Desperadoes

by Chris Scott Wilson

  “Stay right there,” Floyd whispered edgily. The last thing he needed was the sorrel to pinpoint his position for anybody watching. Especially anybody with an itchy trigger finger. The horse stopped, wary of the tone in his voice, but it was close enough for Floyd to see it bore no brand. No help there.

  The sun was almost gone now. He waited, crouched uncomfortably by the rails. There was nothing moving. He hadn’t seen or heard Jody or Billy. He wondered for a moment if they were still alive, then dismissed his fear. After all, there was only one horse here, and anyway he would have heard something. Jody wasn’t one to go down without having the last word. Even if it was only a strangled rebel yell.

  Time to move on. As he came off his heels there was a flicker of light. He froze. It had come from the cabin. Whoever it was had lit the lantern. He could see the square of window clearly now, pale yellow against the dark hand of night. He sniffed. Wood smoke on the breeze. Whoever it was had made themselves at home. They’d even built a fire.

  Floyd took the line of the corral rails, working his way closer. He was fairly confident there was only one intruder. The one horse in the corral could have been to throw them, but he didn’t think so. He paused at the end of the rails. Nothing but empty ground ahead. He had planned the place that way, so if they were ever followed there would be a clear field of fire from the cabin. He had never considered it might be him sneaking up.

  No choice but to make a run. The cabin backed onto a shale slope that would make too much noise for an approach. Another part of his careful planning working against him. No choice at all. He stooped to unfasten his spurs then hung them on a fencepost where they would make no noise. He stayed there a moment, trying to think of anything else that could help him, but came up empty-handed.

  He took a deep breath then came to his feet. He set out at a trot, running as lightly as he could in his high-heeled boots. Thirty feet. No sign of life in the cabin. Twenty feet. Nothing. Fifteen feet. The light went out.

  He sidestepped quickly to the right. Down on one knee, he was ready to shoot. Nothing happened. As his eyes readjusted after being focused so long on the yellow square, he saw the light had not been put out at all. Instead, somebody had hung a blanket over the window so now there was only a thin yellow line at the top.

  They hadn’t seen him. Relieved, now almost in total darkness, he rose again to his feet, this time walking slowly, silently. Ten feet. Nothing. A moment later his back was flat against the rough-hewn logs of the cabin wall, on one side of the door. Waiting for his breathing to slow down, he looked off to the dark timbers. Still no sign of Jody or Billy.

  This was it. No opportunity now to peer in at the corner of the window. It was too closely covered by the blanket. It had to be a rush job. And if there was one thing Floyd didn’t cotton to, it was rush jobs. A man was just too likely to get his head blown off. He was beginning to wish he had sent Jody instead of coming himself. Jody had just the right sort of temperament for this kind of thing—an unshakeable belief in his own immortality. Floyd had seen too many of his buddies shot down to have any faith in his own.

  But Jody wasn’t here. He had come himself.

  Thinking too much about it would only slow him down. He took a firm grip on the 44.40 Winchester, a deep breath, and then launched himself forward. He kicked open the door. Squinting against the light he burst into the room.

  “Stay right where you are!” he yelled, “Or I’ll cut you in half!”

  The figure standing at the smoke-blackened hearth never moved. Small, dressed in tight jeans weighed down by a heavy gun belt, topped off with a work shirt and vest. Long dark hair hanging down from under the wide-brimmed hat. The face was in shadow, and the hands were empty but for a log.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  There was no answer.

  Floyd realized he was standing between the hurricane lamp and the hearth. He stepped aside and the pale light revealed the intruder’s face. He looked hard for a second, then sighed.

  “Aw, shit, looks like I’ve done it again. This just ain’t my day,” he said, embarrassed, the Winchester’s barrel drooping until it pointed at the dirt floor. He gestured helplessly then laid the rifle on the table and turned back, arms spread wide. A broad grin cracked his face.

  “Hell, Sophie, why didn’t you let me know you were coming? I’d of at least stayed home.”

  She smiled and ran into his arms.

  “Oh Floyd,” she said.

  CHAPTER 3

  April 3rd, 1884

  Alameda, Bernalillo County, New Mexico Territory

  Sheriff Luke Prior looked up from sifting the papers on his desk when the street door opened. Damn paperwork. Once upon a time a man just had to be able to see straight and be tolerable fair with a gun to hold down a job like this. Nowadays it was all paperwork. Account for this, account for that, go begging for money every month to the town council and answer query after query about every cent needed to meet the bills. If it wasn’t for the fact he was putting his son through college back east he would have quit long ago. As if he didn’t have enough to bother him, now there was these two.

  He appraised the two strangers with a scowl. He didn’t need to be introduced to know what they were. Both around five-eight, hundred and eighty pounds, dressed in tight-fitting gray suits and derby hats, each carrying a well-used carpetbag. Sheriff Prior glanced at their feet. City shoes, low-heeled, all but useless in this country.

  “Yeah,” he said noncommittally.

  “Perhaps you can help us, Sheriff.”

  “Perhaps I can,” he conceded, sounding as though he had every intention of being as little help as possible.

  The first of the two men brought out some wanted flyers. He handed them across the desk. The sheriff peered at them suspiciously for a moment, and then reached out to accept them. He riffled through the sheets quickly, then looked up at their expressionless faces.

  “Got the same ones here.” He gestured vaguely to the clutter of papers strewn across the desk.

  “Have you seen any of the men on these?”

  Luke Prior sniffed. “Can’t say I have.”

  “We were informed they were in this area,”

  Prior snorted and twisted in his chair to pour himself more coffee without offering them any. When he turned back he took a slurp from the java and shrugged. “According to the hearsay on everybody with a price on their head, they’re all in this area. One time, when I was a young man and ambitious, I used to believe them. I don’t anymore.”

  “Mind if we take a look at your prisoners?”

  “Help yourself. Two drunks and a cowboy who took a loan on somebody’s broken-down horse—only they didn’t know it.” He watched them walk over to the cells then fished in one of the paper heaps in front of him.

  “Thank you for your help, Sheriff,” one of the men said sarcastically as they made for the door.

  “Hold up there.” Prior held up the sheet he had been searching for. “There’s a name missing from your batch of flyers. Jack Keble.”

  The first man smiled. “He’s dead. Bounty hunter accounted for him up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, January gone.”

  Prior grimaced. “Some men have all the luck. Tell you what, some gang tried to hold up the bank in San Pedro the other day. I got the news over the wires. Might be the ones you’re looking for.”

  “Could be at that. Thanks.” This time it was said sincerely before they went out onto the street. Prior was glad to see them go. He had offered the information only so they would be out of town all the sooner. Their sort got everybody talking, suspicious of everyone else, until the whole town was jumpy. You would have thought they would wear different hats or something, so folks couldn’t pick them out of a crowd like beeves mixed with horses.

  He shook his head and began tamping tobacco into his pipe. “Damn Pinkertons,” he said with disgust. His eye caught the face of Jack Keble on the wanted flyer. He crumpled the sheet then tossed it onto the woo
dpile next to the stove, a half smile creasing his face. “Well, that’s one less bit of paper to worry about. Now let’s see if I can find some more to throw out.”

  ***

  “Aw, shit.”

  Floyd rubbed a hand across his eyes and pushed away his half-eaten food. He looked at Sophie’s tear-stained face. “You say this man in black left you for dead in the snow, right under the tree where…”

  “Yes,” she interrupted quickly. “I don’t know how long I was there but somebody found me. I lost the baby though. The doctor said there was no way he could have saved it.”

  “And my Mary? You never saw her?”

  Sophie shook her head in quick denial. “She was already buried by the time I knew what was happening. Somebody said she was badly cut up. They said…” Her voice faltered and she averted her eyes.

  Floyd pressed her, a hand on her shoulder. “They said what? I want to know, Sophie. For when I kill that son of a bitch.”

  “They said her arms and legs, even her head too, had been cut off.”

  Floyd’s eyes narrowed, mouth grim. He had seen things that could make a man sick to his stomach, things he didn’t care to remember, but he’d never seen anything like that, leastways not a woman… He turned away to stare into the fire, watching the writhing tongues of flame lick at the crackling wood. His Mary. Her soft white skin. Long pretty hair that hung like a curtain around her innocent face. It was hard enough to believe she was dead without even beginning to consider the way she had died. He had known men do bad things to women, but to actually cut her up into pieces…

  “You reckon he was a railroad man?”

  Sophie shook her head, no.

  “Bounty hunter then?”

  She grimaced. “Not like any bounty hunter I know of. He kept reading out of a Bible, and the last thing I remember hearing… Maybe I didn’t hear it at all, maybe just dreamed it…”

  “What?” Anything could help.

  She frowned. “There was this voice, rough like he’d drunk too much whiskey, singing ‘Rock of Ages’.”

  “That’s a hymn, ain’t it?” Jody contributed.

  Floyd ignored him. “You sure, Sophie?”

  She nodded. “The only thing I could think he was like is a crazy preacher.”

  “He’s crazy all right. Crazy like a fox. He’d have to be, to get the drop on Jack. Jack was good, real good.” He fished in his vest pocket for a cheroot. “This happened just after Christmas, right? Then this man in black could be anyplace by now. That was almost four months ago. And we don’t even know his name.”

  “I’d know his voice anywhere. I’ll never forget it.”

  Floyd reached an ember from the fire, touched it to his cheroot, then tossed it back into the flames. “Don’t you worry none, Sophie, we’ll get him.” He switched his gaze to her face. “You all right now?”

  “If you can forget this.” For the first time she took off her hat. A long path was shaved through her hair where a ragged scar burned across her scalp. With the rest of her hair long, it stood out even more. She saw their faces and knew she had been right not to show them before. “The doctor said the hair would grow back. Just a matter of time.”

  Floyd stared at the scar. Somehow it made all the horrors she had spoken of that much more real. It had been like an incredible yarn that he didn’t want to believe, but the sight of that raw wound gave him no choice.

  “Let me think,” he said, standing up and striding to the door. He lifted the latch, the square of night pitch black through the doorway.

  Then he was gone.

  ***

  “Remember that job we did on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad on the Arkansas River up in Colorado?” Floyd asked, raking their faces. “There was me and Jack, you Jody, Charlie and Jake, and Emmett Green.”

  Billy, who hadn’t been there, shook his head, but Jody and Sophie nodded.

  “Well, I tell you who else was there. The Sonora Kid from Zamora. Remember him?”

  How could they forget him? A stocky dark-skinned Mexican, given to decorating his hatbands and gun belts with silver conchos. Always grinning, his tobacco-stained teeth poking through beneath his moustache, He claimed he could ride any animal born, even the devil’s spawn, and he could outshoot any man alive. His other claim was he could track a bear through water or a bee through the air, or even more difficult, a bronco buck Apache through his own country. And all one-handed. His left arm ended in a leather stock fitted with a steel hook. When he was asked how he had lost his hand he told a different story each time, the extent of his exaggeration regulated by how much whiskey, or better still, tequila, he had swallowed. One time it would be a ten-foot grizzly in the timbers with claws and teeth like yellow ice picks, another time a howling mountain lion caught in a trap with one leg hanging off, and yet another it would be when he was tortured by a band of renegade Chiricahua Apaches. Each yarn was taller than the last.

  “What about him?” Sophie asked quietly.

  Floyd looked into the fire. “Whenever he’s busted flat out he works as a bounty hunter. I know it ain’t no living to be proud of, but the Kid’s real good at it. When you’ve been in that line of work you get to know all the opposition. I don’t know how it works, but somehow it gets passed along the line. If anyone knows who this man in black who sings hymns is, well, I’d lay money the Kid will.”

  “Where do we find him?” she asked.

  “That’s the problem,” Floyd said, tossing another log onto the fire. “Last I heard he was down in Las Cruces on the Rio Grande, just north of El Paso.”

  “Let’s go find him,” Sophie urged, already on the edge of her seat.

  Jody was shaking his head. “That’s one hell of a long ride for somebody who might not even be there, boy.”

  “How far?” Sophie asked.

  “Close on two hundred miles, I figure,” Floyd answered.

  “Like I said, one hell of a ride,” Jody observed.

  Billy grinned as he poked a long finger into Jody’s ribs. “You figure you can’t ride that far? Want me to get some ointment for your sore ass?”

  “I kin do it, boy. Jody Mackinaw can ride as far as any man and then some.”

  Floyd smiled. “Then what the hell are you bitchin’ about?”

  CHAPTER 4

  April 5th, 1884

  The Foothills of The Jicarilla Mountains, Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory

  Floyd rubbed a hand across his face, wiping away the sweat. Considering it was so early in the year the sun was a real killer. Coming into the dry country didn’t help. He glanced at each of the horses in turn, noting their drooping heads and dragging hooves. He held up a hand and hauled his own tired mount to a stop.

  “We’ll rest the horses for an hour.” Without waiting for agreement from the others he swung down from the saddle, loosened the cinch under the horse’s belly a couple of notches, then unhooked his canteen and drew his 44.40 Winchester from its scabbard. He patted the horse’s rump, turning it loose to find what forage it could.

  Sophie kicked her sorrel mare over to where Floyd was making himself a seat in the shade of a pecan tree. Dust had caked into the sweat on her face and her hair was tangled by the desert wind and sand, making her look half wild. Irritably, she slapped a glove against her thigh.

  “Can’t we keep moving? We’ll never get there.”

  Floyd rinsed his mouth with lukewarm water from his canteen and spat it out. He wiped his lips with the back of his wrist then his face screwed up as he squinted up to where she loomed out of the sun.

  “We won’t get there if we keep moving. It’ll kill the horses first. These critters don’t like this sort of country.”

  “That’s the truth,” Billy said, coming to stand by the sorrel’s head, having already turned his own horse loose. “You get down, Miss Sophie, and I’ll see to your saddle.”

  She sighed, then stepped down and moved into the shade where Floyd patted the ground beside him. He wiped the neck of
the canteen then handed it to her. Gratefully, she drank.

  “You got some of that jerky there?”

  Jody tossed over a couple of sticks. Floyd caught them deftly then gave one to Sophie. He began to chew, using water in his mouth to soften the tough twist of dried meat.

  “You been to Las Cruces before?” Sophie asked, eyeing the jerky with suspicion, before attempting to tear off a bite.

  Floyd nodded.

  “What’s it like?”

  “Border town. You seen one, you seen ’em all.” He said it with distaste.

  “On the border? I thought it was north of El Paso?”

  “Sure. ’Bout thirty miles. But it’s as near as dammit to the Mex border.”

  “We still a long way off?”

  Floyd scowled and twisted so he could see around the trunk of the tree they were leaning against. He pointed.

  “See over there? Them’s the Jicarilla Mountains, and that big one there is Jacks Peak.” He turned back and waved a hand at the horizon, hazy in the west. “About fifteen miles that way is the Chupadero Mesa. That high country runs all the way south past Las Cruces and down into Texas just above El Paso.”

  “We following it?”

  He shook his head. “No, high country’ll slow us down. We’ll ride south. After maybe ten miles we’ll hit the lava beds. The Spanish called them Mal Pais which means bad country and by hell they’re right.”

  “Then why are we going that way?”

  “We’ll skirt them. They last forty miles, give or take a few grains of sand, then we’ll head alongside the San Andres Mountains, down past the salt marsh. Some way south there’s a little town called Organ, of all the crazy names. It nestles in the San Augustin Pass. From there it’s an easy ride to Las Cruces.”