“Floyd Benson.” He squinted at the crude sketch then put the glass back to his eye and set it on the figure below. “It’s him all right.”
He put the paper to one side and chose another. “Jody Mackinaw.” He moved the telescope across the figures one by one until he stopped on Jody. “Yes, it’s him. There’s no doubt.” He was smiling now. He focused on the tall man wearing the duster coat, waiting for him to turn so he could see his face. When he did, all Creech could see was the square jaw that alone was unshaded by the pulled down hat brim. He kept the image in his mind as he rifled through the flyers. He pulled out the one that read: wanted dead or alive emmett green. He frowned at the drawing, then used the glass again. It was as close as dammit.
All of them together in one place.
He could not believe his luck.
But who was the woman and the other man? He shrugged the question aside. If he could get them all he would worry about that later. No doubt, riding with the others, there was bound to be a wanted paper on the fourth man. And the woman didn’t matter a damn. Abruptly, an image of the Mexican woman’s breasts entered his mind, and unconsciously he wet his lips, thinking of that unfinished business. He focused the glass, gauging the width of the woman’s hips as she walked across the yard to the well. Her body was nowhere near as lush as the dead woman’s, but maybe there would be a use for her.
Lying there on top of the hillock, his opponents spread out below him within the long reach of the Sharps rifle, a feeling of power surged through him. Perhaps their coming was an answer to the request for a sign he had made to the Lord when he fought to resist the temptation of the naked Mexican woman that the devil had put before him. If it was an answer, then Creech had implicit faith that the Lord would guide his hand, straight and true.
He smiled as he reached for the Sharps, rubbing his hand lovingly across the smooth stock then on to caress the round barrel. It was the .50 caliber model, the “big fifty” that had gained respect among the buffalo hunters of the ’70s when they had cleaned out the plains, but Creech had been using one for a lot longer than that. He could even remember fifteen years ago, back in ’69, when Sharps had changed over to metal cartridges to replace the paper ones a man had to make up for himself. He liked the speed of a repeating Winchester, especially in a tight corner, but for accuracy and distance he favored the Sharps anytime. It could shoot so far the Indians called it “the gun that shoots today and kills tomorrow.”
He opened the breech to load the first of the shells from his pocket. He pushed one in with his thumb then closed the breech firmly and looked to the sky, voice rumbling:
“If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me.
“I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginnings of revenges upon the enemy.
“Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people; for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries…”
With that, Creech rolled over onto his stomach, working his elbows into the loose earth for a firm rest. He set the rear sight with the care of the hunter who has not eaten for days, sighted, and swung the muzzle to cover the rancho below. He chose Floyd Benson as his first target, sorting out the others to follow. After Benson, he would take Emmett Green, then Jody Mackinaw and finally the stranger. The woman he would leave.
Benson was talking to the woman, both of them standing over the dead Mexican woman. Creech steadied the sights on Benson’s chest, visible above the slim woman’s shoulder. He brought up the muzzle to adjust for drop then a lick to the left to compensate for the light breeze blowing in off the desert. He held steady, followed the rhythm of his breathing.
Then he began to squeeze the trigger.
CHAPTER 10
April 12th, 1884
Donna Ana County, New Mexico Territory
Pandemonium broke loose in the yard.
The one Creech didn’t know was shouting something, waving his arms towards the grove of trees. The preacher reckoned they had worked out where he had hung the Sonora Kid. But then Floyd Benson disappeared from his sights. He cursed, swinging the Sharps to take out Green, but he was running too.
Creech raised his cheek from the rifle’s stock, puzzled. All of them were running, catching their horses, and mounting up. Even as he watched, Jody Mackinaw let out a yell, vaulting over the rump of his horse into the saddle. He cursed. They were all moving too fast for a safe shot. Galloping now, they were swerving past the grove.
With a mounting sense of panic he realized they had found his trail, the one that led around the back of the grove to where his horses were now, at the foot of the hillock.
Only minutes and they would be on him.
His strategy of picking them off from the rise had been based on the shock of Benson’s death driving them to cover. With the low range of their saddle carbines they would have realized he could get at them easily and that their weapons would have been almost useless. Of course he had figured on them trying to work their way on foot to his position, but that would have taken time, time he could have used well, taking them out one by one.
Now that was all shot to hell.
He struggled to his feet, jamming his hat back on and lowering the Sharps' hammer gently onto the cartridge so that it wouldn’t go off by accident. He grabbed the telescope and began to run down the slope, leaping and sliding. A foot went out from under him and he stumbled, scrabbling to stay upright. Breathless, ignoring the possibility of breaking a leg, he pushed on down as fast as he could.
He arrived panting at the stallion. He thrust the Bausch & Lamb telescope back into its case, got a boot into the stirrup, swinging his other leg up over the horse’s back. He wound the pinto’s lead rein around the saddle horn, leaving his right hand free for the Sharps as he kicked the stallion into a gallop.
He checked his back trail, grateful for the big black’s powerful stride, taking pleasure in its shiny rump heaving and its flying tail. The pinto was moving well too, despite its ungainly load of the Sonora Kid’s corpse bouncing across its saddle.
There was nobody in sight.
Creech treated himself to a smile. They could never catch him now. He had been able to tell their horses were tired whereas his own were fresh. They had rested all morning while he tracked the Sonora Kid on foot.
Now the stallion was stretching out, laying its ears back, hooves flying over the dry earth. Creech turned to look ahead. Although he was angry he hadn’t got at least one of them before they had mounted up, he was relieved he had escaped unscathed.
He was home free. They could not catch him now.
***
Tom Keene yawned and stretched on the platform as the train behind him wheezed into life, working up a head of steam to carry it out of Las Cruces, south to the border then across Texas to the town of El Paso. Tom Keene had never been to El Paso, and he reckoned if it looked anything like Las Cruces, laid out before him now, then he could forget it.
Keene murmured, “Have you ever seen anything like it?” After Denver, where he had been based for nearly two years, he had forgotten his experience of how primitive frontier towns could be. Now it all came back to him.
Mike Gallagher, his boss, grunted, then said gruffly, “You want to go sightseeing, get yourself another job. We’re here to work.” He took a hit from his silver flask then secreted it back in his inside pocket, eyes roving the ramshackle collection of buildings lining the main street which appeared as though they had been erected by a crew of whiskey-sodden carpenters who didn’t know the difference between an axe and an adze.
“Let’s go find a room. Not that there’ll be any without bedbugs in this place.”
They set off, Keene pleased that no matter what sort of a front he put up, the big Irishman Gallagher had the same opinion of the town as himself. Keene scratched as
he walked. Gallagher had ordered him to change into a homespun shirt and work jeans, and worst of all, high-heeled boots. And they were killing him. How, in this vale of tears, cowhands managed to walk in them he had no idea. But Keene had gone along with it. It made sense to keep a low profile in a border town likely to be bursting at the seams with men running from their not too distant past. One glimpse of a derby hat and hands were bound to be itching towards well-used holsters.
Gallagher spotted the sheriff’s shingle and jerked his head, angling across the street. Keene fell into step, pleased Gallagher’s change of clothes seemed to visibly reduce his authority, making him look more like a down-at-heel cattle buyer than a bull-nosed detective pushing hard for promotion.
“You know the sheriff here?”
Gallagher shook his head, no. “I just want to be sure he knows us. I don’t want to spend a while pussyfooting around, then when we’re getting close have him busting in like a bear with a sore head, blowing out shotgun shells indiscriminately.”
“You’ve seen it happen?”
“It’s been known. Sheriffs have a fondness for scatterguns. They make a lot of noise and they shoot a whole heap of bullets all at once. Makes them impressive. Wyatt Earp up in Tombstone had one under every bar in town.”
Gallagher pushed open the door to find an empty office. He made a face as though he had expected nothing more. “Never a lawman when you want one.”
Keene became aware of someone standing behind him in the doorway. He turned slowly.
“You gents looking for me?”
“You the sheriff?” Gallagher asked as the new arrival pushed past them to take a seat behind the crude desk. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, capable-looking. The hard desert sun had etched crow’s feet deeply into the corners of his blue eyes, and above his scored forehead a shock of wiry blond hair was revealed as he swept off his sweat-stained stetson and flicked it away from him. It spun before catching on a hat peg driven in the wall. Life must be boring in this town, Keene thought, if he had enough spare time to perfect that maneuver.
“That I am. Vernon Reynolds is the name.”
Gallagher extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Mike Gallagher and this is Tom Keene, one of my operatives.”
Reynolds looked at the Irishman’s extended hand without moving.
“We’re from the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Denver.”
“You don’t look like any Pinkertons I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
Gallagher dug out some identification and placed it on the desk. Reynolds opened the papers, noting the impressive letterhead with the “open eye” logo and the legend We Never Sleep. He scanned them quickly and pushed them away.
“So you are who you say you are. What is it you want?”
Gallagher brought out the flyers. “We’re trying to trace these men. They robbed the A.T. and Santa Fe railroad up in Colorado.”
“Doesn’t make ’em wanted here.”
“The railroad’ll pay for them, no matter where they’re caught.”
Reynolds sifted the posters then shook his head. “Ain’t seen none of them in this town. Can’t help you.”
The Irishman was undeterred. “If they’re not here now, some of them soon will be. We traced Emmett Green to Grama, and he headed south away from there, It’s a good bet he’s on his way here. This is one of the Sonora Kid’s haunts.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve only been here six months. What do you want me to do?”
Gallagher smiled for the first time. “Nothing much. Just wanted you to know who we are so you don’t pick the wrong side when we arrest Green. One thing though. If you hear anything before we do, let me know.”
Reynolds nodded.
“I’ll make it worth your time,” Gallagher added. “If one lawman can’t help another then it’s a poor thing.”
“How much worth my time?”
“Hundred bucks.”
The sheriff rifled through the flyers again. “I reckon the rewards on this bunch come to a good few thousand.”
The Irishman used his smile again. “We’ll take all the risk on collecting it. All you do for your hundred is give me the nod and then keep out of the way.”
Reynolds pursed his lips. Green, Mackinaw, and the Sonora Kid added up to one whole heap of trouble. And that was without Floyd Benson. A hundred dollars in his pocket looked much more appealing than the effort involved in trying to prize rewards out of the notoriously tight-fisted railroad company. They did not mind paying up for one or two outlaws to provide incentive for the others to get caught, but all four at once wouldn’t set easy. Besides, a hundred bucks was a good bonus for nothing, especially when a man took on all the duties of wearing a tin star and all the grief he could handle for the paltry sum of forty dollars a month.
“You got a deal.”
This time he shook hands with the two detectives and watched them thoughtfully as they left his office. He couldn’t see that their lives were worth a plugged nickel if the Benson gang did show up. He had seen outlaws caught up a blind alley before.
And they fought like cornered rats.
***
“Aw, shit.”
Floyd let his winded horse shamble into a walk. He hawked up the trail dust lodged in the back of his throat then spat over the horse’s neck. He saw Sophie turn in her saddle ahead of him and waved at her to hold up, then reached for his canteen.
Sophie handled her sorrel mare without respect. “What’ve you stopped for? We’re right on him.”
“Take it easy,” he counseled.
“But we’ll lose him!”
“We already have.”
“No, dammit. I’ll run this horse into the ground before I let him get away.”
Floyd swilled out his mouth, casting an eye at the sorrel’s lathered neck. “You already have.”
Her eyes darted to the empty trail ahead then back at Floyd. “How can you let him get away?”
“His horses’re fresh. Ours are tuckered out.”
“Not after we got this close! Not now, for God’s sake!” She beat a hand on her saddle in frustration. “That bastard.”
“S’okay. We got a line on him.” He tried to smile his reassurance.
“How?”
Emmett pulled up alongside. As his horse was in better condition than theirs, he had been leading, but had pulled up when he saw how far the others were behind him, and that he had no chance of catching up the bounty hunter on his own.
“He’s headed back to town,” Floyd said.
“That’s what I figure,” Emmett agreed, unhooking his canteen. “Billy found some tracks in the grove. He reckons the bounty hunter hung the Kid then the gunshot we heard as we were coming in was when he killed Conchita.”
“Hung the Kid?” Sophie looked horrified. It was all happening just the same as when he’d got Jack.
“That’s the way it reads.” He pointed to the tracks in front of them. “See. Two horses, and both carrying the same weight. My bet is one of ’em’s got the Kid on it, riding head down.”
“That bastard.”
Emmett was gazing off blankly into the distance in the direction of Las Cruces. He continued his conjecture deaf to her comment. “If he’s got the Kid and he’s headed to town, then chances are he’ll be turning in the body for the reward. He’ll have to wire the railroad and wait for them to verify his claim.”
“How long’ll that take?” Floyd frowned.
Emmett shrugged. “Couple of days, maybe.”
“Then he’ll be stuck in Las Cruces?” Sophie asked eagerly.
“Yes, and he’ll be watching for us.”
“Well, he won’t get the chance to see me coming,” Jody said, edging his way into the conversation.
“He won’t see any of us,” Floyd corrected him.
“How’s that?”
“We’ll wait till after sundown before we go into town.”
“And what do we do till then?” Jody asked, staring at th
e bleak aspect of the surrounding desert.
“We’ll go back to the rancho. We never even had time to get some fresh water. Should be some feed ’round to take care of the horses too.” He squinted at their back trail. “There’s Conchita too.”
Nobody said anything. Floyd looked around at their faces.
“Anybody got a better idea, spit it out.”
Emmett nodded. “You called it right. We ride into town in broad daylight and he’s going to see exactly what he’s got coming right at him. ’Sides, if the sheriff digs out the flyer on the Kid then he’ll dig out ours too and we’ll have him on our backs.”
“Sheriffs don’t scare me none,” Jody said testily.
“But he can get in the way,” Floyd said. “And I don’t want nobody in the way when we move in.”
***
“Jody, see if you can find some feed for the horses and water them. Emmett? You want to go into the grove and take a look-see at the tracks Billy found? I’d appreciate you checking them out. Billy, you go along with Emmett.”
As they went about their tasks, Floyd and Sophie walked over to where the flies buzzed about Conchita’s body, still sprawled in the shade of the porch. Floyd walked past her into the house, grabbed a blanket from the rumpled bed then went back outside and covered the body.
Sophie didn’t seem to have anywhere to put her hands. She glanced around the inside of the house edgily then hunched her shoulders and punched her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans. Floyd noticed her restlessness.
“Make some coffee and see if you can find any food. They’ll be hungry. I got me something to do.” He left her then, standing alone in the middle of the room, gazing at the cooking pots. Another woman’s pots and pans. Another woman who was lying out on the porch, her head blown off. Sophie shuddered, then reached for the blackened coffeepot.
“You need a hand there?”
Floyd heaved up the shovel, throwing the dirt to one side. There was still plenty of digging to do before the hole would be big enough to take Conchita’s body. He stood the shovel on the floor of the grave and rested his hands on the handle.
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