The Thunder Riders

by Frank Leslie

  He laughed again. There was the sound of splashing water.

  When Anjanette had flung aside her skirt and pantaloons, she hefted her full breasts in her hands, soothed by the silky, warm fog touching every inch of her naked body. She stepped out into the lukewarm water, over the smooth, polished rocks of the bottom, hearing echoing laughter, splashing, and hooting from upstream. The water felt like warm milk as it inched up her calves, knees, and thighs.

  She peered into the fog ahead, the far rock wall a purple mass before her. “Jack?”

  “Come on, baby!” Considine yelled. “Follow my voice. There’s a cave. Our own private bathhouse, and the water’s hot enough to scald a pig!”

  His echoing laughter was suddenly muffled. Anjanette cursed, at once soothed by the humidity and warm water pressing against her legs and spooked.

  Ancient Indian ruins. River of No Return. Canyon of Lost Souls.

  The fog became the tendrils of a million ghostly beasts; the laughter of the celebrating outlaws seemed to be the cackling of a thousand ancient Indian demons.

  She moved to the rock wall, pressed her hands against the sandstone, and worked her way slowly upstream, raking her left hand against the stone. In the rock, she saw chiseled images of horned creatures and human stick figures with arrows sticking out of them and more figures leaping off a cliff into what looked like the toothy jaws of some snarling biblical beast.

  The sandstone wall opened suddenly—the ragged entrance of a cave. The floor of the cave was the floor of the river, with a strong current pushing out of the cave and against her ankles. Ducking slightly under the low ceiling, she moved into the cliff face, the crenellated cave walls surrounding her, adorned here and there with more chiseled figures.

  The air was moist and close, steam snaking around the protruding rocks, the smell as cloying as that of wafting powder smoke.

  She peered into the steamy shadows, her vision penetrating only a few yards or so. “Jack?”

  A voice sounded far back in the chamber, but she couldn’t make out the words.

  Anjanette continued forward, moving slowly along the cave’s bending right wall, trailing one hand along the wall in case the bed of the stream suddenly gave way beneath her. She felt a burn of annoyance—why hadn’t Jack waited for her?—and the nettling prick of fear as the bizarre wall etchings gaped out at her.

  And yet the steam, the water lit by fires in the earth’s bowels, and the exotic, mysterious cavern where she found herself naked, the sand almost hot beneath her feet, sent spasms of sensuous pleasure trembling through her, so that she felt the nipple of her left breast rise beneath her palm.

  Even Jack’s childish game of hide-and-seek was somehow compelling, alluring. Old Antoine’s rough saloon, with its fetid spittoons and puddles of spilled whiskey, beer, and vomit, was already a distant memory.

  She followed the stream around a long bend, peering ahead, the water gurgling against her thighs, moving ever deeper into steamy darkness. As the floor of the stream dropped slightly, the thick, warm water inching up to her belly, and all ahead was darkness, she let loose a curse and stopped.

  “Jack, goddamn it, I’ve had enough! Where are you?”

  She jumped with a startled grunt as arms snaked around her suddenly, hands closing around her breasts, squeezing. The body behind her pushed her forward brusquely. She stumbled in the deep water, the hands on her breasts holding her upright.

  “Come on, little bitch,” Considine barked. “Spread your legs for me!”

  Her knees smashed into a large, flat boulder before her, and she gritted her teeth against the pain. “Jack, goddamn it, you’re hurting me—”

  Considine cursed and bent her forward across the rock, and before she could protest again, he spread her legs with his knees. She felt the sudden, sharp pain of his violent penetration and the burn of her bare flesh grinding against the boulder.

  “Damn you!” she cried as Considine bucked against her, one hand on the back of her neck, pinning her head to the rock.

  “You know you want it,” he grunted. “You always want it!”

  She gritted her teeth in pain as the outlaw leader bucked, grunting and digging his fingers into her hips. Her chin against the rock, she groaned and cursed.

  Mercifully, it didn’t take him long. When he finished and stepped back, releasing her, she pushed off the boulder, straightening, her feet sliding on the rocks.

  She slapped him. The crack sounded like a pistol shot.

  “Bastard!”

  Considine stared back at her. She couldn’t see much of his face in the darkness, but the steady silver light in his eyes—at once cold, savage, insane—sent a chill down her spine.

  As she fell against the rock, ready to parry a blow, Considine chuckled. His eyes softened. He brought a hand to his face. “I’m sorry, Chiquita.” His voice was low, soft, barely audible above the gurgling stream. “I thought we were only playing.”

  Anjanette swallowed, crossed her arms over her breasts. “I don’t want to play like that anymore, Jack.”

  She pushed past him and started wading back the way she’d come.

  “Don’t go getting serious on me, now, baby!” Considine yelled behind her, his voice darting around her like a ricocheting gunshot. “I was only joking!”

  Chapter 17

  At eleven o’clock that night, about three miles from the canyon where the Thunder Riders had holed up, Marshal Patchen filled his coffee cup from a speckled tin pot and sank back against his saddle. He glanced over at Sheriff Speares, who sat on a rock about six feet from the low cook fire, hunkered deep in his wool coat and staring out at the darkness while smoking a quirley and sipping from his own steaming coffee cup.

  Patchen could tell that the sheriff was mentally licking his wounds. Speares had been made a fool of by the Thunder Riders, then saved by a man he’d thrown in jail. Knowing now that he shouldn’t have jailed the breed in the first place—obviously Yakima Henry wasn’t one of the gang members—was even more embarrassing.

  Patchen absently fingered a raw buzzard peck on his right cheek. Of course, he was as much a fool as Speares, but Patchen had been a fool before, so he didn’t take it as hard.

  And he would be a fool again.

  No man—especially a lawman—could expect not to be a fool now and again on this savage frontier. The trick was to learn from your foolishness and to continue living in spite of it.

  Patchen crossed his boots and hunkered down inside his mackinaw, resting his coffee cup on his thigh. “Tell me, Speares—why are you still so determined to take down this gang? Your nose is broken, your posse’s been wiped out, you’ve been buried up to your neck in sand, nearly had your eyes pecked out, and you’re over a hundred miles south of the border. Can’t just be the gold you’re after. Or the girl.”

  Speares continued staring into the darkness, holding his Winchester across his thighs. The quirley between his lips glowed brightly. He removed it, staring at the coals as he slowly exhaled tobacco smoke through his nose. “I used to ride with that kill-crazy bastard.”

  Patchen studied him. “Considine?”

  “Several years ago, when I was a kid. He fed me to a catch party. For a joke. The bastards strung me up, left me hangin’, damn near killed me. But I worked myself free. Gave up the owlhoot trail—’ceptin’ a couple times— and vowed that if I ever had the chance I’d kill the murdering four-flusher.”

  Patchen laughed. “Instead, he got the gold you were guarding, shot up your town, and nabbed your girl!”

  Speares turned a hard look on Patchen, holding the cigarette between the thumb and index finger of his right hand. “I’m glad you think it’s so damn funny.” He lifted his chin and squinted his eyes. “What about you? You’re just as far from your jurisdiction as I am from mine.”

  The smile faded from the marshal’s face as he stared into his coffee, absently swirling it. He took a sip, set the cup back on his thigh. “I can tell you a better Considine story than that. A
bout a year ago, he hit the town I was living in, shot up a saloon, and kidnapped my daughter. Took her off the street in front of the haberdashery. I tracked him into the mountains above Tucson, found Peg’s naked body in the Salt River Canyon. She’d been beaten, carved up—”

  Patchen took another sip of the coffee, his eyes hard as he stared out over the rim. “Before he hit Saber Creek, he shot a pair of rangers. Execution style. That’s what I’m gonna do to him.”

  Speares sucked on his quirley as he looked off through the desert willows. “Not if I get to him fir—” He stopped, frowning, slowly reaching up to pluck the quirley from between his lips.

  “What is it?” Patchen asked.

  Speares threw out an arm as he continued staring through the darkness. “Quick—douse the fire!”

  Patchen threw out the last of his coffee and sprang to his feet, kicking dirt on the fire. A second later he was crouched beside Speares, his Henry in his hands, following the sheriff’s gaze through the willows and across the rolling, rocky slopes cloaked in starlit darkness.

  It was hard to judge distance in this broken country, but about a mile away, a flickering, cone-shaped light shone. As Speares and Patchen stared, another, smaller light grew left of the first. A minute later, still another light appeared, quickly gaining vibrancy until it was as bright as the first two.

  The three fires were about ten, fifteen yards apart.

  The lawmen glanced at each other.

  “What do you think?” Speares said.

  “I think we got company,” said Patchen.

  “Strange time to be settin’ up camp.”

  Patchen rubbed his sunburned chin. “Ain’t it, though?”

  “Think we oughta check it out?”

  “It smells like a trap.”

  “If it’s the gang, we might be able to pop a couple and get Anjanette out before they do to her what they did to your girl.”

  “If they haven’t already,” Patchen said.

  “Once she’s safe, we could go back in for Considine and the gold.”

  “On the other hand, we might be wandering into an Indian camp. Or banditos.”

  Speares smirked, impatient. “Well, now, how in the hell are we gonna know if we don’t check it out?”

  “I reckon you have a point.” Patchen walked back to the doused fire, where smoke rose from the dusty ashes, and began gathering his gear. “We best break camp in case we need to split ass outta here.”

  When both men had rolled their blankets and saddled up, Patchen swung onto his horse’s back. “Let’s take it slow. Apache slow. They could be waiting for us between here and the fires.”

  “You know, Patchen,” Speares said snidely, toeing his stirrup while holding his saddle horn, “you ain’t the only experienced lawman out here.”

  Patchen turned his horse and gigged it around rocks and through the willows, heading toward the fires and grumbling. “Maybe not. But at least I learn from my experiences.”

  “I heard that,” Speares said, gigging his own mount up beside Patchen’s. “You’re talkin’ about that ambush, ain’t ya? Well, goddamn it, I done told you I was sorry about that. Those sonsabitches are slick as damn snakes in a privy pit!”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Speares said, swinging his head from left to right as he walked the horse down a rocky hill, starlight limning the sage, creosote, and occasional pine. “Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.”

  Speares muttered something too softly for Patchen to make out, reining his horse a few yards right of the marshal and raking his gaze across the brush and the low, rolling hills revealed by starlight.

  Moving slowly, often stopping and listening, the lawmen worked their way to within a hundred yards of the fires. They dismounted, tied their horses to a couple of low pines in a crease between hogbacks, removed their spurs from their boots, and continued on foot, about twenty yards apart and holding their rifles up high across their chests. They stepped quietly, keeping a low boulder snag between them and the fires, stopping every few yards to look around and listen.

  As they moved, they heard only the slight swish of the breeze in the brush, occasional owls and coyotes, and the pops and snaps of the fires on the other side of the rocks. Sparks rose above the rocks, winking out among low cottonwood branches.

  Speares moved around left of the rubble while Patchen slipped to the right. The marshal hunkered down behind a boulder, squeezing his rifle in his hands, and peered toward the flickering firelight about thirty yards ahead.

  The three fires burned in shallow pits. The wood had burned down some, falling with soft thumps and thuds, but the flames still reached several feet into the air.

  Around them, no one. There was no tack or gear of any kind. No extra wood for keeping the fires burning. It was as if someone had merely set the fires and left.

  Electricity fired through Patchen’s veins. His first instinct had been correct. The fires were a trap.

  He’d begun to retreat when the snap of a branch rose on the other side of the false encampment. He stopped, held his position, peering around the rocks.

  In the brush beyond the firelight, a shadow moved. Flames winked off steel.

  A spur chinged softly.

  From somewhere above and left of the marshal, a rifle boomed, shattering the heavy silence. A man grunted, and there was the thud of a body falling in brush.

  “It’s a trap!” a voice shouted, pinched with fury.

  Boots thumped and brush crackled as two figures materialized from the shadows on the other side of the fire, both aiming rifles. Patchen pulled his head back behind the rock as two slugs blasted the side of it, spraying sand and rock shards.

  Patchen snaked his rifle around the rock and was about to draw a bead on the shooter, when the rifle above and left boomed again. The man on the other side of the fire screamed and flew straight back into the darkness, throwing his Winchester.

  A rifle lever rasped, and there were two more quick shots. A man cursed shrilly to Patchen’s left. There was a loud thump, followed by a crunch.

  A wail rose, filled with such misery that Patchen’s belly flip-flopped.

  Patchen peered around the rocks and to the left and saw a man crawling out of the far fire, his back and arms aflame. Still screaming, he pinwheeled, flapping his arms as though trying to fly, and sprinted off into the darkness—a human torch lighting up the surrounding brush and trees.

  About twenty yards away, he collapsed against a boulder, clung there for a time, legs moving as though he were trying to climb the rock, and gave another yell. It sounded like a horse’s anguished whinny. Finally, the man slumped to the ground and lay there, flames leaping around him.

  Patchen spied movement on the far left side of the rocks. Speares came slowly out from cover, crouching over his rifle as he peered into the darkness around the fire.

  A shadow jounced in the tree ahead and to the left of Speares. Patchen tensed, brought his rifle up. At the same time, Speares swung his own rifle around, angling it up at the tree.

  A familiar voice: “Hold on.”

  Firelight flashed off a brass rifle casing. A man dropped from a stout branch to the fork of the cottonwood and from there to the ground, landing flat-footed, bending his knees. Long black hair fell across his shoulders, and his sweat-stained buckskin shirt stretched taut across his chest.

  “Damn,” Yakima said, shuttling his gaze from the burning man to a spurred boot lying at the edge of the firelight to the dead man behind the fire nearest Patchen. “They only sent three. I was hopin’ for a few more.”

  As Patchen moved forward, lowering his rifle, Speares cursed. “You used us for bait, you son of a bitch!”

  Yakima shook his head, peering cautiously into the darkness. “I just set a couple fires.”

  “You’re a crazy son of a bitch, Henry.” Patchen’s gut burned. He was getting to be as big a fool as Speares, and he wasn’t learning a damn thing from his foolishness. “How’d you know they wouldn’t all come
?”

  Yakima shrugged. “I wouldn’t send my whole gang to check out three campfires. Especially if I had gold to keep track of.” Yakima racked a fresh shell into his Winchester’s breech and off-cocked the hammer. He regarded the two lawmen with vague distaste. “If you two are gonna hang around, you might as well make yourselves useful. I’ve got a hidden camp up yonder in the hills. Fetch your horses.”

  He turned, started away.

  Speares laughed caustically. “You gotta lot o’ damn nerve!”

  Yakima continued walking away. “It’s gonna take nerve to take down the Thunder Riders.”