by Judd Cole
Bill’s eyes cut to the rimrock above them. He recalled the Chinese kid’s words: Mean man. Handsome face, but hard eyes like stones.
“That’s a stumper, ain’t it?” Bill replied.
Josh started to protest. But Old Smoke edged close to a cactus-covered hummock, and the kid prepared to protect his still-aching sitter. Wild Bill snorted, waiting for the wily gray to “chin the moon” and send the kid flying.
They passed the occasional Pueblo indio walking on the trail. The wealthiest ones proudly displayed their turquoise-and-silver jewelry. In a land where Indians were still forbidden, by edict, from riding horses, turquoise had become their leading sign of status. Indeed, its distinctive color—known as Taos Blue—was seen everywhere.
Some of the Pueblos gave them shy, friendly greetings. Others, however, gazed with mute fear at the Winchester rifle protruding from Bill’s saddle boot—“the sticks which speak like the Thunder Bird.” Bill knew some of them were recalling the glorious Pueblo Revolt of 1680, one of the few times when local Indians overcame intertribal wars and dealt misery to the pale bearded ones.
“The numbers eighteen and sixty-five,” Josh repeated, musing out loud, “and the letter D. What’s it mean, Bill?”
Bill’s eyes, narrowed to slits in the burning sun, studied the trail on both sides. For absolutely no logical reason at all, he had a sudden thought: Did the kid’s question just now have anything to do with Sam, Elena, and their quest for the stolen bell?
“Nah—I’m just shooting at rovers,” Bill muttered.
“What’d you say?” Josh demanded.
Again Bill’s eyes cut to the rimrock above. “Never mind,” he told the kid. “Shut up now and keep your eyes peeled.”
Frank Tutt had been watching, from a window of his room at the Dorsey, when Hickok and the gangly pup with him had walked to the livery barn. Seeing them ride south out of town, he knew there was only one route they could take for many miles—the Old Pecos Trail.
No white man knew the Santa Fe country as well as Frank Tutt did. Working for El Lobo had taught Frank every game trace, hidden arroyo, or secret Indian footpath between Taos to the north and the Manzano Mountains to the south.
Thus, it was child’s play to circumvent the Old Pecos Trail, by way of a more direct trace, and get out ahead of Hickok. Now Frank’s sturdy little grullo—a dark blue gelding—was hobbled behind him in the jagged rimrock above the main trail.
Frank knew that high-heel boots, good for holding stirrups, were not made for climbing across talus slopes and piles of loose volcanic scree. He was wearing triple-soled fawnskin moccasins, flexible but thick enough to protect the feet.
He crouched and laid his Spencer .56 carbine across a rock, screwing the 7 x scope into its bracket atop the barrel-and-receiver group. Then he thumbed copper-jacketed slugs one by one through a trap in the butt plate.
By now Frank figured he’d given Hickok enough clues. The man must know by now who was after him. That’s what Frank wanted— wanted like hell thirst—for Hickok to know that Dave Tutt’s kid brother was avenging his death. Otherwise, there was no real justice to the killing of Hickok.
Down below, two riders emerged from a dogleg bend in the trail. Hickok was in the lead on a handsome chestnut with a roached mane. The kid rode perhaps ten yards behind on his gray.
Tutt’s lips eased away from his teeth. He lowered his right cheek tight against the carbine’s stock, sighting in on the trail below.
“Touch you for luck, Wild Bill?” he said out loud, heart palpitating with excitement now that the moment had finally arrived.
Frank moved the crosshairs until they were centered on Hickok’s chest. He took a long breath, relaxed, slowly expelled the breath. Then his trigger finger began taking up the slack.
“Can’t be far to the Lazy M now,” Bill remarked when they pulled in, atop a long rise, to let the horses blow. “We’re coming back down into the river valley, prime cattle grazing.”
Josh breathed in deeply the clean, nose-tickling tang of green alfalfa fields. The Pecos River valley lay spread out below them, a lush green ribbon meandering through the parched brown hills surrounding it.
Rocky bluffs rose on both sides of the trail. Wild Bill studied them while they rested.
“Liddy might not be so eager to see you,” Josh needled. “Way you just dumped her and went running to Elena.”
“Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” Bill replied, still scrutinizing the bluffs. “My loss is your gain, huh? Maybe you’ll have to recite some poems to her while the doves coo?”
The horses stood snorting and stomping at flies. Bill leaned forward, resting his forearms on the saddle horn while he concentrated his attention on one point above them in the rimrock.
“See something?” Josh demanded.
Bill waved him quiet. He thought he had just seen a glitter of reflection. But there was no quartz or mica, up in that spot, to reflect sunlight—just dark shale and red sandstone.
There! Another winking glitter.
“Cover down!” Wild Bill barked.
He didn’t wait for Josh to follow orders. Bill swatted the kid right out of his saddle with a mighty backhand swing that caught Josh in the chest.
Bill followed suit, jerking his feet from the stirrups and literally rolling off the rump of his horse. But even as he cleared the saddle, a rifle cracked loudly from overhead, and Josh’s heart almost skidded to a stop.
Chapter Seven
Wild Bill had many years of experience when it came to being shot at. And he had figured out at least one thing for sure: Usually you won’t hear the shot that kills you. The bullet arrives before the noise of the gun.
So he was actually relieved to hear that rifle crack go echoing across the terrain. Both ambushed riders scuttled into the salt-cedar thickets beside the trail. Their horses ran a few hundred yards on down the trail, then stopped to cut grass beside a little seep spring.
Bill expected more bullets to hail in from the rimrock. Instead, a minute of silence followed that single shot.
“The sniper leave?” Josh spoke up from his hiding spot.
“How long ago was once-upon-a-time?” Bill shot back sarcastically. “How the hell would I know?”
Moments later, more shots rang out. Bill’s brows met in a puzzled frown.
“Those were pistol shots,” he told Josh. “And they weren’t fired at us. That was behind the ridge. Let’s clear out, Longfellow.”
Sticking to whatever cover they could find, the two men moved quickly ahead and caught up to their horses.
“Going back after him?” Josh demanded.
Bill, his face in shadow under his broad black hat, cast a long glance back toward the rimrock. His memories of Civil War disasters made him reluctant to attack the high ground.
“We’ll leave it alone, for now. No need to go looking for our own graves. He’ll leave his calling card again.”
“It’s the same man that threw the rock last night,” Josh said, not making it a question. “The mystery man who dug that pitfall and made the Chinese kid sabotage the water boiler. ‘Cept he ain’t a mystery, is he? Not to you.”
“Leave it alone,” Bill repeated as he stepped up into leather. “Let’s break dust.”
U.S. Marshal Sam Baxter was over a barrel.
Less than a year now, and he’d be retiring from frontier law enforcement. Like a man with one last promise to fulfill, he wanted, more than he ever wanted anything, to lock away the worst public menace in the Southwest: El Lobo Flaco, the Skinny Wolf. And that gold bell the Wolf took from the people of Chimayo—it would at least partially compensate the U.S. Mint for gold he robbed.
Sam was willing, all right, but sadly unable. Once, he had three deputies to assist him in this vast territory. But one had been gunned down in Lincoln County and another died of snakebite down near Isleta Pueblo. His only remaining deputy stayed busy serving warrants and tracking fugitives. Without help from Cavalry or Hickok, Sam knew he didn’t s
tand a snowball’s chance of even getting close to the well-protected El Lobo.
Now, as Marshal Baxter scouted the hill country south of Santa Fe, he wished all over again that J. B. Hickok was still his deputy. Hell, with Wild Bill on his side, a man could hog-tie Geronimo himself. But Hickok had got too famous for his own good. He—
Sam’s thoughts scattered like startled birds when he spotted motion from the corner of his right eye.
Sam looked up toward a sandstone ridge to his right. Thank God his old eyes were better than his kidneys—Sam spotted a rider on a sturdy grullo, picking its way up toward the rimrock. Sam recognized that dark blue gelding instantly: Frank Tutt’s horse.
Sam had no idea exactly what Tutt was up to. The Old Pecos Trail lay on the far side of that ridge—chances were good Tutt was preparing to ambush someone. But the important thing was the fact that Tutt worked for El Lobo. If Sam could arrest him for something, maybe he could arrange a little trade: Frank’s freedom in exchange for information about El Lobo’s plans for the bell.
It was a long shot. But Sam had to take help where he could find it.
“C’mon, old soldier,” he called to his big blood bay, shortening the reins to head him up the slope behind Tutt.
If he was a younger man, Sam would have hobbled his mount and climbed that ridge on foot. But his joints were too stove up with arthritis— he’d have to risk being spotted.
Frank disappeared over the top of the ridge. Before long Sam heard it: the clip-clop of shod hooves approaching along the trail below.
Tutt’s carbine spoke its piece, the noise echoing off the surrounding ridges. Sam tossed caution to the wind and spurred his bay up the slope, drawing his short iron.
That reckless burst of speed was his fatal mistake; soon, one of his mount’s hooves dislodged a good-size rock. It went clattering and clashing down the sandstone slope, causing a small but loud rock slide.
Tutt appeared into view above him, staring downward to locate the source of the racket. As Sam watched, the gunsel surprised him by setting aside his carbine at sight of the marshal.
Huh, Sam thought. Maybe he ain’t the hardcase I thought he was.
But that was only to free his hands. Frank smacked the butt of his Colt Navy revolver; it swiveled up in its special-rigged holster, and fire leaped out of the muzzle.
Tutt fired three times. One slug hammered Sam’s right shoulder and turned him sideways in the saddle. A second raked his rib cage, and the third almost knocked him from his horse when it punched into the side of his neck, severing the big carotid artery. An obscene gout of blood spattered the fender of his saddle.
With his last reserves of strength and consciousness, Sam rolled his bandanna and tied off the neck wound. He wheeled his mount and fled down the slope. But already awareness was ebbing. Desperately Sam pulled a strong rawhide thong from his saddle pocket and began lashing his belt to his saddle.
There’d been other bad scrapes in his long career. But Sam knew this was probably the worst—he’d likely seen his last sunrise. The only slim chance he had was to stay on horseback and let the bay carry him to help.
After the near-fatal ambush, only twenty minutes of uneventful riding brought Wild Bill and Joshua to a pair of stately stone gateposts. They marked the turnoff from the Old Pecos Trail to the Lazy M spread.
“Judging from the size of that bunkhouse,” Bill remarked, nodding at the sprawling, cottonwood-log structure, “Mitts got at least a dozen riders. I’d guess that means his herd’s at least thirty thousand strong. Prob’ly up higher in the summer pastures now.”
Mitt McGinnis was perched on the top rail of the breaking pen, watching a Mexican peeler being bucked half to death by an unbroken coyote dun. His sister Liddy stood behind Mitt. She watched in fascinated horror at the peeler’s apparent indifference to his own health. She wore a crisp white blouse tucked into a blue riding skirt. The long blond hair was pulled into a knot on her neck.
Mitt spotted the new arrivals and waved his hat at them. He leaped down athletically to greet them.
“Wild Bill! Joshua! This makes my day, boys! Welcome, welcome. Manuel!” he added in a shout, and the mozo came running from the nearby stables. “Take care of their horses, son. C’mon up to the house, gents, and wash the trail off your faces.”
Liddy, in contrast to her brother, was much cooler in manner as her blue, wing-shaped eyes appraised Wild Bill. “Free to visit us so soon? And how was Miss Vargas? Well, I trust?”
“Yes. And happily engaged to a soldier at Fort Union.”
“Oh? You must have been . . . taken aback by that news?”
“Liddy,” Bill said with his most winning smile, “I believe your claws are showing.”
“That’s ‘Miss McGinnis,’” she corrected him with icy hauteur.
Deliberately snubbing Wild Bill, Liddy turned to Josh. She walked closer to the surprised youth, moving with catlike grace. She gave him a low-lidded smile that made his heart race.
“So. Mr. Robinson. How are you?”
“Please call me Josh.”
“Only if you’ll call me Liddy,” she insisted, making sure Bill heard her. “My lands, Josh! I saw your byline on a story in The New Mexican. It must be wonderful, having such influence on contemporary society.”
Josh swelled up with pride, and Bill had to snort. The kid was so green, he couldn’t recognize it when he was being wrapped around a wily lady’s finger.
“Add all his ‘influence’ to a nail,” Bill chipped in, “and you’ll have a nail.”
Liddy turned on him like an attack dog. “You’re just envious—and no doubt feeling guilty,” she accused Bill. “Josh is so young, yet he’s doing something so constructive with his life.”
“Lad’s a saint,” Bill agreed from a deadpan. He scratched a phosphor to life with his thumbnail and lit a cheroot.
“Come along, Josh,” Liddy said to the overwhelmed youth. “There’s just enough time before dinner. We’ll saddle you a fresh horse, and I’ll show you my brother’s ranch. Just the two of us,” she added for Bill’s benefit.
“She’s a mite miffed at you, Bill,” Mitt apologized when Liddy and Josh were out of earshot. “You ruffled her female feathers by going to see Elena.”
“Women,” Bill replied with a shrug as the two men walked toward the house. “I can read tracks on bare rock. But I’m damned if I can read the female heart.”
Despite his dismissive manner, Bill was in a foul mood, all right. The whole point of this trip south was to cut loose the wolf a bit. So far, though, he’d spent most of his time dodging attempts on his life. And he wasn’t even getting paid for it.
Mitt, who was still a bachelor at thirty, showed off his fine, ten-room house while the two old friends cut the dust with some excellent Irish sipping whiskey. They settled into comfortable wing chairs in Mitt’s library, a huge room lined with leather-bound classics.
“You’ve come a long way from your soddy in Kansas,” Bill complimented his friend.
Mitt shrugged modestly, though the words clearly pleased him.
“Ahh—you know how it is, Bill. He who rolls up his sleeves seldom loses his shirt. I wouldn’t have a pot to spit in if it hadn’t been for you. A good star man is a national treasure.”
Outside, there was a raucous braying noise that made Bill wince and Mitt grin.
“God kiss me,” Bill remarked. “One of your hands skinning mules alive?”
“You just heard one of the camels, Billy. This camel operation of mine is just chicken fixin’s, far as the money. Mainly I’m doing it as a favor to the Army out here. But as far as the entertainment, it’s priceless. I swear I don’t know who’s more of a caution—them camels or that ripe-smelling she-devil I hired to break them.”
A cloud of suspicion suddenly darkened Wild Bill’s face.
“Ripe-smelling she-devil?” he repeated, his tone flat with sudden apprehension. “What she-devil might that be, Mitt?”
Mitt never answered. For
at that moment a Mexican maid in a lace apron and starched mob-cap poked her head into the library.
“Dinner will be served in thirty minutes, senors. Carlita has prepared rooms for both of our guests. Shall I show you to your room, Senor Wild-Bill?”
Both men grinned. Obviously the young girl thought “Wild Bill” was one word, and this man’s last name. Bill followed her to a roomy, sunny bedroom in the west wing of the sprawling house. A water basin, towels, and shaving accessories had been laid out for him. Bill washed, shaved, and changed into his best black suit.
While he spruced up, Bill again ran the clues through his mind: the numbers 18 and 65, the letter D. There was also the Chinese kid’s claim that the man who threatened him was about Josh’s age.
“Bet you a dollar to a doughnut hole,” Bill told his reflection in the cheval glass mirror, “it’s Frank Tutt. All jacked up on those Rebel lies about how I plugged his brother Dave in the back.”
But why couldn’t Bill shake the suspicion that this vendetta to kill him was also connected, somehow, to the stolen church bell?
The four of them ate dinner at an English gate leg table with a fancy ivory lace tablecloth, set with fine, bone-white china. Liddy looked radiant in a low-cut gown of silver satin, her opalescent skin flawless as moonstone.
She insisted that Josh sit beside her and made a point of fussing over him during the meal. Liddy acted as if Bill weren’t even present in the room. But Mitt and Bill, like any good friends on the frontier, had plenty of reminiscing and catching up to do.
“I envy you, Bill,” Mitt declared between the bisque and the main course, baby rack of lamb. “You came out here to New Mex as a boy Josh’s age. That means you got here in time for the last of the old Taos Fairs. Mixed in with Ceran St. Vrain, Kit Carson, Charles Bent, and that crowd. No lawyers and no taxes in those days. Men settled their own scores.”
“That’s barbaric,” Liddy protested, joining their conversation for the first time. “You can’t have civilized society without rules.”
