Sidewinders:#3: Cutthroat Canyon

by Johnstone, William W.

  Wallace came in while they were still eating, and reported that the wagons were loaded and ready to roll. Skinner nodded, drained the last of his coffee, and scraped his chair back as he stood up.

  “Davidson tell you that I’m in charge?” he asked Wallace in a challenging tone of voice.

  Wallace’s rugged jaw tightened. “He said that you were in charge of the guard detail. I’m still responsible for those wagons and that ore, though.”

  “Just don’t go givin’ me orders,” Skinner warned. “I don’t take kindly to it.”

  The two men glared at each other for a second; then Wallace shrugged and turned away. “Just let us know when you’re ready to ride,” he said over his shoulder as he started out.

  “I’m ready now,” Skinner snapped. He made a curt gesture at the other men. “Let’s go.”

  Hansen still had food on his plate, and looked like he might complain about being forced to leave it, but he thought better of it and stood up along with the others. He picked up the couple of flapjacks he had left, though, rolled them into a cylinder, and shoved the whole thing into his mouth. He was chewing emphatically as they left the building.

  There were two men on each wagon, armed with both rifles and shotguns. In addition, four heavily armed outriders would accompany the wagons, one at each point of the compass. Those defenders would be enough to discourage small groups of would-be thieves. And if a larger bunch tried to grab the gold, the men Davidson had hired in El Paso would rush in to put a stop to the robbery.

  Bo and Scratch went to the corral with the other men and led their horses out. Alfred emerged from the house with four sets of fully loaded saddlebags. He handed out the supplies and then stepped back.

  “Good luck, gentlemen,” he said. “If all goes as planned, you’ll be back here on the evening of the fourth day from now. I’ll see you then.”

  “So long, Alfred,” Scratch said as the men swung up into their saddles.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Morton.”

  Bo lifted a hand in farewell as he heeled the dun into motion. Wallace, on the driver’s seat of the lead wagon, gripped the reins tightly, and had already started slapping them against the backs of the mule team. He yelled at the balky critters, and the mules finally leaned forward in their harness. The wagon lurched ahead. The other teams followed.

  Skinner, Lancaster, Jackman, and Tragg headed up the canyon ahead of the wagons. There was no point in spreading out until they were all out of the valley. The bandits weren’t going to try anything this close to the mine. Bo, Scratch, Hansen, and Douglas followed the wagons, keeping their mounts at an easy walk to allow the vehicles to pull ahead.

  “You want the right side or the left?” Hansen asked as they rode.

  “It doesn’t matter to us,” Bo said. “Scratch and I are to the left now, so I guess we can stay that way.”

  Hansen nodded. “That’s as good a way to choose as any.” As they cleared the canyon mouth and started out into the valley, he went on. “Do you think the bandits will hit us this trip?”

  “There’s no way of knowing,” Bo said. “I won’t be surprised either way.”

  As the wagons followed the road that cut through the fields, Bo saw several men working with hoes or following teams of oxen pulling plows. At least the valley didn’t appear as eerily deserted today as it had the day before.

  Bo saw the furtive glances that the workers cast toward the wagons and the riders, too. And as they neared the village, he looked up at the bell tower in the church and spotted movement there.

  “Fella in the tower,” he said quietly to Scratch.

  “I see him,” the silver-haired Texan replied. “Hombre could cover a mighty big field of fire from up there. You reckon he works for Davidson?”

  “I can’t think of any other good reason for him to be up there, can you?”

  Hansen asked, “What are you gents talking about?”

  Bo decided to risk telling the big Swede what he and Scratch had noticed. “There’s a rifleman in the bell tower of that church. That reflection we spotted from up there yesterday evening came from a rifle barrel, not the bell.”

  “He’s probably just a lookout,” Douglas suggested. “A man could see a long way from up there. He’d probably see that gang of bandits if they rode into the valley.”

  That was a long speech for the close-mouthed, cold-eyed youngster. What he said made sense, too—and yet Bo sensed that wasn’t the full explanation for the presence of the rifleman in the tower.

  “A fella with good eyes and a high-powered rifle, like, say, a Sharps Big Fifty, could hit just about anybody in this valley,” Scratch mused, his thoughts obviously paralleling Bo’s. “A few years ago down in the Texas Panhandle, a fella name of Billy Dixon shot an Injun’s horse out from under him at a range of damn near a mile with a Sharps.”

  “And a pair of field glasses would let a man see everything that was going on around here,” Bo added. “Sort of like the eyes of God looking down from Heaven.”

  “With a rifle instead of a lightnin’ bolt.”

  Hansen laughed. “You fellas are loco. You’re making it sound like Davidson rules this valley through fear. He gets along with these Mexes. He even buys fruits and vegetables and other supplies from them, he said.”

  “That’s what he claims,” Bo said.

  “Well, I tend to take the word of the man who’s paying my wages, at least until I’ve got proof that he’s not tellin’ me the truth.”

  Bo nodded. “That’s reasonable. And maybe the fella in the bell tower really is just a lookout, like Douglas suggested. But I can’t help being curious.”

  “Curiosity’s sometimes a dangerous thing,” Hansen said. “That’s why I tend to keep any doubts I have to myself.”

  Scratch looked over at Douglas. “What do you think, kid?”

  “I think I’m here to do a job,” Douglas said. “That’s all I care about.”

  Bo shrugged. “Fair enough. Let’s let it go at that.”

  Douglas and Hansen could cause trouble, though, if they went to Davidson when they got back to Cutthroat Canyon and told the mine owner what Bo and Scratch had said. Bo didn’t think they would—men who hired out their guns tended to mind their own business—but it was a possibility.

  He and Scratch would deal with that when and if it happened. In the meantime, the reaction of the two men had told Bo that he and Scratch couldn’t count on any help from them if it turned out that Davidson really was running things around here by fear and intimidation.

  If that time came, Bo and Scratch would have a decision of their own to make.

  A few people were moving around in the village, but they all retreated indoors when they saw the wagons and the riders coming. Hansen seemed to notice that. When Bo looked over at the man, he saw a puzzled frown creasing Hansen’s forehead. Hansen thumbed his hat back and tilted his head so that he could look up at the bell tower as they passed the church. Bo could almost see the wheels turning in the big Swede’s brain as Hansen thought about what Bo had said and what he had seen with his own eyes.

  They left the village behind, and a short time later they reached the pass leading out of the valley. By mid-morning, they were through the foothills and out on the flats, heading north toward El Paso. From their trip down here, Bo and Scratch knew that for the most part the terrain was open, with only a slight roll to it, not really good country for an ambush.

  But there were ridges and knolls here and there that could conceal bandidos, not to mention arroyos of the sort that the bandits had used to sneak up on the camp two nights earlier. Appearances were deceptive. There were a lot more places to hide along their route than it looked like at first glance.

  “Reckon we’d better split up,” Hansen said. “The rest of the fellas are out of sight already.”

  That was true. Skinner and Lancaster had vanished to the northwest, while Jackman and Tragg headed northeast. They would parallel the course of the wagons, staying far enough away so tha
t maybe bandits wouldn’t notice them.

  Bo and Scratch reined their horses to the left. Hansen and Douglas went right. They wouldn’t separate as much as the others had and would stay within sight of each other, several hundred yards apart.

  “I got to thinkin’,” Scratch said after he and Bo had been riding by themselves for a few minutes. “It seems to me almost like Davidson’s tryin’ to tempt those bandidos into comin’ after the gold again.”

  “Like maybe he’s setting a trap for them, and wants us to wipe them out?” Bo suggested.

  “Yeah. Exactly like that.”

  Bo nodded slowly. “Could be. After the things we’ve seen, I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Scratch rasped a thumbnail along his jawline, a habit he shared with Bo when either of them was deep in thought. “That young fella Davidson killed a couple of nights ago…he didn’t look like much of a bandit to me. He wasn’t much more’n a kid.”

  “You could say the same thing about Douglas,” Bo pointed out, “and I wouldn’t want to tangle with him.”

  “Reckon that’s true enough. And the hombre did try to ventilate me and was about to take a knife to Davidson. I ain’t sayin’ he was some sort of babe in the woods. But he didn’t strike me as a hardened desperado either.”

  “No, not at all,” Bo agreed. “I wish we could have asked him some questions.”

  “Well, Davidson saw to it that we couldn’t.”

  “Yeah,” Bo said. “He sure did.”

  That was something to ponder, too. Bo could tell from the palaver that Scratch’s thinking was running along the same lines as his. Both of them had a pretty good idea what was really going on in Cutthroat Canyon and the adjacent valley. They just didn’t have any proof of it.

  It was another long, hot day in the saddle, the third such in a row for the Texans, but at least it passed peacefully, with no sign of trouble. As night fell, they made a cold camp and ate a supper of biscuits and jerky washed down with water from their canteens.

  Scratch peered wistfully into the distance at the glow of the fire where the men with the wagons had made camp and said, “Those fellas got hot coffee tonight.”

  “You can have some coffee when we get to El Paso,” Bo said.

  “With maybe a little dollop of brandy in it?”

  Bo chuckled. “I don’t see why not.”

  Scratch sighed as he leaned back against the rock behind where he was sitting and tipped the brim of his Stetson down over his eyes. “I’ll just think about that for a while.”

  “You do that,” Bo told him.

  The night passed as quietly as the day had, and everybody was on the move again at first light the next morning. Bo slipped a pair of field glasses from his saddlebags and used them to check on the wagons. Everything appeared to be fine as the vehicles rolled along northward. In late morning, they came to a range of small hills and mesas.

  “If them bandits plan on hittin’ the wagons between here and El Paso, this’d be about the best place,” Scratch said.

  Bo nodded. “I was just thinking the same—”

  As if they had been waiting for that cue, somewhere up ahead guns began to roar.

  CHAPTER 10

  Bo and Scratch didn’t hesitate. They heeled their horses into a run and headed for the wagons. Off to the right, Hansen and the kid did the same thing.

  It was hard to hear anything over the thundering hoofbeats of the dun and the bay, but in that first moment Bo had heard rifles cracking, pistols popping, and shotguns booming. The wagons must have rolled into a full-scale ambush.

  A moment later, they came in sight of the vehicles, which had halted a couple of hundred yards from a shallow mesa. Puffs of gun smoke came from the top of that mesa, telling Bo that some of the bandits had waited up there for the ore wagons to come along. Then they had opened fire, killing the lead mules in each team to stop the wagons. Bo could see that the animals were down in their traces.

  The gunfire from the mesa had also driven the men on the stalled wagons to take cover. They had scrambled off the seats and were crouched behind the wagons as they returned the fire. The outriders had galloped in and taken cover behind the wagons, too, because to stay out in the open would have made them easy targets.

  As if that weren’t bad enough, bandits on horseback had entered the fray as well, circling the wagons like Comanches and taking potshots at the defenders. Their horses’ hooves kicked up enough dust that it was difficult to see exactly what was going on.

  Bo spotted riders converging on the mesa, though, and recognized them as Skinner, Lancaster, Jackman, and Tragg. He pointed them out to Scratch and shouted, “They’re going after the bandits on the mesa! We’ll take the ones on horseback!”

  Scratch jerked his head in a nod, and hauled his Winchester from its sheath strapped to the bay’s saddle.

  Bo did likewise with his rifle. The dun was used to being in the middle of violent fracases. Gunfire and the smell of powder smoke didn’t bother him. Bo guided the horse with his knees as he worked the Winchester’s lever and jacked a round into the firing chamber. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder.

  The back of a running horse was no place for accuracy. As Bo and Scratch opened fire on the bandits circling the wagons, they didn’t try to place their shots. They just sprayed lead toward the bandidos as fast as they could. Some of the slugs were bound to find a target, or at least come close enough to spook the men attacking the wagons.

  That was what happened. One of the bandits threw his arms in the air as his sombrero flew from his head. He pitched from the saddle, landed hard, bounced once, and then lay still.

  His fall didn’t go unnoticed. Several of the bandits wheeled their mounts to confront this new threat. Smoke geysered from the muzzles of their pistols.

  However, Bo, Scratch, Hansen, and Douglas were still out of effective handgun range. The bullets smacked into the ground and kicked up dust well ahead of their horses. The guards kept up a steady fire as they surged closer, and another bandit was hit, doubling over as a slug bored into his belly and then sliding out of his saddle to sprawl on the ground.

  The bandits’ nerve broke then. They whirled their horses and ran, pounding away toward the mesa where their compadres had lain in ambush. They didn’t try to climb one of the paths up the rugged butte, though. Instead, they circled it and tore off into the hills as fast as their horses would carry them.

  As Bo and Scratch slowed to a halt next to the wagons, Bo heard a fusillade of shots from the top of the mesa. Skinner and the others had made it up there and were battling against the rest of the gang.

  “Reckon we ought to go give ’em a hand?” Scratch asked.

  “Let’s see how bad folks are hurt here first,” Bo said.

  He saw Wallace leaning against the lead wagon. Bright red blood had splashed out on the man’s shirt. As Bo dismounted, Wallace sagged, and would have fallen if the man who’d been riding shotgun with him hadn’t caught him.

  “How bad is it, Wallace?” Bo asked.

  Davidson’s segundo shook his head. “Bullet just ripped across my side,” he said between tightly clenched teeth. “Hurts like hell, but it probably looks worse than it really is.”

  “How about the rest of you boys?” Scratch called. “Anybody hurt bad?”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Wallace snapped. “Get up on that mesa and help Skinner wipe out those damned bandits.”

  “I don’t reckon that’ll be necessary,” Bo said with a nod toward the mesa. “Shooting’s stopped.”

  So it had. Silence reigned atop the mesa now. They couldn’t be sure what that meant, but in all likelihood Skinner, Lancaster, Jackman, and Tragg had been victorious. If the bandits had won the fight, they would be shooting at the wagons again by now.

  Sure enough, while Bo was patching up the deep bullet graze in Wallace’s side, Scratch said, “Here they come.” Bo glanced up to see Skinner and the others riding slowly down the trail that led from the top of the mesa. When th
ey reached the bottom, they came toward the wagons, and their deliberate pace and lack of urgency told Bo that there probably wasn’t anybody left alive up there.

  His mouth tightened at the thought. He didn’t feel sorry for the bandits; it had been their own decision to ambush the wagons and try to steal the gold.

  But he didn’t like the idea of the slaughter that had probably taken place up there either.

  “Get ’em all?” Wallace called to Skinner as the riders came up to the wagons.

  “Yeah,” Skinner replied.

  “They’re all dead?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good,” Wallace said vehemently. “The dirty bastards had it coming.”

  Again, Bo couldn’t argue with that sentiment. As men who had all too often lived by the gun, he and Scratch knew that someday they were likely to die by it, too. Still, the hatred that Wallace displayed, coupled with Skinner’s cold-blooded callousness, bothered him.

  “All right,” he said as he finished tying the bandage around Wallace’s midsection, “who else is hurt?”

  A couple of the other men had minor wounds. Bo tended to them while Scratch rode out to check on the two bandits who had been shot off their horses during the fight. One or both of them might still be alive.

  Bo could tell from the look on Scratch’s face as he rode back to the wagons, though, that that wasn’t the case. As Scratch came up and reined in, he shook his head.

  “Nope, they’re done for,” he reported. “The first fella was drilled plumb through the head and must’ve died right away. The other hombre was gut-shot. Took him longer to die, the poor varmint.”

  “Don’t waste your sympathy on them, Morton,” Wallace said. “They’re just bandits.”

  “Yeah,” Scratch said. “I reckon that’s right.”

  Bo could tell that something was bothering Scratch, though, and as soon as he got the chance, he pulled his trail partner aside and asked him what it was.

  Scratch glanced at the other men and kept his voice pitched low enough so that his answer wouldn’t be overheard. “They was even younger than that fella the other night, Bo,” he said. “I don’t figure either one of ’em was even twenty years old.”