Thunder Over the Superstitions

by Peter Brandvold

  Miller cursed, grabbed a cedar log, and rubbed out the flames with a single swipe.

  “You crazy?” the outlaw rasped, eyes nearly bulging from their sockets. “You tryin’ to draw him in here, or what?”

  CHAPTER 12

  TURNABOUT

  In the following dawn’s misty shadows, Hawk followed the trail up a steep incline and into scattered cedars speckling this slope high above the main canyon. He swept his gaze from left to right and back again, and then, by instinct, he drew back on the grulla’s reins.

  He’d been extra cautious while following Pima Miller, because it had become obvious just after he’d killed the two federal lawmen and sent the third one hoofing it back north with a wet boot, that the girl was much more than a hostage.

  She was, as Hawk had suspected, a guide.

  She was also Miller’s lover. He could tell that from the sign left at their bivouacs.

  Hawk had learned much by studying her and Miller’s tracks. He knew which horse was carrying which member of his two-party quarry from having seen two separate sets of boot prints near the separate horse prints, informing him which rider had mounted and dismounted which horse.

  He knew that Miller’s horse had a faint flaw in its right-rear hoof, and that the outlaw’s horse was ever-so-slightly pigeon-toed. Not enough that the trait could likely be noticed by simply watching the horse walk or trot, but the indentions its shod feet left in the ground told the tale.

  The girl’s horse was almost always in the lead, while Miller rode behind her. She was guiding him into the mountains. That was the reason for Hawk’s added caution.

  He had little doubt that Miller would try to ambush him and that he’d instructed the girl to lead him to an opportune place from which to bring about the ambush. Thus, Hawk, who had set up his own ambushes and been the target of others’ ambushes enough times to know what kind of terrain to look for, rode a little more slowly and with his eyes and ears especially skinned for trouble.

  He sensed trouble now.

  The secondary ridge on his left sloped gradually up toward a large, rectangular boulder set atop a broad sandstone dike screened in cedars and several different kinds of cactus, including a saguaro with one arm pointing down. The ridge was about seventy yards from the trail Hawk was following—the same trail that Miller and Jodi Zimmerman had followed sometime during the previous afternoon, before the rain.

  A perfect distance and reasonable incline for accurate shooting by a seasoned shooter.

  What also had alarms bells tolling in the rogue lawman’s ears was the fact that Miller and the girl had ridden through here especially slowly, as though they’d known exactly where they were heading and were confident that, despite the storm clouds that had been building, they would arrive at their destination soon.

  Hawk pulled back on the grulla’s bridle reins. The horse gave a soft whicker, sensing its rider’s caution, and backed up. Out of sight from the ridge, Hawk turned the grulla, rode a hundred yards back down the trail, and then turned the horse up the steep southern slope, climbing the ridge.

  The grulla was sure-footed, mountain bred, and it had little trouble negotiating the incline’s uncertain terrain stippled with the dangerous cholla, or “jumping” cactus, and several nasty-looking clumps of catclaw. When Hawk had gained the secondary ridge about seventy yards from where he assumed Miller was lying in ambush, he continued up the next ridge, and stopped the grulla several yards down the other side, among boulders whose pocks and pits offered the tired mount fresh rainwater.

  He slipped the grulla’s bit, loosened its latigo, and shucked his rifle from the saddle scabbard. He sat down on a rock to exchange his stockmen’s boots for a pair of soft moccasins for easier, stealthier walking, and then headed back up and over the ridge.

  Hawk moved slowly, stopping every four steps to drop to a knee to look all around him and to listen. Then he continued moving down the slope at a slant, in the direction of where he was assuming his quarry had holed up to set up an ambush.

  He’d gained the lower ridge as the sun poked its head above the eastern horizon, spreading a saffron light across the stark, brown ridgetop behind him. Now he moved slower. Much slower, setting each moccasin down so slowly that neither foot made a sound.

  The sun was full up, and Hawk could feel the heat building, when he finally brought up the backsides of a couple of horses tied to the base of the dike he’d spied from its other side. There was a gap in the rocks near the horses. He figured that would lead directly to Miller’s and the girl’s position.

  But, because of the horses, it was no good.

  He moved to his left, and it took him nearly a whole hour more to find access to the dike from the side opposite the horses. Slowly, he moved through several black boulders capping the dike, weaving among cedars and cacti. Suddenly, he stopped and dropped to a knee behind one of these boulders.

  His heart thudded.

  He smelled smoke on the breeze. Wood smoke.

  For an instant, the smell confused him. Was Miller stupid enough to build a coffee fire when he knew that Hawk was moving toward him?

  Hawk’s hesitation distracted him. He was just about to turn and retreat when a shadow angled down on the rock slab near his right shoulder and knee. The click of a gun hammer sounded as loud as a war drum in his left ear.

  The cold, round barrel was rammed up taut against the back of his head, just behind that ear.

  “Don’t so much as twitch, Hawk,” said the menacingly reasonable voice of Pima Miller. “Just lower that Henry’s hammer and set it down slow. One quick move and I’ll drill a forty-four round through your brain. Don’t want to, ’cause this close I’m liable to get covered in your oozin’s. But I will.” He heard the man’s smile in what came next. “You know I will.”

  Hawk’s heart thudded heavily. A keen frustration coupled with humiliation was a hard rock in his belly.

  He’d been outsmarted. They’d figured—maybe planned—on him finding their camp. They’d built the fire to confuse him. It had worked. He’d let his quarry get behind him. An unforgiveable mistake. One he would deservedly pay for.

  Breaking through the stiff mortar of his sharp reluctance, he lowered the Henry’s hammer and set the gun down on the rock slab before him.

  “Now, both pistols. Set ’em down there next to the rifle. Slow.”

  Hawk rolled his eyes to the right. Miller had backed up a few feet, holding his cocked pistol about four feet away from Hawk’s head. Too far to lunge at him with any hope of being successful.

  Hawk drew a deep breath. He slid the Russian and the Colt from their holsters. The snick of steel against leather was a sickening sound.

  “Easy, now,” Miller said behind him, shifting his weight from one boot to the other. The nervousness in the man’s voice only slightly tempered Hawk’s chagrin at having given them the drop.

  Hawk set the pistols down by the rifle.

  “Get them hands up, stand up, and turn around slow.”

  Hawk raised his hands to his shoulders and turned around. Miller was about three inches shorter than the rogue lawman. The outlaw backed up a step, swabbed his lips with his tongue, twitched a smile. “Feelin’ foolish?” He chuckled, continuing to shift his weight around on his hips and opening and closing his hand around the neck of his Remington’s butt. “I bet you are. I bet you’re feelin’ right foolish!”

  Footsteps sounded behind Miller. And then the girl appeared, making her way down a pile of hard, black lava flanking Miller on his left. Tawny hair tumbled to her shoulders as she let the rise’s momentum carry her down the lava pile.

  As she stopped at the bottom, flushed and a little breathless, she smiled, showing white teeth between pink lips. She drew her shoulders back, pushing her breasts out.

  She said, “Holy shit—you got him.”

  She’d said it quietly, awe in her tone.

  “Yep,” Miller said. “I got him.”

  “So, that’s him—the rogue lawman
.” The girl was walking toward Hawk, sort of swinging her hips and thrusting her breasts.

  She stopped beside Miller. Her hazel eyes sparkled as she gazed up at the dark, grim-faced man before her. “Big, tall drink of water, ain’t he?” she said, raking her eyes up and down his frame and across his broad shoulders, hooking her thumbs in her back trouser pockets.

  Miller lunged forward. Aiming the pistol in his right hand at Hawk’s face, he buried his left fist in Hawk’s gut.

  The sudden move had caught the rogue lawman off guard. Miller was a strong son of a bitch—Hawk would give him that. The savage blow rammed Hawk’s solar plexus back against his spine, compressing his lungs and forcing his wind out in a single, coughing chuff. Hawk’s knees buckled. He hit the stone-hard ground, leaning forward, arms crossed on his belly, gasping.

  Miller stepped back quickly, slanting his cocked pistol down at Hawk’s head. “There—that sorta shortens him up a little, don’t it?”

  Rage swept through Hawk as he tried to suck air back into his lungs. His upper lip quivered as he curled it above his mouth and glared up at the grinning, narrow-eyed, ginger-bearded killer standing over him.

  “Ha-ha!” Miller laughed, taking another nervous step back, as though away from a leg-trapped bear. “He didn’t like that.”

  The girl seemed to be enjoying herself. She smiled down at Hawk, her eyes bright and shifting between the two men. She resembled a bloodthirsty spectator at a bare-knuckle bout. But then, suddenly, her smile became a frown as she turned to Miller. “Well, ain’t you gonna kill him?”

  “Not unless he tries somethin’. This man has a bounty on his head—the most I ever saw.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sure enough,” Miller said. “Uncle Sam has put a twenty-thousand-dollar bounty on his head. All I gotta do is turn him into the nearest federal marshal to make my claim.”

  “Forget it,” the girl said, shaking her head. “Forget it, Pima. We can do better than that.”

  Miller looked at her, narrowing his eyes impatiently. “You just get back to the fire and put a pot of coffee on. Me, I’m thirsty an’ hungry. I done just captured the rogue lawman his ownself!”

  “Forget it, Pima. You’d best shoot this son of a bitch, or you’ll regret it.”

  Miller gave her a mocking grin. “Now, now—no need to be scared, little angel girl. I can tame this wildcat. Come on, Hawk. Get to your feet, turn around and keep goin’ the way you was goin’ before you was so rudely interrupted.”

  Miller chuckled again at that, but Hawk could still hear the nervous, almost giddy edge in the killer’s voice.

  Hawk had regained his wind though his lungs still felt pinched. He looked up at the gun Miller kept aimed at his head. Then he looked past the Remington’s cocked hammer at Miller’s face. The man was sweating and grinning, and Hawk wanted nothing more than to hammer the killer’s face with his fists.

  In good time.

  Slowly, he gained his feet, wincing at the spike-like pain in his belly, the pinched feeling in his lungs. He donned his hat, letting the rawhide chin thong dangle to his chest, and then turned, stepped over his weapons, and began moving through the rocks in the direction of the fire. The fire’s smoke thickened as he approached.

  He stared down from the escarpment at a burlap-roofed lean-to in a small hollow among rocks. The fire lay on the other side of it. It had been built with cedar mixed with cottonwood branches to which green leaves still clung, making smoke.

  “Gotta hand it to her,” Miller said a ways behind him, keeping his distance. “That was the girl’s idea.”

  “Jodi’s idea,” the girl said. “I got a name, Pima. Feel free to use it.”

  Miller chuckled at that, as well. “Fooled you—didn’t it, Hawk? For a second there you thought I was dumb enough to build a fire, knowin’ you was on my trail. You thought you was just gonna waltz right in and surprise us.”

  “Yep, you fooled me,” Hawk admitted. For a second it had been true. At least, they’d baffled him long enough to move up on him. He deserved the jeering. But he hoped he’d get another chance at Miller. Doubtful, but hope kept a man alive when it was all he had.

  The hope of a kill. Two kills, now, since the girl had thrown in with Miller.

  Fueling that hope was the fact that Hawk had a pearl-gripped, over-and-under derringer in an inside pocket of his frock coat. As well as a short-but-deadly, antler-gripped dagger in his right boot.

  Miller pressed the Remy’s barrel against the small of Hawk’s back. Instantly, without having to consider the move, he swung around, pinwheeling his left arm. But Miller had been anticipating the ploy, and the killer managed to pull his hand and pistol back and out of Hawk’s reach, so that Hawk’s fingers only brushed the end of the Remy’s barrel.

  Hawk froze. Miller laughed his insufferable laugh.

  Flanking him, the girl shook her head slowly, darkly. “Pima, you’d best quit funnin’ and kill this man before he kills you. Before he kills us both.”

  That riled the killer once more. Scowling at her, he said, “I thought I told you to make coffee?”

  “Kill him, Pima!”

  “I’m the ramrod of this little two-man gang, sweet darlin’!” Miller railed, disciplined enough to keep his eyes on Hawk. “So kindly shut your pretty mouth. It’s a might better at different things than yappin’, if’n you get my drift. You get over there to the fire and make me a goddamn pot of coffee!”

  He was looking at the girl now. But Hawk did not move on him. Miller was cagey. Hawk had to bide his time. Hoping, of course, that the girl didn’t get her way and he still had some time.

  Glancing darkly at Hawk, her jaws hard, Jodi Zimmerman swung wide of both men and made her way down to the fire.

  “Now, you head on down there, too, Mister Rogue Lawman, sir,” Miller ordered. “But first . . .” He grinned broadly, narrowing his little, narrow eyes. “I’d like you to remove that little popper you got residin’ inside your coat.”

  Hawk stared at the man grinning back at him.

  Slowly, he removed the derringer from his coat pocket, and tossed it to Miller. Miller pocketed the derringer, jerked his chin toward the lean-to. Hawk turned around and made his way into the diamondback’s den of Miller’s camp.

  Well, he still had the dagger.

  At least, for now.

  CHAPTER 13

  IN THE DIAMONDBACK’S DEN

  Keeping his Remington aimed at Hawk, Miller reached into a cavy sack and pulled out a coiled rope. He tossed the rope onto the ground beside the girl, who’d just filled a coffeepot from a canteen.

  “Tie him,” Miller ordered.

  She glared up at him. “You wanted me to make coffee!”

  “Tie him first. Tie his wrists together, behind his back. Then tie his ankles. You, Mister Rogue Lawman—you sit down in front of that rock over there.”

  Hawk looked at the rock. It was on the far side of the little hollow from the lean-to and the fire.

  Jodi looked at Miller. “You wouldn’t have to worry about him if you’d shoot him.”

  Miller closed his eyes for a second. When he’d slowly opened them, his face was red. He drew a deep breath as though to calm himself. “If you backtalk me one more time . . .”

  “Oh, all right!” the girl said, angrily tossing the coffeepot against a nearby boulder and grabbing the rope.

  She walked over to where Hawk had sat down against the rock. Miller holstered his pistol, picked up a carbine, cocked it, and aimed it out from his right thigh at Hawk’s head, to one side of the girl.

  “One wrong move, Mister Rogue Lawman, I’ll drill ya another eye.”

  Hawk just stared up at him.

  “Lean forward and get those arms behind your back,” the girl ordered from six feet away.

  Hawk stared up at her, his green eyes without expression, and then he slowly complied. He gave the girl a faintly challenging look, quirking his mouth corners.

  She glanced uncertainly at Miller. “Y
ou gonna shoot him if he jumps me?”

  “I’ll shoot him.”

  “You hear that, mister?” the girl said, fear coloring her cheeks and beetling her sun-bleached eyebrows. “He’ll shoot you if you try anything.”

  Hawk said nothing. He just stared up at her with subtle menace.

  The girl snorted, her jaws hard, and then she slid her eyes toward Miller once more before leaning forward, as though she were approaching the cage of a wild, freshly captured beast. Which, to her, Hawk guessed he was.

  She dropped to a knee beside him and, flicking her gaze between his hands and his eyes, she wrapped the ropes around his wrists. As she stared at him, the expression in her eyes changed from apprehension to a faintly pensive cunning. He held her gaze for a time, and he got the sense that Miller had taken on a real load when he’d taken the girl away from the Superstition Station.

  “What the hell you smilin’ at?” Miller said.

  “He ain’t smiling,” Jodi said, grunting as she tied a knot in the rope binding Hawk’s wrists. “He’s smirkin’. He knows that every second that goes by that you don’t kill him, he still has a chance of killin’ both of us.” She stared into Hawk’s gaze. “Ain’t that right, mister?”

  Hawk didn’t say anything. The rope was cutting into his wrists.

  The girl smiled, signaling a definite change in her mood. She cut the rope with a barlow knife and used the other half to bind Hawk’s ankles, keeping her gaze for the most part on his, as though probing him with her shrewd, cunning mind. She glanced at Miller and then back at Hawk, her forehead creased pensively.

  And then she stood and stepped away from Hawk’s bound feet.

  “Now, then,” Miller said. “You ain’t so tough, now, are ya, Mister Rogue Lawman, sir?”

  The outlaw grinned as he stepped toward Hawk. The killer lifted the barrel of his carbine, swung up its brass butt, and smashed it savagely against Hawk’s left cheek.

  Hawk grunted as the blow slammed his head sideways against the rock.

  A high-pitched screech rose in his ears and flares exploded behind his squeezed-shut eyelids as he felt the angry welt swell on his cheek. Another welt, like a smoking brand, was rising on the back of his head. He felt the wetness of blood just beneath his right eye. It dribbled down his cheek toward his jawline.