“That deputy said she just run away. Said that women did it all the time. Marcella would never run away. I swear she’d never do that.”
“Where were you when they kidnapped her?”
“I went to buy some barley at Hayden’s Mill for my hawgs. That trip took me all day to go and come back with my wagon loaded. When I got home Marcella was gone. There were three horses’ tracks in my yard and around the house. My neighbors heard her scream but never saw them when they did it. I trailed them east for a while but lost them in the dark.”
“Why would they kidnap her?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Marcella was real pretty.”
“She not have any jewelry or money?”
“No. I am a hawg farmer. How could I have any money for that?”
“Could you have anything worthwhile they might have wanted?”
“Nothing but her. Nothing is missing that I could see.”
“My man and I will be there in a few days. I need to close up some business here first. I can’t promise you anything, but we will investigate and do all we can to find her.”
“Thank you, sir. I will ride home and wait for you.”
“No. When you finish this food, you won’t leave yet. My foreman, Raphael, will find you a bed and you are to get some rest. In the morning, he will see you are fed, have a sound horse to ride, and have food to supplement your ride home.”
“I didn’t come for charity. I just want her back.” He looked close to crying. “I am grateful, sir.”
“Harry, I want you to know we might never find any trace of her. The trail is cold by now and their purpose unknown. But we will look.”
Harry Olson rode a ranch horse for home the next day. Chet hoped he didn’t freeze to death going back. He and Jesus would be there in two more days. Looking at a cold, cold trail. That would be all he could think about. They’d try . . .
CHAPTER 6
He and Jesus took the Black Canyon Stage to Hayden’s Mill. The driver unloaded their saddles, rifles, and bedrolls on the ground. Jesus went to rent them horses. A cold north wind with sand bits on the drafts stung Chet’s cheeks while he stood there guarding their gear pooled on the ground.
The agent holding on to his celluloid visor came out and told him bring their things inside.
“I am sorry, Mr. Byrnes. I hate he dumped your things out there. You’re one of our best customers. I’ll help you get your things into the depot inside.” Soon all their stuff was inside. It took Jesus twenty more minutes to arrive with the horses he rented. He complained, “They aren’t much.”
They saddled them and took to the road. Late afternoon they found Olson’s hog farm.
“I knew we were close.” Jesus wrinkled his nose.
Smoke ascended from the tin chimney of a sheet iron–covered small dwelling. Harry welcomed them in, and Chet could hardly believe what he saw. The interior was all very clean and neat, freshly painted with bright curtains. Those must be her marks on the place.
Olson looked as shabby as he did in Preskitt.
“Have you learned anything?”
“Not a thing.”
“Tomorrow I want to ride east. Meanwhile Jesus will talk to the Hispanic neighbors. Maybe he can learn something. I will need a picture of her.”
“There is one we had made.”
“I won’t lose it.”
“It will be all I have of her.”
He brought the small-framed picture out wrapped in a towel. Chet agreed that she was a very pretty girl. Jesus looked at it and agreed she was, too. Finding her with no more than a picture would be like spotting a needle in a haystack, but Chet knew, somehow, they’d try.
Olson fed them beans and apologized he had no skills at cooking. Jesus made the oatmeal at breakfast and they parted. Olson and Chet rode to Mesa and showed her picture to many but got no information. They rode back at dark. Chet had bought some fresh beef from a butcher on the way back for Jesus to cook along with potatoes.
They ate heartily while Jesus told them he had talked to one of the women neighbors. She had seen two men leading a horse the day Marcella was kidnapped. The horses they rode were bays, but the animal they led was a paint.
“She never saw your wife riding it. But she said she thought it was funny that they led around a paint with a saddle on it. They may have gone east like where you found tracks and taken her that way.”
“She describe them?”
“Gringo cowboys she said.”
“After they heard her speak, others said, ‘Oh, yes, I saw them.’ So two cowboys was all I learned.”
“Wish we’d had the paint horse information where we went today. More might have seen her, if they went east. We will go east of Mesa tomorrow. Maybe someone saw them over there or saw the paint horse if they went that way.”
They left early and were well east of the Mormon settlement town when they dropped off a ridge down onto a ranch. A middle-aged Hispanic woman came out on the porch, shading her eyes against the low winter sun in her face.
“Good day,” Chet said. “A week or so ago did two men water their horses here with a woman on a paint horse? Maybe her hands were tied to the saddle horn.”
“Si. I told Tony when he came home that night someone should go see about her. She had been crying. Those men didn’t care about that. Tony said later I should mind my own business. Such things got people shot.”
“We care about her. Where did they go?”
“North.”
“You ever seen them before?”
She shook her head. “They were gringos. I could see she was a prisoner and that hurt my heart, but I could do nothing.” She held her fist to her chest.
“May God bless you, and we thank you for this information.”
“I will pray more for her safety now that you are on her trail.”
Chet saluted her. They rode north, crossed the Salt River below the temporary irrigation diversion dam, which cut the river’s flow to half. By forcing part of the river water into a ditch used long ago by Indians to irrigate the farmland west of there, it made an easy crossing now.
“I can’t believe she saw her,” Olson said. “Oh, my poor wife. With her hands tied, too.”
“It is a bad deal, but it really makes Jesus and me believe your whole story. We are a long ways from your farm and she saw them. It is not a feather in the wind. We will find her, Harry.”
He was crying. “I swear these bastards have to be caught. Thank you—for helping me.”
Jesus rode in close. “It is time to hope. We have a trail from here, Harry. I think we will have more luck. With less people around, there will be more witnesses seeing three strangers as standouts.”
Chet added, “And they will give us more information. The kidnappers will think they got away with it and will get careless. They probably took her through Mesa in the dark. It may take us time, but we are on her tracks.”
“How will I repay you?”
“You worry about finding her. Jesus and I need no rewards.”
“No one has ever done anything this big for me. I appreciate both of you. How did you know her hands were tied?”
“If she went with them freely, her hands would not be tied. You have been very honest with us.”
“All the time I only told the truth.”
“Yes. I know and believe you. Today I wish we knew why they took her?”
Olson agreed. “Me too.”
“We need to ride up to the Indian agency at Fort McDowell. Then see if they saw them passing through there.”
Olson nodded. They camped at the McDowell Agency that night, and a Mexican woman vendor fed them supper for fifteen cents apiece. She agreed to make them breakfast at sunup.
Chet bought the horses some corn from the subtler and they fed them in feedbags after watering them in the Verde River. The day had warmed, but he knew it would be cold in the low ground. They had good bedrolls. No one had seen the three passing because the road to Rye di
dn’t pass close to the agency, and no doubt they’d went on rather than stop and draw attention.
Dawn they ate a large flour tortilla wrap filled with hot meat and beans. Chet paid her well and they rode north to Rye and Sunflower. Witnesses there at Rye had seen the three Chet sought pass through. The woman rode under a blanket for warmth on her shoulders. One man said he knew she was a prisoner but he had no way to help her. Those two men were armed and he thought them hard cases especially if they’d been challenged.
The next day they stopped in Sunflower. A man told them the older guy’s name was Rodney Pierce from back in Texas. Chet wrote it down. After they rode on he asked Olson if these men might have known her from there.
“She and her family left Texas when she was sixteen. She never said she had a boyfriend back there.”
When they remounted, Chet said, “Olson, she did not go with them because she wanted to. Even if they knew her, in my mind, she didn’t want to go with them without a struggle.”
He nodded. “I regret every day that I did not take her with me to Hayden’s Mill.”
“They might have killed you for her.”
“Yes, they might have.”
“They are not ghosts. They leave prints, and when they stop we will get them.”
“You two believe that?”
“Damn right. There is a fork in the road ahead. One goes to Holbrook, the other one goes to Mormon Lake. We need to learn which way they went.”
Near the Y in the road they spoke to a man driving a freight wagon, with the two teams of big horses hauling some hardware to a rancher, south. He’d said he came from Holbrook when they asked him.
“Two men on bays and a girl on a paint. Have you seen them on the way here?”
“Two days ago. They had her hands tied to the horn.”
Chet nodded. “That is his wife, Marcella. One man’s name was Rodney Pierce.”
The man shook his head. “Sorry. I knew she was in trouble. But feared doing anything in case it was a marriage deal.”
“She is this man’s wife, not his. We have tracked them from Mesa.”
“Sorry. I saw a problem and didn’t solve it.”
“Mount up. We’ll catch them,” Chet said to his pair.
“I didn’t catch your name, mister?”
“Chet Byrnes.”
“Glad to meet you, Chet Byrnes.”
“Your name?”
“Sam Coffee’s mine. I sure wish you luck finding them.”
It began to snow that afternoon, so they decided to stop at a small store with a wood stove and to sleep on the floor in their bedrolls. Their horses were fed grain and were stabled in an empty shed.
The storekeep told them how the two men stopped and bought some supplies. One of them stayed outside with a girl. He saw her hands were tied to the saddle horn and that she was crying.
“Oh, I pray she lives. She is such a wonderful wife,” Olson cried.
“Mister, I’m ashamed I didn’t stop them. But in the end I didn’t know if I could stop them short of being shot myself.”
“I know, but so many have seen her plight and not done a thing.”
“Go easy, these guys must be tough. Normal people have to draw back when they might lose their lives. That is why Jesus and I are here.”
“Oh, Chet, I’d never found her trail—just makes me sick she is being so mistreated.”
“We will get her free.”
“I have been praying for it.”
Chet clapped his shoulder. “That won’t hurt. We are making progress.”
Jesus agreed. The storekeeper’s wife fed them a hardy stew for supper and oatmeal for breakfast. Chet paid her for the meals, over her protest. The next morning, they rode out with it still snowing. It finally let up around mid-day but it turned colder.
At this rate, they’d be two days getting to Holbrook, by Chet’s calculations. They built a pine-covered lean-to facing the campfire to sleep under that night. The horses were fed grain and tied to a line between two trees. A bitter night, but they heated water for tea the next morning and ate more jerky. Saddled now, they rode on. The sun warmed and the snow turned to slush when they reached a place to overlook Holbrook, on the bank of the Little Colorado River, shining like silver in the sun.
They looked at all the horses in the fields and pens for a paint. They found several but no bay horses with them. When they got into the town they looked hard at the various ponies at hitch rails. Then Jesus spurred his horse up an alley as something caught his eye. Olson and Chet reined up and Jesus soon waved at them to join him.
“Think that is them?” Chet asked with his coat swept back from his gun butt.
The saddled horses looked worn out, tied in the alley and standing hipshot. They obviously had not been fed. Where were the men and girl?
“If you have to shoot at anyone, be careful, they may use her for shield. Olson, guard these horses. Jesus, you go that way. I will go this way.”
Chet charged his horse through the wet snow in the alley’s shade. At the next street he saw two men begin to flee. They had a girl ahead of them. He fired a shot in the air.
“Hold up. I’m a U.S. marshal.”
The man on the right half turned and shot back at Chet, the shot too wild to do any harm. They kept running. He charged the horse after them and closed the distance. The one on the right tripped and the girl fell with him into the snow. Chet shot the other one still running. The bullet struck him in the back. He straightened and then fell facedown. Chet jumped off the horse on the back of the other man scrambling for the gun he’d lost, and he knocked him out with his pistol.
Jesus stepped off his sliding horse and jerked the shot man to his knees. He drug him by the collar.
“Who—who—are you?” she asked, looking white in shock but trying to gain her feet.
Chet helped her up. “Marcella, we brought your husband, Harry, with us. I am a U.S. Deputy Marshal. That is Jesus Martinez, a deputy. We have been coming to rescue you.”
She hugged him crying. “Is he all right?”
“Tired as we are but he’s fine. How are you?”
“Tired, too. I didn’t think I’d ever get away from them.”
“Why did they kidnap you?”
“Zeke, the one you shot, he said he wanted me to marry him in Texas. I didn’t want him. He found where my family lives near Hayden’s Mill. Then they came to get me and take me back to be his wife.”
“Who is the groggy one?”
“His brother Rodney . . .” She looked wide-eyed as Harry hurried to her.
“Yes, that’s the man who loves you, Marcella. He’s coming for you. Go meet him.” Chet took off his hat and scratched the top of his head. He watched her run to hug her husband.
Been one helluva chase. He saw the local law was coming on the run toward them.
“Now it is over, partner. What do you think?” he asked Jesus.
“Glad it could end so good. Boy I could use a bath, shave, and a good meal.”
“So could I. You the marshal here?” he asked the man as he reached them.
The man behind the mustache nodded.
Chet told him his name and that they were law enforcement men and that the two men were to be held for trial on kidnapping charges and transported back to Phoenix. “The man over there has been shot, but it should be minor.”
“I can handle it from here. Thanks, Marshal Byrnes, and nice to meet you, sir.”
“There are three horses in the alley over there. I am claiming them and will have them put in a livery. We will come by and give you names and all the information at the jail tomorrow. We’ve been on their trail near a week now. We are tired, dirty, and hungry.”
“Where did you start at?”
“West of Mesa a week ago.”
“Why did they kidnap her?”
“One of them she said she turned down back in Texas. He decided he’d kidnap her and take her back to Texas to be his wife.”
“Take h
im to doc’s,” he told his deputy, pointing to the wounded one. “I got this other one. I’ll lock him up. Glad you caught them. I had no papers on them.”
“There aren’t any. When Harry reported the kidnapping, a Maricopa deputy decided that it was not a kidnapping but that his wife had just ran away.”
The marshal looked upset. “How did you get involved?”
“Her husband rode to my ranch at Preskitt on a worn-out horse to get me to help him.”
“Brave guy, huh?” The marshal shook his head, impressed.
“He damn sure is.” Chet reloaded his pistol as the sun went down behind him.
Jesus went to put all the horses up. Chet turned to them. “You two lovers come along. She needs a new dress, some long handles to fit her, and a coat. You get some new underwear, britches, a wool shirt, and new coat. Let’s go find them.”
“I don’t have—”
Chet shook his head, smiling. “I know I don’t have to do this, but my wife will pay for them.”
“Huh?”
“If Liz was here she’d do that for you two. I know her well.”
The girl laughed, then she shook Harry some. “Silly. His wife is buying it. You get it?”
“I guess. Damn it, I am so glad you’re safe I can’t even think.”
“Harry, I would never have stayed with him even in Texas.”
Chet chuckled. “We knew that, too, and that’s why we kept tracking you. Let’s go shopping.”
They agreed. Later, carrying their clean clothes, they went to the Grand Hotel. Chet ordered them the honeymoon suite and hot baths immediately. And a large meal for the two of them to be delivered in one hour in their suite.
The two were frowning at him.
He ignored it and had the porter show them their suite. Then he said, loud enough for them to hear while marching upstairs, “Make it two nights. We have to make reports to hold the outlaws tomorrow and will leave the next day for home.”
Marcella ran back down the stairs, over to him, and pulled him down and kissed his whiskered cheek. “Thank you so much, Chet Byrnes.”
He winked at her and smiled; then he arranged for rooms for him and Jesus. His partner soon joined him and they went out to eat.
Deadly Is the Night Page 7
