“You hang in six weeks,” McMasters told him.
The Mexican grinned. “No, señor. I no hang. My lawyer . . . he work on an . . . how you say? Appeal?”
“Then wait here with Marshal Kilpatrick,” McMasters said. “And good luck with your appeal.”
The Mexican’s handcuffs rattled as he placed his big sombrero atop his hat. “No, señor. I think I ride with you. But you let us go . . . when we have done this job?”
“A hundred dollars each,” McMasters said. “And then I’ll fight to have your sentences commuted, fight to get you pardoned, or at least not to be executed. Nothing more.”
“Ain’t much of no deal,” the Reb said.
“The voice of a respected rancher and Medal of Honor winner should carry some weight at the territorial governor’s office. Could possibly lead to a parole, if not an outright pardon.”
“I don’t think that’s a game I’m willing to play,” the cardsharper said.
“Then don’t.”
The gambler grinned. “You’d be one I’d like to play poker with, sir. You read my bluff. Forty years in Yuma . . . I’d rather ride with you.”
By then, Kilpatrick had opened the door. He stepped inside the wagon, and moved toward the driver’s box, fishing out more keys before bending over to free the Mexican, Emilio Vasquez. McMasters stepped closer, put the Remington’s barrel between two vertical iron bars, and told Vasquez, “You try anything, I blow you apart.”
The leg manacles came off. Then the cuffs. The Mexican did not take his eyes off McMasters as he gripped the bars and pulled himself to his feet.
“Stay there,” McMasters said. “Don’t move. None of you move. You stand. You stay still. Or you die. Lay one hand on the marshal, I kill you.”
“You shoot that scattergun,” the redhead said, “and you’ll likely blow that greenhorn of a lawman apart, too.”
“Could be. Could be a lot of you’d catch buckshot.”
She laughed. The gambler’s smile turned into a frown, and his face whitened.
“What’s your name?” McMasters asked.
“Marcus Patton.” The gambler massaged his wrists.
“Gambler,” McMasters said.
“Killer,” Kilpatrick said as he moved from Patton to the Reb. “Ten men.”
“A forty-year sentence for killing ten men?” McMasters asked.
Rising, the gambler chuckled. “They weren’t much in the way of men.”
Metal clanged. The thin old Reb’s manacles fell to the floor, and the one-eyed vermin stood, grinning. “And, suh, my name is—”
“Emory Logan,” McMasters said. “Rode with Quantrill. Rode with Jesse James. Rode with Ike Clanton.”
“And now . . . you.” He found a plug of tobacco in a pocket, and bit off a sizeable chaw. “And”—he spit in the direction of the black man—“him.” The word sounded like a curse.
“Stay if you want, Logan,” McMasters said.
“No.” The old-timer chuckled. “Got no desire to see Yuma . . . again.”
“Because he butchered two guards when he escaped six months ago,” Kilpatrick said. “They’re going to hang him in Yuma.”
“Not now.” The old man laughed.
Kilpatrick turned, staring through the bars and over the Remington at McMasters. The one prisoner the deputy did not want to free was Bloody Zeke The Younger, but he was the one McMasters needed the most.
“Go ahead,” McMasters said.
The dark-eyed killer also rubbed his wrists where the iron cuffs had chaffed his skin, almost to the point of scarring him for life. That’s how tight the bracelets had been. His feet turned to the sides, stretching the muscles, the joints, and Kilpatrick backed away, toward the woman, but not taking his eyes off Bloody Zeke. The killer, on the other hand, never let his gaze leave John McMasters.
“You can find Moses Butcher?” McMasters asked him.
The man wet his lips, tilted his head toward Alamo Carter. “Isn’t that why you have him?”
“He knows tracks. You know Butcher.”
“Not that well.”
“Well enough.”
Bloody Zeke grinned as he shook his head. “That isn’t why you want me. I rode for him for maybe a week. One miserable, badly planned bank job. You want me because I want to kill him. Just like you do.”
“That’s right. This is your chance.”
“And I’ll take it, amigo.”
“I’m not your friend.”
With another curse, Kilpatrick moved toward the woman, but McMasters stopped him.
“Not her.” His head tilted toward Alamo Carter. “Him.”
He saw the woman turn to glare at him, but McMasters ignored her. After withdrawing the Remington from within the cage, he stepped back, and trained both barrels on the Negro’s broad back, while keeping the other freed killers in his peripheral vision.
“You watch that black bastard,” Emory Logan warned, pointing a finger at Carter as Kilpatrick began turning the key in the leg manacles. “He kilt six men . . . with his bare hands.”
“You might be Number Seven,” Carter said.
The one-eyed Reb backed against the bars, and shifted the tobacco to another cheek, his teeth and jaws working furiously on the tobacco, trying, McMasters understood, to steady his nerves. Emory Logan was an old man. A hardened killer, but he would be no match for Alamo Carter. He’d be no match for any of this crew, except, maybe the woman.
Kilpatrick backed away against the front of the wagon, glancing at the Mexican to his right and Alamo Carter to his left. To get out of the wagon, he would have to run the gauntlet. Understanding this, McMasters brought up the shotgun again, training the barrels on the most dangerous of the lot. Bloody Zeke The Younger.
“Come on, Dan,” McMasters said. He reminded the criminals that if they did anything McMasters did not like or understand, they would die where they stood.
Kilpatrick swallowed and moved toward the open door, stopping when he came to the woman. He turned to stare at McMasters.
“She stays,” McMasters said.
“The hell I do,” the redhead snapped.
“I’m not taking a woman with me. Not across the desert. Not chasing after Moses Butcher.”
“She’s no woman.” The gambler tossed his head back and laughed. “That’s Mary Lovelace.”
“She stays . . . with Kilpatrick.”
“I’m coming with you,” the woman said.
“I’d bring her along, mister,” the gambler, Marcus Patton, said. “She killed her pard after they robbed a stagecoach near Flagstaff.”
“I heared it was her papa,” Emory Logan said with a snort.
“It was my husband,” Mary Lovelace said. “And he was a bastard.” She turned and stared through the bars at McMasters. He never thought green eyes could look so hard. “And I’ve got more right to find Moses Butcher than any of you sons of bitches.”
“Son of a gun.” The Reb’s one eye twinkled. “That Butcher sure got around, didn’t he!”
“Shut up, you old codger.” The woman did not look away from McMasters. “I’m coming with you.”
“Why? Yuma won’t be that hard on you.”
“For starters, it was my idea. You were just going to take Carter and Bloody Zeke.”
“Why?” McMasters asked again.
“That’s my business. But I know Butcher, too. Better than him.” With just a little twitch of her head, but without looking away from McMasters or even blinking, she indicated Bloody Zeke The Younger. “So you need me.”
McMasters shook his head. “No. You’re staying. With Kilpatrick.”
To his surprise, McMasters watched Daniel Kilpatrick kneel in front of Mary Lovelace and search for the key to her leg irons. When the key slipped inside the lock, McMasters blurted out, “What the hell are you doing? I said—”
“She can’t stay here . . . alone.” One iron opened, and Kilpatrick moved to the other.
“She won’t be alone. You’re stayin
g with her.”
“No.”
“Yes. You can’t come with me.” McMasters had given up any hope of having Dan Kilpatrick along with him, not the way he was so by-the-law, refusing to bend. Hell, he had not even shed a tear over Rosalee’s murder. And, deep down, John McMasters did not want the boy with him. Not on that dirty, hellish task.
“You need to take care of—” He stopped. He’d started to look down at Royal Andersen’s body, but his stomach soured and he could not look at his old friend. He forced down the bile rising in this throat, and stepped closer to Kilpatrick, who was freeing the redhead’s wrist manacles.
“Stop it.” McMasters raised the Remington.
“No.” Kilpatrick stood as the iron handcuffs fell onto the floor. Staring over the twin barrels of the twelve-gauge and into McMasters’s eyes, he said, “These are my prisoners. I’m responsible for them. So I’ll be coming with you.” He turned, studying each of the six killers, then stepped out of the wagon, leaving the door open.
He walked until he stood only a few feet in front of McMasters. “I won’t try to stop you . . . or them”—he motioned at the vermin in the jail on wheels—“even if they try to kill you. This is your doing. Your idea. But I’m coming with you.”
“Shoot that bastard, mister!” the Reb cried out. “He’ll just bring us all trouble.”
“Kill him,” the Mexican said.
“Blow his head off,” the gambler said.
“We needs to get movin’,” the Reb said. “Gettin’ darker each minute. Somebody’s bound to come along. And, hell, these lyin’ curs ’ll likely say that I strangled that old goat.”
“Shut up!” McMasters snapped. “You don’t say anything about him. He was a top soldier. A good man. He was my friend.”
Bloody Zeke The Younger merely laughed. The woman and the black man remained silent.
McMasters felt a sudden chill. Maybe it was the night. Beyond the glow of the lanterns, the country had disappeared into a black void. It amazed him how quickly daylight could turn to midnight in those hills. He had not noticed how dark the night had become, but that was all right with him. They’d move better in the darkness. Yet Dan Kilpatrick was muddying up the waters.
“I said I’m coming with you, John. The only way you can stop me is with that.” He pointed at the giant bores of the double-barrel.
“Shoot him!” the Reb begged.
McMasters just stared into Kilpatrick’s eyes.
“But you need to know this. I am a deputy U.S. marshal. If you somehow manage to live through this, I’ll be taking you to Yuma, Mr. McMasters.”
CHAPTER 14
“Hell,” Carter said, “we ain’t going nowhere.” McMasters lowered the shotgun. “All right, Dan.” Only then, did he turn toward the big black killer.
“How you plan on tracking down Butcher, Mister . . . Hell, I don’t even know your name.”
“John McMasters,” the Mexican said.
McMasters looked at Emilio Vasquez.
“You hear of me, señor. Well, I hear of you.” Realizing that he knew something the other prisoners did not know, he grinned, and stepped into the center of the jail wagon. “Sí. He raises horses. I hear many men speak of John McMasters.” He faked a shiver as he said the name. “Big soldier in your war between your states many years ago. Win big medal. Big honor. Big hero. This man”—he whipped off his hat and bowed in the direction of where Royal Andersen lay—“he speak much of the great John McMasters. So we have nothing to fear, amigos. We are being lead by a hero.”
“Well,” Alamo Carter said. “Mister John McMasters, it’s full dark now. How you expect me to pick up Butcher’s trail? Go back to your place? Ain’t it likely somebody’ll be going to your place . . . or what’s left of it? Ain’t it also true that your place be in the opposite direction of where Butcher’s goin’?”
“We don’t need to go back to Payson,” Bloody Zeke The Younger said. “But I don’t think we want to be traveling in this.” The killer stepped to the door, put his hands on the bars, and looked at McMasters as the shotgun came up. He stepped down, and the others followed, stopping in a semicircle that faced McMasters and Kilpatrick.
“Dan,” McMasters said in a steady voice. “You think you can find your revolver in the dark?”
“Yes.”
“Then find it. And cock it.”
Kilpatrick moved toward the revolver, and McMasters waited, wondering if the deputy marshal might just shoot him—to maim, wound or kill—once he held that Colt. He heard the metallic click of the hammer coming to full cock, but did not look at the young deputy. He kept his attention on the five men and the woman.
“I can’t track from the back of a tumbleweed wagon,” Alamo Carter said.
Ignoring the black man, McMasters trained his eyes and the Remington’s barrels, at Bloody Zeke. “Why wouldn’t we need to go back to Payson?”
“We’ll pick up his trail south of here,” Bloody Zeke answered.
“All we have to do,” Mary Lovelace said, “is make a beeline for the Superstition Mountains.”
Bloody Zeke turned and gave the redhead a curious but respectful look. He laughed and shook his head. “You do know Moses Butcher, don’t you?”
“Enough,” she said, “to know that I wish I didn’t.”
“Well,” the gambler said, “there is one problem that Zeke has already pointed out. As did the colored boy.”
“I’m no boy, gambler. You best lose that word from your vocabulary.”
“No offense, Carter.”
“I took offense.”
“My apology, sir.”
“Accepted,” Carter shook his head and smiled. “Don’t you think traveling in a prison wagon will arouse suspicion, Mr. McMasters?”
“Logan,” McMasters called out to the Reb.
“Yeah?”
“You and Patton unhitch the team. Six mules. Six riders.”
“Why us?” the Reb asked.
“Because you don’t move too good,” McMasters said. “And I can see Patton’s yellow vest well enough in the dark.”
The gambler laughed and started toward the front of the wagon.
“One mule at a time,” McMasters instructed. “Tie the first two to that shrub yonder.” He gestured with a tilt of his head before turning his attention to the black man and Bloody Zeke. “You two. Pick up Royal Andersen. . . gently . . . respectfully . . . and put him in the back of the wagon. I don’t want any wolves or ravens getting to him.”
“There’s a bedroll in the driver’s box,” Kilpatrick said.
“You.” McMasters jutted his jaw at the Mexican. “Get the bedroll. You’ll cover his body.”
“Sí.” Emilio Vasquez crossed himself.
McMasters breathed just a hair easier. He could see the Reb and the gambler with the mules, and the jail on wheels was lighted well enough to watch Bloody Zeke and Alamo Carter serve as pallbearers of a sort as they laid poor, brave Royal Andersen on the floor of the tumbleweed wagon. The Mexican made a lot of racket but eventually came away with the old coarse blue woolen bedroll.
He came away with something else, too.
“Vasquez.” McMaster’s voice carried a threat as he pointed the barrels of the twelve-gauge at the killer’s head.
“Andersen’s pistol—the one he wasn’t allowed to carry. The one you found in the box. Why don’t you just drop it at your feet?”
“Señor.” Emilio Vasquez shook his head and laughed. “You are sadly mistaken.”
“Then I’ll sadly apologize over your body after I’ve blown it in half.”
McMasters’ right forefinger tightened on the front trigger.
The Mexican stiffened, smiled, and shifted the bedroll over his right shoulder. As his left had moved carefully behind his back, the first finger on his right hand pointed at his eyes.
“For a man wearin’ . . . los anteojos . . . you must have eyes in the back of your head, no?”
McMasters tightened his middle finger on the
rear trigger as Royal Andersen’s revolver appeared. Vasquez held it between his thumb and forefinger, then dropped it onto the dirt in front of his boots.
“My hearing’s even better,” McMasters said. Relaxing the pressure against the triggers, he pointed the shotgun at the tumbleweed wagon, indicating for Vasquez to do his chore. Bloody Zeke and Alamo Carter stepped out of the wagon, moved to the side, and found a place to stand between the two wheels. Bloody Zeke cast a quick glance at Andersen’s revolver. Alamo Carter ignored it. The Mexican knelt over Andersen’s covered body, removed his hat, and began to pray in Spanish.
McMasters kept the shotgun trained on Carter and Bloody Zeke, who stood a little too close to the revolver in the dirt for McMasters’ comfort. He thought about asking Kilpatrick to get it, but dismissed that idea. Either Carter or Zeke could grab him, use him as a shield. He could go for the pistol himself, but then he wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Patton and Logan. He could order or ask Kilpatrick to watch over those two as they unharnessed the remaining mules, but Daniel Kilpatrick would always be a green kid in McMasters’s eyes. That left—
“You.”
Mary Lovelace studied him.
He could feel her gaze, but did not dare look at her. Keeping the Remington pointed at the two men, he said, “Ma’am, I want you to go over there, pick up the revolver, and bring it to me.”
Inside the wagon, the Mexican finished his prayer, crossed himself, put on his hat and stood.
“You,” McMasters said to him. “You stay where you are. For a minute.”
“¿Con este hombre muerto?” Fear shown in Vasquez’s voice and eyes as he looked down at the covered corpse.
“For one moment. Por favor.” He nodded, still focused on Carter and Bloody Zeke. “Ma’am? If you’d be so kind.”
“Well,” Mary Lovelace said, “since you’re asking politely.”
He saw her move carefully, considering each step, until she stopped between Bloody Zeke and Alamo Carter. Slowly, turning toward McMasters—just so he could see that she didn’t plan on using Andersen’s pistol on him—she knelt. She swallowed, and slowly gripped the butt of the revolver, and then she started to stand.
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