Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635)

by Leslie, Frank

  He let the mud and grit settle to the bottom, then took a long drink of the cold water, refilled the pot, and brought it up to where Northwest cropped the grass contentedly, giving his tail frequent satisfied flicks and snorting. Colter set the pot on a low rock near the horse and looked around, giving the canyon a thorough survey, looking for any sign of trouble.

  Deeming himself and Northwest alone, he kicked out of his boots and then shucked out of his clothes and the poultice that Alegria had wrapped him in. He laid his duds and boots out where the sun could dry them. Naked from head to toe, he lay down on the damp clay that the sun had already warmed, and loosed a sigh of contentment as the sun began baking the chill from his bones.

  He ground his shoulders and buttocks into the warm earth and groaned again. Before he knew it, he was asleep.

  The heat woke him when the sun was high in the sky and burning through his eyelids. He got up, feeling only a tenderness in all the places in which the floodwaters had bruised him. His ribs still ached almost as badly as before, and he wished he had another poultice, but the dry air and sun would have to fix him.

  His clothes were dry. So were his blankets. He hoped he could find some dry wood, as well, because he intended to build a fire and keep one burning for warmth and cooking, though all the food in his saddlebags was likely waterlogged and fouled and inedible. When he’d gathered all the dry and semidry wood he could find, he’d go out and try to shoot a rabbit or a quail or two, though he didn’t like the idea of popping a cap out here and giving his position away. He doubted Machado’s men would have followed him through such a storm, or that soldiers from Camp Grant would have penetrated this far into Mexico, but while he did not fear the grave, he wouldn’t mind reaching his twentieth birthday.

  Since he’d been born, he might as well live as long as he could.

  Somehow, despite the “Mark of Satan” on his cheek, he still hoped to have a normal life someday, though he had a vague, unsettling notion that such hope was a child’s fairy tale.

  Armed with only his rifle, which he took the time to disassemble and clean, and missing his lost Remington, he walked back along the arroyo in the direction from which he and Northwest had been so unceremoniously carried. He didn’t have to walk far before he saw several javelinas grubbing around a mesquite near a feeder creek to the main arroyo, snorting up beans that had likely been ripped off the tree by the storm. There were three of the wild pigs. Salivating at the imagined smell and taste of the roasted meat—he and Tappin had practically lived off the wild boars at Camp Grant—he got down and crawled until he was snug between a paloverde and a cracked boulder that had leaf-speckled rainwater still puddled on its surface. He dropped a small but plump pig with one shot, grinding his teeth against the echoing of the report’s angry crack around the ridges. The echoes seemed to take an hour to die, though it was probably only about five seconds.

  Too long in this dangerous country.

  Colter hustled over to the dead but quivering javelina and, with the knife he kept in his boot, deftly dressed and quartered the pig, leaving the innards steaming beneath the paloverde. He carried one-quarter of the meat back to his camp on his shoulder, grunting against the strain on his battered body. Riding Northwest out to retrieve the rest, he wrapped the meat in its own hide and lashed the bundle behind his saddle with rope. He returned to camp, stowed the meat in the cool cave, away from the flies, and got to work building a fire just inside the cavern with the flint and steel he always kept on hand, sulfur matches often being scarce and unreliable.

  For tinder, he used a long-abandoned bird’s nest found in one of the other caves. He pulled the tightly woven nest apart and fed the fledgling flame a few strands of dried grass and animal fur at a time, until the one flame became two, then three, and the fire began to consume the rest of the nest in a rush. He added the driest and smallest bits of wood. When the fire was on its way, he added some of the larger stuff and piled the rest of the branches close to the ring so it would dry out faster.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon gathering more wood, not caring if it was dry or not. It would dry out fast in the sun by the fire, as he intended to keep the fire going all night and maybe even all day tomorrow. He needed to stay warm, and he needed to rest and heal after his drift down the arroyo. And Northwest could use a few days’ cropping the wild grasses.

  Besides, he had nothing else to do or anywhere else to go.

  He built a spit from the green branches of a willow and roasted a quarter of the pig, leaving the rest of the meat for later. He ate ravenously, chewing the meat off the spit and cleaning the rib bones until they shone in the firelight. He had no coffee, as it had all washed away in the arroyo, but the tequila bottle he’d wrapped in several spare shirts had been spared. Washing the pork down with tequila, and feeling a warm glow wash over him as he sat by the fire in the cave entrance, he watched the sun go down and the stars spread out and sparkle over the canyon.

  He no longer minded the presence of the dead conquistador. In fact, he’d started to feel comforted by the dead man’s company and, after a few shots of strong drink, found himself calling him Hector. “Look at that, Hector,” he said, sitting back against the cave wall, the fire snapping and crackling before him as he gave his gaze to the sky. “Shooting star! I wonder how far away. . . .”

  He slept soundly, warmly, waking only to build up the fire. He kept one ear open for sounds of interlopers, but all he heard were coyotes and, once, the distant screech of a hunting mountain lion.

  The next morning he led Northwest down the arroyo a ways, in the direction from which they’d come, to a game trail that led down into the wash and where the grass grew lush. He hobbled the horse in the grass and then walked along the canyon, hoping to maybe find some quail eggs for breakfast, and was surprised and relieved when his Remington appeared, embedded in the thick, still-damp clay of the wash’s bottom. He scooped up the old, mud-caked gun, took it back to his camp, where he roasted more of the javelina, and set to work taking apart the pistol and cleaning all the parts. Now if he could find his hat, which he’d also lost in the flooded arroyo. He’d have to find another one soon or the Mexican sun would fry him.

  He’d just finished his breakfast as well as loading the Remy with fresh, dry cartridges when from down-canyon to his left, Northwest gave a warning whinny.

  Colter scrambled to his feet, kicked dirt on the fire, and, despondent that the world was shouldering into this quiet sanctuary, cast a nervous glance up-canyon. Biting out a quiet curse, he rolled the Remington’s oiled cylinder across his forearm.

  Chapter 16

  Colter kicked more dirt on the fire, covering all the logs and dousing the smoke. Holstering the Remy, he bolted on out of the cave and dashed up the arroyo, scrambling down the bank to where Northwest stood in the tawny, fetlock-high grass, switching his tail and staring up the canyon.

  Colter couldn’t see anything in that direction, but the horse must have smelled or heard something. The redhead quickly unhobbled the mount and led him up the bank and back to the cave and deep inside. The horse flicked its ears once more at the dead conquistador but otherwise paid the skeleton little heed.

  Northwest had grown as accustomed to their dead companion as Colter had.

  Colter forced the horse to lie down—not a difficult maneuver since it was one that Colter had trained the horse on, and one they practiced frequently. It was all part and parcel of trying to stay ahead of the bounty hunters.

  When he had the horse lying flat on his left side, Colter grabbed his Henry from the cave wall and crabbed up toward the front, stopping about six feet from the mouth. He lifted his head just high enough that he could see the wet arroyo and its following of willows and dun-brown brush and rocks that stretched toward a bench at the base of the opposite ridge.

  Staying low, he caressed the Henry’s hammer with his thumb and watche
d and waited. After a few minutes, he heard the slow clomps of shod horses moving toward him. Voices rose, then, too—men conversing in Spanish, the voices growing louder, as did the thuds of the hooves. Colter kept his head lifted just far enough above the cave floor to see the arroyo.

  A horse appeared—a rangy steeldust—on his left, following the trail that wound along the arroyo bottom. Two more horses followed, and then two more, with two more appearing several seconds later—all bearing Mexicans clad in dove-gray uniforms and shabby straw sombreros with what appeared eagle insignias stitched into the brims. The men were either mustached or bearded; they were all well armed with pistols and Springfield carbines. The lead rider—a tall man with a gray mustache and goatee setting off the copper red of his angular face—wore brass captain’s bars on the shoulders of his gray jacket.

  Colter felt his jaws ache from tension. These men were members of the Mexican Rural Police Force. He’d never seen them but he’d heard of them from the men back at Camp Grant. They always had to deal with the rurales whenever American soldiers rode into Mexico on the trail of Apaches or cattle rustlers, and from what Colter had heard, they were a surly lot—at least when dealing with gringos. Many were also no more law-abiding than the outlaws they hunted on their own side of the border.

  Colter kept his body pressed flat against the ground, his chin raised about eight inches. The gray-mustached captain rode on past the cave, looking around at both canyon walls. The others followed, talking conversationally amongst themselves. An eighth rider came into view, riding alone. He had an arm thrown back behind him, and as he continued riding toward the cave, Colter saw that he was holding a lead line. The other end of the line rope was connected to the bridle of a brown-and-white pinto on which a young girl rode. A young blond in a dark gray dress and shabby wool coat, with a bullet-crowned hat pulled low on her freckled forehead.

  Colter stared, the corners of his eyes creasing with interest, his thumb no longer caressing the Henry’s hammer.

  He slowly turned his head from left to right, his eyes on the girl astride the slow-moving pinto. He knew right away he was looking at the strange blonde he’d seen before, in the company of Wade and Harlan, because, especially in Mexico, she was a distinctive-looking little gal. Her expression beneath the narrow brim of her hat was grave, glum. And she had every right to be, as her hands were cuffed before her and tied to her saddle horn. Colter also saw that her right ankle was tied to its stirrup.

  The blond was a prisoner of the rurales.

  Colter thought that maybe Wade and Harlan would also ride into view, but so far he saw no sign of the two men. Riding at the head of the pack, the captain stopped his steeldust gelding about forty yards up the canyon, to Colter’s right. The tall man hipped around in his saddle, tossing his head around and speaking loudly as he surveyed the ancient Indian ruins closing around him.

  The others slowed their own mounts and looked around nervously, as well. Colter thought that someone had smelled his fire smoke, but then the rurale captain rammed the spurs strapped to his high-topped, mule-eared boots against his steeldust’s flanks, and the horse lurched ahead as though shot out of a cannon. The others followed suit, the last man pulling the blonde’s pinto along behind, the blonde’s head jerking back as the horse broke into a gallop.

  Colter lifted his head farther above the cave floor, following the rurales with his eyes, his brows ridged in befuddlement. When they were almost out of sight, the blond girl bringing up the rear, he climbed to his feet and pressed his shoulder against the right cave wall at the opening, edging his gaze around to follow the group as they galloped on out of sight down-canyon.

  A trap? Had they known he was here—maybe smelled the smoke or seen his and Northwest’s tracks that were plainly etched at the arroyo’s bottom and all over this side of the canyon? Maybe they’d only slipped away, fearful of a bushwhack, to swing back later and take him by surprise.

  He waited. The breeze ruffled the grass along the arroyo, and shadows slid around rocks and shrubs.

  Finally, he had a feeling the rurales had left for good. Being that they were a superstitious lot, maybe the ruins had spooked them. Concern for his own welfare edged toward the strange blond girl. He’d heard the rurales often imprisoned norteamericanos on some trumped-up charge, and the taken gringos were never heard from again. Rumor had it that the rurales took part in cross-border slave trading, a booming business in southern Sonora and Chihuahua, with all the silver and gold mines studding the mountains.

  Colter doubted the little blonde would make a good rock breaker. And he also doubted she was so hardened a criminal that she deserved incarceration in Mexico. Abruptly, he dropped a brake on such concerns. She was none of his business. He was having enough trouble keeping his own ass out of jail. . . .

  Quickly, knowing he couldn’t comfortably spend another night here in the canyon, he gathered his gear and the javelina meat and saddled Northwest. He slid his rifle into the saddle boot, then led the horse out of the cave and mounted up. He had no idea where he was. All he knew was that banditos had occupied a canyon to the northeast, somewhere back the way he’d come before the flood had swept him away, and that the rurales had drifted southwest.

  After a quick pondering of the situation, he decided he’d follow the rurales’ tracks for a time, then swing off their trail and head wherever the four winds blew him. Doubtless, he’d never find his way to Dominguez’s brother’s silver mine now, even if he got his bearings back.

  He nudged Northwest ahead, following the edge of the arroyo for a hundred yards before dropping into the wash via a game path, and then followed the rurales’ tracks for one slow, guarded mile. Checking Northwest down, he stared off in the direction the gang had drifted, and, relatively certain they were gone, with no intention of circling back, he reined Northwest sharply south, through a break in the canyon wall, and heeled the horse into a spanking trot. As he rode, and though he tried hard to close it out of his mind, the remembered image of the blond girl’s depressed, fearful face hovered behind his retinas.

  He knew it wasn’t like her to look so glum. He’d seen her taking the proverbial stick to her two male companions. For her to look so beaten down and fearful now meant she was up to her freckles in Mexican muck.

  And likely a long ways from home.

  Goddamn it, Colter, get your mind off the girl’s problems. You’re swimming in a whole barnyard of horse shit yourself!

  He continued riding, eyes aimed straight out over Northwest’s head, but a half hour later, he was swinging back out of the break between canyons and booting Northwest back onto the rurales’ trail, cursing all the while.

  Five hours later, hot and tired and his ribs squealing under his shirt, he put Northwest up to a towering ponderosa pine and heaved himself, groaning like an old man, out of the saddle. He stood with his back against his saddle fender, drawing deep breaths to ease the fatigue as well as all the aches and pains in his body. A cool breeze smelling of pine resin slid against him, drying the front of his sweaty wool shirt. It lifted an end of his red neckerchief, tickling his ear and making him remember that blessed night he’d spent with Alegria, which seemed a hundred years ago now.

  Ah, but the cool air felt good after chasing the rurales and the strange blond girl across a hot, dry, rocky waste, then up into the low reaches of a high mountain range that had stood like a giant anvil against the southeastern horizon. As he’d climbed, remaining about a quarter mile behind the men he was shadowing, in case the captain had sent an outrider to check their back trail, he was glad to see shimmering streams and pines and fir forests, and slopes stippled with mule deer.

  All his troubles had seemed to come on the hot desert. Maybe up here in the cool, fragrant air, his luck would change and he’d be able to rescue the blonde from her captors without getting both himself and the girl killed.

  Now he tied Northwest’s rein
s to a branch of the pine tree and slid his Henry from the saddle boot. Slowly, quietly, he levered a fresh cartridge into the chamber and started up the steep slope to his right, his boots slipping in the slide rock and gravel. He gained the dome of cracked granite that crested the slope, then crawled the last few feet to the top. He crawled between two ancient stone bubbles, one with a spindly cedar twisting up from a crack, and peered into the canyon on the other side.

  The sun had gone down several minutes ago, so the opposite, pine-clad slope was cloaked in gray-purple shadows. He could still make out the dove-gray uniforms of the rurales milling about in the trees near the base of the slope, where two men were securing horses to a long picket rope strung between several trees. Through the pines, Colter could see a broad dome of rock much like the one he was hunkered on, capping the opposite slope. At the base of the dome, there appeared several narrow caves, and around these caves, the orange flames of a fire danced.

  Occasionally, the silhouette of a rurale passed before the fire. He could glimpse other shadows arranging gear around the flames, likely breaking out coffeepots and other cooking utensils and grub. As Colter remained low, studying the rurales’ camp and pondering how he was going to get the girl out of there, he saw her moving down the slope amongst the columnar pines, stooping to gather fallen branches. It wasn’t an easy maneuver for the girl, as the rurales had looped a rope around her neck. The opposite end of the rope was tied around a large pine knot with several short branches jutting off it.

  Obviously, the stump was their backwoods version of a ball and chain. He could hear a few of them chuckling from up around the fire, while the two men picketing the horses were calling to the others from the base of the slope, laughing, enjoying themselves.

  The girl did not react to the jeers of her abusers. She merely continued to scour the slope for firewood, crouching, building up the load in her arms. When she had several good-sized logs and a few smaller ones tucked under her chin, she turned and began walking toward the fire, slouching beneath the weight of her load and having to stop and jerk the stump free when it got caught up behind another log or a tree.