He graced me with an unsympathetic look. “Sadly, my friend, I do not possess a rifle, or even a pistol. If I did, I would gladly volunteer to go first.”
Well, he had me there, but I still wasn’t going to give up one of my guns. “Fetch the horses,” I said. “I’ll go down and see what’s afoot. I’ll give a shout if it’s safe.”
I headed for the slot cañon’s entrance. I was nervous about going in, but I would have felt more vulnerable following after Davenport and those guns without knowing where Spence was, or how badly he was injured.
Placing my feet with care and avoiding the side walls out of respect for how well sound carried through the narrow passage, I moved into the deepening twilight of the cañon as swiftly as possible. It didn’t take long to reach the main chamber. Keeping my finger tight on the Savage’s trigger, I stepped onto the sandy beach along the upper pond.
Spence was there, slumped against the far wall with his head twisted to the side. His horse stood nearby, ears perked forward as it monitored my approach. Fortunately the tall roan recognized me and didn’t bolt, although my stealthy advance was making it skittish. Halting at the edge of the pond, I said loudly, “McKenzie, Spencer McKenzie.”
He opened his eyes to look at me, and I took an involuntary step back. His lips peeled away from his bloody gums in what was either a grimace or a grin, I couldn’t tell which. “Ah, lad, there ye be. I was afeared I’d have to die alone in this god-forsaken hole.”
“You aren’t hurt that bad,” I said. “Stand up where I can see you.”
“Ye’ll have to do ye lookin’ from there, J. T., for I’ll no be movin’ from this spot unless ye see fit to bury me proper-like.”
“Like you were going to do for Luis and me?”
Spence chuckled, bringing up a fresh gout of blood that misted the front of his already sodden shirt. I realized then that he wasn’t lying about the seriousness of his wound. Not that I trusted him enough to lower my rifle. Wading across the pool, I yanked a Smith & Wesson revolver from his holster and tossed it over beside our old campfire. Spence’s rifle, a sturdy Marlin in .45-70, was still on his saddle.
“That Smith the only gun you’re carrying?”
“The only one on me. I’ve a pocket pistol in me saddlebags, plus the rifle ye see yonder.”
Edging forward with the Savage pointed unwaveringly on his chest, I loosened the buckle, then slid the gun belt out from under him and tossed it after the revolver.
“Just how bad is that wound?” I asked, stepping back.
“Enough to kill me, I’d wager. Ye bullet hit a lung, laddie, I know that for sure. What else it tore up, I couldn’t say.”
“You’ll understand if I don’t offer my condolences.”
“Ye’d be a damned fool if ye did,” he agreed weakly.
An iron horseshoe scraped the slot cañon’s floor, and I knew Luis would soon be there. Moving back across the pond without taking my eyes off the wounded man, I caught the roan’s reins. Leading the horse over to our old fire, I picked up the Smith & Wesson and brushed off the sand as best I could, vowing to clean it more thoroughly later on. After strapping the gun belt around my waist, I checked the revolver’s cylinder to make sure it was fully loaded, then dropped it in its holster. Even though I’d been carrying the Savage for a while by then, it felt good to have a handgun on me again, something I could grab in a hurry. I liked that it was a brawny .44 caliber, too. If I’d had a .44 or a .45, rather than the .38, Spence would still be out on the trail where I’d shot him, and probably not talking, either.
Luis came warily into the chamber, glanced briefly at Spence, then at me. There was a guarded look on his face as he led my bay mare and his black mule to water. “That is quite a collection of guns,” he observed, hanging onto the reins while our mounts drank.
I walked over to shove the Savage into its scabbard on the bay, then pulled the belt of .303s from around my waist and I draped it over the saddle, like a dead snake waiting to be skinned for supper. “I’m thinking that mule is about to quit on you,” I said. “You can have my bay, and the rifle, too.”
That seemed to appease him somewhat, like maybe he wasn’t feeling so much like a prisoner as a partner again. He didn’t question me keeping the better mount and firearms for myself, either; we both knew he would have done the same had the situation been reversed.
You might wonder why I didn’t keep the Savage, since I’d more or less laid claim to it when Felix brought it back from the desert. Fact is, that .303 is a sweet little cartridge, but it’s got a limited range and not much punch compared to Spence’s Model 1895 Marlin. Plus the Savage only holds four rounds, even with a cartridge chambered, and that’s a definite disadvantage when bullets are flying back and forth too fast to keep track of who’s shooting—the kind of situation it isn’t all that hard to find yourself in when you’re dealing with a man like Chito Soto. Or Ed Davenport, as it turned out.
It would be nice to tell you that Spence passed away quietly while Luis and I were there, and that we buried him in a nice shady spot, marking the grave with a stone that had his name scratched into the surface. But that’s not what happened. It was getting real dark down there in that sandy chamber, and Luis and I both knew Davenport was moving steadily away from us. We didn’t have time, or much inclination, to wait around for Spence to punch his ticket. Still, I was caught off guard when Luis slid the Savage from its scabbard and headed for the wounded man with a determined look on his face.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He gave me a puzzled look. “I am going to finish the job.”
“Like hell you are,” I said, dropping my hand to the holstered Smith.
Luis was watching me closely, wondering if I was serious. I knew what he was thinking. It was obvious to Luis that Spence wasn’t going to survive, but he didn’t want to just ride off and leave him to suffer alone. And I’ll tell you what, there were an awful lot of men in those days who would have shared his feelings. Men who would have condemned us for not “finishing the job,” as Luis put it. But I wasn’t one of them. In my mind it was better to let a person play out his own string. And who knew, maybe someone would come along after we were gone and nurse him back to health. I’ve seen stranger things happen in Mexico.
Luis, though, felt differently, and he felt it strongly. “We cannot just ride away, J. T.,” he said. “Do you want that on your conscience?”
I told him about my theory of someone coming along after we’d left and rescuing Spence, but my arguments sounded pretty flimsy in the slot cañon’s thickening shadows.
“It is more likely a jaguar would find him,” Luis said, “and there would be no mercy in that meeting.”
“We can’t just shoot him.”
“He is already dead,” Luis argued, his words tinged with impatience. “Would you walk away from a horse or a dog as badly wounded?”
I was silent for a moment, then I said, “No, we aren’t going to shoot him,” and this time, there wasn’t any doubt in my words. “Get on that bay horse and let’s ride.”
Luis hesitated for so long I started to worry that he might swing his rifle on me. Then he turned away with a curse, kicking up showers of sand as he stalked toward the bay. It was too dark by then to tell if Spence was conscious, but I could still hear the raw, wheezing suck of his wound every time he inhaled, so I knew he was alive.
Now I’m going to ask you—what would you have done? Did I do the right thing, the moral thing? Or did I take a coward’s way out? It’s a question that was going haunt me before our journey was finished—but there I go again, getting ahead of myself.
That roan gelding of Spence’s was a lot fresher than my mare, and it wasn’t long before I began to pull ahead of Luis. There was only one path wide enough for saddle stock heading in the same westerly direction I’d spied the dust earlier, and the tracks along it were newly pl
anted, so I was confident we were following the right trail.
The light finally faded out and the cañon’s walls resembled ink flows. Although I could hear the occasional clop of one of the bay’s hoofs, I could no longer see Luis or the mare. Overhead the pale ribbon of the sky was like looking at the underside of a river, although populated with bats instead of fish, and once an owl passed so close overhead I could have almost touched it, yet it was so silent I wouldn’t have known it was there if I hadn’t spotted it from the corner of my eye. We’d gone maybe five miles when I heard a voice up ahead, and pulled the roan to a stop.
“McKenzie, that is you?” the voice called softly in Spanish.
My heart kicked into a higher gear, and my scalp did a little dance across the top of my head. I was pretty sure that was Felix, and I was betting Davenport had sent him back to see what was keeping Spence.
“McKenzie?”
“Sí, muchacho,” I replied in a clumsy attempt to reproduce Spence’s Scottish accent—in Spanish.
I was sure now that it was Felix Perez who was calling to me, and not very far away, either. Unfortunately my efforts to mimic Spence’s familiar, “Aye, laddie,” didn’t fool him, and a shot rang out, pinging off a nearby stone. Kicking free of the roan’s stirrups, I dropped to the ground, then to one knee. From this lower angle, and probably because Felix was moving so fast, it took only a moment to spot him scrambling up the incline on my right. I snapped off two quick rounds, then threw myself off the trail as a second bullet from Felix’s rifle crackled through the brush at my side.
I moved deeper into the thick scrub flanking the trail, my left hand held before me to ward off any thorny branches that might want to claw at my eyes, or sweep my hat from my head. The heavy Marlin, held before me like a pistol, was a strain on the muscles of my right arm.
It’s an odd sensation to move through the dark like that, knowing there’s someone out there hunting you, wanting to end your life. For Felix, I knew it would be personal. He’d never forgiven me for laying into him that night in Moralos, then taking away the spoils of what I was certain was his ambush of the motorcycle rider I’d seen leaving Archuleta’s. Felix Perez wanted revenge; his ego demanded it.
The minutes ticked past like a clock dipped in molasses, and after a while I decided to just stop and let Perez come to me. Coming to a low boulder with a flat top, I settled down to wait. You might recall me mentioning earlier how even the quietest night can seem noisy when you’re really listening. The next twenty or so minutes in that cañon was no exception. I swear I heard a snake crawl past on my left, and the flutter of bats’ wings was like a softer version of Midwestern cicadas.
Even concentrating as intently as I was, I was caught off guard when I heard the echoing roar of a gunshot from above me, its muzzle flash briefly illuminating the cañon’s walls. Two more shots rang out from higher up. Then, hearing another shout and the clatter of hoofs, I shoved to my feet and raced toward where I’d left the roan.
My horse was gone, of course. I don’t know if it had ever been trained to stand ground-tied, but I wouldn’t have expected any animal to hold its position with everything that was going on around it that night. There were more shots from upcañon, then a shrill cursing I recognized as Felix’s. The next thing I knew, the Indio’s pinto was bursting out of the scrub not forty yards away. I swung instinctively toward it, shouldering the Marlin but not pulling the trigger. I guess I didn’t shoot because somewhere deep in my mind I knew it wasn’t Perez racing the paint horse toward me.
“Luis!” I shouted.
Vega spotted me and reined the pinto in my direction. Felix was still shooting wildly from above, and I’ll swear one shot came so close I felt it ruffle the brim of my hat. Shifting the Marlin to my right hand, I reached out with my left as Luis wheeled the pinto in a tight arc around me. I caught his arm up high, near the bicep, and he caught mine in the same place, and it was like we’d been training for this moment our entire lives. I jumped, swinging my right leg over the pinto’s hips while Luis leaned to the offside to help vault me up behind him. Then we were racing down the cañon, the pinto’s hoofs pounding the hard ground while Felix’s shouts faded behind us.
We found the roan about a quarter of a mile back down the trail. It had bolted with all the gunfire, but stopped when it came across my trail-weary bay mare, hitched in the scrub alongside the trail. Luis hauled up and I slid from the saddle’s skirting. The roan acted like it might take off again, but I managed to sweet-talk it into letting me grab the reins. Stepping into the saddle, I rode back to where Luis was sitting his new mount in the middle of the trail, listening for pursuit.
“Anything?” I asked.
He shook his head, although I doubted if he could have heard much over the creaking of leather and the puffing of our horses.
Returning the Marlin to its scabbard, I said, “What happened back there?”
“When I heard your shots, I decided to leave the bay here and make my way up on foot. I spotted Felix where he was slipping down through the brush, but then I saw the pinto. He had it tied off in a little arroyo coming down off the side wall. I decided I wanted the horse more than I wanted to kill Felix Perez, so I went after it instead of him. Felix saw me, but I think he was afraid of hitting the horse, and pulled his shot at the last minute. I didn’t have that concern, and I’m pretty sure I got him in the leg. I saw him fall, but then he wiggled off into the brush like the belly-dragger that he is. I didn’t go after him.”
I considered Luis’ reply, about as much as I’d ever heard him say in one sitting. I also thought about Felix Perez, alone up there and wounded, but probably no less dangerous because of it.
“We’ll never catch up, not in time,” Luis said quietly. “Even if we did, we’d have to get the guns away from Davenport and the others. By the time we got back to Sabana, Soto would know. Even if we could get the guns and ammunition, it would be too late for the woman and the niña.”
I nodded agreement. “Felix was coming back to look for Spence, I’d bet money on that. When he doesn’t return, Davenport will know something went wrong. He’ll be waiting for us.”
“They may have even heard the shots.”
“We’ve got to go back, find another way to get Abby Davenport and that little girl out of there.” I looked at Luis, not knowing what else to say. The task seemed monumental—impossible.
“There may be a way,” Luis ventured tentatively. “While Guille and I waited for you at the glade, he told me about the garrison. He seemed certain that Soto would double-cross us, although I don’t think he expected what ultimately happened.”
No, I thought grimly, he couldn’t have. None of us had.
“Guille was convinced we’d have to go in after the woman, and he already had it planned out in his mind,” Luis continued.
“Did he tell you what he was thinking?”
“Sí, in detail.” He smiled. “He was a talker, that one.”
“Can it be done?”
“Possibly. It would be dangerous, very dangerous, but it is possible.”
I could feel my resolve hardening. Davenport might have abandoned his wife and daughter, but Luis and I hadn’t. Pulling the roan’s head around, I said, “Let’s go get her.”
Session Thirteen
We rode back past Yaqui Springs, but didn’t use that route to reach the cañon floor. If it had been daylight we might have tried it, but we were both a little uneasy with the idea of Spence McKenzie still lying down there. I’m not speaking of haunts, mind you, but because I hadn’t searched him more thoroughly after pulling the Smith & Wesson off of him. It would be just like the backstabber to take a shot at us as we came through—assuming he was still alive.
We used the same rugged arroyo going down as we had coming up. At first the bay—Luis was riding the pinto now, with the mare tagging along of its own accord—refused to follow us, bu
t eventually its fear of being abandoned in cougar and jaguar country overcame its reluctance to negotiate the scree-filled gulch, and it came bounding down after us, squealing and snorting her displeasure. In case you’re wondering, we’d left the mule in the Cañon Where the Small Lizards Run; the last I’d seen of it, it had been sniffing curiously at the entrance to the narrow side cañon that led to the grassy meadow above the pools. If it went on up, it could have lived out its life there in comfortable solitude.
I’ve already described the route between the slot cañon and Sabana. The only difference this time was our early evening start, which put us on top of the Sierra Verdes a couple of hours before sunset. Rather than risk being spotted by dropping down off the mountain while it was still light, we reined into a tiny vale out of the wind and stripped the saddles from our horses.
Luis had left Felix’s old hulk back in the barranca, but had brought along the Indian’s saddlebags. He dumped the contents on the ground while we chewed on hardtack and cold ham. The bags held the usual items you’d find in any drifter’s war bag—extra clothing, some odds and ends of food and cooking utensils, a couple of boxes of old Henry rimfire ammunition that I didn’t even know they still made. Then Luis opened a worn leather sack that had been crammed down at the bottom of the bags and upended it. A cold shiver ran down my spine as I stared at the items spilled before us. There were women’s rings, pocket watches, money clips, odds and ends of photos, a woman’s lacy red garter—and a leather thong strung with human ears.
“Jesus,” Luis breathed, staring numbly at the hard, rubbery appendages.
I tentatively pulled the blood-blackened cord away from the rest of the trove. I counted fourteen ears, and with a sickening clarity, realized they were all right ears.
“That boy’s been busy,” I said dryly, then pulled the thong around so that the freshest ear lay separate from the rest. “What do you think, a week old?”
Leaving Yuma Page 18
