by Paul Lederer
‘I think we will capture Jody Short and tie him up. We will throw him into the stage and after we free George Sabato we will take the coach back along the road we followed down here, then strike out for Yuma where the injustices will be corrected.’
‘That’s a fine plan,’ Quinn muttered. ‘What do we do about the outlaws?’
‘You have the pistol,’ Alicia said with a saucy shake of her head.
‘I don’t have enough bullets even if every man I shot went down with one bullet.’
She was beyond pragmatism. ‘Then we will have to get more bullets, or more guns.’ She glanced at Quinn in the purple light of settling night. ‘Unless you just want to shoot Jody Short for me and we ride away real quick.’
‘No. I’m not an executioner,’ Quinn answered glumly.
‘It’s for the best – my plan. That way you can fulfill the vow you made to Mike Hancock and Tank Dawson.’
‘I made no vows.’
‘And my way, Jody Short can be legally hanged. No one can ever say you were a vigilante,’ Alicia added triumphantly.
As night settled and they rode on Quinn felt nothing like a vigilante, nothing like a man honoring his vows. He felt like a damn fool.
He was still trying to figure out how the woman had persuaded him to follow her into madness when they came within sight of Pueblo Soledad. There were still lights on in most of the windows, and from uptown, in which must have been some sort of cantina, came the strains of music and now and then of breaking glass.
‘We’ll have to wait,’ Quinn said, drawing up the gray horse he was riding. ‘If this is to have even the tiniest chance of success, we’ll have to wait until the men are asleep. The best thing for us to do is to bed down ourselves for a while.’
‘I’m too excited to sleep,’ Alicia said, swinging down from the buckskin horse which had belonged to Jody Short.
‘Do what you like,’ Quinn said with a yawn, untying the saddle blanket which Mike Hancock had used for warmth on innumerable desert nights. Quinn doubted that he would be able to sleep himself, but it was not because of the sort of feral excitement Alicia seemed to be feeling, but out of plain honest fear.
He stretched out on the rocky ground, thinking that by now he should have been back home on the Yavapai in his cabin. He would have left the front door open so that the breeze off the pineclad hills could cool the room, carrying the scent of the tall trees. He would have had a roof over his head, and when he awoke, one of the ranch hands would have coffee boiling. The sun would be bright, the day full of promise.
Just now Quinn wasn’t sure he would live to see another sunrise.
Sometime after midnight Alicia nudged him awake with the toe of her small boot and Quinn sat up from the rough ground, trying to remember for a minute where he was and why. The moon showed only as faint glow below the eastern horizon. The stars had grown brighter in a sky as black as pitch.
‘Didn’t you sleep at all?’ Quinn asked.
‘I told you I was excited. Excited to finish this. I watched the town lights go off one by one. Now it is dark across Soledad. Time for us to begin our work.’
‘Look, Alicia …’ Quinn began, intending to take one more shot at trying to make her see sense, but she was not listening.
‘Get up,’ she said. ‘I have already saddled your horse for you.
Now as they approached the town with the silver half-moon at their backs, Quinn’s regret at being manipulated deepened. Alicia was smiling, her eyes eager. She was a beautiful young thing, to be sure, but he could not have let himself be charmed so easily into this ride toward perdition by a lovely smile and sleek figure. Could he? Was it her talk of debts owed and of honor? Unlikely.
More likely he was just born a fool.
‘We don’t even know where to look for Jody Short,’ Quinn said as they paused not far from the town limits to try to formulate a crude plan of action.
‘He is the new man. The prob –’
‘The probationer,’ Quinn provided.
‘Yes, that,’ Alicia said. ‘They will not have given him an essential job. Perhaps they have not yet entrusted him with a gun. I believe he can be in only a few places – returned to the little room where we were kept, where Sabato is. Or,’ she was thoughtful, biting at her full lower lip, ‘they might have given him a simple task. To watch the horses in the stable, maybe so that no one could steal the horse-thieves’ horses.’
‘It could be,’ Quinn answered. He preferred her first idea. If he were Guerrero, he would not leave the wanted man in custody of the horses. Jody Short would be just as likely to slip one free and risk the desert on his own. After all, he owed Guerrero no allegiance.
Quinn said in a low, uneasy voice, ‘We’ll try the little hotel first.’
‘Good. Then we can capture Jody Short and release George Sabato at once.’ Quinn just studied her wordlessly. He wondered if her eternal optimism was congenital. Or pathological.
Quinn reached behind his back now and withdrew the Colt revolver that had belonged to Mike Hancock. Deadly as the .44 was, under these circumstances it seemed a pitifully futile implement. There were at least a dozen armed men in the town. Alicia touched his wrist and said in the darkness:
‘If you are forced to fight, remember to save one bullet for Jody Short.’
Quinn nodded, not giving voice to the harsh response he was thinking. She probably would not have heard his words anyway. It’s difficult to talk to a madwoman.
What did that make him, he wondered? He, after all, understood the dangers ahead and was hardly filled with over-confidence, and yet he rode on. They circled the pueblo widely. Quinn had never discovered whether there was a back door to the hotel where they had been kept, although it seemed there must have been. If for nothing more than deliveries, for a place to throw out slop and dirty water from the kitchen. He hoped to find such an entrance. Riding down the town’s main street, even if every man in the pueblo was asleep, was dangerous business. An outlaw must be alert to stirrings even in his sleep if he is to remain alive. And the clopping of an approaching horse’s hoofs is one sound they are particularly attuned to.
Riding through the scattered shade of a group of cottonwood trees behind the town they came upon a corral containing at least fifty horses. ‘Well, well,’ Quinn said to himself, although it should have been no surprise since a major part of Guerrero’s criminal enterprise was based on horse stealing. He drew his gray up and pondered the situation as the horses in the corral watched with interest, their curious eyes star-bright.
‘It would help if we could scatter them,’ Quinn said. Not only would it leave some of the bandits without mounts, the confused tracks would help to conceal their own hoofprints. ‘But it has to be done in dead silence.’
‘How?’ Alicia asked, her voice now taut with excitement.
Quinn took a long minute to answer as his eyes studied the shadows, looking for a guard. Maybe Guerrero’s men had grown complacent, lackadaisical. Maybe they never posted a guard out here, far away from civilization. Maybe the guard was drunk or asleep. No matter. Quinn had made up his mind.
‘We’ll open the gate. We try not try to frighten them or scatter them, just to allow them to wander out. A few of them will likely follow our own horses. Maybe the others will simply disperse.’
‘I can do that,’ Alicia whispered, ‘while you go get Jody Short.’
The woman had incredible, baseless faith in him, it seemed.
Quinn had no better scheme to counter with. He did not like the idea of leaving Alicia alone out here, but she was more likely to survive if caught than he was. Her father’s vengeance was still a threat hanging over Guerrero’s head.
Quinn glanced toward the silent town, seeing not a single lantern lit. It was very late now. ‘All right,’ he agreed at last. ‘But you must do it silently!’
‘I move like a cat!’ she answered with a smile. ‘I will meet you at the stable so that we can take the stagecoach.’
Quinn
again swallowed the few words he would like to have spoken and walked his horse onward, toward the rear of the hotel. He was gripping the revolver in his hand so tightly that his palm was perspiring. He wiped it on the leg of his jeans, and continued.
The hotel, as he had suspected, did indeed have a back door. Not only that, it appeared by the faint light of the rising moon and stars to be standing ajar! That troubled him a little. Why would the door be left carelessly open if the adobe still held prisoners? He soon discovered the answer.
He swung down from his horse’s back and approached the door, keeping his back near to the wall of the building. Three steps nearer and he would have walked directly into the man who now emerged from the hotel to stretch his arms and gaze briefly skyward. Knowing that this was his best chance, Quinn did not hesitate.
He was launching himself toward the bandit even before the guard heard the sound of footsteps and dropped his hand in the direction of his holster. Quinn had his Colt in his hand and he put a halt to the man’s intention by cracking the barrel of the big blue-steel revolver across the outlaw’s wrist. Thankfully, the man did not cry out, but he dropped his own pistol, half-bending over to clutch his damaged wrist. Angered now, the Guerrero man swung a fist wildly at Quinn, but Tom had been expecting it. He ducked, braced himself and slammed his forearm across the bridge of the outlaw’s nose.
The guard went down as if pole-axed.
Tom stood, breathing raggedly from the exertion and the residue of peril. He bent over, catching his wind again. Then he heard the sounds of approaching horses and he crouched, raising his pistol. He recognized the new arrival.
Alicia shook her head vigorously. She was leading her own horse and Quinn’s toward him. Behind her were half a dozen ponies which had followed her from the corral. An exasperated Quinn whispered at her:
‘What are you doing? You said we would meet at the stable.’
‘I wondered if you needed help,’ she said softly.
‘Get over to it,’ Quinn ordered. ‘We can’t change out plans now.’
Alicia nodded, handed the reins of the big gray horse to Quinn and wandered off to circle the town toward the back of the stable where the coach was being stored. The stray horses scattered, some pausing to graze, a few following after Alicia on the buckskin, a couple of them wandering away aimlessly.
Quinn entered the hotel.
He held his pistol high, the barrel of the Colt beside his ear. If there had been one guard, could there be two? Or three? He toed the door open wider and slipped through into the interior of what seemed to be an unfinished kitchen. Beyond that he saw only faint light glowing, a lantern turned very low so that the wick sputtered. He entered the room cautiously and he oriented himself.
On the same bunk as he had occupied the night before George Sabato slept, apparently peacefully. Beyond him was the slender form of Jody Short, also asleep. Glancing toward the front door of the hotel, aware that the guard he had left in the back might come to at any moment, Quinn moved swiftly.
Jody Short was jarred awake by the cold nudging of the muzzle of a Colt .44 against his throat. ‘What …?’ he began and the pistol jammed against his throat even more roughly. ‘One more word,’ Quinn warned him, ‘and it will be your last.’
George Sabato was now stirring. Quinn lifted a boot to shake the prison official’s bed, rousing him. ‘Get up now and do it silently,’ Quinn commanded, and the sleep-dazed Sabato, understanding that something important was happening, got to his feet.
‘What is it?’ Sabato asked in a whisper. Quinn told the fat man: ‘Take your belt and Short’s and bind his ankles and wrists. Use his bandanna for a gag. We’re leaving Soledad.’
Or so Quinn hoped. It was all up to the gods of the desert now.
SEVEN
Rather than try to carry the struggling Jody Short or make him walk, Quinn threw the killer over the saddle of the gray horse. Gagged, Short could not scream out the oaths he was trying to voice, but his eyes were filled with savage curses. Sabato was an odd combination of fear and hopefulness as he led the horse away. After taking a moment to check on the dazed guard who still had not awakened, and to slip the pistol from his inert hand, Quinn followed. Still, in the dead of night they were forced to be prudent enough to circle the entire town, avoiding Soledad’s main street.
There were dozens of sleeping guns they could not risk awakening.
The stable was deserted when they arrived, except for Alicia who walked up to Quinn with triumphant eyes. ‘I knew you could do it!’ she said sparing a hateful glance for the bound and gagged Jody Short.
‘I’m happy that one of us had faith in me,’ Quinn said without much humor. He nodded toward the stagecoach. ‘Let’s get Short inside that thing. What are we going to do about harnessing the four-horse team? Sabato?’
The pudgy man shrugged. ‘Not my specialty,’ he said. He was moving toward the boot of the stage. His primary concern was obviously still the gold. Quinn grabbed his arm, halting him.
‘Either it’s still there or it isn’t. If it’s not, there’s nothing we can do about it. Here,’ he handed Sabato the fallen guard’s pistol. ‘Stand watch out front.’
Not that that would do much good. If a shooting match started, none of them would have a chance.
Quinn muscled Jody Short up into the coach and felt no pity as the killer fell on his face against the floor. Quinn closed the stage door softly behind him.
‘Someone ought to keep an eye on him,’ he said, running his finger through his dark hair. He was surprised to find it damp with perspiration. ‘But the horses.…’
‘I am very good at harnessing a two-horse team,’ Alicia said quite calmly. ‘This might take me longer, but I can do it. I will call you if I need your help. You watch my sister’s murderer.’
Quinn nodded mutely. He was dead tired, more from the tension of excitement than anything else. He stood by the stage door, his eyes on Short. At the front door to the stable George Sabato stood, arms folded, Colt in his hand. If anything the prison officer looked calmer than Quinn felt. For Quinn still felt – knew – that this was madness!
They could not slip quietly out of town with the stagecoach. The guard at the hotel was bound to come to soon and raise the alarm. They could not hope to outrun a contingent of mounted bandits on the open desert.
Madness.
It was more than remarkable, it was extraordinary but they managed to get the horses hitched and the stagecoach rolling in the hour before dawn. Perhaps it wasn’t that much of a miracle, Quinn reflected as he smoothly but silently started the team northward, toward the Yuma trail. Who among Guerrero’s band of outlaws could have expected them to risk sneaking back into town? Their greatest aid in this mad excursion was the fact that the knocked-out guard had apparently not come to his senses yet. Quinn wondered briefly whether he had injured the man more seriously than he had intended, but did not take the time to dwell on that consideration.
They rolled silently along the trail. The hubs of the stage’s axles had been well greased at Las Palmas. Quinn used neither whip nor shouts to hurry his team. For a mile or so a few of the liberated horses from Guerrero’s holding pen had followed along with their herding instinct, but they soon became wary of the dry, grassless prospect of the desert flats and turned back. Quinn liked the thought of the open desert no better. Come daylight they would be exposed and vulnerable. A party of fast-riding bandits could easily catch up with them. Guerrero’s last words to him echoed in his mind as he guided the team northward:
Do not disappoint me, Quinn.
Well, he had. How angry would Guerrero be, thinking that Quinn and Alicia could pinpoint his hideout for the authorities? Maybe he would decide to cut his losses and move to somewhere other than Soledad and set up a new outldaw camp. Maybe he would be so angry or determined to prove a point to his own renegades that he would hunt Quinn and the others down and punish them to the extreme.
George Sabato rode uncomfortably and anxiously bes
ide Quinn in the wagon box. Their total armament was two handguns which would be useless should half a dozen bandits armed with long rifles come upon them.
Alicia, who had pleaded for one of the handguns, sat inside of the coach with Jody Short.
‘I will need a pistol,’ was what she had said. ‘Then if he makes a move, I can shoot him.’
Alicia’s temper was a little too hot yet at her sister’s murderer for Quinn to have risked that even had they a spare pistol, which they did not.
‘Just watch him,’ he had said as calmly as possible. ‘He’s trussed, and I doubt he can wriggle free. If there’s trouble we’ll stop the coach and be there in seconds.’
‘I would rather have a pistol,’ the girl had answered stubbornly.
No, she could not have one, Quinn told her as he helped her to board the stage. Her full lips were sulky, her eyes glaring as they fixed on Jody Short. She was an angry woman. But surprisingly she paused before the coach door was shut, bent low and kissed Quinn again. Another of those innocent, butterfly-light kisses before her savage mood returned and she sat in the seat opposite Jody Short, her arms folded beneath her breasts and glared at him with consuming fire in her eyes.
‘What do you think, Quinn?’ George Sabato was asking now as the first hint of gray dawn streaked the eastern horizon. ‘Will we make it?’
‘I have no idea,’ Tom answered honestly. ‘I don’t even know if this is the right trail.’ For Paco had known the road well enough, having traveled it many times, but to Quinn it was just a wandering thread across the trackless desert. ‘All I do know,’ he said, guiding the plodding horse team on, ‘is that come daylight we had better be alert for any sort of trouble.’
‘I know Guerrero might be coming,’ Sabato snapped as if Quinn had taken him for an idiot.
‘Yes,’ Quinn said quietly, glancing toward the prison officer. ‘And I hope you haven’t forgotten that there are Apaches around.’
Sabato seemed to shudder a little, but he said nothing in response. He obviously had not forgotten the earlier raid. Still, despite their lack of weapons and precarious position, Quinn believed that Sabato would stand in a fight. He must have seen a lot of trouble in his twenty-three years as a prison guard.
