The Sonora Noose

by Jackson Lowry

  “Ain’t gonna find a soft bed here. Where’s that bunk? I might get myself a bit of it.”

  Barker snorted and shook his head. “This big an expedition means trouble,” he said. “The Apache go off the reservation again?”

  “Some, maybe,” said Sturgeon, “but they’re not the ones we’re after. Rustlers. There’s not a cow safe anywhere in this part of New Mexico Territory.”

  “You were chasing after rustlers to the east of Mesilla. The same gang bring you this way?”

  “Might be. Doesn’t matter,” Sergeant Sturgeon said. “We stop one gang and another springs up like weeds along a riverbank.”

  “I wonder if my vaquero might be part of your gang of rustlers,” Barker said, more to himself than to the buffalo soldier. “He lit out for this part of the country mighty fast when he came to my attention back in Mesilla.”

  “These canyons are a wild, crazy maze, that’s the truth,” Sturgeon said.

  “Might be we can throw in together. I’ve got a map showing where I lost him.”

  “You lost him? You tracked him but you lost him?”

  “You make it sound nigh on impossible for such a thing to happen. He outrode me.” Barker said nothing about the nameless vaquero outgunning him, too. His vanity was still a bit pricked over that. Any decent lawman would have captured the Mexican at the watering hole, not let him get off a few shots and ride away.

  “Rumor has it you’re the best tracker Kit Carson ever had serve with him. You could track a spring breeze through a tornado.”

  “Never heard that one,” Barker allowed. Secretly, he was puffed up with pride at the sergeant’s high praise. It didn’t do much for him to remember he had lost his quarry in the blink of an eye.

  “I got me a couple scouts who brag on finding every rock in this godforsaken part of the country. A map would help them—us—find our rustlers.”

  “Didn’t see anyone else ...” Barker’s voice trailed off. He had seen another rider in the Peloncilla Mountains. The suspicious man who was sure he was being followed for some sexual peccadillo. Thinking of the lone pilgrim out in the mountains forced Barker to think on the woman all by herself on the ranch with the slowly dying animals. She had needed him and he had failed her.

  But he hadn’t failed his own marriage. But where was the line delineating who he was supposed to help and how?

  “You lookin’ sudden strange there, Marshal,” Sturgeon said. “You feelin’ all right? I know you got your back problems.”

  “That obvious?”

  “A blind man can tell that. This is somethin’ more.” The sergeant looked at him intently, but Barker wasn’t about to answer. The thoughts running through his mind—just for a moment—had been personal.

  “This map of mine’s not that much good since I’d have to be the one to point out the landmarks. I made it more for my own benefit than for anyone else to follow.”

  The buffalo soldier kept staring at him real hard, then said, “Come on into camp and get a cup of coffee. Looks as if you could use it.”

  “We have to be on our way. Otherwise, he’ll be too far ahead of us,” Barker said. But he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. The coffee would help.

  “No rush, ’less you want to have your horse step into a prairie dog hole in the dark.”

  “Not so many in the road.”

  “Never can tell. What’s a cup of coffee gonna set you back? A half hour? You that all-fired hot to get back to Mesilla?”

  “Truth is, I am, but my throat’s so parched even your worthless cavalry brew might slip down all good and fine.”

  Sturgeon laughed and escorted him into the camp, after giving the sentry a final disparaging look.

  When they were out of earshot, the sergeant said, “Most are like that boy. Can’t keep their mind on soldiering longer’n a few minutes and for all the fightin’ we’ve done, they’s not been in a real fight yet.”

  “Mixing it up with rustlers isn’t the kind of fight you generally get into,” Barker said. He handed his mare’s reins to a private, who led the horse to a crude rope corral. Barker sank down beside one of the many fires still burning brightly. “What’s the reason you keep the fires stoked like this?”

  “Well,” Sturgeon said slowly, looking around, “it’s like this. The lieutenant took both scouts with him, and I haven’t heard from any of them in two days.”

  “So you wanted a beacon for them to find their way in the night?”

  “Somethin’ like that.”

  “Might be you’d give away your position to those rustlers, too.”

  “That’s a consideration, but if I have to choose ’tween gettin’ the lieutenant back and scarin’ off those thieves ...”

  “Not often you see a newly minted officer with such promise,” Barker said.

  “He treats his men right. Not like most of them.”

  “Not like the captain who got his head kicked in?”

  Sergeant Sturgeon thought on the answer for a spell, then said with a grin, “You can say that. I can’t.”

  “You worried that Lieutenant Greenberg tangled with the rustlers and lost?”

  “These are wild lands. Me and a lot of soldiers have chased Apache all over and never found them. Even with the scouts ridin’ beside the lieutenant, ambush isn’t out of the question.”

  Barker told of the man he had come across, jumpy about a husband finding out about his wayward wife and her lover.

  “Don’t recognize him from your description, but that don’t mean much. All we ever done is see the varmints in the distance.”

  “Seems stealing beeves comes under my jurisdiction, too,” Barker said, sipping coffee that wasn’t half as bad as he’d feared it would be. “You get this from Dooley back in Mesilla?”

  “Did.”

  This set off a new train of unwanted thoughts. He was glad to get the store owner and the lieutenant together for some mutually beneficial trade, but he wished Nate had taken the initiative and acted as the go-between. A profitable exchange between Hugh Dooley and several forts could have made them all a damn sight richer and given Nate something to be proud of.

  Why’d he leave behind the meager pay as if he didn’t need it?

  “You think we can find this spot on your map, where you lost the vaquero?”

  “Before noon,” Barker said, turning the paper around to orient himself. “Might be hard to ride into the hills since the trail’s hardly more’n a footpath. And there’s no way to be sure he’s one of the rustlers.”

  “But you think different,” Sturgeon said.

  “I think I found a man with a whale of a lot of money and no obvious way to have come by it legally.” And the watch. He couldn’t forget the watch the vaquero had sold to Nate. That implicated the Mexican in the stagecoach robbery, at least as far as taking stolen property, but if Barker had to lay a bet, it would be on a certain vaquero also being a bandito.

  “Rest up, if you can after drinkin’ that coffee. It’s strong enough to bring the dead back to life.”

  But it wasn’t strong enough to keep Barker from drifting off to sleep in a few minutes. With the dreams he had, he wished it had kept him awake.

  “THAT’S THE SPOT WHERE I LOST HIM,” BARKER SAID. “He rode on south, or so I reckon.”

  The sergeant stood in the stirrups and slowly studied the terrain.

  “Wish I had the lieutenant’s spyglass. My ole eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, but I think I see a dust cloud in that direction way too big to belong to a single rider.”

  Sturgeon pointed due south. Barker pulled his hat brim down and squinted against the afternoon sun. The return was taking longer than he’d expected, and he’d be on the trail at least one more day before starting back to Mesilla. Might even be two days now that he made out dim figures riding inside the far dust cloud.

  “Four men, I make it,” he told the sergeant. “From how much dust they’re kicking up, they have a small herd of cattle.”

/>   “Fifty?”

  “Could be. I’m not an expert on such things, but it’s not two or three beeves. It’s got to be at least a couple dozen.”

  “Wrong time of year for a roundup,” Sergeant Sturgeon said, turning about and signaling for his corporal to join him. They exchanged words for a few minutes, then the corporal trotted back and passed along the orders.

  “If the whole column advances, we’ll be spotted,” Barker pointed out. “If it’s just you and me and a handful of soldiers on fresh horses going after them, we might capture ourselves some outlaws.”

  “They’ll have the herd between us and them,” Sturgeon said. “Might be we can outflank them, split my squad into two elements, and—”

  “You do what you want with the rest. Give me a couple men and let’s ride. I think they might have spotted us.”

  Barker shielded his eyes with his hand and caught a sudden silver-and-gold flash that caused him to sit straighter in the saddle. He ignored the twinge when he recognized the source of the reflection. The vaquero he had been tracking rode along with at least three others, not the least bit concerned about the cloud of dust getting kicked up.

  A sudden breeze swept some of that dust away.

  “You called it, Sergeant. There’s about fifty head of beeves.”

  “And gettin’ their tenderloins stolen,” Sturgeon said. He motioned, and two sections of his patrol split and went to cut off escape, leaving only the private who’d stood sentry duty the night before and one other. Both were scared but looked resolute. That was the best Barker could hope for. He rode down the sloping trail as fast as his mare could take the rocky path, the horse soldiers close behind.

  When he came to a level stretch, he goaded his horse into a gallop. This was foolish, but he wanted to get out where he could spook the outlaws and force them into a mistake.

  He quickly saw that he was the one who had misjudged. The four rustlers weren’t giving up their stolen cattle easily. Two hung back while the other pair continued to move the herd southward. They were more than twenty miles from the border, but the closer they got, the better their chance of getting away scot-free—and with the stolen herd.

  The vaquero was one of the pair who now faced a charging Mason Barker. His broad sombrero was tipped back so he could sight along the rifle. Barker hardly flinched as the bullet whined past. The vaquero got off another shot before his partner fired for the first time. The Mexican might fire more rapidly, but the other outlaw was something of a marksman.

  The bullet tore through Barker’s shirt, going between his arm and his rib cage. Somehow all that was carried away with the hunk of lead was a bit of his shirt. He remained unscathed, but the second outlaw proved the first shot was no fluke when he put a second round through Barker’s hat. The floppy-brimmed hat flew up, caught the air, and flapped backward, the chin string almost strangling him. Flailing about a moment as it unbalanced him, he fought to stay in the saddle.

  “We’s a-comin’,” came the cry from behind. Then lead tore past him, but in the other direction. Sergeant Sturgeon and his two soldiers opened fire with their carbines to distract the outlaws.

  Barker swung around and bent low to keep the rustler from getting a better shot at him. The only worry he had was if the outlaw shot the horse from under him. A couple more shots whistled past, too high.

  And then Barker felt his horse crouch and launch, jumping a narrow arroyo Barker hadn’t even noticed in his fixation on the rustler. The horse landed with a bone-jarring thud and sent a lance of pain all the way up Barker’s back. He gritted his teeth. He had come this close and wasn’t about to give up. The two rustlers, the rifleman and the vaquero, swung around and prepared to run.

  “Cut ’em off!” Barker’s order was drowned out in a new thunder, deeper and more frightening. The herd had been turned and now rushed directly back toward him. The vaquero and his partner went to either side of the cattle, shouting and urging the frightened animals to stampede.

  “Go to your right. Veer right!”

  Barker looked over his shoulder and saw Sergeant Sturgeon waving wildly to him. He turned back, bent low, and saw that he would be trampled if he didn’t go one way or the other. The sergeant had told him to go right, but what made him decide to gallop in that direction was the vaquero. The Mexican had taken that side of the herd to goad.

  Using his knees and tugging on the reins, Barker convinced his horse to go over rockier ground than what lay straight ahead—and he missed the brunt of the charging cattle. A few head rushed past him, but the driven beeves were not in any position to run over him.

  A momentary pang about the fate of the cattle passed when he saw his chance to follow the vaquero. The fleeing Mexican passed from sunlight to shadow and almost vanished. One instant Barker saw the reflection off the flashy silver-threaded jacket and then ... nothing.

  Barker kept riding and entered the shadow cast by the tall mountain peak, immediately spotting his quarry. The trail narrowed as it curled through rocks leading east, forcing the vaquero to squeeze between boulders. Judging from his frantic movements, the vaquero knew he was close to being taken into custody. Barker vowed to see the cattle thief locked up in his jail—or in an army stockade. If neither of those outcomes was likely, he wasn’t above putting a bullet into the son of a bitch.

  He wanted to take himself a prisoner, but good sense prevailed. He didn’t ride through a particularly narrow gap in the rocks, because it felt wrong. His back might twinge on him, but now his gut was all knotted up and telling him he would regret being hasty.

  Swinging down from the saddle, he pulled out his Winchester and advanced warily. Before he pressed through the vee in the rocks, he looked around for any telltale sign that his quarry waited ahead. He saw an indistinct shadow move against the rock to his left. The vaquero ought to have gone to the other side so he didn’t have the sun at his back.

  Maybe he didn’t think about it—or maybe he did. If Barker surged through, would the sun blind him long enough to prevent an accurate shot?

  Sounds behind him forced him to be sure he wasn’t boxed in between two outlaws. Sturgeon came toward him on foot. Barker pantomimed the situation. The sergeant looked up and shook his head. There wasn’t any way he could climb into the rocks to give a cross fire or even to distract the vaquero.

  Barker motioned the soldier forward, then cocked his rifle and lunged.

  A bullet tore past him on the way to the ground. Twisting, he brought his rifle up and fired wildly. He wanted to keep the vaquero distracted so the sergeant could take him out. But Sturgeon rushed up and fired—at nothing.

  “He lit out,” Sturgeon said.

  “I want him. I’m gonna get him.” Barker’s resolve was stronger than his body. He couldn’t even stand without the sergeant’s help.

  “He’s gone. Long gone.”

  “He—” Barker bit off his determination to arrest the rustler. It had less to do with bringing a lawbreaker to justice than it did putting away a man who had taken advantage of his son. Nate had bought the stolen watch from the vaquero, then the vaquero had rubbed everyone’s face in his guilt by ordering a fancy new watch for Nate, obviously paid for with stolen money.

  Barker couldn’t prove any of that, no matter how vexing it was to him, but if he caught the Mexican rustling cattle, they could put him in prison for a good, long time.

  “We lost the others,” Sturgeon said. “No reason to think we can nab this one, either.”

  “How’d he get into those rocks from this trail?” Barker walked a few yards and saw nothing but a rocky chute. It was as if the vaquero had flown to get to the perfect spot for an ambush.

  “They know these here hills like a calf knows its mama’s teat. That’s why I wanted your map.”

  “Didn’t do much good,” Barker said glumly.

  “Saved a few head of cattle for some rancher. The lieutenant will have somethin’ good to report.”

  Barker said nothing. Lieutenant Greenberg mi
ght report victory, but returning to Mesilla without anything to show for his jaunt into the countryside would make Barker look mighty ineffectual. Maybe the mayor was right hiring a town marshal. Mason Barker couldn’t even catch a rustler in the act of cattle thieving.

  “You all right, Marshal?”

  “Right as rain,” Barker said, following the buffalo soldier back, but every step was burning hot misery. What he needed most was a good, long soak in a mineral bath to ease his back, but that wasn’t likely to happen. He sucked up his resolve and tried not to show too much pain, so Sturgeon wouldn’t worry about him so much.

  10

  THE SECOND SHOT OF WHISKEY WAS GOOD, BUT the fifth went down even better. Barker was long past being able to taste the vile liquor, but what it did to ease his pain was nothing less than a miracle.

  “You better go easy on that popskull, Mase,” the barkeep said.

  “Gus, my good friend, this is the medicine the doctor ordered.”

  “Ain’t got a sawbones in town right now, and if you’re callin’ me a doctor, then I’m doublin’ the price. There ought to be something extra for my special skills.”

  Barker laughed. He felt better than he had in a couple days. Returning empty-handed, after leaving Mesilla as abruptly as he had, had set the tongues a-waggin’. Mostly, he ignored the gossip as it trickled back to him, but some of it hurt. The guilty fled when no man pursued. The preacher had said that in a sermon a month back, but the rumors of Barker having a woman out west of town rankled. He kept coming back to the poor widow woman and how hard she had it. All she’d needed from him was comfort, and he hadn’t given it. But what was it about her that touched him so?

  He had run with the worst of men since taking the job as deputy federal marshal, and none of their evil had rubbed off on him. He had always known who he was and what he stood for, but seeing her—he hadn’t even heard her name—made him feel guilty. It drove home how little any man could do, whether arresting the outlaws or keeping good men from dying and leaving behind their women. He had done the right thing, but it still felt wrong. The preacher might have some words to comfort him, but he doubted it, since he and the minister didn’t get along too well after the imbibing incident.