“Never claimed to be,” Taggart said. “But to show you I’m not the heartless lobo you make me out to be, I’ll turn my back so the two of you can kiss and get it out of your systems.”
Tessa’s cheeks burned. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Me neither,” Calhoun said.
“If you say so. But you’re making a mistake. You’re a perfect match for each other.”
“We are?” Tessa asked.
“Yep. Both of you are rotten liars.”
The soldier and the young woman resumed their climb, mocking laughter wafting over them.
Near the top the slope steepened. Clay had to dismount and lead the black stallion. Dirt and pebbles rattled down from under the animal’s hooves, raising swirls of dust.
Once on the crest, Clay faced westward and smiled. In the distance rose a lot of dust. “It looks like your father cares about you after all, ma’am.”
Bent over with her hands on her knees so she could catch her breath, Tessa glanced up and saw the dust cloud. “Dear Lord! Is that who I think it is?”
“Sure enough,” Clay said. “Before nightfall you’ll get a rare privilege.”
“What would that be?”
“You’ll get to see your own father gunned down right before your eyes.”
Ten
The posse came to the base of a ridge. Marshal Tom Crane scanned the talus slope above and fidgeted in his saddle. He didn’t like being there, not one bit. His mind screamed at him to get the hell out before it was too late, but he couldn’t just head on back to Tucson by himself. The others would brand him a coward or worse. And once word spread, not even the influence of Miles Gillett would keep him in office very long.
Crane rubbed the stubble on his chin. It galled him that Taggart’s ruse was working in spite of all he had done. He was trapped, sure enough, not only by the damnable White Apache, but by his own kin, who he had never even met, and by his tin star. Lord, how it galled him!
“I don’t like this,” one of the men said. “That bastard could be up there right this moment setting his sights on us.”
“He’s not,” Clell Baxter said.
Thorson glanced at the old frontiersman. “How can you be so sure?”
“I’d feel him if he were.”
With that, Baxter kneed his bay on up the slope. Thorson looked at Gritz and rolled his eyes. The latter chuckled softly. Spreading out, rifles at the ready, the men climbed.
Crane rode near the middle. He was inclined to agree with the buffalo hunter. Taggart would pick a better spot, a place where he could box them in. Still, his eyes never left the rim, and he kept a finger on the trigger of his Winchester at all times. So it was that he didn’t notice when the owner of the Acme slanted alongside him.
“I’ve been doing some thinking, pard,” Rafe Skinner said.
“Don’t strain yourself.”
Skinner absently swatted at a fly, then pulled his hat brim lower against the blinding sun. “It’s mighty peculiar if you ask me.”
“What is?” Crane asked without lowering his eyes from the crest. His friend had a knack for picking the strangest times to be talkative.
“This whole business. Doesn’t it strike you as odd how Taggart happened to hit the exact stage carrying your daughter? Stages use that road all the time, and it’s been months since any of them had any trouble. Yet the one stage that your girl is in, Taggart stops.”
Crane didn’t like where Skinner’s trail of logic was leading. “Coincidence is all.”
“I suppose it could be. But Taggart seems to have had the whole thing planned out well in advance, even going so far as to take a soldier captive just so he could force the stage to stop. And then there are all these stone arrows. He’s making certain we don’t lose his trail – or at least one of us doesn’t.”
“You’re saying he’s out to get me?”
“Don’t you think he is?”
Crane composed himself before answering. His friend was much too close to the truth for comfort. No one other than the men who had taken part in the lynching, and Miles Gillett, of course, knew about what had been done to Taggart, and Crane wanted to keep it that way. “You may have a point. But for the life of me, I can’t see why Taggart would have it in for me. I hardly knew the man. I doubt we spoke ten words to each other before he went bad and turned Injun.”
The lawman climbed half-a-dozen yards before he grew aware of the penetrating stare his friend was giving him. “Something the matter?”
“How long have we been pards, Tom?”
Crane had to think a moment. “About eleven years or so. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Have I ever lied to you in all that time?”
“No.”
“Have you ever lied to me?”
The last thing Crane wanted to do was hesitate, yet he did. There had been a few times, minor affairs hardly worth the mention. “No.”
Rafe Skinner stared at the lawman a while longer yet, then flicked his reins and moved off, saying, “When we get back to town, Tom, I’d be obliged if you’d do your drinking and whoring somewhere other than the Acme.”
“Rafe!” Crane said, but it was no use. His friend paid him no heed.
By that time, the posse was over halfway up the slope. Baxter was even higher. “Your daughter slipped here, Marshal,” he said. “She would have taken a nasty spill but the soldier boy caught her.”
Gritz, who was on Crane’s left, could not leave well enough alone. “Did you hear that, boys? Sounds to me like true love is in the air. Wouldn’t it be something if the marshal goes back to Tucson with not just his daughter but a new son-in-law?”
Anger gushed up from deep within Tom Crane. Given his relationship with Tessa or, more aptly, the lack of one, he had no call to act the part of a typical outraged father. Yet before he could stop himself, he growled, “Shut your foul mouth, mister! And the next man who acts as if my daughter is street trash will end up going back strapped to his horse, toes down! So help me God!”
Cringing in fright, as if trying to crawl into a hole that wasn’t there, Gritz said, “I didn’t mean nothing by it, Marshal! Honest!”
Crane spurred on ahead. At the top, Baxter waited next to yet another stone arrow.
“Taggart does like to rub our noses in it, doesn’t he?” the old-timer said.
“I’ll rub his in his own blood before long,” Crane said angrily. He was near the end of his patience, and he didn’t care who knew it. “How far behind them would you say we are?”
“No more than an hour or so,” Baxter said, scratching his beard. “He’s not letting them rest very often, but he’s not prodding them as viciously as a full-blooded buck would either.” He scratched harder, as if he had fleas. “Take Delgadito, for instance. I did some scouting for the army a while ago and saw his handiwork for myself. That devil would make captives run until they dropped, then poke them with his knife to get them to run some more.”
Rising in the stirrups, Crane surveyed the countryside to the east. “How much longer does Taggart aim to keep this up?”
“Not much longer at all,” Baxter said confidently.
“Do you know where he’s headed?”
“I can make a good guess.” Baxter gestured at the valley below the ridge. “On the other side is the best place in the whole territory to bushwhack someone. Odds are you’ve heard of the place.”
Crane delved into his memory. A vague recollection pricked him, but that was all. “Where would that be?”
“Devil’s Canyon.”
Calhoun had been holding Tessa Heritage’s hand for the last half an hour, and neither of them had given it a second thought. As they crossed a second low hill after leaving the valley, a vast canyon unfolded before them. Calhoun halted to scrutinize the foreboding stone ramparts and the maze of enormous boulders and barren knolls that dotted the canyon floor. “You’re taking us in there?”
Clay Taggart brought the blac
k stallion up close to the pair, then drew rein. He tingled at the thought of soon taking revenge on the man he despised almost as much as he loathed Miles Gillett.
Tom Crane was rotten to the core, a bad apple of a lawman who had no business wearing a badge. Killing him would not only help to quell the raging flames that burned in Clay’s soul; it would be doing the Arizona Territory a favor. But to succeed, Clay had to rely on every skill the Chiricahuas had taught him. It would not be as Clay Taggart, rancher, that he carried out his vengeance. It would be as White Apache.
Crane would not go down easy. Nor were the other posse members likely to stand around doing nothing – unless they had no other option.
“Only the woman goes with me,” White Apache said.
Calhoun felt Tessa’s grip tighten. Sliding in front of her, he glowered at the renegade. “I don’t know what you have in mind, murderer, but she’s not going anywhere without me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
Tessa cried out as their captor lashed out with the speed of a striking rattler. The butt of the Winchester slammed into the trooper’s skull, and he buckled, groaning as he slumped at her feet. With no regard for her own safety, she knelt to cradle Calhoun’s head in her lap. A nasty welt marred his brow. “You fiend! How could you?”
White Apache did not mince words. Climbing down, he yanked out his Bowie, reversed his grip, and held the hilt toward her. “Cut two long strips off the bottom of your dress. Quickly.”
“I will not!”
A glance across the valley showed stick figures moving on the crest of the ridge. White Apache pressed the muzzle of his rifle to the soldier’s ear. “I have no time to argue. Do it or he dies.”
Tessa had a sharp retort on the tip of her tongue, but she did not voice it. The butcher wasn’t bluffing. Unless she complied, she stood to lose someone who had become very important to her.
Grasping the hilt, Tessa diligently cut at the fabric an inch above the hem. The blade was a razor. It sawed through the material as a hot knife would through butter. In short order, she had the two strips required.
White Apache snatched the knife and replaced it in the beaded sheath. Motioning for her to move back, he squatted and quickly bound the trooper’s arms and legs. He also wadded a short strip and crammed it into the private’s mouth. Satisfied, he lightly slapped the soldier a few times.
Calhoun jerked up out of a gray haze. His first thoughts were of Tessa. Seeing that she was unharmed, he started to relax, then realized he was tied again.
“Listen to me carefully,” White Apache said. “When the posse gets here, you will tell them that only Crane can go on from this point. If anyone other than the marshal enters Devil’s Canyon, the woman dies. If you join him, the woman dies. Try any tricks at all, and she is the one who will suffer. Savvy?”
After Calhoun reluctantly nodded, White Apache vaulted smoothly onto the stallion. Bending, he hooked a finger at Tessa. “Up behind me.”
To dispute him invited swift retribution. Tessa stepped up close and allowed herself to be hoisted behind him. His muscles rippled like cords. She looked at James and saw mingled despair and longing in his eyes. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
Calhoun choked down an impulse to shriek in outrage. It was almost more than he could bear to sit there helpless while the woman he cared for was taken away by a coldhearted fiend. He watched until they disappeared around a knoll. Tessa gave him a lingering look just before she vanished.
In a fury, Calhoun strained at his bounds. He heaved, wrenched, and yanked. He tugged and clawed at the knots. But Taggart had done too thorough a job. Calhoun gained a fraction of slack, no more.
Resigned, Calhoun rotated on his knees so he could spot the posse that much sooner. Nervously gnawing on his lower lip, he yearned for them to hurry up and get there. Time dragged by as if weighted by an millstone. Each second was a minute, each minute an hour.
Just when Calhoun began to think that the posse had lost the trail and would never come, tendrils of dust rose above the hill. The rumble of hooves confirmed the men were near, and he burst into a broad smile when a lanky man in buckskins reached the crown. The man shouted over a shoulder, then barreled down the slope and reined up in a cloud of dust.
“Hold on there, sonny,” Clell Baxter said. “I’ll have you free in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
The posse converged at a gallop. Tom Crane scoured the canyon floor in dread of a bullet in the brisket. He tried not to dwell on the fact that Taggart might be fixing a bead on him at that very moment. As he dropped to the ground, the soldier stood.
“Marshal!” In his anxiety over Tessa, Calhoun dashed to the lawman and gripped Crane by the shirt. “You have to listen! That madman will kill her if you don’t do exactly as he says!”
Crane pried the younger man’s fingers loose. “Calm down, boy.”
Calhoun couldn’t quiet his pounding pulse if his life depended on it. “You have to listen! Clay Taggart, the man called the White Apache, has taken your daughter into the canyon. He wants you to go on by yourself. If anyone else tags along, he says that he’ll kill her.”
“We know who took her, boy,” Calhoun said, studying the maze of boulders and knolls. An entire army could hide in there. What chance would he have going in alone?
Rafe Skinner placed a friendly hand on the cavalryman’s shoulder. “How is the girl, Private? Has Taggart harmed her?”
“No, he hasn’t laid a finger on her,” Calhoun said. “He never really tried to hurt either of us. I have no idea why.”
“We do,” Clell Baxter said, glancing at the lawman.
Crane needed to think. He advanced a dozen feet to be by himself as the trooper and the members of the posse swapped names. It appeared that Clay Taggart had him over a barrel.
The lawman was no fool. Going on by his lonesome was bound to get him killed. As good as he was with a six-shooter, he’d be no match for a man taught by Apaches.
There was only one thing to do. Early on in Crane’s checkered career as a lawman, he had learned a secret essential to the survival of every tin star west of the mighty Mississippi. The lawmen who lasted the longest were the smart ones, the ones who never went into a fight without an edge. It might be a sawed-off shotgun hidden under a coat or a pistol with a shortened barrel concealed in a pocket or a holster that could be tipped up to fire so the lawman did not have to waste precious instants drawing.
All that mattered in the end was that whatever the lawman picked worked. Given the fix Crane was in, he could think of only one thing that might save his bacon. “Baxter?”
The frontiersman ambled over. Pushing his floppy hat back on his head, he asked, “What do you need?”
“Your rifle.”
Clell Baxter’s scarred eye twitched. “I’d say you must be drunk, but none of us thought to bring a flask along.” He patted the Sharps. “Nobody puts a hand on Old Bess but me.”
Crane was not about to take no for an answer. Nor would he risk gunplay to get what he wanted. “Hear me out, Clell. Taggart always uses a Winchester. Everyone knows that. And a Winchester doesn’t have the range of a Sharps. With your rifle, it would be a cinch to pick him off.”
“For me, maybe,” Baxter said. “I’ve been using Old Bess for pretty nigh on twenty-five years. At five hundred yards, I drop antelope and deer all the time. At two hundred yards, I can knock a squirrel out of a tree. And at one hundred yards, I can put a bullet through a bull’s-eye ten times out of ten.” Baxter’s claims were not idle boasting. Crane had seen the old-timer take part in a marksmanship competition a few years back and win by the highest score ever. He stared at the breechloader, and another inspiration took root. “You mentioned once that you might be interested in collecting the bounty on Taggart. How would you like a chance given to you on a silver platter?”
Baxter pursed his lips. “I’m listening.”
“I doubt Taggart will kill me the second he sets eyes on me. My guess is that he wa
nts me to sweat a spell first. So it shouldn’t be hard for me to draw him out of hiding to give you a clear shot. What do you say? Will you shadow me into the canyon? We’ll split the bounty fifty-fifty.”
The frontiersman took all of two seconds to mull it over. “Seventy-thirty and it’s a deal.”
“Fifty-fifty,” Crane said. “I’m the one whose life will be hanging by a thread.”
A grin curled Baxter’s seamed face. “But I’m the jasper who has to make the shot. Without enough incentive, I might just miss. I do, you know, once every blue moon.”
Crane knew not to buck a stacked deck. “Seventy-thirty, then. Let’s shake on it.”
As they did, Calhoun stormed over. He had caught the last part of their exchange, and he was infuriated. “What the hell do you use for brains, Crane? Didn’t you hear a word I told you? Taggart will kill your daughter if you don’t go on to meet him alone.”
“Calm down, boy,” the lawman said. “Baxter knows what he’s doing. Taggart will never get so much as a glimpse of him.”
“But what if he slips up?” Calhoun said. “No, it’s too risky. I won’t allow it.”
Marshal Crane straightened. “You won’t allow it? And just who do you think you are, Private, to be giving orders to me? I’m wearing the badge here. I can do as I damn well please,” He started toward the horses.
Calhoun could never say exactly what made him snap. Maybe it was the lawman’s callous disregard for the welfare of a woman who had traveled a third of the way across the country to see him. Maybe it was being treated as if he were a child instead of a grown man. Or maybe it was simply love.
Taking a stride, Calhoun threw his entire weight into a solid right to the jaw. It should have knocked Crane down, or at the very least, staggered him. But Calhoun had been without food for days. Lack of sleep and tramping mile after miles across the blistering landscape had further weakened him. His blow merely caused Crane to break stride, no more.
“Why, you young whelp!” the lawman snarled, and he closed in with his fists flailing.
Calhoun blocked the first few punches. Then one clipped him on the cheek and another sank into the pit of his stomach. His knees kissed the ground. His head swam. He barely felt more blows that rained on his shoulders and chest.
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