by Ralph Cotton
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
PART 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
PART 3
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Teaser chapter
FIRST COURSE: DEATH
“Let’s get on with it,” Shaw said. “I’ve got food coming.”
The Mexican gunman sneered at Shaw’s words and said with confidence, “Not tonight, you don’t.”
Shaw stood staring, realizing that for the time being, the constant pain in his head had ceased to pound; his mind felt clearer, his vision sharper. He looked back and forth from one face to another, his hand hanging loose but poised near the butt of the big Colt on his right hip. Maybe this was his most natural state.
The gunman’s hand wrapped around his gun butt. He drew the gun with the blinding speed of a striking rattlesnake. But fast though he was, the tip of his gun barrel never made it past the top of his holster. Shaw’s Colt exploded before the two other gunmen watching realized it was even in his hand.
The gunman hit the dirt floor, dead, a streak of blood flying out his back with the bullet, lashing the others’ faces.
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First Printing, February 2011
Copyright © Ralph Cotton, 2011
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For Mary Lynn . . . of course
Prologue
Little Ester, the Mexican badlands
Lawrence Shaw rode the dusty switchback trail upward nearly a mile, then stepped his big bay onto a rock ledge and looked down, checking his back trail. Beneath him the speckled bay chuffed and shook out its damp mane in a gust of dry warm wind. A wavering white-hot sky lay overhead. Below, a desolate, broken world of stone, gully, hilltop and cutbank was carpeted over with sand—a harsh, unaccommodating fauna that showed no welcome toward humankind.
Home . . . , he told himself wryly.
The bullet wound in his head had mended slowly but steadily for the past four months. The doctor who’d most recently examined him declared it a miracle of medical science that Shaw was alive. Shaw supposed this was true. Leastwise, he had never known anyone to take such a shot and live. As for its being a miracle, he couldn’t say. The way he saw it, miracles didn’t come around much.
He wasn’t even completely certain who’d shot him, and strange though it was, he didn’t much care. It was the young woman, though, an inner voice told him. He gazed out from his saddle across endless rolling hills bathed in a harsh glare of sunlight and wavering heat. Deep inside, he knew it was her.
Now put it away....
With his being known as “the fastest gun alive,” there were more people who wanted to kill him than he ever cared to think about. Getting shot was something he’d learned to take in stride long ago, a part of the life he’d chosen for himself. So was getting killed if it came to it, he reminded himself, watching a lone hawk swing in a lazy circle high above him. He tried not to make a big thing of it, getting shot. It happened to everybody now and then.
He couldn’t quite remember what circumstances had drawn him to this fiery Mexican badlands once again, but it was good to be back all the same, gunshot wound or no. His pal U.S. Marshal Crayton Dawson had called this his kind of place. “Gun country,” he’d said. And he’d been right, Shaw realized. There was solitude here. This was a good place for a man like him. And here he was . . .
The bay scraped a hoof and tossed its head. Shaw touched back on its reins.
The bullet had hit him from a distance just shy of point-blank range, so close that the blast of powder had burned his hair off. But instead of entering his skull, the big .45-caliber slug had only fractured it. Oddly enough, the bullet had flattened, crushed its way upward and bored a path across the top of his head. It split his scalp like a dull hatchet, leaving in its wake a long furrow of cracked skull bone as it made its way out the other side. He winced, thinking about it.
A miracle? Maybe....
He turned the big speckled bay and rode back onto the dusty switchback, reminding himself once again not to think about it. More than likely it had just been a bad bullet, a weak load. Hell, who knew . . .?
The bullet wound had not left him unscathed. He still went about his day-to-day life partially mired in a dreamy numbness that refused to turn him loose. Peculiar though he found it to be, there were days, even weeks at a time that he could not account for. Then, out of nowhere his memory seemed to catch up with him in some jumbled, unsteady fashion, as if he’d been traveling somewhere far ahead of it.
It was strange, he told himself, nudging the bay forward. But he’d gotten used to
strangeness in his life a long time ago.
Home . . . , he told himself again, this time without the irony. Finally, he forced his thoughts away from the matter and gazed off across the rocky hilltops, into the endless breadth of earth and sky. He took a deep breath and let it out.
“We’ve still got a long ways to go,” he said down to the bay. In truth he had no real destination in mind, only a deep, persistent need to keep moving.
He wore a long corduroy riding duster with leather-trimmed pockets and collar. Beneath the open front, his big Colt stood in its holster on his right hip. A large black bandana was pulled back and tied at the base of his skull, and atop it sat a tall sand-colored sombrero. The broad-brimmed hat was plain, with a fine line of green embroidery the color of pale wild grass on its soft crown.
His boots were caballero-style, high-welled, battered and scuffed to the desert hue. The right boot was simple seasoned leather, but the left boot bore a wrap-around carving—tooled in fine detail were two wild stallions locked in a death battle.
When he arrived at Little Ester, the first town in a string of ancient Spanish settlement remnants, he stepped down from his saddle beside a short stone wall surrounding the town’s watering well, hitching the bay to a thick iron ring attached atop the wall. Reaching down under the bay’s belly, he loosed its cinch and let it drink.
As the thirsty horse drew water, Shaw pulled a gourd dipper up from an oaken bucket sitting on the wall and drank from it. Behind him an elderly man appeared from the dark shade between two adobes, a frayed straw sombrero in his knobby hands.
“Bienvenidos a Pequeña Ester, señor,” he said.
“Gracias,” Shaw replied, thanking the man for his welcome. He wiped a hand across his lips and dropped the gourd dipper back into the bucket.
The old man paused, looked Shaw up and down, taking particular note of his finely tooled boot.
“May I ask what brings you here?” he asked in stiff English.
Shaw turned, facing the smiling old man. “Passing through,” he said.
“Aw, sí, passing through,” said the self-appointed town greeter. “I understand.” His eyes went back to Shaw’s boot, then back to his face. “Always when men come to Little Ester from the east, they are passing through.” He offered a smile, seeing that Shaw had little conversation for him. Shaw glanced at the shade between the two adobes, where the old man had emerged from.
But as the man turned to walk away, Shaw said out of the blue, “Tell me, senor, is there a witch here who carries a covey of trained sparrows?” As soon as he’d asked, he realized it was a mistake. But it was too late; now he had to let it play itself out.
“A bruja?” the old man said, curiously. “With trained sparrows?” He considered the question and he rubbed his goatee for an answer.
“Never mind,” Shaw said, wanting to let it go. It had been more than a year since he’d seen the witch and her covey of dancing sparrows. And it hadn’t been here in Little Ester. It hadn’t even been close. These were the things that had been worrying him lately. He knew it was his head wound talking.
But the old man didn’t understand. He continued to study the question for a moment longer, then raised a thin knobby finger and said, “Ah, wait! But, yes, I do know of such a bruja.”
“You do?” Shaw said. Then he insisted quickly, “It’s not important.”
“She does not come here,” the old man continued all the same. “She travels the hills to the south, across the desert basin.”
“Yes, gracias,” said Shaw. “I remember now.” He didn’t manage to hide the look of concern on his face.
The old Mexican tilted his head and asked, “May I ask why you seek her, senor?”
“I’m not seeking her,” Shaw said. “I was just curious, is all.”
“Oh,” the old man said in disbelief. “I thought you seek her because she is from your country.”
“From my country?” That perked Shaw’s interest. “She’s American?”
“Sí, Americano. Did you not know that about her, senor?” the old man asked.
“No, I didn’t know,” Shaw said, stepping closer to the bay to loosen its reins from the iron ring.
“It is a good day when a man learns something new,” the old Mexican said, grinning over bare gums.
He wanted money.
Shaw reached into his trouser pocket.
It had been in the dusty adobe village of Valle Del Maíz where he’d seen the old witch wrapped in a ragged black cloth. She had tossed her covey of paper-thin sparrows upward in a circle of glowing firelight, appearing to orchestrate their movements with the tips of her bony fingers. An American . . . ? That was a surprise.
“Tell me, amigo,” Shaw said, dismissing the witch and her sparrows, “have two American lawmen passed through here?” He took out a small gold coin and placed it in the old man’s weathered palm.
“Americano lawmen . . .?” The old man closed his palm over the coin as he gave the matter some thought.
“Yes,” Shaw said, “one is called Dawson, the other one is called Caldwell—some call him Undertaker. They track outlaws along the border.” He reached down under the bay and fastened its cinch.
“Ah, yes, I have heard of these men,” the Mexican said, tapping a finger to his head, “but no, they have not been to Little Ester. This I would know.”
“You’re certain?” Shaw said. He tested his saddle with a gloved hand.
“Sí, I am certain,” he said. He took a step back from Shaw, as if in caution. “Are they hunting you, maybe, these lawmen?”
“No,” Shaw said, not wanting to offer any more information about himself or the two lawmen than he needed to. He swung up onto his saddle. “Maybe I’m hunting them.”
“Oh . . . ,” the old man said. Shaw watched the man’s eyes go once again to the tooling on his left boot, then back to Shaw’s face as he turned the bay and put it forward along the stone-lined trail.
No sooner had Shaw ridden out of sight than three gunmen walked out of the dark shade between the two adobes.
“Who is he, old man?” a young Mexican named Dario Esconza asked. He stood with a bottle of mescal in one hand. His other hand was loosely shoved down behind his gun belt, close to the big bone-handled Starr revolver holstered low on his hip.
“He didn’t tell me,” the old man said, having buried the coin out of sight inside his ragged clothes. He rubbed his bristly chin as if trying to recall what Shaw had told him. “I cannot remember why he came here.” He grinned sadly. “My mind does not work as well as it used to. Life is hard.”
Esconza scowled at him, knowing the old man was fishing him for money. “If you think life is hard now, imagine how much harder it will be when I stamp my boot on your throat.” He took a step closer.
“Por favor, Dario! Please, no,” the old man begged, raising his hands as if to protect his face. “I will tell you what he said.”
Esconza stopped and stared at him. The other two gunmen, both Texans on the run from the law, looked on in approval.
The old man said, “He searches for an old bruja who carries a covey of trained sparrows in her bosom.”
“A witch with sparrows in her bosom . . . ,” Esconza repeated, staring flatly at the old Mexican.
“Sí.” The old man shrugged, knowing how unlikely it sounded.
Esconza looked at the two gunmen, then turned back to the old man and took a deep breath, running out of patience.
“That’s real good, old man,” he said, stepping forward again. “First I’m going to kick you back and forth in the dirt for a while. Then we’ll start over.”
“It is the truth, Dario. I swear it,” the old man said, speaking hurriedly now. “He asked about the bruja, and I told him she does not come here. Then he asked about the two lawmen you told me to look out for, the ones hunting down the Cut-Jaws Gang.”
“The two lawmen, eh?” said Esconza. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What did you tell him?”
“I tol
d him they have not been through here.” The old man shrugged his bony shoulders. “Because it is true, they have not.”
Esconza turned up a drink from the bottle of mescal and passed it to one of the other two gunmen. He stared along the rise of dust Shaw’s horse left stirred in its wake.
“What else?” Esconza asked. “Is he running from them?”
“He did not say,” the old man replied. “I asked if they hunt him and he said maybe he is hunting them.”
One of the gunmen, a Texan named Ollie Wilcox, lowered the mescal bottle from his lips and passed it to the other gunman. “That’s no answer,” he said.
The third gunman, a Tex-Mexican named Charlie Ruiz, turned up the bottle, swigged from it, then lowered it and said, “Yep, he’s on the run, if you ask me.”
“Yes, I think he is,” Esconza agreed. He furrowed his brow in concentration and added, “I know this man.... I have seen him before somewhere.”
“Yeah . . .?” questioned Wilcox. He just stared at Esconza.
Esconza nodded his head in contemplation. “It will come to me.”
Ruiz grinned at Wilcox and asked Esconza, “So, what do you want to do? Chase him down and tell him you know him from somewhere?”
“We are looking for good men, eh?” said Esconza. “If he is hiding from the law and he is good with a gun, we will invite him to ride with us.”
Ruiz grinned again. “What if he’s hiding from the law but is not good with a gun?” he said. “What if he’s so bad with a gun he has toes missing?”
Esconza shrugged and reached out for the bottle in Charlie Ruiz’s hand. “Then I will kill him, and we will ride away.” He looked at the old Mexican and said, “See how life is not so hard for those of us who are bold by nature?”
