by Jake Logan
But after Slocum had ridden about fifteen or twenty minutes, some of those at an easy jog, he saw something over on his right and up ahead that made him rein in Apache. Will saw it, too.
“Is that a fire goin’, back inside?” he asked.
Slocum nodded. He said, “Looks like we found our boys.”
“Well, c’mon! Let’s get ’em!” Will said.
But Slocum had different plans. He grabbed Will’s reins before he could take off, and said, “Wait.”
“Wait for what? Wait for them to see us and get off the first shot?”
Slocum shook his head. “No. Wait for the storm to come up so we can get past ’em.”
“Oh, fine. Then we’ll be the ones soaked and spendin’ the night in some cold cave!”
“Maybe. Or maybe we’ll be the ones to take ’em by surprise when they’re ridin’ down the canyon come mornin’,” Slocum said. “See?”
Will snorted, but he said, “Fine. Just fine,” and slipped off Duster. He led the horse back against the rocks, grumbling the whole way.
Slocum followed him. There was no way he was going to ride up in there, two against four, in crystal weather. Not and expect to come out in one piece, anyway.
Tucked back into the rocks, he said, “What you got against Bronc Dugan, anyhow? With you wantin’ to charge in there and kill anything that moves, I’m thinkin’ it’s personal.” Actually, he’d been wondering since the beginning.
Will pursed his lips for a moment, then said, “He killed my partner, all right? It was after they robbed the bank at Gunderson, up Colorado way. We was trailin’ ’em, givin’ chase, and they picked him off from up in the rocks somewhere. Ted Holder was my partner’s name. He was a real good man, left a widow and three kids behind.”
Slocum said, “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Will. Sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” Will replied. “I was with the marshal’s office then, and they decided to let ’em ride free till the next time, seein’ as how we’d lost so many men already.” He took a deep breath, then added, “It’s why I quit.”
Slocum nodded. “Been wonderin’ why, but I didn’t want to ask. I figured it musta been somethin’ tough.”
“Tough is right. And someday, if I ever get a chance, I’m gonna put paid to that damn head marshal that called a halt to the whole thing, too.”
It began to rain, just like that. And it was no ordinary rain. It came in almost horizontally, in driving sheets. Slocum glanced up. The sky had gone from black to yellow, filled with clouds broken only by the dim, filtered glow of the moon.
He said, “My pappy used to call storms like this goose-drownders.”
Will let loose the tiniest of smiles. “My pa—that was Big Will—used to call ’em turd-floaters.”
Slocum chuckled, and Will joined in.
Then Slocum said, “Let’s cut across the canyon, get behind those big rocks. Bet we won’t have to go far before we find us a hidey-hole.”
Will nodded. “Gotcha,” he said, and mounted up.
Unaware of the two men crossing the canyon mere yards away from their cave’s opening, Dugan’s men were building up their fire and trying to cook dinner. Dugan didn’t feel all that hungry. He was just anxious for that first cup of hot coffee. The weather had grown chilly about the same time the rain rolled in, and his bones weren’t used to it. Somehow, he’d had the idea that once he crossed the border he’d never be cold again.
Well, so much for that. Here it was, his first night in Mexico, and he was freezing his tail off.
Big Tony had just set the pot on, and Roy and Dave were slicing ham for the skillet.
“Somebody gonna cook us up some biscuits?” Dugan asked. The sight of that meat had him hungering for a ham sandwich all of a sudden.
“Gonna stir some up once the ham’s on,” Roy replied.
Dave looked up, focusing on the rugged wall behind his brother’s back. “Roy?” he said, lifting a hand to point. “ ’Nother scorpion.”
“Aw, crud,” Roy muttered, and swatted it with the side of his knife blade, then flicked its corpse to the back of the cave with the blade’s point. “They shouldn’t call this country Mexico, ’less Mex is Spanish for scorpion.”
Dave chuckled, and Big Tony said, “Mebbe we should change it to ‘Scorpico,’ then.”
“Hey, that’s good,” said Roy with a laugh.
Annoyed, Dugan said, “You boys wanna get onto them biscuits?”
“Sure, Bronc,” Roy said. He wiped his knife blade on his pants before he dragged over the possibles bag and began to search for the flour, salt, soda, and eggs. “Doin’ it right now.”
Dugan grunted. He glanced outside and shook his head. Somebody could have driven a team of Clydesdales down the gorge and he wouldn’t have seen it. It was a mean bastard of a rain, coming fast and hard, and it was filled with bits of desert landscape—sand, gravel, small clumps of cactus, and thorny twigs—it had picked up on its way east.
He heard the ham beginning to sizzle, and turned back toward the fire in time to see Roy set the Dutch oven—filled, he assumed, with biscuits—over the flames.
His stomach rumbled.
He guessed he’d been hungry all along and was just too nerved up to notice. But he could already taste those ham sandwiches now. “Coffee ready?” he asked Big Tony.
Tony eyed the pot. “Few more minutes, Boss.”
Dugan nodded. “Let me know,” he said, crossing his arms.
His eyes drifted closed.
6
The morning dawned, brisk and clear, to find Slocum already awake and gazing out over the canyon floor from behind a cluster of boulders. In fact, he’d awakened at some time around four. Will dozed behind him, hunkered next to a wall that granted him scarce protection from last night’s rain. But it was something. With the hills above shading them, neither had begun to dry out yet, and Slocum shivered.
But the sun shone brightly into the cave where Dugan and his boys had taken shelter. Slocum figured it wouldn’t be long before they stuck their heads out like turkeys at a Thanksgiving shoot.
He didn’t want to start firing right off, though. He wanted to see all four owlhoots outside their cave where he could get off a clean shot or two before they scrambled for cover again.
He took a step back and stuck his leg out, prodding Will with the toe of his boot. Will opened one cranky eye and glared at him.
“Rise and shine, pretty boy,” Slocum said.
“Pretty boy, my ass,” Will grumbled as he sat forward and stretched his arms to loosen the joints. “My ma was afeared to take me out in public till I was three, I was such a butt-ugly little shaver!”
“Stop braggin’,” said Slocum as he moved back to peer back up the canyon, over the rocks. No movement, yet.
“No brag, just truth, plain and simple,” Will said as he stood—somewhat creakily—and moved next to Slocum to peer over the boulders. “Anything yet?”
“Nothin’,” Slocum replied. “But sooner or later, they gotta come out.”
“I hear Santa Anna said the same thing at the Alamo.”
“Very funny.”
Will grouched. “At least them boys back then had coffee.”
“We will, too,” Slocum said. “Eventually.”
Will got his rifle, muttering, “Promises, promises . . .”
There was movement across the way. Slocum and Will stiffened as a horse’s ears, then head, came into sight.
Will raised his rifle.
“Wait!” hissed Slocum. “Give ’em time.”
“You are one son of a bitch for givin’ people time!” Will whispered. But he lowered his Henry just the same.
The horse proceeded to exit the cover of boulders, led by a man Slocum didn’t recognize. Then another came out, then another, and finally, Bronc Dugan himself. All four men mounted up.
“Now?” Will asked.
“Wait.”
The riders began to move down the canyon and toward them. “Go
ddamn it, Slocum!”
Dugan’s men were within fifteen feet.
“Now!” Slocum cried, and pulled off two quick shots. Will did the same, but only three men fell. Dugan lashed his horse, fleeing past them down the canyon. Slocum got off three more shots, but Dugan was moving too fast and zigzagging too unpredictably.
“Damn it!” Slocum shouted, and leapt up on Apache. “Collect the bodies! I’ll get Dugan!” He thundered out into the open and began the chase.
He knew he had to be careful. There was no rising trail of dust for him to follow, only muddy tracks in the patches of gravel between the scrub. And Dugan could cut out of sight at any moment and ambush him from behind the rocks or brush.
Back up the canyon, Will watched Slocum’s silhouette vanish into the distance, then slowly walked across the way. He’d put his rifle away but brought out his handgun. He was taking no chances.
Once he had established that the men were dead for certain sure, he rounded up their horses. Or what was left of them. Somebody—probably him, although he’d never admit as much to Slocum—had shot one of their mounts, and now it lay groaning on the ground.
He knelt to it, rubbed its neck, then stood again. The wound was deep in the gut, and there was nothing to be done. Except . . .
“Sorry, ol’ boy,” he said softly, then shot the horse behind his eye. It was dead.
He slipped off the horse’s bridle, because he figured that nothing should have to meet its maker with a chunk of iron in its mouth and leather straps round its head. It was a nice bridle, but he chucked it aside, then led the other horses back to where the outlaws’ bodies lay.
Two horses and three bodies. It was a dilemma. He scratched at his chin for a moment before, in a sudden flash of brilliance, he decided what to do.
Slocum was at least a mile down the canyon before he reined Apache down to a walk. The horse was still game, but Slocum let him take a breather, just the same.
Dugan’s tracks still showed that he was going flat out, and Slocum knew Dugan’s mount couldn’t stand up to this self-imposed pace for much longer. Maybe Dugan didn’t care. He probably didn’t. Any man who’d cut and run on his own gang members wouldn’t give a good damn about his horse. He hadn’t even glanced backward to see if any of them were still alive, Slocum realized.
Same old Bronc Dugan, the son of a bitch.
Slocum had run across Dugan a couple years back. Dugan was hot to have Slocum join forces with him—together, they’d clean out every bank west of the Mississippi, he said. And Slocum had said no, in no uncertain terms. He was trying to clean up his reputation, not sully it any further. Apparently, Dugan took it to heart. He had tried to kill Slocum the first chance he got.
Slocum was winged in the shoulder and shot in the back, and if it hadn’t been for one Miss Caroline Cor-bus, he might have died. He slipped off his hat momentarily and said a kind word for Caroline. He hoped it would do some good. He didn’t know how he was sitting with the Lord these days.
Ahead, Dugan’s prints got closer together. He had slowed down his horse, finally, and he was moving at a walk. Slocum kept a sharper eye on the trail now. If Dugan had slowed up, it wasn’t because he was easing his horse. But it might mean he was looking for a place to squirrel himself back in the rocks—and set his sights on Slocum. Or worse, Apache.
That sent a tingle up Slocum’s spine. It’s be just like Dugan to shoot the horse out from under him and shoot him while he scrambled for cover.
Of course, Dugan had no way of knowing that it was Slocum dogging his trail, let alone Will. He hadn’t been riding an Appy back then—he’d been between spotted mounts and was, in fact, en route to Palouse country to pick up a new horse. Well, Dugan had sure thrown a wrench into his plans. He was six months late picking up that horse. Although all that time with Caroline Cor-bus had been a welcome vacation, even if he was sick as a dog for the better part of it. Her smile could have made the dead rise.
Well, it had sure made something rise anyway, in his case.
He pulled up Apache and twisted in the saddle, looking for any sign of Will. And there was none. All the man had to do was tie three corpses over their horses and follow him, for God’s sake!
Sighing, he turned back around and urged Apache forward once more. He hadn’t gone fifteen feet before the tracks suddenly veered off to the right, and he figured it was no coincidence that he was riding toward an area rich, once again, with boulders that had fallen from the slopes above. He veered in the opposite direction, figuring to catch Dugan at his own game.
He was nearly to the edge of the jagged line of boulders when a shot rang out. He heard it sing off a rock as he leapt off Apache and ran toward the sheltering stone. Just in time, too—another shot sang out, and splintered the rock behind which Slocum had taken cover.
Quickly, he shuffled down the narrow pass between the fallen rock and the base of the cliff, pushing Apache’s spotted backside in front of him. The farther he could work his position out of the direct line of Dugan’s fire, the better. At least, until he could figure out exactly where the hell Dugan was.
Across the canyon floor—about forty feet across from one fallen line of rock to the other—and up a few yards, Dugan was increasingly frustrated with this interloper, this Nosey Parker, this moron who had not only killed his men, but then proceeded to chase him. Through Mexico, no less! He had no call to be chasing anybody south of the border, no call at all.
Actually, Dugan wasn’t much bothered about losing his men. Men could be found anywhere, men that wanted to follow him. He wished he’d thought to grab the reins of one of their horses, though. He could always use a spare, and especially now. He was riding a bay mare, and she was about used up.
Well, once he put paid to this idiot across the way, he’d grab his Appy. Just who the hell did that fool think he was, anyhow? Didn’t he know you didn’t mess with Bronc Dugan without paying the consequences?
Dugan chanced another glance up over the ragged row of rough, craggy boulders piled in front of him. Still no sign of what he still assumed was a marshal, or that wild-colored horse of his. He’d caught one fleeting glimpse of the big man when he was jumping off his horse and heading for the rocks, and another—just the top of his hat, really—when he was farther down the way. But that was it.
He ground his teeth.
Just when he figured to have it made, just when his future looked clear and ripe, some jackass like this had to stick his nose into it. It just figures, don’t it? he asked himself mutely. Just when things was goin’ halfway decent!
Across the way, Slocum was hunkered down behind some boulders, reloading his handguns and rifle. At least last night’s downpour had come from the west, so the canyon wall behind him had kept his position as dry as a bedroll—well, as dry as his bedroll usually was. It was still soaking from the storm, as were the clothes on his back.
He took a moment to peep over the rocks, but saw nothing but more rocks. No sign of Dugan, no sign of his horse. No sign of frigging anything!
For a moment, Slocum wondered why these bad boys didn’t just step out into the open and say, “Go ahead and shoot. I’m over here!”
But they never did. They never learned. They never figured out that if you broke the law, somebody was going to chase you, and if you broke it bad enough, someone was going to kill you with a rope or a bullet, whichever came first. For such a bunch of yahoos as smart as they all, without exception, thought they were, they never figured any of it out.
He glanced behind him, up the canyon. Will was certainly taking his sweet time. How long did it take a fella to toss three bodies over their horses and follow him down here? But then he began to wonder if Will was planning on showing up. Ever. After all, he could get his money for those three back at the cave and never have to mess with Bronc Dugan. The Will Hutchins he used to know never would have done a thing like that, but then he hadn’t known that Will Hutchins for a long time. Maybe things had changed.
He gave his
head a quick shake, shaking the sense back into it. Men didn’t change that much. Will was coming, he was sure of it. He was just taking his sweet time about it, that was all.
Slocum hoped.
7
Back at Dugan’s cave, Will was just finishing up. He’d had a lot to do. First, there was the loading of two bodies, one to a horse. And then there was the third body, with no horse left to haul it.
He’d copied something he’d seen Mexican bounty hunters do, although he had to admit it turned his stomach. He’d decapitated the third man, drained all the blood he could from the head, then bound it inside somebody’s rainproof duster, after also pouring in all the booze he’d found on the site. He figured that the head was going to be pretty well pickled by the time it got back to whoever it was going to.
Having tied the packaged head to the saddle horn of one of the gang’s stolen mounts, he at last mounted Duster, picked up the rope that was attached to the bridles of the two surviving horses, and set off down the canyon at a jog.
He just hoped Slocum would have the presence of mind to throw him a holler if Dugan had dug in somewhere and they were faced off. He wouldn’t want to go to his maker when the last act he’d committed on this earth had been the grisly one of sawing off a man’s head, even if the man had been an outlaw. And even if he’d already been dead at the time.
Dugan had fired first, and now Slocum had a place to aim at. When he had a chance to stick his head up over the rocks, that was. Shots rang out, sometimes staccato, sometimes legato. Slocum paused to reload once more, and stuck his head up over the rocks. No sign. He waited. Dugan had already winged him once, and he was bleeding from a graze over his right temple. He hoped Dugan was bleeding, too. A whole lot more than he was.
