“I’m not going to forget you, either, Mike.”
She lay back on the bed. Sartain followed her down, planting kisses on her bare belly. She ran both hands through his hair. Her belly rose and fell as she breathed and writhed luxuriously beneath his ministrations.
Dixie looked down at him. “Was that Miguel Otero you were talking with outside?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I thought he’d taken his bottle and a bowl of beans up to bed. He comes in once every few weekends, gives Celina a little time by herself, which she enjoys despite being blind. What were you two talking about?”
“Just them three suits I was dancin’ with out by the corral. They’re lawmen, but Otero thinks they’re here looking for the gold along with everybody else.”
“Miguel would know. He knows pretty much everything that goes on in these mountains.”
Sartain had drifted lower on her body.
Dixie squirmed.
* * *
The next morning, Sartain stopped Boss in an aspen copse and shucked his Henry from its saddle sheath. He led the horse deeper into the trees, tied him to a branch, and then drifted back out to the edge of the copse.
Now he saw the riders on the other side of the deep, narrow valley following the same trail he’d followed down from the northern ridge. One, two, and then three of them appeared, riding single-file down the fir-carpeted slope and spilling down onto the canyon floor. The autumn-cured brome grass was high enough to brush their stirrups.
The Revenger could tell by the way they were dressed—wool coats, well-shaped Stetsons, and in one case, a brown bowler hat—that they were the three lawmen from the night before. That they were following him, there was no doubt. Why, he had no idea.
Maybe they had circled back last night after all and heard him and Otero talking.
If they had, they’d made a big mistake. A bigger mistake than the one they’d made last night. He would not, could not, allow them to follow him to Otero’s rancho.
The Cajun stepped back farther into the trees before swinging around and returning to his horse. He slid the rifle into its sheath, mounted up, and rode on through the copse, the new-fallen leaves crunching under the horse’s hooves. Leaves danced in the air around Sartain, bouncing off his hat brim, sparkling in the sunshine like large burning cinders.
At the far end of the copse, a creek chuckled along the base of the ridge, over a stony bed that was also littered with fallen aspen leaves. Beyond the creek, a trail wound up the bank and into the pines, probably an old Indian trail later used by prospectors crisscrossing these mountains looking for their El Dorados.
Sartain splashed across the creek and followed the trail, knowing his wet hoof prints were leaving a hell of a mark. Soon the pines shaded him as Boss lurched up the steep incline, and the heady pine resin filled his nostrils. He continued to follow the meandering trail, noting occasional old campsites here and there marked by scorched stones and rusty airtight tins.
Soon the trail crested the ridge and dropped down the other side where few trees grew. At the bottom of the next valley, the trail hooked around an old prospector’s cabin.
The place didn’t appear to be in current use. Weeds, brush, and pine saplings had grown up around it, and no smoke issued from the chimney. It was a cool day, and anyone living there would likely have a fire going if only to keep a pot of coffee warm.
Sartain pulled Boss off the trail and around behind the cabin. He tied the horse to an aspen near a small creek gurgling between muddy banks over mossy stones. He unbuckled the horse’s latigo, slipped his bit, and walked around to the front of the cabin.
There was a small, rotting boardwalk fronting the door. The door itself was gray with age but otherwise in good shape. It sagged open when The Revenger tripped the latch.
The cabin was a humble abode with an earthen floor, a sheet-iron stove, and a simple pine table. Split logs were stacked neatly by the stove, with a small tomato crate containing pine cones and needles and feather sticks for kindling. Apparently, the place was a common stopover for travelers; as was the custom of the country, wood was always left in good supply. There were even some airtight tins of canned vegetables stacked on a shelf over a small food preparation table.
Sartain opened the cabin’s four shutters to let in some light and fresh air, then made a fire in the stove, hoping no birds had built a nest in the pipe since the last traveler had stopped here, and set a pot of coffee to boil. He went outside and looked at the stovepipe slanting up out of the moss-spotted shake roof. Smoke appeared to be issuing freely.
He looked toward the trail snaking through the columnar pines, firs, and spruces.
So far, he couldn’t see the lawmen. That was good. Maybe they weren’t following him. Maybe they were smarter than he’d given them credit for. No. Fools they were, all three. Sartain was convinced it had been they who’d ambushed Beacham’s bunch. If not them, then three or four others looking for the gold and hound-dogging anyone they thought might know where it was.
It was hard to tell just whom the rumors of hidden gold had lured to this neck of the San Juans.
He had to make damned sure he wasn’t trailed to the Otero rancho.
He’d know soon if they were coming since they’d likely smell the wood smoke from a hundred, maybe two hundred yards away.
When the water came to a boil, he dumped in a handful of Arbuckle’s. When it boiled again, he poured in some cold water from his canteen to settle the grounds and filled his tin coffee cup, dented and pitted and scorched by the flames of many fires.
He sat at the table, gazing through the open window before him, one boot hiked on a knee. He built a quirley and smoked and sipped the coffee, filling the cabin with tobacco smoke that mingled with the smoke from the leaky stove door.
Outside, chickadees cheeped in the pines. Nearby, he could see a nuthatch scuttling along the underside of a dead aspen branch, probing for aphids. There were all kinds of sounds in the forest around the cabin: the scuttling of rabbits and squirrels, the quiet chuckling of the creek, the scratching of branches stirred by a breeze.
He picked through the sounds, searching for the thud of a horse hoof or the squawk of saddle leather. Maybe the muffled scrape of a rifle being cocked somewhere.
So far, nothing.
Then a shadow moved in the forest beyond the open door, maybe fifty yards away. The shadow had slipped behind a red pine trunk. Now an arm reached out from the left side of the pine. It rose and fell slowly.
A signal.
Above Sartain, the ceiling creaked ever so gently.
He glanced up, frowning. Then he realized that his eyes were burning. There was more smoke in the cabin than he’d realized. It was boiling, thick and white, from around the stove door.
They were trying to smoke him out.
Chapter 14
The Revenger grabbed his rifle from the table and pumped a round into the chamber.
Rising from the chair so suddenly that it flew back behind him and hit the floor, he aimed at the ceiling and pumped three rounds through the gray herringbone-patterned wood around where he’d glimpsed dust sifting toward the floor.
There was a shrill scream and a loud thump on the roof. More dust sifted.
Behind the cabin, Boss whinnied.
Something buzzed in the air around Sartain’s head and clanged off the chimney pipe. It was followed a quarter-second later by the hiccupping blast of a rifle in front of the cabin.
The smoke was still issuing from the stove door, but it had thinned considerably. Apparently, whatever the man on the ceiling had placed over the chimney pipe had fallen off when Sartain had fired up through the ceiling.
Now more rifles barked from what seemed to be three directions around the cabin. The Cajun pumped another round into the Henry’s breach and threw himself to the floor as more lead stitched the air around him, blowing chunks of wood from the table and the fallen chair and pluming ancient dust from the log walls. Smoke from t
he stove was ripped and torn by the careening lead.
There was a dull clank as a bullet clipped his coffee cup and set it bounding across the cabin, spewing what remained of his coffee.
He crawled across the floor beneath the swarm of bullets buzzing above his head and wedged himself into a corner between the front window and the side window facing northeast. He’d counted three rifles hammering away at the cabin. Counting the man who’d been on the roof and whom he was relatively certain he’d put out of commission, the number was puzzling.
There were only three lawmen.
The Cajun doffed his hat, ran his sleeve over his eyes burning from the smoke, and edged a quick look out the side window. A rifle was lapping flames from some brush about forty feet from the cabin. When the shooter raised the barrel to lever another cartridge into the action, Sartain slid the Henry over the window ledge and triggered three shots as fast as he could, hearing a howl from the shrubs.
He pumped another round into the breach.
The man who’d been shooting from the shrubs was up and staggering away from the brush, sort of stumbling to his left. He glanced over his shoulder and Sartain saw the soft, round, red face and paunch of Slater. The gray-haired gent bellowed a curse as he levered his rifle, then swung around to face Sartain, who triggered two more rounds into the man’s gut, which bulged his canvas coat and sagged over his belt buckle.
Slater fell straight back, dropping his rifle and throwing his arms out from his sides.
“Gone to hell, you bushwhackin’ bastard,” The Revenger grated out, racking another round.
“Slater?” called a familiar voice. “Slater, you hit?”
Sartain shouted, “He’s gone to meet his Maker, Lonnie, you stupid bastard!” Quickly, he whipped around toward the front window, aimed, and fired four rounds in quick succession.
After the second round, he’d heard a yelp and saw a hat fly as bark spewed from the bole of the tree the string bean hunkered behind.
“You’re gonna die, you son of a buck!” Lonnie bellowed.
Sartain pulled his head below the window as the horse-faced string bean cut loose with a Spencer repeating rifle, chewing up wood from the window casing. Spying a shadow flick across the floor on his far right, Sartain whipped his head in that direction. A man was running toward the cabin from the west—an old gray-bearded man in a wool coat and a battered wool hat.
The man raised a rifle and aimed through the window, but not before Sartain flung a .44-caliber chunk of lead into his chest.
The oldster screamed, showing his teeth as he twisted around and backward.
Sartain remembered the old man from the saloon, although he’d not learned his name. Most likely a local prospector. One who was tired of prospecting and had turned his prospecting sites on minted gold instead of the stuff you broke your back for.
The Revenger raked out a curse. He didn’t like killing old men, but this dunderhead had given him no choice.
Only one rifle was barking now. The string bean had fallen nearly silent, flinging only the occasional shot through the window.
“You can’t hole up in there forever, Sartain!” the kid shouted now in his grating, wheedling tone.
“It’s just you and me, kid,” the Cajun shouted. “Those are long odds for you! Why not give it up and go on back to the hole you crawled out of?”
“I didn’t crawl out of no hole!” The kid sounded miffed. “You did!”
Sartain chuckled.
“You were keepin’ time with my girl! You’re gonna pay for that, too! I don’t cotton to folks encroachin’ on my territory, and Miss Dixie is my territory!”
The string bean’s rifle belched again.
The bullet screeched through the window and thudded into the opposite wall.
Sartain chuckled again, snaked his Henry over the window, and fired five, then six, rounds at where he’d seen the kid poking his head out from behind the tree. He fired once more, but the hammer pinged, empty.
The kid’s rifle dropped straight down onto the end of its barrel, flipped, and lay flat on the ground. Sartain couldn’t see the kid, only the rifle.
He frowned. He hadn’t thought he’d hit him. Maybe he had. Unless he was playing possum. The string bean probably wasn’t bright or bold enough for that ploy, but there was only one way to find out.
Sartain quickly reloaded the Henry, racked a round into the chamber, and moved slowly out of the shack. The thinning smoke billowed around him like fog. He wiped his eyes with his neckerchief and, holding the rifle straight out from his right hip, he strode out toward the tree.
From ten feet away, he could see the kid’s arms flung around the sides of the tree as though he were hugging it. Sartain walked slowly around the tree. The kid was slumped against it, pressing his left cheek against the bark. Blood trickled out a corner of his half-open mouth. His eyes were open and staring groundward.
Blood also oozed from the hole in nearly the middle of his back.
Sartain frowned, puzzled. That must be the exit wound.
The Cajun kicked the kid out away from the tree and inspected the front of his body. There was one more wound low down on his right side near his rib cage. It was a large, ugly hole issuing blood and viscera.
That was the exit wound.
But Sartain had shot him from the front.
A grasshopper of dread leaped up his spine. From the corner of his right eye, he watched three men walk toward him. He turned his head slowly.
The newcomers were the three lawmen whose clocks he’d cleaned last night. Two were grinning. The one with the busted nose wasn’t grinning. His nose was three times its normal size. The nose and his eyes were blue, the edges of the blue touched with copper. Understandably, he looked jaundiced and sullen.
All three lawmen were aiming rifles at him.
They hadn’t learned a thing from last night.
“Throw it down, Sartain,” Ray ordered, looking especially self-satisfied. A yellow aspen leaf was pasted to the crown of his bowler hat. “Then you and me and my compatriots are gonna have us a little talk.”
“Well, I’ll be…” said the Cajun.
He turned his mouth-corners down and began to lower the Henry.
He didn’t lower it far before he whipped it back up, swung around to square his shoulders and hips at the three lawmen, and commenced firing the repeater from his side.
The rifle roared, flames and smoke lapping from the barrel.
Brass cartridge casings winked in vagrant rays of sunlight angling through the forest canopy. They arced over the Cajun’s right shoulder to clink to the ground behind him.
The sudden move had taken the three badge-toters by surprise. None got off a single shot.
They screamed as they danced wildly, and they died bloody.
Sartain set the Henry on his shoulder. He sighed.
“All I wanted was some water for me an’ my horse,” he said. “Was that too damn much to ask?”
* * *
Sartain dragged the bodies off away from the cabin, so the stench of rot wouldn’t pester future sojourners. The first four attackers had all been men whom Sartain had seen in the saloon. Regulars. He didn’t feel bad about turning them toe-down, except for the fact that he was also whittling down Dixie McKee’s clientele.
He set the cabin back the way he’d found it—aside from the bullet holes, that was—then swung up onto Boss’s back and continued his journey toward Miguel Otero’s rancho. He followed the old Mexican’s direction along the floor of the main canyon and then started climbing through sparse forest toward a stony pass that was already showing a thin mantling of snow.
As he climbed, following a two-track wagon trail up the steady rise peppered with pines, birches, and aspens. Clouds the color of dirty wool moved in over the peaks and dropped. A chill wind kicked up.
The clouds dropped lower, gauzy and gray. Snow began falling, hard, little flakes at first, before they grew larger and softer.
“Oh, h
ell,” the Cajun drawled as he paused to shrug into his mackinaw.
A late summer snow was all he needed. This high in the mountains, at least ten thousand feet, he should have expected it.
He continued riding. The sparse forest grew sparser near the base of the bald, craggy ridge jutting two thousand feet into the sky, though the low clouds and blowing snow had now-obliterated the crest. He’d caught glimpses of what he assumed was the Otero rancho, a brown smudge near the ridge base, although now the snow now obliterated that too.
Hunched low in the saddle, he followed the trail through a portal with the name Otero blazed into the crossbar and into the ranch yard. It was now as dark as dusk. The two-story stone- and wood-frame cabin sat hunched on the far side of a hard-packed yard, several log buildings including a large hay barn and several corrals outlying it.
A large cottonwood stood on the cabin’s east side, shedding its leaves onto the roof.
A rifle barked.
Sartain drew back sharply on Boss’s reins. He leaned forward to place his hand on the Henry’s stock and peered straight ahead toward the cabin. A slender, black-haired young woman in a red wool shirt and denim trousers stood on the wooden gallery that ran along the front of the lodge.
The rifle flashed and barked in the young woman’s hands. The bullet plumed mud and snow about twenty feet to Sartain’s right. Boss lurched and sidestepped, whickering uneasily.
“Hold on, Señorita Otero!” the Cajun shouted. “It’s Mike Sartain!”
The woman cocked the rifle and aimed it from her right shoulder.
“Ride in slow!” she shouted angrily in a Spanish accent.
He raised his hand from the Henry’s stock, leaving the long gun in its sheath, and clucked Boss ahead through the slanting snow falling and melting, looking like thin slush in the dirt of the yard. Dirt that was fast turning to mud.
The Cajun kept his cautious gaze on the slender long-haired figure aiming the rifle at him, as he put Boss up to the cabin and halted about ten feet away. She was her father’s size but better filled out, and she appeared in her mid to late twenties. Round-faced. Good-looking but not pretty, although few girls looked pretty when they were aiming a rifle at you. The tails of her red wool shirt hung out of her jeans. Her long, straight black hair blew around in the chill wind.
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