“This’ll help me clean the wound, once I get the arrow out.”
“Yeah, that, too,” Tennysee said. “Just don’t waste too much of it on that.”
Jamie took the flask and he and Deadlead went back to Edgerton. He let Edgerton swallow a slug of the whiskey and then told him to give the flask to Deadlead for the moment. Deadlead tucked it away in his pocket and took hold of Edgerton’s wounded leg, getting a good grip on it as Edgerton rolled onto his right side.
Jamie grasped the arrow with his left hand and shoved as hard as he could. Edgerton yelled in pain as the bloody arrowhead emerged from the back of his leg. Jamie stopped pushing as soon as the head protruded enough from the flesh for him to cut it off with his bowie knife. Edgerton’s breath hissed between his teeth as Jamie drew the shaft back through the hole. That method did less damage overall than trying to withdraw the barbed arrow.
Deadlead took out the flask and dribbled the fiery whiskey on the entrance wound until it started to trickle from the exit wound. Both holes bled freely for a few minutes, but the crimson flow slowed and then almost stopped.
“Soon as Tennysee and Pete get back with the horses, I’ve got some cloth in my saddlebags we can use to bandage that leg,” Jamie told Edgerton. “We’ll do a better job of patching you up once we get back to camp.”
“That’s fine,” Edgerton rasped. “Right now, just gimme that flask.”
“It’s Tennysee’s,” Deadlead said as he handed it over. “Reckon you ought to thank him for it.”
“I will.” Edgerton tipped the flask to his lips and his throat worked as he took a long swallow. “Later.”
* * *
With nothing really to do, Noah Stuart was bored as he sat around the campsite. Chester Merrick, whose mind wasn’t as active as Stuart’s, was more than happy to nap most of the time. Like a sleeping cat, the heat didn’t seem to bother him.
Pugh had posted himself at the top of the bluff behind the camp. Dupre stood watch on the rocky outcrop to the west, Greybull on the one to the east. Stuart supposed they were accustomed to passing the time in such fashion, too. Knowing that there might be a horde of bloodthirsty Apaches out there, eager to slay all of them, was enough to keep a man alert and occupied with the task of watching for them.
Fletch and Clementine Wylie were inside their wagon most of the time. Stuart didn’t know what they were doing in there and didn’t want to speculate. The actions of the young married couple were certainly none of his business.
That left him to pore over the sketches and rough maps he had made on the way down there. He sharpened them up, tracing the lines darker and bolder. When he had done all of that he could, he took his pencil and pad of paper and walked away from the campsite, heading south.
From the rim to the west, Dupre called, “M’sieu Stuart, where are you going?”
Stuart stopped and tipped his head back to look at the French frontiersman. “I’m just going far enough to get a better look at the escarpment. I thought I’d start mapping it.”
“M’sieu MacCallister said for you to stay with the wagons!”
“I’m only going a few hundred yards!” Stuart replied without bothering to hide the exasperation in his voice. He waved his free hand toward the flats to the south. “There are no Apaches out there! We can see for miles—”
As he spoke, he turned his head in the direction he was waving, and he stopped short as something out there, several miles away, glinted in the sunlight. Just a flash of reflected light, there and then gone, but he was sure he had seen it.
He turned back toward the camp and lifted his voice to ask Dupre excitedly, “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
Stuart waved his hand again. “Something flashed out there. Reflected off metal. That can’t be natural.”
“How far away?”
“A couple of miles. Maybe more.”
Dupre stood stiff and straight on the rim as he peered southward with great intensity. After a few moments, he shook his head and called down to Stuart, “I saw nothing, but I believe you, m’sieu. You had best come back to the wagons.”
Fletch and Clementine heard them shouting back and forth, and emerged from their wagon.
Fletch asked, “What’s going on?”
Stuart noticed that the young man had his hand on the butt of his revolver, and Clementine held the rifle he had seen her use skillfully during target practice.
“I thought I saw something out there,” Stuart told them. “A flash of light.” He glanced nervously over his shoulder, seeing nothing now but sure that something had been there a few minutes earlier. Maybe it would be a good idea to go back to the wagons, he decided. Just in case. He began trudging toward them.
When he got there, Fletch said, “Could’ve been the sun reflecting on a knife, I guess. Or a gun barrel. Those Apaches have a few old rifles, Preacher and Jamie said.”
Chester Merrick climbed out of the surveyors’ wagon, yawning. “What’s all the commotion about?” he wanted to know. “Trouble?”
“Not really,” Stuart told him. “But there may be someone lurking a few miles to the south.”
Merrick immediately looked more nervous than Stuart felt. His eyes got big and he licked his lips. “It must be the savages. Who else would be down here in this godforsaken wilderness?”
“Well, we know one thing,” Clementine said. “It can’t be my brothers. If they’re anywhere around here, they’re behind us.”
CHAPTER 31
“Blast it!” Clete Mahoney yelled as he jerked the spyglass out of his brother Jerome’s hands. “What did I tell you about keeping that thing in your saddlebags?”
“Sorry, Clete,” Jerome said quickly. Like his other two brothers, he didn’t want to risk Clete’s anger. The oldest of the Mahoneys had a fearsome temper.
Clete closed the telescope and tossed it to Harp, who fumbled it for a second but caught it.
“Put that away, and don’t let this idiot have it again,” Clete said as he jerked his head toward Jerome.
Even as wary of Clete as he was, that insult rubbed Jerome the wrong way enough to make him say, “Hey, you got no right—”
“To call you an idiot?” Clete interrupted him. “Why not? Just what sort of good thinking have you contributed, Jerome? I’m the one who came up with the idea of circling around them so we could get ahead and wait for them to come to us.”
“I know, I know,” Jerome muttered with his eyes downcast now. “I just don’t cotton to bein’ called names, that’s all.”
“Then use your head for somethin’ besides hangin’ your hat on,” Clete snapped. He looked around at all three of his brothers. “I swear, if you boys didn’t have me around to handle all the brain work for you, you’d be wanderin’ around at loose ends, not even sure when it was time to feed yourselves.”
He could tell they wanted to argue, but they didn’t dare. They were too afraid of him. Good, he thought. It was better all around if they were scared of him. It would be better if everybody was so scared of him that they let him be the boss.
If Clementine hadn’t been so stubborn and defiant and had gone along with what nature intended, none of them would be out here under that burning sun, in the middle of a wasteland not fit for human critters, only lizards and Apaches.
When it came right down to it, if it had been up to the others they wouldn’t be out here, either. After what had happened in Santa Fe, Lew, Harp, and Jerome would have turned tail and gone running back home. They were too worried about that old mountain man who, for some reason Clete couldn’t even begin to understand, seemed to have appointed himself as Clementine and Fletch’s protector. According to the stories his brothers had heard about Preacher, the old-timer was supposed to be some sort of ring-tailed roarer.
Well, nobody roared like Clete Mahoney, and the sooner everybody knew that and accepted it, the better.
After they had served the seven-day sentence they’d gotten for disturbing the peace, Clete ha
d started rounding up supplies and extra horses for the pursuit. He hadn’t asked the others what they wanted to do, and only Harp had been bold enough to say something about how maybe Clete shouldn’t be getting in such a big hurry.
Clete didn’t put up with any mouthing off like that. He had walloped Harp so hard that a little blood trickled out of his ear as he lay on the ground where Clete had knocked him, and after that none of them dared to sass their older brother or try to talk him out of his plans.
They rode out of Santa Fe well aware that they were a week behind their quarry, but Clete insisted they could make up that time. With extra horses and no wagons, they could move faster.
That was exactly what had happened. They had spotted the wagons and riders far ahead of them a couple of days earlier. After closing in as much as they dared, they had swung wide and circled to the south, getting ahead of Clementine and the rest of that sorry bunch. It was just a matter of waiting for the right opportunity for an ambush to come along.
Earlier, they had stopped to rest their horses next to a small mesa with a thick growth of cactus around its base. The bluff they had descended early that morning was still visible as a low, dark line back to the north, a couple of miles away. That was where the group they were after had made camp, and it appeared that they intended to stay there for a while. Smaller groups had ridden off to the east and west.
Clete wasn’t sure what was going on, but they had heard rumors back in Santa Fe that the party was coming down here to hunt Apaches. That sounded to Clete like such a blasted fool thing to do that he had a hard time believing anybody would even attempt it.
The rumors were nerve-wracking to his brothers, though.
In fact, Harp chose that moment to say, “I don’t like just sittin’ here. Some of them savages could be lurkin’ around. This is their country, not ours.”
“Well, then, what do you think we should do, Harp?” Clete asked.
“We could find a better place to hole up—”
Clete interrupted him by waving an arm at their surroundings. “A better place?” he repeated. “Why don’t you tell me where that’d be? There’s nothin’ out here. A few little mesas like this, and that’s all. Right here’s the best we can do.”
“There’s no water,” Lew said.
“Maybe not, but look at all that cactus. We can get water from them. All you have to do is cut ’em open and suck it out. We’ll do that and save what’s in our canteens for the horses. Anyway, there are bound to be some waterholes around here somewhere. It’s just a matter of findin’ ’em. We’ll have time for that . . . once Clementine is back with us where she belongs.” Clete glared at his brothers. “Or maybe you don’t care about that no more. Maybe you want to let her get away with disrespectin’ and defyin’ her family!”
None of them responded to that. After a moment, Lew muttered something about hacking off a piece of that cactus like Clete was talking about.
“Mind you don’t get the needles stuck in your fingers,” Clete warned him. “The stuff ’s mighty thorny.”
Lew muttered something else too quietly for Clete to understand it. Clete didn’t mind. He was feeling generous again. His brothers were scared of him, and that pleased him.
As long as they were more scared of him than they were of any cactus needles—or Apaches—or old mountain men—everything would work out just fine.
* * *
Both groups got back to the camp late that afternoon, driving Indian ponies ahead of them. That was a grim indication in itself that their search had been successful.
“What do you plan on doing with them, Jamie?” Preacher asked. “There ain’t enough grass and water here for these critters and our horses, too. And we don’t have a good place to keep ’em.”
“We’re going to push them up the bluff and then haze them off to the north,” Jamie replied. “We’ll scatter them as much as we can. They’ll head for some of those little mountain ranges where they can find water. At least the other Apaches down here in these parts won’t get any use out of them for a while. It’ll take time to round them up again . . . if they ever do.”
While some of the men tended to that chore, Greybull and Nighthawk carried Edgerton over to the Wylie wagon and set him down on the lowered tailgate.
Edgerton didn’t like being fussed over, and he said as much in no uncertain terms. “If anybody’s got any more whiskey, just pour some on those arrow holes and call it good,” he insisted. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t know about that,” Audie said. “Let me take a look at the injury.”
Preacher said, “Audie’s a pretty good sawbones. You best listen to what he says.”
“I’m an amateur physician, at best,” Audie said, “but I do have a considerable amount of practical experience with all sorts of wounds. I suspect most of us here do. Let’s see, shall we?”
Several of the men gathered around to watch while Audie examined the wound. So did Fletch and Clementine and Noah Stuart. Chester Merrick started to, then turned a little green at the sight of the angry-looking wounds on Edgerton’s leg and walked away.
“Jamie and Deadlead appear to have done a good job,” Audie announced after a few minutes. “I’ll clean the wounds a bit more and then replace this dressing with a fresh one. You’ll have to stay off that leg for a day or two, my friend, and it’ll be sore for quite some time, but you should be fine.”
“A day or two!” Edgerton said. “I can’t be laid up. I came down here to work, and nobody’ll ever say I don’t earn my wages.”
“You’ll earn ’em,” Jamie said. “You’ll stay here and help guard the camp. Somebody’s got to do that anyway, so you might as well be one of them. In a few days, when you’re able to ride again, we’ll probably move farther south . . . unless we’ve got all the business we can handle right here where we are.”
Nobody had to ask Jamie what he meant by that. After today’s bloody clashes that had resulted in the deaths of more than two dozen Apache warriors, they might not have to go hunting for trouble anymore.
It might come to them, ready and willing to massacre the whole bunch.
CHAPTER 32
That evening, Noah Stuart sought out Jamie and Preacher to tell them about the flash of reflected sunlight he had seen off to the south earlier in the day.
“Any of the others see it?” Preacher asked.
Stuart shook his head. “No, I seem to have been the only one. I’m absolutely certain about it, though.”
“It’s not that we don’t believe you, Noah,” Jamie said. “But if one of the sentries had seen it, too, we might be able to get a better idea exactly where it was.”
“You intend to go down there and have a look?” Stuart asked.
Jamie shrugged. “Seems like the thing to do. Not this evening, though. It’s too late in the day for that. We’ll check it out first thing in the morning.”
“Will it be all right if I come with you?” Stuart’s voice had a note of eagerness in it.
Jamie and Preacher exchanged a glance.
“Liable to run into trouble,” the mountain man warned.
“Perhaps, but it would give me a chance to have a better look around the territory along this escarpment, as well as the bluff itself. I need some distance to get the proper perspective.”
“All right,” Jamie said. “Make sure you bring your rifle and pistol, though, along with that sketch pad of yours, in case we run into any trouble.”
“Leave the scattergun here for Merrick,” Preacher added. “If there’s need of gunplay, he’s more likely to be able to get some use out of it.”
If it came down to relying on Chester Merrick to put up a fight, they really would be in trouble, Jamie thought.
Nobody did any fighting that night. It passed quietly except for Edgerton’s snoring. Normally he wasn’t that raucous while he was asleep, but he had guzzled down enough tanglefoot to deaden the pain of his wound that he slumbered more deeply than usual.
The next
morning, Jamie announced over breakfast, “Preacher and I are going to do some scouting today, at least starting out. I want to have a look at that area where Noah saw something yesterday.”
They hadn’t tried to keep Stuart’s claim a secret, since Dupre, Greybull, Pugh, Fletch and Clementine, and Merrick already knew about it.
“Noah’s coming with us,” Jamie went on, “and I figured we’d take Audie and Nighthawk, too. Lars, Bengt, Deadlead, Tennysee, you boys drive those Indian ponies up on the flat and haze them off to the north, like I told you about last night. The rest of you stick close to camp here until we get back.” He directed a hard look toward Ramirez and Dog Brother. “Everybody try to get along while we’re gone.”
Ramirez opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, then thought better of it and shrugged. Dog Brother’s face remained as stony as ever.
A short time later, the five men who were going to scout to the south mounted up and rode off in that direction. Jamie and Preacher took the lead, while Audie and Nighthawk flanked Noah Stuart behind them. Audie and Stuart talked about surveying and mapmaking. As with most subjects, Audie knew enough about them to carry on an intelligent conversation, and Stuart seemed quite engaged by their talk.
Up ahead, Preacher said quietly, “You reckon we’re gonna find anything?”
“I don’t know, but it’s possible,” Jamie replied. “We’re not the only ones in these parts. There’s really no telling what Noah saw.”
“If he saw anything.”
Jamie nodded and said slowly, “I reckon I believe him. Or I believe he believes he did. But he seems like a pretty sharp young fella, not the sort that would go imagining things or making them up.”
“He’s had sense enough not to cause any trouble betwixt Fletch and Clementine. I wasn’t sure at first if he would.”
“Yeah, I was worried about that, too,” Jamie admitted. “Glad it hasn’t happened.”
They hadn’t ridden more than half a mile when they spotted the low mesa ahead of them. Jamie and Preacher reined in and let the other three riders catch up to them. Jamie pointed at the mesa and asked, “Is that about where you saw something, Noah?”
They Came to Kill Page 18
