“Well, it’s hard to say for sure . . .” Stuart turned his head, looking back and forth between the camp and the mesa. “But it seems to line up right. Yes, I think that’s the area.” He squinted toward the mesa. “What is that?”
“Just a little mesa,” Jamie said. “They pop up here and there in this part of the country.”
“Would you be likely to find Apaches there?”
“You can find Apaches just about anywhere in these parts,” Preacher drawled.
Jamie heeled his horse into motion again. “Let’s go see what we can find out.”
* * *
“Take the horses around on the back side—fast!” Clete Mahoney ordered his brother Harp. “Lew, Jerome, go with him!”
“Ain’t we gonna bushwhack those fellas, Clete?” Lew asked.
“They’re ridin’ right into our gunsights,” Jerome added.
“Let me think about this, blast it,” Clete snapped. They had been waiting for an ambush opportunity, but he wasn’t sure this was the right one. There were only five men riding toward the mesa right now, and when he sprang the trap, he hoped to be able to wipe out more of the party than that before they knew what was going on.
Even if he and his brothers killed these five, the rest of the bunch likely would figure out what was going on and be warned that they were in danger.
On the other hand, he couldn’t tell yet who those riders were. If Preacher and Jamie MacCallister were among them, it might be worth alerting the others just to get rid of those two old ripsnorters.
As the others were leading the horses around the mesa as Clete had ordered, he turned and ran over to them. “Where’s that spyglass?”
“You told me to put it away yesterday afternoon, remember?” Harp said.
“I know I did, blast it! And for good reason, too. Why do you think those fellas are ridin’ in this direction this morning? Somebody spotted a reflection off that glass!” Actually, he didn’t know that, but it seemed like a reasonable assumption. “Gimme it!”
“What? The spyglass?”
“Yes, the spyglass!”
Grumbling, Harp dug out the instrument and handed it over. Clete opened it and used his hat to shade the lens as he lifted the spyglass to his eye with his other hand. He peered through it, and after a moment the two big men riding in front of the approaching group sprang into focus.
“Preacher and MacCallister,” Clete breathed. A chance like this might not fall into their laps again, he thought as he lowered the spyglass, braced one end against his thigh, and closed it. As he tossed it back to Harp, he barked, “Picket those horses and get your rifles. We’re fixin’ to have us a turkey shoot!”
* * *
The group led by Jamie and Preacher was within half a mile of the mesa. Jamie’s keen eyes could make out the deep cracks and seams in the reddish sandstone walls, and he also saw the low clumps of cactus around the base. Nothing appeared to be moving around the mesa—but they couldn’t see what was on the other side of it.
Jamie was about to suggest that they split up and circle the mesa to check it out before approaching any closer, when Preacher suddenly said, “Listen! You hear that?”
Jamie reined in and motioned for their companions to do likewise. As the horses came to a stop, Jamie listened intently and after a few seconds heard what Preacher had noticed first.
In the distance to the southwest, a gunshot sounded. Not a flurry of them, just a single report.
“Fella’s got hisself a single-shot rifle,” Preacher said. “He’s just about had time to reload it once, and now he’s let off a second round. Let’s wait a bit . . . Ah, there it is again!”
The third shot drifted faintly to their ears.
“Someone hunting?” Audie speculated.
“Ummm,” Nighthawk said.
“Yes, the shots do seem to have a regularity to them . . . There it goes again.”
“Somebody’s loading and firing just as fast as he can,” Jamie said. “Whoever the fella is, it seems like he’s got a battle on his hands.”
“But nobody’s shootin’ back at him,” Preacher said. “To me, that says Apaches.”
“Umm,” Nighthawk agreed emphatically.
“If the Apaches have somebody pinned down, we have to go see if we can give him a hand,” Jamie declared. He turned to Noah Stuart. “Noah, you light a shuck back to camp. Tell the boys I want four or five of them to come after us, just in case we need help. The rest of the group needs to stay there until we get back.”
“You don’t care which of the men follow you?” Stuart asked.
“No, any of them are fine. But not you, in case you’re getting any ideas.”
Stuart shook his head. “No, I plan to stay out of any fights that I can.”
“That makes you and me just the opposite,” Preacher said with a grin. He turned Horse’s head to the southwest and put the stallion into a run as he added over his shoulder to the big cur, “Come on, Dog! The fight’s a-wastin’!”
* * *
“Where in blazes are they goin’?” Harp exclaimed as the five men on horseback suddenly split up, one turning to gallop back toward the camp, the other four pushing their mounts hard to the southwest.
Clete didn’t know the answer to that question, but the realization that he and his brothers were about to lose a prime opportunity to strike a hard blow against their enemies tasted bitter in his mouth. He was kneeling behind some of the cactus at the base of the mesa, using it to conceal himself even though it wouldn’t have stopped a bullet. His brothers were close by, also kneeling and holding their rifles.
“I heard somethin’,” Jerome said. “Sounded like a gunshot over yonderways.” He waved a hand vaguely toward the southwest, the same direction Preacher, Jamie, and two of their companions were heading.
Clete thought he’d heard the shot, too, although it was mighty faint. That explained why Preacher and the others had lit a shuck in that direction instead of riding on toward the mesa. They were going to check out that shot.
“Blast it,” Lew said. “I thought we were gonna get to kill some of those fellas.”
“We’ll get another chance,” Clete said. “And maybe sooner than you think.”
An intriguing idea had started to form in his head. They would have to wait and see what happened . . .
But their little sister and her no-account husband and their newfound friends might be getting some unexpected company this morning.
CHAPTER 33
That country might have appeared flat and featureless at first glance, but it really wasn’t. Little ridges and valleys were scattered throughout the region, and after riding hard for a mile or so, Jamie, Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk came to one of those valleys that couldn’t be seen until the ground abruptly sloped down under their horses’ hooves.
About two hundred yards ahead of them, a tiny stream meandered, with a thread of green vegetation marking its course. That verdant patch widened out in one spot to an actual field where crops of some sort were growing. The plants didn’t look all that healthy as they struggled to live in the hot, arid climate, but they were hanging on—the same as the man who likely had planted them. He was inside a tiny adobe hut surrounded by Apaches who hunkered in the brush and fired arrows at the hut’s windows and through the open doorway.
The four men reined in at the top of that little rise to take in the scene being played out along the creek.
Nighthawk said, “Umm.”
“I agree,” Audie told him. “Anyone who would attempt to farm in such a dangerous, inhospitable place is either a lunatic or an incurable optimist.”
“Same thing, ain’t it?” Preacher growled. “I ain’t all that surprised, though. I’ve seen some o’ them Mexican peons try to scratch out a livin’ in places you’d never dream of. They’re the stubbornest varmints you ever seen.”
Jamie was trying to get a count of the attackers. After a moment he said, “Looks like there are eight or ten Apaches down there, a
nd they don’t act like they know we’re here.”
“They’d hear us comin’ if we went poundin’ down on ’em, though,” Preacher said.
Jamie pulled his Sharps from its scabbard. “That’s why I was thinking we’d hit them first from up here, then charge the ones who are left.”
“We could wait for the other fellas that Noah was gonna fetch to catch up to us,” Preacher pointed out.
Jamie thought about that and shook his head. “I’ve never been good at waiting around when there’s a fight going on. Especially when the odds are no worse than they are here. I think we should go ahead and hit them now.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Preacher said with a grin as he reached for his own Sharps.
Audie and Nighthawk carried the same old-fashioned, long-barreled flintlock rifles they had used during their fur-trapping days, when they had first met Preacher. Those weapons were accurate and reliable, although not as powerful nor with as much range as the Sharps.
As all four men dismounted, another shot came from inside the hut. As far as they could tell, it didn’t hit any of the Apaches. Nor were any warriors’ bodies lying on the ground where they could see. It seemed that the man in the hut was trying to put up a determined fight, but apparently he just wasn’t very good at it.
These four men, however, were very good at what they did.
As they started lining up their shots, one of the Apaches leaped to his feet and darted forward. The defender in the hut didn’t get a shot off. The Apache reached the hut and put his back against the wall, then began edging along it toward the door.
“Jamie . . .” Preacher said.
“I see him,” Jamie replied as he shifted his aim. “And I’ve got him.”
“Figured you would. We ready?”
“Ready,” Audie said, and Nighthawk chimed in with his usual response.
“All right. Let’s start the ball,” Jamie breathed just before he squeezed the trigger.
The familiar boom and kick of the Sharps came just as the Apache beside the door poised himself to leap through the opening. The heavy round smashed into his chest and pinned him to the adobe wall for a second with his arms flung out in shock and pain. Then he toppled forward on his face.
At the same time, Preacher, Audie, and Nighthawk fired, too. Their bullets scythed through the brush and struck the Apaches they had targeted. Two of the warriors simply fell, knocked to the ground by the impacts. The third one bounded high in the air, like a fish jumping out of a lake, and then dropped back down in a boneless sprawl of death.
While the roar of the shots still hung in the air, the four men were already back on their horses. They rammed rifles in scabbards and charged down the gentle slope toward the hut and the remaining attackers.
The Apaches who had been concentrating on the hut leaped up and turned to meet the new threat. As they did, the defender inside the hut finally scored with one of his shots. A warrior pitched forward on his face with blood welling from the hole between his shoulder blades where a bullet fired from the hut’s window had smashed into him.
Jamie drew his Walker as he galloped into battle. Preacher filled his hands with both Dragoons and guided Horse with his knees. Dog raced alongside them. Audie and Nighthawk weren’t far behind. Audie gripped a flintlock pistol while his big Crow friend fingered the tomahawk stuck behind his belt.
Jamie ducked as an arrow flew over his head, then thumbed off two shots that pounded into the chest of the warrior who had fired the shaft. The Apache sailed backward.
The Dragoons played a roaring symphony in Preacher’s expert hands as he fired them—left, right, left, right—and two more warriors tumbled off their feet. Responding instantly to the slightest pressure from Preacher’s knees, Horse veered to the right as an arrow whipped past the mountain man’s left ear. The left-hand Dragoon spoke again, its speech punctuated by smoke and flame spurting from the barrel, and another Apache screeched and slewed around as a bullet ripped through him.
Audie’s flintlock pistol slammed a ball through a warrior’s throat and dropped him to his knees as he started to choke on his own blood.
A few yards away, Nighthawk left the back of his horse in a diving tackle, spread his arms wide, and crashed into two of the Apaches. His momentum and great weight carried them all to the ground. The tomahawk in Nighthawk’s hand rose and fell in a swift blur and split the skull of one attacker wide open.
The Crow backhanded the gory tomahawk across the face of the other Apache, shattering the man’s jaw and almost shearing it right off his face. The Apache could only lie there, thrashing and burbling blood for a second before another stroke of the tomahawk sundered his skull, too.
Dog had another man down, ripping the Apache’s throat out as he snarled. Jamie and Preacher wheeled their mounts and swung their guns as they searched for more targets. However, it appeared that the warrior Dog was savaging the last of the Apaches. The rest of the attackers were sprawled around in various limp attitudes of death. Nighthawk was going from body to body, checking just to make sure. He held his knife ready for a swift stroke across a throat if such was needed.
Jamie turned his horse toward the hut and called, “Hello, the house!” Referring to the little adobe jacal as a house was a bit of a stretch, but he figured there was no reason to insult the farmer’s dwelling. “You can come on out now. It’s safe.”
Nighthawk nodded and said, “Ummm,” to confirm that.
A short, slender figure in the white, pajama-like clothing of a peon emerged from the hut carrying an old muzzleloader. The man’s dark, weather-beaten face was set in lines of gratitude. He looked like the sort of hombre who would try to carve a farm out of this desolate landscape.
Jamie wasn’t expecting the four figures who followed the man. The first was a woman with a few streaks of gray in her black hair and the same lined features that showed she, too, spent most of her time out in the elements, trying to coax those plants to stay alive and produce a crop.
Around her long, dark brown skirt clustered three children—a boy about eight years old and a couple of girls who were younger. They were already starting to show the signs of premature aging that this hard life had carved onto the faces of their parents, as Jamie assumed the man and woman were.
“Hola,” he said, not knowing if any of these people spoke English. He went on in Spanish. “You’re safe now. All the Apaches are dead.”
“These Apaches are dead, señor,” the peon replied mostly in English. “But they are far from being the only Apaches in this region.”
“Yeah, we know that, amigo,” Preacher said. “We’ve been tusslin’ with ’em for a few days now.”
The children were staring in horror and awe at the corpses strewn around the place. Kids that young having to see such things was bad, Jamie thought, but what they would have gone through if he and his friends hadn’t come along would have been much worse.
Their father noticed, too, and spoke sharply to them in Spanish, sending them scurrying back into the hut. Then he turned back to the visitors. “My name is Armando Sandoval, señors. This is my wife Honoria. Welcome to our home, humble though it may be. I extend to you our hospitality and ask that you come in and dine with us.”
Jamie exchanged a glance with Preacher and figured the mountain man was thinking the same thing. That hut was so small it was surprising that five people could fit in it, even when three of them were little ones. If four more men tried to crowd into it—especially hombres as big as Jamie, Preacher, and Nighthawk—the place would be busting at the seams.
Not to mention the fact that these people obviously had very little. They didn’t need to be sharing what they did have, even though the visitors had saved their lives, no doubt about that.
“Muchas gracias, Señor Sandoval,” Jamie said. “We appreciate your offer of hospitality, but I believe there’s a chore out here that needs to be taken care of.”
“The bodies of these Apaches,” Sandoval said grimly.
>
“That’s right. We’ll tend to them, and then we’ll be on our way back to our camp.” Jamie jerked a thumb over his shoulder, aiming it northeast. “It’s back that way a few miles, where that long bluff drops down from one stretch of flats to another.”
“Sí, I know the place,” Sandoval said, nodding. He spoke to his wife in Spanish, and she went into the hut to be with the children. Turning back to the men, the farmer went on. “I will help you with the bodies. We can drag them into the brush, well away from the creek.” He shook his head. “These savage heathens do not deserve proper burials.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” Preacher drawled. “Anyway, buzzards and coyotes got to eat, too.”
From the back of his horse, Audie said, “Riders coming, Jamie. Looks like half a dozen or so, from the amount of dust they’re kicking up.”
Jamie turned and looked, then nodded. “That’ll be some of our boys, the ones Noah sent after us. Why don’t you and Nighthawk go meet them and let ’em know everything’s all right here now? Then you can head back to camp and Preacher and I will catch up to you in a little while.”
“All right,” Audie said. “Come on, Nighthawk.”
The two old friends rode away while Jamie and Preacher dismounted. With typical efficiency, they each grabbed the ankles of a dead Apache and hauled the corpses toward the brush, heading for an area well away from the stream as Sandoval had said.
The way they handled the bodies might have seemed callous to some observers, but it really wasn’t. Both of these men had seen enough violence in their lives—had taken part in enough violence—that their experiences had hardened them in some ways. But they didn’t take death and killing lightly. At the core of Preacher and Jamie Ian MacCallister was a huge humanity that made such a thing impossible. They knew full well that if no help had arrived for the Sandoval family, the Apaches would have killed Armando in the most brutal and painful way possible, would have raped and probably killed Honoria, and would have enslaved the three youngsters, if they hadn’t decided to go ahead and kill them, too.
They Came to Kill Page 19
