Down on Gila River, page 14
“The schoolma’am wants her man back,” Lorelei said. “There’s no stopping a woman when her mind’s set on a thing.”
“Sam is already a dead man,” the Indian said. “Santos told me so.”
“James,” Hannah said, “we must try to save him. Won’t you help us?”
The Kiowa nodded. “I will help. We will die together. It is not for us to know the ways of the Great Spirit, but perhaps that is what he has planned for us.”
Lorelei shook her head. “Ain’t you just a joy to be around?” she said.
The cabin had burned down to a pile of charred logs, and only a few thin tendrils of smoke rose from the ashes.
As Hannah climbed into the saddle behind Lori, she glanced at the ruin but saw no sign of bodies, and she was relieved about that. Such a sight would have been horror piled on horror.
She felt the weight of the derringer in the pocket of her dress and for the first time realized just how little Santos had given her.
There had been other guns in the cabin, but he had burned them with the bodies, as though he did not want her to be better armed.
Obviously he didn’t fear her, so giving her the belly gun had amused him, nothing more, some weird kind of half-Apache humor.
Well, that was your mistake, Santos, Hannah thought. But she realized at once it was false bravado, an empty boast, like a rooster crowing atop a dung heap.
Lorelei had mounted and now she kneed her horse closer to Hannah.
“You’re deep in thought, schoolma’am,” she said.
Hannah smiled. “I was trying to figure why Santos gave me the derringer.”
“Because he’s a no-good buzzard,” Lorelei said. “He knows if you ever try to use it on an armed man, you’ll get killed fer sure.”
“Apache humor,” Hannah said, giving voice to her earlier thought.
“Yeah, something like that,” Lorelei said.
* * *
The Kiowa had been unable to round up more of the horses he’d released from the Cappses’ barn, so he jogged ahead of Hannah and Lorelei and constantly scouted the trail.
To the north lay the Pinos Altos, and the tracks of Sam and Santos headed in that direction.
Around them the high country stretched motionless and empty, the aspens and pines on the surrounding hillsides standing as still as paper cutouts in the thin morning air.
The Kiowa stopped and when the women rode up on them, he pointed to an area of trampled grass.
“Santos stopped to palaver here,” he said.
“Was it with Moseley and the Wells brothers?” Hannah asked.
James shook his head. “Six, seven riders, on unshod ponies. Probably an Apache war band.”
His eyes scanned the distances to the west.
“Apaches ride in that direction,” he said. “They’ll raid into Arizona, maybe so.”
The Kiowa’s eyes lifted to Hannah and he pointed. “Santos and Sammy head that way, toward Dan Wells’s place on the Gila.”
A heavy depression settled on Hannah like a sodden cloak.
“Of course that’s where we’ll find them,” she said, in a flat voice. “At the Wells place.”
“You having second thoughts about this, schoolma’am?” Lorelei said, her lips pale, paler even than her face.
Hannah needed reassurance, but she found none in Lorelei’s fevered eyes or in the blunt, roughed-out features of the Indian.
“We don’t have a hope, do we?” Hannah said.
Lorelei ignored that question and asked one of her own. “So, what’s changed since we left the cabin?” she said. “Back then you were all for rescuing Sammy boy and putting a bullet into Vic Moseley.”
“Maybe now that we’re closer, it doesn’t seem quite that easy anymore.”
“Honey, it never was easy,” Lorelei said.
Hannah said nothing and Lorelei laid it on the line.
“We got a kid with us, an Injun who’s scared out of his breechclout, a sneaky gun with two bullets in it, and we’re up against four of the West’s most dangerous gunmen, to say nothing about Apaches.”
Lorelei smiled. “So tell me, what was easy about that to begin with?”
Hannah hugged Lori close and laid her chin on top of the child’s head. “None of it,” she said.
“We go back,” the Kiowa said. “Head for Silver City and tell the law.”
“And let Sam die,” Hannah said. It was not any kind of an accusation, just a statement of fact.
“That about sums it up, sister,” Lorelei said.
Hannah was quiet for a long time, her eyes distant.
Finally she said, “Back to Haystack Mountain way, the ghost of an Apache warrior sits his horse among the trees near my cabin. I see him most nights, just sitting there, staring ahead of him into nothing. He doesn’t move.”
The Kiowa had been listening intently. His face empty, wedged with shadow, he drew off a few yards from the others, stumbling as he walked.
James broke into a low, soft chant and his feet shuffled on the sun-crisp grass.
“Sam thought the Apache was waiting for the return of someone dear to him, and for a while I thought that was the case,” Hannah said. “Now I’m not so sure.”
Lori watched the Kiowa and smiled around her thumb as the Indian’s chant rose and fell amid the hushed morning like a birdsong.
Lorelei waited for Hannah to speak again, her eyes on the Kiowa, saying nothing.
“I believe the Apache failed in some terrible way,” Hannah said, “and he was killed before he could make amends. Now he waits forever, hoping to undo the wrong he did.”
Her face suddenly quiet, she said, “If I fail Sam, if I turn my back and do nothing, I fear, like the Apache, my soul will haunt this place for all time, forever trying to undo a terrible failure.”
Lorelei rounded on the Kiowa. “Quit that racket!” she yelled. When the man’s chant fell silent, she redirected her attention to Hannah. “A right pretty speech, schoolma’am, but lay your cards on the table where we can all see them—do we go or not?”
“Yes, but we don’t go. I go,” Hannah said. “Lori will stay with you and James. You’ll find a place to hide in the hills and I’ll head to the Gila alone.”
“Asking a lot of yourself, ain’t you?” Lorelei said.
Hannah smiled. “Maybe, but I’m the only one with a gun.”
Lorelei thought for a few moments, then said, “All right, I’m all wore out, so we’ll play it your way. But you scout the place well, and if it looks like the deck is stacked against you, then light a shuck the hell out of there.”
Hannah smiled. “I will. Believe me, I’m not that brave. It’s just that tomorrow and the next day and the day after that I want to look myself in the mirror and be able to say, ‘Well, Hannah, at least you tried.’”
“I hope the old coot’s worth it, is all,” Lorelei said.
She scowled at the Kiowa. “Injun, you’ll find us a hideout in the hills where’s there’s water. Understand?”
“I will find such a place,” James said.
“And no more singing, you hear? Blasted chant spooks the tar out of me, makes me think of death and Judgment Day.”
“I sing for the dead Apache, that he may find peace,” the Indian said.
“Yeah, well, don’t do it again. Let him find his own peace without your help.”
* * *
The Kiowa was as good as his word and led Hannah and Lorelei to a wedge-shaped break in the Pinos Altos foothills where a trickle of water dripped into a stone tank.
Lori, sensing something was amiss, clung to her mother’s neck and when Hannah mounted her horse, the child struggled to free herself from the Kiowa’s arms.
Lorelei, her face troubled, said, “Schoolma’am, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”
Lori broke free of James and ran to Hannah’s horse. The woman leaned down and lifted the girl in front of her.
“I’ll be back soon, I promise,” she said, hugging Lori close. “I’ll only be gone a little while.”
“I’ll go with you, Ma,” the child said. “We’ll go home now.”
Tears reddening her eyes, Hannah said to Lorelei, “Am I doing the right thing?”
“Answering as a fallen woman, my answer is, ‘Hell no,’” Lorelei said. “But as a woman who wants to save the man she loves, then the answer is yes.”
“I’m not really sure that I love Sam,” Hannah said.
“The answer is still yes.”
“I’m the only chance he’s got. There’s only me, no one else.”
“Schoolma’am, are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
“Both of us, I guess.”
Lorelei reached up and took Lori from her mother. The child immediately kicked and cried, but calmed down just a little when Lorelei told her they’d go pick wildflowers.
“Go,” she told Hannah. “Now, before you change your mind.”
“Lorelei—” Hannah began.
“It’s all right,” the other woman said. “I’ll take care of her until you get back.”
“But your shoulder—”
“Go, schoolma’am! Get out of here and find your man.”
Hannah kicked her horse into motion and rode out of the break.
Behind her, she heard her child’s cries, and her eyes streamed, as though she were riding into a bitter storm of sleet.
She thought she might go on crying for the rest of her life.
Chapter 35
Skate Santos was not a trusting man.
He pushed Sam ahead of him along the south bank of the Gila, then ordered him to draw rein when the Wells place came in sight around a bend of the river.
Santos took an old-fashioned ship’s telescope from his saddlebags and scanned the ledge and the dugouts. There was no sign of life apart from a sleeping hog and a single pecking chicken.
The horses could be in the barn out of sight, but someone should be around at this time of day, Wells’s women or a few prospectors down from the Mogollon Mountains.
Santos didn’t like the stillness and felt a familiar stirring inside him that warned of danger.
“Nobody’s to home,” Sam said, sensing the other man’s tension. “Hell, Santos, they were all shot up, so maybe they’re dead.”
Santos made no answer. He loosened the Remingtons in their holsters and slid a Henry rifle from the boot under his knee. He levered a round into the chamber and said to Sam, “We will take a look, me and you.”
“Could be a whole passel o’ buffalo soldiers lying for you up there, Santos,” Sam said. “Maybe they know you was part of the payroll robbery.”
The breed smiled. “Well, that won’t matter to you, because once the firing starts I’ll kill you.”
“Santos,” Sam said, “damn me, if you ain’t the most unsociable cuss I ever met in my life, and I’ve met a few.”
“Keep talking, old man,” the breed said. “You’ll be quiet forever soon enough.”
* * *
Santos made Sam ride ahead of him as they took the ancient talus slope to the rock ledge.
As they walked their horses toward the saloon, they heard the man’s screams for the first time.
The grating cries came from the women’s cabin. The terrible shrieks were not constant, more a counterpoint to the vile curses the man roared in a high-pitched, pain-shredded voice.
Whoever he was, he cursed himself and the mother who bore him, and he called on Satan to consign all humanity, every man, woman, and child, to the lowest pits of hell.
As Santos and Sam drew rein, the cursing changed, became a shrill wail, the same words repeating over and over again.
“Oh, help me . . . help me . . . help me . . . Oh, somebody help me . . . help me somebody . . . help me . . .”
“What is that?” Sam said. “It’s spookin’ the tar out of me.”
Santos grunted deep in his chest. “I’ve heard such a thing before,” he said. “Only a gut-shot man screams like that.”
“Who is it?”
“When a man dies of a belly wound, his voice is no longer his own,” Santos said. “It becomes the tongue of pain. I don’t know who he is.”
“Then God hasten his end, whoever the poor soul might be,” Sam said.
Santos shook his head and looked at the older man as though he’d just crawled out from under a rock.
“How did you manage to live this long?” he said.
Sam had no chance to answer. The door swung open and Dan Wells stepped outside. He wore a fat bandage around his left thigh and held a Colt in each hand. When he saw Sam, the hard planes of his face chiseled into a scowl.
“You got him, Skate,” Wells said. “You brought him to me.”
“Said I would.” Santos glanced at the man’s thigh. “Caught a bullet, Danny, huh?”
“Yeah, after we stopped the payroll wagon, we was jumped by cavalry. Jake is wounded and Moseley took a round in the belly. I’ve been listening to him scream and holler like that for hours.”
“Too bad,” Santos said. He thumbed in the direction of Sam. “What do you want done with him?”
“Bring him inside and we’ll see what Jake has in mind.”
* * *
Sam felt like a condemned man taking the last step to the gallows. He could see no way out his predicament, unless the cavalry came to his rescue. The chance of that was slim to none, and slim was already saddling up to leave town.
His heart heavy and the fear in his belly tangling itself into knots, Sam was pushed into the saloon by Santos.
Jake Wells smiled when he saw him.
The man’s thumb tested the edge of an ivory-handled cutthroat razor, and a hundred different kinds of hell gleamed in his eyes.
Sam heard a scream and for one horrible moment he thought it had come from him.
“How much longer have we got to listen to that?” Jake said, momentarily shifting his attention from Sam to his brother.
“Had enough?” Dan said. “I reckon I’ve been listening to it for too long.”
“More than enough,” Jake said. “He’s been screaming and calling out for hours.”
Dan drew his gun and moved to the door.
“If ol’ Vic wants to meet his Maker that badly, it’s only fair that I help him along,” he said.
Dan stepped outside, and Jake turned his attention to Sam once again.
The man’s head was wrapped in a bloodstained bandage and his left leg was propped on a chair. The leg was splinted with split barrel staves and had been bound tightly with rags.
Jake made a show of closely studying the razor.
“Well, lookee here at this,” he said. “Says right here on the blade that it was made by Samuel Last, 105 New Bond Street, London.” Jake nodded. “The English know how to make razors. They make ’em good an’ sharp.”
He waved the cutthroat at Santos. “Hey, Skate, you ever seen a man skun with one o’ these?”
Before Santos could answer, a shot rang out and the echo bounced through the river canyon like a rock tumbling along a marble corridor.
Jake smiled. “RIP, Vic Moseley.” He beckoned to Sam. “Come here, Pops. I want to give you just a little taste o’ the blade. I mean, so you’ll know what’s coming next, like.”
“You go to hell,” Sam said. His face took on a look of genuine puzzlement. “How come everybody around this here neck o’ the woods is hell-bent on skinnin’ folks?”
Jake ignored that. “Well, if you won’t come to me, then I’ll come to you.”
He rose clumsily, swayed for a moment, then hobbled forward a step.
Sam moved to his right, booted a chair into Jake, and the man tripped and fell, roaring in pain as his broken leg slammed into the floor.
Santos was stunned by the suddenness of Sam’s move and didn’t react before the older man made a dash for the door.
Sam threw the door open . . . then backed slowly into the saloon again, the muzzle of Dan Wells’s Colt shoved firmly between his eyes.
“Hold him!” Jake yelled. “Don’t let the buzzard go.”
Dan holstered his gun and he and Santos grabbed and held Sam’s arms. Both were big men, and strong, and Sam’s struggles did him no good.
Jake hobbled toward Sam, his face ugly, the razor poised for a slashing cut. “I promised ye a taste,” he said, “and now I’ll serve it up to you.”
It came very quickly, the razor so keen that Sam initially felt little pain. The blade sliced across Sam’s right cheek; then a vicious backhanded stroke laid open his left. Blood spurted and Sam saw the front of his shirt turn scarlet.
Jake stepped back and admired his handiwork.
“Finish him, Jake,” Dan Wells said. “Cut his throat.”
But the younger man shook his head. “No, I want him skun a slice at a time.” His bloodshot eyes lifted to his brother. “You and Santos strip him and stake him out. His dying will take many days and he’ll scream for all of them, even worse than Moseley.”
Sam struggled, and tried to kick out at his tormentor.
“You sorry piece of trash,” he yelled. “Let me loose and we’ll fight it out, just me and you.”
He would have said more, but blood filled his mouth, his head slumped onto his chest and merciful oblivion took him.
“Stake him, Skate,” Jake said, “like an Apache would.”
“You already owe me thirty dollars,” Santos said. “Staking a man will cost you another ten.”
Jake smiled. “Then do it. It’s well worth the money.”
Chapter 36
A lame horse and the buildup to a summer thunderstorm that turned the bright afternoon dark were only two of the problems that beset Hannah Stewart as she made her slow way along the bank of the Gila.
