Hawk 13, page 4
‘You ain’t always gonna be working for Mr. Sweeney,’ grunted the black, halting as he came level with the hotel. ‘That’s what worries me.’
‘We all got our problems,’ Hawk grinned. ‘You ride herd on yours, I’ll watch mine.’
Behind him, Jefferson Walker chuckled and Clayton Lee blew a shrill whistle.
Stu Johns said, ‘Ace could be yore problem, feller, you go proddin’ him that way.’
‘He’s touchy,’ murmured Hawk, ‘ain’t he?’
‘Where Sweeney an’ the woman’s concerned,’ nodded Johns, ‘yeah. I guess you don’t know the story.’
‘I guess I don’t.’ Hawk shook his head. ‘Want to tell me?’
‘Ace’s been with the boss from way back,’ said the brown-haired man. ‘His folks belonged to Sweeney until he set ’em free. Ace along with ’em. He coulda got a good price on a buck like Ace, but he give him his freedom instead. Sent him to school. Ace can read an’ write.’
He said it with a tinge of awe in his voice, nodding as though in approval of the black man’s accomplishments. Then:
‘The woman was married to another feller when Sweeney met her. But the boss didn’t take no account o’ that—once he’s made up his mind he wants something, that’s it. He just sets out to get it. Anyway, he talked her into leavin’ her husband. Was gonna fix one o’ them separation things. A dee … whatever it is.’
‘Divorce,’ supplied Hawk.
‘Yeah. A deevorce. The husband, though, he didn’t take to that. He made trouble. Enough trouble Ace stepped in. Warned the feller off, then when he didn’t listen, ole Ace shot him dead.’
‘Real loyal,’ Hawk grunted.
‘Loyal as a coon hound.’ Johns realized what he’d said and began to chuckle. ‘Yeah, ole Ace is loyal as a coon hound. Been kinda watchin’ Leonora ever since. On account she’s kinda flighty an’ the boss figgers what she done once; she might do again.’
‘Was a gambler last year,’ called Walker. ‘She give him the eye an’ he took the fancy. Ace made him a bet he couldn’t get his pony saddled an’ be outta town inside ten minutes. The gambler, he said he wasn’t takin’ orders from no nigra. So Ace made him another bet. Bet him he couldn’t cover enough distance in a count o’ ten to be out o’ pistol shot. Ace won.’
Three men began to laugh, and Hawk decided it might be wisest to stay clear of the woman. He could find enough trouble on his own account, without using another man’s bed to climb into it. He watched the last buildings of Santa Rosa fall behind him and lifted the pace. Tucson lay due east of the town, about seven days distant at the rate the wagon could travel. The terrain was mostly flat, high desert country with two sections of mountainous uplands crossing their path. The way he had the route worked out, he was going to meander around some and take maybe ten days to reach his destination, then leave Sweeney’s men to bring the wagon back while he returned alone on horseback. Two weeks at most, he figured, to collect his money and ride clear of Santa Rosa.
It was a pity the woman was married.
‘Please.’ Martha Benson watched her husband tip shells into the pockets of his duster. ‘Don’t do it, Rafe.’
The man looked at her with his face set in hard lines of determination. He emptied the box of cartridges and began to stuff dried beef and hard biscuits into his saddlebags.
‘It’s the only way,’ he murmured. ‘What the hell else is there?’
She shook her head, fingers winding around one another as she tried to find an answer that would persuade him.
‘They’ll kill you,’ she said at last. ‘You an’ Keefer an’ Vance an’ Tommy. All of you. Even if you pull it off, they’ll come lookin’ for you.’
‘Maybe.’ Benson picked up a long-barreled Winchester rifle. ‘Maybe not. If we can take the money, we can hide it someplace. We just sit tight until they stop lookin’, then we sell out an’ move someplace else. Wyoming, maybe. Someplace the sun don’t fry a man’s brains. Buy us a real spread with Sweeney’s money. Goddammit, Martha! He owes us.’
‘We could sell now,’ she said, wearily; knowing it was useless. ‘Start again somewhere else.’
Benson grunted angrily. ‘We started with nothin’, woman! You want us to quit the same way? Ain’t no one but Sweeney gonna buy this place so long as he keeps the Chiragua fenced off, an’ he ain’t offerin’ even close to what we put into the land.’
‘We’ll be all right, Momma.’ Keefer came into the room, dressed like his father in a long duster. ‘We’ll come back rich. Get you some new dresses.’
‘You think I want dresses?’ She turned to face her eldest son, fear and anger mingling in her tired eyes. ‘I want my sons an’ my husband. Not dresses.’
‘You’ll have both,’ Keefer grinned. ‘You ready, Pa?’
‘Yeah.’ Benson nodded. ‘Go wait outside.’
Keefer went out the door. Its opening brought a gust of hot, sand-laden wind whistling into the room. Rafe Benson watched it settle on the bare planks of the floor and put his hands on his wife’s shoulders.
‘I’ll look after them, Martha.’ He stooped to kiss her cracked lips. ‘You know that.’
The woman watched him go out of the room, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, trickling unheeded down her cheeks.
‘Sure,’ she murmured. ‘An’ who watches you?’
She went over to the door and out onto the stoop. Tommy and Vance were already mounted, Keefer handed the reins of his father’s horse over and swung into the saddle. Rafe mounted slower, his age showing in the stiffness of his back.
‘Remember,’ he called. ‘Anyone comes askin’ for us, we gone huntin’ brush strays.’
She nodded, watching them turn their animals and canter away, heading south and east. Before long their figures were indistinct in the heat haze, their yellow dusters blending with the yellow of the landscape so that the horses seemed riderless, like ghost ponies. She lifted her apron to wipe the tears from her face and sighed once. Then she went back inside and began to clear the remnants of their breakfast, wondering when she would cook them another. If she ever would.
Ace waited discreetly on the far side of the room, as far as he could get from the bedroom door. He thrust his head and shoulders out the window, watching the wagon dwindle into the distance, trying not to hear the raised voices.
After a while Sweeney came into the room. He was adjusting the hang of his dark blue business suit, shifting the pants to a more comfortable position on his protuberant belly.
‘You warned him?’ he asked.
‘Clear,’ nodded Ace. ‘He knows the score.’
Sweeney stared at him, an eyebrow lifting an unspoken enquiry.
‘I don’t think he’ll try anything.’ Ace hooked his thumbs inside the shoulder holes of his fancy vest. ‘It’s like he said—he’s a professional. He knows where the money comes from.’
‘I don’t want him around.’ Sweeney glanced at the closed door leading to the bedroom. ‘Not after he’s brought the receipts back.’
‘Don’t think he’ll want to stay,’ murmured Ace. ‘His kind don’t. They drift.’
‘If he does …’ Sweeney left the sentence unfinished, hanging in the cloying air between the two men.
‘I’ll take him out.’ Ace smiled, patting the butt of the pearl-handled Colt. ‘One way or another.’
The gray-haired man nodded. Then went over to the liquor cabinet and filled a glass with whiskey. He drained half in a single gulp. Turned to glare at the bedroom door, and emptied the glass in a second fast swallow.
‘Damn’ bitch,’ he muttered. ‘Bitch in heat.’
‘Ain’t no one gonna dog her footsteps,’ murmured the Negro. ‘Not while I’m around.’
Chapter Five
DAY FADED TOWARDS evening without lessening the heat. The flat country was burnished red by the enormous orb of the setting sun, a great incandescent globe that hung above the western horizon, motionless as the sky darkened and a wan sliver of moon appeared in the east.
Hawk called a halt where a cluster of wind-stunted juniper sentinelled a waterhole. He estimated they had covered around twelve miles on a straight line, not hurrying. There had been no sign of pursuit, and save for a group of bobtail deer that scattered at their approach, the waterhole was deserted. He detailed Johns to settle the wagon team and get a cook fire started while he and Walker and Lee scouted a circle around.
It was full dark by the time he returned, dusk turning abruptly into night with the finality that marked desert country. The air cooled rapidly, and he was grateful for the fire as he felt the sweat washing his back grow chilly. He unsaddled his horse and rubbed the animal down before settling by the fire and taking the coffee Johns offered. The man passed him a plate and he ate as the prairie crackled with the transition from heat to cool, and the night animals began to move.
Walker pointed a fork in his direction, indicating his gun belt.
‘Funny kinda rig, that.’ He frowned curiously. ‘How come you carry a scattergun?’
‘Man gave it to me,’ murmured Hawk, remembering. ‘A man called John T. McLain.’
A big man …
With an easy laugh and a slow Missouri drawl …
It had been down around Lincoln, in the New Mexico territory, Jared Hawk had picked up with McLain. The man was older than Hawk, showing gray in his beard, and a calm solidity that had matched and channeled the younger man’s wildness. He had worn the Meteor then, and when Jared asked why he carried that kind of firepower he had laughed and told him he was getting old, that the shotgun was as good a crowd-stopper as anything he knew.
Jared had seen the logic of it one time when McLain took him off a gallows, using the threat of the Meteor to loose the rope around Jared’s neck. The last time Hawk could recall crying was the day he had seen McLain go down in the dust of a dirty Texas street. There had been blood all over the big man’s body. Coming out of his chest and his belly and his mouth. It had run into his beard, coloring the gray as he spat it out and told Jared he wanted the younger man to have his gun belt. To take the Meteor.
Jared had taken it and buried McLain. Then he had gone after the killers, carrying the shotgun. He had used it: they had all died.
And Hawk had been alone again. Wearing McLain’s belt.
‘I heard of him,’ murmured Walker. ‘Come from some place in Texas called Garrison, didn’t he?’
Hawk nodded, not much wanting to talk about it anymore.
He turned to Clayton Lee.
‘How come you don’t wear a handgun?’
The fair-haired man shrugged and smiled, vaguely embarrassed.
‘Ain’t no good with a pistol,’ he muttered, eyes shifting around the watching faces. ‘Just don’t seem like I can shoot straight off the hip. But with this, if I can see it, I can hit it. Besides, I’m carryin’ fifteen slugs. I got more shots an’ more range than a man with a handgun.’
Hawk grunted something noncommittal as the talk wandered into a discussion of the merits of the various weapons. His own feeling was that a Winchester was fine for long-range work, but too cumbersome to use up close. In a crowded saloon the barrel could snag too easily on some obstacle, or get pushed aside by a man standing close enough. Besides, no matter how fast a shootist might work the lever action, a Colt would fire faster, and at a shorter range prove just as lethal.
He left them talking as he climbed to his feet, announcing that he would take first watch and draped a blanket around his shoulders as he ambled off into the darkness, circling the camp.
The night was bright with stars now, their brilliance joining the moon to light the flat terrain. An owl lofted overhead, pale and ghostly against the sky, its flight swooping suddenly to end in a thin cry as some small animal went down under the questing talons. The wings beat again as the bird lifted, carrying off its prey, and the owl let loose a low, hooting cry of triumph. Off in the distance a coyote howled at the moon, the lonesome wailing singing through the silence like the mourning of a lost soul. Hawk listened to the noises, not registering anything that should not be there, nor seeing anything that threatened danger as he patrolled around the camp.
He counted out seven slow circuits before he went back to the glow of the fire and shook Stu Johns awake, then settled into his blankets and let sleep take him.
The next morning they started out soon after dawn. Hawk leading the way, swinging northwards in the direction of a rise that bulked on a transverse line across the flat. The ridge was no more than fifteen, perhaps twenty, feet higher than the surrounding terrain, but even that much elevation would allow for a clear view over a wide expanse of prairie. Hawk’s intention was to use the extra height to get sight of their backtrail and the land ahead; to watch for pursuit and sign of ambush.
The ridge was little more than a spine of dirt-covered rock, sparsely grassed, with a straggle of shrubs growing on the lee side. Hawk topped the crest and waited for the wagon to come up, scanning the ground through eyes slitted against the sun glow. Behind them the land stretched out flat and featureless with no sign of anything except saguaro and yucca and cholla. There were no riders visible, nor any dust rising; ahead, the same emptiness met his gaze. They followed the downslope of the ridge a few miles farther northwards, then turned east again where a dry stream bed cut across the emptiness. The bed was baked hard enough that tracks didn’t show, and Hawk followed it until it curved away to the south. He thought about leaving the wagon in care of Johns and the others while he scouted ahead, then dismissed the idea for fear the temptation of the money would prove too much for the three men. Instead, he opted for staying with them, trusting to the flat terrain to give him sufficient warning of ambush at least until they reached the higher ground ahead.
The sun climbed farther across the sky, seeming to burn away the few straggles of white cloud that had showed that morning. The heat reached a furnace intensity, reflecting off the sandy ground so that the air shimmered, dancing and wavering, making distance difficult to judge. It was too hot for speech, the lungfuls of oxygen they sucked in seeming to parch their throats and coat their windpipes with dust. Hawk fastened a bandanna over his mouth and nostrils, letting his horse plod forward at the same pace as the wagon. He shucked out of his vest, stowing the waistcoat behind his saddle, grateful for the momentary relief as the movement cooled the sweat coating his back. Then that relief was gone, replaced by the fierce warmth that plastered his shirt against his skin in salty folds that scratched with the gentle rhythm of the horse.
They rode until the sun was directly overhead, then Hawk called a halt and they clustered in the shade of the wagon, sipping water and waiting for the sun to shift over behind them.
Rafe Benson and his sons rode due east through the heat of the day. The way Rafe had things figured out, a direct approach was too risky over the flat country. He didn’t know how many men Sweeney had sent with the wagon, but it wouldn’t take many to defend the vehicle over that kind of country. Coming up on it straight, they’d be spotted a long way out. And even if the Sweeney hands held off firing on sight, they’d have too much time to prepare a defense. No, the best way was to get ahead—that wouldn’t be difficult, not with them mounted while the Sweeney hands were held to the pace of the wagon—and pick a spot at leisure. Lay up for them; let them come to him.
‘How you figger to know where?’ asked Vance. ‘Might be they won’t follow the trail.’
‘Don’t reckon they will.’ Benson’s voice was muffled by the bandanna covering his mouth. ‘Be too obvious.’
‘So how you gonna know where to lay up?’ Vance asked again.
Benson sighed: Vance was a good boy, solid and reliable. But none too bright.
‘The hills?’ he said. ‘Them two stretches this side o’ Tucson with the valley between? There ain’t more’n three roads in an’ out that a wagon can use. We get ourselves up in the second range an’ watch for them. Soon as we got their path spotted, we pick the place. We gotta get ahead of them an’ wait, is all.’
Vance whistled appreciatively.
‘That’s good, Pa. That’s real good.’
Benson nodded and lifted his pony to a slightly faster pace. Tiring the animals didn’t matter overmuch: they’d have time to regain their wind once they reached the hills.
Hawk halted for the night in the shadow of a mesa. The light was fading fast as he circled the flat-topped wedge of weathered stone and called the wagon in. There were scrubby bushes growing around the foot and a pool of salty water in a cleft. Johns backed the wagon up close against the rock and they spread their blankets out in front, around the fire. The night cooled rapidly, the mesa giving off the faint, complaining sounds of heated rock as the temperature dropped and the sky got speckled with stars.
‘How long you been working for Sweeney?’ Hawk chewed on pork and beans.
‘Around three years.’ It was Walker who answered. ‘Me an’ Stu signed up about the same time. You been with us two, ain’t you, Clay?’
Lee nodded.
‘Yeah.’ Walker seemed glad to talk after the dusty, heat laden silence of the day. ‘I was runnin’ from a little bit o’ trouble down New Mexico way an’ Sweeney was lookin’ for hands.’
‘Gunhands?’ Hawk said. ‘Or cowhands?’
‘Both, I guess.’ Walker chuckled. ‘We kinda divide our activities. Why Ace sent us along on this trip.’
‘He had trouble?’ So far Hawk knew no more about his employer than the little he had learnt back in Santa Rosa.
‘Some,’ said Walker. ‘He’d come out from the East an’ he was buyin’ land. There was just him an’ Ace then, an’ folks didn’t take too kindly to an Eastern feller an’ a black flashin’ all that money around.’
‘I thought he owned most of Santa Rosa,’ Hawk said. ‘What I heard.’
