Die by the Gun, page 16
part #2 of Chuckwagon Trail Series
The bounty hunter was gone from behind the rocks, but he had left a trail of blood drops. With Flowers behind him, Mac began hunting for Means in earnest. Every step felt like his last. He knew Means intended to ambush him. “Dead or alive,” read the wanted poster. A man willing to use Desmond as bait hardly cared about the condition of his quarry.
As he moved around the hillside, it occurred to Mac that the bounty hunter, although wounded, might check to see if either of his henchmen were alive. Revolver at the ready, Mac headed for the bodies while Flowers continued searching farther along the slope.
Both men were dead, and there was no sign of Means. Mac looked down at what appeared to be the older of the two brothers and shook his head. This one, Frank Huffman from the papers in his jacket pocket Mac pulled out, looked to be the twin of the man he had shot back in Fort Worth.
“Mac, over here,” Flowers called. “I found the trail.”
Mac hurried to join him. The trail boss knelt on the rocky ground and pointed out a blood smear. Means had bled enough to form a puddle and then carelessly stepped in it. Flowers pointed ahead to a sandy ravine.
“I’ll go,” Mac said. “Back me up.”
“I’m not letting you have all the fun of killing that varmint.”
Mac had no time to argue. The messy footprint had to be a trap. If it wasn’t, Means had bled more freely than Mac expected from a wound through his side.
Flowers moved five yards away, and they advanced together. They reached the bank of the arroyo and poked their heads over the rim at the same time. Mac saw immediately that they were too late. Judging by the piles of dung, four horses had been staked out here. The one Desmond had taken from the remuda, a swayback mare long past its prime, stood beside a better quality horse.
“He got on his horse and took a spare. Catching him’s going to be a full-time job.” Flowers looked at Mackenzie. “That a job you intend on taking?”
Mac considered all the things he could do. Quick Willy Means was wounded, perhaps fatally. But if he wasn’t, he might decide to stay on Mac’s trail. That meant he should be tracked down and taken care of.
“We’ve got a herd to drive north.”
“To Fort Sumner?”
“To Fort Sumner,” Mac said. He looked down the sandy arroyo and hoped he was doing the right thing by letting Means get away. They would be at the Army post in another few days and the drive would be over. Disappearing would be easier with a pocketful of money he had earned.
CHAPTER 18
Dewey Mackenzie kept looking over his shoulder. Every bump in the trail made him sure he was going to slide down an embankment and be pinned under the wagon. Every strange noise caused him to reach for his revolver. He was driving himself loco.
“It’ll be over soon. We’re almost to Fort Sumner,” he said over and over. It had been a week since he and Flowers had rescued Desmond from the bounty hunters. Two of the killers had become worm food. Burying the brothers seemed like a kindness they did not deserve, but Mac, Desmond, and Flowers had clawed out a shallow grave for one of them. The other’s body was missing, likely dragged away by coyotes. Neither Mac nor Flowers had been willing to spend more time hunting for it. None of the bounty hunters deserved that kind of consideration.
He hadn’t even wanted to say words over it, but Flowers had insisted. But the trail boss drew the line at putting a grave marker of any kind over the body. They deserved to be anonymous. Mac didn’t even want a casual traveler to look over and wonder who was buried in the grave. He wanted them wiped from all human memory or thought.
A second grave would have been satisfying, but a third grave for Quick Willy Means would have satisfied him most. But with the bounty hunter escaped and on his own, that small pleasure had been denied him. As Mac drove, he made a gun out of thumb and forefinger and relived the fight that had freed Desmond. Moving to one side, he could have plugged Means. Or if Desmond had acted sooner. Or . . .
“Bang.” He curled his thumb in mock firing. “He should have been a dead man.”
There was no changing the fight. Desmond was safe. Two of the bounty hunters had gotten what they deserved. And the herd was within a day of Fort Sumner. The end of the drive, if they sold the beeves to the Army. Otherwise, it was on to Santa Fe or even Denver.
This journey had been entirely different from his drive to Abilene. The dangers changed, and the dread of a bounty hunter breathing down his neck caused him to be jumpy. But they hadn’t lost near as many cattle as on his other drive, in spite of the dangerous Pecos crossing and the storm and stampede afterward. The Comanches hadn’t made off with many cattle, and there had been few towns along the way to demand tribute in exchange for passage. Texas was wide open and lonely country, as was this part of New Mexico Territory.
Mac liked that.
He jerked around, his revolver out and ready as he heard a galloping horse closing on the chuckwagon from behind. When he saw Hiram Flowers, he slipped the pistol back into the holster.
“No call to be that jumpy, Mac. If Means didn’t bleed to death a hundred miles behind us, he gave up.”
“Means didn’t have the look of a man who would give up. And we never found the other brother’s body.”
“Is that why every night you take a horse and ride back along the trail? Looking for any trace of him?”
Mac changed the subject by asking, “What’s ahead? I’ve never been to Fort Sumner before.”
He felt uneasy talking about the bounty hunters they had cut down. He realized he was turning into a belt-and-suspenders man, never feeling quite secure enough. Seeing the bullet-riddled bodies of his enemies would have smoothed his ruffled feathers.
“The only time I was there was with Desmond’s pa,” Flowers said in answer to Mac’s question about their destination. “The post is an important one for the Army, and they like to keep it well supplied, but that’s not saying too much. Their paymaster up at Fort Union, north of Santa Fe, sorta forgets about frontier outposts now and again. They might be flush with money to buy beef or they might not have two nickels to rub together. Since they closed Bosque Redondo and let the Navajos and Mescaleros go back to their reservations, there’s not much going on at the post. We’re going to put the herd to pasture to fatten them up for a week or so while me and you go on into the post to palaver with the quartermaster.”
“Why not bring Desmond along?” Mac suggested. “This is his herd, more or less.”
Flowers rubbed his stubbled chin and nodded.
“Good idea, Mac. You’ve got a head on your shoulders. I hope you’ll consider stayin’ with the Circle Arrow after the drive. Most of them cowboys will head for other jobs. I’d appreciate it if you considered staying on permanent-like.”
Mac had been afraid Flowers would ask him to do this very thing. Only willpower kept him from glancing back again, just to be sure Means wasn’t catching up. Or some other bounty hunter Pierre Leclerc had set on his trail. Returning to the Circle Arrow outside Fort Worth would give him a permanent address and make it easier for anyone hunting for him to find him. But he liked Flowers. Hell, he even liked Desmond, just a little.
And his curiosity was eating him alive about Flowers and Mercedes Sullivan. How would that romance turn out, even if Flowers was down in the mouth about even saying more than “Good morning, ma’am” to the lovely ranch owner?
“Is this all open range? We just find a patch of grass and let the cattle graze?”
“That’s about it. Most of the countryside is Spanish land grant. The king of Spain deeded it to his loyal soldiers and financial backers more’n a hundred years ago. Parts are open. New ranchers have moved in, but they don’t have much claim to the land, unless they buy it from the Spanish. Then the Mexicans have come up with their herds and ways in the past ten or fifteen years. In spite of so many folks crowding in, there’s plenty of land for us to use.”
Mac looked into the hazy distance to the west where purple mountains rose. The Sacramento Mountains, he had been told. It was quite a ways over there. And the land between was prime grassland, perfect for fattening cattle. The Circle Arrow beeves would appreciate it.
“You going right on into town?” Mac tried to settle down. Losing himself in the middle of a crowd, even if the town was as small as Fort Sumner, pleased him. A drink or two would go down the gullet smooth and warm after being on the trail so long.
“Park the chuckwagon and let’s go. And it’s a good idea to take Desmond with us.” Flowers added dryly, “You can look after him.”
Mac bristled, then saw Flowers was joking. He smiled ruefully.
It took the better part of an hour to get the wagon set up and the team tended to before he joined Flowers and Desmond. Both were antsy about getting into town.
“Sure are a lot of cattle around here,” Desmond said. “Can we get a fair price?”
“Doesn’t matter that much,” Flowers said. “If they won’t buy our beeves, we’ll push on to Santa Fe or even Denver and sell them there. The railroad can ship them west, and we’ll see a handsome profit.”
“That’s another six hundred miles,” Mac said. Staying with the Circle Arrow outfit that much longer worried him. Then he decided Denver was as good a place to part company as Fort Sumner. It added another month of pay to his poke, and the company wasn’t all that bad.
“There’s the Army purchasing office. Let’s get business out of the way,” Flowers said.
The town looked like any other sleepy southwestern settlement. Mac guessed the Army post lay somewhere to the north. Places like this were peaceable enough, especially after the Navajos had been sent packing from Bosque Redondo. The Apaches who had been on the reservation with them trickled back to their homes in the Sacramento Mountains and beyond. Yes, sir, this was a quiet enough place now.
“Do I have to go? Business bores me.”
Both Mac and Flowers glared at Desmond. He reluctantly dismounted and followed the trail boss into the cramped office.
Inside was cool because of the thick adobe walls and small windows. A few maps provided the only wall decorations. A lieutenant sat behind the battered desk poring over a ledger. His uniform was crisp and he looked hardly old enough to have graduated from West Point, although the heavy ring on his finger told a different story. His rumpled blond hair showed he had worn his hat recently and had not bothered to comb the mop. That told Mac the officer had arrived just ahead of them. From his expression when he saw who walked into his office, Mac doubted they’d be in Fort Sumner longer than it took to let the cattle rest and graze.
He was both right and wrong.
“What’s the Army’s need for cattle? We got a herd of prime longhorns waiting to be bought and et by hungry soldiers,” Flowers said.
“The Army’s got quite a need for fresh meat, sir.” The lieutenant pointed to a single chair. Flowers took it while Mac stood to one side and Desmond prowled about the sparse office, bored.
“Then we can do business. I—”
“Wait. Before you go on, let me inform you about our . . . situation.”
“There’s no situation we can’t handle,” Flowers said with some confidence.
“Our operating funds have been held up for another few weeks. In truth, I am not sure when the funds will arrive. They are being sent down from Fort Union.”
“Fort Union’s up north,” Mac said. “On the trail to Denver. Maybe we can drive the herd up that direction and sell there.”
“I am sure they would appreciate such a gesture, though Union is the central supply depot for all of New Mexico Territory. They, of all the posts, will have adequate supplies.” The lieutenant got a sour look. “Unlike here. We struggle in the midst of plenty.”
“Plenty of cattle, you mean?”
The lieutenant nodded.
“Our problem is keeping a cork tamped into a bottle full of animosity here. The ranchers engage in what amounts to war between one another, and—” He stopped suddenly, took a breath, and let it out slowly. “That is none of your concern. If you wait a week, we will dicker for your cattle, or at least some of them, depending on how many you offer.”
“Got close to nine hundred head,” Flowers said.
“More than we need, but we can use two hundred head immediately.”
“Fork over some money and you’ve got a deal.”
“You weren’t listening, Mister Flowers,” Mac said, eyeing the officer carefully. “They don’t have one red cent.”
“Not right now. I can issue an IOU guaranteed by the U.S. Army, to be paid when our disbursement funds arrive.”
“But you don’t know when that’ll be?”
The answer was written on the lieutenant’s face. Not only did he not know, there was a chance the money would never arrive.
“I have to pay my hands. Giving them a piece of paper with a mark on it promising pay at some future time isn’t going to set well with any of them. It don’t with me, either.”
“Then, sir, I suggest you find other markets for your beef. As much as the military’s need for it is great, you must either sell elsewhere or wait.”
“Reckon that settles the matter. We’ll wait.” Flowers cleared his throat. “We’ll wait and find some other market.”
Mac wondered how often the lieutenant had heard those very words. The young man closed the ledger and leaned forward, elbows on the desk. It wobbled a little because one leg was shorter than the others. The lieutenant adjusted unconsciously, used to it.
“Selling around here might be more difficult than you realize. I do, however, wish you luck. Good day.”
Dismissed, they left and stepped out into the bright New Mexico sun. Mac pulled his hat brim down to shield his eyes. The hat almost fell to pieces. The crown had been kicked out by a cow, and a couple of bullet holes in the brim had grown until they were the size of a two-bit piece. If he’d received his trail pay, he would have gone hunting for a new hat.
“I need to ask around about selling some of the cattle. If I get enough, we’ll have money to buy supplies to get us to Denver.” Flowers shook his head. “I’d prefer to sell here to the Army. What do you think the chances are of them seeing any money soon?”
Mac had no idea. Desmond said, “Hanging around for a while isn’t going to hurt us. I’m not looking forward to another drive, this time all the way up to Denver.”
“You can always go back to Fort Worth,” Mac said. He had a sour taste in his mouth from hearing the lieutenant’s tale of woe and why the Army wasn’t in the market for cattle right now. Getting what was owed him wasn’t possible. He knew how low on cash Flowers was. Without the cattle being sold, nobody on the drive would get paid.
“Trying to get rid of me? Because you’re embarrassed at baking such a terrible fruit pie? You ought to be. I’ve still got seeds stuck between my teeth.”
Mac started to snap back, then realized this was the first time Desmond had made any kind of a joke. Desmond was funning him when all he had done until now was gripe his fool head off. That was real progress.
“Go on, find a window and sit under it so you can smell a cooling pie and tell me mine wasn’t better.”
“The only way it’d be better is that I can’t afford to buy even a slice, no matter what it’s made from,” Desmond said.
“Here, you two. I’ve got almost fifty cents. Go get yourselves some pie.” Flowers looked disgusted. “Real men would buy a drink, but no, I got a cook and a drover who want pie. Get on along now. I have to do some business so we can all get a shot of real rotgut.”
The trail boss stalked off, leaving Mac and Desmond on their own.
“There’s a restaurant that looks like it sells pie.” Mac pointed to a hole-in-the-wall adobe building down the street. A buggy parked to the side gave the only hint that the place was open for business.
They went in and looked around the cool, dim dining room. Both men froze when they saw the lone customer.
Mac forced himself to let out the breath he unconsciously held. He had seen prettier women in his day, but right now he couldn’t remember where or when.
The young woman at the back table eating with precise bites wore a Mexican-style dress, bright and cheerful and matching her looks perfectly. She glanced up and smiled almost shyly. Mac thought the sun had come out. Her dark eyes and delicate face, high cheekbones, and carefully plucked eyebrows showed both intelligence and genteel upbringing.
“I want what she’s having,” Desmond said.
“Sit down and let’s order. We’ve got no call to bother her while she’s eating.” Mac’s mind raced trying to find such a reason to introduce himself. If he had known the women in Fort Sumner looked this lovely, he wouldn’t have complained at all about the trail drive. The destination was worthy of shooting his way through murderous bounty hunters and crossing swollen rivers.
“What’ll you gents like?” The waiter gave them a quick once-over and said, “You’re likely sick of steak. Got good fried chicken.”
“Pie,” Desmond said. “What kind of pie do you have?”
“I knew it. You’re straight off the trail and haven’t seen any fruit in a spell. Well, you’re in luck. We got peach and we got apple.”
“All right,” Mac said.
“Which will it be?” The waiter grinned. “Both? A slice of each for both of you?”
“That’ll be so close to heaven that I am speechless,” Desmond said.
“If you knew him, you’d know how unusual that is.” Mac enjoyed being able to joke with Desmond. All it took to break through his arrogance was saving him from a stampede, rescuing him from being kidnapped, and serving up a prickly pear pie that was hardly fit for consumption by man or beast.
The pie came. Both men tucked into it. Mac started with the peach, Desmond the apple. It looked like a race to the last crumb when they each finished. They leaned back and eyed the spotless plates in front of them.
“I could eat the whole damned pie,” Desmond said. He hastily looked at the woman, worried he might have been overheard and his language offended her.
Mac hoped it had so he could apologize to her. He swung around in the chair and hesitated. The waiter was speaking in low tones to the woman. She looked distraught and he wasn’t pleased.
