Part 6 (2/2)
Considine cursed again and pushed through the crowd toward the man, Eddie Tomlain, a young outlaw from Kansas. Knowing Considine's gun reputation, Tomlain had called him out in the main street of Tularosa one drunken Sat.u.r.day night. Considine had known a good, albeit green and ga.s.sy, cold-steel artist when he saw one, so he'd shot the kid's gun out of his hand, beat him to a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp, and invited him into the Thunder Riders.
”Ah, s.h.i.+t, Eddie.” Considine reached up to pull the kid's crossed arms away from his lower right side. ”What the h.e.l.l those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds do to you?”
Tomlain raked out through gritted teeth, ”I'll be all right, Jack. Bullet went through my side. I'll be all right . . . once I get to O'Toole's.”
”Well, you sure got you a nice horse there, Eddie.” Considine stepped back to inspect the horse. Wolf lowered his head and gave Considine an angry stare, expanding and contracting his nostrils. ”Where'd you find him?”
Tomlain forced a smile, and blood gushed from one corner of his mouth. ”He was tied in front of the mercantile. Sure is a fine one, ain't he?”
As he reached out to pat the black's sleek neck, the horse lunged suddenly, lifting its front hooves a good six feet in the air and loosing a shrill whinny. Considine bolted back with a start as Tomlain gave a cry and tumbled off the saddle, somersaulting and hitting the ground with a heavy thud and an anguished grunt. Considine grabbed the black's reins, planted his heels in the turf, and held tight as the horse whipped around, buck-kicking, then rising off its front hooves once more.
The horse nearly pulled Considine off his feet, but the desperado leader held the reins taut and didn't let the horse turn. With this stallion's strength and fury, if he got turned around, he'd be halfway back to town in five minutes.
”Help me, Latigo!” Considine shouted as the horse began to pitch once more.
The biggest, most muscular man in the group-Latigo Hayes-rushed over and grabbed the reins in front of Considine. When the men got the horse reined down, Latigo held the reins up close to the bit, then led the horse a few yards away and tied it tightly to a stout cottonwood.
”Fine horse,” said Latigo in his slight German accent, running a hand along the quivering beast's arched neck. ”Boy, is he p.i.s.sed!”
Considine had already turned back to Tomlain. Several of the others stood around him as well, while the rest of the group watered their horses or separated the bags of gold coins for packing on a couple of stage mounts.
Breathing hard, Tomlain looked up at Considine. ”I reckon I'm gonna need a hand up,” he said with a chuckle. ”D-d.a.m.n hoss. I'm gonna knock some sense into his head . . . show him who's boss.”
Considine glanced at the others gathered around the wounded desperado, then smoothed his mustache and pinched his denims up his thighs, and squatted down. ”You took a bad one, Eddie.” He removed his hat and worried the brim with his fingers. ”I hate to remind you of the rules at a time like this, but . . . well, you know we can't let wounded riders slow down the rest of the group. And we couldn't leave you here. One, it wouldn't be fair to you. Apaches or bobcats might find you. Two, if a lawman found you, he might make you tell him where we're headed.”
Tomlain's eyes turned dark in the sunlight as his chest rose and fell, blood gus.h.i.+ng out from the hole in his side, sopping his s.h.i.+rt and vest. ”You son of a-”
His right hand reached for the Smith & Wesson holstered low on his right thigh in a black rig he'd had tooled and st.i.tched in Durango on their last trip to Mexico. Considine's own hand closed around the gun's grips before Tomlain's could reach it, however, and he slid the .45 from the holster.
He held the oiled weapon up close to his face, looking it over. ”Sorry, Eddie. Anyone you want me to notify?”
”Come on, Jack. I can ride. Put me back on my horse.”
Considine sighed, stood, and regarded the other five men facing him. Anjanette stood off to his left. The other woman, Toots, stood near Anjanette, rummaging around in her saddlebags as she glanced over her right shoulder at Considine.
”I did the last one, so I ain't gonna do Tomlain. I don't wanna get the reputation of bein' an executioner executioner.” He glanced at a short, sharp-featured man in a bowler hat decorated with bear claws, with a string of wolf teeth around his long, thin neck. ”Luther, I know you and Eddie were tight, so I won't ask you.”
Considine raked his gaze across the other four men, his eyes expectant, waiting.
”Hold on.” It was Toots, standing beside her horse and facing the group, with a hand-rolled cigarette drooping from her lips. She held a lucifer in her left hand. A smile shaped itself slowly on her round, fleshy face, the pug nose peeling from sunburn.
She sc.r.a.ped the lucifer to life on the cartridge belt wrapped around her thick waist, on the outside of her wool poncho and deerskin leggings, and cupped her hands to the cigarette, puffing smoke. Drawing deep on the quirley and tossing down the spent match, she walked over and took the Smith & Wesson out of Considine's hand. Staring at the desperado leader, she held the gun out toward Anjanette.
”If she wants to be in this group, let her show how much sand she's got under those purty t.i.ts.”
Chapter 8.
Following the tracks of the dozen galloping riders and the stagecoach fishtailing through the chaparral, deputy U.S. marshal Vince Patchen galloped his steeldust over a low b.u.t.te crest and down the other side. He followed the tracks and the trail of torn sage and cactus toward a mesquite thicket standing in a shallow bowl and checked the steeldust down twenty yards from the abandoned stage.
The six-hitch team was gone, their harness scattered about the scrub, the wagon tongue drooping.
Dismounting, Patchen shucked his rifle, levered a round, and approached the stage warily, swinging his head from left to right. He didn't want to get himself bushwhacked as his old ranger friend, Wilson Pyle, and Pyle's young partner had done.
Patchen squeezed the Henry in his gloved hands and licked his lips. Poor sons of b.i.t.c.hes had been shot down like dogs.
When he'd scrutinized the area thoroughly, concluding the gang had moved on, Patchen walked back to the stage and knelt down beside a woman lying near the coach's open door, in a blood-splattered green traveling outfit. The woman's sandy blond hair had fallen from its bun to hang in disarray about her pretty face.
Patchen didn't bother lowering his head to listen for a breath. The open eyes were death-glazed.
Horse hooves thudded and tack squawked behind him. He straightened, looked over his shoulder at the twelve-man posse galloping toward him, with Speares in the lead, then poked his head through the stage door. Inside the coach, three more bodies lay, b.l.o.o.d.y and broken, in a single pool of slowly congealing blood on the floor between the seats. Flies droned. The blood smell hung heavy in the close quarters.
”I figured they'd dump the stage sooner or later.” Speares drew up beside Patchen's steeldust. Blood spotted the thick gauze wrap over his nose. Adjusting the bandage with one hand, he said, ”They'll be picking up the pace now, headin' for the border, no doubt.”
”That means we're gonna have to pick up the pace,” Patchen said, his jaw hard as he raked his gaze over the posse pulling up to either side and behind Speares. The catch party was made up mostly of shop owners and their sons, with one Mexican vaquero and three Anglo market hunters whom Speares had la.s.soed in one of Saber Creek's saloons.
”I can't ride any faster than this,” said the bank owner, Franklin, wincing as, with one hand on the cantle, he s.h.i.+fted in his saddle. ”You men better go on ahead. I'll only slow you down. I'll go back and alert the army out at Fort Chiricahua, have them send a patrol-”
He stopped as Speares raised his Remington to his head and thumbed back the hammer. ”Isn't that your your money we're chasin', Franklin?” money we're chasin', Franklin?”
As the banker turned toward the sheriff, his lower jaw dropped, his face flus.h.i.+ng with outrage. ”Really, Speares!”
Speares squinted one eye. ”Ain't you the one responsible for all that Wells Fargo gold? You tell me if I'm wrong.”
The others, except Patchen, snickered as Speares held his gun barrel against the banker's left temple. Franklin's mouth opened and closed several times before he finally loosed a few words. ”Well . . . yes, of course I'm responsible. But-”
”But nothin',” Speares said through gritted teeth. ”I'm shorthanded the way it is, since all my deputies were gunned down tryin' to protect your gold. Now, I realize you ain't no gun hand, but, by G.o.d, I need every warm body I got, if for nothin' more than keepin' an eye out for an ambush. In other words, you ain't goin' nowhere but south with me and this posse, and you ain't comin' back till either you're you're dead or we've killed every last one of that bunch of border snipes that invaded dead or we've killed every last one of that bunch of border snipes that invaded my town my town.”
Franklin s.h.i.+fted his eyes nervously, swallowed. ”You don't think someone should notify the army?”
”Take too long. Besides, those blue-bellies got their hands full with them bronco Apaches.” Speares pushed the revolver's barrel more firmly against the banker's head, causing Franklin to stretch his lips back from his gold-capped teeth. ”Have we come to an understanding now, Mr. Franklin?”
The banker slid his gaze to Patchen, standing before the posse, grinning and holding his Henry over his shoulder. Finding no help there, Franklin returned his gaze to Speares. ”I guess I have, Sheriff-”
A voice from behind cut him off. ”What I wanna know is what's in it for us us?”
Patchen glanced at the man riding directly behind Speares-one of the market hunters in a broad-brimmed hat, chaps, and a long tan duster. He was probably twenty-five and, like his two compatriots, carried himself like a man who knew how to use his well-tended sidearms.
”I mean,” the man said, sliding his flinty gaze to the sheriff, ”I think there should be a reward.”
”Yeah,” said the man sitting on an Appaloosa to his right. ”Me and Jim and Nudge was just ridin' through when that gold was. .h.i.t. We got no ties to this town. We hunt for a livin', and by G.o.d if we're gonna hunt that gang of cutthroats and your loot, we want a re reward!”
Speares gigged his horse forward, turned it around to face the three market hunters. ”They took a girl. That ain't enough for ya?”
The one on the far right glanced at the other two, then turned back to Speares. ”h.e.l.l, her old man ain't even ridin' after her. Last I saw, he was curled up drunk behind his bar.”
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