Part 17 (1/2)
The water dropped back down Considine's legs as he approached the opposite sh.o.r.e. Mad Dog and the other men spread out to his left and slightly behind-all except Tomas, who stood with Toots on the opposite sh.o.r.e, staring across the sliding, fog-shrouded stream at the horses- two duns and a claybank.
Considine stopped several feet in front of the clay belonging to Latigo Hayes and ran his gaze across the horse's saddle. His beard bristled and his face warmed.
Latigo Hayes sat the saddle backward, leaning forward so that his face was pressed against the horse's spotted a.s.s. Latigo's hands and ankles were tied under the horse's belly; his face was turned toward Considine, tongue protruding slightly, sightless eyes half open and staring at something downstream. He wore no hat, and his blond hair was ruffled by the morning breeze.
Considine moved around behind the clay. The other men were moving up around the front of the horses, water sluicing off their underwear bottoms or denims, frowning as they cast their gazes across the three horses' grisly cargoes.
Yasi and the black outlaw, Ben Towers, both sat their own saddles the way Latigo sat his-backward and dead.
Considine looked at Mad Dog staring at him over the a.s.s of Tower's dun gelding. He didn't say anything, but his half-grizzled face looked even more grizzled than usual, the mottled skin drawn tighter across the bone, the right eye narrowed to a slit.
”Banditos?” Considine said, his voice trembling with rage.
”That'd be my guess,” Mad Dog said. ”They seen us carryin' the gold, trailed us here. They're tryin' to pick us off a little at a time until there's nothin' left but the gold.”
”I reckon it's time we all mounted up and got after 'em,” said one of the other riders, holding the bridle of Hayes's paint.
Considine turned and stared up the low hills rising away from the river, toward the surrounding blue mountains growing more and more distinct as the sun rose.
He shook his head. ”That's what they want. So they can run us to a frazzle and bushwhack us somewhere off in them mountains.”
He shuttled his gaze this way and that. Anger was burning in him. Anger and the emotion he enjoyed least-fear. Someone was toying with him, playing a nettling little game of cat and mouse. The stalker hadn't yet gotten the gold, but the fact that they'd wiped out nearly half his gain-so quickly and cunningly-meant that they were winning.
Eventually, they'd get the gold.
The idea of him being whipped like this, by an unknown enemy, was enough to blow the top of his head off.
He gritted his teeth so hard they cracked. ”We'll stay right here. Let them come to us us.”
”I reckon that's the best.” Mad Dog glanced at the others standing around the horses before following Considine's gaze toward the mountains. ”Though I sure would like to run those jaspers down. Teach 'em you don't mess with the Thunder Riders.”
Considine looked around, counting the men they had left. Including Tomas, on the other side of the stream, there were seven.
Considine's eyes darted up toward the ruined mud shacks climbing the canyon's southern wall. ”Hey, who's supposed to be guarding the gold?”
The other six men glanced at each other. Finally, the half-breed Sioux, Quint Broken Bow, turned to Joolie ”clubfoot” Hale.
”I . . . I reckon I was,” Hale said, running a gloved hand through his s.h.a.ggy beard. ”I just come down to see what all the commotion in the river was about.”
Mad Dog's cheek dimpled. ”You mean that gold is sit-tin' up there in them ruins unprotected unprotected?”
Hale backed away toward the river, shuttling his sheepish gaze between Considine and Mad Dog, hemming and hawing and wringing his hands.
”Haul a.s.s, fool!” Considine shouted.
Hale jumped with a start and stumbled into the river, heading for the other sh.o.r.e.
Considine turned to the half-breed. ”Go with him, Quint. From now on I want two men guarding the strongbox at all times!”
He looked again at the three dead men and made a sour expression, eyes narrowed. ”I can't wait wait to meet the smart sonsab.i.t.c.hes who done this! I just can't to meet the smart sonsab.i.t.c.hes who done this! I just can't wait wait!”
Chapter 20.
Yakima woke at midnight. He lifted his head from his saddle, threw his blankets back, reached over in the cold darkness, and jerked Patchen's left boot. The marshal gave a startled grunt and snapped his head up, a hand dropping to the holster on his hip.
”Time to move,” Yakima said quietly.
Patchen froze, glanced at Yakima, then turned and nudged Speares, lying a few feet away. The sheriff, too, woke with a start, looking around wildly until he realized he wasn't about to have his throat cut by the Thunder Riders.
It was dark as tar in the hollow where they'd cold-camped, and Yakima began rolling up his blankets and gathering his gear mostly by feel. Yawning and grumbling but not saying anything, the lawmen followed suit, and in a few minutes all three horses were rigged and ready. The men swung into their saddles, the creaking of the leather sounding dangerously loud in the quiet, frosty night. Low clouds sharpened the slightest sound, but the absence of moon and stars would make Yakima's job in the canyon easier.
He and the lawmen rode southwest. Because of the darkness, they had to hold their horses to a trot. An hour after they'd left the camp, the giant stone walls of an ancient Spanish cathedral rose on a low mesa before them, glowing as though from a faint light within the crumbling, vine-shrouded stone.
At the cathedral's east end, Speares and Patchen checked their horses down among the rubble of the collapsed ceiling and the giant, cracked pillars.
Yakima merely slowed the buckskin as he continued southwest. ”I'll try to lead them this way. Stay alert.”
He batted his heels against his mount's ribs, continuing on across the sloping mesa.
”There he goes again,” Speares complained, leaning forward on his saddle horn.
”You can take it up with him after we've got the gold,” Patchen said, swinging down from his saddle. ”After we've kicked the rest of that gang out with a cold shovel.”
Speares dug in his s.h.i.+rt pocket for his makings sack. ”s.h.i.+t, if that crazy half-breed can sneak into that canyon, find the gold and the girl and and lead that crew into our rifle sights, I might just give him my badge.” lead that crew into our rifle sights, I might just give him my badge.”
Chuckling softly, Patchen led his horse off. ”What makes you think he'd want it?”
Yakima had spent his whole life drifting around the American West and Old Mexico, where he'd done some prospecting a few years ago. He knew that every ride took longer than expected.
Still, the ride back to the warm-river canyon, which he remembered the Yaquis called the Canyon of Lost Souls, was frustratingly long. The ridge before him rose with teeth-gnas.h.i.+ng sluggishness, like a curtain of black velvet inching above the pale fog to stand high and jagged peaked against the clouds.
He skirted the canyon's center, where a previous scouting mission had told him the desperadoes were camped, and crossed the river at a rocky ford a good mile east of the ancient ruins. A few days ago, he'd spotted a notch in the canyon wall-a talus-strewn chimney-and this he and the buckskin negotiated slowly, carefully. The slope was steep, the talus unstable.
Halfway up the ridge, Yakima dismounted and led the horse, wincing at every clatter of falling rock behind him. The desperadoes probably had no pickets this far from the main camp, as they'd lost too many men for such an extravagant precaution, but this was desperado and Yaqui country. It was said that few Indios ventured into the canyon, which was supposedly filled with evil spirits, but it was a known hideout for Yanqui and less superst.i.tious Mexican bandits.
At the top of the ridge, Yakima ripped the blanket and bridle off the horse, turned it south down the slanting ridge crest, and slapped its rump. As the horse trotted away in the darkness, Yakima swung his rifle over his shoulder by its rope lanyard and began making his way east, staying well back from the canyon.
When he'd walked a good mile and found himself staring down the steep canyon wall at three fires s.h.i.+vering in the rocks on his side of the fog-capped river, he sat down and removed his boots and socks. He hadn't been able to get close enough to study the ridge wall in the daylight, so he picked a route now in the darkness and hoped that luck and whatever dark G.o.ds remained in the canyon chose to either smile on him or ignore him.
Hoisting himself over the lip, he crabbed down the wall, grinding his fingers and toes into any dimples or fissures he could find. A couple of times, holds gave way and he found himself hanging by one hand and a foot or, in one case, only the first two fingers of his left hand until he swung back toward the wall and ground his big toe into a crack.
The toe rubbed against something at once leathery, furry, and p.r.i.c.kly, something that apparently made its home in the crack. The bat shot out from under Yakima's foot, screeching. Gritting his teeth, he dug his fingers and toes into the wall and hung there until his heart slowed.
Continuing to spider down the wall, he glanced below. The dark smudge of an ancient mud roof rose slowly toward him. A couple of viga poles protruded from one wall, while a chimney-or what remained of a chimney-climbed the one opposite.
His fingers and toes were leaving blood on the wall behind him by the time he dropped to the mud roof. He bent his knees and hunkered low, praying that the roof would hold. It did. He looked around, hearing nothing but the wind shunting against the stone, the rattle of a falling pebble, and the occasional screech and sinewy flap of a bat somewhere above.