Part 20 (1/2)
Wolf pitched with an enraged scream, wide eyes glowing with reflected starlight, mane buffeting wildly. He drove his front hooves into the man's gut and chest and groin, then bounded up on his back legs to repeat the maneuver until Considine's shrieks subsided to guttural sobs and then, finally, silence.
Holding his right hand over his wounded arm to stem the blood flow, Yakima gained his feet and moved to the edge of the streambed. Wolf continued pitching, snorting, and blowing, shaking his head wildly, mercilessly pummeling the outlaw with his front hooves.
On the rocks, Considine looked like a smashed scare-crow, half stripped, broken, and b.l.o.o.d.y. He moved only when the horse's hooves hammered him, his dead body bouncing up and down and rolling among the rocks.
Yakima walked into the streambed, placed his hands on the horse's neck. Wolf, about to bound off his front hooves once more, froze. He turned his head toward Yakima, pupils expanding and contracting, vapor jetting from his nostrils, ears twitching. Blood matted the top of his head, rippling down the white blaze on his snout.
”Easy, boy,” Yakima said, running his hand up the horse's sweat-lathered neck toward his head. ”You nailed him, pard.”
He held Wolf's head still as he inspected the wound behind his ear. There was a lot of blood, but it appeared the bullet had ricocheted off the horse's skull.
Yakima chuckled as he probed the inch-wide gash with his fingers, holding the horse's snorting head still between his arms. ”That hard head of yours saved your life, you stubborn son of a b.i.t.c.h.”
He grabbed the reins, adjusted the saddle, and swung heavily into the leather. He gigged the black back up the hill, plodding slowly. When he saw the dark figure in the gra.s.s, he stepped down from Wolf's back and knelt beside Anjanette. She lay twisted on one side, her face in the gra.s.s, hair fanned out around her head.
The wound in the middle of her slender back had made a large black stain. He placed his hand on her shoulder, about to turn her over, but stopped. Instead, he lowered his hand to her lush hair, caressed the back of her neck.
Footsteps down the hill jerked his head up.
When Patchen announced himself, Yakima rose slowly, removed his neckerchief and wrapped it around his arm. Stooping, he snaked his arms under the dead girl, then straightened and laid her body facedown across his saddle.
Patchen moved up on his right, glancing at the body. ”Who killed the girl?”
Yakima began leading the horse down the hill toward the ruins. ”I reckon I did.”
Epilogue.Yakima and the lawmen built a fire in a ravine half a mile from the ruins, trying to avoid desperadoes, Indians, and other predators possibly summoned by the gunfire and the smell of fresh carrion.
Patchen and Yakima dug the bullets out of each other's hides and sutured the wounds. Because Patchen had lost the most blood and was thus the shakiest-he'd been wounded twice and had lost a finger-Yakima set to the task of sterilizing his skinning knife and digging the three rounds out of Speares's neck, thigh, and upper right chest.
Sitting against his saddle, Speares guzzled whiskey and cursed every time the knife point penetrated a b.l.o.o.d.y, ragged wound.
”s.h.i.+t, breed,” he rasped as Yakima st.i.tched the neck wound closed. Firelight flashed off the b.l.o.o.d.y needle. ”I believe you're enjoying this!”
Yakima grunted and shoved the needle through another pinch of b.l.o.o.d.y skin. Speares groaned and threw the bottle back.
The next morning, Yakima tended Wolf's head with mud and whiskey, then buried Anjanette on the ravine's lip, arranging rocks over the grave and erecting a small oak cross. He saw no reason why the others should know that she'd thrown in with the Thunder Riders, so he kept the fact to himself, tucking it back with his guilt at not having turned his gun over to Considine and thus causing her death.
Knowing that Considine probably would have killed them both did little to temper the pain. And knowing that she'd gone willingly with Considine did little to lessen his sorrow that he would never hear her raspy, husky voice again, or glimpse the devilish, earthy glint in her wide brown eyes.
He and the men, having secured the strongbox and the mule they'd need to haul it back across the border, spent three days wallowing in the warm, healing waters cleaving the Canyon of Lost Souls. Wolf ran loose, staying close to Yakima but taking frequent rolls in the stream and, to relieve his growing boredom with the bivouac, bedeviled the men with his attempted shoulder nips.
Yakima and Patchen built a travois for Speares, who couldn't yet ride astraddle. At sunset of their third day in the foggy canyon, they harnessed the travois to the mule and started northward. They rode at night to avoid banditos, rurales, federales federales, and Indians. Not wanting to risk a gunshot, Yakima hunted rabbits and prairie chickens with his Jesus stick and snares. It was a slow, tedious trek, but by the time they reached the border Speares was able to ride his own horse.
They pulled into Saber Creek around two o'clock on a pitch-black morning, the town's dark buildings falling in around them, a dog growling from an alley mouth. The main street was as still as that of a ghost town, though a torch burned on the porch post of one of the brothels and a piano's faint tinkle came from the second story.
”As soon as I secure the strongbox, I know where I'm headin',” Speares said as he angled his horse toward the stone jailhouse. ”Anyone wanna join me? Miss Colette's girls are a mite flat-chested, but they please right fine.”
”No, thanks,” Patchen said. He dismounted in front of the jailhouse to help Speares with the strongbox. ”I think I'll bed down over to the hotel. See you in about three days.”
Speares glanced at Yakima. The swelling had gone out of the sheriff's broken nose, though the bridge was lumpy. The sutures in his neck wound stood up above his collar on the right side of the neck, where Toots's bullet had come within centimeters of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his wick. ”What about you, Yakima? I don't think Miss Colette's got any rules against half-breeds.”
Yakima began to rein Wolf up the street. ”Maybe next time. I'll bed down in the livery barn, pick up my supplies in the morning, and start back to my cabin.”
”There's probably a reward for hauling in the gold,” Patchen said. ”We'll split it three ways.”
Yakima walked Wolf up the dark street. ”I don't have time to wait around for it. Gotta see if the Apaches left me a cabin.”
”Hold on,” Speares said. Clutching his wounded side, he climbed heavily out of the leather and reached into one of his saddlebags. He turned, tossed something up to Yakima, who caught it against his chest.
He opened his hand. A deputy sheriff's star.
Yakima peered over the star at the sheriff.
Speares said, ”I done lost all my deputies. The pay ain't bad, and it's steady.”
Shaking his head, Yakima lowered his hand to toss the badge back to the sheriff but stopped when Speares held up his hand. ”Now, I knew you'd balk. But hold on to that star for a while. Just see how it feels. If it don't feel right in a few days, toss it into the woods.”
Yakima dropped the star in his s.h.i.+rt pocket. ”It's a waste of good tin, but have it your way.”
He pinched his hat brim to the men standing under the jailhouse's brush arbor, then gigged Wolf up the street toward the livery barn.
He spent that night in the same stable as Wolf, then started back north the next morning, riding Wolf and leading his paint horse burdened with twenty-six dollars' worth of dry goods and a couple bottles of whiskey- enough to sustain his quiet life in the mountains for a good long time.
As he jogged the horses up a rise in the rolling desert, he felt the badge against his chest. He plucked it from his pocket, glanced at it.
DEPUTY SHERIFF.
He gave a wry snort. Clutching the star between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, he drew his arm back, intending to toss the badge into a mesquite snag about thirty yards off the trail.
He stopped, pulled his hand down, and opened it. Lifting his gaze from the nickel's worth of tin, he saw Wolf craning his neck to stare back at him, eyes wide, vaguely curious.
”What?” Yakima grunted. ”I'm supposed to swap lead with Apaches the rest of my life?”
He glanced at the star once more, then dropped it into his pocket, b.u.t.toned the flap, and heeled the stallion into a jog through the chaparral, gradually climbing the lonely slopes rising toward Bailey Peak.Ride the trail with Frank Leslie . . .