.45-Caliber Desperado (10 page)

While the other men except for Brouschard laughed and hollered and clapped, Cuno hauled Camilla down a twisting corridor in the rocks and down a slight grade toward where a spring bubbled around sand and gravel and bits of green grass.

“Okay, cowboy,” Camilla said, when the men were out of sight behind a stone scarp behind her and Cuno, “you can put me down now. I think they get the drift, as you gringos say.”

He stopped by the spring, set the girl down before him. He kept his arms around her. His blood surged hotly in his veins, dulling the pain in other parts of his body.

She stared up at him, her brown eyes darkening. Her cheeks flushed and her bosom swelled behind her calico blouse. Pulling her brusquely toward him, Cuno swept her hair back from her face, nudged her chin up, and kissed her.

He hadn't had a woman in a long time. His loins warmed.

She tasted good.

“FEELS LIKE SUNDAY around here,” said Sheriff Walt McQueen, glancing at Spurr, who rode off McQueen's left stirrup. “Don't it feel just like Sunday?”

“It ain't Sunday,” said Sheriff Dusty Mason, who was leading the horse on which Marvin Candles rode, hands tied to the saddle horn. “Think it might be Tuesday.”

“I ain't sayin' it
is
Sunday,” McQueen said testily. “I'm sayin' it feels like Sunday.”

Spurr was looking around the buildings lining Limon's main street, which was all but deserted except for small groups of horses standing at hitchracks fronting saloons. The only sound was the wind and the ticking of windblown dust against the sides of buildings.

The wind had picked up early that morning, not long after the five lawmen had left the roadhouse where they'd captured the Maiden Killer, and had pelted them raw with dirt and sand the entire four-hour ride to Limon. No, there was another sound. Spurr heard it beneath the eerily moaning wind. The sound of pounding.

It seemed to be coming from Jurgens's Undertaking Parlor, a long, low building that sat just ahead and on the left side of the street. It was flanked by a large cottonwood that was nearly doubled over by the wind.

A man's shout rose from behind the two large sliding doors on the building's east side. The doors were open a foot, and in this crack a dog suddenly appeared. The little, weed-colored, long-nosed cur bolted out the gap with a short-topped stockman's boot in its jaws. The dog's eyes sparked with deviltry. Spurr's roan spooked, rearing slightly, as the dog dashed past him and shot straight across the street with its tail between its legs.

Behind the sliding doors, the man shouted again. Spurr and the other lawmen, including McQueen and his two deputies from Holyoke, drew their mounts to a halt as a man poked his broad, wrinkled, mustached face out between the doors, snarling like a rabid cur himself.

“That dog!” he shouted, shouldering out between the doors and raising a double-barreled shotgun to his shoulder. “The goddamn Widow Wallace's dog stole the marshal's boot. I told her . . . I told her if I saw him again—!”

The buckshot blew up dust in the street just behind the cur's back legs as the dog dashed into a narrow break between two buildings on the street's north side. The report echoed briefly before the thunder was swallowed by the wind.

“I told her I'd kill the damn mutt and throw him through her goddamn front window!” the man cried through gritted teeth, lowering the barn blaster and shaking his fist at the break into which the dog had disappeared.

“Marshal's boot?” Spurr said. “You mean the marshal of Limon?”

The man who was apparently Jurgens, the undertaker, nodded as he turned to Spurr and then to the other badge wearers around him. “Sure enough,” he said with a faint German accent, lifting his voice to be heard above the wind. “Killed him deader'n last night's supper, that gang did. Over there by the Arkansas, between town and the prison.”

He nodded to indicate the far side of Limon and beyond, where the prison sat a mile away like some sprawling medieval castle misplaced here on the windblown prairie.

Spurr looked toward where the cur had disappeared, and glowered. He'd known the Limon town marshal, Willard Overcast, from his old hide-hunting days. Another lawman dead. And a mangy mutt had run off with the boot Overcast had intended to be buried in.

It was a damn cruel world, the old marshal absently reflected, the image of the dead blonde, Lucy Murphy, still clear in his head.

“Who's in charge?” Dusty Mason wanted to know.

“James T. Vernon,” said the undertaker, canting his head toward the stone jailhouse at the west edge of town. “We appointed him constable in an emergency town meeting last night. Older'n them hills yonder, but he's the only one who'd take it. That breakout at the prison, leaving six citizens dead and a whole bunch of prison guards and the warden without his nose and topknot, has got everyone around here feelin' owly.”

Spurr looked out at the prison obscured by windblown dust, and asked, “Who's in charge at the pen?”

“Army group from Fort Sewald. Overcast sent a telegram as soon as he heard them Gatlings barking over to the prison. Then he formed a posse and they laid low at the creek, waiting for the break the sheriff figured was comin'.”

The undertaker clucked and shook his head. “Well, if you fellas will excuse me, I got a load of business all sudden-like. Still makin' coffins. Funerals start tomorrow.” He looked toward a small cemetery topping a low, brushy rise north of town, where two men were busy digging. “The gravedigger had to hire on a local boy to help.”

Spurr glanced at McQueen. “I'm gonna stow my prisoner in the hoosegow yonder, under the guard of James T. Vernon. Then we'll ride out to the prison, see what's what.”

“Like hell you are!” the Maiden Killer yelled. “You can't leave me under lock and key in this jerkwater town, with some old man who's likely so senile he'll forget to feed me!”

“Shut up, Marvin,” Spurr and McQueen said in unison as they and the three other lawmen gigged their horses on up the street.

 

“Scalped him,” Major Pike Donleavy said, blowing cigar smoke out the warden's open office door. “Blew a hole in his leg, another in his knee. Crippled the poor man for life. Then Mateo de Cava blew his nose off. Or the end of it, anyways. Don't know how in the hell you get a good breath without a nose but he seems to be managing good enough through his mouth. Between screams, that is.”

The paunchy, round-faced, high-cheekboned major from Fort Sewald shook his head and tapped ashes off the end of his cigar. “He's down in the infirmary. The prison doctor's lookin' after him. Keeps him drunk on ether and laudanum, but he was screamin' all night, I'm told. My men and I didn't arrive until just a couple hours ago. Rode all night after we got the telegram from Overcast.”

“Is the warden gonna make it?” Spurr asked.

He walked from where he'd sat on a visitor's chair in front of the warden's desk and stood beside the major. Both men stared outside where order was finally being reestablished in the blood-splattered prison yard, the bodies of the dead prisoners and guards being hauled off by surviving guards and the major's men in cavalry blues.

“Doubt it,” said the major. “If the blood loss alone doesn't kill him, gangrene'll set in. Usually does. Seen enough men taken by it during the war.”

“I'd sure like to know how in the hell he let this happen. This is a maximum-security federal prison, for chrissakes.”

Spurr fired a match and turned to regard two of the roofed guard towers as he touched the flame to his cheroot, an indulgence proscribed by his doctor in Buffaloville. “Four Gatling guns and thirty guards. With a good half mile of open ground in all directions. How does a group of twenty or so just ride in and sack the place?”

“Good question,” Major Donleavy said, turning his head as three soldiers rode through the prison's open front gates, leading three bedraggled, barefoot men in prison stripes by riatas looped around their waists. The escapees looked ready to drop. “Ah, three more. Likely, after my reinforcements have arrived from Camp Collins, we'll have all those prisoners who hightailed it after the break safely back behind bars. Except, probably, those who managed to grab some horses from some woodcutters on a creek just north of here.”

“Who'd they come for, Major? Mateo de Cava's gang. Who'd they break out?”

“When the warden was still coherent he said they—meaning de Cava as well as a Mexican girl identified as his sister—came for . . . for . . .” The major turned and started walking toward the warden's desk, where he'd left a sheet of notes he'd scribbled during his interview of the warden.

McQueen was standing by the desk, as the other lawmen had taken up the rest of the visitor chairs. The Holyoke sheriff looked down at the paper, jabbing a finger at it and scowling. “Cuno Massey.”

“Yes, Massey,” the major said, turning back to the open door. “An unusual name. You'd think I'd remember it. Cuno Massey.” He enunciated each word clearly, separately then poked his cigar into his mouth, and puffed. “A gringo. Odd for a gang led by a notorious Mexican desperado to—”

“Cuno Massey?” This from Sheriff Mason, perched on a corner of the warden's desk, a stove match protruding from a corner of his mouth. “I know that name.”

Spurr and the other men in the room looked at him.

“Matter of fact, I arrested him,” Mason said. “He killed a trio of territorial marshals in the Rawhides last winter. They caught him runnin' rifles to the Utes.”

“Gun runner,” Spurr said, the disdain plain in his voice. There were few men more diabolical than those who provided Indians with rifles with which they could wreak havoc on the people of the men who'd armed them purely for money. “Figures he'd be aligned with de Cava. Heard he ran rifles along the Arizona border.”

“Who else did they take out, Major?” Mason asked.

“An old train robber named Frank Skinner. A Mex named Arguello, but my men found him dead a few hours ago. Likely wounded in the skirmish with the townsmen on the Arkansas.”

The old marshal turned to Donleavy. “I take it you have men tracking them killers?”

Donleavy shook his head. “I came with only twenty men. There's been an outbreak of typhoid at Fort Sewald. At the moment, we're badly under-garrisoned. I'm hoping that Camp Collins is sending enough men that they can leave some to help out here and some to send after de Cava.”

“How long till they get here?” asked Mason, his blood up. The name Massey had lit a fire inside him. “De Cava's probably headed for the border.”

“Another twenty-four hours by train.” The major blew a smoke plume through the open door and looked at Spurr. “By now, every lawman in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah has heard what happened here. Thank god for the telegraph. Those lawmen will be keeping a close eye out for de Cava. I'm betting the gang won't make it as far as Albuquerque.”

“I wouldn't count on that, Major.”

Spurr stuck his cheroot between his teeth and walked over to a cherry table that sat beneath a large, framed, flyspecked map of Colorado Territory. On the table were four decanters of different colors and sizes. He turned a goblet right side up and poured a liberal jigger of what looked like brandy. He held the glass up and looked at the amber liquid, swirling it between his dirty, blunt fingers.

“De Cava is a killing machine. Every man ridin' with him is mean enough to shoot his own mother for overcookin' his eggs. There ain't no local lawmen anywhere on the frontier ready to deal with a herd of wildcats like this bunch.”

“What are you suggesting, Deputy?” The major looked piqued. “I have five men out chasing escaped prisoners. The rest I need here to keep the other monkeys in their barrel. I'd suggest forming a posse from Limon, but Overcast already tried that, and the undertaker there is making enough money to buy a stake and move to Sherman Avenue in Denver.”

“I ain't suggestin' nothin',” Spurr said, throwing back half the brandy. “I'm sayin' someone's gotta go after 'em now. While their trail's still warm.” He threw back the rest of the shot and slammed the glass down on the table. “I reckon that means us, fellas,” he said raspily, the brandy searing his tonsils as he shuttled his glance to the four other lawmen in the room.

McQueen and his two deputies, both in their early twenties, regarded him skeptically. He knew what they were thinking. Could the old man make it? They'd likely seen him struggle to get mounted this morning, in the wake of the mule kick to the chest he'd endured in the roadhouse the day before.

He poked his cigar between his teeth, shouldered his rifle, and brushed past Donleavy on his way out the door.

“Hold on, hold on,” yelled Dusty Mason, quickly pouring himself a shot of the warden's brandy, throwing it back, and choking on it. He'd arrested Massey, and he, by god, would make damn sure the lawman-killing younker whose fresh face belied his obviously black heart would pay for his sins.

“Wait for me, damnit, Spurr!”

IT FELT GOOD, being free.

Even better than he'd thought it would when he'd fantasized about it all those long months in the prison, figuring he'd spend the rest of his life there, brawling for the warden's amusement, fighting for every drop of water, every bite of rancid food.

But now that he was out he took special note of the grass and the sage and the hat-shaped bluffs and sand-colored cliffs cropping up around him here east of the mountains that loomed like a perpetual storm. He loved the sky here. It was all around, and clouds didn't so much slide across it as pile up on top of him so that he had to stretch his neck back to get a look at those big, gray, billowy thunderheads.