Canyon Song (8 page)

He remembered his red-haired uncle’s grin as he’d shared that line, along with so many of Shakespeare’s finest
. His Uncle Ferris, a bright, self-educated immigrant, had dreamed of being a great actor, but his Irish brogue consigned him to the brutal life of a day laborer. When he could find work at all, that is. When he could talk his way past the hand-scrawled signs, “No Irish Need Apply.”

Still, Ferris’s smile had lit the shared family apartment
. His dream might not have been his future, but it somehow sustained him even more than the few coins he’d brought home.

Quinn knew his uncle had fought to the last gasp inside that fiery tenement
. He knew that Ferris would want his sister’s son to fight just as hard for his life now.

Quinn surprised himself with the fierceness of his desire to comply
. What was
he
but a ruined gambler and a failed lawman? Who was he to wish to live? Since his family’s death, he lacked even a dream like his dead uncle’s to sustain him.

Yet still, he meant to live, if only to find Hamby and his gang and do what he should have years before
. For with this shooting, he felt his ties to Cameron severed. He would make damned sure no other child was scalped and left to die, no other lawman back-shot. Not by Ned Hamby’s men, at least, for they would all be dead.

Strange, how it had been the scalps that sent him flying from his saddle when nothing else in six years had convinced him to care enough to risk bucking Cameron’s orders
. He closed his eyes, trying not to see the blood-caked black hair held tight in Hamby’s fist, trying not to see the filthy smoke that marked the burning hogan.

And then, suddenly, he knew
. Though his two younger sisters’ hair had been sandy blond, not black, though the home that burned around them had been a tenement and not the round hut built by the Navajo, that child’s dying whimpers had merged the two events inside his mind. Perhaps because, as with his mother’s apartment back in New York, his help hadn’t been in time.

Too late, Annie
. Too late because of you
, he’d told the thief. But he’d been wrong, or lying, because his own greed had been responsible. He could have gone back long before she’d robbed him, but his fine horse had too well pleased him, as did his flashy clothes and the pretty company his generous gifts could buy. Annie Faith had been the prettiest of all, always ready with a saucy smile to encourage or a song so soulful that it made him long to hold her tight. But she was only one of many beguiling, heartless creatures that waylaid the unwary on the road of sin.

If Annie hadn’t robbed or shot him, someone else would have, for he’d grown greedy, cheating more and more boldly, cutting corners in his grasping desperation to accumulate more money
. He didn’t want to just go back to help his family. He’d wanted to return a dapper hero, and in the end that vain desire had cost him everything.

He would never forgive himself for that, no more than he would forgive the woman who had robbed him, even though he knew that with her herbs and unguents, Annie Faith had saved his life.

*     *     *

When Canto sidestepped nervously, Anna wondered if he too sensed something, or if his restlessness was only her apprehension communicating itself to the old horse
. A chill breeze stirred to blow the damp ends of her hair into her face. Another tree nearby shook off a portion of its load of snow.

Of course
. The rain had caused some of the snow to melt and shift. And that cracking in the underbrush? It could have been a loose branch settling, or even her imagination. Thinking about the horrors of the past had made her suspect the present. There was nothing here beyond the possibility of her next meal.

The gelding quieted, then stretched out his scrawny neck to grab a mouthful of winter grasses
. Only a few feet beyond him, a cottontail hung beneath a low limb, a wire snare around its neck.

Anna dismounted, then stooped to retrieve the dead rabbit, her knife still held in her right hand
. Barely had her back bent when something huge and tawny flashed above her head. Two screams rent the air, one like that of a furious woman, the other of the horse.

Anna’s legs loosened with the unexpected sound, and she dropped, knees-first, onto the hard ground
. Twisting her head, she saw a cougar atop the gelding, which plunged and bucked against his clawing rider.

The mountain lion screamed frustration, once again sounding more like a human female than a beast
. But the horse stumbled in its panic, and within moments, the big cat brought it down. Anna stared in fascinated horror as the cougar fitted its jaws around the larger horse’s throat and held on tight.

The gelding’s legs flailed violently, and Anna gripped her small knife tightly
. The cougar’s green-eyed gaze caught hers and held it. Despite its full mouth, it managed a deep growl.

The big cat might easily weigh one hundred fifty pounds, and its every claw outmatched her puny weapon
. Yet how could she sit here and watch it kill her only horse?

Anna forced herself to stop staring and grabbed up sticks, then hurled them
. One bounced off the gelding’s haunch. Another struck the cougar’s back, but it barely flinched, intent only on its prey.

Gradually, the spasmodic thrashing of Canto’s legs slowed to a stop
. Anna watched the life fade from the old gelding’s eyes.

She scrambled for more sticks, but let them drop without bothering to throw them
. The big cat had clearly won its prize, so she would be foolish to risk an injury. Still watching the beast cautiously, she retrieved her hat, which had fallen into the wet snow. Cold rain continued to patter through the pine boughs, onto her head, and into her neckline. Yet Anna felt flushed with the sudden warmth that fear brought, an unexpected boon.

And she would need it, she decided, for the long, cold walk back home.

*     *     *

Just ahead of Ned, Pete whipped his bay horse in an attempt to force it to jump a fallen tree that blocked the trail
. It tried to drop its head to buck, but Pete yanked the reins up hard. Finally, the animal had had enough. After an awkward lurch forward, it leapt the three-foot barrier.

As it landed, its front hooves struck earth glazed with ice
. The horse’s forelegs slid, and its body twisted. With an audible grunt, it fell onto its side.

Pete’s scream followed. “Christ – oh, Christ
! My God, my God!”

With a terrified whinny, the bay scrambled to its feet and trampled its fallen rider before galloping down the trail
. Black Eagle and Hop, who were riding just ahead, both tried to catch the horse’s reins, but it charged past them, deeper into the rocky canyon. Both spurred their own mounts after the runaway.

Ned dismounted and then squatted down beside Pete, who lay screaming on the cold ground, clutching a contorted upper leg
. Blood soaked his jeans at thigh level, and Ned could easily see the white splinters of bone.

Icy raindrops chased the snow, turning the rocky surfaces steadily slicker
. They were hours away from either riding or climbing to any sort of decent shelter, even the damned caves. It would take forever with a man this badly wounded. Ned swore at both the weather and Pete’s ear-splitting shrieks and howls.

“Shut your damned mouth,” Ned warned the downed man
. He didn’t want to stand around freezing his balls off and babysitting this belly-acher. All he really wanted was to get back to a warm cabin and maybe some coffee if they had any left from their last raid. He glanced once more at Pete’s ruined leg and then made his decision.

Pete’s eyes appeared to focus, and something he saw in Ned’s expression made his screams stop abruptly
. No sooner had he stopped wailing than his teeth began to chatter with the cold, or maybe fear. His gaze flicked to his gun, which had been flung just a few feet out of reach.

Ned scooped up the revolver and stuck it in his own belt, then peered down at the spreading bloodstain
. “That leg’s busted real good. Be a hell of a job to carry you out of here. Real painful too, I ‘magine. Then you’d probably go and die on us anyway. Fever’d get you, even if the move didn’t kill ya right off. Lot of noise and trouble to be goin’ to for nothin’.”

Pete’s voice rose on a tide of panic
. “I’m strong, and I can keep my mouth shut. I swear I ain’t dyin’. Maybe if the leg came off, I’d heal up . . . Please, Ned. You and me, we been together, how many years is it?”

Ned thought about the stolen whiskey just before he answered, “Long enough, Pete
. Plenty long enough.”

Pete’s eyes popped open so wide, Ned could see thin rims of white all the way around the dark brown centers
. The injured man’s lips drew back into something that might have resembled a grin, except for the missing teeth and the gagging smell of terror that rose from him.

Ned whipped out his gun and fired so fast Pete didn’t have a chance to scream
. Instead, the young man’s head flopped back into the snow, blood welling from the wound above and right between his still-wide eyes.

Ned stared down at the man he’d ridden with for four long years and wondered what emotions other folks might experience at a time like this
. As for him, he felt just like he did when he killed anybody, completely empty of all but physical sensations, in this case exhaustion and cold. His hands, especially, were freezing. That must be the reason that they shook as he holstered his gun.

His hands warmed a little when he used his knife to hack off Pete’s scalp
. Maybe he oughtn’t to have done that to old Pete, he thought, in light of everything they’d been through. But by now, the action had become a habit, one he didn’t know if he could break. Besides, Pete hardly looked the same with a chunk of that hair missing. A wet mask of crimson made his face seem almost like a stranger’s.

His grisly task completed, Ned began to shiver once again
. He stooped to pull Sheriff Ryan’s leather gloves off the corpse’s stiffening hands.

As he turned away to put them on, he offered his old partner a few final words
. “Sorry, Pete, but, the way I figure it, you’ll have the fires of hell to warm you now.”

*     *     *

With hands so cold she could barely feel them, Anna turned up her wool coat’s collar and once more adjusted her broad-brimmed leather hat. Neither action helped much. The collar had acquired a thin layer of frozen moisture. Now against her neck, it melted, sending freezing rivulets into her shirt. Though it offered more protection than a bare head, her hat had been transformed into a crown of ice.

The rain continued, still mingled with thick, white snowflakes
. A chill breeze stirred the gray sky cauldron with the cruelty of the Devil’s hand. As it increased, Anna heard a mysterious sound, like the most delicate chiming. Her chattering teeth tapped it a rhythm, and for several moments her fogged brain thought it was the tinkling of coins as they struck one another, the evening’s take at the last saloon where she had worked.

She struggled onward, keeping beneath the pine trees’ limbs for whatever scant protection they might offer
. Another gust gave her an answer to the mystery of the chimes. It was the treetops, covered as they were with glassy layers, striking each other whenever the breeze stirred. The beauty of it awed her, as did the crystalline sculpture of the icy limbs. If the clouds lifted and the sunlight touched the treetops, it would look as if the canyon bottom were afire.

How strange for her thoughts to linger on the splendor of this canyon, even as its wild beauty killed her
. Though she felt oddly separate from that hard fact, she knew that it was true, that while her numb, wet feet yet staggered forward, she was quickly losing her race against the cold.

So cold she ached with it
. So cold that her body gave up its futile shivering and struggled to drag its own dead weight. Though some part of her knew she was close to home now, she suspected that she wasn’t close enough. With that realization came a misstep into snow much deeper than it first appeared. In an instant, she spun downhill to strike the base of an oak tree.

She lay there, stunned and outstretched like a child making angels in the snow
. And as she did, she heard the thudding steps of something heavy on the frozen ground above, on the opposite side of the screen of bushes she’d slid past.

The cougar
!
Panic flooded through her veins, once more offered the unexpected blessing of its warmth. For while she might freeze to death, she wasn’t going to just lie here as she was eaten. She dug her hand into a pocket, but her fingers were too cold to grasp her hunting knife.

No matter
. It wasn’t the mountain lion at all, she realized, for the muffled thumps were hoof beats in the snow, not broad, soft paws. Something uphill charged past her, and she caught a glimpse of the dark brown neck of a horse. She saw no one aboard it, but she couldn’t be completely sure.

She had to catch that horse
. If it was halfway tame, she could ride it back to her cabin. If there was a rider, she could flag him down and persuade him to take her the short distance home.