Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635) (5 page)

Chapter 6

Colter must have passed out again, because when he found himself flat on his back and staring at the stars, his horse was nowhere in sight. He heard low snarling and the rattle of stones sliding down the ridge that rose on his left now, about forty yards away—a steep dyke about fifty feet high and resembling a half-buried dinosaur spine.

Fiery pain consumed the young horse breaker. Its intensity doubled as he rose to a sitting position, gritting his teeth, and slid his Remington from the cross-draw holster on his left hip. Out of the frying pan and into the fire was the phrase that repeated itself in the back of his agonized brain. Now a wildcat was stalking him.

And in his condition, he'd make an easy meal.

“Please stay where you are,” he muttered, feeling fresh blood ooze from his cut lips, mingling with that which had crusted on his chin. “Just stay there.”

He clicked the Remy's hammer back, aiming at the ridge, not wanting to trigger a shot and give away his position. In the silence of this Arizona night, without a breath of breeze and no yammering coyotes, the shot would easily be heard back at Grant. And he'd be just as easy pickings for a contingent of soldiers—especially those riding out to avenge the death of one of their own at the hands of a lowly horse breaker—as he would for a mountain lion.

Not only had Colter been on the lower echelon of the social scale at Grant, but he'd sensed that his keeping to himself had been taken as snobbishness. That would be held against him, too, when it came time to ride him down and throw a loop around his neck.

He aimed the Remington as steadily as he could at the ridge. He could see no moving shadow, and the rocks had stopped rolling. Faintly, then, he began to hear a soft, contented mewling and the snapping of hungry jaws. His gun hand relaxed. The cat must have already found its supper on the other side of the ridge, and had just come over to frighten off any potential competition.

Colter waited.

When he was fairly certain he was in no immediate danger from the cat, he hauled himself wearily, painfully to his feet and stared back in the direction of Camp Grant. He could no longer see the fort but merely a milky purple wash of light over the bowl in which it sat. There were no sounds except for those of the cat feeding on the other side of the dyke.

Finally, he started walking up the slope to find Northwest. He stopped, turned back toward the fort, pricking his ears. Faintly, he could hear the soft thuds of distant horses. The thuds of the shod hooves grew gradually as the soldiers—who else would they be?—headed toward him.

Colter wheeled and strode as fast as he could up the slope, sweeping the terrain around him for Northwest. Sweat beaded on the back of his neck and slithered, cold as snowmelt, down his back, pasting his shirt to his skin.

He holstered the Remington and moved faster, looking around the low outcroppings, breathing hard from pain and anxiety as well as from the hard upward climb. Nearly a quarter hour later, stopping now and then to listen to the muffled hoof clomps behind him, he found Northwest cropping galleta grass around a dry spring trough angling out from the side of a rocky slope.

He did not berate the horse for running out on him. Horses feared wildcats the way little boys feared bogeymen, and no horse, no matter how well trained, could do anything but run when it heard the dreaded feline scream.

When Colter had made sure his rifle was secure in its saddle boot, he heaved himself bitterly into the saddle, the twisting and crouching making him feel as though a hot, wet blanket had been thrown over his shoulders, then turned his head to listen behind him.

Amidst the clomps of oncoming horses, he could now hear men's low, conferring voices. The deep, raspy one he recognized as that of Major Fairchild. A stone dropped hard in Colter's gut. The major's leading the contingent himself in the middle of the night, with his bad knees and pleurisy, meant the old man really meant business. He'd show Colter no mercy at all for killing his prospective son-in-law, let alone listen to Colter's story of how it had all transpired. Colter knew the man's iron-hard, take-no-prisoners reputation when it came to the Apaches, and he'd likely treat Colter with just as little mercy.

Colter put Northwest ahead, holding the horse to a trot, as he didn't want to be heard by the riders behind him, who probably realized they were nearing their prey and were stopping often to look and listen. When he gained the vertical jut of sandstone at the top of the rise, Colter picked up the wild horse trail at the base of the rock and followed it down a steep slope to the south.

At the bottom of the slope, he swung Northwest into an eastern-angling, gravel-bottomed canyon and, knowing now he was likely far enough from the cavalrymen that they wouldn't hear him, booted the horse into a gallop that broke the sweat out in earnest across Colter's forehead and shoulders.

He was fairly swimming in pain and fever sweat by the time he'd reached the end of the canyon and loped on up and over a rise, then swung hard to the south. This was rocky country, so by the time the soldiers reached the end of the canyon, they'd have no way to track him—especially in the dark. Only a good Apache scout could shadow him to where he intended to go—up high into the rocky, wind-blasted, and sunbaked reaches of the boulder nest called White Tanks that formed a spur off the southern Galiuro Mountain Range.

Only diamondbacks, Chiricahua Apaches, and Mexican banditos lived there, though Colter had heard that the Apaches had been chased into Mexico by General Crook. That left the snakes and banditos, formidable opponents Colter would worry about when the time came, after he'd lost the soldiers.

Colter had been through this country three times since he'd come to Camp Grant, looking for wild horses to trap and some to buy from a friendly old
mesteno
who lived near here but whom Colter would not burden with his troubles. No, he'd find the cave. He knew a winding route through deep canyons, and the moon should make for relatively easy traveling as long as he wasn't waylaid by banditos or the odd Apache who'd chosen to remain here in the Chiricahuas rather than run wild in Mexico with the others.

Colter had been traveling alone in remote country for nearly three years now, on the run from the law as well as bounty hunters, and he had developed a good eye and a good memory for landmarks, for he never knew when he'd need a fast, inconspicuous escape route to a remote sanctuary. That's why he'd remembered the cave and the path that led him into a canyon below it and then to a circuitous wild horse trace up a steep ridge, until the cave shone like a velvet, black, egg-shaped shadow in the rocks just above him.

It was surrounded by wiry tufts of brush and cactus, slabs of rock poking every which way, and wagon-sized boulders. There was about fifty feet of sheer granite above it, like a giant fireplace mantel, so it was a hard place to see from any direction unless you happened to stumble on it, as he and Willie had done when they'd been avoiding banditos. He doubted anyone had spent much time in it over the last fifty years or so, including Apaches, because, while there'd been a hole dug for a fire ring inside, until he and Willie had spent a night here there'd been only a trace of ashes in it and the flaky remains of ancient, charred bones.

He half fell out of his saddle and dropped to his knees, sucking air into his battered chest, his ribs grinding as his lungs expanded. He was soaked in sweat. Cursing Belden, he gained his feet and stared off across the jagged slope that was cast mostly in shadow by the west-tumbling moon. He could neither see nor hear anything from the devil's mouth of slashing canyons and gorges he'd just traversed, though from far behind him, on the other side of the ridge, coyotes were yammering.

Odd, how he found comfort in their distant company. Aside from them and Northwest, he was alone out here, miles from anyone including the old
mesteno
who had a small log cabin about five miles away as the crow flies—a long, hard ride in this devil's playground. He'd grown accustomed to spending long stretches of time alone, sometimes going weeks without spying another soul. But it was always harder just after he'd been amongst people he'd become close to, like Willie and Lenore Fairchild, whom he would likely never see again.

As he led Northwest up around the rocks toward the cave, he supposed she'd learned of the death of her beau. He supposed, too, that she wished she'd never laid eyes on Colter Farrow, and was probably right now cursing his name while she cried into her pillow.

He paused outside the gaping cave mouth, smelling the cold stone within. Touching the worn walnut grips of his holstered Remington, he said softly, “Hello the cave.”

The cavern's only response was the faint echo of the redhead's own voice. Quickly, agonizingly, he stripped off Northwest's bridle and saddle and the bedroll and saddlebags, piling the gear in front of the cave, then led the horse around the cave to a small alcove nearby. It was an area about as large as two stable stalls, and it had a small rock tank with some water in it from a recent rain. He placed a hackamore over the horse's head, tied the rope to a pillar of rock, and tossed down a few handfuls of oats near the tank. The water and oats would have to do for now. He'd rub the coyote dun down later, when he'd had some sleep. And he'd take him down to the spring in the morning and let him crop the green grass that grew amongst the rocks lining the seep.

In the meantime . . . he stumbled on the toes of his boots as he made his way back to the cave. He scratched a lucifer to life on his shell belt and ducked inside the cavern, holding the match up to inspect the place, making sure it was empty. Then he dropped the match, dragged his gear inside, spread his blanket roll as best he could, and collapsed into it, drawing the top blanket up to his chin. He was cold as well as hot, sweating so that he felt as though he were swimming underwater, and sleep would not come.

He knew he should build a fire, but he did not want to risk the glow being seen from downslope. Besides, he didn't have the energy to gather wood. Remembering Willie's whiskey, he opened the flap on one of his saddlebag pouches and pulled out the bottle. He grimaced when he thought of that snake floating around on the bottom of the sutler's vat and gave a shudder. Before he could chicken out, he popped the cork and took a pull.

The whiskey set his mouth on fire. He swallowed quickly, and then his throat and belly were aflame, as well. His guts heaved, and he bent forward, nearly vomiting. After a few seconds the burning waned and a faint lightness closed over him, dulling the ache in his lips and ribs. He corked the bottle, set it aside, and laid his head back on his saddlebags before closing his eyes.

He gave a deep, rattling sigh.

Sleep about as restful as a voyage in a small boat on typhoon-embroiled seas boiled over him. He ached and burned and felt an Arctic chill deep in his bones. Several times he half woke to find his teeth clattering until he thought all the rest would crack. He dreamed of fire and snow and fork-tailed devils chasing him through dark canyons and up mountains limned in moonlight and into the waiting arms of snarling, red-eyed wolves. All night he was either running from demons or wolves or fire or icy snowmelt seas.

When one of those wolves had grabbed his ankle, and the demons were swarming on top of him, one of the demons screaming, “
Killer!
” he jerked his head up off the soaked leather saddlebag pouch with a low, raspy yell that got tangled up in his throat.

Golden-copper light angled through the cave mouth. It could be morning, but judging by the warmth in the air, it was likely later on in the day. Colter blinked against the light as he looked around dumbly, only half remembering where he was and what had brought him here, running his tongue around in his dry mouth that still tasted like copper. He fumbled around for the canteen, and just when he'd gotten the cap off and was taking a drink, Northwest whinnied.

The dun's cry was answered by another horse farther away.

Shod hooves clacked on rock.

Colter dropped the canteen and flailed around with both hands for his pistol. Where the hell was it? Finally, he found his shell belt half concealed by his possibles bag and pulled the Remington from its holster, his hand still shaking from the fever as he heard the rider moving up the slope toward the cave.

Chapter 7

As the hoof clacks grew louder and copper dust began to waft in front of the cave, Colter saw his rifle in its scabbard still strapped to his saddle. He depressed the Remington's hammer, set the pistol aside, and grabbed the Henry. He racked a shell into the breech and scuttled forward until he was a few feet from the cave mouth, then, on his knees, pressed the stock to his shoulder.

A girl's scream cut the quiet air.

Colter blinked in surprise as a cream gelding was brought up short, the bit in its teeth drawing its head back as it pranced in place, half turning and showing the profile of the chocolate-haired girl in the saddle, clad in a blue blouse with ruffled sleeves and collar and a spruce green riding skirt. She sat back in the silver-trimmed Texas saddle with a dinner-plate-sized horn, her back taut. Beneath the brim of her straw sombrero, her fearful eyes flicked between Colter's scarred face and the cocked rifle he was aiming at her heart. She held the reins in her gloved hands up close to her creamy neck.

“Don't shoot me!”

Colter lowered the rifle, looking around quickly, then, seeing no one else riding up the slope, depressed the hammer and let the barrel sag toward the cave's floor carpeted in gray rock dust. “Lenore . . . ?”

She swung expertly down from her saddle—no sidesaddle for Lenore, which was one of the things Colter had admired about the girl—and continued the last twenty feet to the top of the slope, leading the cream by its reins. Rocks rattled beneath her dusty black riding boots. Her horse snorted and blew. Northwest whinnied from his alcove, and the cream raised its head and returned the greeting in kind.

Lenore place a quieting hand on the cream's snout, her eyes riveted to Colter. “God, you look . . .
terrible
!”

“What're you doin' here?” Again, Colter swept the boulder-strewn slope with his apprehensive gaze. “Who told you . . . ?”

“Mr. Tappin. He couldn't come himself. My father's keeping a close watch on him.”

“Willie's all right?”

Lenore nodded. “He hasn't been hurt, but if my father thought that he knew where you're holed up, he'd likely face a firing squad. My father's very . . . angry . . . about this.”

“What about you?”

“I know it's not very ladylike to admit, but I was so sick after I heard what had happened that I retched six times yesterday.”

Colter frowned. “Yesterday? You mean last night. Today.”

She frowned back at him, shaking her head. “It happened a day before yesterday.”

Colter looked around as though to find some indication of how long he'd slept by his natural surroundings. The angle of the sun told him it was midafternoon, probably edging toward three. Could it be the afternoon of his second day in the cave?

Lenore turned and unhooked the rope of a burlap sack from her saddle horn and set it on the ground near Colter. “This is food. Some chicken sandwiches and jerky, a couple tins of peaches. Willie added a bag of coffee, some beans and tortillas, and a pouch of deer jerky.”

The image of the food in Colter's mind caused his belly to spasm and rumble. He was surprised how hollowed out and hungry he was despite his aches and pains. But then, if he'd slept for nearly two days, it wasn't surprising.

He set his rifle aside, and with quivering hands—due as much to hunger as the fever, he realized now—he pulled at the knot of rope holding the sacks closed, drawing the neck of the bag open. He froze, remembering Northwest.

“Ah, shit,” he said, forgetting himself. “Northwest—he needs food and water.”

“You eat,” Lenore said. “I'll tend to your horse.” She pulled another burlap pouch off her saddle horn and, holding it against her chest, patted it and smiled. “Mr. Tappin thought of him, too.”

Colter grabbed his canteen and held it up to her by its canvas lanyard. “He'll need water.”

“Of course.”

He tossed her his hat, and she took it along with the canteen and started walking toward the alcove in the rocks flanking the cave.

Colter had the smaller pouch in his lap, and he was fishing around inside for a sandwich. “Lenore?”

She turned back to him, brows arched.

“I don't understand. I . . .”

“I know what happened, Colter,” she said grimly. “Lieutenant McKnight and Lieutenant Hobart told my father that they and Lieutenant Belden had found you smoking around the stables after the dance. That you were stumbling around drunk. They were afraid you'd start a fire, so they told you to knock off and go to bed. You got mad and wanted to fight them and somehow got Pres . . . Lieutenant Belden . . . off balance, and he fell against the hay wagon and broke his neck.”

Colter shook his head and narrowed his eyes angrily. “That ain't what happened, Lenore.”

She held his gaze with a firm, sincere one of her own. “I know what happened, Colter. Even before I went over to the stables and talked to Mr. Tappin.”

Colter stared at her in confusion.

She shook her head. “I had no intention of marrying the lieutenant. That was my parents' wish, because he came from a wealthy family, and my doing so would be politically beneficial for Father.”

“Your father know you weren't gonna marry him?”

“He knew only my protests against it, and that Lieutenant Belden turned my stomach like no other man ever has. I'm sure he and my mother thought that, in the end, I would bow to their wishes. And I even believe they thought my marrying Belden really was the best opportunity for me, as well.” She looked off, the breeze sliding loose strands of hair around her cheeks. “For some reason, they couldn't see the monster he really was.”

She moved toward Colter, leaned down, and kissed his cheek. “This is all my fault. I shouldn't have tried to parade you around the dance hall, caused you so much trouble and pain. You see, Colter, I really do like you, and I wanted so much to spend the bulk of the night with you. Not him. I was being very selfish.”

She turned and walked back toward Northwest, leaving the cream ground-reined just outside the cave.

Colter bit into the chicken sandwich that she'd built thick on crusty wheat bread, with onions and mustard and strips of bacon. Ignoring his chipped tooth and torn tongue, he devoured half the sandwich in under a minute, and was about to reach for the second half when he realized his stomach wasn't quite as happy with the food as his mouth had been.

He set the sack aside and looked around for his second canteen. It lay beside his saddle, against the cave wall behind him, about five feet from the opening. He turned gingerly, crawled over to it, popped the cork, and took a long drink of the water no less refreshing for being stale and tepid. When he'd had his fill, he poured some over his head and ran his hands through his wet hair, shivering as several drops slithered under his collar and rolled down his back.

Footsteps sounded behind him. He started to turn toward Lenore, saying, “Sure do appreciate the grub, Miss . . .”

It wasn't Lenore behind him. It was three men in cavalry blues, all three holding Spencer repeaters—two resting their rifles on their shoulders while the third, a young, yellow-haired sergeant with a darkly tanned face with pinched, belligerent eyes, aimed his carbine straight out from his left hip at Colter. He wore a hard smile. The other two looked just as self-satisfied.

Colter rose slowly.

“Easy, now, killer,” said the yellow-haired sergeant, whose name Colter believed was Gustafsson. “No sudden moves or we'll gut-shoot you and leave you here.”

Colter studied the three men. One more came up behind them from the direction of Northwest's stone stable. The fourth man was a tall, gangly corporal, and he was holding Lenore in front of him, one hand over her mouth. Lenore was red-faced with shock, and tears dribbled out of her brown eyes. The corporal removed his hand, and Lenore said, sobbing, “I'm sorry, Colter. I tried to make sure I wasn't followed!”

Colter wasn't surprised she'd been shadowed. He wouldn't have expected her to cover her tracks. But these four soldiers were not going to take him back to Camp Grant. They'd have to kill him and take back a corpse tied over his horse.

The blond sergeant said, “Take that six-shooter out of your pants. Slow. With two fingers. Then toss it over here.”

Still, blond Sergeant Gustafsson was the only one of the four aiming a gun at him. The others obviously didn't think he'd be much trouble, as beat up as he was. They were likely already planning the furloughs that Major Fairchild would award them with for bringing his late prospective son-in-law's killer back to the fort.

“Please, don't!” Lenore beseeched the solders. “It was all an accident. Won't you please let him go?”

“Let him go? We can't let him go, miss. Your father wants his head. I reckon that's all we really need to take back to Grant.”

Sergeant Gustafsson grinned sadistically as he flicked his eyes sideways toward Lenore. It was just a split-second lapse of attention, but it was all Colter needed to close his hand over his Remington's walnut grips and whip the gun up with practiced speed, cocking the gun as he leveled it and then blowing a hole through the dead center of Sergeant Gustafsson's dusty blue tunic. The sergeant groaned and triggered his Spencer into the cave ceiling beyond Colter as he stumbled back on his boot heels and fell.

The casual sneers on the faces of the four others disappeared behind a mask of unbridled fear and exasperation as they began pulling their own shooting irons off their shoulders. Colter turned sideways, automatically making as small a target as possible, and extended the Remington straight out from his shoulder, shooting the private in the middle of the group first, then summarily dispatching the other two before any had even gotten the hammers of their rifles drawn back.

One by one, spaced about a quarter second apart, they flew backward, dropping their rifles, hitting the ground, and rolling. The three yelled or screamed curses. The yells or screams were quickly replaced by gasping groans as their shredded hearts stopped beating.

The tall corporal threw Lenore aside and, sidestepping wildly and cursing, raised the Colt Army revolver he'd managed to claw out of his covered holster while Colter was dispatching his brethren. He raised the gun amidst the dust kicked up by the soldiers still rolling in the rocks and sand around him, and Colter drilled a slug through the middle of the corporal's forehead, just below the leather brim of his forage cap.

The corporal triggered his Colt Army into the ground near his right foot, staggered back as though drunk, eyes rolling back into his head as though to view the bullet that had just killed him. He dropped heavily to his butt, sat there for a time, jerking, before he sagged against a boulder and rolled awkwardly onto a shoulder.

Colter lowered the smoking pistol and turned to Lenore. She was standing with her rump pressed against the boulder behind her, leaning forward slightly, her palms pressed flat against the rock. She stared at Colter, eyes wide with shock, lips parted slightly. Her face was as pale as rock dust.

Slowly, her knees started to shake and buckle behind her skirt drawn taut against them. Colter ran to her and caught her just as her knees touched the ground. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her face against his shoulder, shielding her from the grisly view of the dead or dying men.

She shivered as though in a January snowstorm. Colter said nothing. There was really nothing he could say to assuage the shock of what she'd seen. All he could do was comfort her for a while before getting her back on her horse and sending her home.

“You,” she said finally, her voice quavering as she turned her head to stare up at him, deep vertical lines cut into the bridge of her nose and just as deep horizontal lines slashed across her forehead. “You've . . . you've done that before.”

“Yeah.” Colter took her face in his hands, smoothed her hair back, nodding. “I have. A few times. I ain't proud of it, but I have.”

In the periphery of his vision, he spied movement down the canyon below the cave. Quickly, he pulled Lenore into the cave behind him, grabbed his Remington out of his belt once more, and began shoving  .44 cartridges into it from his shell belt.