Man From Boot Hill (12 page)

Arizona Territory
1884

A cheerful whistle drifted through the air. The man doing the whistling had gathered up an armful of dry wood and was stacking it in a ring of rocks to make a healthy campfire. Since he hadn’t wanted to mark his position until he was far enough away from anyone who might see him, this would be the first night that he could have something other than cold beans and jerked beef for supper.

The food was stacked up and ready to be prepared. A freshly killed rabbit lay nearby and he was ready to make a pot of coffee. As the sun eased its way down past the western horizon, the man settled into a spot beside his crackling fire and kept whistling.

He was mistaken about one thing, however.

He wasn’t too far for anyone to see him.

The two men who crept up to his campsite just didn’t make any noise.

J. D. drifted from one tune into another while his hands busied themselves cleaning the rabbit and placing the meat over the flames. When he turned around to get the bag of coffee beans he’d left in his saddlebag, he saw one of the men crouched not too far away.

“Who the hell?” J. D. snapped as he went for the gun at his side. Behind him, he could hear the subtle brush of iron against leather as the second man drew a pistol and put it against the back of his head.

“Such a nice night,” Nick whispered. “No need to ruin it with gunshots.”

Letting out an aggravated sigh, J. D. let his gun slide from his hand and into his holster. “If you want to rob me, you’re not gonna find much.”

“I know. You did just get out of jail, after all.” J. D.’s eyes widened as he started to turn around. The man behind him backed up a bit, but kept his weapon drawn. When he saw Nick’s face, J. D.’s knees buckled and he landed with his backside in the dirt.

“You let me go and I left,” J. D. said quickly. “I answered your questions! What the hell else do you want from me?”

Nick sat down as Joseph moved up behind J. D. When Joseph took the pistol from J. D.’s holster, he got no resistance. Nick lowered his gun.

“I came up with a few more questions. We’d like to know where you’re going,” Nick said.

“I thought I might go into Old Mexico. Seems to be a lot safer down there.”

“Is that where your friends are headed?”

“I’m alone.”

“You know why that is?” Nick asked. “Because the only people who use this trail are either lost or on the wrong side of the law. You’re riding to catch up with some of your friends.”

“Look around! I’m alone!”

“For now,” Joseph grunted. J. D. shifted to get a better look at Joseph now that he was closer to the fire. When he saw Joseph’s face, he scowled and shook his head. “Goddamn gravedigger needs to hire on some help just to keep me from eating my dinner.”

Joseph’s free hand snapped forward and knocked the hat off of J. D.’s head. Grabbing a handful of J. D.’s hair, Joseph nearly wrenched the man’s head off as he forced J. D. to look at him again. “I’m not a hired gun. I’m the man that your friends tried to kill. Those same friends of yours killed my family.”

“As you can see,” Nick said, “my partner here is a little upset. He’d like nothing more than for me to walk away and let him find some creative ways to put different parts of you into that fire.”

J. D.’s muscles slackened and his voice rose to a high-pitched whine. The more he talked, the closer he sounded to breaking into tears. “I already told
you about Dutch and where they were headed. What more do you want from me?”

“We heard the rest of your gang were using this trail,” Nick said. “So that means there was more you could have told me before. I want the rest of it.”

“Like what?”

“Like the names of the places where the rest of the gang is going to pick up your new members.”

J. D.’s mouth moved, but no words came out. Judging by the look on his face, even he was impressed as to how much Nick had learned. When he felt Joseph’s grip tighten on his hair, J. D. sputtered, “Pe—Perro Negro!”

“Where’s that?” Nick asked.

“A day or two ride east of here, farther into Arizona.”

“Where are they headed from there? You might as well lay it all out for us, because if we need to track you down again…”

“San Trista, and then they’ll hit a ranch called the Busted Wheel.”

“Is that the place near Dos Rios?” Nick asked.

“Jesus Christ, who told—”

Joseph shook J. D.’s head as if he was trying to shake something loose from his ears. “Is it?” he shouted.

“Yes! Yes!” J. D. squealed. “The man who owns that place is supposed to have a stash of gold hidden away. It’s left over from the strike that let him buy up so much land.”

“Dutch found himself another source of information, huh?” Joseph snarled. “Is that it?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“And killing the folks there is just a means to an end? That’s how you assholes work, isn’t it?”

J. D. squirmed as he tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t buy him a close-up look at his campfire. Unable to find one, he merely clenched his eyes shut and let out a whimper. When the gun barrel touched his head once more, the next thing J. D. felt was the warm flow of urine down the inside of his leg.

“Looks like you made a little mess there,” Nick said through a smirk. Glancing up to Joseph, however, took that smirk right away from his face. “All right, Joseph. Ease up and let the man talk. He still needs to tell us the quickest way to find his friends.”

“Anything,” J. D. sniveled. “I’ll tell you anything you want. Please…”

Nick’s eyes narrowed as he studied Joseph’s face. There was fiery rage in the man’s expression that was all too familiar. “You hear me, Joseph? I said ease up.”

Joseph stared intently down at J. D. The anger that had flared up in his eyes was receding once more to give way to a coldness, which concerned Nick more than anything else.

“Hey!” Nick shouted. The sound of his voice was enough to make both of the other men jump.

J. D. clenched his eyes shut even tighter and whimpered to himself.

Joseph, on the other hand, looked as if he’d been revived with a splash of water. He looked back down at J. D., but without the intensity that had been in him only moments ago. Twitching out of frustration, he shoved J. D. away and stormed from the fire.

“There now,” Nick said as he let out a breath. “See how easy that was?”

“That asshole’s crazy,” J. D. said. He was still letting out the last bit of those words when Nick’s fist cracked into his jaw. After J. D. was knocked to one side, he stayed put as if playing ’possum was the only option left.

“That man lost his family, and your friends took them,” Nick growled. “You should be praising the Lord above you don’t have a bullet in your head right now.”

J. D. sputtered and made a weak hissing noise. At first it sounded as if he was trying to spit out the tune he’d been whistling before, but then it sounded as if Nick had knocked a tooth loose.

After a few seconds of that, Nick sighed and said, “Stop it. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”

J. D. kept making the noise. Now he sounded like a whistling teakettle that was moving back and forth from the flame.

“Pull yourself together.”

“I can’t…can’t do it,” J. D. cried.

“Just take a breath and—”

“It’s two short, one long and one short.”

Nick stopped and sorted through what he thought he’d just heard. Even after a few seconds, he was still coming up short. “What?”

“The signal,” J. D. whined. He started making the noise again, but only wound up with his face buried in the dirt out of frustration and exhaustion.

Nick let out a series of crisp whistles: two short, one long and one short.

“That’s it,” J. D. said as he lifted his head and nodded. “That’s the signal to get in close to Dutch and the rest of the boys. Otherwise, they’ll shoot you off your horses before you get within a hundred yards. But you probably already knew that.”

Keeping his best poker face intact, Nick said, “Yeah, I knew that. All I needed was the signal.”

“Now you have it, just please don’t let that other one near me. He’s gonna kill me, I can see it in his eyes.”

“Stay here,” Nick said.

“Oh, God.”

“Better yet, just leave.”

“Are…are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Nick said with an annoyed wave. “Just as soon as you give me those directions. And if I smell a lie on you, I’ll stick you in that fire, myself.”

J. D. rattled off a string of directions to the places his partners would be going. After he was done, he looked to Nick expectantly.

“Get the hell out of here,” Nick told him.

“You’ve got a good heart,” J. D. said as he scurried toward his horse. “I don’t know about that other one, but…I mean…never mind.”

Nick was headed to where Joseph was standing, but paused long enough to see what J. D. was doing. “Leave the horse,” he said.

J. D. stopped with one foot in the stirrup and one hand on the saddle horn. “What?”

“Leave the horse,” Nick repeated. “You can go, but you’ve got to run.”

“There ain’t much of anything around here.”

“Run,” Nick growled. J. D. eased his hand away from the saddle and took his foot out of the stirrup. “All right. I guess I’ll be going.” With that, he sauntered away from the camp. As soon as he put some distance between himself and Nick, J. D. broke into a run and quickly disappeared.

Taking the rifle from J. D.’s saddle, Nick slung the weapon over his shoulder and walked to where Joseph was standing. “That’s a hell of a way to get the most out of someone.”

It took a few seconds before Joseph even acknowledged Nick’s presence. When he did, it was only with an off-handed, “Huh?”

“The founder of this feast here was holding out on us, but he spilled his guts after that little display of yours.”

“I wanted to kill him, Nick.”

“Really?” Nick said sarcastically. “I couldn’t
tell.”

Joseph looked back toward the campfire. “Where is he?”

“With the speed he was running, probably getting close to Old Mexico right about now.”

“Running?”

“I wasn’t about to give him a horse so he could catch up to his friends before we did.”

Chuckling under his breath, Joseph said, “You should have just let me kill him rather than leave him stranded out here.”

“He’s got a better chance than you think,” Nick said. “Outlaw trails like this one have all kinds of surprises. There’s always a few cabins or caves or something like that for them to use if they get lost or followed.”

“You know an awful lot about that.”

“Yeah.”

Turning away from the fire, Joseph looked back out toward the wide-open stretch of rugged land to the north. “You know an awful lot about a lot of things.”

It wasn’t a coincidence that there was no better-known trail established through there. The land was a harsh mix of jagged rocks, a few clusters of trees and uneven slopes. In the subdued light of dusk, however, those edges were hidden and the wildness of the land could be seen in a less threatening way.

“Who did you lose, Nick?”

“What?”

Joseph glanced over to him and then looked back to the landscape. “You talk about things you’ve seen, but you’ve never said what happened, exactly.”

“There’s not enough time to say it all,” Nick replied. “Even if there was, I wouldn’t want to dredge it all up again.”

“I want to stop thinking about my wife and my daughter,” Joseph said quietly. “I know that sounds terrible, but I just wish I could put them out of my head. Just for a few minutes so I can rest.”

“Now’s the time to rest. Once you do, those memories will…” Nick winced and then corrected himself. “Actually, they won’t ever fade, but they’ll be easier to bear. Carrying out what you want to do when those wounds are fresh won’t end in anything good.”

Although he could tell that Joseph wasn’t ready to turn around and go back to his son, Nick could at least tell that the other man was listening.

“You see this?” Nick asked as he held out what remained of the fingers of one hand. “This, and a lot worse, was done by a vicious bastard I used to know. He led a group of killers who called themselves the Vigilance Committee. They’re the ones who cut me up and shot pieces of me like I was target practice.”

Nick needed to steel himself before continuing. “There were some folks that were kind enough to take me in after I was left for dead. I knew those folks would be in trouble if it got out that they’d
helped me. Well, word did get out, and they were in trouble from a group of lawmen who took orders from the Committee.

“The woman who cared for me…her name was Sue. I can still see her face every now and then. At the time, she was the prettiest thing in my world. She said that everything would sort itself out whether I fought for it or not. Of course I didn’t listen. In fact, I took off and killed enough lawmen to put a price on my head that I’ll never shake. All I wanted was to get my hands on those bastards or anyone connected to them in any way. All I wanted was to make them hurt, spill their blood, kill them or anyone they loved, just to pay them back for what they done. Sound familiar?”

Joseph nodded slowly. “Sounds to me like they had it coming.”

“When it was all said and done, I rode off to visit the Committee directly and figured those good folks who cared for me were better off if they never saw me again.

“I checked in on them some time later and they were gone.”

“Where’d they go?” Joseph asked.

Nick slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. Nobody knew. Their house was cleaned out. Their things were gone. The man and his wife…their children…they were all gone. I’d like to think they headed to greener pastures, but I don’t know if that was the case. I do know that I didn’t make one damn bit of difference. The Committee came
anyhow and took over just like they did in Virginia City. They rode in like some kind of goddamn army. That family I wanted to protect was driven out…or worse. They might have been killed, or maybe Red made an example of them to discourage anyone else from taking in a wanted man.”

Nick’s eyes drifted toward the empty land. Rather than linger on the muted edges of rock or the trees huddling together to survive, he looked up to the stars that glittered overhead. “I was one of Red’s examples. Thinking about those good folks and their daughters going through half of what I did tears me up worse than any blade.”