Shadow River (19 page)

As he nudged his dun forward, leading the barb and the seven-horse relay string, Montana called out, “Jones,” getting his attention.

Sam looked around.

“I won a five-dollar piece on you,” Montana said.

“Yeah, how's that?” Sam said.

“I bet Clyde here you'd kill Ace Turpin with one shot.” He chuckled. “Ain't that a hoot?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, pushing forward, “that's a hoot sure enough.”

Mesa Rocoso
Mexican Desert badlands

Leading seven fresh horses and the white-speckled barb, Sam approached the wide mesa on a narrow meandering trail that bore no sign of recent hoof prints. In their place, looking down, he saw a laden bed of coyote tracks trafficking back and forth and straying out into the rock across the mesa's rocky sloping base. When he spotted a black hole on a high wall above him, he rode upward toward it with his rifle lying ready across his lap.

In moments he led the horses onto a flat clearing that appeared to have been leveled and laid out just for this purpose—to shelter and hide him and the horse string, and to offer a long wide view of the desert floor below. As he surveyed the mesa and the terrain surrounding it, he searched any path or trail leading up off the desert floor, knowing that horses drew Apache as a magnet draws iron shavings.

This will do,
he told himself, gazing off in the direction of Agua Fría. Sometime tomorrow Madson and his men would arrive hell-bent along the main trail below. He would see their dust for miles. He would hear their gunshots if any
federales
had gotten close enough on their trail when they'd ridden away carrying sacks of Mexican gold.

But all of that remained to be seen, he told himself, nudging the dun forward toward the black cave entrance, leading the horse string and the supply barb behind him. What he did not want to do was get himself caught or killed by
federales
in his attempt at supplying fresh horses to a gang of bank robbers. Working undercover or not, that would be a hard situation for Ranger Captain Morgan Yates back in Nogales to explain to the U.S. consulate in Matamoros.

He had taken his participation in this as far as he could. Stepping any further would be crossing some serious legal lines. There was no question he wanted Madson dead. Just as badly, he wanted Jon Ho dead, and this gang of thieves and gunmen broken up. But it had to be done coolly and it had to be done right, he reminded himself, stopping the horse out in front of the cave entrance and looking back on the lower trail behind him, seeing the hoofprints of his horses leading down the slope toward the desert floor.

So get started,
he said to himself.

Swinging down from his saddle, he led the horses to a standing spur of rock, tied one end of the string there, spread the horses out and tied the other end around a waist-high rock near the cave entrance. He took a small lantern from the supplies atop the barb and carried it with him inside the cave.

Once inside the narrow black opening, he stopped long enough to light the lantern with a sulfur match and hold it up, revealing a wide floor in a clearing a few feet in front of him. Somewhere in there among the cavern's rocky perimeter, the warning rattle of a snake rose and fell as the lantern light probed into its domain.

“Easy, big boy, I'm not here to eat you,” Sam whispered to the snake.

Rifle in hand, he walked forward in time to see the snake slide silently out of sight farther back into the rocky interior. In the loose fine dust on the cavern floor, he saw more coyote prints everywhere. Across the floor, he saw half of a human skeleton still partly clothed in thin crumbling rags. A few feet away, he saw a loose leg bone. A few feet farther on, a battered miner's boot lay on its side. Sam saw a lizard dart into it. He stood for a moment longer, then turned and walked back out into the afternoon light.

He took his battered telescope from the supplies atop the barb and walked to a rock that stood as high as his chest. He stretched the telescope out and rested on his elbows, scanning the desert floor as far out as the afternoon sunlight would allow.
Nothing,
he told himself. He scanned closer, clearly seeing the hoofprints his horses had left along the edge of the sand flats to the unwinding mesa trail. He looked left and right for any sign of rising trail dust, but he saw none. Letting out a breath, he laid the telescope down atop the rock for later, then turned and walked back to the horses.

From atop the supply horse, he took down some kindling he'd gathered on his way to Rocky Mesa. He laid out the kindling for a firebed and gathered dried scrub branches and piled them atop it. Searching all around the sloping terrain, he found a downed, weathered pine and dragged its brittle carcass back and broke it up as much as he could and banked it atop the brush and kindling.

He walked back to the rock and picked up the telescope and looked out again. The depth of vision had grown clearer with the lowering of the afternoon sun, yet the lower edges of the distant hill line still wavered and hid in the dissipating veil of heat. He scanned in every direction, the same as he had earlier.

Still nothing.
He closed the telescope and carried it under his arm. He looked at the horses, then at the fire waiting to be lit, then at the long afternoon shadows stretching out from Rocky Mesa onto the desert floor.

“Time for some coffee,” he said aloud to himself, “maybe a little goat meat.”

Turning to the waiting fire site, he lit the kindling deep under the brush and downfall pine and let the fire feed and grow. He put a small pot of coffee on to boil and stood a stick of impaled goat meat to sizzle in the flames. While he waited for his evening meal, he walked to the horses, took a few meager supplies from atop the barb and filled his saddlebags behind the dun's saddle.

Early darkness began turning purple as the coffee boiled and the jerked goat meat sizzled on the stick. After he'd finished his food and coffee, he lit a small lantern he'd taken from his supplies and carried it inside the cave. He set the glowing candle to one rocky side of the clearing and walked back out.

Out front he looked at the black cave entrance, seeing the glow of light begging to be investigated. Then he walked to the fire and piled on thick layers of loose brush he'd gathered. He watched the dried tinder flare and crackle and send sparks spiraling and racing skyward on the growing darkness. Beneath his feet came the familiar rumbling deep in the earth. He steadied himself in place, took a breath and looked out onto the darkening desert floor below.

When the deep rumble jarred to a halt, he settled the horses and rubbed the barb's muzzle as if saying good-bye to a friend. Then, rifle in hand, he took the dun's reins and led the horse up onto a path across a narrow stone shelf and let the deep crevices and steep-cut walls of Rocky Mesa swallow them up.

•   •   •

Agua Fría, Mexican badland hills

The Banco Nacional de Méjico, a sprawling whitewashed adobe, stone and timber building, stood at the end of Agua Fría's main tiled street. At that point, the street divided into two lesser-width streets and went around the powerful bank. On a six-foot-high stone terrace out in front of the bank, two large field cannons sat staring out at the town as if in warning. A long stone ramp ran twenty feet wide from street level up the terrace, to the bank's elaborately colored tile porch. Along the front of the wide porch stood thirty feet of iron hitch rail.

“She is a fat pretty thing,” Montana said to Dan Crelo and Clyde Burke, standing beside Crelo outside a large open-front cantina two blocks from the bank. Burke leaned deep against a streetlamp pole, quiet and sullen, his thumbs hooked behind his gun belt.

“Yeah,” said Dan Crelo. “She's fat and pretty. . . .” He checked his watch quickly, snapped it shut and stuck it down into his vest pocket. “If fat and pretty is most generally your style, that is. But it ain't mine.” He made sure the gold watch fob hung just right below his vest pocket.

The Montana Kid looked at him curiously.

“I'm just saying,” Crelo said. He looked back and forth uneasily beneath the brim of a straw skimmer hat. “I myself prefer a slim neat little place with piles of cash—no cannons staring up my backside on my way out of town. But that's just me.”

Burke mumbled something dark and inaudible under his breath, and looked back down the street at the bank. He and Montana wore the same dusty trail clothes they'd been wearing since leaving Sam at Fuego Pequeño.

Dan Crelo wore a clean white linen suit and a black ribbon-style bow tie beneath a soiled white canvas riding duster. He wore black tooled Mexican riding boots that stood up to his knees, his trouser legs tucked inside the wells. He carried a folded Mexican newspaper up under his arm, for show, being barely able to read English, let alone Spanish.

“Maybe I need to skin away from the two of yas, get on down the square,” he said to Burke and Montana. He clutched a lapel of his suit coat behind his duster. “It don't make a lot of sense—an important-looking rooster like me, consorting with . . . Well, can I say
men like yourselves
?”
He smiled. A gold-capped tooth glinted in the morning sunlight.

“Go bite a dog turd, Crelo,” said Burke without looking around at the well-dressed gunman. “Last man I saw dressed like you tried to stick a hand in my blanket.”

Crelo stiffened and bristled.

“Why, you—!” he snarled, his teeth clenched, his hand instinctively jerking back the left side on his duster.

“Whoa! Easy, now!” said Montana. He half stepped in between the two, Crelo ready to draw a big nickel-plated Smith & Wesson from a cross-draw holster. “Jesus, Dan,” he said to Crelo. “We're all set to—” He cut himself short and looked all around the busy street. His voice dropped quiet. “You know, take care of some business here?”

“Yeah, I know that,” said Crelo, cooling quickly. “But I don't tolerate blackguarding from no
son of a bitch
.” He paused, then said to Burke, “Hear me, Clyde? Hear what I called you?”

Without turning to face him, Burke continued to lean and watch the street as he waved Crelo away with a hand.

“You still here?” he said gruffly to Crelo over his shoulder.

Crelo flared again, tried to take a step forward; Montana stopped him with a stiff hand on his chest.

“Come on, Dan! Let it go,” he said. “You know something, you're right. You shouldn't be standing here talking to the likes of us. You should be moving around some. Where's your saddlebags anyway?”

Crelo took a breath and settled again. He started to turn away, but first he directed a warning to Burke.

“When this is over, Clyde, you and me are going to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Burke said, cutting him off, still leaning, still not looking around at him, “you're one
malos hombre
. We see that. Now, cut on out of here. You're standing where I'm fixing to spit.”

“Holy Joseph!” the Montana Kid said to Burke as Dan Crelo turned in a black huff and stomped off along the tiled sidewalk. “Are you crazy, talking to Dan Crelo like
that
, at a time like
this
?”

“You asking my opinion? No, I'm not crazy,” Burke said, still leaning, not looking at Montana. “You heard the poltroon—cutting us down, talking ill of how we're dressed—”

“Damn it, Clyde,” said Montana. “He's got the jitters, like he gets every time before robbing something.” He paused, then said, “Wait a minute. Are you still drunk from last night?”

Burke stared straight ahead at the horseback, donkey-cart, wagon and buggy traffic on the street.

“I've
been drunk
near forty of my forty-eight years, so
drunk's
no mark against me,” he said. He shook his head slowly and let out a breath, still not facing Montana. “I've got lots on my mind, Kid,” he said with remorse. “I mean,
lots
on my mind. . . .”

Montana looked all around. He sniffed the air toward Burke and almost reeled.

“Yep, you're drunk,” he said with certainty. Then he said quietly to Burke, “I don't know what's on your mind, Clyde, but I do know that talking about your troubles never helped nobody, especially when you're getting ready to—” He looked all around again.

“I know that,” Burke said. He straightened up from the pole and hiked his gun belt and turned to Montana. “Anyway, I just stood there and made up my mind.” He took a deep breath and let it out slow and gave a weak grin. “There're some things you've got to draw up your belly and
do.
This is a hard life we're in. If I can't stand toe-to-toe with it, I best get out.”

“That's the spirit . . . and just in time,” said Montana. He gestured a nod toward the far side of the street where Bell Madson, Jon Ho and Madson's top four gunmen led their horses out of an alley and split up onto either side of the street, the four of them drifting along toward the Banco Nacional.

“Damn, how many men are we cutting up this gold with?” Burke asked quietly. “There're
six
right there, counting Madson and Jon Ho.”

“Yeah . . . ,” said Montana, contemplating the matter. “There's Crelo and another one already inside, and there's us two. That makes ten.” The two looked up the street toward the bank at two more of Madson's gunmen standing along the stone sidewalk. “Jenkins and Adams, that's a dozen,” he summed up. “Jones only brought seven relay horses.”

“I've seen Madson do this before,” Burke said. “He's going to split off with Jon Ho and four men and take a different direction. He's got more relay horses waiting somewhere.”

“Damn it,” said Montana. “I don't like all these changes and surprises at the last minute. He acts like he doesn't even trust his own men.”

“So? Would you?” Burke said.

Montana considered it.

“Naw, I reckon not,” he said. “Bell Madson has never seen the inside of a jail. He must be doing right.”

Burke's mood darkened again, as he thought about what Madson was requiring of him.

“He's an evil, rotten, low-dog son of a bitch,” he snarled under his breath, his hand on his gun butt as he stared across the street at Madson and the gunmen. “I could cut his throat and bleed him upside down like a hog,” he added.