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Authors: Ralph Cotton

Shadow River (5 page)

BOOK: Shadow River
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“If there was one place on me that's not sore, I'd stab myself there just to make everything match,” he said. “How much gold
are
we talking about?” he asked Childers, having heard Childers ask Sam that same question the night before. Beside them Stanley Black mounted his watered horse and rode away behind Burke.

“Talk to Clyde about it,” Childers replied to Montana, swinging up into his saddle, giving Montana the same answer he'd gotten from Sam.

The two mounted and rode off behind the others, each man keeping a ten-yard interval between himself and the man in front of him.

Fifty yards farther down the winding trail, they bunched up again at the edge of an overgrown cliff ledge. Sam and Burke sat their horses, looking through a sheltering stand of young pine at a wide desert stretched below.

“What do you think?” Black asked, pulling his horse up on Sam's left.

Sam studied the empty desert floor, his wrists crossed on his saddle horn. Below them, long evening shadows encroached out onto beds of gravel and farther out through embedded stones the size of steers. Sand the color of copper and pearls lay wind-banked among the stones. Pale dry sage clung to the desert floor as if in a last stand before tumbling off to parts unknown.

“Make a dark camp until midnight,” Sam replied to both Burke and Black. He spoke sparingly, knowing he'd have to repeat himself when the other two arrived.

Black let out a tired sigh.

“That's sort of what I figured,” he said. “I hope folks are still drinking hot coffee by the time we get out of this wilderness.”

They waited as Childers rode and stopped, followed a moment later by the Montana Kid.

Sam looked around at them, then back out across the low rolling sand flats.

“We'll stick up here and rest a few hours,” he said. “After midnight, we go down and lead our horses along the rocks, stay this side of the gravel beds.”

The men gave a low collective groan.

“The longer we lead these horses, the longer it'll take us to get to the ruins,” Childers pointed out.

“I know,” Sam said. “But anybody wants to find our trail, at least they'll have to work for it.”

The tired, battered men nodded in agreement.

“Each of us stands an hour of guard,” Sam said, having their attention, knowing he was in charge. “When the last man has stood guard, we move down from here and get under way.”

“You got it, Jones,” Burke said. “I'll take guard first, unless anybody objects.” He looked at each exhausted dust-caked face in turn, then gave a thin, tired chuckle and said, “I didn't think so.”

Chapter 5

They slept the short night four men at a time, while the fifth man sat awake, wrapped in a blanket and backed against a rock. Sam had pulled his hour of guard third in line. At three in the morning, he arose from his spot among the rocks where the other sleepers lay sprawled like dead men awaiting burial and walked quietly to where the Montana Kid sat blanket-wrapped, his rifle hugged against himself like some talisman meant to ward away evil in the wide desert night.

“I'm awake,” Montana said in a lowered tone, as if denying an accusation before it was made.

“I figured you were,” Sam whispered in reply. “It's time we shake them out.”

Montana reached beneath his blanket, took out a pocket watch, opened it and cocked it against the pale moonlight.

“I make it five more minutes,” he said, a man suddenly dedicated to the precision and distribution of time.

Sam leaned against the rock beside Montana and gazed out through the purple-black-striped desert floor below them. Overhead, stars lay spread on a wide silken trail leading off into the endless depths of the heavens. A three-quarter moon dozed, its cleaved edge leaning against the western sky. On the ground below them, Sam watched as a shadowy black line of coyotes rose and fell in their silent stride, their red eyes darting upward toward the scent of man infringing on their domain.

“They make a ten-minute circle,” Montana said quietly. “Seeing if our smell is changing any—figuring us for fresh kill.” He paused, then said, “Might be catching some of Childers' dried shoulder blood on the air.”

“Their scenting don't miss a thing,” Sam offered, watching the coyotes file out of sight into the greater blackness of rock shadow.

“Sons a' bitches hunt with their nose better than we can with our eyes,” Montana said. He paused, then added, “All we've got is brains, and they don't work right half the time.”

“You'd choose to be a coyote instead of a man?” Sam asked.

“I never choose either one,” said Montana. He stood up and gestured a nod in the coyotes' direction. “Neither did they.” He cocked the watch against the pale moonlight again, then snapped it shut soundlessly and put it away under his blanket. “Now it's time to shake them out,” he said.

Sam nodded and walked away. From one sleeper to the next he walked, kicking each man's feet as he passed.

“S'wrong?” Burke mumbled when Sam gave him a wake-up kick. He jerked upright in his blanket, but kept his voice lowered.

“Nothing. Time to go,” Sam whispered.

“Damn it. I feel like I just lay down,” Burke grumbled as Sam walked away.

At the horses, Sam drew the cinch on his saddle and laid the stirrup down the dun's side. He took out the remainder of the goat meat and shared it with the others. The men twisted off a small portion and passed it along. They wolfed the meat down or held it between their teeth as they readied their horses for the trail.

Clyde Burke took his bite of meat and swallowed dry and shook his head. “I always said a big breakfast can ruin a man's whole day.”

The men gave a sleepy half laugh. The worn horses grumbled and blew and scraped their hooves.

Sam took his bite of meat, downed it and stood waiting with the lead rope to the white barb in hand. When the men had shaken off their sleep and bridled and saddled their animals, he led his horse around and stood waiting. A moment later, Burke stepped up into his saddle, saw his mistake and swung back to the ground. He cursed under his breath and led his horse over behind Sam's.

One by one the others stumbled over, leading their horses, and fell into line like lost souls searching for the other side. Finally, without a word, Sam walked away from the dark, cold camp onto the thin path leading to the last stretch of the downhill trail.

As dark as it was on the upper hillside, it turned darker yet over the next hour as they moved down with the moon standing on the other side of the hill line. What moonlight lingered lay sliced and darkened out by black shadows of boulder and cliff shelves lining the winding trail. Another half hour and the darkness waned around them as the larger boulders grew sparse as if having abandoned their rugged domicile one and two at a time, taken over by the long beds of scree sloping on either side of the trail.

Where those loose talus beds banked against the rounded steer-sized rock the men had become acquainted with, a wide bed of gravel and sand lined the lower slopes and spilled and spread out into stands of brush and low cactus garnishing the wide desert floor. When the men reached the long gravelly boulevard near the bottom of the hill, in the east the first thin wreath of silver-gold began to glow below the black edge of the earth.

“I make it we'll all have one leg shorter than the other by the time we're off this hillside,” Burke whispered to Sam, walking a few feet behind him. “I'm thinking I'll walk backward a ways just to make up.”

They trod the gravel bed two miles to its end, their boots and the horses' hooves leaving a low crunching sound in the silent darkness. When the crunching gravel turned quiet and the land turned stiff and rocky beneath them, Sam led his horses a few feet to the side and waited until the last man and horse filed past him.

Kneeling in their tracks, Sam eyed back through the grainy predawn light, seeing the efforts of their travel recorded in the gravel like words embedded in the printed page. Yet it would still be less clear to the searching eye than a line of tracks made out in the open across the sand.

It's the best you get,
he told himself. He knew it wouldn't trick Apache; it wasn't meant to. He only hoped it showed them this trek was not led by a fool.

He stood and looked all around, seeing not fifty feet from him the red glow of eyes and the black silhouettes of the coyote band. He saw three sets of eyes blink and glow closer to the ground.
Pups . . .
He stooped and picked up a round quarter-sized piece of gravel and threw it back along the path of boot and hoof. The red eyes all shot in the direction of the slight sound of the rock skittering away. Then the eyes turned back to him, blinked curiously and vanished. Sam turned, rifle and lead rope in hand.

And he walked on.

As first boiling sunlight spilled up over the horizon, the riders rode back up onto the rocky hillside. At midmorning they fell among rock shade like men shot dead from afar.

“Don't wake me 'less a fish bites,” Burke said, collapsing.

They rested in silence, corpselike, until the heat and glare of sunlight rolled and spread and began to waver like spirits dancing in the middle of the desert floor. While the others lay spent, Sam found a large boulder farther up the slope and positioned himself in a way that gave him a clear look in every direction. As he rested, he held the battered telescope to his eye and gauged the obscurity of the view across the low rolling desert. For the next hour he probed the wavering heat every few minutes with the circled lens until he decided he and his band could not be seen any better than they themselves could see anyone on the other side. He rose and walked back to the worn-out men and horses.

“Fish biting,” he said, kicking the sole of one of Burke's boots. The outlaw's boot soles stood toe-up from the ground, leaning away from each other like a pair of weathered grave markers of some lesser cretins with issues unresolved.

“I'm up,
I'm up
,” Burke mumbled, jerking upright, then stumbling to his feet. He picked at the seat of his dusty trousers as he pushed his hat down atop his head. “Jesus!
Do you ever sleep?” he said to Sam.

“You'd have to be awake to know it,” Sam replied, kicking Montana's boot, stepping away, kicking Black's, then Childers'.

Sam watched the men drag themselves to the horses and take up their reins. The horses yanked against their reins, getting sharp-tempered, hard to handle.

Testy with thirst . . . ,
Sam noted. Even though the horses hadn't been ridden all day, the heat throughout their travels was starting to take its toll. He took a deep breath, walking to the dun and the white barb. He had checked the desert floor as best he could. With the Apache making war on the Mexicans and anyone else they came upon, all he could do was keep the men moving—stay out of sight.

He felt his senses slip a notch beneath the heat and his own thirst. But he shook his head free of a white blankness and looked around to make sure the others hadn't noticed.

“Let's lead them out of here,” he said quietly. “There's water waiting up ahead.”

The men gathered and stretched and settled their thirsty horses and walked on in the scorching afternoon heat.

•   •   •

It was early dark when the riders came to the water hole that lay no more than two hours from the hillside ruins. Two miles before reaching the water, Sam and the men led their horses down off the rocky hillsides onto the sand and stepped up into the saddles. When the horses had caught scent of the water, they had become cross and unruly. It was easier to ride them and let them lead the way than it was to try to keep them in check.

Once at the water hole, Sam and the men stepped down at the water's edge and lay prone beside their watering horses, reins and empty canteens in hand. They sank their canteens into the water to fill them and rinsed their mouths of the day's sand and dust, squirting the water out. Then they drank their fill, their hot scorched faces and chests submerged in the water, finding the tepid water to feel as cold as a winter stream after their torturous day in the desert sun.

When they finished drinking, the men lay on the wet ground at the water's edge until the horses had drunk their fill. Stanley Black sat on a rock keeping an eye on the trail they'd ridden on while the others took their horses up onto the hillside above the water. There they rope-hobbled their forelegs and left them to graze on pale clumps of wild grass standing among rocks the size of melons.

“I got to hand it to you, Jones,” Burke said. “You've kept us a clean trail in both directions.”

“We're not there yet,” Sam cautioned, looking around the darkness as he spoke.

“But we will be soon enough,” Burke said. “What say, after we get this gold and split it up, you ride on with me?”

Sam just looked at him, the two of them sitting with water running down from their wet hair.

“I mean it,” Burke said. “I'll put in a good word to Bell Madson for you. He's got lots of moneymaking gun work coming up.”

“What about me killing Segert?” Sam asked, not wanting to sound too eager. In fact, this was exactly what he'd been hoping for.

“A fair fight is a fair fight.” Burke shrugged. “Anyway, I figure there might have been a bone between the two of them. Why else would Madson be pulling so much away from Crazy Raymond?”

“I didn't realize he was,” Sam said.

“Well, he was,” Burke said. “I saw it. So did some others. Anyway, it's all about business to Madson. With Segert dead, who better to have riding for him than the hombre who killed him?”

“Makes sense to me,” Sam said. “Far as I'm concerned, set me up with him, so long as everybody keeps their mouth shut about this gold.”

“They will, you can bank on it,” said Burke.

The two stood up as the other men gathered at the water's edge, capping their full canteens. On the hillside, the sound of the horses grazing resounded quietly.

“How long you figure?” the Montana Kid asked Sam, gesturing a nod toward the dark silhouettes of the horses, their heads lowered to the ground.

“We'll give them an hour,” Sam said, taking on the authority the men were giving to him. “It's the only graze we'll find between here and the ruins.”

The men nodded in agreement, Sam noted. That was good.

“Think we've shook free from any more Apache?” Childers asked, holding a wet bandana to his healing shoulder wound.

“No,” said Sam. “We'll have them down our shirts as long as we're here.” He looked around the darkness again. “The Apache size everybody up, see how they act, how strong they are. The first thing they look at is gun strength. We've got that. The next thing they look at is how smart you are. They see you traveling wise, leaving little sign of yourself, they know you're strong, not foolish. The Apache don't abide fools. They only respect strength and wisdom. Show them weakness, show them you don't know your way around on the desert, they'll take everything you've got and chop you down fast.”

“So what we're saying is that stupidity won't cut it, fellows,” Burke cut in, wanting to show himself sided with Sam.

The men nodded again.

Childers gave Black his tobacco fixings and Black rolled each of them a smoke.

“How's the shoulder, Boyd?” Sam asked Childers.

“Better,” said Childers, sitting on a low rock. “I'm damn glad you made me go ahead and have you tend it when you did,” he said. “I don't know what I was waiting for. I think the sun might have had me thrown off some.” He took the rolled cigarette from Black and lit it with a flaming match Black held out to him.

Sam looked around, making sure the larger stones around the water hole kept the flare of the match from being seen down on the desert floor.

“Is this all right?” Childers asked, holding the cupped cigarette down close to the ground.

Sam only nodded.

An hour later, the five wet, thirst-slaked men had walked up onto the hillside and gathered their horses, mounted and ridden away.

With the horses grazed, watered and rested, they rode forward along the desert floor at a gallop, cool air moving down around them from the higher Blood Mountain Range. Above them the moon stood full and bright in a cloudless purple sky.

In the middle of the night, the five fell into a single file and rode up off the sand flats onto a path Sam had traveled before. Within an hour they turned off the moonlit trail onto a thin path that brought them to an ancient grown-over stone ruins that stood pressed against the mountainside where it had been since time unrecorded.

BOOK: Shadow River
10.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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