Authors: Frank Leslie
The Killing Breed (9 page)
Chapter 7
A little earlier in the morning and about three miles from the ranch yard, Yakima Henry jerked Wolf’s reins back suddenly and threw up a hand for Kelly to stop his own horse behind him.
Yakima had heard the dull thud of an unshod hoof on the still morning air, and now he stared straight ahead. Narrowing his eyes, he picked the wild stud out of the rocks and brush clumps of a rise about a hundred yards away. The bronc held its head low, and it moved down the rise through scattered mesquites and pin oaks with that loose-legged, slightly knock-kneed gate of a tired horse.
Yakima didn’t take the time to point out the bronc to Kelly. Knowing the horse’s senses were keen, he quickly reached forward to grab Wolf’s nose and backed him behind some boulders littering the bottom of the narrow canyon that he and Kelly had been following for the past half hour. It was warmer now, and they’d tied their coats behindtheir saddles and rolled their shirtsleeves up their arms.
Quietly, Kelly backed his own horse with gentle urgings.
Yakima had known the arroyo led to a
tinaja
, a rock pool that collects rainwater. He’d long ago figured the wild stallion was frequenting the pool, as it was the only good water within several square miles.
tinaja
, a rock pool that collects rainwater. He’d long ago figured the wild stallion was frequenting the pool, as it was the only good water within several square miles.
Dismounting, he dropped Wolf’s reins near some buck brush spiking up around the shaded boulders, and quickly shucked his Winchester from its scabbard. He gently racked a shell, off-cocked the hammer, and moved around behind the horses and down the arroyo. Kelly strode along behind him, his own Spencer in his hands, mimicking Yakima’s Apache-like stealth, stepping lightly, breathing through his nose, and holding his arms slightly forward from his body, and still.
Both men meandered around rocks until they were twenty feet from where their canyon opened into another, broader one. The stallion had dropped down from the canyon’s far ridge and was somewhere out of sight behind the eroded wall to Yakima’s and Kelly’s right.
Yakima climbed a few feet up the sloping right bank, keeping his head well below the top and angling forward toward the broader intersecting canyon. He dropped down between a boulder with a V-like crack down its middle. Removing his funnel-brimmed cream hat, Kelly hunkered beside him, not saying anything and breathing quietly through his open mouth.
Yakima stared through the boulder’s notch, raking his gaze across the sun-flooded canyon ahead. His blood raced when he spied the little broom-tail bronc dropping its head to drink from the
tinaja
nestled in black volcanic rock and junipers about thirty yards to the right of the confluence of the two canyons.
tinaja
nestled in black volcanic rock and junipers about thirty yards to the right of the confluence of the two canyons.
From this angle, Yakima could see nearly all the bronc’s lean, muscular body, which was scarred here and there from brush and, likely, territorial battles with other stallions. The coyote dun had a white spot on his left shoulder and one white rear sock. Another small patch of white shone up high on its forehead, close to its ears.
Yakima didn’t have much time. While he was up-breeze of the wild stallion, it was only a matter of minutes, maybe seconds, before the wily beast’s senses would detect its stalkers.
The half-breed brought the rifle to his shoulder, slowly thumbing the hammer back. He drew a bead on the stallion’s shoulder, slid it slightly up and forward to ensure a heart shot.
He squinted down the Yellowboy’s brass receiver and oiled barrel, fixing the bead on a small, pale scar in the dusty, sweaty hide about where the horse’s heart would be. Drawing a breath in and holding it, he took up the slack in his trigger finger, feeling the curved trigger press into his deerskin glove.
A second passed. Then two . . . three . . . four . . .
In the corner of his left eye, he saw Kelly turn toward him.
Yakima released the breath he’d drawn, drew another, and snugged his cheek against the rifle’s walnut stock.
The coyote dun lifted its head suddenly, turned toward Yakima. Yakima’s heartbeat quickened. The horse stood frozen, water dribbling down its bristled muzzle to splatter about the rocks. Its ears twitched and its nostrils worked, testing the air. Its brushy, burr-infested tail arced slightly out from its hindquarters to fall straight down toward the black slab of pitted rock it was standing on.
The horse was alone. No others were near. No mares, no foals, not even another stallion to fight with. Only a few flies weaved the air about its perfect, regal head.
Yakima tried to pull his index finger back against the Winchester’s trigger, but the finger wouldn’t move.
The horse jerked back suddenly, dark eyes widening, and then it raised its tail and turned away and trotted up a low rise beyond the tank. It turned around a thumb of rock and stunted piñons, and disappeared into another intersecting canyon, the clomp of its unshod hooves echoing softly behind.
Yakima glanced at Kelly, who was scowling at him. Scowling as well, Yakima turned back to the
tinaja
, lying dark and vacant amidst the rocks.
tinaja
, lying dark and vacant amidst the rocks.
Any rancher in his right mind would have shot that stud bronc when he’d had him in his sights. Such a horse would wreak costly havoc on any ranch operation, especially one as fledgling as Yakima’s. Yakima could have tried to catch him, gentle him as Wolf had been gentled, but having two stallions in his cavvy would lead to a different kind of trouble.
Besides, he had nowhere to house the savage beast. Obviously, the stallion couldn’t be corralled with Wolf or the mares and foals. Until he could be gentled—
if
he could be gentled—there was the prospect he’d turn Yakima’s log, brush-roofed stable into toothpicks and dust in minutes.
if
he could be gentled—there was the prospect he’d turn Yakima’s log, brush-roofed stable into toothpicks and dust in minutes.
Yakima should have shot him. But he hadn’t been able to do it. The stallion’s only sin was wanting companionship, after all. To live a good life amongst his own.
As he pushed off his knees, Yakima glanced at Kelly and growled, “Just gonna have to figure something else out, I reckon.”
Still regarding Yakima skeptically, Kelly gained his feet and followed him back down to the horses. “But what about . . . ?”
Kelly let his voice trail off as a soft crack resounded in the far distance. Yakima stopped at the bottom of the canyon and turned northwest, the direction from which the shot had come. The report echoed flatly in the high, dry air, bouncing around the canyons.
Kelly looked at Yakima. “Hunter?”
Yakima ran his tongue across his lower lip. “Maybe. Brody Harms lives over on Buzzard Butte, and he hunts these ridges.”
Harms was an educated loner from Pennsylvania who, stricken with gold fever, had filed a claim a couple of miles from Yakima’s ranch. Every once in a while, when the walls of his diggings shack closed in on him too tightly, Harms would appear on the half-breed’s doorstep with a venison haunch wrapped in burlap for supper, and a bottle of cactus wine.
Yakima didn’t think Harms had fired the shot, however. He’d be breaking rock in the middle of the day, doing his hunting in the early morning or evening.
Apprehension nibbled at the half-breed’s gut.
He slipped the Yellowboy into his saddle boot and grabbed Wolf’s reins. “Best head home.”
Kelly quickly sheathed his own rifle, worry in the young man’s eyes, which were the same lilac blue as his sister’s. “Faith?”
Yakima swung up onto Wolf’s back. “Let’s find out.”
He turned the horse in the direction from which they’d come, nudging his heels against the stallion’s ribs. Kelly followed suit, and they jogged up out of the arroyo and began following an old horse trail over the rolling, chaparral-covered hills.
Nearly an hour after leaving the
tinaja
, both riders rode up and over the last, high ridge. Halfway down the other side, they halted their mounts amidst tall firs in which mountain chickadees peeped.
tinaja
, both riders rode up and over the last, high ridge. Halfway down the other side, they halted their mounts amidst tall firs in which mountain chickadees peeped.
Yakima stretched his gaze across the large, wind-brushed, sun-splashed hollow below, where his ranch nestled at the foot of Bailey Peak. Smoke rose from the stone chimney on the cabin’s right side. Men and horses were milling in front of the porch, two men mounted, two walking toward the corral. Two more walked out the cabin door, one behind the other.
No. Not two men. A man and Faith. She wore her man’s Stetson and her buckskin mackinaw, as though she was heading somewhere. The man behind her held his hand out in front of his waist, as though he was holding a gun on her.
Kelly said, “You recognize ’em?”
Yakima’s voice was hard. “Nope.” He slipped his Winchester from its saddle boot. One-handed, he racked a shell and laid the rifle across his saddle bows.
Yakima froze as he watched two of the strangers enter the corral housing the prancing mares and foals and, holding their rifles in one hand, move around behind the milling horses, working their way toward the stable on the corral’s south side.
Near the cabin, Faith shouted something. She took off running toward the corral. The man behind her stuck his foot out, tripping her and sending her sprawling. The two men in the corral opened up with their rifles, shooting into the air over the heads of the mares and the colts.
Yakima bunched his lips and glanced at Kelly. “Let’s go!”
He rammed his heels against Wolf’s ribs, and the horse lunged into a wind-splitting gallop down the slope, weaving amongst the pines.
In the ranch yard, Faith screamed again. The mares whinnied and the foals nickered and bolted through the open corral gate, their hooves lifting thunder and dust. As the men in the corral continued shooting and shouting, the long-haired man in the stovepipe hat holstered his pistol under his buffalo coat, picked Faith up like a sack of cracked corn, and threw her belly-down over one of the saddled horses tied at the hitch rail.
Yakima’s vision swam with fury.
Curling his index finger through the Yellowboy’s trigger guard, Yakima bottomed out in the hollow and raced through the last of the pines. Staring toward the yard, he saw that smoke issued not only from the cabin’s chimney but from the doors and windows, as well.
Through the smoke he glimpsed orange flames leaping and dancing around inside the cabin. He hunkered low in the saddle as Wolf raced across the clearing, rising and falling over the sage- and cedar-tufted knobs.
He galloped under the ranch portal. The mares and foals raced off to his left in a sifting cloud of adobe-colored dust, pitching and buck-kicking. The two men leaving the corral with their rifles resting on their shoulders turned as one toward Yakima and Kelly.
The burlier of the two glanced toward the cabin. “Company, Temple!”
The man in the stovepipe hat turned from the hitch rail, then shouted something Yakima couldn’t hear. He stepped between the horses and shucked a rifle from a saddle boot.
The two men who’d just left the corral dropped to their knees and raised their rifles toward Yakima and Kelly, who flanked him. The other two men near the cabin grabbed rifles of their own, levered shells, and ran away from the horses to get a clear shot.
Yakima extended his Winchester one handed and, hesitating, not wanting to risk hitting Faith, triggered a shot at the two men bearing down at him from in front of the corral.
His slug plunked into the ground before the older, bulkier gent, making him lurch back on his heels. Kelly fired his Spencer, then tossed the rifle down and took his revolver in his right hand.
Smoke and flames began stabbing from the interlopers’ rifles, the
pop
s and
crack
s echoing around the yard, slugs plunking into the ground around the horses’ pounding hooves and sizzling through the air around Yakima’s head.
pop
s and
crack
s echoing around the yard, slugs plunking into the ground around the horses’ pounding hooves and sizzling through the air around Yakima’s head.
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