Widowmaker Jones (22 page)

The judge said those mountains were the easternmost portion of the Sierra Madres, or what some called the Sierra Madre Oriental. Twice they lost the bandit's trail in the southern fringes of those mountains, but found it again where Cortina and his men had cut back to the trail to La Babia. The third time they lost it both Newt and the judge were stumped and couldn't find it again.

“We'll wait here while you see if you can scare up some sign,” Newt said.

The judge scoffed. “I'm no tracker and never claimed to be. I was counting on catching Cortina at the Alvarez hacienda. Never figured on it going farther than that.”

Newt scanned around them in every direction. “You don't think he doubled back on us, do you?”

“No, Don Alvarez will have men to the east watching the Rio Grande crossings from Ciudad Acuña to Laredo. Water is easier to find to the south, but Alvarez has a lot of influence and family around Monclova, so I don't think Cortina will go that way.”

“What's that leave Cortina?”

“I wish we had an Indian tracker,” the judge said. “I'm reminded of a Mescalero tracker I saw work once. That Injun could see a week-old set of hoof tracks and tell you what the rider weighed, what color his skin was, and what he had for breakfast.”

“Well, we don't have any Indian tracker,” Newt said. “And I'd just as soon as not run into any Apaches. What I'd like to know is how we're going to keep on Cortina's tail.”

“Man tracking ain't so much about reading sign,” the judge observed. “A man that spends all his time trying to follow tracks is going to get way behind in a hurry. Even if we were trackers, Cortina can ride a lot faster than anyone can track.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that a good hunter guesses where his quarry is going and heads that way, using the sign occasionally as a way to make sure he's guessed right,” the judge said. “In dry country you can bet a man will head for the next watering hole, or in mountain country he'll be limited to certain passes or picking places that aren't too rough to ride over.”

“That stands to reason.”

“Okay, you two man trackers,” Kizzy said from the side. “Cortina is getting farther away while you sit there and argue and philosophize over techniques.”

“Mind your tongue, girl,” the judge said. “This is a man's business.”

“Where do you think he's headed?” Newt asked. “Best guess.”

The judge thought on it for a bit. “I'd say he's headed for the pass at La Babia. He'll water at the spring and then cut through the mountains there.”

“And then what?”

“That desert country to the west of the mountains is a long, dry stretch, and I think he'll turn north and skirt the west side of the mountains and head for the crossing at Las Boquillas.”

“Why would he head back to Texas?”

“It's been my experience that these border outlaws will work one side of the line until things get hot, and then they'll drift across to the other side, hoping that whatever they did there in the past has had time to cool off. There's a lot of wide-open country to the west of these mountains, and I'm thinking Cortina will like staying in the roughs where he's got more cover.”

“He's got that girl with him, and he might not be able to keep up the pace to outrun any posse that caught him in open country.”

“Now you're thinking. You might make a manhunter, after all.”

“How far to this La Babia?”

“We'll be there a little before dark, if we ride hard.”

“Look here,” Kizzy said. “We haven't lost their trail at all.”

The men looked to her and saw that she was holding a few white mane or tail hairs in her hand. A few others were hanging from some kind of spiny bush one of the bandits' horses had rubbed against.

“They still have my horses,” she said.

She was even smiling a little bit, and Newt didn't have the heart to tell her that she was never going to get one of those white horses back. A pair of low-down specimens claiming to be lawmen had already killed it with a buffalo gun.

He pointed them west without another word, leaving discussions of the chances of recovering all six of her horses to the judge. The judge was good at making up stories, although he might not tell them the same way twice.

L
a Babia, like other such presidios scattered over northern Mexico, had been built back in the days when Spain still ruled the country and was trying to make war on the Apaches and other tribes thwarting attempts to colonize northern Mexico. The old fort was all but in ruins, but although weathered and fallen in some places, many of the stacked rock and adobe brick walls still stood. On the west end overlooking the mountain valley stood one remaining bastion. It was a round stone tower some twenty or thirty feet high with a parapet on top of it. There were crenels, or notches, cut in the parapet walls for shooting through.

The sun was still above the mountains when they reached La Babia. The trail climbed steadily but gradually upward through a narrow pass in the high mountains. They came through a small grove of pine timber at the narrowest point of the pass, and the trail dropped gently into a small valley. It was a pretty valley with enormous bald mountains walling it to the north, and a somewhat smaller mountain dark with pine timber near its top to the south.

The presidio lay close to the pass with a small grove of scattered trees around it, and the ground nearby it was more lush and green than the valley below it to the west. Newt could see what looked like a narrow stream of water following a broad wash that began where the old fort stood at the mouth of the pass. That green contrasted greatly with the rest of the valley, and he assumed the pass and that water were why the fort was where it was.

Anyone on the remaining walls of that fort could see for miles and was likely to spot them coming out of the pass. Newt led them up the side of the bald mountain on the north side of the valley, and they dismounted in an eroded fold in the mountain at the foot of a sheer bluff of pale rock rising hundreds of feet over them. They left the horses hidden and climbed up into the scattered boulders and other debris fallen from the bluff over the years.

From their position on the side of a mountain a quarter of a mile from the fort, Newt could barely make out what looked like a man standing watch on top of the remaining watchtower. He also spotted the trickle of smoke rising from the fort.

“That's La Babia.” The judge nodded his head downhill at the ruins of the fort.

“What does La Babia mean?” Kizzy asked from behind them.

“Means having your head up in the clouds, kind of dreamy like.”

“Fitting, I'd say.” Newt glanced at the smoky white clouds wisping against the mountaintops like the tickle of a feather.

“There's nothing dreamy about that campfire smoke,” the judge said. “Down there is the reality of the matter.”

“You think that's Cortina's smoke?” Newt asked.

The judge had the better eyesight, and he studied the presidio awhile longer before he answered. “Could be any kind of traveler coming through the pass, but we've got to treat it like it's Cortina. Once or twice I thought I caught something else moving down there through the breaks in those walls. Could be horses.”

Kizzy's study of the presidio was as intense as theirs was, but apparently her young eyes were also no match for the judge's. “Those horses you see, are they white?”

“I keep seeing white flashes. Could be your horses, or maybe a gray. Could be an albino goat or a snow-covered pig, for that matter.”

Kizzy gave the judge a dirty look, but the judge didn't seem to notice.

Newt pointed to the charred remains of a couple of buildings and what looked like a set of corrals close by the fort. “Looks like somebody had a homestead there not too long ago.”

“Some American ranchers bought them a land grant down here a few years back, and that was the La Babia headquarters,” the judge said. “Was until the Apaches burnt them out last year. I was assuming they had rebuilt by now, and that we might find shelter there for the night.”

“Are you thinking that's Apaches down there now?”

“No, if it was Apaches they would have already spotted us and lifted our hair by now.”

“How do you want to play it?”

“We could ride down there and knock on the door and say, ‘Howdy do, Mr. Cortina. Would you kindly let us haul your ass to Texas and hang you?'” the judge said. “‘Oh, and pardon me, Mr. Cortina, you low-life, stealing bastard, but we promised Don Alvarez we would cut off your head for rooting his daughter.'”

Newt frowned at him and jerked his head at Kizzy behind them.

“Begging your pardon, ma'am,” the judge said. “I forgot you were around or I would have watched my language.”

“Do you see that creek bed behind the fort?” Newt asked the judge.

“I see it.”

“What do you think Cortina would do if somebody shot down on him from up here?”

“He'd shoot back.”

“And then what?”

A crafty smile spread across the judge's face. “He'll likely assume he's outnumbered and use that creek bed as cover to get the hell out of there.”

“Exactly,” Newt said. “And what if we were waiting on the creek banks?”

“Who's going to do the shooting to make them think we're all up here?”

Newt turned and looked at Kizzy.

“Oh no, you're not,” she said. “You're not leaving me alone up here.”

“You said you can shoot as good as any man,” the judge said.

She looked uncertain as Newt went to his horse and brought back the Sharps buffalo gun and his sack of cartridges for it.

“I don't know if I can hit anything that far away,” she said.

He gently shoved the rifle into her hands. “You don't have to hit anything. Just pepper the walls as best you can.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Me and the judge are going to Indian down the side of this mountain and get behind them. You wait until you see us in position before you start shooting.”

“What if I can't see you?”

“Give us until that sun is right on top of that mountain at the end of the valley. That should be long enough.”

“What's going to keep them from coming up here after me?”

“Shoot a lot and from different spots. Shoot every shell in that sack if you have to. We want them to think there's more than one of us. Might not hurt to fire off a few rounds from those pistols of yours.”

“I might hit a horse, and there's Don Alvarez's daughter to think of.”

“You will be able to see real good through that scope. Be careful where you shoot,” he said. “Do you need me to show you how to operate that rifle?”

She shook her head. “I know how to shoot.”

“Then find you a place to hunker down with cover in front of you. They're liable to pop off a few shots your way, so you want to keep your head down.”

She glanced at the presidio in the distance, and Newt could tell she was nervous. And she had every right to be. He wasn't calm himself.

“And keep hold of that dog,” the judge said. “We don't want him following us and ruining our setup.”

Kizzy glanced at Vlad lying obediently beside her. “Are you going to kill them?”

Newt thought it was a hell of a question to ask after they had come so far after Cortina, but held that in. “We'll give him the chance to surrender if he'll listen.”

The judge snickered. “The price for your brother's life is Cortina's head. There are no two ways about it. It's either him or your brother, so you let us tend to our work, or those rurales will put your brother against an adobe wall and shoot him dead.”

“Go easy there, Judge,” Newt said, and then turned to Kizzy. “Maybe I shouldn't ask you to do this, but you'll be all right. None of them are going to be able to hit anything with you this far off and high up, not if you keep low.”

She nodded and held up the buffalo gun. “What if one of them has a gun like this?”

He started to turn away, but paused and looked over his shoulder. “Like I said, keep your head down.”

Newt and the judge angled down the mountain, moving fast, but keeping to the cover of the scattered brush, rocks, and every ditch, draw, and eroded crease in the mountain on their way. She lost sight of them before long, and for the first time it really dawned on her that she was alone.

She went back to the horses and slid her rifle out of its saddle scabbard. It was an old iron-framed Henry,. 44 rimfire, and had been her father's gun. While it lacked a lot in power, it made up for some of that by holding seventeen rounds stuffed in its tube magazine. She left the Henry lying on a rock behind a clump of brush and moved several yards away where there were two more large rocks on a little knob that offered a perfect vantage point of the pass below. She rested the forearm of the buffalo gun between a crack in the two rocks and waited. Vlad panted beside her. The sun seemed to take forever to settle on top of the mountain Newt had told her to watch. It was going to be a long wait.

I
t took them longer to cover the distance to the creek bed than Newt expected. The terrain was rough, and the all-but-bare slope at the foot of the mountain slowed them, for they feared being spotted by the guard manning the watchtower. After a half hour of careful zigzagging and sometimes crawling on their bellies, both knees were torn out of Newt's pants legs and he was cut and scraped all over. To make matters worse, there were more cactus needles in one of his forearms than he had time to pick out.

The sun was already sinking low, and Kizzy wouldn't know they weren't yet in position and could start shooting any moment. He and the judge made a dash over a slide of rock and then trotted through the brush to the north bank of the streambed, only a hundred yards to the west of the fort. He was surprised that the judge had managed to keep up.

The creek channel was deepest near the fort, with its sides some five feet tall and covered somewhat by the brush on the ground above and several scattered trees. A narrow stream of water flowed down its rocky center.

The judge pointed with a shaking hand to the head of the wash where it ran close to the fort, and where lush water grass grew as if there were some kind of pool there. “That's where the spring's at.”

“I'll take the far side,” Newt said.

“I won't argue with you.” The judge was breathing heavily through his mouth.

“Take care you don't shoot Alvarez's daughter,” Newt said.

“There won't be any time to talk this over with them. You'd best remember that,” the judge said. “Let them get close, then open up.”

Newt slid down the slope to the bottom of the wash and trotted across it to the other side. The stream was shallow, but enough to get his boots soaking wet. He climbed the far bank and bellied down with his pistol out and pointed toward the fort. After a while, he crawled to a better vantage point and could make out the flicker of a campfire through a break in the walls.

If he were Cortina under heavy fire, he would slip out the back of that fort and ride down the creek bed, going slow until the wash grew shallow and the cover of the trees played out. Then he would run like hell, already putting himself out of easy distance for a rifle shot. Cortina ought to come within a few yards of him and the judge. That was, if things worked out exactly as planned, which in Newt's experience, they never did.

The setting sun was turning the whole pass a weird orange, and a thundercloud the color of a purple bruise was sifting over the mountains far to the west. Newt wiped the sweat from his forehead and waited.

Although he was expecting it, Newt flinched when Kizzy's first shot came from the side of the mountain.

* * *

Kizzy had been a performer for most of her life, but never had she been so nervous when it came her time to step up and play her part. She had never regained sight of Newt and the judge, and all she could go on was the location of the setting sun as she had been instructed. She sat with her knees bent and her legs crossed Indian style, and pressed the butt stock of the buffalo gun up against her shoulder. The gun was too large for her, but she managed to crawl her cheek far enough forward on the stock to bring the scope into focus. She cocked the hammer and could see the scope's crosshairs rising and falling with every beat of her heart.

She thought she had been mad enough to kill when Cortina stole the horses and tried to kill her brother, and had sworn all kinds of oaths of revenge. However, she found herself reluctant. It was an entirely different thing to be holding a loaded gun pointed at your enemy.

And she couldn't quit thinking about the off chance she might accidentally hit Don Alvarez's daughter or one of her horses—any horse, for that matter. All she had to do was make the outlaws believe that a whole posse was up on the mountainside, and no more than that. She was no killer, and wouldn't be when it was said and done. All she wanted were her horses back and to see Fonzo freed from jail. Then the two of them would leave Mexico far behind and never look back.

At the same time she was thinking such thoughts, she knew that no matter what Newt and the judge said about giving Cortina a chance to surrender, they were going to do nothing of the kind. They were going to wait until he and his gang came out of the back of that fort and gun them down at point-blank range. It didn't matter that she wasn't going to be pulling the trigger on them. She was helping arrange it.

How had it come to that? It was as if what had happened to her father was a sign of the misfortune to come and marked the point where their lives would never be the same again.

She closed her eyes and thought of Fonzo beaten and suffering in the squalor of his jail cell. Don Alvarez wanted Cortina in exchange for Fonzo's life. There was no one left who cared for him besides her. She had to be strong. How had the judge put it? What was the life or the head of one outlaw versus her brother's? But no matter how many ways she worked it, she found no peace.

She could see the guard on the bastion clearly in her scope, and lowered the fine crosshairs until they pointed at a spot on the tower wall two feet below him. Other than some odd ricochet, her bullet ought to have no chance of hitting the girl down there or one of the horses.

She let out half a breath and squeezed the trigger. The recoil of the gun drove her back so that she barely saw where her bullet kicked dust at the bottom of the tower barely above the ground. The guard hunkered down at the shot, but she could see him aiming his rifle out of one of the gun ports. She ignored her aching shoulder and her bruised cheekbone and worked the Sharps's lever to drop the breech block and eject the spent cartridge. She thumbed a fresh shell into the chamber, slammed the breech home, and peered down the scope once more while she eared back the hammer for another go.

She aimed higher the next time, with more of an idea how much the bullet dropped at that great distance. She was pleased to see her second shot strike the tower only a foot below the crouching sentinel. Other men were shouting from inside the fort ruins, and she saw a puff of gun smoke from somewhere behind the dilapidated walls. The shot came nowhere near her.

Setting the Sharps aside, she drew both her pistols and began to fire them straight up at the sky, alternating one and then the other. She shot until both pistols were empty and then scrambled on her hands and knees toward where she had left the Henry. More gunshots were aimed her way, many in fact, but only a couple of them came close enough for her to see or hear the bullet strikes. None of them were close calls, but they terrified her nonetheless.

Vlad wasn't with her anymore, and she had no clue where the dog had gone. He was well used to gunfire from his time with their traveling show and her continual pistol practice.

She tore her attention away from thoughts of her missing dog and lay down on her belly and aimed the Henry down the mountain, picking a chunk of broken wall as her target. It took her three shots to find the proper sight elevation to take, but she finally got close enough to kick up dust in the general vicinity. She worked the lever on the Henry as fast as she could, picking random targets.

Several tiny clouds of gun smoke puffed up at different locations along the fort's near wall, and one of those shots hit the rocks below her with an angry whine at the same moment she fired off the Henry's last round. She took the empty gun with her and crawled back to the buffalo gun, intending to make use of it again.

The gunfire from the fort had all but ceased by the time she had reloaded the Sharps. She scanned the building with the rifle scope. At only one point was the yard within the walls visible, and she could see what looked like jacales, or little huts, standing inside and against the outer wall. While she watched, several men exited one of those low-roofed huts, leading their horses behind them. Her spirits lifted when she saw that three of those horses were as white as snow.

The outlaws mounted and disappeared from her view almost as quickly as they had appeared. It looked as if Cortina was going to run, exactly as Newt and the judge had predicted he would.

Kizzy leaned the Sharps up against a rock and began to reload her pistols while she watched the scene below. It was out of her hands now—as if it had ever really been in them in the first place.