.45-Caliber Deathtrap (10 page)

The Chinaman furled his brows as he stared at Cuno.

“They killed his partner,” Serenity explained. “Cuno an' me are on the vengeance trail.”

“Vengeance trail.” Kong spoke the words slowly, then again, as if memorizing them. His voice quivered with emotion. “I know this trail.”

“It's a hard one,” Cuno said. “Not one you tread lightly.”

“No,” the Chinaman agreed, removing the liver from the fire. He set it on a rock and cut it with his knife. “But one I must tread quickly. My daughter is strong, and she will fight. They will kill her.”

He slipped a chunk of liver into his mouth and, holding the skewered meat in his other hand, gained his feet. With his free hand, he reached down and slung his quiver over his shoulder, then his bow.

Serenity stared up at him, aghast. “You ain't headin' off again already, are ya?”

Kong tore off another chunk of meat and chewed hungrily. “I must keep moving. Must catch up with my daughter.” He squatted down, stuffed his coat pockets with meat chunks, and straightened. “Rest of meat yours. Obliged for fire.”

Cuno frowned up at him. “This vengeance trail ain't to be taken light, or too fast. Especially when you're only armed with a bow and arrow.”

“No time waste!”

“You best bed down here tonight,” Serenity urged. “You can ride out with us in the mornin'. Hell, we're all after the same gang.”

“No time waste,” Kong insisted as he scrambled back off the way he'd come. He stopped and turned back, bowing. “For fire, cooked meat…much 'bliged!”

Then he was gone.

When his footsteps had dwindled, and there was only the crackling of the fire and the constant, hollow rush of the stream, Serenity looked at Cuno.

He shook his head and bit off a chunk of meat from his stick. “That's one crazy Chinaman.”

EARLY THE NEXT
morning, Serenity Parker lifted his head from the balled burlap he used for a pillow, and peered out from beneath the freight wagon. A wooden cracking and heavy, regular breathing sounded on the other side of the fire in which the coffeepot chugged and gurgled.

Serenity blinked as if to clear his vision, and stared through dawn's milky, shadowy wash where the still, damp air was scented with pine smoke and fresh coffee.

On the other side of the fire, Cuno Massey hung by both hands from a low pine branch, his boots dangling a foot above the ground. The burly, young freighter was naked from the waist up. As he pulled himself toward the branch, the heavy muscles bunched and balled in his arms and shoulders, drawing the slablike pectorals up toward his neck.

His face was red, veins forking above the bridge of his nose.

When his chin grazed the branch, he lowered himself slowly, until his arms stretched straight above his shoulders, his boot heels brushing the ground. He sucked a deep breath through his teeth and hoisted himself back up toward the branch.

Parker blinked again, ran a hand across his mouth. “What in the name o' God's got into you?”

Massey brushed his chin against the branch three more times, then dropped, boots hitting the ground with a single, solid clomp. He brushed his hands together, and grabbed his shirt and hat from a mossy boulder.

“Just keepin' in shape for mule wrestlin'. Come on, old man. Time to get up. Coffee's done and the sun's nearly up.”

“You've gone ape on me, boy. Sure 'nough.”

“My pa taught me that exercise—a pull-up they call it—when I wrestled and boxed for extra money summers back home. If you're good, maybe I'll teach you.”

“I ain't no hairy-assed ape like some!”

Cuno reached under the wagon, pulled out his bedroll and the saddlebags he'd used for a pillow. Tossing both into the wagon box, he prodded the old man with a boot toe. “Come on, Serenity. If I'd known you were gonna lay around all mornin' like Jay Gould, I'd have sent you home when I first spied your mangy carcass falling off my tailgate.”

Serenity rolled over and threw his blanket over his old, gray head. “It's too early and my ole bones are chilled.”

When Cuno spitted some of the venison over the fire, and the fumes wafted over the wagon, the old man rolled out of his soogan, working his nose and smacking his lips. In a few minutes, he'd tugged his boots on and crawled out from beneath the big Murphy, wrapping a blanket over his shoulders and hitching up his pants.

“Ah.” He grinned, clapping his butternut-gray hat on his head. “Always did like the smell of venison on a cold autumn morn.”

An hour later, the sun was up and the snow was all but melted off, leaving light mud and occasional fog wisps in its wake. The fog was especially thick over the creek, which they hugged on their right, rising up like steam from a slow-boiling river.

The mules were clomping smartly along a flat, making good time, and Serenity was singing an old Southern hymn, when pistol and rifle fire snapped on the other side of the creek.

Cuno hauled back on the mules' reins. Serenity stopped singing and turned his head to the right, furling his bushy brows.

“What the hell you s'pose that's about?”

Cuno stared across the creek, toward a low, pine-covered rise about a half mile ahead. Two more shots sounded, then two more.

Could be hunters, but somehow the shots sounded angry. Like men shooting at men. Not likely to be Committee members, but they might as well check it out.

Cuno slapped the reins across the mules' backs. As the team trotted out, Serenity reached under the seat for his double-bore, and broke it open, making sure both barrels were loaded with wads.

Hearing several more shots, they rode for a half mile before crossing the creek at a rocky ford and mounting the northern bank spotted with wild currant and shagbush. Cows began to appear, a few skinny heifers and one-year-old steers overgrazing the stream banks. Probably a settlement near. Gradually, angry voices rose from dead ahead.

Gaining a shady cottonwood copse, Cuno stopped the team and sat listening. The voices seemed to originate from the other side of the trees.

He wrapped the reins around the brake handle, grabbed his Winchester, and leapt to the ground. “Stay with the wagon.”

Cuno jacked a round into the Winchester's chamber, off-cocked the hammer, and jogged through the trees, angling toward the direction of the rising din. One man seemed to be doing most of the yelling. A pistol spoke intermittently—a .36-caliber, judging by the report.

Once past the trees, Cuno bounded up a low hill pocked with rocks, piñon pines, and junipers. Near the crest, he swiped his hat from his head, hunkered down beside a square hunk of sandstone, which had probably tumbled off the northern ridge, and peered down the other side of the hill.

A makeshift tent camp—with a few a plank shacks and the usual smelly privies and trash heaps and scrounging mutts—stretched across the flat beyond the hill's base. Cattle cropped the tough, brown grass around the camp's perimeter, having already ravaged the creek bank.

The little settlement was deserted at the moment. Probably every prospector who called the place home had gathered at a tall cottonwood on Cuno's side of the village, fifty yards from the hill's base.

The crowd of fifteen to twenty men milled in a close group. Several carried rifles. A few wore pistols strapped to their hips. One man triggered shots into the air while whooping loudly, as though to keep the gang's blood surging. Others carried shovels or hickory ax handles.

Cuno dropped his right knee to the ground, and swept a lock of sandy-blond hair from his right eye. Most likely a shovel fight. Miners liked nothing more than to bash one another's skulls in with shovels. If they were really pissed and really drunk, they'd sling pickaxes.

On his last trip, Cuno had seen what was left after a pick fight. Until he was told better, he'd assumed a hog had been butchered.

Cuno was about to straighten up and head back to the wagon, when the crowd shifted curiously. The center opened slightly, and two men in hats led another, bare-headed man toward the sprawling cottonwood. Cuno stayed hunkered down, staring into the crowd, holding the Winchester across his thighs.

The man with the pistol must have emptied his cylinder, because the gun had fallen silent. The crowd roared louder, as if to make up for the lack of pistol fire. Barking dogs ran amidst the prospectors, and two young boys on a horse watched from the village side of the meadow. A rope was thrown over a branch of the cottonwood. Several men milled around the base of the tree.

Suddenly, the crowd opened around the bare-headed man, shouting even more loudly than before. The bare-headed man suddenly rose straight up toward the branch above, kicking and clawing at the rope around his neck, jerking this way and that. Short-cropped black hair capped a round face. He wore baggy duck trousers and fur-trimmed moccasins.

Cuno's heart thudded. Kong.

The crowd whooped and clapped.

Someone shouted, “Let the heathen suffocate!”

“Teach him to steal
my
mule!” yelled another.

Cuno took several quick, deep breaths as he snapped the rifle to his shoulder. He let out a long breath, held it, aimed, and squeezed the rifle's trigger.

The Winchester jumped and barked. Cuno stared through the billowing powder smoke as the slug smacked into the cottonwood's trunk, spraying bark.

Quickly, Cuno levered another shell, aimed, and fired.

The slug sliced the rope above Kong's head cleanly. The Chinaman dropped, disappeared amidst the crowd, most of whom had jerked around to stare in the direction from which the shot had come.

Cuno pushed himself to his feet and, ejecting the spent shell, held the rifle straight out from his hip in one hand as he strode down the hill. He slid the barrel around the crowd, threatening, and slitted his eyes beneath the shading brim of his hat.

The man who seemed to be the necktie party's leader stepped forward—a short, pudgy man with a thin red beard and floppy-brimmed green hat. He wore an old Civil War model pistol on his hip. “Who the hell're
you
?”

Cuno paused about twenty feet from the crowd, kept his rifle butt snugged against his belt, its hammer at full cock. “I'm the Chinaman's guardian angel.” He lifted his head to see into the crowd. “Kong?”

A grunt sounded. The crowd parted as the Chinaman bolted through it, heading toward Cuno, his black-haired head bobbing around most of the other's men's shoulders. When he surfaced, he ran past the leader, who promptly stuck his right boot out. Kong's left ankle hit the boot and, hands tied behind his back, the Chinaman fell headlong into the sand and sage.

The leader stepped forward, turned sideways, and poked an angry finger at Cuno. “That son-of-fuckin' Han tried to steal my mule! Now, in a minin' camp, the law for horse thievin' or mule thievin'—”

“Or any kind of thievin'!” shouted someone from the crowd.

“Or
any
kind of thievin',” agreed the leader, nodding, “is
hangin'
. You got no right to interfere!”

A wagon clattered along the trail to Cuno's left. He turned a quick glance. Serenity Parker had pulled the wagon up to the edge of the meadow, the two-bore resting across the oldster's thighs. He hauled back on the reins, stopping the mules, and sat scowling toward the crowd.

Cuno turned back to the leader, canted his head toward the Chinaman, whose eyes were swelling, blood trickling from his cracked and swollen lips.

“His daughter was kidnapped,” Cuno said mildly. “I'm sure he'd have returned the mule when he got her back. Wouldn't you have, Kong?”

The Chinaman had gained his knees and was glancing around anxiously. He looked at Cuno and nodded. He raised his chin toward the necktie party's leader and nodded again vigorously. “I return! I return!”

The leader scowled. “You return—bullshit!”

Cuno spied movement ahead and left. The man who'd been shooting his pistol into the air gave a drunken chuckle as he stepped out from behind another man who was holding an ax handle. The shooter flicked his old Navy toward Cuno, thumbing the hammer back.

Cuno pivoted, swinging the Winchester's barrel toward the shooter. The Winchester spoke. The shooter screamed. He dropped the Navy. Smacking the ground, the pistol discharged. The slug plunked into the ankle of another prospector, who yelled and jumped on his good foot before falling into the crowd.

The man Cuno had shot clutched his bloody forearm.
“Son of a bitch shot me!”

Cuno lowered the Winchester's barrel slightly, triggered another shot, spraying up gravel into the man's face and knocking him back on his hands with a terrified howl.

Cuno gritted his teeth at him. “Shut up.” He glanced at Kong. “Head over to the wagon. Move!”

As Kong heaved himself to his feet, the leader stared at the smoking barrel of Cuno's Winchester and stepped back, holding his hands chest-high in supplication. A scowl still pinched his nose, but fear had entered his eyes. He didn't say anything as Cuno backed toward the wagon, swinging the Winchester's barrel around the crowd, which had gone unnaturally quiet.

The two wounded men groaned softly. The dogs made the most noise, sniffing around and panting.

Cuno backed to within fifteen feet of the wagon, then turned. Kong sat in the driver's box beside Serenity, who was sawing through the rope tying Kong's wrists behind his back. Cuno walked around to the driver's side, climbed aboard, grabbed the reins off the brake handle, and released the brake.

He flicked the reins. As the wagon jerked forward, he appraised the crowd, the prospectors now milling and conversing in angry, albeit hushed, tones. The dogs had lost interest in the men and were chasing a rabbit up the northern ridge through the pines.

As the wagon rolled even with the two boys sitting the old, swaybacked paint bareback, the youngsters watched Cuno with keen interest.

“You a gunslinger?” asked the boy in front, swiveling his head as the wagon passed. He wore a soiled trail hat manufactured for a much older man.

Serenity cackled wickedly, jerked a thumb at Cuno. “He'll shoot ye dead and turn ye inside out, boys!” The old man threw his head back on his shoulders and roared.

Sobering, he cleared his throat and brushed a finger across his beaklike nose. “Less'n you're a deer, that is…”