Deadfall (11 page)

“Kinda wet outside,” said Charley to the bartender. “You get these gully washers down here all the time?”

The bartender looked over with a shrug. “
No comprendo
,” he said. He finished pouring the two drinks.

“They get rain like this in winter,” said Fuerte to Charley. “The Sierra Madre Oriental mountains west of here are mostly the cause of it, though not as much as the Sierra Madre Occidental range further west. It has even been known to snow there if it gets cold enough.”

Something caught the Ranger's eye. The newspaper the bartender had dropped on the bar top had been folded back, and there was a blurry photograph of a man on horseback on the third page.

Charley leaned in closer. He squinted. “Hey, Roca,” he whispered, “look over here. I don't have my magnifiers with me. Can you make out a name under this photograph?”

Fuerte leaned in. He took a glance over Charley's shoulder.

“It is Colonel Armendariz, for sure,” he said. “The man we are looking for—”

The ex-Ranger's firm hand fell atop Fuerte's wrist, stopping him cold.

Fuerte turned to Charley and saw that his look was now focused across the bar to the mirror behind the bartender.

In the reflection, he could see that the four Mexicans who had been playing dice were now all silent, having let their blankets fall to the floor. Every single one of them wore leather bandoliers across their chests. Heavy pistols hung at their sides.

Charley spoke softly to Fuerte. “You can duck, or you can draw, Roca. I'm betting there's gonna be some killing around here real soon. And I intend to make sure it isn't me . . . or you . . . that're going to be the ones that die.”

Knowing that there would at least be one out of the four who would have some idea of what he was about to say, Charley, his back to the four, cleared his throat. What he was about to say came slow and easy. He gradually turned until he could make direct eye contact with one of the men in the mirror.

“A Colt revolver is a piece of unique, cold steel,
mi amigos . . .
it doesn't differentiate between a man's size or the color of his skin.”

He bent down slowly and withdrew the Walker Colt from his boot.

“This gun has killed both brown men and white . . . plus more Indians than I'd care to count.”

He made a slow, pronounced pivot, turning around altogether, facing the foursome directly.

“Now you
hombres
have just two choices,” he went on, “thin and none. If you as much as blink, I've made up my mind to put out your lights. So you have just one minute to get things right with your Maker because, whether or not you like it, this is your judgment day,
amigos
. And that means it's
all
over. So go ahead anytime and start counting your blessings. And, by-damnit, that's a damn fact,” he added.

The bartender made a flick of his eyes below the bar. Fuerte figured he probably kept a weapon there, so he wagged a finger in his direction.

The man stepped back, realizing he probably shouldn't get involved.

The air in the small room was becoming very close. No one spoke. The two former lawmen continued to stare down the four Mexicans. The rain's constant drumming on the
cantina
's rooftop was the only sound to be heard.

Charley did not blink. Neither did Fuerte. Nor did the Mexicans, for that matter. Everyone involved knew that the first one who made a move would be the first to die.

Fuerte wished he could ease his hand just a little closer to his own weapon.

The bartender slid just a little farther away.

It was a standoff. All it would take was for one man to make the slightest mistake.

Seconds ticked away on the ancient wall clock above the back-bar. As the moments passed, the ticking became almost deafening.

The door was suddenly flung open by someone entering from the outside. Lightning flashed. At the same moment, thunder roared along with six pistols. Both Charley and Roca Fuerte had fired their weapons in the direction of the Mexicans, knocking down two of them and setting up a smoke screen. Four Mexican bullets whizzed by the ex-lawmen's heads, slamming into the mirror behind them. The bartender ducked as shards of reflective glass exploded all around him. Charley and Fuerte dropped to their knees and took careful aim before disposing of the other two.

The fifth man, the unexpected one—the one who had entered the door sparking the anticipated gun battle—turned around as quickly as he had come in and ran back outside into the rain-drenched street. He found his horse, mounted, and galloped away into the blinding sheets of rain that totally obscured his mud-spattered getaway.

Roca Fuerte and Charley Sunday stopped their pursuit as they reached the porch; neither fired their weapon after the departing rider.

Fuerte yelled over the roar of the storm's onslaught: “Are we just going to let him ride off like that, Señor Charley?”

“Nope,” said Charley. Then he turned. “By the way those men inside acted when they heard you say Armendariz's name, they must have been part of his gang, wouldn't you think?” The ex-Ranger slid his weapon back into his boot. “We'll just go ahead and follow that one. Take our time. More than likely, he'll lead us right to Betty Jean and Kent.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

“What's that?” asked Henry Ellis under an overcast sky as he pointed off across a deep, high-desert valley to a point just above the foothills of a large flat-topped
mesa
.

Kelly and Rod, with Henry Ellis riding in the cart holding the puppy in his arms, were being led by their captors. They had stopped for some rest beside a configuration of boulders that overlooked a peaceful, but dry, creek bed. The thought of rippling blue water flowing a few hundred feet below the faint trail they had been following for the past hour and a half made Kelly hope for some rain.

While the Mexican man and woman stayed in their saddles, speaking Spanish, and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, Kelly tried to figure out just where they might be going by listening carefully for familiar Spanish words.

They had stopped when Henry Ellis had asked about several wooden structures poking up through the arid vegetation in the distance. The Mexican woman, who had been riding behind Kelly, looked up at the sound of Kelly's voice. She could see the American boy was still pointing. She followed her captive's finger with her eyes, finally spotting the questionable objects across the valley's wide span.

“Oh.” She shrugged. “That is the Black-Seminole burial grounds. Our present government, which we despise, has given them permission to live in our country.”

“The Black-Seminoles bury their dead above ground because they have lived in swampland. They are
not
our enemies,” said the man. “Having been granted special permission to be here by the government does not make them bad people.” He turned to Rod. “We leave the Seminole-Negroes alone because one day we may need them ourselves—”

“Or
they
may need
us
,” interrupted the woman.

The man collected the reins of his horse. “We had better be going,” he told them all, “if we plan on getting to our camp before nightfall.”

 

 

Sergeant Stone, Mitchell Pennell, Billy July, John Thomas Bodie, and Elisabeth Rogers sat together in the hidden canyon campsite around a small, crackling campfire, in front of the hut beside the pool. They had just finished their evening meal. Several Indian women were removing the simple utensils they had employed, taking them to the nearby pool where they prepared them for washing by rubbing the dishes with sand before rinsing them in the cold water.

While the flames from the fire threw their shimmering patterns on the thoughtful faces, they were all served a warm, tangy drink by another Black-Seminole woman.

The sun had only just set. The canyon had been in deep shadow since midafternoon, right after Billy July and his prisoners had arrived. An uncomfortable chill was on the evening's air. “Another storm must have set in some distance away,” John Thomas told them. The gracious Black-Seminole leader also offered the newcomers an animal-skin shelter to sleep under, just in case the hideout canyon experienced some showers of its own before dawn.

The talk going on now was not only about the weather. It also concerned Elisabeth Rogers's dilemma: the fact that her husband and son's murderers were still out there—on the loose—running free.

The four men had listened intently to the Rogers woman's story while they ate, with each one of them conjuring up a way in which they might help her find those who had committed the intolerable crimes.

Billy July was the first to offer a sensible solution to the problem by releasing his claim to Sergeant Stone and Mitch Pennell. He granted the two men their freedom by allowing them to continue on their way in the morning, if they chose to do so. There was a condition: they must keep a steady lookout for the bandits Elisabeth Rogers had described. They were to either report back to the two leaders at the Seminole-Negro camp as to the whereabouts of the killers, or they could take matters into their own hands by slaying the assassins themselves.

“I have another idea,” said Elisabeth Rogers, directing her suggestion to the leader of the small band of Black-Seminoles. “I know I owe my life to both you, Mr. Bodie, Mr. July, and your people. It was Mr. July who found me after my wagon overturned and my horses had run off. I thought I was going to die out there in that horrible desert . . . until you showed up.” She smiled. “It was you who brought me here, Mr. July,” she went on. “It was you who treated my injuries and fed me. And I am forever grateful to you for that, believe me. But now . . . now I must leave.”

John Thomas Bodie and Billy July exchanged puzzled glances. “I must continue in my pursuit of justice,” she went on. “Vengeance, some may call it, but until I know that those who took my family away from me have paid for their crime . . . Until I know, without a doubt in my mind, that the men who murdered my husband and son have paid the ultimate price . . .
with their lives
. . . I cannot . . . I will not . . . rest.”

“You must not go alone into the desert again, Mrs. Rogers,” said John Thomas Bodie. “We would be sending you to your own death for sure if we were to allow that.”

Elisabeth reached over. Smiling softly, she stroked the older man's arm. She shook her head. “I don't plan on going anywhere alone from here, Mr. Bodie. I mean to travel with these two Texas gentlemen.” She indicated Pennell and Stone, sitting on either side of her. “I am sure they will not mind if I”—she drew in a deep breath and expelled it—“if I ride along with them.”

 

 

Partly because of the overcast sky, night fell rapidly on the muddy ground Charley and Fuerte rode across on their galloping horses. Within a ten-minute span, the surrounding desert was under complete darkness. The rain had let up less than an hour earlier, and the storm clouds overhead were beginning to disperse. This eventually allowed a soft, eerie glow from the moon overhead to illuminate the usually arid region.

Charley Sunday, and his Mexican companion, Roca Fuerte, found that they had to walk their tired mounts along the barren lip of a deep gully. At the bottom of the steep slope, the channel was churning with four feet of swift-flowing storm runoff.

The two men were following a set of well-defined hoofprints, left by the horse belonging to the man who had fled the
cantina
. They knew they were close to their prey—so close, in fact, the rainwater on the saturated ground hadn't had time to entirely settle into the crescent indentations made by the animal's iron shoes.

“Do you th-think we will catch up to this man soon,” said Fuerte, shivering in the night's chill.

“Don't you go worrying yourself, Roca,” answered a just as chilled Charley Sunday. He removed his slicker, tying it on top of his bedroll behind his saddle. “I'll wager we'll have him in our sights within the hour.”

“I s-sure hope so,” said Fuerte. “Because I'm beginning to th-think my toes will fall off by midnight if we don't.”

“Hell, Roca,” chuckled Charley, “your toes aren't going anywhere. Not as long as you keep your boots on.”

The men rode along a little farther, a quarter of a mile or so. By then, a large slice of moon had been exposed completely by the scattering clouds, and the two could see better than they had expected.

Suddenly Charley reined up.

Fuerte did the same.

The ex-Ranger cocked an ear and squinted off into the murkiness ahead.

“We found him, Roca,” Charley whispered. “He's right up there about fifty yards in front of us. Just waiting to put our lights out.”

Fuerte whispered back, “He thinks he is going to ambush us, does he?”

“Not if Samuel Colt has anything to say about it,” said Charley, acknowledging the large revolver in his boot top.

He dismounted as quietly as he could, hoping a loud squeak of the saddle leather would go unnoticed by the waiting bandit-assassin.

Fuerte also dismounted. Just as he planted his feet firmly on the ground, gunshots, with bright muzzle flashes, erupted from the darkness to their left. Both men grabbed their rifles, sliding them out of the scabbards.

They dove for cover over the side of the ravine, sliding down the shale and into the freezing water that was flowing briskly along the narrow channel.

“G-geezes-G-god-a-mighty,” yelped Charley as he hit the icy surface.

Fuerte mumbled the equivalent in Spanish. He immediately began to scramble out.

Charley pulled him back by his gun belt into the rushing current. “No, Roca,” Charley ordered. “We need to stay right here. Those shots came from over yonder.” He pointed to the rim of the ravine where they had just been. “Not up that way.”

He indicated the direction where he had said the killer would be. “I'm afraid our friend has friends of his own.”

“D-damn, Señor Charley,” said Fuerte. “I'm about to f-freeze my toes off.”

Both men held their balance as the murky water swirled around them.

“We gotta draw them in,” said Charley. “Stay as low in the water as we can, at least until they show themselves . . . make them think they killed us both so they feel safe enough to come down here looking.”

“I d-don't know if I c-can hang on that long, Señor Charley,” said Fuerte. His lips looked to Charley as if they were beginning to turn blue. “C-cold never d-did me any good anyway.” He shivered.

“We aren't going to be waiting long, Roca,” Charley whispered. He nodded toward the brink of the rift. “Here they come now.”

The two ex-lawmen ducked lower into the water.

Shadowy figures began to appear at the top of the slope—silhouetted
sombreros
worn by several men with rifles. They moved slowly—carefully—edging their way over the lip, then using their boot heels to dig into the saturated shale to keep them from slipping or falling down the precipitous incline.

In the brackish water below, Charley Sunday and Roca Fuerte waited. Only their rifles and eyes showed above the surface of the churning water.

Charley's look shifted to Fuerte beside him. He spoke only with infinitesimal movements of his eyes, indicating to his partner that they must wait until the approaching men were even closer before they would make their move.

Bits of gravel and wet clots of sand slid into the water around the two former lawmen. The menacing forms loomed larger and larger as the bandits drew closer. They moved slowly, carefully picking out a safe trail to the water's edge.

When they were no more than seven feet away, Charley nudged Fuerte, and together they rose from the rushing flood, slamming cartridge after cartridge into the breeches of their rifles while yellow flame and spiraling lead crashed into the midsections of the startled attackers.

The bandits, four in all, were caught completely by surprise. They never had the chance to fire one shot in return. Instead, their lifeless bodies tumbled past Charley and Fuerte into the foaming channel, only to be carried away by the floodwater's sucking undercurrent.

Charley's gloved finger pressed against Fuerte's lips, preventing him from letting out a whoop of relief. Roca looked quickly to Charley who shook his head. The ex-Ranger motioned in a direction farther up from where the four men had come.

Another figure in a large
sombrero
was stopped in his tracks at the top of the incline. It was apparent to the former Ranger that the man at the top of the ravine couldn't see what had happened to his friends.

“
Hombres?
” the man called out. “
Ustedes están bien?
”

There was a moment.

“
Now!
” shouted Charley. Both men fired their rifles simultaneously, kicking up four-foot rooster tails just below the reluctant bandit's outline. The man scrambled to the ridge behind him, unharmed.

More ricochets and mud spirals followed, taking huge bites out of the rain-soaked earth.

A quick reflection of the moon off one of the man's large-rowel spurs flashed as he disappeared over the rim of the deep ravine.

Charley scrambled out of the water and began climbing up the incline after the man. Even though he was slipping and sliding, in less than a minute he was still able to make it to the high point where he'd last seen the man.

Once there, he was joined by Fuerte. The two of them stopped, breathing hard, wiping mud from their hands and rifles, listening as hoofbeats faded away into the night.

“Our horses,” said Fuerte, looking around frantically for their mounts.

Charley let a hand fall on his friend's shoulder. “They have to be around here somewhere, Roca,” he said. He put two fingers between his teeth, then whistled.

“Th-that is n-not right,” said Fuerte, shivering even harder now. “My s-saddlebags contained all of my d-dry clothing . . . plus
,
our sleeping blankets were tied to our s-saddles. W-what are we g-going to do now?” he added.

“Well,” said Charley Sunday, “I suggest you look right over there, Roca.”

Fuerte followed Charley's gaze until his eyes fell on both horses.

Dice had heard Charley's whistle and was now leading the way for Fuerte's horse over to where the two men were standing.

Charley took Dice's reins in his hand.

Fuerte did the same with his horse.

“I always train my riding horses to answer to my whistle,” Charley told his friend. “You should do the same, Roca. Otherwise you might just find yourself stumbling around in the dark one night while you go half-crazy looking for him.”

 

 

There was a flutter of bats overhead as a cloud of the tiny creatures flew past the campfire, then departed through the cave's opening in what appeared to be a single motion.