Dust of the Damned (9781101554005) (32 page)

As expected, the outlaw jerked with a start, throwing one hand out toward the six-shooter jutting from the holster around which the cartridge belt was coiled. His hand grabbed the top of Hathaway’s low-heeled cavalry boot. He froze, looked up slowly, a little chagrined, to see the dark face peering down at him.

Jesse smiled sheepishly.

“That’s the lurch of a wanted man,” Angel observed as she knelt, rolling up her blankets. “Don’t worry, James—you won’t be wanted much longer.”

“Oh, I’ll always be wanted, Marshal. By good-lookin’ women, ’specially. Always have been.”

“You flatter yourself.”

“Someone has to.” Jesse yawned and stretched.

Zane rolled his own blankets quickly and tied the roll closed with rawhide straps he’d sewn into the wool. He glanced at Jesse, who’d crawled toward the fire with his empty cup and used a leather swatch to lift the coffeepot from a flat rock in the coals and shake it.

“Well, you got us to the Lobo Negros, Jesse,” Zane said with reluctant gratitude. “You got some vision about where we trail from here?”

Jesse poured the scorched, smoking brew into his tin cup, then sat back on his butt, looking over the cup’s rim toward the northern ridge where the dead dragon had finally stopped smoldering though the rotten-fish stench remained. “Hell, I ain’t no witch. Now, my granny could lead you right to where the Hell’s Angels are right now. Me—I didn’t get that much of the gift. I just seen the wolf’s head cappin’ that peak there.” He lifted his chin to inspect the ridge towering over them, capped in weathered sandstone.

Zane followed Jesse’s gaze. “I don’t see the head.”

“It’s back farther. Can’t see it from this angle. Juts up from the other side of this here ridge, forms a ridge all its own. I been keepin’ a watch on it as we approached the range.”

Jesse blew on his coffee, sipped, and shook his head. “Them killers is gonna rue the day they killed my brother, Frank… Cole… all the others.” Tears of rage and grief glistened in
the outlaw’s pale eyes. “Them’s all the family I have except a few stashed here and there in the hills back home—all beaten an’ broken by the massacre o’ Lincoln’s”—he gritted his teeth—“mercenaries.”

“Well, you’ll get your chance at what’s left of those mercenaries,” Zane said, donning his hat and adding a few chunks of
piñon to the fire. “Just don’t forget who your enemies are. Might cause me to make the same mistake.”

“I scouted north last night, before good dark.” Hathaway had emptied the coffeepot and was adding fresh water from his canteen. “Found a coupla piles of horse apples them spooks didn’t bother to hide.”

“Probably figured the dragon would keep their backtrail clear of shadowers,” Angel said, tossing a pouch of Arbuckles’ to the scout, who caught it against his chest.

“I ’spect we won’t have much trouble followin’ ’em. From what I seen, just north of here there ain’t too many trail options. Rough country, all up and down, steep ridges of sandstone and granite. Not much water, neither. Just a few trails between narrow canyons. Devil’s playground kind of place.”

“Well, hell,” Zane said, grabbing his rifle and blanket roll and walking toward their picketed mounts. “No reason to burn daylight here, then.”

“There ain’t much daylight to speak of, Uriah.” Angel sat back against her saddle, watching him.

Zane glanced toward the lilac sky showing between black ridges in the east, then continued striding toward the horses, casting a look in the direction the full moon would rise. “There’s enough.”

Behind him, Hathaway glanced at Angel and shrugged. As he began pouring the coffee water back into his canteen, he sighed. “I reckon we can brew a pot later, when we stop to rest the hosses.”

“What’s his hurry?” Jesse wanted to know as he sipped the last of the brewed coffee without chagrin, glancing over his shoulder as Zane walked away. “Might have poor luck, trailin’ in the dark.”

Angel kicked dirt on the fire, then lifted one of her six-guns from its holster. “I reckon Uriah’s got it right,” she said, also casting an uneasy glance toward where the full moon would rise. “There’ll be light enough soon.” She rolled the cylinder across her forearm, imagining each of the silver slugs nestled in their chambers, then sheathed the piece, grabbed her rifle, saddlebags, and bedroll, and strode off toward the horses.

Only a few hours ahead rode the Hell’s Angels and Ravenna Gonzalez-Vara. At midmorning, riding along a narrow, crooked, steep-walled canyon, Ravenna glanced at the sky.

“Chico, where are you, damnit?” She noted the wary tone in her voice and didn’t like it.

Riding to her left, the other three riding single-file behind, Charlie said, “What’s the matter,
chiquita
?”

“Chico. I haven’t seen him since just after I managed to conjure him again finally. And I had a dark dream last night.”

“About the dragon?”

“
Sí.
I think so. I don’t like it that he’s not near.”

“Thought he was supposed to be out interceptin’ folks who might be shadowin’ us.”

“
Sí, sí.
But I should see him. I conjured him. I can call him back when I have the power. I have the power now, and I called him back this morning, after my dream. To reassure myself that…”

The horses’ shod hooves clacked on the stony canyon floor. A hawk sat on a small thumb of rock protruding from the two-thousand-foot cliff on the right side of the canyon, the raptor’s
head turning slowly, tracking the four men and the black-haired woman walking their horses along the rocky trail partly shaded by the eastern ridge blocking the climbing sun.

“To reassure yourself what?” She offered Charlie a cockeyed grin. “You think somethin’ might have happened to that winged demon? I don’t think so,
chiquita
. When you conjured him, you outdone yourself and any witch I ever known here or in the Old Country.”

Ravenna lowered her glance from the rims of the canyon walls and turned her head forward once more. She frowned darkly, not a customary expression for her. It worried Charlie a little, and he laughed to cover it. “Come on,
chiquita
. Chico’s fine. Maybe he’s taking siesta.”

“Sí.”
Ravenna rode along, brooding, worried. “That’s probably it, Charlie.” She cast her anxious glance to the right, where an old, massive rockslide formed a jagged hill against the north wall of the canyon, starting just below a great gap in the wall, where an earthquake had likely caused the cliff to bulge and drop.

“Whoa.”

Ravenna stopped her gelding and threw up a hand for the others to follow suit as she perused the massive slide, pulling her nickering horse’s head up, the bit clacking in its teeth.

“Now what is it?” Charlie was impatient, edgy. “Goddamn, girl, you’re startin’ to make me nervous, and I don’t
get
nervous.”

“I saw a flash up there in those rocks. Might have been a rifle.”

The others turned to follow her stricken gaze.

“You sure?” Charlie asked.

“Of course I’m sure. You think I’m seeing things?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “You’re worried about a fucking dragon it’d take a whole ton of dynamite to put a dent in….”

“Fuck you, Charlie!”

Snarling, she rammed the dull points of her spurs into her gelding’s flanks and galloped thirty yards to the base of the canyon’s north wall. While the mount was still moving, she leaped off the horse’s back and onto one of the boulders comprising the rockslide. Cocking her Winchester one-handed, swinging the barrel up and down, she leaped like a mountain goat up the slide, picking her way quickly, black hair dancing across her shoulders and flashing in the golden sunlight flooding that side of the canyon.

She climbed a hundred feet up the slide, leaped onto a high, narrow boulder and down the other side, into a niche among the rocks. She dropped to a knee and scoured the niche’s floor.

Recent boot tracks scored the floury dirt. There was something else. Ravenna reached down, picked up the half-smoked cigar butt, and held it up to her face. She rolled it between her fingers.

Still warm. And store-bought.

Ravenna dropped the butt, rose, and unholstered her ivory-gripped Remington. She followed the prints back down the canyon along the slide, until they disappeared among the tumbled boulders. She stared out over the side of the slide, seeing nothing but more rock. Whoever had been here a few minutes ago was gone.

She holstered the pistol and retraced her steps back down the slide to the canyon floor. As she walked out to where her
horse stood, ground-tied, she glanced over at Charlie, Lucky, One-Eye, and Curly Joe. They were all staring tensely up canyon, all unsheathing their rifles, except Curly Joe. Now Curly Joe unsheathed his saddle-ring carbine and whistled softly through his crooked teeth.

Ravenna swung up onto her gelding’s back and neck-reined the horse around to face up canyon. She stiffened in her saddle, that recent dark expression returning as she saw the six riders approaching from fifty yards away, angling out away from a bend in the north canyon wall. They were little, dark men with long, black hair, in breechclouts and deerskin vests and high-topped deerskin moccasins. They were like living shadows astride horses.

They carried nocked bows in their wiry, muscular arms, holding them out flat in front of them while also holding their mounts’ braided hide reins. Swords of what appeared to be gold dangled from beaded sashes encircling their waists.

The riders were so incredibly tattooed it was hard to distinguish anything else about their features. All their horses—rugged, short-legged mustangs—were also marked with tribal designs, with painted rings around their eyes and talisman designs unfamiliar to Ravenna etched across their breasts.

The witch was vaguely confused. Whoever had left the cigar stub in the rocks had not been one of the natives approaching her group now. These men wouldn’t buy their tobacco in any store. Were she and Charlie being stalked by a white man as well as by these natives?

Charlie glanced wryly at Ravenna. “You didn’t say there’d be ’Paches out here,
chiquita
.” His voice echoed loudly off the stone walls.

“Those aren’t Apaches, Charlie.” Ravenna’s voice was pitched low with alarm. Fire flared in her veins as dream visions flashed behind her eyes.

She jerked a savage look at the wolf pack leader. “We must kill them now, Charlie,” she screamed.
“Kill them now!”

Chapter 31
    

THE LOST TRIBE
AND A VOICE ON THE WIND

A chill wind blew from down canyon against Zane’s back, blowing his sombrero forward. Clamping the hat down low on his head, he turned to squint behind him along the narrow, steep-walled corridor of striated granite, basalt, and sandstone, the jagged-edged rim poking like gnarled witch’s fingers at a sky tan with windblown dust. The dust swirled toward him along the canyon floor.

“Lousy luck,” he said. “This wind’s gonna rub out the Angels’ sign.”

“Don’t need it.”

Zane turned to Hathaway, who was staring off the canyon’s right side. The short, stocky man dismounted and led his mule over to a boulder leaning against the canyon’s southern wall. He squatted beside the boulder and placed his gloved right hand against the side of the rock.

“What is it?” Angel asked, lifting her voice above the wind’s keening.

“Wolf’s head carved in this rock!”

Zane and Angel both swung down from their saddles and walked over to stand near Hathaway. Jesse did not dismount, as his leg was hurting, but he gigged his buckskin over. The scout was running his right index finger along a crude wolf’s head about the size of a man’s open palm chiseled into the lower-middle section of the boulder. “I seen one a while back, figured it was just some kind o’ rock painting like you see all over the Southwest. But now I reckon it was somethin’ more.”

“Prospectors often use such signs to lead the way back to a remote digging,” Zane said. “In case they can’t remember where it is exactly, or they lose their maps.”

“Sorta like Hansel and Gretel layin’ out breadcrumbs,” Jesse said.

“You think that’s what this is?” Angel asked. “A prospector’s signpost?”

Hathaway straightened, pulled his hat brim down snug on his head. “I reckon we’ll know if we keep heading down this canyon and find another one.”

They mounted up and continued along the canyon, the building wind blowing their horses’ tails between their hind legs and keeping a nearly constant curtain of grit and tumbleweeds ensconcing the riders. Where the canyon corridor forked, the three riders scrutinized the cliff walls.

“There,” Zane said, reining General Lee toward the north canyon wall, nearest the right fork in the corridor.

Another wolf’s head had been chiseled into the granite and limestone. It was fainter than the other one but still
recognizable—a definite signpost. Zane gigged General Lee along the right corridor, the others falling in behind him, Angel riding to his left. Riding to Hathaway’s right, Jesse yelled, “Anyone else feel like someone’s watchin’ us?”

Zane glanced back at the Missourian riding crouched in his saddle and tightening his jaws against the gale.