Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635) (12 page)

The bigger man was sluggish from the blow to his oysters, and Colter managed to grind his heels into the ground and heave the man over on his back. Colter straddled him, got his hands on the man's neck and began grinding both his thumbs into his throat. The stocky man's broad face swelled, turned red. He growled and groaned and, hardening his jaws and closing his eyes, raised his arms up between Colter's and thrust his fists sharply to both sides.

The blow broke Colter's stranglehold. The stocky gent smashed his right fist into Colter's chin. Colter grunted and flew back and to one side, hitting the ground on his shoulder.

Knowing that he had to keep moving or die, he gained his heels and saw the Henry leaning against the tree not six feet away. He ran for it. The stocky man grabbed his right boot. Colter hit the ground hard on his chin. He cursed shrilly. Stars burst inside his head.

Colter jerked his ankle free, rose to hands and knees, and crawled madly toward the fir. He grabbed his rifle, twisted around on his butt while swinging the rifle around and jacking a cartridge into the chamber. The stocky gent was crawling toward him, a knife in his hand, a savage snarl on his spittle-flecked lips.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

The Henry's reports sounded like dynamite explosions in the silent night. Each of the three bullets blew dust from the stocky
rurale
's tunic, in a straight line across his chest. He loosed one final growl, his big face crumpling with misery, and flew backward to hit the ground on his back and shoulders, head smacking a rock resoundingly.

Chapter 18

Colter paused, letting the last echo finish rocketing around the ridges. When it died, he ejected the spent cartridge, hearing it cling off a rock behind him, and levered a fresh shell into the chamber. The
rurales
' horses were nickering and pulling at their picket line. He swung around to face the dark slope. The fire flickered about seventy yards away, the trees silhouetted before it.

He could hear no voices from that direction. None of the
rurales
appeared to be heading toward him. Not yet. He backed up to the dead stocky
rurale
, stooped down, and pulled his Remington from behind the man's cartridge belt. He also slipped a big bowie knife from a sheath on the man's belt, and stuck that into the sheath in his own boot well. The horn-gripped knife was an improvement over his own skinning knife.

He continued to stare at the flickering firelight up the slope through the trees as he quickly moved around behind the horses, passing the small remuda, then climbing the slope a good seventy yards from where he and the two dead
rurales
had descended it. He climbed quickly, his knees like jelly, his heart hammering in his ears.

Someone shouted in Spanish, the raspy voice echoing. It was the captain's voice.

When Colter figured he was halfway to the fire, he hunkered behind a deadfall log, his breath raking like sand in and out of his tired lungs, and looked over the top of the log to survey the area around the fire.

All the
rurales
were on their feet, spread out and holding rifles as they peered down the slope toward the dead men and the snorting, nickering horses. The captain shouted to the two dead men, and then he gestured for the others to continue down the slope, saying something that Colter couldn't hear and wouldn't have understood even if he had heard. While the others headed on down the slope, spread out amongst the trees, the captain stood about ten yards downslope from the fire, turning his head slowly from left to right and back again. His right shoulder faced Colter. His profile shone umber in the firelight, his jaw dimpling with tension.

Colter rose and backed away from the log, then, keeping an eye on the captain, continued climbing the slope. Ahead, he saw the tree to which the blond girl was tied. She sat before it as she had before, with an air of extreme defeat though Colter could only see her profile in silhouette.

Slowly, he continued upslope, breathing through his mouth, squeezing the cocked Henry in his hands. Quietly, he dropped down behind the tree the girl was tied to, then shouldered around the trunk and clamped his right hand over her mouth. He felt her mouth come open, felt her little teeth against his palm, and he heard her gasp, but his hand stifled the scream. He showed her his face, rested his rifle against his knee, and pressed two fingers to his lips.

Her eyes were bright and round with fear as she studied him.

Gradually, her terror was replaced with confusion. Colter tapped his fingers to his lips, and she nodded. Colter lowered his fingers, then glanced over his shoulder at the captain, who stood where he'd stood before, staring down the slope.

Suddenly, an alarmed shout rose from below. The other
rurales
had found the bodies. Quickly, Colter jerked up his pants leg, removed the big bowie from the sheath, and sawed through the girl's ropes. She continued to stare at him apprehensively, her eyes darting between him and the captain. But she said nothing.

The captain was angrily shouting orders. Colter could hear the other
rurales
scrambling around at the base of the bluff.

Colter slid the knife back into his boot and put his face up close to the girl's ear. “Real quietlike, run straight back across this slope and hide. If I can, I'll bring a horse.”

She nodded and began running, holding her skirts above her ankles. Colter had just started to turn toward the captain when a gun flashed and popped.

The slug
spanged
into the fir trunk to Colter's left. The redhead wheeled and fired the Henry from his hip. When three explosions had cut open the night, the third followed by a shrill scream, the captain was on his back on the ground, moving his arms and legs like a turtle trying to right itself.

He shouted hoarsely, summoning his men, and Colter aimed and fired one last shot at the man, drilling a silencing round through the captain's right temple. Instantly, he wheeled and ran down the slope roughly the same way he'd climbed it. He could hear the others running back up, yelling, boots crunching brush and gravel.

Rifles barked. Bullets sizzled around Colter, plunked into trees and rocks. He saw several murky, gray-clad figures on his left, stopped, dropped to a knee, and emptied his rifle, the Henry's muzzle flashing wickedly, powder smoke wafting around his head.

In the relative silence following his barrage, and as he pressed his back to a pine while he quickly plucked fresh cartridges from his shell belt and slid them down the rifle's loading tube, several men groaned. He could still hear a couple moving around more cautiously now, small branches breaking beneath their boots as they tried to work around Colter.

The redhead sat on his butt against the tree. He slid the sixteenth cartridge into the Henry's loader and quietly levered a round into the chamber.

A rifle flashed and barked from the other side of the tree and right. The slug hammered the tree, spraying bark. Colter turned, snaked his Henry around the bole, saw a strip of gray in the forest beyond him and which was vaguely illuminated by the fire's amber light, and fired two more rounds.

Silence.

There was a raspy sigh, the thump of a knee hitting the ground. A man gasped. Colter could still see the murky patch of gray, drew a bead on it, and fired.

There was the thump of a heavy body falling, and the crack of the branch it had fallen on.

Colter pulled his head back behind the tree. From somewhere straight out beyond him rose the footfalls of a single man, maybe two, running away across the slope. Raspy, anxious breaths sounded faintly.

Colter continued to hunker on one knee behind the tree, looking around and listening. When he continued to hear only silence save the occasional cracks and pops of the dying fire up the slope on his left, he rose slowly, stepped quietly out from behind the tree, and made his way down the slope to the
rurales
' fidgeting horses. He picked one out of the string—the pinto gelding he'd seen the girl riding before, then turned the others free. As they galloped off into the night, he found the
rurales
' tack piled in nearby shrubs and began saddling the pinto with the first saddle he found.

Footfalls sounded from upslope. He'd just set a big-skirted, double-rigged Mexican saddle on the gelding's back, and now he swung around to grab his rifle.

“It's me,” said a girl's voice. “Don't shoot.”

He looked toward the slope, saw the slender figure moving down through the pines, striding confidently and swinging her arms. Her coat was open, showing a cartridge bandolier wrapped twice around her slender waist. A Colt Army revolver jutted up from the bandolier, over her flat belly clad in a shabby plaid flannel shirt. Colter stared at the girl skeptically as she walked up to him and ran a hand down the pinto's neck, cooing softly to soothe the beast's jangled nerves.

“He's mine.”

“I know.” He glanced at the pistol jutting above her bandolier. “Where'd you get that?”

“Off one o' them Mescins.” She shook her head resolutely. “Never again will I go unarmed in Mexico.” She slid her glance from the horse to Colter. “That was some shootin'.”

“Thanks.”

“Get 'em all?”

“I don't know. I think one or two run off.”

“Figures. You a gunslinger?”

“When I need to be.” Colter reached under the pinto's belly to tighten the latigo straps. “Where're your pards?”

“Dead.” The blonde jerked her chin toward the slope. “Them bean eaters killed 'em deader'n hell when they run us down. Only reason they didn't kill me is 'cause the captain thought he could make some money off me. He said Wade and Harlan were worthless. Can't say as I disagree, God bless 'em.”

“Probably figured they could use you in the southern mines.”

“Or whorehouses.”

Colter snapped a surprised look at her, and bit back a chuckle. Her little face pinched angrily. “What're you lookin' at?”

He buckled the latigo, then started shortening the left stirrup. “What's your name, little miss?”

“It sure ain't Little Miss. I declare, I hate bein' called that. You like bein' called ‘Skinny Red'? My name's Bethel Strange.”

Colter couldn't hold back a chuckle at the appropriateness of the girl's name. “No kiddin'?”

“What's yours?”

Colter went around the pinto to adjust the opposite stirrup. “Colter Farrow.”

Bethel Strange followed him around the horse and stood close, frowning at him, as she asked, “Why'd you do this—risk your life for mine?”

He slid the stirrup up the side of the horse, then buckled it secure. “I don't really know, little Mi . . . I mean, Miss Bethel.” He studied her closely, dubiously. “Ain't you scared?”

“Of course I'm scared,” she said, walking around to the other side of the horse. “But I never seen how cryin' and carryin' on changed anything. Help me up here, will you, Colter?”

Colter went around and helped her into the saddle. She grabbed the big silver-capped horn with both hands. Even with the big hog leg in her belt, she didn't seem to weigh much more than a fifty-pound sack of grain. He climbed up behind her and took the reins. “Hold tight, Miss Bethel. We'll go back and pick up my own horse, then find us a place to camp.”

“You alone out here, Colter?” she asked as he put the pinto around the base of the mountain, glancing around to make sure no surviving
rurales
were trying to flank him.

“I sure am,” he said with a sigh.

“Me, too.”

They said nothing more, knowing the danger of allowing others to know they were out here, as they rode back and retrieved Colter's horse and then headed westward, putting as much ground between them and the
rurale
camp as they could.

They rode for nearly an hour in the star-speckled night, velvet black ridges humping up around them. They dropped down onto the shoulder of whatever sierra they'd been in, and, so tired he could hardly move, Colter reined up on the bank of a narrow, rushing stream. Bethel did likewise, and Colter helped her out of the fancy saddle.

The strange blond girl obviously knew how to care for a horse, and knew the value of doing so even when she was so fatigued she could hardly stand. She unsaddled the pinto, then thoroughly rubbed the horse down before leading it to the stream for water. Both she and Colter hobbled their horses in the grass along the creek and then made a fireless camp.

Neither he nor Bethel had thought of appropriating a bedroll from the
rurales
, so Bethel had none. Colter arranged his own blankets at the base of a stone escarpment, then grabbed his saddle and rifle. “You can sleep in my soogan tonight, Bethel. I'll be fine in the grass.”

“I won't take your bed, Colter.”

“You don't have a choice.” Colter shouldered his rifle and saddle and headed down to the creek, where he found a soft bed in some jimson weed. The water was not so loud that he could not keep an ear skinned as he slept, waking every hour or so to lift his head from his saddle and to look around. Northwest stood nearby, like a sentinel, while the pinto lay on its side a little farther downstream.

Colter wished he hadn't left any of the
rurales
alive. He doubted they'd follow him of their own accord, but not knowing made him jumpy. Of course, Machado's men might also be trailing him, not to mention U.S. soldiers from Camp Grant, which made it wise to sleep with one ear pricked and one eye skinned, anyway. That was something he'd likely have to do for the rest of his life, which, by all recent signs, wouldn't be all that long.

He didn't much care.

He woke again at the first flush of dawn. Birds chirped all around him. Northwest lay down, flat on his side in contentment. Bethel lay a few yards from the stream, at the base of the stone escarpment. She was curled up in a tight ball in his soogan, sound asleep, her blond hair made tawny by the sun tangled about her head. Deciding they could both use as well as afford another hour or so of shut-eye, Colter laid his head back down on his saddle and let himself slide back into a restful though shallow slumber.

Maybe it wasn't so shallow. The hot sun on his face woke him. He lifted his head, blinking, looking around. Both horses stood with feed sacks draped over their ears. The sun was well up though the dew had not yet left the grass. Colter looked toward the escarpment. His blankets were rolled and tied in a neat bundle where Bethel had slept.

He stood, stretching, feeling a little chastened by how late he'd slept, as well as how deeply, and looked around until he saw the blond girl sitting up on a shoulder of the scarp. She sat in a niche in the rocks, silhouetted against the buttery eastern sky. She had a book or something open before her, and she seemed to be intently studying it, occasionally looking up to stare off to the south.

Colter grabbed his saddle and bridle and went over to the base of the scarp. He set his gear down, gathered firewood, formed a stone ring, and built a small fire. Soon, he had some of the
javelina
spitted, the juices sizzling in the flames. He went off and drained his bladder, then returned to the fire, kneeling to tend the meat.

Bethel came down the rocks, leaping from one rock to another and holding what appeared to be a Bible in one hand. Between her open coat flaps, Colter could see the bandolier from which her big Colt jutted.

“Thought you was dead,” she said as she approached the fire.