Massacre Canyon (21 page)

“Why should I? And I see that it's Matt again.”

“Well . . . if we're going to be traveling together, we might as well be friends, hadn't we?”

In the long run, that was the most effective first step. Friends . . . and then eventually he would do everything she wanted.

Although Darcy sensed that tactic might not work with Matt Jensen. She wasn't sure
anything
was guaranteed to work with Matt Jensen.

“Do you have any idea how much farther it is to the Kroll brothers' hideout?” she asked.

“I don't have any idea,” Matt said. Then he added fervently, “But I sure hope it's not far.”

“There it is,” Mordecai said. “I keep tellin' Rudolph it needs some sort of fancy name, like
Casa del Diablo
maybe. But he says that's foolishness, and he ain't inclined to foolishness.”

Casa del Diablo
, Smoke thought as he gazed along the canyon at the big hacienda.
House of the Devil.

Considering who lived there, the name fit.

This was truly the Devil's stronghold.

Following Mordecai's directions, they had bypassed Phoenix well to the north, then followed a curving trail into the rugged Superstition Mountains. Even though the town wasn't that far away in terms of miles, the mountains were desolate and isolated. Some people even believed them to be haunted, including the Apaches. There had to be a good reason why the Indians avoided the place.

Smoke could see why Rudolph Kroll had chosen this canyon for his gang's hideout, too. His experience instantly told him that it was very defensible. High cliffs too steep to be scaled bordered it on both sides, curving around to seal off the northern end as well, except for a narrow gap. The course of the creek indicated to Smoke that it probably entered the canyon through that gap. The opening was small enough, though, that it would take only a few guards to protect it.

The same was true of the high pass where he and Mordecai now sat on horseback. They had climbed a zigzagging trail to get here. An army would have a hard time getting up that trail without being picked off from above. And any men who made it to the top would then have to go through this pass, where riflemen were posted behind boulders on both sides, ready to lay down a deadly cross fire on anybody foolish enough to try to invade Rudolph Kroll's domain.

It wasn't going to be easy for Matt and Preacher to get in here, Smoke reflected.

But Matt and Preacher were noted for doing things that seemed to be impossible.

One of the guards in the pass called, “Hey, Mordecai! Good to see you!”

Several more men shouted greetings as well. Mordecai waved a hand, the gesture full of casual arrogance as if he were royalty. He was owlhoot royalty, Smoke supposed, the wastrel prince, brother to the king.

“Let's go,” he said.

They nudged their horses into motion and started forward through the pass, which ran between high, boulder-littered stone slopes for about fifty yards before the trail dropped down toward the canyon. Mordecai kept grinning and waving. That irritated Smoke, but he didn't waste his breath saying anything.

The trip from Yuma had left him beard-stubbled and hollow-eyed. He hadn't slept much because he didn't trust Mordecai, no matter how securely the outlaw was tied up. In a way, he was actually glad to be here, glad to be surrounded by his enemies. That was less of a strain than traveling with Mordecai Kroll.

As they started down the trail into the canyon, Smoke spotted a man racing on horseback a quarter of a mile ahead of them. Mordecai saw the rider, too, and said, “He'll be goin' to let Rudolph know we're here. Reckon there'll be a big celebration to welcome me back, like in the Good Book where it talks about the fatted calf.”

Smoke grunted and said, “I'm surprised you ever heard of anything in the Bible.”

“Shoot, yeah, our mama used to read it to Rudolph and me when we was just sprouts. She was a believer, yes, sir.” Mordecai paused. “'Course, that didn't stop her from dyin', just all wore out from how hard life was, before she was forty years old. Hell, she looked twice as old as she really was. All that Bible-thumpin' didn't help her one damn bit.”

“If she thought it did, I reckon it was so,” Smoke said quietly.

“Only one thing a Bible's good for. If you carry it in your shirt pocket, you might get lucky and have it stop a bullet or an arrow one of these days.”

Smoke's lips tightened. He wasn't going to argue religion with an outlaw. What he really wanted at the moment was to see his brother and make sure Luke was all right.

If Rudolph Kroll had gone back on his word and killed Luke, Smoke would make sure the boss outlaw died, too. But that wouldn't bring Luke back, and Smoke already regretted all the years they had missed out on knowing each other.

As the canyon leveled out, the trail turned into a regular road bordered with trees. On either side lay garden patches and orchards tended by Mexican peasants. With the fruits and vegetables grown there, the canyon could be self-sufficient for a while if need be. From the pass Smoke had seen a small herd of cattle grazing on one side of the canyon, too. That herd would provide beef. This wouldn't be a bad place to live, he mused . . . if it wasn't full of outlaws.

They passed a number of small huts where the Mexican farmers lived, then started up a slope toward the bench at the far end of the canyon where the big house and most of the outbuildings were located. The house, set behind terraced steps, was high enough for Smoke to see the second-floor balcony over the outer adobe wall. A lone man stood there at the wrought-iron railing, and once more Smoke was reminded of royalty. He knew he was looking at Rudolph Kroll as the man stood there like a monarch surveying his kingdom.

Mordecai must have spotted his brother, too. He snatched the hat off his head and waved it enthusiastically.

Then he said, “You're a dang fool, you know that, don't you? Ain't no way in hell Rudolph is gonna let you or your no-good bounty hunter brother outta this canyon alive.”

“We'll see,” Smoke said.

He hoped Matt and Preacher weren't too far behind them.

 

 

For a while Luke had tried to keep track of the days. He had even scratched marks on the stone wall of this dank basement cell to count them off, using a bit of metal he had found while feeling around in the gloom. He thought it was part of an old buckle. There was no telling how long it had been there or who it had belonged to.

Luke figured the poor varmint was long since dead, though. Anybody who was thrown into this hole probably didn't have much of a life expectancy.

Since he was as good as dead himself, he stopped worrying about how many days he had been here. He wasn't giving up, exactly. Surrender didn't come easy to a Jensen.

Here in this dry mountain desert, you wouldn't think anything could stay damp for very long, but Luke's prison, being underground, had moss growing on its stone walls and he seemed to hear the
drip-drip-drip
of water all the time. Maybe that was just his imagination, but he didn't think so.

As he sat there in his tattered clothes with his back against the wall, he heard something to his right. Tiny feet skittered over the stones. He turned his head in that direction and felt his beard brush against his upper chest. It had been several weeks since he'd shaved, and his beard grew fast.

The sounds told him his visitor was back. He didn't know how the rat got in and out of the cell. He had searched all over the place, feeling for an opening large enough for the furry creature to fit through, but he hadn't found one. The rat managed, though.

He had seen it a time or two in the faint light that filtered through the small, barred window in the thick wooden door. It wasn't a particularly big rat. They didn't grow big in the desert. It had stood up on its hind legs and stared at him with what he took to be an evil intelligence, although that was probably giving too much credit to its tiny brain.

Then it vanished back wherever it came from. So far it hadn't tried to gnaw on him, and he was thankful for that. He tried to insure that stayed the same by pinching off little pieces of bread from what he was given and tossing them on the other side of the cell. Maybe as long as he fed the rat, it wouldn't turn on him.

“Hello, old friend,” he said now. “Come to relish the sight of a poor human brought low, have you? Man believes himself to have dominion over the whole world, but in the end we're all such fragile creatures, not even masters of ourselves, let alone of our fellow beings. . . .”

His voice was rusty and strained. He tried not to go too long without talking. Sooner or later, he would face Rudolph Kroll again, and he wanted to be able to speak so he could tell the outlaw leader what he really thought of him.

Not that it would really matter.

Footsteps echoed hollowly in the corridor outside the cell. This was the only chamber down here under the house, and Luke suspected whoever had ordered it built had designed it so that whoever was locked up would hear his jailers coming and have to dread their arrival for a few extra seconds.

Why the cell had been built in the first place was a good question. It couldn't have been easy tunneling through the rock, hollowing out the small space, and then walling it up with blocks of stone. Had it been built to house a specific person? A mad relative of the ranch's owner, maybe? No one would ever build such a place just in case they might need to lock someone up, would they?

The answers to those questions were far back in the past. Luke doubted if they would ever be revealed to him. He would die curious.

But then, death was the ultimate curiosity, wasn't it? The puzzle to which no living man was ever granted the solution.

The heavy footsteps stopped outside the door.

A second later a key scraped in the lock. The door swung back. The huge shape that bulked in the corridor, seeming to fill it from side to side, told Luke that Galt had come for him.

That meant he was going upstairs. When it was just a meal arriving, one of the servants brought that, followed by a guard with a shotgun.

Galt rumbled, “Stand up.”

Luke thought about not cooperating, but then decided there wasn't any point to being stubborn. His captors fed him barely enough to keep him alive, so he was too weak to fight. Even if he'd been in good shape, he doubted that he could have done much good against Galt, who was almost as big as a grizzly and just as strong and mean.

Luke pushed himself to his feet. Galt had come down here alone, and for a second, Luke considered the odds of jumping him. The idea was ridiculous, of course. He shoved it aside in his brain.

Rudolph Kroll had ordered that he be kept alive. Luke couldn't understand the reason for that. Kroll needed the threat of his death to force Smoke into doing his bidding, but on the outside of the canyon, Smoke would have no way of being sure whether Luke was alive or dead. He would just have to hope that his brother was alive and proceed accordingly.

Smoke would have some plan in mind. Luke was sure of that. Smoke Jensen wasn't going to just waltz in here, turn Mordecai over, and then wait to be double-crossed and killed. Even though Luke didn't really know his own brother that well. He had heard and read plenty about Smoke. If there was a way to turn the tables on the Kroll brothers, Smoke would find it.

Luke was thinking about that as he struggled to push himself to his feet. When he was upright, he rasped at Galt, “What do you want?”

“The boss sent me to fetch you. That's all I know.”

Luke figured that wasn't true. He had seen the way Galt paid attention to everything that went on around him without seeming to. The man might look like a mindless, lumbering behemoth, but he was far from it. He knew why he was supposed to bring Luke upstairs, all right.

He just didn't want to steal Rudolph's thunder, Luke thought.

He felt his pulse quicken. Maybe something was about to happen at last. Maybe after all this time, all these weeks that seemed like years, his ordeal was about over . . . one way or another.

Right now, Luke didn't really care all that much which way it was.

He took a step, almost went down, and then caught himself. He stiffened his legs, determined to walk to meet his fate, whatever it might be, on his own two feet. Galt backed up and raised the lantern he held in his left hand. Luke plodded out of the cell and started toward the stairs at the far end of the corridor. Galt followed behind him.

Luke stopped at the bottom of the stairs to gather his strength. Galt growled, “Up you go, Jensen.”

Luke took a step, then another and another. He tried to ignore the weariness that gripped him. It seemed to take an hour, but finally he reached the top of the stairs.

Then he had to do it again, because Galt said, “Mr. Kroll is waiting for you on the balcony.”

An attractive, middle-aged Mexican woman stood at the bottom of the curving staircase that led to the second floor. Luke saw sympathy in her dark eyes as he started toward her. He knew her name was Valencia and that she was the housekeeper here, as well as the cook. He suspected she warmed Rudolph Kroll's bed, too. But that didn't stop her from feeling sorry for the prisoner. Luke almost liked her. In a way, she was almost as powerless as he was.

She didn't speak to him as he went past her and started up the stairs. He had to clutch the banister for support. He felt Valencia watching him as he ascended, but he lacked the strength to turn his head and look back at her. He had to concentrate on the task directly in front of him: lifting one foot, then the other. . . .

He reached the second floor. Galt prodded him into Rudolph's library. The first time Luke had seen the room with its shelves of leather-bound books, he'd been jealous. He could have happily spent a great deal of time in there reading. Instead, he'd been locked up in what passed for a dungeon in Arizona Territory.

The French doors on the far side of the library were open, with late afternoon sunlight coming through them. Luke saw Rudolph Kroll standing on the balcony, at the railing. Rudolph turned and beckoned to him.

“Go,” Galt growled quietly.

Luke walked across the library, through the doors, and onto the tiled balcony. Rudolph greeted him by saying, “Your salvation has arrived.”

He waved a hand toward the tree-lined lane in front of the house. Luke swayed forward, caught himself with both hands on the railing. He saw the two riders approaching the big house.