Stampede at Rattlesnake Pass (10 page)

They assembled at the bar of the Busted
Flush Saloon.

"Why don’t you take Nantan?" she suggested,
tremulously, as if the shock of finding Rosalind had shaken her to
the core. "He is a good tracker."

Slim Parfitt accepted the suggestion with
alacrity. "That was my very thought," he said, taking a final swig
of his complementary whiskey bottle that Carmen de Menendez had
instructed Manolito, her head barkeeper, to give to each member of
the posse. "He will run that murdering hombre down in no time."

Carmen de Menendez watched the posse ride
off, then quickly went to her private rooms, making it clear that
she was going to rest and did not want to be disturbed for the rest
of the day. Then she sent Leticia, her personal maid, to go and
bring her horse from the livery. Then while Manolito arranged for
drinks on the house, she slipped out the back of the saloon. She
slung her saddle bag on the bay and slid a well-oiled Winchester
into the boot.

Carmen de Menendez was a well-armed and
capable woman who was not prepared to let anyone get in the way of
her ambition or her destiny.

* * *

Rubal Cage had left his horse
ground-tethered on the other side of the rise from the Rocking H
ranch-house, then once darkness had fallen he made his way to the
bunkhouse. Knowing as he did that it would be empty he had settled
down to a peaceful sleep in Bill Coburn’s superior bed in the
ramrod’s room.

At first light he made his way across the
yard to the ranch-house, whose geography he had a vague
recollection about. He let himself in by one of the downstairs
windows that had been left open overnight to let some fresh air in.
Once inside he grinned to himself as he realized that he had hit
the jackpot on his first attempt.

Johnnie Parker was slumbering peacefully in
the big brass bed. Rubal Cage crossed the room and drew out his
Colt .45. He pressed the barrel against Johnnie’s temple as he
simultaneously clamped a hand over his mouth.

"Not a sound, Parker!" he whispered between
grated teeth. "You surprised me by still being alive, but so help
me I will finish the job I started the other day if you so much as
squeak." Then when Johnnie made a slight nodding movement of his
head to indicate his acquiescence, he asked, "Just how come you're
still here? When I shoot a man I expect him to die."

Johnnie eyed him disdainfully. "Maybe I
wasn’t ready to die, Cage. And maybe I will live to see you hang,
you miserable – "

Rubal Cage clamped his hand over Johnnie’s
mouth again and pressed the gun muzzle harder against his temple.
"I’ll give you one chance, Parker. Keep quiet until I say so, or
you go to meet your maker right now."

Once again Johnnie nodded, then watched as
Cage silently stepped across the room and positioned himself on the
other side of the door, as if he had heard a step outside.

A split second later the door burst open and
Yucatan stepped in with a handgun in his right fist. "Mister
Johnnie, are you – "

He never finished the sentence as the butt
of Rubal Cage’s gun thumped down on the back of his neck and the
big man went sprawling face down on the floor.

Rubal Cage prodded him with his foot.
"Didn’t you ever learn to knock before you come in a room?" he said
with a sarcastic laugh. "Because that is what you can expect from
me if you don’t." He picked up Yucatan’s gun before Johnnie Parker
could even think of getting out of bed.

"Now how about we have a little word with
the man of the ranch-house," he said with a malevolent grin.

* * *

Scudder had half-expected to feel the fatal
thud of a bullet in his back as he labored to dig the hole with the
small shovel. A strong, muscular man at the peak of fitness, yet
his breathing was becoming labored in the heat of the mid-day sun
as he stood in the hole that was now the depth of his
shoulders.

"Don’t stop yet!" ordered Sheriff Parfitt.
"You ain’t hit water yet!"

The other members of the posse went into
hysterics at this and another whiskey bottle did the rounds.

"How deep a grave do you plan on me
digging?" Jake asked.

"A grave?" Sheriff Parfitt repeated with
mock surprise. "What makes you think you're digging a grave?"

Jake raised an eyebrow but said nothing,
which provoked another outpouring of laughter from the posse
members.

The sheriff suddenly let out a gasp as
Nantan silently appeared, as if from nowhere and held out a
sack.

"Damn it, Nantan, why do you have to sneak
up like that?" Sheriff Parfitt barked, holding his hand up for
Nantan to keep the sack. "And no, I don’t need to see it yet." Then
turning to Jake he snarled:

"Toss that shovel out here and put your
hands behind your back."

Jake obeyed and felt someone tie his hands
behind him. Then he watched as the barrel-chested man with the
straggly moustache picked the shovel up upon a gesture from the
sheriff and began piling the sand into the hole around Jake.

"I thought you said this wasn’t a grave,
Sheriff," Jake said sarcastically.

"It isn’t a grave unless you want it to be,"
returned Parfitt with a sly grin.

Ten minutes later only Jake Scudder’s head
remained above the surface, which had been tamped down by the other
posse members.

"All right, Nantan," said the sheriff. "Time
to show the man his new friend."

Jake watched in horror as the young Apache
opened his sack and held it steadily for a moment before darting a
hand inside and catching hold of something. A moment later he
withdrew his hand, which was clutching the unmistakable wriggling
body of a diamondback rattlesnake.

Jake was all too aware of the film of
perspiration that had developed over his brow and the thump of his
rapidly beating heart. He watched in horror as Nantan held it
behind its flat, triangular head and dexterously tied a loop of
rope about its tail, just above its rattle. Then he signaled to
Deputy Bott, who tied the other end of the rope to a wooden stake
that he had already hammered into the ground about six feet
away.

And then Nantan slowly lowered the snake to
the ground, stretching its rope to its full extent.

"You devil!" Jake gasped, straining his head
back as far as he could. He was all too aware that the distance of
the stake from his head had been carefully gauged. At full stretch
the rattler would be able to reach within a couple of inches of his
face. If he relaxed he faced a painful death.

Sheriff Parfitt and the posse positively
dissolved into hysterics at the sight of the angry snake and the
clearly petrified Jake Scudder.

"Hope you have a strong neck, Scudder,"
laughed the sheriff. "Because that is what you would have needed if
we had just hanged you. At least this way you’ve got a chance – if
you can outlast the rattler!"

Hank Bott, the deputy grinned. "Of course,
in this heat you are both going to get mighty dry without water or
shade."

Jake was too engrossed with simple survival
to reply. That the reptile was full of hate and anger was all too
obvious.

"Must say it is getting hot," Sheriff
Parfitt said, removing his hat and wiping his brow with the back of
his hand. "You might think about all the discomfort you're causing
us, Scudder," he said accusingly.

The impassive Nantan tugged the sheriff’s
sleeve and whispered in his ear. The sheriff grinned and nodded.
"Reckon that makes sense, Nantan," he said. "Coffee and chow sounds
a good idea. We'll give the bastard a bit of time with his
executioner, and then we'll be back. No sense in us all burning in
this heat."

He knelt beside Jake’s head and grinned.
"And in case the snake doesn’t get you, just remember that I’ve got
six bullets in this Peacemaker of mine – and any one of them will
be enough to put you out of your misery if you just care to
holler."

* * *

Elly had not felt like eating the rancid
bacon or drinking the thick black Arbuckle’s coffee that the two
men gave her. However, she was all too aware that she would need
her strength and her wits about her no matter what happened. They
had locked her in the dark, windowless back room of a cabin in the
Pintos that she had little doubt would be almost impossible to
find. A solitary guttering candle was her only illumination.

The fact that the men made no attempt to
cover their faces alarmed her no end. Even more disconcerting, they
didn’t even bother to conceal their names from her. And indeed, she
was almost sure that one of them had worked for her father for a
while, until he had fired him.

"Damn it, Hog," she heard the younger one,
the coarse featured one with a lazy eye, say as he closed and
bolted the door behind him, "she’s a looker. Why for two cents
–"

"For two cents you'll keep your trap shut,"
said the other, the one Elly noticed had a badly bandaged ear.
"We're here to do a job, that’s all. You know what Rubal said –
keep our eyes peeled and be ready to shoot."

Elly had been about to take another sip of
her coffee, but she stopped with the tin mug halfway to her lips
when she heard the name.

Cage? Rubal Cage? She was sure that she had
heard that name several times before. Then she remembered. He had
been the ramrod of the Double J, she was sure. And Jeb Jackson had
fired him because of some trouble with the way he looked after the
horses and critters. And there were other, darker rumors that made
her spine shiver.

What do they want of me? she thought, once
again trying to puzzle out the whole situation. It seemed clear
that these men had been involved in the rustling, no doubt with
others who had probably been paid off after the herd had been sold
to the C & SW Cattle Company. And so where did Rubal Cage fit
in? Were they planning to hold her for ransom in the mistaken
belief that Saul would be able to raise any money at all?

A thought struck her and she willed herself
to chew on the bacon. Perhaps Rubal Cage’s dismissal had all been a
ploy. What if he was still working for Jeb Jackson, albeit
clandestinely?

Questions! Just questions and suppositions,
she thought with a frown. And in part that frown was aimed at Jake
Scudder, the man who had said so confidently that he was going to
look after her. Well, where was he? She swallowed the bacon and
took a hefty gulp of the strong black coffee.

Whoring, that was where! she concluded.
Probably still loitering about in bed with one of the girls from
the Busted Flush Saloon! At the very thought she pushed the plate
aside and grasped the spoon – the only utensil they had given her.
"You are on your own, Elly Horrocks," she whispered to herself.
"Fine! That means you have to get yourself out of this prison
before those devils out there come in and try to rape you, or – or
worse."

And getting up she surveyed the interior of
the room with its dirt floor. As quietly as she could she went and
tested each of the wooden slats that made up the walls. To her
chagrin she realized that none of them were loose or weak anywhere.
And that meant that her only way out was going to be through the
floor.

She drew a deep breath, pulling her stomach
in as far as she could, as she tried to assess how deep she was
going to have to burrow.

"No time to waste, then," she mused. And
settling down on her knees she began to dig the dirt floor by the
far wall with her spoon.

* * *

The sun had long since reached its zenith
and Jake felt the exposed skin on his neck and face begin to burn,
sure that in some parts blisters were beginning to rise.

From a distance away he heard the ever-more
raucous banter of the posse as they cooked a meal and drank more
whiskey. Despite his predicament, however, such was his approach to
life and all that it could throw at him, he would not allow himself
to permit the thought of defeat or despair. There was no way that
he would give up in his struggle to survive, and give the sadistic
sheriff the pleasure of seeing him beg for a bullet in the
brain.

"I just wish I had a hat," he mumbled to
himself. Then, perhaps partly from semi-delirium as he lost body
fluid and partly from his steely personality, he found himself
grinning at the thought of his head with a Stetson sticking out of
the sand, with a rattler trying to give him a kiss on the nose.

As he thought it the flat head made a lunge
at him, as if divining his thought.

"You sure are an angry varmint, aren’t you?"
he asked the snake. "I don’t suppose there would be much use me
trying to sing to you or whistle a bit. I can’t see that would calm
you down any."

But as he looked into the snake’s eyes it
seemed that all he could see was hate. As if it was determined to
kill this creature who was sharing its captivity and its experience
of the baking early afternoon sun.

Jake’s neck was aching almost beyond
endurance as he strove to keep himself as far from the snake as
possible. Indeed, so focused upon the rattlesnake was he, its head
mere inches from his own, that he failed to hear the approach of
another.

A hand suddenly clamped itself over his
face, pulling his head back at such an angle that he feared for a
moment his neck would snap. Then he saw another hand appear with
the long double-edged blade of a hunting knife. It glistened in the
sun.

He realized that his throat was now exposed
and he shut his eyes and gritted his teeth as he waited to feel the
blade flash across to slit his throat.

CHAPTER NINE

Elly had been listening to the two men with
half an ear, aware that their voices had been getting both
progressively louder and more slurred. Her main focus of attention,
however, had been on the slowly widening hole that she had managed
to scoop out. After an hour she had managed to reach the lower edge
of the wooden slats that formed the back wall of the cabin. Working
with the spoon and her hands she had then managed to enlarge it
enough to the point that she thought she might be able to just
squeeze through. But that meant creating a hole big enough on the
other side so that she could literally burrow under.