The Killing Shot (17 page)

Pardo didn't care. He watched the bucket hit the dirt, and he kept pulling the trigger, even though the hammer kept clicking on empty chambers.

“Ma,” he cried, and fell to his knees, dropping the Colt in the dirt, staring down at those red strawberries, staring until he couldn't see anything for his tears.

Reilly dropped to his knees, pried the Colt out of Pardo's hand, and let it fall. Like a child, that brutal killer buried his face against Reilly's shoulder and bawled.

“Easy, Jim,” Reilly whispered, confused. “What happened?”

“It's…Ma…” Pardo choked out the words. “Chaucer…killed…her.” He punctuated the statement with a mournful wail that even caused Reilly to shudder.

A million thoughts raced through Reilly's mind. He had Pardo now, unarmed, broken. Duke stood in the door of the saloon, next to Swede Iverson, staring, mouths open. He could take them, and Pardo, take them all so damned easily. The major, Ritcher, he had mounted his horse and was loping out of town by the time Reilly ran out of the mercantile, leaving the bag of supplies Pardo had ordered on the boardwalk. He hadn't had time to visit the barber. All Reilly had to do was draw his gun. Arrest them. Yet he couldn't forget Dagmar and Blanche. Chaucer had killed Ruby Pardo, but what had he done with the two hostages? Was he still in camp in the Dragoons? Why was Duke here? Where were the others? Where were Dagmar and Blanche? No, he couldn't risk pulling a gun on Pardo. It was like he had told the Wickenburg marshal. He had to get back to the Dragoons, had to find Dagmar.

He put his lips close to Pardo's ear, and whispered, “Jim, you got to pull yourself together. Don't let them see you like this, not Duke, not Iverson.” He looked at the people milling in the streets. “Not these Redington…” He thought of the word. “Hayseeds.”

Pardo's breath caught. He was trying to dam those tears soaking the blue chambray shirt Reilly had just bought, which had set him—or, rather, Pardo—back fifty-five cents.

“Come on, Jim. We need to light a shuck out of town. Jim, listen to me. Since I was a just a young colt, I always wanted to be like Jim Pardo. Bloody Jim. The man the law couldn't catch. You were better than Quantrill or Bloody Bill, better than Jesse James, Sam Bass. Better than Bill Longley or John Wesley Hardin. But you can't let these people see you like this. We'll get Chaucer. You'll see. Now stand up, Jim. Come on. We need to get out of town. In a hurry.”

There wasn't any law in Redington, but a few merchants were pointing, and those mercantiles had a lot of shotguns, rifles, and revolvers in the cases. If one of them happened to recognize Pardo, or even Reilly, for that matter, these streets could be running red with blood.

Pardo lifted his head, pinched his nose, and forced a weak smile. “Figured my nose would start to gushing,” he said. “But it didn't. Never can figure that out.” His hand found the Colt, and he was standing, nodding, plunging the empty casings into the dirt, and filling the cylinder with fresh rounds.

Most men, including Reilly, kept the chamber under the revolver's hammer empty, as a safety precaution, to keep from accidentally shooting off a toe, but not Jim Pardo. He kept six beans in the wheel, as the saying went.

“Thanks, Mac.” Pardo's eyes were red-rimmed, and snot hung from his nose, yet his voice was firm now. He holstered the revolver, and stared across the street until the people started going back to their businesses. “You get the supplies?” he asked without looking at Reilly.

“Yeah. Back at the store.”

When Pardo turned, he almost started to cry again once he saw the strawberries littering the ground near him, but steeled himself and pointed a stubby finger at Duke and Iverson, still standing in the doorway of the saloon. “Mount up, boys. We're through here. We got work to do.”

 

They drifted south to the Southern Pacific tracks and turned east, following the old Overland road. Back in the late 1850s, John Butterfield had created a route for Overland Mail Company, a passenger-and mail-carrying stagecoach road from Tipton, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. When the Civil War broke out, U.S. officials moved the route out of the South and across the Great Plains, but Butterfield's trail still got travelers, from the Jackass Mail to settlers, and the Army. It still got fairly heavy traffic, although the three riders met only a white-haired Mexican hauling firewood on a burro, and that had been ten miles earlier, as they rode east.

Instead of turning south for the Dragoons, Pardo rode ahead, and Reilly, Iverson, and Duke followed in silence. At the edge of Texas Canyon, he reined in the roan, allowing the three riders to catch up.

“What do you think?” Pardo asked no one in particular.

Swede and Duke looked at Reilly for an answer.

As he swung a leg over the saddle horn and stretched, Reilly asked in a casual voice, “You mean as a place to hit that Army wagon train?”

“That's what I mean.”

Reilly scratched his beard.

The canyon was fairly wide, yet the road hugged the mounds of twisted rocks and boulders on the northern side. The sky was a brilliant blue, which accented the rocky ledges, the closest ones the color of desert sand, but farther up the canyon they turned a deep red, spotted with growths of juniper, the occasional Spanish yucca, and a bunch of dead mesquite trees whose empty, spindly branches reached out like tentacles of some great sea monster.

Reilly glanced at Swede Iverson, then looked into Pardo's eyes, trying to read that man's thinking, but he couldn't.

“You busted Swede Iverson,” Reilly began, then decided to correct himself. “We busted Iverson out of Wickenburg because you wanted a good man with explosives. So you're thinking about blowing up these rocks.”

Pardo grinned, until Reilly shook his head.

“You cause an avalanche, you'll not only bury the soldiers escorting that train, you'll bust up your Gatling guns. And the howitzer.”

“You ain't so bright after all, Mac,” Pardo said, and hooked his thumb toward the highest peak. “Can you bring down them rocks?” he asked Iverson.

It took Swede Iverson only a glance. “With ease.”

“Block this road?”

This time, Iverson had to examine both sides of the canyon with more care. “Sure,” he said after a while, nodding with less exuberance.

Pardo's head bobbed with satisfaction. “Now, here's where it gets ticklish. According to Major Ritcher, two companies of infantry'll be guarding that train, been with them since they left Fort Bliss. There'll also be a cavalry troop out of Fort Bowie riding with it, but it'll be commanded by a green lieutenant named Talley.”

Reilly's eyebrows arched, although he tried to disguise any recognition. It didn't matter. Pardo was looking at the towering rocks, and Iverson and Duke were staring at Pardo.
Talley?
Reilly thought.
Jeremiah Talley?
But Jerry was supposed to have been off to California. He wouldn't be back yet, unless his orders had changed.

“The cavalry patrol, green or not, will take off first, ahead of the wagons,” Pardo continued. “Make sure passage's safe, and once they get here”—he gesturing with his thumb—“they get buried with them big old rocks. And then there's no place for the wagons to go.”

“Except out of the canyon,” Duke said, “due east.”

“How about if I blow up the other side, too?” Swede Iverson rubbed his hands together, excited about the prospects. “I can do that, Pardo. Blow up both entrances to this canyon.”

Pardo blinked. “So we got the Army patrol trapped, eh? No way in, no way out?”

“Yeah,” Iverson said.

“Then we can just pick 'em off,” Duke said and, slapping his thigh, raised his voice excitedly. “Be like a hawg killin'.”

Pardo, saying nothing, looked at Reilly, who grinned.

“Boys,” Reilly said, “if you do that, how do we get the Gatlings out of this canyon?”

Frowns quickly clouded their once-excited faces.

“We could haul them up,” Pardo said, and Reilly's face froze. “With ropes. Have some wagons waiting on the other side, load them, and raise hell for the Mexican border. I like it.”

Reilly didn't. “That'll take a long time, Jim. Too long. Plus, you're likely to run into more than a few patrols out of Fort Huachuca. You bring down these canyon walls, that noise will be heard for miles. Word will be out about what happened here long before you ever reach the border. And it won't just be Army patrols.” He pointed south. “You'll have the posses out of Tombstone, Contention, Charleston, Bisbee, maybe as far west as Nogales.”

“Uh-huh.” Pardo's blue eyes shined. “Give us a chance to test out my new Gatling guns.”

Reilly tried to swallow, found his throat parched, and reached for his canteen.

“What about it, Swede?” Pardo asked. “Can you do that? Bury them blue-belly horse soldiers, then bring down the wall and block any escape that train would have?”

This time, Iverson wasn't so confident. “Let me ride through this canyon,” he said, and the four men did just that, silently, looking at the palisade of red and white rocks, some of them hanging ever so precipitously, as if a strong wind would blow them over. When they had reached the eastern edge of the canyon, Iverson nodded.

“It could be done, but timing will be important. Real important.”

“Can you do it?” Pardo asked irritably.

Iverson's head bobbed again.

“How much dynamite would you need?”

Now, Iverson shook his head. “Not dynamite. Fuses ain't that dependable, and the powder can be temperamental. No, sir, for this job, I'd need nitroglycerine.”

“Nitro?” Duke exclaimed.

“That's right.” It was Pardo who answered. “That's how I figured it, boys. Wanted to see if Swede here figured it the same. You done good, Iverson. Had you said dynamite, I would have pegged you for a fool and left you dying here with a bullet in your gut. Nitro it'll be.”

Reilly cleared his throat. “Even if you pin down those soldier boys,” he said, “that's two companies of infantry that'll be here, plus muleskinners and drivers. And any horse troopers that survive the avalanche. Trained professionals, and more than one hundred twenty men. You'll need more men than what you have now.”

“You forget, Mac,” Pardo said, “that I've seen how you handle that Evans repeating rifle. Like Duke said, it'll be a hog killing. But I plan to get a few extra men for this job. Just to make you feel better, cut down on the number of Yanks you'll need to kill.”

“What if the cavalry troop doesn't separate from the main branch?” Reilly asked. “Or what happens if the wagon train waits until the troopers are all the way through the canyon?”

“Good questions,” Pardo said.

“You got any good answers?” Reilly challenged.

Pardo shook his head before a toothy smile exploded across his face. “Them boys'll be just a few days from Fort Lowell. They ain't gonna be waiting around none. They'll be in a hurry to get to some good whiskey and bad women. They'll be right behind them horse soldiers. I got a feeling. A good feeling.”

Reilly ran his tongue across his chapped lips, tried to think of something else to say, some type of argument, then decided against it. The wind moaned through the trees and rocks, rustling the blades of tall, sunburned grass on the edge of the road.

“What's next?” Duke asked.

Pardo pointed east. “Duke, you take Swede back to camp. Tell the boys what we got cooking.” He scratched his palm against the hammer of his Colt. “How's that woman, the German woman, Dagmar, and her kid?”

“They was fine, boss man. Fine when I left the Dragoons.”

“That's good. That's a fine woman. Yes, sir, a real fine woman. Ten times the woman Three-Fingers Lacy ever was.” His face clouded in anger, but only briefly.

“Where you gonna get my nitro?” Iverson asked.

Pardo cackled. “I'm gonna steal it. There are plenty of mines out here.”

“That stuff's deadly,” Iverson warned. “Slightest touch could set it off.”

“They say the same about Bloody Jim Pardo,” Pardo said. “All right, Duke. You got your orders. Have the boys wait for me in camp. Me and Reilly got us a chore to do.” He drew the Colt, flipped open the loading gate, and spun the cylinder on his arm, checking the loads, then holstering the revolver. “Which way did Chaucer go when he left camp?”

Duke was slow to answer.

“Which way?”

“He just left, boss man,” Duke said. “We didn't follow him or nothin'.”

“But Lacy went with him?”

“Yeah. That was Phil's doin', boss man. He told Wade to take her with him, and they vamoosed. That's what Phil told him. On account that it was Lacy who shot—”

“Shut up,” Pardo barked.

The wind kicked up a dust devil a few yards away.

“Nobody leaves camp till me and Mac get back,” Pardo ordered. “Come on, Mac. Let's go pay a call on Wade Chaucer. And Three-Fingers Lacy.”

They rode out of Texas Canyon, Swede Iverson and Duke heading east, where they'd soon cut their way south and ride for the Dragoon Mountains, Pardo and Reilly heading west, riding in silence, in the heat of the day, on the trail to Benson until they turned south.

Reilly knew this country, knew it well. Off to the west, he heard the chugging of a locomotive, the train to Benson on the Southern Pacific's spur.

“You ever been to Contention City, Mac?”

“A few times,” Reilly answered honestly.

They rode a few miles south before Reilly chanced a question. “What makes you think Chaucer will be in Contention?”

Pardo waited maybe a quarter mile before answering. “I ain't rightly sure he will be.”

The horses covered another thirty yards.

“But I'm certain we'll find Lacy there.”