The Quantro Story (9 page)

Pete shook his head in amazement. “
Tinajas
?”

Wild-Horse nodded and pointed to the ridge that was now visible owing to the disappearance of the heat haze over the cooling land. Pete sniffed. He too knew of the cisterns, but this was a new part of the desert to him. If they had not spotted the buckskin horse and the buzzard they would not have returned this way. While he unsaddled the remainder of the pack mules, Wild-Horse made another two trips to the rock tanks to fill the rest of the bags and canteens. When he returned Pete had built a fire and was cooking the evening meal.

They ate and then split the watches. The pack mules and their loads of supplies were vital to the settlement, and they did not want to lose them to prowling bandits who could take advantage of them in the night. Pete took the first watch, stirring the embers of the fire and checking the animals. Occasionally he would take a look at Quantro whose groans had became a regular part of the night sounds.

Pete Wiltshire did not reckon much on Quantro's chances of staying alive. If the infection in his shoulder didn't kill him, then it was odds-on the heat and the traveling would. It was still a long way to the hideout in the Blue Mountains of the Sierra Madre, and at the pace they were riding now, it would take almost a week to get there.

***

Quantro only regained consciousness here and there during the journey. He would look out from the blanket sling, his vision blurred by the movement of the horses as he caught glimpses of the landscape. It was new country and it meant nothing to him. The torture never stopped, his pain jarred awake again and aggravated every step of the way.

Wild-Horse knew exactly where they were going. Many times he had slipped in and out of Mexico. He had ridden with Nana, Juh, and Geronimo through the years. He knew of little-known passes and winding, zigzag trails barely wide enough for a man on horseback. Some were so narrow that one stirrup would touch the wall of the
barranca
and the other would hang suspended over a sheer drop of a thousand feet. The intimate knowledge he had of the country helped him to preserve the only thing that meant anything to him.

Freedom.

He led them eastwards to skirt Sasabe and Nogales before he turned southward to Naco Springs. They camped that night in Mule Gulch where the water ran green from the copper in the earth. The next day they veered westwards to the east side of the Manzanita Ridge where water was plentiful. They saw deer, wild burros and javelina, the little wild pigs, as they came in to drink the water in the marshy strip of land along the base of the ridge. Wild-Horse had made a trip here once with the tribal Shaman, when the old man had gathered tules for grinding into
Hodenten
, his magic powder that he used for cures and to make spells.

The long train of pack mules trailed southwards across the Cananea Hills alongside Black Mountain, and they camped by a long hard ridge of volcanic rock.

The next day they wound round a pine-capped
mesa
and through a broad valley beyond. When they halted to allow Quantro some rest, the Apache scouted and returned with ripe fruit and wild honey to supplement their diet. By afternoon the trail grew rougher, potholed, then began to climb up to the high country. The trail wound through clumps of Mesquite and Madrona, and when Wild-Horse found a cold clear spring they made camp for the night.

Pete laid Quantro on the ground, then helped Wild-Horse to free the pack mules of their loads.

“I don't think he'll make it,” he said absently as he watched the black mare rolling on her back in the rich grass, glad to be unshackled from her saddle. The Apache consulted the sky.

“If it is the will of the Great Spirit, then it is so.” He shrugged and turned away. Pete watched him go, then knelt down over Quantro. Sometimes the Apache made him wonder. They could just accept it if a man died. They believed that if their God took a life, then it was meant to be. That did not mean they wouldn't try to save a man's life. If it was possible, they would, but if they failed what else was there to do?

Pete sighed and began to skin the two jackrabbits Wild-Horse had shot earlier in the day. Pete had always prided himself on being a good hunter, but the Indian had spotted the rabbits, his new Winchester butt into his shoulder before Pete could even clear his own rifle from the saddle scabbard. By the time Pete had his Winchester to his shoulder, the two rabbits were convulsing in their death throes, the echoes of the twin gunshots fading in the purple hills.

As they rode, the gunshots had penetrated Quantro's comatose mind, the unmistakable bark of the Winchester driving him back into the past.

***

Four weeks ago.

The trail from Zeb Cole's box canyon in New Mexico territory led to the last known place on the list Mace Howbry had furnished as he hung from the tree, his innards stretching towards the ground. The last name on the list was Jack Kilhern, and the place was on the fringe of the badlands in Arizona Territory.

The buckskin stallion was sweating, his head hanging so his dilated nostrils could take advantage of the cool breeze that wafted up the hillside. Quantro was sweating too, but he had long ago learnt to ignore the discomfort of the moisture that trickled down between his shoulder blades and from his armpits across his ribs. Countless lengthy days in the burning sun as he worked the cattle in heat and dust, then long winter nights huddled round a few spluttering logs had made him partially immune to bodily discomfort. It was the climate he had been used to all his life. It was there and he put up with it. As simple as that.

He was practically motionless as he sat astride the stallion, his hard blue eyes studying the valley below from under the sweat-stained brim of his Stetson. The dust clung in the lines of his sun burnt face, his skin drawn tight by the heat. Long hours in the saddle had left his right leg stiff, so he slipped the down-at-heel boot from the stirrup and flexed the troublesome limb for a while before returning it to its place. His hands rested on the saddle horn, the thin reins held almost negligently by the worn leather gloves.

Everything was still in the morning heat, except for the flies that had begun pestering the horse in buzzing flight patterns.

He eyed the valley before him, and it brought back memories of his boyhood, spent in just a valley as this. A few sprawled timber ranch buildings, a pole corral, a patch of cottonwoods clustered by the creek, and plenty of rich grazing land to support enough cattle to make a man sleep easy in his old age. Only if Quantro's information was correct, and he had his own way, then the owner of this little ranch would not live long enough to reach old age.

Quantro's face was expressionless, watching and waiting, and whatever gentleness had been in him as a boy was now well hidden, if indeed there was any left at all. Gone were the long days learning and laughing, and sitting on the back porch at twilight, watching the fireflies as he listened to the lonesome bawling of the calves, or laid in his bed, the cries of the ghostly Whippoorwills taunting him as they called across the flats.

The buckskin shifted slightly, his ears twitching, and Quantro tore his eyes away from the puffballs of cloud that hung in the sky over the bluffs at the far side of the valley and focused on the yard. A woman had come out and was casually tossing corn from a bucket to half a dozen screaming chickens that fussed around her skirts. She finished her chore and lifted her head, but Quantro remained still, his horse standing under the shadow of a tall pine, and she turned away into the house.

He swung down from the saddle to squat in the shade. The Winchester was cold comfort to his restless hands. He took out his makings and rolled himself a smoke, his eyes still fastened on the scene below.

So, Kilhern had got himself a woman. Or maybe she had been waiting here for him all along. Maybe she was his wife. Quantro spat into the grass. As much as he loathed the thought, he would kill her if she stood between him and Kilhern. It was the only way. He steeled himself to the thought. When he dragged up the black image that had been his parents after Kilhern and his
amigos
had finished with them, it became easier to accept that he might have to do it. Nothing would stand between him and what he had to do. One woman, two, or even ten.

So he touched a match to the cigarette and waited.

***

In the ranch house in the valley, Martha Anne Somers sliced hunks of meat into the big black pot that was already simmering over the flames of the old stove. Beneath the frame of her black hair, her eyes glittered and her mouth formed a grim smile. She enjoyed slicing the meat into chunks and she did it slowly, deliberately, wringing every trace of pleasure from the act as her imagination transformed the meat into Jack Kilhern's heart.

She hated him with every tissue and fiber in her bruised body. The evil son of a bitch. My God, how she despised him. She spent every long minute of every long day cursing him for what he had done to her.

Five months and five days she had been here now with him. Five months and five days of sheer hell. Him and his son both; evil, foul-mouthed and crude. A fine pair. Both nothing more than animals.

They had ridden in one afternoon and shot her mother and father down where they stood. All her family wiped out in two minutes flat. The boy would have killed her too, but the father had laughed and said he was saving her for something special. From that day they had taken over the ranch as though it had always been their own.

But worst of all had been the abuse they had subjected her to.

Kilhern had dragged her round the room by her hair, then ripped the fragile cotton dress from her body, his eyes wide with lust and his foul breath washing over her. She had fought and bit and screamed and scratched, but all to no avail. He had thrust his filthy, sweaty body onto hers, his thick, hairy thighs slamming against hers. The rest she remembered in a nightmare of hysteria. Her vision had mercifully blurred in a sea of hot, salty tears, her ears closed to his animal grunts and his son's coarse laughter as she tried to disassociate herself from what was taking place on the rough hewn planking of the floor.

She, a full-grown woman who had never seen a man naked, or allowed one to view her. Her mind was a screaming turmoil of blood-red patches and searing pains. Her insides so torn, so raw for days she had to be careful when she walked.

Now, as she remembered, the tears squeezed between her eyelids and tumbled down her cheeks. She stifled a sob then wiped her eyes with the back of a hand and resumed slicing meat into the pot.

The humiliation. Each night subjected to his needs and demands. Five times she had escaped when he slept, or when he rode the range, and each time he had caught her and beaten her mercilessly. The last time she had been unable to sit down for a week without suffering the most excruciating pains. Her arms, legs and buttocks had been black and blue, the skin of her back ridged and broken from the whipping he had given her with a rope.

The only reason she was not chained up today was that all the horses were out to pasture and Kilhern knew she could not get far on foot. Not when it was almost ten miles to the nearest neighbors, and even then she hardly knew them.

The last of the meat was in the bubbling pot when she wiped her hands and walked to the window. She had learnt from her father to scan the horizon that surrounded the ranch each morning. Earlier, when she had fed the chickens, she had done this, her head still but her eyes roving the hills. She had seen the stranger, sitting his horse under the shade of the big pine tree. But for a flash of sunlight on the horse's harness she would have missed him.

She parted the curtain from the frame.

He was still there. She could make out the big buckskin grazing restlessly, so his master must be nearby. Her spirits rose, and she realized that her breath was running fast and shallow. The rider out there on the hillside could only be waiting for Jack Kilhern. He could be her salvation. Unless? Unless he was one of Kilhern's friends, but then wouldn't he have ridden in and waited at the ranch?

No. He could only be Kilhern's enemy.

For the first time in five months she allowed herself the luxury of hope. The longing for freedom.

As she studied the hillside the pot began to boil over and she turned to tend it.

***

Now he was here and the hunt had drawn to a close, there was only the aiming and the squeezing of the trigger, and the kill. The final kill. Quantro felt he had been lucky so far, and somehow he felt luck was a token of something he didn't quite understand, something that said he should have luck riding with him because he was doing what needed to be done. Serving justice. These men should die. God knows, the West was a cruel place, a place where a ranch could prosper one minute and be a smoldering, charred ruin the next, but these men, these four, they were something else again, they deserved to die. To be treated as they had treated others. What did the good book say–
an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth
? Well now it was a life for a life. But what was Kilhern's life worth? His years could hold a multitude of sins. How many times had he lied and cheated and stole and murdered? Of one thing Quantro was sure. Kilhern's life would never be a fair trade for his father's. Not ten Kilherns. But Kilhern's worthless life was the best deal on offer.

Quantro looked out over the trees and the rich grass that rippled slightly in the breeze. This was a beautiful country. Without men like Kilhern there was a great future here for any man who was not afraid of hard work. There were ample rewards to be reaped. What was it his mother had read to him from the Bible? Sow and ye shall reap? Well, it was all here, waiting for the hands that would work tirelessly for that reaping.

Quantro could only hope Lady Luck would continue to guide him. Anyhow, luck or not, he would give Kilhern as much of a chance as Kilhern had given his parents that day many long trails ago.

No chance at all.