The Savage Curse (3 page)

“No police?” Ben asked.

“Naw. None of 'em would go there, even if they was dyin' of thirst.”

“How can I find it?” John asked.

“It's on a street named Alameda. Little street, more like an alley. Next to a blacksmith's we done some work for, man name of Rudolfo Alicante runs it. I built a cart for one of his customers.”

“Thanks,” John said and holstered his pistol. He stood up. “We'll be going on then, Mr. Wainwright. Where are you bound?”

“Headin' for Lordsburg.”

“We came through Lordsburg,” Ben said. “Ain't much there to brag about.”

“Nope,” Wainwright said. “But wagons to fix and build.”

“You take care, Wainwright,” John said.

“No, you take care, Mr. Savage. That Hobart's got a heap of friends in Tucson. Most of 'em put their boots on the rail at La Copa.”

“I'll be careful,” John said.

Ben snorted as if he knew better. Which he did.

John and Ben mounted up after hanging their canteens from their saddle horns and left Wainwright at the well. He waved to them and they waved back.

They topped the rise and saw Wainwright no more that afternoon.

“We might best be lookin' for a place to bed down for the night,” Ben said after the sun had dropped another three fingers in the western sky. “I measure only two fingers left of sunlight.”

When the sun was setting, a man could hold up the flat of his hand to the horizon, just below the sun, and count fifteen minutes for each finger. They had about thirty minutes before the sun set.

“I'm wondering where that drygulcher came from,” John said. “He was waiting for Wainwright, according to him.”

“That's right, he sure was,” Ben said. “Like he knowed Wainwright would be along.”

“Might be an owlhoot camp hereabouts.”

“A godforsaken place, you ask me.”

“If there is such a camp, it wouldn't be far from that well.”

John scanned the ground for tracks that stood out from ones they already knew. There were tracks from Wainwright's cart and his mules, and tracks heading toward Tucson. The man he'd shot had left no tracks around the well, so he must have ridden straight to that little hideout to wait for Wainwright.

“Johnny, what are you thinkin'?”

“I'm thinking we ought to ride back a ways and backtrack that drygulcher's horse. See where he came from.”

“Why? We ought to just keep ridin' toward Tucson, like we was doin', and leave well enough alone. You done killed one man today. Ain't that enough for you?”

“I just don't want to throw down my bedroll and have somebody sneak up on us in the dark. Didn't you ever hear that old expression ‘Birds of a feather flock together'?”

“Meanin' in this case?”

“Meaning that jasper didn't just come from nowhere to way out here.”

“He probably follered Wainwright all the way from Tucson.”

“Followed him? Then why was he waiting in ambush for Wainwright? No, that boy spotted Wainwright and kept it to himself. He rode up there to that well and waited for him. He wasn't about to share his information with his cronies. And you can bet good money, his outlaw friends are not very far away.”

“Johnny, we don't need no more trouble.”

“Ben, I agree with you. We sure don't need any more trouble. But sometimes you have to listen to what you can't hear.”

“Huh? That don't make no sense.”

“I mean you have to pay attention to your instincts. That little voice up in your head that says, ‘wait, look around, think.' ”

“Yeah, I do that.”

“Well, I'm hearing it now. You know, sometimes you can be all by yourself out in the middle of nowhere and you know, without seeing anybody, that you're not alone.”

“I've had that happen sometimes. Not exactly like that, but maybe in a saloon, you feel like somebody's watchin' you and you turn around real quick and see somebody just a-starin' at you. Makes the hairs on my neck rise up and get stiff as hog bristles.”

“Same feeling, Ben. Like the one I have now.”

“You mean, like somebody's a-watchin' us right now?”

“Sort of. Like we're not alone out here. I got a feeling. Real strong.”

“Well, I don't feel much like ridin' back to that well to scout for tracks.”

“We don't have to, Ben. We'll leave this road and make a circle, see if we can pick up some tracks. If we do, we'll follow them back to where that feller came from. Likely, we'll find a hill or a mesa, maybe a small butte where that bush-whacker got a gander at Wainwright.”

“Wild-goose chase if you ask me.”

“Sometimes you catch the wild goose,” Savage said. “Makes for a mighty fine meal.”

Ben let out a mirthless laugh, dry as a sun-seared corn husk.

“You ain't goin' to listen to me, Johnny. You never do.”

“I listen, Ben.”

“Goes in one ear, out the other.”

“Let's get off this road and see if we can find those tracks before dark.” John turned Gent off the old wagon trail and rode off toward the north. Ben followed. Chamisa sage, ocotillo, rocks, and prickly pear dotted the desolate landscape. Not far away, the skyline was broken by small mesas, low buttes, rocky outcroppings where flash floods had piled up stones upon stones. John scanned the ground, looking for horse tracks.

Ben kept his gaze upon the surrounding country, looking for nothing in particular, but for anything that might catch his eye, stir his interest.

A jackrabbit bolted from cover, scampering more than a dozen yards. Then froze into rigid invisibility. The sun dropped lower in the sky and the distant clouds began to take on color, turning from snow white to pale salmon and peach. Some began to turn to a dusky purple and John knew he would not have much light left to track. He began to turn Gent into a wide circular path, arcing toward the west.

Then he saw disturbed ground.

He reined up Gent and studied the markings more closely, as if to unlock the secrets of desert travel.

“You got something, John?” Ben asked.

“I think we just struck that bushwhacker's trail, Ben. Can you make out those scuffs in the dirt?”

“I don't see nothin',” Ben said, squinting to focus his vision, magnify the ground where John was pointing.

John leaned over and guided Gent alongside the disturbed soil. He saw no clear track at first, just upturned dirt, stones that had been overturned, kicked away from their resting places to leave small smooth divots where they had been.

Ben was still squinting and seeing very little.

John saw a clear horseshoe track, very distinct. He rode on, following the open end of the horseshoe's direction. There was another track on an open patch of ground. He now knew the general direction of the rider who had left those tracks. He looked up, scanned the terrain from right to left, clear to the road.

Then he saw it, and his heart seemed to leap in his chest.

Near the road, less than a quarter mile away, there was a small butte, or what appeared to be a ridge rising above the flat land, like a sailing ship without a mast.

“Ben, look,” John said. “That could be where the bush-whacker waited until he saw a likely citizen come down the road. Tracks lead right in back of that butte or mesa. He could see a long way from on top and have plenty of time to get on his horse and ride to the well.”

“I see it,” Ben said.

“Let's take a look,” John said.

Ben held up four fingers to the horizon. Two of them filled the gap between the land and the sun.

“Be dark in about a half hour, Johnny. We might want to—”

John saw a flash of orange, then heard the crack of a rifle. He ducked and heard the sizzle of a bullet as it split the air over his head.

“Take cover, Ben,” he shouted and rode for a nearby gully.

That shot had come from atop the butte. Two seconds later another shot rang out and the flash this time was from a place just below the butte, just an orange flower, then a blossom of white smoke. The bullet plowed a furrow between Gent's fore and rear legs. Gent bolted for the gully.

The horse scrambled down into rocks and brush. Ben came down into the depression at a gallop as another shot sounded and they both heard the whine of the bullet as it caromed off a rock.

John drew his rifle from its sheath and jumped from the saddle.

Ben dismounted with his rifle in hand, too.

“We're trapped like rats down here,” Ben muttered. “They got us cold.”

John said nothing.

Whoever was shooting at them was at least a quarter mile away. That gave him time to think and to look around.

The gulley looked like an old washout. Soft sand and rock, some brush. A lizard lay sprawled on a stone, yellow eyes staring at him, tail and body perfectly still.

John wasn't going to say it, but he thought they had only a few seconds to set up some kind of defense.

Otherwise, whoever rode up on them would find easy pickings.

It would be, he thought, like shooting fish in a barrel.

4

JOHN SCANNED THE BANK FACING THE BUTTE, LOOKING FOR A DEFENSIVE position that would allow him to return fire. Water and wind had cut a straight line down some of the wall, but he found a spot where he might lean against it and bring his rifle to bear on their attackers.

He stepped on a large rock for purchase, then slowly raised his rifle and eased it over the edge of the gully. He lifted his head until he could see down the barrel. He looked for the two men he had seen shooting at them. The one on top of the butte was gone. The one at the foot of the bluff had also vanished. He heard the muffled sounds of hoofbeats fading away.

Ben scrambled up beside him.

“What do you make of it, Johnny?”

“They lit a shuck. That's odd.”

“Mighty odd. What do you think?”

“Could be a trick. Or they could have lost heart.”

“Why in hell did they shoot at us in the first place?”

“Beats me. But that's probably where that other jasper spotted Wainwright and then took off to ambush him.”

“You think so?”

“It's the highest point close to the road hereabouts.”

The hoofbeats no longer sounded. It grew quiet as the two men leaned against the bank, their rifles resting on the flat ground. Somewhere in the distance, a quail piped a plaintive call and then that sound left a vacuum of silence that was almost deafening.

Then John heard a sound behind him that sent shivers up his spine, electric ripples that set every nerve in his body to tingling as if touched by icy fingers. A boot crunching on sand and gravel, followed by the
snick
of a cocking hammer. Ben heard it, too, and froze into a stiffened statue. John slowly turned his head and looked up. There, on the opposite bank, stood a man with a rifle pointed directly at him. A split second later, another man came into view and stood beside the first man. He cocked his rifle and aimed it at John.

“Well, well,” the first man said, “look what we got here, Jesse.”

“Yeah, a coupla drygulchers.”

“Standin' in a dry gulch.”

Both men laughed.

“Don't tech them rifles, boys,” the second man said. “And better heist them hands in the air.”

Ben and John lifted their hands in surrender.

“They got us cold, Johnny.”

“And shet yore trap, old-timer,” the first man said.

The second man looked toward the butte and gestured, motioning to someone to come his way. John heard hoofbeats a few moments later. The two men waited. The first man was chewing on a cud of tobacco and he spat into the dirt once, sending a stream of brown juice through his stained lips. The men both had five-day beards and neither had seen a barber in some time. They both had long hair streaming from under their hats.

Two riders rode up and John assumed that they were the men who had shot at them. Both brandished rifles. They sat their horses a little behind the other two men and looked down at John and Ben with lifeless brown eyes. They each shoved their rifles into their scabbards.

“Looks like you got you two owlhoots, Cruddy,” the man on the buckskin said.

“How you figger that?” Cruddy said. His name was Billy Crudder, but everyone called him Cruddy.

“Look at 'em. Neither one has stood up close to a razor and they got so much dust on 'em they look like they been a-wallerin' in it.”

“You boys on the owlhoot trail?” Cruddy asked.

Ben looked at John.

“Maybe,” John said, his mind churning for time to think. “Depends on who's asking?”

“I'm askin'. And what you answer might make a difference.”

“You the law?” John said, affecting an air of innocence. He put a little quaver in his voice to heighten the illusion he was trying to create.

Cruddy guffawed. The other three men laughed, too, with all the loudness of a churlish chorus in their cups.

“Do we look like the law?” Cruddy said.

John shrugged. Ben's face took on a puzzled blankness, but he said nothing.

“I—I don't know. Maybe. We were sure chased by a posse back there.” He twitched a pointing finger to the east, behind where the four men stood.

“Lordsburg?”

“Yeah,” John said, his voice dipping low into a disappointed growl.

Cruddy and the other gunmen exchanged knowing glances.

“You must be green as baby shit to try and pull off something in Lordsburg. Might as well poke a stick into a hornet's nest.”