The Trail West (17 page)

“You ain’t got the time,” Sweeney protested as another arrow flew under the batwings and sank into the raw plank floor . . . right where Butch had been.

Monahan cocked his head to look at the arrow. “Mebbe not. And you, missy—” he turned to Julia, who looked relieved about the men in the back hall and very close to releasing her hand and letting Blue free—“keep ahold of that dog. Don’t wanna take a chance with him and those Apache. Not yet, anyhow.”

He hunkered down close to the floor. “Slide me the rifle, girl.” Two more arrows came sailing through the doors and sank into the back wall. Julia swallowed hard before she sent the Winchester skittering in Monahan’s direction. Before it had the time to reach him, she closed her eyes and was hugging Blue’s neck with both arms, her trembling face half buried in his fur.

Dooley picked up the rifle and opened the chambers with one smooth movement. Just as he’d thought, she was nearly out of ammo, and he hollered at Sweeney to scoot him over a box of cartridges. A moment later, he felt the box slide into his leg, and proceeded to scoop out enough cartridges to reload. He cracked the rifle closed and stuffed the box into his vest pocket. Slick as a minnow in shallow water, he scooted over the arrows stuck in the grimy wooden floor like pins in a pincushion and stopped on the far side of the small front window, peering out quickly through the dust-spotted and cobwebbed glass just long enough to assess the situation out front.

An arrow shattered one of the glass panes overhead.

That brave was closer than he’d looked!

Sweeney, who’d been watching, yelled, “How many of ’em are there?”

“Three that I could see,” Monahan replied, rising carefully to his knees. “Means at least six.” His back was pressed to the outside wall, the rifle’s sights to his eye. “You find a minute, you slide that spare pistol over to Julia. Load it first.” He flicked a glance her way. He could tell she wasn’t listening. Too scared, most like. “Shout at her to make sure she’s listenin’,” he hollered.

With that, he moved the few inches to swing the rifle’s muzzle through the last remaining window pane and fired twice—once to send them skittering and once at a specific target. The slug traveled better than he’d hoped—it must be something in the stars, he thought in passing—and the brave on whom he drew a bead gave out a yelp and dropped down behind the dusty water trough across the way.

“There’s one,” he muttered to himself as he quickly took aim on what he thought was a second brave’s shoulder sticking out from the side of a big boulder.

He missed, but he’d been right about the target. The naked shoulder pulled back even as the slug sang off the rock in front of it.

Sweeney slid the spare pistol skittering across the floor toward Julia, and let out a little sigh of relief when she actually noticed and picked it up. She pointed it toward the back hall before he had a chance to tell her to do it. The dog was fussing, but her fingers were locked tight in his fur and held him still. Physically, anyhow.

He heard the rifle discharge two times, then a third, and looked toward Monahan in time to see his controlled slide toward the floor.

“You all right?” Sweeney shouted.

“Ain’t deaf,” the old man muttered. “Got one of ’em, by the way. Don’t know how many friends he’s got, though.”

Another arrow whipped through the window above Monahan’s head and buried itself in the wall halfway between him and Sweeney.

The young cowboy gulped. The old cowboy didn’t even flinch. The only sound, for the moment, was the arrhythmic thump and thud of Blue’s elbows against the floor. And breathing. Sweeney could hear the girl breathing in small, controlled gasps and pants.

And then he realized it wasn’t the girl at all. It was him.

He slapped a hand over his mouth and nose.
Just calm the hell down,
he told himself when he realized his teeth were chattering.
They’re gonna kill you, you damn fool, and you don’t wanna die with your teeth clatterin’ like Mex castanets, do you?
“Hell, I don’t wanna die no way, no how!” he whispered. Softly, he thought.

But Monahan still crouching beneath the front windowpane, half turned toward him and said, “Then get up here!”

Before he knew what he was doing, Sweeney wriggled his way up toward the front of the building and lit beneath the other side of the window with his pistol at the ready.

Monahan muttered, “Good. Now get over by the door.”

“What?”

“Get over by the door. On your belly, boy!”

Sweeney figured it out, and got himself over beside the batwing doors—but still behind the wall—then inched over until he could see. What he saw was a brave, crouched and hustling from behind one cactus to the next sage, not forty feet from where he lay. He aimed and fired.

He missed.

But he fired a second time and had the satisfaction of seeing the brave pitch forward. It wasn’t until then that he noticed Vince’s body still sprawled beside the hole they’d been digging for him. Arrows rose from his back and side like so many porcupine quills.

Sweeney wondered if the Apache had really missed that many times, or if they were just using the corpse for target practice. He was so fixed on the question the next blast from Monahan’s long gun scared him, and he jumped. Not quite certain what happened next, all he knew was that he was suddenly on Julia’s side of the door, and an arrow stuck weakly in the top of his shoulder. It hurt, but he didn’t make a sound when Julia reached over and yanked it out.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “The arrowhead was only partway in.” Not once did he see her look at him. Her vision was riveted straight down the hallway ahead of her, past the bodies, and to the open desert beyond the rear of the building. Her right hand held the pistol so tightly her fingers and knuckles were white. Her left was still woven through the fur on Blue’s ruff. She had him gripped so tightly he whimpered softly and rolled his blue eyes back toward Sweeney. “Let him go,” he heard himself say.

“No. Dooley said not to.” Her voice sounded odd, small, not like Julia at all.

Sweeney put his gun down long enough to grab her hand and try to unlock her fingers, but it seemed they were made of iron. Just as cold, too, even though it had to be a hundred degrees, even in the shade. “I said, let go!” he hissed at her.

After a moment, her fingers joints began to unlock with soft, barely audible clicks.

Although they never could agree on the exact sequence of events of the next few minutes, they at least agreed on most of what happened. Julia claimed the first thing was the Indian’s face peeking around the side of the back door’s frame. Sweeney was certain the dog snarled and vaulted forward first. They both agreed Julia fired her pistol—two handed—and that she missed. Monahan had no opinion because he was busy at the window, taking an arrow to the side of his neck.

He made no sound when it sliced a deep groove just below his right ear, but he toppled to the side with a thud that rattled the dusty floorboards and turned Sweeney’s attention away from the back door, around the opening of which the dog’s hind end disappeared.

Julia watched. She knew the signs of a dog in hot pursuit of its quarry, all right, and she sure wouldn’t want to be that brave when Blue came close enough to sink fangs into flesh. As Sweeney rolled across the floor fast enough to evade three arrows that came swiftly under the door, tracking his path, she heard Blue barking outside the bar, heard the barks go around the building, and heard someone shouting in guttural tones. In Apache.

She didn’t remember moving, but found herself peeking out underneath the batwing doors and seeing something that shocked her. An Apache brave was standing in the middle of the street out front, not ten feet from the grave. His arms were flung wide, his bow slung around one elbow, and he actually looked . . . frightened?

Blue, ears flattened and neck ruff standing on end, his head down, and his posture that of a wolf about to pounce, held that Apache exactly where he stood by barking, growling, and lunging forward at the brave’s smallest movement.

Slowly, she brought up her pistol.

She centered the sights on the brave’s chest.

Her finger began to tighten on the trigger.

“Don’t do it.”‘

She looked across the room at Sweeney. He had wrapped Monahan’s neck with his bandanna, and propped him up so he could see out the window.

Shaking his head, Sweeney repeated, “Don’t do it, Miss Julia. Please.”

Slowly, she let her finger slide from the trigger and rest against the guard. She pulled the gun back inside.

A scraping sound drew her attention across the room again. Monahan heaved himself up a little higher. In a loud voice, just as guttural and foreign as the brave, he spouted off a string of mumbo jumbo that seemed to surprise the brave out front as much as it did her. And Sweeney, too, by the looks of him.

The Apache, whose eyes never left the dog’s, said something softly, just loud enough for her to hear. Monahan answered something right off, and then hollered the first thing that made any sense to her. “Blue! C’mon in here, boy!”

Julia watched while close to a dozen Indians left. They came out of the brush slowly, one by one, creeping off to disappear down the edge of the dry riverbank where she assumed they had left their ponies.

Blue did, indeed, return from the street to the saloon, but not all the way inside. He mounted the steps and sat on the porch, his back to Julia and the doors, and watched the Apache leave. Every once in a while she gave his backside a scratch, and each time he responded with a little wiggle of his tailless rear. But he never turned his head, never took his eyes off those Indians.

Why the fight had come to such a sudden and unexpected halt was a mystery to her, and she planned to press Monahan on the subject.

After the Apache were gone.

Once they were alone again.

An hour later, Monahan and Sweeney had finished putting the late Vince George—plucked of twenty-nine Apache arrows, which they left in a pile on the porch—underground at exactly eight feet from the overhang. He was correctly positioned to be the recipient of any manure deposited by the first horse tethered to the rail. They did not mark the grave, since it was out in what was supposed to be the middle of the street, and also because Monahan claimed he’d be damned if he’d go overboard by marking it for everyone and his brother to see.

Vince George’s old blue roan lay halfway between the barn and the corral, the victim of a stray slug.

Monahan, Sweeney, and Julia gathered their gear, mounted their horses and set out to the west. Monahan, his neck packed with bourbon-soaked cotton covered by two bandannas, sat General Grant, leading the way; a bandaged but cheerful Sweeney followed on Chili, leading the Baylor boys, each strapped to his horse; Julia, numb from it all, rode the horse she called Parnell, leading the burro, whom she had christened Goat, on account of he was up on the straw mound again when she went to get him ready to travel.

It was Monahan’s plan to drop the Baylors off in Yuma. There would surely be some reward money in it for Julia, and she would have need for money in the years to come. He wouldn’t go to the law himself. He was convinced they would recognize him and arrest him without delay for some unknown crime he couldn’t remember committing in the times between memories. He’d be dad-gummed if he’d let somebody lock him up—or worse!—for something he didn’t remember doing. Buckshot Bob had already told him he couldn’t be locked up for anything he’d done as part of Monty’s Raiders so long in the past. He’d never done anything so terrible back in those days that the law hadn’t sooner or later reached its limit.

He could be grateful for that part.

Sweeney was primed to take Julia—along with the Baylors—to the marshal’s office and collect the money, while Monahan would take the burro and Blue and wait for them outside town. He could have cashed in his voucher from all those years ago, too, if he’d only remembered it was in his wallet.

When they were closer to the river and could see the green of its banks full of trees, a shot suddenly sounded, and Sweeney toppled from his saddle.

Monahan cried out, “Off your horse! Now!”

Julia obeyed practically before the words left him. She and Parnell and the burro and the Baylors were off the road and down in the sage and scrub on the northern side.

With Sweeney hobbling under his arm, Monahan headed to the south side. Blue followed, low to the ground, with the end of Chili’s rein in his mouth.

“Good boy,” Sweeney said, once the old cowboy had put him down in the weeds. He’d been hit, all right, but in the same shoulder where Dev Baylor had plugged him, and the slug had passed clean through. He took the rein from Blue and scratched him between the ears. “You wouldn’t happen to know who’s shootin’ at us, would ya?”

Blue didn’t answer, but Monahan, up ahead in the weeds, said, “It’s sure the day for it, ain’t it? You reckon those Apache have a half brother up the road with a rifle? I’m only gonna let you get away with limpin’ like you did, one time.”

Sweeney had the sense to look embarrassed. “You got no idea at all?”

“Not buyin’ the stray half-breed idea, are you?” Monahan shrugged. “Not the first clue.”

“Makes two of us. ’Less somebody painted a sign on us that says ‘Hit me and win a pie’.”

The old cowboy snickered, then said, “Hope that girl is okay.”

“Reckon she is,” Sweeney replied. “Reckon that one could walk through a fire fight with ten pounds of dynamite strapped to her and not suffer in the slightest part.”

“She’s a tough little bird, all right,” Monahan allowed, and smiled to himself. He turned toward the opposite side of the road, and called, “Give us a peep to let us know you’re safe!”

Once she’d let out the requested peep, Julia rolled herself up into a ball and snuggled down into the weeds. She quickly learned that was a mistake—a gray wolf or a coyote had spent time in the very spot she’d picked to lay low, and he’d left her a gift.

She felt . . . and smelled . . . it as it slowly soaked its way into the seat of her britches. She made a face, then rolled off to one side.

She didn’t want to look, but couldn’t help it. On the ground, where the seat of her britches had been, were the smashed and flattened canine turds, and the patch on her back pocket had left a partial reversed imprint: Levi Strau—.

At least it wasn’t
her
name in the wolf scat.

Suddenly, she realized hoofbeats approached. Not galloping hooves, but slow, walking ones, more cautious than in a hurry. She almost sat up before she caught herself and instead, ventured a whispered, “Dooley?”

There was no answer, save for the quick scuffle and skid of hooves, and the
click
of a gun cocking.

That, and the realization that she had no pistol.

Half a second later, the hoofbeats stopped and a shadow loomed directly over her. Automatically, she thought,
It must be noon
.

“Well, you little she-cat,” said a gruff voice that was far too familiar, far too unwelcome, and far too near.

She swallowed hard, and nearly choked when she could find no spittle.

“Stand up, so’s I can shoot you.” He sounded too pleased to be breathing.

She would have shot him without compunction if she’d only had a gun. Or better yet, Monahan’s rifle. But she didn’t. All she had was a butt-smashed pile of wolf scat with somebody’s name pressed into it backwards.

“C’mon, Ju-Ju,” he said, in that coaxing tone she had grown to loathe and fear through those countless assaults on her young and frail body. “C’mon and let your Uncle Kirby shoot you.”

She was almost halfway to her feet, falling into the old habit of “do what he wants and he’ll just go away” when a shot cut the bright stillness of the day, cut it into scarlet ribbons that were falling all around her.

But they weren’t ribbons. They were the long stems of the tall spring grass that came with the rains, and they were scarlet with blood, warm and drenching, red as red could be.

Slowly, she rose up the rest of the way, through the scarlet weeds until her head rose into the clear light and she saw him.

Or what was left of him . . . sitting on his horse with a hole blown clean through his chest.

Monahan stood on the trail, ten feet behind him, holding the rifle. “Your so-called uncle, I take it.”

She nodded. “Kirby Smithers, in the flesh. Or out of it, I guess. You blew a hole clean through him.”

The old cowboy pursed his lips. “Well, the rifle did, not me.”

“It’s a hole and it’s clean through him, just the same.”

Blue came from behind Monahan and crossed to her, baring his teeth and growling softly when he circled Smithers. Even the dog knew he was no good. Even Blue was smarter than she had been when she went with him eagerly, when she trusted him.

She felt her mouth open. “Is Butch . . . ?”

“He’ll be fine. Appears that he’s a hard feller to shoot square in the middle. People keep just skinnin’ the edges.” Monahan walked forward and held a hand down to her. “C’mon, now. We gotta get to Yuma before those Baylors o’ yours start stinkin’ any more than they did when they rode in.”

But she shook her head. “I gotta round up the horses. They’re probably ten miles away by—”

She felt something push against her leg and looked down to see Blue through the bloody weeds. He had one of Parnell’s reins and the lead rope to the burro in his mouth, and he was wagging his hind quarters like a dog possessed.

Monahan guessed what she was seeing by the look on her face. “A little herdin’ does him a worlda good, don’t it?”

She took the rein and the lead rope, wiping Blue’s spittle away on her bloody shirt, and moved toward the trail which had once borne the gaudy title of Heber’s Kiss Highway.

Blue had already rounded up Chili, the Baylors’ horses, and General Grant, who had wandered about a half mile south of the road and were darn near invisible, since they were standing in thick scrub and grazing with their heads down in the grass.

She watched while Monahan fixed up Sweeney. She figured he must have a curse on his left side, except the latest bullet had hit his upper arm instead of his shoulder. It had gone through clean and the wound didn’t need sewing, but still, it had to hurt something fierce.

They tied Smithers—deader than a bent spoon but still stubbornly slumped over—into his saddle. She swore she could see right through him where the slug had passed through the cage of his rib bones and burst out his front. She was a little surprised the sight didn’t make her throw up.

As they started toward Yuma again, she remembered to ask Monahan just where he got off speaking Apache. He had the nerve to say he didn’t know what she was talking about, claiming he’d never heard it let alone spoken it.

Sweeney spoke up. “Oh, quit horsin’ her, Dooley! We both heard you talkin’ Apache like you was one o’ them!

“I don’t know what the heck’s got you two so addled!” Monahan replied, all of a sudden a little cranky.

Julia looked at Sweeney and Sweeney looked at Julia, silently agreeing it wasn’t the time to be pressing the old cowboy. It must be one of his “forgetful things.”

Behind them trailed a string of bodies, a cranky burro, and the blue dog.

After Julia made her statement and signed it—while she nervously crossed the fingers of her left hand in her pocket—the marshal filed it away in his office.

He took a brief statement from Sweeney about the Apache attack, but the young cowboy had to leave him hanging at the end, for obvious reasons.

“I don’t get it. I mean, unless you could talk to ’em or do somethin’ to spook ’em off . . .” The marshal shook his head slowly.

Julia saw their whole story going up in a puff of smoke with each head shake, before she blurted, “We had that dog with us, Butch. Some kind of fuzzy little shepherd dog with no tail. He had blue eyes. Don’t they call ’em . . . whatcha call . . . spirit dogs or somethin’? The Indians, I mean?”

The Marshal leaned forward on his elbows. “Ghost dogs! I ain’t never seen one myself, but I hear tell they can have a powerful effect on the heathen.”

“That must o’ been what done it,” Sweeney agreed enthusiastically. “When they saw that dog, they just filed right back from wherever it was they come from. Too bad about that dog,” he added sorrowfully and dropped his head. “He run off after those Indians. That was the last we seen of him.”

There was a little more small talk, but the marshal bought their story and bought it whole. “I’ll get one copy of your statement sent to the bank up in Prescott tomorrow,” Marshal Peck told Julia. “You’ll have yours and your voucher to show when you get to a bank.”

Sweeney asked why she couldn’t get her money right then. The Marshal explained that the bank in Yuma didn’t have the funds to cover what they owed her. Sweeney started to take exception, but Julia stopped him. She was afraid he was pushing it.

Besides, she didn’t want to irritate the marshal. She was grateful to get those corpses off her hands and not get charged with murder in the process. Getting shed of Uncle Kirby’s body was just icing on the cake, so far as she was concerned.