Arizona (Shad Cain Book 4) Read online

  “Now just hold on a minute… That man doesn’t work for me… I don’t allow anyone to misuse my horses or anyone else’s animal… He just wanted to use my corral to train a horse… He won’t be allowed here again… and the kid can keep his job.”

  “I don’t want your lousy job… I’ll find somethin’ else.” Crocket yelled across the corral where he was trying to soothe the animal.

  “His Choice.” I told him. “I’ll be back in a month or two… I’ll see how things are then and make my decision then.”

  Tobe gathered up his rucksack and his weapons. We were set to leave when I saw the horse beater crawling toward the fence. The boy went and fetched his horse from the pasture. Cal’s horse was still standing at the gate, so I left him. I was pretty sure he’d get treated like royalty. Then I took Tobe and Dog to the eating place for a noonin’.

  He asked about my partner, and it took a couple of seconds to realize he was talking about Cal.

  “We ain’t partners, we just had business together. He works for the railroad… got a real big job too… We met a private train about thirty miles out and they gave me a job to do.”

  “Can you use any help? I’m sort of between jobs right now.”

  “Oh, I could use some help… like maybe the Seventh Cavalry… This is a job that I may not be able to finish. And if I don’t finish it… a small boy may never see his ma again. It’ll also mean, Shadrac Cain won’t see anybody ever again.”

  “Sounds like you’re goin’ off to war.”

  “In a manner of speakin’, I am, but it’s no place for brass button soldiers or parade grounds. It’ll just be one man against… some other men, and it’ll take place somewhere in the Sierra Madres.”

  “I sure wish you’d take me along with you Cain… you wouldn’t even have to pay me. I’d work for free… and I’d be quiet as a mouse.”

  “Crocket, I don’t doubt you mean what you say, and I know you got sand, but where I’m going it’s gonna take a whole bunch more than that… It’s bad enough just riskin’ my fool neck, but I can’t risk your fool neck. And I certainly won’t risk that little boy’s innocent neck… No. It just can’t be done.”

  “If you had ten years’ experience as an army scout, I’d consider it, but this is no job to be learnin’ as you go. One little slip and we both die… and it won’t be quick and easy dyin’… I’ve seen what was left of men who died that way and it’s anything but easy.”

  “But how did you learn the job in the first place?”

  “It was forced on me… I didn’t have a choice… Three Cheyenne elected to take the furs in my pack and the fur on my head. The two survivors chased me for the better part of two days, till I caught ‘em.”

  “What happened?” He asked, and then he answered his own question with, “Oh…”

  “The point is, I didn’t want the fight, but they brung it to me, so I didn’t have a choice. You have a choice.

  “But wasn’t it exciting?”

  “It was exciting all right. It was so exciting, when it was all over; I threw up and shook like that mistreated horse back there.”

  I let him bunk in my room for the night, and suggested he go down to where they were laying tracks. I left the next morning for the Sierra Madres, and he was headed east toward the railroad gang… I wished him well.

  Chapter 5

  It took three days to reach the tough little town of Nogales. It sat right on the border, and the Mexican town of Nogales was across the border. The big difference was how you pronounced it. Most buildings were adobe and the citizens of both towns looked about the same… tough. Most everybody spoke a little bit of both languages.

  You could expect to hear about a shooting or a knifing or two every week in either town. I would imagine it would be a good place to make a living if you were a bounty hunter on either side of the line. The only problem would be getting those bodies through eighty miles of desert up to Tucson to collect.

  I spent a couple of days going back and forth across the line trying to pick up any information I could get. The map I had was a good one, and done in great detail, but it didn’t tell me everything I wanted to know. I wanted to know the terrain conditions, water sources, and Indian activities.

  The Indian activity was the one thing everybody seemed to know a lot about, but only a few knew from experience. One of those boys was missing an ear and three fingers, which could have happened at almost any time by almost any circumstance. But they all agreed they had no reason to go there. None asked why I wanted the information or why I might be going there. They figured if I wanted to tell them I would.

  There was some mighty dry country ahead of me, and it was plenty rough going along with the dryness. I figured it to be about eighty miles from either one of the Nogaleses. Over three quarters of those eighty would be desert or at least semi-arid land. The old timers could tell you how high to expect the mountains. They only rose up to from eight to ten thousand feet for the higher ones, but they were almighty steep.

  All that talk about dry and arid lands, sorta made me thirsty so I stopped into first saloon I came to on the American side. Up till that point, they didn’t have enough Germans in Mexico to make beer the way I liked it. I figured I had about all the information I was likely to get for free, anything else I was going to have to pay for… on the trail.

  The following morning, Dog, Bud, and me were on the trial heading southeast toward the Sierra de Ajos range of mountains. Some of those boys I’d talked with over the last couple days, had more or less given Cal Bailey’s map validation. The big difference was they marked the location of water holes, tanks, and springs. They also warned me to keep my head down around watering places, or I could lose some hair.

  The country was growing more and more rugged by the second day. It was broken by any number of gullies and drop-offs. Boulders and jagged rocks seemed to grow right out of the ground. I wasn’t on a regular trail. I’d seen plenty cattle tracks, but I hadn’t seen any yet. There was graze, but it would take those big leggy longhorns to cover enough range to survive.

  It was mid afternoon, when I topped out a ridge. Normally, I avoid ridges and hilltops in wild country. But this one was speckled with scrubby cedars, and there was plenty of cover. That was the first time I’d had a good open look at my back trail since early morning. And as sure as I was born naked, I’d picked up a tail.

  Now the odds of two people riding a well used trail at the same time, in this country were about a thousand to one. But this wasn’t a well used trail…It wasn’t even a trail, which would make the odds about a million to one… I sure wouldn’t bet on it.

  The dust plume was a small one and most likely a single rider, but he was coming along at a fair clip. So I just pulled off and dismounted… Bud could use a little breather as could Dog. We just found ourselves a nice shady spot and had ourselves a rest.

  I had judged him at about three or four miles back, which would give us roughly twenty or twenty five minutes rest. So I found me a nice sandy spot out of the sun and dozed. I was dragging myself out of my nap, when Dog laid down beside me and started whining. I took that as my signal that the rider was getting close.

  A few minutes later I could hear him coming up the ridge on the far side. He stopped when he found where I had looked at the back trail… he was definitely tracking me. I let him come on over the top and start down the other side. He was coming on more cautiously by then. I reckoned he figured I’d spotted him and was waiting… he was dead right.

  He came on but slowly, and then he stopped and came on even slower. His horse’s head appeared, and I relaxed when I heard.

  “It’s only Davey Crocket’s distant kin… I’m comin’ on, so shoot if you must. I’d just as soon you didn’t though.”

  “Come on along, boy.”

  He moved forward and stopped. Sitting there grinning like he didn’t have good sense. I lowered the hammer on my rifle and moved out to where he sat. I had to give him credit for reading the si
gns right. He was so pleased with himself, I couldn’t get mad at him for following me. Actually, I never really told him not to follow me, so I didn’t have any call to get mad.

  “All right, son, you can tag along. Alls I ask is when I tell you to do something, you do it without thinking… just do it, and do it quick. It could save your life… or mine. So there can’t be any time for arguing or complaining.”

  “I’m goin’ to tell you where I’m headed, and if you’d want to turn and go back, I won’t hold it against you. But if you stay, it could be the death of you, and it wouldn’t be an easy one.”

  “There’s a little boy up there in the mountains. He was took by Gris Lobos, he’s the one the army calls Gray Wolf. Him and his bunch grabbed him in a raid about three years back, and his mama wants him back. If we get close enough to see into their rancharia, we’ll be looking for a towheaded boy about six years old. Look at the hair because by now, he’d be as brown as the other youngens. If we can get close enough, we’ll watch for maybe a week… longer than that would be too risky.”

  “If you get caught, and I can’t see no way of gettin’ you out….then I’m goin’ to kill you if I can. Don’t take it personal… it’s better than what they will do to you as a live prisoner. I would expect the same courtesy from you.”

  “Huh!”

  “The Apaches are masters at inflicting pain, and they’ll keep at it as long as you live… They figure the longer the better. It could go on for days… The longer you last makes you a powerful man, which means they are more powerful for having killed you.”

  He was silent for a moment, and I let him think it over. After he thought about it for a bit, he looked up and said, “How do we get there?”

  I pointed off into the distance, where the bulk of the Sierra de Ajos loomed as a grey blue haze above the desert. From where we were, it looked like low hanging clouds. “That’s where we’re goin’… We should be there sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Lead the way boss.”

  He didn’t ask what the job paid or even if it did. For all he knew, I was doin’ a favor for someone, which I guess I was…, in a way. I didn’t know how far the Apaches ranged on their forays. But I was certain they would come out as far away as we were, so we rode with extra caution. A hunting party was as bad as a war party… the same braves would be a part of either. We’d just have to do our best to avoid both.

  We rode without speaking for several more hours until we came to one of the watering places. It was only a seep and fed from the rocks to a small pool. But at the outer edges of the pool any water that reached a certain depth simply soaked into the sand. Dog and the horses were the first to drink, while we filled canteens from the trickle coming from the rocks.

  It wasn’t in our best interest to stay around the water too long. If we knew about it, so did others. Besides the Apaches, there were always bandit gangs, and the Rurales the government police. All three were ruthless and dangerous.

  So we moved on toward the mountains, and found a place to spend the night. At sundown, we put the fire out and took two hour shifts on watch. About midnight Tobe shook me, but I was already awake. Dog had been about a minute ahead of the youngster. I had been laying awake listening to the horses coming. I was actually listening to the sound of metal on metal. The rattle of a saber or the thump of a canteen on some metal gee gaw can be heard for miles at night.

  I told Crocket, it was banditos or Rurales. “Most likely the Rurales on a night march the bandits ain’t likely to travel at night… Either way, they passed us by a half mile.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know by how true the sounds are… I could hear the “denn” but not the “ding”. You ride the wild country long enough and you’ll know too.”

  He was shaking his head and walking away as I closed my eyes again. At least he’d heard it and knew it didn’t belong. I guess he’s got the makin’s. We may come out of this alive even if we don’t come out in one piece.

  Cold biscuits and jerky made for poor eating pleasure, but it got us up and going for the morning. We stopped and had coffee about mid morning. The mountains were much more real and not hidden behind a veil of haze. We’d been climbing for a while. But we still had a quite a ways to go to get up where we wanted to go.

  Chapter 6

  Tobe was stowing the coffee pot and I was kicking sand on the last of the fire, when we heard the sound of gunfire back to the west. It wasn’t just someone shooting a snake… it was a gun battle. According to my ears, it wasn’t far from where we had watered. My guess would have been, the Rurales had information that a bunch of banditos were going somewhere. So they had set a trap, and it sounded like it got sprung.

  As long as they are chasing each other, they might not notice us. So as far as I was concerned, they could trim each other down good and proper. The last thing we needed was to get into a fracas with either bunch.

  The landscape was changing from scrub brush and sand to pine and cool meadows. I was looking for the landmark that Cal Bailey had put on his map. That big tilted wall would be just short of the trail head we needed.

  We had come down a long pine covered slope that would feed us into a dark gloomy narrow canyon. Bailey had noted it as Dark Canyon, and this one fit the bill. We eased out into it far enough to water the horses in a small stream.

  That done, we moved back to the north edge of the canyon. I’m not the kind of fella that likes to be out in the middle of things. That might be the easiest place to travel, but it also makes you as easy to see as a steam locomotive in a church house. There wasn’t a soul in these mountains we could call a friend, so anyone we would meet up with would be looking to take our scalps. So we’d do well to stay invisible… or nearly so.

  We’d traveled roughly three miles in that gloomy canyon, when I spotted the landmark. It was a huge spear of limestone that seemed to be growing out of the surrounding granite wall. It had been shoved up with enough power and size to fracture the granite and move out into the open. It was about fifty feet tall and twenty feet thick. The elements had worn it down and left it shaped like a bullet. The base seemed to be littered with pieces of granite, but I didn’t see any limestone among the rubble.

  It was time to cross over to the other side. For the last half mile the canyon had been crooked and narrow. When we came around the last bend, everything had opened up and spread out. There was about a half mile of open ground to get to the other side. All I could do was hope there wasn’t anyone on our back trail.

  About half way across, Dog stopped and looked back. He was whining and looking up at me. Tobe was next to me and I told him,

  “Don’t shoot unless they shoot first… We don’t want to announce ourselves to anyone up there.” I motioned to higher ground. They’ll want the horses and whatever else we have… Be ready.”

  We continued moving across the wide canyon floor, and I kept watching the last bend. I figured they were bandits on the run after their scrape with the Rurales, but it could be the other way around. They both live in this country and should have enough sense to keep the noise down, no matter how bad they wanted what we have.

  They came ripping around the bend like the hounds of hell were nipping at their heels. There were three of them, and they all pulled up when they saw us. When they saw there were only two of us, they came on at a lope. We kept moving at a steady pace. I had the notion that they may not have much left in their horses, and didn’t want to spook us into a race.

  “Keep it steady and ride easy… there’s only three of them…. If your man pulls a sword… shoot him and be damned about the noise…. I’ll try to engage two of them. Good luck.” He didn’t reply. He was scared but ready.

  They closed the gap quickly and were smiling and waving as they got closer. The center man would be mine. He was big, dirty, and had a huge black mustache. It was almost as disreputable as mine. He was holding eye contact with me… he knew, and he wanted it that way.

  The ride
r on his right moved farther right. He was going for Tobe, who was on the other side of me and a little ahead. The one on his left moved out… he wanted to get behind me and go for Tobe from the other side. That was Dogs job. Let it begin.

  We were less than fifty feet apart, and they wanted to make sure they were on us before we started shooting. I gave them a few more yards and turned the big buckskin. I gave him a “click click and heels to the flanks. You wouldn’t think a horse that big could move that far or that fast from a dead start. But he was on that ugly mustache before the man could get his big cane knife raised.

  Bud hit that smaller horse with his shoulder hard enough to send it rolling and the rider was doing his own rolling. I heard a horse scream behind me, but I couldn’t take the time to even glance back.

  Coming out of the saddle, with tomahawk in the left hand and Bowie in the right, I landed a few yards from my man. He was scrambling to get up, and he lunged at me with that big machete raised high. It came down in a wide downward arc. He was going for my neck, but with that big a swing, he couldn’t stop in time. I stuck my knife up to block and hold his blade. They clanged together at the hilt. My hand was saved by the guard, but that machete didn’t have a guard and he lost a finger in the collision of the blades.

  He yelled and let go of his blade flinging his hand high over his head. When that underarm was exposed, my hatchet sank into the muscles below and behind the shoulder socket. He stood for a second in shock and realized that he was going to die. That was all the time I needed to shove that big blade under his rib cage and into his heart.

  Turning and running at the same time, I saw a horse with a bloody hock, and Dog was crouched and moving in on somebody. Crocket was in a tussle with his man. Each had a knife and the other was holding the knife wrist, as they rolled over and tried for an advantage. The weaker man would die, and I couldn’t take a chance on the boy’s strength. So I grabbed a handful of the bandit’s hair and yanked his head back. Then I plunged my Bowie into the base of his throat and shoved him aside allowing Tobe to get up.