Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635) (23 page)

Chapter 29

From below, the horse-tooth-shaped formations cresting the cloud-covered ridge had appeared solid and impregnable. From close up now, as Colter followed Strange and Bethel out of the trees, he saw that the monoliths were set farther away from one another than he'd thought. The gap between the two southernmost teeth would give passage to a horse and rider.

Northwest crested the ridge and followed Bethel and her father into the gap littered with black-flecked gray boulders, a few hardy cedars growing from cracks in the rocks. There were puddles in the gravelly trail. Water dripped from the stone ledges above and landed with a hollow sound in the puddles.

The clomps of the horses' shod hooves echoed loudly, water splashing.

At the end of the gap, away from the steep slope they'd just climbed, Strange lifted his right hand as he stopped his Appaloosa. Bethel rode up beside him and stopped the grulla. Colter rode up on her right and checked Northwest down, as well. He stared straight out from the gap, where a dilapidated stone wall, about five feet high, stood about forty yards away. Over the top of the wall, he could see grave markers of stone and wood beyond. Beyond the graves lay the back of a stout adobe church.

The church's rear, wooden door hung from one hinge, and just now a bird was flying out the dark gap. That and the general disarray of the graveyard, littered with tumbleweeds and fallen branches and grown up with cactus and rabbitbrush, indicated that the church and grounds were likely long abandoned.

Strange looked around, then turned to Bethel. “Darlin', you lead my Appy and Colter's horse on over that little rise.” He canted his head toward the rise shrouded in ponderosas and piñons, various stone escarpments beyond it. “Keep the horses quiet and out of sight. You'll likely hear shootin', but you sit tight till we come for you.”

Bethel merely inhaled, her chest rising steeply behind her wool coat.

Strange glanced at Colter. Colter handed his reins to Bethel and, holding his Henry, stepped down from his saddle. Strange did likewise, palming his silver-chased Peacemaker and rolling the cylinder across his forearm. All the loops in his cartridge belt shone with fresh brass. He shucked his old Winchester and racked a round in the chamber.

Colter seated a shell in the chamber of his own rifle and off-cocked the hammer.

Holding the reins of both men's horses, Bethel stared down at her father from atop the grulla. He turned to her. “Go now, girl. Machado'll be along soon, an' you and the horses have to be holed up tight.”

She glanced at Colter, a dark, dreadful cast to her gaze. Then she puffed her cheeks out as she sighed, reined her horse around, and clomped on over the rise, leading the other two horses behind her.

Strange walked ahead to the wall. He was limping slightly, favoring his right side, and breathing hard. Colter followed the man, stood beside him, looking over the wall in the boneyard. He was trying to remember the map. All that he'd seen to mark the treasure was the Dragon, which had obviously indicated the ridge they were now on. In addition, there had been a small cross. Beneath the cross were the initials X and F.

“All right,” Colter said, running a gloved finger down his cheek. “The cross was the church yonder. What did the ‘X' and the ‘F' mean?”

“The grave where Percy and I buried the third dagger. You see, our original camp was right over there.” He pointed toward a dilapidated stone stable and tumbledown corral to the right of the cemetery, hunched in a slight clearing in the dripping pines, barely visible in the foggy mist. “The church is where Percy and me and the young Balladeer holed up nigh on twenty years ago now, when the
rurales
were scouring this ridge for us. We were given sanctuary by an old priest. Xavier Franco.”

“Ah.”

“I'm going to stay here, as the grave is right over yonder. I wanna be close to the son of a bitch.”

“Which direction will Machado be riding in from?”

Strange nodded his head toward the church.

Colter looked around carefully, glancing at the grave with the large stone in which
FATHER XAVIER BALTHAZAR FRANCO
had been chiseled beneath a small, weathered carving of Christ amongst a flock of little lambs. The grave was mounded with fist-sized red rocks.

“All right,” Colter said, looking around, his glance catching on a crumbling spot in the wall on the stable side of the graveyard. “I'll head over there.” He looked at Strange. “You just gonna bushwhack 'em?”

“Oh, I'll give him a chance to throw down the two daggers.” Strange showed his teeth and slitted his brown eyes devilishly. “He won't take it.”

Colter moved off along the wall, swerving around tree branches that had grown over it and stepping over those that had fallen dead at its base. When he'd rounded the far corner near the stable, he crouched down beside the V-shaped gap in the ancient wall and set his rifle across his knee.

The mist came down, ticking lightly off his hat brim.

A long, slow, wet hour passed. Then another half hour. Colter was beginning to think Machado had misread the map, or was suspecting a trap, when a horse whinnied back in the direction of where he and Strange had left Bethel. Colter's heart thudded, and he squeezed his rifle tighter.

Sure enough—they must have flanked him and Strange and found Bethel!

He lifted his head above the wall and froze. Strange was looking over the top of the rear wall, motioning for Colter to drop his head back down. Just then, he heard the dull clomp of distant hooves. Riders were coming from the front of the church. Voices rose, indecipherable beneath the soft pelting of the rain.

Colter lowered his head, pressed a shoulder against the wall to the left of the V notch. He removed his hat and slid his right eye far enough into the crack that he could see the graveyard, which horseback riders were entering via the far side of the church from Colter. There was no mistaking the huge lead rider—the Balladeer himself, Santiago Machado, clad all in glistening black leather and a calico shirt behind his vest and crisscrossed bandoliers. Beaded braids buffeted down both sides of his head as he rode slowly, ploddingly amongst the graves, scrutinizing the stones that fronted each one. Water dripped off the brim of his leather sombrero.

Colter drew his eye back behind the wall. Pressing his back against the wall, holding the Henry firmly against his thigh, he waited. The horses thudded. The Mexicans were talking amongst themselves, their wet tack squawking. They were looking for the initials that Strange had marked on his map.

No one called out suddenly, as Colter had expected when they found the grave. There was merely a cessation of thudding hooves and a dwindling of conversation. Glancing through the V notch once more, he saw all seven of Machado's riders clumped around the grave about thirty yards out from the rear wall and Jed Strange, and angled a little in Colter's direction.

There was the squawk of tack again and the jangling of bridle chains as the men dismounted. Now they were muttering amongst themselves. Three men moved out around the grave, holding Winchester or Spencer rifles up high across their chests, taking sentry positions. Machado was smoking a long black cheroot as he looked down at the stones mounding Padre Franco's last resting place. He leaned a hand atop the padre's tall, rounded marker and kicked at the stones.

Four men stood around him. They'd dropped the reins of the horses, and the horses now milled to the far side of the grave from Colter, one standing and looking suspiciously toward where Strange hunkered behind the wall. Colter winced, hoping no one noticed, but then it didn't matter because Strange's voice called, “Hold it there, Machado. I've got you dead to rights. One sudden move, and you'll be feelin' right at home here!”

That was Colter's cue. He rose quickly, loudly racked a round into his Henry's chamber, and aimed straight out over the wall. The Mexicans turned their heads toward Colter as though they were all joined by the same string. Machado grinned beneath the brim of his wet sombrero, casually lifted his cigar to his mouth, and let the smoke stream out on the damp air through his nostrils.

Remembering his horrific ordeal on the river, Colter felt like wiping the smile off the killer's face with a single slug from his Henry, but he kept his finger steady on the trigger.

“Santiago!” Strange shouted. “I'm gonna ask you once and only once to throw down them daggers and ride on out of here!”

Beyond the Balladeer, one of the sentries jerked his rifle up. Strange's rifle cracked. The sentry screamed and stumbled back, triggering his own rifle into the ground. The man hit the ground, cursing in Spanish and clutching his right knee.

Machado threw his hands in the air and shouted, “
Parada! Nadie tira!
” Stop—nobody shoot! Or some such, Colter figured.

The others froze, crouching, quickly lowering the rifles they'd swung up suddenly as they shuttled wary looks between Strange and Colter. The man on the ground clutched his knee with both hands, groaning through gritted teeth. The horses scattered, trotting amongst the gravestones toward the back of the church.

The Mexicans stood clumped around the padre's grave, dark and wet, the rain dripping from their sombreros.

Machado stepped toward where Strange stood, aiming his Winchester out over the wall, pressing his cheek to the stock. The Balladeer said, “Jed,
mi amigo
! Perhaps we could powwow about this. What do you say, brother?”

“There's nothin' to talk about. I want those two daggers you stole, and I want 'em now, or I'm gonna perforate your big, ugly hide!”

Machado's face hardened and his back tensed. “Stole from you? Oh, you crazy, double-crossing gringo son of a bitch! You stole my third of the map—you and Percy. No?” He kicked a gravestone over.
“Did you not do that?”

His voice was shrill with untethered fury.

“Only because you woulda done the same to us if you knew we'd kept our own sections of the map. No honor amongst thieves, you stupid bean eater.”

No, there was no honor here, Colter thought as he aimed down his rifle at Machado. So what was he doing here?

“You call me names now, huh?”

“Throw down them daggers,” Strange ordered.

The two men held each other's glowering stares. The mist continued to fall, the sky hovering low. The other men stood tensely, keeping their rifle barrels aimed at the ground and shunting tense looks between Strange and Colter, knowing they were in a cross fire. But also likely knowing that, because they were seven against two, the odds were still in their favor despite the walls shielding their adversaries.

As Strange and Machado continued to glare at each other in hushed silence, Colter hoped that Jed remembered the Balladeer's steel breastplate.

“You think you can get all seven of us, huh?” Machado asked sneeringly. “Even with
El Rojo
over there, I will say you can't.”

Machado did not wait for Strange's reply. Shouting suddenly and incoherently, he crossed his arms and shucked his pistols.

Smoke puffed from the maw of Strange's rifle. Twin puffs spread from both of the Balladeer's pistols, Machado's slugs tearing rock shards from the wall around Strange's head. Colter triggered his Henry at Machado, but at the same time the big man crouched, one of Strange's bullets tearing into his leg above his knee, then threw himself hard to the right. Colter's bullet ricocheted off a headstone beyond the Balladeer.

Machado rolled into the billowing cloud of powder smoke kicked up by the six other Mexicans now firing at both Strange and Colter, pivoting at the hips and pumping cartridges as fast as they could shoot.

Colter pumped the Henry, aiming and firing quickly, dropping two banditos in about three seconds after he'd missed and lost Machado in the wafting powder smoke. Strange dropped another pair, one falling to his knees howling and trying to fire his rifle one-handed before Strange triggered a silencing shot through the man's forehead. The others slung lead at both him and Strange, and, screaming and cursing, dove behind stones and grave mounds.

The hammering pops and screeching ricochets sounded like the barrage of a small battle for two minutes, before Colter's Henry pinged on an empty round. Strange must have emptied his Winchester, as well, because a sudden silence fell back over the cemetery, settling down as heavy as the low clouds and the steady mist.

Colter punched shells through his rifle's loading gate.

“Red!” Strange called. “You got company!”

“Shit!” Colter said, hearing someone running toward him.

Chapter 30

Colter looked through the V-shaped break in the wall.

Only one man was moving—running hard down a line of gravestones toward the wall about twenty yards to Colter's right. The man in the green sombrero, Machado's lieutenant, started shooting as he ran, crouching and shouting curses. He had a pistol in each hand, both guns stabbing smoke and flames between gravestones in the dingy grayness.

Colter jerked his head back behind the wall as two slugs slammed into it. He squeezed his eyes shut against the spraying rock shards.

His heart thudded as his wet, cold fingers slipped fresh cartridges from his shell belt and thumbed them through the loading gate. At the same time, the man kept shooting, his boots splashing in puddles, the sounds growing louder as he neared the wall beyond Colter.

In the corner of his left eye, he saw the man leap over the wall, firing both pistols. One slug tore across the nub of Colter's left cheek. The other slammed into the wall only an inch above his head, pelting him with gobs of wet adobe.

The man in the green sombrero had fallen to his knees, wailing furiously, but now as he stumbled to his feet, bringing both pistols to bear once more, Colter leaped up, raised the Henry, and fired three rounds quickly, pumping and shooting.

The bandito screamed and shot himself in the right thigh as he flew backward. He hit the ground hard, his wails thinning, grinding his spurs into the ground as he opened and closed his mouth and blinked his eyes at the sky.

Colter ejected the last spent cartridge, seated fresh, and silenced the man with a round through the underside of his chin, the slug chewing through his skull to exit the top of his head, spitting a great gob of blood and brains onto the wet earth beyond him.

Colter racked a fresh round in the Henry's chamber and turned toward the cemetery. The place was as silent as before they'd come—most of the banditos sprawled amongst the stones. Strange was just now moving through the open gate in the wall to his left, striding into the boneyard with his Peacemaker raised. He waved the gun around, looking for a target.

No one moved. The fog probed at the bloody corpses like the spidery fingers of ghosts.

Colter stepped through the break in the wall and strode slowly toward where Strange stood before the grave of Padre Franco. At his feet, three banditos lay sprawled in bloody heaps. As Colter walked, swinging around, aiming his rifle from his hip, Strange traced a broad half circle around the Padre's grave.

Colter stopped near the grave. Strange stopped then, as well, about thirty yards between the grave and the rear of the church. They looked at each other.

“The only one missing's my friend Machado,” Strange said.

His weathered face was grim beneath his green bandanna, his silver-streaked dark brown hair hanging wet to his shoulders. He'd left his buckskin coat behind the wall, and in his deerskin moccasins and leggings he looked every bit the Apache.

The fog was icy witch's fingers snaking over Colter. Pivoting on his hips, expecting a shot from any quarter, he resisted the urge to shudder. He kept swinging his gaze back and forth across the cemetery. Nothing moved. There was no sound except the quietly ticking mist.

He felt deep lines of incredulity slice into his forehead.

How could a man as large as Machado simply disappear?

He had to be here somewhere. Colter had seen at least one bullet plow into him. He was wounded. Likely hunkering behind one of the gravestones—either dead or right now drawing a bead on Colter or Strange. . . .

Colter backed away from Franco's grave, turning his head this way and that, shuttling his glance across the back wall and then the north wall, and from there to the rear of the church. He strode slowly around the graves and stopped near Strange.

“The daggers were on one of the horses,” Colter said. “The horse of the man I killed out yonder.”

“I'll stay here,” Strange said quietly, tensely looking around at the gray stones, both men expecting the Balladeer to bound out blasting from behind any of them at any second. “You go fetch the daggers. Then let's us . . .”

He let his face trail off when Bethel's voice said, “Pa? Colter?”

Colter saw her coming through the pines beyond the cemetery's rear wall. The redhead tensed, gritting his teeth. Strange stepped forward, his voice tight with anxiety as he waved his arm, “Bethel—get down, girl!”

She kept coming—a small brown figure in the grayness, blond hair hanging from her brown hat. She was heading for the break in the rear wall. “You fellas all right?”

Heart hammering, Colter jerked his head around, tightening his hand on his Henry's trigger.

“Goddamn it, Bethel!” Strange started walking toward the gate. Colter followed him, covering the man's back with his Henry.

“What?” Bethel said, stopping just inside the opening in the cemetery's rear wall.

Just then she heard something and turned. But not before the Balladeer, who must have been hunkered down in the trees just outside the wall, leaped up behind her. Blood oozed from his right thigh. Bethel's startled scream was clipped when Machado wrapped his left hand across her mouth and lifted a cocked, pearl-gripped Colt to her temple.

Colter froze. So did Strange.

“Drop those irons, amigos!” Machado shouted.

Bethel said something that was muffled by the big man's hand, her face turning red. At the same time, she lifted one of her short brown boots and stomped it down hard on the big bandito's left boot. She jerked her head back against his gut. It caught the man off guard.

He cursed and, as Bethel threw herself sharply to her left, leaving Machado open, Colter lifted his Henry and began firing and pumping, the gun leaping and roaring in his hands. Strange triggered his Peacemaker, and the barrage of bullets tore through Machado's arms and legs, a couple hammering the steel breastplate behind his vest and shirt. Colter wasn't sure if it was his bullet or Strange's bullet that did it, but one bullet carved a long red line across the right side of his face.

He hit the ground on his back, howling.

Bethel was crouched on one knee, slowly lowering the arm she'd raised to shield her head.

Colter was striding forward with his smoking Henry. Bethel looked from the wailing Balladeer to somewhere behind Colter. That's when the redhead realized that Strange was no longer at his side, but was down on his hands and knees, hanging his head low, his smoking Peacemaker clamped between his right hand and the ground.

Bethel ran to her father. Colter walked over to Machado, who lay as he had lain before except that he was still now, blood oozing from several wounds in both legs and both shoulders. Two fingers of his right hand were gone, leaving bloody stumps. His left cheek looked like a half pound of freshly ground beef.

His eyes were bright and glassy. A grimace stretched his lips. He groaned and moaned. Between groans and moans, he sang. The lyrics of the Spanish ballad sounded like a dirge. He did not look at Colter but stared past him at the sky as Colter leaned down and disarmed the man, tossing the pistols and knives off into the brush. He found the burlap pouch hanging from a leather thong beneath the man's black vest, felt both daggers in it, cut it loose with the bowie knife in his boot, and straightened.

Machado was fast dying, harmless, though he was gradually doing more singing than moaning and groaning.

“Did you kill Alegria?” he asked the dying bandito.

The Balladeer stopped singing and looked at Colter, wrinkling the furry skin above the bridge of his nose. “How could I kill her? I love her.” He smiled, then returned his gaze to the sky and continued singing the ballad.

Colter turned away from him and walked over to where Strange was now sitting back on the heels of his moccasins, breathing hard, his face pale. Bethel knelt beside him, one hand on his shoulder, tears streaming down her cheeks. Strange looked at Colter, his eyes pain-racked but touched with humor, as well. They looked delighted when he saw the burlap pouch in the redhead's hand.

“That them?”

Colter tossed the pouch down. “I hope this was worth it.”

Strange opened the pouch to the two gold daggers and stretched his lips in a grin.

“Don't die, Pa,” Bethel said quietly. “Please don't die. I don't care about no treasure. I just want you home again.”

“Ah, hell.” Strange shook his head and loosed a ragged sigh, clamping his bandanna to his mouth as he coughed up a small gob of blood. “I reckon I done took my last ride, girl.”

Bethel frowned, worried. Strange rested the daggers in his lap, set his hand against her cheek, and caressed her smooth skin with his thumb. “My last wild ride, I mean. We got one more ahead. Back to Tucson. I'll make it.”

The man looked down at the daggers and then up at Colter. Strange's eyes shone with a devilish, romantic gleam beneath the green bandanna wrapped around his leathery forehead. The old border bandit wasn't dead yet. Maybe soon, but not yet.

Strange said, “You comin',
El Rojo
?”

Colter shrugged. “I got men after me. Bounty hunters. Maybe army.”

“Hey, so do I!” Strange laughed, then turned his head to cough into his bandanna.

“I'll fetch the horses.”

Colter saw Bethel looking at him. Her blue eyes shone with optimism. She smiled. He winked at her, shouldered his rifle, and started walking away. He stopped, tramped back over to the grave where the three dead banditos lay.

He crouched over one, pulled his trusty though nondescript Remington from behind the dead man's cartridge belt. He chuckled. Lost and retrieved once again. He'd often considered trading in the old hog leg on a newer model, maybe a fancy piece like Strange's silver Colt.

But no.

He and the old Remy must be doomed to die together.

He wiped it off with his hand, then stuck it down in his holster and fastened the keeper thong over the hammer.

Brushing a hand across his bullet-creased cheek, he strode out of the cemetery, stepping over the Balladeer, who lay bleeding and dying and singing his last, fast-fading song to the sky.

 

 

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