Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635) (9 page)

Chapter 13

Colter said, “I don't think so,” and dropped his bare feet to the floor.

Alegria looked at him from between her hands still pressed to her temples, her gold-brown eyes wide with fear. “What are you doing?”

Colter rose, wincing as the bandage tightly wrapped around his middle drew taut against his battered ribs, and bent his knees to retrieve his clothes from the floor. “Don't you worry about Machado, Alegria. I'll go out and powwow with him awhile, see if I can't get the old dog off your trail.”

She blinked, then opened her eyes even wider, dropping her hands to her naked brown legs crossed Indian-style beneath her. “What? Are you
mad
?”

“Prob'ly.”

Keeping her voice down, as though the giant Mexican border bandit were already outside their door, Alegria said, “Colter, get back over here. We'll hide, and maybe Senor Dominguez will get the sheriff here before Machado finds us!”

Colter grabbed his long-handles and began to gingerly pull them on. “Last night you wanted me to protect you. Now you want me to hide?” He snorted. “Maybe I can stop him before he gets this far.”

She blinked again, swallowed as though downing a whole apple, and stared at him aghast. “Maybe you can do what?
Dios mio
—you are mad!” She flopped down in the bed and drew the covers up over her head.

While trying to calm the girl, assuring her everything was going to be all right, and that even big border toughs like Machado would listen to reason if pushed into a corner, Colter casually dressed and wrapped his shell belt and pistol around his waist. He pulled on his duck jacket against the chill of the early-autumn morning, set his hat on his head, and took a last sip of coffee and tequila. He lifted the bedcovers, exposing the girl's left knee. He bent down and kissed it tenderly.

“Thanks for last night. I'll remember it for a long time. Not just the tussle, neither, but the palaver wasn't half bad, neither.”

“You are a crazy boy!” she squealed, poking her head out to regard him with exasperation. “
Por favor
, for the last time—get in here with me, and maybe he won't find us!”

Colter set his saddlebags on his shoulder and grabbed his rifle from the wall behind the door. He opened the door and pinched his hat brim to the girl still staring at him with wide-eyed disbelief. “Been a pleasure.”

He went out, drawing the door closed behind him. From the other side of the door, he heard her give another exasperated groan. Colter walked down the hall to the top of the stairs. No sounds rose from the saloon hall below. He couldn't hear Machado's singing anymore, either. Maybe the sheriff had already gotten the big bandit back under rein.

Colter went down to find the saloon hall dark, the chairs upended on the tables. Senor Dominguez stood at the window to the right of the door, looking out across the wash fronting the hotel and casting nervous glances back at Colter.

“Best get back upstairs, Red.”

“He out there?” Colter walked toward the front of the room. Anger was a cold steel blade slipped just beneath the skin of his lower back. He didn't know Alegria very well, but after last night he'd acquired an affection for the girl. There hadn't been many girls in his life after he'd been so hideously scarred. Lenore had been one, and she was dead. There'd likely be damn few from here on out. Damn few who would understand him or could love him despite the brand on his cheek. The tenderness Alegria had shown him last night had been as genuine as Lenore's friendship had been, and it graveled him that the big outlaw had carved the line on the side of the Mexican girl's pretty face, and that he continued to terrorize her.

“
Sí, sí
. He's stopped to wash his face. Vain son of a bitch.”

“How'd he get out of jail so soon?”

“The sheriff must have let him out when he sobered up. No point in trying to hold a man like that. Not with his gang heading for town. The sheriff has a wife and a family. . . .”

“What about Alegria?”

Dominguez glanced over his shoulder at Colter, nodding. “She's a hell of a good moneymaker on the weekends. Without her, I'll have to close my doors, but what can I do? I'll find another one, maybe.” He raked a sigh and turned back to the window and fingered his chin pensively.

Colter gave a caustic snort and opened the door. Dominguez glanced at him again, incredulous. “What are you thinking? Get back upstairs,
Rubio
!”

Colter went out, Dominguez calling behind him, “Kid, get back in here!”

Colter stopped on the gallery. Machado was down on his knees in the wash, his big sombrero on the ground beside him as he leaned forward over the trickle of water and splashed it across his face and over his hairy neck. His face was as large as a horse's, and thick, curly dark brown hair fell to his shoulders, framing it. Much of it was thinly braided, the braids wrapped in beads hanging over his ears. He wore a mustache that curved down over the corners of his mouth to his chin, and a gold stud ring glistened in his right ear. His big face was cut and bruised from last night's dustup, a deep, scabbed gash angling over the edge of his left brow.

Colter wondered how the lawmen looked this morning.

Machado wore two big Colt Navy revolvers—one in a holster positioned for the cross draw, another wedged behind his belts over his bulging belly, on the outside of his red-and-white serape. A shoulder holster angled down beneath the flap of his fancily stitched bull-hide vest, also worn over the serape, and Colter could see the handle of a broad knife poking up from the well of his right, high-topped black boot.

Colter let his saddlebags slide down his shoulder and drop to the wooden floor of the gallery. He leaned his rifle against a post, then stepped down off the gallery and walked over to the lip of the wash.

The big, bearlike bandito was cupping water to his bruised temple. He jerked his chin toward the bank upon which Colter stood, frowning, the man's red-rimmed eyes small as dark pebbles in his large, brick red face scored with deep lines around his eye sockets. He said something in Spanish. It sounded like a command. Colter just stared at him stonily.

“Gringo, uh?” Machado said. “Get out of here, kid. You're annoying me.
Vamos
!”

“You're the one who best vamoose, amigo.”

The big bandit had dropped his eyes to the stream, but now he looked up again as though at a fly that would not go away. He looked puzzled. “What you say, little scar-face boy?”

“I don't want you comin' around Miss Alegria anymore. I seen what you did to her.” Colter bunched his lips and shook his head. He let his glance flick to the three pistols the man was wearing. Machado might be fast, but he was too big to be faster than Colter. Besides, when a man wore that many guns he was usually trying to compensate for something. They gave him confidence when he knew he wasn't as fast or as accurate as some.

Colter felt little fear. Only rage, which he held on a tight rein inside him. He drew deep, regular breaths as he remembered the scar on Alegria's face and the terror in her eyes. He thought of this big man going upstairs now and doing what he would to her, with no one to stop him.

No one except Colter Farrow.

Machado continued to study him with cowlike stupidity. He flicked his dark eyes up and down Colter's lean frame as though he thought his eyes were deceiving him. As though thinking that no one this young and scrawny, with only one old Remington on his hip, could be trying to stare down Machado. The big man's eyes brightened. His face crumpled with laughter. He threw his head back and pointed at Colter and then he laughed even harder, his shoulders quaking, tears streaking his broad cheeks to dampen the ends of his long mustaches.

His laughter diminished to a slow boil. And then it left his face entirely, and his dark eyes bored into Colter's. Heavily, he climbed to his feet, letting his big hands adorned with several gold and silver rings hang straight against his sides. He continued to stare. Then his right hand slashed across his cartridge belt toward the pearl-gripped Colt Navy on his left hip.

Colter jerked as though with a start, his own right hand slashing across his belly. The Remy was out and up faster than it took most men to blink, and the pistol barked three times.

Machado stumbled backward, dragging his
chinging
spurs. The big man had gotten the Colt clear of its holster but was not able to get it half-raised before Colter's Remington spoke again.

Machado screamed and flew back, twisting around and hitting the ground hard in a quivering pile. On his side, he groaned, spasmed, drew a deep breath, and fell still.

Colter was still crouched, feet and arms perpendicular to the wash, making as small a target as possible. His Remington was still extended in his right hand. Smoke curled from the barrel. His senses were still so attuned to danger that when he heard the Babylon's front door scrape open behind him, he wheeled and took aim at the shaggy-headed Dominguez stepping slowly out onto the gallery.

“Hey, hey!” the hotelier said, throwing up his hands. He wore the same soiled red necktie that he'd worn last night.

Colter depressed the Remington's hammer and raised the barrel.

“
Dios mio
, kid,” Dominguez said, his voice raspy with disbelief, stepping off the gallery and staring skeptically toward the wash. “You . . . you kill . . . Santiago
Machado
?”

“He drew first.” Colter spat into the dust. “Or tried to.” He holstered the Remington but kept his hand on the grips when he saw three riders sitting their stalled horses near where this side street intersected with the village's main drag. He let his hand relax. The lead rider was the strange blond tomboy, and the two men flanking her were Wade and Harlan. They were all dressed in wool coats and leather gloves against the chill, and they were trailing a pack mule laden with bulging canvas panniers.

The girl stared skeptically at Colter, as did Wade and Harlan, canting their hatted heads this way and that and flicking their eyes between Colter and the big man lying dead in the draw. Finally, the girl turned her head to say something to the two men behind her, then nudged the heels of her low boots against her horse's flanks, and the three rode on down the street along the side of the draw opposite Colter, their mounts' shod hooves lifting powdery dust. The two men continued to stare at the redheaded shooter, expressionless, maybe a little skeptical, until they'd ridden past him, and then they turned their heads forward and gigged their horses into trots after the girl, Harlan leading the pack mule by a lead rope.

Colter kept his hand on his pistol grips, because several men in serapes or long deerskin coats and sombreros, one in the shopkeeper's attire of a white shirt, wool vest, and armbands, were moving toward him, dragging their feet with caution.

Dominguez stood at the edge of the draw, staring down at Machado, who lay on one hip and shoulder, his thick, long legs scissored. The owner of the Babylon turned his astonished eyes on Colter, letting them flick once to the gun on his left hip.

Then he tossed his head toward the hotel. “Fetch your horse and hightail it,
Rubio
. You might be faster than greased lightning, but you can't take on Machado's entire gang. And that's what you'll have to do if they find you here—with your four bullets in their leader.”

“I hope I didn't cause you too much trouble, Senor Dominguez.”

Dominguez turned his still-shocked gaze toward Machado. “Hell,
Rubio
. I believe you saved me some. The gang, though—they will be after you.”

Colter started walking toward the barn. Dominguez grabbed his arm. “Ride south. I have a brother near the Sierra San Angelo, where Trinity Creek runs into the Rio Yaqui. Ride to him—Ferdinand Dominguez. Tell him I sent you. He will hide you there in return for feeding his chickens and pigs, so he can drink mescal all day and hide from his wife and kids in his silver mine.”

“I don't want to get anyone else in trouble.”

Dominguez shook his head and clamped Colter on his shoulder. “The gang won't follow you that far—even if they could track you across those rugged wastes. They'll want to avenge Machado, but in the end they want to rob banks more, so they can drink and entertain the
putas
in Monterrey.” Again, he clamped Colter's shoulder. “Go!”

Colter strode at an angle across the yard but stopped when he saw Alegria standing on the Babylon's gallery, above the steps. She had a hand on a support post and was staring at Colter with much the same expression as the others. She wore only a sheer pale wrap over a loose burlap tunic. Her legs and feet were bare.

She wrinkled her dark brows. “Pistolero?” she said quietly, dubiously.

Colter drew a breath as he stared back at her, not sure if she was approving or disdainful, but somehow not liking the killer she was seeing in him.

“Adios, Alegria,” he said finally, then grabbed his rifle and saddlebags and continued on around the front corner of the hotel.

He strode down the side of the building to the barn.

Behind him he heard voices as a small crowd gathered around the wash. He didn't know much Spanish, but he was picking up enough to understand the shouted query, “Who shot Machado?”

“
Rubio de la marca de Satan!
” came the reply.

Chapter 14

“The redhead with the mark of Satan on his face!” resounded in Colter's head as he rode south throughout the morning.

Here he was again, cast out of another town, blood on his hands. Alone.

When would the horror that his life had become ever end?

When could he hang up the Remington forever?

He rode south only because south was where the bulk of Mexico lay, stretched out before him—an alien land that beckoned him with its vastness and its distance from his own country and the various bounties on his head. Growing loneliness followed him like a pack of hungry wolves. He wondered when he would ever be able to return to his own country. Of course, he might never be able to. Not unless he wanted to live looking over his shoulder every minute of every hour, and sleep with one eye open.

Some men could change their names and live relatively anonymously. Colter didn't have that luxury. The brand on his face—“the mark of Satan”—would scar him forever.

So he rode south throughout the morning and into the afternoon. In the back of his mind was the half-formed idea of taking Dominguez's suggestion of holing up at the hotelier's brother's mine, if he could find the place. If he could be certain that he hadn't been followed by Machado's gang, he might take the man up on his offer. It was lonely out here, and it would likely get lonelier.

He fancied the idea of meeting folks and spending time with them, getting to know them, sitting down to a table with a family. Of course there was the language problem, but he'd have to learn Spanish sooner or later, and maybe this was his opportunity to learn enough not only to get by while he was here, but to have conversations with folks. The farther south he went he'd likely run into fewer and fewer Mexicans who could speak English as Dominguez and Alegria did.

Alegria.

The memory of last night tempered the hollow feeling in his gut for a time. Gradually, however, remembering the warmth and smoothness of her body, the softness of her kisses, and the sound of her passion as they lay together only made the sky seem vaster, the clay-colored ridges starker and less welcoming, the thickets of catclaw and mesquite around him more threatening.

And then he saw Lenore lying dead beneath Hobart's prancing horse, and he was gripped by a grinding horror and anger.

As though reflecting his mood, clouds closed over the sky, turning the land a charcoal gray. By midafternoon, it had started to rain. Just a mist at first. But then larger drops began to fall hard, and a wind came up of a sudden, growing colder with every sucking, blasting gust.

Lightning that had danced around the far western ridges now flashed nearer, and the accompanying thunder sounded like near cannon fire, making the ground shake and causing Northwest to hesitate and prance in place, nickering his disdain for such weather. Colter rammed his boots against the horse's flanks to keep him moving.

By the time he'd unwrapped his rain slicker from his blanket roll and pulled it on, he was soaked. Continuing to push south, he hoped to outrun the storm. But the sky grew darker. The rain hammered against him—a white curtain slashing sideways and pelting the growing puddles filling every dimple in the clay-colored earth to a creamy froth. Lightning pounded near ridges, touching the wet air with a brimstone tang.

He began looking around for cover, saw a canyon opening between two yawning stone jaws to his right. This was broken country, carved by a maze of rocky arroyos, and Colter leaped down from Northwest's saddle and began leading the jittery horse into the relative shelter of the canyon.

Lightning flashed over his left shoulder. Thunder clapped, sounding like boulders tumbling down the ridges. Ahead, another flash. Colter heard a bullet screech inches past his head. There was another flash ahead and to his left from a niche in the canyon wall. Rock dust flew up on Colter's right. It was followed by the muffled belch of a rifle.

Northwest whinnied and lurched up off his front hooves.

Colter crouched, drew his pistol, silently cursing the dry-gulching bastards.

There was another rifle flash on his left, the bullet tearing into another rock on his right. Dropping to one knee, Colter triggered off two shots toward the shooter firing from the canyon's left wall, and then triggered three more straight up the canyon, unable to see where his bullets struck in the pouring rain. Getting the message that strangers weren't wanted here, he bounded off his knees, jerked Northwest around by his reins, and led the dun off into the cabin-sized boulders farther up the trail.

Banditos, he thought. Holed up out of the rain, and surly as cougars.

When the canyon mouth disappeared behind him, behind the jutting southern wall, he mounted Northwest once more and, hunkered low, the rain sluicing like a mini waterfall from his hat brim, continued up the winding arroyo he'd been following and that was turning into a shallow river swirling with tea-colored water and more and more bits of mud chunks and branches. He looked around for another sanctuary and was crestfallen to see the slick, red-clay arroyo walls rising on both sides of him, until they were nearly six feet high. The thought that he needed to get out of there, as no one but a tinhorn would get caught in an arroyo during a rain squall, had no sooner shunted across his mind than a low rumbling sounded.

The rumbling, like the muffled belching of a discomfited god, seemed to originate from all around him. It grew louder. He glanced down to see that the water was rising and swirling faster and faster. He swung a worried look over his shoulder, and panic was an instant flash within him, taking his breath and making his heart leap and turn somersaults.

A veritable tidal wave of mud brown water was plunging toward him. The flood looked like a brown rug unfurling, the wave gaining on him so quickly that the brown of the froth-limned wave filled his vision. He could see the bubbles and leaves and mesquite leaves and small mud chunks it was hurdling. The cold water slammed over Northwest's rump and against Colter's face, washing through his mouth still hanging wide in shock and dread.

The horse lurched forward and up as the wave lifted him off his hooves, hurling him upstream. Colter heard himself grunt as he was jarred back off the horse and into the cold, dark water, flinging a hand out for the horse's dark brown tail but missing it by at least two feet as the indignantly whinnying dun was plunged downstream and away from him.

Colter was dragged under by the churning currents, sucking half a lungful of water. He surfaced, gasping and choking and glimpsing Northwest's hip to his left. Then he was spun around like a top, feeling himself being hurled with the rest of the debris downstream. He and the horse and the water then began moving faster, as though they were dropping quickly in elevation, maybe into a canyon, and Colter was once more dragged under by unseen hands. Kicking off the rock bottom, skinning his knees on rocky knobs protruding out from the arroyo's bank, he forced his head above the frothy surface and again sucked a deep breath, choking on the water that lodged in his throat and trickled like icy witches' fingers into his lungs.

He vomited water, and as the currents continued to spin him while sweeping him downstream, he flung his arms out toward both banks, hoping to grab a rock or a shrub. He saw a root looping out of the bank on his left. It was coming up fast in a gray-brown blur, dodging and pitching. He kicked toward it, leaned forward, got a hand on it, but before he could close the hand, the rabid dogs of the currents fastened their jaws on his legs and ripped him off downstream.

There was a sudden plunge as the arroyo dropped down. Colter rolled sideways, throwing his arms out for balance as well as in an instinctive effort to grab whatever he could. At the bottom of the drop, the jaws of the dirty cream froth sucked him down once more. When he managed to jerk his head up again, the massive gray fist of a rock wall slid resolutely into his path. Its unyielding bulk slammed against his left side, numbing that arm and shoulder and scrambling his brains, blurring his vision.

He was thrust to the right, now just trying to keep his head above the water. As he was tossed around another bend, he saw an object on his right, and thrust that arm up halfheartedly. Something told him to stiffen the arm a quarter second before it made contact with the object, and he was glad he did, because a second later he found himself hooked around a stout branch protruding from a crack in the rock of the arroyo's ridge.

He vomited, sucked a spoonful of air, retched again.

He'd hit the branch violently, and he felt as though his right shoulder had been partly torn from its socket. Looking down, he saw the water swirling around his waist. His brown leather holster flopped in the current, empty. Somewhere, he'd lost the Remington.

Maybe partly because of the braining he'd taken by the rock wall, the loss of the old gun was what he was most concerned about. Not his own physical condition, or Northwest's, but that he'd lost the Remington that he'd left home with so long ago. It had become a security blanket of sorts.

“Ah, shit,” he heard himself mutter above the water's pulsating thunder as he stared down at the soaked, empty holster.

He hooked his other arm around the branch and hoisted his knees onto it. The rain continued to hammer at him, thick as wind-driven snow. But he could see the top of the bank to his right, only about four feet above. He gained his knees, praying the branch would hold and not send him tumbling into the torrent again. Twisting around, he grabbed the top of a rock jutting a ways out from the bank. From there he was able to scramble off the branch and onto the wall from which he climbed, cursing and grumbling against the renewed ache in his ribs as well as the fresh agony in both shoulders and knees, and onto the top of the ridge.

He collapsed on his back and lay there, raking air in and out of his lungs, squinting against the pelting rain falling out of a sky the color of a bruised plum.

Every bone and nerve throbbed. But he couldn't lie here. For all he knew the arroyo would continue to flood until it washed over its banks to sweep him away again. Groaning, he climbed to hands and knees, looked around, saw that he was in a narrow canyon with steep ridge walls on both sides of the arroyo.

Northwest . . .

Holding his aching ribs, he limped off, bandy-legged and bent-kneed, along the arroyo, looking around desperately for his horse. In many ways the animal was like an equal partner to him, his only remaining companion, but his main concern now was being stranded out here on foot. On foot and without a gun, he'd be as helpless as a newborn calf without its mother.

He felt nearly as freshly beaten as after his dustup, if you could call it that, with Lieutenants Belden, Hobart, and McKnight. His heart thudded wildly, desperately.

“Northwest?” he called, the roaring torrent beside him and the pounding rain drowning the cry as it left his lips.

He stumbled around a bend in the wall, and stopped suddenly.

“Northwest?” he said, softer now and tempered with relief.

To his left, the arroyo had flattened out, and the walls dropped, so that the water didn't appear to be moving as fast. Ahead, he stared in slack-jawed relief as he watched the horse lunging up a series of low shelves in the arroyo's stone wall, until Northwest gained the top of the bank, the saddle and the rest of Colter's tack hanging down his right side, and gave a splay-legged shake.

“Northwest!” he shouted, and stumbled forward, choking on more water forcing itself up from his lungs.

The horse was badly rattled and it trotted a ways on down the canyon before it turned to face the canyon wall as though seeking protection from the flashing lightning and blasting thunder. Colter slowed his pace and held up his hands, palms out in supplication, as he stole up to the mount who stood with his head nearly touching the wall, shivering and snorting and twitching his ears.

“It's all right, boy. You're safe. Er . . .” He blinked against the rain as he looked around, having no idea how far the flood had carried him or where he and the horse had ended up. “. . . at least you're not drowned.”

He looked around, squinting, and saw what looked like a cave mouth a little farther up the canyon. It lay back in a concave depression in the canyon wall—sort of triangular-shaped but much lower on the left than on the right. He took Northwest's reins and after much coaxing, got the horse to follow him over to the cave, which appeared at least from the outside tall enough to shelter both himself and the horse. He stepped cautiously inside, squinting into the dense shadows, half expecting to find some wild animal holed up out of the weather. It was dark, but there was enough gray light seeping in behind him to reveal the two side walls, and the occasional lightning flashes briefly showed him the back wall, which appeared a jumble of strewn rock and gravel, as well.

Colter pulled on Northwest's reins. The horse whinnied shrilly and drew back, lifting his head and flattening his ears. “Come on, horse,” Colter urged, pulling on the reins. “You don't wanna stay out here in the rain, do you?”

When he'd finally led the horse into the cave—the ceiling about a foot higher than Northwest's head—he quickly stripped off the tack, which included Colter's rifle and scabbard, thank God. At least he had the Henry. Shivering against the cold arroyo water, teeth clattering, he slipped Northwest's bit and left him ground-tied. He figured the horse had drunk enough water in the arroyo, as Colter had, so he poured out a small pile of damp oats from his saddlebags, then walked over to the mouth of the cave.

He tightly crossed his arms on his chest, trying to drive the cold out. No use. Every muscle in his body felt electrified. There was likely no dry wood anywhere near, so a fire wouldn't be possible.

Deciding he'd just have to gut out the storm right here, soaked to his gills, he sank down against the cave wall. Even shivering, he managed to fall into an aching, miserable kind of sleep. He was half aware of the storm abating, stopping, then starting up again, the wind like a cold breath blowing against him.