The Lawmen (9 page)

17

Morning on the desert—bright, clear, and hot. The sun blazed down. Three men rode over the undulating foothills of the Verdugo Mountains, half hidden by the thick covering of mesquite and creosote and cactus. Pools of water lay here and there, a rarity in this normally parched country. Fed by last night’s rain, wildflowers bloomed in a sudden profusion of yellow and pink and white. Besides the rhythmic clopping of the horses’ hoofs, the only sounds were those of a woodpecker tapping a saguaro and the calling of a cactus wren. In the distance a hawk circled.

Clay and Essex rode side by side, with Vance Hopkins behind them, still tied up. Clay held the reins of Vance’s horse. They were not on the main road to Tucson. There were stage relay stations on the road where they could have changed horses, but the station operators were shady types who would know the Hopkins brothers. Clay and Essex were as liable to get a bullet in the back there as they were to get help. Besides, that was the way Wes and his men would follow them.

Having prospected the Verdugos, Clay knew a back trail that would take them to Tucson. It was more roundabout, but there was less likelihood of running into trouble, and unless Wes had good trackers, he would never find them.

Beside Clay, Essex breathed deeply, smelling sage and mint and wildflowers. “I love the desert after it rains. Everything gets so green and fresh. Look at all this bunch grass. I bet you could raise some good cattle here, if you could find a way to get ’em water. ”

“Stop worrying about cattle and keep your eyes peeled for Cochise and his friends,” Clay told him. “They damn near got me last time I was out here. Wasn’t all that far from where we are right now, neither. ’Sides, you couldn’t raise no cattle. Government wouldn’t sell you the land.”

Behind them Vance moaned. “Ooh, God, I feel awful. Let me have some water, will you?”

Clay halted his horse and dismounted. He undid the rope that bound Vance to the saddle, then unstopped his canteen and passed it to the young outlaw. Vance tilted the canteen to his lips and drank, gulping repeatedly. Water spilled down his mouth and chin. He put the canteen down, took a few deep breaths, then drank again. “Untie my hands, too, will you?” he asked Clay. “I ain’t gonna run.”

Clay did as Vance asked, then he remounted and the little party continued on. “That’s why I gave him the bottle last night,” Clay told Essex. “Figured it’d make him easier to manage.”

“It made me sick is what it did,” Vance complained.

“At least it was decent whiskey,” Clay said. “I could have got you a bottle of that stuff they sell to the Indians.”

Essex took off his beehive-shaped wool hat and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “How big a lead you reckon we got on Wes?”

“Big enough,” Clay said. “We can’t slack off, though. They’ll be after us.”

“They’ll catch you, too,” Vance said.

“Not if we keep up this pace,” Clay told him. “Besides, they have to find our trail first. “

Vance tried another tack. “It still ain’t too late to let me go. Do it, and Wes’ll see you’re took good care of. I’d put in a word for you.”

“Sorry,” Clay said. “You got a date with the U.S. Marshal in Tucson. After that, with a judge and jury.”

“Wes’ll get you both,” Vance warned, “you and your friend.”

“The man’s my deputy, not my friend.” Clay reined in and turned to Vance. “Come on, sunshine. Let’s walk a while, give these horses a rest. The exercise will do you good.”

* * *

“What!” Wes Hopkins said.

The beefy-faced man named Shaughnessy did not like being the bearer of bad news. “I don’t think there’s nobody in there,” he repeated. They were in the lobby of the Topaz Hotel. Around them, Lee Hopkins and the other members of the gang were eating breakfast and checking weapons, getting ready for the coming showdown. They all stopped what they were doing to listen.

Shaughnessy swallowed and went on. “The lamp went out late last night, but it looked like it guttered out—not like it was trimmed. Since then there ain’t been no movement in there that we could see. Nobody’s used the outhouse, and nobody’s looked out the window—and they was always looking out before.”

A black cloud, like yesterday’s storm, was building on Wes’s brow. “Were you and your men watching the jail the whole time?”

“Yeah, Wes. Except during the storm, of course, but they couldn’t have—”

“Of course they could, you idiot. Lee!”

Lee was sitting on the edge of a table, smoking a cigar. Now he slid his lean form from the table, tossing the cigar to the floor. Behind him a hotel employee rushed to stamp out the cigar’s glowing ember. “Yeah?” Lee said.

“Get the boys.”

Lee turned and began issuing orders. A few minutes later the gang followed Wes out the hotel door, bolting down last bits of food or coffee, holstering pistols, loading rifles as they walked. They headed for the jail, moving down the muddy street, which was littered with debris from the storm.

When they reached the marshal’s office, Wes looked in the broken window. He saw nothing and banged on the door. “Chandler!”

There was no answer.

Wes banged again. “Chandler! Are you in there?”

Still no answer. Wes swore and tried the latch, but the door was barred. “We’ll bust it open,” Lee said.

“No, go through the window.”

A couple of the men smashed out the rest of the window with their rifle butts. When the glass was clear, they crawled in and unbarred the door. “Nobody here,” one of them said to Wes as he entered.

Wes looked around, then turned to Lee. “Search the town. Take it apart brick by brick if you have to, but find Chandler and my brother. If anybody gets in your way, shoot them. I’ll be at the mayor’s house.”

Wes left the marshal’s office. Behind him, Lee gave the men their assignments. “All right, you heard the boss. Find Vance and that marshal, and don’t let nobody stop you. Jenkins and Swanson, take this end of Tucson Street. Paco, you and your brother take the lower end. O’Malley and Brisbane, you got Lincoln Street...”

Wes turned down First Street, headed for Thomas Price’s residence. He passed the smoldering, waterlogged remains of Mason’s warehouse, where men were cleaning up from last night’s fire, but he barely noticed. All he could think about was his little brother, Vance.

Ma would never forgive him if he let anything happen to Vance. Vance and Lee had been his responsibilities since she died, and he’d done a good job with them—until now. He’d overcome a lot of odds, too. There had been those years during the war, living in the brush country north of Dallas along with a mix of deserters from both armies, outlaws on the run, and men avoiding the Confederate draft. Those had been hard times. The Hopkins brothers had lived by their wits and by their guns—and sometimes their guns had come first. But they had survived—even thrived. They had started with stagecoach and other highway robberies, then gone to looting small ranches, stealing the horses and butchering the inhabitants so that people would think Comanches had done it. Later had come cattle rustling, and when the law had gotten too hot for them, they had moved to Arizona.

All his life Wes had felt slighted, put down by the people who counted. Probably it had something to do with growing up poor. He had always envied people with money, had always been determined to have it for himself. Now he had it in abundance. Unlike his brothers, who were only interested in women and cards, Wes had learned to imitate the respectable people, to copy their clothes and manners. He had done such a good job that he was close to becoming respectable himself.

All he needed to make everything perfect was a family. He’d always been so busy taking care of Vance and Lee, of planning for the gang, that he’d never had much time for women. But now there was Estella, the beautiful daughter of a ranchero outside Arispe in Sonora. Estella and her father had no idea what Wes really did. If he worked it right, they never would know. He would continue to run the gang out of the ranch, with Lee taking over much of the day-to-day responsibilities, while he would live with Estella and the children in town. They would become Topaz’s most prominent citizens. The life Wes had always dreamed of was about to become a reality.

First, however, he had to get Vance back. Then he had to settle with Clay Chandler. He couldn’t understand Chandler. He had given the man every chance; he had gone out of his way to be accommodating, to be friends. And this was how Chandler repaid him. Very well, then, Chandler would get to see another side of him; and it was a side the marshal was not likely to enjoy.

* * *

Charity Price was looking out the front window of her house, at her once immaculately manicured garden, now ruined by the storm. She was thinking about all the work she would have to do that day cleaning imp, wondering how she could keep the children occupied while she was busy. She saw Wes Hopkins walk down the street and turn up her front path, kicking aside a whitewashed garden stone that had been blown out of place.

Wes Hopkins was not a frequent visitor to Charity’s house. She would not permit such a thing; she had standards to uphold. She knew they had to put up with him, though, especially since he had done so much for her husband, so she tried to be polite as she opened the door to his knock. “Mr. Hopkins,” she said, affecting pleasant surprise. “Good morning.”

“Where’s your husband?” Wes said brusquely.

“He’s breakfasting in the next room, but he doesn’t wish to be disturbed. Perhaps if you—”

Wes brushed past her and went to the dining room. Charity stared after him, flabbergasted. “Well!” she huffed.

Wes barged into the dining room. “Price?”

The mayor stood from the table. “Wes. I’d prefer it if you didn’t come to my—”

“They’re gone, Price. Vance and that damned marshal.” Price went pale. Behind them Charity said, “Really, Mr. Hopkins, I’ll thank you not to swear under my roof. ”

“I’ll swear wherever the hell I want, lady. If you don’t like it, you’d best leave. It’s liable to get worse.”

Charity looked at her husband, expecting him to defend her honor, but he merely nodded for her to leave the room, which she did, flush-faced. To Wes, Price said in a low voice, “They’re gone?”

“You heard me. They got out during the storm.”

“And you don’t know where they are?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be here, would I? I'm disappointed in you, Price. I gave you a chance to prove your friendship, and you bungled it. Your man Grady was supposed to be good. What went wrong?”

Price hesitated. If Chandler had really escaped with Vance, it could be the best way out of this dilemma for everyone. Let them go and be done with it. It would no longer be the town’s problem. He had to be careful how he answered, though. “I—I don’t know, Wes. It was bad luck, I guess. I did my best.”

 “Well, your best wasn’t good enough. Vance is my family, and by Christ, if anything happens to him, I’ll make sure something happens to your family as well.”

“Wait a minute, Wes. You got no right to drag my family—”

“I got every right. This ain’t business, Price, it’s personal. I’d hate to hurt your wife and kids, but I’ll do it. So you better get your ass out there and start looking for Vance and Chandler—your friends, too, if they know what’s good for them.”

Wes turned and walked out of the room. By the door he passed Charity, who still attempted to maintain the norms of propriety. “Good morning, Mister—”

He ignored her, slamming the front door as he left the house.

* * *

Outside, Wes started back to the street. As he did, Lee came running up. “Wes!”

Wes stopped. “You found them?”

Lee was out of breath. “No, but you know Fountain—the cobbler? Has a shop on the comer of Tucson and Second? He says he saw three men leaving town last night, during the storm. Says he happened to look out his back window just before the fire started—saw them in the alley.”

“Three men—he’s sure?”

“Pretty sure—it was hard to see because of the rain.”

“It has to be them,” Wes swore. “That sonofabitch Chandler.”

“Where would they be going?”

“Tucson. It’s the only place they could go. He sure ain’t taking Vance to Mexico. All right, mount the men. Make sure those two Mex trackers are with them. Have each man bring a spare horse, and tell them to load up on ammunition.”

“The bridge is out,” Lee said. “The river’s still up.”

 “We’ll find a crossing. We’ll swim the horses over if we have to. We’ll build a goddamn boat if we have to. They have a lead on us, but we’ll catch them. We’ll use the extra horses and we’ll ride them into the ground.”

18

Clay, Essex, and Vance rode all day in the blistering July heat. They left the foothills and entered the mountains. Weary as they were, they remained alert, on the lookout for Apaches. Late in the afternoon, Clay found a campground. He led the party halfway up a rocky hillside—he didn’t want to be skylighted against the horizon—to a bench with a rocky escarpment at its back and a drop-off in front. There they would be protected against surprise attacks from two sides.

“It’s about time,” Vance moaned as they dismounted. “My ass is killing me, my head hurts, and I’m sick. I’m going to have my lawyer charge you all with prisoner abuse. I just want to lay down.”

“Hold out your hands,” Clay ordered. Vance did, reluctantly, and Clay slapped the cuffs on him. “Now you can lay down.”

While Vance sprawled in the scant shade of the rocks, Clay and Essex unsaddled the horses, rubbed them down with empty grain sacks, and began the laborious chore of picking cholla needles from the animals’ legs. “We should make Tucson about this time tomorrow, or a little later,” Essex guessed.

“That’s what I figure,” Clay said.

“Ain’t cut no Apache sign. You think they’re around?”

Clay wrinkled his brow. “They were a week ago. They could still be here, or they could be five hundred miles away by now. You never know with Apaches.”

The talk about Apaches brought Vance to life. “I'm scared as hell of Apaches,” he said, looking around fearfully, as though he expected a war party to materialize out of the solid rock. “Cochise and his men caught one of our wranglers once.” He shivered at the recollection and said, “I’d rather hang than fall into their hands.”

“That’s the plan,” Clay said genially.

“It ain’t my plan,” Vance growled.

While Essex guarded Vance, Clay led the horses down the hill to a stream. Most of last night’s rainwater had drained into the sand, but there was enough left to water the animals. Clay grained the horses and set them out to graze, then he and Essex cleaned and oiled their weapons, which had received a thorough wetting in the rain. Metallic shells and paper ammunition cartridges were laid out to dry. Afterward, Clay hobbled the horses for the night in a brushy draw on the far side of the hill, a half-mile from camp. That way, if the Apaches found the horses, they might still miss the men.

Later Clay built a fire among the rocks. The fire was concealed so it wouldn’t be visible from a distance, small enough that an enemy would almost have to walk on top of it before seeing—or smelling—it. Clay had learned to build such fires during his lonely months of prospecting these mountains. When the fire was ready, Clay made coffee, and he and Essex ate the leftover food from the picnic hamper.

Licking his fingers, Clay helped himself to more cherry pie. He looked over at Vance. “What’s wrong, Hopkins? You ain’t eating.”

“Not hungry,” Vance muttered. He sat against the rocks, his back to the other two, like a petulant child.

Clay shook his head. “This food sure is good. We’ll thank your girlfriends for it when we get back to Topaz. It’s a cinch you won’t be seeing them for a while.”

“Go to hell, Chandler. It’s you that won’t be seeing nobody—not after Wes and Lee get through with you.”

Essex was attacking a fried chicken leg. “This white girls’ food ain’t bad, I guess, but I could really go for some kush. ”

“You mean commeal fried up with onions and peppers?” Clay said.

“Yeah, that’s the stuff. You heard of it, huh?”

“Used to eat it all the time back home.”

Essex chuckled. “Man, you
was
rich, wasn’t you?”

Clay washed down the pie with some coffee and looked into the darkness. “Rich? Not in money. We were hardscrabble farmers, raising corn and pigs, and in a good year there might be a few dollars left to buy flour. We wore homemade clothes and Pa drank homemade liquor. What little learning I have, my ma gave me. I never even had me a pair of shoes till I was fourteen—and they was hand-me-downs from Pa.”

Essex was unimpressed. “You still had me beat by two years—Massa Woodbine wasn’t big on giving his niggers no shoes. Figured we’d use them to run away in.”

Clay went on, remembering. “My pa was a hardworking, Bible-reading man. Ma was old before her time—lost four children before they was ten. We were happy, though—the happiest I ever been. ” He took a deep breath and looked at Essex. “Then we lost it all—because of a war that never should have been fought.”

Essex was incredulous. “What do you think—we should have stayed slaves?”

“Slavery wouldn’t have lasted ten more years,” Clay told him. “It didn’t work.”

“You might feel different if you was the one supposed to stay a slave them ten more years.”

Clay’s voice rose. “Was ten years worth all the lives that were lost, all the other lives that were disrupted, the homes destroyed? The whole thing could have been settled peacefully. Instead, my folks are gone, died of grief and illness. My sister Molly was widowed, then remarried and moved to Atlanta. After Sherman burnt the place, we never heard from her again. Then there was my brother . . . Alvah, his name was. He was three years younger than me, a great kid. Ma said the sun shone anywhere Alvah went—he had that kind of personality. Followed me everywhere. Followed me to the war, too. I told him to stay home and take care of Ma and Pa, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Didn’t want to miss all the fun, he said.

“He got himself shot in a picket skirmish during the retreat from Gettysburg. Minié ball shattered his thigh. They cut off his leg and took him to the rear. He was a tough kid, so he hung on a long time, wasting away. I saw him once before he died, at a hospital in Richmond. He weighed about eighty pounds, but he still had that same sunny smile. He was still cheerful.”

Clay waited a moment, then said in a low voice, “The worst part was, I made him go on picket that night. He said he was sick, but I was his company commander, and I didn’t want the men to think I was playing favorites.”

Essex said, “You expect me to feel sorry for somebody died fighting to keep my people in chains?”

“He was fighting for his country,” Clay said.

Essex didn’t care. “Far as I’m concerned, he got what he deserved.”

Clay slugged Essex in the face.

Essex fell backward and Clay leaped on top of him. The two men rolled in the dirt, punching and pounding. Vance laughed, suddenly revived. “Go on, kill each other. Save my brothers the trouble.”

Clay and Essex paid him no mind. They got to their feet and moved toward each other in the darkness. “Damn nigger,” Clay said.

“I warned you ’bout calling me that,” Essex replied. Clay swung his right hand. Essex ducked the blow. He hit Clay with a right to the stomach and followed it with a left to the temple that put Clay down.

Clay lay on the ground, shaking his head. “The overseer teach you that trick, too?” he sneered.

“No, I taught it to—”

Before Essex could finish, Clay scrambled to his feet and rushed him, catching him around the waist. Clay’s momentum drove the two of them off the rock bench and they rolled downhill, banging themselves on sharp rocks, being tom by cactus and brush.

They slid to a halt about halfway down the hillside. They lay for a second, about twenty yards apart, making sure nothing was broken. Slowly, they stood, wincing from the pain caused by the rocks and by the cactus needles sticking in them. They looked for each other in the darkness.

“Come on,” Clay taunted.

“Here I am,” Essex said, moving forward.

The two men exchanged punches, each staggering the other. Then Clay hit Essex in the jaw with his left hand and knocked him down. As Essex got up, Clay laughed and aimed a sweeping, two-handed blow, trying to take off the black man’s head. He missed, grunting with the effort.

Essex butted Clay in the stomach and he went over backward. Essex jumped him, but Clay pushed Essex over his head with his feet. Essex slammed onto his back. Both men lay there for a second, the wind knocked out of them. Painfully they pushed themselves upright, their breathing loud in the darkness. They moved forward, swinging their fists at the same time. Essex hit Clay beneath the eye. Clay hit Essex on the side of the head. “Ow!” yelled Clay, shaking his hand. “You broke my hand!”

“I’m gonna break your neck, you piece of shit,” Essex said. He hit Clay with a left hand that sent Clay spinning around. As Essex rushed in to follow up his advantage, Clay desperately threw out an elbow that caught the black man in the nose.

“Shit!” Essex said. He bent over, blood gushing from his nose, down the front of his shirt.

Both men staggered around in pain. Clay said, “Had enough?”

“No. How ’bout you?”

They grappled again, slipping and sliding on the rocky hillside until they fell. They lay side by side, breathing heavily. Essex tilted his head back to lessen the bleeding from his nose. “Now that we killed each other, maybe we should save some energy for the Hopkins gang,” he suggested.

After a minute Clay stood up. “Come on,” he said.

The two men climbed the hill, huffing, stumbling on unseen rocks, aching and bleeding in a hundred places, poked full of cactus needles. Halfway up, they heard the sound of hoof beats from the brushy draw on the far side of the hill.

“Shit!” Essex yelled again.

They ran the rest of the way up the slope, their hurts forgotten. They reached the fire and their campground, and they looked around.

Vance was gone.