Deadly Is the Night (7 page)

Spencer was on the porch waiting for Chet when he got up the next morning. Bundled up in a long tailcoat and more clothes on under that against the frosty morning, Spencer rose to his feet when Chet told him to get inside. Monica who'd overslept came hustling into the kitchen and looked hard at Spencer. “What're you here for?”

“To tell the boss man I'm taking the job.”

“What will Rebecca do?”

He shook his head wearily. “I guess go back to Texas. She has not decided what she wants to do.”

“Really?”

“I told her I had a job to build a ranch headquarters and we'd have to live down there until it was done, that we would be roughing it for a while but I'd get the bunkhouse done fast, for us to have a home. She said that wasn't the way she wanted to live. Made me sad but I gave her the money for her fare back home and told her thanks.”

“But you are still going to build the ranch headquarters?” Chet asked.

“Yes.”

“You want anything out of that house in town hauled out here and stored?”

“No. The landlord can have it.”

“We need to notify him to find a new renter.”

“I can do that,” Spencer said. “Some things don't work is all there is to it.”

“I have an account started at Nye's bank for the new ranch. Write me your plans as you go.”

“Can I talk to you alone?”

“Sure.”

They went in the living room.

“I want to know something. There is a widow woman named Lucinda Marcos down at the Diablo. Her husband got killed in a horse accident a year ago and she has two small kids. Would it be all right for me to go ask her to marry me and live on the new ranch while I build it?”

“Fine with me. Do what you have to do and explain it in your letter when you get started.”

“I'll buy a wagon and team in Tucson, get her and the kids, and get back up there.”

“No. I'll pay for the wagon, harness, and team. You just make sure you get a good one. You will need it for supplies anyway. Buy an army wall tent and what you need to set up a camp for living quarters. Keep me informed how things go.”

Spencer shook his hand. “Thanks, I can do that.”

“Breakfast is ready,” Monica announced.

“We're coming.”

They ate breakfast and Spencer left for town to close things up.

“What did he find out?” Liz asked when she came down to join him.

“Permission to go get a widow woman from Diablo and marry her.”

“So soon?”

“I think he already knew the last one wouldn't stay with him.”

“Rebecca sounded very much undecided about staying with him or going somewhere else when we talked.” Liz shook her head in disappointment.

Chet agreed and hugged her. “He has his own life to live.”

She agreed.

Late in the afternoon a man on a weary horse reined up at the barns and told one of the stable boys that he needed to talk to Chet Byrnes. A youth ran to the house and told Monica a man was there to talk to the
patron
. Monica took the boy to the living room, where Chet was finishing the books.

“You know this man?” he asked the boy.

He shook his head.

“I better go see who he is.”

Monica frowned. “I'd wear a gun.”

“I can do that.” He strapped on his gun belt from the hook, put on a jumper against the cool air, and went outside.

The man, in his rather shabby dressed appearance, got up and came over. “My name is Harry Olson. You never heard of me I bet, but I've heard of you, Mr. Byrnes, and I rode up here to see if you could help me.”

“What sort of a problem do you have, sir?”

“My wife Marcella was kidnapped by some outlaws. I reported it to the law and they said she'd probably run off with them.”

“Where do you live?”

“Maricopa County. Between Hayden's Mill and Mesa.”

“The law told you that?” Chet could hardly believe a lawman would do that.

“A deputy sheriff told me that when I said I knew someone had kidnapped my wife. I know it was a kidnapping because the neighbors heard her screaming that day and then she was gone. They told me so. She'd've never left me on purpose. She was kidnapped.”

“Any idea who they were?”

“If I had, I would have gone after her myself. Instead I rode up here.”

“You eaten anything lately?”

“Some jerky.”

“Come with me.” He went up the porch stairs, making sure the man was following him.

At the door he stopped. “Aw, Mr. Byrnes, I can't come into your house.”

Monica was standing in the kitchen doorway, blocking it, watching.

“Come on, Monica. Harry has not eaten a meal in the long ride up here. Fix him some food. Please?”

“What?”

Chet was hanging up his gun belt and jumper in the hall. “Anything you have.”

“Breakfast?”

“Fine.”

“I didn't—” Harry started to say.

Chet sat him down at the table. “I don't know what we can find out about your wife's kidnapping, but we could go down and try to investigate her disappearance.”

“I'd sure appreciate it. I heard you rounded up many criminals, and they said you lived up here. It was a further piece than what folks said it would be, but a man on the road pointed your place out to me.”

“You farm down there?”

“I do, sir. I raise hawgs. Fatten shoats and butcher them and I smoke some hams. Lots of Mexican people live around me and buy my meat. No big business but we don't starve.”

“How old is your wife?”

“Eighteen.”

“You been married for a long time?”

“No, sir. About six months. Marcella has been a great wife and never minded our hard life. She really dressed up my house. Nothing like this one though.”

“Where did she come from?”

“Texas.”

“How did she get here?”

“She was the second oldest of eleven kids. They came there by wagon. Her paw wanted to raise cotton. He rented a farm by me. I courted her and she accepted my proposal. We got married in the Good Will Church.

“That deputy said she just run away. Said that women did it all the time. Marcella would never run away. I swear she'd never do that.”

“Where were you when they kidnapped her?”

“I went to buy some barley at Hayden's Mill for my hawgs. That trip took me all day to go and come back with my wagon loaded. When I got home Marcella was gone. There were three horses' tracks in my yard and around the house. My neighbors heard her scream but never saw them when they did it. I trailed them east for a while but lost them in the dark.”

“Why would they kidnap her?”

“I don't know.” He shook his head. “Marcella was real pretty.”

“She not have any jewelry or money?”

“No. I am a hawg farmer. How could I have any money for that?”

“Could you have anything worthwhile they might have wanted?”

“Nothing but her. Nothing is missing that I could see.”

“My man and I will be there in a few days. I need to close up some business here first. I can't promise you anything, but we will investigate and do all we can to find her.”

“Thank you, sir. I will ride home and wait for you.”

“No. When you finish this food, you won't leave yet. My foreman, Raphael, will find you a bed and you are to get some rest. In the morning, he will see you are fed, have a sound horse to ride, and have food to supplement your ride home.”

“I didn't come for charity. I just want her back.” He looked close to crying. “I am grateful, sir.”

“Harry, I want you to know we might never find any trace of her. The trail is cold by now and their purpose unknown. But we will look.”

Harry Olson rode a ranch horse for home the next day. Chet hoped he didn't freeze to death going back. He and Jesus would be there in two more days. Looking at a cold, cold trail. That would be all he could think about. They'd try . . .

He and Jesus took the Black Canyon Stage to Hayden's Mill. The driver unloaded their saddles, rifles, and bedrolls on the ground. Jesus went to rent them horses. A cold north wind with sand bits on the drafts stung Chet's cheeks while he stood there guarding their gear pooled on the ground.

The agent holding on to his celluloid visor came out and told him bring their things inside.

“I am sorry, Mr. Byrnes. I hate he dumped your things out there. You're one of our best customers. I'll help you get your things into the depot inside.” Soon all their stuff was inside. It took Jesus twenty more minutes to arrive with the horses he rented. He complained, “They aren't much.”

They saddled them and took to the road. Late afternoon they found Olson's hog farm.

“I knew we were close.” Jesus wrinkled his nose.

Smoke ascended from the tin chimney of a sheet iron–covered small dwelling. Harry welcomed them in, and Chet could hardly believe what he saw. The interior was all very clean and neat, freshly painted with bright curtains. Those must be her marks on the place.

Olson looked as shabby as he did in Preskitt.

“Have you learned anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“Tomorrow I want to ride east. Meanwhile Jesus will talk to the Hispanic neighbors. Maybe he can learn something. I will need a picture of her.”

“There is one we had made.”

“I won't lose it.”

“It will be all I have of her.”

He brought the small-framed picture out wrapped in a towel. Chet agreed that she was a very pretty girl. Jesus looked at it and agreed she was, too. Finding her with no more than a picture would be like spotting a needle in a haystack, but Chet knew, somehow, they'd try.

Olson fed them beans and apologized he had no skills at cooking. Jesus made the oatmeal at breakfast and they parted. Olson and Chet rode to Mesa and showed her picture to many but got no information. They rode back at dark. Chet had bought some fresh beef from a butcher on the way back for Jesus to cook along with potatoes.

They ate heartily while Jesus told them he had talked to one of the women neighbors. She had seen two men leading a horse the day Marcella was kidnapped. The horses they rode were bays, but the animal they led was a paint.

“She never saw your wife riding it. But she said she thought it was funny that they led around a paint with a saddle on it. They may have gone east like where you found tracks and taken her that way.”

“She describe them?”

“
Gringo
cowboys she said.”

“After they heard her speak, others said, ‘Oh, yes, I saw them.' So two cowboys was all I learned.”

“Wish we'd had the paint horse information where we went today. More might have seen her, if they went east. We will go east of Mesa tomorrow. Maybe someone saw them over there or saw the paint horse if they went that way.”

They left early and were well east of the Mormon settlement town when they dropped off a ridge down onto a ranch. A middle-aged Hispanic woman came out on the porch, shading her eyes against the low winter sun in her face.

“Good day,” Chet said. “A week or so ago did two men water their horses here with a woman on a paint horse? Maybe her hands were tied to the saddle horn.”

“
Si
. I told Tony when he came home that night someone should go see about her. She had been crying. Those men didn't care about that. Tony said later I should mind my own business. Such things got people shot.”

“We care about her. Where did they go?”

“North.”

“You ever seen them before?”

She shook her head. “They were
gringos
. I could see she was a prisoner and that hurt my heart, but I could do nothing.” She held her fist to her chest.

“May God bless you, and we thank you for this information.”

“I will pray more for her safety now that you are on her trail.”

Chet saluted her. They rode north, crossed the Salt River below the temporary irrigation diversion dam, which cut the river's flow to half. By forcing part of the river water into a ditch used long ago by Indians to irrigate the farmland west of there, it made an easy crossing now.

“I can't believe she saw her,” Olson said. “Oh, my poor wife. With her hands tied, too.”

“It is a bad deal, but it really makes Jesus and me believe your whole story. We are a long ways from your farm and she saw them. It is not a feather in the wind. We will find her, Harry.”

He was crying. “I swear these bastards have to be caught. Thank you—for helping me.”

Jesus rode in close. “It is time to hope. We have a trail from here, Harry. I think we will have more luck. With less people around, there will be more witnesses seeing three strangers as standouts.”

Chet added, “And they will give us more information. The kidnappers will think they got away with it and will get careless. They probably took her through Mesa in the dark. It may take us time, but we are on her tracks.”

“How will I repay you?”

“You worry about finding her. Jesus and I need no rewards.”

“No one has ever done anything this big for me. I appreciate both of you. How did you know her hands were tied?”

“If she went with them freely, her hands would not be tied. You have been very honest with us.”

“All the time I only told the truth.”

“Yes. I know and believe you. Today I wish we knew why they took her?”

Olson agreed. “Me too.”

“We need to ride up to the Indian agency at Fort McDowell. Then see if they saw them passing through there.”

Olson nodded. They camped at the McDowell Agency that night, and a Mexican woman vendor fed them supper for fifteen cents apiece. She agreed to make them breakfast at sunup.

Chet bought the horses some corn from the subtler and they fed them in feedbags after watering them in the Verde River. The day had warmed, but he knew it would be cold in the low ground. They had good bedrolls. No one had seen the three passing because the road to Rye didn't pass close to the agency, and no doubt they'd went on rather than stop and draw attention.

Dawn they ate a large flour tortilla wrap filled with hot meat and beans. Chet paid her well and they rode north to Rye and Sunflower. Witnesses there at Rye had seen the three Chet sought pass through. The woman rode under a blanket for warmth on her shoulders. One man said he knew she was a prisoner but he had no way to help her. Those two men were armed and he thought them hard cases especially if they'd been challenged.

The next day they stopped in Sunflower. A man told them the older guy's name was Rodney Pierce from back in Texas. Chet wrote it down. After they rode on he asked Olson if these men might have known her from there.

“She and her family left Texas when she was sixteen. She never said she had a boyfriend back there.”

When they remounted, Chet said, “Olson, she did not go with them because she wanted to. Even if they knew her, in my mind, she didn't want to go with them without a struggle.”

He nodded. “I regret every day that I did not take her with me to Hayden's Mill.”

“They might have killed you for her.”

“Yes, they might have.”

“They are not ghosts. They leave prints, and when they stop we will get them.”

“You two believe that?”

“Damn right. There is a fork in the road ahead. One goes to Holbrook, the other one goes to Mormon Lake. We need to learn which way they went.”

Near the Y in the road they spoke to a man driving a freight wagon, with the two teams of big horses hauling some hardware to a rancher, south. He'd said he came from Holbrook when they asked him.

“Two men on bays and a girl on a paint. Have you seen them on the way here?”

“Two days ago. They had her hands tied to the horn.”

Chet nodded. “That is his wife, Marcella. One man's name was Rodney Pierce.”

The man shook his head. “Sorry. I knew she was in trouble. But feared doing anything in case it was a marriage deal.”

“She is this man's wife, not his. We have tracked them from Mesa.”

“Sorry. I saw a problem and didn't solve it.”

“Mount up. We'll catch them,” Chet said to his pair.

“I didn't catch your name, mister?”

“Chet Byrnes.”

“Glad to meet you, Chet Byrnes.”

“Your name?”

“Sam Coffee's mine. I sure wish you luck finding them.”

It began to snow that afternoon, so they decided to stop at a small store with a wood stove and to sleep on the floor in their bedrolls. Their horses were fed grain and were stabled in an empty shed.

The storekeep told them how the two men stopped and bought some supplies. One of them stayed outside with a girl. He saw her hands were tied to the saddle horn and that she was crying.

“Oh, I pray she lives. She is such a wonderful wife,” Olson cried.

“Mister, I'm ashamed I didn't stop them. But in the end I didn't know if I could stop them short of being shot myself.”

“I know, but so many have seen her plight and not done a thing.”

“Go easy, these guys must be tough. Normal people have to draw back when they might lose their lives. That is why Jesus and I are here.”

“Oh, Chet, I'd never found her trail—just makes me sick she is being so mistreated.”

“We will get her free.”

“I have been praying for it.”

Chet clapped his shoulder. “That won't hurt. We are making progress.”

Jesus agreed. The storekeeper's wife fed them a hardy stew for supper and oatmeal for breakfast. Chet paid her for the meals, over her protest. The next morning, they rode out with it still snowing. It finally let up around mid-day but it turned colder.

At this rate, they'd be two days getting to Holbrook, by Chet's calculations. They built a pine-covered lean-to facing the campfire to sleep under that night. The horses were fed grain and tied to a line between two trees. A bitter night, but they heated water for tea the next morning and ate more jerky. Saddled now, they rode on. The sun warmed and the snow turned to slush when they reached a place to overlook Holbrook, on the bank of the Little Colorado River, shining like silver in the sun.

They looked at all the horses in the fields and pens for a paint. They found several but no bay horses with them. When they got into the town they looked hard at the various ponies at hitch rails. Then Jesus spurred his horse up an alley as something caught his eye. Olson and Chet reined up and Jesus soon waved at them to join him.

“Think that is them?” Chet asked with his coat swept back from his gun butt.

The saddled horses looked worn out, tied in the alley and standing hipshot. They obviously had not been fed. Where were the men and girl?

“If you have to shoot at anyone, be careful, they may use her for shield. Olson, guard these horses. Jesus, you go that way. I will go this way.”

Chet charged his horse through the wet snow in the alley's shade. At the next street he saw two men begin to flee. They had a girl ahead of them. He fired a shot in the air.

“Hold up. I'm a U.S. marshal.”

The man on the right half turned and shot back at Chet, the shot too wild to do any harm. They kept running. He charged the horse after them and closed the distance. The one on the right tripped and the girl fell with him into the snow. Chet shot the other one still running. The bullet struck him in the back. He straightened and then fell facedown. Chet jumped off the horse on the back of the other man scrambling for the gun he'd lost, and he knocked him out with his pistol.

Jesus stepped off his sliding horse and jerked the shot man to his knees. He drug him by the collar.

“Who—who—are you?” she asked, looking white in shock but trying to gain her feet.

Chet helped her up. “Marcella, we brought your husband, Harry, with us. I am a U.S. Deputy Marshal. That is Jesus Martinez, a deputy. We have been coming to rescue you.”

She hugged him crying. “Is he all right?”

“Tired as we are but he's fine. How are you?”

“Tired, too. I didn't think I'd ever get away from them.”

“Why did they kidnap you?”

“Zeke, the one you shot, he said he wanted me to marry him in Texas. I didn't want him. He found where my family lives near Hayden's Mill. Then they came to get me and take me back to be his wife.”

“Who is the groggy one?”

“His brother Rodney . . .” She looked wide-eyed as Harry hurried to her.

“Yes, that's the man who loves you, Marcella. He's coming for you. Go meet him.” Chet took off his hat and scratched the top of his head. He watched her run to hug her husband.

Been one helluva chase. He saw the local law was coming on the run toward them.

“Now it is over, partner. What do you think?” he asked Jesus.

“Glad it could end so good. Boy I could use a bath, shave, and a good meal.”

“So could I. You the marshal here?” he asked the man as he reached them.

The man behind the mustache nodded.

Chet told him his name and that they were law enforcement men and that the two men were to be held for trial on kidnapping charges and transported back to Phoenix. “The man over there has been shot, but it should be minor.”

“I can handle it from here. Thanks, Marshal Byrnes, and nice to meet you, sir.”

“There are three horses in the alley over there. I am claiming them and will have them put in a livery. We will come by and give you names and all the information at the jail tomorrow. We've been on their trail near a week now. We are tired, dirty, and hungry.”