.45-Caliber Desperado (16 page)

Christ, he'd never seen such a thing, much less been part of such a dustup. He laughed again and held his hand in front of his face. It was quivering only slightly.

“Shit,” he said and ran it through his hair once more.

SPURR'S CHEST WAS tight, but he didn't think his pumper was acting up any more than it always did, lurching and chugging like a locomotive on a tough incline. No, it wasn't heart trouble that pestered him now. It was something far more worrisome.

The old marshal had for the past year or so, even before his first bad heart spell, been thinking he was losing his mind. Going loonier than a tree full of owls or a den full of coyotes during a full, blue moon.

The horrible things he'd witnessed throughout his life on the frontier, first as a soldier fighting Indians and then as a deputy U.S. marshal running down the worst hard cases imaginable, had started to trouble him to the point where he often found himself dropping to his knees, as though felled by a strong, unseen hand, and bawling.

Yes, bawling. Like a toddler in rubber pants who'd just had his sucker confiscated by a frisky pup. His chest would constrict and tears roll out of him like a dam had busted deep inside him.

It was happening again now as he rode eastward, trying to pick up the trail of McQueen, Mason, and McQueen's two deputies. He kept his head facing forward but he could not remove the image of those poor young children being carted away by the slaver traders.

And there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Oh, he could summon Mason, and they could go after the cutthroats, but the lawmen would die long before they even got close to the children. They kept pickets, like the man Spurr had just beefed, far out from the main caravan.

Slavers were an especially tough breed, and it just didn't make sense for Spurr to try to run them down until he had a good-sized crew of seasoned lawmen or at least a modest-sized army contingent backing his play. He could go after them later, after he'd formed such a posse, but the men who traded slaves for a living all across the frontier would likely be lost in the Indian Nations in a week or two.

Gone forever.

Those poor damn kids . . .

Spurr sobbed into his gloved hand, shook his head, his swollen heart recoiling at the thought of the grief the children as well as the families of the children were going through. God, he wished there was something he could do. But first and foremost he had to go after Mateo de Cava and the young firebrand the desperado had busted out of prison—Cuno Massey. Those two and their gang were far more dangerous to more people than the slavers currently were. True, the Mateo bunch was too big for Spurr, Mason, McQueen, and McQueen's deputies to bring down alone, but they could follow the gang and stick to their trail until the soldiers from Camp Collins or another posse, possibly summoned via telegraph, could catch up to Spurr's party.

Then they could all run them to ground before more innocent men like the guards at the Arkansas pen and the posse from Limon were so savagely cut down. De Cava was probably headed back to Mexico, but he'd likely rob a bank or two or even a train or two, possibly stagecoaches, to fund his long, circuitous ride.

Spurr blew a long, snorting sob once more, thinking of the children and feeling as helpless as the children themselves. But there were only a handful of the little ones. Spurr had to stay focused on his current problem, for de Cava and Massey were capable of a whole lot larger loss of life.

Spurr would remember the slavers, though. He'd remember their faces. And he'd run them down just as soon as he was free of his current mission and had help from the government. They'd sweep the Nations, find those children or as many as possible, and get them back to their families.

Spurr sighed and blew his nose into his bandanna. There. He felt better now. Deep down, he didn't really believe he'd be able to manage all that, or that he'd ever find those kids, but sometimes you had to manufacture your balms or roll down off your horse and sob the rest of your years away in the goddamn dust of the trail.

Crazy. He was going goddamned, old-woman crazy . . .

He rode another fifteen minutes, following the fresh tracks and droppings of four shod horses before he saw the horses standing near a copse of willows and cottonwoods. The horses had their tail-switching rears facing Spurr.

Left of the horses, Mason sat on a rock. Right of them, McQueen sat on a log, elbows on his knees. He had his hat off. One of his deputies was digging a hole with a small folding shovel. A long, blanketed lump lay near the fresh hole, two boots sticking up, pointed toes aimed at the sky.

Spurr rode over to where Morgan sat smoking.

“He didn't make it?”

The sheriff shook his head and let smoke dribble out his nostrils. “Blew a lung out his back. He was dead before they got here.” He glanced in the direction from which Spurr had come. “What about that dust?”

“Slavers.” Spurr choked back another consarned sob and swung his gaze away from the dead deputy. He had to get himself on a leash. “Too many for us to tangle with alone.”

“Women or girls?”

“Boys and girls. Headin' for the Nations, most like. To be sold to the settlers there.”

Mason stared eastward. “Been a problem out here. They raid the little settlements off the beaten path without telegraph lines. And small ranches and farms.”

“I figure I'll track 'em later, after we finish up with the de Cava gang.”

Spurr swung down from his saddle and loosened the latigo, then slipped the roan's bit from its teeth. He blew his nose, put some steel back into his nerves. He turned to Mason, found the man staring at the ground between his boots, pensively taking another drag off his loosely rolled quirley. Something was bothering him. Spurr glanced toward McQueen sitting near his sole remaining deputy still digging the grave with his shirt off, bandanna wrapped around his forehead. “McQueen taking it hard?”

“I don't know. I reckon.”

“What's the matter with you, Sheriff?”

Mason looked up at Spurr, then lowered his eyes again as he drew on the cigarette. “Ah, hell, I don't know. I keep thinkin' about that kid, Massey. Somethin' don't seem quite right.”

“I'll say it don't.” Spurr filled his hat with water and set it down in front of the roan, which dropped its head to drink.

“No, I mean . . .” Mason let his voice trail off. “There was somethin' about him that didn't set right with me. I mean, there was somethin' about him that made me think I shouldn't have turned him over to the soldiers at Camp Collins.”

Mason flushed a little, embarrassed at his own frankness, and shook his head as he gained his feet and field-stripped his quirley, letting it blow away on the breeze. “Ah, hell, I don't know what I'm tryin' to say. I gotta take a piss.”

He walked off into the trees, fumbling with his fly buttons. Spurr stared after him. His eyes skeptical, speculative. First had come Mason's apology for the blond girl whom Spurr had had to shoot. Now, another expression of self-doubt.

Damn,
Spurr thought. Was Mason turning human?

Spurr hauled a whiskey flask out of his saddlebags, sat down on Mason's rock, and sipped from the bottle as he rolled a fat cigarette and smoked it. He was feeling himself growing impatient with McQueen, wanting to get mounted and ride for another hour or so before the sun set, when McQueen and the deputy finally walked over from the mounded grave.

McQueen looked paler, grayer than before, his eyes deep sunk. There was a jaundiced look about the man.

“We're going home, Marshal,” the sheriff said.

“Home?”

McQueen reached under his horse's belly to buckle the latigo. His deputy, a kid of about nineteen or twenty, pulled his shirt on after first using it to scrub the sweat from his bony, flour-white chest.

“Look, Sheriff,” Spurr said, “we've all lost men before. Sure, it's a hard knock, but . . .”

“Jason was my son.”

McQueen looked over his shoulder at Spurr. There was little emotion in his eyes, but the haggard look said it all.

“My oldest. We ranched before I ran for sheriff, and I wish to hell now I'd stayed on the ranch.” He sighed and turned back to his horse. “Now, I'm going to take my one remaining son back home with me to face the unenviable task of letting the boys' mother know . . .”

He clucked and shook his head, still facing his horse. He set his fists atop his saddle and stared westward. When his other son had mounted up, McQueen mounted, too, and the reluctant sheriff of Holyoke pinched his hat brim to Spurr and Mason and booted his steeldust eastward.

He and his stone-faced son galloped off over the hogbacks, the thud of their horses' hooves fading gradually, until the darkening sky swallowed them both.

Spurr looked at the grave they'd left behind. The pile of rocks was fronted by a cross fashioned from two dead willow branches and wrapped rawhide.

Spurr cursed loudly. His chest felt raw as a rusty tin tub. He hoped he wouldn't cry again, but suddenly he felt all cried out and empty.

Mason said nothing. Spurr felt his chest tighten again, and he took a long pull from his bottle to loosen it.

He corked the bottle and returned it to his saddlebags.

“No point in dillydallyin' here,” rasped the old marshal, climbing heavily into his saddle. He looked to the west. “ 'Nother hour of good light left.”

 

Mateo had lost a half-dozen men at the brothel.

It was a beat-up bunch he led out of the unnamed railroad camp on the horses they'd quickly saddled at the livery barn and drew to a halt beside the train that Cuno had ordered stopped at the camp's eastern outskirts.

A dozen or so riders including Frank Skinner swung down from their saddles, and while the locomotive wheezed and chugged, pressure valves releasing jets of stream around the iron wheels and gouts of cinder-laced smoke from its stack, the men led their horses up the stock car's ramp. Camilla stood near the base of the ramp while Cuno stood in the car, holding his rifle and peering back toward town.

None of the bounty hunters appeared to be following the gang. They'd had enough.

Mateo swung down from his saddle. He was nearly black from the fire smoke and bloody from several minor wounds. He hugged his sister and grinned up at Cuno.

“You think good for a gringo!” He stretched his beard in a grin as he glanced back at the town over which smoke rose blackly. “In that whorehouse, it was getting a little warm . . .”

Cuno was watching the others, who were still obviously sporting hangovers, leading their mounts up the ramp. Skinner looked bleary-eyed. He'd taken a graze across his right temple, and he, too, was basted in soot.

Hooves thundered on the plankboards. Horses blew. Cuno saw three or four wounded riders, though in light of their leader's policy regarding stragglers who might hamper the group, they kept their heads up, their upper lips stiff.

“He is good at many things,” Camilla told her brother, beaming up at Cuno.

“I bet he is!” Mateo laughed lewdly as he led his big black up the ramp behind the others, blinking against a down swoop of coal smoke.

When all the riders had led their horses into the stock car, most of the men climbed an outside ladder to the roof where they could keep an eye on the town. Mateo stood beside Cuno and fired a stove match on his shell belt.

“How far can this thing go back east?” he said, touching the flame to a long black cheroot.

Cuno glanced at the engineer and the fireman, who stood along the freshly graded railroad bed, keeping their hands in the air as Cuno had instructed. “They said all the way to Amarillo.”

“
Si.
But we don't go to Amarillo.” Mateo looked speculatively eastward across the rolling prairie. “Tell them to take us east for an hour. Then we stop and take off on our horses. You tell them that.”

He slapped Cuno lightly on the chest and frowned, nodding, obviously trying to formulate a new escape plan in light of the bounty hunters having caught the gang literally with its pants down.

Like Camilla had told Cuno earlier, the gang leader was getting careless. Cuno hoped he'd learned his lesson. When he and Mateo had the ramp back in place beneath the floor of the stock car, Mateo climbed to the roof while Cuno hazed the engineer and the brakeman back to the locomotive. Camilla followed, and soon Cuno had the train headed eastward as fast as it would go, thundering in reverse across the prairie, the new seams clicking under the wheels.

The fireman shoved a chunk of wood into the firebox and closed and latched the heavy door. He looked at Cuno, his brown eyes dark with worry. “You gonna let us go when this is done?” He licked his lips. “Or you gonna kill us?”

“You do as you're told,” Cuno said, “and you'll be back at the camp by nightfall.”

The brakeman nodded, a cautious relief in his eyes as he shared a glance with the engineer.

Cuno and Camilla sat together against the locomotive's rear bulkhead, taking turns napping while the other kept an eye on the trainmen. Cuno had fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep when a hand nudged him awake, and Camilla said above the train's roar, “It's been an hour.”

Cuno grabbed his rifle resting across his thighs and heaved himself to his feet. He ordered the engineer to stop the train, and then he scrambled down the side of the locomotive and lowered the stock car's ramp. When all the outlaws had led their horses down the ramp and were resetting saddles and buckling latigos, Cuno and Camilla led their own horses down to the railbed.

Cuno slid Renegade's bit into the horse's mouth and turned to Mateo. “We can let the trainmen go, now, huh?”