Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635) (13 page)

Colter's ear tips warmed. “I heard you the whole time. Kept my eyes slitted.” He glanced at her and grinned. “You couldn't tell, could you?”

She smiled as she sat down on a big rock, the toes of her brown boots dangling a few inches above the ground, and looked off. “No, I sure couldn't.”

Colter sat back on his rump, raised his knees, and wrapped his arms around them. “I know it's none of my business, but I'm going to ask it anyway. What're you doin' down here, Bethel? In Mexico, I mean. Who were Wade and Harlan? Kin?”

She was studying the roasting meat. “That sure smells good.” She looked at Colter. “You got any coffee? Them bean eaters wouldn't give me any. Hardly any water at all, neither. When I got up, I 'bout drank the stream dry.”

“No coffee. Just water and meat'll have to do us for breakfast.” Colter studied her as she looked off to the south. “All right—don't tell me if you don't want to. But wherever you came from, you best go back. Mexico is no place for a little girl alone.”

She narrowed her frosty blue eyes at him beneath a shelf of straight-cut bangs the tawny yellow of ripe wheat. “I'm twelve years old.”

Colter chuckled.

“How old are you?” she asked defiantly.

“Older'n you.”

“Not by much, I'd fathom.”

“I'm nineteen.”

She looked off sharply, sneering. “Shit.”

Colter jerked another surprised look at her. “Who taught you to swear like that?”

“My pa, I reckon.”

“Well, you run back to him, and you an' him can swear together in the safety of your own home.” Colter pulled a chunk of meat from the spit, set it on a tin plate, and handed it to her. “Here ya go. Breakfast. Eat as much of it that's done, and throw the rest back on the fire.”

Bethel set the plate and the smoking meat on her lap. She touched the meat, then jerked her hands away, cursing. Colter chuckled as she gingerly pulled the meat apart with her fingers. He took a chunk of the meat himself, leaned back against his saddle, and began to eat the succulent wild pork, using his hands. He saw no reason to break out his forks and have to clean them when his fingers would do. The meat filled the hollow place deep inside him. He felt his blood begin to flow, waking him up and steeling him against what would likely be another long day of directionless riding and looking over his shoulder.

After a time, Bethel said as she ate, “My pa's down here somewhere. That's what I'm doing here. Lookin' for him.” She paused, looking down at her plate and her greasy fingers, chewing. Her eyes were sad, anxious when she lifted her gaze to Colter. “Think he might be in trouble. A whole heap.”

Chapter 19

“What kinda trouble?” Colter asked the girl. He wouldn't normally be so forward, but it wasn't likely she'd shoot him. He doubted she could hold that big Colt steady with both her little hands.

She took another bite of the lightly charred pork, then set the rest down on her plate. Squinting an eye at Colter, she said, “Can you keep a secret?”

Colter glanced around. “Who am I gonna tell it to?”

“My pa came down here to sell guns to some r
evolucionarios
around Hermosillo.”

Colter continued eating. “Who is your pa?”

“The notorious gunslinger and road agent Jed Strange.” Bethel looked at him as though he should know the name.

Colter shrugged.

“He was written up by Mr. Ned Buntline, a time or two.”

“Musta been a while ago.”

“Before I was born. Pa's got a few years behind now. He married up with Ma in Tucson a couple years before I was born. After I was born, he promised Ma he'd walk the straight and narrow. He was a deputy sheriff for a time, and even rode shotgun for a stage line. Till a couple months ago, he was the night marshal of Tucson. He hated it, thought it was beneath him.”

“Your ma still in Tucson?”

Bethel shook her head. “Ma's dead. Had a cancer inside her. The doctor tried to cut it out, but she didn't make it. That was a year ago, just before Pa left for Mexico. Said he'd come back rich, build us a new house, maybe. The one we got's a rat-infested dump.”

“And you come down here to pull him away from them gun runners?”

“I don't think he's with the gun runners no more.”

Colter frowned as he swallowed the last mouthful of meat and clawed up a couple of handfuls of dirt and sand to clean his hands with. He let the dirt sift back down to the ground as he said, “How do you know that?”

Bethel picked up the Bible sitting on the rock beside her. She pulled a folded scrap of lined notepaper out of it and held it up, the breeze nudging it. “This come in the mail just before I started down here. It's a treasure map. Pa drew it himself.”

“Treasure, huh? What'd he say about it?”

“Nothin'. Pa can read a little but he can't write. He can draw pretty good, though. When I was sittin' up on them rocks yonder, I could see some of the landmarks he put on this here paper.”

“What do you suppose he wanted you to do with it?”

“I don't know. Maybe nothin'. Maybe he just wanted to have a safe copy in case he lost his.”

Colter stood and took the girl's empty plate. “He left you alone in Tucson?”

“Nah. My aunt Kate's been livin' with me, Ma, and Pa for a long while. She don't know I come. I left a note and slipped away, hired Wade and Harlan to guide me into Mexico. They worked for the stage line in Tucson, and knew Pa. Wade rode with Pa once. I saved money up from working in a sewing shop and sellin' eggs, and I plundered the box Pa kept his savings in beneath the stairs. Figured it was worth spendin' his money to get him back. Besides, I showed Wade and Harlan this here map, told 'em they'd get a percentage of whatever gold Pa found, if they helped me find him.”

Colter gave a rueful chuff. “They tumbled for it?”

Bethel scrunched her eyes up, angry. “Tumbled for what? I'm an honest woman, not a snake charmer. They took the gamble 'cause they was friends of Pa's. Besides, they were both on the run from federal marshals on an old charge, and had come to town lookin' to Pa to help 'em get out of it. Pa did his time in Yuma, and he's in good now with the deputy U.S. marshal out of Prescott.”

Colter gave another rueful chuff and headed with the two plates for the river. He'd never heard such a silly idea—a twelve-year-old girl allowing herself to be led down here by a couple of raggedy-heeled bandits who had nothing better to do than take a wild gamble on a treasure scribbled out by some cork-headed old outlaw named Jed Strange. Old Jed had probably heard some wild story of treasure buried by Spanish pirates or conquistadores or maybe those Indians who once lived in these parts—the Aztecs—and had run off in search of the fabled cache.

“Colter?”

He heard her running up behind him. As he knelt at the edge of the stream and dunked the plates in the water, she stood just off his right shoulder, lightly lacing her fingers together and regarding him with vague suspicion. “I was thinkin',” she said haltingly.

“Oh? What were you thinkin' about?”

“I was thinkin' I could let you buy chips in my and Pa's game, if . . .” She let her voice trail off and turned her troubled gaze to the stream.

Colter raised the clean plates from the stream and waved them in the air to dry them. He glanced at her, waiting.

“If I knew you wasn't an outlaw or nothin' like that,” she said, regarding him nervously.

Colter chuckled and draped a hand over a knee. “What makes you think I'd want chips in your game, Miss Bethel? I got enough problems of my own without taking yours on, too.”

“Because it's most likely Spanish treasure!”

Colter chuckled again, rose, and headed back to his saddlebags. “I'm young, and I made a lot of mistakes, but that's one I won't make.” She was right on his heels. She'd opened her mouth to give him a burning retort when he held up a hand, cutting her off. “That said, Bethel, I would help you find your old man, because I know what it's like, not havin' one. Heck, I lost two.” He shook his head and sighed as he returned the tin plates to his saddlebag pouch.

“You said you
would
help me find him, like you ain't gonna.”

He buckled the pouch's strap and nodded. “I would, but I'd likely get you in a heap more trouble than you're already in.”

Bethel kicked a rock. “You are an outlaw. I could kinda tell by the way you beefed that big Mex in the gulch outside the Babylon. Not to mention that scar on your cheek. Some secret sign, is it? Helps you get in and out of hideouts? Every ranny in your gang got one?”

“No, nothin' like that,” Colter said, tossing his saddlebags over his shoulder and grabbing his saddle. He stared to the northeast, where blue-clad riders were filing down a trail and into a canyon the stream ran through. “See those blue bellies there?”

Bethel turned to follow his gaze. “What're blue bellies doin' this far south?”

“They're after me.” Colter had spied the riders a few minutes ago. Now he hefted the saddle on his right shoulder and headed over to where the horses grazed by the stream. “Grab your saddle, Bethel. We got some dust to lift—if you're gonna ride with me, that is. I suggest you cut and run your own direction.”

“Well, shit!” The girl scrambled over and began to lift the heavy Mexican saddle, grunting with the effort and cutting frantic glances toward where the last of the blue uniforms was disappearing into the canyon. “I don't have a direction. I was hopin' you could help me find one. You can probably follow this map better than I can!”

“Come on, then.” Colter tossed his gear down and ran back into the camp for his own saddle and bedroll. “We'll lose the soldiers, then get you headed straight . . . and on your own.”

“Colter?”

He shouldered his own saddle and then grabbed hers out of her hands as she struggled to carry it, and strode quickly back to the horses. “What?”

“What'd you do?”

“Nothin'.” Colter tossed his saddle onto Northwest's back and glanced at Bethel, who stared at him uncertainly. “I know—that's what they all say.”

When he had his horse saddled and his rifle slid snug in its boot, he lifted the big Mexican saddle onto the pinto's back. Bethel unhobbled both horses and stowed the hobbles in Colter's saddlebags. He tossed her up onto her horse, stepped up onto Northwest's back, and cast a look behind him. He couldn't see the soldiers, as they were riding along the canyon bottom, which was deeper up toward the mountains, but he figured they were a couple of hundred yards away and moving toward him fast.

“Let's go, Bethel!”

“I just hope it ain't a hangin' offense, Colter!”

“It is, Bethel!”

He couldn't hear the strange little blond girl's reply amidst the thudding of Northwest's hooves and those of the pinto, but he could imagine it was as salty-tongued as most everything else she said. Colter put the horse downstream, heading southeast over the hogback foothills stippled in Spanish bayonet and catlaw and barrel cactus and several other kinds of cactus, with here and there a gnarled cedar or juniper. It was rocky country, and both horses galloped a serpentine course around the brush and rocks and over the hogbacks that swelled like ocean waves.

Beyond lay another low mountain range. Another lay to the south, with a slight gap between them. Colter aimed Northwest toward the gap and glanced over his shoulder. Bethel rode just off Northwest's right hip, hunkered low over the horse's neck, her hat brim blown flat against her forehead, batting the heels of her black boots against the pinto's flanks. She'd obviously ridden before, and for that he was glad. He'd have hated to ride double with someone even as light as she out here, as Northwest had all he could handle negotiating the rough country with just Colter on his back.

Several times Colter glanced behind him. He couldn't see the soldiers, but he could see their dust. The dust cloud wasn't growing, so they weren't gaining on him and Bethel, but they were staying glued to their trail.

About an hour after they'd left the stream, Colter found a shallow, broad-bottomed, gravel-floored canyon that formed the gap between the two barrancas. Here, amongst the rocks, he might be able to lose his shadowers.

He and Bethel followed the canyon for a mile as it twisted around through a maze of devil's country, with ancient bones sticking out of the sides of the banks around them, and here and there a dead coyote or buzzard-eaten deer carcass. He found a narrow opening in the right canyon wall, reined Northwest to a stop, and dismounted to peer inside.

The crack in the sandstone appeared just wide enough to get a horse through, and it led back out of sight around a bend, well lit by the sky above. Colter might be leading him and Bethel into a trap, but it was the best chance he'd seen so far of losing the soldiers. Quickly, he grabbed Northwest's reins. Bethel was just now riding up behind him, her eyes bright with anxiety, but she otherwise appeared to be holding up well. The girl was little more than a hunk of rawhide and a shock of bleached blond hair, but a fire blazed in her heart.

“In here!”

“Where? That
crack
there?”

Colter whipped a look at the defiant child. “You got any better ideas?”

“I ain't on friendly terms with tight places.”

“Time to shake hands, Bethel,” Colter snapped back at her as he led Northwest into the crack.

The coyote dun balked, too. Colter had to pull hard on the reins, and when the horse saw it had no choice in the matter, it stopped chopping its hooves around in the rocks and allowed Colter to lead it through the narrow gap, both sides of the opening scraping the stirrups and almost tearing off Colter's saddlebags. When he had Northwest about twenty yards up the defile, the redhead ran back out into the canyon, where Bethel was cursing as she tried to lead the obstinate pinto into the corridor.

“I'll take him,” Colter said, grabbing the reins.

“He don't like it any more than I do.”

When Colter got both the pinto and Bethel into the gap, he led both horses as far as he could, until piled boulders blocked his path. He settled the animals down while Bethel poured water from a canteen into her hat and set it down in front of the pinto.

Colter said, “Try to keep 'em quiet.”

He walked back to the opening and peered along the canyon the way he and Bethel had come. About ten minutes later, he heard the clatter of shods hooves on stone and stepped back away from the opening. He glanced up the corridor, could see Bethel holding her hand over the pinto's snout to keep the mount quiet as she stared back anxiously toward Colter. He pressed a finger to his lips and shoved his back against the side of the narrow feeder canyon, positioned so that he could watch the broader canyon with one eye.

He counted his heartbeats until he saw the first riders move into sight. As he'd expected, Lieutenant A. J. McKnight led the group, riding side by side with a beefy, bearded man in buckskins and with two sheathed rifles lashed to his saddle. The buckskin-clad gent had a face as red and eroded as a sandstone wall, and he wore a broad-brimmed, low-crowned sombrero over flinty eyes he raked along the ground before his zebra dun.

He was Saul Brickson, scout leader at Camp Grant—a Civil War veteran who'd also fought Red Cloud up in Wyoming and Dakota Territory. Some said he could track a snake across a solid lava bed, but Colter had his doubts. Whenever he'd seen Brickson at Camp Grant, he was drunk and bragging of his exploits up on the Plains and of his sexual prowess with the Lakota maidens.

Colter hoped the man was, indeed, all bluster. In a minute, he'd likely find out.

The hooves clomped and clacked on the rocks as four more soldiers, riding Indian-file behind McKnight and Brickson, passed the defile's opening, each man appearing for half a second in front of the canyon before passing on, their faces pink from the sun, blue tunics sweat-darkened, copper dust wafting around the party like wood smoke. Colter kept his back pressed against the uneven stone wall, every sore muscle drawn taut with tension. Gradually, as the horses clomped away into silence, leaving only a few shreds of dust waving in the sunlit air behind them, Colter felt his jaws relax.

Fortunately, as Colter had figured, Brickson had spent himself on the sutler's tanglefoot. Unfortunately, Colter hadn't figured on a tracker, but he should have. And he was even more fortunate that McKnight's party wasn't being led by one of the three Apaches employed at Grant. If so, he'd likely either be shot or hauled away in chains. On the other hand, the soldiers probably would have taken Bethel back to the border and seen that she made it safely back to Tucson. . . .