The Killing Shot (20 page)

“The man I killed shot down my ma. Don't y'all give him no Christian burial. Wade Chaucer don't deserve that.”

He swung into the saddle, and spurred the dun north out of town. Reilly didn't look back. He just followed Pardo out of Contention City.

“If you steal nitro from some local miner, you might tip your hand,” Swede Iverson told Pardo. He pointed a cigar for emphasis. “Laws might start wondering what's going on, because it's gonna take maybe two crates of nitro to bring down them canyon walls. Besides, lots of mines these days, they don't use nitro anymore. Not even dynamite. They been using gelignite, on account that gelignite don't sweat, don't leak nitro the way dynamite will.” He stuck the cigar back in his mouth, leaned back, and stretched.

They were back in the Dragoon Mountain stronghold, gathered around a campfire, everyone: Pardo, Iverson, Phil, Harrah, Duke, Soledad, Reilly, Blanche, and Dagmar. Thunder rolled in the distance, and the skies kept darkening. It was monsoon season, and Reilly expected an afternoon downpour within the hour.

“What do you suggest?” Pardo asked. He took a long pull from a bottle of mescal, and passed it to Phil.

“We could make it ourselves,” Iverson said.

“Make it?” Duke exclaimed. “Make nitroglycerine?”

“Ain't it dangerous?” Harrah asked.

Pardo looked irritated, but said nothing.

“Oh, it's a handful, nitro, making it, carrying it, doing anything with it. My daddy was in California in the spring of sixty-six when they was shipping three crates of nitro for the Central Pacific to use while they was building the Transcontinental Railroad. One of the crates blew up. Tore apart a Wells Fargo office in San Francisco, killed fifteen people. My daddy said you could find bits of brains and other organs, plus people's various appendages, all over the block.” He laughed, and flicked ash from the tip of the cigar. “After that incident, the state of California outlawed any transportation of liquid nitro.”

“It explodes on contact, right?” Phil asked.

Iverson shrugged. “Contact, sure. But it's so volatile, temperamental, like a woman.” He winked at Dagmar. Pardo's eyes turned to slits. “But it could blow up if the temperature dropped or rose just one or two degrees. Blow up whenever it's a mind to.”

“That's a problem,” Reilly said. “It's going to cool down significantly in an hour when this monsoon hits.”

“Yeah,” Duke said, “and how do we transport this nitro out of these mountains? That could blow us all to hell.”

“Possibly,” Iverson said. He accepted the bottle of mescal from Harrah's hand. “Downright probable.”

“What would you need, Swede?” Pardo asked. “To make us some nitro?”

He removed the cigar. “Nitric acid. Sulfuric acid. Glycerin. Bicarbonate of soda. Some beakers. Ice.”

“What the hell do I look like to you, Swede?” Pardo said. “An apothecary?”

Iverson grinned. “Well, there's another way. Probably a little easier, but just as dangerous. We could sweat some dynamite.”

“Steal the dynamite,” Reilly said, “and, like you said, you might tip Jim's hand.”

“We ain't got to steal it, Mac,” Iverson said. “I got a couple boxes hidden over by Total Wreck. And as hot as it's been, it should be leaking out that liquid beauty by now. Should have enough to pack four or five crates of the juice.”

Pardo said, “Then why the hell did you suggest we make some if you already got some?”

With a shrug, Iverson returned the cigar back to his mouth. “Well, I was hoping to save that nitro to blow up something else, but that's all right. It'll wait. You can use mine.”

“All right,” Pardo said. “It's settled. We all go. But not until Dagmar reads me the newspaper Mac fetched for us while I was filling Wade Chaucer's body with some holes. Grab that paper, Mac. Miss Dagmar, if you'd be so kind…”

Reilly rose, went to the corral, and took the newspaper out of the saddlebag. It was the
Tombstone Epitaph
, and, after knocking off the bread crumbs left from the loaves he and Pardo had eaten after they'd left Contention, he scanned the front pages for any items about him, saw nothing, then looked at the back cover, finding only advertisements. He flipped open the page, looked at the headlines, again, finding nothing that interested him, that was about him, and closed the paper, and handed it to Dagmar before taking his seat by the fire.

Thunder rolled. Closer now.

Dagmar Wilhelm began reading. Beside her, Blanche leaned forward and poked the fire with a walnut stick, just to give her something to do. Still smoking his long nine cigar, Swede Iverson stared at the young mother. Pardo stared, too, scratching the palm of his hand against the hammer of his holstered Colt.

She read about a flood at one of the mines, about a performance at the Birdcage Theater, about the weather, about a Mexican matron giving birth to triplets. She turned the page. She read more about the weather, an editorial about the town council's lack of action about removing the myriad beer barrels from the streets, a story about the Apache outbreak, something about the delicious cream soda available at Yaple's, and a piece about a wagon accident on Toughnut Street that left a miner paralyzed. She read about how the Cochise County baseball team fell, 42–28, to the Pima County baseball team in Tucson, but how the boys from Cochise had led after the sixth inning and did our county proud.

Under the headline
NEWS FROM THE SOUTH
, she read about a gunfight in Nogales that left Special Deputy Marshal Kenneth Cobb dead.

Reilly sat up. “What?” he asked.

Everyone was staring at him. Blanche stopped playing with a stick in the fire. Dagmar swallowed, and repeated: “‘Reports from Nogales, A.T., inform us of the tragic death of Kenneth Cobb, special deputy for United States Marshal Zan Tidball, who has resided in Tombstone for the past thirteen months, at the hands of K.C. Kraft.'”

Reilly sank back, mouth open. Stunned, he quickly recovered, putting up a facade, and laughed. “Old Cobb, eh, took a bullet. That's a shame.” He looked past Dagmar at hard-eyed Jim Pardo. “Cobb's the lawman who arrested me.” He tried to think of where he told Pardo he had been arrested, if he had told him anything. Decided it didn't matter. “Well, I guess I owe Mister K.C. Kraft a beer next time we meet. He saved me the trouble of tracking down that lawman and killing him myself.”

His stomach almost heaved. His mouth went dry. He reached for the bottle of mescal Harrah was offering him. Tried to think while Pardo apologized for Reilly's interruption and asked Dagmar to continue with her story.

“‘A prompt reply from our telegraph to the Nogales Town Marshal confirmed the earlier wire, we are sad to report. Marshal Cobb had walked into The Silver Lode Saloon at noon, Friday instant, and happened to see K.C. Kraft standing at the bar. He reached for his Colt's revolver, but Kraft's younger brother, W.W., sitting in the corner and out of Marshal Cobb's view, shouted a warning, rose from his seated position, and grabbed Marshal Cobb's hand, preventing him from finishing his draw.'”

The mescal burned a wicked path down Reilly's throat, exploded in his stomach.
It's all right
, he told himself, thinking about that letter he had written for Cobb, the one he had given Gwendolyn Morgan to deliver to the marshal. Gwen would have read the note. She would get it to somebody. Maybe Tidball in Tucson. Maybe Fort Bowie. He winced in pain, perhaps from the mescal, though more than likely from the fear of what would happen if that note wound up in Major Ritcher's hands.

Damnation
, he thought.
Why didn't I say in that note that Ritcher's a traitor, that he's working for Pardo?

“‘At that instant, K.C. Kraft, according to eyewitnesses, spun, and drew a Remington revolver, discharging three shots in quick succession, the second bullet striking Marshal Cobb in his sternum, the other shots missing their marks, but the one that hit the marshal took deadly effect, driving the marshal backward into the street, where he sank to his knees, muttering, “I am killed,” and collapsed.'”

If
, Reilly thought,
Gwen knows that Ken Cobb is dead, what will she do? If she doesn't know, she'll take the note to Tombstone, learn of what had happened in Nogales, and…and what? Give it to the city marshal?
Reilly tried to think.
Who is the city marshal in Tombstone? Can he be trusted?
Or would Gwen take it to the sheriff? He knew Deputy Constable Isaac Roberts there. No, Ike was dead. He had caught a bullet back in March trying to serve papers on a lot jumper.

“‘At that time, L.J. Kraft, the third brother of these notorious outlaws, who recently escaped…” Dagmar cleared her throat, wet her lips. Reilly was looking at her now, cursing the newspaper editor at the
Epitaph
for not putting that story on the front page, or putting a headline over it that he would not have scanned over. “I'm sorry,” she said, giving Pardo a little smile, and the gunman grinned back. “Where was I? Oh, yes. ‘Recently escaped from jail…” The story hadn't said jail. He knew that. It had mentioned him. “…came charging down the street on a black horse, leading the horses for his brothers, firing a pistol in the air, urging Nogales's fair citizens to “GET OFF THE STREETS,” and out of the saloon charged K.C. and W.W., who mounted their fearless steeds, and charged out of town, crossing the border.

“‘Marshal Cobb was carried back inside the saloon, and laid on a billiard table, while Doctor Ezra Goldman was quickly summoned, but the marshal had expired before the good doctor set foot inside the saloon.

“‘We promise to have more details of Tombstone's great loss in our next edition. Our sympathies go out to Ken Cobb's widow, mother, and three children.'”

Dagmar wet her lips again. “Let's see. Here's a story about the price of silver. It says—”

“That's all right,” Pardo said. “That's enough reading.” He stroked his chin.

“Them Kraft brothers,” Soledad said.
“Muy mal.”

“You know them?” Duke asked.

“
Sí
. They hide out in Nogales. On the Mexico side of the border. That is where
mi madre
lives. That is where I take Rafael….” He cast his eyes downward, lowered his voice. “That is where I bury my brother. The Krafts, they were there.”

“
Muy mal
, you say, eh?” Pardo showed his teeth. “You think you could find this K.C. Kraft in Nogales?”

“Sí.”

Reilly's stomach began twisting into knots. “What are you thinking, Jim?” he asked.

“I'm thinking it's like you said, Mac. We'll need some more boys to shoot down them soldier boys when we trap them in Texas Canyon. I'm thinking the Kraft boys—I'd read about them before. Well, I've had some reading done to me before. But I'm thinking they might be good for this here deal I got cooking up with the blue-belly army. Besides, they's family, them brothers. Three of them, sticking out for each other. Family's important.” He winked. “Besides, you owe K.C. a beer for gunning down that John Law, don't you?”

“Three men won't be enough,” Reilly said.

Pardo laughed. “You don't know them Kraft brothers, Mac.” That brought a wry grin to Reilly's face. He knew the Krafts. Knew them too damned well. “They got some friends. Soledad, you tell K.C. to bring as many of his gang as he wants. More the merrier. More blue-bellies to gun down.”

The trees began rustling in the moaning wind. The temperature began dropping, and Reilly could smell rain in the air.

“Hand me that paper, woman,” Swede Iverson shouted. “I want to read that story again. See if there's something in it about me.”

Reilly froze. So did Dagmar. Damn, Reilly thought, he never should have brought that newspaper with him, should have left it on the boardwalk in Contention City. But Jim Pardo yanked the
Epitaph
out of Dagmar's hand, and held it across the fire. “Ask politely, Swede,” he demanded.

Once he removed the cigar from his mouth, Swede Iverson forced a smile. “Begging your pardon, both of yours,” he said, tipping his Irish cap, “but might I have a chance to read that newspaper?”

“That's better,” Pardo said, and he extended the paper. Iverson reached across. Dagmar's lips mouthed,
No
.

Reilly started to rise, gripping the neck of the mescal bottle, ready to swing it, but Blanche whipped out the stick she'd been stirring the coals with, the burned end catching the paper, knocking it from Pardo's grip. The
Epitaph
fell onto the coals and erupted in flames while Pardo and Iverson cut loose with dozens of curses at the ten-year-old girl.

“Sorry,” she said, a forced meekness.

Savagely, Iverson reached for her. Blanche fell away, dodging a blow from the explosives expert's backhand. Dagmar shot to her feet, covered her daughter's body with her own. Reilly was up, dropping the mescal bottle while jerking the American Bulldog from Iverson's waistband, shoving the big man over the fallen log he had been using as a chair. He cocked the revolver and aimed at Iverson's forehead.

“Put it away,” Pardo said, and he stepped over the log, helped Iverson to his feet. Slowly, Reilly eased down the hammer and shoved the .44 into his own waistband.

“That's my gun,” Iverson said, and pointed.

“Bull,” Reilly said. “I loaned it to you back at that horseman's place.”

“But I—”

“Shut up,” Pardo snapped. “Especially you, Swede. I seen how you was looking at Miss Dagmar, and I don't like it.”

He turned around to face the others.

“All right, boys. It's settled. Soledad, mount up, ride to Nogales, tell the Kraft boys that Bloody Jim Pardo wants them to join him in a little job. Tell them that we'll meet at this side of the Dragoons.” He pointed north. “Tell them to bring as many boys with them as they want. Tell them we got us a hog killing planned. Ain't that right, Duke?”

Duke slapped his knee. “That's right, boss man. It'll be a regular—”