The Outlaws (28 page)

But she couldn’t sleep. Not that she feared Rudabaugh would return to attack her. Billy’s presence guaranteed no one would bother her. It was the lust she’d seen in his piggy eyes. And by the realization she’d meant to kill him.

The other time, in the hotel with Hank Kilgore, she’d been frightened when she used his boot knife, stabbing at him only in final desperation, with no intent to kill, only to get away from him. She’d never thought of herself as someone who’d kill another person. She’d shot at Apaches, true, but that had been like a bad dream. She’d been scared out of her wits, with no conscious urge to kill. Was she then no better than these outlaws?

* * *

Violet managed to conceal Tessa’s absence from Mark until almost noon by looking so frail and ill that he couldn’t bring himself to question what she said.

“Gone,” she finally admitted when he forced the truth from her. “She took Ezra to Wilcox’s ranch after I found him wounded in the snow. I thought he was dead.”

Mark stood at the window staring out at the falling snow. He couldn’t go after Tessa. That would upset Garrett’s plans if he rode out ahead of the posse. Besides, likely he’d only get himself shot at. She ought to be safe enough at the ranch for the moment. Damn her for a conniving little minx. All for Ezra, of course. He wished she cared that much for him. Garrett wouldn’t ride until he knew Billy had left the ranch. No sense in attacking five, maybe six good marksmen all foiled up in comfort while you froze in the snow. That was a losing game. But the waiting galled Mark.

Around midnight, one of Wilcox’s hands brought word to Garrett that Billy and his gang had moved on. The man didn’t know where they’d gone. Garrett started out at first light with a seven-man posse and Mark. The sun came up before they reached the ranch. Its rays glittered from the snow covering ground and hills, the pinon branches thick and white and shining with diamond brilliance. The country was transformed into a land of eerie beauty.

“It’ll make the tracking easy as shooting a treed coon,” Garrett said to Mark, his Alabama drawl edged with satisfaction. “With any luck we’ll bring them in before Christmas. Though, to tell you the truth, I’m aiming to just out-and-out shoot Billy and get it over with. The rest’ll give up quick enough, once Billy’s gone.”

Mark couldn’t fault Garrett’s reasoning. If he caught Billy and had to keep him in jail for a couple of months waiting for the trial, there’d be the chance of a jailbreak and then he’d have to do it all over.

“What do you aim to do about Ezra?” Mark asked.

“Well, I reckon if he’s shot up bad enough, he won’t be with the others. If he ain’t with the others, I guess I won’t be after him.”

When they reached the ranch, Mark was the first inside. Tessa sat beside Ezra’s cot, staring defiantly up at him. “It’s no use asking where they went--I don’t know. And don’t you dare bother Ezra. He’s feverish.”

Ezra looked at Mark and Garrett without interest from glazed and dull eyes.

“Nothing for us here,” Garrett decided.

Outside, the trail was plain, leading east toward Arroyo Taiban, the horses’ tracks a straight line away from the ranch.

“There’s a way station for herders at Stinking Springs,” Garrett said.

“As I recall, there’s a rock house there to sleep in. That’s where they’ll be making for. I reckon Billy’s just plain forgot I know this country as well as he does.”

They were tracking five men, Mark knew. Charlie Bowdre, Billie Wilson, Dave Rudabaugh and a new recruit by the name of Tom Pickett. And the Kid himself. Billy the Kid.

“I heard you knew the Kid pretty well,” Garrett said.

Mark nodded, thinking of riding line with Billy, the slight seventeen-year-old whistling his perennial “Silver Threads Among the Gold.” He remembered them riding to rescue the Nesbitt wagon from the Mescaleros and fleeing from room to room in McSween’s house as it burned--Billy leading the way out.

Damn it, he’d always liked Billy. How had it come to this, him tracking Billy down like an animal in the snow?

“I knew him when I lived in Sumner,” Garrett said. “We used to play monte together. Likeable cuss, always smiling. I hear he keeps right on smiling when he guns down a man.”

At dusk they were within a mile of the way station, still following the trail when Garrett stopped the posse.

“Billy and the boys are sure to be holed up for the night in that rock house,” he told them. “We’ll slip up and take a look-see before we decide what’s best to do. When we get close, I want every man to be damn quiet.

No sense in telegraphing we’re here.”

When they were about four hundred yards away, Garrett split up the posse, half covering one side while he led the others into a dry arroyo running almost to the front of the rock house.

Mark saw it was a small hut, scarcely big enough for the five men and the two horses they must have brought in with them—only three were tethered outside. The building had no windows and only one entrance with no door on it.

The opening gaped, dark and sinister. There was a chimney, but no smoke came from it. Must be cold as hell inside.

Garrett waved his men back and they returned to where they’d split up and waited for the

others to rejoin them.

“Do we slip in and try to take them by surprise tonight? If they’re asleep, we could go right into the hut. Or should we wait until morning when they’ll know we’re here?” he asked.

“Wait,” Stewart, the Texan who was second in command, said. “I don’t fancy our chances with those boys in the dark. They might be surprised and again they might not be.” Garrett glanced at the others. One or two frowned, but none disagreed.

He nodded. “Going to be a long, cold night,” he said. “Now most of you don’t know Billy too well, so if any one of them comes out before it’s good and light, I’ll bet we want to kill.”

When they’d rolled themselves in their blankets in the snow, Mark said to Garrett, “Does

Billy still wear that wide-brimmed sombrero with the Irish-green hatband?”

“Still does. That’s how I figure I’ll know it’s him if the light’s not good.”

Mark lay shivering in the cold, unable to sleep. He was a deputy marshal, attached to a sheriff’s posse. It was up to him to carry out Garrett’s orders.

But he knew he wasn’t going to be able to pull the trigger of his Winchester if Billy came out that door the next morning and Garrett signaled to shoot. Not unless Billy was shooting at him.

Before dawn the posse was in position along the sides of the rock house and in front, huddled in their blankets with rifles ready. Sounds from inside the house made Mark tense in anticipation. A gunman, his coat collar pulled up around his neck and face against the cold, stepped through the doorway, a horse’s nosebag in his hand. He wore a wide-brimmed sombrero.

Mark glanced down the sights of his rifle. He couldn’t be sure whether it was Billy or not. He looked sideways at Garrett.

Garrett raised his Winchester.

A volley of shots rang out, every man shooting except Mark.

The man screamed. Staggered backward. His hat rolled into the snow. Hands yanked him back through the doorway into the rock house, but not before Mark saw who he was.

Charlie Bowdre.

They’d shot the wrong man.

“Charlie’s dying,” a man shouted from inside a few seconds later. “He wants to surrender and he’s coming out.”

““Okay,” Garrett shouted back. “We won’t shoot.” Bowdre tottered out into the snow. His pistol was clutched in his hand but pointing down, unaimed. He staggered directly toward Garrett, blood running from his mouth, face sagging with pain.

“I wish,” he gasped, “I wish…” He vomited blood onto the snow.

“I’m dying,” he whispered and pitched forward.

Garrett caught him before he hit the ground and eased him down. “Sorry, Charlie,” he muttered, “my mistake.”

Mark turned from the dead man, his attention caught by the movement of one of the tethered horses. Someone from inside was trying to pull the animal into the house.

“No you don’t,” Garrett growled as the horse clopped into the doorway. He aimed. Fired.

The horse dropped in its tracks, blocking the entrance.

Garrett aimed again and shot through the tethers of the two remaining horses.

They bolted away from the rock house.

“How’re you doing?” he called to the men inside.

“Pretty well. Course we’d like some breakfast,” someone answered. Mark recognized

Billy’s voice.

“Come out and be sociable,” Garrett told him.

“Can’t do it, Pat. Too busy.”

Mark shook his head at the cheerfulness in Billy’s voice. It didn’t sound forced.

My God, they were trapped inside the place and he must know it. They had two horses with them, but there was no chance now to make a break for freedom with the dead horse in the doorway.

The sun shone dully through high clouds as it climbed the sky. It shed no warmth and the icy wind blasted from the north. Garrett sent half the men back to Wilcox’s ranch to eat and, when they returned, took the other half there and made arrangements for supplies to be sent to the site of the siege for the evening meal.

As Mark carried wood to their fire, he saw a riderless horse picking its way out of the hut over the dead animal. A second horse followed the first. “They’re sick of the stench,” Stewart said. “Horses ain’t good house guests.”

Two of the deputies spotted a side of beef over the fire and soon its mouth-watering smell made the men smile in anticipation. Mark thought of the outlaws inside the house who hadn’t eaten since they’d left Wilcox’s, and he smiled, too. Garrett was as full of tricks as an Apache warrior.

A few minutes later a white rag waved vigorously from the hut’s chimney. “Parley!” someone inside called. “We want to discuss terms.”

“Show yourself, hands in the air, and we’ll talk,” Garrett agreed.

Dave Rudabaugh stepped through the doorway and stood blinking in the light. “We’ll toss you our guns if you promise you won’t shoot,” Dave yelled. “We want out of here alive.

You agree?”

“I agree,” Garrett said. “You have my promise.”

Colts and Winchesters thudded into the snow. One by one the men emerged, hands in the air. Rudabaugh. Wilson. Pickett. Billy the Kid.

Garrett fed the prisoners a beef dinner before everyone mounted to make the long, cold ride back to Sumner. Mark rode ahead to the Wilcox ranch.

Tessa was in the kitchen ladling stew into a bowl.

“Ezra’s better,” she said.

“That’s good. Billy and the others finally gave up. Garrett’s bringing them into town. He said he won’t bother Ezra as long as you take him home to Lincoln when he can travel and he stays out of trouble from now on.”

“I’ll do my best to see that he does.”

From the back room, Ezra called Mark’s name. He went in to see him.

“Did you say Garrett got Billy?”

“Yes.”

“Everybody all right except for poor old Charlie?”

“Well, they weren’t shouting for joy. They’re all headed for jail, you know that. You’re just damn lucky you aren’t with them.”

“Billy always said I was lucky.” Ezra looked up at Mark. “You think it’s really the end of the line for him?”

“That’s up to a judge and jury, but I’d guess it is.”

“If it hadn’t been for Billy, I wouldn’t’ve stayed in the gang this long,” Ezra said. “It was exciting at first, but after a while, when Rudabaugh and some of the others joined us, I got to feeling it was different. A dirty business. Except for Billy. He wasn’t ever like that.”

“Well, you’re out now. After your wound heals, maybe I can get you some scout work.

You must know every hangout in the Territory. Think about it while you’re getting on your feet.”

Ezra was silent for a few moments. “I guess I ought to be happy I’m
going to be with my family for Christmas,” he said finally. “With Tessa. But it’s sort of like Billy got to be my family and I can’t help thinking that he’ll be spending Christmas behind bars, wondering what’s going to happen.”

“I’m afraid he’ll hang,” Mark said.

Ezra turned his face away.

Chapter
20

By the first of the year Ezra found he could sit a horse well enough to attempt the ninety mile ride to Lincoln. But by the time Tessa helped him off his pinto at Maria’s, he was feverish again and his right hip hurt so agonizingly he could hardly hobble into the house.

For a week or two he lay around, glad of Maria’s good food and Tessa’s tender care. Jules often came to perch on the foot of Ezra’s bed, to show off the latest tune he’d learned on his harmonica, and Ezra smiled and praised him, proud of his little brother’s talent.

The coziness soon palled. By the end of the month Ezra, still limping, was prowling restlessly around the house. His wound had not healed and now drained a yellow-green purulence that sickened him when Tessa changed his bandage.