Twisted Hills (17 page)

“I haven't seen anything,” Lilith whispered.

“Good,” Sam said, swinging the ammunition pouch from his shoulder, laying it atop the stone. As she kneeled beside her, he inspected the front of the hillside facing the trail up the hillside. A glow of moonlight had already seeped into the night sky. The trail was dark but visible from where they lay. Sam leaned the French rifle against the stone wall and sat in silence, waiting, watching the trail below.

In moments when the chill of night began to make itself felt with a promise of the cold to come, without a word, Lilith moved over against Sam and put her arms around his shoulders, drawing herself even closer. Sam breathed in the fragrance of her, and reminded himself that he was there to keep them both alive throughout this long and deadly night.

Preston Kelso had no idea how he and Hazerat had gotten separated on the rocky hillside. One minute Hazerat was there, moving forward with him, only a few feet away. The next minute, he was gone.
Damn it! How hard can it be to stay low and keep moving forward,
Kelso thought. But Hazerat was an idiot, and in an idiot's mind, Kelso supposed, the least little thing could get him lost and confused. That had been a few minutes ago. They'd heard shots from Jones' direction; they'd ducked down and fired back blindly. But now the shooting had long stopped.

So what was this?

Kelso ventured a peep out from behind the rock where he had hunkered down through the gunfire, his rifle across his lap. Now the gunfire was silent. Still, no sign of Hazerat—the idiot son of a bitch.

Kelso stood up warily into a crouch and walked out from behind the rock cover. Evening curtains of darkness had pulled across the hill land. Every rock stood bathed in shadow.

“Hazerat . . . ,” he whispered as loud as he dared. When he heard no reply, he whispered again, “Hazerat, damn your eyes! Answer me.”
You idiot bastard
, he growled to himself. But again no reply. After two more tries, he cursed under his breath and crept forward toward the mammoth boulder. If he had to pull Jones down and hold a boot on his throat to find out about the money, he would. And he'd be damned if he was sharing one thin dollar of it with Hazerat—that idiot turd. . . .

He crept forward slowly.

In the grainy darkness ahead of him, he thought he saw the outline of a man on the moonlit side of the boulder. But when he drew closer and called out again, he still got no reply. And yet there Hazerat was, just standing there beside a tall cactus outside the boulder's dark shadow, bare-headed, looking stupid, Kelso thought to himself.

Jones was gone or else Hazerat wouldn't be standing there like a goose looking for thunder, Kelso decided. He straightened as he walked closer and circled the spiky cactus.

“There you are, fool,” he grumbled in a whisper. “Why didn't you answer me?” He looked closer at Hazerat as he stopped and stood ten feet away. “What's that on your face?”

But as soon as he asked, he saw what it was, and he recoiled and felt a scream well up in his tightened chest.

Mercifully, Hazerat was dead. Blood ran down from his empty eye sockets. In the dark blood, his eyes dangled by their thin tendon cords on either cheek. His mouth lay agape and empty, a black cave carved free of its lips, soft tissue, teeth and bone matter. His scalp was missing. His abdominal cavity had also been cut open sternum to crotch, its contents jerked out, much of it flung aside like that of a field-dressed deer. His own belt around his neck held him pinned to the cactus.

Kelso managed to keep his scream down to a short, painful whine. He turned back and forth quickly, wildly, searching the dark in every direction, his rifle raised at port arms. Yet, in a sudden grip of terror and panic, he fumbled with the rifle as he took his right hand off it and drew his new Colt. With a gun in each hand, he ventured forward. But he stopped and spun back and forth again, this time when he heard the sharp single yelp of a coyote in the darkness in front of him—then an answering yelp from the stones and darkness behind him.

These weren't coyotes, they were Apaches. He sidestepped warily away, with no direction in mind except to get out of the grainy light into the greater darkness of the rocky hillside.

“Stay back, you heathen sons a' bitches!” he shouted, as if shouting would do him any good. He sidestepped quicker, hearing the coyote yelps grow bolder, more intense—coyotes having fun, teasing a scared human. “You ain't fooling me. I know. I know!”

But the yelps continued, growing closer.

Kelso felt them pressing him in. He turned and ran up the hillside to keep ahead of them. He stopped and turned and raised both guns at his sides. He didn't know how many of them were circling him, only that he was outnumbered. They had killed Hazerat, maimed his body and left it there to scare him, and it had worked. He saw figures dart back and forth in the darkness, too fast to even identify, let alone take aim on. He backed around a tall rock, deciding this might be a place to huddle down, make a stand. Yet, before he could do so, he heard a yelp only inches from his ear, and felt a hand come out of the darkness and yank his rifle away from him.

He yelled as he ran blindly up the hillside, hearing shrill taunting laughter behind him. He raced from rock to rock, his Colt pressed to his side, lest it go the same way as his rifle. When he noted that the yelps and the laughter had fallen silent behind him, he stopped and hung against the side of a rock and wheezed and gasped for breath. They weren't gone, he knew. They wouldn't leave now, not while they had their prey outnumbered—not while they had him on the run like this. He sank down into the dark slice of shadow beside the rock.

'Pache . . . sons a' bitches
. . . . He spat drily, and opened and closed his hand around the butt of the new Colt. Now they were being real quiet, slipping in on him unseen like ghosts? Yes, this was just like the heathen savages, he told himself. But he could play that ghostly slip-around game himself. He just needed to catch his breath for a minute.

His eyes searched the darkness back and forth, from rock to rock, seeing nothing. After a while, when his breath was restored and he knew he could make a good sprint up the hillside, he raised himself into a stooped position beside the rock and prepared to streak forward at full speed.

Let's see you catch this, you sneaking sons a' bitches. . . .

He launched himself forward on his toes, holding nothing back, gun in hand. Yet before he made three fast steps, a knee-length leather-laced moccasin jabbed out of the darkness into his running feet. He tripped, his boots tangling beneath him, and went down face-first, sliding forward a few feet even on the uphill ground. His new Colt flew from his hand and clattered on the hard dirt ahead of him.

He knew what had happened. He scrambled forward on his belly and reached for his gun. Yet as he saw it in the pale grainy light, the moccasin again came out of the dark. This time it clamped down on the Colt and pinned it to the ground. His hand fell atop the moccasin.

Above him, two hands pulled him up roughly, enough to flip him onto his back. Kelso stared up at a shadowed-out face, a wispy black looming silhouette—and a half dozen other wispy silhouettes looming around him. Kelso jerked out a bowie knife from his boot well. A moccasin kicked it away. One of the silhouettes picked it up and gave it to the one standing on his Colt.

Kelso lay helpless, surrounded, off his feet.

The young warrior, Luka, kneeled down beside him, holding the bowie knife and inspecting it as though it were a gift to him.

“It's you, you heathen son of a bitch!” Kelso said, his voice dry, trembling with terror and rage.

He caught a glimpse of one of the other silhouettes picking up the new Colt and turning it in his hands.

Luka yanked Kelso's sombrero and bandage from his head in one swipe and threw them both aside. Seeing Kelso's raw, grisly head, he said something in Apache that brought dark laughter from the others.

“That's it, laugh, you savage heathen,” Kelso said to Luka. “I can't get nothing done on account of you—” His words ended in a nasal twang. Luka squeezed his nose shut between his thumb and forefinger.

Kelso's eyes widened as Luka shoved his head back at a sharp angle. Luka made one long, deep pull of his knife blade across Kelso's throat. He held a firm hand on Kelso's heaving chest, pinning him in place until the hapless gunman stopped thrashing.

•   •   •

Before dawn, the Ranger and Lilith rode down as quietly as they could from the sloping hillsides. Lilith drove the peddler's wagon; Sam rode the dun beside her, the butt of the French rifle resting on his thigh, standing ready in his hand. The night had passed quietly after the gunfire stopped. But Sam wasn't kidding himself. In these Twisted Hills, last night's silence could mean anything. He gave no thought to Kelso and the Hooke brother he hadn't shot giving up and going back to Agua Fría. But he did consider the Apaches. Not seeing them, not hearing them, didn't mean they weren't out there. The Blood Mountain Range had been their land for centuries. Avoiding them out here might require more luck than skill, he told himself.

They traveled along the desert floor, yet they stayed close to the bottom of the sloping hillside, should they need to make a run for cover, or for shade when they needed whatever shelter was available for resting themselves and their animals.

They did not stop at first light, but rather ate some dried biscuits and drank canteen water while on the move. They kept pushing forward until midmorning. When they did stop, they stayed out on the sand flats, but kept close watch on the wavering heat that had set in, curtaining the wide desert floor.

“Are you sorry you came with me, Joe?” Lilith asked, the two of them standing with the dun on the thin shaded side of the wagon.

“Only if you are,” Sam replied, gazing out, searching the endless wavering land.

Lilith smiled at him.

“That is no kind of answer,” she said. She gave him a nudge in his side.

“That was no kind of question,” he replied. He glanced at her, then back out across the burning sand. “As it is, I've got nothing but time,” he said, although he knew better. He had plenty to do, most of it bloody and violent, in order to topple Segert's and Madson's gangs and stop the plundering across the U.S. border.

“I have to admit,” he added, “it might be safer to mail your tribute to Don Marco every year, instead of traveling all the way to San Carlo.”

“Mail in Mexico? Ha,” Lilith said. “Mail that does not get robbed by bandits in Mexico gets sorted through, stolen and thrown away by the very ones paid to transport it.”

Sam continued gazing out across the desert sands. Was she trying to keep him talking? If so, why?
Nervous,
he decided. Easy to understand after all they'd gone through the night before.

“I always say, you can't beat the American postal service,” he said quietly.

“Mail is not the only thing wrong here,” Lilith said. “I can tell you so many stories—”

“Hold it,” Sam said, cutting her off. “What's this?” He continued to stare out across the desert floor, but now he raised the French rifle and started to put it to his shoulder.

Lilith stood tense beside him, looking worried.

Sam saw a large half circle of riders begin to close in around them, coming into view through the wavering heat.

Seeing there was not time to get the wagon up onto the hillside, Sam jerked the dun around to Lilith.

“Climb on,” Sam said to her with urgency. “Take my horse and get out of here. I'll hold them off. Get into the hills.”

Lilith grabbed the dun's reins and saddle horn and climbed up quickly. Out fifty yards, the riders drew in closer, still too far away to identify through the swirl of heat, the stabbing desert sunlight. She started to turn the dun to the hills. But then she stopped, seeing Sam with the French rifle, raised, aimed, ready to fire.

“Wait!” she said to him. “I know these men!”

Sam hesitated. He looked up at her.

“What?” he said. “Who are they?” He couldn't see how she recognized them from here. He could not yet make out anything about them, except that they were circling and moving in—never a good sign, he reminded himself.

“They—they are customers of mine. Please do not shoot,” she said. Slipping down from the saddle, she put herself in front of Sam and let the dun's reins fall to the dirt.

Sam gave her a puzzled look, but he lowered the rifle a few inches.

“Customers?”
He stared at the riders, then back at her. “What does that mean?”

“Please let me explain,” she said.

“Feel free to,” Sam said wryly, “before they nail us to the side of this wagon.”

“They won't shoot unless you shoot first,” she said. “I will tell you everything. But don't shoot. If you fire at them, I know they will kill you.”

Sam lowered the rifle a little more. He stared at her, then out at the riders as they moved into clearer sight. Finally he relented and lowered the rifle down to his side. The riders were much closer now. He could see their dirty white peasant clothes, their rifles, the bandoleers of ammunition crisscrossing their chests.

“I hope you know what you're doing, Lilith,” he said sidelong to her.

“Yes, I do,” she said quietly in reply, stepping in, placing a hand on his arm, as if helping him put the French rifle down. “Their people are rebels. They fight to free Mexico from its ruler, Jueto Umberto and his cruel
generalissimo
.”

“I can't help thinking I've heard all this before,” Sam said under his breath as the armed riders, men and women alike, stepped down from their saddles, guns ready in hand. They walked up to Sam and Lilith, stopped and stood facing them.

The leader, a stout, scar-faced Mexican wearing a dusty strip poncho over his shoulders, looked Sam up and down, then turned to Lilith.

“I see you have a new father,” he said to her with a short, knowing grin.

Sam gave him a curious stare.

“A new father?”
he said. His voice demanded an explanation.

But Lilith cut in, her hand still on Sam's arm.

“Not a new father,” she said. “This is Joe. He is a friend who I trust, or he would not be here with me.”

The stout Mexican stood with a big German revolver cocked and aimed loosely in Sam's direction. He reached down for the French rifle in Sam's hand. But Sam didn't want to let go.

“Please, Joe,” Lilith said. “Let him have it. He only wants to inspect it.”

Now it was Lilith's turn to get Sam's curious look. Yet he let go of the rifle and watched the stout Mexican hold it, unload cartridge after cartridge into the dirt, checking the sleek action each time he levered it. Then he left the lever down, turned the rifle and gazed one-eyed down through the long barrel. He looked satisfied with the rifle.