William W. Johnstone (19 page)
Read William W. Johnstone Online
Authors: Savage Texas
E
IGHTEEN
IGHTEEN
Late Saturday afternoon found Johnny Cross leading a line of riders along a twisty trail in a rocky gorge of the Breaks. The sun was behind the western hills, but the waning day was still hot. The line rode single-file through a narrow, high-walled ravine.
Johnny was leagued with a strange group of unlikely allies. Which was saying something, considering some of the characters he’d been thrown together with during the course of a young but eventful life.
A thorny friendship with Bloody Bill Anderson had taken him north into the Border States to join up with William Clarke Quantrill and such long riders as Frank and Jesse James, the Younger Brothers and Manning and Arch Clements. At war’s end with no amnesty for Quantrill’s raiders, he rode the outlaw trail through the Nations, ultimately winding up way down south in the bosky country of East Texas, siding with the likes of Cullen Baker and Bill Longley.
Now, after long years of wandering, he’d come home only to find himself teamed with the damnedest bunch of gunhawks and adventurers ever to set out on a wild quest to trade lead for gold.
“What money will do!” Johnny said to himself. With him were Luke Pettigrew, Don Oxblood, Sam Heller and five Texas vaqueros. The only one he trusted was Luke.
Don Oxblood was all easy amiability, but who knew what lay below the surface? The redheaded, left-hand gun was an outlaw and renegade, a former member of Brock Harper’s outfit who’d turned his coat and betrayed the raiders’ locale in hopes of collecting a piece of that ten-thousand-dollar reward. He’d also been promised amnesty for his past deeds if his tip panned out. Still, there was no telling which way Red would jump until the moment of truth.
Then there was that smiling stranger Sam Heller, who’d horned his way into the deal. It was a case of either stringing along with him or killing him. Johnny had the feeling that Heller would be a hard man to kill. A most mysterious fellow, the Yank, but he brought a lot to the table.
He could shoot, and he had money and connections. Heller had paid for some of the firearms and explosives they were packing along on this trip. It was Heller who’d arranged with the bluebelly Captain Harrison for Oxblood’s provisional pardon in return for services rendered.
It was useful to have a Yankee go-between to cut a deal with the army, cutting down the chances of a double-cross when it came to the payout of the reward money to a couple of notso-ex-Rebels. But he was a bounty killer, and a Yankee bounty killer at that. He might get it into his head to collect on some of his erstwhile partners once the job was done.
Johnny wasn’t wanted in this part of Texas, but there were other places in the West where the law would pay for his hide. Fewer partners meant bigger shares for the survivors.
If it came to that, though, Johnny trusted in his wits and his guns to see him through the showdown.
Heller had brought the vaqueros in, too, five riders from Rancho Grande: Sombro, Vasquez, Gitano, Chicory and Latigo. Johnny would have liked to have known what lay behind that unusual coalition.
Hangtree County folk generally kept to themselves and their families. Their lives consisted mostly of hard work and plenty of it, with little time for socializing with their neighbors, even if they were of a mind to—which, generally, they weren’t. The neighbor you shared a drink with today, you might find yourself shooting it out with tomorrow over water rights, grazing land, or even an unbranded calf.
Anglos and Mexican-Americans mixed even less, each group “sticking to their own kind” as a matter of form, preference and self-protection. But there was some contact between the two, especially for a native son and lifelong resident such as Johnny Cross. He knew Vasquez and Sombro by sight and repute; Gitano looked familiar—he’d seen him around. Chicory and Latigo were strangers to him.
The hand had been dealt, and now there was nothing for it but to play it out to the last turn of the cards.
Johnny set their course, taking the riders on a wide, far-ranging swing way out west deep into the Breaks before heading back southeast toward Buffalo Hump on Anvil Flats. He rode point, followed in order by Sombro, Red, Sam Heller, Vasquez, Gitano, Latigo, Chicory, and Luke. Mixed in along the line were a couple of pack horses containing provisions: water, food, and munitions.
By prior arrangement between Johnny and Luke, Luke brought up the rear at the tail of the file. Knowing the country, he was less likely to get lost should he become separated from the others during the convoluted windings and turnings of their journey. Part of his job was to lay back from time to time and make sure that nobody was dogging their back trail.
Also, of equal if not greater importance, Johnny wanted someone he could trust at his back. Especially considering the bunch he was riding with.
The file moved along at a slow, deliberate pace to keep the horses from kicking up dust that could be seen from a long way off. Brock Harper was sure to have spotters posted at vantage points on the high ground overlooking the hideout in all directions.
None of Harper’s outfit had been seen, though time and again there’d been signs of their presence in the area. The signs had played out as the intruders had gotten deeper into the winding, roundabout course Johnny had picked to direct them undetected to the outfit’s stronghold.
For some time, the trail through the ravine had been widening enough to allow two riders abreast. Now, Don Oxblood urged his horse ahead, overtaking and passing Sombro to come alongside of Johnny Cross. He kept pace with Johnny as they proceeded.
“If you wasn’t supposed to be the expert on this country, I’d suspicion that you was lost,” Red said. “I rode the back trails around the hideout plenty of times but I never set eyes on this one, no sir.”
“That’s the idea, ain’t it? To come by a way so that we ain’t seen?” Johnny countered.
“Hell, I’m lost,” Red admitted. “I saw the top of Buffalo Hump above the cliffs an hour or two ago but I ain’t seen hide nor hair of it since.”
“Which means the lookouts can’t see us,” Johnny said.
“Spooked me a bit, that’s all. I thought I knew this country, but we could be in New Mexico for all I know.”
“Well—we ain’t.”
Oxblood took a swig of water from his canteen. He unknotted his bandanna, folding it up into a square, and poured water on it, wetting it. He mopped his forehead and the back of his neck before retying the bandanna in place. “Hot,” he said.
“Come sundown it’ll get so cold you’ll think you were way up north,” said Johnny. They spoke low-voiced, just loud enough for each to be heard by the other.
“I don’t like being outnumbered by them Mexes,” Red said, scowling.
“We needed more guns, you said so yourself. It’ll take more’n you, me and Luke to bust them rifles loose off of ol’ Brock Harper,” Johnny pointed out.
“I figured on rounding up the sidemen ourselves.”
“Heller figured different.”
Red’s scowl deepened. “That’s something else I don’t cotton to. What’s a damned Yankee doing, siding with a bunch of Mexes?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Aw, he’d just put me off with some more of that fancy doubletalk.”
“He don’t crack to much at that,” Johnny said. “He brung along a couple of good men, though. Good with a gun, that is.”
“Yeh? Who?” Red asked.
“Sombro and Vasquez.”
“Which ones are they?”
“The one riding behind you is Sombro, a damned good tracker.”
“That old man? He don’t look like much,” Red said, scoffing. Johnny made a hand gesture, indicating not assent, but rather acknowledging the fact that Oxblood had just spoken.
“If he’s that good, maybe he ought to be setting the trail instead of you,” Red said.
“Then you’d be saying he’s leading us into an ambush,” Johnny replied.
“Think you got me all figured out, don’t you?”
“Mebbe.”
“Well, you’re right! I would say that. Reckon I’m just a contrary cuss,” Red said. “You said two were good with a gun.”
“Two that I know of,” Johnny corrected. “The others might be good, too, but I don’t know ’em.”
“Who’s the other one you do know?”
“Vasquez, the one with the big hat and the big belly. He’s jefe de los pistoleros, top gun for Rancho Grande, a big spread north of town.”
“He’s fast?” Red asked, interested.
“Killed a lot of Comanches and more than a few Anglos who was prodding him,” Johnny said. “Him and Sombro’ve been riding for Rancho Grande going back to when I was a kid. Gitano—the one with the gold ring in his ear—he’s been with ’em for some years, too.”
Red licked dry, sun-cracked lips. “Reckon that ring is real gold?”
“If you’re thinking of taking it, I hear he’s a wizard with the blade.”
“Bah. A Billy Yank and five Mexes. Trust any of them?”
“Hell, Red, I don’t trust you.”
“Now you went and hurt my feelings.”
Johnny changed the subject. “How come you quit Harper?”
Red looked cagey. “It’s tricky.”
“Keep your confidences, then. You don’t have to tell me a thing.”
“No, no, I don’t mind. Wouldn’t want you to think I quit a man cold just to collect a price on his head.”
“But that’s part of it.”
“Sure, but not all. During the war I killed Yankees who was out to kill me and none of us saw anything wrong with it. I’ll go up against a man with a gun if he’s got something I want,” Red said.
“That’s the way of it,” Johnny agreed.
“Just between you and me, Kimbro recruited me for Harper’s raiders. I’d heard of Harper before—who in our line hasn’t?—but I never worked with him or met him. I knew nothing of the Midvale deal, on that I give you my word.
“I hired on for the gun-wagon job. Why not? Just because Robert E. Lee—bless him!—signed a piece of paper at Appomatox don’t mean I’ve had my fill of shooting Billy Yanks. Especially when they’re hauling a wagon filled with good guns worth mucho dinero. They knew the risks when they took the job. They took their chances same as me. They came out on the wrong end of things—too bad. If they’d’ve been smarter or more wide awake or just plain luckier, it could’ve been me instead of them.
“We took the gun wagon to the Ghost Valley hideout. What I didn’t know was what Harper planned next. He’s already got a small army and he’s planning a bigger. He aims to do Hangtown the way he did Midvale. Go in shooting, gun down everybody except the women, girls and children to be sold down in Mexico. Steal everything worth taking: money, jewels, watches, horses, cattle, guns. Burn down the town and leave no survivors.
“Killing unarmed men, and women and children—that ain’t for me. It ain’t sporting.”
Red looked puzzled, as if trying to work out a problem whose solution was just out of reach. “Kimbro, now, he was pure poison clear through, rattlesnake-mean. He’d rather burn a man down than bed a pretty woman. It’s how he took his pleasure.
“But Harper ain’t built like that. He’s cold as ice. When he talks about wiping out a town, he’s got no more feeling in him than a bookkeeper drawing a line through a ledger entry and striking out a bad debt.
“He sent Kimbro and me and some of the others into Hangtown to scout it out for him. Like I said, I already had me a bellyful. When Kimbro braced you in the saloon I saw my chance to shuck off the others and light out. Even though it meant walking out on a payday I’d already earned for that day’s work at the ford.”
“Lucky you stuck around town long enough to hear about that reward being posted,” Johnny said, dryly.
“Luck is what we’re gonna need to take those rifles away from Harper,” Red said. “That and plenty of firepower.”
Sundown. Buffalo Hump towered above the badlands of Anvil Flats. It looked like its namesake, the rounded hump behind the back of a buffalo’s neck. A mound several hundred feet high, it was topped by a rocky knob. Its fan-shaped lower slopes were covered with small trees, brush and weeds; its upper slopes were jagged slabs and shelves of brown, gray and black stone.
Lookouts were posted high on the bald-domed mound. Roving bands of well-armed gunmen patrolled the area.
Three outlaw riders came circling around the mound from the southwest, curving north, then east. They rode wide around the landform, swinging out into flat, open ground to make an uninterrupted circuit without a lot of weaving and dodging around rock spurs and fans thrusting out from the mound. By so doing, they avoided the intricacies of the high hill’s irregular base, scalloped and ruffled like a coastline with dryland coves and inlets.
Hidden in its recesses on the northwest was a long, narrow draw, a cut shaped like an arrowhead. A narrow mouth and plenty of brush concealed it from view.
Within it were nine deadly gunmen, waiting for nightfall.
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