.45-Caliber Desperado (23 page)

Spurr shook his head. “We're gonna have to get you to Diamondback. Probably a sawbones there of some kind. At least a butcher.”

“Ah, fuck.” Mason lifted his chin and glared at the fine line of washed-out sky above the cavern. “Don't take me to no butcher, goddamnit. My old man was a butcher.” He laughed bizarrely—a high-pitched chortle through clenched teeth. “Shit, I think I'd rather you did it.”

“You're gonna have to get up. Can't sit here all day. I think Diamondback is just south of here—a couple miles is all. I'm gonna go out and fetch our horses, and then I'll come back and help you out to 'em. All right?”

Mason sniffed and nodded, his jaw hinges dimply.

“Stuff your neckerchief in the hole there so you don't bleed out before I get back.”

Mason reached up with his right hand to untie his dirty red neckerchief. He wadded the cloth in his fist and pressed it gingerly against the wound.

“Harder.”

Mason pressed harder, making a face.

“Harder than that.” Spurr reached over and pressed the cloth down hard.

Mason stiffened his legs, arched his back, and screamed.

“Like that!”

Spurr turned to fetch their horses.

“Spurr,” Mason shouted in a weird, pain-wracked voice that echoed around the corridor. “I hate your cussed old guts!”

Spurr snorted.

 

He had the devil's own time running down Cochise and Mason's strawberry whose name he didn't know. If it even had a name; Mason didn't seem the type of man who named his horse. Most men weren't. Horses died too damn easily, so it was best to not get too attached.

After wandering half blind in the storm for twenty minutes, Spurr found one of the four bushwhackers' mounts not far from the riverbed. It stood with its tail to the wind, and seemed so frightened by the storm that it didn't lurch away when Spurr approached nor when he grabbed its ground-tied reins and mounted it.

He used the horse to run down his roan, which he found nearly a mile up the riverbed, having doubtless been hazed there by the harassing wind. Cochise was sheltering himself in a little alcove in the high, stony ridges. He nickered with seeming relief when he saw his rider materialize from the dust storm, the old lawman wearing his bandanna over his nose.

Spurr released the killer's claybank, and astride Cochise he found Mason's horse nearby, on the other side of the riverbed. The horse was so unnerved by the storm that he ran as Spurr approached, and the marshal had to throw a rope on him and dally him in.

He'd marked the spot where he'd left Mason, with a handkerchief tied to a stick, but the stick had blown down, so Spurr overrode the spot and wasted another half hour finally locating the place once more. When he got back to the sheriff, he thought the man was dead; he was slumped forward, chin drooping to his chest.

Spurr called his name.

Mason lifted his head, blinking. “What?”

“Damn—you're alive. I thought my life was gonna get a whole lot easier.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Mason doffed his hat and tried pushing off his left knee. He groaned and nearly fell sideways, but Spurr grabbed the sheriff's arm and, wrapping his other arm around his waist, hauled him to his feet. They staggered like two sentimental drunks down the craggy corridor and back out to the riverbed, where Spurr had tied both mounts to sage shrubs.

Spurr had the devil's own time again getting Mason mounted. He wasn't as strong as he used to be, and Mason was too weak and in too much pain to lift his leg into the stirrup. Finally, Mason stumbled over to a rock, which he managed to step onto, and then onto his saddle. Spurr turned away from the wind and heaved a sigh of relief.

“Now to find Diamondback,” he said as he swung up onto Cochise's back.

“Shit,” Mason grunted, pressing his spurs to his own mount's ribs. “What about the rest of de Cava's crew? They could be anywhere out here.”

“Yeah, and the way our luck's holdin',” Spurr said, following the sheriff up the riverbank, “we're liable to ride right into 'em.”

CUNO RODE HUNCHED in his saddle, his arm hanging down by his side, feeling like a twenty-pound slab of meat that was slow-roasting over a low fire.

Camilla rode ahead. He felt too much the fool for having gotten himself bunged up again to let her lead him, so he held Renegade's reins in his right fist and kept the horse just behind Camilla's horse's tail, which was blowing wildly in the incessant wind.

He felt both hot and cold. Cold sweat dribbled down his cheeks in short streams that were dried or blown away by the wind. He straightened himself in his saddle and tried to stay conscious, but when he felt Renegade slowing, he opened his eyes to find himself slumped nearly to the paint's buffeting mane that whipped his face like whang strings.

Ahead, Camilla reined her mount to a stop. Beyond her, several riders materialized from the blowing sand, dusters or serapes whipping around them. Several of Mateo's riders' hats flopped down their backs by their chin thongs. Hatless, they were hard to recognize but Cuno could make out the lean, hard-chiseled, angular face of Frank Skinner riding beside Mateo. The gang leader put his horse up to his sister. They were in a crease between two sandstone scarps that tempered the wind but caused the dust to swirl like mini tornadoes.

Mateo said something in Spanish that Cuno could hardly hear above the wind, let alone understand. Camilla glanced at Cuno. The young freighter heard the word
serpiente
. Mateo rode back to Cuno, who tried to straighten his back again but felt as though his spine had turned to jelly. He winced, tried to keep his eyes open, but the effort caused him to vomit more bile.

Mateo's horse started at the violent upheaval. The gang leader shook his head and slid one of his big Colts from its holster.

“He's finished,” the man said in English, for Cuno's benefit. He rocked the pistol's hammer back.

“No!” Camilla swung her horse around until its was angled toward the tail of Mateo's Arab. “Put it away, Brother!”

“You know the rules,
mi hermana
.”

“He isn't that bad. We're forting up soon, right? He'll be better tomorrow.”

Mateo shook his head stubbornly. Cuno was too sick to care much if he lived or died, but he felt his own hand sliding toward the ivory-gripped Colt on his right thigh. It was on the opposite side of his horse from Mateo. He knew the gang's rules and accepted them, but the instinct for self-preservation was too strong for him to go down without a fight.

“He'll slow us down,” Mateo said, swinging the long, silver-chased barrel toward Cuno's head. “He dies.”

“I said no,
mi hermano
!” Camilla whipped her serape above the handle of her own .44, and slipped the pistol from its brown leather holster with surprising speed for a girl Cuno had once known as meek and deferring.

Aiming his revolver at Cuno's head, Mateo glared fiercely at his sister and cut loose with a string of Spanish Cuno couldn't keep up with. The only word he recognized was whore. Camilla parried the verbal onslaught with a fiercer one of her own that caused her brother to fall suddenly silent and just stare at her, eyes turning as hard as obsidian ore.

She'd insulted his manhood. It was obvious from the deep cherry color rising in Mateo's tan cheeks above his beard.

“Hold on,” Frank Skinner said, putting his horse up to Camilla's. “Why not give him a chance? We're gonna need all the help we can get for pulling the next job, Mateo.”

“Shut up, Skinner. This is between
mi hermana
and myself.”

“No, it's not.” Skinner smiled to offset his defiance. “If we're gonna make it to the border, we're gonna need guns and money. We're already short-handed after the dustup at the whorehouse, and we ain't seen Brouschard's group of late, neither. I say give the kid till tomorrow. If he's still pukin' his guts up at first light, I'll drill the hole in his head myself, save you from havin' to do it and gettin' any more on your sis's bad side than you already are.”

“She is on
my
bad side!”

Cuno had his hand on his pistol's ivory grips. He'd unsnapped the keeper thong from over the hammer and was very slowly and inconspicuously sliding the revolver from its holster.

Camilla spat a retort at her brother, but Skinner cut her off with, “Come on, amigo. Why make your sister angry? We don't have much farther to ride today. Let's head on over to Diamondback, set up camp, and wait for morning.” He paused before adding with a slow blink:
“Por favor, el capitan.”

Cuno was bringing his gun up slowly, keeping it hidden behind his right hip. He had his thumb on the hammer and was slowly starting to rock it back.

Mateo glanced around at the other men. There were only a handful left besides himself and Skinner. From their scowls and the tense sets to their eyes, they weren't in any hurry to lose any more firepower, either.

Mateo looked at Cuno. Cuno met the man's gaze before flicking his eyes to the black maw of the man's silver-chased revolver. Chicken flesh rose on the back of Cuno's neck. He edged his own pistol a little higher and had the hammer half cocked when Mateo suddenly raised his own gun's barrel and depressed the hammer.

He cursed wickedly in Spanish, turning another frigid glare on his sister, then reined his black around and galloped southward through the gap between the escarpments and out of sight. The other men, all looking relieved, booted their own mounts after their fractious leader.

Camilla looked at Skinner. She didn't say anything. Cuno guessed she didn't need to. Skinner pinched his hat brim to the senorita, then reined his horse around and headed after the others. Camilla turned her horse close to Cuno and reached over and grabbed his shirt collar.

She gritted her teeth angrily. “Are you going to make it? You make it, all right?”

“I'll make it,” Cuno said, straightening his back and dropping his Colt back down in its holster.

She saw his right hand release the gun, then raised her dark eyes to his and smiled. Reining her horse around, she booted it on up the trail. Cuno nicked Renegade's flanks with his dull spurs, and the horse broke into a trot after the girl.

After another long, painful half hour ride, Cuno heard the windblown sand ticking against something nearby. He opened his eyes. To the right of the trail that he and Camilla were following was a sign that read DIAMONDBACK, NEW MEXICO TERR., POPULATION 156.

There was another, smaller sign below the main sign, both worn to a pewter-gray from weather and time, the few chips of remaining paint quickly being worn away by the current blast.

In faint letters, the bottom sign warned: HELL-RAISERS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!

Ahead of Cuno, unseen in the storm, one of the gang members laughed.

Nearly an hour after he got the wounded Sheriff Mason on his horse, Spurr found the old stage trail that he, having traveled through this southern New Mexico country on several occasions over his years hunting tough nuts and hard cases, knew would eventually take him to the little town of Diamondback, just east of the Organ Range.

Surely there he'd find a doctor for Mason. Once he got the sheriff taken care of, he'd rendezvous with Captain Wilson from the cavalry outpost on Hackberry Creek, about ten miles south of town. Together, they'd ride down the de Cava devils before they gained the Mexican border, less than twenty miles away.

But only after the storm died, Spurr thought, wincing as another wind gust peppered his face with sand, weed bits, juniper berries, goat heads, packrat shit, and whatever else it picked up along the desert floor.

His saddle-brown cheeks were raw, and his horse balked at every blast. He glanced behind at Mason, hunkered low in his saddle, tipping his face downwind, his features taut with agony.

“You still with me, Sheriff?” Spurr yelled as he put Cochise westward along the trail.

Mason yelled something in a pinched voice that the wind tore, rendering the words incoherent.

Spurr snorted and urged more speed out of Cochise. He glanced up but could see little except the red-brown waves of blowing grit set against a sky that appeared cloudless. A clear sky meant the wind could continue for a long time. He hoped it would eventually blow in a rainstorm, settle the dust, and clean the air.

He held Cochise at a spanking trot for only a short time, pulling Mason's own horse along behind him by its bridle reins. He didn't want to beat the sheriff half to death, cause him to lose more blood than he already had. Despite his sour feelings for the man, which for some reason had grown a little less sour over the many long days they'd ridden together, he didn't want to see him die.