Born from much rehearsed habit and the full realization that hollow-eyed Death might well lay in stealthy wait for every unprepared man, we not only took the time to make sure each handgun was fully loaded but to carefully check them for fluid and unrestricted action. We always re-inspected all our munitions as well. Then, last but not least, we double-checked all our food and water supplies.
And so, as well-prepared as possible for what should have proven to be little more than a pleasant morning's excursion, we stepped into waiting stirrups, whistled for ole Bear, then urged our animals down the gentle slope to the trail headed north alongside Devils Riverâa broad dusty path that led inexorably into the hazy, unknowable, and possibly dangerous future.
We'd gone little more than a hundred yards when another cold shiver darted up my back on talon-tipped feet. I shook off the feeling of dread and tried, as best I could, to focus my total attention on the winding track ahead.
Bear, his massive head raised, sniffed the air and charged into the gathering daylight out front of our abbreviated hunting party like an angry, bush-raised, longhorn steer on the prod.
With the polished walnut stock of the long-barreled Greener propped against one thigh, Glo protected our small party's rear. In spite of the rapidly increasing heat, I heard him say as how an unexpected feeling of chill had crawled up his broad, muscular back. Made me a mite froggy, when I glanced back and watched as he twisted from side to side in his well-worn saddle. Then flicked a nervous gaze back and forth in an effort to penetrate the retreating darkness and searched each creeping shadow for the unexpected.
The man had a habit of talking to himself. So it came as no surprise when, as though to no one in particular, I heard him mumble, “They's somethin' awful out there, Glo baby. Somethin' awful and waiting. Gots to be careful, Glo. Gots to be real careful.”
Glanced over one shoulder again, about the time we got to the river. Spotted Paco still standing on the porch. He was munching on a flour taco I knew was wrapped around
huevos revueltos
, spiced with bits of fried bacon, onion, jalapenos, and sweet green peppers. Appeared to me he watched us with a tinge of growing trepidation, as we reined our animals down the slanted, grass-poor hill toward
el Rio Diablos
and began fading into the bluish-gray coming of dawn.
Pretty sure I spotted a troubled look on the peon's dark brow. Just before I lost sight of the man, he appeared to pause in mid-chew. He rubbed a hairless chin against the back of the hand holding the taco and crossed himself with his half-eaten breakfast. Then he turned and ambled back to the safety and familiarity of his waiting, oven-like
cocina
.
A quick, edgy, 180-degree glance around the viewable heavens revealed no inauspicious signs or threatening portents, as I could see. No huge, winged, cawing, black birds perched on every viewable flat surface. No shower of wart-covered toads dropped from the sky. No horned owls or other such precursors of a questionable and perhaps grisly future silently swept across the heavens. Nothing like that. Still and all, would have sworn someone had poured a bucket of slime-spiked ice water down my knotted spine.
8
“. . . THESE POOR FOLKS BEEN SHOT SLAP TO PIECES.”
THE TREK NORTH, along the easternmost bank of Devils River to Three Mile Creek, leisurely advanced along a broad, well-traveled trail of powdered silt. A route that a one-eyed man could have followed. Carved into the rugged, hilly landscape by eons of migrating animals, herded livestock, and the wooden-wheeled carts of men, the rutted path gently rose and fell before us like a spacious ribbon of meandering, chalky dust.
In the passage of less than an hour, Boz, Glorious Johnson, and me sat our tail-flicking animals atop a low, barren knoll. Boz draped a bony leg over his saddle horn and shoved a thin, rum-soaked cheroot into the corner of his mouth. Several hundred yards below, a patch of Eden-like greenery sprang from a shallow, bowl-shaped depression in the earth that bordered the two-foot-deep, slow-moving waterway coursing south for the Rio Grande.
A fiery, bubbling, coin-shaped sphere of molten-iron perched on the eastern horizonâa burning ball atop a vast, brown table. Cast by the rising sun, eerie, slithering shadows squirmed and wriggled through the lush stand of trees. With silent stealth, they darted amongst the weeds, crawling like snakes as the hot sunlight crept across the warming earth.
Off a bit to my left, Bear rested on hairy haunches atop a flattened, slablike piece of rock. The animal's lips curled away from its teeth in an atavistic sneer. With brush-notched ears at attention, like an extended set of funeral home fans mounted on its gigantic head, a subdued growl rumbled deep inside his thick canine chest. Every ropelike muscle trembled with strained anticipation, but he would not move from his chosen spot until told to do so.
I extracted a surplus cavalry officer's spyglass from a weathered and age-battered case that dangled from the end of a leather thong tied to my saddle horn. I snapped the telescope out to its maximum, five-segment length and scanned the copse of verdant, whispering cottonwoods at the bottom of the hill. Swept the entire area, back and forthâthree times. Examined every tree, bush, rock, and blade of swaying grass. Meticulously inspected those viewable portions of a canvas-covered wagon nigh on hidden by all the tree trunks and greenery.
“Quieter than the bottom of a fresh-dug grave at midnight down there,” Boz muttered between teeth clenched around his twiglike, unlit cheroot.
“Can't make much out,” I said, left eye still pressed against the leading lens of the foot-long telescope. “Appears as though there's some kind of wagon pulled up under that thickest stand of cottonwoods down yonder.”
“Thought somethin' didn't look right,” Boz mumbled.
“Yeah. Spot nearest the creek where it drops off the mesa into the river. Looks like a cross between an old-fashioned prairie schooner and a trail-drive chuck wagon. Has a water barrel mounted on the side facing us.”
Boz chewed on the cheroot. “Hear tell as how some town folk are buyin' them old chuck wagons just so's they can gad about the countryside these days. Convertin' 'em over just for travelin' around. Campin' out and such. Leastways, that's what I've heard. Don't that just beat all you ever heard? Town folk campin' out just for the fun of it?”
“Umm, well, maybe it is a converted chuck wagon. No chuck box left on the back though. Grass growing all around the site looks like it's probably close to belly deep on the horses. Pretty well trampled down in some spots, though. From up here, it's kind of like looking through a series of weed-choked windows. Only allows a body a small piece of the scene at a time.”
“People? You see any people, Mistuh Dodge?” Glorious said.
“Not a soul, Glo. Leastways none that's upright and moving around. Do spy a couple of lumps, or mounds, on the ground near the wagon's back wheels. Sad to say, but they look an awful lot like bodies to me. All those weeds render any solid observations, from this far away, little more than an educated guess though.”
Boz pushed his hand-creased sombrero to the back of a sweaty head, pulled a blue-and-white bandanna, and mopped at a dripping brow. “Damn. Cool of the mornin' sure 'nuff didn't last long.”
Me and Glo grunted our agreement. Bear breathed a snarling sound around a dripping tongue, like some monstrous wild animal.
“You know, that's mighty suspicious lookin', even from up here, you ask me, Lucius,” Boz said. “Oughta be able to see somebody movin' around. It's more'n a bit worrisome, by God. Mighty worrisome. Earlier, we heard a right smart amount of shooting coming from this spot. Crop of dead folks won't surprise me much. You see anything else as might look like bodies?”
Several seconds of oppressive silence followed. Then Grizz impatiently pawed at the ground with one iron-shod front foot. The bit and reins rattled when he shook his equine head and softly whinnied.
I lowered my glass, shoved it back into the protective sheath, and let the whole package dangle from the leather thong. “Not real sure, Boz. Just can't make out much from this far away, 'cause of all the brush and such. Driver pulled that wagon up so far beneath those trees a body would have to really be looking for the thing to even know it was down there.”
Boz grunted, “Uhmmm,” but added nothing more.
“Seems most like he was trying to hide it from anyone who might happen to pass by. No fire as I can detect. Not even a ghostly wisp of smoke. Doesn't appear that whoever might be left alive down there even bothered to put one together.” Another brief bit of wordless silence passed between us before I added, “Or maybe they just never got the chance.”
“Gonna make damned fine targets if we go ridin' in there sittin' up tall on these hammerheaded bangtails,” Boz offered. “Figure we'd best dismount, fan out a bit. Walk in. Maybe do a little of the ole Comanche tiptoe,” he said and stuffed the damp bandanna back into his pocket, then snugged his battered hat down.
I swung off Grizz. Pulled the heavy, octagon-barreled Winchester hunting rifle from its boot in a single practiced move. Levered a hot round into the big shooter's chamber, as Boz and Glo stepped off their animals and loosed their own long guns.
“Gimme a few minutes to get over to the camp's far side, Glo,” Boz said, then shoved the spit-soaked cheroot into his vest pocket. He breeched the coach gun and rechecked each massive brass-cased round. The weapon made a loud, metallic, thunking click when he snapped it shut.
With the blaster draped across one arm, Boz cast a steely, squint-eyed gaze from one side of the stand of trees to the other. “Once I'm set up, Glo, I'll give a yelp. Then you can move in on this side. Lucius can take the middle. Three of us close in on the camp at the same time, from different directions, should spread the fire from any hidden, back-shootin' varmint as might be lying in wait.”
“Ya, suh, Mistuh Tatum. I'll be right 'hind yuh.”
Silently nodding my agreement of the suggested strategy, I threw Boz a quick smile, then winked. “Sounds like a good enough plan to me. Guess we aren't getting any younger just standing around, twiddling our thumbs. Let's head on out and get 'er done.”
I watched as my friends wordlessly turned and moved off through the waist-deep dry grass.
My compadres in position, I cast a quick, unblinking glance toward Heaven. Said, “Lord, let's try not to let anyone get hurt today. Want all my folks sitting down to one of Paco's suppers at the same time later this afternoon when we say grace over our food. Okay?” Then I snapped my fingers and motioned Bear into action.
The dog snorted out an enthusiastic growl and hit the ground running. Rifle at the ready, I hunched over and slipped into the already parted weeds, silently trailing behind the happy beast.
A stricken look carved deep lines of pain and concern into Glorious Johnson's already creased face. He squatted at the edge of a semicircle of flattened grass and trampled earth near the remains of a pair of oozing corpses.
Nearby, Bear flopped on his hairy belly and let out a series of low guttural yowls.
Appearing as though lost in confused thought, Johnson gazed at the bullet-riddled bodies, then sadly shook his head. The recently departed lay on their backs and gazed with unmoving, sightless eyes, at cotton boll clouds pinned onto a crystalline, turquoise sky.
Caught in a hailstorm of blue whistlers, the dead couple had fallen near the back of the refurbished Studebaker. The entire side of the vehicle's wooden freight box facing the river was riddled with fresh, splinter-decorated bullet holes. A team of fine-looking mules lay dead in the traces.
In the manner of a gory carpet, a clotted mat of blood and viscera, as thick as half a family Bible, covered the well-trampled earth for several feet around the bodies of the man, woman, and their animals. Here and there, like flakes of blood-flecked snow, bits of brain matter and splintered bone from the couple's shattered skulls decorated the thin exposed areas of crushed grass and packed dirt.
Shotgun at the death-dealing ready, Boz circled the wagon.
I stood near the dog and swept a piercing gaze from one side of the campsite to the other. Hissed, “Can you make any kind of sense from all this, Glo?”
Johnson pushed a sweat-stained, gray flop hat to the back of his head, then scratched a spot over one ear in puzzlement. “As you see, Mistuh Dodge, these poor folks been shot slap to pieces. Done bled slap out right where they fell. Just like them poor defenseless mules.”
I shook my head in disgust. “Damned sorry business all right. Damned sorry.”
“Looks to me like whoever done fer 'em wanted to make certain sure they didn't get up once they 'uz down. Both these poor folk been drilled through the head bone several timesâleast twice, maybe more. This here pitiful feller's skull's splattered all over hell and yonder.” He paused, then as an afterthought added, “Woman's, too. Top of all that, they's bullet holes in the dirt all around 'em. 'Pears near half a dozen men stood over these unfortunates and just blasted the by-God bejabbers out of 'em.”
“What about them as done the deed?”
“Gone, Mistuh Dodge. Leastways, near as I can tell. Ain't been gone long, but them as done this sorry deed come and left in a mighty big hurry. Five, six, maybe seven of 'em. Made such a mess right here around the wagon it's hard to tell exactly.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, can say for sure as how the killers rode their animals right up from the river. Got down, walked up here, caught these folks unawares. Shot 'em dead, then lit a shuck away from their crimes. Didn't waste a single second from the looks of it.”