16.
TROPHY
H
AWK ground his teeth as he stared up at Miller. “Let her go.”
“Climb out of there, and keep your hands away from your holsters”âMiller pressed the gun barrel harder against Juliana's temple, and she sucked a sharp breathâ“or I'll spray her brains all over these rocks.”
Hawk placed both hands on the lip of the hole and hoisted his knees up and out. He got his feet under him and stood, keeping his hands away from his revolvers, his eyes locked on Miller. The deputy still had Juliana's left breast in his hand, lifting and squeezing.
“I said let her go.”
Miller glared at Hawk. “You ain't givin' the orders here. I'm givin' the orders now, you crazy son of a bitch.” He pulled his revolver away from the girl's head, wagged it at Hawk. “Lift out those pistols with two fingers, and toss 'em over here, by my feet. Real slow.”
Hawk looked at Juliana. She stared at him, sobbing, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Slowly, he flipped his guns onto a mound of sand to the right of Miller's bootsâeven in defeat reluctant to mistreat his weapons.
Miller dipped his chin and smiled at Hawk with guile. “The stiletto.”
Hawk reached up behind his head and slid the bone-handled knife from the sheath hanging down his back by a rawhide cord, which his neckerchief concealed. He tossed the razor-edged knife into the sand with the revolvers.
One of the other deputies called up from the bottom of the hole, his voice barely audible above the stream's rush and splash.
“We got him!” Miller shouted back, shoving Juliana to his right, where another deputyâa rangy Texas lawman whom Hawk recognized as Bill Houstonâgrabbed her while keeping his rifle aimed at Hawk. “We'll meet you back in the main canyon,” Miller added.
He glanced at one of the other lawmen and canted his head at Hawk. “Pat him down and tie his hands behind his back. Tie him good. Tie his ankles, too. Just enough rope so he can walk but not run. Bill, do the same with the girl.”
“Let her go,” Hawk said, as the Cajun, Franco Villard, patted him down from behind. “She's got no part in this.”
“Sure as hell does,” Miller spat, turning his sharp eyes to the girl. “She climbed that ravine to cavort with a known felon when just last night Flagg warned her not to. Warned the whole damn town.”
“She meant no harm.”
Miller slitted an eye at Juliana, standing tensely as Houston tied her hands behind her back, her breasts pushing at the wet dress. Miller stretched a wolfish grin. “No girl built like that one is
ever
harmless. Ain't that right, boys?”
They all chuckled. Behind Juliana, eyes lowered to study his work, Houston shook his head. He'd stuck a cold cigar between his teeth.
“Keep your hands off her,” Hawk warned Miller as Villard strung a rope between his ankles. His wrists were already tied behind his back. His hard green eyes bored into Miller. “You touch her again, I'll kill you.”
Miller's own expression hardened. “Well, now,” he growled, stepping toward Hawk. “I reckon your killin' days are over, Mr. Rogue Lawman.” He raised his Winchester's barrel, and swung the butt up savagely into Hawk's solar plexus.
The wind left Hawk's chest in a single, loud burst. His knees buckled. He almost fell but got his feet back under him at the last second, his jaw tightening as he fought against the pain and tried to suck air into his lungs.
“Bastard!” Juliana screamed at Miller, lunging toward him. She tripped on the rope tying her ankles together, and fell to her knees. Hands tied behind her back, she shook her hair from her eyes and regarded Miller with fury. “You are a
coward
!”
Miller snapped his head toward her. “Shut up, bitch!”
“Juliana,” Hawk rasped, his voice gently chastising. He winced as he sucked a breath.
“I am sorry, Gideon!” Juliana sobbed, chin falling to her chest. “I led them right to you!”
“They would have found me,” Hawk said.
“You got that right.”
Keeping his rifle on Hawk, Miller stooped to retrieve the revolvers and stiletto near his feet. He wedged both revolvers behind his cartridge belt, slipped the stiletto into the sheath housing his bowie knife, and rose. He stepped aside and wagged his rifle at Hawk and the girl, grinning tensely. “Now, why don't we call on Marshal Flagg? He's feelin' rather poorly, don't you know?”
Bill Houston rolled his cigar to one side of his mouth. “I think he's about to feel a whole lot better real soon!”
Â
Hawk, Juliana, and the deputies followed a narrow, meandering mountain-goat trail down to the main canyon. Along the stream in which Hawk and the girl had fished a couple of days before, they joined up with the other three deputies and climbed the ridge to the sheepherder's ruined shack.
Hawk's horse was tied to a cedar just east of the shack. Miller ordered Juliana into the saddle. He ordered Hawk to lead the horse. Leading the grulla by the reins and having to take short steps because of the rope tied to his ankles, Hawk began making his way slowly back down the arroyo toward the village.
Miller led the procession, walking ten feet in front of Hawk, the Winchester resting on the senior deputy's right shoulder. He strode with his chin proudly lifted, whistling victoriously. The other three walked behind the horse, not saying anything, spurs chinging, boots occasionally kicking stones. Someone was smoking; Hawk could smell the tobacco wafting on the warm, morning breeze.
He stared straight ahead, the buckskin reins in his hands behind his back, the horse clomping at his heels. He was surprised to feel as much relief as defeat.
The running was over.
Juliana hadn't said anything since they'd left the ridge above the cave. Now her voice rose thinly. “Gideon, if it were not for meâ”
Miller turned his head to one side. “No talkin' there, girl.” He snickered. “Besides, I don't think ole Hawk wants to talk to you no more . . . after you went and got him greased for the pan and all . . .”
Miller chuckled again and turned his head forward as he passed a saguaro towering over the trail to his right.
Hawk turned to Juliana, winked, and continued walking.
When the arroyo opened at the north end of the village, Hawk stopped. Ahead of him, Miller stopped, too, and turned with an angry frown.
“What the hell you think you're doin'?”
“Let her go.”
Miller glanced at Juliana sitting the horse behind Hawk. He opened his mouth to speak, but Hawk cut him off.
“She's no threat. You got me. Turn her loose.”
“The man's got a point,” said Bill Houston as he and Villard walked up on Hawk's right, staying wide and keeping their rifles aimed at the prisoner. The other three lawmen swung to the left. “Why bother with her? We got what we came for.”
Miller looked at him, then at Villard, whose expression said he agreed with Houston. Miller jerked his head at the girl. “Cut her loose.”
When Houston had cut Juliana's ropes and helped her out of the saddle, she ran to Hawk and threw her arms around him. She pressed her head against his chest. Miller grabbed her arm.
As he pulled her away, she looked up at Hawk, who regarded her stonily. “Go home. Forget about me.”
“Good advice,” Miller said. “No sense in pinin' for a dead man.” He told Villard to take the grulla to the livery barn, then nudged Hawk forward with his rifle barrel.
Hawk glanced at Juliana staring up at him, fresh tears streaking her dusty cheeks and glistening in the sunlight, her arms hanging straight down at her sides. Quickly memorizing every feature of the girl's lovely face, the thick dark hair framing her head and falling about her shoulders, he turned away.
“Gideon.”
He ignored the plaintive cry, and walked to the main street with Miller, Houston, and the other three deputies tramping along behind. He turned the corner and did not look back as he headed for Green's Saloon.
His heart hammered slowly. His ears rang. His feet felt as heavy as lead within his boots.
“Inside,” Miller said as they approached the saloon, giving Hawk another poke in the back.
“You're proud as a peacock, Press,” Hawk said. “Be careful your feathers don't get stepped on.”
“Shut up!”
Hawk mounted the porch steps, stumbling over the rope between his ankles, and pushed through the batwings. He crossed the empty saloon and climbed the stairs at the back, the rope forcing him to take one step at a time, not lifting one foot before the other was firmly planted.
He was three-quarters of the way up when, behind him, Miller cursed impatiently and rammed his Winchester into the small of Hawk's back. Hawk's boot toe clipped a riser. He stumbled, dropped to a knee.
He turned, glowering hard over his right shoulder. His nostrils flared. His green eyes turned to small, hot fires. Miller held his gaze for a moment before the deputy's face colored, and his eyes flicked away like mice looking for a hole.
“We ain't got all day,” he muttered.
Hawk continued staring at Miller as he pulled himself to his feet. Then he turned and continued up the stairs, moving slower than before.
At the top, he nudged the left wall and planted his feet. While the other deputies stopped on the stairs behind him, Miller moved past Hawk and knocked on a door on the right side of the hall.
“Come!” Hawk recognized Flagg's taut, hoarse voice behind the door.
Miller, unable to contain another self-satisfied smirk, turned to Hawk, crooked a finger, then threw the door open. He disappeared inside. Hawk continued down the hall, the other deputies' boots pounding behind him.
He turned into the room, and stopped.
On the room's small bed, Flagg reclined against the headboard, his back to the far wall. Both of his heavily bandaged arms were secured with slings made from old bedsheets tied around his neck. He wore a gray underwear top, unbuttoned halfway down his chest, which was matted with wiry gray hair. His face was flushed and sweat-damp. An open bottle rested against his left hip, beside a walnut-butted Remington.
The room smelled of sweat, carbolic acid, wood smoke, and alcohol.
To Flagg's right stood a spool-back chair upon which sat a chessboard. On the other side of the chair sat the saloon's burly proprietor, Leo Baskin, the barman's face swollen around a pear-sized nose as purple as ripe grapes on the vine. He wore a quilted robe over long-handles, and an orange night sock on his head. When Hawk had first entered, Baskin had been resting his forearms on his knees, studying the chess game before him. Now he sat up, eyes registering shock deep within their doughy sockets.
One hand on the whiskey bottle, Flagg glowered up at Hawk.
“That trophy I promised, Marshal,” said Miller, leaning back against the dresser to fire a quirley. “Want me to cut his head off, make it easier to take him back to Denver City?”
Flagg's gray-bearded face was stony, but his eyes were sun-fired steel discs. His left hand squeezed the bottle so hard that his knuckles turned white.
“Where'd you get him?”
“Top o' the ridge. He was waitin' for us.”
“
How'd
you get him?”
Miller was lighting his quirley, puffing smoke.
“The girl,” said Franco Villard.
“Led us up the arroyo,” added Bill Houston.
Leaning against the dresser, Miller removed the quirley from his mouth, blew a long stream of smoke, and casually flicked a speck of tobacco from his tongue.
Flagg hadn't taken his eyes off Hawk. “Fire up the telegraph.”
Miller glanced at the other deputies, turned his head to Flagg. “There ain't no telegraph here, Marshal. There ain't much of
anything
here.”
“We're a week's ride out of Denver City, Marshal,” reminded Hound-Dog Tuttle, standing on the far side of Flagg's bed, sweating and breathing hard from the long hike, his rust-colored shirt pasted against his belly. “Maybe we oughta take him to Tucson.”
“Hellfire!” Flagg rumbled, his jaws quivering. “We're taking that son of a bitch to Denver. He'll hang over Cherry Creek, with a whole crowd to see.”
“And a whole gaggle of Eastern reporters,” Hawk said, standing with his feet spread, hands tied behind his back, a knowing light in his eyes. “You can send a cable from Tombstone, have the band playing as our train pulls into Union Station.” Hawk shook his head slowly. “If you aren't headed for great things, Flagg, I don't know who is.”
“Shut up, you fuckin' bastard!” Flagg roared. “If I had time enough to
drag
you to Denver, I'd put two bullets in you, like you did to
me
.”
He turned to Miller. “This place have a jail?”
Miller nodded.
“Lock him up! I want two men on him all night! Tomorrow, at first blush of dawn, we ride for Tombstone!”
“You ain't gonna be fit to ride tomorrow yet,” Hound-Dog pointed out, nodding at Flagg's arms.
“Watch me!”
As the deputies ushered Hawk out the door, Hawk stopped and turned his head toward the barman. “Ah, Leo,” he said, shuttling his eyes to the chessboard, “you can take his king.”
17.
PRETTY GIRL TRAVELING ALONE
E
ARLIER that same day, traveling westward on the trail Hawk and the deputies had taken two days earlier, Saradee Jones brought her sleek palomino stallion up a slight rise through high, pine country. She shifted her sore bottom on the saddle, which she'd padded with a red velvet pillow she'd stolen from the parlor of the hotel in which Flagg had beaten her.
She knew where Flagg was heading because she knew where Hawk had headed. She'd followed Hawk to Bedlam before, pulled toward him by some invisible rope she'd sensed connecting them since the first time they'd met.
Only this time it wasn't Hawk she was trailing. This time it was D.W. Flagg.
Getting as comfortable as she could in her situation, she looped her reins around the saddle horn, dipped a hand into the pocket of her blue-checked shirt, and produced a small tobacco pouch. Letting the horse plod slowly along the trail toward the shaded rise, she dug papers from the pouch, troughed one between the index and forefinger of her right hand, and dribbled tobacco into the crease.
She was licking the paper to seal it as the palomino topped the rise and started down the other side, its hooves clomping on the narrow, rocky, sun-dappled trail. Her eyes were canted down to the cigarette when she heard a man laugh on the trail ahead.
Jerking her head up, she dropped the quirley and slapped the butt of the revolver thonged low on her right thigh.
Ahead, four riders were moving toward her up the rise, the pines casting columnar shadows across their shabby trail clothes and dusty stock ponies. Oblivious to her, they were laughing and talking, the lead rider hipped around in his saddle to talk to the three men tightly grouped behind him.
Two seconds after Saradee had slapped her Colt's butt, one of the men riding behind the leader glanced casually up trail, glanced away, then back again, his eyes glinting incredulously as he picked Saradee out of the tree shadows before him.
He spoke in a low voice to the others, then canted his head toward her. The others snapped their own eyes forward, too. Three touched their pistol butts while the fourthâa wiry, red-headed kid in a torn duster and black stovepipe hatâreached for the rifle snugged in the leather saddle sheath under his right thigh.
Saradee kept her own hand on her Colt's grips, leaving the gun in the holster, as the approaching men ran their eyes up and down her long-legged, buxom figure in tight jeans and man's shirt, their expressions softening, the cast in their gazes turning by slow degrees from caution to bemusement to lust.
“Hi, there,” the lead rider said as he drew his mount to a halt before Saradee.
Saradee had already checked down the palomino, regarding the four men blandly while her horse stared warily ahead, twitching its ears and rippling its withers.
“To what do we owe the honor?” asked a pudgy gent with a broad, pimpled face framed by wispy muttonchop whiskers. His eyes beneath the brim of his black weather-beaten hat were an odd, washed-out gray.
Saradee blinked, removed her hand from her pistol grips, and swung down from her saddle. “The honor of what?” she said with a fleeting glance at the ragtag group before turning and walking back up the hill, holding the palomino's reins loosely in her gloved left hand. Four feet beyond the horse's bronze-cream tail, she stooped, plucked her cigarette out of the dust, and straightened.
Flicking the quirley lightly across her shirt, cleaning it, she strolled back down the hill toward the group blocking the trail before her.
“The honor of meeting such a pretty girl out here in the middle of nowhere,” said the man with the muttonchops and washed-out eyes.
Saradee stuck the cigarette in her mouth, grabbed the horn, and pulled herself into the saddle.
“On such a magnificent horse, too,” said the fourth riderâtall, gaunt, and unshaven, a black patch over his left eye and bandoleers crossed on his beaded vest. He was smoking a long, black cheroot, his sole eye squinted cunningly as he appraised the palomino.
Saradee plucked a sulfur match from her pocket and offered a wooden smile. “Charmed.”
“Where you headed?” asked the red-headed kid.
Saradee snapped the match to life on her thumbnail. “Bedlam.”
“Bedlam?” said Muttonchops. “Bedlam's a ghost town.”
“I happen to like ghost towns,” said Saradee as she lit the cigarette, puffing smoke. “They're so quiet. Even the ghosts.”
The men chuckled, casting their amused, conspiratorial glances back and forth among themselves. The redhead turned his wolfish gaze back to Saradee. “Why don't you forget about that dusty old ghost town. That's no place for a girl like you. Why, you can ride to Tombstone with us!”
“Tombstone?”
“Yeah.” The redhead glanced at the tall gent's bulging saddlebags. “We just happened to run across a little fortune . . . by purely legitimate means, of course. We figured on havin' us a good ole hoof-stompin' time in Tombstone with our newfound treasure, drinkin' and gamblin' and such.” His brows furrowed suddenly, as if from deep consternation. “Only one thing's been missin'.”
“Oh?” Saradee said, matching the man's frown with her own, her voice pitched with mock gravity. “And what thing would that be?”
“Why, a pretty little gal like yourself!” intoned the first rider, smoothing his droopy mustaches with the first two fingers of his gloved left hand. His horse was sniffing the palomino, the palomino lifting its head indignantly.
“Sorry,” Saradee said, taking a slow pull on her quirley. “My momma told me to watch out for boys like you.”
“Boys like us?” said the first rider, feigning indignance. “Now, what kind of boys would we be?”
“Chowderheaded peckerwoods,” Saradee said matter-of-factly. “Who wouldn't know what to do with a girl like me if I gave you lessons for the next ten years.”
She heeled the palomino forward, nudging the first two riders out of her path, their horses sidestepping nervously and chuffing. Smoke puffed out behind her as she trotted the palomino down the hill.
Behind her, the men chuckled uncertainly, brows ridged.
“Won't you reconsider?” shouted the tall man above the clattering of the horses' shod hooves. “The trail ain't safe for a pretty girl travelin' alone!”
“Thanks for the admonition,” Saradee called, spurring the palomino into a trot. She cast a glance behind at the four men watching her from the shaded hillside, and smiled, showing her perfect white teeth between her wide, red lips. “I'll keep a finger on my trigger and an eye on my back trail!”
She stopped two hours later atop a rocky knob, and peered into the ravine she'd just left. A half mile east along the ravine's floor, a mare's tail of brown dust curled amidst the saguaros and mesquite shrubs.
Just the right amount of dust for four riders who'd set their hats for a pretty girl and a fine-boned, broad-chested palomino.
“Come on, boys,” Saradee said. “Don't be late for supper. I could use some beans and biscuits and I'm about out of coffee, too. Wouldn't mind gettin' my hands on that money in your poke, neither!”
She chuckled and kicked the palomino down the scarp, parting shrubs and heading into a shallow wash twisting between seven-foot-high banks streaked with shale and pocked with swallows' nests.
She traced a gradual bend and paused to watch a thick, Mojave-green rattlesnake twisting up out of its hole in the side of the ridge. Fascinated, she unsheathed her rifle and prodded the snake with the barrel.
It struck, closing its mouth around the steel. With a bewildered cast to its flat, copper-colored eyes, the snake recoiled against the sandstone wall and beat a fast retreat to its hole.
Saradee watched it, her face lit up like an awestruck child's. When the snake had coiled back into its hole, she sheathed her rifle and rode on.
After another hour, she stopped the palomino under a low mesa, the west-falling sun filling the hollow with cool purple shade. A thin, shallow freshet ran along the base of the mesa, sheathed in grama grass and sage.
Saradee cast a look over her right shoulder. Her pursuers were nearly a mile away, walking their horses along the shoulder of a cedar-stippled mountain. She probably wouldn't have noticed them if she hadn't been keeping an eye on them for the past several hours. Each rider was no bigger than the nail on her little finger from this distance, but there they were, just the same. They'd probably lay off until the sun went down, then move in after dark.
Unless she could lure them in sooner.
Saradee dismounted, unsaddled her horse, and tied it to a cedar tree near the little stream. She rubbed the animal down with dry grass, taking her time but keeping an eye on the sun, which had another hour yet before it disappeared behind the western ridges.
When she'd gathered wood for a small fire and spread her bedroll, she cast another glance at the ridge behind her, colored now a deep, brassy orange. She could no longer see the riders, but they could probably see her.
She chewed her lower lip, turned away from the ridge, removed her gun belt, and coiled it atop a nearby boulder. She glanced again behind her, then pulled her shirttails out of her pants and slowly began unbuttoning her shirt, her cool eyes staring at the stream, sensual excitement rippling through her.
When she'd taken off the shirt, she stood frozen for a moment as the dry breeze found the six-inch welts crisscrossing her back. She removed her boots and denims and the long, men's underwear clinging to her muscular thighs and flaring hips, and padded barefoot into the stream, touching her fingers to the welts on her bottom. They'd scabbed nicely and might not even leave scars.
Flagg, after she found him, should be so lucky.
She walked upstream until she found a wide flat pool. She sat down in the pool, in the soft, cool sand, rested on her arms, and threw her head back, arching her back and pushing her breasts up proudly. She grinned when she thought of the men staring down from a nearby scarp, an evil, girlish titter escaping her lips.
Slowly, she lowered her back into the water. A delicious chill coursed through her as the hard, crusted cuts sucked in the moisture from the stream.
She lifted her hands, cupping water onto her thighs, hips, and belly. She dippered several handfuls onto her breasts, then massaged the water around on them, chuckling again when she thought of the men watching from above.
They probably had at least one spyglass between them. Saradee's mouth opened wide as she laughed. They were getting one hell of an eyeful.
“Come and get it, boys . . .”
She got up slowly, catlike, and stretched. Then she stood, walked slowly back along the stream, lifting each foot with a dancer's flourish, and dried off with her saddle blanket, dressed, and fed more wood to the fire. When the flames were burning well, crackling as they fed on the dry mesquite she'd gathered from the other side of the stream, she set coffee to boil. That was about all she had in the way of food, for she'd left Cartridge Springs in such an ill temper that she'd forgotten to put on trail supplies.
She pulled her cast-iron skillet out of her saddlebag, though, and greased it from a small tub of bacon fat. Her keen earsâkeen as any Indian'sâhad already picked up the slow clomp of oncoming riders.
A half hour later, she spread her saddle blanket beside the fire. She set the coffee to one side of the highest flames and sat down on the blanket. She leaned back against a rock, tipped her hat brim low, crossed her arms on her breasts, and closed her eyes.
Half-dozing, she smiled to herself, listening to the sounds of boots softly crunching gravel before her and to her right. The sounds got louder, stopped. A gun hammer clicked back.
“Hello, little miss.”
Saradee jerked her head up with a start, snapping her eyes wide with feigned surprise. “Oh!”
Two of the ragtag trail riders stood ten feet on the other side of the fire. The other two stood to her left. Three aimed pistols at her. The red-headed kid in the stovepipe hat aimed an old trapdoor rifle. His broad grin showed two rows of tobacco-brown teeth tipped like fenceposts after a Plains twister had gone through farm country.
“Now, now, nothin' to be afraid of,” he said. “Long as you cooperate.”
All four stood staring at her, their grins not reaching their eyes. Their dust-streaked faces were flushed with lust.
The tall, one-eyed gent glanced at the shell belt wrapped around the two pistols to Saradee's right. “Nice and easy, toss those hoglegs over here, by my feet.” He stared down his pistol barrel at her warningly. “Nice and slow.”
Making her hands shake a little, Saradee slipped each pistol from its holster in turn, tossing it into the sand on the other side of the fire.
“Ah, Jesus,” she said, her fear-sharp eyes darting from one gun-wielding hard case to the other. “You aren't
all
gonna take me at
once
, are you?”
The redhead chuckled through his teeth, spit bubbles popping along his gums.
Saradee shuddered, made her voice thin. “I'll cooperate if you will. Just one at a time. And you gotta promise not to kill me, and to leave a little meat when you're through.”
The one-eyed man spat into the fire. He kept his glistening eye on Saradee as he strode toward her. “Sure, we'll leave a little meat.”
“Hey,” said the man with the drooping mustaches, grabbing his arm. “What makes you think you can go first?”
“Yeah,” growled the redhead as he and the man with the muttonchops and washed-out eyes both turned toward the one-eyed gent.
It was the break Saradee had been banking on.