Dead Reckoning (25 page)

In the morning Clarence woke them and told Ramon to stoke the fire. As the boy went to gather wood, May found the coil of rope on the ground near Clarence's bedroll. She was sure she had left that rope trailing over the ledge yesterday after rescuing Clarence. When she questioned him with a look, he answered her with a wry smile—a smile that would lodge in her mind's eye and mean more to her every day.

It was only a few minutes later that Ramon was on his hands and knees, fanning the embers of the fire with his hat. He was feeling lonely, mourning Petra, missing Guajolote. The Indian woman had gone off into the woods somewhere, so he didn't even have anybody to talk to.

Then the ashes flew away from something, and Ramon cried out.

Thirty-one

Carrol was no expert tracker, but he knew enough to read the desperation in Dee Hassard's trail. He had found the camp at daylight—seen the nun's diminutive tracks, the boy's, the large curve of the big red mule's.

The old miner who had taken the mule left no tracks at all. Maybe he wore moccasins, Carrol thought. Maybe he had learned some Indian trick. Maybe. It didn't matter. He had to keep his mind focused on Hassard.

The swindler's tracks had come down from Notch Mountain and were falling on top of the mule's prints now. The trail was easy enough to read from the back of Clarence Philbrick's horse. Hassard had made no attempt to cover his trail. He was in too much of a hurry. He was short, the parson recalled. Maybe five-foot-seven. But this was the stride of a six-footer. Dee Hassard had been running for his life when he left these prints, trying to catch that mule.

But by now he had to know it was too late. The mule had headed into a small creek valley whose slopes had grown steeper, evolving gradually into a box canyon. Hassard was trapped here. Even if he managed to catch the mule, his only way out would be back down the mouth of the canyon.

Carrol passed over a spot where Hassard had stopped to rest. He made out the place where the heavy bag of gold and money had plastered a cool patch of green grass to the ground. He let his mount's head bob three times, then pulled up, looking back at the place.

He had caught an inkling of something. Hassard never stopped to rest. He had stopped here to think. He had known by this time that he would not get away clean. He had stopped to plan something, like the gun he had planted at the South Platte camp to kill Frank.

It would be something different for Carrol, of course. Ambush? Probably not. Carrol would be expecting that. He knew how to move into a possible ambush, keeping to cover. He had learned that in his old rustling days, when the vigilantes had marked him for execution. He would be able to read an ambush here. Besides, Hassard was more of a back shooter than a sharp-shooter.

It would be trickier than a mere ambush. That was Hassard's style. His guile beat all. He had thought way ahead of Frank, and Frank had been the most thorough of lawmen. It was going to be something unexpected.

While Carrol was trying to guess ahead, Dee Hassard suddenly came walking into view with his hands in the air. The preacher turned the horse, drew his revolver.

“Easy, Moncrief,” the redhead cried, stopping in his tracks. “I'm givin' up. You've got me cornered. I'd rather take my chances with the hangman later than have you shoot me in this godforsaken place.”

Carrol rode forward, his sights trained on the murderer. His jaw muscles tensed so hard they hurt. He noticed Hassard's empty holster. Tricky bastard thinks I won't shoot him unarmed. He came within a few paces of the swindler and swung down from the horse. “Where's your gun?” he said.

“I lost it,” Hassard said.

Carrol smirked.

“I wouldn't believe it if I was you either, but it's true. Anyway, you can see I don't have it on me.” He turned around with his hands in the air.

Carrol knew he was lying. May Tremaine had told him that Hassard carried two pistols. How could a man lose two? The funny thing was that he knew Hassard didn't expect him to believe the story. Dealing with this swindler was like wresting with a man's mind. Well, there was only one thing to do. Teach Hassard a new hold. Do something unexpected. Throw him off guard.

There was a rope tied to Carrol's saddle. “So, you'd rather face the hangman?” He took the rope down and tossed it to Hassard. “Build yourself a loop.”

“You're not gonna hang me. That's murder, Moncrief.”

“What jury would convict me for hangin' a nun killer?”

“Nun?” Hassard said, as if insulted. “What nun?”

“Sister Petra of the Snowy Cross. You killed her yesterday up on the divide.”

“I didn't know she was a nun! What in the hell would a nun be doin' a way out here?”

Carrol shook his head. “Just put the noose on. I'd as soon shoot you if you don't.”

“You're forgettin' something,” Hassard said. “The money!”

“I don't give a damn about the money.”

“I hid it good,” Hassard said. “You won't find it without me.”

“I said I don't give a damn about the money. I just want to free the world of your stench, and the quicker the better.”

“But there's thousands!” Hassard cried, dropping to his knees. “Please, let me take you to it! Let me live just that much longer!” Real tears poured from his eyes.

Carrol laughed. “All right, you can get up now, that's all I wanted to know.”

Hassard stared.

“Well, get up! You didn't really think I'd lynch you, did you? You didn't really think you could fool me with all that whimperin' after what you pulled on me in Denver, did you?”

Hassard sniffed and got to his feet. A cold pit began to form in his stomach. Yes, he had thought Moncrief really was going to lynch him. He had been taken in. He couldn't believe he had fallen for that part about the nun. He had lost the edge, and he knew it. Worse yet, he knew Moncrief knew it.

“Show me where the money is,” Moncrief ordered. “But don't go grabbin' at it real quick, because I know what you'll pull out.” He grinned and twisted his revolver in the air.

Reluctantly, Hassard turned back up the canyon, his hands above his head. Carrol followed, anxiously watching every move. He couldn't help remembering how Frank had let his guard down. How he himself had been so readily taken in that night in Denver. Was Dee Hassard ever finished conniving?

They came into a grove of aspens—a pleasant place within earshot of running water, with summer-green leaves filtering the sun onto the white tree trunks. It was an older grove with bigger trees, well spaced. The two men wound their way among the trees, and Hassard rested his palms on top of his hat, for the lowest limbs swept just over his head, and his arms were tired.

“It's there,” Hassard said, thrusting his chin toward a hollow log. It had been a large pine tree, long dead now, still showing vestiges of charcoal from some prehistoric forest fire. Aspens grew up on both sides of it like andirons holding it in place.

Carrol was taking no chances. He kept thinking about what Clarence Philbrick and May Tremaine had told him. Hassard had waited until the last moment to kill Charlie Holt. He trusted no move the little man made. He wasn't even willing to reach into the hollow log for the saddlebags. Maybe that was what Hassard wanted. A trap of some kind in there? Something to break his arm? Maybe Hassard was still thinking ahead of him.

Putting his muzzle against the back of Hassard's neck, he said, “Reach in there real slow. One hand. Any move you make too quick will get you killed.”

Hassard trembled, and it was with real fear now. Moncrief had him as turned around as old Jules Billings before he found the Snowy Cross. He had never had a game turn this bad on him, and it made his senses swim. What Moncrief would do with him next was a terror and a mystery. Maybe the big preacher really would hang him. Maybe that woman on the mountain really was a nun. He couldn't say. He didn't know. He just reached into the log slowly, slipped his palm carefully under the leather, and drew the saddlebags out.

“Put it down and back away over yonder,” Carrol ordered. He kept his sights trained on the vest buttons as the little sneak shrank away in small, timid steps.

“Don't kill me,” Hassard blurted. “For the love of God, Moncrief, don't kill me here.” Tears burst from his eyes like a flood.

“Shut your trap,” the preacher growled, disgusted. He looked down at the saddlebags and turned back the flap of the near pouch. Inside he found the .36-caliber Smith & Wesson, rust pitted, cocked, lying on top of a stack of paper money.

Frank's Colt must be in the other pouch, he thought. Or …

Frank had gotten him almost to Cañon City. Almost to the penitentiary. He had let his guard down.

The thought shot at him like a lightning bolt, and from the corner of his eye, he saw that Hassard was still backing away, timidly, in little shuffling steps. Even before his eyes could glance up, the notion was in his head, and he remembered a low limb behind the crown of Hassard's hat. Backing toward it now, his hands in the air, pleading, blubbering, conniving.

Carrol's eyes came up, wild and alert, and saw Hassard's desperation. It was already happening. Dee Hassard was pretending to trip backward over a rotten limb in the grass. His hands were reaching for the low-hanging limb above him, as if to catch himself from the fall. Frank's pistol was up there. Lodged in a fork or something. It wasn't in the saddlebags at all. Hassard was one beat ahead, and there was no time to think.

Carrol let the barrel find its mark, tightened his grip on the trigger. He saw the murdering little swindler hump in midair, the blast whipping him to the ground as the rotten limb in the grass caught his heel.

The parson sprang, cocked the revolver for another shot. He looked down at Hassard and found the pale blue eyes open, reflecting flickers of light on fluttering aspen leaves. He kicked him once or twice, just to be sure. He checked for warm breath, pausing long.

Finally, Carrol Moncrief let the hammer spring rest on his revolver and slipped the weapon back into its holster. He sighed, trying to exhale the ball of nausea in his gut.

He looked now at the tree limb above the dead man, but found no revolver there. No knife. Nothing.

Stepping slowly to the saddlebags, he knelt, and shot yet another reassuring glance at the body. He opened the leather flap of the second pouch and found Frank's .45-caliber Colt inside, cocked, resting on a pouch of gold dust.

Dee Hassard had finally connived himself to death.

Thirty-two

In years to come, Ramon would tell it often to the children of Guajolote: how the gold Sister Petra had prayed for appeared in the coals of that high mountain campfire in the country of the Snowy Cross. And the children's parents and grandparents would tell them it was true, for they had been there the day Ramon returned to Guajolote with the gold coins, back when he was just a boy.

“Why Guajolote?” the incredulous young ones would ask, crowding around the good father in the shade of a cottonwood that grew between the two arms of the Ojo de los Brazos. “Why would God want to save this village?”

“¿Quien sabe?”
Ramon would tell them, shrugging his shoulders. “One never knows. Perhaps in a thousand years, this place will amount to something.” He would laugh and stroke his fingers through the black hair of one of the children. “That is God's business.”

“Padre Ramon, tell us about Sister Petra.”

His heart would throb and he would reply: “What do you want to know about her?”

“What did she look like?”

“Ay, muchachos,”
he would say, turning his palms to the brilliant New Mexican skies, his eyes sparkling like an ax against a grindstone. “She was the most beautiful woman you ever did see.”

 

By Mike Blakely from Tom Doherty Associates

Comanche Dawn

Come Sundown

Dead Reckoning

Forever Texas

The Last Chance

Moon Medicine

Shortgrass Song

The Snowy Range Gang

Spanish Blood

Summer of Pearls

Too Long at the Dance

Vendetta Gold

 

“BLAKELY'S WRITING IS CRISP, ENTICING, AND UNDERSCORED WITH DEPTH … HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.”

—
American Cowboy
on
Too Long at the Dance

“The only formula here is talent. Blakely is a superb storyteller in the gritty tradition of Elmer Kelton and Benjamin Capps, and this is one of those Western novels with an unmistakably genuine spirit and style.”

—
Books of the South-West
on
Too Long at the Dance

“Plenty of good-guy–bad-guy action, a poignant love story, and an unerring sense of contemporary detail make this historical novel sing.”

—
Texas Monthly
on
Too Long at the Dance

“He is a gifted storyteller.… Blakely has a remarkable eye and feel for physical action and a striking ability to render the swift blur of violent confrontation.”

—
Texas Books in Review
on
Too Long at the Dance

“Blakely brings a fresh and wonderful new voice to the Western. Readers will hear more from him, and all of it will be good.”

—Norman Zollinger, author of
Not of War Only

“An exciting, suspenseful novel with well-fleshed characters and several surprises.… The gunfights and breaking-in of mustangs are breathtaking.”

—
Library Journal
on
The Snowy Range Gang

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.