The Killing Shot (6 page)

The first thing he saw was a face. Sunburned. Blond hair, dirty and unkempt. Green eyes. Thin lips. A hard face. A girl's face. A kid's face.

“My name's Blanche,” the face said.

“I'll do the talking, kid,” came another voice, followed by another face. A man, needing a shave, wearing a battered hat. Wild, angry eyes. “Who are you?”

“Mac,” was all he could manage before plunging back into that cold, midnight void.

 

A blacksmith's sledge pounded an anvil inside his head, the top of which felt as if someone had poured steaming water over it. With a groan, Reilly forced his eyelids open and saw the girl's face again. Her bright eyes darted before landing back on his, and she whispered, “You remember what I told you?”

He remembered nothing but the girl's face. His confusion must have showed. The girl's lips moved. It looked like she said “Damn,” but Reilly didn't think little girls spoke like that. He smelled piñon wood burning, coffee boiling. He tried to move his head, but that hurt. He tried to remember.

“Listen to me,” the girl started, only to be cut off by that second voice he vaguely recalled.

“I told you to holler when he woke up, kid. I talk to this hombre first.”

Spurs jingled, and the other face, the man with the crazy eyes, reappeared as he shoved the girl aside.

“All right, Mac,” the man said. “You got some questions to answer, and they'd better satisfy me.”

A ton of sand coated Reilly's throat. “Water,” he said softly.

“Later.” A short-barreled Colt sprung into the man's hand. The cylinder rotated a huge bullet as the revolver cocked. The man pressed the barrel under Reilly's nose.

“What happened down in the valley?” the man asked.

“Ambush,” Reilly said, and he started to remember. Gus Henderson. Poor Frank Denton and Slim Chisum shot dead, Slim while he was taking a piss. And Frank, as good a lawman as Reilly had ever known. But this man with the bulldog's face and the madman's eyes, he hadn't been part of K.C. Kraft's gang. More memories came. K.C., riding south. W.W., slapping those manacles on Reilly's wrists. And…the girl, the kid. He could picture her lips moving, her hands reaching through the bars of the prison wagon. Reilly looked down, saw his hands were freed. He reached up, fingered over his bandaged neck, felt his chest.

“My patience,” the man with the gun said, “is about to end.”

“Give him some water,” the girl's voice said. “He can't talk.”

“Shut up.” His finger tightened on the trigger. “Ambush, you said. I ain't blind. I could see you was ambushed. Don't play me for—”

“Give him some damned water!” the girl barked.

“I'm going to give him a hole between his nostrils and his mouth. Then I'm going to wash out your mouth with soap.”

Another voice, from off in the shadows. “Give him some water, Pardo.”

“Why don't you introduce all of us to this hombre, Chaucer?” the man said, glancing over his shoulder. He looked again at Reilly. “Start talking. Or start dying.”

Reilly's fingers ran down his vest. His badge. His badge was gone. His eyes found the girl. The name bounced around in his weary head.
Pardo…Pardo…Pardo…
He saw the girl's face again, remembering, heard her saying something, felt her small hands on his chest, taking off his badge, heard that voice, that warning.

The man with the Colt wet his lips. He swallowed, thinking, and grinned. “One sentence, Mac. One sentence, but make it a good one. Then I'll give you some water. Or a chunk of lead.”

He tried to swallow, couldn't. “They were,” he tried, wondering if anyone could really hear him, “hauling my ass…to…prison.”

He closed his eyes. He didn't expect Pardo to believe him. He expected to feel a bullet tear into his brain, and he wouldn't have minded it one bit.

 

The water revived him. The girl smiled at him, and even Pardo grinned. He still held the Colt, and the pistol remained cocked, but it was on Pardo's lap now, not pressed against Reilly's nose.

Reilly wanted to drink forever, but the girl pulled the canteen away. “Not too much,” she said. “We'll get you some broth in a minute.”

“Feel better?” the man with the gun, the man named Pardo, said easily.

“Not really,” Reilly answered honestly.

“Hauling you to prison, eh?” Pardo said. “Yuma, I take it?”

Reilly started to nod, but there was something about Pardo's tone. He tried to savor the taste of water, the wetness on his cracked lips. The girl had dipped a bandana in a bowl of water, wrung it out, placed it on his forehead. The coolness almost put him back to sleep, but the man's voice called out, sharper.

“Why were they taking you to Yuma?”

Reilly swallowed. He had been taking W.W. and L. J. Kraft to Fort Bowie, to meet up with Lieutenant Jeremiah Talley. The man named Pardo was lifting the revolver.

“Not Yuma,” Reilly said, and the gun lowered. “Huntsville.”

“Huntsville?” Pardo's eyebrows arched. “Huntsville?”

“Texas,” Reilly said. It seemed far enough away.

“You're in Arizona Territory,” Pardo reminded him.

“Thought it was far enough from Texas,” Reilly said. “It wasn't.”

The girl let him have more water. Another woman, lean, harder, reeking of mescal, squatted beside him with a bowl of something that smelled a lot better than she did.

“Want me to give him this, Jimmy?” the woman asked.

“Leave it,” Pardo told her, his eyes boring into Reilly. “All right, Mac. What were three deputy marshals in Arizona taking you to Texas for?”

Reilly looked at the bowl the stringy woman had left at his side. His stomach pleaded for the broth. He had never known broth could smell so good. He looked back at Pardo. Pardo. The name, the face. Bloody Jim Pardo. Everybody in Arizona Territory knew about Jim Pardo. So did the people in Texas. Maybe he shouldn't have tried lying about Texas, but it was too late now.

“Fort McKavett,” Reilly said.

“Where's that?”

“Texas.” His pal Talley had been stationed there before being transferred west to Bowie. “San Saba country.”

“What about it?”

Reilly tried to grin. “Soldiers there don't like me much.”

Explosively, Pardo laughed. “They don't like Jim Pardo, neither.” He lowered the hammer on the revolver, and shoved the Colt into his holster, reached over, and lifted the bowl and spoon. The spoon moved in Pardo's hand to Reilly's mouth. Reilly's lips parted. The broth went in, warming him as it made its way down his throat. Pardo brought the spoon back to the bowl, filled it, and moved it back to Reilly's mouth.

 

“What do you think, son?” Ruby Pardo spit into the fire, the tobacco juice sizzling against a stone.

He shrugged. If Mac had told him they were taking him to Yuma, he would have killed him then and there. 'Course, they could have been headed to Yuma, could have turned the wagon around when they were ambushed, could have turned back because of some other problem, but Texas made sense.
Extradition
, Wade Chaucer had mentioned. Some big word like that.

“If he robbed the Yankees at McKavett or killed one of them, he might be all right,” Pardo said.

“You trust him, then?” His mother put a screwdriver to the Evans.

Reilly filled a cup with black coffee. “You know me better than that, Ma. Man still has some questions to answer. Like how come he wasn't killed? Like who ambushed them? Like what exactly is he wanted for in Texas?”

“Maybe Apaches done it,” Ruby said.

“No, Ma. Apaches wouldn't have left him to bake to death in that wagon. They would have had their fun with him.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wait. I'll see the major before long. Major Ritcher would know something about this guy.”

Ruby set the rifle and screwdriver aside. “That's smart, son. Real smart. Don't trust nobody, and keep your eye on that Wade Chaucer.”

“I always do, Ma.”

“Smart. You're smart, and brave. You pa's proud of you, Jim. Real proud.”

Pardo rubbed his nose and frowned. Pa. If only his father could tell him that, to his face, but he had been shot down like a mangy dog during the war. Kansas redlegs had burned down his home, turned Pardo and his ma into outlaws. Well, a lot of bluecoats had paid for what they'd done to his family, and Pardo hadn't finished collecting.

“I'm proud of you, too, Jim,” his mother said. That meant more to Pardo than anything. He sat a little straighter.

“And what about the woman and her kid?” Ruby asked. “The woman's fit as a fiddle now.”

“We'll see about them, too.” The coffee tasted as bitter as his mother's voice had turned when she spoke of Dagmar Wilhelm.

 

The girl's face had changed. A slim hand lifted a spoon, but pulled away.

“You are staring at me,” she said. A trace of a German accent.

Reilly tested his voice. “Either I've slept as long as Rip Van Winkle…”

She tried to laugh, but couldn't. Tears welled in her eyes, but she fought them down. “I'm Blanche's mother,” she said. “I'm Mrs. Wilhelm.”

She was tall and slender, her clothes torn, stained with blood; face, hands, and arms purpled with bruises, cuts; her eyes filled with a pain caused by something other than those injuries. He could see her in the kid named Blanche, but this one wasn't so tough, and her lips were full, round, not the thin, frowning, hard lines of her daughter. Mrs. Wilhelm had fashioned a bandana into a bonnet, and grimaced when she lifted the spoon again.

“I'm…” He stopped. Who could he trust in this camp? The kid had said she and her mother had been taken by Pardo. The kid had saved his life. But…still…

“Call me Mac,” he said. He slid up, and took the spoon from her shaking hand. She seemed grateful, and quickly lowered her arm, pressing it slightly against her side.
Ribs
, Reilly thought. She had busted a rib or two. He wondered,
How long have I been here?

“I can feed myself, ma'am,” he told her.

When he had finished eating, he tried to stand, but needed Mrs. Wilhelm and Blanche to help him to his feet. He leaned against a tree, aware of every eye in camp trained on him.

They were far from the sagebrush and desert, higher, much cooler. He felt the trunk of the tree supporting him, looked up at the giant limbs, and shade. A massive oak. Piñon and sycamores also hemmed them in, stretching toward a blue sky, climbing through boulders and brush, and beyond them, almost blocked out by the trees, rose towering spires of granite.

The Dragoon Mountains, Reilly guessed. No, it wasn't a guess. He knew. More than a decade ago, the Dragoons had been the stronghold of the great Apache Cochise, and he could see why an Apache, or a man like Jim Pardo, would choose this spot as his hideout. It had to be damned near impregnable, with plenty of shade, and, more important, water. He forced himself to the clear spring in the boulders, heard the rhythmic dripping of the water, squatted with cupped hands, and drank.

It hurt to pull himself up, but he managed, leaned back against the hard rock, and looked at the campfire.

An older woman, thin but mean, worked on a rifle. Reilly blinked. His Evans! She spit into the fire, not giving Reilly a moment's thought. That would be Ruby Pardo, Jim's mother. He had read one account, in a newspaper, or maybe it had been in a dime novel, that said Ruby Pardo tied the scalps of the men she had killed on her pants legs, but she didn't wear pants. She wore a filthy riding skirt that maybe once had been a brilliant red, and, anyway, he didn't see any scalps.

Away from the fire, a man stood in front of a Sibley tent, half of his face lathered, an ivory-handled razor in his left hand. Shirtless, with black pants, and still wearing a gun while he shaved. Wade Chaucer, Reilly guessed.

The other men's names he didn't recollect, but he wouldn't forget their faces. A sorry-looking bunch, who sat around the fire, trying to focus on the poker game they were playing, but staring at him. One tossed his cards on the deadwood, unsheathed a giant Bowie knife, and began running the blade against a whetstone. He seemed older than the rest.

Reilly remembered the dark-haired woman who smelled of mescal. He didn't see her, but there were other tents, a cabin halfway built, two lean-tos, and a corral. This had been a camp for quite a while. He went back to the fire. Three men. Plus the man shaving. And Pardo, wherever he was. But there had to be more. Jim Pardo would have at least one man on sentry duty.

When his head started swimming, he decided he'd better head back to his bedroll, before somebody had to carry him there.

 

For supper, the girl brought in a plate of beans, two burned tortillas, and a cup of coffee. Reilly was sitting up, rubbing his wrists, watching the men and women at the fire. The graybeard was gone, but a swarthy gent had replaced him. Likely trading off guard duty.

“Where's Pardo?” he asked, taking the plate from the girl's hand.

“I ain't his keeper,” she said, kneeling.

“Somebody's going to slap that smart mouth of yours shut,” Reilly said. “And it might be me.”

Handing him the coffee, she eyed him with a measure of respect.

“He rode off this morning.”

“How many men does he have?”

“Five. That's all I seen. But I hear them talk that one of them got killed when they wrecked the train, and his brother took him home to get planted. I don't know when he'll come back.”

“They wrecked a train?”

“Yeah. Killed my stepfather. Don't give me that look. He was a louse.”

Reilly tested the coffee. It was terrible, but it was coffee. “You best get back, look after your mother. They don't want us talking much.”