Chapter 20
The Kid’s razor-sharp reflexes saved him. He twisted aside and brought up the rifle in his hands. Metal rang against metal as the Winchester’s barrel deflected the knife aimed at his throat.
The Apache crashed into him, driving him off his feet. The Kid managed to hang on to the rifle as he rolled over. Levering the Winchester, he swung the muzzle toward the warrior, who had leaped agilely back to his feet.
Flame stabbed into the darkness as the Winchester blasted. The Kid saw the Apache jerk and stumble, but the would-be killer kept coming at him.
He wasn’t alone, either. With howls meant to strike fear into an enemy’s heart, more of the warriors leaped from the bank into the camp.
The Kid’s shot had alerted Kelly and the other men, however, and like him, the perilous lives they led had given them to ability to wake up instantly and be dangerous right away. Kelly came up out of his bedroll with a revolver in each hand. Colt flame bloomed in the night as both guns roared their deadly song.
Chess had his rifle. It barked wickedly as he cranked off several shots in less than two heartbeats. A few yards away, Valdez employed a machete he had pulled from somewhere in his gear. He hacked left and right as he waded into the attacking Apaches. Blood flew in the air like rain.
Mateo fought the invaders on their own terms, gliding through the shadows like a phantom. The knife in his hand flicked out, snake-quick, and cut a throat or pierced a heart.
The Kid was still in the fight, too. He whirled and fired the Winchester again, cutting down another warrior about to leap off the bank.
There were more Apaches up on the bank, and they stopped trying to engage their foes in close combat. They opened fire with their rifles, pouring lead down into the wash heedless of hitting their own men.
The Kid dived behind a rock as bullets whined around him. He came up on a knee and brought the Winchester to his shoulder as he returned the fire. His aim was deadly accurate, even in the dark, as he used the muzzle flashes as targets.
Kelly’s revolvers and Chess’s rifle blasted from where they had taken cover in the thick brush. As The Kid reloaded, he glanced around to see where Valdez and Mateo were, but he couldn’t account for them. It was possible they were among the sprawled shapes lying motionless on the ground in death.
Then, suddenly, the men on the bank began shrieking in pain, cries that were abruptly cut off. Someone roared curses in Spanish. It was Valdez.
“Hold your fire!” Kelly shouted. “Lupe and Mateo are up there among them!”
It was true. Several of the Apaches came hurtling off the bank to land on the floor of the wash in limp sprawls. No more shots rang out, but The Kid heard some ugly, wet sounds that had to be Valdez’s machete chopping into human flesh.
A few moments later, Valdez called, “They are all dead.”
“Mateo?” Kelly asked.
“Sí,” the Yaqui replied in a flat voice. The Kid didn’t know whether Mateo was agreeing with Valdez’s assessment or just acknowledging that he was still alive. It didn’t really matter.
“Chess?”
“I’m all right, Kelly. A scratch or two, that’s all.”
“Morgan?”
“Right here,” The Kid said. “I’m fine.”
Valdez and Mateo slid down the bank.
“I need a light,” Valdez said. “One of the bastards stuck a knife in my arm.”
“Chess, stir up the fire and see if there are any embers left,” Kelly ordered. “Don’t worry, Lupe, we’ll patch you up.”
“The only thing I worry about is if this arm stiffens up. This is my scalping arm!”
Within a few minutes, Chess had a little fire burning again. By its light, he examined the deep gash in Valdez’s arm.
“You got any of that tequila left?” Chess asked.
“Sí, of course.”
“I can put it to good use.”
In the flickering light, Valdez looked horrified. “You mean to use perfectly good tequila to clean this knife wound?” he demanded. “I would sooner have my whole arm rot off than waste it that way!”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” Kelly said. “You’re the best man with a knife we have.” He paused. “Well, when it comes to taking an Apache’s hair, anyway. I reckon Mateo’s got you beat when it comes to pure killing.”
The Yaqui grunted.
“All right,” Valdez said with a sigh. “Chess, do what you have to do.”
Chess fetched the bottle from Valdez’s saddlebags and poured the raw liquor over the wound, washing away the blood and hopefully anything else that might cause it to fester. “A sawbones would probably stitch that up, but I’ve never been much of one for sewing.”
Mateo put a hand on Chess’s shoulder and made a motion with his head to indicate that Chess should step aside.
Valdez’s eyes widened in alarm. “Don’t let that loco Indian near me!”
“He just wants to help you,” Kelly said.
“Sí ... by torturing me!”
Mateo’s lips moved a fraction of an inch in what passed for a smile.
In the end, after Valdez had downed several healthy slugs of the tequila, Mateo stitched up the ugly gash and wrapped clean strips of cloth around it, knotting them tightly in place. Valdez moved his arm around and winced at the pain that caused.
“It hurts, but I can use it.” As if to prove it, he drew his knife from its sheath. “Lemme at those scalps.”
Mateo went with him and stood guard while Valdez went about his grisly work, stuffing scalp after scalp into the canvas bag.
While that was going on, The Kid, Kelly, and Chess hunkered by the fire.
“You reckon there are any more traps like that waiting for us up ahead?” Chess asked.
“Not much chance of it,” Kelly answered without hesitation. “I’m not surprised some of those varmints were laying for us down here, but there were at least ... what? Ten of them?”
“At least,” Chess agreed. “I’m sure Valdez is keeping an accurate tally.”
“The rest of those Apaches probably think that was plenty to deal with any threat,” Kelly went on. “They sure as hell won’t be expecting any trouble now. This plays right into our hands.”
The Kid had already figured out how Kelly approached things. No matter what happened, Kelly was going to claim that was what he expected, and not only that, it was going to work out to their advantage. He was an eternal optimist and a man who couldn’t admit even the possibility that he’d been wrong about something.
The Kid didn’t care. Kelly could think whatever he wanted to. The only thing that mattered was that they stay alive long enough to get those prisoners away from the Apaches.
Valdez and Mateo came back to the fire. Valdez tossed the sack onto the ground. It made a squishy sound when it landed.
“Twelve more scalps, amigos,” he said. “We have collected an even twenty. A good day’s work.”
“We can do better,” Kelly said. “I’d like to get every one in that war party.”
“That would be a small fortune,” Chess observed.
“Damn right it would.” Kelly jerked his head in a nod. “And who deserves it more than we do?”
Valdez grinned, Chess smiled, and even Mateo nodded his head in agreement.
“You’ve been good luck for us since you came along, Kid,” Kelly said. “If those Apaches had cut your throat and jumped the rest of us without any warning, they probably would have wiped us out.”
“You’re saying that I saved your lives?” The Kid asked.
Kelly’s face hardened slightly in the firelight. “I’m saying that you’re earning your share, nothing more than that. Don’t go getting a big head. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
“And by a lot of work, you mean a lot of killing,” The Kid said.
“Well, sure.” Kelly looked around. “Any of that tequila left?”
They rode away early in the morning, leaving the Apaches’ bodies for the buzzards, the coyotes, and the ants.
Though they had survived one attack, nobody relaxed. Where there were a dozen Apaches, there could be a dozen more—or two dozen or three dozen—and none of the men wanted to take any chances. Nobody had slept much after the fight the night before, just fitful catnaps while at least one man was always awake and on guard.
The wash was still rough going, and the temperature climbed as quickly as the sun did. Not even a breath of air stirred inside the arroyo where the men rode. The Kid was glad when they finally reached the end of it. There wasn’t much of a breeze blowing on the desert, just a faint stirring in the atmosphere, but even that was enough to bring a little cooling to sweat-soaked skin.
Not far away, foothills loomed with the mountains behind them. The green pines dotting the slopes gave them a cool look, even though the air was as hot as ever. Up in the hills, in the shade of those pines, it would be cooler.
“How will we know if we’re ahead of the Apaches?” The Kid asked Kelly.
“See that saddle?” The Irishman pointed to a dip between two rugged hills. “The trail to San Remo goes through there. If there are no fresh tracks, that means we’re ahead of the savages.”
“Maybe they went some other way,” The Kid suggested.
“We’ve been down here off and on for more than two years, hunting Apaches,” Kelly said. “I know where they go, Kid. There are other trails through the hills ... but
that’s
the one that leads to the pass, and on the other side of the pass is the valley where San Remo is located. Where Guzman’s headquarters are. Any other route would take them days out of their way, and they aren’t going to want that.”
What Kelly said made sense, The Kid supposed.
The men drew their rifles as they rode toward the saddle between the two hills. They didn’t want to ride up onto the rear guard of the Apache war party and not be prepared.
Mateo inspected the ground closely. When they reached the top of the slope, they reined in. Mateo looked at Kelly and shook his head.
“They haven’t come through here yet,” Kelly said.
The Kid agreed with that conclusion. He hadn’t seen any fresh tracks, either.
He turned in the saddle and looked back to the northeast. They were high enough that he could see the vast sweep of that godforsaken wilderness. Somewhere out there, if they were still alive, were Jess Ritter, Violet and Elsie Price, and Leah Gabbert. They were probably terrified, miserable, and humiliated by the degradation they had been forced to endure already.
But The Kid clung to the hope that they were alive. As long as they were, there was a chance to help them. He had been determined to turn his back on everyone’s problems, including his own, but fate hadn’t worked out that way.
Kelly pointed to the slopes on either side of the gap.
“Let’s get up there and find some good spots. Morgan and I will take this side. Mateo, you take Lupe and Chess up yonder on the other side.”
Mateo nodded.
Kelly turned a wolfish grin toward the desert. “Lots more scalps headed this way.”
Chapter 21
The Kid and Enrique Kelly climbed about fifty yards up the slope, leading their horses. When they reached an area that was thickly covered with trees, as well as having a cluster of boulders just a short distance uphill, Kelly declared, “This is it. This is where we’ll wait for them. We’ll put the horses in the rocks where they’ll be safe, then pick good firing positions here in the trees.”
They led their mounts behind the boulders and picketed them, then returned to the thick stand of pines. The spot gave them a good field of fire over the entire trail for several hundred yards.
The Kid looked at the opposite hill and didn’t see any sign of Chess, Valdez, and Mateo, even though he knew they were over there. Obviously, they were well hidden.
“I’ve been wondering about something,” he said to Kelly as they took up their positions behind thick-trunked pines. “Even with the twenty men we’ve killed, there are still a lot more of them than there are of us. What’s to stop them from charging up the slopes and overrunning us with their superior numbers?”
“That’s why we’ve got to do as much damage as possible as soon as we open fire. Pick your targets well, Kid, and shoot fast. If we can put another fifteen or twenty of them on the ground before they know what’s going on, it’ll spook them. They won’t know how many men are up here, so they’ll try to get out of this bottleneck as fast as they can and head on through the pass to San Remo.”
“If it doesn’t work out that way, we won’t stand much of a chance,” The Kid warned.
Kelly shrugged. “Nobody ever said this life would be easy. A man’s got to fight, and he’s got to take some chances, if he’s going to get what he wants. Otherwise, what’s the point?” The Irishman laughed. “Anyway, the only thing that’s ever scared me is thinking about getting old and dying in bed. How about you?”
“That’s not likely to happen,” The Kid said.
“Exactly. Don’t worry about it, Kid. Just enjoy it as it comes.”
Fine advice from a bloody-handed killer, The Kid thought.
That description fit him, too, he reminded himself. Maybe Kelly was right.
But there were still those prisoners to think of. Until he had done everything he could to help them, he couldn’t let himself get carried away by the urge to do battle that had grown up inside him in recent years.
Now that they were in position, all they could do was wait. The Kid had not been raised to be the most patient of men ... but that life was in the past. Now he was able to stand still, alert, his eyes searching the desert to the northeast of the foothills.
And after a while, sure enough ...
He saw something.
It was just a smudge at first, with a haze of dust floating over it, but as it came closer the vague, dark mass took on shape. It resolved itself into a large group of riders.
As Kelly had said, the Apaches weren’t in any hurry. They approached the foothills at a deliberate pace, most of them on horseback but some walking, striding along tirelessly beside the horses.
“What’d I tell you?” Kelly called softly. “I was right, wasn’t I, Kid?”
“Looks like it,” The Kid agreed. He wished he could fetch his telescope from his saddlebags so he could get a better look at the group. He wanted to be sure the four women were with them.
But there was too great a chance sunlight would reflect off the glass and warn the Apaches that someone was up there waiting for them. The Kid knew he couldn’t run that risk. He would just have to wait until they were closer before he looked for Jess and the other captives.
Now that the Apaches were almost there, the waiting was harder. The Kid felt his heart slugging in his chest as the first riders in the war party reached the slope and started up toward the saddle. His eyes narrowed with intensity as he swept his gaze along the column.
Like a splash of light in the middle of surrounding darkness, the sun shone on blond hair. The Kid leaned forward. The riders came closer and shifted around, and suddenly he got a good look at Jessica Ritter.
Jess rode one of the Apache ponies by herself. Her blouse was in tatters, and her skirt was pulled up since she rode astride. The Kid could tell by the way she held her hands in front of her that her wrists were tied together.
But her head was up, and he was confident if he was close enough to make out any details, he would see defiance burning in her eyes.
A few yards behind her, two women with brown hair rode double on one of the horses. That was probably Violet Price and her daughter, The Kid thought. Farther back in the column, the fourth captive, Leah Gabbert, rode in front of one of the warriors with his arm around her. Her long auburn hair hung over her face as her head drooped forward. Everything about her screamed despair, and The Kid didn’t figure he could blame her for feeling that way.
As far as any of the women knew, no help was coming for them and no one was even aware of their plight.
It was understandable that they would give up, but from the looks of things, Leah was the only one who had so far. Once she realized that things weren’t completely hopeless—almost, maybe, but not completely—she might come around.
“Kid!” Kelly called in a whisper. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
For a second The Kid wasn’t sure what Kelly meant, but then he realized he’d been concentrating so hard on the women that he hadn’t noticed something very important about the Apaches.
There weren’t nearly as many of them as he’d expected.
It was fairly easy to make a rough count. The Kid came up with forty-two. That was still overwhelming odds against five men, but he’d been expecting to see seventy-five or eighty Apaches in the group.
Either the war party hadn’t been as big to start with as the reports Lt. Nicholson had gotten indicated, or else the Apaches had lost quite a few men in the raids they had carried out before hitting the wagon train.
“If we can wipe out half of them, they’ll cut and run for sure,” Kelly said. “Then we can pick off some more while they’re running. I’d have liked to get those other scalps, but this is all right.”
That was one way of looking at it, The Kid thought. He brought the rifle up and settled the stock against his shoulder.
“Wait until some of them have gone past us,” Kelly said. “That way the ones in front will be more likely to run.”
“What about Chess, Valdez, and Mateo?”
“They won’t open fire until we do.”
Impatience gnawed at The Kid’s nerves. Jess rode past, her head turning from side to side as she studied her surroundings. The Kid wondered if she was looking for an escape route. That would be just like her, he thought, checking for a way to make a run for it if she got the chance.
He hoped to give her that chance, very soon.
The prisoners were all in the front half of the column. Kelly let them go by. Then he looked over at The Kid and nodded as he lifted his rifle.
The Kid rested his cheek against the stock of his Winchester and peered over the barrel.
Kelly fired, and the head of one of the Apaches on horseback exploded.
An instant after Kelly’s rifle cracked, The Kid’s blasted as well. He had settled his sights on the bright red headband holding back the coarse black hair of one of the riders. The warrior flew off his pony like he’d been struck by a giant hammer as The Kid’s slug bored through his brain.
Even before the Apache’s body had time to hit the ground, The Kid worked the Winchester’s lever and swung the rifle toward another target, this time a warrior who was on foot. He drilled the man through the body. The Apache crumpled to the dirt.
It wasn’t a battle, at least not starting out. It was more like murder. The five men hidden on the slopes fired as fast as they could, pouring leaden death down into the gap between the two hills. The Kid glanced across the way and caught a glimpse of Mateo darting from tree to tree, killing another Apache every time he paused behind another bit of cover.
The Kid realized what the Yaqui was doing. His actions made it seem like there were more gunmen up on the hill than there really were. The Kid contributed to that illusion himself by dashing over to another tree and cranking off three swift rounds from there that dropped two more Apaches.
At least a dozen of the Indians were down already, and more continued to fall to the deadly accurate shots of the scalp hunters. As Kelly had predicted, the warriors leading the column kicked their horses into a gallop. The Kid saw that one of the Apaches had hold of the reins attached to Jess’s horse and was leading it. He swung his rifle and put a bullet in the man’s back, driving him forward over his mount’s neck. The reins fell free.
Jess’s horse was running loose now.
The Kid stopped shooting to watch as Jess leaned far forward and tried to retrieve the reins with her bound hands. Before she could manage to do that, the horse’s flashing forelegs tangled with the dangling reins, and suddenly the animal fell, sending Jess flying off its back and sailing through the air as the horse crashed to the ground.
The Kid’s heart leaped with alarm as he saw Jess land in a heap and roll over and over until she stopped and lay in a limp sprawl. He didn’t know how badly she was hurt, but she wasn’t going to have a chance to get away now ... unless he went down there and got her.
He was about to turn away and run for his horse when he saw one of the mounted Apaches racing toward Jess’s fallen form. The warrior looked like he intended to pick her up. The Kid snapped his rifle to his shoulder and blew the man off his horse.
The Apaches were starting to fight back. They peppered the slopes on both sides of the saddle with rifle fire. The Kid had to throw himself behind a tree as slugs whined and buzzed around his head. He heard more bullets thudding into the trunk. Pieces of bark and chips of wood sprayed through the air.
When the shooting let up enough for The Kid to take another look, Jess was gone.
Anger and disappointment shot through him. He looked past the gap to where a number of Apaches were fleeing across a broad stretch of open ground. He caught sight of Jess’s blond hair on one of the ponies. A flash of auburn told him that Leah Gabbert was still a prisoner, too. He couldn’t tell about the Price women.
“Son of a
bitch!”
he burst out.
“Don’t worry, Kid, we got more than half of them.” Kelly fired again and dropped one of the few Apaches still putting up a fight.
“But the others got away with the prisoners.”
“I told you, we know where they’re going. We’ll try to catch up to them before they get to San Remo, and if we don’t, we know we can find the women there.” Kelly looked over at The Kid with a shrewd expression on his rugged face. “You sweet on one of those gals, Kid? Is that why you’re so interested in them?”
“I just want to help them if I can,” The Kid replied. “But the scalps are more important.”
That was an outright lie, but Kelly seemed to believe it. He jerked his head in a nod. “Yeah, and there’s a bunch of them down there now, just waiting for Lupe’s scalping knife.”
The men on the opposite hill picked off the few members of the war party who hadn’t fled. After the shooting had been over for a few minutes, Mateo and Valdez cautiously made their way down the slope to check on the bodies and start the grim work of harvesting the scalps.
Kelly, Chess, and The Kid moved out into the open to stand guard while the other two men were busy. When they finally all rendezvoused, leading their horses, Valdez held up two bulging, bloodstained canvas sacks.
“Twenty-four more scalps,” he announced triumphantly. “We’re gonna be rich men!”
“Damn right,” Kelly said. “I counted forty-two of the savages. That means there are only eighteen of them left, and some of them are probably wounded. That’s mighty good work. I’m proud to be riding with you fellas.”
The Kid didn’t take any pride in associating with murderers ... but so far they had proven to be useful murderers, he reminded himself. He wasn’t sure they were any worse than he was.
He could brood about that when Jess and the other three women were free and safe, he thought.
“You know how to find this San Remo place, where Guzman’s headquarters are?” he asked Kelly.
“Sure,” the Irishman replied. “We’ve been there.”
“Well, if all the scalping’s finished, let’s get moving,” The Kid said. “There’s still work to do.”
Kelly grinned, but there was a steely edge to his voice as he said, “Don’t start giving orders, Kid. But I’ve got to admit ... I like your enthusiasm for the job!”