Arroyo de la Muerte Read online

  The three skeletons now appeared to have some company. A large pile of rock fronted the three dead men. The pile was roughly oblong and maybe three feet high. The stones had been piled recently—within the past several hours, for the tracks around the pile were fresh. There were boot tracks as well as the tracks of shod horses. Brown streaks marked the cactus and red caliche around the pile—dried blood, perhaps.

  Yakima swung down with a sigh. The ride, in his less than peak condition, had worn him out. The heat and the sun and glaring light hadn’t done his head a bit of good though he’d gotten rather good at suppressing pain. He’d endured a lot of it, so he knew it well.

  He took another long pull off the canteen, making a mental note to be sure and refill the flask before leaving here. He didn’t want to cap off his tumultuous stay in this country by dying of thirst in the desert, especially when he didn’t need to. The well was over by Jesus’s stone shack; he’d been too preoccupied with locating the Bundrens and Rusty Tull to have remembered to fill the flask earlier.

  Also, his brain was still fogged by the whiskey. He’d have sworn off all tangleleg from here on in if he didn’t know himself well enough by now to know that such a proclamation would be a load of goat shit…

  He hung the canteen over his saddlehorn, shambled over to the rock pile, and removed one of the rocks. He let it roll to the ground, then unseated another and another. He’d doffed his hat and was working up an honest, working sweat when, removing yet another rock from the pile, he peered through the cracks in the rocks to see a brown eyeball staring back at him.

  Yakima gave a sharp grunt and stumbled backward, getting his spurs entangled with the ground and dropping to his butt. His heart hiccupped, and his quickening pulse aggravated that sledgehammer-wielding sadist in his head. His cheeks warmed with chagrin, he looked around quickly, automatically, making sure no one had seen his embarrassing display.

  Reassured that he was alone out here—alone save for the owner of that brown eye glaring up at him through the rocks—he heaved himself back to his feet and moved tentatively toward the stones once again. He crouched over the pile, wincing down at the widely staring eye, and removed the rocks around it until he’d fully revealed the head and pasty face of Collie Bundren—complete with a quarter-sized bullet hole in the dead center of his forehead.

  “Holy…shit...”

  Yakima reached to remove another stone. Something screeched over his left shoulder and slammed into the wall of the cliff just beyond him. Wolf whickered and tossed his head. As the crash of the rifle rose from behind Yakima, he spun with a curse and, dropping to a knee, jerked his stag-gripped Colt from its holster. He sent three bullets hurling toward where smoke puffed between a long, oblong boulder and a one-armed saguaro.

  A scream rose. There was the thud of a falling body accompanied by the clatter of a rifle.

  Yakima rose and hurried forward. As he did, he heard someone gain their feet and begin running off through the rocks and chaparral. He pushed between the oblong boulder and the saguaro and caught a glimpse of a slender back and long, dancing, dark-red hair before the man darted behind another boulder.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  Yakima broke into a run, spying an old Spencer repeater lying on the ground to his right. He weaved his way through the chaparral, following the ambusher’s path. He ran between two more pale boulders. Ahead of him, the shooter was running in a shambling, heavy-footed way across a sandy arroyo, heading for a nest of rocks on the other side.

  Yakima lengthened his strides and dove forward, knocking one of the shooter’s booted feet out from beneath him. The man screamed again and hit the ground. Yakima was on top of him, grabbing a shoulder curtained by long, dusty hair, and brusquely turned the man onto his back.

  Boy, rather…

  “No! Stop!” cried Rusty Tull, staring fearfully up at Yakima, clutching his upper left arm with his right hand. Blood bubbled up between his fingers.

  “Rusty!”

  “Stop!” the boy cried. “Leave me be, damn you!”

  Yakima glared down at him, his indignation at almost having his head blown off slow to fade. “Why in the hell did you shoot at me?”

  As the boy continue to stare up at him, eyes glazed with both terror and befuddlement, Yakima realized that Rusty didn’t recognize him. “You don’t remember me.”

  Rusty just stared at him, stretching his lips back from his teeth in pain, squeezing his wounded arm. Obviously, he had no--or at least a foggy memory--of Yakima. In town, the boy had been addled. He’d still been addled when he’d left. His eyes no longer owned that addled glaze, but he seemed not to recognize the half-breed, who rose to his knees and then to his feet, slowly returning his hogleg to its holster on his right thigh.

  He was tightening his jaws against the pain in his head which kicked up again when he’d made that dive.

  Rusty frowned as he stared up at him, still breathing hard. “I have…a vague recollection…”

  “We met in town. I’m…er, I was…the Apache Springs Marshal.”

  Still, Rusty only stared curiously up at him, trying to remember.

  “Why’d you take that shot at me?”

  “I thought…you was…one of them…”

  “One of who?”

  “You ain’t?”

  “No I ain’t. One of who—one of the men who killed your uncle, I take it?”

  Tears glazed the boy’s eyes, and he gave a single nod. He winced and glanced down at his wounded arm.

  “I’ll take a look at that.” Yakima dropped to a knee beside Rusty. The boy jerked away from him, his fear quick to return. “Easy, boy. Easy. I’m a friend…of sorts.”

  “You are?”

  “Reckon.”

  Yakima pried to boy’s gloved right hand from his left arm, and inspected the wound.

  “I think I do remember you,” the boy said. “Big…Injun?”

  Yakima gave a wry snort. “I’m right memorable. That doesn’t look too bad. I’ll pour some water on it and wrap it. It’ll hold you till we get back to town.” He looked at the kid resting back against the arroyo’s low bank. “What happened out here? You cousins dead, too?”

  Rusty drew his mouth corners down and looked at the ground. “Yes. I buried all three of ‘em in them rocks…after I worked my way back to the camp an’ found ‘em—all three—layin’ dead.”

  “Who killed ‘em?”

  “I didn’t get a good look at ‘em. Uncle Collie—he was awful mad when that girl got away. He knew I turned her loose though I tried to lie an’ tell him it was an accident. He started to skin my backside good with a quirt, an’ I run away from him. He sent Cash after me but Cash turned and ran back to the camp when we heard horseback riders. I hunkered down in the rocks, and that’s when I heard shoutin’ and all sorts of harsh words, and then…the shots came. I heard Collie and Cash and Cousin Dewey all screamin’. An’ then the screamin’ stopped and so did the shootin’.”

  Tears dribbled down the boy’s dusty cheeks, and his lips quivered with emotion.

  “When I heard the riders leave, I made way back to the camp.” Rusty was sobbing now, tears dribbling onto the ground between his raised knees. “I found ‘em…all three of ‘em…dead.” He sniffed, brushed his fist across his nose. “Everyone’s dead now. Chickasaw’s dead an’ so is Uncle Collie an’ Cousin Cash an’ Cousin Dewey.” He looked up through a golden veil of tears, sobbing. “I’m all alone now!”

  Yakima remembered that Chickasaw was the boy’s dead brother. It was Chickasaw’s grisly death that had caused his mind to go soft, so that when Emma had discovered him and his dead brother and brought Rusty to town, the boy had kept muttering over and over again about a snake, as though he were in a trance and was seeing snakes all over the place. Then the Bundrens had come for him, and hauled him off into the desert where, apparently, he’d regained his senses along with his memory of where the treasure-filled church was.

  And now his uncle and cousins
were dead.

  Maybe there really was something to that witch’s curse, after all.

  “Come on, kid,” Yakima said, crouching to pull the boy up by his good arm. “Let’s get you back to town.”

  Wolf gave a shrill warning whinny.

  Instantly, Yakima’s .44 was back in his right hand.

  “Now what?” he whispered.

  Chapter 13

  Again, Wolf whinnied.

  Hooves thudded as the stallion ran off, the black’s retreating rataplan replaced by the growing din of what sounded like two horses approaching at a hard gallop.

  Yakima stood tensely, listening, his left hand still wrapped around the right arm of Rusty Tull, who stood quietly beside him though Yakima thought he could hear the frightened boy’s heart drumming in his skinny chest.

  The horses stopped about fifty feet beyond the arroyo, back near the makeshift grave. Men’s low voices sounded briefly. One of the horses gave a rolling whicker. One of the two men said, “Tracks lead this way.”

  Yakima pulled Rusty back behind him. “Get down behind a rock.”

  The boy hurried into the chaparral and crouched behind a low boulder.

  Yakima raised his Colt and clicked the hammer back softly. Slow footsteps sounded from ahead. There was also the soft chinging of two sets of spurs. The footsteps stopped and then Yakima heard the two men converse in soft, hushed tones.

  Silence followed.

  Yakima caressed his Colt’s cocked hammer with his gloved right thumb, waiting, scanning the rocks and cactus before him, on the far side of the narrow wash. Following his boot prints, the men likely knew where he was—or his general vicinity, anyway. They should be along soon. Soon, Yakima would learn who else knew about the church, and who killed the Bundrens.

  What a damn mess. And he wasn’t even the damn town marshal anymore…

  He kept running his gaze across the chaparral before him. He was sliding his inspection back to his left when he spied movement on his right, on the arroyo’s far side. He switched his gaze quickly back to see a man stepping out from behind a saguaro and aiming a rifle at him. The rifle thundered, lapping smoke and orange flames.

  The bullet snapped a branch from a creosote shrub just beyond Yakima, to his left.

  Yakima dropped to a crouch, seeing in the corner of his left eye another man step out of the chaparral and into the arroyo, cocking a rifle. Yakima threw himself forward, hitting the arroyo on his belly, rolling right and barely avoiding another bullet before firing first at the first man who’d shot, and then, rolling in the opposite direction, at the man on his left.

  The Colt bucked and roared twice before Yakima rolled back to his left and flung another round toward the first man who’d fired, on his right.

  His bullet cut the air where the man had been standing, finding now only the implacable face of a boulder. The ricochet gave an angry, snarling wail. The shooter himself was gone.

  Rising quickly to a knee, Yakima clicked the Colt’s hammer back and aimed at the second man, on his left. He held fire. The man was down on his back, the bottoms of his boot soles facing Yakima. One leg was shaking. The man’s arms were spread wide and he was digging his fingers into the sand and gravel, as though literally trying to cling to life.

  He didn’t manage it. His leg stopped quivering and then the rest of his body fell slack, as well.

  One down…

  “Stay where you are, Rusty!” Yakima yelled as he ran into the chaparral on the other side of the arroyo.

  Running footsteps sounded ahead of him, retreating.

  “Hold on, you yellow devil!”

  Yakima ran ahead, weaving through the desert scrub. A gun barked ahead of him. He only saw the flash, heard the bullet ricochet over his left shoulder. He threw himself right and rolled, and two more shots rocketed around the canyon.

  Rolling up onto his chest, Yakima extended the Colt and fired two quick rounds. He tried to fire another one, but his hammer clicked benignly onto an empty chamber.

  Staying down, half-expecting the man to come back for him, Yakima clicked open the Colt’s loading gate, and shook out the spent shells. When he’d replaced two with fresh bullets from his shell belt, a horse whickered ahead. A girl shouted, “Stop!”

  A man returned with: “Stop this, little gal!” A rifle barked twice.

  The girl screamed and a horse whinnied shrilly.

  Yakima’s heart raced dreadfully as he filled the Colt’s last four chambers, clicked the loading gate home, and scrambled to his feet.

  “Emma!” he bellowed as he ran in the direction of the Bundrens’ grave and from where he heard another horse whinny and then thud off at a fast gallop.

  He ran out of the chaparral to see Emma on the ground near the Bundrens’ barrow. She was sitting up, resting her elbows on her knees, pressing her fingers to her temples. Her long hair, dusty and tangled, hung down over her face.

  “Oh, for chrissakes!” Yakima ran toward her. “You all right? You hit?”

  She looked up at him, wincing. “No. He didn’t hit me. Thanks to my horse bucking me off.” She glanced sourly over at where the buckskin stood a way to the north, its saddle hanging down its side, its eyes glinting edgily. Emma stretched a hand back behind her, massaging her lower back. “Just bruised is all.”

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” Yakima said, fetching her hat and angrily tossing it down at her. “I told you to stay in town.”

  She gave her head a wild-mare sort of toss and glared up at him, jaws hard. “You know I couldn’t do that!”

  “Yeah, well you almost got yourself killed for not minding my orders!”

  “You got no authority to order me around, Yakima Henry. You quit—remember? The Rio Grande Kid is Marshal of Apache Springs now!”

  Ignoring her, he stared off in the direction the bushwhacker had disappeared. “Who was that? Did you get a look at him?”

  “Not a good one.” Emma spat grit from her lips then scrubbed her shirtsleeve across her mouth and spat again. “They were followin’ you. They got onto your trail about halfway out from town. I’m thinkin’ they were headin’ toward you and then got around you and followed you back to the canyon.”

  “I reckon they weren’t the only ones followin’ me.”

  “I saw what they were up to, an’ I rode down here to warn you, you ungrateful half-breed son of a bitch!” She fairly screamed the tirade, her eyes glassy and white-ringed. She spat again then said, “Did you find the…” Just then she saw the all-but-exposed head of Collie Bundren poking up from the stone cairn.

  Emma stared at the piled rocks, her mouth open. “Oh...”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about--?”

  “Cash an’ Dewey are in there, too.”

  “What about--?”

  “Here.”

  Rusty stepped out of the chaparral. He looked pale and world-weary, more than a little frightened. He was a sensitive boy, and he’d seen a lot of killing lately. The Bundrens may not have been much of a family to him, but they’d been all he’d had left after Chickasaw had died so bizzarely, stabbing out his own guts. Now he had no one. He was alone and he knew it and was feeling the raw cold lonely truth of what alone was.

  He’d get used to it. Yakima had faced the world alone when he was even younger than Rusty. The boy would get used to it, too. As much as anyone ever could, anyway.

  Emma got up and dusted herself off. “What happened, Rusty? Are you all right?” She was looking at his left arm, which he’d wrapped a red handkerchief around.

  “I did that,” Yakima said.

  “It’s all right,” Rusty said. “I had it comin’.”

  Emma turned her head to the grave again. “Who killed…?”

  “Whoever those bushwhackers are,” Yakima said, then quickly amended the statement with, “Or were…”

  “Where’s the other one?”

  “This way.”

  Yakima turned and headed back into the chaparral. In a couple o
f minutes, he, Emma, and Rusty were staring down at the bushwhacker whose wick Yakima had trimmed. He was a large, beefy, ginger-bearded man in a brown coat, white shirt, string tie, and corduroy trousers. His boots looked knew. Flies had found the bloody hole in his chest that Yakima had drilled with a .44-caliber bullet.

  The bullet had clipped off the very end of the man’s string tie.

  “Jack Booth.” Emma looked at Yakima. “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “He rides for my father. He’s a bullion guard.”

  Yakima knew that Hugh Kosgrove’s so-called bullion guards didn’t only guard Kosgrove’s bullion. They were often trouble-shooters with the emphasis on “shooters.” They took care of any and all problems their boss was confronted with. Being a man of considerable wealth and power not to mention a scorpion’s personality, Kosgrove was understandably confronted with a lot of trouble.

  Emma gave the nearest rock a furious kick. “That means my father knows about the church!”

  “Well, that figures. It’s not far from his land. It goes to reason one of his geologists would have stumbled on this canyon…and the church…eventually. Why he hasn’t done anything with the treasure yet is right puzzling.”

  “Knowing him he’s probably covering all his tracks—having his lawyers do whatever it takes to plunder treasure from an ancient Jesuit church. Leastways, so it looks legal, even if it isn’t.”

  “I have a feeling that treasure is there for anyone who stakes a claim on it. That’s probably what you should have done. Claimed it.”

  “God, no! I don’t want any claim on that gold. By claimin’ that gold, I’d be claimin’ the curse, too! Yakima, you just don’t understand!”

  “Well, there’s one thing I understand.” Yakima was staring down at the dead man—Jack Booth. “Your father’s men killed the Bundrens in cold blood. Likely would have killed Rusty, too. And they tried to kill me.” He narrowed an eye as he stared pointedly at Emma. “There ain’t nothin’ legal about that.”

  “Okay, maybe I was wrong about the legal business. Why he’s been waiting around to loot the treasure, I got no idea. But I aim to ask.” Emma swung around and started walking back through the chaparral. “And I am to head on back to Apache Springs and do just that!”