Arroyo de la Muerte Read online

“Oh, Yakima,” she said, wrapping her arms around his head, drawing her taut against him. “What am I going to do without you?”

  ***

  “Damn, Jack—you’re gettin’ ripe.”

  Yakima glanced over his right shoulder at the cadaver riding belly down over the claybank. It had been relatively cool in the wake of the last two storms, so Yakima hadn’t detected a scent from Jack Booth’s stiffening corpse until earlier this morning, when he’d back-and-bellied the man over his saddle again, for Jack’s last ride out to his employer’s place of residence.

  He’d leave Booth with Kosgrove, have the man who’d gotten him killed see to his internment.

  It was nearly ten in the morning, with the sun high, and Jack was getting even riper.

  “Sure wouldn’t want to be the one to have to dig your grave,” Yakima said as he crested a ridge then started down the other side.

  There was a shrill banging sound as what could only have been a bullet hammered the top of a boulder to his right. He jerked back on Wolf’s reins, and both the stallion and Jack Booth’s gelding gave indignant whinnies as the crack of the rifle that had fired the bullet reached the bottom of the canyon.

  Yakima fought his instinct to reach for the Yellowboy snugged down in its scabbard to his right. Instead, he kept a taut hold on Wolf’s reins and on the lead rope of Booth’s mount, and held his place there on the canyon floor.

  He looked around at the two sloping ridges rising to either side of him. Both were strewn with rock and chaparral. He wasn’t sure where the bullet had come from. He had a feeling he’d know in a minute, after whomever had fired it had let him sit anxiously, waiting…

  Sure enough, after nearly a minute had passed, a man’s voice caromed down from the ridge on his right, lazy with insolence:

  “What do you want, breed?”

  The man—one of Kosgrove’s trouble-shooters--had glassed him and recognized him. Yakima had expected as much. You couldn’t get very close to Kosgrove’s layout, the lion’s den, so to speak, without being thoroughly vetted.

  Kosgrove was a wealthy and powerful man. Like most wealthy and powerful man, that wealth and power came with a good bit of paranoia. He kept a small army of men around him, to protect him from those who might want to separate him from his wealth and power.

  Or who might want to see him about a reckoning he was due…

  “Wanna powwow with the big chief,” Yakima yelled up the ridge on his right.

  Silence.

  Shortly, two riders appeared, each weaving his way down the ridges—one on his left, the other on his right. The man on his left rode with his Winchester resting on his shoulder. The other held his rifle across his saddlebows. The clacking of their horses’ hooves grew steadily until Yakima could also hear the squawking of the saddles and the soft clicking of their bridle chains.

  The man on the right reached Yakima first, halting his strawberry roan about twenty feet up the ridge and scowling down from beneath his weathered, funnel-brimmed hat. The other arrived a few seconds later—a rangy black man wearing a creamy white Boss of the Plains Stetson. A black cheroot angled out one corner of his full-lipped mouth, the smoke slithering out his broad, black nostrils.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, when both he and the other man had considered the dead man on the horse behind Yakima.

  “Jack Booth.”

  “What the hell’d you kill Jack for?” asked the white man on Yakima’s right, his voice taut with anger. He furled his brows, which nearly met over the bridge of his nose, and swung his Winchester carbine out one-handed, aiming it at Yakima’s belly.

  “To keep him from killing me,” Yakima told him, mildly.

  The black man looked at the white man. “Boss ain’t gonna like that.”

  “No, he ain’t,” said the white man, a faint delight in his gaze. Turning to Yakima, he said, “You wanna see Kosgrove? All right. Let’s go see Kosgrove.” He canted his head to his right, indicating the trail ahead.

  The black man scowled at Yakima and then angrily flicked his black-gloved hand at a fly buzzing around his face.

  Yakima nudged Wolf ahead, jerking on the pack horse’s lead rope.

  His chaperones following closely behind him, keeping their rifles trained on his back, he passed a broad, deeply rutted trail that, from a previous trek out here, Yakima knew led to the Conquistador Mine. He continued along the main trail that followed a broad wash. He swerved sharply left and climbed up and out of the wash and into another, secondary canyon fingering off from the main one.

  He and his chaperones climbed a broad, low bench and then another, even higher bench. Spreading out across the broad clearing in the desert before him, Yakima saw what appeared to be a Mexican hacienda complete with brightly whitewashed adobe barns, stables, and pole corrals, including a round stone breaking corral with a snubbing post at its center.

  Last, but certainly not least, a sprawling, low, Spanish-style casa hunched behind a six-foot-high whitewashed adobe wall boasting a broad, wrought-iron gate with the name KOSGROVE fashioned of wrought iron in the gate’s center.

  The house fronted the barns and other outbuildings, quartering off to the right and flanked by a steeply slanted mesa wall shimmering in the midday heat haze. There was a veritable orchard of what appeared to be lemon and orange trees and maybe a few nut trees behind the wall. The trees spread welcoming shade over a courtyard patio.

  Yakima and his chaperones reined up before the wrought-iron gate in the courtyard wall as a man stepped through it, frowning curiously, holding a wooden water bucket with a ladle sticking out of it. The man was a tall, lean Indian with long, silver-streaked black hair and an age-wizened face. He wore a black suitcoat and string tie as well as fringed buckskin breeches and fancily beaded moccasins.

  A red sash encircled his lean waist.

  “Marshal Henry,” said Three Moons, Kosgrove’s houseman, who spoke English as flawlessly as any white man. In fact, he spoke better English than most of the white men Yakima had known. As the servant’s eyes strayed to the packhorse, he said, “To what do we owe the honor?”

  “Says he come to powwow with the big chief,” Yakima’s black chaperone answered for him, his tone not so vaguely sarcastic.

  “Who’s out there, Three?” Hugh Kosgrove’s distinctive voice had risen from behind the wrought-iron gate.

  Now the short, barrel-shaped man appeared, stepping out from behind some shrubbery wearing a white silk shirt, corduroy slacks, and red suspenders. He had a mud-encrusted trowel in his hand, and he appeared sweating and out of breath. He and the Indian must have been doing some gardening in the patio, which Yakima remembered from his last visit had been carefully tended.

  “We have a visitor—the Apache Springs lawman,” said Three Moons, keeping his mildly amused, almond-shaped, inky-black eyes on Yakima.

  A faint smile curved his lips. An oblique one.

  Yakima remembered from a previous visit that the civilized Apache, who was eastern-educated, always appeared to have much on his mind though he gave little of it away. He would have made a good gambler, though Yakima had never seen him in town and he doubted the man ever left Kosgrove’s compound. He seemed very closely allied with his boss, for whom he’d worked for many years, so that he’d almost become a part of the family, a surrogate uncle to both Julia and Emma.

  “Ah, shit.” Kosgrove waddled out from behind Three Moons, who was nearly as tall as Yakima, and thumbed his white planter’s hat back on his broad, red forehead. His frosty blue eyes glowed belligerently in the lens-clear Sierra Estrada light as he took Yakima’s measure, scowling. He had a white bandage over the ear that Yakima had notched. “What the hell do you want, you crazy son of a bitch? I oughta have you bullwhipped an’ shot!”

  Yakima dropped the pack horse’s lead rope. “Brought your man home.”

  “What man?”

  “Jack Booth,” said Yakima’s white escort.

  Kosgrove frowned. “Booth?” He blinked incredulously at
Yakima. “Why?”

  “He bushwhacked me. The other one you sent almost killed your daughter.”

  “Emma?” Kosgrove inquired, voice raised with worry.

  He glanced at Yakima’s two escorts. “Lead that horse away from the house. Pee-you—what a stench!” The mine owner brushed a hand across his nose, his blue eyes watering. “Bury that body and bury it deep!”

  When the escorts had ridden off, the black man leading away Jack Booth’s sour carcass, Kosgrove returned his angry, concerned gaze to Yakima. “What the hell happened? What have you and my daughter gotten yourselves mixed up in, and what’s all this about some hidden treasure?”

  “In a church,” added Three Moons.

  “Yes, in a church!” said Kosgrove, planting his gloved fists on his hips. “Apparently, this crazy treasure business is what’s been keeping her out in the desert for days on end!”

  “So she told you about it.” Yakima frowned at the house. “Is Emma here?”

  “Yes, she’s here, but you sure as hell are not going to see her.”

  “What are your intentions, Kosgrove? And why in the hell did you send those men to kick me out with a cold shovel—same way you did Collie Bundren and his boys?”

  Kosgrove took two angry steps forward, his face red, his eyes ringed with pale, angry circles. “I don’t know any Bundrens, but you know why I’d like to see your hide tacked to the wall!”

  “You knew about the church, and you wanted to shut me up about it, like you did the Bundrens. What about Emma?”

  Kosgrove glowered up at him, speechless. He pivoted on his hips to glance curiously at Three Moons, who merely shrugged his bony shoulders.

  Turning back to Yakima, Kosgrove said, “What about her? She came storming in here last night, accusing me of killing these Bundren people and demanding to know what I knew about this…this…this ancient treasure in some ancient Spanish church”—he flung his arm out and waggled his fingers—“somewhere around here but god knows where. Emma knows!” He chuckled at that. “And now you come riding in with Jack Booth, who, by the way, no longer even works for me. It wasn’t Booth I sent for you, you obstinate half-breed son of a bitch. I sent Guzman and Mankiller to snuff your wick an’ pickle your ass!”

  It was Yakima’s turn to scowl in disbelief. He couldn’t quite believe what the man had just said. “You sent them?”

  “Yes!” the man said as though he were dealing with an idiot.

  Yakima cocked his head and narrowed an eye at him. “So, you did have them kill Julian Barnes at Senora Galvez’s, after all. Despite what you told me in my office.”

  “I sure as hell did, yes.” The walrus-like Irishman paused, blinked. “Don’t tell me you actually believed my blarney!” Kosgrove dug a half-smoked cigar from a pocket of his pants, along with a lucifer, and glanced, grinning in amazement, at Three-Moons, who pulled his mouth corners down and shrugged. “He believed me. Hah! First person who ever believed anything Hugh Kosgrove said, Three. Get a load of that! Write that down on the same wall you marked the girls’ heights on, will you?” He laughed again.

  Three Moon’s broad mouth cracked a smile.

  When Yakima just stared at the man, unable to believe even the level of Hugh Kosgrove’s gall, Kosgrove said, “You got it right, Henry. I hated that sonofabitch, Barnes. You got it right--he screwed me seven ways from sundown. Nobody screws Hugh Kosgrove and gets away with it. So I hired those two idiots, Mankiller an’ Guzman, knowing they’d take the job because they were too stupid not to, and I told them to kill Barnes and then kill you when you rode out after them.”

  “Because of Julia.”

  “Yes. Of course, because of Julia!” Kosgrove had stuck the cigar in his mouth and now he was lighting it, turning it slowly, the flame flaring when he inhaled. “You believed me. I’ll be damned!”

  He laughed. Then he frowned suddenly, and lowered the cigar, letting another puff roll out from between his thin lips. “I reckon you had the last laugh on that one, though, didn’t you? I gotta admit, I felt a might off my feed when I seen you ride back to town with those two devils layin’ belly down across their saddles.”

  Rage was a hot fire burning inside Yakima. As he glared back at the pompous little Irishman, he slid his .44 from its holster and clicked back the hammer, aiming at the man’s fat face. “I oughta blow you to hell, you old Irish dog.”

  “Yeah, well…” Unflustered, Kosgrove looked down at his cigar, rolling it between his short, fat fingers. “I reckon I would, too, if I was in your place. It’s a nasty thing--murder.” He poked the stogie back into his mouth and gave it a few more thoughtful puffs, studying Yakima shrewdly. “But you won’t kill me. You know why I know that?”

  Tightly, his index finger drawn snug against the Colt’s trigger, Yakima just glared at him.

  “Because you love them girls. And you know that, though be the devil I am, they both love their ole pa. You wouldn’t hurt them.”

  Again, Kosgrove puffed the stogie, shaking his head. He smiled and glanced toward his men milling around the outbuildings. “Besides, you wouldn’t make it ten feet from the house before my men would shoot you off that handsome black, and draw and quarter you, which I should have them do, anyway”—he fingered the bandage on his left ear—“for that stunt in town the other day. Most men would be dead over that, and you will be too if you don’t pull your freight out of here. I hate to go to the trouble of bringing in marshals, but I will, goddamnit! And I’ll come to your hanging just to laugh as I watch you dance!”

  Yakima continued glaring at the man over the barrel of his cocked Colt. Rage burned behind his eyebrows. He wanted nothing more than to drill a hole through Kosgrove’s broad, freckled forehead. If it were any other man, he would have done just that. But he couldn’t do it. And the man had been right about why.

  Yakima drew a slow, deep breath. He depressed the Colt’s hammer, easing it down against the firing pin.

  Kosgrove smiled and glanced at Three Moons still standing expressionlessly behind him, on his left. The Indian drew his lips together then turned and walked back into the patio and along the path to the house. Again, it was hard to tell what was on his mind, but he didn’t seem to think much of either man—Yakima or his own boss—just now.

  “You win, Kosgrove,” Yakima said, returning the Colt to its holster. “Someday, you’ll get yours, but it’s not going to be by me. At least, not here. Not today.”

  “Yeah, well, I feel the same way about you.” Kosgrove gave the stogie another couple of angry puffs, his blue eyes nearly crossing.

  Yakima gazed back at the man. He wasn’t ready to leave. He might have lost the battle with Kosgrove, but he still had one to go. He just wasn’t sure who it was with. “You said Booth no longer worked for you.”

  “That’s right, he didn’t.”

  “Who was he workin’ for as of the other day, when I blew out his lamp.”

  “I don’t know. I turned him over to John Clare Hopkins a few months back. John Clare wanted a good couple of men, and I owed the limey devil for helping me out of a financial tight spot, so I gave him several of my ore guards.”

  Yakima’s belly tightened. “Hopkins?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’d he want them for?”

  “Ole John Clare’s got him some prospects, I understand. He needed muscle to safeguard those prospects. He brought in his brother and some friends, one of who’s a mining engineer, and he’s thinkin’ about opening a gold mine somewhere southwest of Apache Springs. He thinks there’s some promising looking geology out that way.”

  Yakima’s belly flipped again. “Promising looking geology out that way, eh?”

  “Sure enough. I hope so. Not that he doesn’t have enough money, but I hope he gets even richer.” Kosgrove stuck the stogie into his mouth again, and smiled as he puffed it, narrowing his eyes with mockery. “For Julia’s sake. He’s askin’ for her hand, don’t ya know.”

  “I know.” Yakima looked around.
His mind was racing, thinking through what Kosgrove had just told him.

  ‘Promising looking geology’, his ass.

  He turned again to Kosgrove. “Did you tell Emma what you told me?”

  Kosgrove hiked a shoulder. “Yes.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs. Hasn’t come down yet today. She threw a fit, wanted to ride to town, and I locked her in her bedroom. That girl’s gone loco. I think she’s got sun sickness!” He wagged a finger near his good ear.

  “No, she’s not.” The voice belonged to Three Moons. The Indian was working in the patio.

  “No, she’s not what?” Kosgrove asked gruffly, glancing behind him.

  “She’s not upstairs, boss.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about, Three?”

  “I thought you must’ve let her out earlier,” came the Indian servant’s voice again. “She rode out of the yard before you were even up this morning.”

  “Ah, hell,” Yakima said. “She headed for town…and Hopkins!”

  He reined Wolf around and put the steel to him.

  Chapter 19

  Earlier that morning--just after dawn, in fact--Julia Kosgrove stepped onto the staircase that ran up the Conquistador Inn’s rear outside wall.

  The riser squawked beneath her slippered left foot. She winced and glanced around guiltily, drawing her cape tighter around her head and shoulders. Self-realization dawning on her, she snickered at herself.

  Here she was--a twenty-eight-year-old woman sneaking around like a schoolgirl after secretly meet a boy her parents didn’t abide. Well, she was no longer a schoolgirl, but she had met the boy—man, rather—that her father didn’t abide, and she couldn’t help feeling a schoolgirl’s chagrin. She was glad no one else was around at this early hour. Usually, one of the Conquistador’s cooks or kitchen boys would be out splitting wood for the breakfast fires, but she fortunately didn’t see a soul lurking anywhere near in the morning’s deep shadows.

  She may not have been a schoolgirl, but it would have looked curious, at the very least, for the Conquistador Inn’s manager to be sneaking back into her own building at such an early hour. Curious and downright silly. Of course, she could have been returning from a trip to the privy, but she knew that she was really returning from the livery barn in the loft of which she’d made love with Apache Springs’s former town marshal on the very same night that she’d earlier accepted the engagement ring of another man.