The Thunder Riders Read online

  His beseeching scream echoed up and down the street. “Wiillll!”

  He rose to a crouch and bounded down the five porch steps, tripping halfway down and tumbling into the street. He rolled onto his side. Blood glistened across Danaher’s belly, welling out between his crossed arms.

  “Will!” the kid screamed again.

  A high-pitched laugh rose from the sporting house, but no one appeared on the porch. If faces peered through the broken windows, Pyle couldn’t see them.

  He started toward Danaher, thought better of it, and stopped. Whoever had stabbed Kenny would pink Pyle from the windows or the open door.

  The Thunder Riders? Pyle’s spine turned to jelly. Could his luck have gone that sour? But why in the hell wouldn’t the woolliest gang in the Territory and northern Sonora be after that gold? He’d heard there was over fifty thousand dollars’ worth.

  To his right was an alley. Pyle swung toward it, digging his heels in as he dashed between an old harness shop and the doctor’s office. He ran around behind the harness shop, then up the alley, leaping trash heaps and what remained of firewood and weed clumps. By the time he reached the rear of the sporting house, his chest was burning and his heels ached in his boots.

  At the rear corner of the general store, he took a quick study of the sporting house sitting just west, thirty yards beyond. No faces or rifles shone in the windows on this side of the house. No gunmen waited on the porch or the roof.

  Pyle sucked in a deep breath and, squeezing his Henry in both gloved hands, bolted up toward Main Street along the general store’s sun-blistered wall.

  His spurs rang softly, occasionally catching in the sage. Ten feet from the street, he angled toward the sporting house’s front porch, toward where Kenny now knelt in the street, his head down, shoulders rising and falling sharply. Blood stained the dirt beneath him, and liver-colored cords of gut leaked out from between his arms.

  Pyle raked his gaze along the front of the sporting house, then dropped to one knee beside Danaher. “I’m gonna get you to the other side of the street, Kenny.”

  The young ranger only shook his sagging head. “I’m done, Will. Get outta here.”

  Pyle kept his eyes on the front of the sporting house. It looked abandoned.

  “Try to stand. You gotta help me here, boy.”

  Pyle wrapped his arms around the young man’s bloody waist, tried to heave him to his feet, all the while keeping a sharp eye on the front of the quiet sporting house. Kenny was nearly a deadweight, but when Pyle had hauled him up almost to standing height, the young ranger straightened his knees, took some of his weight off Pyle.

  Pyle swung him around and, holding his rifle in his right hand while wrapping his left arm around Kenny’s waist, began leading him toward the other side of the street.

  Keeping a firm grip on the young ranger’s cartridge belt, Pyle jerked frequent looks over his right shoulder, his spine crawling as he expected a bullet at any second. It seemed to take an hour to reach the narrow gap between a blacksmith shop and Herriman’s Jewelers. He passed the rain barrel at the mouth of the gap and kicked through dead leaves and rusty cans, heading for the rear of the blacksmith shop. His heart lifted slightly when the jewelry store shielded him and Danaher from the sporting house.

  Danaher gave a long, raspy sigh, and his knees buckled. The kid’s arm fell from around Pyle’s neck, and he hit the alley hard on his knees, then plopped forward on his face.

  “Kenny!”

  Breathing hard, Pyle knelt beside the young ranger and turned him onto his back. Danaher’s eyes were half open, staring glassily. His chest was still. An awful fetor rose from the wide, gut-leaking wound in his belly.

  Pyle scrubbed his jaw, cursed, then ran his hand lightly over the dead ranger’s face, closing his eyes. He stood heavily, squeezing his rifle as he stared down at Danaher, whose arms rested slack at his sides, his legs crossed at the ankles.

  He took a deep breath, walked back to the mouth of the alley, and shouldering against the jewelry shop on his left, stared at the sporting house on the other side of the street. The west-falling sun gilded the porch posts and upper-story windows.

  Pyle gritted his teeth as he jerked the Henry’s hammer back. Holding the rifle at port arms, he strode into the street, his jaw hard, eyes boring holes into the house’s front wall.

  Halfway across the street he raised the Henry’s stock to his cheek and glared down the barrel as he shouted, “Show yourselves, you goddamn butchers!”

  A bullet tore into his right knee a half second before the rifle report reached his ears and he saw the smoke puff in the window right of the sporting house’s open front door. The mocking laugh he’d heard before rose again, and a plump round face appeared in the window.

  As Pyle’s bullet-blasted knee buckled, the old ranger triggered a shot into the window casing to the right of the laughing face. His knee hit the ground, and he groaned as he shifted his weight to the other knee and rammed a fresh round into the Henry’s breech. Trying to ignore the throbbing pain and feeling the blood drain into the street, he raised the Henry and swung the barrel toward the house.

  Smoke puffed in the open front door. Searing pain lanced his left shoulder. His shot pulled wide as he screamed and jerked straight back, dropping the Henry.

  His back hit the street, and he kicked both legs out before him, pain from the bullet-riddled knee setting his entire leg on fire, while the bullet in his shoulder did the same to his chest and left arm.

  He lay faceup in the street, grunting and sighing and flailing around with his right hand, trying to locate his rifle. In the bottom periphery of his vision, figures moved. Boots thudded across floorboards, spurs rattled and twanged. A woman’s evil chuckle mingled with men’s laughter.

  Pyle lifted his head. Two men and a woman filed out of the sporting house and into the street. The first man was a big black hombre with a mustache, a long tan duster, and a sombrero. The other man was an Apache in deerskin leggings, wolf coat, red sash, and matching bandanna, with a matching brace of .44’s on his hips. He held a Sharps carbine down low in his right hand. He stopped to Pyle’s left and deftly kicked the Winchester out of the ranger’s reach. The black eyes bored into Pyle’s, and he grinned with recognition, flashing a silver eyetooth.

  “Old man, you should have quit while you still had some years left!”

  “Yasi.” Pyle grunted at the renegade Apache who had once scouted for General Crook in the Sierra Madre, before too much tizwin had driven him loco. Two years ago he’d been rumored to be running with the notorious Thunder Riders—mostly Yanqui rapists and murderers who raised hell on both sides of the border. “You murderin’ savage. I figured I’d run into you sooner or later.”

  The woman between him and the black man cracked a snaggletoothed grin and laughed. She appeared to be half Mexican with some Indian blood. Short and plump, she wore a heavy brown poncho, fringed deerskin leggings, and moccasins. She cackled delightedly, causing the dried-up flower in her hair to nod. “Sooner rather than later, eh, amigo?”

  Pyle summoned all his remaining strength to his right arm, jerked his hand to his holstered .44. The woman laughed again, then leapt forward and, lifting one stubby leg, kicked the revolver into the air over the ranger’s head. She stooped, pressing the barrel of her Spencer repeater against Pyle’s temple. The desert rose in her hair sagged. Tin and bone amulets jostled on her poncho.

  She stared down the rifle’s forestock from four feet away. Her flat black eyes twinkled in the dying light.

  Toots was her name. Her real handle was something long and Spanish.

  Toots thumbed back the Spencer’s hammer.

  Pyle glared back at her. If Considine’s bunch was in the country, all hell was about to break loose. He was almost glad he wouldn’t be here for it. “Go to hell, puta bitch.”

  “Usted primero,” cackled the round-faced, flat-eyed outlaw as she squeezed the trigger. You first.

  Chapter 2

 
A horse’s terrified scream shot through the night.

  Yakima Henry snapped his eyes open. A foot thudded softly on the porch beyond his cabin’s front door.

  Yakima grabbed the Winchester Yellowboy repeater off the mattress beside him as the door burst open with a thunderous crash accompanied by a high-pitched, ear-numbing devil’s whoop.

  A short, bulky, long-haired figure leapt into the cabin and crouched just beyond the frame, silhouetted against the stars behind it. Ambient light glinted off white stone as the Apache’s right hand, clutching a tomahawk, whipped back behind his head.

  Yakima snapped up the Yellowboy and fired twice. The Apache screamed as the bullets punched him straight back through the doorway and into the yard beyond, the tomahawk skidding along the porch and thudding into the dust.

  Outside, Yakima’s black stallion, Wolf, loosed another terrified whinny amid the squawk and wooden clatter of the corral gate being opened. The Apaches were after the horses.

  Yakima leapt out of bed and, clad in only his long underwear, crossed the cabin in three giant strides, bounded through the front door, and hurdled the dead Apache. He’d taken one headlong stride toward the corral when a bullet whistled past his right ear and thumped into the ground. Yakima saw the rifle flash out of the corner of his right eye and heard the ringing report.

  There was the quick rasp of a cocking lever. Yakima dove to his left and rolled onto his back as the rifle flashed again up near the peak of his cabin roof. The flash revealed the blue and white calico shirt and red bandanna of the Apache squatting there, rifle extended over the edge of the roof.

  Yakima raised his Winchester and fired two quick shots. The Apache grunted. His silhouette jerked back, then sagged forward to tumble over the edge of the roof. The brave hit the porch below with a thud and a crunch of cracking wood. The rifle clattered to the ground beside him.

  A shrill Apache war cry rose across the yard, and Yakima rolled onto his belly, ramming a fresh shell into the Yellowboy’s breech. Two rifles flashed and thundered near the corral gate, the slugs tearing up sand and gravel in front of Yakima, one clipping a sage branch and tossing it over his head. He returned fire quickly— Boom-rasp! Boom-rasp! Boom-rasp! Boom!—and saw through his wafting powder smoke a shadow fall as the open corral gate squawked on its hinges.

  Another shadow cut away in the darkness, the quick footfalls of moccasined feet sounding clear in the sudden silence.

  Yakima levered another round into the Yellowboy’s chamber as he bolted up and ran, covering the fifty yards between the cabin and the corral in seconds. Near the corral gate, he stopped and angled his Winchester down toward the figure slumped on the ground, but the Apache lay facedown and still, the two holes in his back bright with fresh blood. A Spencer carbine with a lanyard and a brass-riveted stock leaned against the brave’s motionless right leg.

  Yakima slammed the corral gate closed—relieved to see his black stallion and his paint standing still as statues on the other side of the corral—then dropped to a knee, aimed the Winchester in the direction of the quickly fading footsteps, and emptied the chamber. The smoking shells arced over his shoulder and rattled into the gravel behind him.

  He leaned the empty Yellowboy against the corral, then picked up the dead brave’s Spencer and shucked the stag-handled, double-edged knife from the oiled sheath thonged low on the Apache’s thigh. Bolting forward, mindless of his bare feet, he headed off across the night-cloaked clearing.

  Until tonight, the Apaches hadn’t discovered him here on the high, pine-studded slopes of Mount Bailey. Now that this small group of night raiders had, Yakima had to make sure they were all dead—or there would be more.

  He lunged forward through the darkness, arms and legs pumping, heart racing. The night air was as cool as a knife blade against his sweat-slick face. He traced a course through the sage and bunchgrass, leaping boulders and small piñons. When he’d run a hundred yards, he stopped suddenly and stared into the mixed pines flanking the rocky escarpment rising ahead of him.

  The Apaches had probably tied their horses in the rocks, well away from the cabin and Yakima’s mounts.

  He pricked his ears against the rasping of his own labored breath.

  Before him, at the edge of the pines, the darkness shifted slightly. He sucked a sharp breath and dove to his left, hitting the ground on his shoulder as a rifle boomed thirty yards in front of him, the barrel spitting knives of blue-black flame.

  Yakima rolled left once, twice, three times, gritting his teeth as the Apache’s tracking slugs blew up grass and sand behind him, the lead whining as it bounced off rocks. He rolled a fourth time as a slug burned a furrow across his right shoulder.

  He flung himself desperately sideways two more times, then stopped.

  The rifle had fallen silent.

  He whipped up the Spencer he’d managed to hang on to, worked the trigger-guard cocking mechanism, and fired at the place where the Apache’s rifle had flashed. He squeezed off two more shots before the Spencer clicked empty, then tossed the rifle aside. Gripping the knife in his right hand, he dashed toward the pine-studded escarpment.

  At the place where the rifle had flashed, he stopped, hunkered down on his heels, holding the knife between his knees so it wouldn’t reflect starlight, and pricked his ears, listening. Ahead and to the right, beyond the screening brush and a jumble of black boulders, a horse snorted and thumped a hoof.

  Nothing else but the chitter of crickets and the distant screech of a nighthawk.

  Yakima rose to a crouch and moved forward, toward where the horses were tied, holding the knife low in his right hand. He set one bare foot down softly, wincing at the occasional scrape of a sharp rock, pine needle, or weed.

  The slight whisper of a breeze was behind him. It was suddenly rife with the sour, gamy smell of Apache. Yakima wheeled, instantly swinging the knife up and out.

  “Ayeeee!” the Apache screamed as his stocky silhouette leapt straight back and away, starlight gleaming off the blade in his right hand.

  He stopped, lunged forward, and swung the knife so quickly it sliced the air before Yakima’s belly with a shrill whistle. Yakima thrust his shoulders forward and pulled his belly back so that the tip of the Apache’s knife only ripped his undershirt and sliced an icy cut across his stomach.

  The Apache loosed another high-pitched yowl as he brought the knife toward Yakima again on the back-swing. Yakima ducked, and the knife whistled over his head. He lunged forward before the Apache could leap back and, flipping his own knife so that the curved blade angled up, drove the bowie into the Apache’s belly, thrusting so that the blade penetrated beneath the rib cage.

  The knife was so sharp it went through the Indian’s midsection like a glowing pick through suet.

  Hot blood washed over Yakima’s wrist and forearm as he twisted the knife tip through the heart. Bracing his left hand on the Indian’s right shoulder, he withdrew the blade quickly, blood showering from the Indian’s gut. The Apache grunted. He stood before Yakima, swaying like a drunk, knees slightly bent, shoulders slumped, chin dropping toward his chest as he inspected his ruined midsection.

  Yakima sucked a deep breath, his sweat chilling in the cool night breeze. “There you go, you thievin’ bastard.”

  As if in response, the Indian rasped, then dropped to his knees, tumbled forward, and lay still.

  Yakima used a tarpaulin tied with rope to his paint horse to drag the four dead Apaches to a gorge a good mile from his cabin. He dumped the bodies into the gorge and loosed rocks down on top of them. Not even the buzzards and wolves would find them there.

  That job done, he retrieved the braves’ four, half-wild mustangs from where they’d tied them on the other side of the scarp. Most settlers in this country would have shot the horses. He should have shot them, too, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d always felt a stronger kinship with horses than with men.

  Releasing them from his cabin was out of the question, however. They would r
eturn to the Apache encampment, and from there the Apaches would backtrack them to him.

  Yakima had intended to make a supply run to Saber Creek tomorrow. He could lead the Apache mustangs for the first ten miles and release them at Papago Springs.

  He would also check on his neighbor, the old desert rat Lars Schimpelfennig, who prospected the barrancas west of Bailey Peak and occasionally holed up in an ancient goatherd’s cabin along Torcido Gulch. Yakima had heard that Diablito had jumped the reservation again and had promised to kill every white man between Benson and Lordsburg. Lars had been poking and prodding this country for a good ten years and had never had more than minor run-ins with the Chiricahua, but it wouldn’t hurt to check on the old German.

  When he’d corralled the Apache horses with his own paint and black stallion, he returned to the cabin, donned his buckskin coat, and slept fitfully on a chair on the front porch, boots crossed on the porch rail, snapping his eyes open at every night sound.