The Killing Breed Page 7

  Yakima didn’t think Harms had fired the shot, however. He’d be breaking rock in the middle of the day, doing his hunting in the early morning or evening.

  Apprehension nibbled at the half-breed’s gut.

  He slipped the Yellowboy into his saddle boot and grabbed Wolf’s reins. “Best head home.”

  Kelly quickly sheathed his own rifle, worry in the young man’s eyes, which were the same lilac blue as his sister’s. “Faith?”

  Yakima swung up onto Wolf’s back. “Let’s find out.”

  He turned the horse in the direction from which they’d come, nudging his heels against the stallion’s ribs. Kelly followed suit, and they jogged up out of the arroyo and began following an old horse trail over the rolling, chaparral-covered hills.

  Nearly an hour after leaving the tinaja, both riders rode up and over the last, high ridge. Halfway down the other side, they halted their mounts amidst tall firs in which mountain chickadees peeped.

  Yakima stretched his gaze across the large, wind-brushed, sun-splashed hollow below, where his ranch nestled at the foot of Bailey Peak. Smoke rose from the stone chimney on the cabin’s right side. Men and horses were milling in front of the porch, two men mounted, two walking toward the corral. Two more walked out the cabin door, one behind the other.

  No. Not two men. A man and Faith. She wore her man’s Stetson and her buckskin mackinaw, as though she was heading somewhere. The man behind her held his hand out in front of his waist, as though he was holding a gun on her.

  Kelly said, “You recognize ’em?”

  Yakima’s voice was hard. “Nope.” He slipped his Winchester from its saddle boot. One-handed, he racked a shell and laid the rifle across his saddle bows.

  Yakima froze as he watched two of the strangers enter the corral housing the prancing mares and foals and, holding their rifles in one hand, move around behind the milling horses, working their way toward the stable on the corral’s south side.

  Near the cabin, Faith shouted something. She took off running toward the corral. The man behind her stuck his foot out, tripping her and sending her sprawling. The two men in the corral opened up with their rifles, shooting into the air over the heads of the mares and the colts.

  Yakima bunched his lips and glanced at Kelly. “Let’s go!”

  He rammed his heels against Wolf’s ribs, and the horse lunged into a wind-splitting gallop down the slope, weaving amongst the pines.

  In the ranch yard, Faith screamed again. The mares whinnied and the foals nickered and bolted through the open corral gate, their hooves lifting thunder and dust. As the men in the corral continued shooting and shouting, the long-haired man in the stovepipe hat holstered his pistol under his buffalo coat, picked Faith up like a sack of cracked corn, and threw her belly-down over one of the saddled horses tied at the hitch rail.

  Yakima’s vision swam with fury.

  Curling his index finger through the Yellowboy’s trigger guard, Yakima bottomed out in the hollow and raced through the last of the pines. Staring toward the yard, he saw that smoke issued not only from the cabin’s chimney but from the doors and windows, as well.

  Through the smoke he glimpsed orange flames leaping and dancing around inside the cabin. He hunkered low in the saddle as Wolf raced across the clearing, rising and falling over the sage- and cedar-tufted knobs.

  He galloped under the ranch portal. The mares and foals raced off to his left in a sifting cloud of adobe-colored dust, pitching and buck-kicking. The two men leaving the corral with their rifles resting on their shoulders turned as one toward Yakima and Kelly.

  The burlier of the two glanced toward the cabin. “Company, Temple!”

  The man in the stovepipe hat turned from the hitch rail, then shouted something Yakima couldn’t hear. He stepped between the horses and shucked a rifle from a saddle boot.

  The two men who’d just left the corral dropped to their knees and raised their rifles toward Yakima and Kelly, who flanked him. The other two men near the cabin grabbed rifles of their own, levered shells, and ran away from the horses to get a clear shot.

  Yakima extended his Winchester one handed and, hesitating, not wanting to risk hitting Faith, triggered a shot at the two men bearing down at him from in front of the corral.

  His slug plunked into the ground before the older, bulkier gent, making him lurch back on his heels. Kelly fired his Spencer, then tossed the rifle down and took his revolver in his right hand.

  Smoke and flames began stabbing from the interlopers’ rifles, the pops and cracks echoing around the yard, slugs plunking into the ground around the horses’ pounding hooves and sizzling through the air around Yakima’s head.

  Kelly fired and yelled angrily, angling away from Yakima to head for the cabin. The half-breed triggered his Winchester twice quickly, cocking one handed and heading Wolf toward the two men near the open corral gate.

  The burly gent recocked his own Winchester and snarled savagely as he fired.

  The slug sliced past Wolf’s right ear and clipped the slack of Yakima’s buckskin shirt. The other man near the corral—a tall, gaunt Mexican—triggered his own carbine, howling, as though he was having the time of his life.

  Yakima squeezed off a wild shot at the man. Hearing Kelly and Faith scream, he whipped his head left to see the young man sag straight back in his saddle. As his roan continued racing toward the cabin, Kelly did a double somersault off the mount’s rump, hitting the ground in a broiling cloud of dust.

  Yakima had just whipped his head back toward the corral when a slug fired from the direction of the cabin sizzled across his left temple with a grinding burn. He felt his rifle leave his hand, heard it hit the ground beneath Wolf’s thumping hooves.

  As more bullets sliced the air and drilled the ground around him, Wolf screamed and lurched left, and, his vision dimming, blood dribbling down from his torn temple, Yakima lost his reins and flew back and sideways down the horse’s right hip.

  His shoulder hit the ground. His ankle barked in misery as his boot toe hung up in the stirrup and the horse whipped him around in a gut-wrenching half circle, plowing dirt and gravel.

  Tooth-splintering pain shot up and down Yakima’s twisted ankle and leg.

  And then, as his vision continued to dim as though clouds were quickly filling the sky, he was vaguely aware of being dragged at a furious clip, and of men shouting, guns barking, bullets pounding the ground around him, and of Faith screaming so shrilly that her voice cracked, “YAK-I-MAAAAA!”

  Chapter 8

  Yakima swam up out of a deep sleep to a sharp pain behind his eyes and a coiled rattler flicking its forked tongue at him and rattling.

  The rattler was about six feet away from where Yakima lay at the base of a gully’s southern ridge. Yakima recognized the gully. He figured it had once served as a springhouse for some long-dead ancient settler; cool, sweet water intermittently filled the cut. When it was not inhabited by water, however, the gully was a haven for snakes—diamondbacks and Mojave greens.

  That’s where Wolf must have deposited him, although, having passed out while he’d been dragged out of the yard, Yakima remembered little but a vague sensation of falling and landing hard.

  The snake bearing down on him now, eyes like flat shotgun pellets, was a Mojave green, the deadliest of desert vipers.

  Instinctively, Yakima began reaching toward his hip, and stopped. The snake ratcheted up its rattle and drew taut as a clock spring, lifting its head to strike. From that angle, it would likely sink its fangs into Yakima’s cheek.

  He breathed a curse and steeled himself for the inevitable bite.

  A gun barked—a hollow pop that filled the ravine like a shotgun blast, and died suddenly, reverberating in Yakima’s eardrums. Yakima jerked with a start, eyes squeezed shut, for an instant believing, nonsensically, that the roar had somehow been the report the snake had made when it had chomped into his cheek and filled his head with poison.

  He opened his eyes.

 
The snake lay stretched partly out before him, coiling and uncoiling madly, its head and six inches of neck lying separate from its body, the head furiously digging its teeth into a pencil-thin mesquite branch.

  “Well, what have we here?” a man’s voice said.

  Yakima lifted his gaze to the lip of the opposite ridge. A stocky, brown-haired, mustached gent in a shabby fawn vest, bowler hat, and checked trousers stood scowling down at him, the old Remington revolver in his hand still smoking. His round, dusty spectacles winked in the waning sunlight.

  “Hold on,” said his neighbor, the Easterner, Brody Harms.

  Holstering the revolver, Harms turned and disappeared from the ravine’s lip. He returned a few seconds later leading a mule by its bridle and glancing down at Yakima again, as though making sure that Yakima was still there or hadn’t died, then grabbed his lariat from his saddle.

  Quickly, Harms dallied the end of the lariat around the horn, then, holding the coil in his right hand, backed up to the ridge and, paying out a little of the rope at a time, started down. His high-topped, lace-up boots scuffed and scratched at the uneven rock, occasionally breaking off a chunk and rattling it into the gully.

  When he was a few feet from the gully floor, he jumped the rest, then removed the loop from around his waist and, glancing distastefully at the dead but still-spasming rattler, moved over to Yakima. He jerked his checked trousers up at the thighs and squatted down.

  Yakima couldn’t see the man’s eyes, for his dusty spectacles mirrored salmon gold sunlight. “Can you move?”

  Yakima’s head throbbed and his vision swam, but there was one overriding thought in his brain. “Faith . . . ?”

  “I didn’t see her. Did she make it out of the cabin?”

  There was too much to explain. Yakima shook his head and grabbed the prospecting Easterner’s arm. “Get me out of here.”

  “You sure nothing’s broken, Yakima?”

  He wasn’t sure. The way he ached in every muscle and bone, he would have been surprised if something wasn’t broken. His clothes were torn and bloody; he felt as though every inch of hide had been torn from his bones. He grabbed Harms’s arm and climbed to his knees, breathing hard.

  “That’s a nasty notch in your forehead.”

  “Gotta get back . . . ,” Yakima grunted, stretching his lips back from his teeth as, grinding his fingers into both of Harms’s forearms, which had been thickened by two years of rock breaking, he hoisted himself to his feet.

  “Easy.”

  Yakima grabbed the rope from the man’s hand and turned to the opposite ridge where the mule stood, swishing its tail.

  “Hold on,” Harms said, “I’ll help.”

  Yakima didn’t wait for the help. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the attack on the cabin, but he was relatively certain there was nothing he could do about it now. But he had to know what had happened after Wolf had dragged him out of the yard.

  He picked up a rock and threw it at the mule. As the rock bounced off the animal’s left hip, the mule gave an indignant snort and lurched forward. At the same time, Yakima grabbed the rope, and as the mule sort of skitter-hopped ahead and sideways, Yakima gripped the taut rope and quickly climbed the wall.

  Ignoring the pain racking him, only vaguely aware that his buckskin shirt was hanging off his broad, muscular torso in torn strips, one sleeve completely gone, exposing his bleeding, dirt-encrusted arm, Yakima gained the ridge. Dizzy and feeling as though he’d vomit, he stumbled forward.

  Getting his feet back under him, he steadied the mule, then threw the rope back down to Harms.

  When the Easterner gained the ridge, Yakima grabbed the canteen off the mule’s saddle, popped the cork, and took a long pull, drinking thirstily, then pouring some of the water across his face and over his head. The tepid water washed some of the dirt and blood from his face and somewhat braced him, but did nothing to slow the blacksmith hammer in his forehead.

  “I was working my north hole when I saw the smoke,” Harms said, breathing hard from the climb. He looked up at Yakima, face slack with worry. “Was it Apaches?”

  Shaking his head, Yakima handed the canteen to Harms and, leaning against the mule, looked around to get his bearings. He felt as though he’d been hit with an Apache war hatchet and spun on a wagon wheel. When he finally got a handle on his location, he glanced north toward the yard.

  Cedar-stippled knolls stood between him and the cabin a couple of hundred yards away. Gray smoke puffed above the pines.

  He spat blood and water from his lips. “White men. One Mex. Didn’t get a good look but I’d recognize ’em.”

  He grabbed the mule’s reins and pulled himself onto the beast’s broad back. “I’m gonna ride on back to the yard!” he grumbled as, leaving Harms staring incredulously after him, he ground his heels against the mule’s ribs.

  He felt as though the jolting, hammering ride, every stride a sledgehammer to his brain and aching muscles, was going to snuff his wick once more before he galloped around a low hill and brought the yard up in front of him. He drew the mule to a sudden stop and stared ahead in horror.

  The cabin was little more than a mound of smoldering rubble. One of the side walls was only half standing, and the roof had collapsed. The sod of the roof must have doused most of the flames— only a few flares licked amidst the blackened logs—but smoke broiled skyward in massive, gray-black puffs, like that from an overheated locomotive.

  Yakima gigged the horse toward the cabin, raking his eyes around. Spying a body lying in the soot-streaked dirt near the windmill, he swung down from the mule, trying to land more softly than he was able.

  He stumbled over to where Kelly had fallen. The kid stared skyward through half-closed lids, his blue eyes glazed with death. The bullet hole in his forehead was jellied with dried blood. The sage and brown grass around him was crusted with blood, bone, and brains.

  With a quivering hand, Yakima brushed Kelly’s eyes closed. He rose slowly, groaning softly, and continued moving heavy-footed toward the cabin. He looked around, hoping he wouldn’t find Faith in the same state as her brother.

  After circling the cabin twice and scouring the brush and cedars at the base of Bailey Creek, and finding nothing, he returned to the yard in front of the still-smoking cabin, pain-racked, fatigued, and dizzy, but hopeful that Faith was still alive.

  The men had seemed about to take her when Yakima and Kelly had entered the hollow. They’d no doubt gone forward with their plan.

  Who were they? And where were they taking her?

  He had a nagging, miserable feeling that Bill Thornton had sent them, just as he’d sent Wit Bardoul.

  Yakima looked at what remained of the cabin, and nausea nearly overwhelmed him, threatened to buckle his knees. He’d built the place over six long months of endless toil from the surrounding pines, and he’d filled his corral with the mustangs he was gentling for the surrounding Cavalry outposts.

  Now his cabin was burned, his woman taken. Her brother, dead.

  He looked around at the fresh horse tracks leading west from the yard. He discovered his Yellowboylying in the dust, half concealed by a tumbleweed. He scooped it up and brushed dust from the barrel.

  As he looked around again, his gaze settled upon his black stallion standing about a hundred yards out in the brush, reins dangling straight down from the bridle, the saddle hanging beneath the horse’s belly. Wolf was peering toward the cabin, twitching his ears anxiously.

  As he began tramping miserably along the trail toward the black, holding his rifle in one hand, Yakima saw Brody Harms’s stocky, bespectacled figure moving toward him from the northwest, tramping over the sage-tufted hogbacks. Yakima strode through the ranch portal, and Harms headed toward him, scowling.