Arroyo de la Muerte Read online

  “For what?”

  “This.” Emma laid a roundhouse right against the boy’s left cheek. The punch made a sharp smacking sound.

  Rusty grunted sharply and fell in a heap. He lay groaning.

  Two of the mules leaped around on their heavy feet, braying crazily.

  Emma bent over Rusty, whispering, “This way they’ll think you only helped me out to tend nature, and I busted your jaw and escaped. But, again, I do apologize, Rusty. You’re a true gentleman!”

  Over in the direction of the camp, she heard the others stir.

  “What—what was that?” Cash cried. There was the metallic rasp of a rifle being cocked. “Who’s there? Who’s there?”

  Dewey’s higher voice: “What’s goin’ on? Injuns?”

  Collie stopped snoring. He yelled raspily, “What the hell…?”

  Emma swung up onto the buckskin’s back.

  “Hy-ahhhh!” she bellowed loudly. “Hy-ahhh, Buck. Let’s fog some moonlight!”

  She steered the buckskin off across the canyon. It was a dangerous maneuver at night and at a full gallop, but the moonlight lit the way. Shadows grabbed at the horse’s hooves, but Buck had been in the canyon enough times to remember most of the many obstacles.

  “It’s the girl!” Collie Bundren yelled behind her, his voice muffled by distance and the hammering of the buckskin’s hooves. “Gallblastit, anyway! After her!”

  A few seconds later, rifles cracked behind Emma. She glanced over her shoulder to see the menacing flashes of orange flames in the shadows below the big, pale moon. The rataplan of rifle fire continued, bullets screeching around Emma, hammering off rocks. She crouched low in the saddle, her skin crawling with the prospect of a bullet slamming into her or her horse.

  Soon she was far enough down canyon that the bullets were no longer a threat. The firing dwindled to heavy silence. Emma pulled her head up but her heart continued racing for a long time, peril’s cold sweat bathing her.

  Chapter 10

  Yakima woke up with a groan.

  He lifted his head from the cot and received a blow from a sledgehammer for his efforts. He lay back, pressing the heels of his hands against his temples. He opened his eyes. No one stood over him with a sledgehammer. The hammer was inside his alcohol-soaked brain.

  “Oh, my,” he heard himself grunt, pressing his hands harder against his head, trying to get the infernal pounding to stop without success. “Oh, my…oh, my, my, my…”

  “The bear’s a stirrin’.” The voice had come from outside the cell he’d locked himself in. It had sounded farther away than that--from the top of a very deep well. One that he lay writhing in agony at the bottom of.

  Yakima lowered his hands, lifted his head again—this time slowly.

  “Yep, it’s astirrin’, all right.”

  The voice belonged to Yakima’s senor deputy, the oldster who called himself the Rio Grande Kid, which is how he’d been known in his much younger days when, at least according to him, he’d run afoul of the law to some renown on both sides of the Texas border. Now he was old—somewhere in his sixties though where exactly in his sixties he kept a closely held secret, and he’d lost most of his hair and gained enough weight to resemble a small black bear pre-hibernation. He was currently kicked back in Yakima’s chair, behind Yakima’s desk, his mule-eared boots crossed on the desk’s edge, a stone mug of coffee steaming in his thick hands.

  He had one arm in a sling. That wrist was wrapped. His face was cut and bruised. There were three or four sets of stitches in its fleshy, sun-burned, freckled mass, which hadn’t seen a razor in several days and owned the gray stubble to show for it.

  Yakima blinked at the older man, whose real name was Johnny Day, and after hacking phlegm from his throat and spitting it into a nearby slop bucket, said, “You look as bad as I feel.”

  “I bet I feel a whole lot better.” The Kid lifted the mug to his lips, blew ripples on the black surface, and sipped.

  Galveston Penny chuckled. He sat in front of the desk, sitting sideways to it, facing Yakima. He was eating a burrito and drinking a glass of goat’s milk as per his breakfast custom which he’d carried up here from his family’s shotgun ranch in west Texas. His old Winchester carbine, which had also followed him from Texas, leaned against the right arm of his Windsor chair.

  “What’re you laughin’ at?” Yakima growled at the boy.

  Galveston snorted a sheepish laugh and hiked a shoulder. He looked away and took another big bite of his burrito and followed the bite with a slug of goat’s milk. The Rio Grande Kid merely glowered at Yakima and shook his thick, battered head in obvious disapproval.

  “What?” Yakima said through a groan. “You never had a few drinks?”

  Again, Galveston chuckled.

  Yakima dropped his feet to the floor and heaved himself into a sitting position at great cost to his head. The movement inspired the sledgehammer wielding sadist in his head to really go to work pummeling the Apache Springs’ lawman’s tender brain. Yakima sucked a sharp breath through gritted teeth, squeezing his eyes closed against the rabid onslaught.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “A couple drinks, eh?” said the Rio Grande Kid.

  Yakima was baffled. Why did his head hurt so bad? “What in the hell did I…”

  He let the thought trail off as he opened his eyes and saw the broken glass fairly paving the floor of his cell. He looked around, his expression growing more and more exasperated.

  At least six—no, make that eight—whiskey bottles lay in bits and pieces all over the floor of the cell. As his brain absorbed the inexplicable mess, it began to register the pain in his hands. He held them up before him, and his lower jaw sagged when he saw his knuckles were badly scraped and bruised, several swollen and the color of gun bluing.

  He swiped one of his battered hands across his forehead. It came away bloody. Somewhere during his obvious debauch, he’d cut himself.

  Yakima looked at the mess around him again. “What the hell happened? I started out with only one bottle.”

  The Rio Grande Kid and Galveston Penny stared at him dubiously. They shared an equally dubious glance then turned their heads back to face Yakima regarding them through the bars of his cell door. “You had two a night,” the Kid said. “You got roarin’ drunk each night and caterwauled so’s I couldn’t stable any prisoners in here. You’d have deafened ‘em, scared the holy shit out of ‘em.”

  Yakima stared at the man in disbelief. “Each night?”

  “No,” Galveston told the Kid. “Last night he went through one and a half bottles.”

  “I stand corrected,” the Kid said, drolly.

  “Holy Christ—how many nights was I in here?” Yakima asked, aghast.

  The Kid kept his reproving gaze on Yakima. “Four.”

  “Four nights?”

  “That’s correct,” Galveston said, smiling timidly.

  “We ain’t fetchin’ you anymore licker,” the Kid said. “You can threaten us all you want, but you’ve had all you’re gonna get.”

  Yakima looked at the mess again, slowly shaking his head. Half-formed memories were starting to return. It was like waking up in a deep fog after being wounded in a fierce battle. “I’ll be damned.” He turned to Galveston and the old Kid. “What’d I do?”

  “What’s it look like?” the Kid said with a wry snort. “You turned your wolf loose. Soon as you poured that first bottle down your gullet, you turned into a raging griz. I never seen the like. I mean, I’ve seen men get drunk an’ go wild before, but…shit in a bucket…I thought you was gonna bust that cell apart and then the whole adobe building.”

  Galveston said, “We fetched you more liquor to get you to pass out…so’s you didn’t kill yourself beatin’ your head against the bars and walls of your cell.”

  “I did that?”

  “Certain-sure.” The Kid chuckled again and dragged a hand down his face. “You laughed till you cried and then you cried till you laughed.”


  “You called out names,” Galveston added. “People’s names.”

  “Women’s names, mostly,” the Kid said. “But there was also a man’s name.” He scowled at the floor, trying to remember.”

  “Thornton, I think it was,” Galveston said.

  “Thornton, that’s it.”

  “Bill Thornton,” Yakima said, mostly to himself.

  “You were bawlin’ out a gal’s name—Faith.” This from the Kid.

  “Faith,” Yakima said, his heart thudding. His wife, now dead. Killed by men sent by Bill Thornton.

  “You were also callin’ for…” Galveston let his voice trail off. He looked at the Kid. The Kid looked back at him, his eyes dark, hesitant.

  “Who?” Yakima said, squeezing two cells bars in his hands—squeezing so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

  Galveston’s cheeks flushed. He looked down at the floor, absently massaging his left temple.

  “Julia,” the Kid said. “I don’t recollect which name you called out more than the other. I know—maybe they was equal. You screamed Miss Kosgrove’s name so loud one night that she herself came over to see what in hell was goin’ on.”

  “When she seen how you was carryin’ on,” Galveston said, “staggerin’ around like a bear with one foot in a trap and rammin’ your head against the cell door, she herself broke into tears and ran out, bawlin’.” The boy shook his head slowly, his eyes glassy with amazement as he regarded Yakima through the cell door bars. “I never seen the like.”

  “Yeah, that was a new one for me, too,” the Kid said. “Me an’ Galveston got so damn worried we called for the doc. Sutton came over an’ said there wasn’t nothin’ he could do for you. He told us to just keep feedin’ you whiskey till you passed out. Maybe you’d die, maybe you wouldn’t. Well, you ain’t dead yet though you look an awful lot like some three-day-old corpses I’ve seen.” The old man pointed an angry, defiant finger. “Make no mistake—we ain’t fetchin’ you no more whiskey. You’re done.”

  “Yeah, I’m done.” Yakima drew a breath, noting only a trifle lessening of the throbbing agony in his head. “Let me out.”

  Galveston started to rise from his chair.

  “Hold on,” the Kid said, waving Galveston off and canting his head skeptically at Yakima. “You ain’t tryin’ to trick us, are ya?”

  “Yeah,” Galveston said. “You done that yesterday mornin’, too.”

  Yakima was thoroughly befuddled. “I did?”

  “Sure enough.” The Kid gave a droll chuckle. “I could tell you was lyin’, though. I refused to open the door, an’ you went into a rage until you done passed out again. When you woke up again, you demanded more whiskey or you’d turn us both inside out, so Galveston hustled you up two more bottles.”

  “Jesus,” Yakima said. He’d gone on benders before, leaving saloons in total destruction, so he supposed he shouldn’t be all this surprised. “Well…I mean it this time. Let me out. I’m done. I won’t turn either one of you inside out.”

  “You promise?” Galveston asked.

  “I promise.”

  “On a stack of Bibles?” Galveston prodded, looking more than a little nervous.

  Yakima sighed. “Yeah, yeah. On a stack of Bibles.”

  The Kid and Galveston shared another skeptical look. The Kid shoved the ring of keys across the desk. Galveston grabbed them, rose from his chair, and strode haltingly over to Yakima’s cell. Keeping his eyes on the half-breed lawman’s eyes, as though waiting for sign of a further attack, he poked the key into the lock. He turned the key slowly until the bolt slid back into the door, and the door sagged outward.

  Galveston stepped back quickly, his eyes cautious, one hand dropping over a handle of a pearl-gripped Colt holstered on his skinny waist.

  Yakima brushed past him. He opened the office’s front door and stepped out, wincing and narrowing his eyes against the onslaught of the mid-morning light. The light and the street sounds was like being assaulted by a rabid marching band.

  He dropped down the gallery steps, fell to his knees, and plunged his head into the stock trough. He held it under until he was about to drown then pulled it out, whipped his hair around his head, groaning at the sledgehammer’s assault to his brain, then stumbled back up the porch steps. When he’d taken a big drink of water from the rain barrel, lowering the water level by nearly three inches, he hung the gourd dipper back over the barrel and shambled back into the jail office.

  He ripped his town marshal’s badge from his shirt and tossed it to the Kid, who caught it against his chest. Holding the badge in both hands, the Kid frowned curiously at Yakima. “What the hell…?”

  “I’m resigning. You’re the new law in Apache Springs.”

  The Kid looked at the badge. He looked at Galveston before sliding his disbelieving gaze to Yakima. “What’s goin’ on, Yak?”

  “You heard me.” Hair dripping, his shirt soaked, Yakima crossed to the desk. He opened a bottom drawer and pulled out his gun rig.

  Galveston stared in shock at the Kid, who stared in shock at Yakima. The Kid heaved his burly bulk out of the chair, making the chair squawk, and said, “Yakima, dammit…you’re just hungover. You ain’t thinkin’ right.”

  Gritting his teeth against the misery in his head, Yakima buckled his cartridge belt and sheathed bowie knife around his waist. “Oh, I’m hungover, all right. But I’ve never thought righter. I’ve let grass grow way too long under my boots. It’s growin’ up through my soles so that I can feel it tickling my feet.”

  Crouching, the Kid opened a desk drawer. He pulled out a bottle and slammed it atop the desk. He pulled the cork out of the bottle, slammed it onto the desk beside the bottle, and said, “Lord help me, but there you go. Have a little hair o’ the dog that bit ya!”

  “Nope.” Yakima turned to the Kid, grinning. He placed a hand on the older man’s thick shoulder. “Why so long-faced? You’ve just been promoted.” He glanced at Galveston regarding him with his lower jaw sagging nearly to his chest. “You’re the senior deputy now…seein’ as how you’re the only one.” To the Kid, he said, “You’d better hire another man. See if the skinflints on the city council will spring for a second deputy. This town’s too damn big for only one. I been meanin’ to tell ‘em so but I been busy of late,” he added ironically, glancing once more at the mess he’d made of the cell.

  “Yakima Henry, I ain’t qualified to be no chief marshal,” the Kid said, bald-assed fear in the old man’s eyes. “I’m old an’ slow.”

  “That’s not what I saw out in the country a few days back. In fact, I followed a long bloody trail of dead Apaches up to you and those stage passengers whose lives you saved.”

  “That was…that was raw luck! The luck of the foolish!”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Yakima’s grin broadened. “Hell, you’re the Rio Grande Kid.”

  He turned toward the open door, but the Kid rushed around the desk to step in front of him, holding up his hands, palms out. “No, I ain’t the Rio Grande Kid. That’s just me fumin’ the place up with my blather. I mean…I was the Rio Grande Kid, an’ sometimes I like to still see myself as the Kid. But in point of fact, the Rio Grande Kid’s done hung up his shootin’ irons years ago. Years ago, Yak! I’m…hell, I’m just Jimmy Day now.” He poked his thumbs against his chest.

  “Kid, you’re a damn hero,” Yakima told him. “It’s time you started actin’ like one. Now, pin that badge to your shirt and put some spring in your step.”

  The Kid looked distastefully down at the badge he’d left on the desk. He turned to Yakima again, frowning his disbelief. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  The Kid scrubbed his hand across his chin, pondering the badge. “Well…I’ll be damned…”

  “Put it on.” Yakima patted the old man’s shoulder again then turned to Galveston Penny. He held out his hand. “Galveston, been nice knowin’ ya.”

  Galveston scowled at him, eyes wide and miserable. “Really? Just like that…you’r
e gonna…pull out on us, Marshal Henry?”

  “Call me Yakima.” He canted his head toward the Kid. “He’s the law now. He’s your boss. Mind ‘im.”

  Grudgingly, Galveston shook Yakima’s hand.

  Yakima walked to the door, pulled his hat off a wall peg.

  “Where you goin’, Yakima?” Galveston asked in a voice hushed with sadness.

  Yakima stepped into the doorway, filling it, and stared out into the blazing desert light. He thought about the question for a time, and said, “I got no idea. But, then, I’ve rarely ever had one. I usually let my horse choose.”

  He moved down the ramada steps and into the street, heading in the direction of the livery barn, where his black stallion, Wolf, was stabled. The thud of galloping hooves rose behind him, growing louder until he couldn’t ignore them any longer. His heart fell when he saw the long, flaxen hair bouncing on Emma Kosgrove’s slender shoulders clad in a dusty checked shirt.

  “Yakima!” the girl cried, aiming the buckskin at him, drawing rein when she was ten feet away, the horse locking up its legs and skidding several feet, until its head was inches from Yakima’s chest.

  “Ah, hell.” Yakima gave his head a quick, single wag. “I’m outta here, Emma. Whatever problem you got, the new marshal of Apache Springs is in yonder.” He jerked his chin at the jailhouse then swung around and continued heading in the direction of the livery barn.

  “It’s Rusty Tull and the Bundrens,” Emma cried. “They’ve found the church!”

  Yakima stopped. His heart sank lower.

  Glowering, he turned reluctantly, slowly back around to face the girl on the horse once more. “What?”

  Chapter 11

  Emma leaped from the buckskin’s back. As her own dust caught up to her, enshrouding both her and Yakima, she stared up at him, her hazel eyes cast with deep gravity. “They found the treasure. Rusty got his marbles…and his memory…back, and he showed his uncle and cousins the old church.”

  “Is that where you’ve been all this time? Out in that canyon?”

  “Tryin’ to track Rusty Tull and the Bundrens, that’s right. And I tracked ‘em, all right.” Emma glanced around to make sure no one was listening in on their conversation. “Right to the church. Or close enough that I knew that’s where they were headed.”