by Carl Dane
She said yes and waited for me to supply the reason.
“You said the magic word,” I told her as I snapped the reins and headed back to the Apache camp.
Chapter 24
I fell asleep as soon as I returned from the Apache camp.
There was a woman whose life was in danger, presumably waiting for me to rescue her, and I suppose I should be riding to the rescue, but reality has a way of getting in the way of good intentions. I had to await Harbold’s return and Munro’s orders and I was still weak from losing blood.
I wanted to go and I also wanted to stop. I felt like a horse with the bit pulled back and the spurs dug in at the same time.
In war, you confront that feeling pretty much on a constant basis. You know that comrades are in danger fifty miles away but realize that no matter how persuasive the commanding officer may be, an army can’t march forever without food and rest. No matter how much you spur it, a horse can only go so far before keeling over. And from a lawman’s perspective, there are always people who need rescuing, always troublemakers who need my gun barrel alongside their head, and always predators who need a man with a badge between them and their prey.
I used that line of reasoning to convince myself that it was all right to go to bed, and slept until dawn when heavy hoofbeats outside Elmira’s window woke me.
I looked out the window and realized I was having a dream.
I stood there for another minute and realized I was awake.
Elmira stirred and asked me what the trouble was.
“Shit. He’s here.”
She lay there blinking as I stomped on my boots and jammed on my hat and left, forgetting to close the door.
Chapter 25
His hair was the same white as a decade ago: not an old-man white, although he was getting up there, but the shade kids are born with, the type we call towheads because their hair resembles the flax spun to make tow ropes for barges.
The build was the same. So lean you could light a match on him. And the face had a few more wrinkles but still retained its youthful angularity and its patina of tough, utter ruthlessness.
And the voice. The deepest voice I’d ever heard come out of a human, or any other creature, for that matter.
“Thaddeus Munro, reporting for duty,” he rumbled. And he saluted.
“Good morning, Major,” I said, for lack of anything else. It took me a second, but it occurred to me to salute him back.
“I’m not a major anymore, Hawke, I’m a fucking state senator. That trumps a damn general. At least in Texas. But right now, you’re the boss. Harbold tells me your mountain-man deputy spotted someone who could be Lydia Davis in the Canyon of the Long Shadows.”
“That’s what the Apaches call it, Major. Senator. I just learned the name yesterday. I asked a chief for help and he turned me down. Told me the place had bad medicine.”
Munro raised one of those bushy, coal-black eyebrows that were so out of place against the rest of his pale features.
“You’ll have to get back to me on how you got so chummy with the Apaches, but yes, there is ‘bad medicine’ there. Remember, I grew up around here, on the other side of the Canyon toward Abilene, and we knew about it. Even the wildest kids didn’t go near the place, including me. We heard there were holes you’d fall through and things in the air and water that would make you sick. We also heard that outlaws knew a secret way in and used it for a hideout and would kill anybody who tried to make it in.”
He paused and we regarded each other silently. I wasn’t fully awake yet and it took me a few seconds to take in the big picture.
Munro was mounted on a chestnut Morgan; Harbold’s was black. Both men were dressed in civilian garb. Lined up behind Harbold was a string of seven splendid horses, Morgans, Saddlebreds, and a couple of mustangs. Some were laden with thick packs and others bristled with rifles thrust into scabbards, so many rifles that they looked like porcupines.
“These are cavalry horses,” I said.
Munro and Harbold nodded. They understood that I understood the significance. A top-quality horse suitable for cavalry work could cost upwards of $3,000, and there were damn few of them around after the war. I don’t know if anybody will ever figure out a way to count, but I’m sure more horses than men were killed in battle, and replenishing the stock for both species takes time.
A trained horse for battle requires a major investment of time as well as money. The beasts are trained much like soldiers, both physically and mentally. A regular horse can cover maybe 25 miles in a day. One of these could cover 50 and not even breathe hard. Your average horse startles and bolts when it hears gunfire. A cavalry mount ignores battlefield thunder and, if you ask it, will charge right into it.
“How’d you swing these horses, Major?”
“I told you, a state senator trumps a general. Especially when that state senator knows something about the general that the general would not want known by other people, including that general’s wife. Especially that general’s wife.”
“Lots of gossip in Austin,” Harbold said. “You never know who will really keep a secret, but they trust the Major.”
“When I wake up Carmody,” I said, “we’ll have the only four men in Texas we can trust with what we know.”
“I’m up,” Carmody said, as usual, from somewhere up on the roof, his favorite venue for keeping lookout. “Been up here for quite some time while you got in your nightly twelve hours of beauty sleep.”
“You scared the shit out of me,” Harbold said.
“I saw you when I turned the corner,” Munro said, beginning to look bored, wanting us to know that spotting Carmody hadn’t been much of a challenge. “Harbold described you last night, so I knew it was you. Nice hat.”
“I thank you,” Carmody said. It came out ahh thank yee. “I recently switched to bowlers from derbies. Elegant, but still a good-size brim to keep the rain off.”
Munro leveled his gaze back at me.
“I assume you have a plan?”
“I do. Let’s put the horses in back so as not to attract any more attention than we have to. I’ll make some coffee and take care of the prisoners and meet you inside the bar in ten minutes.”
Carmody climbed down from the roof and led Munro’s horse through the alley to the back.
“Now, the marshal used to have a beautiful hat,” Carmody said as he walked. “Got it shot clean off his head, though. Elmira, woman who owns this bar, his girlfriend sorta like, bought it for him and she’s just mad as a mule chewing on bumblebees because he lost it…”
Carmody continued his story as they turned the corner and I couldn’t make out the words.
Munro shot me a glance. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked scared.
The prospect of a day spent in the saddle listening to Carmody would frighten any man.
Chapter 26
After Munro, Harbold, Carmody, and I discussed my plan, I went upstairs to roust Elmira. I told her that Munro showed up unexpectedly with a team of cavalry horses and that we had to leave, and had to leave now. I told her to ask Richard Oak, the blacksmith, and Verne Miller, the druggist, to keep an eye on things.
Both men had taken my side during a bank robbery a few months ago. Oak, a young man bristling with muscles and enthusiasm, had shown up with a .22 that wouldn’t have felled one of Carmody’s fat squirrels at point-blank range. It was Miller, the sour-faced, taciturn old druggist, who’d saved my life by gunning down a robber with, of all things, a musket. The musket had probably hung over his mantelpiece for 30 years, but it sure did the job. Miller had plugged him square in the chest, turned around, and marched home as though he’d just finished mailing a letter.
Elmira does not function well in the morning, and even though she was nodding, I suspected she had perfected a way to sleep while nodding with her eyes open. I was proved correct when she found it impossible to repeat back anything I’d said to her.
I hated to hold things up, but I w
ent downstairs and retrieved a cup of coffee for her and found her snoring. I had to lift her to a sitting position in the bed and close her fingers around the handle of the cup, but gradually she began to regain some of her human-level functions and started nodding again.
“Oak,” she said, as though it were a foreign phrase she was trying out the word for the first time. “Miller. All right.”
I wasn’t sure it was penetrating, but added that she would have to look after Weed and Gillis. Oak or Miller would have to escort them from the cell on an outhouse break and they needed to be fed.
“Weed. Gillis. All right. But I’ll ask the nice blacksmith to take care of Mr. Gillis. Miller is mean.”
“Mean is good,” I told her. “Miller won’t be fooled by bluster or sweet-talk. I don’t have any idea what Milller’s story is – he hasn’t said more than a dozen words to me in a year – but he can look after things.”
“Look after things,” Elmira parroted, the cup tilting dangerously as she began to glaze over again.
I snatched the coffee and left it on the end table. I gave up. Things would have to work themselves out.
When I closed the door, she was snoring again.
Chapter 27
“I realize I am a mere sergeant,” Carmody said as we turned northwest. “But has it occurred to any of you officers that we are all crazy?”
“Let’s see,” Munro rumbled in that voice that somehow came equipped with its own echo. “Hawke here throws a judge in jail, throws anybody who doesn’t like what he did to the judge in jail, and to make Hawke’s mess go away we agree to save another judge’s daughter. Of course, we don’t know for a fact it’s her. And we’re riding into a box canyon to battle it out with a nest of outlaws, even though we’re not sure they are the ones who kidnapped her.”
“That is correct, sir,” Carmody said, “except for the judge part. He ain’t no real judge.”
“I stand corrected,” Munro said.
Harbold spoke up.
“Don’t forget that the place is supposed to be haunted. That’s the part that I don’t like. So, yes, I think we’re pretty crazy.”
“No doubt about it,” Munro rumbled.
“Yup,” I said.
“Figgered as much,” Carmody said. “Crazy as four rats in a coffee can. Just wanted to make sure we all had the same understanding.”
“One thing I actually don’t understand,” Harbold said, “is that you were ambushed before you were even halfway to the drop-off point for the ransom. Maybe, like we said, they were planning it all along and knew that Sergeant Carmody had the money and were coming for him after they killed you. But coincidences make me uneasy.”
“And,” Munro said, looking at me, “if the point was to assassinate you, was it a grudge by some local or an assassination orchestrated by somebody who knew about the kidnapping? If it’s revenge by a random local, why was Lydia Davis being held in the canyon?”
“We don’t know if it’s really Lydia Davis,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure it’s her,” Munro said.
Munro was in a few paces in the lead, so I brought my mount up next to him and looked over.
“Why?”
“Harbold told me that Carmody said it could have been Mrs. Grant, because it looked like her. He was joking, but right after Harbold told me I went to see Judge Davis and asked him for a description. There’s no picture of Lydia or I would have brought it back to show Carmody. But the part of her looking like Mrs. Grant … well, he confirmed that. In fact, he brought up Mrs. Grant before I did.”
“Really,” Carmody said. “Kinda, well, sturdy? And square-headed?”
Harbold cleared his throat.
“Yes, and from what I hear, pretty head-strong. But at least we know she can ride and shoot. That could come in handy. When she was a teenager, she ran away and joined a rodeo.”
Carmody’s eyebrows were still knitted in concentration. “And would you say she is sort of, you might say, stern-looking? Maybe a might angry-like?”
Munro nodded.
Carmody looked puzzled for a second.
“And how old is she?”
“Only twenty-six,” Munro said.
“Hmmm,” Harbold said.
“How about that,” Carmody said.
And we rode in silent contemplation for a while.
Chapter 28
Carmody, who has ears like a bat, heard him first.
We could see a dust trail as the rider dipped below the rise, and when we halted our caravan, the kudulump kudulump kudulump of a horse in full gallop was just barely audible to me.
We had made no effort to hide ourselves since we left town, and concealing four riders and a trail of packhorses would be pretty much impossible anyway until we got out of open country.
As if on cue, everyone plucked a rifle from a scabbard and spun an about-face with their mounts. Carmody used his left hand to fish a bronze spyglass from his saddlebag.
“Shit,” Carmody said. “It’s Pickleface.”
Munro shot him a glance and then refocused his eyes on the top of the ridge.
“Pickleface, I take it, is a friendly.”
“That’s a stretch,” Carmody said, “but the old sourpuss ain’t gonna shoot us. Probably not, anyway.”
“His name is Verne Miller,” I said. “Local druggist. He keeps to himself, sort of in a pathological way, but seems to be drawn to trouble. Last time was at a bank robbery when Carmody and I were outnumbered. Miller showed up with something that looked like a souvenir of the Mexican War and drilled one of them in the chest. Walked away and hasn’t said a word to me since.”
“He’s not carrying nothing today,” Carmody said. “He’s wearing a holster, but it’s empty.”
I put my rifle back and heard the metal-on-leather hissing sound of others doing the same.
We waited in silence. Our horses, unlike civilian mounts, tended to remain statue-still when at rest.
Miller said nothing as he reined his mount back to a trot. The horse, a thin creature of unidentifiable breed with flinty eyes, and which bore an uncanny resemblance to its owner, looked spent.
Miller dismounted. He moved briskly for someone his age. I would characterize him as spry, but I don’t use that word because I’m afraid of the day – if I live that long – that it will be applied to me.
He turned the horse around and swatted it on the rump.
“He can find his way home. I’ll ride the silver Morgan. And if you don’t mind, I’ll use that new German bolt-action tied to her. Don’t see many of them out here. Whose is it?”
“Miller,” Carmody said, “we ain’t taking pills out of big bottles and putting them in little bottles. This is gun-work. This is serious –”
“Here,” Munro interrupted. He drew up alongside the silver Morgan. We’d left saddles on all the horses – you never know when one will get shot out from under you and you’ll need a spare – even though we’d laden them with packs. He untied the rifle and handed it to Miller butt-first.
Miller worked the bolt with fluid and practiced precision, sighted down the barrel and inspected the mechanism.
“Very methodical people, the Germans. They put a safety on an army rifle. Guess Mr. Bismark doesn’t want to waste any bullets.”
Miller rooted through a saddlebag and snatched out a cartridge belt. He looked closely at the rounds and knew which one to take.
“Planning on doing some mining?” Miller said, holding up a stick of dynamite. “Nice new formulation. Much more stable mixture than nitro, and a lot bigger bang than powder.”
“We’ll fill you in,” Munro said.
“And I’ll need a sidearm. Any single-action will do.”
Without asking, he took one out of the saddlebag and slid it into his holster.
“Don’t have a revolver myself,” Miller said. “At least one that works. I promised myself I’d never wear one again.”
Miller stood quietly for a second, contemplating what he’d
just said.
“But the biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves.”
I watched with a sense of unreality. Miller had spoken more words in the last minute than in the year or so I’d known him. And now here he was, a sudden apparition in a suicide mission. I needed to figure Miller out, but I was at a loss as to how to start.
Carmody wasn’t.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“My part,” Miller said as he swung into the saddle. “I have some experience with this sort of thing, and when I saw you riding out I got the story out of the Elmira lady. You’re going to need help.”
“Elmira told you?” I asked.
“She’s a talker for sure,” Carmody said. “Wouldn’t make much of a spy.”
“I don’t know,” Miller said. “Even if you tortured her you’d still have a hell of a time figuring out what she was babbling about. When I finally got her to stick to one subject, she told me you’re riding out to Long Shadows to save a girl that had been kidnapped and then something about keeping the marshal out of trouble. I couldn’t decipher what came next and let it pass.”
“We’ll fill you in,” Munro said.
I felt irritation swelling behind my eyeballs. I wasn’t mad at anyone in particular, except Elmira – who can’t help the way she blabs, so getting angry at her is like resenting a duck because it has yellow feet – but I was irritated that everyone else, including Miller, seemed to know about this canyon except me.
Miller apparently read my expression.
“It’s not something you’d be expected to know about,” he said. “It’s an old legend and you’re a young man.”
I liked the sound of the last part of that and urged him to continue.
“I don’t know what your CO has told you about it.”
“Only what I heard as a kid growing up toward Abilene,” Munro said, his bass sounding a counterpoint to Miller’s tenor rasp. “That it’s supposed to be an outlaw hideout, and that even the Apaches are afraid to go there because it has some sort of curse or bad medicine or something. I’ve only seen it once, and then never went in very deep. Gave me the creeps, if you want to know the truth. I felt dizzy and sick.”