by D. V. Berkom
Harry started snoring again, interrupting her musings. Claire did what she could to wake him or turn him over, but he wouldn’t budge. Eventually his loud snorks and whistles evened out, leaving things not exactly quiet but quiet enough. Relieved, Claire banked the fire so it wouldn’t be seen by passersby and went to check on Rose and the other animals. Rose had been acting skittish since dinner. Claire figured a pack of coyotes were nearby and wanted to keep the horses and mule from getting too spooked. On the way she passed Peters, who appeared to be sleeping soundly. She soothed Rose and the others with gentle conversation and some sugar cubes, then moved off behind some trees to answer the call of nature.
Finished, she was buttoning her pants when something moved in the shadows. Startled, she reached for her pistol.
“Hold it right there.”
Claire froze at the man’s voice. Heart pounding, she squinted into the darkness trying to make out his features. A twig snapped as he stepped toward her, revealing a man with dark, unkempt hair surrounding a long, thin face. A day’s growth of beard added to the angular shadows cast by the moon. His eyes glittered as he aimed his pistol at her chest.
“Damnation,” he remarked. “You either a half-breed and growed your hair out, or yer a girly.” He grinned. “Looks like I hit the jackpot.” He moved closer, and she wrinkled her nose at the stench. He hadn’t seen the inside of a bathhouse in a long time.
Claire eased her fingers around the grip of the Peacemaker. He hadn’t shot her yet, which meant he had something else in mind first.
She calculated the distance between them, keeping her right side turned away. He most likely wasn’t alone. She thought of drawing her knife, but he wasn’t close enough. A gunshot would be heard by other outlaws in the area. She’d have to hope they’d think it was their man shooting.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” she pleaded, stalling for time and hoping to lure him closer. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He lowered his gun and reached for his buckle as he took another step toward her.
Claire brought up the pistol and fired.
The sound cracked through the air like thunder. The outlaw’s eyes bugged out and he clutched his chest. He collapsed to his knees and fell headfirst into the dirt.
Claire picked up his gun and slid it into her gun belt, then moved quickly through the trees to the camp. The red glow of the banked fire showed three men surrounding Harry, who was now awake. The set of his jaw and fierce look in his eyes spoke to his anger at being ambushed. Another man appeared with an unbound Peters in tow.
“Kill ’im and let’s go,” the man with Peters said in a low voice.
“What about Johnny?”
“How many shots did you just hear?” Peters asked.
“One.”
“Which means he’ll be joining us shortly.” The obvious annoyance and superior tone of Peters’ voice told Claire the rest of the gang answered to him.
“Want me to go see what’s takin’ him so long?” asked the man nearest to Harry.
Claire sighted on him and squeezed the trigger. The bullet carved a hole in the outlaw’s forehead, and he dropped where he stood. She immediately pivoted and shot the next in line. He yelled as the round hit him, and she fired again, but he moved out of range. The remaining gunmen scattered with Peters in the lead.
Claire broke cover, firing both her gun and the dead outlaw’s weapon. By this time Harry had gained his feet and was firing at the escaping figures. A gunman cried out in the darkness, signifying another outlaw wounded or down. Claire sprinted after the rest, stopping only when she heard the sound of horses galloping off into the night.
She raced back to camp to saddle Rose. Harry had the same idea—he’d already saddled the bay and had tied a lead on the mule and Peters’ horse. He turned to say something to her and froze. His eyes widened and his mouth opened like a fish.
“What?” Claire asked, irritated that he was at a loss for words in such a fraught time. He was the one with the reputation for being the big, bad bounty hunter.
“You’re a…woman?”
The astonishment on his face would be something she’d never forget. “So what?” she growled. “Get on your damned horse, Harry. If you hadn’t noticed, the prisoner escaped.”
Her words broke the spell, and he quickly mounted the bay. “What happened to the one they called Johnny?”
“He’s been taken care of.” Claire said. She slapped the reins on Rose’s flank. She and the mare took off like a shot after Peters and the last of his gang. Harry soon caught up and they continued apace.
The outlaw’s tracks weren’t difficult to find, but their luck ran out at the edge of a feeder creek.
“We should split up and head in opposite directions,” Claire suggested. “When one of us finds them, ambush the gang, recapture Peters, and bring him back to camp.”
Harry shook his head. “You think I’m going to let you collect my reward? The contract don’t say anything about who has to deliver him to the prison. Hell, a jackrabbit could do it and they’d still have to pay.”
“I’m not interested in your reward, Harry. I don’t need it.” Her frustration at his bullheadedness reached a boiling point. “Not everything’s about money.” Without a backward glance Claire headed south along the creek. That man is about as pigheaded as they come.
Harry rode past her and crossed the stream, then paralleled her. “They’re headed to Mexico.”
Claire bit back a retort. He had a point, though. The border wasn’t far and was the most likely destination. At least covering both sides they had a better chance of finding out where Peters and his gang left the creek.
But not if the outlaws had headed north.
The longer they didn’t find evidence of the outlaw’s tracks the more Claire’s anxiety rose. She decided to follow the creek a bit farther before she reversed direction to ride north.
Harry whistled low, directing her attention. She urged Rose to his side of the creek to see what he’d found. Harry pointed to a set of deep prints in the muddy bank, then to a series of broken branches next to a narrow gap in the bushes.
Claire dismounted to get a closer look at the prints. Most of them were obliterated from multiple markings, but a few had the unmistakable shape of a horseshoe imbedded in the damp mud.
“They’re shod,” she said to Harry as she climbed back into the saddle. Unshod horses would have indicated a possible Indian presence.
Harry nodded. To his credit he didn’t lord it over her—they both knew there was a fifty-fifty chance the outlaws rode north to throw them off their trail before heading south to Mexico. They’d gotten lucky.
Heartened, Claire and Harry followed the tracks. When the prints grew faint Claire would dismount and study the terrain like Thomas had taught her—looking for stone rolls, depressions and pocks, and broken or crushed vegetation. One surefire way of noticing changes was sideheading, which involved getting low enough to the ground to get a good sightline of the trail. Depressions were much more pronounced at that level. By this time the moon had traveled higher, shedding its blue light across the landscape and making her job easier.
The outlaws’ tracks led them to a deep canyon before disappearing. Claire brought Rose to a halt and dismounted. After several minutes of searching she returned.
“The canyon’s blocking the moonlight,” she said. “The sheer rock walls are high and the opening’s narrow. There’s more shale than hard ground as far as I looked. Tracking through the canyon will be difficult unless we use a torch.” That lent its own problems. “I suggest we rest up and wait until dawn to continue. If they know their way through these rocks, and I’m betting they do, they’ll have the upper hand, especially in the dark.”
Harry nodded. “Agreed.” They took the animals to higher ground to set up camp in case a storm surprised them during the night, turning the canyon into a river.
Once the animals were seen to, Claire unrolled h
er bed next to a rock still warm from the day’s heat. They wouldn’t risk a fire in case the outlaws were camped nearby. Harry laid his gear out a few feet from her.
Claire was almost asleep when Harry cleared his throat, startling her. “What is it, Harry?”
“I, well, I think we need to discuss what happened tonight.”
“What happened? You mean how our fugitive escaped?” What on earth could they have to talk about? They had to track his gang and recapture him, pure and simple.
“What happened…earlier this evening.”
Claire racked her brain, trying to come up with what he was talking about but couldn’t figure it out for the life of her.
“I’m sorry, Harry. You’re going to have to be more direct because I have no earthly idea what you’re going on about.”
He cleared his throat again. “The fact that you’re…that you’re a woman.”
Claire rolled her eyes in the dark. So that’s what was bothering him. She chuckled.
“What’s so gol-danged funny?” Harry asked, obviously offended. “You deceived me from the get-go. That don’t warrant a lot of trust.”
She choked back an angry response. “I knew you’d have a problem.” She pushed herself to a seated position and pulled her duster close to ward off the chill. “If I recall correctly, you weren’t too happy having a man join you—how do you think you would’ve reacted if you knew I was female?” She peered at him through the darkness but couldn’t make out his expression. “I can hunt and shoot and track as well or better than most men and you’ve seen me do it. Can we just let it go?”
There was a long pause, then he sighed. “I ain’t never worked with a woman before.” He was quiet a little longer but then climbed to his feet and began to pace. “How in hell am I s’posed to capture Peters with a woman to look after?” he grumbled.
Weary, Claire heaved a deep sigh. “The same way as if I were a man. Look,” she said. He stopped pacing. “Can you do something for me?”
“Depends what it is.” There was wariness in his tone.
“Can you just go back to pretending I’m a man—”
Harry shoved his hands in his coat pockets and resumed pacing.
“Hear me out. Pretend I’m a man for the foreseeable future, until we find and capture Peters. I’ll even wear my hair like I did before, see?” She gathered her hair at the back of her neck and tucked it under her hat. “It’ll be easier to pretend that way.”
Harry turned to look at her. She couldn’t read his face, could only make out the whites of his eyes gleaming in the moonlight.
“And how do you expect me to do that?” He took a step away, then pivoted to face her. “It ain’t like I can unsee what I saw.”
Claire closed her eyes. Why did it have to be this hard? So many of the men she’d met before—Doc, Wyatt, Mart Duggan, Thomas—had accepted her as a gunslinger. What was Harry’s problem?
“Did you ever meet a man by the name of John Henry Holliday?” she asked. “Doc Holliday?”
“I know of him. Can’t say as I ever met him though.”
“You know his reputation?”
Harry nodded. “What does Doc Holliday have to do with the price of tea in China?” There was that annoyed tone again.
“Doc and I were friends. He took me shooting and gave me pointers.”
Harry scoffed. “For all I know you’re making up stories.” He spread his arms wide. “It ain’t like I can ask the man now, can I?”
“No, you can’t. But you need to ask yourself why I’d lie about a thing like that when you could check my story as soon as you got back to Tombstone. I invite you to ask anyone in town. Lord knows my reputation suffered because of my associations with both Doc and Wyatt Earp.”
That got Harry’s attention. “You’re friends with the Earps?”
“I am.”
“If you’re as good as you say and friends with Wyatt to boot, then why ain’t you with the posse out looking for his brother’s killers?”
“Because Wyatt felt the same way you do.” Wyatt’s rejection of her offer to join the posse still stung, but she’d be damned if she’d let Harry know that.
“Aha!” Harry pointed at her in triumph. “If Wyatt didn’t want you along, then why the hell would I?”
“That’s not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
Claire removed the governor’s letter and held it up. “Governor Tritle knew I was a woman, as did his representative. They didn’t have a problem hiring me for the job.” She put the letter back in her pocket. “And neither should you.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll bet they never had to work with a dadblamed woman, either,” he muttered.
“Or a dadblamed, pigheaded bounty hunter,” Claire muttered back. She turned away from Harry, lay her head down, and closed her eyes. In the distance, a lone coyote howled. She waited for its pack to join in, but there was only silence. The coyote was all by itself in the desert night.
I know exactly how you feel, she thought.
Chapter 15
Claire woke at dawn. Harry was still out cold so she answered the call of nature and then fed the animals. She decided to name the mule Harry, although she felt a little bad—it wasn’t near as stubborn as Harry was.
She started a small fire and made coffee, then wolfed down a Johnnycake and a piece of salt pork. She filled a tin cup with coffee and brought it to Harry as a peace offering. The aroma woke him. She held out the cup.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the coffee. The steam curled into the early morning air, dissipating with the dawn.
“The dew’s up,” Claire said, nodding toward the mouth of the canyon. “Should make it easier to track if we get going.” Once the sun rose the dew would dry, removing another clue to the outlaws’ whereabouts.
“Yup.” Ignoring the scalding temperature of the coffee Harry drained the cup and handed it back to Claire.
“I already fed the horses and the mule.”
He narrowed one eye and said, “How long you been awake?”
Claire shrugged. “Less than an hour. Thought I’d let you sleep. Because of your age and all.”
Harry snorted a laugh. “Just how old do you think I am?”
“Older than me I’d reckon.”
“Says you. How old are you? Nineteen? Twenty, maybe?”
Claire widened her eyes in mock offense. “Why sir, you know it’s quite rude to inquire as to a lady’s chronology.”
Harry gave her a look that said he wasn’t buying her act.
“I’ll be twenty-eight next month,” she answered.
Harry looked at her in surprise. “Huh. Sure fooled me. Woulda pegged you younger.”
“Well?” Claire demanded. “I told you mine, now you tell me yours.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Huh. I would have thought…oh, never mind.”
“Would’ve thought what?”
She stifled a smile at his annoyed tone. “That you were a lot older.”
Harry snorted. “Madam, did you know it’s quite rude to insult your betters?”
“Lordy you’re easy to tease.”
The corner of Harry’s mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. Claire hid her grin by lowering her head as she rolled up Harry’s bedroll.
Claire banked the fire and stowed the rest of their supplies while Harry saddled the bay. Twenty minutes later they headed out.
At first, the outlaws’ tracks were easy to follow. Once inside the canyon both Claire and Harry had to dismount and lead the animals over the slippery shale. A broken fetlock spelled disaster for a horse, and Claire had no intention of losing Rose.
About an hour later the shale turned to limestone, which gave way to hard-packed sand. They rounded a boulder and came across the remnants of a camp, most likely the outlaws’. Burned wood from the fire scattered in a wide arc and supplies were left strewn about: a canteen here, a bedroll there. Claire slid from her horse and studied the prints. She
identified several as the outlaws’ horses, but there were also some new prints.
She glanced at Harry. “Looks like the outlaws had company.”
“Apache?”
“That would be my guess.”
Harry nodded toward a group of creosote bushes. “What’s that over there?”
Claire followed his gaze. Something dark lay on the ground next to the shrubs. She walked toward it to get a better look.
She heard the flies before she saw the body.
One of the outlaws lay facedown next to the bush. Blood matted the back of his head where something sharp had cleaved his skull.
“Well?” Harry called.
“Pretty sure it’s one of Peters’ gang.”
Harry got down from his horse and walked over to join her. “The Indians did us a favor by evening the odds. Maybe there’s more than one dead.”
Turned out it was just the one outlaw. The rest of the gang had either gotten lucky and escaped or been taken by the Indians. Claire and Harry climbed back onto their horses and resumed tracking.
“So you know,” Harry said, “there’s two kind of Apache—peaceful and otherwise. Geronimo’s followers, the Chiricahua, they’re what you call renegades. They like to stir up trouble more often than not and would rather kill you as look at you.”
“And the other kind?”
Harry shrugged. “Like I said, peaceful. More amenable.”
“I would guess the Apache who attacked the outlaws’ camp were of the Chiricahua type?”
“Yep. One thing about them, though. If you can get ’em to talk first instead of fight you got a good chance of survivin’ the encounter. But they can be touchy.”
“Can you blame them?” Claire asked. What happened to the Apache sounded a lot like what happened to the Utes in Colorado. Broken treaties, broken promises, greedy settlers and miners. Nobody caring what happened to an entire people. Most of what passed for diplomacy tended to be outright land grabs.