That was still better than having the stickers on his legs, but not much. He stared at his hands. If he hadn’t spent so many hours mining, moving ore and lugging heavy loads, his hands wouldn’t have been callused. That made plucking the thorns from Mabel’s forelegs less painful. He lifted his left hand and bit down on a buried thorn, caught the tip in his teeth and pulled. He spat the offending spine out.
“Then we’d better stay ahead of them. We can travel faster.”
Cooley touched his holster again. Leaving Big Ear’s horse with Mandy back in town had been a good idea, though he hadn’t thought so at the time. The chief might come on them and steal their animals again, but he wouldn’t get mad that they had his horse. England Dan had snuck out without being seen when he stole the mounts.
It was a good thing England Dan had the map. Cooley had tried to orient it and failed every time. He didn’t doubt Rutledge told the truth about being in the British Army and getting all that military training, including map reading and the like, but most men lied about their past. He had no reason to think his partner did, but stretching the truth was a time-honored duty. Who wanted to sit around a campfire at night, bored and without any liquor, and hear the same stories over and over? Embellishing them with every telling kept the entire audience amused.
He looked at his partner and wondered if he really had served with the Brits in a place he called India but where the natives weren’t like the Mogollons or the Tonto Apaches but instead wore towels around their heads and brandished knives all rippled like waves on a lake. Or was that another story he told about traveling from island to island to reach Australia? It all jumbled together. Cooley knew how to keep his own tall tales straight. Doing that with anyone else was too much a chore. Besides, every new telling entertained that much better if he didn’t try to make sense of it.
Sometimes he wished he had gone to school. Not being able to read made him feel England Dan took advantage of him. It was hard to know if he was being gullible or hardheaded about what he believed. Having to make his mark on documents like the deed to their mine added to his feeling of being taken advantage of. He had to believe whatever Dan told him. That map didn’t have any writing on it, but he still had a hard time figuring out how to use it.
His partner mounted and slowly rode toward the denser part of the forest. He made such slow progress that Cooley walked alongside Mabel to give the mule a rest. It felt good stretching his legs and working the cramped muscles in his butt, too. How cavalry troopers rode fifty miles a day was something of a mystery to him, but he knew they did. A black trooper from the Ninth over in Fort Bayard had told him about how chasing down the Warm Springs Apaches required them to make that distance day after day. And they’d done it riding on McClellan saddles.
Cooley rubbed his hindquarters, thinking about having to sit on two planks of wood for twelve hours a day.
“John.” England Dan held up his hand to signal they ought to halt.
“What’s wrong?”
“Hush.” England Dan jumped to the ground and drew his Webley. He didn’t carry many more rounds in that old gun than Cooley did in his six-shooter.
On cat’s feet, he walked over to his partner. England Dan pointed through the trees. Cooley caught his breath. An Indian.
“Are they Mogollons?”
His partner nodded. They watched for several minutes as a brave stalked through the trees, an arrow nocked and ready to fire. Cooley caught his breath when the hunter drew the string back and loosed the arrow. Smooth as silk, the Indian pulled another arrow from his quiver, got it ready and fired faster than most men could fire a Winchester. He disappeared through the trees.
“He hit something. If we’re lucky, it’s a deer. That’ll keep him busy for a spell.” England Dan dropped into a low crouch and turned his head slowly, listening for any hint of other hunters. He came to a decision to get closer and see what the hunter was doing.
Cooley started to stop England Dan from scouting ahead, but he ended up with the stallion’s reins in one hand and Mabel’s in the other. Long anxious minutes passed before England Dan returned.
“He got a feral pig. Almost as good as a deer.”
“What do we do?”
England Dan stroked his stubbled chin, then pointed toward the southeast. Without a word, they made their way on foot in that direction for close to an hour, then mounted and rode at a quicker gait until sundown.
“There’s a stream. We camp here.”
“I’m hungry. What are we going to do for food?” Cooley’s belly rumbled to prove his point. England Dan rubbed his own to quell its equally noisy response.
“Find some berries or roots. I’ll see if there’s a fish or two that’s never seen a fisherman with a spear.” He dropped to the ground and used his knife to hack at a small sapling. He sharpened the point, then looked up from his work.
The moon had edged high above the treetops by the time they fixed their meal of trout and dandelion greens. Cooley finished the last piece of fish and stretched out, staring at the moon, hands under his head.
“This reminds me of an ancestor. You knew Davy Crockett was my great-uncle, didn’t you?”
“You never mentioned it.” England Dan worked to hone his knife. When it was satisfactorily sharp, he hacked at some small twigs and added them to the fire. It burned with little smoke. He kept it low and somehow added only twigs that didn’t send a curl of smoke into the air to betray them. Now and then he warmed his hands.
Cooley slid closer to get his hands warm, too. The fire was too low to put out much heat, but he knew better than to build it up with Big Ear and his band roving the hills.
“Yes, sir, he was. Not the most famous of my relatives, mind you, but you being a foreigner and all, he’s the one you most likely have heard about.”
“Killed down in Texas?”
“That’s what he wanted them Mexicans to think. He got out of the Alamo, settled down in San Angelo. Raised a family, he did. They—”
“I studied about your Civil War. San Angelo wasn’t settled until after the war.”
“Davy wasn’t in San Angelo after escaping Santa Anna’s army. There was a mission there. He stayed with the friars until it became San Angelo.”
“Why’d the priests go against Santa Anna?”
“Oh, Davy was a silver-tongued fox, he was. He talked his way into their mission and proved he was worth keepin’ around. That man was the best shot that ever lived.”
Cooley continued to spin his tale until the fire died to embers. When the sound of his own voice started putting him to sleep, he watched wisps of clouds light up as they crossed the face of the moon. His eyelids began to drop.
Then he came awake, his six-shooter out and cocked, and he looked around, wild-eyed.
“What was that?”
“I never heard anything like it,” England Dan said. He had his pistol out, too. The screech came again, shrill and nerve jangling. “No Shadow said he’d heard Big Owl.”
“A banshee? An Indian banshee?” Cooley swallowed and gripped his pistol so hard, the muscles in his forearms began to knot. He swung around and raised his pistol as the howl ripped through the night.
He let out a startled yelp when his partner yanked the gun from his hand.
“If you shoot, Big Ear will hear and know we’re out here.”
“If I don’t, that thing—Big Owl—will come and kill us.” Cooley took his gun back but made no effort to fire it. There wasn’t a decent target. Wasting ammo shooting blindly into the dark would make the ogre thing all the bolder. He swallowed hard and settled down, vainly trying to make out a shape or a movement in the forest. As far as he could tell, there was nothing out there that hadn’t been there before sunset.
“Banshees don’t kill anybody. They just warn of your death.” England Dan got to his feet. “No Shadow made it out to be an ogre,
and I doubt he’d ever heard of a real banshee, but it sounded the same.”
“Where are you going? You can’t go out there!” Cooley panicked when his partner homed in on another screech and took a step in that direction.
“If it’s a banshee, one of us is doomed. It won’t matter if I face it down or just listen from here. I want to see what’s making the ruckus.” England Dan laughed without humor. “If I find it, maybe I can dicker with it.”
“Dicker?”
“If only one of us is supposed to die, there’s no reason it has to be me.”
“I’m coming with you!” Cooley shot to his feet. Rutledge’s sense of humor was odd, and he couldn’t tell if he was joking now. If not, and arguing changed the banshee’s mind, he wanted to get his two cents in. England Dan talked better, but he couldn’t spin a tale for love nor money. Cooley knew influencing a banshee took more than a silver tongue. It had to, if he wanted to keep on living.
“It might be different with an Indian banshee,” England Dan said, speaking over his shoulder.
Cooley sped up to pull even with him. “What do you mean?”
“Big Owl might not speak English. I’m not sure a regular banshee speaks English, either, since I never talked to one.”
Cooley frowned as he worked through what his partner said. “You never talked with one, but you’ve heard one before?”
Nothing but silence came as they hiked deeper into the trees. Then England Dan said, “Once. I thought it was an Indian sepoy trying to rattle my command. If it was, he succeeded. Half my men pissed themselves.”
“There! Over there!” Cooley reached for his six-shooter again. Shadows moved. Then the howl came.
“I don’t see anything. And the sound’s getting farther away. We ran it off coming out here.”
“Does that make one whit of sense? Two men chasing off a banshee? Even an Indian one? What’s it got to be scared of? We’re flesh and blood, and it’s . . . something.” Cooley stared hard at the shadow where he knew Big Owl had been hiding. As his eyes adapted to the darker forest, he saw a tree limb swinging to and fro. It had been broken halfway through, and a small breeze set it to swaying about.
Cooley ran his finger over the break in the limb. The ragged edge showed something had passed by under the limb, caught it and tugged hard enough to break the wood. He wished it had been cut with a knife. That’d show a man had sawed through it, even if the only ones out here other than him and England Dan were the Indians and Lars Jensen.
“It’s gone now. I don’t hear anything but the normal night forest sounds.” England Dan made a dismissive wave with his hand.
“The animals and bugs and things wouldn’t have anything to fear from a banshee, would they?” Cooley felt a shiver up and down his spine. “That’d make Big Owl fit right in with the rest. It’s us thrashing about out here that’s not natural.”
“We’re not, but the sounds are back to normal, so everything in the forest has decided we aren’t a threat.”
Cooley jumped a foot when England Dan took his shoulder and gently pushed him back toward camp. Reluctantly following, he wondered why he’d ever come out in the first place. It was safer in camp, especially if a fire kept the night at bay. The night and Big Owl. Out here, Cooley was exposed and vulnerable.
“It’s only a few hours until dawn. We need to be on the trail by then. If the sounds came from some sort of animal we’re not familiar with, I want to get away from its territory as fast as we can.” England Dan settled down by the fire and warmed his hands.
“You think it’s not a banshee?” Hope flared. Cooley knew he was grasping at straws, but that was fine with him. Any chance that what they heard wasn’t a banshee soothed his ruffled feathers.
“Whether banshees exist is a matter of faith. I don’t know if they do, but something made those sounds. Anything that nasty sounding’s likely to have sharp teeth and long claws. If it gets hungry, I want to be far, far away.”
“Banshees exist,” Cooley said with conviction. “That map shows the Irish Lord Mine. After tonight, we need to change the name of the mine.”
“How about we find the mine first before getting all high and mighty about its name?”
Cooley ignored his partner. “I’m renaming it the Lost Banshee Mine.” He cocked his head to one side, expecting Big Owl to chime in with another howl.
Crickets chirping were the only sounds. Not even the wind stirred the trees. He wasn’t sure if that wasn’t scarier than hearing the ogre crying out for their flesh and blood.
He left for town before England Dan woke up the next morning.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HE WANTED TO kill somebody. Anybody. Waiting a couple days with nothing to do got on his nerves. Lars Jensen rocked back in the chair and looked around the Thirsty Camel Saloon. Five customers this late afternoon. Not a one of them carried iron on his hip. Two of them had knives sheathed, but shooting down a man armed only with a knife was a bit cowardly, he thought. Years back he had seen a man, a real killer, who didn’t like guns and wore a pair of knives sheathed at either hip.
Jensen had seen him face down a young cowboy who thought he was better than he actually was. Out in the street, squared off and to the death. The cowboy had gone for his smoke wagon and cleared leather. Then his finger triggered a round that dug into the street at his feet. The knife man had whipped out his blade and tossed it with deadly accuracy. The tip had cut through the cowboy’s vest and shirt, slid between his ribs and snaked its way into his heart. Jensen had released his breath then, not even knowing he’d been holding it.
Men with knives were deadly, but not these two. He was faster than either of them. One was old and gray. The other was still wet behind the ears and could be goaded into making mistakes. Gunning them down wouldn’t satisfy his bloodlust.
Jensen scowled and stared into the foam dancing about on the top of his half-drunk beer. There had to be someone else in Oasis to kill, but he was feeling listless. Stirring from the chair took too much energy. Roaming around the hills hunting for Cooley and the girl had tuckered him out. Avoiding the band of Indians had caused him to get impatient and that drained his energy, too. Worst of all was catching the girl and having her get away from him.
He wished he had the deputy to kill again. That had perked him up for a while until the girl got caught by the Indians.
“He’s not gonna be happy,” he said into his beer.
“How’s that, mister? You ready for another?” The barkeep looked at him from halfway down the long wood plank. Ray Hendrix recognized how prickly his customer was and avoided Jensen the best he could. The need to keep peddling his weak beer collided with his good sense telling him to hightail it from the saloon.
“What time is it?” Lars Jensen had a watch, but it was too much trouble to fish it out, open the lid and read the face.
“Going on five o’clock. Are you ready to switch over to whiskey for some serious drinking?”
Jensen had to laugh at the blatant attempt to sell more expensive booze. Or maybe the bartender wanted him to drink so much he passed out. That’d solve a lot of problems.
“Another beer,” he ordered. “And bring a shot of that popskull you have behind the bar. The whiskey with the black label.”
“That’s the best I’ve got,” the barkeep declared. “Coming right up.”
Hendrix brought the beer and set it directly in front of Jensen, with the shot beside it.
“That’s not for me. There. Put it there.” He pointed to the chair across the table from him.
The barkeep silently did as he was told, then hurried away. Some men preferred not to drink alone, but those who made up their drinking companions were mostly loco. Jensen didn’t care what anyone else thought. It was close to time.
He looked up and saw the tall blond man push through the swinging doors. A quick look around sized up
everyone at the bar. Then he came over, threw a leg high over the back of the chair and settled down. With a quick move, he downed the whiskey.
“Another,” the man said.
“Coming right up, Poke.” Lars Jensen signaled for a bottle this time. He almost laughed at how the barkeep scuttled about like a crab, wanting to make a sale but not daring to disturb either of the men at the table. Lars read in his face that greed kept him in the saloon when he wanted nothing more than to skedaddle out the door and never stop till he got to Bisbee.
Lars Jensen had the aspect of a killer. Poke Jensen looked like a man who killed killers.
“You have any trouble getting here?” Jensen watched his brother’s reaction closely. Poke had a hair-trigger temper. Asking the wrong question could set him off.
“Getting out of the prison was harder than I thought. The vaquero was supposed to leave me two horses and plenty of water. One horse died within an hour of me riding it, and there wasn’t anywhere near enough water.” Poke knocked back another shot, wiped his lips and settled down for serious drinking. Lars Jensen made no effort to corral the bottle his brother had commandeered.
“I thought you were being paroled. It sounds like you had to escape.”
“They decided they liked me so much that they were going to keep me another six months. I couldn’t let them do that since I’d already told you I’d be here today. I never break my promise.”
“No, sir, you never do,” Lars Jensen agreed. “You might be many things, but a promise breaker’s not one of them.”
Poke fixed his brother with eyes like stilettos. “You promised me you’d have the map. Give it to me.”
Lars Jensen tried not to show how uneasy this made him. “There’s been a lot of men dying for that map,” he said. “Do you really need it to find the loot?”
“The cavalry payroll’s buried up in the Superstition Mountains, and I don’t know where. Beeman hid it and made the map to pass along to me since I decoyed the soldiers away after he took a couple bullets.”
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