Two days later, Joshua Beaufort and Jacob Benbow arrived on the early evening stage. I watched from my hotel window as they approached the Wayfarers, both men tall and erect, parade ground backbones, military through and through.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Diablo Canyon Massacre
It began at six o’clock in the morning with cold dawning, hours before the full sun would bless the canyon bottom and before the grey rocks warmed for the lizards and snakes to emerge and take it all in. The Mexican soldiers – fifteen troopers and one officer – emerged from their blankets to a cold breakfast of beans and corn bread. No fire and no coffee; they had travelled that way for seven long, hard days and nights. At first, they had been alert: guards were posted with outriders flanking the train, but upon entering Diablo Canyon, things had changed. The outriders were drawn into the narrow passageway and the guards had grown lax and weary. A continuous diet of cold beans and bread are not conducive to discipline for an underpaid, underfed and undervalued soldier. The officer, a young lieutenant, tried to rally his men each morning, but he was under strict orders to run a cold camp until the train had crossed the river. The troopers, he had been informed, would be well fed and treated in San Pedro, where a US cavalry escort would meet them and take the gold on to San Antonio. The US troops would be led by Colonel Frank Vagg, who would see to their every need.
But it was not the false Colonel Vagg who was waiting to meet them long before they emerged at the Rio Bravo, well to the east of San Pedro. High in the broken grey granite, hidden from the escort’s view, were twenty outlaws: renegade Yaqui Indians and Mexican border trash, led by Max Hadley and a one-eared man. As the soldiers emerged from a cold night’s sleep and wrestled with their restless mounts, and as the four muleskinners reloaded the mules, Hadley dropped his arm, giving the order to fire.
And so, the massacre began. Twenty firearms poured hot lead down into the canyon, catching the mule train and its guardians in a deadly crossfire.
The noise was sudden and stridently shattering as fire poured down, many of the rounds ricocheting, screaming off the granite and mixing with the shrieking of the dead and the dying.
‘Fish in a barrel,’ Hadley muttered, directing fire as best he could from a vantage point a little above the undisciplined gunmen from the Circle V.
Jimmy the Deuce emptied his Winchester and drew one of the two Colts he had strapped on. He slithered down the rocks to find a closer killing ground. Hadley watched the big man; they had not seen eye-to-eye since his arrival at the Circle V and his appointment as trouble-shooter, a role Olds himself had cherished. He could be bothersome further down the line. Hadley gave it but a moment’s thought; he raised the muzzle of his rifle an inch and shot the big man in the back of the head. Olds fell like a stone, rolled and tumbled down the loose shale to fall across the body of a dying Mexican trooper.
Problem solved, Hadley worked fresh loads in the port of the Winchester, worked the lever and shot the young lieutenant through the heart.
Beaufort mustered us just after daybreak. His intention was that we cross the river, ride hard for Diablo Canyon and meet up with the column before they reached its narrowest part. Then, we would scout ahead and lead them safely through to the Rio, where I had found a safe place for them to bivouac for the night before crossing the heavily laden mules over into San Pedro. But it did not work out that way.
We heard the sound of distant gunfire well before we reached the high ground along the narrow canyon named after the Devil himself. We had just rested the horses: Beaufort and Benbow were astride quickly selected bays, with the newly recruited Billy Bob Hunt on a big black. I had my regular Morgan between my knees.
‘That sounds like a mighty big ruckus; we may be too late,’ Beaufort said, heeling his mount forward at a gallop. I caught up with him quickly, but young Benbow, not the experienced horseman that we were, brought up the rear with red-faced Billy Bob Hunt riding hard several yards behind him. The clatter of the hoofs muted the sound of the gunfire, and by the time we reached the grey rimrock at the head of the canyon and brought the sweating horses to a stop, it was all over.
Benbow moved to the front and looked down on the bloody scene below.
It had been a deadly ambush and looked as though the mule train had been blasted in a murderous crossfire. The military escort was scattered: their bodies mostly lay where they had fallen, with several close by to their dead mounts. Others had dispersed but, taking fire from both sides, had nowhere to hide. Two of the mules were down and one still alive was braying in agony. The ambushers, several of whom I recognised from my wanderings as being Circle V hands, were stripping the dead soldiers of anything they considered to be of value, such as personal items and weaponry; the latter included some very saleable items on the frontier. Hadley was examining the contents of one of the strongboxes, which had smashed open as the mule had fallen against a rocky outcrop.
Suddenly the soldier in Jacob Benbow clicked in. Mexican or no, that was no way to treat a fallen warrior. ‘Fuck this,’ he whispered, almost to himself and, still mounted, shook the Henry from its leather sheath. He shouldered the weapon and, at a good two hundred yards, shot and killed a pair of the looters, with a third round killing the injured mule.
And that was it; nothing left to do but join in. Both Beaufort and I dismounted and, standing, opened fire: he with his Henry and me with my Marlin. Billy Bob stationed himself behind a rock, using it as a rest for his Winchester.
There was panic among the killers. Not knowing where we were, they fired in every direction while we carefully – and with little regret – dropped them one by one where they stood, or where they ran, but not Max Hadley. He would have been my first choice, but at the first of Benbow’s rounds he had dived for cover behind a huge slab of granite and I had not seen him since.
‘Hold fire,’ Beaufort yelled, and again, ‘hold fire.’
He was right. It was all over. Only the army horses and uninjured mules were still standing.
Leaving our mounts, but still alert, we climbed down into the canyon. I moved quickly to the shelter of the large rock that had hidden Hadley but there was no sign of the big man. I wondered where they had hidden their horses, but guessed they would be above and well hidden in a terrain that looked as if some giant hand had shattered the landscape and spread the resulting chaos with a single sweep.
‘Sorry, Chief,’ Benbow said guiltily, thumbing fresh rounds in the tubular magazine of the Henry. ‘I just hate to see dead soldiers treated that way.’
‘Nothing to be sorry about, Jacob; you were only a second or two ahead of us.’ He turned to me, a sad smile on his handsome face. ‘That right, Lucas?’
‘Almost less than that, son,’ I said. ‘Almost less than that. Pity we missed Hadley, though; bastard ducked behind a rock before I could nail him.’
‘He won’t be hard to find,’ Beaufort said. He sounded sure of himself, but I was not: Max Hadley was a slippery customer and would do just about everything to protect his hide.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said the out-of-breath Billy Bob. ‘I have never seen the like of this day and never thought I would.’
‘Sadly,’ Beaufort said, matter-of-factly and almost to himself, ‘I have.’
‘Gettysburg?’ I asked.
He nodded and stared into the middle-distance for a moment, reflecting, I thought, on something best forgotten but impossible to forget. He turned, parade ground stiff and said quietly, ‘Let’s get to it, boys.’
The hot sun burned down upon us, and my shirt was soaked in sweat. We rounded up the army mounts, stripped those we did not need of all harness and turned them lose, heading them back the way they had come. Benbow found where the ambushers had hidden a dozen of their horses in a small gully and we drove those ahead of us to the river. They all carried the Circle V brand and we guessed they would find their way home from there. We took the packs from the dead mules and transferred them to the saddle horses, one of which did not take kindly
to the unaccustomed load, but quietened after some soft words from Beaufort.
‘We’ll leave the gold in the Wells Fargo strong room in back of the Overland office tomorrow. I will wire head office to send half-a-dozen agents to see it is well guarded until Beaudine can get some military personnel here to escort it through to San Antonio. That is not the agency’s responsibility.’
‘And the Mexican soldiers?’ Benbow asked.
‘I will notify the Mexican authorities. We can bring them in for them or they can send a burial party; that will be up to them. In the meantime, we cover them with whatever we can find in their equipment: ponchos, blankets and the like. It’s all we can do.’
‘And the others?’ Billy Bob asked.
‘You send word to Frank Vagg where they are,’ I said. ‘He wants them? He can go and get them. Me, I am happy to leave them be.’
‘I’ll be pleased to do that,’ the old man said, shoving his Winchester back into the saddle boot and repeating the words to himself quietly.
‘The ravens will also like that,’ I said.
Beaufort looked at me, an unasked question of his lips, but I just smiled, swung aboard the Morgan and took the lead. I led us out that hellhole aptly named Diablo Canyon, looking forward to a quiet supper and a nightcap with Henri Larsson. Strange really, maybe even frightening, but I had shot to death men I had not even bothered to count and I felt absolutely nothing. Perhaps it was time for me to reflect on a different future.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Death of a hired gun
The next day I made an early start for Diablo Canyon. On the high ground, I passed a contingent of federales, a burial party I guessed, sent by the army and on their way to reclaim the Mexican dead. I did not believe for one minute that Frank Vagg would do the same for his men, although Billy Bob had been tasked with – and enthusiastically delivered – Beaufort’s message.
It took me a good two hours to pick up Max Hadley’s tracks. From the canyon, he had made his way to a clearing where several horses had been tethered. He had loosed the animals and scattered them. I estimated from the droppings that there were at least a half dozen animals, and he had lost his trail among theirs. Eventually I found where he had left them but it was shale-covered ground, making it difficult to follow, but once on it, and moving at a slow and careful pace, I followed it back down towards where the Rio Grande offered a reasonably shallow crossing well to the west of San Pedro. Upriver or down? Two choices. If I got it right first time then it would not be a problem in finding where he had emerged from the green water on the Texas side. Make the wrong choice and it could set me back half a day and mean a cold camp and hard tack for supper. I decided the upstream side and eventually found where he had forded the river.
I followed Hadley’s tracks for three long, hot hours to the foot of a rocky escarpment, dismounted and tied off the bay to a dead mesquite. The area was hard and the trail difficult to read, but appeared to be leading me uphill to where a rock-strewn canyon gave way to higher ground, and it was difficult for a horse and rider. There was little to indicate how long the man ahead of me had been riding: no pony droppings and very little vegetation. The sun poured down on us like golden rain, bounced off the grey rocks and hit us again. We were both bathed in sweat and my shirt stuck to my back like a second skin. I stripped off my vest and undershirt and rubbed the animal down with the latter before stowing it in my saddlebag, taking a swig of warm water from my last canteen and giving her most of the last of it in my hat. She snorted the water at me and I poured what was left over my head. I squatted down on my haunches, rolled a cigarette and examined the ground with a great care. The faint trail was lost in the shale.
I studied on the problem for some time. No point in going forward blind, so I decided my best move was to go back to the lower ground and refill the canteens from the last waterhole. I had passed it a few days before when scouting the terrain, so I was pretty sure there would still be water, and there was. Walking, I led the Morgan and heard her snort at the smell of the water. It was cool and about a foot deep, left over from the recent rain drained down from the distant mountains. The bay quickened her pace and I let her walk past me.
The ground around the waterhole was sandy and bereft of any animal prints, which was strange: it was almost as if the ground had been swept clear. I knelt for a closer look and saw the discarded mesquite branch far too late to do much about it.
I was so intent on my own observation, in fact, that I failed to hear the approaching man until it was also too late. My enthusiasm, my desire to bring the man down had made me careless; he had also doubled back and was behind me.
A greenhorn would have known better.
‘While you are down there, you piece of shit, you’d best say a prayer. If you so much as fart, I will cut you in half.’
I turned slowly and looked up into the cold, dead stare of the pale-eyed Max Hadley. His face red, either from the heat, exertion or the excitement – it was hard to tell – but the white scar seemed to stand out against the red flesh of his face like a thin white snake, more clearly so than I had ever seen it. The man had doubled back over his trail knowing I would be totally absorbed in my own difficult progress to note the lack of his. An amateur’s mistake and one I appeared to be about to pay for with my life. The sawed-off shotgun in his big hands was Vagg’s lightweight English piece: the one I had taken from Jimmy the Deuce, the one I had sent back to Vagg with a promise of retribution. The gun was now pointed unwaveringly at my chest.
‘You walk light for a big man,’ was all I could think of to say.
‘Lighter than you could ever imagine, Kid. Now lose the Colt, two fingers with your left hand. You know the drill; toss it over here. You make one false move and this scattergun will cut you in half.’
I did not move, although every muscle in my body was telling me to. Then, very carefully, I did as he asked and tossed the gun to one side.
‘And the belly gun.’ He motioned to the Rainmaker jammed into my belt, having discarded the shoulder holster when I stripped. I did as I was told but did not toss it as far as the long Colt.
‘Frank knows you are up here, Max. He thinks maybe you were among the dead in the canyon, or maybe on the run to Sonora,’ I said quietly, my voice even, thinking ahead. Something about that shotgun I had noticed when handling it back in the Red Diamond the night I shot Jimmy the Deuce.
‘Frank Vagg’s thinking days are over, Santana, only he doesn’t know it yet. He has outlived his time. He’s too small-minded, fails to see the bigger picture and never thinks beyond the gunmen he hires. I will deal with Frank Vagg now his minder has left and I will control this border. In a few days he will be just a part of it . . . only he will be six feet under it.’ He smiled, but the ugly double muzzles with their tightly choked bores still did not waver. ‘He lost the gold and he bet on the wrong side of the mountain for the Denver and Rio Grande right of way. Still, San Pedro is a sweet deal. When your Pinkerton friends and the gold have gone, no one will really care what happens down here.’
‘That may not be so.’
‘It will be so. No one will miss you, Santana. That female you have been pally with: she another agent? Didn’t turn out well for the last one, did it? You are just not very lucky with women.’
‘I’ve had my moments.’
‘Now you have had your last one, it’s time to go, Kid. You have no idea how long I waited for this one moment. Missed you in Wyoming when that bitch moved, but I sure as hell will not miss this time.’
And that was it, right out of nowhere. This man, Max Hadley, had killed my Annie Blue.
There was no rage in me: that had all burned out months before. There was no regret in the sense that regret would have been to deny all of the immense pleasure Annie and I had shared. What was done was done, but I was certain in that one moment in my life that it was not going to end there in that rock-strewn plain with me dead, and Annie not avenged. It was that thinking that saved my life, that m
indset that so often held me apart from other hunters of men, seekers of the truths that make us what we are, what we were and what we become. I was not afraid; my mind was as cold and as sharp as a new razor blade. Hadley was the carrier of such a hate that had drawn him to faraway Wyoming to kill me from ambush years after I had, in his mind, done him wrong. He was impatient to kill me but unhurried as to how he went about it, savouring a moment that would live with him forever, or so he believed.
Why is it when some men set out to kill and have you under their gun, they cannot help themselves but try to talk you to death?
It was a mistake that gave me an edge. When I had handled the English shotgun, I had noticed the trigger pull was not light. The original owner, in all probability a game shooter before the barrels had been cropped, preferred the heavier pull on the lightweight gun.
That one piece of information gave me the edge and I used it.
I dived for the Rainmaker fast. I hit the ground hard and rolled to my left, tumbling over several times before settling briefly on my back and firing three quick upward and aimless double action rounds at his big body. If the shotgun had a lighter trigger pull he would have gotten off a shot in my direction, but it didn’t and he could not.
My first round hit him in the lower lip; the second took off a chunk of his right ear and the third ploughed into and upwards through his big belly. When he finally discharged the shotgun, it was pointed at his left foot and blew a large hole in his black boot, taking most of his toes with it. I straightened quickly and stood over him. He was trying to speak but his blood-soaked words were indiscernible. The eyes were not filled with the pain I expected to see but with a hate impossible to believe, a vision straight from hell that would haunt me and join the rest of my dark night horses. My immediate thought was to leave him to die long and hard on that mountain, gut shot and paralysed, but Annie Blue would not have approved, so I cocked the piece and shot him through the left eye.
Where No Ravens Fly Page 9