Cotton’s Inferno

by Phil Dunlap

  “You stay on this job awhile longer and you might be able to figure out what I’m wantin’ for breakfast, Jack.”

  Jack had no more than tossed a disgruntled frown Cotton’s way, than seemingly out of nowhere there suddenly appeared a bronze-skinned man with long, graying hair, a colorful cotton shirt, and a bandolier across his chest, full of bullets for the Spencer rifle he carried. The Mescalero Apache held up a hand in greeting. He was afoot.

  “Good to see you, Henry. Where’s your pony?” Cotton asked.

  “Find missing man better this way.”

  Cotton nodded. “Have you ever met the man we’re after, Pick Wheeler? He’s an old miner from up near the Dog Creek cut.”

  “I know him. Foolish man who no like coffee.”

  Cotton laughed. “Yeah, that’s him, all right. He was always partial to rotgut whiskey. Could hang one on with the best of them. Well, he seems to be missing, although we aren’t sure of that. Jack, here, found his two animals still saddled up near the mine, a mine which he no longer owned. There were signs that something possibly happened to the old man, too.”

  “Who foolish enough to buy empty mine from man who no like coffee?”

  “That’s a long story, Henry. But at the moment, Jack’s lady friend, Melody, appears to be the rightful owner. We need to find Pick and sort it all out. So far we haven’t seen any sign of him along the road north.”

  “Bring him to you, if he alive?”

  “Yes. I don’t want him harmed; however, do whatever it takes to get him to the jail, unless he’s hurt, in which case get word to me so we can get him to a doctor. I’m goin’ back to town. Jack’s going back with me. There are two other cowboys lookin’ also.”

  Henry nodded and began to sprint away. As he looked back over his shoulder, he shouted, “Have coffee ready, back soon,” and he disappeared into the brush.

  “He looks to be headed straight for the mine. I thought you said that’d be the last place Pick would go,” Jack said, with a puzzled expression.

  “Never figured Pick would go to the mine. Henry’s goin’ to do just what I’d do in the situation, only better.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Backtrack the damned mules.”

  * * *

  Johnny lifted Rachael from her grassy resting place as gently as he could. Carrying her to where their horse was picketed, he was noticeably nervous about her condition. All his efforts at cleaning and wrapping her wounds had barely slowed the bleeding. He was rattled and worried.

  “Where are we going, Johnny?” she said, in a tiny, almost whispering voice.

  “We have to find a town with a doctor. I can only do so much. You’re pretty badly scratched up, and you got to get care from someone who knows about those things. I can’t let anything happen to you.”

  She smiled weakly, trying to squeeze his hand but finding even that small expression of her faith in him difficult. Johnny’s plan was to put her in the saddle in front of him, so he could hold her with one arm around her, while at the same time grasping the reins with the other hand. That way, she could sleep without fear of tumbling from the horse’s back. His main dread was that some even greater danger should befall her before he could get her to a settlement where professional help might be obtained, although he had no idea how he was going to pay for such a service.

  After she was settled and sitting comfortably, he swung up behind her. He gave the horse a little thump with his heels, and the mare seemed to grasp the need to move with care. It was getting late when they finally got started, and Johnny was praying they might reach civilization before nightfall. He’d seen what happened when wounds went untended for very long, and the most dreaded of all consequences could create terrible pain and finally death, or amputation. Gangrene!

  He shivered at the thought of Rachael possibly losing an arm simply because he had failed to keep a more watchful eye out for danger. He should have seen that cat creeping up on them. But he hadn’t. And now this lovely young girl was in grave danger. If she died, he’d never forgive himself.

  Chapter 20

  Carp Varner had just finished cleaning a Winchester that looked like it had been used for pounding nails when he heard several horses riding past the front of the shop. Glancing out the dust-covered window, he didn’t like what he saw. Three riders in long, oilcloth dusters had reined in their horses and were preparing to dismount in front of the saloon. He backed away from the window so they couldn’t see him watching if they happened to look his way. The Callahan Brothers—Black Tom, Stretch, and Dal—were well known in Texas, although not likely as far west as Apache Springs. Was it possible they had spotted him back in El Paso, after all, and tracked him here? Perhaps he hadn’t been as careful as he’d thought. The hair on the back of his neck felt as if it were afire.

  He went back to the bench where he was ready to begin cleaning a couple of sadly neglected Colt revolvers, pushed them aside, and leaned on his elbows to ponder what his next move might be. He had found a perfect opportunity in Apache Springs, a way to make money and to ingratiate himself with the citizenry; a distinct advantage for when he decided the time was ripe for cleaning the town out. Another fire kind of appealed to him, but since he’d had no chance to see the sheriff in action, he didn’t want to make any move that could get him killed. Biding his time had always been what Carp Varner did best. He was a professional at formulating his attack and then making his move when he had every living soul in town pegged for what he was, either a coward or a good prospect for getting back-shot. That’s the kind of philosophy that helped him kill those who might oppose him, scare those who had no spine into staying indoors or getting shot down, and then burn the town with all but no resistance. He’d lived his whole life with but one dictum: strike those who can’t strike back. And do it without warning, swiftly, with no remorse or sympathy.

  He sat staring straight ahead, mulling over whether to stay put or actually let the Callahans see him by walking into the saloon like he owned the place. His first confrontation with them had not gone well, at least as far as the Callahans were concerned. If there was to be a second, he’d better be prepared. And this time it would be on his terms.

  The need to get a grip on his propensity for volatile outbursts in situations where harm could come was one lesson his mother had failed to instill in the self-absorbed Mr. Varner. And so, after due consideration, and since he’d seen the sheriff and his deputy ride out early in the day and not yet return, he decided to wait for the Callahans to make a move. A move in which he figured to play a part beneficial to himself and to the detriment of the Callahans.

  * * *

  Henry Coyote, the full-blooded Mescalero Apache who worked on the Wagner ranch for Emily Wagner, was keen-eyed and deliberate as he began his search for Pick. Henry’s life had been saved some years back when Emily and her husband, Otis, came upon him lying near death at the base of a ravine. They’d taken him to their ranch, where Emily nursed him back to health. Shortly thereafter, Otis Wagner was shot down during a bank robbery by a gang of cutthroats who were in turn killed by Sheriff Burke. Henry’s allegiance to Emily had become an unbreakable bond, due in part to her caring for him during his convalescence, but also to the responsibility the sheriff had placed on him for her safe return after she’d been kidnapped and held hostage by the plotters of a fiendish train robbery. Henry had also taken a bullet intended for Emily fired by a crazed killer in the pay of another sworn enemy of Burke. The ties between the three of them were strong. And for that reason, Henry was eager to help the sheriff whenever needed. This was one of those times.

  Henry slowly wound his way through the thick brush, approaching Pick Wheeler’s former mine. He couldn’t quite figure what had made Melody Wakefield, Jack’s personal whore, invest her money in a worthless played-out silver mine. Even Henry figured Pick to be a blowhard and a worthless dreamer, whose manifold attempts to find silver or gold ha
d led him to nearly every part of the territory, never with significant success. And now he was missing. That thought didn’t sit well with the old Indian. He’d seen several men of Wheeler’s ilk, none of whom ever stayed around long enough to make good on their boasts. He was thinking about how far the sheriff wished him to go in search of a man whose character was notably suspect. At that moment, he spotted the tracks of Pick’s two animals.

  He began his quest by squatting close to the first set of prints, nimbly feeling around the indentations, memorizing any quirk that would set it apart from any other tracks he came across. Other than the fact that the prints of the mule were slightly larger than most horses’, he also took note of a series of jagged slices missing around the peripheries, most likely acquired by constant travel over the sharp rocks under heavy loads. Looking back at the mine entrance, Henry also noticed that whatever slag Pick had hauled out had been dumped not far from the mine’s opening. That meant one of two things: either Pick was working by himself and was too lazy to haul it farther out of his way, or there was little of significant bulk to bother with. Henry decided it was a puzzle that needed answering before he continued his quest.

  When he reached the mine, Henry was instantly aware of Pick’s subterfuge. Several yards away from the entrance, behind several large boulders, he found a small number of silver shavings in the soft dirt, along with a discarded rasp. Entering, he struck a lucifer, touched it to the wick of an oil lamp, and started to the back of the tunnel. He quickly discovered that the mine had been almost worked to death years before Pick Wheeler showed up in Apache Springs, with only sporadic evidence of anything more than meager success since then. Cobwebs, mice nests, and rusting cans littered the mine the farther back one went. After about fifty feet and several turns, he found old shovels and picks, rusted and half-buried in dirt where the ceiling had begun to fall from lack of proper shoring.

  Some white folks easy to fool, he thought, leaving the hole in the ground, shaking his head, and starting back downhill to again take up his assigned task. The tracks proved easy to follow. The ground was soft from several rains in the weeks leading up to Pick’s disappearance, and the mule’s hooves sank deep. He’d gone nearly three miles when he came across the road that led northwest toward Albuquerque. The hoofprints showed where the animals had left the road originally to wander aimlessly back toward the mine.

  Mules try to go back to place they know.

  As he walked farther along the road, looking side to side in a zigzag pattern, Henry came across another set of prints that seemed to be tracking the mules’. Other rider catch up to old man. The prints showed they stopped in the middle of the road for several minutes, possibly to talk. Then the horse and rider turned back toward Apache Springs, while the mules stood around for a while, then wandered off into the brush to find food or water.

  Old man must be nearby. I sense death.

  Within thirty feet of the spot where the two men met, then parted, Henry found Pick Wheeler lying facedown in the dirt with three bullets in him. He’d been back-shot. He appeared to have hung on to the mule’s neck for a distance, then fallen from his saddle and crawled off to die. There was no sign of any money on his person. Henry covered the corpse with branches to keep the curious at bay, and then began his sprint back to town. He took a route that, to most men, would have been the most difficult, but to an Apache was the most expeditious. It would be at least a two-hour ride on horseback, but Henry was able to make it in an hour and a half by cutting across slickrock-covered hillsides and cactus– and brush-infested gullies and ravines that horses would have found impossible to traverse.

  Chapter 21

  Johnny was grateful that the night had finally cleared from an early evening wind. The air was calm and he was now able to see a good distance. Too much of their time had been spent fighting dust that swirled around making visibility almost nonexistent. He’d wrapped his scarf around Rachael’s face so taking deep breaths came easier for her. He feared she had come close to passing out several times, bringing him to a near panic. After what they’d been through together, he couldn’t lose her now, especially not as the result of an attack he carried guilt for not avoiding. When they came to the top of a rise, he spotted dozens of twinkling lights in the middle of a wide valley. A town, thank heavens we’ve found a town, he thought he’d said only in his mind.

  “Wh-what did you say, Johnny?”

  “I-I guess I was mumbling, Rachael, sorry. I said it looks like there’s a town up ahead.” He kicked the horse to a trot. We should be able to make it in an hour or less. I pray there’s a doctor there.

  “That’s good news, isn’t it, Johnny?” Rachael said, barely above a whisper. Her head sank to her chest, and Johnny had to tighten his grip to keep her in the saddle.

  “Yes, Rachael, it’s very good news. Now we can get you the help you need.”

  * * *

  It was after dark when they arrived in a tiny little village along a river. That’s when it hit Johnny as to where they probably were, in New Mexico Territory. He hadn’t known that they’d left Texas some time earlier and now they had fortunately stumbled upon a collection of Mexican adobes. A low wall surrounded the village, which sat on the banks of what he was soon to discover was the Rio Grande, or Rio Bravo, as it was known south of the border with Mexico.

  The small collection of oddly shaped buildings had been built around the residents’ most treasured structure, the distinctly whitewashed church with a wooden cross over the main door. The only sounds Johnny heard were the barks of stray dogs, the strumming of a guitar, presumably in a cantina somewhere down the wagon-rutted street, and the cry of a small child demanding its dinner. He had no idea how to locate a doctor, so he did the only thing he could think of, he went up to the closest house and knocked on the door.

  The door creaked open about two inches and the light of a candle streamed out. He could see the sleepy eyes of an old woman.

  “What is it, señor? Can you not see it is late?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I know, and I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have a lady with me who has been badly injured and I am seeking help for her. Do you know where I can find a doctor?”

  “No. You have arrived in Mesilla, and we are too poor to have a doctor.”

  “Where is the nearest help then? I’m desperate.”

  “Continue on up the road and cross the Rio Bravo. It is shallow and you’ll have no trouble. You will come to Las Cruces, and there you will find a doctor.”

  “How far is that, ma’am?”

  “Not so far. Buenas noches, señor,” the old lady said, closing the door. He heard a wooden bar slip into place. Probably figures I’ll break in and steal her nightcap.

  He hurried back to where he’d left Rachael. He took the reins and began leading the animal down the road in the direction the old woman had said. Indeed, he did come to the river where it was shallow and would be an easy forge. He hadn’t been paying as much attention as he ought since coming away grumbling to himself about the woman’s refusal to help any more than give a vague set of directions. His distraction had left Rachael precariously perched atop the saddle. She was too weak to hang on tightly, and as the horse stepped into a dip in the rushing river, she tumbled from the saddle and fell with a splash into the water.

  Johnny sprang into action, releasing the reins and making a dive to grab her before she went under. He took her by the shoulders and lifted her to his chest, as she spluttered from the intake of river water she’d sucked in. Johnny couldn’t stop apologizing as he attempted to get her back into the saddle with himself behind her to keep her secure. They were both wringing wet, and with nightfall had come chilly breezes down from the mountains.

  If she don’t catch her death, more’n anything from my not watchin’ her proper, it’ll be a plumb miracle. Fact is, that’s what I need right about now, a miracle.

  The horse sloshed out of the river on
the other bank, and to Johnny’s surprise, the old woman had been right. Through the trees on the bank, he could see lots of lights and hear the sounds of a town that hadn’t shuttered its windows at sunset. He headed for the center of where he figured the most noise was coming from. There before him sprang up a lively community of mixed adobes and wooden false fronts. Mostly the singing and music came from the open doors of several saloons, but his quest to find a doctor was his priority. Suddenly, a man crashed through the glass window of a saloon and landed on the boardwalk. He cursed, struggled to right himself, and staggered back inside, pulling a revolver as he went, only to find himself right back where he started from a couple seconds earlier. Only this time he arrived with a bullet in the chest. Lying in a spreading pool of crimson, he groaned and fell silent as Johnny looked on in shock. A few people drifted through the swinging doors, saw that the man was no longer in need of help, and disappeared back inside, where the revelry once again kicked into high gear.

  “I’m goin’ to have to leave you for a moment, Rachael. I’m goin’ inside to see if I can find out where a doctor lives. Please don’t move. Okay?”

  “Uh-huh” was all Rachael could manage in the way of a response. Johnny had no idea whether she had heard and understood him or not, but he had no choice. He tied the reins to a rail and bounded up the three steps to the saloon. When he pushed inside, he was nearly knocked down by the smoke and the sickening smells of beer and whiskey that confronted him. Shouts and hoots accompanied the prancing about of scantily clad females. More whores than he knew existed displayed bosoms spilling out of scoop-neck dresses to the delight of all. Girls of all descriptions, sizes, and shapes went from cowboy to miner to merchant in order to secure a paid trip upstairs or to a crib out back for an evening’s pleasure.