Canyon Song

by Gwyneth Atlee

Oh, no. Never his dream. If he couldn’t find work with one of the big newspapers in the States, as he had planned, then he would start one of his own. And with it, Horace would ruin Judge Ward Cameron, for all the neat coincidences that had worked like deadly poison against Papa’s will to live.

  * * *

  Ward Cameron nearly choked on the cuernito his housekeeper had baked when the realization struck him. Anna Bennett. There was a damned good reason that name stuck in his craw. Already, it had prompted him to take out Singletary’s letter more times than he cared to admit, even to himself.

  He brushed off his hands, showering the gleaming walnut desktop with crumbs of sugary cinnamon. Not noticing the mess, he scooted back his chair and reached pulled out a journal, one hidden in his desk’s bottom drawer. Unlike the dime novels that currently popularized an outlandish version of the west, his writings told the true tales, stories he could not afford to share. Yet he documented them religiously, for the pure joy of seeing his true exploits on paper, the feeling of power that it gave him to read of how he’d gone from nothing to a position where he decided whether men should live and die.

  Guessing at the year it happened, Cameron flipped through his journal to the section written in 1878. He chuckled in appreciation of his cunning as he revisited the story of how he’d fined a drunken rancher into ruin as a result of a spree in Three Cow Crossing. When the man grew sufficiently desperate to sell his ranch, Cameron had stepped in as the “sympathetic” buyer – and then resold the property at a terrific profit. In another case, he’d shown mercy to a copper miner’s son accused of stealing horses. In exchange, the grateful father had cut him in as a part-owner of that mine. And then there’d been that larcenous blond singer who’d been brought to him for justice. What was it she’d gone by? There it was. It had been Annie Faith, but later he’d learned her real name was Anna Bennett.

  He smiled, recalling how the sheriff caught her mere steps out of Mud Wasp. Riding a stolen horse, she’d been carrying a reticule of gold coins. The little fool.

  She’d made a half-hearted attempt to seduce him out of hanging her, but her shoulders slumped in defeat, as if she knew she’d swing. Damned eager sheriff had made it difficult to do otherwise. Ward had had to do some fancy footwork to make it look like she’d escaped and taken off with the gold as well.

  That gold had helped Cameron build this house, and the gift of the woman and the horse had helped establish his relationship with Ned Hamby. He could take her, Cameron told Ned, provided that she never again turned up alive to talk.

  Remembering Hamby’s reputation, Cameron could barely imagine how the blonde had managed to escape alive. But she must have. There couldn’t be two women in these parts by that name.

  God help him if she reappeared and met up with Singletary and the real story ever saw the light of day.

  He sighed and tried to take some comfort in the memory of his recent request that Hamby kill her. This time, they’d both better pray that Anna Bennett would stay dead.

  * * *

  As if he sensed her tears, Padre Joaquín nuzzled against Anna’s leg. She scratched the shaggy brown and white head and wondered once again what had possessed Señora Valdez to name a randy billy goat for a Catholic priest the old woman had once known. The moment Anna quit scratching to stroke Canto’s thin neck, the goat butted her leg for more attention.

  “Ow!” Anna jerked away from the sharp horns and glared at Padre, who stood on his hind legs as if to meet her gaze. “Do that again and you’re cabrito dinner.”

  Despite her threat, she could neither resist another scratch nor think of anything much tougher than old goat. One of the nannies wandered out of the open shed for her share of attention, but Anna instead led Canto from the pen. She needed to ride, to check her traps, but more importantly, she wished to get away from what Quinn Ryan had told her.

  Two days . . . Had they really led to weeks in jail, then to years to replace what she had stolen? Maybe he’d been lying to punish her. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as he’d made out.

  She was a fool if she believed that. No, he hadn’t lied. She had only to recall the anguish in his voice to know his words had been the truth, or part of it. She didn’t think she could bear to hear the rest.

  She led Canto by his rope halter. The speckled horse followed quietly, swatting his tail at thick snowflakes as if they were fat flies. After closing the gate, she stopped by the feed shed and saddled the old gelding.

  If it makes you feel any better, I was punished for my crimes. She couldn’t imagine why she’d tried to tell that to Quinn Ryan, why she’d thought the little mound of red gravel might make a difference to him. Did she really think her suffering would somehow diminish what he’d endured because of her?

  She lowered herself slowly onto Canto’s sunken back and touched his side with gentle heels. Heaven alone knew how old the poor beast had been when he’d stumbled into the clearing two years back and started munching on her beans. Anna thought light work and good care kept him going. Señora Valdez swore it was the howling of coyotes, the black silhouettes of buzzards against the brittle winter sky. The fear of dying, she claimed, proved a powerful incentive for those of her age to continue. Not the being dead part, but the painful crossing over into the next life.

  Anna imagined that was true, for she’d experienced the pain part the day that slack-eyed demon had plunged a long steel blade into her gut. She’d surprised him by fighting harder than he imagined any saloon slut should against his attempts to rip her clothes off, and he’d lost his temper with her. Not that it mattered much. If she hadn’t fought, the filthy beast and his drunken friends all would have taken their turns, perhaps for days on end, and then they would have tried to kill her all the same.

  Thankfully, her memories of the incident were fragmented and few. Sometimes, the crack of her ax blade against wood brought back the blows of fists. Sometimes, the sun glinting off the summer creek returned her to the flashing knife. Now and then, the ache of her right knee sent her mind reeling, tumbling down the rock-strewn hillside where she’d been thrown to die.

  She swiped tears from her eyes and nudged Canto’s sides once more. Talking to Quinn had brought back far too much at once, and she sensed more bitter memories looming just beyond her consciousness.

  The gelding shuffled through the accumulating snowfall, his broad hooves sending sprays of white ahead. With indignant snorts, he shook his head from time to time at the thick flakes that alighted on his ears.

  Gradually, she let the quiet sounds of creaking leather and muffled hoof beats loosen the tension in her chest. As she rode toward the trail where she had set her snares, her worries faded into the whiteness falling all around her. She imagined snowfall blanketing old pain with thick and frozen layers.

  All too soon, her peace was punctuated by an intermittent patter. A shower of icy raindrops plummeted past the feathery snowflakes. Anna shrugged deeper into her leather coat and pulled the hat further down over her ears. Her breath and the horse’s formed plumes in the still air. Surely, it was far too cold to rain.

  Apparently, no one told the raindrops, for they continued to drill small, icy holes through the snow’s surface. Gradually, their rhythm grew staccato as the frigid shower pelted both Anna and the horse. Despite both hat and coat, the moisture quickly found her flesh and chilled her, making her wish for the shelter of the cabin.

  She shivered. Snow was one thing, but this was dangerous weather for walking and especially for riding. The rain that punctured the new snow would quickly freeze against the cold ground, creating a treacherous layer of hidden ice.

  She nearly turned the horse’s head before the possibility of a jackrabbit or a fat grouse gave her pause. Something other than beans and bacon with cornbread sounded too tempting to leave to hungry scavengers. She would quickly check the snares, and then she’d turn around.

  The first snare hung, an empty wire loop beneath a low tree branch. She picked it up, not wanting to kill an
animal that the weather would prevent her from retrieving.

  She had barely dismounted to check the second trap when a strange noise startled her, the sound of a heavy step on underbrush. The nearest pine tree shuddered and its branches spilled a mist of snow, but she couldn’t see past the thick boughs. Her heart thumped hard against her chest wall, and her right hand shot instinctively toward the knife she carried in her pocket. Meant to gut and skin small prey, its blade was also sharp enough to wound, perhaps to kill, a larger beast.

  Even if that beast turned out to be a man.

  * * *

  The dog rose from his place beside Quinn Ryan and padded toward the door. He scratched, then turned to gaze at Quinn with a sorrowful expression.

  “We’re both going to have to wait ‘til she comes back,” Quinn said.

  He was feeling pretty sorrowful himself. Though the tea had eased his parched throat, he could barely move without setting his shoulder to throbbing mercilessly. That was just as well, however, for his ordeal had left him weak.

  He’d expected worse as soon as he had realized he’d been shot. He’d seen shot folks before, and those who hadn’t been hit in some appendage the local sawbones could lop off mostly died. Most of those who didn’t cash in quickly burned like kerosene-soaked haystacks with the fevers of infection. Others rotted like apples going bad from the core out. Back when he’d been a young pup, he’d thought the ones that died fast lucky, but now the Bard’s words sang in his memory, “Fight ‘til the last gasp.”

  He remembered his red-haired uncle’s grin as he’d shared that line, along with so many of Shakespeare’s finest. His Uncle Ferris, a bright, self-educated immigrant, had dreamed of being a great actor, but his Irish brogue consigned him to the brutal life of a day laborer. When he could find work at all, that is. When he could talk his way past the hand-scrawled signs, “No Irish Need Apply.”

  Still, Ferris’s smile had lit the shared family apartment. His dream might not have been his future, but it somehow sustained him even more than the few coins he’d brought home.

  Quinn knew his uncle had fought to the last gasp inside that fiery tenement. He knew that Ferris would want his sister’s son to fight just as hard for his life now.

  Quinn surprised himself with the fierceness of his desire to comply. What was he but a ruined gambler and a failed lawman? Who was he to wish to live? Since his family’s death, he lacked even a dream like his dead uncle’s to sustain him.

  Yet still, he meant to live, if only to find Hamby and his gang and do what he should have years before. For with this shooting, he felt his ties to Cameron severed. He would make damned sure no other child was scalped and left to die, no other lawman back-shot. Not by Ned Hamby’s men, at least, for they would all be dead.

  Strange, how it had been the scalps that sent him flying from his saddle when nothing else in six years had convinced him to care enough to risk bucking Cameron’s orders. He closed his eyes, trying not to see the blood-caked black hair held tight in Hamby’s fist, trying not to see the filthy smoke that marked the burning hogan.

  And then, suddenly, he knew. Though his two younger sisters’ hair had been sandy blond, not black, though the home that burned around them had been a tenement and not the round hut built by the Navajo, that child’s dying whimpers had merged the two events inside his mind. Perhaps because, as with his mother’s apartment back in New York, his help hadn’t been in time.

  Too late, Annie. Too late because of you, he’d told the thief. But he’d been wrong, or lying, because his own greed had been responsible. He could have gone back long before she’d robbed him, but his fine horse had too well pleased him, as did his flashy clothes and the pretty company his generous gifts could buy. Annie Faith had been the prettiest of all, always ready with a saucy smile to encourage or a song so soulful that it made him long to hold her tight. But she was only one of many beguiling, heartless creatures that waylaid the unwary on the road of sin.

  If Annie hadn’t robbed or shot him, someone else would have, for he’d grown greedy, cheating more and more boldly, cutting corners in his grasping desperation to accumulate more money. He didn’t want to just go back to help his family. He’d wanted to return a dapper hero, and in the end that vain desire had cost him everything.

  He would never forgive himself for that, no more than he would forgive the woman who had robbed him, even though he knew that with her herbs and unguents, Annie Faith had saved his life.

  * * *

  When Canto sidestepped nervously, Anna wondered if he too sensed something, or if his restlessness was only her apprehension communicating itself to the old horse. A chill breeze stirred to blow the damp ends of her hair into her face. Another tree nearby shook off a portion of its load of snow.

  Of course. The rain had caused some of the snow to melt and shift. And that cracking in the underbrush? It could have been a loose branch settling, or even her imagination. Thinking about the horrors of the past had made her suspect the present. There was nothing here beyond the possibility of her next meal.

  The gelding quieted, then stretched out his scrawny neck to grab a mouthful of winter grasses. Only a few feet beyond him, a cottontail hung beneath a low limb, a wire snare around its neck.

  Anna dismounted, then stooped to retrieve the dead rabbit, her knife still held in her right hand. Barely had her back bent when something huge and tawny flashed above her head. Two screams rent the air, one like that of a furious woman, the other of the horse.

  Anna’s legs loosened with the unexpected sound, and she dropped, knees-first, onto the hard ground. Twisting her head, she saw a cougar atop the gelding, which plunged and bucked against his clawing rider.

  The mountain lion screamed frustration, once again sounding more like a human female than a beast. But the horse stumbled in its panic, and within moments, the big cat brought it down. Anna stared in fascinated horror as the cougar fitted its jaws around the larger horse’s throat and held on tight.

  The gelding’s legs flailed violently, and Anna gripped her small knife tightly. The cougar’s green-eyed gaze caught hers and held it. Despite its full mouth, it managed a deep growl.

  The big cat might easily weigh one hundred fifty pounds, and its every claw outmatched her puny weapon. Yet how could she sit here and watch it kill her only horse?

  Anna forced herself to stop staring and grabbed up sticks, then hurled them. One bounced off the gelding’s haunch. Another struck the cougar’s back, but it barely flinched, intent only on its prey.

  Gradually, the spasmodic thrashing of Canto’s legs slowed to a stop. Anna watched the life fade from the old gelding’s eyes.

  She scrambled for more sticks, but let them drop without bothering to throw them. The big cat had clearly won its prize, so she would be foolish to risk an injury. Still watching the beast cautiously, she retrieved her hat, which had fallen into the wet snow. Cold rain continued to patter through the pine boughs, onto her head, and into her neckline. Yet Anna felt flushed with the sudden warmth that fear brought, an unexpected boon.

  And she would need it, she decided, for the long, cold walk back home.

  * * *

  Just ahead of Ned, Pete whipped his bay horse in an attempt to force it to jump a fallen tree that blocked the trail. It tried to drop its head to buck, but Pete yanked the reins up hard. Finally, the animal had had enough. After an awkward lurch forward, it leapt the three-foot barrier.

  As it landed, its front hooves struck earth glazed with ice. The horse’s forelegs slid, and its body twisted. With an audible grunt, it fell onto its side.

  Pete’s scream followed. “Christ – oh, Christ! My God, my God!”

  With a terrified whinny, the bay scrambled to its feet and trampled its fallen rider before galloping down the trail. Black Eagle and Hop, who were riding just ahead, both tried to catch the horse’s reins, but it charged past them, deeper into the rocky canyon. Both spurred their own mounts after the runaway.

  Ned dismounted
and then squatted down beside Pete, who lay screaming on the cold ground, clutching a contorted upper leg. Blood soaked his jeans at thigh level, and Ned could easily see the white splinters of bone.

  Icy raindrops chased the snow, turning the rocky surfaces steadily slicker. They were hours away from either riding or climbing to any sort of decent shelter, even the damned caves. It would take forever with a man this badly wounded. Ned swore at both the weather and Pete’s ear-splitting shrieks and howls.

  “Shut your damned mouth,” Ned warned the downed man. He didn’t want to stand around freezing his balls off and babysitting this belly-acher. All he really wanted was to get back to a warm cabin and maybe some coffee if they had any left from their last raid. He glanced once more at Pete’s ruined leg and then made his decision.

  Pete’s eyes appeared to focus, and something he saw in Ned’s expression made his screams stop abruptly. No sooner had he stopped wailing than his teeth began to chatter with the cold, or maybe fear. His gaze flicked to his gun, which had been flung just a few feet out of reach.

  Ned scooped up the revolver and stuck it in his own belt, then peered down at the spreading bloodstain. “That leg’s busted real good. Be a hell of a job to carry you out of here. Real painful too, I ‘magine. Then you’d probably go and die on us anyway. Fever’d get you, even if the move didn’t kill ya right off. Lot of noise and trouble to be goin’ to for nothin’.”

  Pete’s voice rose on a tide of panic. “I’m strong, and I can keep my mouth shut. I swear I ain’t dyin’. Maybe if the leg came off, I’d heal up . . . Please, Ned. You and me, we been together, how many years is it?”

  Ned thought about the stolen whiskey just before he answered, “Long enough, Pete. Plenty long enough.”

  Pete’s eyes popped open so wide, Ned could see thin rims of white all the way around the dark brown centers. The injured man’s lips drew back into something that might have resembled a grin, except for the missing teeth and the gagging smell of terror that rose from him.

  Ned whipped out his gun and fired so fast Pete didn’t have a chance to scream. Instead, the young man’s head flopped back into the snow, blood welling from the wound above and right between his still-wide eyes.