As he watched the Ranger and wagon speed away down the rocky trail, Lupo gripped his wounded side with his free hand for a moment and squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. He felt warm blood seep from the sticky bandage and run between his fingers. Running his hand down the front of his thigh, he felt where the warm blood had turned clammy cold in the night air. He started to sway but stopped himself.
You have no time to die, Easy John, he told himself. He adjusted the pack on his right shoulder and walked up into the rocks. He circled around the gigantic land-stuck boulder, dropped his pack at his feet, then kneeled and scraped out a hole in the dirt between the large monolith and another massive boulder leaning over against it. As he pulled bundle after bundle of tri-sticks of dynamite from the pack and burrowed them deep back into the hole, he heard the beat of horses’ hooves grow more distinct, coming down the trail behind him.
With his smoking cigar between his teeth and a thick coil of fuse in his hand, he hefted the shoulder pack onto his back. He walked backward, stooped, uncoiling the long fuse, laying it out around the large boulder until he reached the top, and dropped flat as the riders came into sight in the pale moonlight. From atop the huge boulder, he looked down on the trail below. Three riders moved their horses along the trail at a walk, one of them leaning deep, staring intently at the wagon tracks in the dirt.
These were not the riders he heard, Lupo told himself. The sound he heard was still coming—many horses, farther back on the trail, coming at a thundering pace. He watched the dark silhouettes below come to a halt and look back along the trail as if hearing the same thing he heard. He had to hurry! Everything depended on him blowing up the trail, putting thousands of tons of rock and dirt between these men and his nation’s gold.
“Sante Madre,” he whispered, crossing himself for the first time in as long as he could remember. He glanced around as if to make sure no one had seen him. Then he puffed his cigar up into a fiery glow. Sticking the end of his cigar to the end of the long fuse, he dropped the fuze sizzling onto the boulder, backed away and disappeared onto the rock gully wall.
Chapter 24
On the narrow trail beneath the boulder, Hodding Siebert turned to Bellibar and the Russian with a curious look on his face. He’d caught a glimpse of a small black shadow streak across the purple sky above the trail and careen away. From the nearby rock and a stand of scrub cedar came a faint chirping sound that died away as quickly as it had started.
“Did you see that?” he said.
Bellibar and Cherzi Persocovich gave each other a look. Bellibar turned a concerned glance back toward the sound of horses’ hooves.
“We didn’t see nothing, Aces,” said Bellibar. “What was it?”
Siebert sounded agitated.
“If I knew what it was I wouldn’t ask if you saw it,” he said in a short tone, looking all around in the dark. “Did you hear it, then? It sounded like birds, or bats—hell, I don’t know what it sounded like,” he added, even more agitated.
“Settle down, Aces,” Bellibar cautioned him. “You starting to get spooked again. All we hear are horses, and they’ll ride right down our shirts if we don’t get out of here.” He gathered his horse and booted it up into a fast pace down the rocky trail.
“Damn it to hell!” said Siebert, turning to the Russian as Bellibar rode away. “What Bobby Hugh can’t understand is that I’ve been hexed.”
“Hacked?” said Cherzi. He made a slight chopping gesture with his hand.
“No, damn it, hexed! You illiterate no-English-speaking son of a bitch!” Siebert shouted. “I’ve been hexed by both a witch and her demon mare. I can’t shake myself loose of them!”
Cherzi stared blankly at him.
“Yes, is horses I hear too,” he said in conclusion, turning his horse behind Bellibar and booting it into a run.
“Damn you and your Belleza negra demonio to hell, bruja!” Siebert shouted at the rock and scrub cedar. As his words echoed away across the yawning gully below, he stared at the rock and scrub with his hand on his Remington. But when no reply came, he cursed under his breath, feeling the ground beneath him tremble with the beat of horses’ hooves.
“We’re going to finish this thing! Mark my word, bruja!” he shouted, a raving madman railing mindlessly against the night. He saw the dark silhouettes of riders come into sight as he jerked his horse around and booted it into a hard run.
But down the trail, hearing Siebert bellow like a lunatic, Bellibar had slid his horse to a sudden halt and jerked it around on the trail.
“For the love of God, what’s that idiot doing now?” he’d said, looking wide-eyed and sidelong at the Russian, who’d slid his horse to a halt beside him.
“He is hacked,” Cherzi said. He shrugged one shoulder. “A witch has hacked him…or her horse hacked him. I don’t know.” He shrugged again and shook his head.
Bellibar took a deep breath; he collected his restless horse beneath him.
“He’s gone off again,” he said, hearing the horses’ hooves thundering closer down the trail. “Let’s get him, Cherzi. Knock his head off with your rifle barrel if you have to.”
The two raced back up the trail toward the land-stuck boulder, but halfway there, they met Siebert heading toward them at a run. As the three slid their horses to a halt and gathered in the middle of the trail, Siebert shouted, “Get going. They’re right behind me!”
The Russian took a hard swipe at Siebert’s head with his rifle barrel but missed. Siebert jerked his horse back and reached for his Remington. What the hell?
“Don’t shoot, Aces!” shouted Bellibar. “I told him to do that if he had to. He misunderstood!”
But Siebert brought the Remington up anyway, cocked, leveled out at arm’s length.
“Misunderstand this, you potato-wine-drinking son of a bitch!” he growled. His horse reared as he took aim. But before he could get a shot fired, the trail seemed to lift beneath them as the night turned a bright glowing orange-blue.
The trail hung suspended in air just long enough for men and horses to succumb to a feeling of weightlessness. Then, when it appeared gravity had given in to the earth’s whim of rising skyward, the trail slammed back down, hard, as a scalding, debris-filled wind sent men and horses flipping, rolling, kicking and scrambling, sliding farther down the rocky trail.
Bellibar rolled over the side of the trail, but he managed to hold on to a jagged rock spur with both hands, knowing without looking that nothing lay beneath him but a two-hundred-foot fall into rock and spike-hard cedar tops.
Still on the trail, forty feet farther down it than where he’d been, Siebert stood up stunned and charred, smoke curling from his shoulders.
“That was jarring,” he said to himself, dazed. He reached down near his feet, picked up his hat, slapped out flames licking atop the crown and placed it, still smoking, back on his head. Seeing Bellibar’s hand clutching the rock spur, he walked over like a man in a trance, stooped down and dragged him up.
Farther down the trail, all three horses had risen from the dirt and stood shaking themselves off, smoke and dust looming about them. Higher up on the side of the gully, Cherzi staggered forward and wandered out of sight into a maze of rock.
Bellibar caught his breath, wiped a hand over his mouth and looked back and forth, badly rattled by the blast.
“Where’s…the Russian?” he said.
“Howdy to you too,” said Siebert, both men’s hearing muffled beneath a loud deep ringing in their heads.
“Damn it, Aces, we’ve no time for mannerisms,” said Bellibar. “Whoever blew this trail thinks we’re on the other side of it. We’ve got to ride the freight wagon down, strike while they think we’re dead.”
“Suits me,” said Siebert, rising to his feet, not completely sure what Bellibar had said. “I saw the Russian walking off up there.” He gestured upward farther onto the gully wall.
“Help me up, let’s get going,” Bellibar said loudly, unable to gauge the volume of hi
s voice.
Siebert reached down and pulled him to his feet. Turning, they staggered down the trail toward the three horses.
From atop a broad, flat-top rock above the trail, higher on the gully wall, Lupo lay staring down at the two ragged gunmen as they staggered off toward their horses. One hand gripping his bleeding side, his rifle lying close beside him, he let out a breath and shook his head. Somehow these two and another one had managed to get past the big boulder before the blast sent it tumbling down, tons of pent-up dirt and rock spilling, closing the trail behind it.
Lupo looked off to his left beyond the looming veil of dust and smoke and saw the bodies of man and horse strewn out along the other side of the closed trail. Clearly the Pettigos’ mercenaries had caught the brunt of the blast head-on in their attempt to ride down the wagon of gold.
Greedy fools and gold. What can one say?
He still had no time to lose, he cautioned himself, puffing on the cigar still burning in his lips. With luck, he and the Ranger would ride down and through the long gully before the Lookout Hill boys or anyone else following them could circle around the mining compound and get back on their trail. There were dozens of smaller trails to choose from leading in every direction.
Rising onto his knees, he gave a last glance toward the dead, made the sign of the cross again—thanking a God in whom he had long since stopped believing? Perhaps…, he thought, offering no further apology on the matter.
His was not a life of perfection, nor was he a man afforded by his nature to admit to any divine intervention, for the good or the bad. He rode as bold men ride…on whatever luck the saints abide.
The Ranger would understand that, he thought with a thin smile, feeling woozy from his loss of blood. Gripping his wet side, the pack weighing heavy on his shoulder, he whispered, “Someday, faith. For now, only the promise of it….”
He rose to his feet, adjusted the shoulder pack and readied to leave. But as he turned, he jolted to a halt as a smell of burned hair filled his nostrils and two viselike hands clutched his throat in a death grip. Lupo’s cigar fell from his lips and landed at his feet.
“Why you try to kill this poor boy?” Cherzi said, his clothes smoking, some parts of it rekindling into small flames on the gusting wind. His eyebrows, lashes and hair were blackened curly stubs; his ears resembled crisp, overfried pork rinds. The whites of his wide eyes shone bloodred.
Lupo thrashed, trying to fight but weakened by his wounds. His heavy pack fell from his shoulder and spilled onto the rock. Hand grenades rolled out like lopsided apples. A small oak-handled pickax was among the strewn contents. Lupo caught a watery glimpse of the pick handle as he sank to the ground. He pounded both fists against the Russian, but did no good for himself. He struggled for his gun across his belly, but Cherzi turned one hand loose from his throat and knocked the gun down from his hand. It hit the rock and fired a wild shot that echoed across the gully floor.
“Now you die, Mexican,” Cherzi said in his face.
The Russian put his hands back around Lupo’s throat for a tight, finishing squeeze. Lupo felt the world blackening around him. The Russian raised him from the ground with both hands and slammed him down on his back atop the flat rock surface. Lupo’s cigar flew from his mouth. He lay stretched out in a way that made it impossible to grab his boot knife, and his rifle was out of reach. His hand swept among the spilled contents of the shoulder pack, searching frantically for the pick handle, for his big Colt. Anything! But instead he grasped one of the round iron French grenades. It would have to do.
He made a wide swing and struck the Russian full on his jaw, sending him sprawling backward on the flat rock. Gasping for breath, Lupo struggled to rise onto his feet, knowing the Russian would be back upon him any second. But he only made it onto his knees, his hand reaching for his boot knife as the Russian shook off the blow to his jaw, staggered upward and lunged back toward him.
No time to grab the knife from his boot, Lupo threw his empty hand up to protect himself. But as he did so he fell back beneath the strong Russian. He glimpsed the burning cigar on the ground beside him. Without even thinking, he made one desperate stab at the tip of the glowing cigar with the short fuse sticking out of the hand grenade.
To his amazement he heard the sputter and sizzle of the fuse catching fire. So did Cherzi.
“Huh?” The Russian, crouched atop him, looked at the sizzling grenade in Lupo’s hand. What was this?
Lupo wasted no time. His free hand reached out, grabbed the waist of Cherzi’s trousers and yanked them forward. The Russian’s wide suspenders stretched out, allowing the Mexican to drop the grenade down Cherzi’s trousers and turn the suspenders loose. Cherzi grabbed himself and let out the bellow of a wild and tortured bull, the fuse sizzling and burning in the center of his crotch. The smell of more burned hair filled the air—this time bellowing up out of the Russian’s buttoned trouser fly.
Cherzi gripped the smoking crotch of his trousers and ran screaming, zigzagging, unable to turn the grenade loose long enough to reach down in his trousers and remove it. The smell of burning flesh wafted with that of burning hair.
Lupo took the opportunity to grab the big Walker Colt lying beside him. Still gasping for breath, blood pouring down his wounded side, he needed both hands to raise, cock and aim the heavy revolver. But it made no difference; before he could fire at his wild, screaming target, Cherzi ran in a frenzy straight off the flat top of the rock, his legs still pumping as if running on air.
The grenade exploded in a large shower of fire and white-hot shrapnel just as the airborne gunman began his downward plunge. A black mist of blood, flesh and fragmented bone matter showered in every direction and rained down in the purple moonlight. Lupo shook his head as if to clear it. Using the tip of his gun barrel to help raise himself to his feet, he stood up and searched for his rifle and pack.
That was close.
Staggering in place, he rubbed his throat. Feeling the blood once again running down his leg from the knife wound in his side, he managed to pick up the rifle, stuff the scattered contents back into the shoulder pack and begin to drag it across the boulder. He couldn’t stop now. There was still much to be done, he thought, even as he felt himself sink farther down with each attempted step. Wait. He wasn’t going anywhere, he realized….
He felt his hand release the rifle and the shoulder pack, and he found himself once again stretched out on the hard surface, flat on his back, staring up at an endless starlit heaven.
Chapter 25
Silver morning wreathed the horizon as the Ranger stepped down from the large bareback horse he’d unhitched from the freight wagon and ridden back around the long turn in the trail. He’d waited as long as his lawman’s dark curiosity would allow before turning back to investigate the single gunshot and see what was taking Lupo so long to meet him. He suspected the two particulars were closely related.
When he reached a spot where he noted the bloody mess, bits of cloth, torn flesh, half of a shredded boot lying scattered midtrail, he looked all around, then up the front of the blood-splattered rock. Having no idea who the gory mess had been, he turned the big horse by the single rope lead of a makeshift hackamore he’d fashioned around its muzzle and nudged the animal up a path around the side of the large rock.
A few yards up the steepening path, he stepped down quietly from the horse and led it the last few yards up around the base of the rock. He tied the animal’s lead rope to a wiry sprig of scrub juniper and climbed up around the short back end of the rock, rifle in hand. Before pulling himself up the last few feet to the top of the rock, he stopped and listened intently for any sound above him. Hearing none, he climbed upward the few remaining feet. As soon as he stood up he tensed and raised his rifle, seeing Bobby Hugh Bellibar standing thirty feet across the rock in front of him, facing away, staring down at Juan Lupo, who lay unconscious at his feet.
Without turning to face the Ranger, Bellibar stood with his big Colt in his hand, hanging d
own at his side, his thumb over the hammer, ready to cock it.
“Howdy-do, lawman,” he said almost amiably. “Glad you could make it. I’m just getting ready to turn your compañero here into Mexican stew.” Smoke wafted around his head and shoulders from the same cigar Lupo had been smoking earlier.
Sam leaned to the side enough to see the French grenades lined up along both of Lupo’s sides. A small pool of blood lay beneath his wound. He moved forward, one deliberate step at a time, until he’d closed the gap to fifteen feet between them.
“Where’s Hodding Siebert?” he asked, coming right to the point.
“He’s all over your horse’s hooves,” said Bellibar with a dark chuckle. “You just rode through his brains and belly down there.”
Sam glanced all around, knowing better than to believe anything Bellibar told him.
“You’re lying,” said the Ranger, playing a hunch.
“Damn, you’re good!” Bellibar said. He chuffed and shook his head. “All right, I’m not going to lie. That’s not Hot Aces all over the trail,” he said. “But for your information, that puddle of coyote food down there was a poor Russian immigrant, and a damn good friend of mine named Cherzi Perso—covet…or Perso-covich.” He shrugged, giving up. “Hell, something like that. Anyway, this damn Mex killed him.”
“A good friend, huh?” Sam said, his rifle leveled at the center of Bellibar’s back. He glanced around as he spoke, watching, listening, searching, getting his best feel of things.
“That’s right, a damn good friend,” said Bellibar, puffing Lupo’s cigar. Sam saw smoke rise above his head and drift away on the dissipating west wind. “Look down from the front edge there. You can see most of his head and some strings of guts.” He gestured a sidelong nod toward the front edge of the big rock. “Want to see?”
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