Chapter 12
Clare O’Neil told McBride that her ranch lay to the north of Deadman Canyon, where the foothills of the Capitan Mountains finally faded into lower, rolling country. To the west, the thousand-foot, volcanic cinder cone of Sunset Peak cast a cooling shadow over the ranch buildings, and the ponderosa pine on its higher slopes provided a ready supply of timber.
Most of the cone was red in color, contrasting with wide bands of black basalt. The Navajo and Hopi considered the place sacred because from a distance, the red cinders seemed to be on fire.
‘‘The Indians named the volcano Sunset Peak,’’ Clare said, turning to McBride. ‘‘They say it glows with a light all its own, like a morning sky.’’ She was talking to keep him awake, worried that if he fell from the saddle she could never get him on his horse again.
‘‘The Hopi say spirits live on the slopes and Yaponcha, the wind god, dwells in an arroyo at the base of the mountain.’’
McBride nodded, his lips pale. He was barely holding on, every step of the mustang another searing skirmish with pain. He had lost a lot of blood and his head felt like a hot air balloon threatening to drift off his shoulders.
Sammy had stubbornly refused to ride with Clare and was perched precariously on the cantle of McBride’s saddle. Every now and then he rubbed the big man’s back with his head.
‘‘Not far now,’’ the woman said, her eyes clouded with concern. ‘‘After we top the next rise we’ll see the old place. Pa will be there. He seldom leaves his ranch.’’
McBride needed to use words to stay awake. ‘‘I’m obliged to you for getting me the rifle back,’’ he said. He smiled weakly. ‘‘Fact is, I’m no great shakes with a rifle. Most times I don’t hit what I’m aiming at.’’
‘‘I’ll teach you. Most times I do hit what I’m aiming at.’’
‘‘Knew a man once, his name was Bear Miller. He was good with a rifle, real good.’’
They were riding across a high meadow ablaze with spring wildflowers, bordered by stands of gambel oak and piñon. Clouds passing over the sun sent shadows racing across the grass, and the air smelled of pine and the promise of rain.
‘‘Bear,’’ Clare said. ‘‘That was his given name?’’
‘‘Nah, folks called him that because one winter he hibernated in a hollow log with an old she grizzly.’’ A wave of pain hit McBride and he gasped, gasped again, fighting it down.
‘‘John, are you all right?’’ Clare’s face was a frightened mask of concern.
His words were hesitant, tangled up with the remembrance of hurt. ‘‘Sure, sure, I’m fine.’’
‘‘So, tell me about Bear and the grizzly. Did she let him sleep?’’ The girl reached out and steadied McBride in the saddle.
‘‘Not a wink. He said the grizz didn’t take to him being there and she fussed and fretted at him from November through April. He said come spring, he was even more tired than he’d been when he first climbed into that log.’’ McBride made the effort and managed a smile. ‘‘At least that’s what he said.’’
Clare’s laugh was a pleasant, feminine sound for a man to hear. ‘‘And where is your sleepy friend now?’’
‘‘He was hung. By a man just like Thad Harlan.’’
‘‘Oh, John, I’m so sorry.’’
‘‘Bear Miller was all right, a much better man than the one who hung him.’’
The rise was a gradual slope, covered in buffalo grass and scattered clumps of manzanita. It was an easy climb for the mustang, but McBride never made it. He was vaguely aware of falling from the saddle, of landing hard on his back and at the same time being jolted by pain.
Then darkness crowded around him and he was falling, tumbling headlong into a dark pit streaked with fire that had no beginning and no end.
John McBride woke to darkness and his eyes reached, exploring, into a violet sky ablaze with the cool, white fire of a million stars. The wind came up and touched him, but he was burning like a soul in torment and cried out in fear and the wind went away again.
A brown hand rested on his forehead for a moment; then a woman whispered words he could not understand. The neck of a skin bottle touched his lips and he drank, water from the snow-covered top of the earth, so cold it scalded his tongue, steamed like mist in his mouth.
Then he was left alone.
‘‘Got yourself in a pickle, boy, huh?’’
Bear Miller sat on a tree stump, grinning, his hands busy, peeling a lime green apple. ‘‘Tol’ the purty young gal about me, huh?’’
‘‘I told her about the grizzly in the hollow log. It made her laugh.’’
Bear nodded. ‘‘Good to hear a woman laugh. A man should hear a woman laugh now and then.’’
‘‘Am I dying, Bear?’’
‘‘Close to it, boy. That’s what comes of fighting a battle you can’t win.’’
The skin of the green apple fell, all in a piece, to the ground.
‘‘I plan on bringing down Jared Josephine and Thad Harlan. He put lead into me, Harlan did. I won’t forget that.’’
Bear cut into the apple and bladed a piece into his mouth. ‘‘You ride on, boy, like you planned in the canyon. Best you leave all this behind. Maybe you’ll meet up with Harlan another day.’’
‘‘He hung a boy, Bear, a Mexican boy. He hung him for shooting a dog.’’
‘‘Remember the El Coyote Azul? Remember that? I had fun with them purty fat ladies.’’
‘‘They cut you down from the cottonwood and washed your body, Bear. They put you in the ground clean.’’
‘‘Did they now? That was right nice of them.’’
Bear rose to his feet. ‘‘Me, I got to be going, John. Have me a fair piece to ride.’’
‘‘Help me, Bear. Help me cut Harlan down to size.’’
‘‘Can’t do that, boy. For me, them wild, hell-firing days are over.’’
‘‘I’m hot, Bear. I’m burning up. Help me.’’
‘‘Listen to me, John. Harlan is bad, Josephine is badder, but there’s another, worse than either of them. A woman. She’ll drag you down, boy. She’ll try to destroy you.’’
‘‘Is it Clare? Bear, tell me! Is it Clare?’’
The old man grinned, slowly fading away until he became one with the darkness and the darkness one with him. Where he had stood, there were only stars.
‘‘Is it Clare?’’ McBride called out.
The wind mocked him, whispering the girl’s name like a pining lover.
Daylight and the sound of rain filtered into McBride’s consciousness. He felt drowsy, at ease, but ravenously hungry. He opened his eyes and at first thought he was staring at a black sky. But as his vision adjusted, he realized it was the roof of a cave. He got up on one elbow and glanced around him.
He was lying on a blanket, covered by another, and two more were spread on the cave’s sandy floor. A small, smoky fire burned near the entrance, a clay pot bubbling on the coals. His rifle and Colt lay close to him and his clothes were neatly folded next to them, his plug hat sitting on top. Heavy rain slanted across the cave mouth and he heard a distant rumble of thunder.
McBride’s head sank back to the ground. Where was he? And why was he here?
He’d once seen a child in New York putting together one of Mr. Milton Bradley’s newfangled jigsaw puzzles, and now he used the same approach to piece together the events of the last . . . how long? He had no idea. He didn’t know if he’d been delirious and completely out of his mind for a day, a week or . . .
Then he remembered that he had Thad Harlan’s lead in him.
McBride threw back the blanket, saw that he was naked and quickly covered up again. This time he lifted the corner of the blanket and examined his side. There were two wounds, angry, puckered scars where the bullet had entered from the rear and exited between the loop of his suspenders where they buttoned to his pants. The entry wound was shallow and had just skinned his side, but the exiting bullet had caused more serious damage, tho
ugh it seemed that no vital organs had been hit.
The wounds were red and raw, but they were clean and it looked like a considerable amount of healing had taken place. McBride groaned. He could have been out for a long time.
Where was Clare? She had obviously tended to his wounds and must be close.
He sat up and looked around the cave again. Now he saw that the blankets were woven in an intricate Indian pattern, and a battered Henry rifle, its stock decorated with brass tacks, stood in a corner. Even the cooking pot on the fire was adorned with a primitive scroll design.
A sudden fear spiked at McBride’s belly. He and Clare had been captured by bloodthirsty savages!
Chapter 13
John McBride threw off his blanket and jumped to his feet. Suddenly the world went mad, cartwheeling around him before coming to a jarring halt only to stand on its end. He fell back onto his blanket, his head spinning, then lay there stunned.
He was as weak as a kitten, powerless among feathered fiends, perhaps the dreaded Apaches with their murderous tom-a-hawks he’d read about in the dime novels.
Then, as the cave slowly righted itself, he remembered that he’d fought Apaches before and none of them had worn feathers and they’d used rifles, not axes.
Well, someone had taken care of his wounds. If it was not Clare, judging by the blankets and cooking pot it had to be Indians. With a sense of relief he realized that they’d shown little interest in torturing him. On the contrary, they’d saved his life.
McBride sat up, slowly this time. ‘‘Clare!’’ he called. There was no answer. He tried again. ‘‘Clare, are you all right?’’
His words were met with an echoing silence.
The rain seemed heavier now, a sheeting downpour that sealed the entrance to the cave with steel. Wind gusted, driving drops into the sputtering fire, making the scarlet and orange flames dance in the ashy gloom.
McBride knew he was mentally far from normal. He would have to regain his memories. He forced himself to remember his time in the New York Police Department and the proud day he’d been promoted to detective sergeant at a salary of a thousand dollars per annum. Then he’d killed a powerful and vicious mobster’s son and been ordered by his superiors to flee to the western lands until it was safe to return to the city.
He had killed the notorious gunman Hack Burns in a fair fight and had suddenly become a named man, a gunfighter of reputation. Along the way he’d acquired four young Chinese wards who were now at a finishing school for girls back East. He’d been looking for work to pay for the girls’ education when he’d ridden into Rest and Be Thankful.
Now the events of the last few days—but was it just days?—came back to him with painful clarity, his escape from jail and the fight in Deadman Canyon.
He and Clare had been heading for her father’s ranch when he’d lost consciousness and fallen off his horse. Had Clare just left him there to die or had she gone for help? In any event, during her absence he’d been found by wandering Indians and taken to this cave.
But what kind of Indians? And why had they nursed a white man back to health?
Was it because . . .
The silhouette of a tall, skinny man appeared at the entrance of the cave. He looked as if he were standing behind a waterfall. The plump, rounded form of a woman joined him and together they stepped inside.
McBride recognized the man at once. It was Bear Miller.
‘‘Bear! I thought . . .’’
The man laughed, teeth showing white under his sweeping mustache. ‘‘Relax, mister, I’m not a bear. Name’s Luke Gravett and this here is my woman. She’s Tonto Apache and her name’s not important and even if you knowed it you couldn’t pronounce it anyhow.’’ The man called Gravett, who looked to be in his early fifties, stepped closer. ‘‘How you feelin’, young feller?’’
‘‘Fair to middling,’’ McBride answered. He tried to smile into the smoky, shadowed murk of the cave, raising his weakened voice above the fall of the downpour. ‘‘For a moment there I thought you were a man I once knew.’’
Gravett’s buckskins were black with rain, the foot-long fringes on the arms and chest designed to drain water from the deer hide. The buckskins had been chewed to buttery softness by Gravett’s woman and were decorated with Apache beadwork, intricate, geometrical patterns of turquoise, red, yellow and black. The man wore a gun belt adorned with large, silver Mexican conchos but the holster was plain black and carried an ivory-handled Colt.
He kneeled beside McBride and lifted a corner of the blanket. ‘‘The wounds are healing well,’’ he said. ‘‘You can thank my woman for that. I figgered you were finished, but she brought you back. When we found you she said a blue coyote had you in its jaws and was carrying you off to the underworld. But she used her spells and herbs to heal your wounds and I guess the coyote let go of you.’’
The Tonto woman was young—no more than twenty—her loose, jet-black hair framing a pretty, oval face. She was kneeling by the fire, McBride’s railroad watch to her ear, giggling.
Gravett’s eyes followed McBride’s. He smiled. ‘‘She likes to hear the watch tick. She thinks there’s magic in it.’’
‘‘It’s hers,’’ McBride said. ‘‘A thank-you for saving my life.’’
Gravett stood and said something in Apache to the woman. She looked at McBride and smiled, then put the watch to her ear again.
‘‘I’ve got something else of yours,’’ Gravett said. He stepped to the rear of the cave and came back with Sammy in his hands. ‘‘He was inside your slicker when we found you.’’
McBride took the kitten, stroked its head and said, ‘‘His name is Sammy. He rides with me.’’
‘‘He’s got an appetite like a cougar, I can tell you that,’’ the man said. ‘‘And, since I’m talking about eating, are you hungry?’’
McBride nodded. His eyes lifted to the man’s lean-jawed face. ‘‘But first tell me where I am and how long I’ve been here.’’
‘‘As to where you are, you’re in a lava cave in the Sunset Crater malpais. As to how long, me and my woman found you six days ago.’’
‘‘Six days . . . ?’’ McBride was stunned.
‘‘You’d fallen off your horse and you had lead in you. Mister, you were pretty much used up.’’
‘‘Name’s John McBride, by the way.’’
‘‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Me and the woman had come down from Archuleta Creek where she has kinfolk and we was headed for Lincoln town, where I have kinfolk. That’s when we found you on the trail and brought you here.’’
Lava caves are cold, even shallow ones, and McBride lifted his blanket over his chest. ‘‘I had a young woman with me. We were headed for her father’s ranch. Did you see her?’’
Gravett shook his head. ‘‘Didn’t see no woman, just you.’’
Something in the man’s voice gave McBride pause. Gravett was studying his face, and his gray eyes were all at once hard and speculating. ‘‘Would that young woman’s name be Clare and would her pa’s name be Hemp O’Neil?’’
‘‘Yes, Clare O’Neil is her name. She didn’t tell me her father’s name.’’
‘‘You said you was headed for Hemp’s ranch. You sure you wasn’t riding away from it?’’
McBride was puzzled and it must have shown because Gravett said, ‘‘Hemp O’Neil is dead. He was gunned down at the door of his cabin by a sharp-shooter. His daughter found the old man weltering in his blood. Hemp O’Neil was game as they come. I’m told he had his gun in his hand and had managed to get off one shot afore he died.’’
Ralph Compton Blood on the Gallows Page 9