“Ah, good. Break out some cups,” he announced to the brothers. “This here’s real whiskey.”
Harry found three cups and. a bent can to put on the tabletop. He gave a chipped enamel one to Leo and the tin can to the Kid.
After the Kid poured the three drinks, rather than use the filthy can, he took a swig from the neck. “Here’s to lots of beef,” he toasted.
“Yeah!” the others chorused in agreement.
The Kid half stood and generously refilled the Slatters’ cups. In Leo’s, he splashed a small. amount, then took a little swig from the bottle. The Slatters each pulled their chairs closer to the table, and were obviously relaxing their guard.
Then, as they had previously arranged, the Kid gave an inconspicuous nod to Leo. It was time to get this over with.
Leo rose. “I got to go piss,” he announced in a tone so urgent that the brothers couldn’t possibly suspect otherwise. Bobby poured them more whiskey after Leo went outside. Leo’s actual mission was to check and make sure no one else was around the area.
“You’ve been working over in New Mexico?” Tom asked.
“We been lots of places.” He grinned broadly, inviting the brothers to laugh with him.
“Yeah, I heard before that you was real slick,” Harry commented. “I mean at getting jobs like this survey thing. What in hell they surveying for, Kid? Another damn railroad?”
The Kid paused with the bottle halfway to his lips. He blinked at the men and chuckled. “By God, I ain’t sure,” he said, as though the idea surprised him.
“Aw, hell,” Tom complained, “you just ain’t telling. Right, Harry?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Come on, Kid, you can let us in on the—” Harry’s wheedling grin was choked off abruptly and his face drained of color. Both brothers faced the Kid’s .38 pistol across the table.
The Kid shook his head as though it pained him to ask. “You boys have been stealing beef, ain’t you?” He didn’t wait for their reply. “Well, you see these rancher friends of ours don’t like that. Old Wagoner said he warned you, but I reckon you boys didn’t listen too good.” He held the pistol steady and never took his eyes from them as he listened for Leo’s returning footsteps.
The door eased open and a patch of bright light fell on the dirt floor. “It’s all right, Kid. There’s no one around,” Leo said softly.
“What’re you going to do with us?” Tom snarled, his fists bunched on the table. The rustler’s eyelids were slits of smoldering anger at being taken in so easily.
The Kid raised a brow and pushed back his hat with the tip of the gun barrel. “Now, just what do you think I’m going to do? Goddamn, you sure are dumb, Slatter. We’re going to kill you, what else?”
“Hey, Kid, you’ve got to give us a chance,” Harry pleaded. “We’ll clear out and be gone in a tick. And we’ll never, never come back here. I mean vamoose! You won’t ever have to worry about us again …”
He sighed heavily as if pained. “I know, Harry.” Then he turned the gun on Tom, who looked the most dangerous and squeezed the trigger once. He swiveled the smoking muzzle at Harry, who let out a high-pitched scream before the loud shot cut his voice off. Harry grabbed his chest and slumped to the floor. The Kid rose slowly to his feet to study the wounded men in the haze of gunsmoke. He had shot Tom in the chest, but it was too high for a dead-on heart shot.
With slow deliberation, he aimed at Tom’s chest as the man’s eyes widened in fear and his mouth opened to protest. The loud report of the .38 and the thud of the bullet rang in the Kid’s ears. Blood fountained out of the black hole centered on Tom Slatter’s breastbone.
He glanced toward Harry, who by this time had rolled over on his belly and in desperation attempted to crawl away. The .38 jumped twice in the Kid’s fist. The other Slatter crumpled and lay still. Satisfied, he sat down on a chair and laid the revolver on the table. Then he combined the brothers’ cups of whiskey into one tin one.
“Leo, check and see how much money they’ve got on them.”
“Sure, Kid.” Leo busied himself searching the limp bodies while Bobby watched and carefully reloaded his .38. Then with care he placed the empty cartridges in his coat pocket, refilled five of the empty chambers, and snapped the hammer down. After holstering the gun, he poured himself another cup of whiskey.
“They got much money on them?” he asked Leo, knowing that most two-bit rustlers were usually busted. Leo put a jackknife on the table, making a dull clink on the worn surface. With a splotch of fresh blood on his hand, he tried to wipe it away with his kerchief and at last shook his head in disgust when he met the Kid’s gaze.
“Shooting pushy ranchers is a lot better than this kind of thing,” Leo complained.
“Yeah, reckon so,” he agreed absently as he stared into the half-filled cup cradled in his hands. “But you’ve got to take the good with the bad.” Someone had told him that once, he couldn’t remember who. Of course, it didn’t matter anyway. When it got dark, he and Leo would plant the bodies close to town as a warning to other rustlers. The foreman who had hired them would like that kind of detail. Then the whole business of the Slatter brothers would be over. Just another job.
“This one had forty bucks on him,” Leo said in surprise, breaking in on the Kid’s thoughts. “Guess we’ve got about fifty dollars altogether. Want me to look in their boots?”
“Sure.” Bobby waved the tin cup. “Ain’t no sense in leaving any money for the damn undertaker. Leo, you should know better than that by now,” he scolded with irritation. He had to tell that dummy everything to do.
“Hell, I just figured that was all they had,” Leo muttered defensively as he bent over to struggle with taking off Harry’s boots.
“Are they good boots?” he asked, straining to see across the table. “These I got on have a hole in the sole.”
“Naw, this one’s sole’s torn loose.” Leo grunted as he worked the shoe off the corpse.
“That figures.” He turned his attention back to the whiskey. He should have shot those brothers sooner, he reflected in disgust. They were a waste of good liquor. Oh well, in the morning he and Leo would ride south and pick up more whiskey on the way. They had a job to do for a rancher at Snowflake. There sure was no lack of work for them in Arizona.
The Kid tried to clear his sight as he came back to the reality of his blindness. Thinking about killing those Slatter brothers hadn’t helped his damned eyes any. It had taken his mind off the fact that Leo had to lead his horse, but now it also reminded him of how dependent he had become. Despite the cool mountain air, his back was bathed in sweat. This helpless state filled him with a fear that made him weak. Although he was grateful to have Leo helping him, he resented the fact, too. His belly was still on fire and he felt dizzy-headed. A gray fog had settled over his eyes, and no matter how hard he blinked or rubbed at them, the wall of mist remained in place. Goddamn them rotgut-making bastards! He cursed them out loud. Those three whiskey runners who sold them that bad stuff would be drinking their own piss if he ever ran across them again.
Later as they rode, he could feel the sun on his left side, and he knew it was late afternoon. But for him, it might as well have been midnight. He had gone completely blind, and the realization stabbed him with panicky fear. He had heard of men going blind on bad whiskey, but he damn sure didn’t think it would ever happen to him. Before he went plumb sightless, he was going to find that trio of whiskey peddlers and make them pay for his condition.
“Leo, where did they go?” he shouted.
“Hell, Kid, I’m right here, ain’t no need to shout,” Leo said from beside him. “Who’re you talking about?”
“Them damn poisoners.”
“Who do you mean?”
“Goddamnit, Leo! Those three back at that log cabin sold us this damn bad whiskey,” he screamed.
“I don’t know what you want me to do about them.”
“Well, by God, you’re going to find them and kill them. They’ve served t
heir last bottle of bad whiskey.” He paused. His heart raced and his breath grew short from the tightness that encircled his throat. “Leo, I—I think I’m losing my sight completely.”
“But I thought you said you were just sun blind?”
“I did—I thought I was—” he said, trying to keep the rising panic out of his voice, “But I’m going blind as a bat from that bad whiskey and I want them to pay. You understand, Leo?”
“Sure, Kid.” Leo’s voice was strained with concern.
“Thanks, Leo,” he said, hating his vulnerability and his need to be so completely dependent on him. Just how bad was it going to get? To gain some control over the runaway anxiety clawing at his insides, he closed his eyelids tight. Maybe a doctor could help; maybe he’d never see another sunrise.
6
Dolly Arnold stood at the corrals behind Arnold’s Store. In small golden shafts, dawn peeked over Turtle Mountain. One of Ben’s Shanghai roosters crowed near the saddle shed. Life continued, regardless of how dead she felt inside. It had been two weeks since she buried Josh. Her eyes still burned from all the tears she had shed, but now they were dried up like an old abandoned well.
The little red earthen grave that held Josh’s small body was etched in her mind, refusing to be dulled with time or pain. At times she had tried to recall the words that Ben had spoken over the grave from his worn family Bible, but even that small comfort was denied her. She had been numbed at the funeral, such as it was. The only sense she possessed was the one that shot pain deep inside her heart. She knew there was grief in Ben’s quiet voice, and she tried to derive comfort from the fact that he shared her loss, but that too was denied her.
Now slowly and inevitably, like the rising sun, her body was coming back to life. The gentle wind and the smell of the horses penetrated through her layer of frozen grief. The rising piñon scent that perfumed the high country surrounded her in the wee hours of morning.
She turned her head slightly and looked toward the silent house that was attached to the back of the store. Ben would still be in bed. A bed she seldom shared with him, and not at all for the past two weeks. She was glad that he wasn’t a demanding man. Perhaps it was due to his advancing age. Whatever the reason, she was grateful for his easygoing, sometimes tender manner. As she stood in the glow of sunrise, she fought a persistent feeling of guilt. She had made a difficult, but resolute decision, one she would not surrender. In twenty-four hours, she would leave the most peaceful place she had ever experienced in her entire life, until those drunken men shattered that dream forever. Growing up in austere poverty with constant domestic turmoil, her rootless family stayed on the move all the time ahead of the law and bill collectors. After her tumultuous upbringing, she survived the bitterest times in her life, working as a soiled dove for Sophie Maxwell. Five years earlier, she had fled all that with a newborn son and after a long trek, like a miracle, she found Ben and this place. In twenty-four hours, she would be leaving him and the only real home she’d ever known, to set out to find her son’s killers.
The idea was not some ill-conceived notion. She could look back now and admit that at first, her instinct had been to ride immediately after those savages who gunned down her defenseless boy. It didn’t matter that she had no weapons. Her rage was so strong she could have killed them with her bare hands. But now she could think and rationalize. She must control her anger. There would be a way to seek out those two men and avenge Josh. She might have to do things that she hated, things that she had given up long ago, but she would even resort to that, if it became necessary, to punish her son’s murderers.
A fresh breath of pine-scented air blew across her face, disturbing the light brown tendrils around her strained eyes. Dawn’s shadows fell past the objects around her, and the sun gilded the tops of junipers and bushes. Even the uncombed manes of the saddle horses in the corral were bathed in a dusky gold. The rooster bragged again for the benefit of his harem. Life continued.
“Dolly?” Ben had moved quietly behind her. “Did you sleep any?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “A little.”
His weathered face showed new lines of strain, she noted in surprise. His milky blue eyes were red rimmed as though he too had done without much slumber. She watched his drawn mouth when he spoke. “If I’ve asked you once, I’ve asked you twenty times—can I do anything else?”
“No, Ben. I have to work it out by myself.” She turned and straightened his galluses, which were lying twisted over his undershirt. “I know you tried to find them, Ben. But somehow it seems that the rest is up to me. I think it’s my job now.”
“Your job? Dolly, you wouldn’t stand a chance against that Coyote Kid!”
“Ben, please listen to me and try to understand.” She moistened her dry lips and narrowed her eyes as she stared into his face. “Ben, I’m leaving you tomorrow.” There, she had said it. The decision was final, irrevocable. She tensed, waiting for her man’s response.
He sighed heavily and looked beyond her. “I was afraid of that. Somehow, I’ve known that’s how it would be. When I realized that it was the Coyote Kid and his partner, I looked hard for them. I looked real hard, girl, you’ve got to believe that. I knew if I didn’t find them, I’d lose you.”
She expelled a tiny breath of relief. There had been no need for her to be so anxious to tell him of her decision. He knew her better than she knew herself.
“I wrote the governor,” he continued. “I thought maybe he might have an answer. I was pretty desperate, girl. Just imagine me writing a carpetbagger like Sterling for his help. My old daddy would turn over in his grave to hear that an Arnold had asked a damn Yankee for help. You know I want you to stay here. Me and Rudy need you, Dolly.”
“It wasn’t an easy decision, Ben. You’ve been generous to me, and you were always good to … to Josh.”
“Guess we should have talked more,” he said sadly. His eyes narrowed to slits, hiding whatever he was feeling when she glanced up at him again.
“No. We’ve had a good life together. I’ve got no complaints, Ben. I came here and we made a deal. You gave more than your share.”
“Aw well, sometimes I’m not so sure I …” He trailed off and slapped the rail.
She shook her head and put her hand on his arm. “Come on to the store. I’ll fix some breakfast for you two.”
“Thanks, girl, that would be nice.” He walked beside her and her hand fell away. She expected him to drape his arm around her shoulder as he had done in the past, but he didn’t touch her. Perhaps, she thought sadly, he was already beginning to wean himself of her. They had talked more this morning than they usually did. She felt torn between relief and pain because he had accepted her decision.
Later they ate a silent meal. Ben chewed the fried mush slowly, seeming to digest every forkful. After a while he pointed the fork at Rudy.
“She’s leaving us, boy,” he said flatly.
The youth’s wide brown eyes swung to her in surprise. Then he looked back to Ben, as if he had not understood. “But where will she go?”
Ben avoided his pleading look by lowering his gaze to his food. “She wants to find the shooters.”
“But I will go, Ben,” the boy volunteered quickly. “They killed my brother.”
“No, Rudy. Dolly must do what she has to do. We can’t stand in her way. We only have each other now. You will understand someday.”
“But she is our mother. Why must she leave?”
Ben shook his head slowly. “She’s been like a mother to you, but now it is time for her to …” His voice wound down. She saw his eyes turn to the light coming in the small window. She recognized the signs. Ben was stiffening himself for the pain of the inevitable as he always did when he felt something deeply.
Long ago, she recalled, he had lost his favorite colt to a mountain lion. She had watched him withdraw into himself, closing up like a withering flower. It took him a long time to come out of his silent world. Now he was doing the
same, withdrawing into a place where no one else was allowed entrance to see his pain.
Rudy bolted to his feet, and without a word or a glance at either of them, he left the room. He did not have Ben’s strength. It was strange how close she had grown to the Mexican youth. She was surprised at how strong the urge was to go and comfort him; she had a hard time fighting that maternal instinct. She had taken Rudy for granted. He had helped her haul washwater, sweep up the store, and he did virtually every chore. His words of a moment ago now wrenched at her heart. “She is our mother!” Now, she was no one’s mother.
Ben rose silently and went inside the store. She watched his retreating back, then she began gathering up the breakfast dishes.
A few minutes later she heard someone ride up in the yard. She tensed as she always did of late whenever someone entered the store. A ringing of spurs and a clumping of boots sounded in the small hallway that separated the store from the house.
“Dolly.” Ben came through the doorway and spoke quietly, “This gentleman out here is a territorial marshal. He wants to talk to you.”
Growing rigid at the words, she tried to gather her scattered thoughts. After drying her hands on her apron, she turned and looked up at the stranger who accompanied Ben. A nice-looking man, probably in his mid-thirties. He wore a black suit with a pristine white shirt and black string tie. A black Stetson crowned his ebony hair. He could have passed for a minister, but there was something in his shrewd blue eyes that soon dispelled the illusion.
Feeling her scrutiny, John Wesley took careful note of Mrs. Dolly Arnold. She was much younger than her husband, but her face showed lines of strain. There was a pinched look about her mouth as though she held herself in control only by determination. When he remembered that it had been this woman’s child who was killed, he closed his eyes for a second in sympathy.
“Good day, ma’am.” He touched the brim of his hat to her. “My name is John Wesley Michaels.”
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