The Thunder Riders

by Frank Leslie

  “You will pay dearly for that, you son of a bitch! I assure you!”

  A voice rose from the shadows over the batwings. “Trouble, Jefe?”

  “Trouble?” said El Segundo. “No trouble, Pablo. Just a gringo half-breed who needs to be taught some Mejican manners.”

  There was the snick-click of a gun hammer being pulled back. The batwings parted, and one of the other vaqueros stepped out, the pistol that he held before him reflecting the umber light from inside.

  “I think a good lashing with my bullwhip might save him from more trouble later on.” El Segundo chuckled, backing away from the porch while squeezing his wrist with his other hand. “Pablo, take his gun.”

  The first man through the batwings stepped toward Yakima, aiming his revolver from his belly, a short cigarette glowing between his lips. Four more vaqueros, two wearing sombreros, flanked him, all sliding their six-shooters from their holsters and thumbing back the hammers. As the first man moved toward him, Yakima raised his hands up, palms out.

  “Por favor, El Segundo, no more trouble, huh?” It was the Irishman, peeking out between the batwings. “Ligia is too young for your rough pleasure. Come back inside. You can have Esmeralda on the house tonight. For free, eh?”

  “This dirty half-breed tripped me,” El Segundo said tightly, keeping his hard eyes on Yakima.

  The man with the cigarette slowly extended his right hand toward Yakima’s holstered revolver. The other four vaqueros flanked him, their own guns drawn.

  El Segundo spat and scooped his revolver from the dust, brushed it off, and clicked back the hammer. “It cannot be overlooked.”

  As the man with the cigarette leaned toward Yakima, his mustachioed lips spread away from the quirley in his teeth. Yakima didn’t look down, but he felt the man’s hand release the keeper thong over his .44’s hammer, then begin to ease the revolver up out of the sheath.

  Suddenly, Yakima chopped his open right hand straight down against the man’s wrist. There was an audible crack of breaking bone. The man grunted and let Yakima’s Colt slide back down in its holster.

  At the same time, Yakima jerked the man’s gun hand wide. The Schofield belched smoke and fire, the bullet plunking into a support post. Holding the man’s right wrist, Yakima spun him around, then grabbed his own revolver, ratcheted back the hammer, and snugged the barrel against the vaquero’s right ear.

  The vaquero was breathing hard, grunting with the pain of his cracked wrist. His cigarette dropped from his lips; it glowed against the porch floor.

  Yakima stared out from behind the man’s head at the four other vaqueros facing him, crouching, extending their revolvers straight out from their shoulders.

  He didn’t say anything, just sidestepped slightly, keeping Pablo between him and the five men bearing down on him.

  “Pablo, you are a damn fool!” screamed El Segundo.

  Pablo groaned and cursed.

  “If your amigos don’t drop those six-shooters and ride on out of here, Pablo,” Yakima said in his cow pen Spanish, “I’m gonna bore a hole between your ears with a .44 slug.”

  El Segundo and the other four vaqueros held their positions, guns aimed. Yakima pressed his own revolver’s barrel harder against Pablo’s ear.

  One of the vaqueros glanced at El Segundo.

  El Segundo stared at Yakima, shifting the gun around before him, trying to get a bead on Yakima’s head. His chest rose and fell sharply. The white streak through his hair shone in the darkness.

  Yakima rammed his gun barrel hard against Pablo’s head.

  “El Segundo!” Pablo cried.

  El Segundo cursed and lowered his revolver, depressing the hammer.

  “Toss ’em down, amigos,” he growled disgustedly as he dropped his own gun in the dust. “The don will not be pleased if we ride back to the hacienda with an empty saddle.”

  Reluctantly, the vaqueros leaned down, set their guns on the porch.

  Yakima shoved Pablo out away from him. “Mount up and ride. Don’t try circling back. I’ve got good ears and good eyes.”

  Pablo and the four vaqueros grabbed their reins off the hitchrack. Silent as scolded children, they backed their horses away from the rack, then swung into their saddles.

  “Gringos like you don’t last long in Mejico.” Keeping his eyes on Yakima, El Segundo slipped his reins from the hitchrack, swung into the saddle, and reined the horse around. “We will meet again, Senor!”

  He ground his spurs against the Arabian’s ribs and galloped out of the yard.

  The others glared at Yakima, then spurred their own snorting mounts after El Segundo, their bouncing silhouettes soon blending with the desert’s inky darkness.

  The batwings creaked, and Yakima turned to see the Irishman step out onto the porch, staring after the Mexicans.

  “Bastard done killed one of my whores a few months back,” the man growled. “They were bound to kill Ligia, too—or mark her so she ain’t worth spit.”

  Yakima glanced at the logs on the porch floor. “There’s your wood.” He turned, began striding toward the barn. “I’ll stay out yonder, in case they circle back.”

  As he crossed the yard, the girl stepped out from behind the barn door. He stopped ahead and to the left of her. She was little more than a brown smudge in the darkness, her straight dark hair framing her oval-shaped face.

  He remembered another young dove he’d saved from hardcases in Colorado, and his heart pinched. Faith. He walked up to Ligia, laid his hand gently against her smooth cheek. “Are you all right, Senorita?”

  She nodded, lowering her eyes demurely. “Sí, Señor.” She stepped around him and headed for the roadhouse, where the Irishman was plucking the logs off the porch, still grumbling and looking after the Mexicans. She mounted the porch steps, pushed through the batwings, and disappeared inside.

  Yakima fetched his rifle from the barn and headed back to the woodpile.

  When Yakima finished splitting wood a half hour later, he dug a small pit in the chaparral near the barn and built a coffee fire. He would sleep here, under the stars, where he could keep a sharp eye and ear out for the Mexicans. He doubted they’d try to even the score tonight, but if they did, he’d be ready for them.

  He sat back against his saddle, his coffee cup on a rock beside him, hands behind his head, staring up at the starry sky. Gravel crunched softly to his left. In an instant, he grabbed his Yellowboy and cocked it, swinging the barrel around.

  A slender shadow jerked. “It’s Ligia!”

  She stood in the greasewood, holding a steaming plate in one hand while extending the other in a beseeching gesture. She wore a thick shawl that fell to her knees and fur-trimmed moccasins. Yakima lowered the rifle, depressing the hammer.

  “I brought . . . food,” she said in broken English, stepping forward haltingly. “You must be hungry.”

  Yakima scooted up higher against his saddle and set the rifle on the rock beside him. “Starving.”

  The girl moved forward and held the plate toward him in both hands, keeping her shy eyes on him expectantly. He saw now that one eye wandered inward slightly. Yakima took the plate. His stomach grumbled and his mouth watered at the thick slab of pork and giant helping of pinto beans steaming in the chill night air.

  “He cooks good food . . . Senor O’Toole.”

  “Much obliged,” Yakima said, picking up the wooden fork and digging in. “I was about to break into my rabbit, but this looks a whole heap better than day-old jack.”

  The girl backed away slowly and stood watching him, hands crossed at her waist. She was lingering. Waiting for the plate, maybe. Yakima nodded at the coffeepot resting on a rock beside the fire’s low flames. “Help yourself to coffee, if you like. There’s an extra cup in one of those saddle pouches.”

  As Yakima continued to eat hungrily, the girl glanced at the coffeepot and the saddlebags lying on the other side of the fire. She walked around the fire, knelt down, pulled a cup from the saddlebags, then used the leathe
r swatch to lift the pot from the rock and to pour the steaming brew into the cup.

  Cup in hand, she rose, moved toward a rock near Yakima, and sat down, pressing her fur-trimmed moccasins together and setting the smoking cup on her knee. She sat there silently while Yakima ate. She glanced around the campsite from time to time, turning her head with a start when a rabbit rustled the nearby brush, but kept her gaze mostly on Yakima, studying him as though he were a question she was trying to answer.

  When his stomach was beginning to feel satisfied, he kept eating but returned the girl’s sidelong gaze. “Name’s Yakima. Yakima Henry.”

  The girl said nothing, her brown eyes reflecting the firelight.

  “I heard you’re called Ligia,” Yakima continued. “Pretty name. One of the prettiest I’ve stumbled across, matter of fact.”

  He looked up to see her blushing. A dove that blushes . . . Obviously, she hadn’t been a dove very long.

  “It was mi mama’s name.” She turned her head slightly to one side and frowned, causing the one eye to slide even farther toward her nose. “You are Indio?”

  “Half. My mother was Cheyenne with some Yakima blood. She liked the ocean. Pa was a white prospector. We traveled around a lot. I spent a little time with my ma’s people, after she died, but I didn’t really belong there. I been drifting ever since.”

  He tossed his fork onto the empty plate, set the plate on a rock, and wiped his hands on his buckskin breeches. He was a little surprised to hear himself talking so much, but he didn’t often get the chance to talk to anyone but his horse.

  “I do whatever work I can—ranch work, railroad work. I’ve ridden shotgun on gold shipments, driven stagecoach, mucked out livery barns. I worked in a place like the Irishman’s once. Last year.”

  He sighed, remembering the night he’d saved Thornton’s favorite dove, Faith, from four men who hadn’t paid, who’d intended to kill her to get back at Thornton. Then the long trail afterward, him and Faith and Wolf, heading for the Colorado mountain boomtown of Gold Cache, staying ahead of the kill-crazy bounty hunter, Wit Bardoul.

  He’d been staring into the fire, forgetting about saving his night vision, lost in his thoughts. He turned his head to see the girl kneeling beside him, running her hand over the brass receiver of the Winchester Yellowboy. Her fingers traced the etching on the side opposite the receiver, of the wolf fighting a grizzly in deep grass.

  “Beautiful . . .”

  “An old friend gave that to me.”

  Yakima stared at the receiver. Funny how a gun intended for a territorial governor had ended up in the hands of a gandy dancer Chinaman—a Shaolin monk who had taught Yakima some Oriental fighting practices— and then in the saddle boot of a drifting half-breed. Ralph, as he was known—his Chinese name was too complicated for Yakima to pronounce—had been a first-rate cardplayer, and he’d won the rifle in a poker game. Not believing in guns, he’d given the Yellowboy to Yakima.

  Yakima felt the warmth of the girl’s hand on his thigh. He looked at her. She was staring at him, eyes bright in the firelight. “You think I am pretty?”

  Yakima stared at her clean, smooth cheeks, lustrous brown eyes, and slightly pursed lips. Her neck was long and fine, with two small, dark brown moles, one above the other. Her straight brown hair swayed across her shoulders in the breeze. “You are pretty.”

  She drew her hands inside her cape, then lifted it over her head and tossed it aside. Lifting her hands to the low neck of her dress top, she began peeling the sleeves down her arms.

  Yakima reached up, placed his hands on hers, stopping her.

  She frowned. “Mr. O’Toole said it was okay.”

  Yakima shook his head, slid the dress back up the young girl’s arms. She was too young, and he was too tired. “You’re right pretty, but I think I’ll just lay back and watch the stars till I fall asleep.”

  He leaned back against his saddle, crossed his hands behind his head. She stared down at him, pooching her lips out and frowning, indignant.

  He squirmed a few inches toward the cantle end of the saddle. “You’re welcome to join me if you want.” She’d be safer out here with Yakima, who could protect her, than inside with the Irishman, who probably couldn’t.

  She dropped to her hands and knees and lay down beside him. He draped his right arm around her shoulders, drew her close to him, so she could share his warmth, and pulled a blanket across them both.

  She snuggled her head against his shoulder, pressed her body close to his.

  “Look there,” Yakima said, pointing skyward. “Falling star.”

  Chapter 14

  Tired as he was, Yakima slept fitfully, waking to listen every half hour or so for approaching bushwhackers. He was accustomed to such sporadic rest, though, and when he rose at four, wriggling his shoulder gently out from beneath Ligia’s head, he felt fresh.

  The girl groaned and snuggled deeper under the blankets as he built a fire and started coffee. While the fire built itself up, he went into the barn to check on the horse, relieved to find that the swelling in the frog was nearly gone.

  He hammered the shoe into place, then led the horse out to where the fire was snapping, the coffeepot chugging. The girl knelt on the ground, rolling his blankets.

  As he led the sorrel up to the fire, Ligia looked at him and sank back on her heels. “Now you are going?”

  “After some coffee. It’ll be light soon.”

  “I will cook eggs for you.”

  Yakima shook his head and knelt beside the fire, removing the pot with the leather scrap. “Just the coffee.”

  He poured them each a cup, and they sat around the fire, saying nothing, sipping the coffee. When he’d finished half his cup, he leathered his horse, attaching the bedroll and rifle scabbard, praying silently that the sorrel’s hoof would hold up until he could trade for another mount.

  The gray of the false dawn shone in the east, dimly defining the distant ridges. A nighthawk cried somewhere above the dark adobe roadhouse hunched on the other side of the yard.

  Watching Yakima from a nearby rock, Ligia shivered under her heavy poncho. “You go where?”

  Yakima slid the Winchester from the saddle boot, began thumbing shells into the receiver. “I’m not sure yet.”

  “You are pursuing the desperadoes . . . the Thunder Riders?”

  Slipping a shell through the rifle’s loading gate with a metallic click, he glanced at her.

  “They go to Junction Rock. A very bad place. Many badmen there . . . gringos and Mejicanos. All running from the law.”

  Yakima walked around the horse and stood before her. “Never heard of it.”

  “I heard the desperadoes talking.”

  Yakima frowned. “Was the woman still with them? The pretty gringa?”

  “Sí.”

  “She look all right?”

  The girl shrugged. “Sí.” She smiled knowingly. “Very beautiful.”

  Yakima set two fingers beneath her chin and pecked her cheek. “Adios, Ligia.”

  He turned to the horse, swung into the saddle, and reined the sorrel toward the yard.

  Behind him, Ligia’s voice rose softly in the predawn silence. “Be careful, Yakima. Many banditos and Indios along the trail. Very bad!”

  Yakima walked the sorrel along the top of the mesa, then down the southwest side. As he bottomed out on the desert floor, the sun rose above the eastern horizon, light shafts spreading across the sky and the broken, red-bronze terrain like a giant blossoming marigold, sweeping shadows along before it.

  He was crossing a cactus-choked wash when he reined up suddenly. In the corner of his eye he’d spotted a sun flash—a faint prick of reflected light, brief as a firefly’s spark—a mile or so ahead, just to the right of the trail.

  It might be only sun reflected off mica or a cast-off bottle, but he had to check it out or risk getting bushwhacked. He cursed. Another damn delay.

  He turned off the trail and followed the twisting, turning watercourse
generally west, crouching so his head remained below the lip of the south bank. When he’d ridden a couple of hundred yards, he swung straight south, keeping his eyes on a pillar of boulders rising above the chaparral ahead and left, roughly where he’d seen the sun flash.

  He gigged the sorrel along, trotting when he thought he could keep his dust trail low, swinging wide of the rocky pillar, then circling to within two hundred feet of its back side. Snorting softly, he shucked his Winchester from the saddle boot.

  Five men perched atop the rocks up and down the pillar, two peering around its one side, three around the other, all holding rifles. They wore short charro or fringed deerskin jackets, black leather chaps decorated with hammered silver disks, and sombreros. El Segundo sat the lowest on the pillar, staring around the right side, his sombrero hanging down his back, the white streak in his hair glowing in the morning sunshine.