Shadow River

by Ralph Cotton

  Kneeling in their tracks, Sam eyed back through the grainy predawn light, seeing the efforts of their travel recorded in the gravel like words embedded in the printed page. Yet it would still be less clear to the searching eye than a line of tracks made out in the open across the sand.

  It’s the best you get, he told himself. He knew it wouldn’t trick Apache; it wasn’t meant to. He only hoped it showed them this trek was not led by a fool.

  He stood and looked all around, seeing not fifty feet from him the red glow of eyes and the black silhouettes of the coyote band. He saw three sets of eyes blink and glow closer to the ground. Pups . . . He stooped and picked up a round quarter-sized piece of gravel and threw it back along the path of boot and hoof. The red eyes all shot in the direction of the slight sound of the rock skittering away. Then the eyes turned back to him, blinked curiously and vanished. Sam turned, rifle and lead rope in hand.

  And he walked on.

  As first boiling sunlight spilled up over the horizon, the riders rode back up onto the rocky hillside. At midmorning they fell among rock shade like men shot dead from afar.

  “Don’t wake me ’less a fish bites,” Burke said, collapsing.

  They rested in silence, corpselike, until the heat and glare of sunlight rolled and spread and began to waver like spirits dancing in the middle of the desert floor. While the others lay spent, Sam found a large boulder farther up the slope and positioned himself in a way that gave him a clear look in every direction. As he rested, he held the battered telescope to his eye and gauged the obscurity of the view across the low rolling desert. For the next hour he probed the wavering heat every few minutes with the circled lens until he decided he and his band could not be seen any better than they themselves could see anyone on the other side. He rose and walked back to the worn-out men and horses.

  “Fish biting,” he said, kicking the sole of one of Burke’s boots. The outlaw’s boot soles stood toe-up from the ground, leaning away from each other like a pair of weathered grave markers of some lesser cretins with issues unresolved.

  “I’m up, I’m up,” Burke mumbled, jerking upright, then stumbling to his feet. He picked at the seat of his dusty trousers as he pushed his hat down atop his head. “Jesus! Do you ever sleep?” he said to Sam.

  “You’d have to be awake to know it,” Sam replied, kicking Montana’s boot, stepping away, kicking Black’s, then Childers’.

  Sam watched the men drag themselves to the horses and take up their reins. The horses yanked against their reins, getting sharp-tempered, hard to handle.

  Testy with thirst . . . , Sam noted. Even though the horses hadn’t been ridden all day, the heat throughout their travels was starting to take its toll. He took a deep breath, walking to the dun and the white barb. He had checked the desert floor as best he could. With the Apache making war on the Mexicans and anyone else they came upon, all he could do was keep the men moving—stay out of sight.

  He felt his senses slip a notch beneath the heat and his own thirst. But he shook his head free of a white blankness and looked around to make sure the others hadn’t noticed.

  “Let’s lead them out of here,” he said quietly. “There’s water waiting up ahead.”

  The men gathered and stretched and settled their thirsty horses and walked on in the scorching afternoon heat.

  • • •

  It was early dark when the riders came to the water hole that lay no more than two hours from the hillside ruins. Two miles before reaching the water, Sam and the men led their horses down off the rocky hillsides onto the sand and stepped up into the saddles. When the horses had caught scent of the water, they had become cross and unruly. It was easier to ride them and let them lead the way than it was to try to keep them in check.

  Once at the water hole, Sam and the men stepped down at the water’s edge and lay prone beside their watering horses, reins and empty canteens in hand. They sank their canteens into the water to fill them and rinsed their mouths of the day’s sand and dust, squirting the water out. Then they drank their fill, their hot scorched faces and chests submerged in the water, finding the tepid water to feel as cold as a winter stream after their torturous day in the desert sun.

  When they finished drinking, the men lay on the wet ground at the water’s edge until the horses had drunk their fill. Stanley Black sat on a rock keeping an eye on the trail they’d ridden on while the others took their horses up onto the hillside above the water. There they rope-hobbled their forelegs and left them to graze on pale clumps of wild grass standing among rocks the size of melons.

  “I got to hand it to you, Jones,” Burke said. “You’ve kept us a clean trail in both directions.”

  “We’re not there yet,” Sam cautioned, looking around the darkness as he spoke.

  “But we will be soon enough,” Burke said. “What say, after we get this gold and split it up, you ride on with me?”

  Sam just looked at him, the two of them sitting with water running down from their wet hair.

  “I mean it,” Burke said. “I’ll put in a good word to Bell Madson for you. He’s got lots of moneymaking gun work coming up.”

  “What about me killing Segert?” Sam asked, not wanting to sound too eager. In fact, this was exactly what he’d been hoping for.

  “A fair fight is a fair fight.” Burke shrugged. “Anyway, I figure there might have been a bone between the two of them. Why else would Madson be pulling so much away from Crazy Raymond?”

  “I didn’t realize he was,” Sam said.

  “Well, he was,” Burke said. “I saw it. So did some others. Anyway, it’s all about business to Madson. With Segert dead, who better to have riding for him than the hombre who killed him?”

  “Makes sense to me,” Sam said. “Far as I’m concerned, set me up with him, so long as everybody keeps their mouth shut about this gold.”

  “They will, you can bank on it,” said Burke.

  The two stood up as the other men gathered at the water’s edge, capping their full canteens. On the hillside, the sound of the horses grazing resounded quietly.

  “How long you figure?” the Montana Kid asked Sam, gesturing a nod toward the dark silhouettes of the horses, their heads lowered to the ground.

  “We’ll give them an hour,” Sam said, taking on the authority the men were giving to him. “It’s the only graze we’ll find between here and the ruins.”

  The men nodded in agreement, Sam noted. That was good.

  “Think we’ve shook free from any more Apache?” Childers asked, holding a wet bandana to his healing shoulder wound.

  “No,” said Sam. “We’ll have them down our shirts as long as we’re here.” He looked around the darkness again. “The Apache size everybody up, see how they act, how strong they are. The first thing they look at is gun strength. We’ve got that. The next thing they look at is how smart you are. They see you traveling wise, leaving little sign of yourself, they know you’re strong, not foolish. The Apache don’t abide fools. They only respect strength and wisdom. Show them weakness, show them you don’t know your way around on the desert, they’ll take everything you’ve got and chop you down fast.”

  “So what we’re saying is that stupidity won’t cut it, fellows,” Burke cut in, wanting to show himself sided with Sam.

  The men nodded again.

  Childers gave Black his tobacco fixings and Black rolled each of them a smoke.

  “How’s the shoulder, Boyd?” Sam asked Childers.

  “Better,” said Childers, sitting on a low rock. “I’m damn glad you made me go ahead and have you tend it when you did,” he said. “I don’t know what I was waiting for. I think the sun might have had me thrown off some.” He took the rolled cigarette from Black and lit it with a flaming match Black held out to him.

  Sam looked around, making sure the larger stones around the water hole kept the flare of th
e match from being seen down on the desert floor.

  “Is this all right?” Childers asked, holding the cupped cigarette down close to the ground.

  Sam only nodded.

  An hour later, the five wet, thirst-slaked men had walked up onto the hillside and gathered their horses, mounted and ridden away.

  With the horses grazed, watered and rested, they rode forward along the desert floor at a gallop, cool air moving down around them from the higher Blood Mountain Range. Above them the moon stood full and bright in a cloudless purple sky.

  In the middle of the night, the five fell into a single file and rode up off the sand flats onto a path Sam had traveled before. Within an hour they turned off the moonlit trail onto a thin path that brought them to an ancient grown-over stone ruins that stood pressed against the mountainside where it had been since time unrecorded.

  “And here we are, hombres,” Burke chuckled quietly to the other men. He tapped his horse forward at a walk, then jerked it to a halt as the long squall of a panther resounded from somewhere far inside the ruins’ vine-clad walls.

  “Easy, now,” Sam whispered to his horses, feeling the dun tense up beneath him, the white barb draw back on its lead rope. The men sat tense and silent.

  “There’s a panther living in here,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, she’s the one I told you et up Mick Galla,” Burke put in.

  “We’ll just keep watch for her,” Sam said, nudging the dun forward, pulling the white alongside him.

  The men eased their wary horses forward as another squall resounded out and down from the hillside. The sound was far enough away to not cause alarm, yet, having seen firsthand what the big she-cat could do, Sam decided to steer clear of it.

  The men followed Sam as they wound around inside the ruins and reached a wide area surrounded by a ten-foot stone wall. As they stopped their horses and stepped down from their saddles for the night, the panther let out another cry.

  “That ol’ pussy sounds hurt to me,” Burke said. “Whatever’s got her so cross, I hope she don’t come blaming us for it.”

  Sam listened as he led his horses over to a young ironwood growing flat and misshapen against the stone wall and hitched them to it.

  “I’m going to see what’s ailing her,” he said.

  “You’re going to what?” said Burke incredulously.

  “You heard me,” Sam said. “Do you want to sleep with an injured cat prowling around all night?” He dropped the saddle from the dun, stepped over and pulled the pack off the white barb.

  “Well, hell, you’re right,” Burke said with a deep sigh. He paused, then said, “If you’re loco enough to go looking for a hurt panther in the dark of night, I expect I’m loco enough to go with you.”

  “Stay here and get yourself some rest,” Sam said. “I shouldn’t need any help.”

  “Huh-uh, I’m going,” said Burke. “You’re the only one knows where that gold is buried. I ain’t going through all this and have you et by a cat the way Mick Galla was—leastwise, not until we’ve got our hands on that gold.”

  Sam shook his head, but he waited until Burke dropped his saddle and slid his rifle from its boot. Turning to Black, Sam said quietly, “We’re going to see about the panther, find out if she’s dangerous to us. We can’t have her spooking the horses all night.”

  “She sounds hurt,” Black replied. “I’ll build us a fire down out of sight. You’ll have coffee waiting when you get back.”

  “Obliged,” Sam said. “We won’t be long.”

  Chapter 6

  Sam and Burke climbed up over a vine-draped stone wall and struck out uphill in the direction from which they’d heard the panther’s pained wailing. Scaling the stony hillside like two dark insurgents reconnoitering some greater plane, they pulled themselves up and over boulder, stone terrace, wall and earthed embankment. A half hour later they stood on what had likely been an ancient marketplace, complete with an overgrown stone-tiled floor and a long stone bench that had served as a public privy above a deep brush-covered ditch.

  “This is where we left Mick Galla, after the cat et him up,” Burke said in a lowered tone, looking all around, recognizing the vine-draped wall and the remainders of weathered-out stone columns.

  “Yes, it is,” Sam said. He gestured upward along an earth- and vine-covered stone wall. “Her lair is right over that wall.”

  “At least we know she’s not there tonight,” said Burke, moving forward, searching as he went for the body of the ill-fated gunman, Mickey Galla, in the pale moonlight.

  Before going three yards farther, Burke stopped short and stared down at the ground beside what was once a stone bench.

  “Good God, there he is,” he said. “Or what’s left of him,” he threw in as Sam walked over and stood beside him.

  On the ground in the moonlight lay scraps of trousers, a brass belt buckle and a human skull lying on its cheekbone. Ragged patches of hair still clung to blackened skin atop the head. Beetles crawled freely in and out of the open eye sockets.

  Burke shook his head.

  “You figure she et him the rest of the way up?” he said, unable to take his eyes off Galla’s skull. Sam saw other bones scattered here and there, including part of a rib cage a few feet away.

  “She probably had her turn with him,” Sam said.

  “Damn it, I wish we’d buried him,” Burke said, also looking around now at Galla’s other bones and remnants. “Although, I’ll be the first to say, we had no shovel with us.” He shrugged down at the skull as if explaining himself. “It don’t seem right, feeding ol’ Mick to the very cat who killed him. She probably brought her cubs down, just had themselves a big ol’ time—”

  Sam cut him off.

  “Put it out of your mind, Clyde,” Sam said, seeing Burke going further and further with the matter. “The panther and her cubs are not the only thing that dined on the dearly departed.” He boot-toed a black-gray feather lying on the ground. “There’s been buzzards, rodents, rollbacks and now rock beetles—ants next, if not already.”

  Burke winced at the picture Sam painted while beetles roamed the skull on the ground.

  “I know it’s true,” he said. “But I don’t like seeing it, close up.”

  “Neither do I,” Sam said, already stepping away. “But it’s a hungry world. Everything takes its turn at the table.”

  “Jesus,” said Burke. “Mick was strong and tough as a Canadian grizzly. Look at him now.” He blew out a breath and tore himself away from staring at the bones and skull of the strong, tough man he’d watched fistfight the she-panther there a month earlier. “It just goes to show you . . . ,” he added, moving along with Sam.

  “Goes to show you what?” Sam asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” said Burke. “A lot of things, I guess.”

  They walked through the lower ruins and back onto another stone-laden hillside. After climbing another fifteen minutes, they stood up in the full moonlight onto a walled and leveled spot that was strewn with jagged stone that appeared to have been spat from the sky over time. Upon appraisal of the level area, its character suggested that it might once have been a parade field or some ancient sports arena.

  “Um-hum, just what I thought,” Burke said, staring across the stony echelon toward the far wall and beyond it to the more upslope hillside. “We’ll be climbing rock all night. And I’ll tell you something else,” he added. “I’ve already gone farther than I wanted to. If that ol’ cat’s on the move, she could drag us along for miles—”

  “Shhh,” Sam said, holding up a hand to quiet him as he listened toward something beyond the far wall. They listened as the panther cried out, her voice sounding closer, but weaker in the moonlit night.

  “She’s no threat to us anymore,” Burke whispered. “Let’s go on back.”

  “Wait,” Sam said. “There’s something
else. Hear it?” He listened more intently. Burke attempted to close in on the sound beside him. From the same direction as the cat’s cry came the low indistinguishable mutter of voices and laughter.

  “Oh, hell,” Burke whispered, the two crouching instinctively, their rifles coming up ready in their hands. They listened even more intently for a moment. Finally Burke whispered, “I can’t make it out. Is that ’pache or English?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam whispered, easing forward. “But we’d better slip in closer and find out.”

  “Wait!” said Burke. He grabbed Sam’s arm, stopping him. “If that’s ’pache camping the other side of that wall, I’m nearer than I want to be already. Slipping closer does not sound all that rewarding.”

  Sam gestured a nod back in the direction of the other three men camped unsuspectingly inside the ruins.

  “Any least sound from back there and we’re going to have a fight on our hands,” Sam said. “We need to know how many we’re looking at before we go back and tell the others.”

  “Bad as this sounds,” said Burke, “I’d sooner we slip off into these ruins and wait till everybody’s smoke settles. We can get out of here then with a full head of hair and go on and get the gold for ourselves.”

  “I don’t leave anybody behind to die if I can keep from it,” Sam said, shaking his forearm free from Burke’s hand.

  “Damn it, Jones,” Burke whispered. “When did you become such a do-gooder? There’s not a son of a bitch back there thinks he’s going to live forever. Let’s find a cave and go deep—save our own skins and pick through what’s left come morning.”

  “Do what suits you, Clyde,” Sam whispered, gesturing toward the deeper ruins. “But get out of here as quiet as you can. I’m going on like I said.”

  Burke hesitated and watched as Sam moved forward toward the far wall.

  “Damn it, Jones,” he cursed under his breath, finally hurrying forward and moving along beside Sam. “I’m nothing but a damn fool when it comes to gold. If I have to keep you alive, I expect I will. You had no right heaping guilt on me that way. I’d hate to die saving somebody just as ornery as I am.”