The sky turned ebony overhead and the stars came out, but Stonewall waited until the moon rose before he said, “All right, I reckon we can saddle up and head out again.”
The mountains were a looming black mass shot through with veins of silver, or so they appeared in the wash of light from the rising moon. The air was still hot, but without the harsh sun glaring down it was more bearable.
After several hours of riding, Stonewall and Corbett reached the foothills. They wound through a vast field of boulders and began to climb into the Santa Catalinas.
Stonewall looked back at the eastern sky and saw a faint gray tinge. “It’ll be dawn in a couple hours. We ought to stop and rest a little more, and we can move out again when it’s light. We don’t know how far Dallin and Jessie made it. We don’t want to ride right past them in the dark without seeing them.”
“That’s a good idea,” Corbett agreed. “I could use another hour of sleep.”
They stopped at the base of a looming bluff where some grass grew. There was no water, but they still had plenty in their canteens so they could wait until morning to search for a spring or a little creek. They unsaddled their mounts and spread their bedrolls.
“You get some rest first,” Stonewall told Corbett. “I’ll wake you after an hour or so and you can spell me.”
“You think it’s necessary for one of us to stand watch?”
“It never hurts to be careful.” Stonewall sat down with his back against a slab of rock and his rifle across his knees. With his hat tipped back, weariness made his face gaunt in the moonlight.
Corbett stretched out on his blankets, and a few minutes later he began to snore softly.
Stonewall listened to the night. At first, everything was absolutely still and quiet except for Corbett’s snoring, the sound of the horses cropping at the grass, and the shuffle of their hooves on the ground as they moved around a little.
As time passed, though, Stonewall began to hear other things, and he knew the small animals, the desert rats and the lizards that populated the mountains, were starting to come out of their burrows. The creatures had hunkered down, motionless and silent, at the arrival of the men, but they began to feel like it was safe to resume their nocturnal activities.
Had to give the critters credit for being smart enough to know how perilous it was when human beings started stomping around, thought Stonewall. He had hunted mountain lions and bears, but figured there were no greater predators in the world than his fellow men.
His eyelids grew heavy. He fought off the drowsiness. He wasn’t going to let Corbett sleep all the way to dawn. His turn was coming, he told himself.
But exhaustion continued to steal over him, and while he wasn’t asleep, after a while he wasn’t fully awake, either. He hovered in the netherworld in between.
His senses weren’t completely deadened. After an unknowable amount of time, something made his head snap up. He blinked rapidly, looked around, and listened intently as he searched for any sign of trouble. He didn’t see or hear anything, but he came to his feet anyway, still holding the rifle.
Suddenly, a weight crashed into his back and knocked him forward. Stonewall tried to keep his balance and stay upright, but the impact drove him to his knees.
A bare arm looped around his neck, hooked under his chin, and cruelly yanked his head up and back to expose the taut line of his throat.
He knew what was going to happen next—cold steel slashing into his flesh, the hot spurt of blood, and death.
* * *
Dallin felt sorry for Jessie, but knowing that Little Ed McCabe and most, if not all, of the crew from Bar Em would be on their trail, he pushed the stolen horse at a hard pace all day.
He sympathized with the horse, too. Since the animal had been tied up at a hitch rack in Tombstone, quite possibly since the previous night, there was no telling when it had last been grained and watered. Dallin had no way of knowing how fresh the horse was.
The mount responded well and gave him everything it had. From time to time, he stopped, swung down from the saddle, and walked while leading the horse, just to lighten the burden for a little while.
The third time he did that, Jessie got down, too.
Dallin tensed, ready to go after her if she tried to run away, but she just gave him a scornful look. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to take off for the tall and uncut. I know you’d catch me if I tried. But you’re killing this poor horse and I don’t want to be any more a part of that than I have to.”
“It ain’t my intention to kill the poor critter,” Dallin said, “but I don’t cotton to the idea of your daddy and his hands stringin’ me up, either.”
“My father wouldn’t do that,” she insisted.
“Oh, no? Then how come Charlie Porter did his best to get a lynch mob to take me outta the jail?”
“Charlie’s known me since I was a little girl,” Jessie said, flushing. Dallin couldn’t tell if the rise in her color was due to embarrassment or the heat. “He was just so upset he got carried away.”
“Uh-huh. I almost got carried away, too . . . carried right to the nearest cottonwood with a high enough branch.”
She didn’t have anything to say to that.
After a while they mounted up again and rode on.
Water was a considerable worry. It was dry country, for the most part, and Dallin hadn’t been able to bring any with him from Tombstone.
He had cowboyed all over the region, though, and knew the location of several springs. He headed for the nearest one, and was glad to see that it hadn’t dried up yet, as it might later in the summer.
He let the horse drink but was careful not to allow the animal to founder. Then he and Jessie drank as well.
She said, “You don’t have anything to eat, do you?”
“Not unless there’s something stashed in these saddlebags,” Dallin said.
“You don’t know because that’s not your horse. You’re a horse thief, too.”
“I’m a horse thief,” Dallin admitted. “I hope they don’t hang me for it later on. But we both know I ain’t guilty of anything else I been accused of.”
She looked away.
He would keep working on her conscience, he thought, and sooner or later she would tell the truth.
He checked in the saddlebags and didn’t find anything other than some piggin’ strings, a deck of cards, a pouch of chewing tobacco . . . and a six-gun.
Dallin’s heart jumped a little when he saw the revolver. He checked the cylinder, saw that five of the chambers were loaded with the hammer resting on the empty sixth chamber. There weren’t any extra cartridges in the saddlebags, but if he was cornered, at least he could put a little fight.
Problem was, despite everything that had happened, he didn’t want to shoot Little Ed McCabe or even Charlie Porter.
Jessie’s eyes widened at the sight of the gun. “Are you going to shoot me?”
“What? Good Lord, gal, you ought to know better than that! Why would I want to shoot you?”
“Because I . . . Because you wouldn’t be in so much trouble if it wasn’t for the things I said about you.”
Dallin shrugged. “I ain’t gonna deny I wish you’d told the truth, but I figure you got your reasons for what you done. I’m sure they seem like good reasons to you.” He looked at her. “I reckon you must be scared. I don’t claim to know you all that well, but you don’t seem like a mean gal to me. You wouldn’t so somethin’ like this outta spite or sheer cussedness. Somethin’ must’a spooked you pretty bad to make you come up with that lie and stick to it so stubborn-like.”
That thought had just occurred to him, but as he put it into words, he thought about it more and was convinced that he might be on the right track. Instead of wanting to protect the fella who had gotten her in the family way, Jessie was scared of him.
She looked like she wanted to say something else, but gave a little shake of her head and turned away.
“Maybe we can find something
to eat later on,” she said. “I have to keep my strength up. On account of my condition, you know.”
Dallin felt like slapping his forehead in exasperation. He kept forgetting that he hadn’t just kidnapped a young woman. He had kidnapped a pregnant woman. That complicated the situation a whole heap more.
“When we get into the mountains we might find a rabbit or two,” he said. “I can shoot one of the varmints, build a fire, and roast him right up. It’ll be good eatin’.”
“Won’t a shot and a fire tell anybody who’s following us where we are?”
“Well, yeah, I suppose so. I didn’t think about that. But I ain’t gonna let you and your . . . I mean, I ain’t gonna let you go hungry.”
She glanced around at him, and for a second he thought she was going to smile. “Thank you.” She didn’t smile, not quite, but he was convinced that she thought about it.
They rode on, and he carried the gun tucked behind his belt where he could get at it in a hurry if he needed to.
By late afternoon, they reached the mountains and began climbing through the valleys between slopes covered with pines and manzanita.
As they were riding, Jessie asked, “What is it you plan to do, anyway? Where are you going?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Dallin answered honestly. “I just wanted to get some place where I can hole up and stay away from everybody who’s after me until I convince you to tell the truth about what happened.”
“You mean if I agree to tell everyone that you didn’t . . . well, you know what I mean. If I say that I’ll tell everyone, you’ll turn around and take me back?”
“Sure. That’s the only reason I went out to the ranch and got you in the first place.”
She turned her head to look back at him. “But I could lie. I could tell you that I’d do what you want, and then when we got back I could say anything I wanted to.” She paused. “I could even tell everybody that you raped me again after you kidnapped me.”
He stiffened and drew in a sharp breath. “You wouldn’t do that. Not if you’d given me your word.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then sighed, shook her head, and faced forward again.
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but he didn’t say anything else. Best just to let her stew in her own guilty conscience, he thought.
Night fell, and eventually it got too dark to go on. They made a cold camp in the trees next to a dry streambed. They hadn’t found any game so far, and anyway, Jessie had been right about him not wanting to risk a shot.
Dallin’s belly was empty, and he was sure hers was, too. Sooner or later, they would have to eat, even if it meant giving up and turning himself in. He had meant what he said. He wasn’t going to let her and her baby starve.
He gathered up a good pile of pine needles, spread the saddle blanket on them, and stomped them out to level them down some. “It ain’t much of a bed, but I reckon it’ll have to do tonight.”
“Why don’t you let me go? Leave me here, and you ride on all night. That would put some distance between you and anybody who’s coming after you.”
“I couldn’t do that. That’d mean leavin’ you out here in the middle of nowhere by yourself.”
“I’m sure somebody would find me.”
“Maybe, maybe not. And you might not like what found you if it was a mountain lion or some such.”
“There are mountain lions up here?”
“And worse things,” he said, thinking about the Apaches. There hadn’t been any Indian trouble for a while, but there was no telling when some of the young warriors would decide to leave the reservation and go back to their wild ways.
He didn’t say anything about that to Jessie. No need to worry her any more than necessary, he decided.
She bedded down, and even though she swore she wouldn’t be able to get to sleep in such primitive conditions, within a few minutes her breathing was deep and regular. Dallin took some satisfaction in that. He wanted to save his own neck, but he wanted to put her through as few hardships as he could in the process.
Despite his best intentions, he dozed off, too, with his back against a tree trunk. Exhaustion dragged him deeper and deeper into sleep until he slumped onto his side without even knowing it and didn’t wake up.
That changed abruptly when somebody grabbed him. He bolted up. His hand flailed out in search of the revolver he had placed right beside him. He touched the smooth walnut grips and snatched up the gun. At the same time, he struck out with his other hand and slammed it into something soft and yielding.
Jessie went “Ooof !” as she fell backward.
Dallin realized that he had just hit her. He dropped to his knees beside her. “Dadgummit, dadgummit! Blast it, Jessie, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you all right? Why’d you grab me that way?”
“I . . . I’m fine. You didn’t really hurt me. You just pushed me down. Help me sit up.”
He did so and then asked again, “Why’d you grab me?”
“Because I was scared. Didn’t you hear that shot?”
“What—” Dallin stopped short. He might not have heard the shot that had spooked Jessie, but he heard the sudden burst of gunfire that shattered the night’s stillness.
Somebody was in trouble, and not very far away.
Chapter 22
The flash of a gun going off almost blinded Stonewall, and the roar of the shot half-deafened him.
It had an effect on the man about to kill him, too. The muscular arm that had been pressing against his throat like an iron bar slipped a little.
Stonewall grabbed the bare flesh, hauled down on it as hard as he could, and ducked his head. He sunk his teeth into the man’s arm and at the same time drove forward in a dive that sent him and his attacker crashing to the ground. The impact jolted him loose from the man who had grabbed him.
Stonewall struck out blindly with an elbow and felt it crack into something, hopefully the man’s jaw. He rolled desperately to one side in an attempt to put some distance between himself and the would-be killer.
The sun wasn’t above the horizon yet, but the eastern sky was lighter, giving off enough grayish light for Stonewall to see his enemy as he came up on one knee.
Just as he had suspected, the man was an Apache. He wore only a breechcloth and high-topped moccasins. A strip of cloth was tied around his head to hold back his thick black hair. He clutched a knife in his right hand and the blade darted forward as he lunged at Stonewall.
Making a grab for the Apache’s wrist, Stonewall caught it just in time to twist his arm aside and deflect the knife. He went over backward, pulling the Indian with him. He planted a foot in the man’s belly and used his leg to throw him up and over.
Stonewall figured Roy Corbett had fired that shot, but he didn’t know where the store clerk was. The Apache might be alone, or he might be part of a group that would fall on the two white men and kill them . . . if they were lucky.
If they were unlucky, the Apaches would capture them and make their dying slow and hideously agonizing. Stonewall fought to bring his fear under control.
As the warrior rolled over and sprang to his feet, Stonewall slapped at his holster, hoping the gun was still there. It was. He drew the revolver. A knife was no match for Colonel Colt’s equalizer.
A rifle cracked from the rocks above them. The bullet whined past Stonewall’s ear. He threw himself to the side, angled the gun up, and triggered a couple return shots.
The muzzle flashes lit up the little clearing at the base of the bluff where they had camped. Stonewall finally spotted Corbett. His friend was on the other side of the clearing, rolling around and wrestling with another Apache.
The warrior was about to plunge a knife into Corbett’s throat.
The wanna-be lawyer finally found the gun he had dropped when the Apache tackled him, jammed it into the man’s side, and pulled the trigger until the cylinder was empty. The booming reports rolled across the rugged landscape.
Stonewall had two
threats facing him, the Indian with the knife and the one with the rifle above him in the rocks. Another shot smacked into the ground a couple feet to his right, making him scramble to his left.
That brought him too close to the one with the knife, who lunged at him again. Stonewall felt the blade’s fiery bite as it cut across the top of his left shoulder.
As his heart hammered wildly, he swung the Colt, clubbing it across the Apache’s face. He felt bone crunch under steel. The warrior fell away from him.
Gravel slid above him. Stonewall looked up and spotted a moving shadow. The third and evidently last Apache was trying to get away. The odds weren’t in his favor anymore and so he no longer wanted any part of the fight.
Stonewall fired after the fleeing man, then cursed as the Apache never slowed down. He scrambled over the top of the bluff and vanished in a shower of dirt and gravel. Stonewall knew they would never catch him.
He also knew there was a good chance a larger band was somewhere nearby. More than likely, the three who had attacked were scouts. The one who had gotten away would rush back to his companions and tell them that two white men were camping in the mountains and had killed or wounded two of their people.
That thought reminded Stonewall there was a more immediate threat. He figured the Indian Corbett had shot to pieces was dead, but the other one might not be. The Apache sprawled on the ground, unmoving, but that could be a trick.
Stonewall looked around until he found the knife lying in the dirt next to the man. He kicked it out of reach, then pointed his gun at the motionless shape and hooked the toe of his boot under the man’s shoulder.
When Stonewall rolled him over, the Apache’s head lolled limply on his neck. He sure looked dead.
“Roy,” Stonewall said with some urgency in his voice as he backed away from the man. “Roy, are you all right?”
Corbett had shoved the man he’d shot aside and crawled out from under him. He was breathing hard. “Yeah, I . . . I think so. How about you?”
Stonewall’s shoulder stung where the knife had cut him, but he ignored the pain. “Just a scratch. I’ll be fine. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Deadly Day in Tombstone Page 17