The rising tip angled toward Hawk’s chin. Then Monjosa’s. Then back again. It closed to within an inch of Hawk’s neck.
Hawk gave a fierce groan as, summoning all his strength to his shoulders, arms, and hands, he got the blade angled away from him and toward Monjosa. His and Monjosa’s combined thrust buried the tip of the knife in the underside of his opponent’s bristled chin.
Monjosa’s eyes widened, terror-glazed. “Ahhh!” he cried, as blood dribbled slowly down from the slit in his chin and down the quivering steel blade—thick as warm molasses and red as a desert sunset.
The slit grew wider as the blade climbed up deeper into Monjosa’s neck.
“Tickles, don’t it?” Hawk growled, grinning as he watched the blade and the flowing blood.
“¡La Madre Maria, me pardona!” Monjosa wailed, begging for mercy.
The cry was clipped as, feeling his opponent’s strength wane, Hawk gave one more savage thrust, driving the knife blade up through Monjosa’s open mouth and high into his skull. The man’s eyes crossed, quivered in their sockets, and acquired an opaque death glaze.
Blood formed at their corners as the blade passed just behind them on its way to the man’s brain, and began to slowly run down the side of his face.
Blood flowed down the blade and across Hawk’s hands and arms. Monjosa quivered violently, blood gushing from his lips now, as well.
Hawk released the knife handle. Monjosa staggered backward, threw out his arms, and fell on his back. He kicked a little more, flapped his arms, and lay still.
Hawk stared down at the man. So did Ironside, who slowly lowered his pistol.
A voice sounded behind both men: “Hold it, Hawk. Sergeant.”
Hawk felt his shoulders twitch with a start. Ironside jerked, as well, and started to turn toward the desert south of the wagon, but the vaguely familiar voice froze him.
“Nope. Don’t turn around. Stay right there, just like that. Only I’d like you both to toss them shootin’ irons into the brush. Nice and easy. Just so you know, you got seven Arizona Rangers holdin’ cocked Winchesters on you.”
Hawk stood statue still for a moment. He glanced at Ironside, who’d turned a shade lighter than he’d been before, then, using his thumb and index finger, Hawk slid his Colt from its holster and gave it an underhanded toss into the brush. Ironside gave his own army-issue pistol the same toss.
“Raise those hands,” the voice behind them ordered. “Raise ’em high and turn around slow.”
Raising their hands shoulder high, Hawk and Ironside turned to see the Indian-dark Ranger Bogarth aiming a Winchester at him and the sergeant from behind a broad saguaro. To both sides of Bogarth, a half dozen more rifles poked out over rocks or boulders or from the small-leafed branches of mesquite shrubs.
Bogarth stepped out from behind the saguaro, aiming his cocked Winchester out from his right side. He had a weed stem stuck between his teeth. His blue eyes nestling deep in dark, deeply lined sockets owned an affability that sharply contrasted the Winchester he kept aimed at Hawk’s belly.
As he came forward, by ones and twos the other men—all dressed in dusty trail garb and all wearing Arizona Ranger stars—moved out from their own covers, keeping their Winchesters and, in one case, a Sharps carbine—leveled on Hawk and Ironside. Hawk recognized the other Ranger, the hard-eyed, younger Stanley, who’d sauntered with Bogarth into his, Ironside’s, and Kid Reno’s camp a few nights back.
“Ain’t it a small, damn territory?” Hawk said.
Bogarth regarded him with grim bemusement. “Nah, I reckon it ain’t all that small, Hawk. We was expecting you out here, matter of fact.”
Ironside said, “Expectin’ him?”
“Yeah, we was expectin’ him.” Stanley smiled coldly as he and the others formed a ragged semi-circle around Hawk and Ironside from about ten feet away.
Hawk narrowed an icy eye. “The only way you could have been expectin’ me was if you were tipped off I’d be heading here.”
Bogarth and the other rangers stared at him. Their ragged hat brims shaded their faces. The warm wind jostled their neckerchiefs and string ties and duster flaps. It lifted a dust devil behind them—rolled it high and dropped it.
Hawk laughed. “Spurlock.”
Bogarth only blinked.
“Well,” Hawk said, his smile belying the fact that he felt as though he’d been kneed in the groin, “does Gavin want me dead outright, or you supposed to take me in and hang me in front of a crowd?”
Still, Bogarth said nothing. He and the other men, sun-seared and wind-burned lawmen of the desert sands, looked hard and grim. One or two looked vaguely troubled. Mostly, they just looked gloomy.
“Step away, Sergeant,” Bogarth said.
Ironside studied him from beneath wary, sun-bleached brows. “What’re you gonna do?”
“Step away, Sergeant,” Bogarth repeated in the same low, even voice as before.
Ironside glanced at Hawk skeptically. He sighed. “Ah, shit.”
Hawk kept his eyes on Bogarth. “It’s all right, Sergeant. This cat’s been on my back awhile now. Time to get it off.”
But he hadn’t expected to be double-crossed by the man he respected more than anyone, Gavin Spurlock. He could have done without that grim bit of news.
Ironside walked toward Bogarth, throwing his hands up with beseeching. “Come on, fellas. You’re lawmen.”
“Step aside, Sergeant,” Hawk growled. He was eager for the end now. It couldn’t come fast enough.
Ironside continued toward Bogarth. “You can’t execute—”
He stopped suddenly as, from the direction of the wagon, a familiar squawk sounded. Bells clanged in Hawk’s ears. He turned and saw Saradee’s blond, hatted head jutting above the Gatling’s brass canister from the end of which the six deadly tubes bristled.
She aimed the gun to Hawk’s left. He threw an arm toward the wagon and shouted, “Saradee, no!”
The girl’s white teeth flashed as she turned the crank.
Smoke and flames burst from the Gatling’s maw.
Hawk squeezed his eyes closed and did not open them again until the long, hammering burst from the belching machine gun had died and drifted off into echoes, and the powder smoke wafted, rife with the smell of hot brass and rotten eggs.
He heard the squawk again and opened his eyes.
Saradee swung the back of the gun down so that the maw was raised skyward. Her lilac eyes were dark with grim purpose as she stared back at him and climbed down from the wagon’s rear.
Hawk swung his head around, his gut clenched by a giant, invisible fist. Bogarth and the other rangers and Ironside lay twisted and torn, blood glistening in the desert sun.
None of the men moved. They looked as though they’d been flung off a high cliff.
Saradee closed the tailgate and then disappeared around the wagon to return a minute later, leading her buckskin. She tied the horse to the back of the wagon, then, slapping her hands on her thighs, blowing up dust around her, glanced at Hawk. She slid blowing locks of hair from her face.
“We can sell this load in Mexico.”
Hawk stared at the dead men.
He felt sick and raw. He felt as though his knees would buckle at any moment, and that his howling torment would suck him into space.
“You didn’t think I’d let them badge toters kill you now, did you, lover?”
Hawk’s heart was a sledge blow in his ears. His chest heaved. His voice was thin and taut with exasperation. “You should have let them do their jobs, goddamnit. Oh, goddamnit!”
His knees buckled, and he dropped, clenching his fists at his sides.
Saradee frowned at him. “Nah.” She smiled. “We got a special bond, you and me.”
Hawk swiveled his head toward her. She smiled at him and glanced at the wagon. “Stop lookin’ so glum. Hop aboard. We’ll stomp with our tails up in Monterrey.”
Hawk heard one of the dead men evacuate his bowels.
H
e said nothing. Tears burned in his eyes. They began to roll down his cheeks.
Saradee made a sour expression. “Had a feelin’.” She climbed onto the driver’s seat, released the break, and looked back at him. “You got your mind made up?”
Still, Hawk said nothing. He could find no thoughts, no words beneath the roaring in his ears and the searing agony in his soul.
Saradee sighed. “See you around, lover.”
She shook the reins over the team and lurched away.
Hawk turned once more to the rangers. He knelt there for a long time, clenching his fists at his sides, sobbing through gritted teeth, not hearing the wagon’s rattling fade to silence.
Before him, the powder smoke thinned on the breeze.
In the distance, a raptor sounded the carrion cry.
Peter Brandvold was born and raised in North Dakota. Currently a full-time RVer, he writes Westerns under his own name as well as his pen name Frank Leslie as he travels around the West. Send him an e-mail at [email protected].
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