Hell's Jaw Pass

by Max O'Hara

  Sherman canted his head toward the canyon. “Ride down there, catch up to Stockburn, keep him distracted while I draw a bead on him.”

  Ivy gasped with feigned outrage. “So you can shoot him?”

  Grinning, Slim blinked slowly. “Yeah, that’s the idea, Ivy. So I can shoot him. Look at it this way—you’ll be the last to see him alive. That might make you sorta famous.”

  Ivy pondered on that as she studied the ground over the toes of her crossed boots.

  She turned to Sherman and grinned adventurously, shrugging her slender left shoulder. She looked like a girl who’d been given a fine pony for her birthday. “Why the heck not?”

  CHAPTER 30

  Stockburn checked Smoke to a stop and stared ahead at the twisted rails that resembled long, silver snakes ripped out of the earth to lay bent in death on either side of the cinder-paved rail bed.

  A hundred yards beyond the twisted rails lay the dynamited work train, the burned-out hulks of the locomotive, tender car, and supply cars looking like scattered dominoes to each side of the graded rail bed. Most had been blasted onto their sides.

  Stockburn rode up near the first of the overturned cars, swung down from Smoke’s back, and dropped the horse’s reins. He loosened the gray’s saddle cinch, for Wolf figured on being here awhile, inspecting the sight of the massacre, and he wanted the stallion to be able to forage freely.

  It was nearly noon, the sun straight up in the sky.

  The sun rained down, dancing on the grass and sage and on the fir and pine boughs to each side of the canyon, to the music of mountain bluebirds and chickadees whose piping was punctuated now and then by the raucous chitters of squirrels or the equally grating calls of irritated crows.

  Stockburn poked an Indian Kid into his mouth, fired up the cheroot, and walked around the burned-out train, smoking absently while he scoured the torched and overturned cars and the ground around them.

  He was looking for something. But he wouldn’t know what that something was until he found it.

  He spent a good half hour inspecting the ruined work train, moving slowly, occasionally kicking a rock or a charred sage clump, dropping to a knee to brush his hand across a hoof print, trying to make out anything particular about the horse’s shoe impression in the gravelly soil.

  There were plenty of shoe prints and two-week-old horse apples, but nothing to distinguish any of the signs from the signs of a thousand other horses.

  Lighting another cheroot, he walked over to the pale canvas tents of the work crew. He’d saved the tents for last, because he knew that it was going to be harder distinguishing anything the dead rail layers had left behind from anything their attackers might have left.

  Smoking, pondering, musing, walking slowly around and sometimes over the torn-down canvas flapping like wash on a clothesline, he found plenty of shell casings. Mostly .44s and .45s with a few .38s. The guns of the rail crew had been left behind, some of the rifles and revolvers hidden beneath the fallen, wind-buffeted canvas.

  Around what he assumed was the mess tent were air-tight vegetable tins, beef tins, and a barrel of salted beef that predators had obviously gotten into, for the barrel was overturned and only bits of the beef remained.

  Part of a cured ham lay in the shade of a twisted cedar, covered with dirt and pine needles. Bite marks shone in the fist-sized chunk of remaining meat, probably dropped by a couple of snarling coyotes maybe chased away by a puma who found better feeding in the beef barrel.

  The tent canvas was liberally stained with blood where the rail crew, awakened in the dark of night, had been gunned down while dressing or feebly, possibly blindly returning fire on the ghostly raiders. Those dead men, now lying on the slight rise fifty yards beyond the camp, hastily erected wooden crosses all the remaining evidence of their previous existence, had left behind clothes and bedrolls and overturned cots.

  There were playing cards, pencil stubs, half-written letters in childish cursive, a smashed fiddle, wallets, and even a few greenbacks and coins attesting to the fact that the posse riders who’d ridden up from Wild Horse to bury the fallen had not seen fit to steal from dead men.

  There were combs, toothbrushes, lumpy soap cakes, cracked mirrors, a pair of dentures, a single leather boot lying off by itself, the initial AW having been stamped into both mule ears lying slack to the side. The boots’ owner had probably gotten double-dee-damned tired of having his consarned boots stolen by other men in the crew, so he’d stamped them to prove they were, by God, his!

  Frustrated at not having found anything of obvious investigative interest, Stockburn cursed and gave the boot a kick. The boot and something else flew upward.

  The second thing arced away from the boot to land in the sage several feet from where the boot landed atop a sage clump fifteen feet from where Wolf had kicked it.

  From where he’d kicked them.

  He hadn’t seen the second object before he’d inadvertently kicked it.

  Scowling curiously, Stockburn walked over, dropped to a knee, plucked the object off the ground, and held it up to inspect it.

  Only a whiskey flask. Tin with a leather covering. He sniffed the lip. Whiskey, all right.

  A flask. Nothing more. He’d seen others out here.

  He was about to give it a disgusted toss but stopped the motion and brought the flask close to his face once more. There was something different about the flask.

  The hide covering looked expensive. It was made from smooth, polished cowhide with fancy red stitching. The stitching on one side of the flask took the shape of a miniature mountain range.

  The stitching on the other side of the flask formed the monogram:

  K. HENY

  “Kreg Hennessey,” Stockburn muttered.

  Between him and the sabotaged work train, Smoke gave a shrill whinny.

  Instantly recalling that this was the place the bastard with the large-caliber rifle had tried to blow his head off from long-range, Stockburn dropped the flask and reached across his belly to fill his right hand with the silver-chased, ivory-gripped Peacemaker holstered on his left hip.

  Dropping to a knee and extending the .45 halfway out from his right side, he looked around.

  Spying no imminent threat, he glanced over his left shoulder. Smoke was gazing toward the east side of the canyon, in the direction of the rise on which the rail crew was buried. Stockburn followed the mount’s gaze.

  As he did, a rider rode out of the aspens and birch beyond the makeshift cemetery.

  At first the rider was a horse and rider-shaped shadow jostling against the lighter shade cast by the trees around it. Then, as horse and rider rode out of the shade of the trees and into the sunlit clearing, Stockburn saw blond hair tumbling over narrow shoulders clad in a checked shirt.

  Behind Stockburn, Smoke whickered, still edgy, skeptical. Smoke was a cautious horse. But, then, after all that Wolf had gotten them both into over the years, why wouldn’t he be?

  The horse coming toward Stockburn lifted its head and released a greeting whinny. Smoke answered in kind then shook his head, still careful, making the bridle chains clink. The rider leaned forward and gave her horse, a brown and white pinto, an affectionate pat.

  Horse and rider rode around the side of the wooden crosses tilting up out of the ground, painted gold by the sunshine at the head of the dozen freshly mounded, rock-crowned graves.

  The rider—tall and shapely in her red shirt and tight denims—batted her heels against the pinto’s flanks, and the mount lunged into a rocking lope. The rider’s oval-shaped face was partly hidden by the shadow of her hat brim, but when she was within a hundred feet of Stockburn, her red lips stretched a smile, showing the white line of her teeth.

  Stockburn lowered his Peacemaker and rose, looking around cautiously. Seeing no one else riding toward him, he slid the Colt back into its holster and snapped the keeper thong into place over the hammer.

  Ivy Russell leaned back in the saddle, jerking back on the ribbons, and t
he pinto thundered to a jouncing halt before Stockburn, turning a little to one side.

  Wolf squinted against the dust rising from the short grass and sage.

  “Fancy seeing you here, Ivy,” Stockburn said.

  “Hi, Wolf.”

  “What brings you to these parts?”

  The pinto fidgeted, lifting its head sharply. Keeping a tight hold on the reins, Ivy leaned forward and gave the pinto’s left wither another pat. “A girl has to get out of town from time to time. Stretch her legs a bit, breathe the fresh air. Miss Martindale agrees.”

  “Miss Martindale?”

  “My mare.” Again, Ivy patted the horse’s wither. “I named her after my teacher.”

  Smiling up at the girl on the mare as frisky as she herself was, Wolf planted a disbelieving fist on his hip. “Ivy, are you telling me you went to school?”

  “I most certainly did. Learned my letters and everything; even how to cypher to a point. I was a dang good student, Wolf!”

  “I can’t believe a young lady as restless as you could sit still long enough to be a good student.”

  “I got all ‘A’s until . . .”

  “Until . . . ?”

  “Until Miss Martindale kicked me out. When I was twelve. She said I was a distraction to the boys.”

  “She said that?” Stockburn exclaimed with fabricated incredulity.

  “Can you believe it?” Ivy said, grinning down at him.

  Stockburn studied her comely figure. What a torture she had to have been. She was torturing him now, just sitting her horse before him, the mountain sunshine sparkling like gold dust in her hair, glittering in her soft blue eyes.

  “Yes, I do believe it,” Wolf said.

  Ivy snorted and looked away, blushing. Turning back to Stockburn, she shook her hair back from her face and said, “What’re you doing way out here, Wolf? Investigating?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Ivy cast her gaze at the ruined rails and sabotaged work train. “Have you found any important clues?”

  “I don’t know.” Stockburn crouched to retrieve the leather-covered flask from the ground. He tossed it up to Ivy, who caught it against her breasts. She looked at it. “A whiskey flask?”

  “Look at the initials on the back.”

  Ivy flipped the flask in her hands, frowned down at it. “Hmm,” she said, returning her gaze to Stockburn. “What do you make of that, Mister Rail Detective?”

  “I wouldn’t think too many folks around would sport those initials.”

  “I reckon not.”

  Stockburn reached for the flask. “I reckon I’ll be heading back to town to have a little palaver with the man to whom this flask no doubt belongs. See if Hennessey has any idea how it might have gotten out here.”

  Stockburn stuck a finger in the corner of his mouth and whistled. Smoke put his head down, whinnied, and came running.

  “Can I ride along with you, Wolf?” Ivy asked. “I was about to start back that way myself.”

  “Why not?” Stockburn dropped the flask into a saddlebag pouch, secured the strap with the buckle, then mounted Smoke, and he and Ivy Russell started back south in the direction of Wild Horse.

  Ivy leaned forward against her saddle horn as she rode to Wolf’s right, between him and the ruined rails on her own right side. “Wolf, you’ve met Hennessey. You know damn good and well that if you go walkin’ into Hennessey’s place you may not walk out again.”

  “He must have hired some muscle to replace those I turned toe down in the restaurant then.”

  “Oh, he’s got plenty of muscle. Don’t you worry about that!”

  “How much muscle? Say, a dozen or so men?” Killers and rustlers? he did not add. The second part was a building suspicion. Had someone—Kreg Hennessey—sent riders out here to massacre a track-laying crew and to rustle cattle?

  Why?

  What dog did Hennessey have in the fight out here?

  Was the McCrae and the Stoleberg war about to explode again?

  Ivy shook her head as though to shrug off Wolf’s question. “He might have given that flask to someone. You know—as a gift.”

  “To one of the men who just happened to turn out to be one of the killers of the railroad crew?”

  Ivy shrugged, sighed. She seemed a little frustrated. “I don’t see how you could prove different.”

  “You’re right, I certainly need more to make a case. If there’s a case to be made, that is.”

  Stockburn turned and cocked an eyebrow at the pretty blonde riding beside him. “Young lady, you sure are smart for a gal who got kicked out of school at age twelve for distracting the boys. Are you sure you haven’t been reading for the law?”

  “The law? Oh, hell—you can have the law. My old man’s the law in these parts, and you saw how he stacks up.”

  “Is he in Hennessey’s pocket?”

  “Who? Pa? Everyone in Wild Horse is in Hennessey’s pocket in one way or another. If they’re not, they’re Kreg’s enemy.” Ivy wagged her head. “You sure don’t want to be Kreg’s enemy.”

  “Kreg, huh?”

  “What?”

  “How well do you know Kreg Hennessey, Ivy?”

  Stockburn noticed a little color rise in her tanned cheeks, and her eyes were briefly sheepish before she regained control of her expression. “Oh, I don’t know.”

  She lifted her chin proudly, defiantly, and drew her shoulders back so that her shirt drew taut against the twin cones of her bosoms. “Not as well as some, better than others. Why do you ask?”

  “That’s a fine horse you’re riding.”

  Ivy frowned. “What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?”

  “Just a nice-looking horse, that’s all. Did your pa buy it for you?”

  Her frown deepened. “A friend bought it for me.”

  They were riding through the aspen copse now, sunlight and shade dappling them and the ground around them, their horses’ hooves crunching the freshly fallen leaves.

  “Is Hennessey your friend, Ivy?” Stockburn knew he was likely treading into shallow water, but suspicion had started nettling him, like a patch of itchy skin in a hard-to-scratch place, when her expression had changed as she’d read the initials on the flask.

  She was a grand if earthy coquette, with sexuality dripping off every inch of her. She didn’t have a job, but she rode a fine horse, and she seemed to have a lot of free time on her hands.

  What was she really doing out here?

  Ivy fired an indignant, taut-jawed look at him. “What’re you getting at?”

  Smoke whickered, tossed his head.

  Ivy looked at the smoky-gray stallion, frowning. “What’s the matter with him?”

  Stockburn looked around, reaching forward to slide the Yellowboy from its scabbard. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  As the rear stock cleared leather, Stockburn cocked the rifle one-handed.

  Smoke whinnied and suddenly reared, lifting his front hooves high

  To Wolf’s right, Ivy yelled in a shrill, impatient voice, “For godsakes, would you take the damn shot before—”

  Stockburn had heard the high whine of the bullet slicing through the air just inches in front of Wolf’s belly as the horse’s hooves clawed skyward.

  There was a resolute smacking sound to Wolf’s right.

  As the stallion dropped back down to all fours, Stockburn saw Ivy’s shirt buffet back sharply against her chest. The girl screamed and flew off the pinto’s right hip.

  Stockburn leaped off Smoke’s back and rammed his rifle butt against the stallion’s left hip. As Smoke galloped forward, whinnying shrilly and shaking his head angrily, Stockburn pressed the rifle’s butt plate against his right shoulder.

  He’d already spied the smoke from the ambusher’s shot, and seen, too, the ambusher himself perched halfway up a leafless aspen fifty feet into the woods ahead and on Stockburn’s left.

  The man was just then canting his head against his rifle’s stock, taki
ng aim at Stockburn.

  Wolf aimed his own rifle quickly and fired a half a blink before his would-be assassin’s rifle belched smoke and flames. The killer’s bullet moaned wide of Stockburn and thumped into a tree as Wolf sent four more bullets hurling into the aspen.

  The rifleman gave a wail and fell back against the aspen’s trunk as bark and small branches danced in the air around him. He dropped the rifle and gave another wail as he fell from his perch at a Y between the trunk and a stout branch.

  He smacked a branch below his perch, twisted in the air, smacked another branch, twisted again, and smacked yet another branch, grunting with each impact.

  He fell the last ten feet straight down to the ground where he struck on his face and belly, and bounced with one more grunt.

  CHAPTER 31

  Stockburn rose and levered another round into the Yellowboy’s action.

  He looked at the rifleman lying under the aspen tree he’d been perched in. The man was moaning and breathing heavily, his body lying at an odd angle.

  He was too broken up to be an immediate threat, so Stockburn turned and hurried over to where Ivy lay belly up on the forest floor. Her right leg was folded beneath her left one. Her arms lay nearly straight out from her shoulders, gloved fingers curled toward her palms. Her hat lay in the dead leaves several feet away.

  Ivy’s blue eyes stared up at Stockburn, but she wasn’t seeing a thing. The large, bloody hole in her chest had shredded her heart.

  “Dammit!”

  Stockburn wheeled and walked over to where the shooter lay beneath the aspen. He looked down at the man who lay in a crumpled heap, a bulge in his lower leg showing one obvious break. He was lean and hawk-faced; long, thin brown hair hung down from the horseshoe-shaped bald spot at the top of his head. He was the same man—the bastard with the large-caliber Sharps—whom Stockburn had seen in the line shack the night before.

  Blood matted the man’s chest; it flowed from his smashed lips as well as from a nasty gash in his right temple. The fall had opened up the long gash arcing up from the man’s left cheek to nearly the corner of his left eye, which one of Stockburn’s own bullets had likely carved the previous day. The bandage was gone.