Yeah, Sweetwater had good reason to feel troubled. It was because there was so much potential for trouble on all sides.
From what lay in back of them.
What lay ahead.
And what simmered from within.
CHAPTER 42
“What about the safety of my daughter?” the old man wanted to know.
“Naturally, I will take that into consideration as much as possible,” Buckhorn answered. “By my reckoning, the best way to make your daughter safe is to make those who rode off with her dead.”
The hint of a grim smile touched Don Pedro’s mouth. “Yes, it is so.”
The exchange between the two men was taking place on the edge of Wagon Wheel’s main street, out front of the general store. A handful of townsfolk were gathered around Buckhorn. A half dozen of Don Pedro’s gunmen, having just ridden into town and still on horseback, were strung out behind him. Overhead, the white-hot, blurred ball that was the sun had barely begun its descent in the afternoon sky.
The old don and his men had shown up only a short time ago, just as Buckhorn was preparing to take out after Wainwright and the small group who’d fled the Flying W. Buckhorn, Sheriff Banning, Carl, and half the townsmen who’d closed on the ranch ahead of dawn had returned to town with Tyrone and Wainwright’s two house servants.
The remainder of the men had stayed behind to put things in some semblance of order and to be on hand in case anyone came nosing around. It had been decided among those making the return trip to town that Buckhorn, alone, would stock necessary provisions and then immediately head out after the fugitives.
That had been imparted to Don Pedro, who’d arrived already knowing about the Flying W being abandoned during the night but was left trying to come to grips with the status of his former partner and what it meant as far as the fate of his daughter. Once the note Wainwright had left was shown to him, the answers to those questions brought great dismay.
Slowly touching Buckhorn and the others before him with a gaze from weary, anxious eyes, the old don said, “I cannot atone, cannot even begin to explain the . . . madness I allowed myself to get caught up in with Wainwright. Nor will I try to lay it all on him. I was very willing, very eager . . . Suddenly, in the emptiness and bloody aftermath that was only a fraction of what would have transpired had we gone ahead with all that we were planning . . . I can but feel ashamed, remorseful.
“To ask forgiveness would be a pathetic insult, but for the sake of my daughter, who had no knowledge about any of what her husband and I intended and played only the part of a pawn—my greatest shame of all—I ask . . . compassion. My first instinct is to send out these loyal men behind me with instructions to hunt down and kill Wainwright in the most savage way possible. But upon reading the words on that piece of paper . . . more madness, bordering on evil, or perhaps the other way around . . . I see that cannot be the way. Perhaps it should never be the way, not the right one. In this instance, no doubt it would only lead to my daughter’s certain death.”
His gaze came back and settled on Buckhorn. “I cannot say why, but something . . . a cold certainty . . . tells me that, yes, you are the right man, the one with the best chance to succeed. To bring my beloved Lusita back alive. I don’t know what that will entail, what else you will have to do . . . I don’t care.”
“I don’t know what I’ll have to do, either,” Buckhorn said, “but, whatever it turns out to be, I’d best get at it. Too much time has passed already.”
Don Pedro nodded. “Indeed. My arrival delayed you.”
“That was only part of it.”
The old don’s gaze went to the sheriff. He gestured to the various citizens up and down Front Street who had paused in the acts of removing barricades and window boards put in place the previous evening. “My apologies if the sight of me and my heavily armed men coming down your street caused any disruption. We came in peace and we will leave the same . . . and we will remain that way in the necessary healing time that lies ahead.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Banning.
“I have heard about the wonder of a new water source that has blessed your town. Water that gushes cold and clean from deep within the earth.” He gazed longingly up the street, toward where Goodwin’s well was. “I had hoped to see this with my own eyes, but I realize that now is not the best time. My new hope is that I will be welcome to return again before too long and view it then.”
“You would indeed be welcome,” Banning told him.
“Only this morning,” Don Pedro added, “I received word that the long-expected revolutionary action outside of Mexico City has dissolved without a shot being fired. Maybe the time for violence and strife is over for a while. Not forever. It never is. But maybe for a while.”
Banning said, “That sounds good, too.”
Don Pedro’s gaze settled once more on Buckhorn. “Vaya con Dios, amigo. I will return to my hacienda and await good news from you.” With that, he motioned his men to wheel about and they rode out the way they’d come in.
“Well, now we know where he stands,” Carl said, watching the fading cloud of dust kicked up by the departing riders.
“And a relief it is, I’d say,” added his sister, standing between him and Banning. Then she scowled. “What I’d really like to know is how the heck he gets his information from clear down in the heart of Mexico. I’ve been waiting for days for a telegram from somebody about what’s going on down there and haven’t heard a single click back yet.”
“Maybe my pursuit of Wainwright will take me down that way and I can find out some answers for you. In my spare time,” Buckhorn said.
“If you don’t get started, you’re not going to make it any farther than Mexville by sundown,” said Banning with a wry grin.
“Well, if everybody’d quit crowding me, I’d be on my way,” Buckhorn told him.
Carl frowned. “Seriously. You really think it’s best for you to tackle going after that bunch alone?”
“It’s the only way—one man dogging ’em, moving by night, closing in cautious. It’s the best chance that gal has. You go after ’em with a posse—never mind the added risk of drawing the attention of the Rurales and the whole legal problem of being on the wrong side of the border—they’d spot a tail from miles away and the whole thing would be queered. If Wainwright means it about what he’d do to his wife, and there’s no reason to think the crazy bastard doesn’t, she’d be dead no matter what.”
“We’ve been over it a dozen times,” Banning pointed out.
“Yeah, yeah, I guess,” Carl mumbled. “Damn it. What about just one more man? I could go with you.”
Buckhorn put hand on his shoulder. “In a street shoot-out, Carl, there’s nobody I’d rather have at my side. But that’s the key—the street. You’ve been off the trail too much of the time in recent years. No offense, but town living has made you soft. And the bouts of alcohol haven’t helped. I got no way of knowing how long it’s gonna take to track down that bunch. A couple days on the trail over hard country in this heat . . .”
“Okay, okay. I get the picture,” Carl said sullenly. “You’re right. But I don’t have to like it, damn it!”
“Not a matter of being wrong or right.” Buckhorn cut his gaze over to Justine before adding, “I’ve got priorities. I need to stick to ’em.”
CHAPTER 43
It felt good being out in the wide open again, not on a road or trail traveled regularly by others. Buckhorn could tell that Sarge sensed it, too, and liked it just as much as he did. All the riding they’d done over the past several days had merely been back and forth between the town and the Flying W ranch.
The first leg that afternoon had been the same. After provisioning in town, Buckhorn had ridden back to the ranch to pick up the trail of the fugitives headed into Mexico.
The ranch was behind them and they were on the track across grassy, gently rolling terrain that would soon start to turn more broken and rugged. The sun was high and hot in a clo
udless sky, hammering down hard on man and animal, sapping them even though the going was relatively easy. Buckhorn held Sarge to a moderate but steady pace. At this time of day tomorrow, after the land had become much harsher, they would hole up and not travel during the punishing afternoon.
As it was their first day out and with the afternoon already partly gone, he meant to push through. Sunset would bring rapidly cooling air and as long as he could make out tracks to follow, he would stay on the move all night, stopping only once or twice to briefly rest and take on water.
The southwestern angle of the trail so far, pretty distinctly marked by the wagon tracks visible even through the higher grass, gave Buckhorn a good idea where his quarry was headed. Never having traveled that way before, Buckhorn had nevertheless familiarized himself with the region via maps.
If Wainwright’s bunch stayed with the course they were headed on, they would be crossing the southern reaches of the Barranaca Mountains through a spot called Verdugo Pass and then on to the eastern coast of the Gulf of California. There, still roughly in line with the way they were starting out, was a waterfront hellhole called Trident City. Buckhorn had never been there, but he knew it by reputation.
Trident City made perfect sense as a destination for Wainwright. From there, either by land or sea, he could gain passage to wherever he planned to pick up the rest of his life.
Buckhorn was determined to see to it he never made it that far.
If old Tyrone was accurate in his estimate that the fugitives left the burning Flying W at midnight, that gave them about a fifteen-hour head start on Buckhorn. If they’d all been on horseback, that would have been substantial. It was still a considerable gap to make up, but the wagon would slow them down somewhat.
Buckhorn figured they would have kept moving all night and through this morning. If they were smart, they would be halted to wait out the pounding heat. That would allow him to close some of the gap, although he expected they’d be pushing on again when the sun went down.
As a lone rider, especially on a strong mount like Sarge, he should easily be able to catch up with them by day after tomorrow. Trouble was, as he drew nearer to them he would have to use caution not to be spotted.
Wainwright had Lusita as his hostage and the threat to kill her was his ace against anyone coming in pursuit. In conjunction with that, he surely would have Sweetwater or one of the other gunmen trailing behind to cover their back trail. It wouldn’t do Lusita, nor himself, any good if Buckhorn was careless enough to ride into an ambush.
His goal was to catch up with the fugitives, but only guardedly. From there, the big trick would be snatching Lusita out in one piece and then killing the rest.
* * *
“I don’t know what’s worse,” grumbled Brazos Kent, “sloggin’ through the freezing damn night or layin’ up like a biscuit on an oven shelf in the baking-hot damn day.”
“I don’t know, either,” Abe Tarvel replied, “but listening to you bitch and bellyache the whole while don’t help neither. Not a stinkin’ bit, I can tell you that much.”
“Aw, I’m just sayin’, that’s all. And you know you’re thinkin’ the same damn thing.”
“So what if I am? All the more reason not to want to listen to you carry on about it.”
Kent was a solidly built man not far into his thirties, an inch over six feet in height, with bristly straw-colored hair and a strong jawline perpetually stubbled with pale whiskers, never cleanly shaven, never grown into a full beard.
Tarvel was a handful of years older, equally as tall, but lean and rawboned. He had thinning brown hair and a weathered face, crinkled with what some people called laugh lines around a set of pale blue eyes, suggesting he might have had something to laugh about at some point in his life, although anybody who spent time around him these days seldom saw any remnants of a happy temperament.
The pair were sprawled in what amounted to just a sliver of shade up close against an upthrust of multilayered rock that poked out of the gravelly ground at a forty-five-degree angle. A dozen yards from their spot sat Wainwright’s wagon, its team of horses unharnessed and staked a few feet beyond in a sparse patch of dry, wiry grass.
Lusita Wainwright lay in the shade under the wagon, propped against the inside of one of the wheels. Her lovely face was clamped by the same look of despair it had worn since they left the Flying W. On the other side of the wagon, the feet and lower portion of Thomas Wainwright’s legs were visible, tirelessly pacing back and forth the length of the wagon. Leo Sweetwater was nowhere to be seen.
Kent spoke again in a tone slightly lowered from what it had been a minute ago. “Hot, cold, or in between, it’s for certain we have got one little item with us on this trip that could sweeten even the harshest conditions.”
Leaning against the rock with his eyes closed, Tarvel didn’t have to open them to know what Kent was looking at. But he did, anyway. A man would have to be a plumb fool not to use any chance that came along as an excuse to take a look at Mrs. Wainwright.
As the two men watched, lacking much in the way of subtlety, Lusita reached for the canteen resting against her hip, lifted it, and poured a trickle of water onto the handkerchief she held in the opposite hand. She used the wetted hanky to dab at her perspiration-beaded face and then tipped up her chin, exposing a long, elegant throat, and squeezed the excess water from the cloth to let it run down as two narrow rivulets that merged and disappeared into the open front of her shirt with the top buttons undone.
Kent groaned. “Good God, what I wouldn’t give to be that hanky.”
“Hanky, hell,” Tarvel grunted. “I’ll take being one of those drops of water sliding down over that creamy throat then down inside the shirt and down, down . . .”
“You just evaporated and are gone. Me, bein’ the hanky, I’m still around. All I gotta do is wait for another splash of water and I’m back in business again.”
“Yeah, you’re in business all right. We both are.” Tarvel issued a derisive snort. “The business of sitting around trading pathetic fantasies. And right here, right now, that’s about as close as either one of us is ever likely to get.”
“You think so, do you?” Kent’s eyes lingered on Lusita and his mouth curved in a shark’s smile. “Don’t be so sure. It’s still a long way to the coast. Just don’t you be so damn sure.”
* * *
Lusita was aware that the two men were looking at her. Leering at her. She could feel their dirty eyes moving up and down her body the way they often did during the course of a day. It disgusted her . . . but not as much as it had in the beginning.
She had grown so despondent, so hopeless in her outlook that no indignity heaped upon her made much difference anymore. Everything good and decent in her life—the material trappings about her as well as the hopes and dreams inside her head—had been torn down, crushed, and left in smoldering ruins.
Her husband and father had turned out to be madmen who’d bartered her as part of their deal with one another. The beautiful house she’d grown accustomed to and had come to consider hers was torched. Her meager handful of friends and family were left behind without notice, abandoned for she knew not what.
If the current horrid traveling conditions, conducted in the company of loathsome men and a husband who had become quite unhinged, were indicators of how she was going to live from now on . . . If they were headed toward a wretched coastal hellhole with a reputation for evil and debauchery, she’d just as soon—
“At last. Here comes Sweetwater now,” Wainwright announced as he finally ceased his pacing back and forth beside the wagon.
Lusita leaned over and peered out from under the wagon, her eyes sweeping in the westerly direction her husband was looking. A cloud of dust with the figures of a man and horse within it was moving toward them.
Leo Sweetwater. The one person in what had become Lusita’s drastically altered world who seemed tarnished to the least degree. Yes, she had heard stories of the sometimes brash young
gunmen’s skill with a firearm and the often lurid accounts of the violence that had resulted from his use of same. Truth be told, she had no cause to doubt those accounts.
Nevertheless, in her personal though limited interactions with the young man, she had noted right from the start the gentleness—there was no more suitable word she could think of—in his eyes, and the courtliness in his manner whenever he was around her. Those were rare traits, even back at the ranch. On the range, with the only other company being the coarse pigs Kent and Tarvel and the deranged thing her husband had become, they offered her the only glimmer of hope she had against the experience deteriorating to an even more wretched level.
“What have you to report, Mr. Sweetwater?” Wainwright asked as soon as the rider reined up and dismounted.
“Only what we had reason to expect,” Sweetwater answered. He pulled a canteen from his saddle and tipped it high. As he gulped thirstily, Kent and Tarvel wandered over to hear the rest of what he had to say. “Nothing but miles and miles of flat emptiness,” Sweetwater continued, lowering the canteen. “Expect it’ll be more of the same until we catch sight of the Barranca Mountains. Figure that should be sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“That sounds promising,” Wainwright said. “It seems our pace has been painfully slow but, if your calculations are correct, we are actually making good time.”
“I think so,” Sweetwater agreed. “The Barrancas this far south are mostly petered out to a few low peaks and smooth, sloping foothills. Verdugo Pass is the main route through where we’re headed. I’ve heard there are markers for it all along the foothills so we shouldn’t have much trouble finding it. We get through that, it should be only two, maybe three days to the coast.”
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