Cain (Ben Blue Book 5)

by Lou Bradshaw

  I figured those fellas would be awhile, so I walked across the street and walked along the boardwalk until I spotted the horse that Baites had been riding when he came to my cabin. It was only a little ways down from the saloon. There were two fine looking animals with it.

  The horses were at the edge of the light coming from the saloon. Beyond that there was nothing for a block, and then there were only a few lights from scattered cabins. I stepped in between two buildings not far from the horses and settled in to wait for those two strangers to take care of what business they had upstairs.

  I had been there for a little more than a half hour, when I heard something behind me at the back end of that passageway. It was just a crunch of gravel and a brush of clothing. I was immediately down behind a rain barrel and out of the backlight from the street.

  “If you want to sneak up on me,” I told the noise, “you’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Eef I wanted to keel you…. you would already be morto…. Eef you’re name ees Cain, we mean you no harm.”

  “I’m Cain… show yourselves… both of you.”

  Two figures appeared out of the darkness. One was small and lightweight, but the other was a man of size. He was every bit as big as Ben Blue, and he walked like there was nothing in the world that could stand in his way.

  “You know me?” I asked as they came closer.

  “We have not met, senor, but your fame is spreading among my people… I am Anjel Baca, and this is Pedro… just Pedro.”

  “Heard of you, Baca. Some call you the Angel of Death.” Baca and the smaller man, Pedro moved on closer.

  “Si,” he replied, “some who wish not to meet me call me that, but my people often call me the Guardian Angel, sometimes it is the Avenging Angel.”

  “That so? You’re a little bit off your range, aren’t you? I thought you stayed mostly in the boarder country.”

  He shrugged and said, “I go where I’m needed…. Sometimes I go there without payment. Sometimes I simply avenge a family member. I am here because I have been sent for by a wealthy Hidalgo from Santa Fe, a Don no less. These men killed the husband of my dear cousin, then they treated her badly. This work I would do for free to avenge my cousin and her poor husband, but I do not mind also getting paid for it.”

  “If you’re talkin’ about the Senora Ramos, I already done that one a few weeks back, up in Creede. The senora took her revenge in a different way.”

  “I have heard… a woman can hold much anger.”

  “I reckon.” I told him for want of anything else to say.

  “There are still Mexican women and senoritas in evil hands. That is what I’m being paid for. Senor Cain, all I ask is that you do not get in my way. But if you would care to come along with us we would be pleased.”

  “Or you could come along with me… and I would be pleased.”

  He made a little chuckle and said, “Perhaps we could simply ride together.”

  “Do you know where they’re holed up?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, no… we have been wishing that you would show up… we do not know any of them by sight, and we hoped you might.”

  “I do… in fact there’s one in the saloon right now, and it looks like he’s got a couple of new men with him. That’s why I’m waitin’ here… That’s his horse there.”

  “Then we wait and follow?” he asked.

  “That was the best plan I could come up with… I’m kinda new at this man trackin’.” He smiled and nodded.

  We settled down to wait for those boys to finish what they were doing and head for their hideout. The man, Pedro, took over the horse watch, Senor Baca and I moved back farther into the passageway. “How’d you know I was Cain?” I asked.

  “We were not sure… the description was a good one, but we were watching for leather clothing… The senora said you always wore… she called it buckskin. But when I looked at you, I thought there are only two people who could look so hard… I am one of them, and you would have to be the other.” Then he chuckled quietly.

  “We live hard lives in hard times, Baca.” I told him.

  It wasn’t long before Pedro made a curious scratching noise on the side of the building. That must have been the signal that someone was coming. When we reached him, I could hear them on the boardwalk.

  Baites was hopping mad saying, “Frank’s gonna be meaner’n a box of hornets. He said to meet you here and come straight back… He didn’t say nothin’ about waitin’ around for you two to play cards, get drunk, and go a whorin’.”

  One of the others told him, “Don’t you worry none about Mister Frank. If he wants these guns, he’ll wait till we get there, otherwise he can just kiss my…”

  Before he could finish, the other one broke in with a drunken laugh and said “Yeah and mine too… and my horse’s too.” Then he laughed again.

  “Well I don’t know why you had to go upstairs, tonight, Pike.” Baites grumbled. “We got women out to the ranch… all you want… fer free.”

  “Now you tell us…. We coulda saved a couple dollars… anyway, we was both in need.”

  They had reached their horses and soon mounted up. The shorter one seemed to be having a little trouble staying upright without a certain amount of sway. Baites led off and the other two followed close behind. They took the north road out of Silverton.

  Pedro and I both went out to where the horses had been standing, and with lit matches we studied the ground getting familiar with the tracks of the three horses. I thought that I could get along well with Pedro… he didn’t say much, and he knew what to do.

  It only took us a minute to fetch our horses. They had tied theirs next to mine. They must have been watching me and had a pretty good idea who I was… I must be getting careless to let someone get that close and me not be aware of it. I tightened my cinch and stepped into the saddle.

  Chapter18

  We rode out by the same route they took, and within a few minutes, we could hear them ahead. Actually, we couldn’t hear all of them, but we could hear the one who thought he could sing well enough to keep them ahead of us. As long as they stayed on the main trail, we’d have no trouble following, even through the pines. But if they turned off, we had to hope that boy kept singing.

  He must have run out of songs to sing because sometime close to midnight, he quit his serenade. We had to move along cautiously, for fear of running into them. As it was, we almost ran right up their backsides. Pedro raised his hand, and we stopped. He pointed up ahead and shuffled his hands back and forth. I dismounted and moved forward slowly. About ten strides down trail, I could hear cussing and some commotion.

  Just around a slight bend in the trail, I saw the three horses standing and two men lifting the third over a horse’s back. Trying to shut out everything but the noise from the men up ahead, I was able to hear, “make camp… Frank… madder’n hell.”

  I went back and told Baca and Pedro what was taking place. We pulled back and made our own camp… a cold camp. It wasn’t my first and probably wouldn’t be my last. Oh well, at least we wouldn’t have to trail them at night and take a chance of losing them in the dark.

  Picketing the horses on some scant grass, we spread our blankets and soon were asleep. We were counting on the horses, with their amazing sense of smell to let us know if there was a problem. I think a horse’s sniffer rivals that of a dog, maybe not a bloodhound but most others.

  We were up at first light, and Pedro went ahead to scout out their camp. I commented to Baca that Pedro didn’t talk much. He replied, “Pedro has trouble speaking… he can make the words, and he will if need be, but it is a struggle for him. He chooses not to speak until he has to… He is very easy company.”

  That was the first time I got a good look at Anjel Baca in the daylight. He surely was a big man, standing over me by three or more inches. I’d say he was nearly as tall as Ben Blue, but not quite as much meat, although he had enough. His shoulders were wide, and his waist was small. You cou
ld tell by the way he moved that he had full control of his body, and there was power in that frame.

  He was dressed in almost all black, with one of those short Spanish style jackets. His well fitted black pants had that flare at the bottom, so that they covered most of his boots. A gray shirt and a moderately wide black sombrero finished his get up. One thing set him apart from many vaqueros I’d seen was the lack of silver on his person.

  Many vaqueros wear their wealth. This man had a few fancy stitchings, but there was nothing that would reflect light and give away his presence on the trail. Neither was there anything to jingle or make noise. He had been on the trail a time or two. I could ride with the likes of him … or he could ride with me.

  Pedro, on the other hand was smaller and leaner. I think the best way to describe him would be to call him raw boned. He dressed in a manner that would fit somewhere between any one of ten thousand working cow hands and an Apache. From his wide brimmed felt hat with a red cloth hat band, down to the homespun pants stuffed into knee high moccasins, he was a piece of a puzzle. His face gave no clue to anything except a lifetime spent in the sun.

  About an hour later, Pedro came back to let us know that they were on the move, and none of them were happy. I didn’t doubt that. Baites already had a pretty good load on when I first saw him, and the others were hitting it pretty heavy as well.

  We stayed back a good ways and kept off the skyline as much as possible. They were moving out at a nice ground eating pace, but there was no hurry to them. We could read their sign at a fast walk; they did nothing to hide their trail. I didn’t know if that was because they were still a bit hung over or from lack of skill… or were they tough enough to not give a damn?

  The trail they took had started out heading north out of Silverton, but had veered off to the east in the night. It didn’t matter much to me as long as we could follow their trail, I didn’t care if it went to the North Pole. I’d prefer not to go that far, but I would if I had to.

  A peculiar thing was happening though. I kept getting the feeling that I’d been here before, but I was sure I hadn’t because this was my first time in this part of the country. It was one of those feelings you get when you dream about something and it really happens. Pa used to say it meant someone was walking on your grave. I don’t see how that made much sense, but it sure was strange.

  It started coming to me I had been here, but I had come and went from a different direction. We were heading straight for the north side of the mountain I’d just spent two weeks on, but I’d been on the south flank.

  This was one of those two peaked mountains connected by a high ridge which runs from one peak to the other. I’d figured it to be near to fourteen thousand feet at both peaks judging by where the trees stopped. The trees on the south slope will usually go up over eleven thousand feet, but trees on the north slope will only go up to a little over ten thousand.

  The main trail veered off to the north again, and after a short distance Baites and his company turned off to the right in a south easterly direction. They were heading straight for the north face of that mountain.

  We followed them until they had crossed a high meadow. It was far too exposed and too open for us to just ride out there like they did. If they had a guard out, we’d be sitting ducks…three dead ducks most likely. Our smartest move would be to take to cover. Pedro motioned to the slope on our left, and I happened to agree with him. We could hide ourselves in the pines and still keep an eye on their trail, since they rode right down the middle of that meadow, leaving a pretty obvious trail. They hadn’t been too clever about hiding their trail, up to this point… I don’t know why I should expect them to be any smarter now.

  Once we got up into the timber, I found a well traveled trail that paralleled the path the other three had taken. I figured the trail we were on was the main trail in or out of where ever we were going, and those three just took a short cut. It made sense that the boss wouldn’t want that meadow torn up. It would be like a road sign. Where the meadow ended, Baites and the other two joined the trail we were on.

  So we were behind them again and climbing. When the trail separated itself from the meadow, it turned sharply to the left and started up among the rocks. My horse seemed to want to step up and take the lead. Of course he would, this was his home country. I told Baca and Pedro about the horse, and we let him take his head.

  After several hours of switchbacks and a couple of thousand feet of altitude, we came in sight of a narrow cut up ahead. For want of a better description, it looked like a tunnel running through a hill that somebody had ripped the top out of. It was a ragged rocky cut between two pine covered hills. At some time, way back yonder, there was probably an earthquake that tossed half of that hill to one side and left the other half where it was.

  It was still a half mile or more up ahead, but that hill rose straight up to become a part of the mountain, in fact, it did pretty much the same thing on the left side of the cut as well. Only on the left side it was far less noticeable because it was so gradual. And the whole thing backed up to the shoulder of the mountain.

  I wasn’t too hot on the idea of just riding up to that cut or crack or whatever it was. That would be a perfect place for a guard or two. So we backed off and worked on a plan. We figured to go back about a quarter mile to a gully we’d passed. It wasn’t much more than an old streambed with walls on both sides. The water flow probably shifted years ago and left this gully high and dry. It was pretty steep but by no means impossible to scramble up and out of sight. A few rocks clattered down the streambed, but there was no one to hear them tumble.

  The three of us sat looking at each other. Baca was looking at me; I was looking at Baca, and Pedro was looking back and forth between us. Ideas were tossed back and back again, but very few seemed to have any future. They were full of merit but rich with risk and a high percentage of not making it to seeing another sunrise.

  The least risky plan was to send one of us up the left side of the opening and up the rock face to where a guard would likely be. The problems were that whoever went up would have to go at night, and that climb would be no church social at high noon. To go up in the daylight would mean he’d be exposed for several hundred yards, and when he got to the gap he’d be exposed on a two hundred foot pinnacle.

  My horse was becoming a distraction. We were trying to concentrate on the problem at hand, and that critter was tugging at the bit and stepping around like he had no manners at all. That was the first outlaw horse I’d owned, that I knew of, and he was a fine animal, but a little bit head strong. My friend Ben Blue said that you can’t beat an outlaw horse. That was alright for him to say, but at the time he was riding a damned fine Arab Mustang.

  “Your horse is trying to tell you something, Cain. He got us here; maybe he knows some other trick… what have we to lose?” Baca asked.

  “Only our skins.” I told him, “What the hell, my hide ain’t worth much anyhow.” I gave that horse his head. I could hear Baca laughing behind me as that critter went up that creek bed like a tramp going after a loose roaming chicken.

  It wasn’t long before we could see the wall ahead of us. It was a massive stone monster. I calculated that thing to be five hundred feet high at its highest point where it became part of the mountain and a full mile or more long. From where we were, it looked like at the blunt end of a mesa, but the other end of it didn’t slope off like a mesas. It gave every sign of being a high valley, and it was a big one.

  The pines grew right up near the base of that wall. As close as kinfolk at a country wedding, they were. They grew on up into the talus, where they became more scattered and the cedars sort of took over for them. Some of those cedars had grown into mighty good sized trees, and you’d find a bunch of them together where the soil was good enough.

  That creek must have come over the wall and made one hell of a waterfall. You couldn’t miss the washout, where it had splashed down from five hundred feet above. The cedars had grown up a
round it and behind it. There must still be some seasonal water coming down.

  Looking around I said, “It looks like this knot headed bronc has led us on a wild goose chase. There ain’t nothin’ here but a washed out dried up waterfall.” That horse was still shaking his head and sidling toward that hole in the creek bed.

  “Again, my friend, I must remind you to trust your horse. Let him lead us.” I figured, he was probably right, so I eased up on the reins and let that critter go. He went right into that washout and into the cedars, nearly taking off my new hat in the process.

  When I finished pushing branches out of my way and quit spitting cedar out of my mouth, I opened my eyes to darkness. But it was a big darkness. I figured that my horse would have run smack into that back wall by then. Baca was just coming through the cedars, and Pedro was right behind him. They drew up on either side of me, with their heads going in all directions, trying to figure out what we were in.

  As my eyes got used to the low light, I realized it was low light and not total darkness. Far ahead there was a distant light, but everything between here and there was dark. The outlaw horse was ready to go, and this time I let him, without having to be reminded of how much smarter that knot head was than me.

  He led off, but this time it was a little different speed because the floor was littered with broken stone and some outright boulders. The only sound was the sound of three horses clip clopping through that… whatever it was. That bronc didn’t seem to be too nervous about being in the dark and moving ahead, so I kinda figured we’d found the back door. Well, to be more exact, that big sorrel had shown us to the back door.

  This wasn’t a proper cave; it was more like a tunnel… a straight tunnel that wasn’t made by human hands. We were going slightly up hill toward the light, which didn’t make much sense to me. To get to the top of where the valley should be we’d have to climb a good five hundred feet, and we weren’t. We weren’t climbing anywhere near what we needed to be. The only thing I could think of was that light must be coming down from above by way of a hole or a well or some such arrangement. That kind of thinking didn’t make me real comfortable. I reckoned I’d just have to wait and see what we found at the end of the tunnel.