Instead of obeying the order, the startled rustlers twisted in their saddles and started blazing away at the men hidden in the rocks. That was the wrong thing to do. Slaughter fired, and so did Santiago and the other men. A storm of lead tore through the rustlers and knocked them off their horses.
“Hold your fire!” Slaughter called. If any of the thieves were still alive, he wanted a prisoner he could question. He left his horse with reins dangling and strode out from behind the slab of rock where he had taken shelter from the stampede.
The rustlers’ horses had bolted, following the runaway cows. That left three shapes sprawled on the ground.
Only three, Slaughter thought. An unknown number of the rustlers were unaccounted for.
Maybe one of the wounded men could tell him where the others were.
He was about fifteen feet away from the men when one of them suddenly twisted halfway up from the ground and thrust a revolver at him. Smoke and flame gouted from the weapon’s muzzle. Slaughter heard the bullet whip past his ear and reacted automatically. He fired his Winchester and saw the man’s head jerk backward.
The rustler’s gun slipped from his fingers and thudded to the ground as he rolled onto his back. By the time Slaughter reached him, he was staring sightlessly at the lingering shreds of dust in the air. The bullet hole in the center of his forehead was like a third eye, but it was as blinded by death as the other two.
Pools of blood spread slowly around all three men, the sandy soil of the canyon floor soaking up the life-giving fluid almost as fast as it welled from the rustlers’ bodies. Slaughter saw that the second man was dead, too, then was a little surprised when he heard a faint groan come from the third man.
Wary of another trick, Slaughter dropped to a knee beside the man, grasped his shoulder, and rolled him onto his back. The three crimson splotches of blood on the man’s shirt—two on the chest, one on his belly down near his waist—were ample testimony that he no longer represented a threat. He was still alive, but barely, and that condition wouldn’t last more than another minute or two at most.
The dying man was young, about Stonewall’s age. Dark beard stubble covered his cheeks and jaws. His eyes were set in hollows that seemed to be made even deeper by the agony that gripped him now. Slaughter could tell by looking at him that he’d had a hard life.
That was no excuse for taking up rustling as a trade, though. Slaughter said, “You’re dying, son. What’s your name?”
The man’s eyelids fluttered open. His mouth moved. It took a lot of obvious effort for him to force out, “St-Stoney . . . Carter.”
“Listen to me, Stoney,” Slaughter said. “We’ll see to it that you’re laid to rest properly, but you have to tell me what this is all about. Why did you steal those cattle? Were the Apaches working with you? Where’s the rest of your bunch?”
Slaughter put more emphasis on the last question. That was the most important one. He didn’t think these three men had been handling that herd by themselves. There had to be more of them somewhere close by.
He hadn’t forgotten that dust cloud he had seen, either, or the worry that some of the rustlers might have doubled back to the ranch for some reason.
Carter didn’t reply. His eyes were still open but unfocused. Slaughter said, “Stoney! This is important. What’s this all about? Did some of your men turn around and go back to my ranch?”
The youngster was slipping away in front of Slaughter’s eyes. He didn’t think Stoney Carter was ever going to say anything again.
But then the dying rustler whispered a word. Slaughter was leaning close over him, or else he wouldn’t have heard it.
He heard and understood, though, and that one word was enough to make Slaughter stiffen and catch his breath. It was a name . . .
“Becker!”
Chapter 15
Stonewall and Hermosa had taken a couple of extra horses with them so they could switch back and forth and keep up a fast pace. Even though Stonewall hadn’t wanted to turn back, now that he had he was beginning to get worried. He knew how smart his brother-in-law was, and he trusted John Slaughter’s instincts, too.
If Slaughter thought something might be wrong back at the ranch, there was a good chance that it was.
Hermosa wasn’t a very talkative companion. He rolled one quirly after another and smoked them as he rode. Stonewall was nervous, though, and when he got that way he talked even more than usual.
“You think whoever’s behind this has got some grudge against Don Eduardo?” he asked the vaquero as their horses splashed across the shallow water of Cave Creek.
“Why not someone with a grudge against Señor Slaughter?” Hermosa asked. “He is the sheriff, is he not? I never saw a lawman who did not have an abundance of enemies.”
“Oh, I reckon John’s got enemies, all right,” Stonewall admitted. “Plenty of ’em, I’d say. And not just from him bein’ sheriff, either. He had his share of trouble with folks while he was bringin’ cattle over here from Texas and settin’ up his ranch. Why, there was one hombre who accused him of rustlin’ ! Can you imagine that?”
“Was he guilty?” Hermosa asked dryly.
“What? You mean, was he a rustler? John Slaughter?” The disbelief was obvious in Stonewall’s voice.
“Today’s honest, upright man may not have always been that way,” Hermosa said with a shrug. “And every story is different depending on who tells it.”
“I reckon that’s true,” Stonewall said, only slightly mollified. “But you probably wouldn’t like it if I started talkin’ about Don Eduardo bein’ some sort of outlaw.”
Hermosa glanced sharply over at him and said, “Make no mistake about it, amigo, Don Eduardo has done things of which he is not proud. Things that many men would look down upon. But he has always stayed true to himself and the things he wished to achieve.”
“You’d know, wouldn’t you? You’ve been ridin’ for him a long time.”
“Many years. I was with him when he founded his ranch. He and his partner.”
“Partner?” Stonewall repeated with a frown. “I didn’t know anything about him havin’ a partner.”
“It was long ago. And it ended badly. But there were two of them, Don Eduardo and a gringo friend of his. And their wives.” Hermosa shook his head. “If the women had not been there, things might have turned out very differently.”
Hermosa fell silent. Stonewall allowed that to go on for a minute or so, then burst out, “Come on! You’ve got to tell me the rest of the story.”
“It is none of your affair, amigo. Of the people who were most intimately involved, they are all dead and buried now . . . except for Don Eduardo. Let him keep his pain to himself.”
Stonewall frowned and said grudgingly, “Well . . . all right. I guess you’re right, it’s not any of my business.”
Hermosa nodded. He took the stub of a cigarette from his lips and snapped it away, then started building a new one. As he rolled the smoke, he said, “It was long ago, but Don Eduardo still says prayers for the dead . . . all of them.” He struck a match, held it to the tip of the quirly, and added from the corner of his mouth, “Even the man who tried to kill him.”
* * *
From where Viola stood on the porch, just outside the front door, she heard the gasp from the parlor and the startled exclamation, “Becker!”
Clearly the hard-faced stranger was right: the name meant something to Don Eduardo.
There would be time enough later to find out what this was all about, Viola thought. For now, the moment had come to play her trump card.
Before Ned Becker could do anything else, she pointed the Winchester at him and ordered him to throw down his gun and surrender.
It didn’t seem that likely that he’d do it, but you never could tell. Sometimes a man’s personality changed when he found himself looking down the barrel of a gun.
Not this one, though, Viola saw despairingly. Becker regarded her coolly from under the pulled-down brim of his hat.
He didn’t make a move to disarm himself or get down from the horse.
Instead he gave her a smug, infuriating smile and said, “We both know you’re not going to pull that trigger, Mrs. Slaughter.”
He wouldn’t be aware of it, but that was just about the worst thing he could have done. The arrogant mockery made her temper blaze up inside her. Her finger started to tighten on the trigger as she shifted her aim slightly to put a bullet through his right shoulder.
Before she could fire, something struck the rifle with stunning force and ripped it out of her hands. She cried out, as much from shock as from pain, and threw herself backward as she saw Becker clawing at the holstered revolver on his hip. Viola fell through the door and kicked it shut.
Jess Fisher was there to drop the bar into the brackets on either side of the door, sealing it from outside. As soon as he had done that, he turned to her and said, “Mrs. Slaughter, are you all right? Blast it, your husband’ll kill me if you’re hurt!”
Viola sat up and shook her throbbing hands.
“I’m fine, Jess,” she said. “What happened?”
“Hard to tell from in here, but it looked like somebody shot that rifle out of your hands.”
Viola thought that was what had happened, too. She held up her hands and looked for blood, but she didn’t find any. The bullet had hit the Winchester but missed her.
“That was a hell of a shot!” she exclaimed in a mixture of anger and admiration.
She heard a swift rataplan of hoofbeats from outside. One of the ranch hands called from a window, “That fella’s lightin’ out, Miz Slaughter. You want me to let him go or try to knock him down?”
“Let him go,” Viola said. There hadn’t been any more shots. “Maybe they’ll decide the house is too well-defended and leave.”
She knew how unlikely that was. She had gotten a good enough look at Ned Becker to recognize the hatred burning in his gaze. Whatever grudge against Don Eduardo had brought him here, he wasn’t going to just ride away and forget it.
Viola wanted to know more about that grudge, although she didn’t see how the knowledge would change anything in this situation. She climbed to her feet and went to the parlor. Her fingers still stung a little, but they didn’t hurt too badly.
Don Eduardo was sitting up on the sofa now with bandages wrapped tightly around his midsection. Belinda stood close enough that she could rest a hand on his shoulder.
Dr. Fredericks was nearby, too, with a worried look on his face. He spoke first, saying, “I heard one of the men ask you if you were all right, Mrs. Slaughter. What happened?”
“Someone shot the rifle out of my hands,” Viola explained.
Fredericks let out a low whistle of surprise. He said, “I didn’t think you ever ran across trick shooting like that except in Wild West Shows and dime novels.”
“Those men have at least one excellent marksman among them,” Viola agreed.
“But you’re not hurt?”
She held her hands up and turned them so the doctor could see both front and back of each hand.
“You’re lucky,” Fredericks said. “You could have lost a finger.”
“And it would have been my fault,” Don Eduardo said.
“You didn’t pull the trigger,” Viola pointed out.
“No, but those men are here because of me. The one who spoke to you . . . he said his name is Ned Becker?”
“That’s right. I take it the name is familiar to you?”
Don Eduardo sighed and nodded.
“It is one I have not heard in many years,” he said. “A name that makes me ashamed to hear it now.”
Belinda protested, “That’s not fair. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of, Eduardo.”
Rubriz shook his head and said, “There are things about me you do not know, my dear. Things that happened long before the two of us met.”
“If they happened before we met, then I don’t care about them,” Belinda said with a stubborn toss of her blond hair.
“You should,” Don Eduardo said, “because they may mean the death of us all.”
* * *
Becker slowed his horse and swung down from the saddle while the animal was still moving. His angry gaze swept over the men gathered behind the brick building that shielded them from the view of those in the ranch house.
“Who fired that shot?” he demanded.
“Talk to your Apache amigo,” Herb Woodbury said with a nod toward Bodaway, who stood there with a Winchester cradled in his arms. The war chief ’s face was as expressionless as ever.
Becker confronted his old friend and said, “I didn’t give the order to start shooting.”
“You would have rather I let the woman shoot you?” Bodaway asked coolly.
“She wasn’t going to shoot me,” Becker insisted. “She wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.”
“You’re wrong. If I had not fired, you would be dead now, or at least wounded. I know when someone is about to kill.”
“She’s a woman, for God’s sake!”
Bodaway actually smiled. His lips curved only a tiny fraction of an inch, but it was a smile.
“Have you not lived enough years to have learned how dangerous a woman can be?” he asked.
Becker blew out an exasperated breath and moved a hand in a curt, dismissive gesture.
“All right, what’s important is that we know now Rubriz is in there,” he said. “Mrs. Slaughter spoke to someone inside and had them tell the don my name. So he’s here, and he’s alive. I can still take my revenge on him. All we have to do is convince Mrs. Slaughter to turn him over to us.”
Woodbury said, “I don’t know if she’ll do that, boss. She strikes me as a pretty stubborn woman.”
“She’ll do it if she wants to save her life and the lives of those other people in there,” Becker insisted. “For now, spread out. Keep to cover, but search the place. I want to know if there are any other ranch hands around here, or if they’re all forted up inside the house. That’s what I’m betting on, but I’d like to be sure before I decide what we’re going to do next.”
Woodbury nodded and started pointing at the other men in turn, singling them out and telling them where to go.
“And keep your damn heads down,” he added. “You waltz right into a bushwhackin’, it won’t be nobody’s fault but your own.”
Within minutes, only Becker and Bodaway were left at the adobe brick building. Becker went into the covered dogtrot and peered through the windows into the rooms on each side.
“I’ll be damned,” he said to the Apache. He pointed through the glass. “Look in there. Desks and chalkboards, by God. This is a schoolhouse. Slaughter must have somebody teaching all the little Mex brats that belong to his vaqueros.”
“It is said that sometimes the Apaches come here, too,” Bodaway mused. “Not all of my people are enemies to John Slaughter. Some are his friends.”
“I don’t care about that. He can be friends with all the Apaches he wants to, as long as he stays out of my way.”
“I have heard as well that Slaughter is a good tracker,” Bodaway said. “Once he starts on someone’s trail, he never turns back until he catches his quarry.”
“You’re talking about those fellas I sent on ahead with the herd? I hope Slaughter stays after them. That’s the whole idea, to keep him away from here until I’ve done what I came to do.”
“They will be outnumbered. They will not have much chance to escape.”
“You think I care about those cows?” Becker scoffed. “I came to settle a debt, that’s all. Why do you think I’ve been holding up banks and trains for the past five years? I saved my share of the loot from those jobs so I could afford to pay Woodbury and those other fellas. So I could afford those rifles I promised to you—the rifles you’re still going to get, by the way. I did all that because money doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, Bodaway.” Becker stared across the open space between the school and the ranch house. “All I want is right in there
. The head of Don Eduardo Rubriz, the man who murdered my father.”
Chapter 16
Slaughter had promised the dying Stoney Carter that he would be laid to rest properly after he crossed the divide. He kept his word, even though the delay chafed at him.
Slaughter had brought along a couple of folding prospector’s shovels, thinking there might be a need for them, and several of the men had taken turns scraping out shallow graves for the young outlaw and the other two rustlers. Those graves had dirt mounded over them now.
Hat in hand, Slaughter spoke a brief prayer over the dead men. He, Santiago, and the cowboys who had dug the graves were the only ones here. Slaughter had sent the rest of the bunch to round up the herd.
With the burying done, Slaughter clapped his hat back on his head and turned to Santiago. He fixed the young man with a hard, level gaze and said, “The two of us have to talk.”
Santiago frowned and asked, “What about, señor?”
Slaughter didn’t answer directly. He figured some privacy would be best for this conversation, so he jerked his head for Santiago to follow him and said, “Come on.”
They strode away, far enough to be out of easy earshot of the other men. Santiago still looked puzzled.
“What is this about, Señor Slaughter?” he asked again. “I thought we would either pursue the other rustlers or take the herd and head back to the ranch.”
“We’ll do one of those things, all right,” Slaughter said, “but first I want to know the reason behind all this trouble.”
Santiago appeared even more confused. He shook his head and said, “How would I know?”
“I didn’t tell you the last thing that boy said before he died. It was a name. Becker.”
Santiago stiffened. His face took on a grim cast.
“Earlier you said something about a man named Thaddeus Becker,” Slaughter went on. “You mentioned that he was your father’s partner, and that sometime in the past he shot Don Eduardo. But you didn’t finish that story, and I think it’s high time you did.”
The Edge of Hell Page 11