The Edge of Hell

by William W. Johnstone

  “Well, that’s between you and Becker. I’m just the errand boy.” The man scratched his beard. “They call me Red, by the way. Reckon you can see why.”

  “Owlhoots usually aren’t very imaginative,” Slaughter said dryly.

  Red frowned and demanded, “Are you callin’ me dumb?”

  “You’re not the one who came up with the name, are you?”

  “Well, no, I ain’t.” Red shook his head. “Quit tryin’ to mix me up. If you think I’ll forget what I’m supposed to do, you’re wrong. Now get down off those horses and shuck those guns. Where we’re goin’, you can’t carry no weapons.”

  Slaughter glanced over at Santiago. He could tell that the youngster wanted to haul out his Colt and blast the red-bearded outlaw from the saddle.

  But Santiago swallowed hard and then did what Red told him to do. Slaughter followed suit.

  Within minutes, they were disarmed and Red had gathered up the rifles and pistols, stowing the handguns in a pack behind his saddle and lashing the Winchesters to one of the extra horses. Then he drew his own revolver and motioned for Slaughter and Santiago to ride in front of him.

  “Straight toward them mountains,” he said. “I’ll tell you if you start goin’ the wrong way. And rest easy, fellas. A couple of hours and we’ll be where we’re goin’. You’ll get to see those folks you’re so worried about.”

  “And they’ll be all right?” Santiago asked. “We have your word on that?”

  “Well . . . I reckon they’ll still be alive,” Red drawled. “That’s about all I can promise you, though, especially where that old don’s concerned.”

  Chapter 26

  At the sound of the scream, Viola and Belinda both rushed to the door, which had a simple drawstring latch. Belinda reached it first, grabbed the string, and pulled. She jerked the door open.

  Before they could take another step, two of the outlaws blocked their path. Each man held a rifle at a slant across his chest. The one closest to Belinda thrust the weapon at her in a hard shove that sent her staggering back against Viola. Belinda might have fallen if Viola hadn’t caught and steadied her.

  “You bitches ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the other man snarled. “The boss said to keep you in there, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

  “What’s going on out there?” Belinda demanded in a hysterical voice. “What have you done to my husband?”

  The two guards exchanged quick, ugly grins. The one who had shoved Belinda said, “The boss didn’t say we couldn’t let ’em take a look.”

  “No, I don’t reckon he did,” the other man agreed. He backed off a little and pointed his rifle at the two women. “You can step into the doorway, but that’s as far as you go.”

  The door opening was barely wide enough for both Viola and Belinda to stand there and look out at the outlaw camp. As they did, Belinda gasped and then sobbed. She lifted her hands to her face and sagged against Viola, who put an arm around the blonde’s shoulders and steadied her.

  About twenty yards away, under one of the cottonwood trees, Becker and Bodaway had pulled Don Eduardo’s arms up and lashed his wrists to a low-hanging branch. They had removed the serape first so his bandages were visible again, and Viola saw a crimson stain spreading slowly on the don’s side.

  The rough treatment had opened the bullet wound. It didn’t appear to be bleeding very fast, but Don Eduardo couldn’t really afford to lose any more of the life-giving fluid than he already had.

  The don’s toes barely touched the ground as he hung there. The pain of having that much weight dangling from his arms had to be excruciating, Viola knew, especially in his weakened condition. His head drooped forward and he looked like he had lost consciousness.

  “You monsters!” Belinda screamed at Becker and the Apache.

  Becker stepped back and turned toward the jacal.

  “Monster?” he repeated. “Hardly. A monster sets out to steal another man’s wife. A monster shoots an innocent man in the back. I’m not a monster. I’m just a man who wants to see justice done.”

  “Your own warped version of justice,” Viola said coldly. “And you don’t care how many truly innocent people you have to hurt to get it.”

  “Doesn’t everyone have their own version of justice?” Becker shot back at her. “Who has the right to say that mine is any more warped than anyone else’s?” He laughed. “And you should have figured out by now, Mrs. Slaughter, that there are no truly innocent people in this world. Not one.”

  Viola supposed she couldn’t argue with his last statement. As for the rest of it, though, he was as loco as a hydrophobic skunk.

  Becker evidently didn’t want to argue. He gestured curtly at the women and went on, “Put them back inside. The don’s all right for now. This is just getting started.”

  Viola was afraid he was right about that. The guards forced her and Belinda back into the jacal and the door slammed closed once again.

  Belinda collapsed on the bunk where she had been earlier and sobbed. Viola sat down in one of the crude chairs and let her cry. She would have offered words of hope, but she figured they wouldn’t do any good right now.

  She wasn’t going to give up, though.

  Somewhere, help was out there, and it was only a matter of staying alive until it got here.

  * * *

  Was he lost? Stonewall frowned at the map in his hand and asked himself that question, but he didn’t know the answer.

  “What do you think?” Jess Fisher said. “Is this where we’re supposed to be?”

  “Yeah,” Stonewall said as he folded the map and replaced it in his shirt pocket. “This is the trail.”

  He lifted his eyes and looked at the narrow path that zigzagged up the almost sheer side of a mountain.

  “You sure?” Fisher asked. “This looks more like something a mountain goat would use.”

  “It’s wide enough for a horse, and this is the way Hermosa drew it.” Stonewall pointed to his left. “There’s the sawtooth peak he put on the map, and over yonder is the flat-topped one. This trail leads up to a pass between ’em.”

  “All right. I trust you, Stonewall. This is the way we’ll go.”

  Stonewall just wished he trusted himself. The possibility that he had gotten turned around somehow lurked in the back of his mind. Under other circumstances he might not have worried about it so much. He might have been content to wander around these hills and mountains until he found his way.

  But his sister’s life was on the line, along with the lives of Don Eduardo and Doña Belinda. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake. He and the men with him had to beat John Slaughter and Santiago to Barranca Sangre so they could be ready when it was time to make their move. If they were late it could cost the others their lives.

  Dithering around here wasn’t going to do anybody any good, either, he told himself. He’d made his decision. It was time to stick to it.

  “Let’s go,” he said as he lifted his reins and nudged his horse into motion. “I’ll take the lead.”

  He walked Pacer onto the ledge. It was a natural formation, which meant its width varied and its surface was uneven in places. Pacer was a sure-footed mount, and he would need to be in order to make it up to the pass. Despite the urgency Stonewall felt, he knew he couldn’t afford to rush the horse.

  The sun was up already. Stonewall knew they ought to be farther along their route by now, but unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it other than keep pushing ahead and hope for the best.

  The ground dropped away to Stonewall’s right as he and Pacer continued to climb. He was widely regarded as fearless, but that wasn’t exactly true. He didn’t care much for heights. He was a flatlander at heart, and this land was anything but flat.

  The ledge was a one-way trail, wide enough for only a single rider. Luckily it didn’t seem to be heavily traveled, so he didn’t think they were likely to meet anyone coming down.

  As the path curved around a shoulder of rock, he took advant
age of the opportunity to look behind him. Jess Fisher was second in line, about ten feet back, and then the other men strung out single file behind the segundo. Most of them looked tense and worried as the drop-off beside them increased, and Stonewall didn’t blame them. If he never had to do anything like this again, it would be just fine with him.

  After a few more minutes of following the torturous path, Stonewall felt relief flood through him when he spotted the pass up ahead. The ledge widened out into a broad, level trail that ran between two rocky upthrusts. Stonewall hoped that the descent on the far side of the pass wouldn’t be as treacherous as the climb up here had been.

  He turned his head to call to Jess Fisher and tell him that the end was in sight, and as he did a rifle cracked and a bullet whipped past his ear.

  Stonewall heard a horse scream. He watched in horror as one of the animals farther back reared in pain. He knew the slug that had narrowly missed him had struck the animal. Whether or not the wound was fatal might not matter. The maddened horse’s rear hooves skittered perilously close to the edge of the trail as the cowboy on its back struggled frantically to control his mount.

  He wasn’t going to be able to do it. The others all knew that. Jess Fisher yelled, “Jump, Corey!”

  The man kicked his feet free of the stirrups and flung himself out of the saddle just as the horse slipped over the brink. As the animal twisted screaming through the air, Corey landed at the edge and clawed at the trail to keep himself from falling. He would have to save himself. On this narrow path, none of the others could reach him in time to help him.

  Fisher reacted with the skill of a top hand. He plucked up the coiled lasso that hung on his saddle, shook out a loop in the blink of an eye, and cast it with the unerring accuracy of a man who had made thousands of throws with a rope. Corey saw it coming and thrust his right arm up through the loop just as he started to slide into empty space. He caught hold of it and hung on for dear life.

  Fisher had already dallied the lasso around his saddle horn. The rope would take the weight of a thousand-pound steer, so it had no trouble supporting one cowboy.

  All that happened in less time than it would have taken to tell about it. There were other dangers to deal with. Another shot rang out and the slug whined off a rock. This time Stonewall spotted the spurt of powder-smoke from the pass. At least one bushwhacker lurked up there.

  That made sense if this was really the back door to Barranca Sangre as Hermosa claimed. Ned Becker could have been cunning enough to post a guard or two here.

  Stonewall knew that he and his men couldn’t let that stop them. He hauled his Winchester from its saddle boot and returned the fire, spraying the pass with lead as fast as he could work the repeater’s lever.

  He didn’t really have any targets at which to aim—the ambushers were well hidden somewhere in the pass—but if he threw enough bullets in there and they started to ricochet around . . .

  That tactic was rewarded by the sight of a man stumbling out from behind a rock with a rifle in his hands, obviously wounded. He tried to lift the weapon for another shot, but Stonewall was too fast for him. Stonewall drilled the bushwhacker, and the .44-40 slug lifted the man in the air and dumped him on his back in the limp sprawl of death.

  As the echoes of the shots faded away, Stonewall heard swift hoofbeats.

  There had been a second guard, and he was getting away.

  Stonewall knew what the man would do. He would run back to Barranca Sangre as fast as he could and warn Becker that someone was approaching the canyon from the north. Those gunshots might have already done it, but the way the echoes bounced around off the slopes, there was a chance the sound wouldn’t travel that far. They were still several miles away from the outlaw stronghold, Stonewall figured from his study of Hermosa’s map.

  As those thoughts flashed through Stonewall’s mind, he was already acting. His boot heels jammed against Pacer’s flanks and sent the big roan surging ahead. The trail was still narrow here, so Stonewall was taking a big risk by galloping his horse.

  But letting Becker’s man get away would be an even bigger risk. That would ruin the plan and likely result in Viola’s death, along with Slaughter’s.

  Stonewall wasn’t going to let that happen if he could prevent it.

  He clutched the Winchester in his right hand and thrust it out to the side to help keep his balance as Pacer raced along the ledge. The trail began to widen, the drop-off became not as sheer, and suddenly Stonewall flashed into the pass. The rataplan of Pacer’s hoofbeats rebounded from the rocky walls that rose on both sides.

  Stonewall was glad he wasn’t in danger of plummeting to his death anymore, at least for the moment, but that didn’t mean he was out of trouble. As he emerged from the pass he spotted his quarry ahead of him, riding down a fairly steep trail that ran through a field of boulders.

  The man twisted around in his saddle and fired a pistol back at Stonewall. The odds against hitting anything from the back of a running horse at this range, especially with a handgun, were almost too high to think about. But bad luck happened, and sometimes a bullet was guided by a capricious fate.

  Stonewall hauled back on Pacer’s reins and brought the roan to a stop. He lifted his rifle to his shoulder and aimed carefully, drawing a bead on the rider in the distance. The outlaw was still in range of the Winchester. Stonewall let out his breath and stroked the trigger.

  The rifle cracked and bucked against his shoulder, and as he peered over the sights he saw the rider suddenly swerve around a bend in the trail. A bright splash of silver appeared on a boulder where the bullet struck it. Stonewall’s shot had missed.

  And the varmint was out of sight now. Stonewall grated a curse and kicked Pacer into a run again.

  The chase continued down the boulder-littered mountainside. Stonewall figured the rest of his bunch was following him by now, but that didn’t really matter. This was a race between him and the man he was pursuing.

  That thought made him remember the race he and Santiago Rubriz had planned to put on matching Pacer and El Halcón. That might never come about now, and Stonewall regretted missing the chance to compete against Santiago. There were a lot more important things to consider, of course, but it would have been nice to settle which of the horses was faster.

  He caught a glimpse of the outlaw below him, where the trail had started to wind back and forth. An idea popped into Stonewall’s head. A dangerous one, to be sure, but it might be his only chance to stop the man from warning Becker.

  He veered off the trail and started cutting almost straight down the mountain.

  Several times during that wild ride he thought Pacer was going to slip and go down, but the roan always caught his balance somehow as he lunged from rock to rock, over gullies, around outcroppings. The branches of a scrubby tree whipped at Stonewall’s face, but he ducked his head and ignored them.

  Taking this dangerous course allowed him to cut the outlaw’s lead to almost nothing. He saw a big slab of rock thrusting out over the trail ahead of him. The man he was after hadn’t come by here yet. Stonewall spotted him from the corner of his eye, galloping for all he was worth and swiveling his head around to check behind him.

  The hombre didn’t know the real danger was in front of him.

  “Big jump ahead!” he called to Pacer. “But you can do it!”

  Pacer’s heart was gallant. Stonewall didn’t ask him to slow down, so he didn’t. He kept galloping full out and left the end of the rock slab in a soaring leap that carried both of them far out over the trail.

  Stonewall had timed it perfectly. He left the saddle in a diving tackle that drove the outlaw off his horse.

  The man hit the ground first with Stonewall on top of him. Even with the outlaw’s body to cushion the impact, Stonewall felt like a mountain had risen up and swatted him. Dust swirled around them as Stonewall rolled over, but he couldn’t cough. He didn’t have any breath left in his body to do so.

  He gasped a few times, swa
llowed some of the dust and choked on it a little, then pushed himself up and looked to the side. The outlaw lay on his back a few feet away, his head twisted and set at a funny angle on his neck. Dust started to settle on his widely staring eyeballs, but he didn’t blink.

  The man was dead, his neck broken in the fall.

  Stonewall groaned and let himself slump back down. His heart still pounded wildly and he had to fight to get his breath, but gradually he felt himself beginning to recover.

  The sound of more hoofbeats made him look up. Pacer had landed safely and returned to him. The roan reached his head down and bumped Stonewall’s shoulder with his nose.

  “Yeah,” Stonewall said in a weak voice. “I’m all right.”

  He heard more horses, and as he pulled himself upright by grasping Pacer’s reins, he saw Jess Fisher and the other men riding toward him. Fisher called, “Stonewall, are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Danged if I know how I didn’t bust every bone in my body, but I don’t think I’m hurt.” He looked at the rest of the men and spotted the cowboy whose horse had fallen off the ledge riding double with another man. “Glad to see you made it, Corey.”

  “What do we do now?” Fisher asked.

  “The same thing we set out to do,” Stonewall replied with a note of grim determination in his voice. “We’ve got a rendezvous to keep at Barranca Sangre.”

  Chapter 27

  After the outlaw called Red met Slaughter and Santiago, it still took them two more hours of riding to reach Barranca Sangre. That time seemed even longer than it really was to Slaughter as they followed a winding path through the mountains. These peaks might not tower like the Rockies, but they were still rugged enough to make for slow going.

  Red was talkative, but it was just aimless chatter and didn’t really help to pass the time. He wouldn’t say anything about the captives except that they were fine when he left the camp. Slaughter had a hunch that Becker had ordered the man not to reveal too much.