About five years back, Jacob Waltz died, and with him . . . almost . . . died the whereabouts of his mine. The woman taking care of the old-timer had asked him, while the miner was on his deathbed, for the location of the mine. He had drawn her a map.
To John McMasters’ way of thinking, that map had been her gold mine. He had been offered—three times—a map to the Lost Dutchman’s Mine. The prices had varied, from as high as $500 to as low as $3. A few people had gone off looking for the mine since Waltz’s death in 1891. At least two had died looking for the mine. No one had ever found it, or if they had, they hadn’t let anyone know.
Would a killer and thief like Moses Butcher go after a mine that might not even exist? Hide out in the harsh Sonoran Mountains with a price on his head and a date with a hangman? Maybe it made sense. No posse would go looking in the Superstitions for a murdering bandit on the run from the law. And a man could find many a place to hide out in that country.
The more McMasters thought, the more sense it made. If Butcher had robbed a bank in Holbrook or Winslow . . . or even Flagstaff or Diablo Canyon, the easiest escape from Arizona justice would have taken him east into New Mexico or north to disappear among the Navajos and that godforsaken Navajo country. Even into Utah. But he had turned south. Across the Mogollon Rim and into the Sonoran Desert. Any posse would figure he was bound for the border. No one would head into the Superstitions.
Gold had never interested John McMasters. He found his gold in horses. And in his family. At least he had.
Dawn broke, and McMasters had the prisoners stop and dismount. They had been riding for a while, and Emory Logan had not fallen off the mule since before they had traversed The Doorway. The wind blew, and with it came a warmth that would turn into burning heat before long.
McMasters waited until the six killers had slid off their mules before he dismounted.
“You can have water now.” He brought up his own canteen, removed the cork, and drank. “One swallow.”
“We wait here?” Alamo Carter asked.
“No.”
“But not much longer, right?”
“We’ve a ways to go yet.”
Carter shook his head, handed the canteen to the woman, then turned back to McMasters. “You strike me as a smart man. Smart enough, at least, to know you don’t travel when the sun gets up too high. That’ll play hell on these mules. On us, too. Ride another hour, maybe, then find shade. Rest. Wait till dark. Then ride again.”
“We’ll rest at Bear Aztec’s,” McMasters said.
“We know where we’re going,” Bloody Zeke said. “To the Superstition Mountains.”
“We’re going . . .” The words died in McMasters’s throat. He stepped up, frowned, and quickly swung back into the saddle. “Watch them,” he ordered Daniel Kilpatrick. “If they breathe too loud, kill them. Even the woman.”
He spurred the buckskin and loped up the ridge, slid off the saddle, found his binoculars, and looked off into the distance.
Buzzards. Circling. Somewhere, the morning . . . or most likely the night . . . had brought Death.
“Damn,” he said bitterly, the sickness returning to his stomach, his hands turning clammy. He knew what he would find at Bear Aztec’s trading post.
* * *
The Remington roared, belching smoke and leaden shot into the morning haze.
Behind him, John McMasters heard Emory Logan scream and his mule snort. He did not hear the crash that sounded as the mule bucked Logan into the dirt. He did hear the flapping of the giant wings of the buzzards as they lifted off the already bloating body of what once had been one of his horses.
That one and another of his horses lay in front of the trading post.
Buckshot began falling like raindrops on the roof. The gunshot faded. McMasters dismounted and wrapped the buckskin’s reins around the top rail of the round pen. The pen was empty, but other horses roamed about. A few had bolted up the ridge, frightened by the shotgun blast.
McMasters opened the shotgun’s breech, withdrew the spent shell, discarding it and replacing another into the bore. He snapped the breech shut and kept moving toward the human body that lay between the two horses.
When he got close enough to see that it was not Bear Aztec, he stopped.
Maybe . . . he thought, but the prayer, the hope, died immediately. The door to the post had been ripped off its hinges, and he saw the body . . . bodies . . . and the blood, already dried to brown and black, that covered the floor.
A Pima Indian leaned against the eastern wall, eyes open, one leg bent, the other stiff and straight, blood covering the front of his shirt. Flies buzzed around the room. He saw the woman, too, and had to turn away. The glasses came off, and he realized he was pouring sweat. He understood that he had not seen an Indian woman on the floor. He had seen Rosalee. He shoved the glasses into a pocket, made himself turn, and cursed.
He ripped off a Navajo blanket that covered the tabletop, and started for the dead woman but stopped suddenly when a groan sounded underneath the table. Spinning around, he stared in disbelief as a hand, stained black with blood, lifted then fell back onto the floor.
“God.” McMasters dropped the blanket and flipped over the table, which crashed and landed near the kiva fireplace. He dropped to his knees and gently lifted the head of Bear Aztec.
“Get me some water!” he bellowed to those outside. “Now!”
He knelt closer, trying to find enough moisture in his mouth and throat to swallow.
“Bear,” he whispered.
How Bear Aztec had remained alive all this time, McMasters could only marvel. That much blood. Ten butchered hogs would not have bled so much.
The old trader’s eyes fluttered open. His mouth opened. He had no strength to utter a noise, but his lips moved.
Juhki? Bear Aztec mouthed.
McMasters did not look at the woman, naked, dead and worse, on the floor.
“She’s all right, Bear,” he lied.
The big man sighed, but it sounded more like death’s rattle in his throat. Alamo Carter entered the room. He swore.
Mary Lovelace followed.
“Dearest God in heaven.”
“Get her out of here,” McMasters barked to no one in particular. “And give me that water. Now.”
Footsteps sounded behind him, and McMasters turned to find the redhead kneeling beside him, removing the cork to the canteen, and gently bringing it to Bear Aztec’s cracked lips.
“I said—” McMasters started.
“Shut up,” Mary Lovelace told him.
More footsteps sounded then the popping of knee joints as the giant black man bent to lift the blanket McMasters had dropped on the floor. Alamo Carter was covering the body of Juhki, Bear Aztec’s young wife.
The trader’s eyes locked on Mary as she dabbed his mouth with water from the canteen. He did not seem to notice. Most of the water ran down his cheeks, leaving a trail in the blood that stained his face. He did not appear able to swallow.
“Had your . . . horses,” Bear Aztec managed to speak aloud.
“I know,” McMasters said.
“I . . . got . . . greedy,” Aztec whispered. “And . . . stupid.”
“Don’t talk.” McMasters knew he didn’t mean it. He wanted the dying old trader to tell him everything he could. He wanted to hear that Bear Aztec had at least put a hurt on Moses Butcher’s bunch, but the sight of the interior, the horses outside, the stench of death . . . The fight had been one-sided.
He looked up, saw the ashes and charred wood that had been blown out of the fireplace, bullet holes in the adobe walls, in the shutters, even splintering the table top. How many shots had been fired? How had all of this happened? How could anyone have gotten the better of Bear Aztec?
“Your family?” Aztec had found enough strength to get one last question.
“Fine.” McMasters sounded hollow.
Aztec’s eyes hardened. The man found a will to clench his fists into tight, hard balls.
McMasters watched the light leave the big man’s eyes, and he cursed again. Bear Aztec had heard the lie in McMasters’s voice when he had told his friend that his family was fine. The man knew he had lied, and had realized that he had lied about the Pima woman, too—that Juhki had been killed, murdered, raped, butchered.
McMasters could not move. He just stared into the man’s hard, dead eyes, and then they closed. Slowly, he understood that Mary Lovelace had reached over and fingered Bear Aztec’s eyelids shut. When he turned to face her, her green eyes registered sympathy, then nothing. She stood and walked out of his view.
Eventually, McMasters heard Alamo Carter’s big but soft-touching feet leave the cabin, too.
He made himself stand, glanced again at the carnage, and walked out of the adobe death house.
“They didn’t burn this place,” Daniel Kilpatrick said. “Like they did yours. Why?”
Bloody Zeke The Younger answered. “Butcher would have needed to draw attention to our boss’s place. Give him a better chance at escaping. At least getting a good start. Way I figure things, he rode up here at night. Got the big cuss out in the open, started shooting. But something”—the killer’s head shook—“something didn’t work out like he planned.” The young murderer laughed. “Hell, nothing ever works out like he plans. He’s a fool.”
“A damned lucky fool,” the gambler said.
“Luck runs out,” McMasters said.
“Fer ya, too,” Emory Logan said.
Ignoring the talk, the big black scout had squatted, his fingers gently brushing some tracks, and he moved over to another set of prints.
McMasters knew to let the scout work. “Vasquez. Logan. Get the bodies out of the house. Behind the barn, you’ll find a small cemetery. Bury them.”
“Bury ’em!” The Reb’s head shook. “Ground’s harder than my heart. I ain’t—”
“Then we can bury you.”
The Reb spit, then turned away, cursing as he followed the Mexican to the barn. They would find the tools first, dig the graves—probably not six feet deep, for Logan had not lied about had hard the earth was—and return to take the bodies in a poor excuse for a funeral procession.
“Horses they rode in on were played out,” Alamo Carter said, standing.
“They got fresh mounts.” Mary Lovelace was coming from one of the corrals. “Turned the rest loose.”
“Patton,” McMasters said. “You and Zeke drag these horse carcasses away. Use the mules. Put them in the round pen.” He indicated which corral with the Remington’s barrels.
“That’s nasty work,” Bloody Zeke said. “Get the black bastard to do that.”
“He’s doing his job,” McMasters said. “You do yours.”
“You need me,” Bloody Zeke reminded him.
McMasters looked up. “I know where Butcher’s going now. And I have her.” He indicated Mary Lovelace.
“She might up and die. Like everyone else has been doin’ of late.”
“Do it.”
McMasters turned, nodding at Kilpatrick.
The deputy marshal understood. Taking the Greener shotgun out of the saddle scabbard, he eared back both hammers. He would watch over the prisoners while McMasters disappeared inside the trading post.
He sucked in a lungful of foul air, exhaled, and pushed his way through the slaughterhouse, using the barrel to push back another blanket that served as a separator, a wall. The blankets had been thrown this way and that, and blood stained the linens and the floor. It sickened him. He knelt at the end of the bed, trying not to look at the reminders of whatever ugly crime had taken place and opened the trunk.
Maybe Butcher and his men had been in too big a hurry that they had not been thorough. They’d come for horses. Horses and bloodlust. They had looked for gold or greenbacks, and those had been easy to find.
McMasters had seen the strongbox in the living area, opened, its contents strewn across the room. They had found the money.
But had they found everything?
* * *
McMasters walked out of the cabin and laid one blanket on the ground, then tossed another on top of it. Looking around, he saw that the dead horses were in the corral. Bloody Zeke and the gambler were bringing back two horses, followed closely—but not too closely—by Daniel Kilpatrick. The woman and the big former slave led horses, as well. The redhead brought one and Alamo Carter two. The sound of a spade and a pick hammering through the rock-hard dirt told McMasters that Emory Logan and Emilio Vasquez were still at work with the graves.
“Trail leads west,” Alamo Carter said as he tied up his two horses on a hitching post out front.
“Butcher will turn back.” McMasters tilted his head. “For the Superstitions.”
“If Bloody Zeke and this woman ain’t lying.”
McMasters nodded then called out to Dan Kilpatrick. “Fetch our grave diggers.” The graves, he knew, would be shallow, but Bear Aztec would understand.
Later, when the bodies were covered, the fresh horses saddled, and two mules rigged for packs, John McMasters leaned the Remington against the wall to the adobe house, and unrolled the blanket.
“Here’s a gift, payment in advance, from Bear Aztec.”
CHAPTER 18
Bloody Zeke The Younger licked his lips.
Marcus Patton, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his brocade vest, shook his head. “I’m betting my life on those . . . antiques.”
Ignoring both men, McMasters picked up the closest revolver. Originally, back around 1860 or a few years after, the Colt single-action Army model had fired .44-caliber balls with gunpowder ignited by copper percussion caps. Cap-and-ball, it had been called. Antique was right. Metallic cartridges had made 1860 Army Colts in .44 caliber and 1851 Navy Colts in .36 caliber obsolete. But in 1871, Charles B. Richards, who worked for Samuel Colt’s company, had managed to acquire a patent that converted those front-loading revolvers into breech-loading revolvers that used metallic cartridges. In the early years, a Richards conversion was considered quite the bargain, selling for roughly half the price of a new Colt.
The one McMasters held had to be close to twenty years old, but it was clean. Bear Aztec did not trade for horses that only a glue factory would want or a weapon that needed to be melted down or tossed away.
McMasters felt the Colt’s balance, and tossed the. 44 to Marcus Patton. The gambler caught it, grinned, pulled back the trigger and squeezed—while pointing the pistol at the back of Mary Lovelace’s head. It clicked.
“Nice.” He shoved the Colt into his waistband.
Next McMasters grabbed an old Winchester, commonly called the Yellow Boy. Originally produced in 1866—this one looked old and beaten-up enough to be from that year—the carbine chambered .44 Henry rimfire cartridges, as it was designed as an improvement to the old .44-caliber Henry rifles. The name came from the shiny gunmetal receiver. The weapon would hold fifteen rounds. He handed it to the Mexican.
“I suspect,” Vasquez said, “that if I pointed it at your head and pulled the trigger it would go click, too.”
“Try it if you want,” McMasters told him, patting the Colt on his hip. “But click or not, mine will blow your head off.”
Laughing, the Mexican slowly worked the lever, and saw that, as he’d suspected, the rifle had not been loaded. “I have no scabbard on my saddle to carry this, señor.”
McMasters said, “That means you’ll have to carry it in one hand. Keep you occupied.”
Vasquez laughed again.
Emory Logan got an 1856 double-action .44 caliber cap and ball pistol from Starr Arms Company of New York. When the bushwhacker saw the stamp on the right side of the pistol, he cursed. “Ya give me this gun!” He spit.
“Figured you knew all about cap-and-balls,” McMasters said. “That’s what you used with Quantrill, isn’t it?”
“We didn’t carry no damn Yankee guns.”
�
�Then go unarmed.”
The man swore, turned, and shoved the pistol into one of his mule-ear pockets.
The other long gun McMasters tossed to Alamo Carter, who nodded at it with approval. It was a Colt, the company’s only effort to produce a lever-action rifle. Colt’s New Magazine Rifle—more commonly called a Burgess—fired fifteen rounds in .44 caliber. Somewhere between six thousand and seven thousand had been produced between 1883 and 1885 before Colt decided to focus on short guns and leave the fast-shooting rifles to Winchester.
“Two Remingtons left,” the gambler said.
McMasters picked up the first gun, the newest of the bunch, a nickel-plated Remington Model 1890, which fired .44-40 bullets and looked more like a Colt—most folks said Remington Arms had been copying Colt with that one—than any of the earlier Remington revolvers. He spun it and handed it to Mary Lovelace.
She took the pistol, pointed it down, and stared hard at McMasters. Finally, as Bloody Zeke The Younger burst out laughing, she took a few steps back.
“So”—Bloody Zeke stopped laughing and stepped up—“you do not trust me, eh?” He extended his right hand, palm up, for the last pistol.
McMasters handed it to him. The gun looked small, even in Bloody Zeke’s small hands. Nowhere near as powerful as the revolver Mary Lovelace still held, the Remington over-and-under derringer was nickel-plated, in .41 caliber, with three-inch barrels and two-piece pearl grips. It seemed to be better suited for the gambler than Bloody Zeke, but he understood why he got the pop gun. He opened the weapon, and looked down the two barrels, seeing the dirt.
“And no bullets for me, either.” The weapon snapped shut, and he slipped the derringer into his pants pocket. “And just two shots.”
“My shotgun holds only two shots as well, Zeke,” McMasters said, referring to the intimidating 1894 shotgun leaning against the adobe wall.
“So you had better make them count.”
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