The man frowned. “I would not call that . . . buried.”
McMasters sighed. “As best as we could. As I said, I also avenge my family.” He waited. “Murdered by the same ones who butchered Bear and Juhki.”
“And my nephews,” the old one said.
“They all fought bravely,” McMasters said. “There were just too many for them to fight.”
“How many?”
“Nine.”
The man looked past McMasters and up the far hill.
“You number seven.”
“Eight,” McMasters corrected.
The old man’s head shook. “One is a woman.”
McMasters decided not to argue. He nodded toward the men riding with the old Pima.
“Join us, and there will be eleven.” No matter how good they were, he didn’t want the Pima Indians with him, but saw no other way out of the fix except by extending them the invitation. If they came along, even if they helped catch or kill a gang of cutthroats like those in the Butcher Gang, White Man’s Law would go down hard on any Indians who committed violence against any white men.
A smile, the thinnest as possible, briefly appeared on the man’s copper face. He called out to his fellow warriors and kicked his pony toward McMasters, raising the old Spencer up, not in a threatening way, but lifting it over his head in a signal of an alliance.
* * *
Most people underestimated just how quick Emilio Vasquez could move. It had left many a Rurale, at least one Texas Ranger, two deputy sheriffs in Cochise County, and even a few more jealous husbands, dead or dying.
He moved quickly, and when the deputy lawman turned, gripping his shotgun, Vasquez slowed down, smiling.
“I keep an eye on the hills, señor,” he told him, and tossed his Winchester to the ground, showing the gringo his empty palms. A sign of peace. Of friendliness. “In case more wait over the rise. They are Pimas. Pimas are wise. Cunning.”
The idiot of a lawman turned back to look at the big brute on the buckskin horse.
Emilio Vasquez found the knife he had been hiding on his body for three weeks. He pressed the button to open the blade, and shoved the blade in the marshal’s back, clamping the man’s mouth with his thick right hand to stop any scream.
The man stiffened, groaned, and wet his britches as the shotgun dropped to the earth. Vasquez hated shotguns and hated McMasters, for he carried a shotgun. Besides, Vasquez did not need the Greener as he had already drawn the deputy’s revolver and was spinning around to face the others even before the deputy, who Vasquez shoved forward, crashed into the dirt.
Bloody Zeke The Younger and the gambler in the fancy vest started toward him, but the metallic sound of the deputy’s revolver coming to full cock stopped them in their tracks.
“Back to your horses. Keep them still.”
Both hesitated. Emilio Vasquez aimed the pistol. “Pronto. Or you will travel the journey of the dead.” He unloaded the shotgun, smashed it against a rock, and grabbed the Winchester he had dropped. Next he went to the mule the deputy had been leading. He glanced behind him, saw McMasters stopping his horse and saw the Indians. He flung aside the canvas, looked, checked one pack, then the other, and finally opened the saddle bag. His left hand went in, dropped one box, saw the other, and it too fell into the dirt. The third box made him laugh.
HENRY
. 44 Caliber
Rimfire
Kissing the box, he ran back and slid to a stop in front of a dead bush that might be sturdy enough to serve as a tripod. He dropped to his knees, spilling several brass cartridges with those big, beautiful lead bullets on the top. Vasquez could not hold back the laughter as he picked up a cartridge and shoved it into the rifle.
He spun, jacking the lever, aiming the Yellow Boy at Bloody Zeke The Younger and the one-eyed man in patchwork britches.
“You stay back! Stay back or die.”
Those gringo outlaws stopped, raising their hands.
“Let us help,” the one-eyed idiot said.
“I told you to hold that damned mule.” Vasquez waved the rifle barrel. “Back. Get back.” He lowered his left hand and pulled out the deputy’s revolver. “I can shoot with both hands, you bastards.”
They backed up. He shot a glance at the others. The big Negro stood closest to him, but kept his eyes trained on what was happening below. The gambler just held the reins to his bay horse, and he too focused on what was playing out on the flats. The woman knelt beside the deputy, who, damn it all to hell, had not died already.
“Don’t none of you try to stop me. I’m going to fix the flint on that hijo de la puta.” He hated shotguns.
Dropping the Colt onto the dirt by his knee, he swung the Winchester Yellow Boy around. One shot. That’s all he had in the rifle. For now. But the man chasing Moses Butcher had made a major mistake. He should have given Emilio Vasquez the derringer . . . because with a long gun, Emilio Vasquez had no equal.
The stock pressed tightly against his right shoulder. He felt the wind blowing in from the storm clouds, and moved the barrel to allow for that.
“You gonna shoot that bastard?” the one-eyed coot called out. “Or not.”
Emilio Vasquez grinned. “No. The Indians will kill him.” He let out his breath slowly, relaxing, and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger.
* * *
And just as quickly, the old Pima Indian was somersaulting backwards over the horse, the heavy carbine dropping into the dirt and cactus, blood spurting in the air.
The pony let out a terrifying cry, spun, and galloped back up the hill. About that time, the gunshot from the hill reached McMasters’s ears.
“No!” McMasters screamed as he turned in the saddle. He saw the puff from a rifle, heard the report, and felt the bullet buzz past his ear. At the same time, an arrow tore off his hat from behind him. Then McMasters felt himself leaping from the saddle.
The buckskin bolted a few feet. McMasters rolled over on his back, brought up the shotgun, and found the young Indian charging him, nocking another arrow, charging in for the kill.
There was no chance, no other way. He swung the Remington over, and let one barrel of buckshot blow apart the boy’s face and chest.
He came up to his knees. A bullet from the Indian tore the sand between his legs. He saw the one-eyed Indian, who had jumped off his pinto mare and charged at him, thumbing back the hammer on a .36-caliber Navy Colt. He had McMasters dead, but the old relic had not had a Richards conversion. It still fired percussion caps, and the cap only fizzled. The Indian cocked again, and McMasters sent the second barrel of buckshot into the man’s chest.
Watching the menacing figure fly backwards and slam into a boulder, McMasters pitched the empty shotgun at the remaining Indian, the one with the old Springfield. He had hoped the shotgun would trip him, but no luck. The Indian leaped over, stopped, and did not bother to bring the old rifle to his shoulder. He was about to fire from his hip.
Although he reached for his holstered Colt, McMasters knew he had no chance. He was about to die.
CHAPTER 20
The mules had not been trained by the man known as John McMasters. That much was obvious to Mary Lovelace. As soon as the Mexican had pulled the trigger, both mules had taken off, kicking, squealing, and heading down the slope. He had let out a string of curses in Spanish and English at the one-eyed Rebel and whoever else was supposed to be holding the other mule.
His first shot had sent the warrior nearest to McMasters over the back of the horse.
Mary Lovelace knew the remaining Indians would kill McMasters. Then they would charge up this hill. Oh, they would not kill them. But the Mexican, once he had done away with the Indians would kill them all. She heard the shotgun blast below then turned toward the groaning deputy marshal. The sneaky bastard had pulled out a revolver from his back waistband.
That surprised her. She hadn’t thought a by-the-book prude of a star-packer would carry anything concealed. His hand shook as he tried to thumb back
the hammer on the nickel-plated pocket pistol, a Merwin Hulbert with a three-and-a-quarter-inch barrel. Six-shots that fired the Winchester .44-40 caliber cartridge. Fancy for a by-the-book lawman. But he did have the right idea.
Quickly, she reached over and took the pistol from the deputy, too weak to offer any resistance. She pointed the gun at the Mexican, remembering the words of her late bastard of a husband.
“Firing a pistol is more instinct than talent or eyesight. You just aim. Point your finger. And pull the damned trigger.”
That’s what she did . . . after cocking the hammer. The gun bucked in her hand, and down went the Mexican. Down went his rifle, too, sliding about six yards before catching on rocks. Everyone dashed for Emilio Vasquez.
Mary turned and snapped a shot at Bloody Zeke The Younger with the .44-40 Merwin Hulbert. That dark man had a dark heart, and he frightened her a lot more than the black man, who slid, grabbing the Winchester as he went about ten yards farther down the rise. By then, she had reached the Mexican, who kept rolling this way and that, clutching his side, begging in Spanish, praying in English, swearing in a mixture of languages that some puta had murdered him.
She grabbed the deputy’s pistol with her left hand and sent a round kicking up rocks between the one-eyed Reb’s legs. That stopped all of them.
A split second later, the black man fired the Yellow Boy, aiming down the slope . . . at the Pima Indians or, she feared, at the old man with the glasses and a bitterness, a hatred that matched if not topped her own.
* * *
The Indian spun to his side, dropping the Springfield unfired in the dirt. McMasters did not hear the gunshot from the hill, but he knew that’s what had happened. The man dropped to his knees, and began singing his death song. He never finished. Another bullet hit him in his temple, and he dropped into a heap in the desert sand.
Leaving his Colt in the holster, McMasters dived into the dirt, crawled on his elbows and knees, and picked up the unfired Springfield. Then he rolled, expecting to feel the burning lead of a bullet entering his body at any moment. Rolling, he kept looking up the eastern hill. He saw the dust, heard the mules braying, then saw both mules bolting down the incline. One tripped, stumbled, and cartwheeled down, disappearing in an avalanche of dust and debris. The other? McMasters couldn’t tell.
He rolled over until he came to a saguaro. It was not much in the way of cover, but it would have to do.
He tried to breathe normally . . . an impossibility. Looking up into the sun, he stared at the hilltop. He could only see blurs, and he reached up to adjust his eyeglasses.
Swearing, he looked over toward the dead old Indian and where his horse had been before the gunfight started. The glasses had come off when he had leaped off Berdan, and likely lay in the dust and rocks. Maybe busted. Maybe not. But he could not get them without the risk of getting his head blown off.
He glanced at the scene around him. The four Pimas lay dead, two from the Remington, two from whoever had used a gun—a long gun—from the hilltop. All of the ponies ridden by the Indians were raising dust up the western hill. Would they run back to Fort McDowell? Maybe. But it would take them a long time to reach the reservation, and he did not think even the best of trackers would be able to find his group.
He felt a sudden coolness, and a blackness fell over him. Clouds obscured the sun. Thunder boomed. Lightning streaked across the sky.
A monsoon would strike before long.
Sensing the approaching storm, Berdan stared at him and pawed the earth.
McMasters looked over at his horse.
“Stay where you are,” he told the buckskin, hoping the horse would listen. He did not want that horse to attract the gunman’s attention.
He had to think. Daniel Kilpatrick? No. Dan had to be lying up on that hill, dead or wounded.
McMasters wiped away sweat and dirt and cursed again, savagely, vilely, cursing himself and his damned fool idea. He never should have left Kilpatrick up there alone with six hardened killers. And he was trapped beneath the gun sights of six killers. He studied the old Springfield weapon with careful consideration.
A rifled musket from the Civil War, most likely. It fired a .58-caliber minié ball. Better than nothing, but he had only one shot. Maybe there were more powder, caps, and lead in the dead man’s pockets. Maybe not. He couldn’t risk crawling back to the dead Indian anyway.
He flipped up the leaf sight—300 yards, if he remembered correctly. Just about the distance he had covered. He would be shooting uphill—difficult for even the best marksman—and looking into the sun. The Springfield could be effective at 400 yards, maybe even 500, but McMasters couldn’t even find a target at that distance—not without his eyeglasses. And his spectacles lay even farther away.
The Colt in his holster? Not at three hundred yards uphill. Not against six killers, even if one of them was a woman. He thought about the old Pima. That Indian did not think much of the woman, but suddenly, McMasters wondered if maybe the woman had him pinned down.
* * *
Writhing in the dust, feeling the coming of a thunderstorm, Emilio Vasquez knew how his brother must have felt that summer evening fifteen years ago.
His kid brother, the one his mother and father had always loved, the one they swore they would give their last piece of bread to, the one they did not work like a donkey or an Indian slave. Miguel Ángel. Oh, didn’t that bastardo live up to his name? He had become the most holy of all priests at Saint Anthony of Padua in the puissant of a village on the lower Rio Yaqui called Cocori. Oh, how he had kissed his brother’s cheeks, let him eat beans and drink wine, and cried about how his mother and father had died. He had prayed for Emilio Vasquez, had asked to hear his confessions, but Emilio, ever the fine brother, had said he had nothing worthy of confession.
As he writhed, Vasquez remembered why he despised shotguns and the men who used them.
* * *
One of the nuns, a fat witch with a nose long enough to stick into anyone’s business, sprinted into the rectory and cried out that Emilio Vasquez had been packing an unholy cargo on those mules.
“Scalps!” she cried.
Padre Miguel Ángel felt no remorse about scalps of Apache Indians. The church helped the alcalde pay for such bounties offered in Cocori. But Emilio Vasquez’s men had not paid attention to his orders. They had left some ribbons in the hair of some of the younger victims’ scalps.
That fat nun wailed that she knew—she would always know—the hair of María Fernanda de la Rosa and her mother, Danna Paola. She pointed at Emilio Vasquez and said that he was no brother, but el Diablo.
His brother gave him a look of pity, of shame, of hatred.
Emilio Vasquez felt he had no choice. He took the cut-down double-barreled shotgun and put a ton of buckshot into his brother’s stomach, and then shot the nun in the back of her head as she ran toward the door.
* * *
Mary slammed the Merwin Hulbert’s checkered hard rubber grips against the Mexican’s forehead. That shut him up.
“Shoot that bastard!” Bloody Zeke The Younger bellowed. “Then let’s all get our horses and get the hell out of here!”
The woman was shouting at the men. Bloody Zeke and that bigoted old Rebel yelled back. Like some married couple arguing with the husband’s daddy joining in to help out his worthless son. The redhead yelled back at Bloody Zeke.
“You stupid fool!” the gambler yelled. “You shot the redskin.”
Carter levered another .44 slug into the Winchester, breathed in, exhaled, and fired down the hill again. He hated to do it, but the way he saw things, it was his best chance out of there. Cut loose with Bloody Zeke and the others, he’d be a dead man in three or four days, maybe even just three or four hours. Sticking with the white man with the shotgun didn’t bode that well for survival, either, but at least he’d be doing something right.
Slowly, after the man named McMasters had rolled until he was sheltered, partly, by a thin saguaro, Alamo Carter
looked off at the threatening sky, then looked at the even more treacherous-looking men. And the woman, who had one of her two pistols aimed at him.
“I heard what you told those boys,” Carter said to her as he angled his head toward the other killers.
“But you’re still holding that repeater,” she said.
“You think you can hold off that bunch?” he asked.
“Don’t worry. I won’t save the last bullet for myself.”
He grinned, lowered but did not drop the Winchester rifle, and gave a slight nod down the slope. Most of the packs had been busted apart when both mules tumbled down the slopes. One had slammed against a pile of boulders, and lay on its side, kicking and bellowing. The other had limped a few paces away. Carter could see boxes of cartridges broken apart, and even though the clouds had started to obscure most of the sun’s rays, the brass casings reflected sunlight. Like diamonds in the rough, he thought. Food and coffee beans had also been scattered, the sugar mixing with sand to give the ants a mighty tasty dessert.
“You sure this is how you want to play out this hand, ma’am?” Carter asked the redhead.
“No,” she answered. “But it’s the bet I’m making . . . for the time being.”
“Ya stupid whore!” the one-eyed jackal snapped.
“Bitch!” Bloody Zeke said in an icy voice.
Alamo Carter stood. “Well, I’ll ride along with you . . . for a while . . . maybe.” He rose, glanced at the deputy marshal, saw that somehow that ornery cuss kept right on breathing, turned toward the Mexican, and realized he hadn’t died yet, either.
* * *
Out of the corner of his eye, McMasters glimpsed five or six fast lightning strikes. He counted. One-thousand-one. One-thousand-two . . . one-thousand-fourteen. Then heard the distant thunder.
“McMasters!” a voice called out after the thunder and wind had died. Even at the distance, he recognized the voice.
“Best get up here pronto. The deputy needs you!”
Remington 1894 Page 16