Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635)

by Leslie, Frank

  He began looking around for cover, saw a canyon opening between two yawning stone jaws to his right. This was broken country, carved by a maze of rocky arroyos, and Colter leaped down from Northwest’s saddle and began leading the jittery horse into the relative shelter of the canyon.

  Lightning flashed over his left shoulder. Thunder clapped, sounding like boulders tumbling down the ridges. Ahead, another flash. Colter heard a bullet screech inches past his head. There was another flash ahead and to his left from a niche in the canyon wall. Rock dust flew up on Colter’s right. It was followed by the muffled belch of a rifle.

  Northwest whinnied and lurched up off his front hooves.

  Colter crouched, drew his pistol, silently cursing the dry-gulching bastards.

  There was another rifle flash on his left, the bullet tearing into another rock on his right. Dropping to one knee, Colter triggered off two shots toward the shooter firing from the canyon’s left wall, and then triggered three more straight up the canyon, unable to see where his bullets struck in the pouring rain. Getting the message that strangers weren’t wanted here, he bounded off his knees, jerked Northwest around by his reins, and led the dun off into the cabin-sized boulders farther up the trail.

  Banditos, he thought. Holed up out of the rain, and surly as cougars.

  When the canyon mouth disappeared behind him, behind the jutting southern wall, he mounted Northwest once more and, hunkered low, the rain sluicing like a mini waterfall from his hat brim, continued up the winding arroyo he’d been following and that was turning into a shallow river swirling with tea-colored water and more and more bits of mud chunks and branches. He looked around for another sanctuary and was crestfallen to see the slick, red-clay arroyo walls rising on both sides of him, until they were nearly six feet high. The thought that he needed to get out of there, as no one but a tinhorn would get caught in an arroyo during a rain squall, had no sooner shunted across his mind than a low rumbling sounded.

  The rumbling, like the muffled belching of a discomfited god, seemed to originate from all around him. It grew louder. He glanced down to see that the water was rising and swirling faster and faster. He swung a worried look over his shoulder, and panic was an instant flash within him, taking his breath and making his heart leap and turn somersaults.

  A veritable tidal wave of mud brown water was plunging toward him. The flood looked like a brown rug unfurling, the wave gaining on him so quickly that the brown of the froth-limned wave filled his vision. He could see the bubbles and leaves and mesquite leaves and small mud chunks it was hurdling. The cold water slammed over Northwest’s rump and against Colter’s face, washing through his mouth still hanging wide in shock and dread.

  The horse lurched forward and up as the wave lifted him off his hooves, hurling him upstream. Colter heard himself grunt as he was jarred back off the horse and into the cold, dark water, flinging a hand out for the horse’s dark brown tail but missing it by at least two feet as the indignantly whinnying dun was plunged downstream and away from him.

  Colter was dragged under by the churning currents, sucking half a lungful of water. He surfaced, gasping and choking and glimpsing Northwest’s hip to his left. Then he was spun around like a top, feeling himself being hurled with the rest of the debris downstream. He and the horse and the water then began moving faster, as though they were dropping quickly in elevation, maybe into a canyon, and Colter was once more dragged under by unseen hands. Kicking off the rock bottom, skinning his knees on rocky knobs protruding out from the arroyo’s bank, he forced his head above the frothy surface and again sucked a deep breath, choking on the water that lodged in his throat and trickled like icy witches’ fingers into his lungs.

  He vomited water, and as the currents continued to spin him while sweeping him downstream, he flung his arms out toward both banks, hoping to grab a rock or a shrub. He saw a root looping out of the bank on his left. It was coming up fast in a gray-brown blur, dodging and pitching. He kicked toward it, leaned forward, got a hand on it, but before he could close the hand, the rabid dogs of the currents fastened their jaws on his legs and ripped him off downstream.

  There was a sudden plunge as the arroyo dropped down. Colter rolled sideways, throwing his arms out for balance as well as in an instinctive effort to grab whatever he could. At the bottom of the drop, the jaws of the dirty cream froth sucked him down once more. When he managed to jerk his head up again, the massive gray fist of a rock wall slid resolutely into his path. Its unyielding bulk slammed against his left side, numbing that arm and shoulder and scrambling his brains, blurring his vision.

  He was thrust to the right, now just trying to keep his head above the water. As he was tossed around another bend, he saw an object on his right, and thrust that arm up halfheartedly. Something told him to stiffen the arm a quarter second before it made contact with the object, and he was glad he did, because a second later he found himself hooked around a stout branch protruding from a crack in the rock of the arroyo’s ridge.

  He vomited, sucked a spoonful of air, retched again.

  He’d hit the branch violently, and he felt as though his right shoulder had been partly torn from its socket. Looking down, he saw the water swirling around his waist. His brown leather holster flopped in the current, empty. Somewhere, he’d lost the Remington.

  Maybe partly because of the braining he’d taken by the rock wall, the loss of the old gun was what he was most concerned about. Not his own physical condition, or Northwest’s, but that he’d lost the Remington that he’d left home with so long ago. It had become a security blanket of sorts.

  “Ah, shit,” he heard himself mutter above the water’s pulsating thunder as he stared down at the soaked, empty holster.

  He hooked his other arm around the branch and hoisted his knees onto it. The rain continued to hammer at him, thick as wind-driven snow. But he could see the top of the bank to his right, only about four feet above. He gained his knees, praying the branch would hold and not send him tumbling into the torrent again. Twisting around, he grabbed the top of a rock jutting a ways out from the bank. From there he was able to scramble off the branch and onto the wall from which he climbed, cursing and grumbling against the renewed ache in his ribs as well as the fresh agony in both shoulders and knees, and onto the top of the ridge.

  He collapsed on his back and lay there, raking air in and out of his lungs, squinting against the pelting rain falling out of a sky the color of a bruised plum.

  Every bone and nerve throbbed. But he couldn’t lie here. For all he knew the arroyo would continue to flood until it washed over its banks to sweep him away again. Groaning, he climbed to hands and knees, looked around, saw that he was in a narrow canyon with steep ridge walls on both sides of the arroyo.

  Northwest . . .

  Holding his aching ribs, he limped off, bandy-legged and bent-kneed, along the arroyo, looking around desperately for his horse. In many ways the animal was like an equal partner to him, his only remaining companion, but his main concern now was being stranded out here on foot. On foot and without a gun, he’d be as helpless as a newborn calf without its mother.

  He felt nearly as freshly beaten as after his dustup, if you could call it that, with Lieutenants Belden, Hobart, and McKnight. His heart thudded wildly, desperately.

  “Northwest?” he called, the roaring torrent beside him and the pounding rain drowning the cry as it left his lips.

  He stumbled around a bend in the wall, and stopped suddenly.

  “Northwest?” he said, softer now and tempered with relief.

  To his left, the arroyo had flattened out, and the walls dropped, so that the water didn’t appear to be moving as fast. Ahead, he stared in slack-jawed relief as he watched the horse lunging up a series of low shelves in the arroyo’s stone wall, until Northwest gained the top of the bank, the saddle and the rest of Colter’s tack hanging down his
right side, and gave a splay-legged shake.

  “Northwest!” he shouted, and stumbled forward, choking on more water forcing itself up from his lungs.

  The horse was badly rattled and it trotted a ways on down the canyon before it turned to face the canyon wall as though seeking protection from the flashing lightning and blasting thunder. Colter slowed his pace and held up his hands, palms out in supplication, as he stole up to the mount who stood with his head nearly touching the wall, shivering and snorting and twitching his ears.

  “It’s all right, boy. You’re safe. Er . . .” He blinked against the rain as he looked around, having no idea how far the flood had carried him or where he and the horse had ended up. “. . . at least you’re not drowned.”

  He looked around, squinting, and saw what looked like a cave mouth a little farther up the canyon. It lay back in a concave depression in the canyon wall—sort of triangular-shaped but much lower on the left than on the right. He took Northwest’s reins and after much coaxing, got the horse to follow him over to the cave, which appeared at least from the outside tall enough to shelter both himself and the horse. He stepped cautiously inside, squinting into the dense shadows, half expecting to find some wild animal holed up out of the weather. It was dark, but there was enough gray light seeping in behind him to reveal the two side walls, and the occasional lightning flashes briefly showed him the back wall, which appeared a jumble of strewn rock and gravel, as well.

  Colter pulled on Northwest’s reins. The horse whinnied shrilly and drew back, lifting his head and flattening his ears. “Come on, horse,” Colter urged, pulling on the reins. “You don’t wanna stay out here in the rain, do you?”

  When he’d finally led the horse into the cave—the ceiling about a foot higher than Northwest’s head—he quickly stripped off the tack, which included Colter’s rifle and scabbard, thank God. At least he had the Henry. Shivering against the cold arroyo water, teeth clattering, he slipped Northwest’s bit and left him ground-tied. He figured the horse had drunk enough water in the arroyo, as Colter had, so he poured out a small pile of damp oats from his saddlebags, then walked over to the mouth of the cave.

  He tightly crossed his arms on his chest, trying to drive the cold out. No use. Every muscle in his body felt electrified. There was likely no dry wood anywhere near, so a fire wouldn’t be possible.

  Deciding he’d just have to gut out the storm right here, soaked to his gills, he sank down against the cave wall. Even shivering, he managed to fall into an aching, miserable kind of sleep. He was half aware of the storm abating, stopping, then starting up again, the wind like a cold breath blowing against him.

  A world-rattling thunderclap woke him. Northwest whinnied. For a second, Colter thought the canyon walls were collapsing on top of him. A lightning bolt blasted the bank of the arroyo just outside the cave, and the redhead leaped nearly a foot straight up off his rump.

  Brimstone fetor filled his nostrils. The lightning played along his retinas the way he’d once seen it sizzle along the rim of a steel stock tank.

  It took him a long time to get back to sleep.

  When he did, he dreamed of Alegria’s warm bed and of sunlight caressing him. It was a miserable dream, because while he could see the delicious light, he could not feel its warmth—only the chill of a frozen steel blade sandwiching his beaten body.

  He woke and lifted his head from his chest. He felt a patch of warmth on his left cheek and shoulder. Looking out of the cave mouth, he blinked against lemon sunlight angling into the canyon from a clear blue sky and penetrating the cave’s opening. Delectable warmth from a sun he’d begun to think had burned itself out.

  “Oh, Lord,” he said, feeling the warmth begin to penetrate the chill that still held him fast. Steam rose from the canyon floor—gauzy yellow snakes rising in the sunlight to gently caress the far canyon wall still purple with the lingering night.

  Northwest snorted. Colter turned to look at the horse standing facing him and flicking his ears. Colter had opened his mouth to speak, but something to the far left of the horse caught his eye, and he jerked back against the cave wall with a start, his heart fluttering.

  Just enough sunlight tumbled into the cave to reveal a man in a gray hat sitting back in the shadows amongst the rocks, aiming a rifle at Colter’s heart.

  Chapter 15

  Colter reached for his rifle leaning against the wall to his right and racked a shell into the chamber so loudly that Northwest lifted his head with a start, snorting. Colter aimed the Henry out from his right hip at the hombre pulling down on him from the cave’s heavy purple shadows. He could just make out the man’s figure and the rifle in his hands limned with sunlight whose intensity was greatly diminished back there.

  He stared at the shooter, his racing pulse gradually slowing. The man wasn’t moving. There seemed an unnatural stiffness in the silhouette.

  Cautiously, Colter said, “Hey.”

  The shadow did not move.

  Colter got his stiff legs under him and hauled himself to his feet. He strode slowly across the cave floor, angling toward the left rear corner, keeping his Henry aimed at the man-shaped shadow, and stopped. He frowned down at the bleached skull with gaping black mouth and eyes and nose sockets looking both bizarre and ridiculous in an overlarge metal helmet crusted with grit and grime with only a few patches of gray showing through the spiderwebs.

  The skeleton, lounging back against the wall with one leg curled beneath it, wore a steel breastplate with a ridge down the front, and metal plates on his thighs. Fibers of some long-moldered clothing clung to its bony shins, and bits of leather from rotted boots clung by threads to its otherwise bare, skeletal feet and ankles.

  A wooden arrow, minus feathers, protruded from the ribs just beneath the breastplate, angling down toward the skeleton’s left thigh. Also resting on the skeleton’s thigh was a short, stocky rifle, most of the ancient wood having flaked away from the badly tarnished barrel, the end of which flared like a funnel. Colter’s sluggish, half-frozen brain recalled the word for the ancient Spanish firearm: blunderbuss.

  The conquistador must have crawled in here a long, long time ago, after some skirmish with Indians, and died.

  Colter continued to stare down at the skeleton, feeling an added chill climbing his spine. The man’s right index finger—merely a slender, jointed bone, was still curled through the blunderbuss’s trigger guard. When he’d died, he must have still been expecting an Indian to charge in here after him.

  The round eye sockets stared blankly up at Colter. Inside the left one, a small black spider was climbing around. Somehow, the skull seemed to be grinning at him knowingly, jeeringly, and Colter felt a shudder ripple through him.

  He stepped back away from the dead man and turned to his horse, who was regarding Colter with a faint look of castigation in his eyes. “Sorry, Northwest,” Colter said, holding his rifle in one hand while caressing the dun’s long snout with the other. “I reckon that dead hombre’s why you didn’t want to come in here last night, huh? Just glad I didn’t know about him, or I wouldn’t have got what little sleep I did.”

  He grabbed Northwest’s reins, leading the horse out of the cave and over to the bank of the arroyo, along which grew several varieties of grasses, all of which looked nourishing for the dun. In the arroyo itself, the flood had diminished to a slow-moving creek, which appeared only two or three feet deep. Oddly, even after all the floodwater he’d swallowed, he was thirsty. Northwest probably was, too, but Colter didn’t want to risk leading the mount down the slippery back, fearing he’d stumble and fall. Swinging around, he started back to the cave to fetch a cooking pot he could fill with water, and stopped abruptly, staring at the ridge wall.

  The cave in which Colter and Northwest had spent the night was not the only cave in the ridge wall. There was another one about twenty yards to the left of it, and more
beyond, with more above in tiers, sort of like rooms in a sprawling hotel, with ledges fronting their recessed mouths. Colter stepped back and raised a shaky hand to point as he counted the caves, stopping when he got to twelve because he couldn’t see beyond the slight bend in the cliff face about fifty yards to his left.

  Some of the caves were fronted by dilapidated ladders made of poles and what appeared to be hemp or rawhide, and rising to the next tier above. Some of the ladders lay on the ledges, crumbling. As Colter scrutinized the cliff face, he realized that it wasn’t the actual face of the cliff at all. What he was looking at was a veritable mountain of piled adobe blocks forming a large building of sorts constructed against the cliff, the caves being individual rooms—what one might call apartments. Colter had seen similar Indian ruins in canyons near Camp Grant in Arizona, and there were even a few near the Lunatic Range in south-central Colorado. He’d heard about one near Durango that was almost as large as the city of Denver, and would put this one to shame.

  Colter looked across the arroyo, to the other side of the canyon beyond a swirling, sunlit fog. Set back against that cliff wall were more of the same man-made caves built into a giant building made of large adobe blocks. Some of the cave mouths had collapsed, and almost all the ladders over there were gone. Birds wheeled in and out of the black gaps, squealing in the rookery for breakfast, their wings flashing in the warming morning sunlight.

  “I’ll be damned,” Colter said, running his damp sleeve across his mouth, vaguely enjoying the sunlight bathing him. “Never know what you’re gonna run into, do you? Just lucky this canyon wasn’t filled with banditos.”

  As the other one had been. . . .

  He went back into the cave, or apartment, or whatever the hell you’d call it, and felt another swath of chicken flesh rise over him when he raked his eyes across the dead conquistador and his oddly shaped blunderbuss again. He grabbed his soogan and dug around in his saddlebags, pulling out the tin pot he usually boiled beans in. He unrolled his blankets, draped them over a shrub to dry in the sun, then carried the pot down to the arroyo and filled it.