Mickey nodded. “Yep.” He was used to being recognized. After all, there weren’t all that many men around who fit his description.
Hawk looked up at the mention of the name Free. “I didn’t know you was in the area. Last I heared you was doggin’ Cochise’s tail.”
Mickey yawned, as if what Hawk had heard was of no interest to him whatsoever. “Nope. That business’s all finished now.”
“Just who are you men?” Jones asked, irritated to be left out of the conversation.
“I’m John Henry Hawkins, but mostly I go by Hawk. This is Jasper Meeks.”
Jones narrowed his eyes. “You the same Meeks who tried to take that wagon train through Indian country?”
Meeks face blushed a bright red. “Yeah, but it weren’t my idea to go that way. The wagonmaster overruled my advice, an’ they paid the price for ignorin’ what I had to say.”
Jones shook his head. “They certainly did. Now, what are you men doing up here during an Indian war?”
“We had business up here,” Hawk answered.
“What business is that, Mr. Hawk?”
“Revenge. Them murderin’ redskins kilt my kin . . . butchered ’em like they was nothin’. I aim to kill a few Injuns for every one of my kin they slaughtered.”
Jones cut his gaze to Meeks.
“What about you, Mr. Meeks?”
Meeks shrugged. “As you know, I suddenly found myself out of a job, an’ I had nothin’ better to do, so I decided to mosey around up here in the Dragoons for a spell.”
“You after revenge, too?” Mickey asked.
Meeks gave a nasty smile. “Well, if any Injuns happen to cross my path, I don’t intend to turn the other cheek after what they did to my wagon train.”
Jones sat back against the cantle of his saddle. “Don’t you men know it’s the army’s place to get the Indians back on the reservation?”
Hawk stared at Jones as he took a plug of tobacco and sliced off a piece. He popped it in his mouth and began to chew as he answered, “Yeah, Captain, an’ we can all see you’re doin’ a damn good job of it, too.”
“From what we heard in Tombstone the other day,” Meeks added, “all you blue-bellies have managed to do so far is give the Indians a bunch of repeatin’ rifles and some targets to shoot at with ’em.”
“Word is,” Hawk said, a malicious grin on his face, “casualties are running ’bout fifty to one, against you. At that rate, there’ll only be one or two soldiers left when you finally kill all the redskins.”
Mickey Free chuckled loudly, muttering under his breath, “You got that right.”
“Enough of this talk,” Jones barked. “Will you show us where Naiche’s camp is?”
“You plannin’ on just ridin’ up the trail an’ attackin’ his people?” Hawk asked.
“Is there anything wrong with that plan, Mr. Hawk?”
Hawk snorted, glancing at Mickey Free. “Well, right off, I think it’d be a mite smarter to send your scout up there with me and Meeks an’ let us take care of the sentries first. Otherwise, by the time you get to ’em, they’ll be all dug in an’ you’ll have a hell of a time rootin’ ’em out.
“He’s right, Captain. I’ll head on up to the camp with these two and scout out the lay of the land. After we’ve killed the guards, we’ll come back and get you.”
Jones nodded and spoke over his shoulder to his aide, “Tell the men to dismount. We’ll prepare lunch here while Mr. Free scouts on ahead.”
* * *
As they rode up the trail, Hawk looked at Free. “Mickey, tell me the truth. How do you stand workin’ for idiots like that captain back there?”
Mickey laughed. “Well, I’ll tell you, my friend, it ain’t always easy.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “But it’s the surest way I know to kill me some Apaches.”
“You hate ’em that bad?” Meeks asked.
Mickey’s face clouded. “As long as there’s even one of those bastards walkin’ around free, I’ll be volunteerin’ to go get his scalp.”
Hawk reined in his horse. “We’d better walk the rest of the way. It’s only another mile or so.”
The three men separated and spent an hour painstakingly creeping up on the ledge overlooking Deer Spring Canyon. Finally, after discovering there were no sentries stationed around the canyon, they met up on the precipice.
“Damn,” Hawk said, “looks like they’ve flown the coop.”
Down in the valley, cooking fires were still smoldering, lazy trails of smoke spiraling skyward.
Mickey stroked his beard-stubbled face. “Well, I guess if it comes to it, I can go down there and track the sons of bitches to wherever they’ve gone.”
“Hold on a minute,” Meeks said.
Hawk and Mickey turned and glanced at the trailsman. He was facing away from them toward the southernmost part of the mountains.
“Look down there,” he said, pointing.
Mickey shaded his eyes, then said, “I was wonderin’ where MacCallister was. It’d be my guess that’s a signal from him that the Injuns have taken out across the desert.”
Hawk grinned. “Leave it to Falcon to send the army smoke signals tellin’ ’em where to find Injuns.”
Mickey started off back down the mountain toward their horses at a trot. “Come on, boys. Let’s go get ’em.”
Chapter 38
Falcon awoke with a start, covered with sweat that was fast becoming frigid as the late afternoon temperature dropped.
Stepping over to Diablo, he poured some water from his canteen onto his bandanna and wiped his face, trying to come fully awake. He glanced at the sun lying low on the horizon and realized he’d slept longer than he wanted to. Naiche and his band of renegades now had a good four hour start on him.
“Time to shag our tails, Diablo,” he said, swinging into the saddle. As he put the spurs to the stud and leaned over his neck, he added, “I can’t believe you let me sleep so long, fellah.”
He could barely make out the tracks in the coarse desert sand in the failing sunlight, and occasionally had to get down off Diablo and cast around in a semicircle until he picked up the trail again.
Soon, he found himself thinking of Billy Bonney, and the adventures they’d had in New Mexico. He didn’t recall his dream, so he couldn’t figure out why Billy was on his mind, but with nothing else much to think about as he rode across the barren landscape, he let his mind roam back to those days.
Remembering his chance meeting with Billy the Kid, Falcon recalled some of the men he’d come to know during those troubles being heralded as the Lincoln County War . . . he’d spilled a lot of blood on behalf of John Chisum during that affair. Chisum lost a great many good friends and neighbors to hired killers, both red men and white, from Santa Fe. Falcon found himself without options he could live with, for he wasn’t made to sit idly and watch a one-sided fight with a good man like Chisum on the short end of things....
* * *
When Falcon approached his cabin, after leaving John Chisum’s South Spring Ranch, he saw three horses in his corral, eating hay and making themselves at home.
He eased off Diablo, and walked to the back of the cabin, stepping on his toes so as not to make any sounds. He doubted if his company was hostile—otherwise they wouldn’t have left their horses in plain view—but he hadn’t lived this long without being careful.
He filled his right hand with iron, pulled the back door open with his left hand, and stepped inside, immediately moving to the side with his back against a wall so he wouldn’t be silhouetted against the open door.
One of the three men sitting at his table looked up, then turned to the others. “See, I told you he’d come loaded for bear.”
Seeing the men sitting there, drinking coffee with their hands in plain sight on the table, Falcon relaxed and holstered his pistol.
The men’s faces were vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place their names.
“Good evening, gentlemen. Mind if I join you in tha
t coffee?”
“No, go right ahead,” a tall, lanky man said. “We boiled plenty, an’ it’s good and strong.”
Falcon poured himself a cup, tasted it, then added a little water with a dipper from the pail on his counter.
“Whew,” he said, “this stuff’s strong enough to float a horseshoe.”
A second man, broad through the middle with a beard and moustache, said, “Sorry ‘bout that. We been on the trail a good ways an’ we needed something to keep us awake ’til you got here.”
Falcon leaned back against the kitchen counter, his feet crossed at the ankles, sipped his coffee, and watched the men, waiting for them to explain who they were and why they were at his cabin in the middle of the night.
The tall, thin man built himself a cigarette, struck a lucifer on the heel of his boot and lighted it. Then he leaned back, coffee in one hand and butt in the other.
“Falcon, my name’s Josiah G. Scurlock, but everybody just calls me Doc.” He inclined his head toward his companions, “This here is Henry Brown and John Middleton.”
Falcon nodded. Now he remembered. These men had been among the first group to join together and call themselves the Regulators.
“Howdy, boys. To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the last of the Regulators?”
Scurlock smiled. Evidently he was to be the spokesman for the group.
“We hear you were a good friend to the Kid, always there when he needed you, an’ we also hear rumors it was you who took out Jesse Evans and a couple of his boys.”
Falcon smiled and sipped his coffee, watching the men over the rim of his cup. He wondered where this was leading.
When Falcon didn’t answer, Scurlock continued.
“When John Tunstall was killed, a group of friends and former employees of his joined together, to avenge his death.”
He took a deep drag on his cigarette, then tipped smoke out of his nostrils as he talked. “When we all—Bob Wid-enmann, Dick Brewer, Charley Bowdre, Fred Waite, and the Kid—joined up, Falcon, we took a blood oath. We swore an oath to remain loyal to each other no matter what happened, and to make sure whoever killed John was punished.”
Falcon began to see where this was heading, but he nodded and listened.
“Now, we ain’t exactly proud of what we done back when things were getting hot and heavy. When the Kid got indicted for killin’ Sheriff Billy Brady I was in Kansas, and both Middleton and Brown here were out of town, also.”
Falcon stepped over to the stove and refilled his coffee mug, not adding water this time. He realized this was going to take a while, and he was bone-tired from a long day.
“Go on,” he said, taking out a cigar and lighting it.
“Well, by the time I heard the news ’bout Kid’s arrest he was already out of jail and on the run, so I didn’t figure I needed to come back here and tell the truth.” He looked down at his hands, folded on the table. “Falcon, it was me who put those slugs in Brady, not the Kid.”
Falcon stared at Scurlock. So the Kid was telling the truth when he told me he didn’t kill Brady, he thought.
“Now, don’t get me wrong. All of us, the Kid included, did plenty of things we could’a gone to jail for, but we was acting as deputies, duly sworn and appointed.”
“Cut to the chase,” Brown said, looking as tired as Falcon felt. He looked over at Falcon, “What Doc is tryin’ to say in his typical long-winded way, is that we’re all feelin’ mighty guilty that we took an oath to stick together, and then when the going got rough, we lit out and left the Kid to do our work, an’ he got himself killed for it.”
Falcon kept his mouth shut. No matter how good friends these were of the Kid’s, too many people already knew he was alive. He wasn’t about to tell anyone else the truth.
John Middleton nodded, his knuckles white where he was gripping his tin mug. “Yeah, so now we’re back and we want to finish what we started, and make those that killed Tunstall, and the Kid, pay.”
Falcon, his legs and butt aching from too many hours in the saddle, joined them at the table.
“And just how do you boys intend to do that?”
Scurlock crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “We’re gonna kill Dolan an’ the hired killers he’s got with him.”
Falcon shook his head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not?” Brown said.
“First off, he’s too well-connected, and too well-protected. If you did manage to kill him, his friends in Santa Fe and the army would never stop until all you men were hunted down and killed, or hanged.”
“We’re willin’ to take our chances,” Middleton said. “We owe it to the Kid, and the others who got killed tryin’ to do what we all promised to do.”
Falcon wagged his head again. “No. I think there’s a better way.”
“What’s that?” Scurlock asked.
“Why not go after the men who did Dolan’s dirty work for him? The Seven Rivers gang and the Dona Ana bunch, led by John Kinney.”
Scurlock nodded, thinking on it.
“Those men are all known outlaws, and no one would mind overly much if you took them out. You could hit fast and hard, and get away clean, and you wouldn’t have John Law on your trail for the rest of your lives.”
“Would that hurt Dolan?”
“In the worst way. He’d no longer have them to do his bidding, and he’d lose all the cattle these men have been stealing to fulfill his government contract to supply beef to the Mescaleros. It would cripple his operations here in Lincoln County.”
The three men looked at each other for a moment. Then Scurlock turned to Falcon. “Would you be willin’ to ride with us?”
Falcon pursed his lips, then sighed. “I don’t usually join causes, but in this case I might make an exception. These gangs have been riding roughshod over the entire county, and it’s time someone took them down.”
“How will we go about it?” Brown asked.
Falcon leaned forward, “I’ve got a plan. Here’s what we’ll do ...”
* * *
The next evening, just before sunset, Falcon and the other three were on a ridge overlooking an area near Mesilla where the Seven Rivers gang were camped. There were close to two hundred head of stolen cattle the gang was preparing to drive to Santa Fe to sell to the government for Dolan. Falcon put his binoculars down and looked at the other men. “I count about twenty men. That makes it about four to one against us. You boys ready?”
Scurlock pulled his pistol out, opened the loading gate, and spun the cylinder, checking his loads. “Ready,” he said.
The men climbed on their horses. “We’ll ride in fast and hard, out of the west so’s the sun’ll be at our backs,” Falcon said.
He wrapped Diablo’s reins around his saddle horn, pulled his Winchester .44/.40 carbine out of his saddle boot and levered a round into the chamber, and loosened the hammer thong on his Colt sidearm.
Henry Brown put his reins in his teeth and pulled a Greener 10 gauge short-barreled shotgun from his saddle boot, filling his pockets with extra shells.
John Middleton filled both his hands with pistols, and stuck a third in the front of his pants, behind his belt for quick access.
They were ready to ride.
Scurlock looked at the others. “For the Kid,” he said.
Falcon smiled and nodded. “And for all the other men these bastards have killed.”
They leaned forward in their saddles and spurred their mounts, bounding over the ridge to ride out of the sun straight into the outlaws’ camp.
As the four horses raced down the hill, several men in the camp, sitting around the fire drinking coffee and whiskey, looked up.
John Beckwith, the leader, said, “What the hell?”
Wallace Olinger, the brother of the man Kid shotgunned to death in his escape from jail, dropped his coffee cup and grabbed for his rifle, which was leaning against a nearby tree.
Falcon, pistol in his left hand and ri
fle in his right, raised the carbine to his shoulder and fired. His first shot took Billy Matthews in the left shoulder, spinning him around and knocking his pistol from his hand.
Brown veered his horse to the left and fired his Greener from the hip, the 00-buckshot loads tore into Matthews’s chest, ripping it open and blowing his lungs to pieces, catapulting his body into the campfire, where it lay smoldering.
Scurlock rode toward Olinger, who began to fire his rifle as fast as he could lever the shells into the chamber. His second shot hit Scurlock in the side, cutting a shallow grove through his flank.
Scurlock didn’t flinch at the burning in his side but took aim and thumbed back the hammer on his Colt Army .44. He fired once, missing, and then again, this time hitting Wally Olinger in the chest.
Olinger staggered back, but continued to fire until a bullet from Falcon tore through his lower jaw, shattering it and sending teeth and blood flying. Olinger fell to the dirt, mortally wounded. He lay moaning and trying to scream for help, but only managing a garbled gurgling through his ruined mouth.
Brown twisted in the saddle and fired his second barrel at a man running toward his horse. The molten lead buckshot hit John Beckwith just below his buttocks, tearing his left leg off at the thigh and shredding his right leg down to the bone. He sprawled, screaming in pain onto his face, to be trampled as Brown’s horse ran right over his writhing body.
Two more men, trying to climb aboard bucking, dancing horses, were cut down by Falcon as he rode past, his .44.40 slugs hitting one mid-center in the back, and the other in the neck.
Scurlock saw John Long—the man who had set fire to McSween’s house and fired into him as he was trying to surrender—jump on a horse and ride away, shooting back over his shoulder with a pistol.
Scurlock gave chase, firing his Colt Army until it was empty. Unable to reload with his mount galloping at full speed, Scurlock rode up next to Long and pulled a Bowie knife out of his belt. As he pulled his horse right up against Long’s, he slashed out backhanded with the razor-sharp blade, cutting a long gash in the side of Long’s neck.
Long grabbed his neck with both hands, blood spurting from between his fingers, and finally fell to the ground, his eyes wide, foamy blood running from his mouth and nose.
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