“I’ll have one of the boys scare one up,” Deputy Osgood said.
He was thrilled that Davenport was taking an interest, and not just because the colonel was a millionaire (though that didn’t hurt). This was a big thing being dumped in his lap and he was on the lookout for anybody he could slough off some or all of the responsibility onto.
Osgood went outside and hustled up one of the hangers-on to fetch a carriage.
A number of private carriages for hire plied the streets of Tombstone, cruising for fares. It was part of the bustling, hustling commerce of a twenty-four-hour boomtown.
A short time later, the carriage arrived, a four-seater open cab drawn by a single horse. Stebbins and Markand would escort Linda Gordon to the hotel.
Sam put a hand on Stebbins’s arm, leading him aside. Stebbins frowned, pinched face expressing distaste. He stared down his long, pointed, turnip nose at Sam’s strong copper-colored hand gripping his upper arm.
Sam let go, having no desire to maintain physical contact with Stebbins any longer than necessary.
“What?” Stebbins demanded, his manner that of a man in a hurry too busy to bother with trifles.
“Tell Davenport to put a couple of guards on the girl, men who can take care of themselves and know how to handle a gun,” Sam said. He pitched his voice low so Linda would not overhear, not wishing to further disturb her.
“Is that really necessary?” Stebbins said, his raised eyebrow and sceptical tone implying it was anything but.
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it was. Angus Jones—alias ‘Black Angus,’ alias ‘Al Jensen’—is one of the worst bandit chiefs in the territory. He’s got a gang of killers at his beck and call. His spies and contacts are everywhere, including right here in Tombstone. Linda Gordon’s testimony can put a noose around his neck for the killings at Yellow Snake Canyon, but only if she lives to get to trial,” Sam said.
Sam was a patient man who took the trouble to explain things to others less quick on the uptake. He did not suffer fools gladly, but he suffered them. That’s why he was bothering to explain the facts of life to Stebbins, because a pinch of foresight now might well spare a pound of grief later.
Stebbins was inclined to make light of the possible threat. “Surely the danger to the girl is past, now that she’s safe in town.”
“What makes you think so?” Sam countered.
“Why surely, with all these people around, no one would try to harm her—”
“Who’s going to stop them? Osgood? The rest of the lawmen are chasing the Wells Fargo robbers, and there’s no telling when they’ll be back. Black Angus sent Quirt and Dorado after the girl, two of his best men. He might be anywhere, outside town with the rest of his gang, maybe. You’re new to these parts so you may not appreciate the seriousness of the matter, but I warn you: don’t underestimate Black Angus.”
Stebbins looked eager to be anywhere else than here, having Sam Two Wolves giving him an earful. “I’ll take it under advisement,” he said, fidgeting.
“Don’t take it under advisement—do it,” Sam insisted. “The colonel’s got plenty of bodyguards along, from what I saw at the hotel. It’ll be easy to assign a couple to Linda.
“You’re a bookkeeper, Stebbins, a man who appreciates the importance of the bottom line. Well, here it is: Like you said, the colonel is taking an interest in the girl. Where’ll that leave you if something bad happens to her right under your nose, especially after I’ve warned you to take proper precautions?”
“I see what you mean,” Stebbins said icily. “Everthing will be done to assure Miss Gordon’s safety.”
“I’ll hold you to it, and I mean just that—I’ll hold you to it,” Sam said. “Lord help you if something happens to that girl, because I surely won’t.” He let Stebbins be on his way, satisfied he had hammered some sense into the man’s head.
Stebbins and Markand escorted Linda to the carriage. Harry Woods went with them. He would stay as close to Linda as possible—he knew a big story when he saw it. And right now, he had an exclusive on it. Rival editor John Clum of the pro–big business, anti-Cowboy Tombstone Epitaph newspaper had so far been left out of the running.
The four of them got in the carriage, which set off for the hotel.
Matt Bodine collared an idler loitering outside, a youngster with whom he had a passing acquaintance. He gave him a five-dollar gold piece and sent him off to the nearest saloon to fetch some bottles of whiskey.
Matt, Sam, Osgood, Ringo, Curly Bill, Lee Lindsey, and Don Brown made themselves comfortable around the office.
Curly Bill commandeered the marshal’s chair, the comfortable one, settling himself into it. Osgood scowled, but made no effort to stake his claim to it.
“A hell of a thing,” Lee Lindsey said, “a hell of a thing.” Everyone nodded agreement: It was a hell of a thing.
“I didn’t bring it up when Linda was here,” Don Brown began, “but we sent a couple of riders from the Patch to Yellow Snake Canyon, for a look-see. Pete Green and Nick Fargo. Good men, fast riders. They took a string of extra horses along, in case there were any survivors.”
He shook his head. “Nary a one. They were all stone dead, men and women. Pete said it looked like all hell. Some had been finished off execution-style with a bullet to the head. There was a couple of youngsters, even, boys no more than five years old, with their brains bashed against the rocks. What kind of man kills a five-year-old boy?”
“Men, hell! They’re a pack of mad dogs,” Curly Bill said.
“Black Angus must’ve gone plumb loco,” Lee Lindsey said.
“Not hardly,” Matt Bodine said. “Mean as a poison snake, sure, but not crazy. He and his gang are slave hunters. They wanted young girls to sell and they took them. They killed everybody else. If the boys had been old enough to take care of themselves on the trail, the slavers would’ve kept them along—they could always be sold as field hands or house boys. But kids that young need looking after and Jones couldn’t be bothered.”
“You talk like you know something about the game,” Bill said.
“Sam and I tangled with slave hunters once before,” Matt said.
“Looks like we’ll be tangling with them once again,” Sam said. “You can see how Jones worked it. Slavers are always on the lookout for fresh prey. The wagon train was fresh meat. Maybe spotters put Jones on to them, maybe he had the trail staked out waiting for something like them to come along.
“His gang stole the pilgrims’ horses. Then Jones comes along the next day with the ponies in tow, playing the part of Al Jensen, Good Samaritan. That’s how he ropes them in. He and the woman and Sonny Boy join up with the emigrants. That puts him in position to size up their strengths and weaknesses, find out what kind of firepower they’re packing, who’ll show fight and who won’t.
“At Buckdun Station they meet up with Simmons, accidentally on purpose. Simmons and his two sidemen ride along and that puts five enemy guns in the emigrants’ camp.”
“Six,” Ringo corrected. “The woman Carol is a killer, too. She gunned the Gordon gal’s pa.” He lit a cigar.
“Six,” Sam agreed.
“Sime Simmons has sunk mighty low,” Curly Bill said. “I knew him back in the day. He was always hard and with no give in him, but I never figgered him for no woman-killer or nothing like that.”
Sam went on. “The ambush was set for Yellow Snake Canyon. That’s where Black Angus made the strike. The rest of the Jones gang must’ve been nearby, waiting for his signal. Yellow Snake Canyon is a good place for a massacre. It’s well off the trail. Nobody goes there—it’s full of snakes. The killings might’ve gone undiscovered for a long time and nobody would have known Black Angus was responsible.”
Ringo stood leaning against the wall, puffing his cigar, blowing smoke rings.
“It was pure blind luck that Linda Gordon got away,” Don Brown said.
“Good luck for her and bad luck for Angus Jones,” said Curly Bill.
The boy came in with a bag full of whiskey bottles. “Keep the change,” Matt told him. The boy said thanks and went out. A bottle was opened and drinks were poured. There weren’t enough glasses and tin cups for all, so some drank straight from the bottle, passing it around. It emptied fast and another was opened.
Ringo amused himself between drinks by blowing smoke rings at Osgood when he wasn’t looking.
“Where’ll they sell the girls?” Lee Lindsey wondered.
“Not in the territory,” Osgood said definitely, stating it as fact. “No house or crib, no matter how low, would take the risk. It’s a hanging offense, sure. Can’t keep something like that secret, for somebody’d be bound to talk. The whoremongers would never reach trial—they’d be lynched outright. Nobody in these parts would stand for something that raw!”
“It won’t be in these parts,” Sam said. “Slavery may not be legal in Mexico, but it’s alive and well and that’s a fact. The border is near. Jones’ll take them south to be sold into some Mexico City bordello or to a rich padrón on a rancho deep in the interior.”
“Makes sense,” Osgood said, nodding.
“That’s where we’ll find them,” Sam said.
“And we will find them,” Matt seconded.
“That’s mighty tall talk,” Osgood said doubtfully, “a tall order.”
“It can be done,” Matt said. “Black Angus can be found; he’ll leave a trail. About a dozen slavers and how many girls—?”
“Seven,” Don Brown said. “We’ve got a list of their names and descriptions from what Linda told us.”
“All that killing for seven girls,” Lee Lindsey marveled.
“They’ll fetch a high price. Seven girls, and maybe a few more they picked up along the way. Them and the slavers—they’ll leave a trail, all right,” Matt said.
“If they leave a trail, I can pick it up,” Sam said flatly.
“We know they set out from Yellow Snake Canyon,” Matt went on. “Linda Gordon survived to tell the tale and put a name on the slavers. That’ll set them running, no shilly-shallying around. They’ll make a beeline for Mexico. There’s only a few places where they can cross the border with captive girls in tow and wherever they cross they’re sure to be noticed. If we hurry, we can pick up their trail and catch up to them before they sell the girls off—maybe.”
“Jones may make another try for Linda,” Sam warned. “Not himself, he’s too well known to show his face in Tombstone. But there’s plenty in his gang who’d do the job.”
Osgood took notice. He looked disturbed, agitated. “You reckon?”
“One person and only one can put Black Angus in Yellow Snake Canyon and that’s Linda Gordon. Without her to point the finger, there’s no case. Jones is not the man to leave any loose ends,” Sam said.
“Hell, he’s already wanted throughout the territory for robbery and murder and a list of crimes as long as both your arms. Why would he bother about this one?”
“You said it yourself, Deputy: This is mighty raw, even for an outlaw or murderer like Black Angus. Killing women and children and selling young girls into whoredom is the sort of thing that sets a fellow an appointment with Judge Lynch. If Jones is ever taken alive, there’s always a chance that his gang’ll bust him out of jail or his lawyers will win an acquittal. But not if he’s taken out of jail at night by a citizens’ uplift committee to be hanged by the neck from a sour apple tree.”
“Huh!”
Ringo blew another smoke ring at the deputy. Osgood turned his head in time to catch the smoke ring full in the face. It broke apart, getting in his eyes. “Now cut that out, Ringo, dern you!” Osgood said, rubbing his eyes to clear them.
Ringo smiled. “I don’t know about playing white knight or Sir Galahad. But Bob Farr was a friend of mine. If I’ve got to go through Angus Jones and the rest of them to get to Dorado and Quirt, why then, so be it.”
“That goes double for me,” Curly Bill said.
“Saving the girls has got to be our top priority,” Sam said.
Ringo showed a quirked smile that was unreadable. It might have signalled agreement, disagreement, or that he was thinking about some altogether different matter.
It might have meant many things or nothing.
“Time is all important,” Matt said. “Best to strike while the captive girls are all bunched together. Once they’re sold off and separated, we’ll have seven trails to follow, instead of one.”
“I’d surely like to go with you boys, but I can’t,” Osgood hedged.
“Nobody’s asking you to.”
“Right now I’m the only law in Tombstone.”
Ringo drew his gun, holding it up in plain sight. “Here’s the only law I need,” he said.
“We don’t need no tin star to give us his blessing. We can handle it ourselves,” Curly Bill said.
“Plenty of tough hombres in town, enough to form a posse to get after Black Angus,” said Matt.
“Now don’t take it like that, fellows,” Osgood protested. “I got responsibilities, I can’t just light out—”
“Why don’t you go to Yellow Snake Canyon? You ought to feel right at home there, with all them other yellow snakes,” Bill cracked. Ringo blew another smoke ring at the assistant deputy.
“Mexico’s a big country,” Osgood argued. “Once them slavers cross the border, who knows where they’ll be?”
“I know,” a voice said, a voice unheard from till now in the conversation.
It came from behind the office, from the first cell to the right of the center aisle—
The voice of Gila Chacon. He stood pressed against the near wall of his cage, facing the office, his hands at shoulder height, each gripping a vertical iron bar.
“Shut your mouth, Mex!” Osgood shouted, red faced, blustering. To the others he said, “He don’t know nothing. He’s talking big, trying to get hisself off the hook—”
“I wonder,” Sam said thoughtfully. Something in the bandit’s tone had rung with a note of conviction, of simple truth.
It must have struck Matt the same way. “Let him talk. It won’t hurt to listen,” he said.
He crossed to the rear of the office, where he could see Gila Chacon better. “What is it you know, or think you know?”
“I know where Dorado is going,” Gila said.
That got Ringo’s attention. He pushed off with his shoulders from the wall where he’d been leaning, to turn and face the bandit. “Where?”
Gila smiled slowly, showing a mouthful of yellowed teeth in a wide Cheshire Cat grin. “What is in it for me?” he asked.
Curly Bill took that wrong, nostrils flaring, neck swelling. “You go to the hangman with all your teeth and no bones broken.”
“It takes more than that to frighten Gila Chacon,” the bandit said, his grin undiminished.
“Pshaw!” Deputy Osgood made a dismissive gesture, scoffing. “He’s just talking, running his mouth in hopes of saving his worthless hide. He’s got nothing!”
Gila shrugged. “In a matter of such importance I would think that you would at least try to find out if my words are true . . . which they are, I assure you.”
“Prove it,” Curly Bill said. Ringo stood silent, listening attentively.
“I could not help but overhear the tragic tale of the so-unfortunate señorita Linda.”
Gila pronounced it “Leen-dah.” “She spoke of the woman who called herself ‘Carol,’ who has a scar like a zee running down the side of her face,” Gila said, his index finger tracing a zigzag course caressingly along his left cheek.
“So?” Bill said.
“That scar—I put it there. Do not think ill of me for it, señores. She was trying to kill me at the time.”
“I’m listening,” Matt said, prompting him to continue.
“Her name is not Carol. It is Carmen—Carmen Oliva. She is the
half-sister of the Golden Man, El Dorado,” Gila said.
“Now I’m listening,” Ringo breathed, moving closer.
“They have the same mother, Carmen and Dorado—a whore—and different fathers. Both bastards. They have the same color hair, reddish-brown, like old dried blood. A color which suits them.”
Sam turned to Lee Lindsey and Don Brown. “What color hair did Carol have? Did Linda say?”
Lindsey shrugged. Don Brown said, “If she did, I didn’t catch it.”
“Ask her,” Gila said. “Women, girls, they notice such things. It is important to them. Ask her, she will tell you it is so.”
“We will if it’s needful,” Sam said. “Say Carol is Carmen Oliva, Dorado’s sister. What of it?”
“There is more. You, señor, the man with the honest face,” Gila said, speaking to Matt. “We spoke earlier today. I told you of my home of Pago, in Sonora.”
“That’s right, you did,” Matt said.
“Carmen, Dorado, and I all come from Pago. We grew up together. Once we were all great friends. With Carmen and I, it was more than friendship. She was my woman—my wife.
“I spoke, too, of my enemy in Pago, who sent pistoleros to kill me—which is why I am in this stinking jail. Don Carlos is his name—Don Carlos de la Vega. He is a big man, the master of Pago. The padrón. A rich man. Carmen preferred him to me. She betrayed me. They tried to kill me.
“I escaped, but not before my knife marked Carmen with the scar. Don Carlos did not want her after that. She was very unhappy, but she got over it. She is a great whore, is Carmen. She has been with many men. She met her match in the outlaw Jones—Black Angus, you call him. Now they are lovers.
“How did Don Carlos get rich? I will tell you, señores. He is a slave trader, the biggest in Sonora if not all Mexico. His men search the land for fresh young girls. Virgins, innocent, untasted. Stolen away from their families, never to be seen by them again.
“Jones and Carmen—and Dorado—they are slave hunters for Don Carlos. They take the captive girls to the great slave market at Pago, to be sold at auction at the opera house. It has a name: ‘La Casa de las Lloronas,’ the House of Crying Women. It is where the Apaches, the bandidos, and the gringo slave hunters bring their captive women and girls for to sell.
Blood Bond 16: A Hundred Ways to Die Page 12