by Ben Boulden
A man crouched down, retrieved the Colt, then straightened, Kate’s .44 in his left hand. He leered. His coal black eyes hungry with lust. A cruel smile on his face. “This is going to be fun.”
Kate recognized the man in an instant. He was the red-headed devil she had pistol-whipped in Small Basin. The man with the insufferable breath that his involuntary nap had done little to improve. Thomas Smith.
He removed his foot from Kate’s hand, took a single step back, opened his mouth to speak. Before he uttered a word his face disintegrated. It splattered against the sandstone wall, meaty red and gray chunks at its center, a soft misty pattern at its edges. As if it were paint blown through a stock of rye grass.
Kate deftly rolled away from the falling man. Pain flared in her left shoulder as she pushed herself to her knees and then her feet. She retrieved the Colt from the dead man’s hand, hunkered down next to the rock fall and scanned the cavern for more threats. She saw only Father Pacheco, Winchester held tightly to his shoulder, moving deliberately towards her. The rifle’s barrel swinging between the tunnel’s entrance and the dead man’s prostrate body.
Kate stood. The Colt still clutched in her hand. “Thank you, Joseph. I thought I was dead.”
The priest smiled at his name. Lowered the Winchester. “I guess that puts us on first name terms, now. Doesn’t it Kate?” His voice an octave higher than normal from the stress of the shooting. A slight tremor in his hands.
Kate looked around the cavern again. With no visible threats she replaced the Colt in its holster. Then she studied the bullet wound in her shoulder; shirt torn, its edges blackened, and directly beneath a livid red slash scarred the flesh. It was surprisingly bloodless. A burn rather than a puncture. She gently touched it with a fingertip. She laughed. “I thought I was all but dead, and this” — she pointed to the wound — “this is all I have to show for it.”
“You’re damn lucky, Kate,” said Father Pacheco.
Kate grimaced. She walked around the dead man, careful not to step in the blood-caked sand around his head and shoulders. A small, nearly bloodless hole pierced the cranium of his skull. It was expert shooting, Kate thought, made even more impressive because the shot was taken in the heat of battle.
“I didn’t know they taught priests to shoot like that,” Kate said.
“I wasn’t always a priest.”
Kate looked at Father Pacheco, her best man-catcher smile on her face. “Well, preacher. It sounds like you have a story.”
Father Pacheco returned her smile, handed Kate the Winchester. “We all have a story. But mine is for another time, I think.”
“Another time, then.” Kate looked at the horses, still in the copse of trees, said, “Where’s Beth?”
“I sent her farther down the cave—” Father Pacheco stopped abruptly as Beth’s thin frame appeared out of a shadow at the back of the cavern. “Well. It looks like she ignored me.”
Kate smiled again. “No harm done.” She wanted to laugh, but didn’t. She knew it was a giddy reaction to the gunfight. A reaction that, if she let it out, might turn into a mild, if short-lived, hysteria. And Kate needed her wits because J.D. was depending on her. Instead she focused on Beth. “Are you hurt?”
Beth shook her head. As she walked nearer, Kate could see wetness around her eyes and on her cheeks. She had been crying.
Kate walked to Beth, put her arms around the girl in a hug. “It’s over now.”
Beth’s body shuddered with fear. Tears ran freely down her face. Kate held her tight, cooed gently in her ear. After several minutes the worst of Beth’s fear subsided. Her shakes faded.
“What happens now?” Beth asked.
Kate let go of the girl, wiped the wetness away from each eye. “You’re going to stay here. Father Pacheco and I are going to leave for a few hours.”
Panic rose in the girl’s eyes. “Alone?”
Kate nodded. “It’s safe. I promise.”
“I—” Beth stuttered. “I—I can’t.”
“Sure you can,” Kate said. “No one knows you’re here. And we’ll only be gone for a few hours.”
Beth looked at Thomas Smith’s dead form. “What about—”
“He’s alone,” Kate said.
“She makes a good point,” Father Pacheco said. “We should take a look around before we leave.”
Kate nodded. “Yes. We should.”
Beth smiled tentatively. “Where should I wait?”
“Anywhere you want,” Kate said. “You can stay by the water, or with the horses. Wherever you’re the most comfortable.”
“Okay.” Beth’s voice was small, childlike.
Kate and Father Pacheco watched as the girl walked to the pool of water, kneeled down and brought a handful to her mouth.
“Okay, padre,” Kate said. “Let’s take a look around and then go find Reed.”
CHAPTER 21
Kate came down the canyon alone. Father Pacheco waited more than half a mile back. He thought Reed would speak more freely if Kate were alone. She didn’t see the structure at first because it was huddled in a narrow alcove more than ten feet above the canyon floor. It was built with brick-like sandstone rocks, dried red mud as its mortar. Its foundation and walls clung to the living rock. Old construction. An Indian dwelling abandoned long ago and recently reassembled. Kate spent several minutes scouting the area before she found the wooden ladder attached to the wall below the structure, hidden in a copse of low slung desert brush, painted dusty red to match the rock. It vanished into the shadows of a narrow entrance built in the overhanging floor of the cliff dwelling.
Kate stood at the ladder’s base for a few moments and looked at the shadowy entrance of the dwelling. She wanted to ascend and peer inside, but she knew entering an unknown and enclosed space would be dangerous. She moved away from the dwelling’s entrance and quietly explored the area, studied the rocky alcove. She noticed a handful of smaller structures in varying sizes and states of decay. The largest, five feet wide and four feet high was freshly mortared with straight walls and a small inset wood door at the roofline. The remaining were scattered ruins. Their roofs, once built from juniper, were rotted away and the mortar had long since disappeared, leaving only disheveled stacks of flat rocks.
A mild wet odor surprised Kate, but it shouldn’t, she thought, since the healthy green brush clawing at the edge of rock and soil required water to survive. She noticed a wet track running the height of the rock face. Its leisurely path followed a shallow rock trench from the back of the alcove to a muddy patch of sandy soil on the canyon floor. It was just as Father Pacheco had described it. The alcove. The refurbished ruins. But Kate hadn’t expected the uncomfortable feeling that she was trespassing on another’s land and she wondered how someone could possibly live in this quiet, sheltered, haunted place. A graveyard of the ancients’ spent dreams.
Kate stood in the afternoon shadows of the cliff wall, ignored her unease. She concentrated on the terrain. The alcove. The buildings. She listened for unexpected sounds, watched for signs of movement. When none came Kate said in a hushed voice, “Mr. Reed?”
The familiar metallic click of a rifle being cocked echoed across the canyon. Kate dropped to the ground, pulled the Colt from its holster in a single smooth motion. She scanned the landscape for rifle and shooter, but saw only stone and shadow. She listened, not daring to move, but heard nothing except the pounding blood in her own ears.
Silently, she counted to ten.
When nothing more happened, Kate said, “I mean you no harm.”
“Who are you?” A man’s voice echoed against the uninsulated walls of the canyon, making it impossible for Kate to locate its source. A moment later, a whisper of movement drew Kate’s attention to the back of the alcove—yards from the house—where an inky blackness hid its depth. The barrel of the heavy Colt followed Kate’s eyes. She scanned the darkness, but saw nothing.
“My name’s Kate Blaze,” she said. “I’ve come to speak with Mr. Reed abou
t a shared concern.” Kate studied the rear of the alcove; willed the man to show himself.
“And that would be?”
“Am I speaking to Mr. Reed?”
“Who the hell else would it be?” A stout and scruffily unshaven man limped from the shadows of the alcove, distinctly favoring his left leg. He wore a dirty brown felt hat cockeyed across his brow. A worn-out lever action rifle firmly against his shoulder. He stood a few feet from the edge, looked down at Kate. “An unexpected pleasure to find a woman of your caliber at my door. You married, Miss Blaze?”
“Yes.” Kate jumped to her feet, held the Colt, the black abyss of its large barrel away from Reed.
“Damn,” Reed said. “Is it serious? Or are you still, just a little bit, on the market?”
Kate smiled. “Well”—her eyes taking in the strangeness of the place—“maybe, but I’d need more incentive than an old man and a stone house resurrected in the cliffs to test that market.”
“Hmmm.” A growl more than anything. “If you’re not here to shake my bones, what the hell do you want?”
“Levi Skousen.”
Reed grimaced, spat. He looked at the sky then back at Kate. “Why’d you ruin such a beautiful day with that foul name? You his latest wife?”
“No,” Kate said. “That wouldn’t work out. I like myself too much to spend more than a few seconds with a man like Skousen. Maybe four or five if I was shooting him.”
“Good,” Reed said. “He deserves to be shot.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Hold on while I come down.” Reed disappeared into the shadows at the rear of the alcove. Kate heard a murmur of voices inside the stone house and a few seconds later a pair of feet appeared on the ladder followed by Reed’s frumpy form. He moved surprisingly fast for an old man and his limp had mostly disappeared. When he came to a stop a few feet from Kate he looked like a little boy about to bounce out of his skin with excitement.
“So, what’s this about shooting Skousen?”
Kate smiled demurely. “Levi Skousen has my husband and a friend locked away on his ranch and I need a way in.”
“I reckon the front gate won’t do?”
Kate nodded.
“Who’s your husband?”
“J.D. Blaze.”
“Never heard of him,” Reed said. “Why does Levi have him?”
“It’s a long story. Involving a young woman from Lugar Bonito.”
Reed growled with a whiskey-stained laugh, an incongruity to Kate since J.D. had told her liquor was sinful to Mormons. “Let me guess. That Fernandez girl? She’s just his type.”
“His type?”
“Yep.” Reed danced from foot to foot. “Just his type. Young. Beautiful. And most important, vulnerable. Course, I guess that’s my type, too.” He laughed again.
Kate thought about Father Pacheco’s story of the young girl Reed and Skousen had fought over. How both she and her mother were dead because two dirty old men couldn’t get enough. And now, Reed’s cavalier behavior about Adalina. The Colt still in her hand, she had the bad idea of shooting him and finding entrance to Skousen’s place another way, but she thought about J.D. and eased away from the idea.
“But I guess Senorita Fernandez ain’t as vulnerable,” Reed continued without noticing Kate’s momentary anger, “as Brother Skousen reckoned since someone has the iron to go in after her.”
Kate put a hand on Reed’s shoulder, hiding the disdain from her face, hoping the contact would settle him. “Is there another way to get into Skousen’s place?”
Reed looked at her hand, then back at her face. “There is, but it won’t do a pretty thing like you any good.”
Kate said, “You would be surprised. Can you tell me how to find it?”
“It’s your funeral. But I can do better than tell you about it.” Reed turned back towards the cliff house, cupped his hands to his mouth. “Jed! Come on down. There’s someone here who wants to see you.”
Kate held her silence. She watched as the old man stumbled back towards the ladder, anxious for his guest to appear.
“You coming, boy?”
“I don’t want to come out, Brother Reed!”
“There’s no need for being scared,” Reed said. “She wants the same thing as you!”
Reed stood at the foot of the ladder. A smile flickered on his face as a pair of hard-ridden leather boots appeared and were then followed by a young man in torn clothing. He descended the ladder stiffly. On the ground he turned toward Kate to reveal a bruised and bloody face. He was the young man from town. The one beaten so harshly by Jackson Rockwell.
Kate winked at him. In her lightest voice said, “I’ve seen you before.”
He looked at Kate doubtfully. “I don’t think I know you, do I?”
“I saw you back in town earlier today,” Kate said. “You sure can take a beating.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy said. “I suppose everyone in Small Basin saw that.”
“What was it about?” Kate asked.
“Nothing,” the boy said.
“Damn, Jed,” Reed said. “We all want the same thing here!” Then, speaking to Kate, “His daddy kicked him out of town a year ago because he was flirting with a girl. Same damn thing that happened to me, ’cept Jed here is Levi’s own flesh.”
Kate jerked in surprise. He was younger than she thought he would be and not a typical looking outlaw. “You’re Jed Skousen?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And your father pushed you out of Small Basin?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“Beth Jensen,” Jed said.
“Beth Jensen?” Kate stood silent for a moment, thinking about the implications. “You and Beth?”
Jed Skousen gulped, then nodded. He looked like a little boy after his first fight. His face puffy, turning purple, lips split, a sad whipped-puppy look in his eyes. He was hatless, his hair matted at the back of his head. His shirt torn under the arms and around the neck. His pants ripped at the knees.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“They been like honey and bees since they were five years old,” Reed put an arm around Jed’s shoulder. “I always thought it was cute how they culled to each other.”
Kate looked at Reed standing like an old bull next to Jed. His feet spread wide, an arm around Jed’s shoulders. His frumpy dirt- and sweat-stained clothing, filthy unshaven face, arrogant demeanor out of place in this tranquil oasis. She decided his presence was unsavory and acted as a mockery to its original inhabitants.
“I can take you to Beth,” Kate said to Jed. “But you need to tell me how I can get into your father’s ranch.”
Jed stepped away from Reed, looked straight at Kate. “Beth?”
Kate nodded. “Beth.”
“I’ll do better than tell you. I’ll show you.”
“Good,” Kate said.
CHAPTER 22
Brother Skousen leaned close to J.D. His breath as sour as his face. Rockwell stood back several feet, leaned against a thick beam that rose all the way to the barn’s rafters.
“Well?” Skousen said.
J.D. shook his head. Scowled. “You asking where Kate is?”
Skousen nodded.
Rockwell shifted his weight and the beam creaked disconcertingly in response.
“We’ve already talked about this one,” J.D. said. “And I would tell you. Honestly I would. If I knew, but I don’t know. Kate can be…” J.D. thought about it for a moment before settling on a word Kate would love, “spontaneous.”
Skousen straightened and spoke to Rockwell over his shoulder. “I reckon it’s getting closer to your turn, Jack.”
“Now wait a minute!” J.D. said, playing his best scared act. “I’ll tell you what I know. Or at least what I think. When I whipped Rockwell’s candy ass—”
Rockwell moved away from the beam. His left eye twitched. A vein throbbed in his temple. He flexed his ri
ght hand near the butt of his holstered six gun, took two bitter steps towards J.D., red hate in his eyes. His mouth an unmoving gash on his face.
“Stand back,” Skousen said. “Can’t you see this man is baiting you?” Then he turned back to J.D. “The fools I suffer.”
“I can imagine.”
Rockwell smoldered, not moving an inch.
“Where did Kate take Beth?”
“I’m getting to that,” J.D. said. “My best guess, I mean.”
“No guessing,” Skousen said. “Please just tell us where we can find your wife. That way I won’t have to allow Brother Rockwell to bloody his knuckles on your face.” Skousen smiled cruelly.
“My thinking is, when I was arrested by Sheriff Allred, Kate’s instinct told her she was next. Since the sheriff threatened us both with arrest earlier, and she took Beth Jensen as a bargaining chip.”
Jackson Rockwell stepped forward. His face red with anger. “This is bullshit, Levi!” Spittle sprayed from his open mouth. “This man.” He struggled for a moment to speak, then said, “He’s just shit!”
“You’re a regular poet, Jack,” J.D. said.
“Shut up! Both of you,” Skousen said. “I’ve told you before to watch your language, Jack.”
“He’s just sore he can’t beat me in a fair fight,” J.D. said.
A blood vessel in Rockwell’s temple bounced. His pupils narrowed and a crazy rage burned in his eyes. He took a step towards J.D., pivoted on his left leg, brought his right foot back before kicking hard at J.D.’s head.
J.D. didn’t flinch away from the blow. Instead he pushed himself as far forward as his bound hand would allow, intercepted the kick early in its trajectory, absorbed a glancing blow on his right shoulder. Then with his free left hand he found Rockwell’s left ankle, pulled it toward himself with all his strength. Rockwell teetered for a moment, then fell hard to the ground. A whoosh of air hissed from his mouth as he hit the hardpacked dirt floor of the barn. In a smooth, almost practiced, movement J.D. liberated the big revolver from Rockwell’s holster, brought its large bore barrel upward to catch Skousen backing away slowly. His mouth wide with surprise.