by Jeff Guinn
“No, we can’t deal with Clum,” Clanton insisted. “He’s too liable to detain us. Then we’d lose days instead of saving a single hour.”
“For once, Clanton’s making sense,” Saint said. “We can’t take the chance of not being on time where Brautigan wants us. We have to skirt south around the agency.”
“What do you think, C.M.?” Mulkins asked.
“I’m with Joe and Clanton, so long as we can still make Devil’s Valley by noon on Saturday with this longer ride,” McLendon said.
“We will, we will,” Clanton said, sounding enthusiastic. “You boys just listen to Ike, and all will be well.”
As they prepared to sleep, Saint ostentatiously placed his bedroll between McLendon and the tethered horses.
“Just in case you feel the urge for a night ride in a different direction,” he said. “Don’t even think of running.”
Mulkins started to protest, but McLendon hushed him.
“Good night, Joe,” he said mildly, and lay down on his blanket.
—
AFTER A PRE-DAWN breakfast of coffee and biscuits, they started out again, swinging south on a route that briefly took them through a forest. There was no permanent trail. They had to thread their horses through the trees. The only conversation concerned when to rest the horses. They stopped soon after reaching open ground again, and fed the animals a few handfuls of oats from a saddlebag. As they did, two riders approached from the east. One was a white man, the other an Apache. When they pulled up, the Apache stayed mounted. The white man jumped down from his horse and said, “I’m Fred Nolan, the assistant agent at San Carlos.”
“I believe we’re significantly south of the agency,” Mulkins said. “We took special care not to trespass.”
“I make no such accusation,” Nolan said. “Yesterday a few renegades broke away, we think on a ride down toward Mexico. They’re unlikely to bother travelers in this vicinity, but Agent Clum’s got some of us out patrolling the area, just in case.”
“How many?” Mulkins asked.
“We think a half-dozen. Mostly they’re youngsters, but the leader’s Goyathlay, who the Mexes call Geronimo. He’s a bad one. I see you’re armed, and that’s good. Keep a sharp eye out, and you ought to be fine. Say—is that Ike Clanton?”
“What of it?” Ike said, ducking his face away from Nolan.
Nolan frowned. “Clum mentioned you’d been caught recently on agency land without permission. You were with someone.”
“My pa,” Clanton said quickly.
“Agent Clum said this man was sizable—clearly not one of your present companions.”
“Daddy’s taken to fat in recent years. Is it all right if we move on?”
“Just as you please,” Nolan said. “Safe travels. And Ike, were I you I’d not come on the agency uninvited again. John Clum will show no pity, and the Army will take you off in irons.”
As they continued their journey, McLendon said to Clanton, “A big man? Ike, if you’re leading us into a trap, you’ll be the first to die.”
“It was my pa,” Clanton insisted. “You three knew him back in Glorious. He’s wide as a wagon.”
“We’re watching your every move,” Mulkins warned.
“My word as a gentleman. My only wish is to help you recover the lady.”
—
THE RIDE HAD already been tense. Now they watched nervously in all directions. Apache were adept at seeming to appear out of nowhere.
“We can’t allow Indians to kill you,” Saint said to McLendon.
“Yes, that would be tragic,” McLendon said. “We wouldn’t want me dying at the wrong hands.”
They crossed a creek and stopped to water the horses and gulp down a lunch of canned fruit. McLendon ate this time, though only a few bites. The food seemed tasteless to him. Clanton emptied one full can and asked for another. After a short break they remounted; Clanton steered them slightly to the southeast.
“Devil’s Valley’s maybe nine, ten hours farther on,” he said. “Of course, that’s barring Apache attack, or downpour.” He gestured at scattered gray clouds. “Late in the season for floods, but you never know.”
“Get us where we’re going, Ike,” Mulkins said.
After another hour, Mulkins pointed at the sky ahead to their left. “What’s that?” he asked. “Buzzards?”
“Whatever they’re circling, it’s none of our concern,” Clanton said. “Could be a dead elk, or even a rabbit.”
Saint turned pale. “What if it’s Gabrielle?” He yanked his reins, kicked his horse in the ribs, and rode madly off. The others followed, McLendon trying hard not to fall off his mount. The birds were farther away than they initially seemed. After almost a mile, Mulkins begged Saint to stop riding all-out.
“You’ll run your horse to death, Joe,” he called. “We can’t be down a mount.”
Reluctantly, Saint slowed to a trot. As they approached the circling buzzards, the riding turned hard. There were large patches of boulders to circle around. Saint wanted to rush ahead, but Mulkins advised caution.
“We don’t know what’s ahead,” he said. “Let’s prepare.” He pulled his shotgun from a scabbard by his saddle and gestured for McLendon to hand the Winchester to Saint. “You draw your Colt, C.M.,” Mulkins whispered. “Those renegade Apache might be in front of us.”
“I’ll just stay to the rear in case you run into difficulty and need cover fire,” Clanton said.
“All right, Ike,” Mulkins said. “You can hold our horses too. We’ll advance on foot.”
Mulkins and McLendon worked their way around the rock pile, keeping Saint behind them so he couldn’t impetuously dash into the open. The schoolteacher was breathing hard. McLendon thought that if the renegades were just ahead, they’d be alerted by Saint’s gasping.
But there were no renegades, just a naked body. Saint couldn’t be held back. He rushed forward and bent over the corpse. “A man,” he said. “Not Gabrielle. Thank God.”
“The buzzards have already done considerable work,” Mulkins said. Much of the man’s face and body were pecked away. “I think he was young. And look, the side of his face—could birds do this?”
McLendon looked, and knew. The exposed skull and cheekbone were crushed.
“Brautigan’s work,” he said, swallowing to hold back vomit. “His style. Unmistakable.”
“What’s this over here?” Saint asked. He walked a few yards away, reached down, and then held up an item of clothing in each hand. “Her dress,” he said, extending torn gray material to McLendon and Mulkins. “And this”—Gabrielle’s chemise. “You know what this means.”
McLendon’s mind worked even as he struggled to control his gag reflex. “No, Joe,” he gurgled.
“Go on and puke, C.M.,” Mulkins advised, and McLendon did. He wiped strings of vomit from his chin and turned back to Saint.
“The corpse is naked, Joe. I think we’re the first ones on the scene. So Brautigan stripped him after he killed him. Gabrielle’s clothes there—he probably thought she could move faster in shirt and pants.”
“He made her undress?” Saint hissed. “What else did he do?”
“I don’t think anything. Rape’s never been Brautigan’s way. Take comfort from this. It proves he’s keeping her alive.”
Mulkins suggested they give the corpse a decent burial to save what was left from the buzzards. Ike Clanton was summoned—he emerged from the rocks only after they swore there were no Indians—and complained when he was tasked with scraping out a shallow grave.
“This is slave work,” Clanton groused. Since they had no shovel, Ike had to use a flat, sharp-edged piece of rock. “The birds have pretty much picked the bastard clean, anyway. Why go to this trouble?”
“Dignity for the dead,” Mulkins said.
Ike nodded toward McLendon. “
Well, it’s more than he’ll likely get.”
—
WHEN THE BODY was buried and a rudimentary stick cross placed over the grave, they rode on.
“Now we need to direct ourselves more south than southeast,” Clanton said. “This interruption took us off our proper route.”
“Say, Ike, isn’t your family’s settlement almost directly east of here?” Mulkins asked. “Are we close to Clantonville?”
“You haven’t traveled much in these regions, have you?” Clanton asked. When Mulkins said he hadn’t, Ike said, “As it happens, Clantonville’s not at all nearby. You’d have to ride almost two days or more to reach it from where we are.”
“That’s nearly across the border to New Mexico,” Mulkins said. “I feel certain that the Gila River is considerably closer.”
“Clantonville’s my home, and I suppose I’d know its location,” Clanton said. “We’re wasting time with this idle talk. Devil’s Valley’s that way to the south, and we need to be moving.”
They fell into a makeshift column, with Clanton in front, Mulkins and McLendon riding side by side, and Saint bringing up the rear. Except for the constantly jabbering Clanton, no one had much to say. The horrible sight of the buzzard-mangled corpse and the thought of Gabrielle being forced into the dead man’s clothes completely occupied the minds of the other three. All of them forgot about renegade Apache.
—
THEY STOPPED for the night at the northern foot of a mountain range that extended south. Clanton called it the Gilas. “Tomorrow morning we’ll cut through a notch not far from here, ride down an hour or two more, and then we’ll come to Devil’s Valley.”
“Tell us what we’ll see there, Ike,” Mulkins said.
Clanton smacked his lips over a bite of canned peaches. “It’s not necessarily a fearsome place; it gets its name because of a lack of water. Mostly it’s a deep valley surrounded by hills. But the valley itself is going on a mile across. Somebody sets up in the middle of it, there’s no way he can be taken by surprise. I expect this man you call Brautigan will be waiting there with the lady. McLendon’ll have to ride down into the valley by himself, leaving you others behind. Anything else, Brautigan will spot you right off. He picked the perfect place.”
“I wonder how he did that, Ike,” McLendon said. “Seeing how he’d be a stranger in this area and all. Funny that he’d know about Devil’s Valley, how it sets up perfectly for this kind of exchange.”
“I have no clue,” Clanton said defensively. “All I know is you wanted me to take you there and I am.”
This time it was Joe Saint who ate no supper. McLendon ate bacon and biscuits and some canned pears, thinking he might as well. Should Brautigan plan to take him back to Rupert Douglass in St. Louis, rations might prove short along the way. When McLendon was through with his meal, he walked over to Saint, who was huddled miserably a dozen yards away from the campfire. He sat down beside the schoolteacher and said, “Stay strong, Joe. Tomorrow night, Gabrielle will be with you and the Major. You can take her home.”
“Maybe,” Saint said. “If she comes out of this all right, it’s no thanks to you.”
“That’s true. If I’d known Brautigan was still on my trail, I would never have come to Mountain View. I’d have stayed away from Gabrielle forever if that’s what it took to keep her safe. But I made a mistake, that’s obvious, and now I’ll pay for it.”
“She’s been taken. She’s paying too.”
McLendon sighed. The next words came hard. “After all this, she’ll need healing. Her life has to go on. Do what you can about that. I want you to.” Saint didn’t respond. He stared into the night until McLendon got up and walked away.
As Clanton snored, Mulkins said quietly to McLendon, “Have you any thoughts about tomorrow, what we might do?”
“Beyond trading myself for Gabrielle, nothing. Brautigan’s got us boxed.”
“I’m willing to try him, C.M.,” Mulkins said. “Maybe get Gabrielle clear, send her off with Joe, and come back for you. Between us, who knows? We might prevail.”
McLendon reached out and grasped Mulkins’s shoulder. “It’s a fine offer. But that night in Glorious, you saw Brautigan in a fight. He’d kill us both with no trouble, and then he could set out after Gabrielle and Joe. My best chance is go off with him and hope he doesn’t mean to do me in right away. If I’m to be brought back to St. Louis, maybe along the way I’ll see a chance to get free.”
“I feel myself a coward, letting a friend be taken like this.”
“You’ve proven the best of friends, one of the few I’ve known in my life. Get Gabrielle safely home. That’s what matters.”
McLendon couldn’t sleep. After a while he got up and walked off a way to piss. He thought he’d better make sure to have an empty bladder at noon the next day. It wouldn’t do for Gabrielle’s last memory of him to be wetting himself with fear at the sight of Brautigan.
17
Brautigan knew that it was dangerous to take even a short nap in the barn. There were enough Clantons to swarm him, if that’s what they chose. His opinion of Newman Clanton, though, was that the old man was practical. Yes, if all his boys and sons-in-law came at Brautigan together they’d win out, but the cost would be fearsome, leaving at least several Clantons dead and others badly hurt. Newman needed every one of them to keep Clantonville blooming. Far better for him to let Brautigan go on and make his swap tomorrow, trusting that somehow Gabrielle and whoever came with McLendon would keep quiet afterward as Brautigan promised.
Still, Brautigan wouldn’t have risked sleep except for being so worn out. Aches and rashes from riding were the least of it. In his usual role back in St. Louis, there was no pressure to speak of. The boss pointed him at targets. He intimidated or killed them. Little thinking was required, and the job was over in a few days, if not hours. But this McLendon pursuit had dragged on for better than two years, and this last part of it was the worst. Brautigan was so close to cleaning up after his only failure ever, getting hands on McLendon and delivering him back to the boss. The run-up, though, was wearying. He’d never dealt with a hostage before, and a woman at that. Brautigan could tell from the moment he snatched her that Gabrielle Tirrito was a spitfire, someone who’d cause him no end of difficulty if he didn’t cow her quick. So he did some things to break her down, not allowing her to talk and putting her through the humiliation of relieving herself in front of him. He’d deliberately let her think she had a chance to get at the Winchester so he could demonstrate punishment for any escape attempt. Brautigan’s beatings of Gabrielle were judicious—first to the ribs so that every movement would hurt some, and later to the shin so running would be impossible. The girl probably thought her ribs and shinbone were broken, but there’d been no chance of that. Brautigan was a master of assault; each blow he delivered inflicted exactly the desired amount of damage.
Now, for the rest of the night, the girl needed to be isolated in the shed, left alone with her thoughts. She’d be afraid for herself and McLendon and her daddy, letting those fears occupy her imagination to the exclusion of further attempts to escape. Brautigan sensed that, scared as she was, the girl still had spunk. So far his intimidation held. After all, she’d never been in any prior fix like this. That kept her off balance—this kind of terror was new to her. But any more threats, even another beating, and she’d start feeling like maybe the worst that could happen already had, and then she’d be troublesome. Not that Brautigan couldn’t handle it, but now he needed to turn as much attention as possible to McLendon himself. It wasn’t going to be easy, maybe five days crossing wild, strange land from Clantonville to Silver City. Brautigan felt certain that once he got McLendon on the stage and then the train back to St. Louis, all would go smoothly. But getting to Silver City, finding his way there without a guide, having all the while to keep McLendon subdued—that would be the hard part. Well, better get started on it now. It
was dark outside; he’d probably slept three or four hours. Brautigan rose from the blanket he’d spread on some hay in a corner of the smelly barn, brushed bits of straw from his clothes, and made his way to the main house.
—
NEWMAN CLANTON, too, was reflecting. Earlier, he’d had to come down hard on his boys. When the big man went off to the barn to nap, Wes and Phin and the rest wanted to fall on him in his sleep, avenge the slights and eliminate the risks he’d brought on the family. Newman told them no, a man like Brautigan was never taken completely by surprise, so leave him alone. Phin and Andy Slinkard, who was married to Newman’s daughter Mary Elise, argued hard, and finally he had to mete out some cuffs to heads. Now they were all off in their cabins, and Newman was alone in his, except for young Billy asleep in the loft. This would have been a good time to have a wife, pleasure from between her thighs, and afterward words of comfort and encouragement. Even when Brautigan left with the girl tomorrow, Newman would be on edge long after, wondering if any minute the law would come thundering in because somebody blabbed despite Brautigan’s promise.
Eight o’clock came and went on Newton’s pocket watch, then eight-thirty. It was full dark. Out beyond the settlement, coyotes howled as they always did. Newman heaved himself up off the davenport with some difficulty; taking two or three suppers a night with various Clantonville daughters and daughters-in-law meant he kept gaining weight, but he liked the company and so had multiple meals. Being together, that was what family was for.
Just before nine, Brautigan knocked on the door. Newman had been expecting him.
“Get some rest?” he asked pleasantly.
“Enough. I want to go ahead and get provisioned now, have everything ready so there’s nothing more to do in the morning.”
“Easy to do.” Newman gestured toward a table and chair. “Hungry? There’s some stew still warm by the fire. I’ll get you some, and whiskey to wash it down.”