They spotted each other at the same instant. Barker groaned as he went for his six-shooter, ignoring the sharp pain through his back in favor of dragging out the weapon. The vaquero needed only to reach down and pick up his pistol resting on a rock beside the watering hole.
“Don’t go for it!” Barker shouted, knowing the Mexican wouldn’t obey, but all he wanted was to delay the man’s reach for his six-shooter an instant.
The vaquero still got off the first shot. The bullet ripped through the brim of Barker’s hat and caused him to flinch. The snapping of his head more than the bullet sent the hat flying through the air—and that saved him. The Mexican followed his movement and sent another bullet into the hat, giving Barker the chance to fire more accurately.
His slug ripped through the vaquero’s left arm, causing a bright fountain of blood to explode outward. The vaquero screamed in pain and twisted, ruining his aim once more.
“I got you in my sights, you son of a bitch. Throw up those hands!”
The vaquero fired again, and this time the bullet did what his earlier ones had not. It sang past Barker’s horse close enough to cause the mare to rear. Barker tried to hang on, but the sudden movement and his back worked against him. He went flying through the air and landed so hard he was momentarily dazed. Hardly knowing what he did, he squeezed off another shot. In the dim corner of his brain that was screaming with pain, he knew he had missed. But just as the Mexican’s bullet had caused the horse to rear, so Barker’s got the man running for cover. If the vaquero had simply stepped up, he would have been able to shoot himself a marshal with no trouble at all.
Struggling to see through the red veil of pain, Barker rocked from side to side, then got enough momentum to come to hands and knees. Again he was helpless—and again firing a shot that went nowhere kept the vaquero running for cover. In the distance Barker heard the clatter of hooves against stone.
By the time he got to his feet and walked to the watering hole, the vaquero was long out of sight. All that remained were two damp spots where he had knelt on the stone by the edge of the water. Barker fired in the direction of the vanished rider, then dropped to a sitting position beside the pool to splash water on his face. The cold, pure water revived him. He stripped off his bandanna, soaked it, and then washed his face and throat. By the time he knotted the bandanna back around his neck, he was feeling almost well. That myth disappeared when he tried to stand.
His back snapped and forced him down to his knees. Gasping, he let the pain abate, then worked his way to his feet, straightened, and tried to ignore what had become a dull ache.
“You can run, but you can’t ride fast enough or ride far enough to lose me,” Barker said.
He filled his canteen, let his horse drink, washed his face one last time, and by now was shivering with the cold, since the sun had long since disappeared behind the Peloncillas. Barker swung into the saddle, clinging to the saddle horn with both hands. He tapped his heels against the mare’s flanks and got the tired horse moving along the vaquero’s trail. The sun might have gone, but the starlight was bright enough to see by.
As he rode, he reloaded his Colt.
It took Barker almost an hour to realize he couldn’t track in the dark worth beans. When he was younger and riding with Colonel Carson, he might have kept on the trail. Too many years had passed and too many miles had slipped under his horse’s hooves for him to entertain such thoughts now. Barker made camp, not daring to start a fire. Instead, he sat with his saddle blanket pulled around his shoulders, shivering so hard his teeth chattered. His shirt and bandanna turned to ice against his skin.
When he began sneezing, he realized he had slept through the night. The sun was poking up over the mountain peak in front of him. Barker worked to orient himself and finally saw a trail angling away to the southeast that had to be the one the vaquero had taken the night before.
Barker dared to start a fire, boiled some coffee strong enough to eat through the enamel in the coffeepot’s bottom, then ate some hardtack and jerky and felt strong enough again to whip his weight in wildcats.
A half hour after the sun finally rose full above the peak, he was on the trail, walking slowly, looking for spoor. An hour later he had to admit that he couldn’t tell if the vaquero or anyone else had ridden this trail in the past year. He found no fresh horse flop or bright, new scratches caused by steel horseshoes against rock or even a broken twig or thread dangling on a thorn bush. He found nothing at all.
Barker hunted for higher ground, spent another hour riding to the top of a rise, and finally got a good look around. He was as alone as if he was lying in his own grave. Nowhere did he see dust kicked up by a rider or any other sign that the vaquero was nearby.
“Damn,” Barker muttered. He had shot it out, gotten a hole shot through his hat, and hurt his back even more, and still hadn’t caught his quarry. Rather than leave in disgust, he took out a scrap of paper and sketched the terrain he saw, then added what he remembered from prior excursions into this hellhole. The map took shape under his stubby pencil, and he oriented himself. If the vaquero had taken the path to the south, he was heading for Skeleton Canyon. A couple times before, he had chased outlaws into that canyon, and both times he had given up the pursuit. Too many potential ambush spots existed.
Especially for a solitary rider.
Barker touched the badge pinned to his coat, remembered his oath about keeping the peace, then realized that he would never be able to do his duty if he took a couple bullets to the head.
The Mexican might be heading south of the border, but in his gut Barker doubted it. Whatever had drawn the man up from Sonora would keep him in New Mexico Territory.
With great reluctance, Barker mounted and rode back down to the trail, to retrace his path into the mountains. Two hours later, he realized he had taken a wrong turn, but as long as he kept moving north, he would eventually come out of the maze of canyons and find the road to Lordsburg and then back to Mesilla.
Late in the afternoon he finally left the foothills behind, but his tongue felt twice its natural size, and the grit in his mouth gagged him. He had used the last of his water before midday. That made the small ranch house off to the east all the more attractive to him. Barker angled for it, aware as he rode closer of how run-down it looked.
It didn’t matter if the place was deserted, as long as there was a good well and a decent sucker washer in the pump. Before he passed through the gate dangling on a broken hinge, a woman came out onto the front porch of the house. She held her hand at her side, hidden by the flow of her skirts. Barker had seen this before and immediately drew rein.
“Hello,” he called. “I’m a federal deputy marshal and am sore in need of water. Can you spare a canteen’s worth for me and some for my horse?” He waited to see if she believed him. He turned carefully so the afternoon sun glinted off his badge. From this distance he might be holding a silver dollar for all she knew, but he saw a change in her posture. She relaxed, let the hand holding the six-shooter come from behind her skirt. That she didn’t lift the gun in his direction told him he was believed.
“Come on closer, will you, Marshal?”
He rode slowly, keeping his hands where she could see them. From the way she held that six-shooter, she likely was capable enough with it. How good a shot she might be was something he didn’t want to find out firsthand. He halted a dozen paces away, letting her make the next move.
“No need to be so cautious, Marshal. I’m not going to shoot.” She put the six-gun down on a chair and rubbed her hands nervously against her skirts. “Sweat,” she explained needlessly.
“Got no call asking you to tell me anything,” he said. Barker gingerly dismounted, keeping the mare between him and the woman not to protect himself but to keep her from seeing how he moved. He felt better, but any exorbitant twist would send paroxysms of pain throughout his body.
“You wounded, Marshal?”
“Just sore from sittin’ in the saddle the li
velong day.” That wasn’t entirely a lie, but it still plucked at his conscience.
“What brings you to this godforsaken place? The ranch is more’n five miles from the main road.”
“That way?” He pointed north. She nodded. “At least I didn’t get that turned around.” He chuckled and she smiled wanly.
After a few seconds, she pushed back a strand of fly-away hair and looked momentarily flustered.
“’Round back, Marshal. That’s where the pump is. Don’t know if there’s enough water for your horse, so you might have to do some pumping. The livestock drink from it and ...”
“That’ll be fine, ma’am,” he said. He led his horse around and saw the empty trough. Working the pump handle strained him a mite, but soon enough water flowed and he filled the tin-lined trough and stood back, a little dizzy.
“You’re wounded, aren’t you, Marshal?” He felt a thin arm circle his shoulders. The touch was worse than the vertigo, since it set off a spasm that caused him to jerk.
“Sorry, it’s just that I twisted up my back while I was down in the mountains.”
“Chasing some outlaw?”
“Something like that. I lost him near Skeleton Canyon.”
“That’s rugged country,” she said. “Why don’t you come on inside? I can fix you a decent meal.”
“That’s all right, ma’am. I don’t want to put you out.”
“I ... It’s no bother. Having a man for dinner again would do me a world of good. You’d be doin’ me a favor if you stayed. For dinner.”
“That your husband’s grave?” Barker pointed to a cross marker out near the barn. It was a peculiar place for a grave, that near where animals were quartered, and he knew he shouldn’t have asked.
“I couldn’t dig in the ground anywhere else. The sun bakes the ground harder than a clay pot, and most places you hit caliche less than a foot below the surface. That’s like digging into rock. Out there, down by the gate, the spot where it’s mostly sand, well, I couldn’t dig there, either. The sand kept sliding back down into the ... the grave.”
“Wouldn’t be good to bury a man like that. The—” He bit off his sentence. He had almost said the animals would dig in the sand and eat the corpse. From the stricken look on the woman’s thin face, he knew that thought had already occurred to her, but that didn’t make him reminding her of it any more polite.
“It won’t be long ’fore I can throw something together. I don’t have much.”
“Ma’am, you don’t have to put yourself out on my account.”
Her look convinced him that she did.
“Why don’t I do some chores around here while you fix dinner? You got some wood that needs stacking, and I’m sure the livestock need to be fed. They always do.” He hurriedly added that, since he didn’t want to make her out to be lazy.
“Too many chores for one body to do,” she said, her thin hand going to her throat. She smiled wanly, then went into the house. Barker listened to the sounds of utensils and plates and the smaller noises of a woman fixing dinner.
For her man.
Barker swallowed hard at that, then shoved his face into the trough so the cold water would clear his head. He had seen too many men killed in his day, and more than a few of the surviving women clung to their memories for a spell, then slowly sank without a trace. Trying to keep up the front that there was nothing wrong, that their dead husband would be back anytime now, thoughts that tore away at their souls and drove them slowly crazy.
The ones that didn’t remarry right away weren’t likely to keep the land under their feet or the cattle out on the range. Looking around, Barker wasn’t sure what had kept this ranch going. A few cattle, a patch of alfalfa, determination not to fail, that was about it.
He stacked wood near the back door, then went to the barn. Most of the animals were scrawny. What feed he could scrape from the bottom of a bin he threw out for the chickens. The horse had to make do with some hay. If the sound wouldn’t have shocked the woman, Barker would have put a bullet through the pig’s head to put it out of its misery. There was no way the animal would live out the week.
“Come and get it,” she called from the back door.
Barker walked slowly, his thoughts all jumbled up. He washed off his hands and let more of the cold water ginger up his mood a mite. Then he went inside, noticing how the woman only stepped back a half pace, so he had to crowd by her, his body brushing hers.
He sat at the head of the table and poked at the meager stew. He wondered what the meat was, then decided it didn’t pay to ask. After a plate, he pushed back, took a long drink of water, then said, “That was mighty good after living on oatmeal and boiled coffee for so long.”
Thoughts of Ruth’s cooking made his belly grumble in protest at this poor woman’s simple fare.
“It ... it’s gettin’ dark out. You shouldn’t be on the trail in the dark. There’s Apaches all around and ... and road agents. But you know that since you was after one.”
“Reckon I can handle them. I was a scout for Colonel Carson during the Navajo War, and finding road agents is my job.” He tapped his deputy’s badge.
“Didn’t mean to say you couldn’t handle all that, but ... you can stay the night. If you want.” Her hollow eyes showed dark desperation. He knew what she meant—what she wanted.
“Ma’am, I’m a married man and take my vows seriously.”
“I didn’t mean, I—” Tears welled in her eyes.
“It gets mighty lonely out here, doesn’t it? After your man died?”
“Does,” she said, sniffing.
“You need to get into the county seat and see about selling this place. You can’t own the land—no woman can own real estate and that’s the law, sorry as it is. But you can make a few dollars off the sale and use it to find a different life.”
“Where?”
He thought for a moment, then said, “Santa Fe is a growing town. You might like Socorro. I don’t advise Mesilla or El Paso del Norte or even Franklin since those are mighty tough border towns.”
“You’ve seen so much of the world. Wh-where do you call home?”
“My wife’s waiting for me,” he said, standing. “I’ll help with the dishes and—”
“No, no, you go on.” The woman licked her lips, then said, “But you can stay. We don’t have to do anything. I just need to feel a man holding me again.”
“Take my advice about getting off this spread,” he told her. “It’ll kill you for certain sure if you stay overlong.” He put his plate and fork into a pan, then said, “You’re a generous woman. That will make a difference with the kind of man you deserve.”
He left without looking back, although he knew she was standing in the doorway watching as he stepped up into the saddle and rode away. The stars lit the way for him, and a sliver of moon would rise before long.
As he crossed the desert on his way to the main road that would take him back to Mesilla, he knew he had done the right thing but did not understand why it felt so wrong.
9
MASON BARKER REACHED THE ROAD JUST BEFORE midnight and turned east, but he had ridden hardly half a mile when he saw campfires off to the south. If there had been one fire, he would have kept riding, but the dozen or so told him this wasn’t even a bunch of drovers from some big spread. The only reason so many fires would be burning—and still stoked this late at night—had to be that this was a military encampment, with at least two dozen men. As he neared, he saw that he had underestimated the number. An entire company bivouacked here.
“Don’t come no closer,” rang the challenge. “Who’re you?”
Barker gave his name but didn’t add that he was a deputy marshal, just to see what happened. There’d be plenty of time for that introduction later.
The soldier stepped closer, clutching his carbine. He squinted up at Barker, then turned and spat.
“I know you. You and the lieutenant was all buddy-buddy a while back.”
“Is Lieutenan
t Greenberg in camp? Or did your captain bring out this patrol?”
“Don’t have a captain right now. He got hisself kicked in the head by his horse.” The soldier didn’t quite chuckle, but he came close enough for Barker to understand it was an unpopular captain with his head stove in and that this was something to laugh at, leastways among the sentries.
“From the sound of it, that might have improved his disposition.”
This did get a guffaw out of the sentry—and it also brought an indistinct squat, powerful shape moving from the shadows.
“Private, you—”
“Well, if it isn’t Sergeant Sturgeon,” Barker said loudly enough to cut off the noncom’s dressing-down of a noisy lookout. “Just the man I want to see, since you don’t seem to have an officer in charge.”
“The lieutenant’s got some of the men, and he’s rangin’ mighty far to the south,” Sturgeon said. He started to chew out the sentry again, but once more Barker cut him off. He felt a tad sorry for the lonely private and the way he had incited him to laugh out loud.
“You see anything of a vaquero all decked out in fancy duds with a sombrero out to here?” Barker held his arms wide to either side of his head.
“That ’bout describes ’em all, don’t it?” the sergeant said. Then he laughed. He quickly stifled the mirth and said sternly to his private, “Get back on duty. Me and the marshal got matters to discuss.”
“Marshal? You didn’t say you was no marshal.”
“You didn’t ask the right questions, then,” Sturgeon said with an edge in his voice. If the private didn’t learn to keep his yap shut, he would be walking sentry duty until the holes in his boot soles stretched all the way up to his flapping tongue.
Barker dismounted gingerly, not sure he was glad to have both feet on the ground. Standing still was mighty fine, but walking, even a little bit, sent jingles of pain down into his legs.
“You look to be in a bad way. You get yerse’f all shot up?”
“Nothing of the sort,” Barker said. “Why, if I hadn’t decided to ride for home without stopping, I could have been sleeping in a nice warm bed this very night.”
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