“Somebody’s riding along the stream,” Barker said. He handed back the field glasses and pointed out the section of the canyon floor where he had seen movement.
“You got good eyes, Marshal,” Sturgeon said. “I mighta missed that.”
Barker doubted it. Sergeant Sturgeon was a wily veteran trooper. One day he’d have to ask him where he had served during the war. Then again, maybe he didn’t want to know. The black companies weren’t sent to the easy battles. Fort Pillow was only a hint of the blood that had been spilled.
“We can’t get down there quick enough. If we ride on along the rim, is there a way to get ahead of that varmint?”
“Better to go down here,” Barker decided. “I don’t know of a better trail. If we got on one of the sections that’ve broken off, we’d have to backtrack and we’d never run that rider to ground.”
Sturgeon took his advice without comment, getting his squad started down the steep trail amid some grumbling. As the troopers passed him, Sturgeon either dressed them down or uttered words of encouragement. Barker liked seeing how the sergeant dealt with his men in different ways, giving each what was needed to bring out his best.
“We’ll be on the canyon floor in an hour.”
“I got a spot in sight where the rider’ll be then, unless he stops.”
“No reason to stop if he sees us,” Sturgeon said.
“Might not have a choice. He’s walking his horse, tellin’ me he’s either looking for something or his horse is pulling up lame.”
The last of the horse soldiers started down the steep incline. Sturgeon snapped his reins and followed. Barker waited until they got a ways down the trail before starting himself. There was no rush. There was no reason for their quarry to be looking for anything. He rode a horse in need of some liniment and a bit of bandage around a sore leg.
By the time he reached the bottom of the canyon and hadn’t been made into a target, Barker was feeling better. The outlaw—if it was one of the gang—hadn’t spotted them. Even better, none of the others in the gang had, either. So far they had managed to get mighty close to their quarry without being seen.
He looked at the steep walls festooned with crevices and wind-driven holes. The Apaches loved this area because it afforded them the best ambush sites west of Dog Canyon. The sluggish stream in the middle of the canyon carried silt and a whitish current that made Barker loath to get closer for fear his mare would try to drink. The minerals in this water would likely kill a horse or a man within minutes.
“What do you see, Marshal?”
Barker knew he had to dismount to answer the sergeant’s question. He felt a bit twitchy down low in his back, but nothing he couldn’t tolerate for a few minutes. He swung his leg over and dropped to the ground, walking along the streambed. The rider had ventured close to the stream only once, then veered away, obviously aware of the poison running in the water.
“He must know of better water,” Barker said. “He’s keeping his distance.”
“Might not be that at all.”
“Is,” Barker insisted. “If he thought we were on his trail, he’d ride in the water to cover his tracks. He’s making a point of keeping away.” He walked from the solitary hoof-print and found broken twigs and other evidence the rider had come this way. More prints showed up in a section of a game trail. Barker pointed. “He’s following this patch of soft earth and not caring if anyone finds his tracks.”
“We’re gonna get him,” Sturgeon said with some determination. “I been after them for a month and this is the closest I’ve got—’cept for that run-in with the stolen herd a while back.”
“I was there,” Barker said dryly. He kept walking, not bothering to mount. Swinging up into the saddle might hurt more than it was worth. Besides, he’d found ample evidence that the rider wasn’t the only horseman using this path. At least two others rode horses with distinctive shoes. One horseshoe had a deep notch cut into it and another was coming loose. If that horse broke into a gallop, it would lose the shoe and leave its rider behind for an easy capture.
“How many you see? I make out at least one other.”
“Two, possibly a third went this way several hours before our rider.” He dropped to one knee and ran his fingers around the print, then measured the length of the stride. He looked up to the sergeant. “He’s not going to stay on this horse longer than another mile. Not the way the horse is pulling up lame. It started hobbling bad a dozen yards back and by the time it reached this point, any rider, even if he was dead drunk, would know he had a problem. I was right up on the canyon rim when I said I saw him walking his horse.”
Sergeant Sturgeon rode back down the path to tell his troopers to be cautious, that the outlaw was afoot and not too far ahead. Barker watched the sergeant’s broad back for a moment, then reached into his coat pocket and took out the laudanum. A couple drops, bitter without water, caused him to make a face. He swallowed hard, took a swig from his canteen, and presented a poker face by the time the soldier returned.
“What do you think?” Sturgeon asked.
“If I wanted to hide out here, if I were them, I’d say we’re not more than a mile from their camp.” Barker looked at the towering red rock walls on either side. The walls narrowed ahead, then spread out and probably branched into two or more canyons. “They’ll be at the narrows.”
“So they can fight off attack from either direction.”
“And have a way to escape if they can’t outfight their attackers,” Barker finished.
“No way I can get half my men to the other side of their camp, then,” Sturgeon said, sucking on his teeth. He frowned as he tried to come up with a way of catching the outlaws in a pincers attack.
“There’s no way to get around. Even if you’ve got Apache scouts, they’re not likely to get past to plug up the escape route on the far side of the camp,” Barker said. “We got to attack from this side and make sure it’s quick.”
“Think we can sneak close enough?”
“I’m not sure I can scout that close without warning them,” Barker said. “I can track, but when it comes to being sneaky ...”
“None of my soldiers is worth beans doin’ that either,” Sturgeon said. He looked up as the sun disappeared behind a high white cloud. “We get close, then attack at sundown, while they’re eating.”
Barker considered how quickly the sun set in the high-walled canyon. It would be dark within an hour, and he wasn’t positive the outlaw camp was ahead. If he wanted to camp here, that’s where he’d camp, but even if they found somebody there, he wasn’t sure it would be the outlaws. And if it proved his guess was right, would the outlaws be eating as the sun went down or waiting until a later time?
He had too many distracting thoughts to concentrate. The image of the fancy watch Nate had been sold kept coming back to him. The Sonora Kid had twice shown his fondness for watches, once selling a stolen one to Nate and another time buying a watch for Nate to taunt Barker.
“We can’t move in for a spell,” Barker said to Sturgeon, forcing himself to ignore whatever bothered him about the watches. The owlhoots ahead demanded his full attention. “They’ll eat later, long after dark.”
“Gets dark early, don’t it?” Sturgeon judged the height of the walls. “Should we hang back and risk being seen?”
“I’m not much of a scout, but I’m likely the best you’ve got. Let me see to the camp. If I’m not back in a half hour or there’s gunfire, come right on in.” Barker doubted his own abilities, but too many questions had cropped up. He had to be sure this was the Sonora Kid’s gang. If they shot up a bunch of cowboys that had come into the canyons to hunt for strays, they’d never hear the end of it, either from the army commanders or Marshal Armijo.
Sturgeon’s impassive face betrayed not a whit of emotion. He finally nodded once, knowing what Barker meant. The marshal handed over the reins to his horse, hitched up his gun belt, and set off through the underbrush, trying not to make too much noise. It w
ould be just as bad to be shot because they thought he was a rabbit as it would be if they knew a lawman had found their trail. Dead was dead, after all, no matter the reason they’d shot at him.
Moving slowly, carefully, he made his way through the thicket to an open area where scrub oak and juniper grew in profusion. Barker crouched and waited, looking hard into the stand of trees for any movement. He doubted the sentry for this gang would be wily enough to lure him out into the clearing for a better shot. More likely, the air would be filled with bullets right away.
As he crouched, he thought hard on what he had seen and how they had followed this trail. Anyone in Skeleton Canyon was likely to be up to no good, but he hadn’t definitely identified the rider as being one of the Sonora Kid’s gang. Truth was, he couldn’t identify any of them other than the Kid himself. The buffalo soldiers might be after an innocent man and he might be wasting his time skulking around the outskirts of a camp. He didn’t know for sure that more than one man was camped ahead. The other horses might have continued deeper into the maze of canyons, with only the solitary rider waiting ahead.
He pressed against the bole of a pine tree and got sap on his coat when he heard horses nickering. Barker moved like molasses flowing uphill on a cold day, not wanting to catch any lookout’s eye. He saw two men come to the far edge of the clearing. They spoke low, but he knew it was Spanish, and couldn’t catch more than a word or two as the pair relieved themselves. When they’d finished, they ducked back into the woods. Barker heard the horses again.
The camp wasn’t far—just beyond the trees. Since the two had come this way, he figured there wasn’t a guard watching this part of the wooded area. If there was a guard at all, he had been posted on the road.
Casting a long shadow to his left, Barker made his way across the clearing and slipped quietly into the cool woods. The horses were corralled not far away. Barker skirted them, not wanting their neighing to alert those in camp.
He moved like a ghost, closer until he heard the men arguing. From behind a tree, he caught sight of the reason for the disagreement. The man he had spotted from the canyon rim held the front leg of his horse and pointed.
One drew his pistol and made to shoot the horse, but the owner batted the gun away and scuffled with his partner for wanting to put the horse down.
Barker rested his hand on his own six-shooter when he saw a man sitting on a log, facing away. The huge sombrero was identical to the one Nate had worn in town. Barker’s six-gun slid from the holster and he lifted the pistol to get off a shot. His hand trembled too much for a decent shot, whether from anticipation or too much laudanum he didn’t dare say. Barker spun about, his back to the tree and the camp, and fumbled out the brown bottle to take a few more drops. Holding out his hand, he waited for the shaking to stop.
It must be the opium that caused him to shake like an aspen leaf in the wind.
He looked back and saw the five men gathered in a tight circle, the Sonora Kid using a stick to draw in the dirt.
Barker had to think again on what he intended. Shooting the outlaw from ambush didn’t seem much different than shooting a rabid dog; he had never shot a man in the back before and wasn’t going to start now. Good sense nudged at the sinful thinking of violating his oath as a lawman and pushed his planning in another direction. He could get off a shot or two and kill the gang leader, but he would be an easy target for the others. Shock might hold them in check for a moment, but they were hardened outlaws. Getting shot at wasn’t likely to panic them the way it would five law-abiding cowboys.
And he had never killed a man before, much less shot one in the back.
A quick look over his shoulder showed the men still intent on the dirt sketch. The only way of catching or killing the entire gang was to alert Sturgeon and his soldiers.
Barker was too intent on getting away to pay attention to where he stepped. His weight came down on a dried tree limb. It cracked with a sound like a gunshot.
Then there was actual gunfire—all the slugs directed toward him, from the direction of the outlaw camp.
14
THE BULLET TORE PAST AND KICKED UP A LONG FURROW of earth beside him. Barker dodged in the other direction, not even realizing he had made a decision that might have cost him his life. If one slug had gone to his right, a dozen came at him when he dived left. He scrambled, fell to his knees, got his feet back under him, and tried to sprint away. A bullet hit him in the heel and knocked him flat.
This saved his life. More gunfire crisscrossed through the space he had just vacated.
Barker rolled, flopped flat onto his belly, and leveled his gun. He didn’t have a decent target, but when he spotted the long orange tongue of flame from a six-shooter, he fired toward it. He heard his bullet splintering wood. He had hit a tree trunk rather than an outlaw intent on ventilating him. He fired again and again, knowing he was out in the open and fast running short of ammunition.
The road agents shouted curses in Spanish and spread out to advance in a fan sure to catch him in their cross fire. He kicked, dug his toes into the ground, and scrambled along, driving his stomach into the rocky ground in his frantic attempt to find refuge. When he saw it, he rolled fast, got to hands and knees, and dived. He screamed in agony, as much from the bullet that finally found his leg as from the pain in his back. He crashed to the ground behind a fallen log barely tall enough to shield him from the outlaws.
Ignoring the stabbing pain in his leg and back, he craned around, poked his pistol over the top of the log, and fired his last rounds. No answering screams of rage reached him. He had missed with every single round. He dropped back behind the dubious protection afforded by the log and fumbled to reload. His hands shook, but this time he knew it was from the intensity of the fight and not from the laudanum. Finally reloaded, he poked back up over the log and saw a dark figure coming toward him. He fired four times and was rewarded with answering fire from three directions that drove him back behind the log.
He got off the remaining two rounds and again worked to reload. There was no way he could wait for the twilight to deepen and hide his escape. The gang was circling him, waiting for him to make a run for it. He clicked the gate on his six-shooter closed, took a deep breath, and got his knees under him. With a surge, he came to his feet, stepped over the log, and let out a screech like a banshee as he ran forward toward his attackers.
Rather than burn through his six rounds as fast as he could, he fired with measured speed, each discharge like a peal of doom. His aim wasn’t any better, but the unexpected frontal assault caused the gang to hesitate—that would reward him a few seconds more of life, and that was all he could hope for.
Then the air filled with more whistling bullets than he could track. It took Barker a second to realize these were not heavy lead pellets coming to kill him but carbine fire from behind.
Sturgeon and his buffalo soldiers had heard the gunfire and moved in for the attack.
This buoyed him but did not turn him cautious. He kept running and firing. A distant grunt hinted that someone had been hit in the gang’s camp, but Barker ignored this small victory. Step after step carried him closer to the edge of the woods. He heard the road agents running away ahead of him and the pounding of horses’ hooves behind.
“Get down, you fool. Take cover. We’ll get ’em!”
Sergeant Sturgeon thundered past on his horse, his men flanking him in a precise battle line that quickly fell into disarray when they reached the edge of the woods. Barker slowed to a walk, reloading as he went and realizing he was out of bullets. What he had in the cylinder was it. Six rounds. He had to make them count.
It was as if he existed in a curious bubble separated from his surroundings. He heard the soldiers cursing as they had to dismount to advance through the woods. They were on either side of him—and the sergeant somehow led them forward to the camp. But Sturgeon’s commands came as if from a distance. The fusillade from the outlaws was nothing more than the whine of annoying insect
s. Barker strode forward, invincible now that he had survived their first attack.
“They’re gettin’ away, Sarge!”
“Stop them. Shoot the horses out from under them. Block the road!”
Barker kept walking and emerged from the woods where the Sonora Kid had drawn his plans in the dirt while the rest watched. Barker’s six-gun came up and fired. A horse squealed like a stepped-on piglet. He fired again, but no reaction reached him. Sturgeon pressed close to his right side, and a corporal came up from his left.
“All the horses are gone. Ever’ last one of ’em hightailed it, Sarge.”
“Forward, fire by the numbers, odd, even!”
Barker was aware of every other soldier firing, then the next rank advancing to fire. They provided cover this way for their comrades in arms.
This worked for a dozen yards. Then the withering fire from rocks forced the soldiers to take cover.
Barker would have kept walking and firing if Sturgeon hadn’t yanked him hard and swung him around behind a rock. As he sat heavily, a rifle slug ricocheted off the top of the rock.
“You been eatin’ locoweed?” Sturgeon demanded. “They’re killers! They’ll kill you if you stick your honkin’ big nose out there like that.”
“I need more bullets,” Barker said, aware that he had used the last of his ammunition.
“All we got’s for our carbines. You stay down and let us catch them rustlers.”
“Rustlers,” Barker said, still in his curious world where danger hardly existed and he was invincible. “They’re killers and stagecoach robbers and—”
The Sonora Noose Page 13