The Sonora Noose

by Jackson Lowry

  He spoke to an empty air. Sturgeon had ducked low and run to get his men re-formed to renew attack.

  Barker heard horses in the distance and knew the outlaws were escaping. He shoved his useless six-shooter into his holster, then began a wide arc that would bring him around to outflank the gang. As he worked his way up to higher ground, he stumbled and went to one knee. Whatever he had fallen over moaned. He reached down and found a soldier staring up at him.

  “Marshal, done been hit. Feels bad.”

  “Take some of this,” Barker said, fumbling out the laudanum from his pocket. “It’ll make the pain go away.”

  “Can’t fight no mo’.”

  He made sure the soldier had swallowed the opiate, then carefully replaced the bottle in his pocket. Somehow, it seemed more precious than life itself.

  Barker snatched up the soldier’s carbine and continued on the arc to go against the gang’s right flank. He scrambled through the rocks, wiggled like a snake atop a rock still warm from the day’s sun, and peered over the top down into deep shadow. Unable to tell where any of the outlaws were, he sighted along the short barrel and waited.

  When one road agent fired, Barker immediately squeezed the trigger. He was rewarded with a moan. The outlaw turned and looked up toward him but couldn’t see him. He fired again, hitting the man a second time. Then the soldiers rushed forward, rifles blazing.

  “Hold your fire, don’t shoot no more!” Sergeant Sturgeon ordered.

  The sudden silence was as frightening as the constant barrage. Barker lay belly down on the rock for a few seconds, then called out, “I’m above you, Sergeant. I’m standing up. Don’t shoot.”

  Barker got to his feet and for the first time realized how weak he was. He slipped, hit the rock, and skidded down the curving surface to land in a heap a few feet from the soldiers.

  The buffalo soldiers snickered. Even Sturgeon’s sharp order didn’t stop the smirking, and Barker noticed the sergeant worked to hide his own amusement. Forcing himself to sit up, Barker checked to be sure nothing had broken. The only aches and pains he had were old, remembered ones, with the exception of the bullet hole in his leg. Using the carbine as a crutch, he levered himself to his feet.

  “How many did we get?”

  “You winged this one, but the corporal stopped him when he tried to sneak away. Can’t rightly say we got any of the others.”

  “Don’t go chasing them in the dark. You’ll get ambushed. Wait till morning. We can track them,” Barker said. He felt the same pull that the sergeant did to go after the outlaws. To be this close and have them escape seemed so wrong, but they had other responsibilities.

  “Sergeant,” Barker said, “you’ve got a wounded man on the other side of this rock. I used his carbine. Hope that doesn’t violate army regulations.”

  “Don’t know that it does, you bein’ a federal lawman, Marshal. Otherwise, I’d have to take you into custody for misappropriatin’ government property.” Sturgeon laughed at his small joke, then motioned to a pair of soldiers to see to the wounded man. “You be all right, Marshal? I want to see what’s in the camp.”

  “Don’t go messing up the map in the dirt. I want a look at it. When I get there.” Barker put one foot in front of the other and found that his strength returned quickly enough if he kept walking. Only when he slowed or stopped did he find himself in trouble if he tried moving another inch. The bullet wound in his leg was minor, bloodier than it was serious. He was just overall weaker than he wanted to be.

  “Won’t do more’n we have to.” With that the sergeant trotted off.

  Barker started to follow the soldier, then slowed and stopped in spite of the aches he then felt in both knees. Something tugged at the edge of his hearing, his sight, his sense of smell. Rather than go back to the camp, he explored farther south, in the direction taken by the fleeing road agents.

  He wended his way along the twisting game trail, increasingly wary because of the deepening shadows. It was hardly six o’clock and the canyon bottom was darker than midnight. Barker swung the carbine to his shoulder when he saw two figures ahead. A horse stood just off the trail, nervously pawing at the ground. But it wasn’t the horse that held his attention. A man knelt with another standing beside him. For a few seconds, Barker couldn’t make out the meaning of the dark blobs. Then he did.

  The kneeling man wore a sombrero.

  He lifted his rifle, but something gave him away. The standing outlaw snapped off four quick shots. The sudden blaze from the muzzle blinded Barker. He jerked to one side, lost his balance, and fell heavily when his wounded leg gave way under him. He rolled over, brought the rifle up so he could fire in a prone position, and saw only the kneeling man. Where the other road agent had gone he couldn’t tell. Then he realized that the horse had disappeared, too.

  “Throw up your hands! You’re under arrest!”

  The outlaw didn’t stir. Barker’s finger drew back on the trigger, but he didn’t fire. Something wasn’t right.

  “What’s goin’ on, Marshal? You needin’ some help?”

  “Over here, Sergeant,” he called. Barker got to his feet and kept the carbine trained on the sombrero-wearing man. “There’s a second one around somewhere.”

  “We’ll sweep the area.” Sturgeon gave the orders, and four soldiers crowded past, then galloped away. Barker edged closer.

  “Don’t try going for a gun. I’ll shoot you where you are.” Barker was ready to fire at the slightest twitch. Nothing. No movement.

  Sturgeon rode past, hit the ground, and ran a couple paces. He clutched his pistol as he got his footing. Between the buffalo soldier and the marshal, they had the outlaw dead to rights. If he so much as sneezed, they’d shoot him down in their cross fire.

  “Don’t see anybody else, Sergeant,” the corporal reported, returning from a quick ride down the trail deeper into the canyon.

  “That’s all right. We got ourselves one of them,” Sturgeon said.

  “Do we?” Barker closed the distance and used the rifle muzzle to knock the sombrero off the man’s head. The hat went flying, but the man toppled to the ground, unmoving.

  Sturgeon came up and used his boot to prod the man in the chest. No movement. The soldier bent and rolled the man over, then looked up at Barker.

  “He’s dead. You done killed him.”

  “I never even shot at him.”

  “Somebody did.” Sturgeon pointed to a bullet hole in the back of the man’s neck.

  Barker considered the angle of the wound and the possibility a stray army bullet might have ended the man’s life. He shook his head.

  “The other man shot his partner. He stood over him, aimed down like this”—he made a gun out of his fingers like a small boy might—“and killed him.”

  “Why? Doesn’t look like he was too injured to ride. No other wound on him.”

  “Might be the killer wanted his horse.”

  Sturgeon snorted in disgust.

  “Troopers don’t leave their comrades behind. If I had any inclination before, I surely don’t want to sign up for this outfit now, though there’s not much left of it. We done too good a job wipin’ ’em out and runnin’ ’em off.”

  “We didn’t get but two of them,” Barker said. “And counting this as ours is pushing the truth till it squeaks.”

  “You don’t know him? Look at the sombrero.”

  Barker stepped closer, then reached into his pocket, found a lucifer, and struck it. The match flared, then settled down to a guttering flame that illuminated the dead man’s face.

  “The vaquero I’ve been chasing,” he said in a dull voice.

  “That’s got to be the Sonora Kid. Their leader’s dead.”

  “Would one of the gang kill his own leader like this?” In his imagination, Barker watched ghostly figures going through the assassination.

  “If his own worthless life hung in the balance, friendship’d go out the window,” Sturgeon said. “Get caught by us or kill the Sonora Kid
? One of the gang didn’t have a problem makin’ that decision.”

  Barker went through the vaquero’s pockets, hunting for something. He didn’t know what he sought, but he didn’t find it. No money, no watch, nothing. He straightened and looked at the body.

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You’ve got too strong a moral sense, Marshal,” Sturgeon said. “These men, they don’t have any moral anchor. What they want to do, they just do.”

  “He didn’t have a watch.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I expected more, I reckon,” Barker said. “This is the vaquero I’ve been trailing. No question about that.”

  “And the Sonora Kid wore that sombrero. We stopped the Sonora Kid, Marshal. And tomorrow we’ll catch the rest of them. How far can they run in the dark?”

  Barker wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be all the way back to Sonora. That meant the whole of southern New Mexico Territory would settle down and be more law-abiding. He wasn’t sure what he felt about that.

  Except that it didn’t seem right.

  15

  MASON BARKER SHIFTED THE SADDLE, LIFTED A mite, and rubbed his sore behind. Sergeant Sturgeon laughed at him, as he had about every day during the past week as they went deeper into the Peloncilla Mountains hunting for the road agents who had escaped. After an entire week Barker still couldn’t tell how many men they were chasing. It might have been one or it could have been three.

  What he did know was that his butt hurt something fierce from being in the saddle this long. The days were hot and deadly if he didn’t swill enough water. Just finding decent watering holes took about all the skill he had as a tracker. At times he wished he was part Apache. They always tracked water like a bee goes after a flower.

  But the buffalo soldiers rode stolidly, never complaining, enduring more hardship than he did since they shared their water with him when he wasn’t able to find anything but alkali holes. He wondered if they had iron plates stitched into their britches. It was the only explanation.

  “I’m ready to get back to the fort and tell the colonel that we done run them back into the heart of Mexico,” Sturgeon said. He wiped the sweat from his face, squeezed out his scarf, and knotted it back around his neck. At one time the cloth had been bright yellow, but the sun and wind had faded it until it was almost white.

  “I’m ready to go back and die,” Barker said. “But I won’t tell your commander that we ran them bastards off. More likely, they led us a merry chase, staying just beyond our reach, watching us and laughing their damn fool heads off.”

  “You’re a good scout, Marshal. I understand why Colonel Carson kept you on. You must have given the Navajos hell.”

  “More like it was mutual. The only ones I ever saw who could outride a Navajo are the Apaches. And I’m saying that because as I get older, what they do on horseback looks all the more miraculous to me.” Barker heaved a sigh and leaned forward in the saddle to take some of the pressure off his hindquarters. “The trail was never good, and it got confused more than once. All we can claim is two dead outlaws.”

  “We can claim the Sonora Kid,” Sturgeon said.

  Barker stayed silent on this point. They had argued, friendly-like, about the vaquero’s identity. The sergeant was sure this was the gang’s leader, but Barker worried about what had happened. The least palatable notion was that the Sonora Kid had actually killed the vaquero and made it look as if they had stopped the top bandito. Still, Barker couldn’t deny he was glad to see the vaquero dead and buried. Whether he was the Sonora Kid or not, he had been one mean son of a gun. Keeping him out of Mesilla and preventing him from robbing stagecoaches and rustling cattle was sure to improve the entire southern reach of New Mexico Territory.

  But was he the Sonora Kid?

  “He was,” Sturgeon said, reading Barker’s thoughtful expression perfectly. “Don’t care if you back me up on that. I’m reporting that the leader of that gang’s dead and gone.”

  “You could be right,” Barker allowed.

  “I’ll see that any reward goes to you.”

  “That’s mighty thoughtful of you,” Barker said. “I doubt there’s any reward, but it would surely do me a world of good.” He stretched and winced. He had been riding without taking any laudanum to save what little remained in the bottle. He looked over his shoulder at the soldier who had been wounded in the fight with the outlaws. He had taken three bullets and had been in terrible bad pain when Barker gave him some of the tincture, and now he rode as hard and as long as any of his fellow troopers.

  Barker kept down the unworthy thought that this just wasn’t right. He needed more and more of the opium just to stay in the saddle, and here this soldier was almost healed after a week, the laudanum having done nothing more than take the edge off his pain when he was first shot.

  “Your leg troublin’ you some?”

  “Not too much,” Barker said truthfully. He pointed to the east. “That the road we were hunting for?”

  “Looks to be large enough for heavy wagons. It runs north. Your skill’s better’n any of ours, Marshal. You found us the road home.”

  The road home. The words rang like a bell in his head. It had been almost two weeks since he had slept in his own bed, Ruth alongside him. Hell, it had been that long since he’d had a bath. Fleas gnawed on his tough hide, and every time he moved, caked dirt cracked and fell off his coat and face.

  The road home. The road to heaven on earth.

  “You and your men deserve a rest.”

  “If the lieutenant’s back, we’ll get it.”

  “But not if the colonel has any say in the matter?”

  “Oh, Colonel Tomasson has all the say in the world’bout it. He’s the post commander, but Lieutenant Greenberg can argue with the best of ’em and can get us furlough or even extra rations. Sometimes.”

  Two of the soldiers riding directly behind began arguing whether it was better to get a three-day pass or extra victuals. Barker appreciated the contention since he wasn’t sure how he’d answer after having his belly rub up against his spine from lack of decent food for so long. Ruth’s cooking would put the weight back on him, but it would take longer than three days.

  Even though he had been hard at work chasing the outlaws from the territory, he doubted Marshal Armijo would give him more than a few days off. Barker wondered if he might make out that the bullet wound in his leg was worse than it was, but he quickly discarded that notion. He wasn’t being paid to malinger. He’d just have to make do with whatever time away from the job he could take to be with Ruth.

  “Here we are, Marshal, on the road back to the fort. Thank you kindly for your help.” Sturgeon thrust out his huge hand. Barker’s was engulfed in the firm handshake.

  “Any time, Sergeant, any time.”

  “We’d have this country cleaned slick as a whistle if’n there were more like you.” With that, Sergeant Sturgeon bellowed for the squad to advance, and the troopers trotted away, leaving Barker alone on the dusty road.

  East lay home.

  He snapped the reins and got his mare stepping along at a fast walk toward the Organ Mountains and home.

  “HE OUGHT TO BE WITH US,” RUTH SAID. “IT’S NOT right.”

  “I can’t go hunting for him.” Barker tried to keep the anger and hurt from his voice.

  “You can ask around. Those soldiers you’re always going on about, how good they are and how they cover every square inch of the territory. Have them look for him. He hasn’t gone far.”

  “I’ll do that, but asking the army to spy on Nate isn’t right.”

  “It’s not spying. I just want to know where he’s got off to. It’s been weeks, and he never so much as said goodbye. I want to know if he’s all right.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Barker said, but he knew that he lied. That wasn’t the proper thing to do ever, and less so since he and Ruth were fixing to go to church services.

  “I want to know.” She faced him an
d looked hard up into his eyes. Then she smiled. Just a little. “It’s good that you’re not drinking like you were. I cannot abide a man smelling like a brewery.”

  Barker instinctively touched the brown bottle in his pocket. The laudanum was almost gone, and it was the reason he hadn’t needed a shot or two of whiskey since he’d been home. The opium kept away the pain and let him move about easily. Being with Ruth made taking the drug even more important, but he had to shove his hand into his pocket to hide the shaking. He needed a few drops right now, but it seemed a weakness he didn’t want his wife to see if he took them. She would neither understand nor approve.

  “You’re sweating, Mase.”

  “It’s hot, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “Not so much inside. And you’re pale. You sure that gunshot wound in the leg didn’t get infected?”

  “It’s healin’ up just fine. Come on or we’ll be late for church.”

  “Now I know you’re sick. The Mason Barker I know would ride twenty miles out of his way to be certain he was late. The preacher can be a long-winded cuss, especially on days this hot.”

  He grunted and held out his arm for her to take. She looped hers through his and they left the house. Barker was almost staggered by the heat, although it was still early morning. He wasn’t sick, but the drug did this to him. He got cold sweats and his mouth turned to cotton wool. Worst of all, his visits to the outhouse were getting to be few and painful. But the laudanum eased his pain. There was no gain without some drawback. To move and ride and be with Ruth without his back stopping him was worth a bit of sweating and having shaky hands.

  He helped her into the buggy, then climbed up and took the reins. Driving, it didn’t matter if his hands trembled. If anything, that helped keep the balky, swaybacked horse moving along, unwillingly so.

  “We won’t have to stay long,” Ruth said, answering a question he hadn’t asked.

  He nodded and kept his eyes focused on the road ahead. The horse pulled slowly, but that didn’t keep every rock and pothole in the road from sending shocks up into his back. Barker considered another drop or two but wouldn’t do it while Ruth watched him like a hawk.