The Sonora Noose

by Jackson Lowry

  “I’m glad you’ve given up drinking. That means your back is feeling better, doesn’t it?”

  “Still gives me twinges,” he admitted. He saw no reason to lie about it since he knew she saw how he winced now and again. Sitting up a little straighter did nothing to ease the pain.

  “You ought to go to a doctor over in El Paso and see to it. Or there’s talk of a good doctor up at Fort Bayard.”

  “He’s a vet.”

  “So? There’s no difference between the human animal and the four-legged variety.”

  “You’ve gone to too many of these sermons without me,” Barker said, grinning. Ruth stared at him for a moment, then laughed.

  “You must be feeling better. You sound more like your old self, joshing like that.”

  Barker continued to guide the horse onto the smoothest portion of the road, but there was hardly any patch without hills and valleys as big as those in the Peloncillas. Gratitude for finally arriving at the church flooded him as he parked under a cottonwood in the shade.

  “Not much of a turnout today,” Ruth said. “There’s Miz Warner. I’ll need to speak to her about that recipe she promised.”

  “For cobbler?”

  “Apple pie,” Ruth said. “Now I know you’re feeling chipper to ask after dessert.”

  He helped her down and watched her bustle over to where Mrs. Warner held court with three other wives. Ruth and Mrs. Warner quickly excluded the others, fast friends swapping recipes. Barker started toward the church, where it had to be cooler inside. If he was first in, he might find a pew near a window where a breeze could keep him awake.

  “Marshal, a word with you.”

  He heaved a sigh of resignation.

  “Morning, Mr. Mayor. Out to rustle up some votes?”

  Mayor Pendleton sidled closer, took his arm, and steered him back into the shade. Barker was glad for that. Otherwise, he would have had to shoot him to get out of the sun. Pendleton was a leather-lunged politician who never fell silent if even one person who might vote remained within earshot. Then Barker remembered he had left his six-shooter at home. This was Sunday, after all, and besides, there wasn’t likely to be much call to shoot the mayor.

  “What are you doing about the crime that grips our town?”

  “You hired a town marshal. He told me in no uncertain terms my presence in town wasn’t appreciated.”

  “Did he, now? I’ll have a word with Marshal Dravecky. It can’t hurt to have two lawmen on patrol up and down our streets.”

  “What crime are you talking about, Mayor? My wife didn’t mention any in Mesilla.” Ruth would have berated the new marshal if there had been reason to do so. As much as she liked him being home, at least a little more, she would have told him if Dravecky wasn’t doing his job.

  “Well, not so much in town,” Pendleton said reluctantly. “Dravecky keeps most of the fighting and drunkenness under control, but there is trouble collecting fines from the, uh, the Cyprians.”

  “So he’s not extorting your ladies of the evening enough to suit you?”

  “I’m not implying anything, just that, he, well, that’s not the real concern. The outlying regions, all around Mesilla, there’s complaints.”

  “About?” Barker wiped sweat from his forehead with the clean linen handkerchief Ruth had tucked into his pocket. He tried to keep his hands from shaking. And he had to watch what he said. His mouth was dryer than the desert outside Mesilla, and focusing on the mayor was a mite more difficult than it should have been. But Barker thought that might only be lack of interest in what Pendleton had to say.

  “Horse thieves. Rustlers. Nothing much. A horse here, a couple head of cattle there, but reports are increasing.”

  “I got a telegram from Marshal Armijo,” Barker said. “He thinks it’s a band of Warm Springs Apaches off the reservation in Arizona. The cavalry has been notified. Corralling Indians is their concern.”

  “The reports I get don’t mention redskins,” Pendleton said.

  “I’ll contact Armijo and see what he wants me to do.”

  “There’s more ... petty thieving.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s hard to point at any given theft, but taken together, well, Mr. Dooley said there’s been shoplifting lately. More than a kid stealing penny candy.”

  Barker said nothing about this. More than once he had seen Pendleton swipe a peppermint from the jar when Dooley wasn’t looking. If anything, Dooley was smart enough to leave the candy where it was easily swiped to keep the kids—and politicians—from taking more valuable merchandise.

  “What does your new marshal have to say about that?”

  “He thinks it’s Mexicans.”

  “He’s probably right,” Barker said dryly. “There’s nobody else in Mesilla who would ever think to steal anything from the general store.”

  “I know you killed the leader of that gang, that Sonora Kid.”

  “The cavalry laid claim to that,” Barker said. He was glad to pass along whatever praise there was for the shooting to Sergeant Sturgeon and his troopers. Still, the vaquero’s death had been strange, and the rest of the gang, the ones not killed in the gunfight, were probably deep inside Mexico by now.

  “If I have to use political pull with the governor, I will.”

  “To do what?”

  “Why, to force you to do your duty, Marshal. What do you think we’ve been talking about? Stop all the rustling and petty pilfering before it turns serious!”

  “I’ll round up all the Mexicans,” he said. His sarcasm was lost on the mayor.

  “See to it. Ah, the minister is ready to begin the sermon. I’m glad we had this talk. I’m sure you will perform your duties from now on, Marshal.”

  It took all Barker’s willpower not to take a swing at Pendleton. That wouldn’t have been the proper thing to do in the sight of the preacher and God on the Sabbath, but Barker would have been willing to argue his case with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates when he finally passed, just for the pleasure of it now.

  He tightened his fingers into a fist, to see what it might feel like. He took a slow swing at empty air since Pendleton was already shaking hands with the minister. As his arm swung around, he lost his footing, stumbled, and the world turned red with pain. He caught the rough trunk of the cottonwood and pulled himself upright. The pain refused to abate.

  Hands shaking, he got the brown bottle from his pocket and took a swig from it. The bitter tincture burned his tongue but began affording some relief in less than a minute.

  “Mase, come along now. The sermon’s ’bout to start.” Ruth waved to him from the church steps. He returned the wave, then started for the door to join her. The sermon had better be a powerful one, because he had nothing but desolation in his soul.

  The bottle of laudanum was empty.

  16

  “I’M GONNA BE SICK,” THE STATION AGENT FROM MESILLA said, turning away. Mason Barker had to swallow his own bile at the sight of the overturned stagecoach and the dead bodies.

  Four passengers, the driver, and the shotgun messenger, all dead and left in the hot New Mexico sun to decay. He rubbed his nose as he walked closer, and his eyes watered from the rising stench. They hadn’t been dead longer than a few hours—more than long enough to begin to stink to high heaven. The day was too hot for the coyotes to come in to pick at the bodies, and the way the dead passengers were trapped inside the compartment had discouraged the buzzards. Both guard and driver were pinned under the stage.

  He started counting bullet holes in the wood sides and then gave up. He couldn’t count that high. It looked as if the stagecoach had driven through the stream of bullets coming out of a Gatling gun.

  “You know who these folks are?” he called back to the station agent.

  “No,” came the weak answer. “Just told they was on the stage.”

  Barker shook his head. The people were as riddled with bullets as the stage. Figured. They’d been inside when somebody opened fire.
He couldn’t even guess how many men had been responsible, but from his examination, it seemed the road agents hadn’t bothered to fire a warning shot to get the driver to stop. They’d just opened up. Nowhere could he see any evidence that the driver had whipped the horses in an attempt to escape or had put on the brake to stop.

  “Not likely to find who they are, then,” Barker said. “They’ve been robbed.” He strained, reached down through the window, and flipped back a torn vest pocket where one man’s watch had been ripped out. The watch chain and fob had left distinctive marks, too. He imagined it clearly—a dirty hand grabbing the chain and then yanking it free.

  A slow circuit of the turned-over stage showed that the passengers’ luggage had been rifled. The contents had been strewn out and then the desert wind had finished the scattering to all points of the compass. Barker tugged a frilly-fronted shirt off a mesquite bush and held it up. It had belonged to a gambler. Nobody else would wear such foppery.

  “What am I gonna tell the home office?” The station agent rode to Barker, making a point of looking away from the carnage.

  “That you lost a stage to outlaws,” Barker said. “No sense tossing in a spoonful of sugar to make it sound any different.”

  He turned back to the stage and frowned.

  “How is it you thought to fetch me? The stage couldn’t have been more’n a couple hours late.” Barker looked up and saw how pale the man had turned.

  The agent swallowed hard, started to speak, then swallowed again after pouring some water into his mouth and over his head to calm himself. Barker waited patiently for the answer. The corpses weren’t going anywhere, and he needed as much information as he could gather to track down the sons of bitches who had murdered six men just like ...

  ... just like the Sonora Kid had done a month earlier.

  “Marshal Barker, I thought it was a joke, but my clerk said it was real blood.”

  “What was real blood?” Barker’s patience began to fray. Remembering the Sonora Kid hadn’t done a thing to ease his suspicions about the death in the Peloncilla Mountains.

  “The n-note. It was writ in blood. Said the s-stage had been robbed out here on the road.”

  “You still got the note?”

  “It’s back with my clerk. I fetched you as soon as I convinced myself it was for real.”

  Barker didn’t ask what had been the deciding factor. He peered back into the compartment, then pushed back and faced the station agent.

  “The note was written in blood and there was a writin’ instrument with it?”

  “It was wr-rapped inside. The man’s finger!”

  Barker had guessed as much. A second look had shown a passenger’s index finger had been sawed off. He circled the stage again, thinking hard on why outlaws would want to alert the station agent of their crime and to do so in such a gruesome fashion. Their robbery wouldn’t have been discovered until the next day, after the stagecoach had failed to arrive. Maybe a rider would have come across the turned-over stage and done his civic duty by reporting it. From the bullets and blood, it seemed that anyone finding the scene of this crime would have been inclined to ride along a little faster and not get caught up in it.

  On his second circuit, studying the rock-hard ground, Barker’s eye was struck by a dazzling point of light coming from something in the dust. He bent and almost toppled over. The pain in his back had gotten worse since he finished the laudanum that Sunday at church. He had stayed out on the trail with his flask of whiskey, which hadn’t been hard after the telegram he got from Marshal Armijo. The mayor had lit a fire under the governor, and the governor had seen to it that the federal marshal sent his deputies out after all the petty thieves.

  Barker had been on the trail most of the time and had been able to do more than take a nip or two of whiskey to dull the pain. But it wasn’t anywhere as good as the opium. He was thinking of riding to El Paso to see if he could find more. Or over to Tombstone. Rumor had it the Chinee in Hoptown got opium directly from the Celestial Kingdom.

  He wished there was a doctor in Mesilla or even Las Cruces. Going to the vet at Fort Bayard was hardly the way to get another bottle of the potent narcotic. Why use pain-killers on a horse? If its condition was that bad, it was put out of its misery.

  He rubbed his back, wondering if he ought to be put out of his misery.

  “What you got, Marshal?”

  His fingers flipped over the silver concha, and he managed to straighten up without venting a groan. Barker held it high, let the sunlight reflect off the Mexican ornament, then tucked it into his pocket.

  “Might not be anything, but my guess is that it fell off a sombrero belonging to one of the banditos.”

  “They was Mexicans? You can tell that?”

  “I’ll want to see the note. Don’t go tossin’ it to the dogs.”

  “It was writ in good enough English.”

  Barker kept his opinion of that to himself.

  “There any ranches nearby?” he asked, more to get the station agent’s mind roving in other directions than for real information. He knew that the Bar K land was not five miles north of the road. Many’s the time drivers had complained about the Bar K cattle on the road, slowing them down. A steer used to grazing out in this sparse land didn’t much care if it found sustenance along a road or up in the foothills of the Organ Mountains.

  He listened with half an ear as the agent rattled on nervously about whose spread was closest.

  “Why don’t you get on back to Mesilla and round up some men to fix your stage so you can get it to town?”

  “The bodies ...”

  “You know how pleased the undertaker’ll be to have six burials in the offing. Why, Digger O’Dell might actually crack a smile he’ll be so happy.”

  “The main office’ll offer a big reward for this, Marshal. A hunnerd dollars, maybe. We can’t lose coaches like this. Why, Little Tom even upped and quit us, takin’ a job over in El Paso. Replacin’ him’s gonna be hard. He—”

  “Passengers would get a mite edgy, too, thinking they’d be killed,” Barker said.

  “Oh, yeah, them, too. Who’d want to ride a Halliday Stage if they’d end up like ... like this.” The station agent stared at the wreckage and quickly turned away, ready to puke.

  “I’ll see if any of the hands on the Bar K have seen riders crossing their land recently.” Barker knew he was more likely to get a reply asking after rustlers. If the Sonora Kid’s gang had returned, it was likely they’d camped nearby and needed food. Taking down a cow or two would make for some mighty fine eating. Anyone who’d murder six men the way these banditos had would probably think on celebrating.

  “When you be back in town, Marshal?”

  “I’m not sure. You tell Dravecky to keep an eye out for a Mexican wearing a sombrero missing a silver concha.”

  “You want him to arrest him?”

  Unworthy thoughts rattled through Barker’s head. He finally said, “I just want to know what they do and where they head when they ride out of town.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  “You tell him not to tangle with them. Not without a dozen men armed with shotguns backing him up. Whoever’s wearing that sombrero is likely the architect of this here massacre.”

  “I ... Do what you have to, Marshal, to stop these ... these animals!” The station agent sawed at his horse’s reins and galloped back toward Mesilla. In this heat the horse would collapse under him before he’d ridden a mile. Barker sighed. The horse would have enough sense to slow down, no matter what its rider wanted.

  He made a more careful study of the stagecoach and its dead occupants but found nothing more. The silver concha might have been left in the dust at any time, but he didn’t think so. The weather, the sun, the constant scraping of sand blowing over it would have dulled its finish if it had been in the road very long.

  Then there was the sombrero the Sonora Kid had worn. It had conchas like this one. He pulled it from his pocket, squinted
hard, and examined it. It had come from Mexico. Nowhere could you find better silversmiths, even among the Navajo. He was no expert, but he thought it might have been made down in Taxco. There had been a comb he saw over in El Paso that he had wanted to get for Ruth, finely wrought and too expensive to buy, that had been made down in the southern Mexico province with a design similar to what he held.

  Barker went to his horse, fumbled in the saddlebags, and got out his pint bottle. He sloshed around the amber contents, took out the cork, and stared at it for a moment. When the twinges hit him, Barker upended the bottle and drained a half inch. It burned like the sun all the way to his belly, but it would take twenty minutes to dull his pain.

  He stashed the recorked bottle back in his saddlebags and mounted, not bothering to stifle the moan. There had to be more he could do to ease the backache.

  Turning north, he rode until the sun cooked the left side of his body. He knew he was on Bar K land because the scrawny cattle hunting for grass or anything else to eat all carried that brand on their hindquarters.

  Just before sundown, he drew rein, took off his hat, and slapped it a couple times against his leg to get the trail dust off, then settled it back. No reason he shouldn’t look all purty for company. Barker rode on down into the cavalry camp, the sentry coming out to challenge him, a private he remembered from the foray into the Peloncillas.

  “Howdy, Marshal Barker,” the soldier greeted. “The sarge, he didn’t say nuthin’ ’bout you comin’ by.”

  “You out after rustlers?”

  “Yes, suh, we surely are.”

  By now their voices had carried to the nearest campfire, bringing Sergeant Sturgeon.

  “You’re like a bad penny, Marshal. Can’t get rid of you no matter how I try.”

  “I’m the only one who’d drink your vile coffee and lie to you ’bout how good it was.”

  “If you’re anglin’ for some coffee, come on in.” Sturgeon motioned him to ride on past the guard, who hoisted his rifle back to his shoulder and slowly returned to pacing his duty post.