Shaw gestured at the river. “Matty, Zeke, ride on down and see if you can spot anyone on the water.”
Bill and Frenchie started to walk back to the fort but Shaw stopped them with his horse. “Not so fast.”
Bill snarled in irritation. “Yes?”
“How do I know you didn’t just help Porter escape?”
“Help? He stole my boat! I just told you.”
“Like I’m supposed to believe a nigger,” Shaw spat. “I already heard from the woman up there, and she seems to think awful highly of Rockwell, so why are you changing your story?”
“Changing my story? I just told you everything I know! Porter showed up here this afternoon, made pleasantries and such. Said he was chasing after Matamoros and wanted my flatboat. I got no use for slavers, but I didn’t want to sell my flatboat, so his folks got me drinking and then they done took it when I was asleep!”
“Who is the woman then?”
Bill laughed and slapped his knee. “Hell! Just another one of the many problems I seem to have collected from Rockwell. I guess he rescued them a couple weeks back from Matamoros, but then he couldn’t take them back to civilization hisself so he told them to come out this way to the fort. Only problem is the Mormons done got run out a little while back by the Utes. So, Frenchie and I took over the place, so now we have to play babysitter to those women folks.”
“I’m sorry to be a burden to you, Mr. Granstaff,” broke in Mrs. Taggart, “the girls and I will be leaving in the morning. Mr. Shaw, if you really are the law, I would appreciate your escort back to somewhere civilized.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Bill. But Mrs. Taggart just raised a hand to hush him and turned her attention back to Shaw.
Shaw was uncomfortable, he didn’t want to have to escort anyone, he was hot on the trail of his prize, the murdering Danite, Porter Rockwell, and now he was being thwarted by petty, little people. Just then, Matty and Zeke came riding up fast.
“They are on the river, Boss!”
Shaw ignored Mrs. Taggart, asking Bill. “Am I right in guessing there isn’t anywhere I can catch up to Rockwell?”
“Not without a boat. That’s why he needed mine to go after Matamoros.”
“Damn it! Hell fires!” Shaw raised his pistol and shot in the air. The six-gun thundered in the night, the boom echoing off the canyon walls. “Son of a bitch escapes me again!”
Bill, Frenchie and Mrs. Taggart all backed away a few steps. Even the deputies made a little room for Shaw.
“You know, Boss,” offered Matty, “seems these folks got an interesting story to tell and what with all I have heard, I’d imagine it makes for a good case against Rockwell. I say we get it all documented, cuz we know Rockwell is gonna came back sure enough one day and when he does, we just need proof for Judge Spicer.”
Shaw looked at Matty and for a half second, Matty wasn’t the only one who thought he might get struck down by that piecing gaze. “That is best thing to ever come out of your mouth. We are gonna do just that.” He then said to Mrs. Taggart, Bill and Frenchie. “We are gonna be spending the night here. I need every bit of testimony you all have for my case. Mrs. Taggart, I especially need everything you can tell me about what happened to you and your daughters.”
She was indignant. “And what about getting us to some relative safety? A town and stage line I’d hope?”
“I’ll do that, soon as you help me with my case,” said Shaw. He dismounted and led them back toward the fort.
Bill and Frenchie sulked at the prospect of more unwelcome guests, eating their larder and being a nuisance in general.
Shaw put his arm around Mrs. Taggart. She shivered at his touch. “Now, don’t hold anything back. Tell me everything that happened, so I can bring justice to this sad predicament.”
“I’ll tell you everything I know, but you’re not gonna like it,” she said.
“Oh? Why not? I just want the truth.”
“The truth won’t convict Porter Rockwell. My daughter, Emily, will tell you. Emily,” she called. There was no answer. Her other daughters appeared. “Where is Emily?”
They shook their heads, and the next eldest, Tana, answered, timidly. “She told me not to worry or say anything, but she is gone. She said she was going to go help Mr. Rockwell.”
Mrs. Taggart’s face flushed and she turned toward the river. “Emily!” she cried.
“Looks like we better add kidnapping to the charges,” said Matty.
A faint smile curled beneath Shaw’s mustache.
12. Ride the River
The flatboat glided down the river, free and easy here, and Porter was pleased that in leaving so early they would better close the distance to Matamoros. That and, even though it was still dark, he was sure Matamoros wouldn’t disembark until much farther downriver, so they were in no danger of missing them at night.
He decided he may as well get a little more sleep, so he took his saddle and bedroll and adjusted a spot near the stack of supplies. As he punched an area to clear it, it cried out, “Ouch!”
“What the deuce?” Porter tore the canvas off the rations to see Emily Taggart lying there in the stack of hay.
“Hi,” she said, sheepishly.
“Hi?” He responded, somewhat surprised at himself with the words. “What are you doing here?”
“Who?” asked Quincy, glancing around then seeing the teenage blonde, he took off his hat and laughed. “Like we needed any more trouble.”
“I want to help. I heard you all talking around the fire and thought I’d sure like to help somebody the way you all did me and my sisters, Mr. Rockwell.”
Porter grunted, saying, “This ain’t the kind of trip you should have stowed away on. This is bad business.”
Emily shook her head, the golden curls, stuck with straw, swayed in the moonlight. “I know Matamoros. He is a very bad man and anything I can do to help you I will. I’ll do anything, cook, for you, help with the horses, I can shoot. My daddy taught me to shoot before Matamoros killed him.”
“Is that why you’re here? To get some revenge?” asked Roxy.
“Yes’m. Well, I’d like to see justice done if that’s what you mean. I’d like to be there when Mr. Rockwell kills him.”
Porter rubbed at his chin. “We’re going after a kidnapped girl, hardly any younger than you. This isn’t some kind of joyride. This is dangerous. Quint, watch for a spot we can get to shore and drop her off, she ought to be able to walk back to the fort on her own don’t ya think?”
“No, I’m not going. I’m here to help you come hell or highwater.”
Quincy was holding the steering pole and shook his head. “Funny, she should say that Port, cuz I’ can’t make that kind of maneuver right now.” The river current was moving strong and swift and it was all Quincy could do to keep them in the center of the river, avoiding the many treacherous rocks along the sides.
“Now ya tell me,” grumbled Porter, helping Quincy with the steering pole. It operated similar to a rudder albeit much less effectively.
Roxy tried to calm the horses, who nickered and panicked at the sudden rough riding flatboat. Emily got up to help her. Redbone nervously clutched at a rail.
The flatboat went up and down as the river flowed in a rough, white capped barrage. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was smooth once again.
“I get the feeling we’re going to be getting a lot more stretches like that soon enough.”
“Likely. No man has ever floated the river through the Grand Canyon below, it’s a death trap. We’ll hopefully find where Matamoros disembarked soon enough. Just a couple more hours ‘til daylight I think.”
“Goodness, that was one of the scariest moments of my life,” said Emily.
The others just looked at her, though it seemed Redbone agreed with her.
“How far you suppose we are from the fort now, Quint?”
“I’d bet we’re at least twenty miles downriver, maybe more with this current.”
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Porter rubbed at his beard. “I guess you’re with us, Girlie.”
Roxy objected, “Porter, no, it’s too dangerous for her.”
“We’re way too far for me to leave her to walk back on her own. We can’t give her a horse, and we don’t have time to ride her back up there either, not that I think we’d get a very warm reception when we did. She’s with us.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rockwell.”
“Call me Port.”
She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek.
Roxy bit her lip and turned around.
Porter sensed this was going to be a longer trip than he had ever anticipated.
13. Debate
“Rise and shine!” hollered Shaw. “We got to get on the trail.” The Taggart women were not accustomed to being yelled at. Bill and Frenchie had let them do their own thing in their own time as a courtesy, but this—this was just rude.
“Where are you taking us, Mr. Shaw?”
“It’s Deputy Marshal Shaw, Miss Taggart. And I will take you and your girls back to civilization once you show me the remains of the camp you claim Porter liberated you from.”
“Why? There isn’t anything left there except bodies and a broken down old wagon that we scrounged every last morsel of food from, before we came here.”
He gave a wicked grin and poked her in the chest. “Exactly. I want to see that evidence for my own eyes.”
She blushed and tried to ignore his impropriety. “What about my daughter? Emily?”
“I don’t get the impression that you are too worried about her being with Rockwell.”
She didn’t answer.
“I think for some strange reason you want to defend him. I don’t claim to understand. The man obviously kidnapped your daughter, didn’t he?”
“He didn’t do that. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Of course, it doesn’t make sense to a peaceful, god-fearing, Christian woman. But let me remind you that Rockwell is a vicious, murderous Mormon Danite. You have seen him kill. Now, maybe it did save you and your girls’ lives, but I assure you that was happenstance. Rockwell had bloodlust on the brain and had to kill something, so he waylaid those travelers.” He made the finger across the neck motion of death, with a wry grin.
“They were slavers! They murdered my husband, they—”
“Now, now, Miss Taggart, you relax. We will get your daughter back, and we will bring justice to these criminals. I just need you to show me where this happened.”
She shook her head. “They were killers. He saved us.”
Changing tactics, Shaw said, “All right, I believe you. But I need to see it for myself.”
“I am not going to help you in your vendetta against a good man,” spat Mrs. Taggart.
“You’re fooling yourself,” said Shaw. “And that’s a sad thing. You really think he is innocent, show me these Mexican slavers. Then I’ll exonerate Rockwell and we can worry about other parties.”
Bill frowned at the situation, but kept his mouth shut. He was still upset about his flatboat being stolen, but he didn’t trust this Shaw a bit either.
“I can show you. You will see that they were bad men who deserved to die. But I need my Emily back. She must have run off thinking she could help Mr. Rockwell.”
Matty and the others in the posse, chortled. Shaw glared at his men, demanding silence.
“We will let you show us the way back, and then we will get you ladies to safety in town and we will find your daughter. No matter what. You have my word on it.”
Mrs. Taggart felt trapped. She didn’t want to do anything to harm Rockwell, he was a savior to her and her girls, but maybe if she could show Shaw the dead slavers, he would know the truth. And this problem could go away for all of them. She prayed Emily was safe.
14. White Water, Red Blood
Sunlight broke high overhead on the red cliffs. The river still moved at a steady pace and the cliffs on both sides seemed to be growing taller by the mile. The flats where they could disembark grew farther and farther between.
“He’s got to be landing somewhere soon and when he does, we’ll catch him.” Rockwell said, as much for himself as the others.
But another twenty miles downriver and there still was no sign of a flatboat or anywhere Matamoros might have camped.
“Could we have missed a spot in the dark where he ran the ferry aground and went on?” asked Quincy.
“I’m worrying at that very thing.”
The river widened and slowed, though they were still surrounded by high cliffs on both sides. The occasional sandbar forced them to push off to continue, and they did their best to stick to the center of the river where they could watch both sides and avoid obstacles.
At a particularly wide stretch, the river curved in a great arc, and they found themselves flung to the far left-hand side of the current, as they moved slowly across they stared in surprise.
There on the far right-hand side of the river wedged up on a great sandbar was Matamoros, his seven men, their horses and Kimama!
Redbone cried out in agony at seeing his daughter with the filthy, dastardly men.
Matamoros laughed and shot at them.
Quincy steered them farther left and let them lodge against the far bank, a few hundred yards downstream of where the robber chief was.
Matamoros and his band took careless pot-shots at them, but stopped once they saw it was fruitless. Porter and company did not shoot back because Kimama was held forth like a shield.
Redbone raged, but was trapped with nothing more he could do.
“We’re in luck, dire as it seems.” Porter said.
“How?”
“Even if he gets his flatboat off that bar, he can’t go back upstream, the current is too much, and there’s no way he can scale those cliffs. He has to come through us. We just got to wait this out.”
That didn’t sit too well with Redbone, but there was nothing else he could do.
They took their own horses off their flatboat to let them graze on the sparse grasses growing there; that and to be sure their mounts didn’t become targets. Anything was better than being stuck on the flatboat all day. Emily made herself busy, frying up some of their rations, which Porter noticed were considerably more than they had when they had left Price.
“Did you help yourself to a few things of Bill’s?”
“I did. He said we could help ourselves to his stores whenever we left, so I did.”
“I’m sure he meant you and your mama, all of you going back to somewhere civilized.”
“I know but I wanted to contribute. Oh, and I brought your Valley-Tan whiskey. I knew it meant a lot to you, so, when Roxy wasn’t looking, I brought four bottles down to the flatboat. You have it all except for those two you drank last night,” she said, with a bright smile.
“I didn’t drink two. Everybody else did.” It was hard to be mad at a girl that smiled so much, especially when she had brought him more of his prized possessions. “But thank you anyhow.”
“How long are we going to have to wait here?”
“Until we get Redbone’s daughter back I suppose. I wouldn’t be too worried though, we’ve got him in a good spot, he can’t get past us, and I’m sure we probably have more rations than he does. We can wait him out.”
“What can we do though if he has the girl?”
“I expect he’ll parley with us soon. I’ll tell him we’re willing to let him go if he’ll let the girl go.
“Do you think he will?’
“No. Men like him only understand one thing and that’s usually a bullet.”
“That why god made men like you?”
“I suppose so.”
Redbone never took his eyes off Matamoros, while the others saw to their own chores and prepared.
A half hour later and several more attempts at shooting Porter and the others, Matamoros finally called out, “Why do you want me so bad, huh Marshal? I am only trying to leave your god-forsaken country, eh? Why
not just let me leave in peace, and you will be left in peace too, huh? I swear I will never come back to your country.”
“Simple. Let the Ute girl go!”
“I don’t know if I can do that. You see, what would I have to give me assurance of a safe passage back to my home, huh? You see the predicament I’m in don’t you, Gringo?”
“We ain’t ever gonna stop dogging your trail til we get her back.”
“What is so special about this one huh? You already freed all the Goshutes I had and those white women too, huh? You cost me a lot of dinero! A lot of men, you killed so many, I weep for them.”
“Good.”
“That was unkind Gringo, you killed so many of mi amigo’s. What will I tell their families, huh?”
“I didn’t think those bastards had families,” yelled Port.
Quincy joined in, “Think of all the money we saved you in having to pay them.”
“You are so mean, Gringo, so mean. But, I think I will keep this one, huh. To keep me warm at night and then maybe I slit her throat when I am done. You want that to happen? You let me go, no molestado, huh?”
“I’m gonna give you the peace of a bullet,” Porter shouted.
“I guess we have an argument then, huh? Fine, but you will be sorry. You see the two amigo’s waiting for me with the flat boat, were only some of my men on this journada del muerto. I have more. You will see them soon, and then what? You will have come all this way just to die? So sad, so pointless. We will get past you now, and you had better let us go with no molestado.”
Matamoros held Kimama in front of him as the five Apache and two Mexican’s finished pushing the flatboat off the sandbar. “You see? We are ready to continue our journada. Are you willing to let her die?”
“You ain’t taking her to Mexico,” shouted Porter.
“We shall see.”
They pushed the flatboat free into the river and it slid toward Porter’s position. Matamoros still held Kimama in front of him to dissuade their shooting at him. But, he had discounted the accuracy at which Porter and Quincy could fire.
CRAZY HORSES: A Porter Rockwell Adventure (Dark Trails Saga Book 2) Page 6