They each fired, and an Apache went down on the far right, while Quincy took a Mexican on the far left. They reengaged, but now the men scrambled for cover behind their horses, even Matamoros, who still held the girl close.
“We gonna shoot their horses?” asked Quincy.
That made Porter terrible mad, he sure didn’t want to kill an innocent animal, but he wasn’t about to let Matamoros just slip away.
“Yeah, shoot ‘em.”
They fired, Roxy and Redbone too. The horses on the flatboat screamed and several tumbled from the raft. The chaos aboard had the Apache returning fire while dodging their own maddened beasts.
Then Porter saw something he sure didn’t expect. A small canoe-like skin boat released from the side of the flat-boat with Matamoros and Kimama aboard. It slipped into the water out ahead of the flatboat. The girl looked unconscious and Matamoros sped ahead of the flatboat with the remaining men throwing as much lead Porter’s way as possible.
They had lost several horses, but it seemed like they didn’t care. Perhaps Matamoros wasn’t lying and he had more men waiting for him farther downstream. If so he would have more horses in any case.
The skin-boat zipped past their position and Redbone cried out in anguish. He rushed toward the shore to see his daughter, but the hail of bullets sent him ducking back down for cover.
The shooting thundered in the canyon, drowning out the subtle roar of the river. Emily held her hands over her ears, hidden behind cover. She might have been screaming at the noise, Porter wasn’t sure, he couldn’t hear anything either. The flatboat drifted down river enveloped in a cloud of gun smoke.
“What do we do?” asked Roxy.
“Same as always, we keep after them. Matamoros can go faster in that skin boat, but we’ll catch him. Get our horses back on board, get gotta get moving and stay close so they can’t surprise us around another bend.”
It only took a few moments to get the horses loaded and they were heading downriver with only about a quarter mile between them and the next boat. The few remaining Apache still fired occasionally, just to gauge the distance but it was too great to be a threat.
“Were all their horse’s dead?” asked Quincy.
Porter nodded grimly. “Think so, unless they had one or two trained good enough to lie down on a boat, that’d be tough even for horsemen as skilled as the Apache.”
Quincy hung his head. “I sure didn’t like doing that. We did it a few years back in a battle with the Comanche. We had no cover somewhere down toward Yucca Flats and it was all we could to save our own skins. I swore, I’d never shoot another horse.”
Porter just clapped Quincy on the shoulder. He didn’t like doing it either, but the life of a girl mattered more than any animal.
The canyon narrowed a spell and, in turn, the river grew faster and had a few more white caps complimented with jutting boulders. On top of that, they got closer to the other flatboat and the shooting commenced in earnest.
“Quint! You man the steering pole. Roxy, Emily, Redbone, do what you can for the horses, I’ll keep their heads pinned down,” shouted Porter. He took out his Winchester rifle and began sending rounds downrange at the Apache.
His foes had the benefit of dead horses for cover, but Porter knew once he got close enough, the heavy caliber was capable of punching through. In fact, he was counting on it.
Lead flew in both direction and one of the horses behind Porter screamed as it took a bullet in the neck. It flailed and kicked then dropped overboard as a particularly nasty bump in the river sent them all careening to one side and then the other.
Emily fell overboard.
Roxy whipped around and tossed a rope to the shocked girl who snatched it just before it was pulled from beyond her reach.
“I can’t see where I’m going!” shouted Quincy, doing his best to keep the flatboat in the center of the river. Redbone helped pull Emily back aboard. “Staying in the water might have been the safest spot,” said Quincy.
Emily was only too relieved to clamber back aboard. “I don’t know how to swim,” she chattered.
Another horse plunged into the rapids. Porter stole a glance to see which one when a bullet nipped at his hat. He turned and rapid fired his full chamber right back.
Redbone moved beside Porter, firing his own long gun. He cried aloud in triumph at hitting a man dead center and seeing him fall into the churning, white water.
No one was controlling the Apache flatboat and it hit the boulders with reckless abandon, tipping the craft almost a third of the way up, granting them no cover at all. But they didn’t dare try to stand and control it either.
A boulder caught the flatboat, holding it tipped and stationary for a moment and now Roxy too was shooting dead center of mass.
One of the Apache leapt away into the white water, while the two-remaining kept firing. Somewhere in the combined lead tornado, they got them all. Then just as suddenly, the flatboat released and continued downriver, empty of life.
“Was that all of them?”
“Except for the one that leapt overboard, but he ain’t gonna be in no position to shoot at us. I don’t think he even had his rifle when he jumped.”
“Porter, we lost three horses.”
He turned and sure enough, two had leapt away and were gone, one lay on its side bleeding out and the other two looked skittish as hell.
“Damnit!” It was Porter’s stallion that was bleeding out. He dropped to his knees and put a hand on the bullet wound. He caressed the animals neck and glanced at his friends, worried. “He was a good one. One of the best I’ve ever ridden.” He put his Navy Colt up to the animal’s head.
“No!” screamed Emily. “Let me see what I can do.”
“What? He’s lost too much blood.
“Please let me try.”
“I don’t want him to be in pain, Girl.”
“Please let me.” Her tears fell freely.
“All right, but if you can’t do anything, I don’t want him suffering.”
“Thank you,” said Emily. She tore open a knapsack from the ration bundle and worked feverishly at cleaning the wound. “Papa, used to work on horses, I learned a lot from him,” she said.
Porter grimaced. He sure wanted her to be right, hoping that there was some kind of miracle she could work, but he had his doubts. He’d seen too many horses take minor wounds and drop dead a few miles down the trail. It was hard business; a man gets close to a good horse, especially one so talented and true as the stallion. Porter had leapt the canyon back in the San Rafael Swell with him, which was something no one had ever done. He was a good horse. Porter then realized he had never actually named the animal, he just thought of it as The Stallion.
Roxy clutched Porter’s hand, then realized he still had blood all over it. She squeezed, and wiped her hand off on the pine guardrail. “I’ll say a prayer. Good horses are hard to come by, especially one you get the day you should have died.”
Porter nodded. “I can’t ever forget that,” he said soberly. He grabbed one of his bottles of Valley-Tan and took a good hard swallow.
“May I?” asked Emily, still on her knees beside the horse.
Port’s eyebrows raised in surprise. But he decided she was old enough to choose for herself, and he handed her the bottle. Emily didn’t take a drink, but instead poured some on the wound, then fished out a slug with a long pair of tweezers.
“I’ll be damned,” said Porter in surprise.
“Probably,” Roxy scolded.
“I think, he’ll be all right,” said Emily, as she stitched the wound closed.
“You are an angel, sent from Heaven above,” said Porter.
Emily blushed.
Roxy frowned.
Quincy laughed as he was steering the flatboat around another bend in the river. Then his eyes perked up. “Porter! Right over there.” He pointed at the far-left bank.
The Apache who jumped overboard was just climbing out of the water. He stared at them
with dark, angry eyes.
“What do you want to do?”
“Dunno. He is disarmed. I won’t shoot him. He’ll probably be trapped and die in this canyon.”
A shot rang out. Emily and Roxy both gasped at the sudden shock of it. The Apache wavered and fell back into the river.
Redbone stood there with his rifle still smoking. “No man may take my family from me.”
The dead Apache floated downriver beside them, his bright, red blood mingling with the red-brown river until they couldn’t see the vibrant discoloration anymore.
“Fair enough,” grunted Porter.
15. Hounds on the Scent
Matamoros had the lead again, as his skin boat could maneuver faster down the river than they could in the flatboat, but once they landed, they had a couple horses and he didn’t. Porter prayed it was a worthwhile tradeoff.
Redbone hung off the front rail of the flatboat watching hawk-like for any sign of Matamoros on the shoreline on both sides as they went downriver.
“Will we even be able to catch him?” asked Roxy.
Porter grunted in the affirmative. “We will, we just have to keep our eyes peeled on the banks, like Redbone there. It’s the only way we can be sure. If I was Matamoros, I’d get off the river soon as I could and hope we kept going by. One benefit of these canyon walls is he has nowhere to go just yet, but once it opens up and there are beaches and spots between the cliffs we need to be concerned, then we gotta be real vigilant.”
The river twisted and turned this way and that until it was a maddening back and forth current driving Roxy to tears. The high canyon walls shielded them from the sun and, in so doing, it never allowed the spray of the river soaking their clothing to fully dry before another rogue wave hit them and it started all over again. It was chilly.
By mid-day some of the canyon walls dropped just a little. Here and there the sloping canyon walls gave way to a few beaches of solid stone and sandy mud. These were precarious places a person could conceivably land. They all watched, eager to find where Matamoros might make his landfall.
Off to their left, a new river fed into the Colorado, and there were some peculiar tracks along the stony shore nearby.
“Let’s head over to that finger of rock and take a look, but let’s be careful, he might snipe at us.”
“I don’t see anywhere a person could hide,” said Emily, motioning at the bare-faced, red-orange canyon walls.
“That’s what worries me,” grumbled Porter, as he steered the flatboat across the entwining currents. Redbone and Quincy helped with poles, pushing along the bottom to better guide them swiftly to the shore.
As they came closer they saw a skin boat had landed, but there were a lot of hoof prints there to greet Matamoros.
“His men?”
“I’d imagine so, don’t know who else he would dare draw up to,” drawled Porter. He was silently counting the hoof prints.
“How many?” asked Quincy.
“At least five, maybe six. It’s six, not counting Matamoros. There were ten horses, but I only see six men’s boot leathers milling about here and here.”
Redbone knelt and ran his hand over a print that was clearly his daughter’s moccasin pressed into the fragile dried mud. “Two hours,” he said, grinding his teeth.
“Guess we should be glad they didn’t wait around to ambush us, huh?” asked Quincy.
“Yup,” agreed Porter.
“How do we catch them?”
“We—can’t. Not with only three horses between the five of us.”
“What are you saying?” asked Roxy.
“I’m wondering if maybe Redbone and I ought to go after them, and you three make your way back to the Mission slow and easy with my horse.”
“No,” insisted Roxy. “We’re here to help and you need all of that you can get.”
“I’m with Roxy, we need to stick together,” said Quincy.
Emily vehemently shook her head in over exaggerated agreement.
Redbone scowled, saying, “We must hurry, Blood Brother.”
Porter cursed, “Hell-fires! I can’t please everyone!”
“It’s not safe, to run off with just Redbone, he’s too hot-headed right now. We gotta work on this together,” insisted Quincy. “Besides you’re gonna need more guns on your side.”
Porter snarled and wiped his face in frustration. “Redbone, I know you don’t like it but we gotta stick together for support. We’re gonna travel slow and easy. Two to a horse except mine since he’s wounded. Good thing the women folk ain’t too heavy.”
Both Roxy and Emily stared daggers at Porter.
“What?” asked Porter, with his hands outstretched. “I didn’t say you were fat.”
“You shouldn’t have said anything,” scolded Roxy.
“I can’t win with you,” muttered Porter.
“The hell you say,” joked Quincy.
Redbone did not dismount. He beat his chest twice, saying, “No. I go on alone.”
“No, you won’t. You need our help and we need yours. We stick together,” cried Porter, just as the war-chief started to trot away. “Don’t make me regret helping you! You hear me!”
Redbone wheeled his horse around. “I cannot let them destroy her.”
“Matamoros won’t. If he was going to do that, he would have already. We will catch them, but we can’t go running into a trap, or running horses to death either.”
Redbone brought his mount back to them and leapt down from the fine Spanish saddle, snarling. “I need drink.”
Porter nodded and pulled a bottle of Valley-Tan from his saddle bags and handed it to Redbone; who popped the cap and took a long deep guzzle and then another and another.
“Is that a good idea?” asked Roxy.
“Man’s gotta deal with everything his own way. He’ll be all right.”
Roxy pursed her lips in a disbelieving scowl. “We should get moving.”
Porter nodded. “Emily, ride with Redbone. You two,” he said, swinging a gnarled finger and pointing at Roxy and Quincy on the bay horse.
“Yes, your majesty,” said Roxy, giving a false curtsy in her dirty black and red dress.
Emily blinked in shock at that display. She was only a year or two younger than Roxy, but was unaccustomed to seeing such behavior. “If I would have ever said that to my Pa, he would have licked me good.”
Roxy shrugged.
“With a belt!” Emily emphasized. “You ought to be nicer to him.”
Roxy narrowed her gaze at Emily until her nose scrunched, then just shook her head in disgust and sighed, “You have no idea who my father is do you?”
“Mr. Lejeune?”
“Ha! How about the most powerful man in the west?”
Emily looked at Porter and Quincy. “Is she crazy?”
“Maybe a little bit.” Porter grinned, but then turned to care for his stallion’s wounds. Emily’s work had stopped the bleeding, but Porter worried the stallion might never be able to jump like it had. He would have to take it very careful riding the animal for some time. He adjusted the saddle, reins and stirrups and gingerly climbed into the saddle. “Let’s get as far as we can before dark.”
They mounted up and followed the very definite trail of the fleeing kidnappers as it rose and climbed the hills above the river.
16. Land of the Dead
They were lucky, no, blessed that there had been a few recent rains this season, otherwise they would have been bust. Scanty pools, little more than mudholes, dotted the desert and gave sustenance enough for them to keep going. Several times they were forced to dig and gain what moisture they could for themselves and their animals. It was not a healthy pursuit but they were undeterred.
Porter knew they were slowly, but surely, falling farther and farther behind. They simply could not ride as hard as the bandits, but as long as they persisted, they still had the path ahead of them.
The trail here was testament to the harshness of the desert; every day they
saw its victims by the wayside. Some forms that used to be men were now dried out husks, resembling mummies with their teeth jutting out in hollow cries that caught the wind and silently screamed. The bleached bones of horses and oxen were here too, picked clean by scavengers.
The nights were cold up on the high desert and they typically had no fire to light because there was no fuel to be had. This was a dead land peopled only with ghosts and haunted memories. The grey moonbeams lit the rolling landscape, making it seem as if everything was bathed in dark ice. Morning was always welcomed despite their sore bones and dire need to press on.
After four days, it got worse.
A storm rolled in, but it was full of wind, wrath, and thunder without the rain. The gusts blasted them and stole anything that wasn’t securely tied down. Emily’s light blue shawl was scooped up, brandished twenty feet in the air before them, and then whisked far away to the east.
“We need shelter!” cried Quincy, his voice hardly heard above the roaring gale.
Porter held his hat securely to his head and glanced about in what should have been a bright afternoon day. Dust blinded them and they could see only a dozen paces in any direction.
“My gut says let’s see what the horses feel guided too!” He hollered back.
It was agreed upon and the five of them struggled together, holding tight to their reins and hats, and trudged blindly alongside their animals.
They soon found a thicket with a few boulders nearby that seemed to give a mocking semblance of shelter, at least from one side or another. It was a miserable, restless afternoon with a weak sun and biting sand in the face. By evening, the winds vanished as suddenly as they had come, but the billowing dust had erased any sign of the trail they had followed. There was no trail anymore.
17. Double Cross
Shaw led the posse and Taggart women over the wide plains, through the red hills, and back over the desolate wastes. They found the wagon of the slavers, though others had stripped near everything of value from it. The buckboard and tailgate were both gone. There was almost no remnant left of the cotton top and even a wheel had been taken. The broken one left behind by whomever had scavenged this vehicular corpse.
CRAZY HORSES: A Porter Rockwell Adventure (Dark Trails Saga Book 2) Page 7