.45-Caliber Desperado

by Peter Brandvold

  No, he wasn’t in the business of killing, he thought as, glancing once more at the warden, he was brusquely hauled to his feet, pain pounding through his broken nose and sending shafts of fire through his brain. But killing would likely come much easier for him given another few days here in this death house masquerading as a federal penitentiary.

  If he was alive in a few more days.

  As if in response to Cuno’s unspoken musings, the warden said, “Today, the Pit,” as Cuno and Mule Zimmerman were led off across the yard, the Gatling guns squawking as they turned on their swivels to track the two bloody fighters. “Tomorrow,” the warden added tightly, “they’ll be hung with the others.”

  2

  A SOFT SCRATCHING sounded, faint as fingertips brushing a rock wall. Cuno felt movement against his left thigh.

  The sensations nudged him from the mercy of a light sleep. He lifted his head from his chest, opened his eyes and winced against the tightness of the swelling. Light was faint here in the Pit, sifting weakly down from airshafts along the high, timbered ceiling of what had once been the main shaft of a silver mine.

  All Cuno could see were several blotchy brown blurs moving around him. He had heard the rats piping and scuttling when he and Zimmerman had been led down here at shotgun point, their wrists now shackled to chains hanging from iron stakes driven deep into the cold, pitted stone wall. Now, as if knowing he’d fallen asleep, they’d come out to sniff around for food. Or maybe to seek out his body warmth.

  Something moved on his left, and he looked over to see a rat sitting on Mule Zimmerman’s upraised left knee. It held its spidery front feet to its mouth, eating something. Cuno gave a repelled grunt and opened his mouth to yell but stopped when Zimmerman said, “Shhhh.”

  Cuno turned to the man shackled to the wall beside him, frowning. He’d thought Zimmerman had been asleep, but in the dimness he could see the giant’s eyeballs gleaming faintly from between his swollen lids.

  “Shhhh.” Teeth shone beneath the ragged raven’s wing of the bald man’s mustache. “I’m growin’ kinda fond o’ this one here. Might make him my pet.”

  Cuno sighed and made an effort to suppress his innate revulsion. “Good thinkin’.”

  “He’s kinda cute, you ask me.”

  “He’s ugly as sin. I think your brain’s swollen up like your nose, and you can’t think straight.”

  Zimmerman groaned. As he pulled on the chains suspending his meaty arms above his head, the rat peeped and disappeared from his knee in a brown blur. “Shit,” the big man said. “You’re tougher than you look, kid—at least, from the neck up.”

  “Mule skinnin’.”

  “Freight?”

  Cuno nodded.

  “That’ll build ya a set of shoulders. What kinda freight were you haulin’ to get you thrown in here?”

  Cuno merely scowled.

  Thinking about the recent past only made him anxious not only about his own fate but about the fates of the three children and two young women he’d escorted in his freight wagon out of the mountains, fighting marauding Indians most of the way. He’d been wounded in the last attack, when his old partner, Serenity Parker, had been killed by the Ute pack trailing them toward Camp Collins. Cuno himself had turned himself over to Sheriff Dusty Mason, who’d been on his trail since finding his dead colleagues, in exchange for the sheriff making sure the three children and their attendant, Camilla, as well as Michelle Trent would be trailed to the safety of the fort.

  Cuno was relatively certain that Michelle Trent and the Lassiter children had been given passage to relatives back East, but after he’d been taken into custody, he’d seen no more of Camilla. He worried about her now. Few good things came to young women alone on the frontier. Especially pretty young Mexican women alone on a remote military outpost, without friends or family.

  And he’d found himself liking the girl more than a little . . .

  In frustration, Cuno jerked on the chains holding his arms up high against the wall. More than anything, he wanted to lie down and sleep, but the chains made sure he remained upright, his shoulders bulging from their sockets.

  “What’s the point of these goddamn things?” he grunted, looking around the dingy, smelly environs. “It’s not like we could get out of this hellhole without the chains.”

  “Torture.”

  The voice, high and almost feminine sounding, had come from the shadows on the other side of the dungeon. Cuno squinted and was finally able to make out three vague figures probably chained to the opposite wall as he and Zimmerman were chained to this one. He’d figured more men were down here, for he could smell the stench of sweat and human waste.

  A while ago, he’d thought he’d heard something gurgling.

  “Who’s there?” Zimmerman called much louder than he needed to. In spite of his beat-up condition, he still had a good set of lungs. His voice echoed like thunder off the stone walls. “That you, Arguello?”

  “Si, si.” A pause, then the voice came more pinched and strained. “When’d you come, Mule?”

  “I don’t know—hour or two. Been catching up on some much needed shut-eye, I reckon. Good place for it, eh, Christiano?”

  “Not much else to do,” came the thin, defeated voice. “But come tomorrow, I won’t have to worry about it any longer. Neither will Ralph and Moeller. I think Frank Skinner is down here somewhere, too, but I haven’t seen him since the sun moved. Maybe he’s gone to the saints.”

  “Not yet,” someone grunted far off to Cuno’s left, in another misty cell. “Can’t believe I have to share a basement flat with a fuckin’ bean eater. I hope they hang me sooner rather than later. As for the rats, Zim, try to catch one between your knees and rip its head off with your teeth. It’s all your liable to get down here between now and your meetin’ with St. Pete. The warden don’t believe in feedin’ the livin’ dead. I just been sittin’ over here prayin’ St. Pete’s got him a nice steak and a big baked potato waitin’ on me. Maybe a side of garden greens covered with sweet butter and salt. And I sure wouldn’t mind dancin’ with his daughter, if he’s got one that ain’t too plain-faced.”

  “Shut up, Frank!” This from the Mexican, Arguello. “Don’t antagonize the saints on the eve of your death, fool!”

  Skinner chuckled. A couple of others laughed, as well, causing echoes to mingle and drown out for a time the tinny drip of water from an underground spring. The air was cool and damp, and Cuno yearned for the sun on his broken nose and aching eyes.

  There was a long silence and then Skinner said in a desultory voice, “How’d you and Junior end up in here, anyway, Mule? I figured you for the warden’s favorite bare knuckler.”

  “I was,” Zimmerman said grudgingly. “Can you believe the shaver damn near beat the livin’ shit out of me?” He sounded truly surprised and indignant. Cuno could feel the giant’s exasperated eyes on him . . . as far as the big man could open them, that is.

  “You best work on your footwork.” Cuno hiked a shoulder slightly and winced at the pain it caused. “And don’t get overly confident just because you’re bigger than your opponent.”

  “Don’t you get so damn big fer yur britches. You can’t kill a man to save your own hide. All you did, bucko, was get us both in a helluva deep pit o’ shit. I’d just as soon be dancin’ with Ole Scratch as slummin’ down here with Skinner and that Mex, smellin’ their piss.”

  “Skinner’s is the bad-smelling piss,” Arguello said, and Cuno thought he could see a vague flash of teeth through a halfhearted smile. “Phew, he stinks like a Yaqui!”

  “I wish I woulda cut your ears off when I had the chance, that night down in Juarez,” Skinner growled.

  A low eruption of laughter. Whoever had been gurgling continued to gurgle somewhere off in the shadows near Skinner. The man had likely been down here awhile and was half dead. Or he’d been half dead when they’d tossed him down here.

  “I don’t suppose,” Cuno said, as the grimness of his situation suddenly swirle
d through the pain of his battered face to his consciousness, “that there’s any way of bustin’ outta here?”

  Another eruption of wry laughter.

  “I like him,” Skinner said. “A kid who can beat the stuffing out of Mule Zimmerman and has a sense of humor to boot. Damn, kid, I wish I’d gotten to know you better up in the daylight.”

  “We’ll shake hands tomorrow,” Cuno said. “Just before they let us drop.”

  That had been an attempt to lighten his own mood. It hadn’t worked. In fact, it had the opposite effect. A wriggly sensation flooded his bowels, and his chest grew heavy. Christ, he’d faced death many times in the few years since Rolf Anderson and Sammy Spoon had killed his stepmother and his father, and his young bride, July, had been killed by bounty hunters who’d come gunning for Cuno himself.

  July and the baby she’d carried inside her, both dead. Murdered.

  But he’d never been confronted by his own demise quite like this. Beat up and chained to a rock wall in a fetid, rat-infested, near-dark mine shaft. Had he always wanted to live this badly? You’d think, after all he’d been through—all the heartbreak and torment—he wouldn’t mind dying so much.

  Or maybe he just wanted to go out fighting. Not like this, trussed up like the fatted calf. But that’s what was likely to happen. Even prisoners not sentenced to hang were hanged on the warden’s whim. There was no proving they hadn’t died trying to escape or from natural causes or even committed suicide, which happened every day, sometimes by twos and threes. He’d watched other prisoners led up from the Pit and over to the gallows, and they’d been chained so securely and guarded so closely that escape would have been impossible.

  Cuno gave another furious tug on his chains, rattling them loudly.

  “Forget it, kid.” Zimmerman sneered. “Once you’re thrown in here, there’s nowhere to go except heaven or hell. You’d best put the rest of your time getting good with your Maker.”

  “Damned if I have one.”

  Skinner laughed. “Damned if ya don’t!”

  “Such sacrilege,” muttered Arguello.

  Cuno had never known a stretch of time to pass so slowly and miserably. Having his arms chained above his head, the blood draining out of them to pool in his shoulders, in addition to the pain of his broken nose, was exhausting.

  It was also painful; he felt certain that his shoulders would pop from their sockets and hang by nerves and sinew.

  For short periods, he could shove the pain into the back of his mind and doze, but that ability diminished as he weakened. The dripping of the spring seemed to grow louder and louder with every few drops until, when the sun had set and the pit was in total darkness, it sounded like the metronomic crashing of symbols.

  The night became so slow and agonizing, every second seeming like a long, torturous hour to be endured, that he found himself eagerly awaiting morning and his journey to the gallows. Death would be his only relief, and he looked forward to it like a dry desert traveler anticipates a drink of cool spring water.

  Sometime in the night, he must have slept because his beloved young half-Indian bride, July, came to him, knelt, and softly kissed his battered nose. Then his eyes and finally his lips.

  So real was the dream that he thought he could smell the girl’s own unique aroma of chokecherry blossoms and sage mixed with two or three other fragrances he couldn’t name.

  He opened his eyes, half expecting to see her there but consciously knowing he would not. But he savored the smell of her, anyway. Until the dream, he realized that he’d forgotten what she’d smelled like. His heart swollen with the bitter heartbreak he’d managed to suppress until now, he silently wept with his chin hanging low against his chest, hearing a couple of the other condemned men crying softly as well as they endured their own individual torments that would find relief only in death.

  When morning came, he nearly wept again with relief. The bits of light slanting through the airshafts revealed the men around him hanging from the spikes in the walls, only half alive. The half that still lived was praying for death.

  Beside Cuno, Mule Zimmerman sat with his chin dipped low, slowly shaking his big, bald head in misery. He was making a low mewling sound that was probably as close as the giant could come to crying.

  When the guards finally clattered down the stone steps, unlocking and opening the heavy timbered door, light spilled down from the morning sun above, revealing four men still alive—Cuno, Skinner, Zimmerman, and Arguello, who was out of his mind and muttering softly in Spanish for his beloved Jesus to fly down and waft him away on silken wings.

  The other five men slumped against the walls, arms above their heads bowed low in death.

  “Your brethren above is ready for their entertainment,” the warden bellowed.

  His laughter boomed throughout the mine shaft that had overnight become catacombs.

  3

  CHAINS CLINKED AS the four weary prisoners stumbled up the stone steps of the pit.

  The light was like spears impaling Cuno’s eyes; it set up a vicious pounding in his already aching head. Connected to Arguello by a chain at the waist, he stumbled up the steps, stubbing his toes but barely registering that relatively minor pain below the other more severe misery in his head, face, and shoulders.

  The Mexican was still muttering prayers as he shuffled barefoot up the cracked and pitted steps toward the grinning countenance of Warden Castle, who stood silhouetted in the open doorway at the top. Behind Cuno came Mule Zimmerman, half dragging Frank Skinner, who, Cuno had learned, had been in the Pit for three days. It was a wonder the man was still alive, if you could call his condition living. If the position you were chained in didn’t kill you, the lack of food and water did. Skinner had survived, he’d indicated, by lapping up a rivulet of spring water tricking down the wall near where he’d been secured and killing a rat in the manner he’d instructed Zimmerman.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” the warden said, clamping a hand on Arguello’s shoulder in a mock gesture of brotherly love. “Did we all sleep well?”

  The pain subsided in Cuno’s eyes enough that he was able to hold a scowl on the man as he stumbled past him and out into the yard. Castle was grinning, his teeth white beneath his impeccable mustache. His eyes were like flint. Cuno hadn’t wanted to kill someone so badly since he’d hunted the leader of the outlaw gang who’d killed his beloved July—Page Hudson.

  Before that, Rolf Anderson and Sammy Spoon.

  Now, if he could have managed the maneuver, he’d have lunged at the man and, with no other weapon handy, torn his throat out with his teeth. Castle turned his head to follow Cuno into the yard with his eyes, chuckling tauntingly as though reading the young man’s mind.

  “Warden, sir,” Mule Zimmerman said behind Cuno, “kindly go fuck yourself. Lord knows you likely haven’t gotten it from anyone else in years.”

  “Oh, no—he’s gotten it,” Skinner said in a low, breathy growl that was all the voice he could conjure in his condition. “I think him and Dunlap been boning each other in the stables of a lazy summer afternoon.” Skinner gave a droopy-eyed half grin.

  Dunlap was one of the Pit guards coming up behind Skinner now. A man nearly the size of Mule Zimmerman, he raised a leg to kick Skinner, but Castle stepped forward to slap the man’s shoulder with the back of his hand.

  “Now, Sergeant—is that any way to treat our prisoners?” He pitched his voice with mocking admonishment. “Besides, if you kick him down, you’ll likely have to carry him up the gallows steps. I don’t think the poor man—the fierce train robber himself!—has an ounce of strength left in his wasted carcass.”

  “Like I said, Warden,” Zimmerman said as the doomed procession was hazed eastward along the morning-bright prisoner yard, “kindly go fuck yourself, sir.”

  Just then, as he stumbled along behind Arguello, noting the other prisoners watching from their barrack cells or from out in the yard, he heard a sonorous voice begin singing “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Cun
o wasn’t sure who was singing the hymn, as he was still too disoriented from the night in the Pit and from the fever in his brain to get his bearings in the bright yard, but at first he thought the singer, a former choirboy judging from the quality of the man’s voice, was trying to add comfort to the condemned procession of shuffling, squinting, chain-rattling prisoners. But then a certain buoyancy in the voice and a few snickers rising around him, told him the man was only mocking.

  Mocking the walking dead men. Cuno felt little acrimony toward the singer. He’d likely been here long enough to know the score. Every man here was one lost fight or one verbal misstep from the gallows himself.

  As the guards led them around the barracks at the eastern side of the yard, the warden sauntering along to one side in his straw boater and flicking his quirt casually against his thigh as he strolled, Cuno was to the point that he just wanted to get it over with. He’d always found some comfort in believing, or at least hoping, that he’d see his pa and ma and stepmother and July and the baby again in some other world, and that prospect somewhat eased the fear in his shuddering heart.

  The prisoners who’d been let out of their cells to watch the hanging moved as several loose groups around the yard, following the prisoners under the watchful eyes of the many shotgun-wielding guards. In the two guardhouses on the gallows’ side of the yard, the Gatling guns swung on their pedestals as the guards, standing under the towers’ peaked, shake-shingled roofs—two to each tower—kept the brass canisters with their six barrel spouts trained on the prisoners.

  The gallows stood bathed in buttery morning sunshine rising over the southern Colorado desert of sage and bristly cedars. The log and pine board scaffold stood constantly rigged with nooses, so that all that needed to be done for a hanging was to lead the prisoners up the ten steps to the platform, drop the nooses around the condemned men’s necks, and trip the wooden lever that released the trapdoors beneath their feet. The oily musk of the creosote-slathered boards and logs made Cuno’s eyes water.