“You gonna kill me now?”
Cuno shoved the man to his knees. “Put your head down.”
“I’ll take it from the front.”
“Get your head down!”
Mason sighed and lowered his head to the ground. He felt a sharp pain against the back of his head, and he figured it must have been the bullet. He was dead. But then the pain awakened him. That and the thud of shod hooves growing louder. He heard a horse blowing nearby and the squawk of saddle leather.
“Good Christ.” Spurr’s voice.
There was the soft crunch of moccasins in the gravel near Mason. Someone shook his shoulder.
“Sheriff?” Spurr’s labored breath whistled in his nostrils. “You with us, Sheriff?”
Mason groaned, lifted his head, felt goat heads and gravel sticking to it. He blinked. Spurr reached up and brushed the gravel and burrs from the sheriff’s forehead with a gloved hand.
Mason looked around, frowning. “What . . . ?”
No sign of the firebrand and the Mex girl. No sign of their horses, either. Nor of Mason’s, which had been tethered to a cedar to the left of the stone shelf.
Mason brought his gaze closer in, saw the money sack sitting beside him, two feet away, just as Spurr picked it up and untied the rope around its neck with one hand. The old marshal looked inside the bag and frowned. He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Spurr had thought maybe they’d left him a couple of angry rattlesnakes.
He shoved a hand into the sack, pulled up a fistful of greenbacks, small bundles of twenty and hundred dollar bills wrapped in heavy brown paper bands.
“All of it there?” Rubbing the sack of his head where Massey had tattooed him, Mason looked incredulous.
“Looks like it. Won’t know for sure till we count it.”
“Where’s Wilson?”
“Worthless bastard’s waitin’ for us a mile north. I told him to stay put, wait for me to send a mirror message. He done sent a few of his boys back to Diamondback with the girl.”
Spurr returned the several bundles of greenbacks to the bag and dropped it to the ground. He tramped around the spring and climbed atop the stone shelf, staring southward across a broad expanse of desert painted with the reds and pinks of a fast-approaching sunset and rolling away toward low, violet mountains that marked the Mexican border.
Vaguely, he saw two riders and one riderless horse galloping off across the flat toward the mountains. They were little larger than pinheads from this distance of nearly a mile.
Spurr shook his head, cursed under his breath.
Captain Wilson hadn’t made it to Diamondback until early that morning. He said he’d been running down renegade Apaches before getting caught out in the storm, but Spurr had smelled hooch on the man’s breath. If the man had gotten his soldiers to town just an hour sooner, Spurr would have had Massey in custody now.
Now, it looked like the gringo desperado had gotten plum away. Scot-fuckin’-free. No telling if he’d ever show his face north of the border again. Spurr didn’t want to go after him—not really, for he felt the kid was in a situation he had little control over—but he had to. Running down desperadoes was his job.
“Forget it, Spurr.”
The old marshal wheeled in surprise. Mason was standing just on the other side of the springs that was turning lavender now in the late afternoon’s tender rays. He was dusty, dirty, sweaty, and crestfallen.
“I don’t forget nothin’, Sheriff,” he heard himself say with a passion he no longer felt. “You local boys don’t understand us federals.”
“Didn’t you say we got some slavers who need runnin’ down in the Nations?”
Spurr stared at the sheriff.
“Shit,” Mason said. “Massey and the girl’ll be in Mexico by sundown.”
“You think ’cause he didn’t kill you and left the money, we should let him go? I don’t know why he did that—maybe he has some good in him. So do a lot of ’em. But he’s a convicted murderer and an escaped convict from a federal penitentiary. That there’s the sorta thing I don’t never let go.”
“Let it go, Spurr.” Mason turned away, stared back toward Diamondback unseen across the vast, rolling desert.
“Why?”
“Because, goddamnit . . . !” Mason turned to glower at Spurr over his right shoulder. Lowering his voice, his features turning pensive, dropping his gaze to the grass around him as though searching for something he’d lost, he said, “I just been realizin’ lately . . . I . . . I think I mighta made a mistake.” He paused. “You ever do that?”
Spurr looked around uncertainly. He puffed his chest out, tramped heavily on down the shelf toward Mason. “Of course I ain’t never made a mistake. And I’m insulted that you’d suggest I ever had!”
“Christ, Spurr.”
“Come on, goddamnit,” Spurr said, poking his hat brim low against the falling sun as he tramped on back to Cochise. He hoped Mason didn’t see the relief in his eyes. “Let’s get you back to Diamondback. Get you back in June’s bed and on the mend again. And then maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you pound the trail o’ them consarned slave traders with me up in the Nations. I’ll be goddamned if I let a winter come without runnin’ them wolves to ground!”
Mason felt his lips quirk a reluctant smile as he walked toward Spurr and the big, waiting roan. “Spurr, about you an’ June . . .”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Was that you an’ her I heard the other night—?”
“I told you, Sheriff, that is none of your goddamned business. Another word out of you, and I’m gonna leave your sorry ass out here to fend for yourself against the bobcats and rattlesnakes. Lord knows me and Cochise could get to town on the lee side of supper if we didn’t have to tote your rancid hide!”
“Ah, shit, Spurr.” Mason chuckled.
When Mason had climbed up behind the old marshal, Spurr heeled Cochise north toward Diamondback. He glanced once more over his shoulder, saw nothing but the darkling desert behind him.
The riders were gone, swallowed by the shadows of the far mountains.
Spurr glanced at Mason, narrowing a speculative eye.
A mistake, huh? One hell of a damn mistake.
He remembered the eyes of Cuno Massey staring down at him over the kid’s Winchester. He’d had Spurr cold. He could have killed him, and he hadn’t.
Had those been the eyes of a killer? No. More like the eyes of a young bobcat only wanting to be left alone.
Alone in Mexico with his girl.
Well, at least Spurr would get to spend more time with June in the days ahead while the sheriff healed. Quite a woman, June Dickinson. If they made the mattress sing again like it sang the other night, her skills as a doctor might come in handy . . .
Spurr snorted to himself.
He urged the big roan toward Diamondback, which seemed way too far away just now.
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PETER BRANDVOLD
“Make room on your shelf of favorites:
Peter Brandvold will be staking out a claim there.”
—Frank Roderus
THE GRAVES AT SEVEN DEVILS
BULLETS OVER BEDLAM
COLD CORPSE, HOT TRAIL
DEADLY PREY
ROGUE LAWMAN
STARING DOWN THE DEVIL
RIDING WITH THE DEVIL’S MISTRESS
.45-CALIBER FIREBRAND
.45-CALIBER FURY
.45-CALIBER REVENGE
“Recommended to anyone who loves the West
as I do. A very good read.”
Jack Ballas
“Takes off like a shot, never giving the reader a
chance to set the book down.”
—Douglas Hirt
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PETER BRANDVOLD
series featuring Sheriff Ben Stillman
ONCE A MARSHAL
ONCE MORE WITH A .44
ONCE A LAWMAN
ONCE HELL FREEZES OVER
ONCE A RENEGADE
ONCE UPON A DEAD MAN
ONCE LATE WITH A .38
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Don’t miss the best Westerns from Berkley
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Berkley titles by Peter Brandvold
The .45-Caliber Series
.45-CALIBER DESPERADO
.45-CALIBER FIREBRAND
.45-CALIBER WIDOW MAKER
.45-CALIBER DEATHTRAP
.45-CALIBER MANHUNT
.45-CALIBER FURY
.45-CALIBER REVENGE
The Bounty Hunter Lou Prophet Series
THE DEVIL’S WINCHESTER
HELLDORADO
THE GRAVES AT SEVEN DEVILS
THE DEVIL’S LAIR
STARING DOWN THE DEVIL
THE DEVIL GETS HIS DUE
RIDING WITH THE DEVIL’S MISTRESS
DEALT THE DEVIL’S HAND
THE DEVIL AND LOU PROPHET
The Rogue Lawman Series
GALLOWS EXPRESS
BORDER SNAKES
BULLETS OVER BEDLAM
COLD CORPSE, HOT TRAIL
DEADLY PREY
ROGUE LAWMAN
The Sheriff Ben Stillman Series
HELL ON WHEELS
ONCE LATE WITH A .38
ONCE UPON A DEAD MAN
ONCE A RENEGADE
ONCE HELL FREEZES OVER
ONCE A LAWMAN
ONCE MORE WITH A .44
ONCE A MARSHAL
MANHUNT
Other titles
BLOOD MOUNTAIN
.45-Caliber Desperado Page 27