Mouth of Hell (The Law Wranglers Book 2)

by Ron Schwab

  She wondered if he would recognize what he was seeing. She liked Sean Kelly well enough. He was a few years older than she, but she looked upon him as something of a child. Fresh from West Point with his Second Lieutenant's commission, he had grown up in Boston and never had been west of the Mississippi until his orders sent him to Fort Union. He was fair-haired and handsome in a baby-faced sort of way, and when his greenhorn days had passed, she suspected she might find him interesting. For now, though, she often found his naiveté annoying.

  Tabby edged her horse forward past some of the enlisted cavalry so she could listen to the exchange between the lieutenant and his sergeants. Momentarily, he rode back to the column with his Tonkawa scout.

  "There's smoke in the southwest," Lieutenant Kelly announced, stating the obvious.

  Very astute. And it required field glasses to figure that out?

  "I'm sending Rattlesnake and White Wolf to scout it out. We'll follow not far behind."

  Tabby suddenly had to pee, and she wheeled Smokey away from the column, spotted, a lonely clump of sagebrush and nudged the gelding toward it and dismounted. She quickly pulled down her britches and relieved herself behind the scant cover, knowing half the men in Company Two were furtively eyeing her backside. She was well past worrying about that. She had left her modesty in Santa Fe. She guessed it was occasionally uncomfortable for male soldiers to take care of bodily functions with a woman nearby, as well.

  She quickly caught up with the troopers and reined in near the front of the column again. The lieutenant caught sight of her and slowed his mount as she edged closer.

  "This could be trouble," he said.

  "It's not a prairie fire. The smoke's too concentrated and not moving anywhere. Too much of it for a campfire. I'd bet on Comanche mischief . . . or they're trying to suck us into a trap."

  "A trap?"

  "Not too likely. But we're not going to surprise anybody. They know where we're at, and there won't be any Comanche there when we get to the source of the fire."

  "You make them sound like ghosts or something."

  "I'd rather deal with a ghost."

  They rode in silence for some time, and, soon, the pungent scent of smoke drifted in with the dry wind and stung her nostrils. Her eyes started to tear, just as she caught sight of the Tonkawa scouts racing their mounts toward the column. Lieutenant Kelly rode out to meet them, and in a few moments, he was engaged in animated conversation with Rattlesnake. She knew that the scrawny Tonkawa spoke a smattering of English and filled in the lapses with sign language, which the lieutenant was surprisingly adept at. White Wolf, on the other hand, rarely spoke to anyone other than Rattlesnake, but Tabby thought his dark eyes reflected a keen intelligence, and she sensed that his partner tended to defer to White Wolf's opinions more often than not. Certainly, White Wolf, a muscular young man who was taller than most Tonkawa males, was the superior horseman. He rides like a Comanche, she thought.

  Momentarily, Lieutenant Kelly returned, and Tabby listened intently while he spoke to his sergeants. "It's a settler's house," he said. "Comanche, of course. The scouts didn't ride in, but Rattlesnake said there were no signs of life. We need to check it out. Order the bugler to sound 'Boots and Saddles.'"

  13

  As the column neared the smoking farm buildings, Tabitha Rivers was pulled back to a day she had pushed out of her mind for several years. She recalled now that bright spring morning when the Comanche raided the Slash R. Her father and brothers and all but a few cowhands were some miles away from the home place, rounding up cattle. They were to be gone for several more days, castrating the young bull calves and branding any critter in the herds that didn't already carry someone else's brand. Tabby had been collecting eggs from the nests in the henhouse, and Mom was baking in the kitchen. Cassie would have been in the parlor nursing little Michael.

  The first clue of trouble came from old Luke, whose arthritis kept him at headquarters tending to whatever chores Tabby's mother might toss his way. He and two green hands also stayed back to provide a skeleton crew for guard duty, although there had not been any Indian raids that deep into northeastern New Mexico for several years. "To the house," yelled the grizzled cowhand, "Indians. Get to the house."

  The thick adobe walls of the house with their narrow windows made the ranch house a veritable fortress, but it was too late. Tabby had stepped out of the henhouse just as the first shots were fired. She saw Luke in the yard with his Winchester firing at a dozen or more Indians sweeping like a Texas tornado into the ranch yard. In a matter of seconds Luke had been impaled on a Comanche lance, and the other two hands, who had come running from the bunkhouse, were quickly pin cushions for Comanche arrows. Three or four of the warriors had dismounted and raced into the house, and Tabby shivered as she heard the screams in her memory. It was only later she had learned of the rape and mutilation of Cassie and Aurelie Rivers.

  Tabby's rifle was in the house, so she hid in the henhouse until the fires started. Then she stumbled through the smoke and to the open doorway, where she was met by a fierce-looking painted warrior. She remembered a stone-headed war club arcing toward her head.

  It was nightfall before she awakened, her head racked by pain and her mind disoriented. Something struck her ribs harshly several times, and she looked up to see the face of her captor. Only then did she realize her clothes had been torn away and that she lay naked on the grass. The Comanche pushed his breechclout off to one side and knelt down next to her, leaving no doubt what he intended. She started to roll away, and the warrior grabbed her arm and yanked her back before hammering her nose several times with his fist. When he mounted her, she did not resist.

  It was over quickly, but several hours later he visited again and repeated the rape. This time he left a blanket behind, and she gratefully snatched it up and wrapped it snuggly about her shoulders. She sat in silence trying to appraise her dilemma. She had heard the tales of Comanche captives. Had she been claimed as this man's wife? Perhaps, that was why she had not been raped by others.

  The night air was more balmy than cool, and, with her blanket cover, Tabby was not particularly uncomfortable. The agony in her skull had abated significantly, and her fingers softly and tentatively traced the wound on the side of her head. She probed the egg-size lump there and felt the stickiness of the matted blood. The soreness between her thighs was a mere annoyance in comparison to the head wound. Her mind was consumed by two thoughts: survival and escape. She reminded herself she had to do the former to accomplish the latter.

  She surveyed her surroundings. A full moon afforded some light, but she was hidden away in a little arbor of shrubs and scrub trees of some kind just off a larger clearing where no more than five warriors were squatted around the fading coals of a fire, engaged in what she took to be a minor argument of some kind. She suspected the dialogue might determine her future or lack of one. Her warrior--strange that she was thinking of him as her warrior--was the most vocal, and she had a sense he was staking his exclusive claim on her. The others were more interested in shared bounty. This band would be less than half the number who raided the ranch. There was no sign of Michael, who would not have been silent unless he was dead. She shuddered at that thought. It was more likely the raiding party had split up and that Michael had been taken by the other band. That was the best she could hope for. As for her mother and Cassie, she had no doubt about their fate. She prayed they had not suffered long.

  She tore her mind away from memories of the raid, studying the landscape around her. Beyond the dying embers of the fire, she could make out the ribbon of a river. It had to be the Canadian. Unless she had slept for two days, there would not be another creek or river of this size within a day's ride of the Slash R. She focused on the river. It would lead her home if she followed it upstream toward the northwest, for the river's course carved its way through a corner of the Slash R's thirty thousand acre spread. But even if she escaped the camp and followed the river's path, the Comanche would t
rack her easily, and, when she was recaptured, the option of being a Comanche squaw would likely be foreclosed. On the other hand, her father, Levi Rivers, often bragged that his tomboy daughter could swim like a fish.

  She watched while the warriors, one by one, moved away from the fire and spread out their buffalo robes on the ground. Her warrior picked up his own robe and moved toward the arbor. He spread out the robe beside her and motioned for her to lie on it. She complied. He quickly took her again, before he rolled off her body and collapsed on the robe next to her. She lay motionless for some minutes before she heard his soft, rhythmic snoring. She slowly inched over onto her side and then stopped to listen. He still slept. She had always heard that Indians awakened at the hum of a mosquito, but this guy seemed to be sleeping the sleep of a dead drunk. Busy day. Busy night. Her eyes scrutinized the arbor, trying to ferret out a weapon. Obviously, the warrior was no fool. His scalping knife and any other weapons were evidently on his side of the robe. That choice saved his life.

  Tabby rose, planning to sign her need to slip away to pee if he woke. She crept from the arbor and into the campfire clearing. She had thought of trying to sneak through the brush and saplings to the river but was certain the warriors would hear her movement. So she just raced through the camp like a deer, making a beeline for the river. She slipped quietly into the icy water, the river running full now from mountain snow melt, and, without looking back, began to swim against the slow-moving current.

  14

  The column moved out at a slow trot after spending the better part of a day and most of the next morning at the burnt-out settlers' cabin. The bodies discovered at the farmstead were both male. From what remained of him it appeared that the older man must have been in his late forties. He had been staked out on the prairie and his genitals carved out, leaving a bloody cavern in his crotch. Hot coals still smoldered on his stomach, where the raiders had built a fire. Tabitha feared his torment had not been brief.

  The other body was that of a boy, no more than sixteen, found near the small corral. Arrows lodged in his throat and chest suggested he had been killed before his scalping, and his corpse was not otherwise maimed. He likely had a rifle that had been taken by the Comanche.

  While the soldiers buried the dead and salvaged any personal belongings that might identify the dead, Rattlesnake and White Wolf paced the ground around the farmstead proper. When they were satisfied they had unraveled the story in the signs there, Rattlesnake reported it was their belief that a woman and a small girl also resided on the farm. This was confirmed by remnants of clothing scattered about the place. There were Kiowa signs as well, he observed.

  The scouts then departed and didn't return until the next morning just as the troops were preparing to saddle up. Rattlesnake informed Lieutenant Kelly that the raiding party was exceptionally large for an attack on a single family--as many as fifty warriors. He surmised that this hapless family simply had the misfortune to be in the path of a larger movement of Comanche and Kiowa heading for a rendezvous somewhere south, likely in Red River country. The party had split up some ten miles southeast of the farm, one group heading due south and the other riding southwesterly. Rattlesnake thought this was a ruse to confuse any pursuers who might be hoping to rescue the woman and her daughter, forcing the searchers to also split forces or to make a hard choice. In either case, the Tonkawa insisted, a trap was being set, and Company Two would be providing the rabbits.

  This left Lieutenant Kelly in a quandary. His orders were to meet up at Adobe Walls, a trading post located some fifty miles northeasterly on the Canadian, with cavalry units out of Fort Sill. The troops were expected to be under the command of Colonel Ranald Mackenzie. From there the lieutenant understood the army would be moving south toward the Red River in the same direction the raiders were headed. Tabitha could see that Kelly was itching to follow the abductors, but, fortunately, he was a West Pointer, who intended to be career military, and he had the good sense not to abort his fledgling career by treacherous heroics. He decided to send a courier ahead to inform the officers gathering their commands at Adobe Walls that the Fort Union troops could be expected to arrive within two days' time. He allowed Tabitha to send her stories with the courier who would, hopefully, put them in the hands of someone who would eventually carry her words on to The New Mexican.

  15

  Josh stepped out of the Exchange Hotel onto the boardwalk that stretched down the front of the expansive adobe building, shaded from the sun's glare by the portales that reached out to the street and stretched the length of the hotel. He turned and walked slowly along the edge of San Francisco Street that adjoined the hotel, his eyes alert, his right hand swinging within easy reach of his Colt. After the recent attempts on his life, he did not take his safety for granted anywhere.

  He had just lunched with Martin Locke and Danna in the open-air placita that afforded pleasant dining within the walls of the Exchange. Marty had told his new partners about his encounter with young William Bonney, who had previously been employed as a dishwasher by the manager of the Exchange's dining room. Bonney had been discharged for being quarrelsome with the other help and disrespectful of the manager. Bonney had insisted the allegations were false, but he had been planning to leave Santa Fe and head for southern New Mexico anyway, and he was owed forty dollars back wages, which the manager had refused to pay. Bonney had told Marty matter-of-factly that he preferred not to kill the manager and that he would pay Marty ten dollars if he would collect the amount due.

  "This kid's blue eyes are like ice," Marty had said. "I think the manager's tinkering with his own life if he doesn't pay up. Obviously, we can't convey Bonney's threat, but I'll have a talk with the manager after we're finished here and see if I can take care of it. I'm eagerly awaiting my next complicated case."

  Danna had assured him that she had an accused murderer for him to defend. "He's probably guilty of killing the man," she said, "but there's a self-defense argument, I suppose, although it's complicated by the fact our client was trying to rob the victim's jewelry store. You'll have more than your share of these for now. For a city of four thousand souls, we keep the two undertakers unusually busy . . . as well as the courts. Anyway, I'm done as a criminal lawyer. The civil practice isn't giving me any time for dealing with the accused lawbreakers."

  Marty seemed willing to take any case that came his way for now, so Josh was glad to be rid of the small bit of guilt he carried for leaving all the work to Danna when he was traveling on one of his missions. He knew Danna was not all that fond of trial work, and she had an organized mind and tolerance for solitude that made her a natural for dealing with business issues and the complicated real estate laws that had to be reconciled with the old Spanish land grants in the territory. Marty seemed more likely to take to the courtroom side of the practice, so he decided he had prospects of a good tandem.

  His errand now had been triggered by a message, for some unknown reason, delivered to Danna by a small Mexican boy that morning. The message was from Clayborne Pierce and included instructions for Josh to meet the man who called himself a "private searcher," at the Exchange Hotel's stables at one o'clock sharp. The location had seemed strange. Why not just meet in the privacy of Josh's office? It made him a little wary. Another setup? Danna did not think so. She speculated that the man didn't want to give Josh a turf edge. Marty had offered to join him, but Josh did not want to scare Pierce off.

  When Josh turned into the multi-rowed stable, he caught sight of a lean man, who matched Danna's description of Pierce, leaning against the gate to Buck's stall.

  "Mr. Pierce?" he asked, as he approached.

  Pierce stepped away from the gate and extended his hand, and Josh reluctantly accepted it with his own. The man had a firm grip and met Josh's eyes unflinchingly, he noted.

  "Mr. Rivers . . . may I call you 'Josh'?"

  "That's fine."

  "I'm Clay. I assume Miss Sinclair has explained what I'm proposing?"

  "Yes,
and I must say the idea of your holding my son for ransom doesn't set well with me."

  "I thought that might be the case. That's why I wanted to let the idea settle a bit before we spoke. Look at this from my standpoint. This is my business . . . the way I make a living. I don't have the inclination to risk my life rescuing captive children or wives for the sake of charity. I have certain skills, and this is the way I've chosen to use them. I would suggest that some things lawyers have to do don't always look so noble from the public's perspective."

  Josh shrugged. He couldn't argue that point. "So, let's talk business. You know where my son's at?"

  "No, I do not. But my Tonkawa associate is quite certain he knows. We have an understanding. He does not tell me the location until he makes final confirmation and I have contracted with the family. That way, in case someone would try to use extreme measures to force the information from me, it would be pointless, because I don't have it."

  "I see. How do I know this isn't some kind of hoax?"

  Pierce withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket and unfolded it and handed the crisp sheet to Josh. "This is a list of people I have helped. Several live within fifteen miles of Santa Fe. Check with them and see what they think about my services. I am a man of my word, Josh. And I am smart enough to know that if I attempted to defraud you, I would pay a dear price . . . perhaps even my life."

  "Then we do understand each other." Josh said softly. He reached into his front trouser pocket and fished out a roll of bills. "One thousand dollars. You get another thousand when you negotiate the ransom and a final thousand upon Michael's return. If you cannot locate him, first payment gets refunded. I have already drafted an escrow agreement for the bank. You may stop by my office and sign it and accompany my secretary to the bank with the money, if you wish."