by Frank Leslie
James crouched low over his chestnut’s buffeting mane as the horse galloped down a gradual grade, following the trail that was a curving pale line in the darkness. Crosseye was about thirty yards ahead, starlight glinting off his hat with its turned-up front brim, and off his saddlebags flapping like small wings. They dropped down into the brush-bottomed canyon, and Crosseye stopped his horse, curveting the blowing, prancing mount.
“How’d you find me?” James asked the old frontiersman.
“I saw the whole thing from the flophouse window, but by the time I got down to the street, they was rolling you off in that wagon. So I went and saddled our hosses and shadowed you.” Crosseye spat, and chaw splashed on a rock beside the trail. He wiped his fur-covered chin with the heel of his hand. “Who were them polecats, Jimmy?”
James glanced along their back trail, sensing more trouble galloping toward them. “Later!” He booted the chestnut on past Crosseye, clacking across the rocks of the dry creek bed, then starting up the opposite slope.
He galloped about a quarter mile back the way he’d come in the wagon, then turned the chestnut off the trail’s south side and into the sagebrush. A low, rocky escarpment humped darkly ahead of him. When he reached it, he swung down from the chestnut’s back.
Crosseye galloped up behind him, then checked down the roan, the horse’s eyes flashing wildly as it chomped its silver bit. “How bad’s their tails twisted, Jimmy?”
“You mean do I think they’re comin’? Uh-huh!” James left his cartridge belt and .36’s hanging from his saddle horn and raised the Henry, running an appreciative hand down the long barrel. “Leastways, I’m hopin’ they are.” He looked up at Crosseye as he worked the Henry’s cocking lever, racking a cartridge into the chamber and absently enjoying the smooth, solid sound of the sixteen-shooter’s action. “And when they do, I want one of ’em kept alive.”
“Just one?”
“Yeah, one’ll do.”
James led the chestnut around to the far side of the scarp, tied it to a piñon branch, then climbed the rocks, moving quietly, carefully in the darkness. A cool breeze blew, rasping amongst the brush growing out from between the jutting rocks, and a coyote howled—an eerie sound to a Southern man who’d only recently started hearing such forlorn cries.
James found a niche at the top of the scarp, from which he had a good view of the trail, and hunkered down, doffing his gray kepi. Wheezing, Crosseye climbed up behind him and settled down beside him. James could smell the familiar, reassuring fragrance of the older man’s sweat, buckskin breeches, and chewing tobacco. Crosseye was breathing hard, but James knew the oldster could keep up with him in a long, hard climb, because he’d seen him do it at Kennesaw Mountain. His potbellied old carcass and broad, fleshy face with its scraggly beard sheathed the heart of a true Southern renegade.
Neither man said anything for over a minute. Then Crosseye, hearing the loudening thuds of oncoming riders, whispered, “Bushwhack ’em?”
“Hell, yes.”
Crosseye gave him a skeptical look.
“I didn’t ask for this fight,” James bit out.
They waited. James stared up the trail curving down a grade to the west. Finally, three riders appeared strung out in a shaggy, single-file line dropping down the slope as they hunkered low in their saddles, wary of just what James and his partner were intending. James extended the Henry over the top of the rock and sighted down the barrel.
The lead rider jerked his horse hard left and angled into the brush up-trail from James and Crosseye’s position, shouting, “Ambush!”
James cursed and eased the tension on his trigger finger. Starlight must have flashed off his rifle barrel. “These Texans are smarter than they look!”
The other two riders swerved into the desert, all three swinging wide of the scarp, trying to get around behind James and Crosseye. Lights flashed amidst their jouncing silhouettes as they cut loose with pistols. The bullets plunked into the rocks around James, who opened up with the Henry just as he had that night on the bridge, shooting and levering, shooting and levering, the beautiful piece leaping and roaring in his hands. He watched his targets tumble off their mounts, the horses whinnying and rearing and galloping straight west of the scarp—all three riderless and trailing their reins.
James glanced to his right at Crosseye. The oldster hadn’t fired a shot. He shrugged and looked at the smoking Henry. “What the hell you need me for when you got that sixteener?”
“Play your cards right, maybe I’ll steal you one someday.”
“If you run into any extra jingle, you can buy me a woman.” Crosseye raked in a breath and brushed a fist across his chin. “Ain’t had me one now in weeks and my rocks is gettin’ heavy!”
“Shut up, you old hound dog!”
Keeping his head down, James stared west of the escarpment, where the three riders had fallen. He couldn’t see them amongst the widely scattered shrubs and rocks, but he could hear one groaning softly. “Looks like I mighta left one alive. Stay here and cover me.”
“Hell, my old eyes can’t see shit out there!”
“Give it a try!”
James dropped to the gravelly ground. Holding his new rifle straight out from his right hip, and keeping the darkness of the scarp behind him, he began walking out in the direction his quarry had fallen. He found the first man about forty yards out—the would-be killer’s neck twisted awkwardly, obviously broken, glassy eyes staring at his bloody hand flung out beside him.
On one knee, James looked around. The groaning he’d heard from atop the scarp had fallen silent. He hoped the wounded man hadn’t died. He wanted one alive to tell him what the hell was going on with Stenck and the McAllisters. Doubtless, Stenck wasn’t one of the three out here. He was likely still tucked safely away in the saloon with his whiskey bottle. He’d leave the fighting to his inferiors.
Raking his tongue across dry lips, James continued forward, swinging his head from left to right and back again, scouring the dark ground with his eyes. There was a raspy sigh to his left. He swung his head that way, saw starlight glint on steel. He threw himself to his right. The pistol flashed. The bullet screeched through the air where James had been standing a moment before, and spanged off a rock, echoing. James rolled onto his elbows and fired the Henry three times quickly.
He heard two slugs kicking up gravel. A third made the telltale whomping sound. He’d found flesh.
Slowly, looking around for the third rider, James gained his feet.
Crosseye’s voice cut the night: “Behind ya, Jimmy!”
James wheeled. A figure lurched out from the shadow of a giant boulder. James tried to get the barrel of the Henry up too late. A knife flashed starlight as it careened in a downward arc toward his throat.
Chapter 9
James dropped the Henry, then reached up to grab the wrist wielding the knife, stopping the blade eight inches from his neck. He glanced past the blade, saw the face of the man who’d gotten his ear burned in the roadhouse. James threw himself backward, hitting the ground hard, then, still holding the knife wrist, kicked his legs up.
The cutthroat flew over his head, ripping his knife hand out of James’s own grasp.
Both men gained their feet instantly. The man with the knife lunged for James again. He was heavy and slow. Again, James grabbed his wrist, wheeled him around until the man’s back was grinding into the side of the giant boulder he’d hidden behind. The knife was between them. James had hold of the man’s wrist with both his hands. He stared into the man’s dark eyes as, grunting, he got the knife turned. The upturned tip slid through the man’s calico shirt.
The man’s mouth widened. His eyes turned to brass in the darkness.
James gave another hard, grunting thrust and shoved the blade into the man’s chest, just beneath his breastbone. Out of long-practiced habit, he lowered the blade and twisted. All the air seemed to leave the man’s lungs at once as the blood washed out over James’s hands—hot as tar. James st
ared into the man’s dark eyes.
Willie stared back at him, gasping.
James stepped back with a start and turned quickly away from the dying man, burying his face in his forearm as though to rub the memory away. When he turned again to the cutthroat, the man’s chin dropped to his chest, and his knees buckled. He groaned and dropped to the dirt like a fifty-pound sack of cracked corn.
The ground heaved around James. He stumbled off in the brush, his guts churning. He fell to his knees. His insides contracted, convulsed, and the contents of his stomach erupted into his throat and shot out of his mouth, hot and sour, splattering onto a sage shrub before him.
Footsteps sounded from the direction of the scarp. He looked up and saw the bulky shadow of Crosseye moving toward him, holding his Spencer repeater across the bandoliers on his chest. The wily old frontiersman’s big, gaudy pistol dangled from its rawhide cord around the man’s bull neck.
James blinked to clear his vision of Willie gasping for life as James had pulled his knife out of his brother’s chest. He ran a sleeve across his mouth, squeezed his eyes closed.
Crosseye stopped and looked around. “Thought you wanted one of ’em alive.”
“I thought you couldn’t see shit out here.”
Crosseye dropped to a knee before James, put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “All right?”
James gained his feet, hacked phlegm from his throat, and spat into the brush. His hands were trembling. Cold sweat covered his body beneath the linsey shirt, buckskin vest, and twill trousers. He glanced around at the dead men. Again, he saw Willie, and another wave of revulsion rushed over him, threatening to buckle his knees.
He fought it off.
He wiped the blood off his hands on the dead man’s pants, then picked up the Henry, ran a hand down the still-warm barrel, removing the dirt and sand. It was a beautiful weapon, but he would have left it here if he thought he’d no longer need it, if he’d no longer be forced to use it. But it didn’t look as if that was going to be true. He’d left one war only to be thrown into another.
Part of him wanted to ride back up the trail and see if he could run down Richard Stenck and find out what had happened to Vienna McAllister. But the most desperate part of him, the part that had killed Willie and had run from the war with his tail between his legs, just wanted to get back to town, to wash the blood off his clothes, and get some whiskey in his belly. He’d deal with Stenck later, in the light of day.
He shouldered the Henry and began walking back toward the scarp and the horses.
“You gonna tell me what all this is about?” Crosseye said behind him.
James only threw an arm up, beckoning his old partner. He didn’t answer the question until later, after they’d ridden back to town and stabled their horses in the same livery barn in which they’d stabled them before, and headed on back to the seedy hotel they were flopping at. There was a small saloon area in a side shed off the drafty, two-story frame building’s right side.
Tonight, a weeknight, the saloon was occupied by two weary-looking whiskey drummers in shabby suits playing a desultory game of cards. A young Mexican whore, half-naked but with a frayed red blanket draped over her shoulders, sat near the room’s sheet-iron stove, rolling craps die from a shot glass and muttering to herself as though to some ghostly opponent. The owner of the hotel, whose name was Burleson, was reading a yellowed newspaper atop the bar that ran along the room’s far wall from the entrance, yawning frequently and loudly as though he wanted everyone in town to know how bored he was.
James and Crosseye sat at a small table near the entrance to the main part of the hotel, a whiskey bottle between them. James threw back the first shot quickly, then refilled his glass while Crosseye looked at him from the other side of the small, round, wobbly table, both his thick hands wrapped around his whiskey glass. His hat was pushed back off his age-spotted forehead, showing a large mole just over his bushy right brow.
James told his old partner the whole story of Stenck’s interrogation in a few short sentences and then threw the second shot back and splashed out another one. He held the bottle up in front of Crosseye, glanced at the frontiersman’s untouched glass that looked little larger than a sewing thimble sitting between his meaty hands with their cracked, yellow, shell-like nails.
“You savin’ that for some special occasion?” James asked him.
Crosseye stared at him. Then he lifted the shot, threw it back, and set the glass back down on the table. James refilled it, set the bottle down, and leaned back in his chair.
“Hosses,” Crosseye said.
James looked at him. “You wanna chew that up a little finer and spit it out slower?”
“I’m thinkin’ we oughta get our Rebel asses down to Texas and start us a horse ranch. I hear there’s all kinds of wild-assed Spanish-blooded broncs runnin’ loco-wild along the San Felipe, in the Big Bend country. My cousin, Roy Handy, went down there years ago, and he ain’t been seen since. I’m thinkin’ the bastard got rich and didn’t tell me!”
Crosseye’s steady eye shone while the other seemed to be staring at the bulbous end of his nose.
James leaned over the table. “What the hell does that have to do with what I just told you?”
The barman, Burleson, yawned loudly as he leaned over the bar, slowly turning a page of his crinkly yellow newspaper.
“It has everything in the world to do with what you just told me, Jimmy. There’s trouble here. We’re fish out of water. What do we know about the West? Now, I say we haul our Reb asses the hell out of here tomorrow, pronto, and fog the trail to Texas and see if we can’t find ole cousin Roy, finagle our way into his hoss ranchin’ operation, and hole up from the whole rest of the world. Might even get rich….”
James blinked at his old partner, incredulous. “You think I’m gonna let this slide? Stenck tried to trim my wick tonight. And what about Vienna McAllister?”
Crosseye sipped his shot delicately, then sucked the end of his soup-strainer mustache. “You done tried to find her, and all you found was trouble in the person of that Captain Stenck. Likely, if you stay here, you’ll run into him again…and more trouble. Trouble’s your way, Jimmy, and I’d like to help steer you clear of it.”
Humor sparked in his good eye. He sipped his drink again, delicately, and scrubbed his mustache with his grimy shirtsleeve. “If the McAllisters was here, someone woulda heard of ’em. If they were ever here, they musta moved on. The war’s jumbled everything up everywhere—you know that, Jimmy.”
Burleson slapped the bar suddenly. It sounded like a pistol shot in the close confines, making the Mexican whore jerk her head up from her game with a gasp. Both James and Crosseye stiffened and dropped their hands to their sidearms.
“Damn, I almost forgot!” the barman said, looking at James.
James and Crosseye scowled at the fat barman as he plucked a folded slip of paper off a shelf behind the bar and on the left side of a dusty, sashed window staring darkly out on the night. “Someone left this here message for you earlier this evenin’,” the man said, walking around behind the bar and dropping the folded paper on the table in front of James.
James stared at the note on which “For the Man Inquiring About the McAllister Family of Denver” had been flowingly written in blue-black ink. “Who did?”
“Don’t know. I just found it sittin’ here on the bar when I come back from the privy. That’d be you, ain’t it?”
James picked up the note. Burleson shrugged and walked back around the bar to his waiting newspaper. The whore rattled her die in her shot glass and tossed it onto her table. James opened the note, slowly unfolded it until he was looking at a small sheet of lined tablet paper, which read “See Mustang Mary at the Ace of Spades.”
The note wasn’t signed.
“What’s it say?” Crosseye asked.
James told him. Burleson must have overheard. The barman gave a snort.
James looked at him. “You know Mustang Mary, do
ya?”
“Heard of her,” said the barman. “Never seen her. Not too many folks venture over to the Ace of Spades uninvited. It’s on the far end of Auraria—Red Mangham’s place.”
James just looked at the man, as did Crosseye.
“What?” said the barman. “You don’t know Red Mangham?”
The whore looked up from her dice, brown eyes wide between the thick wings of her chocolate curls.
“Red runs the Ace of Spades out on the Comanche Creek Trail. Caters to…a certain breed of hombre, if you get my drift. Few not of this certain breed venture over there unless they want their…” Burleson ran his index finger across his throat.
The whore hissed, clucked her disapproval of the Ace of Spades, then returned to her game, still shaking her head.
“Outlaw lair,” Crosseye said distastefully. “I’m too damn old for tanglin’ with outlaws. Yankees was one thing.”
“As long as I’ve known you, you’ve been too old,” James reminded him.
“That’s ’cause I’ve been old a long time. Older’n my years, and I’m gettin’ older every day!” Crosseye wagged his head. “Steer around it, Jimmy.”
James rose and looked at Burleson. “How do I get out to this Ace of Spades?”
Crosseye groaned.
Burleson looked at James skeptically. “You ain’t gonna go out there, are ya, son? Most likely you’re bein’ led into a trap.”
“I’m gettin’ used to it.”
Burleson sighed. “Head on over the creek to Auraria, and follow the main trail out of town to a fork. Take the right tine in the fork. Ace of Spades sits along Comanche Creek, a little line of bluffs behind it. Pay up before you go, though, will ya? If you’re goin’ out there, you prob’ly won’t be comin’ back again.”
“Texas mustangs, I tell ya!” Crosseye said, leaning across the table.
James shoved a hand into a pocket of his buckskin vest.
“No point in goin’ tonight, though,” the barman said. “Red’s only open on the weekends.” He added grimly, “He and his pards are otherwise employed most nights durin’ the week, ridin’ the long coulees from here down to New Mexico an’ back.”