The foul smelling teamster smelled worse if that could be. Curtis reckoned that he’d soiled his trousers when the shooting had started. The man who had once been so sure of his ways trembled in fear. He looked into the eyes of the young Negro man before him in the street.
“You won’t, Mister,” he said, sniffling back the snot in his nose. “Don’t you worry about that any. You’ll never see me again if I can help it.”
The man ran off up the street to another cheer from the gathered crowd. Curtis unloaded the man’s rifle and tossed the empty weapon onto the load of wood.
Bardwell waited for his young partner to step up onto the raised walk before he handed him the empty glass.
“Where’s my whiskey?” Curtis asked.
“Drank it while I was watching the show,” Bardwell said, pushing the boy back into the saloon for a drink. “I’ll buy you another one.”
The lawmen took their seats as the barkeep poured them another. Neither said a thing about what had happened with the foul smelling teamster out front. His wagon sat idle in the middle of the street for the time. By morning, the mule skinner would find another animal and hitch him to the overloaded cart if he wanted to get paid for his effort, but for now, all was quiet on the street outside.
“Thanks for shutting that dirty bastard of a man up, Mister,” the barkeep said, looking at Curtis who remained vigilant about keeping the ink of the five-pointed star of a Sacramento lawman concealed.
“A man can’t enjoy his whiskey listening to that,” Curtis said in reply. That was all that the boy said for the time. Bardwell didn’t say much either. For now, the two sipped what passed here in the desert as good whiskey. It would do for the night.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“So what is it that brings you gentlemen to our little oasis here in the desert valley?” the barkeep asked.
Bardwell slid his empty glass forward. “Looking for a friend,” he said. “We’re supposed to run across him somewhere between here and the mountain range to the south.”
The barkeep pursed his lips. “There ain’t much between here and the mountains unless you’re talking about Broken Hill and I would advise the both of you to stay well clear of that place.”
“And why is that?” Bardwell asked.
“The place is said to be evil, Mister,” the barkeep said. “Folks down that way took to growing the long grass a few calendars back and now that’s all they have. That and the Heroin they bring up from Mexico, I reckon?”
“How far is this place,” Bardwell asked. “How far is this Broken Hill that you speak of?”
“Oh,” the barkeep said, looking up at the ceiling. “I would expect six or seven rods maybe? A fellow should be able to cover the distance in a long day, I reckon?”
“And you say that it’s a bad place?” Bardwell asked, continuing his interrogation of the bartender. The bartender still had no idea of their identity.
“Yes, Sir,” he said. “Folks is mindless down that way. Took to selling their children ten or so years ago and…”
“And…?” Curtis asked.
“Well after they went and sold off all of the little ones,” he said. “They started looking for more to fill their orders.”
“Did they ever get up this way?” Bardwell asked, taking a sip from his glass.
“They did,” the barkeep answered. “They tried it once or twice, a ways back. Folks up here weren’t having it and made a stand as those mindless souls came on.”
“Kill any of them?” Curtis asked.
“Yes, Sir,” the barkeep said. “Maybe ten or a dozen, them fellas were sick looking and had big sores on their skin. They were all blistered up like they’d been set afire?”
“I’ve heard they’ve got one of them flying machines down there?” Bardwell asked. “You know anything about that?”
“They do,” the barkeep said. “We see it fly off every few nights across the desert.”
“Which way are they going in that thing,” Bardwell asked. “You think they’re flying up to Sacramento?”
“Could be,” the barkeep said. “Some nights they’re flying east or returning from the east and some nights they go right up to the range between us and the mountains?”
Bardwell nodded his understanding.
“I’ve heard they take that thing all the way down to Mexico on occasion?” the barkeep continued. “But I can’t attest to that one way or the other.”
Bardwell slid a piece of silver across the bar to settle up their tab. It had been a long day after only a few hours of sleep. It was running late in the evening and time to get back over to the little boarding house and the room Desert Spring had offered.
“Thanks for the whiskey, Mister,” Bardwell said, getting to his feet and grabbing up his hat.
“You fellows come back any time that you find yourselves here in town,” the barkeep said, shoving that silver coin deep in his trouser pocket.
“We will,” Curtis said, striking a sulfur match and placing the flame against a cigar. “We might be back through these parts next week?”
The lawmen started down the torch-lit street in the direction of the boardinghouse. Most folk in these parts were still about, a product of living in a desert community. Everyone waited until the sun went down to venture out.
Once in the room, Bardwell bolted the door shut and kicked off his boots. Stretching out across one of the two beds, the lawman figured that they’d get a good night’s rest in a bed and start for the hilltop perch come morning light.
Curtis raised the window glass, as he was still smoking. “We leaving out early, Sir?” he asked.
“I reckon that we should be getting back up the mountain to keep an eye on those folk there in Broken Hill?”
Nothing more was said as the lawmen settled back for the night with cool air blowing down from the mountains.
***
High median the next day found the lawmen halfway back up the mountain loaded with tobacco, coffee, and dried beef. The plan was to watch the desert village from above for another week to gather more intel. McDaniel was the target no doubt, but Bardwell hoped to put an end to the goings on here in Broken Hill.
“I’ve never seen you put this much effort into gathering information on anyone that we’ve run up against,” Curtis said, lying around the small fire as their coffee boiled for the night. The horses had been hobbled and camp made. “We usually just go right in shooting up the place?”
“I want to do this right,” Bardwell said. “If we go in there now and McDaniel isn’t there, I guarantee that we won’t get another chance, not here anyway.”
“What do you think?” Curtis asked. “We spend another week up here watching over these folk?”
“Maybe,” Bardwell said. “Could be longer?” He paused taking a sip of the strong black coffee that he was known to boil. “I reckon that we’ll take us at least one more trip into Desert Spring before we ride toward home.”
Curtis nodded from his side of the fire. The sun was still up in the dirty western sky. “You ready to go have a look?” he asked.
“I reckon that we’d better,” Bardwell said, kicking dirt over the coals to cover the small fire.
Curtis grabbed up a skin of cool water and a bottle of whiskey. His pocket was stuffed with a few cigars that would see him through the night. Bardwell bent to retrieve his saddlebag and field glasses. The pair started up the hill to their spot under the trees.
“The place looks dead,” Curtis said standing in the shade of a big tree.
Bardwell removed his field glasses and had a look down the hill at the desert village called Broken Hill. “I think that you’re right,” he said, handing the viewing instrument over.
“Ain’t anyone stirring down there?” Curtis said, scanning the settlement.
Bardwell removed his timepiece. It was just past 7:00 and the evening remained quiet. Smoke from a few cook fires drifted skyward on unseen currents of air.
“They don’t have much li
vestock,” Curtis said, looking through the field glasses. “Or kitchen gardens or anything in the way of providing for themselves?”
“I reckon that once we get down there,” Bardwell said. “We’ll find that they haul their food in by flying ship just like those folks in Los Angeles did?”
A noticeable shiver went through Curtis. “That shit’s rancid,” he said, scrunching up his face.
“It was, back when they used to supply me with it,” Bardwell said. “Back when I was your age.”
“So you tried it too, huh?” Curtis asked, handing the glasses back to Bardwell.
“I did,” Bardwell said. “The first time that I rode out of Sacramento, I thought I’d starve to death before I made it back home.”
“Is that when you took to packing hard bread and dried beef?” Curtis asked.
“Yes, Son,” Bardwell replied. “If it was good enough for old Bob James, it was good enough for me. Neither can go bad in a saddlebag and you have to admit, it ain’t too bad with coffee.”
“It’s kept me alive all these years that I’ve been riding with you,” Curtis said, reflecting back on the bagged meals Sacramento sent him into the field with all those years ago. What seemed a lifetime ago.
“As it has me,” Bardwell said, taking a seat in the grass under the tree. There was still no movement when the sun set behind the ridge. The lawmen snacked on hard bread and cheese. By eight o’clock, they cracked open a bottle of whiskey to break the monotony of sitting high on the hill and looking down upon a community where no one stirred.
At midnight, Bardwell woke the boy for the walk back down the hill to camp.
“I thought we were supposed to be watching these folks?” Curtis asked.
“We are,” Bardwell said. “But there ain’t anything going on down there. We might as well get some sleep and start anew on the morrow.”
The horses had moved down the creek some in the dark but were quiet. They rolled out their blankets and stretched out for the night. Tomorrow would be another day. Those folk down in the valley weren’t going anywhere for the time.
Thursday played out in pretty much the same fashion with the lawmen watching over the desert settlement and no one stirring on the valley floor. Here and there, a few tended the crops, but the community appeared lifeless.
“How do these folk live?” Curtis asked, from their hilltop vantage point. “I know there are a good many people in town, but we don’t ever see them out?”
Bardwell thought over the question some. “They stay holed up in their dirty little hovel smoking long grass all day, maybe they’ve moved on to Heroin?” He paused. “Either way,” he said. “They try to stay out of the sun as much as they can.”
“That’s a hell of a way to be living,” Curtis said, scanning the valley below with the field glasses.
“They aren’t.”
“They aren’t what?” Curtis asked.
“They aren’t living anymore,” Bardwell said. “These folk stopped living once they were introduced to Heroin and took to selling off their children to get a little more. They’re no different from those living south in Los Angeles.”
“Folks in Arroyo de las Vegas weren’t any better off,” Curtis added as an aside.
“No,” Bardwell said. “As long as folks like McDaniel can make a living peddling that shit, others are willing to buy it. It never ends, Son.”
“So this is spreading then?” Curtis asked.
“Possibly…?” Bardwell said. “When I first started in this line of work, folks were smoking long grass here and there. It wasn’t much of a problem back then, no different than whiskey maybe?”
“And then?”
“Yeah,” Bardwell said. “Craft and others like him resurrected the iron horse. McDaniel and others found a way to make some of the flying ships run. Twenty rods of ocean separate the borderlands from Mexico, which used to be a deterrent in getting the drugs up here. Now…well now, there isn’t anything in place to stop the flow.”
“But,” Curtis said, to no one in particular. “We don’t see much of it back home?”
“That’s because of the lawmen like you and I standing in the way,” Bardwell said, taking the field glasses back for a look down the hill.
There was no movement in the desert settlement of Broken Hill. Bardwell got to his feet. “Let’s walk back to camp and fix supper,” he said. “There ain’t anything going to change down there for a while.”
The lawmen saw to their horses, boiled coffee, and dined on hard bread, cheese, and dried beef before starting back up the hill for another long night of nothing but quiet.
Just past eleven, Bardwell woke the boy for the sleepy walk back to camp in the dark. Nothing moved on the valley floor below.
Two o’clock found the lawmen asleep in the grass. All was quiet except for a dull thump in the distance.
“Sir,” Curtis said. “You hear that?”
Bardwell was already sitting up listening to the sound drawing closer. “I do,” he said, getting to his feet.
The lawmen started back up the hill in the dark to have a look, Bardwell with his field glasses and Curtis with his pad and pencil.
Torches and signal fires burned near the village below. The sound of the rotary wings of the flying ship drew closer.
“Think they’re back from Arroyo de las Vegas?” Curtis asked
The great flying machine circled high above the village in the dark sky and then began its descent to the valley floor, finally settling in the dirt between the small fires. Several residents of the desert community were out to witness the arrival.
Bardwell watched as the engine whine ceased. The rotating wings continued on, slowing with time. Two gentlemen stepped out of the flying craft.
Curtis with his pad and pencil in hand waited.
“Two-thirty Friday,” Bardwell said. “There are only two on board.”
Curtis scribbled on his pad. 2:30 FRIDAY–2 ONBOARD
The fires burned themselves down with the residents walking away from the machine. Torches lit for the arrival were extinguished as they departed.
Bardwell handed over the glasses. Curtis scanned the early morning environment below. “Huh,” he said. “No, B’s?”
“No, B’s?” Bardwell asked.
“Yeah,” Curtis said, “No barrels, bodies, or bundles? They didn’t bring anything home with them?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The young lawman was right in his observation when the flying craft had arrived earlier in the week it had carried barrels of fuel, along with young, healthy bodies. When it departed, it had been loaded with bundles of dried long grass and a string of the emaciated.
“No,” Bardwell said. “I’m thinking they bring in Heroin, kerosene, and a new batch of souls from Los Angeles. I’d bet they arrive every Monday night at eleven-thirty. They depart for the New Mexico territories a few hours later after they load.”
“There’s no manufacturing in Arroyo de las Vegas,” Curtis said. “So they bring fuel this far to assure them back to Los Angeles?”
“I believe that you’re right, Son,” Bardwell said. “They can’t fly that far and get back safe. I reckon that McDaniel uses Broken Hill in the borderlands as a base to operate from.”
“He keeps a stock of dope and fuel here,” Curtis added, finishing his superior’s thought. “And flies out and back once a week.”
“Exactly,” Bardwell said.
“But what about the bodies, Sir?” he asked. “Monday the arriving passengers appeared to be healthy, the ones that loaded out were drug addicted zombies?”
“Right,” Bardwell added. “Healthy folk are going to kick and scream, make a scene, try to run off. McDaniel feeds them Heroin for a time till they give in to their desire for more and then he ships them off to New Mexico.”
“That’s some bad shit they’re doing down there, Sir,” Curtis said. “Are we going down there to put a stop to it once and for all?”
“In time,” Bardwell sa
id, thinking the situation over.
“What do you mean in time?” Curtis asked. “We’ve probably got enough evidence against McDaniel and the others to make an arrest and shut this down?”
“It most likely wouldn’t stick, Son,” Bardwell said. “And what army would we use to get McDaniel out of there? Those folks aren’t simply going to give their messiah over to a pair of dusty lawmen.”
“So then you’ve got a plan don’t you?” Curtis asked. “I knew it. You’re planning to blow some shit up, ain’t you?” The boy smiled, “That’s what I like about you Sir, always blowing shit up.”
It was Bardwell’s turn to smile. “If we arrest McDaniel,” he asked. “How long till some other outlaw figures out what he had and moves in to continue just like it was?”
Curtis nodded drawing on the stub of a cigar.
“Hell,” Bardwell added. “McDaniel might try his hand at running the operation from the inside if we take him in alive?”
“I don’t reckon that we’re planning to take him back to Sacramento alive, Sir,” Curtis said. “I’m just saying.”
“No, Son,” Bardwell said, in the low voice of experience. “I don’t reckon that the two of us could get in there, get him, and get out alive. It’s the only way.”
“Okay then, Sir,” Curtis asked. “Referring back to what you said earlier. What army are you planning to use to get in there?”
Bardwell smiled getting to his feet again. Nothing stirred in the desert settlement. The lawmen had seen all that they would this night.
“We’ll stay up here through the morrow,” Bardwell said. “If they depart to the south and west we’ll take a ride back into Desert Spring the following day. I’d like to pay a man a visit there.”
“And if they don’t,” Curtis asked.
“Then we sit up here and keep an eye on them till we have some idea of how they operate down there, but I don’t believe that we’ll have to. McDaniel will fly out tomorrow night. I’d bet silver that I don’t have on it.”
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