“I had a hunch all along that cuttin’ for the border might only be a ruse, remember? A way to discourage a posse or any lawmen from crossin’ to where they didn’t have no legal standin’, leavin’ the owlhoots to turn north again later on. So that don’t surprise me so much. The only question, as far as I’m concerned, is whether or not those words in the sand are legitimate.”
“What do you mean?”
“What if,” Firestick elaborated, “it was one of the abductors who scratched those words there? To make us think exactly what we’re thinkin’ and send us off on a wild-goose chase while they continued in a whole different direction?”
“What about the tracks leadin’ that way? To the northwest, I mean?”
“How long are we gonna strain our eyes and slow ourselves down tryin’ to follow tracks over this rough ground if we think we already know where they’re gonna lead us?”
Another tense silence hung between them until, in a plainly exasperated tone, Moosejaw said, “Damn it, there are times when you can think something to death. Sooner or later, you got to go with your gut and act. You taught me that more than anybody.”
“So what are you sayin’?”
Moosejaw shook his head. “Ain’t for me to say, old friend. Kate’s your woman. You got to make the call.”
Firestick glared at him for a moment and then slowly turned his head and looked off to the northwest. When his face turned back, a corner of his mouth lifted wryly. “My gut says Bright Rock.”
Moosejaw’s mouth spread in a full grin. “That’s what I was hopin’ to hear. Let’s get mounted and get a move on.”
“No. Not yet.”
“What’s to wait for?”
“Night. Coolness. Some rest. Now that we know where we’re headed and don’t need to scour the ground as we go,” Firestick explained, “we can travel in the cool of the night and make up more of the time we lost today searchin’ every crack and canyon we came to.”
“This is mighty rugged ground to be coverin’ at night, even if we ain’t tryin’ to follow sign,” Moosejaw pointed out.
“The sky’s clear and last night there was near a full moon once it peeked through,” Firestick countered. “Should give us plenty of light to see by. And not bein’ hammered by the sun and the heat, there’s a good chance we’ll make even better time. What’s more, the farther north we go, the more the land will smooth out again.”
Moosejaw continued to look dubious.
Then Firestick laid down the clincher. “If we give ourselves and the horses a good rest here, take on some grub and plenty of water, then stick to it hard when we do ride out, I can’t see it not bein’ in our favor. We’ll keep goin’ right on into tomorrow. Long as we take care not to ride right up on ’em, there’s even a chance we could skirt around our quarry and get to the town first. Be waitin’ there when they show up. The last thing they’ll be ready for is us to have got in front of ’em.”
Moosejaw’s expression relaxed. “By damn, it just might work.”
“That’s the general idea,” Firestick said. “Now let’s get a fire goin’ and cook some coffee and bacon before we grab a couple hours of shut-eye. I don’t know about you, but I’m damn sick of gnawin’ on nothing but jerky.”
CHAPTER 43
Including himself, Beartooth picked six men for a posse. There was Oberon Hadley; Big Thomas Rivers, Kate’s righthand man from the Mallory House; Gabe Hooper, a young stable hand from Roeback’s Livery; and Russ Overstreet, one of the quarrelsome wranglers from the rodeo arena who hadn’t yet left town. The sixth man would be Miguel Santros from the Double M, whom Beartooth intended to pick up by making a slight detour out to the ranch.
To look after things in Buffalo Peak during his absence, Beartooth deputized Sam Duvall, Frank Moorehouse, and Pete Roeback. All three were fair, tough minded, well respected in the community. And Duvall’s previous history as a New York City constable before seeking the drier climes of the West for his health gave him added credentials when it came to law enforcement.
After making sure everybody was well armed, had plenty of ammunition, and provisioned with three days’ worth of food and water for himself and his horse, Beartooth led the posse out of town. They were already more than an hour behind their quarry and would lose more time making the swing to pick up Miguel.
Since the gang had fled due north, headed for the Vieja Mountains, they clearly intended to use the rugged, rocky terrain to mask their trail. It was their reliance on this notion that Beartooth figured to turn against them. He was confident his own tracking skills, supported by those of Miguel, would be up to the challenge of dogging their sign regardless. With this capability and being able to move fast with a small force of men, the former mountain man was counting on being able to catch up in time to not only retrieve the stolen money but hopefully also save Shaw before the robbers decided he was no longer an asset worth keeping around.
The stopover at the Double M was very brief. Miguel got ready in no time. Beartooth’s time with Victoria was also very short. She had to absorb a lot of news in a big hurry—the robbery, the taking of Shaw as a hostage, and the posse headed by Beartooth going after them. The latter, since it included the calling off of the duel and the alliance of Beartooth and Hadley in its place, was a piece of good news wrapped within the rest. But Victoria took it all in like the tough frontier woman she had become—chin up, eyes bright, and a warm parting embrace and lingering kiss for her man.
As a result, Beartooth rode away wearing a lopsided grin that took a long time to fade from his face.
* * *
Angling north and east from the Double M, the posse picked up the trail of the fleeing robbers with little trouble. As anticipated by the way the gang had headed out of town, it led straight into the Viejas.
By the time the posse began its own ascent into the foothills, the sun was high and hot overhead and the horses were blowing hard from the pace Beartooth had set after leaving the Double M. The low, rolling hills of the prairie—turning lush and green as a result of the recent spring rains—began giving way to rocky, broken ground, ridges cut by twisting gullies, and upthrusts reaching steadily sharper and higher. The sun blasting against these stands of bare, bone-white rock reflected back like heat shimmering off a griddle.
When they reached a long slice of shade thrown across the deep bottom of a narrow canyon, Beartooth called a halt. “Water your horses good and saturate yourselves while you can,” he advised everybody. “It’s gonna keep gettin’ hotter over the rest of the afternoon that’s ahead of us. We’ll be exposed through much of it, not in shaded cuts like this, with the sun bouncin’ hot enough off some of the rocks to burn your skin. But you’ll get your chance to cool off tonight because we’ll be runnin’ a cold camp.”
“You got any more good news to cheer us up with?” Russ Overstreet asked wryly. He was a tall, lanky sort with a shock of blondish hair, prominent Adam’s apple, quick smile, and pale blue eyes that always seemed to have a roguish twinkle in them. It was that twinkle and quick smile—often construed as being cocky—that tended to get him into scrapes like the one at the rodeo arena. Still, even though he’d ended up in the Buffalo Peak clink a few times for brawling, he always took his medicine and never tried to weasel out with some lame excuse, causing Beartooth to find him a likable sort.
“The good news,” Beartooth responded to his question now, “is that the bunch ahead of us don’t appear to be movin’ particularly fast. Not even back when they had easier goin’ out on the prairie. That tells me they’re actin’ kinda cocksure, thinkin’ their hostage is servin’ to keep at bay anybody like us intendin’ to run ’em down. Which is why I don’t want to advertise our presence with a campfire come nightfall. Let ’em keep bein’ cocksure and not bein’ in a rush. Then, tomorrow, we’ll keep pushin’ hard and fast and that’ll give us a good chance to overtake ’em.”
“Aye,” said Hadley, leaning against the cool canyon wall beside Beartooth. “That’s the pa
rt I’ve been thinking about—overtaking them, that is. What happens then? In regard to the captain?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Beartooth told him candidly. “That’ll mostly depend on what the circumstances are when we do catch up with ’em. The lay of the land and so forth. If we’re lucky enough to gain the high ground on ’em and then catch ’em by surprise . . . well, we’ll have six crack shots against four targets. Do the cipherin’. We could wipe out the whole gang before they ever knew what hit ’em and before they had any chance to prop up Shaw as a shield to try and hold us off.”
Hadley’s heavy brows furled. “Ye would do that . . . such a cold-blooded strike . . . to save the life of a man who has caused ye so much grief?”
Beartooth shook his head. “That’d only be part of it. I’d also be doin’ it to avoid a shoot-out and thereby minimize the risk to the lives of ourselves and these other men around us.”
“Practical and efficient,” proclaimed the big Englishman. “I like that.”
“A minute ago you called it cold-blooded.”
“Aye. And the hard truth is that being cold-blooded is sometimes the most efficient way.”
* * *
Higher up in the Viejas, Pierce Torrence had also called a halt in the shade of some tall, outward-sloping rocks. Like the others, he was flushed and dripping sweat. The bandanna he pulled out of a pocket to mop his face was already sopping wet from previous use. Cursing, he wrung it as dry as he could, then poured some of the contents from his canteen over it and dragged it down over his face again.
Perched nearby on a flat-topped chunk of fallen boulder, Black Hills Buckner had removed his wide-brimmed hat and was also mopping his face with a hanky. Not too far from him, Romo Perlison was leaning against the rock wall with one hand and using the other to take frequent drinks from his canteen.
“Of all the lousy luck,” Romo grumbled. “Only a few days ago we was nearly drownin’ in cold-ass rain for days on end. Now, when we decide to pull a job, it’s in the middle of a blazin’ heat wave.”
“Well, excuse me all to hell for not checking with the weather gods to arrange more pleasant conditions for you,” snapped Torrence. “I’d like to see you find a job on your own where you could make anything close to the haul we just did and not have to break a sweat over it.”
“Aw, take it easy, Pierce.” Romo scowled. “I’m just sayin’ it’s damned hot, that’s all. You ain’t likin’ it neither, are you?”
“Nobody is,” said Black Hills. “But whinin’ and bellyachin’ about it don’t help any.”
Romo’s eyebrows lifted. “Hey, Pierce. What you just said about the haul we made . . . You think it’s a pretty good one, do you?”
“No way of knowing for sure until we count it after we make camp tonight,” Torrence replied. “But it looked pretty good while we were raking it into those bags. Wouldn’t you say so, Black Hills?”
“Seemed like, yeah,” the big man agreed.
Romo smiled in anticipation. “Man, I hope so. That bank was a cracker box, just like you said, Pierce. To have it spill out a fat haul on top of bein’ so easy, that’d be frosting on the cake!”
From behind a large, wedge-shaped section of rock that had split away from the taller mass, Leticia stepped into view. She had shed her yellow dress, which was now folded under one arm, and replaced it with a pair of snug jeans and a loose-fitting shirt with the sleeves rolled up past her elbows. Although the shirt was loose, it still didn’t conceal the prominent thrust of her breasts, and the way she’d left the top buttons undone revealed another expanse of creamy, sweat-slick cleavage.
“While you’re all complaining about the heat and spending money you haven’t even counted yet,” she said, “did anybody think to take care of the horses yet? They’re kind of important to us, you know, and they’ve cooled down enough by now to get some water.”
“I’ll take care of ’em, Letty,” Romo said, pushing away from the rock. He made no attempt not to stare at her breasts. “You want me to take your dress over and put it in your saddlebags?”
“Thanks, but I can take care of it myself.”
Romo’s eyes remained locked on her bosom for a long count before he finally turned and started in the direction of the horses.
“What about him?” Leticia said, jerking a thumb to indicate Rupert Shaw who lay sprawled on the ground a few yards from the other men, his hands still tied and his head and shoulders propped against a small mound of packed sand and gravel. “Anybody think to give him a drink?”
“Thought about it,” Black Hills muttered. “Decided he wasn’t worth the effort for me to get up and go over there to do it.”
“Jesus!” Leticia spat in disgust.
She produced a canteen from within the folds of the dress under her arm, walked over, and knelt beside Shaw. Uncapping the canteen she held it to his mouth.
“Oh, God. Thank you, thank you,” Shaw gasped between gulps.
“Just shut up and drink.”
“Don’t waste too much on him,” Torrence called over. “We only need to keep him alive for a while, nothing says he has to be made comfortable. All he has to be is upright in case we have to show him off to a posse.
“Of course, could be that Mr. Fancy-pants might be worth something to somebody. I’ve been sitting here studying him some. The cut of his clothes, the jewels glittering in those cuff links, the fine leather craftsmanship of his boots . . . I don’t know how this British gent ended up in a flyspeck like Buffalo Peak, but I’m starting to get a hunch we may have latched on to somebody who has a lot more worth than merely as a shield against some posse bullets.”
“You, sir, are more correct than you can imagine,” said Shaw, his voice steadying, taking on a hopeful tone and a hint of shrewdness. “Furthermore, if you are willing to follow your hunch, along with also demonstrating a bit more of the civility being shown by this fetching lass, it could be that the ‘haul,’ as you put it, you took from that pitiful excuse for a bank a little while ago is only the beginning of how much you may stand to enrich yourselves.”
CHAPTER 44
The Rurales found them just as dusk was settling.
In less than an hour, Firestick and Moosejaw would have been on the move again, their senses at full alert. But in the lingering minutes of the vulnerable period while they remained at rest—their guard down, their horses still hobbled and unsaddled—the damn Rurales showed up and caught them by surprise.
Only the faintly echoing clack of a horse’s shod hoof striking the rocky ground gave any warning. Both men reacted instantly, coming wide awake and snapping to sitting positions on their spread blankets as they reached for the guns that were close at hand. But it was too late. The Rurale patrol was already fanning out and forming a semicircle across the width of the cavern’s mouth—twenty dark-faced men in dusty, sweat-streaked tan uniforms and gray, steeple-crowned sombreros, all heavily armed with rifles leveled on them.
In the center of the formation was the leader, a lieutenant by his uniform markings. He was lean, wide shouldered, with a mouth that was presently curved downward in a deep frown and beady, suspicious eyes that kept sweeping back and forth between the two former mountain men.
“Don’t do nothing sudden-like,” Firestick advised out of the corner of his mouth. “I think this jasper would just as soon kill us as look at us, and it wouldn’t take much to give him an excuse.”
“I’ll do my best not to give him one,” Moosejaw replied in a low voice. “Though I can’t say I care much for that stink eye he’s givin’ us.”
“Silencio!” the lieutenant barked. “Talk only to me. Tell to me your names and your business here.” His English was quite good, which was convenient because neither Firestick nor Moosejaw had ever picked up much Spanish lingo.
Firestick cleared his throat. “We’re Americanos, as you can see. My name’s Elwood McQueen. My partner here is Jim Hendricks.”
The lieutenant glared, waiting for the rest.
&nb
sp; Now Firestick adopted a frown of his own. “We came down this way on the trail of a couple skunks we’re lookin’ to settle a personal score with,” he said.
“To settle a score? With skunks?” The lieutenant repeated this, as if not quite understanding.
“Men who did us a bad turn. A grievance. They stole from us,” Firestick said.
“So you are lawmen on the trail of these thieves?”
Firestick wagged his head. “No. We’re not lawmen. We understand that law from north of the border has no say down here.” Luckily, both he and Moosejaw had taken off their badges and stuffed them deep in their saddlebags before ever crossing the border, anticipating a possible encounter like this. “Like I said,” Firestick continued, “this is a personal matter. All we want is to catch the men and make them return what they took from us.”
“In our country,” said the lieutenant rather stiffly, “it is the responsibility of the Rurales to handle such matters as theft. We do not condone the kind of vigilante ways we hear many reports of taking place up north. You should have immediately come seeking our help, not proceeded on your own.”
Firestick thought fast, making up his tale on the fly, trying to make it something plausible enough to keep him and Moosejaw from getting snarled up with these notoriously corrupt and brutal “rural policemen” who were supposed to maintain law in northern Mexico. “We sure would’ve done that, except for a couple problems. First off, you see, we didn’t rightly know where to find you. Second, we was hot on the trail of those thievin’ varmints and didn’t want to let up for fear of losin’ ’em. Until that blasted storm came along last night and wiped out all their sign.
“So we’ve spent most of the day tryin’ to pick it up again. We sure would have welcomed some help from y’all, but like I said, we didn’t know where to come lookin’ for ya. And now—finally a piece of good luck—you’ve found us!”
“How lucky it is for you remains to be seen,” the lieutenant said sternly.
Now Moosejaw responded. “What’s that supposed to mean? You said just a minute ago that helpin’ with thieves and robbers is supposed to be your responsibility.”
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