Part 1 (1/2)
The Thunder Riders.
by Frank Leslie.
Chapter 1.
Arizona Ranger Wilson Pyle built a quirley with his gnarled, slightly arthritic fingers and snapped a match to life on his belt buckle. As he touched the flickering flame to the end of the twisted cigarette, his partner, Kenny Danaher, kneeling atop the rocky escarpment above Pyle and the rangers' two ground-tied horses, yelled, ”I don't see a d.a.m.n thing down there, Will!”
”Nuthin'?”
”Don't look to me like there's been a soul in that old ghost town since the miners pulled out two years ago.”
Letting smoke dribble out from between his wind-burned lips, Pyle glanced around. ”Look hard, Kenny. It's late. No doubt quite a few shadows in that canyon.”
Pyle was tired. He and Danaher had been on the trail the last five days, brush-popping owlhoots between the White Mountains and the Chiricahuas. Or trying to. Desperadoes holed up like black widows in Mormon tea this time of the year. The old ranger felt as though his saddle had grown into his a.s.s.
”Ah, h.e.l.l.” Danaher lifted his field gla.s.ses again, directingthe lenses out and down. Long dark red hair fell down from his black-brimmed hat, and his thin red beard was rimed with trail dust. His green duster hung slack on his lean frame, scratched from brambles and cactus thorns.
Young enough to be Pyle's grandson, Danaher had the patience of youth-which is to say, very little patience at all. But then, Pyle didn't have a gal waiting for him back home in Benson like Kenny did. A young wife with a baby on the way. Pyle hadn't had a wife waiting on him in a long time, having outlived two-a half Apache and a pretty blond ex-dance-hall girl from St. Louis by way of Prescott. The old ranger didn't have anything waiting for him back in Benson-except a bottle, a dime novel, and a cord of wood that needed chopping out back of his rented shack near the ranger station.
”Hold on!” Danaher said above the chill winter breeze sighing among the rocks. ”I do see something, after all. Holy s.h.i.+t!”
Pyle's heart quickened. He removed the quirley from his lips and straightened, his tired back creaking. ”What is it?”
Danaher was turning his head slightly from left to right, following something with the field gla.s.ses. ”You ain't gonna believe this, Will.” His voice was sharp with mockery. ”Oh, Lordy, you just ain't gonna believe what I see down there.”
Pyle relaxed, and a faint smile shone on his leathery face, all but hidden by his thin gray beard. ”What is it?”
”Coyote strollin' down the main street just like he owned the place. Got him a rat hangin' out of his mouth.”
Danaher lowered the gla.s.ses and turned to stare down the scarp at Pyle resting on a flat boulder near his paint mustang, one spurred boot propped on a knee. ”You want to go down there and arrest him for trespa.s.sin' or huntin' on mine company land without a permit?”
Pyle chuckled. He blew out a long plume of cigarette smoke, then stuck the quirley between his teeth and hiked his old Walker Colt higher on his hips. ”Come on, kid. We're gonna go down and have a look.”
”What for? I told you there ain't nothin' but a coyote down there, Will!”
”Mount up,” Pyle said, tightening his paint's saddle cinch. ”That bullion's gonna be pa.s.sin' through here on the old army road, about a mile east. We best go down and have a look up close. Could be owlhoots holed up, sharpening their horns and cleanin' their irons for tomorrow.”
Worse still, it could be the Thunder Riders-they'd been raiding along the border for several months now- though a vague dread kept the old ranger from mentioning their name aloud.
”Ah, s.h.i.+t. I'm gonna be late getting home for supper, ain't I?” They were on the last day of their campaign and had expected to be back in Benson by nightfall.
”Just take a minute.”
”It'll take an hour at the least.”
Pyle grabbed the apple and swung into the saddle-a task that seemed to get harder every day. ”Orders are orders, son. Cottonwood Canyon has been a prime owlhoot nest ever since the company pulled out, so we're gonna give it a look-see. Now quit flappin' your lips and mount your horse.”
Danaher cursed as he cased his field gla.s.ses and began descending the scarp, his duster flapping around his long, denim-clad legs, the afternoon breeze bending his hat brim over his deep blue eyes. ”You knew we were gonna ride into that canyon all along, didn't you, you old geezer?”
”Yep.” Pyle laughed. ”I was just takin' a smoke break and restin' my tired old a.s.s!”
With Pyle leading, the rangers found a game trail angling across the canyon wall and followed it down into the cottonwoods lining a dry riverbed on the canyon floor. As they crossed the riverbed, their horses' shod hooves ringing like cracked bells off the water-polished stones, Pyle scrutinized the shanties-all of them made of adobe or logs and sod-and the falling-down stables huddled in the creosote and mesquite.
The shacks and corrals looked like the ruins of some lost civilization. They gave off the spooky aura that Pyle felt whenever he was around ancient Indian cliff dwellings or the Native kivas he came upon frequently as he patrolled the territory's deepest reaches.
The breeze swept the chaparral, lifting veils of sand. A rough-legged hawk, perched on a splintered gray corral post, stared intently at the approaching riders, lifting one long-taloned foot at a time. Its wings ruffled and spread, the talons pushed off the post, and the hawk rose, screeching, toward the ridge the two rangers had just left.
”Population, two,” Danaher drawled, riding off Pyle's paint's right hip. ”I missed him from the ridge.”
”Let's hope he's all you missed.” Pyle checked down the paint, canted his head left. ”You start at the west end. I'll start at the east. We'll meet in the middle.”
When the younger ranger had heeled his piebald off toward the west end of the town, weaving around corrals, chicken coops, goat pens, and privy pits, Pyle put the paint forward.
He swung between a couple of tar-paper shacks, the paper having come loose and fluttering in the breeze, and pulled up behind the town's easternmost Main Street dwelling. Remaining mounted, he sidled the paint up to the livery barn's rear double doors and pulled a handle.
The door opened with a soft thud and a sc.r.a.pe. Pyle backed the horse away from the barn as he swung the door open, and the black mouth of the barn expelled the rotten smells of hay, manure, and rodent scat on a vast, musty breath.
He sat the horse to one side of the open door, using the door as a s.h.i.+eld, listening for sounds of human movement, one hand resting on the walnut grip of his holstered Colt. Hearing only the faintly creaking timbers and scuttling mice, he booted the paint through the opening.
The horse had taken only two strides along the barn's mashed-earth floor when a great whoos.h.i.+ng sounded, and a sudden wind barreled out of the bowels of the rancid-smelling livery. There was a roar like the shuffling of a giant card deck. The paint whinnied and lurched to the side. A flickering black cloud welled up from the shadows.
Pyle lowered his head to the paint's neck, keeping a firm grip on the reins, feeling the horse's muscles bunch and leap in fear beneath the saddle.
Several screaming bats bounced off the ranger's raised left arm and a couple nearly ripped the soiled Stetson from his head. The covey careened through the open doors behind him, their screeching diminis.h.i.+ng gradually until they were gone and a heavy silence fell. Dust and straw flecks sifted.
Pyle patted the neck of the jittery, snorting paint. ”Easy, boy. They're gone.”
The horse shook its head indignantly. Pyle nudged it on down the barn's central alley, swinging his head from side to side. When he'd reached the closed front doors and had seen no sign of anything living in the barn except bats and a couple of kangaroo rats, he kicked the front right door wide and booted the horse onto the town's main street.
He looked around at the false-fronted buildings that, with their dilapidated porches and brush arbors and broken windows, looked like giant tombstones in a forgotten cemetery. Tumbleweeds were basted along the buildings' stone foundations and boardwalks, and several were hung up in the windows.
Horse tracks were etched in the street's deep dust, but since the town was still on a secondary trail used by prospectors and saddle tramps, the tracks didn't mean much. There was no way to know if the town was being used as an owlhoots' nest-especially by owlhoots who intended to go after tomorrow's bullion run-unless Pyle saw direct evidence.
Namely, the owlhoots themselves.
Pyle dismounted the paint and dropped the reins, then shucked his Henry rifle from the saddle boot. Leaving the horse in the shade of the livery barn, he jacked a sh.e.l.l into the rifle's chamber, off-c.o.c.ked the hammer, and began angling across the street.
He spied movement out of the corner of his right eye. Danaher rode into the far end of the town, a rifle resting stock down on his thigh. Pyle waved to indicate all clear so far, then mounted a boardwalk and stuck his head through the window of a drugstore.
He walked through three buildings on each side of the street and looked into two more, then gingerly mounted a gap-boarded walk in front of the Bale of Hay Saloon. He turned to see Danaher stride toward him before swerving onto a boardwalk on the same side of the street as Pyle. The kid disappeared into a sporting house-the newest and probably the best-preserved building in town.
Pyle stepped through the saloon doorway, which had long been missing its two louvers, and strode past the long mahogany bar. The backbar and mirror were gone. The dust on the bar and on the few tables left behind by human scavengers was thick and littered with mouse droppings and the tracks of rodents and even birds.
The ceiling creaked over Pyle's head. He stopped and looked up. There was another soft creak, as though someone were moving slowly across the floorboards. Dust sifted from the rafters to tick on the floor in front of Pyle's boots.
The old ranger hefted the Henry repeater and thumbed back the hammer. Holding the barrel straight up, he crossed to the back of the saloon, then slowly climbed the stairs, wincing each time a rotten riser squawked. He stared at the pine-paneled wall growing before him, from which a rusty nail protruded.