Part 4 (1/2)
”So soon?”
He ran his hands down the insides of her thighs, and she jerked with a s.h.i.+ver. ”I'd love to stay all night, but if Old Antoine wakes and finds me gone, he'll come looking for me.” She kissed him again. ”With his shotgun.”
She rose and dressed quickly, s.h.i.+vering in the chill night, teeth clattering, breath puffing like cotton. When she'd stomped into her men's boots, she leaned down, kissed him again, and, without saying anything more, strode off in the night, her boots clattering on the rocks. He heard her labored breath as she climbed the bank, and then she was gone.
Silence enveloped him. The only sounds were the creek's gurgling and some night creature, probably an armadillo, milling in the brush on the opposite bank.
Yakima wrapped up in the quilts, which were still warm from their lovemaking, turned onto his side, and closed his eyes. It seemed only minutes before he opened them again and saw a milky wash above the eastern horizon. He heard cactus wrens and desert larks chirping and flitting about the brush. The creek to his left glittered like quicksilver.
When he threw the quilts back, the morning's metallic chill smacked him like an open hand. He rose and strode naked to the stream, where he leaned down for a long drink, then, hissing and grunting, slapped water across his body. Gooseflesh rose over every inch of him, but by the time he'd finished the bath and was heading back to his bedroll to dry himself with the quilts, he was as awake as he'd ever been.
He got dressed, stomped into his boots, donned his hat, and rolled his blankets. The sky was only slightly lighter when he propped his saddlebags and bedroll on one shoulder, climbed the creek bank, and, holding the Yellowboy in his right hand, traced a meandering course through the chaparral, back toward the town.
The liveryman, Suggs, was up and shaving in his lean-to living area off the main barn, so Yakima paid the man what he owed him for lodging his horses, then saddled Wolf and the paint and led them over to the mercantile up the street from Charlier's Tavern, which was still dark, the doors closed. The mercantile owner, Ralph Dixon, was sweeping off his front loading dock, his eyes not quite open yet, his gray hair showing the comb tracks through the pomade.
”Christalmighty, can you give a man a chance to drink a cup of coffee first?” he complained when Yakima tied both Wolf and the paint to the hitchrack and mounted the loading dock, where a bur-laden cur slept by a barrel of penny nails.
Yakima plucked his mercantile list from his tunic pocket, glanced at it, then gave it to Dixon. ”I'm gonna have a quick breakfast. Be back in twenty minutes.”
”You expect me to fill this in twenty minutes twenty minutes?” Dixon said, adjusting his steel-rimmed spectacles as he scowled down at the notepaper, clamping his broom under his right arm.
Yakima grinned and canted his head eastward. ”You're burnin' daylight, Mr. Dixon.” He moved down the loading dock's steps to the boardwalk below. He shucked his Winchester from the saddle boot, then ran his hand down Wolf's sleek, blazed face and scratched the paint's right ear. ”I'll be back in twenty minutes. You two don't pick any fights.”
Wolf snorted, eager to be on the trail again.
Yakima headed back down the street, toward the cafe run by a Mexican woman named Ma Chavez. Smoke wafted from the squat adobe hovel's stout chimney, smelling of burning mesquite, frijoles, and roasting lamb. As he pa.s.sed the Wells Fargo bank across from the tavern, he saw a light inside. Someone wasn't keeping banker's hours. No doubt getting ready for the gold s.h.i.+pment the marshal had mentioned.
”Hey, breed!” someone called softly from above.
Yakima glanced up at the bank's shake roof. One of the men he'd seen yesterday in the sheriff's office squatted there, holding a double-barreled shotgun across his thighs. His battered Stetson shaded his face, but a line of white appeared when he stretched his lips back from his teeth.
”Heard you busted Speares's snout for him.” The man chuckled, the deputy sheriff's star on his worn blue s.h.i.+rt jostling slightly. ”The sheriff is one sore hombre, up all night cussin' and drinkin' whiskey to dull the pain. His nose is big as a d.a.m.n beer schooner.”
”Yeah?” Yakima said. ”Maybe he'll keep it closer to home from now on.”
The deputy chuckled again, shaking his head. ”He's gonna make you pay. He's gonna make you pay big big.”
”I reckon he'll try,” Yakima said, stepping off the boardwalk and crossing the side street toward the cafe on the opposite corner.
Inside the dimly lit, earthen-floored cafe, he was taking a sip from his steaming tea mug and waiting for his food, when through the window beside him he spied movement on the opposite side of the street-a tall, broad-shouldered, blond-headed man in a funnel-brimmed Stetson, worn denims, and a red wool s.h.i.+rt under a deerskin vest to which a sheriff's star was pinned.
Speares was moving slowly this morning, almost lightly, as if every step pained him. He wore a big white bandage on his nose, fixed there with a broad white strip around his head, just beneath his hat. The light wasn't at the right angle for Yakima to make out much of the lawman's face, but he could tell the nose was swollen to nearly twice its normal size and was a shade darker than the lingering night shadows.
Speares pa.s.sed the cafe and paused before the harness shop on the opposite corner, near Charlier's, and clamped his Winchester under his left arm as he reached up with both hands to gingerly adjust the bandage.
Yakima muttered, ”That must hurt like holy h.e.l.l,” then blew ripples on his tea as he sipped it.
When Ma brought the hot skillet of eggs, green chiles, a pancake-sized slab of roast lamb, and several steaming tortillas, Yakima rolled up his s.h.i.+rtsleeves and dug in. He was half finished with the plate when his nearly empty tea mug began rattling softly on the table before him.
Growing in the distance, there came the rumble of wagon wheels, screech of leather thoroughbraces and trace chains, and thud of horse hooves. A six-horse hitch, judging by the sound. A deep-throated bellow rose from up the street, in the direction of the bank. ”Whoooooahhhhhhhh!” ”Whoooooahhhhhhhh!”
The gold s.h.i.+pment.
Yakima gave the stage only pa.s.sing thought. It reminded him of the deputy marshal. He hoped he hadn't tied the rope too tight around the lawman's wrists and ankles. If he had, the man had most likely been discovered by Apaches drawn to the burning cabin and was dying slowly over a honey-basted mound of fire ants.
Hearing businesslike voices and commotion outside, Yakima finished his last bite of lamb. His mug began shaking again. It shook so hard it slid around in the little ring of condensation left on the table. Yakima's knife and fork rattled against his plate. He felt the earthen floor quivering beneath his boots.
Outside, thunder rumbled. A horse whinnied. For a second, Yakima thought a rainstorm was approaching. Then he looked out the window, craning his neck and peering east down the street.
He froze.
A gang of riders appeared, riding h.e.l.l-bent for leather toward the cafe-a wild-looking bunch in dusty trail clothes, wielding rifles or revolvers as they flew as if driven by a wildfire, their wide-eyed horses laying their ears flat against their heads. The three lead riders-two wearing sombreros and short charro jackets, the third in a bearskin coat and bowler hat-began triggering their pistols or rifles, the one in the bear coat howling like a rampaging Indian.
More thunder sounded nearer the bank, and Yakima turned to see another group of howling desperadoes approaching the bank from the side street between Charlier's Tavern and the harness shop. Yakima couldn't see the bank or the stagecoach from this angle, but there was no doubt that both sets of riders were making a beeline for the gold s.h.i.+pment.
As both groups converged at the intersection west of the cafe, checking their mounts down to skidding, hoof-grinding halts, a barrage of gunshots rose suddenly. Pistols and rifles belched smoke and fire, the reports echoing around the canyon of adobe, wood, and sandstone facades.
Men howled and yelled. Horses whinnied and screamed.
Bullets spanged and barked into wood or thudded into dirt.
A double-barreled shotgun spoke above the cacophony-first one booming report, then another-making the window near Yakima rattle like a wind chime.
Seconds after the first group had pa.s.sed the cafe, Yakima grabbed his Yellowboy and jacked a sh.e.l.l into the chamber as he threw open the door. He'd taken a step onto the dilapidated stoop when a stray bullet plunked into the doorframe to his left, puffing dust and throwing splinters with a shrill ka-piinggg! ka-piinggg!
He flinched as he dropped to a knee, raising his rifle to port arms and looking toward the bank, where the desperadoes-a good fifteen or twenty men-were laying down a serious fusillade against the bank and the stagecoach from atop their milling horses.
This was no holdup, Yakima saw as one shotgun guard-probably a contract man hired by Wells Fargo- was blown off his feet and into the coach behind him. It was a ma.s.sacre.
Another guard lay beneath the open coach door, one leg resting atop the iron-banded, padlocked strongbox, his rifle lying in the dust to his left. The stage's driver stood in the box, returning fire with his two revolvers, triggering one pistol, lowering it, then raising and firing the other until two of the desperadoes drilled him at the same time-one bullet slamming into his chest while the other smacked his right cheek. The driver screamed and triggered another shot as the bullets flung him straight backward.
At the same time, a woman in a green traveling dress poked her feather-hatted head out the stagecoach door, screaming, her mouth forming a dark O against the porcelain white of her face. A bullet slammed into her shoulder and threw her back into the coach while three more bullets drilled through the coach's thin wooden wall in front of her, clipping her screams.
Yakima drew a bead on the desperado who'd shot the woman-a brown-bearded gent wearing a fringed buckskin tunic over which bra.s.s-filled bandoliers were crossed, and sitting astride a hammerheaded piebald. The man was pulling back on the pie's reins with one hand, howling like a warlock, and triggering a Winchester carbine with the other, when Yakima's slug tore through the crown of his snuff-brown hat.
The man's head jerked sideways and the hat flew off his head, revealing the b.l.o.o.d.y, bullet-smashed crown of his skull. As he dropped his carbine and the reins at the same time and sagged down the other side of the pie, several other desperadoes jerked startled, exasperated looks toward Yakima.
Yakima blew one out of his saddle while another rested the barrel of his Henry on his forearm and triggered a slug into the porch support post near Yakima's head. Yakima racked another round and drilled the shooter through his right forearm.
The man screamed and dropped his rifle. Reaching for it, he released his reins, and his bucking dun flung him off its back and into the dust-churned street below, where another dancing mount kicked him in the head and tossed him end over end.
There was so much gun smoke in the street-from the desperadoes' guns as well as from Speares, the shotgun guards, and the sheriff's deputies-that Yakima could see little but vague outlines of horseback riders dancing about the stagecoach.
He didn't give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n about Speares's men or the gold or the coach. He was worried about his horses. Wolf and the paint were tied before the mercantile on the other side of Charlier's. They were no more than forty yards from the fighting, well within range of stray gunfire and ricochets.
Quickly, Yakima thumbed fresh sh.e.l.ls into the Winchester'sloading gate and then, flinching at a ricochet that plunked into the stock trough before the cafe, bolted into the street, angling toward Charlier's. When he was halfway between the cafe and the harness shop, two bullets drilled the street before him. Another tore through the slack of his right buckskin cuff.