Part 13 (2/2)
Patchen spoke through gritted teeth. ”You better talk to your jailer, Speares. If he's still alive.”
Yakima spread his feet and set his Yellowboy on his shoulder, gloved finger through the trigger guard. He stared skeptically down at the two buried lawmen.
”Should've known better than to leave old Suggs in charge,” Speares rasped.
Patchen chuckled darkly, his head twitching.
”Breed,” Speares said, wincing at a sudden sharp pain. ”I'll put in a few good words with ol' Saint Pete if you drill a pill through my head.”
Patchen ran his dry tongue across his lips, smearing a blood drip. ”Give me one, too. I'm about worn out, tryin' to get out of here and hold them predators back. That gang of yours are sick sonsab.i.t.c.hes.”
”Must be half Apache,” Speares mused. ”Only they were kind enough to leave our eyelids.”
Patchen rolled his eyes toward Speares. ”Makes it slower that way.”
Yakima poked his hat back off his forehead. ”How long you been here?”
Patchen glanced up at him, eyelids fluttering. His eyes were bloodshot, the lids pink and sand-caked. ”Since yesterday afternoon.”
”Long enough for me,” Speares said. ”If the buzzards don't get us by sundown, wolves and cats will move in tonight.” He spat. ”Spare a couple bullets, breed. I'd do as much for you.”
Yakima sighed and looked around. A scarred Spencer rifle lay nearby, half buried in the sand. He set down his prized Yellowboy, grabbed the old Spencer by the barrel, and began shoveling sand away from Patchen's chin with the stock.
Patchen watched him skeptically, hopefully. So did Speares. Neither man said anything while Yakima shoveled the sand away from the marshal's chest, shoulders, and back.
When he'd gotten down to the man's belt, Patchen gazed up at Yakima, incredulous. Yakima pulled his Arkansas toothpick from his boot, reached around, and cut the rope tying the marshal's hands behind his back. Patchen continued staring at Yakima as, planting his hands to both sides, he worked Patchen's legs out of the riverbed.
Yakima straightened, breathing hard. He looked at Speares, now staring at him curiously, one eye squeezed shut. He tossed the Spencer down and picked up his hat and Yellowboy.
”You can dig the sheriff out. I got business ahead.”
Shouldering the Winchester, he walked back across the ravine, mounted the bank, and strode through the brush to the buckskin. He grabbed the reins, leapt onto the saddle blanket, turned the horse around.
In the ravine, Patchen was using the Spencer to dig out Speares-slow, weary strokes, the sheriff spitting sand from his mouth. The buzzards squawked and quarreled as they consumed the dead bodies around them.
Yakima put the buckskin down the bank and gigged it through the sand, weaving around a dead man and a dead horse. He glanced at Patchen, who'd stopped working to stare at him.
”Go on home!” Yakima yelled. ”Stay the h.e.l.l outta my way!”
He could feel the two lawmen staring at his back as he took off on the buckskin up the opposite bank and lit out for the brushy hills beyond.
Midafternoon of the same day, Anjanette and the Thunder Riders galloped over several low hogbacks, twisting around the ruins of an ancient adobe village, and checked their horses down the side of a sage-covered bluff. Beyond, towering sandstone peaks jutted, streaked with the copper light of the west-angling sun.
At the ridge's base, beyond a gra.s.sy bank and a line of tall deciduous trees, lay a stream sheathed in downy fog.
The entire gang spread out in a long line just below the hill's brow. Sitting her dapple-gray ten feet off Considine's left stirrup, Anjanette could faintly feel the silky caress of the warm air from the stream against her face.
The sun had shone nearly every day of their ride from Saber Creek, but the air, except for a couple of hours at midday, was cold. She imagined shedding her clothes and soaking in the warm water, the fatigue draining from her saddle-sore bottom and thighs.
She was about to remark on the strange warm stream, when the fog thinned on the other side of the trees and she caught a glimpse of what appeared to be more ruins climbing the side of the far ridge-a honeycomb of houses sitting one atop the other, with crumbling walls and caved-in roofs. Several square or rectangular openings gaped out over the fog-shrouded stream, like the empty eye sockets of an emaciated skull.
The fog closed, and the ruins disappeared.
Leaning forward on his saddle horn, Considine glanced at her. ”Canyon of Lost Souls, the Injuns call it. The stream's called River of No Return. A few miles east it just slips into the ground, disappears.”
”As many times as we've been here,” said Mad Dog McKenna, at Considine's right, ”this place still gives me the creeps.”
”Gives everybody the creeps,” said Latigo Hayes. ”That's why it's a great place to cool our heels!”
”You mean warm warm 'em-don't you?” The black outlaw, Ben Towers, gave a groan of pleasure, hugging his shoulders. ”That h.e.l.l-fired water's the next best thing to a woman!” 'em-don't you?” The black outlaw, Ben Towers, gave a groan of pleasure, hugging his shoulders. ”That h.e.l.l-fired water's the next best thing to a woman!”
Mad Dog glanced at Anjanette, then curled his lip at Considine. ”Jack here has the real thing.”
”So do I!” yelled MacDonald, putting his horse up beside Toots's mount and wrapping one arm around the big woman's stout neck, guffawing.
Toots rammed an elbow into his ribs, nearly throwing him off the side of his horse. The others laughed.
Considine glanced at the gang members gathered on both sides of him. ”We'll hole up here for a couple days. Give the horses and ourselves a rest before we make the last pull to Junction Rock!”
”Sounds good to me, Boss!” shouted one of the men as he and the rest of the gang spurred their horses down the hill toward the trees and the thick fog beyond, yelling and yowling. Toots rode up beside Considine, glowered at Anjanette, then turned a dimple-cheeked smile on the outlaw leader. ”If you want a real real woman to soap your bones, Jack, I'll meet you at the river!” woman to soap your bones, Jack, I'll meet you at the river!”
With that, she ground her heels against her paint's flanks and, cackling, galloped down the slope in the sifting dust of the others.
Considine turned to Anjanette. ”Don't worry about her. She's just kiddin' around. She already got herself a beau at Junction Rock-a big bearded mestizo who runs a saloon and hunts bear. She's pure-dee stricken by that fool.”
”In that case, it'll be nice to get to Junction Rock,” Anjanette said. ”I'm getting tired of looking over my shoulder at her.”
Considine jerked the black stallion's bit to remind him who was boss. The abrupt reining and the nightly hobbling, as well as several sudden lashes from a bullwhip, had helped take the fire out of the stallion's eyes.
The outlaw leader turned to Anjanette, smoothing his thick, drooping mustache with one hand and dimpling his cheeks. ”Come on! A long soak in that water is the closest to heaven I ever been this side of the sod.” He winked and ran his gaze down to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and back up again. ”Almost, that is!” that is!”
He raked the black's flanks with his spurs, galloping down the slope while angling left of the other riders. Anjanette glanced once more toward the ruins concealed by the fog, suppressing a sudden chill, then threw her head back, shaking her black hair from her eyes, and put her steeldust after the stallion.
She'd ridden a hundred yards when Considine and Wolf disappeared into the cottonwoods and the fog. Anjanette followed, feeling the air grow warmer the closer she rode toward the river. She followed Considine's path through the trees, the fog enveloping her, the warmth pressing against her, the smell of sulfur filling her nostrils.
The steeldust's shod hooves clattered on the rocks, and then she could see the stream sliding along to her right, murmuring slightly. Ahead, the black stood with its reins wrapped around a stout cottonwood, its neck arched indignantly.
Anjanette looked around. ”Jack?” She was surprised by how loud her voice sounded inside the gauzy fog, echoing off the rock wall on the other side of the stream.
Considine's voice came back, nearly as loud, slightly breathless. ”Here!”
Anjanette gigged the steeldust ahead, saw Considine's blurred shape hopping around at the edge of the stream, kicking out of his jeans. When the denims lay in a pile among the small black rocks and gravel, he bent forward to shuck off his underwear, then splashed naked into the water, his pistol belt coiled around one arm, a cheroot protruding from his lips.
”Come on, girl!” His voice thundered. ”Don't be shy. I got somethin' to show you!”
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