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The Devil's Blood Preview
Part
One
Season
of Gloom
Chapter One
The Desperado Den
Mercy sings a hopeless song the ears of a killer cannot hear.
In the shadows of the blue-black hole eating into the side
of the mountain, at the foot of the cliff where Indian gods made
their home, merciless men waited in the dark shadow of death.
The Desperados Eight were led by one man. He was called Savage
Diablo Baraga.
Longhaired little Blue Bell Smith waited with them. It was
like waiting for a certain breeze to blow by-not just any breeze,
but that one in particular that every man would recognize when
he smelled it, when he felt it on his skin, when its acrid musk
tainted his tongue. Blue Bell Smith didn't know why they waited.
He only knew the shadow of death lurked there for him.
Seven of the men waiting that day in the hole in the rock
they called the Desperado Den belonged there. Blue Bell Smith
did not. The little man rode with Diablo Baraga when given the
chance, but he was nothing more than a cur to Baraga. He met
neither the standards of Baraga nor the standards it took to
gain fame in Arizona newspapers.
"Desperados Eight" was the poetic name with which
the Tucson Citizen had dubbed the gang and which had been spread
across the continent by the hot butter knife of the press. They
were Los Desperados Ocho in the little Spanish-speaking border
towns and in the Mexican villas across the border in Sonora.
To the world they were evil in the flesh.
Today in the Desperado Den the only air that moved was a black
wind. It moaned through Blue Bell Smith and called his name.
It was that breeze they seemed to wait for, that bizarre protocol
these men required before they made their move. He knew he should
have left here in the night. He should have left after he awoke
from the dream that left him cold and shaking, sweating and nearly
in tears in the dark. He should have left, but he stayed.
There was no talk, no laughter among the Desperados Eight,
or rather, among the seven present. With cold eyes, they waited
in restless silence, avoiding the little man's glance. It was
a spiteful thing. He would look at one of them, and they would
look away. Maybe he had a guilty conscience. But his memory of
speaking with the marshal-what was his name? Joe Raines . . .
The memory was so vivid it gave him the eerie feeling Baraga
could read his mind.
Smith ran slim graceful fingers over his mustache and through
his shoulder-length blond hair. He pulled out his Army Colt pistol
and used the oil of his hair to smooth its red walnut grip. He
slipped the gun back into the cross-draw holster on his left
hip. He thought of his mother, of his younger brother dying of
scarlet fever, years ago when he was seven and his brother was
only four. The doctor himself had died of the fever the same
morning. No one had been able to save even him-a man of medicine.
Smith thought of his father crying, when men weren't supposed
to cry. He thought of Christmas in the hardwoods of upstate Michigan,
of snows all of ten feet high. He thought of home and family
. . . and he waited to die.
Blue Bell Smith looked at each of the Desperados. He tried
to get one of them to meet his gaze, and they wouldn't. There
was Savage Diablo Baraga. Satan incarnate. Savage Diablo-Savage
Devil. No one knew his real name, and no one knew for certain
where his present one came from, but it fit him like a well-tailored
coat.
In spite of everything else impressive about Baraga, one feature
grabbed a man first. Baraga surely knew that, and maybe it was
why he was so full of hate. His right arm was missing at the
elbow; all of the right sleeves of his garments were sewn up
on the ends so he wasn't obliged to tuck or roll them. He'd lost
the arm to shrapnel from an exploding cannonball on Cemetery
Ridge, at Gettysburg, where he had ridden under the command of
General George Pickett.
Six pistols festooned Baraga's frame, strapped to him, slung
from him, stuffed behind his belt. A one-armed man must make
sure of easy access to a loaded gun. Most of his weapons were
Colt .45's, one on his left hip, butt to the rear, one at the
right in a cross draw holster. Another hung across his chest
from a leather and chain rig of his own invention. He wore two
converted Wells Fargo Colts, in holsters sewn on the outside
of each boot, and when he rode another short-barreled Peacemaker
rested against the inside of the buckle of his gun belt. He kept
the .45's to avoid the confusion of loading several pistols of
different caliber during a heated battle, if the odd circumstance
ever arose of his emptying six pistols and having time to reload.
Baraga sat massaging the stub of his arm. He gazed out into
the sunshine, almost blinding against the darkness in the cave.
Even seated, Baraga cut an imposing figure. His big-boned, cruelly
handsome face with its eagle nose commanded admiration. It was
framed by short, golden, brown-streaked hair that swept back
from a broad, furrowed forehead. Piercing, ice blue eyes gazed
from beneath thick brows, and a dark, closely trimmed beard surrounded
his mouth. A man couldn't have looked once at Savage Diablo Baraga
without turning to look again.
Major Morgan Dixon was Baraga's second in command. He sat
near Baraga, studying a book of war, as if that mattered anymore;
the Desperados used only guerilla warfare. Dixon had the kind
of looks envied by men, desired by women. But from head to toe
he was characterized by darkness. Black hair slicked down with
bear grease reared back from an olive-tone forehead, and a trim
beard lined his jaw. He wore dark clothing, and his hat was gray,
but in spite of all that darkness Smith couldn't imagine it shaded
the darkness of his soul.
There were times the Major still wore his gray campaign coat,
as if to demonstrate his continued loyalty to his cause. He had
survived the harsh conditions of a northern prison camp alongside
men like Baraga, and now he, too, hated the Union and anything
that represented it. Other than Baraga and Bishop, he didn't
care much for anything. Or anyone. His indifference toward the
lives of others showed in the weapon he favored, a twelve-gauge
shotgun with sawed-off side-by-side barrels.
The third Desperado, Samuel Colt Bishop, lay stretched full-length
across a blanket near the grotto's entrance. His gaze roamed
the sunny canyon wall. That outlaw was a puzzle Smith had never
solved. Bishop wasn't like the other outlaws. For one thing,
he was one of only two who hadn't fought in the war. They said
he'd stayed out west, though he'd been twenty-one years old when
the war began-and primed for a fight. For another thing, Colt
Bishop was a gentleman, and as such he was out of place in the
Desperado Den. He always treated Smith with kindness, when he
treated him at all.
Bishop's raw-boned face was whiskered, and a thick dark mustache
drooped over his lips. Facial hair was a sign of the times and
seemed a requirement to ride with the Desperados. Roughly cut
brown hair, etched with gray throughout, scratched a haphazard
line across his forehead and half-covered his ears. Though of
average height, and not uncommonly muscular, Colt Bishop enjoyed
immense respect wherever he went due to his reputation with the
Colt pistol he wore. Blue Bell Smith had never seen the gunman
touch liquor.
As Blue Bell's anxiety grew, his eyes ticked quicker and quicker
across the rest of the gang. Bloody Walt Doolin was a big, black-haired
man, broad across his chest and narrow between his slanted dark
eyes. Silverbeard Sloan's name was a fit enough description of
his outward appearance, and then there was Crow Denton, the man
they called the Breed, and Slicker Sam Malone, who seemed as
much an outcast as Blue Bell himself. These were men who had
always scorned Blue Bell Smith but who had paid him well to be
a spy. A list of men who would, without twitching, watch Blue
Bell Smith be slain . . .
A molten-yellow sun poured down on the vast, rolling, rock-strewn
hills. In that inferno of sand and rock and curled dead grass
and thorn, nothing weak had hope for survival. Even the strong
died horrible deaths unless fortune chose their side. The timid,
and some not so timid, saved their travels for the light of the
stars, to avoid the lethal temperatures and the bandits and Apaches
who might raid this land without as much warning as a javelina's
charge.
Among the rocks and cactus and thornbrush of that land, on
a chestnut gelding with a glistening white mane and tail, rode
a giant of a man by the name of Rico Wells. Today he had a shadow,
a little man named Shorty Randall. Shorty's mane, in color, matched
that of Wells' chestnut, and he rode a white horse that shone
for miles across the desert-visible to any wandering Apache or
Mexican outlaw or cutthroat who wanted a stake or just had a
thirst for blood. Shorty was unwise to the ways of the wild country.
And Rico Wells was too big and too mean and too reckless to care
if the little man's horse drew attention to them.
The government of Arizona Territory called Rico Wells a menace
to society. The newspapers called him, in kinder moments, Desperado
number five. Or Big Samson. The Mexicans called him Sierra Grande-Big
Mountain.
Like sun-darkened strands of corn silk, Big Samson's fine,
flowing hair lifted as a breeze swirled past his plodding chestnut,
making a strand of it brush his cheek. He raised a hand and twirled
a finger absently into the stray lock of hair as he kept his
wary blue eyes moving, like two pieces of sky roving in a wall
of sandstone. Twisting and twirling his hair with his finger
was a habit Shorty had noticed whenever any loose hair tickled
the big man's skin. If it had been any other man but Wells, Shorty
might have called it a nervous habit, and he might have laughed.
But a man did not laugh at Rico Wells. Whatever the cause of
the hair-curling habit, Big Samson did it enough that the ends
of his hair, at least around his face, had taken on a definite
curl.
Wells sat a Texas saddle with the three-banded barrel of a
Springfield rifle balanced across its flat-topped horn. They
could have named him Goliath, this Rico Wells; only the fifteen
hundred-pound horse he rode could dwarf him. His head was large,
and his hips were not narrow, but the enormous set of his shoulders
made his head seem small and his hips the hips of a long distance
runner. The relative thinness of his jaw was disguised behind
a bush of dark beard, contrasting the yellow hair flowing past
his shoulders.
Rico Wells had the tastes of an Indian, with beads on his
moccasins, knife sheath and holster. He wore a cotton shirt that
hung untucked, sashed at the waist, and a breechclout of shimmering
golden satin over soiled buckskin trousers. The beads on his
buckskin were drab in their color, and the only thing about Rico
Wells that could have been called gaudy was the golden clout.
Shorty Randall rode in awe beside this monster. Shorty was a
few inches below average height; Wells was a good foot over it.
Shorty pulled his furtive eyes away from Big Samson and studied
the land. Mountain ranges, hazy and indistinct on the horizon,
sawed against a heat-bleached, cloudless sky. To the northeast,
the Sierritas; to the east, the Cerro Colorados; to the southeast,
the San Luis range-all melded together, giving the appearance
of one long series of ragged hills.
Nearer still rose the Baboquivaris.
This twenty-mile backbone jutted from rocky earth. Its granite
rims braced the skyline, flanked by a narrow band of grassed-over
foothills. Mesquite, with its wiry limbs and hanging with shriveled
pods of beans mixed in with the new pale green ones, and umbrella-like
paloverde-"green stick"-hunkered in washes and on the
lower hills. Ironwood, bur sage, cholla, ocotillo and the occasional
saguaro cactus, massive, spiny arms curved upward, broke the
monotony of rock and sandy terrain.
As Wells and Shorty started their climb into the foothills,
the vegetation thickened, intermixing now with evergreen oak
and taller shrubs, purple prickly pear and Spanish bayonet. Before
them, less than three miles away, the granite broke loose from
the soil and heaved into the sky. The high, steep, rounded dome
of Baboquivari Peak dominated the Baboquivaris, looking like
the fist of some giant whose body must have been the size of
Arizona.
This was Indian ground, the land of the Papago-the Tohono
O'odham. The Tohono O'odham were a peaceful people, for the most
part friendly to whites. But to them Baboquivari was a special
place, a land of mysterious gods. They resented the whites encroaching
even here. According to their legends, an ancient god, I'itoi,
had taken refuge here from his enemies in a labyrinthine cavern
deep in the base of the peak. They expected him to return one
day to purge his lair. Shorty was no man of superstitions, but
he couldn't entirely discount the myth. He had been to the base
of Baboquivari. He'd felt its mystery and its astonishing power.
One afternoon, the first time he ever drew near the peak, he'd
heard the wind rush over its granite face like some mighty waterfall.
That particular day there had been no other sign of wind . .
.
The Tohono O'odham weren't the only inhabitants of the Baboquivaris,
of course. In spite of the quiet of the land during the day,
the nighttime hills teemed with life. Mule deer, and whitetails
the size of dogs; cottontail and jackrabbits; javelinas and desert
sheep all browsed the brush and trees. Coyotes and Mexican wolves
sang lonely songs to the stars and fed on the less fortunate
of the plant eaters. There were also the big cats, the preeminent
cougar and the rare jaguar. These desert dwellers and the Papagos
knew of the cavern deep in these mountains, toward which Wells
and Shorty now rode. They could tell of the beauty and solitude
there. But the Papagos never wandered near. In that hidden cavern,
only death could await them.
They came in sight of the cavern from over the rim of the
canyon. It was a path only Rico Wells liked to use, a trail that
ran deep into a jungle of thorns that always left his face and
the hide of his horse bleeding from many tiny wounds. The canyon
opened out before them, three hundred yards at its widest. Green
marked the surfacing of a spring, and among the oaks and juniper
Shorty could see horses moving aimlessly.
Across from them, the solid limestone of the western canyon
wall gave way to a gaping black hole partly concealed by gnarled
oaks. The cave bore deep into the mountain, harsh and forbidding
against the flat tan of the stone. Shorty had been to the Desperado
Den before, but only twice. He remembered the cave floor, thick
with cool, powdery sand, reaching back sixty feet before coming
up against a solid wall of rock. It then thrust up to a ceiling
twenty feet high in some places. But most of all he remembered
the hard men who found respite from the sun and planned their
plundering raids from that cave.
Blue Bell Smith's teeth hurt from clenching his jaw. He wanted
to walk outside, but somehow he knew he would be overstepping
his bounds. He wanted a cigarette, but his papers were gone,
and he wouldn't on his bravest day have dared ask any of the
Desperados for a loan-not even Colt Bishop, not on a day like
today. He walked to the back of the grotto, then started back
toward the front.
Blue Bell Smith became aware of the sounds of horses moving
up through the brush in the bottom of the canyon. It was the
sound not of horses drifting in their quest for new grass, but
the sound of ridden animals. He tensed, and sweat formed little
beads on his cheeks and forehead. His hands shaking, he stopped
at the big wooden chest that rested in the middle of the floor.
He picked his hat off the chest, clamping it down to his ears.
With outward calm, he looked at the hot ashes of the fire. He
cursed himself for coming back here-for staying after his nightmare
bade him run.
He waited, he sweated. He didn't believe in God, but he prayed.
And then Big Samson Wells stood framed in the sunlight, towering
like his namesake. Shorty Randall moved in beside him, insignificant
as a hare next to Big Samson. Smith's heart jumped when he saw
the little man. He knew he lived in Castor. He might have seen
Blue Bell with the marshal!
Smith remained still. Wells didn't look at anyone but Smith,
and the little man tried to meet his eyes. But he couldn't. He
tipped back his hat and placed a boot on the wooden chest. He
rested his elbow on the upraised knee. The sweat beads melded
and began to roll down his cheeks.
Wells stared with wolfen gaze. His right hand held his long-barreled
Springfield rifle. "Shorty and me talked about you,"
Wells said, his voice a deep purr Smith had found strangely lulling
in the past. But it wasn't lulling now.
Smith shifted his weight and dropped his foot from the wood
chest, straightening. Without thinking, he dried the palms of
his hands on his shirt and forced his eyes to stay as close as
he could to those of Big Samson. "You talked about me? Anythin'
I might be interested in?"
Wells moved only his lips. "Somethin' you should be."
"Well, try me." Smith tried to smile, but he was
aware of how he failed. He edged his trembling fingers closer
to the achingly small Army Colt on his hip. It didn't even seem
as big as David's slingshot.
"The story's on your face, Smith," said Wells, raising
his voice. "Don't play games-you sold us out."
Smith tried to reply, but his mouth wouldn't open. He felt
nerves twitch along his jaw like flies dancing in a line. He
found his voice at last. "Sold you out? What're you talkin'
about?"
"Shut your mouth," Wells said, his voice lowering.
"I wanna know one thing: how much did they pay you?"
"Pay me for what?"
"To die."
The room was silent, and everyone watched. Samuel Colt Bishop
had stood from his blanketed, sandy bed, and he watched both
men. Sam Malone, the man the government called Desperado Eight,
watched Smith. His eyes nervous, he wiped his palms against his
shirt and looked from Smith to Rico Wells, swallowing hard.
Blue Bell Smith twisted up his face. "I-I don't wanna
call anybody a liar, but . . . Well, somebody's been fillin'
yer head with trash."
"You make a bad liar. Shorty don't make up stories. He
saw you and the sheriff of Castor together-plain as I see you
now. You spilled your guts. I hope you got to spend the money."
Blue Bell Smith looked outside, feeling cold all over. Many
eyes drilled through him. Eyes of hatred. Murderous eyes. He
hadn't spent the money. He had tasted bourbon in Castor-good
bourbon. But it hadn't lasted long enough, not to be standing
here. There were no women in Castor-not the kind he wanted. And
because of that lack he had gold coins in his pocket. Two double
eagles-and the promise of more to come. But what did a dead man
need with double eagles? They couldn't buy him a place in Heaven.
His eyes narrowed, and he felt an odd sensation, the cold
walnut grip of his 1860 Army Colt folding inside his hand. He
didn't realize he had reached for it.
Wells moved faster than the little man. Grunting, he lurched
close, swinging with the butt of his Springfield. The sharp edge
of the steel butt plate caught Smith in the teeth, and as Smith
went down his pistol flew wide of his hand. He landed on his
back but saw the pistol from the corner of his eye. With the
heels of his boots he thrust himself backward, clawing for the
butt of the gun. Wells used his rifle like a shovel, thrusting
it into the little man's ribs. The crackling snap of bone and
cartilage was loud within the close rock walls.
With his mouth set, Wells held to his rifle barrel and raised
the butt high. It came down against Smith's left temple with
all the smooth, easy strength Wells had in his hands and long
arms. The little man's eyes rammed shut, and his hands tightened
as Wells stepped back. A quiver passed through Smith's face and
frame and hands. Then he was still, and his blue eyes regarded
the ceiling with utter indifference.
Wells watched for a long moment and no one spoke. At last,
the big man pivoted, his moccasined heels shifting the deep sand
on the floor. He sought out Baraga, and their eyes met. "He
sold us out."
Baraga nodded, his eyes almost bored. He glanced toward Smith,
then back at Wells. "So I heard. That explains the way he's
been acting since you left. Like the devil was prodding his rump
with a hay fork." Baraga took a step closer and stared down
at Smith. At last, he let out a huff and frowned thoughtfully,
turning to Sam Malone.
"Grab yourself a plate, then go out and tell the Injun
to come and have his share while you take his watch. Rico, drag
this coyote out of here and down the canyon three hundred yards
or so. Throw him over the side for the buzzards."
Wells nodded, then bent and slung Smith to one shoulder like
a sack of grain and tramped out of the grotto. Sam Malone picked
up his rifle and disappeared out in the sunshine, and after several
minutes another man appeared. He was an old Indian Baraga's bunch
had named Paddlon-an unceremonious abridgment of his Papago name,
Paddles-On-The-River. No one knew Paddlon's age, but his faced
was gaunt and wrinkled like a sun-dried apple, and his shoulder-length
hair was thin and bleached white. In his eyes was the old man's
only visible strength. They snapped when he felt put-upon and
gleamed when he thought of his family, whom Apaches had killed
many years ago. Paddlon's people detested the Spanish-given name
Papago, and referred to themselves as either Tohono O'odham or
as parientes-kinsmen. But the Desperados knew him and every redman
by one term: Injuns.
When Paddlon paused at the warm coals of the fire pit, Baraga
threw him a preoccupied glance. "Eat up, Paddlon. And take
a canteen back up with you. It's getting hot."
They all sat down to fresh-boiled rice and red peppers, stewed
jackrabbit and steamed cornbread. Crow Denton was Desperado Seven-a
half-breed Yaqui Indian whose long brown mustache made the wrinkles
alongside his mouth appear as if they went clear to his jaw.
Denton, with Bishop, finished up the pair who had taken no part
in the big war. This meal was his doing, and so the others ate
with satisfaction. He cooked as well as he shot, and no one could
best Crow Denton with a rifle.
Rico Wells whispered back in after several minutes and took
up a plate, seating himself Indian-style in the sand. He ate
almost ravenously, catching up with the others and surpassing
them, emptying his plate first. He pressed the last of his cornbread
against his tin plate to embed the remaining rice in it before
popping it in his mouth. As he chewed, he looked up at Savage
Diablo Baraga and studied him. Finally, he said, "Shorty
says Mouse is gettin' hungry again. He wants fifty percent more
than he's bein' paid."
Baraga stabbed his knife into the floor and threw a harsh
look at Shorty Randall. "Who is this man who thinks he's
worth so much? I'll wager he comes from the north. Union man.
Greedy as a man can come, but he probably ranks with gutter trash."
The little blond man swallowed hard, his eyes flickering between
Baraga and the floor. He must not have thought Baraga expected
a response, for he remained silent.
"Shorty, I'll tell you right now-Mouse's cut goes no
higher than it is now. His services aren't irreplaceable. You
tell him. If he isn't satisfied, then I suppose we'll have to
kill him," Baraga said. "Tell him that. As far as I'm
concerned, we'll pay you to do the job for us. You're not stupid.
You're well aware who's buttering your bread. Say I'm wrong if
you believe it."
Shorty shook his head, aware of every eye on him. "There
wouldn't be no money without you. I know that."
Baraga gave a sharp nod. "Right. Now what about the payroll?
The payroll to the Dolce Vita mine? Any word?"
Shorty swallowed his last bite. "Not yet. But next week
we'll know. There was a delay in Frisco."
"All right," Baraga said. "Sloan will be in
to meet you." He glanced over at Silverbeard Sloan, the
Desperado Six of journalism fame. "By then, I hope there's
word on the payroll. But either way, you'd best have spoken with
Mouse about his cut. He can be replaced, in which case he'll
be dead. I want him to be aware of that with every breath he
takes. He stays with the present deal or he dies," Baraga
said flatly.
"Shoulda killed 'im a long time ago," Silverbeard
Sloan said in a growling voice. "He's comin' out of this
whole deal sweeter'n I ever dreamed myself. An' he don't even
risk his life for it."
"He risks it to us," Rico Wells put in.
The others nodded agreement, and Major Morgan Dixon spoke
for the first time. "If he's a Federal man, he'll stay with
the cut we offer him and keep his mouth shut. Craven Union trash
wouldn't stand up to any one of us."
When the meal was finished, the Indian, Paddlon, returned
to his rock perch above the cavern, and Malone came in to stretch
out on the sandy floor, careful to avoid the spots of blood in
the sand where Blue Bell Smith had died.
Samuel Colt Bishop sat at the rear wall of the cave with his
eyes half-closed. But he was very aware of those around him,
what they were doing, what they were saying-sometimes what they
were thinking. He was a perceptive man, a man who felt things
others didn't, saw more than others saw because he breathed in
his surroundings. His speed with a gun dictated he never let
down his guard because there would always be someone who wanted
to kill him.
Colt Bishop's father had named him after the inventor of the
Colt revolver, and his father's love of guns had rubbed off on
him. But nothing else had. His father had been a wife and child
beater, and Bishop had used his namesake revolver to kill him
when he was only fifteen years old.
Bishop hired out as a mine payroll guard at a young age. He'd
been a cowhand, a wrangler, a payroll guard, and a foreman on
a sizable California ranch. He'd worked as a barkeep, too, in
a rowdy border town, before killing a U.S. marshal in a drunken
fight and finding his calling in the gun. For a little while
he'd been a marshal himself, but there was no money in that.
He'd fought private wars-against Indians and Mexicans, usually,
but he drew no border. He was not one to pay much attention to
skin color. A Colt .45 would kill a white man as easily as a
red or a brown or a black. And when he found no work, he made
his own, robbing the occasional bank or stagecoach. He was a
gunman firmly planted on the south side of the law, and all money,
like all men, to him was the same color.
Silverbeard Sloan left his plate on the floor when he was
done eating and flopped down near the grotto's entrance, just
out of the punishing sunlight. He set a dented oilcan nearby
and pulled a greasy rag from the pocket of his gray wool vest.
Then he reached with a practiced hand and withdrew from his right
holster a silver-plated Colt Peacemaker with a four and three
quarters inch barrel.
For a long moment, he tilted the revolver back and forth,
letting it catch and reflect the blue sky and tawny limestone
against its intricately engraved frame and barrel. The pistol,
like its twin in his second holster, had cost him twenty-eight
dollars brand new. It had smooth ivory grips that fit his delicate
hand and caressed his long, slender fingers like silk.
Noble was the outlaw's given name, a name so unbefitting a
man of his character as to sound ludicrous, for he was a born
killer-far from noble. A woman or a child in his path was as
likely to be trampled into the dust as a dog or a possum. A barbarian
void of morals, he derived his greatest pleasure from shooting
his Colts, especially if his targets were alive when the lead
began to fly. It was by that act he could add to an already deadly
reputation. It was time-time and the romantic journalists of
the West-who had done away with the ill-fitting name of Noble.
Time, although he was not yet forty, had given a silver sheen
to his thick head of hair and distinguished looking beard. Newspapers
had renamed him for it. Most people in Arizona Territory couldn't
have said what his real name was. Silverbeard Sloan was a name
of legend.
Sloan cleaned his Colt, though it didn't need it. He spun
the cylinder and listened to its silk-smooth revolutions. He
cocked it and felt the buttery smooth flow of the hammer beneath
his thumb. The best gunsmith in New Mexico had seen to the action,
changing it from the standard factory issue Colt to the instrument
of perfection he now held.
Sloan found himself looking over at Colt Bishop every now
and then. He didn't like the man. He never had. The newspapers
insisted on saying Bishop was the faster of them, and that was
not true. But then, how did he prove he was faster? There was
only one way . . .
He knew he could outdraw Colt Bishop, and in his mind he had
done so many times. He gunned him down, laughing as he fell.
He had imagined it so often it had begun to take place in an
exact succession. They faced each other. Bishop cowered but tried
to defend his reputation. The twin Colts came to Sloan's palms
like they had lives of their own-although in real life he would
never have tried to use them simultaneously in a fight. They
bucked against his palms. He watched the agonized twist of Bishop's
face, the blood on his shirt, his fall to the ground. Sloan stood
over him, blowing smoke from the barrels of his Colts.
But of course he couldn't face him. Not that he couldn't beat
him. He had no doubt he could. In spite of what everyone said,
he knew he was the faster of them-by far. That would one day
be a well-known fact. But for now . . . well, it would be foolish
for two men in the same gang to fight each other. He would let
them all think Bishop was faster, and he would bide his time
and practice with his Colts.
Silverbeard caught himself staring at Bishop's walnut-handled
Colt and shook his head, blinking his eyes. Blast it, he was
the fastest of them. He knew he was. Someday. Someday they would
all see . . .
Chapter Two
Captain Tappan Kittery
There was about to be a lynching. Then Captain Tappan Kittery
came along, and the odds of the Mexican sheepherder leaped a
hundredfold.
Following the sudden, sharp click of metal on stone, an abrupt
silence descended on the shaded, rocky wash. Even the breeze
paused in its springtime dance. The grass waited, the fresh new
leaves of the oak and sycamore and ash trees hovered in silence.
A lizard sunned itself on a granite boulder, unmoving and wary.
Death often came to the first one who moved.
The wash was dry, where at times the snow waters crashed and
roiled and tore off hunks of stone, sweeping trees and boulders
along like a freshet moves weeds and pebbles. At the head of
the draw it was deep and dark and full of upslung granite boulders.
The heavy old gray-trunked trees spread their branches over it
and wove them together until it resembled an isolated hunk of
rain forest cast away and lost in the middle of the Arizona desert.
The rock-scarred roots of those trees gnawed and curled their
way out of the steep banks and from between the rocks, and slithered
along the rim of the wash among dead white branches and tall
green grass.
The lizard sat on its rock, its black eyes staring up the
draw. It extended and flexed its legs, making it rise, then drop.
The paper-thin skin of its abdomen stretched with a breath, relaxed,
stretched again. No one could spot the tiny, dust-colored body
against its boulder perch. No one could catch it if they did.
Then, from the deepest shadows of the draw, a rider appeared
atop a giant black horse. As if sighing in relief, the breeze
picked up again. The grass and leaves began once more to whisper,
and a corner of the horseman's yellow scarf fluttered loosely.
The big rider swayed in the saddle, his eyes watchful for
any movement. From beneath the wide black brim of his hat, sweat
made glistening trails down through the dust on his tanned cheeks,
running into a week's growth of heavy dark beard. The rider had
been away from the comforts of men, it was plain. Salty stains
splotched his faded blue shirt, and cooking grease marred the
white and gray stripes of his trousers. His hat and his boots,
even his horse and saddle, were coated with white dust.
His name was Tappan Kittery. He was a handsome man, but handsome
like the tan angular stones of the wash, not like the green grass
and the nodding flowers that peppered and garnished the spring
countryside. His blue eyes were constant-roving beneath his hat
brim. His full lips lifted in a natural smile, and straight,
almost-black hair ended above his collar line, cropped short
against the heat of the Arizona desert.
The big man's eyes missed little. They even saw the brown
lizard that seemed to sense his gaze. The creature pushed away
and skittered into a crevice in the rocks. Then only the man
and the horse and the wind in the draw remained.
They made their way up out of the wash at the first shallow
place they found. There was a cattle trail there, and the black
made its way along it. Minutes passed now with only the sound
of the saddle creaking and the black's big hooves clopping against
the sun-bleached trail. The late afternoon sun, sapped of its
noontime ferocity, still sat harsh and unforgiving above the
horizon as Kittery reluctantly guided the black horse into it.
The sound of voices reached them through the trees, and Kittery
drew the horse in. After a moment or two, he had heard what he
wanted, and he prodded the horse on at a slow walk. They stepped
into the grass, and now they seemed to glide forward with no
sound.
On the other side of a little rise appeared two men.
Kittery sat his horse and studied them. They faced each other
in knee-high green grass shaded by gnarled oaks and sycamore.
One of them, a Mexican, was short, stocky, with long hair and
a mustache and VanDyke beard. He stood with his hands over his
head, backed up to a massive sycamore. The other, a lanky, sandy-haired
man in the garb of a cowpuncher, held a pistol in his right hand,
a coiled reata in the left. A bay horse stood ground-reined next
to him.
By the sound of bleating back in the trees, and the occasional
glimpse of a light gray form, Kittery figured the Mexican was
a sheepherder. By the way the other one dressed, it was a cinch
he wasn't. From the puncher's voice and ungainly movements, Kittery
guessed he had been drinking.
Anger had burned in Kittery's heart all day. The sins of a
lawless killer by the name of Ned Crawford, a killer as elusive
as he was murderous, filled his thoughts. Kittery was in no mood
to be civil, but he had always been a rational man. He decided
to take the smoothest road he could into the situation between
the herder and the puncher. This proclivity was innate to Kittery's
nature, and had been honed by mimicking the behavior of his older
brother, Jacob, in their childhood. Jacob had always been a placid
youth who made his decisions carefully and stuck by them with
honor to the bitter end yet did all he could short of betraying
his principles to make no man his enemy.
The cowboy took two steps closer to the sheepherder, brandishing
his pistol. Kittery let the black walk in to twenty yards away,
its hooves swishing in the long grass.
"Nice day for a ride."
The puncher wheeled around, swaying as his momentum tried
to carry him farther than he had planned. He turned his Remington
Frontier pistol on Kittery.
"How do." Kittery smiled, hiding his irritation
at being called upon to act as guardian over a flock of what
cattlemen called range maggots.
"Howdy. Who're you?" The puncher squinted his eyes
suspiciously.
"Name's Tappan Kittery."
The puncher dipped his chin and spat a dark stream into the
grass. "Well, I'm Jed Reilly." He straightened himself
up and squared his shoulders, puffing out his chest like a Bantam
rooster.
Without any undue notice of the name, Kittery inclined his
chin toward the Mexican. "Who's your friend there?"
Jed Reilly returned a wry smile. "Friend? That's a mutton
puncher."
"So I figured. What do you plan to do with him?"
"Doesn't matter so much-maybe nothin'. You John Law?"
Kittery forced a chuckle. "No, I told you: I'm Tappan
Kittery. Just a public-minded fool."
"That so? Puh- blic- minded," he cut the word in
pieces to exaggerate it. "Then you'll be wantin' to give
me a hand here." Reilly's throat erupted with a bray of
laughter.
Kittery had allowed the black to walk in closer, until now
they were ten feet away from the puncher's horse. "No-o-o,"
he soothed. "May as well put up the gun, friend. I don't
think you really wanna hurt anyone today."
As he finished speaking, Kittery kicked his right leg up over
the neck of the horse and slipped from the saddle, pausing to
crouch and stretch his legs. He watched the puncher's face for
any signs of alarm as he straightened up and walked closer to
him. Reilly's only change of expression was a flickering of the
eyes, but he backed up three steps. He shot a glance at the sheepherder,
back at Kittery, and then to his own horse. His eyes rested at
last on Kittery.
"Maybe, maybe not."
From the trees, a lamb blatted. The cowboy's eyes widened,
and he gritted his teeth. His Remington, which had started to
lower, swung up to bear on Kittery's chest. "No, mister,
I guess yer wrong. I guess I do wanna hurt somebody t'day-a chili-eatin'
greaser of a sheepherder an' anybody that tries to git in my
way." He hefted the coiled reata toward Kittery. "Here,
take this. Yer gonna help me swing that piece o' sheep meat."
"It won't change anything. You kill him, five more'll
replace 'im. And they'll each have a thousand more sheep. It's
a matter o' time."
Reilly shrugged, the corner of his mouth twisting upward.
He dropped the coil of reata to his side. "Sure, but I'll
feel a whole lot better about myself in the meantime."
Kittery grunted at the stupidity of that rationale. "I
doubt that." His eyes bore into Reilly, though he tried
not to look threatening, which was a pretty big order for a man
who stood well over six feet and outweighed the puncher by a
good sixty pounds of hard flesh. The only thing that helped Kittery
appear non-menacing was the natural upturn of his lip corners.
In his past, men had made the mistake of believing that meant
he was of a perpetual good nature.
Tappan Kittery liked to avoid violence if he could, again
a creed he had adopted from his brother Jake. He collected bounty
on a criminal or two now and then, between more stable jobs,
but the law in southern Arizona had come to know him as the one
who brought them in alive-unharmed, if they were willing to come
in without a fight. But Jed Reilly, with his liquored belly,
wasn't in the same peaceable mood Kittery was. He was going to
make a fight of it. Kittery had no use for the sheepherder either.
He hated the sound of sheep on an otherwise peaceful mountain
morning. He detested the stench they left hanging like a disease
in the air. But he did have a liking for mutton and lamb chops,
and, after all, the army-issue shirt he was wearing was made
of wool, and so was the vest in his saddlebags. He couldn't say
he had no use for dead sheep, and to have dead ones there had
to be live ones at some time or other. Besides, the Mexican had
as much right to a living as anybody else. He might have chosen
a less menial calling if it had been placed before him.
When Reilly held out the reata again, shaking it insistently,
Kittery reached for it with his right hand. Then, with no warning
in his eyes, he grabbed the puncher's gun arm with his other
hand, shoving it skyward. He jerked the reata out of the shocked
puncher's hand and swung with it, striking him on the jaw. Reilly's
finger jerked, sending a .44 caliber round into the sky. Kittery
shifted his hand from Reilly's forearm to the pistol and wrenched
it free. He slammed Reilly in the collarbone with the side of
the gun as his hand came down.
Stunned, Reilly fell back against the tree, clutching at his
collar. His knees sagged, and Kittery reached out with his right
hand-freed by letting loose of the reata-and grabbed him by the
shirt. He shoved the cowboy back against the tree and held him
upright.
Shoving against Reilly's chest, Kittery stepped back, his
hand near his own Remington Army that rode high on his right
hip. He held the puncher's pistol loose along his thigh, forgotten.
Reilly leaned against the tree for a few more moments. He
raised his hand to rub his jaw after the pained look on his face
went away. He looked up at Kittery and tried to straighten up,
but he fell back, slamming his eyes shut and grabbing at his
collarbone again. It took him half a minute to ease away from
the tree. Other than his horse stamping, Reilly was first to
break the silence. He glared from the sheepherder to Kittery.
"Looks like you won yourself a greaser, mister. Yer lucky
day."
Kittery's lip corners bent a little more upward. "Reckon
so." His eyes swung to the Mexican. "What's your name?"
A look of suspicion still clouded the Mexican's eyes. He gawked
at Kittery for a few moments, looking up and down his frame like
he was some monster, stepped out of a cave. At last, he raised
his eyes to meet the bigger man's.
"Me llamo Efraín Valesquez. I would wish to thank
you for you' help. Gracias."
"Don't mention it. But look at it all this way: you'll
have an exciting tale now to tell your family about."
Valesquez pondered that for a moment, then smiled, showing
broken yellow teeth, the combined curse of bad nutrition and
worse care. "You are smart, señor. Inteligente. A
man mus' look at the bright side, yes?"
"Can't hurt. Say, how far to a town called Castor?"
"No' far. Nine, ten mile perhaps. But you should be warn'-there
is nothing there in this Castor. Very small, not grand-like Tucson."
"Thanks for the advice," Kittery replied with an
amused nod. "But I have some business to tend to there.
Besides, I'm tired of 'grand like Tucson.' Maybe we'll meet again,
friend."
He held out his hand, and Valesquez shook it hesitantly. Then
Kittery turned back to the puncher. "Reilly, I'll turn your
gun over at the sheriff's office in Castor. You can keep the
rope. I'll leave you enough to hang yourself."
"Thanks," said Reilly with a voice full of venom
and liquor. He took the reata Kittery passed him and went to
his bay. He struggled onto its back and turned again to Kittery.
"Maybe you'll meet me again, too . . . friend. Me an' my
brother Joe. That oughtta even the odds up a bit."
With that, he turned and spurred the bay, galloping west down
the mountain slope toward the same road Kittery would soon have
to ride. The pair stood and watched the rider's dust settle like
a blanket back onto the vegetation and rocks.
Kittery climbed into the saddle and looked down at the Mexican,
touching the brim of his black hat. "So long, Valesquez."
"Adios, Señor Kittery," the Mexican said
with a smile.
Kittery twitched the reins and touched Satan with his boot
heels. The big horse moved west at a long walk under the shadows
of the trees. Forty minutes of healthy trotting later, they had
left the Santa Rita Mountains far behind them and came to a road
running north and south, a good-sized road rutted with horse
and mule and oxen tracks and the grooves of many wheels. This
was the King's Road, the Royal Road, more commonly known by the
Mexicans' name-El Camino Real. This same road led from deep in
Old Mexico, up through Tucson, and on to San Diego.
After a glance to left and right, Kittery turned south. There
was no sign anywhere of Jed Reilly.
The sun bedded, and dusk came to the desert. Kittery pulled
up in the twilight, conscious of the hissing, scratchy cry of
nighthawks overhead, and the harsh chug, chug, chug of a wren's
call, back in heavy mesquite. Somewhere a poor-will made its
lonesome song, and for a moment Kittery's thoughts turned melancholy,
and he was back home in the Smoky Mountains of Carolina. There,
the bird he and Jacob or his little sister Annie listened to
from the porch in the gloaming was the whip-poor-will, and in
the early spring the fireflies danced and flickered in the dusky
air. In his dream, many loved ones, all his sisters, he and his
three brothers, gathered around a table of hand-hewn slabs, and
his mother said grace. Hickory smoke puffed occasionally from
the fireplace, where a pot of fresh corn simmered next to a browning
haunch of venison and a cast iron oven full of biscuits. From
the west, a pumpkin-colored sun stole through the window, painting
a soft glow on everything. Nudging nostalgia aside, Kittery brought
his thoughts back to the present.
Castor wasn't much farther. But he wasn't in any hurry to
arrive tonight. The town would be closed up, except perhaps for
the local watering hole. He was weary from his day in the saddle,
and though he would have liked to shake the dust from his clothes
and wash it from his sweat-tainted body, that could wait another
day.
Kittery sat there for some time in the saddle, watching along
his backtrail. There was no sign of another human being. And
it wasn't just Reilly he looked for. This was the land of the
Chiricahua Apache, the most adept camouflage expert and guerilla
fighter in the world. And although the great chief, Cochise,
had died a couple of years ago, there were others. Victorio,
Nana, Juh . . . and an upstart shaman by the name of Geronimo.
That man had a nasty habit of jumping the reservation to plunder
and kill. There was no telling where he might be at any given
time, and though Kittery should have heard word in Tucson of
any uprising, it wouldn't do to trust his life to that assumption.
To make matters worse, the border of Arizona and New Mexico
territories with Old Mexico was infested with bandits of all
skin colors, men with hearts numbed to killing by war of one
kind or another. Kittery's outfit would make a good prize-for
a man big enough to take it.
A small, sandy cove nestled in the ochre rocks beside the
road. When Kittery had satisfied himself that he was alone, he
pulled into this shelter. There was plenty of room here for both
him and his horse and patches of spring-green grass for the horse
to eat, and for him to lie on.
There was no water here but that in his canteen-enough for
the stallion and perhaps a cup for himself. His throat was parched
so he could hardly swallow-Arizona did that to a man-but he had
been through worse. As for coffee, he would do without. Deprival
had trained him against that craving years ago.
Pouring some water into his hat, he let the horse drink while
he removed the forty-pound Denver saddle and eased it upside
down onto the ground. "Ain't fair you have to carry that
and me both, is it, boy?" He patted the animal's broad,
damp back, but he would wait to rub it down. It wasn't good to
curry a horse's hair until after its sweat had dried.
Kittery called the horse Satan, not because the horse had
some evil inclination, but because he was powerful and dark.
Satan was a big horse. There was no doubt he had some Percheron
or a similar breed a few generations back in his family tree.
But his feet weren't gigantic, just large enough to keep them
from sinking too far in desert sand. His color was jet black,
blacker than any night, rescued from total blackness only by
the large blaze down his nose and four matched socks that ended
at his knees. He was a proud horse, too, displaying the tools
of a sire and the muscular, curved neck, long, wavy forelock
and massive chest of a knightly steed.
Kittery picketed him between himself and the road. The horse
would sound a warning if anything or anyone drew near in the
night. He sank onto his stretched-out bedroll and chewed on a
stale biscuit and some half-burned bacon he'd commandeered from
the Shoo Fly Restaurant in Tucson too many mornings before. It
wasn't much of a meal, but his needs were simple. And tomorrow
he'd eat in a cafe; that was consolation enough.
Sitting there letting the cool air drift down and circle around
him, Kittery listened to the stallion cropping grass. He listened
to the birds and the other sounds of the night. The wren was
gone. The fiddle of crickets and screech of nighthawks, the occasional
far-off whistle of the poor-will, the kingly hoo-hoo of an owl-these
night sounds and the scents of the desert were all that was left
to Kittery now, these and a sky full of stars and stardust that
must hang brighter than anywhere else in the world.
He listened to the whisper of wind through the grass, and
among the branches of mesquite and paloverde and ironwood. Downing
the last of his water, he laid the canteen beside his bedroll.
Still sitting up, he started to doze, and then when he jerked
awake he heard the crinkle of paper in the pocket of his gray-striped
jeans. Sleep flew away from him, along with the pleasures of
the night. Replacing the peace of solitude was the thought of
the newspaper clipping he carried that told the story of Ned
Crawford, of how he had raped Sarah Dodge and killed the entire
Dodge family in cold blood.
These killings and nothing else had made Tappan Kittery quit
his job driving freight for Tully, Ochoa and Company. This Ned
Crawford was a stench in the air of a ruggedly innocent land.
If the Apaches killed brutally, at least they had a cause. Ned
Crawford couldn't say that.
Tappan Kittery had learned to kill in the war. And he had
killed plenty. At one time or another he had killed Yank and
Reb alike. He didn't want to kill anymore. It had left a sour
taste in his mouth, and a heavy load in his heart. But Sarah
Dodge had been a kind young woman and a lady, her youngest daughter
no more than four. Tappan Kittery meant to bring justice to Ned
Crawford if he burned every last short dime in the accomplishment.
That was one man even Tappan Kittery would kill, at the slightest
provocation. And his brother Jacob would have approved.
Chapter Three
Castor, Arizona Territory
With dawn, the stars faded one by one, blinking out. A chill
tinged the air, and the caliche was cold as ice in comparison
to the furnace blast of the previous afternoon. The diluted purple
of the eastern sky foretold the waking of the sun and begged
the big man to rise. Pushing up onto his elbows, he gazed over
the spot he had chosen to make his camp. Beyond the cove and
across the road sprouted a garden of mesquite, saguaro, bur sage,
cholla and ocotillo. With God as its caretaker, it had flourished.
Accenting the wild beauty were the hues of spring flowers: the
lavender of owl clover, yellow of brittlebush in bloom, blue
of lupine, orange of Mexican poppies.
Kittery rose and readied Satan, ignoring the hunger that gnawed
at his stomach. There couldn't have been much more than a strip
of jerky or a biscuit left anyway. He would just suck on a chunk
or two of horehound candy and drive his weakness away.
Before mounting, Kittery slid his single-shot Springfield
carbine out of its boot and blew the dust from its working parts.
He did the same with the Remington Army revolver he wore on his
hip, and a smile came to his face as he turned it over in his
hand. He had owned the pistol since buying it new back in sixty-four.
The only change to it was the numerous nicks and scratches and
the dull, blackened look the sweat of his hand had given its
walnut grips. Its method of loading was cumbersome for a man
who lived dangerously, but maybe Tappan Kittery liked living
in the past. Maybe he was a relic himself.
As for the carbine, it was not outdated. It was only two years
old, an army-issue piece chosen for its supposed reliability
in the most adverse conditions. And as long as he loaded it with
the new cartridges made with brass casings rather than the older
ones of copper, which seemed to get too easily jammed inside,
it had treated him well. Yet Winchester offered two good rifles,
each with the firepower to wipe out a gang. The '73 model was
a reliable saddle gun, packing fifteen or sixteen .44 cartridges,
each with a walloping two hundred grains of lead. The brand-new
'76 model was even bigger-big enough for a buffalo or a horse,
if that was called for. Its twelve .45-75 caliber cartridges
could be a powerful argument against violence.
But Tappan Kittery wasn't ready for change. He wore the same
sweat-stained hat he had bought three years ago. It was one hundred
percent beaver and tough as leather. He wore the same cavalry
boots he had worn when he rode away from the army three years
before, and he had owned them for three years before that. They'd
been re-soled three times, but it was still the same leather.
Change was for a man who had more money than brains. What served
Kittery well, whether tangible or intangible, he saw no reason
to do away with.
Kittery moved the big black out with crisp air brushing against
his darkly whiskered cheeks. As the road wore on, the vegetation
changed. Creosote, whose notorious poisonous roots prevented
other plants from thriving close by, dominated the land, interspersed
with an array of cactus and the mesquite, whose roots stretched
far beneath the top soil to tap the ground water below. Now the
sandy soil stretched for miles to the south, and the rugged ridges
of mountains dominated the skyline in the east and west. One
brushy rise provided a stage for two coyotes saying hello to
the morning.
The sun cast a golden-orange glow across everything. After
the cold night, the sky seemed bluer, the flowers brighter, the
trees and cactus greener; and perhaps they were, before the heat
of the day that promised to be.
Four miles farther, Kittery began to become more and more
aware of a long ridge of light colored clay that heaved up on
the horizon to the west. He discerned what appeared to be a smattering
of earth-colored structures along the top of that ridge, and
some built along several roads that twisted the length of its
tawny flank. Soon, a sign inviting with a painted white arrow
told him to turn off on a side-road if Castor was his destination.
Here he left the Camino Real.
To Kittery's left, in a rocky gulch, a stream gurgled along
from its beginnings in the Santa Rita Mountains, and a grove
of small cultivated pecan trees displayed their deep green leaves
not far from its banks. Several beaver dams hampered the flow
of the stream, but most were long forgotten. But at one of them
Kittery was surprised to see one of the plump denizens making
its way across a deep, murky pool. It seemed as if it had no
natural fear of man. The thought crossed Kittery's mind that
maybe the beaver had sanctuary near Castor, for Castor itself
meant beaver, in the Spanish tongue.
While these idle thoughts occupied his mind, Kittery rode
down through a sandy wash and up over a rise. Topping out, he
saw with relief that the dusty road descended into another, shallower
wash, then leveled out, fading into a scattering of buildings.
Castor looked like the type of town where a man would stop
for supplies before hurrying on-clean enough, but void of the
luxuries enjoyed in larger cities, and even in many small towns
in more hospitable environments. Few trees, other than those
stunted ones the Sonoran desert normally supported, and not many
flowers. Barren except for the usual mixture of cactus and thorn
bush growing along the ridge. The only place that really showed
the kind of green that welcomed a man home was several more little
patchy orchards of pecan trees that grew off to the left, and
a field of grape vines that crawled tentatively up some four-foot
stakes set in neat rows.
Beyond the greenery squatted an assortment of privies and
broken-down, slatternly adobe huts flanked by brush ramadas.
Strings of red peppers hung from many of the protruding rafters,
laundry was slung to dry from dirty windowsills, and almost all
of the doorways were served by drooping blankets in place of
wooden doors.
Here rose the noises of many people, all of them he could
distinguish speaking Spanish, and all of them sounding carefree.
Little dark children darted to and fro, and one brown dog barked
a warning toward him while another white one with black spots
sat and licked itself, pausing only long enough to watch him
and Satan pass.
Kittery rode around this section of town on a little dusty
road cut by cart and donkey tracks, passing a man dressed in
a white outfit with an over-large straw sombrero. He pushed a
cart that carried buckets of fresh water. A brown dog with stubby
legs walked beneath the cart, taking advantage of its shade.
The entire scene marked the remnant of Old Mexico Kittery would
always love, and he paused long enough to take a drink from the
dipper the man offered him and to toss him down a dime.
Kittery had to ride past the rear of the business section
of town to pass the last of the adobe houses, and as he came
back into the main road and turned left into it he smiled at
the orderliness of the little settlement. Two pine trees had
been cut, probably from the Santa Rita Mountains, and been planted
here at the entrance to the town to support a long bar between
them, from which a sign hung by rusty lengths of chain. It read
CASTOR, ARIZONA, and below, in much smaller letters, Founded
1865.
The main street of Castor was wide. Its wheel-rutted length
ran straight until reaching the loading dock of a huge gray warehouse,
then branched, becoming half its original size in the transfer
until it rejoined on the other side, widened out and continued
on its desert-wending route back to the Camino Real.
Wood made up the majority of the buildings on Main Street,
an oddity in a southwestern community. Perhaps that was another
reason for the town fathers having named the town after the beaver.
On the east side of the street, to Kittery's left, were a mercantile,
combination barbershop and doctor's office, hotel, cantina and
café. To his right he could see a dry goods store (which
by its signage also served as hardware and grocery store), bank,
sheriff's office and jail, blacksmith shop and a huge livery
stable. Only the sheriff's office and jail and the blacksmith's,
all strung together, were of the customary adobe. Pine boards
housed everything else. Even the imposing warehouse was of wood,
and situated width-wise at the end of the street it gave Main
Street the appearance of a three-sided box. It seemed to be Castor's
only answer for the customary central plaza of most southwestern
towns. The only masses of color offered by the entire town was
the blue of the hotel and the faded green of the dry goods store,
fittingly called Greene's Dry Goods.
Besides the two divisions of town Kittery had observed up
close were the structures he had already seen from a distance.
Rising up with the long ridge, the better off seemed to make
their nests. These homes, like the ones on the east side of town,
were of the customary adobe-sensible if one wanted to remain
cool in that often furnace-like environment-but most of these
bore new whitewash, and they appeared orderly, with larger yards,
wooden doors, and many with picket fences. Some of these adobes
seemed precarious in their perch on the steep side of the ridge,
but the ones he could observe in any detail were shored up with
stones.
Kittery, riding nearly the entire length of the street, pulled
up before the livery stable, and a leather-faced man with a peg
leg, long, snowy white hair and a smattering of gray whiskers
stepped out to meet him. Deep laugh wrinkles surrounded the old
man's mouth and eyes, but as he tugged the pipe from his lips
he greeted Kittery with little expression, leaning a gnarled
right hand on his cane.
"Ther's an empty stall in the back."
Kittery nodded and dismounted in one easy, flowing motion.
He led Satan back into the shadows, unsaddled and released him
in the farthest stall. When he returned, the old man looked him
up and down before speaking. "You're a sizeable one."
Without awaiting a reply, he continued, "Costs two bits
a day fer the stall. I'll handle yer horse like he's my own.
Corn an' grain cost fifteen cents extry, and it's worth it."
Kittery nodded again, glancing over the town. "Yeah,
it is worth it. Give him the both. That animal means more to
me than this entire ramshackle town-and everyone in it."
The old man flicked his eyes up at Kittery's face, then allowed
them to sweep the town. A grin revealed the tobacco-stained stems
of his teeth, and he chuckled, poking the pipe back in his mouth.
"Do me a favor and let the horse roll here in a few minutes.
And can you tell me where I'll find Sheriff Vancouver?"
"Who're you, stranger?" The old man seemed to ignore
his question.
"Tappan Kittery's the name."
"Wahl, I'm Jarob Hawkins. An' yer 'Sheriff' Vancouver
is yonder." Without turning, he thrust a thumb over his
shoulder. A man wearing a Pima Country deputy sheriff's badge
had just leaned up against the top pole of Hawkins's corral.
When Kittery's eyes fell on him, the lawman let a smile cross
his face.
"Sheriff?"
"That's what they call me here-sort of an honorary title.
Head deputy sheriff, actually."
"I'm Kittery."
"I heard. And I figured you were. I've heard about you
before." The lawman smiled again, stepping close. "Captain
Kittery?"
"Tappan," corrected Hawkins, off to the side.
"Well, Captain, too. Another of those 'honorary' titles."
Hawkins looked sheepish, and he turned and went on inside.
"Tappan, is it? Well, I received your letter. Why don't
you come to my office-we'll talk a bit."
"Only over breakfast, I'm afraid." Kittery patted
his lean stomach. "I haven't had a decent meal since Thursday
mornin'."
"I have just the remedy for that. Come on up to the place
and eat with me and my wife. She's a good cook, and a picture,
too, if I can boast a little. You won't be sorry."
"You haven't eaten?" Kittery raised his brows in
mild surprise.
"As a matter of fact, I worked night shift, so I'm just
now headed home for the day. You might say it's my suppertime."
"Well, if you're offerin'. But first, I have somethin'
for you." He drew Jed Reilly's pistol from behind his belt
and handed it butt-first to Vancouver with a brief explanation
of how he had come by it.
Vancouver shook his head and sighed. "Sounds like Jed.
He's a hothead when he's been drinking-but a good boy when he's
sober. I'll talk to him next time he comes to town. Thanks for
your help-you saved the boy from his own stupidity."
"He didn't seem stupid," Kittery countered. "Just
drunk."
Vancouver grunted. He turned to go, but something caught his
eye, and he turned back. "Looks like we may have another
guest for breakfast."
Kittery's eyes followed the invisible line drawn by Vancouver's
to a lone horseman on a long-legged dark bay. Badge agleam on
his vest, the man let the horse plod past Kingsley's Cafe.
"Joe Raines," Kittery said quietly.
Vancouver looked around. "You know him?"
"Very well. We've rode together a time or two."
By this time, Raines had reached the pair, and he climbed
down in front of Kittery, smiling with surprise. "Tap!"
The marshal thrust out his hand and shook Kittery's, grasping
his forearm with his other hand.
The marshal was in his mid-forties, with an aquiline nose,
cheeks as dark and full whiskered as Kittery's and a mustache
with elegantly curved ends. He wore a brown flat-crowned hat
tipped high on his forehead and dark hair thrown to one side,
with silver-edged sideburns grown to the ridge of a rock-hard
jaw.
"How are you, Joe?" Kittery beamed.
"Seeing you, Tap? I'm doing real well now. I didn't expect
to see you so soon."
Kittery shrugged. "In my line of work, I could turn up
anywhere. I meant to say g'bye before you left Tucson-what happened?"
"I got a tip. I had to get down here as quick as I could.
They told me you were in to the office the day before I left.
Sorry I missed you."
"Such is life," said Kittery with a grin.
Joe Raines smiled at Vancouver. "Howdy, Luke. Didn't
mean to ignore you." His eyes swung back to Kittery. "What
brings you down? Or should I say who? You're not still following
that blasted Ned Crawford."
"He's not dead, is he?" Kittery joked.
"No, I guess not. I sure wish you'd use your talents
differently."
"How so?"
"Behind a badge. You'd make a good lawman."
Kittery smiled again. "Too much responsibility. I don't
like bein' tied down an' havin' t' answer t' someone."
"Yeah, well, one of these days soon some lady's going
to catch you, and you'll be tied down like you can't imagine.
Just wait."
"I'm waitin'."
"So you've met Luke," Joe Raines changed the subject
abruptly.
"Luke? Oh! Yeah, sort of." Kittery turned to the
sheriff. They hadn't shaken hands before, but they did now, when
Vancouver offered, and Kittery looked him over anew. Raines seemed
to like him; that meant he was all right.
Vancouver was a handsome man by anyone's standards, with slightly
thinning light brown hair and clean-cut features and a good-humored
glint to his bright blue eyes. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties,
a little older than Kittery. He stood six inches shorter, but
his lean frame and work-hardened muscles gave him the appearance
of a taller man.
"Well, Joe." Vancouver turned his eyes to Raines.
"Mr. Kittery and I were heading up to the house to talk-over
'supper.' You're welcome to come along."
"Sounds fine, Luke, except it'll be breakfast for me."
Kittery said, "Me, too, but he's a late-nighter."
Raines chuckled "If you'll let me put up my horse, I'll
be right with you."
Raines joined Kittery and Vancouver in the sheriff's office
several minutes later. They were thumbing through some wanted
posters, and Vancouver took several of them in hand.
"The wagon's out back."
Stepping once more into the gathering heat, the trio climbed
onto a buckboard that stood in the alleyway between the sheriff's
office and the bank, which gleamed brilliant white in the sun,
set off by a blue door and window frames. Vancouver started the
horses moving with a twitch of the reins.
As they rolled away, Kittery glanced over a permanent gallows
rising up behind the jail and a spacious boarded arena that faced
it. They started up a winding, dusty road, and in minutes pulled
to a stop in a quiet yard dotted with shrubs and cactus plump
with winter's moisture.
Kittery surveyed the cottage with approval. A comfortable
looking home, it was surrounded by a covered porch and bore a
fresh coat of whitewash, a guard against the battering Arizona
sun. A picket fence surrounded the yard and a new garden of beans,
potatoes, corn and carrots. Flowers growing in a meticulously
weeded bed painted the front wall in all their glorious colors.
Climbing from the buckboard and kicking dust off their boots
on the edge of the porch, the trio stepped through the front
door, greeted by a spacious front room and the smell of bacon
frying. Kittery glanced about, appreciating the quiet, domestic
charm of the place, the soft cowhide chairs and a hand-made dining
table, graced by a vase of lupine and daisies. Photographs lined
the right wall, shelves laden with books the left. Soft blue
curtains diffused the sunlight from the small window that faced
the road, but on the north the curtains hung open on a larger
window to reveal the hills and the creosote flats that stretched
away toward Tucson. A braid rug softened the puncheon floor,
and a long couch faced them against the far wall. Behind one
of the closed doors leading from the room, between the shelves
of books, they could hear the quiet voice of a woman singing.
It ceased when Vancouver called out.
"Company, Beth."
His hand had grasped the doorknob when the door opened, allowing
the passage of a handsome woman whose gold hair was piled in
braids above her head.
"This is Beth, boys. My wife."
The sheriff presented Kittery and Raines, and they shook the
hand that, though completely feminine, was strong, the way a
woman's should be. Kittery appraised Mrs. Vancouver but only
nodded greeting. He had never been one for talk-in feminine company,
anyway. He had grown up among rough-natured men, back home in
the Great Smoky Mountains of Carolina. There had been little
time for socializing or calling on the womenfolk, so the only
women he spoke to were his sisters and his mother. It had been
a hard life, with little or no time for the soft, pretty things
that many set such store by. He had spent most of his growing
years behind a plow or in the wooded hills with Jake, with a
long rifle in his hands, stalking a black bear or a white-tailed
deer. But he knew true grace when it passed; Beth Vancouver was
a beautiful woman, a perfect match for the sheriff. Jake would
have known how to act around this woman. He had always been the
smooth boy with the easy, friendly character. That was one thing
he hadn't passed on to his little brother.
A smile crossed Vancouver's face as he caught the admiration
in Kittery's glance for his wife. "I'm going to feed the
horses. You all get acquainted." With that, he strode outside,
leaving momentary silence in the room.
"I've heard quite a bit about you, Marshal." Beth
smiled at Raines. "It's good to make your acquaintance at
last. Luke has had nothing but good to say about you."
Raines smiled back. "That was decent of him. Unfortunately,
he never mentioned you to me."
"Oh, really? Perhaps he's ashamed of me."
"I seriously doubt that, ma'am."
"Well, I'll take that as a compliment."
"Do so, by all means."
A blush colored Beth's cheeks, but Kittery had no doubt she
was used to praise. She turned her attention then to him. "My
husband called you 'Captain.' You're an army man, Captain Kittery?"
"No, ma'am. Not anymore, anyway. That's an odd story.
I was a captain in the army during the war. Sergeant for nine
years after. That captain bit just hung on."
"It suits you, however. The title 'captain', that is."
Kittery chuckled, then turned sober. "Sometimes it puts
a man too much in mind of his past."
"That war was an awful thing," Beth agreed with
a sigh, its memory coming into sky-blue eyes that took on a distant
look as she gazed past the two men, out the window toward Tucson.
"Yes it was. I knew it a little from both sides."
"From both sides?" Beth returned curious eyes to
Kittery.
"Uh-huh. Everyone I knew, even my own family, was joining
the Confederacy, so I did, too. I made lieutenant right off-because
of my size, I suppose. After a year, I got to studyin' on things,
and I decided I didn't wanna be any part of this country bein'
torn in half. So I came over to the Union and became a captain
before the end."
"There aren't many who can boast of something like that,"
Beth said. "And what about you, Marshal? You were in the
War, too, I suppose."
"No, ma'am. By 1860 I was a deputy sheriff in El Paso.
Frankly, by the time the war broke out I considered myself a
soldier already. A lawman leads his own kind of war, ma'am-a
war that never ends. I guess I'm making excuses for myself, but
. . . I'm forty-two years old now and still fighting my wars
every day. One of these days I'll come up against someone who's
tougher, meaner and faster than I am. I guess that, ma'am, is
when my war will end."
Beth offered an understanding smile, letting her eyes turn
for a moment in the direction her husband had gone. There was
sudden sadness in the blue eyes, and she didn't look back at
the marshal when she spoke. "Yes, I know how you feel, Marshal.
I know all too well."
She cleared her throat, turning to Kittery with a forced smile.
"And what is it you do now, Captain?"
The front door swinging open cut off Kittery's answer before
he could begin, and Luke Vancouver stepped inside. "Let's
eat, folks. It's gettin' cold."
Kittery and Raines seated themselves, and Luke and Beth set
the table together, then brought out platters of food-flapjacks,
fried eggs, bacon, sausage and a bowl of fresh-churned butter.
Vancouver's helping his wife impressed Kittery, and he smiled
at the lawman as he returned to the table for the last time.
It took a big man to let a stranger see him doing what many considered
woman's work.
Luke pulled a chair out for Beth, then seated himself, glancing
at Raines, then Kittery. Last, his eyes flickered toward Beth.
"I hope you boys won't mind my saying grace."
Kittery shrugged, and Raines said, "Please do,"
and they all bowed their heads while Vancouver uttered words
of gratitude that came from his heart, mentioning the good food
and the pleasant company. The words moved Kittery inexplicably.
With "amen", Vancouver took a knife in one hand
and a fork in the other. He smiled and said, "Boys, eat
hearty."
They did, too, for it was prime fare. Kittery couldn't help
but take a second helping of flapjacks, and his eyes flickered
to Beth for a moment before he dared say what was on his mind.
"Ma'am, these have to be the best slapjacks I've ate in
. . . well, I don't know how long. But they couldn't be better."
"Thank you, Captain." Beth looked at her husband,
then back down at the fork poised in her hand. "It's an
old West Virginia recipe. Mountain folk food. I only wish we
had blueberry syrup to go with it."
Kittery smiled and nodded at her. "I don't know what
this syrup is, but it calls to mind somethin' my mama used to
make, and it suits these cakes fine."
"That's just corn cob syrup," Beth said with an
embarrassed laugh. "Do you really like it?"
Kittery smiled. "It's home fixin's, ma'am. It doesn't
come any better."
While Tappan Kittery ate his food, Beth found her eyes drawn
back frequently to him, in spite of herself. He hadn't had the
chance to answer her earlier question, so she still wondered.
But she didn't know if he wanted to answer it. What did he do
for a living? He seemed to be an intelligent man, and graceful
in his movements. But he was quiet. A distant sort, it seemed.
A loner. She noticed him look out the window to the north a time
or two, and a few times to the east. He had the look of a man
who didn't like to remain in one place very long, she decided.
But in spite of the captain's reserve, Beth found herself
drawn to him by something indefinable. There was something special
about him, about the sunburned broadness of his face, about his
deep blue, almost violet eyes. She glanced down to cut off a
triangle of flapjack and to move her fixed gaze from the big
man's face. While she chewed the bite and listened to her husband
and Marshal Raines talk, she couldn't help analyzing the way
the Captain had affected her. She would never be unfaithful to
Luke, even in her mind. She had no desire to. As far as she was
concerned, there was no man more handsome than Luke, and none
could be more attentive and affectionate. But the Captain had
a way of making her feel safe. No doubt it was partly his size,
for he was uncommonly large and obviously very fit. He owned
the broadest shoulders and back she had ever seen on a man with
a slender waist, and his arms bulged with power even at the simple
task of raising a fork to his lips. His broad, black-haired hands
looked like they could crush a squash with little effort. But
it wasn't only his physical appearance. It was his demeanor.
He seemed shy, yes, but Beth felt that would change in the face
of danger. It was only the timidity of a man who didn't spend
much time in feminine company.
The captain hadn't shaved in a few days, and that gave his
face, from low down his neck almost up past his broad cheekbones,
a black, coal-dusted look. And there was a musky man scent about
him that made it plain he hadn't bathed in a while, which wasn't
uncommon to earthy folk. She was used to men. There wasn't much
about them that bothered her. In fact, it was the kind that tried
too hard to be clean and proper that gave her cause to turn up
her nose. Ab ¨‚-²„¼(Ï=Éß#9¨^Ú3 waí”vomGtHéng particular beneath
the dust, the man scent, and the beard and sunburn-a sense of
gallantry, she supposed. And an obscure gentleness.
Glancing around the table at her husband, at Joe Raines, and
at big Tappan Kittery, she guessed she couldn't be much safer
with any three men who had ever lived.
Vancouver paused to swallow a bite and looked at Raines. "So
how did your ride go, Joe? Anything promising down that way?"
Raines pondered the question a moment as he chewed, looking
down at his plate. He swallowed and touched a napkin to the corner
of his mouth, then raised his eyes to meet Vancouver's. "Baraga's
in there, Luke. I have no doubt of it. Your Blue-Bell Smith didn't
seem to know how much time the gang spent in there, but it appeared
to be considerable, by the worn-down trail I found going in.
I put my faith in Smith. He may not be the best of characters,
but he has some reason for squealing now. And if they ever learn
he spoke to you, his life is worth little more than Confederate
paper."
"You're right. So . . . tell me more. What'd you see
out there?"
"I followed the trail a ways into the mountains-well
up into the oaks. There was only one evident water source on
the way in, at least anywhere near the trail. But good water.
And there are a number of other trails that join the main one
along the way, mostly before it leaves the foothills. After that
there aren't many places a man would want to break off. That
jungle would rip the clothes right off you.
"That's limestone country mixed with granite. Limestone's
good for caves. I must have seen twenty or so, a couple of them
good-sized. I have no doubt there's at least one big one back
there that could house that entire gang. The question is, can
we reach it? Even without that Indian guard Smith talked about,
it sounded like a fortress. Might as well have a moat around
it."
Vancouver nodded. "Well, I think you're right in your
judgment of Blue-Bell Smith. He may be a weasel, but at least
for now he's our weasel. And you're right about the Desperado
Den, too. That Baraga's no fool. It'll take an army to bring
them out. Or ten good men who don't care much for their own safety."
His eyes flicked to Kittery, then back to Raines.
Kittery had followed the conversation of the two lawmen. They
spoke of men and of places everyone in Arizona Territory was
familiar with, after reading about Savage Diablo Baraga and his
"Desperados Eight" for the past six or seven years
in every paper in existence.
The Desperados Eight (every time Kittery heard that ridiculous
sounding name some newspaperman had come up with he had to scoff)
had become by far the most notorious band of outlaws in the southwest,
a gang of ex-confederates and degenerates with no regard for
life, not even their own, judging by some of the outrageous raids
they undertook. The Eight had been numbered by local newspapers
in order of their worth to the law, with Baraga, of course, as
number one. Falling in place behind him were Major Morgan Dixon;
Samuel Colt Bishop; "Bloody Walt" Doolin; Rico "Big
Samson" Wells; Noble "Silverbeard" Sloan; Crow
Denton; and "Slicker Sam" Malone.
Diablo Baraga was missing an arm-his right, if Kittery remembered
correctly. From newspaper accounts-whether they were fact or
not, no one could prove-everyone knew the story. Baraga, Confederate
colonel at a green age, serving under George Pickett, the pretty
boy general, was wounded on Cemetery Ridge, at Gettysburg. Baraga
had been taken prisoner after the horrible battle. Believing
his arm could be healed, he had been forced, fighting like a
crazed badger, to watch the doctors at the prison camp cut it
off and throw it on the reeking heap with hundreds of other limbs.
They said Baraga changed after that. An already burning hatred
for the Union grew, extending in time to the entire human race.
When the war ended, he stole a pistol, and by long hours of practice
he taught himself to handle a handgun better with his left hand
than he ever had with the right. So began his spree of plunder
and murder, landing him here, leader of the most feared band
of killers in the entire southwest.
In some of his more desperate moments, Kittery had contemplated
the feat of going after the Desperados Eight. The man or men
who brought them down would be heroes. But the chance they would
live through the encounter was slim. And Captain Tappan Kittery
was a contented man, at heart. He was seldom desperate enough
to consider such an undertaking for long. Not when there were
so many smaller fish in the sea, such as Ned Crawford.
"Speaking of the Desperados . . ." Vancouver stood
up as he spoke, walking around the table to the window that overlooked
the town. "Well." He turned to look at Raines, who
was stepping over to join him. "You ought to see this. I
wanted to point out Shorty Randall's horse to you-so you'd recognize
it if you ever saw it away from town. But you get a bonus. Shorty's
down there, too."
Kittery stood and followed the other two to the window. The
street below was quiet, but among the few horses tied along its
length the bold white of one stood out at the cantina's hitching
rail. Even at three hundred yards distance, Kittery could see
the long flaxen hair of the man who stood beside the mount, tugging
on its latigo. The man's head barely came to the shoulder of
the horse. He looked both ways along the street before clambering
aboard the saddle and trotting south on the Camino Real.
"Shorty Randall," Raines said with a grunt. "The
man of infamy." He looked over at Kittery. "Shorty's
been pegged a spy, of sorts. He often rides toward the Baboquivaris,
sometimes for days at a time. Actually, we think he's a mediator
between Baraga and someone either in Castor or in Tucson. Someone
that knows an awful lot about financial affairs in this territory."
"Why doesn't somebody follow him to the Desperado Den?
Clean up that place?"
"Oh, that'll come," Vancouver spoke up. "But
not yet. We're hoping he'll lead us to his informant first, if
there is one. Baraga, he'll always be there. He's the known factor.
I'd like to find out the unknown one before we tip our hand to
Shorty."
"He's headed the right way," Raines mused. Kittery
looked back to see Shorty Randall turning off the main road in
a westerly direction, toward the Baboquivaris. Raines smiled
grimly. "Looks like Baraga's about to find out I'm on his
tail. I hope Blue Bell is standing clear."
When the three men were seated once more, Vancouver spoke
to Raines. "Is there anything you'd like to know about the
Desperados, Joe? Outside of what the records say?"
"Well, outside what the records say, I don't know much."
Vancouver chuckled. "The records tell most of it, I guess.
But Blue Bell Smith and I have talked over dinner a half dozen
times, so I think I'm one up on the government when it comes
to knowledge of Baraga's bunch."
"There's one thing I'm curious about," said Raines.
"Colt Bishop-is he as fast as folks want to make out?"
"Faster. Or so Smith tells me. He watched Bishop work
with his gun every day-without fail. Even when most of the others
were too tired to move. Said you couldn't even see his hand move.
But you oughtta know, he says Silverbeard is near as good as
Bishop-and with both hands. I guess that would make him twice
as good."
"A nice tidbit to know, I guess," said Raines with
a nod. "But it won't make much difference. I never claimed
to be any quick-draw artist. It wouldn't take very much to beat
me on the draw. I plan to have that cavern surrounded by so many
rifles Baraga doesn't have time to blink."
"You're smart there," Luke said. "Pistols are
a close-up weapon, for a fact. Dangerous enough, but not like
a rifle. Unfortunately, Crow Denton's supposed to be one of the
best shots there is with a rifle, so he'll be one to watch. And
Big Samson's no slacker, either. He used to hunt buffalo for
a living, I hear. So they can both take you out as far away as
you can them. As far as being most dangerous, I'd almost have
to cast my lot with Bloody Walt Doolin. He's vicious and unpredictable.
He'll kill you for no reason and without any warning. Well, him
and Wells both. That story about Doolin cutting his initials
in men's flesh, Smith said it's true. Said he saw him do it once,
down in Sonora."
Kittery glanced over at Beth, who shuddered and looked away.
He had heard that story before. It was legend in Arizona, legend
like the one about Doolin owning only two shirts, both red longjohns
he redyed in the blood of his victims. He didn't believe that
one, but he'd seen some awful things in his travels, and it sounded
as if maybe Bloody Walt really was that twisted.
"Is it true Ned Crawford rides with Baraga now and then?"
Kittery put in.
"That's the rumor," replied the sheriff. "You'll
find many do, time to time. They seem to find security with the
Desperados, and no wonder. Take a look at these flyers I brought
up. Four of these are supposed to have worked with Baraga, to
my knowledge. Crawford's another, and you have the poster on
him. He's a henchman, you might say."
Kittery paused and nudged his empty plate away. "Your
wire said you knew where Crawford is."
"Yes, I know where he is-or was. Up in the northern end
of the Baboquivaris, laying low-as far as we know. They call
that stretch of the range the Quinlans. Like your newspaper clipping
said, Crawford's a backshooter and a coward of the blackest stripe.
He doesn't care who he kills-or how, or why. And he's not alone,
either. There are a couple hardcases with him-Amayo Varandez,
for one. He's as bad as Crawford and worth a hundred or two more
to the government."
Kittery nodded. "Well, I'll watch myself-when the time
comes."
Beth Vancouver took in a deep breath and let her eyes settle
on the captain's, which watched her husband so intently. So,
that was it. Whatever the captain normally did to pay his way
in life, he had forsaken it to come to Castor. He had come here
to hunt down Ned Crawford. It sent chills down her spine to think
of Crawford, for in spite of her over-protective husband's attempts
to shelter her, she'd heard the stories. Crawford was a killer
not only of men, but more often of women, and even children.
And he didn't just kill them. He did things to them-brutal, inhuman
things that even devils shouldn't do to one another. Beth didn't
know if she approved of a man who went after other men without
the proper authority of a badge, just for the money. It was so
. . . mercenary. But Luke didn't like it either. He'd made that
plain in the past. And yet he seemed to like the captain. Considering
the brutality of the man he was attempting to bring to justice,
Beth would have to forgive Tappan Kittery, too.
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