Rebel Yell (29 page)

A volley of bullets was thrown their way, but by the time the last few rifle-wielding guards had gotten enough nerve to start shooting, the raiders were safely out of range.

The Hangtree gunmen swung around in a tight curve and raced toward the cut in the Breaks. They were grouped pretty much side by side in a loose chevron-shaped formation as they rushed along the middle of wide Wild Horse Canyon.

“Sure gave the hornet's nest a good whomping!” Johnny Cross shouted to those riding alongside him.

And they still had a Sunday punch to deliver.

For Jimbo Turlock, it had been a black night of betrayals, setbacks, and harsh reversals. First was the faithlessness and infidelity of his lady love Ashley, deceiving him with his trusted second in command. Then came his shameful retreat from Hangtree, fleeing like any thief—murderer, rather—in the night. That was followed by the harsh, grueling hours-long ride west along the Hangtree Trail through the Notch, then north to the Sidepocket camp off Wild Horse Canyon.

Upon arrival at camp, he'd been greeted by the news that his howitzer and the munitions wagon, the crown jewels of his Fort Pardee loot, had gone missing and were presumed stolen.

“I leave the command for a few days, not even a full week, and look what happens!” Turlock complained to his adjutant Phineas “Finny” Clark in the privacy of his big tent in Sidepocket camp a few hours before dawn. “Apparently you all can't get along without me. If I'm not here to do the strategizing, you'd all wind up in front of a firing squad!”

“From what I heard tell, hanging is the preferred method of execution in these parts, Commander,” Clark said slyly, taunting Turlock but not in a way that was actionable.

“Never mind about that, Clark,” Turlock said huffily, not being one who cared to be contradicted by anyone, especially not a subordinate, having already suffered the supreme betrayal by his second in command Dancer.

How many others? he wondered.

How long had Ashley and Dancer been conducting their illicit affair? Days, weeks, months?

And who else knew about it? Did Finny Clark know? Did Quarles?

Turlock bitterly recalled the age-old maxim that the betrayed party was always the last to know. He was no husband to Ashley. They had never married, but she was his woman. She belonged to him, and no legally wedded married man could have felt any more jealously possessive of what he considered his property.

Then, too, no one was more righteously indignant about being robbed than a thief.

His proud boast had always been that he took what he wanted. Ashley had been simply Osage Sally Potts when he had discovered her while the Free Company was hiding out in the Indian Nations in Oklahoma Territory. She was young, fresh, and relatively unspoiled, the prettiest young harlot in the territory.

He had taken her, made her his woman, and given her a place in his home—an honored position in his household. She'd had a bountiful array of fancy clothes, jewelry, and furs—all looted plunder from Free Company raids. He'd even had her change her name to hide what he saw as her less than humble origins,
Ashley
being the name she'd picked for herself.

He frowned, pricked by thorns of bitter memory. Come to think of it, Sally hadn't chosen the name of Ashley. It had been suggested to her by Malvina.

Malvina! That sly old witch. She was a procuress, old and wise in the ways of crime and vice. She had attached herself to the Free Company in Oklahoma, making herself invaluable to Turlock by providing him with a steady stream of girls and young women. Women were not hard to come by in the Territory, not if you wanted Indian females or those of mixed blood.

But he had a fancy for pureblooded white women, young pretty ones, and those were not so easily come by in the wind-blown, sun-blasted, God-forsaken reservation lands of the Indian Nations.

Malvina was able to supply them, always knowing where to find families of poor whites willing, if not eager, to sell off a spare daughter. “One less mouth to feed,” was the hard maxim and harder truth behind such sordid transactions.

When Turlock tired of them, Malvina would take them off his hands, selling them to saloon keepers or brothels whether they liked it or not. And there was little to like about it.

Osage Sally Potts had been Malvina's prize specimen. Sixteen, with a pretty face, long blond hair, and blue eyes, she was slim-figured yet roundly curved.

Malvina claimed Sally was an orphan child of good family. Turlock believed her because he wanted to believe. He was quite taken with the girl, besotted, even.

He had thought briefly of marrying her, but the thought was short-lived. Jimbo Turlock was a soldier, a man of action, a man of destiny! He had no place in his life for a wife and family.

Not when he still needed the hired guns of the Free Company as the vehicle to win fame and fortune. Later, perhaps, when he had made his pile and retired from the active life and gone somewhere far away, somewhere where he was unknown and courting respectability. Then he would be wed—just not to Osage Sally Potts. She was dead. But she'd been a protégée of Malvina the fortune teller, poisoner, and procuress. No matter how much he'd been taken with Ashley's alluring young charms, he wouldn't have married her after her betrayal.

Even so, he had allowed himself to believe that the girl loved him, which made her flagrant betrayal of him all the more galling.

And with such as Kale Dancer!

Well, the veil had been lifted from Turlock's eyes. He had learned the awful truth and done what had to be done to redeem his honor. It was the unwritten law!

He still had some loose ends to be dealt with, Malvina foremost among them. Hard to believe she had not known of Ashley's infidelities. She was the girl's mentor and confidante . . . and Ashley couldn't keep a secret to save her life.

As was proven.

Perhaps Malvina had even encouraged her to take Dancer for a lover as part of a cunning scheme to get rid of Turlock and take over the Free Company and its loot for themselves!

Poison was Malvina's stock in trade—the mass murder of the troops at Fort Pardee was proof of that. Nothing easier for her than to give Ashley some poison to slip into his food. They could say he died of natural causes—apoplexy or a stroke.

The Free Company needed a leader and would not have questioned too closely when Kale Dancer took Turlock's place, making himself the new commander.

Turlock had had plenty of time to think about it during the long hours of the night ride from Hangtree to Sidepocket. He broke into a cold sweat thinking some more about what a narrow escape he'd had.

Angry all over again, he sent for Malvina, preparatory to doing her in personally, with his own hands, as he'd done for Ashley and Dancer. Traitors must die!

His aides and henchmen came back empty-handed.

“Can't find her, sir.”

“Look harder, damn it. She's got to be in camp someplace,” Turlock growled. “I want that old hag found!”

He assigned responsibility for locating Malvina to Quarles, his onetime top sergeant long since turned manservant and valet. Quarles had been his indispensible right-hand man for many years, going back to the Missouri-Kansas Border Wars of the 1850s. The one man Turlock
knew
he could trust.

But even the redoubtable Quarles met with no success in his quest, reporting back, “Malvina's gone, Commander.”

“Gone? Impossible! We're in the middle of nowhere!” Turlock said, sputtering outrage.

“She's gone, sir.”

“Where could she go?!”

“The gate guards report she rode out at eleven o'clock tonight, in her two-wheeled donkey cart,” Quarles said, deadpan, unflappable.

“I gave strict orders that no one was allowed out of camp without my express authorization!” Turlock thundered.

“They say she had a pass written and signed by you, sir.”

Turlock was on the verge of roaring that he'd never issued such a pass when the realization struck him that, in fact, in the not-so-distant past he had written many such passes for Malvina. She had been uniquely valuable to him in her capacity of procuress of young women for his bed.

He had given her broad latitude to enable her to fulfill her duties in that role, including the freedom of the camp and the power to come and go as she willed at all hours of the day or night.

The guards knew to let her go, and they would have assumed she was on yet one more mission to furnish fresh young flesh for the Commander.

A chill came over him as another thought struck him. “What time did she leave camp? At eleven o'clock tonight, you say?”

“Yes, Commander, eleven o'clock,” Quarles said, poker-faced.

“That's about the time that I—” Turlock stopped himself in mid-sentence, firmly clamping his jaws shut.
That's about the time I cut Kale Dancer's throat and strangled Ashley to death
, he'd been about to say.

He bit down on his lip, stifling himself. He didn't have to say it. Quarles knew what he meant without having to hear it spoken aloud. Quarles had been there for the aftermath. If not for him, Turlock wondered if he would have been able to carry on.

Jimbo Turlock took a deep breath to steady his nerves, but it didn't work. “Send out a search party, Quarles. I want the gypsy woman found and returned to camp.”

“Yes sir. I'll get on it right away.”

“Don't you go looking for her yourself, Quarles. Put somebody else in charge. I need you here.”

“Very well, sir.” Quarles went out, leaving Turlock alone in his tent.

Turlock shuddered, his blood running cold.

Malvina was a fortune teller. The Mexican Americans with the Free Company called her
bruja
—witch.

Was it possible that she really was gifted with what some called second sight, clairvoyance, the power to see far-off events without physically being there?

It seemed fantastic, but the hour of Malvina's leave-taking from camp—the same fatal hour when Turlock murdered Ashley and Dancer—surely that must be something more than mere coincidence?

It was as if Malvina had divined Ashley's death by occult powers and, knowing that her own death at Turlock's command must surely follow, she had ridden out in the night to make her escape....

Jimbo Turlock knew that he would not rest easy until he had seen Malvina dead. He was haunted by the sinking feeling that it would not come soon, if ever.

A bottle of brandy helped numb his senses. He fell into a stupor, dozing off at his long conference table, arms folded on the table, pillowing his head.

Sleep, blessed sleep, came, but it was not oblivion or pain-ease. It was nightmare. Evil dreams, shapeless formless images of suffocating horror, tormented him.

He dreamed of entombment, of being buried alive, trapped in the well of a deep grave while dirt was shoveled down on him by Ashley and Kale Dancer, dead-alive. Dancer with his throat cut and Ashley with eyes bulging, face purple, blackened tongue protruding, it was just the way he had left the two of them when he fled Dancer's suite in the Cattleman Hotel.

Malvina leaned over the open grave, leering down at Turlock, laughing.

He was hauled out of the grave head-first, hauled out by a rope noose around his neck, a hangman's noose at the end of a hempen rope. Then he was hanging by the neck in empty air, swinging back and forth pendulum-like, hanging in timeless eternity with the gates of hell gaping wide below to receive him—

Jimbo Turlock awoke.

It was a rude awakening at early dawn. The choking billows of the nightmare were banished by the sounds of battle. He awoke to the reality of gunfire, explosions, and mass chaos. It was no evil dream, no nightmare. It was real, horribly real!

But the Free Company was not in the habit of being raided.

Jimbo Turlock jumped up, overturning the folding camp chair on which he'd sat while falling asleep at the table. The brandy bottle was upset, too, rolling on its side, falling off the table to the ground.

That was okay, it was empty.

He picked up his tunic jacket that had been draped on the back of his chair and put it on, struggling with it. He had a hard time getting his arms inside the sleeves. He'd gained weight recently and the tunic did not fit properly nor comfortably. He didn't bother to button it. This was an emergency, judging from the clamor hammering the camp.

Had a riot broken out?

It was not unthinkable, considering the low nature of many of the men in the ranks under his command, the scum. It wouldn't be the first time one of their drunken brawls had raged out of control until the squad leaders had broken a few heads and beaten the troublemakers into submission.

Impatient, Turlock fumbled with the button snap securing the top flap of his shiny, black, patent leather holster. He finally drew his big-caliber revolver, taking strength from the empowering sensation of it in his hand.

He looked for his hat but couldn't find it. He'd lost his hat somewhere. It seemed important to remember what he'd done with it. Fear gripped him as he struggled to remember where he'd left his hat.

With a shock of piercing clarity, he recalled that he'd left his hat in Kale Dancer's suite when Quarles had hustled him out of there, away from the dead bodies of the two people he had murdered, his woman and his second in command. He'd made the long night ride bareheaded through dark windswept plains to Wild Horse Canyon and the Sidepocket camp.

Turlock stumbled to the tent entrance, pawing at the flaps, opening them and bulling his way through to the outside.

Then he truly did step into chaos, for the raid was on, the camp a scene of pandemonium. Mobs of men and women ran in all directions at once, crashing into each other, trampling the fallen in their maddened haste to escape the pistol-fighters on horseback tearing through Sidepocket Canyon.

Hangtree gunhawks plowed through the seething horde like sharp knives slicing up suety pudding.

Among the tents where the leadership cadre bunked, the response was better, more orderly. Not a complete rout like it was on the sandy main floor of the box canyon. The Free Company's inner circle showed fight, running
to
the battle, not from it.