Sidewinder (21 page)

The tracks wound through empty, deserted canyons and dry arroyos where lizards basked on flat stones and the buzzing of flies was the only sound he heard. Gold miners had depleted every promising stream, not only of dust, but of water and life. The land rose and fell beneath Chato’s hooves. Gentle rises led to desolate vistas, and promising valleys turned to stone. Julio could not stop thinking about Pilar and wondering where she was, who the men were that held her captive. And he shuddered inwardly at what those men might do to such a pretty and delicate woman. His woman.

Finally, Julio ran out of day. The tracks became more difficult to see as the trail led through even more rugged country but always heading north toward Oro City or east only to twist back to the west.

The sun set, sinking below the far mountains with a blaze of glory, with painted ribbons and loaves of clouds, with cathedral rays that gave the sky the look of a stained glass window in a Catholic church. The night came on suddenly, and he knew he could go no farther. There were no landmarks that he could see beyond his own location, and the tracks dimmed to hieroglyphics that were like the scrawls of scorpions wriggling across sand.

He found high ground with some scrub pines that were several yards off the trail, and there he made his dry camp as the dusk swallowed everything up and the sky turned black velvet with stars strewn in every direction like scattered diamonds. He nibbled on hardtack and jerky, drank from his canteen, and lay down on his bedroll. He was tired, and Chato was worn out. He left the horse saddled and hobbled him on a sparse patch of grass. In the morning, Julio told himself, he would continue his journey to find Pilar and take her from the men who had captured her. The ground was hard under his bedroll, and the chill air crept through his blanket clear to his bones. He wished he had a serape to wear over his thin denim jacket that Pilar had patched at the sleeves with remnants of a flour sack. His toes were icy cold, and he drew himself up into a ball before he could fall asleep.

In the morning, he awoke shivering just before the dawn light split the sky with a seam of pale cream. He brushed a scorpion off his blanket, and it scuttled into the darkness with a faintly metallic whisper. He dipped grain from his saddlebag, and Chato nibbled it all away, slurping the last of it with his black tongue.

Julio could feel the chill of the earth being drawn out of the ground by the sun, and he shivered for another few minutes before he felt the first warming rays. The dew on the tracks quickly evaporated. He followed the tracks through a narrow canyon that was as bleak as any he’d ever seen, but there were no traces of mining, just talus reminders at the bases of both walls. He emerged into a barren stretch of land where only a few stunted trees grew and even sparser grass. At its far edge, the cow and horse tracks disappeared as if they had been scrubbed away. He looked closer and saw that men had whisked away the tracks for a good long stretch. So, he followed the dusted trail. Something caught his eye, and he rode off down a slope to look at it.

There was a broken sign that had tumbled down into a shallow gully. The wood was weather-beaten and had turned gray, but there was a word cut into its flat surface: Rustic.

A thought flashed through Julio’s mind. He stopped and looked around him. He had never been there before, but he knew that name. He must be near the old Rustic Mine, which was almost as well known as the Lead Hill, where the miners had discovered the mother lode. Julio’s pulse quickened, and he remembered the names of other mines that had brought in a bonanza for the town of Oro City: the Chrysalis, Matchless, Morning Star, Iron Silver, Little Pittsburgh, and Catalpa. All ghostly now in the af termath of a boom that had lasted from 1859 until just a couple of years ago, when Brad had come into the country, seeking a place of solitude and serenity. Oro City was now little more than a ghost town, but there was talk that another discovery was in the wind and just about to happen. And that was something neither he nor Brad wanted. Some said there was silver in the harsh land around Oro City, and geologists and mining engineers, along with dreamers and old prospectors, still held out hope that Oro City would spring to life again.

Julio rode down a long slope and saw an old creek running through a wide, stony bed. And there, just barely visible, he saw new lumber fashioned into pens for stock. He heard the bawling cattle a few minutes before he saw them, all straining to get out of their pens, bellowing and pushing against the poles and boards, raising a dust that hung over them like a murky cloud.

He saw men a few moments later and turned Chato away, looking for a place to stake him out so he could continue on foot.

He found such a place in a small draw, one hill away from the site of the old Rustic Mine. He tethered him to a big chunk of timber that must have been made of oak since it was hard as a rock. Like the sign, it was weathered gray, and when he picked it up, he smelled the faint odor of creosote.

He took his rifle from its sheath, filled a shirt pocket with spare cartridges, and crept up to the top of the hill and lay flat on his stomach next to a prickly pear cactus and a clump of ocotillo.

Julio looked down on what had once been the Rustic. The old ramshackle buildings were there, but new ones had been added on, some with whipsawed lumber, others constructed of logs. There were at least four stock pens and three of them were filled.

He saw a man with a maul walk up to two men wearing short leather aprons who were holding a large steer by the front and hind legs. They also had a cow flattened on the ground. The man with the maul held it over his head and then brought it down full force, smashing the steer in the forehead. The steer collapsed into a heap and didn’t quiver or kick. Then one of the aproned men took out a large skinning knife and cut off the steer’s right ear. He threw the ear into a big tub and wiped the blade of his knife on his canvas trousers.

Julio winced. He knew what they were doing. Two men dragged the cow toward one of the buildings. Two other men came out and dragged the dead steer inside. Laughter billowed out from the butcher shop, and the two men started chasing down another steer to kill.

There were two horses tied up at a hitch rail in front of one of the old buildings. He recognized one of the horses as belonging to Carlos. It was Tico, switching his bobbed tail and standing there with a drooping head. There was no sign of Pilar.

Then he saw two men just beyond the horses, sitting on a wooden bench. They were not butchers but hard cases. They were covered with trail dust. One of them wore two small pistols and had a protruding Adam’s apple. He had a brushy mustache that he groomed with one hand while he smoked a quirley. The other man was nondescript, with a hatchet face stubbled with the iron filings of a four-day beard. He was shorter than the mustachioed man and had a hawk nose and narrow, deep-set eyes.

Julio believed those were the two men who had driven the stolen herd here.

So, he wondered, had Pilar been riding double? The thought made his blood boil. He could not picture her even riding a horse, and he knew she had never ridden double.

There was much to puzzle over as he watched the two men. He wanted to kill them. Right then and there, he wanted to put bullets into their heads or chests.

His anger was clouding his judgment, he knew. While the butchers were not armed except for knives and sledgehammers, these two looked as if they knew how to sling lead.

Where was Pilar?

Julio looked at all the buildings. He looked at the windows, trying to see inside. From that distance, two hundred yards, at least, he saw nothing. Was Pilar tied up in one of them?

The two men got up and walked toward a pump at one end of a watering trough. The man with the two pistols threw away his stub of a rolled cigarette, and the other man worked the pump. They were closer now, almost beneath Julio, and he could see their features more clearly. And, he could hear them.

“Wish’t we had that little Mex gal with us, Ridley, ’stead of just her horse.”

“Old Del will take care of that little enchilada, Abner, don’t you worry about it none.”

“I ain’t, but we might just as well go on into town and meet up with Del and Hiram. Maybe Del will pass her around.”

Ridley laughed.

“They’s about as much chance of that as you findin’ a chunk of gold in the Rustic.”

Ridley drank from the stream, then pumped water for Abner. Both men washed their faces, patted dust from their shirts.

As they walked away, he heard one of the men say, “I’ll be glad to get my own horse back and get rid of that bobtail. He rides like a fence rail, sure as shit.”

The voices faded away as Julio slid backward. He had heard enough.

Pilar was not at the Rustic.

She was with someone named Del, and he figured that to be one Delbert Coombs, the man who had stolen the Seguin cattle, murdered the family, burned down their house.

That same
hijo de puta
, he thought to himself. That same
hijo de mala leche
.

That same bastard. That same son of a whore.

He knew he had to find his way to Oro City. He was lost. There was nothing to do but follow those two men into town.

He wished Brad were with him, but he was already gaining a little confidence in his tracking ability.

The two hard cases would lead him to Delbert Coombs.

And Pilar.

He rode with a heavy heart and he followed the tracks of the two men at a distance.

He also rode with anger, a boiling, fire-breathing monster that made him forget all about fatigue, hunger, and human kindness.

His cheekbones glowed with a red flame that was almost like war paint when the light was just right.

Julio’s grandfather was a Spaniard from Barcelona. His grandmother was a full-blooded Yaqui. That was her blood reddening his high cheekbones, flaring on them like a Guanajuato sunset.

The cabin was nestled in a grove of tall pine trees, with a wide clearing in front of it that flanked both sides of a winding lane. The place was secluded and offered a good field of view for those inside the log-frame, two-story dwelling, with its gunports in shuttered windows and at key points to the side and below each window. In back of the house were sheer craggy cliffs. There was a large log barn, a long carriage house full of empty buckboards, a separate stable for horses, a large corral, watering troughs, a deep well. In front of the lane, a creek ran by, and there was a large, flat bridge wide enough for two wagons and a four-foot-high rock wall running from both sides of the bridge to the bordering timber. It was a home, but it was also a fortress.

Delbert and Hiram, along with Pilar and Felicity, rode over the bridge and up to the house. The horses’ hooves clattered on the wooden bridge, and as they approached, the snouts of a pair of rifles poked through two of the gunports flanking the front door.

“Hello, the house,” Delbert called out. “It’s me and Hiram.”

The rifles slipped back out of sight.

The two men dismounted and tied their horses to hitch rings set just beside a flagstone path to the porch. Hiram pulled Pilar from her horse, while Delbert assisted Felicity in dismounting.

“Untie the Mex,” Del ordered while he began to loosen Felicity’s bonds.

“Finally,” Felicity said, rubbing her wrists and dropping the twine to the ground in a frizzy tangle.

Pilar rubbed her wrists, too, and dipped a little as her swollen ankles gave way. Hiram kept her from falling.

“Follow me,” Delbert said, and walked to the front door. There was no porch. He tapped three times, waited, and tapped once more. The door opened, and a white-haired lady stepped into view. Her hair was piled high, and she wore a large barrette to keep her hair in place. She had on an apron, and bound to her waist by a gunbelt gleaming with cartridges was a holster and a .44 Colt. She smiled at Delbert, flattening some of the wrinkles on her cheeks, revealing a snaggletooth and yellowed teeth.

“Why, Delbert,” she said, opening her arms to give him a hug. “And you’ve brought guests. Two young ladies. My, my, and Hiram, dear, so good to see you both. Come in, come in. Sister’s in the kitchen, stirring up a stew. Pa’s upstairs, and your cousin Phil is . . . Phil”—she turned her head toward the side window—“put that rifle down and come greet your cousins.”

There was a clatter and a tall, broad-shouldered young man appeared just behind Delbert’s mother, Maude. Phil was a big lunk of a man in his early twenties, with straw hair and wide-set blue eyes that were pale as a blue heron feather. Wide shoulders that tapered down to a waspish waist on which hung a gunbelt and a holstered .44 Colt.

“Howdy, cuz,” he said to Delbert.

Delbert ignored him and swept past his mother as she stepped aside.

“Golly, you got a couple of gals with ye,” Phil Coster said, in a slow Georgian drawl.