Devils canyon, p.3
Devil's Canyon, page 3
The horses in, Tomas caught up with Kirby. ‘The colonel’s back. He wants to see you.’
‘OK, thanks.’
Dallas who was sitting his horse, leg hooked around the pommel of his saddle as if he were relaxing in an easy chair, nodded a goodbye, swung gracefully to the ground and started toward the stable, the sorrel still tossing its head as if it had just started to warm to its work and was eager for more.
Asa’s eyes followed Dallas and then switched to Kirby as he walked the gray horse toward the hitching rail in front of the house.
He wasn’t able to decide which one he wanted to kill first.
‘Come in,’ the colonel’s resonant voice called and, as Kirby entered, he added, ‘Kirby! Hell, boy, you don’t have to knock on my door to come in.’
‘That’s the way my mother raised me, sir,’ Kirby said.
With a pleasant weariness from a decent day’s work in his bones, Kirby sagged into a chair, tilted back and said, ‘Tomas said you wanted to see me.’
‘Yes. Did you see those three new mustangs?’
‘I did.’
‘I got them for a song. I felt bad about it, but Kimble over at Double E has a baby on the way and another that’s sick. I gave him fifty bucks apiece and free graze for his steers on my land while we’re gone.’
Kirby smiled. The colonel might have claimed otherwise, but fifty dollars apiece for three half-broken mustangs wasn’t unreasonable, and free graze for a man with poor land and little water more than compensated for any inequity.
‘Have you paid the men yet, Kirby?’
‘I spread the word it would be at dinner-time. We can hand out the extra ammunition and spare blankets at the same time,’ Kirby said.
The colonel nodded. ‘Then I guess we’re ready, Kirby. Tomorrow,’ he said, with just a slight furrow of worry on his brow, ‘south to Mexico and Vista del Luna.’
‘All right, we’re as prepared as we’re going to get,’ Kirby said.
‘I suppose so. I wish we had just a couple more trustworthy men.…’
‘You’ve got Tomas. And Dallas – I spent some time with him today. You can count on him, I think.’
‘So do I,’ the colonel agreed. ‘Did he tell you why he signed on?’
‘Enough.’
‘Yes. I don’t like to tell stories out of school, but if he’s told you …’ The colonel shook his head heavily. ‘He’s got his own agenda. I hope it doesn’t get in the way of the job at hand.’
‘I didn’t get that impression of the man. He’ll ride for the brand, I think.’
‘I hope so.’ The colonel was now noticeably worried. The lines in his face seemed deeper in the shadows. After all, he was risking everything he owned on the success of the drive north.
‘I do hope so,’ the colonel said again, still thinking about Dallas apparently. ‘We will need a man of his caliber with us. If we do run into Oso …’
‘Oso?’
‘The name the Comanchero leader goes by. I’m afraid Dallas might take a notion to do something crazy on his own. The man has no fear, you know. And to have found his wife and children murdered …’
‘He’ll stick,’ Kirby said, with more conviction than he felt. After all, every man must have his own agenda, his own plans. Riding for the brand was a code of honor in the West, a loyalty as strong as that the feudal lords expected and received without question. But Dallas was seeking revenge for his lost family, and that involved a different, perhaps stronger sort of honor.
‘Who else can I trust, really trust?’ Kirby asked.
‘Tomas, beyond question. Bull Schultz – you haven’t met him yet. After that …’ Colonel Tremaine spread his hands helplessly. He added no more names to the list.
Asa and his men made up the crew after that. There were two others who had just ridden in. Drifters who had heard there was work here. Two brothers named Tom and Avery, whiskered, laconic Kentuckians the colonel knew nothing about except that they were available.
‘Kirby,’ the colonel said, ‘this is all pretty much on your shoulders, you know. I needed you, son, that’s why you’re here. Outside of Tomas …’
‘I understand, sir,’ Kirby said quickly.
And he did. Outside of Tomas, there was no one but him the colonel could count on fully.
And very probably Kirby McBride was already marked for death.
THREE
Kirby’s sleep was untroubled that night. The nightly poker game had even been abandoned in the bunkhouse, Every man knew he had to be well rested in the morning for the long drive to Mexico.
The yard was a scene of organized confusion when Kirby walked out into the chill of pre-dawn. The wagon was still in the process of being loaded with supplies. Coffee, sugar, flour, bandages among other things. The wranglers – the Peck brothers – had bridled and saddled the lead ponies. The second string, those that would be used to spell the others when needed, were stamping the frost from their hoofs in the corral as they were tied to lead ropes. Last-minute instructions were shouted. Breath steamed from the lips of men and from the flanks of the horses. Ice crackled underfoot as Kirby walked across the yard, glancing toward the eastern horizon, still seeing no sign of approaching dawn. The stars hung heavy and brittle in a clear, cold sky.
He met Tomas on his way to the big house. Tomas wore a heavy brown and red-striped serape over his shoulders. His fancy sombrero had given way to a broad-brimmed, plain brown stetson.
‘The colonel’s up,’ Tomas said in a shivery voice. ‘I think he was probably up all night, yes?’
‘Probably. I wish there were some way to keep him from making this drive.’
‘That, my friend,’ Tomas said, ‘is as likely as stopping the sun from rising this morning.’
‘I know it.’ Kirby asked then, ‘Are all the hands accounted for?’
‘Except for Turkey.’ Tomas shrugged.
Turkey was a hand Kirby barely knew. But apparently he had taken his pay and ridden off in the night, figuring a week in San Angelo with his pockets full beat two weeks on the Spanish trail.
‘Well, we figured on that,’ Kirby said. ‘At least it was only him that took off.’
Before they had reached the porch of the house, the colonel appeared in the doorway. He wore a long gray coat, carried the old Spencer carbine in his hand. He had his saddle-bags slung over one shoulder. The old man had a clean shave and a steely look in his eyes.
‘Grab some coffee, Kirby,’ Tremaine said. ‘When I see the first color in the sky, we’re starting.’
He was as excited as a kid and skittish as a colt, determined as an old bull at once. The colonel had waited a long while for the drive to begin. Now he was about to find out whether his old age would bring a life of leisure or one of dire poverty. He was eager to roll the dice and find out what came up.
Kirby gulped down two cups of coffee. There was a plate of biscuits on the table as well, and he shoved one in his mouth, poked three more into his own saddle-bags and went back out into the yard.
Now there was the faintest hint of color in the sky to the east, a swath of dull crimson over the night-shadowed plains. A horse whickered and tossed its head. Another answered. Leather creaked as men swung heavily into their saddles. Dallas appeared on his sorrel, leading Kirby’s tall gray horse.
‘Thanks, Dallas,’ Kirby said.
‘It’s nothing, Kirby,’ Dallas shrugged. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night. I’ve been up and about since four. I had to be doing something.’
‘Eager for the trail?’ Kirby asked, double-checking the cinches before swinging aboard.
‘Eager,’ Dallas said, looking southward, ‘just eager.’
At Kirby’s questioning look, Dallas said, ‘I know I’ve got a job to do for the colonel, Kirby. Don’t worry about it.’
‘And a job to take care of for yourself.’
‘If I can, yes. If I can,’ Dallas said, and the expression on his face grew suddenly cold and hard enough to surprise Kirby. It was an almost wolfish eagerness that he saw there. He understood the man’s urge toward revenge against Oso and the Comancheros, but Dallas’s true priorities were still unclear.
From the looks of things – the lining of the horses, the determined looks on the men’s faces, the wagon starting heavily from the yard, it seemed for all the world like a group of men intent on a single purpose, an army moving out toward one certain objective.
But it was far from that.
Every man rode with his own agenda, Kirby knew. Dallas and his vengeance lust, Asa and his men … waiting to steal a herd and commit murder? The handful of other men Kirby really didn’t know at all. Riding without apparent obligation except to their pay. Tremaine, desperate to regain solvency and save everything he owned.
The colonel led them out, his head held high as if he were leading his force into battle. He looked much as Kirby remembered him, but things were not the same anymore. These men rode for no flag, wore no Ranger badges.
If Oso did attack them, how many would stand and fight for the herd of Mexican steers?
Kirby flipped up the collar of his buffalo coat, tugged his hat lower and started the big gray southward toward the border, riding on the skirts of Colonel Tremaine’s dreams.
They moved slowly because of the chuck wagon, but steadily southward, all eyes on the hills which began to close in around them. No rider alone ever traveled this route. The Texas Rangers no longer hunted the Comancheros this far west. Chasing Oso was like pursuing Geronimo, or a ghost Besides, it took the Comancheros no time at all to slip across the border into Mexico and escape their pursuers.
‘Were you in the War?’ Dallas asked, as they rode side by side through the golden morning sunlight.
Kirby had shed his buffalo coat as the sun rode higher into the sky, and now he was settled in for the long, long ride south.
‘Me?’ Kirby smiled. ‘No. I was only twelve when it broke out. I tried to follow my brothers into the war, but my mother caught me. She said I was the last of the male line and she was damned if she’d have me shot. She pulled me off the mule I was trying to ride away on and took me home by my ear.’
He smiled in reflection. She had been right, of course. Trevor, his oldest brother, a tall, handsome reflection of everything a Southern gentleman aspired to be, was killed at the First Battle of Bull Run. His second brother, Talbert – Tal – had been taken prisoner by the Union forces, escaped, shot down in pursuit, reimprisoned and left to rot away, losing an arm from gangrene. A second escape attempt had been successful, but no one knew where Tal had gone, pursued by the Northern army until war’s end.
‘How’d you come to know Colonel Tremaine, then?’ Dallas asked, interrupting Kirby’s brief reverie.
‘After the war my family drifted down from Carolina, looking for new land. Mother died. My sister Beth got married and moved off the rock-and-brush ranch we tried to start outside of San Antonio.…’ Kirby shrugged. ‘I pulled up stakes, drifted for a time and then joined the Rangers. McCulloch himself kind of drafted me.’
‘They say he was a tough man.’
‘The toughest. I was a cocky kid, though. I thought I was a match for anybody. Had a chip on my shoulder after losing most of my family and the ranch. Well … put it this way, the Rangers taught me I wasn’t as tough as I had thought.’
‘And Tremaine?’
‘He was my first commanding officer. Two years of fighting Mexicans, Comanches, Kansas raiders.… I learned it took a little more than mouth to win a battle.’
‘He saved your life, didn’t he?’
‘I don’t talk much about that, but yes he did,’ Kirby admitted. ‘I was young and dumb. Or,’ – he grinned – ‘should I say “younger and dumber”? I got myself cut off from the regiment. I had some idea of saving Texas all by myself. I got myself pinned down at a place called Anchor Wells.’
‘I know it,’ Dallas said. In actuality Anchor Wells was little more than a buffalo wallow south of Fort Stockton, the only place for miles around with water.
‘That shows you how green I was,’ Kirby said. ‘Only water for miles around – well, of course some unwanted company is going to show up.’
‘And they did.’
‘Comanches. Maybe a dozen of them. It was a band we’d been chasing, a crazy bunch of young warriors who’d even destroyed a Kiowa camp in the area for no reason we could figure out. They had me pinned down … man, you don’t think they wanted that water! And me and my old Springfield rifle trying to hold them off.’
‘The colonel pulled you out?’
‘That’s the short version, yeah. Pulled me out doesn’t cover what that man went through fighting the Indians guerilla-style through the night. Him and his Cherokee scout, name of Firesky. He got captured and they killed him. They cut him up slow through the night so that we had to listen to him die bit by bit.… Long ago, Dallas, I don’t care to tell it all in detail.’
‘I understand.’
‘Well,’ Kirby said, shifting in his saddle, ‘I suppose you might, but no one ever understands another man’s life completely, do they?’
‘No. You’re right.’
‘OK. Did you have a reason for bringing this all up, Dallas?
‘Not really. Just trail talk.’ The cowboy yawned. ‘And I was wondering just how far you’d go for Colonel Tremaine.’
Kirby didn’t have to think about his answer. ‘All the way,’ he said with conviction.
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. See, Kirby, I have been wondering exactly what our strength is. That is, if we do have a run-in with Oso’s Comancheros, how many of these men will stand and fight; how many will try to run away?’
‘And there’s a reason you’re wondering this, Dallas?’
‘Yeah, Kirby,’ Dallas answered quietly. ‘There’s a reason … because they’re already following us.’
Easily then, Kirby let his eyes drift to the west where low, crumbling hills, bright where new green grass dusted red soil, filled the view. And at intervals as they rode in near silence with only the creaking of the chuck wagon’s wheels and the low voices of the men, he saw now and then the flitting distant shadow of a mounted man.
Dallas said, ‘It don’t take long for vultures to gather, friend.’
Kirby made no reply. They rode on, his stolid, plodding gray used to long miles and rough travel alongside Dallas’s light-trotting cutting horse. It was true, the vultures were out there, slowly gathering, probably wondering if there was enough loot to make an attack on the colonel’s crew worthwhile. Undoubtedly their leaders were mentally counting their guns, estimating what little worth a wagonful of supplies could possibly have, weighing the possibility for profit against casualties.
And wondering what the colonel and his men were doing out on the empty prairie.
Kirby felt confident that they would not attack. Not against a dozen men for a few sacks of supplies.
But they were watching now, knowing something was in the works. And they would wait patiently until the time was right, gathering more forces. Secrecy, on the first morning southward, was already a lost illusion.
‘Have you figured it out yet?’ Red asked, as he rode next to Asa Donahue. ‘McBride, that is.’
‘It can’t be him,’ Len Parker said. ‘He’s too young.’
‘No,’ Asa agreed. ‘There was another man out from Carolina by that name, damnit. Same lean face. Same blue eyes.…’ Asa glanced back at Kirby again from where they rode fifty feet behind the toiling supply wagon. ‘Tal!’ he nearly shouted.
‘What?’ Red asked.
‘Tal McBride! Don’t you recall now? In Lawrence! He was town marshal for a while. One-armed man!’
‘God, yes,’ Red said. ‘I remember now.’
‘So do I,’ Len said bitterly. ‘I recall folks back there saying they wished the Yankees had shot off his gun arm instead of leaving him with that quick hand of his.’
‘Well,’ Red said with relief, ‘at least we know he ain’t that McBride.’
‘No,’ Asa said. ‘He’s got both arms – but it makes you wonder, don’t it, boys? If they are relatives – brothers is likely – are we riding into something we haven’t counted on? Maybe,’ Asa said meditatively, ‘there’s other parties that have designs on the colonel’s herd and his ranch. Maybe,’ Asa said, ‘we ought to do some hard thinking about this.’
‘What do you mean?’ Len asked, feeling a little uneasy suddenly.
‘Kirby is no easy mark, we know that. Why is he cozying up to Dallas? We know what Dallas used to be.’
‘They say he gave up the gun and went to sod-busting.’
‘Yes, and before that? In Wichita?’
‘They say he cut down all three Sabo brothers in a fair fight.’
‘And you believe he would give it up to settle with a skirt?’ Asa Donahue smirked, as if the idea of a gunman going straight for love was absurd.
‘Then,’ he went on, ‘if that is Tal McBride’s brother, boys, we may be running into something we didn’t count on at all.’
‘You think they’re after the same things we are?’ Len asked almost in panic.
‘I don’t know,’ Asa answered, stroking his chin. ‘All I’m saying is we had better just tread lightly for a time until it all comes clear.’
Three days later with their water barrels low and the horses salt-flecked and weary, the men dry-mouthed and caked with road dust, they rode onto the Rancho las Luna in Mexico.
The ranch had a spectacular setting with the high eastern mountains rising firm and stark against the sky. Scattered oaks and a few sycamores stood along the creek bottoms. But the creeks, Kirby noticed, were almost dry, only twisting silver rivulets wandering aimlessly across the yellow grass valley. There were cattle, many of them, everywhere. Longhorns, they were of course, gaunt and angry looking. They would be cantankerous and mean on a long drive, unwilling to leave the home range and the little water they had. The Texans had their work cut out for them.
The hacienda of Don Trujillo-Lopez was a beautiful two-story white house with Spanish tiles on a sloping roof. Two balconies overhung the arched portico beneath. Dry bougainvillaea vines clung to the trellises with only a few red-violet flowers growing there. Behind the house, in what Kirby assumed to be a courtyard in the Spanish style, two lofty jacaranda trees stood, dry as all else.
