Sidewinder (20 page)

He slid his Winchester back in its sheath, set the saddlebags atop Ginger’s rump, and took a swallow of water before slinging his canteen onto his saddle horn and pulling himself up into the saddle.

He was hungry, but he was not going to eat. He never ate before he went hunting. He told Felicity that fasting sharpened his senses. He could see and smell game better on an empty stomach.

He rode back down to the road. The sky was slowly paling and just before Ginger stepped onto the road, he saw a glimmer of cream spreading across the eastern sky, prying open the night. The stars faded into pale blue, and the sliver of moon was all but a memory as he went up the road. With each freshening of the light, he studied the ground. It was as he had suspected the night before, someone had dragged the road to obliterate all the horse and cow tracks.

Now he smelled them again as he climbed a shallow grade. At the top, the smell was much stronger. Lots of cattle leave lots of waste, especially if they are in a confined space, such as a corral or a tight gather. The sky blazed in the east, spawning bright splotches of gold and russet on the long pennants of clouds drifting high above the horizon, and he could hear jays, the throaty cooing of doves, and a far-off quail. And the bawling of cattle, deep rumbling in dozens of throats, like the sound of hungry bulls kept from pasture.

He found a place to ground-tie Ginger. He left his rifle in its scabbard, pulled his pistol, and spun the cylinder. Six bullets and half a box of cartridges were on his belt. It would be close work, he thought. Pistol work. So, no rifle.

He walked down below the road through a swale of tall weeds, rocks, and stagnant pools of water, jiggling with insects. Cockleburs clung to the cuffs of his trousers, and his boots crunched lightly on gravel. Water drained through this ditch, he thought, and with the cattle lowing, nobody was likely to hear him.

The road curved, and then he saw the pens. To his amazement, there were cattle crammed into an elaborate array of fencing that formed a stockyard. Beyond were two or three long buildings, with lofts and open windows. One small building behind them looked like a dwelling for a bunkhouse. Smoke rose from its chimney, and he could smell food cooking.

The cattle were squeezed tight together and protesting. A line of wagons, maybe a dozen of them, stood around the compound.

He walked past the stockyards and crept up to the building where he could hear low voices and smell the heady aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. There were no men outside. He detected at least four voices, all pitched differently. He crept up to a window, pistol in hand, and slowly raised his head to peer inside.

The window was slightly steamed, but he could see inside the room. It looked like a combination office, bunkhouse, and cookshack. Just one big room, with a desk, a table, bunks along at least two walls, chairs, a stove, sideboards. A coffeepot burbled and steamed. Men sitting around the table, smoking, drinking coffee. One old man with white sideburns was pushing a spatula around in a large skillet, and Brad could smell biscuits rising in the oven.

“Toad,” one man said, “you better give me a head count afore we start butcherin’. I want pay for every head I saw up.”

“After I get some vittles in my belly, Cap,” Toad said, and Brad knew that Toad had to be one of the rustlers. But where was Felicity? He looked at every corner he could see and at all the bunks. There was no Felicity.

Brad waited. He waited while the men ate, and when some went to the outhouse out back, he looked them over. Four of them were wearing leather aprons. Two were not. Toad and another man.

There was a corral beyond the outhouse he hadn’t noticed before. He sneaked past the bunkhouse and looked at the horses eating grain from a trough or drinking at the small tank.

And then he saw the two horses that were tied up and still saddled. One of them was Rose, Felicity’s horse, who stood hipshot. Rose raised her head when she saw him and nickered softly.

Damn, Brad thought, Felicity’s here.

Or is she?

Had he been tricked? Had one of the rustlers swapped horses with her just to throw him off track?

Brad’s jaw hardened, and his eyes slitted with anger. Where was she?

He walked back to a place of concealment near the stock pens and waited. He holstered his pistol but kept his hand close to its butt.

Finally, he saw Toad and another man walking toward the pens. The other man carried a tablet and pencil.

“I call ’em and you tally ’em, Freddie,” Toad said. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Can you even count, Toad?”

“I sure as hell can count fists poundin’ your face to mush if you don’t shut your smart mouth, Freddie.”

“Aw, I was just a-joshin’.”

Toad was puffing on a cheroot. Freddie was spitting tobacco juice. Neither man was looking in Brad’s direction when he drew his pistol and stepped in front of them. He pulled his rattles out with his left hand and shook them.

Both men stopped in their tracks.

“What the hell . . .” Toad said.

Then he heard the click of the Colt in Brad’s hand as he cocked the trigger.

“Sweet Jesus,” Freddie said.

“Who in hell are you?” Toad demanded, jerking the cheroot from his mouth.

“They call me Sidewinder,” Brad said, and shook the rattles again.

He watched both men as the color drained from their faces.

Then he stopped rattling, and it was silent.

It was silent for a long time, it seemed.

When a man faces death, that last second can seem like an eternity. And an eternity can seem like the single tick of a doomsday clock.

In the singular moment when no man breathed, Brad fixed his eyes on the man called Toad.

“That bay mare one of you rode in here. It belongs to my wife. Now, I want to know one thing, Toad. Where is she?”

Toad took his gaze away from the rattles in Brad’s left hand. He looked at the cocked .45, its barrel so close it made him ooze sweat as if he were a sieve.

“She ain’t here,” he said.

“You didn’t answer my question, Toad.”

Toad looked at Raskin. Raskin licked dry lips.

“You ain’t goin’ to shoot us, are you?” Fred Raskin said.

“If I don’t get the answer I want.”

“Jeez,” Raskin said.

“You keep your trap shut, Freddie,” Toad said.

“I don’t aim to get kilt over’n a danged woman,” Raskin said.

“It’s up to you, Toad,” Brad said. “First the balls, then square between your sorry eyes.”

Brad lowered the gun barrel to aim at Toad’s crotch. Toad’s sweating increased until his palms were oily.

“I don’t know,” Toad said. “Boss took her and the Mexican gal with him.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“Delbert Coombs,” Raskin blurted out. “He’s the one what’s got them wimmin.”

“And where is Coombs?” Brad asked.

“I dunno,” Toad said. “Honest.”

“Honest? Hell, you don’t know the meaning of the word,” Brad said. “Either I get an answer, or I’ll blow both of you to hell. Those are my cattle you’ve got in these pens, and that’s a hanging offense.”

“Mister,” Toad said, “Del Coombs took them wimmin, and I don’t know where.”

“Toward Oro City,” Raskin said. He was shaking now. His knees jiggled inside his trousers. He looked like a turpentined cat, and his face was almost sheet white.

“That true, Toad?”

“I reckon.”

“You point me there, and you can walk out of here, both of you.”

“He’s got a place north of town, and in Oro City, he stays at the best hotel,” Raskin said.

“You little bastard,” Toad growled. But he was still sweating like an eight-furlong horse.

“You,” Brad said to Fred, “drop your gunbelt. Run and fetch me that bay mare back there. Be quick about it, and keep your mouth shut.”

Raskin put his tablet and pencil on the ground, then unbuckled his belt and let his pistol and holster drop to the ground. He turned and trotted back to the stables, his boot heels making him wobble like a wheel out of round.

“You ain’t got a chance against Del Coombs,” Toad said, licking his dry lips.

“I’ve got a little advice for you, Toad,” Brad said. “These are stolen cattle. If they’re not back on my ranch by week’s end, I’ll come gunning for you. Just you. You butcher one head of my cattle, and I’ll take your hide to the barn door and set it afire. Got that?”

“I don’t make the rules, here. Del Coombs calls the turn.”

“Better think twice before you turn those butcher boys loose on my stock.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Brad saw Raskin leading Rose toward him. Then, an aproned man stepped outside of the cookshack. Raskin said something, and the man turned quickly and ran back inside.

“Get a move on,” Brad ordered, and Raskin trotted up to him, handed him the reins.

“Toad, you drop your gunbelt, too, and kick it away from you.”

Brad swung into the saddle. Rose turned in a tight circle as Toad let his gunbelt drop to the ground. He kicked it a foot away and kept his eye on it as if measuring the distance.

“Now, turn tail you two, and get to runnin’,” Brad said.

The aproned man emerged from the shack with two others. All three carried rifles. But Toad and Raskin were running for all they were worth.

Brad reined up Rose and leveled his pistol at the first man who shouldered his rifle.

He cracked off a shot, aiming to a spot just above the man’s head. The Colt belched sparks and white smoke, and the bullet sizzled just over the butcher’s head, hit something well behind him, and whined off in tumbling flight.

Brad put the spurs to Rose’s tender flank, and the horse leaped beneath him in a tight turn. He heard the crack of a rifle and heard the bullet whiz past him. Two other shots rang out before he ducked and holstered his pistol. He rode Rose hard to where Ginger was tethered. He jerked up his horse’s reins and rode at a fast clip up out of the swale and onto the road.

Rose galloped on, and Ginger kept up.

A half hour later, Brad rode up a slope and hid in the trees. He waited.

None of the men followed him.

He rode north toward Oro City where he hoped to pick up some information about Delbert Coombs and find out where Felicity, Pilar, and the rest of his cattle were.

Coombs was pretty smart, but all men made mistakes. And he had already made one. He sent two stupid waddies to do a man’s job, and they had been caught red-handed. Rustlers. The scum of the earth as far as Brad was concerned.

Perhaps, he thought, Julio has had better luck in finding Pilar and Felicity.

A day’s ride to Oro City and he would know, one way or the other.

He settled down for the trek, his gaze ever watchful on his back trail.

But his luck still held.

And his hunger gnawed at him until he swapped horses and got into his saddlebags, dug out hardtack and jerky. He gobbled the food down as he rode on toward an uncertain destination.

Julio followed the tracks across dry streambeds and the gouged out ruins of old placer mines. The land was desolate, broken, filled with rubble left behind by miners when the gold ran out a few years before. There were the rotting and crumbling remains of sluice boxes and dry rockers, rusted airtights, scraps of worn leather, picks, shovels. It was as if the wind and flooding had ripped everything away and left only detritus.

He passed old graves with the wooden markers tilted and decaying, a mound with a bare rock for a headstone, the lettering in whitewash long since scrubbed away by rain and wind.

The trail was easy to follow, for a time, but gradually, as the terrain turned to rock and then to sand, he found it difficult to find the specific hoof marks of Tito, Carlos’s horse. But he did find them, and after a while, when the eyestrain became too much to bear, with the sun glinting off sandstone and rock, he just followed the spoor of the driven cattle.