The Loner: Dead Man’s Gold (10 page)

The Kid shook his head. The Jornada del Muerto was no place for a dog. It was no place for humans, either, but he and his companions didn’t have much choice.

“No, he’s not coming with us,” The Kid said. “But I think I know somebody who might be interested in giving him a home.”

“You want me to keep him?” the little boy called Jamie asked the next morning as he hugged the dog to him and looked up at The Kid. “Really?”

“Really,” The Kid said. “As long as your ma and pa say it’s all right, that is.”

“They told me a while back I could have a dog. We just ain’t gotten around to findin’ one yet.”

“Well, there you go.” The Kid grinned. “And I bet you’ll be the only youngster in Las Cruces with a dog that helped somebody win a gunfight.”

“Yeah!”

The Kid ruffled Jamie’s hair, then scratched the dog’s ears before he stood up. Jamie’s folks stood on the porch of the neat little house behind the boy. The Kid had asked at the general store where he could find Jamie, figuring that the clerks there might know the youngster. Sure enough, they had been able to direct him to the right house on one of Las Cruces’s side streets.

The Kid lifted a hand in a wave to the little boy’s parents, then said, “So long, Jamie. Have a good time with your new friend there.”

“I will!” The boy paused, and then as The Kid turned away, he went on, “Mr. Morgan?”

The Kid looked back at him. “Yeah?”

“Will you ever be comin’ back this way again?”

“Well, Jamie, I don’t rightly know.” Given the sort of life he led, The Kid had no idea how long he would survive, nor any way of knowing where his trail might lead him next. “But if I do, you can be sure that I’ll stop by to say howdy to you and that floppy-eared varmint.”

Jamie smiled. “All right. Thanks!”

The Kid waved again and then strode back to the main street. The wagon was parked beside the public well, where he had used the windlass and bucket to fill up their water barrels earlier. The buckskin’s reins were tied to the rear of the wagon.

Annabelle and Father Jardine sat on the driver’s box. Annabelle wore the new trousers, shirt, and hat that The Kid had purchased at the general store that morning. The Chinese laundryman had insisted, loudly and at length, that nobody could get those kerosene-soaked clothes clean.

Annabelle also had a new gunbelt strapped around her waist, along with a new revolver in the holster. It wasn’t a Smith & Wesson .38 like the one she had carried before. It was a .41 caliber Colt Lightning, the model sometimes also known as the Thunderer, with a four and a half inch barrel. Comparable in size and weight to the S&W .38, it fired a slightly heavier round, and The Kid thought Annabelle could handle it.

“Ready to go?” he asked her as he walked up.

“We’ve been ready for a good while,” Annabelle said. “Did that little boy like his new pet?”

The Kid smiled. “He sure did. I think he’ll take good care of the little fella.”

He went to the back of the wagon and untied the buckskin. He swung into the saddle and moved the horse up alongside the driver’s seat.

“Let’s go,” The Kid said.

Annabelle slapped the reins against the rumps of the team and got the horses moving. The Kid rode alongside. As they passed the building that housed the doctor’s practice, one of the deputies stepped out onto the porch to watch them go. His eyes were narrowed and unfriendly.

The Kid had stopped by earlier to let Acting Sheriff Nye know that they were leaving. The young lawman’s left arm and right leg were heavily bandaged, but he seemed alert and fairly strong as he sat propped up in the bed where he had spent the night.

“I don’t know where you’re going, Mr. Morgan,” he had said, “but be careful along the way. No offense, but you seem to attract trouble.”

The Kid had chuckled. “None taken. You’re not the first person to point that out.”

“I expect not.”

The Kid and his companions were leaving, and with any luck, peace and quiet would descend on Las Cruces once more. The Kid wouldn’t have bet a hat on that—there were always troublemakers around any town—but at least maybe the odds would be a little better for the settlement’s tranquility with him gone.

They kept the valley of the Rio Grande on their left and some low, rugged mountains on their right as they headed north. They hadn’t gone very far after leaving Las Cruces when they came to a row of empty adobe buildings. The structures had been abandoned and were slowly crumbling away. To The Kid’s eye, the way they were arranged had the look of a military post, and when he asked Annabelle about them, she nodded.

“This used to be an army outpost called Fort Selden,” she said. “The army withdrew its troops six or seven years ago, and since then it’s just been sitting here.”

“You must’ve studied the route you plan to take through the Jornada del Muerto,” The Kid commented.

“Of course. We’d have been fools not to.”

The Kid reserved comment on that. He couldn’t very well tell Annabelle and Father Jardine that they were loco to attempt what they were doing, when he was going along with them of his own free will.

Annabelle hauled back on the reins and brought the team to a halt as they passed the last of the abandoned military buildings. The Kid stopped the buckskin beside the wagon. Annabelle pointed to the Rio Grande, which curved away to the west.

“We leave the river here and head almost due north for a while. The trail curves gradually to the northwest. At least, it did on the old maps I studied.”

“You don’t really know what we’re going to find up there, do you?” The Kid asked.

Annabelle hesitated before answering. “Not firsthand, no. But I’ve read several accounts by Spanish missionaries and traders and conquistadors who traveled through the area in the past.”

“How long ago?”

“A hundred years or more. But just how quickly do you think an empty, uninhabited desert changes, Mr. Morgan? I suspect the Jornada del Muerto will look almost exactly the same a hundred years from now as it does today.” She smirked at him. “In fact, I’d bet a hat on it.”

“Careful,” The Kid said. “We didn’t bring along a spare this time.”

Father Jardine chuckled, then looked away innocently as Annabelle shot him a quick glare. She turned back to The Kid and went on, “There’s supposed to be a waterhole at a place called Paraje Parillo about twenty miles north of here, but that’s the last water we can count on for another eighty miles after that. There are some dry lake beds that sometimes have water in them if it’s rained recently, but you can imagine how uncommon that is in country like this.”

“Pretty rare, I expect,” The Kid said. “We have enough water in those barrels to last us ten or twelve days, depending on how careful we are. I’d suggest we be mighty careful.”

“I agree. There’s another waterhole at Paraje Fra Cristobal, at the northern end of the basin.”

“Sometimes waterholes go dry in this part of the country,” The Kid pointed out. “What if we get there and there’s no water?”

“Then I suspect we may all die. If you don’t want to run the risk, Mr. Morgan, you can always turn around and go back to Las Cruces…although I’m not sure the citizens there would welcome you with open arms.”

The Kid said, “Once I take cards in a game, I play the hand out to the end.”

“Sometimes that just means you’re throwing good money after bad. Or in this case, risking your life.”

“It’s mine to risk,” The Kid said.

Annabelle shrugged and nodded. She clucked at the horses and snapped the reins against them. The wagon lurched into motion again.

From the sound of what Annabelle had said, she had put in a lot of work before she and Father Jardine started north, studying everything she could find about the trail through this desolate landscape. Even so, the Jornada del Muerto was big and empty, and The Kid had to wonder how she expected to find something as small as the Konigsberg Candlestick and the secret of the Twelve Pearls, whatever that turned out to be. That old German fleeing from the Inquisition could have hidden his so-called treasure anywhere. An hombre could search blindly through the desert for a year and never find it.

Which suggested to The Kid that Annabelle and the priest really knew more than they had told him so far. They had to have some sort of clue that pointed them to the location of what they were looking for. The Kid didn’t particularly blame them for holding it back. Even though he had risked his life to help them on several occasions, they probably still didn’t trust him one hundred per cent. They were smart to feel that way. He wasn’t going to double cross them, but they couldn’t be sure of that.

The heat built rapidly as the sun rose higher in the sky. The Kid was glad for the broad-brimmed hat he wore to keep the sun off his head. When that fiery orb reached its zenith, it was capable of frying a man’s brain in its own juices without something to shield it from the glare.

Because of the heat, they had to stop fairly often to rest the horses. During one of those halts, The Kid said, “You might want to consider traveling at night and laying up in the shade somewhere during the day.”

“Just how much shade do you think we’ll find out here, Mr. Morgan?” Annabelle asked with a nod toward their flat, almost barren surroundings. The only vegetation to be seen were occasional clumps of coarse grass, some stunted mesquite trees, and beds of thorny cactus.

“How would we see where we were going?” Father Jardine added.

“You can always crawl under the wagon,” The Kid said. “That doesn’t help the horses, but they can stand the heat better than we can. As for seeing where we’re going, padre, the stars give plenty of light. When there’s a big moon, it’s almost like day out here.”

“I thought you hadn’t been through the Jornada del Muerto before,” Annabelle said.

The Kid shrugged. “I haven’t. But I’ve been through other deserts. I know a few things about them. For example, we can get a little moisture from cactus if we have to. It’s hard to live on that and nothing else, but it’ll keep you alive for a while, anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad we have an experienced companion, if not a guide.”

“Guiding is your job, Doctor. I know north from south, but I don’t know where anything is out here, as far as landmarks go.”

He resisted the impulse to ask her where they were going to start looking for the Konigsberg Candlestick. Annabelle and Father Jardine would get around to revealing their secrets in their own good time, The Kid supposed.

The slow-paced journey through the almost featureless landscape grew mighty boring, mighty fast. The Kid’s interest perked up when some low mountains came into view ahead of them and to the west.

“Those should be the Caballos,” Annabelle said when he pointed them out to her.

“The Horse Mountains,” The Kid said.

“Exactly. Don’t ask me how they got the name, though. I have no idea.”

They weren’t going toward the mountains. Their route would take them east of the Caballos. They didn’t draw even with the mountains as they traveled on. Those low, rounded peaks seemed to keep receding to the north.

The Kid knew that was an illusion. He and his companions actually were putting some miles behind them; it was just difficult to tell that out there in the wasteland.

The Kid estimated that they covered about ten miles. That wasn’t bad, he thought. If they could maintain that pace, he was confident their water would hold out until they reached the other end of the hellish passage. Especially if the waterhole at Paraje Parillo hadn’t dried up. With luck they would reach it the next day, and if there was water there, they could top off the barrels.

When they called a halt for the night and the horses had been taken care of, The Kid built a small fire to cook their supper and boil some coffee before darkness fell. Once they had eaten, he scooped sand on the flames to put them out.

The light vanished suddenly, almost as soon as the sun had set. That didn’t surprise The Kid. It seemed to spook Annabelle a little, though. As she sat on the wagon’s lowered tailgate and looked at the desolation all around them, she said quietly, “It’s very lonely out here, isn’t it?”

The Kid hunkered on his heels, his hat thumbed back on his head as he sipped the last of the coffee in his cup. “It is,” he agreed. “Some places look empty, but they’re really not. The life just hides during the heat of the day and comes out at night. You’d find birds and coyotes and all sorts of other varmints moving around once it cools off a mite.” He shook his head. “Not out here, though. I’ve got a feeling that not even the coyotes venture very far out into this desert. They’ve got more sense than that. Might find a snake or a lizard, but that’s about it.”

“What about God’s children?” Father Jardine asked.

“You mean people?”

“Who else would I mean?”

“I don’t know, padre,” The Kid said. “The way folks act sometimes, I’m not sure even the Good Lord would want to claim them.” Before the priest could argue with him about his bleak outlook on life, he went on, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we were the only human beings within ten miles, maybe more.”

But as he glanced off to the south, the way they had come from, he thought that he wouldn’t be surprised if they
weren’t
the only people out there that night.

Somewhere back there, their enemies were still on their trail, The Kid’s gut told him.

The only questions were who and how many.

Manuelito lay on his belly, watching his quarry, separated from them by perhaps half a mile. The brilliant stars that had popped into view in the blackness above the desert cast enough of a silvery glow for the Apache to be able to make out the dark shape of the wagon with its lighter canvas cover. The two white men and the woman had no fire tonight.

They were learning.

But their caution would not save them, Manuelito vowed to himself. In the end, he would kill the men and have the woman. His need for that burned even stronger than the fiery pain in his side where the bullet had plowed a furrow in his flesh several nights earlier.

He had made a poultice from the flesh of the cactus and bound it in place over the wound with strips of cloth cut from his tunic. That should have drawn out the corruption and allowed him to heal, but Manuelito could tell that he had a sickness growing inside him. He was confident he could hold it at bay long enough for him to have his revenge, and once he had done that, he didn’t really care what happened to him afterward. He could die happily, his lust for vengeance—and for the woman—satisfied.

“Manuelito!”

The whisper came from behind him. Manuelito looked over his shoulder and saw that Azza-hij had crawled up almost even with him. The young warrior sounded nervous—which came as no surprise considering the way he had turned and run when the whites put up a surprisingly strong fight. As the rest of the war party had died, Azza-hij had fled. For that reason, Manuelito had come very close to slitting the young man’s throat himself.

But Azza-hij might help him achieve his desired goals, so Manuelito allowed him to live for the time being. How he conducted himself from then on would have a lot to do with whether he survived to return to the mountains across the border in Mexico.

Manuelito knew he would not survive that trek. Not with the burning in his side. But he could live with that…and die with it.

“What do you want?” he asked Azza-hij.

“They are up there, the white men and the woman? We have found them?”

Manuelito’s lip curled in a sneer. “Look for yourself. Use your eyes, young fool! Do you not see them?”

“Yes. I see them.”

“Is that all you wanted?”

“No, Manuelito. I came to tell you that someone is coming.”

Manuelito turned. His hand shot out and gripped Azza-hij’s arm so tightly that the young warrior made a small sound of pain.

“How many?”

“One man on horseback.”

“A white man?”

“Or a Mexican.” Even though he lay stretched out on his belly, Azza-hij managed to shrug. “Who can tell?” He was silent for a moment while Manuelito thought about the news. Then Azza-hij asked, “Are we going to kill him?”

“No,” Manuelito decided. “He might manage to shoot his gun, and that would warn the ones we’re after. We will let him go on his way.”

“But what if he joins the men with the wagon?”

It was Manuelito’s turn to shrug. “One more white man makes no difference. When the time comes, we will just kill him, too.”

Azza-hij smiled and nodded. He was eager to atone for his cowardice, Manuelito knew. Or at least, Azza-hij claimed to be eager. The real test would be when the time for killing came again.

Manuelito heard the hoofbeats of the horse as it approached slowly. He jerked his hand in a commanding gesture and then faded off into the night with Azza-hij following him.

The rider stopped, though, instead of moving closer to the wagon. Manuelito watched as the man dismounted and tied his horse to a short, gnarled mesquite tree. Then the man stretched out on the ground, tipped his hat over his eyes, and appeared to go to sleep.

It would be easy to creep up on him and cut his throat, Manuelito thought. So easy…

But then the man shifted, and his hand drew a revolver from the holster at his waist. He settled down again with his fingers curled around the butt of the gun and his thumb looped over the hammer. Killing him without allowing him to get a shot off would be difficult, Manuelito told himself as he watched the man. Better not to risk it.

Again he motioned for Azza-hij to follow him, then crawled off into the shadows.

The pain made it hard for Lew Jackson to sleep, even though he was sick and exhausted. One of the shots that bastard Morgan had fired into the alley had caught him high on the left shoulder. Jackson was pretty sure the bullet had missed the bone and just torn through the flesh, but his shoulder hurt like hell, and that arm was damn near useless.

One more mark against the son of a bitch, Jackson thought. One more score to settle.

After the disastrous shootout in the church, it would have been easier just to ride away, to forget about everything that had happened. Forget about the men who had died. That’s what most fellas would have done if they’d found themselves in his position.

Most men wouldn’t have even tried to get revenge for Culhane, Jericho, and Mawson in the first place. They would have just told themselves, well, it was too bad Morgan had killed those three hombres, but there was nothing to be done about it.

The hell there wasn’t. The problem with the world was that nobody had any loyalty anymore. Nobody stuck up for a friend and tried to do what was right. Jackson could see that, even if nobody else could.

So he and Chuck and McDermott had taken the redheaded girl hostage, along with that fat little Mex priest, and tried to avenge Culhane and the others. Chuck and McDermott weren’t too keen on the idea to start with, but they had gone along with what Jackson wanted, just like they always did.

Then Morgan had to go and double cross them and sneak into the church through the bell tower. What a damned sorry thing to do.

Jackson muttered curses under his breath as a throbbing pain went through his shoulder. He had tied up the wound as best he could, but it really needed a sawbones. Maybe when Morgan was dead, he could go back to Las Cruces and have it tended to properly.

No, that was out, he told himself. They’d be on the lookout for him since he’d killed that damn popinjay of a sheriff and maybe killed the deputy. He’d have to find some other town with a doctor.

Something in the night made Jackson’s skincrawl as he lay there trying to sleep. He felt almost like he was being watched, but he knew that was impossible. Morgan and the two with the wagon were at least half a mile ahead of him, maybe more. He had been about a mile behind them during the day, far enough back to stay out of sight as he followed the tracks left by the wagon and Morgan’s horse. Once night had fallen he had ridden on for a little while longer, then stopped so that he wouldn’t stumble right into their camp without warning. And there wasn’t anything else out there in the barren wilderness to watch him.

He tightened his grip on the revolver anyway. It made him feel better.

There had been so much uproar going on after he escaped from that burning church that he’d been able to duck through some alleys and then hide in the crib of a half-breed whore he knew. She wouldn’t betray him, because she knew he would kill her if she tried to. Come nightfall, he’d snuck out and waited in the alley beside the hotel, figuring that sooner or later he would see Morgan pass by in the street.

Sure enough, the bastard had walked out there big as life, and Jackson had lined up his shot just perfect…but somehow, the bullet had missed Morgan. Just barely, but that was enough to ruin everything. Jackson’s eyes were still irritated from the smoke that had gotten in them that afternoon, and he figured that’s what caused him to miss.

Regardless of the reason, he had missed, and then that damned deputy had come along and butted in, and then Morgan had winged him as he waited in the alley to try to get another shot. Jackson had made it out of Las Cruces by the skin of his teeth, as the old-timers said.

Again, the smart thing to do would be to ride away and forget about Kid Morgan.

Jackson knew he couldn’t do it. He’d hidden out at the crumbling ruins of the old fort north of town, tended to his wounded shoulder as best he could, and then waited. He knew from what he’d overheard in town that Morgan and his two companions were heading north, through the Jornada del Muerto. That would be a perfect place to ambush them, Jackson told himself.

That morning, he’d still been hiding in the abandoned fort when they paused there. He had thought about throwing down on them then and there, but decided it was too close to town. People would hear the shots and come to investigate. Better to wait until they were miles from anywhere.

Tomorrow, he told himself as the chill of the desert night stole over him. Tomorrow, Kid Morgan and the old priest would die, and then he could take his own sweet time dealing with the woman.

It was such a pleasant thought that his lips curved in a faint smile as he finally drifted off to sleep.

“Over there, Arturo,” Count Eduardo Fortunato snapped as he pointed to the hotel, which was built of adobe and had two stories with a balcony over the front porch. “That appears to be the only remotely suitable establishment in this godforsaken hellhole.”

Arturo sent the wagon toward the hotel and brought it to a stop in front. He would have hopped to the ground and helped Fortunato climb down, but the count didn’t wait. Fortunato swung down lithely from the wagon seat with the grace of the exceptional athlete he was.

“Stay with the wagon,” he said as he went up the steps to the porch and strode into the hotel. Someone had tried to make the place look elegant, he saw as he glanced around the lobby, with Indian rugs on the floor, paintings on the walls, overstuffed furniture, and several potted plants. But, to eyes accustomed to the glories of Continental hostelries, the hotel just looked shabby and dusty. Sand gritted under Fortunato’s feet as he approached the desk.

“I need your finest suite,” he said to the narrow-shouldered, pale-faced clerk who stood there gaping at him.

“Sorry, sir,” the man said. “We don’t, uh, we don’t have any suites, just single rooms.”

“Do any of them adjoin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I shall require three rooms, two of them adjoining. Those two will serve as a suite while I’m staying here. You’ll need to have the bed moved out of one room and some extra chairs and a table brought in. My servant will stay in the other room.”

The clerk swallowed. “Well, I, uh, I really ought to talk to the owner about something like that before I—”

“Nonsense.” Fortunato took an American fifty dollar bill from his coat pocket and slapped it on the desk. “That should cover the arrangements. If you need more later on, let me know.”

The clerk’s eyes widened at the sight of the bill. He probably didn’t see very many that large. He said, “Yes, sir, I reckon I can do that!” and the money disappeared from the desk with a deft swipe of his hand. He turned his head and yelled, “Pablo! Get your sorry ass over here. We got a gentleman staying here, and he needs us to take care of him proper-like.”

An elderly Mexican man hurried over and asked Fortunato, “Your bags,
señor
?”

“My servant will get them,” Fortunato said.

“Pablo, this gentleman needs us to change Room Seven into a sitting room so that it’ll form a suite with Room Eight,” the clerk explained.

Pablo frowned. “Can such a thing be done?” He sounded doubtful.

“It can,” the clerk insisted. “See to it!”

“Si, si,”
the old-timer muttered. He started toward the stairs.

“And make sure the rooms are spotless!” the clerk called after him. Then he smiled at Fortunato and went on, “Is there anything else we can do to accommodate you, sir?”

Fortunato grunted. “You could allow me to register.”

“Oh! Yes, of course.” The clerk slid the book in front of him, took the pen from its inkwell, and handed it to the count. Fortunato scrawled his name, and in the place for his home address, he wrote Venice, Italy. The clerk’s already-impressed eyes widened even more when he saw that. He asked in an awed voice, “You’re a real count?”

“Of course I am,” Fortunato said coldly. “A nobleman would not lie about such a thing.”

“No, sir, of course not! I didn’t mean to imply—”

Fortunato shut him up with a casual wave. “Is there a bar in this hotel?”

“Yes, sir, right through there.” The clerk pointed at an arched doorway on the opposite side of the lobby from the dining room.

“Send someone to inform me when my suite is ready.”

“Yes, sir!”

Fortunato strolled through the door into the bar and took off the soft felt hat he wore. The place wasn’t very busy. A handful of men in garish suits and derby hats who were probably traveling salesmen, a pair of better-dressed men who might be the local banker and the owner of a successful business, a frock-coated gambler who was dealing the cards at a baize-covered table occupied by a couple of townsmen and three American cowboys…and a woman. She stood at the bar talking to the bartender, a chunky, middle-aged man with several dark strands of hair plastered across the otherwise bald top of his head. When Fortunato came into the room, she turned and looked at him, her gaze cool and appraising.

Thick, honey-colored hair was piled high on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls. She wore a high-necked blue dress that buttoned to the throat, but it wasn’t as decorous as it might have been because the fabric hugged her body snugly enough so that her ample breasts were clearly outlined. She wasn’t very tall, but Fortunato didn’t mind that. He was attracted to her immediately, and judging by the bold look in her eyes, she returned the feeling.

Smiling, she said something to the bartender, then came forward to meet Fortunato. “Hello,” she said in a throaty voice. “Are you staying here at the hotel?”

“That’s right,” he said. “And you?”

“Yes, of course. It’s the only decent place to stay in this part of the territory. They even have a bottle of cognac here that’s not too bad.”

“I wouldn’t mind sampling it…if, of course, you would do me the honor of joining me.”

She held out her hand. “It would be my pleasure. You can call me Jess.”

He could tell that she was going to be disappointed if he didn’t kiss the back of her hand. He did so, bending over it and pressing his lips to the soft skin. “Eduardo,” he murmured.