Ralph Compton - The Alamosa Trail

“ ’Cause from what Marilou has been telling me, the Kincaid Ranch would be just the place for something like that.”

“Yeah,” Gene added. “You could start running horses there, and me an’ Barry could work for you.”

“You’re forgettin’ a couple of things,” Jim said. “In the first place, this isn’t my herd to do with as I please. And in the second place, I don’t have anything to do with the Kincaid Ranch.”

“You could,” Barry said.

“Yeah,” Gene added. “You may not have noticed, but Miz Katie has her cap set for you.”

Damn, Jim thought. Has she made it that obvious to everyone?

“And we could have these horses, too,” Frank said.

Frank’s comment was greeted with a moment of shocked silence.

“Are you suggesting we steal the horses?” Jim asked.

“I’m not sure I’d call it stealin’,” Frank said. “If you stop an’ think about it, we’re the ones who had to break the horses. By rights, that should make ’em ours.”

“Frank’s got a point,” Gene said.

“If we had rounded them up as well, perhaps he would have a point,” Jim said. “But we didn’t round them up. They were already gathered. All we had to do was break them. Besides, do you really want to take horses from someone like Clay Allison? He’s not the kind of fella that I would want for an enemy.”

“Me, neither,” Barry said.

Frank took another puff, then blew out a long cloud of smoke. “I reckon, now that you mention it, I wouldn’t want to cross him, either.”

“You are probably right,” Gene said. He was silent for a moment, then he smiled. “But it was grand thinking about it for a few minutes.”

Capitán Eduardo Bustamante, Teniente Santos, and Sargento Gonzales were with a company of more than forty Federales, waiting for the Americans. Their scouts had reported that the Americans, with the women, were leading a herd of horses north, and Bustamante knew they would have to come right through here, a place called Diablo Canyon, in order to reach the U.S. border. Here, the trail squeezed down to a narrow pass, closed in on either side by sheer rock cliffs. There were no exits from the pass. Once the Americans were committed, they would have no choice but to go on through. It was the perfect place for an ambush.

Bustamante put Santos in command of the men on the west side of the pass, while he took command of the men on the east side. He had already given the word not to fire until he gave the signal. The agreed-upon signal would be when he fired the first shot.

“It is a brilliant plan, Capitán,” Gonzales said. Gonzales was on the east side of the pass with Bustamante.

“It is an example of what one can do with organization and planning,” Bustamante replied. “Unlike your disastrous operation in Escalon.”

“Sí, Capitán,” Gonzales replied in chagrin. Although he had already been thoroughly reprimanded for letting the Americans evade capture in Escalon, Bustamante was not letting him live it down. Indeed, he would not even be present now had he not begged to be included, reminding Bustamante that he was one of the few who could identify the Americans by sight.

“What about the women?” Gonzales asked, as they waited.

“What about the women?” Bustamante replied.

“The women are riding with the Americans. They might get hurt when we start shooting.”

“They are not innocent victims. Our scouts tell us that the women are riding willingly,” Bustamante said.

“Capitán, does it not concern you that the women are riding willingly?”

“Why should that concern me?”

“Does it not prove that they are not captives, as we once thought?”

“It doesn’t matter whether they are captives or not,” Bustamante replied. “I am no longer hunting these men for the American authorities. I hunt them now because they committed murder in Escalon.”

“But if they are not the ones who captured the women, then they are not murderers in the fullest sense of the word. They are guilty only of defending themselves,” Gonzales said. “For it was we who fired first.”

Bustamante glared at Gonzales. “Sargento Gonzales, you lost many fine citizens in Escalon, including Reyna, your own diputado. Do you now say that you do not want revenge?”

“It troubles me that these may have been innocent men whom we fired upon by mistake. If so, they would have killed no one, had I not ordered my men to shoot at them. Perhaps the guilt is mine.”

“Your only guilt is that you let them get away. Do not concern yourself that they may be innocent. They are the ones who killed Teniente Montoya and Teniente Arino, of that I am certain. When I give the signal to begin shooting, you will shoot as ordered. Am I understood, Sargento?”

“Sí,” Gonzales replied.

“Capitán Bustamante, they are coming!” someone yelled.

Bustamante gave the signal for everyone to get down. Then he ducked behind a rock and jacked a shell into the chamber of his rifle. He thought of the funeral of his two lieutenants, and he remembered the promise he had made to their widows. His blood ran hot as he waited.

Jim had spotted Bustamante’s scouts more than an hour earlier, and he surmised that an ambush may be awaiting them when they reached Diablo Canyon.

“I’m not going to mince words with you,” he told the others, once he figured out what lay ahead. “The way I see it, we have only two choices. We can either try and force our way through, maybe by blending in with the herd and hoping that gives us some protection, or we can just abandon the horses and hightail it out of here, finding some other way back home.”

“Damn, I hate to give up the herd now, after all we’ve been through,” Frank said. “I’m for trying to force our way through.”

“I don’t see how we can do it without a couple of us getting killed,” Barry said.

“I’m willing to take that chance,” Frank replied.

“What about the women? Are you willing to take the chance with their lives? They don’t have any stake in this. They were brought down here against their will,” Gene said.

“They don’t have to go through with us,” Frank said. “They can leave now and find some other way back. And if we are keeping whoever is waiting for us at the canyon busy, that will give them a better chance.”

“None of us have to go through the canyon,” Katie suggested. “There is another way through.”

“Another way?”

“Yes. It’s called Purgatory’s Needle. That’s the way Shardeen brought us through when we came south,” Katie said. “I paid close attention to it, because I figured on getting away somehow, and I thought I might need to know.”

“How far away is the other way?” Jim asked.

“Not far at all. Only about a quarter of a mile west of the canyon opening.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me there are two canyons running parallel to each other?”

“Well, Purgatory’s Needle isn’t exactly a canyon,” Katie explained. “It’s more like a very narrow chute. But if we ride single file, we can get through it.”

“What about the herd?” Gene asked.

Katie shook her head. “There’s no way the horses can get through there.”

“Then we are back where we started,” Gene complained.

“Maybe not,” Jim said. “I have an idea.”

Jim’s idea was to start through the needle with the three women, Gene, and Barry. Frank, who was arguably the best rider of the entire outfit, would remain behind. His job was to start the herd through Diablo Canyon. By firing a couple of shots behind the horses, Frank would start them running through the canyon.

Jim believed that the horses would draw fire from whoever was waiting for them, and that shooting would urge the horses on, thus ensuring that they ran all the way through the canyon. It would also keep the bushwhackers occupied so that they might not notice the absence of Jim and the others.