Ralph Compton - Blood on the Gallows

Where was Clare? She had obviously tended to his wounds and must be close.

He sat up and looked around the cave again. Now he saw that the blankets were woven in an intricate Indian pattern, and a battered Henry rifle, its stock decorated with brass tacks, stood in a corner. Even the cooking pot on the fire was adorned with a primitive scroll design.

A sudden fear spiked at McBride’s belly. He and Clare had been captured by bloodthirsty savages!

Chapter 13

John McBride threw off his blanket and jumped to his feet. Suddenly the world went mad, cartwheeling around him before coming to a jarring halt only to stand on its end. He fell back onto his blanket, his head spinning, then lay there stunned.

He was as weak as a kitten, powerless among feathered fiends, perhaps the dreaded Apaches with their murderous tom-a-hawks he’d read about in the dime novels.

Then, as the cave slowly righted itself, he remembered that he’d fought Apaches before and none of them had worn feathers and they’d used rifles, not axes.

Well, someone had taken care of his wounds. If it was not Clare, judging by the blankets and cooking pot it had to be Indians. With a sense of relief he realized that they’d shown little interest in torturing him. On the contrary, they’d saved his life.

McBride sat up, slowly this time. ‘‘Clare!’’ he called. There was no answer. He tried again. ‘‘Clare, are you all right?’’

His words were met with an echoing silence.

The rain seemed heavier now, a sheeting downpour that sealed the entrance to the cave with steel. Wind gusted, driving drops into the sputtering fire, making the scarlet and orange flames dance in the ashy gloom.

McBride knew he was mentally far from normal. He would have to regain his memories. He forced himself to remember his time in the New York Police Department and the proud day he’d been promoted to detective sergeant at a salary of a thousand dollars per annum. Then he’d killed a powerful and vicious mobster’s son and been ordered by his superiors to flee to the western lands until it was safe to return to the city.

He had killed the notorious gunman Hack Burns in a fair fight and had suddenly become a named man, a gunfighter of reputation. Along the way he’d acquired four young Chinese wards who were now at a finishing school for girls back East. He’d been looking for work to pay for the girls’ education when he’d ridden into Rest and Be Thankful.

Now the events of the last few days—but was it just days?—came back to him with painful clarity, his escape from jail and the fight in Deadman Canyon.

He and Clare had been heading for her father’s ranch when he’d lost consciousness and fallen off his horse. Had Clare just left him there to die or had she gone for help? In any event, during her absence he’d been found by wandering Indians and taken to this cave.

But what kind of Indians? And why had they nursed a white man back to health?

Was it because . . .

The silhouette of a tall, skinny man appeared at the entrance of the cave. He looked as if he were standing behind a waterfall. The plump, rounded form of a woman joined him and together they stepped inside.

McBride recognized the man at once. It was Bear Miller.

‘‘Bear! I thought . . .’’

The man laughed, teeth showing white under his sweeping mustache. ‘‘Relax, mister, I’m not a bear. Name’s Luke Gravett and this here is my woman. She’s Tonto Apache and her name’s not important and even if you knowed it you couldn’t pronounce it anyhow.’’ The man called Gravett, who looked to be in his early fifties, stepped closer. ‘‘How you feelin’, young feller?’’

‘‘Fair to middling,’’ McBride answered. He tried to smile into the smoky, shadowed murk of the cave, raising his weakened voice above the fall of the downpour. ‘‘For a moment there I thought you were a man I once knew.’’

Gravett’s buckskins were black with rain, the foot-long fringes on the arms and chest designed to drain water from the deer hide. The buckskins had been chewed to buttery softness by Gravett’s woman and were decorated with Apache beadwork, intricate, geometrical patterns of turquoise, red, yellow and black. The man wore a gun belt adorned with large, silver Mexican conchos but the holster was plain black and carried an ivory-handled Colt.

He kneeled beside McBride and lifted a corner of the blanket. ‘‘The wounds are healing well,’’ he said. ‘‘You can thank my woman for that. I figgered you were finished, but she brought you back. When we found you she said a blue coyote had you in its jaws and was carrying you off to the underworld. But she used her spells and herbs to heal your wounds and I guess the coyote let go of you.’’

The Tonto woman was young—no more than twenty—her loose, jet-black hair framing a pretty, oval face. She was kneeling by the fire, McBride’s railroad watch to her ear, giggling.

Gravett’s eyes followed McBride’s. He smiled. ‘‘She likes to hear the watch tick. She thinks there’s magic in it.’’

‘‘It’s hers,’’ McBride said. ‘‘A thank-you for saving my life.’’

Gravett stood and said something in Apache to the woman. She looked at McBride and smiled, then put the watch to her ear again.

‘‘I’ve got something else of yours,’’ Gravett said. He stepped to the rear of the cave and came back with Sammy in his hands. ‘‘He was inside your slicker when we found you.’’

McBride took the kitten, stroked its head and said, ‘‘His name is Sammy. He rides with me.’’

‘‘He’s got an appetite like a cougar, I can tell you that,’’ the man said. ‘‘And, since I’m talking about eating, are you hungry?’’

McBride nodded. His eyes lifted to the man’s lean-jawed face. ‘‘But first tell me where I am and how long I’ve been here.’’

‘‘As to where you are, you’re in a lava cave in the Sunset Crater malpais. As to how long, me and my woman found you six days ago.’’

‘‘Six days . . . ?’’ McBride was stunned.

‘‘You’d fallen off your horse and you had lead in you. Mister, you were pretty much used up.’’

‘‘Name’s John McBride, by the way.’’

‘‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Me and the woman had come down from Archuleta Creek where she has kinfolk and we was headed for Lincoln town, where I have kinfolk. That’s when we found you on the trail and brought you here.’’

Lava caves are cold, even shallow ones, and McBride lifted his blanket over his chest. ‘‘I had a young woman with me. We were headed for her father’s ranch. Did you see her?’’

Gravett shook his head. ‘‘Didn’t see no woman, just you.’’

Something in the man’s voice gave McBride pause. Gravett was studying his face, and his gray eyes were all at once hard and speculating. ‘‘Would that young woman’s name be Clare and would her pa’s name be Hemp O’Neil?’’

‘‘Yes, Clare O’Neil is her name. She didn’t tell me her father’s name.’’

‘‘You said you was headed for Hemp’s ranch. You sure you wasn’t riding away from it?’’

McBride was puzzled and it must have shown because Gravett said, ‘‘Hemp O’Neil is dead. He was gunned down at the door of his cabin by a sharp-shooter. His daughter found the old man weltering in his blood. Hemp O’Neil was game as they come. I’m told he had his gun in his hand and had managed to get off one shot afore he died.’’

That was McBride’s second shock of the day, and he was about to get a third. ‘‘When did this happen?’’ he asked.

‘‘Six days ago,’’ Gravett answered. Then with subtle emphasis, ‘‘The day I found you shot on the trail.’’

The man’s accusing tone cut McBride like a knife. ‘‘I didn’t kill Hemp O’Neil. I was shot by Thad Harlan after some Mexicans broke me out of his jail in Rest and Be Thankful. He was planning to hang me.’’