Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

“Not for me, thank you,” Hannah said.

“Take a drink, sister,” Lorelei said. “After what you’ve been through, you need it.”

Hannah took a drink from the bottle, coughed, and handed it back.

“It’s strong,” she said, as though she’d just eaten a hot pepper.

Lorelei nodded. “Matt Laurie made good whiskey, may he burn in hell.”

She tilted the bottle to her mouth and drank deep, then drank again.

“All right,” she said, “cut away. Just remember that I’m a working gal and I need my shoulders the way they are.”

The Kiowa swallowed hard, then dug the point of his knife into the woman’s shoulder.

Lorelei screamed.

Chapter 23

“You sure that’s the cabin?” Vic Moseley said.

“Yeah, that’s the place all right,” Dan Wells said. “The breed probably has his Henry trained on us right now.”

“In this rain he’ll be lucky if he can see a foot outside the damn window,” Moseley said.

The sheriff was in a foul mood, hungry, soaked to the skin, and tired of this wild-goose chase to find a man who’d vanished into thin air.

“He can see us, depend on it,” Dan Wells said. “The breed can see in the dark like a cat.”

“Some say he ain’t human,” Jake Wells said. “They say he’s what the Navajo call a shape-shifter, a man by day an’ a wolf by night.”

Dan grinned. “I’ll tell you what he is. He’s half Apache, half Mexican, and all buzzard.” He looked at Moseley through the sheeting rain. “How many fingers an’ toes you got, Moseley?”

“Twenty, if I’m countin’ right.”

“You’re countin’ right. That’s how many men Skate Santos has killed, so step careful when you’re around him.”

“The breed ain’t been born yet I’ll step careful around,” Moseley said.

Dan Wells recognized the empty talk of a hollow man and said nothing, but his contemptuous eyes spoke volumes.

“Hello the cabin!” he yelled. “You in there, Skate?”

A voice from inside, harsh and demanding: “What the hell do you want, Wells?” A moment’s silence, then: “Where’s Jeptha? He sneaking around the back?”

“Jeptha’s dead, Skate,” Wells said. “Shot by a low-down skunk.”

Lightning split the dark sky; then thunder roared. From somewhere behind the cabin, a horse whinnied.

“I didn’t kill him,” Santos said. “Thought about it a time or two, though.”

“I know you didn’t kill my brother, Skate,” Wells said. “But I want you to find the man who did.”

“You know my rates,” Santos hollered. “Five dollars a day and another hundred if I do the killing. I don’t come cheap, Wells, so if you ain’t got the money, ride on out of here and count yourself lucky that you still got your hair.”

“I got the money, Skate. Now, can we come in and talk? It’s wet out here and I could use a cup of coffee.”

A silence from the cabin stretched long. Finally Santos said, “Put up your horses in the barn out back. Then come around and walk in by the front door. If I see a man coming at me from the barn, I’ll kill him.”

“Trusting soul, that breed, ain’t he?” Dan Wells said. “One day I’ll put a bullet in his hide and kick his teeth in while he lies a-dying.”

* * *

“Who is he?” Skate Santos said, glaring at Moseley.

“Sheriff from up Haystack Mountain way,” Dan Wells said. “You don’t need to know his name.”

“I don’t like lawmen,” Santos said. “They stink up the place.”

Wells looked at Moseley, gauging his reaction. The man had said he’d never yet met the breed he’d step around.

He’d met one now.

It showed in the way the sheriff sat at the table in the Santos cabin, all drawn in on himself, his mouth a tight gash under his mustache.

The breed was taller than average and muscular. His black hair, as soft and clean as a woman’s, fell in glossy waves over his wide shoulders. In an age when men wore mustaches or beards, Santos was clean-shaven.

He wore a pair of ivory-handled Remingtons in shoulder holsters, and a knife hung from a beaded sheath on his belt.

Four years before, during Oscar Wilde’s 1882 trip to the United States, a judge in Denver had compared Skate Santos’s features to those of the poet. Santos loved the comparison, and after serving three days for assault, he had gone out of his way to meet Wilde and shake his hand.

The breed had a face of a poet, but he had the soul of a killer, and when Moseley met his eyes he glanced quickly away, unnerved by their obsidian fire.

“Who is this man you wish me to kill?” Santos said to Dan Wells.

“Not kill, Skate, track. I want him alive.”

“Why did he kill Jeptha?”

“For no reason, Skate,” Jake Wells said. “He shot down one of the finest men who ever lived.”

“Jeptha was a snake,” Santos said. “He needed killing.”

Jake half rose to his feet, his face angry, but the breed’s smiling taunt froze him. “Do you really want to draw down on me, Jake?”

The big man thought about it for a split second, then sat again.

“Jake, behave yourself,” Dan Wells said. “Remember, we’re a guest in Skate’s house.”

“Ah yes,” Santos said, “and how remiss of me.”

He yelled something in Spanish and a pretty Mexican girl stepped out of the bedroom, her face sullen.

“Coffee for our guests,” he said.

“We have no coffee,” the girl said.

Santos dropped his head. “Then I am shamed in my own home.”

He turned, crossed the floor, grabbed the girl by her upper arm, and shook her.

“Why is there no coffee?”

“The coffee ran out a week ago,” the girl said, her eyes defiant. “You know that.”

Santos pushed the girl toward the bedroom door. “You shame me, woman. Get out of my sight.”

As the girl flounced out of the room, Dan said, “Jake, go get a bottle from my saddlebags.”

“No!” Santos said. “I don’t allow liquor in my home. It is the drink of the Devil.”

Thunder roared and shook the flimsy cabin. When the noise died away to a rumble, Santos said, “You will find shelter in the barn. We will leave at first light.”

“We’ll head south, Skate,” Dan Wells said. “We already tracked north, and the man is not there.”

“We’ll head where I say we head,” Santos said. “Now leave.”

* * *

As the three men walked their horses to the barn, Jake vented his suppressed rage. “Dan, when are we gonna gun that breed?” he said.

“Soon. When the job is done and we have your brother’s killer.”

“I want him,” Jake said. “And I want his woman.”

“Sure, Jake,” Dan said, rain running off his hat brim. He looked at his brother like a fond papa chiding a bragging child. “Just make sure his back is turned when you skin iron.”

* * *

Dan Wells woke from sleep and his hand moved to his gun, a reflex born of his calling. He lay still, listening into the night.

There! He heard it again, the hollow, haunting howl of the hunting wolf.

Gun in hand, Wells rose to his feet. He stepped over the snoring bodies of Jake and Moseley and walked to the door of the barn.

The rain had lessened but still ticked off the top of the doorway and thunder boomed, though keeping its distance.

Off to his left, Wells heard a rustle in the shadowed underbrush. He moved toward the sound, his Colt up and ready.

The wolf howled again, close, and froze Wells in his tracks. Hair rose on the back of his neck, and his mouth was suddenly dry.

A growl, low, menacing, a sound as ancient as time, rose from the brush in front of Wells. No, it was behind him! No, to his right! To his left! All around him!

Wells was tough and he had sand. A lesser man would cut and run, but the outlaw backed toward the barn door, his restless eyes searching the night.