Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

“Show yourself,” he called into the darkness. “Be ye man or wolf.”

Then he saw it.

A huge animal, black as sin, with eyes like fire.

The wolf loped from the brush into shadow and Wells, relieved, let it go and lowered his gun. Another thing the outlaw life had taught him was not to push his luck.

He heard brush scrape against . . . what?

Was the thing coming back?

Wells raised his gun and thumbed the hammer to full cock.

But it was Skate Santos who emerged through the curtain of the rain, his Henry angled across his chest.

“Dang it, Skate, I could’ve drilled you,” Wells said, his fear maturing into anger. “You know better than to come at a man like that.”

“I heard the wolf,” Santos said. “I wanted its pelt.”

“It was huge, the biggest lobo I ever seen,” Wells said.

“Darkness always makes the wolf seem bigger,” Santos said.

Wells tried a smile. “Skate, don’t you ever sleep?”

The breed said nothing and walked toward the cabin.

“Skate, they say you’re a skinwalker,” Wells called out after him.

Santos stopped, and then turned.

“Maybe they’re right,” he said.

Chapter 24

“How is she?” Sam Sawyer said.

“The bullet was not deep,” the Kiowa said.

“Why in tarnation don’t you ask me?” Lorelei said, lifting her head from Hannah’s lap.

“How are you?” Sam said.

“Did James mangle me?”

“No, he didn’t,” Hannah Stewart said. “You’ll only have a small scar.”

“Only, the schoolma’am says,” Lorelei said. “ Only a small scar.”

She glared at Sam in the thin darkness. “What are you looking at?” she said, the whiskey still in her.

“You,” Sam said. He smiled and all the winter fled his face. “I heard you caterwauling all the way to the mouth of the arroyo.”

“I reckon you’d caterwaul too if you was bein’ butchered by a wild Apache,” Lorelei said.

“I’m a tame Kiowa,” James said.

“Same difference,” Lorelei said.

“Rain’s almost gone,” Sam said to the woman, “and it will be light soon. We got to move. Can you ride?”

“You shot my horse.”

“I know,” Sam said. Then almost sadly: “I shot the skewbald pony stone dead. Mayor Meriwether up at Lost Mine was gonna pay me forty dollars to bring it back.”

“That was Meriwether’s hoss you shot?” Lorelei said.

“Nah, his daughter’s hoss.”

“Don’t show your face back in Lost Mine again,” Lorelei said. “Jerome T. will shoot you fer sure. He sets store by that fat, pimple-faced kid of his.”

She struggled to rise and Hannah helped her to a sitting position, but Lorelei fell back again. Lorelei groaned and touched her forehead. “Whoa, too much whiskey,” she said. “Let’s give it another whirl, schoolma’am.”

After a lot of help from Hannah, Lorelei finally got to her feet and carefully pulled the shoulder of her dress over her wound. The Kiowa had bound it up with a bandage torn from Hannah’s petticoat, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

The rain had thinned to a mist, and the newly bathed morning was coming in clean. Somewhere, gray among the green hills, a wolf howled, then fell silent.

“Lorelei, can you ride?” Hannah said.

“I sure can’t walk,” Lorelei said.

“We’ll let you set the pace, ma’am,” Sam said. “When you say go, we go. When you say stop, we stop.”

“Got it all figured out, don’t you?” Lorelei said.

“I reckon,” Sam said, his expression defensive.

“How’s all the starting and stopping going to go with Apaches around and Dan Wells on our back trail?” Lorelei said.

“No use building houses on a bridge we ain’t come to yet,” Sam said.

“So you’re a philosopher as well as a hoss shooter,” Lorelei said.

“Sammy speak truth,” the Kiowa said. “Long ride no good for you, woman. You must take it easy.”

“I’ll keep up,” Lorelei said. “Just knowing that Dan Wells is tracking me will keep me upright on the horse. You better believe it.”

* * *

Sam Sawyer and the others left the arroyo as the night brightened into morning. To the west a single blue star still stood sentinel in a copper-colored sky, and the clear air smelled of sage and the high timber.

Hannah and Lori rode together, and Lorelei, complaining and cussing, shifted constantly as she tried to get comfortable on the bony back of the Kiowa’s paint.

They’d agreed that Silver City was the only place they’d find protection from the Wells brothers and Sheriff Vic Moseley, and the boomtown was now their destination.

“Sam, do you really think there are any Apaches between here and Silver City?” Hannah said.

“Maybe,” Sam said. “Apaches come and go. There’s no telling where they’ll show up next.”

“You sound like you fit Apaches before,” Lorelei said.

“I did, a few days ago or a week ago,” Sam said. “I don’t rightly recollect.”

“How come you still got your hair?” Lorelei said. “You ain’t exactly Kit Carson, are you?”

“I sceered them off, I reckon,” Sam said, stretching the truth as much as he dared.

“But, Sam, they took your horse, saddle, and rifle, didn’t they?” Hannah said.

“Yeah,” Sam said, “on account of how the red devils snuck up on me. Plumb took me by surprise.”

Lorelei laughed, then instantly regretted it as she winced in pain. Finally she said, “See, we got nothing to worry about, schoolma’am. Ol’ Dan’l Boone here will run off any Apaches we meet. Ain’t that so, Sam?”

“That’s right,” Sam said in a small voice.

“White men talk big when it comes to Apaches,” James said. “But when the talkin’ is done and the shootin’ starts, they ain’t so brave.”

“I’m sure Sam can handle any difficulties we might have with the savages,” Hannah said.

“Do you really believe that, schoolma’am?” Lorelei said.

“Of course I do.”

Lorelei shook her head. “Then God help us all.”

* * *

After he spoke to James about the lay of the land, Sam’s plan was to head for the sheltering cliffs of Hell’s Half Acre, then swing southeast across rolling timber country directly for Bear Mountain. Once beyond the peak, they’d see Silver City and their salvation in the middle distance.

It was a plan . . . a plan that all too soon would be overwritten by the harsh realities of a hard land and harder men.

Chapter 25

Skate Santos sat his horse and lifted his nose to the wind. “You were right, Indian-eater,” he said. “They are not to the north of us.”

Dan Wells’s anger flared. “Don’t call me that, Skate,” he said. “I don’t like that name.”

The breed smiled. “It is said that you ate a Comanche.”

“Yeah, a long time ago, and I ain’t been that hungry since.”

“Then you are an Indian-eater, are you not?”

Wells was mad enough to kill, but he let it go. Right now he needed Santos, but the breed’s time would come.

Jake leaned over in the saddle and whispered to his brother, “Now what is he sniffing?”

Santos looked at Jake with his hellfire eyes.

“There is an Apache who sits a gray pony and watches,” he said.

“Where?” Dan Wells said, reaching for his booted rifle.

“He is far, and he doesn’t see us,” Santos said. “He will be there forever, watching.”

“Watching fer what?” Wells said.

The breed shook his head. “I do not know.”

Dan’s anger had cooled some, but still honed him an edge.

“Then tell us something you do know,” he said. “Where is the murderer?”

“South, heading for Silver City.” Santos hesitated a heartbeat, then said, “But now there are five.”