Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

Her face suddenly quiet, she said, “If I fail Sam, if I turn my back and do nothing, I fear, like the Apache, my soul will haunt this place for all time, forever trying to undo a terrible failure.”

Lorelei rounded on the Kiowa. “Quit that racket!” she yelled. When the man’s chant fell silent, she redirected her attention to Hannah. “A right pretty speech, schoolma’am, but lay your cards on the table where we can all see them—do we go or not?”

“Yes, but we don’t go. I go,” Hannah said. “Lori will stay with you and James. You’ll find a place to hide in the hills and I’ll head to the Gila alone.”

“Asking a lot of yourself, ain’t you?” Lorelei said.

Hannah smiled. “Maybe, but I’m the only one with a gun.”

Lorelei thought for a few moments, then said, “All right, I’m all wore out, so we’ll play it your way. But you scout the place well, and if it looks like the deck is stacked against you, then light a shuck the hell out of there.”

Hannah smiled. “I will. Believe me, I’m not that brave. It’s just that tomorrow and the next day and the day after that I want to look myself in the mirror and be able to say, ‘Well, Hannah, at least you tried.’”

“I hope the old coot’s worth it, is all,” Lorelei said.

She scowled at the Kiowa. “Injun, you’ll find us a hideout in the hills where’s there’s water. Understand?”

“I will find such a place,” James said.

“And no more singing, you hear? Blasted chant spooks the tar out of me, makes me think of death and Judgment Day.”

“I sing for the dead Apache, that he may find peace,” the Indian said.

“Yeah, well, don’t do it again. Let him find his own peace without your help.”

* * *

The Kiowa was as good as his word and led Hannah and Lorelei to a wedge-shaped break in the Pinos Altos foothills where a trickle of water dripped into a stone tank.

Lori, sensing something was amiss, clung to her mother’s neck and when Hannah mounted her horse, the child struggled to free herself from the Kiowa’s arms.

Lorelei, her face troubled, said, “Schoolma’am, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

Lori broke free of James and ran to Hannah’s horse. The woman leaned down and lifted the girl in front of her.

“I’ll be back soon, I promise,” she said, hugging Lori close. “I’ll only be gone a little while.”

“I’ll go with you, Ma,” the child said. “We’ll go home now.”

Tears reddening her eyes, Hannah said to Lorelei, “Am I doing the right thing?”

“Answering as a fallen woman, my answer is, ‘Hell no,’” Lorelei said. “But as a woman who wants to save the man she loves, then the answer is yes.”

“I’m not really sure that I love Sam,” Hannah said.

“The answer is still yes.”

“I’m the only chance he’s got. There’s only me, no one else.”

“Schoolma’am, are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“Both of us, I guess.”

Lorelei reached up and took Lori from her mother. The child immediately kicked and cried, but calmed down just a little when Lorelei told her they’d go pick wildflowers.

“Go,” she told Hannah. “Now, before you change your mind.”

“Lorelei—” Hannah began.

“It’s all right,” the other woman said. “I’ll take care of her until you get back.”

“But your shoulder—”

“Go, schoolma’am! Get out of here and find your man.”

Hannah kicked her horse into motion and rode out of the break.

Behind her, she heard her child’s cries, and her eyes streamed, as though she were riding into a bitter storm of sleet.

She thought she might go on crying for the rest of her life.

Chapter 35

Skate Santos was not a trusting man.

He pushed Sam ahead of him along the south bank of the Gila, then ordered him to draw rein when the Wells place came in sight around a bend of the river.

Santos took an old-fashioned ship’s telescope from his saddlebags and scanned the ledge and the dugouts. There was no sign of life apart from a sleeping hog and a single pecking chicken.

The horses could be in the barn out of sight, but someone should be around at this time of day, Wells’s women or a few prospectors down from the Mogollon Mountains.

Santos didn’t like the stillness and felt a familiar stirring inside him that warned of danger.

“Nobody’s to home,” Sam said, sensing the other man’s tension. “Hell, Santos, they were all shot up, so maybe they’re dead.”

Santos made no answer. He loosened the Remingtons in their holsters and slid a Henry rifle from the boot under his knee. He levered a round into the chamber and said to Sam, “We will take a look, me and you.”

“Could be a whole passel o’ buffalo soldiers lying for you up there, Santos,” Sam said. “Maybe they know you was part of the payroll robbery.”

The breed smiled. “Well, that won’t matter to you, because once the firing starts I’ll kill you.”

“Santos,” Sam said, “damn me, if you ain’t the most unsociable cuss I ever met in my life, and I’ve met a few.”

“Keep talking, old man,” the breed said. “You’ll be quiet forever soon enough.”

* * *

Santos made Sam ride ahead of him as they took the ancient talus slope to the rock ledge.

As they walked their horses toward the saloon, they heard the man’s screams for the first time.

The grating cries came from the women’s cabin. The terrible shrieks were not constant, more a counterpoint to the vile curses the man roared in a high-pitched, pain-shredded voice.

Whoever he was, he cursed himself and the mother who bore him, and he called on Satan to consign all humanity, every man, woman, and child, to the lowest pits of hell.

As Santos and Sam drew rein, the cursing changed, became a shrill wail, the same words repeating over and over again.

“Oh, help me . . . help me . . . help me . . . Oh, somebody help me . . . help me somebody . . . help me . . .”

“What is that?” Sam said. “It’s spookin’ the tar out of me.”

Santos grunted deep in his chest. “I’ve heard such a thing before,” he said. “Only a gut-shot man screams like that.”

“Who is it?”

“When a man dies of a belly wound, his voice is no longer his own,” Santos said. “It becomes the tongue of pain. I don’t know who he is.”

“Then God hasten his end, whoever the poor soul might be,” Sam said.

Santos shook his head and looked at the older man as though he’d just crawled out from under a rock.

“How did you manage to live this long?” he said.

Sam had no chance to answer. The door swung open and Dan Wells stepped outside. He wore a fat bandage around his left thigh and held a Colt in each hand. When he saw Sam, the hard planes of his face chiseled into a scowl.

“You got him, Skate,” Wells said. “You brought him to me.”

“Said I would.” Santos glanced at the man’s thigh. “Caught a bullet, Danny, huh?”

“Yeah, after we stopped the payroll wagon, we was jumped by cavalry. Jake is wounded and Moseley took a round in the belly. I’ve been listening to him scream and holler like that for hours.”

“Too bad,” Santos said. He thumbed in the direction of Sam. “What do you want done with him?”

“Bring him inside and we’ll see what Jake has in mind.”

* * *

Sam felt like a condemned man taking the last step to the gallows. He could see no way out his predicament, unless the cavalry came to his rescue. The chance of that was slim to none, and slim was already saddling up to leave town.

His heart heavy and the fear in his belly tangling itself into knots, Sam was pushed into the saloon by Santos.