Death Valley Drifter, page 11
“Yes,” she answered.
Russell straightened, his eyes shifting back to the man who had spoken. “What is this?”
“Sir, I am Captain Raoul Dupré. You are?”
“Alan Russell, former colonel in the United States cavalry and retired Apple Town sheriff. Answer the question.”
The captain’s eyes lingered a moment on the weapons that were convenient to the man sitting before him. “We are searching for a renegade, a thief who stole something before making the acquaintance of Mrs. Smith. We seek what he took, nothing more.”
“Why are Mrs. Smith and her son with you?”
“It was my hope, Sheriff Russell, that they could persuade him to cooperate, to avoid violence,” the captain answered pleasantly.
Russell leaned out again. “Mrs. Smith—did you come willingly on this hunt?”
She nodded stiffly. Russell did not believe her. The man behind her had his arms close to her waist, holding her. He looked back at the captain.
“Who are you to be pursuing an outlaw? By what authority?” Russell asked.
“You are a former sheriff,” the captain said. “By what authority do you ask?”
The Frenchman’s gaze continually shifted from the man to the buckboard. A good officer, he was obviously evaluating, moment to moment, the threat represented by a potential enemy.
“From your answers, or rather the avoidance of them, what you’re telling me is that these two are hostages,” Russell said angrily.
“It’s all right, Alan,” Jane said quickly.
“There, you hear?” the captain said.
Once again, Russell’s instincts were active. There had been an uncommon touch of insistence in Jane Smith’s voice. It told Russell that just the opposite was true. She wanted him to cooperate—and move on. But that would take some convincing.
“What did you stop me for?” Russell asked the captain.
“We believe that the man we seek came this way. Did you see any riders?”
“Not a one since I left Apple Town. This isn’t a thickly populated area. Not yet. But I know these trails. Where are you headed?”
“Just northwest,” the man answered.
“The old Butterfield Trail is the place to look, not the plains. There’s a road, after a kind. And a way station at the end of it.”
“Thank you,” the captain said. ‘We have maps.”
“This target of yours—is he American?”
“We do not know, sir,” Dupré said with a sudden show of impatience. “We only know what he stole from our party.”
“I am not without connections in law enforcement throughout these parts,” Russell said. “If you give me more information—”
“Thank you, no. Good day, sir.”
Russell looked out at Jane. The proximity of the man behind her crossed the bounds of decency. If it bothered her, she made no indication. After that brief exchange, she had assumed a reserve that was also unfamiliar to the outgoing woman.
The captain ordered his two men back into the formation. The pair left the side of the wagon, which made Russell feel suddenly less safe, like a bear on a cliff: big and exposed. Because of his specialty in the military, Russell had never been in the heart of battle. He had always been in a tree or on a ridge, picking off enemy observers or commanders. As sheriff, he had rarely felt any personal jeopardy. The worst that happened whenever he failed was someone else got shot and Russell would have to bring in the perpetrator.
This was different. His fingers tingled and his heart began to race. He was alert for any sign from the captain that an order other than “March” was forthcoming. Beyond his own safety, there was the matter of Mrs. Smith and her son. He did not desire to take a stand against a dozen guns, especially when gunfire was fickle enough to strike the innocent.
“Might I ride with Mrs. Smith for a bit?” Russell asked. “She and the boy might be more comfortable in the wagon.”
“We are going north. You are going south, are you not?”
“In fact, I was going south to bring Mrs. Smith supplies she requested.” He jerked a thumb behind him. “That’s what I have here. That’s all I have. If she’s not going to be home, there’s no reason for me to finish the journey.”
“Perhaps it would be best if you deliver the goods while we continue on our mission,” the captain said with finality as he motioned the line ahead.
Russell’s eyes moved to Mrs. Smith. As the woman neared, he could see the urgency in her taut expression. She did not want a showdown any more than he did.
But she does not, by God, seem like a woman who wants to be doing what she is doing, he told himself.
The former lawman waited a moment longer, then made a chucking sound in his cheek and guided his team around the company. As he passed them, he looked past Jane and saw Douglas Smith sitting on the other side of his mother. The boy did not look fearful; but then, he was a trusting boy.
They’ll find their man and let the Smiths go, Russell told himself. Best not to excite the situation.
Yet there was something else. He was snakebit by the idea that foreign agents would cart away any American—even a so-called thief. What would they do to get back whatever he was supposed to have taken? Torture the man? Threaten the mother and child? Perhaps do more than threaten? Accepting that possibility meant that he had spent his life fighting for America and its citizens for nothing.
There was a point that Russell had never crossed in his honest career, when impulse and virtue take control of common sense. He had reached the line between them a few thoughts back; now he was across it. If he were to allow these men to carry a family away in pursuit of a man who would likely get no trial, then he was unworthy of calling himself a man, let alone a lawman.
Russell stopped the wagon. He slid one of the six-shooters from its holster and held it low, beside his right thigh. Then he turned, half rising, and faced the front of the line.
“Captain! I just remembered something!”
The officer lifted his arm, and the riders stopped smartly. Dupré swung his tired charger from the front of the line and faced the retired peace officer.
“What have you remembered, Colonel Russell?”
“I remembered that this is America and you have no lawful business here. And something else.”
“I’m listening?”
“I don’t believe this lady and her son want to be part of your expedition—”
“Don’t!” Jane said, turning in the saddle. “Mr. Russell, it’s all right!”
“Mrs. Smith, it is anything but right.” Russell glared at the captain. “Tell you what, Captain. I’ll make a deal with you. To avoid gunfire, you let me take the boy.”
“Gunfire? You will die.”
“Yeah, I can count. But some of your men will fall, too,” Russell said. “Possibly you, sir.”
The captain was silent for a long moment. He had no time for this, yet a part of him appreciated the fortitude of this man and relished the challenge of an unexpected command decision. Life in Mexico was rote and dull. This was not. He noticed that the handgun had been removed from the holster. He saw the steady demeanor of the American, the unwavering eye. Against that, he weighed this bold and intolerable challenge to his authority. Most of the men had no idea what these two were saying. But they would know what had happened if the boy suddenly peeled off.
The captain said something in French. Something that had meat, Russell thought, judging by its duration. Several men became stiffly alert as the man with the boy broke from the line and trotted over. He passed in front of Russell so that the former lawman could see his own six-shooter low at his side and pointed up at the boy’s back. Neither Douglas nor Mrs. Smith was aware of the danger. The men, of course, would have heard the captain’s command.
“Colonel Russell, we are not monsters, nor do we wish to be savages. I commend your courage, but we really must be on our way. You will leave your guns on the plain, beginning with the one at your side. Then you will continue on your journey. When we return the Smiths, we will return your firearms.”
Though Jane could not see either of the drawn weapons, she had known from the start that weapons had to be in play. Russell’s stand, just that, would not in itself have softened the hard heart of Pharaoh.
“Mr. Russell?” the woman said plaintively, more to herself than to him.
Now Russell was perspiring. He knew he had three courses of action. One was to submit. Another was to fire at the man holding Douglas. Russell knew he could get the shot off fast and clean, throw himself over the back of the buckboard, and bring the rifle into play against the captain. But unless it was trained army stock—and it might not be—the Frenchman’s horse would buck at the shot. It was a lead-pipe cinch that Douglas would end up in the dirt—likely injured or worse. The column would probably be thrown into chaos with gunfire flying at them—and at the Smiths—from every direction.
The last option was to appear to cooperate and, when the column was out of sight, turn and follow them, as he had done to so many riders during the War, then wait for an opportunity to liberate the Smiths.
Without guns, that’ll be pretty difficult, he told himself. But it’ll be more difficult if I’m dead. Awright, Colonel. You created this newest situation. What’s your play?
The Frenchman seemed to be trying to give them all a way out. Reluctantly, Russell took it.
“Okay, Captain. I yield.”
“A sensible move.” Dupré’s voice was not a commendation but something thick and heartless.
Pinching the gun barrel between two fingers, Russell raised his sidearm slowly and, seeking out a clump of grass, tossed the gun down. He followed that with the other .44, still in its holster, and then the Winchester. Except when he bathed or when he slept, he had never been this far from a firearm since his pa first taught him to shoot. He felt no less a man, but he did feel quite naked.
At the captain’s command, the rider holding the boy raised his gun. It was aligned with the boy’s ribs. The French soldier pointed it at Russell and fired. The bullet caught the retired sheriff in the right shoulder, spinning him nearly a full turn. The second shot was immediate, higher, more precise, and it entered the rear of the man’s skull. Bone and brain were ejected from the front, a red-and-white rainbow that the dead man followed into the wagon. He landed limp, motionless save for the torrent of blood from his head. The wound created several streams that dripped through the floorboards of the wagon, splattering as they hit the ground like an ugly rain.
Jane screamed. Douglas froze in openmouthed horror. At a command from the officer, the same two men who had accompanied the wagon rode over to steady the two cart horses, which were rearing and colliding.
“Collect the weapons and horses and leave the wagon,” Dupré ordered in French. “It will only slow us.”
Jane went to dismount, and the man behind her grabbed her hard around the waist. At a signal from the officer, the man with the boy returned to the column. Douglas did not struggle with his own captor but screamed at the man to take his hands off his mother.
“Mrs. Smith, you and your boy will stop! Now!”
“Captain—Captain! You cannot just leave him!”
“Madam, you will not speak again. Is that quite clear?”
“It is, but I don’t care! You must bury—”
“I must?” The captain drew his own sidearm and fired into the air in a single fluid move. The horses barely shied. Unlike the cart horses, they had been inured to gunfire.
Dupré made no other sound, and the woman fell silent. Small moving shadows suddenly fell on the plain as buzzards began to move toward the human carrion. Putting her face in her hand, Jane wept until she heard the soft voice of her son beside her.
“Ma, it wasn’t our fault. You tried to tell him. We didn’t do nothing.”
She raised her face and forced a smile and did not bother to correct his English. “No, son. We did nothing. And Mr. Russell—he did what a good man was supposed to do.”
“I wish he hadn’t,” Douglas said.
“So do I.”
Jane wept as the line moved on, her face in her hands as if they could expunge the horror of what had been committed. She did not see Douglas glancing back, filling his eyes with the carnage they had left behind.
Filling his young heart with the wish that they would find Hank and that Hank would put a Bowie knife into the captain’s foul guts.
Suddenly, the captain stopped the line. He said something to the woman beside him. Nodding, she broke her horse from the column and rode back to where the Smiths were. She fell in beside Jane. This was Jane’s first good look at her. She was a swarthy woman with dark hair that was pulled back by a bow from her strong cheekbones. There was something aristocratic about her, despite the peasant dress.
“I do not speak English much,” the woman said. “I am Maria. The captain wishes you to ride here.” She pointed at her own saddle.
“With you? Why?”
“The men . . . they are looking backward too much.”
“Discipline is not my problem.”
“He will not like that,” Maria said.
“I don’t care.”
Douglas interrupted the conversation to request permission to dismount briefly.
Jane nodded and looked at Maria. “Tell our riders to stop. My boy needs a moment alone.”
“You ride with me, he can do that.”
Jane had not considered this to be a negotiation, but now it was. She weighed Douglas’ needs against her desire not to cooperate with anything the captain wanted.
“All right,” Jane said. “But we ride together, my boy and I. Either you come back here, or he comes up there.”
“I will ask.”
Maria told the two riders to break from the line and stop. While Douglas ran behind the line for a moment of privacy, Maria relayed Jane’s request. When she returned, Douglas was already on his horse.
“I ride here,” Maria said.
As Jane dismounted, Maria relayed the changed marching order to the two men. Jane’s former companion trotted ahead while Maria caught up to the still moving column and took his place.
“He is not happy,” Maria said.
“He does not deserve to be,” Jane replied.
“A word. The captain has a job. You make it easy, you have it easy.”
“The captain is a savage,” Jane said. “I do not believe anything I do henceforth will please him.”
“Then, señora, I do not think you will like very much what is ahead.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE PEARL WHITE stagecoach crossed the frontier with an urgency that challenged horse, driver, and passengers.
It was a conveyance that had been, literally, built for an emperor but had now become merely presidential. There were chips on the exterior and weather-beaten reds and regal shades inside. It was distinguished now only by the iron-reinforced luggage rack that helped to keep three large trunks from shifting.
The men riding in the rear boot were young and working in shifts. While one slept—uncomfortably, fitfully but enough—the other watched the surrounding terrain. They were dressed in the costume of their trade: a white shirt buttoned nearly to the top, dusters, and sturdy trousers. They wore wide-brimmed crown hats, pulled low in front to prevent them from blowing off. Up front, the two men were dressed in similar attire. The man riding shotgun was napping now; when he awoke, he would switch places with the driver. He wore a white kerchief across the bottom of his face. He lowered it only to fit a fresh plug of chewing tobacco in his yellow teeth—an indulgence that would never have been permitted were the passenger a noble personage. The driver wore no such covering. He relied on his full beard and mustache, and keeping his mouth closed, to prevent grit and bugs from landing inside.
Both men had swarthy skin. But unlike other drivers and shotgun riders crossing the southwestern plains, these men were not bronzed by the sun. They were from Veracruz, with ancient Indian blood from farther south.
Inside the rocking, jolting carriage were three male passengers, one of whom had an exceptional calm that the other two lacked. All were dressed in military garb with braid and brass buttons. One had a less martial, more ceremonial flair; the other two wore functional, traditional naval uniforms. These two men sat stiffly, restless as fish in a bowl, now and then peering out from behind the drawn shade on either side. Occasionally they took a sip of water from a canteen, offering some to the third man, who sat across from them, facing forward. He declined with a wave of his large hand. Both men had Spencer repeating carbines on their laps and wore Colt six-shot revolvers on their hips.
Each time the man sitting alone saw the weapons, he could not help but think that here was a portrait of progress. Not very many years before, he and his men had carried slingshots.
But the two sitting shoulder to shoulder were used to cannon and sword—weapons that were impractical or useless on the plains. The anxiety they felt was actually higher than when they had risked everything for the cause. Then, had they lost, had the emperor and his foreign supporters won, the men had only faced hanging or a firing squad. Now they faced something worse: failure. Losing victory would be worse than being unable to achieve it.
Yet that was what they faced if they and their American informants had anticipated wrongly.
The three men had said very little since leaving the inn in Ensenada, El Territorio Norte de Baja California. There, they had enjoyed not just a full breakfast, but the vocal acclamation of the owner and her staff. That was some four hours earlier, just before sunrise, after they had ridden through the night. There was nothing to say now. The plan was set and the decision made. The frigate would sail now from San Diego as if they were on it. They would arrive in San Francisco by coach to meet, with full panoply and cannon salutes, the ship where they were going to meet Ulysses Grant. The only stops they would make now over the next two days were at rivers and lakes to water the horses and in San Pedro to eat and freshen up before the final leg to San Francisco.
