Springfield 1880, page 10
“You will see that you have the very best mules a man could buy in Sonora,” Death said.
“Or steal.” Jed Foster laughed.
“You brought gold, my friend, to pay for these mules.”
“That is what we agreed upon, my friend . . . Mister. . . Death.”
“My friend. It is your money. It is your troubles. But you are new to our country. You are a norteamericano . You . . . well . . . if I may be of your assistance, I should point out that you are buying too many mules, my friend. I count four wagons. Those wagons have heavy loads—eso es verdad—but you are not pulling a load of borax across Nevada or California. You have more than three times as many mules as you need for four wagons.”
“Gracias, amigo,” Foster said. “But I am a man who likes to be prepared.”
“As do I, amigo,” Death said. “Jimenez.”
The rider with the machete swung down from his saddle.
At that moment, two of Foster’s men—two of the men he thought he might be able to trust—stepped outside. Reese, the lanky Texan, came out of The Cantina That Has No Name, holding a double-barreled Parker shotgun in his arms, with two belted guns on his hip. Foster had hoped the young Mexican girl would come out, too, but she was staying inside.
From around the corner of Mariscos stepped the blond-headed kid, Whittaker. He wore two Colts on his hips. He looked ready. The damned fool even looked eager.
“You have friends, amigo!” Death slapped his thigh.
“It’s good to have friends,” Foster said.
“But three men, including you, señor. And four wagons? That does not quite add up.”
“My men had a long journey,” Foster said. “The others need to rest. Me . . . and my two compadres . . . that’s all I need to finish this little transaction.”
“¿Es eso cierto?” the Mexican asked.
“It is very true,” Foster said.
The Mexican called Death laughed again. He raised his hand to push back his massive sombrero. “Señor, when you hired me to bring you many, many, many excellent mules, I was pleased. But when we rode into this fine little town, what pleased me even more was when I looked at the wagons. The wagons, if my mind is not playing tricks on me after such an arduous ride in the heat of the day and in the cold of the desert night, appear to belong to the Yanqui Army. And you have left the boxes out for all eyes to see. I read something that says . . . Springfield . . . Armory?”
“Your vision is perfect. Your English is el mas excelente.” Foster touched his lips with his fingertips in a mock kiss.
“My English,” Death said. “It is not that excellent. This word . . . armory. Does that mean . . . arsenal?”
“It means death, Death.” Foster lowered his hand closer to the butt of his Colt.
The Mexican who called himself Death laughed and brought his right hand up. He pointed dramatically at Foster. “You”—Death shook his head—“are a man who makes me laugh. Por Dios, I wish you could ride with me.” He shook his head. “Let us celebrate, my friends. Let us dance. Let us—” His hand slapped his thigh.
But Foster knew that little game. He filled his hand with the Colt in the holster and the Mexican named Death swept his hand from his thigh to one of his ivory-handled Colts in the belt around his belly.
CHAPTER 29
The bullet from Jed Foster’s .45-caliber Colt caught the man named Death in his side. It would have drilled him in the belly had not his horse shied away as Death palmed his ivory-handled pistol.
“Por trueno, como esto duele,” the man named Death moaned as he toppled out of his saddle and landed in the dust.
Foster had to think a bullet in the side, probably perforating the blowhard’s liver indeed must hurt. The man named Death pushed himself up, trying to find the Colt he had dropped, but the horse he had been riding brought a hoof down on the man’s shoulder blade. Death groaned. The horse galloped back toward the southern edge of town, kicking Death in his right arm as it galloped away from what was thick with white smoke from pistols shooting black powder.
The kid named Whittaker whipped a Colt from his holster. Foster kept the barrel trained on the body of the Mexican named Death, who rolled over onto his back and moaned and cried and cursed. Foster watched the blond-headed kid. The boy’s speed seemed to blur. Like a lightning flash, you saw it and then you didn’t.
The Colt spat out death and flame, and two bullets that sounded like one shot drilled the man with the machete against the corral. The big blade with the long walnut handle dropped to the ground. The man groaned and reached for something behind his back. Two more bullets smashed his head.
Jed Foster wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him. It appeared that one of the bullets from the kid’s Colt had drilled through the machete-wielder’s left eyeball while the second shot smashed through the orb in his right eye socket.
It was no illusion. Because blood pooled out of the two holes in the man’s head, and the big Mexican who carried a machete spun around, tried to keep himself from falling by clutching for the top rails. His muscles refused to cooperate, however, and he was on the ground, rolling over and coming to a stop. Luckily for anyone who did not like the sight of blood or gore, the dead man lay facedown on the street. Facedown . . . meaning . . . what was left of his face.
Reese, the savvy Texas gunman, was showing his prowess, too. The big Remington revolver belted on his right hip shot out and drilled one of the riders in the throat. The man coughed blood out of his mouth as the pistol went somersaulting through the air. He landed in the dust as blood spurted from the ghastly hole above his Adam’s apple. The man’s left foot remained caught in his stirrup, and the palomino gelding thundered out of the village of Rancho Los Cielos, dragging its rider through the dust. The body bounced this way and that, hit a stump, a mound of mule droppings, and was pulled through a patch of prickly pear before horse and the rider it was dragging rounded the bend and disappeared as though heading for the border with the United States.
That left one of Death’s riders. He had leaped out of the saddle, pulling the Spencer repeating rifle with him. The last of the Mexican mule thieves brought the stock of the .56-caliber carbine to his shoulder, and his finger found the trigger. But that’s all he managed to do.
The man named Reese dropped to a knee, aimed, and sent a bullet into the man’s upper right arm, shattering a bone. The heavy Spencer tumbled out of the man’s hands and fell into the dust after a slug from the kid’s Colt ripped through the man’s left side, just above the gunbelt and holster. It exited the right side and tore a savage hole a bit higher up than the entrance wound. That dropped the bandit to his knees, and Jed Foster put a bullet in the center of the man’s head. The killer’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, but he still did not fall until all three men fired simultaneously.
The bandit spun around, twisted as doing some crazy dance, and fell into the dust, his body shuddering as life ebbed away and the man discovered what hell was really like.
Inside the corral, the horses were braying, snorting, and dancing nervously around, but as far as Jed Foster could say, no stray bullets had hit any of the animals. He would need those mules, all of those mules, soon. Real soon. From inside Mariscos and The Cantina That Has No Name, the men he had hired slowly emerged. Most held their weapons loosely. Foster kept his eye on the entrance to The Cantina That Has No Name as he walked to the writhing figure of the bandit who called himself Death.
Foster stood over the pathetic little figure and leveled the Colt so that the barrel was aimed at the man’s forehead. Foster’s eyes, however, remained on the cantina. Eventually, the pretty girl with the stunning eyes and the black, black hair stepped outside.
That’s when Foster smiled and looked down at the dying mule thief.
“Death,” he said, “you’re dead.”
The Colt barked. The slug blew a hole in the man’s head, and Death died without another word.
Foster walked away from the dead men. He plunged the empty shells from the cylinder of his Colt and quickly reloaded. He stopped at Reese and smiled.
“You’re not bad, my friend. Thanks.”
He moved over to the kid. “You’re almost as fast as I am, Whittaker. Thanks for taking a hand.”
He turned back and barked at the men who had watched from the safety of the two businesses of Rancho Los Cielos. “The rest of you, check those mules. Make sure every last one of them is all right. Then get those dead idiots off the street and out of my sight. Bury them. Bury them deep. And then someone better start breakfast. I’m hungry.”
By that point he was standing in front of the black-eyed beauty.
He holstered his Colt and removed his hat. “Ma’am,” he said, affecting a Southern accent, “I sure hope those four men were not friends of yours.”
“I have no friends,” she told him, and walked back into La Cantina Que No Tiene Nombre, The Cantina That Has No Name.
CHAPTER 30
Buzzards circled overhead, waiting for the men to leave. The short man and the bald man staggered over to the three men.
“Finished?” Holden asked as he tightened the cinch on his saddle.
“W-well . . . y-yeah . . . I-I m-mean . . .” the bald one stammered.
“I suppose that’ll do.” Holden glanced at Masterson, who sat on a rock while he cleaned his revolvers, and then at Sam Florence, who stood in the shade, looking at the ridgetop to make sure the Apaches did not come back.
“All right,” Holden said, and pointed to the rockslide. “This is your lucky day. Get your horses, all of them, and ride out. That way.”
He pointed down the trail.
The two men looked at each other uneasily.
“That’s why you came here, isn’t it?” Holden put his right hand on the butt of the Schofield. “Those two miners you planned to kill, they’re back there. You’re going to go to them, both of you. You’re going to bury them, and you best do a better job than you’ve done here. Bury them. And take the horses and keep riding north.”
“You mean . . .” the bald one said, “you ain’t gonna kill us? Or turn us in to the law?”
“Shut up!” snapped the short one.
“If you don’t get out of my sight, I might forget that I’m an officer and a gentleman.” Holden tugged the big .45 halfway out of the holster. The two men ran, but the short one remembered the bay horse Masterson had used, hurried back, grabbed the reins, and pulled the horse toward the rockslide.
“Hey!” Ben Masterson rose.
The short one stopped and turned with a petrified grimace.
“I’d sell those horses as quick as you can and keep riding,” Masterson said. “Out of the territory and as far away as you can get. Montana, maybe. Or Canada. Maybe the North Pole. Because if I see either one of you again, I’m shooting. Shooting to kill.”
The man scurried away to join his running, stumbling, sweating comrade.
* * *
The army men rode easily through the canyon, which caused Grat Holden to bite his lower lip.
He risked talking. “We don’t have much time.”
“You lope through here, Holden,” the old scout said, “and your horse’ll either step into a hole or trip over a rock, and if you don’t break your neck in the fall, you’ll be afoot.” Sam Florence turned his head and spit tobacco juice onto a tarantula. “We’ll make up time, sonny, when we’re in flatter country.”
Sighing, Holden nodded. “You’re right.”
“Usually am,” Florence said, and laughed. “Don’t believe that, boy.”
“What are you doin’ here?” Masterson asked.
“Ridin’,” Florence answered. “And mindin’ my own business.”
Masterson’s face flushed, but Holden said, “You weren’t minding your business when you saved our bacon back there.”
“Old habits,” Florence said.
Having a conversation with Sam Florence took a lot out of a person.
“Did the colonel send you?” Masterson asked.
Florence chuckled. “Nope.”
“Where are you going?” Masterson asked.
The smile left the old scout’s bronzed face. “Boy, you got a lot to learn about this deal I call mindin’ your own business.”
Holden sensed a fight, but Masterson said, “And I guess you were mindin’ your own business when you brought word to Colonel Smythe about Foster and those guns bein’ in Rancho Los Cielos.”
“Happens that that was my business.”
“I don’t understand,” Masterson said.
“That’s your business.”
A thought hit Holden, and he belted it out before he had time to reconsider. “Maybe we can make this your business, Mr. Florence.” He waited until the scout, riding slightly in front of him and Masterson, turned in the saddle and eyed the lieutenant. “You could help us.”
“I did that back at the canyon.”
“Which wasn’t mindin’ your own business,” Masterson said.
“Like I told you already—”
“Old habits.” Holden cut him off. “I know. So maybe another old habit is hard to break.”
“Such as?” Florence turned back to look at the trail ahead.
“Helping your country.”
Florence laughed. “You mean helping a shavetail lieutenant who doesn’t want to face court-martial. Or a real horse’s arse of a sergeant who should be spendin’ the next ten years in a federal penitentiary.”
“I mean,” Holden said, “preventing both sides of the border from turning into a slaughterhouse.”
The scout’s head bobbed. Without turning around he said, “Then maybe I ought to take the advice you give ’em two scoundrels back down the canyon. Go north. See what Montana looks like. Or Canada. And I bet, after fifteen years in Arizona Territory, the North Pole would feel a bit nice. Cool me off some. Always wondered what a seal tastes like. And I ain’t never seen none of those Eskimos ’cept a drawin’ oncet in Harper’s.”
“You are a piece of work, old man,” Masterson said.
“I’m alive.”
“We’d like to stay alive, too,” Holden said.
They rode a few more yards in silence while Sam Florence studied the country, the only sound coming from the horse’s hooves and the creaking of leather.
At length, he said, “Put it plain, youngster.”
He reined in the pinto.
Masterson pulled up his Morgan on the old scout’s right. Grat Holden stopped on Florence’s left.
“All right,” Holden said. “The colonel sent us to get back those Springfield rifles. Just the two of us.”
Florence spit again. “You know why he done that, don’t you?”
“I can guess,” Holden said.
Florence chuckled. “It ain’t no guess. He’s sendin’ you south to get killed, which will save him from findin’ hisself before either a Board of Inquiry or a full-blowed court-martial. He can blame you and Foster for the loss of the weapons. Now, he’ll still have to answer a few questions like how come he took so long to report the rifles stole, but he’ll figure somethin’ out. And the Army brass ain’t knowed for bein’ the smartest thinkers, and with those guns in the hands of Apaches or Mexican bandits or, most likely, that crazy ol’ coot who thinks he can bring back the Confederacy, the Army will have plenty of work to do. They’ll even need a stupid, worthless martinet of an idiot, Carlton Smythe, colonel, U S of A.”
He spit. “I’ve done talked myself out, boys. You speak if you want.”
“All right,” Holden said. “Neither of us knows Mexico. You do. Masterson knows Apaches better than I do. He’s been on the frontier longer. You know more than either of us. And you know who we’ll be dealing with. You know El Cañon de Los Delores, The Canyon of The Sorrows, which is where Foster will be selling the rifles.”
Florence stopped him by lifting his head. He corrected, “Where you think Foster’ll be.”
Where he’s got to be, Holden thought. Where he must be . . . for all of our sakes.
When Holden did not respond, the scout said, “And remember, back in the colonel’s office, I said that I’d never been to Los Delores.”
Holden came to the point: “You can find it better than we can. Will you help us?”
The silence lasted forever.
Shaking his head, the scout sank a bit into the saddle.
“Can’t do it.” Sam Florence kicked the pinto into a walk, and he remembered.
CHAPTER 31
“Remember the date, Sergeant. Eleven May, 1864.” General J.E.B. Stuart circled his prancing horse in front of Sam Florence on the road out of Richmond. “Today we win the war. Or we die trying.”
Florence smiled. “Not you, General.” He thought, But me? Most likely. And most of the rest of us.
Florence could smell the cologne on J.E.B. Stuart. Barely thirty years old, Stuart was dashing, bearded. His hat with an ostrich plume flopping in the side of it was cocked at a rakish angle, and a red flower was pinned onto the lapel of his coat.
The First Virginia Cavalry would follow Stuart anywhere. They were about to follow him into hell.
He rode away to shout encouragement to other divisions, other soldiers, and instruct his junior officers.
The captain of Florence’s troop pulled up alongside him. “What’s that up ahead, Sergeant?”
Florence was checking the caps on his Navy Colt. “Yellow Tavern, sir,” he answered.
“Yellow Tavern indeed. I could use a drink right about now, Sergeant. What about you? I’ll buy the first round.”
The hammer on the Navy came to full cock before Florence gently lowered it. He did not holster it.
“I’m afraid the tavern’s closed, Capt’n. Been closed a long while.”
“Damn.” The captain winked. “War is hell, Sergeant.”
“Hell indeed, sir.”
The road led past Yellow Tavern to the Yankee lines, but there, Major General Philip Sheridan, commander of the Union cavalry, had come to meet the South.
