Embers skittered off the waning campfire from a stiff bone-dry breeze that kicked up through the night. The wind whistled through the piñons and chaparral. Virgil was up, out of his bedroll with his Colt in hand, looking toward our animals.
I lifted my head from my saddle seat that I used as a pillow and reached for my eight-gauge.
“What?” I said. “What is it?”
“Don’t know,” he said.
“Horses are damn sure spooked,” Virgil said.
I looked over to see Skillman move a little. He sat up in his bedroll and looked over to us. Besides the train that had come through and the occasional yapping of a coyote, the evening had been quiet and peaceful.
“Get ready,” Virgil said.
I sat up and looked about in the dark, thinking maybe some critter had sniffed his way to our camp and was agitating our horses. All the grub that would attract animals was stashed in an oilcloth bag and hanging ten feet above camp by a rope draped over a tall evergreen so as to keep such pests away.
“Wind, maybe,” I said. “Blowing like a son of a bitch.”
“Don’t think so,” Virgil said.
Our horses were tied on a head-high Dutchman picket, close to camp. It was dark, but there was a quarter-moon and we could see well enough to know the horses were good and restless about something.
From the reach of the moon I figured it was near midnight. I gathered up my eight-gauge and moved toward the picket when I heard a horse blow off in the distance.
“You hear that, Virgil?”
“I heard it.”
I backed up a few steps toward Virgil and cocked my eight-gauge.
“Damn sure somebody out there,” I said.
“Is.”
“Could be them,” I said. “Or some of them?”
“By God,” Virgil said.
We waited in silence for a time before we heard a man call from the dark. The voice cut through the steady breeze.
“We got you boxed in and outnumbered. Lay aside any goddamn thing you got to fight with and give yourself up or you will be killed.”
Virgil looked at me.
“Sounds like Stringer,” he said.
“Does.”
“Do it,” the man said. “Or consider being dead and gone.”
“That you, Stringer?” Virgil called.
There was a bit of silence, then we heard him call back loudly, “Cole?”
“It is.”
“Goddamn,” Stringer shouted. “Coming in.”
Stringer was once a deputy of Yaqui, but he’d outlasted the others and was now Yaqui’s top-ranking official. He’d been a good lawman and a good friend of ours through the years and he was someone we trusted.
He barked out loudly as he approached, “Boys, stay put, stay where you are, I’m going in.”
In a few moments, big Sheriff Stringer walked into our camp with two of his deputies lagging behind him. They were pulling their horses and carrying rifles.
Stringer was a tall man with a full mustache and was never without his bone-handle long-barreled Colt, which he wore butt forward on his left.
“Virgil,” he said.
“By God,” Virgil said.
Stringer shook his head some as he walked closer to us.
“Everett.”
“Hello, Stringer,” I said.
“Blowing like a son of a bitch,” he said.
“It is,” Virgil said.
“The two of you,” he said, shaking his head.
“It is,” Virgil said.
“I’ll be goddamn if they won’t let just anybody into this godforsaken territory.”
“Who is ‘they’?” Virgil said.
“Good goddamn question,” he said.
Stringer saw Skillman under the piñon and pointed at him with his rifle.
“I’ll be goddamn,” he said. “That one of ’em?”
“Is,” Virgil said.
Skillman sat with his back to the tree, looking at the ground.
Stringer glanced around.
“The other two?” he said.
“Dead.”
“Vadito?”
“Yep,” Virgil said.
Virgil tipped his head toward me.
“Eight-gauge.”
Stringer looked to me and nodded.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “What the hell are you gonna do with him?”
“We’re gonna take him back to Cibola,” Virgil said.
Skillman did not look up as his fate was being discussed. In fact, he’d kept this eyes trained down ever since we apprehended him.
“He hurt?” Stringer said.
Virgil looked over to Skillman for a moment and nodded.
“Got shot in the shoulder,” Virgil said. “Bullet went clean through, but he’s tough.”
Stringer nodded, looked around out into the darkness, then looked back to Virgil and me.
“So what is it?” Virgil said.
Stringer leaned his Winchester in the crux of a sage scrub and shook his head.
“We are on one of them for sure,” Stringer said in a serious tone, then nodded deliberately and slowly. “Got one on the fucking run.”