Rogue Lawman #3: Cold Corpse, Hot Trail

HOLDING his hands over the ends of his binoculars to prevent the sun from reflecting off the glass, Hawk stared past the hang-headed lieutenant.

Sure enough. Four Apaches. Young braves, judging by how straight they sat their saddles and how brightly their cherry skin glistened in the west-angling light.

And sure enough, the color on their faces was no trick of the sun. It was war paint. They were four renegades, no doubt, who, weary of hoeing potatoes at San Carlos, had decided to raise some hell with the white-eyes.

The lieutenant was about two hundred yards away from Hawk. The Indians were another hundred yards behind the lieutenant. Riding abreast, they trotted their horses around the towering saguaros and low stone scarps, casting quick, frequent glances at each other, as if unable to believe their luck—a bluebelly traveling alone.

Hawk dropped the field glasses back into his saddlebags, then reined the grulla off the stone shelf, hoping the late-afternoon shadows had concealed him from the Apaches as they’d apparently concealed him from Lieutenant Primrose. Hawk heeled the grulla northward across the basin, then back the way he’d come.

When he figured he was within a hundred or so yards of the Indians, he dismounted the grulla, shucked his Henry, rammed a shell into the chamber, then off-cocked the hammer. Crouching and weaving through the paloverdes and cholla shading a shallow ravine, he moved toward the middle of the basin and, hopefully, into the renegades’ path.

As he moved along a sandy swale, a horse whinnied ahead and left—probably the lieutenant’s bay, which meant the four Apaches wouldn’t be far behind.

Hawk continued forward, setting his boots down softly in the coarse, red sand. Ahead, a horse nickered. Hawk began running toward it. He’d covered only ten yards before a bare, copper leg lashed out from behind a boulder on his right, too quickly for Hawk to avoid it.

He slammed down hard on his belly, his Henry bouncing off his right thigh and tumbling off to the side.

Hawk rolled onto his back as the young Apache leaned over him, grinning savagely and aiming a nocked arrow at his face. The ash bow squawked, the sinew chirped as the renegade increased the tension. The brave’s right hand opened. At the same time, Hawk flung himself left, hearing the projectile thump into the sand where his head had just been.

Hawk reached across his belly for his Russian. He’d thumbed the hammer back and begun squeezing the trigger when the kid, fast as a panther, kicked the gun from Hawk’s right hand. The Russian popped, the slug sailing skyward as the revolver spun into the brush.

Catching the brave’s moccasined foot, Hawk rolled off his right shoulder, giving the foot a hard tug and lifting the kid off his other foot. Yelling savagely, the brave arced through the air, hitting the ground on his back.

Hawk gained his feet only a half second before the brave had scrambled back to a crouching position, black eyes slitted furiously, chapped lips stretched back from brown teeth. Thonged talismans jostled about his hard, flat chest.

As the kid tried to read Hawk’s next move, Hawk kicked him, the toe of his right boot connecting soundly with the brave’s breastbone.

The renegade only snorted, stumbled back, and flung himself straight forward and up, bulling Hawk onto his back. Hawk slammed his left elbow across the renegade’s jaw, which made a cracking sound as the brave slumped to the left.

Footsteps rose to Hawk’s right as he climbed to his feet. He turned. Another brave—shorter, stockier than the first—ran toward him raising an Apache war lance bedecked with tribal feathers and talismans. As the brave, screeching like a wounded lobo, flung the lance, Hawk dropped to his knees.

A thud and the sound of crunching bone rose behind him. Glancing quickly left, he saw the first brave stumbling straight back, broken jaw hanging askew, eyes wide, the stone blade of the lance intended for Hawk buried in his chest. He grabbed the lance with both hands, blood geysering over them, his eyes growing wider until he stumbled over a rock and hit the ground on his back.

Hawk turned back to the second brave, who continued sprinting toward him, his jaws set hard, long hair flapping across his shoulders.

Again, Hawk ducked. The kid’s left knee slammed into Hawk’s side. As the brave fell forward, Hawk rose, throwing the kid straight up and over his back, careening atop the first brave, who gurgled as he died.

The second brave bounded to his haunches, reaching for the stag-handled knife on his right hip. Hawk straightened, clawed his Colt from its holster, and shot the kid twice through the forehead.

The stocky renegade stumbled back over the first, who now lay still, and dropped to his back, his ankles crossed over the first brave’s throat.

A fast-moving horse thundered behind Hawk, close enough that Hawk could hear the horse’s labored snorts. A shrill, angry keening sounded beneath the hooves.

As Hawk wheeled and began to raise the Colt, he caught a glimpse of his rifle lying between a bunchgrass clump and an ironwood shrub. He ran, picked up the rifle, dropped to a knee, and peered up the shallow wash.

The horse and rider shot toward him, the brave hunched low over his horse’s neck, his brightly painted face bunched with fury. A bow and deer-hide quiver jostled on his left shoulder.

As he approached to within fifteen yards, the brave raised the lance in his right hand. Hawk snapped the rifle to his shoulder, taking quick aim, firing, then throwing himself sideways as the horse roared past him, screaming.

Hawk wheeled toward the horse, ejecting the spent shell, then freezing as the horse disappeared down the wash, its blanket saddle empty, braided reins trailing along the ground.

Turning up trail, Hawk cast his gaze about, looking for the third renegade. Nothing but brush, rocks, and sand. He shoved the rifle’s cocking lever home, seating a fresh shell in the chamber, and walked slowly between the wash’s low banks.

In the distance, several more rifle shots rang out, the lead no doubt being exchanged by Primrose and the fourth Indian. Hawk ignored them, for the moment wanting to make sure of the third renegade’s fate.

Hawk continued forward. Ahead and slightly right, blood dripped down the side of a rock. Beyond was a mesquite tree, the branches hanging over the trunk like a dusty green tablecloth. Hawk moved to the tree, tightened his finger on the Henry’s trigger, and swept the branches aside with the barrel.

The third brave lay before the tree, hands resting palms up at his sides. His head was propped against the mesquite’s thin trunk, open eyes staring unseeing at his own still chest, the bullet through his forehead dripping bright red blood onto the bridge of his broad nose.

Hawk let the branches fall back into place as, in the distance, the rifle shots continued, spanging and echoing around the basin.

Hawk whistled for his horse and jogged up the wash. It didn’t take the grulla long to catch up to him, reins trailing. Grabbing the reins and keeping the Henry in his right hand, Hawk swung into the hurricane deck and galloped toward the shooting.

Straight below in the sun-and-shadow-stippled basin, another Indian ran out from behind a low shelf, his upper left arm glistening red. As he headed for another shelf just ahead, a rifle rang out. The Indian dropped his bow and arrow and, grabbing his right thigh, fell, sliding several feet along the ground.

Looking west along the basin, Hawk saw the smoke puff lifting from a yucca plant at the base of a broad, sandstone ledge standing about ten feet above the basin floor. A tan kepi appeared. The sunlight reflected off the lieutenant’s carbine.

Screaming, the Indian bolted to his feet and ran toward the shelf. He hadn’t limped five yards before the lieutenant’s Spencer spoke again.

The Indian stopped, throwing both arms out, the bow and arrow flying high over his head. He staggered backward and fell, dust billowing, red showing amidst the sweat-glistening copper of his chest.

The lieutenant’s rifle boomed once more, the slug making a dull thumping, crunching sound as it plowed through the Indian’s skull. After a minute, the lieutenant lifted his head from behind the yucca, staring toward Hawk.

A few minutes later, he halted the grulla on the west side of the shelf from which the lieutenant had drilled the fourth Indian. Primrose was returning his carbine to his saddle boot, his implacable face streaked with sweat and pink dust, the bandage around his forehead spotted with blood.

Clumsily, he swung into his saddle, adjusted the bandage on his forehead, spat, and turned to Hawk. “We’d better make use of what little daylight we have left,” he said, glancing at the sky and gigging the bay forward. “I know Schmidt will.”

Hawk stared at the young officer’s back, cursed silently the younker’s mulishness. He slid his own rifle into the saddle boot and urged the grulla into the lieutenant’s sifting, salmon-colored dust.

He’d ridden only a few yards when movement atop the high left ridge caught his eye. As he turned toward it, he caught a glimpse of a hatted head as it pulled back behind the ridge’s lip. Again, he was too far away to see clearly, but the high-crowned Stetson bespoke a white man.

He ran his eyes along the sun-pinkened lip, spat, and gigged the grulla ahead, keeping pace with the obstinate Primrose.

When the sun had fallen so low that they could no longer see the tracks of the fleeing killers, Hawk and Primrose camped in a box canyon, picketing their horses amidst desert willows and Mormon tea.

Sitting on a rock beside the small, curl-leaf fire, Hawk reached for the coffeepot, intending to refill his tin cup for the second time that night.

He glanced at the lieutenant leaning back against his saddle on the other side of the fire. Hawk had felt the man’s eyes on him, studying him. Now the lieutenant grinned shrewdly, his brushy, brown mustache forming a straight line beneath his nose.

Hawk watched as Primrose transferred his own steaming coffee cup to his left hand, and slid his Colt Army from his covered holster. Chuckling without mirth, Primrose aimed the revolver at Hawk, and thumbed the hammer back.

Hawk dropped his gaze and continued plucking the pot from the fire, using a blackened leather swatch. He filled his tin cup with the coal-black, piping-hot brew. “You don’t say.”

“Major Devereaux at Fort Bowie passed a federal wanted dodger around to all us officers. Your face was on it . . . Gideon Hawk.” Primrose curled his upper lip. “Deputy United States Marshal Gideon Hawk.”

Hawk returned the pot to a hot rock within the fire ring. “I sure never expected to be so famous.”

“And I never expected to find myself riding with a wanted vigilante. Rumor has it a death warrant’s been issued on you. That true?”

Hawk sipped the joe, leaned back against his saddle. “That’s what I hear.”

Primrose canted his head to one side. “I don’t understand—what’s in this for you? Surely it’s not just the doxy.”

“I didn’t think that was your style. Maybe you just need an excuse to kill.”

“Killing killers would be a pretty good excuse, wouldn’t it?” Hawk also wanted to get the girl back, though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe, having sent her off with the doomed soldiers, he felt he owed her something. Certainly, it wasn’t because of the few minutes they’d spent rolling around by the campfire. . . .

The lieutenant stared at him, keeping the revolver aimed at Hawk’s chest. The fire danced in his heavy-lidded, brown eyes. Hawk stared back at him stoically, Hawk’s own dark eyes set deep under heavy brows.

The fire snapped, pine smoke curling toward the stars. The coffeepot chugged. A coyote yammered from a nearby ridge as, to Hawk’s left, one of the horses lay down and rolled.

The lieutenant tipped up his revolver’s barrel, depressed the hammer, and slowly slid the Colt back into its holster. “When this is over, I’ll have to arrest you, Marshal.”

Hawk sipped his coffee and crossed his ankles. “I reckon you’ll have to try.”