Rogue Lawman #3: Cold Corpse, Hot Trail

SOMEONE rammed their fist against a door—three hard thumps. Each was a lightning bolt lancing Kilroy’s brain. His eyes snapped wide. Or as wide as he could get them in his current condition. The cuts and bruises, not to mention his broken nose, made him feel as though he were wearing a plaster mask lined on the inside with sharpened steel spikes.

“Boss, the greasers are here!” yelled Turkey McDade on the other side of the wood. “They said you agreed to take a morning ride with ’em.”

Kilroy groaned. It took him several seconds to climb his way up from the excruciating pain in his face and head, and to locate the place in his brain that controlled his voice. His mouth tasted as though a scorpion had crawled inside and died only after giving his tongue several sharp stings. “Shit.”

Boots thumped off down the hall. The vibration in the floor caused an empty whiskey bottle to fall off the other side of the bed and to hit the floor with a glassy thump.

It rolled around the warped floor for a few seconds before another groan sounded from inside the room. Down around Kilroy’s crotch, something moved beneath the blankets. Awkwardly, he threw the covers back to reveal Saradee’s head and shoulders, her hair shining in the full light angling through the deep-set windows flanking the bed.

Saradee lay facedown on Kilroy’s bare belly. She was naked, and her hair was fanned out across her shoulders and his hips. Her back angled down to her flaring hips and pert, round butt. In her right hand, she held one of her silver-plated .45s down near Waylon’s right knee.

Probably practiced her French on him last night while holding the damn six-shooter, only resisting the temptation to shoot off his manhood because his men were near.

Kilroy reached down, grabbed the revolver from her limp hand, and lightly tapped the barrel against her head. “Get up. Federales, remember? We’re ridin’ out with ’em to the train bridge.”

“We’re ridin’ out with the federales—and I use that term loosely—to make sure they don’t pull anything funny settin’ those dynamite charges.”

She rolled onto her back, her bare breasts flattening slightly across her chest, and pressed a hand to her temple, wincing against the hangover. Even in that position, those orbs were still full, round, and magnificent.

Kilroy got up and, feeling as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to his face, stooped to pick up his balbriggans. Imagining the trainload of gold bars took some of the sting away. He couldn’t quite fathom being as rich as the revolucionarios’ gold would make him—if he lived to get his hands on it, that is—but he was willing to take a shot at the train anyway. It seemed that the greasers had the technicalities mostly worked out; they just needed more shooters.

He was pulling on his jeans when Saradee’s eyes snapped wide. She wanted nothing to do with the gold, but if she didn’t ride out with the gang, they might get suspicious and foil her plans to abscond with the payroll loot.

She stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Reckon I’d better see to my own interests,” she said through a yawn. “Wouldn’t want you and the greasers throwin’ in against me.” She dropped her long legs over the side of the bed and stretched catlike. Rising, she kissed Waylon’s nose, enjoying his pained yelp, and began gathering her strewn clothes.

Ten minutes later, they descended the Mountain Lion’s stairs, both moving stiffly, Kilroy looking like the sole survivor of a stagecoach’s plummet from a thousand-foot cliff. He hadn’t had time to freshen his bandages, and they now showed as much red as white. His snuff-brown hat, the crown pancaked in the Colorado style, was tipped back on his head as if to ease the strain on his nose.

As the two crossed toward the front of the room, past the tables upon which the chairs were upended for sweeping, and past the floorboards stained brown from Kilroy’s spilled blood, the outlaw paused at the bar to order a fresh bottle. He popped the cork as he and Saradee walked outside, where the federales sat their horses before the patio, left of Saradee’s and Kilroy’s own gang. The north-of-the-border bandits sat their own mounts with stiff expressions on their hungover countenances, sliding sneering looks at their Mexican counterparts, as if barely able to stomach sharing the same street.

Kilroy tipped back the bottle, taking a long pull. Instantly, the invisible nails piercing his nose and cheekbones dulled enough to lighten the red pain-veil over his eyes.

He followed Saradee into the square, where Major Valverde intoned, “Señor Waylon and the magnificent Saradee, how good it is to see you both this lovely morn—!”

Feeling his face warm with embarrassment and keeping his eyes down, Kilroy walked passed the major’s tall, cream stallion, heading for the riderless horse beside that of Turkey McDade.

Chuckles rippled through the dozen or so federales gathered behind Valverde and his scarecrow lieutenant, Juan Soto. Tenderly, Kilroy toed a stirrup, grabbed the horn, and swung onto his horse. He took the reins from Turkey McDade and glanced over the tightly grouped Mexicans.

At the back of the group lay a wagon, two mules in the traces, and several crates piled in the box and secured with ropes. Two baby-faced federales in baggy uniforms with hats that seemed to swallow their curly heads sat in the driver’s box, sweating and looking edgy. They were no doubt hauling the dynamite for blowing up the bridge.

The major’s brown eyes were bright with glee. Beneath the brim of his ratty, straw sombrero, Soto’s eyes were their usual diamondback-flat, but the man’s bony shoulders jerked with silent laughter.

In spite of the havoc the sore muscles wreaked in his face, Kilroy grinned. “This is my celebration face,” he told Valverde. “Now, why don’t you and your esteemed lieutenant lead us to the party?”

Chuckling, Valverde glanced at Soto. The lieutenant raised his right hand and twirled it, then swung his horse around. As he and Valverde headed through the group of men behind them, the group parted, half the men backing their horses toward the fountain. They apparently meant for the Americans to ride in the middle of the group, with Valverde’s men at both the front and flank. The wagon, with its deadly munitions and nervous pilots, would bring up the rear.

When they were riding through the mountains east of town, following an old mining trail, Kilroy leaned over to Saradee sitting her piebald off his right stirrup. “I unloaded your pistols earlier, while you were using the thunder mug,” he said quietly. “You might want to go ahead and load them now.”

“I did,” she said, smiling. “You might wanna take a peek at your own hoglegs. I unloaded them last night while you snored.”

Kilroy flushed behind the bandages, and shucked a Remy from his right holster. He opened the loading gate and spun the wheel. He glanced at Saradee, and his nostrils flared.

Plucking cartridges from the loops of his shell belt, he quickly loaded each revolver. When he’d spun the second one’s cylinder and dropped it back in its holster, he stared straight over his horse’s ears at the dusty, blue-clad back of the soldier riding ahead of him.

He leaned slightly toward Saradee and said through the side of his mouth, “I know you and me have sort of fallen out of trust with each other, but now might be a good time to call a truce.”

Saradee pooched her lips out and stared at Valverde and Soto leading the group up a low rise through pines. The morning sun burned the green, ankle-high grass growing around rocks and boulders.

“Consider it done.” Kilroy leaned back and plucked his bottle from his saddlebags. It was already half empty. “If we play this right, you and me could be one hell of a lot richer than we ever thought possible.”

Kilroy took another pull from the bottle and returned the cork to the lip. He lifted a shoulder. “He’s got us out-gunned by only four men. I’ve played against worse odds than those in Kansas!”

The trail the group followed dropped gradually until two low sandstone walls, spiked with mesquite and piñon, rose on both sides of a rocky arroyo. The ravine’s stony floor was threaded by a thin trickle of springwater. Ahead, two train trestles, supported by stone and wood, arced across the canyon.

The group rode under the first trestle, the wooden braces smelling of sun-scorched oak and creosote, and continued for a hundred more yards. Valverde held up his right hand in the shadows cast by the second trestle. Kilroy lifted his gaze to the ties and tracks a hundred and fifty feet above.

Valverde turned to Kilroy, who’d ridden up off his left flank. “A wonderful place for a horrible accident—wouldn’t you say, Señor Waylon?”

Kilroy’s eyes were still roaming the stone pilings between which heavy wooden beams were crisscrossed like the flat irons of a jail cell.

“Although you probably know our trains here in Méjico tend to run not always on time,” added Valverde. He shrugged. “Still, we will be here by six, just in case.”

“How do you know it’s going to cross the arroyo on this trestle,” said Saradee, more to look interested than for any other reason, “and not the one we just passed?”

Valverde looked at her, his eyes dropping momentarily to her shirt, then back up to her face. “A very good question, Miss Saradee, which shows you are much more than just muy bonita, uh?” He grinned from ear to ear, his lips showing red against his broad, pockmarked brown face. “In their haste, the railroad built the original trestle on a fault line. Very bad. So, last summer, they had to reroute. This is now the trestle that is used to cross the arroyo.”

He turned southward, pointing. “As you can see, the tracks climb a medium-steep hill as they approach the trestle, so the train will be going very slow, just creeping along. For that reason, I wish to blow the bridge only when the locomotive has crossed. That way, we can be assured of as many casualties as possible. Still, since the rear cars will be far from the bridge when it blows, many of the guards will jump to safety.”

“And put up a fight,” Kilroy said, casting his gaze toward the south end of the bridge. “Just how many guards are we talking about?”

“My informant has told me between fifty and sixty. Half will no doubt die when the bridge blows. The others will be disoriented and, as you can see, there isn’t much cover on that side of the arroyo. With as many men as we have, they should give us little problem.”

“We dig through the wreckage, of course,” replied the major. “When we have found the gold, we take it back to our headquarters for a big fandango—the largest in the land! The next morning, when we are clear-eyed, we will split up the gold and the money we, uh”—placing the end of a fist to his mouth, he gave a dry cough—“found stashed in the mine of Juan’s father, Pedro.”

“Then we’ll be wanted on both sides of the border,” said Turkey McDade, sitting his pinto behind Kilroy, sucking a quirley. He laughed dryly, as did several other Yankees.

Valverde feigned surprise as he turned his white-ringed eyes to Kilroy. “You are wanted on the americano side of the border? Oh, my God—you did not tell me this! For what?” He laughed heartily and punched Kilroy’s right shoulder.

The wagon clattered along the arroyo behind them. Valverde turned his head to look back the way he’d come. “It is about time!” he shouted in Spanish. “What have you drivers been doing—playing with yourselves? Hurry, we have a bridge to blow!”