CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Let me get this straight,” Sean Keegan said after dropping his saddle and bedroll beside the covered wagon in their camp for the night. “Texas wanted this chunk of land some time back?”
Matt McCulloch handed the cup of coffee to Charlotte Platte, who cursed him, took the cup, and drank it about halfway down.
“Satisfied?” she said.
He handed the cup to the ugly-scarred Kruger.
“I have one,” the German said bitterly.
“I know,” McCulloch said. “We’re swapping.”
The man’s wrinkled, ugly lips turned into a menacing frown, but he took McCulloch’s cup in his left hand, and shoved the cup in his right toward McCulloch. The old Ranger nodded, and handed the cup to Platte, who again, took a healthy swallow before shoving the cup to McCulloch.
He drank and turned to face the old Irish soldier. “You were saying?”
“I was saying that you Texans got the best deal of your lives when you didn’t get this piece of desert. Texas already had enough of that. The bloody United States of America got swindled when it took this country after the war with Mexico.” Keegan spit and reached over to take the coffee cup from Otto Kruger’s hand. “New Mexico. Ain’t a damned thing new about this. It’s bloody hell.”
Jed Breen trotted up to the camp, reining up a few feet from McCulloch and Keegan.
The old soldier lifted his cup, “Coffee?”
Breen unloosened the canteen from the horn and drank. “I’ll stick to water. Till Precious Metal.” He stoppered the canteen and nodded at McCulloch. “You were right.”
McCulloch emptied the dregs from his cup and tossed it to the murderess. “How many?”
“Ten.”
“Know where they’re camped?”
“There’s a cave in the hills to the south of here. Hard to find. But your Comanche friend got me there.”
“Can you find it without him?”
Breen nodded.
“Would somebody bloody well tell me what the hell’s going on?” Keegan said. “I thought you said Breen and the scalp lifter rode out to find water.”
McCulloch said, “I said rustlers. Not water.” He pointed. “The Pecos River is a hundred yards over there. Why the hell would we need to look for water?”
“Because the Pecos water tastes like piss.” Keegan straightened. “Rustlers, did ye say?”
“This is a rustler’s paradise,” McCulloch said. “Ten men.”
“But they’re in a cave,” Breen reminded him.
“Cave it in,” McCulloch said.
Breen’s head shook. “That would take a wagon-load of nitroglycerine.”
“Are you two talking about ambushing those sons of dogs before they even try to take our herd?”
“If they take the herd,” McCulloch said, “We lose time. That’s the first problem. Besides, if these mustangs scatter, we’ll never round them all up.” He pointed past the fire. “Breen’s cargo is our other problem.”
“But what if those ten laddies are just grand wayfarers in this lovely country? Out on a vacation or leave from their dull, routine jobs? What if you cave them in, trap them forever, and they had no intention of stealing your horses?”
“That’s their problem,” McCulloch said. “Anybody in this country, hiding out in a cave, is up to no good.”
“They could be hiding out from Indians,” Keegan argued.
“Even Indians avoid this section of hell,” McCulloch said.
Keegan laughed and finished his coffee. “Good. I needed convincing, and bloody good have I been convinced. We want to get rid of those rustlers, then Sean Keegan’s the man to help see you do it.”
“How?” Breen asked.
“That’s me department.”
“You can’t find the place,” McCulloch told him. “And I’m not letting you risk Wooden Arm’s life, getting him into those rocks. You, a kid with a badly busted arm, against ten vermin who prey on those forced to travel this trail? That’s not happening.”
“Matt, ye know me better than that.” Keegan shook his head and chuckled. “I wouldn’t be caught dead alone with a Comanch, even if both his arms, both his legs, and his bloody neck had been broken. The black-hearted crazy man would lift my hair and cut my throat. He’ll stay here.” He winked and hooked his thumb behind him. “To protect ye from that ugly man and that beautiful redhead with poison in her soul.”
McCulloch stood there, the rock, the knot on the log, the silent, tall Texan. He did not blink. He did not speak.
Breen cleared his throat. Still in the saddle, he asked, “How do you find the cave?”
Keegan laughed. “That’s your department.” He turned back to his saddle. “How many rounds have ye for that Sharps?”
“How many do I need?” Breen asked.
“Depends on how well they bounce.”
* * *
When the mustangs had settled down for the night, having slaked their thirst from the Pecos River, McCulloch waved Wooden Arm into the camp. He looked off to the northwest, wondering where Breen and Keegan would be by this time, and for about the umpteenth time, he began to doubt his wisdom, mostly his sanity, for thinking this plan of his—getting mustangs to Fort Wilmont might work with a bounty hunter and a soldier for partners, and carrying two murderers with them, not to mention a Comanche boy.
“Hair-brained,” he said, picturing his long-dead wife, how she would say it, especially how she would smile when she said it.
Wooden Arm dismounted his pinto and grinned.
McCulloch signed him to eat, and then he walked to the edge of the wagon and stared into the desert as the sun sank. Keegan was wrong, of course. When you looked at this part of New Mexico Territory at this time of day, soft, gentle, beautiful light and a desert that seemed serene, not savage, he could see why Mexicans and Indians fought so hard for it. On the other hand, well, it wasn’t Texas. Wasn’t home.
He found a cup by the pot and poured it. “Take chances,” he said with a smile, and looked at the two prisoners as they sat a few yards away, eating with their fingers, their hands in manacles, drinking the same coffee McCulloch consumed.
The Indian boy ate beans with his hands, hungrily, then mopped it up with the sourdough biscuits the woman had cooked up that morning.
He didn’t look sick, McCulloch thought.
The boy frowned suddenly, pushed away his plate and the cup with his good hand, and struggled to his feet.
Quickly, McCulloch poured out his coffee, looking with fury at the woman, oblivious to Wooden Arm. The kid crossed the few yards separating him and slid to a stop, dropping to his knees.
“You sick?” McCulloch asked, realized the stupidity of speaking English, and signed the question to the boy.
Wooden Arm’s head shook. He wet his lips, and jutted his jaw away to the big empty that stretched toward the Pecos River.
He pointed with his good hand and signed, There are white men in the rocks on this side of the river.
McCulloch looked, but saw nothing but shadows, sand, and cactus. How do you know they are white men? he asked the Comanche with his hands.
Their horses make noise.
He shook his head in awe and wonder. Make noise. With their iron shoes, of course. And McCulloch had not heard one damned thing.
McCulloch looked at the mustang herd. On a quiet night like this, one shot would be all it took to send the horses into a stampede. They were tired horses, of course, but they were also mustangs, and the leader remained just half-broke.
The boy understood, and he signed, We must do this without noise.
“We?” McCulloch whispered, and he was about to protest, tell the kid that he would have to stay behind, that McCulloch would do the killing by himself, that he needed someone to watch after Otto Kruger and Charlotte Platte. But there was another question he had to ask first.
He made the signs to ask, How many white men are there?
* * *
Four miles northwest, Jed Breen slipped through junipers and eased his way to where Keegan stayed close to their horses, keeping them quiet.
“Those rustlers still have their horses out of the cave,” Breen whispered. “Drinking their fill from a stream.”
“Good,” Keegan beamed. “They won’t be hurt by the ricochets.”
“Not altogether good,” Breen said. “There are only six horses.” He softly swore. “There were ten when I was here this afternoon.”
* * *
In the camp, at that moment, a hundred yards from the Pecos River, Wooden Arm answered McCulloch.
And at that same time, Sean Keegan and Matt McCulloch whispered the same profane oath.