CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Clay Kyle watched a shooting star flash across the sky, and around him the silence of the towering mountain was as deep as death. Behind him Broken Nose Charlie Bates coughed, a man whose weak lungs always seemed to get worse after sundown. As it turned out, he was also a false prophet. “Clay,” he whispered, breathing hard, “them fellers ain’t coming.”
Kyle said nothing. There was something out there all right. He could feel it, his outlaw instincts as finally honed as a razor’s edge. A few moments later his hunch was proved right. A man called from the darkness, his voice strangely hollow in the quiet.
“Hey, you, in the rocks!”
“What do you want?” Kyle said.
“A better question is what do you want?” the hidden man said. “Are you Texas Rangers bringing your womenfolk with you for protection?”
“Go to hell,” Kyle said.
“Are you Rangers? Answer the question, man.”
“No, we ain’t Rangers. We ain’t in the law business.”
“Then what the hell are you?”
“Traders.”
“What kind of traders?”
“We got a woman to sell.”
A pause, then, “We ain’t in the market for a woman.”
“She ain’t for you. She’s for the Sheik.”
A longer pause, this one stretching for a few seconds, then, “What the hell is a cheek?”
“Sheik, an Arab,” Kyle said. “S-h-e-i-k. Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“My name is Shannon, Dave Shannon,” the man said. “Maybe you’re lookin’ for me?”
Morris Bennett called out, “Dave Shannon out of Abilene?”
“And other places. Who are you?”
“Morris Bennett.”
“Yeah, I know you. You rode with Jesse and them and killed Banjo Art Benson that time up Wichita way. Lost an eye in that scrape, as I recollect.”
“I never did get that eye back, Dave,” Bennett said.
“Then why the hell are you here trying to sell a woman?” Shannon said. “There’s plenty of women in Old Mexico going for free.”
“Well, you could say that ain’t exactly why we’re here, Dave,” Bennett said. “Like Kyle said, we’re looking for the Sheik.”
Shannon said, “Is that Clay Kyle?”
“None other,” Bennett said.
“Is Black-Eyed Suzie Stanton with him?”
“She sure is,” Bennett said.
“Hell, this is like old home week,” Shannon said. “Kyle, I thought you’d been hung years ago and Suzie long since wedded and bedded.”
“We’re still around, Dave,” Kyle said. “You working for the Sheik?”
“Like I asked you before, who the hell is the Sheik?”
“You know who he is.”
“Hell if I do,” Shannon said. “You tell me.”
“All right, I will,” Kyle said. “He’s an Arab, and his name is Bandar al-Salam, and he has a palace hereabouts that’s crammed to the rafters with gold. I aim to relieve him of some of that.”
Harsh laughter from a dozen throats sounded like a flourish of trumpets in the gloom. After a while, his voice sobbing from his recent merriment, Shannon said, “Who told you that?”
“I heard it from an old Chinaman when I was doing a turn in Leavenworth,” Kyle said. “He says the Sheik is so fat he’s lowered on top of his women with ropes of solid gold.”
More laughter, then Shannon said, “That old Chinaman told you a big windy, Kyle. There’s no gold in the Sierra del Carmen, and the only women for miles around are the two you brung.”
“You’re a damned liar, Shannon,” Kyle yelled. “You want all the gold for yourself or you’re working for the Sheik. Come now, tell the truth. Maybe we can get together on this thing.”
“Damn you, Kyle, there’s no thing because there is no sheik,” Shannon yelled. “There’s only a robber’s roost where me and a dozen other boys are holed up until our next job. Now come first light, you get the hell out of here. The likes of you attracts the attention of the Texas Rangers and the local Rurales. The women can stay. We got no objection to that.”
Doubt and disappointment tugged at Kyle. Had the Chinaman lied to him? Dying men don’t lie. Or do they? He tried the question out on Shannon.
“Shannon, the Chinaman was dying, and dying men don’t lie,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”
“Kyle, I thought you were smarter than that,” Shannon said. “Now you sound like a damned rube. I seen men on the gallows with nooses around the neck swear blind that they didn’t do such and such a crime when all present knew they damn-well did. I mind before the trap sprung on Red River Tom Salt, he swore he hadn’t killed a Kansas parson and raped his new bride. Hell, he was caught in the act and still swore he was as innocent as a newborn puppy. Kyle, dying Chinamen lie just like dying white men.”
“It’s hard to take, Shannon,” Kyle said. Somewhere a night bird called, and the shadows of the moon-silvered boulders were long and deep.
“Well, take it or leave it, Kyle, but I want you out of here come first light.”
“Dave, can we talk?” Kyle said.
“My talking’s done,” Shannon said.
A few moments passed. The suddenly a fusillade of rifle fire opened up from Shannon’s position, muzzle flashes like fireflies in the darkness. Bullets crashed into the alcove, spaaanged off stone walls and ricocheted wildly among the boulders. A horse, stung by a flying fragment of rock screamed and reared, and Loco Garrett cried out in pain and surprise as a bullet creased his shoulder. Susan Stanton and the others cursed and hit the ground as the barrage continued for a few more seconds, then stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Shannon’s mocking voice echoed in the ringing silence.
“Hey, Kyle, you wanted to talk! How did you enjoy that conversation?”
“Shannon, you’re crazy!” Kyle yelled.
He threw his Winchester to his shoulder and levered round after round into the gloom and when he ceased firing was rewarded by roars of laughter, and again Dave Shannon called out. “Kyle, come sunup don’t let me see your face around here or you’re a dead man. Y’heah me?”
“Go to hell!” Kyle said, and on the far side of the darkness, men hooted and hollered.
* * *
“What’s driving you, Clay?” Susan Stanton said. She’d torn a strip from Jenny Calthrop’s petticoat and now used it to bandage Loco Garrett’s bleeding shoulder. “Is it greed, stupidity, or are you just being bullheaded?”
“The Sheik’s palace and the gold is close, I tell you,” Kyle said. “Why else would Dave Shannon be here in this damned wasteland? I don’t believe what he said about a robber’s roost. Plenty of them in Texas and closer to banks and trains. He knows the Sheik is here in the Sierra del Carmen, and he and his boys are being paid to protect him.”
Susan tied off the knot of Loco Garrett’s bandage, slapped him on the back, and said, “You’ll live.” And then to Kyle, “Shannon sounded pretty convincing to me.”
“That’s because you never met the Chinaman. Suzie, the little runt wasn’t lying. You just don’t make up a story like that, especially when you know you’re breathing your last.”
“You heard Shannon, dying men can lie.”
“Not the Chinaman. He wanted to get even with the Sheik for abandoning him.”
Susan Stanton sighed. “I got a feeling . . .”
“What kind of feeling?”
“The feeling that hard times are in store for everybody.”
“Tell me you still got that feeling when you’re driving down the Champs-Élysées in Paris in your own coach with a pretty little girl at your side.”
Susan smiled. “Try Bourbon Street in New Orleans and I’ll bite.”
“Whatever your little heart desires,” Kyle said. “You’ll have money enough.” Then, “You in?”
“Yes, I’ll stick until it’s time to leave.”
“Good enough for me,” Kyle said. “Saddle your horse. We’ll pull out in an hour when Dave Shannon and his boys are rolled in their blankets.”
“It’s a cinch he’s got somebody standing guard,” Loco Garrett said. He had a bloodstained bandage on his upper arm and shoulder.
“And that’s why we have to be quiet,” Kyle said. “When Dave Shannon looks for us in the morning, we’ll be long gone.”
“Gone where, boss?” Garrett said.
“Deeper into the mountains, I reckon,” Kyle said. “We just got to keep our eyes peeled.”
“And watch our backtrail,” Garrett said.
“I can handle Dave Shannon,” Kyle said. “He surprised me once. He won’t do it a second time.”
Susan Stanton and Loco Garrett exchanged glances, and the woman said, “Clay, remind me later to ask you to tell me about how rich I’m goin’ to be and how pretty will be the little French girl.”