Ambush at Shadow Valley

Jonas Pierman looked out into the morning sunlight and saw Memphis Beck and Bowen Flannery ride in from the north, Flannery in a buggy, a man and woman riding along behind him on horseback. Without hesitation, the cattleman walked to a coatrack, took down his gun belt and strapped it on. He took down a hat and placed it on his head, then took down a riding duster and slipped it on as he walked out front to the hitch rail.

‘‘Bert,’’ he said to the silver-gray gelding standing at the rail, ‘‘I think it’s time we rode up on the grasslands, check on the hands there.’’

Halfway down the long path leading to the trail, Pierman rode over close enough to touch his hat brim toward Beck and Flannery. Then he rode on without a word. Beck didn’t bother introducing the wary-eyed rancher to Soto and Clarimonde. Ever since his old friend Pierman had left the outlaw life behind him, he’d wisely avoided knowing anything about what Beck and the rest of the gang were up to.

Once inside the large, crumbling adobe hacienda, Beck turned with his arms spread. ‘‘Ole Jonas has the best of it right here.’’ He gestured toward the north across the dusty front yard. ‘‘Right out front he’s got Arizona Territory on his left, New Mexico Territory on his right.’’ He turned facing a back window and gestured out toward an endless line of jagged hills. ‘‘Out his back door he’s got Old Mexico as far as the eye can see.’’

‘‘Right now it all looks like more sand and cactus to me,’’ Flannery said, slapping his dusty gloved hand against his thigh. Then he eyed Beck craftily. ‘‘But I take it the job is somewhere out the front door, eh?’’

Beck smiled and put him off, saying, ‘‘As soon as the others all get here, I’ll tell everybody at once where we’re headed and what we’re going to do there.’’

Flannery started to ask more, but Soto cut in. ‘‘We have to get the explosives out of the buggy and out of the heat, before the clay starts to stiffen.’’ He looked out the back window toward an adobe spring house sitting at the edge of a thin stream. ‘‘That should be a good place to store it overnight.’’ He motioned to Flannery. ‘‘Come help me unload it.’’

‘‘Let’s give him a hand, Bowen,’’ Beck said, stepping in and keeping his words between Flannery and himself. ‘‘You’ve got to help me keep things pulled together until we see this job through.’’

As the three men unloaded the buggy and carried crates of the nitro-absorbed clay into the dark coolness of a weathered spring house, Beck managed to walk in close to Clarimonde and say almost in a whisper, ‘‘I hope you know everything you need to about making this stuff. I’m going to be needing somebody I can count on.’’ He gave her a look that told her Suelo Soto wasn’t going to be around much longer.

She felt a warm breath of relief move through her, yet she remained cautious about what she said. ‘‘I’ve learned everything he wanted me to learn,’’ she said quietly.

Throughout the afternoon and into the night, the rest of the gang arrived, both singly and in pairs. The last to come riding along the path from the main trail at a fast gallop was Dave Arken. Sliding his horse to a halt at the hitch rail, he jumped down and said, ‘‘I could have sworn I was being tailed the last few miles coming in. It was plumb spooky. I thought it best if I swung wide a few miles from here and tried to shake whoever it was.’’ He looked back again warily as he spoke. Then he turned back to Beck and said, ‘‘Anyway, here I am.’’

Beck also looked back toward the trail. Earlier he’d felt that same feeling of being watched that he’d had the night at the hideout. Nerves . . . ? he asked himself. He considered it for a moment, but then he dismissed the matter entirely and said, ‘‘Come on in, Dave. Get yourself a cup of coffee. I’ll send out a couple of guards as soon as I tell everybody what we’re going to do.’’

Inside the house, while the men gathered restlessly to hear what Beck had to say, Soto sent Clarimonde to wait out on the front porch. But seeing her turn to leave, Beck said, ‘‘She can stay.’’

‘‘I say she cannot,’’ said Soto, stepping up, facing Beck. ‘‘She is with me. She does as I tell her.’’

‘‘You brought her in,’’ said Beck. ‘‘You said she helps you mix the explosives. As far as I’m concerned she’s done her share. That makes her a part of this operation.’’

‘‘It’s always been that way,’’ Collin Hedgepeth said in support. ‘‘Everybody who puts in, is in.’’

Soto felt the others staring coldly at him, forcing him to back down. This was not the time to cause trouble, knowing they were all still angry at him for killing the unarmed bounty hunters. Spreading his hands, he said, ‘‘All right, she can stay.’’ But as he sat down, Clarimonde felt his eyes upon her, and she knew that Soto would not forget this.

‘‘Miss Clair, please have a seat, ma’am,’’ said Beck, with authority. ‘‘We all appreciate the fine job you and Suelo have done for us.’’ As he spoke, Beck flipped open a wooden crate full of long, empty rawhide pouches.

She knew what Beck had just done was to let Soto know that he had no voice or power in the gang. She also realized Beck was telling her that he’d had enough of Soto’s belligerent manner, and now that he had the explosives he needed to do the job, Soto had better walk softly. This was Beck extending his hand to her. Was it time she took it? Yes, she believed it was, she told herself, relaxing down onto a comfortable leather ottoman among the men, avoiding Soto’s searing stare.

When the meeting was over and the men had stood up and drifted away into ones and twos, Clarimonde made it a point to stay close to Beck. She did not want to be left alone with Soto after what had taken place. Even though she’d had nothing to do with any of it, she knew how ruthless and deadly he could get in the blink of an eye. She felt relieved to hear Beck tell everyone that tonight, for security’s sake, they would all bed down in the large main room.

‘‘Nobody but the trail guard leaves this group tonight. If this job gets discovered, we’ll all know it didn’t come from anybody here,’’ he’d said in ending. His words had been a godsend to Clarimonde. She shuddered at the thought of what dark promise lay in Soto’s eyes, were the two of them left by themselves.

‘‘Whoo-ieee,’’ said Dave Arken to Bowen Flannery and Earl Caplan, as Clarimonde walked past them to be closer to Beck’s side. ‘‘I’m afraid this might be more unstamped Mexican gold coins than I can carry.’’ He hefted a handful of the long, rawhide pouches that had been handed out from the wooden crate.

Earl Caplan smiled devilishly. ‘‘If it’s too much for you, Dave, I’ll be honored to help you carry it.’’ He also held a handful of rawhide pouches to be loaded with gold coins from the train robbery.

‘‘What always amazes me,’’ said Flannery, ‘‘is how does Memphis get this kind of information?’’ He gave a bewildered shrug. ‘‘How does an American railroad sell minted gold to the Mexican government?’’

Hearing part of the conversation, Beck stepped over, saying, ‘‘Who else has the means of brokering such a deal? The railroad has the means of transporting this sort of shipment. They can ship it right over onto the Mexican rails without being questioned.’’

‘‘But how can the Mexican government pay for something like this?’’ Flannery asked. ‘‘They can’t afford roads. They can’t provide for their people.’’

‘‘But even the poorest government always finds ways to deal in gold,’’ said Beck. ‘‘It’s a fact of life.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ said Caplan, ‘‘besides, it ain’t the Mexican government paying for it. The Germans are the ones holding the purse strings down here. You can bet they’ve figured themselves a cut off the top. That’s why the coins haven’t been stamped, right, Memphis?’’

‘‘Don’t insult a thief like Memphis Beck by calling him a politician!’’ Kirkpatrick replied with a chuckle.

‘‘Forget all that,’’ Flannery chuckled. ‘‘I want to know how you get this kind of information, Memphis Beck. I’m beginning to fear you are some sort of mystic.’’

‘‘Don’t lose sleep worrying about it,’’ said Beck. ‘‘It might make you too tired to tote your gold when the time comes.’’

‘‘Good point,’’ said Flannery. He pulled a silver flask from inside his dark suit coat, twisted the top free and held it out toward Beck. ‘‘Indulge yourself, sir. This whiskey is distilled from a recipe handed down by my dear Irish forefathers.’’

‘‘Obliged, but no thanks,’’ said Beck. ‘‘I’m going to sit guard on the trail tonight. Your forefathers’ recipe could knock out a field ox.’’

‘‘No, Dave, that wouldn’t be fair to you,’’ said Beck. ‘‘You’re always sitting guard while the rest of us get our sleep.’’

Even as he protested, Beck had been hoping someone might volunteer for the job tonight. He’d wanted to stay close to the woman tonight in case Soto tried anything against her. He realized he’d put her on a bit of a spot, but there was no other way to ever let her know that he was on her side, except present it to her in Soto’s face, the way he just did, and hope she believed him.

‘‘It’s fair to me,’’ said Arken. ‘‘I like being up on the hills alone. It makes me feel peaceful.’’

‘‘Then here’s to us, and to a railroad as crooked as we are!’’ Beck said, taking the flask and tossing back a sip.

As soon as Beck had taken the sip of whiskey, Dave Arken stepped away to the door, and said over his shoulder as he shook the stack of rawhide pouches in his hand, ‘‘Sweet dreams everybody. See you all in the morning, when we head out to go fill these things.’’

Stepping over to the open doorway, Bowen Flannery watched the good-natured train robber ride away along the moonlit trail. ‘‘Dave never shut a door behind himself in his life,’’ said Flannery, taking the doorknob and pushing the door shut.

A hundred yards into the purple darkness, Arken veered his horse off the trail. Taking a grown-over path leading up into a broken hillside, he followed it up through a maze of deeply sunken boulders and jagged cliff drop-offs. At a place a half mile below the crest, he stopped and looked down in the moonlight, seeing Pierman’s hacienda in one direction and in the other direction the shadowy main trail snaking away toward the border.

He had traveled as silently as a ghost; when he stepped from his saddle to take a position overlooking the trail, he froze at the faintest sound of a hoof scraping a rock on a ledge below him.

Crouching, drawing his rifle, Arken eased over to the edge of a sharp drop-off, lay down on his belly and crawled forward enough to look below. Twenty feet straight down, in a thin slice of moonlight he saw the ears of a mule twitch. Beside it he could barely make out the dark silhouettes of three more mules huddled together beside a scrub cedar. He had no idea who was down there, or why, but he knew that Memphis Beck and the others had to be told, and told quickly.

Carefully he pushed himself back from the edge with his hands. But as he did so, the edge of the cliff broke beneath his hand. Dropping his rifle, he grabbed with his free hand to catch his weight and keep from falling forward. But more of the edge broke. ‘‘Oh no!’’ he managed to whisper. ‘‘Why me?’’ Then he felt himself tumble downward among loose dirt and rock, and land with a hard grunt on his back, only a few yards from the mules.

Struggling to catch his breath and rise onto his knees, he saw dark figures dressed in white step forward out of the greater darkness, some with their face hidden by wide-brimmed sombreros, one of them hatless, moonlight glistening on his shaved head. Arken saw machetes hanging from their hands as he tried to catch his breath.

‘‘You fellows . . . are making a . . . big mistake,’’ he gasped in a halting voice, seeing them close in around him, silently, deliberately—terrible apparitions unaffected by time. He fumbled with his holster, finding it had been emptied by his fall. He wanted to shout and warn Beck and the others, but there was not enough breath in him to make it happen.

‘‘Well . . . damn you . . . make it fast,’’ Arken managed to say, seeing the machetes rise above their heads in a flash of pale moonlight, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop them.