Chapter 9
Catfish Charlie Tuttle reined in his steeldust gelding on the shoulder of a bald, craggy rampart high in the Stalwart Mountains, forty hard miles south of Wolfwater. He swung down from the saddle with a heavy grunt. Before he’d left his cabin, he hadn’t been in the saddle for days, and his weary old behind wasn’t as molded to the leather as it once had been.
He’d be hanged if he’d let on to Brazos how hard the two-day ride had been on him. He turned now to see his old friend—still a friend?—rein in his fine chestnut named Abe and swing down from the leather. Brazos’s face was as expressionless as when Catfish had first seen the man back at his cabin.
Like Catfish himself, Brazos McQueen dug cased field glasses out of his saddlebags, and trudged up to within six feet of the crest of the ridge they were on. Then they dropped and crawled, doffed their hats, set them aside, and raised the binoculars to peer through them.
Catfish tightened the focus on his own glasses until five riders swam into clear view, just then making their way out from behind a thumb of a rock on the next ridge beyond a barren, boulder-strewn canyon in which the lens-clear, high-country sun fairly hammered down. Catfish couldn’t tell much about the riders, only that none of them resembled the tall, slender, blond-mustached Frank Thorson, who was said to still ride a gray stallion.
“It’s not them,” Catfish said to his old partner now, lowering the glasses. “Frank’s bunch. Not them.”
“Nah, I don’t think so, either. Maybe bounty hunters, maybe banditos. These crags have always crawled with both.”
“Neither might give us a warm reception, Brazos. Both might have long memories.”
“That’s all right. I don’t much care for either stripe, my ownself, an’ my memory is just fine.” Lying belly-down to Catfish’s left, he returned his glasses to his baize-lined leather case. He was a few years younger than Catfish’s sixty-two, but not by much. Still, he hadn’t let himself go to seed the way Catfish had. Brazos was a little over six feet, broad-shouldered, flat-bellied, and he still owned the long-legged, ambling stride of a lifelong horseman. He’d been raised in slavery in Kentucky and had joined the Union Army after the Emancipation Proclamation.
After the war, he’d headed west.
Catfish often wondered, as he knew Brazos likely had, too, if they’d fought against each other in one of those long, bloody, chaotic skirmishes they’d both been involved in. Neither one had ever talked about the war.
Catfish scrutinized his old friend and partner closely. They’d let their horses rest a while. They’d been pushing hard for two days. Only a few minutes ago, they’d seen the curl of dust of the riders on the next ridge and had, in wordless agreement, just like old times—they knew each other well enough they didn’t have need for much jabber—decided to investigate.
Now as their mounts cropped the tough, sparse brown grass thirty feet down the slope behind them, occasionally stomping a hoof and blowing, Catfish said, “You know, we been together now for two whole days, and you haven’t mentioned one word about Vonetta.”
Brazos turned to him, face still bland, though the brows a little ridged now over the molasses-black eyes. Finally he turned onto his back, sat up, and dug into his shirt pocket for his makin’s sack. “I got nothin’ to say on the subject.”
“It’s there between us. You know it is.”
Brazos cast him a hard, grave look. “Of course, it is.” He gave a dry chuckle. “I’m here to go after Abel’s killers and to get Beth’ny back. After that, I’ll ride on out of this country one more time . . . for good.”
He twisted the quirley closed and struck a match to life on his thumbnail.
Brazos was the only one who’d never called Charlie by his nickname. He’d always called him Cha’les—from the first time they’d met when renegade Union soldiers had burned the farm of a Black family in the Panhandle, killing them all, including three sons, and raping and killing two younger daughters. Catfish had been Captain Charlie Tuttle, Texas Ranger, while Brazos had been a sergeant in the same service—one of the first Black men to ride for the Rangers until the organization became the State Police Force and had banned the hiring of Blacks. Until that day, when they’d both been hunting outlaws solo, they’d never before crossed paths.
Together, they’d hunted down the soldiers, killing four, taking two to Amarillo for hanging, and were together for roughly the next twenty years, off and on . . . until that crazy, sad afternoon four years ago at the stage relay station in Wolfwater and Brazos had ridden out, not to be seen or heard from again by Catfish until two days ago.
“It wasn’t what you thought it was, Brazos.”
Brazos drew deep on the quirley and blew the smoke straight out before him. “Don’t wanna talk about her.” He paused, then turned a harsh look at his partner. “Don’t make water in my boot an’ tell me it’s rainin’. You both betrayed me. I saw what I saw.”
“What you saw wasn’t what you thought . . . think . . . it was!”
Brazos snapped his head toward him once more, his black eyes wide and white-ringed. “Like I said—I’m only here to avenge Abel an’ get his daughter back!” He took another drag from the quirley, disassembled it, and let the hot, dry breeze take the bits of tobacco and paper. He rose, pushing off his knees. “Come on if you’re comin’. We got a job to do. Let’s quit chinnin’ like a coupla toothless old fools on a loafer’s bench!”
Catfish heaved himself up with a curse and a grunt. “I still got a few teeth left in my head, you stubborn old ringtail!”
Brazos took up his chestnut’s reins and turned to Catfish. “Maybe so, but I saw you puttin’ salve on them cankers on your big, old, white behind last night.” He looked down at the older man’s bulging, jiggling belly as Catfish trudged down the slope, kicking stones and gravel in his wake, wincing with every step. “Look at you. You done gone to seed, you worthless old grayback. If I woulda known, I wouldn’t have stopped at your place. I’d have kept ridin’ up into the Stalwarts to avenge Abel an’ Beth my ownself!”
The leaner man shook his head in disgust and pulled himself with relative litheness into the saddle.
Catfish looked up at him, red-faced, breathless. “You know what, Brazos?”
“What’s that?” the former buffalo soldier fired back.
“You can go to hell!”
“Ha—that’s a laugh!” Brazos reined his gelding around and rode out. “Ridin’ with you, I done have!”
* * *
They didn’t talk for nearly an hour, but rode higher and deeper into the bald, rocky, up-and-down country of the Stalwarts.
Then, just as they were entering a deep canyon between church steeple spirals of rock jutting from anvil-like shoulders on either side, Catfish raised his gloved right hand while drawing back on Jasper’s reins with his left.
“Hold up.”
Brazos checked his chestnut down and sat staring into the shaded canyon before them, sliding his gaze from the steeplelike rock jutting skyward on his left to that on his right. A slight wind blew, lifting dust from the canyon floor just ahead. That slight whirring and the ratcheting cry of a hawk turning slow circles over the canyon were the only sounds.
“I don’t see nothin’,” Brazos said in his low, musically resonant voice.
“Me neither,” Catfish said, equally as quietly. “But I sure feel it.”
“What do you feel?”
“Trouble.”
Brazos looked at him, one brow arched. “Trouble?”
Catfish dipped his chin and raised his eyes to gaze up from beneath the broad brim of his hat, holding his right hand just above his thigh and extending his index finger nearly straight up. “I think I seen a shadow move amongst them rocks up there.”
About forty feet up above the canyon floor, and on its right side, was a niche in the rock wall, an opening between the wall itself and a twenty-foot-high column of rock jutting out from it and up. In fact, there were several niches in the walls on each side of the canyon, plenty of places for a man or men to affect a bushwhack.
Brazos followed Catfish’s pointing finger to the niche, studied it for a time, and then said, “I seen it, too. Just the shadow of that hawk’s all.”
He nudged his horse ahead.
“Hold on. I feel somethin’, blameit!”
Brazos stopped the chestnut and curveted the mount, scowling back at his partner. “You’ve gone as soft in your thinker box as you have in your old behind. My senses are still as sharp as yours ever was, an’ I don’t sense a thing. All I see is that lone hawk up there!”
Catfish stared at the rocks rising above both sides of the canyon.
He scowled, deeply confounded. He felt a witch’s cold finger of warning prodding the back of his neck, just below his collar. But he couldn’t see a blame thing. Also, there were no hoof or man prints in the inch or so of soft clay sand paving the canyon floor. If men and horses had been about, that soft sand would hold prints.
Were his senses letting him down, just as his old behind was?
Was he just jumpy?
After all, he hadn’t hunted owlhoots in years.
Yeah, that must be it. He was getting jumpy. Scared.
He felt the flush of embarrassment rise in his craggy cheeks, above his unruly beard, and ordered Jasper on ahead with a soft nudge of his spurs. He and Brazos dropped down the slight rise they were on and into the canyon, the steep walls closing around them. Catfish removed his Yellowboy from the sheath jutting up from under his right thigh. He quietly levered a round in the action and lowered the hammer to half cock—just in case.
Brazos gave him an arch-browed, dubious look.
Catfish ignored him, though he did see his old lawdog partner hook one hand over the walnut grips of his long-barreled .45 Peacemaker positioned for the cross-draw high on his left hip. Catfish gave a wry snort at that.
They rode slowly, each man looking around warily. Catfish kept an especially sharp eye out. That witch’s finger would just not stop bedeviling him.
On, they rode, gazing up at the crenelated stone walls around them, at a boulder supported precariously by a stone pedestal high on their left, at a natural arch over a cave high on their right. From behind that pedestal rock or from inside the cave would both be good places for a man or men to shoot down at the trail.
No shots came.
And then both formations slipped away behind them . . . farther and farther back.
The cliff walls lowered gradually, spread farther apart. They found themselves traversing a shallower canyon with a boulder-choked, cedar- and cactus-studded dry wash curving toward them from their right side. They rode in the open sunlight now, the shadows of the steeper walls having slipped away behind them.
The old witch pulled her finger away from the back of Catfish’s neck.
He heaved a heavy sigh of relief and depressed his Winchester’s hammer.
“There!” Brazos suddenly bellowed, thrusting up his right arm and pointing finger. “Sun flash!”
At the same time, a rattlesnake hissed off the trail’s left side, about ten feet ahead of Jasper, who pitched suddenly and whinnied shrilly, rising high and curling his front hooves at the cobalt mountain sky. Catfish heard the screech of a bullet just above his head a wink before he found himself plunging down Jasper’s left hip, the reins ripped out of his left hand. By sheer instinct, he managed to keep his right hand closed around the Yellowboy.
He gave a wailing curse as he kicked free of his stirrups and saw the ground coming up around him fast. The bark of the rifle that had hurled that bullet reached his ears an eye wink before he struck the ground on his back and shoulders. As Jasper bounded up the trail, buck-kicking and avoiding the diamond head of the striking rattler by only inches, Brazos leaped off his own horse’s back, his repeater in his hands.
He slammed the butt of the rifle against the chestnut’s rump. As the horse ran up the trail after Jasper, Brazos dropped to a knee, jacked a round into the Henry’s chamber and fired.
A man screamed.
The rattlesnake rattled.
As Catfish tried to suck air back into his battered lungs after the ground had beat it out of him, he glanced ahead to see the rattler, its coils as big as a man’s arm, staring at him, forked tongue darting in and out of its mouth, its small, hard crescent eyes glinting copper as they bore down on its prey.