The train stopped nowhere near the mining town of Tombstone. Walker hadn’t known this when he boarded with a ticket for California, but he soon learned Tombstone was off the main line for one thing and closing down because of flooding in the mines for another. It was just as well. Tombstone had popped into Madame Octoroon’s head, probably, because of the reputation it had as a hard-cased town near the border. If a semi-literate madam thought of it as a likely place for a wanted man to be headed, others might well be considering it, too.
The overnight ride in the day coach hadn’t been so bad, but it got hot as a two-dollar pistol when sunrise caught them on the Arizona desert. Neither the conductor nor any of the other passengers had seemed suspicious or interested in a tall red-headed man in a checkered suit a size too small, but it was time he began thinking his next move through.
The whore had probably been right about the San Diego station. The station at Tucson might offer a suspicious marshal or two, too. So when the train stopped for water at Benson, he got off.
Benson was a little jerkwater stop on the banks of the shallow San Pedro River, running north out of Mexico. Walker found a saloon open for business early and went inside. He bought a bottle and took it to a table in a corner near the back. He didn’t intend to drink the bottle. But only a hard drinker would be sitting alone in a saloon in midmorning, and he didn’t want any questions, either. The Mexican bartender didn’t look like he was interested in asking any.
It seemed to take forever, but after a while he heard the train whistle and knew it was pulling out. He stared down at his glass, not betraying any interest in the railroad’s own business.
A few minutes later, a lean-looking middle-aged man with a tin star pinned to his faded blue shirt came in and moseyed up to the bar, not looking Walker’s way. The lawman greeted the bartender in border Mex and in the same lingo asked, “What have we got over in the corner, Jose?”
The bartender shrugged and answered in Spanish, “Just a drunk. He looks like a salesman or something.”
Walker kept his face blank, staring owlishly down at his half-filled glass as the town law sauntered over, casually, and sat down at his table. The lawman stared thoughtfully at the stranger in town for a long hard minute before he said, “If you was on the transcontinental, mister, you just missed your train.”
Walker looked up, pretending to be startled as he answered in a slurred voice, “My train? Thash imposhible! They told me the train was stoppin’ for an hour!”
“It stops for mebbe fifteen minutes and, like I said, it just left. You got any money on you, mister?”
“Money? You want money?” Walker blustered, taking out some crumpled bills and spreading them on the table. The lawman looked relieved and said, “Put it away before you lose it, friend. We got a vagrancy law in Benson but as long as you got two dollars you’re O.K. What line are you in? Salesman?”
Walker knew a salesman would be expected to have a sample case. He shook his head and said, “Printer, Journeyman printer. Hear there’s work in my line out on the Coast. Got laid off in El Paso a week ago for some reason and … Look here, they had no call to fire me like that! I mean. I come to work on time, most days, and I never made all that many mistakes and . . . Damn it, the printer’s wife was down on me and—”
“Yeah, I know,” soothed the lawman, getting to his feet with a look of bored pity as he added, “There’s no print shop worth mention in this town, mister. If I were you I’d catch the next ride out. Do you follow my meaning?”
“Sure, Marshal. Where in hell is this town, anyway?”
“You’re in Benson, Arizona Territory. See that the sun don’t set on you hereabouts, unless you like working on county roads.”
Walker waited until the lawman left before he went over to the bar and said, in English, “Thash a mean sheriff, you know?”
The bartender shrugged and said, “He’s just doing his job.”
“Yeah, but he tol’ me to git, an’ he sounded like he meant it. You know where I can hire me a horse?”
“Livery stable just down the street, but where do you think you’re going?”
“Back up the track to Dragoon. Thash just a few miles from here, right?”
“More like fifteen. What you want to go to Dragoon for?”
‘Teller on the train said they has a newshpaper in Dragoon. Said they might hire me there, but the fool train didn’t stop there, and—”
“Mister, if I was you, I’d catch the next through train and go on out to the Coast like you said.”
“Shit, I don’t know for sure there’s a job for me in Dago an’ Dragoon’s a lot closher, so, yeah, I’ll hire a nag an’ run on up to Dragoon.”
Out in the blazing sunlight, he dropped the drunken act and went to the livery stable like a man who knew what he was doing. He’d established a false lead with the bartender, but he knew the livery stable would hesitate to send an obvious drunk out across fifteen miles of desert.
The colored stablehand saddled up a swaybacked bay gelding without comment and accepted a ten-dollar deposit against its safe return. It left Walker almost broke, but he had a horse and gun, now, which was a lot more than he’d escaped from Death Row with.
He rode out of Benson in the direction of Dragoon, fording the shallow San Pedro without meeting anyone important. Like most desert streams, the San Pedro was lined with trees and brush, mostly mesquite and salt cedar. Such grass as he was likely to find would be growing near the river, too, and according to the map, the valley of the San Pedro led to Del Rio, Mexico. It should take him at least two days to reach the border, and there was an Army post at Fort Huachucal between him and the dubious safety of Mexico. This horse would be missed about sundown. They’d have it on the wire by nightfall, but he’d be in rugged, almost deserted country by then. Yeah, he’d ride all night and hole up in the Mule Mountains across the river from the fort until he figured his next move. Just what that move might be was sort of hazy at the moment, but he was still alive and running free, and that was more than he’d expected just two nights ago.
Dick Walker would never know whether the troopers from Fort Huachuca had really bothered to look for him. The scrub-covered Mule Mountains just north of the border were a maze of canyons, and he had little trouble holing up with his stolen horse for the next few days as he waited for the interest to die down. He found a little spring in a shaded canyon where the antique horse could graze and water. He spent most of the next few days hunkered on a ridge with a good view of the outside world and, as far as he could tell, nobody rode anywhere near his hideout. He catnapped at night and could have stayed there forever, had he had anything to eat. The horse was doing fine on grass. The Mule Mountains didn’t offer enough other food for even an Apache to survive, which was probably why there were none around.
He nibbled mesquite pods and caught some frogs at the spring. He ate a couple of lizards and considered using one of his precious six shots on a buzzard, more than once. He’d had no idea how much a buzzard resembled a fat turkey until he’d fasted a couple of days.
But he didn’t shoot any game, knowing the sound would carry for miles. Having plenty of time to study the rough map of the territory he carried in his head, Walker finally decided his best bet was a border jump between Nogales and Douglas, avoiding any towns, Mexican or American, until he was well south of the border. The damned wire probably stretched to Del Rio, and, even if it didn’t, a big town like Del Rio would be crawling with Rurales.
With his old gelding fat and rested, he struck out southeast into the busted-up hell of the Sierra Madres. It was said that even the Rurales steered clear of the Yaqui Indians of the Sierra Madres. The Yaqui were supposed to be meaner than the Apaches. On the other hand, the Rurales were gringo-hating sons-of-bitches who’d shoot a red-headed man with blue eyes on sight. With luck, any Indians he met might not be packing machine guns. Uncle Sam, in his infinite wisdom, had just sold El Presidente Diaz a whole mess of those new Maxim machine guns, doubtless to help him keep a “stable government” in power.
Yeah, his chances against the still-wild Indians of the Sierra Madres were piss-poor, but he’d played tag with Apaches and come out alive.
He had no idea what a man with a six-gun could do against a machine gun. He’d fired one of the damned things only once, back at the 10th. He still couldn’t believe what it had done to the target.