14
Bob Marcus was the brains of the outfit. Foley knew it. But he also new that Marcus was hot tempered and meaner than a chuck-wagon cook.
There was a running joke back in the days when the five of them took turns cooking out on the trail. The joke was one Marcus loved well and told every chance he had:
“Bunch of cowpokes was drivin’ cattle when the cook up and died. So the rest of ’em come up with the bright idea to take turns rustlin’ up their grub. It stayed each person’s turn to take a spell over the campfire till someone else was fool enough to complain. Then he’d have to take over. Well, sir, Ol’ Tex had been cookin’ for two weeks and there’d been lots of grumblin’, but nobody’d out-and-out complained. So one night, he added all the chili peppers to the beans, but all he got was some ugly stares. Next night, he tried a handfula dirt. Still nothin’. Finally, outta desperation, Ol’ Tex threw in a cowpie. It was more’n one cowboy could stand.
“He said, ‘These here beans taste just like cowshit.’ Ol’ Tex started to get all gleeful-like. Then the other cowpoke quickly added, ‘But it’s the best damn cowshit I ever et.’ ”
They’d all got a good laugh out of it, till Cassidy mentioned, “There’s a little bit of truth to every joke.”
Marcus had never taken a turn over the pots after Cassidy’s observation. They’d made sure of it. Tripped over their tongues to complain when it was his turn.
True, they’d had some wind-up, shake-’em-down times together, especially when they’d been tearing up the countryside over by Prescott. Bill Buckley, Abel Cassidy, and Vance Jefferson were the best for thinking up prankish deviltry.
Up until the time they happened upon that Apache woman on the flats past the rock formations called the Dells. They’d sat in the rocks and watched her for a while, grinding corn and patting tortillas out to bake on a hot slab of rock.
Hot damn, she’d been exciting when she took out her tit to feed her baby!
“Come on, gents,” Marcus had said. “We’ll send smoke signals to the rest of them Apache not to go running off from the reservation.”
The five of them had spent the afternoon in her wickiup taking turns with her before it turned ugly. That damn papoose, screaming its brains out in its cradle board. Finally Marcus blew its brains out, right where it hung, just to shut the thing up.
The squaw bitch. She’d fought like a madwoman . . . for a while. Nearly chawed Buckley’s nose off, till Marcus knocked her front teeth out and shoved his cock down her throat.
Years later, Marcus still laughed over what he’d done to her next. And it was still enough to make Foley gag when he thought of it.
To this day he wondered just who the real savage was.
First he’d burned off her hair, then mutilated her face and cut off all her woman parts. Her own mother wouldn’t have recognized her. She’d been used up to the point of drawing her last few breaths when he ripped the silver out of her ears and off her neck, and slashed her throat like an antelope’s.
The cradle board he threw inside, and set the whole shebang afire.
Marcus had stuffed his mouth with the tortillas she’d been cooking and said, “There’s two good Indians.”
They’d had sense to make tracks for town before her buck returned.
That same evening they’d gotten word of the Double Aces payroll. Soon as Marcus heard about that $50,000—all of it in gold—he’d slavered and foamed over the news like a rabid, crazed wolf circling a pool of water.
Money could twist a man’s brain—make him do stranger things than when he had dreams of saloon girls after a month on the range. Foley still had nightmares about that squaw—and the folks on the Butterfield stage. It wasn’t enough for Marcus just to ambush them. He’d gutted the driver and staked the passengers out like hides curing in the hot Arizona sun.
Townspeople thereabouts still believed it was the work of that renegade Apache.
Payback for his woman and baby.
When they’d apprehended that brave’s sorry ass, they’d strung him up faster than packrats can funnel down a hole.
Foley had trouble buying that Marcus ever allowed Bill Buckley to ride off with that gold in the first place. Lord knew, Foley wasn’t the smartest post on the fence line, but he was experienced enough to realize it was against Marcus’s nature to let Buckley control all that cash.
Something didn’t smell right.
Hellfire! Years passed before he and Marcus managed to track Vance down. By then, Buckley was dead and Abel had split off on his own to help his brother with the Bar C. Vance, the slippery bastard, had zigzagged them across the whole New Mexico and Arizona Territories—and then some.
But still, it went against Foley’s grain to kill the asshole on a trumped up fight over a bar girl after they caught up with him.
But it wasn’t against his partner’s grain at all.
Marcus had done a number on Vance before plugging the sniveler. They’d ransacked Vance’s saddlebags and pack roll, but other than a few hundred in double eagles and some unusual looking pipestone carvings, there wasn’t enough shit in Vance’s stuff to give a clue where the rest of the money was squirreled away.
It was someplace back on the Bar C was all he said. But Marcus was positive Cassidy would know right where it was stashed.
Only Cassidy hadn’t known donkey shit. In fact, Cassidy had been pushing them to find it faster.
It was Marcus who had the brilliant idea of killing those horses, just to get Cassidy’s attention. And he’d made it clear to Cassidy, too—if he didn’t ease up pretty damned soon, Miranda would be next.
That’s when he’d reminded Cassidy of that Apache woman, and the people on the Butterfield stage. But even whipping the blubbering son of a bitch with a pistol hadn’t learned them a damn thing.
Marcus had screwed up.
One thing was certain—Foley had found out Marcus was capable of the vilest acts known to man after he’d watched him kill that first mare and her foal. He was wrong thinking he’d never see anything more disgusting than that Apache woman and her baby. Dead wrong. Marcus’s words chilled him to the bone—still turned Foley’s stomach more than two months later.
As soon as they’d dismounted, Marcus had unbuckled his pants. “First we shoot ’em, then we screw ’em, then we butcher ’em.”
“What in Hades are you talkin’ about, Marcus?” Foley had asked, shocked to the toes of his boots.
“Soon as I get my dick out, I’ll show you.”
And that was just what Marcus had done while Foley stood by, puking up last week’s enchiladas.
When all this was over—when they’d found the Double Aces gold—he’d kill Marcus himself.
Foley! Nothing but a good for nothing, sanctimonious cry-baby, Marcus thought.
He rolled up in his blanket and turned his back to the fire. Foley was good for a few things—sticking his arm into badger holes, rolling a tight quirlie, or boiling water. But he was dumb as a rock. You could piss on his foot and convince him it was rain.
Maybe that was a good thing, too. Good for Marcus, anyway.
But it was glaringly obvious Foley didn’t have the heart to be a proper bandit.
Marcus focused his mind on more pressing matters. Right now, Slocum was nosing around, and there was Abel Cassidy to contend with.
Despite all his speed, Slocum would be an easy mark. Marcus had already had him in his sights twice that day. Half the town of Apache Wells either saw or heard that Slocum had laid Foley’s cheek open.
And Marcus made sure they knew Foley carried a grudge. A grudge likely to be settled. Cassidy might be harder to explain, but he wasn’t the first man to get lost in the desert.
And that left Miranda.
When all was said and done, he’d take over as the new head honcho at the Bar C and she’d be the sweetwater on a dying’ man’s throat.
Word on his mother’s grave.
When all this was over, and they’d found the Double Aces gold, he’d kill Foley himself.
Miranda heard a soft knock on her door. She quickly covered the papers and bag of money, and put her hand in her pocket. Reassuring herself with the derringer, she crossed the room.
“Yes?” she said through the door.
“It is me, Carmelita, señorita.” She opened the door and stepped inside. “I have idea. I hope you approve. Berto thinks it’s a good idea.”
Carmelita! Miranda’s grip on the gun relaxed and she withdrew her hand from her pocket. “What do you mean?”
“No matter how you try to explain, this not look good, Miranda. People might think you make up the story about why you kill Señor Abel.”
“But the filthy goat tried to rape me!” Miranda shuddered and rubbed her arms.
“You need not try to convince me.” Carmelita’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Carmelita like to shoot him, too. But not between the eyes. Between his legs! He . . . After your poppy, die, he—” The woman’s face was shot through with rage and pain; then she crumpled.
“Don’t, Carmelita. I’m sorry.” Miranda hugged and bolstered the woman who had been both a second mother and friend to her.
Carmelita straightened her shoulders, wiped her eyes, and continued confidently. “Everyone knows your uncle has been half-crazed over those horses of his. And that he bought the guns of Foley and Marcus to find out who has been doing this despicable deed.”
“But, Carmelita, I’m not so sure that pair’s telling the truth. Just the opposite. I’ve had a terrible feeling they might be involved. That they know way more than they let on.”
“We find out soon enough, now that Señor Slocum is here.” Carmelita shifted from foot to foot. Then she hissed, “I tell Berto not to go for the undertaker. I tell him to bring feed wagon to the back door and drive Señor Cassidy to the canyon where you find those first dead horses. I tell him, dump Señor Cassidy’s body for the buzzards and coyotes. That way, when the sheriff find him, he will think your uncle surprise the bandidos and gets himself killed.”
As Carmelita finished speaking, Miranda heard the wagon, and then two sets of boots pounding across the veranda. The screen slammed and she heard familiar voices in the hall outside her door.
Berto poked his head into the room and asked vehemently, “Carmelita tell you her mind?”
Miranda nodded.
“You listen to her, sí?” Berto said.
“It seems like the only sensible solution.”
Berto nodded approval. “Don’t you worry. Berto and Dilly take care of everything. No one’s gonna be sorry Abel is gone, or ask too many questions.”
Hatred filled the men’s eyes.
“Don’t take him until morning,” Miranda said quietly. “It’ll be safer for the men and the horses then.”
Dilly stuck his head in, too, and said, “We won’t never breathe a word, miss. We’re doin’ this for all the women on the ranch.”
Berto added, “They’re gonna sleep a whole lot easier from now on.”
Nausea flooded over Miranda. The men didn’t need to explain.
Just before the glowing windows of the Bar C came into view, Slocum changed his mind.
He’d lay low the rest of the night and not go back to the ranch.
With Marcus and Foley camped out on the range and Cassidy rampaging around the desert on a wild goose chase, Miranda’s safety was assured. He could trust Carmelita to protect her with her life if need be.
With new purpose, he turned Cougar toward Apache Wells. “Time to start investigatin’, buddy,” Slocum muttered.
Cougar grunted and snorted, then bobbed his head like he understood every word.
Slocum chuckled. “Cougar, old pal? You got more sense than most people I know.”
Then he laughed loud and long. “Way more sense than Bob Marcus and his whole damn gang of cutthroats put together.”
Before long, they reached Apache Wells and another rip-roaring Saturday night.