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  “Reno, you got a bloated reputation.”

  Hawk slammed the Henry’s barrel down hard across Reno’s left wrist. The outlaw yelped. The knife hit the dirt with a thud.

  Crouching, Reno grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, his braided hair dangling down over his eyes. Hawk stepped toward him. Switching his Henry to his left hand, he clenched his right fist, cocked it, and hammered it forward.

  His bulging middle knuckle connected soundly with the gunrunner’s right temple.

  Reno’s head jerked back. “Oh!”

  When it came forward again, it was met again by Hawk’s fist—two brutal, hammering blows that put the gunrunner’s lights out almost immediately, and a third insuring he’d get a good, long night’s sleep. He and Hawk had a long ride ahead of them tomorrow.

  Reno piled up in the dirt like a fifty-pound bag of cracked corn tossed from a high-sided freight wagon.

  “Jesus Christ!” the sergeant bellowed, incredulous, stepping around the comatose outlaw as though around a coiled rattler he’d just found in the trail.

  Hawk strode back into the church. He came out a few seconds later with his Henry clamped under his arm, uncoiling the lariat in his hands. He stopped over Reno and thrust his rifle toward the sergeant.

  “Hold that.”

  Frowning with befuddlement, the sergeant took the gun.

  Hawk crouched and quickly wrapped the lariat around both of Reno’s wrists, slipknotting it, then using it to drag the Kid over to one of the hitch racks fronting the church. He wound the lariat tightly around the rack until the Kid’s wrists were snugged up against the worn rail, the Kid’s torso stretched upward so that he was putting only about half his weight on his bent legs and knees. His chin dipped between his upraised arms and shoulders toward his chest. His breath came in rasps and half groans.

  Hawk dropped the unused end of the coiled rope and took his rifle back from the sergeant, who stood staring down at the secured gunrunner with his lower jaw hanging, his eyes even more incredulous than before.

  “I doubt he’ll stir for a good long time, but keep an eye on that snake till I fetch my horse.”

  With that, Hawk tramped off toward the canyon’s dark north ridge.

  The sergeant ran a thick paw down his face and blinked at Hawk’s back. “Just who in the hell are you, mister?”

  18.

  IRONSIDE

  “NAME’S Hawk,” he said as he approached the sergeant’s campfire, having turned his horse into the corral with the sergeant’s army bay and the gunrunners’ mounts.

  “You got a first name, Hawk?”

  “Gideon.”

  Hawk dropped his saddle, saddlebags, and bedroll on the ground near the low fire that the sergeant had built beside the church, where several other fires had been built in the past, judging from the blackened stones comprising the fire ring. He knelt to untie the whang strings holding his bedroll closed.

  The sergeant frowned at him. “Gideon Hawk . . . Where have I heard that name before?”

  Hawk rolled out his blankets. “Got a name?”

  “Ironside.”

  The soldier lay back against his saddle. His hat, Spencer, and holstered revolver lay beside him. So did a smoking tin coffee cup and a bottle of Old Bourbon. He was dabbing gingerly at the dried blood on his temple, wincing.

  “Marion Jeffcoat Ironside, to come completely clean.” He removed the wadded cloth from his temple and scowled across the fire at Hawk. “But anyone who calls me Marion gets a busted nose for their trouble, so just call me Sergeant or Ironside or Sergeant Ironside.”

  Hawk gave a snort as he dug a battered tin cup from his saddlebags and then used a leather swatch to pluck the sergeant’s coffeepot from a rock near the crackling flames. He splashed the coal-black liquid, salted with ashes from the burning cat’s claw branches, into the cup.

  “What happened at the wash?” he asked, sitting back to let his coffee cool.

  “A goddamn mess is what happened.”

  Sergeant Ironside pressed the bloody, wet cloth to his temple again and glanced toward Kid Reno’s silhouette crouched as though in prayer beneath the hitch rack flanking the sergeant on his right.

  “A green lieutenant to go along with about a dozen raw, blockheaded recruits still hungover from a stash of Apache tizwin one of the fool younkers had passed around among ’em the night before. Sergeant Kaminsky and me was the only two who’d been stationed in Apacheria longer than three months.”

  “Kaminsky must have been the sergeant I saw dangling from the cottonwood.”

  “With the two whelps—that’s right,” the sergeant grunted. “He and the whelps left the main patrol to scout ahead. Kid Reno musta caught ’em flat-footed, though I suspect Kaminsky woulda been just fine alone. Him and me fought at Chickamauga together, and there weren’t no savvier soldier.”

  Ironside poured whiskey onto the bloody cloth and once more pressed the cloth to his forehead, flushing and cursing briskly when the whiskey hit the bullet wound. “Anyways, the lieutenant refused to let me scout the wash before we pulled the patrol across. Said it was a waste of time, Reno’s bunch wouldn’t linger here after hanging Kaminsky and his two snot-nosed whelps.

  “I should have shot the damn lieutenant off his horse and done what my good sense told me to do, but I didn’t, and Kid Reno had set up the Gatling in the mesquites on the other side and cut us all down like ducks on a millpond.”

  Ironside loosed a long sigh, poured some whiskey into his coffee, and offered the bottle to Hawk. Hawk took the bottle and added a jigger to his own tar-black belly wash, and sipped it.

  “That’s why I’m bringin’ Reno and the guns back to Fort Bowie with me tomorrow.” Stubborn challenge edged the sergeant’s words. “Headin’ out first thing in the mornin’.”

  Hawk shook his head and glanced into his coffee cup. “You make good coffee, but you don’t listen for shit.” He reached into his saddlebags for a small canvas sack and tossed it across the fire to the sergeant, who caught it against his chest. “Jerky?”

  Ironside gave him a brooding, sidelong glance. He opened the bag, pulled out a couple chunks of the jerky, then tossed the bag back to Hawk, who fished a couple of pieces out for himself before returning the bag to his saddle pouch.

  “You and me ain’t fixin’ to dance, are we, Hawk? I ain’t seen no badge yet, and every time I ask if you’re a lawman, you give a politician’s answer. For all I know, you’re a bounty hunter lookin’ to collect a reward on the gang’s head. This is army business.” Ironside bit off a chunk of the jerky and chewed with his mouth open, narrowing a hard eye at Hawk. “I reckon you and that Henry clean up right well, and I ain’t no cold-steel artist. Just the same, you stay outta my way, hear?”

  Hawk reached inside his vest, dipped his fingers into his shirt pocket, and tossed his old, tarnished deputy U.S. marshal’s badge across the fire. He hadn’t worn that badge in a month of Sundays, but now was as good a time as any to haul it out. Better to pass himself off as a bona fide lawman than to kill Ironside, likely a good soldier. There were too few good soldiers out here. Hell, there were too few good men, soldier or not, anywhere.

  “Okay, so you’re a federal,” the sergeant said, tossing the badge back to Hawk after a quick look.

  “On special assignment to kill Kid Reno’s old pal, Wilbur ‘Knife-Hand’ Monjosa.”

  The skin above the bridge of the sergeant’s broad, pink nose wrinkled.

  Chewing jerky, Hawk said, “Mexican contrabandista who’s moved his operations up close to the border and across the line around Yuma. Said to have several hideouts out there in that scorched country, and he’s supplying the bronco Apaches with rifles. Reno rode with him for a time, after Knife-Hand started basing his operations in Arizona.

  “Word has it they forked trails. Probably, the two old seed bulls couldn’t get along on the same side of the fence. But Reno likely knows where Knife-Hand’s main lair is, and I’m gonna have him lead me to it. With your g
uns.”

  Ironside’s expression remained unchanged. Slowly, he nodded. “I heard of him. Stirrin’ up the Lipan Apaches over there, raisin’ a real bloody ruckus. Heard they ain’t even sendin’ trains out of Yuma no more.” He turned his head sideways to give Hawk a skeptical look. “They sent you—one man—to kill him?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “Uncle Sam.”

  “Who signed your orders, and I’d like to see those orders.”

  “No papers,” Hawk said. “And I’m not at liberty to tell you who sent me. But I know they wouldn’t like it if I wasn’t given your full cooperation. Likely the stage and railroad lines being harassed by the Apaches being fed guns and ammunition by old Knife-Hand wouldn’t care for it, either.”

  Ironside stared skeptically over his cup as he took a long, slow, pensive sip of the smoking, whiskey-laced mud. Hawk was relieved to see that the man was buying it . . . or beginning to buy it. He’d hate to have to shoot him. He wasn’t giving up those rifles and the Gatling gun, however. Nor Kid Reno. Altogether there was no better way—probably no other way at all—of running down Knife-Hand.

  “You’re an assassin,” the sergeant said, pooching out his lips and chewing jerky as he continued digesting Hawk’s story.

  Hawk lifted his mouth corners. “I like to see my job as that of a problem solver.”

  “You see it however you want,” Ironside grunted. “You’re an assassin. But bein’ as how Knife-Hand has been stirrin’ up so many killin’s down this way, I guess I can sorta see how Uncle Sam might have sent you. But I’ll tell you one thing—top-secret mission or no, neither them guns or that prisoner is leavin’ my sight. After you done killed Monjosa, I’m takin’ both back to Fort Bowie. Ain’t no way in hell I’m goin’ back there empty-handed after that son of a kill-crazy bastard done wiped out my whole patrol.”

  Ironside threw back the rest of his coffee and tossed the grounds on the fire. He narrowed a stubborn eye at Hawk. “And there ain’t no way around that bit of bonded fact, so don’t even go thinkin’ you’re gettin’ shed of me, Mr. Hawk.”

  He tossed his head toward the slumped and softly snoring Reno and then at the wagon shed. “Where he and that wagon go, I go.”

  “No arguments.” Hawk swallowed a large sip of his own cooling coffee and bit off another hunk of jerky. “I’ll likely need assistance with the wagon and the prisoner. I welcome your help, Sergeant.”

  “Welcome my help, huh?” Ironside grumbled, resigned but contrary, and used his empty cup to dig a hole in the ground for his hip. “Shoots the whole damn gang down in a damn church, tattoos the sole survivor, and he welcomes my help. Shit!”

  He drew his blankets over his legs as he turned onto his side. He tossed one more confounded look over his shoulder at Hawk, beetling his thin, red brows for a long time before saying, “Mister, are you sure we never met before? Somethin’ about you rakes me as familiar. . . .”

  “Forget about it, Sergeant,” Hawk advised, pitching his voice with subtle warning. He tossed his grounds on the fire, set his cup down, and began removing his boots. “Get a good night’s rest. If you’re riding with me and the Kid, you’re gonna need it.”

  “Wake up and turn me loose, you son of a bitch!”

  Hawk’s eyes had no sooner snapped open than the big Russian was in his hand and his head was off his saddle. Automatically, his thumb rocked the revolver’s hammer back with a grating click in the dawn silence.

  On the other side of the dead fire ring, Sergeant Ironside was clawing around for his Spencer rifle.

  “Yoo-whoooo!” came another eerie chortle. “Wakey, wakey, little ones around the fire over there . . . and cut me out of this motherfuckin’ rope!”

  Sitting up, cocked Russian extended straight out from his shoulder, Hawk shuttled his gaze toward the hitch rack fronting the church. Kid Reno slumped beneath the rack—a bedraggled silhouette in the first wash of dawn, his braided hair dangling toward the black ground.

  The Kid lifted his head and bellowed, “You hear me? Cut me loose, goddamn you to blazing hell! You got no damn right to tie a man like this. Besides, I gotta piss like a Prussian plow horse!”

  Hawk loosed a relieved sigh, and the rush of blood in his ears faded slowly. He depressed the Russian’s hammer, set the revolver down beside him, and reached for his boots.

  The sergeant held his rifle across his chest and raked a weary paw down his face. “Goddamnit, Reno, you stop that consarned caterwauling or I’m gonna come over there and feed you one of my socks!”

  “Get off your lard ass, old man, and cut me loose so I can piss!”

  “Why, that loudmouth son of a bitch,” Ironside said. “You shoulda shot him, too.”

  When Hawk had pulled both boots on, he got up, wrapped his cartridge belt around his waist, cinching the buckle, and donned his hat. He walked over to where Kid Reno hung from the hitch rack, yelling, cursing, and taunting.

  “You got no right to tie me like this, you son of a bitch!” he bellowed, jerking against the rope wrapped taut around his red, swollen wrists that weren’t quite as purple as ripe plums but damn close.

  “I gotta hand it to you, Kid,” Hawk said. “You got gall.”

  “Untie me or so help me I’ll gut you and I’ll hunt down your whole family—every last one of ’em—and I’ll skin the boys and I’ll . . .”

  His eyes snapped wide as Hawk lunged for him, gritting his teeth.

  “Hold on!” Reno begged.

  Too late.

  With his left hand, Hawk jerked the man’s head back by his hair. He smashed his right fist against Reno’s already badly swollen and bruised left cheekbone. When his fist had pistoned against the man’s face four solid times with savage, brutal fury, the smacks sounding crisp in the still dawn air, he released the man’s hair.

  Reno’s head sagged back down between his shoulders as, slowly, the man’s lips dropped over his tobacco-stained teeth.

  Hawk wiped his bloody knuckles on his pants and turned. Sergeant Ironside stood several yards behind him, grinning. The sergeant shook his head. “You certainly have your own way of doing things, don’t you, Hawk?”

  “Yep.” Hawk straightened his hat and tramped toward the corral. “Build a fire. I’ll get the wagon hitched.”

  19.

  GETTING THE DOG ACQUAINTED WITH ITS LEASH

  WHEN Hawk and Sergeant Ironside had eaten breakfast, Hawk led his grulla over to where Kid Reno sagged beneath the hitch rack. Already the zopilotes must have sensed the carnage inside the church, because a good dozen birds were circling the dilapidated structure about a hundred feet in the air, eagerly heckling and chortling.

  Ironside had pulled the wagon up in front of the church, as well, and sat in the driver’s box, the reins hanging limp in his hands. Hawk dismounted, grabbed his canteen from his saddle, opened the wagon’s tailgate, then walked over to the hitch rack. Reno sat with his legs curled beneath him. His checked trousers were dark across one thigh.

  He looked up at Hawk through slitted, puffy eyes and gritted teeth. “You caused me to pee myself, you son of a bitch. I ain’t a well man!”

  Hawk set down the canteen, then picked up the coiled lariat and, using his bowie knife, cut off a four-foot-long strip. Reno watched him. “What the hell are you doin’ now?”

  “What’s it look like?” Hawk said as he wrapped one end of the cut rope around Reno’s right ankle and the other end around his left ankle.

  “Why don’t you just shoot me? What you gotta torture me for?”

  Hawk gave him a look.

  Reno glowered and looked away.

  When Hawk had tied the man’s ankles, leaving two slack feet of rope between them, he cut Reno’s wrists free of the hitch rack. The gunrunner screamed as his arms dropped like lead weights, and he rolled onto one side in the dirt, clamping his crossed wrists against his crotch, squirming and groaning. “Ah, Jesus, that hurts!”

  “Just getting the dog acqu
ainted with its leash.” Hawk squatted beside the man, looking down at him as Reno rolled in the dirt, grunting and gritting his teeth, holding his right wrist gingerly in his swollen left hand. “Now, listen, I’m gonna make this real easy for you.”

  “Fuck you! I need my McCullough’s! I ain’t well!”

  “Are you listening?”

  Reno cut a miserable glance at him.

  “I’m gonna ask you a question, and if you answer it truthfully, I’m going to let you ride in the wagon box. If I sense you’re lying, which you’re probably going to want to do though I advise very strongly against it, I’m gonna make you walk behind the wagon. For a man with the pony drip, that’ll be a might uncomfortable.”

  Reno only stared at him through his swollen, slitted, baleful eyes.

  Hawk said, “I want to know where you last saw Knife-Hand Monjosa and where you believe I’d be most likely to find him now.”

  Reno stared at him dully. “You’re outta your mind,” he said, moving his cracked, puffy lips. He stared at Hawk, and Hawk could see the man’s pain-racked mind working. Slowly, Reno spread a grim, disbelieving smile. “You’re lookin’ for Monjosa.”

  “Where’s the best place to look?”

  “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. One man?” He glanced at Sergeant Ironside waiting in the wagon, holding the reins and staring toward Reno and Hawk. “Two men?”

  “Where will I find him? I know out west, somewhere north of Yuma. I want to know where exactly.”

  “I don’t know.” Reno winced as he looked at his purple hands, which he was trying to flex. “Shit, we split up nigh on a year ago.”

  “Why’d you split up?”

  Reno chuckled. “Oldest reason in the world.”

  “Money?”

  “A woman.”

  “Okay,” Hawk said. “Where will I have the best chance of finding Monjosa? Think twice before you answer. A lie will only bring more pain and a whole lot more misery. You’re going with me, so the sooner we find him, the sooner you’ll be a free man.”

  Reno’s pale, hollow left cheek twitched slightly. “Free?”