Border Snakes Read online

  “Before I meet him, but not before I’m sure I’m heading in the right direction, I’ll dump you out of the wagon with one canteen and a knife. You can head any direction you want. Free as a dust devil.”

  Reno stared at him again for seconds before switching his gaze to the sergeant, then back again, curling his puffy upper lip. “Hell’s backside. Little canyon in the La Posa mountains north of Yuma, not far from a little waterhole called Quartz-site.”

  Hawk gave his canteen to Reno. “There. That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”

  Reno shook his head as he fumbled with the canteen, glaring at Hawk. “I’ve known some madmen before, mister. But you take the cake.”

  When Reno had drunk, Hawk took the canteen, palmed his Russian, and thumbed the hammer back. He waved the gun at the wagon’s open tailgate. Reno looked at it.

  “You realize that’s Apache country, don’t you?”

  Hawk nodded.

  “And the country of seven brands of border snake—all of ’em bad?”

  Again, Hawk nodded. “Get in the wagon, Reno. We got a long ride.”

  “Two weeks, at least.”

  “We best get started.”

  Chuckling darkly, Reno heaved himself to his feet. His knees shook. The rope binding his ankles allowed him to take only mincing, stumbling steps to the wagon, Hawk following six feet behind, aiming the cocked Russian at the gunrunner’s back.

  The Gatling gun and the rifles were all freighted up in the back, in separate crates from the ammunition. There was no way Reno could pair up any of the rifles with the ammo without making a whole lot of noise—even if he had the use of both hands.

  “Yes, sir, I knowed some crazy folks in my time. Knife-Hand himself bein’ one of ’em.” Reno sat on the edge of the box and twisted around, lifting his legs and keeping his bemused, disbelieving gaze on Hawk. “But you, mister . . .”

  “I know,” Hawk said as he latched the tailgate. “I take the cake.”

  “In spades!”

  Western Arizona was a raw, parched moonscape of gravelly flats bordered by bald, saw-toothed mountains and cut by a devil’s maze of mostly dry watercourses—all of it hammered mercilessly by the giant blacksmith’s hammer of a huge red sun.

  Here and there mesquites, creosote, and ocotillo grew, brushing a lemon-green color across the otherwise black sand and gravel spewed across the land when the surrounding mountains blew their volcanic tops several eons past. There were saguaros and paloverdes on the long, flat stretches . . . and that hammering sun that was like a physical weight. It burned through hat crowns and scorched the skin, cracking lips, drying out nostrils, and searing eyes.

  It was a long, hot trek, and Hawk confirmed Kid Reno’s directions of travel to the La Posa mountains by a couple of old prospectors he ran into along one of the ancient Indian trails he and Ironside followed in the wagon, with the grulla, Ironside’s army bay, and a spare horse for Reno tied to the tailgate.

  Twelve days into the trip from the church teeming with Reno’s dead gang, the La Posa range shone like a giant, slumbering dinosaur on the western horizon—hazel-colored under the cloudless, brassy sky.

  Ironside headed the wagon toward the craggy, eroded sierra while Hawk stepped into his saddle to scout around, as they’d seen Indian sign though, as yet, no Indians. Presently, when Hawk had dismounted to climb a jog of rocky hills and knobs rising along a dry arroyo, he flinched as a bullet screeched off a granite wall two feet to his left.

  The rifle’s roar followed a half second later.

  Hawk jerked a look into the arroyo below the scarp he was on. Smoke wafted from a greasewood shrub on the arroyo’s far bank. A painted, brick-red face capped by a red bandanna peered through the greasewood’s spindly branches. And then Hawk saw the Winchester’s barrel jerk as the Apache levered a fresh shell into its breech.

  Hawk aimed his Henry and fired—three bullets blowing up dust around the greasewood shrub, another lifting a loud whump as it tore through the bushwhacker’s upper chest, sending him sprawling straight back into a paloverde tree. As Hawk seated a fresh cartridge in his Henry’s breech, he glimpsed movement to his left.

  He swung around too late for the Henry to be of any use. Another Indian was on him, whooping and yowling like a whipped coyote and swinging the steel-bladed, feathered ax high in his right hand.

  Hawk dropped the Henry, spread his feet, and caught the brave’s right wrist just before the ax would have cleaved his skull in two neat halves. Then he was falling back off his heels, the brave on top of him, whooping and screeching like a living nightmare, his sweaty, calico-shirted body hammering against Hawk’s, his sour, rotten breath heavy in Hawk’s nose.

  Hawk hit the gravelly slope hard.

  His vision dimmed and his breath left his chest in a guttural whoosh. The Indian still had a grip on the ax handle, and Hawk still had a grip on the Indian’s wrist as they rolled together down the steep slope to slap onto the arroyo floor with a simultaneous grunt of more expelled air.

  Hawk was still dazed from the first fall with the short, stocky brave’s weight hammering on top of him. Now the brave lunged to his knees, grunting and snarling. He had Hawk’s Russian in his hand. Hawk had had the same idea, and now as the brave thumbed back the Russian’s hammer, Hawk jabbed his Colt .44 into the brave’s guts and pulled the trigger.

  “Heeeeeeeeeee!” the brave wailed so loudly that Hawk’s eardrums ached.

  The Russian roared, the slug slamming the rocks over Hawk’s shoulder. Raising the Colt higher, Hawk drilled another round through the wailing brave’s head, punching the warrior off and away from him . . . opening his view of the wash and two more braves striding toward him, crouched over rifles.

  “Ah, shit,” Hawk said, kicking the dead brave off his own right leg and rocking the Colt’s hammer back.

  The two other attackers were moving single file and spaced about ten feet apart. The first one snapped his Winchester to his shoulder, and Hawk gritted his teeth against the certain bullet.

  But it was not the brave’s Winchester that roared. Another rifle exploded somewhere in the scarp that Hawk and the first Indian had just vacated.

  The first brave’s head exploded like a ripe melon, and then the second Indian was howling and dancing around as the rifle in the scarp cracked again. There was a third shot, and the second brave, who’d dropped to one knee and was trying to scramble out of the wash, tumbled headlong into a barrel cactus, the hole in his back, just below his neck, glistening red in the afternoon sun.

  Hawk lowered the Russian slightly, keeping his thumb on the hammer. A bulky, blue-clad figured came down the scarp sideways, striding and sliding, the sergeant’s white teeth showing inside the scruffy red beard he’d grown since leaving his dead patrol and joining Hawk in the search for Knife-Hand.

  He held the Winchester he’d gleaned from the crates in the wagon in his right hand as he leapt the last few feet to the arroyo’s bottom. Jerking his head around anxiously, on the scout for more Apaches, he strode over to the dead Indian piled up against the barrel cactus. The brave’s back rose and fell sharply as he breathed.

  Quickly levering a fresh shell, Ironside lifted the new Winchester and drilled a finishing round through the back of the Indian’s head. He glanced at Hawk, who gained his feet, pressing a hand to the back of his neck, and watched the sergeant walk over to one of the rifles the Apaches had dropped.

  A dark expression on his broad, sunburned face, the sergeant held the shiny Winchester above his head. “So new I can still smell the factory on it.”

  Hawk scooped his Russian out of the black gravel and holstered it, looking around cautiously. Apaches usually roamed in small packs, but there could be more reservation broncos on the prowl out here.

  The thought had barely brushed across his mind before he heard a shrill bellow, and then a victorious whoop back in the direction of the wagon. The bellow belonged to Kid Reno, whom Hawk had left tied in the wagon box.

  Hawk jerked hi
s head up, then swung his glance toward Ironside, who said, “Shit, they found the wagon!”

  20.

  KID RENO’S RIDE

  THEY’VE been following us,” Hawk grated as he scrambled up the escarpment down which he and the brave had tumbled. He heard Ironside clawing and cursing his way up behind him, the heavier, older man breathing hard with the effort.

  Tension gripped Hawk’s innards in an iron fist. If the Apaches had found the horses he’d tied near a spring, they’d likely hazed them off or cut their throats, which would put him and Ironside on foot, and the wagonload of guns and ammunition into the Apaches’ hands for good.

  Rage at Ironside for leaving the wagon nipped Hawk, as well. But, then, if the sergeant hadn’t sensed the trap and come looking for him, Hawk would now be buzzard food on the floor of that arroyo. . . .

  Hawk grabbed his Henry rifle from where it lay against a pipe-stem cactus and, brushing it off, ran back through the scarp’s towering knobs, threading his way through the stony corridors. He’d tied the three saddle horses in a spring-fed hollow, having watered the wagon’s two pullers from his hat earlier. His heart lifted like a dove’s downy wings when he saw all three mounts standing where he’d left them, feed sacks hooked over their ears, contentedly switching their tails as they hunkered in the shade of a tall, gnarled mesquite.

  Beyond the upthrust of chalky rock, back toward the trail where he’d left the wagon, the clatter of wagon wheels and thudding of galloping hooves dwindled quickly.

  Hawk scrambled down the scarp, leapt the last several feet to the ground, landing on his heels, and ripped the grulla’s reins free of the mesquite he’d tied them to. Glancing at the sergeant stumbling down the rocks, Hawk swung up into the saddle, neck-reined the horse in a tight circle, and put the spurs to him.

  “Wait for me, damnit!” the sergeant bellowed. “There might be a whole war party out there!”

  Hawk raced out of the gorge, around several more stony upthrusts and mesquite trees, and bounded onto the narrow trail they had been following between mountain ranges. The wagon was little larger than a matchbox as it careened along the trail, a hundred yards ahead and steadily widening the gap.

  A riderless horse galloped right of the lunging wagon while a brave on a brown-and-white pinto loped along to the left, holding a Winchester in one hand and jerking quick, darting glances back over his shoulder. Spying Hawk kicking after him, he gave a bellow and jerked his head toward the wagon, apparently urging more speed from whoever was driving it.

  Hawk tipped his hat low and pulled his head down as the grulla chewed up the trail. He closed on the wagon bouncing on the other side of the tan dust cloud, the riderless, war-painted Indian pony keeping pace on the right, swerving around shrubs and boulders while the outriding Apache did the same on the left.

  As Hawk gained ground on the wagon, he could hear the hammering of the iron-shod wheels and what could only have been Kid Reno’s wails issuing from the back pucker flap. The Indians likely hadn’t realized they had a white-eyes tied in the wagon’s rear until they’d started moving, or they would have killed the gunrunner by now. The way the wagon was jouncing and bouncing, the Kid was getting quite a hammering ride—a slow death by a new form of Apache torture.

  Hawk didn’t give a damn about Reno. It was the guns—especially that sure-fire death-dealer, the Gatling, he didn’t want the Apaches to have.

  As Hawk drew within forty yards, the outriding Apache hauled his own war-painted pinto to a skidding halt, reined the horse around, and whooping and hollering and batting his mocassin-clad heels into the horse’s flanks, rushed back toward Hawk.

  He took his reins in his teeth as he raised his Winchester. Hawk raised his Henry and triggered a shot at nearly the same time that smoke puffed from the maw of the Apache’s rifle.

  The brave wasn’t accustomed to the new rifle, and the slug whistled over Hawk’s head.

  Hawk’s first round flew wide of his target, as well, but his second and third punched the brave through his naked red chest. As the grulla continued chewing up the trail, the brave hit the ground just ahead. The pinto flew past Hawk, screaming. The Apache rolled wildly, hair and limbs flying, and Hawk glanced down as the grulla’s left front hoof struck the brave’s head with a dull thud.

  Blood sprayed and the body twisted around and then Hawk and the grulla were within twenty yards of the wagon . . . then ten . . . five. . . .

  Inside, Kid Reno bellowed like a bull caught in a hawthorn thicket, the gunrunner’s voice vibrating with the wagon’s violent pitching and lurching.

  Hawk slipped his rifle into its saddle boot as he drew even with wagon’s rear, keeping the flying contraption to his left. When he was less than five feet from the hammering rear wheel, he swung his right leg over the grulla’s rump and slipped that boot into the left stirrup as he slid the left one out.

  Steadying himself with one hand on the saddle horn, he lunged suddenly, pushing himself away from the saddle and throwing himself through the wagon’s rear pucker. He landed just inside the tailgate on his left shoulder, rolling over one of the several long rifle crates that were strewn about the bed, and rolled up against another.

  “Hawk, you son of a bitch!” Reno wailed loudly.

  Hawk glanced up along the wagon bed. “I know—you’re not a well man.”

  The gunrunner’s enraged, feverish eyes peered at Hawk from between two bouncing, shuddering rifle crates, his braided hair dangling over his gaunt, sun-splotched cheeks. Above and beyond Reno, the yellow-and-black calico shirt of the Apache driving the wagon shone through a crack in the front pucker flap.

  Hawk slipped his Russian from his holster, steadied his arm atop one of the rifle crates, and aimed at the swatch of yellow shirt he could see through the front pucker.

  Pow! Pow! Pow!

  The shirt disappeared. The wagon lurched as one of the wheels hammered something more yielding than a rock in the trail.

  Hawk wrenched himself around to send his gaze out the back of the wagon. In the trail beyond, he caught a glimpse of the yellow calico shirt as the Indian rolled in a roiling dust cloud before angling off the trail, piling up against the base of a tall saguaro, and growing quickly smaller as the wagon kept lumbering ahead across the rocky desert floor.

  Behind the tan dust cloud, Sergeant Ironside galloped toward the wagon, hunkered down low in the saddle and whipping his bay’s rump with his rein ends.

  “Well, you killed the savage!” Kid Reno shouted, pulling at the braided leather strips binding him taut to an iron ring in the side of the wagon. “But this thing’s a blazin’ runaway now!”

  Hawk was already gaining his feet, stumbling this way and that as the wagon careened along the trail, often fishtailing, always bouncing and threatening to break up against the next near boulder. He stepped over Reno’s legs, pushing himself off the jumbled gun crates, and made his way toward the front.

  The wagon lurched suddenly, and he twisted around and slammed his back against the front panel, the board cutting painfully into his lower back. The wagon lurched in the other direction, and Hawk used the sudden force to throw himself sideways and up through the pucker, crawling quickly over the blood-splattered seat. He was relieved to see that the reins, instead of bouncing along the ground behind the team, were coiled up in front of the dashboard, on the floor of the driver’s boot.

  He reached down, grabbed the reins in both hands, sat gingerly down on the seat, and set both his boots on the dashboard. Leaning back and pulling hard on the leather ribbons, he got the frantic horses stopped only after they’d galloped another hundred and fifty yards and fairly winded themselves.

  With the wagon idle at last, Hawk slouched in the seat. The ground seemed to continue to race past on both sides. The dust caught up to him from behind, filling his nostrils, making him cough.

  Hooves clomped. He turned to see Sergeant Ironside ride up beside the driver’s box, sparing him an anxious look. Hawk stared back. His face a mask of dust an
d grit, Ironside shook his head, dismounted, and ran up to inspect the silver-sweated team.

  “They look all right,” he said finally, letting the off-puller’s hoof fall back to the ground. “Whipped and tired and hot as that sun up there . . . but all right.”

  Silence.

  Hawk doffed his hat and ran his hands through his hair that hung in ducktails across his collar, ringing out the sweat.

  Reno’s voice came from the back, pitched high with jangled nerves. “What about me?”

  For the third time the next day, Kid Reno barked out the wagon’s front pucker flap, “Cut me loose, you sons o’ bitches!”

  Hawk was riding ahead of the wagon, holding his Henry across his saddlebows. He glanced back as Sergeant Ironside wagged his head and said in disgust, “I just love his personality.”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna miss him,” Hawk said.

  They were traversing a shallow canyon between high, sandstone ridges. Hawk could hear javelinas rooting around in the greasewood shrubs on the left bank.

  “You’re not gonna really turn this wildcat loose, are you?”

  “I gave him my word,” Hawk said, staring straight ahead.

  From behind the sergeant, Reno shouted, “You gave me your word you’d turn me loose as soon as we got into the La Posas. Well, we made it. We’re here!” The gunrunner’s voice broiled up from deep in his chest, taut with exasperation. “So kindly turn me loose, goddamnit!”

  “Shut up, you consarned son of a bitch!” the sergeant rasped, turning his head sideways. “You wanna bring every Apache in the whole damn range down on top of us?”

  Hawk said just loudly enough to be heard above the wagon’s clatter, “When I’m sure we’re near where I wanna be, I’ll let you go. If I find out you’ve sent us on a wild-goose chase, I’m gonna shoot you.”

  “I think you oughta shoot him, anyway, if we’re not gonna take him back to the fort to hang,” Ironside said. “Freein’ this Mad Hatter’s akin to turnin’ a rabid panther loose on a herd of heifers and calves.”