Cold Corpse, Hot Trail Page 3

  Hawk turned up a corner of his mouth. “I’m sure you have them well disciplined.”

  The lieutenant looked off. Five or six other horseback bluebellies were leading two pack mules and a saddled horse—probably the lieutenant’s—toward the spring. Their shadows slid around the creosote and saguaros. The soft hoof falls and desultory voices carried softly on the evening breeze. Smelling the water, one of the mules brayed.

  “Have her ready to ride at daybreak,” the lieutenant said abruptly, and started away.

  “You didn’t post a scout on the ridge yonder, did you?” Hawk called.

  The lieutenant turned and shook his head. “We scouted the springs in advance, but I didn’t send anyone up that rimrock. Why do you ask?”

  “A rock fell from the ridge a while ago. I climbed up, spied a single rider galloping north.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “I’ll keep an extra guard posted.”

  He walked away.

  Hawk moved to the fire, poured a fresh cup of coffee, and leaned back against his saddle. The girl was glaring at him.

  “They are soldiers!” she spat. “They will rape me and throw me in a ravine.”

  “I got a feeling you can take care of yourself,” Hawk said, and blew on his coffee.

  Hawk finished his coffee, then strolled around the campsite. When he’d checked on his horse, he tossed another log on the fire and rolled up in his blankets.

  Estella was already asleep, curled under Hawk’s extra blanket, using her hands for a pillow.

  Hawk lay awake for a time, hearing the soldiers chatting around their own distant fire, and their mules braying at the rising moon. The weariness of the long day caught up to him, and his lids closed down, shutting out the stars.

  He didn’t know how long he’d slept when soft footfalls startled him. His right hand jerked toward the pistol belt coiled beside his head.

  “It is just me,” Estella said in an angry whisper. She was kneeling beside him, her blanket draped across her shoulders. Brusquely, she peeled back Hawk’s blanket, then lay down beside him, her hair fanning his face. Drawing both blankets over them both, she turned to him, wrapped a bare leg over his, and pressed her face against his chest.

  “I am cold,” she said. She lifted her chin to scowl up at him. “Only that, so don’t get any ideas!”

  She snuggled against him, and in a minute she snored softly into his chest.

  Hawk was tense and embarrassed. He was reminded again how long it had been since he’d lain with a woman. Finally, he sighed, relaxed, and rested his head against his saddle.

  It was going to feel damn good to get shed of this girl.

  He woke when Estella stirred at the first wash of dawn. He blinked his eyes groggily as the girl rolled away from him, climbed sleepily to her feet, keeping one of the blankets draped around her shoulders.

  Hawk kept his head on the saddle, watching her as she crawled to the dead fire, plucked some dried juniper branches from the pile beside the stone ring. Crunching the branches up in her hands, she leaned over the ashes and blew, gently coaxing a dull orange glow from the gray.

  Continuing to blow, she fed the glow with bits of the dried juniper, until a match-sized flame licked up from the ashes, feeding off the tinder. Soon, a small coffee fire snapped and crackled in the fire ring.

  Hawk sat up, stretching. “You do that well.”

  She didn’t look at him, just continued to add bits of kindling to the smoking fire.

  Hawk reached for a boot, tipped it upside down, and shook it to dislodge any night visitors. “You have anyone in Craigville?” he asked.

  “My sister,” she said snootily and without looking at him.

  He didn’t attempt any more conversation. When he’d pulled on his other boot, he and the girl had a cup of coffee and the last of Hawk’s jerky and hardtack. Saddling the grulla under the cottonwoods, he could hear the soldiers chatting and chuckling as they rigged up their mounts, chains and buckles clanking, the smell of coffee and corn cakes wafting.

  He led the horse back to the fire, where the girl sat, crouched over a tin coffee cup, one bare foot resting on the other as she stared glumly into the flames. Behind her, a horse blew. Hawk looked up to see the straight-backed lieutenant trotting his Army bay toward him, horse and rider looking crisp and official.

  “We’re about ready to start, Marshal,” the lieutenant said, halting his horse a few yards from the fire and turning it sideways. “Is the girl still riding with us?”

  “She sure is, Lieutenant.”

  Hawk looked at Estella. She glanced over her shoulder at the lieutenant and sighed. Lazily, she stood, tossed her coffee into the fire, and handed both the blanket and the cup to Hawk.

  He took the cup. “You’ll need the blanket till it warms up.” “And the shirt?”

  “I grew out of it.”

  Estella shrugged a shoulder and walked toward the lieutenant, who extended his hand to her. She took it and swung up behind the McClellan saddle, resting her bare calves and knees against the bay’s ribs. The lieutenant pinched his hat brim to Hawk, and reined the bay away.

  He’d ridden only a few feet before he stopped and turned back.

  Hawk tensed.

  “I don’t believe I caught your name, Marshal.”

  Hawk glanced at the girl. She was looking at him with one corner of her mouth raised.

  “Hollis,” Hawk said.

  Estella turned away.

  The lieutenant nodded. “Homer Primrose.” He studied Hawk through slitted eyes, head canted to one side, as if trying to place him. Finally, he turned the bay through the brush. “Good luck with that job over east.”

  Hawk dropped the girl’s cup into a saddlebag, and swung onto his horse. He sighed. It felt good already, being rid of that girl and those soldiers. . . .

  With a glance at the rising sun, he heeled the grulla south, toward Mexico.

  Two hours later, Estella Chacon walked through strewn, sunbaked boulders, then stopped and looked back the way she’d come to make sure the soldiers couldn’t see her. She raised her dress above her waist and squatted down beside a bunchgrass clump.

  “With alacrity, Miss Chacon!” the lieutenant called beyond the boulders. “We have a schedule to keep!”

  Estella looked up as her pee hissed in the gravel. In Spanish she snarled, “Soldier bastard, you make me ride two hours without stopping, and then you expect me to pee as fast as a bird shits!”

  Estella took her time.

  When she was finished, she stood, dropped her dress and shirttails over her knees, and strolled with exaggerated nonchalance through the boulders. In a hollow, the eight soldiers sat their saddles or stood holding water-filled hats from which their horses drank.

  A couple smoked and chatted.

  The lieutenant was staring toward Estella, an impatient frown on his face. “Come along, miss. We have—”

  “Sí, sí—we have a schedule to keep,” Estella grumbled, adding under her breath, “Soldado bastardo.”

  “Better let her ride with me for a spell, Lieutenant,” said the big red-bearded sergeant, his sun-blistered cheeks bunching as he grinned. “Your gelding needs a break.”

  “I’ll take her, Lieutenant,” offered the private dumping water from his hat and squinting up at Estella. He ran his eyes up and down her body. “I don’t mind a bit.”

  “Let her ride with me, Lieutenant,” said a scrawny soldier who looked about twelve in his overlarge uniform and floppy-brimmed hat. Dung-brown chew dribbled down his chin. Chuckling, he grabbed himself. “She can ride right here!”

  Several of the other men joined in the scrawny soldier’s laughter. Blushing, the lieutenant admonished them all to calm down.

  “You take her, Sergeant. Certainly you, the oldest one here, will be able to control yourself.”

  “Of course I can, Lieutenant,” the sergeant said with a wink, leaning out from his horse and extending a hand to Estella. “You just let ol’ Sergeant Schmidt take c
are of the lovely puta.” He ran his small blue eyes across the round mounds in the blue-checked shirt. “Remember me? We met in Coyote Springs a while back.”

  Making a face and drawing the corners of her blanket across her chest, Estella looked at the lieutenant. “I would rather ride with you.”

  “My horse needs a break, miss,” the lieutenant said.

  “She’ll be safer with me than the sergeant,” intoned a blond private holding the lead of one of the pack mules. “You shoulda seen how the sarge acted in Contention last month. Why, I never seen such—!”

  The soldier’s eyes had found the sergeant’s threatening gaze. Flushing, he cut himself off with a cough, then cleared his throat and, fidgeting, turned to look over the head of his bay.

  Several others snickered.

  “With haste please, miss,” the lieutenant urged.

  Curling her upper lip, Estella took the sergeant’s hand, let him swing her up behind him.

  “Well, it ain’t no whorehouse feather mattress, miss,” the sergeant said, chuckling. “But I hope you’re not too uncomfortable!”

  In Spanish, Estella called him a bearded sow. As the sergeant threw his massive head back, laughing, the girl reluctantly tucked her fingers behind his cartridge belt, bracing herself for travel.

  The lieutenant spurred his horse to the head of the pack and shouted, “For-ward!”

  Estella’s butt bounced as the sergeant heeled his own mount ahead, riding left of the scrawny private, who led one of the pack mules.

  As they rode through the twisting, scrubby hills, the scrawny private ogled Estella and made lewd gestures. She did her best to ignore him, but more dust rose on her left than on her right, so the best she could do was turn her head to the right and keep her eyes closed.

  They’d been riding for nearly an hour when Estella opened them to see where they were. The private who’d been ogling her now rode slumped in his saddle, his expression bored, a wad of chew swelling his cheek. They were topping a low rise, boulders strewn along both sides of the trail. A high, broad scarp with a concave face loomed farther back on the right.

  A bird called loudly from just ahead and left. It had a vaguely artificial ring to it.

  Estella turned her head to look that way. As she did, a figure climbed swiftly onto a large, flat boulder and just stood there, fists on his hips.

  Her hips.

  In spite of the male clothing—snug denims, flannel shirt, and leather vest—Estella saw the womanly curves and the long hair falling from the woman’s flat-brimmed hat. Silhouetted against the brassy sky, the woman held a long, thin cigar between her teeth.

  Estella blinked disbelievingly. The woman had to be a hallucination or a heat mirage.

  But then one of the horses whinnied, and a soldier uttered a shocked exclamation.

  The sergeant moved his right hand to his covered holster. Estella watched as he unsnapped the cover, removed his revolver, aimed it straight out at the scrawny private on his right, and pulled the trigger.

  The revolver jerked, popped, and smoked.

  Estella started back in horror, but kept her fingers wedged behind the sergeant’s cartridge belt, staring awestruck at the scrawny soldier.

  A small, round hole appeared in his left cheek. The kid flinched as if slapped, then tumbled headfirst down his horse’s right shoulder. He hadn’t yet hit the ground before the sergeant swung his pistol straight ahead, and fired another shot. His horse had turned so that Estella had a clear view of the sergeant’s bullet plowing through the back of the soldier straight ahead.

  As the horse leapt forward, the soldier tensed and threw his head back. Blood spurted through the hole in his tunic.

  As if the sergeant’s second shot had been the signal, gunfire erupted from the boulders on both sides of the trail, orange fire stabbing through smoke puffs. None of the soldiers had so much as touched their holsters before the bullets began thumping into them, evoking screams from the men as well as the horses.

  As the sergeant’s own bay wheeled and skitter-hopped, starting at the gunfire, Estella glanced left of the trail. The woman she’d seen a moment before was hunkered down on her haunches atop the boulder, firing a silver-plated pistol with each hand, the cigar still clutched in her teeth, gun smoke wafting around her head.

  The sergeant’s horse wheeled sharply left. Estella’s fingers slipped from behind the big man’s belt. She was tossed like a corn-shuck doll off the horse’s left hip, hitting the ground hard on her left shoulder.

  Gritting her teeth against the pain, she gained her feet and began scrambling off the trail—she was too disoriented from the smoke and the gunfire and the screams to know in which direction—when a fleeing, shrieking horse materialized from the smoke, and rammed its shoulder into her chest, knocking her flat.

  The back of her head smacked a rock.

  Lights flashed behind her eyelids and a shrill, inner screech tempered the din around her. Something fell over her legs. She raised her head, blinking her eyes and pressing her hands against the ground as if to keep it from pitching.

  The blond-headed soldier, missing his hat, his face bloody, had fallen over her shins. He raised himself clumsily to his hands and knees. As he lifted his head and began crawling away, a bullet plunked into the back of his skull. His forehead exploded.

  The soldier’s ruined head bobbed furiously up and down, spraying blood, brains, and bone, and then his chest hit the ground a few feet away from Estella. His scuffed brogans jerked as though he’d been struck by lightning.

  Estella watched him as if in a dream. Her own limbs grew heavy.

  The sun faded behind the wafting smoke. The world went dark and silent. She didn’t know how long she’d been out before someone lifted her head by her hair, searing her entire body with nauseating pain.

  The big sergeant stared down at her, grinning, his dusty face streaked and beaded with sweat. A woman’s face appeared beside his—the pretty, oval-shaped face of the woman who’d been firing the silver-plated revolvers and smoking a cigar. Her cool eyes were turquoise blue. She no longer had the cigar in her teeth, but Estella knew it couldn’t be far away. She could smell it beneath the rotten-egg odor of the gun smoke.

  The woman’s straight, honey blond hair blew about her dusty, suntanned cheeks.

  “What the hell do we have here?” she said, scowling at the sergeant.

  “This here?” The sergeant’s grin broadened. “This is just a little something I picked up along the way.”

  Estella’s eyes closed. She sank down, down through warm, black tar.

  4.

  BUZZARD BAIT

  GIDEON Hawk was riding high above the desert floor, traversing a broad jog of saguaro-studded hills, when he halted the grulla suddenly and turned to peer back the way he’d come.

  In the pink, sunbaked basin below—several miles out from where the hills began rising from the desert floor—a shot had sounded.

  He waited, listening.

  Cicadas whined. To his right, a roadrunner or a rabbit rustled the sunbaked brush.

  Another shot sounded, so faint it might have been a twig snapping just beyond the last rise he’d crossed. But the sound was too sharp, with a spanging, lingering echo.

  Several more shots rose from the plain—angrily, hastily fired rounds. Too many to be those of a hunter. Indians, possibly, but Hawk hadn’t crossed any Apache sign, had seen no smoke talk.

  The shots had come from a long ways away. It would take him an hour to ride back to the base of the hills, and probably another hour, traversing cuts and low rimrocks, to reach the site of the shooting.

  By the time he got to the scene, the shooting would long be over, the shooters gone. Whoever they’d been shooting at would be gone as well. One way or the other . . .

  Hawk stared out over the plain, sweat funneling through the blond dust on his sunburnt cheeks, soaking the thick mustache drooping down both sides of his mouth. His eyes were hooded, haunted, brooding.

  The
shots had come from the direction the soldiers had ridden.

  The soldiers and the girl.

  Hawk lifted his canteen from his saddle horn, took a few sips, draped the lanyard back over the horn. He adjusted his seat on the sweat-damp saddle, nudged the grulla’s flanks, and continued along the trail, weaving through the heavy shrubs and cracked, clay-colored boulders.

  After fifty yards, he pulled back on the reins, sat staring over the horse’s ears.

  “Ah, hell!”

  He neck-reined the grulla around and trotted back the way he’d come, retracing the old Indian trail switchbacking across the knobs. Nearly an hour later, the flat, burning desert stretched before him. It took him another hour to cut the soldiers’ sign.

  The sun was nearing the two o’clock position when, weaving through the creosote and crossing dry arroyos, he came upon a horse standing hang-headed, reins drooping, at the bottom of a shallow wash. The horse stood sideways to Hawk, its eyes half-closed, as if sleeping. Something hung down from its saddle on the far side.

  Hawk dismounted, dropped the grulla’s reins, and walked over to the horse—dirty, scratched, and sweat-lathered, its breath raspy. It had run itself to exhaustion. Walking around the horse’s rear, Hawk stopped beside its left hip. His breath caught in his throat.

  Before him, a soldier lay facedown in the bloody rocks. His left boot was caught in the stirrup, the ankle broken and twisted. The kid’s tunic was tattered and bloody, barely hanging from his skinny frame. The dragging wasn’t what had killed him, however. The bullet that had been drilled between his shoulder blades, no doubt blowing out his heart, had done the deed.

  Hawk kicked the private’s foot free of the stirrup, then hurried back to his horse. He mounted up and followed the dead private’s tracks through the catclaw, over the skeletons of fallen saguaros, across a dry wash, and up the side of a low, cedar-stippled knoll.

  Hawk halted the grulla atop the knoll, a pipestem cactus angling a long shadow to his right. Below, in the brush between two vast boulder snags, buzzards fought and quarreled over and between the half-dozen or so bloody, blue-clad bodies and over the large brown humps of two fallen horses. The fallen soldiers were laid out side by side in a relatively rock-free patch of caliche.