Cold Corpse, Hot Trail Read online

  Primrose stared at him, his pulse drumming in his ears, rubbing his sweaty hands on his trousers. Finally, uttering a silent prayer, he placed his left hand on the back of the man’s head and, wincing, shoved it forward.

  The man grunted, his breath catching in his throat, both arms falling to the ground beside him. Quickly, with his right hand, Primrose jerked both money sacks out from behind the outlaw.

  He grabbed the saddlebags by the broad middle strap, but they were too heavy to lift with only one hand. Standing quickly, he propped the man up with his left knee, then picked up the bags with both hands, and slipped them between the man’s shoulders and the saddle.

  Gently, he eased the man back against the saddlebags.

  “You lynx!” the man said, suddenly shaking his head. “Where’d you learn how to do that?”

  Head lolling back against the rounded saddlebags, the man grinned. His cheek twitched. The grin faded, his jaw dropped, and another gurgling snore rose up from deep in his chest.

  Primrose sheathed his knife. The money pouches were joined by a four-foot rope. When he’d draped the pouches over his shoulders, he picked up his rifle, a lariat, and two bridles. Moving slowly and glancing back at the snoring outlaw, he walked around the fire and turned toward the two horses.

  Ten minutes later, he’d bridled both mounts, draped the money pouches over the neck of one, and led them across the ravine. It took him nearly an hour to find his way back up the scarp, via a route wide of the other two outlaw encampments.

  At the top, he tied the horses to ironwood saplings and looked around. The sergeant was where Primrose had left him, belly down, bare ass in the air, hands tied behind his back. He appeared to still be out.

  The girl had crawled about twenty yards from where Primrose had dropped her. She lay on her side, lifting her head toward him, gagging against the neckerchief he’d tied across her mouth. Her breasts bounced and jostled as she kicked her tied ankles, trying to free them.

  “That will do you no good at all,” Primrose told her, leaning down and pulling her over his shoulder. “I was the knot-tying champion of Albany for three years in a row.”

  He threw her, belly down, over the back of the horse with the moneybags draped around its neck. She arched her back and thrust her head at him, grunting furiously, resisting. Primrose swung the back of his right hand across her left cheek. That took the starch out of her; her head sagged down against the roan’s ribs.

  Cutting two short lengths of rope from the lariat, he tied her hands to her ankles beneath the horse’s belly. That done, he went to work wrestling the half-conscious Schmidt onto the back of the other horse—not an easy task with a man Schmidt’s size. To keep from breaking his own back, Primrose led the dun over the ridge’s lip, then dropped Schmidt over the lip and onto the horse below.

  He led the horse back to the ridge crest, and was tying the sergeant the way he’d tied the girl when footsteps rose behind him. He turned, heart hammering, reaching for his rifle. Had he gotten too greedy, taken too much time?

  A shadow moved toward him, weaving through the brush.

  Primrose cocked the Spencer, aimed, and waited. Behind him, the girl gave a long, fierce groan from beneath her gag. The horse blew and shuffled sideways.

  “Gringo bastard,” a woman’s voice snapped in front of him. The shadow moved toward him—a small, dark, long-haired figure taking shape, wearing a man’s blue-checked shirt. “You were going to leave me?”

  Primrose blinked. The prostitute, Estella Chacon, marched toward him. He lowered the rifle. Guilt pricked at him. “I . . . I’m sorry, miss, I—”

  “Forgot about me. It’s so easy to forget a whore, isn’t it?”

  “How did you get free?”

  She stopped and scowled up at him. “One of the men took me off in the brush. While he was trying to stick it in, I grabbed his pistol and beat him over the head with it.” She held up the Starr .44, which appeared ridiculously large in her small brown hand. “I was hiding in the brush, waiting for the others to go to sleep, so I could steal a horse. Then, I saw you.”

  Primrose felt a proud thrill travel through him. Not only had he secured the money, and two thieves, but a hostage!

  “Come along, Miss Chacon,” he said, turning, “you can ride with the other woman.”

  “Miss Jones and the sergeant, eh? How did you get them?”

  Primrose helped her onto the bareback horse, behind the other woman, whose body fairly rippled with rage. “They were . . . otherwise disposed . . .”

  “Fucking, uh? It figures.”

  11.

  “BYE, BYE, LIEUTENANT!”

  PRIMROSE led the horses down the trough he’d climbed, to the shelf where his own bay waited, owl-eyed. He mounted up and led the other two horses to the bottom of the scarp where, dark as ink, the crazily cut desert stretched off in three directions.

  He decided to ride south, turn east at the far end of the mountain range to which the scarp belonged, then head back north through the basin Gideon Hawk had traversed. It was his best chance of eluding the outlaws. When they woke up and found the money gone, they’d no doubt scour the west side of the mountains first. If they found his tracks, however, they’d be on him, as the old salts would say, like flies on fresh hog shit.

  Hopefully, he’d run into Hawk. He could use all the help he could get—even that of an outlaw lawman.

  Mid-morning, he handed the reins of the sergeant’s horse to the whore, and kneed his own bay to the crest of a low rise. He fished his field glasses from his saddlebags and scanned their back trail, seeing nothing but the same rocky chaparral he’d been traversing since leaving the outlaws’ encampment.

  He returned the binoculars to the saddlebags and rode back down to where Miss Chacon sat the roan behind the kill-crazy blonde. The outlaw woman had long since worn herself out and, tied belly-down across the horse’s back, had fallen silent.

  “Any sign of the bandits?” asked the whore. She wore a scarf around her head, to protect herself from the sun. She still wore Hawk’s spare shirt, more like a smock on her small frame, but her copper-brown legs and feet were bare beneath the spangled skirt.

  “I think we’ve eluded them,” Primrose said with a satisfied, almost jubilant air.

  He swung down from his saddle and adjusted the whore’s pistol, which he’d wedged behind his cartridge belt when she’d found no convenient way to carry it. He approached the woman whom the whore had called Miss Jones. Her long hair hung nearly to the ground. Her bare back and arms were mottled pink from the sun. Primrose squatted beside her. “I’ll remove the gag and let you ride upright if you promise to stay quiet.”

  The woman lay still. Finally, she nodded her head.

  Primrose removed the handkerchief, then reached under the roan’s belly with his knife, and cut the ropes. Gently but cautiously, he helped the woman off the horse. When he released her arm and stepped back, raising his rifle, she dropped to her knees and elbows, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her thick hair hung to the ground in frizzy tangles.

  Her shoulders rose and fell as she breathed. Her voice was pain-pinched. “Bastard.”

  “Get back on the horse. I’ll let you ride astraddle, if you’re good.”

  She lifted her flushed face, the skin chafed from the horse’s coarse hide. “I need some water.”

  “I’ll give you water once you’re back atop the horse, with your ankles tied.” Remembering how fast she could move, Primrose retreated another step, and thumbed back the Spencer’s hammer.

  Slowly, she stood, flipped her hair back, and glared at him. She glanced at the money pouches draped over the horse’s neck, then turned back to Primrose. “That’s a lot of money. You and me”—she stretched a wooden smile—“we could have quite a time with all that money in Juarez . . . Mexico City. Hell, we could go on down to Buenos Aires.”

  Unconsciously, he glanced at her breasts. He’d never seen breasts that full. Lucy, bless her heart, was relatively
flat-chested.

  As if she were reading his mind, the woman’s eyes flashed darkly.

  Primrose stared at her down the Spencer’s barrel. “Get on the goddamn horse, Miss Jones, or I’ll drill a round through your killing heart.”

  Her smile evaporated. “I’m burning up.” She hefted her breasts in her hands, stepping toward him. “Look at these. That horse’s damn hide is chafing my tits.”

  “Get on the horse, and I’ll give you my tunic.”

  She glared at him for several more seconds, then led the horse over to a rock, stepped from the rock onto the horse’s bare back, in front of the whore, who was regarding her distastefully. Jones looked at Primrose expectantly. Lowering the rifle, he slipped out of his tunic, handed it to her, watched as she drew the dusty, blue garment about her shoulders.

  When he’d tied her ankles beneath the horse’s belly, he gave her his canteen, then walked back to where Sergeant Schmidt lay across the third horse. Schmidt lay motionless, his dusty red hair glistening in the mid-morning light. His broad shoulders, straining his tunic’s seams, rose and fell as he breathed.

  Primrose slipped the gag’s knot free from the back of his head, pocketed the neckerchief, then walked around to the other side of the horse. He unsheathed his knife, then stooped down to cut the ropes beneath the dun’s belly.

  He froze. The ropes were untied, dangling from the sergeant’s ankles.

  Primrose’s heart lurched. Before he could straighten, the sergeant’s right heel rose in a blur of motion, smashing savagely against the underside of Primrose’s chin. The lieutenant stumbled back, his jaw on fire with several cracked teeth.

  Regaining his balance, he lifted his rifle as before him the sergeant threw himself off the horse. He landed on both feet, pivoted, and shambled toward Primrose, a savage grin showing white on his big, red face.

  Before Primrose could aim the rifle, the sergeant kicked the butt from the lieutenant’s right hand. The rifle flew up and over Primrose’s right shoulder, hitting the ground with a crack.

  The lieutenant dropped his stinging right hand to his holster, but before he could get the cover unsnapped, the sergeant was on him, the man’s right fist hammering across his jaw, the blow rattling his brains and seemingly knocking his eyes from his skull.

  He dropped to a knee. He’d just turned his head back toward the sergeant when Schmidt slammed his ham-sized left fist against Primrose’s right cheek. Blood flew from the gaping cut.

  Primrose was thrown sideways. He rolled off his right shoulder. With bells tolling in his head, and the ground pitching with nauseating swiftness, he rose to a crouch.

  He remembered the whore’s gun wedged behind his cartridge belt, and reached for it. The sergeant’s big, bulky frame closed on him again with amazing swiftness and horrifying menace, fists raised, oak-sized legs spread for power and balance.

  Abandoning the pistol—he wouldn’t have time to aim and cock it—the lieutenant dropped his head and sprang off his haunches. He ducked under the sergeant’s right haymaker and rammed his head and shoulders into the big man’s belly.

  Primrose hadn’t pounced with as much force as he’d intended, yet the sergeant, sapped from the ride, was bulled over backward. The lieutenant landed on top of him, wheezing with fear and fury. He pushed onto his knees and went to work on the man’s face with a combination so desperate and feeble, they would have gotten him laughed out of his boxing club.

  Drained as he was, Primrose hammered away at the man’s face. He had to knock the starch out of him, hurt him deeper than the lieutenant himself was hurt. Then Primrose could crawl away and draw one of his pistols.

  It didn’t work.

  With an enraged bellow, the sergeant blocked Primrose’s left fist with his own forearm. He rolled sideways, sending a right pile driver against the lieutenant’s upper left chest. The wind left Primrose’s lungs with a whooosh! He flew several feet sideways. As he struck the ground on his shoulder, his head glanced off a sharp rock.

  The sky went red, and the world went silent.

  The quiet, red world slid this way and that as, on his back, Primrose stared up at Schmidt. The sergeant loomed over him, appearing to lean first one way, then the other. His face was dirty and bloody. He smiled brightly.

  Primrose reached for the pistol wedged against his belly. Too slow. The sergeant bent down and swiped it from his hand, like grabbing candy from a toddler.

  The sergeant’s bloody smile grew. He raised the revolver in his right hand, thumbed back the hammer, squinted one eye as he aimed down the barrel at Primrose.

  “Fuckin’ lieutenant’s gonna die,” he sang. He waved good-bye with his right hand. “Bye, bye, Lieutenant!”

  Primrose’s eyes slitted as he stared up at the pistol’s maw. The gun sagged, jerked slightly right. It coughed and smoked.

  The slug ripped into the ground a few inches right of Primrose’s head.

  Startled and confused, the lieutenant canted a cockeyed gaze at Schmidt. The sergeant’s face was bunched with pain, his mouth shaping an O.

  The pistol dropped from his right hand as, sagging to his left knee, he reached down to his right thigh, from which the feathered end of an arrow protruded.

  Schmidt fell to a shoulder, groaning. Behind him, several painted warriors scrambled down a boulder pile, howling like Satan on Sunday.

  Earlier, at false dawn, Waylon Kilroy’s eyes snapped open. He’d been dreaming that Saradee had poked one of her beautiful .45s into his mouth and pulled the trigger, and that he was staring up at her, the hole in his throat spurting blood, insisting he’d had no intention of killing her, and how could she possibly believe such a thing?

  He loved her!

  Kilroy’s heart hammered.

  It slowed as he looked around. Saradee wasn’t standing before him. He lifted his right hand to his throat. No hole.

  He continued sweeping his eyes around the narrow ravine he and the wild outlaw woman had camped in, away from the others. Saradee’s lovemaking screams were notorious.

  She wasn’t here. Her side of their bedroll hadn’t been slept on. Usually, this time of the morning, with the faint pearl glow in the eastern sky dimming the stars, she’d have already gotten up to rebuild the fire and make coffee and slice salt pork into a skillet. He often teased that she’d have made a good squaw.

  Apparently, she’d never returned to the camp after they’d made love last night.

  He leaned back against his saddle to ponder where she’d gone, worry nipping at him, when he felt the two bulging leather pouches behind him. Strange. He vaguely remembered propping the money back there.

  He turned. It was the saddlebags, all right. His heart hammered and a low whistle, like that of a distant train approaching fast, rose in his ears. He stared at both flaps, lifted his heavy hands, undid the left flap, and reached inside.

  Sand.

  That bitch.

  He bolted to his feet, the blankets flying, and whipped his head around.

  That fucking bitch!

  Still in his stocking feet, he leapt the fire ring and ran to where he’d turned out the horses. Both gone. Heading back to his bedroll, he dressed quickly, wrapped his pistol belt around his waist. He’d drill her through each breast, then each eye, then . . .

  He donned his hat and, checking one of his revolvers to make sure all six cylinders showed brass, he jogged down the ravine, leaping the shadowy shapes of brush clumps, stones, and driftwood branches. He approached the next camp, a half-dozen men sprawled around a cold fire ring. He kicked the first man he came to—one of Saradee’s own boys. The man’s eyes snapped open, and his right hand reached for the revolver holstered beside him.

  Kilroy clamped a boot down on the gun. “It’s Kilroy. Get up, and wake the others.”

  “What the hell?”

  Continuing on past the man, stepping around the others, several of whom were groaning and blinking their eyes, he continued on down the ravine. His own men were camped fifty yards beyon
d Saradee’s. The two factions usually camped separately; it kept the fistfights, knife fights, and lead swaps to a minimum.

  When the sprawled figures appeared, one man standing at the right edge of the bivouac, yawning as he peed on a flat rock, Kilroy whistled and called his name. Still pissing, Kevin Redmond turned to him, frowning.

  “What’s up, Boss?”

  Several of the others jerked awake, a couple reaching automatically for their weapons. “Everybody up,” Kilroy ordered. “That bitch ran off with the money. I want everybody at my camp in five minutes.”

  Turning and jogging back the way he’d come, Kilroy yelled furiously over his shoulder, “Five minutes!”

  He took four more strides and stopped. Someone had called his name. He lifted his gaze up the scarp to his right. A man stood on a rock jutting above the ridge crest. He held a rifle high above his head, waved it slowly from left to right.

  His voice drifted down the ridge. “Come on up! You gotta see this!”

  12.

  RED DEVILS

  THE sun was high, and Kilroy and his men had ridden hard for nearly four hours, when he halted his long-legged pinto suddenly and dismounted. He poked his hat back and crouched near a spindly mesquite shrub, squinting his eyes against the fierce desert light.

  “Here we go,” he said, picking up a horse apple and crumbling it between his fingers. “They came through here ’bout an hour ago, headin’ that way.” He nodded south, where the tracks of the three horses could be seen in the rocks and caliche rising gently toward a low, piñon-studded bench.

  The sun hammered and cicadas screamed.

  “Where do you s’pose they got the third horse?” asked Barnal Montoya, one of Saradee’s riders—a squat Mexican with a predilection for sweet Mexican cigarettes. A former revolutionario, and known as one of the deadliest gunmen to hail from Sonora, he wore crossed bandoliers over his ratty brown poncho, which had gold zigzag designs stitched across the front.