Leaving Yuma Page 17

  “No,” the sergeant replied with what sounded like genuine regret. “This is what happens to men who steal from General Castillo’s Army of Liberation. It saddens me, but one must do his duty, else he faces the same fate.”

  Soto was there. He must have ridden up with the rest of his men while I’d been struggling against unconsciousness. Young Davenport was at the major’s side. I wanted to protest the youth’s presence but the words wouldn’t come, and my gaze was involuntarily drawn back to the cutbank, the sounds of Guille’s sobs. It was then that I noticed Lieutenant Alvarez kneeling behind the Colt-Browning. This time there was no mistaking the smile on his face. He was watching Soto, who was staring at me, waiting for my undivided attention. When he had it, he tipped his head forward in a silent directive, and Alvarez’s smile seemed to spread across his face. There was no, “Ready, aim, fire,” no final request or last cigarette. He just pointed the Colt-Browning’s muzzle at Guille’s chest and pulled back firmly on the trigger.

  The ammunition belts we had with us in Mexico held one-hundred and forty rounds apiece. Alvarez had fired about forty into the side of the cutbank earlier. He emptied the rest of the belt into Guillermo Calderón’s chest that evening on the banks of the Río Sabana. It’s an image that twists in my guts to this day.

  Session Twelve

  I thought about this a lot last night, and I’ve decided that I’m not going to say anything more on the subject of Guille’s death. He was gone, and that’s all there is to it.

  Luis and I were given our horses and Charles Davenport, and told that we were free to go. It was Sergeant Marcos who lifted the boy onto the saddle in front of me. Keeping my free hand flat against the kid’s shrunken stomach, we got our hind ends out of there. Not fast, mind you—you don’t run from a pack of blood-crazed dogs without inviting chase—but we didn’t tarry, either. It was full dark by the time we got back to Sabana, and although I gave serious thought to swinging past Ramón’s house long enough to pick up some extra food, then blow the bastard’s brains all over the wall, I decided I didn’t have the energy for it.

  We made our way cautiously to the top of the Sierra Verdes, stopped briefly below the Devil’s Crown to rest our stock, then pushed on to the north. Our mounts were worn to a frazzle, and I made up my mind that we’d leave them behind on our return trip to Sabana, and use someone else’s horses. I personally intended to commandeer Davenport’s fine-looking chestnut for my own, and was enjoying the mental image of his irritation as we made our way out of the Sierra Verdes and started across the arid flats toward the Cañon Where the Small Lizards Run.

  Our horses were stumbling frequently as we approached the mouth of the slot cañon late the next day. Davenport must have had someone watching for us, because we were still a couple of hundred yards shy of the entrance when the old man came spurring out of the gorge. Del Buchman, Spencer McKenzie, and Felix Perez were riding close behind.

  I hauled back on the bay mare’s reins, stone-jawed and numb of mind, observing their approach as if through a set of foggy lenses. Reaching our side, Davenport jumped from his saddle with a much younger man’s agility and swept the boy into his arms, and damned if there weren’t tears in the old buzzard’s eyes. But the kid, well, that shell-shocked look hadn’t left him, which Davenport was quick to notice. Turning an accusing eye on me, he said, “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t say. He was like that when Soto turned him over to us. He’s skinny and he’s got to be hungry. Maybe some decent food and a little rest will perk him up.”

  I didn’t mention that the boy had been witness to Poco Guille’s gruesome execution.

  “You saw Soto?”

  “I saw him.”

  “And everything went off as planned?”

  Again, I kept the news of Guille’s death to myself. “No problems,” I replied.

  “Were you followed?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I reckon we’re tired, Mister Davenport, and maybe not as sharp as we could have been, but we weren’t asleep in our saddles, either. Soto is expecting us back with more guns and ammunition to trade for your wife and little girl. He doesn’t have a reason to send trackers after us.”

  Looking unaccountably relieved, the old man turned toward his horse, the boy held tight in his arms. As he passed Del, he said, “Do it,” but kept walking.

  Del’s gaze hardened at the old man’s words. Drawing the Remington from its shoulder rig, he leveled it at Luis and me. I remember my eyes narrowing as I studied the .45’s yawning bore, not so much surprised as confused.

  “Drop that hogleg, Vega,” Del rumbled, and while Luis did that, Spence kicked his mount alongside mine and yanked the Savage from its scabbard. He flicked the safety off with a thumb, then turned the muzzle on me.

  “The rifle, too,” Del instructed Luis.

  I heard Luis’ Winchester clatter to the rocky ground alongside his revolver, but kept my gaze fixed on Davenport as he rode away. The old man was returning to the cañon’s mouth at a leisurely pace, the boy cradled in his arms like a fragile vase. From his poise, you might have thought he was just taking a pleasant jaunt around the park on a Sunday afternoon.

  Turning to Del, I said, “What’s going on?”

  “There’s been a change of plans,” he replied sullenly, then motioned for Felix to pick up Luis’ rifle and revolver.

  “Oh, I doubt that, Delmar,” Spence interjected. “Was ye to ask me, I’d say the old bugger’s been plannin’ this all along.”

  “Ain’t nobody asking you, McKenzie, so shut your trap,” Del growled.

  “What kind of change of plans?” I demanded.

  Del gritted his teeth and refused to answer. It was Spence who enlightened us.

  “It appears the old boy’s got another deal set up for those two remainin’ potato diggers,” he announced. “Seems he won’t be needin’ ye services any longer.”

  “What about his wife and daughter?” I asked, having trouble wrapping my mind around everything that was happening.

  “Shut up,” Del said harshly, and I realized that whatever was going on, it was eating at him a lot worse than it was Spence. Glaring at me as if the anguish he felt was somehow my fault, he added, “This ain’t my doing, Latham. I didn’t know shit about any of this until after you and the Mex there had already left for Sabana. I wouldn’t have pulled you outta Yuma if I had.”

  “Well, I can’t say I won’t hold it against you,” I replied heavily. I looked at Spence, puzzled by his unruffled manner. “I thought you and I were friends.”

  “Aye, lad, we are, but ’tis business we’re speakin’ of now. A bloody cruel business, to be sure, but unfortunately inescapable. I’m sure ye understand.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t reckon I do … amigo.”

  Spence shrugged dispassionately. “Well, ’twill give ye something to mull on then, these few minutes ye’ve got remainin’.” He nodded to the trail behind us. “Mister Davenport has requested that we complete our errand yonder, lads. He’s afeared buzzards may give away ye position, once Soto figures out he’s been dealt a crooked hand and comes huntin’ vengeance.”

  My gaze shifted to Felix Perez. He had been sitting his pinto silently some distance away, as if not sure what was going on. He hadn’t drawn his revolver, but he had Luis’ pistol shoved in his belt, and was balancing the Winchester across his saddle. He’d be no help, but I wasn’t sure yet what his part in all of this would be.

  “Let’s go, lads,” Spence persisted, bobbling the Savage’s muzzle to attract our attention. He took a peek at Buchman. “Are ye comin’, Delmar, or don’t ye have the stomach for such doin’s?”

  Del was quiet for a long minute, then abruptly holstered his Remington. “You go ahead, you cold-hearted son of a bitch,” he snarled, then yanked his buckskin around and started back
toward Yaqui Springs. He pointed a finger at Perez as he rode past, indicating the wiry little Indio should follow him.

  Over the years I’ve often wondered about Del’s actions that day. Did he have another motive when he so drastically lowered the odds against Luis and me? Or was it just a thoughtless gesture, an unconscious concession to their need to pack up and move on as quickly as possible, before Soto’s men came after them?

  When there was just Spence and Luis and myself, I abruptly tugged the bay’s head around and started back down the trail. After a startled pause, Luis heeled his mule after me. Spence fell in a few rods behind, keeping the Savage in his right hand, its muzzle swaying easily with the gait of his horse but never leaving either Luis or me. After half a mile I started to ease back on the reins. Not enough to stop my mare, but just to slow her down, allowing Luis to catch up and closing the gap between us and Spence. After another hundred yards I stopped altogether, reining partway around to block the path. Thankfully Luis had the presence of mind to guide his mule out of my way. Spence pulled up, his eyes darting distrustfully from one side of the trail to the other.

  “What’s the problem, lad?”

  “I figured this was far enough.”

  After a pause, Spence chuckled amiably. “Ye’re bein’ an accommodatin’ sport about this, laddie, and, aye, I believe ye be right. ’Tis far enough. Now to pick a likely spot.”

  “We probably ought to find a gully where you can dump our bodies,” I suggested. “You’ll want to roll some stones over us, too. I’m not suggesting you waste valuable time on a decent burial, but enough so that Soto’s men will have to wonder where the stench is coming from.”

  Luis was watching me curiously, wondering what I was up to, and Spence’s smile had disappeared. He swung the Savage’s front sight toward my belly. At the angle I was sitting, he couldn’t see me slide my right hand inside the small opening in my vest’s lining, or notice the bulge of my fist as I curled my fingers around the semiauto’s hard rubber grips.

  “I’ll no ask ye for the courtesy of making me job easier,” Spence said. “I’d rather ye ride to wherever we end up, and enjoy what remains of this fine but warm day, but ’tis your choice, lad, and enough that ye know I’ll shoot ye where ye sit if ye try anything funny.”

  “I’ve got to know, Spence. Why? Hell, man, we’ve shared a hard trail together. Shared campfires and poor grub and tobacco, and I know you don’t care for Davenport or his heavy-handed ways. So why are you doing this when you don’t have to?”

  A baffled expression crossed the Scotsman’s face. “I work for the man, lad. Surely ye’d do the same, was the old bugger to order me killed.”

  I’ve thought about that comment a lot over the years, and I’m no closer to understanding Spencer McKenzie’s reasoning now than I was then. It just seemed too simple a conclusion to be embraced by an individual I’d considered reasonably intelligent. Not knowing how to respond, and figuring my time was swiftly running its string, I said, “It ain’t much of an answer, Spence, but I guess it’ll have to do.” Then I thumbed the Colt’s hammer back and squeezed the trigger, firing through the vest because I didn’t want to risk the pistol snagging on the lining if I tried to pull it out.

  I wasn’t more than twenty feet away when I fired, and even though I hadn’t properly aimed, my bullet caught Spence solidly in the side. He grunted loudly at the slug’s impact, the Savage bucking in his fist as his finger instinctively tightened on the trigger. The rifle’s round sailed harmlessly over my shoulder, whistling off into the distance, but I flinched anyway. Then I fired again.

  The echo of gunfire crashed deafeningly back and forth between the cañon’s walls, and Spence’s leggy roan jumped and spun and nearly threw its rider. The Savage tumbled from the Scotsman’s fist as he grabbed for the saddle horn. I got off two more rounds before the semiauto’s slide caught the vest’s shredded fabric and jammed. Spence didn’t know that, though. Yanking his horse around, he drove his heels into the animal’s ribs. Already spooked, the roan took off as if shot from a cannon. By the time I was able to rip the pistol free, then clear the slide, horse and rider were gone, the reverberation of the roan’s hoofs ebbing into a silence that seemed almost unnatural after the chaos of a moment before. Then I swore and began beating out a small fire that had ignited the tattered corduroy at one of the exit holes in the vest’s front panel. Preoccupied with slapping out the flame, I reacted instinctively when I saw Luis jump to the ground and hurry toward the Savage. Leveling the Colt, I shouted, “Leave it be!”

  Luis jerked to a stop, then quickly backed away. There was fear in his eyes at first, then understanding, followed by anger. “You think you cannot trust me, J. T., after all that we have been through?”

  “No, but I didn’t think McKenzie would turn on me, either.” I dismounted and led the bay over to retrieve the Savage. “It ain’t anything personal,” I tried to assure him, but I could tell my words didn’t have much effect.

  “Sí, of course not,” Luis replied contemptuously. He motioned toward his mule. “Do I get on, or will you shoot me here?”

  “I’m not going to shoot you,” I snapped. “Go ahead and mount up.”

  I was staring upcañon, toward the spot where Spence and his roan had disappeared. Only shimmering heat waves and the hesitant call of a quail from higher up the slope disturbed the heat-seared atmosphere. Luis’ rig creaked loudly as he climbed into the seat. He sat there a moment, fiddling with his reins, then said, “What do you intend to do about the woman?”

  At that moment I didn’t have the foggiest idea of what we could do to help her, but I knew we couldn’t just ride away. Luis knew it, too; otherwise he wouldn’t have asked the question. After a lengthy silence, I said, “I know a way around that slot cañon. It’s pretty rough, but it’ll take us above the upper entrance. If Davenport tries to go out the way we came in, we might be able to cut him off.”

  “And do what?”

  I looked at him. “I don’t know. Do you have a better idea?”

  Luis sighed and shook his head. “No, unfortunately I don’t. Lead the way, my friend.”

  I smiled and nodded—but I didn’t give him my rifle or the handgun.

  There are a lot of trails through those barrancas north of the Sierra Verdes. Some of them go somewhere, many don’t. There isn’t much grass for your stock, and there isn’t much water. It’s a fiercely harsh land, and although people lived there, most of them didn’t do it by choice. In that part of the world there’s no better place to get lost in, which isn’t a bad thing if you’re trying to shake a troop of Federales, but not much good if you’re just wanting to pass through.

  I didn’t know what Davenport’s knowledge was of the terrain around there. He had that map he’d showed me in Moralos, but it hadn’t been very good. Maybe he was counting on the Perez boys to get him out of there. Or maybe he’d already arranged another meeting with some other rag-tag group calling itself an army, one that could provide him with gold or silver, rather than a woman and a child.

  I knew those trails fairly well because of my years living with the Yaquis, then afterward running my burros between Sabana and Nogales. It wasn’t like I’d grown up there and knew every bush and rock, as the saying sometimes goes, but I could get along. Especially near the water holes, which is always your destination in the desert—the next spring or rock tank where you can find enough sustenance to push on to the one after that.

  The trail I’d told Luis about was a few miles east of the Cañon Where the Small Lizards Run. Little more than a debris-filled arroyo, it cut through the sheer cliff above us to the sloping bench we’d used to reach the slot cañon’s upper entrance. I found it easily enough, but it was steeper and more treacherous than I remembered, and we had to dismount about halfway up and lead our mounts the rest of the way.

  The sky was growing dim, the air losing some of its earlier heat, by the time
we climbed back into our saddles. Knowing from experience that full dark would descend on us faster down here than up above where the land was more open, I urged my weary mare into a shuffling jog, about all she had left by then.

  Luis kept up, but I could tell from the cant of his mule’s ears that that big jack wouldn’t allow himself to be pushed much farther. A horse will just about kill itself doing what you want it to, but there’s a reason terms like “mule-headed” and “stubborn as a jackass” keep floating around out there—although I’d always thought their stubbornness was more from intelligence than contrariness.

  Luckily we didn’t have far to go once we got up above, and there was still plenty of light to see by when we dismounted several hundred yards east of the slot cañon’s upper entrance. Taking along the binoculars Del had loaned me, Luis and I crept as near as we dared to the cañon’s head. Nothing stirred nearby, but after a couple of minutes I spotted a whiff of dust far to the west, following along the same slanted bench where Luis and I were crouched. There was a trail leading in that direction, I recalled, although not the one I’d used bringing us down from Moralos. I lowered my glasses, scowling in concentration.

  “Did you see something?”

  “Take a look just below that splinter of rock leaning toward the cañon’s floor, about three miles out.” I handed Luis the glasses and he adjusted the focus to suit his eyes. After studying the distant haze for a couple of minutes, he brought them down.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think it is Davenport and the guns. I think he must have expected our arrival today, and was waiting with the horses and mules already saddled and packed.” He looked at me. “They’re running, amigo.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, having come to the same conclusion. But I hadn’t noticed Spence anywhere along that cañon trail, and I should have.

  “Still down below with those damned lizards?” Luis stated, as if reading my mind.

  I thought of Spence down there, armed and wounded. Running my tongue over dry lips, I said, “There’s only one way to know if he’s still there.”