Leaving Yuma Page 22

  Luis looked doubtful. “That is a pretty long push, my friend.”

  “It is, but the grade isn’t as steep as it has been, and it’ll be quicker than walking in the long run.” I turned to the woman. “Would you steer while Luis and I push?”

  “Of course.”

  The girl roused at her mother’s voice, then sat up with a grumpy expression just short of full-blown tears. Abby went to fetch her before the crying began. I felt a moment’s unaccountable jealousy when the child’s gaze fell on Luis and her snuffling abruptly stopped. I’d already picked up on her shyness around me, but that was the first time I realized how much she had taken to Luis. I suppose her affection came from his efforts to protect her on our wild ride through the dark Sabana Valley the night before, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit left out.

  Abby took a moment to comfort the child, then set her in the seat behind the wheel with the request that she assist with the navigation. “You can help guide me around the big rocks,” she said, and what remained of the girl’s crabby demeanor vanished behind a smile.

  Abby took the car out of gear, meaning she put it in neutral—and I’ll say here that for the amount of time invested, I think I learned more about automobiles on that trip from Sabana to Vaquero Springs than I have in all the years since—while Luis kicked the rock out from behind the wheel.

  A buckboard is a light vehicle. One man can easily lift either the rear or front if he needs to get it off the ground to work on something. Even the addition of a raucous four-stroke engine, a nearly empty gas tank, and all the levers, gears, and pedals up front didn’t add all that much weight. But the road before us that morning, although not overly steep, was still uphill, and the Watson Masner’s narrow wheels seemed to want to dig into the soil, making our journey all the more difficult. Thankfully Abby hadn’t followed Susan onto the wagon’s seat, and was instead walking alongside the auto, handling the steering with her right hand and helping push where she could with her left.

  Still, the bulk of the labor fell to Luis and me, and we were both sweating buckets by the time we’d cover a hundred yards. At twice that distance the thin desert air was stabbing at my lungs, and the muscles in my calves were starting to cramp. The top of the pass was still another five hundred yards away when Luis uttered a low but spirited curse and quit pushing.

  “Jesus, Luis,” I grunted, throwing myself against the tailgate to keep the buckboard from rolling backward. I expected him to grab a rock to shove behind the wheel, but instead he stood there, staring back the way we’d come. It was Abby who hurriedly rolled a small boulder behind the front wheel. I stepped back, breathing heavily, but any thought of further complaint was cut off by the view behind us.

  “Is it them?” Abby asked quietly.

  Susan whimpered softly, no doubt sensing her mother’s apprehension. Far below, a cloud of dust hung over the desert plain like a blemish.

  “I think it must be,” Luis replied.

  After a few seconds, she said, “They are following the road, aren’t they?”

  No one replied to that. The road ran east across the arid landscape, the dust clinging to it as if tethered. A rough estimate put them perhaps an hour behind us, certainly no more than twice that.

  “Well, we knew they’d be coming,” I said heavily, although to be honest, I hadn’t expected them this soon. Not at the speeds we’d been traveling after leaving Sabana.

  I could feel Luis’ eyes on me. Abby was also watching me, waiting for my decision. Silently I damned the mantle of responsibility I felt settling over my shoulders, yet their expectations were understandable. After all, it was me Ed Davenport had hired to rescue his family—or at least the male element of it. I was also the one who supposedly knew this country like the back of my hand, as the old man had put it that night in Moralos.

  “J. T.,” Luis said gently.

  I took a deep breath, then turned to the Watson Masner. “Let’s keep pushing. It’s our only chance now.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Luis joined me on the tailgate and Abby moved up to take the wheel. Susan said, “Mama, can I push?” but Abby shook her head.

  “I need your help on the wheel, sweetie. You’re going to have to take a tighter grip until we get to the top.”

  Although we redoubled our efforts, the results were disappointing. As gradual as the grade had appeared, it was still too steep to make much time. On top of that, the lack of food and water—especially water—was beginning to take its toll. I don’t know how the others handled it, but I soon reached a point where I just kept my eyes on the ground under the tailgate, wearily swinging one foot in front of the other. I was so lost in my focus on the backward crawl of the earth that when Abby called out that we’d made it, I hardly knew what she was talking about.

  Luis collapsed under the buckboard, his shirt and hair, even his trousers around the waistband, soaked with perspiration. I wasn’t any better. Only the stiffness of my battered knees kept me from dropping to his side. Abby tried to kick a stone under the front wheel, but the coffee pot–sized chunk of rock refused to cooperate. Finally Susan jumped down to wedge the tiny boulder in place. With the vehicle secured, Abby seemed to let go, sagging to the ground with an agonized moan. Susan went to her side, crying softly as these two stalwarts of her recent life—her mother and Luis—seemed to emotionally fade away.

  I kept my feet, but just barely. My limbs trembled as I stood braced against the vehicle’s tailgate. The impulse to let go, to fall hard, then wiggle into the shade of the Watson Masner like a dying slug dominated my thoughts. Only the memory of the men coming up from behind kept me from giving in. After a couple of minutes of rest, I staggered over to where I could view our rearward trail. The dust from the pursuing horsemen was closer than I’d anticipated, already beginning its climb. They would have to slow down as the grade increased, but I suspected their delay would be minimal.

  They won’t have to get behind their horses and push, I reflected bitterly.

  Although still too far away to make out any details, I estimated at least a dozen riders urging their mounts up the steepening incline. I doubted if Soto was among them, but I wondered about Lieutenant Alvarez. My thoughts flashed back to Poco Guille. The image of his shredded form, hanging limply between those twin bayonets plunged into the side of the cutbank, was burned into my brain. I mouthed the word, Bastards, then turned away.

  My legs were still wobbly as I walked over for a better look at the road cutting down the far side of the mountain. I stared in bewilderment at the narrow, winding track. The last time I’d seen it had been from below, and I guess the passage of years had distorted my memory. I’d remembered only one sharp curve in the road on this side of the divide, but that recollection had been made from a horseman’s perspective. Even in my limited experience with automobiles, I knew we’d never be able to negotiate that rutted trail without good brakes.

  I couldn’t see the jacales or the corrals at Vaquero Springs, but I could make out the mouth of the side cañon where they were located. That was also farther away than I recollected, and I felt a moment’s irritation for the way things were turning out. The scrape of boots on the rocky soil distracted me from the difficulty of the road. Luis halted at my side, his expression registering initial curiosity, then disbelief, and finally anger. For the first time since leaving Moralos, I saw incrimination in his eyes. In Abby, who had followed with Susan, I saw only hopelessness.

  “Damn you, J. T.,” Luis blurted.

  “Please,” Abby quickly interjected. “Arguing at this point won’t gain us anything.”

  “And what will?” Luis demanded.

  I stared back silently, caught off guard by the fire in his words, his willingness to loosen his tongue not only in front of the woman, but also the child; he hadn’t been this vehement even when facing Spence McKenzie’s gun, back in the barranca below the Cañon Where the Small Liz
ards Run.

  “I didn’t remember it this way,” I said vaguely, trying to explain. “I’ve only been through here once, and that was a long time …”

  “To hell with you,” he interrupted hotly.

  “Please,” Abby repeated, her voice rising in agitation. “We are all tired and … and frightened, but we can’t allow our feelings to come between us. We can’t let Susan be taken. Major Soto was very clear regarding our futures if Edward should fail to come through with the ransom.”

  Tears sprang to the woman’s eyes, and that was surprising, too. She’d been so resolute all along, so strong and unflinching, no matter how desperate the odds.

  My gaze swept the mountainside with growing urgency, a willingness to consider now what I might have dismissed as impossible under other circumstances. In that frame of mind, I paused as my eyes traced a path through the cactus and rocks, not so much a trail as a series of open spaces between the divide and where the road began to level out so far below. Struggling to harness my scattered thoughts into a coherent line, I studied the passage with growing excitement. It could be done, I thought, dangerous but possible. Yet when I turned to share my discovery with the others, they were gone.

  I went back to the buckboard, where Luis was strapping the carbine’s cartridge belt around his waist. Watching silently, Abby didn’t even look around when I came up. In a voice harsher than I intended, I said, “You think you can to stop them with a single-shot rifle and a six-shooter?”

  “I intend to try,” Luis replied with equal punch. Glaring at me from beneath the brim of his sombrero, he added, “Or die like a man, if death is my only option.”

  “It may not be.”

  He made a curt, dismissing motion with his free hand, accompanied by a growl of disdain. “I have listened to you enough for one day. If I am to die …”

  “Yeah, you’re going to do it like a man,” I cut in. “I reckon I’ll keep going.”

  “Then go!”

  But Abby, always the practical one, interrupted our argument before it became irreparable. “What are you suggesting, Mister Latham?”

  I hooked a thumb over my shoulder, toward the far side of the ridge. “I think I’ve found a way down. It’s going to be rough as a cob and it’ll probably break our necks, but the odds will be better than trying to make a stand here.”

  Luis hesitated. “Where?” he demanded.

  “Just about straight down the side,” I said.

  After a long pause, he said, “You’re crazy, hombre. It cannot be done. Not straight down.”

  “You’re probably right,” I replied, and couldn’t say to this day whether I was agreeing that I was crazy, or that it couldn’t be done. “What do you say? Want to give it try?”

  He glanced at Abby, whose eyes had regained their spark of hope. “I don’t want to perish out here, Mister Vega,” she said, “but I believe I would rather take a chance at escape, no matter how depressing the odds, than surrender to Soto’s murderers. And I believe that standing our ground here, even if we are to die in the end, would be the same as surrendering.”

  “Jesus, J. T.,” Luis said softly, then shook his head as if dealing with an idiot. “To tell you the truth, I would like just one more drink of water before I die.”

  “Well, hell, let’s go get it,” I said.

  Session Fifteen

  Do you want to hear about that ride down the side of the mountain? About me sitting up there like a king and hanging onto the steering wheel like it was a bucket of gold, while Luis and Abby and Susan clung to each other—or whatever else they could find—screaming and hollering and being nearly thrown free of the careening vehicle at least a dozen times each before we regained the road near the bottom?

  Or is that what I just did, in my own roundabout manner? Sorry, didn’t mean to laugh, it’s just that I’m not really sure how to describe that crazy voyage in a way that anyone listening to these recordings would believe.

  We made it, all of us in one piece and not a broken bone among us, although with fresh bruises, new cuts and scrapes, and a rekindled appreciation of having both feet planted solidly on the ground again. Luis’ left arm was quilled from elbow to shoulder with thorns from a cholla plant that we toppled along the way, no small feat since he’d been clinging to the right-hand side of the wagon bed at the time. I don’t know if it was a broken limb that was flipped through the air to strike his left arm, or if it happened during one of his brief, low-level flights after hitting a bump.

  The Watson Masner took an even worse beating than its cargo. The right rear hub had splintered skidding into a boulder about halfway down, and both front wheels suffered broken spokes from one of our hardest, nose-first landings—I think we were probably completely airborne at least three times. Several teeth on the rear axle sprocket had been chipped off, as well, although the gear itself was large enough that it didn’t affect the auto’s drive.

  When the slope gentled out about two hundred feet from the bottom, I ran the Watson Masner into a creosote bush along the road to slow it down, then into soft sand to bring it to a stop. Sitting up and looking around, Susan suddenly began laughing with a child’s delight, as if the ride had been her greatest thrill since the roller coaster—a comparison I realize I’ve made more than once, but which always seems to come closest to fitting the moment.

  I started laughing myself, happy, I suppose, to have made it to the bottom without killing anyone. I’d like to say that Luis and Abby shared in our joy, but neither cracked a smile, and Abby was watching her daughter closely, as if expecting her to burst into tears at any moment.

  We got out long enough to inspect the Watson Masner for damage, and for Abby to pluck nearly a dozen cactus thorns from Luis’ shoulder, her tongue unconsciously probing a small cut on her own lower lip. Deciding the automobile was still serviceable, we wrestled it back onto the road and pointed its nose toward the valley floor. The remaining descent was relatively gradual, and with the gas in the tank once more reaching the value, I popped the clutch about halfway down and the vehicle sputtered familiarly to life. Susan and I both cheered, and I eased the throttle open until we were chugging along at probably twenty miles an hour.

  Without steady traffic beating at the sod, the road here was in better condition than it had been on the Sabana side of the mountains, and although the center hump was grown over with low scrub, we made good time. I glanced over my shoulder just before we entered the brush-lined cañon, but the mountain pass was empty.

  The little rancho was tucked up close to the head of the draw, its adobe walls blending almost perfectly with the surrounding landscape. There hadn’t been much to the place when Old Toad’s Yaquis had descended on it all those years ago, and time hadn’t been especially kind. There was a two-room house, its portico constructed from the ribs of saguaro cactus, and a couple of small jacales off to one side. A corral about eighty yards in front of the nearest building was starting to sag from neglect. The stone-lined tank that marked the location of the spring stood between the corral and the dwellings, its walls less than a foot high and dark from seepage. A verdant hue hung over the shallow cañon, reminiscent of the Sabana Valley, although on a much smaller scale.

  A sizable herd of horses was grazing across the low hills that flanked the springs, looking fat and sassy in the early morning light, and a pale ribbon of smoke curled from a cook fire in front of the house. Nudging my shoulder, Luis nodded toward a pair of horsemen coming down off a squatty hill on our right.

  “Better slow down,” he said.

  A third man rose from beside the fire in front of the two-roomed shack, a thumb tucked almost casually behind a cartridge belt at his waist, scant inches from his revolver, and a Remington carbine, identical to the one Luis was carrying, leaned against the side of the house just a few paces away. He’d been tending a fire-blackened stew kettle hanging over low flames when we came into view. At
least I hoped it was stew. Only the fact that we were all about as desiccated as an old boot had kept us from dwelling too much on the emptiness of our bellies.

  I eased the hand throttle forward until we were barely crawling along, a prickly sensation skittering up and down my spine. Although these men weren’t outfitted in the uniform of Adolpho Castillo’s Army of Liberation, they didn’t look like vaqueros, either. Fact is, they reminded me of the bandits I used to dodge during my earlier forays into Mexico, lining up goods to haul back to Arizona—lean-as-slat figures, shabbily dressed, and heavily armed. Behind me, Abby gently pulled her daughter down to her side, half shielding the child’s body with her own.

  “Three is all I count,” Luis said quietly.

  “Three’ll be more than enough if we aren’t careful,” I replied, allowing the Watson Masner to coast to a stop near the corral gate. I disengaged the drive but left the engine idling in case we had to make a run for it.

  After warning Abby and the child to stay in the vehicle and keep their heads down, I slid cautiously from behind the wheel. Luis eased to the ground on the other side, affecting a wide, friendly grin and making a big production of placing the Remington on the buckboard’s seat before stepping away from the auto.

  “Hey, amigos!” he called amiably. “We are looking for some water, and maybe a little food if you have some to spare. Enough for the niña, at least, eh?”

  The man at the fire stayed where he was, but the two horsemen were approaching warily, their eyes skimming the hilltops for signs of an ambush, their hands seemingly fused to the revolvers holstered at their waists. Eyeing the number of guns the men were carrying, I felt fairly confident they weren’t vaqueros. Not in the traditional sense, at any rate.