Hard Trail to Socorro
Bodie Kendrick – Bounty Hunter Book One
by
Wayne D. Dundee
Smashwords Edition
Hard Trail to Socorro
Presented by Western Trail Blazer
Digital ISBN: 978-1-4657-5671-8
Copyright © 2011 by Wayne D. Dundee
Cover Art Copyright © 2011 by Laura Shinn
Produced by Rebecca J. Vickery
Design Consultant: Laura Shinn
Smashwords License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this ebook without purchasing it and it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Hard Trail to Socorro is a work of fiction.
Though some actual locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and imagination of the author. Similarities of characters within to any person past, present, or future are coincidental.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my grandchildren, William Wayne, Emily Sue, and Riley Wayne, in the hope they grow to discover and appreciate the kind of "cowboy heroes" who made a lasting impression on me as a child, and whose values I find to be increasingly important the older I get. -WD-
Bounty hunter Bodie Kendrick apprehended his prey without too much trouble. Claiming the reward, however, turns out to be not so easy.
First there is Veronica Fairburn, the beautiful woman who has her own business in Socorro and insists on sticking with Kendrick when he sets out to return there with his prisoner … Then there's the gang of tough ranch hands dead set on relieving him of the prisoner in order to dish out their own brand of personal revenge … Add in the Mexican desperado stalking the woman, and the band of renegade Apaches raiding throughout the region—and Kendrick has his work cut out for him.
Complicating matters even more are the feelings developing between Kendrick and Veronica.
But the greatest challenge of all may come from the daring passage they must attempt over the Jornada del Muerto—the Journey of the Dead, awaiting them in the merciless White Sands desert.
Chapter 1: The Fugitive
The dusky cantina girl stirred, came awake. Her sleep-puffed eyes blinked once, twice, then shot open wide as she became fully aware of the presence that had roused her—the tall, broad-shouldered man looming at the foot of the bed. The girl gave a loud gasp and frantically tugged a corner of tangled blanket to her chin. Her eyes remained huge, her mouth agape. She looked ready to cry out.
Calmly, the man raised his left forefinger to his lips and made a soft yet stern shushing sound, the way a parent might do to quiet an unruly child in a public place. The gleaming, sawed-off twin barrels of the shotgun balanced in his right hand seemed to threaten a more permanent silence.
The girl's mouth clamped shut and she swallowed visibly. She stayed quiet.
The man held her eyes for a long count before his dusty, flat-crowned Stetson dipped once in a curt nod. Voice low, he said, "Leave now, child. Softly. You don't want any part of the trouble here."
The girl's eyes slid briefly to the snoring lump under the blanket next to her. Then she scooted obediently off the bed, disregarding her nudity, bare feet scuffing on the floor. She stooped to sweep up her shoes and spangled cantina dress, then, hugging the bundle close, she brushed past the big man, eyes averted and hurried out the door.
When she was gone, the man stood listening attentively to hear if she tried to raise any kind of alarm out in the hallway. Nothing. The double row of cramped sleeping rooms over the cantina remained as still as the dormant establishment below at this early hour, the sun only a few minutes old.
The man returned his attention to the bed and its remaining occupant. A bare foot with a reddish, calloused big toe jutted out from under the blanket and hung over the edge of the mattress.
With the business end of his shotgun, the man tapped the exposed toe. The toe's owner grunted, shifted slightly under his covering, resumed snoring.
The demanding barrels prodded again. The response this time was another grunt and the emergence of a pale, wiry arm that made a brushing away motion. A muffled voice said, "Give it a rest, darlin'. Ain't no bonus in it for you no matter how much friendliness you got left ... I'm purely tapped out, moneywise and elsewise."
A third swat with the barrels, harder, metal clunking against toenail and bone.
The lump on the bed surged up, arm flailing, and the blanket fell away to reveal a rumple-haired, bleary-eyed, yet handsome man of thirty or so, his mouth twisted into a snarl and spitting curses. "Damn it, girl, what's the matter with you? How the hell many times I have to tell you—"
The words stopped short as the bleary eyes came into focus and found themselves staring into the bottomless side-by-side bores of the shotgun muzzle.
"Mornin', Jory," the man on the other end of the gun said.
Jory Ludek licked his lips. He knew all about waking parched after a night of hard drinking, but finding yourself face-to-face with a shotgun on top of those conditions gave new meaning to the term cotton-mouthed.
Ludek licked his lips again and said, "Seems you know me. Who the hell might you be?"
The man's thick shoulders rolled in a kind of shrug, but the shotgun never wavered. "If it matters, the name's Kendrick. Bodie Kendrick."
Ludek's eyes traveled back and forth between the man's face and his weapon. "So what's your beef with me, mister? I say or do something out of line last night when I was liquored up?"
A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of Kendrick's mouth. "I expect you probably did, yeah. But not to me." His free hand dipped into his vest pocket and came out with a folded piece of paper that looked somewhat the worse for wear. He shook open the paper, revealing through the crisscross pattern of fold marks a man's likeness centered under the word WANTED in large letters and above the words DEAD OR ALIVE. Below were several more lines of smaller-print lettering. The sketched likeness was the handsome face of Jory Ludek. "My business with you," Kendrick continued, "has to do with some out-of-line things you did up Socorro way a while back. This handbill gives the details, but I figure you know them as well as anybody."
"Hell," Ludek grunted. "That Socorro trouble was months ago—a year and more, maybe two."
"All the same to me. Handbill says they want you back bad enough to pay a reward. Long as that holds true, I got interest."
Ludek's mouth curled into a sneer. "So that's your game, uh? A stinking, lowdown bounty hunter!"
"Kettle calling the pot black, son. According to the charges on this piece of paper, you're a robber and a killer. I'd say that makes you considerably lower down than me."
"Those are all lies! I didn't have nothing to do with those Socorro killings."
"Uh-huh. Every man I've ever brought in—leastways the ones who've been in any shape to talk—has been plumb innocent. Can you beat that?"
"I'm telling you I am innocent of those charges."
"There'll be a judge up north you need to convince of that."
"You ain't got me there yet," Ludek muttered.
"No. But I will. Only question is, whether you're sitting up in a saddle or laying across one. Answer's up to you."
"You're a real hardcase, ain't you?"
"Hard enough for the likes of you, sonny. Enough talk. You make nice slow movements and keep your hands in sight at all times, I'm willing to let you get dressed before I slap a pair of wrist irons on you."
"Mighty big of you."
"We'll be spending a few days together, you'll get the chance to find out what a kind and generous disposition I truly can have. But if you don't haul your sorry hide out of that bed, you'll quick see the other side of it. I don't aim to make a habit of telling you everything twice."
* * * * *
Half a dozen minutes later, the two men had quit the room and were making their way along the upstairs hallway, heavy boots clumping on worn wood flooring, spurs chiming softly. The corridor smelled of dust and sweat, of soured spilled liquor wafting up from below, and of cheap perfume. The dozen or so rooms branching off the hallway, Kendrick knew, were frequented by cantina girls like the one he had chased, sometimes spending a few minutes with cowpokes they lured to partake of their charms, sometimes staying the night if enough money exchanged hands. The rooms were also available to solitary guests unable to afford more standard hotel accommodations and who were willing to tolerate the cantina racket and related goings-on that lasted into the wee hours of the morning.
The two men went down the back stairs that exited onto a side alley. From there they strode out to the street. El Paso sprawled before them, coming to life in the new day under a climbing white-hot Texas sun that promised to be brutal by midday.
Ludek stepped up onto the dusty planks of the boardwalk and paused, squinting sharply, hitching his arms, trying to comfortably adjust to the tug of the wrist irons that held his hands behind his back. Kendrick drew up behind him, shotgun at the ready in his right fist, Ludek's gunbelt and saddlebags draped over his left shoulder.
"Man oh man," Ludek groaned, "I sure ain't ready for all this sunshine. My head's already busting and I got a throat as dry as the middle of that street. I don't need the sun frying my eyes, too."
"Should have thought of that last night," Kendrick drawled, "when you were so hell bent on drinking and whoring. Next day's always there, and it seldom looks any better through a hangover."
"You ever think maybe I didn't figure on sobering up quite so damn sudden?" Ludek replied. "And I can guarantee I didn't figure on doing it in the likes of your company."
"Into each life a little disappointment must fall. Builds character."
"My character's already been built and wrecked. If you'd give me a couple pulls off one of the bottles I got in those saddle bags, like I asked you polite as can be, you'd be doing your piece to revive my body and soul."
"Later maybe, when we're ready to hit the trail. In the meantime, I spotted a real nice well down by the town marshal's office. Since that's where we're headed, I'm willing to stop and let you wet your gullet all you need."
"I'm telling you, what I need ain't water, mister."
"It's what you'll settle for. That or nothing. You can think about it while we're walking over to see the marshal. Let's get a move on."
"Out for a walk at the crack of dawn. On our way to visit the marshal and get a drink of water. I can see right off that spending time with you is going to be one big hoot after another."
"Shut up and keep walking. You didn't complain so much, you wouldn't be so dry."
* * * * *
Men packing guns were hardly an uncommon sight on the streets of El Paso; or, for that matter, on the streets of any west Texas town in the early 1880s. Neither the Colt .44/40 revolver Kendrick wore low on his right hip, nor the wicked length of Bowie knife sheathed at his left, rated a second glance. Even Ludek's twin-holster style gunbelt that was now slung over Kendrick's shoulder warranted little or no special interest. But the sawed-off Greener shotgun the bounty hunter so openly brandished as he herded his prisoner down the sidewalk in broad daylight, that amounted to a decidedly bolder display than most considered normal. Enough so that the pair drew double-takes from various deliverymen rolling by on horse-drawn wagons and anxious gazes from a number of shopkeepers who happened to glance out their windows while preparing to open their businesses.
By the time Kendrick and Ludek reached the adobe building with the barred windows that sat just off the curve of Front Street, Marshal Curly Hutchins had already been made aware of their approach and was waiting for them. He stood on the front porch of his jail/office, leaning against a post and casually sucking his teeth to work loose some of the coffee grounds stuck there from the three strong cups he'd already consumed that morning. While his posture may have looked relaxed, even lazy, his right hand, thumb hooked over belt, hung purposefully close to the Peacemaker on his hip and his eyes were totally alert and busy taking stock of the two strangers as they drew near.
"Howdy, gents," he offered by way of greeting. "What sort of trouble we got here?"
"In case you ain't noticed," Ludek answered sarcastically, "the trouble I got is that this big galoot is holding a scatter-gun rammed up my backside."
"No trouble, Marshal. Not really," Kendrick said. He once again took the wanted poster from his vest pocket, handed it over to Hutchins. "This should explain everything."
Hutchins took the paper. Reading in short spurts, his eyes frequently lifting, never staying off his visitors for very long, he gave it a thorough examination.
When he'd finished, he lowered the handbill and scowled at the handcuffed man standing before him. "No denying the resemblance to both the drawing and the description given here. You go by the name of Ludek?"
Ludek's eyes flashed momentarily with thoughts of trying a lie. Deciding against it, however, his mouth pulled into a tight, straight line. "Yeah, that's my name," he admitted. "But the face and the name are the only things on that damn rag that are the truth. The rest is a pack of lies!"
"I've tried explaining to him," Kendrick told the marshal, "that the truth of those charges has to be decided elsewhere. Only fact I'm dealing with here is that it's him the handbill was issued against."
Hutchins grunted. "Right enough, I reckon." He turned his scowl to Kendrick. "What's your stake in this?"
"The reward, what else?" Ludek sneered. "He's nothing but a stinking bounty hunter."
Kendrick shrugged. "This fella's got a real problem with my line of work. Doesn't seem to recognize that people like him are what make people like me necessary."
Hutchins grunted again. "Guess you could say the same about me and my line of work. So how come you to track him to El Paso? Can't say I remember that handbill circulating through here."
"Maybe it didn't," Kendrick allowed. "I find it pays to keep a fistful of these sheets with me as I travel about. Never can tell when one might come in handy, like in this case. Spotting Ludek here in your town was plain coincidence. I was just passing through, heading back north after delivering a prisoner down Presidio way. Stopped in one of your local cantinas last night to dampen the trail dust in my throat and there was our boy Jory. Couldn't hardly miss him—he was plenty liquored-up, spending big and talking loud."
Hutchins said, "If you spotted him last night, why didn't you make your move on him then?"
"Shape he was in, I could see he wasn't going far. Besides, been my experience it's a hell of a lot simpler bracing a man when he's hung over and in the company of mostly misery than when he's unpredictable drunk and surrounded by a saloon full of hombres he's been buying drinks for."
"In other words," Ludek said, "when you didn't have to brace me fair and square."
"That scattergun he's carrying would cut you in half just as sure, no fair or unfair about it," Hutchins pointed out.
"Exactly why I'm carrying it," Kendrick said. "Been another experience of mine that a man who might be desperate enough to try and make a break for it under the muzzle of a handgun, or even a rifle, will be a whole lot more reluctant to try anything in front of a sawed-off that can throw a pattern as wide as a kitchen wall."
Hutchins chuckled. "Can't fault your reasoning there, even though I've got to say I'm less than crazy about you parading the streets of my town with that thing the way you are."
"I reckon I can put it away if it bothers you too much."
"Bothers the hell out of me," Ludek muttered.
Ignoring him, Hutchins went on speaking to Kendrick, "So now that you've got your man in handcuffs and you've satisfied me with your bona fides, what's your aim? How soon you figure on lighting out for Socorro with him?"
"Right away," Kendrick answered. "That is, as soon as I get proper provisions put together. Like I said, it was late when I hit town last night. Things were mostly closed. And now that I've taken on a prisoner, I'll need to take on some extra supplies. To be honest, I had more'n one reason for swinging by to see you this morning. In addition to advising you I was serving a wanted paper, I was hoping maybe you'd be willing to accommodate my prisoner behind your bars for a spell while I saw to the rest of my preparations. Make things easier for me and keep some tension off your streets, me not dragging him in irons everywhere I have to go."
"Yeah, it'd do that," Hutchins agreed.
"Oh, come on, marshal!" Ludek protested. "You got no call to be a part of this. I never caused no trouble in your town. Ain't no way New Mexico Territory falls under your concern."
"Maybe not," Hutchins said. "But still nothing in the books says I can't assist a body I believe to be working in the best interests of the law."
"This bloodsucker don't give a hang about the best interests of the law. He's in it strictly for the money. I told you, he's nothing but a damn bounty hunter."
"And you're nothing but a whining punk who's gone and gotten himself plastered on a wanted poster. Now you was me, which side of the table would you be more apt to stack your chips?"
"Much obliged," Kendrick said. "Shouldn't take me more than an hour or so to do the things I need to do, then I'll be back for him. In the meantime, I'm afraid you might be letting yourself in for an earful of his complaining."
Hutchins shook his head. "Don't worry about it. Jail section's got a half-foot thick oak door I can close if he carries on too much. No sound makes it through that. If it does, I can always throw a bucket of water on him."
Kendrick grinned. "You do that. I happen to know he's especially fond of water."
Chapter 2: The Woman
By a stroke of luck and a couple well-placed questions, Kendrick discovered Jory Ludek's horse was liveried in the same barn where the bounty hunter had put up his own animal overnight. The bewhiskered stable boss was understandably reluctant to release a mount to anyone other than the man who'd checked it in, but a patient explanation from Kendrick, accompanied by a peek at the wanted poster and a healthy tip, got the man to give in all the same. After saddling them and stocking their saddlebags with the supplies he'd bought at the general store, Kendrick led both horses from their stalls.
Front Street and its bordering plank sidewalks were considerably busier than they'd been only a short time before. The heavy delivery wagons had been replaced by more colorful carriages and buggies and scattered lone riders. A number of young boys were scurrying this way and that, excitedly planning their day's adventures. Most of the stores and shops had opened and were attracting bonneted women looking to get their shopping out of the way early. With his shotgun now discreetly lashed to the bedroll behind his saddle, Kendrick presented a less threatening sight to these good citizens of El Paso as he brushed in and out amongst them.
He'd used up most of the hour he'd promised the marshal, but Kendrick still had one more stop to make; a bit of an indulgence he felt he owed himself before riding out to spend another long stretch of days on the trail. After spotting Ludek the previous night and formulating the plan he'd gone on to execute that morning, the manhunter had managed to arrange himself a hotel room with a soft, clean-sheeted bed and even a bath, albeit in a tub of used water. But he hadn't been able to wrangle a decent late supper, settling for a couple slices of cornbread and a cold piece of fried beef the Mexican night clerk had been willing to scrounge from the pantry for an exorbitant extra charge. He'd slept on a full stomach, but not a satisfied one, and the smell of breakfasts being prepared as he rose just ahead of daybreak to go for Ludek had been sheer torture. Now, he was about to make up for all that.
Hitching his chestnut stallion and Ludek's gray gelding to the rail out front, Kendrick pushed his Stetson back off his forehead and sauntered across the breadth of well swept board-walk up to the fancy glass-paned front door of the restaurant he'd had his eye, and his nose, on all morning. Entering, a variety of delicious cooking aromas immediately wrapped around him like a welcoming embrace.
He took a seat, removing his hat and placing it on the empty chair beside him, at a table draped by a blue-checked cloth and set with heavy pewter utensils and a fat china coffee cup. To the pretty, dark-eyed young waitress who came around he gave his order of ham and eggs, fried mush, a short stack of pancakes with sorghum molasses, corn bread, a glass of cold buttermilk, and coffee.
The restaurant was doing a brisk business. Its customers were mostly men, slightly more than half of them business types wearing dark coats and vests over white shirts buttoned to the throat, string ties. The rest, like Kendrick, wore faded and somewhat dusty denims and leathers that marked them as ranchers, farmers, wranglers, long riders, or men who otherwise made a hard living mostly out of doors. Also like Kendrick, many of them wore guns holstered at their hips and it was a fair bet that some of the fancies carried a concealed weapon such as a derringer. Unlike Kendrick, however, none of the rest possessed the subtle steeliness about the eyes or the hard set of the mouth that indicated they possessed experience at regularly using those weapons for the grim business they were intended.
Kendrick was halfway through his meal, finding it every bit as satisfying and delicious as he'd anticipated, when he became aware that a new arrival to the restaurant had walked in and paused to stand directly over his table. Looking up just after scooping an egg yolk-sopped piece of bread into his mouth, the bounty hunter was more than a little surprised to find himself exchanging stares with the cool blue eyes of a strikingly lovely woman. Her hair was pale gold, worn long so that it foamed about her shoulders. She had on a split corduroy riding skirt and burgundy boots that roughly matched the color of her Indian print blouse. She smelled of perfumed soap.
Before he could finish chewing in order to say anything, the woman said, "There's a gray gelding hitched out front alongside a chestnut stallion. Some people on the street told me they saw a big, square-faced man in range clothes tie both horses and then come in here. Might you be that man?"
Getting down the mouthful of corn bread and egg, Kendrick rose from his chair with cautious ease, saying, "I might be. Who might you be to have interest in whether I am or not?"
The woman put her hands on her attractively flared hips. "I happen to know that the gray belongs to a man named Jory Ludek. Yesterday afternoon I hired Mr. Ludek to do a job of work for me. I paid him good money, in advance. This morning I cannot find Ludek, as prearranged, but now I spot his horse apparently in the possession of someone else. I believe that entitles me to ask the questions I am asking."
Kendrick twisted his mouth thoughtfully. "Reckon maybe it does."
He glanced around, uncomfortably aware that the exchange between him and the woman was drawing a good deal of attention. The woman's attractiveness alone would have been cause enough for that; her agitated state and slightly raised voice only heightened the interest of the other customers.
"Look," Kendrick said gently, "why don't you have a seat and let me explain. I'll tell you how I come to have Ludek's horse. Tell you where you can find him, too, far as that goes. Then you can decide what you need to do from there."
The woman scowled distrustfully. "What do you mean, 'decide what I need to do'?"
"I told you it's going to take some explaining," Kendrick said, growing impatient. He settled back down onto his chair. "You can sit down and listen to it my way, or you can march off and find your answers elsewhere." He went back to work on his breakfast, ignoring the woman and the indignant glare she was aiming at him.
After the better part of a minute, the woman abruptly yanked back a chair, dumping Kendrick's hat to the floor, plopped angrily down and hitched herself up to the table. "There," she announced. "I'm ready to listen, are you happy? Now I demand to know what the hell is going on."
"Pick it up," Kendrick said, continuing to chew.
"What?"
"The hat."
"What hat?"
"Mine. You knocked it on the floor. Pick it up."
Bright pink color flooded the fair skin of the woman's neck and cheeks. She banged a small, sharp-knuckled fist on the tabletop. "Damn your stupid hat! I have urgent business to attend to and I need the services of Jory Ludek, for which I have already paid, in order to get underway. What have you done with him?"
A dude in a fancy vest rose from a nearby table and swaggered over. He wore a pearl-handled pistol on his left hip in an intricately tooled cross draw holster. He carried himself with an air of self-importance, but the weak taper of his chin and the jerkiness of his close-set eyes indicated something less.
"Begging your pardon, ma'am," he said to the woman. "Couldn't help noticing you seem to have some distress here. Anything I can do to be of service?"
Kendrick rolled his head and fixed the dude with a hard stare that backed him up a half step as sharply as if he'd received a shove to the chest. Intoxicated by the woman's beauty, lulled by Kendrick's plodding, purposefully unobtrusive manner, the dandy had come looking for a moment of easy glory. In the bounty hunter's eyes, he now saw the blaze of potential sudden death.
"The only distress you need to be worrying about," Kendrick said through clenched teeth, "will be your own if you're looking to mess in my business, hombre."
The dude's Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "Don't get me wrong, mister," he said in a voice he had to struggle to keep steady. "I ain't looking for trouble. Only mean to halt any. This is a nice restaurant, we don't care for rowdiness in here."
The dude, realizing belatedly he may have blundered into a situation he was ill-prepared to master, had hoped with some desperation that his use of the word "we" would stir some of the other regular customers or at least the restaurant's proprietor, into siding with him, speaking up to help quell any further disturbance. But no one said anything. No one moved. The place had gone nervously quiet. Not even the woman did anything to help him. She sat wide-eyed, her mouth slightly open as if she was holding her breath.
"Won't be no rowdiness from me," Kendrick said, his stare still burning into the dandy, "if everybody will quit interrupting my damn breakfast."
That was the dude's chance to walk away from it. But he was hotly aware that he'd stood up in front of everybody and started this play, and to just end it under a hard stare and a mouthful of words would leave him publicly looking the fool and coward he feared inside he actually was. It wouldn't have taken much for him to back off in a way he could make excuses for later—a gesture, a word of caution. From anybody other than the man he'd confronted. But no, damn their bloodthirsty hides, they were all just sitting by silently, waiting to see what was going to happen.
The dude calculated. The big man with the savage eyes was sitting down, an awkward position for anybody to try and draw from. He had both hands on the table, the right one, his gun hand, holding a fork stabbed through a slice of fried mush. The dude had speed and accuracy, he'd proven that to himself dozens of times, out alone, drawing and shooting off cactus arms and keeping clumps of dirt dancing in the air. Despite the fancy holster and gun that helped him feel important, he'd avoided ever facing down another man before; yet as far as the mechanics of drawing fast and hitting what he aimed at, he was convinced he rated up there with the best of them. Maybe this was his big chance. Yeah, his big chance with a big, hard-talking stranger who, just because he had lightning in his eyes, didn't mean he had it in his hand. Especially not the way he was positioned . . .
The dude went for his pearl-handled gun.
Fast as a rattler strike, Kendrick's hand swung from the table, never bothering to dip anywhere close to his own gun. The greasy piece of fried mush flew from the fork still clutched in his big right fist.
The dude's streaking hand was a blur crossing his torso. His fingers had only begun to wrap around the weapon they sought, however, when they suddenly stiffened and froze, quivering, in a claw-like position. The dude's scream of agony cut the air in place of expected gunfire.
Driving the fork with all his might into the gristly back of the threatening hand just above its knuckles, Kendrick lunged from his chair in the same motion and threw his heavy body against the other man. The dude was knocked down, falling hard, twisting away as he dropped so that the blood-slippery fork was yanked from Kendrick's grip.
It was finished as quickly as it started.
Kendrick poised in a half-crouch over the fallen dandy, breathing hard, his red-spattered right hand hovering above the still undrawn Colt at his hip while his eyes swept the room, checking to see if there was anybody else wanting to make a move against him.
For several beats, the only sound or movement was the mewling of the dude as he writhed on the floor, tenderly favoring his damaged hand with the fork still imbedded in it.
Kendrick straightened and let the tension drain from his back and shoulders. His gaze found the dark-eyed waitress who'd served him. "Reckon this man will be needing a doctor's attention," he said huskily.
Chapter 3: Night Stalkers
"This is the thanks I get for stringing along with you!?" Marshal Curly Hutchins demanded. His face was blotched with anger. "The whole idea of me holding your prisoner behind bars was so you could finish your business in town without trouble, without making folks nervous. You figure crippling a man with a breakfast fork inside one of El Paso's finest restaurants is some kind of everyday occurrence that don't make people nervous, for Christ's sake?"
Bodie Kendrick wasn't exactly happy himself. "The fella went for his gun. What the hell was I supposed to do? I could have killed him, you know."
"For his part, he'll probably wish you would have. Doc says that hand will never work close to right again."
Kendrick grunted. "He didn't look to be much good with it anyway. Sure wasn't calloused from labor, and in spite of all his fancy gear it was plain he wasn't going very far as a gun sharp."
Hutchins hissed out a sigh. "You're right about that, I suppose. I could see months ago when young Billings—that was his name, if you care—started sporting that damn cross draw rig and picking up a swagger in his walk that he was headed for bad news. He was one of those fools who thinks the gun makes the man, not the other way around."
"Too damn many of those to be found," Kendrick allowed. "And sooner or later most of them end up a sight worse off than I left Billings."
The two men were seated in the marshal's office; Kendrick settled onto a curved-back wooden chair, Hutchins with his rump resting on a corner of his desk. It was pushing past mid morning. Out in the street, the sun was pumping waves of heat out of a cloudless sky. Dust motes from the office's adobe floor and walls danced in streaks of sunlight angling through the windows.
Hutchins sighed again. "Well, what's done is done. No going back to change it now. Lucky for you, everybody else's account of how it went with Billings pretty much matches yours. Clear case of self-defense. I'd like to have a few words with that mysterious woman you was jawing with, though, the one who brought the whole thing on. I still got a couple deputies out looking, but nobody seems to've seen hide nor hair of her since the ruckus started."
"Yeah," Kendrick said, "I wouldn't mind a few more words with her myself. Whoever she is, she's got something to do with my friend Ludek in there. Be surprised if he'd be cooperative enough to fill us in about her."
"Me too," Hutchins agreed, sliding off his perch on the desk. "But it won't hurt to ask."
He hooked a ring of keys off a wooden peg beside the rifle rack, turned and pushed through the heavy door that led back to the jail section. There came the clank of metal, the groan of stiff hinges, muttered words. A moment later Hutchins reappeared, pushing ahead of him a still handcuffed Jory Ludek.
Spotting Kendrick, Ludek's mouth split wide into a lopsided grin. "Well, well. If it ain't the fastest fork in the West. Here I been worried about that sawed-off of yours massaging my spine all the way to Socorro, now it turns out I got to be on extra guard even when we stop to take grub. I bet you can be a holy terror with a flapjack spatula, can't you?"
"You don't wipe that smirk off your kisser," Kendrick growled, "your holy terror is going to be my boot up your ass."
"Knock it off, you two," Hutchins said. "You can spar with each other all you want on the trail to Socorro, which won't be soon enough for my liking, I'll tell you. But in the meantime, I got some questions I want answers to."
He fixed Ludek with a hard scowl. "There's a woman in town, showed up yesterday afternoon about the same time you did. Blonde, thirty or thereabout, a real looker."
"Sounds like the kind of woman who ought to show up in places more often," Ludek observed.
"Who is she?" Hutchins wanted to know.
"How the hell should I know? You're the one telling the story."
"You know her, all right," Kendrick said. "She told me only an hour or so ago that she paid you advance money for a job of work you were supposed to do for her. So quit playing dumb. Who is she and what was it she hired you to do?"
"And where can we find her?" the marshal put in.
Ludek's eyes flicked back and forth at the volley of questions, taking on a shrewd glint as they did so. At the same time, his jaw muscles tightened, pulling his smirking mouth into a grim slash. "Earlier this morning," he said, his voice carrying a harsh edge, "neither one of you two hard-asses wanted to listen to anything I had to say. I'm just a punk on a wanted poster, remember? My version of that Socorro trouble wasn't worth spit. So why all of a sudden now are the both of you willing to believe what I might know about a pretty stranger?"
"Dammit, do you admit knowing her or not?" Hutchins said.
"I know lots of women, old man. A helluva sight more'n you've ever laid your paws on." The smirk returned with a vengeance. "Is that your angle? You maybe wanting me to break the ice for you with this blonde gal? Or when your horn starts twitching do you just throw the ones you want behind bars and let 'em make bail on their backs on one of the cots in there?"
Hutchins' fist swung in a wide-arced backhand that cracked like a whip on Ludek's jaw, spinning him half around and buckling his knees. When the marshal tensed to swing again, Kendrick grabbed his wrist and held it back.
"Take it easy, Curly! Getting your goat is exactly what he was trying to accomplish. You're playing right into his hand."
Ludek showed a coyote's smile through bloodied lips.
Hutchins jerked his arm free. He was breathing hard, snorting through his nostrils like a bull. "Get that smart-mouthed little bastard out of my sight," he said to Kendrick. "You better've got all the supplies you needed before, because five minutes from now all I want to see of you two jaspers is your dust on the trail north. Anything else, I'll come down on the both of you with my boot heels digging to chew meat."
* * * * *
Ride north they did, following the twists of the Rio Grande, the old El Paso del Norte trail, through the ruggedly beautiful countryside as it tumbled away from the Franklin Mountains.
The temperature progressed ever hotter through to the heart of the afternoon, so Kendrick held the horses at a steady but moderate pace. He'd initially figured five days to Socorro. With this kind of heat and the delayed start they had gotten, he now reckoned it might carry into a sixth.
They stopped for a brief lunch in the shade of a jutting rock formation with a slender offshoot of the river bubbling close by. Kendrick uncuffed Ludek long enough to let him eat some jerky and a biscuit and a half can of peaches. He also allowed him to walk around a bit, do some stretching, kneel in the cool stream to wash and scoop some soothing water to the scrapes and bruises around his mouth where Hutchins had struck him. Only after Ludek was back in irons did Kendrick relax his guard enough to eat and take some refreshment from the stream himself.
Flashing his by now familiar smirk, Ludek observed, "You treat me like you must think I'm a real dangerous character, bounty man."
"Try anything foolish," Kendrick told him, "and you'll quick find out who's the most dangerous character on this here trail ride."
At dusk, after they'd crossed into New Mexico Territory, Kendrick selected a campsite in a clump of cottonwood trees on a low bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. He leg-ironed Ludek to an exposed root of one of the trees, leaving him limited mobility for eating and sleeping and giving a break to his chafed wrists. Kendrick was a hard man, but not an unnecessarily cruel one.
After tending to the horses, he got a campfire going and set about fixing supper. More jerky, softened this time in hot bacon grease, biscuits, beans, a shared can of stewed tomatoes, and plenty of hot, strong coffee made their meal.
"You ain't a half bad trail cook, I'll give you that," Ludek said as he pushed aside his emptied tin plate. "I guess a fella could do worse than to be brought in by you. I've heard tell of some bounty hunters who don't believe in grubbing their prisoners decent during the trip in, keep 'em practically starved. Suppose they figure anything more is just a waste of good vittles on a condemned man."
Kendrick nodded. "And there's some bring in all of their prisoners cold across a saddle. Waste no vittles at all that way."
"You ever done it like that?"
"Brought a few in dead, yeah. But not to save grub—only because they gave me no choice."
Night rolled in nearly cloudless and brilliant, tinting everything silver-blue under a thousand stars and a fat slice of moon. The land rapidly gave up its heat.
Returning from the riverbank where he'd washed the pots and mess kits, Kendrick stooped to rummage in one of his saddlebags until he carefully withdrew a spool of string wrapped around a smooth piece of notched wood. A half dozen barbed hooks dangled from a loop at one end of the string.
Straightening up, Kendrick said, "You sit tight, I'm going to mosey upstream a spell. You might work on mustering a wish of good luck to me. If I get any, we'll have ourselves fresh fish for breakfast in the morning."
Ludek frowned. "How far you going?"
"A ways. Till I come on a likely spot."
"How long you figure to be gone?"
It was Kendrick's turn to frown. "Why? You going to miss me?"
"Right. Like the Fever. It's just that . . . "
"Just that what?"
"Well, it's dark and all."
"You mean to tell me a hard-ass desperado like you is afraid of the dark? Besides, it's the dark of the moon and stars. Almost as bright as day."
"Almost, maybe. But it ain't day. You don't know these hills that good. What if you stumble in the shadows, trip and break your fool neck? Or fall in the river and drown? Where does that leave me? Staked out here like coyote bait, that's where."
"Ah, the truth of it at last. Just when I thought you were starting to show a fondness for me."
"I'm serious, dammit. You ain't going to catch no fish anyway."
"Not if I don't try." Kendrick grinned. "Like I said, you'd better wish me good luck . . . at fishing and at making it back in one piece, both."
"That ain't funny. If you're so all-fired bent on fishing, why not do it in the morning?"
"I intend to be making tracks by first light. Besides, the right time is now. The fish have stayed deep all day, out of the heat. Now that the air is cooling they'll be coming up to feed."
"What if there's Indians out there?"
"Jesus Christ, Ludek, you know all the Indians around here are on reservations."
"Wasn't that long ago Geronimo himself was—"
"Including Geronimo. Now shut up, will you? If there are any fish within a mile of here they'll all be scared away by your bellyaching."
Kendrick's broad-shouldered silhouette slid over the rim of the bluff and disappeared. Ludek, listening hard, heard only a couple boot heel scrapes after that and once a patter of loosened gravel. Then nothing. Only the crackle of the campfire and the whispery conglomeration of night sounds that seemed like nothing at all until there was suddenly nothing else to hear.
After a minute or so, Ludek gave a hard kick at the chain fastening him to the cottonwood root, then sat back on his haunches and said softly to himself, "Shit."
* * * * *
Five hundred yards away, in the notch of a lava boulder, another lone figure watched Kendrick dip out of sight over the low bluff and disappear into the inkiness along the riverbank. The figure had caught snatches of the preceding conversation carried on currents of the chill night air, the repeated words "fish" and "fishing," Ludek's protests, the big bounty hunter's nonchalant determination. But above all—before, during, and after the exchange of words between the two men—the watcher was gnawingly aware of the drifting aroma of strong-brewed coffee still simmering in the blackened pot over the fire.
Minutes ticked by.
Ludek sat and brooded.
With increasing impatience, the watcher remained very still. Why didn't the fool close his eyes and sleep? Before the other one returned?
The coffee aroma continued to tantalize.
Some fifteen minutes after Kendrick had left on his fishing expedition, a scraggly tumbleweed of clouds skittered slowly across the sky and blotted out the moon and several neighboring stars. A huge shadow floated across the land. The figure in the lava notch rose, intending to seize the opportunity to close some distance on the camp. But as silently as the floating shadows, another figure materialized out of the volcanic rubble behind the watcher and pounced with the swiftness and ferocity of a hunting cougar.
Chapter 4: Socorro Bound
Bodie Kendrick reentered the camp, not ascending from the down slope northerly direction in which he'd departed, but rather descending from the boulder-strewn higher ground to the south and east, away from the river. In his right hand he held the reins of a buckskin mare, leading the animal easily. In his left he clamped the upper arm of the blonde woman from the restaurant that morning, marching her smartly at his side, about a half step ahead. She was dressed as before, with the addition of a broad-brimmed dark hat.
Jory Ludek stood crowded against the shadow of his cottonwood, eyeing the procession's arrival, watching the shapes emerge out of the silver-blue gloom into the flickering yellow circle of campfire light. He'd heard a commotion in the hills to the south some minutes back, alarming him at first until he recognized the commanding bark of Kendrick's voice. Then he'd heard what sounded like the voice of a woman, accusing, cursing. Ludek couldn't imagine what a woman would be doing way the hell out here, until he saw the blonde.
"Well, my fishing trip was a success," Kendrick announced, releasing the woman with a flourish. "Except unfortunately it didn't net anything we're going to be able to fry for breakfast."
The woman glared at him, rubbing her arm where he'd gripped her. "I hope you fry in hell! You ruffian. The way you jumped on me, I thought I was being crushed under a landslide."
"Serves you right," Kendrick returned, "skulking a body's camp in the middle of the night like a common jayhawker. You're lucky my Bowie didn't automatically carve a new smile in that pretty throat of yours before I decided to hold off and ask a few questions."
Ludek chuckled. "You plumb got a way with everybody you meet, don't you, Kendrick? Here I been thinking maybe it was just me."
The woman wheeled on him. "And you, you drunken snake! None of this would be happening at all if you'd tended to business like I paid you to do instead of immediately going on a whoring and swilling binge at the very first cantina you came to."
Ludek hung his head. "That's a pure fact, ma'am. And I'm rightly ashamed. You don't know how many times this very day I have sorely regretted—"
"Oh, shut up before you make me vomit," the woman cut him off. "I don't know how I could have been so stupid as to put my trust in the likes of you."
Turning back from picketing the buckskin, Kendrick allowed his mouth to pull into a lopsided grin, saying, "Yessir, Mr. Ludek, I can see you're going to have to give me one of your world famous lessons on how to better hit it off with the folks I run into."
The woman's eyes flared anew and then immediately softened as she watched Kendrick kneel beside the fire to pour himself a steaming cup of coffee. When he lifted the cup to his lips and took a scalding sip, her throat muscles worked with his.
After watching him take another drink, she said, in by far the softest voice she'd used so far, "Can you . . . spare a cup of that?"
Kendrick shook the pot, sloshing its contents. "Sure. Got plenty." He leveled a flat stare in her direction. "But it's going to cost you."
"Cost me . . . how?"
"Answers. For openers, how about your name?"
"I thought Mr. Ludek would have supplied that by now."
"Hey, lady," Ludek protested quickly, "I don't spill to lawmen, or no damn bounty hunters, or none of their cut, you got that?"
"That's a fact," Kendrick confirmed. "Whatever else his shortcomings are, this jasper's been hell bent on keeping his confidences."
The woman shrugged as if she saw no major virtue in the issue. "Very well. My name is Veronica Fairburn."
Kendrick rummaged a clean cup from the mess gear he'd washed earlier, poured it full of coffee, held it out to the woman. "How long since you've eaten anything?"
"Nearly all day. I had a muffin with my coffee first thing this morning. After that . . . well, things turned pretty hectic. You obviously saw that I hadn't the wherewithal to pitch any kind of proper camp when darkness arrived."
"I've got a sack of hard biscuits. Some jerky. Canned peaches or pears or—"
She didn't let him finish. "Either of those, the peaches or pears, would be wonderful. Maybe a biscuit. If it isn't too much trouble."
Ludek made a face. "Hey, before you two set up housekeeping or something, you suppose I could get a cup of that coffee, too? You got me chained the hell and gone over here away from the fire, my backside's getting frostbit. And don't give her the last of the peaches, neither. Pears make my tongue raw."
"Bellyaching sure as hell doesn't seem to bother it any," Kendrick muttered.
He handed the prisoner a cup of coffee, then pointedly ignored him as he split open a can of peaches and dug out a biscuit for the woman.
"Lord, no meal ever tasted any better," Veronica praised as she spooned a wedge of peach from the tin and pushed it hungrily into her mouth to chew along with the bite of biscuit she'd already taken.
Watching her eat, the firelight dancing reddish gold off the cascading paleness of her hair, the flickering shadows high-lighting the strong planes and delicate features of her face, droplets of peach juice glistening on her full lips, Kendrick realized with thudding force that he had seldom been in the company of so beautiful a woman. He had to brace against the basic instincts this kind of realization triggered and remind himself with equal force that she remained very much an unproven quantity, a still-mysterious factor that demanded to be weighed carefully as far as what her motives were, and to what extent she could be trusted.
"All right," he said evenly. "Now the rest of it."
She eyed him over another dripping wedge of peach. "The rest of it?"
"The whys and what-fors. What's the connection between Veronica Fairburn, a woman of obvious beauty and intelligence and spirit, and a half-assed outlaw saddle tramp like Ludek? Why did you hire him in the first place, and why are you so desperate you tried to sneak-follow us out of town after I'd taken him into custody?"
Veronica smiled ruefully. "The one word you used, desperate. That about tells it all. You're looking at a very desperate woman, Kendrick."
"What's got you that way?"
"Circumstances. Life. Fate. Who ever really knows how people get themselves into the fixes they get in?"
"In your own case, you must know how you got into whatever it is you're talking about."
"You don't let up, do you?"
"Looks like I'm stuck with you awhile, unless I decide to toss you back to the night, a situation you're clearly not very well equipped to handle. Before I decide otherwise, though, I aim to know what's going on."
The woman set aside her can of peaches, took a long swallow of coffee. "Under the circumstances, of course, you have every right to know. But that doesn't make it any easier to tell. I'm afraid I don't come off looking very good. I told Ludek and look where it got me."
"I ain't Ludek."
Veronica drank some more coffee, then heaved a sigh. "Very well. I'm desperate because I ran against some trouble back across the border in Mexico. Not trouble with the law, but the kind of trouble that can follow you just as relentlessly. It had to do with a man. A no-good man, but I couldn't see that until it was too late. He had a smooth way and a line of sweet talk that made me as starry-eyed and foolish as a schoolgirl. Well, it turned out he was married. That was bad enough, but it got worse. His wife, when she found about me and our affair, decided to fight for him. Him, she could forgive, me, she could not. She belongs to a very rich and powerful family. The family's money made the man decide it was her he truly loved after all, so then the family's power, because they needed somebody to atone for the dishonor that had been caused to one of their own, was aimed at me."
"Was your life threatened?"
"Not in so many words. But I feared for it all the same. To give the devil his due, the man discreetly arranged to provide me with a horse and some money and an escort to get me as far as El Paso."
"Mighty big of him."
A fatalistic shrug. "He might have been risking his life to do that much. Considering what a coward and a cad he is, it was as close to a heroic act as he'll likely ever manage. At any rate, that's what landed me in El Paso yesterday afternoon. My escort returned to Mexico and I was on my own."
"At which point you struck up an association with our Mr. Ludek?" Kendrick guessed.
"Exactly. His arrival in town coincided with mine. We were having our horses liveried at the same time and place. I couldn't help noticing the two guns he carried and the rugged overall look of him. He appeared to be competent, someone who was ready and willing to handle trouble if it came."
"Looks can be deceiving," Kendrick said, "especially if you base it on how many shooting irons a man carries. Man who knows what he's doing can usually get the job done with one gun. When you see a man packing one for each hand it means he's either awful good or he's trying to make up in show what he ain't really got in ability. More often than not, it's the last. Same as that fancy Dan in the restaurant and his flashy cross draw rig that didn't do him a whole lot of good when it came right down to it, remember?"
"Don't you listen to him, lady," Ludek called from the cottonwood. "You got a keen eye for man flesh, meaning yours truly, even if you did get made a fool of by that slicker down in Mexico. And you, Kendrick, if you think I carry those two hoglegs of mine just for show, whyn't you let me strap them on and prove how pitiful I am for a fact with them?"
Neither Kendrick nor Veronica bothered to acknowledge him.
"Right or wrong," she said, "I decided he might be my answer for moving quickly on from El Paso, getting further away from Mexico. If the wife's brothers or some of their hired vaqueros are indeed after me, then they're not going to be turned away by a minor thing like an international border. So I boldly introduced myself to Ludek and blurted out my situation. I offered him fifty dollars in silver to escort me to Socorro where I have friends who will help me, see to my safety from there on out."
"If you had money, why not book stagecoach or rail passage?"
"Number one, there wasn't a stage leaving until Friday. Number two, the railroad doesn't go to Socorro or even close. I didn't have that much money, anyway. And besides, I reasoned if anybody did come after me, the first thing they'd check would be if a woman of my name or description left town by stage or rail and that would give them a clear-cut schedule and route to pursue. I figured I had a better chance to elude them if I did something more unexpected."
A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of Kendrick's mouth, the manhunter in him appreciating her guile.