Chapter 9


John McBride, the calico kitten curled against his chest inside his slicker, slept standing on his feet, his shoulder against the wall. Slowly, like a clock winding down, the noise in the saloons gradually faded and the town grew silent. Rats stirred in the corners of the jail, scurrying, and a hungry coyote trotted along the street, picking its way through the mud. The moon made its way across the sky, painted the buildings the color of gunmetal and cast angled, navy blue shadows in the alleys. Across from the jail a single reflector lamp stayed lit for several hours, then guttered out, and a thin string of smoke lifted from the soot-stained chimney.


McBride slept on. . . .


The wind was from the west, blowing off the vast malpais of the Tularosa Valley, carrying dust and the promise of the day’s heat. Above the tarpaper roofs of Rest and Be Thankful the sky slowly changed from black to pale lemon, streaked with ribbons of scarlet and jade. The dawn light teased McBride, shining in his face, trying to pry open his eyelids.


He woke with a start, remembered where he was and looked around him. Nothing had changed. Apart from the shaft of light that slanted through the window and illuminated part of the filthy cot, his prison was in darkness. The place still smelled like an outhouse in summer, but the stench seemed less. He was either getting used to it or the ravenous rats had cleaned up.


Then he remembered Lopez.


The man was dead. Had McBride’s slender hope of rescue died with him?


There was no one in the street and the boardwalks were empty of people.


Where was Harlan? Where were the Mexicans?


An hour dragged past. McBride caught a whiff of frying bacon in the air and across the street a merchant opened his store, then used a hook at the end of a long pole to pull down a faded yellow awning. The man walked to the edge of the boardwalk, holding the pole like a spear, and looked up and down the street. Unsatisfied by what he saw, he shook his head and stepped inside.


A few minutes later Harlan arrived at the jail holding a tray covered with a red and white checkered cloth. He stood outside the jail window and looked at McBride. ‘‘Sleep well?’’ he asked.


‘‘What do you think?’’


Harlan grinned. Under his mustache his canine teeth were large and pointed, giving him the look of a hungry carnivore. He lifted a corner of the cloth. ‘‘Fried salt pork, sourdough bread and coffee. Suit your taste?’’


‘‘Did you kill a man last night, Harlan?’’


The marshal was taken aback. ‘‘How did you know?’’


‘‘Heard shooting. I reckoned it had to be you that pulled the trigger.’’


Harlan’s slicker slapped around his legs in the wind. ‘‘He was a Mexican and don’t hardly count. If I was a man that cut notches on his gun, I guess I would let that one slide.’’


Harlan made a motion that signaled he was about to move to the door, but McBride’s voice stopped him. ‘‘When are you going to let me out of here?’’ He was probing, but already knew the answer.


‘‘Day after tomorrow,’’ the lawman answered. ‘‘That’s when I take you out and hang you.’’ He grinned again. ‘‘No breakfast that morning, McBride. I don’t want you spoiling a perfectly good hanging.’’


‘‘What’s the charge against me that calls for the rope?’’


‘‘You mean you don’t know? Breaking Lance Josephine’s nose was an act of lawless violence. That’s a hanging offense in this town.’’


‘‘You’re the law, Harlan. You could stand up for me.’’


The man shook his head. ‘‘Josephine wants you dead and so does his father, the mayor. I’m not about to get in their way.’’


‘‘Harlan, you’re just like Lance Josephine,’’ McBride said, trying to punish the man. ‘‘A two-bit tinhorn and low-down back shooter. When did you last shuck the iron on a named man? I’d guess never.’’


The marshal looked as if he’d been slapped. The skin of his face tightened and his eyes looked like blue steel. ‘‘Hard talk coming from a saddle tramp and a no-good Yankee at that. Boy, I’m going to enjoy hanging you. I plan to draw it out, just for your benefit.’’


‘‘If I don’t kill you first,’’ McBride said, meaning every cold word.


For a fleeting moment it looked like Harlan would forgo the pleasure of a hanging and shoot. But the man fought a battle with himself and visibly relaxed. He lifted the cloth from the tray and threw the food into the street, plates and coffee cup clinking into the mud. ‘‘No breakfast for you, McBride. And if you give me any more sass, there will be no supper either.’’


Bitterly remembering Lopez, McBride said, ‘‘Harlan, you go to hell.’’


The lawman smiled. ‘‘Come the day I hang you, you’re going to be a mighty hungry man.’’


Harlan turned on his heel. Then, his honed gunman’s instinct warning him, he started to swing around again, his face alarmed. He never made it. The butt of a rifle, wielded by a young Mexican man, crashed into the back of his head. Harlan did not make a sound. He fell facedown into the mud and lay still. Another Mexican bent over the unconscious marshal and quickly searched his pockets. He came up with the key to the jail door. As McBride watched from the window, a Mexican came into view, leading his saddled mustang.


These men were not flashy vaqueros in tight, embroidered finery, but simple peasants in homespun white cotton pants and shirts, leather sandals on their feet. They were small men, very dark, but they looked lean and tough as rawhide.


The key scraped in the lock, and one of the Mexicans stuck his head inside. ‘‘Rapidamente, mi amigo,’’ he yelled. ‘‘Vayamos!’’


McBride needed no second invitation. He held the kitten against his chest and stepped outside. The Mexican who had downed Harlan said to him urgently, ‘‘Mount up. I will take care of this one.’’ The man held a knife in his hand. He rolled the lawman on his back, and readied himself for a killing slash across Harlan’s throat.


‘‘No,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Let him be. We’ll get him another time.’’


The young Mexican looked puzzled. ‘‘But this is the man who killed Senor Lopez and hanged the sheepherder boy from my village.’’


‘‘I know, but let him live for now,’’ McBride said, wondering if he was doing the right thing. But he knew he could not bring himself to slaughter a helpless man, even a sorry piece of trash like Thad Harlan. ‘‘His time will come,’’ he said.


It looked like the young Mexican was about to argue, but finally he shrugged and sheathed his knife. ‘‘A man has a right to be killed at his best moment,’’ he said. He bent over Harlan again and yelled, ‘‘Listen well! My name is Alarico Garcia and I will wait. Then I will kill you.’’


The marshal muttered a curse, tried to rise but groaned and sank into the mud again.


McBride fought an inward battle, hating himself for hating the man at his feet and for not destroying him.


Garcia straightened and motioned toward McBride’s horse. ‘‘Mount. We had better go.’’


McBride climbed into the saddle and put the calico kitten on the saddle in front of him. ‘‘Sammy,’’ he said, ‘‘I hope you’re a better rider than I am.’’


The Mexicans had disappeared but Garcia emerged from behind the jail, mounted bareback on a bony dun. ‘‘We will go now,’’ he said.


The young Mexican led the way out of town, heading east where the rising sun spread a fan of golden light above the peaks of the Capitan Mountains.


After an hour, as a cool, fresh wind carried the scent of spruce, aspen and high-growing pines, Garcia motioned McBride to follow and rode up the slope of a shallow bench. He drew rein when he reached the ridge. Ahead lay mile after mile of flat plateau country that would eventually lose itself in the vastness of the Llano Estacado. Rabbitbrush, scarlet Apache plume, cholla and prickly pear grew everywhere, along with mountain mahogany and gray oak.


McBride stopped beside the other rider, a covey of startled scaled quail scattering away from his mustang’s hooves. The sun had completed its climb over the mountains, but the bright promise of the day was already fading as ash-colored clouds gathered in the denim blue sky.


Garcia pointed. ‘‘Deadman Canyon is ten miles to the southeast. You can hide out there until it’s safe.’’


The young man read the reluctance in McBride’s face and the sudden stiffness in his back. ‘‘Thad Harlan is already hunting you and he will be close,’’ Garcia said. ‘‘With him he will have many men, all of them famous outlaws, fast with a gun and good trackers. If he catches you out in the open you’re a dead man.’’


McBride made no response, considering.


He was still on the payroll of the New York Police Department’s bureau of detectives, and still a duly sworn officer of the law. The town of Rest and Be Thankful meant nothing to him, but cold-blooded and cruel murder had been committed there. As he’d been told often since his arrival in the West, he was way off his home range, but if he did not try to bring Thad Harlan and Jared and Lance Josephine to justice, who would? He admitted to himself that it would make sense to turn his back on the problem, let it go and simply ride on without any choices to make at all.


It was a way, maybe the sensible way. But at that moment in time, in this place, Detective Sergeant John McBride decided it would not be his way.


‘‘I don’t want to hide out,’’ he said finally. ‘‘I want to strike at Harlan, Josephine and the rest of them.’’


‘‘Then hide first and fight later. Right now you are angry, as I am, but anger is never a good counselor. It urges you to stand and fight, but can a dead man harm the men you mention?’’ Garcia smiled, more to make his point than display humor. ‘‘Besides, you have no weapons. What will you do when Harlan catches up with you? Throw rocks at him?’’


McBride nodded his uncertainty. ‘‘You make a good point. Without a gun I wouldn’t last long.’’


‘‘Yes, I make a good point, and here’s another—if we hope to reach the canyon alive we must ride.’’


‘‘Then lead on,’’ McBride said, dying a sad little death. How could a man without a gun stand up to a vicious killer like Thad Harlan and his hard-bitten posse? And even if he was armed, what chance would he have?


The obvious and simple answers to his questions made the big man smile grimly. The reply to the first was he couldn’t. And as for the second . . . the answer was slim to none.



Towering, stratified walls of rock sloped away on each side of him as McBride followed Garcia into Deadman Canyon. The young Mexican found a dim game trail that angled across flat, desert grassland broken up by scattered boulders and stands of mesquite, ocotillo, saltbush and yucca.


Within the canyon the day was stiflingly hot and humid and McBride rode with his slicker across the back of his saddle. The sun was hidden by a layer of thick cloud and the air smelled of sage and the coming rain.


‘‘We go there,’’ Garcia said, pointing to a narrow arroyo that cut deeply into the base of the cliff. ‘‘And pray the rain starts soon and washes away our tracks.’’


It was ten degrees cooler in the arroyo, its high, rocky sides covered in bunchgrass and struggling spruce. After thirty yards, the gulch made a sharp bend to the north, then opened up on an acre of lush grass and a single cottonwood, fed by water trickling through the canyon wall.


Under a wide granite overhang was a ruined, windowless cabin. Its log roof had long since collapsed, but the rock walls still stood and a warped pine door hung askew on one rawhide hinge.


‘‘You will be safe here,’’ Garcia said. ‘‘When Harlan has called off the chase I will come back for you. Tomorrow maybe, or the day after.’’ He reached behind his saddle and held out a bulging sack. ‘‘Here is food. It is not much, but we gave you what we could spare. There is a small pot for coffee.’’


‘‘I appreciate it,’’ McBride said. He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then said, ‘‘Can you leave me your rifle?’’


It was the young Mexican’s turn to look uneasy. ‘‘I am sorry, McBride, but this is the only rifle in my village. We need it to hunt our meat and perhaps defend us from Thad Harlan and his gunmen.’’


Feeling small for asking, McBride smiled and said, ‘‘I understand. It’s unlikely Harlan will find me here in any case.’’


Garcia glanced at the threatening sky. ‘‘It will rain soon, and that will be good for you. Now I must get back to my village. My wife will be worried.’’


‘‘Be careful, Alarico,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Ride wide of Harlan.’’


The young man touched the wide brim of his straw sombrero. ‘‘I will be careful. Adios, mi amigo.’’


McBride watched Garcia leave, a sense of loss in him. He climbed out of the leather and set the kitten on the grass. As the little animal went off to explore, he unsaddled the mustang and let it graze.


Taking the sack Garcia had given him, McBride pushed the door aside and stepped into the rock house. The roof beams were charred by fire and most had collapsed into the single room in a V shape. Only to his right was there a clear area, a corner above which a couple of logs were still in place.


McBride walked outside and picked up half a dozen heavy rocks. He went back into the cabin, spread his slicker over the corner beams above him and weighed it down with the rocks. Rain was already falling, but if he could start a fire, he figured he’d be cozy enough.


He had not eaten since the night before and was ravenously hungry. He checked the contents of the sack: several corn tortillas, slices of jerked beef and a small paper package of coffee, twisted shut at the top, and another, even smaller, of sugar. It was little enough, but then impoverished Mexicans who lived constantly with hunger had little to give and McBride would not allow himself to feel ungrateful. It was food, freely given, and it would do.


He set the sack in the corner, then looked around for the makings to start a fire, wishful for coffee with his meal. There was dry wood in plenty scattered under the fallen beams and McBride piled these beside the sack. He found an abandoned pack rat’s nest, and though he didn’t recognize it as such, he was pleased. The dry twigs and straw would light easily.


The calico kitten came in from the rain, and under the meager shelter of the slicker McBride fed it tortilla and jerky. He was alarmed at the amount the little cat ate. ‘‘Sammy,’’ he said after the kitten finally quit and curled up near him to sleep, ‘‘I swear, you’ve just eaten enough for two strong men.’’



Throughout the daylight hours, McBride constantly checked the canyon but he saw no sign of Harlan and his posse.


Although this part of the arroyo was hidden from anyone riding through the valley, McBride was uneasy. Restless now as the day shaded into early evening, he stepped out of the cabin and into heavy rain that drummed a tattoo on the top of his plug hat. A surging wind shook the branches of the cottonwood and tugged at the stream that ran from the arroyo wall, spraying fragile fans of water droplets into the cooling air. The sky was iron gray, grimed with black, like the sooty thumbprints of a giant.


McBride reached the mouth of the arroyo and his anxious eyes searched the rain-swept valley. His shoulder holster, lacking the weight of the Smith & Wesson, brought him no comfort, and within him nagged an unquiet fear, the kind that always makes the imagined wolf bigger than he is.


A few minutes later his state of mind did not improve when he saw Thad Harlan ride into the canyon, the gloom crowding close around him.


The lawman was staying near to the north wall of the Deadman, opposite McBride. The marshal rode head up, alert and ready, his Winchester across the saddle horn. The rattling rain raked into him, but Harlan seemed oblivious of the downpour, his eyes scanning the rugged strata of the ridges on both sides of him.


McBride took a step backward, losing himself in the shadows of the arroyo. As he watched, the marshal swung out of the saddle and dropped to a knee. He bent his head to the ground and his fingertips delicately brushed at the grass. After a few moments he lifted his head, gazing speculatively into the flat land ahead of him and then to the soaring rampart of the south wall of the canyon.


Finally Harlan stepped into the saddle, his slicker and hat streaming water. For several minutes he held his mount where it was, man and horse standing perfectly still, like an equestrian statue of iron in the rain.


McBride swallowed hard. A magnifying glass had been a necessary part of his equipment during his time as a detective on the NYPD. But Thad Harlan needed no such help. Despite the rain, the man was reading the clues left by the passage of his and Garcia’s horses and his hunter’s instinct was telling him his prey was close.


Like a mouse mesmerized by a cobra, McBride was fixed to the spot, his scared eyes on the lawman. Did Harlan know he was being watched? Did he know exactly where his quarry was holed-up? Would he soon turn and charge directly at the arroyo, his rifle blazing?


In the end, McBride’s fear saved him from himself. There are two kinds of men, those who get paralyzed by fear and those who are afraid but bite the bullet and go ahead anyway. After an inward struggle, John McBride chose the latter.


His eyes searched the ground around him and found what he was looking for, a couple of fist-sized rocks. He picked them up and stepped back to the entrance to the arroyo, ready to sell his life dearly.


He was just in time to see Thad Harlan ride away. The lawman was heading out of the canyon.


A rock in each hand, McBride watched until horse and rider dissolved into the shimmering, silver veil of the rain and the darkening land became empty again.


Harlan would return. McBride knew that with certainty. The lawman had not known exactly where he was but, like a predatory animal, had been aware of his presence.


He’d be back come the dawn . . . and he’d bring company.


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