The Loner: Inferno

Chapter 12

He rode to the edge of the hills and stopped. Since the Apaches had prisoners now, not to mention those horses they had taken from the camp, it was likely they would head for the border in a straight line, just as fast as they could.

But The Kid couldn’t be absolutely certain of that, so the smart thing to do would be to wait until morning and pick up their trail once it was light. A war party of a hundred men couldn’t travel without leaving behind plenty of signs, even in the arid wasteland.

When he thought about Jessica Ritter and the other three women, he wanted to keep going, but he forced himself to stop and unsaddle the dun.

If he was going to have any chance of rescuing the captives, he had to keep his emotions at bay. He had to be as coldly calculating as a machine. It was the only way to overcome the overwhelming odds he faced.

The Kid picketed the horse and spread his bedroll again for the second time that night. He wrapped up in his blankets against the nighttime chill and tried to sleep.

But even though his eyes were closed, he kept seeing horrific images of fire and blood and death. He hadn’t witnessed the slaughter at the wagon camp, but in his mind it was like he had been there, watching and hearing everything.

Every terrible thing.

Despite that, weariness eventually claimed him, but his sleep was restless and haunted by nightmares. He was glad when he woke up the next morning in the cold gray light of dawn.

The Kid stood up and stretched to ease muscles that ached from tossing and turning so much on the hard ground. He gathered broken branches from some nearby scrub brush and built a small fire.

He soon had coffee boiling and shaved slices off a chunk of salt pork into his frying pan. There were plenty of biscuits left in the bag of provisions Horace Dunlap had gathered for him the night before. As he hunkered on his heels next to the fire and ate, The Kid thought about the people who had donated that food for him.

Most of them—maybe all of them—were dead. The meal tasted like ashes in his mouth, but he forced himself to eat anyway.

By the time the sky was light enough for him to start searching for the war party’s tracks, he had his gear packed away and the dun saddled. The Apaches must have come through this area, he thought as he mounted and began to ride along the edge of the hills.

That hunch proved right. He had gone less than a quarter mile when he came to a broad swath of hoofprints and mocassin tracks that led off to the south. Some of the Apaches were on foot, but that wasn’t surprising. An Apache warrior moving at a steady trot was capable of running a horse into the ground, Frank had told him.

The Kid turned to follow the tracks. Figuring out how many men were in the war party was impossible. The prints were too jumbled up.

The only thing he could be sure of was that there were a lot of them.

From the looks of it, the Apaches weren’t trying to cover their trail. They knew they had avoided the cavalry patrol, which had moved on west. And they wouldn’t be expecting any pursuit from the devastated wagon camp. As far as they knew, they hadn’t left anyone alive behind them.

After a few days, when the three Apaches who had gone after The Kid failed to return, the rest might start to wonder what had happened to them. They wouldn’t be concerned, though. The Kid was only one man.

What could one man do to hurt them?

The night’s chill disappeared rapidly as the sun climbed into the sky. As the heat grew, The Kid wondered how far it was to the next source of water. He had filled both canteens in the creek in Raincrow Valley before he rode away, but in the semidesert, that water wouldn’t last long. The dun would require quite a bit of it.

The Apaches had to know this territory, he reminded himself. They would need water, too, and would know where to find it. As long as he was following them, he would come to it sooner or later.

A couple of hours after sunup, he spotted dust rising to the west. Unless the war party had made a sharp turn for some unfathomable reason, that was the wrong direction for them. The Kid reined in and rested his hands on the saddle horn as he studied the dust.

It wasn’t the first such cloud he had seen recently. In that arid country, any group larger than a few riders raised considerable dust. The cloud was about the same size as the one he had seen a few days earlier as the cavalry patrol approached the wagon train.

Could it be?

The Kid decided the smart thing to do was wait and see. The delay in going after the Apaches grated on him, but he needed to know whether or not he had a new threat galloping toward him. He looked around, spotted a cluster of boulders about half a mile away, and rode toward it, figuring the rocks would conceal him while he got a look at those riders.

Once he was behind the boulders, he dismounted and pulled his Winchester from its saddle sheath. He found a good spot where he could see the approaching dust cloud and waited.

Within a few minutes, he could make out the riders. He thought he saw the bright colors of a flapping guidon, so he fetched his telescope from the saddlebags to check.

Yes, The Kid thought grimly as he peered through the glass, the cavalry had returned ...

Much too late to do any good.

He closed the telescope, put it away, and stepped out from behind the boulders. Pointing the Winchester into the sky, he fired three shots as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever.

The troopers slowed in response to the shots, then turned toward him without stopping. The Kid lowered the Winchester and waited until the blue-uniformed soldiers rode up and reined in.

Lt. Nicholson was in the lead, with Sgt. Brennan behind him. Nicholson stared at The Kid in surprise. “Morgan! What are you doing out here?”

“I’m trailing that Apache war party. What are you doing?”

The lieutenant’s face darkened in anger at the contemptuous tone in The Kid’s voice. “Not that I have to answer to you, but we’re returning to Fort Bliss. We reached the limits of the area we were supposed to patrol.”

“Let me guess. You didn’t see any sign of the Apaches, did you?”

“As a matter of fact, no. What’s that you said about trailing them?”

The Kid didn’t answer the question directly. Instead he snapped, “You didn’t see them because they didn’t want you to see them. They probably knew where you were every minute of the day and night and could have ambushed you at any time. The only reason you’re not dead now is because they found a more tempting target ... that wagon train.”

Nicholson drew in a deep breath and glared down at The Kid from his saddle. “The wagon train?” he repeated.

“That’s right. Except for four women the Apaches carried off as prisoners, every man, woman, and child in that party of immigrants is dead now, and I figure you’re partially to blame for that.”

Angrily, Sgt. Brennan crowded his horse forward. “Hold on just a damned minute! You best keep a respectful tongue in your head when you’re talkin’ to the lieutenant, mister.”

“I’m not in the army. Those gold bars don’t mean anything to me,” The Kid said coldly. “If you’d stayed with the wagons, Nicholson, the Apaches might not have attacked.”

“You can’t be certain of that.”

The Kid shrugged. Nicholson was right about that. He couldn’t be sure. But there was a good chance it was true.

The lieutenant dismounted and handed his reins to Brennan. He turned to The Kid. “Tell me what happened.”

The Kid summed up the bloody, tragic circumstances in as few words as possible. Nicholson’s face had acquired a tan during his service in the Southwest, but he turned pale underneath it as The Kid described how everyone with the wagon train had been killed except for the four women who were taken prisoner.

“You say you were trailing the Apaches?” Nicholson asked when The Kid was finished.

“That’s right. Their tracks are hard to miss.” The Kid paused. “You might have even noticed them if you’d kept riding.”

Nicholson’s lips tightened at the thinly veiled insult. “We saw the glow in the sky from our camp last night. The sergeant told me something was on fire, and I was planning to investigate. I recalled that man Dunlap saying the wagon train was headed for Raincrow Valley, and I wanted to be sure the settlers were all right.”

“Little late for that,” The Kid drawled.

Brennan started to get down from his horse. “By God, I’ve had just about enough of you, mister!”

Nicholson waved the noncom back into the saddle. “Stay where you are, Sergeant. Civilians are ... entitled to their opinion, even when they don’t know what they’re talking about. I had my orders, Mr. Morgan, and I followed them. My conscience is clear.”

The Kid wondered if that was completely true, or if later on uncertainty and guilt would visit Nicholson on some dark night of the soul. He had experienced plenty of that himself.

But he said, “If you want to follow something, how about following their tracks? The Apaches probably aren’t expecting any pursuit. We might be able to catch up to them in time to do those women some good.”

Nicholson frowned in thought as he considered the suggestion.

“For God’s sake,” The Kid burst out impatiently, “your orders are to find that war party, right?”

“To locate and engage the hostiles, yes,” Nicholson said with a nod.

“Well, those tracks will lead you right to them. Even a stiff-necked son of a—” The Kid forced himself to stop and take a breath. “Even you ought to be able to see that, Lieutenant.”

“You’re right. Following those tracks is exactly what I should be doing, Mr. Morgan. And you’re going to help me do it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“From this point on, consider yourself under my command,” Nicholson said. “You’re now attached to this patrol as a civilian scout, and therefore under the jurisdiction of the United States Army.”

The Kid’s eyes widened. “The hell you say!”

Nicholson jerked his head in a nod. “That’s right, the hell I say. I’m declaring this part of the territory to be under martial law, and as such I have the right to impress civilians into temporary duty.”

“That can’t be legal,” The Kid protested.

“If you think so, you can take the matter up with my superior officers when we get back to Fort Bliss. In the meantime, you already said you were trailing those Apaches. I intend to do the same thing. Why should you object to riding with us?”

“It’s not the riding with you I object to, it’s the blasted business about being under your command.”

“Well ... perhaps it won’t come to that. We want the same thing, after all, don’t we? To punish those savages and deliver justice to them for their crimes?”

That wasn’t what The Kid wanted at all. He wanted to rescue Jessica and the other three women. Killing some Apaches in the process would be a good thing, but it wasn’t the main objective.

If he said that, it would just lead to more arguing with Nicholson, and they had already wasted enough time. “Let me get my horse. I’ll ride with you.”

“I thought so,” Nicholson said with a smile.

The Kid wanted to wipe the smirk off the lieutenant’s face with a fist. If he was lucky, he would get the chance to do that later.

For now, getting those women away from the war party was the only thing that mattered to him. He led the dun out of the boulders, swung up into the saddle, and moved to the front of the patrol alongside Nicholson.

As he rode past Sgt. Brennan, he saw hate smoldering in the noncom’s eyes. There would be trouble with Brennan before it was all over, The Kid thought.

That was fine. The mood he was in, he was ready for trouble, and plenty of it.