The Loner: Inferno

Chapter 18

With all the shots and echoes of shots racketing around in the canyon, the blast of one more Winchester was lost.

But the results were startlingly evident. The Apache who had unwisely lifted his head flew backward as The Kid’s steel-jacketed slug bored through his skull and exploded out again in a pink, grisly shower of blood, brain matter, and bone fragments.

The dead warrior’s body hadn’t hit the ground by the time The Kid worked the Winchester’s lever, shifted his aim, and honed in on another rock. The Apache kneeling behind it, evidently startled by his companion’s sudden death, twisted around to look at the bloody corpse. One of his shoulders stuck out enough for The Kid to see it.

He fired again.

The Apache didn’t make a sound as the bullet shattered his shoulder, but the impact sent him rolling out from behind the rock. He tried to leap to his feet, but shots rang out from the other side of the canyon and he went down again, drilled at least twice through the body. He jerked a couple of times, then lay still.

In a matter of seconds, the odds had improved considerably. However, the Apaches couldn’t give up without a fight. If they left the shelter of the rocks, they would be easy targets. Even though they had set up the ambush, they were pinned down just as much as Kelly and the others were.

Both sides started firing with renewed intensity. Bullets flew back and forth across the canyon, and clouds of powdersmoke drifted through the air.

The Kid added to the hellish clamor by cranking off several rounds as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever. He concentrated his shots on the canyon wall behind the rocks where the Apaches were hidden. Ricochets whined and buzzed around them like angry hornets.

Those hornets had fatal stings. One of the warriors dropped his rifle and stood up, arching his back and trying to reach behind him to the place where he’d been hit. More slugs riddled him, driving him back a step before he pitched forward off the ledge. He turned over a couple times in the air before his limp body thudded to the sandy bottom of the canyon.

By now the remaining Apaches realized they were under attack from above. They lifted their rifles and started peppering the rimrock with slugs. The bullets threw grit into The Kid’s eyes and forced him to roll away from the edge.

He lay there for several moments, using the opportunity to thumb fresh cartridges through the Winchester’s loading gate. When the rifle’s magazine was full again, he tossed his hat aside and crawled toward the rim again. The Apaches seemed to have gone back to shooting at Kelly and the others.

But they had left one man watching for him, The Kid realized as a bullet struck the rim less than a foot from his head as soon as he poked it out. Tiny bits of gravel stung his cheek.

He forced himself not to flinch, and snapped a slug right back at the spot where the shot came from. An instant later he saw a rifle flung into the air and knew that was because of a dying spasm on the part of its owner. His bullet must have gone right over the barrel of the Apache’s Winchester and into his head.

Now that The Kid had personally accounted for half of the ambushers, the pendulum had swung the other way. The Apaches were the ones who were outnumbered. He pulled back a little and watched as Kelly and his friends picked off the other Indians one by one. Two of the Apaches fell off the ledge when they were fatally wounded, plummeting to the bottom of the canyon the way their companion had a few minutes earlier.

Even when the shooting stopped, it took several seconds for the echoes to stop rolling through the canyon. When silence finally settled, it had a grim, eerie quality after all the gun-thunder.

Enrique Kelly broke that silence by calling, “Hey, whoever’s up there on the rim! You sure as hell saved our bacon, mister!”

The Kid moved forward so he could look down at them. The men had emerged from their cover behind the rocks, but Chess and Mateo still had their rifles trained on the opposite wall just in case any of the Apaches were clinging to life and tried to resume the fight.

Kelly and Valdez peered up at the rim, each man using a hand to shield his eyes, and Valdez suddenly yelled, “It’s him! Morgan! The bastard who kicked me in the cojones!”

He jerked his Winchester to his shoulder.

Before Valdez could fire, Kelly’s hand shot out, grabbed the rifle’s barrel, and forced it down. “Quit it, you fool! Morgan probably saved our lives just now.” He pulled the rifle out of Valdez’s hands and then tipped his head back to call up to The Kid again. “Morgan, come on down!”

The Kid’s instincts told him not to trust these men, but if he was going to convince them to help him free those captives, he had to make them think that he did. He waved his rifle over his head and said, “I’ll get my horse.”

He picked up his hat, slid the Winchester back in the saddle boot, and took the dun’s reins. It would be easier and probably safer to lead the horse down the ledge than to ride. As he started down, he saw that the others had already resumed their descent rather than waiting for him.

By the time he reached the bottom of the canyon, Valdez and Mateo had gone over to the bodies of the Apaches who had fallen off the ledge. Making sure the warriors were dead, The Kid thought, even though it was highly unlikely any of them had survived the fall on top of being shot.

Kelly and Chess stood waiting with the horses near the base of the trail. Kelly grinned at The Kid. “When somebody started shooting from the rimrock, I had a hunch it was you, Morgan. I knew you weren’t going to pay any attention to that stiff-necked lieutenant. You’re still on the trail of those Apaches, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” The Kid said. “And from the looks of things, you are, too. You followed the tracks here, didn’t you?”

Kelly shrugged. “That’s right. We’ve got business to take care of.”

The Kid glanced across the canyon’s sandy floor. Valdez was hunkered on his heels next to one of the bodies.

The Kid frowned as he saw sunlight reflect off steel. “What’s he doing?”

Kelly glanced over his shoulder at Valdez and said carelessly, “That business I just mentioned.”

Valdez straightened from the corpse with something dark hanging from his hand. He held it out toward Mateo and grinned proudly.

The Kid’s jaw tightened as he realized what he was seeing. “Valdez just scalped that man, didn’t he?”

Kelly chuckled. “That’s the only way to collect the bounty the Mexican government pays for dead Apaches. You’ve got to have the scalps to prove it. We made some money here today. Not a whole lot, mind you, but it all adds up.”

“You’re scalphunters,” The Kid said.

“Somebody’s got to do it. It’s no different from exterminating any other kind of vermin.”

After seeing what the Apaches had done in that wagon camp, The Kid felt no sympathy for them. Politicians and newspaper writers back east liked to talk about how the Indians would be peaceful if only they were given the chance. That might even be true in some cases ... but not this one. The Apaches lived to kill their enemies, and it didn’t matter who those enemies were. If there hadn’t been any white or Mexican settlers in the Southwest, the Apaches would have warred against other tribes, as they had done all through the ages.

Even knowing that, The Kid didn’t like seeing men being mutilated. It didn’t sit right inside him.

But he was aware that Kelly was watching him. Though the man had seemed friendly enough so far and had stopped Valdez from shooting at him, The Kid saw something cold and intent in Kelly’s eyes. A lot was riding on how he reacted.

“Bounty, eh?” he said. “Well, I killed four of those varmints, so I’ll expect my share.”

Kelly threw back his head and laughed, and even the normally dour Chess smiled a little. Kelly nudged his companion with an elbow. “What’d I tell you, Chess? I told you that if we ran into Kid Morgan down here below the border, we ought to ask him to throw in with us.”

“That’s what you said, all right,” Chess agreed quietly.

“You know who I am?” The Kid asked.

“Well, I wasn’t sure,” Kelly said, “but you said your name was Morgan and I thought I remembered hearing about a fella who’s supposed to look like you. I know a man who’s fast on the draw when I see one, and you’re not anywhere near old enough to be that other Morgan, the one they call The Drifter.”

“People will forget about him, but they’ll remember me,” The Kid said with the cool arrogance most gunfighters displayed. He figured these men would be less likely to try to double-cross him if they believed he was as deadly as his reputation. “Are you serious about wanting me to join forces with you?”

“Damn right I’m serious,” Kelly responded without hesitation. “That’s a damned big bunch of redskins we’re going after. We can use some help, especially from a man as good with a gun as you are.”

“Even with the ones we killed here, that war party still has eighty-five or ninety men in it,” The Kid pointed out. “I’m not sure one more gun on your side is going to make much of a difference.”

“It wouldn’t if we took them all on at once. But my plan is to cut a few out of the bunch at a time. Also, I’ve got a pretty good idea where they’re going. If we can get ahead of them, maybe we can set up an ambush of our own.”

“You know where their stronghold is?”

“Mateo’s got a pretty good idea,” Kelly replied as he inclined his head toward the Yaqui, who was walking back from the other side of the canyon with Valdez. Three blood-dripping scalps now hung from the Mexican’s hand.

Kelly went on, “But that’s not where the Apaches will be going first. I knew that as soon as you mentioned those female prisoners they have, back in that border settlement.”

“I don’t understand,” The Kid said.

“The Apaches won’t be that interested in keeping the women,” Kelly said. “The fact that they haven’t already killed them and dumped the bodies tells me they’ve got something else in mind for them. They’re taking them to Alberto Guzman.”

“And who’s that?” The Kid asked.

Kelly grinned. “The biggest slaver in this part of Mexico.”