Santa Fe Death Trap Page 2

  “Good enough?” he gasped, giving the laces a strong tug that jerked her straight like a prisoner on the rack.

  “Tighter,” she choked out. “I can feel it’ll go even tighter. Don’t stop till my cheeks glow like apples.”

  “Crazy goddamn women,” Tutt muttered, giving her stays another hard tug. He tied them with a strong double-hitch knot.

  Frank tipped Lisa a silver dollar and sent her on her way He decided to get dressed and shove some solid food in his aching gut. Frank still had a few things to take care of before Hickok arrived. Best of all, Frank didn’t have to worry about hurrying it up. El Lobo didn’t even know, yet, that Hickok was headed this way. Frank could drag it out awhile, like a cat pawing a doomed mouse. After years of waiting for it, revenge tasted much sweeter when it could be savored rather than gulped.

  He had no doubt, by now, that Hickok would be coming within a day or so. Frank had been watching, hiding in his assigned observation post in the rimrock, when Hickok and the tenderfoot with him took the Cimarron Cutoff to avoid the rock-strewn Raton Pass. That meant they could only be headed toward Santa Fe—there was nothing else out here in the barren land of Coronado. At least, nothing a prissy like Hickok would care about.

  No, it was clear enough. Hickok had chosen the City of Holy Faith to raise a little unholy hell. His conquests in Santa Fe were national legends: opera stars, singers, and actresses; a Spanish countess; a Norwegian princess; even haughty young heiress Katherine Vanderbilt, cousin to Cornelius himself. Now the stag was in rut again, Frank figured. And what city had been luckier for Wild Bill than Santa Fe?

  Tutt’s face went granite-edged with hatred. His eyes cut to the Colt Navy revolver in its modified holster. A special rivet, which he kept well greased, allowed the holster to swivel effortlessly in a full circle on the belt.

  Mastering it required long practice. But by now Frank didn’t have to lose that critical fraction of a second required to clear the holster and realign the gun arm to fire. He gained another fraction by filing the gun’s trigger down so close there was no slack left to take up. By now Frank knew precisely how to make the altered revolver fire itself, simply by jerking it to a stop. No drawing, no manual firing.

  “Just swivel and it shoots,” he announced out loud as if lecturing a classroom. “You need that extra edge against the likes of Hickok. He’s got the speed of a striking snake.”

  But his unique pistol rig was only the beginning. A man who took a bull by the horns needed more than one way to throw it down. A hidebound chest in the corner contained all of Frank’s worldly possessions—including a few more surprises for Hickok.

  Frank felt a little better by now. He decided another bottle of Old Crow would whet his appetite for a steak. Not bothering to bathe or shave, he put on his only clean shirt and trousers, then tugged on his scuffed-leather boots, their heels extra high to hold stirrups. Finally he strapped on his shell belt.

  Frank Tutt took three flights of carpeted stairs to the big front lobby. It was a slow afternoon, and the lobby was nearly deserted. Just several proper ladies in ostrich-feather hats and rustling bustles. They shared a circular sofa while they exclaimed over the latest Montgomery Ward catalog.

  Frank stepped out onto the raw-lumber boardwalk for a breath of fresh air before he started drinking again. It was a hot, sunny, windless day, the white dome of the new opera house next door gleaming like marble in the late-afternoon sun.

  The Depression of ‘73 had left much of the nation destitute and cash-starved. But Santa Fe remained a frontier oasis and boomtown, prosperous as a pretty whore at end-of-tracks. Signs all over the city advertised HELP WANTED, some of them adding in parentheses: ORPHANS PREFERRED.

  “Sons of bitches,” Frank said out loud to no one in particular. “‘Round here, you all got money to throw at the birds, ain’tcha’s? Well, kiss my lily-white ass. I’ll take what I need, and you’ll smile while I do it.”

  Truth was, he hated this damned mongrel town. All the Mex and gringo customs got all mixed up, so’s a man got them damned tortillas with his eggs instead of biscuits.

  Frank stood there stretching out the hangover kinks. A yellow boil of dust rolled toward him as a half-dozen cowboys pushed a small herd through town. Some of the brindled longhorns had horns spreading up to seven feet.

  Frank watched the yipping, weather-rawed cowboys and felt contempt for all those proud, dirt-poor men. Buncha damned cow nurses! He’d tried it himself once, out in west Texas. Thirty a month and grub, you furnish your own rig and bedroll. Call that living? Hell, even a sheepherder’s wages were double that. But pretty damn quick now, Frank Tutt, too, would have money to throw at the birds. Ten thousand dollars, to be exact. The price on Hickok’s head.

  Frank headed back inside the hotel and crossed the lobby toward the adjoining saloon. He thought about the little surprise he’d left on the trail for Hickok and his pard. Unless somebody else reached it first, they should be riding into it any old time now. Just a little clue so that Hickok would start worrying.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Tutt?”

  Frank snapped his head around toward the front desk. A bald headed clerk wearing sleeve garters waved him over.

  “Mr. Tutt, I noticed on your registration card that you put down Vermin exterminator as your occupation?”

  Frank grinned. It was a private joke. “That’s right. Why?”

  The clerk pointed toward the nearest corner. The front half of a long, black rat protruded from a hole, sniffing the air for a food scent.

  “There it is again, Mr. Tutt. Bold as a harlot! That damned rat’s been plaguing us for a month now. You can well imagine how painful that is to those of us who take pride in the Dorsey’s reputation.”

  “Why, sure. Fine place like this.”

  “Exactly. Sir, would you recommend strychnine or mercury poison to kill a rat?”

  “Here’s what I recommend for rats. Two-legged or four.”

  Frank tapped the butt of his Navy Colt with the heel of his palm, swiveling his riveted holster around into firing position without drawing the gun. He had practiced shooting this way from the hip for years.

  He didn’t touch the filed-down trigger—the simple, sudden force of stopping the gun’s movement released the hammer. A .38-caliber slug blew the rat into several bloody chunks. One of the women screamed and swooned. The clerk turned pale as new linen. The acrid stink of burnt saltpeter filled the lobby.

  “Would the service I just rendered,” Frank asked the astounded clerk, “be worth another day’s lodging?”

  “Two days,” the visibly impressed clerk hastened to assure him. “With laundry service tossed in.”

  Chapter Two

  Joshua was still too busy gloating and taunting Wild Bill, to notice how Old Smoke had drifted right over to the edge of a vast prickly-pear patch.

  “I’ve read that some of your best bronc-peelers,” Josh boasted over his shoulder, “grew up in big cities back east just like I did. Ace Parker out of New York City, Bo Simmons out of Boston, Sammy ‘Leather Butt’ Levinski out of Cincinnati.”

  “Uh-huh,” Bill responded with a serious expression. “And now Josh Robinson out of Philly.”

  “You know, Wild Bill? I still got my last remittance payment from my editor. Now that I’m a horseman, I’m buying chaps and spurs when we hit Santa Fe!”

  “Yeah, kid,” Bill said quietly as he watched the fading day, which seemed to watch him back from the eyes of a sullen animal. “You’re definitely the big he-bear hereabouts.”

  Bill couldn’t believe it. The journalist was so full of himself he hadn’t even noticed yet how loose his saddle cinch was—Old Smoke was slyly holding his stomach distended to steady it. But all that was about to change.

  “Would you recommend angora chaps or leather?” Josh demanded.

  “Depends where you wear ‘em. Angora’s for cold winters. Leather’s for cactus.”

  “Sure,” the kid responded, as if he’d known that all along. “Wel
l, should I get star-roweled spurs like yours, Bill? With the five points? You know, there’s some that swear by three points ...”

  Josh was still nattering on in this vein when Old Smoke made his move. The agile mustang sprang straight up and jackknifed its spine quick to upset the rider’s balance. Then he gave a shuddering twist in midair designed to toss Josh off on the right-hand side.

  Old Smoke’s treachery worked perfectly. The loose saddle whipped round to the right like a tent in a tornado. Josh catapulted out of the stirrups head over handcart. He landed, hind end first, on a spiked mound of prickly pear.

  The yowl of pain Josh loosed made Bill feel a moment of guilt for not warning him. But how many times had he tried to tell the kid to keep his head screwed on straight? The soft-brained city dweller had to learn the high price of cockiness on the frontier.

  “Don’t move,” Bill called out to the grimacing, howling newspaperman. “I’ll reel you in.”

  Bill swung down, a man of medium height and build, lithe and muscled. He hobbled his horse foreleg to rear, then caught the gray’s halter and hobbled it, too. Then he took the lariat off Josh’s saddle horn and shook out a few coils.

  “Grab the end, kid, and just hand-walk your way out.”

  Bill flicked his wrist, and the end of the rope snapped out toward the tail-hooked kid. Josh, still yowling like a butt-shot dog, caught the rope. Bill braced himself, and the youth pulled himself up gingerly, hand over hand.

  “My ass is on fire,” he wailed, limping pathetically. “Katy Christ, Bill! Feels like a thousand red ants are biting at once!”

  Bill slid a case knife out of his left saddle pocket and pried out the smallest blade.

  “Kid, you’re alla time scribbling down notes. So write this down, too. It’s an old cowboy rhyme from the Brasada country: ‘There ain’t no hoss that can’t be rode; there ain’t no man that can’t be throwed.’ Now shuck down your trousers and drawers. Those barbs will have to be cut outta you one by one.”

  “Cut?”

  “What, we got an echo? Damn it, kid, hurry up, wouldja? We’re burning good daylight.”

  “That animal is laughing,” Josh said bitterly as he unlooped his suspenders. “Look at him, Bill.”

  Indeed, Old Smoke’s lips were drawn away from his teeth. As the horse watched Josh, its sturdy frame seemed to shake with silent mirth.

  Bill said, “He knows a fool when he sees one, that’s why. Now hold still, Longfellow. I ain’t got all day to play peekaboo with your sitter. I mean to sleep under a roof tonight in Chimayo.”

  Ten minutes later, Bill tossed the moaning Josh a bottle of calomel lotion. “I’m damned if I’m rubbing it on for you. Hurry up, we gotta make tracks.”

  Josh watched Bill reach up and place his hand between the sun and the horizon.

  “‘Bout four fingers left,” Bill announced. “That means only about a half hour of good daylight.”

  Josh reset his saddle, careful of the girth this time. They hit the trail again, following a long ascent up a creosote ridge. At the top, despite their hurry, Bill and Josh pulled in so their horses could blow.

  “There’s Chimayo,” Bill said, pointing to a tight cluster of adobe buildings down below in a fertile valley. Wild columbine colored the surrounding pastures and meadows with splashes of sky blue. Why, Bill wondered, was no one working in the milpas, the communal fields?

  “Too damn much of the land is under fence now,” Bill complained just before they rode on. “I pushed stagecoaches through the West when you couldn’t find one fence between El Paso and Bozeman. The free-range days are over.”

  Josh stood up in the stirrups to ease the pressure on his thorn-ravaged rear end. Bill shook his head in disgust.

  “Kid, if your antlers were any greener, they’d be Christmas trees. Did I teach you that stupid trick?”

  “What stupid trick?” Josh demanded.

  “Sky lining yourself like that on a ridge in open country. Why’n’t you just yell ‘gobble gobble’ at a turkey shoot, you young fool?”

  Josh flushed. Wincing at the pain, he lowered himself gingerly into the saddle again. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Fresh off ma’s milk,” Bill said as he nudged his horse forward. “Suffer the little children.”

  Josh knew Bill wasn’t really all that mad at him. Usually Hickok viewed Josh’s shoddy trail craft with mild good humor. But he always became snappish when he ran out of cigars and bourbon. However, as they descended nearer to the village, they soon realized they had bigger troubles than a shortage of luxuries.

  The few dwellings were of puddled adobe, the Indian style, with layers of grass-impregnated mud poured between forms, drying one layer on another. Even this poor excuse for a village had its solid adobe church with thick, buttressed walls. But the town seemed like a graveyard. At first they noticed no one, and the only sound came from an old, rotting windlass creaking like a rusty hinge in the breeze.

  “Man alive,” Josh said nervously. “What’s going on around here, Wild Bill?”

  “Not too damn much, huh?”

  Hickok’s gunmetal-blue eyes closed to a squint in the setting sun. The two riders slowed their horses from a trot to a walk. Bill noticed bright prayer plumes planted in front of some of the houses—only planted in times of duress to seek special mercy from the indio gods. That puzzled Bill. Chimayo was a mix of Mexicans and Indians, but had long been a solidly Catholic village.

  “There! There’s some people.”

  Josh pointed behind the church.

  Bill followed the kid’s finger. About two dozen Pueblo Indians—men, women, and children— were gathered in an irrigation ditch. They were scrubbing themselves with yucca root, which created a rich, white lather.

  “They must like being clean,” Josh commented. “They’re sure scrubbing hard enough.”

  “They ain’t scrubbing off dirt,” Bill replied grimly. He had just spotted something else. He pointed it out for Josh—a white towel had been tied to a stake in front of the nearest house.

  “What’s that?” Josh demanded. “Who they surrendering to?”

  “Nobody. It’s a warning. The town’s under epidemic. Probably either smallpox or the black-rat plague. That towel warns strangers to keep riding. As for that bunch ...”

  Bill nodded toward the irrigation ditch again. “Indians around here scrub with yucca root when they want to wash away unclean influences. Like white man’s baptism. See how the church is closed up? I’d wager these Indians think they’re being punished by their old gods for praying to new gods.”

  “That might be why they’re staring at us so hard,” Josh speculated. “They don’t look too happy to see us.”

  “Nope. We best keep riding. I know another spot near here with water and graze. Called Chico Springs. It’s a campsite for wagon trains after they round Point of Rocks on the Cimarron Cutoff.”

  Their hoof clops echoed eerily as they rode through the nearly deserted village. Yellow plumes of dust rose behind them, floating a long time in the hot, still air. Bill’s eyes, shaded under his hat, stayed in constant motion, noticing the best ambush points.

  “Jehoshaphat!”

  The journalist flinched at a sudden darting motion in the corner of his eye. But it was only a tumbleweed, rolling on a sudden, hot gust of wind. It was the only plant Josh knew of that didn’t put down roots, but instead roamed in search of water.

  At the far edge of town, an old Indian woman wrapped in a dark rebozo sat cross-legged in front of her hovel. She was crushing corn on a metate, a grinding stone. Using an odd mix of Spanish and English, known as Spanglish throughout the border region, Bill managed to purchase two wooden bowls of cornmeal gruel.

  The old abuela seemed grateful for the fifty cents in silver dimes Bill generously paid her. But she avoided their eyes, and politely but firmly ignored Bill’s attempts at conversation. She seemed relieved when they finished eating and slipped the hobbles from their horses.

  “Oye, abuela,
” Bill said to the old woman as he swung up and over, reining his horse around. “What’s going on here? Why are you so scared?”

  For a long moment, she pretended to ignore the questions. Finally the old woman’s frightened, coffee-colored eyes peered out from under her shawl.

  “Hidalgo,” she responded in a cracked and sere old voice. She made the sign of the cross. “Afuera!” she added, gesturing wildly. “Afuera! Get out now while you can! The Curse of Hidalgo is on all of us! We who live here are as good as dead!”

  Josh’s instincts as a newspaperman told him to stay in Chimayo and ferret out the story of this terror-stricken pueblo. The AP might telegraph his dispatch to every major newspaper in the country. Especially if Wild Bill was prominently mentioned.

  But those were professional instincts. His instincts as a badly outnumbered white man made him feel relieved to get the hell out of town.

  There was little sunlight left now, and Hickok set a fast pace to take advantage of what remained. He and Josh had split the remuda, so each man had two horses following on a lead line. Santa Fe still lay well to the south of them, another full day’s ride. So Bill led them due east off the Santa Fe Trail, hoping to make Chico Springs by nightfall or just past.

  The riding, even on the narrow old trace Bill now took, was mostly easy while light held out. Although jagged mountains surrounded them on the distant horizons, up close the terrain was mostly gentle scrub hills dotted with creosote and cholla. Despite the peacefulness of it all, however, Josh couldn’t shake the image of the old grandmother’s terrified eyes. Whatever the “Curse of Hidalgo” was, it had an entire town under its evil thrall.

  Wild Bill led them due east, showing amazing memory of the country for a man who hadn’t ridden these trails since the 1850s. Indeed, like a canny showman, Bill seemed to know exactly which spectacular sights to show Josh—those that would most appeal to millions of avid newspaper readers back in the Land of Steady Habits. Yesterday Bill had showed him where the famous Pecos River rises in the Sangre de Cristo mountains before twisting and rioting southward to plague cowboys and smugglers alike.