Santa Fe Death Trap Read online

Bill aimed a gunmetal gaze at Liddy; her cornflower-blue eyes looked demurely away. But clearly, thought an envious Josh, it was a come-hither gesture.

  “We’d be honored,” Bill replied, still watching Liddy.

  His first night in town, Josh thought bitterly. And another fresh flower is as good as plucked.

  However, Hickok’s moment of triumph was brief.

  A few more minutes passed, Bill and Liddy flirting shamelessly. She had progressed to calling him “Bill” rather than Mr. Hickok. Abruptly, a young Mexican boy about ten or twelve years old stopped at the table.

  “Senor Wild Bill?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Perdon. My mistress, La Senorita Elena Vargas, told me to deliver this to you. Es muy importante.”

  The kid handed Hickok a folded sheet of fancy, deckle-edged stationery.

  “Elena Vargas,” Mitt repeated, adding a whistle to show he was impressed. “That gal’s rolling in it. And she’s easy to look at, too.”

  Even from where he sat, Josh could smell the expensive perfume. Hickok broke the wax seal and read the brief message. His blond eyebrows met when he frowned.

  “Senor? My mistress told me I must wait for your reply.”

  “Tell her,” Bill finally answered, “that I’ll be right there.”

  Hickok looked at Mitt, then at his frowning sister.

  “Sorry. Something’s come up. We won’t be able to visit the Lazy M tonight.”

  Josh looked at Liddy’s slightly puffy, heart-shaped lips. Lips just ripe to be kissed.

  “I’m free,” he volunteered. “I could—”

  “Need you here, Longfellow,” Bill cut him off, and the youth scowled.

  “Hell, the ranch ain’t going nowhere,” Mitt boomed. “Come visit us when your, ahh, business with Elena is finished.”

  Liddy stared at the perfumed summons Bill was now folding back up. Josh saw her cheeks flush with the anger of a woman scorned.

  “Yes, Mister Hickok,” she said archly. “Do come visit once your ‘business’ is complete.”

  “Whoa there, Ignatius!” Martha “Calamity Jane” Burke shouted, tightening the reins wrapped around her hand. “Whoa, you ugly, humpbacked son of the Sahara.”

  With a raucous braying noise loud enough to wake snakes, the big, ungainly camel Jane was riding came to a jerky halt. A dozen more camels likewise halted in the pale moonlight.

  “Drink up, you goldang bottomless water tanks,” Jane called out as she gave the reins enough slack to let Ignatius, the herd leader, drink with the rest.

  Every one of the shaggy brown camels was branded on the left hip with the “Lazy M” of the McGinnis brand. Very few peelers—experienced horse trainers like Jane—would even work with camels. They had first been imported by the U.S. Army back in ‘56. They proved to be great workers under very hard conditions in the desert southwest. But sadly, the very sight of them made all the other animals stampede. Besides, camels were deadly accurate spitters (as well as kickers) who fought back hard when they were whipped.

  Nonetheless, the Army wanted to keep a small herd broke to saddle. A camel, some wag had joked, was just a horse designed by a committee. But Calamity Jane had come to admire them for their own qualities. In fact, the outcast Jane was close enough in spirit to truly understand this sturdy but cantankerous animal. The camel’s nature was just like hers: too stubborn to submit, too tough to defeat.

  The herd hadn’t drunk for two days, so Jane knew they’d stay at the pond for some time. She swung down from her sheepskin-pad saddle to stretch the kinks out of her muscles. Ignatius, who was devoted to his trainer, swung his ugly, dish-flat face around to nuzzle her shoulder.

  “God A’mighty, you smell like a buffalo wallow,” Jane said with gruff fondness. “Or is that me?”

  Jane was a stout young woman with a homely, careworn face. Her hair was tied in a heavy knot that dangled under an immaculate gray John B. Stetson hat. She wore frayed men’s trousers, a beaded leather jerkin, and men’s hobnailed boots. A big Smith & Wesson Volcanic pistol was tucked into a bright-red sash around her waist.

  While the camels tanked up, Jane walked around the area in the moonlight, searching for a sign. Soon she found it in a nearby draw—a place where a number of riders had rested to graze their horses.

  Jane also found a set of deep wagon ruts, fresh made, and she cussed out loud. “You damned thievin’ barn rats!”

  She knew it almost had to be the missing church bell. Jane was raised a Methodist of the “shouting order,” and she wanted no truck with these popish Catholics. But she knew all about the famous church in Chimayo from which the bell was stolen, El Santuario. Near the altar, there was a hole in the floor filled with “miracle dirt” that supposedly healed. People claimed that, no matter how much was taken out, the hole never got larger.

  But why in tarnal blazes, Jane asked the moonlit New Mexican night, would anyone want that bell?

  Sure, bells had been melted down before to make munitions. But only during serious war shortages did anyone bother. Well, anyhow, that missing bell had sure-God devastated the folks of Chimayo. They believed that old Curse of Hidalgo business. And Jane was not one to gainsay the supernatural.

  The supernatural... in that phosphorescent moonlight, Jane turned her right palm up and gazed at a deep groove in it that ran from the heel of the palm up to the base of her index finger: her “love line,” that palmist in Old El Paso had assured her. The old visionary’s third eye also confirmed what a love struck Jane felt in her heart of hearts: Her life was meant to intertwine with Wild Bill Hickok’s like two separate but intimately close strands of rope. Bill didn’t realize it yet, was all.

  Bill. Thinking of the handsome frontiersman caused her a pang of irony. After years of faithfully following him, a witness to his numerous intrigues with women, Jane had finally given up and gone her own way. And now look. He was coming to her! Destiny . . .

  Jane had first heard the exciting rumor from local Pueblo Indians and their “moccasin telegraph”: Wild Bill Hickok had pointed his bridle toward the Land of the Thunderbird. Soon he would arrive in the city white men called Holy Faith.

  Again, just before she returned to the stock pond, Jane gazed at her love line. Call it Fate. Her love was coming to join her. But wherever Bill Hickok went, trouble followed him like a cat on a rat.

  Jane stared at the wagon ruts again. The Lord had not yet enlightened Bill, had not convinced him yet that he and Jane were meant to ride the same trail through life. Until Bill finally woke up, Jane was determined to protect him.

  Ignatius brayed happily when Jane returned. Deerflies were pesky near the water, and the sated animals were ready to move on. In less than a half hour, Jane drove them through the yard gate of the Lazy M and turned them out in their holding pen.

  Jane forked some fodder over the rail fence, then headed toward her room in an old milking shed, stuffing a pipe with strong Mexican tobacco while she walked. From the ridges behind the low, adobe-and-stone ranch house, a coyote howled. The mournful sound sent a shiver down Calamity Jane’s back.

  Again Jane recalled the look of hell-spawned fear she had seen in the eyes of those who lived in Chimayo. And again she pictured those deep wagon ruts in the draw.

  “Keep your nose to the wind, Wild Bill,” she said softly to the night. “Hell’s a-popping.”

  El Lobo took the whip from its socket on the dashboard and lashed at his lethargic team.

  “Mas de prisa!” he shouted to them in the darkness. “Faster, you worthless nags, or I feed you to the Apaches!”

  A team of four well-muscled dray horses pulled a buckboard across the open, rolling country northeast of Santa Fe. A huge church bell occupied much of the bed, tied down with ropes to prevent sudden shifting. Ten riders accompanied El Lobo Flaco, the Skinny Wolf. They were a hard-bitten lot, half of them renegade Jicarilla Apaches, the other half former lancers who had deserted the Mexican army. Behind El Lobo’s buckboard was a second, filled wi
th forage for the horses.

  Nothing was visible in the pale moonlight except saltbush cactus and yucca. El Lobo had chosen to move the bell only at night, forcing any would-be attackers to move in close. How many people knew the truth about the bell he wasn’t sure. But until he got it safely to Los Cerrillos, he was taking no chances.

  Many fools chased after chimeras. Like Gran Quivira, the mythical City of Gold that Coronado chased like a shadow across a fool’s dream. But this bell behind him was no myth. El Lobo did not chase after phantasms.

  At Caliente Springs they stopped to breathe and water the horses. El Lobo clambered into the back of the buckboard to check the ropes securing the bell. In the generous moon wash, he saw the words cast into the rim of the stolen bell: Saint Joseph, pray for us!

  The bandit kingpin was superstitious, if not religious. That invocation of St. Joseph troubled him. Could divine intervention explain the recent arrival of this gringo famoso, Wild Bill Hickok?

  “Well.” El Lobo said out loud, “we must pass through the bitter waters before we reach the sweet.”

  For now Frank Tutt was keeping a close eye on Hickok. And Tutt was the best killer El Lobo had ever had on his payroll. Not only was Tutt motivated by the bounty on Hickok—his brother’s blood cried out for vengeance.

  Besides, there was no proof Hickok had come here to retrieve that bell. But if he had?

  “Then the battle lines are clearly drawn,” El Lobo said softly, ringing the bell lightly with his knuckles. “Saint Joseph and Wild Bill versus El Lobo and the devil.”

  Chapter Five

  “Every time we meet a pretty girl,” Josh fumed, “you claim dibs and keep every other fellow from trying his luck.”

  “That’s bunk, kid. You’re needed here, is all.” Wild Bill said this as he keyed the lock of his door and carefully nudged it open, making sure his hotel room was secure.

  “Needed for what? To shine your boots?”

  “Thanks for the offer, but the hotel does that. What we need from you is to stay in your room while I’m gone. Keep your eyes and ears open. I showed you how to hold a glass to the wall— check my room now and then for noises.”

  “‘While I’m gone,’” Josh repeated sarcastically from the doorway behind Bill. “That could be all night.”

  “If I’m lucky. I didn’t come to Santa Fe for the waters. I warned you when you first bulled your way into my life, kid—I’m a one-man outfit. You swore up and down and sideways that you’d ride with me on my terms. Now you’re trying to change horses in the middle of the stream. You ain’t tethered, and this is a railhead town. You don’t like the way things are, you can be back in Philly in four or five days.”

  “Things are okay with me,” Josh sulked. “But that was just rude, Wild Bill, to practically spark with Liddy, then just toss her aside like an empty tomato can.”

  Bill was slapping fresh bay rum tonic on his cheeks as Josh said this. He’d put Elena’s note on the oak chest-of-drawers nearby. Josh edged closer to read it.

  “Rude? Kid, you know how to punctuate, but you best learn the rules of courtship, too. Liddy’s a beautiful woman, and proud as a big chief. Me giving her the go-by like that, she’ll take it as a challenge. Turns me into twice the prize, in her eyes.”

  Josh was close enough now to glance down and read the brief note:

  Wild Bill, please come at once. And come alone. My home is number 17, Calle Linda. Elena Vargas.

  “Besides,” Bill added as he smoothed his neat mustache with one finger, admiring himself in the mirror, “I forgot all about Elena settling in Santa Fe.”

  “Or you’d’ve been there by now,” Josh observed with jealous pique, still staring at the note. Come alone. And when Bill had his way with the beautiful Elena, there was still Liddy McGinnis out at the Lazy M. The man had himself a larder of females.

  Bill ignored the remark. “Is your pistol loaded?” he asked Josh, ushering him out of the room and locking the door.

  Josh nodded.

  “Good. Keep it handy. And if you happen to spot that kid who runs the wash house, just ignore him. I’ll talk to him later.”

  Bill had met the alluring Spanish beauty Elena Vargas while working his first case for Allan Pinkerton. She was proud, fiercely independent, and thanks to Bill, incalculably wealthy.

  Hickok had exposed the criminal machinations of her wealthy entrepreneur fiancé. Upon his death at the hands of angry Sioux warriors, Elena inherited his business fortune. Wild Bill had sweet memories of the time he enjoyed her considerable charms. Now her terse note hinted that she, too, had similar memories—and hoped to revive them.

  Despite the cloak of darkness shrouding Santa Fe, Bill remained alert and vigilant as he emerged from the hotel and strolled two blocks north to Calle Linda. It was one of the city’s premier residential streets, lined with walled mansions and terraced gardens.

  Number seventeen was a gray-granite villa with tall, lancet-arched windows in the style of medieval Spanish cathedrals. Bill clapped the brass knocker of a massive carved-oak door. An indio maid in a coif and a crisp white apron ushered him into the main salon.

  “Bill! Thank God you came!”

  Elena had been sitting at a beautiful rosewood piano, listlessly tapping out scales. She rose and glided across the room to offer him her hand.

  The woman’s abundant beauty struck Bill with physical force. Wide, sea-green eyes were set like gems behind the delicate and prominent cheekbones. Flawless mother-of-pearl skin offset raven-black hair pulled back under a silver tiara. She wore a pretty white sateen dress with black velvet trim.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he countered. “Why wouldn’t any man with blood in his veins? You never leave my mind for long, Elena.”

  “Nor you mine. I think often, shamelessly often,” she added teasingly, “about our time together. But when I feel certain . . . desires, I defeat them by reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards. I confess, by now I recite it quite smoothly.”

  “Well, tonight you won’t have to defeat those desires,” Bill assured her. “You’re here . . . I’m here. Shall we make beautiful music together?”

  Bill had already kissed Elena’s slim white hand. Now he moved his lips toward hers. But she eluded him with an agile little spin like a ballet twirl.

  “You are a master at temptation. However, the only music we may make together, Senor Hickok, is on the piano.”

  Elena held up her left hand. A huge diamond sent off heliographs of light in the reflection of the gas lights.

  “I am engaged,” she announced.

  Bill stared at the ring as if it had spit on him. His first vain reaction was an inner sting of anger. By now the likewise beautiful—and fully available—Liddy McGinnis had put Bill’s name in her bad book. He forgot all about his glib bragging to Josh concerning “the rules of courtship.” He thought, instead, about that proverbial bird in the hand—the one he had just let go.

  “I’m so happy for you,” Bill said sarcastically.

  “He’s a wonderful man, Bill,” Elena said, ignoring his disappointment. “I hope you’ll meet him soon. He’s a captain at Fort Union. Right now he’s on patrol down near Albuquerque.”

  Elena led him through a floored breezeway to show Bill the lush garden out back. It included a one hundred-eighty foot lily pond with built-in islands. An elegant gazebo stood on one of them.

  But clearly Elena had not summoned Bill so dramatically just to announce her engagement and boast about her house. They returned to the salon. A tall case clock in one corner chimed the quarter-hour, and it seemed to remind her of her real purpose.

  “Come to the library, Bill. Someone is waiting to see you.”

  Elena took his hand again and led Bill to a paneled door. It opened onto a huge, luxuriously appointed room lined on three walls with leather-spined books in Spanish and English. Flames crackled in the Italian-marble fireplace. A walnut sideboard was crowded with bottles of liquor— including Old Taylor.

  But it
was the big, grinning man with the badge of a U.S. marshal pinned to his rawhide vest who got Bill’s attention. The lawman had been studying a wall map of the territory when they came in. Now he hurried forward to shake the hand of his best former deputy.

  “Sam! Sam Baxter!” Bill exclaimed, feeling genuine pleasure as he gave his old friend a hearty grip. “Still alive, you ornery old warhorse.”

  “Too mean to die, J. B. Well, I see you have become quite the dandy. Dressed like a barber’s clerk. And you smell like a French whor—”

  Sam caught himself just in time. “Pardon my range manners, Miss Vargas.”

  “Territorial marshal now, huh?” Bill remarked, for Sam had been assigned to Kansas when Bill rode for him.

  Sam nodded his weather-grizzled head. He was a big, strong man starting to go soft with age. His hair was still full, but whiter now than Bill remembered it. And there was the start of a belly drooping over his cowhide belt. Bill could remember the day when Sam Baxter could hurl an ax forty yards and stick it into any tree—or man—you pointed out to him.

  “Been out here six years now, J. B. One more and I retire on pension. Got me some stock options on a sweet little turquoise-mining operation down near the Laguna Pueblo.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Bill glanced from Sam to Elena, suspicion cankering at him. “But I got a hunch you two didn’t set up this meeting to make small talk.”

  “No,” Sam admitted. “I got this problem.”

  “We have this problem,” Elena corrected him.

  “Jesus, I need a drink,” Bill announced, helping himself to some bourbon.

  “J. B.,” Sam continued, “would you consider— just temporarily, I mean—being deputized again?”

  “Not for all the king’s ransom,” Hickok assured him. “So save your wind.”

  “Oh, Bill,” Elena pleaded, placing a hand on his arm. “At least hear Marshal Baxter out. I have callused my knees praying before the Santo Nino and the saints. Praying for help. Your arrival is not coincidental.”

  Bill scowled. “I’m listening, damn it.”