I gazed over my saddle at the smithy and said, “Well, you’d best offer up a prayer that we do exactly that, Jim. Any harm comes her way, I just might come back here and take it out of your lardy ass.”
As I threw a leg over Grizz’s back, Boston patted the beast’s enormous rump and said, “Ain’t gonna worry much ’bout that, Lucius. Figure you’ll see the light of reason ’fore then. ’Sides, it’d take you, Tatum, Johnson, and two hard-rock miners armed with sharpened picks to get anything out of an ass the size of mine.” He grinned then gave Grizz’s rump a resounding smack.
Me and Boz headed out of Carta Blanca like red-eyed, fork-tailed demons were dogging our trail. Along the way, I offered up a silent prayer that we got to Clem before she found Murdock and Atwood. I had the uneasy feeling in my heart that either man would likely kill the girl graveyard dead and not so much as bat an eye, if’n her true identity should be discovered, that is. Could hardly bear the thought of another slaughtered child’s funeral in my near future. Whole business weighed mighty heavy on my heart.
17
“. . . WALKED UP TO MISS CLEMENTINE AND TOOK HER PISTOL ...”
THE ROAD TO Del Rio plummeted south from Carta Blanca in the manner of a carpenter’s snapped chalk line—flat as a tabletop and straight as a planed board. A harsh countryside of colorful wildflowers, stunted greenery, dry washes, and reddish brown, rock-strewn earth fell away on either side of the rugged trace like the last remnants of a hellish world blasted by Satan’s own fiery vengeance. A world inhabited with every form of biting, stinging, fanged, and clawed form of instant death a body could imagine.
My heart got to beating like a hand-pumped San Antone fire wagon the more I thought about the deadly consequences of what might well occur should the headstrong Clementine Webb err but a few steps off that rough path. Nothing I could’ve conjured up, in my wildest imaginings, however, came anywhere close to preparing me for the strange, twisted reality of what lay waiting as we drew to a clod-slinging halt near a Mexican peon’s stick-sided, hay-roofed jacal, just a few steps off the road, about four miles from downtown Del Rio.
A pen of bleating goats off to one side of the makeshift dwelling raised almighty hell as we stepped off our animals. A troop of scrawny chickens squawked, flapped, and scattered in every direction and added to the general hubbub of racket caused by our thunderous arrival.
A buck-nekkid child of about three or four stood in the hut’s open doorway and sucked his thumb. A disembodied female arm snaked from the interior dark and drew him away as we approached the place on foot.
His ever-present shotgun draped over one arm, Glo rose from a shaded bench beneath the pitiful shack’s stingy overhang. He strode out to meet us, handed me a fresh-filled canteen, and said, “Ain’t gonna believe what I gots to tell you, Mistuh Dodge.”
I took a swig of the refreshing liquid, then handed it off to Boz. Wiping my damp lips on the sleeve of my shirt, I said, “Well, gonna hope over hope it’s good news.”
Glo shook his head. He narrowed his gaze and peered off to the south, as though distracted. “Naw, sur. Cain’t say as how it is. Don’t appear good at all. Not to me. Leastways on the surface of it.”
Boz dragged his hat off and upended the canteen over his sweaty mop of hair. He wagged his soaked, dripping noggin back and forth like a wet dog. Managed to sling huge, soaking drops of the water all over himself, me, and pretty much everything else within ten feet.
He offered the canteen back to Glo, then slicked his hair down with one hand and said, “Well, go on ahead, Glo. Tell us. Might as well have it all. Cain’t be that bad. Can it?”
Glo stared at his feet again. The canteen still dangling from the strap in his hand, he glanced up, then pointed toward the road behind us. “Pert sure I found Murdock and Atwood’s trail. Neither one of ’em made any effort to cover up. Miss Clem, her tracks are right on top a what those bad men left.” He stopped and for several seconds didn’t say anything more but let the container of water fall to the ground next to one foot.
“Well,” I said and impatiently motioned for him to go on.
Our old friend glanced up and nodded toward the spot he’d pointed out before. “Whole trail got right messy over yonder by that big rock, ’tother side of the road.”
“Whaddaya mean by got pretty messy?” Boz said.
“Well, near as I could figurate, Mistuh Boz, when they got here, sometime late yesterday afternoon, Murdock and Atwood met up with two other riders over yonderways. ’Pears them others came straight outta Del Rio, joined up with them two murderin’ skunks I ’uz trailin’, then they all rode on back into town together.”
“But you’re just figuratin’ on that one, right?” Boz said. “Actual events might not have transpired quite that way a’tall.”
“Well, naw, suh, Mistuh Boz. Actually happened exactly that way,” Glo said and hooked a thumb toward the jacal. “See, the feller what lives here, name of Benito Suarez, tells as how he seen them fellers a-sittin’ they hosses and talkin’ for several minutes ’fore they struck out for town.”
“What about the girl? What about her?” I said.
Glo shook his head. A pained look scrunched his tense, ebon brow into a series of darker, tighter lines. “Well, I followed her and the rest of ’em on into town, see. She trailed up right behind ’em others.”
“Little gal went into Del Rio behind Murdock, Atwood, and a pair of unknowns? That what you’re tellin’ us?” Boz said.
“Yah, suh. Course, gotta remember, she come on quite a few hours later. But sho’ ’nuff, that’s what I’m sayin’ all right. Think I come close to catchin’ her ’bout the time she reined up out front of a joint on Del Rio’s Main Street named the Broke Mill Saloon.”
“Came close?” Boz said.
“Couldna been behind her more’n a minute or two. Oddest of circumstances though, don’t you know. Seems as how Murdock, Atwood, and them other two was standin’ outside under the Broke Mill’s awning when she rode up. Gal musta stopped when she seen somethin’, or somebody, familiar. Confronted them boys like she’s gonna kill ’em all right on the spot. I watched a goodly bit of the noisy business from the doorway of a big ole grocery store and dry-goods outfit, ’tother side of the street.”
“Confronted? Confronted?” Boz blustered. “How’n the hell would Clem know who to confront? Girl wouldn’t have known Murdock and Atwood from a pair of red-eyed cows.”
“Didn’t say her attention was aimed at either of them boys. Right doubtful she recognized either one of them skunks,” Glo said and eyed each of us as though heavily burdened by some kind of mystery-laced secret.
I rubbed my jaw with the knuckles of one hand and said, “You mean to say Clementine challenged one of the two men we haven’t identified yet?”
A reluctant nod of the head, and Glo added, “Yah, suh, that’s the story for sure. Swear ’fore Jesus, Mistuh Dodge, gal acted like she done knowed one of them men. Most like she mighta knowed him all her life. Thought it was right strange-like and mysterious myself.”
Boz spanked one leg with his hat. “Now wait a second. This ain’t makin’ no kind of reasonable sense. Let’s back up some. Go at it from the beginning. Start with a place where I can get a real handle on this, Glo.”
Glo ran a hand up to the side of his head, scratched a spot over one ear, and looked puzzled. He said, “Well, like I done said, I followed the trail on into town. Spotted Miss Clementine outside the Broke Mill. Slipped up on that store’s covered porch to see what was happenin’.”