The Loner: Inferno #12

faint smile. He couldn’t find it in him to regret doing that. The sergeant had been asking for it.

The Kid looked around until he found a little hollow ringed by mesquite bushes. That would do for a camp. Since he had eaten back in the settlement, he didn’t have to worry about a fire, just a place to spread his bedroll.

He poked around under the bushes to make sure no snakes were lurking in the vicinity, then unsaddled the dun and tied him to one of the mesquites. He let the horse drink from his hat again before turning in.

In the desert latitudes, the night air cooled quickly. By morning, when The Kid rolled out of his blankets, it was downright chilly. The sun wasn’t up, but the eastern sky was gray and the stars were fading overhead.

He looked toward Sago, where a few lights glowed in the homes of early risers. He supposed Lt. Nicholson and the rest of the patrol would start back to Fort Bliss. Hunkered on his heels, he built a small fire out of mesquite branches and boiled some coffee. He had some supplies from the wagon train left, although the biscuits were getting a little stale. Together with the salt pork, they made a decent meal.

When he had finished eating and cleaned up after himself, he saddled the dun and led it out of the mesquites. The sun still wasn’t up, but the brilliant orange glow on the eastern horizon told him it soon would be. There was enough light to see by, so he swung up into the saddle.

The Apaches hadn’t paraded right through Sago with their captives, so they had to have gone either east or west of the settlement. The Kid rode back toward the border, angling toward the east.

He spent more than an hour riding back and forth before he finally came across the tracks of the war party about a mile west of the settlement. The sun was up, and the day was growing hot as he turned to follow the tracks to the south.

The Kid rode another hour before he reined in sharply and lifted his head as the sound of three distant gunshots drifted to his ears. Three shots, spaced close together like that, were undoubtedly meant to be a signal, he thought. The fact that no more shots followed was a good indication of that, too.

The Kid frowned. It was unlikely the Apaches were signaling to each other. Judging from the tracks he’d been following, they were all sticking together.

He thought about Enrique Kelly, Chess, Valdez, and Mateo. They had ridden out of the bordertown the night before, heading in the same general direction. A signal like that usually meant a search of some sort. Had Kelly and the others been looking for something?

The trail of the Apache war party, maybe?

The shots probably meant they had found it.

The Kid pressed on. If Kelly and the other men were ahead of him, he would deal with that when and if it became a problem. For now, his attention was still focused on following the trail.

Anyway, those shots might not have anything to do with him or the quarry he was after, he told himself... although he didn’t really believe that.

Since he had started trailing the war party, he had worried that he would come across the mutilated body of at least one of the women. If the Apaches tired of their captives, it was entirely possible they would just cut the women’s throats and leave them behind for the buzzards. For that reason, The Kid kept glancing at the sky, fearful he would see the carrion-eaters circling.

So far that hadn’t happened, but The Kid wondered how long the prisoners’ luck would hold.

If you could call anything about being held captive by a bunch of brutal savages lucky, that is ...

The Kid could see mountains ahead and to the west of him, but the trail led through country that could only be described as desert: a flat, hot, arid, mostly featureless landscape, the soil a mixture of sand and rock dotted here and there with mesquites and small clumps of hardy grass. He saw a few snakes, lizards, and giant, hairy- legged tarantulas, but those were the only signs of life.

He had been through the Jornada del Muerto, the awesome desert to the north, in New Mexico Territory. That was as close to hell on earth as anything he had ever seen.

The Mexican desert ran it a close second, The Kid thought. By midday his shirt was sodden with sweat, and he had started looking for a place that offered a little shade where he and the dun could wait out the hottest part of the day.

He found it in a small arroyo. A mesquite grew on the edge of it, and the space underneath the tree had been hollowed out by the very occasional flash floods that ran through there.

The Kid spooked a rattlesnake out of the shady spot. For a second he thought about letting it go, but then realized that if he did, it might crawl back into the hollow with him.

He brought his boot heel down on the writhing body just behind the head and drew his knife. A swift swipe cut the rattler’s head off. The snake kept trying to sink its fangs into something, not yet aware that it was dead.

The Kid kicked the rattler’s head and the still-squirming body well away from him and led the dun into the hollow, which was barely big enough for both him and the horse. The dun didn’t like the snake smell, but he didn’t want to get back out in the blazing sunlight, either.

Despite The Kid’s intention to stay awake, in the heat it was almost impossible not to doze off. With his back against the wall of the arroyo and his hat tilted forward over his eyes, he drifted into slumber.

Some time later—he wasn’t sure exactly how long, although the sun was still up—more shots woke him.

The Kid lifted his head and opened his eyes. The shots were faint, nothing more than quiet popping sounds in the distance. There were more than three of them, and they weren’t regularly spaced. They came in fast bursts, one on top of another, and that told The Kid there was a fight going on.

Again he thought about Kelly and the other men who had ridden out of Sago. If they were looking for trouble, they must have found it. But it was none of his business.

Was that true? If Kelly and the others were looking for the Apaches, they were potential allies for him, despite what had happened between him and Valdez. The Kid didn’t figure he could trust them for a second, but their common interests might come into play.

Anyway, somebody up ahead on the trail he was following was in trouble, and he wanted to find out what it was about. He got to his feet, untied the dun’s reins from the mesquite roots that protruded from the arroyo wall, and mounted up.

In the big, empty landscape, it was going to be hard to sneak up on anybody. From time to time as The Kid rode south, he stopped to listen. The shooting was still going on, although the shots weren’t coming as rapidly. They had settled into a slower, steadier rhythm.

It sounded like somebody was pinned down, he thought. He kept riding.

Suddenly, after another mile or so, the ground almost fell out from under him with no warning. He reined in and stared at the deep canyon that slashed across the barren earth in front of him.

The canyon was fifty or sixty feet wide and at least a hundred feet deep. It stretched as far as The Kid could see in both directions. The walls were perpendicular to the floor of the canyon, or close enough to it. Only a fly could climb up and down them.

Except ... where the Apache trail led, a narrow ledge zigzagged its way to the bottom, then up the other side. The ledge was wide enough for one man on horseback, maybe two if the riders were brave or foolhardy enough. The Kid couldn’t tell at first glance if it was natural. Something about it struck him as man-made, as if someone had carved the ledge into the rocky walls.

It might be the only place for miles where a man could cross the canyon without having to ride around it for a day or more. The Apaches must have known about it. They had ridden straight to this spot, even though The Kid didn’t see any landmarks nearby that could have guided them.

The shots came from inside the canyon, bouncing from wall to wall as booming echoes before escaping. They were probably even louder down there, The Kid thought.

He dismounted and left the dun with reins dangling, knowing the horse was unlikely to bolt. He pulled the Winchester from its sheath and levered a round into the chamber. Carrying the rifle, The Kid moved forward cautiously until he could peer down into the great declivity.

Puffs of gunsmoke told him where the shots were coming from. The ledge on both sides was littered with slabs of rock that had sheered away from the canyon walls in ages past and toppled onto the trail, creating obstacles but also places where men under fire could take cover.

That was obviously what had happened. About halfway down on either side of the canyon, two groups of riflemen crouched behind those rocks and took potshots at each other. The group on the opposite side was slightly