The Backstabbers Read online

  For a moment Papa Mace stood transfixed by the horror he’d just witnessed. He roared his rage and picked up the Winchester Elijah had discarded earlier.

  A bullet spanged off rock inches from Luna’s head. Then another. She looked down and saw the fat man shooting at her and others running to his assistance. She climbed for her life, the parapet of the rock face still twenty feet above her. The limestone rock smoothed out the higher she climbed, and secure foot- and handholds became fewer. She slowed her climb as bullets smashed splinters around her.

  Ten feet to go . . . Luna winced as a rifle ball burned across her right shoulder, immediately drawing blood that stained the torn fabric of her shirt. She climbed on.

  Five feet . . . her chest heaved, and her breath came in short gasps.

  She slipped on loose rock and clung by her fingers to a narrow rock shelf as she struggled, her legs kicking, to find a foothold. The Rathmores were not marksmen, but bullets peppered the rock, close enough to her head that a jagged fragment of lead drew blood from her cheekbone.

  Luna found a toehold, a shallow niche that was secure enough that she could push and pull herself over the top of the escarpment and onto level ground. She rolled away from the edge and then rested a few moments before she stood. Shouts warned her that the Rathmores were on top of the arroyo and closing fast. A talus slope fell away from her at a steep angle for about a hundred yards before it reached the flat, and Luna Talbot flung herself at it. Running, she slipped and fell several times, grazing her hands and knees bloody before she reached the level and stumbled across stony ground into the cover of heavy brush and sage.

  Exhausted, Luna threw herself flat and tried to make herself small . . . like a hunted animal.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Ryan, how are you feeling?” Arman Broussard said. “You can’t take too many more beatings.”

  “And that’s a natural fact,” Buttons Muldoon said, himself sporting a black eye and bruised cheekbone, just visible in the dim lamplight. He sniffed a chunk of the boiled meat his captors had provided, made a face, and set it aside. It smelled like dead horse.

  Red said, “I thought they’d never stop hitting me with their damned rifle butts. How long have I been out this time?”

  “About three hours. It’s dark outside,” Broussard said.

  “Who are these people?” Red asked. “No, don’t answer that. First tell me, where is Luna Talbot?”

  “They were shooting at her . . . I remember watching her climb the rocks before I went out like a dead cat,” Buttons said.

  Red said, “So right now, you don’t know if she’s dead, alive, or captured?”

  “About the size of it,” Buttons said. “Broussard here missed all of it, including the kick you aimed at the fat man’s head.” He smiled. “That was funny.”

  “To you, maybe,” Red said, talking slow, favoring a split lip. “I didn’t think it was so funny.”

  Brossard said, “The fat man’s name is Papa Mace Rathmore, and he’s the big auger around here. According to what I learned from the Mexicans, Mace led his seven sons with their wives and children into these mountains calling them the promised land. Only it wasn’t. The Rathmores found nothing but disease and starvation and constant war with a local rancher . . . but then they discovered the gold mine.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Buttons said. “Luna Talbot giving me and Red a share in the mine, an’ all.”

  “A share of nothing is still nothing,” Broussard said.

  Buttons frowned. “I’m not catching your drift.”

  “The mine is played out, and there wasn’t much gold here to begin with,” the gambler said.

  “I find that hard to believe,” Buttons said. “Feller by the name of Morgan Ford struck it rich and called the mine the Lucky Cuss. He drew a map to the place and left it to Luna Talbot before he died.”

  “Whoever that man was, I believe he made a fair living mining a single quartz seam, and for the past couple of years the Rathmores have done the same,” Broussard said. “But the seam buried itself in solid rock and the Mexicans are now trying to dig it out. The Rathmores put me to work with a pick down there, and the vein is getting narrower. Two or three feet deeper into the rock and I reckon it will be gone. Maybe less than that.”

  “And that’s it?” Buttons said. “All the gold in the Lucky Cuss is in a single, goddamned quartz vein that’s about played out?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Broussard said. “Sure doesn’t make Luna Talbot’s map worth much, does it? And there’s even more bad news.”

  “Hell, man, you’re just full of calamity, ain’t you?” Buttons said, scowling, visions of future riches popping in his head like soap bubbles.

  Broussard ignored that last comment and said, “The timbers holding up the roof are old and full of dry rot. It won’t take much to bring down the whole shebang and half the mountain with it.” He smiled. “A good sneeze might do it.”

  Buttons was disappointed and determined to be crabby. “Broussard, who the hell are these Mexicans you’re always talking about?”

  The gambler answered, “They’re slaves. Slaves of the mine like me, you, and Red. We’re all to be worked to death.”

  Buttons shut his mouth, sorry he’d asked the question.

  * * *

  Red Ryan, hurting all over, dozed for an hour and was wakened by a rifle muzzle jammed into his ribs.

  “On your feet,” one of the Rathmore brothers said. Like the others, he was thin and wore only sandals and a skin loincloth, but the Winchester he held was shiny and new.

  Red rose to his feet. Buttons and Broussard already stood, guarded by another rifle-toting man with a knife scar on his left cheek.

  “Outside,” Scarface said. “All of you.”

  “All three of you,” said the Rathmore guarding Red.

  “I can count,” Scarface said. “I know there’s three of them.”

  “No, you can’t count.” The man prodded Red. “Go.”

  Buttons, still in a bad mood, said, “Where are you taking us?”

  “Outside,” Scarface said again.

  “Why?” Buttons said.

  “You will honor the dead.”

  Red Ryan felt a stab of alarm. Was Luna Talbot dead? Had she been shot off the cliff? “Is the woman dead?”

  Scarface glared at him in disgust, spat, and then pushed him toward the mine entrance.

  * * *

  A pulsing, single beat on a hand drum and the wailing shrieks of women greeted Red Ryan and the others as they approached the rectangle of flame-streaked darkness that marked the entrance of the Lucky Cuss. Rifle butts herded the three men to the opening, where they were told to stand.

  “Bow your heads,” Scarface said. “Show your grief.”

  The funeral procession had stopped, Papa Mace in the lead, Red’s hat on his head. He had blackened his face with soot, and around his fat neck he wore a rusty piece of armor, a gorget that had belonged to one of the old Spanish conquistadors that had once visited the mountains in a vain search for gold. As he had Luna Talbot, Mace held another human being by a rope, a terrified Mexican who visibly trembled as Rathmore forced the man to his knees. Behind Papa Mace, seven lamenting women screamed and tore at their hair and cut themselves, blood running down their thin arms in tendrils of scarlet. Behind the women a shrouded corpse lay on a makeshift litter, two silent male pallbearers on each side.

  Arman Brossard’s Cajun parents would not dig a hole on Good Friday lest it quickly fill with the Savior’s blood, and now the superstitions of his childhood returned to haunt him. “Who lies dead in these mountains?” he said.

  “Elijah Rathmore, my brother and the firstborn son of Papa Mace,” one of the guards said. “Murdered by the whore you brought among us.”

  Red felt a surge of hope. “Where is Luna Talbot?”

  The question was answered by a backhanded blow across Red’s face. During his days as a booth fighter, Red had been hit harder by bigger men,
and although he staggered back a step, he remained on his feet.

  Scarface had delivered the wallop, and he gave Red the answer to his question. “The witch escaped, but we will find her. And when we do, we’ll burn her.”

  “Silence, Jeremiah,” the other guard said. “The time has come for the Mexican to pay the price for Elijah’s sins so that our brother may enter paradise.”

  The wails of the women ceased and a quiet so profound fell in the arroyo that the only sound was the crackle of the fires. A ragged child with huge brown eyes handed Papa Mace a braided leather riding crop about three feet in length with a hammer-shaped ivory handle. As Red and the others watched in horror, the whip rose and fell, slashing across the Mexican’s face, shoulders, and outstretched, pleading hands.

  The helpless Mexican’s screams ringing in his ears, the sight was more than Red Ryan could bear. Stiff and sore from his beating, he nonetheless needed to stop the atrocity . . . and this time his hands were not tied.

  Before his guards could react, Red crossed the few yards of space between him and Papa Mace. The fat man looked at him in astonishment, a split second before Red delivered a powerful straight right to his face. Mace Rathmore staggered back, his smashed nose spurting snot and gore, but Red was relentless. His shoulders and arms bulged with a pugilist’s muscle, a holdover from his days as a bare-knuckle booth fighter. When he followed up with a looping left, it snapped Mace’s head back and set the man up for Red’s tremendous right uppercut. Papa Mace fell on his back, and his feet gouged the dirt as he convulsed like a stranded white whale.

  The two Rathmore brothers raised their Winchesters, but Buttons and Broussard immediately tackled them, and their shots went wild, whining off the rock walls of the mine. Buttons, stocky and strong, had been in many a fist-and-boot scrap, and he got in a few good licks at both Rathmores before he was overwhelmed by two more brothers and several screeching women. Broussard, a revolver fighter, was not handy with his fists, and he quickly went down, beaten into unconsciousness.

  The remaining two Rathmore brothers went for Red, aided by four enraged women who snarled and clawed and bit like panthers. Like Buttons, Red was by nature a brawler, and he took both men to the woodshed, ignoring the women. He made a good accounting of himself before a rifle butt to the back of his head dropped him.

  Slipping into unconsciousness, he was aware that the Rathmore brothers were giving him a savage, terrible beating with fists, rocks, and rifle butts, but his feeble attempts to fight back were brushed aside. He finally blacked out and didn’t hear Papa Mace yell, “Don’t kill him. I want him to burn.”

  Buttons Muldoon, himself on the ragged edge of oblivion, opened his swollen eyes and saw Red lying still in the dirt. Then from somewhere distant, he heard his dead mother’s lilting Irish voice say, “Patrick, your friend is going to die. Bejaysus, he’s lost enough blood to paint the back porch.”

  Buttons tried to say something, reassure his ma that Red would survive, but all he heard was the frail, meaningless croak of his own voice . . . and then the darkness took him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Townes Pierce handed Johnny Teague a cup of coffee and said, “You got to get over it, boss. What’s done is done and there’s no going back to change it.”

  Teague said, “Five men, Townes. Five of the best. Tom Racker, Fulton Smith . . . the others. We’re done. Finished. The hoedown is over.”

  The night was dark, silent, brooding, as though the desert was lifeless.

  “You got four of us left, boss,” Pierce said. “You got me, Dave Quarrels, Slim Porter and the breed. It’s enough.”

  “Enough for what?” Teague said, the black dog of depression ravaging him. “Townes, you got no right to say it’s enough.”

  “Frank and Jesse did some of their best work with four,” Pierce said.

  “How do you know that?” Teague said.

  Pierce lowered his head and didn’t answer.

  Juan Sanchez had been listening, and he stepped away from the fire. “Johnny, including you, there’s five of us, enough to take the gold mine.”

  “Sure enough,” Dave Quarrels said. “Hell, I heard of mines where a feller could just walk into the shaft an’ pick nuggets up off the ground. I heard that plenty of times.”

  Teague raised lusterless eyes to Sanchez. “You still sure the stage with the Talbot woman was headed for the Cornudas?”

  “Yeah, damned sure,” Sanchez said.

  Teague thought that through for a spell and then said, “Well, maybe we’ll head out that way.”

  “We got to do something, boss,” Pierce said. “We need to get some money and leave this desert.”

  “Is there any alternative?” Teague said. “If we don’t go for the mine, what else can we do?”

  “Nothing,” Sanchez said. “Except split up and go our separate ways.”

  “We could rob a bank,” Dave Quarrels said. “Plenty of fat banks in El Paso. I say we rob a bank and then skip over the border into Old Mexico.”

  “We’re already all shot to pieces,” Teague said. “You really want to rob a bank in a town with some tough lawmen? Remember what happened to Jesse and Frank and them in Northfield? No, robbing banks is out as far as I’m concerned. At least for the time being.”

  Quarrels looked contrite. “Well, all right then, maybe a bank in some other town . . . a small town, huh?”

  “Dave, don’t say the word ‘bank’ again or I’ll shoot you dead,” Teague said.

  “And if you ain’t dead, I’ll make sure of it,” Sanchez said.

  “Well, if somebody makes a decision soon I’ll go along with it,” Pierce said.

  “Me too,” Slim Porter said. He was a tall, round-shouldered man with a pleasant, open face. Later Dave Quarrels would say of him that Slim was the best of a bad bunch, fast and deadly with a gun but much given to reading the Bible he kept in his saddlebags. And he’d had a good mother.

  Teague stared over his coffee cup into darkness, seeing nothing as a night bird made a trilling sound. The breeze had a cool edge and made the campfire flames dance.

  After a while, he looked up at Sanchez and said, “I’m taking your word for it. We’ll head for the Cornudas and claim ourselves a gold mine. We ride out at first light.”

  “Johnny, melancholy comes to a man that sees no future for himself,” Sanchez said. “Now you got a future, it’s time to throw off the woebegone, I think.”

  “What’s in my future, Sanchez?” Teague said. “You got a crystal ball?”

  “Striking it rich, by golly,” Quarrels said.

  Sanchez nodded. “Like the man says.”

  “We may have to kill to get it,” Teague said.

  “We’ve all killed before,” Sanchez said.

  Teague smiled. “Gets easier, don’t it? You kill a man. Time goes along, and you kill another and pretty soon you don’t feel it anymore.”

  “Yeah, the more you kill, the easier it gets,” Sanchez said. “It’s a natural law.”

  “An’ it’s also a natural fact,” Quarrels said, grinning.

  * * *

  Crystal Casey and Daphne Loveshade had been deep in whispered conversation, and they stepped to where the men were gathered around Johnny Teague.

  “Ahem, gentlemen,” Crystal said. “Listen up. Daphne has an announcement to make, something she wants to tell us. Speak now, Daphne. Don’t be shy.”

  The girl smiled . . . shyly . . . and said, “As you know, I’ve left my husband and now wish to make a new life for myself. Since I’m very young and not used to the ways of the world, I’ve been talking things over with Crystal, and she’s given me valuable advice on my future profession.”

  Five men, all of them hardcases, stared at Daphne in puzzlement, wondering where all this was headed.

  “My decision was not an easy one to make, but with Crystal’s encouragement I’ve finally decided on the forthcoming course of my life,” the girl said. In the dull, rose glow of the firelight she was thin, p
ainfully shy, and painfully plain.

  “So, what’s your decision, girlie?” Dave Quarrels said, a known mankiller but the most affable male present. He smiled. “We’re all waiting to hear.”

  “I have decided”—she swallowed hard—“to change my name to Daphne Dumont. That’s French, you know.”

  “Now tell them the most important part,” Crystal said. “Speak up, loud and clear.”

  “Oh yes,” Daphne said. “And I’ve decided to become a prostitute.”

  Surprised as they were, the laughter of the men was a little slow in coming, but then it arrived with a gale-force gust of guffaws. Johnny Teague forgot his depression and even slapped his thigh in delight.

  Tears in his eyes, he gasped his laughter. “Good luck with that, Daphne Dumont. I’m sure . . . oh, God help me . . . I’m sure . . .” He ended in a breathless rush, “I’m sure you’ll get plenty of customers.”

  According to newsman A. B. Boyd, Dave Quarrels told him that he didn’t laugh, out of regard for the girl’s feelings. In fact, he rolled around on the ground, clutching a knee, tears streaming down his cheeks as his ringing peals of merriment threatened to cut off his breathing. Slim Porter laughed, and even the dour Juan Sanchez managed a grin.

  But the newly minted Daphne Dumont was not amused, and neither was Crystal Casey.

  “What are you men laughing at?” she said. “Daphne’s got the right to be a whore if she wants to. She’ll prosper in the profession, I can tell you that.”

  “Sure, she will,” Teague said. “Just so long as a man ain’t too fussy.”

  At that Daphne showed some spunk. Leaning forward, her hands on her hips she said, “Well I can tell you this, Mr. Johnny Teague, you’ll never get a taste. And for your information, Preacher Loveshade never complained about our time in bed.”

  “No, I guess he didn’t,” Teague said, blinking away tears.

  “Then I guess he wasn’t fussy,” Dave Quarrels said.

  “Then I guess I’d make a bad preacher,” Porter said.

  And the men laughed again.