Rope Burn Read online

  “Let them through,” he said in a dull voice. “As long as he . . . as long as he has Evelyn, we have to cooperate with him.”

  “That’s right, Major,” MacDonald said, smirking. “You sure do.”

  The other men who were taking part in the escape hurried along the edge of the parade ground and joined MacDonald and the rest of the bunch at the infirmary. Ace and Chance were still inside that circle of guns, and Ace realized with a shock that with the way things had played out, he and his brother might be considered hostages now, too.

  The difference was, their lives weren’t worth a blasted thing in the eyes of the United States Cavalry.

  “Now,” MacDonald said, “I want a dozen horses, each of them with a bag of supplies. And eight handguns and plenty of rounds of ammunition, too.”

  Those numbers were telling. Eight men were making this escape attempt, which explained the guns, and four more horses meant four hostages—including Ace and Chance.

  Sughrue hesitated, and MacDonald barked, “Give the order, Major!”

  He squeezed Evelyn hard enough to make her let out a little yelp.

  Sughrue flapped both hands this time. “Get the horses. Give him whatever he wants, I tell you!”

  Some of the troopers looked like they wanted to argue, but they couldn’t very well do that. Sughrue was still their commanding officer. After a few seconds, men broke away from the crowd and hurried to carry out the orders.

  Sughrue stared at Parnell and asked, “Corporal, how can you do this? You’re a good man, been in the army a long time—”

  “That’s right, Major,” Parnell interrupted. “I’ve been in the army a long time, and you just said it yourself. I’m still a corporal, ain’t I?”

  “But . . . but to desert! To help prisoners escape and threaten an innocent young woman—”

  “How about you shut up, Major?” Parnell snapped. “You may still give orders to those other fellas, but not to me.”

  On the porch, Chance said to MacDonald, “Why are you taking Ace and me with you? We’re not worth anything.”

  MacDonald chuckled. “You’re sure as blazes not. Can’t believe I started to trust you little varmints, even a little bit. But I can still get some use out of you.” His smile was an ugly leer. “If we happen to run into any Apaches out in those badlands, why, we’ll just leave you two boys as a little present for ’em. I figure they’ll be too busy havin’ fun with you to bother comin’ after us!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The saddled horses were brought to the infirmary, along with the supplies, the handguns, and the ammunition. MacDonald demanded that enough of the troopers turn over their rifles so that he and all his men had Springfields, too, and ammunition for the rifles was added to the supplies that were gathered. Major Sughrue ordered the rest of the soldiers to stack their rifles and withdraw to the far end of the parade ground, where they were to stay in sight. That was MacDonald’s idea, as well.

  “Nobody’s gonna get in our way when we ride outta here, Major,” he said. “You understand that?”

  “I understand,” Sughrue replied. He appeared furious beyond belief and terrified out of his mind at the same time, the latter emotion caused by the fear he felt for Evelyn.

  MacDonald still had an arm around her, holding her close, although he had set her feet back on the ground. She had stopped fighting, and her head sagged forward in apparent despair. Every now and then, the sound of a soft sob came from her.

  “I don’t want anybody comin’ after us, either,” MacDonald said. “If they do, I’m liable to leave pieces of Driscoll along the trail for them to find. But if you do like I tell you, I’ll let Driscoll go tomorrow and he can ride back here.”

  “Alone?” Driscoll exclaimed. He was white as milk. “I’d never get back by myself. The Apaches would find me!”

  “Well, you’ll just have to hope you’re lucky and get through all right, Doc. Anyway, if your friends here at the fort don’t do exactly like they’re told, you won’t have to worry about that.”

  Driscoll swallowed hard at the ominous implication of those words.

  “What about my daughter?” Sughrue demanded. “Will you let her go tomorrow, too?”

  “She’ll be staying with us a mite longer than that,” MacDonald answered. “There’s a settlement on the other side of the Prophets called Moss City. If no one’s bothered us by the time we get there, that’s where you can find her in a week or so.”

  Sughrue’s jaw clenched so hard a little muscle began jumping in it. “Moss City is a cesspool,” he said. “No decent young woman will be safe there.”

  “You’d better hope you’re wrong about that, Major. But if we don’t make it to Moss City without any trouble, neither does little Evelyn here.”

  Sughrue was breathing hard as he visibly struggled to control himself. “If you harm her, if you hurt one hair on her head,” he said, “I’ll kill you, MacDonald. I’ll kill you myself, with my bare hands, you brute!”

  “Shut up, Major,” MacDonald said. “I’ve listened to all your bluster I care to. And once we ride out of here, I’ll never have to listen to it again.”

  Ace and Chance stood there listening to all this and seething because of their inability to do anything to prevent Vince MacDonald from carrying out his plans. MacDonald had told Corporal Parnell to keep an especially close eye on the Jensen brothers.

  “They’re insurance, that’s all,” MacDonald had said to Parnell. “So if either of them even looks like he’s thinking about trying something, don’t hesitate to blow his brains out.”

  “It’ll be a pleasure, Vince,” Parnell had said.

  As soon as the horses were lined up, MacDonald’s men quickly took charge of them, and the soldiers who had brought them from the stable had to go back to the other end of the parade ground with the others. Major Sughrue was the only one left there in front of the infirmary other than MacDonald and his allies and the four hostages.

  “You’ll never get away with this, Sergeant,” Sughrue said. “You’ll be hunted down and killed like the dogs you are. You must know this.”

  “I know that you won’t do a blasted thing as long as we’ve got this little gal with us,” MacDonald said. “And once we’ve let her go, it’ll be simple to make a dash across the border. You might as well give it up now, Major. You’ll never see us again. But if you do like you’re told, you might see this girl of yours. You just think about that once we’re gone.” MacDonald turned his head, contemptuously dismissing the older man who stood in front of him, and called, “Mount up!”

  Parnell poked Chance in the back with his Springfield and said, “You heard the man.”

  Chance cast a baleful glare back over his shoulder. “One of these days, somebody’s liable to make you eat that rifle, Corporal.”

  “Well, it won’t be you, kid,” Parnell snapped. “Move.”

  Ace and Chance swung up into the saddles, which were the McClellan type used by the cavalry, flatter than regular range saddles and lacking a horn since soldiers didn’t have to worry about lassoing any proddy cattle. The mounts were the sturdy sort favored by the cavalry as well, built for strength and stamina rather than speed.

  MacDonald lifted Evelyn and put her on the back of a horse. “I thought about making you ride with me,” he told her, “but I figure it might be best for you to have your own mount. Just don’t try to take off for the tall and uncut. It wouldn’t end well for you.”

  “I . . . I’ll do what you say,” she replied, thoroughly cowed by what she had gone through so far and undoubtedly aware that the ordeal likely would get worse before it was over.

  Ace wished he could reassure her that everything was going to be all right, but at the moment, he couldn’t make that promise for any of them.

  The gates had been closed after Sughrue and Evelyn came back from the cemetery, so they had to be opened before the group rode out. MacDonald waved a hand toward them and told Sughrue, “Go open those gates, Major. I reckon
you can manage by yourself.”

  Sughrue glared at him but turned and stalked toward the gates. He struggled to lift the bar holding them closed—taking it off its brackets was normally a two-man job—but finally succeeded in shoving it loose and dragging it out of the way. Then he swung back first one gate and then the other.

  MacDonald led the way with a couple of his men right behind him, then the four hostages. Evelyn and the clearly shaken Lieutenant Driscoll rode side by side, then Ace and Chance. Parnell and the rest of MacDonald’s men trailed them. Any time Ace glanced back, he saw that Parnell rode with his rifle across the saddle in front of him, looking eager for an excuse to use it.

  Major Sughrue stood beside the opening, puffing and red-faced from exertion. He had to lean over and rest his hands on his thighs for a moment.

  “Daddy,” Evelyn wailed in a miserable voice as she rode past her father. Sughrue straightened and started to take a step toward her, but MacDonald twisted in the saddle and pointed his rifle at him.

  “Just stay back, Major,” MacDonald warned.

  “Evelyn, darling, it’s going to be all right,” Sughrue said. He was talking to his daughter’s back now because Evelyn was already outside the fort, casting a pathetic gaze over her shoulder at him. “I’ll come and find you. No one is going to hurt you, I promise.”

  MacDonald laughed. “You better hope that’s right, Major. Do as you’re told and the odds’ll be a lot better.” He faced forward again and called, “Come on. No draggin’ your feet back there!”

  The whole group moved through the gates and into the open. As they did, Major Sughrue stepped into the opening and shouted after them, “You’ll never get away with this! I’ll see you all dead! You’ll wind up at the end of a rope, or worse!”

  MacDonald’s mocking laughter floated back at him.

  “I can’t feel too sorry for the major,” Chance muttered to Ace as they rode side by side behind Evelyn and Driscoll. “If he hadn’t fallen for all the lies Olsen’s been feeding him, this might not have happened.”

  “Maybe not, but he’s still got to watch his daughter riding away from here as a hostage. That’s got to be pretty hard.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Chance admitted grudgingly. “You have any ideas what we should do next?”

  “Outnumbered and outgunned like we are, I don’t think we have any choice but to wait for a better hand to play,” Ace said. He frowned. “And I’d still like to know where Lieutenant Olsen is this morning.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The early morning meeting at Marshal Hank Glennon’s office in Packsaddle wasn’t really a council of war, because everything was going well, but Howden-Smyth insisted on these occasional get-togethers among the conspirators. A meeting of the minds, he called them.

  To Frank Olsen, they were more like a waste of time, but he tolerated them because sooner or later this scheme was going to make him rich. It had already increased his stake quite a bit, but the real loot was still out there, tantalizingly close.

  Portly Judge Horace Bannister waddled in and said, “Let’s get on with this, gentlemen. I need to get to church. I have a Sunday School class to teach.”

  Olsen sat beside Marshal Hank Glennon’s desk, smoking a cigar. The lawman was behind the desk nursing a cup of coffee that was probably half whiskey, judging by the smell coming from it. Olsen took the cigar out of his mouth and said, “Our English friend isn’t here yet, but he ought to be showing up any time.” A moment of puckish humor prompted him to add, “You teach Sunday School, Judge?”

  Bannister frowned. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Well, considering that you’re so intimately involved with a bunch of criminals like us—”

  “Stop that,” Glennon said. “Everything we’ve done has been legal and aboveboard, isn’t that right, Judge?”

  Bannister hooked his thumbs in his vest. “As far as you and I are concerned, that is certainly true, Marshal. I can’t speak to what happens at the fort or at Mr. Howden-Smyth’s mine, of course, since such things are out of my jurisdiction and control.”

  Olsen looked at his two companions for a second and then laughed coldly. “Sure, you go on telling yourselves that. Those Jensen boys actually were deserters as far as you’re concerned, I suppose.”

  Bannister spread his hands. “Misidentification isn’t a crime. Such errors are bound to occur, and our legal system deals with them in due time.”

  In due time, for the Jensens, would be when they wound up in an unmarked grave in the desert, Olsen thought. He shook his head and went back to his cigars. He didn’t enjoy working with a couple of toads like Bannister and Glennon, but the end result was all that really counted.

  Packsaddle’s main street was quiet and almost deserted at this time on a Sunday morning, so Olsen had no trouble hearing the hoofbeats of several horses coming to a stop right outside the marshal’s office. A few moments later, the door opened and Eugene Howden-Smyth strolled in, followed by two of the gunmen who went everywhere with him. Arizona Territory wasn’t exactly civilized yet, so the Englishman always brought his protectors along.

  The lean, whip-bodied one with a face like a cadaver was Chet Van Slyke. He was Howden-Smyth’s top gun and reputed to be a fast, deadly pistoleer who had killed a number of men. The shorter, beer-gutted hombre was called Navasota Jones, probably after the place he came from back in Texas. His real name probably wasn’t even Jones. He carried a double-barreled shotgun under his left arm. Supposedly, he wasn’t much good with a handgun, but there was nobody better at shooting folks in the back.

  Nobody bothered Howden-Smyth with those two around, and the men who worked at the mine, actually hacking the precious ore out of the earth, didn’t cause any trouble, either.

  Howden-Smyth looked like he was in a good mood this morning. He had a cigar clenched between his teeth at a jaunty angle. Olsen had a pretty good idea what was responsible for the Englishman’s jovial attitude. Or rather, who was responsible. From here, he and his men would accompany Olsen back to Fort Gila, where he would pick up Evelyn Sughrue, after which she would have dinner and spend the day with him.

  Olsen couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that Howden-Smyth intended for Evelyn to spend the night, too. He knew Howden-Smyth had been lusting after the girl ever since the first time he laid eyes on her, and it was inevitable that he would get tired of waiting and insist on having his way with her.

  Olsen hoped things hadn’t reached that point yet. He didn’t care what happened to Evelyn, not really, but her father would be more difficult to manage if he found out that his daughter was being subjected to all sorts of British debaucheries.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” Howden-Smyth greeted the trio waiting for him. “And a beautiful morning it is, too.”

  Glennon grunted. “Gonna be hot as blazes later.”

  “Well, by then I intend to be back at my house, which is nice and cool behind those thick adobe walls. And I should have some very pleasant company with me, which makes things even better.” Howden-Smyth took the remaining chair in front of the marshal’s desk. Van Slyke and Jones stood behind him. “Now, shall we get down to business?”

  “I’m not sure we have any business to take care of,” Olsen said. “Everything’s running smoothly, as far as I know.”

  Howden-Smyth pointed the cigar at him and said, “As far as you know. But what you don’t know, Lieutenant, is that my men have spotted Apaches in the distance several times recently, watching my mine.”

  “Always better for Apaches to be at a distance instead of up close,” Glennon said. “It’s when they’re up close that folks wind up dying.”

  Olsen said, “We’re aware that the savages have been more active lately. They attacked one of our work details and nearly killed me a few days ago.”

  He gestured toward the bandage on his head, which was much smaller by now because the bullet graze was healing up already.

  Howden-Smyth nodded and said, “I heard about t
hat, Lieutenant. Not much goes on in this part of the territory that I don’t hear about. I don’t mind admitting that the situation makes me uneasy. The mule trains I have to use to transport the ore out of the mountains are slow and difficult to guard because so many mules are required and the line stretches out to such a great length. If that road was complete, I could load up several wagons and bring out just as much ore in half the time . . . or less. Not only that, but I could concentrate my guards around the wagon so that not even the most fanatical Apache would want to attack them.”

  “Never underestimate the fanaticism of a savage,” Olsen said. “But you make a good point, Eugene. Unfortunately, building a road takes a lot of time, especially through such rugged terrain.”

  “But progress would go faster if you had more men working on it.”

  Olsen looked hard at him for a moment. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Glennon, Bannister, and I have already railroaded as many men into the guardhouse as we can get away with.”

  Bannister said, “I take exception to the term ‘railroaded’—”

  “Shut up, Horace,” Howden-Smyth said. “Tell yourself whatever lies are necessary to allow you to sleep soundly at night, but don’t waste my time with them.”

  Glennon said, “Don’t look at me, either. There are only so many strangers who drift into Packsaddle. I throw as many of ’em as I can into jail, but I can’t lock up the locals unless somebody actually does something to warrant it. Nobody cares about saddle tramps like those Jensen boys, but if you start dragging honest citizens out to the fort and put them to work, the outside authorities are going to hear about it, mark my words.”

  “You’re probably right, Marshal,” Howden-Smyth said with a sigh. “But whenever you do see the opportunity to throw the book at someone with reasonable justification, I know I can count on you and His Honor to do so.”

  “We’ve played along so far, haven’t we?” Bannister asked in a surly tone.