concert was over.
“Reilly?”
She had pulled away from him. He tried to smile.
“I’m sorry, Reilly. I hurt you.”
“I’ll be fine,” he told her, but she had lifted his left hand, found a handkerchief, and wrapped it around the torn flesh.
“You need a doctor.”
“It’s nothing,” he told her again.
She looked past him, at the prison wagon. “I want him dead.”
“I don’t blame you. But Judge Spicer gave him and L.J. fifteen years.”
“Not for what he did to me.”
Reilly put his right hand under her chin, turned her face toward him. “He’ll get his, Gwendolyn. Fifteen years in Yuma…”
“If he gets there.”
He frowned.
“Can you get back to Contention?” he asked.
“I made it here.”
“You best go. Matilda’s girls can be meaner than guttersnipes.”
“I can take care of myself. Maybe I should have waited till you brought him to Contention.” She smiled at him. She had quite the smile, even with her face disfigured by that bastard W.W. Kraft. “Can I see you in Contention, Reilly? I won’t try to kill that peckerwood. I promise.”
He started to say something, stopped himself, then decided to tell her. “We’re not going to Contention.”
“What the hell?” The words came from Gus Henderson, who stood at Reilly’s side, stupidly holding Gwendolyn’s Colt and purse.
“Be quiet, Gus,” Reilly said. He cursed his own stupidity. Should have kept his big mouth shut.
“Gwendolyn, you get back to Contention. Pretend that you’re waiting for us. Anybody asks you, I told you that I’d see you in Contention before the train left. That’ll buy us some time. Do this for me?”
“Sure, Reilly.”
She took the purse and reached for the belly-gun, but Gus pulled it back, eyeing Reilly.
“Give it to her,” Reilly said. “It’s some rough miles to Contention.”
She took the gun, dropped it into her purse, and hurried down the boardwalk, rounded a corner, and was gone.
“We’re supposed to catch the train in Contention,” Gus said.
“We’re not,” Reilly told him, and looked across the saddle at Frank Denton.
“Everybody knows we’re going to Contention.” Reilly spoke in a hoarse whisper. His left hand throbbed. “Including K.C. Kraft.”
“It’s about three hundred miles to Yuma,” Denton told him. “Across the desert.”
“I know.” Reilly wet his lips. “K.C.’s not going to let his brothers reach Yuma, not without making a play. He’ll be waiting for us in Contention, maybe Benson, maybe Tucson, or somewhere on the road, somewhere on the rails. When we don’t show at Contention, he’ll start wondering, fretting.”
“And looking,” Denton said.
“And looking,” Reilly agreed. “But looking west of here. We’re crossing the San Pedro and riding northeast. Skirt around Tombstone, through the Chiricahuas, and to Fort Bowie.”
“That’s the opposite way of prison,” Gus told him.
“But I know an Army officer at Bowie.” Reilly ran his fingers through his unruly brown hair. He realized his hat was gone, saw it in the dust on the street. “He’s agreed to let us tag along with a company he’s leading to California.”
“The Krafts aren’t a military matter,” Gus said. “Why would he do that?”
“Because I asked him.” Reilly was losing his patience. He hadn’t planned on telling them this until they crossed the river. “And the Army doesn’t like the Krafts any more than we do. We ride with them. It’ll take longer, but I don’t think even K.C. would attack a company of cavalry.”
“Does Cobb know about this?” Denton asked.
“’Course not.”
Denton chuckled. “You got style, Mac. I like it.”
“I don’t,” Gus said, pleading. “I just got back from Dos Cabezas, Reilly. My wife’ll worry sick if we don’t get to Contention. She’s bringing me fried chicken for the train. You got to let me go tell her, Reilly. Before she leaves. Before we leave. Please, Reilly, please!”
Underneath his breath, Reilly McGivern muttered, “Cupid.” He shook his head, but sighed. “All right. Go tell her. But tell her not to breathe a word of this to anybody. Nobody. If she wants you alive. If K.C. Kraft finds out, we’re dead. Savvy?”
“Thanks, Reilly.” Gus dashed down the boardwalk.
Frank Denton led his dun toward the prison wagon. A bandolier full of the large .44 shells for the Evans rifle dangled from the saddle horn of Reilly’s buckskin. Reilly slipped the canvas over his shoulder, grabbed the buckskin’s reins, and followed Denton, picking up and dusting off his hat on the way.
A vast emptiness, the Sulphur Spring Valley could hide hell. Seemed like a body could see forever, only there was nothing much to see among the Dragoons, Chiricahuas, and other brown, mostly barren mountains that tried miserably hard to make the country look somewhat hospitable.
For the past hour, a dust storm had choked and scalded the lawmen and their prisoners, but finally the winds had abated, and Reilly McGivern pulled down the bandana that had been covering his nose and mouth and sucked in a lungful of air that didn’t taste of dirt and smell of acrid creosote. His face felt heavy with dirt and grime, and he reached for the canteen secured around his saddle horn. He took a long pull.
“How about some agua for me and my brother?” W.W. Kraft asked.
After swallowing, Reilly nudged his mount close to the prison wagon and stuck the canteen between two hot, black bars.
“Not too much,” Reilly warned. “That’s got to last us to Bowie.”
“If I poured it out, you’d be in a fix.” W.W. grinned.
“Nope. But you’d be.”
The slim gunman laughed. “You got sand, Marshal, and savvy. Me and my brothers respect that, even in a law dog. Especially K.C.” He wiped his mouth, and tossed the canteen to his brother. “We’ll regret killing you. Well, not really.”
L.J. Kraft drank little water before returning the canteen to his brother, who took another long pull. The iron bracelets sang a metallic tune
