Chapter 4 - The Rimrock Trail
The trail didn't deserve to be called a trail. It was a goat-track carved into the face of a three-hundred-foot cliff of rotten limestone that dropped straight down into the dry bed of the San Pedro tributary. Every time the gelding’s hoof slipped on the loose shale, a shower of small stones clattered into the void, taking five seconds to hit the bottom.
Clay rode behind Kea, his teeth gritted so hard his jaw ached. The bullet wound in his flank felt like someone was twisting a rusted fishhook through his muscle with every lurch of the saddle. He didn't make a sound. He kept his eyes fixed on the sway of Kea’s dark braid against the back of her buckskin tunic, watching how she balanced her weight over the mare’s shoulders, letting the animal find its own footing without ever jerking the reins.
Eli brought up the rear, his old Sharps lashed crosswise to his saddlehorns, his gray mule picking its way through the rocks with the stubborn sureness of an animal that had survived three wars and every bad winter the territory had thrown at it.
They rode for two hours without speaking. The heat rose off the stone walls, baking the moisture right out of their skin until their lips cracked and tasted of salt and alkali.
Around noon, they reached the summit—a narrow shelf of tableland covered in stunted piñon pine and bitter-sage. From here, the whole valley unrolled beneath them like a dried cowhide.
Far down below, near the bend of the dry wash where Clay’s cabin sat tucked against the red-rock bluff, a thin smudge of black smoke was rising straight up into the windless air.
Clay pulled his horse to a halt. His hand went white on the reins.
The roof was gone. Through the binoculars Eli handed him, Clay could see the blackened rafters of his kitchen standing like charred ribs against the white ash of the floorboards. The corral fence was kicked down, and three bay steers were running wild across the scrub flat toward the south hills.
“They didn't wait for sundown,” Clay said, his voice terrifyingly quiet.
“They wanted you to see it from the ridge,” Kea said, her hand resting on the neck of her mare. She pointed down toward the upper spring three miles to the west. “Look there.”
Through the lenses, the spring looked like a green oasis of cottonwoods against the red earth. Tied beneath the shade of the largest tree were four horses with U.S. Cavalry brands altered with a running-iron. Two men sat on empty lard crates near the water trough, passing a tin flask back and forth, while a third—wearing a city-cut gray suit and a bowler hat—was pacing back and forth in the dust, waving his arms as if arguing with a ghost.
“That’s the land agent,” Eli said, spitting through his teeth. “Fellow named Vance—brother to the one you put down in the wash, Mercer.”
Clay felt the world narrow down to a point no bigger than a rifle sight. The man down there by the water was Cole Vance’s kin—the same blood that had tried to run Kea down like a stray calf in the rocks.
“He thinks we’re running north toward the Indian agency,” Clay said. “He’s got his men planted by the water because he figures we have to drink before we hit the high desert.”
“And we do,” Kea said. She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a small leather pouch filled with dried meat and salt. She bit off a piece, chewed slowly, and handed the pouch back to Clay. “If we wait until dark, they’ll move the horses and set picket lines in the brush. We have to hit them before the sun clears the cottonwoods.”
Eli pulled an old percussion revolver from his holster, spun the cylinder with a dry click, and shoved it back down. “Three of them down there, plus the clerk. You and the girl take the left flank through the rocks. I’ll ride down the open trail like an old fool looking for stray burros. Draw their eyes.”
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“They’ll kill you, Eli,” Clay said.
“They might try,” the old scout grinned, his milky eye catching the light. “But I’ve been dying of the lung-rot since the Grant administration anyway. Might as well spend my last cartridge on a lawyer from Tucson.”
