Through the closed door Milton could hear a steady, hoarse animal whimpering between the sucking noises.
His first impulse had been to run out and give succour, but something held him back. He had been visited before by fugitive outlaws fleeing to or from the desert. None of the encounters had ended pleasantly for him. This newcomer had the look of danger.
Milton matched up a small board sign inscribed: CLOSED. He inched the front door open far enough to hang the sign outside, eased the door shut again. He ran to the corner for the stout oak timber with which he barred himself in at night.
The door was hauled open before he could fit the bar into its brackets. The stranger stumbled through, dripping water. At close range he was even less prepossessing.
A word crashed into Milton’s mind, made shambles of any coherent thought
Ugly...
He backed up nervously. “I was just closing for the night”
“You just opened again,” Tuco croaked.
His gaze fell on the shelf of bottles behind the bar. He stumbled across, snatched a bottle of whisky and drank thirstily. A full third of the liquor had vanished before he lowered the bottle.
He let go an explosive, “Ah-h-h-h—” He stared around,the room and his eyes glittered. “Guns. I need a hand gun—the best one made.”
“Yes, yes,” Milton said. The stranger’s ugliness was that of death, with a foretaste of rot. Milton ran to a case and hauled out pistols, one at a time. “Here are only the very finest, mister. Remington, Colt, Root, Smith and Wesson, Navy, Joslyn—”
“That’s enough,” Tuco growled. “I know guns.”
He examined each pistol with the eye and ear of an expert, testing the trigger pull, the spring’s force. He spun cylinders close to his ear to gauge the set of the ratchets. When he found one that pleased him he loaded it sand thumbed back the hammer. His gaze roved the room, searching for a target.
“Wait,” the little man cried nervously. “Out in the back is a small range where you can try it out. You’ll know exactly—”
“Show me,” Tuco growled. “Come on—move.”
Milton scuttled to a rear door and opened it to reveal a small courtyard with a row of targets across the for side. Behind each target hung a piece of iron that would clang on a bull’s-eye.
The pistol bucked and slammed in Tuco’s hand. Five shots blasted and each one set iron to ringing. Milton, his eyes wide with awe, followed Tuco back to the counter.
Tuco growled, “Shells.” He reloaded and thumbed back the hammer. “How much?”
“Fifteen dollars, sir.”
“You don’t get the point, friend,” Tuco said through his teeth. “Think about it and try again.”
He waggled the gun and Milton suddenly became achingly conscious that the muzzle pointed straight at his face. He paled and swallowed heavily.
“A—a hundred dollars? Two hundred dollars, sir.” He snatched up a cigar box and opened it to reveal a stack of worn banknotes. “See? It is all the money I have.”
“You got the idea finally.” Tuco snatched the bills. “Where’s your horse?”
“In the stable—out back.”
Tuco grinned and slipped his new gun into his holster. “Now I’ve got everything I need but a cigar.”
“A cigar? Yes, sir. I have them right here, sir, the best in the West.”
“The cigar I’m looking for,” Tuco said savagely, “has the face of a black-hearted son of a whore behind it.”
CHAPTER 7
FEW men, Sentenza reflected, ever had the privilege of watching a bloody, day-long battle from a choice box seat. And even fewer men, his thoughts ran bitterly, had the hellish luck to arrive on the ground where a fortune in gold was buried at a moment when two idiot and unaware armies were mauling one another to pieces over it.
His seat was probably the same pinnacle of rock from which a Union soldier had first spied the Confederate cavalry detail escorting the money wagon. It was the hest look-out point and his trained eye detected signs of previous occupancy. From this vantage point he could see down into Glorietta Pass, far back into Apache Canyon and westward, across the Pecos, almost to Santa Fe. For the better part of the day—now waning—the entire area below had been bloodied by some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
Sentenza had reached the pass shortly after daybreak, bound for Santa Fe and the elusive Bill Carson. One way or another Jackson, alias Carson, would be made to talk, to identify the exact grave which hid the fortune.
Sentenza had known a distinct shock at finding the road from Santa Fe to the pass jammed with marching troops in Confederate grey. Some scouting had revealed them to be a force of Texans sent out by General Sibley to secure and hold Apache Canyon against the Federal troops at Fort Union. The action was intended to cut off Santa Fe’s only hope of liberation by Colonel Canby’s tough Colorado Volunteers.
Sentenza’s first look at the unwelcome obstacle to his plans had sent him up the canyon wall. The Johnny Rebs had art unpleasant reputation of either shooting stray civilians as spies or forcibly impressing them into the army. Neither alternative fitted into his own programme. He had scouted carefully from high ground, ghosting down as opportunity offered to learn what he could by overhearing soldiers’ conversations.
At last he rode as high as he could, left his horse among concealing rocks and proceeded on foot. The rock pinnacle offered an ideal vantage point from which to see when the last troops had passed on into the canyon, leaving the road to Santa Fe clear. It also proved the ideal vantage point from which to see the best-laid plans of mice and gunmen go all to hell in a crash of cannon fire.
The last baggage and supply wagons were still tumbling into the pass when the vanes and of the troops rammed headlong into a large force from Fort Union, sent to keep the canyon open. Sentenza suddenly found himself an unwilling spectator to a battle of incredible ferocity.
The Texans were mainly flatlanders, men from the open plains who elected to make their fight on the canyon’s floor, taking cover behind the masses of fallen rocks. The Colorado volunteers, on the other hand, were chiefly miners from the gold fields, thoroughly at home in rugged mountain terrain. They scrambled up the canyon walls like mountain goats to pour a withering fire down into the expceed Confederates below.
For an hour and more the Texans held their ground with incredible courage and at fearful cost. A steady stream of ambulance wagons, jammed with wounded, poured out of the pass, some heading towards Santa Fe, others turning south towards Galisteo, where the main body of Sibley’s troops was encamped. The traffic ended any hope Sentenza had of working his way past the embattled forces to continue his journey.
A rare impatience began to gnaw at him. He saw no cavalry in action below, so Carson’s Third Regiment would be either in Santa Fe or twenty miles south-east at Galisteo. But for the time being Carson—from Sentenza’s viewpoint—might as well be stationed on the moon.
Inevitably, for all their dogged courage, the Texans began to give ground. Slowly but inexorably they were driven back towards Glorietta Pass, leaving grey-clad bodies on the canyon floor.
By mid-afternoon they had been driven back to Glorietta Pass, and were digging in for a last, desperate stand. Sentenza could see the Union forces massing for an all-out assault. It came at last, a howling irresistible charge that hit the weakened Rebel line and sent it reeling back out of the pass to the bank of the Pecos.
There was little or no pursuit. Having gained their objective, the Volunteers pulled back to the mouth of the pass and settled down to hold the ground. Beyond the river, on the Pecos Plains, the scattered Confederates were coming together and setting up camp. Plainly, neither side was ready to break off the confrontation and leave the way clear for Sentenza to pursue his search for Bill Carson.