The Man from Stone Creek. Linda Miller Lael

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      Sam pulled part of his shirttail out and rumpled his hair.

      “You have folks around here?” he asked, watching her face. He’d have bet his last pound of coffee beans that she hadn’t seen her sixteenth birthday yet. “Someplace you could go?”

      She shook her head.

      “How about the padre, over at the church? Maybe he could help.”

      “Help?” Rosita echoed, obviously puzzled.

      Sam sighed. “Never mind,” he said. He consulted his watch. He was supposed to meet Vierra in twenty minutes. “This church you told me about—where is it?”

      Rosita went to the window to point the place out, and Sam stood behind her. The adobe bell tower was clearly visible, even in the starlight. He could get there on foot, in plenty of time.

      He was turning to go when Rosita caught hold of his arm. “Vierra,” she said in an urgent whisper. “Do not trust him too much.”

      Sam cupped Rosita’s small, earnest face with one hand. “Thanks,” he told her, and headed for the door.

      She followed him down the stone steps and he made a point of tucking his shirttail back in as soon as he was visible to the patrons of the cantina. He smoothed his hair, crossed to the table and reclaimed his hat. As an afterthought, he downed the whiskey, and it burned its way to his stomach.

      He knew the Donaghers would follow, and as soon as he got outside, he ducked around the corner of the cantina, into the deep shadows, instead of heading for his horse.

      Sure enough, Mungo’s sons came outside a moment later.

      “Where’d he go?” one of them asked the other.

      “Maybe the outhouse,” the other replied.

      Sam waited. If they bothered his horse, he’d have to deal with them, but they were either drunk or just plain stupid, maybe both, and headed for the privy at the far side of the dooryard.

      He watched as one of them slammed at the outhouse wall with the butt of his gun and bellowed, “You in there, mister?”

      The second brother tried the door, pulling on the wire hook outside, and it swung open with a squeal of rusted hinges.

      “Hey!” the first brother yelled, putting his head through the opening.

      Sam eased out of his hiding place.

      Both the Donaghers stepped into the outhouse.

      Sam shut the door on them and fastened the sturdy wire hook around the twisted nail so they’d be a while getting out again.

      A roar sounded from inside and the whole privy rocked on the hard-packed dirt. Sam grinned, mounted his horse and rode for the church to meet Vierra.

      He could still hear the Donagher brothers yelling when he got where he was going. The graveyard was enclosed behind a high rock wall, and there was no gate in evidence, so he stood in the saddle and vaulted over, landing on his feet.

      He took a moment to assess his surroundings, as he had in Rosita’s room over the cantina, and spotted the red glow of Vierra’s cheroot about a hundred yards away, beneath a towering cottonwood.

      He approached, one hand resting on the handle of his Colt, just in case.

      Vierra’s grin flashed white and he solidified from a shadow to a man, ground out the cheroot with the toe of one boot. “There is some trouble at the cantina?” he asked, inclining his head in that direction. The sound of splintering wood, mingled with bellowed curses, swelled in the otherwise peaceful night.

      Good thing I didn’t leave my horse behind, Sam thought. They might have shot him out of pure spite.

      He shrugged. “Just a couple of cowpokes breaking out of the privy,” he said. “I reckon they would either have jumped me or followed me here, if I hadn’t corralled them for a few minutes.”

      Vierra laughed. “The Donaghers,” he said.

      Sam nodded, took another look around. It was a typical cemetery, full of stone monuments and crude wooden crosses. He recalled the crucifix on Rosita’s wall, and it sobered him. “What do you have to tell me here that you couldn’t have said last night in Haven?” he asked.

      Vierra reached into his vest and produced a thick fold of papers. “These are the places where the banditos have struck on this side of the border.” He crouched, spreading a large hand-drawn map on the ground, and Sam joined him to have a look. “Here, at Rancho Los Cruces, “ Vierra said, placing a gloved fingertip on the spot, “they stole some two hundred head of cattle and left four vaqueros dead. Here, in the canyon, they robbed a train.”

      Sam listened intently, committing the map to memory, just in case Vierra wasn’t inclined to part with it.

      “They used dynamite to cause an avalanche,” Vierra explained, lingering at the place marked as Reoso Canyon. “The train, of course, was forced to stop. They took a shipment of gold, and the wife and young daughter of a patron were captured, as well. The wife was found later—” Vierra stopped, and his throat worked. “She had been raped and dragged to death behind a horse. There has been no word of the girl.”

      “Christ,” Sam rasped, closing his eyes for a moment.

      Vierra was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was flat. “I was told that you would give me a map corresponding to this one. Showing all the places this gang has struck on your side of the border.”

      Sam nodded, reached into the inside pocket of his coat and handed over a careful copy of the drawing the major had given him. “Except for the woman and the girl,” he said as Vierra unfolded the paper to examine it in a shaft of moonlight, “it’s a version of what you just showed me. Rustling. Train robberies. They cleaned out a couple of banks, too, and killed a freight wagon driver.”

      “Our superiors,” Vierra observed, his gaze fixed on Sam’s map, “they believe we are dealing with the same band of men. Do you know why?”

      Sam knew it wasn’t a question. It was a prompt. “Yes,” he said after a moment of hesitation. “They leave a mark.”

      Vierra folded Sam’s map carefully and tucked it away inside his vest. “A stake, driven into the ground, always with a bit of blood-soaked cloth attached.”

      Bile rose in the back of Sam’s throat. He’d seen the signature several times, and just the recollection of it turned his stomach. He nodded, took another moment before he spoke. “I suppose you’ve considered that it might be the Donaghers,” he said. That was Major Blackstone’s theory, and, since his conversation with Terran Chancelor that afternoon, regarding the Debney shooting, the possibility had stuck in his mind like a burr.

      A muscle bunched in Vierra’s jaw. “Sí,” he said. “But there is no proof.”

      Sam waited.

      “The patrons who hired me, they want the right men. No mistakes,” Vierra went on. “And I do not have the option, as you do, of shooting them СКАЧАТЬ