The Burning Trail

Prologue

With a chink and a clank, Donny Belasco hopped down from the wagon along with the other prisoners, then lined up to have his chains removed so that he could once again put in a long day’s labor for the great United States of America.

Criminal, he thought, to have men out here toiling in the sun. Just criminal.

And then he smiled. He found himself very amusing.

Especially today.

Chains removed, the men shuffled in single file to several barrels of rusty shovels. Donny pulled one out and followed his mates—all dressed in wide, ragged prison stripes, all of their left ankles iron-cuffed—down to the pits.

They were making adobe bricks, just as they did several days each week. Fill a wheelbarrow with clay, push it up to the top, over and over and over. That is, if you were lucky enough to get a barrow. Most had to make do with baskets.

The men up top turned the hard clay into mud and mixed it with the proper measure of sand and quicklime and a little straw. Then another crew wheeled it to the drying yard, packed it into wooden molds, and left the molds to dry in the sun. At any given time there were acres of the curing bricks.

Exactly what they did with these bricks born of his labor—what they built, if anything, and where they took them—Donny didn’t know.

He didn’t care.

Especially today.

Mayfield had saved a wheelbarrow for him, and he filled it under the watchful eyes—and ready guns—of Officers Philby and Smith. Grunting, he pushed it up the ramped incline to the top. Men were everywhere, hauling water, hauling sand or quicklime, hauling clay, sweating under bright spring sun of Arizona Territory.

Good morning to you, Mr. Caulfield, he said, rather brightly, to the officer stationed at the dumping site, and touched his forehead in a sort of salute.

Shut up, Belasco, Caulfield replied.

Why, certainly, Donny said, smiling. Anything you like.

You dumb shit, Caulfield snarled, and raised the butt of his rifle.

Donny suddenly ducked and rolled the empty barrow into Caulfield’s legs, knocking them out from under him. At this preordained signal, four other men—Mayfield, Wilcox, Billings, and Cooper—launched into action, attacking the guards.

As Donny snatched away Caulfield’s rifle and used it to smash the man’s face with a satisfying crunch and spurt, he caught a glimpse of Pignose Wilcox doing much the same thing to Officer Philby. Tricky Jack Cooper had already flattened his man and was running for the hills. Mayfield and Billings weren’t far behind. And the rest of the prisoners, seeing their chance, were scattering every which way.

Ah, blissful confusion, Donny thought with a brief smile.

Donny fired one shot into the back of the guard standing between himself and his mates, and ran for all he was worth.

By the time he had raced one hundred yards into the open, the guards had sufficiently recovered and started firing.

Slugs cut brush on either side of him, exploding sage and cactus alike. His lungs ached. His heart felt as if it were beating down the cage of his ribs, but still he ran.

He caught up with Pignose, saw him stumble, fall, and twitch, saw the spreading red stain, but Donny didn’t alter his stride. To the left, Billings went down. To the right, Cooper yelped and fell, convulsing.

Donny just kept moving, feet pumping, heart racing, blood churning, his head about to float away it felt so light, so overjoyed.

So free.

And he laughed, laughed out loud, even while a bullet took down Mayfield, the last of his compatriots, even while the man lurched and tumbled to the ground beside him.

Donny ran, oh, he ran, and even the iron cuff felt light, as if it weren’t there at all.

And when he reached the crest of the rise alone, with only the stumbling, irate guards bringing up the distant rear, their bullets by now falling far short of their mark, he saw Pignose’s friend, Vince Martindale, waiting down below with five horses and a confused but expectant look, he thought that it was exceedingly good to be alive.

Especially today.

1

Hobie Hobson tossed another flake of hay into Red’s manger at the moment King Garner’s silhouette appeared in the doorway of the barn.

We gonna have some grub anytime soon? Garner asked. As always, right to the point. Right grumbly, too, if you asked Hobie.

Hobie started peeling off his worn work gloves.  ’Bout fifteen minutes, Boss, he said. Mayhap twenty. Ham okay?

Garner turned, grunting in the affirmative, and Hobie watched him walk on up to the house. Garner stopped halfway there, his back toward Hobie, and took a another slug from his hip flask. Must be about the last one left, by the angle of the bottle.

Hobie shook his head. It was a doggone shame, if you asked him, a famous man like King Garner taken to drink. Worse than that, going fast to ruin out here on this ranch. Besides trips to the outhouse or down to the barn to yell at him or Fred or Jim, Garner hardly got off the porch anymore, let alone into town.

Hobie figured it wouldn’t be much longer before Garner sank roots into the soil so deep that he got to be a tree. A regular ponderosa pine nursed on Who Hit John. Tall, but kind of weedy and apt to blow clean over at the first breath of wind.

After Hobie’s daddy had died and his mama had gone back East to be with his married sister, Hobie had signed right on at King Garner’s spread, which was just getting built at the time. He’d been real excited about working for a man like Garner. Here was a celebrated citizen, a man with an honest-to-goodness reputation—a man they wrote books about, by gum!—and he was slapping together a horse operation practically in Hobie’s backyard!

Hobie had wanted to hear everything King Garner had to say. He’d wanted to know everything King Garner had to teach him, all about sheriffing and bravery and tracking down killers and such.

Except that King Garner didn’t teach him much of anything, unless you wanted to count building barns and building houses and building corrals and taking care of livestock, and Hobie already knew how to do those. And now, with everything put up, everything tended to, it was more like he’d been hired to nursemaid a dad-gum drunk than anything else.

It was an awful big disappointment.

Muttering to himself, Hobie hiked up the hill to the house. Without comment, he crossed over the porch, passing Garner—who stared out over the broad valley, oblivious as usual—then went inside to the kitchen and put another log in the stove. Early May, but it still got nippy up here, and they kept the stove going all day and all night.

He uncovered the ham and sliced off a couple thick hunks, then thought better of it and sliced off a third. King usually liked two. Amazing how a man who drank that much could still eat like a horse. Most drunks he’d known sort of lost their appetite, but not Garner. And you’d think he’d at least put on some weight, get sloppy, but no. Hobie couldn’t figure where Garner was putting it.

He set the ham in a frying pan while he hunted up the jar of applesauce he’d opened yesterday. The other hands had teased him something fearful for all the canning he’d done last season. They’d called him Miss Hobie and other names less polite—which especially hurt when you were a blonde-headed fellow and none too big or tall to begin with—but he’d had the last laugh. Nobody ate something they’d laugh at, no, sir, not while he was doing the cooking.

And nobody was laughing this year. No, next winter Jim and Fred wanted to eat something besides what they shot and cooked themselves.

He shook dried sweet corn into a pot, added water, and put that on the stove next to the ham, then dug out the pot of little green jalapeño peppers. He chopped up a couple and tossed them in with the corn, and set out three peppers each on blue enameled plates he pulled from the cupboard. Just two plates. Just for Garner and himself. The rest of the boys—that being Jim and Fred—had gone into town.

Probably to get themselves a decent meal.

What you want me to do with all these newspapers? he called, kicking at the stack as he passed it. He asked about every day, for all the good it did.

Don’t care, came the answer.

Well, hell. Five months’ worth, give or take, of the Zuni Gazette, and they hadn’t been so much as unfolded. They were Garner’s newspapers, and nobody touched them until Garner had read them, and well, Garner wasn’t reading them. He didn’t pay attention to a damn thing anymore except his horses and his whiskey.

Can I burn ’em in the stove, then? he called, figuring that at least they’d have the kindling out of them.

Don’t care, Garner repeated.

Hobie snorted. You’d think the man who’d tracked Cherry Lazlo—the man who’d sent that murdering Jackson Woodrow to his Maker, the man who’d rounded up the Suggs gang and the Farley brothers and countless others, and who was a certified legend, some said—would give a damn about something.

Anything!

But no, Garner just wanted to sit on the porch and sip his whiskey.

A goddamn shame, Hobie muttered, and stirred a pinch of sugar into the corn.

Zuni was coming of age, Marcus Trevor thought as he sauntered down Main Street. They’d put up a new feed store since he’d last been here, as well as a sweet shop and a tobacconist. Pretty soon, the railroad would be in here and the whole place would be growing like Topsy. Course, that would bring in all the wrong element, but he figured that was all right too.

After all, he was a U.S. deputy marshal. Without the wrong element, he’d be out of a job.

He’d just finished paying his respects at the sheriff’s office, as he always did. In Zuni, that meant sitting back, putting up his boots, and having a leisurely cup of coffee or two with Tom Grayson. Good man, Grayson. Reminded him a tad of U.S. Marshal Holling Eberhart, his esteemed boss, and the man who, in his Prescott parlor, had reluctantly given Trevor this particular assignment.

Grayson had said that Trevor was a fool to try what he was about to try. Well, Eberhart had implied that, too, come to think of it.

We’ll see, Tom, Trevor had said. We’ll see. And poured himself another mug of Arbuckle’s. He hadn’t had such a fine cup of coffee since three days ago, at Eberhart’s house.

He won’t do it, I tell you, Tom had insisted, his long mustaches bobbing with sincerity. Not even if you chop off that long, moppy mane of yours and braid it up into a pair’a fancy reins for him. ’Sides, he’s half-soused three quarters of the time, and dead drunk the other.

Trevor had just smiled.

Grayson had shaken his head and changed the subject.

Trevor reached the livery, paid his fee, and saddled up Stealth, his gray gelding. The horse was rangy—one of his parents had been a Thoroughbred, that was for certain—but then, Trevor himself was a tall fellow who needed a tall horse. Annie had named the gelding when he was a two-year-old and Marcus Trevor brought him home after one of his business trips.

How on earth are you ever going be stealthy on a beast like that, Marcus Trevor? she’d asked, wiping her slim, delicate hands on a dish towel.

Annie, my love, he’d said, settling his arm around her narrow shoulders and assuming his listen up,because I’m going to tell you something important stance, Stealth is all in the mind, not the color of a horse.

She’d smacked him with the dish towel.

Well, she had a temper. But there weren’t many women who’d put up with a lawman husband, especially one who was gone more than half the time. Especially one with nearly waist-length sandy hair, a thick mustache the size of a cattle car, bowed legs, and a narrow butt.

Course, she said she liked that hair of his. Said it made him look like a pirate.

He was inclined to agree with her.

One thing was for certain. Reporters didn’t forget him, once they’d met him. Nobody did. He had carved himself into what the magazines called an unforgettable character, and he was about to make the biggest news of his career.

He hoped.

It all depended on one drunken old ex-lawman.

He led Stealth from the livery barn, stuck his foot in the stirrup, and swung up, saddle leather creaking. He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in a nearby shop window, and took a moment to preen. Goddamn, he muttered to himself. I am one handsome sonofabitch, ain’t I?

Hey, Deputy! cried a grinning kid from across the street, disturbing his reverie. You catch any crooks today?

Not yet, he called back with a grin. But it’s still early. He reined Stealth around and headed out of town at a soft jog.

King Garner leaned back in his porch rocker, drank the last drops from his flask, and idly debated finding the bottle and refilling it. Upon extensive thought, though, that sounded like way too much work, especially since lunch was just about on the table. Or was supposed to be. He decided against expending the energy.

Garner liked the view from his porch. He’d faced the front of the place southwest, so he’d have a clear view of the horses grazing down in the valley. The grass was green and already knee-high, and dotted with mares with their gamboling spring colts—Red’s spring colts—sleek and shiny at their sides. Come nightfall, he could sit out here creaking back and forth in his rocker and watch the dying sun in a sky all full of purple and orange and pink.

He’d come up here with Red and his half of the money he and young Quincannon had taken off those hapless bandidos down in Indian Haunt, plus half the reward money that Lloyds of London had paid Quincannon. He hadn’t wanted to take it—well, not right off—but the kid had pressed it on him.

He raised a glass to Quincannon about once a week, although he wouldn’t have admitted it to him. He’d heard that Quincannon had taken his pretty little wife and moved down to Apache Springs, where he was practicing law. That was, what? Better than two years past? Quincannon or his wife wrote Garner a nice, newsy letter every Christmas and Easter—with an invitation to come and visit them anytime, door’s always open—but Garner never quite got around to answering.

Funny how you sort of lost track of folks—or at least, lost enthusiasm for them—when they weren’t right in front of your face.

What the hell, Quincannon, he muttered, and touched the empty flask in his pocket. I’d drink to you if I had anything wet to hoist.

Well, the kid had done right by both of them. Set himself up in practice, and set Garner up with a nice retirement.

He had himself a fine new stable, a crop of promising yearlings, and a new crop of nice foals.

He had Red, who was grinding his noontime hay down in the barn.

He had three men hired year-round to help him out, and he planned to hire on a couple more once they got to the point where they were breaking and training.

He’d bought this place outright, built it out of his pocket, and he still had enough money in the bank to tide him over for the next three years if he was careful with it—plenty of time for the horses to start paying for themselves.

Just like he’d always pictured it. Just what he’d yearned for.

So why the hell was he so bored?

And why was he drinking the way he was?

He had everything he’d wanted: the best stud horse in the whole damn Territory, some of the finest mares, a place of his own where nobody bothered him and nobody came whining to him with their problems, expecting him to solve them.

He’d solved enough of other people’s problems, solved enough of his own, seen enough blood and torment and grief to last a man ten lifetimes.

And he was going to be fifty.

Oh, it was a few years off yet, but he saw it looming on the horizon just as sure as a circling wolf waiting to pounce. Fifty goddamn years old. Forty had been bad enough, but fifty? What the hell would he do then? What the hell would he be able to do?

Age was already creeping up on him. When he was a younger man, he’d laughed at those older hands who took so long to get up in the morning, stomping their feet or working the cricks out of their backs or necks or binding up their ruptures. Now he knew what it was to have your whole body wake up in a small series of crackling or painful or, at the least, uncomfortable events.

And he had no doubt that it was going to get a whole lot worse.

Hobie! he shouted, suddenly angry. Lunch ready yet?

Keep your darn shirt on, came the mumbled reply.

I heard that, he shouted back.

"Didn’t hear me, though," said a new voice.

Garner twisted toward it, relaxing only marginally when he saw the familiar face. U.S. Deputy Marshal Marcus Trevor rode the rest of the way up to the porch and just sat there on his horse,