Читать книгу Dead Man's Gold - J.A. Johnstone - Страница 12

Annabelle climbed into the wagon to sleep, while Father Jardine spread a bedroll underneath the vehicle. As The Kid stood nearby watching the preparations, he frowned.

“You have a hair rope, padre?” he asked.

“What?”

“A rope made of horsehair, just like it sounds,” The Kid explained.

“We only have the ropes we used with the horses.” Father Jardine shook his head. “I don’t know what they’re made of.”

The Kid had placed his saddle on the ground. He had a lariat made of braided rawhide, the sort that the Mexicans called la reata, but he also had a coil of hair rope that he carried. He fetched it and played it out from its coil as he walked around the wagon, until he had a circle of rope completely enclosing the vehicle.

By starlight, The Kid saw Father Jardine smile. “Is this supposed to be some sort of talisman to ward off evil spirits, my son?”

“You could call it that,” The Kid said dryly. “A rattlesnake won’t crawl over a hair rope because the fibers tickle his belly too much. If you ever woke up with a nice fat diamondback rattler curled in your blankets with you because he was looking to get warm, you’d think he was an evil spirit, all right.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

The Kid waved a hand. “Forget it, Father. Just get some sleep.”

Father Jardine crawled into his blankets. The Kid walked over to a rock next to the spring-fed pool and sat down with the rifle across his lap. He sat still and quiet and sent his senses out to search for any sign of danger in the night. Everything seemed peaceful. Within a few minutes, he heard soft snores coming from the priest.

There was silence from inside the wagon. The Kid thought about Annabelle Dare sleeping in there, if indeed she was actually asleep. He caught himself wondering how much of her clothing she removed before she turned in, then forced that thought out of his head. He hadn’t been a widower all that long and had no right thinking such things. Anyway, Annabelle Dare was opinionated almost to the point of obnoxiousness. She was clearly accustomed to always getting her own way, and she really wasn’t all that pretty. She was just…striking-looking, that was all.

Maybe there would come a time when he was ready to move on with his life, when he could look at a pretty woman and have those sort of thoughts without feeling that it was wrong. But not yet. Not yet.

Right now, all he really wanted where Annabelle was concerned was to keep her alive until she and Father Jardine could finish this loco quest they were on. If they succeeded, she could go back to Harvard or Yale or wherever she came from, and he wouldn’t ever have to think about her again.

Time passed as the stars wheeled through their courses overhead. The Kid felt a little drowsy from time to time, but he was able to shake it off without any trouble. When he judged that four hours had passed, he went to the back of the wagon, stepped over the horsehair rope, and said quietly, “Dr. Dare.”

He heard the sound of a gun being cocked, then Annabelle mumbled, “Who…?”

The Kid stepped quickly to the side, just in case her finger got a mite too heavy on the trigger. He said, “Damn it, Doctor, there’s a time and a place when you need to wake up with a gun in your hand. This isn’t one of them.”

“Oh. Mr. Morgan.” He heard her moving around. A moment later she stuck her head out the back of the wagon. “I’m sorry. I was sound asleep, and I didn’t know at first who you were.”

The Kid nodded. “Your turn to stand guard, just like you wanted.”

“Yes, of course.” She climbed out of the wagon. “If you could give me a moment first…”

“Sure, go ahead.”

He waited while she went off into the brush that grew along the base of the rocky outcropping. When she came back, he handed the Winchester to her.

“Everything’s quiet,” he told her. “The padre’s still asleep.” The Kid could hear the snores coming from under the wagon.

“That’s good. I’m glad we didn’t disturb him.”

The Kid motioned for her to follow him and led her over to the rock where he’d been sitting earlier. “This is a good place. You’ve got a good view of the flats, and it’s just uncomfortable enough so that you won’t be too tempted to doze off again.”

“All right. Thank you for the advice.”

“Here’s another piece. That Smith and Wesson of yours is a double-action. You don’t have to cock it before you shoot. But you know that, or you seemed to when you were gunning down that Apache.”

Her breath hissed between her teeth. “Are you trying to remind me that I killed a man tonight?”

“First time?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, I hope it’s the last, too. But in case it isn’t, it won’t hurt you to get as good with that gun as you can. Maybe we’ll work on it some on the way.”

“You’re going to teach me how to be a gunfighter like you?” Her voice held a tone of mockery.

“Not like me, lady. You don’t want to be like me.”

He started to turn away.

“Wait,” she said. “I heard you talking to Father Jardine earlier. The business about the rope and the rattlesnakes. You were nice to him, when he was a little condescending to you. I appreciate that. He really is a good man.”

“He’s a priest. That’s what you’d expect, I reckon.”

“You know a lot about surviving out here on the frontier, don’t you?”

“I’ve had to learn,” The Kid said. He didn’t say anything about the tragic circumstances that had forced him to pick up a lot of his survival skills in a hurry.

“But I’ve noticed…there are times when there’s something about the way you speak, the way you carry yourself…Are you an educated man, Mr. Morgan?”

The last thing he wanted to do was to tell her all about the life he had led back east, when he was still a pampered, pompous ass. Yeah, he was educated, all right, but he had also been ignorant of the things that mattered most in life. It had taken Frank Morgan and Rebel Callahan to educate him about those.

“No, Doctor,” he said. “I don’t know a damn thing except how to kill my enemies before they kill me.”

With that, he turned and walked back to the wagon. He took his bedroll and spread it out on the ground inside the big circle of rope, placed his saddle where he could use it for a pillow, and stretched out to sleep. The ground wasn’t too comfortable, and The Kid had trouble forcing thoughts of the conversation he’d just had with Annabelle Dare out of his head.

He was asleep in minutes, anyway.

The sky was gray with the approach of dawn when The Kid woke up. He opened his eyes first, without moving otherwise. His head was turned so that he could see Annabelle sitting on the rock. He watched her for a moment without giving away the fact that he was awake.

Her head was up, and it turned frequently from side to side as she looked around, evidently alert for any sign of danger. That was good to see. If he was going to travel with them, he had know whether or not he could depend on her. From the looks of it, she could stand a turn on watch. They’d have to wait and see about everything else.

Oh, and she could get her gun out fairly quickly and defend herself in a fight, he reminded himself. But that had been an instinctive reaction, and the Apache had been only a few feet away when she shot him. He would find out how fast and accurate she really was once they’d had a chance to practice a little. He wouldn’t truly know how she would react in a fight until the time came again—which he was sure it would, if they were heading into the Jornada del Muerto.

The Kid sat up, which drew Annabelle’s attention to him as she saw the movement in the dim light. He pushed his blankets aside and climbed to his feet, walked over to her.

“Everything quiet?” he asked.

“Yes. I haven’t seen or heard anything except some sort of night bird a little while ago.”

The Kid frowned. What Annabelle had heard might have been a night bird…or it might have been something else.

“Give me the rifle,” he said, his voice flat and hard. “Then go get under the wagon with Father Jardine.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Do you think—”

“I don’t know. Just give me the damned rifle.”

“You’re a rude man, Mr. Morgan,” she said, but she handed over the Winchester and stood up.

“Under the wagon,” The Kid said again. “Where’d you hear that bird?”

She gestured vaguely toward the hills. “Up there somewhere.”

“If you hear any shooting, stay where you are and keep the padre under there with you. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”

He set off up the hill, moving swiftly in a crouching run and veering from side to side. The light at this time of day wasn’t good for shooting, just like twilight, but if anybody was up there waiting to bushwhack them, chances were the bastard’s eyes would be adjusted to the dimness by now.

The Kid used every rock, every bush, every scrubby little tree he could find for cover. He climbed all the way to the slab of rock where he had watched over the camp the night before, without running into any trouble along the way. He paused there to listen.

Somewhere far away in the distance, he heard the drummimg of hoofbeats.

The tension that filled The Kid eased a little, but only a little. His gut told him that someone had been spying on them, and more than one someone, at that, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any need for signals passing between them.

The two members of the Apache war party who had survived the fight? Maybe. Indians often signaled with animal noises like that. It might have been some of Fortunato’s men, too, although The Kid considered that less likely. And it could even have been someone else, some enemies Annabelle and Father Jardine hadn’t encountered so far. The Kid wondered just how many people actually knew about this golden candlestick they were after. Something like that might be valuable enough to tempt any number of thieves and owlhoots.

But right now, The Kid didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary, so he suspected that whoever was watching them was gone. He didn’t know what the purpose had been in spying on them. He was sure he would find out sooner or later.

“What was it?” Annabelle asked when he returned to the camp.

“Nothing,” The Kid said. No point in worrying her when he didn’t really know anything. “I reckon it was just a bird, like you said.” He handed the rifle back to her and went on, “Keep your eyes open. I’ll get started on a fire so we can cook some breakfast.” He looked toward the north. “We’ll put some miles behind us today.”