Ambush Valley Read online

  He holstered his gun and dragged both bodies to the far side of the clearing, well away from the pool. He might be a thief and murderer, but he didn’t want to foul this water hole. He would want to drink from it again when he came back in a year or so to recover the money. By then, there wouldn’t be much left of Cortez and Beck except a couple of dried husks that had once been human. Less than that if any coyotes ever ventured in here. Scavengers would scatter the bones.

  McCoy had no doubt now that he would reach the border without any trouble. He even had extra canteens and extra horses. And he was confident that none of the posse from Tucson had attempted to follow him through Ambush Valley, not with the reputation the place had as a death trap.

  That was exactly what it had turned out to be for everyone in the gang except him, he thought with a wry smile. He was still smiling a few minutes later as he rode away without looking back, following the ravine that the luckless Cortez had told him would lead him out of the valley.

  McCoy still had plenty of water, but he was thirsty for something else as he came out of the desert later that afternoon. The little border settlement of Hinkley shim mered into existence out of the waves of heat radiating from the ground, and at first McCoy wasn’t sure it was real. Then he heard the braying of a donkey and knew that it was.

  Hinkley consisted of a single street with a church at one end, a public well at the other, and a couple of dozen shacks and businesses in between, most of them built of adobe. A big general store was the largest frame build ing in town. According to the sign on the front of it, the store was owned and operated by one Cyrus Hinkley, who had probably founded the town and named it after himself.

  McCoy wasn’t interested in the store at the moment, although he would stop there before he left the settle ment and headed across the border into Mexico. For now, his attention was fixed on a squat adobe building with crudely painted letters spelling out CANTINA above its arched entrance. McCoy reined to a halt in front, dis mounted, and tied the three horses to a ramshackle hitch ing post. They were the only horses there.

  The shadows inside the cantina were a welcome relief from the heat. A couple of old Mexican men in som breros and the loose white outfits of peasants sat at a table passing a bottle of pulque back and forth. The rest of the tables were empty. Planks laid across whiskey bar rels on one side of the room formed a bar. A fat, sweat ing Mexican stood behind it. McCoy walked over to him and said, “Cerveza, por favor, hombre.” He dropped a coin on the makeshift bar. “And I damn well hope that it’s cold.”

  “There is nothing cold this side of the snow on the mountains far to the south of the border, Senor,” the bar tender replied. “But the cerveza is … less hot.”

  “I reckon that’ll have to do.”

  The Mexican drew the beer from a keg, filling a mug that wasn’t too smeared with fingerprints. He set it in front of McCoy, who lifted it and took a long, deep swal low. The stuff was bitter and watery, but at least it was a little cool and cut the dust that the desert crossing had left clogged in McCoy’s throat.

  The bartender leaned closer and lowered his voice. “You want a woman, Senor?” he asked in a conspirator ial tone.

  It had been a long time since McCoy had enjoyed any female companionship, but he wasn’t really tempted. He wanted to finish his business in Hinkley and get across the border. He considered it highly unlikely that any of those possemen from Tucson would stay on his trail this far, but there was no point in taking chances. So he shook his head and said, “Gracias, but no.”

  “Are you sure, Senor?” The bartender leered. “I got a young girl … my cousin … she is virgin. Innocent, just for you.”

  McCoy didn’t believe that claim for a second. But he still shook his head. He lifted the mug to take another swallow of the beer.

  Outside, one of his horses nickered.

  McCoy frowned and turned his head. Nobody had better be messing with those animals. The money he’d brought with him from the bank job was still in his shirt, but there were supplies and extra rifles on the horses. Not to mention the animals themselves. Greasers were natural-born horse thieves.

  “I can get you two girls, Senor,” the bartender said hurriedly. “Both virgins, I swear on my sainted mother.”

  McCoy turned away from the bar as one of the horses nickered again. He realized now that the bartender was trying to distract him, keep him occupied while some other pepper-belly stole his horses. He’d deal with the thief first, then come back and give that fat bartender something to really sweat about.

  Before McCoy reached the door, a large figure ap peared there, silhouetted by the late afternoon light. “You’re the fella who came out of Ambush Valley,” the man said as he stepped closer. McCoy had never seen him before. The stranger was big, craggy-faced, with sandy hair and mustache. Recognition flared in the man’s deep-set eyes. “And I know you, too. Seen your face before. You’re Cicero McCoy.”

  Alarm bells were clanging in McCoy’s brain. This was a setup of some kind, a trap. But there was only one man between him and the door, and he was confident in his ability to shoot his way of this.

  “I don’t think we’ve ever crossed trails before, mister,” McCoy said in a hard voice.

  “No, we haven’t. But I’ve seen your picture … on wanted posters.”

  Bounty hunter! The big stranger was a damned bounty hunter. Had to be.

  McCoy reached for his gun.

  The sound of a Winchester’s lever being worked came from behind him. “Don’t move, mister,” a flinty voice ordered.

  McCoy glanced over his shoulder. There was an other one of the bastards! McCoy didn’t know where he’d come from. He must have been hidden behind the bar someplace.

  A rear door opened and several more men crowded into the cantina. The bartender crossed himself and then ducked out of the same door, getting out of the line of fire in case any shooting broke out.

  The two old men sat at the table watching, their lizard like dark eyes full of years and the sure knowledge that they didn’t care anymore what happened to them. They had already lived out their allotted span, and now they just wanted to be entertained.

  “Where’s the money, Cicero?” the big, sandy-haired man drawled. “We looked in the saddlebags on all three horses, and it’s not there. What did you do, hide it in Ambush Valley?”

  Shock coursed through McCoy as the bounty hunter guessed correctly on the first try. McCoy didn’t want to let the son of a bitch have the satisfaction of knowing that, though, so he didn’t say anything.

  “You’re going to tell us,” the big man said as he came closer. “Taking you back to Tucson is one thing, but I don’t know if we’ll get the whole reward if we don’t bring the money with us.”

  McCoy tried a bluff, even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got the wrong hombre, mister.”

  “I don’t think so. We’ve been waiting for you. You’re the only one who’s showed up from the direction of Ambush Valley. And like I told you, I know who you are. That job in Tucson wasn’t the first bank robbery you’ve pulled, McCoy.”

  McCoy couldn’t take it anymore. He ran out of pa tience and his lip curled in an angry snarl. To be this close to escaping, this damned close …

  “Go to hell,” he said. “I’ll never tell you anything.” Then he grabbed for his gun despite being sur rounded. He’d rather force them to kill him than be taken back and thrown behind bars.

  But before he could clear leather, the man with the rifle slammed the weapon’s butt against the back of McCoy’s head. Red starbursts exploded behind the outlaw’s eyes. He was driven forward by the blow.

  That brought him within reach of the sweeping punch that the big sandy-haired man threw. His fist crashed against McCoy’s jaw. McCoy’s gun slipped from his fin gers and thudded to the floor. The room spun crazily around him and he felt himself falling. As he sprawled on the floor, he reached for the gun he had dropped, but
a boot heel came down on his hand and ground it against the planks. McCoy screamed. Another kick smashed into his ribs and rolled him onto his side. A red-tinged dark ness crept in from the edges of his vision, and he knew he was losing consciousness.

  The last thing he was aware of before that darkness claimed him was the big bounty hunter saying, “Don’t kill him. We still need him to tell us where that money’s hidden.”

  That’ll be the day, McCoy thought, and then he was gone.

  Chapter 7

  McCoy’s lawyer, a stocky, red-faced man named Mitchell, probably hadn’t been fully sober since the days when Geronimo had been terrorizing the Arizona Terri tory. He only took the case because the judge insisted that McCoy have legal representation instead of acting as his own lawyer. And because McCoy had had a couple of thousand dollars on him when he was captured, and the judge could order that part of that money to go to the lawyer as his fee.

  As far as McCoy could figure, it didn’t matter a damn whether he had a lawyer or not. What was there to say? He was guilty. He knew it, the judge knew it, the whole blasted town of Tucson knew it. Five people had died be cause of that bank robbery, most of whom McCoy had killed personally. By all rights, he ought to hang.

  But he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  Sure enough, the trial didn’t take long. Folks testified that they had seen McCoy leading the bank robbers. The prosecutor entered the money into evidence. The jury filed out of the courtroom, filed back in a few minutes later, and rendered their verdict. Cicero McCoy was guilty as sin. Guilty of bank robbery and murder.

  For which the judge sentenced him to twenty-five years at hard labor in the territorial prison at Yuma.

  Yuma … a real hellhole. Men who went in there seldom came out again, no matter how long their sen tences were. Yuma had a way of grinding its inmates down until there was nothing left of them.

  McCoy’s face showed no emotion as the verdict was read and the judge passed sentence on him. That was just about what he had expected. They couldn’t hang him be cause he was the only one who knew where that money was. So they had to send him to prison in hopes that somewhere along the line they could force him to talk. Eighty grand was a fortune. It meant more than justice, which should have had McCoy swinging from the end of ahangrope.

  As he was led out of the courtroom, McCoy’s eyes met those of one of the spectators. One of the guards was talkative and had mentioned him to McCoy earlier. The hombre’s name was Browning. He didn’t look like much-a scrawny, fair-haired Eastern dude who hadn’t been out in the sun enough in his life. But he owned the First Territorial Bank of Tucson, and as McCoy’s bad luck would have it, he’d been in town when the robbery took place. Browning was the one who had put the ten thousand-dollar reward on the head of the gang.

  Without the prospect of collecting that big reward, Abner Hoyt and the rest of those damned bounty hunters wouldn’t have come after them, McCoy knew. And if all he’d had to worry about was the posse led by Sheriff Lamar Fortson, he would have gotten away clean. He’d be down in Mexico right now, sipping tequila and fondling some eager, brown-skinned gal … instead of being led out of a hot, stuffy Tucson courtroom, shuffling along with leg irons locked around his ankles and shackles on his wrists.

  But he could still grin, so that’s what he did He grinned right at Conrad Browning, and the message was clear.

  I’ve got your money, you rich bastard. I know where it is and you’ll never see it again, because no matter what you do to me, you can’t make me talk.

  McCoy laughed at the frustrated anger that darkened Browning’s face. He was still laughing when the guards hustled him out and prodded him at gunpoint into a prison wagon. The barred door slammed shut and the vehicle lurched into motion. Several outriders fell in around it. McCoy gave a mocking wave to Conrad Browning as the young man stepped out onto the porch of the courthouse. McCoy waved, too, as the wagon rolled past a saloon and the group of bounty hunters who had captured him stepped out of the place to watch him go by. From the way they glared at him, McCoy knew that Browning had re fused to pay the full reward. They had gone to all that time and trouble, and they hadn’t even gotten the ten grand

  It was one hell of a good joke as far as McCoy was concerned. Almost as good as that sanctimonious judge thinking that he was actually going to stay in Yuma Prison. The stone walls and iron bars hadn’t been made that could hold him.

  Somehow, sooner or later, Cicero McCoy was going to escape.

  He knew it in his bones.

  Abner Hoyt looked across the desk in the borrowed office in the First Territorial Bank and said, “I can make him talk. I know it.”

  Conrad Browning didn’t look convinced. “You had plenty of chances to do that on the way back here to Tucson with the prisoner, Mr. Hoyt, and yet McCoy never divulged where he hid the rest of that money.”

  “I was trying to take it easy on him,” Hoyt said with a glare. “I didn’t want to mark him up a lot, because I knew he’d have to come back here and stand trial. Might’ve looked bad.”

  Browning leaned back in the bank manager’s chair, steepled his fingers in front of his face, and frowned. “No offense, Mr. Hoyt, but you don’t strike me as the sort of man who would worry a great deal about appearances.”

  “I’m not,” Hoyt growled, “but I didn’t want my partners to get carried away and kill him, either. That way he’d never talk.”

  It had been a chore, too, convincing the Coleman brothers not to use the old Apache torture of cutting strips in a man’s hide and peeling them off one by one on McCoy. They wanted that reward.

  So did Hoyt, and he’d been mad as hell when Brown ing refused to pay the whole ten grand. Browning had ponied up a thousand for McCoy, but that was all. He said that he would pay the rest of the bounty when the money was recovered, but not before.

  “What do you propose to do now?” Browning asked.

  “I’m going to Yuma. McCoy just thinks he’s gotten away from me.”

  Browning shook his head. “What can you do to him in prison? There’ll be guards and other officials around. You can’t-“

  “The hell I can’t,” Hoyt broke in. “I never saw an official yet who couldn’t be paid off.”

  “You’re talking about a bribe.”

  Hoyt shrugged. “Call it an investment. Spend a thousand dollars or so paying off the warden and a few guards in order to find out where that eighty grand is.”

  Browning’s frown came back. He said, “What you’re talking about is illegal.”

  “Do you want your money back or not?”

  “It’s not my money. It’s the bank’s money. But yes, I want it back. You’re damned right I do.” Browning’s head jerked in a nod as he made up his mind. “All right. We’ll do like you suggest, Mr. Hoyt. I’ll even pay your ex penses to travel to Yuma. But the effort had better pay dividends this time.”

  “Oh, it will,” Hoyt said with complete confidence as he nodded and thought about the things he would do to Cicero McCoy. “It will.”

  The trip from Tucson to Yuma took several days in the prison wagon. McCoy was the only prisoner, which was fme with him. He’d never cared that much for company anyway. It was hot during the day, but at least the roof of the wagon gave him some shade. At night, though, the chilly wind blew through the bars on the sides of the wagon and he lay there shivering since he had no blan ket or any other cover. There was a bucket in which he could relieve himself, but that was the only item inside the wagon. He couldn’t stand up, either, because the roof wasn’t high enough.

  McCoy didn’t waste his breath complaining. He knew it wouldn’t do any good. He just sat there and endured the misery, knowing that it would be over sooner or later. Of course, once he got to Yuma, things would be even worse, he supposed. But at least there he could start making plans to escape, once he’d had a good look at the place.

  The prison sat atop a hill that overlooked the town of Yuma. All around was ugly, rugged terrain scored by ra
vines and dotted with sandstone ridges and buttes, sim ilar to Ambush Valley but not as inhospitable. The prison offices and guards’ quarters were frame buildings that sat in front of the main compound. They were what McCoy saw ftrst as the wagon trundled up the hill. Then, as the vehicle reached the top of the slope, the prison itself came into view. McCoy couldn’t see anything except a high, whitewashed adobe wall with an arched entrance midway along it. The entrance was closed offby a huge wooden gate. The wall was even thicker around the gate, bulging out like a pus-filled blister.

  The wagon came to a halt in front of one of the admin istration buildings. The prison authorities must have been waiting for McCoy to show up, because two men in sober suits emerged from the building, followed by three guards in dark blue woolen uniforms that had to be miserably hot and itchy in weather like this. No wonder the guards at Yuma had a reputation for brutality, McCoy thought.

  One of the suited figures was short, fat, and balding, with a graying brown beard that jutted out from what was no doubt a double chin. The other man was younger and thinner, with spectacles that perched on his nose. He had a subservient air about him as he followed the fat man over to the wagon.

  “I’m Warden Eli Townsend,” the fat man said as he stared through the bars at the prisoner. “Welcome to Yuma Territorial Prison, McCoy.”

  “Don’t reckon you’ll mind if I don’t say I’m glad to be here,” McCoy drawled, summoning up a smile.

  Warden Townsend’s lips tightened petulantly. “You won’t be so arrogant once you’ve been here for a while,” he promised. “But if you follow the rules, you’ll be treated humanely. I’m aware that Yuma has a … less-than-sterling reputation, shall we say. But we’re fair and we ask nothing except that you cooperate and do as you’re told. Do you understand that, McCoy?”