The Savage Curse Read online

  He wondered if he should lie and tell her the same story he told Crudder. He didn’t like to lie, especially to a woman. Especially to a woman with a shotgun in her hands.

  “I’m John Savage. My friend’s name is Ben Russell. We’re chasing a man who killed my family and others, stole all our gold out in Colorado.”

  The woman pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose. Shadows crept into her eyes, vanished. She blinked as if to regard him with a fresh look.

  “You’re that John Savage? We heard about you down here. You’ve killed a lot of men.”

  “Yes’m. Have you heard the name Oliver Hobart?”

  “Who hasn’t?” she said.

  “Well, he’s in Tucson. The men who were chasing us are joining up with Hobart. Led by a man named Crudder. Ever heard of him?”

  “No, can’t say as I have. But Hobart is a wanted man—a killer and a thief.”

  John said nothing, waiting for the woman to digest all the information he had given her. It did not take long.

  She eased the hammers down on the shotgun and stepped toward John.

  “I’m Gale Gill,” she said. “I’m a widow, and this here’s my ranch. I raise sheep on land my husband bought from the Navajo. Come with me. I’ll take you to the house and we can drink some tepache, cool down some. Would you like that, John Savage?”

  “Yes’m, we’d both like that.”

  She spoke to the Mexicans in Spanish. All but two walked away.

  “Juan will go with us,” she said. “You and Ben can walk with me. He’ll take your horses to the corral, give ’em water and corn.”

  “That’s mighty nice of you, ma’am,” John said.

  “Call me Gale. The name’s like the wind, sonny. Spelled that way and meanin’ that way.”

  Gale lived in an octagon house that lay nearly a mile distant. There were corrals, a small barn, a wagon, horses, and a fence to keep the sheep out. A stream ran past the house and down to the river.

  “Yonder’s the border,” she said. “As hostile as any place on this good earth. Come on in.”

  John and Ben followed Gale into the house, struck by its simplicity and its sturdiness.

  “Your husband build this?” John asked.

  “We both did, and it cost us a pretty penny for the lumber.”

  John sat in a comfortable homemade chair that was cushioned and covered with deer hide. Ben sat on the small sofa that was similarly made, while Gale sat in a large rocker that seemed to diminish her already small size. She took off her hat and laid it on the small table at her side. A young girl drifted silently into the room. John saw that her feet were bare. She was Mexican, or Indian, he thought, from her high cheekbones and dark russet skin.

  “Chula, bring us three cups of tepache, will you please? And tell Juan to come in when he’s finished putting up the horses.”

  The girl nodded without speaking and left as silently as she had come. John could not even hear her feet touch the polished hardwood floors.

  There was a large bookcase that covered one wall, with leather-bound volumes neatly arranged. In one corner stood a small rolltop desk that was open. There were papers stacked on it and an inkwell with a pen sticking out at an angle. The room smelled of wisteria and lilacs and something indefinable, perhaps leather or wood.

  “I want you to listen to Juan Torres,” she said. “He can tell you a thing or two about Oliver Hobart. And maybe you can tell him a thing or two.”

  “Yes’m,” John said, removing his hat. He darted a glance at Ben, who took off his hat and set it in his lap. John put his on the floor. He saw the rifle over the fireplace, just above the mantel, and a box of cartridges beneath it. A Colt pistol in a holster, with a filled gunbelt, dangled from a wooden peg at the end of the mantel. All within easy reach, since the fireplace was small and a woman the size of Gale could easily stand on the hearth and grab the rifle. He was pretty sure it was loaded. It was polished until the bluing gleamed, and it was unmistakably a Winchester ’73.

  Chula brought the drinks out on a round wooden tray, handed one to Gale, and one each to Ben and John.

  “Thank you,” John said.

  “Juan is coming,” she said to Gale in perfect, although accented, English.

  “Send him right in, Chula.”

  “Do I give him the tepache?”

  “No, he is working.”

  Chula did not bow nor reply. She just left the room on those silent feet of hers. She was like a cat, John thought. She moved with grace and was probably older than she looked. She seemed self-assured. He wondered what she was doing in the house. He heard no sounds from the other rooms. Perhaps she did not cook, he thought. Perhaps she sewed, mended clothing, or wove shirts from wool gathered from the sheep.

  She was very pretty and looked no more than eighteen, but might have been twenty or so.

  She reminded him of his little sister and he felt a sudden pang in his heart, thinking of little Alice, cold in the ground, so needlessly slaughtered by that bastard Hobart.

  “Tastes good,” Ben said after a swallow of the sweet tepache. “Nice and cool.”

  “We make it in a clay jar, what the Mexicans call an olla. Mix beer and fruit and let it ferment under a damp cloth. The olla keeps it cool. Won’t get you real drunk, but it’ll make you right happy.”

  “It is good,” John said. “What are all those books up there?”

  “My husband, Clarence, liked to read and so do I. Some of the books, a very few, are mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “I wrote them,” she said. “And if you look through those magazines on the shelf, you’ll see my name. Just got one from Harper’s Weekly the other day. I write stories and novels.”

  “That’s amazing,” Ben said.

  “What? That a woman can write books, too? Just like a man?”

  “No, ma’am,” Ben said. “I just meant I never met no real writer before. I seen a reporter or two, but no real book writer.”

  Gale laughed.

  “I don’t knit or sew, Ben, so I write books instead. Keeps my mind occupied when I’m not running off rustlers or no-accounts.”

  John heard a door open and close at the back of the house. Then, footsteps sounding on the floor and down the hall. A moment later, Juan Torres entered the room, his hat in hand.

  “Sit down, Juan,” she said.

  She patted a spot on the divan next to her and Juan sat down.

  Juan sat very straight. He had a patrician nose, high cheekbones, soft dark eyes, and thin lips cutting across tight skin as if his head had been sculpted out of copper. He had small hands, but they were calloused from hard work. He wore a white shirt and pants, like the other Mexicans, muslin, John thought, but perhaps cotton woven very thin.

  “Juan, that man there is Ben Russell and the young one is John Savage.”

  “Savage?” Juan said. “From Colorado?”

  “Yes. He’s hunting Oliver Hobart.”

  Juan’s already taut face tautened even more. A light danced in his eyes like some lambent sparkle from a dark star far out in space. His lips tightened and thinned. His hands clenched into fists.

  “You are hunting Oliver Hobart, Mr. Savage?” Juan said, his accent faint as a wave sound in a seashell. The accent was there but hard to trace.

  “I am,” John said. “I mean to kill him when I find him.”

  “You cannot do this, Mr. Savage. You cannot kill Hobart.”

  “Why not?” John said.

  Juan took a deep breath and a sadness came into his eyes like a cloud shadow passing beneath the sun.

  “Because . . . because . . .”

  And he could not go on. He bent over and began sobbing softly. Gale put an arm over his shoulder and drew a deep breath as if fighting off tears of her own.

  Juan pulled himself up and stopped crying. He wiped a sleeve across his eyes and smeared moisture from his cheeks with a swipe of his hand.

  The room filled with a silence that was so thick, John felt he
could touch it. And if he did, it would be like touching stone.

  Cold, hard stone.

  12

  JUAN TORRES SHOOK HIS HEAD AS IF TO THROW OFF THE LAST OF his tears. He blinked his eyes dry and looked at Gale.

  “Go ahead, Juan. Tell Mr. Savage why you don’t want him to kill Oliver Hobart.”

  “I tell you,” Juan said, “if you go after Hobart and try to kill him, he will kill my sister.”

  “Your sister?” John stared hard into Juan’s eyes.

  “He stole her, and when I try to get her back, he tell me he will kill her if anyone try to take her away from him.”

  Ben and John exchanged knowing glances.

  “You can see, can’t you, John, that this is a most delicate situation?” Gale said.

  “Yes.”

  “So you must not jeopardize that young woman’s life. It would devastate Juan and his family. And I would never get over it, either.”

  “Neither would I,” John said.

  “It is good that you understand,” Juan said.

  John looked at Juan, his lower lip edging up over the upper. His eyes narrowed to dark slits as he pondered the situation. He knew how Juan felt. He would feel the same way. He had seen what Ollie Hobart had done to his mother and sister. He knew that the man was cruel and heartless, even with women.

  “Juan, I will promise you this. Ben and I must have a showdown with Hobart. But we won’t go barging in with our guns blazing and throwing lead. As long as your sister is in danger from him, we won’t make a move. But we must get this man. We must stop him or he will go on killing and robbing people. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, but I am still afraid.”

  Gale patted Juan’s knee in reassurance.

  “Juan and I both understand perfectly. Nobody is safe around here as long as Hobart is allowed to live and go on killing and stealing. But you both must surely know what you are going up against when you go after Hobart. Two of you cannot possibly stop such a man. He has a gang of gun-slingers around him and outnumbers you, three or four to one.”

  “We know that,” John said. “When Ollie attacked our mining camp, he had several men with him. Ben and I went after him. Just the two of us. We managed to get most of them.”

  “Yes, but not Ollie himself,” Gale said.

  “No.”

  “And some of his men chased you here, so you said.”

  “Yes. They’re going to join up with Hobart. That’s true.”

  “We got one of ’em,” Ben said.

  “And one of those left may be on our side,” John said.

  “What do you mean?” Gale asked. “Might be on your side?”

  John told her about Jake Ward.

  “So he wants to kill Hobart, too,” John said, finishing up his account.

  “Might be he’ll save you the trouble,” she said.

  “Could be. I don’t care who gets Hobart. I just want him to pay for what he did to all those people, including my folks. Pay with his life.”

  “An eye for an eye,” Gale mused.

  “Yes, something like that.”

  “Well, we can talk about this in the morning,” she said. “I want to make sure you weren’t followed here, and Juan has to get back to work tending the sheep. There’s a bunkhouse out back. You want to stay over, I hope.”

  “Yes’m, we could use some rest and time to think. I may have a way to draw Hobart out in the open, away from Juan’s little sister.”

  “I’d be right interested in what you have to say. Want to take supper with me tonight?”

  Ben and John both nodded. Gale smiled.

  “Fine. We’ll eat about six of the clock.”

  “Yes’m,” John said.

  The bunkhouse was small, made of adobe. It had cots and blankets in it, nothing else. There were six army cots inside it and two of those were taken.

  “Looky here, will you, John?” Ben said.

  There, in a corner, were their saddles, bedrolls, rifles, and saddlebags. Their bridles hung on wooden pegs driven into the soft brick.

  “Seems like Mrs. Gill knew we’d stay with her,” John said.

  “I reckon so. Better check your saddlebags, John. Them Mexes find our gold and . . .”

  “You check them, Ben. I trust these men who work for Mrs. Gill.”

  “You do? After all we been through, I wouldn’t think you’d trust nobody.”

  “It’s Gale Gill I trust. A woman running a sheep ranch this size has to be pretty strong. I figure her men have taken on some of her character.

  John lay on one of the cots and stretched out his legs. Ben rummaged through all four saddlebags, sounding like a huge pack rat going through a wooden box.

  “Ain’t nobody touched nothin’,” Ben said. “Our gold and our money is right where we left it.”

  John smiled, but said nothing.

  When Hobart had robbed the mining camp, he missed a cache hidden in John’s father’s tent. John had kept the sacks of dust and the nuggets, cashing in small amounts only when he and Ben needed money to continue their pursuit of Hobart. John was glad that they still had quite a bit of gold. Maybe now was the time to put it to good use.

  It was cool inside the adobe. Bare as it was, it was the most comfortable place they had seen in a long while.

  “Johnny, you got any idea how long we’ll be stayin’ here?” Ben was lying on a cot, his blanket under his head for a pillow.

  “Long enough for me to work some things out.”

  “What things?”

  “Juan and Gale were right. We can’t just go galloping into that cantina after Hobart. Juan’s sister could be killed in the cross fire. Or Ollie would put her lamp out just for pure meanness.”

  “Hell, that warn’t my idea in the first place. I thought we’d just wait outside somewheres until we spotted the bastard and then let him have it.”

  “You can bet Ollie’s thought of that. He knows we’re after him. He’ll know it for sure once Crudder blabs to him.”

  “Crudder don’t know who we are. He thinks we’re the Logans, dumber’n a pair of stumps.”

  “Ollie will figure it out. He’s smart.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe about it, Ben. No, we have to think this through.”

  “You’re the one with the thinkin’ cap, Johnny. I can’t hardly figger out how to get through the day.”

  John laughed. “You do all right,” he said.

  “Well, you got any ideas buzzin’ around in that head of yours?”

  “A couple.”

  “I’d like to hear ’em.”

  John sighed.

  “Still working on them, Ben. Maybe by supper. You know, this ranch was a surprise to me. Green grass and all. Sheep. I’ll bet this country holds a lot of secrets. It’s an old land. Indian land. Like that canyon we were in with Crudder. The Navajos, Hopis, or whoever they were, lasted a long time with Kit Carson chasing them all over. I want to ask Gale about this ranch and the country.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “I don’t know. We might find out a few things.”

  “You got somethin’ in your craw, Johnny. I can tell. You hold your damned cards pretty close to your vest, son.”

  “Sometimes that’s the best way. I don’t have any cards yet, though. I’m just shuffling the deck at this point.”

  “Well, I’m goin’ to get some shut-eye. Wake me if you have somethin’ important to talk about.”

  “I will, Ben, I surely will.”

  Ben slept until supper time when John awoke him. They washed up at the pump in back of the house, heard the sheep bells tinkling in the distance, the bark of a dog. The sun had smeared the western sky with splashes of gold and crimson, dusted the clouds with silver and purple, bronze and vermillion. It was quiet and there was a breeze blowing cool across the burning land.

  “You set a fine table, Gale,” John said when they sat down to supper. The smell of mutton and gravy assailed his nostrils, stirred
his salivary glands. Ben was grinning at the lavish spread, his eyes bright as sun-shot agates.

  The girl who had served the tepache brought more food and drink, hot coffee and cakes for dessert. Gale treated Chula like a daughter and she also sat at the table, only getting up when something was needed from the kitchen.

  “I have some fine brandy from Santa Fe,” Gale said when they had all finished eating. “We can sit in the front room where it’s cool. Open those front windows, will you?”

  Chula nodded.

  When they sat down, Chula served brandy in delicate snifters.

  “You’re spoiling us, Gale,” John said, holding the glass to his nose, sniffing the vapors that arose from the dark liquor.

  She swirled the brandy around in her glass, holding it with the reverence of a chemist, raised the glass up to her face, and closed her eyes as she drew in the aroma. She looked as if she might be holding a bouquet of flowers, sniffing the scents. Her hand was beautiful, John thought, strong and delicate as any he had ever seen.

  Chula lit a lamp as the evening shadows began to flow into the room like a soft fog, even though it was still light out.

  “The brandy reminds me of home and that takes away some of the loneliness,” she said.

  “Yes’m,” John said. “Where are you from originally?”

  “Texas, where the tall pines grow.”

  “Never been there.”

  “I miss seeing the hickory nuts fall in the spring, the smell of pine trees. Ever since Clarence was taken from me, I miss the little hills, the green trees, the change of seasons.”

  Ben looked as if he might cry.

  She took a sip of her brandy and leaned back, looked at John.

  “We built this place so that the front faces east, just like the Navajos. We got that much from them and a lot more, I suppose. I miss seeing the sunsets, though, at this time of day, in this room. But in the morning, the sun streams through the windows and you feel happy to be alive.”

  John said nothing. His mind was working in a divided state. Her words made him homesick for Missouri, even the high country of Colorado, but he also wanted to talk to her about the plan that was forming in his mind.

  “I’m lucky to have what I have,” she said. “And mighty grateful, too. But I do get lonely of an evenin’, sure as the grass grows tall on the prairie. I miss old Clarence, the folks back home. But I love the sheep and the men who work for me, men who have never seen a Texas sky or a catfish pond.”