AN ALL-NEW, EBOOK EXCLUSIVE WESTERN-HORROR
SHORT-STORY FEATURING THE DRIFTING HALF-BREED, YAKIMA HENRY...
By
Frank Leslie, author of the Yakima Henry and Colter Farrow novels...
Some fool sheriff tried to jail Yakima Henry
for a crime the half-breed did not commit, and got a bullet for his
trouble. Now Yakima has some trouble of
his own--three bounty hunters tracking him across the Jornada del Muerta, on a
wild ride to the border.
Yakima just has to get through Skull Canyon
and across the Rio Grande. Then he’ll be
free in Mexico.
But a beautiful Mexican woman named
Magdalena, who runs the Gate of the Canyon Saloon, warns him to steer clear of
the canyon. Yakima accepts an invitation
to Magdalena’s warm bed. He should have
heeded her warning about Skull Canyon, too.
Because now he’s not only got three bounty
hunters to contend with but some specter with a little-girl scream, stilettos
for teeth, and breath that smells like death...
THE CANYON
1.
An
autumn wind blew chill and dry out of Mexico, moaning like the ghosts of the
long-dead conquistadores, as Yakima Henry reined his sweat-lathered black
stallion off the side of the trail and into bright-yellow leaves raining from giant
cottonwoods and spindly sycamores.
The
big half-breed leaped swiftly down from his saddle and reached into a saddlebag
pouch for his spyglass.
“You
stay, Wolf,” Yakima said, running a hand down the black’s sleek neck. “I’m gonna have a quick look-see at our back
trail. If we’re far enough ahead o’ them
coyotes, we’ll camp soon. Me--I’m so
hungry, my belly’s been gettin’ way to friendly with my backbone.”
The
stallion snorted, blew, twitched his ears.
“That
the way it is for you, too, hoss? Well,
don’t worry--we’ll strap on a feed sack soon.”
Yakima patted the white, Florida-shaped blaze on the horse’s snout as he
looked at the jutting stone pinnacles and monoliths lining the deep canyon
around him.
He
picked out one, and started to climb as the bright leaves continued to rain. He’d donned his desert moccasins, and pulling
with his muscular arms and pushing with his powerful legs, the bearclaw
necklace dangling from his thick neck, he easily, swiftly climbed to the top of
the jutting finger of rock.
At
the top, he hunkered low, swept his long, coal-black hair back from his face,
and raised the glass to his right, jade-green eye. He twisted the canister, adjusting the
focus. It took him nearly a minute, but
as he stared east along his backtrail, he picked up a faint ribbon of dust
lifting between two distant buttes.
Yakima
lowered the spyglass, reduced it, and continued to stare east along the rocky
canyon and toward the desert flat beyond--the ninety-mile stretch of hot, dry,
featureless stretch of Jornada del Muerto he’d traversed on his way to the border,
a small passel of American bounty hunters stubbornly shadowing his every move
along the El Camino Real.
He
turned to stare up trail, toward the misty, blue-green reaches of Old Mexico. Not far now.
Another day’s ride and he’d ford the Rio Grande at Robedo Crossing,
south of Apacheria. Another day’s ride beyond, and he’d be in
Mexico. The hunters wouldn’t follow him
across the border.
Once
in Mexico, Yakima would find a pretty, brown-eyed senorita and shack up for the
winter along the Yuma River, or maybe on the shores of the Sea of Cortez. He’d take a break from trouble for a
while. He could do with a soft breast
for a pillow at night.
Guilt
prodded him. He turned his gaze to the
northwest, as though he could see Bailey Peak in the Arizona Territory from
this distance of several hundred miles, and the grave he’d dug there years
ago. But whenever he thought of her he
felt as though he’d buried her only yesterday.
Faith...
The
big half-breed in worn denims with patched knees, and a skin-tight,
sweat-soaked buckskin shirt, shook the reflection aside. Too easy to get caught up in what might have
been if the gods hadn’t frowned. Time
now only to ride, find water and a place to bed down for the night, head for
the Rio Grande again at first wash of dawn.
He
dropped down the side of the stony pinnacle, leaped the last few feet to the
ground, swung toward his horse, and stopped.
He lurched back with a start, his right hand automatically reaching for
the horn-gripped .44 holstered low on his right thigh.
Then
he caught himself.
“Shit,”
Yakima said softly.
He
stared down at the dead man he somehow hadn’t seen before. A skeleton with only a few ragged swatches of
clothes hanging off his sun-bleached bones.
Both skeletal hands were wrapped around the Castellani saber that had
shattered his breastbone and pierced his heart, which was no more than a few
fingers of dust lying against the ribs curving around his back.
Skeleton
and saber were all that remained of some long-forgotten battle waged here just
east of the Rio Grande. The dead man had
probably been a bandit, possibly an Apache, who’d attacked a Mexican trade
caravan headed north to Santa Fe, and got a saber through the heart for his
efforts.
Yakima
wrapped his hand around the sword’s gilt handle. A fine piece.
Crusted with the dirt and grit of the ages, but fine, just the same. It had likely been forgotten in the heat of
battle.
The
half-breed released the handle. Bad luck
to steal from the dead. Besides, he
didn’t want the extra burden. He and
Wolf were still a long way from the senoritas.
Yakima
returned the spyglass to his saddlebags, grabbed the reins, and swung into the
leather. He turned Wolf back west along
the trail, heeled the stallion into a trot.
The sun was angling down quickly behind the darkening San Mateos. He needed to find a place to camp soon. With its thorny thickets, its maze of
sierras, barrancas, and sudden, rocky arroyos, this was no country for night
travel.
He
and the horse clomped another narrow trace for another forty-five minutes and
then, when the trail had risen gradually out of the canyon and into a high, broad,
expansive basin ringed with distant, knife-edged, purple peaks hunkered low
against the horizon, he once again drew Wolf to a stop.
Before
him lay a town.
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