Kid Palomino Read online

  ‘This is loco, Kid,’ Red muttered as the horses drank their meagre ration of water. ‘You’re gonna get us killed on a hunch.’

  With wisdom far beyond his years, Palomino scooped up his hat and returned it to his head and shrugged. The droplets of water trapped within the bowl felt good as they cooled him.

  ‘I know exactly where they’ve gone,’ Palomino said bluntly and then poked his boot in his stirrup and dragged himself back on to his saddle. He waited for his partner to do the same and then tapped his spurs against the creamy flanks of his mount. ‘You coming or are you gonna turn-tail and ride back?’

  Red thought for a moment and then urged his quarter horse to follow the majestic stallion of his friend. ‘Hold up, Kid. I ain’t finished gabbing yet.’

  The younger deputy glanced at his partner. ‘I’ve finished listening to you moaning and groaning, Red. I tell you I’ve figured out where they’re headed and I’m headed there too.’

  Red Rivers lifted his wet pants off the sweat-filled saddle and glanced at Palomino as they continued to allow their mounts to walk between two steep dunes. No matter how hard he racked his brain, he could not figure out how Palomino could possibly tell where the outlaws could have ridden in this terrain.

  ‘How can you know where Carson and his galoots have gone, Kid?’ he asked before sitting back down. ‘Tell me, how can you be certain where they’re headed?’

  ‘You’ll figure it out just like I did,’ Palomino said as his unblinking eyes stared into the shimmering heat vapour before them.

  ‘My brain’s boiling inside my head, Kid,’ Red grunted. ‘My figuring ain’t so good in this temperature.’

  They steered their trusty mounts down through a narrow canyon of bleached rocks. The heat grew more intense as they travelled the winding course. Both men could feel the merciless rays of the overhead sun bearing down on them as they rode side by side into the sickening abyss.

  Yet Palomino continued to lead them as though he had travelled this route many times before. Red could not fathom how the younger horseman was able to negotiate this unfamiliar place. Had Palomino noticed something that his partner had failed to observe? Thoughtfully, Red chewed on the tails of his bandanna and watched as the Kid defiantly continued to lead the way.

  The shimmering heat haze bent the air before them. Nothing was exactly as they imagined it to be. It was as though they were looking into a powerful waterfall and not blisteringly hot air.

  Suddenly as the horses turned a rugged corner of bleached rock, they both saw the very thing that the Kid had spotted two hours earlier.

  A line of poles stretched from one horizon to the other held together by telegraph wires marked a dusty road. The wires glistened in the unforgiving sun as they swayed back and forth between the weathered poles. The dusty road was between the riders and the poles.

  Palomino drew rein first and leaned back against his cantle. Red slowly halted his mount and stared at the poles in bewildered awe.

  ‘If that don’t beat all,’ Red sighed.

  ‘That’s how I know which way they went, Red.’ The Kid picked up one of his canteens and took a welcome swig of its warm contents.

  Red turned his head. ‘Telegraph poles?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Palomino confirmed. ‘Telegraph poles.’

  ‘How the hell do they tell you where Bill Carson and his gang have gone, Kid?’ Red growled. ‘Go on, tell me how them poles can possibly tell you where them bastards have gone.’

  Palomino smiled and handed his canteen across the distance between them. The older horseman grabbed the canteen and took a long swallow of the precious liquid.

  ‘Feel better?’ the Kid asked as he accepted the canteen and returned its stopper to the leather vessel’s neck.

  Red sighed heavily. ‘I’m obliged for the drink, Kid, but this is driving me plumb loco. I just don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

  ‘To my knowledge, Carson and his cronies ain’t ever bin in this territory before, Red,’ Palomino explained as he hung the canteen beside the others next to his cutting rope. ‘This is mighty dangerous country and not to be taken lightly. Think about it, Carson and his men knew who owned the bank back in Fargo and they knew where Hardwick and his family lived. They must have bin given this information by someone else.’

  Red screwed up his eyes. ‘I’m with you so far.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident that Carson rode in here and knew where Hardwick lived. That gang rode into Fargo and followed detailed instructions so that they wouldn’t run into any trouble robbing the bank,’ the Kid continued to explain. ‘They would have gotten away with it if they hadn’t have run into us when they were making their escape. It stands to reason that they were also instructed on how to get out of this territory.’

  Red stared blankly at his pal. ‘But what have these telegraph poles got to do with you being able to figure out where them hombres are headed, Kid?’

  Palomino indicated to the poles. ‘The telegraph wires head on out of Fargo, don’t they? Then they split into two sections. One section heads east and the other heads west.’

  Red Rivers pulled out his tobacco pouch and started to roll a cigarette. ‘I know that. So what?’

  ‘The wires head east to Cherokee Springs and west to Dry Gulch.’ Palomino watched as Red struck a match and lit his cigarette. ‘Cherokee Springs is too far away from Fargo to ride to with saddle-bags full of money, Red. You’d have to travel there by stagecoach but Dry Gulch is only just over that rise.’

  Red stared through his cigarette smoke. ‘It is?’

  Palomino nodded. ‘It surely is. I reckon it’s only a few miles away from here.’

  The wily deputy looked long and hard at Palomino.

  ‘How’d you know that, Kid?’ Red sat up on his saddle and frowned. ‘I know for a fact that you ain’t ever ridden out this way before. How’d you know that Dry Gulch is only a couple of miles away?’

  Kid Palomino shook his head in frustration and checked his pair of matched Colts. Then he glanced at his bewildered pal.

  ‘Ain’t you ever looked at the big map on the wall in the telegraph office back in Fargo, Red?’ Palomino gathered up his reins again and looked at the daunting terrain still ahead of them. ‘That map has got all the poles marked on it. That’s in case they gotta send out linemen to fix them.’

  ‘They got a map in the telegraph office?’ Red asked as he sucked the smoke through the cigarette and then blew it at the cloudless sky.

  ‘A real big map for all to see,’ the Kid nodded and then guided the high-shouldered palomino stallion to the rough road of compacted sand.

  Red tossed the cigarette away, tapped his spurs and navigated the distance to the dusty trail. He looked down at the road and observed the wheel grooves cut into the ground.

  ‘You can see the ruts where the stagecoach travels up and down this road, Kid,’ he said before noticing that his partner was staring down at something else marked in the sand.

  Palomino eased his tall stallion beside his pal’s horse and studied the sand carefully. He raised a hand and pointed down at fresh hoof tracks.

  ‘There,’ he muttered before dismounting and kneeling beside the tracks. He could not contain the sense of gratification he felt in finding the fresh tracks.

  Red leaned over the neck of his mount. ‘What you doing, Palomino boy?’

  The Kid straightened up and then grabbed the mane of his mount. He threw himself back up on to his saddle and mopped his brow with his shirt sleeve.

  ‘Fresh hoof tracks,’ he pointed out.

  ‘That’s the stagecoach horse’s tracks, Kid,’ Red sighed.

  ‘No they ain’t. These tracks weren’t left by the stage team.’

  Palomino pointed at the deep hoof marks six feet away from the wheel rim grooves. ‘They’re the hoof tracks of three horses that were headed west.’

  ‘To Dry Gulch?’

  Palomino grinned. ‘Yep, to Dry Gulch.’

  ‘Why’d you
figure they’re headed there for, Palomino?’ Red wondered.

  The younger deputy glanced at his pal. ‘I bet it’s to meet up with the hombre who planned the bank robbery and split their ill-gotten gains, Red.’

  ‘The what?’ Red raised his bushy eyebrows.

  ‘The loot, Red,’ Palomino said slowly. ‘They’ve gone to Dry Gulch to split the loot.’

  Finally it dawned on the older lawman what his partner was talking about. ‘Now I get it.’

  Kid Palomino rolled his eyes. ‘I’m sure happy that you now understand what I’ve bin talking about for the last few hours.’

  ‘Next time talk clearer, Kid,’ Red scolded. ‘How’s a body meant to know what you mean when you keep gabbing about telegraph poles?’

  The Kid silently frowned.

  Then without warning Red suddenly slapped the sides of his quarter horse with his boot leather and galloped away from Palomino. The older lawman glanced over his shoulder and shouted, ‘What you waiting for? C’mon, Kid. Let’s go get ’em.’

  Kid Palomino steadied the handsome stallion. ‘Catch that old rooster, Nugget.’

  The powerful horse bolted into action and chased the quarter horse. The Kid rose off his saddle, balanced in his stirrups and cracked the tails of his long leathers in the desert air.

  Within a few heartbeats the stallion had caught up to the far smaller horse. As Palomino drew level he looked at his old pal and winked. Red Rivers touched his hat brim and nodded as their horses defied their exhaustion and kept thundering on to Dry Gulch.

  Neither of the deputies had any idea of what lay ahead of them in the aptly named Dry Gulch. All they knew for certain was that they were closing in on the merciless outlaws. Men of Bill Carson’s formidable reputation were all cut from the same cloth.

  They would fight to their last drop of blood and take as many innocent folks with them as they could before they succumbed. Their evil breed did not die easy.

  Soon there would be a clash of titanic proportions within the arid town the deputies were quickly approaching, for neither Kid Palomino nor his sidekick Red Rivers had ever shied away from a fight when they knew that right was on their side.

  The lawmen rode on.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A growing worry was gnawing at the mature outlaw’s innards as his eyes kept glancing at the wall clock hanging from a rusty nail in the small office. He knew that time was quickly passing and wondered how much of it was left before the law finally showed up in the remote town.

  Bill Carson was sat opposite Jeff Kane and Poke Peters inside the Dry Gulch telegraph office waiting for the pre-arranged message from the Deacon. Yet as the clock ticked loudly there had not been any indication that the message was going to arrive.

  The gang had been there for over an hour and were getting more and more anxious. The grim-faced Carson rose from the hardback chair, strode to the wooden counter and glared over it at the small figure sat beside the telegraph key pad.

  A fury was brewing inside the notorious killer as he clenched both his fists and watched the weedy man, who only seemed to awaken when a message caused the crude machinery to start tapping like a frantic woodpecker.

  Poke Peters stood and moved to the side of Carson. He rubbed his throat and shook his head before turning to the stony-faced Carson.

  ‘I thought you said that the Deacon would send us a message, Bill,’ he asked the statuesque outlaw before glancing back at the still seated Kane. ‘Me and Jeff figured he was totally professional but this don’t sit right in my guts. What are we meant to do?’

  Beneath the wide brim of his Stetson, Carson’s eyes darted at Peters. ‘Something feels mighty wrong to me about this, Poke. You’re right.’

  Peters nodded in agreement.

  ‘I don’t like this hanging around,’ he said. ‘We should have left this cesspit by now. Every damn minute we wait in here, the closer the law is getting, Bill.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Carson knew that Peters was correct.

  They were wasting time and time was the one thing they were mighty low on.

  Kane got to his feet and strode to where his fellow outlaws stood. He tilted his head and stared between the pair at the sleeping telegraph operator.

  ‘Them telegraph keys ain’t made a sound since we arrived here, Bill,’ he commented before resting his hands on his holstered guns hidden beneath his long dust coat. ‘Maybe it’s busted.’

  Carson and Peters looked at Kane.

  ‘How would you know if it’s busted?’ Peters asked.

  The older and far more dangerous of the men stroked his unshaven jaw and narrowed his icy glare. ‘You could be right. For all we know there might be a break in the wires. The Deacon might have sent me his instructions but his instructions ain’t reached here.’

  Kane and Peters looked troubled by the prospect.

  ‘What’ll we do, Bill?’ Kane wondered. ‘We can’t hang around here waiting for a message that might not even arrive.’

  Peters leaned closer to his fellow outlaws and drawled in a low whisper. ‘I got me a feeling in my craw that them star-packers back at Fargo will be rounding up a posse when they find the banker and them women.’

  Bill Carson nodded in agreement. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’

  Peters glanced briefly at the dozing operator and then returned his attention to Carson.

  ‘What do you figure we should do, Bill?’ he asked nervously before pacing to the office windows and looking out into the sunlit street. ‘We’ve already wasted over an hour in this damn town and if they do send out a posse from Fargo we’re in real big trouble.’

  ‘They could arrive here at any time,’ Kane swallowed hard.

  ‘I ain’t scared of any posse,’ Carson snapped viciously at his hired guns. ‘But you’re right. We have wasted a big chunk of time here and no mistake. If there is a posse looking for us they’ll be getting mighty close.’

  Kane looked at Carson. ‘Let’s high-tail it, Bill.’

  ‘Jeff’s right,’ Peters nodded. ‘I reckon we should split the takings and ride. It ain’t our fault the Deacon hasn’t sent you a message, Bill.’

  ‘It ain’t his neck them star-packers will be itching to stretch,’ Kane added. ‘We gotta get out of here.’

  The grim-faced Carson stared at the sleeping old man beyond the counter. ‘The Deacon said that we should sell our horses and take the stagecoach to Yuma like ordinary folks. Trouble is there ain’t no stagecoach.’

  ‘I ain’t selling my horse,’ Kane announced.

  ‘Me neither.’ Peters spat at the floor.

  The fearsome Carson rubbed his jaw and looked at the telegraph operator as he slumbered on a note pad. The outlaw slammed his fist down on the wooden counter. The noise shook the building and caused the small man to wake. His bleary eyes squinted through his spectacles at the three awesome creatures facing him.

  ‘Are you boys still here?’ he yawned.

  Carson pointed a gloved finger at the bony old character.

  ‘Check that your telegraph is working, old timer,’ he ordered.

  The telegraph operator raised his eyebrows. ‘What on earth for? It’s working just fine.’

  Furiously, Carson lifted the wooden flap and walked toward the still sleepy old man. As he reached the desk he drew one of his six-shooters and cocked its hammer. He pushed the cold steel barrel under the nose of the seated man.

  ‘Humour me and do what I tell you,’ the outlaw growled. ‘Test that the lines are OK. I’ll blow your head off your damn neck if you don’t. Savvy?’

  The old man gulped. ‘I savvy.’

  Carson watched and listened as the operator tapped on the keys. Within a few seconds the office resounded with the distinctive noise of the keys replying. The outlaw rose to his full height and holstered his gun.

  ‘It’s working just like this old fossil said it was, boys,’ Carson muttered at his men. He then glanced down at the terrified figure with his fingers poised in mid-air. ‘When’s the next stageco
ach to Yuma due?’

  The old man was still shaking as he gathered his thoughts.

  ‘There’s one due through here at sundown, sir,’ he croaked. ‘Yes, that’s right. Sundown.’

  Carson marched back to his men. ‘We’re going to the saloon and have us a drink. I gotta think.’

  The telegraph operator watched as Carson grabbed the door handle and pulled the door toward him. Kane and Peters stepped out on to the boardwalk as Carson paused and glanced back at the frightened old man.

  ‘If you get a message for Bill Carson, bring it straight to me at the saloon,’ he demanded.

  The fragile old timer nodded. ‘I’ll bring it to you as soon as it arrives.’

  As the door slammed shut the operator opened a draw and pulled out a quart of whiskey and pulled its cork. He guzzled half its contents and then shook his head. There was something about looking into the eyes of the merciless Carson, which few men had ever done and lived to tell the tale.

  The elderly telegraph operator downed the remaining half bottle of fiery amber liquor and glanced at the empty vessel in his hand.

  ‘I sure hope it’s good news that he’s expecting,’ he stammered in terror. ‘I don’t hanker giving him anything that might upset that varmint.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Broken Wheel saloon was like numerous others in the more desolate portions of the west. It towered over the other sun-washed structures so that anyone with a hankering to quench their thirst, lose their wages or get their itch scratched knew exactly where to go.

  Bill Carson and his two dusty cohorts marched purposely across the parched sand toward the welcoming building. Carson stretched his long legs and stepped up on to the building’s boardwalk. He paused for a few moments under the shade of the porch overhang as his fellow outlaws caught up with him. As Kane and Peters stepped up on to the boards, Carson ran a match down the wooden upright and cupped its flame as he lit the cigar between his teeth.

  Like a sidewinder studying its next victim, his eyes darted around the virtually deserted street. He filled his lungs with the strong smoke and then shook the match before flicking its blackened remnants away.