T
he fringe of his buckskin shirt flapped in the light April breeze. “This way. The stage went this way, mules on the run, out of control.” Long strides of his knee-high moccasins carried him along a trail obvious to him if not to his comrades. He led his riding mule. “Hey, wait! Shouldn’t we bury them?” Two bodies pierced by arrows lay on the ground many yards apart. “Sure, kid, but it can wait. They’ve been lying here a week, and they’ll keep. They’re swollen. It’s gonna be nasty.” This pronouncement came from a big, broad-shouldered, soft-spoken man. The kid gulped. He was slight but strong having been in the west for a time. He gulped again, holding something back in his throat. He tried to mat down his hair without success. It stuck out from his head, and he settled for jamming his hat down over it. “I guess. If you say so, Matt.” A tall, lithe man looked up from a body at the frontiersman’s receding back. “M, I think Jack’s right,” he said to the kid. “We can bury them later.” He seemed to be the leader. Matt and the kid, M, followed him. Behind them came a dark man, a bit
taller than average, and well dressed. His eyes shifted from side to side as he watched. “Sure, Free,” said the kid, gulping again. They hurried after the frontiersman, Jack, walking rapidly away from the big stone building that had been the Stein’s Peak Station in the shadow of pyramidal Stein’s Peak. The trail followed the course the Overland Road, along the banks of an arroyo that cut deep along the mountain’s flank. They found the celerity wagon, a kind of coach with three seats on a flat foundation with canvas top and sides. It was over on its side in the deep wash. There was one naked, mutilated body inside. Matt whistled. “They didn’t like him much. I’ll bet Sam accounted for a few of them before they got him.” The kid turned green but said nothing. Jack nodded toward the peak where buzzards surrounded a clump of trees. They headed uphill, but carrion birds and coyotes unwilling to surrender their prey repulsed them. The dark man trailing fired a shot, and the scavengers departed in haste revealing two bodies hung by their ankles in the tree. Charcoal and ash showed where the Apaches had lighted small
