Hard Trail to Socorro (Bodie Kendrick - Bounty Hunter Book 1) by Dundee Wayne D

Author:Dundee, Wayne D. [Dundee, Wayne D.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Bil-Em-Ri Media
Published: 2014-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

They rounded up the Indian ponies to make sure they didn't find their way back to the rest of Fire Shirt's band. Two of them had been seriously wounded by stray fire from the ambush. Kendrick took them out into the dunes, shot them and covered their corpses by collapsing fine white sand over them.

The dead braves they piled against a wall of the gap, concealing their remains with sand and gravel and a couple fair-sized boulders they were able to roll into place.

Doing this in the terrible heat of the middle of the day was grueling, exhausting work but it had to be done. Sooner or later the seven braves would be missed and there was no guarantee they had not left some kind of word or sign that would bring the other renegades in this general direction. Circling buzzards can be seen for miles.

Callahan and Pearlman, clad now in shirts and moccasins from the dead and re-armed with their own weapons that had been taken from them, were fit enough to ride. They had five ponies to choose from and Kendrick would provide them with some grub and a full canteen. They could easily make it back to the Rio Grande and follow that to Las Cruces or until they were met by one of the outlying cavalry patrols. Hopefully, without running into any more Apaches.

The problem was Thurmond. No way he could sit a horse, and attempting to somehow tie him in the saddle for the ride out would only amount to torturing him some more, let alone severely hampering the progress his comrades could make. He should already be dead, but the madness he had slipped into was in some way sustaining him. They had carried him into the shade where they fed him water and kept him wetted down while they cleaned up the ambush site, but none of it had brought him around any. He kept moaning and mumbling incoherently the whole while, experiencing and seeing things with his destroyed eyes that only existed inside his head now.

Veronica continued to tend to him.

Kendrick, Ludek, Callahan, and Pearlman stood at a distance, discussing the problem in low voices, casting uncomfortable glances in the direction of Thurmond whenever he would call out in his delirium.

"All I know," Kendrick was saying, "is that we need to move away from this place. Now. As far and as fast as possible. We got our way to go, you soldier-boys got yours. If we're lucky and get a desert wind again tonight it will stir the sand smooth and not even an Apache will be able to tell what happened here or to track the way anybody went."

"Only poor old Thurmond ain't got no luck left," Callahan pointed out.

"He does if you got the grit to give him some," Ludek said.

They all looked at the ground. Every one of them knew what Ludek meant, but none of them were ready to deal with it.

"Ain't as if he's likely to come out of it, is it?" Pearlman said in his soft drawl.

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