Gunpowder Express Read online

  “It’s a hot one today, sure enough,” he said more to himself than to her, like a man long used to spending time alone with his thoughts will do.

  She did not reply, instead, continuing to watch the fight playing out down the hill from them.

  Inside the roped-off boxing ring, the two fighters shuffled their feet and circled each other, their movements lifting dust from the raked sand. One of them was a redheaded man, half a foot taller than anyone in camp. He wore a pair of black tights with a green sash tied around his waist and a pair of high-topped, lace-up boxing shoes on his feet.

  The man with the pipe muttered, “The damned fools put up a collection and ordered that boxing getup for him. Had it sent here all the way from San Francisco.”

  “Hmm,” was all the woman gave in reply.

  “Guess we couldn’t have our local champ looking like any old country bumpkin, could we?” the man with the pipe continued.

  Instead of answering him, the woman shifted her gaze to the other fighter squared off against the redhead.

  He was a big man himself, although not so professionally attired for a bout of pugilism. He was stripped to the waist like his counterpart, but instead of tights he wore only ragged work pants, and his feet were encased in, of all things, a pair of Indian moccasins. Well over six feet at a guess, still tall, but a couple of inches shorter than the redheaded giant he faced.

  She studied him closer to see what it was that had given her the initial impression that he was larger than he was. He was an abnormally big-jointed and big-boned man, true, and all angles and jutting jaw. Maybe that was it. And the muscles and tendon cords stretched over that outsized frame were visible even from a distance, as if every bit of spare fluid and finish had been sucked out of him. His waistband was bunched in wads and cinched tight over his gaunt belly with a piece of rope that served as a belt, as if the pants were two sizes too big for him or as if he hadn’t eaten regularly in a long, long time.

  Truly, he should have seemed almost a sad, comical figure standing in that ring in his ratty, oversized pants and Indian moccasins, and with the shaggy mop of his black hair hanging lank and sweat damp over his brow as if he hadn’t had a haircut in months. And to add to that impression was the still, almost bored expression on his face, as if it didn’t matter that the mining crowd was cheering for the redhead to cave his head in. Just a raggedy man too far from where he had come from and too far from his last good luck. But still, there was something about him. Maybe it was the scars.

  To say that the big man’s face was scarred was putting it nicely. Maybe he had been handsome once, and maybe he still was if you liked them rugged, but it was hard for her to look away from the scars. In between the broad swath of his forehead and the jut of his blunt chin, the bridge of his nose was knotted and bent, obviously having been broken more than once. And his eyebrows were so scarred that one of them was all but hairless, and similar scars marked his cheekbones and the rest of his face. All like a roadmap of pain, and story symbols of a life of battles painted on him for all to see.

  While she was contemplating such things, the redhead swung a wide, awkward fist that clipped the scar-faced man on the jaw. Even with no more than she knew about boxing, she could see that the redhead had little skill for such things. But skill or not, he was powerful. And that slow, ponderous fist he threw had enough power in it to knock his opponent down, even though it had only grazed him. The scar-faced man lay in the dust while the referee called for the end of the round and made sure the redhead went back to his corner.

  “I thought he was supposed to be a professional,” she said to the man with the pipe. “Professional, you said.”

  “I didn’t use that word,” the man answered. “I said he was tough, or at least that’s the rumor.”

  “Well, his reputation isn’t doing him much good.”

  The man beside her nodded, but didn’t seem especially bothered by what they had seen. “They say he brought Cortina’s head back to Texas in a sack.”

  Her voice was quiet like she was short of the air required to speak in a normal tone, breathless and slightly husky, as if the afternoon heat had sucked the oxygen from her lungs. “A tramp boxer who cuts off heads in his spare time? Not exactly inspiring, and a poor recommendation for employment if I ever heard one, if that’s really even him.”

  “Oh, it’s him, all right. I’m certain of that. Same one that tamed that mob in Shakespeare a few years back, and the one that got back that Redding boy from the Apaches last fall. Read it in the newspaper and I heard it from an army officer I ran across in Tucson,” the man said. “And there’s another rumor going round that he spent the winter in Mexico hunting after another kid he lost down there while he was after the Redding boy.”

  “You know how people like to talk.”

  “Maybe.”

  “How did he end up here?”

  The man took another thoughtful puff on his pipe and shrugged before he answered. “Rode in about two weeks ago wearing rags and riding a horse about as starved as he was. Said he’d been in Mexico and lost his traveling stake. Wanted a job.”

  “Is that why you believe that story about him going back to Mexico after the other kid? Because he said he had been in Mexico?”

  “No, I didn’t even know who he really was until somebody who had seen him box up in Silver City recognized him and came and told me. But that story fits with what I saw. He came from the south, and unless I miss my guess, he’d ridden a far piece on nothing but guts and bad water.” The gray-haired man pulled his pipe from his mouth and used it to gesture at the scar-faced man in the ring. “Notice what kind of Injun moccasins he’s wearing?”

  “They’re Apache, I presume.”

  He put the pipe back in his mouth and nodded while he drew on it. “You always were a smart girl.”

  “What else?”

  He shrugged. “Shows up to work every day. Doesn’t complain. Doesn’t say much at all, for that matter. Best man with a double-jack I’ve got unless it’s Ten Mule there. That redheaded devil can swing a sledgehammer, I promise you, but that man yonder isn’t far behind him.”

  “That’s not much to go on.”

  “Any man that will pester an Apache has got plenty of guts, and he got Cortina. Cortina was good with a gun. Real good.”

  “Still . . .” She put a gloved pointer finger to where her mouth would have been if not for the veil, as if rethinking what she had been about to say and shushing herself.

  “Who else could I hire?” he asked. “There aren’t many around here that might handle the job and fewer that wouldn’t laugh at us if we asked them. There was a man over at the store yesterday claiming he saw Irish Jack and two of his gang on the road between here and White Tank.”

  The mention of that name caused the woman to turn her head and look at him, and she took a deeper breath before she spoke again. “You said we need at least four men.”

  He nodded. “Six or eight would be better.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to find six or eight, and neither do you. So, let’s say four guns.” She gave an inclination of her veiled face toward the boxing ring and the scar-faced man only then getting up off the ground. “Say that’s one. Who else have you got in mind?”

  “The Dutchman will come.”

  “Waltz? You trust him more than I do.”

  “He’s tough, knows the trail, and if he says he’ll go, he’ll go.”

  “Who else?”

  “The Stutter brothers.”

  She nodded again, as if she, too, had thought of them but didn’t like it. “I’d trust them farther than I would the Dutchman, but they aren’t exactly the brightest stars in the sky.”

  “Maybe not, but they’ve both got good rifles and they’ve offered to let us use the company coach.”

  “I still don’t like it,” she said.

  “You forget that this isn’t your run. It’s mine.” The man squinted at her through his pipe smoke.

  Her rep
ly came no louder than any of those that came before, but her voice was stronger. “I’ve got as much riding on it as you do. Don’t you forget that.”

  They stood in silence once more, watching the fight. By then, the scar-faced man in the moccasins had gotten himself back up and to his corner.

  “Got to give that to him. Not many can take a lick from Ten Mule and get back up.” The man beside her jabbed a thumb in the direction of the boxers, and the corner of the man’s mouth curled in an ironic smirk around the stem of his pipe.

  “Widowmaker,” she said. “That’s what they call him, isn’t it? The Widowmaker?”

  “That’s what they call him.”

  She turned as if to go, not toward the boxing ring below them, but the opposite way. She had taken several steps before she called over her shoulder, “It will take more than a name to get that gold to the railroad.”

  “Are you saying we ought to try and hire him?”

  “If Ten Mule doesn’t kill him first,” she said without looking back.

  Chapter Three

  Ten Mule Mike, that’s what they called the overgrown devil glaring back at Newt Jones, and if ever a name fit a man it was that one. The red-haired Irish puke had a head made of pure gristle and bone, and every punch he landed on you felt like a team of mules had run over you and kicked you twice in passing for good measure. Hard as nails, that one.

  Newt Jones leaned his back against the corner post and swiped a wet sponge at the sweat and the blood running down into his right eye where an old scar had been laid wide open above his eyebrow. He stared across the ring to where Ten Mule stood in the opposite corner of the prize ring. Ten Mule was sweating heavily, too, and there was a red knot over one cheekbone where Newt had clipped him one. But he didn’t seem especially bothered by it. Newt spat a stream of bloody spittle onto the sand between his feet and tongued the jaw tooth that Ten Mule had loosened for him. He’d be lucky not to lose that tooth.

  Heavy. Not just his arms and the fists hanging at the end of them, but Newt’s whole body and something on the inside of him suddenly felt outsized and sagging, weighing him down like a wet blanket. And it wasn’t only the battering he had taken in the first round or the punch Ten Mule had landed out of nowhere. Newt was plain and simple weary, and had been for a long time. Tired of it all. And that bonehead across the ring was staring at him like this was something new, as if knocking him down was really special.

  Maybe there was something to be said for a man who will keep getting back up no matter how many times he’s knocked down, at least that’s what some claimed. But Newt didn’t know what it was that was worth saying. “Don’t know the meaning of quit.” That’s what Mother Jones used to repeat almost proudly, as if that were a thing a man could hang his hat on and something that would get her boy somewhere. True, maybe, or maybe that kind of fellow just doesn’t have enough sense to quit. Either way, getting back up never got easier, like the whole world was packing fists and swinging at him every time he raised his head. And it never seemed to get him anywhere other than back in the same tracks he’d been standing in before. Fighting for nothing but the sake of fighting, where even winning didn’t feel much different from losing.

  And here he was again, getting his face pummeled for nothing more than the entertainment of people he didn’t know and for a lousy one-hundred-dollar purse.

  “Time!” one of the umpires cried as he held up his stopwatch.

  “Fighters, to your mark,” the referee in the center of the ring shouted.

  There was a confident grin on Ten Mule’s swollen mouth as he rolled his neck and loosened his hairy shoulders. He came forward at a lean with his chin tucked and his elbows out like some redheaded bull coming to gore everything in its path.

  Newt moved toward the line scratched in the dirt at the center of the ring so slowly that he was almost shuffling, and so lost in his own thoughts that the referee had to ask him twice if he was ready and good to go for another round. Newt only nodded. Maybe that blank expression on his face was a daze from the hard lick he had taken to the head, or maybe he was simply daydreaming. And maybe either one of those two reasons was why the cheap shot Ten Mule took at him to begin the second round worked so well.

  The referee hadn’t finished his hand motion to start the new round before Ten Mule poked a stiff jab at Newt’s face, practically throwing the punch over the top of the referee. The crack of the fist striking Newt’s chin was loud, and it snapped his head back like his neck was made of India rubber. The crowd of miners pushed against the top rope and cheered louder than ever when Ten Mule followed that jab up with a straight, hard right that knocked Newt down to one knee.

  The referee called for the end of the round and stepped between the two fighters, but not before Ten Mule took another cheap shot and grazed a left hook across the top of Newt’s forehead. Newt went from kneeling to lying flat on his back for a second time and was still staring up at the blue sky when the referee finished wrestling Ten Mule back to his corner.

  “Get up, you puke!” one of the miners leaning over the top rope yelled at Newt. “Get up, you lily-livered poser.”

  Knocked down for a second time in as many rounds, Newt shoved himself up on one elbow and glared in the direction the voice had come from, but let it go at that. It was all he could do to get the rest of the way to his feet and stagger to his corner, much less bother with a smart-aleck drunk. And on top of that, it wasn’t like that one was the only loudmouth in the crowd rooting against him. Ten Mule was a local favorite, and most of Vulture City was jeering and throwing catcalls Newt’s way. And never was there born a mining camp crowd with some whiskey under their belts that could exactly be called anything close to reserved or polite when they got their blood up.

  He took the same sponge he had used earlier, threw it aside, and lifted the whole bucket of water and poured it over his head. Then he turned and leaned his back against the corner post again, waiting for the cobwebs to clear from his head and gripping the top rope to either side of him until his legs felt steadier.

  Whereas Newt was alone in his corner, Ten Mule had a pair of men to help him. One of them, a little Mexican fellow, was trying to wipe Ten Mule’s face with a wet sponge, but the big redheaded fighter pushed it away with an impatient scowl.

  The other man in Ten Mule’s corner, wearing a derby hat and stripped down to his vest and rolled-up, gartered sleeves, was trying to give his fighter some kind of instructions. But Ten Mule wasn’t having any of that, either. He brushed him off, same as he had the Mexican, and turned his head and accepted the cigar somebody in the crowd behind him shoved in his mouth. He took two good puffs on the smoke stick before he handed it back. A mug of beer was next passed over the top rope to him, and he turned it up and downed it in one long pull while the Mexican massaged his shoulders. Ten Mule handed the mug back while he wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand, still watching Newt. A gloating smirk slowly spread across Ten Mule’s mouth, and he put one fist in the other, cracking his knuckles so loud that the sound of those popping joints carried across the ring.

  Newt returned Ten Mule’s stare without changing expression. Smug bastard. Smoking cigars and drinking beer in the corner to show how easy it is for him. Caught me like a fool with the cheap trick at the mark and thinks I’m easy pickings.

  Newt felt the old devil rising up inside of him—the devil that liked this kind of thing; the devil that didn’t have enough sense to quit; the devil that was slowly coming awake and wanted nothing more than to walk over there and gouge out both of Ten Mule’s eyes and drag him around by his skull.

  “Fighters, to your mark!” the referee called out.

  Newt started to complain to the referee about the quick punch and Ten Mule sneaking in another lick after he was down, but held it in. The fact that the referee hadn’t so much as given Ten Mule a warning meant that he wanted to see the Irishman win as badly as most of the crowd did. Anything said about it would be nothing but wasted bre
ath. And besides, the old devil was blowing smoke inside Newt, and it was hard to talk any time the devil started smoking like that.

  Ten Mule came forward quickly with that same confident, smug look on his face. Newt moved slowly to meet him, milking every bit of time he could to clear his head and to get his legs under him. The referee began to count off the eight seconds Newt, as the downed man, was allowed to reach the mark under the London Prize Ring Rules.

  “Get out there, you puke!” the same one in the crowd that had heckled him before leaned far over the top rope and all but screamed in his ear. “Some kind of fighter you are! Haw, haw! The Widowmaker, my ass!”

  Newt reached the mark just as the referee reached a count of seven. The referee nodded at him to get his fists up, and Newt did so sluggishly, as if it took all the energy he had to do that much. Ten Mule saw that, and that nasty grin of his got bigger.

  The referee glanced at each fighter to see that they were ready, and then with a chop of his hand between them and a quick step back, he motioned for the round to begin. Ten Mule was big and he was tough, but his size didn’t extend to his intellect. He saw the sag in Newt’s shoulders and the slow way Newt had readied his fists and elected to try the same cheap trick that had worked the round before. And that was exactly what Newt wanted him to do. At the same instant the referee’s hand was dropping, Ten Mule poked his left fist out aimed at Newt’s chin, only this time it didn’t connect.

  From the crowd’s point of view—and Ten Mule was probably no less shocked—Newt moved with surprising quickness for a man who had only an instant before appeared out on his feet. He bobbed his head to the right and let Ten Mule’s jab slide past him and then leaned back and bobbed the other way to slip the looping overhand right that Ten Mule followed with. The punch meant to end Newt merely flew over his right shoulder, and in doing so, Ten Mule found himself off-balance and his whole right side exposed. Newt split the redhead’s ear with a left hook and then followed that blow with a right uppercut under the edge of Ten Mule’s breastbone. Ten Mule went up on his tiptoes and doubled over, and the air gushed out of him in a groan. His legs wobbled and he would have fallen on his face then and there, but Newt bull-rushed into him and pinned him against the ropes.