Only 06 - Winter Fire

didn’t pause in his eating while Case gave him a quick grooming, cleaned his hooves, and cinched the saddle up tight.
    As always, Case checked his repeating rifle and shotgun before he mounted. As always, he found them in battle-ready condition. He slid them into their individual saddle sheaths.
    He didn’t need to check his six-gun. He had done that the instant he awakened.
    Quickly he tied on the saddlebags and the bedroll, picked up Cricket’s bridle, and looked around for anything that he might have forgotten.
    The ground was bare of everything except tracks. Case wasn’t a forgetting kind of man.
    As he approached Cricket, bridle in hand, the stallion ripped grass, chewed, and swallowed with impressive speed.
    â€œYou just love slobbering up that bit with green stuff, don’t you?”
    The stallion lifted his head to receive the bit. Ropes of green drool hung down either side of his elegant muzzle.
    Case made a disgusted sound. “I know you’re laughing at me, you spoiled devil.”
    Despite his words, he was gentle as he bridled Cricket. He had been raised to value good horseflesh in the same way a smart man valued a good weapon. Take care of them and they would take care of you in turn.
    Too bad people aren’t like horses and guns , he thought. Be fewer wars that way .
    And no Culpeppers at all .
    He swung into the saddle with a swift, easy movement. Cricket didn’t flatten his ears or hump his back like many Western horses first thing in the morning. He accepted being ridden the same way he accepted dawn, just a normal part of life.
    â€œC’mon, Cricket. Let’s you and me check out that raggedy-ass wickiup saloon. We’ll see if that one-eyed padre is marking the cards any smarter this time.”
    Â 
    It was late afternoon before Case reached the place that was mockingly referred to by one and all as Spanish Church.
    The name partly came from the fact that the huge rock formation that was the rear wall of the building looked like a Spanish church if the man doing the looking was too drunk to focus very well. The rest of the name owed its origins to the original owner of the saloon, Pader Gunther. Pader was quickly corrupted into “padre.” Since then, whoever ran the bar was called the padre.
    The nickname Spanish Church stuck to the place like a bad reputation. The bad reputation, at least, was earned.
    The settlement was hardly more than a handful of rough shacks strewn along Cottonwood River. Most of the time the “river” was a creek small enough to spit across, but it ran year-round, which was rare in this part of the West. The creek’s source was in a cluster of distant mountains, where spring runoff raced down from snowy peaks through dry slickrock country, and from there into a maze of stone canyons no white man had penetrated.
    Spanish Church had no real street, no building worthy of the name, and no stable. The watering trough was the same muddy pool that supplied drinking water for the humans whose thirst wasn’t quenched by the local rotgut.
    From the top of the nearby rise, Case watched Spanish Church through his spyglass. He could see eight riding animals tied or hobbled along the creek.
    Two of them were sorrel mules.
    No matter how carefully he studied the mules, he couldn’t tell which Culpepper was inside the brush and canvas structure that passed for a saloon.
    â€œGood thing you spent most of the night filling your belly,” he said to Cricket. “It’s mighty thin pickings down there for man and beast alike.”
    Too many animals had been left along the creek to forage for themselves while their riders drank away the days and nights until their money or their stomachs gave out.
    â€œMaybe Ab rode one of those mules,” Case said softly. “Maybe I’ll just cut off the snake’s head and let the rest of the body thrash around until it dies of its own accord.”
    Maybe …
    His mouth flattened into a grim line beneath his black beard stubble.
    But not damned likely , he thought. Ab might have been the one who personally savaged Ted and Em before hesold them to the Comancheros, but the rest of his kith and kin didn’t raise a finger to stop him .
    For a few minutes longer Case weighed the advantages and dangers of riding into the settlement.
    If Ab was there, Case would be recognized, but not as one of the “Texicans” who was following the Culpeppers with a