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  OUTLAW ROAD

  OUTLAW ROAD

  A Hunter Kincaid Novel

  By Billy Kring

  Copyright © 2013 by Billy Kring

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Image by:

  Elizabeth Mackey Graphic Design: www.elizabethmackey.com

  Books by Billy Kring:

  The Hunter Kincaid Mystery Series

  QUICK

  OUTLAW ROAD

  THE EMPTY LAND

  TONTON

  The Ronny Baca Mystery Series

  BACA

  L.A. WOMAN

  Short stories

  THE DEVIL’S FOOTPRINTS–A HUNTER KINCAID SHORT STORY

  JORNADA

  AS B.G. KRING

  WHERE EVIL CANNOT ENTER

  COWRITTEN WITH GEORGE WIER

  1889: JOURNEY TO THE MOON

  1899: JOURNEY TO THE MOON

  You can find these books and more at my website: www.billykring.com

  Want to know when my next novel is available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list here:

  Click me!

  To the men and women of Law Enforcement, my brothers and sisters all.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  A special thanks to my friend and fellow writer, George Wier, who regularly shows me there is more to writing than just writing. Mil gracias, amigo.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Excerpt

  CHAPTER 1

  The great canyons run like claw marks off the spine of the Sierra Madre, as if some enormous lion god had pulled Mexico to ground like prey. Pale wounds six thousand feet deep furrow through soil and stone in jagged chasms extending for many miles before shallowing and blending into the landscape of a less feral part of the country.

  The big ones are large enough to swallow the Grand Canyon four times over and still have room. The Barranca Del Cobre, Copper Canyon, is the largest and most well known, but there are others only slightly smaller.

  One, the Barranca Quebrada, Broken Canyon, is remote, rugged almost beyond belief, sheer-walled, and splintered with so many side canyons that few outsiders other than the occasional Tarahumaras, Yaquis and rumored small bands of the fierce ones who are refugees from another time have ever seen this mile-deep wound in the Mother Mountains.

  And that is where she lives…

  ***

  Anda Tumecas stood outside her tiny stone house at the edge of the great canyon and looked at the sky for a long minute. She was uneasy, and the air itself felt hot and stuffy, as though she had climbed too fast from the canyon floor below and her ears needed to pop. She yawned, but it didn’t help.

  There was something else too, something she couldn’t locate but could sense, and the hairs on her neck prickled. Anda let her eyes follow the rim all the way to the canyon trail some thousand meters distant.

  Nothing.

  At that moment, her stomach growled and the feeling, as if she was made of dried maize husks and was ten feet tall and two inches wide came over her. The dizzy weakness almost made her stagger. One plate of black beans in the last five days, she thought.

  Anda selected four smooth stones from the ground, tossed them up and down in her hands a few times to make sure they were going to be right, then put them in the pocket of her threadbare skirt. She trotted away in a lope, moving over the rough rocky ground and through a thin scattering of pines to a wide area of scrub brush and cleared ground.

  The snare was untouched, but she saw fresh tracks of six blue quail. Anda’s mouth watered. She pulled out a stone and at that moment felt all the hairs on her neck prickle. She turned and looked hard at everything along the canyon rim, scanning it for a full minute, until hunger gnawed at her insides with so much insistence that she turned away from the rim. Food was more important than anything else, and Anda knew she would soon starve to death without it.

  ***

  A thousand meters away Anacleto Holguin crouched behind a deadfall and whispered, “She couldn’t have seen me, no way.”

  He readjusted the cloth covers shading the lenses of his binoculars and rose to look again. The girl was hunting. Cleto touched his tongue to his upper lip as he fondled himself. His position was good, hidden in shade among a cluster of boulders and pines near the mouth of the narrow path that led down into the Barranca. Cleto’s legs were still weak and rubbery from the climb. Hijo de la chingada, he thought, that trail so narrow that one of his arms hung out over the edge with the gut-lurching view.

  Only horses, mules and foot traffic could traverse it, and only in single file. He wiped his face with a handkerchief. Getting from the village of Ojo Caliente to the start of the trail had been bad enough: a full day’s travel along the canyon floor over no discernable road and in a truck with broken shocks.

  Man, it had bounced his insides to jelly. At least he hadn’t had to walk. But the trail up to the rim, now that was real torture. Cleto glanced at his gang. Four men lounged in the shade, drinking from bottles of tequila, and ready for what was to come. When Cleto turned around, the men watched their fat pig of a boss alternately fondle himself and look through the glasses at the small Indian girl.

  Cleto watched Anda as she eased forward like a slow motion dancer, smooth and careful along the brush line. Through the binoculars, something that at such a distance looked like a swarm of gnats erupted from the ground in front of her and flew in scattered directions, and just as fast he saw the girl cock her arm and throw, knocking some bird from the air in a cloud of feathers.

  Anda picked up the quail and loped across the uneven ground to her tiny house. Cleto adjusted his hardening penis and pushed himself to a standing position. “All right, cabrones. She’s in the trap. Let’s go.”

  ***

  Anda heard his rasping breath before the door banged open and fat, sweaty Cleto Holguin stepped inside.

  “Hey girl, you grew up a little, uh? What are you now, thirteen, fourteen?” He gestured toward her chest. “Last time I saw you, you didn’t have those little nubbies, but I think you weren’t so skinny then, either. It was in Ojo Caliente, a year ago when I saw you, remember?”

  “I remember you tried to put your hand up my skirt,” Anda said. She glanced from Cleto to the door, but there were four hard-looking men standing just outside.

  “Nahh, that was just some playing. But this, this is going to be some real fun.” Anacleto played with himself through his white pants as he grinned at her. He’d never had one like this, not one so wild. She was so tiny and so good looking in an Indian way, with dark watchful eyes that reminded Cleto of a young wolf. Her long black hair was combed and neat, and the threadbare skirt and blouse she wore were clean.

  Cleto felt the heat of dark thoughts flush his face. No one could find out about this one. He would have his fun, then let the men have her and when everybody was finished, they would toss her off the rim. By the time somebody else found her, if somebody found her, she would be only a few bones and scraps of cloth.

  “You leave now,” Anda said as she backed away. “Leave now and take your m
en with you before someone gets hurt.”

  “Of truth? And who is going to do that, your parents? Maybe your boyfriend? Your parents are dead, and your boyfriend, you think he can rescue you?”

  Anda’s heart raced. How did he know about her family, and of Alsate, the wild boy who started coming by six months ago?

  “Oh yes,” Cleto said, “I know about him, the sneaking bastard. My men caught him four nights ago when he came into Ojo Caliente. He made the mistake of trying to sell his bundle of mota to one of my men. I tell you though; he stayed quiet a long time. But, after a little work with the knife, he started talking and man, you couldn’t shut him up then, you know? He talked about your parents dying in the quake last year and about you living alone up here and how he met you.”

  Cleto leered at her, “Let me tell you, he didn’t leave out anything, you understand? So now we want to share in a little of the honey you were giving to him. You can make it easy or hard, but either way, it’s going to happen, girl.” Cleto half-closed the front door and used his bulk to steer her into the bedroom.

  Anda backed into the only other room in the house as Cleto lifted up his enormous belly, reached under and unzipped his pants, pulling out a stiff, stubby erection. He held it in two fingers and said, “This snake is for you, chulita. You make friends, it’ll go easier for you.” He grinned as she backed to the bed. “I hope you’re a squealer,” Cleto said, “I like a little noise.”

  When he was one step away and still brandishing his member, Anda snatched a fork off the plate left from last night’s meager meal and buried the tines into the head of Cleto’s penis.

  It took a second for Cleto to register the pain, then his eyes grew wide and his mouth formed an O. He grabbed his groin and uttered a small squawk as he fainted.

  Anda watched the half-open front door but no one came in. She listened to them talking about who would go next after Cleto. The quail was lying on the small table, but in sight of the men outside. Anda thought about sneaking to the bird but knew she couldn’t risk it. To leave that much food…

  Cleto stirred and a small moan seeped from his lips. She made her choice then, and began removing the wooden covering over what had once been a window with glass panes.

  ***

  She lost the window one month after her family died, during a storm that erupted from a dark, green tinged thunderhead blowing with roaring winds so fierce Anda felt air pulled from her lungs. The boiling sky poured down its fury in a barrage of frozen, wind propelled missiles. The pounding from the hailstones was so terrifying and so loud Anda could not hear herself screaming. Iridescent white cannonballs the size of grapefruit smashed through the window to ricochet off the dirt floor and explode against the stone walls.

  The hail tore limbs from trees, knocked birds from their perches, and caused a deer to panic and run over the edge of the cliff, its legs still churning as it disappeared into the chasm. The hail flattened Anda’s small garden planted with the last seeds in the house and left smoking holes in the soft earth.

  Before it was through, Anda stood ankle-deep in ice and could see it piled against the side of the house as high as her waist. Trees looked like they had been stripped by loggers, and the ground was white.

  When the sun came out, Anda stepped outside and wandered in a daze as a dense white fog rose from the ice and blanketed the ground a meter deep, leaving a world where trees grew from clouds and the sounds of injured birds fluttering unseen near her feet left Anda feeling as if she were in a dream.

  Later when the fog thinned, she gathered broken limbs until there were enough to cover the bedroom window. She lashed them together with strips of cloth and tied it to the old, rusted square nails protruding from the wood around the window frame, then she chinked the larger gaps with mud mixed with grass, which left the opening foolproof from night-roaming predators, whether bear, lion, or man.

  ***

  Anda got the window uncovered and saw the area behind the house was unguarded. She went to Cleto and shoved on him until she uncovered his pockets. No knife, but she took his money. Anda was so close to the four men outside that she could hear the shuffle of their feet on the ground. One of them jingled change in his pocket.

  Anda left Cleto and eased out of the window as silent as smoke.

  A man’s voice yelled, “She’s getting away!” She heard them coming, and took one last look at her home before running toward the low ridges east of the house.

  The men were in good shape, and fast, but they were no match for Anda. One dropped off at the ridges, and another one seven miles later. The last man, the lean one with long legs, lasted for almost thirty miles before collapsing as she led him down into a small canyon some two thousand feet deep, and then up the other side, never changing her pace. He went down in a pile of loose talus on the deer trail and sat there, watching her top out on the far canyon rim. She ran another thirty miles before stopping to think about things.

  What to do? Her family was dead, now Alsate, the only other person she had seen in the last year was also dead. Her heart fell at the thought. He was so sweet and kind, and now he was gone. She had no one left, and Anda knew she would starve if she stayed. Or worse, Cleto or others like him would come. In her fourteen summers, Anda had only been to Ojo Caliente three times, and it was the home of Anacleto and his group of criminals. Anda thought of things her father and grandfather had talked of around the fires at night. Batopilas was one place she could find, because her father had pointed the direction to her once, years ago. Three hard days and nights across rough mountains he had said. She had no choice; it was stay and die, or leave.

  But after Batopilas, what? Her grandfather and father talked of another place, and their eyes had shone in the firelight when they mentioned it. El Norte.

  She made up her mind: first to Batopilas. She glanced once more at the house and saw no followers, then trotted off in a ground-eating lope.

  ***

  Two days later Anda awoke in her hiding place among a cluster of boulders and felt nauseous. She thought about what she had eaten: a small trout she scooped from a trickling stream and ate raw and the water she drank from the same stream. There had been nothing else. And it wasn’t so much her stomach as it was a little lower. She also checked herself to see if her period had started, thinking maybe it was her menses, but it wasn’t. She was three weeks late, and had never been late a day since she started. So she knew then. She was with child.

  Anda crawled from the boulders and looked around at the vastness stretching in every direction. Ridges of dark mountains one behind the other, like frozen waves on a darkening sea stretched before and behind her. Steep canyons dropped off on either side, with many going nowhere and ending abruptly against another range, or intersecting a larger canyon and continuing in a labyrinth that one could never escape.

  Anda had never been so alone, so isolated. She had not seen a road, a building, a domesticated animal, or a human footprint in two days of running along the narrow game trails. It was as if she was the last person left on earth. She thought of her father then, and reassured herself she was going in the right direction. It helped a little, thinking of his hard brown face and dark eyes. It also made her realize she was not alone. This pregnancy was a burden almost too much to bear on top of the others, but one has no choice but to endure, she thought. Anda touched her stomach, and then started down the trail. One more day to Batopilas, then north and cross where her father and grandfather crossed, and where her great-grandfather had fought the terrible Apaches in the old days. It was a dangerous, rough, desert place with perils behind every rock, but it was the way into…how had they called it? Yes, into this Texas they talked of with such shining eyes.

  CHAPTER 2

  As Hunter drove down the rough road near the Rio Grande, she thought about her upcoming trial for the shooting of El Lobo.

  The thought of it being moved up without any prior notice, man-oh-man, that was not a good thing. She tilted up the brim of the straw St
etson and wiped sweat from her forehead, then punched and jiggled and banged on the air conditioning controls. A feeble, hot wind came out of the vents. Why was it that stuff never broke until you were miles away from the garage? She put her left arm out and rested it on the windowsill, forcing a deeper tan on her left arm.

  The road was like a bad dream: just two pale strips snaking a bouncing, jarring path over a rocky, thorn-filled, sun-blasted landscape. The Rio was on her left and on her right the sloping talus fields and dark, razor-edged stone ridges angled down from brooding desert mountain ranges to cradle this river that was a siren’s call to both animals and men.

  Hunter rubbed her eyes. Nine hours today and no sign anywhere. Not even an old footprint. Plenty of animal sign though. She’d seen bobcat, quail, rabbit, fox, the half-eaten carcass of a crow, and twice she saw both lion and bear tracks. That was unusual. But no human tracks.

  The upcoming trial crept into her head again and Hunter felt a funny lurch in her stomach at the thought of it now only being two weeks away instead of six months. All or nothing, she thought. Either she’d have a job and her life could go on, or everything would come crashing down. It was a year-long burden that was suddenly much heavier.

  Hunter’s mind started to drift back to the shooting when her front wheels dropped into a pothole so hard that dust came out of the headliner like heavy smoke. Hunter coughed as she moved to ease the sudden pain in her lower back.

  “Pay attention to the road”, she mumbled. That last one had clicked her teeth together, and she didn’t need a broken axle spring to happen at the end of shift and in an area where her radio wouldn’t work.

  Right then Hunter realized she’d missed the path down to Tortuga crossing, and not by a little bit, either. Tortuga was at least a mile back. She stopped the Tahoe and thought about it. This was the end of shift and she still had to drive out of the river area, back on the road and back to Marfa, so at least two hours just for that. Then there was gassing up the Bronco for the next shift and paper work to do before she could leave the office for home. Another half hour at least. Then she had to change clothes, run to the store, buy beer for everyone, and take it to Raymond’s, where he was grilling fajitas for the unit agents.