Outlaw Mountain

“It’s a gift,” Joa

Ernie’s frown deepened. “You mean it’s something you were born knowing?”

Joa

“Well,” Ernie Carpenter said. “It’s pretty damned impressive.”

Frank Montoya came up behind them. In his early thirties, Frank was a tall man with a medium build. In hopes of disguising his receding hairline, he kept his hair barbered in a precision crew cut.

“Ernie!” Frank exclaimed. “You’re already here. Good. Doc Daly sent me to find you. She’s almost ready to start the proceedings, and she was hoping you’d arrived.” Frank stopped and looked around at the collection of haphazardly parked cars. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Was there a fender bender or something?”

Joa

“You’re sure?” Frank asked.

The very real concern fellow officers showed one another never failed to touch Joa

“If you expect me to arrest her,” Mallory objected, “what about statements? I’m going to need to talk to both you and your detective here.”

“We won’t go back to Bisbee without talking to you, Sergeant Mallory,” Joa

As Joa

“Will do,” Dick replied. “Besides, regardless of whether or not they’re suspects, it never hurts to chat with survivors.”

“Also, you may want to have one of the town marshals over in Tombstone slap some crime scene tape across the entrance to Alice Rogers’ house until we have a chance to process it and make sure whatever happened didn’t happen there.”

“I’m one jump ahead of you there,” Dick Voland told her. “By now, the crime scene tape should already be in place.”

“Thanks, Dick,” she said. “I knew I could count on you.”

Talking as she walked, Joa

Alerted by her yelp, Frank turned around just in time to see Joa

“I always thought they called cholla jumping cactus because the cactus jumped,” he observed with a smile. “I see now the cactus stays put. It’s really the people who jump.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” she ordered curtly, “Come help me. This hurls like hell.”

Without another word, Frank pulled his Leatherman multi-purpose tool from the pouch on his belt. Flipping it open to the pliers configuration, he used that to remove the two offending cactus segments. Once the spines had been pulled free from her body, Joa

“Thanks,” she said gratefully as Frank restowed his Leatherman. “I couldn’t believe how much those spines hurt.”

Frank shook his head. “If you think this was bad,” he warned, “just wait till you see what happened to Alice Rogers.”

They both moved forward then. Deep in the grove of cacti they came to a small space where the cholla wasn’t as thick. Several of them appeared to have been knocked down. In the middle of the fallen cacti and on top of one-impaled on the three-inch spines-lay a small female form that was covered with ants and surrounded by a cloud of buzzing flies. Hundreds of needles dug deep into the woman’s back and sprouted from her legs and arms. The slightly bloated body was clad in a print dress and a lightweight sweater. There were torn nylons on her legs, but no shoes. Her vacant, empty eyes stared upward. One tightly clenched fist rested on her breast. The other lay outstretched on the rocky ground, as if searching for the pair of wraparound sunglasses that lay in the dirt just out of reach.

Fresh from her own excruciating encounter with the cacti, Joa

A stiff breeze, blowing out of the west, swept across the scene and filled Joa

Engrossed in what was going on around her, Joa

“Well,” he said. “I’ve heard of people sleeping on a bed of nails, but this is ridiculous.”

It was a nonsensical comment, and it certainly wasn’t fu

“It’s ridiculous, all right,” she agreed when she finally sobered enough once again to be capable of speech. “Ridiculous but deadly.”