Stand Up and Die

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Hell, he told himself, we’re in New Mexico Territory, almost in Arizona Territory, both of which once belonged to Mexico. Of course there would be Mexican riders.

  It was still no concern to McCulloch. What concerned him was down below, raising dust and moving west. When the mesa ended, and the trail led down the northern side of the rise so that none of the travelers below to the south would have seen them, McCulloch signed to the Comanche that he had seen enough.

  They rode down the slope to rejoin their companions, and Matt McCulloch busied himself focusing on the job at hand. Keeping the mustangs moving, keeping an eye on that evil woman, Charlotte Platte, keeping a watch for any man or men on the rises north and south of them who might be trailing them, and not some party of families heading west.

  Yet when they made camp that afternoon, and after they had degraded Charlotte Platte once more by making her strip and drink from the cook spoon or ladle every ten or fifteen minutes while she cooked supper, McCulloch pointed to the ridge that rose off northwest of the trail.

  “There were two riders,” he said. “Likely Mexican. Following that wagon train.”

  Keegan looked at the ridge, while Breen looked at what passed for a trail.

  “There are a lot of men in that wagon train,” Keegan said. “I don’t think two men pose a problem.”

  “Wooden Arm figured they’ve been following them for a while,” McCulloch said.

  “Could be sneak thieves,” Breen said. “Waiting for those folks to get careless so they could make off with some horse, oxen, maybe some supplies.”

  Breen spit, shook his head, and added, “From what we’ve seen of their camps since we started following their trail, they tend to get careless every time they make camp.”

  “Yeah,” McCulloch said.

  “It could very well be, laddies,” Keegan said, “That those two hombres are just scouting along, taking notes, making plans. Maybe they have been ordered to keep an eye on the pilgrims, then ride up ahead, join their fellow blackhearts. Ambush those pilgrims.”

  “Either way,” Breen said, “Those folks aren’t our responsibility. All we have to worry about is getting Matt’s horses . . . and more important, my prisoners . . . to Precious Metal.”

  “Wim-men,” Broken Arm said, jabbing his good fist west. “Ride . . . wag-gons . . . all-so.” He waited to see if he had been understood.

  “Hell,” Breen said. “That son of a gun was a whole lot easier to tolerate when he didn’t speak anything but grunts and barks.”

  “Women ride in our train, too,” Sean Keegan said, nodding at Charlotte Platte.

  “That’s no woman,” McCulloch said.

  “And she’s worth five thousand dollars,” Breen said, “In Precious Metal, Arizona Territory.”

  “Hell,” McCulloch said.

  “Hell,” said Breen.

  “He-ell,” grunted the Comanche kid.

  “Well,” said Keegan, “Before we all be forgetting what jackals we be, let me, as an old horse soldier, point out that Camp Singletree is yonder way. We could swing by it in a day, two at the most, and one of us can report to the commanding officer what we have found. He can send a company of cavalry to escort those fine pilgrims to wherever they want to set down roots.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Breen whispered, and McCulloch confirmed that with a short, quick nod.

  “Supper’s ready!” Charlotte Platte roared, and banged her spoon against the cast iron pot.

  “Now that we’ve settled that troublesome matter,” Keegan said with a grin, “Let’s eat. This day and all this talk have left me famished.” He turned toward the cook pot, saw the cook, frowned, and stepped back behind Breen, McCulloch, and even the Comanche boy. “You boys go first. I must remember that my fine mother raised me to be a gentleman.”

  * * *

  They did not have to detour south to Camp Singletree. The next evening, blue-coated soldiers rode into their camp. The gruff-looking sergeant nodded and introduced his commanding officer, a pimply faced second lieutenant named Bright. He was, Keegan later said, badly named.

  “We are scouting for hostiles.” Lieutenant Bright’s eyes locked hard on Wooden Arm.

  “Apaches?” Keegan asked.

  “Navajos,” said the kid in blue.

  “Navajos.” Keegan almost laughed. “Lieutenant, me lad, we’ve had no trouble with those Indians since before the rebellion ended.”

  “That is no longer the case,” the lieutenant said. “We have reports from Don Marion Wilkes that Navajos have been raiding his cattle, and others say they have far more nefarious plans in mind. Massacre. Taking over the country—”

  “That we stole from them.” Breen laughed.

  That flummoxed the snot-nosed kid, but then he pointed at Wooden Arm. “And what is that, if I may ask?”

  “Can’t you tell, laddie? Ol’ lieutenant me boy,” Keegan said, “That’s a scarecrow.”

  “It’s our guide,” Breen said.

  “A Navajo guide?” the lieutenant asked.

  His sergeant grunted and added roughly, “Beggin’ the lieutenant’s pardon, sir, but that ain’t no Navajo.”

  “That’s a fact, Sergeant,” McCulloch said. “He’s our guide. He’s on release from the reservation in the Indian Territory. Bill—I mean General Sherman, that’s William Sherman—but, hell, we’ve known each other so long, he’s still Bill to me and I’m still Cody to him.”

  “Cody?”

  Matt McCulloch nodded. “That’s right. William F. Cody. Buffalo Bill, my pards call me. Ain’t that right, pards?”

  “Yeah,” Breen said. “That’s right, Buff.”

  “Lieutenant”—Keegan pointed west—“here’s one thing that might concern you more than our guide and our boss, the gallant William Cody. There is a party of white settlers riding west. You can see their tracks plain as day. They were about a day or two ahead of us, but they move like a snail.”

  McCulloch picked up the story. “We spotted tracks of a couple of horses—shod horses, not Indian ponies—”

  “Unless the savages stole them,” the sergeant growled.

  McCulloch frowned, but let his head nod up and down. “I’ll give you that, Sergeant. They could be Indians who ride shod horses, smoke Mexican cigars, and wear big spurs on their cowboy boots.”

  “They could be trailing those settlers, planning an ambush up the trail,” Keegan concluded.

  The sergeant twisted in his saddle and looked west, considering, but then his eyes moved to the mustangs, and he forgot about playing hero and rescuing a party of homesteaders. He got the look in his eyes that Keegan, Breen, and McCulloch had seen far too often.

  “Good lookin’ mounts.” He looked back at McCulloch, who just stared.

  When the sergeant moved his hand toward his holster, McCulloch put his hand on the grips of his Colt.

  “Lieutenant,” the sergeant said, “We do have authority to confiscate horses should we need them during wartime.”

  Most of the color left the green pup’s face.

  “Wartime?” Breen asked, rising and letting his hand push back the jacket he wore to fight off the desert chill with the coming night. His hand hovered next to his double-action Colt.

  “There’s this . . . um . . . trouble . . . with the . . . Navajos,” the lieutenant said.

  “We’ve been on this patrol since yesterday,” the sergeant added.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Keegan said, and the soldiers noticed that he now held his Springfield in his arms. “Since yesterday? Boys, when I rode, there were months I didn’t get out of me saddle until it was time to eat the horse that had carried me to Hell and back.”

  “Well”—the lieutenant looked around—“there’s this war.”

  “There’s a war about to start,” McCulloch said, “If you make one move toward those mustangs.”

  “They have a date with this man’s army at Fort Wilmont,” Keegan said, “And you might have a date with old Lucifer himself if you
get in our way.”

  “Fort Wilmont.” The boy officer straightened in his saddle. The Irishman’s statement had given him a way of retreating without shame. “Well, that is different, gentlemen, since you have a contract with our brothers in Arizona Territory for your horses, and since you have a signed release for the savage . . . umm . . . Cherokee,” he guessed. “I think we have all we need for now.”

  “Just try to follow that trail,” McCulloch said. “Let those folks know they might have some unwelcome company.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” the lieutenant said, head bobbing.

  “At least send a galloper to them,” Keegan said.

  “Right. Galloper. Very good, sir. Now—”

  “Supper’s done,” Charlotte Platte hollered again from the fire. “Come and get it.”

  Hands moved away from the weapons as the wind picked up, carrying with it the aroma of stew.

  McCulloch nodded at the young officer and his surly sergeant.

  “Gentlemen, we’d be honored if you and your men would dine with us this evening before you ride on about your duties.”

  “Aye,” Keegan said. “We insist.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Rolling over on his back, Hank Benteen lowered the binoculars and slid back down the embankment, careful not to raise dust or send a stone rolling down toward the horses. A whinny or any other sound could travel a long way in this country.

  “What did ya see?” Uncle Zach asked.

  “They’re getting ready to pull out.” Hank did not bother to tell him that this morning, like every morning since they had caught up with the murderer of Hank’s cousin, he had focused on the gorgeous woman who took off every stitch of her clothes at gunpoint. She never looked too shamed about baring her breasts and everything else to three tough, dirty, ignorant fools and a crooked-armed Indian boy.

  “Why don’t we just ride down there and shoot ’em all down like the dirty dawgs they is?” Hank’s uncle asked one more time.

  “They vood kill mein Bruder,” Hans Kruger said, almost in a panic.

  “They’d be the one who shoots us down like dirty dogs,” Hank said. “For the last time, Uncle, the men down there are professionals. They’ve killed more men, I suspect, than the number of Mexicans the boys of the Alamo shot before they got cut down.”

  The old coot cussed and snorted, and went back toward his horse, mumbling his normal rant. His kinfolk, like his own boy, like all outlaws their age didn’t know what it was like. They wouldn’t be a patch on Zach Lovely’s overcoat. Why back in his day . . .

  “No soldaten?” the Hun asked.

  “Huh? Speak English, buster,” Hank said.

  Kruger did some ignorant pantomime trying to find the word, and at length did say soldiers.

  “No. The soldiers are gone.”

  “Well,” Uncle Zach said, “That was your excuse for not hitting them yesterday. Soldiers was too close by. Might come to investigate. Now them soldiers ain’t close by, and you still don’t want to hit the low-down skunk who murdered my boy, your cousin, your right-hand man.”

  “You’ve always been my right-hand man, Uncle Zach.”

  That should have shut up the damned fool for a few hours, at least, but it didn’t. Not that windy morning.

  “It just don’t make no sense, not to me. Maybe I’m just too danged ol’ to know no better than how we’d avenge a death before every outlaw, and all my kin, and even this damned Hun turned dandified, gentrified, and petrified. We’d just ride down there, kill ’em all or get killed. By gawd, we’d make a show and get revenge or die tryin’.”

  “And what would happen to those mustangs?”

  “Mustangs?” The old man spit. Shaking his head and wiping his mouth with the back of his coat sleeve, he swore again. “Ponies. Runts. Not like the big hosses we rode. Them things ain’t no better than donkeys. They’d stampede, of course. Scatter like the wind.”

  The old man was so worked up, he couldn’t think straight.

  Like the wind? Hank frowned.

  “What you mean is that our fortune in gold would scatter with the wind.”

  “Huh?”

  “Those horses, small that they may be, will bring a fortune if we could sell them at a town.”

  Uncle Zach wet his lips, considering the possibilities. The German tried to follow the conversation without much success.

  “My plan is to hit that murderer and his pals when they are in town or at a trading post when they leave the boy and maybe one man with the Hun’s brother and that woman. We kill them all”—by all, Hank meant Otto Kruger, the woman, and Hans Kruger after his usefulness had disappeared—“then we take the herd into the town, and sell them.” He laughed. “That’s almost like we were earning honest wages for once in our lives. Now do you understand?”

  Hans Kruger scratched his head, but Uncle Zach wet his lips again and smiled. “Well, maybe I was wrong about how ignorant folks is.”

  “There’s a crooked trading post a little ways west of here. I’m not sure we can hit them by then, but shortly after they get past Camp Singletree, they’ll be following the stage road. That’s when we’ll hit them. The horses will be easier to round up in that country, and we won’t have far to drive them to some place where they can fetch us a profit. You’ll get your revenge then.”

  If it all worked out, maybe Hank would have that fine-looking woman to himself for a little bit. He wouldn’t have to see her from a looking glass, either. He also thought of something funny. Hans Kruger and his brother were wanted. Not many people knew Hank Benteen in the Territory of Arizona. If he turned in two dead Kruger brothers for a reward, that would be one mighty funny joke.

  * * *

  Scouting around, Killed A Skunk watched a raven fly across the mesa, then decided that the white man with the see-far glasses had moved away to join his two foolish comrades instead of watching the white woman put on her white-man clothes or watching those who’d stolen Broken Buffalo Horn’s son continue their dumb white-man work before leading the fine Comanche ponies farther from the land of the Comanches.

  He hurried to where Broken Buffalo Horn and Lost His Thumb waited with the horses.

  “Do the three white men still watch from far away?” the great holy man asked.

  “It is so,” Killed A Skunk answered and took the hackamore to his horse from Lost His Thumb.

  “What of those men who have taken my son and our Comanche ponies?” Broken Buffalo Horn inquired.

  “What they always do,” the warrior answered. “They make the woman stand naked before them.”

  “Yet they never touch the woman.” Lost His Thumb shook his head. “All white men are fools, but Texans are the worst of the fools.”

  “Maybe it is their medicine,” Broken Buffalo Horn said.

  “It is bad medicine,” Lost His Thumb said.

  “No.” The medicine man nodded. “I see the reason now, though why it has taken so long I do not understand. Perhaps the God of All Comanches made me wait to see, but now I see, and it makes sense. These white-eyes get their power from the woman. She makes them strong.”

  Lost His Thumb and Killed A Skunk exchanged glances.

  The great Comanche medicine man said, “I will explain. When each day begins, as soon as Mother Sun has risen and there is light enough to see, these white-eyes have their woman disrobe before them. This woman, her hair is not black like a crow’s feathers. She is too tall and too thin and not as beautiful or desirable as any of my wives, but she is still a woman. Pale perhaps, and hair the color of flames, not like a fine black pony, but still, she is not a bad woman to look at.”

  He let his friends picture the woman.

  “When they make their camp, and before she cooks their meal that fills their stomachs before they go to sleep, these white-eyes again make their woman disrobe before them again.” He shrugged. “Sometimes, they make her disrobe in the daytime.”

  “At least one of them always aims a weapon at her,” Lost His Thu
mb said.

  “Because they fear this strong woman,” Broken Buffalo Horn said. “They fear her power. She must have great power. She could smote them like Killed A Skunk when he grinds ants into the sand. That is how strong this white-eye woman’s power must be.”

  “So why does she not smote those white-eyes?” Killed A Skunk asked.

  “Because she is not their enemy, nor are they her enemies. It is a test. A test that requires much power.”

  Again, the two warriors looked at each other.

  Broken Buffalo Horn laughed. “You do not see, do you?”

  “No,” said Killed A Skunk, “But we are not holy men. We do not see beyond the horizon.”

  The great medicine man nodded. “It is true.” He drew a breath, exhaled, and said, “What would you do if a woman, the woman of an enemy—not a woman of the Comanche who is spoken for by another Comanche man, but a woman you found on a raid, a white-eye woman”—he grinned—“What would you do if you were in front of that white-eye woman that the white-eyes have, and she disrobed before you?”

  “I would—” Lost His Thumb began, but the medicine man cut off the rest of his sentence.

  “Exactly.” Broken Buffalo Horn grinned wider. “Now do you see?” He did not wait, but explained the obvious, so obvious, he should have seen it long ago, but did not. The God of All Comanches was testing him, blinding him, but now he knew.

  “Every day they look at a fine woman. Every day they do not touch this woman, they do not molest her, they even—white men are strange animals—let her put her clothes back on. They grow stronger. Their will grows stronger. They become more and more powerful every day, every time that woman stands before them naked. They will be more powerful than any Apache they should meet on the trail west.”

  “And what of us?” Killed A Skunk asked.

  “They do not know about us,” Broken Buffalo Horn said. “But we have watched this woman, too. We have not ridden down to take coups, or take scalps and gain glory for all Comanches.”

  “I have been tempted.” Lost His Thumb hung his head in shame.

  “Yes, but you have not ridden down there. Our strength grows, not as much as those white-eyes, but it grows. Theirs grows more because they are closer. But they are white-eyes. We are Comanches. We are more powerful than they are already, and the little power we gain by watching this woman from a distance makes us stronger than they could ever hope to be.” Broken Buffalo Horn nodded with finality.