Dust of the Damned (9781101554005)

by Brandvold, Peter

  “To reassure yourself what?” She offered Charlie a cockeyed grin. “You think somethin’ might have happened to that winged demon? I don’t think so, chiquita. When you conjured him, you outdone yourself and any witch I ever known here or in the Old Country.”

  Ravenna lowered her glance from the rims of the canyon walls and turned her head forward once more. She frowned darkly, not a customary expression for her. It worried Charlie a little, and he laughed to cover it. “Come on, chiquita. Chico’s fine. Maybe he’s taking siesta.”

  “Sí.” Ravenna rode along, brooding, worried. “That’s probably it, Charlie.” She cast her anxious glance to the right, where an old, massive rockslide formed a jagged hill against the north wall of the canyon, starting just below a great gap in the wall, where an earthquake had likely caused the cliff to bulge and drop.

  “Whoa.”

  Ravenna stopped her gelding and threw up a hand for the others to follow suit as she perused the massive slide, pulling her nickering horse’s head up, the bit clacking in its teeth.

  “Now what is it?” Charlie was impatient, edgy. “Goddamn, girl, you’re startin’ to make me nervous, and I don’t get nervous.”

  “I saw a flash up there in those rocks. Might have been a rifle.”

  The others turned to follow her stricken gaze.

  “You sure?” Charlie asked.

  “Of course I’m sure. You think I’m seeing things?”

  “I don’t know,” Charlie said. “You’re worried about a fucking dragon it’d take a whole ton of dynamite to put a dent in….”

  “Fuck you, Charlie!”

  Snarling, she rammed the dull points of her spurs into her gelding’s flanks and galloped thirty yards to the base of the canyon’s north wall. While the mount was still moving, she leaped off the horse’s back and onto one of the boulders comprising the rockslide. Cocking her Winchester one-handed, swinging the barrel up and down, she leaped like a mountain goat up the slide, picking her way quickly, black hair dancing across her shoulders and flashing in the golden sunlight flooding that side of the canyon.

  She climbed a hundred feet up the slide, leaped onto a high, narrow boulder and down the other side, into a niche among the rocks. She dropped to a knee and scoured the niche’s floor.

  Recent boot tracks scored the floury dirt. There was something else. Ravenna reached down, picked up the half-smoked cigar butt, and held it up to her face. She rolled it between her fingers.

  Still warm. And store-bought.

  Ravenna dropped the butt, rose, and unholstered her ivory-gripped Remington. She followed the prints back down the canyon along the slide, until they disappeared among the tumbled boulders. She stared out over the side of the slide, seeing nothing but more rock. Whoever had been here a few minutes ago was gone.

  She holstered the pistol and retraced her steps back down the slide to the canyon floor. As she walked out to where her horse stood, ground-tied, she glanced over at Charlie, Lucky, One-Eye, and Curly Joe. They were all staring tensely up canyon, all unsheathing their rifles, except Curly Joe. Now Curly Joe unsheathed his saddle-ring carbine and whistled softly through his crooked teeth.

  Ravenna swung up onto her gelding’s back and neck-reined the horse around to face up canyon. She stiffened in her saddle, that recent dark expression returning as she saw the six riders approaching from fifty yards away, angling out away from a bend in the north canyon wall. They were little, dark men with long, black hair, in breechclouts and deerskin vests and high-topped deerskin moccasins. They were like living shadows astride horses.

  They carried nocked bows in their wiry, muscular arms, holding them out flat in front of them while also holding their mounts’ braided hide reins. Swords of what appeared to be gold dangled from beaded sashes encircling their waists.

  The riders were so incredibly tattooed it was hard to distinguish anything else about their features. All their horses—rugged, short-legged mustangs—were also marked with tribal designs, with painted rings around their eyes and talisman designs unfamiliar to Ravenna etched across their breasts.

  The witch was vaguely confused. Whoever had left the cigar stub in the rocks had not been one of the natives approaching her group now. These men wouldn’t buy their tobacco in any store. Were she and Charlie being stalked by a white man as well as by these natives?

  Charlie glanced wryly at Ravenna. “You didn’t say there’d be ’Paches out here, chiquita.” His voice echoed loudly off the stone walls.

  “Those aren’t Apaches, Charlie.” Ravenna’s voice was pitched low with alarm. Fire flared in her veins as dream visions flashed behind her eyes.

  She jerked a savage look at the wolf pack leader. “We must kill them now, Charlie,” she screamed. “Kill them now!”

  Chapter 31

  THE LOST TRIBE

  AND A VOICE ON THE WIND

  A chill wind blew from down canyon against Zane’s back, blowing his sombrero forward. Clamping the hat down low on his head, he turned to squint behind him along the narrow, steep-walled corridor of striated granite, basalt, and sandstone, the jagged-edged rim poking like gnarled witch’s fingers at a sky tan with windblown dust. The dust swirled toward him along the canyon floor.

  “Lousy luck,” he said. “This wind’s gonna rub out the Angels’ sign.”

  “Don’t need it.”

  Zane turned to Hathaway, who was staring off the canyon’s right side. The short, stocky man dismounted and led his mule over to a boulder leaning against the canyon’s southern wall. He squatted beside the boulder and placed his gloved right hand against the side of the rock.

  “What is it?” Angel asked, lifting her voice above the wind’s keening.

  “Wolf’s head carved in this rock!”

  Zane and Angel both swung down from their saddles and walked over to stand near Hathaway. Jesse did not dismount, as his leg was hurting, but he gigged his buckskin over. The scout was running his right index finger along a crude wolf’s head about the size of a man’s open palm chiseled into the lower-middle section of the boulder. “I seen one a while back, figured it was just some kind o’ rock painting like you see all over the Southwest. But now I reckon it was somethin’ more.”

  “Prospectors often use such signs to lead the way back to a remote digging,” Zane said. “In case they can’t remember where it is exactly, or they lose their maps.”

  “Sorta like Hansel and Gretel layin’ out breadcrumbs,” Jesse said.

  “You think that’s what this is?” Angel asked. “A prospector’s signpost?”

  Hathaway straightened, pulled his hat brim down snug on his head. “I reckon we’ll know if we keep heading down this canyon and find another one.”

  They mounted up and continued along the canyon, the building wind blowing their horses’ tails between their hind legs and keeping a nearly constant curtain of grit and tumbleweeds ensconcing the riders. Where the canyon corridor forked, the three riders scrutinized the cliff walls.

  “There,” Zane said, reining General Lee toward the north canyon wall, nearest the right fork in the corridor.

  Another wolf’s head had been chiseled into the granite and limestone. It was fainter than the other one but still recognizable—a definite signpost. Zane gigged General Lee along the right corridor, the others falling in behind him, Angel riding to his left. Riding to Hathaway’s right, Jesse yelled, “Anyone else feel like someone’s watchin’ us?”

  Zane glanced back at the Missourian riding crouched in his saddle and tightening his jaws against the gale.

  “You see somethin’, Jesse?”

  “In your head or elsewhere?” Angel added with a faintly wry note.

  “Nah.” Jesse glanced over his left shoulder, then swung his head forward again. “I just got a creepy-crawly feelin’ between my shoulders, like someone’s starin’ a bull’s‑eye on my back.” He managed to turn it into a joke, grinning at Angel. “Used to think it was one Marshal James Coffin. Couldn’t be him now, though, could
it? Not in the daylight!” He stretched his lips wider, showing his small yellow teeth.

  Zane glanced at Angel. Even through the windblown grit, and even though she tried hard to hide it, he could see the injured look in her eyes. And the rage. He felt it himself, and before he fully realized what he was doing, he’d drawn the Colt Navy from his cross-draw holster. The click of the hammer was nearly drowned by the wind.

  He aimed the pistol at Jesse’s face. “I do believe you’ve outworn your welcome, James. Time to ride on over the divide with Cole and Frank an’ the boys.”

  “Hold on!” Angel rode over and nudged Zane’s right arm down. “I’ll fight my own battles, mister. And we’re going to need all the guns we have against the Angels. If he makes it through the battle, I want the pleasure of watching him hang.”

  She reined Cisco around and gigged him on up the right-forking canyon. Hathaway cast his white-ringed gaze between Zane and Jesse. “Boys, boys, boys…”

  Zane depressed the Colt’s hammer and slid it back into its holster. As Hathaway gigged his mule after Angel, Zane held his hard gaze on that of Jesse James, whose pale eyes had grown uncustomarily apprehensive when he’d seen the big pistol bearing down on him.

  “You keep riding her,” the ghoul hunter warned the Missouri outlaw, “and not even she’s gonna be able to save your worthless hide.”

  Jesse frowned, tipped his head to one side. “You an’ her…?”

  “She goes her way; I go mine.” Zane nudged his hat brim down once more, reined General Lee around, and put the big palomino into a trot along the right-forking canyon trail.

  Not far ahead, Angel’s and Hathway’s mounts stood riderless in the middle of the corridor. Angel and the scout were crouched over what looked like rubble from a collapsed cutbank littering the canyon’s right side.

  Zane rode over, was about to ask what had caught their interest, when he saw a bloody, brown, tattooed arm sticking out of the rubble. Beyond, a brown eyebrow peered up from its bed of loose, red dust and clay. Hathaway was looking into a horseshoe-shaped alcove cut into the canyon wall just beyond the collapsed cutbank.

  He wandered around for a time, Angel following him, her red hair blowing wildly in the wind. Zane walked into the alcove, saw a few more bodies hastily tossed among the boulders that littered the alcove’s floor.

  “Three more,” Angel said. “With the four someone tried to bury under the bank there, that makes six.”

  “Six who?” Zane crouched over one of the bodies—a young man wedged between two boulders, where he likely wouldn’t be easily seen by someone passing through the main canyon. He wore crude deerskins with dyed designs that Zane had never seen. On the top of each of the young man’s moccasins was a red wolf’s head about as big around as a gold eagle coin.

  “I was gonna say ’Paches,” Hathaway said. “But I ain’t never seen Apaches painted so.” He stood over Zane, fists on his hips, and shook his head slowly. “I seen several of them wolf heads. One over there had it tattoed on his chest. Never heard of no ’Pache, Pima, Papago, Navajo, or Yaquis tribe with such a totem as that—just like the wolf heads we seen in the canyon yonder.”

  “Whoever they are,” Zane said, “I see no firearms of any kind on ’em. Some bows and arrows.” He brushed dust away from the leg of the young brave before him, uncovering a long, slender sheath with an engraved gold handle jutting up against the youth’s sharp hip bone. He wrapped his hand around the handle and drew the sword, staring in wide-eyed awe at the solid gold, razor-edged blade.

  All up and down the length of the blade had been etched the figures of wolves engaged in hunting or mauling various creatures—rabbits, deer, mountain lions, bears, and, most fascinating of all, faintly comical caricatures of fleeing humans.

  “Here’s another one,” Angel said, holding the blade she’d found in both hands, staring down at it in wonder.

  Jesse had dismounted when he’d seen the gold and was pulling up another sword from the dirt and gravel of the collapsed cutbank, grunting against the pain in his wounded thigh. He ran his hands down the blade he’d found, his eyes fairly dancing as he scrubbed away the grit and saw the pure, glistening gold beneath.

  He shook his head and laughed. “Frank, this breaks my heart.” Tears beaded in his eye corners. “It purely breaks my heart, brother, that you and Cole and the boys ain’t here to see this.”

  Zane lowered the golden sword, and willed himself to let it drop back down where he’d found it. Even at such a dire time, gold had an intoxicating effect. One sword would probably be worth as much bounty money as he’d earned in the past five years.

  “Leave ’em.” He slapped his hands together. “We got more important work ahead of us.”

  “Leave gold?” Jesse laughed, tears now streaking the dust on his cheeks. “I don’t think so! I’m gonna take me one of these here pigstickers in case we don’t make it back this way. You know how much this is worth?”

  “Think about Frank and Cole, Jesse,” Angel said, knowing the way to the emotional Confederate’s heart. “How would they feel—you droolin’ over gold when their killers are still pounding the trail?”

  Jesse looked at her, blinked the tears away, squinting against the dust blowing in under his hat brim. Angrily, he held the blade out before him in both hands. “You got a nasty side, Marshal.” He dropped the sword, swung away as though it caused him great pain, and grabbed his buckskin’s reins.

  He’d just swung up into the leather when Zane, also walking toward his mount, Angel and Hathaway behind him, saw the outlaw flinch. In the grit haze kicked up by the wind, he thought he saw something sticking out of Jesse’s back, just below his right shoulder. Jesse stiffened and lifted his chin, gritting his teeth.

  “Gnah!”

  His cry was obscured by the wind.

  Zane froze. It saved his life. An arrow whistled through the air about six inches in front of his face and clattered against the rocks to his right. He jerked a look to his left where several horseback riders were galloping up the canyon toward him—five dark little men with long, black hair, all triggering arrows expertly as they rode. More arrows clattered among the rocks, while another slammed into the side of Hathaway’s mule. The beast immediately began pitching and braying indignantly, though Zane had seen the arrow bounce off its stirrup and clatter onto the canyon floor.

  “Company!” Zane shouted, palming both his Colt Navies, dropping to one knee, and beginning to trigger each pistol in turn.

  He dropped one of the Indians with his first shot, as the brave leaped off his galloping mount—a lucky shot that sent the warrior spinning and cartwheeling to the ground, whooping wildly. The others commenced yowling then, as well, and Zane dropped another just as the man triggered an arrow that sliced just past the ghoul hunter’s left cheek.

  His bullet plunked through the brave’s upper arm. As he reached for it with his other hand, dropping his bow, either Angel’s or Hathaway’s bullet plowed into the side of his head, blowing him back off his heels and laying him out, quivering. The fusillade of bullets was too much for the natives. The two survivors of the attack ran back down the canyon, one pausing only to trigger one more arrow before wheeling and sprinting off after the others and their fleeing, buck-kicking mustangs.

  Zane holstered both his empty pistols and ran over to grab Jesse as the outlaw sagged dangerously backward and sideways over his skitter-stepping buckskin’s right hip. Wrapping both arms around the outlaw, he pulled him easily out of the saddle; the wiry Missourian couldn’t have weighed much more than a slightly hefty woman.

  As Hathaway walked a ways down canyon to make sure their attackers were gone, Zane set Jesse down against the cliff wall, the outlaw grunting against the pain of the arrow fletched with brown and black hawk feathers protruding from his right shoulder, the stone point sticking out his back. Blood stained his denim jacket and duster.

  “Leave it to a goddamn redskin to fill me with misery!” Jesse cried, kicking against the pain. “Pull
the goddamn thing out, Zane! Pull it out!”

  “If you’ll hold still, I will.”

  Zane shoved one of the man’s fumbling, flailing hands down, then with his own hand grabbed the six inches of arrow protruding out the man’s back. With his other hand, he grabbed the front to hold it steady, then broke off the back part with a dull crack.

  “Ahh!” Jesse kicked his legs and tightened every muscle. “Christ, could you give me some warnin’? We might have our differences, Uriah, but we’re brothers of the Confederacy, fer cryin’ out loud!”

  Zane kept a firm hold on the front of the arrow and jerked it forward. It slid out smoothly, blood dribbling out from the hole it left in the outlaw’s shoulder. Crouched on the other side of Jesse, Angel immediately stuffed the outlaw’s own neckerchief into the hole, clamping it down hard.

  Jesse said, “Oh, mercy!” His eyes closed, and his head sagged to one side as he lost consciousness.

  A voice rose on the wind. “Confederates?”

  There was a pause during which Zane thought the voice must have been a trick of the wind itself. He and Angel looked around, frowning.

  The disembodied shout came again, louder this time, as though its owner was moving nearer from the opposite wall of the canyon. It was a man’s voice, shrill with exasperation.

  “Did you say ‘Confederates’?”

  Chapter 32

  JERICHO TURNIPSEED

  Zane straightened tensely, quickly thumbing cartridges from his shell belt into one of his Colts. A figure appeared on the far side of the canyon, materializing out of the blowing grit as he ran a sort of shambling, stumbling run, open fur coat slipping down his shoulders.

  He held an old, rusted trapdoor Springfield carbine in one hand, barrel up. The gun was held together with wire and rawhide. He was tall and thin, and at first Zane thought he had no hat, but then he saw it dangling down between the man’s shoulders, blowing in the wind.