Shadow Shooters

by George Arthur

  Yates, across the river, pulled his Colt. He thought to wound her, maybe slow her thinking down some, make it easier for the boys to grab her and bring her back across to him. After the fear of the attacking dog, he now looked at that lithe naked body with lust, eager to touch her. He licked his lips while the boys closed in. He felt heat in familiar areas. He decided not to shoot – he’d likely kill her.

  Hattie Smooth Water managed to strike One Eye Tim Brace – who didn’t see so well with that cavity – once across the head. She swung for Wild Fletch, but he quickly moved in and grabbed the branch with a backhand to her face.

  And they had her.

  Marshal Leather Yates tried to shut out the guttural animal grunts of the two men on the mud in tree shadow while he pulled his clothes from the saddle. He didn’t want to dress. He wanted more. And more. He didn’t want those swine to crawl over her, slapping and fist punching away her whimpers. One Eye looked grotesque with his black dirty cavity where an eye was supposed to be. The mean Wild Fletch Badger liked to slap and hit and squeeze and hurt, making her cry out while he did his business. She was so sweet and innocent, and deserved the marshal’s gentle kind of loving. He had been the first with her, and that had to give her a memory, as honeyed as his – maybe not a nightmare. He even thought about shooting them and taking her away with him. But that made no sense. They had to get the stagecoach. He held his clothes, not yet stepping into his pants. He would order them off her and wash her clean and take her to another place where he’d enjoy her again. They both kept slapping her, telling her to shut up.

  And then Wild Fletch Badger hit her too hard.

  And when her whimpers stopped, the boys stood and stared at her, wearing their wet shirts and vests and kerchiefs – only their pants and boots removed. They looked at each other, then at her, then sheepishly at the marshal when he put on his pants and joined them.

  One Eye said, ‘We was too rough with her.’

  ‘You’re animals,’ Yates said. She lay so still, her mouth slack, eyes staring without seeing, black hair a nest around her face, beautiful body bleeding along her legs, and still, so still. ‘You belong with whores,’ he said, ‘you should lie with dogs.’

  ‘Mebbe so, Marshal,’ Wild Fletch said, looking at the body as if the words didn’t matter to him. ‘She wasn’t very strong – thought she might hold up better, not be so fragile – thought she might last longer than she did. You’re right, whores is tougher, they’re used to rough treatment so they got more stamina.’ He shrugged, then sighed, and turned to the marshal with a blank expression. ‘So, what we gonna do now?’

  Marshal Yates stiffened and frowned, turning his pork-chop whiskers left and right. ‘What was that?’

  One Eye and Wild Fletch looked around them. One Eye said, ‘I didn’t hear nothin’.’

  ‘Feet running on the mud,’ the marshal said. ‘Brush rustlin’. I think mebbe somebody saw us, been watching.’

  The three walked along the bank. One Eye said, ‘That dog set a warp in you, Marshal. There ain’t nobody.’

  Yates shrugged. He looked back to the girl, swept his gaze up and down the river, and exhaled with a shudder. Sweet, innocent, but gone – he had to get back to the task at hand. That was real.

  He said, ‘Push her in the river. She’ll float on down to the Colorado and likely be in Mexico ’fore anyone finds her. Throw the dog in, too. We’ll take her clothes to the shack behind the Way Out Saloon; leave them there for Hawkstone and his murderin’ Apache to find. I got the note already writ. Catch her appaloosa and we’ll cut the pony loose at the village, give Hawkstone some reading material.’

  One Eye said, ‘She whispered something jest before she went, kept saying it with her grunts while we done her. She said his name – Anson. Ain’t that the first name for Hawkstone? Yeah, I remember. Guess she was stuck on him.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Hawkstone and Black Feather rode in sunset back to the village, they found the old woman sitting cross-legged in front of her wickiup, rocking back and forth and wringing her hands. The wrinkled stone face held no expression, her lips were a straight, tight line. Her grief showed in her dark eyes. They looked up at Hawkstone with fear and loss and expectation.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, standing down from the saddle.

  She handed him the note. ‘It tied to her pony.’

  He held the note in both hands while he read that Hattie was taken as a hostage, and Hawkstone was to meet the marshal and Pearl Harp at her hotel room Wednesday morning eight o’clock. The wind wiggled the edges of the paper. As he took in the short, clipped words of Marshal Leather Yates, his jaw tightened and his breath quickened. He squinted, and his teeth clamped so tightly together they began to bring dull pain. He handed the note to Black Feather.

  ‘My sister,’ Black Feather said when he had read the note. His dark eyes gazed up and away to the west towards the burned shack. He wrinkled the note in his palm with both hands, kept crushing it until it became a tight, tiny ball. He threw the ball into the dead ashes of a cold camp fire. ‘The trail is still fresh. She liked to go west in the afternoons. We start at the burned shack.’

  ‘Let’s git riding,’ Hawkstone said.

  With open-oven biscuits and fresh canteen water, Hawkstone and Black Feather reached the timber skeleton when it was too dark to make out ground signs. They dismounted and walked around the shack.

  Hawkstone said, ‘We know where she was headed. She went to the Rio Gila for a swim and a bathe.’

  Black Feather knelt on his left knee studying the ground. ‘We do not know if she made the river.’

  Hawkstone stood stiff, holding the reins of the chestnut in a tight fist. His teeth still ached from clenching. ‘If they hurt her – if they did anything. . . .’ He doubled his fist and held it in front of his face.

  Black Feather stood and faced the fist. ‘My brother, you have sailed the world and travelled the land. You know the way of men. You have watched these men, and you already know what they have done with our little Hattie.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Hawkstone said. His voice broke and he had to clear his throat.

  ‘You already know.’

  Hawkstone sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, we both know, especially these men. We can only hope she is still alive.’

  ‘We can hope,’ Black Feather said. He walked in a circle around the front of the charred timber skeleton his head bent to search the ground. ‘We will sleep now. See better in daylight.’

  In the morning, Black Feather studied hoofprints in the dewy earth. He walked slowly, leading his appaloosa stallion by the reins.

  Hawkstone walked ahead with the chestnut. ‘The pony was alone, no fresh tracks around.’

  ‘No,’ Black Feather said. ‘They would wait for the river. They would want her without clothes.’

  ‘Stop talking like that.’

  ‘You can tell. You put off the believing, but you know.’

  ‘Let’s get to the river.’

  Black Feather held up his palm. ‘We will move slowly with the track of the appaloosa pony. They did not come close here, they held back. Here, between the shack and the river they kept their distance. I can backtrack the way from the village and pick up their horse prints. We rode over them last night.’

  ‘I want to see the river,’ Hawkstone said.

  ‘You are anxious, my brother. Were you so anxious when you scouted for the cavalry?’

  ‘It wasn’t personal then,’ Hawkstone said.

  Sometime later, Black Feather swung down from his pony and bent with his knee to the ground. ‘This was where they drifted behind to follow closer. You see the extra prints, the brown stain on the mesquite?’

  ‘Tobacco juice,’ Hawkstone said.

  Black Feather nodded. ‘From the spitter.’ He remounted his horse and walked on.

  ‘Wild Fletch Badger.’ Hawkstone looked towards the river, still a mile away. ‘They’d want to be close enough to watch her undress.’

 
‘But she does not know. She rides on, no change in direction – the prints walking towards the water. She did not turn back to see what came after her.’

  They rode silently over brown desert prairie grass thick with mesquite in places, by juniper with scraggly trunks, and around waist-high rocks until they saw willow and cottonwood ahead, and heard the light splash of running water from the Rio Gila river. The sun burned warm enough to have them reaching for their canteens when they reached the trees.

  Hawkstone was the first to see the overlap of horse hoofprints. ‘This is where they caught up to her.’

  Black Feather pointed to his right. ‘There she take off clothes. She already in the water when they ride up. One sits on the bank to take off boots, here.’ He walked a few steps. ‘The dog, Volcano, ran here.’ He walked on. ‘He was shot here. He continues to run. Deep boot tracks of a fat man. See the blood. Volcano bit the fat man.’

  ‘Marshal Leather Yates,’ Hawkstone said.

  ‘Volcano is dead. See entrails on mud.’

  By studying tracks, Black Feather laid out the events that happened by the river. Hawkstone followed, and found tracks on his own across the river. He even held the tree branch she had used. Against his will he had to accept that Hattie Smooth Water was dragged back across the river and raped by three men. What he accepted more readily in his own mind was that the three men truly had only a short time to live. But that truth did not tell them where the men took Hattie when they had temporarily finished with her.

  Knowing that their princess was no longer a maiden, that she had had her innocence brutally taken from her, churned at Hawkstone. He found himself breathing heavily through his nostrils, snorting like a Texas longhorn bull about to attack. His muscles felt tight, walking or riding. Though he fought the image, he pictured the three of them, their grimy hands on her, forcing her to allow them their pleasure. They would slap her, maybe even hit her. Forced to submit to the savage ways of such men, a victim of their brutality, and their numbers, she was completely helpless. They took what they wanted, then dragged her off – dragged her off to where?

  Hawkstone and Black Feather sat on the bank, boots off, feet dipped in the river water. They smoked and passed the whiskey bottle back and forth.

  Hawkstone said, ‘Can you pick up the trail again?’

  Black Feather stared at the flowing water. ‘They clever, ride back and forth, split, come together, go south across river, north back to burned shack, return towards village. It takes me days to find them.’ He passed the bottle.

  Hawkstone took a pull, then a drag from the cigarette. ‘They sent Hattie’s pony to the village with the note. That means they either already hid her away, or they had her with them and were packing double on one of the mounts.’

  ‘I will know when I find tracks. If they pack double I see where they come from.’

  ‘Can you pick them up from the village, from the pony?’

  Black Feather rubbed his chin. ‘Many tracks around the village, many ponies ride in and out. It will not be soon.’

  Hawkstone turned to his blood brother. ‘You’re saying I got to ride with the hold-up. You telling me I got to ride with them rapists and not kill them right off.’

  ‘We cannot destroy them until we find Hattie.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Or, at least know where she is.’

  They sat silent, smoking and passing the bottle. When the vices were done with, both bottle and cigarette stubs were tossed in the current.

  Hawkstone said, ‘If I’m throwing in with the rapists, I got to find out if regulators are coming, and how many, and where they’ll be. If that fella Roscoe told the bank about the hold-up, he mighta mentioned Steeple Rock, but he don’t know the territory. The bank expects the stagecoach to be hit in New Mexico past Steeple Rock where the other hold-ups happened. Mebbe the regulators will wait there to surprise whatever bandits try.’

  Black Feather leaned back on his elbows. ‘When I find the trail and where it leads, I will ride for you. If you stay away from the hold-up, we must know the trail before next week.’

  Hawkstone stood. ‘I can’t stay away now. They got me ’til we find tracks. I don’t know which trail Pearl Harp will take. I hope she rides on. But if she’s there, I got to find some way to keep her away from the gunfire. You got to pick up the trail again, no matter how many days it takes.’

  As they mounted, Black Feather said, ‘These are bad hombres, my brother, they might try to gun you down at the stagecoach.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘So, you got a Franklin for them?’

  ‘When you talk to a man, watch his eyes. When he talks to you, watch his mouth.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Marshal Leather Yates thought to catch Pearl Harp still getting dressed, maybe in her unmentionables up there in her Wharton City hotel room, getting ready for him and Hawkstone. At seven-fifteen on Wednesday morning, activity in the hotel stirred slow and sour. The desk clerk with his vinegar face watched him come in and march for the stairs. Yates smelled coffee from the hotel restaurant kitchen, and wanted some. Inside his gut lay a pulsating fear that kept time with his heartbeat: what if Hawkstone knew about Hattie, the little princess? No, him and the Injun had been looking for almost a week and had found nothing. The previous night Yates had ridden out to pay a sugar call on Rocky Face Fiona and had checked the shack. Hattie’s clothes were still there. The only question now was if Hawkstone would show at Pearl’s room, ready for the hold-up.

  When he knocked, Pearl opened the door fully dressed in buckskin with a cigarette stuck in the corner of her thin mouth, and her Colt Navy .36 strapped to her hip. She squinted against the smoke and opened the door wide. She wore a thin black overcoat – now open – to eventually hide her woman shape, her hair bundled under a plains hat. A blue kerchief was tied loose around her scrawny neck.

  Yates hid his disappointment at not seeing her half-dressed or less, and went to a stand where she had a fresh pot of coffee, and helped himself. ‘No Hawkstone?’

  ‘He’s downstairs ordering breakfast to be sent up.’

  Yates raised his eyebrows. ‘He was here last night?’

  ‘All night long, you fat piece of hog.’

  ‘Whoa, prison whore, just hold on. You don’t talk to me like that.’

  ‘He told me what you and your buzzards did to make him join in.’

  ‘It was necessary.’ The marshal squinted at her. ‘Told you what?’

  Pearl mashed out her cigarette and sat on the edge of the unmade bed. She picked up her coffee cup and sipped. ‘How you got Hattie hid away someplace.’

  ‘It will all work out, Pearl, so jest settle yourself.’ The coffee tasted good. Pearl looked touchable in her skin-tight buckskin, but Yates figured he’d have nothing to do with Hawkstone’s leavings – like sipping a greasy cup – her skinny neck red with whisker burns – no matter how tasty it looked. ‘So, you’re both in, and we ride out less than an hour from now. No time for a big breakfast.’

  ‘Just toast and eggs. He wants me to ride away from this, go home.’

  ‘But you ain’t, right? We need you with us.’

  Pearl put the cup down. ‘Why? Four men is enough.’

  The harder Yates looked at her, the less attractive she became. It was that tough, experienced face and the neck done her in. She looked almost like a man. He found the track of his thinking went to just where and when they would shoot Pearl down. A ten- to fifteen-foot cliff overlooked the Rio Gila just before Steeple Rock. The land on the other side of the river was barren, without civilization. Her body might go over to follow the Apache princess and that torn mutt down into Mexico. Hawkstone would stay with the other bodies massacred by murdering thieving savages.

  Marshal Leather Yates turned in the middle of the room with the coffee cup in his hand when the door flew open and Hawkstone stepped in. He looked at Pearl sitting on the bed and at the marshal. He took two steps and smashed his fist into the marshal�
��s pork-chop whispered jaw.

  Yates dropped the cup as he fell back against the footrail of the bed and rolled to the floor. He was clawing at his holster when he felt the business end of Hawkstone’s Colt against his forehead.

  ‘Where is she?’ Hawkstone said.

  From the bed, Pearl said, ‘Don’t kill him yet, Anson.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘I need the money. We need the payroll.’

  Hawkstone cocked the hammer on the Colt. ‘I don’t. I told you to go home. It ain’t too late.’

  Yates got his thinking straight after the shock. ‘Kill me, and you’ll never see the little princess again.’

  ‘How about I just pistol whip you ’til you tell me where she is?’

  ‘After this job we got to do, I’ll take you to her.’

  Yates waited. Hawkstone paused. He worked his jaws while his hazel eyes drilled a glare into the marshal. Tension eased when Hawkstone pulled the Colt and stood.

  ‘Let’s get it done, then,’ Hawkstone said.

  ‘After breakfast,’ Pearl told him. ‘I ain’t robbin’ no stagecoach on an empty stomach.’

  From a bluff with the afternoon sun beating down on them, they watched the stagecoach roll away from the way station with fresh horses. Yates thought he heard gunshots, but he wasn’t sure – they were too far away to know. That would be the boys taking care of the guards, likely back shooting them while they rested waiting for the stagecoach to roll out again.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Hawkstone and Pearl.

  They mounted and rode hard towards Steeple Rock along the General’s road. The marshal had scouted the rocks and found craggy breaks where they’d wait for the boys to catch up. Behind the rocks was enough space to leave the stagecoach when their business was done. They kept their horses with them tied to junipers. Across the road, mesquite grew on flat land to the cliff, with the flowing Rio Gila below.