Marshal Yates rode easy into the village. Smoke blocked vision like a black shroud. The payroll was buried someplace, either under one of the tepees or nearby. He dismounted and poked his boot around. He found a silver buckle with a silver dotted belt, and picked it up. He looped it over his shoulder. There were gold bracelets and silver necklaces he put in his pockets. The boys would return soon after their girly business. He knew from personal experience that kind of action didn’t take long. They’d be back and maybe ready to dig for the payroll. Or, they could return another time. The killing was sure enough done for now.
And after the killing, came the looting.
One nagging thought buzzed through the marshal’s head as he rubbed the stinging dog bite on the back of his leg and mounted his horse. He had reckoned that the end of the village would sever all connection with Anson Hawkstone and any threat to his life – but he hadn’t seen the body of the old woman or Black Feather anywhere. No sign of them.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Anson Hawkstone stood inside the shack behind Way Out Saloon. He held Hattie Smooth Water’s clothes while his chest and guts felt shredded as if a grizzly had clawed and chewed his entrails. He had trouble swallowing.
Black Feather stood by the wood-planked weather-worn door – the only light came from gaps between the boards. ‘I keep them here so you can see. They did not bring her here. They killed her on the bank and pushed her in the river. Children at a tribal village near Mineral Creek found Hattie – one or two knew she was from our tribe. A warrior brought her to us. We sent her to spirits in other clothes. These carry their scent. They held these and sniffed them before they raped her. We will burn them.’
‘The old woman?’ Hawkstone asked.
‘She is in the hills that reach for the Pinon Llano mountains with Burning Buffalo. She weeps with grief. We must get to the village. Bad medicine, my brother, I do not like what might happen. Spirits make me fear what has already happened.’
They rode as fast as Hawkstone’s wounds would allow – a trot, an easy gallop, finally walking their mounts. He had new clothes from Fort McLane to cover his bandages – Levi jeans with copper rivets at the pocket corners, a yellow light wool shirt and a black leather vest, a new Colt .45 Peacemaker, and a grey plains hat to cover the wrap around his head. His saddle scabbard held a Winchester ’76. His boots were still good, and he rode the chestnut mare with the Mexican saddle. They crossed the Rio Gila and rode slowly up Disappointment Creek.
The smell came at them first.
Hawkstone had not recovered from the rape and murder of Hattie. He carried her clothes in his saddle bags to be burned. When he caught the deadly odour of the village a burn stuck in his throat and his chest fluttered which made him foresee a dreaded sight – but the scene before his eyes did not prepare him for the carnage. The tepees at the edge were not there. No crows cawed from tree branches. No dogs barked. The first of the bodies lay in front of them. As they rode in, bodies spread among cold ashes the length of the village like mesquite bushes across the flat desert. A chill ran through him. Any substance in his chest sunk to the pit of his stomach. The chestnut walked uneasily, stepping carefully.
Black Feather walked his appaloosa silently beside Hawkstone. He pointed to a body with no forehead. ‘Jimmy Wolfinger.’ He nodded to a pile of ash. ‘My tepee was there.’
They looked left and right as their horses walked. Hawkstone recognized bodies, even some of the dogs. He tried to breathe shallow because of the smell. He looked up to see Federal Marshal Casey Steel sitting his mount in front of a ruin that had once been the old woman’s wickiup.
As they approached, Steel said, ‘What stirred up the cavalry to do something like this?’
‘Not here,’ Hawkstone said. ‘I ain’t talking here.’ He reined the chestnut to the right, away from the village to the big boulders along Disappointment Creek, beyond the bodies of four girls taken there. Steel and Black Feather followed.
They sat on boulders and pulled Bull Durham and corn paper and rolled smokes. Hawkstone leaned back against a rock. Every part of his body ached with patched bullet-hole stings. His heart and head felt numb.
Marshal Casey Steel studied Hawkstone. ‘What happened to you?’
Hawkstone said nothing.
The marshal looked from one to the other. ‘I got two wagons of prisoners coming from Yuma Territorial for burial detail. It will have to be a mass grave. You got anyone special, you got to say.’
Black Feather and Hawkstone inhaled cigarette smoke and remained silent.
Steel slid off his black Montana Peak Stetson and rubbed his thinning hair. He returned his hat. ‘I talked to the sergeant who took over the raid after his lieutenant got shot down. He says five of the ten soldiers got cut down. The cavalry had help. He talked about four bank regulators – one killed – and a town marshal and his two deputies. The marshal had come upon a stagecoach that was attacked by Apache.’
Despite his pain, Hawkstone felt grateful to the marshal. He was naming victims for them, saying how many cavalry soldiers and regulators there were, and those who plundered the village – the killing looters who would have to die.
Steel tightened his lips and looked back and forth. ‘Anything you fellas can tell me? Anything at all?’ He waited. He flipped his cigarette into the creek. ‘I’m gonna have a talk with the bankers in Tucson. Something ain’t right about all this. If them Apache was from this village and they held up the stagecoach and killed them people, then they came back here with the money the stagecoach was carrying. How much was it? Where is it? That was a private stage run by Longfellow Copper. So, my guess is they was running payroll out to the mines. Some braves in this here village held it up and come back with the money. The city marshal found the stagecoach and them stinking bodies and went running to the cavalry, mebbe figuring to get the money back. I don’t know if them regulators work for the bank or Longfellow. Either way the regulator gunmen had to have a reason to jump on the raid. I reckon they was paid. What do you think it was? Who do you think paid them regulator fellas?’
Black Feather flipped his spent smoke into the creek. He looked at the marshal then beyond him towards the village. He pulled his Colt and rotated the cylinders, checking the load. His black hair fell to each side of his face, hiding it. He said nothing.
Steel turned to Hawkstone. ‘You fellas can start talking my ears off anytime now. You ain’t doing yourself no good keeping shut. What do you know about what’s going on?’
Hawkstone smoked the last of his cigarette. He mashed his boot heel on it against the boulder and glared at the marshal. He grimaced and twitched with a shot of pain, and twisted his back. A wind had come up blowing across the tribal village away from the creek. The wind diminished the smell but did not eliminate it. Three buzzards flew past above them, their wings angled towards the carnage. He said nothing to the marshal.
Federal Marshal Casey Steel stood on his boulder, pulled off his Stetson again and slapped his leg with it. ‘Want you to know it was real pleasant chatting with you fellas.’ He pointed his finger from one to the other. ‘What you keep from me is goin’ to come back like a rattler. It’s gonna bite you with a poison that will either put you in a prison cell or kill you. Mark me, the pair of you.’
They watched the marshal step shakily down from the boulders in his high boot heels, walk his bowed stubby legs back to the village, mount up and ride out.
Hawkstone laid his head back on the boulder. He heard the wind rustle cottonwood branches and the splash of the fast-moving creek. He thought of Rachel Good Squaw and her touch and her response to his touch. He had left the money Black Feather brought with her. He trusted her without knowing why. She affected any decision he made now. The decisions he was about to make would bring changes he could not reverse, changes that would alter the course of his life for all the days he had left.
‘I wasn’t going back to this,’ he told Black Feather.
Black Feather squinted, looking
at whitewater. ‘Does my brother think we have choices?’
‘I reckon not. It’s jest, before prison I was one kind of man. I don’t know what kind. I don’t know what I was. Not a man, not human. Jest some sort of predator animal taking up space and doing harm to others. Not much good for nothing. I deserved prison. Only chance and luck kept me from getting hung. I would have deserved that too, the things I done. Ain’t no forgiveness for what I was and how I acted. When I got out I was a different kind of man. No more outlaw trail. No more killing for the sake of killing. I was gonna take the money they sent me to prison for and make a different life. Mebbe ride a hard, lonely trail but make it a good one, a decent one.’
‘You think that is beyond you now? Away in a land you cannot find?’
‘Mebbe, mebbe not. When we do what we gotta do, I may go back to what I once was, be no good again. I found Rachel and that might redeem me. Could be I was meant to ride the lonesome trail, ride alone. But I found that woman and she is good to me. So, could be I don’t have to be so alone. Maybe I might live as a decent man again, like when I was at sea, and right after, before they killed my wife and boy. Could be I can hang on to the woman. Then again – a man can get his head twisted with maybe and could be.’
Black Feather stood. ‘That kind of talk is out there, Hawkstone. It is after and beyond. You know what we must do, now.’
‘We see the old woman is comfortable first.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be headed to the banker in Tucson.’
‘I will find where the regulators live and drink. We will meet at the stagecoach station north of Fort Stevens. We go to them together.’
‘We can’t do nothing about the cavalry. The army would swallow us up. The Wharton City marshal and his pair of cockroaches come last.’
Black Feather started for the village and the horses. He turned to look back where Hawkstone followed, the black hair sliding over his buckskin-covered shoulders. ‘You got a Franklin, Hawkstone? You got a saying about them polecats?’
Hawkstone paused a few seconds in thought. ‘Virtue may not always make a handsome face, but pure evil will certainly make it ugly.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Saguaro Claw, the old Apache woman, was dying. Burning Buffalo had her in a shallow cave high in rocks where desert bighorn sheep roamed. The day had worn itself out, and twilight offered muted trails by the time Hawkstone and Black Feather left horses to climb among rocks and plants.
When Burning Buffalo saw them approach, he waved them to the cave. A beaded deerskin headband held his hair in place. The long pigtail hung down his back. His spear-scarred face looked sombre. They followed him on hands and knees into the cave where the old woman lay. A lantern showed the walls of the cave to be slick with wet.
The old woman’s face looked placid and empty of interest or life.
Hawkstone pulled her hand out from the buffalo blanket while he watched her deep creased colourless face. She felt cold to the touch. He was aware his vision blurred, aware of the sting in his eyes and the quiver of his lower lip. Black Feather looked away, his fists clenched. She squeezed Hawkstone’s hand as he bent to kiss her forehead.
In her final sigh, she whispered, ‘Hattie’. And she was gone.
Behind Hawkstone, Black Feather said, ‘Another life they must answer for.’
Hawkstone waited in darkness by the rock formation behind the Pima County Tucson Bank. He and Black Feather had camped beside the charred skeleton of his house. He had started before dawn for the ride to Tucson. He felt sore from his wounds and the fast full day ride, and hungry. He wanted a sip of whiskey. He was in no mood for banker nonsense. A lantern still burned inside the bank – Barron Jacobs worked late. No lights showed from the mining office fifty feet away. Jacobs had his mare tied near the back door. When the lantern blew out, Hawkstone used the banker’s pony for cover. He eased the Peacemaker from its holster. Barron Jacobs wore a tan banker suit with a string tie. He wore no hat. He came out of the door, and turned to lock it.
Hawkstone grabbed a handful of his brown suit jacket collar and jammed the Colt against the back of his neck. ‘You know the steps, Barron. Ease out your dainty pistol with thumb and first finger. Swing it out back here.’
Jacobs did as he was told. ‘I didn’t figure to see you again. I thought you’d be off spending the payroll.’
‘You so sure I got it?’
‘We aren’t fools, Hawkstone. Apparently, you are a fool to come back here.’
‘Let’s hike on over to them rocks. You know the way and the place.’
Hawkstone moved the Colt back and released the banker’s collar. They walked close together. Along the way Hawkstone stopped at the tied chestnut and pulled a bottle from his saddle-bag. They climbed the five feet and sat on the same boulders they had used before.
Barron Jacobs’ face shone smooth and slick as the boulders. A few strands of his thick honey hair wiggled in the breeze. He looked at Hawkstone, amused. ‘We’ve been here before. I told the marshal about you.’
‘What marshal?’
‘The federal marshal, Casey Steel. He’s the one told me your name.’
Hawkstone kept his Colt on his leg, aimed at the banker’s belly. ‘Casey Steel is one of the good men. He rides an honest trail, takes pride in his work, and knows some things ain’t for sale. When he gets the straight of what really happened, I reckon he won’t come gunning after me.’ He removed the cap from the bottle and offered it to Jacobs.
Jacobs kept his smile and shrugged and took the bottle. He gulped down a big swallow. ‘How did you get all those Apache to hold up the stagecoach with you? They say there were almost forty of them.’
Hawkstone took a pull from the bottle. ‘You think about that, banker. You get an image in your head about forty Apache surrounding one stagecoach along a road through hills and rocks. You tell me how they’d all fit. They’d be strung out like a caterpillar.’
‘Then who was with you?’
‘Wharton City Marshal Leather Yates and his two outlaws, that’s who. And they wasn’t with me, they hoodwinked me to go with them, after they raped and murdered my little sister. Along with shooting me, they murdered Pearl Harp just released from prison.’ Hawkstone raised the Colt to tap it against Jacob’s forehead. ‘You quit jawing about the stagecoach. You know nothing was on it.’
Barron Jacobs leaned away from the tapping weapon. ‘I know you hit our pony riders and took the saddle-bags. They said they thought you had three Apache with you.’
‘That is correct, banker.’
‘Then you have the money.’
‘I know where it is – less the ten per cent reward fee.’
Jacobs shook his handsome head, loosening a few more honey strands. ‘No, that isn’t how it works. You turn in all the money, then we give you the ten per cent, maybe.’
Hawkstone gave the bottle to the banker. ‘You got any kinda image of that happening? I don’t trust you no more than I trust city marshals. I’ll tell you where the money is. You tell Casey Steel. They got to dig it up from a grave on the west side of some pines next to my burned-up house. Steel and his men will find a coupla bodies down there, shot down by the owner of the boots, which they will also find.’
‘Then he can arrest him.’
‘Ain’t nothing in the coming days got anything to do with arrest.’
‘Should I also tell Steel about what you did to those people in the stagecoach?’
‘I was one of them people. I got shot down, just like them folks did. I can show you the bullet holes, but I ain’t got the time.’
‘Steel will come after you. He’ll get a posse and hunt you down.’
‘Mebbe not when he finds out who the real shooters – about to be deceased – were.’
‘You mean this fellow, Yates?’
‘And his scum shadow shooters, One Eye Tim Brace and Wild Fletch Badger – which brings me to another item we got to discuss. Tell me about them gunmen regulators. Who pa
ys them?’
Jacobs slugged down another swallow. ‘They guard the payroll shipments and patrol the copper mines.’
‘Now, Barron, that ain’t what I asked you. Who pays them?’
‘Longfellow Copper Mining.’
‘The mines paid them to massacre Apache in a small village?’
‘Just like the savages did to those in the stagecoach.’
Hawkstone sighed deep, jerking when he felt pain. ‘None of you jaspers get it. There weren’t no Apache. The village they destroyed was innocent. Them blue belly soldiers and the regulator gunmen, and the marshal and his pair killed and looted for no reason.’
‘So you say. They scalped the Longfellow vice-president. And who are you? A thief and a killer yourself. You were sent to prison for robbing a bank. You even killed a teller. I don’t believe you any more than you trust me.’
‘I was the only survivor of the stagecoach slaughter – me and them that did the killing. And it weren’t Apache. They faked it to look that way. Not one was from that village.’
Hawkstone drained the last of the whiskey from the bottle. He held it in his hand with the Colt on his leg again and stared at Jacobs’ knee.
Barron Jacobs squinted at him. ‘You trying to decide whether to shoot me or not?’
‘Yup. Will you tell Casey Steel what I said?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You’ll get your money back, eventually, unless you’re in a hurry and go on out there with some boys and dig it up yourself.’
‘Not all the money, Hawkstone.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Yes, all right. I’ll tell him. But I’m riding out there with him to see if what you’re saying is true. If it is, there will be arrests.’
Shadow Shooters Page 12