The moustache was the sole sign of affectation about the man and his garb totally ignored style in favor of serviceability. A grey hat, low-crowned and wide-brimmed with a standard, unfancy band. Black cotton shirt and Levis of the same hue. A grey neckerchief. Black riding boots and no spurs. A gun belt, with the holster tied down to his right thigh. The gun in the holster was an army model Colt .45.
His horse was big and strong, ideally suited to a rider who was taller and heavier than average. Tacked out with a split-ear headstall and curb bit and a conventional Western saddle hung with two canteens, a coiled lariat and a forward-slanting boot holding a Winchester repeater rifle. Lashed on behind the saddle was a bedroll that contained the barest essentials of life on the open range.
A keen-eyed observer might have noticed a slight bulge at the centre top of the man’s back, appearing first at the ends of the black hair and finishing several inches lower down the line of the spine. But, unless the watcher knew the man, he would not have guessed what caused the elongated bulge - a leather pouch slotted with a wooden-handled, straight razor, its single-sided blade sharpened to a fine edge and point. The pouch was held in place by a beaded thong that encircled the man’s neck, hidden at the throat by his kerchief. Although the man used the razor for shaving, it had another use; and his chosen manner of carrying it was by no means affectation.
Now, as he continued to allow the gelding to set its own easy pace along the trail towards Fort Waycross, it was obviously many hours since the razor had last been put to its conventional use. A thick growth of bristles sprouted from the taut cheeks and firm jaw, almost negating the moustache. And it was equally apparent that the ride had been a long one. For trail dust clung to the man, his clothes, his horse and his gear, toning down the slight differences in colors to make everything a neutral shade of grey. A long ride but easy, because there were just faint traces of sweat on the face of the man and coat of the horse.
The stench of long-dead bodies grew stronger as the man rode closer to the fort. And, whereas previously the Dragoon landscape had been shrouded in silence, sounds could now be detected. The monotonous buzzing of countless flies gorging on rotten meat. Then, when the gelding was reined to a halt at the open gates in the north wall, a louder sound erupted. The frantic flapping of big wings.
The gelding reared, and was coaxed back to docility. A group of buzzards, ugly yellow beaks streaked with crimson and trailing flapping lengths of glistening sinew, squawked in bitter rage as they lumbered into the sky. The man watched them stoically, until they lit on a jagged ridge some five hundred yards to the north. He felt no disgust towards the birds. In a world where sudden death in lonely places was an unavoidable fact of harsh life, such scavengers performed a useful service.
Across the area before the gates, where the trails intersected, there was a signpost. The black lettering on the white-painted timber was faded and peeling, but still readable. Four arms pointed to distant places: Tombstone in the north-west, Silver City in the northeast, Huachuca in the south-west and Janos in the southeast. The fifth arm was aimed across the intersection and announced: Fort Waycross.
‘Too far to anyplace else,’ the man said as he swung from the saddle, sliding the Winchester from the boot as part of the same action.
He led the horse through the gateway and raked his expressionless blue eyes over the gruesome result of the massacre. Only the gallows at the centre of the compound, and the north wall, had completely escaped damage. The blast and fires started by spraying sparks had partially destroyed the other three walls. But the detritus of their collapse hid the full extent of the carnage until the man entered the fort.
The buzzing of the gorging flies filled the air again, as they returned to the feast after the spooked buzzards had disturbed them. They fed on upwards of a hundred corpses and half as many horse carcasses. The dead were all buried to some extent - completely under the rubble of collapsed buildings, or slightly sunk into mud which had been baked to a hard crust by the blazing sun of morning. Arrows were still imbedded in some of the decomposing bodies. But bullet holes were impossible to discern. For buzzards - far more than the half dozen the man had disturbed - had clawed and torn at every corpse. Ripping away skin to ravage the crimson meat beneath. Here and there, stark white bone shone in the bright sunlight, between the crawling mass of feeding flies.
The man completed his survey, worked some saliva into his mouth, and spat. Then he slid the Winchester back into the boot, and led the gelding on a diagonal line across the compound. The surface was as white and smooth as the trail had been: the rain had leveled all sign and the sun had baked the mud to a deep crust. He hitched the reins to a ring on a crazily leaning door of the stable, and stepped through the rubble of the building. The flies had a taste for horsemeat as well as human flesh, and they swarmed away angrily as his shadow fell across rotting carcasses. He located some undamaged feed and dropped the hay in a heap by the canting door. The gelding had been watered at an evaporating pool an hour ago.
As the horse chomped on the feed, the man unfastened one of the saddlebags. He took out a wax paper-wrapped package, lowered himself to a fire-charred chunk of adobe, and ate a combination breakfast-lunch of jerked beef. Through the open gates, one of them featured with two embedded knives, he could see the buzzards, still patiently perched on the ridge. The constant buzz of flies gradually became less frenetic as the massed scavengers reached satiation. By the same degree, the stench of rotting meat grew more sickeningly powerful.
This had more effect on the horse than on the man. The gelding ate his fill hurriedly, then showed signs of a restlessness to leave this scene of carnage. The man was as relaxed as if he had been eating in the plushest restaurant of a big city. Which did not mean he was totally at ease; this was a condition he never attained, even when he was asleep. Because, while he was certain there was no immediate danger lurking in the destroyed fort, he did not trust the apparent tranquility of the heat-shimmered terrain spread out beyond the ruin. Just as he would not have trusted the far more comfortable surroundings of a plush restaurant.
His meal finished, he took a drink of tepid water from a canteen and re-wrapped the package. Then he put this back into the saddlebag, atop another package - this one wrapped in a piece of doeskin.
The sun was almost at its noon peak by then, and there were only three areas of shade in the entire fort - beneath the gallows platform and under the stairways leading up to two guard towers at each end of the north wall. He unhitched the reins and led the gelding into the shadow of the stairway at the eastern end of the wall. Distance diminished the stench a little. The man re-hitched the reins to a stairway tread. Then, instinctively rather than from a definable sense of danger, he slid the Winchester from the boot before starting to climb up the guard tower.
Rising currents of warm air lifted the stench of Baker and Whelen towards the sun. Thus, the man did not see the two corpses - one of them decapitated and both scalped - until his narrowed, heavily hooded eyes were on a level with the walkway.
His reaction was as negative as when he had entered the gates of Fort Waycross. And it was purely accidental when, as he stepped on to the walkway, his foot nudged the severed head and the stinking piece of human debris tipped off the boarding to thud to the ground. The gelding whinnied, and stepped back, away to the fullest extent of its hitched rein.
From his elevated position atop the wall, in the square patch of shade from the roof, the man made a three-hundred-and-sixty degree survey of the barren foothills country. The bright blue slits of his eyes were as cold as the high sun was hot, and just as relentless in the manner they gazed at every square inch of terrain not hidden behind high and low points. Nothing moved out there, except the illusory walls of water that were composed of shimmering heat rippling on the foreshortened horizons. Even the buzzards were as immobile as the rocks upon which they were perched, staring with resentful eyes towards the fort that was no longer entirely a dead place.
But the man distrusted what his eyes could see, just as he lacked faith in the absence of sounds to hear. On a shelf fixed to the wall, above where the headless corpse was slumped, there were two empty tin mugs and a brass telescope. He rested the rifle and extended the telescope to its full length. Then he made a second survey of every direction, the lenses bringing the heat shimmer into closer, sharper focus.
And he saw them.
Moving like wraiths in a mist, advancing slowly along the northeast trail. His only response was a low grunt, perhaps of surprise that they were not Apaches.
At the head was a man driving a buggy. Behind him were about a score of horsemen. Although the pace was easy, hooves and wheel rims broke up the trail surface and rising dust added its blur to the haze. But, despite this, the man could see the newcomers were neither Indians nor uniformed soldiers.
They were still at least two miles distant from the fort when he replaced the telescope on the shelf and picked up the Winchester, pumping the action to jack a shell into the breech. Then the group came close enough to see Fort Waycross clearly - to pick out the signs of destruction. And the easy pace was suddenly superseded by a gallop, the riders holding back their mounts to stay in the wake of the buggy. Men, horses and buggy were hidden by billowing dust.
The sound of the advance reached the vicinity of the fort. The buzzards took to squawking flight, retreating to a higher, more distant ridge. The man turned his back on the trail and lowered his rump to the walkway, feet resting on the second step down. His long-fingered, brown-skinned hands held the Winchester in a loose grip.
From a distance, his hooded eyes looked weary as he directed his gaze towards the area just inside the open gates. The clatter of hooves and the rattle of the buggy swelled in volume. Then the cadence diminished. Brake blocks shrieked against wheel rims. Men yelled vocal orders to back up the pull of reins. Dust drifted over the top of the wall and settled on and around the seated man. The flies rose into retreat, their sound masked by louder noise.
The buggy side-slid in through the gateway, wheels locked.
Saddle horses reared and stumbled to a halt around it. Fresh eyes surveyed the aftermath of slaughter. The muzzles of drawn revolvers and leveled rifles tracked over the same scene. At first, there was fear in the eyes. Then the same brand of cold impassiveness the man on the stairway had shown. Except for the driver of the high tandem gig. As he stared out from the shade of the fringed canopy, fear was replaced by furious rage.
‘Friggin’ Apaches!’ he roared They gotta be friggin’ dead already.’
‘Unless he is the man, Senor Sullivan.’
The quiet-voiced response came from one of three Mexicans in the group. A man in his mid-twenties with classic Latin good looks who wore stylish black clothes trimmed with silver buttons. The man at the head of the stairway had spotted him as the only newcomer to check behind himself, as well as to the front and sides. Now, as the Mexican brought the Winchester on to target, every other man in the bunch swung his attention - and gun - in the same direction.
‘Buena’s trades, senor,’ the youngest of the Mexicans continued in the same easy tone. ‘It sure is a hot one, is it not?’
The man who had a half share in the Mexican’s heritage gave a curt nod. ‘Hotter last night, though.’
The gig tilted dangerously to the side as the driver slid along the seat and then heaved himself out of the vehicle. He was no more than average in height, but he carried an enormous burden of weight. Better than three hundred pounds was the half-breed’s guess. Most of it thick layers of fat, a large amount hung his belly and drooped from his chest, but his limbs and face bulged with their quota,
It was the face of a man in his early forties, the red-complexioned skin, smooth except for areas beneath his flesh-squeezed green eyes. A round face with a nose and mouth that were too small, decorated with a bushy moustache and long, broad sideburns.
‘What the friggin’ hell you doin’ up there, stranger?’ he demanded, aiming his Winchester one-handed, the stock resting against his gun belt. His left hand was inside his unbuttoned shirt, scratching at the matting of hair on his wide, flabby chest.
‘Thinking, feller,’ the half-breed replied evenly, tightening his grip around the rifle, which rested across his thighs.
‘Thinkin’? What the friggin’ hell about?’
There were eighteen men in the group. With the exception of the stylishly attired Mexican, they were all dressed in the same manner as the obese Sullivan. In sweat-stained shirts and travel-worn pants, scuffed riding boots and battered hats. Half of them had rifles and all wore gun belts. The handsome young Mexican was as stubbled and dirty as the rest.
‘That you’ll get it first, feller. If...’
Sullivan blinked and the flabby flesh of his face quivered faster with heightened anger. The others showed a flicker of surprise at the quietly spoken challenge. Then became tense.
‘You want we should blast the snotnose, Mr. Sullivan?’ a redhead with a mole on the right side of his jaw asked.
‘Shuddup and wait, Jesse!’ another redhead snapped. Almost an identical twin, with the mole making the difference.
‘If what?’ Sullivan raged, still scratching.
The half-breed spat down the stairway. The moisture hit the lowermost step. ‘You and your partners don’t aim them guns someplace else. Got an allergy to guns aimed at me.’
‘They ain’t my partners, stranger! Work for me.’
‘Just give folks the one warning,’ the half-breed insisted evenly.
Sullivan’s anger was calming. He looked long and hard at the half-breed - appraising him. Then he curled back his lips to show twin rows of tiny teeth in a wry smile. ‘Guy who sticks to his guns, ain’t you?’
‘Your guns we’re talking about. I’ll kill you and three others.’
The fat man and the half-breed eyed each other across forty feet. And each recognized something of himself in the other, despite the broad gulf in physical appearances. Both were hard, totally lacking in compassion, and deadly. Both wary. Not scared. Just experiencing respect for the threat of imminent death. Not wanting it, but ready to accept it. If the reason was good enough.
Then the small mouth with the tiny teeth opened wider. And a harsh laugh was expelled. ‘Hell, stranger! You ain’t none of my business. And you won’t be, if you abide by Sullivan’s law.’
He tossed his Winchester on to the button-padded seat of the gig. And used both clawed hands to scratch his body as he turned his attention back to the corpse-littered compound and crumbled buildings. Most of his men holstered and booted then-weapons. The handsome young Mexican was the last to comply with the tacitly signaled order.
‘Were you around when it happened?’
‘What’s Sullivan’s law, feller?’ the half-breed countered.
‘What I want, I get!’ the fat man rasped in reply. ‘Were you around?’
‘Got here an hour before you fellers.’
Sullivan nodded and ambled across the compound, excess flesh quivering under his tight-fitting clothes.
‘Four of us before you die, senor.’ The tone of the Mexican’s voice made his smile a sneer. ‘You think you are that good, uh?’
The man at the top of the stairway eased to his feet without using his hands against the walkway. He shook his head - and the Mexican’s smile became a broad grin.
‘I know it, feller.’
The grin abruptly had a frozen quality. Some of the men laughed. And the laughter, as much as the arrogant response, seemed responsible for the Mexican’s burst of anger. His glittering eyes swung from left to right. And the half-breed was now certain that the threat of sudden death had been removed. The fat man had lost interest in him - for the moment. And the Mexican sought a less satisfying outlet for his rage. His frustration mounted, until he saw a patch of shadow glide across the baked compound.
He snatched out his rifle and canted it towards the sky. One of the buzzards had ventured off the distant ridge to ci
rcle high above the fort on the rising currents of stinking air. The Mexican squeezed the trigger and the buzzard paid the price for its adventurous foray. Then a second bullet hit it as it plummeted downwards. A third and a fourth smashed into its unfeeling flesh. And it was heavier by three more rapidly fired shells by the time the carcass thudded on to the gallows platform.
The marksman celebrated his feat by giving the rifle a one-handed twirl on its way back into the boot. His companions eyed him with a mixture of envy and resentment.
‘For a man who is sparing with words, senor,’ the man chided with a fresh grin, ‘You talked your way close to the grave.’
‘Don’t waste shells, either,’ the half-breed answered evenly, slanting the rifle to his shoulder. He watched Sullivan as the fat man squatted down between the buzzard-ravaged corpses of the two women. ‘Just remember the warning, feller.’
‘It is fair I gave you one in return, senor. We now know where we stand.’
‘And that nobody wants Fort Waycross to be his last.’ He watched Sullivan pick a way into the rubble of the fort buildings, then turned to show a grin of his own to the Mexican. His teeth were very white against his darkened skin. Snow white, as his eyes were ice blue. The mounted men saw that, even when he expressed humor, there was no sign of warmth about the tall stranger at the head of the stairway.
‘Only what Senor Sullivan wants is of any importance.’ It was as if the tense moments of the spoken threat in the face of aimed guns had never happened. With the fat man lost to sight, preoccupied among the wreckage of the buildings, the rest of the men took their mood from the Mexican. He considered honor satisfied and the others sat in their saddles in relaxed attitudes. ‘I am the first lieutenant to Senor Sullivan. My name is Juan Garcia. Late of the Federal Mexican army.’ He drew himself erect, and bowed stiffly.
EDGE: Sullivan's Law (Edge series Book 20) Page 3