The Jackals

by William W. Johnstone

  “Easy,” McCulloch said. He stood in the stirrups and stretched his left hand to the rocky top. His broken finger hurt like blazes. He couldn’t bend it but the other fingers and thumb gripped the barrel of the Winchester, and he pulled it down. He did not bother to shove it into the scabbard. He might have need of it real soon, and those horses behind him were about to bolt—if he didn’t get them away from the dead Indian quickly.

  He kicked the gelding’s side and maneuvered through the narrow path, came to the main trail, and loped away. He did not follow the trail, but dipped past a garden of ocotillo and into a winding arroyo to put as much distance between him and the dead Indian as possible.

  Yet he did not keep the horses at a gallop for long. Running horses raised too much dust, and a drunken white man would be able to follow his trail once he entered the sandy arroyo. An Apache would find him a lot quicker.

  The horses wanted to lope, but if those Indians caught up with him, McCulloch knew he would need all four of those horses, and they’d have to be fresh and ready to run. For the time being, he decided to take a leisurely journey across the emptiness. He climbed out of the arroyo, dodged between cactus plants, up and over rocks, and through narrow passes. The Apaches might follow him, but they wouldn’t enjoy the torment he put them through.

  * * *

  By dusk, he was still alive. Surprising, perhaps, but McCulloch felt no reason to complain. He wasn’t sure he’d still be walking around on this earth by morning.

  He had heard the gunfire earlier, and figured it had to be coming from Culpepper’s Station. Maybe that’s why he had decided to make for the old Butterfield stagecoach line. If the Apaches had attacked there, knowing Apaches the way he did, they would have moved on. The place seemed as permanent as the mountains in the Big Bend country. Old Culpepper’s place would still be standing all the way to Armageddon—and maybe even afterward. Maybe he would find white men still there, or maybe not, but he knew he’d find water—the Apaches would do a lot of things, but he had never heard of one poisoning a well—and a place to sleep. The horses needed the water. He needed water, too, and he wouldn’t frown on a chance to catch a few winks.

  Roughly a mile or so from Culpepper’s, McCulloch reined in his horse in a small box canyon and swung to the ground. He had managed to wrap and splint the pinky on his left hand. It had stopped bleeding, but the throbbing remained persistent. He slaked his thirst and gave the last of the water from the canteens to the horses.

  Wish I had some grain for you boys, he thought. He knew better than to talk.

  He removed his boots and opened his saddlebags, withdrawing Apache-style moccasins. They made less noise than his boots, and even an Apache could not tell if moccasin prints were made from a white man or an Indian. He pulled them up over his ripe-smelling socks, over his britches, and laced them tight around his calves just below the knees. He took the horses to the deepest part of the canyon, where he hobbled his gelding, and then used the lead rope to manufacture hobbles to the other horses. He didn’t like the idea. If he got killed, and the Apaches never found the horses, they would all die of starvation or thirst—or even worse, be ripped to death by hungry wolves or coyotes before they were dead.

  But if the horses wandered off, McCulloch would be in a bigger pickle than the one he was trying to get out of.

  I’ll be back, boys, he thought as he rubbed the horses’ necks. He wrapped the canteens in his bedroll and strapped that over his shoulders like he’d been taught to do in what passed for an army during the late War Between the States.

  Infantry. He shook his head. Why in hell had he enlisted in the Texas infantry? He was a horseman. He probably would have been promoted to colonel in the Rebel cavalry.

  He shook his head again. The bedroll, of course, would keep the canteens from rattling, and with Apaches all around him, McCulloch knew he had to make little noise if he wanted to stay alive.

  He checked his Colt, the Winchester, and the Navy. 36 he had taken off the Apache he had killed. Then, he started to make his way across the broken country toward the stagecoach station.

  * * *

  The drums started a quarter of a mile later, and he smelled smoke.

  If the Apaches did not care who smelled their fires or heard their music, then they must be settling in for a siege. That meant people were still inside Culpepper’s Station. McCulloch considered heading back to the horses. A man could cover a lot of ground in the night, even if the moon was new.

  But there would be water at Culpepper’s. And maybe even something stronger to drink.

  He moved past cactus and into the rocks, picking his path quickly but practically, moving with little sound. When he could see the station, he sat down. The stagecoach was parked in front, doors open, tongue down, and no sign of any horses. Not hitched to the stage, nor to another, smaller wagon off to the side that, from the words on the side and back door, belonged to some theatrical troupe. No horses in the corral, either, and no smoke coming from the chimney. He looked at the barn, the lean-to, and the other corrals. His eyes locked on the well, and then the cistern.

  Behind him, the drums continued to beat, and the voices of Indians carried in the gloaming. The Indians were arguing, but that figured. Comanches might be argumentative, he liked to joke, but Apaches made Comanches look like Quakers.

  There was nothing else for McCulloch to do, so he stretched out, kept the Winchester in his arms, and waited and watched. Eventually—though it felt like an even hundred years—the sun disappeared. Darkness dropped the temperatures. There would be no moonrise, so he remained patient. When the blackness seemed complete, and the Indians continued to pound their drums and scream and shout, and McCulloch was as certain as he could be that no hostiles remained in the barn or near the station, he rose and picked a long, arduous, time-consuming path down the rocks to the edge of the barn.

  With his eyes accustomed to the dark, he slid past the big barn, more wood than adobe, and moved one step at a time, almost not moving at all till he smelled the stench from the stagecoach.

  It was a smell you never forgot. And McCulloch had smelled it too many times in the West Texas country.

  The penetrating, lingering odor of death.

  He moved around the tongue of the wagon, not even daring to step over it, then felt the nearness of the hitching rail before his thighs brushed against it. He slid past it, and moved like a snail until he was on the porch. With one ear pressed against the rock wall, he listened.

  Someone was . . . snoring? McCulloch rolled his eyes. What kind of fool would be sleeping with Apache war drums beating? McCulloch looked behind him. He could even see the glow of the fires in the hills above Culpepper’s Station.

  The snoring stopped. Footsteps sounded inside, just faintly as the walls were thick. Whoever was snoring inside must have sounded like an approaching tornado.

  Five minutes later, McCulloch knew he was at the door.

  He brought the rifle out about half a foot, then slammed the butt against the heavy door. Once. Twice. Thrice.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jed Breen trained the Colt Lightning on that big door maybe a fraction of a second before Sean Keegan was cocking the Remington. Or maybe Keegan had won that draw. Breen wasn’t exactly sure.

  The only light came from the faint glow from the fireplace off in the corner.

  “Mother of God!” shouted the man who called himself Harry Henderson as he shot upright from where he had been sleeping and snoring like a platoon of drunken cowboys.

  “Shut up!” Keegan barked.

  Outside, three more thuds pounded the door.

  “Apaches!” cried the coward.

  A muffled voice called out from behind the door. “Matt McCulloch. I’m alone. Let me in.”

  At that moment, a match flared, and Breen and Keegan spun to find Gwen Stanhope starting to light a candle. “Douse that!” both men shouted simultaneously.

  To her credit, the woman shook out the match, and both men
moved toward the door.

  “Wait!” cried out the newspaper editor. “It might be an Apache trick.”

  “Shut up.” Breen holstered his Colt and reached for the bar on his side of the door.

  Keegan gripped the other side and called out, “When I say come, get in here. We’re not opening the door wide, and don’t tarry, because it’s shutting quicker than you can pop a cap.” He nodded at Breen.

  Once they lifted the bar, Keegan took three steps away from the door and yelled, “Now!”

  The door opened and almost immediately, it was slamming shut, and the two men were dropping the bar into its holders.

  A man dressed like some ordinary cowboy picked himself off the floor. He held a Winchester in his hands, but as soon as he stood, he leaned the carbine against the wall and began removing the bedroll strapped over his left shoulder. When that fell to the floor, he breathed in deeply, exhaled, and pushed back his hat.

  “Much obliged.” He nodded at Keegan and Breen. “Sergeant. It has been a while.”

  “Uh-huh,” Keegan said. “You’d be a hero in my eyes if you told me a company of Texas Rangers was out there with you.”

  “You’d be a hero to me if you told me you were just holding down the fort till the Seventh Cavalry came riding down to save our hides.”

  Keegan’s head shook. “Ain’t part of Uncle Sam’s Army no more. And it was the Eighth Cavalry. Not the Seventh. There ain’t much left of the Seventh these days.”

  “I would have taken a brigade of invalids.” McCulloch sighed. “And I’m afraid to inform you that I’m alone. No longer a Ranger.”

  Keegan spit.

  Breen scratched his nose and studied the newcomer. “Did I hear you right, mister? McCulloch. Matt McCulloch. Texas Ranger. Is that what I heard?”

  “Got the name right.” McCulloch studied Breen with cold eyes. “But like I told Sergeant . . . I mean, Mister Keegan here, I’m no longer packing a cinco pesos star.”

  “Yeah.” Breen hooked both thumbs into his gunbelt, the right thumb just inches from his holster. “That’s what I thought. Two years ago. Del Rio. You caught up with Joe Morse. Blew his head off with a rifle in the Carolina Saloon.”

  McCulloch’s head nodded as his right hand moved to the Colt holstered on his right hip. He scratched his palm with the heavy hammer.

  “Yeah. Kin of yours?”

  Breen’s head shook. “No. I was looking for him. You beat me to him. Cheated me out of fifteen hundred bucks.”

  McCulloch laughed, and it was a gentle, true laugh. His right hand did not raise far from the holstered Colt, but his left hand came up and settled on his cheek, just below the left eye. It traced along an old scar for about two inches before it stopped. “I kind of wish you had caught him. He spoiled my handsome features.”

  Breen had to laugh. Shaking his head, he crossed the station and held out his right hand. “I hope you spent that reward money well, Ranger. Breen. Jed Breen.”

  They shook briefly, and Breen stepped away, noticing that everyone was awake.

  “I guess that makes this a poker hand worth betting on,” Sean Keegan said. “Ain’t that right, Mister Newspaper Editor? You’ve drawn three of a kind. Not jacks. But jackals.”

  Slowly, McCulloch turned around. He saw a man in a black suit clutching two carpetbags as he cowered in the corner, a striking woman, and a man pulling a goatee off his face. McCulloch blinked at that sight, then realized that the beard was fake. The clothes the man wore were . . . well . . . more like the latest fashions being illustrated in Godey’s magazine. And last, McCulloch saw the Purgatory City Herald Leader ’s editor and publisher, Alvin J. Griffin IV, who did not appear any happier to see Matt McCulloch than McCulloch was to see him.

  “Hello, McCulloch,” the editor managed to say. “Haven’t seen you since the meeting.”

  “Uh-huh.” McCulloch turned back to Breen. “Any chance a man could find a shot of rye here? Or coffee?”

  “No rye,” Breen said. “And I’m not sure I’d call it coffee, but it’s strong and it’ll fortify you.”

  “What do you think, Griffin?” Keegan said. “The three men you singled out as blights on your community are all here. Like the Three Musketeers. You’ll have a hell of a newspaper story, sir. If we live out tomorrow.”

  “I write the truth,” the editor said, though his voice cracked. “You read it, too. You must. Or have it read to you, Keegan.”

  Keegan stiffened, and that made Griffin grin. “And you read it, as well, didn’t you, McCulloch?”

  Holding the cup that Breen was filling with coffee, the former Ranger smirked. “I wouldn’t say I read it, exactly.” He turned around and took a sip of the awful brew. “But it does come in handy in the privy.”

  That made Breen and even Keegan laugh, and the tension that had been filling Culpepper’s Station vanished.

  Until the drumbeats up in the hills intensified.

  “We killed a fair number,” Keegan said as he followed McCulloch and Breen to the nearest shuttered window. “Wounded a few. Apaches don’t ride in big numbers.”

  McCulloch sighed. “They’ve likely got between ten and twenty reinforcements.”

  Keegan and Breen swore.

  “I barely missed their company on the trail here. Killed one.”

  “And you brought them here!” The little man with the carpetbags had been eavesdropping. “You brought more Apaches here. You let them follow you. My God. Now we’ll all be butchered.”

  “Shut up.”

  Breen, McCulloch, and Keegan turned to see the woman, who spit, rather unladylike onto the floor, and eyed the man in the black suit with pure disgust.

  “He didn’t bring those Indians here. He didn’t even know we were here. And he’s an extra gun, mister, and obviously willing to use it. What have you done? Except hide behind those god-awful grips you’ve been toting?” She spit again.

  The three men smiled.

  “Well,” Breen said. “Ten or twenty, they’re still following old Holy Shirt. Shooting only arrows and the like. They can nock arrows faster than some people can shoot, but they’re no match for Winchesters, Colts, and my Sharps.”

  “They might be.” McCulloch set the coffee cup on the main table. He drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and nodded at the shuttered window. “The one I killed, he was bringing up the rear, probably watching their backs.”

  Drawing the Navy Colt from his waist, he laid it beside the coffee cup. “He had this on him. And he was ready to use it.” McCulloch raised his left hand and painfully wiggled his pinky. “Would have gotten off a shot had I not stopped the hammer from falling.”

  “Damn.” Keegan’s head shook.

  “We might have killed too many Apaches today,” Breen said.

  “What are you blokes talking about?” said the man in fancy clothes.

  “Oh.” Breen shook his head. “I’ve forgotten my manners. Matt McCulloch, this here is Sir Theodore Cannon, actor extraordinaire. That’s his traveling wagon outside, if you could see it in the dark, or if the Apaches haven’t dragged it away. Sir Theodore, meet a former lawman and rancher in these parts, Matt McCulloch. You know our illustrious journalist. The woman is Gwen Stanhope.”

  McCulloch studied her, removed his hat, and said, “Ma’am. A pleasure.” But his eyes told the woman that he knew all about her, and that maybe he read the newspapers more than he was willing to let editor Griffin know.

  “And this”—Breen nodded at the coward—“is one Harry Henderson. He’s quiet most of the time, except when he’s snoring, and doesn’t talk much unless he’s screaming for mercy. We tend to think that he’s a carpetbag drummer.”

  Harry Henderson moved the two grips behind his back.

  McCulloch still nodded a greeting and turned toward Breen and Keegan, but his eyes turned to another figure.

  “Oh,” Keegan said. “That’s one of Holy Shirt’s boys. We took him prisoner. I’m still not certain why. Anyway, it’s one less we have to worry about.
”

  McCulloch frowned. “If he’s alive, I’d worry about him.”

  “We are civilized, McCulloch,” Alvin Griffin preached.

  “Uh-huh.” McCulloch changed the subject. “I didn’t get a good look at the Apaches who were riding this way.”

  They could hear the drumbeats increasing and the faint echoes of singing.

  “Could be,” Keegan said, “that the leader of the ones who joined Holy Shirt’s boys are preaching that the only way to win this here battle is to fight with white man’s weapons.”

  Breen nodded. “And Holy Shirt’s preaching that they must follow his vision. Bows and arrows. Nothing tainted by us white folks.”

  “That’s probably the size of it,” McCulloch said.

  Gwen Stanhope was listening. “So the question is, Who wins the argument?”

  McCulloch, Breen, and Keegan nodded.

  “I’d say that’s about the size of things, ma’am.” McCulloch looked around, first at the people in the station, and then at the fireplace. “You’ve been busy,” he said, and finished his cup of coffee.

  “I like to be prepared.” Keegan nodded toward the fireplace and motioned for McCulloch to follow. “What caliber you shooting? .44-40?”

  McCulloch nodded. “Both carbine and revolver.”

  “Makes things handy. I think we’ve got some casings that’ll fit you, if you need to restock your shell belt.”

  McCulloch nodded. “I’ve spent some lead myself.”

  “And we’ll be spending a lot more before this merry adventure’s over,” Keegan said.

  Breen was watching the woman as she wandered back to her bedding on the floor. He drew in a breath, let it out, and followed her, calling out her name, and smiling when she stopped.

  “Ma’am,” he said when he caught up with her. “I didn’t mean to snap at you when the Ranger started pounding on the door.” He motioned at the shuttered window. “But you light that candle, and if Indians are outside, they might just poke their weapons through the gunports in those shutters and open fire. Arrows, of course. But that light would provide some fine targets.”