by Jory Sherman
Newton chuckled. “He’s got you there, Les,” he said.
“I don’t like the bastard,” Cunningham said. “We don’t know where he come from. We don’t know what he wants. He asks for coffee, then don’t drink it. Shit, he’s got something up his damned sleeve besides an arm.”
“Aw, Les, you go on too much about nothin’,” Newton said. “Coffee’s real hot. He don’t want to burn his lips.”
Zak looked at the two men. Newton was oblivious to the threat voiced by Cunningham, or was unaware of the tension between the two men. But he wasn’t. Cunningham’s eyes were narrowed to slits and he looked like a puma ready to pounce. He decided he had played with them long enough.
He set his coffee cup down on the floor. Cunningham’s gaze followed it and he stiffened. Newton looked like an idiot that had just seen a parlor trick he didn’t understand.
But Zak noticed that Newton was wearing a swivel holster. He wouldn’t even have to draw his pistol, just reach down, cock it as he brought the holster up on the swivel, then fire. Of the two men in the adobe, Zak figured Newton was the more dangerous one, even though he showed no signs of being belligerent.
It was the quiet ones you had to watch, he thought.
“I don’t know,” Zak said softly, shaking his head, “he must have scraped the bottom of the barrel.”
“What’s that?” Cunningham said. “Who you talkin’ about?”
“Old Hiram,” Zak said.
“Hiram?” Newton came out of his seeming stupor at the mention of the name.
“Ferguson?” Cunningham said. “You talkin’ ’bout Hiram Ferguson?”
“Yeah, that’s the man,” Zak said.
“You work for him?” Newton asked, an idiotic expression on his face.
“Nope,” Zak said.
“What’s that about scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel?” Cunningham said, pressing the issue.
“When he hired you two on,” Zak said.
“What the hell…” Newton said, setting his cup down on a small table.
“You got somethin’ in your craw, mister, you spit it out.” Cunningham’s right hand drifted closer to the butt of his pistol.
Zak sensed that both men were ready to open the ball. But he wanted to give them a chance, at least.
“Your other way stations up the line are all shut down,” Zak said. “The men manning them are either lighting a shuck for Tucson or wolf meat. You two boys got yourself a choice.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Cunningham said, his right hand opening, dropping lower still.
“You can either walk out of here, saddle up and ride back to Tucson, or…”
Zak reached down, casually, and picked up his coffee cup. It was still steaming.
“Or what?” Newton said, a menacing tone in his voice that was like a razor scraping on a leather strop.
“Or you’ll both be corpses lying here when I burn this shack down,” Zak said.
That’s when Cunningham made his move. His hand dropped to the butt of his Dragoon. Zak tossed the hot coffee at him. Cunningham screamed and clawed at his face. Then Zak hurled the empty cup straight at Newton and stood up, crouching as his hand streaked for the Walker at his side.
Newton dodged the cup and tilted his holster up, hammering back with pressure from his thumb. Too late. Zak had already jerked his pistol free, cocking on the rise, and squeezed the trigger when the barrel came level with Newton’s gut. The pistol roared and bucked in his hand, spewing lead and sparks and flame from its snout like some angry dragon.
Cunningham rose to his feet and drew the big Dragoon from its holster, his eyes blinking at the sting of hot coffee.
Zak swung his pistol and made it bark with another squeeze of the trigger. The bullet smashed into Cunningham’s belly and he doubled over with the shock of the impact.
“You drop that pistol, Lester,” Zak said, “or the next one goes right between your eyes.”
Newton groaned and started to lift his pistol to fire at Zak.
“Don’t you get it, Newton?” Zak said. “You just stepped on a rattlesnake.”
“Huh?” Newton said, his voice almost a squeak as the pain started to spread through his bowels.
“I’m the rattler,” Zak said, and shot again, drilling Newton square in the chest, cracking his breast-plate and tearing out a chunk of his heart. There was a gush of blood and Newton dropped like a sack of stones.
Cunningham let his pistol fall and rolled on the floor, his back in the dirt. He stared up at Zak, his eyes glassy from the pain that seeped through him like a slow brushfire.
“Who in the hell are you, mister?” Cunningham managed to say. “We ain’t done you no harm.”
“It’s the Apache you’re hurting, Cunningham. I gave you a choice. Go or die. You chose the wrong one.”
“How—How many of you are there?” Cunningham said. “You got men outside?”
“There’s a nation outside, Lester. A whole nation of Apaches.”
“I don’t get it,” Cunningham said, his voice fading as his eyes began to glaze over with the frost of death.
He shuddered and there was a crackle in his throat. He let out a long sigh and couldn’t get any breath back in his lungs. He closed his eyes and went limp.
Zak looked at the two men. Both were dead and there was a silence in the room that was both blessed and cursed.
Zak walked to the cage. He took the cage outside, set it on the ground. He lifted the door, and Bertie hopped out. Zak made a sound to scare the rabbit off, then returned to the shack.
“And you won’t kill any more coyotes, either,” Zak said as he picked up the oil lamp and hurled it against the wall, hitting it just above the bundle of hides. Tongues of flames leaped in all directions and began licking at the dried fur, anything that would burn.
Zak stepped outside into the clean dry air. He opened the gate to the Colt and started ejecting spent hulls. He stuffed new cartridges into the pistol as he walked slowly toward the place where he had left Nox. Before he mounted up, he could smell the sickly aroma of burning human flesh.
Chapter 18
Ben Trask cursed the rising sun. He jerked the cinch strap tight, drove a fist into his horse’s belly. The horse flinched and drew up its sagging belly, giving Trask another notch on the cinch. He buckled it and turned to the others in the stable.
“Jesse Bob, you and Willy about finished yonder?”
“Just about, Ben,” Cavins said, but he was still trying to load his saddle over the blanket. His horse was sidestepping every attempt.
“I got to finish curryin’ mine,” Rawlins said. “He wallowed in shit durin’ the night.”
The eastern horizon was a blaze of red, as if billions of sumacs had exploded and dripped crimson leaves in the sky. There was a majesty and an ominous hush across the desert as the sun spread molten copper over the rocks and plants.
“It’s goin’ to be hotter’n a two-dollar pistol out there today,” Trask grumbled. “We should have been gone long before sunrise.”
“Nobody woke us up,” Cavins complained. “Hell, we even hit the kip with our clothes on last night.”
“It’s that damned Ferguson,” Rawlins said. “He said he’d have somebody wake us up before dawn.”
“Where in hell is Ferguson?” Trask said, a nasty snarl in his voice. “It looks like we got a bunch of barn rats in here and no sign of Hiram.”
“He said he had business to take care of,” Cavins said. “He’ll be along directly.”
“There’s only one business this day. Damn his stage line anyway.”
The Mexicans were almost finished saddling their horses and were leading them out of the stables. Ferguson waded through them into the barn and started yelling at Lou Grissom.
“You got my horse saddled yet, Lou?”
“Yes, sir. He’s still in his stall, though.”
“Shit, you could have brought him out. Ben, this is a hell of a day for whatever you got planned,” Ferguson said as he approache
d Trask.
“Climb down off your high horse, Hiram,” Trask said. “You know the stakes.”
“No, I don’t know the damned stakes. I got one plan, you got another.”
“O’Hara’s map’s gonna lead us right to the head honcho Apache hisself. We can wipe ’em out in one blow. With my men and yours, them what’s in those line shacks, we’ll have a small army. Just make sure everybody’s got plenty of cartridges, and it wouldn’t hurt to take along a few sticks of dynamite.”
“Christ, Ben, what makes you think you can trust that soldier boy?”
“Did you hear that horse come in early this morning, runnin’ like a bat out of hell?”
“Nope. I slept like a dadgummed log all night.”
“That was a rider from Fort Bowie. Wore out saddle leather and his horse to bring me a message from Willoughby.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. O’Hara’s baby sister left the fort night before last, headin’ straight for your place. I told O’Hara if this didn’t pan out, she’d be the first to die, and he could watch her bleed.”
“He swallered that?”
“Shivered like a dog shittin’ peach seeds,” Trask said.
Hiram found that hard to believe. O’Hara hadn’t impressed him as a man who was much afraid of anything. But, of course, he would have strong feelings for his sister and might fear that harm would come to her if he didn’t cooperate. And he had to admit, Trask was a bear of a man who could easily make most men think twice before bucking him.
“Well, just watch out he don’t trick you, Ben. O’Hara looks to me like a man who puts a card or two up his sleeve when he’s at the table.”
“He won’t double-cross us, Hiram. If he does, he’s a dead man.”
They finished saddling their horses and gathered outside the stables. Cavins brought O’Hara from the office. He was dressed in civilian clothing and he was no longer bound. But Cavins had his pistol out of its holster and leveled on him.
“Ready to ride, Lieutenant?” Trask said, patting his shirt where the map stuck out so O’Hara could see it.
“Yes,” O’Hara said. “Under protest.”
Trask laughed. “Duly noted,” he said in a mocking tone. “Climb aboard that steel-dust gray over there. You’ll stand out like a sore thumb.” With a wave of his arm, Trask indicated all the other horses, which were sorrels and bays.
“Mount up,” Trask ordered the others as O’Hara climbed into the saddle, with Cavins watching his every move. O’Hara was the only one unarmed, and he sighed as he looked at the small army of men surrounding him. He knew that he did not have a friend among them, but his philosophy had always been, “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” He just didn’t want to put Colleen in jeopardy. By now he had figured out that Ferguson and Trask both had ties to Fort Bowie. Although they had never mentioned any names, he knew that their influence, or their connections, must reach fairly high.
He didn’t know much about Willoughby, hadn’t seen that much of the major. But he knew, or suspected, that Willoughby’s sympathies might lie with the Apache-haters. It was just a feeling. Nothing he could nail down on a roof of proof.
Ted looked at the bloodred sky of dawn, said to Cavins, “Red sky at morning.”
“What’s that?” Cavins asked.
“Red sky at morning,” Ted said, “sailor take warning.”
“Well, you ain’t no sailor and we ain’t anywhere near the sea.”
“Don’t have to be, Cavins. That sky dominates the earth.”
“Shut up, soldier boy,” Cavins said. “You so much as twitch on this ride and I’ll blow you plumb out of the saddle.”
Ted knew that Cavins wouldn’t shoot him, but he saw no reason to argue the point. He was unarmed and outnumbered, and this was not the place to make a stand. But he also knew that the first duty of a prisoner was to make every attempt to escape. It had been drilled into him at the military academy, and that thought had been uppermost in his mind ever since he was captured in the dead of night.
He looked around. All of the men were looking at the dawn sky. Ted had never seen a more vivid sunrise. The color was extravagant, plush bulges of the reddest red, the color of blood, fresh spilled, after a hot breeze had stiffened it. Yes, it would be hot that day, but he knew that in another day or two all hell would break loose as the sky filled with black bulging clouds and the wind blew dust and sand into their eyes just before the torrential rains hit with a force strong enough to blow a man out of his saddle. He had seen such storms before, blown down out of the mountains and onto the desert. He had seen cattle and men washed away by flash floods and rivers appear in dry creek beds that brought walls of water rushing headlong at better than six or seven feet high and then some.
That sky told Ted that within twenty-four hours they’d be caught up in a gully washer that would have these men scrambling for high ground, their eyes stung by grit and rain, blinded for a time, he hoped, unable to see more than a foot in front of their faces, if that. There would be a chance then for him to ride away from his captors, put distance between him and them as he made his way back to the fort. It was a chance. Perhaps the only chance he’d have. They couldn’t make it to the first marks on his map before they would all be swept up in one hell of a frog-strangler of a storm.
Suddenly, he felt an inner surge of energy as a thought occurred to him. He began to calculate the distance in his mind, the estimated speed of travel with this group of armed killers, and he knew it was possible. Possible to outwit Trask and Ferguson, possible to escape. It was a long shot, to be sure, but he was confident there would be time. Time and opportunity. His nerves would be scraped to a fine razor edge when they reached the place he had in mind, but he could handle that.
All he had to do was wait and bide his time, he thought, as he looked at that rude dawn sky again and smiled inwardly.
“Let’s get this outfit moving,” Trask yelled, as the Mexicans sat their horses, their gazes still fixed on the eastern horizon. Cavins nodded to O’Hara, who turned his horse toward the main bunch of men.
“O’Hara,” Trask said, “you ride with me in front. Cavins, you watch him.”
“My men,” Ferguson said, “you follow behind Cavins.”
“Hiram, come on up. You ride with me, too. We’re going to pick up those men you got on station. That should give us enough guns to do what we have to do.”
“More’n enough,” Hiram said. “Them are all good men. Crack shots.”
There was grumbling among some of the men who had stayed too long at the cantina the night before, but Trask got the column moving, and the griping stopped once the small troop made the commitment. The sun rose above the horizon, drawing off the night dew and releasing the dry smell of the earth. The shadows evaporated and the rocks and plants stood out in stark relief, as if carved out of crystal with a razor. A horse farted and some of the men laughed.
“I want you to take us straight to where old Cochise has his gold, O’Hara, you got that?” Trask said.
“It’s marked on that map in your pocket, Trask. It’s a good two-day ride.”
“We’ll make it in a day and a half.”
O’Hara suppressed a smile. That would be perfect in his estimation.
Trask set a pace that brought more grumbling from the men. The Mexicans kept up, as if to show up the gringos, and the muttering stopped once again.
A half hour later, when the smoke of Tucson was no longer visible behind them, Hiram stood up in the stirrups, peering ahead. He uttered an exclamation that there was no equivalent of in any language.
Trask followed his gaze. Small puffs of dust speared on the horizon, golden in the morning light, almost invisible against the desert hue.
“He’s wearin’ out saddle leather,” Trask said.
“Yeah. He’s in a mighty hurry, and ridin’ the old trail to them ranches where I’ve got my men on station.”
“One of yours?”
“I don’t know yet. He’s
too far away.”
“Well, we’ll shorten his distance some,” Trask said. “Let’s keep up the pace,” he called out to the men behind him.
The oncoming rider closed the distance. He loomed up, madly whipping his horse with his reins, the brim of his hat brushed back by the force of the breeze at his face.
“Damned if that ain’t Danny Grubb,” Hiram said. “And looky at his horse, all lathered up like a barbershop customer.”
Flecks of foam flew off Grubb’s horse. Hiram held up his hand as if to stop him before the animal floundered.
Grubb reined in when he was a few yards away, hauling hard on the reins to stop the horse. The horse stiffened its forelegs and pulled up a few feet away, its rubbery nostrils distended, blowing out spray and foam. It heaved its chest in an effort to breathe, then hung its head, tossing its mane.
“Danny, you ’bout to kill that horse,” Hiram said. “What in hell’s the all-fired rush and where the devil are you bound so early in the mornin’?”
“Boss, he done shot Tolliver. Larry’s plumb dead. He didn’t have a chance.”
“Whoa up, Danny. Take it slow. Who shot Larry?”
“Let me get my breath,” Grubb said, wheezing. The rails in his throat rattled like a stand of wind-blown cane.
“Just tell me who killed Tolliver and we’ll get him,” Hiram said.
“C-Cody,” Grubb stammered. “Calls hisself Zak Cody. The Shadow Rider.”
Trask’s blood seemed to stand still in his veins, then turned cold as ice.
“Cody?” Trask said. “Are you sure?”
“Damned sure.” Grubb was breathing hard, but he was more anxious to get his story off his chest than to breathe in more air. “I lit out, then circled back a ways to see where he went.”
By then the other riders had crowded around Grubb and encircled him, all listening intently.
He looked over at Julio Delgado.
“He took Carmen, Julio. Seen ’em ridin’ off, and there’s another feller with him now, I reckon. Don’t know him. But he burned down most ever’ one of them ’dobes and I know he kilt Cunningham and Newton. It was dark as hell, but I seen that ’dobe burnin’ and I crossed nobody’s trail gettin’ this far. That man Cody’s a pure devil. And he’s headed this way, near as I can figure.”