Blood Sky at Morning

by Jory Sherman

  Zak’s Walker Colt roared just as Chama’s barrel cleared the holster. He shot from just below his hip, the barrel at a thirty-degree angle. Just enough, Zak thought, to put Chama down.

  Chama opened his mouth and yelled, “Noooooo,” as Zak’s pistol barked. The bullet caught him just above the belt buckle, driving into him like a twenty-pound maul, smashing through flesh as it mushroomed on its way out his back, nearly doubling the size of its soft lead point.

  The air rushed out of Chama’s lungs like the gush from a blacksmith’s bellows and he staggered backward, blood gushing from his abdomen, a crimson fountain. He groaned and went to his knees, the pistol still clutched in his hand. He tried to raise it for a shot at Zak, then his eyes went wide as Zak took careful aim and blasted off another shot that took away Chama’s scream as it ripped through his mouth and blew away three inches of his spine in a paralyzing crunch of bone.

  Carmen slid her pistol from the sash and pointed it at Zak, her hand trembling, her arm swaying as she tried to aim.

  “Sorry, Carmen,” Zak said, “but you’re standing on the edge of that same cliff.”

  She fired and the bullet whistled past Zak’s ear. He stood there, shook his head slightly and pulled the trigger of his Colt. Carmen closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them in disbelief as the bullet spun her halfway around. Blood spurted from her shoulder, but she managed to lift her pistol again and aim it at Zak, her lips pressed together in rage and defiance. She looked like a cornered animal, her brown eyes flickering with flinty sparks. The pistol cracked and the bullet plowed a furrow in the ground between Zak’s legs. He still stood straight, and now his eyes narrowed as he cocked the pistol and held it at arm’s length in a straight line that pointed directly at her heart.

  “Sorry, Carmen,” he said as he squeezed the trigger. “But you called the tune.”

  The bullet smashed into Carmen’s chest, slightly to the left of her breastbone. Her heart exploded under the impact as the bullet flattened and expanded after smashing through ribs. She dropped like a sash weight, a crimson stain blossoming on her chest. She lay like a broken flower in the dirt, the angry expression wiped from her face as if someone had swiped it with a towel. Her eyes glazed over with the frost of death, staring sightlessly at the sky.

  The sound of the last gunshot faded into a deathly silence as Zak ejected the hulls from his pistol and slid fresh cartridges into the empty chambers. The smell of burnt gunpowder lingered in his nostrils as he gazed down at Carmen’s body, shaking his head at another needless and useless death. Whatever scraps life had offered her, he had taken them all away, regretfully.

  Zak saw that Chama, too, was stone dead, his bleeding stopped. He had tried to warn him, but Chama’s self-confidence bordered on insane arrogance. The man had followed his own path to the end of the road. The road ended on a high cliff and Chama had taken the fall. The stench from his body, since he had voided himself, was strong, and Zak turned away.

  Death was such an ugly thing, he thought. One moment a man, or a woman, was vibrant with energy, brimming with life. The next, after death, they were just carrion, all signs of life and personality gone, their bodies like cast-off rattlesnake skins. In Tibet, he knew, when a person died, the monks took his body to a place in the hills where there was a convex slab of rock. The dead body was stripped and men cut it into pieces, tossed the parts to the large waiting vultures. Their idea was to remove all traces of humanness and let the soul return to spirit form. They watched the vultures gorge themselves on human remains, then take to the sky, flying over the hills and the mountains, carrying what was left of the human corpse. The sight gave the mourners great comfort.

  Zak sighed and turned away to walk toward his horse.

  Nox stood there in silence, his ears still flattened, his body braced for danger.

  Then the horse’s ears pricked up and twisted as if to catch a distant sound.

  Zak paid attention to such things. He stopped and listened, turning his head first one way, then the other. The sun was clearing the horizon, sliding up through murky logjams of clouds, spraying the land with a pale gold in its broad reach.

  He heard the familiar click of a rifle cocking, and whirled to see an armed soldier pointing a Spencer repeating rifle straight at him.

  “You just hold on there,” the soldier said.

  A moment later Zak heard the scuffle of a horse’s hooves and turned his head to see another soldier, also armed with a Spencer, bearing down on him from behind a low hill.

  “Better lift them hands, mister,” the first soldier said.

  Zak slowly lifted his hands.

  “Looks to me like we got a murder here,” the second soldier said, then turned and raised a hand, beckoning to someone Zak could not see.

  The two soldiers closed in on Zak, flanking him on both sides, but kept their distance, their barrels trained on him, their fingers caressing the triggers.

  The Spencer had a seven-cartridge magazine, tubular, and used .56/56 rimfire cartridges. Zak knew they could shoot him to pieces at such close range.

  “This wasn’t murder, soldier,” Zak said softly. “Self-defense.”

  “So you say.”

  “Look at the bodies. They both have pistols next to them.”

  “You just hold steady there.”

  Then Colleen O’Hara rode up. She stared at the bodies of Chama and Carmen, gasped aloud. Then she saw Zak. She stopped her horse next to the second soldier.

  “Mr. Cody,” she said. “Whatever happened here? Did you kill that man and that woman?”

  “You know this jasper?” the first soldier asked.

  “Why, yes. Slightly. Why are you pointing your guns at him?”

  “It appears that Mr. Cody murdered these two people and I’m going to take him into custody.”

  “Mr. Scofield, Delbert, I think you may be making a big mistake,” Colleen said. “I’m sure Mr. Cody has some reasonable explanation.”

  “Yeah, what is your explanation, Cody?” the second soldier said.

  “Your name?” Cody said, looking at the soldier.

  “This is Hugo,” Colleen said, “Hugo Rivers. These two were escorting me to Tucson where I plan to look for my brother Ted.”

  “Well, Private Rivers,” Zak said, “these two pulled pistols on me and were going to kill me. I beat them to the punch.”

  “Some story,” Rivers said.

  Scofield snorted. Then, he looked at Chama more closely.

  “Hey, this here’s Sergeant Jimmy Chama,” Scofield explained. “He’s a damned deserter.”

  River turned his head to look at Chama. “Sure as hell looks like him,” he said.

  “That is Chama,” Zak said. “Miss O’Hara, he’s the one who fixed things with Ferguson and Trask so they could kidnap your brother.”

  Colleen reared back in her saddle, her back stiffening.

  “He is?” she said.

  “That’s what he told me,” Zak said. “He was proud of it. He is a deserter, as these men say. Or was.”

  “What about that woman?” Scofield asked. “She wasn’t no deserter.”

  “She’s married to one of Ferguson’s men. She was my prisoner. Chama slipped her a pistol and they both meant to kill me, to stop me from trying to free Lieutenant O’Hara.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to sort all this out,” Scofield said.

  “No,” Zak said, dropping his hands, “you two are now under my command. Put down those rifles. We’ve got a ways to ride.”

  “You ain’t got no authority to order us to do a damned thing, mister,” Rivers said.

  “I think he does,” Colleen said. “I learned, at the fort, that Mr. Cody is a commissioned officer in the army, working for General Crook and President Grant. You’re a colonel, are you not, Mr. Cody?”

  Zak nodded.

  The two soldiers looked at him, their faces dumb-struck.

  Before they could say anything, Colleen lifted her head and pointed to the west.<
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  “I see a cloud of dust,” she said. “Somebody’s coming this way. Or, it might be the stage.”

  Zak walked quickly to Nox and climbed into the saddle.

  “All of you,” he said, “follow me to cover behind that hill over there. Until we know who that is under that dust cloud, we’re all in danger.”

  Colleen was the first to move. Reluctantly, the two soldiers followed.

  “There goes our damned leave,” Rivers grumbled.

  “You trust this Cody?”

  “He’s the onliest one who seems to know what the hell he’s doin’, I reckon.”

  Scofield stifled a curse.

  The dust cloud grew closer as the four riders galloped behind the low hill well off the old wagon road.

  The sun filled the sky and the blue heavens filled with mares’ tails as if the gods had gone mad and scrawled their warning of impending weather for all to see.

  Chapter 21

  Trask pulled his hat brim down to shield his eyes from the rising sun. But as he gazed at the sky ahead, he saw the first buzzard float to a point and begin circling. The bird was soon joined by two more, then, as they rode on toward the junction of the two wagon roads, several more gathered and began to circle.

  “What do you make of it, Hiram?” Ben asked. “Too many buzzards for a dead jackrabbit.”

  “It don’t look natural,” Ferguson said. “Must be a big chunk of dead meat to draw that many turkeys this early of a morning.”

  “That’s what I’m thinkin’,” Trask said.

  He turned in the saddle and looked at the men riding behind until he picked the face of the man he wanted.

  “Deets, come on up here,” Trask yelled, beckoning with his hand.

  Deets rode up alongside Trask.

  “Al, see them buzzards up yonder?” Trask said.

  “Hell, you can’t miss ’em. That’s all we been lookin’ at for the past five minutes.”

  “You ride on up under ’em and see what it is they’re sniffin’.”

  “A dead cow, maybe.”

  “You check, Al. Be quick about it. You get in trouble, you fire off a shot. Got it?”

  “Sure, boss,” Deets said, and slapped his horse’s rump with his reins. He galloped off and the men in line began talking among themselves.

  Trask turned around again. “Shut up,” he said, and the men fell silent.

  Ferguson suppressed the urge to snort at Trask’s remark. He didn’t want to rile the man up any more than he already was. Trask had been in a foul mood all morning, snapping at the men, cursing the sunrise, the flies, the chill that rose from the earth earlier. He had a lot in his craw and the sight of the buzzards wasn’t doing his mood any damned good.

  Trask watched Deets disappear over a rise. The buzzards dipped lower, circling like slow-motion leaves caught in a slow-motion whirlwind. More buzzards had flown in to take their places on the invisible carousel, and Trask unconsciously sniffed the air for the stench of death.

  Deets was taking a long time, it seemed, but when Trask looked up at the sky again, he saw that the vultures were at least a quarter mile from him, maybe more. Still, he didn’t like to wait, and he put spurs to his horse’s flanks. The men behind him did the same. Ferguson frowned. They had a long ride ahead of them, days of it, and Trask was already wearing out their horses.

  Ted O’Hara saw the buzzards, too, and knew that the sight of them had agitated Trask. This gave him a twinge of pleasure. Trask was a man who had to be in control at all times, he surmised. When he felt that control slipping, he turned ugly and mean. The gallop wouldn’t accomplish much over the stretch of land they had yet to cover, but he knew Trask had sent Deets up ahead to investigate, and yet, didn’t fully trust any of his men. In fact, he probably trusted no man, and that was almost always a fatal flaw. The loner could only go so far in life. Then, when he began to run out of friends, he stood completely alone, and without anyone to rely on, except himself, he was lost. Trask wasn’t at that point yet, but he was certainly headed for it. One of his men, one day, would become fed up with him and put a bullet in his back. And Trask would never know what hit him. He brooked no counsel, took no advice. From anyone, except himself.

  The line of men stretched out into a ragged column as the slower riders fell behind, but nobody complained. All of them knew where Trask was headed, just under those circling buzzards, and all would eventually reach it. Some of the men exchanged knowing looks, but kept their comments to themselves.

  Trask topped the rise and slowed his horse.

  There was Deets, riding back and forth across the old road. He was leaning over, scanning the ground. He rode toward the regular stage road where it had veered off from the old road, then back again, beyond where two saddled horses stood and there were two dark objects on the ground that Trask could not identify as being human or animal.

  The men behind him caught up and fanned out to look at what Trask was seeing. None spoke a word, at first. They all just stared at Deets, trying to figure out what he was doing.

  As if reading their thoughts, Trask said, “Studying tracks.”

  Julio Delgado broke the silence among the men following Trask.

  “That is the horse of my wife down there,” he said. “The brown one with the blaze face.”

  “I know the other one,” Hector Gonzalez said. “Do you not recognize it, Fidel?”

  “Yes, I know that horse, too,” Hector’s brother said.

  The Mexicans all grew very excited. They slapped each other on the arms and exchanged knowing looks.

  “That is the horse of Jimmy Chama,” Renaldo Valdez said. “Ay de mi.”

  “Chama, ain’t he the boy what set up O’Hara for the capture?” Trask asked.

  “Yep, he’s the one. A sergeant in the army out at the fort. But he said he was going to desert as soon as my men got away clean with O’Hara.”

  “What’s his horse doing there, I wonder,” Grissom said. “And him not on it.”

  “Carmen, oh Carmencita,” Julio breathed, “’onde stas?”

  He twisted the reins in his hands as if he wanted to strangle someone.

  “Let’s go see what we got,” Trask said, and dug spurs into his horse’s flanks.

  Deets rode off toward a long low hill on his left. He stopped his horse, then looked at all of the other hills, a jumble of them, rising on either side and behind. He turned his horse and rode back to where the other horses stood and where the dead bodies lay. He kept looking back over his shoulder and then he rubbed a spot behind his neck.

  As he rode closer, Trask saw that the dark shapes on the ground were human. And they were dead. A man and a woman.

  “Al,” he said as Deets rode up.

  “Found ’em like this,” Deets said. “That’s what brung them buzzards.”

  “What do you make of it?” Trask asked, looking down at the body of Chama.

  “Still tryin’ to sort it all out, Ben. Near as I can figger, they was three riders—Chama, that lady yonder, and one other. He might have kilt them two lyin’ on the ground, or some other riders come up and they could have kilt ’em, but that don’t make no sense, maybe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Three riders come from over yonder like they was ridin’ the stage road to Tucson. Then the tracks show four of them rode off toward them hills yonder.” Deets pointed in the direction from which he had just come.

  “So, we’re dealing with four riders,” Trask said.

  “Looks thataway. Less’n there’s more about.”

  “What the hell do you mean, Al?”

  “I mean, these are the onliest tracks I seen, Ben. Maybe this was some kind of bushwhack, and four people jumped these two, then rejoined their outfit. Could be the army, I reckon.”

  “Shit,” Trask said.

  The others crowded around to listen to what Deets had to say. Julio Delgado rode over to the body of his wife and dismounted. He bent over her and began to sob. Renaldo looked over at
him and then rode his horse up close and dismounted. He patted Julio on the back. Then he, too, began to weep, so quietly the others could not hear. The other Mexicans drifted over, one by one, to console the grief-stricken Julio, who was cradling his dead wife in his arms and rocking slowly back and forth.

  O’Hara suppressed a smile. This was not a military operation, but Trask was too dumb to see it.

  Ferguson looked at Chama’s face, then turned away, as if death were too much for him in the harsh light of day. He gulped in fresh air to keep from gagging on the smell.

  Trask looked over at O’Hara. “You know that man there?” he asked.

  “He was a sergeant,” O’Hara said. “Rode with our patrol.”

  “You know anything about this?”

  “Not any more than you do, Trask. Two people dead. Probably killed by gunshots.”

  “You’re not as smart as you might think you are, O’Hara.”

  O’Hara said nothing. He kept his face blank, impassive as desert stone.

  Trask turned back to Deets. “The tracks lead over yonder, right?”

  “Right, boss. I figure they circled that long hill and either lit a shuck or are watching us right now.”

  Trask scanned the top of the ridge. Everything looked the same. Rocks, cactus, dirt. He saw nothing move, saw no sign of life anywhere.

  “Well, if there was an army waiting up there, they could have picked us off by now. We’re riding on.”

  “Aren’t we going to bury these two?” Ferguson asked.

  “I don’t give a damn,” Trask said. “We’ve already wasted enough time here.” He looked up at the sky. “Them buzzards got to eat, too.”

  “I will bury my wife,” Julio said. “And Chama, too.” He crossed himself.

  Trask fixed him with a look of contempt. “Do whatever you want, Delgado. We’re ridin’ on. You’d better catch up.”

  “I will catch up,” Julio said, biting hard to cut back on his anger.

  “I will help Julio,” Renaldo said. “It will not take too long.”

  “I, too, will stay and help dig the graves,” Manuel Diego said.