‘We’ll see.’
That night, Mary-Lou Brittain came to James Muir and asked him if he would share her wagon and bundle up with her against the cold. Since her ravings and screams seemed to have eased away, the soldier agreed. He never even bothered to check with Crow. There didn’t seem any need. With so few left in the ring of Doughertys they were having to stand single guards. Muir went first and Crow finished the night’s watch.
In between it was all down to the women.
Muir joined Mary-Lou at about ten o’clock.
By the half hour he was rammed firmly home between her ample thighs.
By eleven she was crawling over him in the blackness of the nest of blankets, rousing him for a second bout.
By five minutes past, Trooper Muir was dead.
Mary-Lou leaned across him, trapping him beneath her weight and the coverings. Kissing his lips. Brushing her teeth against his neck. Licking his stubbled skin. Feeling the pulse of the great artery under the ear throbbing against her mouth.
Touching it with her tongue, very gently.
And biting through it in a great convulsive jagged ripping.
Crow was wakened by the cry of shock and pain, bubbling away into silence. Grabbing at his guns and leaping from the front of the rig. Facing two women holding carbines, pointing at him. Turning slowly and seeing Rachel and Martha behind him, both with guns.
Finally seeing the other women joined by Mary-Lou Brittain, her eyes bright in the moonlight, all with guns. A splash of blackness around Mary-Lou’s mouth, dappling the front of her body, naked under a blanket.
Crow nodded slowly. ‘I get it. Sure. I should have guessed. Should maybe have just ridden on and left you thankless bitches to the Shoshone.’
‘Maybe, Crow,’ said Martha Hetherington, her voice a soft whisper.
‘Now you aim to trade me for your lives. You know how much Many Knives would want me.’
Mary-Lou pushed to the front of the group. ‘Yes. But you aren’t that important to us. It’s living. Even with the Indians. Any fate’s better than dying.’
It wasn’t a time for arguing.
‘One thing, ladies. By now you should know better than to hold a gun on anyone without cocking it first.’
Predictably, every single one of them glanced down at their guns. It gave him all the time that he needed.
To dive sideways, rolling on his left shoulder, drawing the Purdey as he was still moving. Coming up on one knee and cocking and firing, all in one blur of action. The lead tearing through Mary-Lou Brittain, nearly taking her head from her shoulders. A higher shot than Crow had intended, but it had the right effect.
‘First one to move gets the other barrel!’ be yelled. ‘Keep still.’
‘Crow … we …’
‘Martha,’ he said, ‘I just don’t have the time.’
He considered shooting them all down where they stood, but the firing might bring in the Shoshone, not giving him the time he needed for his last, desperate gamble.
‘What …?’ asked Rachel Shannon, the gun hanging loose in her hands, while she avoided looking at the shambles of tattered flesh that had been Mary-Lou.
‘I’m goin’. You all drop the guns, and line up over there with your hands in plain sight.’
It didn’t take him long to ready the stallion. Swinging up on its back and heeling it between two of the wagons. Cantering through the moonlight, across the packed snow, never once looking back. To the edge of the sheer cliff of scree over the Moorcock River.
Not once looking back at the ring of wagons and the line of silent women. ‘Come on, boy,’ he whispered, driving the animal over the edge. Hoping that his guess was right and the river was much lower than it had been.
It was like riding clean off the side of the world. For a long time horse and man slithered and fell, finally plunging into the freezing water. But his guess had been right. The Moorcock was no longer in racing flood. It was more -gentle and shallow, carrying them along with no great danger and Crow was able to walk the stallion out on the shallow bank of rock that he’d seen days earlier.
It had been hard times and he decided to rest up in the hills for a few hours, giving the animal space to recover from the river. From where he was it was possible to see clear across the plateau, looking for first light.
When it came he saw the women filing out from their defenses, walking uncertainly behind Martha Hetherington, carrying white flags. The Indians allowed them to come to the narrowing of the trail before they accepted it was no trick and they swooped out like vultures to surround and carry off the precious captives. Crow thought he heard a scream but it was hard to tell.
Crow pushed on west and south, away from the Indians, holding up on a high trail. He’d only covered three or four miles when he saw winding below him, heading for the plateau, the long column of blue-clad soldiers. Maybe a hundred of them.
The relief command coming to the rescue of the trapped train of wives and widows.
Four hours too late.
Crow reined in and watched them moving on, none of them noticing the lone rider. He shook his head and spoke to nobody in particular.
‘Well, Martha, I surely hope you find it’s not worse than death. That’s what you got to live with. Until it’s over.’
He pushed on away from the Dakotas. For the man called Crow it wasn’t over.
An exciting preview of the next book in the Crow series, Tears of Blood.
Chapter One
The greening came late to Kansas that year. Spring crawled across the chilled land like a beaten mongrel. Slow and careful. But at last it happened. Like it did every year. The frost eating out of the soil and the first fresh shoots appearing. Green out of gray.
There was even a watery sun breaking through on the Abilene street that afternoon. Warm enough to bring the old man out of his second-floor back room to sit on the stoop and rock a whiles. Eyes closed. Letting the sun bathe him. It was something for the aged when spring came round once more.
It was a sign. A victory. An affirmation that the winter had gone away and you were still alive. Maybe a good chance of seeing the summer through.
A shadow fell across the porch, a loose board creaking under a boot. Enough of a sound to waken the old-timer from his faded dreams.
‘What the Hell you want?’ he snarled, wiping away a thread of spittle that had wandered from the corners of his lips. Looking up, seeing the man silhouetted against the Kansas sun. ‘Oh, it’s you. Ain’t seen you in a in a coon’s age. Sit yourself down yonder.’ Seeing the look of distrust directed at the rickety chair. ‘Safe enough. Just don’t lean back too far or you’ll go clean over on your ass.’
The stranger eased himself into the bentwood chair, feeling it give a little under his weight, nodding across at the man in the rocker to reassure him that everything was fine.
‘Guess you’re here for more tales about old Crow. Ain’t that a fact?’ Cackling at the nod from the Easterner in his neat blue suit. Speckled with Abilene dust.
‘Shouldn’t even have told you how it all began. Could have won a few dollars more out of you.’ Hastily. ‘Only joshin’, Mister. Just joshin’ you a little. You been mighty generous and that’s a fact. Hell, I surely never figured tellin’ a man like you about old Crow would have been like strikin’ at Sutter’s new mill. You want to hear more about how he left the Cavalry?’
The other man shook his head. He’d heard all that before. It was one of the problems with the old guy. It was all in there. Like the gold at Sutter’s Mill, right enough. But there was times that his mind wandered off down some weed-covered abandoned trail and it was hard going to bring him back to talk about what you wanted.
‘Guess I told you ’bout that, huh? Well, you got to understand, Mister, that life don’t look so straight when you go back on it. Faces get kind of blurred. I seen a man lynched by vigilantes up in ... somewheres in Oregon. Neck stretched to about two and a half feet. Burst the veins in his throat and he drowned.
Mighty odd way to pass on, ain’t it? Drowned in blood on a sycamore tree in Oregon. Now he bad a mustache that was black with kind of silver tips to it. See them plain as my own hands.’
He stretched out his fingers on the arms of the chair, looking down at them. The stranger looked too. They were old man’s hands. Spotted with brown patches. Unweathered, and frail. The nails looking soft.
‘’Fact is, I can see that man’s face as he kicked away up that sycamore. Or was it an oak? Don’t recall that. But I see his face. And the way his pecker stood out the front of his breeches. You ain’t seen no hangin’, I guess. No, you wouldn’t. I seen some. But I don’t rightly remember what I had at that stinkin’ coffee shop for my breakfast this morning. Funny, ain’t it?’
But it wasn’t really a question and the stranger didn’t bother to field it, letting it fly on past him into the spring air.
‘I know there was beans. Give me dreadful wind. You suffer from gas, Mister?’ The old-timer didn’t wait for the reply. ‘I’m a damned martyr to it. Beans and chilli. Ham. Couple of eggs over easy. I go there every lousy mornin’ and that painted yeller whore always smiles on through me when I get the check. Thanks for coming,’ he parodied. ‘Ya’n come see us again. Have a nice day. Sheet!’ He spat in the dust of the small back garden.
What was I talkin’ about? Was it the time that Crow got hisself mixed up with that wagon-train of officers’ wives up north? Sioux country?’
The stranger shook his head, beginning to wonder whether this visit might be wasted.
‘Guess I mentioned the killings down in Apache country. Them kidnappings and murders? I didn’t? Well, ain’t that somethin’, Mister? I’d have sworn that I had. By God but that was something. See them little plants breakin’ through. Old slut owns the rooming-house put them in. Clean forgot them. Her dog shits all over ’em and she sets her sun-chair down on ’em. Still come through when the greenin’ beckons them.’
At last they were on the right trail. The stranger had been down to the South-west a few days ago and he’d caught the scent of this new story down there. Just a passing reference in old papers and a couple of letters in the State Archives.
Enough to bring him back up to Abilene. To sit in the sun with the old gunfighter. Maybe the only person living who’d remember the man they called Crow. No other name.
Just Crow.
Guess you might care to hear more ’bout those killings down Arizona. Apaches. Clever sons of bitches. Once met that Cuchillo Oro. Pinner’s Indian, they called him. Surely was a big son of a bitch. Right hand was missin’ fingers. Soldier thought that had done for him. He learned.’ A cackling laugh. ‘I told you before what Crow said about never gettin’ stung by a dead bee. That was Cuchillo Oro. Some kin of Mangas Colorado. Carried a gold knife. Listen to that Christ-awful noise.’
It was an aeroplane, coming in low over Abilene. Making the Sunday afternoon air shake with the thunder of its passing. The stranger looked up at it, blinking into the sun. Hoping that the interruption hadn’t broken the thread for the old man in the rocking-chair.
‘Odd how my mind comes back with things. Seeing the sun all gold and that black shape. Puts me to thinkin’ of Crow. All dressed in black. Like somethin’ you’d frighten a kid with. And that soft cold voice. Hear that comin’ at you out of the shadows and you’d know you was livin’ on borrowed time. Just that yellow bandana around his neck. From his time with the Third. I tell you? Yes, sure I recall I did.’
The stranger had only arrived in Abilene by train that morning. Finding the town quiet, with most folks at church.
Above their heads the noisy biplane made another buzzing circuit. Bringing children out in the streets to watch and setting off every dog for miles around barking and yapping.
God meant us to fly then he’d have given us wings. That’s what I say, Mister,’ muttered the old feller, pettishly. Flicking a fly away from his mouth. Spitting again at the small green shoots near their feet.
The Easterner prompted him once more, afraid that he was slipping away. Losing the tale he wanted to hear.
‘Sure, Mister. Arizona. Apaches. Took ’em for a kind of ... What’s the word?’ The stranger offered a suggestion. ‘That’s it, Mister. A ransom. By God, but there was surely some deaths down there that spring. Must have been seventy-seven. Year after Autie bought the farm up on the Little Big Horn. Seventy-seven. Sure. Lot of dead. Women’s tears. Not salt. More like blood. Yeah, tears of blood.’
CROW 2
WORSE THAN DEATH
First Published by Transworld Publishers Limited in 1979
Copyright © 1979 by James W. Marvin
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: November 2012
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Published by Arrangement with Elizabeth James.
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About the Author
Laurence James was a member of the original 'Piccadilly Cowboys'. In 1972 he became a full-time freelance author and journalist and for many years thereafter published short science fiction stories in both Britain and the U.S. In 1974 he published his first novel, Earth Lies Sleeping which introduces galactic secret agent Simon Rack. The series is shortly to appear in electronic form under the PP imprint. At around the same time, Laurence published a fantasy saga of Hells Angels under the name 'Mick Norman'. The four books, Angels from Hell, Angel Challenge, Guardian Angels and Angels on my Mind, were later repackaged as The Angel Chronicles by Creation Books. Laurence went on to enjoy a highly prolific career, publishing dozens of novels under his own name as well as various pen names. Today Laurence is best-remembered for his post apocalyptic Deathlands series, for which he penned more than thirty novels under the name 'James Axler'. He was also a gifted western writer, and among his many western credits are such series as Crow, Apache, Herne the Hunter, Caleb Thorn and Gunslinger. His other series work included The Witches as 'James Darke', Wolfshead as by 'Arthur Frazier', The Vikings as 'Neil Langholm', Survival 2000 as 'James McPhee', the Confessions series as 'Jonathan May', The Killers as 'Klaus Netzen' and The Eagles as 'Andrew Quiller, plus two stand-alone novels as 'Richard Haigh'. His frequent collaborators included Terry Harknett, John Harvey, Angus Wells and Kenneth Bulmer.
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