Slaughter's Way (A J.T. Edson Western)

by J. T. Edson

  Alvord twisted around as he fell, landing on his right side facing towards the two men while his yell sent the Appaloosa loping away from danger. Both the men held guns and Doug had just fired. Before either Doug could re-cock his gun or Kelly change his aim, Alvord cut loose with his long-barreled Army Colt.

  First he sank a bullet into the fleshy part of Kelly’s skinny left shoulder as the man fired. A red-hot sensation across his leg told Alvord that the thin man had made a glancing hit. However, the scout gritted his teeth, swung his gun towards Doug. Aiming and firing in a fast move, Alvord drove a .44 bullet into Doug’s head, tumbling him over backwards. As he fell, Doug fired a last shot with a dead head. The bullet smashed up dust and dirt a few inches from Alvord’s face, half-blinding him. Desperately Alvord thumbed off three fast shots, fanning the lead in the direction he had last seen Kelly. The scream of a horse in agony followed the soggy thud of a bullet striking flesh. Alvord hoped the scream did not come from his Appaloosa.

  “I’m done! Don’t shoot, I’m finished!”

  Now it was Kelly screaming. Slowly Alvord raised his right hand to wipe clear his eyes and looked around at the results of his gunplay. Doug lay on his back and dead. One of the harness horses belonging to the men was also down. The Appaloosa stood safe, some thirty yards along the valley. Lastly there was Kelly. The man had gone to his knees, one hand holding his shoulder, the other extended in a pleading manner. Rising to his feet, Alvord walked towards the scared-looking man.

  “Don’t shoot!” Kelly screeched. “It was Doug who told Tanaka about the money on the stage and when to hit it. And it was Doug who bought the guns.”

  And picking up the two men’s guns, Alvord went towards the rear of the wagon. He glanced down at his injury, seeing blood running from a gash in his pants’ leg. The wound could not be too serious or he would not be able to stand.

  Lifting the canopy at the rear of the wagon, Alvord looked inside. Then he turned and tossed one of the freighters’ revolvers down before Kelly.

  “Pick it up,” he said quietly. “I’m going to kill you whether do it or not.”

  Kelly read death in the dark young man’s face and knew the reason for Alvord’s words and action. Like a cornered rat, Kelly tried to fight. He grabbed for the gun and caught it up. Before he could line the gun, Alvord shot him dead.

  For a moment Alvord stood looking at the man’s body. Then his eyes went to the wagon and from it to the dead harness horse.

  “This’s one hell of a fix,” Alvord said aloud and looked around for something with which to stop the flow of blood from his leg.

  ~*~

  Although there was still a good hour’s driving time before the sun went down, John Slaughter halted his herd as soon as they crossed the Carne River. The cattle, with the finest grazing they had found in days, showed no desire to go further, but were soon settled down for the night under the watchful eyes of the cowhands.

  Slaughter made a scout out over the range and Burton took a party of men to bury the Apaches’ victims. By nightfall every man was aware that they were in the middle of a hot-bed of trouble once again. Rifles were conspicuous in almost every hand, and none of the men showed any eagerness to roll in their blankets.

  “Rider coming up fast,” one of the men on guard called.

  All the others fell silent and listened to the rapid beating of approaching hooves. This was not an Apache, or it seemed unlikely to be. No Apache would ride so noisily through the night towards the camp of the white-eye ride-plenties.

  Instead of heading for either the remuda or the night horse picket line, the rider came straight into camp. His horse’s flanks were white with lather and the big stallion showed signs of being hard run. It was Burt Alvord, dirty, disheveled and looking all in. His trousers’ right leg had been cut off at the knee and a bloody rag was tied around his thigh.

  Men sprang forward, one to take the Appaloosa’s head and others lifting Alvord from the saddle. Grabbing up a tin cup, Coonskin tossed the coffee out of it and ran to the water keg to collect a drink to slake Alvord’s thirst.

  “Walk the Appaloosa until it cools!” Slaughter snapped to a man. “Ease him down by the fire, boys. Coonskin “

  “Here I is, Massa John,” the Negro replied. “You fix him with this here drink while I goes and gets my doctorin’ kit out.”

  It said much for Alvord’s iron constitution that he was still conscious after his injury and the long, grueling ride back to camp. After drinking, he looked at his boss.

  “Didn’t find the camp, boss.”

  “Lie easy, boy,” Slaughter replied. “They jump you?”

  “Nope. Come across a wagon, couple of fellers with it. Went to warn them about Tanaka—turned out they didn’t need any warning, they was looking for him.”

  “Looking for Tanaka?” growled Burton, glancing first at Slaughter, then back to Alvord.

  “Them, around a hundred Winchester rifles and maybe twenty thousand rounds of prime .44.40 shells to use in ’em, some powder and lead. Only I didn’t stop to take no trail count of it.”

  “Renegades!”

  Slaughter spat out the word as if it burned his mouth. It rolled around the camp, each man given a special note of revulsion as he said it.

  “They sure were.”

  Alvord’s reply left a tolerable lot unexplained. From what he had already told the other men, he must have looked into the rear of the wagon. But no renegade, with a bullet or a rope his only hope if caught, would ever permit any chance-passing stranger to take such liberties.

  However, from the emphasis Alvord had placed on the last word of his speech, it appeared that the gunrunning renegades were in no position to do any objecting.

  “What’d you do with the rifles?” Slaughter asked, as Coonskin arrived with his simple medical kit.

  “Left it.”

  “You left the rifles?” Burton barked.

  “Short of burning the wagon, and bringing down every Apache in miles a damn sight sooner than I wanted, what else could I do; tow it myself?”

  “How about their team?”

  “One of the horses took lead in the fussing.”

  “You lie still, Massa Burt,” Coonskin warned, working at cleaning the wound. “This am going to hurt you a mite.”

  Gritting his teeth, Alvord lay still as Coonskin removed the blood soaked bandage. Then the scout looked at Slaughter.

  “Wagon’s well hid, boss. Take some finding even if you was looking for it.”

  That figured. Renegades would not wish to be seen doing their business out in the open; even in an area over which the Apaches were supposed to reign supreme. They were likely to pick a spot where they could make their deal without the danger of anybody locating them.

  While Coonskin cleaned and bandaged his leg, Alvord told Slaughter everything he could think of, recalling the smallest details, even down to the green leaves and twigs which aroused his curiosity.

  “Comes morning, if not already,” Alvord finished, “Tanaka’s going to be looking for that wagon.”

  “Us and Tanaka both, huh, John?” Burton drawled.

  “Us, yeah. Tanaka, no, at least not tonight,” Slaughter replied. “Whyn’t he make a play for the herd already, Tex?”

  “Maybe don’t know we’re around.”

  Although he said it, Burton did not believe that for a moment. If Tanaka’s men had been in the vicinity in the late afternoon, they would have seen signs of the cattle and brought word to their leader. Tanaka would hardly pass up a chance to kill off white men and run off their cattle.

  “He’s doing something big,” Slaughter guessed. “That’s why he hit the stage and took its money. Those renegades learned of the shipment and fixed it with Tanaka to take the money to pay for the guns they had stashed away. With all those guns and plenty of shells Tanaka would be a big man among his people, and have plenty of support.”

  “John’s right at that,” Alvord growled. “Only a thing that big’d need plenty of
medicine making afore it could be decided on.”

  “They’d’ve decided it afore they hit the stage,” Burton objected.

  “Have to give thanks to their war god for coming out so easy,” Alvord explained. “Easy there, Coonskin, I ain’t got but one right leg.”

  “I reckon that the renegades didn’t fix any meeting place with Tanaka,” Slaughter remarked. “Or why would they chance sending up smoke and attracting attention to where they were?”

  “You’ve a right smart point there, John. We’ve got to stop him. If Tanaka gets them guns, there won’t be a living white man from the Pecos to the California line and back the long way.”

  “We’re going to stop him,” Slaughter answered.

  “Even if you took every man along, it’d still be two to one at least against us, and that’s pretty stiff odds even for us Texans.”

  “It’ll be stiffer. There’s only me, Burt, if he can ride, Talking Bill and Hernandez’s lil toy going.”

  Burton stared at his boss for a long moment.

  “It’s a long chance, John.”

  “It’s the only one we’ve got. You’ll keep the herd moving, Tex. Happen I don’t catch up with you before you reach Fort McClellan, sell the herd, pay off the crew and take the money home to Bess.”

  Fort McClellan was still a good eight days’ drive away, so Burton asked, “Where’ll you be?”

  “Dead!” Slaughter answered quietly.

  ~*~

  The plume of smoke had been rising into the air, sucked up by a draft of wind, since just after dawn. Now it was almost ten o’clock and John Slaughter stood with Burt Alvord by the fire, looking across the range to where Tanaka led his men towards the entrance to the valley between the two mesas.

  On arrival the previous night, or in the small hours of the morning, Slaughter’s party went to work. First they removed and buried the two renegades and dragged the dead horse out on to the range. They turned the wagon sideways on across the valley, made other preparations and then hid their horses, leaving a mule brought from the herd to make up the full number necessary for the wagon’s team.

  Taking sacks of lead from the wagon, Slaughter’s party fixed them into place so they hung at the right of the wagon, each supported by a rope which went over the top and was fastened to the lower edge of the canopy on the left side. The weight tended to draw up on the canopy, but a single piece of rope held it in place hiding the surprise waiting for Tanaka on his arrival.

  At dawn Slaughter and Alvord, the latter wearing his spare pants and favoring the wounded leg, donned the dead freighter’s wolf-skin jackets, draping them over their shoulders for easy removal. Then they started the fire and waited.

  “You set in there, Bill?” Slaughter asked over his shoulder as the Apaches entered the valley.

  “Fit as a flea and raring to go,” came the reply.

  Talking Bill must have been feeling the strain of waiting, tossing words around wholesale in such a manner.

  The tension might be easily understood. It seemed that Tanaka had brought his entire band along to collect the rifles. Which same made a tolerable fair handful of bad mean Apaches for a man to look at—even if he did know about Hernandez’s little toy being in the wagon.

  Out ahead of the rest rode Tanaka. He was a squat-built, tough looking Apache of middle age and sitting a big pinto horse like he was part of it. If proof had been needed as to who attacked the Wells Fargo stage, Tanaka for one gave it. A shoulder holster containing a short-barrelled Webley Bulldog revolver was strapped around his stocky, brawny chest, and across his arm he carried one of the specially built twin-barreled ten-gauge shotguns Wells Fargo issued to its guards. Before him, across his horse’s withers, hung a couple of medicine bags of fringed, beaded and decorated buckskin and inside would be the money from the stagecoach’s bullion box.

  Reaching down, Tanaka lifted the medicine bags from his horse and raised them into the air. He kept his eyes on the two white men as he rode slowly nearer. Slaughter and Alvord stood watching the Apaches come closer, a hundred yards, ninety, eighty, seventy-five. Soon it would be time to make their play, or they might be too late. They must not let the braves come closer in than fifty yards.

  Leading his men on to their destiny, Tanaka rode easily. The Apache contemplated his future, and a very fine future it seemed. His people needed a leader to carry them along a war trail which would sweep the white-eyes from their land. No such leader was around, except Tanaka. Mangas Colorado had been long dead, murdered by the white-eye soldiers he so foolishly trusted. Victorio and Cochise were turned to old women, fit only to sit by the council fires and talk of peace with the white-eye brother. Even the witch man Geronimo hid like a skulking coyote down below the border instead of riding north and making his prophesies of war and victory.

  So Tanaka decided he must be the one. That great leader who would come from their people and lead the brave-hearts to drive out the hated white man for all time.

  He was pleased he had not killed the half-breed who had brought word to him of the white-eye gun-sellers. On seeing the man riding towards the camp, Tanaka’s first thought had been to finish his life. But Tanaka held off the pleasure until he heard the man-of-no-people speak. That had been a fortunate move. The two white-eye gun-sellers spoke of a way to obtain many repeating rifles and bullets. Such a simple way, and offering the added pleasure of killing off a few more white-eyes.

  It seemed the white-eyes were keeping their word. There stood the wagon and the men looked much as when he met them by the small fire in the darkness a few nights ago. Tanaka decided to pay for the guns this time, in the hope of learning where he might buy more weapons. When the gun-sellers were no longer useful to him, they would go the way of other white-eyes.

  With the guns, Tanaka and his men would return to the reservation and gather the brave-hearts. There might be a few objections, but Tanaka doubted it. On an earlier visit to his people, an old man chief objected to his ways. The chief had a beautiful daughter, a girl worth at least thirty good ponies— or had been until her father challenged Tanaka’s will. They had staked her out and built a little fire on her face. Two young bucks who objected were taken, their eyelids cut off, ears removed and tongues slit. After that nobody objected to anything Tanaka did.

  Once he became supreme war chief, Tanaka swore he would never make the mistake so many other leaders made. They allowed too much freedom around the council fire, too many people to have a say in what should be done. Tanaka did not intend to make so foolish a mistake. When he rose to his greatness, he and he alone would make the decisions.

  Suddenly one of the braves gave a yell and jumped his horse forward from the Apache ranks. By that time they had reached fifty yards’ distance from the wagon and that young buck Apache had cause for his alarm. The two white-eyes looked all too familiar. A man did not forget the sight of someone who had come close to killing him; and the young buck was the one who escaped from the attempted ambush on the banks of the Carne River.

  Reaching his leader’s side, the buck spat out a mouthful of fast-spoken Apache. In the guttural tone of his people, he told Tanaka of his suspicions. A snarl twisted Tanaka’s face as he looked at the men who had killed his brother, not a really important matter, and who it seemed had tricked him; which was, to Tanaka’s mind, the most heinous and unforgivable act a man could make.

  Tanaka brought his shotgun off his arm and opened his mouth to yell an order. He left it too late.

  While neither Slaughter nor Alvord recognized the buck or spoke Apache, they guessed what must have happened. So both Texans went for their guns. Fifty yards was well beyond anything like gunfighting range—no matter what Ned Buntline and other blood-and-thunder writers of the day claimed. However, Slaughter had developed a technique or two for getting the most out of his Colt in the quickest possible time.

  Drawing the Colt, Slaughter kept on lifting it until he held it shoulder high and at the end of an extended arm. At the same time, his left han
d came to grip and support the right. Bending his head forward. Slaughter took sight and touched off his first shot. By using that method, he added a good quarter of a second to his draw, but had the advantage of being able to use the gun’s sights.

  How well Slaughter used those sights showed when Tanaka, his shotgun only half raised and his orders unspoken, took a bullet between the eyes.

  Alvord lacked Slaughter’s extra skill with a Colt and, had he been given a choice, would have preferred to hold his rifle. That would have been out of the question, for Tanaka had the suspicious nature of a lobo wolf and might not have ridden in if he saw a man holding a rifle.

  However that many Apaches made a fair target, even for a fast draw and an instinctive alignment shot. Alvord cut down one man, though it cannot be truthfully claimed he tried to hit the man out of all the others.

  Before any of the Apaches, who had never before seen a real fast gunfighter in action, could make a move, Slaughter and Alvord had fired their shots and were backing to the cover of the wagon.

  Inside the wagon, Talking Bill heard the shots and sprang to do his part. One slash of the knife he held cut through the rope holding down the left side of the canopy. On the right side, the lead weights, relieved of their anchor, crashed to the ground. The resulting pull on the ropes stripped the canopy off the wagon. In doing so, it left the way clear for Hernandez’s little toy.

  It stood squat and evil on its tripod. The five-barreled, lightweight .45 caliber Gatling gun Slaughter had taken from the possession of a Mexican bandido. Talking Bill leapt to the rear of the gun as soon as he slit the rope, gripped the firing handle and started to crank it around. The barrels revolved and flame spurted from each as they reached to the top of their circle.

  At that range, faced with a crowd, Talking Bill did not need to take a careful aim. He turned the handle and swung the barrel so a spray of lead scythed across the Apaches’ front. In the War Between the States Talking Bill had handled a captured Gatling gun.