The effect was devastating.
Lead from nine repeating rifles ripped into the Apaches as they galloped across the parade ground toward the headquarters building.
Half a dozen bucks dropped with the first volleys and a couple more bent over on their ponies, one of them coughing up black blood.
Moments later the soldiers posted at the windows of headquarters opened up.
The fire from the sutler’s store had shattered the Apache charge. Now blasted by hails of lead from two sides the warriors milled around, taking hits from enemies they couldn’t see.
Geronimo, blood on his right arm where a bullet had tagged him, shrieked in rage. He yelled at the young men around him to follow and he charged directly at the sutler’s store.
It was a lethal mistake.
The Apaches charged headlong into a withering fire and Geronimo was suddenly surrounded by riderless ponies. The attack faltered, and the younger bucks, new to warfare and not on ground of their choosing, pulled back.
The soldiers from the headquarters building poured out onto the parade ground and their officers and noncoms chivvied them into line.
Within moments controlled volley fire smashed into the Apache rear and more warriors went down. Half Geronimo’s original number now lay dead or dying on the ground . . . and the battle for Fort Defiance was lost.
Asa Pagg groggily raised himself to a sitting position and watched the disaster unfold.
He rose, stumbled to his horse and mounted. A pall of gray smoke obscured the slaughter on the parade ground, but Pagg saw a few wounded Apaches drift away into the night. There was no sign of Geronimo.
There were two things on Pagg’s mind: Find the pay wagon and steal as much gold as he could carry. Track down Winnifred Grove, the lying bitch, and kill her.
Keeping to the shadows, Pagg rode his horse at a walk and wove among high brush and scattered, disused buildings until he reached the western edge of the parade ground.
Now the wounded Apaches were being killed and clumps of men gathered to watch, slapping one another on the back, grinning their congratulations for a battle against a hated enemy that had been fought and won.
Pagg doubted that there would be anyone inside the headquarters building and to bolster that thought, he was sure he saw Major Grove talking with Owen Shaw near the sutler’s store.
Shaw was also on Pagg’s death list. If not tonight, then later.
Thunder rumbled far off, and the sky above the bleak brush country to the east flashed with blue electric light. The rising wind was strong enough to tangle itself in Pagg’s beard and blow it across his naked chest.
As he reached the gable of the headquarters building, soldiers yelled and laughed as they hoisted a wounded Apache onto the frame where Pagg had been lashed. The Apache’s head hung but he made no sound as whips cracked.
Pagg dismounted in darkness and drew his guns.
For Winnifred Grove, the Apache attack was a heaven-sent opportunity.
As soon as an excited soldier ran into her husband’s office to warn of the impending assault, Winnifred had immediately volunteered to stay by dear Mrs. Ashton and protect her, “lest a murderous savage gain entry to her quarters.”
Colonel Grove, distracted as he tried to silently assemble his scattered troops, nonetheless was touched by his wife’s compassion and devotion to duty and readily agreed.
Winnifred shunned his offer of a revolver, saying that, “The Good Lord will be our protector.”
It had all been so laughably easy.
Now she stood beside Maude Ashton’s bed and looked down at the sleeping woman. Winnifred smiled. This time she’d finish the job and make sure that Maude wouldn’t blab . . . to anyone . . . ever again.
Winnifred pulled the feather pillow out from under the woman’s head and in one swift motion pushed it over her face. Gritting her huge teeth, she bore down with all her strength and . . . she had to admit it . . . enjoyed poor Maude’s feeble struggles.
In fact, she enjoyed it, you know, that way.
Breathing hard, Winnifred lifted the pillow and stared at Maude Ashton. She smiled and nodded to herself. Yes, the poor dear was dead . . . dead as . . . what was it her husband always said? Ah yes, dead as a wooden Indian.
What a thrill that had been!
Winnifred was still grinning, the pillow bunched in her hands, when she turned and saw Asa Pagg standing in the bedroom doorway, as grim and silent as a ghost.
“You!” she said. Her eyes widened in fear.
Outside, guns still banged but Pagg had no time to talk pretties. But the stony expression on his face said it all.
He shot Winnifred Grove between her breasts and the woman was dead when she fell onto Maude Ashton’s bed. A vase of wildflowers stood on the table. Pagg grabbed the flowers and tossed them over the two women.
He smiled. It was a good joke.
Asa Pagg was fast running out of time.
The shooting and yelling from the parade ground had petered out and he had only a few minutes to find the pay wagon and grab what he could.
He remounted his horse, then made a fast scout of the open land behind the headquarters building, riding in bright moonlight.
Pagg found the wagon—but it was empty.
“The money is gone, Asa, locked up for safekeeping.”
Pagg swung his horse around. Captain Owen Shaw stood behind him, his military cloak blowing in the wind.
He had his service Colt in his hand.
“Damnit, Shaw, I don’t have time,” Pagg said. “Where is the money?”
“Locked up in the guardhouse, Asa.” Shaw smiled. “The colonel insisted on using a couple of Wells Fargo padlocks, huge iron things.”
Pagg racked his brain, trying to come up with an answer to this latest problem. But he stopped when he heard the triple click of Shaw’s revolver hammer.
“Sorry, Asa, but you have to go,” the captain said. He smiled. “All bets are off, and by killing you I’ll make myself a hero in Colonel Grove’s eyes. Hell, I might even get a medal.”
“Damn you, Shaw, I always took you fer a dirty, low, two-timing—”
Pagg drew and fired in one dazzlingly swift movement.
Surprised and caught flatfooted by the outlaw’s speed from the leather, Shaw already had a bullet in his chest by the time he triggered his Colt.
He missed, badly.
And Pagg shot him again.
An experienced gunfighter, Pagg knew he’d fired killing shots. There was no need to stick around. As voices rose behind him in the darkness, he swung his horse around and galloped headlong into the brush.
They’d follow him, he knew, figuring him for an escaping Apache.
It was time for Asa Pagg to put a heap of git between him and Fort Defiance.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“He was here,” the old man said. “The one who wears an animal skin and has the mark of the thunderbird on his throat.”
“Did he find the bell, Grandfather?” the boy said.
“Yes, he did. And he found the gold madness that comes with it.”
“Will he come again?”
“Perhaps.”
The boy was silent for a while, thinking. The old man sat in the great Spanish chair and watched him, wondering what the boy would say next. He didn’t have too long to wait.
“You are not Death, Grandfather.”
“Did I ever say I was?”
“The poisoned air in the cave is death. It choked me and made my head ache and made me very sick.”
“That is so, little one, but it was well that you did not linger long. In the past many people came to steal the bell, and all of them lingered long and all of them died. It was the Mexican peons who said I was El Muerte and I was happy to let them think that and spread the word. That was all.”
A frown gathered between the boy’s eyebrows. “If the poisoned air protects the bell, then why the need for a guardian?”
“There has always been a gua
rdian. Before me, there were many.”
“And I will come after you.”
“Yes. You will wear the robes of a monk and guard the bell.”
“Why, Grandfather?”
“Because the bell once rang in heaven and it is a holy thing.”
“You said the bell never rang.”
“Well, it did. But only in heaven.”
The old man’s white eyes went to the small bundle on the cave floor, a shirt, a pair of sandals and a piece of rye bread.
“You are leaving me I think, mi niño?”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“Why?” There was sadness in the old man’s eyes.
“I do not want to guard the bell until I grow old like you and die.”
“When did you decide this thing?”
“After you carried me away from the bell, Barnabas spoke to me.”
“And he told you to leave?”
“He said that you will die in this cave, Grandfather, and that I am too young to suffer the same fate. He told me I should heed him better than his own grandson, who is an idiot.”
“Barnabas says many things, not all of them wise. He told me to offer the seekers the gray horse, and that did not work.”
“Barnabas looks at the bell many times, does he not?” the boy said.
“Yes. That is because he already passed to a dark realm and the bad air cannot harm him.”
“He says he follows the buffalo.”
“Yes, he does. That is his fate. It is what God ordained for him.”
The boy was silent again for a moment. Then he said, “God has not ordained that I guard the bell, Grandfather. Barnabas told me so.”
“In those words?”
“No, he said, ‘For the love of God, leave here, kid.’”
The old man smiled slightly and nodded. “And that’s what you want to do?”
“Yes. I will go and live in a Mexican village. I will be a doctor and heal their ills.”
The boy picked up his bundle. “Please don’t grieve for me, Grandfather.”
“I will pray for you, that you will become a great healer.”
The boy leaned over and kissed the old man on the cheek, and then he walked out of the cave and down the slope to the village.
The old man tried to watch him leave, but his eyes were filled with tears and he could not see.
“I just don’t see it, Abe,” Charlie Fong said. “Dynamite could blow the bell sky high without breaking it.”
“Damnit then, Charlie, what do we do?” Abe Roper said.
“I don’t know.”
Ayasha, still silent but less withdrawn, sat near Sam Flintlock. The Chinese girls chattered to each other, seemingly oblivious to the men’s conversation.
“Well I say we try blowing it,” Roper said. “What have we got to lose?”
“Only two thousand pounds of gold,” Fong said.
The morning was coming in fresh but gray.
Yet another summer thunderstorm threatened and dark clouds piled high in massive ramparts above the Carrizo Mountains. The morning seemed to have passed without a sunrise and a gunmetal light spread across the land like a fog.
“What do you say, Charlie, want to take a look?” Roper said.
“In the cave, you mean?”
“That’s what I mean, damnit.”
“If what Sam is telling us is true then we’re taking a dangerous risk, Abe.”
“Ain’t a fortune in gold worth a risk, huh?”
Charlie Fong looked at Flintlock. “What do you reckon, Sam?”
“I say don’t do it. You could both die in there.”
“Hell, Charlie, Sammy’s scared. With or without you, I’m gonna take a look at the damned bell and figure a way to get it clear of these damned mountains. Now, are you comin’ with me or no?”
Fong turned the question over in his mind, but he was still not convinced. “Sam?” he said.
Flintlock shook his head. “You’re a grown man, Charlie. I can’t tell you what to do.”
He rose to his feet, the Hawken cradled in his arm. “I’m going to shoot us some camp meat. I’ll leave the bell to you and Abe.”
Ayasha, who never let Flintlock out of her sight, got up and stepped beside him.
“No, you stay here,” he said.
The girl shook her head.
“Hell, you can’t hunt in a dress,” Flintlock said.
Ayasha’s only reaction was to draw closer to Flintlock’s side.
“The ladies love you, Sammy,” Roper said. “Take the little gal hunting.”
“What about Sister One and Sister Two?” Flintlock said.
“They’ll come with us,” Charlie Fong said. He saw the horrified expression on Flintlock’s face and added, “As far as the mouth of the cave. They can wait there until we come back out.”
“So you’re going up there, huh?” Flintlock said. Rain began to fall around him.
“Only for a look-see,” Fong said. “We won’t stay long.”
“If I say don’t go there, you won’t listen.”
“That’s how she stacks up, Sam’l,” Roper said.
Flintlock shook his head. “Then you boys will learn . . . the hard way.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The Navajo say the sandstone Sonsela Buttes that straddle the Arizona and New Mexico border were formed by stars falling to earth, their explanation for a remote, lost land marked by ancient lava beds, petrified forests and the ruined pueblos of the Old Ones who lived there thousands of years before the Navajo themselves.
Asa Pagg rode through brush and sage country a couple of miles west of the buttes. To his left lay the massive rift of the Canyon de Chelly, ahead of him soared White Cone Mountain, a triangular peak that looked as though a great wind had blown a pyramid all the way from the Giza plateau. To the east rose the Chuska Mountains, holding up a blanket of black rain clouds.
Pagg knew he had pursuers on his back trail. He’d watched their dust for the past hour.
The questions were: How many and how determined were they?
He’d soon find the answers.
Men like Pagg, outlaws who were always on the run, dodging, ducking, going to ground in some stinking prairie dugout or one-horse hell town, had a pathological fear and hatred of being hunted like an animal.
But those who were skilled gunfighters and man-killers could be pushed so far and no farther. Eventually they’d put their back to a wall and let their guns do the negotiating.
Asa Pagg was one of those.
He drew rein and scouted the flat country behind him with care and caution. He knew the manner of men he faced, leather-tough cavalrymen with experience fighting Apaches. They’d be no bargain.
But how many?
Rain now ticking on his slicker, he sat his horse in a patch of piñon and waited, his eyes constantly scanning the badlands.
Pagg reckoned he could let the soldiers come up on him, sudden-like, and he’d take them by surprise.
Again, it all depended on their numbers, probably many, given Colonel Andrew Grove’s likely rage.
Well, Pagg wasn’t about to take on a cavalry troop. If the army was coming at him in strength, he’d turn and run and trust to his horse.
The rain was settling the dust and Pagg no longer had a rising brown column to help him fix his pursuers.
All he could do now was wait....
A coyote skulked out of the brush then stopped, did a double take when it saw the rider, and trotted quickly away.
The animal rustled into the sage and then the only noise was the steady drum of rain and the jangle of the bit as Pagg’s mount impatiently tossed its head.
And then the horse stiffened and stared across distance, its ears pricked forward.
Pagg saw them then.
Four riders, barely visible behind the falling rain. Thunder banged above the mountains, still far off.
Pleasant Tyrell’s .44-40 Henry was in the boot under Pagg’s left leg, but it didn�
�t enter his thinking to use it. He was no dab hand with a long gun and in a rifle battle with trained soldiers he would surely come out the loser.
He’d rely on surprise . . . and the Smith & Wesson Russians in his holsters.
Aware that the slicker he wore was an encumbrance, Pagg shucked it and the rain fell cold on his naked chest and back. His beard, long untrimmed, hung in an unruly amber bib to his navel and his battered hat shaded his glittering eyes.
Looking more pirate than pistolero, Asa Pagg drew his guns . . . and readied himself....
The four cavalry troopers came on through a pelting rain, the soldier in front bending over from the saddle, scouting for Pagg’s rapidly disappearing tracks in the sand.
Pagg grinned. Fifty yards away and they hadn’t seen him yet.
Thunder boomed and lightning split the sky. Cloud piled on black cloud and the dark morning became a roaring, flashing bedlam of noise and shimmering light. The wind slapped hard against Pagg and under him his horse grew restive and nervously tossed its head.
Forty yards . . .
Pagg’s hands were wet, slick on the smooth ivory of old Tyrell’s revolvers. He set his chin. Well, he’d shot guns in rain before and killed his man. He’d manage.
Twenty yards . . .
And they’d spotted him!
The point rider threw up his hand, and the three behind him drew rein.
Asa Pagg charged.
Ten yards . . .
Time to get his work in.
The troopers had been surprised and it slowed them. They ignored their booted carbines and grabbed for sidearms.
It was a big mistake.
Pagg worked his revolvers with amazing skill and rapidity, the result of a lifetime of training.
One . . . two . . . three saddles emptied. The surviving trooper, a man with dark features and eyes, got off a shot then swung his horse away.
Pagg, fighting his own animal, let him go.
The man now had a story to tell and others would listen to what he had to say and decide that maybe chasing a named gunfighter wasn’t such a good idea after all.
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