by Doug Thorne
So he forced himself to stay right where he was until Tahkay was near enough, then finally made his move. He kicked out, catching the buck’s leading leg between his two feet, one connecting with his shin, the other hooking around to take him behind the knee, and in almost the same moment he gave a sharp twist and rolled, toppling Tahkay sideways.
The Indian fell clumsily but was back up on his knees almost at once, and this time so was Hennessy. But on the way up, Hennessy had also grabbed a handful of still-warm ashes from beside the wagon, and as he pushed erect he flung them straight into his opponent’s face.
Halfway through climbing back to his feet, Tahkay suddenly choked and grabbed at his eyes, but even as he clawed the dust out of them, Hennessy threw himself forward, tackled the Comanche around the waist and sent them both crashing backwards in a heap, with each man trying to punch the life out of the other.
They rolled to left, then right, then back again, washed-out dust rising around them in a smothering haze. Then they fell apart, came back up onto their knees and Tahkay threw a hurried punch that Hennessy dodged more by luck than skill.
Now plastered in dust, Hennessy lurched to his feet and danced back a few paces. Catching a glimpse of his canteen where he’d dropped it in the sand, he quickly snatched it up by the straps and swung it in a short arc. The canteen itself whacked Tahkay on the left ear and sent him staggering sideways, and before he could recover Hennessy swung it back the other way and caught the young Comanche on the jaw, slamming his teeth together hard.
Tahkay lost his footing then, rolled, came back up, scooped up and threw some dust of his own, then started to rip the hatchet from his sash.
Seeing the move through stinging eyes, Hennessy threw the canteen at him and then followed it fast, crowding him before he could pull the weapon free. He hit him again to put him back on his knees, then kneed him in the face, drawing a thick squirt of blood from his nostrils.
Hennessy backed up again then, hoping that would be the end of it, but Tahkay, ornery sonofabuck that he was, still had other ideas. Beside himself with rage now, and seemingly oblivious to the pain of his broken nose, the Comanche swiped at his bloody face with his left hand, more or less sprang back to his feet and threw the hatchet. It turned end over end through the air and Hennessy had to dodge low and to one side to avoid it.
But then it was his turn.
His right hand blurred across his belly and he drew the bowie from its beaded sheath at his left hip.
The knife was a lethal-looking ten-inch slab of honed steel with a brass hand guard and a bone handle measuring around five inches. As he brought it up and back for throwing, the sun bounced off the blade and a pale, restless oblong of light skittered across Tahkay’s twisted face. The young buck’s dark eyes went wide, but there was no fear in them, just an almost impossible-to-contain mixture of anger and regret that he couldn’t have killed more whites before his own life came to an end.
Hennessy tensed, and was just about to throw the knife and skewer his opponent’s heaving chest when his fighting blood suddenly cooled and all at once he wanted no more of hatred and death. Besides, common sense told him that, while the Comanches might approve of the way he had fought, they certainly wouldn’t take kindly to watching him kill one of their own.
No: to kill Tahkay now would be to sign his own death warrant.
That being the case, he straightened up, allowed his bunched shoulders to relax, spat more blood and then very deliberately put the knife away.
It was, he hoped, over.
A long, tense moment ticked into history, the sudden silence broken only by the sounds of his and Tahkay’s quick, hungry breathing and the occasional stamp of a bored or skittish horse. Then another Comanche dismounted and came charging down into the arroyo, and Hennessy had the damnedest feeling that he was going to have to fight this sonofabitch as well.
But the Indian flung himself down beside Tahkay instead, and quickly inspected the boy’s battered face to see for himself the extent of his injuries.
The newcomer was about forty or so, with a thick waist and an old scar that had taken the skin of his right cheek and twisted it into a small, wrinkled spider’s-web of dead tissue. For all that, however, the likeness between this man and Tahkay was unmistakable, and explained his obvious concern for the youngster.
Unless Hennessy was very much mistaken, they were father and son.
Glaring at Hennessy now, the scar-faced warrior helped Tahkay to his feet, but Tahkay, both angered and shamed by his beating, quickly shrugged him off and spat defiantly to one side.
Bruised and dishevelled, Hennessy looked from Tahkay to Eagle Hand, the obvious question on his face. Eagle Hand kicked his pony forward until he could look straight down at the white man, then said gravely. ‘Get away from here, Hennessy! My brothers wish only to kill every white man they see. For now, I hold them in check – some of them. But for how long? So ride from this place and never return, and be grateful that your friendship with Stormbringer protects you at this time, for it will not do so again.
‘Next time, Hennessy, you will die!’
TWO
Hennessy’s natural instinct was to mount up and get the hell out of there just as fast as he could, but he knew better than to hurry. The Comanches would see that as cowardice, and cowardice was the one trait they despised above all others.
So, eager as he was to skin out right then, he forced himself to bend instead and retrieve his fallen hat, then made a show of using it to brush himself down before retrieving his canteen and finally stepping up to leather.
A long half-minute later he gathered his reins, nodded once to Eagle Hand and rode up out of the arroyo, fighting the urge to glance back over one taut shoulder as the gelding carried him away from the Kwahadis and the results of their grisly handiwork. Only when he was hidden from his enemies by a vast spill of boulders half a mile distant did he finally release a long-held breath and allow himself to sag.
That had been close, he thought. But at least he was still here to tell about it – which he suspected had been Eagle Hand’s intention all along. Eagle Hand wanted word of what had happened in the arroyo to spread. He wanted the whites to know that their brief but damaging time here was coming to an end, that he and his brothers were going to wash them away on a tide of blood. And he wanted Hennessy to be the man who carried the message.
Pausing, he checked the position of the sun. It was already well past noon, which meant that he would have to move fast now if he were to reach the relative safety of his destination before nightfall. As if sharing his master’s unease, the gelding eagerly picked up the pace.
In the hour before sunset, Hennessy heard the firecracker pop of gunshots in the distance and drew rein, but there was neither urgency nor alarm in him now, for this wasn’t the furious, irregular shooting that told of some desperate gun-battle. Unless he missed his guess, it was the steady, systematic slaughtering of yet another buffalo herd.
He climbed a high rise from which he could survey the scrubby flats in every direction and, as he topped out, immediately spotted his own particular trail’s-end no more than half a mile south-west.
Adobe Walls.
Within the last month or so, the hide men had started working their way down from western Kansas and eastern Colorado in search of easier pickings, and along the way they’d turned this crumbling, long-abandoned stockade into their base of operations. A band of money-hungry merchants from Dodge City had accompanied them, each one figuring to turn a handsome profit by catering to their every need, and the result was this rough-and-ready pocket of civilization in the middle of no-place.
Adobe Walls was a modest scattering of buildings set within four crumbling, half-charred walls built from the clay, straw and water bricks that gave the place its name. To the north-west, a large hide yard shared space with a stable, a store and what he took to be some kind of eatery or mess hall. West stood a log-built blacksmith’s shop and a ramshackle, board-and-batten sal
oon with a sagging shingle roof that looked as if it might collapse at any moment. A way off to the southwest sat a second hide yard, this one about a fourth the size of its companion, beyond which there stood a single, forlorn-looking privy.
Both yards were stacked almost to toppling height with buffalo skins.
The skins brought a frown back to Hennessy’s brow. How many were there? he wondered. A thousand? Fifteen hundred? And each one all that remained of a life snuffed out for a handful of dollars.
Before he could think too deeply about it, he was distracted by the sight of two riders coming out of the west, walking their horses either side of a creaking light wagon that was filled to overflowing with yet more slowly-stiffening buffalo skins. Another small group of hunters, escorting a heavily-laden wagon carrying much the same cargo, was heading towards the settlement from the east.
He grimaced as the stench of blood and flayed hides carried to him on the warm air. To the Indians, that same stink would represent a challenge, saying as it did that the whites were here and here to stay, and treaties be damned. For the sorry truth was that these hard-bitten hunters would only leave when they’d slaughtered every last buffalo and left this country much as they’d left the plains of Kansas before it, with Eagle Hand’s precious P’te all but wiped out.
This time, though, the Indians were going to have something to say about it, and they were going to let their knives, bows, hatchets and trade guns do the talking for them.
It was going to be a bloodbath.
Deciding that he’d tarried long enough, Hennessy touched his heels to the gelding’s ribs and came down off the rise, headed for the stockade.
As he drew closer, he noted with a tactician’s eye that the largest of the hide yards also appeared to be the sturdiest structure the place had to offer. Although three of its four corners had watchtowers, however, only one was manned, and this by a bespectacled skinner who seemed to be more interested in studying a dog-eared wish-book than the safety – or otherwise – of their potentially hostile surroundings.
He came through the broken walls and slowed to a trot. Few of the grizzled, grease-stained men going about their business between buildings gave him a second glance, and that surprised him. He’d expected the place to be a hive of activity, its occupants eager for news of the outside world, but it seemed that not even the arrival of a dusty newcomer unknown to most of them could disrupt the slow, methodical orderliness of the place, which appeared to be occupied by around thirty or forty men. In fact, the closest he came to a greeting of any kind was when a curly black Newfoundland dog galloped towards him, wagging his tail and letting go a series of deep, happy barks.
Hennessy drew rein and swung down in front of a weather-warped trough that was filled with brackish, cloudy-looking water. As he loosened the cinch and bit to let his horse drink more comfortably, the dog circled and pushed at his legs, determined to get his attention. Admiring the critter’s persistence and appreciating its desire to make friends, he scrubbed its big head and ears with his free hand.
When he judged that the gelding had drunk his fill, he tugged on the reins and led the animal towards the saloon, where he planned to slake his own thirst and dull some of the pain in his bruised ribs and back. Still hot from the ride, the gelding went reluctantly, and losing interest in them, the dog trotted back the way it’d come.
Hennessy was just throwing a loop at the hitch-rail out front when the batwings away to his right opened on dried-out leather hinges and a man’s voice remarked, loud enough for him to hear, ‘Well, I’ll be damned! Lookit what the wind’s blowed in!’
Turning, he saw three men studying him from the shadows of the saloon doorway, each with a foaming schooner in hand. Two of them – fresh-faced men in their early twenties – were strangers to him. But the third was—
‘Billy, you sonofabitch!’
Even as Hennessy recognized him, Billy Dixon came stamping out into the last of the day’s light with his free hand thrust ahead of him. Hennessy took it, returning the other’s grin as he did so, but there was no shake, as such. Just that simple, firm handclasp alone said it all for men of their calibre.
‘Cal Hennessy!’ said Billy, his surprised smile all but hidden beneath a flowing moustache the same midnight black as the hair that fell from beneath his tilted slouch hat. ‘By God, you’re a sight for sore eyes! But what the hell brings you out this way?’ Before Hennessy could reply, he narrowed his eyes and asked with comical suspicion, ‘Say, I don’t owe you any money, do I?’
‘Relax,’ Hennessy replied mildly. ‘Just figured I’d swing by an’ say howdy, is all.’
Billy found that funny. He was of a stocky build and average height, and his weathered face played host to a high, broad forehead and dark, good-natured eyes set deep above rounded, bewhiskered cheeks. He, like almost everyone else there, favoured buckskins that had seen better days.
‘You’re the only man I know who’d cross country like this jus’ to say hello!’ he chuckled, and he was still chuckling when he turned at the waist and beckoned to his companions. ‘Bat! Oscar! Come on over here an’ meet Cal Hennessy!’
Billy’s friends ambled closer and, while they also gripped with Hennessy, Billy made the introductions. ‘Cal, this young grasshopper here is William Barclay Masterson, but he answers best to the name Bat. An’ the grey wolf escortin’ him calls hisself Oscar Sheppard.’
‘ ’Boys,’ Hennessy said with a nod.
Masterson was dressed for range work in a loose patterned shirt and fringed buckskin leggings. He wore a battered hat with an upturned brim and a well-worn cartridge belt hanging low on his right hip. By rights, his heavy, untrimmed moustache should have aged him, but in fact he looked even younger up close than he had from a distance. His dark, heavy eyebrows sat above well spaced pale blue eyes with very large, very dark pupils, and his mouth had a tight, all-knowing twist to it. Hennessy pegged him at around nineteen or so – but a nineteen-year-old who thought he knew it all.
Oscar Sheppard was a couple or three years older. Thin-faced and clean-shaven, he stood tall and slim in a collarless, sweat-darkened red shirt and creased grey pants held up by a gunbelt buckled high around his waist. As he swept off his wide-brimmed Plainsman hat and offered a shy smile of greeting, Hennessy was surprised to see that he was already bald but for a shadow of fine black hair that grew above his ears and around the back of his head. Hennessy didn’t think he’d ever before known a man lose his hair so early in life.
‘Heard of you, Mr Hennessy,’ Sheppard said politely. ‘All of it good.’
‘ ’Preciate it,’ he replied. Almost immediately, however, he turned his attention back to Billy. ‘But I reckon I’ve got bad news for you-all.’
Billy’s smile suddenly faded. ‘Oh?’ he asked carefully.
‘Ran into two dead men on the way here.’ said Hennessy. ‘A bunch of Kwahadis, too.’
‘Dead men?’ echoed Bat Masterson. ‘Hide men?’
‘ ’Fraid so.’
‘What happened?’ asked Sheppard.
He gave it to them just as he’d seen it happen, and at the end of it Billy muttered, ‘Damn.’
‘You know ’em, Billy?’ asked Hennessy.
‘Sounds like Sam Dudley an’ B. J. Williams,’ was Billy’s reply. ‘They went out a little afore first light an’ I ain’t seen ’em since.’ He shook his head and tucked his tongue into one cheek, remembering the dead men and considering exactly what this new development signified. After a while his eyes sharpened again and he growled, almost to himself, ‘Well, I guess we’d better go spread the word. Raise a fresh glass to their memories, too, while we’re at it.’
Hennessy gave him no argument about that, so they turned and went back into the saloon, a narrow, dingy building with a plank-and-barrel counter running the length of the left-side wall and a lightly sawdusted floor across which had been scattered a handful of rickety tables and upturned crates that doubled for chairs. Too warm, too smoky and none too clean
for comfort, the single room was presently occupied by about eight or ten men who were playing cards, shooting the breeze or just washing the dust down with cheap beer or barrelhead whiskey.
Billy led his companions to a spot at the end of the bar and bought four shots of brave-maker. He tossed his own drink down in one fast swallow, then banged the bottom of his glass against the counter to get the attention of his fellow patrons.
‘Listen up, you fellers!’ he bawled, and as unshaven, sun-darkened faces turned his way he said, ‘I got bad tidin’s! ’Pears that Dudley an’ Williams ran into some trouble this mornin’. They’re dead!’
A moment of heavy, shocked silence followed his announcement. It lasted maybe three seconds. Then, as the news sunk in, a jumble of questions and cuss-words rippled through the room, and a bearded giant of a man Hennessy identified as Big Mike Welch stood up from behind a table in the far corner and asked in a low baritone, ‘What happened, Billy?’
His question brought an expectant hush back to the room.
Jerking a thumb in Hennessy’s direction, Billy said, ‘Reckon most of you know Cal Hennessy, if not by sight then for sure by reputation. Well, it was him that found ’em, murdered by Comanches.’
The Comanche word immediately provoked another dark, angry reaction from the assembled hide men.
‘They die hard, Hennessy?’ growled Mike.
‘I haven’t seen men die much harder,’ Hennessy replied, and quickly swallowed the contents of his own smudged glass to blur the memory.
Caught up in the tension of the moment, Masterson declared excitedly, ‘Why, Hennessy had a run-in with the same band! If he hadn’t knowed their leader, he’d like to’ve lost his own hair, too!’