“Hired guns always want to show off.”
“Like shavetail troopers.”
“They’re getting extra pay, and know this isn’t just about moving the cattle.”
Bishop nodded toward Maynard a hundred yards away, slumped in his saddle, snoring loudly. His horse stood eating at some tall, wet grass.
Garrett said, “He’s earning his wages for sure.”
“Those bandages are filthy. Damn fool won’t let me clean him up.”
“Nobody ever accused Maynard of having any sense.” Garrett poured a shot for himself. “So tell me, Doctor, how’d you take on so many of the Fire Riders?”
Bishop talked to the sky, trying to put things in order. “I didn’t know they existed until I was in the middle of a fight. I was tracking the men who killed my son, and they came down on us.”
“The red demons, right?”
“That’s what they looked like that first time.”
“How many did you put down?”
Bishop frowned. “I-I don’t recall.”
“Then the train?”
“Later, but yes, then the train.”
“That’s what impressed the crap out of Chisum.”
“I try to remember. It’s still broken pieces, but you’re right when you called it war with them. Attack, pull back, attack again in a new way. Battle skills.”
Garrett drank his own shot. “Like the cavalry or Crazy Horse?”
“Either.”
“You didn’t let go of any of this with Chisum.”
“He’s not riding into anything.”
Garrett studied the empty shot glass. “That’s why he’s got us.”
“I recall they used dynamite on the tracks. And a Gatling on the troopers. Those sounds stayed with me.”
“The Riders used grenades, too?”
Bishop looked to Garrett. “So they tell me. That, I don’t remember so clearly. Maybe I still have half a one in my skull.”
Garrett laughed. “Not a surprise.”
“Now let me ask you a question. What am I doing here? Why did Chisum go to all this trouble, instead of letting me hang?”
“You saying you’re sorry you didn’t?”
“I’m saying I don’t know what I bring to this fight”—Bishop lifted the rig—“other than this, and I doubt that’s worth all the money he’s paid out.”
Garrett said, “Chisum was having you ride in, come hell or high water.”
“That much was always clear. Are you supposed to keep me alive?”
Garrett corked the bottle and stood. “Doc, I’m worried about keeping myself alive.”
“Get back to Chisum’s big table?”
“My intention is to be a regular guest.”
Bishop said, “You’re an honest man, Patrick. I appreciate that.”
“I’ve got a few moves figured for us, but if this fight busts open, you might be on your own.”
“That suits me to the ground.”
Garrett took the reins of his horse, ready to lead it away. “I know you got some thoughts on Rose. Frankly, I don’t need a dead woman on my hands.”
Rose’s voice carried from the edge of the woods. “You want to know about Rose, why don’t you ask Rose?”
Garrett brought the hammerhead around as she walked from the pines, hitching her belt.
“The Doc’s got nothing to say. This is on me. And no matter what’s ailing me”—she made a jerking motion with her whole body toward the boys by the fire—“I’m still as good a shot as any of these you got.” Rose looked to Bishop. “Well?”
John Bishop stayed lying against his saddle, his only hand on the shotgun rig, and said to Garrett, “We’re both here on personal business. Rose is looking out for herself, and I don’t doubt her marksmanship.”
Garrett said, “As long as she does what I need her to when this thing starts.”
Rose said, “I’m standing here, right?”
Pat Garrett rode off.
Rose cast a look down at Bishop, who had pulled the shotgun closer to him and tilted his hat down. His voice came from under its shadow. “See how you feel in the morning. Give yourself that much judgment.”
* * *
It was the mandibles that Farrow saw first—the large jaws, ghostly white, with the fanged canine teeth, moving in and out of the tree line. Then breaking. Running.
Farrow’s horse twisted against the reins, the skeletons roaring out of the dark, surrounding him. The painted ribs, spines, and legs of the horses glowed in the moonlight.
He drew a Colt as the Fire Riders closed their circle around him. “I’ve never seen you done up like this. Must scare the hell out of the farmers and rubes.”
“It does good with everyone.” Hunk broke the circle, bringing his skulled stallion next to Farrow’s own. Hunk’s face was uncovered. He handed Farrow a small parcel.
Farrow said, “So, you’re the deliveryman?”
“I command. They do what I order.”
Farrow threw looks around him as the Riders brought their horses two steps closer. Dead-eyed stares came at him from their hoods. He could see shouldered rifles and blades.
One Rider bled the air with a Prussian saber before turning its polished edge toward Farrow’s throat and holding it there.
Farrow said, “Well, by fire or the sword, eh?”
Hunk said, “What’s your meaning by that? Answer quick!”
Farrow watched the saber. “Just the motto of another group I work for.”
Hunk put his words into pieces. “You . . . double . . . the . . . deals?”
Farrow said, “That’s why I’m paid.”
Hunk’s large hand almost covered the Smith & Wesson it held, the barrel seeming like an extra finger.
The parcel went into Farrow’s jacket, his hand glancing at the pistol he had holstered, but he judged the situation, and simply raised his arms in surrender. Farrow never lost his tight-lipped smile of advantage.
Hunk chuckled. “You look a damn fool.”
Aimed directly at Farrow were guns of all type and blades that were less than a foot away. He said, “Absolutely no offense intended. I’m here to take you into Myrtle.”
“What time the Chisum men coming?”
“That’s been worked out. I won’t tell you wrong.”
Hunk eased the gun back to his belt, which signaled the others to raise their weapons. The saber remained.
“What time?” he asked again.
“We figure around noon.”
The saber went back into its sheath. No one said another word.
Farrow brought down his arms.
The evening dusting had picked up, and Farrow turned his collar against the snow as he started out of the camp. The hooded Riders on painted-fleshless horses followed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Bleeding Ground
The storm came through a jagged break between two Rocky peaks, a natural wind tunnel turning raindrops into skin-slicing needles. It was a half hour past sunrise, but the rolling clouds darkened the sky like midnight.
Bishop stayed the trail with the bay, duster buttoned to his throat, the rig slinged. Sharp rain soaked him, but he felt good. Ready. He’d slept with no nightmares, no slashes of memory.
The others, sporting rubber slicks and pulled-up bandanas, kept the cattle moving with the storm beating their backs. McCarty, sombrero tilted back, not caring, waved to Bishop, locking his arm at the elbow imitating the double-barrel. He hooted a laugh before running his horse along the trail’s edge to the front of the herd.
Maynard followed, struggling to keep pace, fighting his wounds. His bald-faced mare drifted close to a bull that knocked them both away. He lurched in the saddle.
Garrett charged up from behind, swatting the bull with a coil of rope, water spitting off its hide. “You said you were up to this! Getting these to town isn’t even half of what we’re supposed to do!”
Maynard was pale, sweating in the cold. “Don’t doubt I got some fig
ht in me!”
Garrett said, “I’d bust your jaw in half if I didn’t need every man.”
The rain was coming in buckets as Garrett angled off on his tall horse, not letting Maynard throw another excuse.
Bishop stood in his stirrups and called to Maynard over the storm, “Let me check you out!”
Maynard didn’t turn around, just fought to stay mounted.
Rose rode up on her brown and white from half a mile back, having kept her distance for the night. Beside Bishop, her eyes were fixed on the cattle and hired guns, water pouring from the brim of her hat. She said about Maynard, “I guess some folks just can’t accept help.”
“Garrett thinks we’ll hit Myrtle in an hour.”
“Good, that’s good.”
They rode for a bit, then she said, “Look, I don’t want to hear nothing about my time to turn back.”
Bishop said, “Some folks just can’t accept help.”
“You’re on a vendetta for your family, just like I am for mine!”
“Don’t make comparisons.”
Rose finally looked at him. “When somebody you love is killed, why does it seem that another killing is the only thing makes you feel better?”
“Fact is, it doesn’t.”
“Then what are you riding for?”
Bishop let the rain answer.
* * *
Colby organized his ammunition in neat rows within easy reach, along with two pistols, and a polished stiletto. When he was satisfied with the arrangement, he opened a hinged cedar box and admired the new Fiedler telescopic sight resting in its velvet lining.
He secured the scope to a Winchester 1875 Single Shot with a jeweler’s screwdriver from a set in his vest. Hunk’s ear dangled on a gold chain from the vest pocket like a watch fob. He slipped bundled sheets under his knees for comfort, then brought the rifle to his shoulder. Setting his elbow on the windowsill, he adjusted the precision eyepiece on a twenty-cent coin lying in the muddy street below until it came into sharp focus.
* * *
Bishop, Garrett, McCarty, and Rose had all taken up the side of the trail to ride ahead of the cattle, their horses deep in the slop. With Myrtle less than half a mile away, Garrett raised his hand to slow the herd.
Garrett said to Rose, “You and McCarty are at the back.”
Thunder tidal-waved over the hills, with another jag of lighting. The cattle felt the sound in their spines, smelled the lightning burning the wet air.
McCarty threw a look at the herd. Stirring. Uneasy. Batting each other, locking horns. He said, “I don’t blame ’em. Scares the hell out of me, too, when God gets angry.”
“They’re ready to run.”
Garrett said to Rose, “Keep them back. I’ll tell you when.”
McCarty poured out the water trapped in his sombrero, then tied it under his chin. “That sounded like an order, Mr. Garrett. And you know what? I’m gonna do her!”
McCarty galloped off. Rose’s eyes, frustrated and dark, locked on Bishop, and she was about to say something, but whipped her horse around, riding after the sombrero.
Maynard cut between some broad-shouldered albinos, almost colliding with Rose. He was gripping his chest. “I’m ridin’ in the cow crap. You pushin’ me off this fight?”
From his higher position, Garrett looked down on him when he said, “The Doc and I take stock of the situation—”
“Take stock?”
“That’s right. Then you’ll obey orders like everybody else. Might just keep you alive.”
“Keep favoring that one-armed son of a bitch, and you’re the one’s dyin’!” Maynard struggled his horse around, before taking it through a small break in the storm-bent trees leading away from the trail.
“Good riddance.” Garrett lit a short-rolled cigarette, then said to Bishop, “So how many times have you ridden into hell on purpose?”
Bishop drew the rig. “I think you’ve been reading the penny dreadfuls, Garrett. It’s not like that.” He moved his shoulders, taking up the slack of the trigger lines that ran up his sleeve to the rig’s brace.
“You son of a bitch.” Garrett laughed under the thunder as the two rode the last minutes toward Myrtle.
* * *
The side of Hunk’s head still bled when he crooked his neck the wrong way. He was in the corner shadows, cramped against a mildewed hay bale, holding balled linen to the wound. The riders with him kept their horses and voices down.
One whispered, “Hunk, can you lend me an ear?”
Some nervous laughs spewed from the others.
Hunk daubed drying black blood from the stitches where his ear used to be, thinking of stabbing the tâmpit with the big mouth. “You’ve had your joking. Be ready to attack.”
One of the men was holding a sword. “You’re a foreigner. I carried this when I was with Bloody Bill Anderson. I know how to send a message.”
Hunk said, “You’re not the one in charge here. Just be ready to follow.”
The rider kept the blade poised, making a short, chopping motion like he was cutting off a head.
* * *
The heavy rain curtained the wood and iron junk piled at the foot of what was Myrtle’s main street. The roof of an old caboose and a blasted-apart potbelly stove were stacked along with empty flour barrels and railroad trash, giving perfect cover.
Bishop and Garrett brought their horses in close. Garrett leaned out of his saddle, taking in the town. “Same old hellhole.”
Bishop thought Garrett wrong. Myrtle wasn’t a hellhole, it was a T-shaped corpse, silent and rotting. Just a few buildings stood around an old cattle pen attached to a twisted rail spur where a dilapidated freight car, front wheels missing, had been left for dead years before. Lean-tos and shredded army tents, roughly patched together for prosties, took up the rest of the street that ended in a small crossway.
A ragged and empty two-story dry goods emporium stood at its center. A shattered window on the second floor was being beaten by the storm, its curtains blowing out from the inside.
Bishop took the bay a few steps from the junk pile for a better view. Nobody walked into the street for a look-see of the strangers bringing in a herd. The only sound was the rain overflowing gutters and water troughs.
Not even a dog barked.
“We’ve got targets on our backs.”
Garrett said, “Hell, yes.”
The air had the taste of ashes and felt hot in the storm.
Bishop snapped the rig into a firing position from his hip, throwing beads of water off the barrels. “I’d just gotten my medic stripes, and we’d crossed into North Carolina, an open field, corn stacked in huge piles across it. We couldn’t see the enemy, but we knew. They sent us in anyway.”
“How many were killed?”
“More than half the company.”
Garrett shook his head. “That, you remember.”
“In pieces.”
“We sure as hell don’t have a company backing us.”
On Garrett’s last word, glass dropped from the broken window on the second floor of the dry goods emporium at the end of Myrtle’s main street.
There was the silhouette of a rifle.
* * *
The water blowing around the window frame hazed Colby’s aim. He wiped the telescopic sight and his eyes, then tried fixing on his target again. He sensed Bishop and Garrett behind their cover, knew if he had even half-an-inch break right or left, he could put a bullet in a skull, reload, and finish before the first target hit the ground. Making two shots count was a test of reflexes that Colby enjoyed, and there was great satisfaction when it worked.
He also wanted to see the travel pattern of the special bullets he’d fashioned and the impact of the slugs creased with the knife blade. All things a professional considered.
But there was no clean shot through the rain. Yet.
Rose and McCarty were behind the last of the herd, a couple leather bags with wagging tongues. Another low roar of thunder scat
tered a pair of shorthorn bulls, and Rose watched as hired guns threw lassos, stopping the running cattle and pulling them in.
They looked at Myrtle just ahead of them, but were handling the animals easy, like they were told.
She called out to the gunman who was shoving the bulls back into the herd. “You’re riding too close! They’re already spooked!”
“Chisum claimed a special job! There ain’t nothing special about this crap!”
Rose had her revolver in hand, under her rain slicker. “I’m working, same as you.”
“Except I know what to do proper with a Colt Six.” The hired gun rode off.
McCarty said to Rose, “Forget that cow pie. Garrett told you what’s what?”
“You’ve got his fool orders. I’ll follow mine.”
* * *
Chaney stood in the doorway of the emporium’s second-floor room where Colby was positioned at the broken window with his rifle. “They’re showing caution about coming in,” the reporter said, then checked the exposure on his small camera. “A picture before the slaughter of Chisum’s men and then one after, to shock and amaze.”
Colby quick-aimed a Derringer Four-shot Pepperbox at Chaney’s face.
“I have an arrangement with Mr. Farrow.”
Colby remained silent.
“Your employer wants the world to know how dangerous his group is. I’ll tell the tale, and you do what you do, Mr. Colby.”
Colby leaned forward, bringing the Derringer closer.
Chaney nodded. “I look forward to photographing John Bishop’s corpse.” He bowed slightly, giving it a flourish before shutting the door behind him.
A cough ripping him, Colby dropped the Pepperbox, then cupped his hands, caught some cold rain blowing in, and splashed his face. He spit blood into a handkerchief before aiming the Winchester at the rotting pile of wood and railroad iron at the end of the street... focusing on a target he couldn’t yet see.
* * *
The bay and hammerhead were moving antsy, but Bishop and Garrett kept them reined tight, using the junk pile as a shield against the storm. Staying hidden.
Garrett said, “Break, and we’ll be slaughtered faster than pigs at Easter.”
“Lay some cover. I can get behind those old tents, work my way up, take care of the sniper in the window.”
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