Dark Shadow

by Roy F. Chandler

  He had felt that way before, long ago. Right after he had killed the last of the rogue Apaches. In war, some soldiers killed more than he had, but not many. During the great war he had been in the western mountains, and he had fought Indians there, but the actual fighting had been occasional. Mostly, he had trapped and scouted and holed up comfortably in the coldest months.

  When the scouts were formed, he began killing in earnest. He shot many at longer ranges and others close-in using the Spencer. He was there when others killed, and he looked often into dead Apache faces.

  Within weeks, the dead no longer interested him. Only those still not killed held his attention. For months he killed or hunted to kill with only the mostly crazy Barkley Sweet for company. The tension and weariness, the dirt and discomfort probably made him a little mad himself. When they re-crossed the border, Josh Logan sold his faithful Spencer to a scout who wished to brag about the gun that had killed so many and rode away.

  He rode to the high mountains. For most of a year he lived alone in a cabin he built in a lower valley. The scouts had been paid more or less by the Apache head, and Logan had kept enough money to buy the dry goods he needed and to keep himself in powder and shot. His rifle then was a Remington rolling block that shot straighter than his Spencer. That year alone and the next two spent hunting for a silver mining camp improved his shooting even more.

  Then the hunger for Pennsylvania and the old county rose in his breast like a storm. It cut through mental weariness, and Logan again felt interest beyond his physical needs. He rode to a railhead and took the cars east.

  In 1870 Perry County was a settled-in place. The land was peaceful, and Josh Logan put aside his guns and most of his memories. He bought in with Frank and leaned back to let the peach crops provide a living.

  He hunted, of course. In Perry County, men would always hunt. Most of the hunters still used muzzleloaders, so Logan did the same.

  A friend of his youth, Billy Sweger, made long rifles near Elliotsburg, and Josh renewed their companionship. Sweger had no use for the contraptioney breechloaders and regularly announced his opinion. Logan knew better and spoke highly of them.

  Sweger declared that there was not a one of them that could shoot with any of his better rifles. Logan borrowed a Sharps to show him different.

  Billy Sweger's gun was the better. Logan shot with both rifles, and the muzzleloader held closer. Logan declared correctly that the round ball muzzleloader would fail at longer ranges, and he proved it, but lost the argument because Billy was also right that no one shot at those crazy distances, anyway.

  Josh Logan knew that the borrowed Sharps should shoot better. Experimenting with improving the gun's accuracy caught his interest, but when he had that rifle shooting adequately he realized that what now held him down was not only the puny cartridge his Sharps used, but the rifle itself. It took a while, but Logan finally had the gun.

  The big rifle was long, a Sharps, customized in almost every detail. It was not an old Civil War gun like most of the Sharps rifles men carried. Logan's weapon had always been a cartridge rifle.

  The heavy single shot action had been fitted with a special barrel, round instead of the often preferred octagon and thirty eight inches long, nearly as long as one of the old muzzle loading guns. The barrel was round because Logan believed a concentric barrel vibrated most evenly shot to shot and that a heated round barrel expanded more uniformly and therefore shot more accurately than a many sided barrel. The Sharps needed the longer barrel because it had been modified into Josh Logan's idea of the perfect long range rifle.

  The Sharps fired an unusual cartridge, a .45 caliber bullet of 550 grains with a cartridge case 3 and 3/4 inches long. Logan's most powerful charge was 130 grains of FFFG black powder, but he had learned to vary the quantity of powder for the game and the distance he was shooting.

  Such a rifle required a special sight, and Logan had that, too. There were no open sights; instead, there was a long telescopic sight held strongly in an elevation adjustable mount.

  The scope was longer than the rifle barrel, but was mounted a little to the rear to provide correct eye relief. The sight was old, made shortly after the Civil War. Logan had chosen it for its iron tube, which would not easily dent or bow as brass tubed scopes were prone to do.

  Morgan James of Utica, New York had made the telescopic sight, just as he had made others for Berdan's Sharpshooters during the great war, only James had learned things during the intervening years, and Logan's sight was a long step better than the maker's earlier models.

  The sight had a cross hair that the shooter could place directly on the spot he wished to hit, and the scope's magnification was eight power. When Josh Logan laid his sight on a game animal six hundred yards away, the meat was practically in the pot.

  The Sharps had two triggers. The front trigger fired the gun, but if squeezed first the rear trigger set the firing trigger so that it became a hair trigger that could be released by the smallest touch. When shooting long distances, Logan used the set trigger. Concentrating on his sight, his finger needed to barely stroke the trigger to fire the gun, leaving his sight undisturbed.

  Even the rifle's stock was different. Logan had shaped the pieces himself from straight grained walnut. The butt stock had a high comb with little drop to the heel so that when firing prone Logan's cheek rested solidly against the wood with his eye perfectly aligned behind the sight. The butt plate was flat and broad, to spread the jolt of recoil against his shoulder.

  The forearm of the Sharps was broad and flat. The rifle was too heavy for much stand up shooting, and the eight power scope with its tiny field of view could not be easily held on a target, so Logan's shooting was usually lying down. Then, the flat beaver tail forearm lay neatly across his blanket or even his hat placed atop a convenient boulder.

  The big rifle could have been handsome, but Logan had destroyed its looks by painting everything a flat and non-reflecting black. He had learned in the south mountains that a glint of metal could warn an enemy. A reflection could also alert a game animal, and Josh Logan did not hunt for sport. When he went out, hunting was serious business, and to risk being betrayed by a shined up rifle barrel or scope tube would have been simply stupid.

  To make a rifle like the Sharps perform at its best Logan had needed a special cartridge. He had worked diligently developing what he believed to be the most accurate far-shooting load possible.

  Josh Logan's cartridge had two secrets. First, his specially ordered cartridge cases were longer than any offered over the counter. That meant more powder could be dribbled into the case, which in turn meant more power when fired. Experience had proven that he could safely reload each cartridge case seventy-five times before the brass began to weaken.

  Josh had worked longest on his bullet. Most 550 grain bullets were fifty caliber, but Logan had recognized that just as round bullets went the shortest distance, long and skinny bullets sailed the furthest. Light bullets fell short, and heavy bullets kept flying. Logan supposed everybody recognized those basic facts. At .45 caliber, Logan's 550 grain bullet was slender yet longer and heavier than any others.

  His bullet molds were Sweger made, and because his rifle was a single shot, Logan could give his bullet the longest tapered point he wished without the worry of feeding through some sort of magazine. Logan figured that, just like an arrow, the longer the point, the slicker his bullet would fly.

  When it came from the molds, Logan's bullet had four empty grease rings around its body. He mixed bees' wax, graphite, and bear grease—when he had it~into a hot liquid and stood his bullets in the mix until the wax cooled and became hard. By pushing each bullet through a tube the size of the bullet's body, Logan left the grease grooves full of his mixture. The lubricant would help keep powder gases behind the bullet, and also reduce rifle bore leading when the bullets passed through.

  When Logan cast bullets, hunters liked to watch because a Josh Logan cartridge was unlike any others.

&nb
sp; First Logan poured pure lead into a small mold that created a whole row of bullet tips. When the tips cooled, he placed one in the end of each compartment of his bullet mold and carefully filled the mold with a mixture of one part tin, one part antimony, and ten parts lead.

  None of those attributes were desirable on game, but there was another kind of shooting, a kind Josh Logan hoped never again to be facing. When man killing, Logan's explosive bullets would make very certain that a wounded enemy would be severely wounded. A poor hit was turned into a massive wound, and a killing shot left a gaping crater that could turn another enemy's heart to water.

  When seated on its powder charge, Logan's bullet just touched the barrel's rifling lands. A customized load could manage that important fit, and the less a bullet jumped from the chamber to the rifling, the less the lands would score the sides of the bullet. The truer a bullet's form, the straighter it would fly.

  There were other aspects of Josh Logan's loading that would escape less than exacting study. A card wad was placed between the cartridge powder and the bullet's flat base. The wad too helped hold hot gasses from seeping along the bullet's sides and eroding the bullet's base. Good loaders knew that the flatness of a bullet's base had great bearing on the bullet's flight. A crooked base invariably threw a bullet off course. Logan paid attention to that detail.

  Logan's bullets exactly fit the bore. He had tried all of the over-sizing and paper-patching techniques, but in his rifle a perfect bore-fit shot most true.

  Over the years he had developed a number of cartridge loadings that he could trust. Logan loaded a general purpose cartridge that shot well out to four hundred yards. Recoil was mild in the heavy rifle, and he did not waste powder. He had another load using more gunpowder that he could depend on for accuracy and impact if his target was at seven hundred yards, and finally, he had a maximum load for everything beyond that range.

  If he was able to set up well, Josh Logan made hits out to one thousand yards, a distance so beyond expectation that few would have believed if he had told them he really could shoot an antelope at well beyond a half mile. A good shooter expected to hit a deer sized animal at three hundred yards, but beyond that range capabilities dropped so dramatically that few could believe another could do what for them was wildly impossible.

  Josh Logan could shoot at one thousand yards because he had practiced at the long distances. Over the years he had gotten good at it

  In close or as far out as they could find fields to shoot over, Logan's Sharps with its long, round barrel and telescopic sight thumped his specially loaded cartridges into their deer-sized targets, and when the season was in, Logan and sometimes Billy Sweger did the same on live animals.

  When he and Erni went out to Utah, Josh Logan had the right guns. No one in any of the Mormon towns could shoot with Erni Logan's husband. Mormons did not gamble to speak of, but if there was any kind of a shooting contest, everyone knew that Josh Logan would win it.

  Yet, Logan had never shot a man with his big Sharps. He had not wounded, killed, or even fired at a human since the south mountains war.

  Josh Logan had not shot at anyone in twenty years.

  Logan thought about that only one time on his ride south. He knew that man killing would be like swimming or riding one of those bicycles that were popular in the east. Once you learned how, you could always do it.

  Logan had bought the hollow pointing kit with the special .22 caliber drill thrown in, and Billy Sweger had reshaped the device's cone so that it fit the tips of Logan's special bullets.

  Although he had never expected to use the device, Logan had seen what a bullet tipped with a backward .22 cartridge could do on flesh. Some of the scouts had loaded Spencer cartridges that way. Such a cartridge could only be single loaded, however, because if placed in a Spencer's tube magazine, a cartridge's . 22 caliber tip rested against the next bullet's flat base. Some had been known to fire off during recoil with disastrous results to both rifle and shooter.

  Now Logan expected to use the hellish bullets. He would have to open up the hollow pointed tips of his game cartridges with the special drill before he could fit the .22s in place. Perhaps he could quit early enough to fit some of them tonight. He figured that with some luck he just might have need of them within the next few days.

  5

  The Rio Grande was further than Logan had remembered. He reached its bank in the light of an early moon and expected that he was about a mile west of the bandits' crossing.

  The Rio that marked the border between Mexico and the United States was a turgid and shallow creek that in many places would never have been called a river. He crossed without having to raise his boots from the stirrups. The Mexican side was an easy climb to the desert floor, but moonlight did not make for sensible travel among the cactus and thorn brush. Logan worked his way in a half mile and made camp.

  There could be no fire, of course. The Mexican deserts and mountains were dangerous places for a lone gringo, and Logan expected that for him, fires south of the river would be about as common as snowballs. Any Yankee possessed wealth in money and equipment that could amount to more than most peons could ever hope to acquire. A Yankee horse was enough for some to kill for. Of course there were good and honest people in the Mexican wilderness, far more than there were outlaws, but to guess wrong a single time could mean an unmarked grave for the unlucky victim.

  Logan unsaddled his horse and stacked the mule's packs. He hobbled his animals and also tied them to a thorn bush with a long rope. Although they had drunk long at the river, he watered both animals from a big canteen using his hat as a bucket and grained them the same way. During the night the horse and mule would feed on whatever was in reach and by daylight should be ready to travel far.

  He chose the kind of resting place that he had used on a hundred nights in the south mountains. He backed against an outcropping with an overhang that made him hard to reach from the rear. Brush grew all around and should help him detect anything approaching.

  It seemed doubtful that anyone could have seen his river crossing and then have followed him unnoticed, but the Apaches he had killed were capable of such skills and other denizens of this wild Mexico might still be.

  He slept with his Spencer close beside his body and the Colt pistol in his hand. By the time he closed his eyes, the desert heat was leaving the air, and the night was astonishingly cold. He pulled his buffalo robe high and used the blanket for a pillow.

  Josh Logan was mildly surprised by how comfortable he felt. He had removed only his boots, but old habits hung on, and he remembered from so many nights of hard camping just how to wriggle his body comfortable.

  As he remembered how to camp, so Logan recalled how to sleep. He thought for a little on what he would do at dawn, then he allowed himself to slip into a doze. He would rest that way most of the night. For short periods he would sleep normally, but within a few minutes he would again doze. His ears would hear, and his mind would record the night sounds. Anything unusual would bring him instantly alert.

  He wondered idly if those old skills would still work, but he could feel that they would. Could one of the long dead Apaches have snuck in on him? He should smell the Indian, or he should notice a stillness of insects, or perhaps only sense something unnameable as not right. Retention of those refinements he would not know about until they were tested. He hoped powerfully to avoid any such testing.

  He rose at first light. Logan left his boots and donned his moccasins. He crammed the Colt into his belt and checked the Spencer’s loading. Ready, he moved with utmost caution from beneath his overhang. He watched his surroundings with increased heartbeat. A clever enemy could be attempting to do exactly what he himself intended. Logan made a circle of the higher ground around his camp but found nothing. Keeping off the skylines he walked swiftly toward the bandits' crossing.

  Logan came to the ford from deeper within Mexico. His approach was slow and cautious. He crawled to each overlook and carefully scanned th
e land ahead. If Punto had left an ambusher or a scout to warn of approach from the north, Logan figured he would be in the series of high breaks that bordered the river. The ambusher would not be too close to the trail and would position himself so that he could see far up the valley the band had followed coming to the river. There could be more than one lookout, but the duty of anyone who had been left behind would be to shoot any single follower or to ride fast with a warning if a vengeful posse crossed the river.

  An ambusher's horse would be hobbled and tied in low ground further from the trail than its owner. Logan hunted for the horse as much as for the man.

  There were only a few perfect spots, and Logan found the horse in the second one he encountered. He also found the ambusher. The rear guard was lazy, and that would cost him his life. The single man lay under his serape as sound asleep as if at home; his rifle was leaned against a nearby rock. The weapon was a model 1873 Winchester, a fine gun for such a man to own. A bandoleer lay beside the rifle, and Logan judged the cartridges to be .44-40s.

  The distance to the sleeper was about one hundred yards, so Josh had no worry if he had to shoot. He waited a few moments, his eyes searching the surrounding area for another scout, but decided the man really was alone.

  He rose, and the horse's ears went up. The animal watched his approach with interest but made no stompings or alerting snorts. Before Logan was in the camp the animal was again nibbling at the short grasses within his reach.

  He could kill the sleeping sentry, but the man had information that Logan needed. Josh Logan had never captured or questioned an enemy, but he had seen others handle recalcitrant prisoners. Logan had his own ideas how best to question and how best to gain honest answers from bandits like this one.