The great blemish that gave Punto his name was obvious through the telescope. The scar was massive and distinctive. Punto would not be able to travel unrecognized among those who had seen him. Logan thought about that for a long moment. Clearly, Punto must live far from his depredations, and almost certainly in Mexico.
He would not dare to return to Texas where men with bitter memories might be encountered.
Logan felt an easing within him. No matter where he fled, Punto would be seen and remembered. If Logan lost Punto's route he could keep asking for the gringo with the scar, and he would again be on the devil's trail.
The ride to the overlook above Punto's Zapata camp had not been long. Logan had ridden up another trail into the mountains and made a laborious passage along the rim for five miles to look down on the raiders' encampment.
The Zapata Water was as Josh had remembered. A wide and dense fringe of brush circled the creek making an approach noisy and difficult. Punto had his remuda secured within, so there could be no planned or accidental running off of horses. Logan smiled to himself. Twenty years past, the scouts had done it the same way.
Logan found himself wearied by the morning's travel, and he dozed, rousing only occasionally to study the outlaw camp while the sun was high. He decided that they would not move today, so he had time to prepare.
The captive, Julie Smith, who had been taken from Micah still lived. A small tarpaulin had been raised behind which men used her. The girl had a piece of blanket which she threw protectively across her naked body when she was alone. Logan felt his guts knot, but his intent did not waver. He had come to kill and kill and kill until his own turn came. The welfare of Julie Smith came behind that clear priority.
The Micah count had been accurate. There were twenty raiders in the camp. Only the dead Perida was missing.
Logan saw Juan the one-eyed tracker, and recognized a closeness between the Indian and Punto. Perhaps their similar mutilations drew them together, but Juan was clearly the subordinate. This was Punto's band, and no other would be allowed to challenge.
The other tracker, also named Juan, was more difficult to identify, but Logan believed he must be the man with silver in his hatband. Jose Perido had used that description. Logan was concerned with eliminating the trackers. In the rocky mountains he could lose most, but when they came after him, skilled trackers might be able to follow his animals across the stones and rocky ledges. The Apache had wisely stayed afoot in these mountains. Moccasins left no trail and certainly no revealing droppings the way horses did.
Logan was worried by his need to rest. Once he barely needed to pause in his hunting, but the years had taken their toll, and after days in the saddle with little sleep and more than enough tension, his body demanded rest. To become exhausted would cause mistakes. To become careless or dull through weariness could be to die.
Those he hunted would not tire. They would rage like cornered cougars, and when he pressed them they would come for him. It was good that he had the afternoon hours and the evening to gather strength. Once he began, sleep would be rare and always marred by the need to remain alert and ready.
He chose a shadowed lookout from which he could raise himself a little to see into the camp. Settled back, he was below the ridge line and invisible from below.
When he roused from napping, Logan began working on his ammunition. He studied the land falling away to the plain and estimated distances. He marked spots in his mind, and re-estimated the ranges until he believed he had them right. Getting it all correct was essential because if he shot from high above his targets, his bullets would fly far different than if shooting across flat land.
Sometimes, Logan wondered if experts had worked out formulas to tell a down or uphill shooter how to change his sighting. If they had, Logan had never seen them. Josh Logan knew how to adjust from having fired thousands of bullets over such terrain. When you hunted to sell your animals, hitting what you aimed at became a matter of livelihood, and intensity climbed.
Josh supposed that every long shooter knew that if you fired either up or downhill your bullet flew high, but the skill to know just how to hold for a distance, then how much lower he should hold to overcome the angle up or downhill, was learned only by a lot of shooting.
Because he hunted mountains and had for most of the last decades, Logan knew how it was done. Sometimes he could hit at one thousand yards, but despite all of his perfecting, at that extreme range he was just as likely to miss. Logan wanted any targets he shot at from these mountains to be closer.
He laid out his Sharps cartridges. All of the bullets were hollow pointed for game shooting. When they hit, the soft lead tips would flatten and expand from .45 caliber to about .75 caliber. The stiff body of the bullet would push the flattened tip deep and probably completely through most animals. A human body would hardly slow such a heavy bullet.
Logan did not intend to waste his bullets' power digging up earth or ricocheting from rock behind anyone he shot. Logan got out his hollow pointing tool and went to work.
He placed the pointed alignment cone over a bullet's tip. He slowly screwed his .225 caliber drill into the existing hollow point, enlarging and deepening it to his man killer size. He examined each new hole carefully before choosing a .22 caliber cartridge to fit in it.
Logan used .22 caliber long cartridges for his explosive tips. When inserted nose first, the .22 was slip fit and the cartridge's explosive rim lay flat against the bullet's lead tip.
Logan had tried the man killers on game animals. They often executed like lightning, but the wound channel was a horror to behold. Meat was blasted into an immense entry crater, and sometimes the bullet failed to continue in the planned direction. Its head blown away by the explosion of the .22 cartridge, the body of the Sharps bullet might slew from its course. By exploding its bullet backwards, the .22 cartridge also distorted the main bullet and blunted its velocity. Penetration was sometimes limited on large and thick animals, and Logan could find no use for the arrangement in hunting.
The loading of a backward .22 caliber into a conventional rifle bullet had been developed during the last days of the Civil War, and Logan and Billy Sweger had talked with a former Bucktail who had tried the terrible bullets in a Minie ball Springfield muzzle loader. According to the ex-soldier, the wounds inflicted were unfailing killers. They were ghastly to see, and the shock of such immense wounds often killed before the bullet's other effects took hold.
At the time, Logan's interest had been academic because he was finished with man hunting, but it was the ex-soldier who sold Logan the hollow pointing outfit that Sweger modified to fit Logan's Sharps bullets. The .22 adapter was included.
Logan drilled and fitted half of his Sharps cartridges. He placed his buffalo robe and adjusted himself into a solid shooting position behind and across it. Resting on the rolled robe, the Sharps lay as if poured into a mold. If he had shooting from here, Logan was ready.
Before dusk, Logan watered and fed his animals. He saddled his horse but left the girth loosened. The mule's panniers lay ready, and he could load and lash them in place in moments. He tied both animals on their long ropes but did not use hobbles. His departure might be hasty and without time to spare.
He watered but did not feed the dead lookout's horse. His grain was limited, and he would soon return that animal to the raiders.
He left the Sharps and its ammunition lying across the buffalo robe. He considered taking the dead Jose Perido's fast shooting Winchester, but the rifle could look good yet shoot or feed cartridges erratically. He could not be sure of the Perido rifle's condition, and he had no way to check it. Tonight he would use his Spencer and would carry its box of loaded cartridge tubes. Logan changed into his moccasins and trailing the captured horse, he moved to the head of the rugged trail that descended to the flat land and the Zapata Water.
He took his own meal, chewing sun dried beef, and some of Erni's bread now hardened by the dry desert into a cracker-like texture. He
swilled water from his small canteen and was finished.
He was ready, and he waited with an old man's patience for the dropping of the sun to hide his passage down the barren rock slope and across the open plain to the brush surrounding the raider's camp. From as close as he could get, Logan would deliver his first vengeance into the unsuspecting murderers of his beloved Erni.
7
Logan let the captured horse pick its way down the steep trail. It was a short and rough path with a drop along one side, but the route was the only way up or down for at least five miles. Even in dusk, the trail was difficult. Attempting to ride up or down in full dark would be foolhardy. Coming back, Logan would leave the horse and ascend on foot. That, of course, assumed that he came back at all.
By the time he reached the flat land the night was upon him. He allowed the horse to snuffle at the desert growth while he measured distances in his mind. Then he walked the horse slowly forward, heading directly toward the night glow of the raiders' fire.
A shallow dry wash led toward the Zapata Water, and Logan left the horse in it. The small dip in the land would not conceal the animal, but Logan could locate himself and the horse by following the wash back from the creek.
His moccasins were quiet on the sun packed dirt, but low ground cover swished noisily against his ankles. As usual, Logan took it slow, listening at times, his seven shot Spencer held ready with his thumb over the hammer. He did not expect to find outguards. The thicket had only a few ways through, and the outlaw band was too large to worry much about sudden attack. But a raider could be relieving himself beyond the camp, or one of the bandits could be roaming for no apparent reason. Logan planned on seeing before being seen, but mostly he wished to avoid any premature announcement of his presence.
The brush tangle surrounding the camp was exasperating. He chose to avoid the paths that led through. An encounter now could ruin it all. The spiky desert growth, with its thorns and pickers snagged on his clothing and clawed his exposed skin. There was only one way to conquer the thicket and that was to keep going. Logan struggled ahead, slowed by the need for silence, but seeing the light of the raiders' fire growing brighter through the brambles.
Pinched within the clutching brush, Logan knew his withdrawal would be hell, and his enemies might attempt to rush along the trails to circle behind him. He had crossed a twisty path and resolved to take that route on his way out. That would be a time for speed, and his creaky old muscles might be hard pressed.
The clearing swarmed with raiders. Up close, the band looked like a small army. Booted and spurred with the huge draggy rowels preferred by Mexican riders, the gun-hung raiders were intimidating. No one had laid down a weapon, Logan guessed. Bandoleers still draped chests and shoulders, and long knives dangled from every belt. This was a mean bunch, and Logan looked forward to begin killing them.
He found himself wondering which one might have fired the bullet that struck Erni, and the rage in his belly turned even colder. Punto sat in his tent entrance occupied with some small task. Logan searched for the tracker described as Juan of one eye, and the other with the silvered hat band, but neither was showing himself.
The temptation to shoot Punto first was powerful, and resisting made Logan sweat in the night chill, but if Punto went down, the band would scatter, and most would get away. Despite what was about to happen, and perhaps because of it, Punto might hold his raiders together. Then, Logan expected, he could kill more of them.
Some of the raiders gambled around a blanket with onlookers offering loud and raucous criticism of the play and the players. That broad target was best, and Logan decided it would do.
It was safest to shoot from his belly, providing the smallest possible target to return fire. Prone was also steadiest, but when on his stomach, a shooter could not swing rapidly to find moving targets, and operating a rifle's action could be clumsy. Logan intended to kill more than one. He chose to shoot kneeling.
The range was pointblank, about thirty yards, Logan judged. He would not miss often at such a short range, but survivors would be firing back. He had to be fast, but speed hurt straight shooting. Logan shrugged the problems aside. There were always compromises, and few killed men without risking themselves.
A chest loomed in Logan's V-notch sight, and he held just below the cross of the man's cartridge studded bandoleers. Logan eared back his hammer and squeezed swiftly.
The Spencer's boom was cannon-like within the confines of the thicket. The shot jerked heads, and hands reached for weapons. Logan's bullet crumpled the outlaw at the waist, and he sat staring dully at the center of his chest
Logan levered and cocked and centered a figure in his sights. He fired and worked at firing again. There were more than enough targets, and he snapped his shots into them without pause to judge a bandit's importance. The group around the blanket dissolved into a whirl of figures, and Logan's third shot had to find another target.
Logan was unaware of the shouting, the frantic scrambling, or the bullets that began slashing into the brush around him. He had seven shots, and before he sought his own cover they were all going in. He tried to keep track, but lost the count and wasted precious time snapping on an empty chamber. Something tugged at his shirt as he slid backward into the thicket, and Logan belatedly realized that a horrendous volley of ill-aimed fire was plowing brush and ground around him.
Now he wanted to be away, and he clawed and fought his way through the thorn snarls without regard to skin or clothing. He stumbled into the beaten path and with a hand raised protectively before his eyes, he rushed along it.
Behind him men shouted, and the firing continued, but no bullets came his way. Voices called, and some answered from other spots. Raiders were also rushing along the paths to get behind and surround whomever had fired into them.
Logan found the dry wash by stumbling into it. He struggled to his feet, already panting with his legs quivery from unaccustomed running. He made the horse and clawed himself into the saddle. He spurred the animal into a startled run for a few hundred yards to make certain he was well beyond shooting range. Then he slowed his horse and began searching for his next checkpoint.
How many had he put down? If he had wasted a bullet, he had not sensed it. In a confused melee like that, it was even possible for a single bullet to strike more than one target. Logan fervently hoped he had been that lucky, but if not, it was still certain that some had died and others had been wounded. By God he had stung them good.
The gauntlet had been flung. How Punto would react was the next question. Logan thought he knew, but who could be sure? Punto might be interested only in escape. He could mount his raiders in the night and have them steal away in many directions. If that happened, Logan knew his work was cut out, but he did not plan on Punto running.
Punto would be proud and arrogant. His leadership would lie in his successes. Raiders like these did not follow losers. So, Punto would hunt down the lone ambusher that challenged them and kill him. Rather, he would have his men hunt down the man who had attacked them.
Logan planned on Punto taking that course, and he would be waiting.
At the base of the mountains, where the flat land turned upward and became almost impassible cliffs, Logan left the horse. He removed the saddle and dropped it beside the animal. He tied a rein to a strong bush. He wanted the horse exactly there when the sun rose and the trackers came after him.
Then Logan began the climb to his high perch. He felt his way up the trail, unable to see well even in the increasing moonlight. He was too distant to hear sounds from the raiders' camp, but he could imagine the bandits hunkered in the brush, their campfire scattered, not daring to reassemble because the ambusher had not been caught and could still be waiting. By daylight their rages would be broiling, and with Punto's encouragement, they would take his trail like hounds on a hunt.
Near the top, Logan found a comfortable spot from which he could shoot back down the trail. If he was followed, he could kill again, and
although being tracked seemed highly improbable, he would wait. Underestimating an enemy was always a risk. Logan settled back, closed his weary eyes and allowed his ears to do the watching.
Punto crouched in thick brush near the creek edge, and damned if there weren't mosquitoes to sting and harass him. It was a miserable situation, and scattered within the brambly tangle his men cursed openly in their own discomfort. All feared to expose themselves to the ambusher who had not been located, and only Juan of the one eye was out there scouting.
While the rest had scrabbled like frightened rabbits, Juan had kicked the fire apart allowing them concealment and time for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Juan was his strong right arm, and Punto knew he would be weak without the Yaqui Indian. He did not worry about his man's safety, however. At night, no man was Juan of one eye's equal. If the ambusher still lurked, Juan would see him first, and the man's belly would feel the bum of Juan's knife.
How mortifying it had been. Like flushed quail they had scrabbled for cover. Like amateurish fools his men had blasted hundreds of bullets into surrounding foliage. One had actually shot another in the lower leg. Some claimed to have seen muzzle flashes and probably had, but most simply blazed away in panicky firing.
Who could it be, Punto wondered? He was certain that only one gun had been firing, but the shooter had been fast and accurate. Three of his men lay dead near the fire, and the groans and curses of wounded mixed with the rage of the untouched.
Punto sought patience. Daylight would come, and one of the Juans would find the ambusher's trail. If the man ran, they would ride him down. If he rode it would take longer, but for the damage he had caused he would pay with his life.
But who could it be? A tracker from the north was possible, but back at the river Juan Perido should have seen and disposed of one man. Perhaps not, though. This one was obviously determined and probably clever.
Dark Shadow Page 7