by Jory Sherman
Lightning strikes danced across the empty desert, illuminating a desolate landscape a split second at a time. It was like living in a nightmare, Zak thought. The sound of thunder rolled across the skies as if it had come from a thousand cannons, a thousand throats of unearthly demons on a rampage.
How many men will I have to kill to get to Ben Trask? he asked himself, to drown out the sound of pealing thunder in his head. He had already killed too many, and now the storm had allowed Trask to elude him. For a time. Trask could not know that the men he had left in shacks along the old stage road would not be able to help him. They were all dead. All had fallen to the snarl and roar of his gun. They were help that Trask was never going to get. But Trask would go on. He was bent on finding the Apache gold he believed Cochise had hidden. Trask was not only a stone cold killer, he was a fool.
Zak heard the low whicker of one of the horses, and led the others to them. Sheets of rain lashed them as they climbed into their saddles.
Zak climbed onto Nox and rode over to the lieutenant.
“Ted, just follow the edge of this hill to the end. You might find some shelter on the other side, near the road.”
“Where are you going?” Ted asked.
“I’m going to get the gun rig off of Cavins. You might need another sidearm. I’ll join up with you in a while.”
“How long’s this rain going to last?”
“All night, probably. Just sit tight when you find shelter. Wait for me.”
Zak turned his horse, then was gone.
“Sis,” Ted said to Colleen. “Who in hell is that man?”
“Nobody knows, really,” she said, her voice soft, a wistful note in it.
“Can we trust him?”
“He saved your life, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but—”
“Ever hear of the Shadow Rider, Ted?”
Ted didn’t say anything for a long moment. His face was wet with rain. Colleen looked like a drenched bird. The two soldiers waited, their backs bowed, their heads lowered against the wind and the whipping curtains of rain.
“Not much. The men who captured me were talking about it, and I’ve heard talk of such a man around the fort. Ex-army. Something to do with General Crook.”
“Well, that’s him. Zak Cody. He’s a strange man.”
“But you like him, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “He…He’s magnetic. He’s not my type, but—”
“Admit it, you like him, sis.”
“Shouldn’t we get out of this rain, Ted? Zak put you in charge.”
“Seems to me,” Ted said, “that your friend Zak’s in charge.”
Ted dug spurs into his horse’s flanks. They moved along the base of the ridge, the wind at their backs.
“Yes,” she said. “I’d say you were right, Ted. From what I hear, Zak is, or was, a colonel in the army. That’s what the two army men were calling him. I don’t know why he’s here, but I’m glad he is.”
“Well, I’m damned sure going to find out who I’m riding with. Even if he did save my life. He took a hell of a risk, now that I think of it. We both could have been shot.”
Colleen said nothing. She was thinking about Zak and her feelings for him. They were all tangled up, like vines in the trellis of her mind. She could not sort them out, now that he was gone into the night and the rain, after having thought of her brother, not of himself. And he’d said there might be more men coming up the road. He could be riding straight back into danger.
She shuddered at the thought, and the vines began to straighten and line up, a string of green leaves bright with energy and promise.
Chapter 6
Lieutenant Ted O’Hara took charge. He struck out along the base of the ridge, as Cody had instructed him, with Colleen, Scofield, and Rivers following him. It was pitch-black, raining and blowing hard. There were no other reference points along the route, no trail to follow. But he had no difficulty keeping to the left of the baseline.
His mind reeled with thoughts of Zak Cody and the fight on the old stage road. Cody had been very brave to attack as he had, in the dark, badly outnumbered. He had deployed Scofield and Rivers wisely, stationing them on the top of that ridge, and Colleen had been part of it, too, providing still another rifle. His sister was a good shot. Their father had taught them well. But he was still in the dark about all of it. Where had Cody come from, and why? Was he in the army, following orders? He didn’t know. He had a lot of questions and no answers.
Ted didn’t mind being out in the weather. He had been cooped up as a prisoner for so long he welcomed the good air, even if it tasted like metal as lightning etched quicksilver hieroglyphs across the elephantine sky while thunder boomed like empty barrels rolling across an attic floor. He had been out, away from the fort so long—tracking Cochise and other Apache bands, sitting with them, giving them tobacco, smoking with them, eating with them—that he had lost his relish for barracks roofs and adobe walls.
He wondered what Cochise and his tribe were doing just then. From what he knew of the Apache, they would view the storm much differently than the white man did. To them, the thunder would be the voice of God, the Great Spirit, and the lightning a demonstration of power—immense power over all things. They would see the thunderbolts as arrows and lances shot and hurled from on high, striking game or humans who were not pure, setting fires, burning rocks and sand with a force no mortal man could match. He wondered now if he had gotten too close to the Apache. Was he beginning to think like they did?
One day, when he had returned from Cochise’s camp to the place where his patrol was bivouacked, his sergeant, Ronnie Casteel, asked him that same question in another way.
“Lieutenant O’Hara, sir, do you think you might be spendin’ too much time palaverin’ with them Apaches?”
“What do you mean, Ronnie?”
“You never stayed away all night before. We was worried.”
“I was perfectly safe.”
“At night, when you sleep, the men can hear you talkin’ that gibberish what you talk with them Apaches.”
“That gibberish is Spanish, Sergeant.”
“Well, the men are just wonderin’ if you are turnin’ into a squaw man.”
“What’s a squaw man?”
“More Injun than white.”
“I assure you, Ronnie, I’ve still got the same blood. I might add that it’s no different than yours or Cochise’s, for that matter. I speak Spanish with Cochise because I can’t speak Apache. He speaks Spanish—Mexican, really—so we can converse. It’s essential that I know what he’s thinking. Our conversations help me to know what’s on Cochise’s mind.”
“Why should you care what that old bird is thinkin’?”
“Because we’re here to keep the peace with the Chiricahuas, and to calm the fears of the white settlers. That good enough for you, Ronnie?”
“Sir, I didn’t mean no disrespect.”
“Of course you didn’t. But if you’re talking about respect, it wouldn’t hurt to show some to the Apaches. We’re in their country, after all.”
“We are? I thought we was in the United States.”
“The Apaches don’t have the same feelings about land that we do. We whites, I mean. They believe that land is a gift from God, the Great Spirit, and they don’t abide ownership, by any man or tribe, red or white.”
“That ain’t practical, sir.”
Ted didn’t argue any further, but now, that conversation came back to him, and he thought of how he felt looking at land and the ownership of land through the eyes of the Chiricahua. When he was out there, with his men or with the Apaches, he felt unfettered, free. When he lay on his bedroll at night and looked up at the stars, looking so bright and close, he thought the heavens were surely a part of it all, part of some grand scheme bestowed on man by a higher intelligence, a God, if that be the belief, or a Great Spirit, as the Apaches believed.
No man could own a star, or a bunch of stars, or
a planet, the sun, or the moon. Why should it not be the same for the land on planet Earth? Sometimes he thought the Apaches made more sense than those of his own skin color and descendents. Boundaries, he thought, kept people apart. Ownership created enemies, foes that would kill to possess an acre or a section, a township or a great metropolis. And at the heart of it all was greed, the same greed that he saw in Ferguson and Trask. Trask believed that Cochise had a great golden treasure, and he was determined to possess it. And both he and Ferguson and their men would gladly kill to get it.
Among the Apaches he had known, he had seen no signs of greed or envy, and the revelation was a puzzle to him. The white men he had known, his own kind, coveted things—land, wealth, women—and none considered the cost of acquisition, but sought and strived for things they did not possess. While the Apaches were grateful for what they had, a wealth no white man could fathom, the earth, the sky, water, and, most valuable of all, friends and family. Gifts, they said, from a spirit so strong it gave them strong hearts and invaded their dreams, opened their eyes to all the wonders of the heaven and the hidden riches of the earth: food and shelter and clothing, and vistas so wondrous they painted the horizon at sunset and dawn.
They reached the butt of the ridge and Ted turned his horse, rounding the corner. His sister and the two soldiers followed after him. He noticed a decided drop in the wind. There, in the lee of the butte, or whatever it was, the rain no longer drove into them with the force of war arrows. It was still wet and rainy, but at least they were out of the wind.
“Dismount,” he ordered, “and gather the horses close, bunch ’em up. We’ll squat under them and maybe not get any wetter.”
“Good idea, sir,” Rivers said.
A bolt of lightning speared the ground nearby, atop the next hill, and thunder roared from above a moment later. The air smelled of burnt mercury and tasted faintly of iodine or copper. Colleen ducked and shivered as she brought her horse in close to the others.
They huddled together beneath their horses, exchanging the heat of their bodies with their breaths and the pulsing of the blood in their veins. The horses’ bellies, too, gave off warmth and provided shelter from the pelting rain. The wind streamed past them on both sides of the hill, but whipped back now and then to lash them, draw them closer together as if they were bound together by something like the string of a purse.
“That wind’s a blue one, all right,” Scofield said, his teeth clacking together like dice in a tin cup.
“What I wouldn’t give to be back in the barracks,” Rivers said.
“If you don’t think of it so much,” O’Hara said, “you won’t feel it so bad. Isn’t that right, Colleen?”
“I think of warm zephyrs and a fire in the hearth,” she said, her voice quavering from the cold, the bone-penetrating chill.
“I c-c-can’t think of nothing else but the cold with that wind howlin’ like a banshee,” Scofield said.
“I’m thinkin’ about that Cody feller,” Rivers said. “He’s out in it by hisself, huntin’ men like they was meat.”
“Yeah,” Scofield said. “He be a strange one, all right.”
O’Hara thought of Cody and how he had ridden into the outlaw column, all alone, and rescued him, against all odds.
“What do you think of him, Lieutenant?” Rivers asked.
“I don’t know what to make of him. He’s uncommon brave. I know that.”
Colleen said nothing. She was thinking of Zak Cody, too, wondering why he was not with them. Was he brave or foolhardy? What could he see in the dark and the rain? Was he protecting them, or did he just thirst for blood? She did not like to think of the latter possibility. But was she just projecting him onto her mind in a fabricated image, making him into someone she wanted him to be, denying to herself who he really was? She knew she was responding to his magnetism. She felt the pull of his gravity, and it was disturbing to her, like certain dreams she’d had that she could not fathom.
No one spoke for a few moments, each locked in their own private thoughts of Zak Cody, perhaps wondering what he was doing out in the weather while they crouched like drenched birds beneath their horses, waterfalls cascading from their saddles, rain trickling down quivering legs, pooling up in hoofprints, sputtering under the onslaught of dancing raindrops.
They heard a sound then. The wind carried it through the liquid crystal curtains of showers, carried it, muffled it, and spewed it to their ears like a dissonant crackle escaped from a long forgotten thunder. They stiffened as if each had been larruped with the lash of a bullwhip. The sound was unmistakable, oddly disconnected from the storm, but part of it as well.
A gunshot that seemed to speak of fire and blood, the violence that sprouted from a dark wet world while the sky bristled with branches fashioned of mercury and quicksilver, as if conjured by some ancient alchemist risen from the underworld.
Chapter 7
Ben Trask had been watching the darkening sky and knew the fierce storm was coming toward them. He and his men put their horses through a punishing pace, hoping to reach the next line shack before the rain and wind hit them.
It was already dark by the time Trask spotted the adobe. And the rain had already started to fall. He rode up to the front of the shack, whose door was ajar, and motioned for the other men to follow him.
Just then, a crack of lighting lit the scene. It was followed almost immediately by thunder, which pealed across the sky like a battery of twelve-pounders. At the same time, rain sloshed down like an engulfing tidal wave, the horses screamed terrified whinnies, and the men jerked their reins to hold them, so they wouldn’t bolt out from under them.
Trask yelled into the explosive downpour, “Everybody inside. We got a gusher. Tie up your horses on high ground.” The men dismounted and struggled through the wind and the rain as if they were slogging through quicksand. Some shook out lariats and led their horses out in back of the adobe. They tied their mounts to anything solid they could find as the rain continued to drench them. The wind tore at their soaked clothing, stung their faces. They put hobbles on some of the horses and tied these animals to the secured mounts and fled to the front of the shack to get in out of the rain.
Trask was the first one in the door. He couldn’t see at all in the darkness. He held his arms out in front of him, as a blind man might do, feeling for anything that might be in his path. He took two steps into the room and tripped over something on the floor.
“Damn,” he said, regaining his balance in time to keep from falling down. A streak of lightning lit the inside of the adobe just long enough for Trask to see what he’d stumbled over. It was a body, and he got a glimpse of another corpse on the floor a few feet away. He knew they were men who worked for Hiram Ferguson.
Trask barked at Fidel and Hector Gonzalez, “Haul them bodies outside, toss ’em on the road. Flood’s going to take ’em away right soon.”
The other Mexicans, followed by Ferguson, poured into the adobe and helped remove the dead bodies.
The adobe sat on high ground above the road, but Trask worried that they might not be high enough. He knew what was coming. So did Ferguson, who walked over to Trask, his wet face the color of cork. With the constant strikes of lightning, Ferguson could see the fear flickering in Trask’s dilated eyes like restless shadows. “Gonna come a flash flood, Ben, sure as shootin’.”
“It’s a frog strangler, all right,” Trask said.
Fidel and Hector bent down to pick up one of the bodies. It had been ripped and torn by animals—coyotes, possibly—and they struggled with the feet and shoulders. They turned their heads as if to avoid the stench and stood up. Trask cleared a path for them. Rain shot through the door almost in straight lines as the two men stumbled outside.
“Get that other man out of here,” Trask ordered, looking at Jaime Elizondo. Pablo, you help him,” he said to Pablo Medina.
The two men went over to the other body, which was in worse shape than the first. It was hardly recognizable as b
eing human. One leg was completely gone, the other reduced to blood-smeared bone. The face was gnawed off and there was only a skull under the matted hair. They slid their arms under the dead man’s back and hefted him up. He wasn’t heavy because there wasn’t much left of him. They walked outside, ducking to avoid the stinging needles of rain, and sloshed off into the darkness.
Willy Rawlins turned away from the hideous sight. He doubled over and started to retch, but clamped a hand to his mouth and held on, breathing air through his nostrils. As was typical of the adobes, there was no glass covering the windows, which were more like gaping holes than windows. He stepped close to one of them and stood up straight, gulping in fresh wet air. He swore and shook his head as if to clear it of the smells of decaying flesh, coyote dung, urine, and a dozen other scents he could not identify.
“Christ,” Ferguson said.
“Get used to it,” Trask said, a note of contempt in his voice. “It ain’t goin’ to get no better.”
The adobe seemed to shudder with the next crack of thunder. Lightning flashed all around, limning the windows and the doorway with a flood of bright light. The wind blew rain through every opening.
“Rawlins, close that damned door,” Trask said, and Rawlins started to close it when Hector and Fidel dashed back in, their slickers bright with rain. He closed the door, and moments later the other two men opened it and came in. The wind took the door and slammed it into the adobe. Rawlins had to step outside and fight the wind to close it again. The blasts of air and rain made the door rattle and creak, but it stayed closed, pinned shut by the wind.
“Any of you boys want to catch some shut-eye, there’s a bunk yonder, or you can get your bedrolls and bring ’em in here,” Trask said. “I want at least three men on watch. You can take turns, starting now.”
“I’ll take the first watch,” Rawlins said. “Shit, I’m soakin’ wet. Can we make a fire in here?”