by Jory Sherman
“This is war, Colleen. I needed information from Deets. I got it. You could call it torture if I got the information and then kept hurting him. I gave him a nudge. He told me what I needed to know. Don’t try and make something out of it that it isn’t.”
“I guess I just don’t understand you, Zak,” she said, her manner softening.
“That’s another matter entirely. Something you’ll have to work out for yourself.”
“Oh, you are an exasperating man.”
“That, too,” he said, a flicker of a smile on his face.
In the distance he heard a coyote yelp. The sound only emphasized how quiet it was after the rain and the flood. In the east, he saw a glimmer of pale light, a faint trace of salmon on some of the clouds, a shimmering tinge of gold that quickly disappeared.
“I wish I knew you better,” she said.
“Who can really know someone, Colleen? People are mysteries.”
“Mysteries? I’ve never heard that before.”
“You can never truly know a person, Colleen. People wear masks. People hide who they really are. If you observed a single person all your life, every day and night, you still would only see a little bit of that person.”
“I’ve never thought of people that way,” she said.
“I have.”
He started walking away from her. She opened her mouth to stop him, to pursue the conversation, perhaps, but instead just shook her head and followed him.
When Zak got back to his horse, he took Deets’s rifle out of the scabbard on his saddle and replaced it with his rifle. He tied Deets’s rifle in back of his cantle, after wrapping it in his bedroll and retying the bundle.
“Zak, got a minute?” O’Hara said to him.
“Less than that, Ted. We need to get moving. Trask is probably gaining more ground on us.”
“It’s about Deets.” O’Hara’s voice was pitched low so the others, including their prisoner, wouldn’t overhear him.
“What about Deets?” Zak asked.
“Why are you trading horses with him and why did you dress him in your slicker and hat?”
“If Trask means to pick me off when we get close, he might mistake Deets for me.”
“I don’t think Deets will make it very far.”
“You mean Trask will shoot him instead of me?”
“He’ll probably bleed to death.”
“He might.”
“I say we ought to leave him here. He might stand a chance, if we leave him some food and water.”
“Your kindness is admirable, Ted.”
“I’m not trying to be kind. Colleen and I think that man’s been tortured enough. Now you want to make him a target for Trask. That’s pretty damned cruel.”
“It’s not meant to be. Deets has a better chance of surviving his wound if he comes with us. Scofield can doctor him. As for Deets being a target instead of me, I call that simple justice.”
“Not in my book.”
“Maybe you ought to get another book, Ted.”
“Look, I know you’re a hard man, but Colleen is pretty upset. And I think she’s right.”
“Well, if Colleen’s right and you’re backing her, maybe you and she ought to go on to Tucson or make it to Fort Bowie on your own.”
“If I left with Colleen, I’d take Scofield and Rivers with me.”
Zak shrugged. He saw that the day was getting lighter by the moment. They had already spent too much time getting ready to pick up Trask’s trail. And the outlaw would leave tracks. Tracks that had to be followed.
“Ted, that’s fine with me. You can all go to Fort Bowie. I won’t try and stop you.”
“We’d take Deets with us.”
Zak felt his anger begin to boil. He knew he could pull rank on O’Hara and order him to stay. But he didn’t want to do that. What galled him was that Ted and his sister were trying to protect a man who deserved no consideration whatsoever. Deets was a killer. He was the enemy. And he was something else.
“Deets is my prisoner, Lieutenant O’Hara. You can leave if you like, but Deets stays.”
“So he can be killed.”
“So he can be employed in a military situation, if you want it that way.”
“Splitting hairs, Cody.”
“My hairs to split. Now make up your mind. You can go with me to try and stop Trask and Ferguson from meeting up with renegade soldiers, or you can tuck your tail between your legs and crawl back to the fort. I’m sure Willoughby will welcome you with open arms.”
“You do make a point there, Zak.”
“Well, which is it, Ted?”
“I’m concerned about my sister.”
“Maybe you’d better take her to some safe place. Tucson, Fort Bowie.”
O’Hara sighed. “Knowing her,” he said, “she wouldn’t go.”
“I can’t guarantee her safety, or anyone else’s for that matter. I’m after a bunch of killers and they want to start a war. That’s a lot of lives at stake, Ted. I’m all out of argue with you, so I’m going to do what I have to do. You follow your own path.”
With that, Zak climbed up into the saddle. He and Deets were the only ones who were mounted. Scofield and Rivers stood on either side of Nox, holding the horse still. Scofield held onto the reins.
“Come on, Deets,” Zak said, riding up to him. “Follow me.”
“What about us?” Scofield asked.
Zak leaned down and snatched the reins out of his hand.
“I’m turning you over to the lieutenant. He’ll give you your orders from now on.”
Zak rode off then, leading Deets.
There was a silence in his wake, and then he heard Colleen’s voice.
“Ted, what is going on?” she asked her brother.
“Damn that man,” Ted said.
Zak smiled to himself as he rode down off the hill, Deets behind him.
There was more talk, more arguing, but Zak couldn’t hear the words. Five minutes later he heard the clatter of small stones. He looked back to see Ted, Colleen, Rivers, and Scofield riding down the slope in single file. He wondered if they would cut across the road and head for Fort Bowie or turn down it and head west to Tucson. He kept going.
“Hold up, Zak,” O’Hara called out. “We’re going with you.”
“Catch up, then, Ted. I’m going on.”
He heard hoofbeats as O’Hara put his horse into a gallop. A moment later he was riding alongside.
“Zak, you’re hard to deal with,” O’Hara said.
Zak said nothing.
“Colleen said we ought to go with you. So, I’m putting myself under your command.”
“Make sure Rivers and Scofield know that, Ted. And have them ride up here and take Deets in tow. I’m going to scout ahead. Stay alert. All of you.”
“Yes, sir,” O’Hara said, and turned his horse to ride back to the others and issue orders.
The day brightened, illuminating the landscape ahead. He would stay off the road for a time. He knew they were not far from one of the old stage stops. There, he might learn something. For now, his gaze roved the land, looking for any movement, anything out of the ordinary. Sprays of lemony light shot through distant clouds on the horizon. He watched a hawk float overhead, wings outstretched, head turning from side to side as it hunted.
The stillness of morning made him feel good inside.
He looked back at Deets.
Deets glowered at him, and Zak nodded. The man still had some fight in him. That would help him if he was going to pull through.
The wound wouldn’t kill him.
But Trask might, he thought.
Over that possibility, Zak knew he had no control.
But Fate might.
Chapter 19
Trask rode alongside Pablo Medina for two or three miles before he started asking him questions. He was sizing the man up, watching the way he rode, how he looked over the country. He wanted to see if Pablo had any horse sense. He also wanted to know if he was
too inquisitive. He would have expected Pablo to start asking questions, but he did not; he kept his silence. To Trask, that was a point in his favor.
Pablo seemed alert. His head turned from side to side as they rode, and Trask saw that he was looking all around, his hand not far from the butt of his pistol or, for that matter, the stock of his rifle in its boot. He seemed at home in the saddle. He rode easy, but his left hand kept a firm grip on the reins.
“You got a family, Pablo?” Trask looked over at him to gauge his reaction to the question.
“I have a wife and a baby son,” he said, his English only faintly accented.
“You born in Mexico?”
“Santa Fe.”
“School?”
“Yes. I went to school.”
“You didn’t answer my first question. I asked you if you’d ever killed a man.”
“I heard you ask, Mr. Trask,” Pablo said, a note of respect in his voice. “I do not know how to say it.”
“Yes or no. Simple.”
“Not so simple. But, yes. I have killed a man before. More than one. I think you ask if I have shot a man with a rifle. I have not.”
“Who did you kill?”
“My brother. And, my father.”
“That’s pretty close to home.”
“My brother raped my wife. I caught him in the bed with her.”
“And your father?”
“I see him in bed with my sister. She was screaming.”
“How did you kill them?”
“I use the knife.”
“You live with it. Aren’t you afraid you will go to hell for killing your father and your brother?”
“If I do, I will meet them there.”
Trask thought about what Pablo had said. It told him very little about the man. Medina was either simple-minded or wasn’t bothered much by killing another human being. He hoped Pablo felt the same way he did about killing a man. When you took a man’s life, you robbed him of everything, of all power, and thereafter, that man’s power was yours to use for your benefit. That was the kind of man Trask admired and respected. No quarter, no live and let live, but rather, live and don’t let live, anybody who stood in your way.
Now that the sun was up, the clouds took on a blue cast, a pale lavender to their underbellies. And here and there, to the south and north, he saw streaks of white where the clouds were shredding up, dissipating and showing patches of faint blue that might have been sky, but he wasn’t sure.
“Tell me, Pablo,” he said, “how do you feel about killing a man you don’t even know, a man who did you no harm, who didn’t rape your sister or bed your wife?”
“I do not think of such things, Mr. Trask.”
“Maybe you oughta.”
“What?”
“If I asked you to kill a man, shoot him off his horse from some distance, could you do that?”
Pablo thought about that for a moment or two.
“Mr. Ferguson, he say I might have to kill somebody if I come to work for him. I say, okay. You pay me, I kill anybody. I tell him—Mr. Ferguson—you pay me to shoot you and I shoot you. He laugh and I laugh. It is a joke.”
“A joke, yeah. But did you mean what you said? That you would kill anybody if he, or someone like me, asked you to do it?”
“When I was a boy, I worked on a big ranch. The boss told me when I work there, I ride for the brand. He mean—”
“I know what he meant, Pablo.”
“I ride for the brand,” Pablo said. “Always.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Trask said.
“You want me to kill somebody, Mr. Trask?”
“That man who took the soldier away from us. I want you to kill him.”
“Where is this man?”
“I think—I know—he’s on our trail. I want you to hide out at the next stage stop and shoot him when you see him. He will probably be with the lieutenant—O’Hara—maybe some others. But you will shoot him first when you see him. He’s easy to spot. He wears black clothes and he rides a black horse.”
“This is the man you want me to kill?”
“On the first shot, Pablo.”
“He is the one they call jinete de sombra, no?”
“What does that mean? I don’t speak the Spanish.”
“The rider of shadow.”
“Shadow Rider. Yeah, they call him that. He’s the one. The bastard.”
“Un carbon,” Pablo said. “That is what they say he is.”
“Could you kill him?”
“If I see him, I could kill him. Yes.”
“That’s what I want you to do, Pablo. There’s a hundred dollars for you if you do that for me.”
“I will do it.”
“And, if you also kill O’Hara, the army lieutenant, I will give you another fifty dollars.”
“Silver or gold?”
Trask laughed. “Gold, if you want it.”
“I like the gold,” Medina said.
“When the time comes, I will tell you what to do, Pablo. Think about it. Think about that shot.”
“When will I do this?” Pablo asked.
“Maybe tomorrow. I’ll let you know.”
“Good,” Pablo said, and Trask touched a finger to his hat in salute and rode off to join Ferguson at the head of the column.
The blue in the sky softened and the white streaks grew larger and longer, the wind sculpting the clouds. The lavender was fading, giving way to patches of the purest blue, as if a giant ceramic bowl had been glazed in a kiln and was just emerging into the cool high reaches of the atmosphere. Trask studied the sky and thought it was going to be a good day when the sun broke through and dried the road where travel would be easier.
“You and Pablo come to an agreement?” Ferguson asked when Trask rode up alongside him.
“I think so. We’ll leave him at the next stage stop while we ride on.”
“You payin’ him?”
“I said I would. Why?”
“Just curious. I hope it works out. This Cody feller, from all I’ve heard, is a pretty tough bird.”
“No man can stop a bullet, Hiram.”
“I just hope Pablo doesn’t stop one.”
The ground they traveled was witness to the previous night’s storm. They rode past washouts and piles of debris, dead animals, broken plants. Late in the afternoon they turned toward the road and saw that it was washed bare of tracks. Old wagon ruts still existed, but they were shallower, their edges smoothed. They passed the place where the flash flood had originated, a confluence of gullies that bordered the road, fed water into them through several spouts and drains.
“This would have been a bad place to be last night,” Ferguson said.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” Trask said. He raised a hand and beckoned to Willy Rawlins. “Let’s take the road, Willy,” he called. “You all follow us.”
“Goin’ to leave tracks for that Cody feller,” Ferguson said.
“I know. Hell, I want him to follow us now. I think Pablo’s going to take care of Zak Cody.”
“I hope to hell you’re right, Ben.”
They spoke little as Trask set a faster pace. It was easier going on the road, and he knew he was leaving tracks. Cody would know just how many of them were ahead of him and where they were going. Well, he thought, that was just Cody’s bad luck.
The clouds began to break up and drift apart. Some were shredded by high altitude winds and hung like tattered gray curtains from puffy, elongated lintels. Others looked like the foam circling a whirlpool, and these were drifting apart in clumps from the center. Clouds with smudged underbellies turned white as they passed under them, like optical illusions, or perhaps a deception brought on by the constant shift of light as it played over land and sky.
By late afternoon there were only puffs and streamers as reminders of the night before, a few scattered white clouds with little definition and an uncertain destination. The sun was boiling hot and the men were all sw
eating, griping about the heat. They drank from their canteens and chewed on jerky and hardtack. They smoked and kept riding, their horses striped with sweat, switching their tails at ravenous flies, snorting and wheezing under the grueling pace.
As the sun fell away in the sky, their shadows stretched out in front of them, growing longer and longer. The land itself seemed to change as the shadows pooled up, shapes shifting and reshifting as they rode. Trask kept looking at the road behind him, and every time he did, Grissom and Rawlins did the same. The Mexicans all looked ahead and to the sides, their nerves stretched taut, their horses laboring as they tired and perspired.
Just at dusk, Ferguson raised an arm and pointed ahead.
“There’s the next stage stop,” he said.
“I see it,” Trask said. He turned and made a circling sign with his hand.
Grissom peeled off to the right, Rawlins to the left, leaving the road. They rode in a wide semicircle to flank the adobe.
“Thin out,” Trask said to the others. “Don’t bunch up. You see anything don’t look right, you shoot it.”
“Do it, boys,” Ferguson said, and the Mexicans fanned out.
Trask slowed his horse. Ferguson did the same.
“Let’s see if Willy or Lou run into anything,” Trask said.
The sun was sinking below the western horizon now, painting the clouds silver and gold, tinting the undersides with soft orange pastels. The shadows deepened to the east, twisted into formless shapes like clay in the hands of a mad sculptor.
Willy reached the adobe first and circled it on his horse. Lou took an opposite tack on his horse, and the two met out front. Trask reined up and held his hand high to stop the others. They all waited and watched as Willy dismounted and drew his pistol. He crept up to the open door and called out, “Hello the house.”
There was no answer.
Then he went inside and Trask held his breath. He returned a few moments later, stood in the doorway and wig-wagged an arm to signal all clear.
“Let’s go, Hiram,” Trask said, and motioned for the others to follow.
Lou dismounted and tied his horse to a hitchrail.
“Empty?” Trask said as he rode up.
“Nobody alive in there, if that’s what you mean,” Willy said.
“Well, anybody dead in there?”