by Joe Millard
The door was hauled open before he could fit the bar into its brackets. The stranger stumbled through, dripping water. At close range he was even less prepossessing.
A word crashed into Milton’s mind, made shambles of any coherent thought
Ugly...
He backed up nervously. “I was just closing for the night”
“You just opened again,” Tuco croaked.
His gaze fell on the shelf of bottles behind the bar. He stumbled across, snatched a bottle of whisky and drank thirstily. A full third of the liquor had vanished before he lowered the bottle.
He let go an explosive, “Ah-h-h-h—” He stared around,the room and his eyes glittered. “Guns. I need a hand gun—the best one made.”
“Yes, yes,” Milton said. The stranger’s ugliness was that of death, with a foretaste of rot. Milton ran to a case and hauled out pistols, one at a time. “Here are only the very finest, mister. Remington, Colt, Root, Smith and Wesson, Navy, Joslyn—”
“That’s enough,” Tuco growled. “I know guns.”
He examined each pistol with the eye and ear of an expert, testing the trigger pull, the spring’s force. He spun cylinders close to his ear to gauge the set of the ratchets. When he found one that pleased him he loaded it sand thumbed back the hammer. His gaze roved the room, searching for a target.
“Wait,” the little man cried nervously. “Out in the back is a small range where you can try it out. You’ll know exactly—”
“Show me,” Tuco growled. “Come on—move.”
Milton scuttled to a rear door and opened it to reveal a small courtyard with a row of targets across the for side. Behind each target hung a piece of iron that would clang on a bull’s-eye.
The pistol bucked and slammed in Tuco’s hand. Five shots blasted and each one set iron to ringing. Milton, his eyes wide with awe, followed Tuco back to the counter.
Tuco growled, “Shells.” He reloaded and thumbed back the hammer. “How much?”
“Fifteen dollars, sir.”
“You don’t get the point, friend,” Tuco said through his teeth. “Think about it and try again.”
He waggled the gun and Milton suddenly became achingly conscious that the muzzle pointed straight at his face. He paled and swallowed heavily.
“A—a hundred dollars? Two hundred dollars, sir.” He snatched up a cigar box and opened it to reveal a stack of worn banknotes. “See? It is all the money I have.”
“You got the idea finally.” Tuco snatched the bills. “Where’s your horse?”
“In the stable—out back.”
Tuco grinned and slipped his new gun into his holster. “Now I’ve got everything I need but a cigar.”
“A cigar? Yes, sir. I have them right here, sir, the best in the West.”
“The cigar I’m looking for,” Tuco said savagely, “has the face of a black-hearted son of a whore behind it.”
CHAPTER 7
FEW men, Sentenza reflected, ever had the privilege of watching a bloody, day-long battle from a choice box seat. And even fewer men, his thoughts ran bitterly, had the hellish luck to arrive on the ground where a fortune in gold was buried at a moment when two idiot and unaware armies were mauling one another to pieces over it.
His seat was probably the same pinnacle of rock from which a Union soldier had first spied the Confederate cavalry detail escorting the money wagon. It was the hest look-out point and his trained eye detected signs of previous occupancy. From this vantage point he could see down into Glorietta Pass, far back into Apache Canyon and westward, across the Pecos, almost to Santa Fe. For the better part of the day—now waning—the entire area below had been bloodied by some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
Sentenza had reached the pass shortly after daybreak, bound for Santa Fe and the elusive Bill Carson. One way or another Jackson, alias Carson, would be made to talk, to identify the exact grave which hid the fortune.
Sentenza had known a distinct shock at finding the road from Santa Fe to the pass jammed with marching troops in Confederate grey. Some scouting had revealed them to be a force of Texans sent out by General Sibley to secure and hold Apache Canyon against the Federal troops at Fort Union. The action was intended to cut off Santa Fe’s only hope of liberation by Colonel Canby’s tough Colorado Volunteers.
Sentenza’s first look at the unwelcome obstacle to his plans had sent him up the canyon wall. The Johnny Rebs had art unpleasant reputation of either shooting stray civilians as spies or forcibly impressing them into the army. Neither alternative fitted into his own programme. He had scouted carefully from high ground, ghosting down as opportunity offered to learn what he could by overhearing soldiers’ conversations.
At last he rode as high as he could, left his horse among concealing rocks and proceeded on foot. The rock pinnacle offered an ideal vantage point from which to see when the last troops had passed on into the canyon, leaving the road to Santa Fe clear. It also proved the ideal vantage point from which to see the best-laid plans of mice and gunmen go all to hell in a crash of cannon fire.
The last baggage and supply wagons were still tumbling into the pass when the vanes and of the troops rammed headlong into a large force from Fort Union, sent to keep the canyon open. Sentenza suddenly found himself an unwilling spectator to a battle of incredible ferocity.
The Texans were mainly flatlanders, men from the open plains who elected to make their fight on the canyon’s floor, taking cover behind the masses of fallen rocks. The Colorado volunteers, on the other hand, were chiefly miners from the gold fields, thoroughly at home in rugged mountain terrain. They scrambled up the canyon walls like mountain goats to pour a withering fire down into the expceed Confederates below.
For an hour and more the Texans held their ground with incredible courage and at fearful cost. A steady stream of ambulance wagons, jammed with wounded, poured out of the pass, some heading towards Santa Fe, others turning south towards Galisteo, where the main body of Sibley’s troops was encamped. The traffic ended any hope Sentenza had of working his way past the embattled forces to continue his journey.
A rare impatience began to gnaw at him. He saw no cavalry in action below, so Carson’s Third Regiment would be either in Santa Fe or twenty miles south-east at Galisteo. But for the time being Carson—from Sentenza’s viewpoint—might as well be stationed on the moon.
Inevitably, for all their dogged courage, the Texans began to give ground. Slowly but inexorably they were driven back towards Glorietta Pass, leaving grey-clad bodies on the canyon floor.
By mid-afternoon they had been driven back to Glorietta Pass, and were digging in for a last, desperate stand. Sentenza could see the Union forces massing for an all-out assault. It came at last, a howling irresistible charge that hit the weakened Rebel line and sent it reeling back out of the pass to the bank of the Pecos.
There was little or no pursuit. Having gained their objective, the Volunteers pulled back to the mouth of the pass and settled down to hold the ground. Beyond the river, on the Pecos Plains, the scattered Confederates were coming together and setting up camp. Plainly, neither side was ready to break off the confrontation and leave the way clear for Sentenza to pursue his search for Bill Carson.
In the glow of the setting sun the peaks of the mountains were taking on the deep crimson hue that had earned them their Spanish name of Sangre de Christo—Blood of Christ. In the shadowed gorge below lay puddles of a deeper crimson that came, not from fanciful illusion but from the blood of brothers.
It was full dark by the time Sentenza had worked his way down to his horse and nearing midnight by the time he had slipped past the last Union picket post at the mouth of the pass. The sporadic rumble of wagons and strings of flickering lanterns, like regimented fireflies, marked the road to El Paso.
Sentenza mounted and turned his home’s head southward, towards the main Confederate camp at Galisteo. Circumstances would dictate his next move.
Some two hours later he saw the dark bulk of wal
ls against the glow of a rising moon. As he drew closer he saw that the fort was in ruins, shattered by a recent bombardment. He reined in and studied it. Through the broken gates he could see the red glow of flames dancing on an inner wall. The night wind brought the smell of wood smoke and the stench of blood and death. It also brought something else—a soft, eerie keening that rose and fell endlessly, awakening the short hairs on the back of his neck.
Fear was not what he felt—but alertness to danger. The dead, he thought with a thin smile, never panic.
He swung down and started toward the gate, then turned back to get a full bottle of whisky from a saddle bag. Cradling it in his left arm, his right hand dose to his gun, he stepped to the gate and peered in. A small fire burned in the middle of an unroofed room. An iron kettle bubbled above the flames. Around the walls lay scores of fearfully wounded Confederates. The keening sound he had heard was the blended chorus of their agonized complaints.
A sergeant limped in from another room and stopped short at the sight of Sentenza. A bloody bandage circled his head and his left arm dangled limp and useless, the sleeve ripped and stiff with caked blood.
A sardonic glow came into his eyes. He bowed mockingly.
“Welcome, friend. If its a quiet place to spend a holiday you’re looking for you’ve come to the right place. This luxury hotel boasts all the comforts of home, with no hurrying crowds to shove you around and trample on your elegant boots.”
Sentenza uncorked the whisky bottle wordlessly and proffered it. The sergeant snatched it, tilted it to his lips. His throat worked convulsively. He lowered the bottle and blew out a gusty breath of appreciation.
“I haven’t told you all the attractions of this fine retreat, my friend. This hotel is proud of its cooking. It serves only the most healthy and nourishing of foods—corncobs à la Confederacy, supplied unsparingly by our most generous Government. Want to sample the superb treat?”
He gestured mockingly and Sentenza saw that the pale objects simmering in the kettle were indeed plain corn-cobs without a single kernel of corn on them.
“You can see for yourself how well the guests are treated here.”
“I’m hunting for a man named Bill Carson,” Sentenza said. “Ever hear of him?”
“And we’re being hunted by a man named Canby. Ever hear of him?” The sergeant’s laugh was a snarl. “He’s the Yankee colonel whose Colorado Volunteers cut us to pieces today at Glorietta, friend. Now they’re fixing to hunt down the pieces and stomp them to pulp. We’re interested in only one thing here, mister, and that’s saving our worthless hides. And you come asking for one of us. Why, mister, and in whose name? Damned if I can figure what you civilians got in your heads—it sure as hell ain’t good sense.”
Sentenza forced himself to patience.
“This Carson has a black patch in place of an eye and he’s with the Third Cavalry.”
“Ain’t nobody here from the Third.” The sergeant tipped up the bottle, lowered it abruptly. “The Third, you say? Then your man’s riding to his own funeral right now. Our scouts report Canby’s whole Yankee force is on the way from Fort Union to hold Glorietta Pass. General Sibley’s throwing in every man we got to take it. The Third left Galisteo at midnight to lead the fast assault. They’ll be plumb in the middle of a battle that’ll make today’s scrap look like a picket skirmish.”
Sentenza slammed his fist to his palm in frustration.
“But suppose Carson survives. Where would he be afterwards?”
“Either retreating down that hundred and fifty miles of desert hell they call the Jornada del Muerte—the Dead Men’s March—or in Battleville, the Union prison camp. If he’s a friend of yours, you better hope he’s dead or in the desert. Either way he’d be better off than in that hell camp.”
“I’m obliged, Sergeant,” Sentenza said bleakly. “And keep the rest of the whisky. It’s all yours.”
Outside he stood for a long time in bitter thought. At last he swung into the saddle and headed back towards Glorietta Pass.
CHAPTER 8
THE Confederate Invasion of New Mexico was at an end. The private dreams of General Sibley and the high hopes of the Confederacy died together in the holocaust of the second battle for Glorietta Pass.
For long and bloody hours the struggle had see-sawed, the issue in doubt. Then a force of Colorado Volunteers, slipping over the mountains, had struck the unprotected Confederate rear. In a fury of destruction they had burned eighty-five wagonloads of irreplaceable supplies and bayoneted six hundred horses and mules.
Isolated in a barren, hostile land, hands and bellies empty, the invaders had no choice but to begin the long and terrible retreat. It was in no sense a rout. They withdrew from the bloody field in good order and marched southward, Canby’s victorious Colorado Volunteers at their heels.
In the little town of Santa Bella, near the northern rim of the dead Jornada, a hotelkeeper by the name of Pardue stood at the window with his wife and watched the grey-clad columns you. He could barely conceal his glee.
“I got it on good authority that Colonel Canby and his Colorado Volunteers are less than five miles behind them. That’s why they’re marching on the double. They brought their war to us but Canby gave them a bellyful of medicine. They’ve had all the fighting they can stomach for a long time to come.”
“Poor boys,” his wife murmured as an ambulance crowded with wounded edged past the marching columns.
“Poor boys, my rump. They came asking for it and they got it. The sooner those thieving beggars clear out the sooner the Yankees will get here. And the Yankees, in case you’ve forgotten, woman, don’t take everything we have and pay for it in promises or worthless Jeff Davis shinplasters. What Yankees need they pay for in good gold and silver.”
A canvas-topped headquarters wagon rattled into view, passing the columns of marching troops. Pardue snatched open the curtain to point.
“Look, there’s Sibley himself—up there on that wagon. The one with the white beard, that’s the great General Henry H. Sibley himself, getting out from underfoot at last.” He pretended to wave a flag, jeering, “Long live the Confederacy! Long live Jeff Davis! Yeah—yeahyeah—”
His wife grabbed his arm.
“Sam, what are they doing to those men down there ?”
Pardue bent forward to look. “Getting ready to execute them.”
A few sorry-looking soldiers, their hands tied behind their backs, were being shoved into line against an adobe wail The firing squad took its stance a dozen paces away. A sergeant with a bull voice read the list of charges, his bellow coming fitfully above the thud of marching fort and the rumble of wagons and gun carriages.
“Rape... cowardice... desertion under fire... looting of dead or wounded comrades...”
The Pardues whirled as the hotel door burst open with a crash. A man charged in, waving a pistol.
“That horse out there at your hitchrail—where’s the man who owns it?”
“Please,” Pardue said nervously, “do you mind pointing that pistol in some other direction. This war already has my wife frightened half to death.”
“Answer me, damn you. Where is he? You know the two-legged skunk I mean. Tall and white-haired—wears a cigar in his face and mighty few words get past it.”
“Get out of here,” Pardue’s wife said shrilly. “Whatever your ditty business is, my husband will have no part in it.”
“Shut up, old hag.” The intruder put his gun on Pardue. “You. Talk.”
Pardue lifted an unsteady hand.
“Upstairs. Room at the head of the stairs. But don’t tell him I—”
His voice was drowned in a man’s scream of mortal terror from the street outside. The yell was cut off by the crash of shots. The voice of the sergeant barked commands. By than the intruder was halfway up the stairs, running on tiptoe.
The Man With No Name turned from the window, his face impassive, his feelings untouched by the executions he had witnessed. Death in its most
violent forms had been a part of his life too long to affect him. He went back to a table where his pistol lay beside a kit of cleaning tools.
He sat down, swung open the cylinder and shook the cartridges out to the table top. He reached for the cleaning rod and froze. From the hall just outside his closed door came the faintest tinkle of a spur.
He was on his feet like a cat, facing the door, his gun in his right hand, his left reaching for the spilled cartridges
From behind him the voice of Tuco, bubbling with glee, said, “There are two kinds of spurs in the world, Whitey—those that jingle ouside a door and those that slip silently through a window.”
The bounty hunter whirled. Tuco sat on the sill of the window, one foot in the room, the other still on the narrow balcony outside. His cocked pistol pointed unwaveringly at the tall man’s chest. His ugly face was a mask of Satanic triumph.
“Drop the gun. You will have no need for it where you are going, friend.”
“It’s empty,” the other said.
He dropped pistol and cartridges on to the table, his eyes measuring the distance to the window.
Tuco chuckled wickedly.
“Uh-uh, Whitey. You’d never make it.”
He carefully swung his other leg over the sill and set his feet firmly. A heavy, ominous rumbling began somewhere in the distance. Its reverberations set the window to rattling. Tuco cocked his head, listening.
“Ah-ah, I remember, long ago, the priest telling us that the sky thundered when Judas hanged himself.”
“That sounds more like cannon fire than thunder to me.”
Tuco shrugged.
“Cannon fire? Thunder? It is all the same as long as a Judas hangs.”
He slipped a coil of rope from his shoulder, a hangman’s noose already fashioned at one end.
The room had no ceiling but the high roof itself. Beneath this a heavy beam ran from wall to wall. Tuco flashed a look at it and grinned with satisfaction.