by Joe Millard
“It fits you, Whitey, to select a room with a ready-made gallows. This rope is a little present—just for you. Take it, amigo, and climb up on that table.”
Silent, his face devoid of either alarm or rage, the hunter caught the tossed coil and swung himself up on to the table. The beam was still inches beyond his fingertips. Tuco snatched up a low wooden stool and set it on the table.
“Step on this. Ah, that’s better. Now tie the rope around the beam, Whitey. Make sure the knot is good and tight so it can’t slip. I wouldn’t want you to fall and break a leg.”
The distant rumbling began again, louder, heavier, making the plank floor quiver underfoot. A low whistle invaded the sound, seeming to rush nearer. It rose to a piercing shriek that ended in the thunderous crash of an explosion somewhere close by.
“Hurry up, Whitey,” Tuco said, “Ah, that’s good. Now—the noose over your head. That’s right. Don’t worry if its a little loose. The weight of a pig on it will tighten it to a perfect fit”
The hunter adjusted the noose with steady hands, fitting the thick hangman’s knot with its traditional thirteen turns of a rope snugly behind his left ear. If he felt despair or hopelessness, neither emotion showed on his face nor in the cold eyes. He had not spoken a word since taking the rope.
“We’ll play our old game, Whitey,” Tuco said, backing to the wall. “The one we played so often on the stupid sheriffs, only this time it is turned around. You’re wearing the rope and I have the gun. And I have worked out a new system. Instead of shooting at the rope, I will shoot at the legs of the stool. I’m a very good shot. Not as fast as you—but I don’t often miss. So, adios, old partner.”
He took careful aim, ignoring the rising shriek of another cannon shell. His finger was tightening on the trigger when the shriek ended in a great, deafening thunderclap of sound. The old building rocked violently. Under Tuco’s feet a section of the floor heaved up sharply, fell away with a rending crash.
The hunter watched as, yelling, the bandit plunged down into a dense cloud of adobe dust where the hotel’s small lobby had been. He landed heavily and lay partly stunned while debris rained down upon him. Outside the tempo of the Union bombardment was picking up rapidly.
When the fall had ceased Teo clawed his way up out of the wreckage. Aside from numerous bruises he seemed to have suffered no injury. He discovered with pleased surprise that he was still clutching his gun and suddenly remembered why.
Cursing wildly, he peered up through the thinning hue at the gaping hole in the ceiling. The table stood at the edge of the hole, the stool perched on top. Above it, the hangman’s noose still dangled from the beam—but now it was mockingly empty. There was no trace of the nameless bounty-hunter whose neck was so recently occupying that loop.
The wounded trooper with the shoulder patch of the Third Cavalry sagged back against the wall, watching from hungry eyes as Senteaaa rolled and licked a cigarette. The soldier took it between bloodless lips and sucked gratefully at the match flame.
From another room of the makeshift infirmary came the grating of a saw on bone and a man’s voice screamed in wordless agony. Two orderlies in bloody unif owls tame out, lugging a tubful of severed limbs. Their faces bore the bolt of dull detachment men wear when taking out.garbage. They went out and came back moments later with the empty tub.
Sentenza, on his knees beside the pallet, said impatiently, “You’re sure Bill Carson was alive the last time you saw him?”
“Positive,” the trooper said. “He was hit pretty bad but he recognised me and called me by name when I was helping load him into the ambulance. He was the last of the load and the wagon started right out. It headed here but it never got here. I was hit about a half-hour later and brought in. I asked about Bill and about our major, who was in the same ambulance. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of either one. That load just never arrived here.”
“Maybe it went to another field hospital.”
The trooper gave him a look of bitter scorn. “You think we had time or surgeons for more than one, mister? Even this place is short of medicine and instruments.”
“What do you think could have happened to them?”
“Only one thing I know of could have happened. They most have been captured on the way. Those damn Colorado mountain goats were swarming around as like wolves by then. Some of ’em even chased the ambulance I was in but we got away, thank God. I’d rather die here than in the Yankee stockade at Battleville prison camp.”
Sentenza got to his feet. “Thanks, soldier.”
“Tell me one thing, mister,” the trooper said. “Why are you so all-fired anxious to find Bill Carson? Is he a friend of yours?”
“That,” Sentensa said grimly, “remains to be seen.”
CHAPTER 9
TUCO put his hat on the ground at the crest of the ridge overlooking the river. He carefully parted the bushes. The Man With No Name sat beside a fire in a small clearing on the riverbank. A smoke-blackened coffee pot squatted on the embers and the hunter idly examined an empty tin cup while he waited patiently for the coffee to boil. His saddled horse stood at the edge of the clearing, cropping grass.
Tuco wriggled back below the ridge line, put on his hat and scrambled down to where four men waited beside tethered horses. They were a gun-tough quartet, brawlers with hard, brutish faces.
“The set-up is perfect.” Tuco breathed hard. “He’s hunched over his fire, waiting for his coffee. He’s so sure no enemies are near that he does not even bother to look behind him. Red, you and Scar creep up from that way. Juan and Pedro will close in from the other side. When I call to him he will jump up with his back to you. Hit him then—make sure you come out shooting. Don’t give him a chance to get out his gun. He’s a dead shot.”
The man called Scar grinned wolfishly.
“Don’t worry, Tuco. The dead shot’ll be just dead—and we’ll split the four thousand dollars bounty on his head.”
“Three thousand,” Tuco corrected. “I take one thousand and you split the rest. Ah, to kill a hated enemy is sweet—but to kill him and make a profit is sweeter still.”
The hunter lifted the boiling coffee pot off the coals on the river bank. Still holding the shiny tin cup, he reached into the open saddlebag beside him and took out another cup, this one old and battered from long use. He poured coffee into this one and set it aside to cool.
Not once had he bothered to glance at the thick underbrush behind him. There was no necessity to swivel his head mound. The shiny bottom of the first cup was a micror. By moving it slightly he could maintain a constant watch on the underbrush at his back.
The mirrored surface showed a stir of movement, then a fleeting glimpse of two heads briefly raised. He turned the cup slightly and caught a similar glimpse on the opposite side.
The voice of Tuco came from in front of him, somewhere beyond the screen of shrubbery.
“Hey, Whitey, are you so selfish you don’t invite your old friend and partner to share a cup of coffee?” The hunter was on his feet and spinning around as the four broke through the brush. His palm slapped the hammer of his gun.
The four shots blended.
Deep in the woods, safely sheltered behind the thick trunk of a tree, Tuco also heard the four rapid shots. They were followed by silence. He blanched, whirled and ran frantically to where he had left his horse.
The Man With No Name paused in the act of reloading his gun. He cocked his head, listening to the pound of swiftly receding hoofbeats.
A faint smile stirred his lips.
“Goodbye, old friend and partner,” he murmured.
He glanced at the four sprawled belies, shrugged and squatted down to sample his cooling coffee.
Sentenza had spent most of the morning working his way up the mountain to avoid the Union forces holding the canyon and pass below. Close to noon he sat down to rest and catch his breath. He glanced idly around and his eye caught a flash of dark blue among the grey-brown of the rocks. He sprang up and
moved cautiously towards the spot.
He found the body of a Union sergeant huddled in a shallow niche under an overhang of rock. The man apparently had been mortally wounded in the fighting that had surged up the flanks of Glorietta Pass and had crawled here to die.
Sentenza squatted and went through the dead man’s pockets. Inside the jacket he came upon an order, assigning Sergeant Allen Crane to adjutant duty at Battleville Prison Camp. Sentenza’s pale sorrel eyes glowed with satisfaction.
Luckily the sergeant had been no small man. His uniform jacket was full enough to conceal the long-barrelled pistol at Sentenza’s left hip. Sentenza buttoned the jacket and strapped on the dead man’s army Colt over it.
“Excellent,” he murmured, looking down at himself. “Now, if you can only remember how to salute properly, Sergeant Crane, you may wind up yet with two hundred thousand in gold.”
The scene had been duplicated too many times. The swarthy prisoner slumped in his saddle beneath the gallows beam, the hangman’s noose around his neck. The sheriff stood at the horse’s flank, holding his whip. The judge finished reading the list of charges.
“Therefore, with the powers vested in us by the law, the aforesaid Thomas Larson, commonly known as Shorty, has been duly condemned to hang by the neck until dead. May the Lord have mercy on his soul.”
Some two hundred yards down the street, in a narrow alleyway, the hunter steadied his rifle across his left aim and took careful aim at the gallows rope. The sheriff raised his whip. The hunter’s finger tightened on the trigger.
The barrel of a gun rammed hard into his back and the voice of Tuco biased, “Eh-eh-eh—not this time, Whitey.”
The ugly one reached around and snatched the rifle, then lifted the hunter’s pistol from its holster. Down the street the whip came slashing down and the horse lunged away.
“What about Shorty?”
Tuco chuckled coldly.
“Shorty be hanged, amigo. This partnership, like the old one, is—how did you put it, Whitey? Dissolved?”
The hunter looked at the figure kicking at the and of the rope. He shrugged.
“Sorry, Shorty, but I guess every man’s luck has to run out sooner or later.”
He tramped to the rear of the buildings, the gun nudging his back. He turned towards his horse.
Theo said, “No, Whitey. Not this time. The world is divided into two kinds of people, amigo—those who ride and those who walk. This time you walk.” He swung into his own saddle and grinned down. “They say walking is good exercise. It makes a man healthy. You are going to be the healthiest man in the territory, Whitey—if you live long enough. Start walking.”
The Man From Nowhere stumbled and caught himself, forcing his legs to move on. The hot sand dragged at his boots, making every step a supreme effort of muscle and will. The sun hammered down with incredible ferocity until he felt as if he were being beaten from head to foot with white-hot irons. Even when he closed his eyes the fierce glare from the sand burned through the lids. Every sobbing breath of the superheated air seared his throat and lungs.
“Come on there, Whitey,” Tuco said gaily. “Walk, man. Walk faster. You’re leaving me with no one to talk to. That is not polite.”
He sat comfortably on his horse, grinning down at his dishevelled victim. Two full canteens of water hung from his saddle horn, sloshing with every movement of the horse. The blond man stumbled again and instinctively grabbed for Tuco’s stirrup to keep from falling. The outlaw jabbed with his spur and the horse skittered out of reach. The hunter fell heavily. It seemed to take him forever to struggle to his knees, then to his feet again.
“You should watch where you are walking,” Tuco said in mock reproof. “Ah, but I know what the trouble is, Whitey. You are carrying too much extra weight.” He reached down, snatched off the hunter’s broad-brimmed hat and sent it sailing out of sight behind a dune. “There. Now you will walk lighter, amigo.”
Even at a slow walk the horse was moving farther and farther ahead of the man on foot. Tuco reined in, waited for the stumbling figure to catch up.
“Eh, Whitey, this desert makes a man thirsty just to look at it.” He uncapped a canteen and tipped it up, drinking noisily, letting some of the precious fluid dribble down his chin and on to his shirt. “Ahhhh, that’s better. You have no idea how good cool water can feel on the tongue and throat.”
He made a pretence of peering down anxiously as the other caught up.
“How this sun beats down. They say the sun is very bad for people with pale skin like yours, Whitey. It burns and blisters until the skin peels off in strips. And worse, it burns through a man’s skull and cooks his brains until they are nothing but jelly. You must be careful not to get too much of the sun, Whitey.”
Tuco squirmed around to reach into the blanket roll tied behind his cantle. He brought out a ridiculously ruffled pink parasol. He opened it over his head and pretended to shiver.
“It is strange how this thin air cannot hold the sun’s heat. A little bit of shade like this and I feel actually cold. Brrr!”
“Where—are—we—going?” the hunter croaked.
“Where? Towards a place where only one of us will arrive, amigo. Do you see all that beautiful sand ahead of us? That is the Jornada del Muerte—an oven a hundred and fifty miles long. Even armies are afraid to go through here. On that side the Confederates are trying to escape. The bluecoats are arriving on the other side. But neither dares set foot in here. Only you and I, Whitey, have the courage to take this beautiful walk where we can be alone and undisturbed. Is that not a pleasant thought?”
The hunter stumbled again and made thick croaking noises.
“What was it you told me once?” Tuco asked. “Oh, yes. Now I remember. ‘You might not survive—but again, you might. Consider it a challenge, amigo. A man needs a challenge to bring out the best in him.’”
The hunter fell, made a feeble, aimless effort to getup again, then collapsed on the burning sand. Tuco shook his head sadly.
“What? You are not resting already? Up, man. On your feet. We are almost there. It can’t be more than a hundred and twenty miles more. And in eight hours it will be sundown, when it gets so cold your teeth chatter and the dew falls like rain until you are drenched to the skin. Do you think you will be around to feel it, Whitey?”
He roared with laughter, rocking in the saddle. The hunter made an herculean effort and made it to his feet He stumbled on. He endured an eternity of torment before Tuco squinted towards the sun and reined in.
“Time to eat so soon? Ah, but I am starved. How good the bread and the big slabs of meat will taste, washed down with plenty of cool water. What? You’re not hungry, Whitey? You would rather enjoy the sun while I eat? Oh, very well. But I insist that you have a good drink of water. Here.”
He unhooked a canteen, sloshed it invitingly and tossed it to the ground some yards beyond the hunter’s reach. The tall man pitched forward on to hands and knees and crawled towards it. He got the canteen and was struggling with the cap when Tuco drew his pistol and fired. The container flew out of the hunter’s hands, spurting water from both sides.
The hunter crawled towards it. His outstretched hand was almost on the canteen when Tuco shot again and again, riddling the canteen. The last drops of water gushed out and vanished in the parched air and the thirsty sand. The bounty-hunter collapsed and lay unmoving.
Tuco rode to the sparse shade of a sand dune some distance away and dismounted. Carrying the other canteen and a package of bread and meat from his saddlebags he sat down in the shade and finished a leisurely meal. He stood up and looked towards the sprawled figure.
“I’m afraid I have to leave you now, Whitey. Goodbye, amigo, and pleasant journeying. Remember me to the coyotes.”
He had his foot in the stirrup, ready to swing into the saddle, when the wagon rose into view, cresting a dune. The vehicle was a Confederate army ambulance drawn by two running horses. No driver was visible on the seat, no sign of life sh
owed from behind its drawn curtains. The horses had obviously been running for a long time. Their flanks were white with dried lather and their running was little more than a wobble-legged trot.
Tuco snatched his foot down and ran to intercept the runaways. He had no difficulty grabbing the bridles and bringing the exhausted team to a halt. He ran around and snatched open the side door of the ambulance. The dead body of a Confederate major pitched halfway out. Beneath and beyond it were other bodies, thrown into a tangled heap by the jouncing of the wagon. Tuco dragged the corpse of the major to the ground and rifled the pockets. They yielded a gold watch, a few coins and a packet of Confederate banknotes. The last he contemptuously threw aside.
The next body wore the blood-stained uniform of a cavalryman. A black patch covered the empty socket of one eye. Tuco stripped off the patch and tried it on. It fitted well and he put it away in his pocket. It could serve him as a disguise on his next robbery.
He took hold of the body to drag it out and nearly leaped out of his boots when it stirred in his grasp and uttered a feeble moan. Swollen lips moved in a croaking whisper.
“Water, in the name of heaven. Water, water—”
“Aiee.” Tuco spat. “Water is too precious in this desert to be wasted on a man as good as dead. Be quiet while I see if you have anything worth stealing “
He found a handful of small coins, a cigar case engraved with the name Bill Carson. A folded paper proved to be the enlistment record of one Bill Carson in the Third Cavalry, C.S.A.
Tuco put this carefuly away. His eyes glittered as ha considered the infinite possibilties inherent in carrying the identy of a man already dead.
The figure stirred again and the one eye opened. “Water—I’ll pay—for it—in gold dollars. Two-hundred thousand dollars.”
“What?” Tuco grabbed the dying man and shook him roughly. “What is this? What about two hundred thousand gold dollars, Carson? Where would you get that much money? If you’re lying—”
“No,” the feeble whisper came. “Not Carson. Real name—Jackson. I stole—Fourth Cavalry funds—hid them. Only I—know—where. Water—”