The Avenging Angels

by Michael Dukes

  “We ought to’ve been there for General Lee,” he said, then clucked to his mare and let her pick a way down the trickier side of the slope.

  Kings did not wait to watch his friend go. He turned John Reb’s head south, down the face of the slope that took a more gradual path to leveling out, so Kings reached the bottom before Yeager did.

  Miraculously, he had been the only one to make it out of Justicia unscathed, and that fact, coupled with his survival instincts and the strength and endurance of his mount, gave him great confidence that he could reach Texas—and after that, California—alive.

  They would assume he was wounded, and when all was said and done, he was the one they wanted. Would they even bother following Yeager? If they did, his trail would be hard to miss. Yeager’s shoulder had been leaking a good amount of blood . . .

  Kings couldn’t decide which course of action he preferred they take.

  Back on the streets of Justicia, Caleb Stringer sat his horse, staring painfully to the south as his volunteers scuttled about, taking far too long to collect themselves and get mounted. Every minute wasted meant another mile lost. That Kings and Yeager had made it out alive was a devilment of the worst sort. Leduc was practically in fits about it, and Stringer couldn’t blame him. No one should have made it through that ungodly stream of fire he’d unleashed, much less anyone at the front of the stampede. Though the sergeant had accounted for three of the five, he counted his part in the ambush a failure.

  The fact that Pat Delaney lay dying from a high chest wound, with Kings himself responsible, gave the lawmen all the more reason to burn with anger.

  One of Shepherd’s two remaining deputies, Bauer, pulled his horse in beside Stringer and waved his Winchester like a battle standard. “Sheriff said to tell you he’s stayin’ behind to tend to the mess here,” he said. “Dobie and I are comin’ with you, and we’ll follow whatever orders you give us.”

  Stringer gave them their first when they reached the summit where Kings and Yeager had separated not long before. “At least one of these snakes is bleedin’,” he announced, noting the spots of blood from Yeager’s wound, then hooked his mount to the side so that he could better examine the faces of the men. After dividing them up in his mind’s eye, he pointed at Bauer. “You know the terrain?”

  The deputy nodded.

  “Then you’ll ride with Detective Mincey. You men to the left of me will go with ’em and follow this blood trail leadin’ off to the east. The rest of ya, with me and the sergeant. We ride south.” He found Dobie’s face. “Deputy?”

  “Yassuh, Captain?”

  “You think you know the land the way your partner does?”

  “Yassuh, Captain.”

  “Then take point.”

  Dobie was a freedman from Kansas, the first in a long line of slaves, but he hesitated now at the prospect of leading white men anywhere. It showed in his face as he moved his horse alongside Stringer’s, but the flinty resolve in the captain’s eyes encouraged him to ease forward another step. And then another, and then on down the slope.

  Finally, the hunt was on.

  Kings knew he couldn’t ride without stopping. Sooner or later, he would have to. He knew the limits to which he could push his horse, and he would not—could not—test those limits. If anything, he would ride John Reb slightly below his daily limit, then recover the distance lost in the morning. More than once he leaned forward and gave the stallion’s neck a good strong clap of reassurance, willing his life into the power of his animal.

  He had cheated the Devil before. He could do it again.

  There was no sound but the jangling of saddle gear and the steady thudding of hooves beneath him. The air was cool on his sweat-beaded face, which he mopped clean with a hairy sleeve. Beneath the buffalo coat, the cotton sack bulged outward from his chest and extended over the saddle horn like a fat man’s paunch. Kings hadn’t yet had time to count it, but he could tell by the weight that he wasn’t carrying the haul he’d expected to find. Not beer money but not a fortune, either. Coupled with the losses suffered, it was a discordant swan song for a man and a gang whose entire career had been a blaring rebel anthem. The sting of Agave Seco waned in comparison.

  At midday he dismounted on the top of a bald ridge for a drink, and to look over his shoulder for what must have been the dozenth time. He raised his field glasses. From such an unobstructed elevation he could see for miles, and what he saw was nothing . . . no posse, no gleam of sunlight off a rifle barrel, nothing but a myriad of black trees studding the rolling, grayand-white-patched hills.

  Kings estimated he had roughly five more hours before dusk, which would leave him a few minutes more of sufficient light by which he could navigate. As much as he hated to stop, the threat of the oncoming darkness wouldn’t bode well for that posse, either. They too would have no choice but to encamp till morning, or risk losing sight of his tracks. In their haste to catch up, they weren’t likely to have brought along lanterns for night-riding. But even as he reasoned this, Kings’s mind was plagued by the possibility of being crept up on in the dead of night and shot while he dreamed. Would the need for sleep, for himself and his animal, result in his death?

  If he had Yeager with him, he might have been willing to turn and make a stand. But the way things stood right now, that was out of the question. A man didn’t need to be a military tactician to know that.

  Though he had greatly admired General Stuart’s fighting spirit, Kings never sympathized with the general’s firm belief that to retreat was to shame oneself. Right now, Kings had to run like hell and, somehow, make it back to the Frio River.

  To Belle.

  He remembered the flecks of brown in her blue eyes, and the soft, salty taste of her skin under his lips before he left her at the foot of her father’s stairs. He remembered her body against his, and then he mounted up and wheeled the stallion, starting again at a brisker pace.

  John Reb trusted his rider’s touch, and over the next few hours, with dusk pressing down on them and the sun quickly losing itself behind the treetops. Kings kept him on a southbound course until it became too dark to see clearly. He reckoned they could chance a few more miles, provided he came up with a sufficient means of lighting the way.

  He paused to break off a dead and brittle branch hanging low, just longer than his forearm. Deciding that his neck could stand to be a little colder, Kings unwound his woolen scarf, tied it securely around the broken end of the branch and used it to catch up a good amount of gooey tree sap. That done, he struck a match, the sap caught fire, and the darkness retreated—but not far.

  Holding his crude torch out over John Reb’s shoulder, Kings saw that to their left was a deep gulley. Opposite, a snowy plateau loomed and dead ahead, horizontal across the trail, was an uprooted pine, torn loose by a tumbling boulder that still rested beside it, embedded in scree.

  Quickly assessing the geography and the choices it left him, Kings tried the obvious option—to move across the ledge between the tree and the declivity just beyond. But the stallion, generally nimble-footed and unafraid of heights, fussed under his rein, pawing at the disturbed ground before backing up. Kings tried again, but, living up to his name, the black refused once more.

  The alternative route looked damnably precarious but no more than forcing a skittish, half-ton animal down a path he didn’t want to go. It was a massive tree, as tall now as it had once been wide, so jumping it didn’t seem tenable. With enough coaxing, Kings got the stallion up and over the pile of scree, but just as man and beast descended onto even ground, there came a queer squeaking sound from overhead. No noise was too insignificant to dismiss, so Kings paused, listening intently. Gradually the squeaking became a low crumbling, and then climaxed as a rolling crash.

  With a scream, John Reb buck-jumped and bolted. Kings, caught off guard, was thrown from the saddle. Landing on his side, he rolled over and was temporarily blinded by the glare of the torch that had fallen near his head. Snow and debris tumbled
down, over and all around him, and just as he was getting up a rock struck him in the center of his back. His wind gone, Kings crumpled and fell forward onto his belly, the loot sack only semi-cushioning the landing. He threw up his arms, interlocking his fingers over the back of his skull, just in time to absorb another stone as it clouted and bloodied his knuckles. Swooning, he tried to scramble free of the avalanche but did not get far.

  The world went black, black and cold.

  Stringer’s party pitched camp before sundown. The tracking made for slow going and had a poor effect on morale. Huddled about the fire, someone wondered if the others were faring much better. Had they caught up with their quarry and spilt more of his blood on the snow? Another volunteer raised the question whether Kings—if this was indeed Kings they were following—would dare to ride through the night, but no one felt like entertaining that thought.

  Their chatter was suddenly interrupted by Stringer, who assigned hourly shifts before going on to say they would be back in the saddle by sunup.

  When he came to, it was still night. He lay still for several minutes, gathering his wits, trying to recall how he had wound up under half a hillside. The weight of it had him pinned like giant, frigid hands, rendering him nearly immobile from the waist down. Anchoring his front end by digging two holes with his elbows, Kings began to wriggle. His head pulsed with pain, his teeth chattered uncontrollably, and, as he wriggled, his breath went out in ragged streams. It took nearly half an hour of constant straining to slide free of his icy cocoon.

  Slowly, he got to his knees, then rocked back on his heels to compose himself. His entire body shivered in spite of his coat and the extra padding of the loot sack. Thanks to this double binding, his guns and knife were all secure, but as merciful as that was, his heart sank when he took a slow look around and saw that John Reb was nowhere to be found.

  This realization alone might have caused a weaker man to despair and resign himself to a slow death, but Kings wouldn’t allow his thoughts to venture down that road. Experience was what would save him now, as it had done so many times in the past.

  Even so, it was an act of will just to stand, and an even greater act to take that first lurching step. As disoriented as he was, he knew he had to get off the trail he had been following, considering that while he had lain under that mass of snow, his pursuers must have closed the gap and might even be on this same path. He deviated by only a few dozen yards, immersing himself in the pines.

  Fire. Before he went any further, he must have a fire. It didn’t take much strength to snap off a few branches, even in his cold and woozy state. Dropping them in a cluster, he fumbled the Bowie free and with it peeled a large, single strip of bark away from one. Laying this strip flat with the yellowish underside facing up, he knelt over it and, using it as a table, sawed the lead caps off two bullets. He emptied the casings of their gunpowder, distributing the black grain evenly onto the strip. On one end he placed some branch fragments and pine needles, and on the other, one of the empty cartridges.

  Tipping the Bowie at a low angle, with the point of its blade touching the cartridge rim, he felt around, sifting through snow to uncover a stone. With this he struck the pommel of the knife—once, twice, and a third time before he ignited the powder.

  His fingers were stiff and bloody from where the second rock had cut him, so he rubbed them vigorously over the weak flames. Liquid coaxed from a handful of crushed snow cleaned the small wounds over his knuckles and joints, and he tried to bury himself within his coat, rubbing warmth back into his chest. The sack he dropped beside the growing fire.

  He had no idea how long he had been out, but there was just enough sky showing through the treetops for some speculation. Shifting around so that he faced north, he lay back and searched for the Big Dipper. He found it, held there for a moment, then let his eyes wander toward the Little Dipper. Finding the crucial light of the North Star at the end of the little handle and using both of his hands as markers, he envisioned the North Star as the center of a clock face. An imaginary hour hand went out from it on a line with the outer two stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper, and after a short time on his back, Kings guessed it was somewhere between eleven o’clock and midnight.

  Four hours. He’d lost four hours.

  After a time, he got up to fashion himself another torch before stamping out the fire. He went back to the trail and swept away his tracks. When he reached the tree line again, he paused to look back, reviewing his handiwork and approving it. He also saw that the avalanche had, in actuality, done more good than harm. The pine tree, which had stood so tall even on its side, was almost completely submerged in snow, with only a few black tufts of needles poking through here and there. The trail was no longer immediately traversable to anything larger than a badger.

  It had been roughly fifteen hours—over half the day—since his breakfast of two biscuits and a cup of coffee at the Long Branch Café, and his ears were just now becoming attuned to the grumbling in his stomach. There was nothing to be done about that, though—not if he wanted to conserve what few bullets he had, and keep his whereabouts in this wilderness yet unknown.

  On foot in unfamiliar territory, the rate of travel he might have accomplished on horseback would now be reduced to a fraction of a fraction, and it was a long way back to Texas. All he could hope for was to come across a river or creek that would inevitably—eventually—bring him into contact with human life. He needed shelter, but, more importantly, he needed a horse.

  In the meantime, he paced himself by taking short rests every so often. Keeping his blood circulating and his legs warm was essential, which he endeavored to do by performing basic calisthenics—pumping his arms, taking high steps through the snow. He kept alert for any movement, any sound, with a Colt in his right hand and the torch in his left. The loot sack, which he now carried on his back with both arms through the loops like an infantryman, was only a minor burden. It might even come in handy if the weather got worse and he managed to find a small cave or cranny to hole up in. Its bulk could be used as a stopper of sorts.

  A reprieve from his gnawing hunger came at about the third hour of tramping, in the form of a whitetail deer carcass. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be a doe, which, judging by its size, was more than a few fat summers and lean winters old. It did not appear to have been brought down by a pack of wolves, as it was not savagely torn asunder and unrecognizable. The two puncture wounds below the jaw identified the killer as a cougar. After emptying the now gaping cavern of the doe’s torso, the big cat made off with the right hind leg as well. That didn’t leave much meat for Kings, but with a little barbaric intuition he could scrounge some nutrition from this animal yet.

  Using his knife as a surgical instrument, he made an incision in the skin and, pressing his full weight onto the blade, was able to saw through sinewy muscle and bone and tear a thin foreleg free. Baring it down, he found the right groove and with little effort split the shank down the middle. He cleaned the inner groove of its pasty marrow as if it were honey.

  He scoured the inside of another of the unfortunate deer’s limbs, washed it down with crushed snow, and walked on, having spent no more than twenty minutes at the carcass.

  Not an hour from there he heard the sound of rushing water.

  If Caleb Stringer had previously attributed the longevity of Gabriel Kings’s career to wartime skills, he was now beginning to think that luck had as much to do with it as anything. Having recently arrived at the site of last evening’s avalanche, Stringer felt that, short of the Lord striking the man down on the highway as He had Saul of Tarsus, the increasingly cold tracks they were following would prove about as useful as teats on a boar hog.

  With the avalanche blockading the road ahead, they had no other option but to descend an unforgiving incline and follow the gulley until they found a gradual enough slope to lead them back up onto Kings’s trail. Once they came to a place where they could make the ascension and not risk another avalanche,
the lawmen strung out again along the path.

  After about a half hour of tracking, it became distressingly apparent that they were following a meandering, riderless horse.

  Led by the stream, Kings emerged from the trees into a moonlit glade. Along the banks was a cabin, a lean-to and a rail corral that, from a distance, appeared to contain a horse and a mule. Dousing the flame of the torch in the snow, he entered the clearing with caution, keeping an eye on the dark-windowed structure.

  Kings hadn’t gone very far before he saw footprints. They all appeared to have been made by the same man. Drawing closer, Kings found a multitude of animal skins cobwebbing one side of the cabin . . . A hard-working man, and likely a light sleeper, to live in this solitary and defenseless place.

  Whatever luck that had so cruelly eluded Kings in Justicia seemed to have found him at exactly the right moment. It soon became clear that, while the mule was inside the corral, the horse was no more inside it than Kings was. Rather, it stood free, dabbing at the snow in the hope of finding some browse, and appeared to be saddled.

  Then Kings noticed the three white stockings and could have shouted for joy.

  John Reb turned his ears toward movement, and caught Kings’s familiar scent. The man froze, hoping the stallion wouldn’t betray his presence, but John Reb stood stock-still and stared. Slowly, Kings raised a hand and beckoned, and with a foal-like eagerness, John Reb came to him.

  “I thought I’d lost you, brother,” Kings said to the horse, looking with great affection into the big brown eyes. He guided him into the corral, then slid his rifle from its scabbard. With it in hand, he moved to the front door, shoved it open, and stepped in.

  Whoever lived here was content to do so simply, with little of the comforts of civilization. The room was nearly bare, save for a chair and table that looked to have been assembled as hastily as the cabin itself. Everything appeared to have been here for quite some time. There was wood stacked beside the low-burning fireplace, and a broom stood in a corner. Kings found pots, pans, and coffee tins in a cupboard.