He held his breath, then exhaled softly, releasing half of it. The barrel of his carbine tracked the nearer of the two riders. The distance closed slowly. Twenty yards became fifteen, then ten. When the pair were five yards away, he fired.
It was a good shot. The spinning bullet from the rifled carbine struck the first rider in the side of the head, shattering bone and spraying the second man with a gruesome shower of blood and brain.
The captain was on his feet the moment he had pulled the trigger, his left hand holding the carbine whilst his right drew his revolver. The handgun came up in one smooth motion. There was time to see a moment’s fear on the second rider’s face before he fired.
The bullet struck the bandolero in the chest. He jerked backwards, his arms thrown wide by the force of the impact. The captain fired again, the second bullet striking the bandolero’s chest less than an inch to the right of the first. This time the man tumbled out of the saddle and into the dirt.
All along the gully, the Confederate cavalrymen were pouring on the fire. Some followed the captain’s lead and used revolvers. Others switched to shotguns, and the air was full of the explosive blast of their firing. No matter their choice of weapon, every trooper hit his target, and the bandoleros were gunned down without mercy. The sounds of the shots blurred together so that they merged into one long-drawn-out roar. Underscoring it all were the cries of the dead and the soon-to-be dead.
‘Hold your fire, goddammit!’ The captain shouted the order, then scrambled over the lip of the gully and down the slope. The ambush had lasted less than half a minute. Not one of the bandoleros was left in the saddle or seated on a wagon.
He reached the bodies of the two men he had shot. One was clearly dead, his shattered skull unloading its contents into the sandy dirt that covered the ground. The second, the one shot by his revolver, was still alive. He lay spread-eagled on his back, gazing up at the sky whilst his mouth moved in a fast, desperate prayer for deliverance.
The captain stood over the man. He paused, making sure the bandolero was looking directly into his eyes. Only then did he move his right hand, aiming the revolver. The bandolero’s prayer increased in tempo, the words pouring out of him in a sudden terrified flood. Then the captain fired and the prayer was ended.
There was nothing else to see, so he walked back along the gully. He fired twice more, killing two men too badly wounded to live for long. He found what he was looking for draped across the seat at the front of the second wagon in the now stationary line.
The bandolero who had been driving the wagon was still alive. He had been hit twice, once in the shoulder and once in the head. Neither wound would kill, even though the bullet that had grazed his scalp had released a great torrent of blood. It had left the man dazed and hurting, but alive.
‘Get yourself the hell down.’
The bandolero blinked back at the captain, too dazed to understand.
‘Goddammit.’ The captain hissed the word under his breath, then holstered his revolver and approached the wounded bandolero. He took hold of the man’s shirt, then half dragged, half threw him off the wagon and on to the ground.
‘Don’t you goddam move.’ He gave the order, then stood back and waited.
All along the wagon train, his men were going about the same merciless task of searching the bodies for any bandolero left alive. Gunshots cracked out every few moments as the killing continued. Around him, the oxen brayed and fussed, but he ignored them, just as he ignored the riderless horses that pawed anxiously at the ground or roamed along the gully. His men would round them up when the bandoleros had been dealt with.
‘Capt’n, we got ourselves one of the sons of bitches.’ The corporal delivered the news to his officer as he approached. Two troopers followed, guarding a dishevelled, bloodied bandolero. The man looked pathetic. He had been shot in the arm, the wound now covered by his free hand. His face was bloodied, the flesh puffy and bruised from the blows it had taken from the fists of the men who now held him fast.
‘Ramirez!’ The captain summoned one of his men fluent in Spanish.
‘Jefe?’ Ramirez had already wandered over, expecting to be summoned.
‘Ask these sons of bitches who they work for.’
Ramirez nodded. He posed the question in fast, fluent Spanish. Neither prisoner answered.
‘Corporal.’ The captain nodded.
The corporal needed no further instruction. He was a big man, easily over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and long, powerful arms. He knew what his captain wanted.
The bandolero with the bloodied arm looked up as the corporal came to stand in front of him. His mouth opened, but whatever words he wanted to utter were rammed back down his throat as the corporal smashed his large fist directly into his mouth. More punches followed, the corporal throwing his full weight behind each one. The men holding the bandolero gripped him hard, keeping him upright as the blows came without pause, hammering first into the Mexican’s head, then into his chest and stomach.
‘Enough.’ The captain called a halt to the battering. ‘Let him go.’
The bandolero fell to the ground as if his bones had been pulped into so much mush. The corporal stood back, chest heaving with exertion, knuckles speckled with blood.
‘Ramirez.’ The captain nodded to his Spanish speaker.
The question was asked again. This time it was addressed to just one bandolero. This time it was answered, in a gabbled, terrified flood.
‘They’re Ángeles,’ Ramirez translated.
The captain grunted in acknowledgement. He knew the band Ramirez referred to well enough. There was more than one gang of bandoleros who thought nothing of attacking the wagon trains bringing the cotton from as far away as Louisiana and Arkansas, but the one known as Los Ángeles – the Angels – was the largest and most notorious. It was said that its leader, Ángel Santiago, had as many as three hundred followers now, his men well fed on the wagon trains that he ordered them to attack. He was said to be a monster, a killer who had no notion of mercy and who would never take a prisoner. The locals referred to the gang as Los Ángeles de la Muerte. The Angels of Death.
‘Bury them.’ The captain had learned enough. He gave his last order, then turned away. The sight of the Ángeles sickened him to the stomach.
His men understood his order, and hurried to obey. It took them a while to dig the two pits to the side of the trail; long enough for the bandolero the corporal had beaten to come back to consciousness.
The two Ángeles were dragged towards the pits. Both knew the fate that awaited them, and both fought against their captors, their cries and pleas greeted with blows, slaps, jeers and laughter. Still they struggled. Both were weeping now, their tears cutting channels through the dirt and blood that smothered their faces. The Confederate cavalrymen gave no quarter. The two bandoleros were beaten into submission, fists and boots used without mercy until they were forced into the freshly dug holes in the ground.
The Confederates started to shovel the soil around their two victims. The captain stood by, listening to the sobs and muttered prayers of the two men he was committing to a horrific death. Both were weeping, and emitting a heart-rending series of moans and pleas as the soil was piled higher and higher. When it reached their necks, one of the troopers stepped forward, compacting the freshly turned dirt with his boots. Those watching laughed as he turned the task into a jig, their laughter doubling in volume as he deliberately kicked the nearly buried men in the head and face with his heavy boots.
Only when he had finished was the last of the soil shovelled into place. The Confederate cavalrymen took care not to pile it too high, stopping when it was firmly in place around the bandoleros’ necks. Their heads were left free.
The captain called for his corporal and gave the order.
‘Mount ’em up.’
‘Capt’n.’ The acknowledgement was brief. The troopers moved to obey, not one of them glancing back at the two men they had just incarcerated in the dusty
soil.
The captain alone stayed where he was. He looked at the two men in turn. He was not moved by their tears or their whimpers. They faced a slow and painful death. The insects would come first, the tarantulas and the scorpions, the ticks, the fleas and the flies. None would kill, no matter how many times they stung or bit. That task would be left to the bigger animals that would follow: the coyotes and the rats that would begin to devour the flesh that had been left for them, and the rattlesnakes, copperheads and rat snakes that would sense the warm objects and come to investigate.
The two men would provide a welcome feast for the animals that called this forlorn, empty wilderness a home. That feast would continue until nothing but bone was left behind, the two men reduced to a pair of sun-bleached skulls. But the warning would endure, long after they were dead.
The captain turned his back on the two bandoleros and walked to his horse. His men were ready to move out, just as he had ordered. Some would drive the wagons that had been captured, whilst others would ride out ahead to scout the trail. They would proceed slowly, taking every precaution, wary of any more Ángeles who might dare to venture close. Not one would dwell on the fate of the men who had been left behind to die. Today it was their turn to administer the cruel, merciless justice of the frontier. Tomorrow they could be the ones on the receiving end of such a fate. Such was the bitterness of their war. Such was the destiny of the men who fought it.
The captain led his column north. Behind him he heard the first terrified shouts and cries as the men left buried up to their necks tried desperately to keep away the insects that had arrived to begin their long, tortuous deaths.
Natchitoches, Louisiana, St Valentine’s Day 1863
The man sitting in the dining room’s corner seat eyed the room warily. He had not bothered to learn the name of the town he was in, for he would not linger there long. It was a place to rest for a few hours before he resumed his wandering, nothing more.
The settlement was prosperous, he knew that much, the main street lined with fine Creole town houses with iron balconies. He cared little for the aesthetics. He cared only for practicality. The town’s location on El Camino Real de los Tejas, one of the main trade routes through Louisiana, meant there was enough passing custom for it to have a livery, and so his horse could be fed, watered and brushed. It was not out of compassion for the animal that he spent the last of his grey Confederate dollars on its care. It was out of necessity. He would need the beast if he were to continue to travel. Without it he would be reduced to nothing more than a tramp roaming the countryside. He might not have a destination in mind, but he was more than a homeless vagrant. Much more.
Or at least, he had been.
He had wandered for months now. The summer that had come after the bloodshed at Shiloh had passed easily enough. The warm weeks had been spent travelling across the Southern states, the days passing in a lazy torpor, the money in his pocket allowing him to rest and eat without interference. The autumn and winter that had followed had been harder. His supply of ready cash had dwindled, and he had been forced to find work, a succession of odd jobs in out-of-the-way places allowing him to continue to head south and west. He kept away from the war and, as much as he could manage, away from people too. He avoided both with assiduous care, wanting nothing to do with either. For he craved peace and solitude, or at least that was what he told himself as he spent night after night by his lonely campfire with no one but a stolen horse for company.
One of the logs burning in the fireplace spat out a fat ember with a crack loud enough to turn heads towards its fiery grave. The man in the corner seat did not so much as twitch. A man who had fought on a dozen battlefields was not startled by such an innocuous sound. Yet he still reached out to pull his repeating rifle towards him, keeping it within easy reach. Next to it was a Confederate infantry officer’s sabre in its scabbard. On his right hip, the man wore a fine Colt revolver with ivory grips, the metal buffed and polished so that it shone like silver. He was never far from the three weapons; the tools of his trade always at hand and ready to be used.
The hum of conversation began again almost immediately. The simple dining saloon was almost empty, but there were enough men present to fill the space with grunted discussion and the scrape of metal on plate. Few would loiter there. It was a place for consuming the fuel needed to survive, not for enjoying a leisurely dinner.
The man in the corner seat used a wedge of dry day-old bread to mop up the last of the juices from the thick, fatty slices of bacon he had devoured. It felt good to have the food settle in his belly, even if it had cost him fifty cents, with another ten spent on the bitter coffee that tasted nothing like the thick, tarry soldier’s tea that he preferred. Still, it was an improvement on the hardtack, desiccated vegetables and salted meat that was his usual diet. If he were being honest with himself, he had stopped at the backwater town for reasons other than just the care of his horse. There were times when a man needed warm food inside him.
There was little to see in the dining saloon. The simple pine tables were battered and scuffed from years, even decades, of long use. There was scant decoration on the walls, save for the large chalkboard above the fireplace that listed the fare on offer and its price. For a man who had once lived and eaten in a maharajah’s palace, there was little to recommend it. But the food had been hearty, if not so fresh, and the truth of it was that the man in the corner seat had barely a dollar left in his pocket and had to live on the means at his disposal.
Food consumed, he stretched his legs out in front of him and belched softly. For once, he felt full, and he patted his belly to ease the arrival of the heavy meal. He burped for a second time, keeping the sound soft, unlike so many of the other men in the saloon, who shovelled their meal into their mouths at pace, then belched with the volume of a bullock being led to the slaughterman.
There was just a single woman in the room. The man in the corner seat had known she was a whore the moment he had entered the room. She was dressed to provoke interest, wearing nothing more than her lace-edged white underclothes paired with a scarlet bodice that had been left with its uppermost lacings undone to display enough flesh to arouse. But it would take a needy man indeed to be attracted to the display. The whore strolled listlessly around the room, her hands caressing a shoulder here or sliding across a table there. All the patrons, bar the man in the corner seat, had been approached. Clearly none had voiced enough of an interest to keep the woman from working the room, as she waited for men to finish eating so that she could earn the first coins of that evening’s pay.
Eventually she approached the man at the corner table. He had known she would, his arrival noted by the woman as carefully as it had been by the old man who had delivered his food and taken his money. He was just glad she had allowed him to finish his meal before she bothered him.
‘Are you lonesome, sir?’
The man in the corner seat said nothing. The girl came closer in what he supposed she thought to be an alluring way, but which to him looked like she was half cut. He studied her eyes, noting the glazed look and the widely dilated pupils. He had been raised in a gin palace in the East End of London, his first friends the whores his mother had allowed to work the crowd who bought her watered-down gin. Enough of them had dulled the pain of their lives with opium, and although he was thousands of miles from his childhood home, he recognised the look of a woman, long past the early flush of youth, who had turned to whatever local substance was available to get herself through another night of being humped by any man with enough coins in his pocket to pay for his pleasure.
As she came closer still, he could see the lines around her eyes, her age revealed in the cracks and fissures gouged across her forehead. She smelled as cheap as she looked, her overpowering perfume catching at the back of his throat. She opened her mouth to repeat her unsubtle question, but stopped abruptly. Her mouth remained open as she contemplated the hard grey eyes that looked back at her, then she turned on her heel an
d sashayed away.
The man in the corner seat was not sorry to see her go. But he did wonder what it was she had seen that had turned her away so swiftly. He knew he was no ogre, despite the thick scar on his left cheek that played peek-a-boo from behind his beard. There had been enough women in his life for him to realise that some found his battered charms attractive. But it had been a while since any had come to his bed, and he wondered if he were now repulsive; if there were something of what he had seen, of what he had done, reflected in his gaze.
He ran a hand briskly across his head, his fingers tingling as they touched the close-cropped bristles, and surveyed the room, checking for a threat. He was always alert, always looking for danger. He no longer knew why, but he could no more stop watching than he could stop breathing. It was who he was now.
It was time to go, but before he could rise, a young couple entered the room. Both were well dressed, the boy in trousers and shirt and a fine bright-red waistcoat that reminded the man in the corner seat of the flash boys of his youth. On his hip was the inevitable six-shooter, the revolver kept snug in a brown leather holster, and as he entered the room, he pulled a wide-brimmed black felt hat from his head. The girl was pretty enough to turn heads, with long dark hair worn in a neat braid that hung over one shoulder. Her dress was dark green and patterned like tartan, with white lace around the neck. To the man in the corner seat she looked a thousand more times attractive in her simple, respectable dress than the whore who paraded around with a large portion of her breasts on open display.
The pair whispered to one another, the conversation taking no more than a few seconds, before they separated, the boy walking into the room whilst the girl sat at one of the many empty tables near the door.
The Lost Outlaw Page 2