Gunslinger 01, page 8
part #1 of Gunslinger Series
There were three lamps in the store, and he carefully tipped them over. Two in the front part and the third one out back. The heavy oil trickled over the tinder-dry floorboards, soaking into the wood. He opened the windows to make sure there would be a good draught, though he knew from experience that once a fire took hold in the Arizona summer, there was no power on earth that could put it out.
Widow Sonntag’s place had caught fire earlier in the year, and she’d climbed into the loft to try and rescue a few of her treasured memories. There’d been men with buckets outside within five minutes of her knocking over the lamp. They might as well have tried to hogtie a pair of wolves on the same lariat.
The heat had been so intense that nobody could even get near enough to the building to throw their buckets of water, never mind actually doing anything to subdue the blaze. The walls had flared, with the lace at the windows blossoming like fiery roses. Widow Sonntag had managed to reach the loft window before the flames caught her, and the whole of Settlement had watched as she leaped screaming to her death, nightdress like a blazing comet’s tail, hanging for a fraction of time in mid-air like a tortured candle in the night wind.
Ryker remembered that well enough.
With the store ready to go, all that was left was the frame house where he and his father had lived since they reached the, Territory. Unlike their home back in Virginia, the place had few memories for John Ryker. And scarcely any of them were happy ones.
The shingle still creaked as the morning wind began to raise the dust about his feet. Inside, he took the filled lamps and spilled them around the rooms. A couple upstairs, and the rest around the ground floor. Backing away from the front door, Ryker held the last lamp in his hand, the movement making the wick smoke. The chimney was clouded with soot, glowing red with the heat. It was the one that he had lit first, before he visited Mrs. Daughton.
‘So long,’ was all he said as he dropped it into the pool of oil, hearing the shattering of the glass, and watching the worm of red fire leap across the hall, burning and devouring as it went. It rushed quickly through the house along the paths of oil, so that the whole place was blazing before he’d even walked the short distance to the store.
There he stooped down and struck a match, guarding the flickering light against the breeze that was freshening as the first gleam of the sun started to brighten the eastern horizon. The match ignited the trail of powder, and Ryker backed away hastily as the smoking fuse snaked out of sight, vanishing in the direction of the main pile of explosive.
When it caught, the noise was surprisingly quiet. A muffled whump spat flames out of the windows and ignited the lamp oil.
By the time he reached Nero, who was stamping skittishly, moving sideways, both house and store were irretrievably ablaze. Flames were already gushing from the shingle roof of the house, casting eerie shadows all around the township.
While Ryker swung himself easily up into the saddle, his eyes never left the blazing buildings as he watched the fire destroy what had been his home. His living. Perhaps his future. It was all going. The wind carried the smell of the burning wood to his nostrils, heavy with the lamp oil.
The shingle that said his father’s name and his profession was smoking in the intense heat, the wind rattling it on the hinge, until it fell smoldering to the front garden. He could see lights coming on around Settlement, and faintly hear voices calling out in alarm.
‘Time we was moving on, boy,’ he said to Nero, heeling the stallion forward. The black horse was uneasy with so much heat and light, but he moved on at a walk, picking his way along the rutted trail. Bits of burning ash were falling all around them, like the molten cascade from a volcano.
Dimly Ryker could see figures beginning to scurry towards the twin fires, and he smiled grimly, knowing the utter futility of what they were trying to do. Even without the powder and the lamp oil it would have been virtually impossible.
Once he was clear of the township, he didn’t look back once at Settlement.
There wasn’t a thing for him to look back on.
The party from the bank arrived late the following day, having ridden their horses into the ground at the angry instigation of Julius Goldburgh.
All they found was a charred heap of ash, and a partly-burned shingle that said:
Angus Ryker, M.D.
So they took it back to Tucson.
There was nothing else for them to do.
Chapter Nine
JOHN RYKER RODE south; and then cut to the east through the hills, taking care to keep his weather eye well open for any Indians. Desolation was up towards Apache land, and he’d heard enough about the Mescaleros and Chiricahua to have a healthy respect for them’
It took three days, with the best part of one of them wasted as he tried what seemed to offer a chance of a shortcut. It ended with him back-tracking nearly ten miles over rough ground alongside a deep draw before he found a place where ho could cross it and get back on the right trail.
He was able to fill the water bottles at each night’s camp, resting up near a stream. Nero was watered while Ryker sat and nibbled away at the leathery, salted meat, and crunched the corn dodgers. Each night he checked all of his guns with scrupulous care.
The third night he thought that he was probably close enough to Desolation for a patrolling horseman to spot his fire, so he chose his campsite with great care, lighting only a small fire from dried wood under a great overhang, a good three hundred yards off the trail.
Ryker was no great tracker, but he’d learned enough to see that the trail was scarcely used at all. It hadn’t rained up there in the hills for a long time, so what tracks there were, were still clear.
He could see that there had been only one horseman out of the isolated town, recognizable from a missing nail in the left hind shoe. And there, overlaying that trail, was the same rider coming back in again.
His guess was that it might have been the man who’d managed to get the bounty offer out of Desolation and send it on the rounds. Sitting by the fire on that third night, he reached in his jacket pocket for the flyer that Nolan had given him back in Tucson. He read it yet again, trying to drag some further clue from it as to the sort of mission he’d taken on.
What were these deserters like? Half a dozen men. Well-armed. Probably with rifles and pistols stolen from their units when they fled them. A thousand dollars in gold. That would see his pa buried in style. Not in a rickety box of pine that sagged at the corners and was warped before it even went into the ground. Something with class. Maybe bronze. That would look good. Black velvet lining and a silver plate on it. Not like the Potter’s Field ceremony in Settlement.
Mr. Joshua Hall. Mr. Karl George. Mr. Lester Riley. The three men in the township with enough cojones to put their names to the bounty. Probably three merchants, Ryker guessed. They’d be the folks with most to lose in the sort of situation that Nolan had talked about. Six deserters. Almost certainly Southerners. Maybe he’d be able to reason with them and get them out peaceful. That’d be a grand way to earn the thousand dollars. Although the flyer had said dead, shot or hung, maybe the folks there’d be happy enough to see them out of their hair and would pay up just for that.
Ryker lay back, head resting on his saddle, and thought about the job he’d taken on. Being a bounty-hunter wasn’t anything that had ever occurred to him. But the killing had been so easy. Sure, Hughes had nearly wasted him, but that had simply been inexperience. Now he knew better. But taking a man alone in a saloon bedroom might be a different proposition to trying to shoot it out with six armed men in a strange town. What had Nolan said?
‘Talk of silver brought folks to Desolation. Last I hear from up there the place holds around a hundred souls. One long hard winter and they might all end up like the Donner party, eighteen years back. Eatin’ each other ’til there’s nothing left to gnaw on. Still, like my pa used to tell me, guess a man’s got to chew what a man’s got to chew.’
Six men holding off a hundred. And now he would be one man against six. John Ryker carried that thought with him into the dark corridors of sleep, his hand never stirring from the cold butt of the Navy Colt tucked under the saddle near his head.
After that last camp, the trail wound higher and steeper. Rocks closed in on both sides until they seemed to press right up against Ryker’s broad shoulders. The cliffs towered over him until they almost met, blocking out the light from the pale blue sky. Once or twice he caught sight of birds circling high and free, somewhere ahead of him.
Buzzards.
Gradually the red rocks opened out again on the one side, finally dropping clear away to a deep valley, with a narrow river foaming at the bottom. On Ryker’s right, the mountain still closed in on him.
Nero didn’t like the state of the trail any more than his rider, and he shook his head uneasily at they reached parts where the track had been slurried away by a land-slip, leaving only a trodden path a couple of feet wide, where Ryker had to dismount and lead the trembling stallion. He glanced upwards, seeing a massive overhang threatening to topple down and sweep away what remained of the trail. He thought back to Nolan’s words, and wondered how much longer the trail to Desolation was going to remain open.
From what he could see, he doubted that it would survive the next heavy rain.
The trail wound along, hugging the inside of the hill like a drunk hanging on a banister. From what he’d been told, Ryker figured he couldn’t be more than five miles away from the township, and he stopped Nero for a moment and eased the Sharps in its long bucket holster just in front of the saddle. With no chance of turning and running, the path would be one Hell of a place for an ambush.
But nothing happened, and he carried on for another mile or so, as free and easy as if he was taking a young belle for a Sunday ride in a buggy. The sun rose higher, and he began to sweat. Ryker pushed the black hat further back off his forehead, opening the coat and unbuttoning the fancy waistcoat. His father had always hated that waistcoat, thinking it made his son look effeminate.
‘Ye’ll be attractin’ the wrong sort of trade, Jack, boy,’ he’d growled. ‘Damned nancy-boy in that pretty coat. The brown-holers’ll be flockin’ to Settlement for your favors. Put the place on the map.’
One of the strands of gold thread was coming unstitched and Ryker picked at it, breaking it free between his strong fingers and flicking it away from him into the vastness of the canyon at his left.
Ahead of him the trail snaked to the right and then back again, winding out of sight behind a great towering bluff of red stone. The trouble with there being only the one trail in and out of Desolation was that it made it damnably difficult for him to sneak in unobserved. The only thing to do was to keep on riding until he was close enough to leave Nero and try to make it on foot.
It was close to the middle of the day, with the sun scorching down at him. It would have been nice to break off for a shady rest, but the path drove remorselessly on with no chance of a stop anywhere along its exposed length. But round the bluff Ryker could see that it was becoming easier. The steep part looked to be over and it was opening out.
The stallion was easier too, able to walk more freely without the risk of his hooves slipping on the dusty pebbles and sending them both whirling to perdition.
‘Whoa. Back, boy,’ said Ryker softly, tugging on the rein to check the big horse from going on at too fast a pace now the terrain was more open. A quarter-mile ahead he saw that the trail finally flattened out completely. Nolan had told him that he thought that Desolation stood at the very head of a nearly inaccessible box canyon, and it looked as if the description was right.
Whatever the stories were of silver, they surely must have been strong to drag men and women and children to this God-forsaken spot, miles from anywhere. Supplies must have been packed in by mule, and he figured that the water came from the river at the bottom of the ravine. It still flowed in the middle of the Arizona summer, so he guessed that it was a fairly reliable source of supply for the people of the township.
The road went on through a narrow vee of rock. It seemed that this would be as good a place as any to tether Nero while he went on in. Far enough from town that it. might be safe, and close enough to make the journey in a short one. As he looked around he saw a sign lying on its side at the edge of the trail. It was split down the middle, and torn apart with what could only be bullet-holes.
It lay face down. Ryker dismounted, hanging on the reins, and turned it over with his boot, having noted the size of the exit holes.
‘Maybe a Spencer. But if they’re Confederate deserters from the end of the fightin’, then they won’t likely be carrying Spencers,’ he mused. Ryker bent down and examined the holes, ignoring the writing on the board. ‘Big enough for Enfield Carbines. Yeah. That’d be it. Five seven seven caliber. Big and reliable and slow as watching a kettle come to boil.’
Only then did he bother to look at what the board actually said.
‘Welcome to Desolation.
Most beautiful town in the Territory.
Population on January 1st, 1864 …
117 souls.’
That was what it had once said. But there had been various alterations by several hands. And the message had been painted partly out so that it read in its amended form:
‘Stay away from Desolation.
Most awful town in Hell.
Population now 84 miserable souls.’
The number of inhabitants seemed to have been altered several times. Ryker touched the board, starting when he found that paint on the number was still sticky to his fingers. Up until the last day or so, the inhabitants of Desolation had been eighty-seven. He wondered what could have happened to the missing three. There were no tracks on the trail so they hadn’t got out that way. And Nolan had sworn there was no back path in. So how in thunder had three people managed to stop living in Desolation so recently?
The answer came with shocking speed.
Away to the right of the board was a small patch of high scrub, masking a group of trees. Ryker, still stooping, heard a noise of movement from that direction, like the sound of someone walking in new boots, or the scrape of chaps on leather. An odd, creaking noise that he couldn’t identify.
The Navy Colt leaped to his fingers like a blur of metallic light, and he eased back the hammer, slowly straightening up and facing the trees.
‘Come on out, mister, or I start shooting,’ he said, eyes never leaving the brush.
The wind was rising, sending the high wisps of cloud scudding across the tops of the peaks around him. Dust stirred around Nero’s hooves, making the big horse restless. Ryker quickly tethered him to the stump of the noticeboard, using his left hand. The Colt stayed ready for action in the right hand.
‘Last chance, mister.’
Nothing moved, but the sound continued. An uneasy, scraping, squeaking noise, like a hemp rope binding a heavy gate open.
It was that thought that gave John Ryker the clue he needed.
Eyes raking the area around him, he stepped towards the trees, filled with a sick certainty of what he was going to find.
He found it.
It was the source of the noise and the reason why someone with a macabre sense of humor had so recently changed the number of inhabitants of Desolation. The three men hadn’t left the town. They were still there.
Ryker had seen a lynching when they were traveling along the Mississippi. A black had been accused by a white woman of trying to spy on her while she bathed. From what he heard among the crowd, Ryker guessed that the woman had come close to being caught with the slave by her husband, and had made up the story to save her own name.
It hadn’t been a nice sight. They had lit a fire under the wretch while he was tied to a tree, naked, and the woman herself had stepped forward to the cheers of the drunken mob and lit a brand, holding it against the screaming man’s genitals until they were destroyed. Some of the little children watching were encouraged by their parents to also set fire to sticks and poke them against the slave’s flesh.
Sickened by the stench of scorching skin, and by the sight of the eagerness and joy on the faces of the crowd, Ryker had walked away, only hearing the fusillade of shots as the men strung up the dying black and used him for target practice. It had been an appalling sight and one that had begun to turn Ryker against the ideas of the South.
And here it was again.
All three bodies dangled and swung on the same branch of the same tree, the wind turning the stiff corpses so that they jostled against each other in obscene familiarity. The new ropes that were knotted about their stretched necks creaked and moaned against the chafed wood. That had been the noise that Ryker had heard.
All three bodies were naked, male and white. And all three had been hideously beaten before they were hanged. All that Ryker could make out was that one had been fat. And another was older, with his hair white under the matted blood. The birds had already taken the eyes and had begun on the other soft tissues of the face and body.
As they pirouetted in the rising wind, their revolving corpses showed that at least two had been flogged with a heavy whip. Hard enough to actually expose the whiteness of bone on the older man. The third man had also been burned, in the same way as Ryker had witnessed along the Mississippi a couple of years back.
The fat man had also had both hands chopped off at the wrists. The third man, apart from the scorch marks on his lower body and stomach, had lost both feet. It looked as though a drunk man had used an axe to hack them off, as the calves of both legs were also scarred from badly aimed cuts. The older man seemed unmutilated.
Then Ryker read the crude notices pinned to each man’s chest. When he looked closer, wincing at the smell of putrefaction that already surrounded the corpses, he saw that? the notices, scrawled with blunt pencil on store wrapping paper, had actually been hammered to each man’s chest with three-inch nails. From the dried blood around the nails, it had obviously been done while the three men still breathed.
