Slaughter Time (A Breed Western #15), page 3
Sarah Black met him halfway down Main Street, and his frown faded into a smile.
‘He’s gone,’ he said. ‘Lord knows why I gotta look after yore stray dogs, but I stopped Luke an’ his crew shootin’ him.’
The girl smiled. ‘Got coffee just brewed, Con. You want some?’
Taggart looked at her face and her figure and wondered if she meant something more than coffee. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Bastard!’
Luke Masters swallowed whiskey.
‘Goddam bastard.’
‘Half-breeds,’ said Jude. ‘They’re all the same.’
‘Don’t see how a white man would go with a squaw,’ said Cotton. ‘Not unless she was in a whorehouse.’
‘He was lucky,’ muttered Luke. ‘If Taggart hadn’t come in ...’
‘He needs killin’,’ said Fargo. ‘Needs a lesson taught.’
‘Injuns rape white women,’ said Cotton. ‘But the kids turn out dark. Look like injuns. He musta been one off a squaw. They’re lighter. Get more white blood from the man’s seed.’
‘Could use a lesson,’ Fargo grumbled. ‘Might be best not to kill him. Just hurt him. So he lives to tell the others.’
‘Goddam lucky fer him Taggart came in when he did. Saved his goddam life.’
Luke picked up the bottle and saw that it was empty. He shouted for another. The thinner of the two bar-keeps came over and lifted the three drained bottles clear before placing the fresh one on the table.
‘Wonder where Con sent him?’ slurred Jude.
‘Valverde, I reckon,’ said Cotton. ‘Ain’t nowhere else closer than a week.’
‘They got some fine Mex whores there,’ said Fargo. ‘I had me a couple a while back.’
‘Better’n Annie’s?’ Cotton’s mouth hung slack at the thought. ‘Better’n that French girl?’
‘French girl, shit!’ said Fargo. ‘She ain’t been closer to France than New Orleans. Creole, her.’
‘That’s like a Negra, ain’t it?’ asked Jude. ‘You mean we been fuckin’ a Negra?’
‘Ain’t nothin’ wrong with fuckin’ a black woman,’ chuckled Luke. ‘It’s what comes out after that counts.’
They all laughed. They usually did when Luke Masters cracked a joke.
The fresh bottle got emptied three-quarters down and they fell silent. The saloon had emptied out and the bar-keeps were emptying the spittoons and sweeping the floor. The air was thick with smoke.
‘I ain’t had a Mex girl in some time,’ said Fargo. ‘Had two the last time. At the same time.’
‘Jesus!’ said Cotton. ‘All three o’ you? In bed? All at once?’
Fargo laughed. ‘You got a lot o’ learnin’ to do, boy.’ Cotton said, ‘Why don’t we go down there? Get us a piece or two?’
‘Hey,’ said Jude, ‘that sounds like a nice idea. How about it, Luke?’
Luke Masters looked up from the dregs of his whiskey: ‘Valverde? Ain’t that where the ’breed’s headed?’
‘Sure,’ said Fargo. ‘Might be we’ll catch him on the way.’
‘All right,’ said Luke. ‘Let’s go.’
They emptied their glasses and stumbled out of the saloon. Over in the stable, a Mexican sweeper told them what he had heard of Marshal Taggart’s conversation with Breed. A few minutes later they were driving their horses hard down the Valverde trail.
The land was flat and wide and empty. Night had closed down with the abrupt cessation of day’s light that marks the south-western plains, the sun descending like a great burning ball of fire behind the western horizon, lining the sky with striations of red and gold and green as the darker blue of night lifted like a rising curtain from the farther horizon. Stars prickled from the blue, and a huge, yellow-green moon lifted sluggish into the sky. It filled the land with a pale, phosphorescent light that dimmed the flames of Breed’s fire, transforming the flickering yellow glow to a ghostly radiance that alternated with the moonlight to throw fantastic shadows back against the cactus and the dark, moon-washed ground.
Breed chewed on the jerky stored in his saddlebags. There was just enough to take him through to Valverde, and he might find game along the way, if he wanted to take out the time to hunt. For now, he was content to chew on the preserved meat—with the Chiricahua, he had gone longer and hungrier without any food at all.
He washed down the last of the mouthful with water from his canteen, then banked the fire and stretched back against his saddle, tugging the blanket over him as somewhere off to the west a coyote howled at the rising moon.
Sometime around midnight something woke him. It might have been the cessation of the night-time sounds, or the intrusion of a new – unnatural – sound. It was impossible to tell: he just woke, with his right hand fastening on the butt of the Colt. He sat up; listening.
Somewhere close by there was a scuffling movement, followed closely by what might have been a horse snorting through a cupped hand.
He pushed the blanket aside and dropped the Colt into the holster. Lifted the Winchester. The rifle’s action made a loud click as the lever sprang down and then up.
He rose to his feet.
And a rope landed over his shoulders.
Instinct threw him back against the pull of the lariat, taking off the slack so that he had a chance to wriggle loose as he turned the rifle and triggered a shot into the darkness that had now overtaken the moon. Muzzle flash illuminated a tall figure, pale-faced under a black hat and above a black shirt.
Fargo laughed and drew the rope tight again.
Breed’s movement had slipped it clear of his shoulders, but the shifting of his rifle had settled it around his neck. He gasped as the oiled leather slid through the hondo to fasten, noose-like, on his throat.
A second rope caught the barrel of the Winchester and yanked it from his hands as he was levering a second shell into the breech.
He got up on his knees and hurled himself forwards, fighting to gain sufficient purchase so that he could reach the Colt before the tightening hondo crushed his windpipe. At the same time, his left hand dropped to his belt, seeking the hilt of the Bowie knife.
Gun and blade came clear at the same time. One spat flame at the man holding the rope, the other lifted up to slash at the plaited cords.
The Bowie was sharp. It cut the rawhide lariat easy as slicing butter. The rope parted and Fargo staggered back, off-balanced so that the Colt’s bullet tore air an inch past his face.
Then something hard and heavy crashed against the half-breed’s legs and something even heavier slammed into his back. He went down on his face, tasting sand in his mouth as a boot landed on his wrist and ground it down into the ashes of the fire. The dying embers singed the hairs on his wrist and he twisted round and back, cocking the Colt as he turned.
A boot slammed against his wrist and the bullet flew wide. Then the same boot came back and landed on his arm, pinning it to the ground as a second smashed down against the hand clutching the knife.
Pain shafted through his arms and he lifted his legs, trying to kick the men pinning him to the ground. Someone laughed and swiped the stock of a rifle across his face. His legs doubled over his belly, then straightened, and the stock came back, ramming down against his midriff like a pile-driver. Black pain flooded his mind as the stock lifted and descended again, this time between his legs, bringing a roaring red column of agony up from his groin, through his stomach, into his mind and mouth and eyes and nose.
There was darkness.
When it went away, he hurt. He opened his eyes slowly; carefully. They looked on sand. There was a small, black ant crawling over the sand. It was moving towards a wide puddle of red that was soaking into the sand. The red was very close to his face: he recognized it as blood. Then realized it was coming from his nose.
He spat, and someone said, ‘He’s awake.’
‘Good.’
A boot tucked against his chest and turned him over on his back. He looked up into the face of Luke Masters. Looked past the rancher’s son to the three men he had dimly recognized the night before.
Fargo: the tall, thin man with the hooked nose.
Jude: with the pinto vest and the red hair.
Cotton: the kid with the two guns.
‘Lift him up,’ said Masters. ‘Get the bastard on his feet.’
They lifted him. Jude and Cotton held his arms; Fargo slung an arm around his throat, holding his head back.
And then Luke Masters came in with both his big fists swinging.
They drummed a tattoo of pain over Breed’s body, starting low down and working slowly up until they reached his face. He felt his lips split against his teeth, his nose burst blood that ran down over his mouth and shirt in thick streams. One eye closed. After a while the pounding stopped and he heard Masters say, ‘All right. Let him go.’ Then there was the faint sensation of falling; a reality when his body hit the ground and fresh pain sparked upwards from his side and back. Then more as boots began to pound against him. He rolled into a ball, a fetal shape that curled his legs up to protect his genitals and his hands around his head.
After a while the pounding stopped, and through the red mist that clouded his mind he heard something drop close beside him. Light shone off a glassy surface and there was the faint smell of whiskey. A voice that sounded like it belonged to Luke Masters said, ‘All right. Leave him.’
Another voice said, ‘We goin’ to Valverde, Luke?’
‘Hell! why not? I could use me a good whore.’
Someone laughed. Then someone tilted Breed’s chin back and spat on his face.
Luke Masters said, ‘You hear me? You hear me, you goddam injun squaw seed? You got off lucky. You ever come back, I’ll kill you. Like I’ll kill all yore kind. You tell ’em that.’
There was more laughter. And the sound of men mounting horses. The drumming of the hooves against the ground echoed loud in Breed’s ears. He rolled awkwardly sidewards and watched them ride away. A cloud of dust got diffused by the empty whiskey bottle resting close to his face. The glass fragmented the sun’s light so that the vision of dust and stamping hooves got lost behind a flickering pattern of brilliant light that seemed to pierce down into his mind and coalesce into the raw, aching hole of pain that was consuming his body.
Time passed. He wasn’t sure how long or how much. Wasn’t even sure that he could tell it right or see it straight. There were periods of light and periods of darkness, but they might be the result of the pain still washing through his body.
All he knew for sure was the fire had gone out and the gray stallion was snickering anxiously. And those things might have been because the horse was worried, or because Masters and his friends had doused the fire.
He eased his hand slowly into the ashes: cold. Not wet or disturbed; just cold.
He rolled over, groaning as the movement flashed fresh lances of pain through his body, and looked up at a bright sky that didn’t quite focus until he realized one of his eyes was closed. He touched it. And winced as the touch sent fresh pain into his brain.
He spat dry blood from between his teeth and got up on his hands and knees. The sand under his face spun round and he closed the one eye that he could close until the ground came into focus again. He couldn’t tell if the column of ants was really lead by the first one he had seen, but they were working a whole lot busier on the blood, twin columns working busily back and forth from the puddles like well-organized armies raiding an unexpected supply store.
Getting up on his feet was a whole lot harder. He fell over three times before he got to the gray horse, and then needed to use the animal’s bulk to lever himself upright as he slung the saddle on its back and fastened the thing in place.
He was surprised to find his guns left with him, and grateful for the drunken abandon, or arrogant carelessness, or whatever that had made Luke Masters forget a prime rule: kill the enemy, don’t leave him alive to come after you.
But maybe Luke Masters didn’t know that Apache meant, in the language of the tribes, enemy.
It took him a long time to get up on the gray horse, because the animal was nervous, frightened by the smell of blood – and maybe also the smell of hate – coming off him, but he climbed into the saddle in the end and then turned the animal back towards the distant-bulking shadows of the Guadalupes and began to ride, painfully, slowly, to a place he knew where he could rest up.
Until he came back.
Chapter Four
BREED HUNKERED DOWN on the flat terrace fronting an adobe halfway up the cliff. A small fire blackened the sun-washed stone at his feet, the embers surmounted by the carcass of a prairie chicken set on a wooden spit. From time to time he prodded the roasting bird with the point of the Bowie knife, watching the juices spurt out and sputter in the fire. After a while, he lifted the bird away from the flames and began to carve chunks of meat from the breast.
He ate most of the bird, then wrapped what was left in leaves and carried it back into the adobe. The building was cool and very quiet. It had about it the calm distance of time, a stillness like the tranquillity of an old church, as though the ages had permeated the rock to leave an aura of peace. The door was low, framed by pieces of wind-weathered timber that had been set into the original masking of brick and plaster, flanked on one side by a rectangular window. It opened on a single room that ran back into the natural facing of the cliff so that a kind of arch divided the room in two. Beyond the arch, it went back for about twelve feet before another opening presented itself. Beyond this, there was a second room-really a cave, with a platform carved from the rock where a bed might be made, and stone shelves cut into the walls. Most of the adobes were built exactly the same, though some were slightly larger, some smaller. All were empty, scoured over the years of whatever detritus the original inhabitants might have left behind.
Old Sees-The-Fox had shown Breed the place years before, pointing it out as a good hiding place; a refuge.
They had been chasing a bunch of Comanches who had crossed into Apache territory on a horse-stealing raid. The attackers had driven off close on fifteen head of Chiricahua ponies from a rancheria linked to Azul’s by ties of blood and marriage. The chief – a warrior called Dancing Pony had asked for help, and Sees-The-Fox had chosen Azul and four other young men to go with him. They had trailed the Comanches for nine days, the hunt culminating in a running fight that left two Chiricahua wounded and six of the horse thieves dead. Returning towards Apacheria, they had rested up inside the canyon.
I do not know who built these houses, old Sees-The-Fox had said. My father showed them to me when I was a boy, younger than you. They are very old, maybe from the time before even the Spanish came. Not many people dare come here now because they think there are ghosts here. Maybe they are right, but I think that if there are ghosts, they are Apache ghosts, and look friendly on us. Whatever, it is a good place to hide. If you ever need to hide.
I’ll not hide, the young man had said, in his pride. Not from the Nemmenna or the pinda-lick-oyi. Not from anyone.
Sees-The-Fox had chuckled and answered: No one can see his path that far in front. There is nothing cowardly in hiding when you need to. Not if you need time before you go back to repay the debt that made you hide. Going back is the important thing, and waiting is not the same as running.
Breed understood that better now.
He set the remnants of the prairie chicken on a stone ledge and went back into the sunlight. He clambered down the worn steps of the terrace to the ground below, moving with relative ease: his bruises were fading, and the cracked ribs were knitting back together. He looked down the canyon to where the gray stallion was penned inside a makeshift corral of thorn and mesquite, close to the source of the stream. The big horse looked up as he approached, nickering a greeting and presenting its head for attention. He stroked the velvet muzzle and scratched at the ears. The horse pawed the ground, ducking its head: it was anxious to run, needing exercise.
It was close on two weeks since Luke Masters and his cronies had ambushed the half-breed, and the journey to the hidden canyon had taken around three days. Breed couldn’t be sure exactly how long; for most of the ride he had been barely conscious, doing little more than steer the horse in the right direction. Consequently the animal was getting restless.
He came to a fast decision. Ducking under the fence, he slung the saddle on the gray’s back and fixed the bridle in place. Then, holding the reins, he shouldered the barrier away and climbed into the saddle. The horse snorted once, and took off down the canyon at a rising gallop. Breed let it run, giving it its head until they reached the far end and he turned the reins, swinging the pony round to charge back down the length of the rough grass. The fluid motion of the animal simultaneously soothed and hurt him. The pounding hooves sent sparking memories of the beating up through his body, but the sheer joy of being back in the saddle overcame the pain. He rode for almost an hour, criss-crossing the canyon until the sun was fading behind the western rimrock and the bottom was in shadow.
When he dismounted and led the horse back into the corral, he was aching. He turned the animal loose to roll on the grass and went over to the stream, stripping off his clothes. His ribs and belly were still discolored, the bruises yellowing into a striated pattern of color that spread across his midriff and sides like a mosaic. Where the boots had stamped on his wrists, there were darker markings like purple-black bracelets. On the surface of the water, his reflection gave back an image of a face rendered ugly by the punches. The gash beneath his eye was healed to a thin red line that cut over the blackish-green of the fading swelling. His lips still looked unnaturally large, laced with a tracery of cuts, and the rest of his skin seemed darker than was normal.
