Shadow Man Read online

  Thanks to K P., A.M., and (especially)

  Philip Davenport; in tribute to the man who made

  Wagon Master.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  Buzzards turned in the sky.

  They planed on brown-grey wings, cutting slow, tightening circles. They might have been tethered by an invisible leash to a spot on the desert floor far below.

  That told Calvin Taylor a little. Something down there was hurt but it was still alive, otherwise the buzzards would be spiralling down to feed.

  Taylor sat his grey horse in the only cover hereabouts: the shade between two large boulders. He lifted field glasses to his eyes and studied the land to the east.

  The green country, the valley of the Rio Grande, was behind him. Ahead was only a seared and waterless landscape, all the way to the Pecos River: Southern New Mexico Territory. Mountain ranges that paralleled each other, trending north to south. Between these ranges were desert basins. The nearest range, the Lagarto Mountains, lay before him. The Lagartos were well-named, dim, lizard-like shapes with a spine like the edge of a saw running against the sky. Beyond them lay his destination: the new mining camp of Ore City.

  Through his field glasses Taylor studied the carrion birds overhead and then the ground they staked out. He frowned. The buzzards hovered over the first foothills of the Lagartos, where there was a sight too much cover for his liking. It would be safer and wiser to keep to open country. Nonetheless Taylor kneed his horse in the ribs and rode towards the place the buzzards marked.

  The wind brought suffocating waves of heat, and fine, warm dust that scratched his skin. It was only early June and already as hot as hell’s griddle.

  Calvin Taylor was twenty-five years old. He was six feet tall, and of medium build; a good-looking young man with dark hair and, in contrast, very blue eyes. He had grown a moustache to put some age in his face and wore two days of patchy trail beard. His clothing was functional, not stylish. The colour had long faded from his Levis and flannel shield-front shirt. He wore an equally faded poncho he’d bought in the last town along the way – Paso Del Norte – and a battered plainsman’s hat. He carried a long-barrelled Colt .44 pistol in a cross-draw holster on his left hip and a fifteen-shot Winchester, model of 1873, in the saddle boot on his horse. A knife was sheathed on his right hip. All this weaponry was a considerable burden on man and horse but they were necessary. Even now, in 1879, this was still dangerous country.

  Taylor rode slowly across a plain of low brush – saltbrush, creosote, clumps of yucca – under the eye of the sun and in the teeth of the hot wind. Haze blurred the horizons and turned the lizard spine of the mountains to wave crests, rippling towards some far shore. This was high desert and altitude made the air burn his lungs. It was very silent. It was still, too; then a white dust showed, streaking across the desert face, pelting away from him.

  Taylor had his hand to his rifle and the Winchester halfway out of its boot before he realized this was only the strange ground-running bird called the chaparral cock fleeing before him. He told himself, ‘You’re getting jumpy, Taylor.’

  He could see a cleft in the wall of foothills before him, a little narrow canyon angling in there, towards the place the buzzards marked. He decided only a damn fool would leave open ground and enter those hills, where he could be trapped and ambushed easy as you please. But curiosity was pulling on him and he rode into the canyon. It was his day to be a damn fool.

  He made one concession to common sense: he drew his Winchester from its boot, cocked it, and laid it across the saddle before him.

  Rock walls rose on either side, bare and sheer. The heat trapped between had no air to stir it, was solid, dizzying. The canyon crooked ahead, angling out of sight. Brush and haze provided a myriad hiding-places all around him. Taylor decided he’d been fool enough for one day. He’d turn his horse about, quit this canyon and leave the buzzards to their work.

  Taylor was conscious of a ledge, shouldering out of the rock wall behind and above him and how close he’d let himself get to it. He began to knee his horse forward. Then something clattered on the trail before him. Taylor looked that way. In the same instant he caught movement in the corner of his eye. A man was suddenly standing on the ledge!

  This man ran forward, yelling.

  And sprang.

  As the man leaped towards him, Taylor swung his horse about. He lashed out with the rifle in his hand.

  The barrel struck home; the plunging figure grunted and was flung aside. The blow pulled Taylor to the left, half out of the saddle. At the same time his horse jumped to the right. Suddenly Taylor had no horse under him. He seemed to hang in the air an instant; then he struck the ground very hard, on his front.

  By good luck he came down on a slope of white sand, but the fall still knocked most of the air out of his lungs. He lay prone for a time, trying to find breath. He tasted the harshness of gypsum in his mouth. The glare of salt-white earth hurt his eyes.

  Slowly he sat up.

  His attacker lay on the slope above. He moved slowly too, coming to all fours, then kneeling up.

  Taylor saw a man in a faded red polka-dot shirt and muslin loin-cloth, now fouled with white dust. His very black, chest length hair was tied across the temples with a thick band of red calico. A chevron of white bottomclay banded his face from ear to ear, running across the bridge of the nose, startling against his dark-copper skin. He got to his feet and showed he was bare-legged behind the breech-clout, wearing crumpled knee-high moccasins. He had a knife in his hand.

  An Apache.

  Dazedly, Taylor became aware of the Winchester lying on the earth before him. He got his hands to it.

  The Apache charged.

  As he ran he put the knife between his teeth. Taylor scrambled upright, lifting the rifle and the Indian seized it with both hands, cannoning into Taylor and driving him backwards. Taylor fell and rolled down the slope; the Apache spilled over him and rolled too. They tumbled down-slope in dust.

  Where the slope levelled, they floundered in this choking stuff. Taylor got to a crouch, looking around for his rifle and a dim shape loomed over him. A man with a knife in his hand, striking down.

  Taylor dodged and grabbed the man’s arm. He yanked, turning as he did so, pitching the Indian headlong over his right shoulder. The Apache somersaulted forward, striking on his back. Taylor sprang in on him. The Apache kicked up from the ground. His foot went into Taylor’s belly, hooking Taylor into the air. Taylor performed his own neat somersault and crashed down on loose sand.

  The Indian lunged at him again but he was slower. Taylor had time to get to his knees. As the Apache stabbed down, Taylor grabbed his arm. The white man squirmed to his feet. He was six inches taller than the Indian, but they seemed matched for strength. The knife point was only a few inches from Taylor’s throat; he strained to hold it there. They swayed, locked together, each one’s hands to the other’s wrists, almost face to face. The Apache’s teeth were bared in a snarl, very white against his da
rk skin.

  Suddenly the expression of ferocity on the Indian’s face changed. It became pain. A sigh came out of him. All the strength seemed to leach out of him at once; he sank down. Taylor lifted his foot, placing it against the Indian’s chest, and kicked out. The man was driven backwards, sprawling on the slope.

  Taylor reached down and lifted the Winchester. The Apache had dropped his knife. Taylor snatched that up too. He found he was dizzy with weariness after only a few minutes’ physical exertion in this heat. Breath panted out of him. His arms trembled as they always did after violent action. Sweat was running into his eyes. He wiped it away and took aim on the man lying before him.

  The Apache sat up, making small sounds of pain. That was explained when he reached behind him, putting his hand to his back. His fingers came away bloody. There were blood patches on the white sand around him. He looked up at Taylor calmly, in his face a sullen acceptance of his death.

  This was a young man, younger than his white enemy. After a moment Taylor recognized him. In Apache (which he spoke well) Taylor said, ‘Hello Nachay. You got a bullet in you?’

  The wounded man was trying to keep his face a mask, Taylor could see that; it was something an Indian could do easily, but for an instant the mask slipped and he looked puzzled. Nachay said, ‘I remember you from the agency. You’re the one they call Shadow Man.’

  Nachay meant Rat, but that wasn’t an insult in Nachay’s world. Apaches honoured the rat as a clever animal. Taylor told him: ‘I always figured your daddy, Loco, was a pretty smart Indian. So why’d he leave the reservation?’

  ‘The white eyes promised to feed us on the reservation. But you can’t eat promises. They wanted to starve us like they did the Navajos.’ About ten years back, Taylor knew, the white man had penned up the Navajos on the Bosque Redondo, where thousands of them had died of starvation, hunger and disease. Nachay’s eyes moved to the rifle in Taylor’s hand. ‘Better to die like an Apache.’

  ‘I’m not going to kill you, Nachay.’

  ‘Why not? I’d kill you.’

  ‘There’s been enough killing. Tell your daddy to come in and talk peace.’

  Nachay was struggling to keep the shield over his face and not let his further puzzlement show. Taylor turned away from him and began to climb the slope towards his horse. He’d taken half a dozen paces when Nachay said, ‘Shadow Man!’

  Taylor turned back. Nachay was on his feet. He held out something, a strip of some material. Nachay said, ‘If you come across any of my people, show them this. It might keep you alive.’

  Taylor took this object. It was a belt of maybe dried pony skin, daubed with crude paintings of horses, deer, the moon and stars and symbols he didn’t recognize.

  He said, ‘Adios, Nachay.’

  Taylor tied the Apache belt to his horse’s bridle and swung into the saddle. Nachay stood watching him. The Indian’s eyes burned holes in Taylor’s back as he rode out of the canyon.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ore City was as ugly as its name. Once it had been a tiny Mexican hamlet of fifteen or so adobes grouped around just enough space to stage a cockfight. But the mines had come, and the Anglos determined to tear their fortune from the earth. After that, Ore City had grown too quickly to be pretty. Now it was a raw settlement climbing hills on both sides of an almost dry creek. A haphazard scatter of dwellings of all kinds: brush huts, adobes, frame structures, false-fronted buildings, tents, together with bizarre hybrids of adobe, wood and canvas. Despite its grand title it wasn’t quite city size yet. Perhaps a thousand people might live in this neighbourhood, though many were invisible most of the time. They burrowed away in the mines that gave this place its name and its reason to exist.

  Calvin Taylor came into Ore City from the west, along the Paso Del Norte trail. It was only about 11 a.m. but stamp mills thumped away in the hills. Doubtless they worked round the clock. He noted that there only seemed to be two buildings above one-storey size in view. One was a hotel. The other, a vast barnlike structure had a sign over one doorway bearing the legend: GENERAL MERCHANDISE. J. GARTH PROPRIETOR.

  Taylor reined in at a horse trough in front of this building and dismounted. He tied his horse at a hitching rail away from the water. Then he moved to the trough and proceeded to wash his face. The water was warm and not too clean but he didn’t care. He unknotted his bandanna and used it to towel his face dry. As he did so a man came out of the store carrying two sacks of flour, which he placed in the back of a buckboard.

  Taylor said, ‘Morning.’

  The other man smiled. It was the ready smile of a businessman to whom any stranger was a potential customer. ‘Morning. Hot one, ain’t it?’ He wore an apron that was bleached with flour dust. There was dust on his hands too. He wiped some of that away, then extended one hand. ‘Garth is the name.’

  Taylor heard the Southern hill country – Tennessee, Arkansas – in Garth’s soft accent, which meant he came from the same part of the world as Taylor himself. Taylor introduced himself, they shook. Taylor was surprised at the power in Garth’s grip, his fingers like iron. Garth was about Taylor’s height, and of slim build. He was in his forties, a handsome man with a long, narrow face, fashionable handlebar moustache and a little grey at the temples of his dark hair. His was a humorous, good-living face, and deeply tanned for a storekeeper who presumably spent most of his time indoors.

  Now that his horse had cooled down Taylor let the animal drink from the trough. He said, ‘Supposed to be a wagon train in this neighbourhood.’

  A little surprise showed in Garth’s eyes. ‘You mean those crazy fools fixing to go down to the Rio Azul?’ When Taylor nodded slightly, Garth said, ‘They’re camped on the other side of town, along the creek there.’

  Taylor swung up into the saddle. ‘Much obliged.’

  Garth dampened his hands in the trough and started to wipe more flour dust from him, smiling again; then his gaze sharpened on something. The smile slipped from his lips.

  Taylor realized he’d left Nachay’s gift, the strip of pony hide, hanging from his bridle. Garth reached forward and touched it. ‘Where’d you get this Apache gewgaw?’

  ‘Traded it from a friendly Indian.’ Which was an approximation to the truth, Taylor decided.

  Garth glared at the horseman. All the humour and friendliness were gone from his face. His eyes, which ought to have been dark but were grey, had anger in them. His mouth twisted with contempt. ‘Friendly Indian.’

  Garth spat. Maybe he spat at Taylor’s boot. If so he only missed by inches, the spittle coiling on the earth by the horse’s front hoofs.

  Taylor found himself in a staring contest with the older man. After a little of that, Taylor glanced up at the sign over the door, wondering how he’d been so slow as not to register the name. ‘You Jedediah Garth, by any chance?’

  ‘You heard of me?’

  Taylor didn’t answer. He turned his horse and rode down the street.

  He’d heard of Garth all right. If Garth had known that Taylor had let the son of Loco live, when he could have killed him, he’d probably have gone to his gun then and there. In a territory of Indian-haters, Jed Garth had a reputation all of his own.

  Thinking of that, Taylor reached down and untied the Apache belt from around his horse’s bridle and stuffed it into a saddle-bag.

  He rode by saloons that were clearly doing fair business even at this early hour. He was tempted to cut the dust but resisted. He was about to meet his new employers and didn’t want to do so with whiskey on his breath.

  Buildings thinned around him and he came to the edge of the desert and to a creek, a riffle of brown water maybe two feet deep and twenty paces across. It looped about, its banks lined in places with stunted trees, cottonwoods and such, a belt of green on land that had most of the colour burned out of it. Covered wagons were drawn up in a loose circle on the far side. Taylor could see mules and oxen grazing further down the creek. People were about, men, women and children.

  Taylo
r rode across the creek. Ahead of him a small mesquite fire burned, a spider over it and a coffee pot on that. A woman in an apron and white dress with some kind of brown pattern on it stood by the fire.

  She looked up as Taylor approached, shading her eyes with her hand so that he couldn’t see her face.

  Taylor touched the brim of his hat. He said, ‘Morning, ma’am. I’m looking for Major Cameron.’

  A voice behind him asked: ‘Who wants me?’

  Taylor turned to see a man striding towards him.

  Alexander Cameron was in his mid-fifties, Taylor judged. He was large and barrel-chested, standing a few inches over six feet. He was hatless, his florid, slablike face topped with a thatch of iron-grey hair. Cameron went in for burnsides and a heavy walrus moustache which was whiter than his hair. He walked with his lower lip and his chin jutting forward. It was a pugnacious face, but not without humour.

  Taylor told him: ‘Seems like I’m your guide, Major.’

  Cameron blinked. ‘You’re Calvin Taylor?’ He frowned. ‘I was expecting an older man.’

  ‘I’m older than I look.’

  Cameron fmgered one of his burnsides. ‘Just how old are you, exactly?’ Taylor heard a faint Scots burr, far back in his voice.

  ‘Twenty-six.’ Which was almost the truth; Taylor would be in a matter of weeks.

  The Scotsman’s gaze remained sceptical. Taylor became aware that others around the wagons were staring at him too. Faces were doubtful. It seemed that everyone was glaring and frowning at him today.

  One man stepped forward. He asked Taylor, ‘You’re going to be our guide into bad country?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The man smiled very slightly. A little contempt came into his voice. ‘You sure don’t look old enough to me.’

  This was a man of about thirty. He stood a little above middle height but his broad chest and bull shoulders made him seem taller. His hair was dark and his moustache luxuriant, a vanity. A very handsome man, with a hint of arrogance in his face that suggested he knew it. He wore drab work clothes that had a lot of dust on them. His only affectation was the gloves he wore, thick gauntlets with long fringes at the sides.