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Shadow Man Page 5


  ‘Yes I can, Major. If I was hired for one reason, it was to make sure hostiles didn’t jump us.’

  ‘I don’t know much about Apaches, but from what I hear, they’ve ambushed the smartest men who ever lived.’

  Taylor didn’t want to argue. He stared out at the paling darkness.

  The men at the barricades waited. Full light came, and no attack.

  Taylor scanned the surrounding country with his field glasses. A few Apaches showed, on foot and on horseback, but they were out of range.

  He felt tension ease out of him in a long sigh. He told the men at the barricades: ‘All right. Normal guard rota. Rest of you can stand down. Go back to bed if you want.’

  ‘What?’ Buck Evans gave him a surprised look. ‘That’s your plan? Just sit here, do nothing?’

  ‘Doing nothing’s usually the best bet, ’specially when it gets hot. More you move, more you sweat, more water you need.’

  The people in the corral ate their breakfasts and then lay in their wagons, or under them, or in what shade they could find. The sun climbed in a bleached-out sky. The livestock made the pitiful sounds of thirsty animals. The farmyard stink of their droppings and voiding lay over the wagon corral like a thick blanket. Humming flies swarmed. Occasionally Jake Harrison moaned, or talked in delirium. Apart from that there was almost no talking in the compound. Taylor missed Josh Williams’s mouth organ.

  Around noon Cameron said, ‘Something’s happening.’

  Taylor strode over to the barricade, where men were gathered with rifles in their hands. He stood between Davy Harrison (Jake’s son) and the Evans brothers and gazed out. The noon sun made a haze that swayed and distorted the plain before him. Then the haze moved and Taylor saw a body of horsemen. They were at the edge of range, maybe 700 yards.

  Taylor trained his field glasses on the distant horsemen. After a moment of study he told the others: ‘See the big fellow in the red shirt, on the white horse? That’s Loco.’

  Buck Evans sucked on a pebble. Around that he said, ‘Wish I had my buffalo gun. Sold it to help buy my wagon.’ His mouth twisted with bitterness. ‘If I still had that old Sharps, I’d make El Jefe out there jump.’

  Davy Harrison said, ‘You can’t hit a man at that range.’ Harrison wasn’t more than thirty, but his hair, moustache and thin fringe of beard were prematurely grey. His face was old and gloomy before its time. That had been the case even before the Apaches attacked and his father took what was maybe a mortal wound.

  Buck said, ‘You never hear about the Adobe Walls fight? One buffalo hunter hit an Indian at more’n fifteen hundred yards there.’

  Cameron asked Taylor, ‘You think they’re going to rush us?’

  Taylor put his field glasses on the horsemen once more. Suddenly a man on a paint pony pushed his mount forward. He held a long rope which he jerked. A man afoot staggered along behind him. This man was held by the rope tied around his wrists.

  There was an icy coldness in Taylor’s belly that seemed to spread through him slowly. Some of what he felt must have shown in his face, because Cameron asked: ‘What is it?’

  Taylor passed him the field gasses. It was a minute before Cameron saw and then he said, in a bare whisper: ‘Ramon Sanchez.’

  Cameron lowered the field glasses and returned them to Taylor. The Scot looked defeated, an old and broken man.

  Ramon was naked but for his white cotton pants. There might be blood on his face and on his feet. He called out in a cracked, thirsty voice that carried clearly to the wagons: ‘Help me, Major! Taylor!’

  Cameron asked, ‘What are they trying to do, set up a trade?’

  ‘What have we got to trade? They’re just taunting us, and playing with him.’

  A warrior jabbed Ramon with his lance and the prisoner stumbled forward. He called plaintively: ‘Please, somebody! Help me! Taylor!’ Apaches laughed and jeered.

  Taylor heard a high wailing cry behind him. He turned. Señora Sanchez was clambering on to the barricade. Fiona Cameron ran towards her. Fiona grabbed the older woman’s arm but she squirmed free and sprang to earth beyond, running out into the desert. She cried: ‘Ramon! Ramon!’

  Fiona Cameron plunged over the barricade after her. Major Cameron and Harrison ran out after Fiona. Calvin Taylor ran after them.

  Señora Sanchez ran ten yards before her skirt tripped her. Cameron and Harrison caught her. The woman screamed and kicked and fought against them. They had to half-carry and half-drag her back towards the wagons. Taylor moved beyond them, covering their retreat with his rifle.

  Movement rippled through the horsemen, there was yelling and jeering but no surge towards the wagons. One Apache, afoot, strode forward. He turned his back, threw up the flap of his breechclout and slapped his bare rump.

  Taylor felt cold anger. He pulled his rifle to his shoulder. The Apache was out of range but Taylor didn’t care. He took a shot at him anyway. The man laughed derisively. Another Apache called out in English: ‘Hey, Shadow Man, we can see you! You’re dead!’ As Taylor returned to the wagons, he was followed by the taunting cries of coyote and turkey.

  Señora Sanchez sat against a wagon wheel with a huddle of women about her. Fiona Cameron had her arms about the older woman; she made soothing noises, as if to a child. Señora Sanchez began to call Ramon’s name, over and over.

  Buck Evans leaned on the barricade. ‘What was it that Indian called you, Taylor? Shadow Man? What’s that mean?’

  ‘Hard to explain. A shadow ain’t just a shadow to an Indian.’

  Taylor lifted his field glasses and did some more scanning. Something kept pulling his attention to a towering bluff, red as a wound, off to the east.

  There was movement and Taylor trained his field glasses on it.

  Ramon’s captor had become restless. He mounted his pony and walked it up and down. Ramon was pulled to his feet and staggered behind, on the end of the rope. He went to his knees and was half-dragged, then pulled to his feet again.

  Cameron asked Taylor: ‘What’s happening?’

  Taylor studied the man on the paint pony, sensing his impatience. The man flicked the quirt in his hand, as if he was eager to run his horse….

  It occurred to Taylor that Señora Sanchez had fallen silent. Now she stood and gazed out over the barricade. Suddenly she called her son’s name.

  Maybe Ramon heard. He gave a great, wailing cry of despair. He lunged forward, as if he thought he might escape. The man on the paint pony reared his horse, yanking on the rope and jerked Ramon off his feet. Ramon rose dazedly, only to be jerked off his feet again. This happened a couple more times and Apaches laughed.

  As Ramon rose wearily once more, his captor gave a high wild cry. He heeled the flanks of his paint pony and the pony started running. Ramon ran behind it, hauled along by the rope, and his captor veered his pony across a scatter of loose stones and broken rocks. Ramon began to scream as the stones and rocks lacerated his bare feet. He fell and was dragged in a trail of dust. The Apache reined in his paint.

  Very slowly his captive rose. Ramon was a ghost, white with dust all over, including his pants, and then blood started to show through and covered his chest, legs and face. He staggered drunkenly. The Apache yelled again and kicked his horse in the ribs once more. He raced his horse in a wide circle. Ramon fell and was dragged. The Apache dragged him across the bed of stones and rocks and out of them and round and back across the stony bed a second time, and then a third.

  Señora Sanchez cried her son’s name. The cry became a terrible, rending scream. It ended on a piercing note that seemed beyond the limits of a human voice. Then she seemed to faint, slumping in Fiona Cameron’s arms, and the younger woman lowered her to the earth.

  There was a silence of horror in the wagon compound.

  It was ended by Buck Evans. He asked Taylor: ‘Why don’t you tell us what human beings Apaches are? About their sense of humour?’

  Taylor sat with his back to the barricade, clenching and unclenching his ha
nds around the barrel of his Winchester. He heard Señora Sanchez’s scream in his head. It went into his teeth and into his brain and echoed again and again in his ears.

  Afternoon heat and blinding light fell on the wagon compound. People retreated into shrinking amounts of shade. Flies tormented thirsty livestock. A horse fell and died. There was barely a word spoken. And then Señora Sanchez started crying out Ramon’s name.

  Next, one of the older women, Mrs Kruger, raised her voice. She had a harsh, whining voice at the best of times, and now, cracked with thirst, it was a rusty, grating instrument. She called on the Lord to smite the Amalekites.

  Ethan Evans told her, ‘I don’t see no Amalekites out there, Ma, only Apaches!’ but she ignored him. She told the Apaches: ‘As your sword made women childless, so shall your mother be made childless amongst women….’

  Taylor’s own father had fancied himself as a preacher, especially when he was in his cups – which was often – particularly keen on quoting the wrathful and vengeful passages of the Old Testament. So Taylor had heard a lot about the smiting of Amalekites (and others). He could almost hear his father’s voice as she declared: ‘Therefore go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have… Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey….’

  Ethan Evans had been shading up under his wagon. He rolled out from under it now and stood. He told Mrs Kruger: ‘Don’t be calling on God, you crazy old woman! There ain’t none! There ain’t no heaven, and there ain’t no hell!’

  Buck stirred in the shade where he lay. ‘Oh yes there is. There’s hell all right. Where do you think we are, right now?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Taylor thought: you’re right there, Buck.

  This was hell’s half-acre all right. Except it was less than half an acre.

  One reason Taylor had come West was to find freedom in limitless space and endless distance. Only now his world was little more than a few dozen yards across in any direction, hemmed in by walls of canvas and wood. The space thus enclosed was filled with suffering humans and animals dying of thirst, being driven crazy by a myriad flies. The air he breathed was choking and foul. In the background, suitable to this madhouse, a crazed woman droned on about destruction and revenge.

  Ethan Evans moved back into shade. In a half-whisper that Taylor heard he told his brother, ‘Listen to that old loon. That’s what happens when you get religion.’

  Taylor came to a decision. He took his hands from his rifle and found they ached from gripping the barrel so tightly. He stood and used his field glasses to study the bluffs once more. Then he went on a little quest about the wagons. Next he approached Cameron.

  The Scot sat in a small piece of shade by his wagon. He’d damped his bandanna and draped it over his face. Fiona lay under the wagon, holding Señora Sanchez. Both women seemed to be asleep. Cameron told Taylor: ‘This is like being in Dante’s Inferno. God’s mercy there’s no children amongst us.’

  ‘Major, can I speak to you?’

  They moved to the far side of the compound, out of earshot of the others. Taylor said, ‘I checked – we’ve got plenty of rope.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was looking at that bluff off east. The deep red one. Up on the west side there’s a sort of a zigzagging trail. I think a party can climb up there.’

  ‘You’re crazy! Those bluffs are sheer!’

  ‘No, they’re not.’

  Cameron fanned flies away from his face with his hat. ‘Sun’s got to you Taylor. You’re as cracked as poor Mrs Kruger.’

  ‘Major, listen to me. Nobody knows what Apaches’ll do. More’n’likely though, they’re going to hit us at dawn tomorrow. No need for ’em to wait any longer. When that happens, we can’t hold ’em. You agree? We’ll all die – slow or quick – unless they carry off some of the women as slaves. So our only chance is to climb that bluff tonight.’

  Cameron thought about it. ‘Only needs a couple of Apaches on top of the bluff to pick us off one by one.’

  ‘Sure. That might happen. But my guess is most of ’em’ll be gathered at the mouth of the canyon, ready to charge in. So we create another diversion. Take some men down there and attack them first. Whilst that’s going on, the rest of us climb the bluff and out of this trap.’

  ‘Attack them? How many men would attack them?’

  ‘I figure four.’

  ‘Another crazy plan! Four men attack the whole bunch? How much chance would they have?’

  Taylor swallowed against the dryness in his throat. ‘None. They’d be dead men. But they might keep the Indians occupied long enough for the rest of us to escape.’

  ‘You’d ask four men to sacrifice their lives? While you climbed out of here?’

  ‘No. You take the people up the bluff, Major. I’d be down the canyon. With three volunteers to side me when we hit them.’

  Cameron glared at him. ‘What is this? Your way of atoning, because you feel guilty you let us get ambushed? I told you, it wasn’t your fault. Apaches have jumped smarter men than you.’

  ‘If I’m going to send men to their deaths, least I can do is keep ’em company.’

  Cameron shook his head dismissively.

  Anger came into Taylor’s voice. ‘At least if we try this, we have a chance. We sit and wait here, there’s no chance.’

  ‘Crazy!’

  ‘All right, Major, you tell me: what else can we do?’

  As dusk fell Taylor found one private place in this enclosure packed with humans and animals. That was the Sanchez wagon. Señora Sanchez slept right now by the Cameron wagon so Taylor had taken her space in order to get the last sleep he’d ever enjoy.

  Major Cameron had agreed to his plan as Taylor knew he would; there was no alternative. Taylor paused in the shadows behind the Sanchez wagon. He would snatch a few hours’ sleep in poor Ramon’s bed and then lead his diversion party into the canyon.

  He remembered Nachay’s safe-passage belt, still in his saddle-bags. That might save him if the Apaches took him alive, though he doubted it. He’d been prominent in fighting the Mescaleros and had killed a few of them. That would count against whatever value a strip of dried pony skin might otherwise have. No, better to accept his fate as certain. He just hoped the end was quick. It was curious how calm he felt about this business, now that a decision had been made.

  Taylor pulled open the back flap of the wagon; then something moved in the shadows near him. His hand went instinctively to the Colt pistol in his cross-draw holster before he saw who it was, then he moved his hand from the gun.

  She said, ‘My father told me what we’re going to do. What you’re going to do.’

  ‘I need to sleep, Fiona. There’s no time to talk.’

  She came close to him. ‘No, there isn’t.’

  He opened his mouth to reply and she placed her fingertips over his lips. She took his hand and led him towards the wagon.

  A man about to die, Taylor thought, ought not to feel this good. But feel good he did. He was trying not to grin like a damn fool as his little band of heroes gathered about him.

  It was just gone midnight. There was a full moon and no stars on ink-black darkness. The air was chill. Matt Williams was there, and Davy Harrison. Then the third man came towards them.

  Taylor was surprised. ‘Ethan.’

  Evans smiled sardonically. ‘What’s the matter, Taylor, don’t you want me?’

  ‘I didn’t expect you.’

  ‘Buck and I tossed for it. He won.’

  These men blackened their hands and faces with boot polish and black ash from a dead fire. They checked and oiled their rifles with silent, grim care. Taylor pulled on a pair of knee-length Apache moccasins, grass stuffed into the soles to muffle sound. Matt Williams started blackening the blade of a long stabbing knife, something like an ‘Arkansas toothpick’. Taylor asked him, ‘Who you fixing to stick with that?’

  ‘I smell out a scalp, I figure I’ll take it
. Get one of theirs before they get mine.’

  Harrison said, ‘I heard Apaches don’t take white men’s scalps. That right, Taylor? Only Mexicans, cus they pay bounty on Apache hair.’

  Ethan said, ‘Maybe Mr Taylor here don’t approve of scalping Indians.’

  Williams glared at Taylor. ‘It ain’t your three brothers dead out there.’

  Harrison nodded, maybe thinking of his father: Jake Harrison had died a few hours back. Taylor might feel touched that these men had opted to die with him, but he knew their main motivation was revenge.

  He said, ‘That’s something. You can smell them. They rub themselves with bear grease.’

  Cameron came from the darkness, shook their hands and wished them luck. He stared at Taylor, then nodded, for no reason Taylor could understand. The Scot faded into the dark.

  The four remaining men stood in awkward silence. Taylor got his thoughts back from Fiona Cameron. He’d already said his goodbyes to her. He asked the men with him, ‘Ready?’ They gave grunts of assent. He thought he ought to say something and waited for the words to come. After fifteen seconds of that, Ethan said, ‘Let’s get on with it, for Christ’s sake!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The four men got down on their faces and crawled on their bellies away from the wagons.

  As the jaws of the canyon loomed before and around him, Taylor came to rocks. He slid into the cover they provided gratefully. Crossing open ground, snaking along naked of cover in the eye of the moon, had shredded his nerves. The strange calm he’d felt earlier was gone. Now fear was dry in his throat and his arms trembled. Despite the chill of the night his face was damp with sweat.

  He lay between rocks and waited for the others.

  For a moment he thought about Fiona Cameron. Remembering the brief time they’d had he could feel warm pleasure, and then bitter resentment. To find a woman like that and then lose her almost immediately! Maybe to lose her to Buck Evans after all!

  A whisper of sound; then Evans, Williams and Harrison crouched around him. Harrison was attempting a smile, although fear made it something off-kilter and grotesque. The others stared at Taylor grimly.