A Good Day to Die (29 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: A Good Day to Die
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At the climax, her mouth was close to his ear, her voice a breathless whisper that spoke louder than a shriek. “Save me, Johnny, save me. Don't let them kill me. Oh God, oh God. Save me!”
Frantic, but choice. That's Francine,
Johnny thought.
Hell, I'd have saved her anyhow, but this sure seals the deal.
N
INETEEN
“Do you know the Truce of God, amigo?” Latigo asked.
“No,” Sam said, “can't say as I do.”
At midnight on the cloudy night, the moon was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds. Bright silver moonlight alternated with ghostly silver-black gloom. A farmer's old saw Sam had oft heard repeated during boyhood days in southwest Minnesota maintained that for the best crop yields, some planting was done by moonlight. He and Latigo were doing some planting of their own on the far west edge of Hangtown, sowing seeds of destruction to reap a crop of pure hell.
It was an idea he'd had, to lay out a special welcome mat for Red Hand. Surprise package, so to speak. He'd pitched it earlier to Hutto and Barton and through them to the Cattleman Crowd. The town powers had bought his idea.
Sam and Latigo were laying the groundwork to make it happen. They were not the only agents of the plan. Others were at work in other parts of Hangtown, carrying out similar preparations.
Moonlight or shadow, which is best,
Sam wondered. Moonlight meant he could see better, but he could also be seen. Shadow hid him, but also hid others who were lurking.
Comanches, it was said, didn't attack at night. Not true. They preferred not to attack at night, but they weren't ones to pass up an opportunity no matter what the hour, day or night.
Sam and Latigo labored on the flat below the church and Boot Hill. With them were two horses, and a mule laden down with sacks full of hardware: bundled sticks of dynamite, wooden stakes, digging implements, and strips of cloth.
We've got our necks stuck out a country mile,
thought Sam.
Two men in the church tower were keeping watch for Comanches, but Sam preferred to trust his own perceptions. Not that he trusted them so well.
A breeze was blowing from the west, making the night air cool and fresh. Latigo held the horses' reins and the mule's lead rope. Sam was down on one knee beside a shallow hole on the ground. A wooden stake had been hammered partway into the hardpacked clay. A narrow band of cloth twelve inches long was knotted around the top of the stake. In the moonlight the cloth was gray; its true color was red.
Sam placed a bundle of dynamite in the hole, laying it on its side, lengthwise. Rising, he took up a spade, sticking the blade into a pile of dirt that had been excavated from the hole. Carefully—very carefully, for all the sticks of dynamite were fitted with blasting caps—he sprinkled the dirt over the bundled explosives.
The dirt mound disappeared quickly as he refilled the shallow hole. Using a leafy branch he'd broken off a bush, he evened off the dirt on top of the hole to disguise the marks of digging. Only the stake with the strip of cloth tied to it marked the spot where the dynamite had been buried.
Five more such banded stakes were studded at regular intervals across the broad apron of ground fronting the rise to the church.
Sam put the spade and the leafy branch in one of the burlap sacks slung across the mule's back. He rubbed his palms together, wiping the dust from them. “That'll do it for here,” he said, low-voiced.
He and Latigo mounted up, Latigo holding the mule's lead rope. They started forward. The mule balked, staying in place. Latigo tugged on the rope several times, but the mule wouldn't budge. Leaning over in the saddle so his mouth was close to the mule's long ears, Latigo spoke softly to him in Spanish. The mule began moving in the desired direction.
“What'd you say to him?” Sam asked.
“I tell him I leave him for the Comanche,” Latigo said. “Nothing they like better than roast mule meat.”
They followed the dirt road up the rise, through the gap between the two knolls and down the other side, riding toward Hangtown. “A couple more here should do it.” Sam halted.
He and Latigo climbed down and dug two holes on the down slope, one a man's length below the crest, the other at the base. As before, bundles of dynamite went in the holes and were covered with dirt. Banded stakes marked out each hole. They talked as they worked, their voices hushed.
“Do you know the Truce of God, amigo?” Latigo asked again.
“No, can't say I do. What is it?”
“In Mexico, in the swamps around Vera Cruz on the coast, they say that when there is a great flood all the animals in the jungle flee to higher ground. Trapped all together, the creatures do not follow their natural way.
El Tigre
, the jaguar, falls not on the sheep to kill and eat it. The snake preys not on the rabbit, nor the fox on the chicken. All are at peace with each other until the waters go down. This is the Truce of God.”
“Tell me, Latigo, have you ever seen this Truce of God?”
“In flood—no, for I have lived most of my life here on the plains of
Tejas
, where the floods are not so much. But with my own eyes I have seen something like it, during prairie fires. When animals flee the fire, none attacks the other.”
“Because they all fear being eaten by the flames.”
“So it is with the folk of Hangtown, no? Fear of the Comanche is stronger than their hate for each other.”
“It's a truce, mebbe, but not of God. The Lord and Hangtown are pretty far apart,” Sam said.
“
Quien sabe, amigo.
Who knows?”
“Well, that's the way to bet it.”
Sam brushed over the filled-in holes with the leafy branch, smoothing out the dirt. He and Latigo got on their horses and Sam rode up the side of the hill to the church, careful to stay off the road for fear that an iron-shod hoof could set off one of the tricky, touchy blasting caps.
He tilted his head back, looking up. High atop the bell tower, the outlines of the two watchmen formed a deeper darkness against the night sky. Sam whistled to get their attention. “All done. Keep off the road!”
“We will,” a sentry replied.
“Be sure to warn the replacements, when they come to relieve you.”
“When's that gonna be? We been here since before sundown.”
“I'll tell Barton.”
“See that you do,” the watchman said.
“Tell him to get his ass up here, see how he likes it,” the other said.
Sam had nothing to say to that. He rode downhill, joining Latigo. They started into town, walking their horses east where the dirt road became Trail Street.
“A good trick, that dynamite,” Latigo said, “if the Comanche come this way.”
“If they don't, the other approaches to Four Corners are planted, too. We'll get 'em coming or going.”
“Is it that you like Hangtown so well or hate the Comanche so much?”
“I like living. If we beat Red Hand here, we live. If not ...”
 
 
Red Hand was wary of mysterious activities his scouts had observed going on around town in the hour before midnight. The Texans were up to something. Groups of two prowled around the edges of Four Corners for reasons unknown. His men were unable to get close enough to determine what exactly it was they were doing.
He would give the Texans something to think about during the long hours of the night watch. He sent in a band of skirmishers to start trouble on the west side of town, shooting it up to draw the whites' attention to that sector. A classic piece of misdirection.
 
 
The moon came out from behind a cloud, shafting silver rays. Sam and Latigo continued on Trail Street.
“What now?” Latigo asked.
“We get something to eat and drink, mebbe catch a few hours of shut-eye, and wait for sunup.”
They neared the Alamo Bar.
Strange to see the Alamo dark—shuttered and locked up,
Sam thought. Ordinarily it would just be hitting its stride, riotous and ablaze with light. But it was black and silent as a tomb, as was the rest of Hangtown outside Four Corners, itself dimly lit with few figures showing.
Something burst out of the north sidestreet, streaking overhead. Great wings beat the air as an owl soared up and out of sight. A big one, its flapping wings sounded like a blanket being shaken out.
Startled, Sam's horse upreared, forelegs leaving the ground. He clung to the animal to keep from being thrown. Unseen objects whipped past him in the dark, scorching the air with the speed of their passage.
Arrows!
The thud of a shaft striking flesh meant Latigo was hit.
Shadowy forms shifted in the dimness deeper in the side street.
Sam stopped fighting to hold on and threw himself off the horse, opposite from where the Comanche arrows had come. He hit the ground hard, breaking the fall as best he could as he rolled on his shoulders. It gave him a jolt, stunning him for a moment before he continued rolling to avoid being trampled by his horse as it ran away.
The mule brayed, breaking free and running down Trail Street, too.
Latigo was still in the saddle, hunched forward, with an arrow sticking out of his chest. Grabbing his gun, he fired at the ambushers. Red lines slanted from his gun barrel toward figures huddled in the shadows.
A strangled cry, abruptly choked off, showed that at least one shot had scored.
A bowstring twanged as another arrow was loosed, taking Latigo in the torso. He tilted sideways, firing a shot into the air as he fell off his horse.
A Comanche darted out of the street, tomahawk in hand. Shrieking a war cry, he charged Sam who lay sprawling on his back in the street.
With no time to get the mule's-leg loose, Sam drew the Navy Colt stuck in his belt, firing up at the brave standing above him with war hatchet held high for a skull-splitting downstroke. He pumped several rounds into the center of the Indian. Muzzle flashes from the Colt underlit the brave's face, highlighting stark death-mask agony. The Comanche collapsed.
Rifle fire tore out of the darkness, flying high and harmlessly over Sam. Pushing the dead man away, Sam rolled over. Raising himself on his elbows, he returned fire, tagging a brave who shrieked, spun and fell, the rifle falling from his hands.
The Colt was empty. Sam let it go and drew the mule's-leg. Rising to his knees, he worked the lever, spewing lead into the side street. Muzzle flares pulsed with fiery flashes.
Three braves writhed, shrieking in a death dance as they were cut down.
On his feet, Sam advanced, levering the mule's-leg, cutting down Comanches all the way to Commerce Street.
He watched as the two Comanches who had stayed behind to hold the horses hopped on the backs of their ponies to make their escape. Screened by a row of buildings, they were safe from Sam's bullets.
The deadly little skirmish was over. But Latigo was dead.
T
WENTY
The clock tower on the courthouse had been turned into a combination observation post and sniper's nest. It was occupied by two Hangtown marksmen of note, Pete Zorn and Steve Maitland.
Zorn was an old-timer, a burnt-out cinder of a man, gray-haired, grizzled. A veteran of the Mexican-American War and the War Between the States, and countless shooting scrapes with Indians and owlhoots, he was a dead shot with a rifle.
Steve Maitland was a gangly, sixteen-year-old ranch kid with brown hair, a pink beardless face, and the clear cold gray eyes so often found in sharpshooters. He had finished second in the annual Thanksgiving Day turkey shoot the year before—no mean feat in Hangtown with its many top shooters.
Zorn had finished first that day and taken the prize.
The clock tower room was a square space, much of it taken up by clockwork machinery. Gears, wheels, flywheels, weights, counterweights, and pendulums were corroded with rust and thick with dust and congealed grease.
The walls had louvered side windows with adjustable horizontal wooden slats, allowing for light, vision, and ventilation. They also allowed for many and varied lines of fire covering much of Hangtown below.
The space was supplied with a couple chairs and whatnot to provide Zorn and Maitland with minimal comforts. A kerosene lamp burned smokily, trimmed low to provide illumination with minimal damage to the occupants' night vision. Each shooter had his own rifle plus several extras supplied by the town to minimize time spent in reloading. There was plenty of ammunition, too.
Earlier, they had watched as a number of stealthy two-man teams set out from Four Corners to plant dynamite in the avenues of approach. They'd kept a ready eye out for prowling Comanches, but none had been seen. Not that they weren't there. But if they were, they couldn't be seen from the clock tower.
The first floor of the courthouse had seethed with noise and unrest when so many families had massed in the courtroom. The scene had quieted down with the lateness of the hour, but was still disturbed by anxious men, nervous females, sleepless kids, and squawling babies.
An office in the southeast corner of the second floor was reserved for the use of Wade Hutto, pursuant to his duties in town council and county administration. Hutto sat behind the desk, comfortably set up in a high-backed, well-cushioned chair. Seated across from him were Banker Willoughby, Alamo Bar owner Chance Stillman, and promoter Rutland Dean. Their chairs were smaller and not quite as comfortable as Hutto's, but they were drinking his liquor and smoking his cigars.
A leather couch, useful for entertaining lady friends or for napping—stood in a corner against the wall. Boone Lassiter lay on his back, hat tilted over his eyes, awake. A lit cigar was clenched between his jaws; he held a tumbler of whiskey on his chest.
Hutto was making the best of a bad situation, but he would gladly have given plenty to be anywhere but where he was, waiting out the night hours before a full-scale Comanche onslaught.
“Good brandy,” Banker Willoughby said. “You do yourself right, friend Hutto.”
“In this job you need it,” Hutto replied. “Especially on a night like this.”
Gunfire sounded outside. There were shrieks in the distance. More shots—a death cry.
Boone Lassiter sat up, swinging his booted feet to the floor. Hutto came out from behind his desk and went to the south window. He lifted an edge of the window shade, peering outside. Lassiter went to the desk and blew out the light in the oil lamp. The room went dark, a line of light showing at the bottom of the door to the hallway.
The others crowded around Hutto at the window. It looked down on Trail Street, including the other three bulwarks of Four Corners. They could see the jail, the feed store, and the Golden Spur.
“What is it, Wade?” Dean asked.
“There's movement down there, but the shooting came from farther up the street,” Hutto said. “Can't quite make it out.”
Lassiter crossed the hall to the office opposite Hutto's, and entered it. Empty and dark, the room held the southwest corner of the second floor. Standing to the side of a window facing west, he raised the curtain and looked outside.
Hutto and the others came into the room, the last one in leaving the door open.
“Close that door so we don't show against the light,” Lassiter growled.
Willoughby shut the door, then joined the others.
The moon came out from behind a cloud, silvering rooftops and shining into the street. Motion swirled on Trail Street. Black forms of horses and men shifted and surged. A gun yammered, striking sparks of light.
A man screamed and fell. More shooting racketed up from the darkness.
The couthouse was astir. Pete Zorn and Steve Maitland went to the west wall of the clock tower, peering out and down through the wooden-slatted windows. They couldn't make out much. The shooting had stopped, and the horsemen had fled, swallowed by darkness.
In the first floor courtroom, men started up out of troubled sleep—those with nerves strong enough to enable them to sleep, or drunk enough to have passed out for a blessed while. Women gasped, girls shrieked, children and babies fussed.
Armed men with sleep-bleared eyes staggered to the west windows for a look, only to be balked by the Golden Spur blocking their view.
Men moved around in the jail, feed store, and gambling house. Defenders made ready, but none ventured outside for fear of stepping into an ambush.
Throughout Four Corners, attention was focused on the dark, west side of town from where the shooting seemed to have come.
 
 
Red Hand and twelve followers were hidden in a dark grove of trees a hundred yards east of town. Part of a well-wooded thicket north of Hangtree Trail, it was a tangle of brush, shrubs, and tall weeds.
When the shooting started on the west side of town, Red Hand rode out alone into the open, toward the courthouse. Outfitted in full warlike regalia, he rode a strikingly colored silver horse with a white mane. A bonnet of eagle feathers crowned his head. His face was striped and masked with war paint, his torso was shielded by a chest piece made of buffalo bones, and his arms were painted red from fingertips to elbows. A round buffalo-hide shield was worn on his left arm; his right hand held a flaming spear.
Not the Fire Lance, of course. It was too valuable to be thrown away on a mere ploy, and that's what he was engaged in. A bold stroke to steal the Texans' courage and plant fear in their hearts.
Red Hand wielded a Comanche lance whose spear blade was coated with Medicine Hat's inflammable compound and set ablaze. He crossed the field, charging the courthouse front.
Close to the courthouse steps, he yanked hard on the reins, the bit digging into the soft parts of the animal's mouth. The silver stallion reared, rising on its hind legs.
Red Hand cast the fiery lance, burying it point first in one of the wooden front double doors. It stuck, quivering in a planked panel, its head burning with eerie blue ghost light.
Turning his horse to the right, he galloped away into the darkness. He shrieked a war whoop in parting.
His men in the grove opened fire on the courthouse with repeating rifles, laying down a covering fire for their chief. Once Red Hand was safely clear, they ceased fire, melting back into the woods.
Drawn by this new disturbance, the courthouse folk rushed to the east windows to see what it was all about. Wade Hutto returned to his office, looked outside, and saw the burning spear stuck in the courthouse front door.
“What's it all about?” asked Banker Willoughby.
“A declaration of war, I call it,” Hutto said.
“As if any were needed! They've already made their hostile intent clear,” Rutland Dean said.
“Comanche medicine, to scare the faint hearts,” Boone Lassiter informed them. “Hope nobody falls for it. But they will.”
The fiery spear kept on burning. Presently, some hardy souls opened the front door partway, mindful not to show themselves as targets. Somebody splashed the spear with a bucket of water. The fire was oil-based and instead of extinguishing it the water made it burn hotter and brighter.
Next, buckets of sand were thrown on it and blankets were beaten against it and the door until the flames went out. A few door planks were charred, but only on the surface, not too deep.
The door was slammed shut and bolted from the inside.
An hour or so later, the screaming started. It came from somewhere in the grove from which Red Hand had previously ventured. Thick woods and darkness hid whatever was going on there.
Shrill and piercing, the outcry was the sound of a man in mortal agony. Worse, it was only the opening note in what would prove to be an aria of anguish. It was loud and clear throughout the Four Corners.
A small lamp burned in Hutto's office, glowing dimly. Fresh screams ripped through the stillness of night.
“Gad! What're they doing to that poor devil?” Rutland Dean exclaimed.
“Torture,” answered Boone Lassiter.
Chance Stillman went to the east window, looking out. “I don't see nobody. No Injins. Nothing.”
“You won't see them until they want you to see them,” Lassiter said.
“Who is it, do you think?” Dean wondered.
“Some poor soul unlucky enough to be taken alive, Lord help him,” Lassiter said.
“Think it's Coleman or Hapgood?” Stillman asked.
“Let's hope not. They're our only hope of getting word to the cavalry,” Willoughby said.
“Don't count on the army,” Lassiter said. “We're on our own here.”
Hutto's face fell. “There's a good chance that one or both of them might have gotten through ... isn't there?”
Nobody answered. The shrieking fell off, grew silent. After a moment, Dean said, “Thank God that's over!”
Boone Lassiter snorted. “Hell, they ain't even started yet.” He poured himself a fresh drink.
After a while, the screaming began again, steadily rising into ever-higher registers of pain. It lost all human qualities. It was the hopeless wail of a suffering animal in mortal pain and terror.
“What do they do to make a man scream like that?” Willoughby wondered.
“Don't think about it,” Hutto said thickly.
Lassiter gulped his drink, setting down an empty glass. “Save a bullet for yourself, if we can't hold 'em today. Save some for your families, too.”
The shrieks rose and fell, fading, then starting up again, and again, and again.
“Why don't he just shut up and die?” Stillman said. “Die, damn you, die!”
“Easy,” Hutto cautioned.
“Comanches know what they're doing,” Lassiter said. “They'll keep him alive for a long time. They're good at that. By working on him, they're working on us, trying to put the fear in us.”
“They're doing a pretty good job,” Rutland Dean mumbled, grinning weakly.
Wade Hutto rose from his chair. “I better go downstairs and make a show to the folks, take their mind off things. Reassure them. They might need some shoring up.”
“I can use some shoring up myself.” Dean poured a stiff drink and tossed it down.

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