Haxan (14 page)

“How so?”

“Since you were shot she comes to the office every morning to sweep out and boil fresh coffee.”

“I wonder why.”

“Maybe she feels she owes it to you. Some Indians is like that. They’re better than most white people in that regard. Thing is, she came in this morning and then rushed out for some unknown reason.” He picked up a fistful of paper and dropped it. “The paperwork has piled up on your desk something awful, Mr. Marwood.”

“Hang the paperwork.” My voice was hard and brittle. “I want my hands around Rand’s scrawny neck.” I made a twisting motion in the air.

“That works for me,” Jake said. “Oh, this also came for you early this morning by wire. Where did I put it?” He dug through the mess of papers on my desk. “Here it is. The county sheriff in Mesilla wants us to pick up a prisoner he’s holding.”

The door to the office opened before I could answer. Frank Polgar rushed in. He was grim and flustered.

“Marshal,” he opened with a curt nod, “I heard you were back on the job. Good thing, too. We’ve got bad trouble.”

“Morning, Frank. What can I do for you?”

“A hide hunter rode into town half an hour ago. He came across Pat Wheedle’s spread. That’s on the other side of Broken Bow about fifteen miles out. Well, this hide hunter, he claims Wheedle’s place was torched to the ground and everyone killed.”

I
walked between the bodies. Everyone was dead. Horses. Dogs. Men.

The smoke from the burning wagons towered like black pillars against the blue, un-winking sky. Broad canvas from the canopy ribs snapped and tore in flaming shreds. Sometimes the wind moaned through the broken wheel spokes like a ghost trying to find its way home.

There were a lot of ghosts here.

We had been riding to Pat Wheedle’s farm when we happened upon the wagon train.

Jake tipped his hat and leaned back in his saddle. “I don’t know why we live here, Mr. Marwood. The desert . . . it kills people.”

A young woman, all of sixteen, lay at my feet. Her green dress was ripped and torn.

“The desert didn’t do this, Jake,” I said.

“Apache?” He shook his head in sad wonder at the mutilation. “Savage enough. And they didn’t just count coup, neither.”

I studied the arrow in the back of a man. He was face down, one arm around the girl. He had tried to protect her with his last breath. Father, maybe, or an older brother.

“They didn’t take the horses, either, like they are wont to do.” Jake was disgusted. “Just plain murder.”

“I know. That bothers me, too.” Indians always took horses in a raid. So did white men posing as Indians, which happened more often than people cared to admit.

Whoever did this wanted to kill every living thing in sight. Like they were trying to scrub everything alive out of the territory.

I put my boot against the dead man, took hold of the shaft and pulled it loose. “Look at this point, Jake, and the fletching. That’s not Apache.”

“Navajo.” He tossed the bloody arrow away. “That fits with what we’ve heard about war parties jumping the reservation. But this isn’t like them.” He meant the wanton slaughter. “They’re mostly peaceful folk, as I reckon.”

“Something made them mad. We’d better find out what.” I took the reins from Jake and swung into my saddle. I grimaced at the twinge of pain that lanced through my side.

Jake eyed me with grave concern. “You up to this riding, Mr. Marwood?”

“Don’t suppose I have a choice anymore, Jake.”

“We still have to ride to Mesilla and pick up that prisoner. Sheriff Olton is waiting with transfer papers.”

“He can hold that man a while longer. If renegades jumped the Bosque Redondo they might hit Haxan next. They’re headed in the right direction. We can’t let that happen.”

For a lot of reasons. I had come a long way through time and wind and dust to make sure something like that
never
happened. Either to the town, or to
her
.

Like it or not, this forced me to put my hunt for Connie Rand on a back burner as well.

We followed the unshod pony tracks. It was hard to judge in the packed earth, but it looked like twenty or thirty horses were in this war party.

“A fair sized group, Jake, and moving fast. The way they always do when they’re on rampage.”

“Lucky thing we were skirting Crooked Mesa back a ways or we’d have never found that wagon train.” He pursed his lips in contemplation. “Six wagons and they didn’t have time to circle up and defend themselves proper.”

I pointed to a bare hillock in the distance. “From the tracks it looks like the war party came over that rise. Let’s ride that way and investigate.”

Jake pulled his Winchester from the scabbard. The desert was quiet all around us. We were holding our breaths, too.

I was thinking about the dead girl. Her hair was long and black. Like Magra’s.

“My stars, can you imagine what it was like?” Jake’s voice was hushed. “Thirty men on war ponies screaming out of the sun. It’s enough to frost your liver.”

“That’s enough, Jake.”

“Yes, sir.”

We crested the rise. The wind was in our faces. We could smell smoke. “Oh no. . . .”

A cabin nestled in a canyon a quarter mile away was wreathed in dying flames. There were more people on the ground. All the livestock were dead.

All men are born of blood. We die that way, too.

It is the blood of our family and friends that ties us together. Makes us human. Gives us enemies.

I cannot remember how long I have travelled or from what depths I arose. I only know I am here now, brought to stand against that which must be overcome.

As all my people are.

“I wired Fort Sumner before the lines were cut. The agency claims a war party of fifty braves jumped the reservation two days ago, and another one, a smaller one, yesterday. Two more parties jumped this morning. Something’s got them stirred up like a hornet’s nest.”

Mayor Polgar and Doc Toland stood in my office, over strung and unsure of themselves. Jake sat beside the potbellied stove oiling a Winchester.

Polgar’s face was drawn and yellow in the desert morning light that streamed through an open window. “Who’s in command there?” he asked.

“Colonel William Colorow,” I answered. “I’ve dealt with him before in another capacity. He’s competent enough. They’ve got a troop trying to run this first war party down, the big one, somewhere along the El Camino Real. No luck, so far.”

“What do you think we should do, Marshal?”

“People are safe if they remain in town,” I said. “It looks like this southern party is hitting up and down the territory, restricting their terror to Sangre County. From what I can gather they’re bypassing towns like Haxan and Glaze and Coldwater.

“Are these random attacks, John?” Doc Toland asked. On this morning he looked more grizzled than ever. His black frock coat had the ever-present dusty cuffs and chemical stains.

“No, Doc, more like they’re searching for something. Or someone.”

The two men exchanged swift glances. “Say again, Marshal?”

I used the map of Sangre County behind my desk. “Here’s where they hit the wagon train Jake and I found. This is the cabin where Flat Bush Creek hits the rise. This is Wheedle’s farm beside it.”

I picked up another telegram from my desk. “An hour ago I got a report from a whiskey drummer who had his mule train attacked yesterday. It’s scattered all over the county, Frank. Back and forth along a line between Crooked Mesa and Coldwater.”

“That covers a hell of a lot of territory, Marshal.”

“The attacks are concentrated there. The first party that jumped the rez, well, if you ask me, it was a feint to give this second one time to gather and attack in force.”

“If they’re raiding up and down like you say, then we’ll never stop them short of all out war.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t an ordinary raiding party, Frank. Jake and I saw that for ourselves.”

“Right enough we did,” Jake broke in.

“The wagons were fired and broken, but they weren’t ransacked. They didn’t even steal the horses, Frank. Nothing was stolen, except for maybe guns and ammunition, which you would expect. Same thing on the farms. Everybody was just . . . dead.”

“Scalped?” Doc Toland asked.

“They were dead, Doc. Leave it at that.”

Jake put the Winchester down and loaded Magra’s old shotgun with buckshot. He clicked the breech shut and handed it to me. “Ready when you are, Mr. Marwood.”

Jake had come a long way since the night we faced Ben Tack together. He was still green, but I trusted him more than any man I knew to watch my back.

He was faithful to a fault. You gave him an order and he would carry it out, even if it meant his death. He had proved that in the plaza.

Polgar gaped in amazement at us. “Where are you two going?” He and Doc Toland followed us onto Front Street. “You must stay and protect this town, Marshal,” Polgar said.

I lashed the shotgun to my saddle. “No, Mayor. I told you these renegades are skirting big settlements. They’re not on a suicide mission. They’re roaming the countryside and that’s where we need to be. Maybe we can run them down and learn what this is all about.”

“This is an Army problem,” Doc Toland put forth. “Let the Army handle it. We must look after our own interests.”

“I’m a U.S. Marshal, which makes this federal business, Doc. Fort Providence is helping Sumner chase that big group up north. Like or not, this small war party is our problem.”

“I don’t support this decision, John,” Polgar said, scowling. He grabbed my arm and turned me around. “You were brought here by the Haxan Peace Commission to protect our town.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Frank.” I had known this was going to happen. When a city pulls strings to get a federal lawman they always think they own him.

“I was sent by the War Department in Washington to uphold the law, and that’s what I aim to do.” I made sure my saddle was cinched tight. “Look, I don’t like this any better than you. But I must handle this problem the way I see fit.”

“What do you want us to do while you’re away?” Doc asked.

“Keep everyone inside. No one will get hurt.”

“Be very careful out there, John,” Toland said.

“We will. Come on, Jake.”

I mounted my blue roan and he kicked a little. He was always able to smell blood coming.

I addressed the two men from my saddle. “I mean it, Frank.” He was glowering. “I don’t want armed posses forming up without my knowledge. I won’t stand for it. You want me to protect this town. Okay, that’s what I aim to do, but I’ll work it my way. Doc, you help the mayor keep a lid on things while I’m gone.”

He waved back his understanding.

Polgar hung onto the bridle of my horse. “John, you’re taking an awful risk going out there alone.”

“Maybe. Like I said, I prefer to handle this my way.”

“How, may I ask, do you plan to do that?”

“I’m headed for Magra Snowberry’s place. She’s part Navajo, but as far as I know they’ve always trusted her because of who her mother was. Mayhap she has an idea what this is all about. Can’t hurt to ask.”

“Then why are you riding? She’s staying at the Haxan Hotel.”

A cold grin crept like ivy across my face. “You don’t know Magra the way I do. I’m sure she’s heard about this trouble by now. That girl has her own way of doing things, no matter what anyone says.”

Jake and I rode hard for Shiner Larsen’s place. As we rode through town shopkeepers called from their doorways, begging us to stay. The plaza was abandoned. People were worried and I couldn’t blame them. We followed the main road out and cut across country to save time.

Magra’s place—everyone continued to call it the Shiner Larsen place after her father—was on a small rise. I followed Gila Creek through the familiar field of boulders. I had been out here so many times the trail was becoming worn.

Jake and I rounded the last big boulder covered with magic symbols when we reined our horses hard enough to cause them to stumble and snort.

“My . . . 
stars
,” Jake choked with awe.

Navajo braves mounted on sleek, painted ponies surrounded the blackened remnants of Magra’s cabin. There must have been twenty or more and they all wore war paint.

“Ride easy, Jake,” I said under my breath. “Keep your hands in sight or we’ll both end up as a smear spot on the desert floor.”

“You think they’re holding Miss Magra hostage?”

As we approached I saw someone had tied buffalo hides to the blackened posts left standing so as to create a small enclosure.

“I don’t know. I don’t see her anywhere around.”

We rode slow. Hard faces watched us come nearer. We pulled short ten yards away.

“Now what?” Jake wondered aloud.

“Let them make the first move. They hold the cards.”

A flap to the hastily constructed shelter opened and a tall Navajo wearing breechclout, moccasins, and an imposing war headdress emerged. His face was marked by the New Mexican desert and wind, his shoulders burned red from the blistering sun. He had a single white feather tied in his hair.

Magra emerged after him, unharmed. She wore buckskin instead of her in-town calico, perhaps as a concession to her people. Her hair was tied back and braided, Indian fashion.

Addressing the war chief standing at her side, she pointed at me.

“That’s him,” she said. “That’s the man known as Long Blood.”