Red Moon (21 page)

“You must have misunderstood me,” he said in a soft, even tone. “I meant for you to shoot her, not me.”

The worst of the storm had passed when the Ranger arrived at the path leading up to the big boulder. He stepped down from the California saddle and led the speckled barb the last few yards, his Colt in his left hand, his Winchester and the horse's reins in his right. When he eased his way around the boulder, he saw the young Mexican woman sitting in the mud.

“He's . . . gone,” she said, barely above a whisper.

Still, the Ranger looked all around before stepping any closer. He saw the scalped and decapitated heads of two men and one woman, standing in a row across the top of the overturned rock where the gunman Freeman Manning had spent the last minutes of his life.

More warnings?
he asked himself, staring at the heads, rain pouring down their sightless, open eyes, pink blood still running down the rock into the mud. Beside the rock, he saw the empty hole and a short shovel lying in the mud. That's where the money had been buried, he told himself.

When the posse was on Orez's trail and Orez knew that much money would only slow him down, he had his men roll a rock over beside the boulder, scratch out enough dirt to bury the bags, then roll the rock back atop everything.
Smart thinking,
Sam had to admit.

He let the barb's reins fall from his hand and walked over to the woman. Looking all around to make sure it was clear, he then stooped down beside her and examined her bloody, mud-streaked face, her wet, filthy clothes and the rope lying in a pile on the ground beside her.

“Are you wounded anywhere, ma'am?” he asked, looking at a splotch of watery blood on the wet ground, another a few feet away. He wasn't about to ask if she was all right. She clearly wasn't, wound or no wound.

“I—I'm afraid if I stand up, I'll fall in half,” she said in a raspy voice.

The Ranger raised a cold arm from across her waist and looked closely at her. He saw no blood.

“I see no wound,” he said.

She didn't respond to his words. Instead she let her arm fall back limp across her lap when he turned it loose, and she looked all around slowly.

“I killed them all, you know,” she said quietly. “I shot them dead.”

“No, ma'am, I didn't know that,” Sam said. “Did Wilson Orez make you do it?”

She shook her head slowly, as if having to consider it for a moment.

“Make me? No,” she said. “But I already knew that I had to do whatever he wanted me to do. He told me
today everybody dies.
” She took on an uncertain look. “Is that the same thing as him making me?” she asked.

Sam didn't answer right away. He laid his rifle across his wet knee, reached out and wiped a fleck of mud from under her eye. Finally he said quietly, “There's all kinds of ways of making folks do things, I expect. Who are you?”

“I'm Sweet Rose,” she said with a slight but painful-looking smile.

Sam just looked at her.

“My name really is Rosa Dulce,” she added.

“You've been leaving me signs along the way?” he said. “String, pieces of your skirt hem?”

She looked surprised.

“You found them,” she said. “You knew I was here.” She stiffened her expression a little. “Did you come for me, or the money?” she asked.

“To tell you the truth, I came for both,” Sam replied. “But mostly I came for you,” he said. “Whatever you did, I know he must've made you do it. So, if it comes down to anybody questioning—”

“I shot him too,” she said bluntly.

“You did?” said Sam, looking back at the splotch of watery blood on the ground.

“I did,” she said, barely shaking her head. “It didn't bother him. He took the gun from me, replaced the bullet and put it back in my hand. He said, ‘This time, get it right.' So I went ahead and killed them both.”

“Don't talk about it now,” the Ranger said. “Just keep telling yourself that you're safe, that it's over. That's enough for now.” He looked around. Orez had taken all the horses to carry the bags of money. “How bad is he bleeding?” he asked.

“He's bleeding a lot,” she said. “But it doesn't bother him. I don't think he can be killed.”

“He can,” Sam said. He took her hands in his and stood up, helping her to her feet. “There, see? You didn't fall apart.”

“He knows you're tracking him,” she said.

“He does? How does he know that?” the Ranger asked. Even as he asked, it dawned on him that Orez hadn't left a horse for her.

“Because he's seen you now,” she said. She gave him a strange, thin smile. “He said he would know for sure when he sees you come here. I think he knows everything, about everything.”

Sees me come here?
Sam looked all around warily, his eyes going up along the cliffs and ledges above them.

“He knows about the string and the cloth I left for you,” she said. “I told him everything last evening.”

“Come with me,” he said quickly, realizing Orez had meant what he'd told her. Today everybody dies
.
He had only left her alive to keep him standing in the open. Orez was up there, behind the breaking clouds, waiting for his shot.

Still scanning the cliffs and the hill line, Sam took her arm and started to lead her to the shelter of the large boulder. But before they moved a step, she gave a loud grunt and slammed against him. He caught her in his arms as he heard a distant rifle shot resound from somewhere in the swirl of rain on the barely visible hill line above them.

Without a second between shots, Sam dragged the woman to the shelter of the boulder as mud from the next bullet sprayed up, followed by the explosion. Quickly he leaned her back against the boulder and looked at the gaping wound in her chest.

“See?” she said, choking, gasping for breath. “He was right, today everybody dies,” she said. “Just like he . . . said we would. . . .” Her head fell over onto her shoulder and she seemed to relax in the mud and the falling rain.

Sam closed her eyes with his wet gloved hand, then turned and looked around the edge of the boulder in the direction the killing shot came from.
Who in the world could make such a shot as that?
he asked himself, feeling the icy reality of just how deadly this man was. He looked up as thin breaks in the black sky drifted across the obscured ledges and cliffs.

Don't let him throw you,
he warned himself. If Orez had gotten his way, one of those two shots would have left him lying dead in the mud beside the young woman.

You wanted me to fear you. All right, you've got that,
the Ranger told himself, looking over at the three heads standing drenched in the pouring rain. “But so what?” he murmured aloud to himself. He'd felt fear before, more times than he cared to recall. He forced himself to his feet, his back against the boulder, and stood there for a moment.

He understood fear. He'd learned that fear wasn't the lack of courage. Indeed not, he told himself. He'd come to know that there could be no courage without fear being the challenge it had to overcome. He took a breath, stepped out from the boulder and walked to where the barb stood in the open, staring at him through the rain.

Why hadn't Orez shot the horse if he didn't want to be followed?

He didn't know; he didn't care. Whatever Orez had in mind, it was getting ready to play out, he thought, gripping his rifle tight in his wet, gloved hand. He felt whatever fear he had fall away under the icy current that swept through him. He gathered the barb's reins, stepped up into the saddle and touched his heels to the horse's sides.

Today, everybody dies,
he said silently to himself, looking back up at the gray-silver mist hiding the hill line.
Today, everybody dies. . . .

•   •   •

In an ancient dugout on the wall of a high bluff at the mouth of the Twisted Hills, an old Red Sleeve warrior named Yehicho, or Iron Belly, awakened with a start and looked up at Wilson Orez, who sat at the front of the high cliff dwelling looking out on the slow, steady rain falling into the canyon below. Neither man acknowledged the other.

After a long silence, Orez said over his shoulder, “Before I cut the face off the man who fathered me, and burned his trading post down around him, I told him it was Iron Belly who informed me he was my father.” Orez paused for a moment. “He didn't like it. He said you were supposed to be his friend.”

“No, he did not like it.” Iron Belly gave a thin, flat smile.

He had heard the story so many times he didn't have to pay close attention. Instead he reached up with his knife, cut a slice of dried antelope from a shank of meat hanging from the ceiling of the dwelling and cut it into smaller pieces on his bare knee.

“I was never his friend,” he said. “A Red Sleeve has no white man for a friend.” He took a bite of the meat for himself and held a piece over to the nose of a blind, aged dog who lay curled up beside him on the stone floor. The dog took the piece of antelope in his toothless mouth and gummed it slowly, savoring the taste of it.

Iron Belly pitched the largest of the pieces over against Orez's thigh.

“Eat with me,” he said. “You smell like a long journey.”

“It
has
been a long journey,” said Orez, picking up the meat and tearing off a mouthful of it with his teeth. Without looking around at the old warrior, he chewed the meat and reflected. “In the last moon, twenty white men came to kill me, to collect the bounty on my head.” He paused, then said, “But I killed them, one and two and three at a time, until now they're all dead—all except one.” He shrugged. “I'll kill him before the day's gone and the moon rises for the night.”

“The one still coming is not after bounty, is he?” Iron Belly said.

“No, he's not,” said Orez. “A man I killed today told me this one is an Arizona Ranger. He doesn't scare easily. These kinds of lawmen don't stop. They don't hunt for the sake of bounty. They hunt for the sake of the hunt. This one is a warrior, like we are.”

He sounded pleased, Iron Belly noted. He saw the blood ooze down Orez's side. But he wasn't going to mention it. A man knew when he was wounded, and how bad. It was not his place to say anything.

Instead he said, “What more do you want from the white man, Wilson Orez?”

“I don't know,” Orez replied. “I've killed his kind, violated his women and stolen his money.” He paused, then added, “Still, it's not enough. I'm not satisfied.”

“It's the white man's blood in you that keeps you from being satisfied,” said Iron Belly. “You are as much white man as you are Apache. The war you fight inside you never stops.” He shook his head slowly and passed another small piece of meat to the blind dog's frost-colored muzzle. “When you were a boy, you used to cut yourself, to punish yourself for having the white man's blood. When you grew up, you cut everybody else for it.”

“I cursed my white blood. I still do,” Orez said, tearing off another bite of meat with his teeth.

“You curse it, but you can't change it,” Iron Belly replied.

“The other day I thought I had gotten rid of it,” Orez said. “I stood naked in the storm and felt it leave me.”

“But it was back inside when the storm passed, wasn't it, Wilson Orez?” said the old Apache.

Orez only sat slumped, chewing the dried antelope.

“Tell me, old man,” he said, “what would the Red Sleeves think of me, if they knew I'm one of the last of us alive?”

“Don't wonder what the dead think,” said Iron Belly. “They knew you as a warrior. Your white blood didn't matter to them.”

“You're wrong, Iron Belly. It did make a difference,” Orez said. “I proved myself the best of us warriors, time and again. Still, I knew they thought less of me for my white blood.”

“You did prove yourself a great warrior to the Red Sleeves, Wilson Orez,” said Iron Belly. “But you never proved it to yourself.” Again he shook his head slowly and gave the blind dog another small cut of antelope. He scratched its bony head as it gummed the meat. “And that has cost the lives of so many people whose paths crossed yours on this earth,” he said with regret.

“I have four horses carrying bags of money,” Orez said. “How many bags can I give you?”

“I have no use for the white man's money,” Iron Belly said, brushing the notion aside. “I once used it when I had no wood to burn. It made my fire burn greasy, and smelled like fish that were too long dead.” He paused, then said, “Does their money always smell that way?”

“Yes, I believe it does,” Orez said. “They don't smell it, though. At least I've never heard them complain.” With much effort he rose to his feet, his hand pressed to his bullet wound behind his right side.

“No wonder you hate them, then,” Iron Belly said in reflection, still scratching the blind dog's head. “How can they not smell something so bad?” He gave a look of disgust.