The Red Hills (14 page)

While he lay back drinking it had been so easy for Crow to steal first the horse and then the hand-gun. The mount was tethered a hundred paces back along the trail and the gun had been simply thrown down the sides of the gorge towards the Yellowstone. Since Menges's saber was safely boxed up at Fort Buford, he was completely defenseless. Crow could afford to take some time and enjoy his revenge on the man who had totally ruined the only genuine career that he had ever had.

'Guess you'd better take off your clothes, Captain,' he said, letting his hand drop casually to the stock of the Purdey.

'Sure. Anything you say. Anything at all. I'm doin' it now, Crow. Doin' what you say,' babbled Menges, frantically tearing off his shirt, buttons popping away in the dust. Tugging off the boots. Socks. Sliding the suspenders off his shoulders and kicking his way out of the stained pants. Finally standing naked and shivering in front of the avenging figure of Crow, cupping his hands over his genitals in a feeble gesture of self-protection.

'That's fine. Wouldn't want you to die shamin' that uniform. You've done more than enough of that during your living, Menges.'

The little man dropped to his knees, clasping his hands together. The rolls of fat from his belly drooped over his thighs. Sweat was running from his forehead, dripping from the end of his nose. His tongue kept flicking out to moisten his lips as he begged desperately for his life.

'Please, Crow. I'll do just about anythin' you want. I'll leave the Army. Get you back in. I got money. It's yours. Plenty of money. You can have it all. No use to me.'

'I don't want your money, Captain. Just want you dead. Slow and hard a passing as I can come up with for you.'

Menges began to weep, great blubbering tears spilling in the sand in front of him. Flabby shoulders shaking with his crying, fingers tangling and knotting.

'Please. Anything!!!'

'No.'

In his times with the various Indian tribes Crow had learned many things. Including watching the women as they had practiced their skills at torture. He had seen things done to a human being that almost defied belief. Including keeping a man alive when every nerve of his pain-racked body screamed out for the merciful release of death. It wasn't something that Crow had enjoyed, but it was something that he'd learned. And he'd considered putting some of that knowledge to the test with Menges. But there wasn't really enough time. The area was well-patrolled by the Cavalry and it would ruin the sweetness of his revenge if it was interrupted.

So the killing had to be quicker than he wanted.

But that didn't mean Menges wasn't going to suffer.

Indians laughed at the way the white man would load down his prisoners with heavy chains and locks, binding them with great lengths of rope. All that was needed to totally immobilize a man was a couple of short strips of strong rawhide, each of them about eight inches long.

At Crow's orders Menges stretched himself out, facedown, in the dirt, putting his hands obediently behind his back. It wasn't even necessary to draw a gun to reinforce the words. The Captain was so terrified that he would have done anything Crow told him to, just to hang on to life for a little while longer.

Menges was a civilized man and he made the mistake of believing that Crow would treat him as such. The binding and humiliation was just part of the revenge. He understood that. What he didn't realize at first was the depths of his enemy's bitterness and anger.

Once the thumbs and toes were securely tied, Crow stood up again, looking down on his naked, helpless victim. The rawhide thongs had been pulled so tight that they almost vanished into the swollen flesh and dark blood seeped out from under the nails.

'Now,' said Crow, gently, dusting his hands together like a store-keeper preparing to fill a customer's order.

'What are you .?..' began Menges, straining his face round to look up at Crow. Making it easier for the lean man to kick him hard in the side of the head. Hard enough to roll him half on his side, eyes shutting, a grunt of pain forcing its way between his puffy lips.

'On your back, Menges,' Crow said, smiling down at him. Following up the words with another kick. Brutally short, but packed with sinewy power. The toe of Crow's boot jabbing at Menges's ribs, just to the right of his breast-bone. There was the crack of a bone breaking and a purple bruise sprang up oil the soft skin.

'Aaaarrgghh!! Jesus that...'

'Over,' repeated Crow, stabbing out a third time with his foot, cracking another rib. There was a strangled cry from the helpless man and he rolled on his back, dust mingling with sweat, matting his thin hair.

'Better. Much better. Now we can get on with it.'

Unhurriedly, he moved to stand by the side of the naked figure, looking down at Menges. Black eyes without any expression, seeing the fear in Menges's face. Suddenly lifting his foot again, the naked man too slow and too securely tied to evade the blow. This time it was the heel and not the toe that ground into the flesh. Flush on the genitals, tearing the skin, pulping the soft organs against the cutting edge of the pubic bone.

Menges screamed. A thin, reedy noise oddly out of proportion to the agony he was suffering. He doubled up, arms straightening behind him as he struggled to break the rawhide thongs. And vomited, a thin string of bile following the gushing stream of whisky from his open mouth, muddying the sands and stones around him.

'That's the beginning Menges. Only the beginning.'

Crow looked down contemplatively at Menges, and kicked him again in the groin, feeling the jar of the impact run up the muscles of his leg.

When the Captain recovered consciousness from that kick nothing had changed. The sun still hung in the blue sky and the day was warm. The Yellowstone still thundered hundreds of feet below them. And Crow still stood looking down at him, hands by his sides.

Patiently waiting.

'Back with us, Mister Menges. Excellent. Don't think this is some kind of revenge for the way you let your wife get herself butchered. It's not. Revenge for anyone else is a futile and time-wasting feeling. I don't give a damn for her. Or for anyone else, Menges. But you hurt me. You and Simpson with your damned cowardly lies.' All of that delivered in the same calm voice, without any anger or feeling.

Menges began to scream. Loud as he could. Letting it rip in case there was anyone near who might spare him from this cold-faced madman.

Crow wondered for a moment whether to let him scream.

The sound was pleasant to his ears, letting him know how Menges was suffering. But there was always the danger of someone hearing. Perhaps it might be better to take the honed-down saber and use it to slice out Menges's tongue. The danger there was that he might choke to a speedy death on his own blood.

'Going to have to gag you, Captain,' he said, picking up a sizeable rock in his left hand. A grey, pitted stone, about the size of a woman's fist. Kneeling down by Silas Menges and pausing, swatting away a fly that buzzed around his face.

'That'll never go in my mouth, Crow,' said Menges, voice trembling with fear.

'Will with a mite of help,' was the quiet reply.

Working with a steady efficiency Crow ground the stone several times into Menges's mouth, knocking out the remaining teeth, splintering them into shards of white bone. Snapping them off level with the bleeding gums.

Cutting and bruising the red lips that had lied so glibly to the court martial.

Finally jamming the bloodied rock hard in the open mouth, shutting off the scream like slamming a door on bedlam. Tying the stone in place with a strip torn off the discarded blue shirt.

Menges's eyes popped from his skull and he rolled his head backwards and forwards, utterly helpless and mute.

Blood and spittle gargled in his throat and frothed around the gag.

'There, Captain. Now we can go on without any kind of interruption from anyone,' Crow said, conversationally.

Glancing around. The whole land about them was empty of life, except for a couple of buzzards, circling above them on leathery wings, scenting blood.

For the next half hour Crow worked quickly and efficiently on the naked body of Menges with the knife. Cutting here, and slicing away a little flesh there. Working faster than he would have wished to enjoy the revenge to the full. Constantly aware that Menges's original plan had been made for him to die. Just as his plan was for the Captain to die.

Twice Menges passed out, eyes rolling white in their sockets, but each time Crow revived him with a little water from his canteen. Dabbing it on the pale temples. Wiping away some of the worst of the blood from face and groin and from the fingers and toes. Tidying up the ragged ends of severed tendons and muscles where they'd trailed in the hot sand as Menges rolled and tossed, locked in a timeless Hell created just for him and for him alone.

But the sun was sinking and Crow wished to be away.

West towards the Big Horn after Trooper Simpson and Autie Custer for the last course of his vengeance.

He'd looked around for what he wanted. A low cave, invisible from the trail. Any strangled mutterings that Menges might be able to make through the brutally efficient gag would be inaudible above the sound of the misty pounding waters far below.

There was a jagged spur of rock immediately over the opening of the small cavern, about eight feet high.

While Menges lay moaning faintly through the blood and spit, Crow walked to the cave and threw a loop of rope over the rock, letting it dangle down to a little below head height. With expert skill the tall man fashioned a noose in the end of the rope.

Although Crow had delicately removed the eyelids from the injured man, Menges was unable to see through the mask of dried blood that spread thick and brown across his face. Crow again wiped him clean, wanting him to appreciate and understand exactly what was happening to him.

And what was about to happen.

Menges tried to speak. Mumbled what might have been: 'Stop it.'

With effortless ease Crow lifted him and carried him to the cave, carefully avoiding becoming splattered with blood. "I'll stop it very soon,' he whispered in the man's ear as he laid him down in the sand beneath the shadow of the dangling noose.

In the Montana summer heat most of the blood was already congealing, attracting hordes of flies that battled among the peeled flesh. Menges had given up any kind of struggle, his mind locked away into a world where there was only white pain and endless night.

Crow stood over him, smiling down at him as fond as a mother with a new baby. He didn't give a damn about what Reverends and soft Easterners might preach about forgiveness.

There was no dish as satisfying as revenge.

Menges had robbed him of the life he'd chosen, and tried to kill him as well. That meant there was nothing wrong about paying back Menges with interest.

'Turn the other cheek and you get it branded,' he muttered to nobody in particular.

At his feet Menges wriggled, turning his head away from the swinging loop of hemp. Crow wiped away a trickle of sweat from his upper lip. 'Don't worry about the hangin' bein' a good one, Captain,' he said. 'I seen more hangings than you had hot dinners. Even saw Billy Duly up in Mankato, way back... Must be twelve or more years back when I was a shaver. Saw old Billy set thirty eight Sioux all a'danglin' from the same gallows.' He laughed softly. 'Hell, I can recall that was the day after Christmas. Cold as charity up in Minnesota there. Day after Christmas. Filled folks there with a fine seasonal spirit.'

Despite his lean build, Crow was a man of enormous strength and he lifted Menges up and propped him against the side of the cave, in a patch of shadow. His victim's eyes watered constantly, washing a stream of pink through the blood. With the eye-lids gone, blindness would come very quickly if he was left in the sun.

Working fast, Crow built a small pyramid of stones, standing on the top of it to make sure it was stable. Glancing up to check it was positioned directly under the noose.

Lifting Menges on to it, adjusting the loop of the lariat around his neck. Taking great care that the knot of the rope was placed at the back of the head. If he'd put it beneath either ear then Menges could have tried to hop off the stones and quickly broken his neck. Crow didn't want it quick. This way, if — or when — Menges finally slipped and lost his balance, the end would be a slow strangling.

The rope barely held Menges upright, and he teetered for balance on his precarious perch, knees wobbling while he fought for a kind of safety.

'That's good, Captain. Keep that up. You never know. Just maybe there's goin' to be a patrol out this way sometime today or tomorrow. You keep in there and don't slip or fall and you could even be alive when they get here to save you. Keep that thought in mind.' He paused and began to walk away. Stopping. Turning back. Menges had found a point of equilibrium. Mutilated and desperately wounded, he had managed to reach a position on the shaking mound of stones where he wouldn't fall.

Not for a very long time.

His body was rigid with the effort of hanging on to the last, lingering threads of life and hope, face turned away from Crow towards the dark recesses of the cave. For a moment Crow wondered what was going on inside the man's failing brain. What he was thinking.

But he didn't really care.

There was no point in bothering about a dead man.

And Menges was dead. Even though there was still a heart pumping blood round the body and breath that rasped in tortured lungs. Despite that, Captain Silas Menges of the United States Cavalry was dead.

Had been dead ever since Crow decided that he would have to kill him and Trooper Simpson.

Simpson was still walking around somewhere in that Montana sun. Out with Custer to the west.