The Shadow Man (17 page)

Kirker raised the rifle to his shoulder. “Get ready. Fire when I do,” he ordered.

The long-barreled weapon exploded harshly. The Mexican officer was flung backward by the punch of the bullet. His feet came loose from the stirrups, and he fell from the back of his horse.

Rifles crashed along the line of Kirker's men. Several more cavalrymen tumbled from their mounts.

The Texan leader dropped his first gun and snatched up the second. Below him, the Mexican sergeant was shouting to his troops. His musket whipped up, and he fired into the brush that concealed his enemies on the rocks above.

Kirker heard the large-caliber ball smash into the branches near his head. The Texan killed the sergeant with a shot in the chest.

Then Kirker's men were firing a second volley. Five more horses were suddenly riderless.

The Paterson Colts of the scalp hunters began to boom, filling the ravine with rapid explosions. A soldier flung up his arms and toppled to the ground.

The cavalrymen, still astride their mounts, spun them to the rear and whipped and spurred toward the river.

Another soldier was struck by a bullet. He leaned forward and clutched at the neck of his steed. He strove vainly to hold his seat as the frightened beast he rode fled with its mates. “Look at them run,” cried Rauch. “They'll not quit until they're back in Chihuahua.”

“Wasn't that wonderful shooting?” exclaimed Connard. “We killed more than half of them. Damn, oh, damn, I like to put a bullet in a man and watch him fall.”

The last of the fleeing Mexicans vanished into the brush beyond the river. The Texans listened until the sound of the running horses could no longer be heard.

“Let's get down there and see what valuables those Mexs were carrying,” Borkan said.

“Charge your guns first,” Kirker ordered. “Then go check the soldiers' pockets, but watch for live ones,” he warned.

The men swiftly reloaded their weapons. Rauch and Flaccus finished first and clambered down from their hiding places.

Kirker maintained a slow pace and came last. Every shot might not have struck true. Wounded men could still kill.

Rauch and Flaccus reached the bodies. Rauch ignored the enlisted men, for they were poorly paid, and went straight to the Mexican officer. The caballeros always had the most money. He kicked his toe in under the body of the officer and heaved upward to roll him over.

As the man flopped onto his back his hand suddenly moved. It held a cocked pistol that stabbed out, pointing directly into Rauch's face. A bright flame flashed from the open end of the barrel.

Rauch, seeing the weapon, tried to dodge to one side to escape the shot. He was too slow. The bullet entered the front of his neck and tore free at the base of his head.

The wounded bandit sat down heavily on the ground. An unbelieving expression washed over his face as he looked down at the blood pumping in great spurts from his severed jugular.

A guttural cry escaped Rauch as he watched the spouting red liquid. His countenance twisted in terror. He shoved his thumb into the hole in his neck, trying to stem the cascade of blood.

“Son of a bitch,” shouted Flaccus. He shot the officer twice. “Shoot the others,” he yelled.

The Texans, except Kirker, stormed among the corpses, firing into the uniformed bodies. Kirker held his pistol and regarded the dead officer. You were stupid, he thought. You led your men straight into a trap.

Rauch sat for a moment watching the blood flow down his arm and drip from his elbow. He began to shudder. His eyes canted upward into his head. He fell to the side. The blood flow weakened quickly, then ceased.

Kirker walked over to Rauch. “You bastard,” he said. “You never would listen to me.” But your mistake has saved me the trouble of shooting you, Kirker thought.

The Texans left the killing ground with eight horses and a small handful of gold and silver coins. The dead lay where they had fallen.

* * *

Senator Simon Caverhill left the card parlor and immediately moved to the side, out of the rectangle of lamp glow spilling from the open doorway. He had many enemies, but that didn't worry him. His action was merely precautionary. He intended to live a very long time.

He touched his two front pockets, bulging and heavy with paper money and gold coin. Luck had been perched on his shoulder with an unshakable hold, and he had won steadily at poker for hours. Some men with little imagination might even say he had won a fortune.

All around him the night in Austin City was dark under thick clouds. Not one star or glimmer of sky light broke the utter blackness. A quarter mile away, along the main street that lay beside the Colorado River, the single oil lantern at the entrance of the hotel was only a tiny pinprick of fire.

Nothing stirred on the avenue in the small, dreary hours of the morning. Even the night insects were mute and asleep. The hushed quiet lay expectant, as if waiting for something to awaken it.

Caverhill pushed into the yielding darkness. He would retrieve his horse from the stable behind the gambling parlor and ride to the hotel. In a very few hours he had to be traveling to his ranch on the Llano River. Kirker would be waiting.

The stale, musty odor of old hay and horse droppings filled his nostrils when he entered the open door of the stable. He angled to the right in the direction of the stall that held his mount.

Segments of the deep murk abruptly moved, like black specters taking shape. The barely discernible forms became more distinct, and the figures of four men tore free from the wall of darkness. They sprang at Caverhill.

By reflex, he dropped to a low, crouched position. He expected to hear a gun explode, to see the flash of burning powder.

But there wasn't any sound or flame. Only the men charging at Caverhill. They intended to kill him quietly.

Caverhill cursed the Stygian gloom. The men must have been hidden in the stable for some time and their eyes would be adjusted to the darkness, while he was almost blind.

He leapt to meet his attackers, the last thing they would expect. His pistol came into his hand. The man directly before him must be blasted out of the way to make an opening for Caverhill to escape.

The opponent on the right was closing in the fastest. His arms rose and he swung a club, invisible to Caverhill in the darkness.

The weapon swept down, missing Caverhill's head as he ducked aside but ripping his ear. The club continued its course and crashed down on the top of his shoulder. Pain, intense as a bolt of lightning, roared through muscle and tendon. The pistol dropped from his numbed fingers.

The four men had rushed within striking distance of Caverhill. One slashed at his face. He heard the swish of the blade slicing air. The man's swing had been short by the thickness of a shadow.

Caverhill drove forward into the man who had missed with the knife. He struck out with his good left hand, a solid blow to the head. A gasping moan escaped the man and he sank backward.

A red-hot streak burned across Caverhill's back. One of his assailants had caught him with a knife. He felt no weakness. Only rage.

Caverhill pivoted before the man could cut again. He hurled himself forward and down, rolling once on the ground. His spinning body knocked the legs from under the man. At the same time Caverhill reached and grabbed the man by the front of his clothes and yanked, adding momentum to the crashing descent of his attacker. The man's head hit the earth with a sodden thud.

Caverhill made a hasty sweep with his hands over the floor of the stable, searching for the man's knife. He found nothing except dirt and hay chaff. His fingers closed upon a handful of the debris.

Caverhill's two remaining opponents rushed him again. He came erect, dodging left. As one of the men stabbed at him Caverhill flung the scrapings from the floor into his eyes.

The man's strike missed, and before the hand with the knife could be withdrawn, Caverhill caught it in a viselike grip. Swiftly, brutally, he pounded the man twice in the face. Bones broke under the knuckles of his hammering fist.

He tore the weapon from the man's weakening hand, whirled, and went to the side. The fourth man was close, and his knife skittered across Caverhill's ribs.

As Caverhill spun, he extended his arm to its full length and struck out with his knife. The last man propelled himself backward, desperately trying to move out of Caverhill's reach. He failed. Two inches of steel blade went into his chest.

Caverhill twisted away in the darkness. He crouched, holding the knife poised, awaiting the next attack.

“Let's get out of here,” one of the men yelled, his voice garbled, as if he spoke from a broken mouth.

Through the lighter shade of darkness in the doorway, three men ran from the stable in frantic haste. One figure lay unmoving on the ground.

Caverhill straightened. The blood strummed in his veins. He raised his head and laughed. The joy of battle had put the strength of ten in his arms. He was invincible against ordinary men.

He felt around on the floor of the stable until he found his pistol. He holstered the weapon, thinking that the loads must be checked at first light. Caverhill led his horse from its stall and mounted. He left by the small rear door. Men who had failed to kill him with knives might decide to try with rifles.

Caverhill passed the hotel and, a block farther along, went on by the home and office of the doctor. No one must see him injured and bloody. He had disabled a few of his enemies. There were others, and they, like a pack of coyotes, would gather and try to pull him down if they thought he was badly wounded and weakened.

He looked to the northwest. Out there at his ranch on the banks of the Llano River, his knife cuts would be treated. The mulatto slave he had purchased in New Orleans had great skill as a healer. She had brought with her a sizable pharmacopoeia of natural substances, roots, bark, and leaves of plants from which poultices and salves could be made that would stop infection. And strong teas could be brewed that healed from within. Caverhill had observed her examining the plants that grew on the ranch for their possible curative powers.

He kicked his horse in the ribs. The steed ran the familiar road. Each time it tried to slow, he sent it onward with a thump to its flank.

Daylight was a gray curtain opening in the east when Caverhill reached the Llano River. Beyond the stream, his slaves were already in the bottomland beside the river. Their axes rang as they chopped the cottonwood and pecan trees, clearing the land for the growing of cultivated crops. Massive piles of logs and brush smoldered and flamed, having burned all night. Horses dragged large sections of trees into more piles.

Caverhill veered from the main road that crossed the river near the slaves. Farther east, he forded the stream. The horse was guided through the woods and up the bluff to the big white house. He stopped the tired mount at the edge of the porch and stiffly climbed down.

* * *

Kirker watched the columns of gray smoke slowly rising from burning wood in the valley below him. He sat in one of the wicker chairs on the porch of Caverhill's new house. A rich man's house.

The structure was located on the north bank of the Llano River overlooking far-flung meadows of side oats, grama grass, and blue-stem grass as high as a man's knees. Patches of live oak were scattered here and there in the wide grassland. On the flood plain of the Llano, large trees made a dense forest. Three to four hundred acres of the bottomland had been cleared. The fields were situated so that the rich, black soil could be irrigated from the river.

To the right of the house in a grove of trees there were squat log cabins, recently constructed slave quarters. Caverhill had become a slave owner since Kirker had last been there.

Kirker saw Caverhill come up the steps at the end of the porch. He noted with surprise that man's shirt was torn and plastered with fresh blood. Even his trousers were soaked with blood.

Caverhill's step broke when he spied Kirker sitting in one of the tall-backed chairs. With a deliberate stride he then went on to the front door and, without a word, went inside.

For an instant as Caverhill turned, Kirker saw a second mass of blood on the broad back of the man. How badly was Caverhill wounded? Kirker grinned. Perhaps very seriously.

“Millicent, come here at once,” Caverhill called inside the house.

Kirker moved to a window and peered through. The light-colored Negress that had come to his knock at the door earlier in the morning hurried from the rear of the house.

“Bring your medicines and needle,” Caverhill ordered. “Have Tona bring me fresh clothing and prepare a bath.”

Caverhill's movements were strong. His injuries must not be deep. Kirker returned to his chair and again sat staring down at the laboring men and the smoky fires close to the river. But he didn't truly see the activity there. His thoughts were on Caverhill. The man would be hard to kill.

Caverhill came from the house. He wore a fresh shirt and trousers. He walked with his normal, lithe stride. Kirker couldn't detect one sign that the man had been wounded.

“Kirker, where have you been for three months?” Caverhill spoke sharply. “I paid you good money to gather information for me and you didn't return.”

“I came past here to report when I got back from Mexico, but you'd gone, no one knew where. So I went on to Houston to do a job. I needed money. Our luck in Mexico was bad. The damn war between the Mexicans and us started while we were there. We had to shoot some of the greasers' soldiers to get back to Texas.”

“Yes, the war started at Palo Alto near the mouth of the Rio Grande,” Caverhill replied. “There've been two battles since then.”

“I traveled to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to check on a rumor that an army of Americans would be assembled at the fort to march on Santa Fe. The rumor was fact. General Stephen Kearny was mustering the 1st Dragoons and one thousand volunteers from Missouri to take New Mexico and from there move on and conquer California. By now he may have marched out from Fort Leavenworth with his so-called Army of the West.”