The Shadow Man (21 page)

“Goddamn, Kirker,” growled a man, “you didn't have to do that. He was already same as dead.”

“No time to waste on him. Can't let them get organized. Let's go and shoot the rest of the damn Mexicans.” Kirker went cautiously along the hallway.

Rifles and pistols boomed in other parts of the hacienda. Every wall shook and jarred with the concussions. Dirt rained down between the willow-stems of the ceiling. A woman screamed in great agony.

“Halt here,” Kirker said as they neared an unlit section. “We'll be shooting each other if we're not careful.”

The sound of firing dwindled away. The Texans began to call to each other. A group of men came out of the darkness farther along the hallway.

“Every greaser we could find—man, woman, and child—is dead,” called Borkan, who walked in the lead.

“Maybe,” replied Kirker. “Light candles in all the rooms and search. When you're done, come outside. How many of you are wounded?”

“Only one,” said Borkan. “Some old man shot Jeeter dead center. We didn't see any real fighting Mexicans. Did you?”

“No. That must have been them we shot to pieces yesterday. We've got some wounded. A woman with a shotgun got off a blast. We'll take them outside where there's more light and see what we can do for them.” Kirker pivoted and pushed back through the men.

* * *

Glen Sansen came in timidly. He had stayed by the river until the firing had ceased. He cursed having ever met Caverhill and the killer Kirker.

He saw the leader of the Texans with other men, some standing and some lying prone on the ground. He slowed even more at the sight.

A short blond man straightened up from the prostrate bodies. “One dead. One shot in the face with a shotgun and blind. He'll die soon. Two others wounded, but they can ride and should heal okay.”

“All right, Tumblin,” Kirker said. “Not too bad.” The first objective had been taken with the loss of only two men. That left twenty-eight and himself to complete the job.

Kirker saw Sansen and motioned for him to come close. “Get in there and find every scrap of paper there is,” Kirker ordered. “Bundle it up for safe carrying.” He gestured for Sansen to hurry.

“Tumblin, I brought you because you've had some doctor training. Get busy and take care of the two who'll live.”

The shrill, frightened cry of a woman pierced the walls of the hacienda. A moment later a heavyset man dragged a buxom woman from the door. He was laughing in a jovial tone as she struggled futilely to break free of his hold on her arm.

“Look what I found. She was hiding in a big basket in the storeroom. Now I'll have me some pleasurin'.”

Kirker spoke to Borkan, standing at his elbow. “Back me. One woman is certain to make trouble. The men will fight over her.”

Kirker raised his voice and called to the man holding the woman. “Timmins, remember your word. Every Mexican was to be killed immediately, even the women.”

The man laughed roughly. “That was two weeks ago. A man's needs change.”

“A man's word to me doesn't change. Now kill her!”

“Not for a little while,” Timmins said. His eyes battled with Kirker.

Kirker drew his pistol with a lift of his hand. He fired. The bullet broke the woman's sternum, then plowed onward and shattered her spinal column. Like a rag doll, she was flung away. With her arm still clutched by Timmins, her body whipped around to land on the ground at his heels.

Timmins's rage poured into his eyes. His hand moved to touch his revolver.

With a swift movement Kirker shifted his point of aim to Timmins. “I need every rider I've got. But just maybe I can do without you. Do you want to test me?”

Timmins seemed to stop breathing. He'd heard much about Kirker's skill with a gun. He moved his hand and hooked his thumb in a vest pocket. “You're right. We'll do it as we agreed.”

“Good. Take all the men except Tumblin and Sansen and round up every head of livestock you can by mid-afternoon. You and four others will leave today and take this first drive to Texas. I want you gone, because I may still decide to kill you. If you have any argument about this, then spit it out.”

“No argument. I'd just as soon go east back to Texas.”

“Then do it.” Kirker growled, tired of the man. He holstered his gun and stood watching after Timmins until the man had ridden off.

* * *

Kirker slept in the giant master bed with its deep feather-tick mattress. It rained hard during the night, and he came awake, listening to the downpour. All signs of the herd moving east would be washed away. The big common grave of the dead occupants of the hacienda was also well hidden. The storm would add even more to its concealment.

Caverhill had been right. Kirker believed he would be a good leader of military campaigns. He kept his mind away from what might have happened if the fighting men of the rancho had been behind the walls and in the hallways of the hacienda.

Come awake!” a guttural voice speaking in the tongue of the Comanche ordered Jacob. The sharp point of some weapon pricked the flesh of his cheek.

Jacob sat up with a surge, his hand darting out for his pistol. But the Colt was gone, and so, too, were his knife and rifle.

An Indian squatted close by in the morning dusk. He held a fourteen-foot battle lance, steel headed from half a soldier's saber, pointed directly at the white man.

Jacob froze in place. The hatred in the Comanche's smoky bronze face was ugly to behold. Only a trifling motion from Jacob would trigger the Indian to strike with the lance.

The warrior did not stir. The only movement about him was a thick vein pulsing in his forehead just below a twisted, red cloth cord that encircled his head. The cloth was from a Mexican soldier's uniform.

Jacob ignored the few drops of blood that dripped from his cheek. He held his gaze unwavering, locked on the black liquid eyes of the Indian. Minutes slid past, endlessly long.

As Jacob waited, he evaluated the Comanche. The warrior's face was broad with a large, flaring nose. He was slightly undersized and leanly sinewed over heavy bones. He wore only a breechcloth and moccasins with leggings tied above the knees.

His left arm up near the shoulder had recently healed from a bad wound. A sunken spot where a bullet or some sharp weapon had deeply punctured the flesh was puckered and purplish, marring the perfect flow of muscle. Yet that didn't seem to lessen the man's obvious strength. Jacob believed he'd have little chance to get past the war lance and overpower the Comanche.

The man arose in one fluid motion. His lance reached out to touch the two scalps Jacob had placed on a rock in the night to dry.

“White man's hair. Did you kill these men?”

“Yes,” answered Jacob in the Indian language.

“Why? White men do not take other white men's scalps when they kill them.”

“Because I hated them for what they did to me.”

“What harm did they do that made you kill them?” questioned the Indian.

“They murdered my family and wife while I was not there to protect them.”

A momentary flicker of some deep emotion passed over the Comanche's features. It was quickly hidden.

“Were they alone, just these two?”

“When I found them, they were. But they were with other men before.” Jacob pointed at the many tracks on the bank of the creek. “These two who lost their scalps stayed behind. Now I'll catch and kill these others who are riding south.” Jacob thought the Comanche knew more than he pretended.

“Are they also your enemies?” Jacob asked.

“They
are
my enemies. And only because you had two of their scalps did I not run my lance through you in your sleep.”

“Why do you trail them?”

The Comanche lowered his lance. “The leader and some of the men are scalp hunters for the Mexicans. The governor of Chihuahua pays gold for the scalps of my people, the Comanche, and also for the scalps of the Apache. He gives gold even for the murder of children. How many times has your family been slain?”

“Once,” replied Jacob, surprised by the question.

The Indian held up three fingers. “Three times white men have destroyed my wife and children. My sorrow is threefold greater than yours.”

The Comanche fell silent a moment. His eyes stabbed down at the tracks. “This band of murderers, part of them, are responsible for two of those attacks on my tepee. They must not be allowed to do such deeds again. I, like you, will catch and slay them.”

Jacob felt his own poignant sadness. How awful to lose your woman and be all alone. Yet the Indian had experienced it three times. Jacob examined more closely the face of the Comanche. Beneath the hate that glinted iron-hard from the man, Jacob saw the soul-bending anguish in him.

“You and I shouldn't fight,” Jacob said. “Together we would be doubly strong and would win the battle with our foes.”

As the Comanche pondered Jacob's suggestion he gazed to the south along the fresh traces on the worn wagon road. He glanced back at Jacob. “They take your sheep and cattle and drive them to the land of the Texans. What will you do about that?”

“The livestock means nothing to me. I must run these men to earth.”

“Before your rancho, they take many animals from the rancho on the Gallinas River.”

“That would be the Bautista rancho. What of the people at the rancho?”

“All dead. I found the big grave that holds them all. The scalp hunter thinks he hides it, but I found it.”

Jacob jerked, startled at the news that the Indian had found a grave. “Did you find a grave at my rancho?”

“I did not search. However, I believe the murderers would do the same thing—hide the bodies.”

The Indian studied Jacob. “I must be the one that slays the chief of the scalp hunters,” he said.

“Your grievance against this man is greater than mine. You can kill him. But should you fail to take his life, then I will complete the task.”

The Comanche laughed, his mirth hoarse and ghastly, like a raven's croak. “Four moons now I have hunted the man that slays women and children. He thinks me shot and drowned in the Rio Pecos. But, you see, he is wrong. I am alive and healed. Several times I almost catch him when he goes to Chihuahua to sell the scalps. But he leaves there very fast, with the Mexican cavalry after him. So I cannot get near to him. Then I follow him far to the east, among many white men. That was very dangerous for me. But now he has returned to my land of the great Llano Estacado and the Rio Pecos.

“I have only one goal before I die, to take this man's life. I shall not fail to do that.”

Jacob visualized the silent Indian in pursuit of the white man through all the many days and across hundreds of miles of Mexican desert and Texas plains. How had he managed that without losing the trail in the rain and wind, and more difficult still, in the countless horse tracks near the cities? The Comanche must be an unmatched tracker, even among his own people.

“What is your name?” Jacob asked.

“High Walking. What is yours?”

“Jacob.”

The Comanche warrior nodded curtly. He strode to his horse, a Mexican Cavalry mount, and climbed into the saddle. He fastened the lance along the horse's side to point upward and backward at a slant. A quiver of arrows, jasper-tipped and winged with hawk feathers, and a powerful war bow were taken from where they hung on the pommel of the saddle. The quiver was slid over his shoulder to hang down his back. He held the bow in his hand. With a touch of rein the Comanche's horse left at a fast lope.

Jacob hastened to pack his bedroll and retrieve his weapons, lying nearby on the ground where the Comanche had placed them. He overtook High Walking, and under a new sun breaking loose from the far horizon, they sped south beside the Rio Pecos.

* * *

The blazing sun tortured the earth and the creatures of the earth. No wind stirred to carry away the heat, and it lay on the surface of the ground like liquid gravity.

Jacob and High Walking rode doggedly south beneath the fireball. Directly under their feet, the tracks of the raiders always led onward. Through eyelids hammered down to a squint by the brutal sun, they warily watched for an ambush. Both men knew that somewhere ahead, a rear guard of the outlaws could be waiting in hiding to kill them.

The land was changing as they traveled, gradually flattening, the soil becoming sandy. The grass was shorter and beginning to lose its greenness. The flowers of the cacti had died and turned brown. A multitude of yellow bean pods were ripening on the slender limbs of the mesquite.

On the left, the meandering Rio Pecos flowed in a wide, swampy valley choked with water-greedy phreatophyte grasses, sedges, and brush. Large cottonwoods lined the banks, elbowing each other for space in which to sink their roots. The horsemen passed many abandoned river oxbows lying half full of dead water, as gray and dull as lead.

Near midday the river curved steeply away to the west, and the road led down to a gravelly ford. The men stopped in the shade of a cottonwood at the edge of the water. The horses lowered their heads and sucked noisily, slaking their thirst.

For several minutes Jacob and High Walking cautiously evaluated the dense stand of brush and trees on the far side of the two-hundred-foot strip of open water. To be caught in that flat, exposed surface by riflemen would mean death. Still, they had to move on. They glanced up and down the stream. The muck and mire and rank grass and brush of the swampy river extended in both directions as far as they could see. There would be quicksand in many places.

High Walking emitted a short, aggravated hiss. “I go. You stay,” he said. “Help me with your rifle if our enemies are there.”

Without waiting for an answer, he kicked his mount into the water. Jacob saw him unlimber his war bow and draw an arrow from the quiver. He nocked the shaft. Jacob lifted his rifle to a ready position for a quick shot.