The Shadow Man (29 page)

Jacob evaluated the woman for several seconds. He spoke to High Walking. “She says the scalp hunter you're chasing is in the white man's house. Also, there's another man who is responsible for the murder of my people.”

“Then let us go and kill both of them.”

“Who else is at the house?” Jacob questioned Millicent.

“Another woman. She will be in her room in the rear of the house.”

“Black or white?”

“Like me.”

“And the black men?”

“They are not allowed near the house. And even if they were, they wouldn't help Caverhill.”

“Lead the way,” ordered Jacob. He kicked the lantern into the river, and the world went black.

Millicent warily led the way from the woods and up the hill across a broad stretch of newly cleared ground. Several times she glanced at the white man and Indian to be certain they were still with her, for they made no more sound than two floating shadows.

She allowed her hate of Caverhill to soar and flare. Now she believed she might have found in these strange men someone strong enough to help her destroy Caverhill.

They reached the porch and climbed the steps. She whispered to them, “This way. The senator and the other man are in the big library at the far side of the house.”

She guided them inside, across a large room with a thick carpet, and down a wide hallway. Near an open door that spilled light, she stopped and put her finger across her lips. She held up two fingers and gestured inside.

As the two men stepped into the light of the room, Millicent slipped off along the dark hallway.

* * *

“I'll put these documents in the safe,” said Caverhill. He rose from his chair and walked toward an iron vault in the corner of the library.

Kirker also stood up. He looked at the broad back of Caverhill. The man would kill him with just as little thought as he'd ordered the death of Sansen. Unless Kirker acted first.

Kirker heard the footsteps of two men entering the room behind him. That would be Flaccus and Connard. With the help of their guns, especially the fast Connard, Caverhill could be slain regardless of his skill at fighting. Kirker's hand went to the pistol on his side. When Caverhill opened the safe, the three of them would fire on him. Kirker turned to signal his intent to his men.

Caverhill rotated the dial of the safe left and right to the correct combination. He twisted the handle and swung wide the thick iron door.

“Goddamn!” Kirker's voice was a guttural whisper behind him.

Caverhill whirled around. Kirker stood staring at two men near the door to the hallway.

The newcomers were a strange pair of intruders. A gaunt Indian, his bronze skin stretched tight over angular bones, held a powerful war bow nocked with an arrow and drawn to full arc. Beside him, a gray-bearded white man aimed a cocked revolver.

Caverhill rapidly measured the intruders. Their eyes bore back at him, hostile and yet with a pleased cast, as if the men were glad to see him. Caverhill primed himself to pull his pistol. He thought he could kill the Indian before the man could hit him with the arrow. He was not so sure there would still be time to kill the man with the handgun.

“You can't beat either one of us,” Jacob said. “But go ahead and try. We would like that.” His hate of these men who killed women and children burned like fire in his veins.

“What do you want?” asked Caverhill, surprised at the accuracy of the American's reading of his intentions.

“To see both of you die.”

“What have we done to you?”

“My rancho was on the Rio Pecos. My friend's wives and children were murdered for their scalps.” Jacob's words were crusty and brittle.

High Walking spoke in a harsh tone. “We talk when we should be putting the steel of our knives into them. I am going to scalp the redheaded man while he is still alive and make him eat it.”

“What did he say?” asked Kirker, seeing the Indian's hot eyes upon him.

“That he plans to scalp you alive and feed you your own flesh. Unbuckle your gun belts and throw them against the wall. You go first.” Jacob motioned to Caverhill.

“Do it damn slow,” warned Jacob, observing the sudden tightening in the Caverhill's face.

Caverhill pulled the buckle of the belt free and tossed the holstered pistol aside.

“Now you get rid of your gun,” Jacob ordered Kirker.

The scalp hunter did as directed. “Now what?” he asked.

“I think this Comanche intends to start carving on you,” said Jacob.

“Don't I get a knife to make it an even fight?”

Jacob interpreted the words for High Walking. The Comanche laughed at the question, a weird, cackling laugh so full of unquenchable hate that Jacob felt his own soul cringe.

High Walking slid his long-bladed knife from its sheath. He poised on the balls of his feet. In a fury of muscled speed, he hurled himself at Kirker.

The Texan dodged to the side. High Walking veered to meet the change in the Texan's position, and his knife reached out. The sharp blade slashed into Kirker's upper arm.

The Indian stopped and pivoted. He swung the hilt of his knife in a backhanded blow. The hard butt of the weapon crashed into the temple of Kirker's head. He fell to his knees.

High Walking instantly sprang upon the dazed man, hammering down with the butt of his knife. Kirker collapsed to the floor.

The Comanche's knife flashed as he encircled Kirker's head, cutting through to the bone of the skull. He clamped a powerful grip on the man's hair and yanked. The scalp came loose with a tearing sound.

High Walking flopped Kirker onto his back. The glazed eyes of the half-conscious scalp hunter looked up at the dark visage of the Indian above him.

High Walking held the scalp over Kirker. “Look,” said the Indian. He shook the hairy object, and blood dripped in large, slow drops into Kirker's face. Kirker moaned, and his eyes rolled up into his head.

The Comanche squatted beside his hated enemy and stared at his bloody face. He recalled all the wives and children, beautiful wives and children he had lost because of this man. High Walking wished for a way to kill him a hundred times, a thousand times. Oh! If only that were possible.

He dropped the scalp and, taking his knife in both hands, raised it high above Kirker. With every ounce of his strength High Walking drove the steel blade into the scalper's chest to the very hilt.

The Comanche stood erect. “It is done,” he said. “The man is dead and will never slay my people again.”

Jacob looked at his comrade. The man's body that had once been so strong and vibrant now seemed to have shrunken in on itself, and the fire of revenge in his eyes was gone, the dark orbs vacant and dead.

Jacob had been watching Caverhill. There was a sneer on the man's face. “I won't die so easily,” Caverhill said, chucking a thumb at Kirker's corpse.

“You will die just as easily,” Jacob said. His desire to kill the man was like molten metal in his brain.

“Are you a coward that you'd shoot me without giving me a chance?” demanded Caverhill. There was something deadly and implacable about the two men facing him. He felt a new emotion being born in him. At first he hadn't recognized it, but now he smelled his own fear.

But why did he fear this pair? He had faced two men before and always won the fight. He needed a weapon, and then he would show them.

“You aren't worth fighting. You must simply be killed.”

“You aren't like this heathen Indian. You're a white man. Fight me with knife or pistol. Take your choice.”

A cold wind seemed to blow through Jacob's mind and calmed him. The man was full of fear. Jacob could see it moving below the muddy surface of his eyes. Jacob knew with certainty that he could kill him.

Caverhill's face suddenly exploded, shreds of flesh and fragments of bone torn loose and flung away. He was knocked backward by some titanic force. The room filled with a tremendous roar.

Jacob's senses reeled under the jarring concussion of the noise. He spun around to locate the cause of the sound.

The Negro woman stood in the doorway. Her face was pinched and taut, and blood leaked from her lips and nose. She held a double-barreled shotgun gripped in her hands. Smoke curled from the large, open bores of both barrels.

She dropped the shotgun to the floor with a clatter. Absently she wiped at the rivulets of blood coursing down her chin. The recoil of the heavily charged weapon firing both barrels at one time had rammed the hard wooden stock into her face.

“Why did you shoot him?” demanded Jacob.

The woman began to tremble at the terrible thing she had done. And now this white man yelled angrily at her. His pistol was gripped so tightly in his hands, she thought it would go off at her.

Millicent spoke quickly. “I was afraid you would fight him. He'd win, for he always wins. I knew he had to die now, this very night before he killed you, and then the many others later who do not deserve to die.”

“She did the correct thing,” High Walking said. “You were a fool to consider giving him an even chance. Tell her that so she may have peace in her mind.”

Jacob realized the Comanche spoke the truth. Some men should be shot like the savage beasts they were. “You did the right thing by shooting him,” Jacob told Millicent.

She smiled, a tentative, fragile curve of her mouth. She brushed at the blood on her lips. “I'll go tell all the others.” She backed from the room and was gone.

Jacob went to the open safe and raked the contents out on the floor. There was a pouch of gold coins and a packet of paper money. He kicked them aside and scanned the various written documents. His anger boiled anew when he read the false mortgages that had been drawn up against the ranchos on the Rio Pecos.

He took the sheaf of papers to the hearth of the fireplace. Lifting the glass globe from one of the lamps, he lit the papers and watched the black ashes form and curl and then break into fragments as they cooled.

High Walking spoke to Jacob. “Now, my friend, the battle is finished. My enemies are all dead. It is time for me to go and meet with my three good wives and all my children.” He turned the long blade of his knife to his stomach and angled it to point upward at his heart beneath the ribs.

“Don't do it,” cried Jacob. “There are other women. You can make more children.”

“I have lost my family three times. I believe the same thing would happen should I try again. That would make me a crazed man. It is better that I go where I know they wait for me. There we all will be safe.

“But you are a brave man, Jacob. You must go and try again. I have a feeling you will succeed and die with your wife and children around you.”

High Walking pulled mightily on the knife, driving it inward and upward. The powerful muscles of his body quivered at the horrible injury. For a moment he stood erect. His eyes were locked on Jacob, but his sight was turned inward.

High Walking began to smile. “I was right,” he whispered. “They are there waiting.” His smile broadened to encompass his entire face.

The Comanche warrior fell upon the thick carpet of Caverhill's library.

Jacob's heart anguished at the death of High Walking. But he could help the brave Comanche make a proper journey into the next world. Jacob would burn Caverhill's mansion, that would make a fitting funeral pyre for a friend.

He grabbed one of the lamps and hurled it against a wall, where it broke, splashing oil in every direction. The burning wick ignited the oil and spread outward in a yellow wave of flame. Jacob threw the second lamp into the opposite wall and watched the flames take fiery possession. Jacob took the gold and paper currency and went out to the yard. A group of blacks had gathered in front of the entrance. They shouted out in happy voices to him.

Jacob called the woman Millicent to him and handed her the gold and paper money. “Divide this among you.”

“Thank you very much, but it will do us no good. It will be taken from us by the first white man we meet because we are slaves.”

“Bring me paper, pen, and ink and I'll write you freedom papers.”

With a joyous laugh, Millicent dashed into the dark end of the house and returned with the requested items. Jacob found a seat. In the flickering flames of the burning mansion he wrote, one by one as the people spoke their names, the declaration of release and freedom for each slave. He signed the documents with his name, and for his place of residence he stated Rancho el Vado, Rio Pecos Valley.

Jacob finished his task and rose. He would return to Rancho el Vado. Perhaps High Walking could see things that other men could not.

The crashing volley of rifle fire exploded in the murky darkness of the morning twilight. A ragged popping of pistols followed. The pistol fire swelled to a crescendo of shots that rapidly blended one into another until they could not be counted.

Jacob sprang from his blanket and stared to the west. He judged that the battle was a mile or so distant. He knew what was happening as if he were there.

Gunfire so early in the morning meant that an attack had been sprung upon a night camp. An enemy had crept close in the darkness and at first light had fired rifles into sleeping men. The defenders not killed by the first volley had replied with their handguns. But only a weak defense had been mounted.

The attacking force, their rifles empty, had replied with many pistols. Even as Jacob drew his conclusions, the firing ceased and the silence of the morning came rushing back.

Jacob hastily rolled his blanket. He tossed the saddle upon his horse and hurried toward the battleground.

He was six days and three hundred miles west of Senator Caverhill's burned mansion and High Walking's burial place. He'd been expecting to encounter one or more of the stolen bands of sheep at any time. Someone had beaten him to them.