The Shadow Man (7 page)

“I'd be glad to make you some clothing,” he said. “Cloth's over there.” He pointed at nearly a score of bolts of fabric on a long table. A wide assortment of hats were on an adjoining display rack. “Do you want leather, cotton, or wool?”

“Let's take a look,” Jacob said.

He examined the fabrics at length. Finally he identified what he wanted.

“Make me a suit of this gray wool. And then an extra pair of pants of the same material and a pair out of leather. I want two white cotton shirts and two of this heavier blue cotton.”

“When do you want the clothing?” asked the tailor.

“The suit and one shirt by noon tomorrow. I've got something that I want to start right away.”

“That's quite a short time for all the cutting and sewing that has to be done,” said the man in surprise. “But by working part of the night and then starting early tomorrow, I can have the one outfit by noon. Let me take your measurements.”

With a practiced hand the tailor took Jacob's dimensions and wrote them down. “That'll be ten dollars in advance, the balance when you pick up the clothing.”

“First I need a hat,” replied Jacob. He chose a broad-brimmed, felt one with a flat crown. “Hold this for me until tomorrow.” He extended a gold coin from his pouch and paid the tailor.

* * *

The sun had fallen from the sky and lay smoldering on the horizon when Tamarron came out onto the plaza. Rays of sunlight slanted in at a low angle, striking the walls of the plaza buildings, and the adobe glowed with a soft orange radiance.

Even as Jacob watched, the sunlight weakened, and shadows filled the plaza. The laughter of the children faded away to nothing. The people left the darkening streets, vanishing into the homes and cantinas.

Lights came to life within the buildings and shined through small glass windowpanes, or the thin sheets of crystal gypsum that served as glass in most instances.

Jacob stood in a splash of light that shined out from one of the houses. Somehow, by being in the light, he felt uncomfortable, as if he were spying on the people that had created it. A heavy shutter swung shut with a thump, and the light vanished.

Jacob and a few other men, mostly mountain men, continued to wander the square in the twilight. Now and then a mixture of voices of a man, a woman, and children, a family recounting the happenings of the day, slipped out between the shutters. Jacob felt a pang of loneliness.

Three bold walkers, street whores, brightly rouged, brazenly strutted close and with teasing smiles spoke to the strolling men. Two couples struck a bargain and went off arm in arm. The last woman approached Tamarron, but he shook his head in the negative and she turned aside with a sour expression.

The dusk became darkness under the covered walkways, and Tamarron at last decided to have his evening meal. He halted and turned around, retracing his steps to a restaurant he had passed earlier.

A large man that had been following Jacob in the gloom stopped abruptly. Jacob watched the man peering through the murk at him. After a moment the man began to retreat, soundlessly walking backward. Then he spun around and went off hastily.

Tamarron recognized Unger and cursed softly. The man was not going to let the argument die. Men seeking revenge were the most dangerous of all enemies. Jacob touched the handle of his knife. Eventually he would probably have to kill Unger.

* * *

Tamarron sat in the rear of the restaurant and ate his meal of beef stew, bean soup, soft cheese, a stack of blue-corn tortillas, and sweet custard. He ordered a cup of coffee and a second sweet custard, then leaned back to finish his meal leisurely.

He listened to the hum of conversation from the crowd of diners. Two trappers in buckskin were eating near the door. Three Americans in town clothes talked in low, confidential voices and didn't seem to be thinking of the food before them. Jacob heard the word
Texas
once, and a little later the word
war
.

He wondered what special meaning the men's conversation might have. Texas had fought itself free from Mexico ten years ago. It had finally become a state just the past summer. Surely Mexico wouldn't try to retake Texas from the United States.

The remaining tables held Mexican citizens talking in pleasant tones. Jacob's mind shifted to that lingo. From a nearby table he heard the people discussing the coming of an early spring and the traces of green grass already sprouting from the earth on the south-sloping hillsides near the Rio Grande. These folk weren't thinking of war.

Tamarron rose and left to find Tim and Deek, and to make good his promise to buy them drinks.

The band of six scalp hunters mounted on strong, long-legged mustangs, crossed the range of yellow sand hills, and halted behind the caliche bluff above the Rio Pecos. The men had been riding sixteen days since leaving Austin, Texas, pressing swiftly onward from morning's first light until the next darkness overran them. Three times they'd stopped and ambushed small Indian camps. They had taken thirty-three scalps.

Kirker swung his tall, wiry frame down from his mount. He stretched once, then shook himself like a wolf flinging off water. The kinks, bent into his muscles from riding fifty miles since daylight, fell away from his tough body. He looked at his riders.

The men stared back at him from lean, hard faces shaded beneath broad-brimmed hats. Each member of his gang wore two Colt cap-and-ball, five-shot revolvers. On their ponies they carried a pair of the latest model rifles, breech-loading .54-caliber weapons. All were expert gunmen. They were the finest bunch of fighters Kirker had ever assembled. He believed they could whip a war party of fifty Indians, Comanche or Apache.

“Connard, you care for the horses,” Kirker said in a gravelly voice. He pointed a finger at the saddled horses, the three extra riding horses, and the two pack animals. “Keep them out of sight and quiet until the rifle work is done.”

“Hell, Kirker, I want to get in on some of the shooting,” Connard growled. “It should be some damn fine target practice from up here.”

“You're a good rifle shot, but you're the worst of the lot of us. Somebody has to tend the animals. That's you. So enough said. Understand me? You'll get some pistol shooting.”

“All right,” Connard said, grumbling.

“Settle down and rest,” Kirker said to the men. “Don't make noise. I'll check and see how things lay. Rauch, come with me.”

The two men went quietly across the swale toward the caliche hill separating them from a view of the Rio Pecos. When the ground angled upward, they dropped down to their knees and crawled up to the crest of the ridge to peer over cautiously.

The two-mile-wide valley of the Rio Pecos spread itself before the men. The current of the river, lying some three hundred yards distant and a hundred feet lower in elevation, sped south in a yellow, muddy flood. With a wet, drum-like rumble, the rushing torrent of water poured around the tight bends and curves. On the outside of the turns, the full force of the straining current struck the side of the river channel, and the frothy waves cut and tore at the high banks. The stream had escaped the confinement of its banks in several places, and ran in yellow fingers among the boles of the giant cottonwood and walnut trees lining the channel.

“The snow in the mountains is melting fast,” Kirker said. “The river's risen three feet since we saw it at dawn this morning. And it'll get worse too.” He pointed down at the bend of the river that curved away from them. “There's the Indian camp we came to find.”

Rauch had also spotted four tepees in an open stand of large trees. The skin lodges were heavily stained with the soot of many fires. Up near the smoke holes they were nearly black. Winter storms had damaged the pyramid-like structures, and the patches that had been used to close the rents and tears showed like white scars.

“This time we got here before they left for their summer camp in the mountains,” Rauch said.

Kirker scanned the encampment and did not reply. A group of squaws knelt around a buffalo hide stretched on the ground and worked on it with sharp flint scrapers. The women wouldn't live long enough to finish the hide.

Another woman was gathering wood downstream from the camp. She finished breaking some dead limbs into shorter lengths and loaded her arms with a heavy pile. As she passed a group of children romping and playing dangerously near the speeding floodwaters of the Pecos, she shouted out sharply to them. In laughing obedience the youngsters scurried back from the riverbank and, hollering at each other, ran off among the trees.

“The bucks aren't here, only squaws and kids,” Rauch said.

“Most likely out hunting,” Kirker said. He measured the sun, which lay half a hand-width above the Capitan Mountains sixty miles to the west. “It'll be dark in less than two hours, so the bucks will soon return. They won't leave the women alone, with the spring weather good and men traveling.”

“Like us,” agreed Rauch.

“We'll get into position for the ambush. Let's go.”

Kirker and Rauch dropped down from the crown of the hill and returned to the other men. They all climbed erect and looked at Kirker, awaiting his orders.

“Only squaws and kids there now,” said Kirker. “But that's okay, for the bucks will surely come. Check the loads in all of your guns. Be sure all the balls are tight on the powder in every chamber. I don't want any misfires. Bring both your rifles—the shooting will be fast, with no time to reload!”

The men inspected the charges in their long guns.

They slid ramrods down the barrels of the pistols to tamp the round lead balls down firmly and closely scrutinized the caps.

While the men completed their preparations for the coming ambush, Kirker spoke to Connard. “Bring the riding horses up quick when the rifle shooting stops. Some of those Comanche may try to run for it. We'll need horses for sure to catch them. Until then, keep the horses out of gunshot. I don't want any hurt.”

“Right,” Connard said.

“Follow me,” Kirker said to the other men. “Fan out to lay along the top of the ridge. Don't let yourself be seen from below.”

* * *

The sun began to turn red as it floated lower to rest on the crown of the far-off Capitan Mountains. The yellow sand hills turned crimson, like waves on a pool of blood. The flooding Rio Pecos rose another half foot.

Kirker lay basking in the sun and did not stir. He was a patient man, and the outcome of the battle wasn't something to worry about. The Indians would be easy to kill. In a month he'd be in Chihuahua selling a sack of scalps to Governor Antonio Canales. The savage raids of the Apache and Comanche into the northern Mexican Province had so angered the governor that he'd placed a bounty of one hundred dollars on every Indian man, and fifty dollars on each Indian woman and child. The longhaired scalps proved their deaths. Kirker and his gang would make six, maybe seven, thousand dollars in only a few months. Kirker's cut would be one third.

The men had spent the winter in Austin, the capital of the new state of Texas. When the days had turned warm, he had gathered his band to ride. The white men journeyed swiftly, attacking the Comanche on the plains and along the Pecos. They would continue south and kill the Apache on the lower Rio Grande and in northern Mexico.

Kirker rolled onto his back and stretched. Events much more important than killing Indians were brewing. Throughout Texas there was heated talk of war to force a settlement of the western boundary between Mexico and Texas. Simon Caverhill, a Texas State senator, was the loudest proponent of the need to fight.

Caverhill had made several speeches in the Texas Senate, pressing for a vote of war against Mexico. Once he'd managed to speak before a joint session of senators and representatives. Always his proposal had been voted down.

After the last stormy defeat Caverhill sought out Kirker and had given him a secret mission. The senator gave the scalp hunter five hundred dollars to carry out the task.

Kirker touched his money belt, which contained the thick wad of U.S. currency. He hadn't told his men of Caverhill's payment, nor of the mission.

Kirker had led his men farther north than ever before, almost to the headwaters of the Rio Pecos. As they had traveled searching for Indians to kill, he'd located the Mexican ranchos and had stolen in close to examine the strength of their defenses. He'd made a rough count of the sheep, cattle, and horses. When he returned to Austin, there would be plenty to report to the senator.

Kirker turned to look at Rauch. The man was watching him from squinty eyes.

“Kirker, how did you come straight to this place after wandering hundreds of miles over the country?” Rauch asked. “It's been three years since we last saw this Indian camp.”

Kirker knew Rauch's question was only a ruse to cover the real thoughts in his mind as he had secretly observed the gang leader. Rauch wanted him dead so he could become leader of the band. Kirker would not let that happen. He'd kill Rauch before they returned to Austin. In the meantime he needed Rauch's skill with guns.

Nevertheless Kirker considered Rauch's query. For days, under thick winter storm clouds that had hidden the sun, he'd led the men across the flat, unmarked Llano Estacado. Then the band had roamed in a circuitous route over the Rio Pecos Valley. Yet unerringly, after six hundred miles, Kirker came to this one small caliche hill. Without fail he could return to every distant spot he had known during all the years of his life.

Once Kirker had tried to analyze the instincts that guided him. But as he cast about through his mind searching for the unique sense, he felt the skill slipping away. The desire to understand the gift—indeed, the mere quest for it—could mean its destruction. He'd immediately ceased his mental probing. It was enough to possess the knack.