Through Darkest America-Extended Version (25 page)

It was a crazy, senseless thing. His eyes were filled with mud and water and he could see only vague shadows past the end of his barrel. Who was he shooting at? Rebels? Loyalists? He realized, suddenly, that it hardly mattered who was out there. As long as he was slamming cartridges in the chamber and watching the fire flash from the end of his muzzle the fear stayed a respectable distance away. The time was marked for killing and maybe something more terrible than dying would meet the man who didn't take his share.

The rain parted briefly, letting awesome sights and sounds fill the world. Howie was appalled to see he'd run no more than thirty yards or so into the gully. He was sure it had been a good mile.

A veil of acrid smoke masked the heart of the battle, but he could clearly see the Rebels at the edge of the ravine had broken. Still, stragglers quickly reformed their ragged lines a few yards back. They were dead men, but they made the Loyalists pay for every inch of ground. The rain had been Monroe's ally in that first, terrible charge, but now his own mounts were as useless as Hacker's. The dry ravines had turned to a thousand water-filled trenches, and it was one man against another.

A great cry went up from the mesa as a fresh wave of government troopers swarmed into the fight. The Rebels held a brief moment, then crumbled.

The fighting was over, but there was still killing to be done. Troopers roamed the trenches firing point blank at anything that moved. The cries of the wounded were quickly stilled with the butt of a rifle or the edge of a blade. As Howie watched, a great, dark figure rose up out of nowhere and nearly cut a Loyalist soldier in half with his axe before a dozen shots brought him to ground.
Klu
. Or Jigger, maybe. He couldn't tell. The rain swept in again on a roll of thunder and covered the sight.

"
Godamn
!" rasped the man next to him. He turned his muddy,
rainstreaked
face to Howie, eyes weary with fear. "I
seen
enough. I sure don't want to see no more." He scrambled down the muddy bank, leaving his rifle where it lay, and disappeared into the rain. His companions looked blankly after him a moment, then quickly followed.

Howie suddenly felt terribly alone and vulnerable. Not that the raiders could have done much, but they'd
been
there, anyway. He slid down into the cold water, searched through the rain, and moved off to his right. A volley of shots brought him up short. He crouched low, squinting into the storm. The shots had been so close he'd seen the red blast of a muzzle. A man cried out. Another shot stilled him. A soldier called out cautiously and another answered. Howie knew immediately what had happened. The raiders had run right into a Loyalist patrol. A cold ball of fear knotted his belly
: They're behind me, now. In front and behind and me in the middle!

A figure rose out of the rain right on top of him. Howie brought his rifle up and fired. The man's face disappeared.

Howie went down beside him and searched blindly through the water. He found the Loyalist cap with its sodden feather, tossed his own hat away and replaced it with the soldier's. Then he stripped the jacket off the man and forced his arms through wet sleeves.

"Mark, you all right?" The voice was no more than three yards away.

"Yeah," Howie mumbled, "I reckon." He stood and moved quickly down the water-filled gully, away from the body.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

T
he storm swept over the mesa an hour before sundown, leaving a dull, leaden sky behind. There were men among Pardo's band and the Rebel army who would never curse bad weather again; only the raw power of the driving wind and rain had enabled them to escape the Loyalist slaughter. Even then, pitifully few gat away and fewer still once the storm abated. Monroe's troopers meticulously combed the gullies for survivors, taking no prisoners.

Howie watched them and waited for darkness. He had stayed alive by moving with the troopers under cover of the storm. It was an unnerving experience. What if the rain let up, and the soldiers saw him there and knew he didn't belong? He shook with relief when an officer called them back to the mesa. When the others answered, he hung back and let them pass him, then turned and started running as fast as he could. He had no idea where he was going. All he could think about was putting as many miles as he could between himself and the Loyalists. They'd be back. And he didn't plan to be there.

He stumbled more than once, choking on muddy water that was waist-high in places. The last time he fell, something groaned beneath him. He shrank back, startled. A face looked up at him and grinned feebly.

"
Harlie
!
"

He could see his friend was badly hurt. Only his head and shoulders were above the water. Howie started to move him further up the bank but
Harlie
shook his head painfully.

"I ain't
goin
' nowhere and don't want to, boy."

"
Harlie
. Where you hit?" Howie asked him.

"Belly. 'Bout twice, I figure.
Godamn
if once wouldn't have been enough."

"Is it . . . bad?" Howie didn't need to ask.

"I ain't walking out of here, if that's what you mean," said
Harlie
. He studied Howie, trying hard to focus on his face. "It ain't too bad, boy. The water's good and cold and I haven't felt
nothin
' for a while." He tried to grin again but couldn't. "
Dyin
' don't mean a lot, but
hurtin
' sure does."

Howie took off his trooper's cap and draped it over the man's head. The rain was letting up a little and the cap kept some of the water from
Harlie's
face. He told Howie he'd been hit right at the beginning of the fight, when Monroe's soldiers had overcome the Rebels and poured into the gullies.

"Tam got it, and then Gus," he said. "Gus was right beside me when they come over. I tried to get him out but there wasn't no use in it. There was 'bout . . . six of us. We left him there and kept Grin' and moving back from one damn mud hole to the next an' then I got hit and someone
 
got me to here. Wouldn't let '
em
. . . take me no further." Pain swept over
Harlie's
face. His body arched, then relaxed into the water. "Wasn't any of '
em
fit to . . .
 
anyway. I think Mac and that kid Raney got on out. And … maybe some others. I don't know. Not many of '
em
, for sure . . ."

He closed his eyes a minute and took a deep breath.

"
Harlie
. . .” Howie bent low to his face. "Did you . . . did you see the girl anywhere? Kari? Did Kari get out?"

Harlie
opened his eyes and shook his head. "Didn't see her." He looked hard at Howie. "I wouldn't count on it, boy."

"Did you see her anytime? After they hit us?"

Harlie
looked off into the distance, somewhere over Howie's shoulder. "She was …back in the column. Wasn't nobody got out of there."

"
Harlie
, you don't know that!" He knew, though, it was true. But he wouldn't let himself believe it.

"I . . . seen Jigger go down," said
Harlie
distantly. "And then Klu. Though that took some doing. They was all together,
them
two and Pardo." He forced a terrible grin.

"Same as ever, Monroe's got him, now. I
seen
that. Pardo, and
them
godamn
pack animals in the bargain…"

Howie straightened. "They
took
Pardo?" He put his face against
Harlie's
. "He ain't dead? They didn't
kill
him?"

Harlie
didn't answer.

"
Harlie
?
"

Howie looked at him a long minute, then closed the empty eyes and covered them against the rain. For the first time, he noticed the storm was easing up, passing swiftly to the south.
Pardo. Alive.
Only that couldn't be. Maybe
Harlie
only thought he'd seen him taken.

With the rain moving out, the troopers would be back. And soon. If they found him… They wouldn't, though. He'd keep one step ahead of them until the dark. They sure couldn't search every hole on the mesa. And when the sun was down, they wouldn't look anymore.

They had set up the camp half a mile to the south, away from the site of the battle. It was a big army. Howie couldn't even guess how many men had pitched their tents on the ta-
bleland
, but there must have been a hundred or more big
cookfires
going.

He was tired, hungry, and shaking with cold.
Lordee
, he could smell meat cooking—fresh meat! He didn't know anything about armies, but it had to be a big one if they carried their own live meat around with them.

Edging up through the gullies he got close enough to see there were few guards posted along the perimeters. One or two every hundred yards or so and maybe a dozen outriders on horseback, patrolling the dark. They weren't expecting trouble. Not after today.

It would be easy enough to get in, then, once things settled down for the night and the fires burned low. But . . . then what? If Pardo was still alive, how would he find him? In a camp of over a thousand men—and he was sure there were that many—where would you start to look for one?

It took him a good two hours to circle the camp. Most of that on his belly to avoid the guards. It was easier when the fires burned down some, but harder to see what was going on. In the end, though, he decided he had a fair idea of how the camp was put together. The mounts were roped off away from the men, and
well guarded
. He'd have a time stealing one, but that wasn't something to worry about yet. The supply tents and wagons were bedded down near the small herd of stock. The regular troopers were grouped together and the officers to one side.

He decided that was where Pardo had to be if he were alive, near the officers. If Monroe was with the army, he'd sure have Pardo close at hand. Howie couldn't think of anything that would please the Loyalist officer more.

From the stars that peeked through gray tails of cloud he decided it must be two in the morning, or later. Something would have to be done soon. He watched the officers' tents, trying to figure what they were doing. One tent seemed to be busier than the others. It was all lit up inside by an oil lamp. Men wandered in and out every few minutes, and he watched to see where they went.

Another hour went by and he learned nothing. If anyone in the camp had anything to do with Pardo, he couldn't figure it. Maybe Pardo wasn't even there. Maybe
Harlie
was wrong; Pardo could have escaped. Or he could be dead in the gullies…

Suddenly, Howie sat up straight. Two men came out of the lighted tent. Instead of walking past the front of it and going to the left or right, they moved out
behind
it.

That was important. Because it was different. No one had done that before.

They went straight to a smaller, darkened tent some thirty yards away. Howie had noted it earlier, figuring it held supplies or something. If it did, though, why would the men be going there now? In the middle of the night?

When the two officers came out, Howie crawled past the guards and straight into the camp. There was no time to worry about whether he was right or wrong. If the sun came up and caught him there, he wouldn't have to wonder about Pardo or anything else.

The tent was old and the cloth parted quickly and silently under his bone-handled knife. He stopped where he was and waited a long moment. It was dark inside, but the other end of the tent facing the officers' area was still open. Pale yellow light spilled over the bare ground. There were dark patches above where the tent had been repaired, and a rent that let the stars through. Howie froze. To the right, in near darkness—something else.

At first he thought it was a trick of the night. There was nothing in the tent but a few sticks of firewood—old, dried branches with the bark peeled off. Like wood you found on the river bank. Howie looked again. Bile rose up from his empty stomach. It wasn't wood at all. It was Pardo. He was staked out naked on the ground and someone had neatly stripped all the skin from his body.

Howie bit his lip until blood came and crawled closer. You could hardly tell who the man had been. There was no hair on the head. The scalp had been carefully peeled away from right above the eyes. The nose and lips were gone and the rest of the face had been carved away. There was bone showing on one cheek and under both eyes.

Howie started and almost cried out aloud. The hollow eyes suddenly opened and looked at him. The terrible, ruined mouth parted like a raw wound and tried to talk!

"P-Pardo?"
God help us all. Ain't nothing like that ought to be alive!
"Pardo? It's me. Can you . . . talk?"

The mouth opened and a noise came out. It wasn't a voice at all. It was a horrible, rasping thing. Sound scraping against bone. A chill crawled up Howie's spine.

"
You?"

"Yes, Pardo."

"
You . .
.” The sound tried, failed, then tried again. “
You . . . doing here
. . ."