Blood and Gold

Chapter 17

Hank’s agonized shrieks echoed out of the darkness, screech after shrill screech scarring the tremulous night, spiking into our ears like sharp shards of broken glass.

Lila put her hands to her mouth and her eyes widened in shock and fear.

Ezra Owens had gone very pale, his lips bloodless, and even Wingo looked green around the gills, with his rifle clutched close to his chest and his troubled gaze desperately trying to penetrate the gloom.

There came a fleeting moment of ringing quiet; then Hank screamed again in mortal agony, obviously suffering pain that was beyond pain.

Hearing those dreadful cries, I figured that the Apaches were working on Hank’s belly wound, trying to wear us down through mounting terror. Scared men make mistakes, and that was what the Apaches were counting on.

I’ve learned since that you can’t judge the Apache by the standards of white men.

He grows up hard in a hard land and from an early age sees much of death, usually long drawn-out, painful and ugly. In the harsh, unforgiving school of the desert and mountain from whence he springs, the Apache knows that each living creature thrives only by inflicting death on another. The Apache feels nothing in the way of kindness and compassion toward an enemy, because those are women’s emotions and show only weakness. Yes, the Apaches were torturing Hank Owens horribly, but it was cold, impersonal, without sadism.

It is the way of the Apache warrior to test, by inflicting great pain, the courage of an enemy. He believes that if an enemy proves strong and brave, his strength and bravery will become part of his own—and his chances of surviving one more day in his pitiless environment become that much better.

It is a harsh way, but even as I listened to Hank’s screams, I made no judgments and no condemnations. Why judge and condemn the wolf because he pulls down and savages an elk?

It is the way of the wolf . . . and it is the way of the Apache.

I stepped over to the fire and poured myself coffee, the dying man’s screams drowning out even my thoughts. Then I returned to my post.

The cup was hot and I placed it carefully on the side of the wagon and just as carefully, with hands that shook only a little, rolled myself a smoke.

I lit the cigarette and drew my Winchester closer to hand and looked out on the menacing darkness, the scowling sliver of the horned moon touching the grass only here and there with faint, grudging light.

Hank screamed and screamed again, the wild echoes of his rising shrieks reverberating around us before finally dying away, fading like ghastly bugle calls into distance and the haunted night.

Several slow moments of silence passed as I smoked and drank coffee, enjoying the harsh bitterness of both. Lila sat close to my feet, her chin resting on her drawn-up knees, her eyes wide-open but seeing nothing. Beside her, Ned dozed, waking now and then with a surprised jerk of his head.

Ezra Owens, his mouth working, stared into the darkness, a drawn look about him that showed even under his thick beard. The man was confronting some inner demons that he didn’t seem to be handling well.

Wingo chewed on the end of his mustache, his restless eyes everywhere, showing the strain of this enforced inaction but, as far as I could tell, mastering his fear.

Hank screamed again.

Cursing, Ezra stepped out from behind the wagon, threw his Winchester to his shoulder and cranked off round after round into the flame-torn night, ejected brass shells tinkling around his feet.

Ezra shot the rifle dry and kept on pulling the trigger, the hammer clicking time after time on an empty chamber.

Finally he lowered the Winchester and walked back behind the wagon. Wingo clapped his hands together in derisory applause. “That was a great help,” the big gunman said. “All you did was shoot at phantoms and waste ammunition.”

“Maybe so,” Ezra said, his face grim. “But Hank is my brother, even though he never amounted to much. I figured I owed it to our ma to do something.”

The outlaw slumped against the wagon, then slid to his haunches, holding the rifle between his knees. I glanced at him and noticed an absorbed, calculating look on his face, like he was carefully thinking something through.

I had no idea what Ezra had on his mind, but whatever it was, the not knowing bothered me plenty.

The moon sank lower in the sky and the dark shroud of the night drew itself closer around us. Hank had not screamed for a couple of hours and I figured he’d finally been taken by merciful death.

But I was wrong. The Apaches were not yet done with Hank Owens.

During the darkest part of the night just before the dawn, a lone Apache on a magnificent gray horse galloped past the wagon, something large, flopping and bulky held in his arms.

Wingo snapped off a shot at the warrior and missed. Without slackening his pace, the Apache threw his burden to the ground and was gone, the drum of the gray’s hooves fast receding in the distance.

I stepped out behind the wagon and so did Wingo. We walked to the thing lying on the ground and soon saw it for what it was.

It was Hank . . . or what was left of him.

The man’s eyes had been gouged out and his naked, ravaged body was covered in blood from the top of his scalped head to his toes.

Hank had died hard and in unbearable pain—an end I’d wish on no man.

Wingo toed the body, looking for signs of life. There were none. “Just as well,” he said. “All I could have done for him is shot him.”

And that was when Ezra Owens made his break.

Wingo was riding my paint and he hadn’t unsaddled the animal. The saddlebags with Simon Prather’s money were still on the horse along with his blanket roll.

All this Ezra knew.

The outlaw suddenly sprang to his feet and ran for the paint. He swung quickly into the saddle and fled, dust spurting from the pony’s flying hooves.

Wingo watched Ezra go. He just stood there doing nothing, his smile real small and tight and knowing. Then, before I realized what was happening, he jerked my Winchester from my hands and threw it to his shoulder.

BLAM!

The shot shattered the fragile night into a million separate fragments of sound, the echo bouncing across the flat grassland. In the distance, half obscured by the night shadows, I saw Ezra jerk in the saddle, straighten up to his full height in the stirrups, then topple into the dust.

The paint kept on going, his hooves drumming until I could hear them no longer.

I reckoned Ezra had been at least three hundred yards away when Wingo nailed him, and that in darkness. It was a fine shot by anyone’s standards and spoke volumes of the outlaw’s skill with a rifle.

Wingo turned to me, still smiling, his eyes hard. “I figured ol’ Ezra was going to try that sooner or later.” His face took on a thoughtful look. “I guess that just leaves you and me, boy.”

“I reckon it does,” I said, wondering if I could shuck my Colt before Wingo swung the rifle on me.

But it didn’t come to that.

The outlaw merely stood silent for a few moments, shrugged and handed me back the Winchester. “And soon it will only be me. And the girl.”

When I look back on it, I knew I should have shot him then and saved myself a world of grief later. But the moment came and went because the Apache on the gray horse rode out of the newborn morning and stopped about a hundred yards from the wagon. As far as I could see, he carried no weapon.

The warrior cupped his hands around his mouth and cried out: “Matanzas con Sus Dentes!”

Kills with His Teeth. It must have been he who had given me that name after my fight with the Apache at the hogback.

“What the hell is he hollering about?” Wingo asked, his face puzzled.

“It means Kills with His Teeth,” I answered. “It’s a name the Apaches gave me.”

Wingo looked at me in surprise. “Hell, for a younker, you sure got around, boy.”

I ignored the man, mustered my Spanish and yelled: “Qué usted desea?”

“What did you say?” Wingo asked, irritation edging his voice. “I don’t speak that damned Messkin lingo.”

“I asked him what he wants, but it seems he don’t much feel like telling me.”

The Apache had given me a name, but I didn’t know his. For him, this was powerful medicine that would weaken me if we ever met in a fight.

A few moments passed, the warrior sitting his horse, never for one moment taking his eyes off me. Finally, the Apache raised his arm and pointed in my direction, aiming his forefinger like a gun.

He stayed like that for a long time, in complete silence, then swung the gray around and loped away.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Apache had just warned me. He was telling me by his sign that he knew me and had me marked as a mortal enemy, someone he must destroy.

Maybe he was kin of the Apache I’d killed among the rocks, for he sure seemed to be holding a grudge.

Wingo realized that too, because he looked at me, grinning. “Boy,” he said, “near as I can tell, you got a powerful lot of enemies and mighty few friends.”

I nodded. “Seems that way.”

The big gunman slapped me hard on the shoulder. “Well, don’t you worry about it none because very soon now it will be all over for you.”

“Go to hell,” I said, my anger flaring as I pushed him away from me.

Wingo didn’t answer. He just took a single step back and went for his gun.