Blood Sky at Morning

Chapter 9

The two men continued to argue. They had been at it ever since the wagon came through, changed horses, and left them way out in the middle of that bleak nowhere. A place that had no name. A way station between Tucson and Fort Bowie, but not on any known trail or road that either man knew of or gave a damn about. Someplace on the distant edge of a ranch, they figured, a line shack no longer used by any white man.

A dust devil swirled across the flat above the spring, and the horses in the pole corral neighed, flattened their ears at the sound, like a great whisper in a hollow room. Miles of nothingness stretched out in all directions around the homely adobe, and Larry Tolliver, yoked with two wooden pails of springwater, paused to watch the swirling dust as if that was an event to break the monotony, a rent in the fabric of sameness that dogged his days in isolation.

Danny Grubb sat outside the adobe shack, whittling on a piece of mesquite, his eyes squinted against the glare of the falling sun, a wad of plug tobacco bulging out his cheek like some hidden growth distorting his lean, angular face. The whick whick of the knife blade was the only sound in his mindless mind, the blond and gray curls of the shaven wood falling to the parched ground like locks on a barbershop floor.

Tolliver, puffing from exertion, slipped the yoke from his shoulders and set the pails down in front of Grubb. The water sloshed over the rims, stained the ground for a second before it disappeared, sucked up by the wind and sucked down by the thirsty earth, like ink vanishing under the pressure of a blotter.

“Go on ahead, Larry, spill ever’ damn drop of that water,” Grubb said.

“While you sit on your skinny ass, Danny.”

“Hell, I might make a whistle outta this stick of mesquite and play you a tune come dark.”

“You can stick that whistle square up your ass, Danny.”

“I might stick it up yours, you keep flappin’ your sorry mouth.”

“You could carry this water inside, out of the dust.”

“I could, but I been cuttin’ the wood. It’ll be colder’n a well-digger’s ass once that sun goes down.”

The incoming wagon had brought them two cords of firewood. Danny had been splitting sticks of kindling for their cookstove, so he didn’t see where Tolliver had any room for complaints. He had also fed the six horses in the corral. The wagon had also brought grain. When it returned, with Rawlins and Cavins, it carried their prisoner, one Ted O’Hara, an army lieutenant wearing shabby civilian clothes. Grissom had been with them, too, and Danny had begged him to stay at the shack and let him go back with the wagon into Tucson.

“I got my orders, Danny,” Grissom had said. “Hiram says you boys got to stay another month.”

“What for?”

“For thirty a month and found,” Grissom had said with a vicious little laugh that still irritated Danny when he thought about it. Everything irritated him, especially Tolliver.

“Who’s going to fix supper?” Danny asked.

“My turn, I reckon,” Tolliver said.

“My belly hurts already.”

“Look, Danny, I don’t like bein’ out here anymore’n you do, but we got to make the best of it. You don’t like it, you can slap a saddle on one of them horses and ride on back to town.”

“When I think of Rawlins and Cavins swillin’ down beer and whiskey in the cantina,” Danny said, “I get plumb burned. They ought to try this shit for a time.”

“Hiram said we’d take turns. They might come back in a couple of weeks.”

“That’ll be the day,” Danny said, and threw down the stick of whittled wood, closed his Barlow knife and stuck it in his pocket.

Larry Tolliver cooked supper and opened a can of peaches. After they ate and Danny washed the tin plates, the knives, forks, and spoons, they sat outside. Larry smoked and Danny chewed on a cut plug of tobacco. The sunset was as sweet as the night was depressing. The bright clouds had turned to ash and then faded to black as the sky sparkled with stars and the wind turned chill.

“You hear anything?” Danny asked after a while. He spat a plume of tobacco into the dust.

Larry watched the smoke from his cigarette twist into ghostly shapes that resembled small animals in the lantern light, snakes and mice and tiny gray birds. They unfolded in the breezeless air like paintings on parchment.

“Nope,” he said. But he listened. It got spooky out there at night, and they hadn’t heard the coyotes sing as they usually did. There was a quiet that made the silence seem loud.

There wasn’t so much as the crunch of a boot on sand, nor the clink of an overturned rock, but there he was, standing in front of them, dressed all in black like an undertaker, his eyes shaded by his hat brim so that they couldn’t see them. He wore a big Walker Colt on his hip, and the way he stood there, as if he had come out of nowhere, made both men freeze as though thunderstruck.

“Just set there easy,” Zak said, and his voice carried authority. It was low-pitched and firm, vibrated in his throat with a hypnotizing hum. The voice didn’t even seem to come from him, but from somewhere else, from somewhere above him.

Tolliver’s throat went dry as the dirt under his feet, but he managed to squeak out a question.

“Damn, where’d you come from?”

Zak said nothing. He looked at the two men. Both were armed, but they didn’t look ready to defend anything they might have inside the adobe or on their persons.

“Mister, you oughtn’t walk up on a man like that,” Grubb said. “You could get yourself killed for no good reason.”

“I’ve been watching you two fellows,” Zak said. “Had my eye on you since late afternoon. If ever I saw a couple of dunces, you two were they. I doubt if either of you could hit the broadside of a barn at five paces. But if words were bullets, you two would be champion shots. I haven’t heard such arguing since I stayed with a married man and his wife up on the Judith.”

“You been listenin’ to us?” Tolliver said, gape-mouthed.

“Voices carry out here,” Zak said. “A long way.”

“Well, what you sneakin’ around for?” Grubb said. “Spyin’ on people like that. Ask me, you’re the one ain’t got good sense.”

“I’ll tell you why I stopped by, mister.” Zak looked at Grubb. “Danny.”

Danny recoiled in shock that the stranger knew his name. “Yeah? How come?” he said.

“There was a wagon come through here with a kidnapped soldier in it. I want you boys to tell me where it’s going to wind up. I’ll give you five seconds, Danny, and I’m counting real fast.”

“Ain’t none of your business,” Tolliver said.

“Three,” Zak said.

“What you gonna do if we don’t tell you?” Danny asked.

“One of you I’m going to blow straight to hell,” Zak said.

“Which one?” Danny asked.

“One second left.”

“Jesus,” Tolliver said, and he wasn’t praying.

Danny, rattled, spoke first.

“Ferguson,” he said.

Tolliver chimed in on the heels of Danny’s one word statement.

“Edge of Tucson. You find Cantina Escobar, you’ll see the freight company a stone’s throw away.”

“Either of you know a man named Ben Trask?”

The two men looked at each other, their expressions showing their bewilderment.

“Naw,” they said, like a chorus of jackdaws.

“You know the soldier’s name? The one that was in the wagon?”

“They called him O’Hara,” Danny said. “Young feller. Still wet behind the ears.”

“Tied up,” Tolliver said.

“Where’s the next station?”

“Huh?” Danny said.

“Is there another one of these ’dobes where that wagon was headed?”

“Two more,” Tolliver said.

“You boys are out of business,” Zak said. “As of right now. I’ll leave you two horses. The rest I’m running off.”

“You can’t do that,” Tolliver said. “They hang horse thieves in this country.”

“I’m not stealing them. I’m just turning them loose. You got any apples inside that ’dobe?”

“Apples?” Danny said.

“Yeah, my horse likes apples.”

Both men shook their heads.

“Does this look like a damned orchard?” Tolliver said, suddenly belligerent.

“I don’t see no horse,” Danny said.

Zak turned his head, gave a low whistle. Then he called, “Nox.”

The black horse, his coat shining like dark water, came around the corner of the adobe, reins trailing. He ambled up to Zak, who rubbed the hollows over the horse’s eyes, worried his topknot with massaging knuckles.

“I ought to burn you out,” Zak said. “But I’m just going to turn those horses out and ride on.”

He grabbed his reins, separated them, and draped the ends over the horse’s neck, just in front of the saddle.

“Mister, you ain’t running none of our horses off,” Tolliver said. “I’m callin’ you out.”

Zak turned toward Tolliver and stared him straight in the eyes. He let his right hand slide easily down his horse’s neck until it was parallel to the butt of his pistol.

Tolliver sat there, blinking. Under the brim of his grease-stained hat, his eyes glittered with lantern light and shadow. He screwed up his lips as if chewing on something distasteful. Seconds ticked by as the silence deepened into a great ocean tossing with soundless seas. Grubb swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed, a sharp pointed spearhead beneath the skin.

“If you do,” Zak finally said, “it’ll be the last thing you call out.”

“You don’t scare me none,” Tolliver said.

“You’re going to hear two things, Tolliver,” Zak said.

“Yeah?”

“One is the sound of my Walker Colt calling out your name. The other is old Angel Gabe blowing his trumpet, calling you to Judgment Day.”

Tolliver snarled, uttered an oath under his breath. He came up into a crouch, his hand diving for his pistol. Danny sat there, trying to hold back his bowels, his face drained of color, leaving only the white stain of fear sprawling on his features.

Zak didn’t take his eyes off Tolliver as his fingers grasped the butt of his pistol. Tolliver was pulling his own pistol from its holster. In that wink of eternity, it seemed as if it took hours for the barrel of the pistol to clear the sheath. In that split second, Tolliver’s face mirrored his final thought: He was going to make it.

Zak’s pistol seemed to leap into his hand, and when he thumbed back the hammer, the click made Danny jump inside his skin. Tolliver’s barrel came clear and his thumb pressed down on the hammer to cock the single action.

Zak’s Colt bellowed, spewing a bright orange flame, unburnt powder, and a .44 caliber lead projectile from its muzzle. The roar of the explosion was like a single thunderclap drowning out the sizzle of the bullet as it sped faster than the speed of sound, making a crack like a bullwhip just before it smashed into the center of Tolliver’s chest with all the impact of a pile driver.

Tolliver’s finger closed around the trigger, then went slack as he was slammed back against the wall of the adobe, a jet of blood spurting from his chest, a crimson fountain that drenched his belly and the crotch of his trousers. Danny put his arms up over his head and ducked as if to ward off the next shot that he was sure would come.

Tolliver slumped against the adobe. His pistol slipped from his hand and made a dull thud as it struck the dirt. He stared a thousand yards without seeing anything but a blur, an afterglow of orange light burning into his brain.

Danny swallowed his tobacco. It made him sick and he pitched forward, vomiting it back up, along with the moil of his supper and whatever else was inside his tortured stomach.

Zak walked over, picked up Tolliver’s pistol, stuck it inside his belt. He then lifted Grubb’s pistol from its holster as Danny went through the throes of the dry heaves.

“I’m leaving you two horses. One for yourself, one to pack out that dead man there. You tell Ferguson and Trask I’m coming for them. And I’ll ask you one more time, Danny, how many more of these line shacks between here and Tucson? The ones Ferguson is using.”

A watery-eyed Danny looked up at Zak, wiped vomit from his chin.

“Two more, that I know of. Hell, I don’t even know who you are,” he croaked.

“The name’s Cody.”

Zak walked inside the adobe and kicked over the stove, threw the lantern onto the coals. Then he walked out, past Danny, and climbed into the saddle. He rode down to the corral, tied Nox to a pole, went inside. He ran all but two of the horses out and closed the gate. He looked up toward the flaming adobe and saw Danny pulling Tolliver’s body away from the conflagration.

Zak untied the reins, pulled himself back up into the saddle.

He rode off through a shimmering band of firelight, into the night, following the wagon tracks. He heard the horses galloping away and the neighs of those left behind.

In the distance, across the vastness of night, the coyotes loosed their ribbons of song. And the moon rose over the horizon, bright and full, its shining face lighting his way long after he left the burning adobe behind.

And he felt as if his father were riding alongside him, speaking to him in the Ogallala tongue, the language of his mother.