Blood Sky at Morning

Chapter 13

The Big Fifty.

The sound of the Sharps was unmistakable, and Zak knew he had only seconds to get out of the line of fire before the shooter could reload the single shot rifle. He saw the puff of white smoke cloud the window ledge in the lower left-hand corner. He rode hard to come up in front of the house before the man inside could get off a second shot.

Nox’s muscles bunched up and he galloped as the energy in those muscles uncoiled. He stretched out his neck and laid his ears down, raced under the guidance of the bit in his teeth.

There was no second shot by the time Zak reached the front of the house. He took Nox around the corner to the other side, jumped out of the saddle and hunched down beneath a window on that side.

The scrape of a boot and Zak whirled, his pistol a part of him, swinging like a weather vane to come to bear on whoever was coming around the corner of the adobe.

Chama stepped into view, hunched over, pistol in hand. He tiptoed toward Zak, who waved him down even closer to the ground.

“See anything?” Chama said.

Zak shook his head. “What’s out back?” he asked.

“A worn-down old wall, a boarded-up window.”

The adobe bricks were crumbling, the gypsum almost all washed away, sand along the base of the very old building.

Zak pressed his ear against the wall, listened. He heard only the faint susurrance of the breeze against the eaves and the faint rustle of the nearby brush. Underneath, a silence seemed to find harbor in the adobe wall and within.

“You get hit?” Chama whispered.

Zak pulled away from the wall, shook his head.

“I think there is only one man inside,” Chama whispered.

Zak nodded in agreement.

“Jimmy, can you sneak by that front door, go around to the other side, under the open window?”

“Yes, I can do that.”

“I’m going to call the man out through the front door. If he doesn’t come out, I’ll bust in. When you hear that door crash open, you cover that window.”

“You will take all the risk, Cody.”

“No. It’s dark inside. You won’t be able to see well through that window, but if he shoots at me, you’ll have a shot.”

“And you?”

“He might surrender without a fight.”

“That would be the smart thing to do.”

The two men considered their moves for a moment. When Chama was ready, he nodded. Zak waved him on past him. Chama crawled on his hands and knees around the front of the adobe. He made no sound, took his time. Zak followed, also on his hands and knees. He stopped on one side of the door as Chama disappeared around the corner of the house.

Zak waited. He put an ear to the door and listened.

He heard the soft sounds, like dream noises from another dimension. The shuffle of a leather sandal sole on dry earth, the faint metallic scrapings as if someone was fiddling with a stuck brass doorknob. Heavy breathing, anxious breathing, like someone gripped with fear and urgency.

Something about those odd confluences of sounds made him think that there was a child or an idiot on the other side of the door, someone confused and in a state of increasing panic. Someone demented and scared, an imbecile who couldn’t figure out what to do.

Zak touched a finger to the door, pushed gently. It moved, and the leather hinges made no sound. He pushed with the heel of his hand and the door opened wider, letting a shaft of sunlight pour a sallow streak onto a dirt floor that showed signs that it had been swept flat with a broom. He craned his neck as he brought his pistol up close to the doorjamb, ready to push it through the opening and squeeze the trigger if someone came toward him.

The sounds were louder now. A rustle of cloth, a deep sigh, and that same metallic chitter sounding like a tin grasshopper working its mandibles, or a squirrel muttering low in its mechanical throat. He saw movement and stretched his neck to look inside toward the window where someone had shot at him moments before.

A dark shape and the unmistakable straight line of a rifle barrel silhouetted against the window’s pale light. A figure hunched over, fiddling with the trigger or the trigger guard. The action on the Sharps was jammed, he figured, and the shooter had not ejected the empty hull nor jammed in another .50 caliber round.

Zak eased up through the doorway, still hunched over in a crouch, and stepped carefully onto the dirt floor. He made no sound as he tiptoed toward the figure with its back to him. He knew, from a quick glance, that there was no one else in the room. Just that bent form below the window, struggling with the Sharps, absorbed in freeing the jam, breathing hard and fast, the sucking in and out of an open mouth and nostrils.

Zak grabbed the end of the barrel as he rammed the barrel of his pistol into the back of the person’s head. He thumbed the hammer back on the Walker Colt to full cock, the sound like an iron door opening in a dark cave.

“One twitch,” Zak said, “and I blow your brains to powder.”

He heard a startled gasp that sounded almost like a sob, and he snatched the rifle out of the squatting person’s hands, tossed it to the side and behind him.

“Just stand up,” Zak said. “Real slow.”

He looked downward at long black hair. As the figure rose from the floor, he saw it stream down the back of her dress. He felt something tighten in his throat. A lump began to form as she slowly turned around and looked up at him. Her lips were quivering in fear and her dress rippled from her shaking legs.

“Jimmy,” Zak yelled toward the window, “you can come in now.”

He saw the crown of Jimmy’s hat bob up in the window, then disappear. A moment later Chama entered the hut, pistol in hand.

“Lady,” Zak said, “step out where I can see you. We won’t hurt you.”

She was young, Zak could tell that. But as she stepped toward him, he could see that her eyes were very old, and full of pain, the pain of centuries, and the pain of her present existence. Her brown eyes lay in watery tired sockets and the flesh beneath them was darker than her face, sagging from too many nights of weeping and maybe hard drinking. There was an odd smell in the room, one that he could not define, but was faintly familiar.

Chama walked over to a table and picked up a clay pipe, sniffed it.

“Opium,” he said. “She’s been smoking opium.”

“That’s what I smelled,” Zak said. “The room reeks with it.”

“Quien eres?” the woman said in Spanish.

“My name’s Cody. Do you speak English?”

“Yes. I speak it.”

“What is your name?”

“Her name,” Chama said, “is Carmen Delgado. She is the wife of Julio Delgado.”

“You know her?”

“I have seen her before,” Jimmy said. “In the jail at Taos. She was bailing out her husband, Julio, who had beaten her up the night before.”

“Is this true?” Zak asked Carmen.

“He did not mean it. Julio gets loco sometimes. When he drinks too much.”

“Julio stole tiswin from a Chiricahua and killed the man he stole it from,” Chama said. “I tracked him to Taos.”

“You didn’t arrest him?”

“I tried. Nobody would listen to me. Julio is a bad man, a killer.”

Carmen’s eyes flashed. “Mentiroso,” she spat, her eyes blazing. “You liar,” she said in English.

“It is true,” Chama said. “The Apaches would like to see Julio hanged, or if they could get their hands on him, they would cut him into many pieces.”

“Well, Carmen,” Zak said, “looks like Julio run off and left you here by yourself.”

“He come back,” she said.

“Was he one of those who painted himself like an Apache?”

“I no tell you nothing,” she said.

Chama stepped in close and glared at her.

“Answer the questions,” he said. “Maybe he won’t kill you.” He spoke in Spanish, but Zak understood every word.

“That’s good advice, Carmen,” Zak said. “You want to live, don’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

Zak picked up the clay pipe, held it front of her.

“You want to dream again, don’t you?” he said.

Her eyes flashed, burned with need, with longing. Then they returned to their dull dead state as her shoulders slumped. She seemed resigned to the hell she was probably going through, but her lips pressed together in defiance.

“Just tell me their names, Carmen,” Zak said, “and you can fill your pipe.”

“They are friends of Julio,” she said.

“They work for Hiram Ferguson, don’t they?”

Her eyes widened and flashed again. “You know they do.”

“Tell me their names.”

Chama put the snout of his pistol up against Carmen’s temple. He thumbed the hammer back. The double click sounded like a lock opening on an iron tomb. Silence filled the room as the blood drained from Carmen’s face.

“They have gone,” she said. “You will not catch them.”

“No matter. But I want to know their names. There were six of them. Julio was one of them.”

“Yes,” she spat. “Julio is their leader. He is a very strong man. If you go after him, he will kill you.”

“The names,” Zak said.

Chama pushed the barrel of his pistol hard against Carmen’s temple. She winced and licked dry lips with a dry tongue.

“No matter to me,” she said. “Hector Gonzalez and his brother, Fidel. Renaldo Valdez, Jaime Elizondo, and Manuel Diego. They ride with Julio.” She paused, then said, “Give me the pipe.”

Chama eased the hammer down to half cock and pulled the pistol away from Carmen’s face. But it still pointed at her.

“I think you’ve had enough opium, Carmen,” Zak said. “Now, we’re going for a little ride.”

“Where do we go?” she said.

“To the next one of these adobe way stations, then to Tucson. To find Julio.”

“He will kill you,” she said, and as Zak threw the pipe down on the dirt floor, a shadow of a sadness came into her eyes and her dry tongue laved her lower lip.

“Saddle a horse for her, Jimmy, will you? Let’s get the hell out of here, out of this stink.”

The adobe reeked with the stench of whiskey, opium fumes, stale bread, and moldy tortillas. But there was also the lingering scent of pipe tobacco and burnt powder from the Sharps. Zak picked up the rifle, examined it. There was a dent in the receiver’s action, a dimple that kept it from ejecting unless force was used. Apparently, he thought, Carmen didn’t have the strength to force the breech open. And she was not even a good shot.

“Why would Julio leave you here all by yourself?” Zak asked her after Chama had taken saddle, bridle, and blanket from a corner and lugged it outside.

“He said he would be back soon.”

“What’s soon?”

“Two days, he say. Maybe three.”

“Do you know why he was coming back?”

“No.”

“Who was here before you came? The man who was watching the place, taking care of the stock?”

“I do not know his name. He works for Hiram.”

“He went back with the wagon? With the army lieutenant?”

“There was a man in the wagon. His hands and feet were tied with rope. He did not wear an army uniform.”

“But you knew he was a soldier?”

Carmen nodded. “They said he was a soldier.”

“Do you know where they took this soldier?”

“To Tucson. To the office of Hiram, I think.”

“Did Julio ride with the wagon?”

“No. The wagon came after he left.”

Zak threw the rifle down. He picked up a lamp, shook it. There was the gurgle of oil inside its base. He pulled the stopper and splashed the coal oil around the room.

“What do you do?” Carmen asked.

“Nobody’s going to use this adobe again,” he said.

“You burn?”

Zak ushered her to the door, turned and struck a match. He tossed it on a place where the coal oil made a dark stain. The match flared and guttered, then flared again as the heat reached the coal oil. The oil burst into a small flame that grew larger.

“My purse,” Carmen said. “My boots.”

“Too late,” Zak said, stepping outside and closing the door.

Inside, he could hear the crackle of flames as the fire fed on dry wood and cloth. Chama had finished saddling a horse for Carmen. He waited, holding the reins of his horse and the one he had just saddled. Zak whistled and Nox trotted up to him.

Smoke billowed from the adobe as the three rode off. Carmen looked back at the burning adobe, that same flicker of sadness in her eyes that Zak had seen before. Then she turned back around and held her head high, staring straight ahead at Chama, who rode in front, following the wagon tracks.

Zak felt sorry for her. She had nothing, and she had just lost everything.

He knew the feeling.