Blood Sky at Morning

Chapter 17

In the distance, across the eerie nightscape of the desert, the yellow light flickered like a winking fire-fly as they rode through and over small rocky hillocks dotted with the twisted forms of ocotillo and prickly pear. In the darkness, distances were deceiving, but Zak had learned to gauge them through long experience of riding at night in country more deceptive than this.

He left Chama and Carmen behind a low hill above the adobe cabin, out of harm’s way, after whispering to Carmen to be quiet. She was skittery, and he had a hunch she might try to warn the two men in the hut. He also told Chama to keep a close eye on her.

“Brain her if you have to, Jimmy,” Zak said.

In the darkness, he could see Chama nod.

He circled the lighted shack, a slow process because he didn’t want Nox’s iron shoes ringing on stone or cracking brush. Through a side window he saw shadows moving inside. The horses in the corral were feeding, so he judged that one of the men, or both, had recently set out hay or grain for them. He patted Nox’s withers to calm him, keep him quiet as he neared the end of his wide circle.

Zak dismounted, looped the reins through the saddle rings so they wouldn’t dangle, leaving Nox to roam free. The horse would not roam, he knew, but stay within a few feet of where he would leave him, waiting patiently for his master to return. He patted Nox on the neck and walked toward the adobe, his boots making no sound on the hard ground.

He crept up to the edge of the light from one window to the side of the front door. The feeble glow from the lamp puddled on the ground outside, its beam awash with winged gnats flying aimless circuits like demented swimmers. A faint aroma drifted from the window and the cracks around the weathered door that had shrunk with age. Zak sniffed, smelling the distinct aroma of Arbuckle’s Best, with its faint scent of cinnamon. He listened, heard the burbling of what he imagined must be a coffeepot on a stove. His stomach swirled and his mouth filled with the seep of saliva.

He loosened his pistol in its holster, stepped up to the door and gave a soft knock.

“Who the hell is it?” growled a voice inside.

“I smell coffee,” Zak said. “Lost my horse.”

Whispers from inside the adobe. A scuffling of feet, scrape of chairs.

Zak left himself room to step aside if anyone came at him with a gun or a knife.

“Hold on,” another voice called out.

The door opened.

Two men stood there, back-lighted, and Zak couldn’t see their faces well. They wore grimy work clothes and their boots had no shine, dust-covered as they were.

“You what?” the taller man in front growled.

“Lost my horse. Well, he broke his leg in a gopher hole and I had to put him down. Been walking for a couple of hours. Saw your light. Smelled that Arbuckle’s when I came up.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Name’s Jake,” Zak said, the lie coming easily to his lips. “Jake Baldwin.” A name out of the past, one of the mountain men who had trapped the Rockies with his father. Jake wouldn’t mind. He was long dead, his scalp hanging in a Crow lodge up in Montana Territory.

“Let him in, Lester. Jesus.”

“Yeah,” Lester said. “Come on in. Coffee’s just made.”

Zak noticed that Lester’s dangling right hand was never very far from the butt of his pistol, a Colt Dragoon, from the looks of it. Well worn, too. There was the smell of rotten flesh and decayed fat in the room, mixed with the scent of candle wax and whiskey fumes.

“I’m Dave Newton,” the second man said. “We don’t get many folks passin’ this way, stranger.”

“Jake,” Zak said, stepping inside where the musty smell of an old dwelling mingled with the scent of the coffee. “Pleased to meet you.”

“That’s Lester Cunningham,” Newton said. “My partner.”

“Set down,” Cunningham said, his gravelly voice so distinctive that Zak looked at his throat, saw the heavy braid of a scar there, dissecting his Adam’s apple. He was a tall, rangy man with long hair the color of steel that hung down past his shirt collar. His complexion was almost as gray, pasty, as if he had been in a prison cell for a good long while.

Newton was a stringy, unkempt man with a sallow complexion, bad teeth, and a strong smell that emanated from his mouth. His scraggly hair stuck out in spikes under his hat, which, like him, had seen better days. His eyes appeared to be crossed, they were so close-set, straddling a thin, bent nose that furthered the illusion. His face and wrists were marbled with pale liver spots, and Zak could see the blue veins in his nose, just under the skin.

As Lester took the coffeepot off the small square woodstove with its rusty chimney, Zak glanced around the room. There were coyote skins drying on withes, others, stiff and stacked, tied into bundles with twine, and, in a small oblong box resembling a cage, a jackrabbit hunched, its eyes glittering with fear. Some potato peelings littered its cage.

Newton saw Zak looking at the rabbit and let out a small chuckle.

“That’s Bertie,” he said. “Me ’n’ Lester pass the time huntin’ coyotes at night. We take Bertie out there in the dark and twist his ears till he squeals like a little gal. Them coyotes come slinkin’ up for a meal and we pop ’em with our pistols. For sport. But we can sell them hides to the Mexicans in Tucson for two bits or so. Drinkin’ money.”

Zak saw that both men wore skinning knives on their belts. Newton packed an old Navy Colt, converted from percussion to handle cartridges. The brass on it was as mottled as his skin.

Lester poured coffee into three grimy cups. He handed one to Zak, who took it in his left hand, the steam curling up from its surface like tiny wisps of fog.

“What’s this about your horse?” Cunningham asked. “You say it stepped in a gopher hole? I ain’t seen no gophers ’round here.”

“It was a hole,” Zak said. “I thought it was a gopher hole. Maybe a prairie dog hole.”

He held the cup up to his lips, blew on it, but he didn’t drink.

“Ain’t seen no prairie dogs ’round here neither,” Cunningham said. “Where’d you say you was from?”

“I didn’t say,” Zak said.

“Les, you don’t need to be so unsociable,” Newton said. “Let the man drink his coffee.”

“He ain’t drinkin’ none,” Cunningham said. “You left-handed, mister?”

“I’m ambidextrous,” Zak said.

“Huh?” Newton said.

“Yeah, what’s that?” Cunningham said. “Some kind of disease? That abmi—whatever.”

“Ambidextrous. Means I’m good with either hand, Lester,” Zak said, an amiable tone in his voice. “From the Latin. ‘Ambi’ means both. ‘Dextrous’ means right.”

Both men worried over Zak’s explanation. Newton was the first to figure it out.

“That means you got two right hands?”

“Something like that,” Zak said. “Means I can write or play with my pecker using either hand.”

Newton laughed. Cunningham scowled.

“Mister, seems to me you got a smart mouth,” Cunningham said. “Something wrong with the coffee?”

“No, why?” Zak said.

“You ain’t drinkin’ it.”

“Too hot.”

“How come you’re holding that cup with your left hand?” Cunningham said.

“Oh, it was the handiest, I reckon,” Zak said with a disingenuous smile.

“Or maybe you mean to draw that Walker and rob us,” Cunningham said.

“You got something to rob?”

Newton chuckled. “He’s got you there, Les,” he said.

“I don’t like the bastard,” Cunningham said. “We don’t know where he come from. We don’t know what he wants. He asks for coffee, then don’t drink it. Shit, he’s got something up his damned sleeve besides an arm.”

“Aw, Les, you go on too much about nothin’,” Newton said. “Coffee’s real hot. He don’t want to burn his lips.”

Zak looked at the two men. Newton was oblivious to the threat voiced by Cunningham, or was unaware of the tension between the two men. But he wasn’t. Cunningham’s eyes were narrowed to slits and he looked like a puma ready to pounce. He decided he had played with them long enough.

He set his coffee cup down on the floor. Cunningham’s gaze followed it and he stiffened. Newton looked like an idiot that had just seen a parlor trick he didn’t understand.

But Zak noticed that Newton was wearing a swivel holster. He wouldn’t even have to draw his pistol, just reach down, cock it as he brought the holster up on the swivel, then fire. Of the two men in the adobe, Zak figured Newton was the more dangerous one, even though he showed no signs of being belligerent.

It was the quiet ones you had to watch, he thought.

“I don’t know,” Zak said softly, shaking his head, “he must have scraped the bottom of the barrel.”

“What’s that?” Cunningham said. “Who you talkin’ about?”

“Old Hiram,” Zak said.

“Hiram?” Newton came out of his seeming stupor at the mention of the name.

“Ferguson?” Cunningham said. “You talkin’ ’bout Hiram Ferguson?”

“Yeah, that’s the man,” Zak said.

“You work for him?” Newton asked, an idiotic expression on his face.

“Nope,” Zak said.

“What’s that about scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel?” Cunningham said, pressing the issue.

“When he hired you two on,” Zak said.

“What the hell…” Newton said, setting his cup down on a small table.

“You got somethin’ in your craw, mister, you spit it out.” Cunningham’s right hand drifted closer to the butt of his pistol.

Zak sensed that both men were ready to open the ball. But he wanted to give them a chance, at least.

“Your other way stations up the line are all shut down,” Zak said. “The men manning them are either lighting a shuck for Tucson or wolf meat. You two boys got yourself a choice.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Cunningham said, his right hand opening, dropping lower still.

“You can either walk out of here, saddle up and ride back to Tucson, or…”

Zak reached down, casually, and picked up his coffee cup. It was still steaming.

“Or what?” Newton said, a menacing tone in his voice that was like a razor scraping on a leather strop.

“Or you’ll both be corpses lying here when I burn this shack down,” Zak said.

That’s when Cunningham made his move. His hand dropped to the butt of his Dragoon. Zak tossed the hot coffee at him. Cunningham screamed and clawed at his face. Then Zak hurled the empty cup straight at Newton and stood up, crouching as his hand streaked for the Walker at his side.

Newton dodged the cup and tilted his holster up, hammering back with pressure from his thumb. Too late. Zak had already jerked his pistol free, cocking on the rise, and squeezed the trigger when the barrel came level with Newton’s gut. The pistol roared and bucked in his hand, spewing lead and sparks and flame from its snout like some angry dragon.

Cunningham rose to his feet and drew the big Dragoon from its holster, his eyes blinking at the sting of hot coffee.

Zak swung his pistol and made it bark with another squeeze of the trigger. The bullet smashed into Cunningham’s belly and he doubled over with the shock of the impact.

“You drop that pistol, Lester,” Zak said, “or the next one goes right between your eyes.”

Newton groaned and started to lift his pistol to fire at Zak.

“Don’t you get it, Newton?” Zak said. “You just stepped on a rattlesnake.”

“Huh?” Newton said, his voice almost a squeak as the pain started to spread through his bowels.

“I’m the rattler,” Zak said, and shot again, drilling Newton square in the chest, cracking his breast-plate and tearing out a chunk of his heart. There was a gush of blood and Newton dropped like a sack of stones.

Cunningham let his pistol fall and rolled on the floor, his back in the dirt. He stared up at Zak, his eyes glassy from the pain that seeped through him like a slow brushfire.

“Who in the hell are you, mister?” Cunningham managed to say. “We ain’t done you no harm.”

“It’s the Apache you’re hurting, Cunningham. I gave you a choice. Go or die. You chose the wrong one.”

“How—How many of you are there?” Cunningham said. “You got men outside?”

“There’s a nation outside, Lester. A whole nation of Apaches.”

“I don’t get it,” Cunningham said, his voice fading as his eyes began to glaze over with the frost of death.

He shuddered and there was a crackle in his throat. He let out a long sigh and couldn’t get any breath back in his lungs. He closed his eyes and went limp.

Zak looked at the two men. Both were dead and there was a silence in the room that was both blessed and cursed.

Zak walked to the cage. He took the cage outside, set it on the ground. He lifted the door, and Bertie hopped out. Zak made a sound to scare the rabbit off, then returned to the shack.

“And you won’t kill any more coyotes, either,” Zak said as he picked up the oil lamp and hurled it against the wall, hitting it just above the bundle of hides. Tongues of flames leaped in all directions and began licking at the dried fur, anything that would burn.

Zak stepped outside into the clean dry air. He opened the gate to the Colt and started ejecting spent hulls. He stuffed new cartridges into the pistol as he walked slowly toward the place where he had left Nox. Before he mounted up, he could smell the sickly aroma of burning human flesh.