Blood Sky at Morning

Chapter 18

Ben Trask cursed the rising sun. He jerked the cinch strap tight, drove a fist into his horse’s belly. The horse flinched and drew up its sagging belly, giving Trask another notch on the cinch. He buckled it and turned to the others in the stable.

“Jesse Bob, you and Willy about finished yonder?”

“Just about, Ben,” Cavins said, but he was still trying to load his saddle over the blanket. His horse was sidestepping every attempt.

“I got to finish curryin’ mine,” Rawlins said. “He wallowed in shit durin’ the night.”

The eastern horizon was a blaze of red, as if billions of sumacs had exploded and dripped crimson leaves in the sky. There was a majesty and an ominous hush across the desert as the sun spread molten copper over the rocks and plants.

“It’s goin’ to be hotter’n a two-dollar pistol out there today,” Trask grumbled. “We should have been gone long before sunrise.”

“Nobody woke us up,” Cavins complained. “Hell, we even hit the kip with our clothes on last night.”

“It’s that damned Ferguson,” Rawlins said. “He said he’d have somebody wake us up before dawn.”

“Where in hell is Ferguson?” Trask said, a nasty snarl in his voice. “It looks like we got a bunch of barn rats in here and no sign of Hiram.”

“He said he had business to take care of,” Cavins said. “He’ll be along directly.”

“There’s only one business this day. Damn his stage line anyway.”

The Mexicans were almost finished saddling their horses and were leading them out of the stables. Ferguson waded through them into the barn and started yelling at Lou Grissom.

“You got my horse saddled yet, Lou?”

“Yes, sir. He’s still in his stall, though.”

“Shit, you could have brought him out. Ben, this is a hell of a day for whatever you got planned,” Ferguson said as he approached Trask.

“Climb down off your high horse, Hiram,” Trask said. “You know the stakes.”

“No, I don’t know the damned stakes. I got one plan, you got another.”

“O’Hara’s map’s gonna lead us right to the head honcho Apache hisself. We can wipe ’em out in one blow. With my men and yours, them what’s in those line shacks, we’ll have a small army. Just make sure everybody’s got plenty of cartridges, and it wouldn’t hurt to take along a few sticks of dynamite.”

“Christ, Ben, what makes you think you can trust that soldier boy?”

“Did you hear that horse come in early this morning, runnin’ like a bat out of hell?”

“Nope. I slept like a dadgummed log all night.”

“That was a rider from Fort Bowie. Wore out saddle leather and his horse to bring me a message from Willoughby.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. O’Hara’s baby sister left the fort night before last, headin’ straight for your place. I told O’Hara if this didn’t pan out, she’d be the first to die, and he could watch her bleed.”

“He swallered that?”

“Shivered like a dog shittin’ peach seeds,” Trask said.

Hiram found that hard to believe. O’Hara hadn’t impressed him as a man who was much afraid of anything. But, of course, he would have strong feelings for his sister and might fear that harm would come to her if he didn’t cooperate. And he had to admit, Trask was a bear of a man who could easily make most men think twice before bucking him.

“Well, just watch out he don’t trick you, Ben. O’Hara looks to me like a man who puts a card or two up his sleeve when he’s at the table.”

“He won’t double-cross us, Hiram. If he does, he’s a dead man.”

They finished saddling their horses and gathered outside the stables. Cavins brought O’Hara from the office. He was dressed in civilian clothing and he was no longer bound. But Cavins had his pistol out of its holster and leveled on him.

“Ready to ride, Lieutenant?” Trask said, patting his shirt where the map stuck out so O’Hara could see it.

“Yes,” O’Hara said. “Under protest.”

Trask laughed. “Duly noted,” he said in a mocking tone. “Climb aboard that steel-dust gray over there. You’ll stand out like a sore thumb.” With a wave of his arm, Trask indicated all the other horses, which were sorrels and bays.

“Mount up,” Trask ordered the others as O’Hara climbed into the saddle, with Cavins watching his every move. O’Hara was the only one unarmed, and he sighed as he looked at the small army of men surrounding him. He knew that he did not have a friend among them, but his philosophy had always been, “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” He just didn’t want to put Colleen in jeopardy. By now he had figured out that Ferguson and Trask both had ties to Fort Bowie. Although they had never mentioned any names, he knew that their influence, or their connections, must reach fairly high.

He didn’t know much about Willoughby, hadn’t seen that much of the major. But he knew, or suspected, that Willoughby’s sympathies might lie with the Apache-haters. It was just a feeling. Nothing he could nail down on a roof of proof.

Ted looked at the bloodred sky of dawn, said to Cavins, “Red sky at morning.”

“What’s that?” Cavins asked.

“Red sky at morning,” Ted said, “sailor take warning.”

“Well, you ain’t no sailor and we ain’t anywhere near the sea.”

“Don’t have to be, Cavins. That sky dominates the earth.”

“Shut up, soldier boy,” Cavins said. “You so much as twitch on this ride and I’ll blow you plumb out of the saddle.”

Ted knew that Cavins wouldn’t shoot him, but he saw no reason to argue the point. He was unarmed and outnumbered, and this was not the place to make a stand. But he also knew that the first duty of a prisoner was to make every attempt to escape. It had been drilled into him at the military academy, and that thought had been uppermost in his mind ever since he was captured in the dead of night.

He looked around. All of the men were looking at the dawn sky. Ted had never seen a more vivid sunrise. The color was extravagant, plush bulges of the reddest red, the color of blood, fresh spilled, after a hot breeze had stiffened it. Yes, it would be hot that day, but he knew that in another day or two all hell would break loose as the sky filled with black bulging clouds and the wind blew dust and sand into their eyes just before the torrential rains hit with a force strong enough to blow a man out of his saddle. He had seen such storms before, blown down out of the mountains and onto the desert. He had seen cattle and men washed away by flash floods and rivers appear in dry creek beds that brought walls of water rushing headlong at better than six or seven feet high and then some.

That sky told Ted that within twenty-four hours they’d be caught up in a gully washer that would have these men scrambling for high ground, their eyes stung by grit and rain, blinded for a time, he hoped, unable to see more than a foot in front of their faces, if that. There would be a chance then for him to ride away from his captors, put distance between him and them as he made his way back to the fort. It was a chance. Perhaps the only chance he’d have. They couldn’t make it to the first marks on his map before they would all be swept up in one hell of a frog-strangler of a storm.

Suddenly, he felt an inner surge of energy as a thought occurred to him. He began to calculate the distance in his mind, the estimated speed of travel with this group of armed killers, and he knew it was possible. Possible to outwit Trask and Ferguson, possible to escape. It was a long shot, to be sure, but he was confident there would be time. Time and opportunity. His nerves would be scraped to a fine razor edge when they reached the place he had in mind, but he could handle that.

All he had to do was wait and bide his time, he thought, as he looked at that rude dawn sky again and smiled inwardly.

“Let’s get this outfit moving,” Trask yelled, as the Mexicans sat their horses, their gazes still fixed on the eastern horizon. Cavins nodded to O’Hara, who turned his horse toward the main bunch of men.

“O’Hara,” Trask said, “you ride with me in front. Cavins, you watch him.”

“My men,” Ferguson said, “you follow behind Cavins.”

“Hiram, come on up. You ride with me, too. We’re going to pick up those men you got on station. That should give us enough guns to do what we have to do.”

“More’n enough,” Hiram said. “Them are all good men. Crack shots.”

There was grumbling among some of the men who had stayed too long at the cantina the night before, but Trask got the column moving, and the griping stopped once the small troop made the commitment. The sun rose above the horizon, drawing off the night dew and releasing the dry smell of the earth. The shadows evaporated and the rocks and plants stood out in stark relief, as if carved out of crystal with a razor. A horse farted and some of the men laughed.

“I want you to take us straight to where old Cochise has his gold, O’Hara, you got that?” Trask said.

“It’s marked on that map in your pocket, Trask. It’s a good two-day ride.”

“We’ll make it in a day and a half.”

O’Hara suppressed a smile. That would be perfect in his estimation.

Trask set a pace that brought more grumbling from the men. The Mexicans kept up, as if to show up the gringos, and the muttering stopped once again.

A half hour later, when the smoke of Tucson was no longer visible behind them, Hiram stood up in the stirrups, peering ahead. He uttered an exclamation that there was no equivalent of in any language.

Trask followed his gaze. Small puffs of dust speared on the horizon, golden in the morning light, almost invisible against the desert hue.

“He’s wearin’ out saddle leather,” Trask said.

“Yeah. He’s in a mighty hurry, and ridin’ the old trail to them ranches where I’ve got my men on station.”

“One of yours?”

“I don’t know yet. He’s too far away.”

“Well, we’ll shorten his distance some,” Trask said. “Let’s keep up the pace,” he called out to the men behind him.

The oncoming rider closed the distance. He loomed up, madly whipping his horse with his reins, the brim of his hat brushed back by the force of the breeze at his face.

“Damned if that ain’t Danny Grubb,” Hiram said. “And looky at his horse, all lathered up like a barbershop customer.”

Flecks of foam flew off Grubb’s horse. Hiram held up his hand as if to stop him before the animal floundered.

Grubb reined in when he was a few yards away, hauling hard on the reins to stop the horse. The horse stiffened its forelegs and pulled up a few feet away, its rubbery nostrils distended, blowing out spray and foam. It heaved its chest in an effort to breathe, then hung its head, tossing its mane.

“Danny, you ’bout to kill that horse,” Hiram said. “What in hell’s the all-fired rush and where the devil are you bound so early in the mornin’?”

“Boss, he done shot Tolliver. Larry’s plumb dead. He didn’t have a chance.”

“Whoa up, Danny. Take it slow. Who shot Larry?”

“Let me get my breath,” Grubb said, wheezing. The rails in his throat rattled like a stand of wind-blown cane.

“Just tell me who killed Tolliver and we’ll get him,” Hiram said.

“C-Cody,” Grubb stammered. “Calls hisself Zak Cody. The Shadow Rider.”

Trask’s blood seemed to stand still in his veins, then turned cold as ice.

“Cody?” Trask said. “Are you sure?”

“Damned sure.” Grubb was breathing hard, but he was more anxious to get his story off his chest than to breathe in more air. “I lit out, then circled back a ways to see where he went.”

By then the other riders had crowded around Grubb and encircled him, all listening intently.

He looked over at Julio Delgado.

“He took Carmen, Julio. Seen ’em ridin’ off, and there’s another feller with him now, I reckon. Don’t know him. But he burned down most ever’ one of them ’dobes and I know he kilt Cunningham and Newton. It was dark as hell, but I seen that ’dobe burnin’ and I crossed nobody’s trail gettin’ this far. That man Cody’s a pure devil. And he’s headed this way, near as I can figure.”

O’Hara listened to this account and was barely breathing as he mulled it over.

He had been watching Trask the whole time and he had now found another one of the man’s weaknesses. Besides a lust for gold, Trask was afraid. Afraid of one man—Zak Cody.

The Shadow Rider.

It was something to keep in mind, and Cody just might turn out to be another ace in the hole.

The eastern sky was a ruddy daub on the horizon. The sun lifted above the earth and the clouds began to fade to a soft salmon color. But the warning was still there. A storm was coming that would turn the hard desert floor to mud.

Trask turned around and looked straight at O’Hara as if he had read his thoughts.

Ted O’Hara smiled, and he saw a sudden flash of anger in Trask’s eyes.

Well, Ted thought, now we know each other, don’t we, Ben Trask?

Trask turned away, and the moment passed. But now Ted felt that he had the upper hand and Trask had no control over the future. Some of the men Trask had counted on were dead. Julio’s wife was a prisoner, and ahead lay a bigger unknown than the location of Cochise’s rumored hoard of gold.

There was tension among the men now, and Ted knew that this was only the beginning. He was glad he was alive so he could see how it all turned out.

Red sky at night, ran silently in his mind, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

“What are you smirking about?” Cavins asked when he looked at O’Hara.

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking.”

“Well, don’t think, soldier boy. It might get you dead.”

“If you say so,” O’Hara said amiably, knowing that it was Cavins who was worried about death, not he.