Blood Sky at Morning

Chapter 20

The eastern sky drained its blood, turned to ashes. Tiny mares’ tails began to etch the sky with Arabic scrawls of stormy portent. Zak did not look up at the wisps, but kept his gaze fastened on Chama and Carmen. A slight breeze began to rise, its fingers tousling Carmen’s hair as she stood there, her face a mask of defiance and determination.

“Tell me, Chama,” Zak said, “did you have anything to do with Lieutenant O’Hara’s capture? You carry yourself like a military man.”

“I was there, yes. I told Ben where the patrol would be and when the best time would be to take O’Hara prisoner.”

“You’re a deserter, then,” Zak said.

Chama shrugged. “I have done my time in the army. I was a sergeant. A good place for a spy like me, do you not think? That is finished. I go now to fight the Apache, to help Hiram and Ben wipe them out. To take their gold.”

Zak caught the boastful tone in Chama’s voice. Let him brag, he thought.

“The Chiricahua have no gold.”

“Cochise has gold. Much gold.”

Zak suppressed a laugh. This was far too serious for humor.

“That is an old wives’ tale. A lie,” Zak said. “Rather, it is a lie made by white men to turn the settlers against Cochise. He has no gold, beyond a few trinkets.”

“That is not what Trask and Ferguson believe. And I think O’Hara knows where that gold is. He will tell us. We will find it.”

“Not a good reason to die, Chama. For a pile of gold that is only a fairy tale told by white men.”

“As I told you, Cody, this is as far as you go. We are two against one, Carmen and I. You can drop your gun now and I will let you walk away. We will keep your horse.”

“My horse is worth more than any Apache gold,” Zak said softly.

“He is not worth your life, Cody.”

“Chama, let me ask you something before you draw your pistol.”

“Ask,” Chama said, flexing the fingers of his gun hand. “You do not have much time, gringo.”

It was funny, Zak thought, how quickly people could change, how swiftly they could change their colors, like a chameleon. Chama had all these pent-up emotions inside of him that he had been carrying for many miles. Now, in the light of a new day, he had reverted to what he always was, a lying, scheming, shifty sonofabitch with murder on his mind.

“Ever stand on a high cliff and look down, wonder what it would be like to fall about a hundred feet onto the rocks below?” Zak asked.

“No, I never have done that. You ask a strange question. Why? Do you have the fear of falling, Cody?”

“No. I was just thinking to myself about you. And me.”

“There is nothing to think about,” Chama said.

“Chama, I’m that tall cliff, and you’re standing right on the edge of it, about to fall right off. Only in your case, you’re never going to see the ground before you hit it.”

The expression on Chama’s face changed as he realized what Zak had said. In that moment, he knew that Zak had turned the tables on him. Zak was calling him out, not the other way around.

“All right,” Chama said, and went into a crouch. As he did, his right hand stabbed downward for the butt of his pistol.

Zak was facing the sunrise, but he did not look at it. Instead, he kept his gaze focused on Chama, and in the periphery of his vision, on Carmen. He was aware of Chama’s intentions with the first twitch of his hand, which echoed on his face like a tic.

Zak stood straight, his gaze locked on Chama’s flickering eyes. But in one smooth motion his hand snaked down to his pistol, drew it from its holster as if it was oiled, his thumb cocking it before it cleared leather.

Carmen was slow to react, but she saw Chama grab for his pistol and she became galvanized into action. Her hand slid inside her sash, grasped the butt of the pistol Chama had given her and began to slide it upward. She appeared to be moving fast, but in that warped time frame when death dangles by a slender hair, her motion was much too slow, like an inching snail trying to escape a juggernaut.

Zak’s Walker Colt roared just as Chama’s barrel cleared the holster. He shot from just below his hip, the barrel at a thirty-degree angle. Just enough, Zak thought, to put Chama down.

Chama opened his mouth and yelled, “Noooooo,” as Zak’s pistol barked. The bullet caught him just above the belt buckle, driving into him like a twenty-pound maul, smashing through flesh as it mushroomed on its way out his back, nearly doubling the size of its soft lead point.

The air rushed out of Chama’s lungs like the gush from a blacksmith’s bellows and he staggered backward, blood gushing from his abdomen, a crimson fountain. He groaned and went to his knees, the pistol still clutched in his hand. He tried to raise it for a shot at Zak, then his eyes went wide as Zak took careful aim and blasted off another shot that took away Chama’s scream as it ripped through his mouth and blew away three inches of his spine in a paralyzing crunch of bone.

Carmen slid her pistol from the sash and pointed it at Zak, her hand trembling, her arm swaying as she tried to aim.

“Sorry, Carmen,” Zak said, “but you’re standing on the edge of that same cliff.”

She fired and the bullet whistled past Zak’s ear. He stood there, shook his head slightly and pulled the trigger of his Colt. Carmen closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them in disbelief as the bullet spun her halfway around. Blood spurted from her shoulder, but she managed to lift her pistol again and aim it at Zak, her lips pressed together in rage and defiance. She looked like a cornered animal, her brown eyes flickering with flinty sparks. The pistol cracked and the bullet plowed a furrow in the ground between Zak’s legs. He still stood straight, and now his eyes narrowed as he cocked the pistol and held it at arm’s length in a straight line that pointed directly at her heart.

“Sorry, Carmen,” he said as he squeezed the trigger. “But you called the tune.”

The bullet smashed into Carmen’s chest, slightly to the left of her breastbone. Her heart exploded under the impact as the bullet flattened and expanded after smashing through ribs. She dropped like a sash weight, a crimson stain blossoming on her chest. She lay like a broken flower in the dirt, the angry expression wiped from her face as if someone had swiped it with a towel. Her eyes glazed over with the frost of death, staring sightlessly at the sky.

The sound of the last gunshot faded into a deathly silence as Zak ejected the hulls from his pistol and slid fresh cartridges into the empty chambers. The smell of burnt gunpowder lingered in his nostrils as he gazed down at Carmen’s body, shaking his head at another needless and useless death. Whatever scraps life had offered her, he had taken them all away, regretfully.

Zak saw that Chama, too, was stone dead, his bleeding stopped. He had tried to warn him, but Chama’s self-confidence bordered on insane arrogance. The man had followed his own path to the end of the road. The road ended on a high cliff and Chama had taken the fall. The stench from his body, since he had voided himself, was strong, and Zak turned away.

Death was such an ugly thing, he thought. One moment a man, or a woman, was vibrant with energy, brimming with life. The next, after death, they were just carrion, all signs of life and personality gone, their bodies like cast-off rattlesnake skins. In Tibet, he knew, when a person died, the monks took his body to a place in the hills where there was a convex slab of rock. The dead body was stripped and men cut it into pieces, tossed the parts to the large waiting vultures. Their idea was to remove all traces of humanness and let the soul return to spirit form. They watched the vultures gorge themselves on human remains, then take to the sky, flying over the hills and the mountains, carrying what was left of the human corpse. The sight gave the mourners great comfort.

Zak sighed and turned away to walk toward his horse.

Nox stood there in silence, his ears still flattened, his body braced for danger.

Then the horse’s ears pricked up and twisted as if to catch a distant sound.

Zak paid attention to such things. He stopped and listened, turning his head first one way, then the other. The sun was clearing the horizon, sliding up through murky logjams of clouds, spraying the land with a pale gold in its broad reach.

He heard the familiar click of a rifle cocking, and whirled to see an armed soldier pointing a Spencer repeating rifle straight at him.

“You just hold on there,” the soldier said.

A moment later Zak heard the scuffle of a horse’s hooves and turned his head to see another soldier, also armed with a Spencer, bearing down on him from behind a low hill.

“Better lift them hands, mister,” the first soldier said.

Zak slowly lifted his hands.

“Looks to me like we got a murder here,” the second soldier said, then turned and raised a hand, beckoning to someone Zak could not see.

The two soldiers closed in on Zak, flanking him on both sides, but kept their distance, their barrels trained on him, their fingers caressing the triggers.

The Spencer had a seven-cartridge magazine, tubular, and used .56/56 rimfire cartridges. Zak knew they could shoot him to pieces at such close range.

“This wasn’t murder, soldier,” Zak said softly. “Self-defense.”

“So you say.”

“Look at the bodies. They both have pistols next to them.”

“You just hold steady there.”

Then Colleen O’Hara rode up. She stared at the bodies of Chama and Carmen, gasped aloud. Then she saw Zak. She stopped her horse next to the second soldier.

“Mr. Cody,” she said. “Whatever happened here? Did you kill that man and that woman?”

“You know this jasper?” the first soldier asked.

“Why, yes. Slightly. Why are you pointing your guns at him?”

“It appears that Mr. Cody murdered these two people and I’m going to take him into custody.”

“Mr. Scofield, Delbert, I think you may be making a big mistake,” Colleen said. “I’m sure Mr. Cody has some reasonable explanation.”

“Yeah, what is your explanation, Cody?” the second soldier said.

“Your name?” Cody said, looking at the soldier.

“This is Hugo,” Colleen said, “Hugo Rivers. These two were escorting me to Tucson where I plan to look for my brother Ted.”

“Well, Private Rivers,” Zak said, “these two pulled pistols on me and were going to kill me. I beat them to the punch.”

“Some story,” Rivers said.

Scofield snorted. Then, he looked at Chama more closely.

“Hey, this here’s Sergeant Jimmy Chama,” Scofield explained. “He’s a damned deserter.”

River turned his head to look at Chama. “Sure as hell looks like him,” he said.

“That is Chama,” Zak said. “Miss O’Hara, he’s the one who fixed things with Ferguson and Trask so they could kidnap your brother.”

Colleen reared back in her saddle, her back stiffening.

“He is?” she said.

“That’s what he told me,” Zak said. “He was proud of it. He is a deserter, as these men say. Or was.”

“What about that woman?” Scofield asked. “She wasn’t no deserter.”

“She’s married to one of Ferguson’s men. She was my prisoner. Chama slipped her a pistol and they both meant to kill me, to stop me from trying to free Lieutenant O’Hara.”

“Well, we’ll just have to sort all this out,” Scofield said.

“No,” Zak said, dropping his hands, “you two are now under my command. Put down those rifles. We’ve got a ways to ride.”

“You ain’t got no authority to order us to do a damned thing, mister,” Rivers said.

“I think he does,” Colleen said. “I learned, at the fort, that Mr. Cody is a commissioned officer in the army, working for General Crook and President Grant. You’re a colonel, are you not, Mr. Cody?”

Zak nodded.

The two soldiers looked at him, their faces dumb-struck.

Before they could say anything, Colleen lifted her head and pointed to the west.

“I see a cloud of dust,” she said. “Somebody’s coming this way. Or, it might be the stage.”

Zak walked quickly to Nox and climbed into the saddle.

“All of you,” he said, “follow me to cover behind that hill over there. Until we know who that is under that dust cloud, we’re all in danger.”

Colleen was the first to move. Reluctantly, the two soldiers followed.

“There goes our damned leave,” Rivers grumbled.

“You trust this Cody?”

“He’s the onliest one who seems to know what the hell he’s doin’, I reckon.”

Scofield stifled a curse.

The dust cloud grew closer as the four riders galloped behind the low hill well off the old wagon road.

The sun filled the sky and the blue heavens filled with mares’ tails as if the gods had gone mad and scrawled their warning of impending weather for all to see.