Blood Sky at Morning

Chapter 23

Julio Delgado heard a sound. He looked up from the shallow grave, squinted until his eyes were in focus on the rider coming toward them from the west. Renaldo Valdez saw him and turned his head, looking off in the same direction.

“Someone is coming,” Julio said.

“I see him. Who is it?”

“I do not know.”

Manuel Diego set down a rock he had dug up and turned to look.

“Maybe that is the man who killed your wife, Julio,” he said.

“Maybe,” Delgado said, his voice low and guttural.

A few of the buzzards landed some distance from the gravesite. They flexed their wings and marched to and fro like tattered generals surveying a battle-field. Their squawks scratched the air like chalk screeching on a blackboard.

“He does not ride fast,” Renaldo Valdez said. “He does not hurry.”

“No,” Delgado said. “He is without hurry on that black horse.”

“He wears black like the horse, eh?” Diego observed. “Maybe he is a messenger.”

“A messenger? Who would send a messenger out here from Tucson?” Delgado wiped tears from under his eyes, squinted again.

“Maybe there is trouble at the office of Ferguson,” Diego said. “Maybe it burned down.”

“You have the imagination of a chicken,” Valdez said.

“Why not?” Delgado said. “He has the brains of a chicken.”

Valdez laughed. Diego did not laugh.

Delgado stood up. He did not dust himself off, but continued to stare at the approaching rider. Valdez and Diego got to their feet as well, slowly, knives still gripped loosely in their hands.

“You there,” Delgado called to Cody, “what brings you this way?” He spoke in English.

“I have a message for you,” Cody said.

“See?” Diego said. “He has a message. El es un mensajero.”

“You are full of the shit, Manuel,” Valdez said.

“Be quiet,” Delgado said.

Zak drew closer. “What message do you bring?” Delgado asked.

“I will tell you in a minute,” Zak said.

“Tell me now, mister. Do not come any closer. It is very dangerous here.”

Zak kept riding.

“Oh, yes, it is dangerous here,” he said. “Dangerous for you. Are you Delgado?”

“Yes, I am Julio Delgado. You have news for me?”

“If you are Julio Delgado, I do have news for you. And for your companions as well.”

Zak rode up to the three men and reined in Nox. He looked down at them. Delgado’s knife lay on the ground, but Valdez and Diego still clutched theirs, more tightly than before.

“And what is this news that is so important that you ride out all the way from Tucson?”

“I did not ride from Tucson,” Zak said. “I rode out of the night on this black horse. My message is this: If you and your companions will bury your dead and ride back to Tucson instead of catching up to Trask and Ferguson, you will live another day. Maybe many more days.”

Zak’s words hung there like black bunting in a funeral parlor. Delgado cleared his throat. Valdez and Diego looked at each other.

“He is loco,” Valdez said in Spanish.

“He said he rides out of the night? What does he mean?” Diego asked, also in Spanish.

“Why do you want us to go back to town?” Delgado said to Zak. “Are you going to kill us if we do not do this?”

“Yes, Delgado,” Zak said. “I’m going to kill you if you try and join up with Ben Trask. I am going to kill him, too.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Zak Cody.”

“You are the one they call the Shadow Rider?”

“Some call me that, yes.”

“I am not afraid of you, Cody. Did you kill my wife? A man told me that you did.”

“I killed your wife, Delgado. And I killed Chama, too.”

Delgado’s neck swelled up like a bull in the rut. His face purpled with rage. The blood drained from the faces of Valdez and Diego. They both looked as if someone had come up to them and kicked them in the nuts.

“Hijo de mala leche.” Delgado spat. Then, in English, “You bastard.”

“He is only one. We are three,” Valdez said in Spanish to the others.

“He might kill one of us,” Diego said.

“I will kill him,” Delgado said. “For what he did.”

Zak understood every word.

He slid quickly from the saddle, slapped Nox on the rump and squared off to face the three men.

“What do you wish, Delgado?” Zak said in Spanish. “To bury your wife and ride to the town alive, or leave her body to the buzzards while you join her in sleep?”

“You talk very brave, gringo.”

Diego and Valdez squeezed the handles of their knives. Cody was too far away. Diego let his knife slide through his fingers until he grasped only the tip.

Zak saw the move and waited.

Delgado licked his dry lips. A buzzard squawked, impatient. There was a silence after that, a silence buried deep in a soundless well.

“You are a dead man, gringo,” Delgado said in English. “You do not tell me what to do.”

“Delgado, it is your choice. But I will tell you this. The last sound you hear on this earth will be the voice of my Walker Colt.”

Delgado’s face grew livid with rage. He went into a crouch and clawed for the butt of his pistol. Diego started to draw his arm back to throw his knife at Cody. Valdez stabbed his hand downward to jerk his pistol free.

A single second splintered into fractions. Four lives teetered on the fulcrum of eternity. All breathing stopped. Sweat froze. Eyes crackled and sparked like tiny flames deep in men’s souls. Time no longer existed in that place. Somewhere, out of sight, a small door opened just a crack and there was a darkness beyond, a limitless darkness where no light could shine.

Cody’s hand was a flash of lightning, his pistol a thundercrack in the mute firmament. The blue sky seemed to pale as fire belched from the barrel of his pistol and the hornet sound of his Colt fried the still morning air. Delgado sucked blood from the hole in his throat and his arms flew upward, his hands empty.

Cody sidestepped as he hammered back and his pistol roared again. The bullet caught Diego just as he hurled his knife and before Diego hit the ground, Cody knocked the hammer back on the Colt with the heel of his left hand and swung the barrel toward Valdez, who had his pistol nearly out of its holster. His lips were pressed together as if he were under a great strain.

“Hijo…” he breathed as Cody’s pistol roared with the exploding sound of doom. The bullet smashed into Valdez’s chest with the force of a pile driver, cracking bone, crushing flesh and veins into raw pulp, and his eyes clouded up as tears shot from ducts like a salty rain.

Valdez collapsed to his knees and struggled to draw breath into lungs that were clogged with blood and bone. Then the feeble light in his eyes fled through that open door, into the darkness.

Zak cocked his pistol again and looked at each man sprawled on the ground, the smoke from his pistol rising like a fakir’s cobra from a wicker basket, the air reeking of burnt powder.

He heard a noise then, the clattering of rocks, the crash of brush. He turned to see Hugo Rivers running headlong down the slope of the hill, his rifle held high over his head, his feet moving almost too fast for his body to follow.

“Hey,” Rivers yelled, “you done it all. I didn’t have a chance to help.”

Zak opened the gate on the pistol and began ejecting the brass hulls. He had filled the empty cylinders with fresh cartridges by the time Rivers reached his side, out of breath and panting. In the distance, he saw Scofield running toward them at a fast lope.

“Boy, sir, I never saw nothin’ like that. I mean, one minute they was three men bracin’ you, and you plumb beat ’em all to the draw and dusted them off like they was flies on a buttermilk pail.”

“There is an old saying about the quick and the dead, Rivers.”

“Yeah, what’s that, sir?”

“If you aren’t quick, you’re dead.”

“Never heard that.”

“I just made it up. You’d better get your horses and Miss O’Hara. Don’t let her see any of this, though. I’ll meet you on the other end of the hill, the top end.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir. But I’m still tryin’ to figure out how you was so much faster than any of them. They wasn’t slow.”

“When a man goes for his gun, Rivers, he’d better not have anything else on his mind. Those men were so busy trying to figure out what to do about me, they forgot I was there.”

“Well, no, sir, they knew you was there all right. That one boy, the one you shot first, well, he went for his gun long before you did.”

“He might have gone for it, Rivers, but I was already there, about two seconds ahead of him.”

“About a half second, I’d say.”

“Well, who’s counting? Now get going. We’ve some riding to do.”

Rivers started to salute, then realized that Cody wasn’t in uniform and awkwardly dropped his arm. He trotted off to climb the hill he had just come down, and ran right through a pair of buzzards that flapped and squawked as they hopped out of his way.

Scofield came up, panting for breath. He looked at the dead men in disbelief.

“Colonel Cody, sir, I never saw anything like it.”

“Like what?”

“Like the shooting you did. I had a bird’s eye view and saw those three men buck up against you. I thought sure you were a goner.”

Zak said nothing as he holstered his pistol, then lifted it slightly to keep it loose.

“I mean, how do you do that, sir?” Scofield said.

“What?”

“Go up against three gunmen and come out without nary a scratch? I couldn’t see your hand real well, but I know it was empty when that fat one went for his gun.”

“It’s real simple, Corporal. I knew what he was going to do. He didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“That simple?”

“Almost. Near enough.”

“Yes, sir. Mighty fine shooting, though.”

“Scofield, these men are dead. They didn’t have to die. I gave them a choice. They picked the wrong one. I regret that I had to kill them. I feel sorry for the lives they gave up.”

“Well, they were trying to kill you, sir.”

“Yes, they were. But I walked into their world. I was the intruder, not they. Makes you wonder.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Just what keeps the world in balance. A man swats at a bug, kills it with the palm of his hand. Another cuts off a snake’s head, while another shoots quail out of the sky. Who keeps track of such small things? And what does it mean when the final count is tallied? Nothing? Or everything?”

“I don’t follow you, sir.”

“No need, Scofield. I just hate to take a life. It leaves an empty hole in the life of someone who’s still living. And maybe it leaves a little hole in my life, too.”

“Aw, you can’t go worrying about trash like these, sir. They was rawboned killers. Probably got more blood on their hands than you got on your hankie when you was a nose-bleedin’ kid.”

“Let’s go, Scofield,” Zak said. “Rivers will bring your horse and Miss O’Hara to the high end of that hill, and we’ll get on the trail of Trask and Ferguson. You want to ride double?”

“I’ll walk, sir, if it’s all the same to you.”

Scofield looked at the dead men again and shook his head as if he were still trying to figure it all out. The buzzards flapped, and three more landed some fifty yards away. They were ringed by the scavengers now and there were more still floating in the sky, their circles getting smaller as they slowly descended toward earth.

The smell of death lingered in Zak’s nostrils a long time that day. He was glad that Colleen didn’t say anything about what he’d done, although he’d bet a day’s pay that Rivers told her all about it, no doubt in exaggerated terms.

“I’m sorry,” she said that night when they stopped by a dry wash to rest the horses and stretch their legs.

“About what?”

“About what you had to do today. I know it was necessary.”

“It wasn’t necessary, Colleen. It was brutal and cruel and heartless.”

“But—”

“No, that’s what it was. I’m glad you weren’t around to see it.”

“You’re awful hard on yourself, Zak.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. She moved in closer to him and he could smell her scent, her soft womanly scent, like lilacs and mint growing under a cistern. Fresh and sweet. He wanted to kiss her, but Scofield and Rivers were watching them. This was not the time.

He wondered when that time would be.