Blood Sky at Morning

Chapter 6

Zak knew how dangerous Felipe had become. He’d just been slapped in the face with an insult so foul and demeaning that it had cut through to the core of the man’s being. Few things were more sacred to a man than the woman who had given him life, his mother. Felipe was ready to put his life on the line in defense of the woman who had birthed him.

“All you have to do, Felipe,” Zak said, “is tell me the truth and I’ll take back what I said about your mother.”

“It is too late for that,” Felipe said.

“I’ll find those men anyway. I do not need to know their names. I do not need you to tell me where they went. I will find them.”

Felipe drew back, cocked his head and looked more closely at Zak.

“Who are you?” he said. “What do you call yourself?”

“Cody.”

Felipe spewed air through his nostrils.

“Are you the one they call Jinete de Sombra?”

“I am sometimes called ‘Shadow Rider.’”

“Because you wear the black clothes and ride the black horse.”

“No,” Zak said. “Because I am like a shadow. I come upon a man with no sound. I am not seen and I am not heard until it is too late.”

“Ah, I wondered. You are the Indian fighter. You are the one who rode with the general they call Crook.”

“I am the one.”

“Then, perhaps you come here to kill Apaches, no?”

“Maybe,” Zak said.

“Then you and I, we are on the same side. I, too, would kill Apaches. And the men you seek. They, too, wish all the Apaches killed. Maybe you would like to join them.”

“Maybe.”

“That is why you hunt them?”

“I wish to talk to them, yes.”

“I think they would like to talk to you, Cody.”

“Now we are getting somewhere, Felipe. I want to know who those men were who painted themselves like Apaches, rode the ponies here. I want to know who they work for.”

“You ask much, Cody. But I will tell you so that you will go and leave me alone. Perhaps I will see you again one day.”

“Perhaps.”

“The men you look for have gone to Tucson. You must see a man named Ferguson. He owns the freight line.”

“I am looking for a man named Ben Trask,” Cody said.

“Ah, you know this man?”

“Yes, I know him.”

“You are friends, no?”

Cody didn’t answer. He let the question hang and watched Felipe squirm inside his skin. He could almost see the man’s mind working, the way his forehead wrinkled up and his nose crinkled, making his eyes squint.

“This one, Trask, he is there. He works for Ferguson.”

That was all Zak wanted to hear.

Trask was just the kind of man to stir up trouble with the Apaches, but he’d bet money that he had something else on his mind, as well. Trask might be working for Ferguson, but he was also working for himself, perhaps looking for an opportunity to make some illegal money.

“All right, Felipe. I’m leaving now.”

“You do not want another horse?”

“No. You keep them.”

Zak looked around at the ground, the maze of wagon tracks. The adobe with its adjoining jacal was some kind of way station, he was sure. Someone had to haul in fodder for the horses, food and supplies for Felipe. He wondered how many such stations were scattered over the territory. Someone had gone to a great amount of trouble to stir up hatred against the Apaches.

“What have you got inside that adobe?” Zak asked suddenly.

“Nothing.”

“I want to take a look.”

“No. This is not permitted.”

“Are you hiding something in there?”

“No. I hide nothing.”

“I think you are, Felipe. Step aside. I’m going to take a look.”

Felipe hesitated. Zak took a step toward him, his right hand dropping to the butt of his pistol. It was a menacing move, deliberate, and Felipe got the message.

“Go inside, then.”

“You first,” Zak said.

Felipe shrugged. He turned and stepped inside, Cody right behind him. The hovel smelled of wood smoke and stale whiskey. A potbelly stove stood near the back wall, its fire gone out, but still leaking smoke from around its door and at a loose place on the pipe. A pot of coffee stood atop it, still steaming. Several bottles of whiskey lay on the floor, and half-empty bottles sat on a grimy table in the center of the room. The bunk in a corner reeked of sweat. On a sideboard he found several small cans of paint and brushes that had not yet been cleaned with the linseed oil standing nearby, next to a grimy wooden bowl.

Something caught Zak’s eye in another corner. He walked over, his stomach swirling with a sensation like winged insects.

“What’s this?” he said as Felipe stood there, his face waxen.

“I do not know. Those were there when I came here.”

“Bullshit,” Zak said as he picked up an army canteen. A blue officer’s uniform lay in a heap. Silver lieutenant’s bars gleamed from the shoulders of the tunic. A pair of cavalryman’s boots, shiny, with a patina of dust on them, spurs still attached, stood against the wall behind the pile of clothes.

“I do not know who left those clothes,” Felipe said.

“Do you know the name of the man who owns them?”

“No.”

“Maybe you know Lieutenant Ted O’Hara.”

“I do not know him,” Felipe said.

Zak had seen enough. He was sure that Ted O’Hara had been brought to this place. They had stripped him of his uniform, put civilian clothes on him, perhaps. Then they had taken him someplace else. A hostage, maybe? A bargaining chip? Or maybe to torture him for information about the location of Apache camps, knowledge they somehow knew he possessed.

“You want some advice, Felipe?”

“What advice?”

“When I tell the army about this place, they’re going to swarm all over you like a nest of hornets. If you’re smart, you’ll get on one of those horses out there and clear out.”

“I have done nothing.”

“I think you have. You’re lucky I’m in a hurry or I’d pack you off to Fort Bowie trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

Felipe, wisely, said nothing. He held his breath and walked outside with Zak.

“You leave now?” Felipe said.

“I might be back. In any case, someone will. You’d better find another place to hang your hat, Felipe.”

Felipe stood in front of the door, speechless.

Zak knew his encounter with the man wasn’t over. He had given Felipe fair warning. The next move was up to him. Felipe could either let him ride off or he could try to stop him.

Either way, the writing had already been painted on the wall.

Zak started to walk back to his horse when he heard a sound, the whisper of metal sliding out of leather. He knew what it was. Felipe was drawing his pistol.

Zak spun around, went into a fighting crouch. His right hand streaked to the butt of his Walker Colt. His gaze fixed on Felipe’s eyes, not on his hand. But he could see, in the same range of vision, the barrel of Felipe’s pistol clearing leather, the snout rising like the rigid black body of a striking snake.

The Walker Colt seemed to spring into Zak’s hand. His thumb pressed down on the hammer, pushing it back into full cock as he leveled the barrel at the Mexican.

Felipe fired his pistol. Too soon. The bullet plowed a furrow at Zak’s feet as he squeezed the trigger of the Walker.

He looked down a long dark tunnel as the pistol exploded, gushing flame and lead, bucking in his hand. At the end of the tunnel, Felipe, in stark relief, was hammering back for a second shot. Zak’s .44 caliber ball of soft lead struck him just below his rib cage with the force of a sledgehammer. Dust flew from his shirt and a black hole appeared like a quick wink that filled suddenly with blood.

The hammered bullet drove Felipe off his moorings and he staggered backward, slamming into the wall of the adobe. A crimson flower blossomed on his chest, the smell of his half-digested supper spewing from his stomach. He gasped for air and slid down the wall, his fingers turning limp, the pistol drooping, then falling from his grasp. His eyes clouded over, the spark fading like a dying ember. The pupils turned frosty as blood pumped through the hole in his chest, ran down into his lap.

Zak stepped toward Felipe, his pistol at full cock for another shot, if needed.

He heard the death gurgle in the man’s throat, but Felipe was still alive, hanging onto life with labored breaths.

Smoke spooled from the barrel of Zak’s pistol as he knelt down in front of the Mexican. He lifted the pistol, the action scattering the smoke to shreds.

“I won’t say adios to you, Felipe,” Zak said, his voice a soft rasp, just above a whisper. “God isn’t going with you on this journey. He’s just going to watch you fall into a deep hole. The next sound you hear will be me. Walking over your grave, you sonofabitch.”

Felipe stretched out a hand toward Zak’s throat. He tried to sit up. Something broke loose inside him and he coughed up blood. His eyes glazed over with the frost of death as he gave one last gasp and fell back, his lifeless body slumped against the adobe wall. His sphincter muscle relaxed and he voided himself.

Zak stood up, walked away from the sudden stench. He ejected the empty hull in the Colt’s cylinder and dug a cartridge from his gun belt. He slid it into the empty cylinder and spun it, then eased the hammer down to half-cock before sliding the pistol back in his holster.

He walked down to the corral and opened the gate.

“Heya, hiya,” Zak yelled, waving his hat at the horses and ponies. They all dashed through the opening and galloped off down the gully and up the slope. They disappeared over the rim and a quiet settled over the empty corral.

Zak walked back to the adobe and went inside. He picked up the tunic with the lieutenant’s bars, folded it tightly, went outside and stuffed it in his saddlebag. Then he went back inside, took a lamp from a hook over the potbellied stove and dashed coal oil on everything flammable within reach.

He stepped to the door, dug out a box of matches, struck one and tossed it onto the floor. The flame sputtered for a moment, then caught. The oil flared and tongues of flame began to lick the clothing and empty boxes, the chairs and table. It spread to the jacal as Zak mounted Nox and rode off, following one of the wagon tracks that was laced with shod hoof marks. The jacal blazed bright in the morning sun and he heard bottles of whiskey explode inside the adobe. Black smoke etched a charcoal scrawl on the horizon, rising ever higher in the still air.

The horse tracks led west, beside the faint wagon wheel ruts, and he followed them, putting Nox into a canter. The wagon tracks made it easy, and the horse tracks were only a day old, with no rain nor strong wind to erase them.

Killing a man was not easy. It was never easy. There was always that dark tunnel, that unknown blackness, that he saw and wondered about. Conscience? He didn’t know. He knew only that death was so final, there was no second chance for those who went up against his gun. And the killing of a man always weighed heavy on his heart or his mind or, perhaps, his soul. Life was such a fleeting, fragile, troublesome journey, but to cut that journey short, for whatever reason, gave a man pause, made him reflect on his own breath, his own heartbeat, his own blood pulsing in his veins.

Felipe hadn’t seen it coming. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. But Zak had seen it. He could always see it in a man’s eyes, that inkling of mortality, that wonder, just before death blotted out everything, just before the tunnel closed in darkness and the light that had been a man one moment plunged into final darkness the next.

There was one question Zak had meant to ask Felipe, but the Mexican had pressed it, had made that fatal decision to draw his pistol. So the question had never been asked. Had never been answered.

The question would have been: “Do you know a man named Major Willoughby?”

Zak would have read the answer in Felipe’s eyes, even if he had never replied. Then he would have known who betrayed Ted O’Hara, and who told Ben Trask where O’Hara was.

Deep down inside him, though, Zak thought he knew the answer to the unasked question.

One day he would find the answer, and the proof to go along with it.

It was only a question of time.

He just hoped he would find Lieutenant Theodore O’Hara alive.

But he would find him.

That, he knew.