DANIEL FOGARTY WAS angry.
John Mengers was worried.
Morton Shelby and Joe Hedges and Charles C. Garrett were worried, too.
Fogarty was angry because most of his plans seemed to have gone wrong. Mostly since the man called Breed arrived in Comstock and began to upset them.
Mengers was worried because Fogarty was angry, and the fat lawman knew that the rancher would hold him responsible. Fogarty had arranged his appointment, and kept him in office. The rancher also paid the peace officer one hundred dollars a month to keep things quiet and avoid any awkward questions.
Shelby and Hedges and Garrett were worried because they knew they had taken a long chance in bucking Dan Fogarty. At least openly.
So far, none of Fogarty’s men had come round to deliver the kind of beating Shelby had received the first time he helped Jody Taggart and the half-breed, but he still expected it.
And so did the others.
Most of the bravado they had felt with their fellow citizens watching was gone, and they all expected a visit from Fogarty or Mengers, or some new-hired man. They took precautions. Garrett began wearing a cut-down Colt’s Peacemaker in the right-hand pocket of his trousers. Hedges bought himself a shotgun that he carried every time he left his gloomy shop. Shelby invested in a pair of matched derringers, one tucked inside his medical bag, the other in a vest pocket.
They mostly went out together, staying clear of the Golden Knife, and doing their best to keep away from any place that Fogarty’s people might use.
They also began talking with friendly citizens who resented the power Fogarty exerted over the town.
There weren’t many: six or seven who were ready to voice their opinions:
Cleve Vine, who didn’t like the way Fogarty told him to run his bank. Sol Bevan, who felt the same way about his stable. Jim Fletcher, who ran a dry goods store. Sandy Hall, who owned one of the few hotels that were independent. A tall, dark man called Val Hart, who operated a store and decided he didn’t enjoy being told what to do.
They got together and decided to form a Citizen’s Committee that might—just might—be able to stand up to Dan Fogarty. They agreed to meet once a week and stop Fogarty telling them what to do. Also to watch the Taggart spread and check the rancher didn’t wipe it out.
Which they all felt was pretty likely, given the insult he got from the half-breed.
Azul reached down to run his fingers through Mary’s hair, pulling her face away from his body.
The woman smiled, licking her lips as she reached up to kiss him.
Her mouth was moist and still demanding. Tempting.
Hungry, too.
He shook his head, pushing her face away.
‘I have to check the horses. You’d best check your husband.’
She slid clear of the couch, kneeling beside it. Her breasts thrust forwards, the nipples standing dark and stiff from the pale mounds of firm flesh. Her hair was tangled about her face and her eyes were bright, her lips and legs wide. It was hard to refuse her, but the last few nights had drained him.
‘The horses,’ he repeated. ‘I have to check them.’
She nodded, the early morning light slanting over her body as she stood up. Azul watched her for a moment, admiring the play of light and shadow over her back and buttocks as she walked away, then forcing the thought and the re-emerging desire from his mind as he, too, climbed out of bed.
He draped a blanket over his body and went out to the bunkhouse to take a bath. The air was chill, frost covering the ground, and his breath clouding about his face. He scrubbed quickly, then went back to the cabin where the woman was getting breakfast ready.
He opened the door and paced across the floor to where his clothes were dropped.
He was getting dressed when the inevitable thing happened: Jody Taggart came out from the bedroom.
The rancher was drawn and thin, wrapped in a blanket that seemed only to emphasize his sickness. His brown hair was plastered about his face and his eyes were hollow, dark pits in the lean angles of his face. He held the blanket clutched around his body, the other hand pointing at the half-breed.
‘How long?’
Mary gasped and reached for her robe.
‘Jody? I thought you were asleep.’
‘Yeah! I’ll bet you did. You goddam bitch! How long’s this been going on?’
He took a step into the room, staggering as he came clear of the wall and easing back so as to support his weight.
Azul buttoned his shirt and lifted his gunbelt clear of the floor, fastening it around his waist.
‘You goddam bastard!’ Taggart snarled. ‘You half-breed sonofabitch. I’ll fuckin’ kill you.’
He pushed clear of the door frame and began to totter towards Azul. The blanket fell away from his body, exposing the bandages and the full extent of his wasted thinness. He got halfway across the room, then fell down.
His teeth rattled on the floor, and a sudden spurt of blood gouted from his nostrils.
Mary pulled the robe over her body and ran towards him.
‘Jody! It’s not what you think! Dear God, Jody! Please! Don’t die!’ She cradled his head in her arms, oblivious of the crimson spurting over the white cotton of her robe. It plastered the garment against her body, emphasizing the lush contours as definitely as though she were naked.
‘You was sleeping with him!’
The accusation produced a fresh spurt of blood from Taggart’s mouth.
‘I’m a woman, Jody! I got needs, too. You never thought of that.’
‘Bitch!’ Taggart’s voice was almost gone. ‘Stinking, rotten bitch.’
His eyes closed as blood came out from his mouth. More came from the bandages covering his stomach, spreading a sticky wave of crimson across his belly.
Azul shoved the woman aside and reached down to get his arms under her husband’s body.
He lifted Jody Taggart with some difficulty, still feeling the pain of Rack’s shot through his left arm.
He got the rancher back to the bed and stared at the blood welling out from his stomach and mouth. The bandages covering Taggart’s midriff were now soaked through with scarlet that ran down under the wrappings and soaked into the sheets covering the bed. Blood ran down from his nose and mouth, too, frothing there as he attempted to breathe through the swill of liquid pumping up from his insides.
‘He’s dying.’
Mary’s voice was still husky, but now it was hoarse with grief.
Azul checked the bandages, cutting them loose.
The hole in Jody Taggart’s stomach had been opened by his movements. Whether by his rising from bed or his walking through the door or his subsequent fall, it was impossible to tell. But he was dying, whatever the reason.
Azul looked at the blood surging from the hole. Then at the matching streamers pulsing from Taggart’s mouth and nostrils.
‘I’d ride for Comstock,’ he said. ‘Or fetch Cuervo. But I don’t think either of them could help.’
‘I know.’ Her voice was dull. ‘I wish I’d been a better wife to him.’
She sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up Jody’s right hand.
Her husband seemed to smile, and opened his eyes. They were blank, like empty pits filled with dull grey rain water. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but only blood came out. It came in a thick swell that coated his lips and flooded over his chin, running down on to the sheets covering his chest so that they, too, became colored with the bright flood.
His head rolled to the side, redirecting the crimson flow. And the pillow became gradually as scarlet as the bandages and the sheets.
‘My God! He’s dead.’ Mary Taggart’s voice was dull and flat. ‘We killed him.’
‘Fogarty’s men put the bullet there.’ Azul looked at her. ‘That’s what killed him.’
She shook her head. ‘He was mending. He wouldn’t have died if it weren’t for us. If he hadn’t suspected something he’d have stayed in bed. It was moving around that did it. I’m to blame: I wanted you. If I hadn’t …’ She broke off, tears streaming down her face, dripping on to the bright blood discoloring her robe, dripping on to the body of her husband.
Azul watched her for a while, then stood up, walking from the room. It was better that she work this out for herself: come to terms with her own conscience and learn to live with whatever guilt she might feel afterwards. For his own part, he felt none. Jody Taggart had owed his life twice over; once when the half-breed saved him up on the ridge, and once again when Azul brought the old brujo to mend him. Shelby had thought the rancher was dying, and even Cuervo had been doubtful about his chances. Had he lived, it was unlikely he would ever have been normal again. Azul had seen men gut-shot before, bent over and constantly sick, with delicate stomachs and loose bowels where the bullets had torn up their insides. Had he been shot that way, he would have preferred to die.
He felt no guilt.
He waited until the woman stopped weeping, then left the cabin and checked the horses. After that he fetched a spade from the outhouse and began to dig a grave. It took him most of the morning, for it was hard work with his damaged arm, but he got a pit dug out and then fashioned a cross.
He went back to the cabin.
‘Best bury him.’ He touched the woman gently on her shoulder. ‘What do you want on the marker?’
She shook her head, mumbling something he couldn’t hear. He went back outside and used his Bowie to carve Taggart’s name in the wood. He couldn’t remember which year it was so he left it at that. Then he folded the corpse inside the bloody sheets and tied it with rope. Carried it outside and dumped it in the grave.
He was filling the hole when Mary appeared. She wore a black dress and her hair blew loose in the breeze coming off the mountains. Azul finished piling the earth over the body and rammed the marker at the head of the grave.
‘He was a good man,’ she said quietly. ‘A good man.’
‘They always die young,’ grunted the half-breed. ‘It’s mostly the bad who live long enough to get ugly.’