THERE WAS A period of waiting. Of wondering what Fogarty’s next move would be. It preyed on the woman’s mind, the tension coming close to shattering the veneer of calm.
On Azul’s part, it was merely a question of passing time that he accepted with the stoic indifference of his Apache forebears. The challenge had been issued and now it was a matter of preparing for the reply. He had known all along, ever since he killed Bulmer and Hook and took their bodies back to Comstock like war trophies, that Fogarty would have to try to kill him. Cyrus Rack had been the first attempt, and when he failed, Azul had known Fogarty would try again. The rancher had to: he had lost too much face to back down. Now he had lost more in the confrontation on the porch, and his authority must be eroded to the extent that Azul’s death was the only way he could retain his hold. The situation had been reduced to the kind of simple outline the half-breed liked: it was him or Fogarty.
His only doubt was exactly how the rancher would retaliate.
The obvious method was to post riflemen around the spread and pick Azul off at long range. Against that, the seven Chiricahua were insurance. If Fogarty’s men were to get in close enough to shoot him, they would have to pass Churro’s warriors first. And Azul doubted they could.
That meant, most likely, that Fogarty would try something else. Something dramatic that would solve his problem once and for all, and establish him again as overlord of Comstock.
What that move would be, Azul could lean only by waiting.
He made sure the house was secure, then went out to the horses. There was no sign of movement. No burst of gunfire. He turned the two animals loose in the corral, figuring that they had enough space to get clear of the fighting when it began and would have to look after themselves. Then he went back inside the cabin and began to clean his guns.
Mary Taggart busied herself with food, fussing over the stove in a fierce attempt to occupy her mind with something other than the impending attack. Azul ate the meal she prepared then went outside again with the mirror.
The mustang was cropping grass over at the far end of the corral, lifting its head when it saw him, and then placidly returning to its browsing when he failed to call it. The Arab-bred stallion nickered a greeting and trotted to meet him, thrusting its velvety nose against his face so that he had to push it away to free his arms.
It was the first time the big horse had come to him like that, and he felt a curious pride that he was now accepted as friend and master by the animal.
He checked the position of the sun and began to flash a message at the ridge.
Have you seen them?
Churro’s mirror blinked the answer.
No. Not yet. They rode in the direction of the cattle. All of them. If they come back I will fire a shot.
Azul flashed his thanks, acknowledging the message. Then went back to the cabin.
It took Daniel Fogarty a few hours to get back to his ranch. It took him about five minutes to decide what he was going to do next, and one more hour to set the plan in operation.
It was a very simple, very direct plan that came to him as he rode up to the main building and saw a bunch of his men herding cows into the small corrals for the Fall branding. The way he got it worked out, he wouldn’t even bloody his hands, it would be an accident: an act of God. He sent Billy off to collect as many riders as the ramrod could find quickly, and then went in to get something to eat and more to drink.
Billy came back after a while and told him there were twenty hands waiting on his orders. Fogarty gave them all whiskey to get them in the right mood, then opened the corrals and put his plan into motion.
Azul was on the porch when the shot echoed across the valley.
It was one of those warm, lazy afternoons that come with the approach of Fall and carry on through the season until the real cold hits. The air was sultry, heavy with dust and the sweet odor of cut hay. Up along the ridges surrounding the Taggart spread, the aspens were turned to gold, mingling with the buttermilk yellow of the cottonwoods, and the deeper, auburn shades of oak and maple.
The still sweetness of the afternoon seemed to magnify the sound.
Azul ran out into the corral as the mirror began to tell its tale.
Riders coming …
With cattle …
Perhaps twenty white men …
Fifty cows …
Abruptly, the message ended as a second peel of distant thunder roiled over the valley.
There were two more shots and then Azul saw the dust. It was rising up in a thick cloud that was alternately grey, then yellow, then red as it tumbled through the still air. It was moving fast towards the cabin, angling for the ridge behind the place. There were more shots, and as he watched, Azul heard a low, sullen drumming that seemed to echo up from the ground itself.
Suddenly he realized what Fogarty was planning. He turned towards the cabin, running back to the porch and slamming the heavy door. Dropping the crossbar into place.
‘He’s coming?’ The woman sounded almost glad to have the waiting ended. ‘He’s on his way?’
‘Him and twenty men,’ Azul rasped. ‘Along with fifty head of cattle.’
It was a trick Fogarty had learnt from the Comanche and the Kiowa back in Texas: how to use a white man’s own animals against him. He didn’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work just as well against an Apache half-breed.
Even one with his goddam tribesmen helping him.
Though not so many now. The one with the mirror was dead with two Winchester slugs in his back, and the three who came out to help him had gone down under the massed fire of twelve of the Flying F hands.
The same gunfire had stampeded the cows so that now they were running headlong at the Taggart spread. All Fogarty’s men needed to do was keep them running the right way.
He slammed his heels against his pony’s flanks and whooped with pure joy, urging the running longhorns on to an even faster pace.
The cabin began to tremble. At first, the vibrations were no worse than the ring of far-off thunder; then they got louder and harder. Dirt spilled from the roof, and the plates stacked beside the stove began to rattle. One fell down, shattering on the hot metal. On the table, a vase of flowers jumped in the air and crashed on its side. Dust rose from the floorboards, and before long the furniture picked up the staccato movements and began to dance over the shuddering boards.
Azul swung his Winchester through a gun port, firing blind into the dust that swirled outside.
There was a low, painful bellow, but then the dust rolled forward in a great cloud and blanked oui: his vision, clogging his nostrils and watering his eyes. He fired twice more, then moved to the front of the cabin.
The woman was standing at the center of the room. Her eyes were wide and her hands were clenched tight across her stomach.
Azul shouted: ‘Get the shotgun! Use it!’
Like an automaton she obeyed. She picked up the gun and went over to the right hand window. Poked the twin barrels through the port and cocked the hammers. Squeezed the triggers.
Lurched back as the force of the discharge slammed the stock against her shoulder, then began—still automatically—to reload.
Azul fired into the blinding dust storm. He could see no clear targets, so angled his shots at where a mounted man should be. Three times he thought he heard screams.
Then he saw definite targets. Four men had swung down from their ponies and were running towards the cabin with pistols blasting flame before them. They were headed for the door, hoping to rush it.
Azul twisted sideways to angle his rifle in their direction. He fired fast, aiming on pure instinct and levering the action of the Winchester like a water pump. One man seemed to jump in his boots, leaving the ground and sitting down with both hands pressed tight over his belly. A second went on running with a big red hole in the center of his face and blood staining through the bandanna covering his mouth and nose. The third clutched at his right shoulder, dropping his pistol as the man with no face crashed into him.
The shotgun boomed again and the fourth cowboy was blown sideways in a spreading cloud of scarlet spray. At the same time, the wounded man let go his shoulder and pressed his hand against his cheek. He began to scream as his fingers touched bare bone and the jagged fragments of his teeth, but then blood filled his throat and he started coughing, bending over to spit long, thick streamers of crimson over his knees. Azul fired again, planting the bullet in the top of the man’s head so that he fell back and crashed on to his face. A cow ran over his body, stamping it down into the blood-stained soil.
And then the stampede was gone by.
There was a moment of silence. The cabin was thick with dust and gunsmoke. Azul shoved fresh cartridges into the loading gate of the Winchester; shouted for the woman to do the same with the scattergun.
Then more gunshots and the thunder of returning hooves.
Azul peered through the gun port. The dust was cleared enough that he could see the bodies stretched before the cabin. Seven men and three steers. He could also see the new direction the cattle were being forced to take: head-on at the house.
He began to fire, trying to turn the animals.
It was impossible. Maddened by the firing and the smell of death, the herd was charging blind in the direction dictated by Fogarty and his riders. The front runners saw the danger and turned to either side, but then the rear of the panicked herd crashed into the center and front and forced the cattle over the porch against the door and walls.
The walls shook. Chunks of clay exploded inwards, and the plates crashed unheard to the floor.
The door splintered as a terrific blow struck the woodwork. Then one of the metal brackets holding the crossbar in place tore loose. Azul fired into the dust, hearing the double boom of the shotgun pace his own fire.
A movement to the side caught his attention, and he swung round in time to see a hand poke inwards, levelling a Colt’s Peacemaker across the room. He left the Winchester stuck through the firing slit, snatching his own Colt clear of the holster and firing as the other gun sparked flame.
Two voices screamed. One belonged to the cowboy who had tried to shoot him. Whose arm was now bloody from wrist to elbow, where the half-breed’s shot had broken the bones. The other to Mary Taggart.
Azul fired again as the cowboy began to drag Iris broken arm clear of the opening. It was a snap shot, like the first. And it hit the same way. The cowboy was up close to the wall, using his good arm to lift the broken one out. The half-breed’s bullet went neatly through the narrow slit and landed where the cowboy’s nose met his eyes. A spurt of blood fountained inwards and the broken arm jerked as the body fell back. A bone tore loose from the skin and snagged on the edge of the firing slit, jamming tight, so that the bloody hand still dangled inside the cabin.
Azul looked at the woman.
There was a dark stain spreading over her black dress from a point just above her left hip. She had one hand reached round to clutch at the wound, and blood was beginning to filter through her fingers.
A fresh shock rocked the cabin, tearing the cross-bar completely loose from its mountings, and tumbling the woman from the wall.
Azul ran towards her, lifting her up and dragging her back as the door fell inwards and the head of a big longhorn hooked through the opening. He dropped the woman to the floor, firing his Winchester directly into the skull of the huge steer.
Bone broke and blood sprayed out as the animal went down, blocking the doorway. Azul took the rifle in his right hand and hooked his free arm around Mary, hauling her back towards the storage cave.
He was almost to the door when the first cowboy showed, clambering over the bulk of the dead cattle. Azul fired the Winchester one-handed, watching as the man flew back with red gushing from his chest.
Then two more appeared, firing inwards, and he dropped the Winchester and dragged his Colt from the holster. Firing wild, just spreading enough bullets to keep them back until he could open the door and get the woman inside the cave.
Dan Fogarty didn’t know the storage room had no lock. He didn’t know that all he had to do was rush the place and pour enough fire inside to wipe out the half-breed.
What he did know was that he had lost about thirteen men. Either the concentrated fire coming from the house, or the Apache snipers hanging round the edges of the fighting.
The bastard Indians never rode in close enough to get killed or present a clear target. They just hung back and picked off stragglers, or sneaked in to plant a few bullets in Fogarty’s men and then disappear into the dust and the waning light.
So Fogarty decided on a desperate measure.
He called his remaining hands back from the cabin and ordered them to group the remaining steers together for a fast run up the ridge behind the house. He had lost close on twenty head, either to bullets or panic, but the thirty still milling around the cabin were enough for what he wanted.
He got them grouped in a tight bunch, then urged them up the low slope.
The cattle were tired and frightened, but the ridge wasn’t very high, and the angle of its slope was gradual enough that all the steers were gotten up to the crest in a single bunch. The Apache were still firing at the white men, so Fogarty detailed four of his riders to keep them down and took the cows to the crest himself. He had Billy and two others with him, which was enough.
They bunched the steers a few yards back from the edge and then—on Fogarty’s orders—began to fire into the cattle.
The animals were frightened enough already. The roar of fresh gunshots and the sting of bullets threw them into total panic.
And they stampeded straight over the rim.
Three went down like living bombs on to the cabin, then the others tried to halt, but got pushed forwards by the rearward animals. Got pushed over. And before the last few knew what was happening, Fogarty and his men had them whipped up and running too fast to stop.
Azul heard the pause, and wondered what the rancher was planning next. He stretched the woman on the cold ground and reached under her skirt to tear a length of petticoat loose, wadding the material into a bundle for her to press against her side. She was losing a lot of blood, and more was beginning to trickle from her mouth.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘They may have gone.’
He eased the door open, sliding the barrel of his Colt through the crack a long way in front of his body.
There was silence. The room was thick with smoke and dust and the smell of blood. Then there was a dull rumbling sound that was difficult to place.
At least until the roof shook and the beams buckled inwards as a cow crashed through.
Abruptly, like a massive, bloody hailstone, the body fell through, pushed down by the weight of the others. Azul ducked back into the cave, staring in surprise as body after body fell down on to the roof and burst and smashed the timbers inwards and downwards. They hit the floor, screaming and kicking. Filling the room with a red mist and the stink of dying. They piled up all over the broken timbers, crushing the cabin so that all that remained was a great mound of broken wood and bloody bodies.
Fogarty watched the last of the herd tumble screaming into the morass below and fell back from the ridge.
Two of his men had been wounded by the Apache, and now he was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t overplayed his hand. The one thing that kept him determined to go on was the desire to see the half-breed’s corpse in the wreckage of the Taggart cabin.
He told Billy and the others to stay on the ridge and keep the Indians’ heads down while he checked over the place below.
He rode down fast, keeping low on his pony and jumping to the ground as soon as he was close to the cabin. Or what was left of it.
The stench was horrible, compounded of blood and fear-loosened bowels; of burst bellies and spilled entrails. Several steers were screaming as they tried to drag themselves clear of the charnel pile on broken limbs, saliva dripping from their lips as they gouged their horns in terror at their companions.
Where the main room of the cabin had flanked the bedroom, just in front of the ridge, there was a gap before the cave door. It was little more than five feet wide, flanked round with shattered wood and broken bodies. Fogarty climbed into it.
He saw the cave door and thrust his right arm inside, triggering six shots at random into the room.
Then he screamed as the door slammed shut on his arm.
The heavy frame closed on his wrist, crushing the delicate bones so that his hand opened and let the gun fall loose. Then the door swung back and he felt his hand grasped and tugged inwards. The pull separated the hand from the shattered bone, driving fragments of splintered white out through the underside of his wrist.
Fogarty screamed again and fell down on his face.
Pain filled his eyes with tears, and when he opened them he saw that he was stretched over a corpse.
It was a beautiful corpse. One with blonde hair and a firm, still-warm body. It had a black dress that was crusted with drying blood and smelled of gunsmoke and death. The face was pale, with a thin thread of red coming from the left corner of the mouth, where full red lips were parted to expose white teeth partially stained with blood.
‘Mary?’ He turned to face Azul. ‘Mary got killed?’
‘Didn’t you want it that way?’ The half-breed was standing to one side. His voice was flat and cold and ugly. ‘Didn’t you want to kill her along with everyone else?’
Fogarty eased away from the woman’s body, shaking his head.
‘I thought so once.’ He reached over to grasp his broken wrist, staring at the limp hand, seemingly oblivious to the pain. ‘Then I thought I’d buy her out. I never thought she’d die this way.’
‘How many ways are there?’ Azul rasped.
‘I aimed to marry her once.’ Fogarty’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I could’ve made her a real lady. She might’ve been the Governor’s wife.’
‘She didn’t want that.’ Azul pointed his Colt at Fogarty’s skull. ‘She wasn’t so ambitious.’
‘No. She told me that herself.’ Fogarty looked up at the cold, dark muzzle of the pistol. ‘It was that damn’ Jody spoiled it all. Him an’ you.’
‘No.’ Azul shook his head. ‘You spoiled it when you tried to own too much. That and killing a horse.’
Fogarty frowned and began to say, ‘I don’t understand.’
But then Azul squeezed the trigger and blew his face and his dreams and his ambition apart.
The .45 caliber slug hit Fogarty directly between the eyes. It blasted his face inwards and tore through the lower part of his brain, exiting at the base of his skull in a huge gout of crimson and bone and sticky pieces of grey brain matter. Azul fired again, compounding the injury so that the front of the rancher’s face disappeared into a greater crater of pulsing crimson. He became featureless, a corpse with no face—just a huge hole that was ringed with blood-stained hair and the dribbling remnants of a skull. He pitched back, falling across Mary Taggart’s body so that his head rested between her breasts like a pulpy, scarlet fruit.
Azul ejected the spent cartridges and thumbed a fresh load into the Colt. Then he heaved the door open and went out into the ruins of the cabin.
He climbed over the bodies of the dead steers and shouted up at the ridge.
‘Fogarty’s dead! Go on home.’
There was the sound of hooves, lighter than before, and moving faster. Then several shots. More hoof beats. More shots. Then silence.
The long, empty silence of death.
Azul clambered back into the cave and lifted Mary from the floor. He carried her outside, moving awkwardly over the steers, and laid her on the ground.
The garden she had made was churned up by the cattle, and Jody’s grave marker was broken down. The half-breed found a shovel in the outhouse and began to dig a second hole. He was still digging when Churro and Matanza and the one remaining Chiricahua came back.
‘You killed them.’
There was no question mark: it was accepted.
Churro nodded. ‘Yes. They killed too many of us for the spirits of the dead to rest easy.’
Azul shrugged. ‘It is the way. Will you fetch my horse? The grey stallion?’
‘Of course.’ Churro watched him, then: ‘What about the others?’
‘You take them. Bring me the grey and keep the rest. Take them south and breed good ponies.’
‘Fine ponies,’ Matanza grunted. ‘Better than dead ones.’
Azul nodded and went on digging.
He got the hole deep enough and put Mary Taggart inside. Then he covered her with earth and stamped it down flat. He used the timbers of the cabin to fashion two new crosses and scored the names on the wood: Mary and Jody; that was all.
Churro and the others came back with his horse, ready-saddled and nervous at the destruction. Azul mounted, calming the animal with words and gestures. Then he rode back with the Chiricahua to gather the remaining animals and start them on the long ride into Mexico.
‘Come with us,’ Churro urged. ‘It will be good down in Sonora now. We can hunt together.’
Azul shook his head. ‘For you it will be good. Not me. If I come with you, so will death. Better that I keep that dark horse for myself.’
He watched as the Apache warriors rode away, then turned his own mount northwards, riding up past the Cañón Verde towards Taos and the border of Colorado. As he passed the canyon, he seemed to hear Cuervo’s laughter like a dry rustling that was carried on the edges of the wind, and he wondered how much of his future the brujo had seen.
And how much it might change from the past.