‘RIDERS COMING, FATHER.’ The Morillo boy set down the box of nails he was holding for the priest and peered up the street. ‘Federales, I think.’
Duran dropped the hammer and followed the youngster’s pointing hand. The badlands were wreathed in the mid-morning heat haze so that it was difficult to make out the shapes floating above the sand, but squinting hard, he saw a line of riders approaching. The haze made it impossible to discern colors, but from their two-by-two progress, he guessed that they were, as the boy said, the military.
He wiped his hands on his cassock and went to greet them. Cristobal was too small a settlement to boast an alcade, so Father Duran doubled as priest, mayor and, sometimes, doctor.
He watched the riders take on shape and color as they came closer, a presentiment of trouble growing as the uniforms became obvious.
‘Julio,’ he bent to speak to the child, ‘run to my house and tell Señora Ramirez that our guest must stay inside. Go quickly.’
Julio winked with juvenile wisdom and raced off between the little adobe houses. Like everyone else in Cristobal he knew that Father Duran was sheltering the strange man who had saved his life. Julio had watched him scale the bell tower to rescue the priest, and he admired that act almost as much as he admired the pistol the man carried or the two knives. Maybe the mestizo would let him touch the gun as a reward for the warning. He didn’t know why it should be a warning, but was sure that it was. Clearly the sun-haired indio was a pistolero; probably he had killed someone evil and was now hunted by the man’s friends.
Julio Morillo, like most Mexican peasants, felt a whole lot closer to a wandering saddle tramp than he did to the grey-uniformed collectors of the tax.
He reached the priest’s house without being seen and pounded on the door, feeling extremely important.
‘Welcome to Cristobal, Capitan.’ Father Duran hoped he didn’t sound as nervous as he felt.
‘Buenas dias, padre.’ Capitan Vega climbed wearily from his saddle, unpleasantly conscious of a blister flowering on his left buttock. ‘I need refreshment, food and rest, in that order.’
By all the saints! He’d been chasing Padillo’s murderer for two days now, back and forth over the God-forsaken wilderness between Galenas and this piss-hole of a place. Old Rodrigo had lost the trail late yesterday when he couldn’t make up his damned senile mind whether the matador had ridden north or south. Either way, the man was gone and it wasn’t very likely they’d find him again, so Cristobal seemed like a good place to go. If the killer was heading north, he’d come through here; if not... well, Padillo wasn’t that big a loss.
Capitan Rafael Vega concentrated on keeping his dignity as he tried not to limp, forgetting about promotion in favor of food and a well-cushioned seat.
Linda Ramirez thrust a tortilla into Julio’s eager hand, thus taking his mind off Azul’s gun, and sent him away. She hurried into the tiny living room where Azul waited, one hand close to the butt of his Colt.
‘Federales?’ He spoke as she came through the doorway.
‘Sí.’ Her pretty face was worried. ‘Are they looking for you?’
It was more statement than question.
‘Yes,’ nodded Azul, ‘I thought I’d lost them. Maybe I did: they could be here to rest.’
‘Why are they hunting you?’ Linda’s concern was genuine. Tor what you did in Galenas?’
Azul nodded again and told her about Nolan’s ranch and the killing of Padillo.
‘Good.’ Her smile showed savage approval. ‘They need killing, men like that. They destroy a village like mine and the Federales pay no attention. But kill one fat townsman and they hunt you like a dog.’ She placed a hand on his arm. ‘Get away, Azul. Get away and kill them.’
He thought for a moment, pondering the best course of action. Nolan and his men had not been seen since their last, bloody visit – they could be staying clear, though he doubted it – and he wanted, badly, to find them. The Federales could have tracked him to Cristobal, or guessed his destination, in which case they would tear the village apart looking for him. Alternatively, they might have lost him and simply arrived in the place because it was the only pueblo in miles of arid wasteland. If he was found there, the whole village would suffer. Duran, Cristobal’s most eminent inhabitant, would almost certainly be killed or thrown in jail, the others would probably lose their homes. Beside his desire for vengeance, such considerations seemed insignificant — but a friendly village did offer sanctuary, which might well prove useful in the future.
Azul came to a decision and turned to Linda.
‘Bring the horses round to the rear. I’ll wait in the desert until the Federales are gone, then come back. Unless something happens.’
Linda ducked her head in silent agreement, then, swiftly, reached forwards, kissing him on the lips.
‘Vaya con Dios, Azul. I shall be here if you come back.’ He watched her go, admiring the swing of her hips even as he wondered if he could get away unseen.
‘So you have seen no one like this man?’
‘No.’ Father Duran stared straight into the capitan’s eyes, hoping that his God would forgive the lie. ‘No one.’
‘A pity,’ murmured the officer, watching the priest’s face as he sipped his beer, ‘I imagine there would be a reward for the man who turned him in.’
‘How much, thirty pieces of silver?’ Duran asked drily. ‘Or are scalp traders worth more?’
‘The trade is approved of by the Government,’ shrugged Vega. ‘It keeps the savages down. And after all, Father, you would not complain of a bounty set on wolf hides, would you?’
‘Human beings are not wolves,’ replied the priest.
‘No?’ Vega raised his eyebrows, his face bland. ‘I saw the body of Padillo. Let me describe him to you, Father, What was left of him.’
Father Duran tried hard to suppress the nausea he felt at the officer’s description, wondering if, in hiding Azul, he was not sheltering a man as bloodily guilty as those he hunted.
Perhaps this, he thought, is the first step on the downward path. Do I presume too much when I take the law into my own hands by hiding Matthew Gunn? Am I setting myself above the law? Or do I seek, as I had thought, to serve justice by choosing the lesser of two evils?
‘So you will not object,’ Vega’s voice, more order than question, interrupted his thoughts, ‘if I search the village?’ Father Duran decided to wrestle with his conscience later in the day
‘No, of course not.’
‘Good.’ The Federale swallowed the last of his beer and stood up, wincing as the boil lanced pain deep into the flesh of his buttock. The prospect of riding on the damn’ thing did nothing to make him amenable to this evasive priest. ‘I shall do so immediately.’
He called to his men, waving them out of the cantina into the dusty street, ignoring their grumbled protests. If he had to suffer, so would they. He detailed them off into teams of four men and sent two groups to either end of the village. Working down the single street they would cover the whole place within an hour: a peasant’s adobe didn’t offer many hiding places.
He ordered Rodrigo and a trooper to scout around the village and went back into the cantina. The chairs were hard as a puta’s heart before payday, but at least tequila would alleviate the boil’s pain.
Azul watched the troopers scurrying through the village from the safety of the badlands. Blundering Mexican conscripts didn’t worry him; the two men on horseback did.
From where he lay, sprawled on the warm sand, he could see them both clearly. The leading rider was the same old Yaqui who had trailed him so doggedly out of Galenas, the other was a hawk-faced young trooper who looked as though he relished the prospect of hunting down the fugitive.
Slowly, wary of too much revealing movement, Azul wriggled back to the horses.
He muzzled their nostrils and lead them, one after the other, off into the scrub. The paint pony he tethered in a hidden gulley, where it would be found only by chance. The other horse, he left in a cactus thicket. Then he walked back towards the approaching riders.
They split up as they came closer, the old Indian reading the tracks leading away from Duran’s house as though they were painted on the sand with glowing letters. He came straight at Azul’s position, alternately bending his head to study the ground and standing in his stirrups to scan the terrain ahead. He reached a point downslope from Azul and reined in, turning to speak with the Federale. Azul watched him gesture at the surrounding desert and then turn his horse to the left as the trooper rode away in the opposite direction.
Grinning coldly, Azul moved down the far side of the ridge and began to trot parallel to the Mexican’s path.
Estimating his position, he moved back to the top of the ridge. And saw the Federale studying the sand below him. Silent as a stalking cougar, Azul padded through the mesquite, a hunted animal seeking to defend himself by killing first.
The Federale never heard him. He walked his horse on, studying the ground with careless inattention to his surroundings, so that Azul got within six feet before he rose from his crouch, drawing the slender-bladed throwing knife as he stood up. His right arm lifted above his head, the hilt of the knife resting in his palm, the steel supported by his thumb. He swung his arm over and down, snapping the knife away in a vicious, glinting track of deadly light.
It hit the trooper in the neck, just below his left ear, and he was dying even as the flying body of the man he hunted cannoned into him, smashing him from the saddle.
Azul jumped as the knife left his hand, using his body like a club to knock the Mexican to the ground. At the same time, his hands locked around the horse’s muzzle so that its snort of surprise was cut short, and the clutching hands dragged its head over, pulling it down to the ground. The animal tumbled, legs flailing as it rolled across its dead rider.
Azul held it still on the sand until its eyes calmed and then, still muffling its nostrils, let it climb back on to its feet. He lifted his restraining hand enough to let the animal breathe and blew into its nostrils. It was an old Apache trick for calming a nervous animal, and it worked as well as ever, for the horse stood silently while Azul checked the corpse of its master. The Mexican was dead, stretched on the sand with a thin trickle of blood running from the wound in his neck. The throw had been aimed at the vital nerve linkages centered below the ear: the aim had been true.
He pulled the blade free and wiped it on the grey jacket before sheathing it again on his right leg. Then he started back after the Yaqui.
He spotted the old man close to the horse carrying the Sonora saddle and from the way the tracker was moving, he knew he would find the animal soon. Drawing the knife from his moccasin, Azul began to close in. He moved silently through the scrub, watching as the Indian pushed into the cactus thicket, using the shrouding cover to get close to the entrance.
He let the old man reach the horse, then wriggled on his belly through the close-knit stems.
Peering through the big plants, he saw the Yaqui lower his rifle to gaze at the silver-studded saddle. He let the old man reach out to stroke the heavy metalwork of the cantle and flaps, then exploded into the clearing, knife poised for the killing throw.
The Yaqui threw himself backwards, hiding behind the horse as he heard Azul burst in. He saw the wicked glint of sunlight on the blade as he rolled under the stamping hooves.
‘Why kill me?’
It was a simple question that would have made no difference to Azul had anyone other than an Indian asked it. But the old man spoke almost casually, as though delivering a mild reprimand to a child, and his eyes were calm as he said it.
‘Why not?’ Azul’s reply was as direct, and it whistled through his teeth just as the blade spun from his hand.
The throwing knife, redirected at the last humanly possible instant, drew blood from the Yaqui’s arm as it pinned his sleeve to the ground. Azul dropped as he spoke, drawing the Colt so that the old man froze, ignoring the hooves that pumped earth around his head.
‘We are both Indians,’ he said slowly, ‘and I have lost brothers to the scalp hunters. We have that in common.’
Azul gestured for him to rise, still pointing the Colt at his stomach.
‘I did not know who you were,’ continued the Yaqui, ‘until I saw the saddle. It belonged to a man called Juan Ortega, a man with a bridle of hair.’
He spat on the ground.
‘I killed him with the bridle,’ said Azul.
‘That is good,’ the old man nodded: ‘My brother would have enjoyed that. His hair was part of the bridle.’
Azul lowered the gun. ‘If the scalpers killed your brother why do you help the Mexicans?’
‘A man must do what he can,’ shrugged the tracker, ‘and I have no wish to die in a new war. No, better to live and enjoy life doing what you do best. Anyway, I did not know it was another warrior who killed Padillo. I had thought it was a Mexican.’
‘I killed him,’ said Azul quietly, ‘because he bought my parents’ hair.’
‘Then you killed well.’ A slow smile spread across the wrinkled features. ‘He needed killing.’
‘But you,’ asked Azul, ‘what shall I do with you?’
Rodrigo smiled, the myriad wrinkles of his face fragmenting into a kaleidoscope pattern of tiny lines. Beneath his snow-white hair, his eyes were bright and old and wise, filled now with a melancholy humor.
‘You could kill me and ride away, hoping that Capitan Vega does not blame your friends in the village. Or you could trust me.’
‘Why should I?’ Azul kept his thumb on the hammer of the Colt. ‘You take the Mexicans’ money to hunt your own kind. You betray your people. Uno traidor.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the old man slowly, ‘but at least I still fight, I am still a man.’ He shrugged. ‘My people are nearly all gone now, killed off in the fighting. The few that remain hide, cold and lonely, in the mountains; or join your people on the reservations. I take the Mexicans’ money because it means I sleep warm and have enough to buy tequila or a woman. And I can still fight, not huddle in a lodge, singing the old songs that the children don’t understand anymore.
‘If I die now I shall die a warrior, not a tired old man. Our time has passed. The day of the Indian is gone away before the towns and the railroads. The ranches and the mines sprout like weeds on our land, and our people are choked off and wasted just as the tree is destroyed by the clinging ivy.
‘We held the land once, but now the day of the white man has dawned and the sun has gone down on the day of the Indian. We are shadows passing across the eye of the sun: things of little substance who will soon be gone completely.
‘At least I can still act the man with the Mexicans.’
It was an argument that the Apache side of Azul’s nature could understand. The Red Man had been pushed back and back, until he had nowhere left to go. The cattle herds, the sheep, the farms, the towns, they all ate up his land; the railroads and the telegraph wires carried men and messages across the country faster than the swiftest mustang; the factories his father had described to him churned out guns and bullets, iron and steel; and all of it pressed down upon the free-riding people.
There was an old Apache legend, told by the shamans, of how the tribes had been shoved farther and farther south by the more numerous, more powerful tribes of the north, until they came to the barren fastnesses of the great Southwest. And there everything was against them; but it was a country no one else wanted, so they stayed to make it their own, fighting the sand and the sun and anyone who tried to take the wilderness away from them.
In their own language, the word Apache meant enemy. It was both indictment and accolade to their way of thinking.
He could understand Rodrigo.
‘Very well, old one.’ He shoved the Colt back into the holster as he spoke, though he watched the discarded rifle carefully. ‘I shall trust you.’
Rodrigo nodded, looking like someone’s grandfather.
‘It is good. The killer of my brother’s enemy should be a friend of mine.’
‘I would be the friend of so wise and experienced a tracker.’ Azul made a ritual reply. ‘But how will you prove this friendship ?’
Rodrigo chuckled at the innate Apache caution. ‘I’ll lead the Mexicans away across the desert, then tell them I’ve lost the trail. Will that prove my intentions?’
‘Yes,’ said Azul, ‘but if you do not keep your word I shall kill you.’
‘Fair,’ was all Rodrigo said, accepting the inevitability of fate. ‘We have a bargain.’
They squatted on the sand, two Indians discussing a plan to fool the whites. Azul told Rodrigo of the Federale’s death and, to the relish of the old Yaqui, described Juan Ortega’s painful demise. Rodrigo, in turn, promised to lead the militia out of Cristobal on the trail of the vicious killer of the young trooper and Padillo; and lose the trail out in the badlands.
They reached agreement and Rodrigo started back for town while Azul waited in the scrub. He watched the old man ride in, then hurried back to the horse, leading it through to the paint pony. He brought both animals up to an accessible point, watching the town.
Rodrigo would – most likely – act exactly as he had said, but Azul was Apache-bred: he trusted no one completely.
That was why he rode the horses through the mesquite to a new vantage point, well away from the cactus thicket where he had spoken to the Yaqui. The tracker, however, remained true to his promise: Azul saw the Federales mount their horses and follow Rodrigo out of Cristobal, galloping hard down an imaginary trail that, to his relief, would lead them nowhere.
He waited until they were gone from sight, then rode into the village.
Farther on, down the Galenas trail, Nolan lashed his horse to a fast canter.
‘Feds should be gone by now,’ shouted Jude Christie, bringing his mount alongside the dark man’s, ‘you sure you want to go back in ?’
‘Hey, Jude,’ said Nolan in a tone that prompted Christie to look away from the cold green eyes, ‘whyn’t you just let it be? I gave you a taste of honey, right? So tell me why I should have known better than taking a ticket to ride for Cristobal?’
Christie didn’t answer: Nolan wasn’t the kind of man you did answer back if you wanted to stay alive, so he shut his mouth tight and rode in silence.
Jude Christie had met Nolan three-odd years before, two hard-eyed men getting over the effects of the Civil War. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox had left Christie without the cavalry squadron he’d commanded since he was nineteen, or anywhere to go. The spread his family had worked in Georgia was trampled down into the cotton-rich soil by the feet and hooves of Sherman’s army on their way to the sea. After that, there was nothing to go back to, so he had fought his best through the siege of Petersburg, cursing Lee for betraying the Southland, and then drifted to whatever pockets of resistance still remained.
He had joined the Ku Klux Klan shortly after its formation in Tennessee in 1866, decided that burning out defenseless negroes wasn’t so much fun as riding with the offshoots of Quantrill’s Raiders and consequently opted for that violent activity.
Two good years passed in a hail of bullets and burned-out farms, until the Northern forces got too tight for the jayhawkers. A few months went by amiably, given over to random looting and the odd stage hold-up; hell! if Jesse James could do it to trains, why not Jude Christie to stagecoaches?; then the entire area west of the Mississippi shut down tighter than a whorehouse in Salt Lake City, and Captain Jude Christie drifted south to the open country. Texas, New Mexico and Arizona were still wild and free, too-sparsely populated to afford much trouble to a wide-riding pistolero. Mexico was a fast gallop across the Rio Grande, and south of the river the whole thing was wide open.
Christie laughed to himself as he recalled the words of the old vicar back home in Georgia. They echoed from the old church steeple: stay here with the decent people, settle down and marry while you’re young. But the seeds of change blew across the churchyard to him, like tombstone faces of the people, so Jude Christie had gone into the world while he was young.
He’d met a woman called July, more woman than anyone he’d ever known, down in San Joaquin, and killed her husband. After that, with a posse on his tail, he’d decided that you can’t look back to the mother country, so he was never going back to the farm on Stone County Road: all that waited were the shackles and the chains of civilized society. Which, to Jude Christie, wanted killer and gunman, renegade Confederate and outlaw, meant at best the hangman’s rope.
Allende, south of the river, was a chilly kind of town, but it seemed like a good hide-out, so he had used it. And met Nolan there.
The cold-eyed Yankee had ridden in one night like something out of a bad dream. Christie had seen him coming from his seat on the porch of the only saloon in town, noting the faded blue trousers with the yellow cavalry stripe and the way the man’s right hand stayed close to his pistol. He’d dismounted with the stiff-legged thankfulness of a man who’s ridden a long way and walked over to Christie.
‘Name’s Nolan.’ His voice carried a flat, Yankee twang. ‘Where’s the best place to stay around here?’
‘Well,’ Christie emphasized his Georgia drawl, eyeing the man’s faded uniform, ‘I ain’t sure if’n a Yankee’s gonna be welcome round here.’
He’d never seen a man so fast. In fact, he didn’t really see Nolan move at all, just felt himself hauled bodily out of his chair as a hand textured like worn leather slapped back and forth across his face. When he tried to draw his gun Nolan kneed him hard in the groin, then kicked his stomach when he doubled over. Something solid smashed against the back of his neck and he passed out.
When he came to, Nolan was seated on the porch, holding out his revolver.
‘Needs cleaning.’ His voice was almost conversational. ‘An’ a .45 stops a man better’n a .38.’ He chuckled as Christie thumbed the hammer back. ‘No use, friend. I emptied it.’
He tossed five shells at Christie who had just knelt there with a pain between his legs, wondering who the hell the man was.
‘C’mon, I’ll stake you a meal.’ Nolan stood up and walked into the saloon, ignoring Christie just as though he knew the younger man would follow him.
Christie shook his head, climbed painfully to his feet, and followed the Northerner inside. He never did know just why he hadn’t loaded the Navy Colt and shot the man in the back then and there, but something in his aching skull told him that Nolan would know what he was thinking and kill him before he could fire. The man had that effect on people.
Christie realized it over the next few weeks: Nolan seemed able to tell what a man was thinking—and act before he’d even finished formulating the thought.
They had sat down to eat and Nolan had outlined his plan to set up a scalp hunting operation. It made a lot of sense and Christie found himself drawn slowly into the affair. Hold-ups were O.K., but there was always the danger of trigger-happy guards, or a pursuing posse. Killing Indians for their hair was easier and, in Mexico, entirely legal. Not to mention profitable. Halfway through the second bottle of whisky, Christie had found himself a leader.
They started small, picking isolated rancherias, shooting the Indians they spotted on the trail, and gradually they had built up a stake and a gang.
Manolo had joined first, a pistolero with four notches on his gun butt and a growing reputation. Then Luis had come in with Roberto, and soon after they had picked up Juan. Nolan was like a magnet to the moral-free border raiders. And still an enigma to Christie.
The man hated Apaches, enjoyed killing them the way some people enjoy destroying insects they loathe and fear. Christie simply enjoyed killing. He liked the sound of the cartridge exploding from his gun and the sight of a falling body. They got along. But now Juan and Roberto were both dead and there was some crazy half-breed hunting them, and he couldn’t figure out Nolan’s thinking.
Though that, he reminded himself, was something he never had been able to figure out. All he knew about the man was that he’d served with the Northern cavalry during the war, loved money and hated Apaches. That was the sum total of his knowledge of the man he had ridden with for the past few years.
He shrugged and followed Nolan into Cristobal.
Azul was spooning up the last of a very good stew when they rode in, letting the admonishments of Father Duran flow over his head. The Federale patrol was gone and the priest wanted to know exactly what had happened in Galenas.
He sighed when he heard.
‘What now, father?’ asked Azul, wondering if the priest would disown him.
‘I don’t know.’ Duran shook his head, caught in a quandary of ethics. ‘You kill as easily as I would swat a fly. Does life mean nothing to you?’
‘My mother’s life meant a great deal,’ said Azul quietly, ‘so did my father’s. The men I kill are no loss. They deserve it.’
The priest’s answer was stopped by a pounding on the door. Before he could rise to open it, a villager burst in.
‘Father,’ the man shook with fear, ‘they are back! The two gringos and the Mexicans. They say they will burn the village if we don’t hand over the half-breed.’
Azul smiled, reaching for his Winchester.
‘A simple choice, father,’ he said quietly, ‘give me to them and live in peace, or hide me and risk your life.’
‘A choice?’ replied Duran bitterly. ‘What kind of choice is that? How could I live with myself if I handed you over to them? How do they know you’re here?’
‘They don’t,’ grunted Azul. ‘They’re guessing.’
‘No.’ The villager spoke, his words shaky with fear. ‘They beat Pablo until he told them. They know you’re in the village.’
‘Damn!’ Father Duran vented a stream of unpriestly oaths. ‘What can we do now?’
‘I’ll lead them away.’ Azul moved for the rear entrance as he spoke. ‘Those who seek to kill often find death waiting for them.’