She was good.
Very good.
Her body was warm and willing. For the teenage daughter of a preacher, even setting aside her near blindness, Mary Spangel had learned tricks that could have earned her good money down Juarez, or out on the coast. She moved fast and hard, so that she seemed to be all over him. Her lips were sucking at the hollow of his neck while her fingers caressed him with a directness that was almost brutal. Then she was on top of him, setting her heels to his body as though he was a troublesome gelding.
Crow wasn’t about to let a girl use him like that and he arched his back under her, rolling so that she finished flat on her back in the dirt. But they were still linked and he drove down into her, feeling her hips come up to meet him. Her mouth sagged open and the eyes, without her glasses, stared blankly up over his shoulders. Her nails raked at him through his black shirt and she locked her heels into the small of his back, tugging him even deeper between her thighs.
“Oh, help me, Jesus,” she sighed. “Jesus Christ, let him fuck me good. Oh, God, but that is so good! Yes, Crow. Do me good. Ream out every damned line and furrow of me and sow your seed deep.”
Crow had once had a whore in Des Moines who had whispered a psalm as he used her. The daughter of a minister who panted out foul language was something else again.
Of the two he was sure which he preferred.
The rest of the camp stayed silent, almost as though everyone was waiting and listening. Crow was conscious of the others, sleeping in the wagon and close by the dying fire, but he was too far traveled along the silken road of lust to give a damn.
And when it was over he felt drained. Sore as well. As if he’d ridden a saddle-galled mustang for an hour.
Mary rolled away from him, their flesh parting with the slight stickiness of lovemaking. She sighed and fumbled among the stones for her spectacles, putting them on and only then turning her head to look at him. Smiling shyly.
“You must think me awful, Mr Crow,” she said, doing up the hooks and eyes along the front of her dress.
“That a question or a statement, Mary?” he replied, buttoning his pants.
“A question, I guess.”
“Then the answer is that I don’t think you’re awful. Fact is, you were real good.”
“Best you’ve had?”
Crow lay back and stretched like a big cat, throwing out his arms above his head and pushing so hard that his muscles cracked. “Best is a big word.”
“One of the best?”
There was a note of entreaty in her voice. “Sure, Mary. I’d say one of the best.”
“You don’t mind that I can’t see very well and have to wear these…?”
“Doesn’t signify, lady. It’s the lady, not the clothes that matters.”
“I’m glad. Very glad. I can see a little better now than I could once. But Daniel’s gettin’ worse and worse. He’s got what Pa’s got.”
“How’s that again?”
“Same eye ailment.”
“Goin’ blind? Full blind?”
“It’s like lookin’ down a railroad tunnel, is what he says about it.”
“You mean a kind of tube of seeing?”
She nodded, the movement making her long hair weave about her shoulders like dark smoke. “Yes. The one eye’s gone. The left.”
“And?”
“And the right’s sinkin’ fast. Says that times he can hardly make out anything and he has to keep moving his head to see properly.”
“He’ll go blind?”
She nodded again, turning to look at the shootist with concern. “Yes, Crow. Soon. Any day now, he’ll lose that bit of sight. That’s why we have to get the place that my father has chosen.”
Crow was puzzled. “He’s chosen it already?”
“No. No, not yet. But he knows that he’ll know it when he sees it.”
“Could go on forever. And if he don’t see at all, then how will…?”
She patted him on the arm, with the easy affection that comes close after sexual love. “There’ll be a sign, Crow. That’s what he’s waiting for.”
“Some Indian tribes think like that.”
“How?”
The shootist lay back and looked up at the black veil of the sky, sparkled with diamond-point stars. “They look for things like, maybe, an owl at noon. Or the wind and clouds playin’ odd tricks. Then they decide whether it’s a good day for dying or not.”
Mary Spangel sat up straight, adjusting her glasses over her ears. Pushing back the hair. “Pa’s not like some heathen shaman, Mr Crow.”
He noticed the “Mister’ but didn’t say anything. Realizing that this was a touchy subject:
“I think I’d best go and join Ma in the wagon, less’n she gets wakeful and upset.”
“Do that, Miss Mary.”
She noticed the “Miss” but didn’t say anything in reply.
She stood up in a rustle of cotton, smoothing her dress over her thighs. “I ... I surely would like to say that you and...”
He uncoiled himself, towering over her, feeling a sudden wave of pity for the girl. Tied in to a family of the blind and mad. Unsure of herself, yet giving herself generously to him. He touched her on the side of the face, feeling her cheek wet with tears, glistening in the sinking moonlight.
“No need for words, Mary. Bein’ friends means that you never have to say anything.”
“Good night, Crow.”
“Good night, Mary.”
He watched her disappear into the gloom, her boots crunching over the dry pebbles. Then he turned to lie down himself, near the glowing remains of the fire. Alongside the still figure of Ben Ford.
Within a couple of minutes he was asleep.
The soldiers came on them before sunrise.
The first pale light of the false dawn was tinting the sky, edging away the black into light blue, shading into an opalescent pink. Crow started awake, immediately alert. Hand reaching for the butt of the Purdey, tucked under his saddle by his head.
Ben Ford detected the movement and also came out of sleep, drawing his own pistol.
“What is it, Crow?”
“Horses.”
“Comin’ this way? Yeah, yeah I hear them. How many d’you make it?”
“Three. Shod.”
“Mexes?”
Crow sat up, thumbing back on the hammers of the scattergun. “Could be, Ben. Best to get ready. Don’t wake the others.”
“They ought to …”
The shootist shook his head. “No, Ben. They’ll likely get in the way.”
“I’ll stay here and keep my gun cocked under the blanket.”
“Guess with just three I’ll do the same. First sign of trouble, then fire like the blazes, Ben.”
He saw the flash of white teeth in the dark blur of the ramrod’s face. “Hell, Crow. I know that.”
The sound of the horses was coming closer. Stopping out of sight, then moving in.
“Hello, the camp!”
“Troopers!” hissed Ford.
“Lay still and quiet. I heard Apaches speak good enough to get right in among wagons.”
“Hello, the camp there. We’re comin’ in.”
“Identify yourself first!” called Crow.
“Lieutenant William Birtles. M Troop, Sixth Cavalry. With two Troopers, Mulcahy and Taylor.”
“Come ahead slow and easy, Lieutenant, so we can see you.”
Three shadows appeared, stark against the lightening sky. Moving on at a walk, until they turned into men. Soldiers. An officer leading, the other two fanning out on either side of him.
“Looks all right,” whispered Ben Ford. “I can see their faces and they ain’t no Apaches. Nor no Mexicans, neither. What’d you say?”
Crow breathed slowly out. They looked right. But there was something nagging at him. Something that just didn’t set quite right with him. There’d been the smoke the other day. A large patrol quartering the desert. Indian ponies in the night. All the signs of some kind of trouble going on around them.
So what was such a small patrol doing out on its own at dawn? Maybe a scouting unit. But a Lieutenant and only two soldiers? Somehow it didn’t …
“Hold it there!” called the shootist. “Swing on down and let’s talk a little.”
“You’re mighty suspicious, mister. Just the two of you?”
“Two more in the wagon. Two under it.”
“Oh. Dismount, men. Want us to stay here and shout or could we come over and stir up that fire? Make us all some coffee?”
There was still something. Picking at Crow’s mind, sending the short hairs tingling at the back of the neck. Yet everything seemed calm and normal. Daniel was crawling out from under the wagon and he could hear the voices of the women raised from inside.
“Sure. Come ahead.” It would have been churlish to refuse. But Crow sat up, keeping the blanket draped over his lap, the shotgun still cocked and ready. His right index finger set on the triggers.
The three soldiers walked over, spurs jingling. Sitting in a semi-circle on the opposite side of the fire. Ben Ford struggled to a sitting position, holstering his pistol.
“You goin’ far, Mister … What’s your name?”
“We’re heading out westwards. This here is Ben Ford. Young fellow is Daniel Spangel. Man still sleeping is his Pa. Reverend Charles Spangel.”
“Them women?” asked one of the Troopers, jerking his thumb towards the Conestoga.
Ben answered. “Wife to the Reverend is Mrs. Lily Spangel and the daughter is Miss Mary. I’m the ramrod. Was, ’til I bust my hip.”
“You crippled bad, Mr Ford?” asked the officer, solicitously.
“Sure am. Can’t walk. Crow here has to damned carry me like I’m a ... What’s wrong?”
The officer had straightened at the name. His hand sliding down to the buttoned holster. Neither of the Troopers had reacted at all. The shootist cursed under his breath, knowing that this could lead to trouble.
“You the Crow that used to be an officer with the Third? First Squadron, under Captain Menges? Hell, sure you are. I heard of you.”
At that Mulcahy and Taylor both tensed, eyes turning towards Lieutenant Birtles as if they were waiting for a signal.
“You were court-martialed and booted out of the Army. Cowardice, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t talk about it, Lieutenant.”
Crow knew it was going to be trouble. His case had run through the Cavalry like a brush fire in August, leading to his expulsion from the Army.
“I guess you don’t.” For a moment it looked as though Birtles was going to say more, but he checked himself. As the sun rose, Crow could see the faces of the men more clearly.
The officer, in his mid-thirties. Gingerish hair and moustache and side-whiskers. Narrow eyes like slits in a pine fence. Mulcahy, tall and broad. A drinker’s face, with heavy bags under the eyes and jowls that hung like dewlaps over his collar. Taylor, younger than the other two. Probably early twenties. High cheekbones and a nervous tic that tugged at the corner of his mouth, making it seem that he was trying to control a grin.
All three of them were dirty and unshaven, but out on patrol Crow knew well enough that few officers made any attempt to keep high standards of dress while out on patrol against hostiles.
“You’re Crow. By God, but I heard plenty about you. I was up there, you know.”
“Where?”
“With Custer. Well, truth is I was with Reno and Benteen. Two damned days and little water up there with ten thousand screamin’ Sioux all over us. Closer to us than that wagon. Why, good morning, Ma’am.”
He jumped to his feet as Lily Spangel tucked her head out of the wagon like a frightened bird. As the officer bowed to her she disappeared again.
“What was I sayin’?” asked Birtles.
“You was talkin’ about bein’ up on the Little Big Horn,” prompted Mulcahy.
“Yes, so I was. Thank you, trooper.”
Crow noticed that the soldier had not said “Sir’ to the officer. And that was unusual.
“We was there, Crow. Menges was killed there, wasn’t he? No, some other place. Worst thing about that defense with Benteen and Reno was the smell.”
“Dead bodies?” asked Taylor. Again, no “Sir’.
“No, not that. Just shit. Place stank of shit. Guess there was hardly a man there didn’t foul himself that battle. Brown breeches were the order of the day. Know what I mean, Crow?”
The shootist nodded.
“I seen men pulling triggers on Springfields that they’d not even cocked.”
Crow still had the feeling that the soldiers were waiting. Making conversation until they’d learned what they wanted to know, then they’d be ready to act.
Nearly every Cavalryman that Crow had met since he had been court-martialed had looked upon him in disgust and hatred. Yet these three men didn’t seem unduly concerned to be sitting around a fire with him.
Daniel came and joined them, followed by the two women. Birtles kept up a flow of chatter about his time in the Army, flavoring his stories with enough excitement to make Mary and her mother exclaim in shock at times, but never strong enough to give offence. The fire blazed more brightly and the coffee steamed and hissed.
Crow kept mainly silent, hands still holding the Purdey under the blanket. If the soldiers recognized any threat from him, none of them spoke. And after a while the shootist began to relax a little.
Finally, he asked them the question that had been bothering him since their arrival.
“You out on patrol, Lieutenant?”
“Part of a patrol, Mr Crow. There’s been some trouble. Folks been talkin’ about a party of Mescalero bucks raisin’ Hell.”
“I still figure them for Mexicans,” said Taylor, cradling his mug of coffee between both hands.
“Could be. There’s a band around robbed a payroll wagon a week back. Fifty thousand dollars is the word.”
Mulcahy licked his lips. “Yeah. Fifty thousand dollars.”
“How come you’re split off from the rest?”
The answer didn’t come quite as fast as Crow figured it should have done. “Captain wanted three of us to go scout the trail back east a ways.”
“Officer with two troopers?”
“Sure. Nothin’ wrong with that, is there, Mr Crow?”
The shootist didn’t answer, sitting quiet, his mug of coffee down by his boots. Ben Ford looked at him strangely, as though something of Crow’s unease was beginning to communicate itself to him.
But Crow couldn’t pin it down. The relationship between the Lieutenant and the two ordinary soldiers didn’t seem quite right. It was too casual, even for a small patrol. And why send out a full Lieutenant with only two Troopers on what they claimed was a casual scouting mission?
Lily Spangel had gone over to wake her husband, singing gently to herself. Coming back to stand alongside the officer, running her fingers along the back of his neck, making him start.
Kneeling down alongside him, smiling up into the brutally handsome face. Birtles was uncomfortable, looking at his men, then at Ford and Crow.
“You are a pretty boy, a pretty blue soldier. Soldier blue, soldier blue, who will marry you? Who will marry you, sweet soldier blue?” she sang.
“Ma’am, I’d surely …” began the officer.
“Leave him, slut. You are an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and shall be punished in the flames that burn forever and cannot be healed.”
The Reverend Spangel towered over everyone, hefting his long staff. The soldiers all looked up in shock at the sight, hands reaching for their pistols. Ben Ford started to draw his own gun. “Take it easy, he don’t mean …”
Before Crow could make a move the officer had grabbed the woman round the neck, jamming the barrel of his pistol against her neck, the hammer back, gloved finger on the trigger.
“Take it easy, you crippled fuck!” he snarled. “Don’t tell me that shit.”
“Billy, let’s bust ’em all,” said Mulcahy, his own Dragoon drawn and covering Ford and Crow.
The shootist sat very still, the blanket tugged up over his lap. Wondering when he ought to try and make his move.
“You’re damned deserters,” snarled the ramrod. “That’s the filth you are.”
“Man like you ain’t really a man no more, old-timer,” sneered Taylor. “You talk too big for a fuckin’ cripple with no legs.”
“You’re quiet, Crow,” said Birtles, grinning round at the tableau. “One move and the lady dies. You know I mean that?”
Crow’s voice was so quiet that it barely rose above the bubbling of the brown enameled coffee-pot.
“Yeah, I know, soldier. I know.”
And he squeezed the trigger of the scattergun.