It was Isaac Ray who broke the tension. Many of the gang were asleep but El Poco and his young lover had reappeared, walking among those who were still awake. Calling out jokes and pausing here and there to take a mouthful of tequila. The brothers remained helpless. Thaddeus bents over the wooden framework, looking as though he had slipped into unconsciousness. But Ike had been moved to the center of the camp, near one of the cooking fires.
Caroloa had been quite for nearly an hour, lying on her side, eyes staring blankly down into the canyon, locked in with her own thoughts. Herne lay near her, considering whether his best course of action might not be to simply ride away from the whole mess. There were just too many of the gang for him to deal with. If they made a run for the main trail, there was nobody to stop them. If he’d had just one more man—and he thought of Whitey Coburn—he could have bottled them up and picked them off with the Sharps.
‘Look,’ said the woman, pointing downwards.
‘Hell. Looks like El Poco wants his photograph taken. Son of a bitch.’
Isaac had been released, staying on his knees, rubbing painfully at his wrists as he tried to drag back some of the lost circulation. One of the breeds had brought him an earthenware mug of what must have been tequila. Ike took it in trembling fingers and drained it down, coughing and nearly vomiting, wiping at his bloodied mouth and jaw. Spitting several times in the dirt.
Carola crawled higher, to where the ledge tapered to barely three feet wide, giving herself a better position to look down.
‘They might let him go,’ she hissed.
‘No reason to.’
‘He’s no use to them.’
‘That’s it, lady. He’s no use, so they’ll kill him. Just as easy as that.’
‘Then we must save him.’
Herne shook his head in silence.
El Poco was saying something to his prisoner, who looking up blankly into the dwarf’s face. The bandit slapped him hard, knocking him back in the dust, shouting to one of the other Mexicans. Who came over, seemingly to interpret for him. Isaac listened, then shook his head. The as El Poco took a step towards him, he suddenly nodded, struggled to his feet, walking unsteadily towards his beloved camera and the pair of wooden boxes.
‘Yeah. Family portrait time,’ said the shootist, on an impulse bringing the Sharps forward again, checking automatically that the wind hadn’t changed since the last time he set the sights. But at such a short range it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
It took time for Isaac to set up the equipment to his own satisfaction. Nearly a half hour, during which El Poco roused all of his men from the long hut, getting them to line up. Inspecting them in a parody of a military parade, strutting up and down the row, pausing every now and again to slide his podgy fingers inside their cotton breeches.
Twice breaking off to shout a threat at hapless Ray, still fumbling with brass screws and delicate chemicals, taking square sheets of tinted glass from one of the boxes.
‘What did he say to my brother-in-law?’ asked Carola Ray.
‘If’n he didn’t get this portrait taken real quick then El Poco would warm him up some.’
At last Ike Ray was ready, trying to arrange the bandits into a semblance of a group picture, waving his arms to try and get them in a line with El Poco in the centre. But the bandit leader was now very drunk and he whispered something in the ear of his boyfriend, who nodded vigorously. Sliding down to his knees at the front of the line and beginning to use his mouth on the dwarf.
It was too much for Ike Ray, who shouted an angry protest, the words clearly audible to the two unseen listeners.
‘I won’t do it, you sick-minded, twisted little bastard!’
Herne brought the rifle to his shoulder, lips moving silently. ‘Oh, Hell,’ were the words that he whispered to himself.
Jesus Maria Diego pushed his pretty compadre away from him, calling out to ask what the prisoner had said. The Mexican who spoke English was clearly uncertain whether to translate or not, but El Poco drew his pistol and pointed it at him. So, in a terrified gabble of words, he told his leader what Ike Ray had shouted.
Fat thighs rubbing on each other, the small man walked towards Isaac, who realized the enormity of what he’d done, backing away, hands raised as if he expected a blow. The handsome young boy who had been fellating the bandit leader followed him across, spitting at Ray, hand falling to the ornamented hilt of a long dagger at his belt.
‘Shoot him,’ said Carola.
‘Not yet. Got to wait ...’
El Poco looked at Ray, then suddenly kicked out at the camera, his toe knocking over the tripod, sending the valuable piece of equipment toppling on its side, like a dying stork. He drew his pistol and fired a half dozen rounds into it, the crashing and breaking of glass and wood clearly audible to Carola and to Jed Herne.
Ike Ray went mad.
The pain and the humiliation that he’d suffered over the last few hours paled into a forgotten chimera of yesterday’s dreams. All that mattered was that his beloved camera was ruined. Irretrievably destroyed by the crazy dwarf who mocked him.
Ike Ray went mad.
Flinging himself at the Mexican chief and knocking him over, landing on top of him, flailing at the dimpled cheeks with clenched fists, bloody froth hanging on his lips in his crazy rage.
‘That’s the lid off of the can,’ said Herne, cradling the stock of the big Sharps tighter into his right shoulder, finger easing down and caressing the narrow trigger.
El Poco’s lover was lightning fast, diving in from the right, the knife in his hand, his boots kicking dust into the nearest fire, sending the flames dipping and the shadows racing.
It was enough to throw Herne off his aim for a vital moment. By the time his eyes were used to the changed light down in the canyon, the knife was in Ike Ray’s back, below the left shoulder blade. Out and stabbed deeply in again, blood flowering black on the dirty shirt. In the bedlam of noise the shootist heard El Poco screaming shrilly for help while his lover was crying out for the others to come and aid him in slaughtering the crazy gringo.
Ike Ray rolled off his enemy, already dying from three stab wounds to the heart, feeling little pain, his only sensation a bitter regret that he had failed to kill the man who had taken all he loved, and finally his life.
He didn’t even have the consolation of knowing that his own slayer was dead before him. The thunder of Herne’s buffalo gun was too late for his dimming brain.
The effect on the tired and drunk bandits was truly electrifying.
Herne’s shot took the boy through the head, the fifty-five caliber bullet bursting his skull like a ripe melon under a ball hammer. The impact was so great that the body almost completed a somersault, rolling sideways, the knife arcing away into the silvered moonlight.
El Poco scrambled to his feet, head turning as he tried to see where the assassin’s bullet had come from, but the light breeze that dodged around the end of the box canyon was strong enough to break up the cloud of powder smoke and there was nothing to give him a clue.
‘Take cover!’ screamed one of the other Mexicans, waving his arms at the others, running towards the shelter of the hut.
Jed’s second shot took him plumb through the middle of his back, the distorted lead burying itself in between two smashed vertebrae, breaking his spine and severing the cord of vital nerves. The bandit fell like a pole-axed bullock, arms and legs flung out stiff and still.
But this time there were eyes scanning the dark walls of the cliffs for the flash and one of the breeds spotted Herne on the ledge. Drawing his pistol and fanning away several shots at the dim figure. None of them came even remotely close and Herne was calmly able to reload the long gun and shoot the Apache through the throat, kicking him among a pile of boulders in a welter of bubbling blood and flailing limbs. It was the man with the flowered shirt.
‘Keep down, woman!’ snapped the shootist, seeing that Carola was trying to lift her head and peer over the side of the narrow trail.
‘I want to see Thad,’ she protested.
‘They’re too busy to care much for him. Got him!’ Exultantly as another Mexican fell, dropping his rifle, a Sharps bullet buried in his heart.
‘How many of them left, Jedediah? Not many more, surely?’
‘I make it seven. Hell!’ A splattering of lead against the wall behind them, dashing splinters of brittle red rock all over them. ‘That was damned close. Could be time to move on out of here.’
At El Poco’s orders the fires were hastily extinguished, plunging the bottom of Lost Woman Canyon into almost total blackness, the moon failing to penetrate into the shadowed comers. Herne held his fire, lying flat, hands over his face, while the bandits poured bullets in the approximate direction of where they had last glimpsed him. But gradually the firing eased and he heard El Poco call out for them to save ammunition. That they didn’t know how many men there might be ambushing them and they should all wait quiet.
‘What will they do?’ whispered the woman, edging in nearer to Herne so that he could feel her shoulder touching his arm.
‘Don’t know. Guess this must have put the fear of the Almighty in them. If those bastards believe in any kind of Almighty.’
That gave him an idea.
‘Carola. Take this pistol and go lower down. When you hear me fire a shot, I want you to shoot off all six rounds from the Colt. Space them out around ten heartbeats apart. Aim them around the bottom of the canyon if’n you can. I’ll shoot as well with the Sharps. Let’s make them think there’s more of us.’
He handed over the heavy pistol, waiting while she crawled slowly down the trail, to a point where there was only a drop of around twenty feet to the floor of the valley. When he thought she was safely there he aimed the Sharps at where he’d last seen a small group of the bandits, squeezing the trigger. Reloading at his top speed as Carola Ray also began to shoot. Hearing the hissing whine of their bullets as they ricocheted around at the far side of the camp.
There was a loud scream and then it seemed as though every one of the bandits was yelling and running, changing their positions to try and get away from the pouring lead.
Herne’s Spanish was rusty, but he dragged at his memory for the words he wanted. ‘I want only El Poco. The rest of you can go free and live to be old men with your tiny grandchildren at your sides.’
Carola had crept back to him, handing him the empty, pistol. Keeping silent as he started to reload it. Jed calling out again.
‘He has done nothing for you with his evil sickness and his helpless little body and small legs. He is not a man. That which once made him a man has been worn off against the sand with his legs that are shorter than those of a snake.’
‘Dog of a thousand whores!’ screamed Jesus Maria Diego, emptying his pistol in the direction of the voice .But the echoes of the night are deceptive and none of his shots came within fifty feet of the crouching couple. ‘They will not leave me!’
‘Then they die with you.’
‘You will not kill me.’
‘I will kill you slowly, or I give you to our women to kill, slowly with the needles and the fires.’
‘You will not.’
‘All can go. Walk away and keep your guns and your pride. There is no shame to be beaten.’
‘I kill any man who deserts me!’ yelped El Poco, his thin, reedy voice wailing around the cold walls of ancient stone.
‘When the sun rises, all of you will die. All of you. There is no escape for you.’
‘How can we trust you, señor?’ came a new voice from the blackness.
‘You will die at my hands, Emiliano Muera,’ threatened the chief.
‘Trust me, Emiliano. There is no choice for you. A slow death or a long life. I will speak no more, but the light of morning is not far away and then … then it will be too late.’
~*~
‘The sky is lightening, Jed,’ said Carola Ray, her voice disturbing Herne’s train of thought. His mind had been long ago and far away, when he had been a young man, filled with fire and gall. And he had met a warrior of the Chiricahua tribe, who had laughed a great deal and ridden his dappled pony like the wind across the land. ‘The name of the Indian had been Geronimo.
‘Guess I’ll never ever see him again,’ the shootist said. ‘Not now.’
‘Who?’
‘Geronimo. If’n we get out of this, it’ll likely be the end. Thaddeus isn’t goin’ to want anything but a whole lot of rest. In time the Cavalry’ll send in their Apache scouts. And they’ll send him off to Florida to plant melons.’
‘I’d go on. Even if I had to crawl on my hands and knees, Jed, I’d go after that Indian.’
‘What about Thaddeus?’
Her face was a white blur in the approaching dawn, her mouth a black cut across her cheeks. ‘He must take his own chances. We can get him out safely now...’
‘Don’t bet your last silver dollar on it.’
‘But we hold the cards.’
‘No. Maybe they think we got us some aces. Best we got is maybe an empty straight. Can’t fill it.’
‘Whatever happens … I’ll go along. You’ll come with me, won’t you, Jed? I’ll do what I can to make it jolly well worth your while.’
‘I’ll think on that, ma’am. Look. Man moving out towards the end of the canyon.’
There was more than one of them. Most of the bandits were little better than simple, superstitious peasants who had chosen to ride with the monstrous Diego in the hope of finding a way out of their life of bitter, grinding poverty. While the gold came, and the women and the liquor, they would be as loyal as the Swiss Guard. They could even live with their terror of El Poco and his blind rages. His animal desires could be tolerated, as long as it wasn’t you that the dwarf had picked on.
But not now. Trapped in a box-wall canyon with several of their number already dead. Somewhere in the surrounding night there were men with guns. Men who had picked off their amigos without even showing themselves. And those threats …With them had been the promise of their lives, providing they left El Poco behind. Faced with the choice of the unseen killers, the little chief seemed much less terrifying.
So they had begun to leave. In ones and twos, the breeds going first. Creeping silently among the boulders, crossing themselves and praying that the men with rifles wouldn’t see them.
It was looking like the end of the line. A gang like El Poco’s are roaring sons of hitches when the going’s good, But when there are men with rifles trapping you in a dark canyon, then life turns bleak and empty. They had drawn lots to see who of them would creep out towards the main entrance of the trail, to test out what the cold-voiced man in the shadows had told them. That if they left now, without their leader, they would live. And there was also the backing fact that if there had been a trap out there then good old Hernando would have warned them of it.
Not knowing that the blood no longer flowed from the slit throat of good old Hernando and the coyotes were already scenting his dying.
But one of them went first.
While the others waited, ignoring the occasional whispers of Jesus Maria Diego. Whispers that began with blood-curdling threats and faded away into slobbering entreaties for help and loyalty.
There was no sound from the darkness at the mouth of the canyon, so others went. Until El Poco was alone in Lost Woman Canyon with the bound figure of Thaddeus Ray, semi-conscious, unaware of the attempted rescue. Knowing that pain and the tearing penetration had ceased and vaguely realizing there had been shooting and screams.
Dawn was racing across the Territory from the east, cutting new shadows in the orange dust, lighting up the tops of the cliffs opposite Jed Herne and the resting woman. The shootist suspected that his plan had worked but he had no way of knowing how many of the bandits had fled. Or whether El Poco was still there. Or if any of them were there.
But if things had gone his way, he still had the bitter regret that the rest of the murderous gang had managed to escape. It would have been good to have crushed the scorpions for once and for all.
Jed needn’t have worried.
~*~
The breeds and the Mexicans had fallen like babes into the waiting arms of Geronimo and his Chiricahua warriors. Only one was killed immediately, the remainder of them being beaten quickly to the ground, brutally gagged and bound ready for the women.
Nachez wanted to go in after El Poco and after the white shootist, but the chieftain checked him with a word.
‘No, brother. I will wait until the fight is over, and you will wait with me. The others take these jackals back to our camp and there deal with them kindly. But we will wait.’
The half dozen survivors of the gang were dragged back to the main camp of the Apaches, roped behind ponies, their bodies peeled raw from the stones and biting sand. But that was only the beginning
The squaws—thirteen of them—took a prisoner between two of them and spent the morning and the whole afternoon on their pleasures. Ensuring that the bandits had a hard passing of it, with their little razoring knives that pecked at flesh, scratching down to the core of living bone.
The fires came with the next darkness and in the second morning the gang were carried out and buried chest-deep in the dirt. By then they were all blinded and mute, crippled and emasculated. But they lived.
It was left to the handful of children and the whooping women to administer the last rites to them, throwing stones and jagged rocks and making a sport of it. Until all were dead.
But by that time there had been happenings back in Lost Woman Canyon, witnessed by Geronimo. With more deaths.