JONAS STRONG WAS wearing a battered Stetson to shield his bald head from the fierce sun. His khaki shirt was thickly stained with sweat; his denim pants almost black at the crotch. The leather strap which held the sawn-off Browning automatic shotgun close to his right side shone with sweat; the metal of the gun’s barrel gleamed.
Strong wiped a film of perspiration from his eye lids and set the field glasses to his eyes, scanning the rocky terrain to the north-east.
‘See anythin’?’
‘Sure,’ said Strong after a few moments more. ‘There’s one bitch of a lot of empty land out there.’
‘That all?’
‘Uh-huh. That’s all.’
Strong took the glasses away from his face and offered them across to Jamie.
The Kid shook his head. ‘If they ain’t there, they ain’t there. No amount of lookin’ through them glasses is goin’ to change that.’
Strong nodded and set the glasses back in the leather case that hung from his neck. ‘Guess you’re right.’
Jamie flopped onto his back and squinted up into the bright blue of the sky. They’d been away from the camp since just before dawn and it had got hotter every hour they’d been in the saddle; hotter and drier till you thought the air was going to break like some twig each time you breathed.
He pulled up the sand-colored kerchief and used it to wipe his forehead and the right side of his face. A pair of flies sat on the black mask to the left and he left them undisturbed.
‘Thing is,’ said Strong, squatting down beside him, the powerful muscles of his limbs showing through the material of his pants and shirt, ‘if they ain’t out there, then where in the Lord’s name are they?’
‘Presidio?’
‘They should’ve left there a couple of days back at the latest.’
‘Maybe things went wrong.’
‘That’s what worries me.’
‘I don’t mean with Kennedy. The major and Yates can settle him. I mean with those guys from the film company.’
‘Yeah.’
They fell silent again; the flies on Jamie’s mask got bored with just sitting there doing nothing and started to chase one another around and buzz like crazy until Jamie finally flashed out his hand, catching one and knocking the other aside.
He was thinking he wouldn’t have minded being in Presidio himself—laying down in that white bed with those white fingers cooling his body and the touch of a needle against the skin of his arm.
He was ...
‘Kid!’
Jamie roiled over and pushed himself up onto one knee. Strong was pointing towards the north-west, the glasses already back in his hand. Jamie followed the line of Strong’s arm and finger and saw a cloud of dust, slow-moving but moving all the same, west to east.
‘Is it them?’
‘Uh-uh. Wrong direction.’
‘I know that, but... ’
The column of riders came slowly into focus in the twin rings of the field glasses. Strong held them there for a moment, then handed the glasses across. He pursed his lips in a slow, low whistle.
Jamie saw and nodded, giving the field glasses back. ‘How many would you say?’ Strong asked.
‘Between a dozen and fifteen, sixteen. Hard to be exact.’
‘Yeah.
Jamie scratched at his head, immediately behind his left ear where the thong that held the mask was beginning to itch in the continued heat. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘How a bunch of feds are that far west?’
‘They could be lost. Hell, that’s easy enough when one pile of rock looks same as another.’
‘Yeah, or they could be fresh troops movin’ into Ojinaga.’
Strong looked at him seriously. ‘You think so?’
Jamie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But if Villa holds off much longer, it could happen.’
‘So what do we do?’
Jamie gave a half-grin. ‘We could ride down and ask em.
‘Sure. An’ I could just take out this here Colt and set it plumb against your brain pan.’
Jamie laughed, then his face went serious. ‘We come to look for the major. That’s what we do.’
Strong nodded. ‘I don’t need tellin’ that.’
‘Then why d’you ask?’
The negro smiled. ‘Figured you might just see things different.’
‘Shit!’
Strong was still smiling a few minutes later when he took out the glasses and gave a quick sweep of the land to make sure the Federal troops were heading where they’d thought—towards Ojinaga.
He was stopped short by the sight of something he hadn’t expected—not at that moment.
‘What is it?’ asked Jamie, hearing the sharp intake of breath.
‘You ain’t goin’ to believe this...’
‘Try me.’
‘Of all the times we didn’t want the major to appear...’
‘You’re lyin’!’
Strong shook his head. ‘I wish I was.’
‘You sure?’
Strong gave him the field glasses.
‘You can’t be sure.’
He made an adjustment to the focus and squinted through the lenses. A matter of seconds later he was arguing: ‘No way we can know for certain.’
‘They’re ridin’ in the right direction, ain’t they?’
‘That don’t prove nothin’.’
‘Five riders.’
‘That don’t prove nothin’.’
Strong looked at him. ‘What kind of proof d’you want, Kid? The major’s an’ Yates’ dead bodies?’
Left unimpeded, the two groups of riders would have passed so close to one another as to make conflict certain. Fifteen against two, since all three of the film people could be discounted as soon as the shooting began—other than as targets. It was possible that Onslow would spot the federales first, but, ignorant of the fact that the other two gringos were near, that wouldn’t leave him a great many options. He could hide or run. The former was unlikely; the latter even more so.
If some of the enemy could be taken out first, then there was a good chance that most of the patrol would never get as far as Ojinaga. Which would be a good thing in the long run.
Strong and Jamie rode as close as they dared, then hobbled their horses and went the rest of the way on foot, ducking down behind boulders, sliding down arroyos and clambering up the jagged sides of stubbornly sheer rock.
They could hear the steady clip of the horses clearly now, occasional voices, someone who whistled from time to time, pleasant and lilting.
Strong peered over an edge of reddish rock and turned his head, signaling for Jamie to make his approach as quiet as possible. Jamie acknowledged, drawing the Colt Lightning from his holster as he did so.
Jonas Strong flattened himself and his eyes narrowed. The . leader of the patrol was the man whistling, lips pursed beneath a smart black moustache, the peak of his cap set at something of an angle, his uniform smart and relatively uncreased. He looked younger than he should have been—certainly younger than Strong, younger than Jamie even.
They looked at the rest of the column. Most were little more than boys. Their faces were unlined, untroubled by the blade of a razor; their eyes were still clear and bright, reflecting the light from the sky. They rode with a mixture of pride and awkwardness, holding their reins that much too tight, boots pushed too firmly down into their army-issue stirrups. Their bodies seemed strangely shrunken inside their uniforms and at first neither Strong nor Jamie understood the reason why. They finally realized the boys were wearing the uniforms of dead men—drummed into service to fill the shoes of corpses.
Only three were other than young: a man with a shock of white hair that poked at all angles from beneath his hat and a patch over his right eye; another with his left arm in a sling; a third with a bandage about his head, hatless.
If these men were coming to relieve the siege of Ojinaga, then Villa was right to be unhurried.
Strong and Jamie exchanged questioning glances.
The patrol did not seem to have spotted the advance of the major’s party yet, much of their view was blocked off as that of the two gringos had not been. It was possible to let them go and hope they passed the possible intersection without anything happening.
They did not want to kill children.
Jamie Durham frowned and his handsome half-face showed his indecision. Jonas Strong lay tight-lipped, listening to the melodious whistle of the officer and watching the faces of the boys in uniform who followed on behind.
Strong remembered his first days in the army barracks, days of special torment for him because of his color; days and nights of doubt and agony that he had only been able to get out of his system by getting into fight after fight until he was spending more time in the guardhouse than out of it. That had been before he met up with Cade Onslow.
Remembering, there was no longer any doubt in his mind what he should do.
‘Right, Jamie?’
The Kid shifted his saddle gun, an 1895 Winchester, to his shoulder.
Strong flicked sweat from his brows. ‘Let’s do it!’
Jamie rested the smooth side of his face against the wooden stock of the rifle and squinted along the twenty-five inch barrel. He squeezed the trigger and the neatly-mustached head of the officer jerked round hard, the pursed lips ceased whistling, a burst of blood and tissue erupting from beneath his jauntily angled cap.
Strong was up on one knee, the Browning gripped in both hands; he watched as the startled soldiers turned in the direction of the rifle shot then he unleashed the fury of the shotgun right into their midst.
Jamie swiveled his rifle along the rock ridge, picking his targets quickly, bringing back the trigger with smooth efficiency, emptying the box magazine into the men below.
The recruits were in total panic.
Screams and shouts and curses vied with the sound of gunfire.
Horses wheeled and whinnied, flared their nostrils, flashed and clashed their shod hoofs upon dust and rock.
One boy—fifteen perhaps—clung to the pommel of his army-issue saddle with his left hand, the right clawing at his throat, fingers running with blood, sounds gurgling from his shattered windpipe. More blood jolted through his nostrils and his ears. His legs were free of the stirrups and from time to time kicked out aimlessly as the horse turned beneath him,—caught up in the moment of fear and terror.
The soldier with white hair was sitting on the ground, his hat at an abrupt angle, the patch over his eye smeared with the gray matter of another man’s brains. His arms were folded across his chest and his shoulders slumped forward; his legs were spread wide and straight. Through the dust-covered cloth of his uniform, his bowels hung like tripes thrown up against a butcher’s wall and now slowly sliding down. Blood-streaked, pink and stinking. The white-haired man was still alive.
Two of the recruits lay on the ground in one another’s arms, nestling together in their time of dying, seeking and finding some final comfort in the bright and violent blood-letting of their end. A hand touched a face; a hand gripped a hand. Wounds shared their blood.
One of the older federales, the one with the bandaged head, had dropped down behind his head horse and exchanged fire with the two gringos, all the while yelling orders that most of the youngsters with him were too terror-struck to understand, never mind obey. But three of them did hear him, heed him, kick their animals and spur them out of the morass of dead and dying bodies.
The soldier with the bandaged head jumped up behind the last of the youths and the four of them galloped eastwards, fleeing the wrath of the gringos’ guns.
They were not to know that there were more than two gringos.
There was no way in which they might have known that they were riding directly towards them.
No way—out.
Cade Onslow heard the sound of horses clearly, plenty of time to free the Mauser 7.63 automatic from its holster and rest the barrel on the crook of his left arm.
As soon as the escaping riders were in sight Onslow emptied the magazine into them. It was as simple as that. When he raised the Mauser again there were four dead soldiers on the ground, three horses milling stupidly round.
Onslow slipped another clip down into the gun and pushed it back down into its wooden holster. He touched his mount with his spurs, flicked at the reins and rode on down the arroyo towards the sound of the shooting that had first drawn his attention.
When he got to the spot, Strong and Jamie Durham were walking slowly between the scrambled bodies, making sure that all were dead. The man with white hair had been groaning when Strong had reached him, hands clinging to his spilled guts, Ups gibbering nightmare and Mary, Mother of Christ and pain. Strong had drawn his Colt .45 and set the barrel end against the man’s head. The Ups had continued to move for a few seconds even after the trigger had been pulled.
‘Major!’ Strong strode forward and shook Onslow’s hand.
Onslow exchanged the grip with strength and obvious feeling; he clapped Jamie on the shoulder and smiled, tight-Upped.
His eyes took in the bodies, surprise beginning to show at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
‘Kid!’
Strong nodded and looked away.
‘Kids!’ Onslow’s voice was thick with disgust.
‘Kids in Federal uniforms,’ said Jamie.
Onslow nodded abruptly. ‘I know.’
‘They was headed right for you,’ said Strong after a few moments, during which Onslow examined several of the bodies. ‘I figured if we didn’t take ’em out, then...’
His voice hesitated, stopped.
Onslow looked at him. ‘You did right, Jonas. Nothing else you could do. I know that. Ain’t no blame to you.’
‘Who are you goin’ to blame, Major?’ asked Jamie, staring down at one of the dead, young faces.
Onslow shrugged. ‘The government that needs to use children to cling on to its power. I don’t know. This war. The damned revolution.’ He kicked at the dust-covered rock. ‘This damned country!’ Onslow’s face was hard, like slate, grained and grooved. ‘I don’t know.’