‘HOW HIGH’S THE church tower?’
‘Thirty feet. Maybe forty.’ Tarrant sounded confused. ‘Why?’
‘I’ll need about fifty feet of good rope, then.’ Azul ignored the confusion. ‘How’s it join with the rest of the building?’
‘There’s a platform under the bell and a ladder going down to the room below. A door opens on a small room, then there’s a door into the church itself.’ Tarrant frowned. ‘That door opens behind the altar.’
‘Catholic or Protestant?’ demanded Azul.
‘A non-denominational church, though essentially Catholic in its design.’
‘There a big altar? A pulpit, too?’
Tarrant nodded. ‘The altar is a fair size. Perhaps the height of a man’s chest. It faces down the central aisle. The pulpit is raised about ten feet from the floor, on the right as you face down the room.’
‘Fancy,’ Azul grunted. ‘For a town like this.’
‘We pride ourselves on the finest religious establishment this side of Tucson.’ Tarrant sounded defensive. ‘Perhaps even better than that town’s church.’
‘That’s real Christian of you,’ grunted Azul. ‘There any other way in?’
‘No. Except the front doors, but Lynch has a man there all the time.’
‘It got a loft? Anything like that? Or does the roof just slant over.’
‘It’s empty,’ said Tarrant. ‘The interior simply angles up to the boards of the roof. Of course, there are supporting beams, but nothing like a loft.’
Azul nodded, thinking. Then: ‘Along with that rope I’ll need some kind of grappling hook. Let’s go check a store.’
They ran through the rain to the general store across the street. Azul and Tarrant were accompanied by Jason and three other men. Inside the store they met the deputy Azul had seen the night before.
‘Mike Rubens,’ Tarrant introduced. ‘Mr. Gunn thinks he can fetch them out.’
‘He better have a damn good plan,’ grunted Rubens. ‘They still got six women in there.’
‘And you can’t get them clear,’ said Azul. ‘I think I can.’
‘How?’ asked the deputy. ‘Like I say: it better be good.’ When he heard the plan the half-breed had concocted he shook his head: ‘That’s too damn dangerous.’
‘It’s all we have, Mike,’ Tarrant said.
‘No. He’ll just get the women killed. I ain’t allowin’ that.’
Azul stepped forwards, right foot moving in a short, vicious arc that slammed the toe of his moccasin into the deputy’s groin. Rubens gasped and began to fold over in time to meet Azul’s left knee as it came up to thud against his chin. The lawman’s eyes gaped wide, then closed. Azul hit him on the side of the neck, and Rubens collapsed on the muddy floor.
‘Let’s get it done,’ grunted the half-breed. ‘Fast.’
‘My God!’ Tarrant stared at the unconscious deputy. ‘Was that necessary?’
‘Needs must,’ said Azul. ‘And right now the Devil’s driving from inside your church.’
‘I suppose so,’ murmured the shocked undertaker. ‘And the end justifies the means.’
Azul ignored him, checking through the store for the equipment he needed.
He took a length of good hemp rope and knotted one end through the head of a pick to fashion a crude grappling iron. Then he selected four knives from the display on the counter, slipping them into his belt so that the guards held them in position. After that he ordered his volunteer followers off to surround the church and went out into the rain.
It was easy reaching the building, because the steady downpour veiled Santa Rosa in a watery mist, and the only hard part was trudging through the overspill of the Santa Cruz. Up close, the church showed wide double doors at the front and curtained windows on the sides. The rear, where the tower lifted up above the vee-shape of the chapel roof, had no windows. The entire structure was raised on piles like the stable, standing clear of the swirling water that filled Azul’s moccasins and threatened to tug them loose as his feet sank in the mud beneath the rush of grey liquid. He passed his hat to Tarrant and knotted the Apache warband about his head to keep his rain-slicked hair from his eyes. Then he darted over to the end of the building and began to whirl the rope about his head.
His first throw landed the pick-head on the rim of the tower, and when he tugged the rope it stayed firmly caught. Azul grasped the hemp cord in both hands and sprang clear of the muddy waters, planting his feet against the overlayed planking of the church.
The boards were slippery, but his moccasins afforded him a better grip than a man wearing boots might have hoped to find, and his strength hauled him upwards in a vertical walking movement.
He reached the top of the tower and swung a leg over the rim, all his senses attuned for the sound of movement that might spill him back on to the ground. There was none, and he dragged upwards to clasp the wood in both hands and haul himself on to the bell platform. Then he yanked the rope up and unfastened the pick.
Coiling the hemp about his left shoulder, he climbed down the interior ladder.
The room Tarrant had described was empty except for a row of Bibles stacked on a shelf to one side and a pot of cold coffee on the tiny table at the center. Azul set his head against the crack of the outer door and listened. There was the sound of a woman crying and the harsh laughter of a man. The echo of footsteps on boards followed by the clash of metal on stone.
He checked the Colt holstered on his right hip, seeing that the shells were dry, then took a knife in both hands and shouldered the door open.
Grace Parker was resting on one of the narrow benches that occupied the main part of the church. Martha Carver and Bridget Hanna were tending her, trying hard to calm the hysterical girl. There was a mattress under Grace and a blanket covering her; Martha and Bridget were feeding her a cup of beef broth the three men holding them prisoner had allowed them to brew.
Hiram Jennings was slumped across the altar, cleaning his Winchester to the accompaniment of the women’s moans and his own complaints. He was bored and irritable: if Maze hadn’t riled the goddamn citizens of this godforsaken town so much they might all be clear and headed somewhere that offered a mite more fun. So all right, they had women and the thousand dollars Maze had taken off Parker! But what else? Food and whiskey, sure; but how long could they really hold out? The rain was both a camouflage and a hang-up: the citizens of Santa Rosa wouldn’t feed them all the way through the winter. Sooner or later the fear would be replaced by anger and they’d come storming in. That was what Hiram would do if someone took his woman. So, surely, they would do the same.
Jed Colter was sharing the same doubts, though he was too nervous of his older companions to voice them. Shit! Maze was a hard man: likely to demonstrate his anger by killing another woman. Or, worse, by slamming a fist into Jed’s face. Like when he’d argued about shooting that old biddy, and Maze had swung on him and knocked him down.
He looked at the women huddled around the church and felt a faint stirring in his loins. Too early since the last time, he decided, and went back to the altar, where Hiram was busy cleaning his guns.
Martha Carver was the first to see Azul come through the door.
What she saw was a man all damp with rain and blue eyes that seemed to burn with a kind of cold fury. An arm that reached out to let loose something that glinted in the light of the kerosene lamps and stopped glinting when it met Hiram Jennings’s throat. After that, she saw Hiram’s hands reach up to his windpipe and all his fingers get dark. Then he fell down with Jed Colter following him.
Azul’s first knife took the big, dark-haired man at the base of the neck, plucking in where the collar bone dips down to open a gap between throat and lungs.
The blade cut deep into Jennings’s neck, cutting off his supply of air and filling his head with pain.
Azul flipped the second knife over and threw as the younger man was turning. The blade landed between Jed’s shoulders, angled low so that the point drove through his back to puncture a lung. He choked on the sudden upsurge of blood and tried to drag the Colt on his hip away from the holster.
Azul drew the third knife and hurled it at Colter. It hit the young outlaw as he came round, going in through his right eye so that the blade got stuck against the sockets of his skull. Jed screamed and went down with both hands struggling to claw the blade out from his bleeding eye. He fell on his back, driving the first knife deeper into his body, twisting the point up through his lungs to emerge from his chest.
Maze Lynch was running back from the front of the church with a shotgun in his hands.
Hiram Jennings was down on his knees, reaching for the guns spread across the altar.
Azul threw the fourth knife.
It hit Jennings in the belly, going in through the man’s sweaty shirt and the flesh behind, puncturing the stomach sac to dig its point into a kidney. Jennings screamed and doubled over, ramming the hilt of the first knife against the floor so that it tore clear of his neck, severing his jugular vein to release a massive fountain of blood out from the side of his throat.
Maze Lynch’s shotgun went off louder than the thunder from above. The twin barrels of ought-ought shot blasted fragments from the altar and two women. Splinters of stone and pieces of flesh gouted through the air.
Azul powered clear of the door and rolled through the blood of the dead outlaws to fetch up behind the stone square with the statue of Christ mounted on top.
He bellied on, cat-footing over to the pulpit with the rope dropping clear from his shoulder. Lynch was thumbing fresh shells into the scattergun as he hit the stairs and began to climb.
He got up the curling walkway and leaned out with his elbows resting on the Bible spread across the upswung wings of the carved angel that dominated the screaming women below. The lower end of the rope was fashioned in a noose, and he swung it three times around his head before releasing it to snake out over the man below.
Maze Lynch was closing his scattergun as the rope landed around his body. It tugged his arms close against his chest so that the Remington was pointed up against his face. Azul hauled back, dragging the outlaw off balance. Then he jerked again, tumbling Lynch on his back.
The outlaw struggled to hold the hammers of the scattergun down in order to prevent them discharging the full load into his face.
Azul looked up and saw a wide cross-beam spanning the roof. He swung the loose end of the rope up and over, jumping to catch the down-swinging cord. And set all his weight into the pull.
Maze Lynch screamed as he was lifted up from the floor of the church. Azul came out over the parapet of the pulpit, landing on the floor as Lynch swung up above him. He hiked the rope around a cornice that decorated the base of the pulpit and stepped back.
‘Up amongst the angels,’ he rasped. ‘You never got so high.’
Maze Lynch groaned and tried to take his fingers off the double triggers of the shotgun. Azul’s noose had settled neatly around his chest, pinning both arms against his ribcage. The upwards movement of the rope had forced the gun tighter, so that now it was held firm against his chin, the barrels angling beneath his jaw. The stubby length of the gun forced his head back so that he squinted down at the half-breed, unable to move his face for fear of triggering the scattergun.
‘Oh Christ!’ His voice was hoarse with fear. ‘Oh Jesus! Please let me down.’
‘Kill him! Kill the murdering bastard!’
The speaker was the blonde girl Azul had noticed under the blanket. She was on her feet now, the rough wool draped about her body swinging open as she shook with fury and hatred so that he saw she was naked. She would have been pretty had her features not been contorted by rage, but her lips were drawn back in a snarl that exposed her teeth and her nostrils were flared, her eyes wide and blazing, transforming her face into a savage mask.
‘Grace! Cover yourself.’ One of the older women stepped forward, drawing the blanket about the girl’s body and drawing her back from Lynch. ‘You’re in the Lord’s house.’
Azul guessed the blonde must be the Grace Parker Tarrant had mentioned.
‘He’s going to die,’ he said. ‘But I want to speak with him first. You ladies stay away from the door.’
‘It’s locked, anyway,’ said the woman holding the shaking girl. ‘He’s got the key.’
She pointed her chin in Lynch’s direction. Azul grinned: with the church still isolated, there was less chance of interruption. He glanced around.
There were four women staring at him, including Grace Parker. The two caught in the blast of Lynch’s scattergun were sprawled against the altar, one with most of her face missing, the other with a gaping wound where her breasts had been. They lay close to the bodies of Colter and Jennings, and down the three steps leading to the raised dais on which the altar was mounted, there came a sluggish runnel of blood. Lynch dangled like some obscene ornament at the center of the church, directly in front of the altar. His mouse brown hair hung back from his head and his dungarees were getting dark as fear poured sweat from his body. He looked less like a wanted outlaw than a frightened farmer. Azul grinned and took hold of one foot, pushing Lynch so that the killer swung in a pendulum movement.
‘Oh God!’ Lynch’s voice was fainter now, bordering on the edge of hysteria. ‘What you gonna do?’
‘I heard Nillson was headed towards Garner.’ Azul ignored the question. ‘That right?’
‘Who told you? Who told you about me?’
‘Paco Camino.’ Azul’s tone was conversational. ‘Just before I killed him.’
Lynch gulped and a darker stain that was not sweat fouled the crotch of his pants. ‘How’d you find Paco?’
‘It was easy. After Burt Hart gave me directions.’
‘Burt was stayin’ in Blood City!’ There was disbelief in Lynch’s voice now. ‘You couldn’t have got to him.’
‘I did,’ Azul grunted. ‘And unless he’s got friends in Hell, he’s a lonely Hart now.’
‘Oh my dear God!’ Acrid smelling liquid dampened the legs of the dungarees. ‘Oh, save me!’
‘He’s pissed himself.’ Grace Parker tittered. ‘The big brave killer just pissed himself.’
‘Nillson,’ said Azul, ‘tell me about Nillson.’
Maze Lynch would have nodded had the shot gun not been jamming his head rigid.
‘He’s got a woman in Garner. Runs a cathouse there called the Golden Delight. Big, black-haired girl by the name of Molly. Arne figgered to winter with her.’
‘Hart said it was Nillson kept the money.’ Azul shoved the foot again. ‘That right?’
‘Yeah! We all took some fer expenses, but Arne held on to most of it. We was due to meet back in Blood City when the fuss died down.’
‘But you’ll die up,’ grunted Azul.
He turned to face the surviving women. Each one was now staring at the figure of the outlaw, and on their faces was written a vicious, implacable hate. For the first time, he saw that only the older one was dressed. And her clothes were torn. The three younger women were in various stages of disarray. Grace Parker was nude, save for the blanket; a brunette with a voluptuous mouth and wide hazel eyes was wearing only a thin petticoat and a flimsy bodice; a redhead with green eyes and large breasts wore a full corset and pantaloons. None thought to cover themselves from the half-breed’s gaze, their attention fixed on Lynch.
‘He raped us.’ It was the redhead who spoke. ‘He had us all. Even poor Martha and Bridget.’
‘Well,’ grinned Azul, no humor showing on his face, ‘he’s pretty well hung.’
It was as though a dam burst, waves of animal ferocity shattering the walls of civilized behavior. Azul stepped aside as the four women converged on the dangling figure of Maze Lynch. Grace Parker reached him first, tearing clear of the older woman’s arm so that the blanket fell to the floor and she was naked of all but her fury. She jumped up, clutching at the outlaw’s leg to sink sharp nails deep into his calf. The brunette followed, grasping the other leg and lifting her feet from the boards to settle her full weight on Lynch’s ankle. Only the full-clad woman hesitated a moment before joining the others.
Their combined weight drew the rope taut, dragging the noose even tighter around the killer’s chest and arms. They fought one another to stretch upwards, clawing at his clothing and pounding clenched fists. The redhead got a grip on an elbow, digging her nails into the material of the shirt. Grace Parker let loose her hold on the calf and pounced for the other arm.
Maze Lynch screamed.
Then the screaming was lost behind the thunder of the scattergun as the clawing, clutching women hauled his thumbs away from the hammers and forced his fingers tight over the triggers. For an instant the man’s head was lost in the flash and the burst of smoke. Then it was gone forever, shattering in a myriad fragments of ravaged flesh and splintered bone. A thick column of blood fountained up from the stump of his neck and the women fell away, screaming in turn as gobbets of crimsoned pulp and chunks of bone and brain matter rained over them.
Something silvery dropped to the floor: a thin chain that was no longer supported by any neck. Azul scooped it up, finding the key to the church door slung alongside a medallion. He broke the chain, tearing the key loose, then wiped the medallion clean on the cuff of Lynch’s dungarees. One side was engraved with the image of a woman’s face, the other carried a legend: Masius Lynch from his loving Mother.
Azul grinned, pocketing the token. ‘Messy, Masius,’ he grunted. Then: ‘I better open the door, ladies. You want to get dressed?’
Abruptly sobered by the violent death, the women scrambled to collect their dresses, struggling into them with a disregard for the blood and chunks of skull still adhering to their flesh and underclothing. Azul waited until they were moderately decent and set the key in the lock.
The rain was still hammering outside, but off to the west there was a hint of light. The half-breed hauled the door fully open and shouted into the gloom. Like bit-part actors in a well-rehearsed play, Tarrant and nine other men came running towards the church. Azul noticed with amusement that one was the deputy Rubens, and that he was holding a Colt .45 in his right hand while keeping his left pressed firmly against his jaw.
Tarrant came up the steps with a Henry repeater angled at the light. He darted inside, calling for the others to follow. Then halted with his mouth gaping wide at the carnage. Behind him, Rubens doubled over again, emptying his stomach into the rain-washed street.
‘Good grief!’ Tarrant’s cultured voice was faint as he stared at the mutilated body hanging before the altar. ‘What happened?’
‘Lynch upset the ladies,’ Azul shrugged. ‘He lost his head.’