SAMUEL GRAVES LOOKED up at the sky and mouthed an obscenity. Night was a blue velvet cloth pricked through by the white silver points of the stars. The moon was a pale yellow sliver; and there was no sign of Paco.
The negro was suddenly aware of a low-pitched humming sound from close by his right shoulder, and he turned to John Bear. The half-breed was sitting with his eyes tight shut and his mouth open, chanting softly. Graves recognized the chant: it was a death song. He cursed some more and tried to dream up a convincing argument for staying alive. But he couldn’t think of anything that would persuade Iron Knife, so he concentrated instead on trying to make himself comfortable. It was impossible.
He watched the Comanche chieftains seated around the main fire, taking food from the women, grinning and shouting as the new white prisoner moved amongst them.
Then his gut knotted painfully as Iron Knife stood up, shouting and pointing at the two men.
He couldn’t hear what the war chief was saying through the babble of voices, but the intention was clear as the Comanche strode, smiling, towards his prisoners. He stopped before the stakes, watching Graves’ face with studied calm. Then he squatted and reached out, clamping steel-hard fingers over the negro’s jaw so that Graves was forced to look directly at him.
‘The moon is thin.’ His voice was soft, full of menace. ‘And the old one has not returned with the guns. It is time for you to die, black one.’
Graves tried to say something, but Iron Knife’s fingers constricted his mouth so that only an incoherent moaning came out.
‘It will be very slow,’ continued the Comanche, ‘and very painful. And you will know what is going to happen because we shall kill the other one first.’
John Bear opened his eyes and looked over at Iron Knife. His lip curled and hate shone from his face.
‘The Comanches are women. They talk like women and their strength is a woman’s. My father was Kiowa. I am not afraid of the Comanche squaw-warriors.’
It was the first time he had spoken since being tied, and the longest speech Graves had ever heard him give. It ended abruptly when Iron Knife kicked him in the stomach.
They cut John Bear free and dragged him over to the center of the camp. Stakes were already hammered into the packed sand and they threw the half-breed down, lashing his wrists and ankles to the posts, so that he was spreadeagled in full view of the Indians. Iron Knife hunkered down beside him, grinning as he cut John Bear’s clothing from his body.
‘So the Nemmenna are women? We shall see what the white Kiowa thinks of our women.’
He called out to the squaws serving the food, and they giggled, setting down the serving dishes and hurrying over to the sprawled figure. Iron Knife spoke with them a moment, then resumed his position on the chief’s blanket.
Chuckling and crooning, the women set to work.
Matthew Gunn watched from the shadows. He felt no pity for the Comancheros: they dealt in death, and a painful end was one of the risks they took in return for selling weapons at inflated prices. The diversion caused by their suffering could, though, be useful to him if it provided a means of getting close to the Dalton woman.
For the moment she was too close to the chiefs, standing in horrified silence as she watched the squaws working on the prisoner.
The man held out for a long time before he began to scream and Eleanor Dalton doubled over, vomiting.
Gunn saw the Comanche chief lean aside and grasp the woman by her wrist, pulling her down as he spoke. He used English, and Gunn could just make out the words.
‘Watch carefully. You learn. You work on El Negro,’
Graves choked on the fear clogging his throat, wishing he could tear his eyes away from John Bear’s ravaged body. It was impossible: the awful sight was as compelling as it was horrifying. He had always known that the Comanches were cruel, but until now it had been the kind of knowledge that is registered and then pushed deliberately to the back of the mind, a reference that concerns other people. Now the terrifying reality was stretched bloodily before him. He hoped that John Bear would take a long time to die, staving off his own fate. Maybe Iron Knife would change his mind. Maybe a cavalry patrol would jump the camp. Maybe Paco would turn up.
Maybe it would snow in mid-summer.
Graves shuddered and listened to the half-breed screaming.
The noise went on for a long time. Shrill at first, it grew hoarse as the night grew older, dropping to a guttural, choking moan that in turn fell to a breathy whimper.
When it stopped altogether, the silence was very loud.
Iron Knife rose to his feet, dragging Eleanor Dalton with him. He handed her to a squaw, then waited as two braves dragged Graves across the clearing.
The negro was stiff from his long confinement, his arms and legs cramping badly when he tried to stand. The Comanches held him upright, bracing him when he flexed away from the blade in Iron Knife’s hand. The war chief smiled and slashed through Graves’ shirt, ripping the dirty material away from his body. He cut through Graves’ belt and slit the pants, leaving the negro naked except for his boots, A wrinkled old woman scuttled close, reaching out to clutch Graves’ genitals. She howled with laughter as the Comanchero screamed and urinated.
Then the braves kicked Graves’ feet from under him and lashed him down where John Bear’s body had been.
Eleanor Dalton was brought forward to stand between the negro’s spread legs. Two women held her while a third pulled the doeskin dress over her head. She tried to cover her nudity, but the squaws pushed her hands away, forcing her to display her body to the watching Indians and the spreadeagled negro. Graves moaned and became erect. It was purely instinctive, an involuntary reaction born of fear, near madness and the sight of the woman’s lithe, full-breasted figure.
Iron Knife laughed and shouted to the squaws. They shrieked, broad, sadistic grins appearing on their faces.
Roughly, they dragged Eleanor Dalton between Graves’ legs, forcing her to straddle him. Then they began to push her down. She groaned, shaking her head as she realized what they planned, but the women shoved their feet against her knees, bending her legs so that she squatted over the negro’s manhood. A third squaw came forward and reached between the prisoners, grasping the Comanchero’s erection as the others leant heavily on the white woman’s shoulders.
Eleanor Dalton screamed as Graves entered her. His upward motion was pure reflex, an atavistic compulsion that had little to do with desire. It was the same animal reaction that drove his hips up, back, and up again, ramming into the woman crouched over him.
At first she moaned and tried to pull back, gritting her teeth as the squaws held her in position. But then, slowly, a kind of madness came over her as, against her will, she became aroused. Her lips parted and her head lolled back. Slowly, she began to move her hips, grinding down against the negro’s thrusts. Her movements grew faster, urgent, and a thread of spittle dribbled from her open mouth. Her eyes closed and she began to whimper, matching Graves stroke for stroke.
The squaws fell back, watching with sly smiles as the two prisoners approached a climax.
Eleanor Dalton screamed, her pale hair tumbling in the firelight as her head shook and she took Graves into her. The negro grunted, humping upwards as he spent himself, and fell back.
Around them, the Comanches howled their approval.
Abruptly, the woman threw herself to one side, disgust replacing desire. She began to weep.
Iron Knife grinned and tossed a small skinning knife to her.
‘Now kill him.’
From where he watched, Gunn could sense that the woman’s mood had changed. Lust had ruled her body, prompting actions that now filled her with self-hate. It was clear in her wild, glaring eyes as she stared at the knife, and for a moment he wondered if she would kill herself. Then the emotion became directed outwards at the man who had aroused her, and she turned to Graves with a feral light in her eyes.
Graves saw it and shuddered. Then screamed as the knife traced a bloody line down his stomach. He gagged as she seized his genitals, staring at them over the knife.
‘Jesus Christ!’ He was almost too scared to get the words out. ‘Listen to me, lady. I got a gun hidden in my boot. Cut my hands free an’ I’ll finish it fast fer both of us.’
He said it low and fast, hoping the words would penetrate the woman’s madness. They seemed to, for she slowed the downward swoop of the blade, stroking it over his stomach as she glanced up.
‘You had me,’ Outrage sounded in her voice, abruptly replaced by a coy wonderment. ‘I never had a black man before.’
Graves realized that she was mad, and tried to penetrate her derangement.
‘The gun, lady! I got a derringer in my boot. Cut my hands free an’ I can get us both out o’ this,’
Eleanor Dalton giggled and twisted around, throwing herself full-length over Graves’ body. She writhed against him, pressing her lips down on his mouth as she reached up towards his wrist.
‘Yes,’ she muttered, ‘yes. Kill me,’
And she cut the ropes.
It happened almost too fast for Gunn to follow. He saw the woman reach up, the knife slash to right and left, then she was rolling aside and the negro was coming up to a sitting position. He stretched, fumbling at his right leg. And Gunn saw the derringer.
The woman lifted to a kneeling posture, but the negro shoved her aside, shouting something as he leveled the little gun at the Comanche chief.
A thrown hatchet caught his shoulder as he fired, spoiling his aim so that the bullet flew wide into the watching Comanches. An Indian screamed and went down, forgotten in the rush towards the prisoner. The derringer barked once more, and Gunn powered forwards.
He didn’t see the second bullet hit Little Buffalo, and he couldn’t see the negro anymore through the milling warriors. But he had the diversion he needed.
Shoving through the crowd of screaming Comanches, he kicked a fire, scattering flames over a nearby tepee. The dry hide caught instantly, adding to the confusion, and Gunn reached the white woman. He grabbed her arm, yanking her upright and hauled her back through the crowd. A woman yelled something at him and he clubbed her down. A brave appeared in his path and he shoved the Winchester into the man’s stomach and squeezed the trigger, blowing the warrior backwards.
The camp was in uproar, the fire spreading fast from lodge to lodge. Gunn ran through the flames, dragging Eleanor Dalton with him. The Comanches were too intent for the moment on killing Graves and dousing the fires to notice the escape, and the few who did, died as they tried to stop Gunn.
He made for the pony herd and lifted the woman bodily onto a pinto mustang. He swung up behind her and kicked the animal to a gallop.
Two warriors blocked his path as he thundered through the close-packed tepees and he rode them down, driving the pony headlong into them before either could fire the rifles they carried. Then he was out of the camp and riding hard for the bluff where Abrams waited.
Samuel Graves never knew how he helped save Eleanor Dalton. His actions were prompted by hatred and raw anger at losing money on his deal with Iron Knife. When he drew the hidden derringer his only thought had been to kill the Comanche war chief and then himself. When he saw the first shot go wild he fired again without thinking. After that his world exploded in a haze of red as the enraged Indians descended upon him.
When they finally pulled back, all that was left recognizable were Graves’ boots.
Iron Knife stood over the ravaged corpse, his own hatchet bloody, and looked around for the woman. When he realized that she was gone he sent warriors through the camp, searching. They found no trace of the woman, but they reported three men dead, and a squaw. One man was shot, the others trampled, and Iron Knife bellowed his anger as he realized that his prisoner had been taken from him.
Within minutes those warriors not fighting the fire that raged through the camp were mounted, heading out in search of the woman.
Matthew Gunn made straight for the hide-out. The night was dark enough to make tracking difficult, and he wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the Comanches. The fire he had started would keep some of the braves busy, but he was reasonably sure that a fair proportion would be out looking for him before very long.
The rescued woman wasn’t making things easy. The hysteria that had gripped her after the forced seduction was still with her, and she struggled, trying to break free. Gunn wasted no time arguing with her; instead, he simply punched her and held her, unconscious, across the mustang’s shoulders.
They reached the bluff and he halted the pony, handing the supine woman down to Abrams. The Ranger captain took her without speaking, carrying her into the shelter of the cleft. Gunn tethered the mustang, tying a folded blanket over its back in lieu of a saddle, and followed Abrams into cover. The Ranger was already pulling a shirt over the woman’s nudity, working fast as she began to come round. He got a pair of spare pants on her before she woke and slapped a hand over her mouth when she opened it to scream.
Her eyes were wide, staring at Gunn, and she began to tremble violently.
‘It’s alright, ma’am,’ murmured Abrams, ‘you’re safe now. He’s white. We’re gonna take you home.’
Gradually, her trembling eased and she clutched at the Ranger, hiding her face against his chest. He turned towards Gunn.
‘What happened back there?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way,’ grunted the half-breed, pulling on his shirt. ‘But for a while things looked kind of black.’