Joe Millard - The Good the Bad and the Ugly

Tuco grinned and slipped his new gun into his holster. “Now I’ve got everything I need but a cigar.”

“A cigar? Yes, sir. I have them right here, sir, the best in the West.”

“The cigar I’m looking for,” Tuco said savagely, “has the face of a black-hearted son of a whore behind it.”

CHAPTER 7

FEW men, Sentenza reflected, ever had the privilege of watching a bloody, day-long battle from a choice box seat. And even fewer men, his thoughts ran bitterly, had the hellish luck to arrive on the ground where a fortune in gold was buried at a moment when two idiot and unaware armies were mauling one another to pieces over it.

His seat was probably the same pinnacle of rock from which a Union soldier had first spied the Confederate cavalry detail escorting the money wagon. It was the hest look-out point and his trained eye detected signs of previous occupancy. From this vantage point he could see down into Glorietta Pass, far back into Apache Canyon and westward, across the Pecos, almost to Santa Fe. For the better part of the day—now waning—the entire area below had been bloodied by some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

Sentenza had reached the pass shortly after daybreak, bound for Santa Fe and the elusive Bill Carson. One way or another Jackson, alias Carson, would be made to talk, to identify the exact grave which hid the fortune.

Sentenza had known a distinct shock at finding the road from Santa Fe to the pass jammed with marching troops in Confederate grey. Some scouting had revealed them to be a force of Texans sent out by General Sibley to secure and hold Apache Canyon against the Federal troops at Fort Union. The action was intended to cut off Santa Fe’s only hope of liberation by Colonel Canby’s tough Colorado Volunteers.

Sentenza’s first look at the unwelcome obstacle to his plans had sent him up the canyon wall. The Johnny Rebs had art unpleasant reputation of either shooting stray civilians as spies or forcibly impressing them into the army. Neither alternative fitted into his own programme. He had scouted carefully from high ground, ghosting down as opportunity offered to learn what he could by overhearing soldiers’ conversations.

At last he rode as high as he could, left his horse among concealing rocks and proceeded on foot. The rock pinnacle offered an ideal vantage point from which to see when the last troops had passed on into the canyon, leaving the road to Santa Fe clear. It also proved the ideal vantage point from which to see the best-laid plans of mice and gunmen go all to hell in a crash of cannon fire.

The last baggage and supply wagons were still tumbling into the pass when the vanes and of the troops rammed headlong into a large force from Fort Union, sent to keep the canyon open. Sentenza suddenly found himself an unwilling spectator to a battle of incredible ferocity.

The Texans were mainly flatlanders, men from the open plains who elected to make their fight on the canyon’s floor, taking cover behind the masses of fallen rocks. The Colorado volunteers, on the other hand, were chiefly miners from the gold fields, thoroughly at home in rugged mountain terrain. They scrambled up the canyon walls like mountain goats to pour a withering fire down into the expceed Confederates below.

For an hour and more the Texans held their ground with incredible courage and at fearful cost. A steady stream of ambulance wagons, jammed with wounded, poured out of the pass, some heading towards Santa Fe, others turning south towards Galisteo, where the main body of Sibley’s troops was encamped. The traffic ended any hope Sentenza had of working his way past the embattled forces to continue his journey.

A rare impatience began to gnaw at him. He saw no cavalry in action below, so Carson’s Third Regiment would be either in Santa Fe or twenty miles south-east at Galisteo. But for the time being Carson—from Sentenza’s viewpoint—might as well be stationed on the moon.

Inevitably, for all their dogged courage, the Texans began to give ground. Slowly but inexorably they were driven back towards Glorietta Pass, leaving grey-clad bodies on the canyon floor.

By mid-afternoon they had been driven back to Glorietta Pass, and were digging in for a last, desperate stand. Sentenza could see the Union forces massing for an all-out assault. It came at last, a howling irresistible charge that hit the weakened Rebel line and sent it reeling back out of the pass to the bank of the Pecos.

There was little or no pursuit. Having gained their objective, the Volunteers pulled back to the mouth of the pass and settled down to hold the ground. Beyond the river, on the Pecos Plains, the scattered Confederates were coming together and setting up camp. Plainly, neither side was ready to break off the confrontation and leave the way clear for Sentenza to pursue his search for Bill Carson.

In the glow of the setting sun the peaks of the mountains were taking on the deep crimson hue that had earned them their Spanish name of Sangre de Christo—Blood of Christ. In the shadowed gorge below lay puddles of a deeper crimson that came, not from fanciful illusion but from the blood of brothers.

It was full dark by the time Sentenza had worked his way down to his horse and nearing midnight by the time he had slipped past the last Union picket post at the mouth of the pass. The sporadic rumble of wagons and strings of flickering lanterns, like regimented fireflies, marked the road to El Paso.

Sentenza mounted and turned his home’s head southward, towards the main Confederate camp at Galisteo. Circumstances would dictate his next move.

Some two hours later he saw the dark bulk of walls against the glow of a rising moon. As he drew closer he saw that the fort was in ruins, shattered by a recent bombardment. He reined in and studied it. Through the broken gates he could see the red glow of flames dancing on an inner wall. The night wind brought the smell of wood smoke and the stench of blood and death. It also brought something else—a soft, eerie keening that rose and fell endlessly, awakening the short hairs on the back of his neck.

Fear was not what he felt—but alertness to danger. The dead, he thought with a thin smile, never panic.

He swung down and started toward the gate, then turned back to get a full bottle of whisky from a saddle bag. Cradling it in his left arm, his right hand dose to his gun, he stepped to the gate and peered in. A small fire burned in the middle of an unroofed room. An iron kettle bubbled above the flames. Around the walls lay scores of fearfully wounded Confederates. The keening sound he had heard was the blended chorus of their agonized complaints.

A sergeant limped in from another room and stopped short at the sight of Sentenza. A bloody bandage circled his head and his left arm dangled limp and useless, the sleeve ripped and stiff with caked blood.

A sardonic glow came into his eyes. He bowed mockingly.

“Welcome, friend. If its a quiet place to spend a holiday you’re looking for you’ve come to the right place. This luxury hotel boasts all the comforts of home, with no hurrying crowds to shove you around and trample on your elegant boots.”

Sentenza uncorked the whisky bottle wordlessly and proffered it. The sergeant snatched it, tilted it to his lips. His throat worked convulsively. He lowered the bottle and blew out a gusty breath of appreciation.

“I haven’t told you all the attractions of this fine retreat, my friend. This hotel is proud of its cooking. It serves only the most healthy and nourishing of foods—corncobs à la Confederacy, supplied unsparingly by our most generous Government. Want to sample the superb treat?”

He gestured mockingly and Sentenza saw that the pale objects simmering in the kettle were indeed plain corn-cobs without a single kernel of corn on them.