Jory Sherman: Blood Sky at Morning

“You want some advice, Felipe?”

“What advice?”

“When I tell the army about this place, they’re going to swarm all over you like a nest of hornets. If you’re smart, you’ll get on one of those horses out there and clear out.”

“I have done nothing.”

“I think you have. You’re lucky I’m in a hurry or I’d pack you off to Fort Bowie trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

Felipe, wisely, said nothing. He held his breath and walked outside with Zak.

“You leave now?” Felipe said.

“I might be back. In any case, someone will. You’d better find another place to hang your hat, Felipe.”

Felipe stood in front of the door, speechless.

Zak knew his encounter with the man wasn’t over. He had given Felipe fair warning. The next move was up to him. Felipe could either let him ride off or he could try to stop him.

Either way, the writing had already been painted on the wall.

Zak started to walk back to his horse when he heard a sound, the whisper of metal sliding out of leather. He knew what it was. Felipe was drawing his pistol.

Zak spun around, went into a fighting crouch. His right hand streaked to the butt of his Walker Colt. His gaze fixed on Felipe’s eyes, not on his hand. But he could see, in the same range of vision, the barrel of Felipe’s pistol clearing leather, the snout rising like the rigid black body of a striking snake.

The Walker Colt seemed to spring into Zak’s hand. His thumb pressed down on the hammer, pushing it back into full cock as he leveled the barrel at the Mexican.

Felipe fired his pistol. Too soon. The bullet plowed a furrow at Zak’s feet as he squeezed the trigger of the Walker.

He looked down a long dark tunnel as the pistol exploded, gushing flame and lead, bucking in his hand. At the end of the tunnel, Felipe, in stark relief, was hammering back for a second shot. Zak’s .44 caliber ball of soft lead struck him just below his rib cage with the force of a sledgehammer. Dust flew from his shirt and a black hole appeared like a quick wink that filled suddenly with blood.

The hammered bullet drove Felipe off his moorings and he staggered backward, slamming into the wall of the adobe. A crimson flower blossomed on his chest, the smell of his half-digested supper spewing from his stomach. He gasped for air and slid down the wall, his fingers turning limp, the pistol drooping, then falling from his grasp. His eyes clouded over, the spark fading like a dying ember. The pupils turned frosty as blood pumped through the hole in his chest, ran down into his lap.

Zak stepped toward Felipe, his pistol at full cock for another shot, if needed.

He heard the death gurgle in the man’s throat, but Felipe was still alive, hanging onto life with labored breaths.

Smoke spooled from the barrel of Zak’s pistol as he knelt down in front of the Mexican. He lifted the pistol, the action scattering the smoke to shreds.

“I won’t say adios to you, Felipe,” Zak said, his voice a soft rasp, just above a whisper. “God isn’t going with you on this journey. He’s just going to watch you fall into a deep hole. The next sound you hear will be me. Walking over your grave, you sonofabitch.”

Felipe stretched out a hand toward Zak’s throat. He tried to sit up. Something broke loose inside him and he coughed up blood. His eyes glazed over with the frost of death as he gave one last gasp and fell back, his lifeless body slumped against the adobe wall. His sphincter muscle relaxed and he voided himself.

Zak stood up, walked away from the sudden stench. He ejected the empty hull in the Colt’s cylinder and dug a cartridge from his gun belt. He slid it into the empty cylinder and spun it, then eased the hammer down to half-cock before sliding the pistol back in his holster.

He walked down to the corral and opened the gate.

“Heya, hiya,” Zak yelled, waving his hat at the horses and ponies. They all dashed through the opening and galloped off down the gully and up the slope. They disappeared over the rim and a quiet settled over the empty corral.

Zak walked back to the adobe and went inside. He picked up the tunic with the lieutenant’s bars, folded it tightly, went outside and stuffed it in his saddlebag. Then he went back inside, took a lamp from a hook over the potbellied stove and dashed coal oil on everything flammable within reach.

He stepped to the door, dug out a box of matches, struck one and tossed it onto the floor. The flame sputtered for a moment, then caught. The oil flared and tongues of flame began to lick the clothing and empty boxes, the chairs and table. It spread to the jacal as Zak mounted Nox and rode off, following one of the wagon tracks that was laced with shod hoof marks. The jacal blazed bright in the morning sun and he heard bottles of whiskey explode inside the adobe. Black smoke etched a charcoal scrawl on the horizon, rising ever higher in the still air.

The horse tracks led west, beside the faint wagon wheel ruts, and he followed them, putting Nox into a canter. The wagon tracks made it easy, and the horse tracks were only a day old, with no rain nor strong wind to erase them.

Killing a man was not easy. It was never easy. There was always that dark tunnel, that unknown blackness, that he saw and wondered about. Conscience? He didn’t know. He knew only that death was so final, there was no second chance for those who went up against his gun. And the killing of a man always weighed heavy on his heart or his mind or, perhaps, his soul. Life was such a fleeting, fragile, troublesome journey, but to cut that journey short, for whatever reason, gave a man pause, made him reflect on his own breath, his own heartbeat, his own blood pulsing in his veins.

Felipe hadn’t seen it coming. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. But Zak had seen it. He could always see it in a man’s eyes, that inkling of mortality, that wonder, just before death blotted out everything, just before the tunnel closed in darkness and the light that had been a man one moment plunged into final darkness the next.

There was one question Zak had meant to ask Felipe, but the Mexican had pressed it, had made that fatal decision to draw his pistol. So the question had never been asked. Had never been answered.

The question would have been: “Do you know a man named Major Willoughby?”

Zak would have read the answer in Felipe’s eyes, even if he had never replied. Then he would have known who betrayed Ted O’Hara, and who told Ben Trask where O’Hara was.

Deep down inside him, though, Zak thought he knew the answer to the unasked question.

One day he would find the answer, and the proof to go along with it.

It was only a question of time.

He just hoped he would find Lieutenant Theodore O’Hara alive.

But he would find him.

That, he knew.

Chapter 7

Zak saw the flash out of the corner of his eye. It was bright as silver, as intense as a bolt of lightning. He had descended into a shallow depression and was just emerging when the dazzling light streaked from a low hill a half mile away. He kept on, but his gaze scanned the surrounding countryside.

That’s when he saw an answering flash.

He knew he was not alone.

He built his first smoke of the day, casually taking out the papers and the pouch of tobacco. He rolled a quirly, licked it, stuck it in his mouth. He struck a match, drew smoke into his mouth and lungs. He knew he was being watched. His every move.

But who was watching?

The army?

He didn’t think so. Troopers could be stealthy, but they’d had time to look him over and should have announced their presence long before he lit up a cigarette.

Apaches?

Likely. They probably had army signal mirrors, but they could use almost anything to reflect sunlight, send messages. A chunk of quartz, a piece of tin, broken glass from a bottle.