Jory Sherman - Blood Sky at Morning

“I want a horse and a pistol and food to carry me to Tucson. I want to leave tonight. I can’t do it without your assistance.”

“Ma’am—I mean Colleen—you’re askin’ a lot. I could stand before a court-martial if I gave you an army horse, let alone a firearm.”

“But you’ll do it, won’t you, Francis?”

Her smile this time was full and warm, a knowing siren’s smile, as old as time, a smile that made creases in her dimples, made them wink like conspiratorial smiles.

“Well, you can’t go to Tucson all by yourself, you know.”

“Oh, Francis, I can do anything I set my mind to.”

“Yes’m, I reckon you can. Matter of fact, a couple of the boys got leave coming and they’re riding into Tucson town tonight. Good boys. They could escort you, I reckon.”

She smiled again. “Yes, I reckon they could. That would be quite nice, Francis.”

“Can you handle a gun? I mean a big old pistol with a kick like a mule?”

“You bet I can, Francis. Ted taught me to shoot, and I can take a pistol apart and clean it and load a cap and ball with nothing more than powder, ball, and spit.”

Francis laughed. “All right. You got to be sneaky, though. I’ll tell the boys to meet you behind the livery after dark. They won’t like waitin’ that long to get off to Tucson, but they’ll mind what I tell ’em. You’ll have a horse waiting there and grub in your saddlebags, a canteen hanging from the horn. Those boys are privates, but they’re seasoned. Likable. One of ’em’s named Delbert Scofield, the other’n is called Hugo Rivers. They know the way, even in the dark, and they’ll give a good account of themselves if you should run into trouble.”

“And a big pistol? Ammunition.”

“Yes,” he said, with a downtrodden tone of surrender. “All you need. You might want to take something else with you, though, you bein’ Irish and all like me.”

“What’s that, Francis?”

“A four-leaf clover and a St. Chris medal.”

“Why, Francis,” she said, “I didn’t know you cared.”

He smiled wanly, then left her standing in the doorway of her schoolhouse.

Colleen watched him walk across the compound, into the sunlight, and she brushed back a strand of copper hair that had fallen over her eyes.

“I’m coming, Ted,” she breathed. “I’ll find you.”

And her voice carried the petulance of a prayer. She hoped she would find Ted alive.

She was prepared to face Ferguson and find out the truth about her brother’s kidnapping, where he was.

She would not hesitate to shoot Ferguson or anybody else who got in her way.

And she would shoot to kill.

Chapter 17

In the distance, across the eerie nightscape of the desert, the yellow light flickered like a winking fire-fly as they rode through and over small rocky hillocks dotted with the twisted forms of ocotillo and prickly pear. In the darkness, distances were deceiving, but Zak had learned to gauge them through long experience of riding at night in country more deceptive than this.

He left Chama and Carmen behind a low hill above the adobe cabin, out of harm’s way, after whispering to Carmen to be quiet. She was skittery, and he had a hunch she might try to warn the two men in the hut. He also told Chama to keep a close eye on her.

“Brain her if you have to, Jimmy,” Zak said.

In the darkness, he could see Chama nod.

He circled the lighted shack, a slow process because he didn’t want Nox’s iron shoes ringing on stone or cracking brush. Through a side window he saw shadows moving inside. The horses in the corral were feeding, so he judged that one of the men, or both, had recently set out hay or grain for them. He patted Nox’s withers to calm him, keep him quiet as he neared the end of his wide circle.

Zak dismounted, looped the reins through the saddle rings so they wouldn’t dangle, leaving Nox to roam free. The horse would not roam, he knew, but stay within a few feet of where he would leave him, waiting patiently for his master to return. He patted Nox on the neck and walked toward the adobe, his boots making no sound on the hard ground.

He crept up to the edge of the light from one window to the side of the front door. The feeble glow from the lamp puddled on the ground outside, its beam awash with winged gnats flying aimless circuits like demented swimmers. A faint aroma drifted from the window and the cracks around the weathered door that had shrunk with age. Zak sniffed, smelling the distinct aroma of Arbuckle’s Best, with its faint scent of cinnamon. He listened, heard the burbling of what he imagined must be a coffeepot on a stove. His stomach swirled and his mouth filled with the seep of saliva.

He loosened his pistol in its holster, stepped up to the door and gave a soft knock.

“Who the hell is it?” growled a voice inside.

“I smell coffee,” Zak said. “Lost my horse.”

Whispers from inside the adobe. A scuffling of feet, scrape of chairs.

Zak left himself room to step aside if anyone came at him with a gun or a knife.

“Hold on,” another voice called out.

The door opened.

Two men stood there, back-lighted, and Zak couldn’t see their faces well. They wore grimy work clothes and their boots had no shine, dust-covered as they were.

“You what?” the taller man in front growled.

“Lost my horse. Well, he broke his leg in a gopher hole and I had to put him down. Been walking for a couple of hours. Saw your light. Smelled that Arbuckle’s when I came up.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Name’s Jake,” Zak said, the lie coming easily to his lips. “Jake Baldwin.” A name out of the past, one of the mountain men who had trapped the Rockies with his father. Jake wouldn’t mind. He was long dead, his scalp hanging in a Crow lodge up in Montana Territory.

“Let him in, Lester. Jesus.”

“Yeah,” Lester said. “Come on in. Coffee’s just made.”

Zak noticed that Lester’s dangling right hand was never very far from the butt of his pistol, a Colt Dragoon, from the looks of it. Well worn, too. There was the smell of rotten flesh and decayed fat in the room, mixed with the scent of candle wax and whiskey fumes.

“I’m Dave Newton,” the second man said. “We don’t get many folks passin’ this way, stranger.”

“Jake,” Zak said, stepping inside where the musty smell of an old dwelling mingled with the scent of the coffee. “Pleased to meet you.”

“That’s Lester Cunningham,” Newton said. “My partner.”

“Set down,” Cunningham said, his gravelly voice so distinctive that Zak looked at his throat, saw the heavy braid of a scar there, dissecting his Adam’s apple. He was a tall, rangy man with long hair the color of steel that hung down past his shirt collar. His complexion was almost as gray, pasty, as if he had been in a prison cell for a good long while.

Newton was a stringy, unkempt man with a sallow complexion, bad teeth, and a strong smell that emanated from his mouth. His scraggly hair stuck out in spikes under his hat, which, like him, had seen better days. His eyes appeared to be crossed, they were so close-set, straddling a thin, bent nose that furthered the illusion. His face and wrists were marbled with pale liver spots, and Zak could see the blue veins in his nose, just under the skin.

As Lester took the coffeepot off the small square woodstove with its rusty chimney, Zak glanced around the room. There were coyote skins drying on withes, others, stiff and stacked, tied into bundles with twine, and, in a small oblong box resembling a cage, a jackrabbit hunched, its eyes glittering with fear. Some potato peelings littered its cage.

Newton saw Zak looking at the rabbit and let out a small chuckle.