Jory Sherman - Blood Sky at Morning

“That’s Bertie,” he said. “Me ’n’ Lester pass the time huntin’ coyotes at night. We take Bertie out there in the dark and twist his ears till he squeals like a little gal. Them coyotes come slinkin’ up for a meal and we pop ’em with our pistols. For sport. But we can sell them hides to the Mexicans in Tucson for two bits or so. Drinkin’ money.”

Zak saw that both men wore skinning knives on their belts. Newton packed an old Navy Colt, converted from percussion to handle cartridges. The brass on it was as mottled as his skin.

Lester poured coffee into three grimy cups. He handed one to Zak, who took it in his left hand, the steam curling up from its surface like tiny wisps of fog.

“What’s this about your horse?” Cunningham asked. “You say it stepped in a gopher hole? I ain’t seen no gophers ’round here.”

“It was a hole,” Zak said. “I thought it was a gopher hole. Maybe a prairie dog hole.”

He held the cup up to his lips, blew on it, but he didn’t drink.

“Ain’t seen no prairie dogs ’round here neither,” Cunningham said. “Where’d you say you was from?”

“I didn’t say,” Zak said.

“Les, you don’t need to be so unsociable,” Newton said. “Let the man drink his coffee.”

“He ain’t drinkin’ none,” Cunningham said. “You left-handed, mister?”

“I’m ambidextrous,” Zak said.

“Huh?” Newton said.

“Yeah, what’s that?” Cunningham said. “Some kind of disease? That abmi—whatever.”

“Ambidextrous. Means I’m good with either hand, Lester,” Zak said, an amiable tone in his voice. “From the Latin. ‘Ambi’ means both. ‘Dextrous’ means right.”

Both men worried over Zak’s explanation. Newton was the first to figure it out.

“That means you got two right hands?”

“Something like that,” Zak said. “Means I can write or play with my pecker using either hand.”

Newton laughed. Cunningham scowled.

“Mister, seems to me you got a smart mouth,” Cunningham said. “Something wrong with the coffee?”

“No, why?” Zak said.

“You ain’t drinkin’ it.”

“Too hot.”

“How come you’re holding that cup with your left hand?” Cunningham said.

“Oh, it was the handiest, I reckon,” Zak said with a disingenuous smile.

“Or maybe you mean to draw that Walker and rob us,” Cunningham said.

“You got something to rob?”

Newton chuckled. “He’s got you there, Les,” he said.

“I don’t like the bastard,” Cunningham said. “We don’t know where he come from. We don’t know what he wants. He asks for coffee, then don’t drink it. Shit, he’s got something up his damned sleeve besides an arm.”

“Aw, Les, you go on too much about nothin’,” Newton said. “Coffee’s real hot. He don’t want to burn his lips.”

Zak looked at the two men. Newton was oblivious to the threat voiced by Cunningham, or was unaware of the tension between the two men. But he wasn’t. Cunningham’s eyes were narrowed to slits and he looked like a puma ready to pounce. He decided he had played with them long enough.

He set his coffee cup down on the floor. Cunningham’s gaze followed it and he stiffened. Newton looked like an idiot that had just seen a parlor trick he didn’t understand.

But Zak noticed that Newton was wearing a swivel holster. He wouldn’t even have to draw his pistol, just reach down, cock it as he brought the holster up on the swivel, then fire. Of the two men in the adobe, Zak figured Newton was the more dangerous one, even though he showed no signs of being belligerent.

It was the quiet ones you had to watch, he thought.

“I don’t know,” Zak said softly, shaking his head, “he must have scraped the bottom of the barrel.”

“What’s that?” Cunningham said. “Who you talkin’ about?”

“Old Hiram,” Zak said.

“Hiram?” Newton came out of his seeming stupor at the mention of the name.

“Ferguson?” Cunningham said. “You talkin’ ’bout Hiram Ferguson?”

“Yeah, that’s the man,” Zak said.

“You work for him?” Newton asked, an idiotic expression on his face.

“Nope,” Zak said.

“What’s that about scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel?” Cunningham said, pressing the issue.

“When he hired you two on,” Zak said.

“What the hell…” Newton said, setting his cup down on a small table.

“You got somethin’ in your craw, mister, you spit it out.” Cunningham’s right hand drifted closer to the butt of his pistol.

Zak sensed that both men were ready to open the ball. But he wanted to give them a chance, at least.

“Your other way stations up the line are all shut down,” Zak said. “The men manning them are either lighting a shuck for Tucson or wolf meat. You two boys got yourself a choice.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Cunningham said, his right hand opening, dropping lower still.

“You can either walk out of here, saddle up and ride back to Tucson, or…”

Zak reached down, casually, and picked up his coffee cup. It was still steaming.

“Or what?” Newton said, a menacing tone in his voice that was like a razor scraping on a leather strop.

“Or you’ll both be corpses lying here when I burn this shack down,” Zak said.

That’s when Cunningham made his move. His hand dropped to the butt of his Dragoon. Zak tossed the hot coffee at him. Cunningham screamed and clawed at his face. Then Zak hurled the empty cup straight at Newton and stood up, crouching as his hand streaked for the Walker at his side.

Newton dodged the cup and tilted his holster up, hammering back with pressure from his thumb. Too late. Zak had already jerked his pistol free, cocking on the rise, and squeezed the trigger when the barrel came level with Newton’s gut. The pistol roared and bucked in his hand, spewing lead and sparks and flame from its snout like some angry dragon.

Cunningham rose to his feet and drew the big Dragoon from its holster, his eyes blinking at the sting of hot coffee.

Zak swung his pistol and made it bark with another squeeze of the trigger. The bullet smashed into Cunningham’s belly and he doubled over with the shock of the impact.

“You drop that pistol, Lester,” Zak said, “or the next one goes right between your eyes.”

Newton groaned and started to lift his pistol to fire at Zak.

“Don’t you get it, Newton?” Zak said. “You just stepped on a rattlesnake.”

“Huh?” Newton said, his voice almost a squeak as the pain started to spread through his bowels.

“I’m the rattler,” Zak said, and shot again, drilling Newton square in the chest, cracking his breast-plate and tearing out a chunk of his heart. There was a gush of blood and Newton dropped like a sack of stones.

Cunningham let his pistol fall and rolled on the floor, his back in the dirt. He stared up at Zak, his eyes glassy from the pain that seeped through him like a slow brushfire.

“Who in the hell are you, mister?” Cunningham managed to say. “We ain’t done you no harm.”

“It’s the Apache you’re hurting, Cunningham. I gave you a choice. Go or die. You chose the wrong one.”

“How—How many of you are there?” Cunningham said. “You got men outside?”

“There’s a nation outside, Lester. A whole nation of Apaches.”

“I don’t get it,” Cunningham said, his voice fading as his eyes began to glaze over with the frost of death.

He shuddered and there was a crackle in his throat. He let out a long sigh and couldn’t get any breath back in his lungs. He closed his eyes and went limp.

Zak looked at the two men. Both were dead and there was a silence in the room that was both blessed and cursed.