Jory Sherman - Blood Sky at Morning

Zak walked to the cage. He took the cage outside, set it on the ground. He lifted the door, and Bertie hopped out. Zak made a sound to scare the rabbit off, then returned to the shack.

“And you won’t kill any more coyotes, either,” Zak said as he picked up the oil lamp and hurled it against the wall, hitting it just above the bundle of hides. Tongues of flames leaped in all directions and began licking at the dried fur, anything that would burn.

Zak stepped outside into the clean dry air. He opened the gate to the Colt and started ejecting spent hulls. He stuffed new cartridges into the pistol as he walked slowly toward the place where he had left Nox. Before he mounted up, he could smell the sickly aroma of burning human flesh.

Chapter 18

Ben Trask cursed the rising sun. He jerked the cinch strap tight, drove a fist into his horse’s belly. The horse flinched and drew up its sagging belly, giving Trask another notch on the cinch. He buckled it and turned to the others in the stable.

“Jesse Bob, you and Willy about finished yonder?”

“Just about, Ben,” Cavins said, but he was still trying to load his saddle over the blanket. His horse was sidestepping every attempt.

“I got to finish curryin’ mine,” Rawlins said. “He wallowed in shit durin’ the night.”

The eastern horizon was a blaze of red, as if billions of sumacs had exploded and dripped crimson leaves in the sky. There was a majesty and an ominous hush across the desert as the sun spread molten copper over the rocks and plants.

“It’s goin’ to be hotter’n a two-dollar pistol out there today,” Trask grumbled. “We should have been gone long before sunrise.”

“Nobody woke us up,” Cavins complained. “Hell, we even hit the kip with our clothes on last night.”

“It’s that damned Ferguson,” Rawlins said. “He said he’d have somebody wake us up before dawn.”

“Where in hell is Ferguson?” Trask said, a nasty snarl in his voice. “It looks like we got a bunch of barn rats in here and no sign of Hiram.”

“He said he had business to take care of,” Cavins said. “He’ll be along directly.”

“There’s only one business this day. Damn his stage line anyway.”

The Mexicans were almost finished saddling their horses and were leading them out of the stables. Ferguson waded through them into the barn and started yelling at Lou Grissom.

“You got my horse saddled yet, Lou?”

“Yes, sir. He’s still in his stall, though.”

“Shit, you could have brought him out. Ben, this is a hell of a day for whatever you got planned,” Ferguson said as he approached Trask.

“Climb down off your high horse, Hiram,” Trask said. “You know the stakes.”

“No, I don’t know the damned stakes. I got one plan, you got another.”

“O’Hara’s map’s gonna lead us right to the head honcho Apache hisself. We can wipe ’em out in one blow. With my men and yours, them what’s in those line shacks, we’ll have a small army. Just make sure everybody’s got plenty of cartridges, and it wouldn’t hurt to take along a few sticks of dynamite.”

“Christ, Ben, what makes you think you can trust that soldier boy?”

“Did you hear that horse come in early this morning, runnin’ like a bat out of hell?”

“Nope. I slept like a dadgummed log all night.”

“That was a rider from Fort Bowie. Wore out saddle leather and his horse to bring me a message from Willoughby.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. O’Hara’s baby sister left the fort night before last, headin’ straight for your place. I told O’Hara if this didn’t pan out, she’d be the first to die, and he could watch her bleed.”

“He swallered that?”

“Shivered like a dog shittin’ peach seeds,” Trask said.

Hiram found that hard to believe. O’Hara hadn’t impressed him as a man who was much afraid of anything. But, of course, he would have strong feelings for his sister and might fear that harm would come to her if he didn’t cooperate. And he had to admit, Trask was a bear of a man who could easily make most men think twice before bucking him.

“Well, just watch out he don’t trick you, Ben. O’Hara looks to me like a man who puts a card or two up his sleeve when he’s at the table.”

“He won’t double-cross us, Hiram. If he does, he’s a dead man.”

They finished saddling their horses and gathered outside the stables. Cavins brought O’Hara from the office. He was dressed in civilian clothing and he was no longer bound. But Cavins had his pistol out of its holster and leveled on him.

“Ready to ride, Lieutenant?” Trask said, patting his shirt where the map stuck out so O’Hara could see it.

“Yes,” O’Hara said. “Under protest.”

Trask laughed. “Duly noted,” he said in a mocking tone. “Climb aboard that steel-dust gray over there. You’ll stand out like a sore thumb.” With a wave of his arm, Trask indicated all the other horses, which were sorrels and bays.

“Mount up,” Trask ordered the others as O’Hara climbed into the saddle, with Cavins watching his every move. O’Hara was the only one unarmed, and he sighed as he looked at the small army of men surrounding him. He knew that he did not have a friend among them, but his philosophy had always been, “Where there’s life, there’s hope.” He just didn’t want to put Colleen in jeopardy. By now he had figured out that Ferguson and Trask both had ties to Fort Bowie. Although they had never mentioned any names, he knew that their influence, or their connections, must reach fairly high.

He didn’t know much about Willoughby, hadn’t seen that much of the major. But he knew, or suspected, that Willoughby’s sympathies might lie with the Apache-haters. It was just a feeling. Nothing he could nail down on a roof of proof.

Ted looked at the bloodred sky of dawn, said to Cavins, “Red sky at morning.”

“What’s that?” Cavins asked.

“Red sky at morning,” Ted said, “sailor take warning.”

“Well, you ain’t no sailor and we ain’t anywhere near the sea.”

“Don’t have to be, Cavins. That sky dominates the earth.”

“Shut up, soldier boy,” Cavins said. “You so much as twitch on this ride and I’ll blow you plumb out of the saddle.”

Ted knew that Cavins wouldn’t shoot him, but he saw no reason to argue the point. He was unarmed and outnumbered, and this was not the place to make a stand. But he also knew that the first duty of a prisoner was to make every attempt to escape. It had been drilled into him at the military academy, and that thought had been uppermost in his mind ever since he was captured in the dead of night.

He looked around. All of the men were looking at the dawn sky. Ted had never seen a more vivid sunrise. The color was extravagant, plush bulges of the reddest red, the color of blood, fresh spilled, after a hot breeze had stiffened it. Yes, it would be hot that day, but he knew that in another day or two all hell would break loose as the sky filled with black bulging clouds and the wind blew dust and sand into their eyes just before the torrential rains hit with a force strong enough to blow a man out of his saddle. He had seen such storms before, blown down out of the mountains and onto the desert. He had seen cattle and men washed away by flash floods and rivers appear in dry creek beds that brought walls of water rushing headlong at better than six or seven feet high and then some.

That sky told Ted that within twenty-four hours they’d be caught up in a gully washer that would have these men scrambling for high ground, their eyes stung by grit and rain, blinded for a time, he hoped, unable to see more than a foot in front of their faces, if that. There would be a chance then for him to ride away from his captors, put distance between him and them as he made his way back to the fort. It was a chance. Perhaps the only chance he’d have. They couldn’t make it to the first marks on his map before they would all be swept up in one hell of a frog-strangler of a storm.