Jory Sherman - Blood Sky at Morning

Suddenly, he felt an inner surge of energy as a thought occurred to him. He began to calculate the distance in his mind, the estimated speed of travel with this group of armed killers, and he knew it was possible. Possible to outwit Trask and Ferguson, possible to escape. It was a long shot, to be sure, but he was confident there would be time. Time and opportunity. His nerves would be scraped to a fine razor edge when they reached the place he had in mind, but he could handle that.

All he had to do was wait and bide his time, he thought, as he looked at that rude dawn sky again and smiled inwardly.

“Let’s get this outfit moving,” Trask yelled, as the Mexicans sat their horses, their gazes still fixed on the eastern horizon. Cavins nodded to O’Hara, who turned his horse toward the main bunch of men.

“O’Hara,” Trask said, “you ride with me in front. Cavins, you watch him.”

“My men,” Ferguson said, “you follow behind Cavins.”

“Hiram, come on up. You ride with me, too. We’re going to pick up those men you got on station. That should give us enough guns to do what we have to do.”

“More’n enough,” Hiram said. “Them are all good men. Crack shots.”

There was grumbling among some of the men who had stayed too long at the cantina the night before, but Trask got the column moving, and the griping stopped once the small troop made the commitment. The sun rose above the horizon, drawing off the night dew and releasing the dry smell of the earth. The shadows evaporated and the rocks and plants stood out in stark relief, as if carved out of crystal with a razor. A horse farted and some of the men laughed.

“I want you to take us straight to where old Cochise has his gold, O’Hara, you got that?” Trask said.

“It’s marked on that map in your pocket, Trask. It’s a good two-day ride.”

“We’ll make it in a day and a half.”

O’Hara suppressed a smile. That would be perfect in his estimation.

Trask set a pace that brought more grumbling from the men. The Mexicans kept up, as if to show up the gringos, and the muttering stopped once again.

A half hour later, when the smoke of Tucson was no longer visible behind them, Hiram stood up in the stirrups, peering ahead. He uttered an exclamation that there was no equivalent of in any language.

Trask followed his gaze. Small puffs of dust speared on the horizon, golden in the morning light, almost invisible against the desert hue.

“He’s wearin’ out saddle leather,” Trask said.

“Yeah. He’s in a mighty hurry, and ridin’ the old trail to them ranches where I’ve got my men on station.”

“One of yours?”

“I don’t know yet. He’s too far away.”

“Well, we’ll shorten his distance some,” Trask said. “Let’s keep up the pace,” he called out to the men behind him.

The oncoming rider closed the distance. He loomed up, madly whipping his horse with his reins, the brim of his hat brushed back by the force of the breeze at his face.

“Damned if that ain’t Danny Grubb,” Hiram said. “And looky at his horse, all lathered up like a barbershop customer.”

Flecks of foam flew off Grubb’s horse. Hiram held up his hand as if to stop him before the animal floundered.

Grubb reined in when he was a few yards away, hauling hard on the reins to stop the horse. The horse stiffened its forelegs and pulled up a few feet away, its rubbery nostrils distended, blowing out spray and foam. It heaved its chest in an effort to breathe, then hung its head, tossing its mane.

“Danny, you ’bout to kill that horse,” Hiram said. “What in hell’s the all-fired rush and where the devil are you bound so early in the mornin’?”

“Boss, he done shot Tolliver. Larry’s plumb dead. He didn’t have a chance.”

“Whoa up, Danny. Take it slow. Who shot Larry?”

“Let me get my breath,” Grubb said, wheezing. The rails in his throat rattled like a stand of wind-blown cane.

“Just tell me who killed Tolliver and we’ll get him,” Hiram said.

“C-Cody,” Grubb stammered. “Calls hisself Zak Cody. The Shadow Rider.”

Trask’s blood seemed to stand still in his veins, then turned cold as ice.

“Cody?” Trask said. “Are you sure?”

“Damned sure.” Grubb was breathing hard, but he was more anxious to get his story off his chest than to breathe in more air. “I lit out, then circled back a ways to see where he went.”

By then the other riders had crowded around Grubb and encircled him, all listening intently.

He looked over at Julio Delgado.

“He took Carmen, Julio. Seen ’em ridin’ off, and there’s another feller with him now, I reckon. Don’t know him. But he burned down most ever’ one of them ’dobes and I know he kilt Cunningham and Newton. It was dark as hell, but I seen that ’dobe burnin’ and I crossed nobody’s trail gettin’ this far. That man Cody’s a pure devil. And he’s headed this way, near as I can figure.”

O’Hara listened to this account and was barely breathing as he mulled it over.

He had been watching Trask the whole time and he had now found another one of the man’s weaknesses. Besides a lust for gold, Trask was afraid. Afraid of one man—Zak Cody.

The Shadow Rider.

It was something to keep in mind, and Cody just might turn out to be another ace in the hole.

The eastern sky was a ruddy daub on the horizon. The sun lifted above the earth and the clouds began to fade to a soft salmon color. But the warning was still there. A storm was coming that would turn the hard desert floor to mud.

Trask turned around and looked straight at O’Hara as if he had read his thoughts.

Ted O’Hara smiled, and he saw a sudden flash of anger in Trask’s eyes.

Well, Ted thought, now we know each other, don’t we, Ben Trask?

Trask turned away, and the moment passed. But now Ted felt that he had the upper hand and Trask had no control over the future. Some of the men Trask had counted on were dead. Julio’s wife was a prisoner, and ahead lay a bigger unknown than the location of Cochise’s rumored hoard of gold.

There was tension among the men now, and Ted knew that this was only the beginning. He was glad he was alive so he could see how it all turned out.

Red sky at night, ran silently in his mind, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

“What are you smirking about?” Cavins asked when he looked at O’Hara.

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking.”

“Well, don’t think, soldier boy. It might get you dead.”

“If you say so,” O’Hara said amiably, knowing that it was Cavins who was worried about death, not he.

Chapter 19

They rode through the night and into the dawn, Zak, Carmen, and Jimmy Chama. Zak felt the weariness in his shoulders, but there was a tingling in his toes, too, as if they were not getting enough circulation. He knew they had to stop and walk around, flex all their muscles, if they were to continue on to Tucson. It was just barely light enough to see in those moments before dawn. The world was a gray-black mass that had no definition, but still, he had seen something that gave him pause.

Carmen was sagging in her saddle, dozing or deep in sleep, he didn’t know which. Chama kept rubbing his eyes, and every so often his head would droop to his chest and he’d snap it back up again as if to keep from descending into that deep sea of sleep that kept tugging at him with alluring fingers.

The day before, the two had been locked in conversation, speaking Spanish to one another, their voices barely audible to Zak. He supposed it helped them pass the time and made nothing of it. Carmen was their prisoner, but she behaved well, and perhaps he had Chama to thank for that. He heard her mention her husband’s name a time or two, and Chama had spoken his name more than once as well. He figured Carmen missed her husband and welcomed having someone talk to her in her native tongue.