Jory Sherman: Blood Sky at Morning

“What makes you think that?”

“A dog has reasons for running after something. I think you ran after me for a reason and it has nothing to do with the lieutenant or the Chiricahua.”

“A man can’t fight suspicion. It’s like a shadow when the sun is shining. It moves, but it will not go away.”

“Maybe you’d better make your intentions plain, Chama, before we go any farther down the road.”

Chama stiffened as if slapped. The skin on his face tautened and a hard look came into his eyes, like a shadow drifting across the sun.

“This is as far as you go, Cody,” Chama said. He cocked his right hand so it hovered just over the butt of his pistol. Zak saw Carmen jerk straight and her right hand brush against the top of her sash.

Zak looked at the two without making a move himself. Seconds ticked by, and it was so quiet, it seemed all three were holding their breaths at the same time.

“Maybe you’d better think about that for a minute, Chama,” Zak said evenly. “Words like you just said can shorten a man’s life real quick.”

“I have thought about it, Cody. End of the line for you. Sorry.”

“Any reason?”

Carmen spoke, to both men’s surprise.

“You killed his brother, Cody, you bastard.”

“That so?” Zak said, looking straight at Chama. “It’s news to me.”

“Felipe Lopez,” Chama said.

“He was your brother?”

“My half brother. We had the same mother. I loved him.”

“Like you, Chama, Felipe had a choice. To live or die.”

“I do not know how you did it. I know I found him dead, and your tracks.”

“So, you tracked me, and waited. Why now?”

“Because you will not get to Tucson alive. There is too much at stake. I want Hiram to win this one. The Apaches are our enemy.”

“You are not Apache,” Zak said.

Chama spat, his features crinkled in disgust.

“Filth,” he said.

“You have the Indian blood.”

“Not Apache. They killed my parents, held me and Felipe prisoner until we both became men and got away from them. I have the Comanche blood.”

Suddenly it all became clear. Zak understood. He had allowed himself to be duped. He had believed Chama’s story. But there had been no reason to doubt it. He took a man at his word until he proved out as a liar. Now Chama had proven out.

“I guess you got cause to hate, Chama,” Zak said.

“You are in the way, Cody, and you killed my brother. Now you will die.”

Zak looked at Carmen, then back to Chama.

“Two against one, I reckon.”

“Yes,” Chama said, and gone was the sleepiness, the fatigue. Carmen had brightened up, too, was licking her lips like a hungry cat.

These two meant to kill him, for sure, gun him down like a dog and leave him for wolf meat.

Still, Zak did not move. He knew he did not have to, just yet.

The hand had been dealt. And, in death, as in life, the hand had to be played out.

He was ready.

Fate would decide who had the better hand.

Zak knew that when it came to a showdown, most men often made a fatal mistake in that moment just before a gun was drawn or a trigger pulled.

And that gave him the advantage. Always.

Chapter 20

The eastern sky drained its blood, turned to ashes. Tiny mares’ tails began to etch the sky with Arabic scrawls of stormy portent. Zak did not look up at the wisps, but kept his gaze fastened on Chama and Carmen. A slight breeze began to rise, its fingers tousling Carmen’s hair as she stood there, her face a mask of defiance and determination.

“Tell me, Chama,” Zak said, “did you have anything to do with Lieutenant O’Hara’s capture? You carry yourself like a military man.”

“I was there, yes. I told Ben where the patrol would be and when the best time would be to take O’Hara prisoner.”

“You’re a deserter, then,” Zak said.

Chama shrugged. “I have done my time in the army. I was a sergeant. A good place for a spy like me, do you not think? That is finished. I go now to fight the Apache, to help Hiram and Ben wipe them out. To take their gold.”

Zak caught the boastful tone in Chama’s voice. Let him brag, he thought.

“The Chiricahua have no gold.”

“Cochise has gold. Much gold.”

Zak suppressed a laugh. This was far too serious for humor.

“That is an old wives’ tale. A lie,” Zak said. “Rather, it is a lie made by white men to turn the settlers against Cochise. He has no gold, beyond a few trinkets.”

“That is not what Trask and Ferguson believe. And I think O’Hara knows where that gold is. He will tell us. We will find it.”

“Not a good reason to die, Chama. For a pile of gold that is only a fairy tale told by white men.”

“As I told you, Cody, this is as far as you go. We are two against one, Carmen and I. You can drop your gun now and I will let you walk away. We will keep your horse.”

“My horse is worth more than any Apache gold,” Zak said softly.

“He is not worth your life, Cody.”

“Chama, let me ask you something before you draw your pistol.”

“Ask,” Chama said, flexing the fingers of his gun hand. “You do not have much time, gringo.”

It was funny, Zak thought, how quickly people could change, how swiftly they could change their colors, like a chameleon. Chama had all these pent-up emotions inside of him that he had been carrying for many miles. Now, in the light of a new day, he had reverted to what he always was, a lying, scheming, shifty sonofabitch with murder on his mind.

“Ever stand on a high cliff and look down, wonder what it would be like to fall about a hundred feet onto the rocks below?” Zak asked.

“No, I never have done that. You ask a strange question. Why? Do you have the fear of falling, Cody?”

“No. I was just thinking to myself about you. And me.”

“There is nothing to think about,” Chama said.

“Chama, I’m that tall cliff, and you’re standing right on the edge of it, about to fall right off. Only in your case, you’re never going to see the ground before you hit it.”

The expression on Chama’s face changed as he realized what Zak had said. In that moment, he knew that Zak had turned the tables on him. Zak was calling him out, not the other way around.

“All right,” Chama said, and went into a crouch. As he did, his right hand stabbed downward for the butt of his pistol.

Zak was facing the sunrise, but he did not look at it. Instead, he kept his gaze focused on Chama, and in the periphery of his vision, on Carmen. He was aware of Chama’s intentions with the first twitch of his hand, which echoed on his face like a tic.

Zak stood straight, his gaze locked on Chama’s flickering eyes. But in one smooth motion his hand snaked down to his pistol, drew it from its holster as if it was oiled, his thumb cocking it before it cleared leather.

Carmen was slow to react, but she saw Chama grab for his pistol and she became galvanized into action. Her hand slid inside her sash, grasped the butt of the pistol Chama had given her and began to slide it upward. She appeared to be moving fast, but in that warped time frame when death dangles by a slender hair, her motion was much too slow, like an inching snail trying to escape a juggernaut.

Zak’s Walker Colt roared just as Chama’s barrel cleared the holster. He shot from just below his hip, the barrel at a thirty-degree angle. Just enough, Zak thought, to put Chama down.

Chama opened his mouth and yelled, “Noooooo,” as Zak’s pistol barked. The bullet caught him just above the belt buckle, driving into him like a twenty-pound maul, smashing through flesh as it mushroomed on its way out his back, nearly doubling the size of its soft lead point.