William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

Red Hand’s movements took on a deliberate, ritualistic quality. Holding the lance in both hands, he raised it horizontally over his head and shook it at the heavens. Lowering it, he dipped the blade into the heart of the fire. A few beats passed before the slow-burning ointment flared up, wrapping the blade in blue flames.

Red Hand lifted the lance, tilting it skyward for all to see. The blade was a wedge of blue fire, burning with an eerie, mystic glow—a ghost light, a weird effect both impressive and unnerving.

Quivering with emotion, Red Hand’s clear, strong voice rang out. “Lo! The Fire Lance!”

He touched the burning spear to Hardesty’s well-oiled chest. Blue fire sparked from the blade tip, leaping to the oily substance coating the captive’s flesh. The fire-starting compound burst into bright hot flames, wrapping Hardesty in a skin of fire, turning him into a human torch.

He blazed with a hot yellow-red-orange light. The burning had a crackling sound, like flags being whipped by a high wind.

Hardesty writhed, screaming as he was burned alive. Fire cut through the ropes binding him to the stake. Before he could break free, he was speared by Red Hand, who skewered him in the middle.

Red Hand opened up Hardesty’s belly, spilling his guts. He gave a final twist to the blade before withdrawing it. He faced the man of fire, lance leveled for another thrust if needed.

Hardesty collapsed, falling in a blazing heap. The fire spread to some nearby grass and brush, setting them alight.

At a sign from Red Hand, members of his five-man cadre rushed up with blankets, using them to beat out the fires. Streamers of blue-gray smoke rose up. The night was thick with the smell of burning flesh.

Red Hand thrust the blue-burning spear blade into a dirt mound. When it was surfaced, the mystic glow was extinguished, the blade glowing a dull red.

Chaos, near anarchy, reigned among the Comanches. The horde erupted in a frenzy, many breaking into spontaneous war dances.

Above all others was heard the voice of Red Hand. “Take up the Fire Lance! Kill the Texans!”

Much later, when all was quiet, Wahtonka and Laughing Bear stood off by themselves in a secluded place, putting their heads together. The horned moon was low in the west, the stars were paling, the eastern sky was lightening.

“What should we do?” Laughing Bear asked.

“What can we do? Go with Red Hand to make war on the whites.” Wahtonka shrugged. “Any raid is better than none,” he added, philosophically.

Laughing Bear grunted agreement. “Waugh! That is true.”

“We shall see if the Great Spirit truly spoke to Red Hand, if his vision comes to pass,” Wahtonka said. “If not—may his bones bleach in the sand!”

TWO

The town of Hangtree, county seat of Hangtree County, Texas, was known to most folks, except for a few town boosters and straitlaced respectable types, as Hangtown. So it was to Johnny Cross, a native son of the region.

Located in north central Texas, Hangtree County lay west of Palo Pinto County and east of the Llano Estacado, known as the Staked Plains, whose vast emptiness was bare of towns or settlements for hundreds of square miles. Hangtown squatted on the lip of that unbounded immensity.

The old Cross ranch lay some miles west of town, nestled at the foot of the eastern range of the Broken Hills, called the Breaks. Beyond the Breaks lay the beginnings of the Staked Plains.

Johnny, the last living member of the Cross family, had come back to Hangtree after the war. He lived at the ranch with his old buddy Luke Pettigrew, two not-so-ex-Rebels trying to make a go of it in the hard times of the year following the fall of the Confederacy. They were partners in a mustang venture. Hundreds of mustangs ran wild and free in the Breaks and Johnny and Luke sold whatever they could catch.

Growing up in Hangtree, Johnny and Luke were boyhood pals. When war came in 1861, both were quick to fight for the South, like most of the menfolk in the Lone Star state. Luke joined up with Hood’s Texans, a hard-fighting outfit that had made its mark in most of the big battles of the war. In the last year of the conflict, a Yankee cannonball had taken off his left leg below the knee. A wooden leg took its place.

Johnny Cross had followed a different path. For good or ill, his star had led him to throw in with Quantrill’s Raiders, legendary in its own way, though not with the bright, untarnished glory of Hood’s fighting force. Johnny spent the next four years serving with that dark command, living mostly on horseback, fighting his way through the bloody guerrilla warfare of the border states.

A dead shot when he first joined Quantrill, he soon became a formidable pistol fighter and long rider, a cool-nerved killing machine. His comrades in arms included the likes of Bloody Bill Anderson, the Younger brothers, and Frank and Jesse James.

The bushwhackers’ war in Kansas and Missouri was a murky, dirty business where the lines blurred between soldier and civilian, valor and savagery, and it was easy to lose one’s way.

When Richmond fell and Dixie folded in ’65, Quantrill and his men received no amnesty. They were wanted outlaws with a price on their heads. On the dodge, plying the gunman’s trade, Johnny Cross worked his way back to Hangtree County, where he wasn’t wanted for anything—yet.

A dangerous place, the county was one of the most violent locales on the frontier. Trouble came frequently and fast, and Johnny was in his element. He and Luke crossed trails and teamed up. A mysterious stranger named Sam Heller—a damned Yankee but a first-class fighting man—roped them into bucking a murderous outlaw gang. 1

When the gunsmoke cleared, Johnny and Luke had come out of it with whole skins and a nice chunk of reward money.

Johnny and Luke saddled up and pointed their horses east along the Hangtree Trail, heading into town to blow off some steam after working hard during the week. Hangtown was a couple hours ride from the ranch, but then, Texas was big. Every place in Texas was a fair piece away from everywhere else.

They rode out in the morning, when it was still cool. Texas in late June got hot early and stayed that way long after sundown. The Hangtree Trail was a dirt road stretching east-west across the county. It had rained the night before, washing things clean and wetting down the dust. The sky was cloudless blue, the grass and trees bright green.

Luke Pettigrew was long and lean. War wounds left him hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked and gaunt. He was starting to fill out, but there was still something of a half-starved wolf about him. Tufts of gray-brown hair stuck out on the sides of his head under his hat, and the sharp tips of canine teeth showed over the edge of his lips.

He was mounted on a big bay horse, a rifle fixed to the right-hand side of the saddle and a crutch on the left. He was good with a rifle, fair with a pistol. A sawed-off shotgun hung in a holster on his right hip, for when the fighting got up close and personal.

Johnny Cross was of medium height, athletic, and compactly knit. He had black hair and hazel eyes that sometimes looked brown, sometimes yellow, depending on the light and his moods. He was clean shaven, something of a rarity when most men wore beards or mustaches.

When he’d been with Quantrill, he lived rough in the field, going weeks, months without a shave, haircut, or bath and wearing the same clothes night and day until they began coming apart, shredding off his body. These days, he set a high value on bathing, shaving, and clean clothes. His nature was fastidious, catlike even.

He wore a flat-crowned black hat, a dark broadcloth jacket, and a gray button-down shirt. His black denim pants hung over his army-issue boots. A pair of hip-holstered Colt .44s showed beneath his jacket. A lightweight pistol was tucked away in one of his jacket pockets, a carbine was tucked into his saddle scabbard, and a couple more pistols were stashed in his saddlebags.