by Jory Sherman
Men screamed and fell from their horses, on both sides. Officers yelled orders; some men roared in the rage of the battle, while others carried out their lethal duties with utter silence and determination.
Zak and Randy wove their way through crashing horses and men rushing to their mounts, ducking under a hail of bullets that buzzed over their heads like wingless leaden hornets.
The Navajos swarmed and dispersed, only to dash in and out of lines of mounted troops. The troops cleared paths that closed up behind them, formed new attack routes, until the entire melee was a freeform brawl of mounted men dashing after enemies on every side.
Zak scanned the Navajo horsemen, looking for any that stood out, watching for a leader and his followers. He and Randy reached the Narbona mesa and ran up the path to the top, encountering no resistance.
Zak thought, Where does an animal go when it has reached the point of desperation? It climbs the highest tree, it seeks out the deepest cave, it makes its last stand in a place of safety, a place where it feels at home.
They looked at the dome-shaped hogans, all facing east, scattered like bee hives atop the mesa.
“Check every one, Randy,” Zak said. “Shoot anything that moves.”
Zak ran among the adobe hovels, entered a circle and spotted a single dwelling in the center.
He halted a few yards from it, standing to one side in case anyone was inside.
“Ho, Narbona,” he called. Then, in Spanish, he said: “Yo soy Dinéh. Vengo con un mensaje por un hombre quien se llama Narbona. Narbona, un cobarde, la basura de la tierra.”
“I am Navajo. I come with a message for a man who calls himself Narbona. Narbona, a coward, the filth of the earth.”
He heard muffled voices from inside the hogan. A man appeared at the entrance, a rifle in his hands. His face was painted, smeared with signs and symbols, streaks of vermillion, circles of yellow and white, vermicular scrawls of black. The man saw Zak and raised his rifle to his shoulder.
“Largos,” Zak called, his hand streaking for his pistol.
Largos hesitated, surprised at hearing his name.
“You were with the dead and now you return,” Zak said in Spanish.
Largos scowled, his face becoming a pinched mass of painted bronze. Zak fired his pistol as the man seated the butt of his rifle in the hollow of his shoulder. The bullet smashed him high in the left part of his chest. His mouth went slack and his eyes widened in surprise. Zak shot him again as he pitched forward, slumped to the ground.
Another man appeared in the doorway. His face and body were painted white and there were black circles around his eyes, red streaks at the corners of his mouth. He wore only a breechclout and moccasins.
“Narbona,” Zak said, still speaking in Spanish, “you stole the name of a brave warrior. He sent me to bring back his name.”
“Quien eres tu?” Narbona asked, reaching for the pistol hanging from his belt.
“I am the horseman of the shadow,” Zak said.
“So, you are Shadow Rider. Where do you come from?”
“I come from the land of the dead. Narbona wants his name returned to him. The name you stole.”
“I am Narbona.”
“You are a ghost,” Zak said, and the Colt bucked in his hand, smoke and flame spouting from its blue-black muzzle. Narbona raised his pistol. The bullet smashed into his face, ripping off his nose and the lower part of his brain. His forehead collapsed inward and a rosy spray of blood shot out of his left temple as splinters of bone exploded into the door jamb. The man’s legs folded beneath him and he settled in a heap, one eye staring at the blue sky, the other pooched out like a boiled egg, riddled with streaks of blood.
The dead man had no face.
“And, now,” Zak said softly, as he opened the gate of his Colt and began ejecting the empty hulls, “you have no name.”
He reloaded his pistol and put it back in its holster. He dragged Narbona’s body to the edge of the mesa. He put his hands in his armpits and held him up, shook his body back and forth. Then he threw him over the side, watched his body tumble and crash on the rocks below, where all could see.
Randy met him as Zak walked back through the hogans.
“Colonel Loomis has got ’em on the run, Zak.”
Zak said nothing. He wondered how Jeff Vickers had fared.
When he descended from the mesa, he had his answer. Vickers was holding Nox and a horse for Bullard. He had Zak’s crumpled hat in his hand.
“I see you got a fresh coat of blood, Zak,” Jeff said.
Zak climbed into the saddle and heaved with a heavy intake of breath.
“And you’re still out of uniform, Captain.”
“You got Narbona. When the Navajos saw him fall from the mesa, they cut and run.”
“I didn’t get Narbona, Jeff. Narbona died a long time ago.”
And now, he thought, Narbona’s ghost could rest, at last.
About the Author
JORY SHERMAN is the Spur Award-winning author of the westerns Song of the Cheyenne, The Medicine Horn, and Grass Kingdom, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Letters.
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By Jory Sherman
Shadow Rider
BLOOD SKY AT MORNING
APACHE SUNDOWN
GHOST WARRIOR
THE BARON HONOR
BLOOD RIVER
THE VIGILANTE
TEXAS DUST
THE BARON WAR
THE BRAZOS
ABILENE GUN DOWN
SOUTH PLATTE
VISIONS OF A LOST GIRL
CHILL #1: SATAN’S SEED
CHILL #2: SEPULCHRE
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SHADOW RIDER: GHOST WARRIOR. Copyright © 2008 by Jory Sherman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition MAY 2008 ISBN: 9780061983429
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