The Dark Sunrise

by Terrence McCauley

  Pappy eased the man back with a gentle shove to the chest. “We appreciate the offer, mister, but the marshal’s got a fever. He won’t be drinking today.”

  The man shoved Pappy’s hand away. “Mind your business, old-timer, before—”

  But there was no before and no after, either, as Pappy knocked the man cold with a short right hand across the jaw.

  As the man fell back against his friends, Billy stepped in to prevent an all-out brawl from breaking out.

  Mackey grabbed his father and pulled him away from the bar. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I’m a grown man and can have whiskey if I want to, damn it. I’m not a boy anymore.”

  But Pappy grabbed his son by the collar and pulled him down until they were eye to eye. “You are a boy, Aaron. You’re my boy, and you’ll always be my boy while I’ve still got breath in me. Now come to your senses and let’s go see Katherine like you should. There’s nothing in the bottle for you but trouble.”

  Mackey grabbed his father’s massive hands and gently pulled them from his collar. “Sometimes a man needs a certain amount of trouble to burn out a bigger trouble. And, Papa, Rigg is bigger trouble than you know. A little whiskey is just what I need.”

  Mackey turned back toward his space at the bar. He had hardly taken a step before the entire world went black.

  CHAPTER 11

  When the world came back to Aaron Mackey, it came back ever so slowly.

  His head throbbed, and he did not dare open his eyes out of fear of the pain that would rush in when he did.

  But he knew by the softness of the fabric and the smell of rosewater that his head must be in Katherine’s lap. The gentle touch that could only be hers caressed his face.

  “Poor thing,” she said. “He’s still asleep. What did you hit him with, Billy?”

  “He didn’t touch him,” Pappy said. “I hit him.”

  “Was that really necessary?” she scolded.

  “He’s my son, and I can hit him if I want to, especially to stop him from doing something stupid.”

  “I’d hardly call ordering whiskey in a bar being something stupid,” Katherine said. “Aaron never drinks and is entitled to one if he wants one.”

  “You’re right,” he heard Billy say. “Aaron never drinks. Not anymore, anyways. Hasn’t touched a drop since the day we came back to Dover Station, and we aim to keep it that way. If you’d known him when he drank, you’d have slugged him, too, Katie. Only reason why I didn’t do it was because Pappy beat me to it.” Billy was quiet for a moment before adding. “You still hit like a mule, old man.”

  “You saw what happened to the last man who called me that.”

  Billy laughed, and Katherine scolded him. “This isn’t a laughing matter, Billy. Poor Aaron’s been out for almost an hour. I still think we should call for a doctor.”

  “He’s awake now,” Pappy said. “His legs have stopped twitching. He’s just having himself a rest, is all. Let him be. The poor lad’s earned it after the day he’s had.”

  Mackey loved feeling her warm soft hands on his face. But he knew she would have questions when he finally opened his eyes. Questions he did not want to answer. Shame he did not want to admit.

  “He never mentioned having a problem with drink,” she said to them.

  “Can’t say why he would,” Billy said. “It was an embarrassing time for him. For all of us, I guess. Happened when he got kicked out of the army.”

  “Kicked out?” she repeated. “But he was honorably discharged. I’ve seen the documents.”

  “That was part of the deal they gave him for keeping his mouth shut,” Pappy told her. “Resign and nothing more will be said. It was out of deference for his service that they gave him that chance.”

  “And your medal,” Billy said. “That’s what got him into West Point in the first place.”

  “If it opened a door for him, so be it,” Pappy said. “But he’s the one who walked through it and earned his place on the other side. And those bastards had no right to take it from him like they did.”

  “Which bastards?” Katherine asked. “He doesn’t talk much about his time in the army. We met while he was waiting for his promotion to captain. He didn’t talk much about Adobe Flats then and hasn’t since. And he never talked about why he left the army. He—”

  Mackey’s heart skipped a beat when she stopped talking. She had never been a stupid woman. In fact, she was one of the smartest people he had ever known.

  He knew it would not take her long to add everything together to get a proper picture and he was right.

  “He wanted to drink because of what happened in the lobby, didn’t he? Because of that man who came to see him.”

  “Aye,” Pappy said. “It’s why I slugged him when I did. He’s a different man when he’s in his cups. A man you wouldn’t recognize, Katie. A man you wouldn’t care to know, much less love.”

  The damp cloth she put on his head felt good. Too good for him to open his eyes yet.

  “There’s nothing I don’t know about this man,” Katherine said. “Or love.”

  “You don’t know the reason for his drinking,” Billy said. “Neither do you, Pappy. And yes, Katie. That reason is Nathan Rigg.”

  Katherine dabbed his forehead with the cold cloth. “Why were his men pointing guns at Aaron?”

  “That wasn’t the first time Rigg has had Aaron and me in a bad spot. Probably won’t be the last time, either.”

  “Captain Nathan Rigg?” Katherine asked, remembering. “I thought he looked familiar. He was an acquaintance of my late husband. He had been to our house in Boston several times. We always found him to be splendid company. I can’t imagine he would cause anyone grief, especially a fellow soldier.”

  “Well, I don’t have to imagine it,” Billy said, “because I lived through it. At least the end of it, anyway. He was Major Rigg by the time I came along, and when I did, that Rebel bastard had no use for a black sergeant like me.”

  “I won’t say we agreed with all of his attitudes,” Katherine said, “but the war—”

  “The war had nothing to do with Rigg,” Billy told her. “He just used being a Virginian as an excuse to treat people poorly. He’s got fancy clothes and nice manners, but none of that hides the fact he was a man born crooked. That man had only one attitude and that was pure meanness. He had no use for any man below his rank nor for a man any color than his own. Black or red, he treated us all the same. A man like that has a way of drawing other men like that to him. It was like that in the army, and it looks like he hasn’t changed any.”

  Katherine laid a warm hand on Mackey’s forehead. “How did he ruin Aaron’s life?”

  “Don’t,” Mackey said without opening his eyes. “It’s my story to tell, not yours.”

  Katherine cradled his head as she kissed it.

  “It’s as much my story as yours, Aaron,” Billy told him. “And I’ve got as much right to speak on it as anyone, especially to family. Maybe I’ve got more of a right since you can’t remember some of it.” Billy paused before adding, “Unless you’ve changed your mind about me being family.”

  Mackey picked his head up from Katherine’s lap, but the pain webbed from his jaw through his head, and he lowered it again. “You know better than that. All the family I’ve got is in this room right now.”

  Mackey didn’t have the strength to tell him to stop again, so Billy laid bare his past.

  “It started with an Apache buck named Diablo looking to make a name for himself by raiding ranches down in the Arizona Territory,” Billy began. “His real name was Red Moon, but he changed it to the Spanish word for ‘devil’ to scare the whites. His tribe wanted peace with the whites, so they banished him because Diablo was a troublemaker. He figured his only way to power was bathing himself in the blood of his enemies. Color didn’t matter much, but preferably settlers, cowpokes on the trail, even members of rival tribes. Anyone he could kill, really.”

  “Good God,” Katheri
ne whispered.

  “Killing was never enough for Diablo and his men. Each man he killed was a statement. Each kill more gruesome than the last. I know you’re a nurse, Katie, but I’ll spare you the details of what he did to folks. You can imagine what he did to men and womenfolk alike. You’ve heard some stories, I’m sure, but none like this.”

  Mackey felt a shudder go through her. He hated for her to hear all of this, but he supposed the time had come. “Go on, Billy.”

  “Rigg was our major at the time, and he ordered young Lieutenant Mackey over there to take twenty volunteers and two sergeants to hunt down Diablo as quickly as possible. Sim Halstead was one of the sergeants. I volunteered to be the other. No other sergeant at the fort would go with Aaron, and since Rigg didn’t think highly of my kind, I figured I’d take my chances out on patrol.

  “We had a half-breed Chiricahua scout with us called Eagle Eye to help us find Diablo and his men,” Billy continued. “Don’t know if that was his real name, but Rigg put great stock in Eagle Eye’s tracking abilities. Eagle Eye also professed great hatred for Diablo, but I was never all that convinced. Neither was Sim. Aaron went along with it because Rigg ordered him to and was never known to question an order.

  “We needed twenty men to do the job right. We wound up with ten of the worst men in the regiment whose only skill was that they had no problem killing Indians. Got most of them straight from the stockade.”

  “This Eagle Eye,” Katherine asked. “Did he do his job?”

  “Depends on what his job was,” Billy told her. “If his job was to lead us to Diablo, he certainly did it. Maybe did his job too well.”

  “He led them to Diablo,” Pappy said, repeating the story his son had told him one drunken evening long ago, “but didn’t tell them how close Diablo was. Luckily, Sim and Billy here were fine trackers in their own right and could read sign well.”

  “Is that true?” Mackey heard Katherine ask. “You mean this Eagle Eye led you into a trap?”

  “He tried,” Billy told her, “but we caught on to it just before he led us into a massacre. We were outnumbered at least two to one. The morning Eagle Eye disappeared, we were less than a mile from Diablo and his hostiles. I don’t know if it was all Eagle Eye’s doing or if he did it on orders from Rigg, but we came within a mile of getting killed.”

  “Why would a major order the massacre of his own men?” Katherine asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “So he’d have something to avenge,” Pappy said. “Many a reputation has been forged in avenging the fallen, Katie. Could be he wanted to start another Indian War where he could be a hero. Could be he just didn’t like Aaron. Men like Rigg do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, darlin’. Especially in uniform.”

  Billy continued with his story. “We realized Eagle Eye had disappeared in the middle of the night, and Aaron knew we didn’t have much time before Diablo and his men rode into us. So, he ordered us to mount up just after dawn and attack. We cornered them at Adobe Flats, where they’d planned to ambush us and surprised them. We ran them down before they realized what was happening. Diablo and all of his men were killed. Seems like they’d never been in a straight-up fight before with men who knew how to fight back.”

  “So you accomplished your mission,” Katherine said. “Rigg must have been pleased.”

  Mackey heard Billy choke on the words. “In a fashion.”

  “Tell her,” Mackey said, his own voice hurting his head. “You pulled the cork out of the jug. Might as well drain the rest of the bottle.”

  “Major Rigg had issued Aaron an order before we rode out,” Billy said. “If we found Diablo and his men, we were to ‘visit the same horrors upon them as they had committed against the innocent men and women and children who had been their victims.’ That’s an awfully elegant way of telling us to hack them to pieces.”

  Mackey smelled tobacco and knew Billy had lit a cigarette.

  “So,” Billy continued, “we got to visiting. Just three of us had the stomach for it. Sim Halstead, Aaron, and me.” Mackey heard Billy take a long drag on his cigarette and let the smoke drift out through his nose. “Yes, sir. We visited the hell out of those savages that day. Guess we became savages ourselves in the process.”

  Mackey had expected Katherine to shove his head off her lap and run out of the room in horror. Instead, she cradled his head carefully and kissed his forehead. “My poor love.”

  “When we got back to the fort,” Billy went on, “Major Rigg wasn’t happy that Eagle Eye got away. He’d ordered us to go right back out and get him, but the men were wiped out, and none of us were in much shape to travel. Sim and me and all of the other boys praised the lieutenant for his bravery in battle. Eagle Eye swore there were only fifteen braves with Diablo. He had more than thirty when we hit them. Aaron’s tactics cut them down to size in short order. We would’ve been killed if it hadn’t been for him. We even put it in writing, but Rigg wasn’t impressed.”

  “I still knew a few graybeards in Washington,” Pappy said, “who looked into the matter and decided Aaron deserved his captaincy. But by the time he’d finished his training, Aaron was sent to serve under Rigg again. That was when you met him, Katherine darlin’, before he was shipped out west again. Rigg reissued his order to find Eagle Eye.”

  “Aaron only wanted to take me and Sim, but Sim was sick and it wound up just being the two of us. Took the better part of a year, but we found Eagle Eye in the nations and dragged him back to the fort. When we brought him in, some of the junior officers set to beating on him. Aaron stopped it, but hit one of the men a bit too hard and turned him into a vegetable. The boy’s father was a senator from a southern state. Things were still raw along the Mason-Dixon line following Reconstruction and Mackey was court-martialed. His trial was supervised by Major Rigg himself. Rigg wanted Aaron to be hanged, but the generals allowed him to resign instead. They’d spent so much time building him up as the Hero of Adobe Flats that tearing him down would’ve made them look bad. Rigg was furious, always vowed to get even. Never heard what happened to him after we left the army, but I guess now we know.”

  “We saw Rigg come to town a couple of days ago,” Pappy said, “him and that pack of wolves he brought with him. He was quiet, but obvious. Drew a lot of eyes and seemed to like the attention. I never knew his name, but if I had, I would’ve put a bullet in him before you got here.”

  “Then you’d be in jail right along with Brenner and Grant,” Mackey said as he sat up from Katherine’s lap. Katherine fussed over him as he regained his senses. “You’d be in there longer than they’ll be, too, because Judge Forester is letting them go.”

  Billy took a step backward as though he had been hit. “Are you sure? Your eggs got scrambled pretty good just now.”

  Mackey rubbed his aching jaw. “Not enough to get that wrong. He told me so himself, right before my run-in with Rigg.”

  “How can he let them go?” Billy said, close to yelling. “We’ve got them dead to rights.”

  “Judge Forester sees it different.” Mackey tongued a molar loose and spat it into his hand. He tossed the tooth to his father. “Your prize for winning the fight.”

  Pappy held the tooth up to the light. “If it knocked some sense into you, then I gladly accept. If not, I’ll belt you again. Maybe wind up with a tooth necklace. Walk around wearing it proudly like one of them heathens you used to hunt.”

  But Billy was still on the Forster business. “Did the judge tell you why he was letting them go?”

  Mackey spent the next couple of minutes laying out his conversation with the judge point by point. When he had finished, Billy looked more disgusted than Mackey had ever seen him. His deputy was not known for showing much emotion.

  “That name Rhoades sounds familiar. Where’d I hear it from?”

  “He used to be an army lawyer,” Mackey said as he got to his feet. He thought he would still be dizzy after being out for so long, but his mind was clear. Maybe the old man was
losing his touch after all.

  “Rhoades was the lawyer at my court-martial,” Mackey reminded him. “Looks like he and Rigg have thrown in together, because they’re both working for Grant.”

  Billy leaned against the wall as the entirety of the situation sat upon him. “Looks like Grant wasn’t lying about having a plan. Did it right, too. He managed to use your past against you in the bargain.”

  “Looks that way.” That was when he noticed Joshua Sandborne sitting on a couch at the far end of the room. The young man did not have a scratch on him, but his eyes looked like he had taken a brutal beating.

  “You all right?”

  The young man simply nodded.

  The look in his eyes said more than the young man ever could. “Sorry you had to hear all that, Joshua. About me. Guess I’m not the man you thought I was.”

  “You’re not.” The young man stood up. “You’re more than I thought. What are we going to do next, boss?”

  Mackey walked over to the window and parted the curtains. A man leaning against a gas lamp across the street quickly looked down and walked away. Rigg had someone watching him.

  “Stay alert,” Mackey told him. “And stay alive.”

  “Complacency,” Josh said. “Right boss?”

  “Right.” Mackey dunked his aching head in the bowl on the dresser. The young man did not know how right he was.

  CHAPTER 12

  After the four of them had an early dinner in the dining room of the Hotel Helena, Katherine insisted that Mackey take her for a walk around town. Alone. Billy, Josh, and Pappy did not like the idea of the two of them being off on their own, but Katherine was clearly not in a mood to argue.

  Her stern expression when she ordered them to stay had made Mackey smile. He had seen Pappy and Billy face down men twice their size, but one look from Mrs. Campbell fixed them in place.

  She slipped her arm through his as they strolled along the boardwalk together. The heat of the day had already faded, and the afternoon air hinted at the promise of a cool evening to come. The brief Montana summer was already preparing to give way to autumn and the harsh winter that followed.