Shadow Shooters

by George Arthur

  Yates found One Eye Tim Brace about as grotesque and ugly as a man could be. He looked a little better with his hat. Why didn’t he go get his hat? Why didn’t he wear an eye patch over the cavity or get one of them marble false eyeballs like others who lost an eye? One Eye once told Yates he liked the mean image, made him look scary to people he wanted to frighten. The marshal sat straight with a frown. ‘What’s that? He’s gone? Did he tell you where the tepee was?’

  ‘Yeah.’ One Eye’s voice sounded strained. ‘Third site in from the northeast corner.’

  ‘That ain’t all he told you, is it Tim?’

  ‘That one in there and three others held up a Pony Express string and got the payroll. They got the cash buried all right.’

  ‘Did he say where?’

  ‘No. Except he said it mighta been by the burned shack, ’cept he didn’t know for sure.’

  ‘True or not, we can at least go for the ten thousand. What else? That wasn’t all.’

  ‘No sir, no sir, that ain’t all.’ He rubbed his hand across his lips.

  ‘What is it?’

  One Eye Tim Brace leaned forward, ugly and sweating. ‘Before he went gone, he told me, Anson Hawkstone ain’t dead.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Just at dawn, Hawkstone felt the soft warmth of the medicine woman push against him. Her long red hair covered his face. He took his sweet time exploring her with his palms. He wasn’t sure when Black Feather left his blankets to wander the village. He seldom heard the movement out of the hut. He did know the girl Little Rain followed Black Feather like an obedient puppy, though not ten words had passed between them.

  Rachel’s lips touched his ear. ‘Are you strong enough for this?’

  ‘No, but it don’t matter.’

  ‘I already had to restitch and burn that shoulder. I don’t want to do it again.’

  ‘It might be worth it. When the well is dry, we know the wealth of water.’

  Rachel chuckled. ‘Another Franklin? You ain’t been dry since you got here.’

  ‘You see to that.’

  ‘And I’m about to again.’

  Mid-morning, Hawkstone had the chestnut in the river. Without boots, he stood in water to his calves, washing the mare’s back and neck and scooping water on her. He rubbed her with an old piece of calico and her shoulders shivered while her head moved up and down as if pleased. He talked low to her, telling her what a fine mount she was.

  Black Feather led his appaloosa to the water and began to splash water over the stallion’s back. ‘When?’ he said.

  ‘It’s more’n a two-day ride. You think the prisoner wagons been there yet? Yates will be watching that.’

  ‘Maybe he go to burned house, find grave, get payroll money.’

  ‘I figure Casey Steel will get there first, then come looking for Yates. How’s your side?’

  ‘I can ride. We both too shot up for racing horses. We maybe take two and a half days.’

  ‘My trigger finger works jest fine. We gotta make sure they’re still there.’

  ‘They will search until they find something.’

  ‘Where did you keep the Mineral City money?’

  ‘Wrapped in a buffalo hide, against a tepee wall. Now your woman has it.’

  Hawkstone wrung the calico and wiped down the filly. ‘How old is that girl follows you around?’

  ‘She is eighteen. She tells me she will always follow.’

  Hawkstone squinted at Black Feather. ‘Will she?’

  ‘Perhaps. She is easy to look at and she is good to fix the side wound. She likes to help the medicine woman heal others. She has a good heart and carries more smiles than frowns. But she may be too gentle.’

  ‘Ain’t no such thing as a woman too gentle.’

  ‘We will see what happens. When do we go?’

  ‘I reckon about noon,’ Hawkstone said.

  On the second day of riding, in a twilight that pushed down the sun and cloaked the land grey, Hawkstone and Black Feather crossed the Rio Gila river and walked their ponies towards Disappointment Creek. Before they reached what had been the village, they aimed their mounts to the hills on their right, beyond the other end of the site. They moved in shadows now, for night had almost come. Hawkstone did not want to climb as high as the cliff-dwelling rock-desert sheep and goats, just high enough to see the village site clear before it all became black. They found a flat ledge large enough for them and the horses, and stopped and dismounted and looked down at the clearing that had once been a tribal village. They remained silent. Hawkstone did not know what thoughts went through his blood brother’s thinking. His own pondering was a mix of grief and anger. He still felt the flutter in his chest, the finger flexing of his healing gun hand. The soldier boys and gunman regulators who took part were dead. This was the finish of it, the killing dead end of it.

  The village bodies had been taken by Federal Marshal Casey Steel and his two wagons of Yuma Territorial convicts and buried somewhere Hawkstone did not want to know. It must have been a grisly business. Vultures took care of leftover titbits of flesh. Ashes and rubble still marked the locations of tepees and wickiups. Toward the end of the clearing, closest to the creek, Hawkstone saw the skeletal remains of the old woman’s wickiup. No more was visible in the darkness.

  Hawkstone and Black Feather kept their mounts saddled. They built no campfire but ate cold antelope jerky and drank water. After eating, they sat with their backs against a rock wall and lit smokes and passed a whiskey bottle.

  ‘They will not come at night,’ Black Feather said, ‘unless they know we wait and want to ambush us. They will come with the sun.’

  Hawkstone drew in a drag from the cigarette. ‘Before they die they must feel the loss of their private parts. They must know the pain because of Hattie.’

  ‘Yes. We will shoot them slow, a little at a time.’

  They sat and looked down on the clearing and passed the bottle. Hawkstone spoke part of his thinking. ‘For Hattie – for what they done to Hattie. They ain’t men, nobody can say such. They’re something less, less than human. I knew plenty like them when I scouted for the army up around Santa Fe. It was how they acted towards tribes. Mebbe when men get shed of home and hearth, leaving a loving woman where they walk tall in the eyes of their young ’uns, they throw out everything they left behind, scrape off any civilized thinking. They see them as savages, as cur, and don’t see nothing to justify them living and having a life like them. They want the children killed so no more generations come along.’

  Black Feather said, ‘You got too much Apache thinking in you.’

  ‘Mebbe not enough.’

  They sat silent until the bottle was empty. Black Feather moved away far enough to pee. He came back and grimaced as he sat from the pain in his side. ‘When we are done, I will not return to the hut of your woman or her village.’

  Hawkstone stared at him. ‘What about the girl, Little Rain?’

  ‘She will live a happy life without me.’

  ‘Collect her and take her with you.’

  ‘When we are done, I will want to be alone. I will ride to Mexico, and when I am ready, I will find people of my own kind and mingle with them. You are my blood brother, but I have no more patience with the white man. He irritates me when he comes among us. I don’t like him coupled with our women. I don’t like our women to lay with him.’

  Hawkstone sat with his knees up, staring down at the darkness below. He turned to Black Feather. ‘Tell me where you’ll be.’

  Black Feather sighed. ‘I cannot tell you because I do not know. I only tell you that when we are done, I will ride away.’

  Hawkstone nodded. ‘I reckon you know best.’

  ‘And what of you, Hawkstone? You will return to the medicine woman?’

  ‘For as long as I can. They may come after me, and I’ll have to ride out.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Mebbe to Montana or Wyoming Territory. I’d want Rachel to come with me, but she wo
n’t. She figures I’d always come back to her, and she ain’t gonna give up what she has.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows? When the dust settles I might jest drift back this way.’

  Black Feather nodded. He stretched. ‘Now, you send us to sleep with a Franklin, my brother.’

  Hawkstone leaned back. ‘Evil must cloak itself. Truth can go naked.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  They came at late morning the next day, as Hawkstone and Black Feather watched, watched not from the exposed ledge, but behind ground-level rocks large enough to hide the horses. Sunlight brought out a lingering death smell from the earth. Crows had returned to the cottonwoods, flying down on occasion to snap up spotted rotten flesh. The three rode in, walking their mounts, weapons in their hands. The rotund Wharton City marshal led them down the length of the butchery site, then back. At the ash rubble that had been Black Feather’s tepee, the marshal holstered his Colt and watched the other two do the same.

  ‘All right, gents,’ he said. ‘Think like an Apache. You got this cash, this money another fella stole, and you’re gonna hide it for him. Do you step off ten paces or fifty paces and claw at the dirt?’ He scanned the horizon around him.

  ‘No,’ Wild Fletch said. He swung down and pulled the shovel tied to his saddle and spat a gob of tobacco juice. ‘That’s the white man way. If I’m Apache I bury it inside the tepee, in the centre where I sleep and eat and drink, and fool around with Apache women.’

  ‘Yeah,’ One Eye said. He swung down and pulled his shovel. ‘Let’s start digging.’

  The two men stood in the centre of the circled rubble and began to dig standing opposite each other. The marshal Yates grunted as he swung down from his animal. At the saddle-bag, he pulled a small bottle of whiskey. He rubbed the back of his leg and stood uneasy, as if he was not used to standing. He said, ‘Did you boys bury the redskin where I told you?’

  One Eye paused, breathing heavy. ‘Burning Buffalo, yeah, an hour from the Way Out Saloon, to the west like you said.’

  ‘Good. I told you Hawkstone made me walk naked from there back to the saloon. It’s good his friend is buried there, after my deputies beat him to death.’

  Protected by chest-high rocks, looking at the digging, Hawkstone saw Black Feather’s face muscles tighten. Black Feather reached for his Colt, but did not pull it. Instead, he grabbed Hawkstone’s arm and nodded to the southwest at a dirt cloud. Riders were coming from where the burned house sat.

  Mesquite and dry grass and sage spread beyond the village site. The land spread flat to shallow hills and showed three riders coming, and the marshal had not seen them yet. Behind them, rocky hills rose to mesas towards the Rio Gila.

  Hawkstone and Black Feather stared at each other. Hawkstone was undecided. Hit the three now, or wait for what was coming? They waited, while the two deputies dug, their deputy badges shining in the sunlight.

  As the three riders rode closer, Hawkstone recognized Federal Marshal Casey Steel in the lead by his black Montana Peak Stetson. They rode at a fast trot, the two with him wearing deputy badges. They were almost at the village when Yates saw them.

  One Eye looked up from his digging. ‘What is it, Marshal?’

  Yates stared at the coming riders. ‘Better ease up on the diggin’, boys. Get rid of them shovels.’

  They tossed the shovels towards a mesquite bush and stood by the hole watching with the marshal. The marshal fixed his pork-chop whiskered face with a polite grin as the three federal men rode up.

  Casey Steel touched the brim of his Stetson. ‘Leather?’

  ‘Casey?’ Leather Yates said. ‘You’re a long way from Tucson.’

  Steel sat on his mount without moving. The two deputies split apart on each side of him. The horses with empty saddles moved away. Steel said, ‘On the right there is Burt White, left is Jess Cassidy. We been digging out at the burned Hawkstone place.’ He nodded at the hole. ‘I see you boys been shovelling some on your own.’

  ‘That’s jest fascinatin’, Casey,’ Yates said. ‘You find anything interesting?’

  Burt White, with a full black beard and a bowler hat, said, ‘What are you digging for?’

  Yates ignored him. ‘What brings you here, Casey?’

  ‘An arrest warrant.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Yates said, his hand going easy to his holster.

  To Casey’s left, Jess Cassidy with a deep creased bare face and grey plains hat, pulled from his holster and said, ‘Don’t think about doing that.’

  Casey Steel stepped down from his horse and drew his Colt. ‘You’re under arrest, Leather Yates, for the murder of Big Ears Kate and Billy Bob Crutch. I found their grave, along with your boots.’

  ‘My boots?’

  ‘Buried along with forty-three thousand and two hundred in cash – which the banker fella with us took back to Tucson. Seems it was supposed to be forty-eight thousand, but somebody skimmed it.’

  Leather Yates breathed heavy through his nose. ‘Anson Hawkstone. He buried my boots with the cash and Big Ears Kate and Billy Bob on account of he stole the money and skimmed it and killed them two.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ Hawkstone said as he and Black Feather came out from the rocks.

  The men stared at the two, coming at them with Colts in their hands, their horses still hidden.

  Yates returned his attention to Casey Steel. ‘You can’t arrest me, you ain’t got the authority.’

  ‘I’m a Federal Marshal, Yates. I represent the United States Government. And we ain’t even mentioned the butchery that went on here. You was part of that.’

  ‘It was all legal, with the United States Army leading it. You ain’t gonna hold me for that. I’m a city marshal – I was elected by town citizens – elected. Some politician appointed you. You ain’t gonna arrest me, Steel. Not on account of my boots,’ he pointed to Hawkstone, ‘that he planted to make me look guilty.’

  Casey Steel glanced up at his deputies. They both swung down from their saddles, weapons in their hands. One pulled out handcuffs. Steel said, ‘That’s what the warrant is about, but that ain’t why I’m arresting you. You and your two cockroaches raped and murdered an Apache girl down by the Rio Bravo. A boy saw you and run to his pa. They pulled the girl from the river. I’m gonna see all three of you hung for that.’

  One Eye said, ‘She was jest some Apache. We was funnin’ with her. Nobody gonna hang us for some Apache.’

  The men stood about eight feet apart in a semi-circle, their horses behind them. Hawkstone watched Wild Fletch Badger’s right hand down by the holster, fingers quivering.

  ‘You’ll hang for sure,’ Casey Steel said.

  The quickest draw of them all was gunfighter Wild Fletch Badger. He spat out a gob of tobacco juice and before anyone could move, drew and shot Federal Marshal Casey Steel in the chest. Steel stumbled back. Horses jerked back and moved away. Hawkstone shot Fletch Badger in the gun wrist, cocked and shot Leather Yates in the leg. Badger dropped his gun and grabbed his wrist. He crouched, released the wrist, and his left hand groped in the dirt for the gun. Yates twisted down to his fat knee. The snap of gunshots echoed across the hollow empty village site and out across the barren land.

  Black Feather shot One Eye through his vacant socket and again quickly through the throat, then took a step forward and shot him twice below his belly button. While Casey Steel fell, Yates shot Deputy Burt White through his black beard. The other deputy, Jess Cassidy, shot Yates in the back. Fletch Badger had his pistol in his left hand. He fired and hit Cassidy in the shoulder. Black Feather aimed low and shot Leather Yates below his ample stomach straight through the crotch, fired again higher, into the stomach. Yates doubled and fell back.

  Hawkstone stepped close enough to push his Colt against Wild Fletch Badger’s stomach, aimed a little lower to the crotch and fired twice. Badger screamed as Hawkstone stepped back and shot him through the heart.

  After white gunsmoke curled away in the breeze and the ear-pounding shooting had stopped, three m
en remained on their feet – Hawkstone, Black Feather, and the Federal Deputy Jess Cassidy. Hawkstone and Black Feather kept their aim at the deputy. The man stood like stone, sharp face clean and creased, left hand against his shoulder, his Colt aimed at Hawkstone.

  ‘We’re done,’ Hawkstone said. ‘It’s up to you.’

  Marshal Casey Steel moved and groaned.

  Cassidy holstered his Colt and went to the marshal and kneeled beside him. ‘We’ll get you help.’

  Casey Steel blinked and looked beyond the deputy to Hawkstone. He lay back with his eyes closed.

  Hawkstone said, ‘We’ll get him on his horse.’

  ‘All of them,’ Cassidy said. ‘I’ll string the bodies to Wharton City, get a wagon and after a doc sees him, take the marshal back to Tucson.’ He stood straight and looked from Black Feather to Hawkstone. ‘What about you two?’

  ‘We’re done with all of this.’

  ‘You better come to Tucson and clear it up.’

  ‘I don’t see that happening, deputy. We’ll be gone.’

  Cassidy stood silent for a spell, his flinty grey-eyed stare going from one to the other. He nodded, and turned his attention to the marshal.

  The three of them draped the bodies over mounts and tied them down. Casey Steel sat hunched over his horse. Deputy Jess Cassidy led the rope-connected horses out of the village site and towards the Rio Gila river.

  Black Feather reloaded his Colt. While Hawkstone watched the string of bodies move out of sight, he fetched the horses and led them down to his tepee site. He swung his leg over the appaloosa. He smiled at Hawkstone. ‘Until next time my blood brother. You got a Franklin to leave me by?’

  Hawkstone said, ‘Enjoy the present, remember the past, but neither fear nor wish the appearance of the last.’

  Black Feather rode south, and Anson Hawkstone watched until he was out of sight. He reloaded his Colt and with it back in the holster, mounted the chestnut, mindful of his wounds. He wriggled to sit well in the saddle. His gaze went the length of the village and came to rest at what used to be the old woman’s wickiup. He had known comfort and happiness in the village, and carried fondness for the people living there. As some parts of a life went, the village now spread cold and dead. Gently, he heeled the chestnut and reined her to ride easy for the Rio Gila. After crossing the river, he’d start his two-day journey to the village where Rachel Cleary, now Rachel Good Squaw, the medicine woman, waited for him.