The meeting point was the rear of the guardhouse, and Grunting Bear and his two braves were the last to arrive. They had had the furthest to go, having had to make a three-quarter circuit of the fort to the southeast corner. To have crossed the compound under the north wall would have been to invite premature discovery by any one of perhaps many occupants of Fort Waycross awakened by the storm.
But, if anyone was staring tiredly out of a window, he saw nothing except unmoving shapes through the wind-contorted downpour lashing at the fort.
There was no need for words in the wet darkness behind the guardhouse. Grunting Bear merely checked that all his braves were present, then moved to the side of the building. A raised and roofed sidewalk ran in an unbroken line in front of the three blocks of buildings, only stopping short at the stables directly across the compound from the guardhouse. The sub-chief stepped up on to the boarding, and instantly felt relief beneath the roof’s shelter.
The guardhouse door was closed, but not locked. Like the negligence of the sentries and their lack of numbers, this was one more dividend from the long period of peace which Grunting Bear and other Apaches like him had found so hard to endure. The security at Fort Waycross was more concerned with army routine than defense against intruders.
There was just one possible danger that could be lurking in the stoutly built guardhouse. And Black Cloud eased his brother’s mind about this.
‘I am the only prisoner, Grunting Bear,’ the condemned Apache announced softly.
The younger brother was pressing his back against the door he had closed, his knife gripped more tightly than ever in his right hand as he peered through darkness.
‘I am ashamed, Black Cloud,’ the newcomer replied thickly.
Out of the rain, Grunting Bear’s vision improved. He saw a large, square room with a desk and a chair at the centre. Along one sidewall was a rifle rack. A barred partition divided the room into two sections. Behind the bars and at right angles to them were adobe walls to form four tiny cells. Three of the cells held just a bucket and a heap of straw. In the fourth, Black Cloud sat cross-legged on his straw bedding.
The prisoner vented a short, low laugh as he rose to his feet. ‘Be not so, my brother.’ His tone was apologetic. “My eyes are accustomed to this darkness. I knew only a Mescalero could approach so stealthily. And that you could not see me before I saw you. The key is in the drawer of the desk. The moon must move through two White Eyes hours before the sentries change.’
‘We know of this change, brother,’ Grunting Bear answered, feeling better after the explanation. He glided towards the desk.
“You are not alone?’ Black Cloud was surprised.
‘There are twelve of us.’ He smiled as he unlocked the barred door and swung it wide. Then held up Whelen’s scalp. The blood had crusted and it was rainwater that dripped to the hard-packed dirt floor. ‘Eight of us with such trophies. You will lead us, Black Cloud.’
In the storm-lashed darkness behind the guardhouse, the eleven Apaches waited with stoic patience. They could not hear the low-voiced conversation inside the building. But they knew the subject Grunting Bear had raised. And they were certain the senior sub-chief would respond as they all hoped. For, of all the Mescaleros of the Dry Wash Rancheria, Black Cloud found it the hardest to subdue his hatred of the White Eyes. At every council, he had urged an uprising against the oppressors of the Apaches. But, always, the elders had dismissed his entreaties as the wild talk of a hothead. And he had obeyed them, placing loyalty to his chief above his personal ambitions. While, to the braves who shared his ambitions, he promised fulfillment when his time came to be their chief.
He was still not chief, but his priorities would be different now. How could an Apache brave remain loyal to his father and chief when that ancient one had remained docile and cowering in his wickiup while his son faced wrongful execution? He’d done nothing except ask the, shamans to request the Great Spirit to accept the soul of his first-born son.
Grunting Bear appeared from around the corner of the guardhouse, his knife sheathed and holding a bunch of keys instead. Black Cloud was immediately behind him. Greetings were exchanged with unsmiling nods. Then: ‘My brother will lead us,’ Grunting Bear whispered. ‘It will be as we planned. Except that we will take the women.’
‘The young women,’ his brother added.
This came as no surprise to the braves. It was well known on the Dry Wash Rancheria that Black Cloud derived great satisfaction from ill-treating females. Thus, after the officer horse-soldier had described what happened to the female members of the settler family, those Mescaleros who were not ardent supporters of the sub-chief had been inclined to believe him guilty of the crime against the White Eyes.
‘We start now,’ Black Cloud rasped, showing his teeth in a taut grin of excitement.
Better disciplined than any soldier on the post, the Apaches moved to put into operation the second part of the plan. Lightning was flashing more frequently against the northern dome of the sky. But the centre of the storm was still not close enough to light up Fort Waycross.
Grunting Bear unlocked the stout door of the armory and magazine. Then he and Black Cloud jerked the plugs from small barrels of powder before passing them out to the braves. One at a time, the braves padded off along the sidewalk, only ducking low when they passed the windows of sleeping quarters. Soon, the contents of thirteen barrels of explosive powder had been piled at intervals in the angle of sidewalk and building frontages. Only the length of boarding in front of the married quarters was left clear.
Then came the most dangerous part of the plan’s second phase as all the Apaches sprinted from the cover of the buildings to scramble into the restricted area of dryness beneath the gallows platform. But the Great Spirit continued to bless the Dry Wash renegades. Only they moved within the fort. And there was just the subdued thud of their feet on the muddy compound to compete with the crashing, howling, hissing sounds of angry nature.
From inside their shirts, the twelve rescuers of Black Cloud drew soggy balls of fabric: carefully tied and with loops that allowed them to be fixed to arrowheads. The pungent smell of kerosene swirled in the crazy wind currents. From a pouch on his weapons belt, Grunting Bear took a box of stick matches. He handed it to his elder brother.
‘You will strike the first fire, Black Cloud.’
The freed prisoner began a smile, that immediately became a sneer. ‘One that will spread throughout the whole Indian nation.’
He struck a match, cupping the flare in both hands. Arrows were already fitted to bows. Grunting Bear pushed his bow forward. And his brother snatched his hands away as the kerosene-soaked ball flared. The other Mescaleros ignited their arrows from that of Grunting Bear,
The area beneath the gallows was abruptly brilliantly lit by a dazzling yellow light, dancing in the wind and plumed with dark, evil-smelling smoke.
‘What the hell?’ The words were hissed by a bearded corporal standing at a bunkhouse window. He had woken early for his spell of sentry duty and was about to kill time by smoking a cigarette. But the match fell from his limp fingers and the cigarette was spat from his lips. His mouth stayed wide, frozen in the attitude of a scream that had no sound. He watched, petrified by horror, as the mass of brilliant light exploded into a dozen fireballs. A veteran of countless skirmishes and one major battle with the Sioux on the plains, he recognized the fire arrows for what they were. But, by the time he found his voice, it was too late for his shout to give warning.
Hissing and spluttering as they sped through the teeming rain, the arrows continued to blaze. Precise accuracy could not be guaranteed in the darkness, but it was not necessary. A thin line of powder connected each large heap with the next. Thus, although not a single arrow scored a direct hit, all were effective. The iron tips thudded against adobe. Fragments of blazing fabric were shaken loose. Tongues of flame showered down. Powder which had been pelted with swirling rain was sprayed aside - and that beneath was dry.
An ear-splitting explosion masked the sounds of nature’s violence. In fact, there were thirteen separate explosions, but the time lapses between them were short. And to the ears of the listeners - triumphant and terrified alike - the many reports were merged into a single rolling, thunderous crash.
Glass shattered and shards showered in fire-glinting sprays through air blasted clear of rain. Building fronts disintegrated into lethal chunks of blackened adobe. A great cloud of dark smoke was launched high. Curling, twisting tongues of red and yellow flames licked through it.
For a moment, the flare of the massive powder explosion negated the smoke. And the interiors of the shattered buildings could be seen in brilliant light. The eager watchers saw men, in mid-air, and at the moment of crunching impact as the blast smashed them into walls, furniture and floor. Here and there, just pieces of men. Heads, arms, legs and torsos, wrenched from the whole and raining down in blood-dripping chunks.
In this split-second, no sound could be heard above the roar of the exploding powder. Then, as the Apaches scrambled out from under the gallows, this was nothing more than a painful buzz of memory in their ears: and the screams and shrieks of the wounded and the uninjured filled the rain, smoke and flame-laden air.
The roof of the stable block collapsed. And the dreadful cries of dying horses were silenced.
A sergeant - a massive, crimson-run wound where his left arm had been - staggered out of the bunkhouse. He was carrying a severed limb. But it was too short to be his own. He hurled it away with a horrified scream. A smaller man, still whole, but with his naked body charred matt black, ran out behind the sergeant. Two more men emerged through a blazing wall of flame. Screaming and beating at the fire in their hair and clothing.
There was an abrupt drop in the wind, as if nature was pausing to draw fresh breath after the massive disturbance of the explosion. The rain teemed straight down, splashing in the mire of the compound and hissing into steam amid the flames. But the fires continued to crackle and leap on three sides.
Six officers lunged out of their blackened and blazing quarters. Each man miraculously whole and with his nightclothes torn and charred, but not on fire. All disorientated by blast and shock, staggering away from the fierce heat, but unable to focus upon where they were headed.
Finally, ten women and their officer husbands emerged, screaming and fighting each other in panic. Although not directly attacked, the married quarters had suffered the secondary blast from the flanking buildings. Failing masonry had crashed through the roof and pieces of blazing timber had rained into the holes. The flames and choking smoke from ignited furniture and carpets drove the couples from their private rooms.
‘Now!’ Black Cloud bellowed to the eager braves.
Twelve arrows sped through the rain. Less than half the victims were aware of the attackers. But none had the strength or agility to evade the silent death hissing through the downpour. Iron arrowheads bit deep into already punished flesh. Men crumpled where they stood, pitched out of their panicked fright, or staggered backwards into the roaring wall of fire.
As further evidence of their strong-willed discipline, the Mescaleros calmly looped the bows over their shoulders and took up the rifles and revolvers. Excitement shone in then-eyes, and their teeth gleamed in the firelight. They stood in a well-ordered line. Only Black Cloud moved his feet, to leap up on to the gallows platform.
One elderly officer had taken the time to find his sidearm. His single shot was a part of the cracking fusillade exploded by the Apaches. The officer’s bullet released splinters of wood from the gallows upright. Then he and seven other men were cut down by the spinning bullets from the Apaches.
Two women toppled, crimson patches spreading across the bodices of their nightdresses.
‘Not the females!’ Black Cloud bellowed, his pleasure turned to anger.
His words were masked by a second volley. And the final male survivors of the explosions dropped into the mud of the compound. The grin of triumph split Black Cloud’s face again, as he surveyed the eight women. Each of them held still, as if their bare feet were trapped in the mud. But their heads moved, as their wide eyes surveyed the dead, the destruction, and the Apaches.
Six of the armed Apaches advanced, and dispersed across the compound. Wherever the groan of an injured man was heard, a gunshot cracked. And the women shuddered.
‘Let us see what kind of new pleasures await us!’ Black Cloud yelled gleefully.
He leapt to the ground, feet splashing up muddy water. The wind curled over the north wall again. He led his brother and five braves towards the women.
‘No!’
The word was shrieked by a middle-aged, amply proportioned, redheaded woman. She whirled and ran. Grunting Bear raised his Colt. Black Cloud knocked the gun aside.
‘Be not wasteful, brother,’ he chided.
The running woman began to moan. A sound of misery. Then she threw herself to the blazing sidewalk. Searing agony drew a scream from her lips. It was short-lived.
The other women did not even move their heads now. As the killing of the wounded continued around them, they stared with terror and horror. Trembling as the arrogant eyes of Black Cloud explored their faces and bodies.
‘Kill that one!’ the sub-chief announced at length.
He pointed to a painfully thin woman of more than sixty with grey hair and a bad complexion. The contours of her body, starkly revealed by the nightdress which was pasted to her flesh by rain, were boyish.
‘Please!’ she begged, and dropped to her knees in the mud. She clasped her hands together in a gesture of prayer. Tears spilled from her eyes. A gust of wind toppled her sideways. She struggled on to all fours. ‘I’m old, but I can still give you pleasure!’ She began to crawl towards the powerfully built Black Cloud. ‘I possess everything these women have! I beg of you!’
The fires had begun to subside under the onslaught of the rain. But the fresh gusts of wind fanned the flames again. The intermittent crackle of gunfire, sending bullets into the wounded, had ended. Then six reports exploded. The old woman had no time to scream. Her emaciated body fell to the ground, spasmed once, and was still.
“Dear God!’ a young, full-figured blonde woman croaked. ‘Let it be over now!’
Black Cloud’s smile took on the lines of cynicism. From the belt of the brave closest to him, he drew a tomahawk. Renewed horror was inscribed more deeply into the rain-washed faces of the women. But it was not upon any one of them that the smiling sub-chief advanced.
A young officer lay in the mud, an arrow in his chest and a bullet hole marking the precise centre of his forehead. Black Cloud knew him. Lieutenant Wycoff, who had led the patrol to arrest him. And who had beaten him senseless on no less than six occasions in vain attempts to extract a confession.
Black Cloud raised the tomahawk, stooped his back and swung his arm. His face in the flickering firelight was no longer smiling. The marks of the many beatings added to the lines of vicious hatred that seemed to drip from his features like the raindrops. The blade smashed through flesh and bone with a sharp report, as from a low caliber pistol shot. It cleaved the forehead across the bullet hole, and remained buried in the blood-oozing wound when the sub-chief drew himself erect. His new smile still held remnants of the hatred.
‘It is over,’ he announced, and laughed. ‘And you women will respond to my sign of friendship.’
‘Friendship?’ a woman gasped.
Another vomited.
‘You saw,’ Black Cloud mocked. ‘As you White Eyes say it. I have buried the hatchet.’
Chapter Two
THE lone rider astride the grey gelding reined to a halt at the side of a rock outcrop and surveyed the charred ruin of Fort Waycross. The horse flared its nostrils, pricked its ears and quivered. The man stroked the neck of the animal and sucked in a deep breath through his nose. The acrid odor of old burning had been in the hot air of mid-morning for several minutes. But only now, over a distance of a quarte
r of a mile and with the fort in sight, did horse and rider catch the sickly-sweet scent of putrefying flesh.
‘Easy, feller,’ the man muttered, gave the reins a gentle flick and touched his heels to the animal’s flanks. ‘Only old trouble smells this bad.’
The gelding responded to the urgings and moved on along the trail, out of the shade of the rocky pinnacle and into the direct heat of the sun, still nervous of the hot, evil-scented air but trusting its rider.
Beyond the simple act of calming his mount, the man showed no response to the sight and attendant stench of the destroyed fort. But, had anyone with an iota of perception been with him on the trail from Tombstone - or even watching from a pocket of cover in the barren, foothill terrain spread on either side - they might not have trusted this overt lack of reaction. For it was obvious the rider was the kind of man who commanded a high degree of self-control.
He was tall and lean without a hint of slightness about his frame: six feet three inches and weighing close to two hundred pounds. He drew his features from two races - a Mexican father and a Scandinavian mother - which combined into a whole which could be regarded as either ruggedly handsome, or menacingly ugly. Heritage and exposure to all kinds of weather gave him a dark complexion and deeply lined skin that was stretched taut between high cheekbones and a firm jaw line. Beneath a strong, jutting brow, his eyes were the brightest and clearest blue, surveying the world impassively from under hooded lids. There was a hawk-like quality about his nose, and his mouth was narrow and had a cruel look to it, even in repose. His hair was jet black and thick, reaching down in an untidy fall to brush his shoulders and conceal the nape of his neck. Although in his early thirties, his features caused him to appear close to forty. The suggestion of a moustache, drooping at each corner of his mouth, strengthened the impression of a man approaching early middle age.
EDGE: Sullivan's Law (Edge series Book 20) Page 2
