The blow hit him through the top of his nose, kicking him over to lie scrabbling on his back, looking up at a pale sky. With the odd distortion of his life-blood spurting into the air. Steaming slightly in the bitter chill. The sight puzzled him and he still hadn’t worked it out when he died.
The blow hadn’t come from the Apache axe.
It had been a forty-five caliber ball from Trooper Dearman’s Springfield rifle.
Crow killed the last of the Indians with his pistol as the boy turned and raced at him, lips peeled off the teeth with a wolfish snarl.
Small Pony was angry. The soldiers had been much better than he’d expected. Of the eleven young men who had ridden proudly in against the blue-coats only three returned alive. And one of those had a badly broken shoulder that would
likely leave him crippled for life. It was a greater toll than he’d thought possible and again he wondered about the lean man in the black clothes.
Crow.
The last two days had been bad ones for his people. The boy killed. Then the appalling massacre at Sandy Creek. Now eight of the finest of the young men taken from him. There would be sad songs around the lodges of the Chiricahua for many moons now.
He tried to decide what he should do.
Sergeant Haydon and Crow squatted together in the centre of their shrunken defensive ring and tried to decide what they should do.
Four soldiers left. Six of them against thirty warriors. They’d realized that Small Pony had deliberately sent boys against them to test them out. The next time he wouldn’t make that sorry mistake.
“We could run for it.”
The shootist shook his head. “We stay here we get to live a while longer. We run and we’re dead in an hour. They’ll ring us in and split us, like wolves after caribou.”
A quarter mile away Small Pony was in council with his half dozen veteran warriors. They were scratching with the points of knives in the dirt. In their experience they had never known such lethal fire-power. Such accuracy with long guns. If they came again at them there was no way at all that the soldiers would not kill at least ten more of them.
“It is too great a price to pay,” said Small Pony, standing with intense reluctance.
“But the blood cries for revenge.”
“And we will take it. Not now. Later. For the next years we will take soldiers when we can. Raid and kill from darkness. They will pay the blood toll many times over for these days.”
“They’re goin’,” exclaimed one of the watching troopers. “Christ! They’re just pulling out and leaving us.”
“Could be a trick,” said Haydon, cautious as ever.
“No,” replied Crow. “That’s it. We hit ’em too hard that last attack. More than they figured. Chalked up on the board what’ll happen if they rush us. They’re goin’ back to mourn.”
“And we go free.”
“Yeah. For the time. I know Apaches. They won’t just go back and rebuild their wickiups and mourn the dead. They’ll plan ways they can take revenge without them gettin’ losses.”
“And the boy?”
“Cyrus Quaid. He’s dead. Maybe not this moment. Maybe he’s still walkin’ around somewhere in that camp. But he’s a dead boy.”
“Taken some with him.”
Crow nodded at the Sergeant. “Surely did. Dead’s maybe best. Over half this patrol gone. Dozen young Apache bucks. The Lord knows how many gotten butchered in their river camp. Lot of dead.” He paused. “Yeah. A lot of dead.”
“So, what do we do now, Crow?” asked Trooper Dearman.
“Now?”
Haydon took up the question. “Yeah, Crow. Now it’s over, what do we do?”
“It’s over, Haydon.” He watched the small band of Apaches, dots against the bleak vastness of the desert, disappearing. “So, we might as well all go home.”
Chapter Fourteen
An Extract from a Report Dictated by Major Charles Lovick on the day before his death. Signed by Captain Edgar Merriweather as Acting Commanding Officer, Fort Garrett.
“The casualties included Lieutenant James Carter, Corporal Chandler and Troopers O’Croxley, Dale, Harris, Stantiford, White and Lennon. All Discharged Dead.”
“At least eight of the hostiles were reported as being killed as well as a number of women and children who were unfortunately shot down during a raid on their camp on Sandy Creek. Among other fatalities were the half-breed known as John Dancer.”
“I commend for promotion Sergeant Haydon. And the four surviving troopers to be made up a step in rank. Trooper Dearman to be specially commended and made Corporal with effect from the date of this report.”
“Also I register my thanks to the civilian scout, named Crow. Any outstanding charges or matters between himself and the United States Cavalry shall be concluded from this date and nothing further left on the record. His contribution to this mission has been mentioned by every survivor of the patrol. If it is possible I would personally appreciate it that some payment should be made to Mr. Crow as a token of our gratitude towards him.”
“Finally, I would say how sorry I am personally for the vicious prank that led to this many deaths. I have spoken to the Sutler, Cyrus Quaid Senior, and he has promised us that the boy will be punished for hiding himself away in the Fort with the willful intent of blaming the local Apaches. A plan on the boy’s part that was all too successful. I am making arrangements for a new Sutler to be found and the Quaids to be removed from Army property. There is great feeling against the boy on the fort for his stupid trick and it is better he goes.”
“I have the honor, Sir, to be Major Charles Lovick, U.S. Cavalry, Commanding Fort Garrett.”
Chapter Fifteen
On the bottom of the report, as a postscript, Captain Merriweather had written in his own hand: “The morning after dictating this document I greatly regret to tell you that Major Lovick’s illness became terminal and he passed peacefully away in his sleep. By a grim irony the boy Quaid was also found dead when his parents went to rouse him the same morning. His throat had been cut and our belief is that a warrior from the band of Small Pony managed somehow to sneak in past our guards and killed him in revenge. I am investigating with a view to punishing the sentry on watch for slackness. There will also, when the weather and circumstances permit, be a patrol to try and find the Chiricahua responsible for this fresh outrage. But in honesty I do not foresee much hope of success in this.”
Crow had left Fort Garrett a little after dawn that morning.
He’d woken early and after dressing made his way by an indirect route to the livery stables. Waking the soldier on guard there and readying the black stallion for a quick departure from Garrett. He’d had enough of it. Seen enough. All that was left was the tidying up of the one loose end.
The sentry swung open the gate for him and gave the shootist a wave. Watching the solitary, black-clad figure as it rode out into the pearly light. He watched the feathering of breath from the horse in the cold of the dawn and the splash of gold at the neck of the man called Crow where he still wore his Cavalry kerchief.
When Crow was a couple of miles from Fort Garrett he reined in the black. Dismounting and doing something that he hadn’t been able to do earlier.
Drawing the two and half feet of razored steel that he wore on his left hip. The honed-down 1860 Army saber with the brass hilt. Unsheathing it and kneeling in the cool light of morning. Tearing up a handful of dry grass and wiping the blade clean of the blood.
The fresh blood.
Standing again and looking around him. Seeing the sun beginning to rise with a serene majesty in the east.
“Yeah,” he said to himself. “It’s goin’ to be a good day. A real good day.”
CROW 8: A GOOD DAY
By James W. Marvin
First published by Transworld Publishers in 1982
Copyright © 1982,, 2015 by Laurence James
Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: January 2015.
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.
Series Editor: Mike Stotter.
Text © Piccadilly Publishing.
Published by Arrangement with Elizabeth James.
The Crow Series
The Red Hills
Worse Than Death
Tears of Blood
The Black Trail
Bodyguard
The Sisters
One-Eyed Death
A Good Day
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