The Jackals

by William W. Johnstone

  “What friends do I—?” She didn’t finish because Timmons had managed to pull Brant inside.

  The scream did not sound human. Gwen covered her mouth, her eyes widening in terror, and slowly she understood that she had not screamed. That had come from Henry or Harold or Harry or whatever name he was using at the moment.

  The body of the drummer bounced off the seat, hit the floor, and knocked the door open.

  Once again, Rourke’s shotgun thundered. Timmons stepped across the body and grabbed the door. “God have mercy on our souls.” He slammed the door shut, dropped to his knees, and opened the satchel he had set by his feet.

  Gwen couldn’t take her eyes off the drummer. An arrow was jammed into his side, almost all the way to the feathered shaft, and another had gone right into his ear. A third was lower, in his side. His eyes remained wide open, unblinking, and as she looked at his face, she did not see the fat drummer but Kirk Van Patten, whom she had killed. Another shotgun blast by Rourke snapped that mirage.

  “Apaches!” said Glenn Reed.

  “You take that side,” said Timmons, who opened his Schofield, snapped it shut, and moved to the far side, bracing his feet against the dead man’s head, and extending his arm out the open window.

  “I’m guarding my prisoner!” Reed said.

  “The hell with your prisoner, Sheriff!” the newspaper editor shouted.

  The shotgun roared. So did the Schofield in Timmons’s hand.

  Gwen stared at the deputy sheriff incredulously.

  The lawman grinned. “It might be fun to let the Apaches have you, but then Charles wouldn’t pay me . . .” One minute he was talking. The next second blood was pouring out of his mouth like water from an artesian well.

  Gwen blinked, trying to comprehend, and at last saw the revolver he had dropped onto the floor, and the two hands clutching the shaft of the arrow that had somehow struck him in the center of his throat.

  Deputy Sheriff Glenn Reed slowly tilted onto his side, clutching the bloody shaft of the arrow, sucking for air until he stopped breathing and just stared across the coach, looking completely shocked and completely dead.

  On the other side of the stage, Timmons fired the Schofield. Gwen looked at the newspaper editor, who seemed even paler than Brant had when he was just sick and not dead. The coward with the carpetbags remained rigid. The deputy’s pistol lay where it fell, and Gwen realized that neither Alvin J. Griffin IV, editor and publisher of the Purgatory City Herald Leader, nor Harvey Harrison or whatever his name was had any inclination or backbone to save their hides. She leaned off her seat, swept up the pistol in her manacled hands, and slid onto the seat that had previously been occupied by Timmons of Toledo, Ohio.

  She set the revolver on her lap to raise the curtain, and once she had that secured, she felt the arrow whistle past her ear and thud into the padding on the wall behind her. That almost shattered her nerves, but she choked down the fear, snatched the revolver, and aimed.

  All she saw, however, was dust. The coach hit a hole or a rock or something, and the Concord rocked, almost overturned, and slammed her against the wood. After choking back a curse and fighting off the pain, she looked again, searching for a target.

  On the other side of the stagecoach, Timmons’s Schofield boomed. Timmons, maybe, had a better view. The wind was blowing toward Gwen, so the dust might not be as thick on his side. Or perhaps he was just pulling the trigger to scare off those Indians, or let them know that customers inside the coach were armed and ready.

  Wetting her lips, Gwen kept the pistol level and cocked, but no warriors rode into sight. She became aware that she no longer heard Rourke’s shotgun above, and feared that he might be dead. Another thought jarred her. Both the jehu and the messenger could be dead and the team was carrying the coach pell-mell and out of control. Curses above did not make her relax, but at least she knew someone was up there driving the team.

  The coach banged skyward again then landed on the two wheels nearest Gwen, and she saw the ground coming up to meet her. She also saw a figure slam onto the road as the coach righted itself. She looked before the dust flew inside and saw the figure rolling into the ditch. She blinked. That man wasn’t dressed like the messenger. That had been the driver, Petey.

  “Damn your sorry hides!” shouted the voice above. “Move, mules. Run. Run, damn your hides. Else we’re all dead!”

  That was Rourke. Petey, the driver, was dead, and his body was just off the road. That explained why the shotgun was no longer being fired upstairs.

  Gwen saw a white figure emerge from the dust. She blinked, wondering if she might be hallucinating, for the figure looked like an angel. But that thought died quickly, too, because the figure was an Apache, dressed in light-colored buckskin, with long black hair dancing in the wind. And the horse was not white, but gray.

  The revolver shook in her hand as the warrior drove his magnificent stallion closer to the stagecoach. The derringer had been impossible to hold steady when she had killed Kirk Van Patten, too. She never quite grasped how she had managed to hit him, let alone kill the brute. But that memory helped her find her nerve, and the dead deputy sheriff ’s gun stopped shaking. She no longer saw an Apache warrior with a lance in his right hand, preparing to throw it into Gwen’s body. She saw that miserable swine of a man who was going to beat her to death. The gun bucked in her hand, the lance flew off to the side of the road, the warrior clutched his chest and toppled off the horse, and the gray went galloping into the dust.

  She could breathe. No longer did fear grip her. Cocking the revolver, she waited.

  The wagon sounded different, and the scenery vanished, replaced by rocky walls. They had made it to the canyon country, and if Gwen’s mind were not playing tricks on her, that meant they would soon be at the stagecoach station. The dust grew thicker, funneled down the narrow entrance of the canyon.

  Another rut or stone or hole bounced them around, but the stagecoach kept moving.

  “Folks!” yelled the man driving the Concord. “If anyone back there’s alive and can hear me, we’ll be at Culpepper’s in a few minutes, God willing! As soon as this bucket stops, pile out and don’t be lazy! Don’t be stupid. Leave everything that ain’t breathing where it is. Go through the doors and take cover. And you best know what to do with that last bullet. In case things get—” He did not finish. “Here we come, folks! Remember. Into the station and make it snappy!”

  Bracing herself, Gwen felt the stagecoach slide to a hard stop. Dust blinded her as it swept inside the coach. Just breathing hurt, and with her eyes clamped shut, she tried to find the latch to the door.

  Suddenly, the door swung open with a bang. She heard a curse, felt someone move past her, and then she managed to open her eyes. It was the newspaperman. Alvin Griffin wasted no time departing the coach. Gwen tried to shake her head, but before she could stand, the little coward had leaped past her, out of the door, and into the dust. She would not have recognized him had she not caught a glimpse of the hideously colored and designed carpetbags he was carrying.

  So much for leaving behind personal items that were not breathing.

  She made it out of the coach and felt her legs on solid ground. She reached out to help Mr. Timmons, who, still gripping the Schofield in his right hand, was coming toward her.

  She heard the unmistakable sounds of arrows cutting through the air, then the jarring, numbing sound of arrows striking flesh. The Schofield flew out of Timmons’s hand and struck Gwen in her chest. She fell backward onto the dust, and her head struck the ground hard.

  Arms reached under her, lifted her up. Gwen’s eyes opened to saw Mr. Timmons, his left hand sticking out through the window of the coach, his right slapping at his back. Another thump and the look on Timmons’s face told her that another Apache arrow had found its mark. The messenger, Rourke, was at the side of the coach, reaching for Timmons’s hand.

  “Forget it,” the red-bearded man said. “I’m done for.”

  Timmons
, that brave man from Toledo, Ohio, closed his eyes and slowly slumped into the coach. She couldn’t see his face or his body, just that hand, fingers curled, hanging out of the window.

  We’re all going to die.

  That would be her last thought.

  Her eyes closed, but opened as she heard herself say, “Nobody lives forever.”

  Her shoes dragged across the ground. That’s the first thing she saw. Next, she spotted Rourke. With the shotgun in his left hand, he scooped up the Schofield with his right.

  Only seconds had passed.

  Gwen felt shade and saw the roof above her. She was inside a building. The door shut, and she saw Rourke and a . . . a . . . a . . . man from the Bible, no, the Middle Ages help slam the heavy cottonwood bar onto the holds on the sides of the door. It was like she was in the Leadville Opera House watching King Lear.

  She was being laid down, fairly gently, and she looked into the face of the man who had dragged her from the stagecoach to the inside of Culpepper’s Station.

  “Ma’am.” He tipped his hat and disappeared.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Picking up the Sharps, Jed Breen hurried across the practically barren quarters of the stagecoach station. He heard the hooves of horses, the yips of the warriors, and the thudding of arrows as they struck the door, the shutters, and the stone walls. Back during the days of the original Overland Mail, Culpepper had been no fool when he had erected the stagecoach stop. The solid walls, some adobe but mostly stone, were two feet thick, and the roof might have been made of wood, but it had been covered with three feet of dirt and more rocks. Nobody, not even the Apaches, would be burning them out. The doors looked to be wood. So did the shutters. But those heavy cottonwood boards covered an iron interior.

  The place had been built better than any Army gunboat.

  He rammed the rifle barrel through the gunport, bent, and tried to find a target.

  Laughing, he pulled back the Sharps and stepped away from the closed bolted window. He shook his head. You had to respect those Apache bucks.

  “What?” asked the man from the stagecoach.

  “They’ve already pulled the mules out of their harnesses and vanished,” Breen said.

  “How about the coach?” the man said.

  “It’s still out there. For now.”

  “Well, the president of this company will hear from me and my paper,” said one of the men from the coach, the one who wasn’t hugging two ugly carpetbags as he huddled in the corner. “This is an outrage. I’ll—”

  “Shut up,” Breen told him, and walked to the woman, picking up a cup off the table. He held it to the handsome woman as he knelt. “Ma’am, it’s not hot. It’s not even good. But it might perk you up.”

  She smiled, and the metal cuffs jingled as she lifted her hands. She hesitated, maybe embarrassed or maybe just annoyed at the handcuffs.

  “Silver is becoming on most ladies,” Breen said. “But I expect even brass would look wonderful on you, ma’am.”

  She tested the coffee and smiled.

  “Keys?” he asked.

  “I . . . um . . . stagecoach.”

  “Colonel, open the door.”

  “You’re not going out there just so you can unchain this wench, sir!” the newspaperman bellowed.

  Breen turned. “If you want to show your chivalry, I’ll let you do your good turn for the day, mister.”

  “I will not have you risk my life—or the lives of these other good people—to free a concubine and a murderess bound for the gallows.”

  Breen glanced at the blonde, sizing her up.

  “Leave her chained!” said the coward in the corner.

  Sir Theodore Cannon climbed atop the table, put his right hand inside his cloak, closed his eyes, and began speaking.

  “I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I waked him, you should half his revenue forever and live the beloved of your brother.”

  “What the hell?” said the newspaper journalist.

  Breen grinned. “Well said, Earl of Gloucester. Get that bar off the door.”

  “I forbid you to risk our lives for a woman who is doomed to hang.” The newspaperman had found his backbone and was standing, pointing a finger. “Do you know who I am, sir? I am Alvin J. Griffin the Fourth, mister, and I edit and also publish the renowned Herald Leader in Purgatory City, sir.”

  That stopped Breen, who turned around, and looked over the gent.

  “You’ve heard of me, I presume,” Alvin J. Griffin IV said.

  “Indeed I have. I’ve even read some of your editorials. My name’s Breen, Mr. Editor. Jed Breen. Or maybe you should just call me . . . a jackal.”

  Breen looked at the man drawn up into a ball in the corner, clutching the carpetbags, and then at the shotgun who had driven in the stagecoach. “I don’t know how many bucks are out there, folks, but we stand a better chance if this lady has both of her hands freed to kill some Apaches before they kill us. Anybody else want to argue with me?”

  The stagecoach employee and the actor lifted the bar, and Breen darted outside and stepped toward the coach.

  It stank of death. After climbing over the body of the corpse that partially blocked the door closest to the station, Breen saw the body of another man lying faceup on the floor. He guessed that the lawman was the other dead man who lay on the seat in a pool of blood. Anyway, that’s the one that looked like a lawman, and bounty hunters like Jed Breen could pretty much spot any lawman.

  Sure enough, when Breen pushed back the dead man’s coat, he saw the badge pinned above the top pocket on his vest. He stuck his fingers inside the coat pocket, pulled out a wallet, and looked through it quickly.

  And he started to sweat.

  The first vest pocket held a few matches. The second one held a cheap watch. The third had the keys, and one of those Breen knew from prior experience was a key that could lock and unlock manacles. He stopped searching, and with his free hand, gripped the butt of the Lightning on his hip.

  An Apache in buckskins jumped in front of the door, and raised a knife over his head. With the .38 revolver already in Breen’s hand, two quick bullets drove the warrior over the hitching rail. Instantly, the door opposite Breen jerked open. Breen dived over the body of the Indian who had died in the doorway. Turning back toward the opening, he saw the Apache raise his arm to thrust the lance. Suddenly, the Indian’s face disappeared in an eruption of bone, blood, and brains, and he slammed atop the dead white man.

  “In the station!” a voice yelled from the desert. “I’m white. I’m alone. And I’m coming in!”

  Breen was crawling out. He dropped to the ground, turned around, and using the front wheel for cover, aimed the Colt at the corrals.

  The door behind him opened, and the man from the stagecoach rushed outside, taking cover behind the rear wheel. “Who in hell is that?”

  “I don’t know, but when he shows, if he’s not a white man, gun him down.” Breen saw dust behind the barn. “Because I detest a liar.”

  The man came from the side of the cistern by the corrals. The first thing Breen noticed were the buckskin britches. That briefly made him think it might be an Indian because the rest of the man’s outfit was that of a soldier. Apaches had been known to use white man’s duds to sneak closer to their prey.

  But not those Apaches, he remembered. They were Holy Shirt’s boys, those that shunned all white man conveniences.

  Crouched low, the man was running at angles from the cistern. He held a big revolver in one hand, a Springfield trapdoor in the other, and a few canteens were slung over his shoulder.

  “Let him come,” Breen told the stagecoach man when he lifted his shotgun.

  An Apache dropped off the roof, swung a tomahawk, and dropped the shotgun guard into the dust. Breen shot the brave dead, as an arrow cut across his collar, drawing blood. Bree
n rolled to his side and saw another brave coming at him. A gun roared, and the warrior’s chest exploded crimson. He staggered awkwardly and dropped to his side as about a dozen riders galloped into the yard.

  From the doorway, Sir Theodore Cannon blasted two barrels from a shotgun that dropped a horse and sent an Apache toppling over. As the thespian reloaded the double barrels, he began screaming at the top of his voice.

  “Blood and destruction shall be so in use

  And dreadful objects so familiar

  That mothers shall but smile when they behold

  Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;

  All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:

  And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,

  With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

  Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice

  Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;

  That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

  With carrion men, groaning for burial.”

  The shotgun barked again.

  The soldier, or ex-soldier, or whoever he was, swung the Springfield like a club. The actor stepped outside and fired the shotgun from his hip. Breen brained one young Apache with the barrel of his Lightning, sending the warrior through the doorway. A lance flew through the open doorway.

  Breen thought This is it. But Death comes for us all!

  Dust. Sand. Breen could see little, but pulled the trigger on the Lightning anyway. He felt his back pressing against the jagged walls of the station as Apaches sang out war songs. They yipped. They shouted. Their horses screamed. Arrows whistled overhead, bounced off the stone walls, and then a grinning warrior stepped out of the dust and prepared to gut Breen with his knife. Breen turned the Lightning at the warrior’s black-painted face and squeezed the trigger again. Nothing. He pulled the trigger once more, saw the hammer drop, and heard nothing. The Lightning was empty. He wondered how long he had been dropping the hammer on empty shells.