The Jackals

by William W. Johnstone

  Keegan went to him. Breen saw the bloodstained arm and let the sergeant pull him up. He blinked, heard the Winchester cracking, and saw the charging warriors wheel their horses. That told him that Gwen Stanhope was all right.

  “To the rocks!” McCulloch yelled.

  A bullet creased the right side of Breen’s neck.

  The wagon lay on its side, one wheel off on the top and the rear wheel spinning and squeaking. He could not see any sign of Sir Theodore Cannon, but the back door was closed. He could see the two carpetbags and one of the canteens lying on the ground just before the rocks.

  Two mounds of rocks were about forty yards apart. The wagon had crashed into one, which was closer.

  Gwen Stanhope started for that one, but Breen pulled her away and shoved her in the opposite direction. “That way.”

  “It’s farther!” she yelled.

  “But it’ll steer those Apaches away from Sir Theodore.” Breen started running.

  “If he’s still alive.” Keegan shook his head, grabbed the woman’s arm and led her after Breen. McCulloch followed.

  Sean Keegan dived over the rocks as a bullet ricocheted just past his ear. Immediately, he rolled over, bounded to his feet, drew a bead on a screaming warrior, and knocked him off his galloping dun with a shot from the Springfield. Falling back behind the rocks, Keegan reloaded the .45-70 after he shoved Gwen Stanhope onto the ground. Stepping over her, McCulloch snatched the Winchester carbine from her hand and sent two quick shots.

  While lying on his back and reloading the Sharps, Jed Breen nodded at the Texas Ranger. “I still think it was a fine idea.”

  McCulloch shrugged. “Maybe next time we’ll have a newer wagon that won’t fall apart.”

  An arrow smashed against the rocks over their heads. McCulloch ducked, and began fingering the holders in his shell belt. He swore, and turned to Keegan. “I’ve maybe five in the Winchester, maybe not that many, and only four in the pistol. How about you?”

  They counted off. The number didn’t make any of them overly hopeful.

  “Those Indians are leaving the wagon alone,” McCulloch said as another Apache round whined off the rocks.

  “For now,” Breen said.

  “He hasn’t come out yet,” Keegan said. “I fear he’s dead.”

  “Likely he’ll have company soon.” Gwen Stanhope screamed and pointed. “Here comes one of them!”

  “I see him,” Keegan said. “It’s old Holy Shirt himself.”

  McCulloch braced his rifle on the rocks, and flipped up the rear tang sight. Breen moved to the side and aimed his Sharps.

  Holy Shirt, naked except a breechcloth, rode a high-stepping brown horse. He carried a lance in his left hand and held the hackamore in his right.

  “Sun just reflected off something in his right hand,” Breen said.

  “Knife?” McCulloch asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You get first crack, Breen,” Keegan said. “When he’s in range.”

  “He was in range a half-mile ago,” Breen said.

  “Can you hit him from here?” Gwen Stanhope asked plaintively.

  “I . . .” He lowered the rifle, raised his head, and muttered, “What the hell?”

  The door to the overturned wagon was being pushed open, and the sun reflected brightly, causing Breen to turn his head.

  “It’s that damned fool Cannon,” Keegan said.

  Breen turned back, brought up the Sharps again, and lowered it. He yelled, “Get out of the way, Sir Theo! Drop down. Get out of the way.”

  McCulloch’s mouth hung open.

  Gwen Stanhope stood. “What’s he doing?”

  The Apache reined in. The surviving warriors behind him stopped their chanting.

  All that the four people hiding in the rocks could hear was Sir Theodore Cannon’s voice.

  “‘. . . Handmart is preparing for a settlement of his heavy demand for the stables,’” Sir Theodore Cannon said in his Cockney accent. “‘Then there is Temper for pictures and other things for Miss Florence Trenchard’s account with Madame Pompon, and—

  “‘Confound it, why harass me with details, these infernal particulars? ’” he continued, using a haughty English voice. “‘Have you made out the total?’”

  The brown horse carrying Holy Shirt reared and turned in a circle as the medicine man got the horse in control. The Indian lowered his lance.

  One of the Apaches let loose an arrow, but it clanged off the belly of the armor. The actor moved back to his Cockney dialect. “Four thousand, eight hundred and thirty pounds, nine shillings, and sixpence.”

  Holy Shirt reined in his horse.

  “I don’t have a shot!” Breen yelled. “Sir Theodore’s right in my line of fire. Can you take him, Keegan?”

  Two bullets whined off rocks above Keegan’s head. “Not without getting my head shot off.”

  “Toss me your rifle,” Breen said, and he moved toward the sergeant before bullets sent him diving for cover. “Sons of bitches. Now they decide to shoot guns.”

  “If they shoot Cannon, he’s a goner!” McCulloch yelled.

  But they weren’t shooting at the knight, at least, not with powder and lead.

  “Matt!” Keegan yelled.

  “I’m empty,” McCulloch said, and tossed his carbine into the dust.

  Gwen gasped and shouted, “Holy Shirt’s about to charge.”

  Carefully, the three men raised their heads just enough to see.

  Holy Shirt shrieked his war cry, kicked the stallion in the ribs, and galloped toward the actor, who had stopped Our American Cousin and had become Falstaff in Henry IV: Part I.

  No longer able to take it, Breen came to his feet, and ran out from the rocks. Keegan jumped from his perch and joined the charge.

  McCulloch shook his head, and hurried past Gwen Stanhope. “Nobody lives forever.”

  The woman stood, watching the three men charge at the charging Apache, and the other Indians whoop and cheer. Suddenly, she just smiled and took off, too.

  McCulloch drew his pistol and fired twice from the hip, hoping to startle the horse. He cut loose with a Rebel cry.

  But they knew they would never reach the actor in time.

  Sir Theodore had drawn the heavy sword from its scabbard as he marched out to meet the charging Apache. The other Indians stood back, still cheering, still singing, and some of them, having overcome their fear of the man in the shiny metal, were laughing at him.

  Those with repeating rifles opened up on the charging white foursome. And all four dived to the ground for cover.

  Holy Shirt let the lance sail. Sir Theodore Cannon blocked it with a shield.

  Keegan, McCulloch and Breen lifted their heads.

  The woman covered her eyes. “I can’t watch.”

  The Indian reined in the frightened horse and leveled his right hand.

  “He’s got a gun!” McCulloch yelled.

  Holy Shirt held a Remington derringer in his right hand, and he pointed it at the actor in shining armor.

  In a proper accent and back to Our American Cousin, Sir Theodore said, “‘Well, of course we must find means of settling this extortion.’”

  The .41-caliber hideaway gun popped. Once. Twice.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Keegan cringed as the knight spun around.

  “Nooo!” Jed Breen cried out, and he stood up.

  The knight in all that armor twisted and staggered, and started to topple but managed to keep himself upright by stabbing the earth with his broadsword.

  The Apaches in the distance cheered.

  Breen came up and began running toward the actor and the Apache, whose horse bucked and reared. Suddenly, the knight straightened, turned, and walked toward old Holy Shirt.

  The brown arched and reared again, and Holy Shirt fell to the ground as the horse galloped away from the staggering knight. The Apache came up, wiped his face, and lunged for the lance he had thrown earlier. He grabbed it and stood as Breen
stopped and aimed the Sharps, then cursed.

  “Shoot!” Keegan roared.

  “I can’t. I might hit Cannon, too!”

  The Apache unleashed the lance and hit the knight dead center, knocking him backward, but not off his feet. The lance fell down. Holy Shirt drew his knife and charged.

  Sir Theodore Cannon shook his rattling head and raised the sword just as Holy Shirt reached him.

  Matt McCulloch had the best view. He saw the broadsword drive through the medicine man’s body.

  The Indian fell over dead.

  Sir Theodore Cannon managed to stagger a few feet away then fell loudly on a bed of prickly pear. He did not move.

  “Yiii-eeee!” One of the Apaches charged.

  The other Apaches watched.

  Keegan and Breen fired at the same time, and the brave was catapulted off his pony’s back.

  The three men turned their weapons toward the other Apaches, although Breen kept glancing at the pile of silver that did not move.

  “How many bullets do we have now?” Keegan asked.

  “Math and me never quite saw eye to eye,” McCulloch said.

  “Sir Theodore,” Breen whispered. “Sir Theodore . . .”

  “Hey!” Gwen Stanhope laughed. “Look! They’re leaving.”

  They watched as the Apaches disgraced themselves by leaving their dead, including the already disgraced medicine man, Holy Shirt, who had broken his own medicine by using a Remington over-and-under. 41-caliber derringer and then had died at the hands of a warrior and weapon from the fifteenth century.

  “I’ll be the damnedest suck-egg mule I ever saw,” Sean Keegan said, as he butted his Springfield on the ground. “We’re still alive.”

  A bullet splintered the stock of Keegan’s weapon and sent the carbine tumbling across the ground.

  “Riders!” Breen shouted.

  Three riders galloped their horses across the floor between the mound of rocks.

  “More Apaches?” Gwen cried out.

  McCulloch saw the puff of smoke from the charging riders and felt a bullet whine off a boulder somewhere. He turned back to see the last of the Indians dipping into an arroyo, out of view. “No, I don’t think so.”

  The Sharps roared like a cannon, and one of the horses went down, sending its rider crashing hard in front of the animal, which rolled over the body. One rider glanced that way then leaned low in the saddle. Breen lowered the Sharps, opened the breech, and fished out another long cartridge. He studied the dust where horse and rider had fallen. Neither man nor beast moved.

  “Spread out,” McCulloch said. “Two men left. They can’t take all three of us.”

  “Four,” Gwen Stanhope said.

  “You’re right, ma’am,” McCulloch said. “Four.”

  Keegan’s gun roared, and another rider was booted from his saddle, landing with a thud, but that horse turned and galloped back toward El Paso.

  “Odds,” Stanhope said, “are getting better.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve got just one cartridge left,” Keegan said.

  About a hundred yards away, the third rider slowed his horse to a walk. When he reached fifty yards, he reined in.

  “McCulloch!” he yelled. “Matt McCulloch.”

  The Ranger stepped forward. “Yeah.”

  “You killed my brother, McCulloch. I’m here to kill you.”

  “I’ve killed a lot of men’s brothers,” McCulloch said.

  The rider swung down from his horse.

  “I shot that damned fool off his horse!” Jed Breen yelled. “Not Matt McCulloch.”

  “That wasn’t my brother. I’m Jake Hawkin!”

  Breen whispered a curse, and then he grinned. “What’s the reward on Hawkin’s head now?” He started to ear back the hammer on the Sharps.

  “This is personal, Breen,” McCulloch said. “I’ll take him.”

  Breen sighed. “All right. But if he kills you, I’m killing him. And the reward’s all mine.”

  “He won’t kill me,” McCulloch said, and started walking toward the outlaw.

  Breen butted the Sharps. Keegan cradled the Springfield in his arms. They watched as the Ranger strode across the ground, while Jake Hawkin wrapped the reins around a bush and walked toward the approaching Texan.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” Gwen Stanhope asked.

  “It’s his fight,” Breen said.

  “He called it,” Keegan echoed.

  “But—”

  Keegan shook his head. “If McCullough’s a jackal like that yellow-livered Griffin claimed, then I’m a son of a soiled dove.”

  Breen nodded. “You are a son of a soiled dove, Keegan, but that man . . . McCulloch . . . well . . . he’s a man. But don’t ever let him know I said that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Keegan said. “I won’t.”

  “I can’t believe you two,” the woman said. “You’ll just let him face that killer, alone, without any help.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Breen said. “Because if Hawkin kills him, we get more money.”

  With forty feet between them, the outlaw and the former Ranger stopped.

  “Jake,” McCulloch nodded.

  “Matt.” Hawkin hooked his thumbs inside his gunbelt. McCulloch did the same.

  “You didn’t do Billy right, Matt,” the outlaw said.

  “I gave him a chance.”

  “You should have buried him.”

  “Then the Apaches might have buried me. Figuratively, you know.”

  Hawkin nodded. “Yeah. I guess you’re right about that.”

  “I’m no longer a Ranger, Jake. Means I have no authority to bring you in. So you can ride out of here right now.”

  A gust of wind turned both men’s heads, just slightly.

  “I aim to do that, Matt. After I kill you.”

  “I ought to warn you, Jake.” McCulloch gestured behind him. “One of those men behind me is Jed Breen. I figure you’ve heard of him.”

  Hawkin nodded. “I have. He got that Big Fifty with him?”

  McCulloch nodded.

  “Well. I guess I’ll have to kill him, too.” Hawkin nodded and pointed with his left pinky. “What the hell is that big thing on the ground?”

  “That’s a knight, Jake. In full armor.” McCulloch didn’t feel like explaining, so he changed the subject. “The bank robbery in Sierra Vista?”

  “I thought you weren’t a lawman anymore.”

  “I’m not. But I have to know. Was a man named Henderson involved? Harry Henderson?”

  “I don’t rat out friends or enemies, Matt.”

  “You’re not. The Apaches got Henderson.”

  “Did they get the money?”

  Matt McCulloch sighed. He did not answer the outlaw’s query. Instead, he tried something else. “You wouldn’t happen to know if Henderson has a wife in El Paso, would you?”

  “You know me, Matt. I never pry into anybody’s business. This’ll be for Billy, Matt. He was no good. But he was my brother.”

  “I know, Jake. But the thing is. You were no good, too.” McCulloch palmed the .44-40, stepped to his right, and fired.

  Surprised that a Texas Ranger would draw first, Hawkin had his gun halfway out of the holster when the bullet spun him around. He reflexively squeezed the trigger and blew apart the pear of a cactus plant as he dropped to his knees. Coughing, he turned a bit and felt another bullet punch his side. The revolver slipped from his hand, but he managed to stand, turn, and start walking toward McCulloch.

  McCulloch let the outlaw come.

  Hawkin had no weapon. He was a dead man, but he just kept walking. “You”—he managed to raise his right hand and point accusingly at the Texan—“you . . . drew . . . first.”

  McCulloch nodded.

  Hawkin dropped to his knees, bent over, spit up blood, and lifted his head. “That . . . ain’t . . . right.”

  “I told you, Jake. I’m not a Ranger anymore.”

  The outlaw coughed, blinked, and then a smile crept
across his face. He was laughing as he fell to his side, then shuddered, and closed his eyes.

  The wind stopped blowing. The sun no longer felt so hot, and the desert suddenly looked glorious. Texas could be that way, it seemed. Desolate, disturbing, and deadly in one moment, then glorious, almost like the Garden of Eden, the next.

  When you suddenly felt alive, the place took on a new look, and gave you a new meaning.

  Matt McCulloch felt that way.

  So did Sean Keegan.

  So did Jed Breen, even though he knew he could never collect the substantial reward on Jake Hawkin’s head . . . unless Matt McCulloch met an untimely demise before reaching El Paso.

  Keegan and Breen walked out to meet McCulloch, who carefully picked up the revolver Jake Hawkin had dropped and shoved it into his waistband.

  The soldier and the bounty hunter waited by Hawkin’s body.

  “The wind carried part of your conversation in our direction,” Keegan said. “I take it you two knew each other.”

  “In the war,” McCulloch said. “We served in the same outfit.”

  “I see,” Keegan said. “Wasn’t prying.”

  McCulloch shrugged.

  “You were pards?” Breen asked, and grinned when the Ranger looked at him. “Yeah. I am prying.”

  McCulloch gave another shrug. “It doesn’t matter. He’d stop for remounts at my ranch from time to time.”

  “You didn’t turn him in?” Breen asked.

  “Wasn’t a Ranger in those days.”

  “And you sold him fresh horses?” Keegan asked.

  “Traded. Well, that’s not exactly right. I’d wake up one morning to find some of my horses gone and tired horses in the corral.”

  “The Matt McCulloch I know wouldn’t have allowed that without a few words,” Breen said.

  “The Matt McCulloch you know wasn’t the same man back then. Besides, I usually got the better end of the trade. The horses he left were better than the horses he took.”

  “Knowing your reputation for horses, that’s hard to believe,” Keegan said.

  McCulloch gave yet another shrug. “Believe what you want. That’s the truth.”

  “Speaking of horses, we’ve got two horses now,” Breen said. “The Apache’s. And Hawkin’s.”

  “If we can catch them up,” McCulloch said.