Blood Sky at Morning

by Jory Sherman

  The sounds were louder now. A rustle of cloth, a deep sigh, and that same metallic chitter sounding like a tin grasshopper working its mandibles, or a squirrel muttering low in its mechanical throat. He saw movement and stretched his neck to look inside toward the window where someone had shot at him moments before.

  A dark shape and the unmistakable straight line of a rifle barrel silhouetted against the window’s pale light. A figure hunched over, fiddling with the trigger or the trigger guard. The action on the Sharps was jammed, he figured, and the shooter had not ejected the empty hull nor jammed in another .50 caliber round.

  Zak eased up through the doorway, still hunched over in a crouch, and stepped carefully onto the dirt floor. He made no sound as he tiptoed toward the figure with its back to him. He knew, from a quick glance, that there was no one else in the room. Just that bent form below the window, struggling with the Sharps, absorbed in freeing the jam, breathing hard and fast, the sucking in and out of an open mouth and nostrils.

  Zak grabbed the end of the barrel as he rammed the barrel of his pistol into the back of the person’s head. He thumbed the hammer back on the Walker Colt to full cock, the sound like an iron door opening in a dark cave.

  “One twitch,” Zak said, “and I blow your brains to powder.”

  He heard a startled gasp that sounded almost like a sob, and he snatched the rifle out of the squatting person’s hands, tossed it to the side and behind him.

  “Just stand up,” Zak said. “Real slow.”

  He looked downward at long black hair. As the figure rose from the floor, he saw it stream down the back of her dress. He felt something tighten in his throat. A lump began to form as she slowly turned around and looked up at him. Her lips were quivering in fear and her dress rippled from her shaking legs.

  “Jimmy,” Zak yelled toward the window, “you can come in now.”

  He saw the crown of Jimmy’s hat bob up in the window, then disappear. A moment later Chama entered the hut, pistol in hand.

  “Lady,” Zak said, “step out where I can see you. We won’t hurt you.”

  She was young, Zak could tell that. But as she stepped toward him, he could see that her eyes were very old, and full of pain, the pain of centuries, and the pain of her present existence. Her brown eyes lay in watery tired sockets and the flesh beneath them was darker than her face, sagging from too many nights of weeping and maybe hard drinking. There was an odd smell in the room, one that he could not define, but was faintly familiar.

  Chama walked over to a table and picked up a clay pipe, sniffed it.

  “Opium,” he said. “She’s been smoking opium.”

  “That’s what I smelled,” Zak said. “The room reeks with it.”

  “Quien eres?” the woman said in Spanish.

  “My name’s Cody. Do you speak English?”

  “Yes. I speak it.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Her name,” Chama said, “is Carmen Delgado. She is the wife of Julio Delgado.”

  “You know her?”

  “I have seen her before,” Jimmy said. “In the jail at Taos. She was bailing out her husband, Julio, who had beaten her up the night before.”

  “Is this true?” Zak asked Carmen.

  “He did not mean it. Julio gets loco sometimes. When he drinks too much.”

  “Julio stole tiswin from a Chiricahua and killed the man he stole it from,” Chama said. “I tracked him to Taos.”

  “You didn’t arrest him?”

  “I tried. Nobody would listen to me. Julio is a bad man, a killer.”

  Carmen’s eyes flashed. “Mentiroso,” she spat, her eyes blazing. “You liar,” she said in English.

  “It is true,” Chama said. “The Apaches would like to see Julio hanged, or if they could get their hands on him, they would cut him into many pieces.”

  “Well, Carmen,” Zak said, “looks like Julio run off and left you here by yourself.”

  “He come back,” she said.

  “Was he one of those who painted himself like an Apache?”

  “I no tell you nothing,” she said.

  Chama stepped in close and glared at her.

  “Answer the questions,” he said. “Maybe he won’t kill you.” He spoke in Spanish, but Zak understood every word.

  “That’s good advice, Carmen,” Zak said. “You want to live, don’t you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Zak picked up the clay pipe, held it front of her.

  “You want to dream again, don’t you?” he said.

  Her eyes flashed, burned with need, with longing. Then they returned to their dull dead state as her shoulders slumped. She seemed resigned to the hell she was probably going through, but her lips pressed together in defiance.

  “Just tell me their names, Carmen,” Zak said, “and you can fill your pipe.”

  “They are friends of Julio,” she said.

  “They work for Hiram Ferguson, don’t they?”

  Her eyes widened and flashed again. “You know they do.”

  “Tell me their names.”

  Chama put the snout of his pistol up against Carmen’s temple. He thumbed the hammer back. The double click sounded like a lock opening on an iron tomb. Silence filled the room as the blood drained from Carmen’s face.

  “They have gone,” she said. “You will not catch them.”

  “No matter. But I want to know their names. There were six of them. Julio was one of them.”

  “Yes,” she spat. “Julio is their leader. He is a very strong man. If you go after him, he will kill you.”

  “The names,” Zak said.

  Chama pushed the barrel of his pistol hard against Carmen’s temple. She winced and licked dry lips with a dry tongue.

  “No matter to me,” she said. “Hector Gonzalez and his brother, Fidel. Renaldo Valdez, Jaime Elizondo, and Manuel Diego. They ride with Julio.” She paused, then said, “Give me the pipe.”

  Chama eased the hammer down to half cock and pulled the pistol away from Carmen’s face. But it still pointed at her.

  “I think you’ve had enough opium, Carmen,” Zak said. “Now, we’re going for a little ride.”

  “Where do we go?” she said.

  “To the next one of these adobe way stations, then to Tucson. To find Julio.”

  “He will kill you,” she said, and as Zak threw the pipe down on the dirt floor, a shadow of a sadness came into her eyes and her dry tongue laved her lower lip.

  “Saddle a horse for her, Jimmy, will you? Let’s get the hell out of here, out of this stink.”

  The adobe reeked with the stench of whiskey, opium fumes, stale bread, and moldy tortillas. But there was also the lingering scent of pipe tobacco and burnt powder from the Sharps. Zak picked up the rifle, examined it. There was a dent in the receiver’s action, a dimple that kept it from ejecting unless force was used. Apparently, he thought, Carmen didn’t have the strength to force the breech open. And she was not even a good shot.

  “Why would Julio leave you here all by yourself?” Zak asked her after Chama had taken saddle, bridle, and blanket from a corner and lugged it outside.

  “He said he would be back soon.”

  “What’s soon?”

  “Two days, he say. Maybe three.”

  “Do you know why he was coming back?”

  “No.”

  “Who was here before you came? The man who was watching the place, taking care of the stock?”

  “I do not know his name. He works for Hiram.”

  “He went back with the wagon? With the army lieutenant?”

  “There was a man in the wagon. His hands and feet were tied with rope. He did not wear an army uniform.”

  “But you knew he was a soldier?”

  Carmen nodded. “They said he was a soldier.”

  “Do you know where they took this soldier?”

  “To Tucson. To the office of Hiram, I think.”

  “Did Julio ride with the wagon?”
>
  “No. The wagon came after he left.”

  Zak threw the rifle down. He picked up a lamp, shook it. There was the gurgle of oil inside its base. He pulled the stopper and splashed the coal oil around the room.

  “What do you do?” Carmen asked.

  “Nobody’s going to use this adobe again,” he said.

  “You burn?”

  Zak ushered her to the door, turned and struck a match. He tossed it on a place where the coal oil made a dark stain. The match flared and guttered, then flared again as the heat reached the coal oil. The oil burst into a small flame that grew larger.

  “My purse,” Carmen said. “My boots.”

  “Too late,” Zak said, stepping outside and closing the door.

  Inside, he could hear the crackle of flames as the fire fed on dry wood and cloth. Chama had finished saddling a horse for Carmen. He waited, holding the reins of his horse and the one he had just saddled. Zak whistled and Nox trotted up to him.

  Smoke billowed from the adobe as the three rode off. Carmen looked back at the burning adobe, that same flicker of sadness in her eyes that Zak had seen before. Then she turned back around and held her head high, staring straight ahead at Chama, who rode in front, following the wagon tracks.

  Zak felt sorry for her. She had nothing, and she had just lost everything.

  He knew the feeling.

  Chapter 14

  Lieutenant Theodore Patrick O’Hara dozed on the bunk, pretending to be in a deep sleep. At least the torture was over for the time being, he thought. A small victory in the early stages of what he expected would be a long battle. Hiram Ferguson had been only a small assault force. Ted knew that he still must face the main battalion, and that was Ben Trask. Trask was the major force, and he was formidable.

  Moonlight streamed through the window above Ted’s bunk, splashing dappled shadows that flirted with those sprawled by the lamp upon the wooden floor. A column of gauzy light shimmered with dancing dust motes that resembled the ghostly bodies of fireflies whose own lights no longer shone.

  He was strapped down to the bunk, one of several in a bunkhouse for the stage drivers. Two were asleep across the room, one of whom was snoring loudly. Watching him was Jesse Bob Cavins, his chair tilted back against the wooden wall under a lighted lamp. He was reading a dime novel, his lips moving soundlessly as he struggled with some of the words.

  Ted tested his bonds for the dozenth time, the leather cutting into his wrists, too strong to break. Thoughts of his sister Colleen drifted into his mind unbidden. Guilt-laden thoughts. He never should have suggested to the post commandant, Captain Reuben Bernard, that Colleen be hired to teach the women and children of the Chiricahua tribe. Ted had argued that there would never be peace in Apache land unless the Indians assimilated the English language. Colleen had agreed to come to Fort Bowie. She saw it as a challenge and an opportunity to bring about peace between Cochise and the whites.

  Certainly the army had failed, Ted knew.

  Captain Bernard, under orders, had waged a fierce and brutal campaign against the Apaches when Ted first came to the fort. He rode with Bernard as he attacked Apache villages, killing eighteen warriors in one, late in 1869. Early the next year, they swarmed down on another village, killing thirteen warriors, and just this year Ted had engaged in another village attack that left nine Apaches dead.

  All to no avail, because the Apache war parties increased their depredations, attacking settlements and lone settlers, killing mail carriers and travelers out on the open plain. They even attacked army patrols, as if to show both their defiance and their bravery, and when Bernard sent detachments after the culprits, the soldiers always returned to the post empty-handed and dispirited after fruitless searches over desolate and difficult terrain.

  Tom Jeffords had been brought in to palaver with the Apaches, bring them to the council table, beg them to stop their bloody raids on white villages. Some progress had been made and Bernard sent Ted out under a flag of truce to locate Apache villages and strongholds without engaging any of them in battle. Jeffords had paved the way, and Ted was able to locate many Apache camps. These he marked on a map with a special code. The X’s did not denote the location of the actual camps, but denoted a marked spot where Ted had written down numbers that indicated the actual location. These numbers were meaningless to anyone but army personnel.

  But Trask did not know that. Not yet. And by now, Ted reasoned, the army would be looking for him. If he could lead Trask and his cohorts on a wild goose chase, sooner or later they would encounter an army patrol and he would be freed. That was his reasoning as he lay there in the dark, thinking of Colleen and his fellow troopers, sweat beading up on his forehead and soaking the skin under his arms and at the small of his back.

  He worried about Colleen because now he knew that Ferguson had eyes and ears inside Fort Bowie. That was evident in their threats and their knowledge of troop movements. Ferguson, or Trask, or both, had an informant on the post, either an army man or a civilian. It was disconcerting, but he knew there were soldiers who sympathized with the civilian whites, soldiers who wanted to drive the Apaches from Arizona or tack all their hides to a barn door and set the barn afire.

  The motives of such soldiers and the motives of civilians were easy for him to understand. What puzzled him now was the motive of Ben Trask. He had discerned that Trask was in Ferguson’s employ, but he also deduced that Trask was not the following kind. He was like a coiled spring, inert for the moment but on the verge of exploding into something entirely different.

  What did Trask want?

  Ted had a hunch that he would know the answer to that question very soon. Trask was so full of deceit, he reeked with it, like some fakir’s woven basket that, when opened, would reveal a writhing nest of snakes within. Trask had something else on his mind besides wiping out Apaches. Ferguson might be under the illusion that Trask was in his employ, but Trask was using Ferguson to achieve his own ends. Ted did not yet know what those ends were, but he’d studied the man enough in the few hours he had been observing him to know that Trask had no ideals, no conscience, no common purpose he shared with Ferguson. He was like a cur, pretending to be friendly and loyal, who at the right moment would snarl and snap and tear a person to pieces with his deadly teeth.

  Trask was the man to watch. Ferguson was weak and indecisive. Trask was strong and purposeful, although he concealed from others what he really wanted. He was playing along with Ferguson, but there was no loyalty there, and the pay he got from Ferguson was not compensation enough. And Ted knew that Trask wanted something from him that went beyond the location of Apache camps and strongholds.

  Still fresh in his mind was his meeting with the wily and wise Chiricahua leader, Cochise. Tom Jeffords had arranged the meeting, and Ted had to travel without an army escort. It had been just him and Tom, and the ride took nearly two days through rugged country. Tom had apologized when he told him, at the last part of the trip, that he would have to go the rest of the way blindfolded. That was Cochise’s wish and there was no negotiating the terms.

  Wearing the blindfold, he had ridden with Jeffords up through a steep canyon. Tom told him there were Apaches in the hills watching their progress, that they all had rifles and were within easy range.

  “I can’t tell you much more than that, Ted, sorry. But you have a right to know what kind of country we’re in. Even if you rode up here without a blindfold, you’d never find your way back.”

  “I guess I have to trust you, Tom. And Cochise, too.”

  “Cochise is a man of his word. You will come to no harm while you’re with me.”

  Ted was thoroughly confused by the time they halted in Cochise’s camp. When Tom took off his blindfold, the glare of the sun blinded him for several seconds. Then he knew he was looking into the eyes of Cochise, looking into centuries of warfare, blood and pain, and he saw mystic shadows in Cochise’s eyes, a knowing that was almost beyond human comprehension.

  He was a small,
wiry man, with a rugged moon face lined with deep weathered fissures. He looked, Ted thought, like a wounded eagle that was still full of fight. He wore a loose-fitting muslin shirt and a colored bolt of cloth wrapped around his head, his graying hair spiking from it like weathered splinters of wood. He wore a pistol and knife. A rifle and bandoleros sat nearby, within easy reach. Ponies stood at every lean-to, hip-shot, switching their tails at flies, their eyelids drooping like leather cowls on hunting hawks.

  Apache men sat under lean-to structures made of sticks and stones that stood against canyon walls. They were little more than temporary shelters, and blended into the terrain, forming no discernible pattern. There were no women or children that Ted could see, and he knew he was in a war camp. Armed Apaches stood on rocky lookouts high above them, or sat, half hidden, squatted in clumps of cactus and stones, barely visible, their rifles and bandoleros glinting in the sun. The fire rings were under latticed roofs that broke up the smoke when it rose so that no sign of their presence ever reached the sky above the hills. It smelled of cooked meat and the dung of horses and men. It smelled of sand and rock and cactus blooms.

  “You sit,” Cochise said in English. “We smoke.”

  Ted smoked with the Apache chieftain, while Apache braves sat around them in a half circle, their faces stoical as stone, their eyes glittering like polished obsidian beads. He and Cochise talked, and Cochise asked and answered questions, as he did, too.

  “Did you kill Apaches when you rode with the white eyes, Captain?” Cochise asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill women?”

  “No.”

  “My children?”

  “No,” Ted answered.

  Then he asked Cochise: “Have you killed white men?”

  “Yes,” Cochise said.

  “The army does not want to keep fighting the Chiricahua. But it does not want the Chiricahua to kill any more white people. The army thinks the two tribes can live together, in peace.”

  “The white man wants all the land,” Cochise said. “Land that the Great Spirit gave to the Chiricahua.”

  “No, we do not want all your land.”