“I have them in safekeeping,” Lowth said. “Yes, they’re safe and sound.”
“Then go get them,” Moss said, a little annoyed. “I don’t want one of my men looking like a pansy.”
Lowth held up the baby in his arms, his climbing eyebrows asking a question.
“You, Higgins,” Moss ordered. “Take the kid to its mother. If the woman can keep it alive it might increase her price on the slave block.”
Although dressed in his own clothes, with a Colt once more strapped at his waist, Shawn felt dirty. And every time he looked into Moss’s face his skin crawled. The man had the cold, staring eyes of a reptile.
“I need to fill my cartridge belt,” he said to Creeds as he accepted a glass of bourbon from the man.
“Your revolver is also empty,” Creeds said. “You’ll get all the cartridges you need when we get to where we’re going.”
Shawn looked at Moss. “You don’t trust me?”
“I trust nobody,” Moss said. “Listen to Creeds. When we reach Sonora you’ll get your ammunition. In the meantime, drink your whiskey, relax, and enjoy the train ride.”
“Can I talk to Julia?” Shawn asked.
“To Trixie? No, you can’t. Stay away from those women back there, O’Brien. They’re valuable merchandise and I don’t want them handled.”
“Who are you selling them to, Moss?”
“You’re working for me now, O’Brien. From now on you address me as Mister Moss. As for whom I’m selling the women to, you’ll find out in Sonora.”
“I’ll buy Julia from you,” Shawn offered.
“Maybe. I’ll decide on that after I speak to the interested parties. White women don’t come cheap in the West African slave markets and my contact will bid high.”
“I’ll match it,” Shawn bargained.
“We’ll see. Of course by the time the bidding begins, you might be dead.”
“Boss, O’Brien and me still have a score to settle,” Creeds said.
Moss sighed. “See what I mean?”
Chapter Twenty-nine
The rabbit hunt had not gone well and Sheik Abdul Basir-Hakim was not at all pleased. He leaned on his Lebel Model 1886 rifle and considered the kills. “Only three, and scrawny at that. I did not get a shot, Hassan.”
“A thousand pardons, great lord.” Hassan Najid shrugged as he spread his hands. “We are surrounded by wilderness and game is scarce.”
“Not a good day’s hunting,” Hakim said. “I have wasted my time, it seems.”
Najid feared the sheik’s wrath. “There are still a couple hours before darkness falls. Perhaps . . .”
Hakim shook his head and shouldered his French rifle. “I am no longer in the mood for rabbits.” He looked around him at the desert brush flats that stretched as far as the eye could see. “You are right, Hassan. This is not rabbit country, too dry and no timber. Did you kill one, Hassan?”
Najid sighed. “The littlest one.”
“A kill is a kill when one hunts for sport,” Hakim said. “My congratulations to you. And the others?”
“Two crewmen, lord. They shot one each.”
“See that their marksmanship is rewarded.”
“Your wish is my command, lord.”
Hakim took one last glance at the three dead Mexican peons sprawled and bloody on the sand and spat. “Poor hunting indeed.”
As he and Najid walked back toward the schooner and their encampment, Hakim said, “Tell me now about the black woman.”
“Ah, the light-fingered one,” Najid replied. “Her name is Katie Shore and she is one of the San Francisco whores.”
“And? Tell me what happened?”
“The Shore woman stole a hair comb from a Chinese girl. When the girl confronted her, she slapped her and said, ‘Yes, bitch, I stole the comb and I’m keeping it.’”
“There were witnesses? To those words?”
“Indeed, lord, and not only other Chinese. Other women heard and saw it.”
“Then this Katie person must be punished according to our law.”
“We await your judgment,” Najid said
“I will make my decision on the woman’s fate before the evening meal. A thief is not to be tolerated. The Holy Quran says, male or female, the hands of the thief must be cut off as an example to others.”
“Allah is just,” Najid said.
“Then you will bring the woman to me and a man with block and sword, should I decide in that direction. But no matter how I decide, tonight, Hassan, you will see justice done according to the laws of Islam.”
Katie Shore was high yaller and beautiful. Her honey-colored skin, glossy black hair, and voluptuous curves had made her one of the Barbary Coast’s most popular whores—until the night she was drugged, kidnapped, and carried onto the slave schooner. Gone was the woman’s professional finery. She stood before Sheik Hakim with her hair unbound, dressed only in a plain cotton shift.
Hakim sat in a folding chair outside his tent and the captive women had been herded to the spot to witness the proceedings.
In the lilac light of the fading day Katie Shore stood in isolation. The woman looked terrified and her black eyes kept darting to the huge corsair standing behind a beheading block, a massive scimitar across his naked chest.
“Do you know why you are here, woman?” Hakim spoke in English, a barbaric tongue he despised, but knew well. Beside him, his eyes eager, Najid grinned like a vulture.
Katie shook her head. “I don’t know why.”
“You deny that you stole a comb off another woman?”
Scared as she was, it took the woman a while before she could form her words. “I borrowed the comb. I was going to return it.”
“Bring forth this woman’s accuser,” Hakim ordered.
A young, pretty Chinese girl was pushed before the sheik.
“Is this the woman who stole your comb?” Hakim asked, pointing to the black woman.
The girl’s eyes moved to Katie. She nodded, her gaze fixed on the ground at her feet.
“Did she return it?”
The Chinese girl had been forced to work as a whore, but her English was limited, horny men not being long on conversation. She said nothing.
Hakim gaze swept over the assembled women. “Do any of you Chinese speak English?”
A woman stepped forward. “I do.”
“Ask her if the comb was returned,” Hakim instructed.
The woman spoke to the young whore in Chinese, and after some hesitation, the girl replied.
“Well?” Hakim asked impatiently. “What did she say?”
“The black woman refused to return the comb.”
“Then it was theft.” Hakim stared hard at Katie. “Do you know how a thief is punished?”
“Please don’t whip me,” Katie begged. “I’ll give the comb back.”
“I will not whip you,” Hakim promised.
“Thank you, oh, thank you,” Katie said, hope bright in her eyes.
“The punishment for theft is to have both your hands cut off,” Hakim informed.
Katie screamed and threw herself at the sheik’s feet. She looked up at him, her cheeks streaming tears. “Please, not that. I couldn’t bear that.”
Hakim kicked the woman away from him. “Though you are nothing but a common thief, I am not without mercy.”
“Thank you . . . thank you . . .” Katie sobbed. “I’ll never steal again. I promise.”
“That is well.” Hakim’s eyes were cruel, his mouth a tight, hard line. “You shall lose only one hand, the left that does no work in bed or out.”
Katie screamed and again clung to Hakim’s legs and begged for mercy.
The faces of the other captive women were masks of horror, confused, as though they couldn’t believe what was happening or that such barbarism existed.
Suddenly Hakim seemed bored and he waved an indolent hand. “Take her to the block and let justice be done.”
Still screaming, the woman called Katie was
dragged to the block and made to kneel. A burly sailor looped a rope around her left wrist. Sitting down, he pulled on the rope so her forearm was forced onto the block. A second man pushed on her back, rendering her immobile.
The swordsman, a huge brute with the broken face of a prizefighter, looked over at Hakim. Katie continued to call out for mercy to men that had none.
The sheik nodded and the sword fell in a flashing arc.
Women crowded around Kate, who no longer screamed, but stared at the bloody stump of her wrist the way a gut-shot man stares at his belly, a mix of disbelief and horror in her eyes.
“Hassan, see to it that the physician attends to the woman,” Hakim ordered. “If she dies I stand to lose money.”
Najid hurried away, and the sheik rose to his feet, glancing at Katie, his face expressionless. He saw her only as female flesh for the slave auctions, a commodity, not as a human being.
Hakim stepped to his tent, then stopped and looked behind him at the sea. The strange, uneasy feeling that had been with him since the end of the rabbit hunt was stronger, disturbing his tranquility of mind. He turned and walked down to the beach. The gulf was calm but rose and fell in rounded swells as though hungry sea monsters swam just under the surface, watching, biding their time.
Kneeling, Hakim lifted a handful of water from the silent surf and let it trickle through his fingers. Then he tasted it. It was salty, bitter on his tongue, and with the tang of iron, like blood.
He rose to his feet and his eyes searched the dark waters.
It was out there, the thing that disturbed him so much.
Hunting him.
He glanced at the tent where his suicide bomber wallowed with his well-worn whores, all the while dreaming of virgins. Anxiously, Hakim wondered when Zebulon Moss would come with his women. It must be soon.
Hakim looked at the sea again, swollen and full of menace. Somewhere out there in the purple darkness was a thing that wanted to tear his guts out. Suddenly Sheik Abdul Hakim-Basir, the mightiest warrior in all of Islam, was afraid.
Chapter Thirty
Agraciana Morenos chided her husband, who sat by the fire toasting his toes. “Maria Gomez has a husband who would walk with her to the big house in the snow.”
“Juan Gomez is a rotten vaquero. Everybody knows that.”
“But a good husband. Everybody knows that also.”
Agraciana’s husband shrugged, his eyes on the flames of the burning log. “You baked the churros for the patron. You should deliver them.”
“Ach. It is a trial and a tribulation to have such a husband.” She took her battered hat from the rack on the wall near the door and shrugged into her husband’s sheepskin many times too big for her. Stepping into the kitchen, she retrieved the colonel’s churros, the sweet Mexican doughnuts he loved to dip into his morning coffee.
Many times the patron had told her she made the best bear sign he’d ever tasted and Agraciana had made a habit of taking a batch to him two or three times a week.
After one last, frowning glance at her husband, the woman stepped outside. The morning was cold and snow tossed around in a whipping wind. The walk from her house to Dromore was not such a long one, but in the freezing weather she decided it was quite far enough, especially for one who was quick with child.
The snow crumped under her booted feet as she drew nearer to the house. A sullen sky grayed the crest of Glorieta Mesa and the stiff breeze stirred the branches of the pines.
Agraciana reached the door of the house and rapped the brass knocker, the rat-tat-tat loud in the morning quiet.
But louder still was the flat statement of the rifle shot that slammed a large-caliber bullet into her slender body.
Drinking coffee in the kitchen when he heard the shots, Jacob leaped to his feet and grabbed his holstered Colt from the gun rack by the front door on his way outside. Behind him, he heard people running.
Once outside, he glanced at the wounded, groaning woman, then to the drift of smoke lifting from the trees on the rise fifty yards from the house. The range was too great for a revolver. To Samuel and Lorena at the door, he yelled, “See to her!” and headed toward the stable, buckling his gun belt as he ran.
“Jake!” Samuel shouted, but Jacob ignored him.
He saddled his black, swung into the leather, and left the barn at a gallop, sparing a quick glance at Agraciana. Lorena kneeled in the snow beside her, and for a second time Jacob ignored Samuel’s yell to stop. Wearing neither coat nor hat, he headed for the rise at a run, the Colt in his upraised hand.
The bitterest of cold and freezing snow was borne on an icy wind. Jacob, dressed only in shirt, jeans, and boots, knew he would need to find the bushwhackers quickly. He could not survive long in such weather.
The black slowed to a canter for the last few yards to the trees, then Jacob reined him back to a trot. He rode into the pines, his eyes wary. There were tracks aplenty—two different sets of boot prints in the snow, one large, the other smaller—but no sign of the men who made them.
Beyond the ridge the ground sloped to a large meadow and the dirt beneath the black’s hooves was iron-hard as he galloped down the rise onto the flat. A few white-faced cattle foraged for grass along creeks fringed with ice and in the distance dull gray clouds hung so low there was no delineation between earth and sky.
Two pairs of parallel horse tracks angled across the meadow’s virgin snow, the riders seemingly in no hurry, riding at a walk. That irritated Jacob. Had those two such a low opinion of Dromore that they didn’t fear a pursuit?
It seemed that way—unless they rode toward a place where others of their kind waited.
Then another possibility occurred to him. It could be the bushwhackers had mistaken the Mexican woman for a man, dressed as she was in masculine clothing. They were in no hurry to leave because they planned other killings . . .
To avenge their brother killed by Jacob O’Brien.
The more Jacob thought about it, the more he decided that was the case. It was no random act. It was the start of the wolfers’ campaign of vengeance.
Anxious to get out of the cold wind for a few moments, Jacob angled toward the stand of mixed spruce and ponderosa pine trees a hundred yards to the right of the tracks. Shivering in the thin shelter, he pulled a sack of tobacco from his pocket and managed to build himself a cigarette, but half of it spilled on the ground. His forehead felt like a chunk of frozen steel and he couldn’t feel his toes in his boots. Ice clung to his eyebrows and shaggy mustache and his breath smoked like damp firewood.
After only a short respite, he rode out of the trees and followed the trail again. His head bent against the wind, he urged his horse forward, figuring he was getting close.
But an hour later he still followed tracks that showed no sign of ending.
Stiff with cold, Jacob’s head ached and his ungloved hands were frozen into claws. The long-legged black plodded on gamely and Jacob knew he would give out long before the horse. He began to dream about finding a spot out of the wind where he could build a fire and get warm.
And drink coffee, steaming hot, black as night and sweet as sin, poured from a sooty pot just off the fire . . .
Jacob jolted upright and lifted his great beak to the wind. Yes! He smelled it. Smoke. And close enough to be strong. Surely it was only a little farther now.
To Jacob’s north rose the craggy bulk of Hurtado Mesa and around him in the timbered, broken country snow was piled in treacherous drifts, a trap for the unwary. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the thin air. He was close. Very close.
A man on a horse was a target and Jacob swung stiffly out of the saddle. He tethered his horse to a piñon and cleared snow away from a patch of grass. It wasn’t much but the black seemed grateful as he lowered his nose and began to graze.
It was the last thing Jacob wanted to do, but it had to be done. He unbuttoned his shirt at the neck and shoved the frozen fingers of his right hand under his armpit. The shock took his breath away.
After a few moments, Jacob withdrew his hand, bent and stretched his fingers, and buttoned up his shirt again. He worked his fingers again and decided they were flexible enough—if he moved fast.
He left the shelter of the piñon and, within minutes, picked up fresh tracks. The smell of smoke grew stronger. Gun in hand, he topped a shallow rise between two massive boulders and almost stepped onto the wood-shingled roof of a lean-to.
Crouching, his frozen knees aching, he took the lie of the land. The lean-to had been built on the other side of the rise and backed up to a shelf of bare rock. The horse tracks angled twenty yards to his right, where they followed an eyebrow of game trail and ended at a graveled talus slope. A small pole corral was built next to the lean-to and held three horses, two of them saddled.
Jacob frowned. Three horses. Did that mean there were three men in the cabin?
Cold and stiff as he was, he didn’t like those odds, but he was damned if after all he’d been through he’d turn tail and run.
The talus slope was icy, but the gravel held as Jacob walked down to the flat on stiff knees. His gun hand was cramping again and he knew he had only a short while to get the job done.
The lean-to had no windows to the front and he stood three yards from its sagging pine door.
Never a man to study too hard on the right or wrong of a thing, Jacob cut loose. Three fast shots slammed through the door, splintering wood, and then he ran for the corral and took cover behind a fence post.
Outraged cries followed the racket of the shots and two men ran outside. One was the man with the horribly bullet-scarred face he’d seen at Dromore, the other was an old-timer in a ragged plaid shirt and miner’s boots.
Scarface spotted Jacob instantly and the rifle in his hands came up fast. He fired . . . too quickly . . . but close enough to scratch Jacob’s left arm. Jacob stepped away from the fence post and fired. Scarface took the bullet square in the chest and dropped to one knee, working his rifle. Aware that it was his last round, Jacob fired again. Another hit. The man stared at Jacob for an instant, showing his shock at the time and manner of his death, then pitched forward and lay still.
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