He’d had two drinks so far, and a third would be just enough. But Jack was gone from behind the bar, and had been for a while.
Falcone turned to the man nearest him. “Where the hell’s that bar dog?”
His neighbor gave him a bleary-eyed grin. “The hell do I know?” He showed Falcone his back and raised his mug to his lips.
Falcone shook the guy on his other side. “You seen that barkeep?”
This man was not as deep in his cups as the first one had been. “He went out back to dump some old water,” he said. “Few minutes ago. Ain’t seen him since.”
“Out back?” Falcone echoed. He was probably out there pissing or smoking, when he should be inside pouring booze.
Well, he would fix that. He shouldered his way through the crowd and found the back door. The air outside stank something fierce—so bad, he could even smell it over himself.
He looked down and saw Jack. Or some of him, anyway. He lay in the shadows, but Falcone could see that his head was mostly severed, connected by only a few ribbons of flesh. A dark pool, which Falcone guessed was blood, surrounded him.
He whipped his knife from its sheath and took another step into the alley, checking it in both directions. It was empty to his left, although a coyote loped past that end, moonlight silvering the fur on its back. As he was turning to his right, recognizing that taking a second to eye the coyote was a mistake, he heard the rush of something tearing through the air toward him, so light on its feet that the liquid sound of the alley’s mud barely registered.
He brought the knife around and dropped into a defensive crouch, but too late. Whatever was coming slammed into him with the force of a charging bull. Falcone went down across the bar dog’s back, his head splashing into the pool of blood. He lashed out with the knife and felt it slice through something, but he couldn’t tell what. Before he could bring it to bear again, though, whoever or whatever had knocked him down fell on him. A huge hand clamped across his nose and mouth, forcing his head back. Falcone strained to shake the attacker off, but he couldn’t breathe and he felt the tendons in his neck start to tear, and then he didn’t feel anything at all.
* * *
The piano was loud, and the laughter and general merriment inside Soto’s was louder still, and that was the way Senora Soto liked it. When people couldn’t hear themselves think, they were less likely to be sad, and if they weren’t sad they were more likely to buy drinks and spend time with her girls. A sad drunk could sit in a corner for an hour, nursing a drink. She didn’t want that kind taking up table space. If a drunk was going to be sad, she wanted him to be the kind who would down several drinks in a hurry, so at least he would have paid for the room he was taking up.
But it had been awhile since anyone had seen Jack, and people were starting to grumble. She enlisted one of the men drinking at a nearby table and sent him in search of her barkeep. When he came back into view a couple of minutes later, he was pale and quivering, and he looked like he’d been sick on himself.
Senora Soto instantly regretted having allowed anyone but herself to search for the missing barman. Jack was loyal and he took his work seriously; only something bad would have kept him out of the bar for so long. It was too late now, though. Already, word was spreading through the place. Conversations were dying out. Even Franklin, the piano player, dropped his hands from the keyboard and stared at the man.
“Out there…” the man said. “Jack. Some … other feller. In back.”
Senora Soto was on her feet, skirts gathered in her hands, sweeping toward the back door. She meant to be the first one out, but others were nearer the door than she, and people were lurching to their feet, some barely able to stand, so her way was blocked time and again. When she finally shoved through into the alley, people were vomiting into the mud or standing around like idiots, unable to come to terms with the tableau at their feet.
Somebody held up a lantern, and in the swaying light, Senora Soto saw Jack and another man, one she didn’t know well, though she’d noticed him inside a short while earlier. Both had been torn apart, as if by a pack of wild dogs or wolves. But that would have made noise, wouldn’t it? Snarling and yapping. The saloon had been noisy, so maybe she would have missed that. But—
“What’s that?” someone asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“What?”
“Right here.” The man who’d seen it reached down and picked up two similar objects, each one dark and curved, thicker than Senora Soto’s thumb at one end and tapering to a vicious point at the other. “The hell is this?”
“Looks like claws,” someone answered.
“Claws? These’re twice the size of the biggest bear’s claws. More than.”
“Just sayin’ that’s what they look like.”
Senora Soto snatched them from the man’s hand. “Give me those,” she said, though she’d already helped herself. “Somebody get Mr. Chalmers over here to gather up these bodies. The least we can do is treat these men with some respect.”
She tucked the claws, or whatever they were, into a pocket. The last thing she wanted was anyone showing those around inside the saloon. Bad enough this had happened right out back, and to Jack, of all people, who people associated with her business as much as they did her. Jack’s name wasn’t on the sign out front, but when people thought of Soto’s he was who many thought of first.
Business was done for the night. Sure, a few people would order drinks, and those most disturbed might have more than usual. But what she feared had already started to happen by the time she went back inside. People were huddled quietly together. They looked afraid. Their safe world had been attacked, shown to be not so safe after all. There was no fun left in the room, only terror and a sense of loss.
She hoped her business would recover. But it would take days, or longer, before it did. Until then, Soto’s would represent bodies in the alley, covered in blood, and the ungodly claws that had done the deed.
As she sat in her usual chair at the corner table, she struggled to keep her expression impassive, and she hoped the place would survive.
Chapter Thirty-two
Cuttrell admired patient men. He had read about the lives of the saints, those holy men who could accept whatever torments life threw their way and attribute their suffering to God’s plan. Those were tests, perhaps, not to prove anything to their Lord but to themselves. They could, it was said, find good inside the most heinous evil, and know that God was with them, taking their suffering onto his own shoulders.
He wished he were that way. He wished he didn’t hold his own suffering deep inside, dwelling on it in quiet moments, in wakeful times after midnight, knowing even as he did that it was eating him alive.
But he was not like the saints. He stored anger inside his heart until it bubbled out as rage.
Sadie sat on the edge of their bed. She had known him long enough to recognize the state he was in. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her legs crossed, even her ankles. When he spoke, she flinched, as if surely a blow must follow.
“Don’t just tell me you talked to him,” he said. He strived for patience, but he could feel it sliding from his grasp. “I already know you talked to him. Which is why I asked you about the nature of that conversation.”
“It was … it was nothing. The weather. He admired the dress I was wearing, I think. He asked after you.”
“Jasper Montclair asked after me? Was that before or after he tried to wrench your arm from its socket?”
“It was nothing of the sort,” she said. “Whoever told you that is imagining things.”
“Both of them? Imagining it the same way? I hardly think that’s likely. Do you?” That was a lie. He had only heard it from one source, and that one barely trustworthy. But the man had sworn that he thought Montclair would have struck her if not for the intercession of that new marshal. “What did he say to you?”
“Nothing! I told you, he was just passing the time of day.”
“And I’
m supposed to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.”
“I’m sure it’s not, Sadie. You can still tell me the truth, though, and save yourself some trouble.”
“The kind of trouble you like to dish out? That, again? This has all been just an excuse, hasn’t it?”
Her words stung, but only briefly. She was right, he did, he supposed, take a certain pleasure from administering the discipline she needed from time to time.
As he removed his belt, he watched her watching him, her eyes wide with fright, her lower lip quivering.
It was for her own good, he told himself. She wasn’t that far removed from the upstairs at Senora Soto’s. She was a wife now, a military wife, and that meant something.
But before that, she had been a whore. And sometimes, that taint still had to be knocked out of her.
This was one of those times.
* * *
At Little Wing’s request, Kuruk had moved into the cottage she’d been provided. He slept in the front room, on the floor, or that’s what he told her. The truth was, he didn’t sleep much at all. He was worried about her. She was getting better, day by day. Her injuries were healing, and she was able to converse better, speaking in whole sentences and sometimes answering questions in ways that weren’t completely unintelligible. Kuruk didn’t think she was cut out to be a washerwoman, but it was better than some alternatives the colonel had proposed, so he had been trying to persuade her to give it a try.
But other times, she reverted to the confused and confusing creature she had been when they found her. And when she slept, she was haunted by something Kuruk couldn’t identify. So most of the time she was sleeping, he stayed awake in case she needed him.
On this night, she was more troubled than usual. He had looked in on her several times. After the last one, he had retreated to the front room and sat on the floor, eyes closed, when he heard her cry out in alarm.
He bolted up and rushed back to her room. She was still in bed, thrashing around, kicking at the blanket covering her. She spoke rapidly, in an extended monologue of which he could only catch snippets. He thought he made out the words “mead,” “Devil’s” something—maybe deck, or dead—and then something that sounded like “Cemetery Ridge” or “Bridge.”
She was delirious, muttering nonsense. He sat beside her for a while, brushing hair off her forehead and placing his cool hand over it, speaking gently to her. She calmed, after a while, and when her breathing was even again, her face serene, he once more left her room.
He had always thought better out of doors, so he left the house to walk on the parade field, to feel the earth beneath his feet and to see the starry sky above. Her presence here meant something, but he didn’t know what. He couldn’t wait for the army to figure it out, because they never would. White people had a very narrow approach to understanding anything, and white soldiers were even worse. The Apache people thought in broader strokes, making greater allowances for magic and mystery.
Before he had reached any conclusions, though, a figure emerged from the darkness. “Evening, Kuruk,” Jimmy McKenna said.
“Howdy.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Sometimes. When I need to.”
“And the rest of the time?”
“Don’t need to.”
“What about now?”
Kuruk shook his head. “I could, but I can’t.”
McKenna regarded him for long enough that Kuruk started to feel uncomfortable. “What’s bothering you, Kuruk?”
“Did I say anything was—”
McKenna cut him off. “You just about did. Anyway, I can see it on your face. What is it?”
Kuruk trusted McKenna more than he did most whites, so he saw no reason not to tell the truth. “It’s Little Wing,” he admitted. “When she sleeps, she is troubled. She rolls around, she cries out, sometimes she appears terrified.”
“What do you think that’s all about?”
“Can’t say. But sometimes when she is very agitated, bad things happen. Tonight, she is very very agitated.”
“Bad things?”
Kuruk had expected McKenna to dismiss his concern immediately. In his experience, whites were not predisposed to accept such ideas. “Sometimes real bad.”
“There’s a lot of those around, these days.”
“There are?” Kuruk asked.
“Sure. People getting killed. Hell, I didn’t even see that mule train, but you did. Sounded horrible. You think animals did that? Or human beings?”
“Definitely not animals,” Kuruk said. “People, maybe so.”
“Not the way I heard it. No bullet holes. No arrows, or spears. You think somebody snuck up on forty armed men and slashed them all to death with a knife?”
“I suppose not.”
“Damn right. I don’t know what’s going on, and I can’t get Colonel Cuttrell to take it serious. But something is. And I’ll tell you true, Kuruk, it’s starting to scare me.”
“You’re not alone, Jimmy. Little Wing is afraid. If she’s afraid, I am, too.”
“Cuttrell won’t listen.” McKenna closed his mouth and glanced in every direction, seeing whether anyone was close enough to hear. “But I’m not waiting on him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Ever met an Apache who couldn’t?”
Jimmy chuckled. “I’ve met a few Apaches, but I guess I never tested them before. Not that way, at least.”
“Well. I keep secrets from white folks every day.”
“Come with me, then.”
“Where?”
McKenna stepped closer to him, and kept his voice low. “To the blacksmith shop,” he said. “Delahunt and I have been working on something. Well, mostly he’s been working on it. I’ve had some ideas, but he’s the one who figures out how to do them, and then puts them together.”
Kuruk nodded. “Delahunt, he’s a pretty smart guy.”
“He is that,” McKenna said. “Some kind of mad genius.”
Kuruk didn’t know what to expect as he walked with McKenna toward Delahunt’s shop. He looked forward to being surprised.
The real surprise was how surprised he turned out to be.
Chapter Thirty-three
Tuck didn’t want to sleep.
He wasn’t sure he ever wanted to sleep again, as long as he lived, though he doubted he would live very long without it. The last time he had slept, a man had been viciously murdered not ten feet away from him. That was the kind of thing that could put a man off his feed—or his sleep—for a good long while.
To stay awake, he walked through the town. Rain had fallen off and on during the late afternoon and evening, and now a massive cloud blotted out the stars and seemed intent on staying awhile. Deep, booming thunder sounded and lightning revealed the mountains that loomed over Carmichael in jagged flashes. Rain washed across the town like an upended ocean. Crossing the space between one building’s covered walkway to another’s, Tuck was drenched.
At least the chafing and rubbing of his wet clothes would keep him alert.
The streets were empty, which he attributed to the downpour. But it wasn’t just that, he decided. Curtains were drawn over windows, doors were closed up tight. It was as if everybody in town had become afraid of the same thing, and he was the only one who hadn’t yet heard what it was.
Even when the weather was bad, Soto’s was usually lively. He was across the street, wondering why he didn’t hear the usual music and rowdy laughter from there, when instead, he heard a gunshot. The sound was unmistakable, and it was followed, in this instance, by the thump of something heavy hitting the floor, and a few halfhearted screams.
Tuck jumped from the boardwalk into the street, and cursed as he tried to take another step and the muck threatened to yank his boot off. He freed it, and crossed as fast as he could under the circumstances. By the time he gained the walkway on the far side, his legs were coated in mud up
to the knee. He clomped awkwardly through the batwing doors, drawing his Colt at the same time. “Nobody budge,” he ordered. “Who fired a gun?”
The scene became clear immediately. A man lay on the ground, writhing in pain, blood spreading out from a hole in his belly. His hands were clasped over it, but the life was slipping through them. Another man stood by the bar, clutching a revolver with two fingers and a thumb on the grip, looking at the wounded man as if he’d never seen anything like him. The rest of the people in the room—a tiny crowd, for this time of night, as if something had emptied the place out early, leaving only those truly serious about their drinking—stared on in quiet shock. The acrid scent of gun smoke still hung in the air, reminding Tuck of Durham. He shoved his weapon back into its holster. It felt like a rattlesnake coiled around his leg.
“What happened?” Tuck asked.
The man with the gun cleared his throat a couple of times. His eyes were huge and liquid, his hands trembling. He was no killer, Tuck judged, just a man caught up in the circumstance of the moment. Put a gun in a frightened man’s hands and he was only one mistake away from murder.
“I … I th-thought he was drawin’ on me,” the man said. “He b-bumped into me, and I said s-somethin’. Then he come around with his h-hand at his h-h-hip, and I … I thought there was iron in it.”
Tuck crouched by the wounded man. “Anybody go for a doctor?”
“Not yet,” Senora Soto said. She was behind the bar instead of at her usual table. “Franklin, fetch Doc Crabtree. And fast.”
The piano player had been sitting at a table with a couple of empty glasses and half of a ham sandwich in front of him. Nobody was where they ordinarily would have been. He scraped back his chair and stood, then on unsteady legs he wove between tables toward the door.
Tuck knelt beside the wounded man and put a hand on his shoulder. “Help’s on the way,” he said.
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