Through Darkest America-Extended Version

by Neal Barrett Jr

  Pardo looked back over his shoulder at the first streaks of morning, then faced Hacker. "I reckon that's real interest- in' if you got time for it," he drawled lazily. "But it appears to me we got a sight more to do than sit here talking 'bout yesterday. I figure today'll be excitin' enough for everybody." He grinned at the riders around him and they laughed with him.

  Hacker didn't smile. "I think yesterday's got a lot to do with today," he said stiffly.

  "Meanin' what?"

  Hacker shook his head irritably. "Godamn, Pardo, don't sit there and tell me you figure there wasn't nothing wrong with that business last night!" He leaned forward on his mount, his face growing redder than ever. "I don't think much of you and I sure don't trust you no further than I can throw you, but I don't figure you're an ignorant man, either."

  Pardo shrugged wearily. "Hacker, I got no damn idea why we wasn't all killed up there or what Colonel Monroe's got up his ass. Maybe he figured we'd scare easy. Maybe he knows more about that column of yours than you figure he does. Might be he just wanted to spook us a little 'til he can catch us in the open." He grinned crookedly, and winked at the Rebel leader. "Reckon he done a fair 'nough job of it, too."

  Hacker gaped at him.

  "Now just hold on," Pardo threw up his hand, pushing air before him. "Ain't no need for us to get all riled up at one another. We're both still sittin' in the same stew."

  "And you're stirring it with a knife, Pardo," warned Hacker. "I ain't goin' to sit here and…"

  Pardo jerked his horse abruptly, and galloped off down the rise. His men followed, leaving Hacker swallowing dust. Howie, a few mounts behind, heard the whole thing. He figured Pardo was likely right; one way or another, it sure was going to be an exciting day.

  Hacker dispatched six of his riders out across the mesa. He was plenty anxious, now, to meet the strong Rebel forces. Monroe had shown he was close by and ready to fight. And he'd sure as hell hit the column again before the Rebels got there, if he could. And there wasn't anything stopping him.

  A scout returned just before noon. He hadn't found the Rebels, but he'd seen signs of Monroe's troopers. He swore he'd read the tracks right and that there hadn't been more than fifty mounted men in the force that hit the camp. More than that, after they'd broken off the fight they'd headed northwest for a while, paralleling Pardo and the Rebels, then suddenly veered off to the southeast.

  Southeast? That didn't make any sense at all, thought Howie. Why would they head away from the column, back toward Roundtree? Even if they were part of a larger force, which they pretty well had to be, why drag along behind somewhere?

  No one even slowed down for the noon meal. Every rider grabbed what he could in the saddle. Pardo and Hacker kept the column tight and sent men on scout duty to all points of the compass.

  Low clouds had formed in the north just before midday and now a strong, high wind pushed them to the south. A wide band of darkness rushed down to meet them, shutting out the sun. Ordinary colors turned peculiar shades of brown and blue, and everything on the mesa seemed strangely sharp and distinct—as if something in the storm had finely etched the world below. White veins of lightning searched the ground far to the north and men counted the seconds it took the sound to reach the column.

  "Ain't never been in a storm up here, have you?" grinned Harlie. He watched Howie sniff the air.

  "I been in storms before," Howie told him.

  "Not up here you ain't."

  "What's different about here?" Howie wanted to know. "It's goin' to dump all over us and get everybody wettern' hell and I seen that once or twice."

  Harlie shook his head smugly. "What it's goin' to do, boy, is come down like rocks instead of water. So fast and hard you can't breathe without near drowning. It'll drive you to the ground, pound the flesh off your back, and after it's over you'll think you been beat with a godamn stick." He looked over at the other rider beside him. "Now, ain't that the truth, Bo?"

  Bo nodded grimly at Howie. He was a short, stout man with sad eyes and wiry hair matting his head and face. "Likely to," he said solemnly. "'Course if it comes down hard enough, we won't be findin' them Rebels, an' we'll be sittin' out here without no help when ol' Monroe gits us."

  "Bo… Harlie looked pained. "If we can't find them Rebels, Monroe sure as hell ain't goin' to find us, neither."

  "Well, maybe," Bo said glumly.

  Klu trotted by and glared at the three of them; reminding them that they were being paid to keep their eyes open, not to sit around jawing like whores out of work.

  The wind picked up, stirring cold sand in the air. A few drops of rain splattered the ground and it was hard to see what lay more than a few hundred yards away. The column slowed, and Howie saw the ground ahead was getting rough and choppy. Shallow gullies cut the mesa like wrinkles in an old man's face. The land was the same as far as he could see; there was no place else to go unless the column turned back on itself, and he didn't figure either Pardo or Hacker were about to do that.

  Hacker didn't like the gullies. It was a surprise he hadn't counted on and he looked accusingly at Pardo, as if he might have put them there. "That's goin' to be just real fine," he said acidly, squinting against the sand. "We get ourselves caught in one of them things with Monroe on top of us and there'll be nothing else for it." He ran a quick finger past his throat to make the point.

  "I ain't as worried about Monroe as I am about that," Pardo said flatly, looking at the sky.

  "What? The rain?"

  "Rain and what comes with it in this country, if you don't know. The land up ahead is some higher. If the storm hits up there it'll fill them gullies like a floodin' river 'fore you know it. Monroe and them bastards can sit back and watch us float by."

  Hacker bit his lip. "There's high ground ahead. We got scouts out. They'll see water coming."

  "Naw, I don't much like it," Pardo shook his head.

  "And I don't much like sittin' up here plain as day, either." He looked darkly at Pardo. "I guess I feel better worrying about water than I do thinkin' about Monroe hitting us 'fore we find the column. He sure ain't goin' to see us down there."

  "Hacker . . .” Pardo frowned painfully and turned in his saddle to face the Rebel. "I'm telling you, it's too godamn risky. I ain't goin' to lose my head or them guns inino gullywasher—an' that's just what'll happen. We come too far for that."

  Hacker yelled something at him but his voice was lost to Howie on the wind. Pardo leaned over and said something to Jigger that sent him trotting to the rear of the column.

  The wind was moaning over their heads like a banshee and the black clouds were so low Howie could watch dark tendrils reach down to touch the earth. He jerked his mount around out of the wind, and moved over to help Harlie quiet the pack animals. He'd stayed clear of Kari all day, but now he squinted back along the column to find her. She's crazy as a damn owl, he told himself crossly, and doesn't care any more about me than a stone, but if the whole world is going to come to an end out here there isn't anybody else going to help her but me.

  A shout ahead brought him around. A Rebel rider came curling through one of the gullies, waving his arms wildly,. Howie reached for his pistol, then relaxed. The whole column broke into a ragged cheer. Behind the scout Howie could see the first riders from the Rebel detachment. Hacker and his officers broke from the column and galloped down to meet them.

  It was a strong force. Howie tried to count them as they trotted out of the gully into the wind. There must have been two-hundred riders in all, more men on horses than he'd ever seen at one time. The Rebels mingled with the raiders and shouted at one another. A soldier no older than Howie rode up to him and leaned out of the saddle to shake his hand. Howie grinned and the soldier said something he couldn't hear. He looked past the Rebel to the north, at the black clouds pushing solid sheets of rain before them. Dark torrents pounded the ground and tossed dry dust in the air. The whole horizon was a veil of black clouds, gray rain, brown dust. And—what else? Howie leaned
into the wind and studied the broad band where the earth met the sky. There was—something. More than just dust running before that rain.

  Suddenly, his stomach turned upside down and he was sure he was going to lose everything he'd ever swallowed. There were men in the dust. Riders! Coming right at them, and stretching from one end of the horizon to the other, as far as the eye could see.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The battle on the mesa was decided long before the first shot was fired. There was killing to do and men to be buried if you were on the winning side, but there was never any doubt about the outcome. Hacker knew it, and most of his men, and even Pardo's raiders, who had no experience with this kind of fighting. They were dead men. It was just a question of when and how it would feel when it happened.

  Hacker rallied his troops above the storm. There was only one defensible position on the flatlands and he took it. Troops to the front and mounts to the rear—soldiers hunkered down in a broad circle with the gullies at their backs. Hacker's horses wouldn't help him here and he knew it. Not against the thunder bearing down from the north. Nobody could say how many they were, but it was clear the enemy dwarfed his own two hundred.

  It was an awesome, terrible sight. Howie could see their faces, now, and even the bright feathers in their caps. War cries sang above the shriek of the wind. He sat frozen on his mount and stared, his mouth full of sand, until Harlie galloped by and dug his boot in the horse's rump and sent it flying.

  A shot whined past. Then another. A rider went down ahead and he saw the frightened white eyes of the mount, hooves clawing air. The Rebel forces scrambled for cover and died getting there. Their officers tried vainly to form orderly fire lines they knew wouldn't stand against the first Loyalist charge.

  Howie glanced back, searching wildly for Kari. But there was nothing back there anymore, only black clouds and destruction. Monroe had swallowed the rear of the column without slowing down.

  He thought he saw Pardo, snaking his pack horses down a sharp ravine, Klu or Jigger beside him. The rain hit, burning his flesh and closing his eyes. His horse slid down the sides of the gully, pawing frantically for footing in the wet earth. He saw what was coming and clutched his rifle and jumped, praying the animal fell the other way. The ground came up to meet him. The rifle cracked hard across his brow, bringing blood.

  He was up, then, and running. There were dead men in the water beneath him, men crying out on every side. He could see nothing, but he knew he had to keep running. The gullies were filling fast. He stumbled, fell. A hand clutched his shirt and jerked hard. Howie yelled and swung his rifle blindly against whatever it was. The man cuffed him sharply, drawing his face close to his own. Howie stared.. He knew the face. One of the raiders, The man shouted but Howie didn't hear. The raider pointed back behind him and Howie nodded and followed. There were four others, bunched together atop a muddy bank, sending fire back at the troopers. Without thinking, he took up his own position and began shooting in the same direction.

  It was a crazy, senseless thing. His eyes were filled with mud and water and he could see only vague shadows past the end of his barrel. Who was he shooting at? Rebels? Loyalists? He realized, suddenly, that it hardly mattered who was out there. As long as he was slamming cartridges in the chamber and watching the fire flash from the end of his muzzle the fear stayed a respectable distance away. The time was marked for killing and maybe something more terrible than dying would meet the man who didn't take his share.

  The rain parted briefly, letting awesome sights and sounds fill the world. Howie was appalled to see he'd run no more than thirty yards or so into the gully. He was sure it had been a good mile.

  A veil of acrid smoke masked the heart of the battle, but he could clearly see the Rebels at the edge of the ravine had broken. Still, stragglers quickly reformed their ragged lines a few yards back. They were dead men, but they made the Loyalists pay for every inch of ground. The rain had been Monroe's ally in that first, terrible charge, but now his own mounts were as useless as Hacker's. The dry ravines had turned to a thousand water-filled trenches, and it was one man against another.

  A great cry went up from the mesa as a fresh wave of government troopers swarmed into the fight. The Rebels held a brief moment, then crumbled.

  The fighting was over, but there was still killing to be done. Troopers roamed the trenches firing point blank at anything that moved. The cries of the wounded were quickly stilled with the butt of a rifle or the edge of a blade. As Howie watched, a great, dark figure rose up out of nowhere and nearly cut a Loyalist soldier in half with his axe before a dozen shots brought him to ground. Klu. Or Jigger, maybe. He couldn't tell. The rain swept in again on a roll of thunder and covered the sight.

  "Godamn!" rasped the man next to him. He turned his muddy, rainstreaked face to Howie, eyes weary with fear. "I seen enough. I sure don't want to see no more." He scrambled down the muddy bank, leaving his rifle where it lay, and disappeared into the rain. His companions looked blankly after him a moment, then quickly followed.

  Howie suddenly felt terribly alone and vulnerable. Not that the raiders could have done much, but they'd been there, anyway. He slid down into the cold water, searched through the rain, and moved off to his right. A volley of shots brought him up short. He crouched low, squinting into the storm. The shots had been so close he'd seen the red blast of a muzzle. A man cried out. Another shot stilled him. A soldier called out cautiously and another answered. Howie knew immediately what had happened. The raiders had run right into a Loyalist patrol. A cold ball of fear knotted his belly: They're behind me, now. In front and behind and me in the middle!

  A figure rose out of the rain right on top of him. Howie brought his rifle up and fired. The man's face disappeared.

  Howie went down beside him and searched blindly through the water. He found the Loyalist cap with its sodden feather, tossed his own hat away and replaced it with the soldier's. Then he stripped the jacket off the man and forced his arms through wet sleeves.

  "Mark, you all right?" The voice was no more than three yards away.

  "Yeah," Howie mumbled, "I reckon." He stood and moved quickly down the water-filled gully, away from the body.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The storm swept over the mesa an hour before sundown, leaving a dull, leaden sky behind. There were men among Pardo's band and the Rebel army who would never curse bad weather again; only the raw power of the driving wind and rain had enabled them to escape the Loyalist slaughter. Even then, pitifully few gat away and fewer still once the storm abated. Monroe's troopers meticulously combed the gullies for survivors, taking no prisoners.

  Howie watched them and waited for darkness. He had stayed alive by moving with the troopers under cover of the storm. It was an unnerving experience. What if the rain let up, and the soldiers saw him there and knew he didn't belong? He shook with relief when an officer called them back to the mesa. When the others answered, he hung back and let them pass him, then turned and started running as fast as he could. He had no idea where he was going. All he could think about was putting as many miles as he could between himself and the Loyalists. They'd be back. And he didn't plan to be there.

  He stumbled more than once, choking on muddy water that was waist-high in places. The last time he fell, something groaned beneath him. He shrank back, startled. A face looked up at him and grinned feebly.

  "Harlie!"

  He could see his friend was badly hurt. Only his head and shoulders were above the water. Howie started to move him further up the bank but Harlie shook his head painfully.

  "I ain't goin' nowhere and don't want to, boy."

  "Harlie. Where you hit?" Howie asked him.

  "Belly. 'Bout twice, I figure. Godamn if once wouldn't have been enough."

  "Is it . . . bad?" Howie didn't need to ask.

  "I ain't walking out of here, if that's what you mean," said Harlie. He studied Howie, trying hard to focus on his face. "It ain't too bad, boy. The water
's good and cold and I haven't felt nothin' for a while." He tried to grin again but couldn't. "Dyin' don't mean a lot, but hurtin' sure does."

  Howie took off his trooper's cap and draped it over the man's head. The rain was letting up a little and the cap kept some of the water from Harlie's face. He told Howie he'd been hit right at the beginning of the fight, when Monroe's soldiers had overcome the Rebels and poured into the gullies.

  "Tam got it, and then Gus," he said. "Gus was right beside me when they come over. I tried to get him out but there wasn't no use in it. There was 'bout . . . six of us. We left him there and kept Grin' and moving back from one damn mud hole to the next an' then I got hit and someone got me to here. Wouldn't let 'em . . . take me no further." Pain swept over Harlie's face. His body arched, then relaxed into the water. "Wasn't any of 'em fit to . . . anyway. I think Mac and that kid Raney got on out. And … maybe some others. I don't know. Not many of 'em, for sure . . ."

  He closed his eyes a minute and took a deep breath.

  "Harlie . . .” Howie bent low to his face. "Did you . . . did you see the girl anywhere? Kari? Did Kari get out?"

  Harlie opened his eyes and shook his head. "Didn't see her." He looked hard at Howie. "I wouldn't count on it, boy."

  "Did you see her anytime? After they hit us?"

  Harlie looked off into the distance, somewhere over Howie's shoulder. "She was …back in the column. Wasn't nobody got out of there."

  "Harlie , you don't know that!" He knew, though, it was true. But he wouldn't let himself believe it.