Shadow River

by Ralph Cotton

  “I’m not planning on dying,” Sam said sidelong to him. “And I didn’t heap anything on you.” He stared straight ahead at the dark far wall. “We’re going in and out of there as quiet as ghosts.” He paused, then added, “You’re going to be glad you did it, once it’s done.”

  “Ha. That’s real funny, Jones,” Burke said in a critical tone, moving along quietly beside him.

  They crept across the rocky field until they hugged against a pile of collapsed stone at the bottom of the overgrown wall and listened to the sounds from the other side. In the last few yards, they had seen the slightest glow of a firelight wavering from the other side. The quiet voices they heard in the night were not Apache; they were Spanish. Through the voices they heard the constant low whine and growl of the cat. The sound was that of an animal that had spent itself threatening and resisting, and was now exhausted from its efforts.

  “Mexicans. We can go back now,” said Burke in a whisper, sounding relieved by their discovery. He shoved his hat up and looked at Sam in the moonlight as the she-cat groaned in pain. “They’ve most likely wounded that ol’ gal and are just watching her die for the hell of it. Mexicans are good for that sort of thing.”

  “It might be federales,” Sam whispered in reply.

  “So?” Burke whispered. “Federales are still Mexicans.” He stared at Sam. “They still love to torture a cat.”

  “They’ll be no different than Apache if they catch us here,” Sam said.

  “Then let’s get out of here, like I said,” Burke said.

  “We will,” said Sam. “As soon as I see how many there are over there.”

  “How are you going to find out without tipping our hand?” Burke whispered, getting a little put out.

  Sam gestured up at the top edge of the wall as he handed Burke his rifle.

  “Here, hold this, I’m going up,” he said.

  Burke took the rifle Sam thrust to him and looked through a stand of brush and dry tangled vines hanging from the wall.

  “No, wait! That’s crazy,” he said. But it was too late. Sam had already darted up a rock pile and huddled back down out of sight.

  “Lord God, he’s got us both killed,” Burke whispered to himself. He lay silently, rifle ready, watching as Sam slipped forward again and cloaked himself in the hanging vines.

  • • •

  Sam grabbed two thick vines and tested his weight on them. Finding the vines strong enough, he wasted no time climbing hand over hand until he pulled himself atop the crumbling wall. Like some silent reptilian creature, he burrowed in beneath a thick bed of dried vines lining the wall’s upper edge. There he lay perfectly still looking down into the circling firelight below.

  On the ground in the outer glow of firelight, he saw a two-wheel mule-killer cart loaded heavily with supplies and ammunition, covered with a ragged trail canvas. Behind the cart stood two brush-scarred mules tied for the night alongside six horses to a drawn rope along the stone wall.

  Too much ammo and supplies for only this many men, he told himself, looking at the six federales lounging closely around the campfire. The six men, their dusty tunics opened down the front, passed around a bottle of mescal and made gestures and laughed at the she-panther, who had been stretched out Christ-like between two thick low branches of a twisted hackberry tree. The panther hung there panting, hopelessly bound by ropes, her head lolling on her outstretched shoulder. Sam saw fresh red blood on her exposed chest. Her milk teats hung loose on her belly. Against the tree stood a long crudely whittled lance made from a pine sapling. The sharp tip of the lance was red with blood.

  Uh-oh . . . Not necessarily panther blood, Sam told himself, seeing six young Apache warriors seated across the campsite, a guard standing over them with a rifle at port arms. Moving his eyes along the warriors from face to face, Sam saw dried-over untreated bullet and saber wounds on their chests, heads, arms and bellies. He reminded himself of the fierce battle he and the outlaws had heard on their way up the hill trails. This was the outcome.

  Looking closely, he recognized one of the warriors as the prisoner of the three scalp hunters he’d encountered over a month ago on his way to Agua Fría. He’d given the warrior a drink of canteen water; later the warrior had managed to untie himself and get away from his captors. Looking at the bloody, familiar face, Sam saw the warrior turn his eyes ever slightly up and appear to be looking back at him.

  Sam started to duck down, but he caught himself and froze in place. The warrior could not have seen him, he told himself. If he had, Sam doubted he would say anything to his Mexican guard. Still, he decided, he’d seen what he’d climbed up here to see. He started inching back out over the edge of the wall. Before dropping down, he saw one of the soldiers walk over drunkenly and pick up the lance from the tree. He poked the point of the makeshift lance into the she-panther’s already wounded side. The panther jerked and squalled out weakly, but she could do little else.

  “Por favor. Baile para nosotros algún más, la anciana!” the soldier said to the half-conscious panther. The Apache prisoners looked on stone-faced.

  “Por favor, por favor, anciana.” He poked her again, this time not as hard, but it didn’t matter. The old woman was not going to dance for him as he’d requested at the end of the sharp lance. The cat was exhausted, maybe dying, Sam told himself. He thought for a second about the she-panther’s cubs—cubs he’d never seen, cubs he didn’t even know for sure existed, he reminded himself. Then he dropped over the wall into the hanging vines and started to climb down as quietly as he’d ascended them. But he stopped when he heard a short burst of the soldiers’ laughter, a weak growl from the tortured cat.

  All right, that’s enough!

  He climbed back up and slipped beneath the tangle of vines. Looking all around from his loose cover, he saw a break in the vines a few yards ahead of him. Below the break, the gourd around the wall lay in blackness outside of the circle of firelight. Silently he inched forward on his belly like a stealthy snake, causing only a slight rise and fall atop the dry layer of vines as he passed beneath them. At the break, he crawled out onto the wall and dropped down onto a sloping pile of broken rock.

  He crawled around in the blackness at the bottom edge of the wall until he stopped and watched the soldier lean the lance back against the tree. The soldier shrugged at his friends, walked back over and joined them at the campfire. Sam saw the bottle of mescal make its rounds from man to man.

  Wait a minute. This is crazy, his own voice inside his head told him. Why are you doing this? He stopped suddenly in the black darkness and lay as still as stone against the bottom of the wall. He thought about it. This had nothing to do with his job, with why he was here, with what was expected of him. This panther had killed at least one man that he knew of—he’d seen her do it. She would kill him too, if she got a chance. Anyway, she was probably too far gone. Nobody would risk their life doing this!

  I know all that, he replied to himself, dismissing all the questions running back and forth through his mind. But this will only take a minute. . . . He cocked his leg at the knee and brought his boot close enough for him to reach back and pull out a big knife in his boot well. As he inched forward again, he froze at one point when he could have sworn the young warrior he’d recognized looked around toward him as he crawled down into a shallow water-cut ditch that ran along the wall behind the hackberry tree.

  Keeping an eye on the soldiers, Sam rose behind the tied panther, his knife in hand. The panther had been hanging there motionless. Yet, when her drooping eyes opened and she saw Sam’s face not more than a foot from hers, she showed her fangs in a low hiss and tensed her claws in her rope bindings.

  Sam ducked away quickly, knowing the soldiers had heard her. But as he peeped around the tree, he saw them only look her way, then fall back into talking and drinking. Sam waited for a moment before attempting to cut the panther loose. This had not
been one of the best ideas he’d ever had. But he was here now, and had already gone this far. All right, here we go, he told himself. As he started creeping back up a fork in the tree’s trunk, he heard gunfire break out in the distance, in the direction of the other three outlaws.

  The soldiers, hearing the gunfire, scrambled to their feet and began buttoning their tunics as if that was them doing their part. Sam watched them all hurry to an open gap in the wall and stand looking in the direction of the battle. Even the rifleman guarding the Apache left his position and ran to the others. The Apache prisoners sat stone-faced, staring straight ahead, as if none of this mattered to them.

  Hurriedly, Sam rose with the knife and cut through the rope circling the tree, holding the panther’s right front and rear paws stretched out. As soon as the rope went slack, the cat swung her freed paws back and forth as if searching for Sam, her big claws bared, ready to slice open anything that got close. As the wounded bleeding cat sensed her freedom at hand, she found a new burst of energy and swung about wildly on her left paws.

  Sam quickly sliced the rope drawn around the tree holding the cat’s left fore and rear paws. As soon as he cut the rope, he dived backward into the ditch. But he saw the cat hit the ground and catch herself and look all around, crouched on all fours. Blood dripped from her wounded side. But she was free, and wasting no time. Each of her four paws had a two-foot length of cut rope hanging from them.

  Given her new resurgence of strength, Sam knew her next move would be to leap up onto the wall and bound along it and disappear off onto the hillside into the night, ropes and all. Yet, in the flicker of a second, it dawned on him how crazy this cat had acted from the very start.

  “Oh no,” he said, seeing the big cat had spun and stood staring at him huddled there in the shallow ditch. At the gap in the wall, the soldiers had heard the cat squall out. They turned, guns in hand, just in time to see her spring forward onto Sam and roll and wallow atop him down in the ditch.

  Sam had just enough time to draw his Colt as she hit him. But in spite of her wounds, her rage was so sudden and intense, his knife flew from his hand in one direction and his Colt in the other. The cat was weakened enough by its ordeal that Sam managed to get his hands around its throat and hold it back, but it did him little good. The long, sharp fangs didn’t reach his face, his neck, his jugular vein, but the claws slashed at his chest, at his shoulders.

  Across the campsite three soldiers raised their rifles as one and fired. The shots missed the cat, but the roar of explosions and the impact of bullets knocking chunks of stone from the wall caused the cat to leap away and up atop the wall. By the time the soldiers fired again, Sam heard the cat breaking through the vine bed and vanishing into the darkness.

  The Apache prisoners still sat watching stone-faced as Sam struggled to his feet, his hands raised high, four red slashes of the cat’s claws stretched across his bare chest. Blood ran down from the claw marks. Rifles turned and trained onto him, their barrels already smoking. He froze in place, seeing the other soldiers also raise and aim their rifles.

  “Tenga su fuego!” a soldier shouted, ordering them to hold their fire. But one rifle shot exploded anyway just as he finished his words. “Tenga su fuego, embecile!” he repeated, staring hard at the bungling soldier. He started forward cautiously toward Sam, a long saber in hand. Beyond the walls in the distance, Sam heard the battle raging in the ruins farther downhill. He only hoped Burke had lain low as he told him to do. He glanced all around as the soldier drew closer, the saber rising slowly, pointing at him, glistening in the firelight.

  “Who are you, hombre?” he asked in stiff English, “and why do you come to disturb our entertainment?”

  Chapter 7

  Clyde Burke lay hidden among the rocks on the stretch of terrace where Burke told Sam he would wait. He’d heard the gunfire coming from the direction of the other gunman camped inside the walls of the lower ruins. He also heard the commotion and gunfire from the other side of the wall in front of him. He knew nothing else to do for the time being but lie low, hoping Sam would get back so they could get out of here. The longer he waited, the less likely he thought that was going to happen.

  Damn it, Jones!

  He stayed buried down in the rocks as the gunfire waned from the lower ruins. When the sound of hoofbeats rumbled up a trail and stopped inside the wall in front of him, he poked his head up for a second for a look-see, then ducked back down quickly when he saw horsemen come out from behind the wall and ride almost straight toward him.

  There was no way he was going to get up in the light of a full moon and make a run for it. Huh-uh. Not now, he warned himself. He’d waited too long. All running would do now is get him a back full of Mexican bullets. He lay frozen, almost as if pretending the hoofbeats closing in around him had nothing to do with him. He hugged his and Sam’s rifle against his chest and lay with his eyes squeezed shut. But he winced and snapped his eyes open when the closing hooves stopped and a voice called out to him.

  “You in there, come out,” a federale’s voice demanded in clear but broken English.

  Burke waited, tense, silent.

  “So, you are not in there, eh, hombre?” the voice called out with almost a dark laugh. “In that case, I will have my men start shooting until we decide you are dead.” A pause; then the voice said to the circled riflemen, “Ready, aim—”

  “No hablo español,” Burke called out in a shaky voice. But the federale leader was having none of it.

  “—fire,” he shouted.

  “Wait!” said Burke. “Here I am, see?” He stood up with his hands high and empty.

  “Step out, keep your hands high,” a federale captain demanded.

  Looking Burke up and down, a sergeant sitting his horse beside the captain gestured for two men to step down and take Burke prisoner. As the men dismounted, the sergeant leaned a little in his saddle.

  “You see, Capitán, I said there would be more out here. These gringo pistoleros are everywhere—like flies.”

  “What were you and your amigo doing out here?” the captain demanded as the soldiers lowered Burke’s hand behind his back and quickly bound them together with a strip of rawhide tethering.

  “Believe it or not, Señor Capitán,” Burke said, getting his nerve back, “I was just out taking a stroll, the night being such as it is.” He rolled his eyes toward the purple starlit sky.

  “Alone, eh?” said the stocky sergeant, swinging down from his saddle. He stood with his face only inches from Burke’s.

  “Sergeant, he has two rifles down here,” said one of the two riflemen who’d bound Burke’s hands. He held up the two rifles from among the rocks.

  “Ah,” said the sergeant. “The other one belongs to the man they captured inside.” He gazed back at Burke as he spoke over his shoulder to the captain. “These men are all a part of the rebel forces. They support our enemies.”

  “These men . . . ?” said Burke, as if in surprise. “It’s just my pal and me here. Like I told you, we were out taking a stroll—”

  “Shut up your lies, idiot!” the sergeant bellowed, cutting Burke off with a hard fist to his belly. Burke’s knees buckled from the blow. He almost sank to the rocky ground, but the two soldiers caught him, held him up until he collected himself and stood swaying in place.

  “We know there are more than the two of you,” the captain called down to Burke from his saddle. “We found the rest of your band of pistoleros camped farther down. My patrol brings the survivor up to us even as I sit here speaking.”

  “Survivor?” said Burke. This time he really was surprised. “You mean there’s only one man left alive?” His voice was weak and strained from the hard blow to his gut.

  “You do not ask us the questions, gringo. We ask you,” said the sergeant.

  “Sergeant Bolado,” said one of the soldiers still mounted, “here comes the patrol now.”
He pointed out toward a shadowy line of riders topping into sight on a narrow trail up from the lower ruins.

  “Good,” the sergeant said, staring into Burke’s eyes. “Soon we will know the truth.” He turned to the two soldiers. “Rope this one and walk him up to the camp. Let him and his amigo see each other, so they will both know that all is lost.”

  All is lost?

  In spite of the pain throbbing in Burke’s stomach, he stifled a chuckle and shook his head. “Sergeant, if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re making a whole lot more of this—”

  His words stopped short as the sergeant launched another hard blow to his stomach.

  “Every time this one opens his mouth, hit him again for me,” he ordered the soldiers. He gestured a hand. “Now get him out of my sight.”

  The soldiers shoved Burke roughly over to their horses. One took down a lariat, uncoiled it and looped one end of it around Burke’s waist. Burke made it a point to keep his mouth shut as the soldiers stepped atop their horses and turned them toward the approaching patrol as both parties of riders spotted each other.

  When the two parties joined at the top of a rocky rise, Burke saw a body draped over a horse in the moonlight; he recognized his horse and the others led by one of the soldiers. He caught a glimpse of someone riding slumped in the saddle, his hands tied behind him, two soldiers flanking him. But Burke couldn’t make out the face in the pale grainy light. He lowered his head and stood waiting, wondering what sort of plan his pard Jones would have for getting them out of here.

  • • •

  Sam stood across the campsite from the stony-eyed Apache warriors, his chest bleeding from the panther’s claw marks, a short welt on the side of his head from one of the soldiers’ rifle barrels. A soldier stood in front of him, a rifle in his hands at port arms, ready to crack Sam in the head or shoot him if need be. Luckily, when the soldiers had tied Sam’s hands, they tied them in front of him rather than behind his back. He wasn’t sure how long that would last, noting that the six Apache prisoners’ hands were all tied behind them. A long rope ran behind their backs, through each man’s tied wrists, keeping them roped together.