Remington 1894

by William W. Johnstone

“As should you.”

  Stepping back, McMasters grabbed the twelve-gauge. “Pack the mules. Water. Blankets.” He motioned at the one on the porch. “Food.” He pointed again, but this time at the horses. “You’ll find saddles, bridles, horse blankets in the barn. And curry combs, brushes, and hoof picks. Groom your mounts first, and do it right. Do it not to my satisfaction, and you’ll walk. It’s already a furnace here. Walking’s not fun.”

  “Well,” the Reb said. “I’ll tell ya somethin’ else that ain’t no fun. An’ that’s goin’ up again’ a bunch of black-hearted killers with guns—but no powder and lead. So, ya avengin’ bastard, when do we get bullets?”

  “In good time. Get to work.” McMasters stepped off the porch, cut through the prisoners, and went to the buckskin. His horse remained strong enough, sturdy enough, game enough to ride into the Superstition Mountains. He would groom it himself, like he always did.

  When he led Berdan away from the corral and tied it to a hitching post, he walked to the gambler.

  “That pick won’t hurt you, and it won’t hurt that bay’s hoof. Do it right.”

  A glance told him he need not inspect Alamo Carter’s sorrel. The man had served in the U.S. Army. He knew how to care for a horse. McMasters stopped, studied the brown gelding Emory Logan had picked, and frowned. The old Reb had picked a fast one—a good horse with plenty of heart and legs that could carry a killer a long, long way.

  Another mistake on my part, McMasters thought. I should have picked the horses for each of these killers. Then he remembered all he had heard about William Quantrill and his raiders. They rode only the best mounts and could ride them a long, long way. Almost like Comanches or the Sioux. Keep an eye on him, McMasters told himself. Then he laughed.

  Hell, I need six pairs of eyes.

  He glanced at Daniel Kilpatrick, who had picked a fresh horse, too, a blood bay stallion, then grinned, remembering when he and Bear Aztec had caught that mustang way over near Willow Mountain. The grin turned to a frown. Dan would need watching, too.

  “No,” McMasters said aloud, “seven pairs.”

  “Seven what?” Lovelace asked.

  McMasters stopped, startled, and stared at her. “Nothing.” He took a few steps away, stopped, and walked back to check on her horse.

  She had picked a paint horse, more white than black, a rangy mustang that would fit her perfectly. It was a mare with a gentle disposition, but good bottom. Better suited for climbing mountains than running, but a good desert horse.

  He shifted the shotgun to his left hand, reached and lifted the right rear leg, studying the shoe.

  The hoof returned to the earth. The mustang snorted and shook its head as the woman stared.

  “You know horses,” McMasters told her.

  “I know a lot of things.”

  “Including how to kill men,” he said.

  Her green eyes darkened, and she looked through him.

  “One man,” she corrected. “Just one.”

  “That’s enough.”

  She spit and put the brush back on the horse’s back, moving it with purpose, but also with a caress, so not to hurt or bother the mare. “And how many have you killed, John McMasters?”

  She continued a steady job on the horse.

  He shrugged, brought the shotgun back to his right hand, and turned to walk away.

  She stopped him. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He started to walk away, but couldn’t. Turning slowly, he looked back into those hard eyes. Damn, she did remind him of Bea . . . only harder, much harder, much more worldly . . . and much more alive than his wife. He felt a mist cover his eyes and his mind flashed back. As much as he tried to stop the memory, he couldn’t.

  * * *

  He was grooming the horse, a roan, using the brush too hard. Bea stopped him, scolding him as he might James or Nate.

  He snapped, “What the hell do you know about horses?”

  “On this Saturday morning,” she snapped back, sounding more Irish than French, “a lot more than you, my husband. You’ll rub his hide off if you don’t stop. So stop it. Right now.”

  Her green eyes hardened.

  He tensed, feeling the anger, that hatred, and then he felt remorse and a sickness. He looked at the brush, the roan, dropped the brush, and turned, staggering away, tripping, catching himself against the stall. His lungs heaved. He heard the noises, the cannon fire, deafening musketry, and the whistling of grapeshot . . . and those horrible screams of men. Even worse, he felt the Sharps kick against his shoulder.

  “John!” She was at his side.

  He felt the flour on her hands as she reached for him.

  “John”—her voice cracked—“what is it?”

  “Nothing.” He pulled away from her.

  But she did not retreat . . . like he so often did. She pressed forward, like some damned Union infantry, marching into battle. Even up the slopes at Cold Harbor, where they would be shot to pieces.

  “Tell me,” Bea said.

  “No.” He breathed in deeply, let the air out, and felt better. Well, better than he had. The noise was gone. No more shells exploding. Yet he saw himself rubbing his right shoulder.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  “No.” He dropped his left hand to his side. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re hurting.”

  He laughed without any humor and raised his right arm over his head. “This does not hurt.”

  “I am not talking about your shoulder.” Her flour-coated fingers rose and tapped on both his temples. “But here. I wish you would tell me why . . . what happened.”

  “That,” he said, “you don’t need to know.”

  “I’m your wife.”

  “It was before I met you. Before we were married.”

  She sighed. “I did not marry the John McMasters I met five years ago. I married the John McMasters who was born in 1844.”

  “Forty-six,” he corrected and laughed.

  “I married all of you.”

  “And I’m glad you did.”

  Her head shook. Her eyes lost their hardness, turning softer, less emerald, more grass, and so damned sad. She could break his heart when she looked at him that way.

  And on that one day, that one time, in . . . Missouri? Kansas? Someplace long before Arizona Territory and the Mogollon Rim, he almost granted Bea her wish. He almost told her . . . everything.

  “It was during the war,” he said with a sigh.

  “That much I figured.”

  “I’m no hero.”

  “You are to me. Medal of Honor or no Medal of Honor. You’re my hero. You’ll always be. You can always protect me.”

  And that almost killed him.

  He laughed, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her in that barn on that homestead where the guns did not roar so loudly in his head.

  * * *

  He shook his head as the memory faded, but he continued pondering. He’d taken her to Arizona, but hadn’t protected her. He hadn’t been able to save her . . . or Rosalee . . . or James . . . or Eugénia . . . or even young Nate.

  There were days when he wished he had been killed, laid to rot by a Rebel musket ball on some forgotten or remembered field of battle. Sometimes he cursed God for letting him live. Letting him live with that stupid medal that he did not deserve.

  For maybe a year, he had almost forgotten Colonel Berdan, Sharps rifles and telescopic sights. Had blocked out the nightmares, the horrors, and some general pinning a Medal of Honor on his chest.

  Then Moses Butcher had turned McMasters’ life asunder, murdering his family . . . butchering them. And killed one of his dearest friends. Bear Aztec had helped him forget those horrors, and find peace in horses, in rounding up mustangs, breaking them, training them or other horses. Horses were kind. Horses were forgiving.

  But Moses Butcher had picked on the wrong family. By murdering the wrong people, he had resurrected the demons that had controlled John McMas
ters. He welcomed those demons and would use them to keep him going.

  He would kill men he truly hated, not men merely because they wore a uniform of a different color, or because they owned slaves, or wanted to form their own country. He would kill those he hated and he would kill them all.

  Suddenly, he remembered something else, something Daniel Kilpatrick had told them as they rode toward The Doorway. “That shotgun doesn’t kill far. That means you’ll have to look into the eyes of the man you aim to kill. You will have to see him. And that’s different from anything you did in the late unpleasantness.”

  The late unpleasantness. That’s what people who had not fought in the Civil War called the damned thing. Unpleasant? Hell, they didn’t know anything about the war.

  McMasters spit. He almost laughed as he remembered turning to Kilpatrick. So real was the memory, he repeated what he’d said then. “I won’t see him. I’ll see my wife, my kids. And that’s different, too.”

  “What is?”

  McMasters stopped. The image of Daniel Kilpatrick vanished. So did the one of Bea, lovely Bea. He looked up, no longer in that barn, no longer rubbing down a roan colt, and, regretfully, no longer looking at his young, radiant, headstrong wife.

  The glasses came off, and he wiped the lenses with the frayed ends of his bandanna.

  Mary Lovelace kept her eyes locked on him. She wet her lips, forgot what she had just asked—out of concern—and asked what she had thrown to him earlier with no concern, and not even what she would consider curiosity.

  “I asked you how many men you’ve killed. You’re leading us into a gunfight. I figure that’s a fair question, McMasters. How many?”

  “Too many,” he answered, returning the spectacles.

  “And you plan on killing more.”

  “That’s right.” He stuck the stock of the Remington under his arm and turned to find Emilio Vasquez and inspect the palomino gelding he was grooming.

  “Me, too,” she told him.

  He stopped, turned, and looked back at her. He made himself grin. “Me?” he asked.

  “No . . . unless you get in my way.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The pines disappeared, replaced by saguaro. The hills remained just as rugged, though, and the heat intensified. Still they rode, turning east to skirt around the Fort McDowell reservation, moving southeast toward the Superstition Mountains.

  John McMasters loped the buckskin ahead of the others, climbing up the loose rocks, avoiding the arms of the giant cacti. Coming up to the boulder-strewn top, he turned the horse around, and reined up on the hilltop. From the saddlebag, he withdrew the binoculars and looked at the back trail.

  It had been a hunch. An itch he could not scratch. He focused the lenses until he could see clearly. A hunch. Now he knew.

  Riding the sorrel, Alamo Carter topped the hill first, and moved his horse off to McMasters’s right. “I was wonderin’ when you’d figure it out.” He kicked free of the stirrups as his horse began to urinate.

  “When did you?” McMasters did not lower the binoculars, but he did move his right hand to the butt of the holstered revolver. The Remington remained sheathed in the saddle scabbard.

  The ex-Scout just chuckled for an answer.

  Next up the hill came Mary Lovelace, her face shining with sweat, and the pinto working hard to breathe.

  “Best climb down, ma’am,” Carter told her. “Take a few sips of water your ownself. Then let that hoss have a little, too.”

  McMasters did not argue the point.

  He lowered the binoculars, and watched the others climb the hill. Marcus Patton on the bay, fanning his face with his hat . . . Vasquez, grinning, mopping his face with his bandanna . . . Emory Logan, pulling the pack mule that McMasters had handed off to him before he rode up the hill . . . and Bloody Zeke, who turned his horse to come around McMasters on his left side. McMasters drew the Colt from the holster, and thumbed back the hammer.

  “Not too close, Zeke,” he warned.

  The killer laughed, pulled the reins and he and his black horse gave McMasters plenty of room.

  Last up the hill, pulling the other pack mule, was Daniel Kilpatrick. He stopped his horse and asked McMasters,

  “Trouble?”

  “You shouldn’t be pulling one of the mules. Make Zeke do it. Keep him occupied.” McMasters lowered the hammer, holstered the revolver, and nodded toward the hills behind them . . . those they had already descended.

  Kilpatrick turned in the saddle, stood in the stirrups, and felt the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. “I don’t see anything,” he said as he settled back into his seat.

  “Because,” Alamo Carter said, “they don’t want you to.”

  “Butcher?” Kilpatrick asked.

  McMasters slid the Remington out and cradled the shotgun across his thighs.

  “No.”

  A few seconds later, the riders topped the hill, stopping their rangy mustangs. None pointed. None raised a weapon. They just waited. Four men.

  “Apaches?” Kilpatrick blurted out.

  “Pima,” McMasters said, and kicked Berdan into a walk, wetting his cracked lips with his tongue as he rode down, bracing the twelve-gauge’s stock on his thigh. “Wait here. Don’t let anyone get behind you. And watch our mules.”

  “They’re after our mules?” Kilpatrick said in disbelief.

  “They’re after us,” McMasters said.

  The buckskin kicked dirt and stones down the hill but remained surefooted.

  Emilio Vasquez twisted the bandanna, soaking wet with his sweat, and tied it around his neck again. He waited. The way he figured things, he knew they were being followed long before either the gringo with the shotgun or the Negro who had scouted for the Army. He knew they were Indians, too. Back in the days when Apaches raided both sides of the border, Emilio Vasquez had made a right tidy sum selling Apache scalps for bounties to the alcaldes in various villages in Chihuahua and Sonora. A hundred pesos for each warrior—or at least a boy fourteen years or older—fifty pesos for each woman, and twenty-five pesos for any kid. And when there were no Apaches to be found, well, Emilio Vasquez learned quickly that the scalp of a Mexican man, woman or even a chico or chica could pass for that of an Apache.

  He watched the tall gringo ride the magnificent horse down the slope toward the Indians and studied the terrain above the far hill. He waited and watched. No, there were no others. Just those four foolish Pima Indians. Pimas were no Apaches. No Yaquis. Too damned tame. Too trusting.

  He wet his lips, dried his hands on his pants, and found the foolish gringo with the one eye and told him in an urgent whisper. “Do not let your mule go, amigo. Hold him tight.”

  Then he moved.

  * * *

  Across the desert, the four Pima Indians kicked their mustangs down the other hill, and spread out once they reached the flats. Keeping the shotgun’s barrels pointed skyward, McMasters eased his horse toward them, his throat dry, and sweat dripping down his forehead, but he dared not move a hand to wipe his face.

  “Whoa, boy.” He tugged back on the reins, and let them drop over the horse’s neck.

  Three of the riders looked young, but not green. All were thin. The leanest—and probably the youngest—held a bow. He sat on a dun mustang the farthest to McMasters’s right. The Indian to the left held an old Springfield musket, stock and forestock decorated with brass tacks, across his lap. Next to him, separated by a saguaro that had not yet sprouted any arms, the meanest of the group sat on the back of a skewbald mare. The man’s face had been deeply scarred by some pox, and his left eye showed the brightness that told McMasters he had been blinded in that eye. McMasters saw no weapon, but the man’s left hand had disappeared inside a cut-off Army dark wool. McMasters bet it held a revolver.

  The last man, the oldest, with silver hair and a yellow headband, kicked his brown horse forward. He did not come too close, however, and he kept his weapon—a Spencer carbine—across his thighs, thumb on the hammer
, a finger inside the trigger guard.

  McMasters lifted his left hand. His right remained part of the 1894 Remington.

  The Indian offered no greeting, just a fierce scowl.

  “Buenos tardes,” McMasters tried in Spanish. “¿ Tú hablas Inglés?” He decided to speak informally, as if they were friends, rather than use formal Spanish. It did not work. Or the old Pima did not speak Spanish, either.

  “You know why we are here,” the old man said, in guttural but easy to understand English.

  McMasters nodded. “I have an idea. But you are wrong. We chase the same men.”

  The Pima did not blink.

  “Bear Aztec,” McMasters said, “was my friend. His woman was my friend.”

  The Pima had come across the carnage at Aztec’s trading post, and had followed the tracks left by McMasters, Kilpatrick and the six convicted killers. That was something that McMasters had not anticipated, but should have. Other Pima Indians would come to the post, and seeing what had happened, they would not go to Fort McDowell to ask the damned agent for justice. They were Pima Indians. They would seek retribution their way—much as McMasters sought it his way.

  “You know Bear Aztec,” McMasters said. “You have heard him mention The Man Who Is One With Horses.” It was not a question. Hoping to see a horse he had traded or helped round up with old Bear Aztec, he looked at the other Indians. But things didn’t work out that easily.

  The leader did not take his eyes off McMasters, but called out to the pockmarked Indian in the Pima tongue. The grizzled, part-blind Indian answered in a few syllables, studied McMasters with his one good eye, shrugged, but then pointed with his chin up the hill at the others. He said something else, but it took more than his first response.

  “The men you ride with,” the old one said, “know death.”

  McMasters understood. “That is why they ride with me.”

  “You avenge Bear Aztec?” the old man asked.

  McMasters nodded. “And my own family.”

  “And,” the Indian said, “Juhki?”

  “We buried Bear’s wife, too. And the others. If we’d murdered them,” McMasters added, hoping it might persuade the old Pima and his companions that he spoke truthfully, “we would not have buried them.”