The Violent Peace

by George G. Gilman

  “Let's go,” Binns said nervously. “I won't feel safe until I'm in the fort. How far now?”

  Carstairs waited until another burst of distant gunfire was over. “Too far for comfort, I think.”

  The horses, their weariness evident from flared nostrils, bulging eyes and the white lather on their flanks, were asked for more speed. It was not long before the two men liad ridden out of earshot of the gunfire.

  In fact, there were no other shots to hear. Monahan had rained a whole fusillade of bullets against Steele's covering rock, while Steele had pressed himself against the ground and reloaded. Then a silence which seemed to stretch seconds into minutes hovered in the hot air above the slope. It was broken by Monahan's voice, the words twisted by pain.

  “Okay, up there! Okay! I'm beat. Out of shells and bleeding like a stuck pig. You win, soldier boy.”

  Steele stayed in cover. “Get on your feet and come out with your hands up,” he yelled.

  “How the frigging hell can I?” Monahan snarled. “You shot half my leg off.”

  “So, crawl into the open,” Steele shouted in reply, and peered around the side of the rock.

  Monahan, his tanned face contorted by the agony of his leg, clawed his way up out of the dip. Steele could see that he still wore his gunbelt, but the double holsters were empty. He raised himself, turned and ambled up the slope, unhitching his horse from the far side of a patch of high brush. He mounted and rode back down the slope. The injured man was sprawled flat on his stomach, one hand retaining a vice-like grip on his leg wound, the other trapped beneath his chest. Steele had slid the rifle into its boot, but his hand swung loosely at his side, close to the slit in his pants' seam.

  “Man that's unconscious wouldn't have a grip like that,” Steele said softly.

  Despite his pain, Monahan was able to move with smooth speed. Even as Steele spoke the final word, the man on the ground lunged into a half roll, flinging himself on to his back. The hand which had been beneath his body pumped up, as if on a spring, and one of the revolvers drew an inverted bead on Steele. Steele was a fraction faster, his hand plunging through the slit seam, streaking out and arcing forward. Sunlight glinted on the spinning blade. Monahan screamed and the revolver exploded into sound.

  The bullet went wide, fired from a gun sailing through the air. Monahan stared in agonised horror at the knife blade, which had entered the back of his hand and penetrated between the bones to protrude through his palm. Whimpering sounds trickled from his mouth.

  Steele dismounted and Monahan looked up as the shadow of his attacker fell across him.

  “Do something!” Monahan begged, extending his hand with its ghastly, blood-dripping appendage.

  Steele grasped Monahan's' fingers in one gloved hand, then gripped the knife handle and jerked, Monahan emitted another high scream, then gagged as his own blood sprayed into his open mouth. Steele stooped, and wiped the knife blade on Monahan's, shirt before replacing it in the boot sheath.

  “You ain't army,” Monahan accused, his injured hand resting on his heaving chest as he clutched at his leg wound. “Who the frigging hell are you?”

  Steele unhitched the rope from the saddle he had taken from the Binns farm. “An orphan,” he answered. “Like you said awhile back, you're beat. I think you ought to keep laying down.”

  “No!” Monahan screamed as Steele bent over him."

  “Guess that's what my father told you,” Steele said.”You should have listened.”

  It took almost fifteen minutes to strip the weakly struggling Monahan, then stake him out, using lengths of ropes and pegs ready cut for the purpose. The sun had exceeded its noon peak by then, but the cloudless sky promised many hours of blazing heat still to come. A swarm of flies, which had buzzed impatiently while Steele worked on his whimpering victim, zoomed in and split into two groups as he backed away and swung into the saddle.

  They gorged avidly on the blood of the open wounds.

  Monahan made a final effort to break free of the ropes holding his legs splayed and his arms wide. It drained him of his last reserves of strength. Even the hate which brimmed in his eyes lacked vigor as he stared up at his torturer.

  “Rest easy - and long,” Steele said in farewell, as he wheeled his horse and rode off towards the distant mountain peaks.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LATE in the afternoon, on a small, rocky plateau in the high country, Lieutenant Carey halted the troop and the men ate a meager meal washed down with strong coffee. They were weary and their tiredness was compounded by the frustration of the knowledge that they were probably wasting their time and energy.

  There was little conversation during the meal, and afterwards, it was the red-faced sergeant who voiced the men's feelings to the officer.

  “Bad country to track in, Lieutenant,” he said, flopping down beside Carey in the shade of a low bluff. “Man nor beast leave much sign on this stuff.”

  He thudded his heel against the solid rock of the ground. On the far side of the campsite, the horses stamped their feet, as if in agreement. There were a few patches of tough grass on which to feed, but it was poor eating.

  Carey sighed and rubbed his stubbled jaw. “I'm too tired to listen to the obvious, sergeant,” he replied disconsolately. “They could have holed up and waited for us to pass, or they could have gone off at a tangent we missed. Unless you have something constructive to say, leave me alone to think.”

  The sergeant cleared his throat. “I have only one thing to say, sir.”

  Carey detected an inflection in the other's tone which captured his walling attention. “What's that, sergeant?” he asked.

  “Begging the lieutenant's pardon, but I think we should have sent a man back to check on Corporal Reagan, sir.”

  Carey seemed about to rebuke the non-com for the criticism, but then let his anger escape in a sigh. “Reagan poured his life out through his throat,” he said softly. “He's dead, and he was the fifth man we lost. And two more deserted. I can't spare anybody for a useless errand.”

  “We might have captured the fourth conspirator, sir,” the sergeant insisted.

  Carey's irritation grew again. “A decoy,” he shot back curtly. “We were expected to follow him and be thrown off the track. We can't afford to foul up this mission, sergeant. It's of the utmost urgency and importance.”

  The veteran non-com shrugged. “I ain't an officer, sir. I don't get confided in.”

  “And you're not about to be,” Carey replied with a note of finality. “So get some rest so you'll be fresh to start the search again.”

  Carey allowed his chin to fall to his chest. The sergeant sighed and stretched out full length on the ground. The enlisted men adopted whatever posture they found-most comfortable on the hard, uneven ground. No sentries were posted since, Carey reasoned, they were the hunters and had nothing to fear from the hunted.

  He was wrong.

  Carstairs and Binns had moved up close to the campsite while the troopers were still eating. Binns had been anxious to circle the plateau and ride hard for Fuller's Folly, but Carstairs had insisted they keep watch for awhile.

  Now, as he watched the soldiers take their rest, the Englishman smiled with satisfaction that his decision had been proved the right one. “Cover me,” he muttered, sinking to the ground and bellying forward, keeping down below the scattering of rocks between Binns' hiding place and the patch of shade where the horses were tethered.

  Binns opened his mouth to protest, but Carstairs was already gone. He rested both rifle barrels on the rock and struggled to keep his hands from trembling as he hooked fingers around each trigger. His eyes flicked back and forth between the sleeping soldiers and the group of horses. One or two troopers moved in their sleep: others grunted or snored. The horses whinnied as Carstairs moved in among them. The blade of his knife glinted occasionally as he sawed through the tethers.

  It was less than a minute later that the Englishman returned to pluck his rifle from Binns' nervous gr
asp. “Come on,” he mouthed, and led the way up sloping ground to a grotesquely formed outcrop.

  Their horses waited behind the rock formation and Binns was shaking so much it took him many fumbling seconds to mount.

  “We going now?” he asked, wiping sweat from his eyes.

  Carstairs' handsome face wore a contemptuous frown, but then he smiled. “Like bats out of hell,” he said, and heeled his mount forward, controlling the animal with his knees as he grasped his rifle in both hands. Binns stared at the Englishman in numb shock, hardly able to believe the evidence of his own eyes as he saw him racing down towards the campsite.

  “You're crazy!” Binns yelled as the Englishman squeezed off his first shot. But the company of a madman was preferable to being stranded alone in a country thick with army troopers. Binns galloped in the wake of Carstairs, drawing a Remington from under his suit jacket.

  A cry of pain and shouts of alarm rose from the troopers as the first shot resounded among the high peaks. Panicked horses, finding themselves free, wheeled, reared and bolted. The first man to be hit spilled blood from his stomach. The flying hoof of a loose horse crashed against a soldier's head and the man's neck snapped like dried timber.

  Another trooper scooped up a rifle and squeezed off a shot, Binns' derby skimmed from His head. The Tennessee farmer squealed in fear and fired wildly. The man with the rifle spun away, taking the bullet in his shoulder. A string of three loose horses galloped over him, trampling his head to a bubbling red pulp.

  The sergeant grabbed at the cut tether of a horse and was dragged several yards before he was forced to release the animal. The tattered remnants of his uniform breeches were stained bright red with blood drawn by jagged rock scraping through skin.

  Carey went down on to one knee and sighted at the zigzagging figure of Carstairs. He squeezed the trigger, but at that instant a freed horse swerved in front of him. The animal took the bullet in the brain and rolled over. A young trooper screamed and fainted as the tremendous dead weight collapsed across his lower legs, crushing them and bursting open the flesh.

  Such was Binns' fear, he drew level with Carstairs, lashing at his horse unmercifully to urge the animal to the limit of its speed.

  They rode clear of the campsite on the far side, flanked by half a dozen of the loose army horses.

  “Some reveille, eh?” Carstairs shouted with a laugh, then ducked low as a fusillade of shots exploded behind him and bullets whined about him.

  Binns could not reply. His mouth was full of vomit, which erupted and streamed out behind him as he rode.

  Carey squeezed off two final shots, then hurled his empty rifle away. “All right!” he roared, staring after the distance-shrinking figures of Carstairs and Binns. “Cease fire.” The screams of the wounded and the anger pounding in the ears of the soldiers who were unscathed, prevented them hearing the officer's order.

  Carey whirled around and cupped his hands to his mouth. His voice became a bellow: “Cease fire, I said! There's nothing to hit!” Lead continued to pour after the attackers for several seconds; and it was the fact that they rode from sight, rather than in compliance with Carey's order, which persuaded the troopers of the futility of further retaliation.

  Carey's anger became disgust for a moment, as he surveyed the dead, dying and wounded. But an inward-directed rage powered his voice as he felt the eyes of the men upon him. “Catch the damn horses, for Christ sake!” he snarled.

  On a hill-crest high above the blood-run plateau, Adam Steele stroked the neck of his horse and shook his head.

  “Makes you wonder how the Union won the war with officers like that,” he muttered. Then he clucked to the animal and urged him forward, turning his eyes away from the body-littered scene below, towards the distant dots of movement which were Carstairs and Binns.

  In what remained of daylight, Steele narrowed the gap between himself and the two men ahead of him. By dusk he was less than a quarter of a mile behind them. When full night was born, he was close enough to hear their intermittent conversation as a low, unintelligible murmuring.

  When they entered an abandoned line-shack after putting their horses in a stable at the back, he was close enough to see them - and to recognize Ed Binns from the wedding picture he had burned at the farmstead.

  Steele's vantage point was a small stand of pine trees slightly to the side and some twenty yards in front of the shack. The building was single storey, with no glass in the windows on each side of the leaning door. There was a large hole in the sloping roof. Moonlight shafted in through the opening. Steele's eyes were expressionless as he dismounted and peered across at the shack, seeing clearly the forms of Carstairs and Binns, one at each window. Their whispered conversation was amplified by the stillness of the night.

  “You sure it was just the one horse you heard, Bill?”

  “Yes, old son. Of course, it may have been a loose one.”

  “He sure followed us a long way.”

  Carstairs tone became pensive. “That's what worries me.”

  As he listened, Steele unbuckled the cinch, and slid the saddle silently from the back of his horse. He lowered it to the ground and drew the Colt Hartford from the boot. Then he jabbed the rifle muzzle hard into the animal's rump.

  The horse snorted and lunged clear of the pines, galloping across the front of the shack. Binns gave a cry of alarm and fired through the glassless window, missing the pained animal. Carstairs took more careful aim. Binns fired again. The horse took both bullets in. the shoulder and staggered. Carstairs squeezed off a second shot, hitting the animal's head. It sighed into death and keeled over.

  Steele completed his run and pressed himself against the side of the shack, holding his breath in lungs which seemed ready to burst. “It was just a loose one, Bill.”

  “Perhaps, old son,” the Englishman replied thoughtfully. “But what made him come out of those trees as if somebody bad jabbed him?”

  “You think—” Binns voice had taken on a tremulous tone.

  “Lately, I've learned to take nothing for granted. Take a look at the back.”

  “Why don't we just make a run for it?” Binns demanded.

  “Not until it's known to be safe,” Carstairs snapped. “Just do as I say, there's a good fellow.”

  Steele side-stepped towards the rear of the shack, then ran diagonally across the yard on the balls of his feet. When Binns creaked open the rear door and thrust his rifle out, then his head, the yard was empty. He snaked his body around the frame and pressed himself hard against the timber wall, eyes straining for the slightest movement, ears for the tiniest sound. Nothing moved. Some crickets chirped. Binns held his position for a full ten seconds, then: “Ain't nothing out here, Bill.”

  “Check the stable,” Carstairs replied.

  His voice sounded further away than it should have been. But Binns realized his ears could be playing tricks on him, considering the strain he was under. He stepped away from the shack wall and a door had been. The ground crunched under his feet. The horses made small grunts. The crickets' excitement mounted. There was a faint swishing sound.

  Binns screamed. He dropped the rifle and clutched at his shoulder. He felt the warmth of blood and the smooth roundness of the knife handle.

  "Bill!” he screamed, dropping to his knees, half turning to look towards the shack, his hands fumbling to pull the knife from his flesh.

  Footfalls sounded - running. They grew fainter, running away. There was a thud and Binns keeled over, full-length, turning his head to look towards the stable. Steele stood in the gaping doorway, legs still splayed and bent after his leap from the hayloft. The Colt Hartford was crooked in his arm. Binns gasped and streaked out a hand towards his discarded rifle. Steele snapped up the sporting gun to the aim and squeezed the trigger. The bullet smashed into the stock of Binns' Henry and the man snatched away his hand.

  “Your shooting days are over, feller,” Steele said, approaching Binns slowly. “Same as your lynching days - and
every other kind.”

  Confusion showed in Binns’ eyes, shining through tears of pain and fear. “Bill?” he bellowed suddenly.

  The footfalls had faded into the distance. The crickets and the horses were silent. The moonlit stillness had an eerie quality.

  “Ran out on you,” Steele said. “With the kind of friends you fellers pick, you don't deserve an enemy like me.”

  He stooped, held Binns pinned to the ground with the rifle muzzle and jerked the knife free. Binns screamed, then watched in mute horror as Steele wiped the blade on his shirt.

  “Who are you, mister?” he managed to gasp at length.

  Steele's face, heavily bearded after many days without a shave, was menacing in its utter lack of any kind of expression. His voice was flat: “To you - slow death.”

  Once more, Steele worked quickly but methodically, to engineer a lingering, agonizing death for one of his father's murderers. First he tied the groaning Binns to a doorpost of the stable. Then he rigged up a framework to the rear of the shack, fixing Binns' own rifle into it, carefully positioned so that it was aimed at the heart of the captive. A length of cord was tied to a thicker length of rope, the cord looped around the rifle trigger and it, and the rope, pulled taut and fixed to a nail.

  After the knife wound had become numb, Binns began to plead for mercy, but Steele ignored his whining voice. His work almost finished, he went into the stable and back up to the hayloft. He stretched out on the rotting straw and was able to drift into sleep, despite Binns' constant moaning.

  He awoke at first light, and discovered that Binns had slipped into unconsciousness. The wound in the man's shoulder had festered. It looked ugly and it smelled of decay. There was water in a pool behind the stable and Steele scooped some up and saturated the rope.

  Binns returned to awareness as the sun crested the horizon and struck him slantwise in the eyes. His shoulder seemed to be on fire. But he was able to forget his pain as he saw the first wisps of steam rising from the damp rope. He heard a sound at the side and snapped his head around, to see the impassive Steele leading the two horses from the stable. One was saddled. The other bolted when Steele slapped him hard on his flank.