The Black Trail

by James W. Marvin

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ moaned the white man.

  Unless you were a top shootist you never used a pistol in each hand. Not if you wanted any kind of accuracy.

  The Mescalero saw the Zulu and swerved aside, lashing out with the rifle as he dashed past, making Mikalawayo stumble and dodge. The Apache was going to get away. None of them was close enough to reach him now. Crow wished he’d brought his Winchester. He would have risked the shot rather than face the certainty of the Indian escaping like this.

  Mavulamanzi had stopped and was drawing the odd-shaped club from his belt. Waving it in a circular way, as if he was threatening his fleeing enemy. Which seemed to Crow to be a pointless waste of time.

  Until he realized that the chief was building up speed with the knobkerrie, swinging it faster and faster, the round end of it whirring through the air. And finally letting it go. As far as Crow could see there wasn’t any proper aiming of the club. Mavulamanzi simply let it go with a heave of the shoulders.

  Crow had often lain still among the mountains and watched the great hunting birds of the Sierras. Hanging almost motionless in the air as they scanned the earth a half mile below them for the tell-tale movement of their prey. And once they had seen it they would swoop. Tucking in their wings and aiming themselves. Gathering speed until they struck with ferocious force, almost too fast for the eye to comprehend.

  So it was with the war-club of the Zulu chief.

  Crow heard it, but then lost sight of it among the clump of trees. His eyes drawn to the running Apache. Catching a glimpse of the knobkerrie again, just before it struck the Mescalero a shattering crack on the head, knocking him over like a shot rabbit in a flurry of arms and flailing legs.

  ‘Damned good,’ he called to Mavulamanzi, nodding his approval at the black man’s skill. Checking his smile as he saw that the Negro was locked in his own world of blood-lust. Loping towards his victim with an easy grace.

  But Crow had no idea of the brutal extent of the Zulu’s revenge.

  Out of habit Crow checked that the three warriors in the clearing were all dead. His eyes had told him that all their wounds must have proved fatal, but that didn’t mean a thing. He’d seen a drunken waterfront thief in San Francisco run over by a loaded dray, losing an arm clean off at the shoulder. He’d got up, blood fountaining from the severed stump at the shoulder, and walked into a bar, ignoring all offers of help. Ordered himself a beer and drunk half of it before finally collapsing and dying.

  This time all three were dead. The white man tugged out the spears, wondering at the power that had thrown them so deeply buried were they in the bodies of the Apaches.

  Then he went to Mikalawayo, who was standing looking sheepish on the edge of the stream. Both guns stuck in his belt, the Winchester trailing from his right hand. The yellow derby was back on his head but it perched there at a dejected angle as if it shared its owner’s obvious shame at how badly he had acted.

  ‘Frightfully apologizing, Crow,’ he began, looking fearfully over his shoulder at where Mavulamanzi, ignoring both of them, was kneeling by the fourth Mescalero, binding his hands tightly behind him. From which Crow deduced that the crunching blow from the knobkerrie hadn’t killed the Indian. It must have been the thick mane of black hair that had cushioned the blow and saved his life. From the expression on the chief’s face, Crow doubted that it could be regarded as a mercy of any kind.

  ‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’ asked Crow, reaching out for his guns.

  ‘That was what I was endeavoring to communicate to you. Sad to say Mikalawayo has no skill with such weapons.’

  ‘Jesus! You mean you can’t even fire a gun yet you took them and went off? You could have been the key that locked us all in here for good, you stupid bastard.’

  ‘I have made my…What is wrong?’ Tremulously. Seeing that Crow was looking at his Winchester. Turning it and staring at the barrel.

  ‘What have you done with this?’

  ‘I accidentally dropped it in the mud and…’

  ‘Got it filled real good with shit you stupid son of a bitch nigger!’ said Crow, clenching his fist. ‘I’d have pulled the trigger and blown my own head off.’

  ‘Most sorry that…Oh!’

  Crow’s punch caught him flush on the cheek, the butt of the Winchester that followed it up cracking his nose apart like an apple. Breaking the bone and sending a gush of blood out over his clothes. The little Negro folded over and sat down hard, holding his face in both hands, peering up tearfully at the menacing white man.

  ‘I was thinking you were a chum,’ he mumbled through the blood.

  ‘Any man jams my gun with dirt looks to get himself hurt,’ said Crow, angrily. Even in his rage his voice still quiet and gentle.

  ‘I did not mean…’

  ‘I believe you. Ifn I thought you’d done it deliberate then I’d have killed you.’ Mikalawayo didn’t say anything to him. ‘You hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good. Means you won’t do it again.’

  ‘No. I won’t,’ muttered the frail black, trying to pull a kerchief out of his pocket to staunch the flow of crimson,

  And to try and stop himself from crying.

  Mavulamanzi continued to ignore Mick and Crow, not even looking round when the white man punched his servant in the face. Pulling the thongs tighter around the arms of the unconscious Apache, tugging them hard until the Indian’s elbows met behind his back, wrenching him into an agonizing contortion. The pain finally brought him round, lying on his face, twisting his head to look up at the giant Negro standing over him.

  ‘What are you goin’ to do with him, Chief?’ asked Crow.

  Mavulamanzi took no notice, standing still, looking down at his prisoner.

  ‘I asked you a question, I ask you one more time and if you ignore me again, you black bastard, then you and me are through.’

  ‘He took my men and my woman. Made them know pain and killed them.’

  ‘We don’t have time for a lot of sportin’. Not ifn we want to get to their camp.’

  ‘It will not take long. Not for us.’

  ‘For him?’ pointing at the helpless warrior with the toe of his boot.

  At last the Zulu looked at Crow, smiling and licking his full red lips.

  ‘He will die when he wills it.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘The time of his dying is his. I will not kill him. He will.’

  Crow didn’t understand.

  Not until Mavulamanzi showed him.

  The Mescalero was a big man by Apache standards, coming close to five feet nine, weighing something over a hundred and fifty pounds. The Zulu stooped and picked him up in his arms as if he were a day-old baby. The Indian kicked and spat at him, but he took no notice.

  Crow followed him as he walked in among the trees, as if he was looking for something particular. Mikalawayo also followed, coughing and spitting out blood in the dust. The shootist looked round at him, puzzled by what was happening. And the little Negro made a strange gesture with his right hand and arm. Clenching the fist and bending his arm at the elbow. Driving it up as if he was stuffing something into a hole. Crow didn’t understand it.

  Then he saw the tree that Mavulamanzi had selected and he understood it all.

  Understood the gestures and the cryptic comment of the chief about how the Indian was to go to meet his Maker.

  It was the tree with the jagged spike sticking from the top of its six feet height Pointed like one of Mavulamanzi’s spears, smoothed by the wind and sand. The Apache, cradled in the Zulu’s arms, imagined that he was to be tied to the tree and tortured. Perhaps burned in the way that he and his comrades had tortured the two Negroes during the previous night. That would have been bad enough.

  In an amazing exhibition of raw strength, the huge black lifted the Apache out at arms’ length, holding him upright. Raising him and measuring him against the tree, the frightened face of the Mescalero warrior still uncomprehending. When he was satis
fied that he could reach, Mavulamanzi lowered his prisoner to the earth. Pushing him flat and bending, tearing off his breeches in one great burst of violence. Leaving the Indian naked below the waist, his hairless genitals exposed to the warmth of the rising sun.

  As the Zulu lifted him once more, Crow’s suspicions became certainties.

  The tip of the upright branch was thinner than a child’s finger, and sharp. Gradually widening until it was thicker than a man’s forearm. The total length of the spur of iron-hard wood was a little over three feet.

  Just at the moment that the chief began to lift him up again, the Apache realized with a shriek of horror what his fate was to be. Beginning to kick and struggle. He might as well have begged for help from the clouds drifting disinterestedly by.

  Mavulamanzi shook him as a child would a doll that had displeased it. Or like a terrier with a rat. The head of the Mescalero rattled on his shoulders and he seemed to become briefly unconscious.

  The Zulu used the moment to raise him up so that his waist was above the level of the top of the tree. Crow turned away, seeing no reason to watch. Mikalawayo watched him go, puzzled by his lack of interest.

  As he reached the edge of the grove of trees, Crow looked back. And looked again, fascinated despite his revulsion. The Indian was perched on top of the spike of wood, gripping it desperately with his thighs and feet. Trying with every atom of his concentration to stop himself from sliding down it. The end few inches were jammed solidly inside his rectum, and there was already greasy blood inching down the natural spear, making it harder for him to avoid the slow and inevitable process of impalement. Gradually, Crow guessed, the strain would be too much. With his hands bound behind him he could do nothing to save himself. All the time the needle tip of the tree would be sliding inexorably deeper into his body. Seeking out his bowels. There would be more blood. He would lose control and empty his body, making the wood yet more slippery. His feet would lose their grip and he would slide an inch more.

  And further.

  Until the spike finally penetrated so deep that it would rip his intestines apart and there would be a final rush of blood and he would slump into total impalement.

  It was a vile death. Crow had no love for the Apaches. No love, truly, for the whites or the blacks either. But he had never liked to see cruelty for the sake of it He had himself caused men to die miserable and lonely deaths as his own revenge. But the relish of the Zulu at the man’s plight sickened him.

  The Mescalero was still alive when the three of them left the place of death, abandoning the grove of trees to the waiting vultures. Walking on. Mavulamanzi looked back twice at the grotesque figure of the Indian, moaning now, the spike buried nearly a foot in his body.

  ‘I teach lesson, Crow. Show what happen to any man make me lose face.’

  Crow nodded. ‘Good lesson, I guess. Sure figure the poor bastard got the point.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Crow took care that they moved on slowly and carefully, never exposing themselves on the skyline until he had patiently waited to check that the main body of the Apaches was still ahead of them and out of sight. On its way to the safety of White Canyon.

  Mikalawayo gradually recovered something of his cheerfulness. His nose was swollen to twice its usual size and was still leaking blood, but the yellow derby still adorned his fuzzy skull.

  He kept his place between Mavulamanzi and Crow. He still had one of the pistols in his belt, only this time he knew how to use it. Crow had spent a quarter of an hour showing him the basics of firing a handgun. Cock and aim and squeeze. Steady and easy. No snatching or jerking. Both hands on the butt.

  It might not be of any help at all, but there was a better than average chance that they’d be facing some shooting trying to get the woman out of White Canyon.

  Crow caught himself realizing that he had begun to think of himself as being part of the rescue attempt. That wasn’t the deal. Get the chief there. That was all he’d said.

  ‘You come?’

  They’d stopped for a few minutes while Crow scouted on ahead, making sure that the leader of the Mescalero band hadn’t doubled his rearguard insurance by leaving any more men behind. But the trail still showed clear. It was only about a mile and a half to go.

  The white man looked down at Mavulamanzi, stretched out on the earth, resting.

  ‘Come all the way, you mean?’

  The Zulu nodded. ‘Yes. I ask you as friend, this time. Not pay you as servant.’

  ‘Well, that’s something else. I don’t see any reason to go and get myself killed just because of some wrong-headed idea you’ve got about pride.’

  Mavulamanzi stood up abruptly, towering over Crow. ‘I shall not ask again.’

  ‘Good enough. Save me having to tell you the answer’s still the same.’

  Still lying on his back, breathing harshly through his damaged nose, Mikalawayo looked even less happy at the exchange.

  It was early in the afternoon when they finally reached White Canyon. From where they stopped they could see a little way into the deep ravine, the mica dazzling in the high walls. There was silence inside. A deep, unyielding silence.

  ‘What are they doing, Crow?’ whispered the little black.

  ‘Resting, Mick,’ answered the shootist. ‘Maybe gettin’ some food.’

  ‘I am hungry,’ said Mavulamanzi.

  ‘Got revenge to dine on. Real good that. Better’n a feast, some folks say.’

  The Negro didn’t reply. Stalking down out of sight, and walking a little distance away, where he hunkered down and sat muttering to himself in the shade of a giant saguaro cactus.

  ‘He prayin’?’ asked Crow.

  ‘Yes. He talks to the spirits. They will tell him what to do.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he let this lie?’

  ‘He will not, Crow. I have told you of this. A chief like Mavulamanzi has his honor. The Indians have taken his possession. He will have it back.’

  ‘Undamaged?’ asked Crow.

  Mikalawayo looked away and didn’t say anything.

  It was close to a quarter of an hour later that the chief rejoined them. An impressive figure. The paint still streaked on his face and body, the spears rattling softly in the quiver across his shoulders. The club dangling from his belt. Crow wondered what the Apaches might think when they saw him. It would be the damnedest thing they’d ever seen. Like a demon from out of their ancestral nightmares. A mighty black giant come to rend and tear. To drag them off to their own special kind of Hades.

  Maybe there was some way that the terror could be harnessed, he wondered. Mavulamanzi would top any of the Mescalero by a good foot and a half. And none of them had seen him dressed like that.

  ‘Chief,’ he began.

  ‘I will attack now,’ interrupted the Zulu. ‘With Mikalawayo. You have done your part and you will be well paid, Crow. My thanks.’

  ‘How do I get the money?’

  ‘When I return.’

  ‘Yeah. Listen, Chief. And you listen good. I’m goin’ to say this once.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You go in there now and you’re deader than a salted hog. And the little guy. They’ll cut you down in less time than it takes to pick your nose. And you won’t rescue the woman. Nor kill any of them. It won’t work. But I’ve just been thinkin’ about a plan that might work. But only if you do exactly…exactly…what I tell you. Want to hear it? Or do you just want to die?’

  A lot of people might say at different times that they want to die. But when you get right on down to it, not many of them really mean it. Show them an acceptable alternative and they’ll leap at it.

  The Apache camp was a place of mixed feelings. Their leader, Angry Man Whose Face Smiles, was a warrior in his late thirties. Inclined to stoutness, his cheek split by a dreadful scar where a buffalo had hooked his face in half after his pony had thrown him in front of the animal. He had been desperately wounded, and still suffered from blinding headaches that brought fits
of vile temper. And the scar gave him the impression of a perpetual grin, puckering the skin at the corner of his mouth.

  He was worried that the four men he had left to guard their rear hadn’t appeared. It was close to dusk, the orange light fading fast around them. Fires were lit and his twenty-one warriors were relaxing around them. Apart from the three that he’d set as sentries. There had been no shooting. So where were they? They had been good men. Under orders to wait in their blankets for a while, then to patrol the area by the bodies of the two black men. Finally rejoining the rest of the party before the sun sank down below the hills to the west.

  Perhaps they had seen the other black men and gone after them to hunt them. The tall one in the clothes of a white man and the small one whose hat was the color of raw gold.

  And that white man.

  Angry Man Whose Face Smiles shook his head, the black mane of hair swinging against his neck and shoulders. That white man. He remembered long years back meeting a white boy. His name had been... had been Crow. Since that time he had heard much about the man called Crow. The word had come down that he had been a pony-soldier with the blue-bellies of the Cavalry. And his name kept appearing from all parts of the country.

  It was said among the tribes of the Plains that where Crow’s shadow fell, nothing would ever grow. And the Apache was certain that the lean figure in the black clothes that had been scouting for the Negroes was this same man.

  This Crow.

  Crow had located the guards. There was a narrow back trail to White Canyon, and the Mescalero chief had placed two of his men there, occasionally visible as tiny silhouettes against the darkening sky. And the third man was at the foot of the main trail. The arroyo was so wide that it wasn’t likely that anyone would try and storm the Apaches that way.

  So that was the path that Crow had chosen for his plan.

  ‘He’s the one got to be hit. Soon as the light grows worse, then I’ll take him.’

  ‘I will,’ said Mavulamanzi.

  ‘I’m better at it than you.’

  ‘No. I can get close enough there,’ pointing to a cluster of large boulders twenty yards to the right of the guard.