Dark Shadow

by Roy F. Chandler

  There was satisfaction in Bishop Otis' voice but no surprise. What else would be expected of Josh Logan? "You're going after them, Josh? Can we send men with you to help?"

  Logan did not really wish to talk about it, but he had to tell them straight. He had no doubts and could never have imagined suffering any. What he would do had been certain from the instant he had learned the story. The bishop understood that; it was in his voice.

  "I am going to track them down, Bishop, and I am going to kill all that I can. I am going to kill them as long as I can follow them, and if I am still alive when I lose their trail, I'll keep hunting until I find it again.

  "I appreciate your need but you cannot help me on this trail." Logan considered for an instance, then added, "I will look for the girl, and I will do what I can for her. She is probably dead, but understand that if she is alive I will not lose these men to save her."

  Logan saw the shock and incomprehension on upturned faces, so he went on. "Men like these care about no one. If they live, they will kill again and again. You say there are twenty-one of them. I am only one." Josh sighed, "And I am old. How could I recapture one woman from such a large band? Once I might have done better, but now? Now I will kill all that I can come up to, and that is all that I can do."

  Josh turned his animals away amid a still stunned silence. He handed the reins of the game burdened mule to someone and rode slowly back toward his home.

  3

  Logan turned away because he could feel himself slipping. To the men of Micah he had appeared strong and deadly determined, which he was, but the other side, Erni's side, was working through. His eyes were brimming and a lump had gathered in his throat. If he had to speak more, his voice would have cracked, and that was not the Josh Logan the ravaged community needed to see right now.

  Erni was gone. Gone in an instant while he was far away in the north mountains. Gone, actually, even before he reached the high country, and her killer and the others had looted the town while he had walked his animals slowly up the slopes and into the mountain meadows. As he camped, Erni's people had doused the blazes and counted their dead and wounded. Women had been violated and would never be the same. Men had died along with Erni, and they had left widows and children.

  He supposed he had been shooting the antelope about the time the women of Micah had laid Erni on her own table and cleaned and dressed her for burial. He would have been coming down when they said their prayers over her and the others. All done without him suspecting anything.

  Logan pushed into his home, devastated by the sight of her personal things still resting where she had last used them, her slippers neatly placed beside his own worn moccasins. Her... Logan heard himself groan, an anguished moan from deep inside. He who had seen death's every form was gut-ripped and rendered weak and vulnerable by this single dying.

  He wished to crawl into their bed and allow the world to go on without them. He wished to toss it all in and rest in the peaceful darkness of their cabin until death came also for him. But, he could not. Erni was owed, as he and the townspeople were owed. Killers had taken from them, and those murderers must be made to pay.

  There was no one else. If a company of Texas Rangers came riding up, even they could do no good because the raiders had gone south, and south was across the border into Mexico where American authorities could not go.

  There were no other experienced fighting men in Micah, and there were none for many miles around. He, Josh Logan, must do alone whatever he could.

  He had little doubt that in the end he would lose. One man did not attack more than twenty and ride away. The realization was immediate, of course, but he was not swayed. He was old and had lived a full life. What difference would his death make, and when they pulled him down, he could go easily and be pleased by whatever number of them he had sent ahead.

  He could not know which one of the brigands had shot Erni. Shooting wildly, seeking to intimidate, uncaring of who was hit, probably none of them really knew where bullets had gone, and to Josh Logan a name would make no difference. He wanted them all.

  It had been the same in those earlier days. Then rogue Apaches had raided, and there was no one to follow them into their south mountain strongholds.

  A company of scouts had been formed. Thirty-six men, armed to the teeth with death in their hearts crossed the Rio Grande and sought their enemies. The scouts were seasoned men, war veterans and mountain men, Indian fighters and deadly marksmen.

  At first there was success. The Apache had believed themselves safe in their mountain jacarals. No one from north of the river had hunted them, and Mexican authorities were incapable of fighting in the mountains. The scouts killed Indians as they found them. Innocents died among the guilty. The scouts did not care. They had been sent to kill Apaches, and they did their utmost.

  Josh Logan and Barkley Sweet were among the hard riders. As resistance stiffened and scouts fell, Logan and Sweet emerged as the front riders, the real scouts who found the enemy and led the main body to their quarry. They were an ill-matched pair. Sweet, young and desperate with hate in his heart and a readiness to die; Logan at fifty was already too old, but he was cool headed, an experienced westerner with an unmatched ability to hit what he shot at.

  When the others slept, Logan and Sweet were high in the mountains seeking the reflected light of hidden fires. At dawn they were in hiding, sweeping the barren stone ridges with their telescopes seeking Apache movement or telltale smoke. They slept in snatches and ate cold. They grew lean and bearded with their clothing in rags. They became very good at what they did, and the Apache knew them. Logan they called Sombra Preta, Dark Shadow, because, like their shadows, he was always there, never resting, always hunting.

  Dark Shadow was seen on the ridges and in the valleys. He appeared where he could not be, and he rode where he could not go. The wild Apache feared the medicine of Dark Shadow who struck from nowhere, and some believed that only the secret of the Apache Water saved them.

  For Josh Logan, the hunting was a job at which he excelled and for which he would be well paid, but to Barkley Sweet the task was a hunger. Sweet's family had suffered long before the Apaches killed them, and Sweet intended to slaughter Apache until the name itself had disappeared from human memory.

  Barkley Sweet was a little crazy. The scouts recognized the madness and relied on Josh Logan to point Sweet in the right directions. Logan was willing. In the mountains, Sweet was the best, and Logan wished to scout with no other.

  Once they lay along a ridge and three Apache dog soldiers trotted by within pistol shot. Sweet's body trembled with the hunger and need to kill their enemies, but Logan's hand on his shoulder calmed the fires, and the Apaches passed unknowing. Staying high, Logan and Sweet followed the warriors almost to their camp, and when the band raised a small fire they saw it. Logan stayed to watch while Sweet went for the scout company. They killed eleven Apache males the following dawn, trapping them in their canyon and allowing none to escape. One was a small boy, but no one cared. The boy had traveled in vicious company, and if spared, he would be as they were.

  In the south mountains, Logan had used his Spencer rifle. The long shooting cartridge Sharps he now preferred had not yet been perfected, and despite the baldness of the mountains, plunking a buck Indian now and then from long range was not the game. The scouts' wished to get close and kill many.

  Only once had the Apache attacked the main body of scouts. The Apache trap had been good, and with Logan and Sweet away, the scouts had stumbled deep into it. But the Apache could not close their ambush to finish off the whites. The scouts' Spencer carbines poured walls of fire into the Apache on the high ground. The ambushers were fewer than the scouts, and the fire from their old guns was almost unnoticed within the blasting volleys from the seven shot Spencers. The scouts lost three, with a number of wounded, but they rode free and swung left and right to counterattack. Of course, the Apache faded away, and if they had casualties, none were left behind. But, eve
n if they lost no men, the message had been clear, the scouts' fast firing rifles could blow into pieces any band of Apache daring to face them.

  The scouts were re-provisioned from the American side. They stayed in the field and sought Apache throughout the south mountains. Complaints of their presence were officially submitted by the Mexican government, but the complaints were only formalities; that government too would be pleased if the cursed Apache were killed or driven away.

  The campaign was long. At times it was bloody. Scouts were killed and grievously wounded and replacements came from the north.

  The Apache fought with silent desperation because they had no place to go. Squaws and children were sent north to the tamed tribes, but the rogues could not return because they would be sought out and brought to trial. Then they would be executed.

  Finally, they were few, but those few Apache were the devil to locate. Vainly the scouts searched, but the six or seven raiders left alive seemed to disappear into their mountains and remained gone until they again struck. Their attacks were mostly against the scouts hunting them, but on occasion they raided Mexican ranches, primarily for food, Sweet and Logan believed. The great problem was to find the last band's stronghold, but the months rolled and the raiders continued to disappear without trace somewhere amid the broken and barren mountains.

  Those were the months when Josh Logan really learned the southern mountains. He climbed and scrabbled into the unlikeliest guts and hollows. He and Sweet slept among the high peaks, coming in only for water because there was none in the south mountains.

  If there was no water, how could the rogue bands live in there? Logan's Spanish had become adequate, and he asked the question of the sheep and goat raisers and bean and squash farmers who strained livelihoods from the flats along the mountains.

  Most knew nothing, but a few spoke of the fabled Apache Water, a spring that only Apaches initiated into a secret warrior society could find.

  At first, Logan had put little faith in the secret spring idea, but as the months passed and the raiders still came from the mountains, he began to wonder. Time after time the scouts would arrive too late and could only follow the foot trails left by the retreating warriors until they too disappeared on the rocky mountain slopes.

  Sweet fumed and hunted like a bird dog. Others spoke of bringing man-catching dogs from the east. Somewhere in the barren, grassless, tree-empty mountains there had to be an Apache Water, for no other explanation served. Logan began looking even closer at the tiny, bone dry hollows, but none supported life.

  The scouts were to pack it in and go home. The threat north of the river was believed eliminated, and enthusiasm for supporting a company to wipe out the surviving half dozen or so savages dwindled.

  Sweet raged about it and feared to report to the main body lest they receive orders to head north to disband. As long as Sweet was hungry, and the scouts stayed together, Josh Logan was willing to hunt.

  Josh Logan, the lank, and tattered Apache-hunting scout, little resembled the man who had crossed the Rio Grande almost a year earlier. His eyes were cold with an eagerness to hunt barely disguised. Among the scouts it was said that Josh Logan had killed more Apache than even Barkley Sweet. Sweet fired a lot of ammunition and raged like a panther among whatever Apache they found, but Josh Logan plain-out killed them. When Logan squeezed a trigger, an Apache bled, and Logan had been out there just as much as Barkley Sweet.

  If they were called off, Logan was ready to go, but he hungered to know how the remaining Apache outfoxed them. He and Sweet remained in the mountains, carrying in huge water canteens so that they did not have to waste time coming in and out. They left their horses at the mountain edges and used their legs like Apache. Only when the night grew old and secret fires would have died did they sleep, and they waited anxiously for the dawn that might expose moving Apache. They found nothing.

  It was nearly over. Josh expected that when they went in again, the word would be to give it up and head north. Logan could not argue with such a decision. There had been no Apache raids for more than a month. It was possible that the last of the raiders had themselves slipped north and were even now attempting to fit in with the pacified tribes. He and Sweet were down to their last water, and they would have to start back before the next nightfall.

  The dawn had come, and with it the day was building as it always did into furnace heat. Logan sat with a thrust of rock protecting his back as Sweet did across a wide gravelly ravine. Logan could protect Sweet's back and see the slopes along which Barkley sat, and Sweet could do the same for Logan while observing a different range of ridges.

  There was nothing out there. They had determined that before the night came down, and there had been no hint of firelight or whiff of distant smoke to encourage them. The mountains were as empty as a robbed tomb.

  Rock scraped somewhere off to Logan's left, jerking his eyes and tightening his grip on the Spencer. From an eye corner he saw Sweet dip low, and Logan knew his ears had not been deceived.

  Then they appeared, six of them, popping into view, weapons ready, studying the land around them. Six Apache bucks, coming from the earth like ants from a hidden hill. From where?

  Then Logan saw it. A cone shaped rock had been shoved aside exposing a hole from which different air came rushing. He could see the mirage of the new air in the dry morning heat just before the last Apaches fitted the rock snugly back into place.

  Wet air, Logan thought. His heart hammered because it had to be the secret Apache Water. Nothing else was probable. Their luck had changed, and he and Sweet had unknowingly camped almost on top of the last Apaches.

  And the Apaches had chosen this dawn to come out. Why now, without the protection of the night? Logan did not care. What counted was that he and Sweet had them.

  No wonder they had not found the enemy. Theirs was a hillside without cover, and Logan would have sworn there was not a hiding place for a ground squirrel anywhere before them, but six warriors had been in there, and there could be more.

  Logan had frozen himself in place. The Apache were only a pistol shot from him and even closer to Barkley Sweet. The scouts were mostly hidden and disguised by heavy shade. If neither moved, their detection was unlikely, although a vagrant breeze could drift their scent to the Apache, which would not go unnoticed and hell would break loose. The trick would be to let the renegades move well away from their secret hole and far enough away to allow careful shooting. Then he and Sweet would kill them in their tracks.

  Then Logan sensed something awful. He knew it would happen with a certainty born of months with his partner. Without hesitation Logan began raising his rifle, but he was already behind Barkley Sweet.

  Sweet could not tolerate a wait. There they were, right in his gun sights, the Apaches he hated more than life itself. The ones he had hunted with all of his soul for most of a year, and these were probably the worst killers of them all. Sweet screamed like a Comanche and jerked his trigger.

  The Apaches had no warning, and Sweet's shot seemed to come from almost among them, but they were deadly fighting men who were backed into the most desperate of corners.

  Sweet's bullet struck hard and an Apache went to his knees. The rest lunged at Sweet without pause or signal. Seeming almost to glide across the small distance, too swift and deadly even for war cries, they were on the scout like a bee swarm.

  Sweet too was fast. He jacked in a new round, hauled his hammer to full cock, and shot a second brave squarely in the chest. Then they had him.

  Logan's first bullet blew an Apache head to pieces. The warrior fell at Sweet's feet. Cursing savagely, Logan worked his action. The first Apache to go down was again on his feet and looking in Josh's direction, but Logan had no time for him. Sweet was down, and Logan's second shot tore into a warrior plunging a knife into the scout's body.

  The two untouched Apaches left the downed scout to others and came for Logan. Each fired his gun, and a bullet chipped rock near Josh's head. God, they were cl
ose. Logan fired into the face of one and worked his action without glancing down.

  As the Spencer's hammer came back he stared straight into drawn and straining features, and without conscious aim he squeezed the carbine's long-pull trigger. The Apache's face disappeared in a blossom of blood and bone, even as Logan looked for another target

  And there was one. Sweet's first shot had sledged an Apache in the middle, but the warrior was still trying. He was coming for Logan. His chance was small, but there was no surrender.

  Logan held on the Apache's struggling body and shot him dead center in the chest. The warrior's eyes blinked, his strength departed, and he slumped forward, his fingers loosening on the wooden grip of an old kitchen knife.

  Logan's eyes darted. First to the secret hole, but the plug was in place, and no more Apaches appeared.

  Then to Sweet. The scout lay unmoving on his back, and a knife handle protruded from his chest. No one could live with a blade struck that deep in him. Sweet in his madness had finished his task and died doing it. His craziness had nearly taken Josh Logan with him, and with the dead piled around them, at least for the moment, Logan did not sorrow too much over the hard fact of Barkley Sweet getting all of what he had really wanted.

  Logan went across to make sure, but Sweet was dead. Josh closed his staring eyes, and as if appreciative, Sweet's death-contorted features appeared to relax. Logan hoped the man was finally at peace with himself. Later, Josh planned to think some about his former partner, but this was not the moment.

  He took a close look at the fallen Apaches. Having an enemy make some sort of miraculous recovery was never pleasant, but he had for company six very dead hostiles. In death, they were a scraggly band. Their bodies were emaciated to nearly skeletal, and Logan wondered if starvation had finally forced the Apaches into the open. Even half-starved, they had fought furiously, and if his Spencer had suffered a single misfire, the fight might have ended differently.