Dark Shadow

by Roy F. Chandler

The screw adjustment was a massive bolt arrangement created by a skilled watchmaker in Philadelphia. The threads were so fine that a complete turn barely moved the scope. Minuscule movement was essential because at great distances the finest adjustment could move a bullet further than a shooter might like.

  Logan chose a rock face that he judged to be six hundred yards away. He selected a prominent man-sized stone for his target and bedded himself solidly behind the rifle.

  His first bullet splattered itself a body's width to the left and many feet too low. A target shooter would have fired at least three shots to make sure that he had not simply aimed poorly or suffered a bad cartridge. Logan did not waste the time. He screwed his sight adjustment, raising the rear of the long scope tube and settled for a second shot.

  The bullet struck close alongside his target, but not quite high enough. Logan turned in a little more elevation. He had no convenient windage adjustment. To move his bullets right or left he had to carefully tap his front mount sideward with a small hammer. He rarely made sideward adjustments. Instead, Logan held off using Kentucky windage. If you practiced enough, you got surprisingly good at it. Logan's third shot blasted into the center of his target stone.

  There was still one other test to make, and it was the most important of all. Logan connected his jointed cleaning rod and gently wiped his rifle bore. Then he relaxed for a few minutes to allow the rifle to cool. For a hunter of men or animals, the important shot was the first bullet from a clean and cool barrel. If that shot went home the rest could be simple. If it did not? Everything got harder.

  For his last target, Logan chose a different stone, this one about the size of a man's head. When he squeezed, the shot felt good, and he was not surprised to see the stone blasted into bits. The rifle and its shooter were ready.

  Logan studied the sign at the Zapata Water. Many men had camped there, and using their ropes and horses they had ripped brush out by the roots to use for campfire fuel. The man hunters had enjoyed a large fire and had further littered the place with empty cans and a few bottles.

  There were four graves with twig crosses erected as markers. Three would be the desperadoes Logan had killed when he shot into Punto's band. The last, Logan believed, could be the ambusher he had encountered at the trail head.

  Buzzards circled and rose from three sites south of the water, and Logan supposed the carrion birds were tearing at the other three ambushers that he had downed. All things considered, he had virtually decimated Punto's bandidos. It was no wonder that Punto had placed a handsome price on his head. How much, Logan wondered? More important, was the bounty still out there? If it was, he would have to avoid nearly everyone until he was well away from this part of Mexico.

  First, he would go to Garcia's. He had brought burning and loss upon the goat herder, and Logan felt obliged to do all that he could to make up for the man's suffering. Garcia might know something of the hunt, and Logan needed information and resupply. His mule? Who could guess, but if the animal had survived the brush fires, Logan wanted him back.

  He used most of the remaining day to reach Garcia's patch as the sun began to leave the valley. Logan slung his Sharps and unlimbered the Spencer. Logan judged Garcia as a simple and honest man-one who did not even own a gun, in fact. He did not fear the goat keeper. It was not impossible, however, that others were at Garcia's, and their temperaments might be unfriendly.

  The goat keeper's adobe appeared untouched, and Logan was thankful that his house had not been savaged, but the thicket behind was gone with only black ash and a few burned over stubs showing where the brush had flourished.

  A boy of perhaps nine years waited hat in hand for Logan's approach. Although the chickens still scratched and a sow had piglets tumbling about her, no one else stepped into view.

  Sometimes, Logan believed that Mexicans had the most beautiful children of all. This boy's eyes were deep pools, and his hair tangled in a black and wild growth that fell to his eyes. His bare feet were gnarled and callused, and his ill fitting pants were supported by a single suspender. Just the way a vigorous young boy should look, Logan thought.

  The boy bobbed a bow and said, "Welcome, Senor Sombra Preta. My father even now brings your mule."

  Logan marveled a little. They had somehow seen him coming, and the mule had survived. His day was turning truly marvelous all around.

  The youth's name was Enrique, an unusual choice in a land of Pedros and Juans. Logan dismounted and tied his horses to a deeply driven hitching post. He talked as he loosened his girth and listened carefully to Enrique's responses. The boy rushed to fill a bucket for horse watering and held it while the animals snuffled their noses deep inside the bucket.

  Garcia came through the desolation of the burned out thicket leading the mule, their feet and hooves raising small clouds of powdery ash. Logan's mule was burdened as if it had never been unloaded. The goat herder, who could easily have frowned at what had happened, was wreathed in a smile of welcome, and Logan experienced relief that Jose Garcia and his family seemed unharmed.

  Within moments the rest appeared. Maria Garcia was tiny with her son’s liquid eyes and her children were the stair-step ages that made parents proud.

  The senora arranged her evening meal, and Logan ate with the family. Beans and thinly baked bread had never tasted finer, and the chance to use his voice, even in his poor Spanish, helped him feel whole again.

  Logan told of the chase, and children clapped their hands when he made light of escaping down the mountains while his pursuers still climbed. They giggled at the picture he painted of the vaquero struggling on the mountain side and grew somber and fearful when he described the ambusher at the base of the mountain path. When he showed the healing wounds across his chest and arm the mother and children covered their mouths in fear and awe. Sombra Preta ignored even the bullet wounds inflicted upon his body. Logan used great detail in explaining his stay in the Apache Water, and Jose Garcia clearly wished that he could see the secret well for himself.

  The firing of the thicket? The family laughed together. Garcia explained that bandidos often burned the thicket and usually the house. Neither mattered much. The house roof always leaked during the rare rains, and the brush profited by burning because it grew back thicker than before.

  Of course the Garcias never hid in the first thicket. That brambly patch was merely a hidden way to gain their real hiding places in what might be called the third thicket away. It was even beyond that bramble patch where Garcia had taken the mule. He had sheltered the animal under an eroded overhang while a pair of riders had forced their loudly cursing but unseeing routes through the brush above.

  Since then they had cared for the mule as if it had been a family member. They all knew that Sombra Preta could not be captured by a mob of crazy vaqueros, and Garcia had kept a son or daughter constantly on the lookout for Dark Shadow's return.

  Garcia had this very day spoken with a friend who had been in the village of Caliente and who knew many things about the search for Sombra Preta.

  The reward offered for Sombra Preta's capture had been a fortune. One thousand

  Yankee dollars, it was said, and all of the young men had been lured by the gold.

  Upon their return, the impetuous young men had been reviled and castigated by the respected old ones who remembered that it was Sombra Preta who had saved them from the wild Apaches.

  The hard riding vaqueros had returned to their rancheros, but not before the golden reward had been examined. The provider, Punto Negra, a bandido to be feared, had disappeared to the west without returning to Caliente.

  The storekeeper, Tobias Brisbane, had been encouraged to examine the gold to make sure that the hunt was really worth continuing, but when the money bag was opened only lead bullets fell forth. The friend of Garcia said that there had been much cursing among the vaqueros who had ruined horses hunting Sombra Preta and much rude laughter at their expense from the old ones who hoped the rabbits who chased a wolf had learned an
important lesson.

  Logan made his camp against a bank where he could sleep undisturbed by the bustle of the many children of the Garcia home, but as he settled onto his comfortable and achingly familiar buffalo robe, children appeared carrying their blankets and serapes to nestle alongside the legendary Sombra Preta, the greatest of all Apache killers and a hunter so clever that even a hundred vaqueros could not find him.

  Theirs would be memories for telling through a lifetime. They, the children of Jose Garcia the goat keeper, had kept the mule of Sombra Preta, they had eaten tortillas with him and even slept beside the killer of Apaches.

  Enrique had watered Sombra Preta's horses and even felt the stocks of the powerful rifles the hunter never set aside.

  Logan silenced them and stilled their continual wriggling for closer proximity, but he smiled to himself, and wondered again if being Sombra Preta could compare to having a flock of offspring like the fortunate Jose and Maria Garcia.

  Jose came to relieve him of the burden, but Logan waved him away. Having children huddle close and whisper in voices intended not to disturb him were wondrous comforts. For this night he would enjoy them.

  In the morning, Logan would demand that Jose Garcia accept coins in payment for his many kindnesses. He would leave the dead ambusher's abandoned horse, and Garcia could do with it as he chose. Logan wished that he could do more, but he expected difficulty in getting Garcia to accept even these small gestures.

  Then he would ride west, in the direction Punto had taken. Logan doubted the man would remain close by. Deceived and angry vaqueros would enjoy coming on him. No, Punto would ride far, and Mexico was a huge country.

  Still, there were only a few ways through the mountains, and beyond there were even fewer villages. Logan would range among the passes and the towns until he again picked up the trail.

  Punto Negra, Garcia's friend had claimed, left the bounty hunters with two companions. One was the Yaqui Indian called Juan of one eye who also had only one hand. The other was a stupid and brutal rider whose name none recalled.

  That trio could not pass unnoticed, and sooner or later, Logan would again be on their trail. It would be a hard road, Josh Logan did not doubt that, but he had started after more than twenty. He had killed a pile of them, and he had managed to send Julie Smith back to her people.

  Logan expected that if she could, Erni would tell him that he had done enough, but Logan was not content, and he would not turn aside until he had finished off the ringleader responsible for the raiding. Punto, whoever he was or however he was known beyond his raiders, would again meet Josh Logan, and one of them would not ride away.

  Logan pondered the possibility that neither would ride away, but if Punto Negra went down to stay, Logan believed he could arrive at heaven's golden entrance with his mind and soul at peace. He expected that Peter, or whomever guarded that final gateway, would open for him and say, "A job well done, Dark Shadow."

  18

  For a time, Logan believed he might be on Punto's trail, but the tracks he followed were lost on hard ground, and Logan could not relocate them. He supposed Punto and his companions had veered away, deliberately hiding their passage and direction. That is what he would have done. Logan had no choice but to keep looking, ranging widely, asking the few he encountered if they had seen a one handed Yaqui and a gringo with a spot on his face, but the outlaws had vanished.

  Logan had to smile around the thought that perhaps Punto the bandit had his own Apache Water somewhere in these unfamiliar hills and now lay in comfortable hiding allowing pursuit to wash past and become diffused in the desert and the mountains beyond.

  Ahead lay the mighty Occidental Sierra Madre Mountains. Within those mountains, minor ranges paralleled each other and pointed north and south like eroded earthen fingers. Mostly barren, the mountains grew higher to the south, and were generally passable only by twisted and steeply climbing paths.

  The Sierra Madres were also dry mountains offering little livelihood for humans. Most Apache bands had been wiped out, and a rising of the Yaqui tribes further west had been viciously suppressed a dozen years before. Mexican authorities considered the mountains tamed, but a traveler was safe only as long as he did not appear to be easy prey, Logan rode with his eyes alert and avoided easy ambush or too deep sleep.

  Despite the apparent emptiness of the mountains, wildlife existed and sometimes flourished. Buffalo had been killed off, but wolves, coyotes, beaver, javelina, skunks, and big horn sheep could be found.

  Logan took meat only if an animal offered itself. His food was mainly the maize and beans common to the Mexican people. He resupplied in one-store trading stations and the few villages existing on the water-short plains. No one had encountered the bandits that he sought.

  To the south lay Chihuahua City, but Logan believed his quarry would stay north of that civilized center. Punto could expect that serious pursuit would visit and question in such a metropolis. He would not go there. Logan continued to the west.

  He entered the big mountains and began working across and around the greater elevations. He struck a river and for lack of a better way followed it north into a tight loop and then again south to discover the village of Delores. Logan rested there and considered his options.

  Within the mountains, towns were very few, but it was rarely practical to ride east and west from one village to another. Each village commanded a north south valley. Its trade came from that valley and there was little communication with the valleys to either side. Contact was rare because crossing the mountains was impractical. A traveler had to find a pass to get through, and those passages were few and difficult. Logan deemed it most logical to aim for the west coast of Mexico where the land flattened and north and south travel again became common. It was said that a King’s Road ran along that coast and that a railroad was operating.

  So, he would cease his deliberate search and head for the salt water. He wondered if Punto might not make his home along that shore as it seemed improbable that the man would choose a permanent life in the remoteness of the inhospitable mountains.

  Of course doubts surfaced. Punto was clever. He was cunning. He might have headed west only to turn east and now be lounging along the Gulf of Mexico laughing at his pursuers who would be searching the deserts and mountains of central Mexico.

  But there was the Yaqui. That tribe occupied the mountains and deserts of western Sonora. Logan was told that there was even a river named after them. Perhaps Punto was there.

  At least Logan believed he had heard about such a river. Communication with the Mexican people was difficult because only a small minority spoke Spanish, and among the peons, English was virtually unknown. Logan could not guess how many Indian dialects or separate languages he had encountered, but it seemed as if each village used a different tongue. He became adept with sign language, but beyond the universal yes and no, understanding could become lost.

  Moving west was not simply a matter of pointing his horse's head. He journeyed around mountains and plodded into dead end canyons that required backtracking. Not many Mexicans traveled far, and promising trails might end at a two building settlement backed against an impassible cliff.

  Sometimes, staying on top of the ridges was best, and he could move with little difficulty from crest to crest in more or less the right direction.

  Logan was on top when he heard gunfire erupt from somewhere below. It was not the emptying of a single rifle or two, but the sustained roar of many guns. Logan knew the sounds of war, and that was what he was hearing. But what war? It would be wise to discover into what he was heading.

  While he thought over the matter, the rifle fire died into an occasional shot, and Logan judged an attack had been fought off and the continued shooting was intended to keep everyone in place and alert.

  It might be best if he rode on because the Mexican military varied in quality from top notch to little more than uniformed bandits, but the soldiers might know something of Punto and his compa
nions. At least they could direct him through the maze of mountains still ahead.

  When he reached the narrow gut, Logan carefully examined the iron shoe prints. The soldiers were mule mounted. They traveled in two columns where practical and blended easily into one when the cut narrowed. Disciplined troops, Logan decided, but he would approach them gently. Trigger fingers could become itchy when enemy were firing on you.

  A rear guard challenged him well behind the company’s camp, and Logan knew he had been right about the discipline. He expected to be greeted with civility.

  Colonel O'Cortez, who looked as much Irish as Spanish, was a huge cut above the usual officer Logan had encountered along the Texas border, but the commander had his foot in a trap this time. It was obvious that the colonel was not going to catch his quarry.

  Logan was not particularly interested in the army's difficulty until the criminals were described, then his guts knotted and the banked hatred flared. He had, by God, stumbled onto Punto and his two men.

  Military men do not like civilians poking into their business, and when he volunteered to shoot the single ambusher so that the company could go after the others Logan expected to be refused.

  To his surprise, Colonel O'Cortez agreed to his try. Logan's spirits lifted another notch. After weeks of fruitless wandering, luck was going his way.

  The range was long, but within the gut of canyon there was no wind and no heat mirage, and there was no hurry. He was able to select a perfect rest within the stone clutter, and the downward angle was not horrendous. Best of all, he was shooting to the west and the sunlight shown directly on his potential target. His telescopic sight needed a lot of light, and he would have it Logan judged he had a chance to make the hit.

  A young American Lieutenant Lilingham was excited by the long shooting attempt. Logan knew about officers like Lilingham. They were usually fresh out of the academy at West Point and were dispatched to foreign units to gain experience. As an observer, Lilingham’s Spanish would blossom, and as in this case, he might gain useful fighting experience. The boy was believed to have prospects or he would not have been given the post. Logan expected he would provide the young officer with something new to think about.