Storm's Thunder
Page 19
Ballentine.
Oh God.
Oh dear God. It comes flooding back, the unspeakable truth. There is no food on my face. No hangover. No campfire. Slowly—the splitting agony between my ears far worse than the harshest whiskey sick—I open my eyes.
I lie on the sandy ground of the arroyo. A smoke-filled sky brings an early dusk, but spears of sunlight tell me I was not out for long. I see two legs, two dusty boots. I will them to move and they move. You ain’t crippled, I tell myself. And you sure as hell ain’t deaf.
The air lives thick with the sounds of war—gunfire, horses, screaming.
No. Not war—the gunfire too methodical—but what comes after war—butchery and desecration, when the superior side has its way with the defeated. I try to sit up, but a hand, sleeved in blackened seersucker, presses me down.
“Best stay put, son. They ain’t done yet,” Ballentine again.
Close by, a child sobs and a woman offers comfort. “Mamma’s here, darling, and I’m not going away.” Owens’s wife, I forget her name. The crying continues. To hell with the pain. I roll to my side and sit up, the world spinning—and through double-visioned eyes make out Owens to my left. He holds one of the children, his wife rubbing the head of the other—the girl—in her lap.
“You took a blow, Harlan. Easy now,” Ballentine says from my right. I see two of him and close one eye, like a drunk, but it helps. He’s aged ten years in an hour.
“How’d I get here?”
“You staggered out yonder,” Spooner nodding toward the open expanse of the arroyo, “then collapsed. Owens and I, we dragged you back here.”
I glance toward Owens. He strokes the boy’s hair and keeps his head low, but his eyes are alert as he clocks the whereabouts of the soldiers. Or whatever they are. The eagle feather—I remember it from the berm—perches from the cavalryman’s hat. He stands guard ten yards away, his back to us, but pivots at the commotion and steps closer, brandishing a rifle.
“Y’all sit still. I ain’t telling you again,” barking in a husky voice. The hat swims too large on his head, flopping forward until, annoyed, he shoves it back and mashes it down onto his skull. I can’t figure how it would stay put at any more than a trot, much less crossing fifty miles of desert a day. He whistles loud to a point above my head. I look up and see that they have us corralled at the base of the berm. The train must be just on the other side, because the smell of charred wood and burnt stove oil is so thick I want to gag. An army soldier, with sergeant’s stripes on his arm and a sawed-off four-ten in his hands, sits atop the berm, eyeing me through bored, squinted eyes.
“I see him,” he says to Eagle Feather. “Won’t be long now.” Then he spits and turns the other way.
* * *
Another soldier, his infantry tunic unbuttoned over a red-checkered work shirt, walks up to Eagle Feather. They exchange words and the man looks over at us, frowning, and then marches off.
I hold stone still and with my mouth barely moving say, “What they got planned for us?”
“Not sure yet,” Owens’s voice low, but keenly attentive for a man passed out drunk half an hour ago. Besides the Owens clan and Spooner, a black waiter—Ernie, I reckon—crouches nearby, his head in his hands, weeping. A man and wife I recognize from first class huddle in each other’s arms, the woman shaking her head in disbelief. Her gray-haired husband gnaws at his thumbnail to keep it from trembling. Another woman, round and sweating, kneels in the dust, her shredded parasol offering little protection from the elements. Two or three men, all smartly dressed, kneel beside her, holding hands, heads bowed in prayer. And then beyond them, I see George. He sits alone, arms tied behind his back. He wears nothing but his union suit. Even his shoes and socks are gone and his swollen face bears the aftereffects of a mighty dustup, but the scraped and bloodied knuckles say he gave as good as he got, if not better. He stares motionless out into the arroyo, his face set hard in an icy scowl.
My gaze follows his out to the arroyo, and with the faculties of my brain and vision returning slow, I have to blink a few times to make sure I see the bodies. But I see them, all right. A dozen dead, maybe twice that—passenger and crew alike—lay sprawled about the dry riverbed in every direction. They died where they fell, mostly, shot in the back as they tried to run. But some—as I look closer—show the mark of a finishing headshot, administered at close range once the body was down. Otherwise, the corpses look unmolested—to be picked over at a later time.
And time seems to be no issue for these men. I let my eyes continue on, surveying what I can of the particulars of this operation, and the intent of its perpetrators. Across the skeletal remains of the blown-out trestle, where the track picks up again on solid ground, a short stretch of telegraph poles lay flattened against the earth like felled trees, their magic wires stripped away. That’s why these bandits take their time. No one is coming.
An explosion rips from over the berm, jarring bones and—once the shockwave dissipates—causing a chorus of shouts and whoops from marauders spread over a quarter mile. The men guarding our group turn left as a thick cloud shoots upward from the front of the train. I use the distraction to hop up and shuffle over to Owens, squatting down next to him. We don’t look at each other.
“Jesus Christ, these morons don’t know what the hell they’re doing. That was enough ordnance to flatten half a mountain.”
“TNT?”
“Yeah, can tell by the smoke. It’s a miracle they didn’t vaporize the whole train and us with it.”
“They cut the wires,” I say.
“I saw. Be hours ’fore anyone knows we’re missing.”
“You make out who they are?”
“Is there any doubt?” his chin turning toward me. “We landed headfirst into the Crazy Dazers.”
The Dazers. Of course, we had. The tattered uniforms, the slack formations, and as far I can see, no tangible chain-of-command, bore all the signs of a unit that had gone rogue before the rote habits of soldiering had taken hold. That gives them an unpredictability worth fearing. And the stolen dynamite turns the fearsome into the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As for the Apaches—rogues in their own right—they must serve as scouts, if not willing partners.
I glance back and now have a better view of the front of the train. The explosion came from the express car. A handful of Dazers crawl over the steel carcass like maggots and several more stand around, conversing and swigging from a shared bottle. A Dazer on board hurls out something—looks like a bale of hay—but when it lands at the feet of the others I see it is the torso of a real soldier—one of the Pinkerton’s detail.
“You don’t want to look at that,” Owens says, his voice unable to hide the sadness. I figure he means the express car but when I see the Pullman coaches, where most of the passengers had been riding, my belly sinks.
The Pullman car burns with the steady intensity of fire that has crested but still has work to do. Gray-charred bodies lay crammed against unbroken windows. Others had managed to break their windows, their corpses hanging from the waist, gutted by the glass, or their heads blown apart by awaiting guns. The unceasing gunfire alternates between a rifle’s snap and the soul-churning boom of a big caliber pistol. The long-haired Apache stands on the boxcar above the burning Pullman, taking deliberate aim with the pistol and ending the misery of anyone still moving. A bearded soldier patrols the other side, dispatching any survivors with the rifle.
“A slaughter,” the word passing my lips with depleted breath. “Fish in a barrel.”
“Fish in a burning barrel.” Owens struggling to make sense, like his brain won’t believe what his eyes tell him. “There just ain’t no reason for that. No reason at all.”
I can’t argue with Owens. Sure, there’s a reason, but not one any of us want to think about. Instead a question that will define the next few minutes slips from my mouth.
“Why the hell are we still alive?”
“I have no idea.”
* * *
Eagle Feather breaks into a laugh as the animal nears. But the solider in sergeant stripes breeches the four-ten, removes one shell and replaces it with another, no doubt swapping out buckshot for a single lead slug. He raises the gun and fires—the sudden noise dropping Spooner and the others flat to the ground. The heifer shudders once, a loud squeal escaping her, and then crashes face first into the dirt. The sergeant Dazer cracks open the shotgun again, flicks out the smoldering shell and replaces the buckshot.
I am on my knees, palms turned skyward, and close my eyes.
Great Spirit, spare the stallion. Let his thunder ring another day.
* * *
“Oh dear God,” Spooner’s breaking voice pulls me from the prayer. “They’ve got Skip.”
I face out toward the arroyo and see the Apache who clubbed me riding in, atop his paint pony. He keeps a steady trot and that makes it hard for Skip. The ball player runs behind the pony, struggling to stay upright, his hands bound in front by a long rope tied to the saddle. Skip is completely naked, his face and blond hair matted with bloody dirt and his bare feet shredded to pulp and bone.
Eagle Feather brings his fingers to his mouth and peals out a sharp whistle, which is repeated by the sergeant and then Red Flannel. The signal travels haphazard down the line until it reaches Dazers gathered at the express car. Four men on horseback break from the pack and ride full-bore up to where the Apache stops, about thirty yards out into the arroyo. At the front of the riders, a tall man in black officer’s Stetson reins up as they near the Apache, and the others slow down with him. The man in charge always shows himself eventually. One of the riders in back, a guidon, carries the Union flag on a pole, only the stars and stripes are inverted. An upside-down flag—usually a sign of distress—here I make it for just a perversion.
The Man in Charge says something to Skip and then points over to our group, and I get the sinking feeling that this spectacle unfolds for our benefit. Skip pleads with his bound hands. His desperate cries nearly reach my ears, but not quite. He stays on his feet, despite the exhaustion. I would too. The Man in Charge nods to the Apache, who gets off his pony and draws his club. Skip tries to run but the other men dismount and grab the rope and stand on it until the Apache is upon him. He hacks the club at Skip’s legs, landing once above the knee. Skip screams and drops to the ground. The Apache moves in, letting the club fall and drawing a knife. He grabs Skip by the hair, and with a measured stroke, cuts the boy’s throat. A collective gasp of horror rises from our group. Blood shoots out from the Skip’s neck, the fight not yet left him, but soon he slackens. The Man in Charge turns his horse and walks it straight at us, the other riders following.
“Don’t look, don’t look, darling,” Owens’s wife repeating over and over. I hear someone vomit, a few more weeping. The rest stay silent.
The Man in Charge approaches, revealing the garish appointments of his costume. He wears the brass insignia of both major and colonel. I think of a magpie collecting and hoarding trinkets of shiny silver for which it has no understanding. But as he nears, I see his eyes beneath the shadow of the gold-banded Stetson, their callow cruelty. I behold no great intelligence behind those brown-flecked discs. They are stupid eyes—eyes for whom luck will run out. The colonel-major stops his horse and addresses the unwilling congregation assembled before him.
“Anybody else wanna run?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The three other riders fall in behind the colonel-major, and mixed in among their various garments of army dress are pieces of clothing I recognize—a brown linen jacket, a white collarless shirt, now splattered with blood, and sturdy field boots. The three of them have divided, and now wear, George’s clothes. The bannerman revels in showing off his new boots, smiling at the ball player. But George remains unmoved, staring stone-faced, as he had been, out toward the horizon. A soldier comes running up from the direction of the train, waving to get the colonel-major’s attention and pointing, very clearly, at me.
“That one’s got money! I seen it.” His kepi, dark with sweat, sits back on his head. The nervous face I encountered moments before the explosion has given way to fiendish delight at the chance to earn favor with the colonel-major. I step back and feel the barrel of the four-ten against my spine. The kepi scout runs over, the horseman advancing behind him—all attention on me now. “He was splashing coin all over the Harvey House. It’s there, in them pockets,” Kepi Scout jabbing a finger at my coat.
Eagle Feather closes in on my right, barrel leveled at my chest. I think about the pistol in my trousers—not drawing it—but keeping it safe, for the right moment, a moment that has not yet come.
“Search him,” the colonel-major says. Eagle Feather pulls a knife and slashes at the fabric of the coat. I raise my hands and press my shoulder blades back and let the jacket slip off the shoulders. The sergeant does the rest, stripping it off my arms and flinging the jacket forward. Eagle Feather and Kepi tear at it like dogs after a bone. The lining rips from the inside and coins rain down from the pockets, until every penny I own—over a thousand dollars—shimmers on the ground.
“Whoa, daddy. Pay dirt!” Kepi drops to his knees, plucking the coins from the crystalline sand as Eagle Feather shakes the shredded jacket empty. Bandits appear from all sides and soon the ground crawls in a mass of stolen blue. “I told you it was smart to put me on board. Reconnoitered the whole dang lot of ’em, I did. That’s right.”
“Turn your pockets out,” the colonel-major says. The four-ten digs a little deeper into my spine.
“And do it easy,” the sergeant’s breath blowing warm and sour down my neck, “less you looking to get cut half-sized.” I move slow hands down to the trousers and gently pull out the front pockets. Kepi waddles over, still on his knees. He slaps my hands away and feels through the fabric with curious fingers. I catch sight of Spooner and only now do I see that his pockets lay inside out, already fleeced, like flags of surrender. Same with Owens and the rest. My inspection, I reckon, was only delayed by their thinking I was dead. I feel something fall.
“A dollar . . . stick of gum . . . and what’s this here?” Kepi rising to his feet, a greasy pistol cartridge pinched in his grip.
“Check his boots,” Colonel-Major says, irritation in his voice. “You shoulda done that already.”
“Yeah, you shoulda done that,” Kepi making the grievous error of echoing the reprimand at the sergeant standing to my rear. A fist shoots out from behind me and lands square against the young Kepi’s nose, standing him upright. The sergeant moves around me and smashes the barrel of the four-ten down onto the young man’s head. The Crazy Dazers, to a man, erupt in grotesque laughter as the young Kepi, teary-eyed, staggers backward, blood pouring from his nose.
“Boy, you take a tone with me again, I’ll tie your guts ’round your neck and hang you from a tree.”
“Jesus, Lon,” the boy’s voice quivering, “I was only repeating what Craw said.”
The colonel-major hears this, all humor draining from his face. I know what’s coming and have no faith that he won’t miss, but if I break, the shotgun ends me. I tense and lower my weight into my legs, ready to spring. The colonel-major draws a long pistol just as the boy’s eyes go wide, realizing what he’s done.
“No!” the boy turning, arms raised, pleading. The colonel-major fires. A woman screams. The shot blows through the boy’s hand before
hitting his chest. He slumps to the ground, life already drained from him. The laughter stops.
“No names, I said.”
But I heard the names, two of them, Lon shadowing me with the four-ten—Lonnie to his momma, I’ll wager. And Craw—the colonel-major himself. What kind of name is Craw? I burn them both into my memory with a white-hot iron and vow to survive this day. I won’t die by their hands, not after what I lived through in the Sangres. Or in the Bend, or even today on the grade. I will live to die a more noble death than what these marauding bastards can come up with. And if they kill Storm, if they harm the stallion in any way, I will track them down with the full-blooded skill of the Diné. But when I find them, it will be the White Man’s vengeance—the kind with a long memory and no sense of proportion—that cuts them open and watches them bleed. Such is the benefit when white and red run together in the same vein.
“You,” the sergeant—Lon—barking to a stray Dazer still on his knees, pilfering the last of my gold. “Get over here, finish checking him.” The bandit crawls over and I gaze straight ahead as his hands wander down into my boots, kneading the leather, and then up each leg. He can’t bring himself to lay his paws on my business and I betray nothing, just staring out into the arroyo until he relays the findings.
“He’s clean.”
Sergeant Lon shoves me downward, driving a knee into the back of my spine to hasten the descent. “Sit your ass down and keep it there. You know we ain’t playing now.” I go down without protest or catching the eye of anyone who might take it as a challenge. As Lon moves around me I catch from him the strong odor of burnt wood—not charred planks of trestle—but fresh-cut pine. The strangeness of it, out of place in the high desert, sits funny with me. The handful of Dazers picking over the money rise and carry what they’ve found over to the bannerman, who holds open a sack nearly half-stuffed already with cash and coin.
But even so, the size of the booty bears no proportion to the enormity of the caper. Nearly a hundred souls lay dead already, with four score or more entombed in the Pullman. Such carnage hardly seems worthwhile for a few thousand dollars. And considering the manpower of the team—I’ve counted twenty-two, so far—the final haul, per Dazer, wouldn’t equal much more than a good night at the poker table. It just don’t make sense.