by Jory Sherman
“I’ll let you know my thinking in a while, Ted. First, I want to question Pablo here a little more. You can call Scofield back in here. Nobody’s going to ride up on us tonight.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. What’s more, we’re going to spend the night here. We all need sleep. I’ll post guards.”
“This place is filthy,” Colleen said again.
“You’ll welcome the rest,” Zak told her. “We’ll help you clean this place out.”
O’Hara walked to the door, called to Scofield, “Come on, Corporal. You’re relieved.”
“Yes, sir,” Scofield said, and after tying his horse to the hitchrail, he entered the adobe.
“You relieve Rivers guarding the prisoner, Scofield,” Zak said. “Rivers, you help Colleen shovel out what she sweeps up.”
“Yes, sir,” Rivers said as Scofield walked back to relieve him.
Zak holstered his pistol after easing the hammer back down. He took Medina by the arm, led him over to the wall next to Deets.
“Sit down,” he said. “You, too, Deets.”
The two men sat down.
“Scofield, shoot them if they try to get up.”
“Yes, sir,” Scofield said.
Zak walked back to O’Hara.
“Let’s go outside and talk, Ted. I’ll tell you why I’m going to let these two men go tell all they know to Trask.”
“I can’t wait.”
The two men walked out into the night. The moon was up a few degrees above the horizon and cast a soft silvery light over the adobe and the surrounding countryside. When they were out of earshot of those inside, Zak stopped. O’Hara stood next to him, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“Nice night,” Zak said.
“Are you going to tell me your plans, Zak?”
“No, Ted, I’m not. But those two prisoners in there will think I am. By the time they catch up to Trask, they’ll each have a different story. And each one will embellish their stories to suit themselves.”
“That’s taking a long dubious chance, if you ask me. You don’t even have a plan, do you, Zak?”
“Oh, I have a plan all right, Ted. And you’ll see signs of it as we continue on after a good night’s sleep.”
“Signs of it?”
“You don’t need to know everything just yet. Better if you don’t, in fact. You might be recaptured by Trask, you know.”
“Not if you don’t let those two men—”
“I’ll give the orders here, Lieutenant,” Zak said. “You just watch and wait.”
O’Hara shook his head. He was puzzled and showed it. Zak said nothing. He looked up at the starry sky and breathed deep of the air. Rivers came to the door a few times and threw out shovels of dirt and debris from the adobe. In the distance, a coyote yipped and then a chorus of yowling canines sang their plaintive songs, ribbons of music floating on the night air.
O’Hara shivered at the sound. “Coyotes give me the willies,” he said.
“Coyotes,” Zak said. “Or maybe Chiricahua, sounding like coyotes.”
O’Hara’s eyes narrowed as Zak let a shadowy smile ripple through his lips, his dark eyes bright with moonlight.
Chapter 25
Zak worked out the hours in his head.
After retrieving his hat and slicker from Deets, he ordered Scofield to bind the hands and feet of both Medina and Deets. Zak took the first two-hour watch. He found Medina’s horse where the man had said it would be, led it back to the adobe and hitched it to the rail with all the others. Then he took a torch down to the road and examined the tracks left by Trask, Ferguson, and the other men in their bunch.
He figured that by the time he arrived at the adobe, Trask had been gone for at least four hours. He knew the outlaws wouldn’t last the night before they’d have to stop and get some sleep. And he figured they’d sleep at least three hours, perhaps four. No more than that.
At that pace, Trask would reach the last stage stop sometime in late afternoon. Certainly while there was plenty of daylight left. Welch should be there waiting for him. If not, he’d surely be there shortly afterward. They would study O’Hara’s map, plan their campaign against Cochise and the Chiricahuas that night, leave the next morning.
That was the way Zak figured it, and he knew that his calculations could not be far off.
That gave him plenty of time to do what had to be done.
His own campaign against Trask, Ferguson, Welch, and their war party would begin early in the morning. And by the time he turned Deets and Medina loose, they’d have a long ride to rendezvous with Trask.
He was betting they’d never make it. Trask would be long gone by the time Deets and Medina reached that last adobe shack.
Zak rode a wide circle in the moonlight, picking his way with care, noting the landmarks, crossing and recrossing the road. He marked the moon’s progress as it rose in the sky and painted the edges of cactus a dull pewter, daubed silver into wet muddy low spots, and glazed the rocks with a misty gray-black patina that made them shift shapes as he passed. It was cool, but not so much that he’d have to don his light jacket, tucked away in a saddlebag. He chewed on dry hardtack and strips of jerked beef, washed the food down with water from his canteen.
He loved the far lonely places, and as he rode, he felt grateful to the Great Spirit for giving him this peaceful night under a canopy of bright stars, whose clusters seemed at times like the lights of distant cities. The Milky Way, the fabled Star Path of the Lakota and the Cheyenne, blazed a brilliant trail across the heavens, more stars than the sands on all the shores of the world.
When he rode back to the adobe at the end of two hours, he felt rich and alive, his plans set in his mind. And he felt that great peace upon him that he always felt when he was outdoors, all alone, contemplating the vastness of the universe, the complexity of all life and all things.
Hugo Rivers was awake and waiting for him when Zak rode up to the hitchrail and dismounted.
“I hereby relieve you, sir,” Rivers said in a soft whisper. “Everybody’s asleep. Any orders?”
“Just ride a wide circle, no more than a hundred yards from the shack at any time. Figure two hours, then Scofield will take the next watch.”
“Yes sir. And, sir?”
“What is it, Rivers?”
“I believe Miss O’Hara is awake. She was mighty restless and I saw her put more wood on the fire a few minutes ago.”
“Why are you telling me this, Private?”
“She, ah…she spoke to me, sir. Told me to tell you to wake her if she was asleep when you came in. She wants to talk to you, I think.”
“Very good, Rivers. On your way, now.”
Rivers mounted up and rode off into the night.
Zak waited until he was well gone and then started walking toward the adobe. Before he got to the door, Colleen stepped out. She had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, a bandanna covering her hair.
“Take a short walk?” she said. “Before you turn in?”
“Sure, Colleen,” he said, offering her his arm.
She slipped her arm through his and they walked out on the plain.
“You smell nice,” he said.
“I keep lilac water with me. To freshen up.”
“Yes, you smell of lilacs.”
“It’s nice of you to notice.”
“Can’t sleep, Colleen?”
“Oh, I lay down. Dozed. But…”
“But what?”
She stopped, and so did he.
“I—I keep thinking about you,” she said. “I hate myself for judging you. For accusing you of things.”
“It’s all right.”
“No it isn’t,” she said. “You’re such a mystery to me. I—I’ve never met a man like you, Zak. You’re—You’re…oh, I don’t know, a kind of enigma, a puzzle I can’t quite figure out.”
“Is it necessary to figure everybody out?”
“Not everybody, silly, just you. And,
yes, I think it’s necessary. I was attracted to you the first moment I saw you. I felt…something. I don’t know what it was, but I was drawn to you. Like a moth to a flame.”
“You were at Fort Bowie. Plenty of male companionship available.”
She sighed.
He smelled her faint perfume, and it added a pleasing dimension to the night. She looked lovely in the moonlight, even shrouded up as she was. She could be feminine wearing a burlap sack for a dress, he thought, a ragweed crown for a hat.
“Average men,” she said, “with average thoughts. And, by average thoughts, I mean—”
“I know what you mean, Colleen.”
“See? You do know what I mean. The men I met at Fort Bowie were mostly obtuse. Do you know the meaning of that word?”
“Yes. You had no feelings for them. They were just faces and forms. Like blocks of wood, pieces of lumber.”
“Straw men, more accurately.”
They both laughed.
She touched his arm and they gazed at each other. He felt a longing in her that matched his own. Perhaps it was the night and the quiet, but he felt drawn to her. She was a puzzle herself, he thought. She had strong opinions and she had a tongue as sharp as any fishwife’s, but she was also gentle and sweet and very alluring.
“Colleen,” he said, catching his senses up from his romantic reverie, “this…this attraction, or whatever you want to call it, whatever it is, can’t go anywhere. You and I come from two different worlds. You’re a schoolteacher, refined, educated, genteel, even. I’m a rough man used to rough living. That bark on me is going to stay on me until I die.”
“Don’t talk like that, Zak. You’re much more than that. You—You would fit in anywhere. You could be an important man. With the right woman. I sense that about you.”
“You would have me change to suit you, your idea of me,” he said, and knew it was true.
“No, I didn’t mean it that way, Zak. I just mean, well, you won’t always be doing what you’re doing. Chasing bad men. Shooting and killing. There’s a better side to you. I know there is.”
“I am what I am, Colleen.”
“You’re stubborn, too,” she said.
“Maybe. But I think you may be missing the point. I’ve chosen this life I lead. I was given life and I cherish it. But one thing I don’t want is to fit into somebody else’s mold. I would be tempted, with a beautiful woman like you, but I know it would never work. If I was transplanted to a city and a house with a fence around it, little children at my feet, I’d always be looking over the fence, the horizon, and wishing I were back on the Great Plains, hunting buffalo, running with the Lakota, sitting at a Cheyenne campfire, catching trout high in the Rocky Mountains. I’m wild, Colleen, as wild as they come, and I could never settle in one place and assume a respectability I never had, or ever wanted.”
“You sound so sure of yourself, Zak. But it seems to me that you are fighting with yourself, deep inside, fighting against who you are, the life you’ve chosen for yourself.”
“No, Colleen. I’m happy with who I am and what I do. You must understand that.”
She sighed again.
“I don’t think I ever could,” she said. “Not after knowing you as I have, even for so brief a time.”
“Just live in the moment, Colleen. Don’t try and look into the future. All the life we have is just this one single moment. And this moment is forever. That’s something I learned from the Lakota. Life is a journey and it’s a circle. We follow our paths and when we come to the end it’s another beginning.”
“I don’t know if I understand you,” she said.
“No matter. Someday you’ll remember what I said tonight and it might even make sense.”
“I don’t want to quarrel with you anymore.”
“Then we won’t. This journey we’re on now is strange for you. It’s as if we’re in a different world, both of us, and the rules of civilization and decency have been left by the wayside. We’ll finish the journey, and we will have learned something, you and I. But after that, we must say good-bye to each other. You will go your way, and I will go mine.”
“You make it sound so final.”
“We have the moment,” he said. “This moment.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her. It was a long, lingering kiss, and she pressed against him until he could feel her warmth, the pulse of her being. He felt dizzy with rapture, and the scent of lilacs wafted to his nostrils and made him feel giddy and aroused.
“Oh,” she said, when they broke the kiss. “Oh, my. That—That was wonderful.”
“Can you sleep now, Colleen?”
“I—I don’t know. Maybe. I wish there was more, though.”
“Just this moment, Colleen. No other.”
They walked back together, arm in arm. He felt an odd sense of contentment, but he knew that nothing had been resolved. Perhaps nothing ever would be.
But they had had that moment, and for now it was enough for him.
He slept, waking only when the watch changed, and then fell back asleep, dreaming of lilac fields and wild horses, the shining mountains, silver streams that sang as they coursed through steep rocky canyons, and soft snow on the high peaks, a woman dressed in a bearskin and children rolling hoops and chasing after them with sticks that turned into wriggling snakes.
Just before dawn he heard a commotion, and a man groaned in pain. He sat up and reached for his pistol.
“Get the bastard,” Rivers shouted, and Zak saw a dark shape looming over him. One of the prisoners had freed himself and disarmed Rivers.
Colleen screamed in terror.
O’Hara struggled to his feet and was knocked down.
The man, carrying a rifle, hurtled straight toward Zak. The rifle was pointed at him.
He heard the lever work and a shell slide into the firing chamber, the hammer lock in place on full cock.
The horses outside whinnied, and his hand flew to the butt of his pistol.
He wondered if he would have time. He wondered, in that split second of eternity, if he would ever have time to keep his own death at bay.
His arm felt numb from sleeping on it and his fingers were rubbery and nearly lifeless.
Time. Was there enough time to draw and shoot?
All he could do was try.
That was all any man could do.
Time be damned.
Chapter 26
Zak raised his pistol just far enough to fire at Pablo Medina. He hoped the man would run into his bullet. A moment after pulling the trigger, he ducked and rolled to one side. He heard the explosion from the rifle, so close the sound was deafening. The bullet ripped into his bedroll and plowed a furrow in the dirt floor.
Medina grunted as Zak’s pistol bullet smashed into his lower abdomen. He pitched forward, the rifle falling from his hands, as the bullet crushed veins and capillaries, mashed flesh into pulp and nicked his spine before blowing a fist-sized hole in his back.
He cried out in pain, and hit the floor screaming at the top of his lungs.
He kept screaming as Zak raised up, cocked his pistol again and took aim at Medina’s head, ready to fire from a distance of three feet.
“Kill him,” Rivers shouted.
Scofield drew his pistol, crouched a few feet away from the fallen man.
Colleen put her hands to her ears, shrank against the wall as if trying to escape the hideous screams, the gushing blood that pooled on both sides of Medina.
Zak held his fire, his gaze fixed on Medina, who kept screaming, his back arched as if he were gripped in the vise of a seizure.
Hoofbeats pounded on the ground outside, and a moment later Ted O’Hara burst through the door, slamming it back against the wall. He crouched low, a rifle in his hands, his head moving from side to side.
“What in hell’s going on in here?” he said.
“Get out of the doorway, Ted,” Zak said. “Medina tried to escape.”
O’Hara saw the man on the
floor, then looked toward his sister, who was still pinned against the wall, a small fist in her mouth.
He sidled to one side, still in a crouch. He seemed like a coiled spring, ready to pounce.
Medina continued to scream.
“Do something, Zak,” Colleen said, taking her fist from her mouth.
“Yeah,” Scofield said, “put that poor bastard out of his misery, will you, Colonel?”
Zak considered that suggestion. It would seem the humane thing to do. Under the circumstances. Blood poured out of Medina’s back wound, little spurts ejecting with every beat of his heart. The screaming wasn’t helping any, either. Pump, bleed, pump, he thought.
He leaned over and clamped a hand over Medina’s mouth, shutting off his scream.
“Callate,” he said.
Medina swallowed his scream, but sweat broke out on his forehead, and the muscles in his face expanded and contracted with the pain he felt all through his body. Zak drew his hand away.
“Ayudame, por favor. Me duele mucho.” Help me, please. I am hurting very much. There was an agonized pleading in Medina’s voice.
Zak snapped his fingers, looked back at Rivers.
“Bring me a small piece of kindling wood,” he said. “Quick.”
Rivers, paralyzed until that moment, jumped toward the stove, reached down and picked up a small sliver of wood. He took it to Zak, handed it to him.
Zak stuck the wood inside Medina’s mouth.
“Bite on it,” he said, in Spanish.
Medina bit down and tears streamed from his eyes.
“Thank God,” breathed Colleen.
O’Hara walked over to Zak, stood over Medina, then looked at Rivers.
“How did this man get loose, Private?” he asked.
“Sir, I don’t know. He—He untied the ropes around his ankles and managed to free his hands. He did it real quiet. I didn’t know he was loose. He jumped me, grabbed the rifle out of my hands.”
“You weren’t watching him close enough, Rivers.”
“No, sir.”
Rivers retreated to the back of the adobe shack.
Zak got to his feet.
