The earth rumbled and shook. Calhoun rolled into the brush and winced when a sharp branch lanced into his arm. He was engulfed by dust so thick that he couldn’t see the end of his own nose, so heavy that he choked and sputtered and couldn’t take a decent breath.
On the driver’s box, Curly Decker used every curse word he knew and a lot of them twice as the coach skewed wildly from side to side. The clattering, the rattling, and the whinnies of the horses drowned out his curses. All the muscles on his forearms stood out in stark relief as he fought to keep the stage under control. It lurched violently to the right, nearly spilling Ira Kent, who squawked in fright. But at the very last instant, when Curly was certain the stage was going over, it righted itself and finally came to a halt a dozen yards past where the soldier in the road had been.
Kent scooted to the rear of the luggage rack. Swiping at the dust, he called out, “I see the jackass! He got out of the way! What in the hell was he doing in the middle of the road?”
Tessa heard the cry and opened her door to step out and see what was going on.
“I’d stay in here, were I you,” Gallagher said. “There’s no telling what might happen.”
Hesitating with one foot part of the way out the door, Tessa leaned to the left to peer out Wilkinson’s window. “Who is out there? What is this all about?”
“I don’t have the foggiest notion, ma’am,” the young man said.
Outside, Calhoun struggled to his knees as the dust settled around him. The driver swang to the ground. The shotgun messenger climbed onto the luggage rack beside another man who looked as if he were in dire need of a bath. Several faces peered at him from the windows. One was female. It had been so long since Calhoun had last seen a white woman that the sight shocked him.
Curly Decker could not help but notice the soldier’s dazed expression and jumped to the wrong conclusion. “That was a close shave, I’ll agree, but you’re fine now, son. No harm done.” He was only a yard away when he discovered the bounds. “Say, what are you doing trussed up like a hog for the slaughter?”
Calhoun tore his gaze from the vision of loveliness in the stage and told the driver who he was, adding, “Apaches bushwhacked the patrol I was with. I think I was the only one to get out alive.” Drawing a Green River knife that hung on his left hip, Curly cut the loops of fabric. “But who left you here in the road, Private? No Apache I know of would do such a thing.”
“It was a man named Taggart. The one they call the White Apache.”
About to slide the knife into its sheath, Curly Decker froze. “The devil you say! Taggart let you live?”
Up on the stage, Ira Kent jerked out his big revolver. “Don’t dawdle, Curly! Get the soldier boy inside so we can get the hell out of here! That traitor Taggart might have left him there as bait.”
With the driver’s help, Calhoun slowly stood. His arms and legs tingled terribly from having the circulation cut off for so long. He tried to stand on his own, but his legs began to buckle and Curly had to grab him. “Give me a minute.”
Ira Kent beckoned impatiently. “We don’t have a minute to spare, boy! In case you haven’t heard, Clay Taggart is murderin’ scum. He sold out his own kind to go live with a bunch of filthy heathens. They say he’s killed dozens of whites – men, women, and sprouts alike. He deserves to be strung up by the neck – or better yet to have his stomach cut open and his innards pulled out for the vultures to feast on.”
Less than fifteen feet away, concealed in the mesquite, the White Apache had been about to turn and go his own way. On hearing the unkempt man’s words, he stopped, his face acquiring a flinty cast.
“That’s enough out of you,” Curly told Kent, nodding at the coach to remind him there was a woman present. But naturally, Kent didn’t take the hint.
“Apaches aren’t human like us,” Ira said. “They’re nothing but dirty, worthless animals who deserve to be hunted down and wiped out. It wouldn’t be any great loss. More like squashing a bunch of fleas.”
Curly made for the coach, the private leaning on him for support. “Not all Injuns are as bad as you make them out to be. I’ve known a few good ones in my time.”
Kent snorted. “The hell, you say! I never took you for an Injun lover. There’s not one of them worth a damn, Decker, not even the squaws and the sprouts. Fact is, the world would be better off if we dug a huge pit and buried every last one of them alive.”
A single shot rang out. Ira Kent was snapped to his feet by the impact of a heavy-caliber slug that cored his forehead and burst out the back of his cranium. Arms flung outward, he pivoted and toppled off the rear of the stage, smashing face down into the dirt.
For a few moments, no one else moved. Then Will swiveled his shotgun and unleashed a barrel at the mesquite, even as Curly let go of the soldier, drew his revolver, and turned to shoot.
White Apache flattened himself in the nick of time. Buckshot blistered the limbs above him, breaking a large one clean in half. Pumping onto his elbows, he settled a bead on the shotgun messenger and fired just as the man was about to cut loose a second time. The guard’s chest spurted blood, and he flew backward, disappearing over the far side of the coach.
Shifting, White Apache saw the driver taking aim. The buckskin-clad man had spotted him. White Apache fired first, his shot striking the driver squarely in the sternum.
Private Calhoun threw his hands before his face as blood and bits of flesh spattered him. Unarmed, there was nothing he could do except dive for cover under the stage. Above him, pistols blazed.
One of the shooters in the stage was uncannily accurate. White Apache flinched as lead whizzed by his face so close that it seemed as if he were being swarmed by angry bees.
Two heads were framed by the stage windows, and from the left-hand one poked a pair of glistening Colts. The man firing them was a gunman of uncommon skill. So White Apache shot him first. Centering the Winchester on the door, he sent a slug smashing through the wood. The gunman was flung from sight, leaving White Apache free to concentrate on the last white-eye.
In the stage, Tessa Heritage was glued in place by the horror of the sudden carnage. A body had toppled from the top and crashed down on her side, and. she had looked out to find the shotgun guard sprawled on his back, convulsing violently. Aghast, she saw a scarlet geyser bubble from a hole in his chest.
Then Gallagher grunted and was flung to the seat. Tessa turned toward the gambler, appalled to see a red stain low on his white shirt. She reached out, but before she could help him, two things happened at the very same moment.
Harvey Wilkinson was slammed from the window as if by a giant mallet. Tessa glimpsed him flying toward her and tried to get out of the way, but failed. His shoulder collided with hers. The next thing she knew, she was sailing through the door she had opened as the stagecoach rolled into motion and went rattling off down the road, the team in a panic.
Tessa landed on her elbow and hip. Jarred but otherwise unharmed, she sat up. Will, the guard, was an arm’s length away, breathing in raspy gasps. She extended her arm to comfort him, but the second her fingers made contact, the shotgun messenger commenced flopping like a fish out of water and making the most horrible gurgling sounds. Suddenly, his right hand came up holding his Colt. It went off into the air, not once but three times.
Tessa wished there were something she could do for him. It didn’t occur to her that she might be in danger until the pistol unexpectedly swung toward her. His thumb curled around the hammer. In another heartbeat, he was going to fire. She tried to spring out of harm’s way, but knew she would never be able to make it.
A pair of strong arms looped around Tessa’s waist. Without ceremony, she was yanked to one side just as the six-shooter discharged. Startled, she looked up into the handsome face of the young soldier. Their eyes met, and something electric coursed through her from head to toe.
At that moment, another shot boomed. That one was much louder and came from across the road.
Tessa
spun and immediately recoiled against the trooper. “Dear Lord in heaven!”
A warrior with a smoking rifle in his bronzed hands stalked toward them. White Apache paid the unarmed pair little attention. Striding straight to the shotgun messenger, he made sure the man was dead. Next, he walked to the stage driver, whose face was a mask of amazement. Many looked like him at the point of dying, Clay mused. The simple truth was that people figured it would always happen to others, but never to themselves.
Calhoun was in a whirl. So much had happened so fast. He could not quite accept the fact that one minute ago he had been about to board a stage to safety. Now, however, the same stage was racing westward without him, while to his right and left lay bodies pumping blood, and in his arms was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. The fragrance of her scented hair was enough to make him dizzy.
Tessa ordinarily would not let a strange man hold her close, but she was so stunned by the slaughter and the death of the kindly driver and the other two that she completely forgot the arm around her slender waist.
White Apache looked at them. In a moment of fury, he had saddled himself not only with the greenhorn, but a woman as well. A true Chiricahua would shoot the trooper and take the woman back to his lodge. But he still couldn’t bring himself to slay the greenhorn. And he already had a woman.
Calhoun found that his vocal chords worked. “You bastard! You deliberately used me to get the drop on the people on the stage! You’re a murdering fiend, just like everyone says you are!”
White Apache could feel the fury drain from him like water from a sieve. He saw no point in explaining himself to the trooper. Calhoun would never believe him. Covering the two of them, he walked to the still form of the man who had been on the luggage rack, the man who had wanted to dig a big pit and bury all Apaches alive. “What was this one’s name?”
Bewildered by the question, Calhoun said, “I don’t have any idea.”
Clay glanced at the woman. She was attractive in a frail sort of way. “Do you know it?”
Astounded that the Apache spoke flawless English, Tessa answered, “Ira Kent. I have no idea where he lived or what he did for a living.”
“It doesn’t much matter. He was a waste of flesh,” Clay said. Lifting his right foot, he stamped down with all his might. Kent’s nose crunched. A surge of rekindled fury sparked Clay into stamping again and again until the dead man’s face looked more like battered dough than skin and bone. The nose was shattered, the lips ground into the teeth, half the teeth broken, and both cheeks split wide.
Glancing up, Clay could not help but note the utter horror and loathing mirrored by the young couple. Again he elected not to say why he had done what he did. He couldn’t. He didn’t truly understand himself. Clay walked toward them.
Calhoun stepped in front of the woman. “I don’t know what you have in mind, Taggart, but I’m telling you right now that I won’t let you harm a hair on her head. You’ll have to kill me first.”
Tessa looked at her defender and felt a knot of warmth deep in the pit of her stomach.
Clay shrugged. “You keep saying that you want to die, trooper. Maybe it’s high time I obliged you, after all.” He leveled the Winchester.
To everyone’s surprise, Tessa darted around in front of the trooper to shield him with her own body. “No! How could you? He’s not even armed!”
“You’re wasting your breath,” Calhoun said. “This is the White Apache. He likes nothing better than to kill our kind. He’s gone totally Injun.”
Not until that moment did Tessa realize that the man she had mistaken for a full-blooded Apache was in truth white. Tessa gulped, convinced they were about to be slain in the most gory way imaginable.
Had the auburn beauty but known it, Clay Taggart had no plans to harm her or the soldier. His strongest desire was to be shed of both of them. He looked after the fleeing stage, well out of sight beyond the next bend, debating whether he could catch it and bring it back so that Calhoun and the woman could go on into Tucson, leaving him free to get on with his own affairs.
Calhoun followed the renegade’s gaze and leapt to the wrong conclusion. “That’s right, killer. You should be worried. Once that stage rolls into Tucson, every man in the territory will be out looking for the lady here. You can’t harm a white woman and get away with it. Even you should know that.”
Clay studied the woman. She might be frail by Apache standards, but there was fire in her eyes. If he were any judge, she had more grit than was apparent. “What’s your name, lady?”
“Tessa Heritage.”
“Meet Private Calhoun,” Clay said, nodding at the trooper. “The two of you seem to have taken a shine to one another. I reckon the two of you will go far together.”
Tessa bristled. “I resent any man besmirching my reputation!”
Clay didn’t doubt her. Women like her would rather die than suffer the shame of a fate worse than death. “That’s not what I meant, lady,” he said not unkindly and pointed westward. “It’s a long walk, but I think the two of you can make it if you stick to the road and travel only at night.”
“I don’t understand,” Tessa said, since obviously, he wasn’t about to simply let them go.
Calhoun realized otherwise. As anxious as he was to get out of there, he couldn’t resist asking one last question, the same one that had plagued him ever since it became apparent that Taggart did not intend to murder him. “Why, mister? Just tell me that.”
“Go,” Clay said and moved off.
Tessa faced her protector. “What’s he up to? Is he going to shoot us in the back when we walk away?” Rotating toward the White Apache, she said, “You’d better not!” Fresh in her mind was the raw fear the mention of her father had instilled in Ira Kent. Perhaps, she reflected, it would have the same effect on the butcher. “Harm us and my father will never rest until he tracks you down. He’s not a man to be trifled with.”
Pausing at the road’s edge, Clay regarded her as he might a boastful child. “I’m trembling in my moccasins. What’s your father’s name, lady?”
Tessa straightened. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him,” she declared. “Marshal Tom Crane of Tucson.”
Calhoun sensed that Tessa had made a grave blunder. He saw anger in the flaring flames in the White Apache’s eyes and the clenching of the renegade’s hands.
“Know him, do you?” Tessa gloated, flattering herself that she saw fear where there was none.
The next words Taggart uttered were tom from the depths of his ravaged soul. They slashed into Tessa Heritage like daggers, chilling her to the core.
“I’ll never forget your father, girl.” Clay Taggart paused to do battle with his roiling emotions. “The son of a bitch hanged me!”
Eight
Close to sunset, Marshal Tom Crane was talking to Rafe Skinner on a corner near the jail. A commotion up the street made both men turn. A team in harness and the rush of wheels gave the lawman an inkling of the nature of the disturbance.
“About damn time,” Crane said. “The stage is over two hours late.”
Skinner grinned. “Don’t tell me that you were worried? I thought you didn’t care about her.”
“Be mighty careful, friend,” Marshal Crane said. “I won’t be prodded.”
The owner of the Acme chuckled and held his hands up, palms out, to show he meant no insult. “The least you could have done was bought her some flowers. After all, the poor girl has come a long way to see you.”
“I won’t warn—” Crane stiffened as excited shouts broke out, spreading along the street like wildfire. He stepped to the end of the boardwalk, cocking his head to hear better. Loud and clear above the bedlam rose a bellow for someone to fetch the doctor.
Crane sprinted to the center of the street. A thickset man who seemed vaguely familiar was bringing the stage to a stop. Up on the box beside him was a thin man wearing jeans and a wool shirt. Crane recognized Slim Reece, a prospector. The thick set man was Reece’s part
ner. A few months earlier, Crane had arrested them both for being drunk and disorderly.
People were converging from all over. The marshal had to shoulder through a babbling pack to reach the stage. Reece saw him and jabbed a bony finger at the coach.
“It’s just awful, Marshal! We’ve got a dead one inside and one bad wounded.” The prospector jabbered on while climbing down. “Bob and me were headin’ east along the Tucson-Mesilla road when the stage came roarin’ toward us. Right away we knew somethin’ was wrong. There was no sign of Curly or the shotgun. We was able to bring it to a stop, and once we saw what was inside, we lit a shuck for town.”
Crane shoved aside a citizen who stood on tiptoe trying to peer inside. The man complained, but Crane didn’t give a damn. Yanking the door open, he looked in. The rank odor of blood and urine made him gag. Taking a shallow breath, he pulled down the folding steps and climbed up.
Lying crumpled on the floor was a young cowboy or rancher, a sizable chunk of his face gone. Flies crawled over the wound; a few buzzed into the air when Crane entered.
Curled up on the right-hand seat was a tall man in black, his eyes closed. Tucked under a red sash around his waist were a pair of expensive Colts, butts forward. The front of his white shirt bore a wide scarlet stain and he was grimacing in torment.
“It’s Gallagher!” Rafe Skinner said from behind the lawman. “I sent for him a couple of weeks ago to come work for me.”
Crane had met the gunman before. Crane would never admit as much, but Gallagher was one of the few men he made it a point never to cross. The gun shark had few equals, and Crane wasn’t one of them. On top of that, Gallagher was as gritty as fish eggs rolled in sand.
Bending a knee, Crane placed a hand on the gambler’s shoulder. “Gallagher? Can you hear me?”
The gunman’s eyelids fluttered, then snapped opened. The instant he saw the lawman, his right hand closed on a Colt. “Crane? Where?” he said hoarsely.
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