He hung the dead Mexican’s gun belt on a handy bush and gently propped the captured Winchester against the trunk of a cottonwood. At the moment he did not need the rifle. His own Winchester, the One of a Thousand, would take care of this debt.
He inched closer until he could hear the conversation around the campfire. The Americano was talking, with Cole barking an occasional laugh.
“Yes, Zeb. I’m gonna get me a little ranch in Mexico and a cute little senorita. One with a nice plump body, y’know, the kind with enough flesh to keep you warm at night, and who cooks the sweetest tortillas and tacos you’ve ever tasted. Then I’ll buy me a few head of cattle. Better’n them out there.” He waved a bottle towards the night where the stolen steers lowed. “A few good horses and then I’ll breed the best goddamn critters south of the border.”
“Si, Amigo,” Cole nodded. “Everybody will come from miles around to buy your fine horses, the very finest in the land. No tough caballos for the Vaqueros, only the very best in stallions and brood mares. Only the Padrones and the nobility will be able to afford them, they will be so magnificent.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Ike Jones smirked, pleased at the picture Cole had drawn for him. “What about you, Zeb? What you gonna do with your money? You coming on down to Mexico too?”
“No, señor. I do not think so.” Cole shook his head and pursed his lips. “Many bad things I have done in Mexico. They could not be helped, you understand.” He shrugged and gestured vaguely. “They were things I had to do at the time. Being as handsome as I am, I was forced into them.”
“Ha ! You mean the señoritas?”
“Si, the chicas.” Cole smiled at his prowess. “Now I am wanted from Sonora to Durango. Many angry fathers and husbands. They would like to,” he cackled, “take a shotgun to me.”
Jones laughed. “So, no Mexico, right?”
“Si. Myself, I go to California. They say she is the most beautiful country, and the sunshine, she shines all the year round and it is never cold. Si, I think I will try my luck with the señoritas there.”
He was about to laugh again when a cold voice spoke from beyond the fire.
“I don’t think so, Cole. You ain’t going nowhere.”
The half-breed froze for an instant, then dropped the whiskey bottle and rolled fast, away from the firelight. Quantro’s Winchester barked from the darkness and dug a hole in the earth where Cole’s leg had been a moment before. As Cole drew his pistol from its holster, the rifle barked again. But this time the bullet was not aimed at him.
It whanged past him to where Jones was flinging himself out of the lighted circle. Jones’s hat spun away into the night and he crumpled to the ground, his feet pointed toward the fire.
Cole was out of the light, circling to reach Jones. He loosed a couple of shots into the trees where he had seen muzzle flashes, but heard no reaction. He crabbed across the grass and reached out to touch Jones.
Then he found out why the Americano’s hat had blown off.
The rifle bullet had smashed into the back of his head and splintered the skull as easily as an eggshell. There was nothing anybody could do for him.
Cole spat. It was nothing. De nada. The odds were still good.
Cole knew Ramone would have heard the shots while he was checking on the horses and come quickly. Cole grinned evilly. He and Ramone had fought together often, and one of their specialties was combining to take on one man in country such as this. There were few things more pleasing to him than hunting human game. It brought a lecherous smile of anticipation that peeled back the thin lips from his flashing white teeth. Whoever was out there, he would certainly get what he deserved.
And each moment would be a pleasure.
After Quantro had fired his first shot he had quickly decided to take the white man out of the game. Cole, alone now, would be enough trouble to handle in the trees. He’d hoped for a hit with the second shot and had seen his target go down, the Stetson flung across the grass. Maybe he’d got a head shot, or at worst, a burn across his scalp. If so, then he would be out cold for a while. Hopefully long enough for him to get Cole.
He squeezed the Winchester’s trigger again, aiming at the shadow that moved near the fallen white man. He side-stepped immediately to the right and felt the wind of a bullet as it whipped through the airspace he had just occupied.
He levered another shell into the breech, then the night went quiet as each man tried to gauge where the other was.
Quantro’s last shot had burned Cole’s left arm as he backed away from Jones’s body. He touched his sleeve and felt the stickiness of blood beneath the ripped cloth. Whoever was shooting out there would pay for that. He retreated into the trees, his boots crunching on dead wood, then stopped to listen.
He heard nothing.
Then he caught the sound of Quantro reloading the Winchester. He aimed into the darkness and thumbed the hammer of his Colt. The sound of the shot was deafening to the ears of both men as they strained to catch the slightest movement in the undergrowth. Cole listened again, but the bullet had ploughed harmlessly into the thick bark of a tree.
Quantro caught a glimpse of the muzzle flash and squeezed off a quick shot. But the night was still again.
It seemed that Cole was trying to circle round in back of him, to place him so the firelight could give him a chance of getting a profile shot. Quantro smiled. Well, if that was what he wanted, then that’s what he would get. His moccasins silent on the soft earth, he moved in towards the flickering of the fire. He circled a little to take himself out of Cole’s line of fire, just in case the half-breed was too close, and edged to the fringe of trees that surrounded the clearing where the camp was placed.
Just inside the clearing lay Cole’s sweat-stained and well used Vaquero saddle, placed by the half-breed to serve as a pillow. Quantro reached out quickly from the undergrowth and scooped up the lariat hanging from the saddle horn. Within five seconds he was back in the shelter of the timber.
The lariat would serve him well.
He wanted to take Zeb Cole alive so the breed would know who it was who had taken him, and why he was going to die.
He knew that Cole would circle the fire, and keep on circling until he found his attacker. Or his attacker found him, so Quantro picked himself a strong tree, whose large forked branches were just visible in the gloom above him. His wiry arms reached up and placed the Winchester in the protective crook of a branch, then with his arm through the coil of rope, he leapt like a wildcat and caught hold of the bough above him. He swung for a moment, then hoisted himself up onto the perch.
He squatted on the broadest branch and fashioned a loop with a slipknot in the lariat, testing the rope with a practiced hand.
The Winchester within arm’s reach provided a little insurance.
Five minutes he waited. Then ten. He swung the coil slowly.
To kill Cole he had all the time in the world.
A muffled crack of a breaking twig reached his ears and he froze. Then he heard the swish of a branch.
Cole was coming closer.
Quantro’s night vision was strained to the utmost as he squinted among the trees. A shadow moved. Quantro’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a death’s head grin. He began to feed the rope through his fingers, almost caressing the rough fiber, and the loop slowly grew bigger.
Zeb Cole stepped as carefully as he could, but cowboy boots with big Californian spurs weren’t exactly the best footwear for stalking in the woods. With the Colt held out in front of him he crept through the undergrowth. Where the hell was Ramone ? He must have heard the shots. Unless… the snake-eyed bastard who had killed Jones had already killed him out at the horses? Yes, that must be the reason. What was he after? The cattle? A rustler rustling from rustlers? It couldn’t be ranchers out looking for their cattle because if it was, then there’d be a whole bunch of them together. Who then?
He had heard no movement other than his own for the last ten minutes, so where was the
man with the Winchester? Maybe he had only wanted to kill Jones? No, that couldn’t be it. He had already killed Ramone or he would have been here by now, so it couldn’t just be Jones he was after.
Cole swore under his breath.
This was crazy. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. The ambushing bastard was ruining his big haul. The BIG one. Enough money to go to California. All lost. If only he could get his hands on the sniveling, interfering…
…Then the loop of rope fell out of the sky. It slipped over Cole’s head and past his shoulders with the ease of an experienced cowhand roping a yearling calf. As he realized, the man in the tree pulled back hard on the rope and the lariat snapped tight around him, pinning his gun arm to his body. As he was jerked backwards off his feet his mouth opened to cry out involuntarily, and the look of astonishment on his face turned to one of fear. For some reason he could not fathom, his mind screamed Indian!
Cole slammed into the ground on his back. The hand that was clamped tight around the six-gun was jarred as he fell, sending a bullet crashing out into the night sky, then his fingers relaxed their hold and the pistol fell to the ground beside him.
Then the shadow leapt from the tree.
***
When Cole awoke, something was wrong. It was daylight and the world was upside down. His body was stiff. When he tried to move he found his wrists and ankles were lashed to a rough wooden cross leaning against a twisted oak. The ropes were so tight they burned into his flesh and his hands and feet were numb, his circulation cut off. His face too, hurt, and he remembered the pummeling fists after the man had leapt from the tree. He supposed his face was a good mess by now.
By twisting his head painfully he could see his bare scalp was about two feet from the ground, and he was hanging almost vertically, his boots pointing to the sky that was visible above the top of the oak.
If he looked straight ahead, he could see his gaoler squatting by a fire shaking a skillet of spitting fat over the flames. The smell of bacon was tantalizing on the morning air. That and the aroma of coffee. Battered as he was, Cole was still hungry.
As best he could, upside-down, he looked his assailant over. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with long blonde hair and dressed in trail clothes. Except for the knee-high moccasins. They would account for his stealthy attack. As he watched, the blonde man forked bacon straight from the skillet into his mouth, then cupped his hands round a steaming coffee mug. Finished, he stood up, a hand brushing the remains of his breakfast from his beard stubble. He padded across the clearing to a big buckskin horse that stood waiting patiently. He returned with a tobacco pouch and some papers.
Then Cole saw the slight limp.
He examined the cowboy’s face. Yes, it was him. The hair was longer, and the face was older, but he was the boy from the ranch back in Colorado. What was that rancher’s name? Quinton? Quarter? Quantro?
“Awake now, greaser?” Quantro said without looking up from his fingers as they manipulated the tobacco.
Cole grunted.
“Know who I am?”
“I know,” Cole growled.
“Good.” Quantro smiled and stuck the cigarette into the corner of his mouth. He leaned forward and lifted an ember from the fire. As the smoke curled upwards from his nostrils he eyed his captive.
“Ain’t your lucky day, is it?”
***
The torture began as the sun climbed into the morning sky, a blazing ball of painful fire. If you were staring at it of course. But then, Cole couldn’t do much else, because by then he didn’t have any eyelids. The sharp blade of the Bowie knife had sliced them clean off.
He couldn’t swallow either. The strip of wet rawhide laced around his Adam’s apple saw to that. As the sun’s heat mounted, the rawhide dried out little by little, shrinking until it cut easily into his throat. He could not even cry out in pain. His voice had been reduced to an animal croak, guttural and weakening by the hour.
He wished the gringo would kill him. At this point he would have thanked him for death. The sun searing into his brain through unclosable eyes and the noose eating into his throat was indescribable. His lips had cracked and his swollen tongue poked uselessly out into the hot, dry air. Quantro spoke only once as he sat and watched over his captive.
“I’ve waited a long time for this, Cole. You’re going to die by inches. Each time my leg hurts in the years to come, I’ll think of this day and that pain will become a pleasure.” He paused and drew his Colt. He aimed the pistol at Cole then slowly cocked the hammer. After a few moments he released it then lowered it back down harmlessly. “It would give me the greatest pleasure to just blow you away, but that would be too easy on you. And besides, you just ain’t worth the cost of a bullet.” He holstered the pistol and occupied his hands rolling another cigarette. When the operation was complete, Quantro struck himself a match, then churned the smoke around his mouth slowly before ejecting it to the burning sky.
It would soon be noon, and where Cole was suspended, under the bare branches of the twisted old oak tree, there would be no shelter, no reprieve. The sun would beat mercilessly on him. Quantro smiled over at the half-breed.
“I’m going to sit here and wait for as long as it takes you to die. A day, two days, maybe even three if you’re half as tough as you think you are. But I don’t think so. I’ll be surprised if you make it through ‘till tomorrow morning.”
Cole could do nothing but glare half-heartedly at his gaoler through eyes that would never shut, even in death. Of the three pistoleros that Quantro had tracked down and brought to account, Zeb Cole took the longest to die. It was the penance he paid for breaking a boy’s leg with a cruel sideswipe of a Winchester barrel. Throughout the day the rawhide noose gradually bit deeper and deeper into his throat until the skin broke and his windpipe ruptured.
Death arrived with the dawn of the second day.
When Quantro was ready to travel, he crossed the clearing and inspected the bug-eyed, blistered face that had been a man. He spoke aloud.
“What’s the matter Cole? Can’t you take it when you’re on the receiving end?”
CHAPTER 5
Pete Wiltshire’s shirt clung uncomfortably to his back. He wiped a hand across his face which only smeared the clinging coat of white dust kicked up by the mules in Wild-Horse’s string. Between his legs, the shaggy coat of the paint pony steamed. Each step the pony took jarred him in the saddle. Goddamn desert. He squinted ahead to where Wild-Horse’s string of heavily-laden mules walked into the distance. The line was a little longer now, for the Apache had roped the dead cowboy’s black mare to the end of the string.
Pete turned in his saddle and looked back at his own mules. The sturdy little animals were jerking their heads and snorting under the weight of their loads. Right at the back, the big buckskin stallion with the fine saddle plodded along, head hanging, listless in the blistering heat.
Pete fanned his face ineffectively with his battered hat, but soon returned it to his head, for the strength of the sun was too great to bear through his thinning hair.
They must be close now.
He squinted into the sky, and sure enough, there it was.
The buzzard hung in the endless sky like a marker over the man that must be on the desert floor below. They would soon reach him. Only a few hundred yards.
As he watched, the buzzard banked in a steep turn and began to lose altitude. Rapidly, it glided in towards the earth.
Pete opened his mouth to shout, but Wild-Horse had already let the lead rope of the mule train fall, and was kicking his pony into a loping canter.
***
Quantro’s eyes were barely slits as he faced the ordeal of the noon sun. It blazed down on to his face with the concentration of an air-fanned kiln. It mattered little which way he turned his head, the heat still found access to each pore of his raw skin. Yesterday he had been able to sweat, even though it had dried as soon as it emerged on to the surface of his skin, but today there wa
s not even that. Even the burning sands reflected the heat back up on to his body.
Now he was beginning to understand what Zeb Cole had gone through, lashed upside-down on the crude wooden cross. He had seen it happen to Cole and now it was happening to him. The sun had twisted his brain into a tortured, hysterical thing, his cracked lips only uttering coarse cackles instead of the full-throated manic laughter he heard echoing through the caverns of his mind. His right hand still persevered in his grip on the Colt, but he was so weak he wondered if he would be able to summon the strength to pull the trigger if the need arose.
His whole body was one huge nerve-searing pain. The ache from the gunshot wound seemed to have crawled outwards from his busted shoulder until it encompassed his whole torso, joining up with the dull throbbing from his badly-healed leg.
Now he could only move his head a little. In the corner of his eye he caught a movement. A tiny lizard wriggled under the shelter of a fist-sized rock. Quantro’s eyes fluttered uselessly closed, his burnt eyelids no protection at all against the glare. His eyeballs felt as though they were bedded in a pit of gravel. He found himself dreaming and wishing for the cold, crisp snow that had covered the mountains that winter. How good he had felt, returning to the cabin, a haunch of Antelope meat over his shoulder. Fresh. Alive.
Now, he was no longer the same man. Even his lungs were slowly losing their fight to drag oxygen out of the hot, dry air that was sucked painfully into them. Pathetic, dying in a hole in the ground in the God-awful desert that was called the Devil’s Plateau, with only a hungry buzzard for company.
The buzzard!
His eyes flickered open, and with horror surging in his stomach, he saw the black silhouette of the bird’s wingspan wheel away to the west, then swing back. He blinked. Were his eyes playing tricks on him?
It was falling out of the sky.
No.
The Quantro Story Page 8
