Tears of Blood

by James W. Marvin

  Or it meant a number of sick.

  Crow thought back to the dappled thighs of the warrior that he’d shot with his Winchester. And of the descriptions of the disease that was killing others in the tribe.

  Cholera.

  As he completed his walk around the outskirts of the site he passed through the wind. Sniffing at the smell it carried from the deserted wickiups.

  ‘Death,’ he said. Nodding to himself as his suspicions were confirmed.

  When cholera struck there was often a brief period when it might not claim any further victims. But it was lying breeding itself in their bodies. Perhaps it had flared up again with a remorseless vigor sometime last night. And when the victorious braves had returned to their homes, they had found many newly sick. Perhaps many that were dead or dying.

  It was a particularly cruel disease for children. Even the comparatively healthy white boys and girls frequently succumbed to it. Unable to withstand the ravages the illness made on their little bodies. Crow had seen enough frontier graveyards with whole sections set aside to cover the mass graves of children taken off during epidemics of cholera.

  For many tribes it was more devastating than a whole battalion of Gatling guns. Spread with murderous intent on occasions by whites, it decimated whole races of Indians. And again it was the children and the women who suffered most. The air carried the evidence of death. There was a taste to it that you never forgot.

  Crow had drawn the Purdey as he walked around the camp, but he now thumbed off the pressure on the hammers, easing the scattergun back into its special holster. There was nobody there who was likely to prove a danger to him.

  Not now.

  He counted nineteen corpses. Three of them were very old women. One old man carrying arrow scars on his wizened body that could have been inflicted sixty years past. There were two younger women, one swollen with child-bearing. A young warrior who also showed the signs of a recent bullet wound above the left hip.

  All the rest were children.

  Crow didn’t stay around the camp. The stench of death would grow as the sun grew warmer. Within a day and a half it would be possible to smell the charnel-stench several hundred yards away. And the noise of the blowflies would carry to a man on the bluffs.

  He was about to leave when he heard the voice.

  Faint as snow on leaves. Barely reaching the ears of the white man. Calling out for water in the harsh tongue of the Apaches.

  There was such scant life in the voice that Crow nearly ignored it. There was little that such a voice could do to help him, and he wasn’t about to waste any of his own precious water on a gut-poisoned Chiricahua. But it occurred to him that it was possible he might have some information that could be useful. Where the remnants of the tribe had gone. And if there was any further news of the group of white men camped over beyond Buzzard Rock.

  The cry came again, from one of the wickiups on the edge of the site. Crow had peered quickly into it, seeing that it had held the body of an old woman. And she had been unquestionably very dead indeed. There had been a pile of blankets, stained with the results of the cholera, and nothing else.

  Crow had been wrong. When he pushed aside the flap of hide across the entrance, he was able to see better. The blankets hid the owner of the feeble voice. Naked from the waist down, fouled with blood and excrement, it was a skinny old man.

  When the white man moved him, the eyes flickered open, blinking like a sightless kitten. The stink in the wickiup was appalling, but Crow squatted down by the old man, looking at the sunken chest, and the ribs standing out like a spavined horse.

  ‘You wish water, old man?’ he asked, using his own, slightly rusty, Apache tongue.

  ‘My spirit has passed and I see shadows. Men from the past when I was young and ran among the grasses of summer and…’ the mind wandered and the voice tailed off. Crow shook his head. There was nothing here. The old Chiricahua was so far gone that his brain was shutting down.

  ‘Where are your people?’ he asked.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Gone. Scattered as the sands of the river and the birds of the sky.’

  ‘When? Last night?’

  The eyes opened again, and the face turned slowly towards him. The old man was very close to death. At each breath the chest rose and fell slowly with a painful effort. The lips were crusted and sore.

  ‘Water, white man. Or take your gun and with it let free my spirit.’

  ‘They left last night?’

  ‘Yes. There was singing. The chant of death and that of a killing. A great victory over the pony soldiers. But so many have died. My squaw was sickly.’

  Crow glanced across the dimly-lit hut and saw the corpse of the old man’s wife. Where her eyes had been there were only teeming nests of blind maggots that crawled about her face seeking soft meat.

  ‘Your squaw?’

  ‘She has gone with the rest so that she may not see me in my ending. Darkness covers the grass and the sun will not give me warmth. The waters divide in snow and all fire burns upon the sides of stone mountains.’

  The old man’s voice had risen to a sing-song chanting and Crow stood up to leave the shambles of death and pestilence. Sensing that the Indian was closing in on death.

  ‘Kill me, white man, that there shall be honor in my passing.’

  He ignored the request, stepping carefully past the rotting body of the old woman. Tugging back the curtain over the entrance.

  ‘I beg you to kill me. It will be a fine passing. Kill me.’

  ‘No,’ He stepped out into the fresh light of the Arizona morning, breathing in the cleaner air. ‘No,’

  Chapter Eleven

  The abandoned camp of the Chiricahua had answered several questions for the tall man in black. He knew that the soldiers had been killed. Knew now that the cholera had bitten deep into the tribe and that the survivors were moving out. Crow was certain that they wouldn’t come back.

  That meant that the kidnappers were safe from the threat of an Apache attack. And it also meant that he could carry out his own attack on their camp without fear of intervention from the Chiricahua.

  ‘Head of the damned family.’ muttered Crow as he stalked the canyon. Buzzard Rock hung above him like a statue, throwing its shortened noon-time shadow down across the sand. Here and there Crow saw the first signs of life returning to the barren region. Green shoots pushing through and even the cactuses greener beneath the coating of dust. All it needed was a good spring rain to bring the desert to a brief, blooming life.

  That seemed to be the only way he’d heard anyone describing Abraham Verity. Sometimes as the Mayor. But there never seemed anything personal in the way folks back in Dead Hawk talked about him. Head of the Family.

  It was often that way in frontier settlements. Little townships that had been founded by a single family, way back when, and sometimes kept that family’s name. Often kept the influence.

  So it was in Dead Hawk.

  Mayor. Banker. Saloon owner. Sheriff. All kin of some kind or other. Brothers and cousins.

  The Veritys.

  And they wanted Abe back. Nobody seemed to give a single damn about his wife, Martha. Still, if Crow could get back the couple alive, he stood to be three thousand three hundred dollars better off. Plus what he could make on the side by gunning down a few of the kidnappers. He’d left the stallion a long way back. Tying it to a jagged spur of rock, split by frosts and roasted by the summer furnace.

  In another couple of months that part of Arizona would-be sweltering under temperatures that were consistently over one hundred degrees in the shade. And in that part of the Southwest there wasn’t an awful lot of shade.

  The kidnappers seemed to have been so casual in their methods, taking all manner of absurd chances, that Crow was almost relieved when he saw that they had at least posted guard.

  One man, sitting with his back against a stump of a long-dead sycamore, its branches twisted and gray. He looke
d about thirty, cradling a Winchester carbine in his arms. Dressed in blue pants and a gray shirt, open to the waist. A Colt Peacemaker was on his right hip, the hammer tied down. A dull brown Stetson was tugged low over his forehead, shading his eyes.

  He was asleep.

  Crow watched him for several minutes, making sure that the man wasn’t simply resting in a pool of stillness of his own making.

  If ever a man deserved killing it was the sentry. Even if you could forget the mutilated corpses hanging from the cross-bar of the gate at the Verity spread, then it was enough that he slept while supposed to be on watch for Indians. It was unlikely that they expected to be followed to the isolated canyon by anyone from Dead Hawk. But there were the Chiricahua.

  Crow waited a few moments longer, scanning the tops of the bluffs around. Making sure there wasn’t a back-up guard anywhere. But it was as empty and silent as a Monday night church.

  Assuming that there were about eight of the bandits, Crow needed to take out-as many as possible as silently as possible. He didn’t much relish a gun-battle against those odds.

  The big man moved in on his prey, setting each foot carefully and silently in front of the other. Making sure that he could draw both his handguns if he needed to. But for a speedy secret killing, he was going to use the cut-down saber.

  It was already in his list. Better than two feet of polished steel that glittered in the bright sun like the eyes of a snake. The gilt tassels swung beneath the hilt and Crow thought with a part of his mind that he ought to cut them off. But they were somehow a comfort, reminding him of the good things about his time with the Cavalry.

  The man snorted in his sleep, turning his head slightly to one side, exposing the soft flesh at the left of the neck. Beneath the ear. Where the large artery throbbed and pulsed.

  There was a scar running from the corner of the left eye down to the top lip, tuckering up his mouth into a permanent sneer. The Winchester was battered, the stock split and wired together, looking as if he’d used it to hammer in nails. Crow had nothing but contempt for someone who failed to look after his weaponry. Leaving a carbine that was so filthy it looked like it had been used for stirring stew and then stuck barrel down in mud for a month.

  The shade from the dead tree was moving slowly around, leaving the man’s feet and legs in the sun. A tiny spider scampered across the material of his breeches, pausing and then lowering itself to the ground on an invisible web.

  Like a ghost, Crow stepped around the back of the tree, careful not to let his own shadow intrude in front of the sentry. Pausing for a last look around the steep-walled canyon.

  Crouching at the side of the sleeping guard, the saber in his right hand. Suddenly clamping his left hand across the man’s mouth. Hard and tight as a trap. Jamming his lips together. Simultaneously slicing the long blade in and across the neck. Hard and fast. The edge so keen that it a seemed as if he was cutting through warm butter. The skin and artery falling apart under the slashing blow. Blood jetted out from the cut, to the left, surging under pressure and pattering in the dirt twenty feet off.

  The sentry died in terrified ignorance. Snatched from a dream of it sweating lust, where he was penetrating a young Mexican boy from behind while several old women in shawls applauded him. Urging him on in the brutal rape.

  Then there was a cold pain and he couldn’t speak. His hat fell across his eyes, blinding him. The women and the boy disappeared and he struggled to move. But someone had tightened a strap across his mouth. The gun fell from his lap and his feet kicked out helplessly. Gradually, the blood eased from a gushing fountain to a steady trickle.

  Crow felt the life ebbing from the body. The flailing arms and legs becoming still.

  The sentry passed away not even knowing whether he was truly dying or whether he was inextricably locked into a dream of horror.

  Standing up, Crow wiped the saber on the man’s shirt. On the right side, where it wasn’t already slobbered with blood. Pushing the corpse away from him with his foot.

  Considering for a moment propping it up so that anyone passing by might still think the man was alive. But he rejected the idea. Only in poor light or at a distance would anyone mistake a man dead for a man sleeping.

  ‘So far …’ he muttered, sheathing the knife on his left hip. Carrying on down the canyon.

  From a hundred paces away, Crow leaned against the splintered shelf of rock on the steeper side of the valley, watching the camp of the kidnappers.

  The narrow stream that ran through the canyon chuckled and sang to itself as it ran over the polished stones. The sun shone brightly down on a scene of quiet beauty. There were four tents. gray canvas, stretched tight over poles. Looked like stolen Cavalry issue. Close by the back wall of rock, near where a thin waterfall wormed over the stones, sliding into the stream at the bottom. There was a screen of scrubby bushes, light green against the red and brown of the cliff.

  Ten horses stood patiently, roped to a row of wooden stakes hammered into the earth behind the tents. At first Crow couldn’t see any men at all, wondering whether they might be out hunting on foot, or sleeping through the heat of the day.

  Then he began to pick them out. One by one. Some of them looking as if they were asleep. Two lying down close to the bushes. Another near to the edge of the stream. Only his head and shoulders visible.

  ‘Three,’ Crow said. Moving further round so that he could see more of the camp area.

  Four and five were sitting by one of the tents. Joined as he watched by a sixth. Squatting around a dark blue blanket, playing cards. Crow was close enough to make out small piles of coins in front of each of the men. There was nothing special about any of them. Just ordinary drifters, like a dozen you might see around any frontier town. Mostly in their late twenties or thirties by what he could see.

  Six. That left two more. As well as trying to locate Verity and his wife.

  A sudden wind from nowhere sprang up, fluttering the blanket. Blowing specks of dust into Crow’s face, making him blink. Rubbing at his eyes.

  Shifting his position again. He’d gone as far as he could up that side, so he retreated and came at the camp from the other side, creeping along the bed of the stream. Getting closer. Able to see that there were two hewn-down trees behind the tents. And that there was someone tied to one of them. Difficult to see because of the screen of undergrowth. But looking like a man. Naked from what Crow could see. With someone sitting nearby, whittling at a piece of wood. That made seven. One more of them. And the woman.

  ‘Eight,’ breathed Crow, finally making out another man. Standing behind the tents, idly throwing stones at the pool of water at the head of the canyon. Looking taller than the rest, but it was hard to see. He could have been standing on some rocks.

  And there was Martha Verity.

  Wearing a print dress, long yellow hair loose over her shoulders. No bonnet, despite the heat of the spring sun. She walked out of one of the tents, going past the man against the tree. Close by, and Crow strained to make out what was happening. She seemed to be talking to the bound figure, who had to be her husband. Reaching out as though she was touching him. Watched by the man by the pool and the one who was whittling.

  Then she moved away and came towards the stream, moving in the general direction of the hidden Crow. The three kidnappers playing cards all broke off to watch her go by. From what he’d seen of her while he was locked up in Dead Hawk’s jail, Crow didn’t blame them for that.

  Martha Verity was worth looking at.

  There was something about her that reminded him of poor, short-sighted, doomed Angelina Menges. Sometime wife of Captain Silas Menges. But Angelina had walked with her own misery. There was something strange about Martha Verity. In front of her husband she had seemed quiet and submissive. Now, in a position of great danger, she walked with more confidence. There was almost a spring in her step.

  She reached the stream and climbed carefully down to the edge. One of the men called something to her and
she shouted a reply. Crow couldn’t hear what was said above the noise of the water, but it made the kidnappers laugh. Then she began to walk towards him, holding up the hem of her skirt to save it trailing in the little river.

  Stopping and calling rout: ‘Further down!’

  Only when she got close to him did Crow guess where she was going and what she was going to do. Not surprised that the men allowed her so much freedom. Without a horse there was nowhere for the girl to run to. They could track her down within less than an hour if she decided to try and escape.

  Martha Verity kept looking round, until she was confident that she was out of sight of the kidnappers, then she squatted down with her feet in the water, lifting her dress to relieve herself. Less than twenty yards away from Crow.

  It was such an amazing chance that he could hardly believe it. The canyon was so narrow that he could get her away with him and then cut down anyone after her with the Purdey. It should be easy to get another mount and slip away as soon as the light went.

  As she finished, splashing herself with the stream water to clean herself, Crowd called out to her. His voice barely carrying.

  ‘Martha Verity.’ He carried the Purdey cocked in his right hand.

  The woman started and looked round. Staring up into the sky as though she’d been expecting a message from the Almighty.

  ‘Martha. Here.’

  Then she saw him and her face went pale. Instinctively she glanced around to where her kidnappers waited for her return. But she was safely out of sight.

  ‘Over here. Been sent to get you and your husband back. Quick.’

  Cautiously she walked towards him, her eyes searching his face.

  ‘You…You were the man in the jail.’

  ‘That’s right. Now let’s move it out of here, Mrs. Verity.’

  ‘Can I have a gun? Have you a pistol?’ She looked at him from pale blue eyes, and Crow felt sorry for her. Knowing that the rescue of her husband was going to be difficult.