The Dark Land Page 8

  Two Apaches rose up and, bent over, ran a few yards, then dropped out of sight. Then, the next two, farther back, did the same thing. He waited, wishing now he had grabbed up his rifle instead of the Greener.

  But then he realized he’d have only one shot with the Kentucky flintlock. At least with the scattergun, he’d have two shots. And he still had the six-gun.

  The Apaches kept coming, using that same pattern. So now he knew how many and how they planned to steal his horses. Two of the horses whinnied and looked toward the Indians. As soon as they did, the Apaches dropped down out of sight again.

  The other horses began to mill around, but the one he was gentling with his hand stayed put, content to remain under his protection. As long as the others were moving, he thought, the Apaches would be watching them and might fail to notice him standing next to one of them, out of their line of sight.

  It began to get lighter by the moment. The Apaches were perhaps still a good two hundred yards away. By pairs, they rose up and ran a few yards, then lay on the ground, out of sight. Two, then the other two. The horses began to fidget again as the Apaches came closer, but the gelding still held its position, although now it was stamping one foot on the ground, then pawing the dirt with its right hoof.

  As the land began to brighten, Randy saw movement on the horizon beyond the skulking Apaches. As the morning gradually began to lighten, his heart sank. The Apaches had not walked here, but had ridden, and there was at least one of their band holding the horses for those now afoot. They were specks on the horizon at that distance, but the silhouettes were clearly those of horses and one man, perhaps two, held them in readiness. He saw only one man, but admitted to himself that there could be two. And, he asked himself silently, how many more were waiting out of sight, beyond the dip of the land?

  The Apaches were patient; he’d give them that. Agonizing moments crawled by as he waited for the red men to get within range of his scattergun. His palms began to sweat and the Greener turned lead-heavy. His knees jellied as his legs started to quiver. He had stood stock-still so long, he wanted to run, to bring back the feeling to his legs, to somehow set the cold blood in his veins to flowing again.

  The Apaches crawled still closer. He could catch only slices of movement, since he dared not move his head. Then they came so close he could hear them, or else he imagined he heard them. A rustle of grass, a scrape of a moccasin, the rub of a bare arm on the earth.

  The horses stopped pacing and turned to face the skulking Apaches, their ears twisting to pick up each small sound. Then the agitated horses ran at him and the horse next to him moved out of the way. Suddenly he was in the open, exposed, and he dropped to one knee as the grass exploded with four Apaches leaping to their feet, arrows nocked, bows drawn.

  The Indians screeched high-pitched yelps as they charged the corral. They shot their arrows at him on the run. He took a bead on the nearest man, cocked both barrels of the Greener, and fired the first one. The gun bucked in his hands, spewing out white smoke and deadly shot. The buckshot nearly tore the charging Apache apart at less than ten yards, cutting off his yips and scattering blood, bone, flesh, and guts in a wide arc, like flung entrails. He swung the barrel on the second man and touched the trigger. The Apache threw up both hands as the lead ripped into his face and throat, tearing them apart in a cloud-spray of rosy blood.

  He stood up then and drew his pistol, cocking it as it cleared the holster. He led the next man and squeezed off a shot. Without waiting to see if he had struck his target, he turned to the last of the four Apaches, who was charging toward him with a long skinning knife poised to strike. The Apache’s blood-curdling scream stopped with the explosion of the pistol. The ball caught him square in the Adam’s apple and he stopped, spun around, flailing at the sky, the knife still clutched in his hand, gasping for breath and drawing in only blood that made a whistling sound in his throat.

  He turned to the third man and saw him down on the ground, still alive, crawling painfully toward him. He rushed up to him, put the barrel of the pistol to the man’s temple, and squeezed off the shot. The Apache’s head burst open like a melon struck with a ten-pound maul, spraying blood and gray matter for two yards as the other side of his head blew away like a pie plate.

  Something moving caught the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw the Apache horses start to run. The Apache who had been watching them yelled something, then disappeared from sight. He heard the sound of pounding hoofbeats, then two rifle shots that sounded like firecrackers. Two more Apaches appeared on the horizon, running at high speed. Then he saw them both stumble and fall. A split second later he heard two rifle reports, very close together.

  As he stood there, watching, two riders appeared. They stopped by the fallen Apaches, then started riding toward him. He cocked his pistol and waited.

  “You there,” called one of the riders. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He waited until the riders got close enough for him to see that they were white men. They rode up on him and he saw two men, one young, the other a little older, their faces covered with three-day beards and dust, their rifles still smoking.

  “You are one lucky son-of-a-bitch,” the older man said, looking at the dead Apaches outside the corral. “And a damned good shot, ’pears to me.”

  “Who in hell are you?”

  “I’m Ford. He’s Chambers. We’ve been tracking these red niggers for twenty mile.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re Texas Rangers,” Chambers said. “These Apaches killed a family over by San Antone.”

  “How many did you kill over yonder?”

  “Four,” Chambers said. “They were getting ready to ride down here and slit your gullet.”

  “They needed fresh horses,” Ford said. “Looks like they picked your string, fella. Glad they didn’t add your scalp to their belts. You got any coffee with maybe some whiskey to sweeten it up? We haven’t slept in two days. Onliest thing holding us up is our belts and these tired old horses.”

  Funny that he would think of that first meeting with Ford and Brad Chambers. But the riders coming toward him reminded him of that day.

  One of the men started waving as they came closer and he recognized Lou Reeves. He waved back.

  Moments later, he saw Brad Chambers lift a hand in greeting. Then he saw Gid. He didn’t know the Mexican.

  “Well, well, look what the wind done blown in,” Randy said. “Is this meetin’ day? Did you boys have an appointment?”

  “Randy, you haven’t changed a bit,” Brad said. “I see the wind didn’t blow you away last night.”

  “Light down,” Randy said. “What brings you to these parts, Major?”

  Brad didn’t swing out of the saddle right away. Instead, he looked Randy straight in the eye and said: “Abel Thorne. Wondered if you might want to join us on a manhunt. Full army pay.”

  “Rebel or Yankee?” Randy asked.

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “Not a damned bit. As long as I don’t have to wear no uniform, Major.”

  “It’s a come-as-you-was party, Randy.”

  “You aim to catch this Abel Thorne?”

  “Dead or alive,” Brad said, and swung down out of the saddle. He was not smiling.

  13

  * * *

  ABEL THORNE JERKED the reins, bringing his horse to a sudden halt at the edge of a large clearing. Beyond the tree stumps, near the opposite edge, stood a small clapboard house that appeared to have been made with scrap lumber. It had a sod roof and an uneven porch with three handmade chairs.

  A mongrel dog lay under the porch, eyeing the men who had ridden up. It did not bark or wag its tail. Beyond the house, there were no stumps, but a three- or four-acre cleared spot. Two Negroes were working the garden, hoeing and raking along the rows of corn, beans, okra, cabbage, and other vegetables. They looked up and stood unmoving.

  Thorne turned to the man in the suit who had ridden up alongsi
de him.

  “This isn’t on my list,” the man said.

  “Grimley, you can stay or ride around and we’ll meet up with you. But me and the boys have business here.”

  “What business would that be, Mr. Thorne?”

  “My business. If you don’t want to watch, then you’d better ride on around. You know where the road is.”

  Jonas Grimley, a pudgy-lipped man of florid complexion, with sagging jowls and a crisply trimmed square mustache, flat sideburns and a pair of tiered chins, pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and dabbed at the beads of sweat glistening in the wrinkled furrows of his forehead. He cleared his throat of accumulated phlegm and adjusted his portly body in the cradle of the Denver saddle.

  “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Thorne. I do not wish to ride alone in such wild and unfamiliar country. Do you know these people?”

  “I know them as nigger squatters, Grimley. Now make up your mind. You can stay and be a part of this or ride on and never know the difference.”

  “You mean you don’t want me to witness a crime.”

  “I mean that.”

  “Mr. Thorne, as a duly sworn and designated official of the United States government, I strongly . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear that shit, Grimley. Now, either get your ass back to the road and ride around these nigger squatters, or you join us and bear the blame.”

  “I will not be a party to any . . .”

  “I ain’t goin’ to tell you again, Grimley. You ought to catch up with Blackjack and the pack horse. He should be waitin’ at the next crossroads. You wait there. We’ll be along directly.”

  “I have another farm on my list that ought to be nearby. The Worth place, I believe.”

  “Worth’s is the next farm over, but we have to go to the crossroads to reach it. You let me worry about where we go next, Grimley. Now, get on. Tell Blackjack we’ll be along directly.”

  Grimley spluttered, but said nothing. He took one more look at the two Negroes standing in their garden and turned his horse to ride the connecting path back to the road.

  Thorne watched him go, then beckoned to his two companions. They rode up alongside. One of them, a man named Herbert Luskin, wore a smirk on his pockmarked face. The other, Orville Trask, bore a full-toothed grin that, with his off-center left eye, gave his face a lopsided appearance. His face appeared to have been mashed together out of spare parts, a deformity granted him at birth when a drunken barber, in his capacity as a surgeon, squeezed his head while pulling him out of his mother’s womb.

  “Boy oh boy,” Trask said, “you done found us some bluegums, Abel.”

  “Shut your mouth, Orv,” Thorne said. “Wait’ll that damned Yankee gets on down the road a ways.”

  Thorne shot Trask a withering scowl, and when Luskin opened his mouth to say something, Thorne pierced him with a lancing look that made the darkness of midnight look like daylight. “You neither, Herb.”

  Thorne was a lean whip of a man who looked as if he had been cut from a mean bolt of cloth with a hatchet slice. He was all angles, from his bony arms and pole-thin legs to his high cheekbones framing a square jaw that was bent inward in the shape of a wedge. His small dark eyes were deep-sunk, seemingly radiating the meanness of his black soul. Despite his slender build, he was intimidating in the sinister way that a venomous snake can strike fear in its prey.

  The three men listened to the sound of the receding hoofbeats. When it was silent, Thorne turned to look at the two farmers in their garden. He lifted a hand and waved. Trask suppressed a chuckle. After a moment, the man in the garden raised his hand and waved back. Thorne dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks and rode toward the couple. He, like the other two men, carried two rifles in scabbards attached to both sides of his saddle. Each man wore two pistols on belts, and each had sidearms dangling from his saddlehorn in holsters.

  “Do I get to shoot one?” Luskin asked.

  “If you want,” Thorne said. “I’ll open the ball. You boys just wait.”

  “You aimin’ to have some sport with ’em first, Abel?” Trask asked.

  “I aim to give ’em what for,” Thorne said, as a sudden thought crossed his mind.

  The auctioneer walked around the naked black man as light streamed through the chinks in the old barn’s roof and walls, shooting spears of light on the men who stood there in a cluster watching the proceedings.

  “Here we have a young buck, around eighteen years of age, in his prime, with strong legs and back, in good health, with good teeth and big hands. He’ll pick your cotton, build your fences, dig your wells, slop your hogs, chop wood, service your young slave gals, and live to a ripe old age.”

  The auctioneer grabbed the youth’s scrotum and hefted it in his hand as if it were a chunk of meat.

  “What am I bid, what’ll it be, better get it, two, I hear two doodle a quarter now a half, biddle de bid, will he do it, three, ba ba bid it three and do I hear it?” Talking very fast, just a stream of talk with numbers in it.

  “Daddy, why do people buy other people?”

  “Abel, these ain’t people,” his father said. “They’re Negroes, wild critters come over on a boat from Africa, same as cattle.”

  “But they look like people, only they got black skin.”

  “Son, don’t you never forget, these niggers ain’t human. They was born to be slaves to white folks and that’s why we buy and sell ’em. God put ’em here on this earth to work for white folk.”

  “Daddy, would you sell me?”

  “Abel, Abel, how come you to talk that way? You ain’t no nigger. I’d never sell you. Nobody would buy you, anyways.”

  “How come?”

  “Why, you ain’t nothing but a little bitty old thing and you’re white as white can be. White people ain’t slaves. Only niggers.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sold,” said the auctioneer. “One thousand dollars.”

  “Don’t you reach for no rifle or pistol until I tell you,” Thorne said. “I don’t want to have to chase down these niggers.”

  “No sir,” Trask said. Luskin grunted his assent.

  “Howdy,” Thorne said as he rode up to the edge of the garden.

  “Yes, suh, howdy,” the black man said.

  “You sharecroppin’ here?”

  “No, suh, we is free. We owns this land.”

  “No, by God, you don’t,” Thorne said, pulling the pistol from his right holster, easing it out slow.

  “Suh?”

  “You don’t get no forty acres and a mule, you black son-of-a-bitch,” Thorne said. “No matter what General Sherman said.”

  “Now?” Luskin asked.

  “Now,” Thorne said, cocking his pistol. He aimed at the black man and squeezed the trigger. The woman started to run toward her husband, but both Luskin and Trask opened up with their rifles and cut her down. She fell across her husband’s body, her blood streaming from her neck and chest onto his legs.

  “Make sure,” Thorne said to Trask. Then he turned his horse without another glance and blew the smoke out of his barrel. He holstered his pistol and rode off. Behind him, Trask and Luskin shot two more times, striking the already dead couple in their heads.

  The two caught up to Thorne and they rode the path down to the road.

  “What was that about forty acres and a mule?” Luskin asked.

  “That goddamned Sherman done went and guaranteed every goddamned nigger slave free land, the son-of-a-bitch. Well, by God, not in Texas. Not while I’m alive.”

  “No sir,” Trask said.

  “For Christ’s sakes,” Luskin said. “For Jesus Christ’s sakes.”

  After they were gone, a white woman walked out of the woods, about a half hour later. She was leading a mule wearing a halter and rope behind her.

  “Jessy?” she called. “Joe Sam?”

  Puzzled, she led the mule toward the house, following a path on the far end of the garden. She saw something out of the corner of her eye and stop
ped.

  “Jessy? Joe Sam?”

  She dropped the rope and ran up one row of sprouted corn. She stopped when she saw the dead couple lying there. She saw the bullet holes in their heads, their vacant eyes, glassed over, glinting dully in the sun.

  Then she dropped to her knees, buried her head in her hands, and began to weep.

  14

  * * *

  BRAD HELPED RANDY pack grub in his saddlebags.

  “I’m right glad you decided to join up with us, Randy,” Brad said.

  “I figgered something was wrong when that puffbag Grimley served those papers on me. Wasn’t him, so much, but those three hardcases he had bracing him looked like trouble.”

  “Just four men, then?”

  “Well, I seen another way off, a-leading a pack horse. He was with ’em, but he didn’t ride up; he went on down the road toward Norm Worth’s place. But, hell, that’s a good fifty mile from here.”

  Brad swore.

  “What?” Randy asked, as he tucked a flour sack full of hardtack into one of his saddlebags.

  “Norm Worth’s got a temper. He might not take kindly to Grimley serving him papers.”

  “No, I reckon not. Neither did I, but those three hardcases looked ready to throw down on me if I blinked. ’Specially that one they called Abel.”

  Paco had wandered off to take a leak and Brad saw him walking back from behind Randy’s barn. Lou and Gid were still talking about the windstorm while their horses nibbled on grain from Randy’s stable.

  “Get on your horse, Paco,” Brad said. “Gid, you and Lou about ready?”

  “We’re ready,” Gid said.

  Brad turned back to Randy. “We may be gone a while, Randy. Thorne and his bunch have got a good head start on us.”

  “I figger they had to hole up yesterday and last night.”

  “Where might that be?”

  “Well, ’tween here and the Worth spread, there are some old adobes we used to use as line shacks during roundup and when we cut brush. Then, there’s Jessy and Joe Sam Cooper’s place. But they wouldn’t hole up there, even if they could have made it that far.”