Cold Corpse, Hot Trail Page 4

  Blood was splashed around them like paint.

  One of the shaggy, black buzzards, perched on the head of a dead soldier, squawked and turned its grizzled bald head toward Hawk, a bloody eyeball dangling from its hooked beak. The bird leapt from the soldier’s head and ran, bounding awkwardly and spreading its massive wings, into the dense chaparral beyond the dead men.

  Hawk lifted his gaze as something moved in the brush down the grade ahead and left. A soldier backed toward him, crouching and stumbling as he dragged a body toward the six already laid out. He turned his head to one side, to see where he was going.

  Suddenly, he stopped with a grunt, dropped the dead man’s ankles, and whipped around. He stumbled right and forward, and dropped to one knee, clutching his right side.

  As the man looked up from under the brim of his battered kepi, the sweaty, blood-streaked face of Lieutenant Primrose shone in the harsh light. He reached for the pistol on his right hip. Apparently realizing Hawk was out of the six-shooter’s range, he pushed off his knee and ran toward the carbine leaning against one of the fallen horses.

  “Hold on, Lieutenant,” Hawk called, gigging his horse down the knoll and touching his Colt’s butt. “It’s Hollis.”

  Frowning up the knoll at Hawk, his lower jaw hanging, the lieutenant slowed to a shambling, heavy-footed walk. Primrose grabbed the carbine by the barrel, then sat heavily down on a rock, laying the Spencer across his thighs. He watched Hawk with a wary, puzzled expression, as if he wasn’t sure he could trust his vision.

  As Hawk reined up before the man, the fear in the lieutenant’s eyes abated. He removed his yellow kerchief, doffed his hat, and mopped his brow and sweat-soaked goatee. Blood dribbled down from a gash on the side of his head. More of it stained the right side of his tunic.

  Something behind Hawk caught the lieutenant’s attention. Suddenly, he dropped the kerchief, grabbed his carbine, ran past Hawk toward a buzzard pecking the back of a dead private, and fired.

  The bird screamed as the slug blew it off the dead soldier. It flapped in a broad circle, wings beating the ground insanely, chortling and squawking as it ran down like a child’s top, and died. Around it, several other buzzards barked and ran for cover.

  “Bloody scavengers!” the lieutenant shouted, tears welling in his eyes as he ejected the smoking shell. He rammed a fresh slug into the Spencer’s chamber, but held the gun low by his side, staring at the soldiers lined out before him.

  Flies buzzed around the glistening blood pools. Cicadas whined. High up in the brassy sky, a hawk screeched.

  “What happened?” Hawk asked.

  The lieutenant sighed, set the rifle down against the rock, and walked back to the body he’d been dragging when Hawk had first spotted him.

  “Ambushed,” Primrose said thickly, staring down at the dead private. “They were waiting in the rocks.” He turned to look at Hawk, his rheumy eyes slitted with fury. “Sergeant Schmidt was in with them.”

  “How many?”

  Primrose shrugged. “I had no time to count them, Mr. Hollis. They took me by surprise. Before I knew what was happening, my horse had unseated me. I crawled away and began returning fire with my revolver.”

  The lieutenant leaned down, grabbed the body by both ankles, and straightened. “A bullet ricocheted off my shoulder holster, burned my side. I went down, hit my head on a rock. They left me for dead.”

  He paused, head hanging. His shoulders jerked. He turned to Hawk, laughing coldly. “One was a woman. A beautiful, deadly woman. I froze when I saw her, thought surely she must have been a mirage!”

  He laughed again, stepped back, and began dragging the body toward the others he’d positioned side by side for burial.

  Hawk took another look around. “What happened to the girl?”

  “I haven’t seen her body, so I assume they took her.”

  Hawk turned his horse around, rode slowly back the way he’d come, scouring the ground for tracks. “Did you see which way they went?”

  “No.” Behind Hawk, Primrose’s voice sounded pinched.

  Hawk turned. The lieutenant had fallen to his knees again, head bowed, holding his right arm taut to his bloody tunic.

  Hawk cursed and rode back to where Primrose crouched beside a cholla. Dismounting, he looped his reins over the grulla’s saddle horn, then squatted before the lieutenant. “Let me take a look.”

  “I have to bury my men,” the lieutenant said weakly. “It’s the least I can do. Should have sent a scout ahead.” He shook his head. Again, tears filled his eyes. “Just didn’t think we’d be hit out here . . . small group . . . traveling cross-country . . .”

  Hawk pushed him back, quickly unbuttoned his tunic, and peeled the right side away from the shoulder holster decorated with a Union medallion showing an eagle with spread wings. The disc was dented and creased where the bullet had hit. Behind the holster, the ricocheting slug had torn a deep, bloody path about six inches long.

  Hawk cursed again and looked around. He had to get on the trail of those bushwackers before dark, but the lieutenant looked too dazed and weak to tend to himself.

  “Come on, Lieutenant,” Hawk said, standing and grabbing the man’s left arm. “Let’s get you into some shade and wrap those wounds.”

  Primrose shook his head. “I have to . . .”

  “You don’t have the strength to bury them. The commander at Bowie will send a detail.”

  “There’ll be nothing left of them!”

  Hawk pulled the lieutenant to his feet, drew the man’s left arm over his shoulders, and led him away from the growing stench of death. The soldier was too weak to resist. Hawk clucked to the grulla, which followed, rolling its eyes uneasily at the carnage and the persistent buzzards returning from the brush jerking cautious, hungry looks around the gap between the boulder piles.

  “Goddamn Schmidt,” the lieutenant said as Hawk eased him down in the shade of a paloverde. “Murdering son of a bitch. I’m going to dog his murdering ass . . . ahhh! That hurts.”

  As he’d leaned back against the tree, he’d pulled the wound open. He clapped his arm and head over his side, breathing sharply through his teeth.

  “You think that hurt,” Hawk said, returning from his horse with a roll of bandages he’d fashioned from an old sheet, and a bottle of whiskey. “Try this on for size.”

  He popped the cork, nudged the lieutenant onto his left shoulder, and tipped the bottle over the eight-inch gash. When the whiskey hit the burn, the lieutenant arched his spine, threw back his head, and bunched his face with misery.

  “Oh, mercy!”

  While the lieutenant still had his head back, Hawk poured more whiskey over the gash in his head.

  “Oh, Christ!”

  When Hawk had cleaned both wounds and wrapped bandages around the lieutenant’s lower chest and his forehead, he mounted the grulla and ran down one of the soldiers’ saddled horses. A canteen hung from the saddle horn. Hawk led the horse back to the lieutenant and, without dismounting the grulla, tied the reins to a branch of the paloverde.

  “You have a horse, weapons, and water,” Hawk said. “You best rest here overnight and head back to Fort Bowie in the morning.”

  Hawk began reining away from the tree.

  “Where’re you going?” the lieutenant called.

  “See you around, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Hawk turned. The lieutenant was pushing himself to his feet. “Stay put, Lieutenant. You’re addlepated.”

  “They’re my men . . . my responsibility . . .”

  When the lieutenant, lips stretched with pain, sagged back down against the tree, Hawk gigged the grulla into a trot, began scouring the ground around the carnage for the killers’ sign. Twenty minutes later, he’d found where the bushwackers had tied their horses. It wasn’t hard to see which direction they’d headed after they’d gathered the payroll-bearing mules and the girl.

  Due south.

  Hawk turned toward th
e paloverde. Again, the lieutenant was trying to stand, holding his arm against his side, his gritted teeth white against the dark hollows of his blood-smeared face. He was a tough, young bastard, but Hawk doubted he’d be able to climb onto his horse before his concussion convinced him it was a bad idea.

  Hawk turned the grulla south and gigged it into a trot, following the tracks of the ten shod horses down a rocky shelf and onto a low table surrounded by distant blue, red-tipped mountains.

  He’d ridden an hour through a shallow, jagged-edged basin when, pausing to drink, he spotted a small purple figure moving behind him. Frowning, he lowered the canteen, reined the grulla up a low table of sandstone, and raised his binoculars.

  As he adjusted the focus, a bay horse bearing a blue-clad, slump-shouldered rider took shape. The rider wore a white bandage under the brim of his tan kepi. The horse plodded along slowly, the rider’s head dipping toward the bay’s jostling mane. The brass buttons of his tunic winked in the west-angling sunlight.

  Hawk was about to snarl a curse when more movement appeared behind the lieutenant. His frown deepening, Hawk again raised the binoculars.

  He lowered them and cursed sharply.

  Flanking the lieutenant were four war-painted Apaches.

  5.

  INDIAN TROUBLE

  HOLDING his hands over the ends of his binoculars to prevent the sun from reflecting off the glass, Hawk stared past the hang-headed lieutenant.

  Sure enough. Four Apaches. Young braves, judging by how straight they sat their saddles and how brightly their cherry skin glistened in the west-angling light.

  And sure enough, the color on their faces was no trick of the sun. It was war paint. They were four renegades, no doubt, who, weary of hoeing potatoes at San Carlos, had decided to raise some hell with the white-eyes.

  The lieutenant was about two hundred yards away from Hawk. The Indians were another hundred yards behind the lieutenant. Riding abreast, they trotted their horses around the towering saguaros and low stone scarps, casting quick, frequent glances at each other, as if unable to believe their luck—a bluebelly traveling alone.

  Hawk dropped the field glasses back into his saddlebags, then reined the grulla off the stone shelf, hoping the late-afternoon shadows had concealed him from the Apaches as they’d apparently concealed him from Lieutenant Primrose. Hawk heeled the grulla northward across the basin, then back the way he’d come.

  When he figured he was within a hundred or so yards of the Indians, he dismounted the grulla, shucked his Henry, rammed a shell into the chamber, then off-cocked the hammer. Crouching and weaving through the paloverdes and cholla shading a shallow ravine, he moved toward the middle of the basin and, hopefully, into the renegades’ path.

  As he moved along a sandy swale, a horse whinnied ahead and left—probably the lieutenant’s bay, which meant the four Apaches wouldn’t be far behind.

  Hawk continued forward, setting his boots down softly in the coarse, red sand. Ahead, a horse nickered. Hawk began running toward it. He’d covered only ten yards before a bare, copper leg lashed out from behind a boulder on his right, too quickly for Hawk to avoid it.

  He slammed down hard on his belly, his Henry bouncing off his right thigh and tumbling off to the side.

  Hawk rolled onto his back as the young Apache leaned over him, grinning savagely and aiming a nocked arrow at his face. The ash bow squawked, the sinew chirped as the renegade increased the tension. The brave’s right hand opened. At the same time, Hawk flung himself left, hearing the projectile thump into the sand where his head had just been.

  Hawk reached across his belly for his Russian. He’d thumbed the hammer back and begun squeezing the trigger when the kid, fast as a panther, kicked the gun from Hawk’s right hand. The Russian popped, the slug sailing skyward as the revolver spun into the brush.

  Catching the brave’s moccasined foot, Hawk rolled off his right shoulder, giving the foot a hard tug and lifting the kid off his other foot. Yelling savagely, the brave arced through the air, hitting the ground on his back.

  Hawk gained his feet only a half second before the brave had scrambled back to a crouching position, black eyes slitted furiously, chapped lips stretched back from brown teeth. Thonged talismans jostled about his hard, flat chest.

  As the kid tried to read Hawk’s next move, Hawk kicked him, the toe of his right boot connecting soundly with the brave’s breastbone.

  The renegade only snorted, stumbled back, and flung himself straight forward and up, bulling Hawk onto his back. Hawk slammed his left elbow across the renegade’s jaw, which made a cracking sound as the brave slumped to the left.

  Footsteps rose to Hawk’s right as he climbed to his feet. He turned. Another brave—shorter, stockier than the first—ran toward him raising an Apache war lance bedecked with tribal feathers and talismans. As the brave, screeching like a wounded lobo, flung the lance, Hawk dropped to his knees.

  A thud and the sound of crunching bone rose behind him. Glancing quickly left, he saw the first brave stumbling straight back, broken jaw hanging askew, eyes wide, the stone blade of the lance intended for Hawk buried in his chest. He grabbed the lance with both hands, blood geysering over them, his eyes growing wider until he stumbled over a rock and hit the ground on his back.

  Hawk turned back to the second brave, who continued sprinting toward him, his jaws set hard, long hair flapping across his shoulders.

  Again, Hawk ducked. The kid’s left knee slammed into Hawk’s side. As the brave fell forward, Hawk rose, throwing the kid straight up and over his back, careening atop the first brave, who gurgled as he died.

  The second brave bounded to his haunches, reaching for the stag-handled knife on his right hip. Hawk straightened, clawed his Colt from its holster, and shot the kid twice through the forehead.

  The stocky renegade stumbled back over the first, who now lay still, and dropped to his back, his ankles crossed over the first brave’s throat.

  A fast-moving horse thundered behind Hawk, close enough that Hawk could hear the horse’s labored snorts. A shrill, angry keening sounded beneath the hooves.

  As Hawk wheeled and began to raise the Colt, he caught a glimpse of his rifle lying between a bunchgrass clump and an ironwood shrub. He ran, picked up the rifle, dropped to a knee, and peered up the shallow wash.

  The horse and rider shot toward him, the brave hunched low over his horse’s neck, his brightly painted face bunched with fury. A bow and deer-hide quiver jostled on his left shoulder.

  As he approached to within fifteen yards, the brave raised the lance in his right hand. Hawk snapped the rifle to his shoulder, taking quick aim, firing, then throwing himself sideways as the horse roared past him, screaming.

  Hawk wheeled toward the horse, ejecting the spent shell, then freezing as the horse disappeared down the wash, its blanket saddle empty, braided reins trailing along the ground.

  In the distance, a rifle spoke, too far away to have been aimed at Hawk.

  Turning up trail, Hawk cast his gaze about, looking for the third renegade. Nothing but brush, rocks, and sand. He shoved the rifle’s cocking lever home, seating a fresh shell in the chamber, and walked slowly between the wash’s low banks.

  In the distance, several more rifle shots rang out, the lead no doubt being exchanged by Primrose and the fourth Indian. Hawk ignored them, for the moment wanting to make sure of the third renegade’s fate.

  Hawk continued forward. Ahead and slightly right, blood dripped down the side of a rock. Beyond was a mesquite tree, the branches hanging over the trunk like a dusty green tablecloth. Hawk moved to the tree, tightened his finger on the Henry’s trigger, and swept the branches aside with the barrel.

  His trigger finger relaxed.

  The third brave lay before the tree, hands resting palms up at his sides. His head was propped against the mesquite’s thin trunk, open eyes staring unseeing at his own still chest, the bullet through his forehead dripping bright red blood onto the bridge of his broad no
se.

  Hawk let the branches fall back into place as, in the distance, the rifle shots continued, spanging and echoing around the basin.

  Hawk whistled for his horse and jogged up the wash. It didn’t take the grulla long to catch up to him, reins trailing. Grabbing the reins and keeping the Henry in his right hand, Hawk swung into the hurricane deck and galloped toward the shooting.

  Five minutes later, he halted the horse on a rocky rise.

  Straight below in the sun-and-shadow-stippled basin, another Indian ran out from behind a low shelf, his upper left arm glistening red. As he headed for another shelf just ahead, a rifle rang out. The Indian dropped his bow and arrow and, grabbing his right thigh, fell, sliding several feet along the ground.

  Looking west along the basin, Hawk saw the smoke puff lifting from a yucca plant at the base of a broad, sandstone ledge standing about ten feet above the basin floor. A tan kepi appeared. The sunlight reflected off the lieutenant’s carbine.

  Screaming, the Indian bolted to his feet and ran toward the shelf. He hadn’t limped five yards before the lieutenant’s Spencer spoke again.

  The Indian stopped, throwing both arms out, the bow and arrow flying high over his head. He staggered backward and fell, dust billowing, red showing amidst the sweat-glistening copper of his chest.

  The lieutenant’s rifle boomed once more, the slug making a dull thumping, crunching sound as it plowed through the Indian’s skull. After a minute, the lieutenant lifted his head from behind the yucca, staring toward Hawk.

  Hawk lifted his Henry. “I’m coming over, Lieutenant.”

  A few minutes later, he halted the grulla on the west side of the shelf from which the lieutenant had drilled the fourth Indian. Primrose was returning his carbine to his saddle boot, his implacable face streaked with sweat and pink dust, the bandage around his forehead spotted with blood.