A Good Day Read online

  “That old Apache? Shit, he’s dirt, Mister. On his way to gettin’ to be a fuckin’ good Indian.”

  “Typhoid, looks like. Could come inside the fort, well as outside.”

  The anger had slipped away from the soldier’s voice. Replaced with doubt. “The Hell you say.”

  “I seen it.”

  “Sure. But …”

  “But nothing.”

  “I still say it’s good to see one of them bastards goin’ home to his happy huntin’ ground or what the fuck they call it.”

  The stranger finally turned to look at the soldier. Who found himself oddly short of breath. Feeling as though he’d been threatened in some way that he didn’t really understand.

  The tall man’s eyes were colder than anything he’d ever seen, even in the waking hours of a nightmare. Narrow, almost slits, with a kind of fire smoldering in their deeps. The cheek-bones were high and pronounced, the jaw long.

  It wasn’t a kind face.

  One of the Chiricahua women started to wail, pulling her shawl of bright cotton down over her wrinkled face. Dropping to her knees and beginning to weep, great tears glistening on her cheeks.

  The soldier laughed. Reassured by the sight of three of his friends standing watching from the angle of the fort’s walls.

  “Looks like the old bastard’s gone.”

  “Yeah,” nodded the stranger. “No more takin’ shit and cheap liquor from trash like you.”

  The trooper brought the rifle around so that its muzzle pointed in the general direction of the tall man in black.

  “I guess me and some good old boys are goin’ to have to teach you a lesson, you stinkin’ Indian-lover.”

  There was no reply for a moment. The head turned back again and those smoldering eyes seemed to drill right into the mind of the soldier. Seeking out the innermost rooms where fear lurked.

  “You ready to jump, son?”

  “What?”

  That quiet, insidious voice. Calm and gentle and thoroughly reasonable.

  “I asked if you was figuring on jumping.”

  “Where?”

  “I heard that after the first dozen feet or so you kind of forget whether you’re jumping or falling.”

  The soldier was baffled by the enigmatic words. Feeling that in some obscure way he was being threatened but not able to see how.

  “Mister …” He saw a way of counter-attacking. “That’s a Cavalry kerchief. You got the right to wear it?” Looking more closely. “And that’s a saber. One of our sabers. Been tradin’ with the Apaches?”

  The stranger turned away from him, ignoring the wailing of the Chiricahua squaw and the drained corpse of the old man. Moving back inside the fort. But the Private wasn’t going to be denied now.

  “You better stop right there.” The click of the side hammer on the forty-five Springfield carbine. The stranger halted in his tracks.

  “Now. What’s your name? And where the Hell d’you get that stuff? You a runner?”

  “No. I’m not a deserter.”

  Two or three other soldiers had drifted up, caught by the sight of Trooper Jonas Maynard holding a stranger at the point of his gun.

  The soldier had vacillated between bullying and cowardice. Most times anyone who came into the fort was fair game for some sporting. ‘Specially if they looked like a friendless drifter. But this one was something different. Maynard felt it. But with the stock of the Springfield braced against his hip and his finger tight on the trigger he knew he was more than a match for any man.

  “What’s your name?”

  Then he came around to face the man with the gun. Who took a step back at the clear-writ anger.

  “My name’s Crow.”

  “What kind of name’s that? Sounds Indian.”

  “It’s just Crow, trooper.”

  One of the soldiers watching—a grizzled time-serving Corporal—called out. “Hey. You the one that got broke up at Buford?”

  “I was court-martial led there,” admitted Crow. Only too aware of how the albatross of that incident was likely to hang around his neck until the day he died.

  “For bein’ yeller?” exclaimed Maynard.

  “For helping out Indians. That was it. Somethin’ about old Crazy Horse,” shouted the Corporal.

  “Hey,” grinned the trooper, lips peeling back wolfishly from yellowing teeth. “Then we got us a real good one here.”

  Crow stepped in close to him.

  So close that the muzzle of the carbine pressed into his lean stomach, three fingers” span above the belt-buckle. Maynard swallowed nervously, glancing round at his fellows for moral support.

  “You want a gutful of lead, Mr. Long-Hair Crow? Huh?”

  “I’ll break your arms off and ram them up your ass, soldier blue,” said Crow. The threat was delivered in exactly the same tone of voice as if he was considering whether to have his steak medium or rare.

  “Sure, Mister,” grinned Maynard.

  The tall man took the muzzle of the carbine and eased it away from himself. Looking with a blank, incurious stare into the stubbled face of the trooper.

  When Crow moved it was with a speed that was totally lethal. Jamming his left hand down between the hammer and the bullet.

  Maynard snatched at the trigger in panic, but the hard edge of Crow’s palm checked the firing action. Rendering the Springfield useless.

  “Jesus Christ!” gasped one of the watching soldiers, hypnotized by the speed of the stranger.

  Crow didn’t stop there.

  Instead of trying to tug the carbine away from the trooper’s grip he pushed at it. Knocking Maynard back off balance, following in on him. Pulling his left hand clear of the hammer which eased down with a soft, impotent click. Using the same edge of his hand to crack open the soldier’s nose. The snap of bone loud and clear in the cool air, blood immediately jetting out across Maynard’s lips and chin.

  As the fingers relaxed on the carbine Crow took it from the soldier, easy as a rag doll from a sleeping child. He brought the butt round in a hissing arc, just missing his aim at the trooper’s jaw. Hitting him in the mouth instead, splintering the front teeth, snapping them off at the level of the gums. The shards of bone slicing through the upper lip as clean as a razor cut.

  Maynard toppled backwards, hands going to his broken nose and ruined mouth. Trying to cry out but choking on the blood that filled his jaws and throat.

  Crow was one of the most lethal fighting machines ever created. Once he had a victim going back, he would follow him down with a cold, ruthless application. He’d promised the soldier that he’d break his arms, and that was what he intended.

  Someone had once asked him about rules for fighting hand to hand.

  “Rules?” he’d replied. “Rules don’t signify. You just win, that’s all. Just win.”

  Maynard was sprawled on his back, weeping in pain and terror. Conscious through the mist of shock that he’d emptied his bladder in fear, soaking the blue pants with the dusty yellow stripe.

  Crow kicked him once in the belly, aiming at the groin but missing as the trooper wriggled away from him. But the blow was hard enough to roll Maynard on his side, arms stretching out as he tried to steady himself.

  Before any of the watching Cavalrymen could move to stop him the tall stranger had taken an easy half step in, kicking with all his strength at the semi-conscious man. The toe of his boot striking with an almost clinical precision on the right elbow.

  The joint disintegrating in torn cartilage and ruptured bone.

  The scream.

  High and thin, torn from the deeps of Maynard’s throat like the cry of a stallion at the gelding-block.

  “That’s one arm,” said Crow.

  The soldier’s body jerked and then he lay very still, the pain blanking out the lines of communication that kept the brain conscious.

  One of the Indian women keening beside the corpse of the old warrior by the gates looked up at the scream of unearthly suffering. Trooper Jonas M
aynard hadn’t been the most popular of the white pony soldiers at Fort Garrett.

  Something that might have been a smile flickered for a moment across her face and then disappeared again.

  Crow didn’t believe in empty threats. They were worse than useless. He’d promised the soldier that he’d break both his arms for him. And that was what he intended to do.

  But he hadn’t figured on the middle-aged Corporal being fast and light on his feet. Moving in quickly behind the shootist, his pistol reversed in his hand. Maynard wasn’t that popular with his fellows either, but the honor of the force was at stake.

  The first that Crow knew of the approach of Corporal Chandler was the crack on the back of his head and the opening of the black pool under his feet. It looked very inviting and he knelt and slithered gratefully into it.

  Chapter Three

  Major Charles Lovick was the officer commanding Fort Garrett.

  There had been a time when he’d been a bright young officer. Hair flaming like the sun over the Sierras, filled with gall and sand. The kind of young officer who managed to temper his own naturally impetuous spirit with considered caution. Saber rattling brought promotion and headlines, but it also brought a wall of corpses. Most ordinary soldiers preferred to be alive at the end of a patrol, even if the glory didn’t come so fast.

  There were plenty of unmarked graves with worm-eaten markers across the South-West dedicated to heroes who’d finished up young and dead.

  Charley Lovick was middle-aged and alive.

  A few years back he’d earned a certain notoriety when he’d gone out with a small patrol after some bloody deserters. And survived a run-in with the legendary giant Mimbreños warrior, Cuchillo Oro. Old Golden Knife himself. ‘Pinner’s Indian’ as the Apache had been called at the time.

  Lovick had come close to being a friend to the lonely and suspicious Indian. The grandson of the almost mythical Mangas Colorado, Cuchillo Oro had taken to the frank honesty of the young Lieutenant and they had, once, been near to a comradely understanding.

  But those times were long gone.

  Now Lovick was a Major, certain that further promotion wasn’t likely to come his way. Bitter at seeing younger men with less talent pushed up the ladder of command by money or influential parents and friends.

  His hair was still tinted red, but it was more sparse than when he’d sat across a fire from Cuchillo Oro. His temples had advanced and he needed to keep his slouch hat on when he rode out with a patrol, keeping the Arizona sun off the bald circle at the crown of his head. The lines around his mouth that had once been etched with laughter were now furrowed deeper with worry and with grief and illness.

  Lovick had married, back around ‘seventy-two. A plain girl from Tuscaloosa who he’d met while she was out west visiting a cousin. Their marriage had lasted only four months before he caught her out under a wagon with the young Lieutenant Dickens from Boston. She’d gone off home to stay with her parents while they both reconsidered their positions.

  A week later she was dead of a flux from drinking tainted water at a river crossing baptism.

  And Lovick’s own health had deteriorated over the last four years. There’d been a rupture that had become strangulated and led to surgery. The doctor had been a drunken butcher and Lovick now found that any length of time either walking or in the saddle left him almost doubled up with pain. And since the operation he’d found it impossible to achieve an erection on his infrequent visits to military whore-houses.

  And in the last three weeks, with summer fading fast into memories, Major Lovick had been laid low with a cough. One that had begun as a dry, nagging tickle at the back of the throat. One that kept him awake at nights but didn’t bother him much during the days. Then it worsened after he’d been out with a small patrol, showing the flag among settlers to the north of the fort. There’d been a sharp rain that had soaked every man in the unit and when they’d gotten back to Garrett, the Major found he was shaking and running a fever.

  And the cough had become much worse.

  Deepening, sinking down on the chest. So that when a fit took him, it seemed to rattle clear to his bootstraps, making him fight for breath, his lungs feeling as though they had been filled with great wads of water-sodden paper.

  The day before Crow came riding by the fort Major Lovick had reluctantly taken to his bed.

  And it was to his bedroom–spartan in the extreme–that Crow was marched. He’d been locked in the guard-room after Corporal Chandler had laid his head open with the butt of his forty-five. They’d dragged him along by the heels, stripping him of the weapons and manacling his wrists together behind him. Chaining him to the wall. Only then had they felt safe enough to give him the obligatory kicking, beating him with belts and boots.

  But Chandler had been there to make sure they didn’t go too far. He’d heard about the man called Crow at other times and in other places. And it had been the gray-haired veteran who’d forcibly thrown out the group of younger troopers when he sensed that the punishment had gone far and long enough.

  “Leave him be!”

  “He near killed Jonas,” protested one of them, breathing hard, eager to get in again at the helpless man who lay bruised and bloodied in the dry straw.

  “Jonas was a son of a bitch, deserved what he got. And you know that.”

  “Hell, Corporal, he weren’t that bad.”

  “No. He was just a real good old boy liked to …”

  Chandler held up a hand. “We know what he was. Jonas was a bastard to those weaker than him and an ass-licker to those stronger. He was about the least popular person on Fort Garrett.”

  “Except for young Cyrus Quaid,” said another of the soldiers.

  “Hell, yeah,” agreed Chandler. “If’n his Pa wasn’t sutler hereabouts, I figure the Major would have whipped that boy’s backside clear across the Rio Grande.”

  There was a general murmuring of agreement, and among that agreement the men temporarily forgot that they’d wanted to carry on kicking the bejesus out of Crow.

  The corporal had the last word on the matter.

  “I’ve heard plenty ‘bout this shootist,” pointing at the semi-conscious man. “And all of it bad. They say that Crow got born out of the dark shadows of Hell. Where he steps nothing grows. When he smiles the birds sing and when he frowns the little children weep in the streets. Yeah.”

  It was a long and imaginative speech for a corporal in the United States Cavalry, but Chandler had always had aspirations to become a writer.

  “Guess you mean we kill him or we leave him be, Corporal?” asked one of the youngest troopers.

  Crow had stirred among the straw at that. Blinking up through bruised eyes. Lips thick from the kicking he’d taken.

  “True, son,” he said, quietly. “You carry on and by God but you’d do well to make certain sure I’m dead. If you don’t I’ll come after you …”he fought for breath, struggling to find a less uncomfortable position. “I’ll come and I’ll kill you. Kill you in ways you’d not believe, boy. Ways so that your Ma wouldn’t be able to look on you without weeping all her days.”

  It was said calmly, and without venom, and that made it a hundred times more frightening than if he’d said it in a blustering, blowhard way.

  The soldiers were used to living close to danger and they learned to recognize what was false and what was true.

  So Crow was hauled into the bedroom of Major Charles Lovick.

  His hands were still cuffed behind him. He could only stand with difficulty and he had to peer awkwardly with his head on one side to make out the officer who lay on the bed, a gray blanket tugged up to his chest. Lovick looked at the man with distaste, trying to stifle a cough.

  Failing.

  Battling for breath. “Why in Hades is this man here, Corporal? Looks like he’s lost an argument with a fighting bull.”

  “Fell down some steps in the guardroom, Major,” replied Corporal Chandler. Straight-faced.

  “You sa
y he’s Crow?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Same one that gotten busted couple years back up north? Just before Autie lost his hair.”

  “Believe so, Sir. That’s what he says.”

  “And he damn near killed Maynard?”

  “Broke nose. Broke jaw. Lost several teeth. Lot of cuts round the mouth. Ribs cracked. Elbow broke so bad the Doc figures he’ll never use it again.”

  “Be up before a board for disability pension, then? Lot of damned paperwork you cost me, Mr. Crow.”

  The shootist waited a while until another coughing fit had passed. Noticing that the officer pressed a white square linen to his mouth during the attack. Even in the dimly-lit room he could see that when Lovick brought it away from his lips it was flecked with crimson.

  “You got nothin’ to say, Mr. Crow?”

  “Sure, Major. Your man pointed a cocked Springfield carbine at my guts, and I don’t take kindly to that kind of greetin’.”

  “That true, Corporal?”

  Chandler was rigidly at attention. “Could be, Major. Some kind of disagreement.”

  “What over, Crow?”

  “I don’t recall. The soldier was passin’ comments about Indians.”

  “You like Indians, Mr. Crow? I recall that at your court-martial there was—”

  “I don’t specially like Indians, Major Lovick,” he interrupted. “Then again, I’m not partial to a lot of whites.”

  Lovick coughed again, his face pale with the effort. Lying back on the bed, his chest fluttering as he fought for breath.

  “They say you’ve killed a lot of men, Crow.”

  “They say the Cavalry’s done its share of that, too, Major.”

  “Don’t play damned games with me, Crow. By God!” he controlled his temper, but two spots of hectic color stood out on the thin cheeks. “I will not lose my temper with you, Crow.”

  “Your trooper tried that, Major. Got him on the road to beggin’ in alleys.”

  There was a noise from Corporal Chandler that might have been a muffled laugh. Or might just have been a cough.

  “You’re threatening me, Crow! I do not believe what I’m hearing. You’re unarmed, manacled and guarded and you threaten me!”