The Black Trail Page 3

  Nate Goldsmith looked around the little town, seeing the weathered frame buildings. The little half-built church down at the far end of the street. The boardwalk lined with people. Just visible between them were the feet of the dead bandits, laid out in a decent row. It wasn’t a bad place to live, he thought. Suddenly wondering what he was doing out there facing this stranger.

  His eye was caught by Jeremiah Harknett, part-owner of the stables, standing on top of the barn to get a better view of the gun-fight. He was stretching, arms out sideways, black against the eastern sun. Throwing a long, cross-shaped shadow clean across the dusty trail, its point nearly reaching the feet of the man called Crow.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he breathed, and it wasn’t the usual blasphemy.

  ‘Get to it,’ called Crow.

  Nate knew at that moment that he was going to get killed. He could even imagine the pain as the shot from that scatter-gun ripped his body apart. It was going to be a burning agony like he’d never known. Fifteen years back he’d caught a Cheyenne lance in the shoulder and the searing whiteness as that had been pulled out from the torn muscle stayed with him. This was going to be worse.

  But like a man who’d stepped off a high cliff, and was falling free through the singing air, Nate Goldsmith had gone too far to stop himself.

  ‘Fuck you!!’ he yelled, making a grab at his Colt, hand diving down with a speed that came out of the depths of desperation rather than from any kind of remembered shootist’s skill.

  He was faster than Crow had somehow expected. Faster than a drunken, middle-aged, out-of-practice gunfighter had any right to be.

  And that was still way too slow.

  Sheriff Rogers watched it happen, all in the blinking of an eye.

  Nate’s shout, and his hand reaching for his pistol. Starting the habitual pivot of the shootist’s body, dipping to the right as he began the draw.

  Crow also dipping, less than the older man. Left hand brushing the hammers on the Purdey even before it was clear of the deep holster. The right hand, braced at the wrist, holding the remodeled stock of the shotgun,

  Nate’s gun beginning to break leather.

  Crow’s gun out and leveled.

  The clicking of the twin hammers, loud in the stillness. Hearing a gasp of shock from one of the whores along in front of the dry goods store.

  Nate’s Peacemaker, the hammer giving an audible triple click, the frail sound submerged in the thunder as Crow pulled back on the triggers of the Purdey, filed down for lightness. A burst of black powder smoke that gushed out from the snub barrels. Crow not moving back an inch against the brutal kick of the gun, standing rock-steady.

  The ten-gauge shot starring out over the short distance, hitting Goldsmith round about the middle of his body. Lifting him clean off his feet, and throwing him in a bloodied heap five paces back, his pistol arcing through the air to thud to the earth near the feet of one of Rogers’ deputies.

  The moment he’d fired his Purdey, Crow dropped it in the street, hand snaking to pull out his own forty-four, snug in the small of his back. Taking no further notice of the mewing creature that had been Nate Goldsmith a fraction of split time ago. Covering the rest of the town’s folk, making sure nobody got hasty. But they were hardly even looking at him, preoccupied with the fascination of watching Nate dying.

  It didn’t interest Crow. He’d seen too many people die for there to be any novelty about it And he also knew that life has a limitless number of imponderables. But he also knew that there are certain reliable facts.

  One of them is that you never trust a gambler who calls himself ‘Doc’. Or a saloon that offers you best home cooking. Anyone who says he can show you a good deal.

  And another fact is that a man hit in the belly at less than ten paces with both barrels of a ten-gauge scatter-gun won’t be getting up from it.

  Nate’s belly was ripped apart, some of the lead driving on through and punching a massive hole out of the back of his shirt and jacket. It was puzzling for the dying man.

  One moment he’d been standing up, conscious that he was drawing faster than he ever had. Seemingly a short second later he was on his back, feeling like a mule had kicked him in the groin. Hands groping at his body, feeling only warmth and a sticky, greasy wetness.

  He blinked sand from his eyes, trying to smile. It didn’t hurt like he’d thought it would. The shock of the blow and a terrible coldness. That was all.

  But no pain.

  ‘No pain,’ he said. Closing his eyes against a sun that had grown brighter than he remembered. ‘No pain,’ he whispered, laying his head back in the warm dirt. His lips moved to say it a third time, but there was no sound and he was dead.

  Crow’s concentration was interrupted by a loud voice coming from behind him. A confident, powerful voice, with a pronounced English accent, ‘Jolly good, old chap. Really frightfully well done.’

  It came from the corner of one of the private houses in the street, and immediately he heard it Crow guessed it must belong to one of the group of people who’d come riding into Crossworld Springs while he was in the saloon. Someone who sounded like an English m’lord.

  He turned to face the owner of the voice, expecting to see someone dressed in the height of Eastern fashion. And he wasn’t disappointed, though there was something that Crow hadn’t expected.

  The man leaning watching him and clapping his hands softly together was around seven feet tall.

  And blacker than jet!

  Chapter Four

  ‘Jolly fine bit of shooting, old chap. Burst him like a squashed apple, ain’t it?’

  Crow held the pistol loosely in his right hand, staring at the apparition. He’d seen plenty of black men around America. All shades of brown, and even yellow when he’d been out on the West Coast. But even the darkest of the Negroes paled by the side of this man. There weren’t words made for such blackness. A raven’s wing at midnight in an unlit dungeon? That approached it, but it still didn’t convey the depths of the blackness of the man’s skin.

  The whole of Crossworld Springs was frozen by the sight of the giant Negro, dressed in such outlandishly smart clothes. It was such an amazing combination.

  Any man seven feet tall would have been stared at.

  Any man dressed in such immaculate clothes would have been stared at.

  Combine the two and make the man blacker than jet into the bargain and you had one of the most brain-stretching sights the South-west had ever seen.

  Sheriff Rogers blinked and rubbed at his eyes as though he doubted what they were showing him. His mouth opened twice and closed twice, like a landed salmon. Then opened a third time.

  ‘Holy shit!’ he breathed, reverently.

  ‘Amen to that, Sheriff,’ whispered the wife of the saloon owner, standing at his elbow.

  Nate Goldsmith was forgotten. Even the line of mangled corpses of Neumann and his compadres lay smelling of decay, ignored by all except the hungry flies.

  Crow slowly holstered the pistol. Stooping and picking up the still smoking scatter-gun, levering out the spent cartridges and thumbing in two more from the supply in his pocket. Cradling the gun and looking over the street at the Negro, waiting to see which way the cards were going to fall.

  The huge man stepped elegantly across, picking his way through the rutted dirt, a broad grin splitting his face into two unequal parts, the white teeth gleaming like a lighthouse on a stormy night. As he passed what remained of Nate Goldsmith he paused, looking down at it. Shaking his head in what Crow took to be admiration. Along the other side of the street, nobody moved.

  ‘My felicitations on your success, my friend. I would be honored to purchase for you a liquid libation to celebrate your skill.’ The voice was loud and the English slightly guttural and accented. Careful, as if the speaker was picking his way through a field sewn with detonating caps.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You must be so happy to have conquered.’

  ‘No.’

 
‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not happy to have conquered that son of a bitch there.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘I’m happy he’s dead and I’m not. That’s as far as I’d take it’

  ‘I like the cutting of your…’ he hesitated and called something out over his shoulder. A question, in a harsh tongue that Crow didn’t recognize. From behind him a thin fluting voice shouted: ‘Jib.’

  ‘Yes. The cutting of your jib.’

  ‘You got friends back yonder?’

  ‘Friends, Goodness gracious me, old chap. What an absurd idea that is. Friends.’ He threw back his gigantic head and bellowed his laughter, the noise so loud that it sent a brindled mongrel dog whining across the street, its stump of a tail trailing abjectly between its legs.

  ‘Not friends?’

  ‘No. They are my servants. Slaves some of them. Some servants.’

  ‘Slaves. I figured that we did away with all of that better’n ten years back.’

  ‘I am not governed by your foolish rules and your regulations.’ He again shouted something in his own language and Crow stared with the rest of the township as a dozen or more blacks, all big men, padded silently out into the street, standing in a mute line. Most wore a simple white loincloth, some also dressed in a blue shirt. Some carried large packs. One an assortment of rifles and another a bag with what looked like short spears in it.

  At their head was a skinny Negro in a slightly toned-down version of the big man’s clothes, topped with a jaunty yellow derby. Crow guessed that he was the person with the fluting voice.

  The giant black had one other person in his entourage. A white woman, looking to be in her late thirties. But it was hard to tell as she was wearing a long dress of sweeping cream lace, topped with a flowered hat and a veil.

  ‘There. They are mine.’

  Crow pointed at the woman, standing idly scraping the toe of a white leather ankle boot through the dirt, while she twirled a pale yellow parasol on her shoulder. ‘Her too?’

  ‘Most particularly her,’ grinned the Negro. Pronouncing ‘particularly’ as if it were five quite separate words. ‘Yes.’

  The people of the township still stood looking out at the carnival that had arrived in their midst, nobody anxious to move and miss anything. The trickle of blood from the corpse of Goldsmith was already congealing and the flies had come homing in on it.

  ‘Guess I’ll be moving on shortly,’ said Crow, turning away from the Negro, heading towards the saloon. Still desperately in need of a drink. Then food and a bath. During the adrenalin-boosting fight the needs had slipped away from the front of his mind. Now all that was over he felt thirsty and hungry. And very dirty and tired.

  ‘Wait!’

  Crow hesitated, sensing the note of command in the voice. A note that immediately raised his hackles against the arrogance it implied.

  ‘I said I was going. My business here is done.’

  ‘Killing that animal?’

  ‘No. I came after those animals there. I was too late.’

  The Negro nodded his understanding. ‘Your task is to apprehend malefactors.’

  ‘Sort of. I get paid for taking wanted men in or shooting them down.’

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘Yeah. Net a lot of it, sometimes. But I’m like those old alchemists I read of. I turn lead into gold.’

  ‘I would drink with you, if I may. Perhaps there may be a place for you among my…’ the black stopped himself in time. ‘That is not satisfactory, is it my dear friend? Not a servant.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I shall employ you to be a guard against the hostile savages that inhabit these parts.’

  ‘Savages?’ exclaimed Crow, unable to disguise his surprise at the use of the word from such a man.

  ‘I trust that your amusement is not directed at any aspect of a suggestion that I might be classed myself among…’

  ‘Hell, no,’ interrupted Crow. ‘I never heard Mescalero Apaches called quite that before. Bastards. Sons of bitches. Murderin’ devils. All of them. Sure. I’ll take your money to ride shotgun with you.’

  ‘Ride shotgun?’ asked the Negro, puzzled.

  The young man in the yellow derby had been edging in closer and he broke into a stream of chatter. At first the Negro looked bemused, once barking out some further question, pointing to the holstered Purdey on Crow’s right hip. Finally breaking into a smile.

  ‘I understand now, old chap. You will be my induna. A leader of my small impi here.’

  ‘That mean officer in your army?’ asked Crow.

  ‘Yes. But how very remiss of me. I have failed most utterly in declaring my identity. My name is Mavulamanzi, a grandson of the mighty Cetewayo, leader of all of the Zulu people.’

  ‘Defender of the weak and the helpless,’ continued the young interpreter. ‘Devourer of fear. Lord of all gold and silver. Slayer of elephants. Seducer of a thousand virgins. Runner boldly after the lion and his whelps. Wader of mighty rivers and leaper upon the slopes of snow-tipped mountains. Singer of sky-chants and pointer of eternal deaths to all who tremble in the dust beneath his feet.’

  ‘I’m Crow. Just Crow. And I’ll have that drink you promised me.

  By evening, the settlement of Crossworld Springs had slipped back to something approaching normal. Neumann and his crew had been photographed by the teenage son of the local gunsmith with much flashing of smokey flares and muffled cursing. For good measure he had also taken a picture of the bloody corpse of Nathan Goldsmith, still lying in the street.

  All of the bodies were finally tucked safely away in the graveyard outside town, on the trail to the west, piled stones hopefully preventing the coyotes from crunching at the bones.

  Crow had gone and talked to the lawman in his cramped little office, the walls papered with fly-blown posters and notices. Rogers had been nervous. First the elation of finding Neumann and his thugs were dead. Then the shock of the realization that the killings meant a party of Mescalero warriors were on the rampage in the area. The sudden and brutal slaughter of his old drinking and poker companion, Nate Goldsmith, by the lean stranger. Companion, and not friend, as Rogers kept mentioning to anyone who’d listen to him.

  And then the arrival in town of the great African chieftain and his party, all of whom, barring the woman and the young assistant, were camped in tents and wagons behind the stables. Sheriff Rogers wanted nothing more than to go to the saloon and sit quietly with a few beers, and follow it with a visit to the rooms at the top of the stairs in the ‘Promised Land’. Maybe with Oregon ‘Two-up’ Jeannie. A big girl in every way. Who’d gotten her nickname from her legendary skill in giving you two ups to every down.

  He and Crow had not enjoyed each other’s company. The tall shootist found it hard to conceal his contempt for the sheriff. Who, in turn, found it difficult to hide his fear of the tall, blank-faced man in black. They agreed very quickly that the death of Nate Goldsmith presented no problems. That he had forced the fight and received his just reward.

  Crow and Mavulamanzi talked little while they shared a drink. The gigantic black complained of feeling tired and went to the room he’d booked. Having made sure that two of his servants had been up first to hack the footboard off the bed to give him enough space to stretch out. He left the hiring arrangements to his assistant who told Crow his name was Mick. Short for Mikalawayo. Crow agreed to three dollars fifty a day plus keep. And feed for his stallion. For a period of not less than two weeks.

  The young Negro told Crow a little about his master and about their trip across America.

  Mavulamanzi was a British puppet. Educated and financed by them as a walking example of the benefits of following imperial doctrines and setting aside the old ways of his grandfather, Cetewayo. Ways that led only to massacres and the ruin of the Zulu peoples.

  As part of the price for his co-operation, Mavulamanzi had demanded that the British should pay for him and his retinu
e to travel across the continent. There were fifteen other blacks in the party, including Mick. Though the young man said there had been twenty-two of them when they’d begun. Crow didn’t quite understand what had happened to the rest. Mick tried to explain about how all of them were totally bound to Mavulamanzi as his personal slaves, but it seemed too extreme and the shootist decided that there was a language barrier between them. Nobody, not even in the bad old days in the Southern States, was held in that close a thralldom to a master.

  Crow had asked about the white woman, who had said nothing to anyone, following the giant Negro to his room.

  ‘She’s a lady,’ grinned Mick. ‘Chief like that. Not just a woman. Lavinia Woodstock is a real English lady. She would once have been the sort with a dish of tea on the terrace and a few male slaves hung up for whipping around the cellars. The Chief Mavulamanzi enjoys his power over such a creature.’

  ‘A Lady? Like an Honorable?’

  The young black grinned. Rubbing the side of his nose in a way that would have brought him a one-way ride to the hanging tree in most of the States of the South.

  ‘She is the third daughter of an Earl. Or is it a Baron? I forget, Mister Crow. But she has a great hatred for Chief Mavulamanzi.’

  Crow shook his head and looked deep into the shot-glass of whiskey. It sounded as if this was going to be a real unusual job.

  Chapter Five

  It was the strangest hunting party that Crow had ever been on. Or even heard about.

  Mavulamanzi rode a superb white Arabian stallion, all decked out in fancy Mexican bridle. Jingling silver and gold around the saddle. Crow figured the whole outfit at around three and a half thousand dollars, American. And that didn’t count in the pearl-handled brace of matched Peacemakers. Nor the clothes that the chief changed three or four times a day. Retiring to his specially built wagon. Made in Conestoga, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with extra height and length to accommodate his enormous frame. That must have set the British Government back a few hundred dollars more.