One-Eyed Death Page 4

  “Aye. We have been much plagued. My wife is bereft of sense. My daughter can scarcely see in the light of the brightest day. My son is afflicted with the same illness as myself. Now our strong right arm, Benjamin Ford there, has also been struck down by a thunderbolt from the heavens.”

  “Where are you heading?”

  The long stick rose and pointed with a grim certainty towards the west. “Where the sun sinks, shall our new city rise.”

  “Where?”

  “We do not know, Mr Crow,” said a new voice. The daughter, Mary, peering myopically at him from behind her glasses. Crow looked back at her with interest, seeing that there might be a pretty face beneath the hanging brim of the bonnet. But the glasses so obscured much of her that it was hard to tell.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I thank you as well for saving Daniel from those brutal fools.”

  “Wasn’t anything, Miss Mary,” replied Crow.

  “I do not agree. It was everything,” she insisted. “Everything.”

  The question of precisely where they were heading seemed to have slipped away for a moment. The mother came hesitantly up and joined them, smiling at the shootist with her head on one side, like a quizzical dove.

  “You killed so many, Mr. Raven.”

  “Crow. Name’s Crow, Ma’am.”

  “One black bird is another black bird is another one. Beaks and claws and fiery eyes. I am in your debt. My body is yours to command.”

  All said with the gentlest of smiles. Crow nodded at her, uncomfortably aware of the husband, standing unblinking a yard away. Fortunately unable to see that Lily Spangel had calmly unbuttoned the front of her bodice, revealing two pleasing breasts, the nipples erect, tipped with scarlet in the glowing light of the westerly sun.

  Mary Spangel was clearly used to the eccentricities of her mother and stepped in, taking the older woman’s arm and leading her away.

  Ben Ford watched the small drama with an enigmatic grin, looking away to where Daniel was still struggling to light a fire.

  “Don’t use that green kindling, boy,” he called. “Give more smoke than fire and it might be better not to do that right now.”

  “You think that those ... those men from Rosa Cruz might come after us?”

  Crow answered. “Bet any dollars you got, son. Maybe sooner. Maybe later. But they’ll come.”

  The Reverend Spangel still stood like a gaunt rock, head craning towards the shootist. “Sunday mornings, in my home town, so long ago,” he began, then seemed to lose the thread and wandered a little distance away. Sitting himself in the dirt, his long limbs folding and cracking under him like a strange insect. He crossed his hands in his lap and seemed to fall asleep.

  “See what I mean, Brother Crow?” asked Ford, quietly. “Hell of a fine party you up and gotten yourself invited to.”

  The shootist nodded. “Yeah. Mad old man. Mad wife that offers herself like a Juarez whore. Son that seems to seek out trouble where there isn’t any. Pretty daughter, from what you can see.”

  “And me,” added Ford, with the first trace of real bitterness that Crow had seen.

  “The break’ll heal.”

  “I don’t look like an egg-suckin’ wet-nose brat, do I, Crow? No, I don’t. Doctor said no more walkin’. Jesus, but I’d like to think him wrong. But there’s nothin’ down here,” striking the flat of his thigh with the palm of his right hand.

  “It might come back.”

  Ford sighed. “I’ve broke limbs before this. Wrist, fingers. Bone at the collar here four, five times. Leg once and ankle twice.”

  Crow nodded. If you were a working cowboy then your life wasn’t the idyllic romance that some of the Eastern pulp magazines tried to make out. Life riding out with cattle was unpleasant, harsh and brutish. And frequently short.

  “And they all hurt. Hurt like a bastard, Crow. But this one …” he shrugged. “Didn’t pain me a moment. There was a damned loud crack and then … then nothin’. Nothin’ at all. I can lie in the wagon and maybe make some use with a long gun. Like back there. But that’s it. Over for me, Crow.”

  “Why stay?”

  “Gave my word. And the Reverend has...” he looked round and dropped his voice, beckoning the shootist nearer. “He’s got a lot of dollars. Ran a successful ministry back in Florida. Enough to bring him and the family out here.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “Start a kind of paradise. The Spangels have the dollars to set it up. Once it’s runnin’ then all the folks from back in Pensacola get invites.”

  “I see. They for real?”

  Ford sniffed. “Realest thing I ever saw. They promised to take care of me once the city’s built.”

  Suddenly the Reverend Spangel unfolded himself again, standing up and looking around the clearing where the wagon stood. For all the world as though he could see. The sun was now far down, evening’s gloom settling across the land like the creased wings of a great bird of prey.

  “Mr. Crow?”

  “Yeah, Reverend?”

  “Benjamin has told you of our divine mission?”

  “Some.”

  “How we plan to find the land of our dreams where there shall be no taint of blood or violence and there will only be light and softness.”

  “Yeah. Something of that.”

  The staff pointed out towards the shootist. “I hear the mockery, but I forgive you that, Mr Crow. I believe that you are no empty vessel, but a fine weapon for the anointed ones. You shall be our lawman.”

  “Could be I’ve got other plans.”

  The towering figure shook his head, something of a smile appearing through the beard. “The decision is not with you, Mr. Crow.”

  “I’ll ride with you a day or so. Then I move on.”

  “I will pay you fifty dollars for every day you serve.”

  Crow looked at Ford, trying to conceal his surprise at the amount of money being offered.

  “Like I said, Reverend. I’ll ride with you a day or so.”

  “Then?”

  “Then, we’ll see. Guess we’ll have to see.”

  Chapter Five

  They ran into the posse a little after noon on the following day.

  They’d risen early, before dawn, and the women had cooked up a hasty breakfast of biscuits with some gravy left over from the evening’s stew. Though Lily Spangel might be lacking a few cents in the dollar, she was a great cook. The gravy was rich and flavorsome and the biscuits melted in the mouth. Complemented by some coffee hot and black enough to float a reel of barbed wire.

  Both Crow and Ben Ford guessed that the folks from the settlement wouldn’t take too kindly to strangers riding in and blasting away some of their youngest and finest. So they arranged that the crippled man would ride as before in the back of the rig, rifle ready beside him, keeping watch over anyone trying to come up behind them. The Reverend Spangel and his daughter would also ride inside. Mary found the brightness of the Arizona sun trying to her weak vision and was happier in the shaded stuffiness of the Conestoga. Daniel drove the team while his mother sat contentedly at his side, singing an old Scottish Covenanter hymn to herself and occasionally laughing delightedly out loud as though someone had told her a delicious piece of tittle-tattle.

  And Crow heeled his black stallion out front of the rig.

  They moved slowly down the side-trail, heading left back along the road westwards. The shootist had asked the patriarch if he knew exactly where they were heading, but Spangel had laughed at him.

  “Does the water buffalo know anything of where the river flows? Or the humble fly comprehend the beauty of eternity?”

  “Wouldn’t know the answer to that, Reverend,” Crow had replied.

  “No more do I know when the Lord shall bless me with his vision.”

  “So, when you know, then you’ll know?”

  Spangel stuck his head out of the front of the wagon, like a prehistoric tortoise. “When the Lord knows, then we shall all know. Just as the out
cast Saul received his divine guidance on the road to Damascus, so shall we all know it.”

  “Amen to that, Father,” said Mary Spangel, her blue eyes distorted and barely visible behind the bottle-glass spectacles.

  “And we shall broil up all the liver, the beautiful the beautiful liver, that stands on the plate of God,” sang Lily Spangel, with a winsome smile on her face.

  Crow wondered again whether he’d made the right move in casting himself in with the ill-assorted and virtually helpless party.

  “Fifty a day and found,” he said to himself as he pushed the horse forwards, scouting along the trail towards a point where it disappeared between sheer cliffs on either side.

  Be a good place for an ambush.

  But that wasn’t the way that the cards fell.

  Rosa Cruz had taken three hours or more to recover from the shock of the brief and bloody gun-battle that had ripped out its heart. There were those who were all for letting matters lie. Mainly those who’d lost no kin. But there were others who wanted revenge. Fathers and brothers of the slain and wounded.

  Later that day sixteen men rode out from Rosa Cruz. Three turned back on blown horses that evening, having galloped too hard after the wagon and the blind family. And the black-clad shootist.

  The remaining thirteen pressed on past the side trail, missing the wagon tracks in the poor light. Carrying on for another eight miles before they admitted that they’d lost their target. Having slept out rough they had also risen early, back-tracking towards Rosa Cruz again. Winding their way through the nest of cross-trails with steep sides. All of them aware that they could easily have been trapped there if there “d been any war-parties out that morning.

  It would have been a good place for an ambush.

  Crow reined in his stallion, bringing it whinnying on its back legs. The dozen or so men weren’t riding hard, but they were bunched together, heading towards the east at a fast canter. It didn’t take a whole lot of creative thought for Crow to guess what had happened and he spun the black around, spurring it back towards the slow-moving wagon.

  “Here they come, Ben!” he yelled. “Get the rest of the folks down. Can you use a gun, Daniel?”

  “Pa don’t hold with us carryin’ weapons, Mr. ... Mr Crow,” stammered the boy.

  “Well, it’s you and me, then,” he called to Ford.

  “We goin’ to take “em all on, Crow?”

  “I guess some talkin’ might come first,” he replied, putting his horse back to the front of the rig. The team had stopped, reined in by Mary Spangel, who had peered out across the light grey stones of the desert towards the group of riders.

  He drew his pistol and fired a single shot into the sky, making the horses of the wagon stamp nervously. The posse checked in their tracks, slowing to a walk, finally halting about fifty yards off.

  “Want me to pick a couple from their saddles? Kind of slow them some?”

  “No,” he said, quietly. “Let’s walk soft on this one, Ben.”

  There was some kind of discussion going on among the riders. It seemed to Crow that some might be for charging in fast and hot, while others didn’t relish getting broken teeth from the scattergun and the hidden rifle.

  He walked the stallion forwards a few steps, reining in again.

  “You men from Rosa Cruz?”

  “Sure are.”

  “You aimin’ to cause trouble?”

  “That’s damned funny comin’ from a cold-eyed killer like you.”

  “I’ll talk to whoever’s the leader of your posse. I’m not about to shout to a mob.”

  There was more chatter and an elderly man finally moved forwards, turning round once and calling for the rest of the band to keep quiet and make sure that he was covered. He was wearing a travel-stained dark suit and had a massive Tranter pistol strapped on outside his jacket.

  “I got a dozen guns on you, whatever your murderin’ name is.”

  “I got but one rifle aimed at you, mister. And that’s all it’d take.”

  “Don’t threaten me, you scum!”

  Crow didn’t speak, waiting until the other man stopped a dozen paces away from him. Then he stared him calmly in the eyes until he looked down and away.

  “You’re the vigilante committee?”

  “That’s correct. My name is Thaddeus Webley and I am in charge of the local branch of the Cattleman’s Bank in Rosa Cruz.”

  “My name is Crow, Mr Mann. In the wagon there is the Reverend Charles Spangel of Pensacola, Florida.”

  “Reverend!”

  “Surely. Old man’s blind. There’s him and his wife and two children, and neither of them see too well.”

  Then who is holding the rifle that you claim is aimed at me?” asked Webley with a sneer at his own cleverness.

  “My name’s Ben Ford and I see real good, Mr. Bankerman,” called the crippled ramrod from the shelter of the Conestoga.

  “Two of you. Two against a dozen.”

  Crow smiled. Webley couldn’t understand why something as simple as a smile could be so damned frightening. “You got an odd idea about figures, banker,” said the shootist. “Real odd.”

  “Why?”

  “You got a dozen men with rifles and pistols. I got my scattergun. A Winchester. Pistol. Ben yonder’s got a ’seventy-three as well. And a brace of handguns. You think on that, bein’ a man used to figuring and to calculating.”

  “Yes. What of it?” The banker had an edge come to his voice. Something that could have been angry, short-tempered bluster.

  Or it could have been fear.

  “You think twelve against two’s good odds. You take two away from twelve and you got ten. Ten men left to ride out alive. Back to Rosa Cruz with my head on a pole and that poor blind family in tow. That it?”

  “Get on with it, Thad! Let’s take ’em out!” yelled a voice from the group.

  “I’m talking here,” replied the banker. Dropping his shouting to something closer to a whisper. “Lost his son. One of the boys you killed. He’s. ... Go on, Crow. I’m still listening.”

  “That’s your adding and now I’ll give you mine. And the answer’s damned different, Webley.”

  “Go on.”

  “You follow through on this one and come evening there’s going to be a lot of men lying still and colder’n a well-digger’s ass.”

  “You think we’re going to be....”

  “I know you’ll die, Mr. Banker Webley. Isn’t that right, Ben?”

  “Sure is. Got him deader than a beaver hat, Crow. Could even pick which eye gets hit first.”

  Webley grew pale as he realized suddenly that this wasn’t going to be like the usual posse. Riding out after a couple of drunks who’d stolen a horse. Running them down and stringing them up to cheers and a few drinks at the saloon. This wasn’t like that at all.

  “Maybe if you men agreed to ride back to town with us, then we can sort all this out,” stammered the banker.

  Crow permitted himself the rare luxury of a smile. “Guess a hemp collar’s the kind of sortin’ out you mean.”

  “No. Not at …”

  The shootist had suddenly had enough of this scared small-town man with his small-town mind.

  “I’ll give you a count of three to get going, Webley. And your gang of eager lynchers. You know what happened there in town. Every bastard there knows it. Your good old boys got themselves drunk and thought they’d have some funning with a half-blind boy. I stopped them and they pushed it further than they wanted. Now there’s dead. You ride on home and there’ll be no more killing.”

  “For Christ’s sake get on with it!” called the same man who’d shouted before. A thick-set man with a red face and little neck. His head set square on broad shoulders.

  “Tell them, Webley. I’ll wait here.”

  He watched the banker heel his mare back to rejoin the rest of the posse. Crow leaned and hissed to Ford.

  “On the word pick the red-faced man off his horse.”

  “
Kill him?”

  “Sure. Maybe encourage the others we mean it. The one in the plaid shirt.”

  Thaddeus Webley was returning, followed by jeers and yelps from some of the others. But not all of them, Crow noticed. The threat had reached some of the vigilantes.

  “We think you are bluffing us. We do not believe that we could not win.”

  “Wasn’t what I said. Said it’d cost you dear. You men there are all horsed. You come at us and Ben in the wagon can guarantee to get off six, maybe seven shots, and he’s good enough to take the balls off of a hornet. That’s at least five of you dead. I can pick off three more with the rifle here. And then there’s the scatter-gun when you get close. You’ve seen what that can do. I figure there’s a chance that maybe a couple of you could win through to try and hit us. Try, Webley. Only try. Seem to me to be damned poor odds.”

  “We can take ’em, Thad!”

  “All right. Bust him, Ben,” said Crow quietly.

  The crack of the rifle followed on the heels of the last word, and the shootist heard the hiss and whine of the bullet. Saw the man in the plaid shirt throw his arms out wide like someone waking and yawning. But there was blood on his face. Spouting out between the eyes, over the heavy features and gaping mouth.

  To someone as good as Ben Ford, to kill a man with a good rifle from the prone position at around sixty yards was too easy.

  The horse reared up and the corpse toppled backwards out of the saddle, but the boots caught in the stirrups and the mount galloped away, the body bouncing on its back in an absurdly contorted position.

  “You’re next, Webley,” called Crow. “Then the first man to reach for a gun. Don’t do it!” Though he didn’t seem to be shouting, his voice penetrated well enough to freeze every man of the posse still on his horse. Even the rider who’d been next to the dead man and who’d been splashed in the face by some of the blood sat motionless.

  “You won’t get away with it, Crow!” said the banker, face sick with terror.

  “I have, mister. And I will. You ride on back now. Next time we see any of you, we’ll kill you.”

  “I’m not goin’ to let it rest here, Crow.”