The Black Trail Read online

  Lavinia Woodstock went with the wounded man, and they remained in his wagon. When he finally came out he was his old self. Dressed in yet another set of clothes so new they almost squeaked. There was no sign of his injuries and he laughed and joked with Mikalawayo, who became almost incoherent with relief that there were to be no repercussions after the disastrous hunt.

  The chief insisted that Crow should join them for their meal and all four of them sat around the fire, while the remainder of the slaves squatted around their own fire, by the wagons, crooning what Crow guessed must be a death chant.

  The woman was heavily veiled, sitting silently, only lifting the covering from her face when she was eating. And she only pecked at the stew and biscuits, refusing the brandy that Mavulamanzi passed to her.

  Nobody referred to the fact that she had saved his life with her pistol. Mick had specifically urged Crow to put from his mind what he’d seen. Telling him how very important the loss of face was to Mavulamanzi.

  ‘No man must use even the cup or dish of the chief. Once it has been used then it is a thing spoiled, of no worth at all. And it will be discarded. Yet should another man steal even a cracked plate from a chief, then he will pursue that man unto the very ends of the earth.’

  ‘Why? If he doesn’t value it after it’s been touched by another?’

  Mikalawayo stared at him from his deep-set brown eyes. ‘Because he must, Crow.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Yes. That is all.’

  As he became drunker, so the giant Zulu became more friendly. Patting Crow on the shoulders and laughing at how skinny the white man was. Comparing him to a stork and complaining that Crow would not become one of his party for the whole of his visit to America.

  ‘Kind of dangerous, Chief.’

  ‘Why, old chap?’

  ‘He found it kind of dangerous,’ pointing to where the light from the fire showed the still body of the dead slave.

  ‘He was pleased to give up his soul in such a way for me, Crow. All of them are the same. They know that there is no better way for them to leave this world. Is that not true, Mikalawayo?’

  ‘Indeed it is, Chief Mavulamanzi,’ nodded the little man, his yellow derby nearly falling from his curly head with the vehemence of his agreement.

  There was a short silence around the fire, broken only by the soft sound of the charred branches of wood burning through and falling in on themselves. Crow took the opportunity to ask the chief if the guards could be changed.

  ‘You fear Indians?’

  ‘Yes. And I fear snakes and scorpions and floods and fires and falling from high buildings.’

  ‘My slaves do not fear anything.’

  Crow couldn’t hide his disbelief at the foolish bragging and the Negro grew angry. Throwing the bottle across the clearing where they were camped so it shattered against the boulders.

  ‘You think I lie! Me!! Mavulamanzi, greatest of all warriors!!! I show you, Crow. By all gods but I will show you the veracity of my statements.’

  ‘Hell! You don’t have to…’ He noticed that the woman was silently shaking her head at him from behind the chief’s back, as if warning him to remain silent. Crow looked at Mavulamanzi and saw red rage lurking there, waiting to be released. It was there in the eyes and in the set of the jaws, so he held his peace. Not wishing for a confrontation with such a man at such a time.

  ‘I fucking well show you, old chap and making any mistakes,’ muttered Mavulamanzi, lurching unsteadily to his feet, wincing as if the movement had tugged at one of his wounds.

  Crow also stood up, uncoiling from the ground like a steel spring. Mikalawayo also rose, but the woman sat still where she was, looking down into the crimson depths of the fire, Mavulamanzi called out to one of the men in the darkness. A harsh, throaty, ugly cry. Repeated when nothing seemed to happen. Then Crow saw one of the guards appear, a dim figure in the evening darkness, the white of his loincloth standing out against the sky.

  Mick whispered to Crow, translating what the chief was shouting. Telling him that the massive black was telling his slave how the white man had called him a liar over the loyalty of the men.

  ‘He says that he knows the chosen warriors of his finest impi will not suffer such a disgrace to their leader.’

  ‘Ah, shit,’ sighed Crow. Wishing he’d kept his mouth closed in the first place. Wishing he’d never taken on this damned job with this crazy nigra.

  ‘We have here no snakes, Crow,’ said Mavulamanzi, grinning sideways at the white man.

  ‘Plenty about, Chief. Just that you don’t get to see ‘em around.’

  ‘No scorpions.’

  ‘Forget to shake out your boots in the mornings and you might think different.’

  ‘Ah, but we have no floods in such a desert place. That you are not able to deny me?’

  ‘Not right now. You come through this ravine after a bout of heavy rain and there could be a flash-flood fifteen feet deep.’

  Crow’s replies to his questions were annoying the Zulu and his voice was rising towards a scream.

  ‘No fires! No bloody buggers of fires, Crow, my chum. But there are…what did you say? High buildings, was it? Not buildings but cliffs. Where that guard stands. Is that high enough?’

  ‘Plenty,’ said Crow, quietly, feeling a sick certainty in his stomach how the Zulu was going to prove his point about loyalty.

  ‘Very well, Crow. Very, very well, my dear Mister Crow.’

  Again the shout in his own tongue. A single barked word of command. Crow peered up into the dimness, seeing more clearly now he was away from the glow of the camp-fire. Able to make out the tall figure of the black guard, standing ramrod straight on top of a jagged monolith of red stone.

  Like someone celebrating a famous victory, the warrior raised his arms. Shield in one hand, the assegai in the other. And shouted out the name of his chief.

  ‘Mavulamanzi.’ And again, louder, so that the hills around rang with the pealing echoes of the name. And a third, and final time: ‘Mavulamanzi!!!’

  Then he jumped.

  As far as Crow could tell he did it gladly. Almost like a lover leaping to join his dearest in cool waters. Arms still spread, silent as he plummeted to his doom.

  The crack of the ankle bones splintering and then the snapping of the long bones of the leg was overwhelmed by the thump of the main part of the body striking the dusty stones below the cliff. Nobody moved. None of his fellows ran to see if they could help. It was clear to everyone there that the wretched black was infinitely beyond any help.

  That’s fine,’ said Crow, turning away from the exultant Mavulamanzi in disgust ‘But what the hell are you goin’ to do for an encore?’

  At that moment Crow had seriously thought that the Zulu leader was going to leap at him and his right hand had dropped to the butt of the shotgun, ready to wipe him away. Even though he was certain that the rest of the band would immediately have hacked him to pieces. But the moment slipped past. Mavulamanzi had laughed and stalked back to the fire. Snatching the arm of the woman and dragging her with him towards the wagon, where they both disappeared for the night Crow had breathed a sigh of relief and slipped back the retaining rawhide cord that held the Purdey snug in its deep holster.

  ‘You like to live very dangerously, Crow,’ little Mikalawayo had whispered, his voice trembling at the nerve of the white man.

  ‘You don’t ever get close to the edge, Mick, then you never get to know what’s down there.’

  The next day dawned with the sky grey, filled with clouds that seemed to be squatting down on the tops of the surrounding hills. Mavulamanzi wanted to go hunting for a cougar to replace the one that had so nearly ended his life, and he took most of the warriors with him, leaving only a driver on each wagon and a couple more of his men behind as guards. When Lavinia protested that she was feeling unwell, the chief looked for a moment as if he was going to insist that she accompanied him on the hunt. Then he changed his mind, looking up as th
e sun chose that moment to break through the grayness. ‘There. I made the brilliance of warmth and light to beam down upon us all. It will be a good day. Mikalawayo shall ride with the wagons. I shall take my impi with me to chase the lion. And you, Crow, will be the nanny to my little girl. Guard her well, white man, or…’

  The threat was left dangling in the still air between them, but Crow knew well enough that it wasn’t an empty promise.

  ‘Want me to ride with the lady?’

  ‘Indeed. We will meet up somewhere near. Tell me where.’

  There’s a wide arroyo about twelve miles west of here. Big rock at the head of it you can see from the trail, looks like an owl. Meet there at sundown. Neck of Owl Canyon.’

  ‘It is good.’

  ‘Sure the lady’s well enough to ride with me some?’ asked Crow, looking sideways, trying to see the face behind the ever-present veil.

  ‘I think so, thank you, Mister Crow. Thank you, Mavulamanzi. It will be better for me than charging about these tiresome hills or trying to rest in one of those frightfully stuffy wagons.’ She paused. ‘That is, if Mister Crow doesn’t mind.’

  ‘Mister Crow will do precisely what I tell him to do, my dear,’ laughed the big black, swinging himself up into the high saddle.

  Leading his men out along the trail to the west, the warriors padding along at a fast trot that would outrun anything except possibly a horse.’

  Lavinia Woodstock was riding her bay mare. Dressed in a white cotton jacket that seemed to Crow to be tighter across her pronounced bosom than was really necessary. The skirt was divided and cream-colored. She wore a bandolier of ammunition across her shoulder with the gleaming little thirty-two holstered on it at its lowest point. And polished riding boots with the silver spurs. A silver-handled quirt dangled from a strap on her right wrist. Crow, as usual, was dressed entirely in black. With the single break of the yellow bandana knotted around his muscular neck. He carried all of his weapons with him for the social ride, knowing that it must only be a matter of time before they encountered a scouting party from the local raiding band of Mescalero Apaches.

  The Purdey was on his right hip and the honed-down saber on his left The Peacemaker in the back of his belt with a round ready under the hammer and the Winchester rifle bucketed by the saddle.

  The wagons rolled steadily along the main trail, following roughly the direction of Mavulamanzi and the bulk of the warriors. Crow heeled his own stallion forward, waiting for the woman to decide which direction she wished to ride in.

  ‘Are you waiting for me, Mister Crow?’

  ‘I am, Miss Woodstock.’

  ‘My name is Lavinia.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘Lavinia. While the chief is not here, I have not the least objection to being called by my given name. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do, Lavinia.’

  He did. Crow understood very well, exactly what the woman meant.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me?’

  She brought the quirt smartly down on the flank of her horse, making it shy at the sudden pain. ‘Yes, Crow. Your name. Don’t play games with me like this.’

  ‘I’m not playin’ games at all, Lavinia.’

  ‘Then, tell me your given name.’

  ‘It’s Crow.’

  ‘Your first name.’

  ‘Crow.’

  ‘You must have another name.’

  ‘Nope. Crow. First and last Just Crow.’

  For a moment he thought he could catch the glimmer of a smile under the veil. But it was hard to tell.

  ‘Come then, Crow. Let you and I go for a canter in this awful land. We need not return to our cages until the sun has set.’ There was a cold bitterness in the woman’s voice that made him wonder again at who the pistol had been aimed at during the hunt of the cougar.

  There was no sign of any activity from the Mescalero Apaches, and in some ways that made Crow more nervous. The Indians of the South-west were often at their most deadly when you couldn’t see them. He hadn’t been at all happy about the Zulu chief insisting on splitting his command in the way he had. If they’d all remained together then it wasn’t likely the Mescalero would have attacked such a strong force. But once the Apache scouts reported that they were divided then the war-parties would be on the move.

  It was a beautiful morning. The clouds had cleared away and the sky was a faultless blue dome stretching as far as the eye could see. As Crow and the woman walked their horses into the hills, following a trail that wound high above the eroded floors of the arroyos, he could see the twin trails of dust. The faster moving cloud that was Mavulamanzi and his warriors on their hunt. And some way behind it the other pillar of reddish dust that marked the progress of the wagons.

  They didn’t talk at all, until Lavinia reined in and turned to him. ‘My mother was a Powler,’ she said.

  Crow was puzzled by the runic statement. Wondering whether Powlers were some kind of obscure religious movement. Maybe one of those that flourished in parts of Arizona using snakes and young girls in their ceremonies.

  ‘A Powler?’

  ‘Yes. The Powlers are one of the oldest and finest families in England. We can trace our ancestors back to the Norman Conquest. To the Domesday Book. There have been Powlers at most of the great courts of Europe. And my mother was a Powler.’

  There didn’t seem any answer to that.

  Nor did Lavinia Woodstock seem to expect one. Keeping her veiled face turned away from him while they sat still, feeling the cooling breeze moving around them.

  ‘I expect you are wondering how someone who was once as high as I was has now fallen to these dreadful depths. Are you not?’

  Crow shook his head. ‘No, Lavinia. Can’t say I am. No.’

  ‘Surely you…’

  ‘I figure that all that concerns me is myself. Maybe what a man or a woman does to me or for me. That’s all. I’m not the sort of man to care much about your past’ He hesitated. ‘Not the future, neither.’

  Slowly the woman raised the veil from her face, staring at him. ‘What about the present, Crow? Does that interest you at all?’

  ‘It might, Lavinia. It just might.’

  They were in a natural depression, like a large saucer, with the trail sloping down on either side of it. On the one flank there was a sheer overhang of rock that protected it from above. On the other flank the wall of the ravine toppled sheer down into eternity, several hundred feet below them.

  It was the right place.

  And, Crow supposed, it was also the right time. Long weeks had passed since he’d last been able to use a woman and here was one throwing herself at him. Crow was never one to look gift women in the mouth.

  Behind the veil Lavinia Woodstock had a good face. She was in her early thirties, Crow finally decided, and there were the signs there of the path that had wound up with her as the mistress of a crazed Zulu chieftain. There were deep lines cut around the eyes and the mouth. Around the folds of the neck and across the temples to the line of the hair.

  Blonde hair, touched with a sprinkling of silver at the sides. The eyes were blue. Suspicious and guarded, only finally opening to him as they clung together in the throes of their lust for each other. The chin was broad and determined, very much what Crow would somehow have expected from an English upper-class lady, even one fallen on such hard times.

  But the reactions to his forceful taking of her, spread naked on the rough stone, was more what Crow might have expected from a hundred dollar whore in a champagne bordello in San Francisco.

  Lavinia had stripped off all her clothes in front of him, standing close by, then rubbing her naked body against him. Moaning as he took her in his arms, pulling her tightly so that her nipples pressed into his chest through his black shirt.

  Crow took no chances. All he did was remove his gun-belt and lay it near where they coupled, pulling down his pants around his ankles. Keeping everything else on. Conscious through the pleasure that they were absurd
ly vulnerable to an attack, even though any Apache could only come at them up the stony trail. He kept his nerves strained alert to listen for any sound, ramming his palm over her mouth when she cried too loudly as he forced himself into her. Protesting that he was too big for her. Whore’s talk, yet arousing coming from such a woman in such a genteel and refined voice.

  She had kept on her white stockings, lace-gartered, and the riding-boots. Until Crow ripped them off her feet when she tried to lock her heels together in the small of his back’ the spurs opening up two bloody gashes.

  The second time they both took their pleasures more gently and quietly. Though Lavinia dug her nails into Crow’s shoulders, her teeth set at his throat.

  ‘Oh, my dearest darling, Crow. My strong he-man of the wild mountains! Take me. Take me away from that evil nigger and save me.’

  ‘I don’t see a chain on your ankle,’ he’d said to her as they lay sweating together, locked in each other’s arms. Her naked body coated with fine red dust, her lips bruised and swollen, hair tangled and dirty. Looking as far removed from an English gentlewoman as it was possible to be.

  ‘There are chains that you don’t see, Crow,’ she’d whispered, ‘but they weigh and gall, just the same. More I cannot tell you.’

  Then she’d rolled on top of him, whispering her love for him in his ear, her urgent voice blanking out all other sounds, her hands reaching to try and rouse him a third time. Finding him ready for her.

  For once Crow had allowed his animal instincts to ride over his inbred caution, and the price was high. The first sound he heard of the Mescalero Apaches was the cocking of a rifle, followed by a burst of harsh laughter!

  Chapter Seven

  There were three of them, the oldest no more than sixteen. All holding rifles. A Henry and two Spencers. All wearing cotton head-bands, and cotton shirts. Loose pants tucked into soft boots. And all three were painted for war.

  ‘White man not move,’ shouted one of them in broken English.

  Another laughed: ‘We should wait until he has finished his moving. It is cruel.’