A Good Day Read online

  “Sure, Sergeant. Good question. You and your four men begin the action as soon as you get ready. We’ll be there to support you. Remember what I said. Only kill if you are threatened, men.”

  There was a mumble of something that could have been agreement.

  “You will ride with me, Mr. Crow. Unless you would prefer to stay and watch from a safe distance.”

  Carter smiled, confident that things were, at last, going his way.

  The smile disappearing like the dew at morning as Crow stepped in close to him. The officer’s fingers groped for the butt of his Colt, but he’d have been far too late.

  The shootist’s voice was quiet as ever. But it held a chilling note of menace. A sound of totality. A promise of death.

  “Don’t you ever speak like that, boy,” said Crow. “Not now and not ever.”

  Everyone watched to see what the Lieutenant would do, faced with such a clear threat.

  Carter did nothing. Swallowing hard and turning away from the shootist.

  “Best not show me your back like that, son,” continued Crow. “You get your men ready and off for this big raid you got planned so damned well.”

  “I will, Mr. Crow. I will,” answered Carter, barely controlling the shaking in his voice. The wings of the angel had brushed him and by God but he knew it!

  The snow came down with renewed violence, blanking out sight and sound. Haydon and his men had disappeared into the white-out, muffled and hooded against the cold and wet.

  Carter, Crow and Corporal Chandler waited with the three remaining troopers, on the near side of Sandy Creek. Beyond stood the wickiups of the Chiricahua.

  Chapter Eleven

  It wasn’t a good day.

  As he climbed back into the saddle the tall man in black reached inside his vest pocket and pulled out a gleaming gold hunter watch. Ricking the case open with a strong fingernail, angling the face of the watch to protect it from the driving snow. Peering at the Roman numerals.

  Twenty minutes after three,” he said, replying to Corporal Chandler’s unspoken question.

  “Be finished by nightfall.”

  “Yeah,” replied Crow. “One way or another, it’ll be done by then.”

  “Quiet, if you please. We’ll move in as soon as we hear the others fire their first volley.”

  Crow looked across at Carter, huddled inside his heavy greatcoat, collar turned up. His hat was pulled down over his eyes, its rim tilted, fringed with snow like the icing on a cake. The officer had freed his pistol at his belt and was now toying with the hilt of his brass saber.

  The wind kept rising to a screaming crescendo of noise and blank whiteness, then falling again. At times the flakes of snow seemed to be racing parallel to the ground, and at other times they fell gently to earth like the most peaceful of rural paintings.

  “Ready, corporal?”

  “Aye, Sir.”

  “Mr. Crow?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then we shall move on forwards, so that we are prepared to give the most immediate support possible to Sergeant Haydon.”

  The hooves of the horses made little sound as they padded through the deepening snow. Breath streamed out from the nostrils of animals and men alike, hanging around their heads like a string of small fires.

  Crow loosed the retaining thong from over the hammers of the shotgun. The Purdey was an excellent weapon for close-action killing from a horse. Its shot would spread at any distance, but in the sort of battle that this was likely to be, it would take away any man threatening you from the ground.

  “Ready?” said Carter, his voice barely recognizable with tension.

  From the bank of white they all heard the faint popping of firearms, muffled by the wind and the snow.

  “Go!!” screamed the young officer, drawing his saber and waving it over his head, coming close to taking an ear off the soldier on his right.

  They were off and walking.

  Cantering.

  Galloping.

  It was a wild frenzy.

  Crow was aware of Trooper Dearman spurring ahead on his left. The mad-eyed Kentucky marksman was bent forward over his horse’s neck, his body, leaner even than that of Crow himself, stretched out, hat flown off in the charge. The curling scar across the left side of the man’s face seemed to flame red, pulling down the corner of his eye as though he was locked in some eternal, satanic wink at the absurdity of life.

  “Git the bastards!!” yelled someone beyond him.

  Chandler was a little behind and to the right, holding his pistol in his hand, kicking his heels into his horse’s flanks, encouraging it on with a stream of whispered obscenities.

  Lieutenant James Carter was out ahead, carving a way through the blizzard with his hissing blade, eyes glinting with the lust for battle.

  For killing.

  It was like a curtain lifting.

  Just as they reached the edges of Sandy Creek, its waters swollen with the recent snow, the wind eased and the swirling flakes died away.

  It was a scene of chaotic carnage.

  On the narrow spit of land Crow could see the huddled wickiups, smoke coming from many of them. The far side of the Apache camp he could make out the figures of the attacking soldiers, whooping and hollering. Firing at anyone that appeared as a target for their guns. Any thoughts of only shooting anyone who threatened them had already been forgotten.

  In the few seconds that he reined in on the edge of the water the shootist saw three women go down. A young child, barely eight years old, throw up its arms and fall down on the bloodied shambles that had once been its face. An old man, scarcely able to stand, tottered from one of the primitive shelters, right into the path of Sergeant Haydon. Without checking his horse’s stride the soldier brought his saber, crimson-slick, over and down, splitting the Indian from collarbone to hip, the clatter of the ribs audible even above the sounds of screaming and shooting.

  Women.

  A child.

  An old man.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Crow.

  The realization was more chilling than a fall in Sierra melt-water.

  The men were gone. All the warriors of the tribe had left their summer camp, probably starting the move to the sheltered canyons of the mountains. Then the weather had suddenly broken and the tribe had been split in two unequal halves. The fighting side was safe and away. All that was left for the vengeance of the white pony-soldiers was the old and the weak and the ill. The women and the young children, not yet old enough to go with their fathers.

  But it was too late.

  Way too late.

  By not scouting the camp properly, insisting on riding in at the charge, Carter had left himself with no options. He couldn’t have stopped his men now, even if he’d wanted to. And from the look of him, mercy didn’t feature high on his list of priorities.

  Crow watched the soldiers as they yelped their way through the freezing spray of the river, snapping off shots at anyone who appeared.

  “Hell,” he said. “Damn it all to Hell and back.”

  For a moment he considered turning about and riding on out of the region. But, whatever happened, it was likely going to be safer with numbers.

  Regretfully, he walked his stallion on into the foaming creek, drawing his Purdey, knowing that he was probably going to have to use it.

  He’d seen massacres before.

  Images stayed with him. Like the flickering pictures that traveling showmen exhibited, reflected in a coated mirror.

  Dark sights.

  A girl of twelve or so being used by three of the soldiers, including Dearman. While a fourth man whooped as he sliced off the breasts of the girl’s mother with a skinning knife. Yelling how he’d gotten himself the finest pair of baccy pouches of any man in the regiment.

  An old man, waving a beaded war ax, so frail that he fell twice on the slippery ground. Being gunned down through the forehead by Lieutenant Carter, so that he toppled back into the embers of a fire. His fringed buck
skins began to burn and the camp was filled with the stench of roasting flesh, overlaying the bitter reek of powder smoke.

  Corporal Chandler fired three times as a middle-aged woman came screeching at him, carrying only an iron cooking ladle. Two bullets hit her in the stomach, folding her over like a cringing courtier. Blood soaked in the trampled snow, turning it to scarlet mud.

  “Find the boy!” called Carter. “Search for the boy!!”

  But nobody was much interested in looking in the dark, smoky wickiups for missing Cyrus Quaid. What they all wanted was to get themselves laid with any Indian woman they could beat into submission. Finishing off their own lusts by slitting the throats of their unwilling partners. While others sought souvenirs of the raid. That generally meant scalps, but other parts of the bodies were also fair game for them.

  Crow sat his horse. A still point amid the swirling action.

  The Apaches were in no position to try and defend themselves. They had no reason to expect such an attack on them, from the deeps of an early winter storm. As they stumbled, blinking into the light, they were cut down, or blasted into the dirt by the bullets of the soldiers.

  Crow didn’t try to count.

  He’d never seen much point in keeping a tally of death. The corpses surely weren’t interested in a score and the living had their own problems.

  There were only a couple of instances of attempted retaliation.

  A boy, looking in his early teens, but with a bandaged leg that slowed him some, came out of one of the wickiups, hefting a battered musket. Standing with it cradled in his hands, frantically trying to tug back the spur on the hammer. Finally succeeding, looking around him for a target. Seeing the officer with his back to him, calling out orders.

  Crow was too far away to kill the young Chiricahua and he sat still. Watching.

  Just as the boy was about to pull the trigger Sergeant Haydon came bursting past one of the huts, holding his Colt ready in his right fist. Seeing the boy and shooting him down without any hesitation. The bullet angling off the lock of the musket, opening the young lad’s throat from side to side.

  The patrol still hadn’t suffered a single casualty.

  Trooper Dermot O’Croxley was the first.

  He’d found a squaw, cowering on her hands and knees behind one of the tiny dwellings, a blanket pulled over her head, nearly unconscious with terror. The wind had lifted her fringed skirt at the back, showing her thighs almost up to the swelling folds of her buttocks.

  It was too much for O’Croxley.

  It took him only a few seconds to holster his carbine and tie his horse to a rack where meat still lay, dried and leathery. He tore open the front of his breeches so fast that buttons popped through the cold air. Then he was on the woman, leaning all his weight on her back. Pinning her in the mud and slush, one arm around her neck to hold her still as he thrust himself into her from behind. Taking her like a dog ravaging a bitch.

  To his surprise the Indian woman didn’t cry out. Didn’t even try and wriggle. Simple grunting with the violence of his attack on her, then lying still and passive as he humped at her.

  Dermot could feel himself close to coming. The tension gripped him so that everything else blanked out. It never occurred to him the risk he was taking, alone and defenseless in the midst of an Apache village. Anyone could have crept up behind him and spitted him like a dead rabbit.

  But sex was all that mattered. Burying himself as deep as he could inside the warm vagina of the Indian woman. He couldn’t tell how old she was. Fifteen? Eighty? He didn’t care. Cared only about his throbbing climax that was boiling inside him. With his right hand he felt for his butcher’s knife, ready to kill the fuckin’ bitch the moment he’d spent inside her.

  O’Croxley was locked into his own world, away from the rest of the bloody raid. Out of sight of the other soldiers.

  “Soon, lady, soon …”he grunted, the hilt of the knife cold in his hand.

  Then, only then, did the woman start to respond. Sighing and pushing back against him, her hips seeming to seek his. Her buttocks were warm against his groin and he grinned at the sensation. She wriggled, her hands reaching back between her own thighs to touch him as he withdrew for each driving thrust. Stroking him and caressing his tense genitals, cupping them between work-hard fingers.

  “Jesus, yes … Do it, you fuckin’ whore! Do it to me …”

  The soldier was thinking how he’d tell his mates of the way the slut had reacted. How she’d loved to get some white meat for a change. How she’d rutted against him and loved it.

  It was a dream.

  Nightmare.

  Nightmare.

  There was sudden pain. Deep, tearing pain. Her fingers had tightened on him, giving him a moment of thrilling tension. Then came pain.

  The trooper reacted by instinct, not yet knowing what had happened. The orgasm that had been so close had utterly disappeared in the blackness of agony.

  He jerked back, away from her, seeing her as she rolled on one side. She was in her fifties, his mind told him. His eyes saw the triumph in her lined face. The smile showing crooked teeth.

  But his eyes saw more.

  Something in her right hand that glinted silver. A dull gleam of metal.

  Nightmare.

  Blood.

  More blood than he’d ever seen.

  His! Gushing from the severed root of his penis in an unstoppable flow, all over the woman. Over his own breeches. The earth.

  Blood everywhere.

  Nightmare!

  The soldier opened his mouth to scream, then saw the futility of it and whispered a single word.

  “No.”

  Quietly.

  When the Apache woman moved O’Croxley saw the limp remnants of his erection as it slid, bloodless and spent, from between the woman’s legs.

  Bloody nightmare.

  That was the last sight that the trooper carried with him from this world into the next.

  It was some minutes before anyone realized that one of their patrol was dead. And by then it was more or less over. Sanity had seeped back in as the killing lust faded away.

  But not before Crow had killed.

  An elderly man with only one eye. The withered socket showing an old hunting injury. Coming at the shootist holding a long war-spear, its end decorated with many feathers. The silent boast of many coups counted in long-gone battles and skirmishes.

  He hobbled towards the white man on the big black horse, lips moving with a remembered chant of fighting. Lunging towards Crow with the shaky tip of the spear.

  The shootist didn’t move. Simply tightening his index finger on the light trigger of the Purdey. There was the noise and smoke and kick of the explosion. And the old Chiricahua disappeared. The powerful shot bursting his head and neck apart in a welter of blood and bone and gristle. Killing him instantly.

  Crow could hear Carter as he fought to regain control of his men. Yelling for them to search for the boy. But there didn’t seem a lot of response.

  A curtain twitched at the low doorway of the nearest wickiup and Crow saw the figure of John Dancer appear. The breed was bent double and fought a coughing fit, finally managing to stand upright. He looked around, eyes wide with horror and shock, catching sight of the shootist. Running towards Crow, stopping after a few paces, standing with arms spread, hands empty.

  “Why?” Crow didn’t speak. “Why, you white bastard? Why this?”

  “Where’s the boy, Dancer?” said the shootist.

  “Boy?”

  “The boy?”

  “Nephew of Small Pony?”

  “No.”

  The breed took a step closer, avoiding the pool of blood from the corpse of the old man that Crow had just killed. Staring around the camp as though he couldn’t believe his own eyes.

  “The boy was killed by the soldiers.”

  “Not him, John Dancer.”

  “Oh, look. Look at the killing. Oh, the horror of it. The horror.”

  “
Tell me where Cyrus Quaid is, Dancer. This can be stopped now.”

  But the half-breed didn’t seem to hear Crow’s words anymore. Standing, stricken, looking at the carnage about him. Seeing the smashed skulls of the elderly. The ripped bodies of children. The torn women and girls.

  He turned back to face Crow and the shootist saw the madness in the man’s eyes. The lips moved silently and the hands clenched, fingers like claws.

  “Where’s the white boy, Dancer? Where is he?”

  But John Dancer’s mind wasn’t there to be talked to. All he wanted to do was leap at the man on the tall horse. Rip the face from his skull with his bare hands and kill him.

  “Dancer!”

  “Oh, the horror,” said the breed, starting his charge.

  It was Sergeant Haydon that killed him. Calmly putting a forty-five through the middle of the breed’s spine from twenty paces with the rifle. Sending him kicking and screaming in the blood and the brains and the slush.

  “Thanks,” said Crow.

  “You were waiting it close with that scattergun,” called the non-com, holstering the Springfield at the side of the saddle.

  “Is it over?” asked the shootist. The noise of bullets and screams had died down and he could hear Lieutenant Carter’s voice, high and reedy, shrilling out for order from his men.

  “Seems so. Boy’s not here. So it’s over. Ain’t it?”

  Crow reloaded the Purdey. “I guess not, Haydon. Truth is – I’m not even sure it’s really started yet.”

  The snow was already beginning to fall heavily again, covering up the details of the massacre. Blurring the edges of the horror.

  The horror.

  Chapter Twelve

  They pulled out of the remains of the Apache village at twenty-three minutes after four in the afternoon. The time being correct by the gold hunter watch that Crow carried in his inside pocket. The whole raid and all of the killing had lasted barely an hour.

  Carter had made a feeble attempt to get his men to count up the dead, but they were surly. Sated with death and eager only to get as many miles as possible under their horses” hooves before dusk closed them down.