Where the Bullets Fly Page 24

  Mackey and the man kept looking at each other. “That’s up to him.”

  The man smiled a jagged yellow smile, just like Darabont’s. “Sounds like your negra friend’s backing your play. Awfully smart.”

  “I haven’t lived this long by being dumb. But no one is backing me now, friend. This is just you and me.”

  “I’d a thought you’d had your fill of Darabont by now, friend. Crossing him ain’t smart. In fact, it’s just about the dumbest thing a man could do.”

  Mackey smiled, too. “How about you show me? Right now.”

  The man brought up his left hand and the pistol in it.

  Mackey pulled the Colt and shot him through the belly before the man could aim.

  The man doubled over and tried to keep his balance. He tumbled over, firing once into the floor as he fell onto his back. Mackey quickly got up as the man tried to bring up his gun again. Mackey pinned his arm to the floor beneath his boot, putting all his weight on his wrist. The Darabont man screamed.

  Billy and the others came running downstairs as Brahm barreled into the lobby.

  “You get him?” Billy asked.

  “Of course I did.” He opened the Colt’s chamber and removed the spent shell; dropping it on the gunman’s face. “You boys help the Boudreauxs keep an eye on the street. This bastard might have more friends in town. Have Javier, Solomon, and Sandborne get our horses ready. We’ll be riding out as soon as this bastard tells us where we can find Darabont. And Brahm, don’t let anyone in here until I saw so. My new friend here and I have some things to discuss.”

  After the others cleared out, Mackey snapped the Colt’s cylinder shut and spoke to the dying man. “It’s just you and me now.”

  The man laughed a wet laugh. “You ride out tonight, you’ll be riding straight to hell if Darabont has anything to say about it. You’ve seen what that man can do at night.”

  Mackey slid his pistol back into the holster. “Did you know this place has a full kitchen? Food’s not so good, so the cook covers it with lots of salt.”

  “Salt?” Another wet cough. “Who cares about salt?”

  “You do, because I’m going to start pouring a whole lot of it into that belly wound unless you tell me where Darabont made camp. You tell me that, I’ll let the town doctor look at you. You don’t, you’ll die in as slow and as painful a way as I can think.”

  “Bastard. You’ll probably do that anyway.”

  “Only if you lie to me.” He put more weight on the gunman’s wrist until he screamed out again. “So, where is he camped?”

  Chapter 40

  Sim Halstead stayed low as he crept through the darkness. He had lost track of the Blackfoot warriors some time ago—maybe an hour or more—but he kept on going. He didn’t need them for what he was doing now. He had been hunting white men and red men for half his life. The other half, he’d spent being hunted by them.

  He had picketed his horse a quarter of a mile back when he saw the tracks split off. He’d seen similar tracks from the hillside to the creek bed back in Dover Station. That had led to an ambush—albeit a half-assed one—but an ambush just the same. He didn’t want Mackey and the others to ride into another one in open ground.

  Sim followed the tracks in the pale moonlight. The rider had split off from the rest of Darabont’s group and moved off the trail into the timber. It was harder to track the rider through the forest floor, especially at night, but Sim had tracked men through much worse and with less light.

  The tracks might’ve looked like any other horse tracks to another tracker, but Sim knew what to look for. He’d been following this trail for a hundred miles since Dover Station. He’d come to be able to read it like Mr. Rice might read a stock report, and he could glean as much information from it, too. The tracks told him the condition of the mounts, the scat told them how many there were, the gait of the tracks told him which horse might be lame and which mounts were tiring.

  He had seen this particular track many times in the many miles since Dover Station. This one had an uneasy gait. Long, then clipped, giving it a certain skitter as it moved. It could’ve been the nature of the horse or the fault of the rider pulling up on the bit without even realizing it. Either way, it was there and it was definable.

  And it led Sim into a stand of tall trees off the main trail.

  There were plenty of reasons why a rider might split off from the rest of the group. Given the number of women in Darabont’s group, none of those reasons were probably good for the captives riding with them.

  As he followed the trail into the stand of trees, he kept his Colt holstered. His Bowie knife was his weapon of choice now. He’d left his Winchester back in the scabbard on his saddle. It was too dark to do much good with a rifle. Any work that needed to be done would be done best up close with a knife or a pistol.

  Sim was just inside the cluster of trees when he realized the tracks changed. The horse was no longer being ridden, but led. The footprints of moccasins were barely visible in the soft earth, which was the whole point of wearing them. He had seen these moccasins before, but not on the feet of the Blackfoot warriors tracking with them.

  The trail led off too far to the right, too close to the tree and kept going in that direction, into the darkness of the trees beyond. It was too neat; too easy to follow, given Darabont’s men knew they were being followed.

  Instinct brought Sim away from the tree, stepping backward, Bowie knife ready.

  Instinct made him look up. Just as Concho dropped from the tree limb above him.

  Instinct made him raise the blade of his Bowie knife as Concho fell on him.

  Sim’s grip held through the impact, even as the blade slid into Concho’s heart, even as the handle of his own knife was crushed into his chest, pinning his hands beneath the gasping renegade.

  Concho’s knife dropped from his hands, his breath escaping him as the blade punctured his lung until the knife tip poked through his back. He had misjudged the reflexes of the older man and landed too high atop his target.

  Sim tried to move, but could not. He tried to flip the Indian off him, but his legs couldn’t move. He tried to work his hand free, but found it trapped beneath Concho’s weight. He didn’t know if he was paralyzed or simply pinned to the ground as Concho was impaled by his Bowie knife.

  All he knew was that he couldn’t let Concho pull that blade free.

  Sim heard Concho’s wet coughs and gasps as he fumbled to get to his feet. He saw the Indian roll off him instead and flop over onto his back. He coughed again when he collapsed, sending a spray of blood onto Sim’s face. The scout tried to wipe it away, but could not move his hands.

  He was paralyzed after all.

  He was able to lift his head just enough to see the Bowie knife was no longer in his hands. He looked over and saw it still sticking out of Concho’s heaving chest.

  Good, Sim thought. He’ll never pull it out on his own. Not with it so deep.

  But he saw that Concho wasn’t quite done yet. The renegade was reaching for something with his left hand. It was too far out of Sim’s limited vision to see what it was? Was it the knife he had lost when he fell from the tree? Was it a rock?

  He never found out what he was reaching for, because Concho stopped moving, coughed a few more times before he grew very still. When he heard the Indian’s bladder release, he knew Concho was dead.

  Sim was already very still, too, and very much alive. He tried moving his feet again, but could not. He tried simply wiggling his toes, but no luck there, either. His hands were still on his stomach where the handle of his Bowie knife had been. They would not respond to his will, either.

  He raised his head and looked himself over as well as he could. He didn’t see any blood and decided he was probably just stunned from the impact of Concho falling on him from such a height. He set his head back on the cold ground and closed his eyes, listening to the night sounds of the forest slowly come back to life. The humans had struggled, but now it was ov
er and they had their business to attend to.

  The old scout closed his eyes and tried not to think of what might come for him in the night. He tried to think of Aaron and Billy and how they would find him the next morning at the latest.

  He only hoped it would not be too late.

  Chapter 41

  Given the fullness of the moon that evening, Mackey and the others set out well before sunrise to hunt Darabont. The wounded gunman had told him Darabont’s men were supposed to follow the trail south and camp past a stand of trees where they would be sheltered from the prying eyes of passersby on the trail. He said the group was low on ammunition and food; the last meat from the cattle they’d slaughtered was beginning to go bad. Darabont had sent the two men to scout the town and purchase provisions the next morning if the town was clear.

  The information made sense, so he believed it. It’s what Mackey would’ve done.

  He’d fought the urge to kill the man after he’d told the truth. He let the doctor work on him instead. Besides, it would take the man a while to die, even if the doctor did manage to save him. He could always go back and kill the man later if he was lying.

  The sky was beginning to brighten with the coming dawn when they saw Sim Halstead’s dappled gray hitched to a distant tree just off the main trail. Billy and Mackey spurred their horses into a gallop, stopping next to the mount.

  Billy looked at the horse’s saddle. “It’s Sim’s horse, all right.” He pointed over at the stand of trees in the near distance. “Looks like he went on foot for some reason. Probably over there.”

  Mackey didn’t like it. Sim was an old cavalryman. He would never have gotten off his horse unless he thought it was necessary. To the others, he said, “You men stay here and stay on your guard. I want rifles out and eyes on all positions. Call out if you see anything move. We’ll be right back.”

  Mackey steered Adair through the overgrowth and into the clearing that led to the stand. Billy followed.

  When he got closer, he saw the two men lying on the ground in a clearing within the trees. One was lying on his back, with something sticking out of his chest. The other’s body was laying at an unnatural, broken angle.

  Mackey was off Adair and running full speed toward them before he realized he was doing it.

  The one Darabont had called Concho was the one with the knife sticking out of his chest.

  The broken man was Sim; his arms barely clawing the ground as his legs were twisted crooked. He didn’t have to examine him to know his back had been broken.

  No, no, no, no.

  He slid to a halt next to Sim and saw the old scout was still alive, though barely. His eyes were wide as he tried, breathlessly, to get to his feet. His mouth was stained with dry blood and his breath was shallow.

  Mackey cradled his old friend’s head in his hands. “You’ll be okay. Just sit still a while until we get this sorted out.”

  But if his old friend heard him, he didn’t show it. His eyes were fixed on a point, deep in the gloomy stand of trees. His arms flailed back and he grabbed Mackey’s shoulders with both hands. Even as death approached, his old friend had a hell of a grip.

  For the first time in as many years as he could remember, Sim’s mouth moved and he began to try to speak.

  Mackey tried to quiet him. “It’ll be okay, Sim. Billy’s going to look you over. He’s better than any doctor going. You know that.”

  Sim’s mouth quivered as a tear streaked down his cheek. And the man who hadn’t spoken in more than a decade struggled to speak now. “Aaron, look.” His eyes locked onto the gloom. “It’s them. They’re still . . . alive. Amy and the boys. They’re here. They came!”

  Mackey couldn’t have seen anything, even if his own eyes weren’t filled with tears. It wasn’t just because he knew his oldest friend was dying. It was because, for the first time in longer than he could remember, he saw Sim Halstead smiling. “Of course they did. Where else would they be?”

  Sim struggled to raise his head from Mackey’s hands, to go to the family he’d lost so long ago. The family whose death had caused him to curse God and hold his silence ever since. Sim gasped as his eyes went soft and he was gone.

  Billy Sunday took a step back and wept.

  Mackey buried his face in the old scout’s chest and screamed longer and louder than he had ever screamed before.

  Chapter 42

  Sim’s burial was a blur.

  Mackey and Billy dug as deep a grave as they could in the hard ground of the forest and covered it with as many rocks as they could find. It wasn’t permanent anyway. Mackey would see to it he was buried in Dover Station where he belonged.

  They left Concho where he had fallen, but pulled Sim’s knife from his chest.

  Mackey wiped the blood on the renegade’s clothes and gave it to Billy.

  But Billy wouldn’t take it. “He’d want you to have it.”

  Mackey didn’t take the knife away. “I was an officer. He’d want an enlisted man to have it.”

  Billy took the knife and kissed the handle before he tucked it into his belt and climbed into the saddle. “Never thought he’d go out like that.”

  “He went out fighting. We should all be so lucky.”

  The two of them rode back along the clearing to the others. They let their horses move at their own pace. Darabont was close by and waiting on supplies. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  * * *

  An hour later, Billy spotted one of Darabont’s lookouts on an outcropping just off the trail. The man was leaning against a tree, dozing on his feet instead of keeping an eye on the trail as he’d been assigned to do.

  Billy slid out of the saddle and drew Sim’s knife. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Mackey and the others watched Billy move slow and steady toward the sleeping man. Billy stepped quickly but quietly around the tree, slipped his hand over the man’s mouth and drew the blade across his throat in one fluid motion. No scream, no sound except for the dead man’s body hitting the ground. Billy signaled Mackey to come forward.

  Mackey motioned for his men to stay where they were before he dismounted and joined Billy at the edge of the outcropping. The two of them belly crawled up the slight rise and peered over the edge down at the camp below.

  Darabont’s camp was about a quarter of a mile below the outcropping, nestled against the rock wall. The sun had just begun to rise, giving them a good look at the layout.

  Mackey counted twenty bedrolls on the ground around a central cook fire. A covered wagon sat unhitched and farther away from the camp. He figured that’s where the captives might be. Where Katherine might be.

  This was the closest he had been to her since this whole nightmare had begun.

  He pushed every thought of her out of his mind, for this was no time for distractions. Mackey and his men were outgunned and outnumbered, and taking the camp wasn’t going to be any easier without Sim. He had wasted enough emotion over Sim’s grave.

  Now was a time to think.

  In the growing light of coming day, Mackey noticed how the trail became a gradual incline that snaked around down to a small box canyon where Darabont and his people had camped. Seeing as how the trail was the only way down and the only way out, Darabont probably had it guarded.

  The entire situation reminded Mackey of Darabont’s failed siege at Dover Station, only this time he would be in Darabont’s position. He hoped the invaders would fare better this time.

  Darabont had probably made camp in the box canyon because he didn’t think anyone would dare attack a party that size.

  Mackey was about to prove him wrong.

  Mackey looked back and motioned for the men to hitch their horses and come toward him quietly. To their credit, each man did as he’d told them. For a group of amateurs, they were shaping up into a decent outfit, even young Sandborne.

  Billy and Mackey met them halfway between the horses and the outcropping. They gathered in front of him in a tight semi-circle and he spoke in a low
voice. “Our targets are at hand, boys. Darabont’s men are camped right below us. We’re still outmanned and outgunned, but Billy and I have been up against worse odds with the Apache and we’re still here to talk about it. If you do what we tell you, chances are you’ll be telling your grandkids about this someday.”

  The men laughed, not out of humor, but because it masked their fear.

  To Sandborne and Brahm, Mackey said, “I want you two up here with the Boudreaux boys peppering those bastards with rifle fire. Call out your targets ahead of time and put them down. Looks like there are about twenty of them, mostly still in their bedrolls, so picking them off as they wake up should be easy. Make sure you tell each other who you’re shooting at before you shoot. I don’t want you wasting four bullets on one man when you could be taking down four different men at once.”

  “What will you be doing?” Jack Boudreaux asked.

  “Billy, Solomon, Javier, and me will ride into them hard and take down the bastards you miss.”

  Both Boudreauxs began to protest, but Mackey cut that off quick. “I know you boys want to be in the thick of it, but the vaqueros are better riders and better with their pistols than you are. You boys are the best riflemen we have. I need you up here where you can do some damage. But there’s too many of them to pick off from up here. A few of them are bound to get to cover or try to hurt the women we think are in the wagons. If we ride in hard and cut them off, we’ll have a better chance of winning this thing.”

  Billy pointed to the south, and Mackey continued. “This trail forks off to the south and leads down to their camp. Darabont most likely has more guards along the way. I already killed one of them, but we can’t sneak up on them on foot without at least one of them getting off a shot and waking the whole camp. That means we’ll have to shoot them on our way down. The first shot will be your signal to start picking off your targets in their bedrolls. Hit your man in the chest and put him down.”

  He paused to allow the men to ask questions. When he didn’t hear any, he continued to the tricky part. “You all know there’s a group of captive women down there, but we can’t see them. I think they’re either near the wagon or inside it. The wagons are all out of range for you boys anyway, so you let Billy and me worry about them. Solomon and Javier here will ride through the camp and put down anyone you boys miss.” He looked at the vaqueros. “That sit well with you boys?”