A Time to Slaughter (12 page)

Later that morning, Dr. James Glover stepped into Shamus O'Brien's curtained bedroom and nodded to Lorena. “How is he?”

“The colonel says he's paralyzed from the neck down, Doctor. He thinks he's not likely to recover.”

“Colonel, can you hear me?” Glover leaned over the bed, his thin face shadowed by the lamplight.

“Damn it, man, of course I can hear you,” Shamus snapped. “I'm all frozen over, not deaf.”

“You mean you can't move?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, of course that's what I mean. I'm paralyzed, damn it.”

“Your spinal cord is intact, Colonel,” Glover said quietly.

“Then why can't I move?”

“Because you're afraid to move.”

“I'm afraid of nothing. I wasn't even afraid of the Apache who shoved his lance into me in the first place.”

“You're afraid to move because you fear that you cannot. Is that not so, Colonel?”

“Are you saying I'm a coward, you damned pill wrangler?”

“If you're afraid to move, then yes, you're a yellow belly.”

Shamus roared in anger. “Lorena, get me my gun!”

“Look at you!” Lorena yelled, pointing her shaking finger at her father-in-law.

“What the hell?” Shamus glared at her.

“You're sitting up!” Glover rushed to the bed and supported Shamus. “Not too much too fast, Colonel.”

“I can move!” Shamus cried. “Damn it, doc, I can move my legs!”

“All it took was a little motivation,” Glover said. “Calling you a yellow belly worked wonders, but I do apologize for that.”

“Thank God and his Blessed Mother,” Shamus shouted. “This is a miracle!”

“Dr. Jakobs deserves some of the credit, Colonel,” Glover remarked dryly.

“Yes he does, and God bless him, too.”

Overcome by emotion, Lorena covered her face and ran sobbing from the room, calling out for Samuel.

Luther Ironside was the first to dash inside.

Shamus was still sitting up. “I can move my legs, Luther. Hell, I can even wiggle my toes.” He demonstrated, even though his legs were covered by a sheet.

“Good, now get on up out of that there bed and we'll put you on a hoss right away, Colonel,” Ironside said, beaming.

Glover shook his head. “Easy does it, Luther. The colonel can toddle around the house for a few weeks to get the feel of his feet under him. Then we'll talk about riding horses.” The doctor glanced at the bedroom window. “Besides, it's dark and snowing outside.”

“Then the colonel can have a drink, huh, doc?” Ironside pushed.

“I suppose one won't hurt him, if that's what he wants.”

“Brandy, Luther,” Shamus ordered.

Samuel, Patrick, and Lorena bustled into the bedroom.

“You heard?” Shamus grinned.

“I sure did, Pa,” Samuel grinned back.

“Look.” Shamus moved his legs. “It's a miracle.”

“Of modern medicine,” Lorena added.

“Maybe so,” Shamus said, “but I'm sure the good Lord had something to do with it.”

“I can't discount that, Colonel,” Glover said. “No man of science can.”

“I only wish Shawn and Jacob were here to see this,” Shamus said quietly.

“So do I, Colonel,” Patrick agreed.

Shamus shook his head. “Two of a kind. Reckless. Feckless.”

“A pair of knights errant, off tilting at windmills,” Patrick quoted.

Shamus gave his son a blank look.

“
Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes, Pa.” Patrick pushed his eyeglasses higher on his nose. “Remember when Don Quixote attacked a windmill, thinking it was a giant?”

“Son, you say some powerful strange things.” Shamus shook his head slightly.

“I didn't beat him enough when he was a boy, Colonel,” Ironside said, handing Shamus his drink. “That's why he has all these strange notions by times.”

Shamus drained his brandy in a gulp, then said, “Lorena, avert your eyes. I'm going to get up and take a stroll around the room.”

Glover put a hand on the man's shoulder. “Colonel, I don't advise it. You need to recover for a few days.”

“Do as the doctor says, Colonel,” Lorena agreed. “You need to regain the strength in your legs.”

“Daughter-in-law, I'm strong enough right now,” Shamus argued. “Now clear away there and give me the road.”

He swung his legs over the bed, pulled down his nightshirt, and got to his feet. “Nothing to it.” Taking a step, he tottered, waved his arms with despair in his eyes, and fell flat on his face.

Ironside rushed to the colonel and lifted him in his strong arms. “I'll put you back in bed, Colonel.”

“I can't walk, Luther,” Shamus said, his face ashen. “I'm just like I was before.”

Glover helped settle his patient back in bed. “It's too early. You've sat in a wheelchair for years and you need to regain the strength in your legs.”

“Damn you. You heard what I said,” Shamus yelled. “I can't walk.”

“Someone will help you at first, then you'll use a cane for a while,” Glover explained. “You'll walk again, Colonel, but it will take time.”

“You'll walk with me, Colonel,” Ironside urged. “Come morning, we'll take a . . . what does Pat call it? A promenade.”

“It's impossible, Luther,” Shamus argued. “My legs won't move.”

“They'll move,” Ironside said adamantly. “I'll make them move.”

“Listen to Luther, Pa,” Samuel coaxed. “He'll help you.”

Shamus groaned deep in his chest, then lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes.

One by one the others crept out of the room until Ironside stood alone. “Colonel, if'n I could, I'd give you my own legs to walk on.”

Shamus seemed to be asleep, and Ironside didn't know if he heard or not.

 

 

His hat and shoulders covered with snow, Jacob O'Brien rode toward Dromore, leading a dun horse with a dead man draped over its saddle.

“Is all prepared?” Sheik Abdul Basir-Hakim asked.

“Yes, great lord,” Hassan Najid said. “The man is drugged and has six naked Chinese girls attending him.”

“A foretaste of paradise,” Hakim predicted. “He will die all the more willingly to taste the real thing.”

“He says he is eager to destroy the infidels and fly to his reward.”

“Where will the bomb be placed?”

“Abdullah will light the fuse and then charge into the infidels, the holy name of Allah on his lips,” Najid said. “The bomb will detonate very quickly.”

“Allah be praised. Will it kill them all? We must be sure that none survive.”

“The device is loaded with musket balls and iron nails. It will kill every living thing within twenty paces of the blast.”

Hakim laid a hand on Najid's sweaty shoulder, disliking the task. “You have done well, Hassan. Once back in our own land you will be richly rewarded. You are indeed a holy warrior.”

“Thank you, great lord. It is Allah's will to destroy infidels wherever they can be found. One of the Chinese girls, the prettiest, will accompany Abdullah. She will put Zebulon Moss's men at their ease and they will suspect nothing.” Najid smiled, his breath rotten in his mouth. He pushed his hands upward in a V shape. “Then boom!”

Both men laughed, standing alone in the moonlight. “Pity about the Chinese girl, is it not?” Hakim grinned, causing more mirth.

“Lord, since she's going to be killed anyway, may I use the wench for my amusement?”

Hakim nodded. “I give her to you, Hassan. She is yours until she sacrifices herself.”

Najid leered. “She might well seek her death as eagerly as Abdullah after I'm finished with her.”

The sheik waved a dismissive hand. “A woman is nothing. Do with her what you will.”

The two men retired to Hakim's silk tent pitched on the sand, small by Arab standards. A slave schooner had little room to store luxuries. The crew of the Nawfal slept outdoors on the sand, the women confined to the ship under guard. A smaller shelter made from a tent covered with palm leaves, called by the Bedouin an
Al Arish
, housed the pampered suicide warrior and his Chinese girls.

The sheik and his second-in-command shared a dish of mild, salty cheese and dried dates washed down with green tea and mint.

“Once we kill Moss and the other infidels, we will take his women and set sail at once,” Hakim said. “It all has to be done quickly.”

“What of the American sloop of war, great lord?” Najid asked, remembering the blasts fired on them earlier.

“What of it?”

“Does she lie in wait?”

“The Americans are stupid and impatient,” Hakim said. “The warship is long gone, to some dunghill of a port where the crew can find rum and whores.”

“Is this so, lord?”

“Of course it is so. Listen to me, Hassan, and remember—the Americans are cowards. That is why they were happy to let us slip away in the fog. They feared to board us and face our Arab steel.”

“Aye, death to the American infidel,” Najid said, raising his cup.

“And may Allah curse their vile ship.” Hakim lifted his cup in agreement.

“Damn your eyes, Mr. Wilson, don't tell me that again,” Commander John Sherburne raged at his first lieutenant. “I don't want to hear it.”

Wilson's young, round face flushed, but he was a dogged officer, not an overly intelligent one. “But it remains a possibility, sir.”

Sherburne bit off the sharp retort on his lips, and said, “Yes, Mr. Wilson, of course it is. But the schooner is here in the Gulf, not in the Pacific. I can feel her, smell her stench.”

Wilson ventured a small, “Where?”

“Mr. Wilson, if I knew that, would we be swinging on our anchor off a pissant island that isn't even on our charts?”

“No, sir.”

“I'll find him,” Sherburne affirmed. “I'll steam the
Kansas
up and down the length of the gulf and find him, even if it takes me till doomsday. Then so help me I'll gut that Arab like a hog.”

The two officers stood on the bridge under a bright moon, veiled now and then by scudding, silver-rimmed clouds. From the crew's quarters a man with a fine tenor voice sang, “There's a New Coon in Town,” then eight bells chimed the last dog watch as he finished a song that was currently all the rage in the eastern cities.

“We'll commence the search again when we have daylight on our side, Mr. Wilson,” Sherburne said.

“Very good, sir. I'll post extra lookouts.”

“You look a bit peaked, Lieutenant. Missing your betrothed?”

“Alas, Captain, that is not the case. Miss Coffin forbade me to think of her too often lest my imagination stray into carnal matters. She often reminds me of the sinfulness of sexuality and of the extreme sinfulness of the sexual organs. ‘William,' she once told me, ‘those who feel the lusts of the flesh are the living citadels of Satan. A respectable married woman should consider intercourse with her spouse as a duty, not a pleasure. In other words, my dear, she must lie still and suffer.'”

Sherburne concealed a smile by coughing into his fist. Finally he managed, “She sounds like a remarkable woman.”

“Indeed, Captain, she's a frail, chaste creature, is Miss Coffin.”

“Too bad.”

“Sir?”

“I said, ‘Good lad.' I mean for getting betrothed to such a fine lady.”

“Yes, I count myself blessed that she will soon become my helpmeet.”

Sherburne, a man with a vast appetite for wine, women, and song, stared at the moon and decided that his first lieutenant was a sanctimonious little prig. He and Miss Coffin of the Locked Knees deserved each other.

“I'm retiring to my cabin, Mr. Wilson. Pipe the crew to an early breakfast and then double the watch. Roust me out of my bunk at daybreak.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“We'll catch him, by God.” Sherburne slapped the bridge rail with the flat of his hand. “We'll catch him and rip his heathen guts out.”

“I paid for the three of us to ride the cushions and for the horses to ride with the livestock. The train is headed south, but the ticket clerk is a right talkative feller and he says the private car is scheduled to be coupled to another train at Rincon and then it'll head east for Sonora.” Tweedy looked at Shawn. “It's an expensive trip and you don't have any change comin' back, Mrs. Lowth.”

“Damn you, Uriah. I've never done anything less dignified in my life.”

“Oh I don't know, sonny,” Tweedy said. “I reckon you make a handsome woman in that dress an' all. Does he not, Mr. Lowth?”

“Well, my real wife, though large in girth, is a fragile creature, much given to those ill humors that afflict only the female sex. I'm afraid Mr. O'Brien does not match that description in any way.”

“And this baby I'm holding is wet,” Shawn complained. “I know this baby is wet, damn it.”

“You can't change her until we board the train, Mrs. Lowth.” Tweedy grinned, having fun.

“Uriah, I swear. Call me Mrs. Lowth again and I'll gun you first chance I get.” Shawn was not having fun.

“I'll keep that in mind, Mrs. Lowth,” Tweedy responded with a bigger grin.

They stood on the station platform under a cone of pale orange light from an overhead lamp. The night was cold, but the snow had stopped, replaced by a thin mist and a raw hoarfrost.

The locomotive hissed and vented steam like an angry dragon, the fireman and engineer agleam with scarlet light from the firebox as though stoking the furnaces of hell.

Zebulon Moss's reserved Pullman was hitched behind the tender, and he and the women had already boarded. Two gunmen, Silas Creeds easily recognized by his top hat and ankle-length coat, stood on guard at the door, their breaths steaming.

It had been Shawn's idea to give Moss's men a good look, figuring a veiled woman with her baby, an old geezer in buckskins, and a man who looked like a seedy office clerk would not alarm them. And he'd been right. Creeds had briefly glanced at the party under the lamp and then looked away, dismissing them as no account.

Thaddeus Lowth put his arm around Shawn's waist and spoke in a voice loud enough to be heard by the Moss gunmen. “Do you care to board now, my dear?”

Enraged, Shawn bit his tongue . . . but he nodded his agreement. He had a role to play, a bitter cup he must drain to the last humiliating drop. Besides that, he was anxious to get on the train where it was warm. Stripped down to his boots and long johns under the thin cotton dress, he was freezing to death.

His pants, shirt, and sheepskin were in what Lowth grandly called his “portmanteau,” and he wouldn't be reunited with them again until they reached Sonora—unless Moss planned an unscheduled stop along the way.

The train consisted of three cars and a dining car. Bringing up the rear was a boxcar and caboose. The locomotive was named The General Lee and that made Shawn more favorably inclined toward the Santa Fe railroad company. But as he and the others entered their carriage he knew he faced hours of jolting, sooty misery in a woman's dress that was bursting at the seams as it failed to contain his wide shoulders.

“Take the window seat, my love.” Lowth's voice pitched soft like a doting husband.

Only a few passengers were in the car and Shawn growled, “Don't say that again, Thaddeus. Not ever again.”

“He's right though,” Tweedy hissed. “Git in the corner by the window, pull your veil down, and for God's sake look small and frail.”

 

 

The train, lost in a vast land, hammered through the darkness on a narrow ribbon of frosted steel. The locomotive's great headlamp picked out random flakes of snow fluttering like moths around a flame. Iron wheels rattled like castanets and the passenger cars rocked on a track that was never quite level. The chimney spewed sparks into the air and belched smoke that found its way into every nook and cranny of the carriages.

Hunched and miserable, and holding the wet, hungry baby in his arms, Shawn was so relieved when Lowth said, “Give her to me, my dear, it's time I changed and fed her,” that he didn't get angry.

She stopped crying instantly when Lowth took her, as though babies and hangmen had a natural affinity, one for the other.

Shawn watched as Lowth fed the child and displayed gentleness that he figured must be unique in a man who broke necks for a living. He was about to mention it to Tweedy, but the words died on his lips as the car door slammed open and Silas Creeds, all hostility and arrogance, stepped inside and made his way along the passageway.

As part of his disguise Shawn carried a tapestry handbag on his lap. He slid his hand inside and his fingers closed on the Colt he'd taken from Rance Bohan's body. The revolver was short-barreled and handy and had been tuned by a gunsmith who knew his craft. Somewhere along the way Shawn had lost his .32, otherwise both revolvers would've been in the bag.

Creeds, his top hat at a jaunty angle that suggested the man had been drinking, made his jolting, swaying way toward the dining car. He had time to register the alarm in Tweedy's eyes and lurched to a halt, staring at Shawn for a moment. “Where you headed, little lady?”

Shawn kept his head bowed, the veil over his face. He kept his hand on the Colt, aware that a close-range gunfight in a railroad car was a recipe for disaster. There were only a dozen other passengers, but most of them would be in the line of fire and some would be hit.

Lowth answered quickly. “My lady wife is unwell, and dare not show her face.”

“She's got the pox,” Tweedy added.

“Is that so?” Creeds pushed his right hand into the pocket of his coat. “Well, I still want to see her face. It could be I have a place for her in my present business enterprise. You savvy?”

Lowth shook his head. “My dear sir, I'm afraid that is impossible. My wife is not feeling well and she has no head for business.”

“Pox or no, I want to see her. Now!” Creeds' eyes hardened to nail heads as he drew his Colt self-cocker and shoved the muzzle against the baby's head. “Now, or I scatter the brat's brains.”

“Damn you.” Tweedy gritted his teeth. “You're picking on a sick woman and a helpless child.”

“Shut your trap, pops,” Creeds ordered. “Well, does the kid get it?”

At that moment, a middle-aged respectable-looking man in a black wool coat lurched along the aisle, holding on to the back of seats for support. “Here,” he yelled at Creeds, “that won't do.”

Creeds waited unto the man was almost on top of him, then, without turning, he swung his arm and slammed the Colt against the side of the would-be rescuer's head. The respectable man went down hard and a moment later his hysterical wife kneeled beside him, his bleeding gray head in her lap.

“Creeds, damn you for a yellow-bellied coward!” Shawn cried, jumping to his feet, still wearing his flowered hat and veil. But there was nothing feminine about the blue Colt in his fist.

Creeds immediately thumbed back the hammer of the Lightning. “Drop the gun or I kill the kid, then his pa.”

“She's a girl, you know,” Lowth said, trying to defuse the situation a little.

“You, shut your trap.” Creeds ordered the hangman again while staring at Shawn. He nodded. “Well, make your choice or make your play.”

Shawn had only an instant to make up his mind. He knew with certainty that Creeds would kill the baby, then swing his gun and start shooting, but the appearance of two more Moss gunmen took the decision out of his hands. He saw them pick up the respectable man and throw him into a seat, followed by his wife.

“Drop it,” Creeds said, reading defeat in Shawn's slumped shoulders.

Shawn dropped the Colt onto the seat opposite him and Creeds said, “Now, take off the veil.”

Shawn tore off the hat, and Creeds' eyes widened in surprise. “Well, well, if'n it ain't Shawn O'Brien. You took to wearin' women's fixins?”

The other gunmen laughed and Shawn's anger flared. “Damn you, Creeds. If I'd had an even break with you, you'd be dead now.”

“Big talk comin' from a man dressed like a woman,” Creeds sneered. “And an ugly one at that.” He rammed a stiff finger into Tweedy's chest. “What the hell are you, old-timer?”

Tweedy lifted his hat an inch above his head. “Uriah Tweedy's the name, Silas, as ever was. I'm a bear hunter.”

“How did you get tied up with O'Brien?”

“Ol' Ephraim is sleeping away the winter, Silas, so young O'Brien hired me as a scout.”

“Not much scoutin' to be done on a train,” Creeds remarked dryly, swaying with the rhythm of the car.

“A truer word was never spoke, Silas,” Tweedy said. “But a hired man does what he's told.”

Shawn mentally cursed him for a traitorous dog.

“Who's he?” Creeds nodded at Lowth.

Tweedy opened his mouth to speak, but Creeds said, “Let him talk for himself.”

“My name is Thaddeus Lowth, a hangman by profession.”

“A hangman?” Creeds said, surprised.

“Yes indeed, and an honorable and ancient profession it is.”

“Hell, if you say so.” Creeds looked at Shawn and grinned. “The baby yours, ma'am?”

The two late-arriving gunman sat on opposite sides of the aisle, guns in their hands and smiles on their faces, enjoying the fun.

“You should know, Creeds,” Shawn said. “She belongs to the man you murdered along the trail.”

“Oh, him? He was damned uppity, tried to stop us taking his wife, pretty little thing that she is.” The gunman frowned. “I didn't see no kid back at the cabin.”

“She was there,” Shawn said. “You missed her.”

Creeds pulled down the baby's blanket with his gun and looked at her face. “Lucky, wasn't you, little girl? If Uncle Silas had found you, you'd be a dead baby right now.”

Shawn looked hard at the gunman. “Take the baby to her mother, Creeds.”

“Of course, O'Brien,” Creeds replied, his face ugly. “We're all going to see the baby's mother . . . and Uncle Zeb.” His thin lips pulled away from his yellow teeth. “We'll all have such fun.”

Then, through the silence that fell on the group, Creeds spoke again. “I'm going to kill you, O'Brien. Somewhere between here and Sonora I'll put a bullet in your head.” He grinned like a ravenous wolf. “Now you study on that.”

“You go to hell,” Shawn answered. But despite his defiance he knew he was in mortal danger.