Storm's Thunder (20 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The three other riders fall in behind the colonel-major, and mixed in among their various garments of army dress are pieces of clothing I recognize—a brown linen jacket, a white collarless shirt, now splattered with blood, and sturdy field boots. The three of them have divided, and now wear, George's clothes. The bannerman revels in showing off his new boots, smiling at the ball player. But George remains unmoved, staring stone-faced, as he had been, out toward the horizon. A soldier comes running up from the direction of the train, waving to get the colonel-major's attention and pointing, very clearly, at me.

“That one's got money! I seen it.” His kepi, dark with sweat, sits back on his head. The nervous face I encountered moments before the explosion has given way to fiendish delight at the chance to earn favor with the colonel-major. I step back and feel the barrel of the four-ten against my spine. The kepi scout runs over, the horseman advancing behind him—all attention on me now. “He was splashing coin all over the Harvey House. It's there, in them pockets,” Kepi Scout jabbing a finger at my coat.

Eagle Feather closes in on my right, barrel leveled at my chest. I think about the pistol in my trousers—not drawing it—but keeping it safe, for the right moment, a moment that has not yet come.

“Search him,” the colonel-major says. Eagle Feather pulls a knife and slashes at the fabric of the coat. I raise my hands and press my shoulder blades back and let the jacket slip off the shoulders. The sergeant does the rest, stripping it off my arms and flinging the jacket forward. Eagle Feather and Kepi tear at it like dogs after a bone. The lining rips from the inside and coins rain down from the pockets, until every penny I own—over a thousand dollars—shimmers on the ground.

“Whoa, daddy. Pay dirt!” Kepi drops to his knees, plucking the coins from the crystalline sand as Eagle Feather shakes the shredded jacket empty. Bandits appear from all sides and soon the ground crawls in a mass of stolen blue. “I told you it was smart to put me on board. Reconnoitered the whole dang lot of 'em, I did. That's right.”

“Turn your pockets out,” the colonel-major says. The four-ten digs a little deeper into my spine.

“And do it easy,” the sergeant's breath blowing warm and sour down my neck, “less you looking to get cut half-sized.” I move slow hands down to the trousers and gently pull out the front pockets. Kepi waddles over, still on his knees. He slaps my hands away and feels through the fabric with curious fingers. I catch sight of Spooner and only now do I see that his pockets lay inside out, already fleeced, like flags of surrender. Same with Owens and the rest. My inspection, I reckon, was only delayed by their thinking I was dead. I feel something fall.

“A dollar . . . stick of gum . . . and what's this here?” Kepi rising to his feet, a greasy pistol cartridge pinched in his grip.

“Check his boots,” Colonel-Major says, irritation in his voice. “You shoulda done that already.”

“Yeah, you shoulda done that,” Kepi making the grievous error of echoing the reprimand at the sergeant standing to my rear. A fist shoots out from behind me and lands square against the young Kepi's nose, standing him upright. The sergeant moves around me and smashes the barrel of the four-ten down onto the young man's head. The Crazy Dazers, to a man, erupt in grotesque laughter as the young Kepi, teary-eyed, staggers backward, blood pouring from his nose.

“Boy, you take a tone with me again, I'll tie your guts 'round your neck and hang you from a tree.”

“Jesus, Lon,” the boy's voice quivering, “I was only repeating what Craw said.”

The colonel-major hears this, all humor draining from his face. I know what's coming and have no faith that he won't miss, but if I break, the shotgun ends me. I tense and lower my weight into my legs, ready to spring. The colonel-major draws a long pistol just as the boy's eyes go wide, realizing what he's done.

“No!” the boy turning, arms raised, pleading. The colonel-major fires. A woman screams. The shot blows through the boy's hand before hitting his chest. He slumps to the ground, life already drained from him. The laughter stops.

“No names, I said.”

But I heard the names, two of them,
Lon
shadowing me with the four-ten—
Lonnie
to his momma, I'll wager. And
Craw
—the colonel-major himself. What kind of name is Craw? I burn them both into my memory with a white-hot iron and vow to survive this day. I won't die by their hands, not after what I lived through in the Sangres. Or in the Bend, or even today on the grade. I will live to die a more noble death than what these marauding bastards can come up with. And if they kill Storm, if they harm the stallion in any way, I will track them down with the full-blooded skill of the Diné. But when I find them, it will be the White Man's vengeance—the kind with a long memory and no sense of proportion—that cuts them open and watches them bleed. Such is the benefit when white and red run together in the same vein.

“You,” the sergeant—Lon—barking to a stray Dazer still on his knees, pilfering the last of my gold. “Get over here, finish checking him.” The bandit crawls over and I gaze straight ahead as his hands wander down into my boots, kneading the leather, and then up each leg. He can't bring himself to lay his paws on my business and I betray nothing, just staring out into the arroyo until he relays the findings.

“He's clean.”

Sergeant Lon shoves me downward, driving a knee into the back of my spine to hasten the descent. “Sit your ass down and keep it there. You know we ain't playing now.” I go down without protest or catching the eye of anyone who might take it as a challenge. As Lon moves around me I catch from him the strong odor of burnt wood—not charred planks of trestle—but fresh-cut pine. The strangeness of it, out of place in the high desert, sits funny with me. The handful of Dazers picking over the money rise and carry what they've found over to the bannerman, who holds open a sack nearly half-stuffed already with cash and coin.

But even so, the size of the booty bears no proportion to the enormity of the caper. Nearly a hundred souls lay dead already, with four score or more entombed in the Pullman. Such carnage hardly seems worthwhile for a few thousand dollars. And considering the manpower of the team—I've counted twenty-two, so far—the final haul, per Dazer, wouldn't equal much more than a good night at the poker table. It just don't make sense.

“Here they come now,” says the rider in George's coat. By his place on horseback, and his proximity to the leader, I make him for the colonel-major's second-in-command. I even detect a resemblance in their jawline and squarish features. Brothers again.

Always with the brothers. Good or bad, I have about run out of patience for
bilagáana
fraternity. I don't know what it is about the frontier that breeds trouble among male kinfolk. More than likely, the seeds of trouble were there to begin with, but then, once migrated to the frontier, flowered in its lawless opportunities. In the Sangres, I fought side-by-side with three brave Germans—Frey was the family name. But short of them, most sets of brothers I come across find a reason to have a problem with me, and those problems put many of them in the ground.

* * *

A mule labors up from the front of the train, dragging a travois, accompanied by a handful of Dazers who take great pains to keep the animal from losing its cargo. As slow as the mule moves, an even slower parade lags behind. Two Dazers push a reluctant prisoner up along the wrecked train toward the awaiting colonel-major and his horsemen.

I find myself unattended during the distraction and shimmy over toward Owens and fall in between him and Ballentine, the three of us shielding our conspiracy by never looking directly at anyone or anything.

“I heard the name Craw,” I say.

“I'm thinking short for Crawford, maybe,” Owen picking up the thread.

“Back home, we had a Crawley, so I made that assumption,” Spooner chiming in. “Although I'm starting to think the commander's commission is of spurious pedigree.”

“They's phonies, all of them.” Owens says. “They ain't army, least not anymore. No, it's the Crazy Dazers, stake my life on it.”

“Don't say that!” Clara May's voice—her name coming to me—sizzles in admonition. “You trying to get yourselves killed?”

“It's all right, darling,” Owens quieting her. “They don't want us dead.”

“I'm inclined to agree,” Spooner says, “But I wish I knew what it is they want.”

I can see from here what they want. The answer's being drug behind that mule.

“Money,” I say. The others turn and notice the heavy black cube weighting down the travois. “In that safe, there.”

“My. Not very big, is it?” Spooner taken by the object's diminutive size, no bigger than a steamer trunk.

“No,” I say, remembering the riches confined to a small space in Garber's office. “But you stuff it with gold, you can fit half the army's pay in there.”

“So that's it,” Owens marveling. “All this for one lousy safe.”

The Apache, standing over Skip's body, wipes the blood from his knife on the dead man's hair, then looks over at the approaching captive. Annoyed by the prisoner's slow progress, the Apache leaps onto his horse, bolts over and snatches him from his Dazer escorts. The once dignified Pinkerton expressman—dressed waist up in only his tattered shirtsleeves, hands bound behind his back—looks like a bomb went off in front of his face. His white hair stands straight up in all directions, giving the Apache an easy handle as he grabs a fistful and canters the man—feet struggling to keep him upright—over to the others. The Apache stops abruptly and flings the expressman down into the dirt at the colonel-major's feet.

The safe arrives atop the travois a few moments later.

“Children, you keep your eyes closed now,” Owens voice soothing into prescience of things to come. “You too, Clara May.” The men unload the safe from the travois and stand it upright, with the lock plate facing the Pinkerton.

“Here's what's gonna happen,” Craw says to the expressman, but loud enough to make it a show for all in attendance—the luxury of time again. “You're gonna spit out the numbers for that there strongbox, or you're gonna spit out what's left of your teeth one by one.”

The expressman can't shake the stunned look on his face and gives no assurance that he understands. Then I squint, and in the dying sun, make out the puddles of deep red pooling in his ears.

The second blast deafened him so hard his drums burst. The colonel-major might as well be speaking Diné, but that hardly matters. Any expressman standing against his will in front of the safe he's sworn to protect knows damn well what's being asked of him. The only variable is his tolerance for pain. The colonel-major nods to his second and the man in George's coat swings down and puts himself square in the face of the Pinkerton.

“Feed me them numbers,” the second pointing to the dial, then back to the Pinkerton. “Feed me them numbers for the safe, I says.”

“Feel you? I can't hear nothing. Feel you what?” The expressman yelling as if separated by the length of a barn.

“No
, feed
. . . aw, you blitherin' idjut. Just tell me the damn numbers.” To make his point he spins the dial hard to the right. “Now you tell me where to stop.”

“Never!” The Pinkerton defiant.

The Apache, his fuse ever shortening, jumps down from his horse and moves in behind the expressman. He raises his club and swings it down, over the top, onto the Pinkerton's collarbone, dropping him to his knees.

“Damn you to hell, ya bastard,” the Pinkerton howling. He collapses onto his side, trying to get past the worst of the pain.

“Too bad the 'pache don't believe in hell,” the man in George's coat says. “If he did, he'd probably gut you for that. Now tell me where to stop.” The Pinkerton rolls onto his knees again, steadying his breath. He manages a look and sees the second spinning the dial once more. He shakes his head.

“You can't do it. I gotta do it. The dial is . . . particular.”

An uneasy quiet over the scene, the Dazers unsure of what comes next. But it won't be good. I learned a thing or two from the greatest safe man of all time, and even the Snowman himself would defer to the pointlessness of trying to work the dial on a time-lock safe—the kind that only spreads her legs once a day—at a preset hour—which I strongly doubt is now. The second in command looks to his brother. Craw thinks a moment, grimacing, then nods toward the Pinkerton.

“Cut him free.”

The Apache, eager for any use of blade or club, steps in and slices the cord that binds the Pinkerton. I feel Owens's head inch toward mine.

“It's a time-lock.”

“I know.”

“Pinkerton damn well knows it too. All he's gonna do is get them angry, get us all killed.”

I agree with Owens. Only thing opening that door is dynamite—a tool for which the Dazers have not shown much subtlety or precision. The Pinkerton expressman rolls his wrists, limbering the joints. His right arm stays mostly straight, down by his side. I suspect his collarbone is broke, rendering the arm useless as he shuffles up to the safe. The Apache and the second pull in close beside him, the second watching his turning hand, the Apache eyeing the rest.

“Get back from it,” the second admonishing, “I need to see what you're doing.”

“I ain't got my spectacles,” the Pinkerton says, his face mere inches from the numbered dial. The colonel-major moves over on his horse, the whole scene shrinking to the tiniest of stages against the vast backdrop of the Malpais.