Wraiths of the Broken Land (29 page)

“No,” said Dolores. “Not him too.”

“Goddamn them Mex’cans. Goddamn I hate ‘em!”

“How serious is the injury?” inquired the dandy.

“I can’t tell. He’s got blood on his head, but he’s holdin’ his horse like he’s conscious.” The distance between Patch Up and his eleven pursuers continued to widen. “And he’s only ‘bout four minutes out from the fort.”

Two miles south of the bleeding man, eleven riders poked twice as many bright white holes into the night. Shortly after the reports faded, the negro looked up from the mare’s neck and waved a gory hand at the inhabitants of the fort. There was no blood upon Patch Up’s head other than in his hair.

Brent’s dread abated. “Looks like they shot his hand. Maybe he got some blood in his hair on accident—scratching himself—but I don’t think they got his head.”

“Thank God,” said Dolores.

“I told you he’s comin out alive!” enthused Stevie.

Brent panned his spyglass east and observed the crew that pursued Patch Up. Mounted upon hale horses and wearing dark clothing were eleven armed men. “They’re never gonna catch up with—”

The foremost rider jerked back and spilled out of his saddle. Two men in brown suits guided their galloping mounts around the fallen individual, grabbed their necks, fell and slammed into the bucking heads of the two mustangs that were directly behind them. Concussed and overbalanced, the beasts tumbled forward and catapulted their riders into the air. The heads of three other men jerked back upon their necks, and moonlight glinted for half of a second upon the arrow shafts lodged in their nostrils.

Those who remained fired into the open terrain, reined their steeds in a tight circuit and rode back toward the woodlands. After emptying a revolver in all directions, the southernmost rider arched his back, fell from his saddle and rolled across the weeds. Arrows found the spines of the last two mounted men and knocked them down.

“Deep Lakes got ‘em,” announced Brent.

“Thank God.”

“I always liked the goddamn Indians.”

Hunching low in his saddle, Patch Up guided the black mare west, around the trench and toward the mountain wall.

Brent trained his spyglass upon the area in which the pursuers had fallen. One of the thrown riders, a pale fat man with a thick handlebar mustache and a dark green suit, stood up and reached for a gun no longer in his holster. Arrows pierced his right hand, left wrist and right kneecap. He shrieked and collapsed to the ground.

Fifty yards north of the injured and dead riders, Deep Lakes rose from a sinkhole and notched shafts.

“He’s gettin’ us a captive?” Brent asked Long Clay.

“Several.”

Beside the cowboy, the dandy shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing.

Patch Up hastened the black mare northwest, toward the mountain wall, and presently escaped Brent’s field of view.

“He rounded the edge of the trench,” the dandy announced, “and is now riding directly toward us.” The tattoo of the galloping hooves grew louder. “He is bleeding…rather significantly.”

“I’ll get him.” Brent pulled the strap of his gun over his shoulder, hastened to the western door, opened it wide and looked outside. The black mare cantered through the graveyard, toward the fort. Collapsed upon the beast’s back was Patch Up.

“No.”

Dolores asked, “Is he okay?”

“Patch Up!” Brent ran toward the black mare. “I’m comin’!” His vision blurred. “Hold on, hold on!”

“How is he?” Stevie shouted from within the fort.

As the cowboy reached the cantering horse, he felt an electric horror. The right side of the negro’s abdomen was covered with blood. For a moment, the world was still.

“Patch Up.” Brent gripped the injured man’s right shoulder. “I’m here. Wake up.”

“Get out of the open!” ordered Long Clay. “Now!”

Brent pulled the mare and its bleeding burden toward the sunken stable that was situated between the fort and the mountain wall.

Without raising his head from the neck of the black horse, the pudgy negro said, “There are at least sixty more…than what followed me out.”

“Okay.” Brent was unconcerned with the enemy right now. “How bad are y—”

“Put me alongside your father.” Patch Up wheezed.

“We’ll get you fixed.”

“You won’t. They shot me from the side…through the liver…and a kidney.” Patch Up gasped for air. “Put me…with your father. I want to be wherever he winds up.”

Brent cleared his throat. “We’ll put you two together.” It was hard to speak with a solid voice, but he knew that he could not break in front of the dying man. “I promise we will.”

“Thanks.” Patch Up grabbed Brent’s hand and squeezed it affectionately. “And tell Stevie that I intend to haunt him.”

“Okay.”

“Forever.”

“Okay.”

Presently, the cowboy pulled the mare down the log ramp that led into the stable. The beast’s hooves clopped loudly upon the wood, and the tattoo echoed up and down the mountain wall.

Brent asked, “Do you want me to put Plugford for your last name? On the tombstone?”

“I do.” Patch Up’s voice was almost inaudible. “Thanks.”

Brent tied the black horse beside the dandy’s tan mare, turned around and caught the falling man.

Patch Up was no longer breathing.

“Is he gonna make it?” Stevie asked from the fort. “He okay?”

Unable to speak, the cowboy laid down the negro’s body, removed the iron tabard and hurled it, angrily, as far as he could. The metal plates reflected moonlight, clanged to the ground and scraped across the stone. Startled horses whickered.

Brent hugged Patch Up to his chest.

“Is he okay?” Dolores’s question echoed across the mountain wall.

The cowboy put his arms underneath the dead man, raised him from the ground and walked up the log ramp, across grit, through the west door and into the fort. His siblings and the dandy turned their anxious faces toward him.

“He’s gone.”

“No!” Dolores yelled from her stool. “No!”

The dandy slapped his palm against the stone wall. “Damnation!”

Stevie discarded his rifle, ran across the enclosure and looked down at Patch Up. “I…I can’t believe it.” His eyes filled with moonlight. “I can’t believe it. I didn’t think…I didn’t think that he’d ever…ever…” He was unable to complete his sentence.

“Slide Pa over,” Brent said, “Patch Up wants to be next to him.”

Stevie nodded and went to the funereal bunk, where he was joined by Nathaniel. The two men slid the patriarch against the north wall, and Brent laid Patch Up beside the huge body. Without a word or a glance at anyone, the dandy walked away from the deceased.

Dolores gathered her crutches and hobbled beside her brothers.

To his siblings, Brent said, “He wants it to go Patch Up Plugford—on the tombstone.”

The redheaded woman patted the dead man’s hands. “It should.” Tears dripped from her chin. “That’s what he was.”

Stevie began to sob.

Brent hugged his little brother tightly to his chest. “He said he was gonna haunt you forever.”

“I hope...I hope he does it.” Stevie withdrew, grinned sadly, wiped his eyes, sniffed and walked back toward his slit.

The cowboy hugged his sister.

“Brent?” asked Dolores.

“Yeah?”

“We’re all gonna die out here, ain’t we?”

Before Brent was able to reply, Long Clay said, “Deep Lakes is bringing the hostages.”

“I’ll rip their hearts out!” proclaimed Stevie. “I’ll stomp their goddamn nuts and piss in—”

“You will listen to me,” the gunfighter warned, “or you’ll get another mark on your tally.”

Stevie grumbled.

Brent helped Dolores back to her stool and returned to his position on the south wall. “Patch Up saw sixty others—not even includin’ the ones we put down.”

Dolores and Stevie and the dandy were silent.

“Sixty men,” restated Long Clay.

“‘At least sixty’ were his words, exact precise,” clarified Brent.

Long Clay announced, “We need to go all the way mean.”

“Okay.”

“My pleasure!” proclaimed the youngest Plugford. “The meaner the better!”

“Stevie,” said Long Clay.

“Yessir.”

“Get a fire going in the potbelly stove.”

“Yessir.”

Stevie set his rifle upon its stock, leaned it to the wall and opened the tinderbox earlier placed beside the molten potbelly stove.

The dandy stared at the gunfighter.

“Mr. Stromler,” said Long Clay.

“Yes.” Nathaniel’s voice was hard with contempt.

“We’re outnumbered ten to one. Or perhaps the ratio is worse. We must be ruthless.”

“Do you intend to torture people?”

“If you can’t stomach mean business, you should leave. If you lodge one complaint, Stevie and Brent will throw you in the cell and lock the door until it’s all over. If you attempt to impede my tactics in any way, I will shoot you.”

“Long Clay’s got the reins,” affirmed Stevie. “He’s the tactician.”

The gunfighter eyed the dandy. “Will you follow my lead?”

“I will.” Nathaniel turned away and faced his slit.

“You’ve been warned.”

“I have.”

Long Clay looked meaningfully at Brent.

To the wraith that offered his dark services, the cowboy nodded.

The tall narrow man returned his gaze to his telescopic sight, and the moonlight captured within its lenses turned his right eye into an opalescent gem.

Chapter II
The End of Nathaniel Stromler

A match scratched and hissed. White light flared in the southeastern corner of the enclosure, turned orange, shrank and became an amber rectangle that was the opening of a potbelly stove. Wood shavings curled with serpentine life and crackled like a phonographic cylinder or a bowl of scorpions.

Nathaniel Stromler turned back to his west wall crenellation, looked outside and surveyed the cemetery in which tombstones and markers sprouted from the sere land like dull teeth. On the far side of the burial ground was the horse that carried the native, followed by a trio of steeds laden with blindfolded prisoners.

“Deep Lakes is thirty yards from the door,” announced the gentleman.

“Mind your words when the captives are in,” ordered Long Clay. “We don’t want them to know the size of our crew.”

“Understood,” said Nathaniel.

“Okay,” said the Plugfords.

Forty minutes before the first shot was fired, Nathaniel had crouched in the latrine and forced the last prickly scorpion through his bowels. Everything in his life, all of his relationships and hopes and ideals, had yielded to the agony of the bleeding orifice. He was a sweaty, unintelligent animal that was in intense pain, nothing more and he doubted it would be much easier for him to witness other people reduced to the same bestial state.

“Brent. Stromler,” said Long Clay. “Help Deep Lakes with the captives. Mind the blindfolds.”

“Okay,” said the cowboy.

The gentleman slung his weapon over his shoulder and found that his hands were shaking.

“Leave your rifle here,” said Brent. “Their hands’re tied, but you don’t wanna risk one of them grabbin’ no gun.”

Nathaniel set his rifle against the wall.

Brent pulled open the door and exited the fort.

The gentleman walked outside and felt the night—cool, vast and deadly—open up around his head. The halved moon was magnified by a thick gray cloudbank, upon which he saw an electric blue thread that was either distant lightning or a flaw in his retina.

Five yards away, Deep Lakes reined his purloined colt to a halt, leaped from the saddle, slung his strange bow and walked to the trio of horses that he had trailed. He grabbed the ankles of two captives and pulled. The men thudded against the ground and were dragged toward the fort like sacks of bad potatoes that were about to be turned into fertilizer.

Brent pointed to a redheaded man who wore a pinstriped brown suit and had arrows in his chest and right shoulder. “Grab that one.” Like all of the captives, the individual was blindfolded and had his wrists bound together.

Nathaniel slid his arms underneath the injured man’s back, heaved him from the horse and grunted.

“Draggin’ is easier,” remarked the cowboy.

While carrying the redheaded man toward the fort, the feathers of embedded arrows waggled in front of the gentleman man’s nose and elicited a sneeze.

Nathaniel entered the edifice and laid his burden upon the floor, beside a stout Mexican who had a boyish face and the triumphant individual who had exclaimed, “¡Triunfo!” in both Castillo Elegante and the crimson stagecoach. Brent indelicately dropped his captive, a heavy fellow with a dark green suit and a thick handlebar mustache, next to the redheaded man, and Deep Lakes dragged the last hombre, who wore a black vaquero outfit decorated with silver fringes, across the stone until he laid alongside his peers. The amber glow of the potbelly stove shone obliquely upon the five bound and blindfolded men, only two of whom appeared to be conscious.

It was clear to Nathaniel that he could not remain indoors while the torturous endeavors occurred. “I shall wait outside,” he said as he walked toward the west wall.

“Stay here,” ordered Long Clay. “I need you to translate.”

Nathaniel silently cursed.

Brent closed the west door.

To the brothers, the gunfighter said, “Watch the perimeters.”

“Okay.” Brent and Stevie returned to their slits.

Long Clay knelt beside the redheaded man and slapped his face.

“Don’t!” protested the bound and blindfolded captive.

“How many men are in your posse?”

“A…a lot. We’ve got a big crew.” The man’s accent indicated that he was from the Midwest.

Long Clay swatted the man’s throat. “Give me a number. If it doesn’t match what the other captives say, I’ll cut off your right hand.”

The Midwesterner paled. “Uh…um…ninety, I believe.”

A terrible dread flooded throughout Nathaniel’s body. For the second time in two days, he was hopeless.

“Goddamn,” muttered Stevie.

Dolores lowered her head, and Brent spat through his slit.

“Some horses got sick after we went through your campsite,” the Midwesterner added, “and a few men too.”

“Why’re you out here?” asked Long Clay.

“I’m friends with Diego and Rosalinda. Was.”

“Who’re they?”

“Gris’s son and daughter-in-law. Good, kind people that you folks murdered when you robbed Catacumbas.”

Irked, Brent spun around. “We didn’t rob that damn place or kill one woman.”

“The pregnant woman,” the Midwesterner said, “the one that the tall man shot in the hand, she went into shock and bled to death. And her little baby died too.”

Long Clay seemed unaffected by the news that he had killed a pregnant woman and her child. “Are you close with Gris’s family?”

“I…I know them.” The Midwesterner’s voice was weak.

The gunfighter looked at the cowboy. “This one goes on the wall.”

At that moment, Nathaniel knew that Long Clay was the most immoral man he had ever known, and the single most odious individual on either side of this battle, including Gris himself.

The gunfighter knelt beside the only other conscious man, the stout Mexican with the boyish face, and inquired, “Do you speak English?”

“No Ingles.” The fellow seemed very proud of this fact. “Soy Mejicano verdadero.”

Long Clay looked over at Nathaniel. “Ask him how he’s connected to Gris.”

The gentleman restated the inquiry in Spanish.

A moment later, the boyish Mexican replied.

Nathaniel said, “He was hired by a third party to join the posse and does not personally know Gris.”

“Perfect.” The gunfighter looked at the native. “Separate this one from the other four. He’s the messenger.”

Deep Lakes grabbed the boyish Mexican by the left ankle and dragged him toward the west door.

Long Clay looked at Stevie. “Put five iron stakes into the stove. Just the tips.”

“Gladly.”

Nathaniel’s skin tingled.

Stevie opened a green crate that was beside the table, grabbed five stakes, set their points into the luminous amber interior of the potbelly stove and returned his right eye to the telescopic sight above the gunfighter’s rifle.

Long Clay looked at Brent. “Strip these four naked.”

“Okay.”

Queasy, Nathaniel walked toward the door.