The big gundown (15 page)

Blood spurted across the table and the remains of the meal as Dunbar screamed and lurched violently forward in his chair. Micah Terhune yelled, “Damn!” as he, Devlin, and Cranston sprang out of their chairs.

The Kid didn’t move, his iron will holding him still. It was already too late for him to do anything for Dunbar.

Colonel Black jerked the saber free. Dunbar thrashed around in his chair, pawing at the hideous wound in his neck as blood continued to gush from it. Black set himself and swung the saber again. This time the keen edge of the blade caught Dunbar on the back of the neck and sank deep, grating against bone as the impact of the blow knocked Dunbar forward onto the table.

Black pulled the saber loose and raised it over his head still holding it with both hands. Dunbar’s frantic struggles were getting more feeble as his panic-stricken heart pumped more and more blood out of his body through the gashes in his neck.

“Hold still now,” Colonel Black said mildly, as if he were admonishing a child.

With a grunt of effort, he brought the saber down in a sweeping blow. The Kid heard the grotesque rasping sound as the blade sheared through Dunbar’s spine. Black chopped with the saber twice more, cutting through muscle and skin, and finally Dunbar’s head rolled free of his body, which flopped backward into the chair and sat there, arms dangling at its sides, as more blood bubbled slowly from the severed neck.

“Son of a
bitch,”
Terhune whispered into the silence that followed.

Blood had splattered all over the table in front of Dunbar’s corpse, as well as the chair where his body sat and the floor around it. If the men across the table from him hadn’t jumped back, it would have covered them, too. As it was, this fancy dining room had taken on the look and smell of a charnel house.

Black turned and held his crimson-smeared saber out to Lopez, who stepped forward and took it calmly. “Clean that,” Black said.

“Sí, Colonel.”

“You have the papers I gave you earlier?”

“Of course.” Lopez produced them and handed them to Black.

That would be the letter and the map the colonel had mentioned a few minutes earlier, before the slaughter began, The Kid thought. Black rolled them up and inserted them into a small metal tube he took from his pocket. He screwed the cap onto the tube, then stepped over to the table and reached out to take hold of Dunbar’s severed head. He turned it so that he could shove the metal tube into Dunbar’s mouth, hammering it home with his fist. The Kid heard teeth shattering, but Dunbar was way past feeling it.

“There,” Black said with satisfaction in his voice. “It’s much more efficient this way, I think. Lopez will place the head in a small crate, and you’ll deliver it to Titusville, Captain Devlin.”

“Me?” The word was a startled yelp as it came from Devlin’s mouth.

Black’s face suddenly hardened. “Are you questioning my orders, Captain?”

At that moment, Devlin, along with everybody else in the room, was probably thinking the same thing The Kid was: how much like Satan himself Colonel Gideon Black had looked as he stood there chopping Dunbar’s head off with a saber. With the blood flying and the insane gleam in his eyes, all Black had needed to complete the image were the flames of Hell leaping up around him and giggling, inhuman imps capering at his feet.

“No, sir,” Devlin said. “I’m not questioning your orders at all. I’ll sure take that box to Titusville for you. You want me to give it to Edward Sheffield?”

“No, you don’t have to put it in Sheffield’s hands yourself. You’ve been a fine second in command, Captain. I don’t want to risk losing you. Just take the crate into town, find someone who looks dependable, and pay them to deliver it to the mining company office. I’m sure that’s where Sheffield will be, if he’s not out searching futilely for our trail, which he’ll never find without our assistance.”

“Which…we’re going to give him?” Devlin sounded like he didn’t fully understand.

“Of course. We want Sheffield to come here. That’s why I’m sending him a map.”

Cranston said, “But if he knows where we are, won’t he just go to the law, or even the army, and get them to help him?”

Black shook his head. “No, because my letter will make it clear to him that he will be under observation, and that if he involves any outsiders, he’ll never see his wife alive again.” The colonel smiled. “Once he sees that his faithful clerk, Dunbar, was actually working for me, he won’t know who to trust. He’ll see enemies everywhere, and that’s exactly how I want him to feel. I want him to know that his wife is in the hands of a madman, and that the only possible way to save her is to do everything that I tell him, exactly as I tell him. He’s under
my
command now.”

The Kid felt a chill go through him as he listened to Black. He realized suddenly that the appalling display of violence he had just witnessed wasn’t completely the act of a lunatic. Beheading Dunbar had been a calculated act on Black’s part, intended to make Sheffield think that he was crazy.

Of course, a man really would have to be loco to come up with something like that. Whether Black believed it was a pose or not, his insanity was the real thing.

The Kid thought he could risk a question. “What is it you’re demanding of Sheffield, Colonel?”

Black turned toward him. “That he bring me all the gold and silver ore currently on hand at the mine and at his offices. Also that he sign over to me all of his mining, rail, and other financial interests. When he delivers the ore and those documents to me, I’ll turn Gloriana over to him.”

“Do you really think he’ll give up his entire fortune to save his wife?”

Black slashed a hand through the air. “Of course not. But he’ll pretend to go along with me, thinking that he can double cross me the same way he did before. He’ll bring the papers with him. He may even give them to me. But then he’ll try to kill me…and I’ll kill him instead. Then Gloriana will be mine, along with everything else he owns, just as I predicted.”

“That won’t stand up in court.”

“I believe it will, because there won’t be any witnesses to claim that the transfers of ownership were coerced. Sheffield will be dead, and so will any of those hired guns he brings with him.”

“What about people back in Titusville? Everybody in town will hear about that severed head with the note in its mouth. That note will be evidence, and so will the head itself.”

“I appreciate you playing devil’s advocate, as it were, Lieutenant,” Black said, “but I assure you, it’s not necessary. I’ve considered every aspect of this strategy, and I’m confident of its success.”

The Kid realized then that he was looking at this all wrong. He was considering Black’s plan from the standpoint of logic and reason…and those things no longer had any place in the colonel’s brain. Black believed it would work because he
wanted
it to work. That was all he needed.

The Kid glanced at the other men in the room. Devlin, Cranston, and Terhune had to have figured out for themselves by now that their leader was out of his mind. Why the hell were they going along with Black’s crazy scheme?

The answer burst on The Kid’s brain. The other members of the gang didn’t
care
if Black’s quest for vengeance on Edward Sheffield worked or not. They didn’t give a damn about Sheffield or Glory. They had stolen several ore shipments from the train, and they had looted an entire town. They already had a fortune salted away somewhere in this stronghold. The only reason they were still playing along was because they wanted the rest of the ore. Once they had it, they would probably double cross and abandon the colonel.

The Kid couldn’t bring himself to feel too bad about that. Whatever happened to Black, it wouldn’t be as bad as what he should have coming to him.

But The Kid still had Glory’s safety to think about, as well as his own. He had no doubt that Sheffield would show up with a small army of hired guns led by Phil Bateman. Colonel Black was planning an ambush, but even so, there would still be fighting. Glory could get in the way of a stray bullet. There was also the risk that once Black was dead, his so-called “soldiers” would take off for the tall and uncut, taking Glory with them as a hostage. The Kid wanted to prevent that.

The best way for him to accomplish that goal, he realized, was to see to it that he and Glory got out of there before all hell broke loose.

That was going to take some time and planning. It wouldn’t be easy, with that heavily guarded wall and gate, plus the whole gang being holed up in the compound. He and Glory couldn’t just waltz out, The Kid thought, nor could he shoot their way out against odds like that.

They would need a distraction, or another way to escape.

Luckily, he had some time to work on the problem, because Black turned to Devlin and went on, “It’ll take you until sometime tonight to reach Titusville with your…delivery…Captain. Sheffield won’t be able to gather his forces and get back here until late tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest. That will give the men time to rest before the next engagement. Set up a guard schedule that takes that into account.”

Devlin nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“While you’re gone, Captain Terhune, Captain Cranston, Lieutenant Morgan, and I will work out the details of the reception we’ll give Sheffield and his men when they get here.”

That was good news, The Kid thought. If he knew the details of Black’s plan, it would be easier to circumvent it.

“On your way now, Captain,” Black continued. He sighed. “I wish I could be there to see Sheffield’s face when he opens the package I’m sending him. I’m sure it will be a most pleasing reaction.” He looked around the others. “For now, you’re all dismissed.”

Cranston and Terhune started toward the door. The Kid followed them, but he paused when Black added, “Oh, Lieutenant?”

The Kid looked back over his shoulder. “Sir?”

“I suspect you’d like to take a look around the compound. Don’t be gone long, though. We’ll have work to do this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” The Kid said.

He left the house-under-the-cliff with Cranston and Terhune, but once they were outside in the compound, the two outlaws suddenly stopped and turned to face him. They didn’t look too friendly. The Kid glanced around. Some of the other members of the gang were converging on them, and he wondered if this had been planned or if the other men sensed that something was about to happen and were simply curious.

“Something wrong?” The Kid asked coolly.

“Yeah,” Terhune replied in a harsh voice. “You’re what’s wrong, Morgan. You come outta nowhere, you kill some of our partners, and now the boss makes you his aide, for God’s sake! It ain’t right!”

Cranston added, “You have to admit it’s a mite unusual, Morgan.”

The Kid shrugged. “I figure the colonel knows what he’s doing. Anyway, he’s in charge, isn’t he? Like Devlin said, if Colonel Black wants us to work together, we need to work together.”

“Oh, we’ll do what the colonel says, I reckon,” Terhune said, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t find out a little more about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Just what sort of hombre you are. We know everybody else in the bunch is plenty tough.”

“I don’t need to remind you of what happened when you attacked the train,” The Kid pointed out.

Cranston shook his head. “That could have been luck. We have to be sure of you, Morgan.”

“How do you intend to go about that?”

Terhune grinned. “Like this,” he said.

He lowered his head and tackled The Kid, ramming into him so hard that Morgan was driven off his feet and came crashing down on his back.

The attack took Morgan by surprise, and the weight of the beefy Terhune landing on top of him drove all the air out of his lungs. His head bounced hard off the ground and made stars spiral around in front of his eyes. For a couple of seconds, all he could do was lie there, stunned and gasping for breath.

Then he felt Terhune move and realized that the man was about to lift a knee into his groin. His instincts took over as his hips writhed off the ground and twisted to the side. Terhune’s knee jabbed into his thigh. That was painful enough, but a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

Self-preservation made The Kid lash out with his left fist. It glanced off Terhune’s head just above the right ear. Terhune reached for The Kid’s throat and closed his fingers around it, clamping down hard and cutting off what little air Morgan had managed to suck back into his body.

Knowing that he would pass out if Terhune choked him for more than a few seconds, The Kid continued trying to hammer blows to the outlaw’s head. Terhune hunched his shoulders, drawing his head down so that The Kid’s fists just skidded off his skull and didn’t do any damage.

Desperation made The Kid cup his hands and slap them hard against Terhune’s ears. He had learned that move back in college, and Terhune howled in pain and loosened his grip enough for The Kid to get his arms between Terhune’s arms and tear the outlaw’s fingers away from his neck.

The Kid hauled in a breath, then locked both hands behind Terhune’s neck and jerked the man’s head down. At the same time, he raised his head off the ground, tucking in his chin so that the top of his skull smashed into the middle of Terhune’s face. Terhune cried out again as blood spurted hotly from his pulped nose. The Kid shoved him hard to the left and rolled to the right, putting some distance between the two of them.

Still gasping and wheezing, The Kid pushed himself onto his hands and knees and came unsteadily to his feet. He was just in time to see Cranston lunging at him, swinging a mallet-like fist. The Kid tried to get out of the way but was too late. Cranston’s punch caught him in the jaw and sent him staggering back.

Knowing that if he went down again, he might never get up, The Kid fought to keep his balance. Cranston rushed him, a confident grin on his handsome face as he threw another looping punch. The Kid ducked under it, stepped in closer, and hooked a right into Cranston’s belly. The outlaw’s breath huffed out of his mouth. The Kid hit him with a hard left to the heart. Cranston’s face turned gray.

Conrad Browning had been on the boxing team in college, so he knew quite a bit about the art and science of pugilism. But Frank Morgan had taught him how to fight for his life, and those were the lessons that stood The Kid in such good stead. He hooked a foot behind one of Cranston’s calves and jerked hard, sweeping the outlaw’s feet out from under him. Cranston went down, landing hard on his back. When he tried to get up, The Kid hit him again, and that time, Cranston stayed on the ground.

He heard a rush of footsteps behind him and whirled to see Terhune charging him. The lower half of the man’s face was covered with blood from his broken nose. The Kid darted out of the way, grabbed Terhune’s shirt as he went by, and used the outlaw’s own momentum against him as he heaved hard on Terhune’s shirt. With a startled yell, Terhune lost control of himself and plunged forward, tripping and plowing up dirt with his face as he hit the ground. The Kid closed in, ready to kick Terhune in the head if necessary to keep the man down, but when Terhune tried to get up, he groaned and collapsed, then didn’t move again. He was out cold.

Chest heaving and pulse pounding in his head, The Kid stood there and looked around at the other men, wondering if any of them were going to attack him next.

Instead, he heard the sound of two hands clapping lazily behind him. He turned and saw Colonel Black coming toward him, a smile on his face.

“Excellent, Lieutenant,” Black said. “One of the best fights I’ve seen in a long time. And quite impressive. You had a certain amount of luck on your side, I’d say, but no one defeats men as capable as Captains Terhune and Cranston solely by way of luck. You handled yourself very well.”

“You…you set this up,” The Kid managed to get out.

“I wanted to be sure that I had chosen correctly when I picked you to be my aide, yes,” Black agreed. “And the captains were more than happy to help me. They wanted to take your measure, Lieutenant. I daresay every man here felt the same way.”

The Kid glanced around, saw some of the other outlaws nodding.

“And what’s the decision?” he snapped.

“You’re good enough to be one of us,” Black said. “I didn’t really doubt it, but it’s nice to have my judgment confirmed.”

“Fine.” The Kid looked around, spotted his hat lying on the ground where it had fallen off when Terhune tackled him. He picked it up, slapped it against his leg to get some of the dust off, and put it on. He ached all over from the pounding he had taken, but he wasn’t going to let Black or any of the other outlaws see that.

“Why don’t you come back inside?” Black suggested. “The dining room has been cleaned and returned to normal. It looks like you have some cuts and scrapes that ought to be taken care of.”

The Kid started to shrug and insist that he was fine, but then he realized that there was no point in such false bravado. “All right,” he said.

Black led him back into the house and turned him over to Señora Lopez, instructing her to tend to The Kid’s injuries. She nodded stolidly and sat him down at the now empty dining room table. She went to the kitchen and Black left through the front of the house, which meant that The Kid was alone in there for the moment.

He didn’t know how long Señora Lopez was going to be gone, but he thought he ought to take advantage of the opportunity to have a look around. He stood up and moved along the wall, running his hand over the adobe. Something about it struck him as wrong.

A soft footstep just outside the room made him move back quickly to the chair where he had been sitting. Instead of Señora Lopez, Elena came into the room carrying a tray with a basin of water and a cloth on it.

“Señor Morgan?” she said.

“Right here.”

She smiled and started toward him. “I thought I heard you sit down.” She came to a stop in front of him and set the tray on the table just as easily as she would have if she could see. “Señora Lopez said you were injured.”

“Just some bruises and scrapes,” The Kid said. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

“I will clean them.” She reached out and unerringly touched his face. “Let me feel you.”

Her fingers were cool and smooth and soft, and as they moved over his face, The Kid felt some of the tension draining from him. Even when she touched the sore spots, the hurt was a good one.

Elena kept one hand on his face and used the other to get the cloth wet. She wiped it gently over his skin, which soothed him even more.

“You are a good man, Señor Morgan,” she whispered. “I can tell it from your face. What are you doing here with these monsters?”

The Kid was surprised that she would say such a thing. She didn’t know him. For all she knew, he would tell Colonel Black what she had said, and she might be punished. She couldn’t tell what kind of man he was just from touching his face…could she?

She leaned closer to him. “Help me,” she breathed. “Help me get away from here. Please, Señor Morgan. The men here…they are evil.”

She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. But was she being truthful with him?

Or was this just another test, like the attack on him by Cranston and Terhune? Was Colonel Black using Elena to find out if he could be trusted not to betray the gang?

But as The Kid looked up into Elena’s sightless eyes, he knew he didn’t have to worry about that. There was nothing on her face except fear, and perhaps a little hope. The Kid had heard it said that the eyes were the windows to the soul, but even though Elena’s eyes were blank, he could tell there was no treachery in her soul.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Take me away from here. I will go with you, do anything you want, if only you will take me away.” Her fingers grazed softly over his cheek.

“I don’t know how I can do that.”

“There is a way,” she said.

The Kid felt his pulse quicken. Elena sounded mighty sure about that. The Kid hadn’t seen any way out, not without fighting against odds so heavy that they meant certain death.

“What way?” he asked.

“I can trust you?” She caught her breath. “
Aii,
what a foolish question. I know I can trust you. Did I not feel it in your face?”

The Kid didn’t know about that. He wanted to reassure her, so he said quietly, “Yes, Elena, you can trust me. I give you my word I won’t betray anything you reveal to me.”

“In that case…” She set the damp cloth aside and held out her hand. The Kid took it. “I will show you.”

He stood up, and she led him over to the wall he had been exploring earlier. His instincts had told him there was something unusual about it. Now he saw what it was as she felt along the wall until she came to one of the support beams. She rested the palm of her hand against it and pushed. The beam, to The Kid’s surprise, moved slightly. He heard a faint click.

A section of the wall swung out an inch or so, released by the latch he had heard. Elena slid her fingers into the gap and opened the door even more.

“There are stairs,” she said. “They lead to the top of
El Cráneo Rojo.”

The Kid leaned closer to the opening. The light from the lamps in the dining room penetrated far enough so that he could see a narrow staircase, carved out of the stone of the cliff itself, spiraling up into the darkness. Excitement made his heart slug harder in his chest.

“These stairs go all the way to the top, you say?”

“Sí. Many years ago, before the colonel and his men came, before even the Apaches came to this land, others lived here under the cliff, and they carved these steps so they would have a way to escape from their enemies if they needed to. In the end it did not help. Those old ones are gone now. But the stairs remain.”

She was right, The Kid thought. The stairs had an air of antiquity about them, as if they had lurked there unseen behind the wall for centuries. He didn’t know anything about those old ones she mentioned, but he felt a surge of gratitude toward them. The hidden stairs were just what he needed.

“Do you know where Señora Sheffield is being held?” he asked.

“Señora Sheffield?”

“The redhaired woman,” The Kid said, then realized that description would mean nothing to Elena. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think—”

“Do not worry, Señor Morgan. I have never had my sight, so I do not miss it. Are you talking about the colonel’s lady?”

“He’d like for her to be,” The Kid said, “but she’s actually married to someone else.”

Elena’s lips pursed in disapproval. “I told you the colonel was an evil man. He speaks well, but he does many terrible things.”

Remembering what had happened to Dunbar earlier, The Kid knew she sure as hell was right about that.

“I know in which room the woman is being kept,” Elena continued. “Why do you need to know?”

“We have to take her with us,” The Kid said.

A slight frown creased Elena’s otherwise smooth, golden forehead. “Why? Is-is she something special to you, Señor Morgan?”

Was that a hint of jealousy he heard in her voice? The Kid didn’t know, but as much as he was depending on Elena’s help, he didn’t want to risk ruffling her feathers.

“Señora Sheffield is my friend, that’s all,” he assured her. Even that was stretching the truth a mite—honestly, he didn’t like Glory much at all—but he didn’t think she deserved whatever Gideon Black had planned for her. He wanted Elena to think that Glory was important enough to him that she would help him get her out of there, too.

“Señora Lopez guards the other señora’s room most of the time,” Elena said. “You will have to do something with her. Kill her, perhaps.”

The Kid grunted in surprise at the casual way Elena made that suggestion.

She heard his reaction, because she added, “Señora Lopez can be very cruel to me at times. She beats me, and—” She broke off with a hiss of breath between her teeth, then said, “The señora comes!”