Ghost Warrior (15 page)

Z
ak rose up and struck with the ferocity of a panther. He strapped one arm around the man's head, clamping his mouth shut, then sliced across the neck just above the collarbone. The man struggled for just a moment, then slumped into Zak's arms as blood spurted from his cut throat. Zak laid him gently down, put a moccasined foot on his chest and pressed hard. If the man had any breath left in his lungs, Zak squeezed it out, right then and there.

Zak dragged the dead man over next to the adobe. He took off the man's hat and put it on. He picked up his rifle, a Sharps carbine and took up the guard's walk where he had left off. He would meet the other one a hundred or so yards from where he was.

He heard noise above, up in the brush, and the faint sound of cartwheels buzzing on sandy soil and thumping occasionally on rocky ground. Over on the Narbona mesa, he saw flickers of cook fires and, on the breeze, he smelled the aroma of fried bread. The Navajos had been making it ever since Kit Carson had taken some to Bosque Redondo and the army had given them flour and salt for
subsistence. The smell made his stomach roil with hunger, but he walked the walk, just the way the guard he'd killed had done it, and when he met the other man, he saw his face change. He could not see his expression, but he imagined that his eyebrows arched and his mouth dropped open.

Just for an instant.

Zak closed on him and stuck the barrel of the Sharps in the man's gut.

“You keep your mouth shut,” Zak whispered, “and just point to the 'dobe where Leo and Minnie are sleeping.”

When the man raised his arm, Zak jerked his rifle from his shoulder. The man pointed to an adobe about thirty yards away.

“How many in there with Leo? Just hold up your fingers. If just Leo and Minnie are there, hold up two. If more, you give me the count.”

The man held up two fingers. Zak could feel him shaking against the muzzle of the rifle. He, like the others of Leo's band, had a tied-down holster. Zak slipped the pistol from the scabbard and pointed to the shadows next to an adobe.

The man turned and walked toward the dark place where he would die.

Zak wasted no time. He shoved the pistol in his belt, laid the two rifles down, and throttled the man. Then he jabbed his knife straight into his throat, just below his Adam's apple, twisting the blade to widen the wound. The man made a low gurgle in his throat, doubled over, and Zak eased him to the ground. The gushing blood sounded like running water for just a moment and left a
shiny pool on the ground, its center filled with the reflections of a half dozen dazzling stars.

Zak looked up at the sky and to the east. The sky was paling beyond the Jemez, the stars fading like autumn flowers.

He crept into the adobe with its open, glassless windows. He hugged the wall inside and listened to the breathing of the two people. There was no hurry now. He shrank into the darkest corner, wiped the blade of his knife on his trousers and slipped it back into its sheath. It made a faint whisper. Zak held his breath.

Neither of the two sleepers stirred, and he let his breath ease out slowly through his nostrils.

Pale light began to seep through the open windows. Zak looked at the two lumps on the bedrolls, a single blanket covering man and wife.

He could smell the musk of Minnie, the sweat and whiskey on the breath of Leo. He listened for any outside sounds, and smelled the fried bread wafting on the breeze that still blew down from the high mountains.

Leo made a sound in his throat. He threw an arm over the blanket, held on to it for a moment, then let go. Zak wondered if Leo had a pistol lying next to him. He was pretty sure that Minnie had a knife either strapped to her leg or in her sash.

He could see them better now. Minnie slept with her mouth closed. Leo's mouth was open.

They were dead to the world, he thought, and tried not to smile.

It was getting lighter outside. He did not have much time.

He walked to the other side of room, away from the doorway and the windows. He stood on the side where Leo slept, not four feet away.

“Biederman,” Zak said softly. “Leo.”

“Whuh?” Biederman looked around with sleepy eyes. He started to rise from his bedroll. “Who's 'at?” he mumbled.

Minnie made a sound, but she was still asleep. She moaned. It was a kind of whining moan, Zak thought.

“I'm the drummer,” Zak said to Leo.

“What drummer? I didn't order no goods.”

Leo rose up to a sitting position, suddenly wide awake. He squinted at Zak, trying to make out who he was.

“I've got your order right here, Mr. Biederman. Remember? You ordered it in Santa Fe.”

“I didn't order nothin' from no drummer.”

“Yes, you did. I have it for you.”

“God damn it, what the hell is it?”

“Death,” Zak said.

Biederman lunged for his pistol, which was still in its holster by his bedroll.

Zak filled his hand with blued iron and wood and thumbed the hammer back. Just as Leo's fingers touched the grip of his pistol, Zak fired, aiming right at the center of Biederman's forehead. The explosion boomed in the confines of the adobe and Minnie boiled out of her bedding like a flushed prairie chicken. She came up with a blade in her hand. Acrid smoke filled the room and she screamed as she whirled and came charging straight at Zak, her arm raised, the knife poised like the head of a striking cobra.

She cursed him in Navajo.

“I don't understand your language,” Zak said, and shot her in the heart. He stepped aside as her momentum carried her straight to him. She crumpled into the wall, bleeding through the hole in her chest, her pumping heart in its last wild throes.

Zak didn't wait to watch her die. He slipped out of the adobe and ran to where Bullard was waiting.

“Let's go,” he said.

Bullard ran at breakneck speed down the trail to the top of the mesa, Zak right behind him.

A pale light glowed in the east. Most of the stars had vanished, and a color like the violet in a morning glory was spreading westward. The white peaks shone as each snow crystal caught the rising sun and threw up an aura that was like an alabaster mist.

Zak guided Bullard to cover and they squatted behind rocks as the top of the mesa rang with the shouts of men awakened suddenly from their sleep.

“God, those shots sounded so damned loud,” Bullard whispered.

“Just wait until Hazard opens up with those cannons.”

“Who'd you get, Zak? Biederman?”

“And Minnie.”

“Lord.”

“No, not him, Randy. He's still with us.”

“How can you make a joke at a time like this? We've got to get the hell out of here.”

“If you see anyone come down that trail, Randy, you shoot whoever it is.”

“It's not light enough.”

Zak ejected the empty shells, stuffed two more cartridges into his Colt. “Any minute now,” he said.

“Any minute what?” Randy asked.

“Captain Hazard will start his music.”

A man came to the edge of the mesa and looked down at the valley. He saw nothing, so he ran back, and there was more shouting and angry yells as some of Biederman's men discovered the dead bodies.

Then the golden rim of the sun cleared the distant horizon, lighting clouds shaped like long loaves of bread, turning them pink and lavender and spraying light through them until they radiated like the stained-glass windows in a church.

Thunder rocked the morning as the howitzers opened up, and Zak saw a ball strike the Narbona mesa, exploding in a cloud of smoke.

Then the second round hit, and men screamed as the explosion tore away their limbs and smashed their bodies to pulp.

“Time to go,” Zak said to Bullard.

“Where we goin'?”

“I want to see if I can kill a ghost warrior, Randy.”

“Huh?”

“Narbona,” Zak said and started running toward the base of the mesa.

Rifles crackled and there was the acrid smell of cordite in the air. Smoke drifted toward them, broke up into wisps above their heads.

Barebacked horses streamed into the valley from a nearby canyon, driven by mounted Nava
jos waving blankets. Men poured from the tops of both mesas, racing down the trails. The saddled horses emerged from another canyon, white men driving them as if on cue.

Zak raced on, looking at every Navajo brave, looking for one man among many.

Narbona.

C
avalry troops surged into the valley. Rifle fire erupted like a string of Chinese firecrackers. Troops surrounded the two mesas. Some closed with the Navajo horsemen, engaging them in battle. Smoke streamed in every direction, sometimes blossoming into clouds. There was the acrid stench of exploded gunpowder.

Men screamed and fell from their horses, on both sides. Officers yelled orders; some men roared in the rage of the battle, while others carried out their lethal duties with utter silence and determination.

Zak and Randy wove their way through crashing horses and men rushing to their mounts, ducking under a hail of bullets that buzzed over their heads like wingless leaden hornets.

The Navajos swarmed and dispersed, only to dash in and out of lines of mounted troops. The troops cleared paths that closed up behind them, formed new attack routes, until the entire melee was a freeform brawl of mounted men dashing after enemies on every side.

Zak scanned the Navajo horsemen, looking for any that stood out, watching for a leader and his followers. He and Randy reached the Narbona
mesa and ran up the path to the top, encountering no resistance.

Zak thought, Where does an animal go when it has reached the point of desperation? It climbs the highest tree, it seeks out the deepest cave, it makes its last stand in a place of safety, a place where it feels at home.

They looked at the dome-shaped hogans, all facing east, scattered like bee hives atop the mesa.

“Check every one, Randy,” Zak said. “Shoot anything that moves.”

Zak ran among the adobe hovels, entered a circle and spotted a single dwelling in the center.

He halted a few yards from it, standing to one side in case anyone was inside.

“Ho, Narbona,” he called. Then, in Spanish, he said: “
Yo soy Dinéh. Vengo con un mensaje por un hombre quien se llama Narbona. Narbona, un cobarde, la basura de la tierra.
”

“I am Navajo. I come with a message for a man who calls himself Narbona. Narbona, a coward, the filth of the earth.”

He heard muffled voices from inside the hogan. A man appeared at the entrance, a rifle in his hands. His face was painted, smeared with signs and symbols, streaks of vermillion, circles of yellow and white, vermicular scrawls of black. The man saw Zak and raised his rifle to his shoulder.

“Largos,” Zak called, his hand streaking for his pistol.

Largos hesitated, surprised at hearing his name.

“You were with the dead and now you return,” Zak said in Spanish.

Largos scowled, his face becoming a pinched
mass of painted bronze. Zak fired his pistol as the man seated the butt of his rifle in the hollow of his shoulder. The bullet smashed him high in the left part of his chest. His mouth went slack and his eyes widened in surprise. Zak shot him again as he pitched forward, slumped to the ground.

Another man appeared in the doorway. His face and body were painted white and there were black circles around his eyes, red streaks at the corners of his mouth. He wore only a breechclout and moccasins.

“Narbona,” Zak said, still speaking in Spanish, “you stole the name of a brave warrior. He sent me to bring back his name.”

“Quien eres tu?
” Narbona asked, reaching for the pistol hanging from his belt.

“I am the horseman of the shadow,” Zak said.

“So, you are Shadow Rider. Where do you come from?”

“I come from the land of the dead. Narbona wants his name returned to him. The name you stole.”

“I am Narbona.”

“You are a ghost,” Zak said, and the Colt bucked in his hand, smoke and flame spouting from its blue-black muzzle. Narbona raised his pistol. The bullet smashed into his face, ripping off his nose and the lower part of his brain. His forehead collapsed inward and a rosy spray of blood shot out of his left temple as splinters of bone exploded into the door jamb. The man's legs folded beneath him and he settled in a heap, one eye staring at the blue sky, the other pooched out like a boiled egg, riddled with streaks of blood.

The dead man had no face.

“And, now,” Zak said softly, as he opened the gate of his Colt and began ejecting the empty hulls, “you have no name.”

He reloaded his pistol and put it back in its holster. He dragged Narbona's body to the edge of the mesa. He put his hands in his armpits and held him up, shook his body back and forth. Then he threw him over the side, watched his body tumble and crash on the rocks below, where all could see.

Randy met him as Zak walked back through the hogans.

“Colonel Loomis has got 'em on the run, Zak.”

Zak said nothing. He wondered how Jeff Vickers had fared.

When he descended from the mesa, he had his answer. Vickers was holding Nox and a horse for Bullard. He had Zak's crumpled hat in his hand.

“I see you got a fresh coat of blood, Zak,” Jeff said.

Zak climbed into the saddle and heaved with a heavy intake of breath.

“And you're still out of uniform, Captain.”

“You got Narbona. When the Navajos saw him fall from the mesa, they cut and run.”

“I didn't get Narbona, Jeff. Narbona died a long time ago.”

And now, he thought, Narbona's ghost could rest, at last.