Ghostwalkers (2 page)

There wasn't.

However the memory of that one moment of azure light lingered. It burned in his eyes as if he'd stared too long at the sun, and only slowly, slowly faded.

Whatever it was, there was nothing natural about it, he was certain of that.

And there was nothing out here in the desert that could easily explain it. Not amid a pile of ancient rocks dropped by a glacier before the red man even hunted these hills. There wasn't even any water to reflect sunlight, not that water on brown rock under a yellow sun would flash with a blue as bright as cornflowers.

He pulled Picky up short on the far side of a jutting shoulder of sandstone and slid quietly out of the saddle. The small man guarding the horses was on the other side and he was masking all sound by yelling encouragement up to his companions. He had a truly poisonous mouth and cursed his companions, called them goat molesters and worse. Damned them to hell and wished seven kinds of torment on them.

Grey was bored by the patter, so he screwed the barrel of his pistol into the man's right ear and said, “Hush now.”

The man hushed.

The man froze solid.

Grey took a fistful of the back of the little man's collar to keep him from rabbiting. The man held his arms out to his side.

“Good,” said Grey amiably. “Take your pistol out like it's red hot. Yup, just two fingers. Nice, that's the way to do it. Put it on the ground. No, no, don't be moving quicker than common sense tells you to. Good, good. Now back up and let's go have a quiet chat, shall we?”

With the gun in place, Grey used his hold on the collar to walk the man backward around the shoulder of rock. Then he pushed him toward the wall.

“Hands on the wall, feet wide. Yeah, like you're trying to hold it up.”

Grey patted him down, removed a small two shot over-and-under derringer and a skinning knife and tossed them into a tangle of cactus paddles. Then he spun the man and thrust him hard against the hot stone.

His prisoner was nearly a foot shorter than Grey's six-two and easily sixty or seventy pounds lighter. A skinny man with a bad sunburn and worse breath. He had rough, big-knuckled hands, though, which spoke of years of hard labor. A farmer or a miner. Nothing else would do it. His face was young but his eyes were old and they didn't seem to want to meet Grey's.

Grey stood very close, the gun barrel an inch from the man's tobacco-stained teeth. The fellow went crossed-eyed trying to look at it.

“Now,” said Grey, smiling an affable smile, “let's start with your name.”

The man hesitated for a beat, then said, “Riley.”

“First name?”

“That is my first name.”

“Give me the whole thing, then.”

“Riley Jones.”

“Uh huh. And, do you want to tell me who you are and what's going on here, Mr. Riley Jones?”

Riley turned his head and snarled. “We're sheriff's deputies and you're interfering with a criminal apprehension.”

“You saying you're a deputy?”

“Yes I am.”

“Where's your badge? I must have missed it, or'd you forget to bring it along?”

Riley licked his lips. “We were deputized by the sheriff. This here's an official posse.”

He pronounced it “
O-ficial
.”

“
Deputized?
Ain't that interesting as all hell. Remind me now … which sheriff's department has jurisdiction way the hell out here?”

“Reno.”

“Maybe you need to buy a map, son, but you're a long damn way from Reno.”

Riley Jones licked his lips again. “We … I mean…”

“Take your time,” suggested Grey. “Think up a good answer. Let's see how much we both like what you have to say.”

On the other side of the rock and above them on the shelf Grey could hear the grunts and curses of the other pursuers. They were discovering that the route taken by the Sioux was considerably tougher than it looked, and it had looked plenty tough to Grey. He would not have tried it without rope and some time to plan.

“Who are you, mister?” demanded the prisoner.

“I'm the ghost of George Washington, father of our country come to reunite these dis–United States,” said Grey. He tapped the edge of the barrel against the man's upper lip. “I believe it's your patriotic duty to tell the whole unexpurgated truth.”

“Unexpur … what?”

“No lies.”

“I ain't lying,” insisted Riley. “The sheriff's got special powers from the territorial governor himself.”

“
Special powers?
” Grey smiled. “Bullshit.”

“Hand to God. Like I said, we're out here on official business.”

Grey kept his smile in place but he began to wonder if he'd made a mistake. The moral high ground felt a little shaky beneath his feet.

“You want to tell me what that bright blue flash was?”

Riley's eyes shifted away immediately. “I didn't see no light.”

“Sure you did. Everyone for twenty miles must have seen it. Bright as can be, right on top of that rock. Right under that Sioux you men have been chasing. How could you not see it?”

Riley squared his shoulders. Very carefully. “What's your interest, mister?”

“In the blue light? Common curiosity.”

“No. Why'd you step into something ain't your business?”

“I saw six men chasing one. Didn't look fair.”

“You saw six white men chasing a red injun.”

“I don't care if he's bright purple. Six to one?”

“You always bring more men than you need to for a posse. That's how it's done.”

“Posses usually have someone in charge,” said Grey. “Someone with a badge, and so far I'm not seeing one. What I am seeing is a bunch of damn fools trying to kill themselves while pretending to catch an unarmed Sioux.”

Riley sneered. “You're one of them injun lovers, aintcha? Gone sweet on some squaw and now you're standing up for all them savages?”

“You got a lot of sass for someone with a gun halfway down your throat.”

A voice behind him said, “And you got a lot of balls drawing on a deputy of the law.”

There were two simultaneous sounds. The soft, warning nicker of Mrs. Pickles. And the metallic click as a pistol hammer was cocked back. Then the cold barrel of a pistol was pressed into the hot flesh of the nape of Grey Torrance's neck.

“Ah,” said Grey, “crap.”

 

Chapter Three

“Turn around slow,” said the voice. “Riley, you get his gun.”

The little man snatched the Colt .44-40 and shifted to the right to cover him with it as Grey turned to face the newcomer. The second man was as tall as Grey but not as broad in the shoulders and much wider in the hips and gut. Not fat exactly, but solid. He was one of the two men who'd circled behind the rocks. Grey figured the man must have found no way up and come back sooner than expected.

It was Grey's bad luck and, he knew, his own damn fault for being careless.

And, for all that, it was typical luck, as far as he was concerned, because lately he hadn't had much of any other kind. He tended to ride that narrow path between no luck and bad luck.

Now he had guns in his face and all of his luck seemed to have run out.

The big man wore a long-sleeve denim shirt and canvas gloves with the fingers cut off. He stood holding a Manhattan Navy pistol in a rock-steady hand, the black eye of the barrel staring right at Grey. A British Bull Dog revolver was tucked into his belt, ready for a quick grab. He stayed close, his finger inside the trigger guard.

Grey smiled at him, raised his hands and said, “Howdy.”

“Shut up and tell me who the hell you are,” growled the man.

“Um … can't really do both.”

“What?”

“I can't shut up and tell you—.”

“You trying to be smart?”

“Trying to be helpful,” said Grey. “Just like to know which of those two things you'd like me to do.”

“Careful, Bill,” said Riley, “he thinks he's funny as a catbird.”

“Don't matter what he thinks. He seen us going after the stash, and that's too damn bad for him,” said Bill. “Get some rope and tie him up. Big Curley's going to want to have a long talk with this dumb son of a bitch.”

Grey didn't know who Big Curley was, but he guessed it was the large man climbing up after the Indian. He was positive he didn't want to meet him. Especially when hogtied.

No, the situation was rolling downhill on him. Grey felt like sighing and crawling back into his bedroll to see if there was a way to start the day over again. Instead he remembered a Latin phrase he'd read in an old book written by some Roman fellow named Horace.
Carpe diem
.

Seize the day.

Or, possibly seize the moment. Grey didn't really understand Latin.

The message, though, that was easier to grasp.

When a man stands with his hands raised he is admitting defeat. When, as his granddad once told him, a
smart
man does it, he is preparing for action. Grey's hands were up at shoulder level, raised and slightly forward. Granddad said: “Always place your hands so you can see the back of 'em. That means they're like a couple of snakes, ready to bite. So …
bite
. But be quick about it or you're going to die looking like you was giving up, and that ain't no way for a Torrance man to go down.”

Without changing his expression, without tensing a single muscle, Grey moved.

He whipped his left hand out and slapped the Manhattan pistol away, swatting it like a scared man swats at a wasp. The barrel swung right at Riley, who yelped and jumped backward. In the same second, Grey snatched the Bull Dog from Bill's belt, used the hardwood butt to chop down on Bill's wrist, and then lashed out with the barrel across the bridge of Riley's nose. Two guns hit the ground—Bill's and Grey's own Colt. Riley staggered back with blood exploding from his nose.

Bill, startled as he was, tried to make a fight out of it. He swung a wild left hook that popped Grey in the side of the head hard enough to make all the church bells from Sacramento to Chicago play the Hallelujah chorus. Grey took two quick wandering sideways steps then wheeled around as Bill came after him. The big man was swinging rights and lefts with every ounce of his muscle and mass behind them. Huge punches, the kind that work really well in barroom brawls.

This, however, was not a barroom.

Despite the pain in his head, Grey tucked his chin down on his chest, hunched his shoulders, covered his left ear with a fist, and raised his elbows into the path of the left haymaker. The inside of Bill's right forearm hit the point of Grey's left elbow. The impact was considerable, but it was muscle against bone, and bone always wins. Grey thought he could hear something go crack inside the big man's arm.

He didn't wait for the pain to hit Bill. He did it instead, clubbing out fast and nasty with the Bull Dog. He banged the butt into the center of Bill's forehead once, twice. On the third blow all of the clarity fled from the big man's expression. The fourth put him down on his knees, and a fifth, this one behind the ear, put him flat on his face.

Grey turned to Riley, who was doing some kind of Irish dance while holding his bloody nose and wailing like a banshee. Grey kicked him in a most unsportsmanlike way. Twice. Riley joined his friend on the rocky ground and lay there curled like a boiled crawfish, whimpering like a baby.

Grey blew out his cheeks and tried to shake the bell echoes from his head. That bastard Bill could hit, damn him to hell. He knelt, quickly patted Bill down, then fished a piece of hairy twine from his saddlebag and lashed both men wrist and ankle. Bill was totally out, but Grey crouched over Riley and said, “I took you twice, old son. Get loud, warn the others, or make me tussle with you again and I guarantee you won't like what happens. Are we understanding each other here?”

Riley squeaked something that sounded like a yes.

“Good doggie.” Grey patted his cheek and stood.

His Colt had landed on hard rock and there was a scrape along the cylinder, but the barrel was clean and the action was as smooth as ever. He slid it into its holster. The Manhattan had fallen barrel-first into soft sand, so he kicked it away. The Bull Dog was a tidy little five shot and that went into his pocket.

Picky was stamping and pulling at her tether, so Grey soothed her with long strokes down her neck, murmuring calming words to her. In truth, though, he was as nervous as the horse. Whatever was going on here was none of his business, and now he was ankle deep in a mess. It felt like standing on quicksand, and Grey cursed himself for making the kind of move that had gotten him into trouble too many times before.

Far too many times before.

He squinted up to try and see what was going on above him, but none of the players were in sight. He could hear the other members of the posse cursing and shouting to each other, which told him that they hadn't yet reached the summit.

The fact that he couldn't see the other men suggested that they had not spotted him. None of their shouts seemed to involve anything but climbing and getting to the Sioux. As for the Indian, there was no sign of him at all. Not a peep, either.

Grey looked at the two fallen men. Riley glared up at him through painful tears.

There was still time to change the course of what was happening. He could gag Riley, cut the posse's horses free, climb onto Mrs. Pickles, and ride like hell for anywhere but right here.

Yes, sir, there was time to do that.

Grey Torrance stood there, looking up.

He could be halfway to what was left of California before these jokers organized a proper pursuit.

Yup. He could get away clean.

But there was the Sioux.

And there was that damn blue flash. What in Satan's own hell was that?