Red Moon
As Sam grappled with his thoughts, he saw Orez step into view, blocking the face of one of the men. No sooner had Orez stepped into sight than he stepped back out. When the Ranger saw the other man's face again, he saw the red line of gushing blood spewing from the man's sliced-open throat.
Whoa!
He hadn't expected that.
Sam tensed, watching through the circling lens as the man's wet gloved hands clamped over his throat attempting to stay the flow of arterial blood. But the reflex didn't help. The dark blood jetted from between his gripping fingers as he staggered forward into the mud and blowing rain. His wet hat came loose and flew from his head in a spiraling spray of water.
Sam watched; the surprise of the brutal act gone now, yet the intensity of it held him captivated until he swung the lens onto Orez to see what was coming next.
Ralph Cotton
A SIGNET BOOK
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Copyright © Ralph Cotton, 2013
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For Mary Lynn, of course . . .
Badlands, Arizona Territory
The young Ranger Samuel Burrack lay atop a mammoth boulder overlooking a stretch of spiny hills skirting the Mexican border northwest of the Nogales badlands outpost. A storm was hard blowing. Through the lens of an outstretched telescope, he studied three watery figures while raindrops crawled sidelong across the circling lens. To his right lightning twisted and curled in a gunmetal mist on the distant curve of the earth.
“
Tormenta mala de vientoâciclón!
”
an old stable hostler had warned him two days earlier when the sky over Nogales had taken on a pallid yellow-gray and the hot desert wind began sucking southward like some terrible demon drawing in its breath. “Here is the stillness before the terrible storm,” the man had warned in stiff English, raising a crooked cautioning finger. “The longer the stillness, the more terrible the storm,” he'd added, lowering his voice as if such information were privy only to himself and the Ranger.
Sam had simply nodded in reply. Storm or no storm, he had a job to do. Weather was just a factor to acknowledge, but not a factor to concede to.
He'd thought of the old man when the stillness lingered throughout that day and part of the next as he'd pushed on. He'd kept watch on the sky for what good it did himâwatched it gather and loom until at last a roiling blackness rose from the bowels of the earth and robbed the morning of its light, falling upon the earth as if in vengeance.
“Good prediction, hombre,” Sam reminded himself with no real surprise, reflecting on the old hostler's conversation from two days ago.
Before leaving town he had said
gracias
to the old man for his warning as he unrolled his brown rain slicker and put it on. With his big Colt resting on his hip, protected beneath the slicker, he'd tied down his bedroll atop his saddlebags and stepped up into the roan's saddle, spreading the tails of his long rain slicker down the horse's sides. He'd reminded the hostler that
bad
weather did not stop
bad
men, and the old Mexican had shrugged his thin shoulders either in sympathy or resignation and stood watching as the Ranger turned to ride away.
“Go with God,” the old man had whispered in Spanish, seeing the Ranger's headstrong surplus roan balk and sidle and shuffle on its hooves.
“Always,” the Ranger had replied, tipping a gloved hand as he'd gathered the unruly roan beneath himself and chucked the animal forward. The roan snorted and grumbled in protest, but did the Ranger's bidding all the same. And so their journey had gone.
Bad
men and
lawmen . . . ,
Sam thought now in retrospect, holding a tight focus on the three faces beneath their wet wind-bent hat brims. They tugged and tightened their drenched hats down against a hard blow of wind, the loose tails of their rain slickers wagging and flapping wildly, like the tongues of a gaggle of lunatics. He might say that times like this neither lawman nor outlaw had sense enough to get in out of the rain. But that wasn't being fair to his own professionâhis brothers in arms.
Lawmen endured bad weather because their work required it.
Outlaws, murderers and rogues of the kind he pursued played out their hands fast and loose, with no regard for weather or anything else. He suspected that deep down the lawless realized the broad possibility of each day being their last, and he understood their thinking. It gave lawmen like himself little choice but to follow the lead set forth by their miscreant prey, no matter the climate, no matter the trail.
And that's the whole of it. . . .
He drew a closer focus and moved from face to face on the subjects in the small round frame of the wet lens. He could see their lips moving. An arm pointed off toward the trail rising and falling out of sight across a sandy stretch of squat cactus and scarce patches of spindly wild grass standing cowed beneath the gray blowing deluge. The arm belonged to the group's leader, Wilson Orez, and had Sam not known it already he would have deduced it, seeing as how these other two appeared to listen to the man, nodding in agreement, checking the wet rifles in their hands while Orez raised a wadded bandanna and mopped blow-in rain from the side of his neck, his beard stubble.
Wilson Orez . . .
From what the Ranger had learned of the man, Orez was tough, smart and fearless: a former cavalry scout, desert seasoned, a man trained to keep a cool head while sudden death lurked all around him. Sam ran down a mental list he'd compiled on him. Wilson Orez was part Scots-Irish, part White Mountain Apache. His skill with a rifle was unsurpassed. He was both fast and accurate with a handgunâan expert with a knife. He had faced the feared Apache warrior TaChima from the Compa clan, brother to the dreaded Apache leader Juan Compa.
You know your history when it comes to killing,
Sam reminded himself grimly.
In a straight-up knife fight, toe-to-toe,
mano y mano,
Orez had killed TaChima graveyard dead. Sam considered it, finding it noteworthy how these sorts of facts sprang so readily to his mind.
Part of the job,
he decided, dismissing the matter, going on with his thoughts.
TaChima had earned the alternative calling of Red Sleeve, a title originated years earlier by the famed Mimbreño Apache leader, Mangas Coloradas.
Being a Red Sleeve Warrior put TaChima at a high position of respect among all the Chihenne warriors in the Animas Mountain Range. TaChima had not been a man to take lightly, Sam acknowledged. Yet, according to the story generated among Captain Edmond Shirland's California Volunteers, Wilson Orez tracked TaChima into the heart of Apacheria, the People's stronghold.
Standing alone, naked save for a loincloth and a knife in hand, Wilson Orez had cast a challenge of honor for the sake of blood vengeanceâa matter of powerful medicine among the killer elite of the Apacheria alliance. Thereupon he had calmly, methodically gutted and all but quartered the dreaded blade-man as if he were some sacrificial steer.
And that's the man you're after today.
But he's older now,
Sam thought in reply. He lowered the lens from his eye in the heavily blowing rain and thought about it as he wiped a wet gloved hand across his face. At the end of this storm, there wouldn't be a hoofprint left to follow between here and the border. He raised the telescope back to his eye and homed down onto the three figures. Thunder split the sky high above the low-hanging blackness.
Stay close,
he told himself. Whatever moves these men made, he'd have to be prepared to make it with them.
No matter the climate, no matter the trail . . . ,
he repeated to himself
.
Stay close and at the same time try to keep a man as trail-savvy as Orez from knowing he was there. Lightning glittered as he looked closely back and forth at the faces of the other two men. There was something at work between these twoâsomething secretive. He could see it in their eyes. Were he in any way a friend or an associate of Wilson Orez, he would have to warn him to watch out for these two. But that was none of his concern.
Another thing, forget Wilson Orez's reputation, he reminded himself. Having too much respect for a bad man's reputation was as dangerous as having too little. Either would get you killed. Besides, if there was one thing he learned
quick
out here, it was that a man's reputation was almost always larger, more powerful than the man. Leastwise, enough so that the prowess of the man lived on long after the man himself had gone to dust.
But not Wilson Orez,
a voice cautioned inside his head.
Stop it,
the same voice rebuked. His hands tightened around the lens.
As he grappled with his thoughts, he saw Orez step into view, blocking the face of one of the men. No sooner had Orez stepped into sight than he stepped back out. When the Ranger saw the other man's face again, he saw the red line of gushing blood spewing from the man's sliced-open throat.
Whoa!
He hadn't expected that.
Sam tensed, watching through the circling lens as the man's wet gloved hands clamped up over his throat attempting to stay the flow of arterial blood. But the reflex didn't help. The dark blood jetted from between his gripping fingers as he staggered forward into the mud and blowing rain. His wet hat came loose and flew from his head in a spiraling spray of water.
Sam watched; the surprise of the brutal act was gone now, yet the intensity of it held him captivated until he swung the lens onto Orez to see what was coming next.
Gray rain blew howling across the land between the Ranger's lens and the grizzly scene of silent carnage. Wilson Orez had moved fast. By the time the sheet of rain had blown on and the Ranger had Orez back in focus, he saw the other man had bowed forward at the waist. Orez gave a hard sidelong jerk on the handle of his big knife and Sam saw the blade slip out of the man's abdomen where Orez had just then buried it to the hilt. At the man's side, a big Remington revolver fell from his wet hand into the mud at his feet. The man sank to his knees, then flopped forward, face-first with a muddy splash.
Orez stepped back, red blood washing from his knife blade, turning lighter, thinner in the rain. Sam turned and scanned the telescope to where ten feet away the man with the gaping throat had struggled along as far as he could and appeared to melt down into the ground.
Two down, one to go.
Marking the spot in his mind with a close-by stand of rain-whipped juniper, Sam closed the telescope between his wet hands and slipped it inside his slicker. Picking up his Winchester from beside him, he slid back on his belly to the edge of the boulder and down its side to where the surplus roan stood waiting. The horse appeared annoyed and restless, hitched to the spiky remnants of a weathered piñon. As Sam shoved the wet rifle down into the saddle boot, the roan grumbled and nickered and tossed its head against its tied reins. A forehoof splashed down hard in a puddle of water.
“Hope I haven't kept you from anything pressing,” Sam said wryly, unhitching the exasperated animal. The roan was one of three horses making up the Nogales outpost's surplus riding stock he'd had to choose from. His personal stallion, Black Pot, was still recovering from a pulled tendon he'd picked up during their previous venture across the Mexican border.
The roan snorted and raised a threatening rear hoof. Sam ignored the gesture and patted its wet withers.
“I know,” he said quietly. He stepped up into the saddle as if they were longtime friends. Before the roan could organize itself enough to offer resistance, he'd backed it a step, collected it firmly beneath him and nudged it forward through the mud. “I know,” he repeated. “You're a tough fellow. Now let's go.”
The roan settled as if satisfied it had made its position clear and went on, taking up a steady gait, the Ranger riding easy, his hand drawn loosely on the reins. With the horse's head lowered sidelong against the blow of wind, he'd only managed to get halfway across the rolling terraced land before the constant slam of wind and water and the lack of visibility forced him to step down from his saddle, draw his rifle and lead the roan the rest the way.
When he did reach the place where the killings had taken place, he came upon the spot all at once, the powerful thrust of the storm waning for a moment to reveal the juniper bush. The slant of the rain corrected itself and fell straight and steadily. He stood in the silver-gray mist like some supplicant to the dark sky churning above him. Rifle in hand, he stared through a braided stream of water running steadily from the lowered front brim of his sombrero.
Fifteen feet in front of him the juniper bush was stooped and dripping. Beyond the juniper, pipe organ cactus stood erect like lean apparitions in a low swirling mist. Sam looked around at the sodden ground expecting to find the bodies of the two men. Yet, only mildly surprised, he found no sign of the hapless thieves except for the dropped Remington and two watery pink puddles lying in the indentations where the two had fallen and the rain had not completely washed the blood away.
He looked at the watery hoofprints, barely visible now in the falling rain. Each set showed signs of equal weight on their backs. Stooping, he picked up the black-handled Remington and inspected it. The initials
TQ
were carved into the right side of the handle.
“You loaded the bodies up and sent them off.” Sam spoke to himself as if he were speaking to Wilson Orez. “Wise move, Orez.” He shoved the Remington under his slicker into his gun belt. “You're a cautious man,” he murmured, still searching the rolling land while the wind rebuilt and groaned and came hurling back across the land in a low, menacing roar.
Even in a storm Orez had lowered any pursuer's chances of following him, no matter how briefly, from a sure thing to the slimmer odds of one-out-of-three.
The wind passed and started to build again as he noted the three sets of hooves disappearing in three separate directions before being lost to the pounding deluge altogether.