Shadow Falls: Badlands (12 page)

Running low on food, too
, Galen thought as he dug for the last pieces of jerky. He’d have to do something about that as well. From what he could see, hear, and smell, there was definitely plenty of game in these woods.

Blue tied up not far behind, Galen crept through the woods looking for jackrabbit, a Dragoon at the ready, the other in its holster. The thought of one roasting over a small fire made his mouth water. If he were lucky enough to get two, he’d treat Blue to something other than jerky. He crouched behind the trunk of a fallen tree and waited.

He saw the white jack enter the small clearing, completely unaware it was being hunted. With a steady hand, Galen lined up the rabbit in the sights of the pistol. Galen waited, inhaled quietly, and started to squeeze the trigger when he heard the scream of a woman coming from—what seemed like—not too far away.

Galen began running toward the sound, receiving further direction from a second scream coming from just over a rise above him. Quietly, he scrambled up the hill, pistol in hand. Once more he heard it, though this time cut it off in mid-scream. Now Galen could hear other voices—those of men, yelling.

“I tole you to shet up!” yelled one.

Galen crawled on his chest to the top of the hill and peered over into a clearing. Standing fifty feet away, his hair-covered back to Galen, was a shirtless hillbilly—his gut hanging over the top of his pants, one hand holding a knife, the other clutching a bloody pink ribbon of flesh. Below him, on the ground, lay a fragile-faced, brown-skinned woman—her dress torn open and hiked up past her thighs—who was being viciously raped by a second similar looking hillbilly. His large pale white ass pumped back and forth with every grunt he made.

Galen turned away, unsure of what to do. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the barrel of the Colt against his right temple.

Damnit
. From this distance he could hear the one with the knife encouraging the rapist. “Do it! Do it!” he brayed, his voice taking an excitedly high pitch.

Galen took a deep breath. After Sagebrush, he never wanted to take a human life ever again.

He took a peek toward the sky. “I'm sorry,” he muttered under his breath before turning and dashing toward the hillbillies, Colt firing. The hillbillies looked up, stunned. Galen's heart pounded wildly as his first two shots went far wide. The third and fourth found their mark in the ribcage of the fat hillbilly lying on top of the woman. The one with the knife found his feet fast enough to begin running, leaving his accomplice behind. Galen emptied his revolver at the escaping hillbilly, half-heartedly firing in his direction without actually aiming.

He holstered the weapon and turned back to the woman but, as he took his first step, he saw the ribbon of flesh that the escaped hillbilly must have dropped. Galen stopped, instantly recognizing it: a tongue.

Immediately Galen understood why her last cry for help had cut off mid-scream.

He looked toward the woman—sure she was dead. But she turned her head toward him and coughed up a large, messy mouthful of blood. Her face was turning purple.

She was suffocating under the dying weight of the obese rapist.

Galen rushed to her side. With his boot, he rolled him off of her, allowing her to immediately gulp for air. The hillbilly moaned, blood pumping from his bullet wounds. He looked up at Galen, eyes wide in terror.

“Help me,” he gasped.

Galen looked down at the rapist, his dirty dungarees pulled down below his knees, revealing his filthy, pathetic, and shriveled prick. Galen reached into the small leather ammo bag slung around his neck, withdrew a percussion cap, and placed it on the cylinder nipple of the only unfired chamber of the Colt. As a precaution, he’d been taught to leave one uncapped to prevent accidental discharges; there would be nothing accidental about this. Galen aimed the gun between the dying hillbilly’s eyes and fired the round into his skull.

Galen holstered the again empty Colt and knelt down next to the woman. He turned her head to drain the blood that was pooling to prevent her from suffocating. He looked back toward her severed tongue and wondered if he was going to watch her die.

She was obviously Mexican—or at least of Mexican decent. Galen began to wipe the tears streaming from her eyes.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said, fairly certain he was lying.

From her mouth came a series of sounds as she tried to speak. Without a tongue, her words were unintelligible at best.

“Shhh,” Galen commanded. “Don’t try to talk.” He wanted her to conserve her strength, but she began pointing back to the woods in the direction of the escaped hillbilly. She spat out another mouthful of blood and hysterically gestured again at the woods.

“I... I can’t understand you,” Galen said, frustrated.

What she was trying to communicate became very clear the moment gunshots rang out from the woods, bullets flying in their direction.

The rider had come a long way to Kansas City. He had endured quite a bit to get here, but as he entered the town he suddenly felt refreshed, invigorated. He had memorized the address of his destination and found it without trouble. He stopped his horse at the waterfront house and dismounted. Squaring his shoulders, he approached the mansion’s door and knocked—loudly.

When Dunburton opened the door, he was only slightly surprised to see his old charge standing before him.

“Major Dunburton,” Cyril spoke, clicking his heels together and saluting.

Dunburton returned the salute and smiled.

“Please, come in,” the banker said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

*****

CHAPTER 9

T
he bullets whizzed past Galen's temple, sailing into a tree behind him. His battle reflexes, born on the dusty plains of Mexico and now dormant for more than three years, instantly awakened. Galen deftly reloaded and returned fire twice, albeit blindly, back into the woods. The time between their salvos made Galen think that these gunmen were not experienced in the art of the quick reload.

How many shots had been fired at me?
He wondered.
Two? Three?

Regardless of experience, though, it was easily apparent there were more of them than him, and it wouldn't take much, even for a bunch of hillbillies, to figure out a way to outflank him. He had to find cover. Galen grabbed the bleeding Mexican woman by the back of her collar and, while firing more shots into the woods as cover, dragged her back toward the embankment from which he'd made his initial charge. Even in her severely wounded state, she tried to scream, her open mouth streaming blood from where her tongue had been severed. Galen continued to pull the trigger on the Colt until it fell on the sixth, uncapped chamber, making it over the hill as another volley of shots came from the woods, one of the rounds tearing into the dirt by his feet.

“Too close,” he muttered to himself. He waited for more gunshots; when they didn't come, Galen determined that there were only two shooters in the woods—and they were staying together.

Hillbilly's got a friend
, he thought, regretting not taking more careful aim at the one who ran away. He pulled the woman down below the edge of the hill, thinking,
Hysterical
.

“Do you know who those men are?” Galen shouted. She didn't answer; too busy wailing unintelligibly between heavy sobs.

“Shhhh!” Galen told her, but still she continued to wail. He turned his head toward the woods. There had been the faint crackling sound of a footfall on the underbrush. The gunmen were no doubt close, although still invisible among the dark thicket of trees. Using the crest of the hill, Galen was certain he had enough cover to hold them off, but was unsure for how long.

He reached into the ammo satchel slung around his neck—down past the extra thirty-two caliber lead shot and paper cartridges full of black powder—took out a single percussion cap, and placed it on the cylinder nipple of the only unfired chamber left on his second Colt. Quickly, he thumbed back the pistol's hammer and fired into the wood and, as was his best guess, at the hillbillies. Although he now had two empty revolvers, he hoped this last shot would keep the hillbillies cowering in the woods long enough for him to load his two black powder pistols.

Galen wasted no time. From his bag he took out a paper cartridge full of powder and ripped off the twisted top with his teeth. Carefully, he dumped its contents into the first chamber, then placed one of the thirty-two caliber lead balls atop the powder charge, pushing it down into the chamber slightly to keep it from falling out as he unhooked the gun’s built-in rammer from the lug under the barrel and, with his other hand, pulled down on the lever and pushed the ball home deep into the chamber. He began the process again for the second empty chamber. Nimbly, his fingers went about their task.

Again shots rang from the woods, one right after the other. The bullets coming nowhere near their mark—but Galen thought they sounded like they had come from two very different parts of the woods.

They are splitting up
, he thought. This wasn't good.

He kept his eyes focused on the tree line as he continued to load the Colt. Paper cartridge, lead pistol round, a slight tamp, ram it home, and then move to the next chamber. Another crack of rifle fire—this time a single shot from his right, the bullet making no impact within earshot. Galen reached for the tin of beaver grease and, with his finger, slathered some across each loaded chamber. He'd seen men in the haste of battle forgo this last step only to have the powder flash of their first shot cause a chain-fire and ignite the other chambers. He’d seen one man’s gun explode in his hands, scarring his face.

A rifle shot sounded from Galen’s left.

He finished loading the first Colt and aimed it toward the woods. Still nothing, as if those hunting him were ghosts, haunting him with disembodied noises and all-too-physical bullets; he shuddered at the thought. He could blindly fire more warning shots into the woods, but Galen knew better: he'd just killed one of those raping bastards; they were coming for his hide.

Galen stole a glance at the woman just as she turned her head and spat out another thick mouthful of blood. Placing the now loaded pistol on the ground, he cracked open the cylinder of the other Colt and dug into his ammo bag for another paper cartridge of black powder. He had pre-measured and twisted them during the first few warm summer nights of his journey and, as he poured just the right amount into the chamber of the Colt, was glad he'd done it. As he crumpled the paper, a rifle shot came from his right, this time striking the ground directly in front of him.

Too close
, Galen thought. Suddenly he realized what the hillbillies were doing. They were using an old trick to try and flush him out: one shoots while the other waits for the quarry to lift his head before picking him off from another location. Regardless, even if Galen stayed low and didn't take the bait, his hunters would eventually have him flanked and in a crossfire.

Hillbillies aren't so stupid after all
, Galen thought. It was perfectly considerable that the two gunmen in the woods had served in the war as well.

That's it, Galen silently realized. The shooters were doing this by the book—a book he knew quite well.

***

As he sat in the study a clock from the hallway tolled the hour’s bell, and the first thing that struck Cyril was how frail the major now looked. Dunburton's slave poured two cups of tea from a china pot while Cyril leaned away from her, causing her to hurry back into the kitchen.

“You were saying?” Dunburton asked, prompting a return to their previous conversation.

Cyril was hesitant to fully explain why it had taken him so long to make good on the major's request. He would disapprove of the reason—Cyril was sure.

“My delay was caused by circumstances beyond my control,” Cyril lied.

“Military issues?” inquired Dunburton.

“Yes.” This was the truth, but not all of it. Cyril didn’t elaborate, allowing the old Major to nod his head in understanding. “Tell me more about this Tom Holt,” Cyril said, moving the conversation in another direction.

Dunburton gave as many details his old, yet nimble, mind could remember while Cyril listened intently. The latter already knew Tom Holt was Galen Altos, being there was only one deserter from the brigade of St. Patrick’s who had eluded initial capture, albeit just barely. However, there was one thing about the whole story that bothered Cyril, one inescapable fact that burrowed under his skin like a tick. The Private First Class Galen Altos he knew from the war—the very same man who had deserted his unit—had been hunted down and killed years ago. Cyril had followed a lead to a small town south of Nogales and discovered a lone gringo sheltered by the dirt-poor natives in the town’s one-room church.

In fact, it was Cyril who had ordered his men to round up the townsfolk into the church; it was even his very hand that lit the first torch that set the building, Galen, and poor Mexicans aflame.

He shut the door on the case of Galen Altos years ago, watching him perish along with those pathetic Mexican fools who had risked their worthless lives to save him. Indeed, the deaths of these innocents, he though, would be a veritable warning to any future cowards considering desertion. In this way, Cyril felt, he was giving their poor lives some kind of previously absent meaning.