The Eye of the Hunter (25 page)

Henry laid the rifle barrel in its loophole and lined up the iron sights for a return shot; saw dust fly from the six-inch gray stone he had aimed at, a safe two feet from the general's eyepiece.

And grinned as Stockard fired back—two feet above his head. Yes. by God, he thought, this will make a dandy story for Ben Ambrose, practically unbelievable: Two grown men, qualified snipers, firing at each other at a perfectly reasonable bull's-eye distance—but taking great care not to hurt each other!

After the general's next careful bull's-eye, Henry ripped off a fusillade of five roaring shots, filling the general's ambuscade with dust and ricocheting lead. He waited for his reply, and when it came, it was high again. He turned his head and looked behind him, and by God the slug had hit precisely where every shot was going home—a knot on the trunk of a little hackberry tree up the slope! The ten-ring every time.

After Stockard's next shot—damned near finishing off the tree with this one—Henry sprawled from rock to rock down the slope and set himself up behind a couple of boulders. Stockard threw a hasty shot through the manzanita brush at his left. Henry then gave him four shots back. Being careful not to hurt him.

Then, by infantry rushes, he worked on down the slope another fifty feet. A giant gray stone protruded from the slope at this point, a good fifteen feet high. Henry clambered up a piñon tree behind the boulder, and from it, he crawled out onto the rock. The view from the top was sniper's dream. He could sweep the rock wall so completely that if any part of Stockard's anatomy got more than four feet from the wall, he could tear a hole in it.

In fact, a moment after he settled down to wait, he saw a boot moving on the ground. He adjusted his sights a hair. His target was a hoarhound weed a couple of feet to the right of Stockard's boot. He tore out the weed on the first try, and the general's foot disappeared. Then he pumped several more shots into the same area and, as the echoes and whining ricochets died, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Don't make me kill you, General! You're pinned down.”

“Go to hell!” Stockard yelled back, firing a hurried shot to reinforce his determination. A yard away, the dust flew.

Henry felt a thrill. It was like suddenly finding yourself speaking a foreign language—understanding something you really hadn't thought yourself capable of.

“General,” he shouted, “you're finished. The sheriff is bringing a posse. And you don't have a hostage now. It's man-to-man.”

“If you cross that stream, Logan,” Stockard roared back, “you're a dead one!”

“I don't mean to cross it! I've got a box of shells and the Grand Army is a-coming! You're the one who's going to cross it—and surrender. Think it over.”

“I kept my word!” Stockard shouted back. “I released the woman.” A hesitation, then: “What are your terms?”

Henry's teeth showed in a fierce grin.
You're a piss-poor liar, my friend
, he thought.
You've still got your trap, and you think I'm playing right into it
.

“My terms are that you'll get an Army court-martial,” he called back, “just like any soldier! Throw your rifle over the wall and stand up.”

He was surprised by what happened next.

A yellow-and-black pennant appeared above the wall and waved back and forth. He had seen it in the office of the
Globe
, the general's old headquarters guidon.

Henry took aim and shot the staff in two.

“You bastard!” the general shouted.

But he stood up, his arms crossed, smoking one of his bitter little cigars. Across his chest, two bandoliers were draped. He was wearing no eye patch.

I really should shoot him now
, Henry thought. If he should get away, God knew what kind of depredations the savage would inflict on the people around there before he'd be corraled, and he could outhide a wildcat. But he owed something to those forty dead Apaches, too. Only complete and utter humiliation could satisfy Henry. Stockard on display behind bars.

“Stand fast!” Henry shouted.

He scrambled down the hillside, never taking his eyes off the grizzled warrior, reaching the cobbled beach short of the stream and stopping there to yell: “Advance to your side of the water and wait there.”

He waited ten yards from the water, keeping the warm-barreled '95 gun on the old man, the steel about the temperature of body heat, watching Stockard clamber over the stone wall and, guidon over his shoulder, walk cockily past the first oak, skirt Parrish's fire ring, and pass the big juniper stump without a glance at it.

The general followed orders, halting short of the water. In an act of meaningless bravado, he worked the broken staff of his bumblebee guidon into the sand, setting up his command post—right where it had been on the map.

Henry let his gun barrel point above his man's head, as if it would be in bad taste to threaten a prisoner; even display a lack of confidence in himself.

“All right, General. I now ask you to cross the stream and wait on this side. When you reach the dry sand, turn your back to me.”

Stockard advanced slowly into the water like a convert about to be baptized. He puffed on his cigar as he came. Now he was at the spot marked with an
X
on the map, the log lying like an alligator in the water, only a foot above the surface. He hesitated, seemed to be trying to decide whether to step over the log or go around it. Then he tripped, tried to catch himself, but fell flat in the water behind the log. For a moment he could not be seen in the geyser of muddy water.

Stockard's head reappeared above the log, his body underwater, his hat floating down the stream, and his bald head gleaming. Rip Parrish's carbine was in his hands, dripping wet as it came up from where Gorman had hidden it beside the log.

“Remember Wounded Knee!” he shouted.

He fired four shots, working the loading lever so fast that it was several seconds before he realized the gun was not firing—that there was no sound, no smoke. Henry put a shot into the water near him, to let him taste the cup a little deeper. Stockard reared to his knees and shook water from the rifle, swearing. Then he tried several times more to make the carbine talk, thinking, probably, that surely there was at least one dry shell in the loading tube.

At last he lowered the carbine, panting, and stared at Henry. Waiting for the secret to be revealed.

Henry reached in his pocket and tossed a handful of paraffined cartridge into the water a few feet from the general. “Thought I'd better draw your teeth, General,” he said. “Gorman gave me the map. Throw the gun here.”

Stockard began swearing, sloshing and stumbling forward with the gun held over his shoulder like a club. He would keep walking, Henry supposed, until he was shot. So he raised his carbine and sent a shot into the gun butt and took it out of the general's hands.

He said: “General, I won't kill you, so you might as well give up. I'll shoot an arm, and then a leg, and then another arm, if I have to. I will cut you absolutely to pieces. Come forward and lie down on the sand.”

Stockard, twenty feet away now, stared blankly at him. “Logan,” he said, “you'd better shoot me, because I ain't beat. Always knew I'd die before a firing squad somewhere. Shoot, you son of a bitch!”

Henry shook his head. Stockard put his hand to the back of his neck and rubbed it like a very tired, defeated man. But a moment afterward, Henry saw the flash of the steel in his hand and knew he had drawn a throwing knife. He fired and Stockard swore and hugged his bloody hand to his belly, his chest heaving.

Henry said, “Well, General, shall we wrestle? I think I can take you.”

Stockard bent and groped in the bloody water around his ankles, and when he straightened, he held the knife in his left hand. He started toward Henry with the knife raised.

Henry realized then that he was not only courageous but also insane. But still, with the old Logan reluctance to kill something that might be made into a pet or a friend, he decided on a final stratagem.

“General,” he said, “you've put up a brave and soldierly fight. I respect you for it. I haven't always agreed with your tactics, but I admire you as a soldier. I ask you now to surrender your weapon and your command.”

Stockard breathed like a foundered horse. The water was running down his shirt, and blood streamed from his hand and began coloring the water. He looked down at it, seemed fascinated. He raised his eyes to Henry and said, “Everything I did, Henry, was done to honor your father.”

“I appreciate that,” Henry said. “And I'm sure he would have. I'll see that your guidon is preserved at Fort Bowie, sir. Will you surrender your weapon and your command?”

Stockard reversed the knife, holding it by the point, and began walking, sloshing on through the bloody water. He halted two paces from Henry and offered his knife, then stood fast.

“By God, Logan,” he said, “you're a soldier, after all. I am honored to surrender to you.”

“Did you ask him if he killed Rip?” Henry asked Frances.

“Oh, he told me! He seemed so proud of it. He told me all the boring details you bored me with before. Guns!”

“If they hadn't been invented,” Henry told her, “mankind would be carrying some of the damnedest bows and arrow you can imagine!”

It was evening. Frances had already bored him with one of her papa's favorite lines from Tennyson, something about the long day waning and the slow moon climbing, and from where they sat in the big parlor of the ranch house, they could see it climbing above the hills east of the ranch, thin and crisp as an ice design on a window. They were exhausted, having ridden for an hour before making contact with the posse heading for Spanish Church. Then, before they could ride on to the ranch, Henry had had to explain to them where General Stockard would be found—manacled to a large stump in Rip Parrish's camp.

Frances had been able to stanch the bleeding of his hand, and he had made it a point to betray no pain whatever as she cleaned the hole with a powerful antiseptic. The parting was very formal: a salute by Henry; a nod by the manacled prisoner; a grave statement by Frances, thanking him for not having hurt her, and releasing her according to his promise.

“Madam,” he'd told her, “I am an officer of the old school. We respect women and keep our word.”

“Of course,” Henry reminded him, “it's your sworn duty as a soldier to attempt to escape as soon as we leave you. But I'm taking all the weapons.”

“You'd be a damned poor soldier if you didn't.”

Frances had protested, but Henry was having a drop of Bushmill's behind his quinine, and she was having a drop of Rip's wine. In the kitchen, Josefina and Alejandro were chattering as they washed the dishes. Henry waved his glass at the room in general.

“It's a fine place you have, Miss Frances,” he said. “But it's my belief you need to get away from it for a while.”

“I intend to.”

“And I don't mean Hermosillo, Panchita. According to my father's letter, I have a little place down in Costa Rica.”

“They have a little yellow fever down in Costa Rica, too.”

“Only in the lowlands, and my father's coffee plantation is in the highlands. I'll show you the picture of the house and garden when I get my stuff from Allie's. He said there are butterflies there a foot across!”

“And I've heard tell the anopheles mosquito is so big, it's the national bird!”

“But if you read the
Globe
,” Henry said, “you'll know that I can take the ash off a mosquito's cigarette at a hundred yards. So there's nothing to worry about.”