Death Valley Drifter, page 6
It remained empty, and Hank turned sharply in the saddle. “Lieutenant—help me! Give me something. Have you heard that name?”
“I’ve heard it,” Martins said.
“Tell me where! I’m not holding anything back—”
Hank looked at him imploringly, but Martins was done.
The lieutenant looked ahead. “C’mon. We have to reach the way station by nightfall.”
Martins spurred his horse to move. Hank did not bother asking what the urgency was about, did not press him more about the name. The man was either a self-made bastard or a great soldier, possibly both.
Hank followed, mentally repeating the name Bill Beaudine.
William Beaudine. WB. Bill. BB. Sergeant Beaudine. Captain Beaudine. Colonel Beaudine.
No version of it, no rank, seemed to be quite right. None brought up a face.
A gust of wind lifted a tumbleweed, blew it against him. Strands stuck to his sweat, and he brushed them away, spit a few to the side—
A blade of grass.
He had been chewing one on the back of that horse. The grass had been stuck there when he regained consciousness. He did not bother to tell Martins about that. But it was something, something new.
He reminded himself of something Jane had said, to let things sit. Don’t look straight at them. Hank turned his struggling mind to Lieutenant Martins. Hank and, presumably, Bill Beaudine had been seeking the soldier and his companions. Why?
Martins had been fighting in Mexico, part of an army. The lieutenant had not said whether he was siding with the natives or was fighting for the United States.
“Are we at war with Mexico?” Hank asked suddenly. Jane had not spoken of it, but then it was not necessarily the topic a busy frontier woman might think to mention.
“Not since forty-eight. My pa served. Cost him an eye and an ear, fighting those dust rats.”
“Was your father a soldier, too?”
“Stop talking,” Martins said.
Direct questions had not worked, and the back door was shut, too. But it did not sound as if Martins would have fought for the locals. Another nation? Any political information Hank might have possessed was gone. If Martins was against the Mexicans, did that mean Hank had been for them? He did not seem to recall any language other than English. If he worked down there, he would have to know some Mexican.
Unless you were down there for just this one thing: attacking Americans and not locals.
The sun was just past overhead when dust rose on the northern horizon. That was the direction Martins was headed, toward the next way station. Lieutenant Martins “whoaed” to a stop. Hank did likewise.
Martins dismounted. Hank did not. He had been considering for the last few minutes, separating himself from the other man. This vague hope that scraps of knowledge would return or be triggered did not seem to be bearing fruit. Not with this man and his unwillingness to help anyone but himself and his mission—whatever that was. Hank was getting restless to try something else, almost anything else. The only thing that prevented him from galloping off was the very real fear of being shot in the back if he tried to get away. Or having the horse shot from under him and having to trot after the lieutenant, noosed to the saddle.
But this distraction might be the opportunity he needed. It depended on who was riding hard to get here. Martins obviously considered the newcomers potentially more of a threat than his unarmed companion. He had walked his horse ahead and not looked back once.
“You think they’re your friends?” Hank asked.
“I said, don’t talk.”
Martins still did not look back. He was peering at that sudden activity, shotgun in hand. Then he did something curious: He took the horse’s reins in his left hand and just stood there.
That’s not to escape, Hank realized, whether remembering it or figuring it. Martins’ intent was to pull the animal around for cover, if need be. That was why he had dismounted . . . and didn’t mind if the other man stayed in the saddle. Hank would be the first to draw fire.
Hank looked at the terrain east and west. There was no cover in the low hills that he could reach in time, and there was no way he could outrace a shotgun blast. Especially on a horse, which made a considerable target. Yet if flight was impossible, there was still an option.
Hank dismounted, slowly and quietly. He kept his head steady so he wasn’t shocked by a jolt of pain. Without the slight breeze he had felt on horseback, the sun and the heat quickly became oppressive. That meant Martins had to be feeling it, too. Despite his care the injury throbbed again, though not as bad as before. The parched grasses protected Hank’s bare feet somewhat, enough so that when he started to move, he did not feel the burning . . . or make any sound.
I’ve done something like this before, he was certain. His legs knew to bend for flexibility, and his right hand felt empty . . . as if it needed a knife.
Hank did not bother trying to remember where, when, how, or why he had done this. He only knew that he must do it again. He let his body move, slightly crouched. His eyes were on the shotgun, in case Martins turned—
Hank was about five feet from the lieutenant when a sudden chittering sound, some flying instinct—or perhaps an Indian—caused the man to spin around. Had the officer turned and raised the shotgun simultaneously, Hank would have died there. But that was not what Martins did. Hank was able to take two more steps, then spring at the man before the weapon could be fully lifted.
The leap caused Hank’s wound to ache, and he screamed from deep in his belly to release the pain. Fortunately, the cry livened his senses, his eyes, his movements. Hank’s hat flew away, and the shotgun discharged, injuring only the dry earth in front of the soldier and scaring Hank’s horse away; Martins had been forced to release his own reins, causing the paint to buck and back away as the men fell. Hank landed with his left arm around Martins’ neck, pulling the man down as he himself hit the ground. Hank landed on his right side, braced by his right arm, but the drop had knocked the breath from the Confederate soldier.
Time mattered now. Whoever was approaching would have heard the shot.
Hank did not waste time fighting for the gun. As they scrapped for position, Hank had two goals: to get on top of the other man and to get his right arm around the man’s waist . . . behind it. Hours of frustration fueled by desperation helped Hank achieve both. Straddling the lieutenant, Hank put his left hand on the man’s throat, putting his weight into the grip and pressing the back of the man’s head to the ground. Martins had to use both hands to try to wrest the attacker away so he could breathe.
While that fight played out, Hank slipped his right hand round and felt for the hilt in the back of the gray jacket. He grabbed the bone handle through the fabric and tugged the knife to pull it free. Martins suddenly realized he had two battles to fight but Hank had the advantage—and then he had the knife.
The men were both inarticulate, grunting savages as they fought. Hank poured his desperate situation into the assault, lifting his full weight briefly from the straddled officer and coming down hard, knocking the breath from his adversary. Martins’ fight dissipated as he wheezed, as Hank freed the knife from under the coat, flipped it over in his right hand, and laid the blade against the throat of the man trapped beneath him. Hank stopped choking the man as the blade drew blood and the officer ceased struggling. Hank used his free hand to pull the shotgun from the man’s fingers. His eyes blazed down at the lieutenant.
“Who am I?” he screamed.
“I—I don’t know!”
Hank dragged the sharp blade like a pendulum, cutting side to side in the man’s leathery neck and drawing more blood.
“I swear, I don’t know!”
“Who is Bill Beaudine?”
“A Pinkerton man.”
“What?”
“A detective!”
The explanation meant nothing.
“Who are you working for?” Hank demanded. “What did we steal?”
Martins wriggled, clamped his lips shut, snarled in his mouth as blood trickled down both sides of his neck.
Hank grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanked his head back to expose more throat, and pressed down. The lieutenant winced, but his lips did not open.
Lieutenant Martins was more of a soldier, of a man, than his attacker had guessed. Hank stole a look up, saw the dust cloud nearing, two riders visible. He glared back down at his captive and pushed the knife hard enough to draw more blood. He felt the resistance of the man’s voice box and stopped.
“Give me something, damn your eyes!”
Martins looked up. And spat.
There was no more time. Hank raised the knife, hilt down, and brought it hard against the man’s forehead, audibly cracking Martins’ skull. Rising unsteadily, blood once again running behind his own ear, Hank took the shotgun, recovered his hat, and carefully approached the lieutenant’s spooked horse a few feet away. His own had run off too far to catch.
Hank climbed into the saddle. He did not know if the men approaching were friends or enemies. Obviously, neither had Martins, and this was not the time to find out. Without making any stops, his companions would likely have beaten him to the meeting place, been watching for his dust.
Pulling the reins to turn the mount around, Hank made his way past the other horse, slow enough not to scare him and close enough so he could reach over to grab his boots without stopping.
He and Martins had been heading northeast, by the sun, and Hank continued east—the direction the horse was facing. He kicked him to a gallop, as unsure of where he was going as he was unsure of everything else in his life at the moment. All he knew was that he could not go back to the Smith cabin. However bad Martins was hurt, he might return there when he woke. It was not fair to put the family in further danger. Hank’s fast-made plan, the entirety of it, was to circle wide around the newcomers and, at least for now, make his way to the stagecoach stop. If they were headed there, chances were the hard-riding Beaudine might have done so as well.
Besides, at the moment, the stop was one of only two places he knew of on God’s entire earth.
* * *
* * *
THE TWO RIDERS, both in dirty Confederate uniforms, rode in with urgent speed. They stopped just a few feet from the fallen man. One of the men slid from his saddle and looked off to the east. He saw a galloping horse and rider small against the sky and another horse grazing much nearer.
The mounted man was also looking east. “Should I go after him, Frank?”
Colonel Franklin Voight looked around and shook his head. “Seems like he took the lieutenant’s shotgun. No point running headlong into that. Bring water, a cloth, something to patch his throat. We gotta bring the lieutenant around, see who that was.”
As the other man dismounted, Voight glanced at a compass hanging from his belt and marked the fleeing man’s exact direction. There was nothing out there, so the rider was likely to turn back at some point. The other horse out in the field—that was the one Martins had brought to carry a dead man. It wasn’t.
The second man came over with his canteen and removed his kerchief. Private Paul Stevens was a strong six footer, his head covered in prematurely white hair. The man bent over the unconscious Martins was the shortest of the trio.
Stevens knelt and dribbled water sparingly on the injury inflicted by the knife hilt, then used his sweaty kerchief to dab it away. Lieutenant Martins did not move. Voight listened to the man’s breathing, touched lightly on both sides and around the small of his back. Nothing was broken. Voight put the damp cloth on the man’s neck wound, then sat back on his heels.
“You see the head wound, Private?”
“Yeah?”
“Bruising already. Hard, sharp, pointed hit.”
“A rock?”
Voight shook his head. “I’m guessing it’s the same knife that was held to his throat. Probably that Bowie knife the lieutenant pulled from the tree. Unless he stashed it elsewhere, it’s missing.”
“Seems careless of the lieutenant to have had this happen.”
“Man tied up can slip off the horse, slow you down. You gotta do everything for him. Go collect the other horse. We’ll get the lieutenant on it, go to the meeting point, figure out what to do.”
“He’ll want to ride on, cuts and bumps or not,” Stevens said.
“Likely as not, but he’ll need ’em patched all the same.”
The private looked to the east. The horse and rider were no longer visible. Perhaps they were in the small clump of velvet mesquite about a quarter mile away; it was difficult to see into the shade.
“I still think I should ride after the one who did this.”
Voight shook his head. “He could be hunkered down out there, waiting for us to do just that. No, you’ve got to cover our move north so we can regroup, fast. Get Martins’ horse. And, Paul—watch that whoever is out there ain’t waiting for you to do just that.”
“Right.”
While Voight patched Martins’ throat as best as he could—using mud he made from canteen water—Stevens remounted and went off after the other horse. It had stopped about a quarter mile away and was grazing. He rode toward it and then halted abruptly.
“I see him!” Stevens shouted.
Voight spun but remained low to the ground. “Where?”
“Off to the east—”
Voight shielded his eyes with both hands and looked where the private was pointing. He saw a small shape just north of the trees. It could have been a horse or a rock or a stunted tree; it was too far to be sure.
“Let him be!” Voight ordered.
But Stevens didn’t hear, as he had simultaneously driven heels into his horse and taken off in that direction.
Voight stood and bellowed, “Private!”
Either pride and a desire for vengeance or distance rendered the private deaf. As Stevens rode, he pulled his carbine from its scabbard and held it at the ready. The figure beside the tree had not yet moved. Maybe the man had been thrown, the crazy way he was riding. Or it could have been that Martins hadn’t taken punishment without giving some, and the man was injured.
The private charged ahead, sucking the hot air through his teeth, ready to stop in an instant. He was riding low, hugging the neck of the horse, using a tight rein to pull the horse into unexpected zigs and zags. As the point man of their Tennessee regiment during the war, he was accustomed to short pursuits and antelope-fast attacks.
The ground spit dirt and grass ahead of him. and a moment later the air erupted with a deep, rolling crack. Private Stevens made one of those sudden halts, nearly upending the horse with the forceful ninety-degree turn. Stevens was off the horse in the same move and tugged the reins sideways, leaving the animal between him and the shooter. He held firm on the reins with his left hand while with his right he brought the rifle up and over the saddle, pointing north.
He peered ahead. The horse was still in the trees. Stevens squinted at it.
“Eh?”
A horse. Just a horse was standing there. The rider had doubled back on foot, probably belly crawling, taken concealment in the rolling terrain, and fired off a shotgun—likely Lieutenant Martins’ Crescent double-barreled, from the familiar boom of it.
That was more cannon than Stevens wanted to deal with. Especially because that first shot might have been an intentional miss.
None of the old unit had ever surrendered, but they had retreated. Still behind the horse, he raised the carbine so it was pointed up, above the saddle.
“I’m leaving!” he shouted.
The private looked down at the scraggly earth. He always found he could listen better if he wasn’t looking. There was no response, but there was also no additional gunfire. Stevens stood a moment more, then cautiously stuck his head up over the back of the horse. He looked ahead.
The horse was gone, leaving behind an empty settling cloud of dust.
“Goddamn, you’ve done this before, too,” he said.
He returned his brain to the other missions: tending to Martins and the big one, recovering the box. Though he could not help but wonder if a big clue was departing fast to the east.
Without further hesitation, Stevens climbed back on his mount and kicked it in the opposite direction, scooping up the stray horse as he rode back.
When the private returned, Voight was kneeling beside Martins. The officer’s jacket was off, and Voight was checking the muddy poultice on the lieutenant’s throat.
“Had your ration of full-steam stupid for today?” Voight asked, glancing up.
“Colonel, there’s a reason the lieutenant was traveling with that fella.”
“You mean the lieutenant who’s lying on the ground here?” Voight reminded him. “You’re saying he had a reason that he could tell us if he were awake?”
Stevens dismounted, still holding the reins of the second horse. His hard landing, his kick at the ground, showed he wasn’t ashamed of going, just of failing.
“How is he?”
Voight turned back to the man lying on the ground. “Despite having his bruised sides painfully poked, he has not made a sound.”
Like too many of our boys in too many of those bloody campaigns in the last American war, Voight thought. And now here they were, on what was supposed to be a milk run, hoping they could get their leader healthy again.
“You want to sit him up or—”
“No,” Voight said. “We’ll take off his jacket to pad the saddle and just drape him over carefully.”
“That’s what the lieutenant planned to do,” Stevens observed. “Throw two dead men across it.”
“I was there, Private. I heard.”
“Just remembering,” Stevens protested.
“Would’ve been better if you’d did some thinking, too. And waiting.”
