“He wanted it that big? Hell, it pretty much covers your neck and down into your chest.”
“Barnabas said folks would remember me because of the bird. He told me that a man folks don’t remember is of no account.”
“He was a hard old man, was Barnabas, him and them other mountain men he hung with. A tough, mean bunch as ever was.”
“They taught me,” Flintlock said. “Each one of them taught me something.”
“Like what, for instance?”
“They taught me about whores and whiskey and how to tell the good ones from the bad. They taught me how to stalk a man and how to kill him. And they taught me to never answer a bunch of damned fool questions.”
Roper laughed. “Sounds like old Barnabas and his pals all right.”
“One more thing, Abe. You saved my life today, and they taught me to never forget a thing like that.”
Roper, smiling, watched a hawk in flight against the dark blue sky, then again directed his attention to Flintlock.
“You ever heard of the Golden Bell of Santa Elena, Sam?” he said.
“Can’t say as I have.”
“You will. And after I tell you about it, I’ll ask you to repay the favor you owe me.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Are you sure you saw deer out here, Captain Shaw? It might have been a shadow among the trees.”
“Look at the tracks in the wash, Major. Deer have passed this way and not long ago.”
“I see tracks all right,” Major Philip Ashton said. He looked around him. “But I’m damned if I see any deer.”
“Sir, may I suggest we move farther up the wash as far as the foothills,” Captain Owen Shaw said. “Going on dusk the deer will move out of the timber.”
Ashton, a small, compact man with a florid face, an affable disposition and a taste for bonded whiskey, nodded. “As good a suggestion as any, Captain. We’ll wait until dark and if we don’t see a deer we’ll leave it for another day.”
“As you say, sir,” Shaw said.
He watched the major walk ahead of him. Like himself, Ashton wore civilian clothes but he carried a regulation Model 1873 Trapdoor Springfield rifle. Shaw was armed with a .44-40 Winchester because he wanted nothing to go wrong on this venture, no awkward questions to be answered later.
Major Ashton, who had never held a combat command, carried his rifle at the slant, as though advancing on an entrenched enemy and not a herd of nonexistent mule deer.
Shaw was thirty years old that spring. He’d served in a frontier cavalry regiment, but he’d been banished to Fort Defiance as a commissary officer after a passionate, though reckless, affair with the young wife of a farrier sergeant.
Shaw wasn’t at all troubled by his exile. It was safer to dole out biscuit and salt beef than do battle with Sioux and Cheyenne warriors.
Of course, the Apaches were a problem, but since the Navajo attacked the fort in 1858 and 1860 and both times were badly mauled, it seemed that the wily Geronimo was giving the place a wide berth.
That last suited Captain Shaw perfectly. He had big plans and they sure as hell didn’t involve Apaches.
The wash, dry now that the spring melt was over, made a sharp cut to the north and the two officers followed it through a grove of stunted juniper and willow onto a rocky plateau bordered by thick stands of pine.
In the distance the fading day painted the Chuska peaks with wedges of deep lilac shadow and out among the foothills coyotes yipped. The jade sky was streaked with banners of scarlet and gold, the streaming colors of the advancing night.
Major Ashton walked onto the plateau, his attention directed at the pines. His rifle at the ready, he stopped and scanned the trees with his field glasses.
Without turning his head, he said, “Nothing moving yet, Captain.”
Shaw made no answer.
“You have a buck spotted?” the major whispered.
Again, he got no reply.
Ashton turned.
Shaw’s rifle was pointed right at his chest.
“What in blazes are you doing, Captain Shaw?” Ashton said, his face alarmed.
“Killing you, Major.”
Owen Shaw fired.
The soft-nosed .44-40 round tore into the major’s chest and plowed through his lungs. Even as the echoing report of the Winchester racketed around the plateau, Ashton fell to his hands and knees and coughed up a bouquet of glistening red blossoms.
Shaw smiled and shot Ashton again, this time in the head. The major fell on his side and all the life that remained in him fled.
Moving quickly, Shaw stood over Ashton and fired half a dozen shots into the air, the spent cartridge cases falling on and around the major’s body. He then pulled a Smith & Wesson .32 from the pocket of his tweed hunting jacket, placed the muzzle against his left thigh and pulled the trigger.
A red-hot poker of pain burned across Shaw’s leg, but when he looked down at the wound he was pleased. It was only a flesh wound but it was bleeding nicely, enough to make him look a hero when he rode into Fort Defiance.
Limping slightly, Shaw retraced his steps along the dry wash to the place where he and Ashton had tethered their horses. He looked behind him and to his joy saw that he’d left a blood trail. Good! There was always the possibility that a cavalry patrol had returned to the fort and their Pima scouts could be bad news. The blood would help his cover-up.
He gathered up the reins of the major’s horse and swung into the saddle. There was no real need to hurry but he forced his horse into a canter, Ashton’s mount dragging on him.
It was an officer’s duty to recover the body of a slain comrade, but Ashton had been of little account and not well liked. When Shaw told of the Apache ambush and his desperate battle to save the wounded major, that little detail would be overlooked.
And his own bloody wound spoke loud of gallantry and devotion to duty.
Lamps were already lit when Captain Owen Shaw rode into Fort Defiance, a sprawling complex of buildings, some of them ruins, grouped around a dusty parade ground.
He staged his entrance well.
Not for him to enter at a gallop and hysterically warn of Apaches, rather he slumped in the saddle and kept his horse to a walk . . . the wounded warrior’s noble return.
He was glad that just as he rode past the sutler’s store, big, laughing Sergeant Patrick Tone stepped outside, a bottle of whiskey tucked under his arm.
“Sergeant,” Shaw said, making sure he sounded exhausted and sore hurt, “sound officer’s call. Direct the gentlemen to the commandant’s office.”
“Where is Major Ashton, sir?” Tone said, his Irish brogue heavy on his tongue. Like many soldiers in the Indian-fighting army, he’d been born and bred in the Emerald Isle and was far from the rainy green hills of his native land.
“He’s dead. Apaches. Now carry out my order.”
Tone shifted the bottle from his right to his left underarm and snapped off a salute. Then he stepped quickly toward the enlisted men’s barracks, roaring for the bugler.
Shaw dismounted outside the administration building, a single-story adobe structure, its timber porch hung with several large clay ollas that held drinking water. The ollas’ constant evaporation supposedly helped keep the interior offices cool, a claim the soldiers vehemently denied.
After leaning against his horse for a few moments, the action of an exhausted man, Shaw limped up the three steps to the porch, drops of blood from his leg starring the rough pine.
He stopped, swaying slightly, when he saw a woman bustling toward him across the parade ground, her swirling skirts lifting veils of yellow dust.
Shaw smiled inwardly. This was getting better and better. Here comes the distraught widow.