A Good Day to Die Read online

  He’d been beaten, starved, abused, and tortured near the extreme. But not all the way to destruction. Red Hand needed him alive. He had a use for him. Hardesty was taken north, to the conclave at Arrowhead Rock. Kept alive and on hand—for what?

  Out of the tipi stepped a weird hybrid creature, man-shaped, with a monstrous shaggy horned head.

  Coming into the light, the apparition was revealed to be an aged Comanche, pot-bellied and thin-shanked. He wore a brown woolly buffalo hide headdress complete with horns. He was Medicine Hat, Red Hand’s own shaman, herbalist, devil doctor, and sorcerer.

  Half carrying and half dragging Hardesty, Sun Dog and Little Bells hustled him to the front of the rock. Medicine Hat shambled after them, mumbling to himself.

  The cavalryman produced no small effect on the crowd. Like a magnifying lens focusing the sun’s rays into a single burning beam, the trooper provided a focus for the braves’ bloodlust and demonic energies.

  Hardesty was brought to the stake and bound to it. Ropes made of braided buffalo hide strips lashed him to the pole with hands tied above his head. Too weak to stand on his own two feet, the ropes held him up.

  When Comanches took an enemy alive, they tortured him, expecting no less should they be taken. Torture was an important element of the warrior society. How a man stood up to it showed what he was made of. It was entertaining, too—to those not on the receiving end.

  Hardesty bore the marks of starvation and abuse. His face was mottled with purple-black bruises, features swollen, one blackened eye narrowed to a glinting slit. His mouth hung open. His shirt was ripped open down the middle, his bare torso having been sliced and gouged. Cactus thorns had been driven under his fingernails and toenails. Twigs had been tied between fingers and toes and set aflame. The soles of his feet had been skinned, then roasted.

  Firelight caused shadows to crawl and slide across Hardesty’s bound form. He seemed as much dead as alive.

  Black Robe now went to work on him with a knife whose blade was heated red-hot. It brought Hardesty around, his bellows of pain booming in the basin.

  Badger shot some arrows into Hardesty’s arms and legs, careful to ensure that no wound was mortal.

  Each new infliction was greeted with shouts by the braves. It was great sport.

  Hardesty was scum and he knew it, but he played his string out to the end. His mouth worked, cursing his captors. “The joke’s on you, ya ignorant savages. I ain’t cavalry a’tall. I’m a deserter. I quit the army, you dumb sons of bitches, haw haw! How d’you like that? Ya heathen devils.”

  A few Comanches had a smattering of English, but were unable to make out his words. All liked his show of spirit, however.

  “The gods are happiest when the sacrifice is strong,” Red Hand said. “Make ready for the Fire Lance.”

  Medicine Hat muttered agreement with a toothless mouth, spittle wetting his pointed chin. Reaching into his bag of tricks, he pulled out a gourd. It was dried and hollowed out, with a long neck serving as a kind of spout. The end of the spout was sealed by a stopper. Pulling the plug, he closed on the captive.

  Hardesty slumped against the ropes, head down, and chin resting on top of his chest. He looked up out of the tops of his eyes, his pain-wracked gaze registering little more than a mute flicker of animal awareness.

  Red Hand moved forward, out of the shadows into the light. It could be seen that his face was freshly striped with black paint.

  War paint! The sight of which sent an electric thrill surging through the throng.

  Red Hand motioned Medicine Hat to proceed. The shaman’s moccasined feet shuffled in the dust, doing a little ceremonial dance. Mouthing spells, prayers, and incantations, Medicine Hat neared Hardesty, then backed away, repeating the action several times.

  He held the gourd over the captive’s head and. began pouring the vessel’s contents on Hardesty’s head, shoulders, chest, and belly, dousing him with a dark, foul-smelling liquid. Compounded of rendered animal fats, grease, and mineral oils, the stuff was used as a fire starter to quicken the lighting of campfires. It gurgled as it spewed from the spout.

  Groans escaped Hardesty as his upper body was coated with the stuff. Medicine Hat poured until the gourd was empty. He stepped away from Hardesty, who looked as if he’d been drenched with glistening brown oil.

  Red Hand moved forward, the center of all eyes.

  The shaman was a great one for brewing up various potions, powders, and salves. Earlier, he had applied a special ointment to the spear blade of Red Hat’s lance. The main ingredient of the mixture was a thick, sticky pine tar resin blended with vegetable and herbal oils. It coated the blade, showing as a gummy residue that dulled the brilliance of the steel’s metallic shine.

  Red Hand’s movements took on a deliberate, ritualistic quality. Holding the lance in both hands, he raised it horizontally over his head and shook it at the heavens. Lowering it, he dipped the blade into the heart of the fire. A few beats passed before the slow-burning ointment flared up, wrapping the blade in blue flames.

  Red Hand lifted the lance, tilting it skyward for all to see. The blade was a wedge of blue fire, burning with an eerie, mystic glow—a ghost light, a weird effect both impressive and unnerving.

  Quivering with emotion, Red Hand’s clear, strong voice rang out. “Lo! The Fire Lance!”

  He touched the burning spear to Hardesty’s well-oiled chest. Blue fire sparked from the blade tip, leaping to the oily substance coating the captive’s flesh. The fire-starting compound burst into bright hot flames, wrapping Hardesty in a skin of fire, turning him into a human torch.

  He blazed with a hot yellow-red-orange light. The burning had a crackling sound, like flags being whipped by a high wind.

  Hardesty writhed, screaming as he was burned alive. Fire cut through the ropes binding him to the stake. Before he could break free, he was speared by Red Hand, who skewered him in the middle.

  Red Hand opened up Hardesty’s belly, spilling his guts. He gave a final twist to the blade before withdrawing it. He faced the man of fire, lance leveled for another thrust if needed.

  Hardesty collapsed, falling in a blazing heap. The fire spread to some nearby grass and brush, setting them alight.

  At a sign from Red Hand, members of his five-man cadre rushed up with blankets, using them to beat out the fires. Streamers of blue-gray smoke rose up. The night was thick with the smell of burning flesh.

  Red Hand thrust the blue-burning spear blade into a dirt mound. When it was surfaced, the mystic glow was extinguished, the blade glowing a dull red.

  Chaos, near anarchy, reigned among the Comanches. The horde erupted in a frenzy, many breaking into spontaneous war dances.

  Above all others was heard the voice of Red Hand. “Take up the Fire Lance! Kill the Texans!”

  Much later, when all was quiet, Wahtonka and Laughing Bear stood off by themselves in a secluded place, putting their heads together. The horned moon was low in the west, the stars were paling, the eastern sky was lightening.

  “What should we do?” Laughing Bear asked.

  “What can we do? Go with Red Hand to make war on the whites.” Wahtonka shrugged. “Any raid is better than none,” he added, philosophically.

  Laughing Bear grunted agreement. “Waugh! That is true.”

  “We shall see if the Great Spirit truly spoke to Red Hand, if his vision comes to pass,” Wahtonka said. “If not—may his bones bleach in the sand!”

  TWO

  The town of Hangtree, county seat of Hangtree County, Texas, was known to most folks, except for a few town boosters and straitlaced respectable types, as Hangtown. So it was to Johnny Cross, a native son of the region.

  Located in north central Texas, Hangtree County lay west of Palo Pinto County and east of the Llano Estacado, known as the Staked Plains, whose vast emptiness was bare of towns or settlements for hundreds of square miles. Hangtown squatted on the lip of that unbounded immensity.

  The old Cross ranch lay some mi
les west of town, nestled at the foot of the eastern range of the Broken Hills, called the Breaks. Beyond the Breaks lay the beginnings of the Staked Plains.

  Johnny, the last living member of the Cross family, had come back to Hangtree after the war. He lived at the ranch with his old buddy Luke Pettigrew, two not-so-ex-Rebels trying to make a go of it in the hard times of the year following the fall of the Confederacy. They were partners in a mustang venture. Hundreds of mustangs ran wild and free in the Breaks and Johnny and Luke sold whatever they could catch.

  Growing up in Hangtree, Johnny and Luke were boyhood pals. When war came in 1861, both were quick to fight for the South, like most of the menfolk in the Lone Star state. Luke joined up with Hood’s Texans, a hard-fighting outfit that had made its mark in most of the big battles of the war. In the last year of the conflict, a Yankee cannonball had taken off his left leg below the knee. A wooden leg took its place.

  Johnny Cross had followed a different path. For good or ill, his star had led him to throw in with Quantrill’s Raiders, legendary in its own way, though not with the bright, untarnished glory of Hood’s fighting force. Johnny spent the next four years serving with that dark command, living mostly on horseback, fighting his way through the bloody guerrilla warfare of the border states.

  A dead shot when he first joined Quantrill, he soon became a formidable pistol fighter and long rider, a cool-nerved killing machine. His comrades in arms included the likes of Bloody Bill Anderson, the Younger brothers, and Frank and Jesse James.

  The bushwhackers’ war in Kansas and Missouri was a murky, dirty business where the lines blurred between soldier and civilian, valor and savagery, and it was easy to lose one’s way.

  When Richmond fell and Dixie folded in ’65, Quantrill and his men received no amnesty. They were wanted outlaws with a price on their heads. On the dodge, plying the gunman’s trade, Johnny Cross worked his way back to Hangtree County, where he wasn’t wanted for anything—yet.

  A dangerous place, the county was one of the most violent locales on the frontier. Trouble came frequently and fast, and Johnny was in his element. He and Luke crossed trails and teamed up. A mysterious stranger named Sam Heller—a damned Yankee but a first-class fighting man—roped them into bucking a murderous outlaw gang.1

  When the gunsmoke cleared, Johnny and Luke had come out of it with whole skins and a nice chunk of reward money.

  Johnny and Luke saddled up and pointed their horses east along the Hangtree Trail, heading into town to blow off some steam after working hard during the week. Hangtown was a couple hours ride from the ranch, but then, Texas was big. Every place in Texas was a fair piece away from everywhere else.

  They rode out in the morning, when it was still cool. Texas in late June got hot early and stayed that way long after sundown. The Hangtree Trail was a dirt road stretching east-west across the county. It had rained the night before, washing things clean and wetting down the dust. The sky was cloudless blue, the grass and trees bright green.

  Luke Pettigrew was long and lean. War wounds left him hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked and gaunt. He was starting to fill out, but there was still something of a half-starved wolf about him. Tufts of gray-brown hair stuck out on the sides of his head under his hat, and the sharp tips of canine teeth showed over the edge of his lips.

  He was mounted on a big bay horse, a rifle fixed to the right-hand side of the saddle and a crutch on the left. He was good with a rifle, fair with a pistol. A sawed-off shotgun hung in a holster on his right hip, for when the fighting got up close and personal.

  Johnny Cross was of medium height, athletic, and compactly knit. He had black hair and hazel eyes that sometimes looked brown, sometimes yellow, depending on the light and his moods. He was clean shaven, something of a rarity when most men wore beards or mustaches.

  When he’d been with Quantrill, he lived rough in the field, going weeks, months without a shave, haircut, or bath and wearing the same clothes night and day until they began coming apart, shredding off his body. These days, he set a high value on bathing, shaving, and clean clothes. His nature was fastidious, catlike even.

  He wore a flat-crowned black hat, a dark broadcloth jacket, and a gray button-down shirt. His black denim pants hung over his army-issue boots. A pair of hip-holstered Colt .44s showed beneath his jacket. A lightweight pistol was tucked away in one of his jacket pockets, a carbine was tucked into his saddle scabbard, and a couple more pistols were stashed in his saddlebags.

  Riding with Quantrill had taught him the value of having plenty of firepower where he could get to it fast. Returning to Hangtree had firmed up that belief.

  Ahead lay a low ridge running north-south, cut at right angles by the Hangtree Trail. Hangtown lay just east of the rise.

  North of the trail rose the Hanging Tree, a towering dead oak, silver-gray and lightning-blasted. It had broken limbs sticking out from its sides. At its foot, lay black, sticklike crosses, slanting wooden grave markers, and weedy mounds of Boot Hill, burial place of the poor, the lost, and the damned.

  South of the trail, the rise was topped by a white-painted wooden church with a bell tower topped by an obelisk-shaped steeple. Nearby was the churchyard cemetery, neat and well kept.

  Johnny and Luke crested the ridge. On the far side, the trail dipped and ran east into Hangtown. Once in town, the road became Trail Street, the main drag. It was paralleled on the north by Commerce Street, south by Mace Street.

  At the east end of Trail Street stood the courthouse and the jail, Hangtown’s only stone buildings, built in the 1850s. The courthouse fronted east, a two-story brown sandstone structure with a clock tower. The jail fronted north, its long walls running north-south, a one-story brick building with iron bars on the windows. South central of town a jumble of adobe houses and wooden huts grouped around an oval plaza. Mextown.

  Southwest of town was a grassy open field with a stream running through it. A wagon train was camped there, with more than two dozen wagons arranged in a circle. Horses and oxen were pastured nearby. Smoke rose from cooking fires. People moved to and fro, youngsters weaving in and out around them.

  Johnny and Luke rode down the ridge into town. It was a little past ten o’clock in the morning.

  Saturdays were usually busy in Hangtown. Ranchers and their families from all over the county came in to trade, barter, or buy. The fine late June weather had brought them out in big numbers. Wagons lined boardwalk sidewalks fronting the stores on both sides of Trail Street. Groups of kids ran up and down the street, playing tag.

  Many cowboys and ranch hands worked only a half day on Saturday; they would start coming in after twelve noon. The week’s wages burned a hole in their pockets, itching to be spent on whiskey, women, and gambling.

  Johnny and Luke put their horses up at Hobson’s Livery stables and corral, which was south of the jail. Once the horses were squared away, Johnny said, “Let’s get some chow.”

  “Hell, let’s get a drink,” Luke said.

  “Chow first. It’s early yet.”

  Luke gave in with poor grace and they went into Mabel’s Café. They sat at a table, ordered breakfast, and soon were digging into a big meal of steak and eggs, biscuits, and coffee.

  Fortified, they exited the restaurant a few minutes later. Johnny reached into an inside breast pocket of his jacket for one of several long, thin cigars he kept there. He bit the end off, spat it out, and lit up. Luke used a penknife to cut a chaw off a plug of tobacco, stuck it in the side of his mouth, and commenced to work on it.

  They moved on, north to Trail Street. With his crutch wedged under his left arm, Luke swung along with the facility that comes with much practice. Men with missing limbs were a commonplace throughout the land in the war’s aftermath.

  Johnny padded along at a nice easy pace so as not to get Luke winded. Besides, he was in no hurry. Turning left at Trail Street, they went west along its south side, nodding to acquaintances, saying hello in passing. Johnny smoked his cigar, trailing blue-gr
ay smoke. Luke squirted tobacco juice from time to time.

  Johnny liked to watch the passing parade, especially the pretty girls, the town misses, and ranchers’ daughters. They were bright eyed, with well-scrubbed shining faces.

  Their wayward sisters, denizens of the saloons and the houses, were mostly still abed, not yet astir. Johnny liked them well enough, too—perhaps too well. But they belonged to a half world of gamblers, barkeeps, whores, hardcases, and thrill seekers—sinners all. They were nightbirds who flew when the sun went down.

  At ten-thirty in the morning, respectable folk held sway, crowding the wooden plank sidewalks fronting the stores. Luke flattened against a wall to dodge a gang of kids chasing each other, shouting back and forth. He and Johnny made their way west, sidestepping knots of people.

  “Lot of strangers in town,” Luke said.

  “Must come from that wagon train, Major Adams’s outfit,” Johnny said.

  The strangers were a rough-hewn lot, decent-seeming enough, but bearing the look of having done a lot of hard traveling with a long way yet to go. Some were staring, others shy, but all had the aspect of wayfarers. Pilgrims.

  “Where’re they going, Johnny?”

  “West to Anvil Flats and then across the plains to the Santa Fe Trail, I reckon.”

  “And then?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Denver, or the mines in Arizona or Nevada. California, maybe. Who knows?”

  “Damn fools.” Luke jetted some tobacco juice into the street. “I mean, the ones taking their families with them.”

  “Can’t leave ’em behind,” Johnny said reasonably.

  “Well, maybe not. But they got a hard road ahead. Lucky to make it without losing their hair.”

  “Major Adams knows his business, they say.”

  “They say.”

  “His wagons have gotten through so far.”

  “Not all of them. Injins and outlaws, desert and mountains did for more’n a few.”