A Time to Slaughter Read online

  The man smiled, showing few teeth and all of those black. “Good news, lord.” Hassan Najid had no need to say more. He, like his master, knew the implications of such a celebration.

  Unlike his men, who were dressed in the striped shirts and black bell-bottom pants of English seamen, Hakim wore the blue robes of a Bedouin. At his left side hung a gold-hilted saif, the terrible curved scimitar of the Middle East. The sheik was proud to say that two score men had fallen to his sword in many battles.

  The dory bumped alongside the schooner then a seaman scrambled over the rail. The man bowed and Hakim said, “Well?”

  “A wedding, lord,” the seaman said.

  “And the bride?”

  “Very lovely, lord. And there are other pretty young women there.” The seaman smiled. “And some hags.”

  “And the men? What about the men?”

  “No more than thirty of fighting age.”

  “Are they armed?”

  “They are sheep, lord.”

  Hakim gave that some thought. Like many successful warriors, he was a cautious man and carefully weighed the odds before entering battle.

  Finally he turned to Najid and said, “Lower the longboat. You and eleven others will go with me. The men will use their swords and pistols this day.”

  Najid gave a deep salaam, then turned away, shouting orders. Within minutes, the longboat was lowered and a dozen heavily armed seamen scrambled on board. Hakim, his naked blade across his knees, took his usual place at the bow.

  That he was outnumbered did not enter the sheik’s thinking. His men were the elite of his corsairs, tough desert warriors born and bred for war. They would make short work of a rabble of Mexican peasants.

  The longboat followed the surf and ground to a halt on a narrow stretch of shingle beach between half a dozen upturned fishing boats. The village, a rambling collection of adobe buildings built around a central plaza, lay fifty yards from shore.

  Hakim stood on the beach and studied the village through his telescope.

  The plaza was crowded with people dancing to music the sheik did not understand or appreciate, a far cry from the sweet flute airs of his homeland.

  One girl stood out above the rest. Dressed in white, she was obviously the bride, and her hair, as black and glossy as a raven’s wing, hung unbound to her waist, swaying like a thick sable curtain as she danced.

  Sheik Hakim nodded and smiled. Such a bride would bring a fine price at the Zanzibar slave market. He turned and addressed his men. “I want the girl in white and all the other women present. I will make my selection in the plaza.”

  “And the men, lord?” Najid asked.

  “Kill them all. Spare the hags and the atfal. We do not make war on children this day.” Hakim raised his sword. “Forward!”

  The corsairs hit the village like a ripsaw through soft pine.

  Women screamed in terror as their men were cut down one by one.

  The groom, a slender, handsome young man, tried his best to protect his bride and got a sword in the guts for his attempts. He died hard, using the last of his strength trying, and failing, to come to grips with his attacker.

  Shrieking, the bride kneeled beside her fallen husband and took him in her arms and soon her dress looked like blood on snow.

  Hakim, huge and powerful, cut down three cowering peons one after the other, laughing, enjoying the slaughter. His sword was not a silent weapon. The steel blade announced its coming deathblow with a thin whisper, and for a dozen Mexicans it was the last sound they heard on this earth.

  The village blacksmith, taller and more muscular than the others, made a stand at his forge and dashed out the brains of two of Hakim’s men with a hammer.

  Enraged, the sheik ordered him taken alive and lost a third man when the smith rammed a corsair’s head into the anvil, splitting the man’s skull so his brains spilled onto the floor. But finally the giant was wrestled to the ground where, bloody but defiant, he was bound hand and foot with ropes.

  When the slaughter was over, the sand of the plaza was scarlet with blood from the sprawled, butchered bodies. The fountain in the middle of the square ran red, the legs of a headless corpse sticking out of the basin. Above the village the sky was blue, the sun bright, but the air was tainted with the metallic smell of blood, and the birds shunned the place.

  Hakim’s corsairs herded the bride and a dozen other girls to the beach. The women were terrified, some crying uncontrollably while others stood, stone-faced, in shocked silence.

  The sheik ordered the women to be pushed into a line, then strolled past them, pausing at each one to study her face and figure. In the end he settled on the bride, a beautiful girl named Consuelo Spinoza, and three others.

  “Take them to the ship, then return,” he ordered Najid, whose sword hand was crimson to the wrist. “See no harm comes to them or you’ll pay with your head.”

  The longboat pulled away with the hysterical women on board, grieving for lost fathers, husbands, or lovers.

  Sheik Abdul-Basir Hakim watched them leave and was well satisfied. If that infidel dog Zebulon Moss had agreed to provide more, his trip would be profitable indeed.

  He turned away from the shore. He had a score to settle.

  He ordered the blacksmith brought before him and his corsairs forced the man to his knees. The Mexican was defiant; no fear in him. That was good. Hakim would not defile his blade with the blood of a coward.

  One swift stroke of the sheik’s sword and the blacksmith’s head jumped from his body and rolled in the sand. Hakim’s men cheered and Hakim acknowledged them by smiling and holding his bloody sword aloft.

  By the beards of his forefathers, it had been a fine morning’s work.

  Chapter Twelve

  Shawn O’Brien put on his hat, then washed, dressed, and shaved in the chill dawn light. The fire had burned down and was a pile of cold gray ashes. The windowpanes were etched with ferns of frost and outside, snow flurried in the street, hurried along by an icy wind blowing off the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east. The black morning promised a blacker day.

  Shawn punched the empty shells from his Colt, reloaded then buckled his gun belt around his hips. He shrugged into his sheepskin, left the room, and headed downstairs in search of coffee and breakfast.

  At this early hour there were only a few people in the dining room, but the killing of Lou Tabard had created a stir and all eyes were on the tall, slim young man in shotgun chaps and sheepskin whose Mexican spurs chimed as he found a table and sat down.

  Shawn met stares with a stare and his fellow diners quickly dropped their eyes and suddenly found the food on their plates to be of the greatest interest.

  “What can I get you, cowboy?” the waitress, a plump, motherly woman with the endlessly suffering expression of people with sore feet, asked.

  “Coffee, please, ma’am,” Shawn said, smiling.

  “You’ve been raised right, young feller,” the woman said. “You hungry?”

  To his surprise, Shawn realized he was. Luther Ironside always said that a killing ruined a man’s appetite, but he was having the opposite reaction.

  Before he could give her his order, the waitress said, “How about steak and eggs? It’s the only thing they can halfway cook right in this dump.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Shawn said.

  The woman waddled away and returned a few moments later with a coffeepot. The coffee was hot, strong, and bitter, just the way Shawn liked it. The food, when it came, passed muster as edible.

  He lingered over coffee and his first cigar of the morning, reluctant to leave the warmth of the dining room, where a large log fire burned. His attention was drawn to a woman who stepped into the room and hesitantly looked around, as though looking for someone. She wore a hooded cloak with a sprinkling of snow on the shoulders and top of the hood that almost completely covered her face.

  The woman turned in Shawn’s direction and their eyes met. Looking at her face, he realized she wa
s a young, pretty brunette, her cheeks rouged by the outside cold.

  The girl made up her mind about something and walked directly in Shawn’s direction. Always keen to meet a pretty woman, he rose to his feet and the girl said, “Mr. O’Brien?”

  “Yes I am, but you can call me Shawn.”

  “May I sit?”

  “Of course.”

  Shawn stepped around the table and pulled out a chair for the woman. After she was seated, he regained his own chair and said, “What can I do for you?”

  “I shouldn’t be here,” the woman said, glancing over her shoulder. She still had the hood of her cloak pulled over her head.

  “I’d say that makes two of us.” Shawn smiled.

  “My name is Minnie Dennett and I’m a friend . . . was a friend . . . of Trixie Lee.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think so.”

  “Coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Shawn waited to let Minnie think about what she had to tell him. Her eyes were brown, worried.

  Finally the woman said, “I work for Zeb Moss at the Lucky Lady saloon.”

  “Hostess?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Go on, Minnie.”

  “There’s a cellar at the rear of the saloon. It’s accessed by a trapdoor on the floor. Zeb stores his beer barrels in there to keep the beer cool.”

  Then, anticipating what Minnie would say next, Shawn said, “And that’s where Jul—Trixie is?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “But you don’t know so.”

  “I believe I heard a woman’s voice down there, talking to Zeb. It might have been Trixie’s voice, but I’m not sure.”

  “How the hell do I find out? The saloon never closes.”

  “That’s why I came to talk to you this morning. The Lucky Lady will close early tonight to let carpenters work on the floor behind the bar. Stuff spills back there and some of the floorboards are rotted.”

  “Will the carpenters be there all night?”

  “No. I heard Zeb say that he wants the job done by midnight. Then he told the bartenders they should open up tomorrow morning at seven.”

  “That’s enough time for me to get in there and find Trixie.”

  “Yes. I mean, if she’s who I heard.”

  “I’d bet the farm on it, Minnie.”

  The woman nodded, but said nothing more. After a lengthy silence she said, “The saloon only has one back door. I’ll try to leave it open for you. If I can’t, you’ll need to find another way in.”

  “I’ll find a way,” Shawn said.

  Minnie rose to her feet. “I must go now. I can’t risk being seen with you.” Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she added, “Zeb Moss plans to kill you, Mr. O’Brien.”

  “I figured that when two of his guns tried it last night.”

  The woman nodded. “Rance Bohan is a dangerous man and now he hates you. All of Zeb’s hired gunmen are dangerous.”

  “I’ll make sure to step around them,” Shawn said, smiling.

  “Good luck, Mr. O’Brien.” Then Minnie was gone, walking quickly across the dining room to the door.

  The clock tower in the plaza struck one as Shawn stepped out of the hotel into the night. A few flakes of snow drifted in the icy air, and his breath smoked as he crossed the empty street to the alley running between the Lucky Lady and the general store next door.

  Stepping into the alley, he smelled the rawness of the night and the dank odor of wet mud and ancient vomit. He made his way carefully, but still his boots hit empty bottles that clanked and rolled, alarming the rats that scuttled along the baseboards of the saloon. A mist hung in the air, gray as a ghost.

  At the rear door of the saloon, Shawn stood still and listened in the silence. No sound came from inside, though earlier hammers had pounded and saws rasped so loudly he’d heard the racket from his hotel room.

  He reached out a gloved hand, turned the door handle, and gave a little push. The door creaked open. A drift of mist entered into the saloon and he followed it inside, stopping immediately, trapped by darkness. After a few moments he slid one tentative foot ahead of him, then another, like a man crossing a frozen pond.

  Clang!

  A spittoon bounced away from Shawn’s booted toe and clattered and gonged as it tumbled across the wood floor. He froze and held his breath, waiting for . . . he didn’t know for what. Voices, yells, running feet, gunshots . . . maybe any of those.

  But all he heard was silence and the slow tick . . . tick . . . tick of the railroad clock above the bar.

  After Shawn’s thudding heart settled and he could breathe normally again, he made his way carefully across the floor. Disoriented, he hoped he was headed in the right direction. What he needed was a lamp. Better to take the chance on being seen than fumbling around in the dark.

  And suddenly there was light.

  To Shawn’s left, Zeb Moss turned up the wick of an oil lamp, illuminating Rance Bohan and two other hardcases lined up in front of the bar. All four men grinned at him, the muzzles of their shotguns aimed right at his belly.

  “Don’t even think about it, O’Brien,” Moss said. “We’ll cut you in half before you can clear leather.”

  Shawn let his right hand drop from his holstered Colt. “Minnie.” The name was like bitter gall on his tongue.

  “She told you she works for me, O’Brien,” Moss said. “What did you expect? You’re not the first man to let a pretty face make a fool of him.”

  “Damn. I should’ve known,” Shawn grumbled, playing along.

  “Yes, you should’ve. Now unbuckle the gun belt, let it drop, and kick it over here.”

  Shawn did as he was told, then Moss said, “Since you’re so all-fired determined to find Trixie, I’m going to oblige you.” He nodded toward the rear of the saloon. “Walk that way, real slow and easy.”

  Shawn knew he couldn’t save his life by bluster and threats of the vengeful wrath of Dromore. Men like Moss were savvy, hard as nails, and afraid of nothing.

  He walked slow and easy.

  When he reached the stage, Moss ordered Shawn to stop and looked at his men at the bar. “If he tries a break or makes a fancy move, gun him.”

  “Looking forward to it, boss,” Rance Bohan said, grinning at Shawn with teeth too perfect to be anything but store bought.

  Moss walked behind the stage and after a moment yelled, “Bring him here, boys.”

  A shotgun butt slammed into his back, urging Shawn in the right direction. When he joined Moss again, the man was holding the trapdoor open. “Hey, Trixie!” he yelled. “Here’s a friend of yours come to visit for a spell!”

  Moss nodded to the opening in the floor and again Shawn was prodded until he stood on the edge of the opening, a rectangle of blackness just beyond his toes.

  “Comin’ down, Trixie!” Moss yelled.

  He pushed Shawn hard in the small of the back. Unable to keep his balance, Shawn fell into the dark void. The last words he heard before the trapdoor slammed shut were Moss’s shouted, “Vaya con Dios, amigo!”

  Shawn O’Brien hit every hard, timber step on the way down—and there were a dozen of them.

  He cartwheeled, all arms and legs, thumping, bouncing, first his back hitting, then his front, then his head . . . then his back again.

  Finally he thumped onto the floor, sprawled, and lay still.

  “Shawn, are you all right?” The voice came from a long way off, at the far end of a tunnel.

  “Shawn, speak to me.”

  His eyes fluttered open and he looked into Julia’s concerned face, lit by the dim light of an oil lamp. “Damn, those steps are hard. If I ever find the man who built them, I’ll shoot him.”

  “Can you move?” the woman said. “Do you have any broken bones?”

  Shawn’s head throbbed and his brain seemed as though it had ground to a halt. He became conscious of a sharp pain at the top of his head and whe
n he investigated, his fingers came away bloody.

  Slowly, painfully, he rose to a sitting position and groaned. “God, I feel like someone just got after me with a bois d’arc fence post.”

  “What happened?” Julia asked in concern.

  “Zeb Moss threw me down the stairs.” Shawn tried to smile. “Now he owes me.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’ve come to take you home, Julia,” Shawn answered.

  He rose to his feet and stretched, trying to work out the kinks, a movement that caused him so much pain he regretted it instantly and groaned. “Hell, I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Julia shook her head. “You can’t take me home, Shawn. Not ever. It’s way too late for that now.”

  “I know this sounds strange coming from a man locked in a beer cellar by a bunch of shotgun-toting hardcases,” Shawn said. “But I’ll find a way.”

  “There is no way.” Julia’s eyes were in shadow. “I’m being sold into slavery. Zeb Moss told me that.”

  Shawn’s first reaction was to laugh, but he managed to keep a straight face. “Julia, slavery ended with the War Between the States, remember?”

  “Not in Africa and the Arab countries. Zeb Moss says that’s where I’m headed, me and other women.”

  Suddenly it was not a laughing matter. “How does he plan to get you there?”

  “We’ll be picked up on the Texas coast by an Arab ship, Zeb says, and taken to a place off the African mainland called Zanzibar where there are slave markets.”

  “When is he moving you out of here?”

  “I don’t know. Soon, I think.”

  Shawn hurt all over, but he tried to ignore the pain and think. Finally, coming up with little, he could say only, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Shawn, that’s impossible. All you can do now is to try to save yourself.”

  “That might be pretty impossible, too, the way the hard times have come down recently.” He picked up the lamp and took Julia by the arm to the rickety table and chairs near her cot.