The Jackals Read online

  “Damn it, Harry, get off that horse now.” Billy Hawkin did not wait any longer but reached up and jerked Henderson’s sweaty body off the horse and shoved him into the thicket.

  The men with the horses spurred their own mounts and galloped down the arroyo. Henderson tried to register what was going on. They had just robbed the Bank of Sierra Vista. They had just left Mr. James R. Cox, president of that very bank, dead with the back of his head blown off. And now, not even a quarter of a mile out of town, they had dismounted and moved into a thicket of mesquite trees that would tear a body to pieces if he wasn’t careful.

  “Don’t move,” Billy whispered. “Don’t open your mouth. Don’t even breathe.” He pushed Henderson’s head down.

  The former bank teller did not move too much, nor did he open his mouth, but he breathed. His eyes saw Jake Hawkin, big revolver in his right hand, kneeling behind one of the trees. The wheat sacks filled with loot stolen from the Bank of Sierra Vista were at his feet. The man named Galloway had a couple of carpetbags in front of his feet while he gripped a long-barreled revolver.

  Henderson heard the thundering of horses. He almost gasped, but felt Billy squeezing his shoulder and saying, “Shhhhhhhh.”

  His eyes widening in terror, Henderson saw the horses—a dozen, maybe more—tear through the arroyo and disappear. Four minutes later, several more horses galloped past. For the next few minutes, a few stragglers came along.

  Then, for an hour, Hawkin and his men waited.

  Finally, Jake laughed and holstered his revolver.

  The man named Galloway shook his head, picked up one of the carpetbags, and tossed it to his boss. “I gotta hand it to you, Jake. This one sure takes the cake.”

  “Give some of the credit to Billy.” Jake opened the gaudy bag of pink and yellow and white and blue designs, and dumped the money from one wheat sack into the bag.

  “We wouldn’t have gotten this done without my pard here.”

  Henderson felt Billy’s rough hand slam against his back. “Ol’ Harry here, he done all right.”

  Jake snorted and poured the greenbacks and gold from the second wheat sack into the carpetbag.

  Another carpetbag was tossed to the outlaw leader, who filled it, too.

  “I don’t—” That’s all Harry Henderson could get out.

  “The posse will chase Alfredo and our boys till they get tired of chasing,” Billy Hawkin said. “They’ll send telegraphs, of course, to the Rangers. To El Paso. Crossfire. Fort Davis. Van Horn. Presidio. Pecos. Fort Stockton. Purgatory City. Half of West Texas will be looking for a bunch of men traveling fast on horseback.”

  “We’ll be enjoying some refreshments of the liquid and lady-of-the-tenderloin varieties,” Galloway said with a laugh. He even slapped his own thigh.

  “Right under the noses of the law and all the fine folks in Sierra Vista,” Billy said.

  Henderson thought about his wife in town. Likely, the town marshal and the other clerks, cashiers, and tellers at the Bank of Sierra Vista had already informed her that her husband had been part of the robbery. They’d seen him riding out with the outlaws, and well, the vault had been opened, and only two people knew the combination, and one was James R. Cox, who had died defending the savings of the good citizens trusting him with their hard-earned money.

  “We spend a day or two at Matilda’s,” Billy said. “Then we take a stagecoach ride to Purgatory City and on to El Paso.”

  “No one’ll expect us riding a stagecoach,” Galloway said. “You already got the tickets, didn’t you, boss?” he called out to Jake.

  The outlaw leader reached inside his vest and pulled out the tickets. “Too bad MacMurray won’t be with us.”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Too bad.” And he laughed.

  Jake dropped the tickets inside the carpetbag, the one with the green and yellow floral designs, not the pink, yellow, white, and blue.

  “When we get to the House of the Divine,” Billy said. “We’ll get you a special room. Don’t want any of the locals seeing you there. Your wife wouldn’t understand.”

  * * *

  Sitting in that special room, Harry Henderson managed to laugh. The girl asked if he wanted to buy her another drink, so he opened the carpetbag, found a double eagle, and handed it to her. Just as she stepped out, Billy Hawkin came in.

  “How’s it goin’, pard?”

  No longer sweating, Henderson grinned and raised his glass of brandy in salute.

  “Good.” Hawkin knelt by the open carpetbag and pulled out a handful of greenbacks. “Jake’s got two girls with him. Galloway’s snoring like my old man. And I’m gambling with Matilda herself in her own room.” He shoved money into one of the front pockets of his trousers. “And I’m winning. Don’t go anywhere with all our loot, pard.” He laughed and walked out.

  Harry Henderson couldn’t believe his luck. He finished the brandy and moved to the third-floor window, slowly drawing back the curtain and staring down at Sierra Vista at night.

  The westbound stagecoach had pulled in. He looked at the clock on the table in the private parlor suite. He looked at the carpetbags.

  And an idea struck him. Galloway and the Hawkin brothers were, well, preoccupied. Most of the townsmen were off chasing the gang members who had led the posse away from the bank’s money. The stage would be leaving in fifteen minutes. And Harry Henderson had a ticket. He could take those carpetbags, walk out of Miss Matilda’s House of the Divine, and hand the ticket to the driver and messenger, who wouldn’t know Harry Henderson from his Uncle Walter on his mother’s side.

  By the time the Hawkin brothers realized that they had been double-crossed, Henderson would be in . . . Mexico. With fifty thousand dollars all to himself.

  He had never been one to take risks, except when it came to marrying several women. But now he would have a price on his head and a hangman’s noose waiting for him. Jake Hawkin wouldn’t be one to trust Harry Henderson forever. Even Billy might grow tired of him.

  Henderson found his courage, snapped the two carpetbags shut, picked them up in one hand, and carefully opened the door and peered down the hallway. He could see the back door that led to the staircase that led to the ground that led to the walkway that led to the stagecoach station at the edge of Sierra Vista.

  He stepped out and did not look over his shoulder. He stayed in the shadows then waited until the passengers were loaded and the rawhide-looking driver and the young messenger climbed aboard. The station agent disappeared into his office, and Henderson took a deep breath, exhaled, and hurried to the Concord.

  The driver looked down.

  Henderson handed him his ticket.

  “Ya cuttin’ it close, ain’t ya?” the driver said, studied the ticket, shrugged, and shoved it into the pocket of his tan jacket.

  “Working late,” Henderson told him, opened the door, and climbed into the coach. His heart pounded as he smiled at the two other people in the coach, and he found a seat. He kept the carpetbags in his lap, waiting for Billy and Jake Hawkin to jerk open the door and gun him down.

  Only then . . . the stagecoach lurched and the driver’s whip popped and he cut loose with a string of curses. The Concord rolled into the darkness, its lanterns glowing to light the road ahead, and Harry Henderson was leaving Sierra Vista with something like $50,000.

  He said to himself, “This is so terribly easy.” And he laughed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sitting in the most uncomfortable chair west of the Pecos River, Sean Keegan estimated the distance from where he sat to the spittoon at the side of Colonel John Caxton’s desk. It was a risky shot. But then so was shooting Lieutenant Erastus Gibbons off the back of that mule five days ago in Dead Man’s Canyon. This time, Keegan opted to hold his fire.

  Behind the desk, Colonel Caxton sat, rubbing both temples with his hands and shaking his bald head. Captain Conrad Percival rolled a cigarette. Major Hans Ziegler, post surgeon, sat cleaning his monocle. First Lieutenant Nelson Wilmot sharp
ened a pencil with a pocketknife. Sergeant Major Titus Bedwell leaned against the closed door to the colonel’s office. No one looked happy.

  “You heard what everyone in your patrol said.” Captain Percival had finished rolling his smoke, but he did not light it, just kept playing with it in the fingers of his left hand. His right picked up the notepad in front of Lieutenant Wilmot, who glanced up briefly before returning his attention to the task of carving the point of his pencil to the best angle for maximum writing.

  “They all said the same thing,” Wilmot said and nodded with approval at his pencil point.

  “No discrepancies,” Hans Ziegler said and settled the piece of glass over his left eye.

  “I’ve never heard such a story in twenty-eight years of service,” Colonel Caxton said. After sliding the notebook back toward Wilmot, the stenographer, Caxton leaned back in his chair. “You shot a West Point graduate, the commander of your patrol, in the back.”

  “It was the right thing to do, Colonel,” Keegan said.

  “The right thing to do?” Caxton rose from his seat. “It was cold-blooded murder!”

  The hell with it, Keegan thought, and spit across the room. The ping the brown juice made when it hit the cuspidor’s lip made him smile. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his blouse and stared at the colonel’s blazing eyes. “I don’t see it that way, Colonel. Cold-blooded murder? That was leaving six young troopers and me with only the water in our canteens and only the lead in our weapons to face a bunch of horse-stealing Apaches with a mind to kill as many bluecoats as they could.”

  “How many Apaches?” Lieutenant Wilmot flipped through the pages of his notebook. “Four?”

  “Three,” Keegan corrected, “after Baker took care of one of the bucks.”

  “Baker?” Hans Ziegler said. “Who’s Baker?”

  “Whatever the kid’s name was.” Keegan shifted the tobacco to his opposite cheek.

  “Three Apaches,” Captain Percival said. “Against a sergeant of the Eighth United States Cavalry and six able-bodied troopers.”

  Keegan shook his head. “Like I told the lieutenant, four Apaches could do a world of hurt in that canyon. Three could’ve done just as much damage. And would have.”

  “I don’t believe that for one minute,” said the affronted stenographer, who knew nothing of lead except the kind he sharpened.

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever see you, Lieutenant, out in the field, sir.”

  “That’s enough of that, Sean,” the sergeant major said from the door.

  Keegan drew in a breath, let it out, and nodded. He had always respected Titus Bedwell, and always would.

  “Then,” Captain Percival said, “you turned loose all ten of your horses to the Apaches. Just gave them up. Without a fight.”

  “Eight horses,” Keegan corrected. “The lieutenant shot his dead when the ruckus started. Accident. And another horse took off for parts unknown after the rider got killed. Maybe the Apaches got him. Maybe the wolves. I don’t know. But we kept the mule.”

  “The mule.” The colonel spat onto the floor in disgust.

  “Sergeant,” the German surgeon said, “you had taken cover against the canyon wall. You had water—two kegs—and you had ammunition. You could have withstood a siege of four—I mean three—bucks. Why turn your horses loose?”

  Keegan shook his head. This was getting nowhere. But he had served in this man’s army long enough to know that. “The Apaches had Winchesters, Major. One of them could have kept us pinned down in that rocky part. The other two would’ve climbed up atop the ridge and rolled boulders down on top of us. That is, if I recollect right, how Dead Man’s Canyon got that name.”

  “Ah!” The German’s eye grew bigger behind the monocle as he stood, again gripping the notes the stenographer had taken. “But you said the Apaches wanted the horses. If they showered you with boulders, they would have killed the horses, too.”

  “Baker, or whatever his name is, killed an Apache. That meant the three others would want revenge. Or something in return. I gave them the horses.”

  “Eight horses,” Major Hans Ziegler said. “For a comrade’s life? That does not seem like a fair trade.”

  Keegan shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve made better.”

  “Such as?” the lieutenant said.

  “Such as,” Keegan said, “a yellow-bellied lieutenant for water and ammunition that might keep some of us alive.”

  That led to much bantering, name-calling and finger-pointing as the officers gathered around the colonel’s desk. Even Sergeant Major Bedwell left his post by the door and stood beside Caxton’s desk, waited, then bent to pick up the brass cuspidor by the handles. He carried it to the chair in the center of the room, and set it on Keegan’s left.

  Keegan spit, wiped his mouth, and smiled. “Thanks, Sarge.”

  Titus Bedwell just shook his head before he walked back to the front door.

  When the commotion had dwindled into just a few heavy sighs and under-the-breath curses, Lieutenant Wilmot, no longer holding his pencil, said, “Answer this for us, if you’d be so kind, Sergeant. Why would Lieutenant Gibbons ride off on a mule, and not one of our fine Army mounts? Surely he did not think he could get away on a pack mule, especially one laden with two kegs of water and pounds and pounds of cartridges for .45-70 carbines and .44-caliber pistols.”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir,” Keegan answered. “Maybe since none of the horses had canteens, he figured he needed water. But that’s just a guess.”

  “A bad guess,” Colonel Caxton said.

  “Could be. Better guess would be that crazy people and cowards do crazy things.”

  Caxton started heaving and clenching and unclenching his fists, but Captain Percival cleared his throat before the colonel could start frothing at the mouth.

  “How many times have you engaged the enemy, Sergeant?”

  Keegan shrugged. “I quit counting back during the War of the Rebellion, Captain.”

  “Sergeant,” Percival said, “we’ve served together for a number of years. We’ve lost men in battle before. Haven’t we?”

  “Yes, Captain. Yes indeed. Too many to count, sir.”

  “That’s very true, Sergeant. But this is what really bothers me about the reports everyone gave us, Sergeant. At Rattlesnake Pass six years ago. Five of our men, including Sergeant Wilson, were killed. Do you remember?”

  Keegan nodded. “Yes. Yes, sir, I do. Too well.”

  “The ground was practically frozen,” Percival said. “But we buried them, didn’t we? Maybe not six feet under. Certainly not with coffins. We couldn’t even leave tombstones or wooden crosses, couldn’t leave anything to mark their graves. The Comanches would have dug up the bodies. Desecrated those valiant, honored dead. But we buried them.”

  Keegan did not answer verbally, but that no longer mattered, as the stenographer had stopped taking notes after Trooper Baker, or whatever his name was, had finished his testimony forty minutes ago. Keegan’s head bobbed. He remembered. There were fights you recalled, and those you forgot. Rattlesnake Pass was one nobody forgot. He wondered if he would remember Dead Man’s Canyon ten years from now.

  “What about the dead at Dead Man’s Canyon, Sergeant?” Percival asked. “What did you do with the slain?”

  Keegan spit into the cuspidor. Nobody seemed to notice that it had miraculously migrated from the colonel’s desk to Keegan’s hard-rock chair.

  “Apaches carried off the one we killed. We, meaning, Baker, or whatever his name was.”

  “Baxter,” Lieutenant Wilmot said.

  “A murdering savage carried a dead buck away on a U.S. Cavalry horse,” Colonel Caxton said. “That sickens me.”

  “Go on, Sergeant Keegan,” Captain Percival said. “What about the slain soldiers?”

  “We dragged Ulfsson, the Swede, and the other boy—Brackenburg, Brackenbury, Bracken-something or other. . . .”

  “Brackendorff,” the stenographer said.

  “I guess so.
We dragged them to the side of the canyon. Managed to collapse some dirt atop their bodies. Piled some rocks over them. That was about all we could do. Figured if we met up with a patrol, they could send some boys back with spades—we didn’t have any—and a wagon. Bring them back here for a proper burial in the post cemetery. Or let their folks know if they wanted to come plant them closer to home.”

  “You didn’t try to hide the graves, though?” the major asked.

  “No need, sir. Apaches ain’t like Comanches. They don’t like dead men. Spooks them. If you can figure that out.” Keegan spit again.

  “So . . .” Captain Percival started walking toward Keegan, who crossed his legs and waited. He knew what was coming. “So Trooper Klaus Brackendorff and Trooper Nils Ulfsson are buried as deeply and as honorably as possible under the dire circumstances.” The captain smiled. “What about Lieutenant Gibbons, Sergeant? What did you do about young Erastus’s body?”

  “Nothing,” Keegan said. “We left him for the coyotes.”

  The hemming and hawking, the shrieking and fist-slamming, resumed, but about the only words Keegan caught came from the stenographer, Lieutenant Nelson Wilmot. “Erastus’s recommendation for appointment to the Academy came from Senator Jacoby. The same senator who got me my appointment!”

  Keegan shifted the quid to the opposite cheek again.

  When the commotion silenced, Colonel Caxton rose from behind his desk and waved a finger at Keegan. “During the Rebellion, Keegan, I would have had you up before a firing squad. To blazes with a court-martial. I’d have had you shot. You’re a mad dog, Keegan, and mad dogs deserve to be shot.”

  “He’s a jackal,” said the surgeon. “Just like that newspaperman wrote.”

  “Lock him in the worst cell in Leavenworth and throw away the key,” Percival said. “Hanging, shooting, that’s too good for the likes of this . . . animal. Let him rot.”

  “First we must bring charges against him for a general court-martial,” said the lieutenant.

  “You can’t rightly do that.” The voice came from the front door where Sergeant Major Bedwell brought his left boot down to the floor, and put his right boot against the wall. “Begging my superior’s pardon.”