Return to Massacre Mesa - Edge Series 5 (5 page)

Ricketts recognised the US Cavalry brand on the rump of the dappled grey gelding in the traces and saw an identical mark on the backrest of the buckboard’s sprung seat. Rose was first to see the dried blood on the rig’s bed and one of the front wheel rims. However, because of the barrage of earlier gunfire and the way the vehicle had been hauled here by a bolting horse, this was no cause for surprise. But after they had followed the wagon tracks to reach the scene of the slaughter at the foot of the slope to the south of Mesa Desolado the extent of the carnage they found was far worse 29

than they had expected.

Seven uniformed figures sprawled in the blood stained dust, along with four dead horses. Most of the men had been killed instantly by gunshots. And two had cut throats where knives had been used to finish them off. All of them were unarmed: or more probably disarmed, Ricketts guessed when he saw how the uniforms had been ripped open and pockets slashed in a violent search of the corpses. It was the angrily scowling Rose who moved to where an encampment had been pitched and recognised from the sign that it was a band of Comanche – her own people

- which had been camped here: were responsible for the killing. Rose, too, who saw a slight movement made by one of the uniformed figures: a man who was sprawled in the dust some forty yards or so from the centre of the slaughter. The sign showed how he was borne by his bolting horse until a barrage of gunfire had blasted the animal out from under him. Now it was sprawled a few feet off, the wounds in the carcass feeding a black swarm of ravenous flies. While the young lieutenant breathed shallowly, dying a death that the blood crusted bullet hole in his chest should already have delivered.

For close to thirty minutes Ricketts paced back and forth and Rose squatted on her haunches, waiting for the good looking young officer to breathe his last: having protected him from the full intensity of the blistering heat of the mid-afternoon sun with a makeshift blanket awning they constructed beside the buckboard. But the badly wounded man showed no certain sign he was about to die or that he was going to recover.

High overhead, circling against the cloudless sky south of the mesa and north of the mountain foothills, a flock of buzzards patiently awaited their opportunity to feast on putrefying human and horseflesh. Ricketts was not so unwaveringly patient as the birds and often complained fretfully that they should load the dying man and the corpses on to the wagon and start out again for Fort Chance. But Rose, who he knew from personal experience was an expert in the ways of Comanche medicine, argued that the lieutenant would never survive the rigors of the long journey. 30

It was best, she said, to make him as comfortable as possible on the buckboard and return the short distance to the cave they had recently abandoned on the other side of the mesa. There she would care for him and perhaps even nurse him back to health. Ricketts was certain she was hoping for the impossible and guessed she also knew this: except that as a fervent convert to Catholicism, she nurtured a strong belief in miracles.

But it made good sense that they could not remain here. And there was surely nothing they were able to do about the dead men, unless bury them. Which was maybe something the army would not want for them to do. So, as had happened so often in the recent past, Hiram J. Ricketts agreed to abide by the good sense the squaw made and once more he did as she suggested. The badly wounded lieutenant did not regain consciousness on the way back to the cave. But he groaned and perhaps came close to the surface of awareness when they carried him inside. And there they were unable to do any more than sit with him, bath his wound that was starting to fester, and wait for him to die with a degree of dignity.

Which was not much, but was surely better than if he had been left with his already dead fellow officers, maybe aware from time to time how the scavenging birds were tearing with their vicious beaks and clawed talons at fast rotting flesh. Twice Rickets and Rose were startled to hear sounds from the lieutenant apart from his mostly shallow breathing. The first time was when he screamed and his body jerked like he was about to die when unbearable pain ripped aside the mercifully numbing effect of unconsciousness. But he immediately sank back into whatever kind of peace he had been experiencing before and it was not until the next morning that he began to mutter some disjointed, incoherent words and phrases.

‘Colonel . . . Don’t trust . . . Fortune . . . All that money . . . Sand . . . Betrayal

. . . Kill . . . Lucy, please . . . ‘ Mostly unintelligible monosyllables, some obscenities mixed in with what the delirious man said. Sometimes he whispered, occasionally he shouted and constantly he repeated himself.

Certain words and unfinished phrases he spoke more than others. To the extent that Ricketts, who paid close attention to what the man said while Rose concerned 31

herself with calming him and occasionally moistening his sweat beaded face with cool water, was able to piece together the gist of an account of what had happened to the group of cavalry officer who met up with a band of Comanche to the south of Mesa Desolado.

While he listened to the lieutenant and made a mental note of what the babbling man muttered, Hiram Ricketts was at the time only mildly interested in the meaning. But during the next day, after the officer had sunk into calm unconsciousness again and Ricketts was eager to do what he and Rose had set out to achieve yesterday, he had time on his hands. Involuntarily his mind kept applying itself to what he had heard and as the hot day wore on into cool evening, it seemed clear to him that the army had been about to make a deal with the Comanche. But there was a double cross: the troopers had believed they were to bargain with a full hand of silver dollars and treasury bills. But their stake had been stolen and replaced with sand. And the Comanche took murderous exception to being tricked.

Then, at last, the mortally wounded lieutenant met his inevitable fate: just after Ricketts returned from bedding down the animals for the night, and finished his final plug of chewing tobacco. At a time when it was too late to commence the journey to Fort Chance and so he had until next morning to sleep on what he had heard and what he could make of it. So he did not rest well that night: because he was too excited by the prospect perhaps opened up to him.

He rose early while Rose still slept soundly, the woman exhausted from her tireless efforts of taking care of the lieutenant whose blanket swathed body had been placed at the low roofed rear of the cave. And he decided to leave her for a little longer while he went outside to prepare for another departure from the place that had been their home for so long.

But as he stepped out into the cold grey light of the false dawn he was immediately aware of danger. Instinctively knew all was not as it should be, even after a rapid, suspicious eyed survey of the familiar scene beside the mesa at the fringe of the desert showed nothing out of the ordinary.

32

‘Morning,’ a man greeted cheerfully.

Ricketts screwed his head around to look up at the almost sheer face of the mesa. Saw a man comfortably balanced on a ledge some fifteen feet above the curved top of the mouth of the cave that was reached by a natural stairway some yards off to the side.

‘My God, what the . . . ‘ Ricketts stared to rasp, his heavily bristled, fleshy features contorted by shock. Then he saw a revolver was aimed down at him and terror robbed him of speech.

‘Sure, buddy, we’ve all got our Gods!’ The man’s voice was suddenly harsh as he pushed the sixgun out at arm’s length. ‘Time for you to go see yours now.’ He squeezed the trigger and exploded a bullet into the centre of the helpless Ricketts’

upturned face. And as the prospector died and corkscrewed down into an inert heap on the threshold of the cave, the killer concluded with a sneer: ‘My God’s a real almighty one. Name of dollar.’

33

CHAPTER • 4

______________________________________________________________________________________

FIFTEEN YEARS after the Massacre at Mesa Desolado, Billy Russell sat on a
bench in the morning shade of the porch out front of his former store. As he took his ease there he idly toyed with the carved horn knob of a polished elm walking cane while he watched a man ride into town from off the El Paso Trail.

The passing of those years had witnessed many changes to the settlement of Fort Chance that was now a full-blown town named Lakewood. On a personal level Russell was the full time sheriff these days and the building in back of where he sat this fine sunny morning had been converted from a general store into the law office and jailhouse. In even more personal terms, the girth of the one time storekeeper had thickened somewhat, his grey hair had turned to silver and many more and deeper lines had been inscribed into his bronzed countenance.

The years had also considerably stiffened his joints and dimmed his eyesight to some extent. So he winced from a sharp pain low down in the centre of his back and needed to squint against the brightness of the mid-morning sunlight as he leaned forward. To peer toward the man who rode a chestnut gelding at an easy pace past what was now called the Wild Dog Hotel and moved on to the eastern end of a clearly defined thoroughfare named Cedar Street.

The rider was a stranger. A little taller than Russell himself: maybe six feet two or even three inches, not so thick at the waist and broader at the shoulders. He still had some black among his greying hair: pretty much the same number and depth of lines cut into the skin of his face that was stained dark by heritage as well as long term exposure to the elements. A few years younger than Russell, so maybe only just starting to undergo the unwelcome physical changes that the passing of time brings to a man moving through his slowing down mid-life toward debilitating old age. He was attired for riding western trails in clothing that was far from new: the garb of the two men alike only in terms of a Stetson apiece – for Billy Russell spent his working day in a grey business suit, white shirt and black bootlace tie. Then the 34

lawman sighed, leaned against the backrest of the bench again and felt once more a sense of frustration as yet another drifter rode into town: maybe to cause trouble or maybe not. For he had lost the knack of spotting the troublemakers. Which he used to be able to do, nine times out of ten, and it was for sure that if this newcomer was going to step out of line, Russell was in no state of health to do very much about it.

‘Good morning to you, mister,’ the local man greeted after the stranger had reined his horse to a halt outside the law office.

Close enough for Russell to see for certain the man had something of the Mexican about him: in the sculpturing of his features, emphasised by an underplayed moustache styled in the manner favoured by so many
hombres
from south of the border some thirty miles away from town. But the glittering blueness of his eyes set in narrowed slits under hooded lids was not at all Latino.

‘And to you, sheriff.’ The stranger offered an amiable smile as he reciprocated the greeting but Russell continued to sense a latent menace that warned if he was not himself a troublemaker he was well able to handle any aggravation that came his way. So he was the same type as countless other men who drifted along the trails of the Southwest and occasionally rode through Lakewood: friendless loners living on their wits and, as often as not, by the gun. This one packed a walnut butted Colt .45 in a tied down holster on the right and there was a far from new Winchester repeating rifle slid into the boot hung forward on the same side of his saddle. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and asked evenly:

‘Is that the only place in town a stranger can bed down?’

Russell showed a grimace as he glanced across the vacant lot between his office and the Wild Dog Hotel, past the Lakewood limits marker that meant the establishment that had changed its name slightly, but not its line of business, was now considered to be out of town. As he directed his jaundiced gaze at the place still operated by Sam Tree, a man emerged from the former lock up that now served as a privy. The lawman’s sour expression was not triggered by physical discomfort this time. 35

With the passing of the years and the expansion of the community from a huddle of crude shacks huddled close to an army post into a regular town he had come to share the views of many other citizens concerning the Wild Dog and the dubious pleasure that could be purchased there. Dubious outside of liquor, of course, which often went some way to ease the pains in his arthritic joints.

‘It sure is, unless you step over the line of the law and wind up in one of my back rooms, Mr . . ?’