The Eye of the Hunter (23 page)

He folded a piece of paper, gave Budge a sketch he had made, and said, “Here are your orders, Sergeant Gorman.”

Budge glanced at Frances. “Sir, I—”

“That's all right, I'll read it to you. The map explains all you really need to know. Can you read maps? Good. You are to go out to Spanish Church—immediately—and set up my command post where you see the
X
.”

“Yes, sir. But what ... what's a command post?”

“In this case, it's a carbine—the one you're holding. By the way, take it off safety when you get there. Leave it exactly where I've marked....”

“But that's—”

“Are you questioning my orders?”

“I'm sorry, sir. Sure, I can read it. I draw maps all the time to show people how to get from here to there in town, and I can read 'em, too. The Army taught me.”

“Good soldier, Gorman. Now, then. When you've accomplished your mission—I would guess that will be about seven this evening, just after dark—take the short route to town. Don't come back here—I won't be here. Find Sergeant Logan and give him this paper. He'll know what to do. Then go ~o the stable and wait.”

Budge poured himself a bit more whiskey, but Stockard threw it into the cold fireplace. “You're on duty, Sergeant.”

“Sir, what about the woman? She knows all the trails out here. Maybe she should go along and guide me....”

Stockard chuckled. “Oh, you're a sly one, Sergeant. What I like about you. No, I'll need her myself....”

Frances wondered whether she could reach the little nickeled derringer Henry had given her before the general satisfied his need for her. She was ready to turn her back on all her instincts and training and take his life, if it were the only way to save her own—and Henry's.

Gorman saluted and grabbed the carbine by the barrel, but the general said, “Not yet. Mrs. Parrish, do you have any paraffin in the house?”

“For ... for putting up fruit only. That kind?”

“That kind. Stay put—I'll find it.”

He carried the carbine into the kitchen. Soon, while Gorman sat eyeing her with his lunatic grin, she smelled the paraffin. Shortly afterward, he returned with the gun, turned it over to Budge, and dismissed him.

He told Frances, “Tell the Mexican boy to saddle your horse.”

By the time Alejandro brought the horse to the door, Stockard had found a pair of manacles among the supplies in the ammunition wagon. “I hope you won't be too uncomfortable, ma'am,” he said.

In the office of the Arizona
Globe
, Henry and the editor were fitting type into little trays Ambrose called “sticks.” Henry puzzled out Ambrose's scrawled lines on newsprint and then looked for letters in the wooden hives in which they were sorted.

“Upside down and backward,” Ambrose had instructed him. “You'll get the hang of it. Use the mirror if you have to.”

“How long will this take?” It went so infernally slowly that Henry thought it might take a week to set the type for a mere column.

“All night,” Ambrose said. “By seven o'clock I'd like to have the story in the window and at least a few dozen sheets printed.”

Then he laughed, looked at the ceiling, and cried, “Oh, my God, it's going to be wonderful! Next week we'll finish up the Black Jack Logan story. And on to my book!”

Time passed, the last green light in the sky faded, and Ambrose turned on yellow pulsing bulbs screwed into goosenecked stands. The sharp edges of the little pieces of type were beginning to make Henry's fingertips sore. He was eager to hear from someone how Stockard had taken the news that he would be charged with murder, for by now he must know it.

Sheriff “Whispering George” Bannock was getting a warrant from the judge, at his home.

Bailed out by his Grand Army friends, the stableman had come straight from the jail to the office and offered to accept ten dollars for the Frances Parrish story. Ambrose had not only rejected his proposal but also had run off a big, damp proof of the headlines and presented it to him.

“Take it to the general,” he said. “Tell him to roll his cannon down here and challenge me, if he's up to it. But he'll be up against two of us now, as well as the sheriff, if he ever wangles that warrant.”

But Stockard did not appear. Not like him, thought Henry.

Ambrose laid down his stick of type, rubbed his eyes, and went to a little wood stove in the back. He had put coffee on, and now poured the black stuff into two stained crockery cups and set them on the composing stone. He climbed onto a high stool, and Henry took one across the stone table from him and sat there flexing his fingers, as the editor scribbled words on the stone, then rubbed them away with a rag and tried other words. Finally he dropped his pencil and sat back.

“‘The Two Lives of Black Jack Logan,'” he said. “What think?”

“Fine. I was kind of mulling—this is just an idea,” Henry said apologetically. “Something about Lazarus? You know, the man in the Bible who—”

“I know who Lazarus was! Jesus, Henry, give me credit! Give me credit! But maybe ... how about ‘Captain Lazarus: His Two Lives'?”

“No, I think Black Jack should be in the title.”

“I agree.” Ambrose looked at the clock. “Tell me about receiving the letter.”

“Well, it was about two years ago, and the return address read, ‘Juan Lucero, Hacienda Logano, Sta. Barbara, Costa Rica.' But there was a picture, too, and I looked at that first. Lucero? I didn't know any Lucero. Logan? Funny, so close to my own name. Well, the photograph showed a fine white house behind an iron fence—with Señor Lucero, apparently, standing in the gate. He had a white mustache but his hair looked pretty black. And he was skinny—looked tubercular. My father was Black Irish, and in a white suit and planter's hat, he could look the part of a Spaniard. It was him, all right.

“He looked sick, though. He looked like me after the mosquito finished with me. Very much like me! I think I knew right then, in my heart, that it was my father....”

Henry had to stop talking. Feelings had been piling up in him like clothes in a closet, unsuspected because out of sight, and now there was a possibility of his being buried in grief when the door was opened. He sipped coffee to get his throat clear.

Ambrose said, “Steady. Sentimentality is the curse of the Irish. Had tears before they had Busmill's.”

Henry resumed. “All right. When I noticed what he had in his hand, I knew for damn sure it was Dad. He was holding a silver piccolo!”

Ambrose shot another look at the clock. “One minute, Henry.”

“He said that after the gang left, he looked at the horrible mess inside the barn, and there wasn't much left of the men's bodies. They'd been pretty well cremated. You couldn't tell one from another—but the brass buttons and so forth were there. So he laid his silver bars in some coals for a while, put them where one of the men's shoulder bars would have been, and let him pass for Black Jack.

“The soldier they reported had been dragged off and tortured somewhere was Dad. He took the payroll and left.”

“
Why?
It's so damned fascinating! Hurry up—we've got to get back to work.”

“Because the Army had cheated him out of a life as a musician and a bandleader, what he always wanted to be. And here God—his word, not mine—had saved him for another, happier life! ‘For what purpose?' he said. The way he read it, God wanted him to have that career! So he took the money and left. He wandered down the coast, and when he reached the mountains of Costa Rica, he said it felt like home.

“He bought a little coffee
finca
and discovered had had another talent—farming. He did very well.”

“You did say he was dying?”

“Yes. Tuberculosis. He said it was a matter of weeks....”

Someone rattled the knob. The door was locked for reasons of safety. Ambrose peeked through the blinds before letting in Sheriff “Whispering George” Bannock.

The big man accepted coffee, pressed his fingertips to his eyelids, and cleared his throat with obvious pain. They waited until his anguished croak finally came.

“I just went up to Cemetery Hill to tell Stockard. Never shoot that damned cannon again.”

“What about the warrant, for God's sake?” Ambrose pleaded. “The old loony will kill us if he isn't locked up—or we'll have to kill him.”

“Judge Scott. Studying report. Four pages.”

“Stage fright.” Ambrose snorted. “Well, did you tell Stockard maybe he'd better take off for Sonora? Is that why the stalling?”

“No. He'd already left! Emily apologized.”

“Where was Milo?”

“Spider Ranch. Took the cannon.”

Henry and Ambrose looked at each other in shock.
“He took the damned cannon?”
Henry shouted.

“According to Emily. And it shore ain't in his front yard anymore.” Henry closed his eyes and tried to think like the general. Charge!—all Stockard knew. Attack, intimidate, bully. Must have lost hundreds of men that way. Impatience was his weakness. Arrogance—nobody as smart as he was. He must plan to seize the ranch house, like the small fort it was, and dare them to put it off. While Beckwith hired lawyers and set out to bleed Frances of any cash she had left.

The rest of his thinking he did in motion. He had brought his Winchester to the office, thinking they might well need to defend themselves. He made sure it was fully loaded, thinking with Stockard's mind some more—ambush? It was a strong possibility that it had been he who had fired the threatening shot on the road the other day. He made up his mind to stay off the road where possible, proceed fast but with prudence.

He noticed that the general's personal guidon was gone from the wall: this seemed to confirm all his suspicions.
You are in an unmistakable, if limited, military action, Sergeant
.

“Sheriff,” he said, “why not tell the Grand Army men what's happening? Shake the saloons for a few more men, and get them out there to the Parrish ranch. I'll lead off as point man, right now, and beat the brush for traps. He's probably forted up in the ranch house. I don't know, though—he may try to trade his hostage for a run to the border.”

“What hostage?”

“Frances Parrish. She stayed out there yesterday.”

As he rode up the dark road in the warm night, he ran through the situation as they used to do when the captain would say,
“Take Hill 109.”
He recalled that Frances had said there were tons of dried and salted foods there, and the old foul spring was inside the walled yard of the kitchen, so Stockard could withstand a siege. But if he wanted to try to escape to Mexico, of course, he had a hostage. But hell, Henry didn't care if he went all the way to Costa Rica, like his father, if he wanted to.
Just don't hurt Frances!

He fought down the urge to spur the horse, knowing there was only one way to reach her, and that was by letting the horse travel at a reasonable gait.

The horse heard the sounds first, his ears pointing at the brush from which the wild noises were coming, and the dun sidled, indicating,
Want to check out that thicket?
In three seconds Henry was off the horse and lying under it with his rifle at his shoulder.

The racket became a frantic uproar barbed with oaths and sobs of fury. “God! Damn! Horse! I should have—damned idiot brush—ouch! Son of a bitch!”

From a thicket of the terrible, fishhooked, wait-a-bit brush, a man stumbled onto the road, sobbing with rage and exhaustion. He fell to his hands and knees and was resting on all fours, gasping, when he saw the horse's hooves before him. His head raised and he looked up and saw the dun.

He staggered to his feet. “Miracle! Thank you, Jesus! Stand easy, horse—easy there—easy now—”

“That's good advice, Gorman,” Henry said. “Stand real easy or I'll blow you in two.”

Budge's head swiveled back and forth. “I ain't got a gun!” he cried. “I lost it. Who is that?”

“It's Logan. What's going on, Budge? Sit down on the road and keep perfectly still. I have your head in my sights. Where are you coming from?”

“Hey, Logan? I got something for you! Right here! The general wrote it down for you.”

Henry knelt under the horse, his saddle gun reacting to Gorman's every move, its front sight moving like a snake's head. “Where's your horse?” he demanded.

“I run him to death. Had to go clean out to Spanish Church, and then turn aroun' an' come back an' find you. I been walking and running since ... here! Take this stuff—I've got to go on and wait at the stable for the general....”

“Crawl up to the horse and lay it on the ground.”

Gorman crawled, flat on his belly, to the shadow of the horse, laid some papers there, and wriggled back the same way. “Is he at Spider Ranch?” asked Henry.

“Uh-huh. Jesus, you don't have a bottle, do you?”

“No. What's going on out there?”

“Well,” Gorman said, “he's took it over. The woman is okay. He won't hurt her.”

“That's nice. I'm going to light a lamp—sit tight or I'll kill you. Understand, Budge?”

Henry rose and got the small Army field lamp from a saddlebag. The torch resembled a tiny metal pitcher, a wick coming from the spout. He knelt down, got it lighted, and spread the two papers on the earth. One was a map, the other a message covering the entire sheet of note paper and resembling a military dispatch. He read the last paragraph first and knew that he had to go alone to Spanish Church.

The dispatch read:

SUBJECT: Disposal of prisoner

TO: Logan, Henry, Sgt. U.S.A., ret.

FROM: Stockard, Milo, Brig. Gen., U.S.A.,

1. This detachment has taken prisoner a female Caucasian twenty-two years old known as Frances Wingard Parrish. She must be disposed of as summarily as possible before this CP is struck and relocated.

2. Subject female will be released unharmed under the following conditions:

a. Sgt. Logan shall come,
alone and armed
, to the cemetery at the place known as Spanish Church, by 0500 hours tomorrow.

b. He shall signal his arrival by firing a shot.

c. At 0530 hours, a shot will be fired, informing Sgt. Logan that subject female has been released.

d. The entire area will then be off-limits to all save Sgt. Logan and Genl. Stockard.

e. At sunrise, the truce shall end and the adversaries may fire at will. Contest shall end upon the death of either man. If Sgt. Logan is killed, Gen!. Stockard agrees to leave his beloved country and never return. If the general is killed, his widow shall pay for the erection of a plaque to mark the place of his death.

f. If anyone other than Sgt. Logan enters the area, he will be shot. This includes ranchers, miners, travelers, and smugglers, and the condition is without time limit.

g. Finally, if Sgt. Logan does not come to the designated spot by 1600 hours, the prisoner will be executed. Conditions described in (f) will then obtain, in perpetuity.