The Quantro Story (4 page)

Quantro dug out his makings and rolled himself a smoke. As he touched the match to the cigarette he looked over the flame at the feet swinging lazily in the breeze. The flies and the sun were already making a good job of blackening the mess of intestines that hung obscenely away from Mace Howbry's body as he died by inches.

Quantro rolled the smoke around his mouth and then aimed it at the sky. He pursed his lips. He nudged the buckskin with his heels and began to ride away, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

“You know something, Mace Howbry, tough
hombre
?”

He spat out a sliver of tobacco that had attached itself to his tongue. “You got a big mouth.” He paused, then added, “But I guess that don't matter too much now, anyhow.”

***

Eight months later Quantro was sitting in a saloon in the small town of Pueblo on the Arkansas River. He had endured a long, dusty ride and was indulging himself in a few friendly hands of poker before he took a bottle to bed with him for company. They say Lady Luck smiles only briefly on a man in any given place or at any given time. Well she was certainly smiling on Quantro that day. He held four kings in his hand and the pot was growing bigger by the minute.

The other players dropped out one by one until only the dealer and Quantro were left. He had figured out two of the aces had gone down in the last hand for he'd held them himself, so unless his opponent had dealt off the bottom of the deck, then he had a good chance of winning. He could feel the time growing close when the dealer would have to see his hand.

He fanned the cards one last time, seemingly in indecision, keeping his face expressionless. After a suitable pause he reluctantly called. The dealer smiled tensely and threw a handful of coins on to the table.

“I'll see you.”

“Well, you've paid to.” Shag Quantro smiled and placed the four kings in a neat row on the green baize. At that exact moment the saloon doors swung open and Quantro glanced up. A man walked in. The newcomer strode confidently into the room, his eyes flicking round the tables. His old cavalry uniform had been replaced by blue jeans and a work shirt, but no change of clothes could disguise the face. Just under the brim of his Stetson, a jagged red scar ran the full width of his forehead.

There was no doubt who he was. At least not for Quantro. He knew for certain the man was Purdy Dale.

Dale ignored the poker game at the corner table and went up to the bar where the bartender had already set up a bottle and a glass. He nodded perfunctorily to the white-aproned man for his thoughtfulness and helped himself to the whiskey. He flung back a fast shot, then more leisurely tasted the second. Satisfied, he raised his foot on to the brass rail and leaned his elbows on the counter.

“Your pot.”

Quantro looked back at the faces around the card table and saw the dealer watching him thoughtfully. The gambler had noticed Quantro's preoccupation with the man at the bar and was beginning to wish he had loaded the deck earlier. It looked as though his opponent was going to call it quits and pull out of the game. He was right.

Quantro scooped his winnings up in front of him and began sliding the coins off the table into his left hand.

“You quitting?” the tinhorn said. “Bad luck to leave the table when you've just hauled a big pot.”

“That so?” Quantro replied easily, not looking up.

“Yes,” the dealer continued, “you gotta give these men a chance to win some of their money back.”

“Like you do?” Quantro's voice was dry and a little half smile played at the edge of his mouth.

There was no answer. A cowboy on Quantro's left shifted uneasily in his chair.

“I've got me a little business to attend to, so you'll have to excuse me.”

The dealer opened his mouth to speak, then saw the look that had come into Quantro's eyes as he glanced up across the table. The apparently easy-going cowboy had changed. The dealer's gaze flickered to the man with the scar who stood at the counter. It was something to do with him.

He leaned back in his chair and shrugged. There was always another day to play cards.

Quantro appreciated the dealer backing down. Any trouble would alert Dale to his presence, and he wanted to play this game his own way. He nodded at the tinhorn's common sense.

“To make up for my absence I'll buy you gentlemen a drink.” He pushed a five dollar piece into the centre of the table and swept his eyes around the circle of faces. One by one they smiled nervously and nodded. Quantro graced them with his own half smile. “Appreciate your understandin'.”

He pushed his chair out and walked to the stairs without a glance at Dale who was still propping up the bar.

Back at the table, the dealer watched Quantro for a long moment then switched his eyes to the man with the scar.

He began to shuffle the cards.

The two hundred dollars from the poker game went into Quantro's saddlebags. Before he fastened the flap down he pulled out the folded square of paper and slowly opened it. The flyer carried a crude drawing of Purdy Dale, unshaven and complete with scar. The bounty figure of One Thousand dollars had been scored out and amended to One Thousand Five Hundred Dollars.

Quantro smiled.

The flyer gave his task credence. It was all going to be legal and above board. He would enjoy collecting the reward for something he had been going to do anyway. The old man of a sheriff was putty. He was happy to leave the chore of apprehending a dangerous desperado to anyone willing to take the job. After all, he had his life to consider. He wasn't as young as he used to be, and nowhere near as fast. He even lent Quantro a shotgun and made him a present of a box of cartridges to go with it.

Quantro broke the scattergun in half and examined the barrels. Clean, just as he knew it would be. He had cleaned it himself. He split the seal on the box with his thumbnail and pushed a fresh cartridge into each of the two barrels. The gun shut with a satisfying click. Before he closed the box he selected another two of the cartridges and slid them into his waistcoat pocket. Not that he would need them. Of that he was sure.

He shut the bedroom door behind him with a muted click and stepped out onto the balcony. A gaudily attired saloon girl who had watched him play cards smiled at him, her fingers playing enticingly with the ribbon holding together the low neckline of her dress. The look on her face conveyed all he needed to know. He dipped his eyes to the lush mounds of her breasts, then glanced back at her face. She raised an eyebrow and held up five fingers.

He nodded. “Later,” he said as he reached the head of the stairs.

She beamed, then twirled away on dainty ankles and disappeared.

Slowly, boot heels echoing hollowly on the planking, he made his way down into the main room. The scattergun was pointed at the ground, but his finger was inside the trigger guard.

The dealer looked up as Quantro reached the bottom step. He stopped in mid-deal and motioned with his eyes.

The other players turned their attention to the blonde cowboy and the man with the scar. Dale still stood with his back to the room, elbows on the bar, the glass slowly moving to his lips. The bottle was only half full now.

Purdy Dale had noticed the bartender discreetly sidle down the bar, making an elaborate show of polishing glasses. His eyes had also seen the blonde man walking down the stairs. The mirror had provided all the information. The slow, deliberate walk, the deceptively held scattergun, the fast draw rig. There was something familiar about him, but he just couldn't place what it was. He knew he was wanted in this state, so maybe the blonde man was a bounty hunter.

Well, Dale concluded, he wasn't the first and he surely wouldn't be the last.

But there was something about the man's face that troubled him. He was sure he knew him from somewhere. He just couldn't figure it. His eyes watched the bounty hunter's approach in the mirror, but still he did not turn.

“Purdy Dale.” There was no enquiry about the flat statement. Dale did not move.

“What's it to you?” he asked.

Quantro noticed the Cavalryman was now drinking with his left hand. The right one had moved out of sight in front of his body. He pulled the folded flyer from his waistcoat packet and tossed it easily the seven or eight feet to the bar. The paper landed an arm's length way from Dale.

“That's your face on that flyer, ain't it?”

Dale reached out casually with his left hand towards the paper but Quantro saw his opponent's legs stiffen slightly, and he was ready.

Dale swiveled fast, his Navy Colt clearing leather. His face was grim, eyes hard. The scar on his forehead stood out angrily, a jagged scarlet line.

It seemed to take an eternity.

As Dale brought up the Colt in a flashing arc, his left hand which had begun the feint to the paper, moved across to fan the hammer. He stopped turning and settled into the crouch of the gunfighter.

He executed the movement as second nature. The ruse of reaching for the paper to take Quantro off guard, the urge to gain an edge. It had worked a score of times before. As the heel of his left hand caught the hammer his forefinger pulled back on the trigger.

Then he knew who the blonde man was.

The ranch in Colorado. The memory flashed through his mind. Zeb and Mace and Jack had been there with him too. The ranch with the good-looking woman with the body as sweet-smelling as a fresh-cooked peach pie. He was the woman's son. The boy who had busted in on their fun.

His mouth twitched into an evil half smile at the pleasure he was going to get from this. He'd said all along they should have killed the boy before they left. His left hand had jerked past the hammer and it was springing back to fire the bullet.

An eternity that lasted all of one second.

The blast from the two barrels of the scattergun literally picked Dale up from the balls of his feet, as though a giant had grabbed hold of his collar and yanked him up off the floor. He arched into the air and was flung down on the bar top. His own Colt crashed out, unheard under the roar of the shotgun, and the bullet went off to the right to splinter into the wooden paneling of the ceiling.

Dale's body lay twitching on the freshly pockmarked counter. His head was cruelly twisted to one side above his sagging shoulders. The material of his shirt was completely shredded by the storm of pellets, and his raw, bleeding flesh mingled with the cotton tatters. As Quantro watched, Dale's eyes slowly rolled up into the top of his head. His mangled right hand relaxed in death and the heavy Navy Colt fell to the floor with a clatter.

The silence that followed the reverberating explosion of the scattergun was almost painful in its passing, pressing heavily on compressed eardrums. A wasteland of silence. The shots seemed to almost echo in the spectators' ears, as though volley after volley had been fired.

Quantro broke the shotgun in half and plucked out the spent cartridges. He dropped them on to the floor and then reached out for the tattered flyer that had been blown along the bar top. He stuffed it into his pocket.

Footsteps sounded in back of him and he turned to see the old sheriff awkwardly walking across the sawdust floor towards him. Quantro nodded to the corpse on the bar.

“Yours, I believe ?”

The old man's face was white. Quantro wondered whether it was the killing or having to dole out the bounty money. Most likely it was a bit of both. He didn't much care, the money was only an added bonus. It would keep him alive until he caught up with the next one on the list.

“Settle up in the mornin', Sheriff,” he said, handing the scattergun back to its owner. The old man nodded and Quantro turned towards the stairs.

When he reached the top he turned and looked back down at the grisly sight sprawled across the bar top.

“A pity it had to happen in here, Dale,” he murmured, “otherwise I'd have finished off the scalping job that the Indian started an you.”

As he turned away, the whore came to lean on the banister, a smile etched on her ruby lips. Quantro looked at the woman and then back at Dale's corpse, then back at her smiling eyes. He decided he would allow himself the luxury of relaxing in the warm embrace of her arms.

He felt in his pocket for a five dollar piece. He held it up so she could see it.

She smiled.

The solace he found in her arms was a different, brutal, animal love compared to the wholesome, paternal love he had experienced as part of a family, but as he kissed her tawny shoulders and she drew him to her, he tried his hardest to forget the bitterness of the past and the futility of the future yet to come. He buried himself in the ecstasy of physical union, his fingers entwined in the tangled strands of her chestnut hair, and allowed his lust to shut out the hate.

CHAPTER 3

The sun continued its steady climb throughout the morning. It hung in the clear desert sky like a flaming torch, the hatred of its heat searing the ground. The bleak horizon stretched away hidden under a heat haze that danced continuously over the land, shimmering like the wind-ruffled waters of a cool mountain lake.

The white man and the Apache had kept the sun on their right shoulders as their ponies picked their way over the stony mesa. Wild-Horse knew with certainty which way to ride, but then his eyes were a lot sharper than those of his companion. For his part, Pete Wiltshire had not yet seen the buzzard Wild-Horse had spied at dawn. The thought crossed his mind maybe the Indian should have been named Hawkeye instead.

Their pace never varied. With the mules in tow they made only slow time. Anything faster would kill the heavily laden animals in that heat.

Pete looked up to see Wild-Horse rein in his pony. The Apache stood up in his stirrups, head tilted slightly back, giving the appearance of being totally at one with his wild environment. The sweat on his lithe brown body gave his torso a sheen akin to that of a well-oiled light-weight wrestler.

He shaded his eyes and pointed.

“
Chelee!
Horse!” he said, his voice triumphant.

Pete shaded his own eyes but could see nothing for the heat haze.

“Yeah, I see it,” he lied. “Another horse. That makes two in two days.” He wondered who this one belonged to, but didn't ponder on it long for the heat wasn't very conducive to solving mysteries. He grunted and swigged from his canteen. He plugged the cap back in.

“The buzzard?”

Wild-Horse's mouth turned down at the corners. “Not long now. Still makes circles.” He made a motion with a flattened hand, indicating narrower and narrower circles.

Pete nodded and slid his rifle from the scabbard and checked it. When he was satisfied he rested it across the saddle horn and squinted at the horizon.

“Okay, let's ride.”

Soon, even Pete could see the horse. It was a black mare, standing head down on teetering legs. It was trying feebly to pull away from something on the ground.

Wild-Horse let the lead rein of the first pack mule fall and the line of loaded animals stopped immediately, blowing and jerking their heads. The Apache kicked his pony into a canter and rode towards the black mare, his long raven hair blowing behind him in the dry desert air. When Pete joined him, Wild-Horse was squatting on his heels over a hunched form on the ground.

The dead cowboy was only a boy, about seventeen years old. His face had stiffened in death, the heat drying his skin tight to retain the agonized expression he had worn as he died. His right hand still tightly gripped the reins of the black mare, which accounted for the horse's attempts to free itself. Pete knew that unless they were trained properly horses never did like the smell of blood, and would shy away as soon as the odor caught their nostrils. The blood in this case was from the boy's stomach. He had been gut-shot, then had mounted up before falling off. The blood smeared all over the saddle confirmed that. If he'd been shot off his horse there would have been little if any blood an the saddle.

Pete looked away from the body and up into the sky where he gained his first glimpse of the buzzard circling across the endless stretch of blue. The bird seemed to be splitting his vigil between the boy at their feet and a point a couple of miles further on. Probably only the presence of the black mare had kept the bird at bay. He stood up slowly, still staring at the wheeling shadow in the sky. The mare trembled beside him and he reassuringly placed a hand on its neck.

“Could be more of the same up ahead,” he said. “The other half of the puzzle.”

Wild-Horse frowned, his eyes still searching the ground around the boy's body. No, nobody else had been here before them. On silent moccasins he padded around the flank of the mare and pulled the Winchester free of the saddle boot. He jerked his head, disappointed. Not as good as the one they had found on the buckskin yesterday, but nevertheless good. He held the rifle up in the sunlight and slapped the barrel with the flat of his palm.

Pete turned at the sound. He smiled tiredly through his whiskers.

“That's a pretty rifle.” He looked down at the boy, curled up in death like a new-born baby on the dry earth. “Take everything else too. He won't need it.”

As Wild-Horse stripped the gun belt from the boy and raked through his pockets, Pete walked back to the paint pony and swung up into his saddle. He sniffed as he watched the Apache lead the black mare over to his string of mules.

“Okay. Let's see if'n the other one's dead too.”

***

Four miles north, under the ever watchful eye of the hungry buzzard, Quantro lay in his hole in the ground. The long hours of the morning had almost finished him off. His lips were blistered and his swollen tongue pushed out its tip into the hot air. He'd heard if you sucked a pebble it would help. He looked round but there was none within reach.

Every now and then he touched the Colt. The steel of the gun was almost red hot, so now he did not even bother to hold it. His mind was a haze of pain that swept across his conscious in thick enveloping waves. Helpless, he lay under the broiling furnace of the sun.

Earlier he had tried to make his move but the shoulder wound had weakened him too much to do more than crawl pathetically to the rim of the hole. He knew he was too weak to get anywhere without the horse, but where the buckskin had disappeared to, God only knew. So that was that. He had no chance. If his leg had not been so bad he may have been able to walk, but it was, so he couldn't.

His damn leg.

As his mind fixed its feeble grasp on his stiff leg he began again to blame his troublesome limb for all his misfortune. The heat drove him into a delirium that was plagued with memories that forced their way up from the back of his mind. In the distorted coma of pain they were all crystal clear, as fresh as the day his eyes had witnessed them.

***

After Pueblo Quantro had headed south.

Unable to free his mind of the memory of blowing Purdy Dale to pieces with the scattergun, he had headed away towards New Mexico where he believed Zeb Cole to be. But he already knew he was riding into the cold winds which promised the snows to come. Still, he turned up his collar and hunched deeper into his coat, and feigning ignorance, spurred the buckskin on.

The grey sky was heavy with snow over the mountains of Colorado when he finally admitted to himself winter had caught up with him. The trail gradually forced him higher into the dense belt of pines that clothed the craggy peaks, the buckskin wearily plodding, his breath blowing steamy clouds into the freezing air. The damp of the coming winter had already crawled into his bones and his stiff leg ached with a dull, persistent throb.

The first night he camped under a rock overhang, building a roaring fire against the bitter cold. The buckskin's nervous neighing woke him several times in the night and more than once he caught a glimpse of the ghostly form of a timber wolf slinking between the nearest trees. His only defense while he slept was the fire, so he added fuel to the glowing embers each time he woke, waiting until it was safe to sleep once more. He rolled back into his blankets, huddled in the light from the dancing fire, and listened to the plaintive howling that echoed through the mountains.

The ground was hard with ice the next morning when he mounted the buckskin, and before night fell on his second day in the high peaks the clouds began to break. As he rode, he felt the gentle touch of a snowflake on his cheek, and when he looked up into the dimming sky the heavens were dappled with swirling flakes that rapidly began to carpet the earth. Quantro's face was grim, his eyebrows white with snow, his lips clamped together to stop his teeth from chattering uncontrollably as he urged the stallion onwards. If at any time during his quest for revenge he considered turning back, then this was one of those times. His bones were stiff with cold, his feet blocks of ice. His hands were almost petrified into claws inside the worn leather gloves that held the reins. The bad weather threw him into an intense depression, and the thought of spending another night barely out of reach of the yellow fangs of the wolves was not one he welcomed.

But when he thought of the horror of the scene in his father's ranch-house after the
pistoleros
had gone, the pain stabbed angrily into his chest and he set his jaws with grim determination to mete out justice. If he had to spend a hundred long nights with the wolves, then he would, if it meant that he would be closing in on his goal. As he rode into the timber with the snowflakes emphasizing the silence as they drew a gloomy curtain on the day, he resigned himself to another night without shelter.

As he rode he searched for a suitable place to camp, his eyes restlessly peering out into the ghostly hollows that faced into the mountainside like soft folds in a huge blanket. He was about to settle for one that had a small deadfall nearby that would provide plenty of wood for a big fire, when around a twist in the trail he saw the cabin.

He tied the buckskin to a tree, back out of sight, then set out on foot with the Winchester for company.

The cabin's front windows gave a clear field of fire covering the trail, and a view over the trees further down the mountainside. It was deserted, and had been so for some time. The two front windows were shuttered and the door was fastened with a rusty hasp. Quantro used the Winchester's butt to smash off the hasp, then he carefully pushed open the creaking door. Inside, there was evidence of disrepair; joints in the rough-hewn timbers had been opened by the weather, allowing the cold wind to penetrate. The interior was dirty, but there was enough timber furniture to suffice and it was dry. The previous occupant had been careless, or in too much of a hurry to remember to take the few well worn tools that were laid on a shelf above the bed.

A door at the rear, probably added as a safety precaution, led to a lean-to, large enough to stable one or two horses and equipment. Another door led out from the lean-to onto the mountainside climbing up behind the cabin, and stacked against the back wall he found a small pile of ready cut logs. A few feet away, a fresh water spring trickled up out of the earth and cut a track through the snow into a hollowed out log that served as a water butt, now iced over. Water, shelter and warmth too. For the first time that day Quantro smiled.

He stabled the buckskin in the lean-to and cared for him, rewarding the horse with a grain feed. The saddle and the rest of his gear he carried into the cabin, then began to build a fire in the stone hearth, using the fuel from out back.

With the worst of the weather outside and a good meal of bacon and coffee under his belt, he dropped the wooden bar across the door and settled into his blankets on the bunk.

When the logs burned down low, filling the cabin with a warm red glow, Quantro slept.

***

Hot coffee woke his brain enough to take stock of his supplies. He had ample tobacco, salt, coffee, and flour, enough for his own needs. Fresh meat would have to be hunted, but he was well stocked with ammunition. A few pounds of grain were left for the buckskin, which could be stretched by turning the stallion loose for a few hours each day to forage for himself.

The cabin needed some quick repairs to keep out the cold, but that was no problem, and there was a good supply of fuel to lay in for when the weather worsened. Among the tools was an old axe that would be usable with a little sharpening. Quantro regarded the depleted pile of logs in the hearth and decided that fuel was the first priority. With no fire in these mountains, the cold could soon become a killer.

Outside, the air was cold and crisp, biting sharply into his lungs. The snow had continued to fall throughout the night and almost reached his knees, dry and powdery. He went round to the lean-to and attended to the stallion, then cleared a patch of snow. It was hard work breaking into the frozen ground but he had soon scraped enough earth to fill a pot. He carried it back inside and set it to warm over the fire. He returned his attention to the axe, and fifteen minutes later he went back outside with the newly-honed blade and the Winchester.

He made for the deadfall, only a short tramp from the cabin. It was a small gash in the earth about ten feet deep that had filled with dead branches and other wood washed down during the rains. Soon he had worn a path between the gulch and the cabin as he hauled and chopped wood, stacking it neatly at the side of the lean-to.

The earth he had shoveled into the pot was by then soft enough to be used to caulk the gaps between the logs that made up the walls of the cabin. He patiently filled and smoothed and built up the surface until the biting wind could no longer penetrate.

Thus, the first day of his occupation was spent in toil, his sweat warding off the bitter cold, and when the fire began to fall into ashes he banked it up with slow-burning logs and retired to his blankets.

The second day he hunted. A fresh fall of snow had wiped out yesterday's tracks, leveling them off with a crisp white crust that hugged the ground beneath the huge pines. It was hard going, almost wading where the snow had drifted, but it made tracking easy.

Inside two hours he had brought down a young deer, enough to provide good eating far a few days at least. He butchered the carcass and cleaned it on the ground where it fell, taking only the best meat. The offal he left for the wolves.

His preparations served him well.

That night a blizzard blew up from the south, lashing Quantro's mountain refuge and driving every living thing to cover, away from the icy fingers of winter's cruel hands. It lasted three bleak days of howling winds and blinding snow that piled up outside the sturdy log walls, seeking to drive its way into the cabin, tearing at cracks and joints, straining the craftsmanship that had constructed it with such a storm in mind. The builder had done his work well, and Quantro was grateful.