The Shadow Man (22 page)

The river deepened to touch the belly of the Comanche's horse, then became more shallow.

Suddenly High Walking struck his mount with the bow and let out an earsplitting shriek. The animal leapt forward, throwing water for yards. Indian and steed drove into the trees on the riverbank.

A handful of minutes passed, and High Walking returned to the water's edge. He motioned Jacob to cross.

“Next time you go first,” High Walking said, his face grim.

* * *

The hacienda sat in a grassy meadow above the flood line of the Rio Pecos. All the doors and shutters were closed.

Jacob went silently to the front entry. He tripped the lock and kicked wide the door. With pistol drawn, he burst inside.

His eyes swiveled, scouring the big, shadowy room and the several hallways leading off to the recesses of the hacienda. The echoes of his noisy entrance died away. There remained only the complete quietness of a house deserted.

The structure was less than half the size of the Solis hacienda, and he finished his investigation in a brief time. As far as he could determine, all of the ranchers' major furnishings and possessions appeared to be intact. Again, as at the Solis hacienda, he saw none of the smaller, valuable articles that Mexican households normally contained.

Jacob detected some storage chests and drawers askew, as if someone had searched among them. It was odd that the bandits hadn't damaged or carried off more items. The band was organized, with the leader maintaining tight control. Such a disciplined, almost military band of men would be dangerous to attack.

He left the house and began to search the yard. The ground was heavily marked with the fresh tracks of horses' hooves and heeled boots. He found a pool of dried blood. “Goddamn,” he cursed.

High Walking came into sight riding his horse up the bank of the Pecos. The Indian was little interested in the Mexican people of the rancho and had ridden off to seek out the route the raiders had taken.

“They take many sheep and cows and go that way.” High Walking pointed to the east. “The same direction they took from all the other ranchos.”

“To Texas,” Jacob said. “Did all the riders go the same way?”

“No, only five or six. The others go down the river.”

“There is one more rancho there.”

“I know,” said the Comanche. “I have seen it, nearly a day's ride from here. It is a small rancho with few people.”

“These tracks are a day old. That means the raiders could have attacked that rancho this morning, or perhaps even as early as last evening.”

High Walking shrugged his shoulders. “I think we will be too late to warn the people. But the Texas
banditos
are getting farther and farther ahead of us. We must ride swiftly.”

“I agree.” Jacob mounted his horse.

The two riders crossed the river and swung south. The horses picked up into a trot, a jarring ride, hard on the riders, but a pace the animals could maintain for miles.

The sun grew old, turned blood-red, and vanished into the bottomless pit behind the rim of the world. The shadows of twilight crawled out of the hollows. A million mosquitoes rose up from their daytime resting place in the river marsh. They swarmed upon the horsemen.

Jacob batted the buzzing black insects from his face with a hand. He glanced at High Walking. The bloodsucking pests were a black fog around the nearly naked Comanche. The man ignored the mosquitoes, his sight picking out the hoofprints of the Texan marauders from the blackness settling over the ground.

Jacob looked to the west at a hill silhouetted against the darkening sky. He pointed and called to High Walking. “Up there a wind may be blowing and could keep the mosquitoes off us. Let's water the ponies and go see.”

The Comanche grunted something Jacob could not make out. He halted his mount and allowed it to drink beside Jacob's.

They traveled directly away from the river, climbing upward to the crown of the small rocky hill. Near the top the Indian angled away, and without a word, he disappeared into the night.

Jacob found a spot where the wind had the mosquitoes swept clear. He hobbled his horse and spread his blanket.

Jacob lay sifting the ashes of his memory of Petra, seeking those bright moments of pleasure with her. But the gloomy thoughts came swiftly and lay heavily upon him. Never again would he be able to hold her and find joy in the comfort she gave him.

He turned from his bleak thoughts and listened to the night. A bird roosting somewhere below in the brush crooned like an old woman. To the east, far out on the Llano Estacado, a desert wolf gave his weird and wavering call. Jacob drifted off into sleep.

Sometime in the night Jacob came awake in a second, and his hand closed on the butt of his revolver. The echo of a sad, heart-rending cry from the Comanche filled the darkness. He listened for the sound to come again.

The Indian made no further noise. Yet Jacob sensed the man's wakefulness out there somewhere in the blackness. Jacob didn't know where the Indian had finally lain down. That was not good. Whether he liked the Comanche's presence or not, closer attention must be paid to him.

Jacob awoke at a slow, sliding movement on his chest. The movement ceased, but a solid weight remained. Slowly, ever so slowly, he cracked an eyelid.

In the light of first dawn he saw the tan-and-brown body of a giant rattlesnake coiled on his chest. Jacob flinched, and before he could prevent it, his lungs expelled a short breath of air.

The rattlesnake was awakening from the drugging coolness of the night. Its recovery was being hurried by the heat radiating from the mound on which it lay. Already it felt the elastic strength in its muscles.

The large reptile felt the warm wash of air over it. It sensed a quiver in the mound beneath.

A third of the snake's body lifted, and its venomous, fanged head swung to point straight at the source of warm air. The bulbous, nearsighted eyes stared. The wet, forked tongue licked out to capture the molecules of scent on the air and to deposit it inside the olfactory pits in the top of the snake's mouth.

Jacob rolled his eyes to the side. The Comanche crouched not three yards away, intently watching Jacob and the rattlesnake. His lance was in his hand. But Jacob could tell by the expression on his face that he was not going to give any assistance.

The reptile sensed the almost imperceptible tremble of the mound again. It pulled back its head and the elevated portion of its body, in preparation for striking at this strange-smelling animal that was so threateningly near. The snake pointed its tail at the sky and began to vibrate its loose, interconnected rattles in a frenzied warning.

Jacob had to strike before the snake did. He lashed out. His open hand hit the solid, muscular body of the reptile. It seemed to be gripping his clothing. Then it broke loose and slid to the side.

Jacob rolled the opposite direction. He kicked the blanket free and leapt to his feet.

The rattlesnake coiled instantly. It raised its poisonous head, poised to stab out at the thing that had hurt it.

“Goddamn heathen Indian,” stormed Jacob. “You put that snake on me.” He rushed at the Comanche.

High Walking sprang erect. He thrust his lance out to meet Jacob's charge.

Jacob barely halted in time to prevent himself from being impaled on the long steel head of the Indian's weapon. “You bastard, I could have been killed by that snake, or poisoned so badly that I couldn't travel.”

Jacob's fist ached to smash the brown face and the black eyes that watched him without emotion, like marbles of obsidian. All of Jacob's will was required to hold in check the anger that flamed in his mind. “Why did you put the snake on me?” he demanded.

“I wanted to see how brave you are,” High Walking said. “I do not want to go with a coward to fight battles.”

The Comanche lowered his lance and turned his back to Jacob. He gestured to the south. “That is the way we must go. We waste much valuable time here,” he said over his shoulder, without looking at the white man.

Jacob stared at the man's back. “One more trick and I will kill you,” he promised.

One slight shrug of the Indian's shoulders was the only response to Jacob's threat. “Do we go now?” asked High Walking.

Jacob pulled on his moccasins and rolled his blanket. “Damn heathen,” he said under his breath as he cinched the saddle on his horse.

“Let's ride,” Jacob called harshly.

The rested horses ran easily through low hills studded with prickly pear, cholla cacti, and scattered clumps of bunch grass. As the day wore on, yucca appeared, as well as agave, stabbing skeletal fingers upward. The riders also encountered small sand dunes. Fresh tracks of buffalo and antelope appeared. And always there were the tracks of the Texans' horses pounding on ahead.

The sun reached its zenith, burning the earth with unnatural heat. Horses and men sweated. Strange mirages formed, then melted away and disappeared before Jacob's and High Walking's eyes, to reappear again like monstrous spirits rising from the bowels of the earth.

The Indian and the white man ignored the false images. The Texan raiders traveled somewhere ahead of those things that did not exist. What were real were the men they must find and kill.

* * *

The two riders came warily toward the hacienda, which squatted a hundred yards ahead on an old river terrace. At one time the adobe building had been whitewashed. Jacob thought that an odd thing for the owners to do in this remote location where few visitors would ever come. However, the house was now heavily weathered, the brown adobe showing in many places. The hacienda stood exposed, with no protective walls.

“The Texans have already been here,” Jacob said, raising his sight from the scores of tracks on the sunbaked ground.

“No one will be alive,” High Walking said.

“I'll look inside.”

“No time for that. Let us go on at once. We cannot help the people who lived here.”

“I said, I'll go look around.” Jacob's voice was flinty. “You do whatever you want.”

High Walking's dark face turned surly. Perhaps he had made a mistake in journeying with Jacob. Never could he be a friend to a white man. Always an enemy. However, to kill the scalp hunters, he would use the strength of anyone. He whirled his cayuse and circled off to the left, his eyes sweeping the ground.

Jacob found the major contents of the hacienda to be in place. The storerooms were partially empty, with open sacks and lids off other containers. In the kitchen, plates and dishes sufficient to feed ten men stood on the long wooden table. Jacob went quickly to the fireplace and felt the stones. They were cold. No cook fire had burned there that day.

He ran from the hacienda and toward his horse. The men who had attacked this rancho were miles ahead. He yelled out loudly to the Comanche.

High Walking rode up the grade from the river. “They crossed the Pecos just below here, where the water is wide but shallow. Their sign is fresh. Made late yesterday.”

“I know. We'll catch them tomorrow if we hurry.” Jacob flung himself onto his mount.

* * *

The flat, smooth surface of the Rio Pecos shone brightly in the glare of the hot evening sun. The fish of the river had long ago sought a cool haven in the shade beneath the overhanging banks. Just downstream from the smooth flow of deep water, the river shallowed and became braided, flowing in three swift streams between low gravel bars.

“Damnation, I'm melting,” complained Custus. He looked west at the sinking sun. “I hope the night comes quick.”

“This is better than riding out there on the Staked Plains herding sheep and cattle with the other men,” replied Borkan. “The only shade there is a man's hat brim.”

“You're right.” Custus turned onto his back. “It's your turn to keep an eye open while I catch a nap.”

Borkan and Custus lay in the shadows among a grove of cottonwoods and spied on the road where it forded the wide spread of water at the gravel bars. Kirker had ordered them to keep lookout for two days. If no pursuit came trailing the Texans, the two men were to give up their vigil and hurry after Kirker.

Borkan rose to a sitting position and surveyed the Pecos Valley. On both sides of the river the cottonwoods clung to the banks in a narrow, hundred-foot-wide band. Higher on the bank, the desert bunch grass had finished growing and was turning brown. The hacienda they had attacked the day before, though less than half a mile distant on the old river terrace, could not be seen.

Borkan came to quick attention. Two horsemen, their mounts moving at a fast gallop, had come into sight on the steep road leading down from the hacienda.

“Custus, wake up and get your rifle. Some fellows are coming.”

* * *

Jacob and High Walking sat their saddles and watched over the wide expanse of open water at the far shore. At their feet, the Pecos murmured a liquid undertone. High overhead, a buzzard hung ominously on wings that did not move. Jacob saw the bird riding the updraft of hot wind and wished he had that vantage point from which to examine the dense mat of trees on the opposite bank of the river.

The water wrinkled at a strong puff of wind coming from the east, the direction in which danger could lie. High Walking sniffed, turning his head, testing, evaluating. Jacob did likewise, searching for the odor of sweaty horses and men.

Just for an instant Jacob thought he caught a whiff of scent from something that should not be there. But so faint was the smell, so laden was the wind with the odor of the river mud and water, he wasn't certain.

“You go,” said High Walking. “If we circle every place where our foes could hide, we would never catch them.”

Was there a new and odd tone in the Indian's voice? Jacob believed there was. But he said nothing. His long-legged horse felt the heels of its master brush its flanks, and it stepped forward into the shallow water of the river.