Jory Sherman - Blood Sky at Morning

SHADOW RIDER BLOOD SKY AT MORNING

JORY SHERMAN

For Arlie Weir

Chapter 1

Zak Cody cut sign that morning just after he passed Dos Cabezas. The tracks were both disturbing and puzzling. There was blood, too, mixed in with the dirt and the rocks. At least six men, he figured, on unshod ponies, had lain in wait for the stagecoach. There were drag marks, and these led him to a gruesome discovery.

The bodies of two men lay spread-eagled on their backs near a clump of mesquite and cholla. Their throats were cut, gaping like hideous grins. Blue-bottles and blowflies crawled over the wounds and clustered on their eyes. The men were hatless and scalped. They wore army uniforms and they had been stripped of their sidearms.

Zak stepped off his horse to examine the dead men more closely. One of them, a young lieutenant with blond fuzz still on his face, had blood on his shirt, a few inches under his armpit. He pulled the shirttail out and saw the wound. It appeared the young man had been stabbed there. The other man wore a sergeants chevrons on his shirt. He had a dragoon moustache and there were small scars on his face that had long since healed. A fighter, from the looks of him. His nose had been broken at least once in his lifetime, which Zak judged to have been about forty years.

Moccasin tracks all around the bodies. Hard to tell the tribe. Chiricahua maybe. This was their country. The hair on both mens heads appeared to have been pulled back to take their scalps, slit their throats. A few strands around the dollar-size patch where the scalps had been lifted were sticking straight up.

At least one of the men had voided when he died. The young lieutenant, he decided, when he bent over to sniff. He smelled like a latrine. The urine smell stung his nostrils, so they hadnt been dead long. An hour, maybe less.

He set about deciphering the tracks, walking around the wagons marks where it had stopped. Wagon or stagecoach, he couldnt tell for sure which just then. Six separate sets of horse tracks. Four horses, shod, pulling the wagon or coach. A depression where one body had fallen, close to the side. The driver, probably. On the other side, more marks, indicating a struggle, then another depression a few feet away from the wagon tracks.

Then the wagon had driven off. And it wasnt trailing any of the unshod horses. Who had been driving? Why had he or they been allowed to leave? Was the lieutenant the target? The sergeant? Both? Strange, Zak thought.

He mounted up and continued down the road in the direction the wagon had gone. The pony tracks led off on another tangent. Business finished. Where had they gone? There was no way to tell without following the tracks. And even then, he might not know why they had attacked the wagon, or coach, and why they had just let it drive off. None inside the wagon had stepped down. He had accounted for all the tracks.

Yet someone had escaped.

Why?

Zak touched a hand to his face. Two days of stubble stippled his jaw. The hairs were stiff enough to make a sound like someone scraping a match head across sandpaper. He touched spurs to his horses flanks and left the smell of death behind.

The wind moved miniature dust devils across the land like dervishes on a giant chess board, with squares painted burnt umber and yellow ochre. Cloud shadows slipped across the rocky outcroppings and small spires like wraiths from some surreal dream, slinking and rippling over the contours of the desolate earth, making the land seem to pulse and breathe. Little lakes shimmered and vanished in the smoke of shadows, only to reappear again farther on in silver curtains that danced enticingly along the old Butterfield Stage route that wound through stone cairns and cactus like the fossilized path of an ancient serpent grown to gigantic size.

Zak Cody licked the black cracks on his lips, shifted the pebble in his mouth from one side to the other. His canteen was empty, all of the water inside him where it could oil his muscles, saturate his tendons. That was the Apache way, not the white mans, who rationed water until he died of thirst, leaving his gaunt skeleton on the desert either through ignorance or an addled mind.

He found the first object beside the trail almost by accident. A glint of sun, something odd seen out of the corner of his eye. He rode over to see what was glittering so, thinking it a stone veined with mica or quartz. But there was a blue-green cast to it that defied immediate identification. It was small, and might have passed notice on an overcast day.

He reined in the black and dismounted. Stooping down, he picked up the dazzling object, turned it over in his fingers while he stared at it. There was gold on it, too, and he saw that it was a piece of jewelry. Womans jewelry. The gold band was attached to the precious stone, and there was a pointed shaft through the band. A womans earring, he determined, before he put it in his shirt pocket. A few feet away, almost hidden from view, he spotted the matching earring. He slid it into his pocket with the other one and climbed back into the saddle.

Now, what would a woman, possibly a refined woman, be doing way out in the middle of nowhere, miles from any sizable town, any town where a fine lady might wear such a fashionable accessory? Ahead, miles away still, was Apache Springs, and beyond that, Fort Bowie. He had seen the wagon tracks, knew how fresh they were, how many horses, four, were pulling it, and how fast they were going. Cody was a tracker, by both habit and training, so he always studied the ground wherever he rode his black gelding, a Missouri trotter, sixteen hands high. He called the horse Nox, knowing it was the Latin word for night.

A hawk floated over the road, dragging its rumpled shadow after it along the ground. It disappeared over a rise and a moment later he heard its shrill scree scree. The sound faded into the long silence of the desert, and then he heard only Noxs shod hooves striking the hard ground.

A few moments later, he figured perhaps fifteen minutes had passed, he saw something else that was out of place in such surroundings. A flash of silver light bounced off it in one short streak, almost like a falling star going in the wrong direction, from earth to the heavens. He stopped and picked it up.

A bracelet, of silver and turquoise. Probably Tasco silver, from the way it was wrought, so finely turned, turquoise beads embedded in round casings that clasped them tight. A womans bracelet, graceful and elegant, such as a refined lady might wear.

Zak crossed and recrossed the ruts in the ground, looking for more cast-off artifacts. Ten minutes later he found a necklace made of silver and turquoise, like the bracelet. He stopped long enough to retrieve it and put it in his pocket before he rode on. He kept his gaze on the broken land, scanning both sides of the road for any sign of movement, judging the age of the tracks, holding Nox to a steady, ground-eating pace, closing the distance between him and the four-wheeled vehicle.

He spat out the pebble when Nox gave a low whicker and his ears stiffened to cones, twisted in a semiarc. Apache Springs was close, he knew, and he began to drift wide of the road, but keeping it in sight. The tracks were very fresh now, and as he topped a small rise, the springs lay below him, a wide spot in the road, deserted except for the small coach that stood off to one side. A woman sat on the seat, alone, her head facing the opposite way.

He saw legs move between the horses. A man was checking the traces.

Zak rode toward the coach, his hazel eyes narrowed to thin dark slits. They flickered with little flecks of gold and light brown, specks of magenta. The man emerged from between the horses legs, and the woman turned and stared straight at him. A hand went up to her mouth and she stiffened on the seat.