Shadow Man

CHAPTER ONE

Buzzards turned in the sky.

They planed on brown-grey wings, cutting slow, tightening circles. They might have been tethered by an invisible leash to a spot on the desert floor far below.

That told Calvin Taylor a little. Something down there was hurt but it was still alive, otherwise the buzzards would be spiralling down to feed.

Taylor sat his grey horse in the only cover hereabouts: the shade between two large boulders. He lifted field glasses to his eyes and studied the land to the east.

The green country, the valley of the Rio Grande, was behind him. Ahead was only a seared and waterless landscape, all the way to the Pecos River: Southern New Mexico Territory. Mountain ranges that paralleled each other, trending north to south. Between these ranges were desert basins. The nearest range, the Lagarto Mountains, lay before him. The Lagartos were well-named, dim, lizard-like shapes with a spine like the edge of a saw running against the sky. Beyond them lay his destination: the new mining camp of Ore City.

Through his field glasses Taylor studied the carrion birds overhead and then the ground they staked out. He frowned. The buzzards hovered over the first foothills of the Lagartos, where there was a sight too much cover for his liking. It would be safer and wiser to keep to open country. Nonetheless Taylor kneed his horse in the ribs and rode towards the place the buzzards marked.

The wind brought suffocating waves of heat, and fine, warm dust that scratched his skin. It was only early June and already as hot as hell’s griddle.

Calvin Taylor was twenty-five years old. He was six feet tall, and of medium build; a good-looking young man with dark hair and, in contrast, very blue eyes. He had grown a moustache to put some age in his face and wore two days of patchy trail beard. His clothing was functional, not stylish. The colour had long faded from his Levis and flannel shield-front shirt. He wore an equally faded poncho he’d bought in the last town along the way – Paso Del Norte – and a battered plainsman’s hat. He carried a long-barrelled Colt .44 pistol in a cross-draw holster on his left hip and a fifteen-shot Winchester, model of 1873, in the saddle boot on his horse. A knife was sheathed on his right hip. All this weaponry was a considerable burden on man and horse but they were necessary. Even now, in 1879, this was still dangerous country.

Taylor rode slowly across a plain of low brush – saltbrush, creosote, clumps of yucca – under the eye of the sun and in the teeth of the hot wind. Haze blurred the horizons and turned the lizard spine of the mountains to wave crests, rippling towards some far shore. This was high desert and altitude made the air burn his lungs. It was very silent. It was still, too; then a white dust showed, streaking across the desert face, pelting away from him.

Taylor had his hand to his rifle and the Winchester halfway out of its boot before he realized this was only the strange ground-running bird called the chaparral cock fleeing before him. He told himself, ‘You’re getting jumpy, Taylor.’

He could see a cleft in the wall of foothills before him, a little narrow canyon angling in there, towards the place the buzzards marked. He decided only a damn fool would leave open ground and enter those hills, where he could be trapped and ambushed easy as you please. But curiosity was pulling on him and he rode into the canyon. It was his day to be a damn fool.

He made one concession to common sense: he drew his Winchester from its boot, cocked it, and laid it across the saddle before him.

Rock walls rose on either side, bare and sheer. The heat trapped between had no air to stir it, was solid, dizzying. The canyon crooked ahead, angling out of sight. Brush and haze provided a myriad hiding-places all around him. Taylor decided he’d been fool enough for one day. He’d turn his horse about, quit this canyon and leave the buzzards to their work.

Taylor was conscious of a ledge, shouldering out of the rock wall behind and above him and how close he’d let himself get to it. He began to knee his horse forward. Then something clattered on the trail before him. Taylor looked that way. In the same instant he caught movement in the corner of his eye. A man was suddenly standing on the ledge!

This man ran forward, yelling.

And sprang.

As the man leaped towards him, Taylor swung his horse about. He lashed out with the rifle in his hand.

The barrel struck home; the plunging figure grunted and was flung aside. The blow pulled Taylor to the left, half out of the saddle. At the same time his horse jumped to the right. Suddenly Taylor had no horse under him. He seemed to hang in the air an instant; then he struck the ground very hard, on his front.

By good luck he came down on a slope of white sand, but the fall still knocked most of the air out of his lungs. He lay prone for a time, trying to find breath. He tasted the harshness of gypsum in his mouth. The glare of salt-white earth hurt his eyes.

Slowly he sat up.

His attacker lay on the slope above. He moved slowly too, coming to all fours, then kneeling up.

Taylor saw a man in a faded red polka-dot shirt and muslin loin-cloth, now fouled with white dust. His very black, chest length hair was tied across the temples with a thick band of red calico. A chevron of white bottomclay banded his face from ear to ear, running across the bridge of the nose, startling against his dark-copper skin. He got to his feet and showed he was bare-legged behind the breech-clout, wearing crumpled knee-high moccasins. He had a knife in his hand.

An Apache.

Dazedly, Taylor became aware of the Winchester lying on the earth before him. He got his hands to it.

The Apache charged.

As he ran he put the knife between his teeth. Taylor scrambled upright, lifting the rifle and the Indian seized it with both hands, cannoning into Taylor and driving him backwards. Taylor fell and rolled down the slope; the Apache spilled over him and rolled too. They tumbled down-slope in dust.

Where the slope levelled, they floundered in this choking stuff. Taylor got to a crouch, looking around for his rifle and a dim shape loomed over him. A man with a knife in his hand, striking down.

Taylor dodged and grabbed the man’s arm. He yanked, turning as he did so, pitching the Indian headlong over his right shoulder. The Apache somersaulted forward, striking on his back. Taylor sprang in on him. The Apache kicked up from the ground. His foot went into Taylor’s belly, hooking Taylor into the air. Taylor performed his own neat somersault and crashed down on loose sand.

The Indian lunged at him again but he was slower. Taylor had time to get to his knees. As the Apache stabbed down, Taylor grabbed his arm. The white man squirmed to his feet. He was six inches taller than the Indian, but they seemed matched for strength. The knife point was only a few inches from Taylor’s throat; he strained to hold it there. They swayed, locked together, each one’s hands to the other’s wrists, almost face to face. The Apache’s teeth were bared in a snarl, very white against his dark skin.

Suddenly the expression of ferocity on the Indian’s face changed. It became pain. A sigh came out of him. All the strength seemed to leach out of him at once; he sank down. Taylor lifted his foot, placing it against the Indian’s chest, and kicked out. The man was driven backwards, sprawling on the slope.

Taylor reached down and lifted the Winchester. The Apache had dropped his knife. Taylor snatched that up too. He found he was dizzy with weariness after only a few minutes’ physical exertion in this heat. Breath panted out of him. His arms trembled as they always did after violent action. Sweat was running into his eyes. He wiped it away and took aim on the man lying before him.

The Apache sat up, making small sounds of pain. That was explained when he reached behind him, putting his hand to his back. His fingers came away bloody. There were blood patches on the white sand around him. He looked up at Taylor calmly, in his face a sullen acceptance of his death.

This was a young man, younger than his white enemy. After a moment Taylor recognized him. In Apache (which he spoke well) Taylor said, ‘Hello Nachay. You got a bullet in you?’

The wounded man was trying to keep his face a mask, Taylor could see that; it was something an Indian could do easily, but for an instant the mask slipped and he looked puzzled. Nachay said, ‘I remember you from the agency. You’re the one they call Shadow Man.’

Nachay meant Rat, but that wasn’t an insult in Nachay’s world. Apaches honoured the rat as a clever animal. Taylor told him: ‘I always figured your daddy, Loco, was a pretty smart Indian. So why’d he leave the reservation?’

‘The white eyes promised to feed us on the reservation. But you can’t eat promises. They wanted to starve us like they did the Navajos.’ About ten years back, Taylor knew, the white man had penned up the Navajos on the Bosque Redondo, where thousands of them had died of starvation, hunger and disease. Nachay’s eyes moved to the rifle in Taylor’s hand. ‘Better to die like an Apache.’

‘I’m not going to kill you, Nachay.’

‘Why not? I’d kill you.’

‘There’s been enough killing. Tell your daddy to come in and talk peace.’

Nachay was struggling to keep the shield over his face and not let his further puzzlement show. Taylor turned away from him and began to climb the slope towards his horse. He’d taken half a dozen paces when Nachay said, ‘Shadow Man!’

Taylor turned back. Nachay was on his feet. He