Cordbush smiled at them and laid his hands on theirs. Cuchillo was briefly surprised at the steadiness of the priest’s fingers.

  “Those who the Lord has joined … let no man put asunder. I pronounce that you are now man and wife.”

  There was a moment’s silence and the Apache didn’t quite know what to do.

  “Come, husband, you may kiss me. May he not, Reverend Cordbush?”

  “Indeed. Indeed he may, Ma’am.”

  In front of the population of Harlan Springs, one of the most notorious Indian warriors in all western history lifted the veil from the face of his white wife and touched his lips to her mouth. The words ringing in his brain. ‘Those who the Lord has joined … let no man put asunder.’

  It was at that moment the doors at the rear of the building burst open and the shooting began.

  Chapter Five

  THERE WAS A voice.

  A fragment in front of the first bullet.

  “Stop the fuckin’ wedding!!!”

  But the crash of gunfire drowned out anything. Anything except the screams.

  Cuchillo turned in a splinter of shattered time from a loyal and loving husband into a ruthless fighting machine. Pushing Gaye to one side, knocking her spinning into the cover of the front row of benches. Before she’d hit the ground the Apache was moving, diving the other way, drawing his handgun and cocking it.

  His eyes raked the building, he saw panic gripping everyone there. Women were standing and screaming, men battling for safety against the hail of lead.

  Cordbush was hit.

  He’d been facing the intruders and his first reaction had not been that of a man of peace. Dropping his prayer book and clawing out his pistol. But he was too late. A ball struck him in the throat, kicking him backwards towards the low pine table that was substituting for the altar. His finger tightened on the trigger in a dying spasm; the bullet buried itself among the low rafters. Blood jetted from the side of his neck, splattering over Gaye Turner as she cowered on the floor. The minister’s feet kicked and scrabbled like a child’s in a temper tantrum. Then he was still.

  But Cuchillo was too busy to note the passing of the Rev. Artemus Cordbush from this world into the next.

  There were three of them. Oakley, to the left of the door, tall and imposing, his black Stetson back off his head, showing his mane of fiery hair. He held a smoking pistol in his right hand, a scattergun under his left arm.

  O’Connor was on the other side, grizzled hair, his scarred cheek turned away. He was levering furiously at a carbine, eyes searching for the vanished Indian.

  The third man was the young boy, Rendell. Right hand shrouded in a bloodied bandage, using a pistol in his left, laughing as his bullets found their mark among the good citizens of the township.

  Cuchillo guessed that it had been his shot that had taken out the priest. Revenge hadn’t taken long.

  A new and bizarre layer of sound hung over the building. Ellie Maidstone, utterly post-deaf, had been watching the couple kiss, sniffing her jealous disapproval. Turning immediately back to her keyboard, pedaling up a storm on the harmonium. Bursting out with ‘We Will Gather at the River.’ Totally ignorant of the slaughter going on behind her.

  Cuchillo crawled quickly to one side of the hall, scrambling over the body of a young boy, shot through the head. Brains and blood smeared over his clean wedding clothes. He knew that facing odds of three to one wasn’t going to be easy. Especially not when one of the three was the tough and experienced ramrod, O’Connor.

  “Hold the shootin’!” shouted Oakley. “Hold on there, we just want the Indian.”

  New Jersey Lily rose to her feet like a sailing clipper in a typhoon, holding an ivory-handled straight razor, heading for Rendell. Her mouth open in a silent scream.

  The boy shot her carefully between the eyes, grinning his wolfish satisfaction at the rose of bright scarlet that flowered from her temples.

  And round and over it all flowed the stirring notes of the old hymn, being given its best by Ms. Ellie.

  Oakley stood near the door, half crouched like a gunfighter, watching for Cuchillo. O’Connor had moved to the corner of the hall, by a large window overlooking the main street. All three men had stopped firing.

  “Hold that damned music!!” yelled the red-headed man. “You, lady, shut it down!!”

  But Ms. Ellie pedaled on, oblivious to what was going on behind her resolutely corseted back. Her mind wasn’t totally on the music, it’s true, following a pleasant dream involving a stream of clear water and a tall bronzed warrior and herself sixty years ago.

  “Waste her, Pat,” said Oakley, to the older man with the carbine.

  “No,” yelled Regan, jumping to his feet, offering too little and too late.

  The ramrod lifted the gun to his shoulder and sighted quickly along the barrel. The bullet hit the old woman through the back of the head, plowed through the brittle bones of her skull, exited through the side of her nose and ripped the end off the Vox Jubilante stop. Ms. Ellie slumped face down on the black and white keys, the weight of her head holding down a crashing discord that lingered on for several seconds until the harmonium ran out of air.

  There was a cry of outraged protest from the survivors at the callous murder, several of them rising to their feet in anger.

  It was the moment that Cuchillo had been waiting for. A chance to change his position and maybe take at least one of the gunmen out of the action.

  Moving fast and low he snaked across from one side of the hall to the other, coming up close to Cyrus Regan, who was holding forth with the gunmen.

  “Let us go, you villains! Murdering rascals, coming to our quiet settlement and—”

  “Shut the flappin’ mouth, Mister,” said Oakley. Pointing his scattergun at the leading citizen of Harlan Springs. “I want the Indian. Dead or alive … Prefer him alive for some sportin’ with him. And then my woman.”

  “Your woman?”

  “One there on her knees. Indian’s bitch. Was to marry me.”

  “She is already wed,” protested Regan.

  “Sure. Don’t signify to me. I don’t aim to marry her myself. Not now. Not now, Gaye.” Raising his voice. “You hear me, you nigger-lovin’ suckin’ whorin’ bitch, Gaye? But I want some payment on that debt you owe me.”

  “She owes nothing,” said Cuchillo. Punctuating the words with three bullets snapped off with his Colt.

  The Apache had never considered himself much of a shot with either a handgun or a rifle, but he was still better than average. O’Connor had been looking at the wrong side of the building for him, watching where he’d first disappeared to. Rendell was busy reloading his own pistol after murdering the minister. The ramrod was obscured from Cuchillo by the Navaho prostitute and Oakley was saved by an old man being in the line of fire.

  So, it was Danny Rendell.

  One bullet missed completely, shattering the glass on a yellowing tract advocating temperance above any other virtue. But it made the boy duck away, startled at the shot. The second bullet caught him through the right shoulder, forcing him to drop the gun, cursing in pain. He began to crouch for cover. Cuchillo’s third shot was aimed at his chest but instead it took him through the forehead as he stooped. The impact straightened him up again, sending him staggering against the half-open door, falling through it and disappearing from sight into the street.

  “Jesus,” yelped Oakley.

  Cuchillo was behind Regan, using the body of the big man to shelter him. Waiting for a chance to shoot at either of the other two attackers.

  “I’ll get him,” said the ramrod, beginning to crab around the hall, using the women there as cover for himself.

  Oakley wasn’t about to wait.

  He squeezed the triggers on the double-barreled Meteor. The heavy-gauge shot came starring out at a range of less than twenty feet, cutting a swathe through the congregation, sending women and children spinning like crimson dolls. Blood spurted to the ceiling, spattering on the windows of the building like light spring rain.

  But enough of the lead remained to tear into the hapless Cyrus Regan. Cuchillo, behind the merchant, saw the flash of the explosion and his ears filled with the double boom of the shotgun. The next thing he knew was Regan’s body pressed against his, pushing him back towards the altar and the corpse of Cordbush. Some of the pellets actually penetrated through the white man’s body, stinging the Indian, leaving tiny scarlet smears on his clothes, but none of them broke his skin.

  Regan was dying as he fell, face spared by the shot, half-turning to look at the Apache. His eyes were wide with the certain knowledge of his own passing.

  “Die, you red bastard!” screamed Oakley, his voice sounding thin and unnaturally high. The Indian recalled in the flash of the moment that he had laid the white man low those months ago with a savage kick to the groin. Perhaps it had done permanent damage.

  But other factors were taking over.

  Panic had unfolded his charnel wings and now strode through the building. There were at least seven dead in the hall and several of the others were grievously wounded. But with the death of Regan it became crystal clear to the survivors that Oakley was intent on mass butchery, that he was prepared to kill anyone who blocked his will.

  And that could mean any of them.

  Or all of them.

  “Let’s get out!” cried someone. The voice was so taut with terror that it could have been man or woman, young or old.

  And the wedding congregation began to do just that, all of them moving with inexorable purpose towards the half-open doors. Oakley was in their way, and O’Connor was moving into their path.

  “Come on!” called the ramrod, recognizing the futility of trying to bar that number of people.

  “I want the fuckin’ Indian,” replied Richard Oakley, fumbling for shells for the Meteor.

  Cuchillo took his opportunity to snap off two further rounds towards the red-headed gunman, having the satisfaction of hearing a yelp of pain as he winged the man across the side of his ribs.

  “Come on!!” urged O’Connor, putting a carbine ball through the belly of a fat young half-breed woman, folding her over as if she was kicked by a mule. Two people behind her stumbled and nearly fell, but the weeping girl did little to check their escape and they trampled over her, treading on her legs, her breasts, her face, regardless of her pain and distress.

  Oakley ran out through the doors, followed by the ramrod. He was clutching a hand to his ribs, blood showing against the pale blue of his shirt.

  Cuchillo moved cautiously through the frightened folk, aware he had only one bullet left in his pistol.

  “Husband.”

  He turned, hearing Gaye’s voice. Hesitating, wanting to go after the killers. Finally sighing and going to where his wife sat, her back against the front row of seats. Her bonnet had slipped, its veil drooping in the pool of blood around her. For a second the Apache thought that she had been shot, then he saw that the lake of crimson had spread from the dead priest.

  “Come hold me, love,” she said, her voice penetrating through the moaning and crying from the rear of the hall of death.

  He knelt beside her, holstering the pistol, vaguely aware of the sound of horses somewhere out beyond the houses. Oakley and the other two must have come up along the draw that ran parallel to the main street. Danny Rendell would have helped them there with his local knowledge. Then they tied the animals and came in quick and quiet on foot. It was a simple plan and it had nearly worked. With a little more patience it would have worked. Cuchillo Oro would have been dead and Gaye Turner would have been a helpless and doomed prisoner in the hands of her vengeful lover.

  “They’ve gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are many dead, aren’t there? All on account of me and you, Cuchillo, my dear husband. On our account all of …” she gestured with a hand towards the carnage. “All of this.”

  “It would have happened one day, Gaye.”

  “But today. Our wedding.”

  “We are married. The priest had done his work.”

  “And now he is among the dead.”

  “He spoke the words of the burying ceremony. By mistake. It was a sure sign.”

  “Hold me.”

  He did as she asked, putting his arms about her, feeling her trembling from shock.

  “They will come again?” she asked.

  “Perhaps,” he replied. “Perhaps.”

  Chapter Six

  BUT THE ‘PERHAPS’ gradually faded away from their lives.

  Months drifted on by and the town fought its way back to something approaching normality. The dead were buried and the wounded were healed. And Gaye and Cuchillo Turner, as they were known, resumed a life that came close to being perfect. The spread began to flourish, despite the poor soil.

  Some twelve weeks after Oakley and his scar-faced ramrod had fled Harlan Springs, Cuchillo was sitting patiently skinning a puma that he had hunted for three days. Gaye was working at a patchwork quilt.

  The long-bladed scissors glittered in her fingers as she cut and sewed the colorful pieces of material.

  “Are you now well?” he suddenly asked her.

  “Well, dearest?”

  The Apache smiled at her, feeling a glow of warmth and affection for his wife. “Yes. You have been sick in mornings for days.”

  Gaye smiled back at him, laying down her scissors and reaching out to lay her hand against his smooth cheek. “Your eyes are too sharp, husband. I had not thought to bother you with it.”

  “You have been whiter.”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “There is something that I think I should tell you, Cuchillo, my darling.”

  “Tell me?”

  “Yes. Something has not happened that should have happened for two months now.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “No,” she laughed. “I did not think that such a great warrior as Cuchillo Oro of the Mimbreños would have any knowledge of the matters of mere women.”

  “Women’s matters. I still do not know what you say, Gaye.”

  “I mean that you and I are to have a new member of our family.”

  “What?”

  “There will be the pattering of small feet about the ranch before too many more months have passed.”

  “Small feet?” He looked up at her, puzzled. “I still do not—”

  “Oh, you ninny. I mean that we will be having a baby!”

  “I know that.” The words were flat and untroubled, taking Gaye by surprise.

  “You know already!”

  “Of course. The sickness in morning and other things I have seen. I knew it was a baby coming.”

  She shook her head in mock resignation. “I vow I shall never properly understand you, husband. You are the most wonderful and outrageous man that I have ever known in my life.”

  He kissed her, having looked around to make sure that nobody was anywhere close enough to observe the private moment. “And I also love you, Gaye,” he said, smile vanishing when he saw that she was close to tears. “What is wrong?”

  She sniffed and forced away the sadness. “It is not that I am miserable. It is the opposite. I cry because I am the happiest woman in all the world and I just … it is silly of me and you will laugh at me for being a goose … but I just fear that something will go wrong again with our contentment. That is all.”

  A few days later it seemed as though the worst of her premonitions might come true.

  Cuchillo had just returned from the banks of the Little Red River, checking on a couple of cows that had gone astray. There had been no trace of the wandering animals but there had been signs of horses. About ten ponies, all but one of them unshod. It didn’t take a deal of tracking skill to know that it meant Indians. The Apache chose to keep the news to himself, not wanting to worry Gaye at a time when she was a little on edge with her pregnancy and the recurring sickness.

  As he cantered back he saw his wife standing on the veranda, staring out towards the low hills that dominated the northern skyline. She turned at the sound of his horse and took a few hesitant steps towards him, wiping her hands on a long apron.

  Even at this distance the Indian could catch the scent of baking from inside the house.

  “What is wrong, Gaye?” he called.

  “Dust. Over yonder,” pointing towards the spreading range of mountains.

  He reined in and stood in the stirrups. Though he was still perfectly able to ride bareback, for work around the ranch he preferred the rig of the white men. He saw it immediately. A spiraling column of reddish dust, moving lazily and with deceptive slowness towards them from the north.

  “What is it, Cuchillo?” She asked, worry riding the ragged edge of her voice.

  “Horsemen.”

  “Whites?”

  Even his sharp eyes couldn’t penetrate the dust. But he strung two and two together. “I think it is probably my brothers.”

  “Apaches?”

  “Perhaps. There are two young cows gone and I find tracks of ponies.

  “Then it’s all right, you think? Or are they a war party?”

  “Cuchillo says that it is better to beware of the shadow than to be killed by it. We put up shutters and be careful.”

  One of the first things that they had done to the house after they’d cleared out most of the presence of the Lorker clan was to strengthen it. Clearing away lines of fire and removing some of the low scrub that made it easy for anyone with hostile intentions to approach under good cover. Doors had been thickened and windows covered with strong shutters. Slits were cut in walls to give a range of fire over blind corners of the house. The chimney had been supplied with a stout cover that could be installed from within. And the space beneath the building had also been boarded off so that nobody could crawl underneath.

  “Go and load the guns. Everything is ready.”

  One of the things that he admired about Gaye was the way that she responded to emergencies. Many women he had known would have fallen down and tugged the apron over their heads, weeping for divine intervention. Not Gaye Turner. She turned immediately and ran indoors and he heard her rushing around, slamming shutters and sliding across bolts.

 

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