Somewhere he caught the sound of a lone coyote, howling for the serene, floating moon. A horse nickered in the barn, one of the two Chiricahua ponies, unused to being tethered inside a building. At least he would be going away and leaving Gaye in safe hands, Cuchillo thought. The two warriors had given their word to protect the white woman, and they would give up their lives rather than break that oath.

  He returned to their room, looking down with an infinite fondness on the naked woman. The sheets had fallen away from her body and she lay like a child, on her side. One breast in shadow, the other moonlit. Her hair tumbled across the pillow like fine rain.

  Cuchillo decided to leave immediately rather than wait for the sadness that would come with the dawn. He dressed quickly and walked across to the barn, waking one of the sleeping warriors, Many Winters, telling him that he was going. The old Chiricahua nodded sleepily, standing with a sigh. Reaching for his rifle to take over his duties as guard.

  The stallion that Cuchillo had selected was quickly saddled and ready. But at the last he tethered it to the hitching rail at the front of the house, going back inside for a final moment with his wife.

  She lay now on her back, one arm raised over her head, face blank with sleep. Cuchillo leaned over her and carefully pulled the sheet up over her breasts, settling it across her shoulders. Taking care not to disturb her. But she moved, lips parting. And she whispered a name in her sleep.

  Her father’s name. Not his.

  He turned away from her and pulled the door of the bedroom shut behind him. Out, across the hall and through the living room, the furniture frozen in the bright silver glow. Into the open air, easing the door shut on the porch.

  Far over his head a tiny cluster of clouds scudded over the face of the moon, and for a moment the land grew very dark.

  Chapter Ten

  IN THE END it took the war party three days to reach the place where their scouts had reported the flame-headed white man and the gathering Mexicans. The weather broke on the first afternoon, when they were barely over the border and the rains flooded down, turning wide trails into streams. Making streams into ferocious orange torrents, brimming with mud, churning mighty boulders from canyon walls.

  It was impossible to travel at all for nearly twenty-four hours, and when they resumed on the following morning they made painfully slow progress. Angry River kept them on the high trails, to try and avoid the worst of the damage to the paths, but they frequently dismounted to detour around mudslides.

  One of the young men went out ahead of them and came back at a fast canter two hours later, reporting that he had seen the camp of the enemy. It was in a place deep among the hills, with canyons that twined in on each other like a nest of snakes. But the Mexicans had chosen to go for height, choosing a place on a low plateau. There were two trails in, the warrior told them. One wide, from the back. The other narrow and twisting.

  “Guards?” asked Angry River.

  “Three. Two at the back and one only at the front. They will not think of danger that way.”

  Cuchillo grinned at the chief. “Then that is the way we go.”

  “Some men to the back?”

  The Mimbreños warrior shook his head. “No. We are not enough for that. Best to come in and take them by surprise. If any run, we can hunt them. But if we are fast and silent then we shall take them all as they sleep.”

  Angry River nodded silently. Looking round the circle of dark, wolfish faces for their approval. Seeing more smiles.

  “Then it is good, Cuchillo Oro, son of the son of Mangas Coloradas.”

  There was only one incident to mar the smoothness of their planning.

  That evening, while they waited patiently for darkness to bring its cloak of safety to their attack, one of the younger men reported that he had heard the sound of a horse, galloping. Heading northwards, towards the border that lay behind them.

  “Apache? Mexican?” asked Angry River.

  “The light was not good.”

  Cuchillo stepped forwards. “You heard, though? Then you know whether it was one of the people or not.”

  “The horse was shod. But the man did not wear the large hat of the bandido.”

  “So, it was not a Mexican. Perhaps it was the man called Oakley.”

  Angry River shook his head. “It is my fault. I should have thought to place men on the trail.”

  “No. But I hope that it is not Oakley. It will not end this matter if he lives.”

  There were less men in the enemy camp than the Apaches knew. Oakley had lured them to his dubious banner with the promise of blood money. Big money. And they had come skulking from the gutters of a dozen border towns. Weasel men with narrow eyes and thin lips who talked little and sat with their backs to walls, one hand never far from pistol or knife. Some of them were breeds, a couple of them deserters from the Cavalry, running all the way from west Texas.

  But the days had drifted by.

  The white man with the burning hair had been easy with the promises. And there had been money, it was true. But less than he had said, and not so often. They were not fools and they realized that he would not hold too much silver where he might be robbed and murdered for it. But there was still no sign of the raid that he had spoken of. And gradually, some of the men who had drifted to his camp drifted away again.

  There were currently around eighteen men there. Oakley had promised that he would soon give the word for the attack into the United States. And he had even made arrangements for more money to be brought from north of the Rio Grande. But that would take several days and half of his gang had decided secretly that they would leave on the following morning, taking what they could.

  They left it one day too late.

  “There is the man who watches for them,” whispered the young Chiricahua to Cuchillo Oro. “See him, to that side of the spike of stone.”

  Cuchillo looked where the boy pointed, not spotting the sentry at first. Then he looked a little to the right, finding that the old trick of night-seeing worked. He made out the faint blur of white against the darker shadows of the rocks.

  “Yes.”

  Angry River was also with them, and two of his oldest warriors. “I shall go,” he said. “When I have killed him, I will give you the signal by waving.”

  “I wish to go,” said Cuchillo.

  “I am chief.”

  “I lead you. It was your wish.”

  “Angry River leads us, not you, Mimbreños man,” snarled one of the other Indians.

  “I will show you who—” began Cuchillo his knife sliding easily from its soft leather sheath, the flickering light of the moon reflecting off the polished steel blade.

  “We fight the men there, not each other,” interrupted Angry River.

  “It is well spoken,” replied Cuchillo, instantly returning the knife to his belt. His anger had flamed at the deliberate provocation of his own tribe, but he saw that Angry River was right. “We go together, my brother. And then we will walk and let our knives drink deep of the blood of those that sleep.”

  “So it shall be,” agreed the other man.

  John Hernandez stood alone on the windy edge of the drop down into the canyon, a hundred feet below. He was nineteen, an orphan. His mother had been a whore in Juárez and his father, so she always claimed, had been an American soldier. A general, she would say. And his name had been John. That was all she could recall, though enough tequila would prompt her to recall that he had yellow hair and soft hands with neat nails.

  It wasn’t much of an image for a boy to build on. Not when his mother was a drunk whore in a filthy hovel. She had died when he was fifteen, the victim of an angry customer who had taken out his rage against her with a stiletto.

  It was John’s turn on watch and he hated it. He wanted to be down with the rest of the men. Specially he wanted to be with Garcia. Garcia was nice to him. Giving him money for doing small favors and for being kind to him under their shared blanket in the lonely hours of the morning.

  The mad gringo suspected that he and Garcia played games each night. Hernandez hated the American, with his arrogant face. Tall and lean, always looking down his narrow nose at the rest of them. And there was something to Oakley’s eyes that John Hernandez feared. A touch of madness that shone through, particularly when the gringo sat alone in the day. Looking out into the distance from the camp, fingers knotting against each other, mouth working and spitting out silent words.

  And the scar-faced one. O’Connor. At least he laughed sometimes, but all of them were wary of him. Seeing the malevolent power of the ramrod, knowing that a step out of line could bring him down on them. That was why their plans to desert had waited for the right moment. The morning of the morrow would be the moment.

  He couldn’t see why the skinny gringo insisted on a guard being kept on this twisting back path. If they were attacked by the rurales then the soldiers would come at them along the main trail, and there were two men there to watch for them. But Oakley had insisted on it. As though he feared something more than the troops.

  John Hernandez sat down with his back against a low boulder, sunbaked, wind-rounded. He leaned comfortably and closed his eyes.

  And so died.

  Cuchillo watched as Angry River did the actual killing. Walking crouched, knees bent, padding over the still rocks, knife out at arm’s length. Stopping as the breed stirred. Moving on again. Waiting a couple of heartbeats to measure the distances and then striking out.

  Hernandez felt something on his face. Iron claws that gripped his jaw, squeezing his lips tight shut so that the breath froze in his chest and the scream was choked at birth. A stinging pain at the side of his neck and a dreadful grating sound that filled his ears. The noise of the blade hacking through the cartilage beneath his ears, slicing the artery apart, spilling his life out in a cascade of weltering blood. The blood, black in the moonlight.

  The boy kicked out and fought for a few moments, in blind panic. His mind not fully taking in what was happening to him, but knowing that it was death.

  Angry River held him until the struggling stopped, laying him back on the earth. Wiping the knife on the half-breed’s shirt and standing up to face Cuchillo. The lone warrior saw the flash of teeth in the night.

  “It was well done?” asked Angry River.

  Cuchillo looked at him for a moment, realizing that the Chiricahua leader was still in awe of him for his reputation. “Yes, Angry River. It was very well done.”

  The fourteen other men slept around a brace of smoldering fires. Two of them were on guard on the further side of the camp, but they would be dealt with later, after the rest of the bandits were dead. Indeed, three of the Chiricahua had been told that the sentries would be their own special responsibility once the attack had begun.

  And that was soon.

  Chapter Eleven

  CUCHILLO WAITED, CROUCHED in the darkness just beyond the fringe of sleeping men. Waiting with Angry River and three of the more experienced warriors, he counted the blanketed figures.

  “Two hands and five fingers.”

  “Yes.”

  “Two hands and three.”

  “Two and four,” said Cuchillo.

  In the silence they all checked their numbers, finally turning to the tall Mimbreños and nodding. Agreeing on fourteen.

  “It is not so many as we thought.”

  “Some have gone,” said Angry River.

  “There was the man on the trail,” reminded Cuchillo, peering intently into the camp, trying hard to make out which of the sleeping men might be Oakley. But all were shrouded against the chill of the night, heads covered.

  “Shall we …?” asked one of the warriors.

  Cuchillo sighed. It would have been better if he could have been sure of Oakley himself. There was a debt of blood between them and he would have liked to have had it paid.

  In books the hero will often insist to his underlings that they spare the villain for him to deal with. Such an idea never occurred to Cuchillo. In the hectic tension of a fight, you killed whom you could. If someone else took out the fire-headed white man, then that was nearly as good as killing him yourself.

  Nearly.

  It came near to being the perfect raid.

  But when you’re talking about being sweat-close to the man you aim to knife to death, then near is not quite good enough.

  It is hard to slit the throat of a man in total silence. Angry River had accomplished it well when he slew John Hernandez. But he had done the act before and practice increased a man’s skill most wonderfully.

  There were young bucks on the raid who had never butchered in such a way.

  It was one of them who failed and bungled his killing.

  Seven of the gang had died. The hand that gripped them by the throat stifled their cries, and the razored edge of the knife pulled hard across the side of their necks, cutting their arteries so that they choked to death in a welter of their own blood. Not one of that first seven even woke up enough to realize what was happening to them, dying in what seemed no more than a vicious nightmare.

  A dream from which they never woke.

  The eighth was sleeping on his side, one arm up across his face, making the murder more difficult for the young brave. It was a Mexican, nearly fifty years old, and he had learned to sleep with his own knife ready in his fist.

  As the Chiricahua tried to move the arm to get at the exposed throat, the Mexican woke, coming alert in a fraction of a second, realizing what was happening.

  “Help!!” he screamed, pushing at the young buck. “Help, amigos, help!!!”

  Cuchillo was standing up, having disposed of another of Oakley’s bandits, when the cry tore the air apart. He turned towards the direction of the yell, seeing that secrecy was blown away into the cool air and that only sudden and violent action would save them now.

  “Kill them!” he shouted. “Shoot them down!”

  From then on it was impossible to get any clear picture of what was happening. Someone stumbled through one of the fires, kicking the embers to flaring life, so that the whole camp was exposed in a bright orange glow.

  The man who had given the warning pulled the Indian down on top of him, slashing at the boy’s face with his knife. He opened up a wide-lipped gash that sliced through the Indian’s right eye and tore up the length of his nose. He ended by grating across the Indian’s front teeth. It was the Chiricahua’s turn to scream, falling back, dropping his blade, hands trying to hold his face together. The bandit kicked him in the chest and struggled to his feet, the blanket draping itself around his feet.

  Cuchillo was only a few steps away and he drew his pistol, transferring the cinquedea to his crippled right hand. He cocked the Colt and fired two shots at the Mexican. He saw the man throw up his arms and fall with a bullet through the brain and another in his shoulder. There was no possibility of mistaking the signs of death as the bandit slumped to the dusty rocks.

  “Behind you, brother!” came a voice, and the big Apache turned to see a half-breed leveling a sawed-off Meteor scattergun at him from ten feet off. At that range the gun would blow a Butterfield coach in half.

  Since that bitter time when Cyrus Pinner had crippled him, Cuchillo had battled on to train himself to fight with either hand. It had been a long struggle, but he had won it. He trusted himself better with the knife than the handgun and he immediately flicked the golden-hilted blade at the enemy.

  Angry Voice was watching, fearful his warning to Cuchillo had been too late to save him. But the Mimbreños was faster than any fighter the chief had ever seen. Reacting with a turn and duck, the gold knife pointing from his hand. Striking the breed in the chest, the force of the throw sent him staggering three paces. Catching his heel among loose stones, he fell over on his back.

  The barrels of the Meteor pointed to the lowering sky, the man’s finger tightening on the twin trigger. It sent a great burst of ten-gauge shot towards the blandly sailing moon. Powder smoke obliterated the wounded half-breed for a few moments.

  When it cleared Angry Voice blinked in amazement. In those few moments Cuchillo Oro had recovered his own balance and ran across the camp, kicking the shotgun from the breed’s hand. He stooped and tugged the golden knife from the helpless man’s chest and then cut his throat with it.

  “My brother, that was well done,” called the Chiricahua chief, standing frozen with admiration. “It was—”

  A short-handled ax struck him from behind, felling him like a steer in a slaughterhouse. Above the force of the blow Angry Voice heard a brittle splintering sound, like a man walking through dry twigs on a winter morning.

  Even as he fell, eyes clouding, the middle-aged warrior knew he had heard his own skull cracking open. The total blackness that folded its wings gently around his mind came as no surprise to him.

  Cuchillo put two more bullets from his handgun into the man who had chopped down the Chiricahua chief. He saw him toppled sideways, his blood spilling from a double wound in his stomach, leaving him scrabbling and yelping in the dirt.

  Despite the wakening of one of the Mexicans, the surprise of their attack still gave the advantage to the Indians. Three minutes after the first of Oakley’s gang had died, eleven more of them followed on the one-way trail. Only five of the Indians, including the hapless Angry Voice, had died, with two more of them nursing bad knife wounds.

  There were only two of them to deal with. So far Cuchillo had not seen any sign of either Oakley or of the ramrod, O’Connor, and he guessed that the two missing men must be them. There was a rough area of jumbled boulders on the side of the camp nearest to the main trail. Nearest also to the horses. And he figured that must be where the two whites had gone.

  If they tried to break out, the Chiricahua detailed to kill the guards on that side of the camp should be able to pick them off, even in the poor light.

  The death of their chief had taken the heart out of the surviving Chiricahua braves. They gathered together near the remains of the fire, silent and depressed.

 

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