~New Mexico, 1870's~
Chapter 1: A Stranger Rides In
A dead Indian hung from the limb of a cottonwood over a dry creek bed. There was a flurry of large wings as a rider slowly approached, and reddish-colored hawks lifted their engorged bodies sluggishly into the air with a chorus of kreeing sounds and began to circle leisurely overhead.
John Green clicked his tongue softly and the pinto he was riding came to a stop at the edge of the shallow clay bank on the opposite side. It was past June when most stream beds had dried up. He lifted his, wide-brimmed hat from his head and wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty brow. His face was streaked with grime. His blue shirt and tan buckskin pants were covered in a thin coating of alkali from days of trekking up the Jornada del Muerto, a waterless waste of blistering sand and sagebrush.
He wore a holstered pair of Colt .44-40s with the ivory butts pointed forward on two criss-crossed cartridge belts. Hanging from his pommel by a shoulder strap was a leather case. Inside was a Sharps .52 caliber buffalo rifle. The throat of his shirt was open underneath a yellow bandana, and the sleeves were rolled up deeply tanned arms to the elbows. He looked to be a man in his mid-twenties with black, curly hair and piercing blue eyes.
He squinted against the hot glare of the noonday sun and, after a moment, placed the sweat-stained Stetson back on his head.
The Indian, a boy, had been dead some considerable time. The body was bloated with gas. The lower portion, from the hips down, was coal black where the blood had settled. Decay had caused the torso to turn a reddish black. Clots of dried blood hung in black strands from the nostrils. Shit had fallen to the ground beneath, but it had long since dried, and no flies buzzed around it. The eyes were gone from their sockets. The mouth hung open; the tongue was chewed away as well as the lips by the hawks. The cock was missing, too. Either eaten . . . or cut off. Whoever had hanged the boy had mutilated him; the belly had been cut open. The uncoiled gut hung to the ground like a long, withered snake.
Green guessed he had been dead at least twenty-four hours. The rope used to hang the Indian was a Mexican-made maguey, a light string good for calf roping. It had been tossed over the limb of the cottonwood and, after the Indian had been hoisted up, secured around the trunk of the tree. There were many hoof prints in the sandy creek bottom around the boy. Maybe half a dozen riders.
Green wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs and took out a draw-string pouch of tobacco from his shirt pocket and rolled a smoke, lighting it with one of the few remaining matches stuck in the yellow band. He inhaled the smoke deeply smelling sulfur fumes mixed with the faint stench of the Indian. He didn't want to get any closer.
Whoever had hanged the boy wanted his body to be seen, for it was in plain sight of the stage route Green had been following. He nudged his silver spurs gently against the pinto's flanks and continued on across the creek bed avoiding the body by a wide margin; the hooves of the horse clopped on a bed of sandstone near the center. Green knew that the circling hawks would draw attention from far off, and he didn't want to be around when the boy's relatives showed up, for he had, most likely, been killed by whites; the hoof prints he had observed near the body had been those of shod horses.
He moved on off and after awhile came to the top of a rise where stretched out before him was a panorama of red-cliffed mesas and deep canyons interspersed with wide, open plains. Scraggily pinons and other various pines and junipers clung to the nearby slopes, surging up through cracks in the reddish rocks. Prickly pear and sagebrush dotted the landscape. Below on a stretch of open ground, he could see a small cluster of twenty or thirty buildings mostly of adobe. A few of two stories. He looked around at the low outcroppings of rocks on either side of the road. Several hundred feet to his right was a rocky overhang adjacent to a wide-spreading juniper. He guided his horse toward it and dismounted. The tangy odor of the juniper itched his nostrils. Behind the tree, he inspected the outcrop. Near the bottom was a narrow fissure running several feet horizontally and several inches wide vertically. He got down on his hands and knees and peered into it; after a moment, he stood back up and took the leather case holding the Sharps rifle off the saddle and fitted it into the fissure. It went back far enough to be out of sight.
Mounting up once more, he returned to the stage route and headed down the gently sloping rise toward the small cluster of buildings. On the outskirts he passed a cemetery on a hillock and a pine marker leaning into the ground with a panel nailed to the top that read 'RED ROCK'. An Apache arrow was stuck in the post. The sign had several bullet holes in it.
The first building to his left, a barber shop, had a 'closed' sign hanging in the window. In a lot next to it were some hay stacks of grama grass and a corral behind a gabled livery of pine logs. Next to this a general store of adobe, with a doctor's office above, according to the sign over the porch walkway. On the slightly inclined roof sat a man holding a Winchester rifle in his lap. At the bottom of some side stairs that led up to the doctor's office was a buggy with a yellow canvas top. A black medical bag was sitting on the seat. Farther down, another sign on a small adobe building proclaimed it to be the jail.
In front of the general store, two men were loading a buckboard with supplies. Green noticed that both were heavily armed with pistols and knives. On the seat of the buckboard leaned two Winchester rifles. He also noted that the walls of the adobe buildings were pitted with bullet markings. As well as the logs of the livery which were splintered and punched full of holes. A few arrows stuck out just beneath the roof.
To his right, across from the barber shop, was a two story adobe. The 'Loomis Hotel' according to the sign. A vacant lot sat next to it; farther down was a hardware store. All the buildings had small windows and heavy shutters that could be closed in a hurry if need be. Typical of western towns periodically besieged by Indians.
Continuing on he passed another adobe building to his right. A pretty woman with blonde hair braided up in coils on the top of her head was leaning in the doorway observing him without expression, her arms crossed over her breasts, one foot extended out in front of the other on the plank walkway. On the front of the two-storied adobe an arch of black letters stated that it was the 'Red Rock Lantern'. A few buildings farther down was a cantina, also of adobe with bright red shutters on its two front windows, one on each side of the door. A canvas awning overhead held up with poles served as a porch. A drunk, with his wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, was kicked back in a chair against the wall next to the door sleeping one off.
As he dismounted in front of the livery, a strongly built man with close-cut gray hair beneath the brim of his black fedora stepped out of the alleyway. He was puffing on a curved pipe and pushing a wheelbarrow full of manure. The pitchfork handle stuck out in front like the jib pole of a ship. His shirt was blue and white stripped underneath a dark-gray vest. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscular forearms. His trousers were of blue denim.
When he saw Green he sat the wheelbarrow down and tipped his hat back.
"What can I do for you, mister?" he asked, taking the pipe from his mouth and cupping it in the palm of his dark-brown hand.
"Need to put my horse up for a day or two," Green replied.
The liveryman's narrow eyes sized him up, glancing at the makeshift rope hackamore on the pinto.
"Indian pony, huh." He lowered his eyes. "Not shod."
Green nodded. "Couple of bucks jumped me a few days back." He spoke slowly, softly, meeting the man gaze. "Killed my horse. I caught this one . . . afterwards; the other spooked and got away."
"Un, huh," the liveryman said, He glanced at the ivory handled Colts on Green's hips. He didn't feel a need to ask what happened to the two Indians. The eyes of the stranger were cool and watchful like a rattler before it strikes.
"Probably some of Gray Wolf's renegades," the liveryman said. "They've been hitting us pretty hard lately. Last stage through was two weeks ago. Indians killed a passenger and the guard. Hasn't been one since."
Green nodded slightly.
Pocketing his pipe the liveryman stepped off to the side of the pinto and cupped it's muzzle in his hand. The horse didn't shy off. He stuck his finger in the side of it's mouth and pushed up the lip to examine its teeth.
"About four years old," he said. "Tall for a paint, a ripper, good sixteen hands." He patted it shoulder. "Good slope but not too much. Good cow pony; large chest, healthy lungs and a big heart; holds his legs nice and straight under him; he'll be clear-footed. Got a short back, won't ride as comfortably as the long back, but he'll be stronger and quicker. Firm looking hooves, no cracks." He glanced at Green. "Probably need to shoe him if you plan on doing much riding. Lots of rough ground around here."
