Blood Sky at Morning

Chapter 8

Ben Trask poured two fingers of whiskey into Hiram Ferguson’s glass.

“Maybe this will calm your nerves, Hiram,” Trask said. “You’re as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

Ferguson’s hands shook as he lifted the glass to his lips. He was almost as big a man as Trask, but he was soft, flabby, with pudgy lips, jowls like a basset hound’s, and at least three chins under a round moon face. Trask was all hard muscle, half a foot taller than Ferguson, with a lean, angular face, and a hooked nose that looked as if it had been carved out of hickory with a hatchet. Wind and sun had burnished his features to a rich brown tan. His pale blue eyes were almost gray, portraying no emotion, like the eyes of a dead fish.

“That’s what you wanted, Hiram, wasn’t it? Get the army to chase out the Chiricahua?”

“Yeah, but we wanted to make ’em mad that the Apaches were killin’ civilians, burnin’ down their homes, rapin’ their women. I never called on you to go after soldiers. Shit almighty, Ben. You done took one giant step. In the wrong direction, to my way of thinkin’.”

“Hiram, you got nowhere with them tactics. Now you got that damned Jeffords smokin’ the peace pipe with Cochise and his whole gang. Then you go to the army mollycoddlin’ every red nigger from the Rio Grande to Santa Fe.”

“They’re even talkin’ about namin’ a fort after them bastards,” Ferguson said.

They were sitting in the Cantina Escobar, not far from Ferguson’s Stage & Freight Company. Most of the men inside were as anti-Apache as Ferguson, including the six Mexicans who had dressed up like Chiricahua and killed the two soldiers.

The others were local ranchers and their hands. Most of these were standing at the long bar, quaffing beer and eating pickled sausages prepared by Antonio Escobar’s wife, Lucinda, who also cooked bistec, frijoles refritos, juevos, papas, puerco, and anything else a hungry man might ask for. The smells from the kitchen were not overpowered by the scent of smoke and whiskey and mescal, tequila and fresh sawdust on the dirt floor hauled in from the nearby lumberyard and sawmill. The tables were small, except for one, which was used by card players and sat in the front corner to make room for all the tables. There was no music on most nights, but sometimes Lucinda’s brother would bring his guitar and sing sad Mexican folksongs on holidays when the cantina was occupied largely by Mexican vaqueros. This was not one of those nights, and the crowd was equally divided between Mexicans and norteamericanos.

“Look, Hiram, you wanted me to bring the army down on the Apaches. That’s why I staged that attack on one of your stages to make it look like the Apaches were on the warpath. By now, that gal has told every woman in that fort about that savage Indian attack.”

“Speakin’ of that, where in hell is Jenkins?” Ferguson asked. “He should have been back from Bowie this afternoon.”

“Who knows?” Trask said. “I’m wondering how you’re doing with O’Hara. You still got him over at the freight yard?”

“So far, he won’t talk.”

“He knows where every Apache camp is from here to the San Simon. Maybe you ought to let me work him over. And while we’re at it, what’s the difference between you kidnapping a cavalry officer and my bunch putting out the lamps on a couple of soldier boys? I’d like a crack at O’Hara. I could make him talk like a damned magpie.”

“No,” Ferguson said. “I’ve seen your work, Ben. We’ll get what we need out of him.”

“When?”

“By tomorrow. His sis was on that stage Jenkins took out of here to Fort Bowie. He sets store by her. I’m going to tell him we’ll grab her and put the boots to her if he doesn’t tell us what we want to know.”

“Just what are you doing to make O’Hara tell us where those Apaches are holed up?”

“The lieutenant’s bobbing for apples,” Ferguson said.

“Huh?”

“You wanta see? Finish up and we’ll walk over to the office.”

“Damned right I want to see,” Trask said.

He finished his whiskey, stood up.

Ferguson swallowed the last of his drink.

“See you later, boys,” Trask said to the Mexicans still drinking at the tables, their heads and shoulders bathed in lamplight and blue smoke. He laid some bills on the table, picked up the bottle, held it against the light to see how much whiskey was left. He grunted in satisfaction.

The two men walked out of the cantina and toward the freight office. Its windows sprayed orange light on the porch. A man with a scattergun stood in the shadows beneath the eaves, while another, with a rifle, paced back and forth between the corrals and the office building, his boots crunching on sand and gravel. The shotgun man worked for Ferguson. His name was Lou Grissom. The man with the rifle was one of his own, Al Deets, as hard as they came, not a soft bone in him.

“Al,” Trask said. “In the dark you got to shoot low.”

“Yeah, Ben,” Deets said. “Low and off to one side.”

Trask laughed as they clumped up the steps onto the porch. Grissom just stood there, like a mute statue. He wasn’t at all friendly, Trask thought, and that was the kind of man you needed to stand guard with a Greener chocked up with buckshot.

Ted O’Hara sat in a chair in a back room, stripped of his shirt, his arms and legs bound with manila rope. He