Buffalo Soldier: Mob Justice by Charles Ray

Author:Charles Ray
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Westerns, United States, Historical, African American, Genre Fiction, Literature & Fiction
Publisher: Uhuru Press
Published: 2015-07-18T04:00:00+00:00

12.

Staring up at Hardcastle, Ben wondered at his boast that he could take care of himself.

He’d helped Davis move Harris into the cave, which turned out to be a large hollow in the rock with a high, domed ceiling, with enough room to keep the horses in the back and make a sleeping place in the front for Harris and Davis. The large arched opening let in enough light so that the front area was almost as bright as outside, and enough light filtered toward the back of the space so they could see the horses, tethered to large rocks, but it was dim enough that the animals stayed quiet.

They’d slept fitfully. With Harris unable to stand, Ben and Davis had split sentry duty, each of them sitting in the cave entrance staring up at the black sky for three hours. Ben had allowed the younger man to do the first watch. He’d been sitting just outside the cave with his back against the rock, looking up at the sky when it began to change color, signaling the onset of dawn.

He made sure they were settled before saddling his horse and getting back to the task of following Hardcastle. In the end, he hadn’t so much found Hardcastle as he’d just stumbled upon him.

Ben tensed, waiting for the man’s next move. The barrel of the shotgun never wavered.

“I heard what happened to Rafael Nagle,” Hardcastle said. “I can’t say I’m sorry ‘bout it . . . all them Nagles is bad, so he probably deserved what happened.”

“You say that like you didn’t have anything to do with it,” Ben said.

Hardcastle looked Ben directly in the eye, his gaze never flinching. “I didn’t,” he said. “Oh, I busted him up a bit, but I thought at the time that I had good reason to do that. But, I didn’t kill him . . . he was alive when I left him whimpering like a whupped dog in that alley.”

Something in the way he told it, simply, without emotion, struck a chord with Ben. The man was telling the truth . . . or, he at least thought he was telling the truth.

“Someone caved his head in,” he said. “You saying it wasn’t you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” The shotgun barrel lowered a few inches. “I ain’t never killed nothin’ but rabbits, and a deer now and then for meat. I might beat up on somebody what deserves it, but I couldn’t never kill nobody.”

Again, Ben felt the man was being truthful. Besides, if he was a killer, Ben reckoned, he would have just shot him already.

“You mind if I get off my horse?” Hardcastle waved the shotgun, indicating his consent. “You want to come down here so we can talk?”

Hardcastle’s sun bronzed face had a skeptical look. “You ain’t gonna shoot me while I’m climbing down, is you?”

Ben looked up at the man standing on the ledge. His expression was as innocent as a choir boy at Sunday Mass. Trusting in his instincts about people, Ben inclined his head forward.

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