Death Song by Andrew McBride

Author:Andrew McBride
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719822537
Publisher: Robert Hale Fiction

ELEVEN

Nathan West’s freight wagon and the spring wagon were hidden in cover against the walls of a little canyon. McLennan watched as soldiers piled brush under West’s vehicle. Private Keogh told him, ‘We got orders to destroy the wagon rather than let the hostiles get hold of it.’

‘What’s in it, anyway?’

Keogh shrugged. ‘Who knows? Guns maybe.’ He stared gloomily into distance.

Dusk was closing over the canyon, the walls darkening, the sky turning purple. Quail and crows called in the brush. Dave smoked a cigarette. Corporal Felmer came over glancing uneasily at the canyon mouth. ‘We should be all right,’ he said. ‘Apaches ain’t supposed to fight at night. That’s what they say. And Neal should be back tomorrow morning.’

McLennan looked up at the melancholy tone in the soldier’s voice. The howl of a coyote came plaintively from the darkness. Felmer said, ‘This country’s too goddamned lonely to fight over. We should let the Apaches keep it.’

Dave went into the brush to urinate. As he stood there, he thought about his own loneliness, the dark mood that seemed to have come over all the men here. Perhaps it was this gloomy place that made them this way.… Dave started walking back towards the others, still deep in thought, barely noticing that a wind was rising, drifting tumbleweeds along the ground; he hardly heard the fluting call of a cactus wren.

Sombra lifted his head. He cupped one hand about his mouth and made the call again. His signal meant get ready. He felt the muscles bunch on his shoulders and back; his throat was raw and hot with fear. It might be easy work, there were only five white eyes in the canyon, guarding the wagons; but that didn’t mean that Sombra’s luck couldn’t fail him today. He’d already lost his yellow-haired medicine.…

He pulled the butt of his Spencer rifle into his shoulder. It was daubed with a few spots of white medicine paint on the barrel to help the gun shoot straight. Sombra wore his sacred shirt that might make him invisible to enemies and was hung with lucky charms and amulets; a piece of petrified wood and a piece of tree bark that had been struck by lightning. His face was split by the usual white band of bottomclay. In the darkness on either hand there were dim shapes, his warriors lying in cover, some moving forward behind tumbleweeds, using these loose clumps of mesquite as camouflage. Sombra narrowed his eyes, watching the white eyes moving in the purple gloom. The civilian amongst them went into the brush under the canyon walls, perhaps to relieve himself. Two of the bluecoats sat by the freight wagon, a third stood off by himself, near to where the horses were picketed. The fourth soldier was the nearest, pacing up and down, his rifle held across his arms. Sombra supposed he was the guard watching for enemies coming into the canyon.

The war chief’s mouth twisted with contempt. The soldier’s enemies were lying only a pistol shot from him and he couldn’t see them.

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