Rage Under the Red Sky by Carl Dane

Author:Carl Dane [Dane, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, General, cowboys, Fiction_ Westerns, westerns, carl dane, amazon, western books, hawke and carmody
ISBN: 9781794036840
Google: cU8KwQEACAAJ
Publisher: Raging Bull Publishing
Published: 2019-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Taza said he was unhappy because twenty riders were on their way to kill me and he might not have the chance to do it himself.

The man held a grudge like glue.

Last year he’d been leader of an ambush party that got the drop on us. Carmody, who speaks enough of the language to get me into trouble, had calmed things down by insulting Taza on my behalf and telling him that even though I didn’t look like much I could beat the Apache up like he was a little girl.

He goaded Taza into fighting me mano-a-mano with knives, under the provision that Carmody and I could go free if I won.

Which I did, thanks to the fact that I kicked Taza in the thigh and the big Indian fell forward and impaled himself on his own knife. Carmody insisted I kill Taza, that it was expected and the war party would kill me if I didn’t follow through, but I didn’t and they didn’t and Taza has been singing the same song of revenge ever since.

Every time he saves my life he insists it’s so he can do the job himself, and whenever I start to ask him for a favor he interrupts and tells me that if I am asking for him to kill me quickly when the time comes, it will depend on how hard I beg.

Taza is nothing if not cagey. It turned out that Taza spoke English but hid the fact and knew what Carmody and I were planning while we spoke, secure in the assumption that we would not be understood.

Taza lectured me about falling for that trick.

And so did Carmody, who loves to lecture more than Taza does. The fact that Carmody fell for it too did not dampen his ardor as he recounted my strategic failings. Endlessly. With that finger stuck in the air.

Taza was unusually big for an Apache. Most were muscular but short; he had plenty of gleaming muscle but was well over six feet, almost as tall as Carmody. When he dismounts and talks with me he stands excruciatingly straight and tilts his head down to accentuate the inch or so he has on me.

“You are fucked,” he said, looking as though he were trying to stifle a yawn.

He’d caught me languishing in my ten minutes of sanity and my mind wasn’t working at full speed yet.

“Riders…where? You say there are about twenty men coming to kill me?”

“Not say ‘about.’ Apache is precise, not make sloppy guesses like you. Exactly twenty. Not broke camp yet, but coming this way before noon.”

“How do you know they’re coming to kill me?”

“I hear them talking. They say they going to kill ‘dumb-shit marshal.’ I do not know any other dumb-shit marshal.”

I ignored him.

“Do you know who they are?”

“Do you know any other dumb-shit marshal? Maybe I make mistake.”

“Do you know who they are?”

Taza turned thoughtful and decided to placate me with an answer.

“Gang thrown together. I watch for a while. Men stay in circles.

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