Shadow on the Sun Page 6

  “Wait!” Finley shouted to the chief. But if Braided Feather heard, he gave no sign of it. Face a carven mask, eyes held straight ahead, he drove his horse toward the edge of town. In a minute, every Apache was gone.

  Finley stood for a few moments, staring in the direction they had gone. Then, slowly, his gaze shifted to the man.

  “What in the name of heaven is going on?” demanded an angry, confused Boutelle.

  Finley shook his head, looking at the man.

  “Are those the Apaches we met with yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they trying to—”

  “Hey, what in hell’s going on around here?”

  The two of them turned as Appleface Kelly came stomping up, wearing a long, gray overcoat over his nightshirt. His eyes were puffy with sleep, and there was a growth of dark stubble on his cheeks. In his hands he carried a rifle.

  “I thought there was a treaty with them bastards,” he said.

  “There is,” said Finley. “This has nothing to do with the treaty. They rode in to see him.” He gestured toward the man across the street.

  Appleface squinted at the man. “Him again,” he said.

  “You’ve seen him before?” asked Finley.

  Appleface told him what had happened at the Sidewinder Saloon the night before.

  “He asked for Dodge?” said Finley. This thing was getting beyond him.

  “That’s what Eddie Harkness figgered he wanted,” said Appleface. He glanced across the street. “Wonder who in hell he is anyway,” he said.

  “Maybe we’d better find out,” said Finley.

  “I would like to—” Boutelle began, then stopped as the Indian agent stepped away.

  “Watch y’self,” Kelly muttered after him.

  Finley nodded once as he started across the muddy street toward the man, who, apparently oblivious to the agent’s approach, had gone back to the chair and was looking toward the hotel again.

  Finley stepped up onto the walk.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  He was not prepared for the sudden tightening that took place in his stomach muscles when the man’s eyes turned to his. It took an effort of will to keep his voice from faltering.

  “My name is Finley,” he said, trying to sound casually affable. “I’m the Indian agent for this territory.”

  The man looked at him without answering.

  “You—speak English?” asked Finley. Kelly had said that he did, but there seemed to be no reception in the man’s face. He eyed Finley without blinking, his face as still as a rock.

  “If I can help you in any way . . .” Finley went on, talking more from instinct than design. “I know the Indians who just spoke to you and—”

  There was a sudden glittering in the man’s eyes which made him stop.

  “You know the Night Doctor?” asked the man.

  Finley felt a chill lace through the muscles of his back. The way the man had asked it, almost hungrily.

  “I know of him,” said Finley.

  “Where is he?” asked the man.

  Finley realized in that instant that he would not have told the man where the Night Doctor was even if he knew. He had no reason for this except a feeling in his gut.

  “I don’t know that,” he said.

  The man turned away, no longer interested in Finley. Why does he want to see the Night Doctor? the agent wondered.

  He was about to say something about knowing Professor Dodge when the man raised his head a little to see who it was that was riding into town down beyond the hotel. And Finley saw the scar.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off it. They were still fixed to the discolored line of tissue when the man turned and looked at him.

  Finley drew in a quick breath and forced his eyes up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Looking into the man’s eyes was like staring into two black pits.

  “That must have been . . . quite a cut,” Finley heard himself saying.

  The man’s brutally appraising look altered. Abruptly, almost terribly, he was smiling, but it was not a smile that bore warmth for Finley or for anyone.

  “Someone cut my head off once,” he said.

  Finley shuddered. “Really?” he said, but the bantering tone he tried to put in his voice failed completely.

  He stood looking into the man’s black eyes for another moment. Then, without another word, he turned and stepped down off the walk. He knew he had learned nothing, that if anything he had been made a fool of. Yet he also knew that he’d had to get away from the man, that he couldn’t have stood there by him for another second.

  Reaching Boutelle and Kelly, he turned right and started back for the hotel. The two men fell into step beside him.

  “What’d he say?” asked Appleface.

  “Nothing,” said Finley. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Who is he?” asked Boutelle. “And why did the Apaches ride here to see him?”

  “I don’t know,” Finley said tensely. “He told me nothing.”

  “You think there’s gonna be trouble with the Injuns?” Kelly asked.

  “If they’d come in to make trouble,” Finley told him, “they could have wiped us out. You know that.”

  Appleface grunted. “That’s so.” His step faltered. “Well . . . I better get me some clothes on before I get arrested. I’ll see ya later.”

  “All right.” Finley kept walking determinedly toward the hotel, trying to rid himself of the cold and frightened restlessness in his gut. He’d never felt like this in his life, and he neither liked nor understood it.

  Kelly fell out of step and turned away from them. As he walked back to his boardinghouse he kept glancing across the street to where the man sat. Who in the hell is he, Kelly wondered, that Braided Feather should come riding all the way into town just to see him?

  “The man told you absolutely nothing?” Boutelle asked after Kelly had left them.

  “Only that he wants to see the Night Doctor,” Finley said, hoping this would satisfy the younger man.

  “Who in God’s name is the Night Doctor?” asked Boutelle.

  “An Apache shaman,” Finley answered. “A medicine man,” he added as Boutelle started to say something. “He was a member of Braided Feather’s tribe.”

  “Was?”

  Finley grunted, glancing back over his shoulder. The man still sat in the same position, looking up at the hotel. Finley traced the line of his gaze and saw that it ended on the second story—perhaps on the window of Professor Dodge’s room, it occurred to him. Although how the man knew where Dodge’s room was, was another question added to the rest.

  “Is he dead?” asked Boutelle.

  Finley started. “What?”

  “The Night Doctor,” Boutelle said acidly. “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know,” said Finley.

  “Why did he leave his tribe?”

  “He didn’t leave it; he was driven out,” Finley answered. “Braided Feather outlawed him.”

  “Why?”

  Finley pushed open the hotel door and started in.

  “For tampering,” he said.

  “What do you—”

  Boutelle stopped. The Vances were in the lobby, turning from one of the windows where they had been watching. Realizing the state of his dress, Boutelle headed directly for the stairs. After he was dressed, he’d confront Finley again and this time, by heaven, the agent had better give straight answers and stop this nonsense about any Night Doctor. If Finley thought for one second that he could condone the Apaches’ obvious disinclination to abide by the conditions of the treaty—not the least of which was the clearly stated rule that they were to keep away from Picture City—he had another think coming. And on the day after the meeting, too! Good God, did Finley think him an idiot?

  Finley, at that moment, was thinking of anything but Boutelle’s mental capacity.

  “No, it wasn’t a war party,” he was assuring Mrs. Vance. �
��They were here to see a man. Which is what I want to—”

  “Yes, we saw,” said Mrs. Vance. “He’s the same one who came here last night.”

  Quickly, she told Finley about the previous night. As she described the open window and the footprints ending in front of it, the agent stared at her almost blankly.

  “You think he . . . went out the window?” he asked.

  “I don’t see what else he could have done,” she said.

  “That scar, did you see that scar on his neck?” added Harry Vance.

  Finley nodded, feeling as if he were involved in some ridiculous dream and not actually standing in the hotel lobby talking to the Vances.

  “Tell me,” he said, “did he happen to mention why he wanted to see Professor Dodge?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Harry said. “Just went upstairs and . . .” He shrugged weakly.

  Finley shook his head and grinned wryly. “Sure makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?”

  “It makes no sense at all,” said Mrs. Vance, as if he were speaking seriously.

  “You say you don’t know when Professor Dodge is coming back?” Finley asked Harry.

  “No, he didn’t say,” said Harry. “Never does.”

  “I see. Well, when he does come in, will you tell him I want to see him right away? Before that . . . other fellow gets to him.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that,” Harry said.

  “Good.”

  Except that things were far from good, Finley thought as he went up to his room to shave. He kept trying to put the bizarre details into some kind of pattern, but they wouldn’t fit together. How could you connect such shapeless pieces as a stranger who might or might not be an Indian; a stranger who wanted to see an outlawed medicine man and a professor of archaeology; a stranger with a jagged scar around his neck (“Someone cut my head off once”) whose presence gave one a sense of sickened dread; a story about this man jumping from a second-story window without injury; and Braided Feather, a fearless Apache chief, riding in to see the man, then fleeing as if devils pursued him? These things made no overall sense—or, if they did, the sense was lost to Finley.

  He was just relocking his door when it occurred to him that there might be two more details to be added, details which would make the pattern, should it emerge, even darker.

  The death of Little Owl. And the disappearance of Tom and Jim Corcoran.

  7

  At eight o’clock that morning, Al Corcoran rode into Picture City with the corpses of his brothers.

  He did not look to either side of the street, did not note the shocked faces of the people who came out from their stores and houses as he passed. He did not notice the man sitting on the porch of the general store. He rode on woodenly, eyes staring and glassy, mouth set into an ugly, lipless gash, gloved hands curled tightly round the rein ends of his mount.

  Following behind on a lead walked the horse that had belonged to his brother Tom. The two bodies lay across its back, covered by a frayed blanket. They had been put there, faces down, their arms and legs hanging loosely, the wrists and ankles tied together. One of the men was barefoot, the feet pale white and gnarled with dark blue veins. Across the wrists of the other was a darkened spiderweb of dry blood. The two bodies stirred with the motion of the horse as if they were trying to move.

  Corcoran rode directly to the Indian agent’s office before reining up. Slowly dismounting, he wrapped the reins of his horse around the hitching post and, ignoring the stares of the people around him, strode to the plank walk, stepped up onto it, and went to the office door. He did not go in. Turning the knob, he shoved the door open as hard as he could.

  Inside, Finley and Boutelle looked up in shock as the door crashed against the wall.

  “Al . . .” Finley’s voice was startled.

  Corcoran did not reply. He stared in at the agent, gloved hands fisted at his sides. Finley pushed up from his desk and hurried to the door. Corcoran didn’t move, blocking his way. Finley stopped in front of him and looked over the heavy man’s shoulder. There was a tightening on his cheeks as he saw the bodies.

  “Where were they?” he asked.

  “Out where the Injuns were,” muttered Corcoran.

  Finley blinked. Then, as Corcoran stepped back, he moved out onto the walk, eyes stark with pain. This was the moment he had dreaded most since yesterday. Abruptly, a fragment of his dream flared briefly in consciousness: him coming out of some building, seeing the two bleeding bodies. He shuddered and stepped down off the walk into the mud. Corcoran followed him.

  Finley stood beside the second horse, his hand closed around a cold, white ankle. He felt sick with premonition. These two, still bodies could plunge everyone in Picture City into a bloody nightmare again.

  “Now tell me it wasn’t Injuns,” Corcoran said between his teeth. “Tell me, Finley.”

  Finley drew in a fast breath of the cold, morning air. “Al—” he started.

  With a sob of fury, Corcoran tore the blanket away.

  “Tell me it wasn’t Injuns!” he cried.

  Across the street a woman moaned softly and had to be supported. On the walk, Boutelle gagged and caught onto one of the columns that supported the balcony overhead.

  “Oh, my God,” Finley murmured.

  One of them was naked, his blood-drained body raked with deep, blue-edged gullies, half his chest torn away. The other, the one who had been Jim Corcoran, had no face—only a blood-oozing mask of shredded meat. Here an eye was missing, there an ear. Gouges deep enough to lay the hand in sideways had been slashed across backs and bellies. Nerve and artery ends hung like black ribbons. In one thigh, bone showed. From the half-missing chest, rib ends stuck out jaggedly, their ivory darkened by blood.

  Finley could not speak or draw his eyes from the butchered remains. He felt his heart thumping slowly and heavily in his chest. Horror swept over him in waves that seemed to blot away the sane world which he had managed to cling to until this moment.

  He hardly felt the hand on his arm as Corcoran turned him. He stared blankly at the trembling, wild-eyed man.

  “You get them soldiers,” Corcoran muttered hoarsely. “You get them right away. You hear me?”

  Sucking in breath, Finley disengaged Corcoran’s shaking fingers and picked up the blanket lying on the mud. Carefully, he laid it back across the two bodies and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to force back into himself the strength he needed.

  Then he turned back and took Corcoran’s arm.

  “Come inside,” he said.

  Corcoran jerked his arm away. “I’m takin’ them to Packer’s,” he said.

  “Al, we—”

  The heavyset man turned away, moving almost drunkenly. He stopped in mid-step and looked back over his shoulder.

  “I’m comin’ back here in a couple o’ minutes,” he said. “If you ain’t ready t’go for the soldiers by then, I’ll go after them murderin’ bastards myself.”

  “I’ll be here, Al.”

  Corcoran untwisted the reins of his horse and started walking it away. Behind, the second horse lurched forward, the two bodies twitching at the abrupt movement. Finley stared at the arms and legs as they began to hitch and sway. He wanted to call after Corcoran, but his voice would not function. He knew he should go with the nerve-shattered man, but he needed a little time to get hold of himself. He stood, wordless, watching Corcoran move away toward Packer’s Funeral Parlor.

  It wasn’t Braided Feather. That was the only thought his mind could manage. Yet what good would it do to say that to Corcoran now? What dissuasion could it possibly be to a man who had found his two brothers in that hideous state and, with his own hands, put them on horseback? By any judgment of sanity, he should ride immediately to Fort Apache and get the soldiers, send them after Braided Feather’s tribe.

  Finley shuddered. That was the crux of it, he realized. This wasn’t sanity. It was all a maniac’s dream. No Indian had done that to the Corcoran brothers. Only a giant animal coul
d have torn them so. Was that possible? Finley thought suddenly.

  No. It was that man. Behind all sensible thoughts, the secret place of his mind knew that somehow that man was responsible. But how? The conscious mind could not imagine an answer. How could one man do what had been done to those two, husky young men?

  There was only one course he could think of in the midst of all this, to ride to Braided Feather’s camp immediately—or to the reservation if they had already reported there—and find out who the man was and why the Apaches feared him. He’d take Corcoran along. He didn’t dare leave the grief-maddened man to himself. He had planned to wait for Professor Dodge’s return, but there was no time for waiting now; that was frighteningly clear. Something had to be done immediately.

  Boutelle followed him back into the office—a paler, far less steady man than had left it minutes before.

  “And you defend them,” he said, his voice thickened by the horror he had just witnessed.

  “No Indian did that,” was all that Finley could think of saying.

  “Then what did, Mr. Finley?” demanded Boutelle.

  Finley sank down heavily on the bench where Little Owl had lain the night before. He’d taken the body to its wickiup an hour earlier. Yes—what did? his mind repeated. And what had made the old Apache die without a single mark on him?

  “I don’t know, Mr. Boutelle,” he answered. “I only wish I did.” He exhaled slowly. “I only know it wasn’t Braided Feather’s—”

  “Finley, you’re blind!” cried Boutelle. “Or mad—or worse!”

  At any other time, Finley would have lost his temper at such vitriolic, accusing words. Yet now, off balance, he only looked up defenselessly at the younger man’s infuriated expression.

  “Are you going to the fort?” challenged Boutelle.

  Finley rubbed a hand across his dry lips. What answer could he give that would not brand him as brainlessly submissive?

  He could only shake his head, not in answer so much as in reflection of his perplexity.

  “I see,” said Boutelle, and for a second, Finley almost envied the simple clarity with which the younger man saw the situation, devoid of complications, of perilous possibilities.