‘Cade!’ she screamed.

  Then the Mexican dragged her back, but not before Onslow saw the dust in her dark hair, the blood on her dress.

  ‘Well?’ Montoya called. ‘Is it a deal?’

  ‘All right. We’ll come out, on one condition.’

  ‘What?’ said Montoya. ‘Name it.’

  ‘Nine horses. All saddled, all fresh. Water and food.’

  ‘Done.’ Montoya turned to call for the animals to be brought up to the gate. ‘What else?’

  ‘We keep Ramon Hoyos and his daughter with us until we get to the ridge. Nobody follows us, or we kill them. You stay here until we turn them loose.’

  Montoya shouted his agreement, ignoring the muffled protests Onslow was trying to push through his gag.

  The horses were brought up and led one by one past the remnants of the gate. Then Montoya ordered them inside the grounds and tethered to whatever was still left standing strong enough to hold a nervous horse. The handlers fell back through the wreckage of the gates. Montoya withdrew, beckoning for Onslow to come back with him.

  ‘Your horses!’ he shouted. ‘I keep my promises.’

  A man emerged from the front of the hacienda. He picked his way carefully over the rubble, stumbling where the porch was broken down and fragmented because he carried a white flag in one hand. It was a very dirty flag. It was tattered and smeared with dust and soot. The man himself wore a dirty bandage around his forehead. It was dark brown in places.

  He clambered over the wreckage and got down onto the shell-pocked lawn. Stood, waiting.

  The silence went on and on.

  Then more men showed. They carried rifles, pistols; most wore bandages. Two were held upright by their companions.

  They spilled out from the house like defeated rats quitting a sinking ship.

  One of them had his arm around Linda’s waist, a Luger Navy Model cocked and pointed against her neck.

  Another dragged Ramon Hoyos forwards with a Colt automatic shoved stiffly into the old man’s mouth.

  Onslow tensed. The men holding him dug their fingers tighter into his arms, numbing them.

  The Villistas paused. Looked round.

  The federales stood quiet. Montoya smiled, hands on hips. Waiting.

  The man holding Linda pushed past the others. He looked young under the blood and dust that covered his face. He wore the beginnings of a moustache and a waist-length jacket with silver stitching on the cuffs and hem. The jacket was torn and the white shirt underneath was stained with blood. His face was cut and there was a ragged tear down one side of his pants. White flesh showed through the tear, lipped with red.

  He went over to the horses and climbed astride the nearest animal. Then he hauled Linda up in front. He still held the Luger against her neck.

  ‘Come on! he shouted. ‘Let’s go.’

  The others followed.

  The man with the flag was the first, climbing up onto a bay horse with the dirty white cloth still fluttering in the early morning breeze. Then the man guarding Ramon Hoyos mounted, motioned Hoyos up on another animal. Then the others followed.

  The Villistas formed into a line, two by two. The one holding Linda took the head of the column, the man with the flag just behind him. After came Ramon Hoyos and his guard, then the others.

  They came forwards slowly, nervously.

  They went past the ruined fountain, skirted a long trench cut out of the lawn by shellfire, and approached the gate.

  ‘Now,’ said Montoya.

  And the Lewis guns opened up.

  They chattered like angry monkeys, the sound oddly flat, almost distant. It sounded less like two deadly weapons than a pair of muffled typewriters stuttering out a message.

  The message was Death.

  The gunners were firing over a flat trajectory at short range. They knelt behind the spade-grips fighting to hold the bucking guns down as the loaders fed the belts of cartridges from the ammunition boxes into the hoppers.

  The horses went down first, their legs blown apart by the riveting strike of the Lewis guns. They collapsed, spilling their riders as they collapsed downwards into the fire. As they fell, the bullets tore through their chests and skulls, mangling them, tearing them, until they were reduced to soggy, tattered mounds of steaming flesh.

  The riders shouted. Linda screamed. The guns went on clacking their awful message.

  Onslow watched the horse carrying Linda fold up like a pack of cards. It went down in mid-stride, its skull exploding as the bullets hit. Linda and her captor were pitched forwards over the ruptured neck. The Luger flew loose. Linda landed on her face and when she pushed herself up Onslow could see blood running from her nostrils. The Villista hit ground and rolled. He fetched up close to an ornamental tree and flattened himself behind the slender trunk. He reached under his jacket and came out with a Colt Peacemaker.

  ‘That’s Batista!’ Montoya screamed. ‘Kill him!’

  Thirty federales levelled their rifles on the man. The machine-guns began a fast traverse.

  Batista was about ten feet from Linda, shouting and firing back at Montoya’s men.

  The tree collapsed. Its trunk was severed in two places by the Lewis guns. Batista jerked upright and seemed to jump into the air. His arms waved and he tumbled backwards with his shirt and jacket and face all one color: red.

  Onslow ignored him. His eyes were fixed on Linda.

  No! Sweet Jesus Christ, please no. Dear God in Heaven, no. NO!

  It was a long time since he’d prayed, and he knew it was useless even as he thought it.

  Linda stood up. Her mouth was open, but her screaming was blocked out by the guns. She pushed both hands out in front as though trying to ward off the bullets. Onslow saw her hands twist and disintegrate. Blood pumped from the stumps of her fingers.

  She tottered back, held upright by the stream of metal.

  Blood spattered thickly over her breasts and waist and legs.

  She twisted round, almost slowly.

  Her left arm jerked out. The ravaged hand seemed to point at Onslow. Then the arm turned and flopped loose, like the limb of a doll torn out by a willful child. It spun round, seeming disconnected from the body, contorted at a crazy, impossible angle.

  Then she folded up, collapsing down onto the ground.

  The Lewis guns swung back to the left. Began another traverse. The belts of cartridges jerked and twisted as they fed into the loading gate. The stubby barrels swung in an arc, spraying shells slowly, almost lovingly, into the horses and the men.

  Into Linda.

  Onslow watched them hit. Saw his wife jerk and writhe as more bullets tore through her body.

  Vomit filled his throat. He choked it down, ignoring it as he ignored the tears clouding his vision.

  Linda ...

  ... Linda ... His wife ... His bride …

  ... Dead.

  Dead ...

  The silence was worse than the gunfire. It emphasized the reality of death. It fell like a hammer on ears horribly accustomed to the racketing of machine-guns and rifles. It emphasized the totality of death.

  Linda was gone. Nothing would bring her back. Not God. Not Onslow. Nothing.

  It was very still. Very quiet.

  He could hear the cooling mechanisms of the Lewis guns sizzling in the warm air. There was the reek of cordite and the sweet, sickly odor of hot blood. A fly buzzed close past his face. It settled on his forehead, then took off and meandered over to the corpses.

  Someone removed the gag from Onslow’s mouth.

  He spat puke and hate into the Mexican’s face.

  The man hit him.

  It was a hard punch. Delivered with the full weight of a muscular arm backing the fist. It caught Onslow along the side of his Jaw and rocked his head sideways, opening up the cuts inside his mouth and along his cheek. He shoved back against the man holding him and slammed a knee up into the man’s groin.

  There was a scream and a brief vision of an officer collapsing with both hands pressed to his crotch.

  Then there was the sensation of falling. Of boots drumming against his ribs and face.

  Linda, he thought. Linda, forgive me. I didn’t know.

  There was darkness.

  He was on his back. His wrists were tied, hands bunched to cover his face, knees drawn up to protect his groin.

  It was dark.

  His mouth and chest and legs hurt. But there was something he had to do.

  He wasn’t sure what it was, but it meant rolling over and crawling towards the noise.

  The crawling hurt.

  The noise hurt worse because he recognized it as he came round. It was the sound of dogs chewing meat.

  The meat was Linda.

  The dogs were eating her.

  Cade Onslow dragged himself to his knees. He tried to stand up, but his legs couldn’t manage it and he fell down on his face. He spat blood and chips from broken teeth and writhed forwards like some grotesque worm.

  He reached what was left of the Hoyos gateway and levered his body upright against the pillar of the gate. There was a pit on his right, lit by the moon. It was quite shallow. It shone in the moon’s light. Shone with the slick of oil and empty shells. There were two boxes in the pit, a dark puddle of oil.

  There was a white shape a hundred yards ahead that was Linda.

  His wife.

  A dog was tugging at something long and pale that stretched out from her body.

  Onslow shouted. Staggered forwards.

  The dog snarled and ran off. Then turned back to a new corpse.

  Onslow tottered over to what was left of his wife.

  He went down on his knees and wrapped his bound hands under the neck. Blood stained his shirt and a cluster of sleeping flies erupted irritably from the holes. Onslow ignored them. He ignored the blood. He ignored the devastation of the face and body.

  He said: ‘Linda. I love you.’

  He began to cry.

  Jonas Strong found him like that: Holding the corpse of his wife.

  The Negro hauled him clear and tied him to a tree as he buried Linda and Ramon Hoyos. The other corpses he left for the dogs.

  Then he dragged Cade Onslow up on his feet and put him on a horse. He tied Onslow’s wrists to the saddle horn and led the horse back to the ridge where Durham and McCloud were waiting with the wagons.

  He cut Onslow free and lifted him down. Then he set the man on a groundsheet, near the fire, and passed him a bottle of whisky.

  Onslow took a long swallow. Then another. He sat upright, his eyes closed. He rocked slowly backwards and forwards. Strong motioned for the others to keep quiet.

  After a while Onslow went to sleep. The bottle was half empty and there were tears on his face.

  Chapter Six

  ‘CHRIST JESUS ALMIGHTY! what in the good goddam hell are we supposed to do now?’

  Yates McCloud stared down the slope to where the Hoyos ranch was still burning.

  ‘Is he gonna stay like that? Or will he wake up sometime?’

  ‘Leave him be,’ said Strong. ‘Sit down an’ eat yore breakfast. Maybe that’ll fill yore mouth.’

  ‘I don’t need advice from no goddam black feller,’ snarled McCloud. ‘There was a deal promised here. That’s why I came down to this godforsaken place: there was money promised. Where is it now? What the hell do we do now?’

  Strong forked eggs from the fry pan.

  ‘Wait,’ he said evenly. ‘We’ll work something out.’

  ‘Yeah! Like before. Like riding miles across nothing to end up with nothing.’ McCloud kicked dirt over the fire. ‘He promised us a deal. He said there was money waiting in Mexico. Where the goddam hell’s the money now?’

  ‘Burned up, I guess,’ said Strong. ‘Along with his wife. Eat and keep your mouth closed. There’s not much else you can do.’

  ‘I could kick your goddam black skull in,’ rasped McCloud. ‘You were in on this from the start.’

  Strong nodded agreement. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t advise you trying anythin’. It might just be the last thing.’

  ‘You want to bet on that, boy?’

  Strong forked up some more egg. He chewed slowly, staring at McCloud. Then he picked up his mug and drank some coffee. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  ‘I don’t like to be called “boy”,’ he said quietly. ‘You want to speak to me, you call me Jonas or Strong or Sergeant, Sergeant Strong wouldn’t sound bad.’

  ‘Boy,’ said McCloud, ‘Jonas Strong, boy. Sergeant Boy.’

  Strong set his mug down beside the fire. He lifted the coffee pot and tipped a full measure into the tin cup. McCloud took a step backwards, bracing his feet wide as he stared at the big black man.

  ‘You’d best take that back,’ Strong said carefully. ‘You’d best apologize.’

  ‘Like hell I will,’ grunted McCloud. ‘I came a long way for nothing with you and Onslow. A whole long way with a crazy man and a dumb—’

  ‘I told you once,’ said Strong. ‘I don’t aim to say it twice.’

  He thrust his right arm out, twisting his wrist so that his mug jerked up to spill its contents into McCloud’s face. As the scalding coffee splashed against the white man’s mouth and eyes Strong lifted up to his feet.

  He dropped the mug as he reached forwards to sink his left hand into McCloud’s stomach. The Southerner’s yell got choked off to a groan and he doubled over. Strong pivoted on his left foot, swinging his right arm down and across to connect with McCloud’s falling head. His hand was open, the heel of his palm connecting with McCloud’s neck just behind the ear, in the fold of the jaw. It was a crushing blow, one learned in barrack room brawls years ago. It froze the side of McCloud’s face and sprang his mouth open just in time to catch Strong’s lifting knee.

  The knee snapped the mouth back shut, splintering some teeth along the way. McCloud closed his eyes and went down on his face. Strong stepped back and watched the blood pool under the man’s head. There was no sign of further movement, so he eased McCloud’s face round to the side and left him lying there: that way he couldn’t choke.

  Jamie Durham poked his head out from under one of the wagons and asked what was going on. His voice was thick with morphine and when Strong told him to shut up and go back to sleep, he obeyed without question.

  Strong settled back on the ground and filled his mug again. He sipped the coffee slowly, thinking hard.

  He was thinking about what McCloud had said with far more concern than he was prepared to show. Onslow looked to be into some kind of shock, and there was no way of telling how long it would take for him to come out. Meanwhile, they were inside a country split by civil war with a cargo of weapons and ammunition and explosives that either side would be glad to take, and few questions asked. Jonas Strong had thrown over twenty years in the Army—twenty years of hard work and harder discipline—to follow Onslow; now he wondered if it was all about to be wasted.

  He was riding herd on a bigot with a grudge and a drug addict. His leader was lost in some private world of grief. There were Huerta troops all around them for all he knew, probably rebels, too.

  It sounded like a whole sack of bad news.

  The big man sipped his coffee and wondered what to do. He wasn’t prepared to leave without Onslow, but he doubted he could shift the major easily. McCloud and Durham he didn’t care much about one way or the other, but he didn’t want to leave them for the federales, either.

  Nor did he feel inclined to leave the weapons: there was too much money tied up in them. But he couldn’t shift the wagons on his own.

  Maybe waiting was the best thing.

  It felt like he sat there for a long time, but it couldn’t have been much over one hour because McCloud was beginning to groan and move around a bit when Onslow stood up. Strong watched him in silence. Onslow looked thinner somehow, and there were dark shadows under his eyes. They emphasized the redness. He stood up slowly, as though stiff, and stretched like an old man.

  ‘I feel lousy,’ he remarked. ‘You got coffee going?’

  Strong nodded and filled a mug, glad to hear his friend’s voice sounded normal.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Onslow said it quickly and there was coldness in his voice.

  Strong held out the mug. Onslow took it and sipped, ignoring the heat of the coffee. He sat down. Strong stayed quiet: there was no need to waste words on sympathy: it was there, understood.

  ‘What happened to him?’ Onslow nodded towards McCloud. ‘Looks like a mule stomped him.’

  Strong shrugged. ‘Race relations. He got a fast lesson.’

  Onslow grunted. Then: ‘Where’s the Kid?’

  ‘Under the wagon,’ said Strong. ‘He pumped more junk into his arm and went to sleep.’

  ‘Hell,’ muttered Onslow, ‘it’s not turned out like we planned.’

  ‘No,’ said Strong. ‘It hasn’t.’

  Onslow drank his coffee. McCloud groaned some more and opened his eyes. He pushed up on his knees and spent some time probing around his mouth. Then he ducked his head and spat a tooth on the ground. He stayed like that for a while, just shaking his head and blinking; finally he stood up.

  ‘I still don’t take to uppity ... black folks,’ he mumbled, ‘but I can learn not to argue about it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Onslow. ‘We’ll work better that way.’

  ‘Better? What the hell you mean?’ McCloud rinsed his mouth and spat. The water came out pink and frothy. ‘What we working on?’

  ‘Two wagonloads of guns and ammunition,’ said Onslow.

  ‘That?’ McCloud sounded genuinely surprised. ‘What good’s that? Way I got things figgered that stuff’s about as much use as a rope on our necks. Christ! Onslow, your wife’s old man was the one wanted that. He set up the money, didn’t he? Now he’s dead, so what use is it?’

  ‘Plenty use,’ said Onslow.

  ‘The hell it is,’ McCloud replied. ‘Way I heard the story, you ain’t exactly friendly with this Colonel Montoya, and he’s most like in charge up here. What you going do? Go find him and ask if he’d like to buy the guns?’