CHAPTER 2 #2
The two mercenaries looked at each other, genuinely startled by the sudden break in hostility and by the unexpected invitation.
The strong smell of the heating coffee and the promise of a proper rest in the middle of the day spoke a great deal louder in their exhausted minds than their own suspicion did.
They climbed down slowly from their mounts, tied the leather reins to a dry creosote bush growing among the stones, and sat on the far side of the fire, folding their legs on the red earth.
The meal went on under a thick and uneasy silence.
Nero chewed his food slowly, eyes half shut and his mind on the ground around him, keeping his hands always perfectly visible above his knees — but positioned, by design, a few inches from the holsters of the Patersons.
The two mercenaries ate fast, swallowing the dry biscuits, but behind their sweating, dust-caked foreheads greed was working at a frantic pace.
Three heads of wanted criminals were worth a great deal of gold in the right hands.
And there, seated in front of them, vulnerable and alone at the bottom of an isolated canyon, was only a solitary hunter in a dusty coat.
The younger mercenary finished his piece of jerky with a violent bite and wiped his lips on the back of his right hand.
That simple motion served as the silent signal they had both been waiting for.
With the filthy speed of men who had made betrayal a profession on the frontier, the one with the ruined teeth rolled abruptly to his left, pulling a short-barrelled percussion pistol he had kept hidden at his waist. In the same instant the young man with the scarred neck sprang forward over the ashes of the fire, a broad-bladed hunting knife held rigid, aimed at Nero’s throat.
For a fraction of a second they believed they held the absolute advantage of surprise.
It was the last and final mistake of their lives.
Before the first traitor could even line the iron barrel of his pistol on the hunter’s chest, Nero’s right-hand Colt Paterson was clear of the holster and spitting fire.
The brutal report broke the stagnant calm of the canyon like a summer thunderclap.
POW. The solid lead ball struck the man with the ruined teeth square in the centre of the forehead, splitting the skull bone.
The impact threw his lifeless body backward, straight down onto the coals of the fire, scattering a cloud of sparks and smoke and hot ash across the red earth.
In that same instant of action Nero twisted his torso to the right flank, slipping the younger mercenary’s blade by a fraction of an inch.
With no room and no time to raise and line the revolver at eye level, he drew the second Paterson left-handed and pulled the trigger at an upward angle, firing from below, entirely on instinct and at point-blank range. POW.
The young man let out a high, choked cry at the exact moment the heavy lead punched through the side of his abdomen, tearing the organs within.
The impact at that short distance hurled his body violently against the limestone wall behind him, leaving a smear of dark blood printed on the grey rock.
The boy slid slowly down until he touched the ground, both hands shaking as they pressed the hole from which his life was pouring out in red spurts.
His eyes rolled quickly back and he collapsed sideways into the dust, completely still and senseless.
Nero remained standing in the middle of the canyon.
The thick blue smoke of black powder rose in slow jets from the twin barrels of his pistols, mingling with the smell of burning flesh from the corpse laid out over the fire.
He studied the two bodies for several long seconds, his breathing even.
The young mercenary down beside the rock showed no visible movement of the chest; the abdominal bleeding was massive, forming a dark pool that the thirsty ground drank up fast.
Nero holstered the Colt Patersons with two dry clicks, satisfied that the work of elimination had been properly settled and that the merciless dryness of that desert would see to the rest of the burying.
Moving calmly, almost without haste, he walked to where his black stallion waited near the dry bush.
He needed to reset the tack, tighten the leather buckles that had worked loose, and check the lashing of the burlap sack before taking up the march again.
The sun was starting to drop slowly toward the horizon, painting the stones a sinister orange, and he needed to make the main road before full darkness took the territory.
Absorbed in ordering his gear, his back to the interior of the canyon, Nero allowed himself to focus on the saddle for a few silent minutes.
That was when a sudden, violent, desperate sound of hooves hammering the loose stones rang off the canyon walls.
Nero spun instantly toward the noise, his right hand dropping in a straight line to the grip of the Colt.
Near the limestone rock only one of the mercenaries’ horses was still tied, pulling at the reins in fear.
The young man with the scar, using the last drop of adrenaline and strength left in his dying flesh, had managed to drag himself belly-down through the red dust, cut the leather line of the second animal with his knife, and haul himself into the saddle.
He was already clearing the narrow mouth of the canyon at full speed, bent low over the horse’s neck to keep from making a target of himself, leaving a steady trail of blood drops on the desert ground.
Nero raised the right-hand Paterson, extending his arm and lining the front sight exactly on the back of the fugitive, who was pulling away by the millisecond under the dust.
He locked the motion, held the air in his lungs, and set his index finger on the folding trigger.
But he did not fire. The distance had already become too great for the accuracy of a short revolver, and the broken ground at the canyon mouth kept throwing up visual barriers.
He lowered the arm slowly, easing the hammer down with his thumb.
The hunter’s glacial blue eyes followed the rider’s silhouette until it vanished entirely into the enormous cloud of red dust rising on the far horizon.
The traitor was carrying lead in his flank, but the ball had come in on a graze, and stubborn carcasses like that one tend to last a good deal longer than they deserve; and if that stubborn carcass managed to survive and find help before the limits of Bitter Creek, Colonel Jonathan Vance would know exactly who had executed his men.
He would know that a man called Nero was crossing the Texas line with McCready’s heads on his saddle.
Nero put the Paterson back in its rawhide holster, swung into the saddle of his black stallion in a single motion, and looked steadily down the dirt road stretching out ahead of him.
The danger surrounding his journey had just doubled in size before he had even set foot in Texas, but his final destination remained exactly the same.
He put his spurs to the animal’s flanks and rode on south, under the watchful eyes of the vultures still marking the sky.
◆◆◆