The Lonely Hunt

By James A. Muir

He stepped out of the shadows, a tall man with a gun on his hip and death in his eyes. ‘I am Matthew Gunn. Some call me Azul.’
He drew as he spoke, triggering the Colt in a violent explosion of sound that blew the Mexican backwards off his feet, twisting him around so that he hit the sand face down. Dead.
He was part-white, part-Apache, all killer. Around the border country they came to know him as Breed, and they feared the name, for it spelled violent death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: May 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005601294

Book preview

Chapter One

HE COULD SEE the column of smoke from a mile away, and when he rode in closer he could smell the rotten odor of decaying bodies. He swung down out of the crude saddle and tethered the string of mustangs he was leading to a near-by cottonwood, then he levered a shell into the breech of his Winchester and hauled himself astride the paint pony. His moccasins kicked the animal to a canter towards the village as his pale blue eyes scanned the surrounding terrain for sign of raiders.

The only movement came from the spiral of flesh-hungry birds wheeling in the air currents above the village, gliding down to join their wing-brothers on the ground. Throwing his customary Apache caution to the winds that lifted smoke and smell over the rancheria, he kicked the pony into a gallop that brought him directly to the center of the straggling lodges.

Buzzards, too gorged to fly, stumbled out of his path as the pony’s unshod hooves scattered snarling pi-dogs from their feast. He fought nausea as he jumped to the ground, eyeing the ruins of what had been his home. The lodges smoldered black in the afternoon sun, their bent wood supports standing like bones against the sky. The cooking fires, doused with the grease of the pots, added their own rancid smell to fetid air. But the worst offence came from the bodies that littered the camp. They lay where they had fallen, the bloody wounds indicating an attack with scatter-guns, completed with knife and club. A few warriors clutched weapons, the women and the children sprawled unarmed, mute evidence of the sudden violence of the attack.

They had all been scalped.

He saw his father near the center of the ruined village, tall even in death, his blue eyes staring at a sky he could no longer see, his long blond hair streaked with blood from the gaping, hideous wound on the top of his head where the knife had done its work. Beside the corpse lay his mother, her own dark locks mutilated.

The young man threw back his head and screamed. A long, piercing yell that came up from his stomach to split the air like death’s knell, grief and fury intermingled in mindless raw protest.

Then he shook himself, the way an animal does when pain strikes, unseen and unexpected, with nothing to do but suffer, hoping for the chance to strike back.

His eyes, clouded with loss, cleared to a hard, cold, steely blue; his wide-lipped mouth set into a thin line, slowly parting as he stared at the mutilated remnants of his parents.

‘I am Azul!’ The cry sent buzzards flapping from the corpses. ‘I am Chiricahua. I kill. I shall kill the men who did this.’

He bent over his parents, hand extended to stroke the bloodied hair. ‘I am white, too. Father, you christened me Matthew. Matthew Gunn, I give you my word that the men who did this will die. Before they die, they shall know me. They shall know who kills them, and why.’

He lifted his hand, the fingers smeared with his parents’ blood, and stared at the dripping crimson. Slowly he brought his hand to his face, bright red smears spreading across the tan, salt taste on his lips.

‘By the sky and the grass, your blood and my birth tree, I swear I shall kill them.’

His tall frame was drawn in as he stood up, the shoulders hunched around his anguish; his knuckles white where he gripped the rifle. Then he threw it from him, his right hand darting to the top of his knee-high moccasin, snatching clear the long knife that was sheathed there. With a single swift stroke he drew the blade across his left fore-arm, extending it so that the welling blood dripped out over the ground and the sightless faces of his father and his mother.

‘My blood is your blood,’ he muttered through clenched teeth, ‘who takes yours, takes mine. And blood repays blood.’

He swung around, ignoring the wound, and walked over to the paint pony, restless at the presence of the birds and the mangy dogs. He hitched the animal to the ridge pole of a burned-out lodge and began to gather the bodies into a central burial mound.

The moon was full before he had finished piling the corpses around and beneath a pyre made up of the remains of the rancheria. He dragged in wood stored against the cold New Mexican nights and lit the pile before he laid his parents out, side by side, and carried stones to form a cairn over their shallow grave.

Then he squatted beside the rocks, watching the slow spread of cold moonlight tinge the construction with shades of deathly blue. Quiet, deep in his throat, he began to sing the Apache death song, a lone, mournful complaint that kept up until the sun began to color the surrounding hills. When the tip of the cairn was bathed in red he stopped, rose to his feet and began to walk around the ruined village. He collected all the cartridges he could find that would suit the Winchester and then mounted the pony. He rode out to the tethered mustangs and turned three loose, the remaining animal he led back to the village, hitching both mounts outside the circle of ruined dwellings. On foot he moved through the wreckage, gathering what food and clothing he could salvage. Finally, he picked the best of the stuff and lashed it in a bundle across his pony’s rump. His father’s gunbelt was buckled around his waist, holding the Colt .45 Frontier model that he had practiced with since he was ten years old.

Ignoring the still-burning fire, he walked slowly around the perimeter of the rancheria, his eyes on the ground. The sun was high over the Mogollons before he had the information he needed: six men, riding shod horses had attacked his people. They had moved in on the village from the west, waiting for the evening meal to start before opening fire. He located the vantage points they had chosen by the litter of empty cartridge cases, and the tracks that lead out of the scene of massacre in the direction of Mexico gave him the rest.

The killers were white. Scalp hunters making their ghoulish living from the trade in Indian hair. He knew that the Mexican government still offered a bounty of $100 for every male Apache scalp brought in to one of the specially-appointed alcaldes; and that the American authorities often turned a blind eye to the trade, regarding it as a means of solving the Indian problem.

Azul smiled, though no humor showed on his face. Instead, his even white teeth parted in the kind of blood-hungry grin a lobo wolf shows before the kill.

He walked back to the ponies, tying a leather war-band around his blond hair. He paused to whet the edge of the Bowie knife resting in its sheath on his right hip, then checked the load in the Winchester before swinging astride the paint pony and, leading the second animal, headed south.

Forty miles away a group of dusty horsemen pushed their tired animals along the trail to Galenas.

The lead rider, a big dark man in a sweat-stained white shirt and black vest, turned to the Mexican beside him.

‘A good haul, eh Manolo? Better than fourteen scalps.’

The Mexican laughed. ‘Seventeen by my count, jefe. The best yet.’

‘Hell of a thing though,’ the speaker was a fair-haired American with a slow, Southern drawl, ‘that crazy white bastard bein’ with them.’

‘I told you about him, Jude,’ grinned the dark man, ‘he was how we found the place. The squaw man was an old Santa Fe trader, name of Gunn, I think. Married an Apache woman and turned native, though he still traded.’ He laughed. ‘He shoulda learned to cover his tracks better.’

‘Still,’ Jude shook his head doubtfully, ‘it was odd to find him there. Not like killin’ reds.’

‘Killing’s killing,’ muttered the big man, some dark memory crossing his eyes like a cloud over the face of the moon, ‘and for us it’s profitable.’ He patted the two hide sacks hung on either side of his saddle. ‘Seventeen hundred dollars’ worth of profit. Even with Padillo’s cut it leaves us two-fifty apiece.’

‘Sí, jefe,’ said Manolo, ‘but why do you take the rubious hair? Padillo will not pay on that Yankee scalp.’

The man turned in his saddle, cold green eyes pushing silence into the Mexican’s mouth.

‘I got reasons, Mex. Maybe one day I’ll tell ’em to you.’

Stung by the insult, Manolo reined his horse back to fall in line with his three fellow-countrymen. He wiped the arm of his silver-threaded jacket across his eyes, muttering in his own language about the vagaries of the Yankee temperament. The three Mexicans ignored him. They were tired and hot and it was a long way to Galenas and Padillo’s trading station. They had been moving the better part of two days, holding a wounded man in his saddle, with the constant fear of an Apache reprisal causing them to turn their eyes frequently northwards. It was impossible to tell what the Indians might do if someone had escaped the attack, or a passing indio had reported the carnage.

And to make it all worse they were slowed down by Juan. The crazy old gringo with the fair hair, the one whose trail they had so carefully followed, had put two bullets in his stomach. Now he rode doubled over the pain, bloody froth trickling from between his lips. It would have been better to leave him in the village, but the jefe had insisted on bringing him with them. It was as crazy as the gringo’s wild defense; but who could know what a gringo would do?

Their eyes met across the man hunched in the big Sonora saddle. That they would take with them when Juan did the decent thing and died.

As though to relieve their worries, Juan coughed a mess of bright red blood over his hands and fell sideways out of the silver-studded saddle.

He was still falling as one of his companions shouted ahead.

‘Jefe! Juan is finished. It is better we leave him now.’

The dark man at the head of the column swore as he pulled his horse back, skittering the beast around to come level with the groaning figure clutching its belly on the ground.

‘Yeah. Leave his horse an’ some water.’ He leaned out of his saddle, ‘Juan. We have to do it this way. If you can make it, follow us into Galenas.’

Juan looked up through the pain.

‘Sí, jefe. Leave me the horse and a gun. I catch you up.’

They carried him to the side of the trail, the Mexicans cursing at the loss of the saddle, and put a Colt beside him, next to a canteen of water. Then, without looking back, they moved off down the trail.

Juan pulled himself painfully up against the rock at his back so that he could watch the desert around him and the receding figures of his partners in the scalp hunting enterprise. He stroked the butt of the Colt with numbing fingers and hoped that they had got out of the Apache territory unseen.

Twenty miles farther north Azul finished watering his pony and kicked the animal into a gallop. The rifle was clutched in his right hand and death shone in his eyes.

Chapter Two

AZUL HAD EXHAUSTED the unbroken mustang during the first hours of the hunt. The animal was unused to the weight of a man on its back, and fought him hard as he pushed it on, following the trail of the scalp hunters. The signs were clear to his trained eyes and after meandering in an attempt to confuse any followers, the six men had headed straight for the Mexican border. The half-breed could guess, from knowledge gleaned on raids into Mexico, that they were making for Galenas or Chihuahua itself and he rode the pony hard in a furious attempt to catch up.

The wild gallop was almost as tough on Azul as it was on the animal and by the time he felt his quarry close ahead, he was ready to turn the beast loose in favor of his own animal. From the tracks he saw, he knew he was not far behind the six men who, for some reason, seemed to be riding slower than he had expected. Usually a raiding party that had hit one