Blood Valley
Gundown!
Blood Hunt
Apache Blood
A nice guy to have around, as editor andfriend:
For Colin Murray
Chapter One
FRITZ BAUM WAS a big man. Standing just under six feet four inches and weighing around one hundred and eighty pounds, he was as solid as he was tall: there was no flab on him, just muscle. It was surprising that so large a man could move so fast, but Baum was quick like a cat. He needed to be: he was a bounty hunter.
His parents had emigrated to the promised land of America in the 1840s, buying a spread of land in East Texas where they raised squash and cotton and their only son. When the War Between the States broke out, Hans Baum had gone off with the Texas Volunteers to fight the men who said he shouldn’t use slaves. Fritz and his mother, Gerda, had worked the farm. In August of 1864 Hans Baum was killed defending Petersburg, and a year and a half later carpetbaggers had talked and bought Gerda Baum out of her farm. She used the money to book passage back to the old country, but when it came time to board the boat, Fritz had refused to join her.
Instead, he took the share his mother gave him and headed west.
In San Antonio he worked for six months as a bouncer in a brothel. Then he was forced to leave when he beat an argumentative customer to death. In El Paso, he shot one. In Banderas he killed his third man and realized that he enjoyed it. He quit his job and invested his money in a good horse and a gun. He knew that two wanted outlaws used the brothel regularly, so he waited until they showed again and shot them down. No one argued too much about the fact that both men were in bed at the time and the girls they were with got badly wounded. Least of all Fritz Baum. He had five hundred dollars and a new career.
He drifted into West Texas, then over into New Mexico and Arizona. He got employed as a bodyguard and a regulator, but mostly he stuck to hunting bounty.
He got known as The German, for he never lost the accent his parents imposed on him, and he was typically Teuton in his looks. Reddish blond hair was cropped tight against his skull, the color matching the arrogant wave of his mustache. He favored the kind of dark gray suit his father had worn on Sundays, though now the pants were spanned by a polished black leather gun belt and the cuffs hung over high-heeled boots rather than lace-up work- shoes.
He was very strong. In Saltillos his gun had jammed and he had thrown the useless pistol at his quarry. The force of the striking pistol had knocked the man back, and while he was staggering, Baum had moved forwards to slap the gun from his hand. Then he had picked the man up and slammed him down across his knee. The sound of the spine snapping had pleased Fritz Baum as much as the screaming.
His methods of working upset a lot of people, so that as his reputation grew he tended to specialize, taking contracts only from those men – or women – who didn’t care how a job was done, so long as it brought results.
Now he was in Cinqua, just south of the border with New Mexico, waiting to meet the man who had sent him the letter and two hundred dollars.
The letter had been simple, blunt; coming
immediately to the point.
I need a good man and I have heard you are
good I want someone killed and am willing to pay one thousand
dollars to see it done. Here is two hundred on account If you are
interested I will meet you one mile out of Cinqua. Where the north
trail forks above the river on the Eighth November. If you are
willing to handle this, I will pay you the other eight hundred when
you bring the man to me.
The letter was unsigned, but the two bills pinned to the paper were real enough, so that Baum got interested. He checked a calendar and rode over to Cinqua.
It was now the nineteenth of November and Fritz Baum had been waiting at the crossroads since dawn. He was cold and hungry and thirsty. But mostly irritable. The sun hadn’t completely dried the dawn damp from his clothes and all he had to eat were the biscuits and the beans he had brought with him. He had a canteen and a bottle of whiskey, but he wanted the beer the saloon in Cinqua sold. That and some of the spicy sausage hanging behind the bar.
He looked up at the sky guessing from the angle of the sun that it was close to noon. He thought about leaving, going back to spend what was left of the two hundred dollars on the pleasures the town offered. Then he changed his mind: after all, a man who sent two hundred in crisp new bills to a stranger must have a reason. Two hundred wasn’t small change, so the mysterious donor had to have a reason.
Baum went on waiting.
At exactly one o’clock the coach showed at the head of the trail cutting over the ridge. It came down through the pines with four pure black horses tugging the midnight-dark bulk of the wagon behind them. To Baum’s eye the coach looked Spanish: high wheels and a small body designed to carry no more than two people. He checked for guards and outriders with automatic precision: there were none. Only the driver.
It came down fast and halted midway across the fork. Baum saw that the windows were covered with black drapes, and when the driver braked and climbed down he checked the horses, not the passengers.
The bounty hunter waited, wondering what the passengers inside the coach would do.
After a while he got bored and stepped out from the trees with his right hand hugged close on the butt of his Colt.
The driver started, gasping as the big German came into view. Baum saw that he was a Mexican. Unarmed. Mostly scared. He paused, watching the driver gesticulate at the body of the coach.
A voice that didn’t sound quite right said, ‘You’re Fritz Baum. I heard you’re good at your work.’
‘The best,’ said Baum. ‘There’s only one other as good as me.’
‘Who’s that?’ asked the voice, whispery like wind blowing over cold ashes.
‘Man called John Ryker,’ said Baum, staring at the curtained windows of the stage. ‘Folks call him Blackjack.’
‘What do they call you?’ asked the voice.
‘The German,’ said Baum. ‘But I’m better’n him. He’s too interested in guns.’
‘What are you interested in?’ The voice was hoarse, and the curtains didn’t move.
‘Money,’ said Baum. ‘Doing my job right.’
‘Can you track a man and kill him?’ asked the voice. ‘Follow him down and bring him to me?’
‘Sure,’ said Baum. ‘But I thought you wanted him killed. No questions asked.’
‘I want him brought to me,’ said the voice. ‘I want him found and brought to me. I want to kill him myself.’
‘That might be difficult,’ said Baum. ‘It’s easier to kill a man than it is to bring him in alive.’
‘I’ll wait in Cinqua.’ A gloved hand thrust through the curtains of the coach’s window and dropped an envelope on the ground. ‘Open that.’
