‘You goddam squaw man’s bastard!’ Dumfries drew his Colt. ‘I’m gonna kill you now.’
‘Tied up?’ jeered the half-breed. ‘Like Cal Backenhauser?’
‘Yeah.’ Dumfries’s face broke into even uglier lines. ‘Just like that. With a knife. Yore knife.’
He holstered his gun and went over to Azul’s saddlebags. Tugged the Bowie clear of the sheath and scraped his thumb across the fine-honed blade. Then he thrust the knife under his belt and drew the gun again.
‘Move it, bastard!’ He shoved the Colt up close against Azul’s ribs. ‘Pick up yore saddle an’ walk.’
Azul climbed to his feet and slung the saddle across his shoulder. Dumfries took him out beyond the perimeter of the fire’s light to where the prairie was cold and dark and lonely. Empty.
‘Baum won’t like this,’ Azul sneered.
The corners of Dumfries’s mouth tucked down as his teeth grated together and his eyes got screwed up tight with rage. A low grunting sound came from his lips, more animal than human. He thrust forwards with the Bowie.
Azul laughed and moved backwards.
It was important to keep the rancher off balance.
‘Don’t make too much noise. Or Baum could come stop you.’
‘Goddam fuckin’ bastard!’
Dumfries ran forwards, hefting the Bowie knife in a scything movement aimed at the half-breed’s belly. Azul stepped back and sideways, heaving the saddle clear of his shoulder in a swing that landed the heavy-laden leather hard against the rancher’s side.
Dumfries stumbled, the knife going clear of Azul’s gut.
He tottered, then came back on his feet, moving in again with the blade held low, ready to jab upwards into the half-breed’s stomach.
Azul was off-balance, his arms dragged down by the weight of the saddle, both hands constricted by the rope binding him to the horn. He let himself fall. And Dumfries came in, lips spread wide in an evil grin as he thought he saw an easy target.
Then Azul’s legs kicked out, pivoted upwards from the bulk of the saddle. Landing just below Dumfries’s knees so that the rancher was pitched abruptly forwards as his center of balance went out from under him.
The knife thudded into the leather of the saddle’s seat. Azul rolled, spreading his legs so that Dumfries’s were pushed apart. He lifted his right knee, hard and fast into the gap. And the rancher screamed as the half-breed’s leg drove upwards against his groin. Pain flooded through his body as he felt his testicles crushed, and vomit spilled out of his mouth, blocking off the screaming.
Azul twisted, driving his wrists against the blade of the Bowie knife, sawing viciously at the rope with a total disregard of his own flesh.
There was pain. Blood ran down over the saddle, but then his hands were free of the weight.
Still bound together, but free enough that he could pick up the Bowie from the saddle and grasp the hilt in both hands as he lifted up on his knees and drove down with awful force into Dumfries’s belly.
The blade went in through the rancher’s corduroy waistcoat. It cut easily through his linen shirt. Went on through the flesh of his stomach into the muscle behind. For a moment it grated on his pelvic girdle, but then the angle of the blow turned it upwards, scraping over the bone, into the soft pit of the belly. It opened the viscera in a flooding spill of organs as Azul twisted the point round and dragged the knife stickily over the line of Dumfries’s belt.
The rancher’s eyes opened wide as the pain hit him. His mouth gaped, ready to emit a scream, but Azul tugged the knife out from his stomach and jammed the blade down between the parted lips.
It pinned the tongue back, severing the tip so that a sticky blob of jerking tissue tumbled on to the ground. The remainder was shoved downwards as the blade cut through the rear of the throat, severing windpipe and vocal cords before slicing into the bones of the neck. The vital bones that connect brain to body.
Azul planted both knees on Dumfries’s arms and twisted the Bowie.
There was a grating sound as the blade turned through the bones, and the rancher opened his eyes wide for one last look at the sky before it got blocked out behind the column of blood spouting from his throat and mouth.
Azul tugged the blade clear and rolled away from the body. He began to hack at the rope binding his wrists together.
Was halfway through before he heard Fritz Baum’s voice and felt the cool touch of a pistol’s muzzle against his face.
‘Nice try,’ said the bounty hunter. ‘But not quite good enough.’
Azul dropped the knife onto the mess of Dumfries’s stomach.
‘Now stand up, real slow.’ Baum stepped back from the corpse. ‘An’ don’t try nothin’ fancy.’
Azul weighed the odds. Baum had been hired to bring him to Cinqua alive, and the journey down from Lordsburg had shown that the bounty hunter had his own peculiar sense of honor. The half-breed felt confident the man would not kill him, unless forced to. But that need not stop him from maiming his prisoner: a .45 caliber slug through Azul’s knee would make Baum’s task very easy.
Slowly, his eyes blazing with a cold fury, he climbed to his feet.
‘Kick the knife over,’ ordered the German. ‘Gently.’
Azul hooked a toe under the blade and sent the Bowie spinning through the firelight. Baum stooped, not taking his eyes off the half-breed, and picked up the bloody weapon. Without bothering to wipe the blade, he backed over to his saddlebags and thrust the knife inside.
‘Now bury him.’
‘How?’ Azul held out his bound hands. ‘Like this?’
‘Yore problem.’ Baum grinned. ‘You killed him, you cover him,
He moved warily towards the body, motioning Azul back with a wave of the Colt, then reached down to lift Dumfries’s gun clear of the holster. Deftly, he ejected the cartridges, then hurled the pistol away into the darkness. It thudded on the sand, and from the shadows came a low growl and the pad of clawed feet as a prowling coyote took fright.
Azul began to gather rocks, building a shallow cairn over Dumfries’s corpse. It would not take the scavengers long to expose the body, but at least it would hold them for a while.
