Slow Dying (An Apache / Cuchillo Oro Western #18)

This is for Liz—who has helped me find the road

I’d never found. I loved her when I first saw her,

and I’ll love her until I die.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918

The Apache Series

#1. THE FIRST DEATH

#2. KNIFE IN THE NIGHT

#3. DUEL TO THE DEATH

#4. THE DEATH TRAIN

#5. FORT TREACHERY

#6. SONORA SLAUGHTER

#7. BLOOD LINE

#8. BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

#9. THE NAKED AND THE SAVAGE

#10. ALL BLOOD IS RED

#11. THE CRUEL TRAIL

#12: FOOL’S GOLD

#13: THE BEST MAN

#14: BORN TO DIE

#15: BLOOD RISING

#16: TEXAS KILLING

#17: BLOOD BROTHER

#18: SLOW DYING

#19: DEATH DRAGON

#20: BLOOD WEDDING

#21: FAST LIVING

#22: BORDER KILLING

#23: DEATH VALLEY

#24: DEATH RIDE

#25: TIMES PAST

#26: THE HANGING

#27: DEBT OF BLOOD

Chapter One

BRING UP THE twelve-pounders!

All the mules are dead here, Sir!

The mist blew about him, making the uniforms of the soldiers blur and shimmer like ghosts. There was clinging mud beneath his feet, forcing each step to be slow and painful. All around him there was a bedlam of screaming men and bursting shells, black powder smoke adding to the sense of unreality. He could hardly make out whether the troops to his right and left were wearing uniforms of blue or gray.

They’re breakin’ through on the ridge, Captain! came a voice from his side, and he turned, but there was nobody there, the speaker having vanished in the murk.

His fingers gripped the slippery brass hilt of the saber, while his left hand held an empty pistol. His hat was gone, and he blinked, wiping away a thread of blood from his eyes with the torn sleeve of his jacket.

Look at Jackson, Captain Mann!

The piping voice was a young drummer boy, hefting a musket longer than he was, blood streaking his hands and arms, a cut across his shoulder. His eyes were wide with shock and fear.

What?

There. See!

Captain Thaddeus Mann stared through the fog that swirled around them and saw a group of men locked together in a desperate battle a half mile away across a steep-sided valley. The hill was dotted with corpses tangled together in death, but on the top stood a solitary figure surrounded with what looked like a rampart of rotting bodies, many of them little more than skeletons.

I make him out, he replied.

He holds the line! screamed the boy, his voice trembling with emotion.

Then hurrah for Jackson. See how he stands, like a wall of bones. Bones— the officer replied, shaking his head at a sudden faintness.

There was the sound of silk rustling, and he looked behind him. A woman was walking past, oblivious to the bloody carnage about her, dressed in a long, flowing silk gown of the palest lilac. Her eyes were blue as the summer sky in Montana, and she smiled at Thaddeus Mann and then disappeared behind a small clump of trees.

Rachel, he said, trying to take a step toward her, but his boots were clogged in the crimson mud, and he nearly fell. There was the whistling of an artillery shell, growing louder and louder, and he flinched away from it. The earth shook with the concussion of the explosion. He heard the screeching of metal fragments as they burst all around him, leaving him unscathed.

Captain? said the drummer boy at his side, in a questioning, conversational tone.

Yes, Captain Mann replied as he turned to the boy. Sweet blessed Jesus, he muttered.

The cannonball had taken the lad’s right arm clean off at the shoulder as though he had been struck a blow by some giant cleaver. The severed limb lay at his feet, and as Mann looked down, he was horrified to see that the fingers were still curling and straightening with a hideous life of their own.

Blood jetted from the wound, dappling the ground around them like a fall shower. But to Captain Mann’s dismay, the boy showed no sign that he was even aware of his injury. Though his face grew pale and he swayed a little on his feet, he still smiled gently at the officer.

You know something, Captain?

In God’s name, what, boy?

My father was an officer. He seduced my Ma, and she hanged herself when I was one year old.

Then I am … but he could think of nothing more to say.

Hanged herself in her garters, Captain. One fine Sunday morn.

With that it was as though someone had slashed through the strings that hold body and spirit together, and the boy slumped to the earth without another word, lying still and dead.

Thaddeus Mann turned and tried to run from the field of battle, dropping his gun and allowing the saber to slip from his fingers. His only wish was to flee this nightmare. He knew the fighting so well that it was almost as though the same scenes were being played over and over for him.

The fog cleared, and he was able to run once more, feeling dry earth beneath his boots. There was an avenue of tall and stately trees that helped to cut off the sounds of the battle behind him. Gradually, he slowed to a walk, holding his side where the running had pained him, feeling his breath grow less ragged.

The sun came out, diamond-bright and broken by the leaves of the trees. From among them Mann saw a beautiful white stallion that was moving slowly and picking at the lush grass at the edge of the forest. He smiled at it until it half turned, and he saw that it had been dreadfully wounded. A fragment of metal had ripped its flank and belly apart, and its intestines looped greasily about its rear hooves, trailing in the dust as it walked steadily toward him.

The officer began to run again, away from the double row of trees, toward a lake he could see glinting a half mile off. A raven swooped down from the warm air, its midnight wings brushing against his gray hair. Once more the Confederate officer eased his pace and gathered his breath. The long meadows had given way without his noticing it to cropped lawns, and there was a large white house visible behind a rambling bower of red roses. It was a colonnaded mansion like his own home in Georgia, but there was nobody to be seen anywhere. It was odd that there were no slaves working in the fields beyond the lake. They couldn’t all have run North to the comparative safety of the Union lines.

There was a polished table laid out with a spotless damask cloth covering it diagonally, set with silver cutlery and glittering crystal glasses. A decanter of red wine and a long vase with a single white rose were in the center. The wind had dropped, and Captain Mann stood still in a dome of total silence.

He was conscious that he was no longer alone, and he swung around to see a woman walking around the corner of the house, her arms held out toward him, almost pleadingly. She wore a white bonnet, which totally concealed her face from him, but he felt that he knew her.

Rachel? he whispered, unbelievingly. It couldn’t be his wife, Rachel. He knew that she was dead, buried in the blazing ruins of Atlanta.

The silence was gone, and he could hear the noises of fighting coming closer. But he couldn’t remember what battle it was. Antietam? Shiloh? Spotsylvania? Vicksburg? Or was it Chancellorsville? That was when Jackson had fallen; Mann remembered that.

The woman was coming nearer, almost running, her arms still outstretched to him. The sun was sinking lower behind her so that she was a black silhouette against a dazzling bowl of golden light. The Captain squinted, trying to make out the face under the brim of the white hat. A white hat decorated with red roses around the brim. His wife had worn a hat like that.

Rachel?

There was a crash behind him, and he saw that the table had fallen over, the glass and porcelain had shattered. But there was no wind, and nobody was near it.

Rachel?

She was right by him, and he held his arms out to hold her. The hat fell back, held around her neck by ribbons, and he saw …

No …!

It was a sigh, not a cry, that strangled in his throat at the charnel vision of horror. A blasphemous entity was in his arms. There was rank breath on his cheek from the yellowed stumps of teeth; shreds of withered skin decorated the bones of the skull; a few hanks of corn-yellow hair dangled from the scalp; red-rimmed sockets of wind-washed bone were where the eyes would have been.

Thaddeus Mann pushed away this gibbering specter of his wife and ran away from the great white house and the formal gardens, away from the lake and the trees and toward the fighting.

He hardly saw the soldier who was standing and waiting for him in the shadows, holding a .577 Enfield rifle musket with a bayonet fitted. The man wore dusty blue and had a half-smile on his lips as he saw the Reb officer running blindly toward him. He lowered the muzzle of the gun and braced himself for the impact.

Thaddeus Mann never saw the bayonet. He felt only a dull blow and the pain of something that grated between his ribs, bringing him toppling to the earth. His fingers scrabbled among the fallen leaves, and he felt his sight slipping away. But he could hear steps coming closer. The last he saw was a woman in a long dress, wearing a white hat trimmed with