Black as Death Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Undertaker #2 ‘Destined to Die’

  For: David Alan Coe — if you ain’t country, so will I!

  PROLOGUE

  DURING the afternoon of an extremely hot day in the August of 1859, a boy of ten years old sat on a wooden bench in Battery Park at the very tip of Manhattan Island, a large book open on his knees.

  For most of the time he read the book with intense concentration — studying the pages carefully and turning over the leaves with eager speed, voraciously seeking the endings to the sentences which were incomplete at the foot of each.

  But occasionally he would look up from the book, to gaze out across the harbor of New York City.

  He was a slightly built youngster, a little too thin for his height More than adequately dressed for the heat of the day which was cooled not at all by the slight breeze which came in off the harbor. As is often the case with a boy of his age, lie had started to outgrow the knickerbocker suit, shirt and cap which had fitted him not long ago.

  On the occasions when he looked up from the book, the concentration he applied to his reading no longer showed on his pale face. Instead he wore an expression that was almost vacant — the kind of look a boy of his age might show if he were confined to a classroom, enduring a dull school lesson, and was able to sneak a glance out of the window at the sunlit yard where his friends were playing.

  And although he was not in school on this humid Saturday afternoon, the boy did experience a feeling of being trapped. Enclosed by the trees of the park, the teeming streets of the city behind, the Hudson and East Rivers to either side and the busy expanse of New York Harbor in front of him. From which he could escape in spirit by reading the book or daydreaming when he abandoned the printed page to visualize in his mind’s eye the images which were conjured up by the writer’s descriptions. Images which, the book informed him, were there to be seen in reality at the other side of the ocean that stretched out beyond the harbor.

  Anybody who knew the boy would have found nothing strange in his choice of a Saturday afternoon pursuit; for all who knew him considered him something of an oddity in everything he did.

  But the elderly lady who paused in front of the bench during one of his preoccupied stares out towards the Narrows did not know him.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts, young man,’ she said in an amused tone.

  He looked up, startled. ‘I’m sorry, lady?’

  ‘You were miles away, it appeared.’

  The boy was embarrassed. ‘I was just thinking what it would be like to go to Europe.’

  He closed the book and the lady craned her neck around to see the title — Treasures of the Major Cities of the Continent of Europe.

  ‘My, my, this is America, young man. Where everybody is supposed to want to go West’

  The boy’s face remained in a serious set and his tone was cold when he replied: ‘I’m not like everybody else, lady.’

  She was a little taken aback. But then nodded. ‘There’s no harm in being different, I guess.’ She took his place on the bench after he stood up. ‘Good luck in whatever you want to do.’

  ‘I appreciate it, lady. But I do not intend to rely on luck. I’ll get to Europe by my own efforts.’

  He tucked the book under his arm and touched the peak of his cap.

  ‘I’m sure you will, young man. Bye bye.’

  ‘Bye bye.’

  She opened her purse and took out a paper sack filled with breadcrumbs. Birds flocked around her when she began to scatter the food.

  The boy went from sight around a curve of the walk between the trees and the waterfront.

  There would be many other-days when he came here to read of and dream about what lay far to the East.

  But events were to take him West.

  CHAPTER ONE

  FLOYD Channon heard the organ music break the perfect stillness which had previously filled the Arizona valley and for several seconds he expressed a scowl of fear. Then was embarrassed in his own company by his reaction to the totally unexpected sound. Next, as he recognized the melody, he spread a sardonic grin across his face.

  The organist was playing the Death March.

  With just the ghost of the grin still turning up the corners of his mouth and crinkling the skin at the sides of his eyes, he rose from the boulder upon which he had been seated for fifteen minutes or so. And went to where his jet black stallion was again cropping indifferently on a patch of dry scrub grass, after also being briefly alarmed by the abrupt intrusion of incongruous music into the long silence.

  The handsome horse had lifted his head and pricked his ears to the sound, but otherwise had not moved. Remained, unfettered, on the spot where the man had commanded after dismounting to take a rest. Now, as the man slid a foot into the stirrup and swung smoothly up into the saddle, the stallion waited eagerly for a touch of heels to his flanks and a movement of the reins: subserviently anxious to respond instantly to the orders of the rider.

  And Floyd Channon required an easy walking pace toward the source of the melancholy music. Which lay in the direction to which all the mid-morning shadows were pointed. North-west on a diagonal line across this broad valley which was cut through the Huachuca Mountains. A route which took the man away from his intended destination across the border in Mexico.

  But the slow beat of the Death March, eerie in such a setting, had given Floyd Channon an idea. And although he looked forward to checking out whether or not his notion could be put into effect; he was, easily able to contain his enthusiasm as he deftly steered his obedient mount across the dusty, boulder-strewn and cacti-featured slope towards the low ridge over which the organ music spilled. For patience was one of Floyd Channon’s few virtues. Some said his only one. While others, who had stepped too far across the line which put them on the wrong side of this relentlessly tenacious man, had reason to regard his brand of patience as the very opposite to a virtue.

  He was thirty years old and possessed the bearing which few men of his age could command: the smooth and easy self-assurance of a man who, if he did not have everything he wanted, knew where and how to get whatever was lacking. He was as tall as a Texan is supposed to be — almost six and a half feet — and had a solid build that carried no fat surplus to the bodily need. His face was ruggedly handsome, clean shaven and stained an even shade of brown by the sun and winds of west Texas. The skin was free of blemishes, the eyes were a clear blue and his teeth were perfectly matched and exceptionally white.

  Floyd Channon was dressed and his mount was equipped for the line of work they were in. Which was cow punching, a long way from here on the Doubled range to the east of El Paso.

  He wore a Texas-style high crown hat with a fabric Lone Star sewn on the side, a kerchief and shirt of cotton, denim pants and mule ear boots with work spurs: all of these a uniform grey. His batwing chaps were black, as was the gunbelt slung around his waist and hung on the right hip, with a holster into which was slotted a .44 Remington Frontier revolver. He rode on a Denver saddle double-cinched to the stallion, carrying a coiled lariat, a booted Winchester Yellowboy rifle, two canteens, a pair of bags and with a bedroll lashed to the re
ar jockey. Although his clothing and equipment was workaday, it was all of the finest quality: much more expensive than the average cowpuncher could afford to buy.

  But Floyd Channon was not an average cowpuncher.

  As he neared the crest of the shallow slope, the mournful music was abruptly curtailed and apart from the slow clop of the stallion’s hooves against the rock hard, dusty ground the valley became heavily silent again. Then, when he had reined the horse to a halt beside a towering four-pronged saguaro on the ridge, there was only the breathing of the man and the animal to be heard. Until a bell began to sound the death knell.

  When Floyd Channon’s eyes glinted and he exposed his gleaming white teeth in another grin of deep satisfaction.

  The ground fell away sharply from where he sat astride the motionless horse, and at the foot of the steep, grotesquely eroded slope there was a shallow stream, which at this time of the year flowed sluggishly along a channel never wider than four feet. Fifty yards to the right of where he had halted the stallion, the stream curved away from the base of the high ground: arcing across a half mile strip of cultivated land to flow around the south side of a small community. A single street town at the end of a trail that ran arrow-straight northward along the valley bottom, bisecting scrub grass pastureland on which several small herds of mix-breed cattle were grazing.

  The adobe and timber church, from the truncated tower of which the monotonous one-note clang of the death knell sounded, was at the southern end of the trail become street, built sideways across it to block it off. To the south of the church, spreading from its arch-windowed wall to the high water bank of the stream was the cemetery. Where, among headstones and crosses, a freshly dug grave waited to receive whoever was the subject of the funeral service in the church. A service attended by a great many of the town’s citizens, Floyd Channon realized, as he dragged a shirt sleeve across his brow to wipe away beads of sweat. Maybe even everybody, for there was not a sign of life along the wide street to be seen from his elevated vantage point. A street without sidewalks, flanked by single storey buildings of adobe and timber and a mixture of the two. Stores and houses for the most part, constructed to serve their purpose and, seen from this distance, entirely lacking infancy frills.

  Again the black stallion responded instantly to the demands of the rider, to pick his way carefully down the treacherously steep slope. Then, at the bottom, the horse was allowed to drink some of the crystal-clear water from the stream: as the bell ceased to sound and the shuffling of many pairs of feet could be heard within the church. Muted by distance and then falling into a regular cadence as a man’s voice, deep and richly toned, began to recite the Thirty-Ninth Psalm.

  The stallion was moving again, away from the stream along a direct line for the end of the street when the preacher came around the corner of the church, hands clasped and head bowed, speaking the words of the psalm from memory. Immediately behind him came four pallbearers with the casket carried on their shoulders. And, in back of them, the mourners.

  Upwards of a hundred men, women and children, moving slowly in a column four abreast. Too many to gather at the graveside, so that most held back at the edge of the cemetery. While just six men followed the preacher and the casket to align themselves across the newly-dug hole from the heap of displaced earth.

  The approaching stranger was seen for the first time and there was a stir of interest among those mourners at the side of the cemetery. But almost immediately all attention reverted to the interment as the casket was lowered on ropes into the earth. And, the psalm finished, the preacher began to say in a louder voice: ‘Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a ... ’

  The pallbearers, their chore done, backed discreetly away. Everyone bowed their heads. Floyd Channon reined in his horse, took off his hat and held it against his chest.

  A fly alighted on the tip of his nose and he rasped through clenched teeth: ‘Get off me, you sonofabitch!’ Jutted out his lower lip and expelled breath to send the fly buzzing angrily away. Then, patiently, he waited for the burial to run its course, filling in the time by surveying the youngest and firmest looking women among the mourners. Indifferently aware that, close to, probably not one of them would merit more than a glance from him under normal circumstances.

  Then, the religious aspect of the burial was over. One of the men at the graveside — the youngest and tallest — put on his hat and shook hands with the preacher. It was a narrow-brimmed, high crowned black hat. And he wore a long frock coat of the same somber color. A black shirt and necktie, too. Floyd Channon noticed as he urged the stallion to carry him closer to the cemetery: from which the main body of mourners was dispersing, while the preacher and the five other men at the side of the grave seemed to be engaged in a mild disagreement with the young mortician. But the outnumbered man won the point and the others started making their way between the old graves to leave the cemetery: paying only brief attention to the tall rider astride the stallion.

  The young man dressed entirely in black gave no indication that he was aware of the approaching stranger, as he picked up a long-handled shovel from the ground and began to put the dirt back into the hole.

  Floyd Channon halted his horse and dismounted on the bank of the stream. Stopped to stoop and moisten his hands which he rubbed over his sweat-greasy face, then approached the last man at the funeral on foot. There was one thud of earth against earth to every other footfall by the newcomer.

  ‘Help you?’ the man with the shovel asked, not interrupting his chore or looking up from it.

  ‘I reckon you’re the undertaker hereabouts?’

  Another shovelful of dirt thudded into the grave. ‘My father was.’

  ‘I’m real sorry.’

  ‘I appreciate the sentiment.’

  ‘You’ve taken over from him, it seems to me.’

  ‘It’s what he wanted. But what he wanted isn’t important anymore. Least I could do was bury him, though.’

  ‘I’m real anxious to have a casket made.’

  ‘Last one I ever intend to make is under this dirt. There are a few plain pine coffins back at the funeral parlor. Give you a bargain price. Part of my closing down sale.’

  Floyd Channon grunted his disinterest in this. ‘I ain’t looking for a bargain, feller. Want something made of the finest materials. Mahogany, maybe. Silver handles and hinges. Silk or satin trimmings inside. Lead-lined if you can do it’

  The young undertaker interrupted his chore with the grave only half filled in. And surveyed the big Texan curiously: even doubtfully, as if suspecting the seriousness of the man’s request.

  ‘You’re talking real big money.’

  A nod. ‘And you’re talking to Floyd Channon. That’s one of the Channons off the Double-C range, way the other side of El Paso from here.’

  The undertaker was in his mid-twenties. A lanky six footer with a thin, angular face. Blond haired and green eyed. With good looks close to the far end of the range from the ruggedness of the Texan’s features.

  Channon realized his family name meant nothing to the man, but sensed he was interested in the proposition. Even though the black-clad mortician said: ‘I’m planning to leave for Europe soon as the business is sold.’

  The Texan nodded. ‘You reckon you could make the kind of casket I need — and have plenty left over for your trip — out of a fee of a thousand dollars?’

  The undertaker’s interest deepened. ‘I’d be overcharging you, Mr. Channon.’

  A shake of the head as the stranger from Texas reached into a hip pocket and withdrew a roll of bills. ‘You didn’t set the charge. I named my price. Half now and half when you’ve made what I need.’

  ‘It’ll take time.’

  Now Channon nodded, as he peeled off some bills from the roll. Four centuries and two fifties. He held them out across the grave and after a moment’s hesitation they were taken.

  ‘Take the time, feller.
’ He turned to return across the cemetery to where the stallion obediently waited.

  ‘Hey, Mr. Channon! Where do I pick up the deceased?’

  The Texan paused to glance back at the perplexed young undertaker. ‘You don’t have to concern yourself with that, feller. I’ll haul in the carcass.’ He patted the butt of the Remington jutting from his holster. And sent a globule of saliva at the arid ground. ‘Just as soon as I’ve slaughtered it.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  FLOYD Channon was conscious of being watched as, astride the stallion again, he backtracked over the flat land and then dismounted to lead the animal up the steep incline. He cast an eye across at the town twice. The first time saw that the undertaker was working at filling in the grave again, while a group of men approached him and frequently glanced over towards the departing stranger. The second time the lanky, blond-haired, black-clad young man was still at work with the shovel and his fellow citizens were withdrawing from the cemetery. There was something ill-tempered in the way they moved, spoke to each other and spared the occasional glance for the undertaker and the stranger.

  And the Texan grinned. There had not been time for the man with the shovel to explain the reason for the stranger’s brief visit to town. Maybe just enough time to tell his inquisitive neighbors to mind their own business.

  Then Channon was at the ridge beside the saguaro again and he remounted the stallion. Rode him down the more gentle slope to where he had rested on the rock, unaware that there was a town in the vicinity. On beyond this, covering ground that was new to him as he headed slowly but relentlessly south through the Huachuca Mountains valley.

  At midday he rested himself and his horse. Ate some jerked beef stew washed down with tepid water from a canteen. At nightfall he made camp and lit a fire to cook a hot meal and brew coffee. He had seen no international boundary marker, but guessed he was now in Mexico. Maybe two days’ ride from where he was headed, if the information he had been given in El Paso was good. If it wasn’t, his patience would stand him in good stead. The undertaker would just have to wait a while longer for the second payment.