Apache Shadow

by Jason Manning

  He waited up in the rocks, watching the jacal, until a man emerged. Kiannatah recognized him. He was Netdahe—one of the bronchos who had followed Geronimo for a long while. The man collected some wood from a pile at the side of the jacal, and took this back inside. Kiannatah's instincts told him that the man was not alone. So he continued to wait. The afternoon waned, and the long blue shadows of the night began to fill in the nooks and crannies of the high country. Then a boy of about twelve years emerged from the jacal; he went down to get some water in a bucket.

  Kiannatah waited until darkness had fallen before moving in. Smoke was wafting from the jacal's smoke hole; he could smell bread cooking. He was fairly certain that the Netdahe had a woman with him too, and when he went through the doorway, he was prepared for this. The Netdahe dived for his rifle, but Kiannatah was quicker. As the other Apache brought the rifle around, Kiannatah drove his knife into the man's chest, turning the blade sideways so that it would pass easily between the ribs and pierce the heart. The man died instantly, and Kiannatah plucked the rifle from his grasp as he fell. The woman—she was an Indian woman, short and squat, and not Apache—lunged at Kiannatah without hesitation, brandishing a large knife. He could not get a shot off in time, so he swung the butt of the rifle to block the knife stroke, and then brought the barrel down across the woman's head. Her knees buckled and she fell in a heap at his feet. Kiannatah was short on ammunition, so he killed the woman with a fierce blow to the top of her skull with the base of the rifle.

  Whirling, he saw the boy bolt out of the jacal. Kiannatah picked up the large knife that the woman had dropped and stepped outside. The boy was quick; he was already thirty feet away when Kiannatah hurled the knife. Pain from his yet-to-heal wound shot through him even as he threw, and he thought perhaps this was why his aim was off. The knife struck the boy in the back of the thigh. He went down silently; he did not cry out at the pain, and Kiannatah was impressed by that. When he reached the boy, he pulled the blade out, and still the boy did not make a sound. Kiannatah pinned him to the ground, placing the blade to his throat. He could feel the boy's body trembling. His eyes were wide with terror. Kiannatah considered letting him go. In doing so, he would be creating someone just like himself—someone who had watched his family killed before his eyes. Someone who would probably grow up with a thirst for vengeance that could never be slaked, and whose life would be ruled by and, ultimately, destroyed by that thirst. Kiannatah told himself that any hope that the boy might have had for a good life—if it had ever existed—was gone now. He, Kiannatah, had snatched it away. The least he could do was give something back in return.

  "Do not be afraid," he said softly. Taking his hand from the boy's chest, he placed it over the frightened eyes. "Life is misery. In death you will have peace forever. Just close your eyes. You will not suffer long."

  With a quick, deep stroke, he opened the boy's throat. The boy struggled briefly, clinging to life, and then died. Kiannatah stood up, wiped the blood from the knife on his himper, and walked back into the jacal.

  As night fell, Barlow knew he was in trouble. He was suffering chills and fever, and began to think that perhaps the Apache hunter had dipped his arrows into poison. They did this to slow down their prey if the first shot wasn't mortal. Barlow figured that, if this was indeed the case, there would not be enough venom to kill him, but only to make him quite sick. He had been looking for a good place to hole up—not just for one night, but maybe a day or two—when daylight abandoned him. It was then that he saw the smoke. It came from somewhere up ahead, not far away. Proceeding with caution, he came to a ridge line from which he could look down and see a jacal. The moon was just now rising, and he could distinctly see a body lying on the ground some thirty or forty feet from the Apache hut.

  There was no doubt in his mind that he had found the hideout of another Netdahe. The Avowed Killers lived like outlaws, isolated from the rest of their people, and often choosing even to spurn their own kind. But the body puzzled him. In this light and at this distance, he could not tell if it was male or female, young or old. He could smell wood smoke, but saw no firelight leaking around the edges of the blanket that draped the jacal's entrance. There were several horses in the corral. So it seemed likely that there was more than one person down there. The question was whether anyone was still alive.

  Barlow recognized that the wisest course of action was to hide among the jumble of rocks on the ridge line and wait until morning to see if anyone emerged from the jacal. But he wasn't sure what his condition would be in the morning. He decided to press the issue; leaving his horse on the back side of the ridge, he took his rifle and proceeded down the other slope toward the jacal, intent on resolving the mystery now rather than later.

  Reaching the body, he knelt beside it. An Apache boy, whose throat had been cut. Barlow peered at the jacal. He wasn't sure—but had the blanket covering the doorway moved, ever so slightly? Then the moonlight glimmered off steel. He dived to one side as the rifle in the doorway spat flame. Immediately he was up and running, because he'd been caught out in the open, and the nearest cover was a pile of rocks at the base of the ridge, where it curved round to one side of the jacal. The rifle spoke again, and a bullet burned the air inches from his head. He dived into the rocks, wincing at the pain that racked his body. Crouched behind this cover, he fired three shots in quick succession through the jacal's doorway. The blanket danced as his bullets tore through it. There was no answering fire. Barlow waited, taking the opportunity to load the rifle and to check his pistol to make certain every chamber housed a bullet. With disgust he noticed that he was trembling slightly. It was the adrenaline surging through his body. There was only one way to find out if the man inside the jacal was still above snakes. Barlow got up and raced for another pile of rocks some twenty feet along the base of the ridge. No bullets chased him. He began to think he'd gotten lucky—that one of his shots had hit its mark.

  Inside the jacal, Kiannatah had moved away from the blanket-draped doorway seconds before the fusillade. In the dim half-light of the jacal's interior, he checked the rifle. There was one round left. He glanced at the dead Netdahe. The man might have had more ammunition stashed somewhere in the jacal, but Kiannatah sensed that he did not have time to conduct a search. He had not been able to identify the intruder in the darkness, but he was pretty sure the man was a Pinda Lickoyi. He couldn't figure out how a white man had survived venturing this deeply into the Sierra Madre; like many other Apaches, Kiannatah had been lulled into believing that the Cima Silkq was a safe haven that neither Mexican nor American would dare try to penetrate. He had to assume that there was more than one Pinda Lickoyi out there; no sane white man would come here alone. And sooner rather than later they would charge the jacal. With no ammunition, his chances of fending off an attack by even a few white men were slim.

  He crawled to the back of the jacal, leaving the rifle, loaded with its single shell, beside the dead Netdahe, moving to the trap door that gave access to the tunnel that would take him far enough away from the hut so that he could slip into the rocks unseen. As he started to descend into the tunnel he had a thought, and went back to collect the body of the woman. This he dragged through the trap door after him. Leaving the corpse in the tunnel, he began to crawl. It was pitch-black, and the tunnel itself was barely wide enough for his broad shoulders, but Kiannatah wasn't bothered by the momentary sensation of being buried alive. It galled him that he as running away from a fight. This time, though, he had no choice. The one consolation was that, in all likelihood, the white men would assume that the Apache lying dead inside the jacal was the one who had been shooting at them. Thinking this, they would not search for or pursue him. The corpse of the woman, bludgeoned to death, did not fit into the scenario. Neither did the body of the boy he had left outside. But maybe the Pinda Lickoyi would overlook that. Two unexplained deaths would be more difficult to overlook.

  Reaching the end of the tunnel, he climbed out and in a crouching run ma
de for the nearest cover. There he paused only a moment, looking and listening, straining eyes and ears to detect any sound in the stillness of the desert night that might signify danger. But he heard nothing. Satisfied that he would make good his escape, Kiannatah disappeared like a wraith into the deeper darkness.

  Back at the jacal, Barlow made his move, sprinting across open ground and boldly barging into the hut. He tripped over the body of the Netdahe and landed badly. Dazed and consumed by pain, he lay there a moment. Somehow he found the strength and the will to get back on his feet. He gazed for a moment at the corpse of the Apache. This, then, was the broncho who had fired at him. And he had killed him with a lucky shot through the doorway. The Apache looked like a Netdahe. That made four. It was odd, he thought, that he felt no diminution of the burning desire for revenge that had completely overcome him while he lay on Oulay's grave.

  He remembered the body of the Apache boy that lay outside. That didn't make sense to him—he couldn't figure out why this Netdahe would have killed one of his own. But his head hurt, and he wasn't thinking clearly. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep. The venom in his system was making him nauseous. He couldn't stay here. It wasn't safe.

  Leaving the jacal, he returned to his horse, feeling a measure of remorse that he didn't have the time—or the strength—to bury the boy. It was a shame to leave him to the desert scavengers. But there was no help for it. He mounted up and let the horse have its head. After what seemed like an eternity in the saddle, wandering aimlessly through the night, he had the sensation of falling—and blacked out before he hit the ground.

  Geronimo and the two Netdahe bronchos with him found the body of the Apache hunter the day after Barlow had killed him. The host of buzzards circling high in the morning sky had brought them, and when they arrived, they found several of the birds feasting on the corpse. They fanned out and checked the gulch for sign, putting the clues together for the complete story of what had happened here. After a few minutes of this, they reunited near the corpse, sitting on their haunches and impassively watching the buzzards pluck morsels of raw flesh from the body.

  "It was a white man who killed him," muttered one of the bronchos.

  Geronimo nodded. "Just like the others." He looked, thought the others, more somber than usual. "One White Eyes?" asked the third broncho. "He must be loco."

  "At least this time he was wounded," said the first, hopefully. "I saw blood."

  "That does not make him any less dangerous," said Geronimo.

  "He is only one man," said the other broncho, his voice bitter with contempt. "We must hunt him down and kill him."

  "Do what you will," said Geronimo, standing up. "I go north."

  The third broncho was incredulous. Could it be possible that Geronimo was afraid of one white man? That seemed to be the only explanation. Yet the broncho was afraid too—afraid enough of Geronimo to keep his mouth shut.

  Nor did Geronimo say anything further. He was a man who put great stock in dreams and visions. There were some among the Chi-hinne who believed him to be a prophet, a man who could see into the future, and he had used the superstitious natures of his people to good advantage on numerous occasions. But Geronimo was himself a creature of superstition. For some time now, he had suffered from an anxiety that he could not overcome. He had a feeling that the terror that he and the other Netdahe had spread across Apacheria would someday soon be turned upon him and his kind. There was always a price to pay. The White Eyes said that a man who lived by the sword would die by it. That a wrong done would come back to haunt the perpetrator. This notion was not alien to the Apache. Geronimo realized that some might say he had a guilty conscience. Whether it was a guilty conscience or a strongly developed sense for self-preservation, he knew that the deaths of three Netdahe in the past days—all clearly at the hands of a solitary white man—constituted a very strange set of events. No one had thought that such a thing was possible. The entire Mexican army was too fearful to enter the Cima Silkq. And now a single white man had entered the stronghold of the renegade Apaches, and had managed to slay three of the Avowed Killers? No, it was too strange. It made Geronimo uneasy. He took it as a sign that now was the time to make a change.

  "I will go north, and live among the Bedonkohe who remain there," he told the others. "Come with me, or stay. It is up to you."

  And with that he headed back down the gulch for the place where they had left their horses.

  Barlow came to feeling a hand gently touching his face, and for an instant he thought he was back in his adobe home, with Oulay beside him, caressing him, and his heart sang with joy as he murmured her name.

  Then he opened his eyes, and as his vision cleared, he saw the round, creased face of an elderly Indian woman, illuminated by flickering firelight, looming over him.

  His left hand lashed out and closed around her throat.

  "Who are you?" he hissed, speaking in her own tongue. "Where am I?"

  Fear filled her eyes as she clawed at his hand. He was too weak to maintain his grip, and when she broke free, she let out a shrill cry of alarm and fled.

  Barlow realized that he was inside a jacal. A small fire burned in the ring of stones marking the center of the hut. He was alone, but could hear other voices—excited Apache voices—outside. He tried to sit up. That required supreme effort. He'd made it up on one elbow when the blanket covering the jacal's doorway was swept aside and Cochise entered.

  The Chiricahua jefe settled cross-legged near the dying fire and looked gravely across the jacal at Barlow.

  "Some of the men out there," said Cochise softly, "they say you are crazy, and that you should be killed before you hurt somebody."

  "Most of them never liked me," said Barlow dryly.

  "You were more dead than alive when they brought you in," continued the jefe. "I am told you've killed several Netdahe. If this is true, then I would say you have been fortunate."

  "I'm not done killing Netdahe. Maybe my luck will hold out."

  Cochise nodded, and Barlow saw the sadness flicker across his features, even though the Chiricahua leader was trying his best to conceal the grief he felt. "I have lost a daughter. But you have lost everything. You do not care if you live or die. You have replaced what you lost with a thirst for revenge. This makes you like the very Netdahe that you hunt. Maybe that is why you frighten Geronimo."

  "Frighten?"

  "The Netdahe are gone from the Cima Silkq."

  Barlow didn't believe him. He thought Cochise was telling him this just so he would call off his crusade against the Avowed Killers.

  "Really," he said, skeptically.

  "Have you ever known me to lie?" asked Cochise sternly.

  Barlow admitted that he had not.

  "They are going north, to scatter and live among the bands up there. So they will be hard to find."

  "You're sure all the Netdahe are gone."

  "You have been here for three days. In that time we have been looking, and can find none of them."

  "Hopefully, one day, you will find none of them left anywhere on the face of the earth."

  Barlow spoke with such rancor that it gave Cochise pause. He gazed speculatively at the white man for a moment before speaking. "Even though the Netdahe have caused trouble for those of us who prefer to live in peace, I do not hate them. Most, including Geronimo, have good reason to want to kill their enemies—the same reason that has brought you here. They have seen their loved ones murdered, just like you. But there is the one called Kiannatah. . . ." Cochise looked away for a moment, trying to maintain his composure. "I hope that before they kill you, Barlow, you will kill him."

  "If he as the one who took Oulay, he's already dead."

  "Unless you saw his body with your own eyes, you cannot be sure of that."

  "I've never seen this Kiannatah."

  "If you ever meet him, you will know him."

  "How?"

  "He is the worst of them all. And the most dangerous." Cochise got to h
is feet. "I will go find your nurse, and send her back. Try not to scare her anymore. In a few days the poison will leave your body and your wounds will be well enough healed that you can be on your way."

  "Trying to get rid of me?"

  "Yes," admitted Cochise bluntly. "Seeing you reminds me too much of my daughter."

  "I'm sorry. I promised I would keep her safe."

  "No one is safe out here," replied Cochise, as he left the jacal.

  Chapter 35

  He was five days north of the Sierra Madre when the dragoons struck. He had stopped for the night, and was brewing up some coffee over an outlaw oven—a small, smokeless fire built in a hole excavated about a foot deep—when he heard them coming, even though they were doing their best to approach stealthily. That in itself was alarming, but he decided he didn't want a war with the Mexican army, and since he had nothing against them, and nothing to hide, he did nothing. So when a dozen of them rode into his camp, surrounding him immediately, he just sat there, minding his coffee, and nodding pleasantly at his uninvited guests.

  "If I'd known you were coming," he said, speaking in their tongue, "I would have made more java."

  "Put your hands up," said an officer, a lieutenant—the man Barlow assumed was in charge of the patrol.

  Barlow had not failed to notice that some of the dragoons were aiming their short-barreled carbines at him. And they were all looking fairly unfriendly.

  He stood up, slowly raising his hands. "What's going on?"