Trail of the Apache and Other Stories
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reined in gently with a soothing murmur into the
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mare’s ear, and slid from the saddle, whispering
again to the mare as he tied the reins to a pine
branch a foot from the ground.
He made his way along the trail until the slope
was again thick with brush and trees, and there he
began his descent. A yard at a time, making sure of
firm ground before each step, bending branches
slowly so there would be no warning swish. And
every few yards he would hug the ground and wait,
swinging his gaze in every direction, even behind.
He had gone almost a hundred yards when he
saw the woman.
He crouched low to the sandy ground and
crawled under the full branches of a pine, watching
the woman almost thirty yards away. She was sitting on something just off the ground, her back
resting against the smoothness of a birch tree.
He was approaching her from the rear and could
see only part of her head and shoulder resting
against the tree trunk. The brush near her cut off
the lower part of her body, but there was something
strange about her position—her immobility, the
way her shoulder was thrown back so tightly
against the roundness of the birch. Street had the
feeling she was dead. Time would tell.
He lay motionless under the thick foliage and
waited, the Winchester in front of him. And Simon
Street had his thoughts. You never get used to the
sight of a white woman after an Apache has fin-‚
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ished with her. An hour later, a week later, a dozen
years later, the picture will flash in your memory,
vivid, stark naked of hazy forgetfulness.
And the form of the Apache will be there, too,
close like the smothering reek of a hot animal,
though you may have never seen him. Then you will
be sick if you are the kind. Street wasn’t the kind,
but he didn’t look forward to approaching the
woman.
After almost a half hour he again began to work
his way toward the woman. In that length of time
he had not moved. Nor had the woman. If she was
dead, the Apache would probably be gone. But that
was guessing, and when you guess, you take a
chance.
He crawled all the way, slowly, a foot at a time,
until he was directly behind the birch. Then he
reached up, his hand sliding along the white bark,
and touched her shoulder lightly.
Amelia Darck jumped to her feet and turned in
the motion. Her face was powder white, her eyes
wide, startled; but when she saw the scout the color
seemed to creep through her cheeks and her mouth
broke into a fragile smile.
“You’re late, Mr. Street. I’ve waited a good many
hours.”
The scout was momentarily stunned. He knew
his face bore a foolish expression, but there was
nothing he could do about it.
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The woman’s face regained its composure
quickly and once again she was the colonel’s lady.
Though there was a drawn look and a darker
shadow about the eyes that could not be wiped
away with a polite smile.
Then Street saw the Apache. He was lying belly
down in the short grass, close behind Mrs. Darck.
Street took a step to her side and saw the handle of
the skinning knife sticking straight up from the
Apache’s back. The cotton shirt was deep crimson
in a wide smear around the knife handle.
He looked at her again with the foolish look still
on his face.
“Mr. Street, I’ve been sitting up all night with a
dead Indian and I’m almost past patience. Would
you kindly take me to my husband.”
He looked again at the Apache and then to the
woman. Disbelief in his eyes. He started to say
something, but Amelia Darck went on.
“I’ve lived out here most of my life, Mr. Street, as
you know. I heard Apache war drums long before I
attended my first cotillion, but I have hardly reached
the point where I have to take an Apache for a lover.”
Simon Street saw a thousand troops and a hundred scouts in the field. Then he looked at the slender woman walking briskly up the grade.
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Most of the time there was dead silence. When
someone did say something it was never more than
a word or two at a time: More coffee? Words that
were not words because there was no thought behind them and they didn’t mean anything. Words
like getting late, when no one cared. Hardly even
noises, because no one heard.
Stillness. Six men sitting together in a pine grove,
and yet there was no sound. A boot scraped gravel
and a tin cup clanked against rock, but they were
like the words, little noises that started and stopped
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at the same time and were forgotten before they
could be remembered.
More coffee? And an answering grunt that meant
even less.
Five men scattered around a campfire that was
dead, and the sixth man squatting at the edge of the
pines looking out into the distance through the dismal reflection of a dying sun that made the grayish
flat land look petrified in death and unchanged for
a hundred million years.
Emmett Ryan stared across the flats toward the
lighter gray outline in the distance that was Anton
Chico, but he wasn’t seeing the adobe brick of the
village. He wasn’t watching the black speck that
was gradually getting bigger as it approached.
All of us knew that. We sat and watched Emmett
Ryan’s coat pulled tight across his shoulder blades,
not moving body or head. Just a broad smoothness
of faded denim. We’d been looking at the same
back all the way from Tascosa and in two hundred
miles you can learn a lot about a back.
The black speck grew into a horse and rider, and
as they moved up the slope toward the pines the
horse and rider became Gosh Hall on his roan. Emmett walked over to meet him, but didn’t say anything. The question was on his broad, red face and
he didn’t have to ask it.
Gosh Hall swung down from the saddle and put
his hands on the small of his back, arching against
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the stiffness. “They just rode in,” he said, and
walked past the big man to the dead fire. “Who’s
got all the coffee?”
Emmett followed him with his eyes and the question was still there. It was something to see that big,
plain face with the eyes open wide and staring
when before they’d always been half-closed from
squinting against the glare of twenty-odd years in
open country. Now his face looked too big and
loose for the small nose and slit of an Irish mouth.
You could see the indecision and maybe a little fear
been there before.
We’d catch ourselves looking at that face and
have to look at something else, quick, or Em would
see somebody’s jaw hanging open and wonder what
the hell was wrong with him. We felt sorry for
Em—I know I did—and it was a funny feeling to all
of a sudden see the big TX ramrod that way.
Gosh looked like he had an apron on, standing
over the dead fire with his hip cocked and the worn
hide chaps covering his short legs. He held the cup
halfway to his face, watching Em, waiting for him
to ask the question. I thought Gosh was making it a
little extra tough on Em; he could have come right
out with it. Both of them just stared at each other.
Finally Emmett said, “Jack with them?”
Gosh took a sip of coffee first. “Him and Joe Anthony rode in together, and another man. Anthony
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and the other man went into the Senate House and
Jack took the horses to the livery and then followed
them over to the hotel.”
“They see you?”
“Naw, I was down the street under a ramada. All
they’d see’d be shadow.”
“You sure it was them, Gosh?” I asked him.
“Charlie,” Gosh said, “I got a picture in my
head, and it’s stuck there ’cause I never expected to
see one like it. It’s a picture of Jack and Joe Anthony riding into Magenta the same way a month
ago. When you see something that’s different or
hadn’t ought to be, it sticks in your head. And they
was on the same mounts, Charlie.”
Emmett went over to his dun mare and tightened
the cinch like he wanted to keep busy and show us
everything was going the same. But he was just
fumbling with the strap, you could see that. His
head swung around a few inches. “Jack look all
right?”
Gosh turned his cup upside down and a few
drops of coffee trickled down to the ashes at his
feet. “I don’t know, Em. How is a man who’s just
stole a hundred head of beef supposed to look?”
Emmett jerked his body around and the face was
closed again for the first time in a week, tight and
redder than usual. Then his jaw eased and his big
hands hanging at his sides opened and closed and
then went loose. Emmett didn’t have anything to
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grab. Some of the others were looking at Gosh Hall
and probably wondering why the little rider was
making it so hard for Em.
Emmett asked him, “Did you see Butzy?”
“He didn’t ride in. I ’magine he’s out with the
herd.” Gosh looked around. “Neal still out, huh?”
Neal Whaley had gone in earlier with Gosh, then
split off over to where they were holding the herd,
just north of Anton Chico. Neal was to watch and
tell us if they moved them. Emmett figured they
were holding the herd until a buyer came along.
There were a lot of buyers in New Mexico who
didn’t particularly care what the brand read, but
Emmett said they were waiting for a top bid or they
would have sold all the stock before this.
Ned Bristol and Lloyd Cohane got up and
stretched and then just stood there awkwardly
looking at the dead fire, their boots, and each other.
Lloyd pulled a blue bandanna from his coat pocket
and wiped his face with it, then folded it and
straightened it out thin between his fingers before
tilting his chin up to tie it around his neck. Ned
pushed his gun belt down lower on his hips and
watched Emmett.
Dobie Shaw, the kid in our outfit, went over to
his mount and pulled his Winchester from the boot
and felt in the bag behind the saddle for a box of
cartridges. Dobie had to do something too.
Ben Templin was older; he’d been riding better
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than thirty years. He eased back to the ground with
his hands behind his head tilting his hat over his
face and waited. Ben had all the time in the world.
Everybody was going through the motions of being natural, but fidgeting and acting restless and
watching Emmett at the same time because we all
knew it was time now, and Emmett didn’t have any
choice. That was what forced Emmett’s hand,
though we knew he would have done it anyway,
sooner or later. But maybe we looked a little too
anxious to him, when it was only restlessness. It
was a long ride from Tascosa. A case of let’s get it
over with or else go on home—one way or the
other, regardless of whose brother stole the cows.
Gosh Hall scratched the toe of his boot through
the sand, kicking it over the ashes of the dead fire.
“About that time, ain’t it, Em?”
Emmett exhaled like he was very tired. “Yeah,
it’s about that time.” He looked at every face,
slowly, before turning to his mare.
✯ ✯ ✯
It’s roughly a hundred and thirty miles from Tascosa, following the Canadian, to Trementina on the
Conchas, then another thirty-five miles south,
swinging around Mesa Montosa to Anton Chico,
on the Pecos. Counting detours to find water holes
and trailing the wrong sign occasionally, that’s
about two hundred miles of sun, wind, and New
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Mexico desert—and all to bring back a hundred
head of beef owned by a Chicago company that tallied close to a quarter million all over the Panhandle and north-central Texas.
The western section of the TX Company was
headquartered at Sudan that year, with most of the
herds north of Tascosa and strung out west along
the Canadian. Emmett Ryan was ramrod of the
home crew at Sudan, but he spent a week or more
at a time out on the grass with the herds. That was
why he happened to be with us when R. D. Perris,
the company man, rode in. We were readying to go
into Magenta for a few when Perris came beating
his mount into camp. Even in the cool of the evening the horse was flaked white and about to drop
and Perris was so excited he could hardly get the
words out. And finally when he told his story there
was dead silence and all you could hear was R.
D.
Perris breathing like his chest was about to rip open.
Jack Ryan and Frank Butzinger—Frank, who nobody ever gave credit for having any sand—and
over a hundred head of beef hadn’t been seen on
the west range for three days. R. D. Perris had said,
“The tracks follow the river west, but we figured
Jack was taking them to new grass. But then the
tracks just kept on going. . . .”
Emmett was silent from that time on. He asked a
few questions, but he was pretty sure of the answers before he asked them. There was that talk for
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weeks about Jack having been seen in Tascosa and
/> Magenta with Joe Anthony. And there weren’t
many people friendly with Joe Anthony. In his time,
he’d had his picture on wanted dodgers more than
once. Two shootings for sure, and a few holdups,
but the holdups were just talk. Nobody ever pinned
anything on him, and with his gunhand reputation,
nobody made any accusations.
Gosh Hall had seen them together in Magenta
and he told Emmett to his face that he didn’t like it;
but Emmett had defended him and said Jack was
just sowing oats because he was still young and
hadn’t got his sense of values yet. But Lloyd Cohane was there that time at the line camp when Emmett dropped in and chewed hell out of Jack for
palling with Joe Anthony. Then came the time Emmett walked into the saloon in Tascosa with his
gun out and pushed it into Joe Anthony’s belly before Joe even saw him and told him to ride and keep
riding.
Jack was there, drunk like he usually was in
town, but he sobered quick and followed Anthony
out of the saloon when Emmett prodded him out,
and laughed right in Emmett’s face when Em told
him to stay where he was. And he was laughing and
weaving in the saddle when he rode out of town
with Anthony.
Until that night Perris came riding in with his
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story, Em hadn’t seen his brother. So you know
what he was thinking; what all of us were thinking.
Riding the two hundred miles to find the herd
was part of the job, but knowing you were trailing
a friend made the job kind of sour and none of us
was sure if we wanted to find the cattle. Jack Ryan
was young and wild and drank too much and
laughed all the time, but he had more friends than
any rider in the Panhandle.
Like Ben Templin said: “Jack’s a good boy, but
he’s got an idea life’s just a big can-can dancer with
four fingers of scootawaboo in each hand.” And
that was about it.
✯ ✯ ✯
The splotch of white that was Anton Chico from
a distance gradually got bigger and cleared until finally right in front of us it was gray adobe brick,
blocks of it, dull and lifeless in the cold late sunlight. Emmett slowed us to a walk the last few hundred feet approaching the town’s main street and
motioned Ben Templin up next to him.