“They’re headed in the right direction for it, sure enough.”
Sam said, “Then I expect we’d better try and get there ahead of ’em.”
“I expect you’re right about that.”
“We’ll cut north and bypass ’em,” Sam decided, “and then we’ll have to give these horses a workout to get there ahead of those cowboys.”
Ringo put up his horse at the OK Corral and walked to the Oriental. There was a scattering of patrons; not much of a crowd yet. By evening it would be filled with drinkers and players.
Sheriff Behan was watching narrow-eyed as Bat Masterson dealt faro. Ringo gave the sheriff a cold look and faced Masterson across the table.
When Masterson looked up, Ringo grinned. “Want to try and shoot me today, Bat?”
“Not today or any other day,” Bat replied. “Way I see it, John, any damn fool can shoot people. It’s not a thing to take pride in.”
“Well, it’s like anything else in human endeavor. It’s not so much what you do as how you do it. Speed, grace, and style, Bat. That’s why I admire to watch your hands handle those pasteboards.”
“Care to play?”
“Not just now. I hear Cemetery Jones is in town. Hear he says he’s faster with a gun than I am.”
“Might be a fact,” Bat Masterson said. “In which case you’re in a hurry to get killed, aren’t you?”
“I’m not in the habit of getting killed, Bat.”
“Well, you’re plumb out of luck anyway, John, because Sam Jones and Luke Short rode out of town this morning.”
“Headed for where?”
“I can’t say.”
“Expect ’em back?”
“Can’t say that, either.”
Sheriff Behan said, “Jones’s lady friend’s still got a room in the Occidental. I saw her and Nellie Cashman with their heads together this afternoon.”
“Then he’ll be back,” Ringo said. He turned toward the bar. “However long it takes—I can wait.”
Eight
Brown and slender in breechclout and headband, the warrior put his thumb across the musket’s hammer. He waited then, in patient stillness, tight against the bole of a shading cottonwood, while the solitary white horseman followed a little herd of a dozen cattle to the stream. The cattle put their front hoofs in the water and drank.
The rider brought his horse around upstream of the cows, as the warrior had known he would do, and dismounted almost within reach of the unseen warrior, while his horse put its head down and nuzzled the clear flowing water.
The white man was gaunt, with shabby clothes and the red nose and pasty skin of a man who liked alcohol too much.
The warrior, who allowed friends to call him by the name Nachite, was happy he wasn’t going to have to make use of the musket. The old weapon was unreliable and inaccurate. If the horseman hadn’t come into the shade, it would have been necessary to use the gun because there would have been no way to approach him on the open grassland without being seen. But this was much more sure. Nachite brought up his knife, took two quick paces forward, gripped the white man’s lank hair from behind, touched his enemy along the throat—counting coup: proving his victory and his manhood in the time-honored Indian way, by touching his enemy while the enemy still lived—and thrust the knife home between two back ribs. All this in a single fluid action that was finished before the white man’s weary body could react.
Nachite let the corpse drop at his feet and made a quick grab for trailing reins before the horse could bolt.
With the horse secured, reins looped around his arm, the warrior knelt down and sliced off the white man’s scalp. The hair was gray, thinning, shoulder-long and matted with filth. Nachite held the scalp in the flowing stream to cleanse it before he knotted it to the belt of his breechclout. Then, after a moment’s thought, he stripped the gunbelt and holstered revolver off the dead man and buckled it around his own waist.
Then he turned to strip the saddle off the horse.
The animal stood still without resistance; evidently it was as played out as its former owner.
Nachite plucked the rifle out of the saddle scabbard and examined it. Winchester .44-40. Far finer weapon than his old musket. Grinning, he searched the body and the saddlebags for ammunition, and was disappointed to find there was nothing except the two dozen cartridges in the loops of the gunbelt he’d already appropriated.
They’d have to do. Anything was better than the muzzle loading contraption he’d taken off a prospector’s scalped body last spring.
He smoothed the blanket on the horse and, still holding his new rifle in one hand, gathered the reins in smooth synchronization with his swift leap astride the animal. It gave no objection.
He left the musket on the ground beside the corpse.
With reins and heels he prodded the horse up out of the stream’s shallow defile. When the long grass meadow came into sight, he halted the mount and held the rifle overhead and waited that way until Victorio and the rest came riding out of the distant trees toward him. Then Nachite rode back down to the stream to wait.
The cattle drank their fill and milled on the creek bank. They were in no hurry to go anywhere. Nachite kept a desultory eye on them while he let the stream’s clear water birl around his feet. He watched with childlike interest as the swirling water made patterns and eddies. Dragonflies hovered. Insects skated across the surface of the stream. In the water he saw tadpoles and snails.
He sat in the shade, happy, ignoring the nearby corpse, until he heard the horses coming over the hill. Then he stood to greet the war leader.
Victorio led them in. He was thick-set, with a cruel, broad flat face and numerous scars of battle everywhere on his face and arms. The twenty warriors with him were young men, like Nachite, but Victorio was old enough to have strands of white-gray in his hair under the greasy headband.
Nachite grinned and displayed the scalp hanging from his belt.
Victorio sat his horse, grunted, spared a quick glance for the dead white, and pointed to one of the riders behind him. The man, who was armed with bow and arrow, dismounted to collect the discarded musket. Nachite grinned at him. The man responded with a mock-angry sneer. Then both laughed.
Victorio looked over the dozen browsing cows. “We take those with us,” he said. “Eat them one at a time. Get on the horse, lazy Nachite. We go to the mountains now.”
Victorio turned without waiting for an answer. He splashed his horse across the stream and rode uphill. Nachite looked at his friends, sighed, and got on the horse.
They drove the cattle with them. The cows had been easy picking but, in relating the tale of his spectacular battle with the vicious white gunman, Nachite spun an outrageous yarn of hardship and heroism.
A white man who believed Indians to be stone-faced and impassive might have been astounded by the horseplay in Victorio’s band. Jubilant at Nachite’s coup, they rode giddily, and made great sport with the stolid cattle they herded.
Victorio found as much enjoyment as any of the others. He took pride in the skillful riding of his braves, and often spoke of how each of them had inherited the mantle of the great war leader Mangas Coloradas.
That outsiders, even those with some sympathy for “the cause of the Indian,” considered Victorio a marauding, murdering renegade bothered him not at all.
Victorio was the avenger of the Apaches. He and his counterpart in Mexico, the shaman Geronimo, were upholding the pride of a great people.
Nachite felt the swelling of that pride. Enemies called Victorio a cruel despot—it was nonsense. What they didn’t understand was that no Apache was “chief” of anything by right of tyranny. Tribes respected the wisdom of elders, surely; but a leader held his position only so long as he held the respect of his people. He was put in power by the will of his followers, and they could take it away from him at any time if he displeased them.
There was no tyranny. Victorio was war leader because Nachite and his brothers respected Victorio as a warrior am
ong warriors.
The band was on its way now to the old stronghold, where Cochise and Mangas had created the Apache fortress. Victorio had proposed they acquire horses and guns and ammunition from the young heretic Pacheco.
Victorio anticipated no difficulty. “Pacheco, the great warrior.” He laughed. “A half-grown mission Indian from the Christian Brothers School. We will pull Nachite’s headband down as a blindfold and tie one hand to his side and watch him massacre the mission Indian while the old men and cripples and women bow their heads to us and cook our cattle.”
Everyone laughed.
Nachite’s young cousin, who had been scouting, rode up in agitated haste. “There is sign—white men riding toward the stronghold.”
“How many?”
“At least as many as we are.”
“Pony soldiers?”
“No. Cowboys—from the direction of the old white beard’s rancho.”
Victorio’s smile was hard. “It will be good to see that old enemy. There will be many fewer in their party when they flee.”
The scout was sent out ahead again, to make sure they did not meet the white men until they were ready to.
Victorio finally acknowledged the scalp at Nachite’s belt. “Did you count coup before he died?”
“Before I even touched him with a weapon.”
“For a lazybones you did very well, young Nachite.”
Nachite gave a barking whoop and wheeled his pony to rejoin the group herding the cattle.
Sam Jones and Luke Short drew in their winded horses. They dismounted and walked, leading the animals, giving the hard-worked beasts a rest. There was no visible trail, but before he had left them, Massé had pointed out a high spire of rock on the crest of the range. They used it as a beacon, climbing steadily into the stark boulder country of the Dragoons.
The young boy, Massé, had parted company with them an hour earlier, scrambling up a steep cliff of rocks where no horse could go. He would proceed into the stronghold ahead of the two white men to forewarn his people of their approach, so that Sam and Luke would not be ambushed.
October now, and Sam was thankful for that; in high summer the trek would have been accompanied by murderous desert heat. Despite the altitude, the rocks could gather warmth like an oven. Even now it was hot enough so that both men removed their jackets and tied them across the backs of their saddles.
Neither had arrived in Tombstone geared to fight Indians. They had not changed their mode of dress to leave town; it had been best to appear that they had business elsewhere. Now Luke glanced at Sam’s boiled white shirt and black broadcloth trousers, and grinned. “Lordy, if we don’t look like a couple useless dudes!”
“I reckon,” Sam agreed. He tipped his black hat back. “Guess we’re not just exactly outfitted to throw a scare into anybody. When Pacheco sees us he’s gonna be sorry he sent for help.”
Luke began to laugh softly.
That was when they heard a sudden sound of gunshots—not far away.
Then there was a quick answering volley; and it was followed by a continuing spatter of shots as the first burst settled down into a steady combat of rifles.
With an exchange of glances, Sam and Luke were on horseback, heading uphill—heading for the sound of the guns.
Doc Holliday had awakened around noon, as usual. It had taken him an hour to finish coughing and get himself shaved and dressed for the day. He’d eaten breakfast in his boardinghouse dining room—alone—at half past one.
After that he wandered down into the Occidental Saloon and said to the bartender, “Seen Bat Masterson?”
The bartender set up a bottle and shot glass without being asked. “Believe he rode out this morning for Agua Prieta. Heard a rumor about a big card game down there,” said the barkeep. “Him and John Ringo both headed down that way, early.”
“Together?”
“Not hardly. Not them two. But the boys are makin’ odds. There’s a good chance Ringo and Bat’ll meet up, and odds are, only one of ’em’ll come back.”
Doc was hung over and in a generally sour mood. He disdained the shot glass and drank directly from the bottle. The whiskey burned going down. “Who’s the favorite?”
“Ringo. Who else?”
“What odds?”
“You lose your money if there’s no fight between ’em. You win two to one if there’s a fight and Ringo wins. Five to one if Bat wins.”
“I’ll take a hundred dollars of that action,” said Doc, and spun out five double eagles on the bar.
It wasn’t that he particularly liked Bat Masterson. But anybody who’d put money on a crazy man like Ringo against Bat was a fool who hadn’t seen Bat Masterson in a fight. Even Doc knew enough to walk wide around the man. Bat was deceptive. He wasn’t big; he had good manners, spoke softly and politely; he looked a little soft because of his round face and easy smile. But Bat Masterson had never let anybody get the better of him and likely never would.
Doc endured a painful spasm of coughing, wiped blood off his mouth with the filthy handkerchief he kept in the sleeve of his coat, and turned to scowl across the room. Ike Clanton was over at a table with Tom McLowery.
Doc tramped belligerently across to the cowboy’s table. He felt like a fight. “Ike,” he said in a loud voice, “I hear tell you aim to kill me. Come on then. Get out your gun and commence.”
Ike Clanton scowled up at him. “I ain’t armed, Doc.”
“Get armed, then.”
Tom McLowery said, “Talk to your friends the Earps. They’re the ones tellin’ everybody to disarm themselves.”
Doc said, “Listen. Next time you cowboys come into town and I hear you’re making war talk against me, I’ll gun you both down like dogs, armed or disarmed. Hear me? So you’d better come heeled.”
Ike Clanton evaded his glance. Tom McLowery got half out of his chair. Tom glared at Doc with a murderous squint. “Doc, I promise you, next time you see me it’ll be over my gun sights. Hear?”
Then Virgil Earp came up behind Doc and gripped his thin shoulder. No telling how long Virg had been in the room, or how much he’d heard. The young man said, “Lay off, all of you. Or I’ll put the three of you in the calabozo.”
Doc pulled away from his hand. “I don’t think you want to try that. Not with me.”
“Come on, Doc. Ease off. I’ll buy you a drink.” Virg was big as a moose and rock-steady. Doc still felt like a fight, but not with Virgil Earp. He cast one more contemptuous glance toward the two cowboys and stamped away to the bar, where he reclaimed his bottle and took a long drink from it.
Virg watched him skeptically. “How many men you killed, Doc?”
“Eighteen white men. I don’t count the others.”
“You keep score, do you?”
“What do you care?”
“Never could figure out what makes you tick,” Virg said.
Doc gave him no assistance.
Virg said, “Listen, now. A gunfight right now with you involved would ruin my chances to round up this Clanton-McLowery bunch and put ’em behind bars where they belong. I’m working on cattle-stealing evidence that should put ’em all away nice and neat for years to come. Don’t spoil it now, Doc.”
“You asking me or telling me?”
Virg gave him a slow humorless smile. “Asking. A favor—to Wyatt, if not to me.”
“Well, I’ll think about it,” Doc said, with a surly curl of his lip. He downed another slug of whiskey and lurched out of the place in time to see Bull Baxter ride by.
The big cowboy grinned. “Surprised to see you here when the action’s down in Agua Prieta. Big poker game down there, Doc. I figure to go and watch. Maybe set in a few hands.”
You do, Doc thought, and you’ll likely get your head served up on a tray. But he said nothing; he didn’t think enough of Bull Baxter to offer him the dignity of a reply. Doc caught his balance against a porch post and walked away.
Sam and Luke scrambled through ankle-busting rocks towar
d the crest of the ridge. What spurred them was the bitter sound of gunshots, just beyond the crest. At least a dozen rifles, talking harshly.
Pacheco—?
The horse hooves made a racket on the rocks, but there was no risk in that, not now with all the shooting going on. A man with a rifle at his ear would be half deafened by the noise of his own gunshots, and it would be a while after the end of the battle before he’d be able to hear much of anything again.
So they urged the tired horses, tugging the pack mule after. They threaded among huge boulders.
Despite the urgency of haste, it just wasn’t possible to make good speed. The upslope was not steep, but the rocks made for treacherous footing. More than once they were boxed against a dead end from which they had to retreat and find another way around.
By the time they neared the crest, the sound of shooting—accented by the high whistling screeches of ricocheting bullets—had steadied down to the occasional burst of fire, indicating that the opposing sides must have taken cover in the rocks.
As they neared the top, Sam and Luke got off their horses. Even nearer, they ground-hitched the animals with heavy rocks and left them behind, taking their rifles with them. No point subjecting their mounts to the deadly risk of ricochets.
Must be the Clanton cowboy mob against Pacheco and the Cochise remnant. It didn’t surprise Sam that the cowboys had arrived ahead of him; the path he and Luke had been forced to take, in order to avoid detection by the cowboys, had caused them to swing much farther to the north than he’d anticipated. If they’d cut in any closer, their telltale dust cloud would have alerted the cowboys. To avoid that, they’d used up at least an extra half day, not to mention last night’s brief camping stop, where they’d rested the horses.
Sam feared the sight that awaited them when they reached the crest.
From what they’d learned from young Massé, the little band of Chiricahuas that Pacheco had joined was a pitiful handful of women, children, old men, and untested youths. Not the warlike braves; those were away somewhere, scattered across Arizona and northern Mexico, raiding with Victorio and Geronimo.
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