Pony Soldiers

by James Axler

  The rest of the Mescalero nodded, but Ryan no­ticed that Cuchillo Oro made no move, either to agree or to disagree.

  Ryan stood up, glaring at the pocked man. He al­lowed his hand to fall to the butt of his handgun, the threat obvious.

  "The Mescalero mock that I have one eye. But are the Mescalero blind children that they can see noth­ing?" He was vaguely surprised to hear himself speaking like an old westie vid.

  "We are…" the Apache began, but Ryan pointed an accusing finger at him, pushing him into silence.

  "The Mescalero say how they have looked, tested and fought, and…they still do not know how to win." His voice became openly incredulous. "Then the Mescalero should leave their home and go. Go before the pony soldiers decide to come and beat you, take your women. Enslave your children. If you say you do not know how to win, then I say that we will tell you."

  His voice rang with confidence. The scarred war­rior said nothing, mouth turned down in annoyance, eyes looking past the white man toward the pool that filled the farther end of the canyon.

  Cuchillo Oro spoke, addressing the Apache first.

  "Soft, my brother. All men know that Stones in Face is the bravest of the warriors. And the Anglo has come here as our guest and says he will be our friend, that he will fight with us against Yellowhair. It is true that we people need such help. To say not is to speak like a crazie. So, we will talk together and fight to­gether. And then, my brothers, it will be a good day to die."

  Ryan hoped he meant for the collection of rene­gades and mercies who now rode together under the banner of the Seventh Cavalry.

  It took most of the afternoon, but an agreement was eventually thrashed out. Twice they broke off the talking so that both sides, Anglo and Apache, could go their own way and discuss what was to be done. It was in the softly fading light of early evening when Ryan Cawdor finally stood up, followed by the other whites.

  "That's it. Day after tomorrow. Dawn. You and six of your best warriors, me and the Armorer, here, mounted on your strongest ponies."

  Cuchillo also stood, reaching out to clasp Ryan's hand. "We shall go to Many Deer Canyon and watch for the pony soldiers."

  The Mescalero were familiar with the patterns of the patrols from the cavalry fort, but there was no way they could raise sufficient strength to do more than mount a dangerous hit-and-run sortie against the sec men. Which was all that Ryan and J.B. wanted them to do. They needed the chance to observe the sec men in action, to judge if there was any obvious weakness in their discipline.

  During their first run-in against the General, Ryan had been too busy worrying about saving their skins to consider any points of tactics.

  "Are there many deer in Many Deer Canyon?" Krysty asked.

  Stones in Face answered her. "In the time of the fathers of our fathers of our fathers of our fathers there were deer. So many that a man might stand all day and watch them pass him by and never see an ending of their numbers. Now… Now, Fire Hair Woman, there are none."

  "If that's my name, what are the names of the rest of us?" she asked.

  Cuchillo replied. "The names of our people come from how they look or what they do. Only a chief can give such names."

  "Me?" Lori said.

  "Keeps Night Warm," the war chief replied.

  "I don't… Keeps what warm?" The burst of laughter from everyone made the girl blush with a sudden realization. "You mean like with fucking. Sorry, Doc, I mean making of love."

  "I think that's a real nice name, dearest," Doc re­assured her. "I shudder to thing what kind of mali­cious nomenclature you have contrived for me, Cuchillo Oro. Tell me."

  "Your name, you mean? I have talked with Man Whose Eyes See More and he tells me that he believes you are old mutie. Not in body, but in mind. He sees something in you, Doc Tanner, that is not as in other men. So you cannot have name as others do. I call you Doc. That and no more."

  "Could be worse, I guess. How about John Barrymore Dix? And Ryan? And there's the young boy as well. What about them?"

  "Young warrior is called Eyes of Wolf," Cuchillo replied.

  "And me?" J.B. asked, giving Doc Tanner a dirty look for blurting out his disliked given names.

  "Man Whose Weapons Strike Fear into Hearts of All Enemy."

  "Fireblast!" Ryan exclaimed; "By the time you shout that out, the firefight's started and finished."

  Cuchillo joined the laughter. "It is the way of my people. There was famous warrior called Young Man Whose Enemies Are Even Afraid of His Horses. But in books it was made into Young Man Afraid of His Horses. That is not the same. We call J. B. Dix by name of Weapons Strike Fear."

  "Better," the Armorer said.

  "How about Ryan?" Krysty asked. "What d'you call him, Cuchillo Oro?"

  "His name is hard. One Eye Chills," the Mescalero replied. "Is a good name?"

  Ryan nodded. "Sounds fine to me, Golden Knife. Now, seems like supper's near due. Then we should bed down early. We'll be off at dawn to see what we can find out about those pony soldiers of yours."

  After another filling meal, well spiced with red and green chilies, the group went back to their hut, set against the massive stone walls of the canyon.

  They had lamps with wicks that guttered in bowls of oil, smelling strongly, giving off a soft, golden light. At Krysty's request, the Indian women had brought in blankets and pinned them together across the low roof beams of the hut, giving the illusion of separate small rooms. She and Ryan took the one nearest the door. Doc and Lori had the next one, and J.B. shared the third one with the recuperating Jak, who'd been brought to join the others, with the reluctant agree­ment of the tall shaman.

  To his delight and amazement, while wandering around the village, Doc had found an old solar-powered ceedee player from before the long winters. It had been kept by an old man who knew nothing of what it was or how it worked. It had been handed down from father to son, as an artifact from the dead days. Doc had asked if he could borrow it and, reluc­tantly, it had been handed over. He sat with the small black and silver box on his lap, peering into the top. It had been easy to remove the case, and he'd found that a single wire had become disconnected.

  "Eureka!" he exclaimed. "Battery works. Not much of a charge left after a hundred years, but it still functions."

  "All you need is…"

  "Love," Doc cackled, baring his gleaming teeth at Ryan. "Upon my soul, but this is marvelous, my dear friend. You see, there is a compact disc within. Still there from that moment when…when all music died."

  "Will play, Doc?" Jak asked feebly. "Seen some of them that worked. Try. Go on, Doc. Try. For me. Please. Try."

  They gathered around this strange surviving piece of prenuking technology. Doc pressed the round but­ton marked with the symbol for "play." A faint light glowed deep within the player, and they could all hear a tiny hissing sound.

  And the music flowed out.

  It was a melancholic, swelling sound, the solemn strings pouring into the long room, silencing Ryan and all his companions. Despite the age of the machine and the disk, the music was fresh and pure, un­tainted. Krysty was standing next to her man, and she reached out and took his hand. Ryan squeezed her fingers, closing his good eye, feeling a glimmer of what life might have been like before the holocaust turned America into the Deathlands.

  Doc folded Lori in his arms. The dim light of the lamps was strong enough to show the glint of tears among the stubble on his deeply lined cheeks.

  None of them had any idea of how long the music lasted. The sounds of the Mescalero camp outside the walls of baked clay drifted from them until the whole world was the music. When it ended, the machine whirred briefly and then gave a sharp, terminal-sounding click.

  "Guess that's it," J.B. said, breaking the stillness in the room. "Don't figure that'll be playing for us any­more."

  "Least we heard it the once." Krysty sighed. "Gaia! It was so beautiful. What was it called?"

  There was a trumpeting sound as Doc pulled out
his swallow's eye kerchief and blew his nose with un­usual vigor.

  "Why, 'pon my soul, I had forgotten that such sounds had ever, ever existed."

  "What was it, Doc?" Krysty repeated.

  "The Adagio in G Minor, by the Venetian, Tommaso Albinoni. So beautiful."

  Most evenings the group would sit around, rapping about the day gone, or about the days to come. With a potential firefight the following morning, there could have been much to say. But the age-old music seemed to affect everyone in the same way. Jak muttered he was feeling real tired and was going to get some sleep. J.B. mumbled in turn about having to strip and field-clean his blasters, get them ready for the next day. Doc and Lori made no excuse, simply wandering off be­hind their section of blankets, arm in arm.

  "Leaves you and me, lover," Krysty said quietly. "Mebbe time to hit the straw?"

  "Could be. Yeah, it could just be."

  To Ryan and his contemporaries the idea that the sexual act could best be performed in conditions of privacy, behind locked doors and preferably in the dark, would have seemed absurd. In the Deathlands, privacy was a privilege reserved for the very rich or the very powerful. And the two things normally went to­gether. Of the hundreds of times that Ryan had done it, only a handful had been in anything approaching seclusion.

  Tonight was no exception. Indeed, it was better, far better, than most times.

  The light was dim and the blankets pressed in around them, giving the lovers the illusion of being on their own. All they had to do was shut out all the other sounds around them. Jak moaning in his sleep from the combination of pain from his injuries and drugs the shaman had given them. J.B. whispering as he took apart both of his blasters. The soft clicking of oiled metal and the unmistakable noise of springs being tested.

  From Doc and Lori's end of the room, there was only the rustling of straw and an occasional giggle from the girl.

  "I love you, Ryan," Krysty whispered. "Don't say anything back. I just wanted you to know that being with you and loving is all I want. The only times I'm happy is when I'm with you."

  He kissed her on the side of her neck, feeling the pulsing flow from her heart. His hand slid inside her shirt, cupping the firm breast. She'd peeled off the khaki overalls, and he only kept on his brown shirt.

  It was a relief to feel secure enough in Drowned Squaw Canyon to be able to go to bed and take off clothes and boots. But Ryan made sure his blasters were to hand near the cotton pillow.

  She pressed against him and he could taste the sheen of excitement on her skin. Safe in the secluded canyon, Ryan knew this coupling would be sweet… so very sweet.

  Chapter Sixteen

  RYAN AND J.B. STOOD by their ponies, waiting for the half dozen Apache warriors to join them. The pallid glow in the sky above the lip of the canyon heralded the false dawn. Doc and Lori were still sleeping when Ryan and J.B. rose and got dressed, strapping on their weapons. Jak was awake, calling out good luck to them. Krysty woke as soon as Ryan stirred, hastily pulling on her overalls to stand with him as he left.

  Cuchillo Oro was the first of the Indians to appear, heeling his pony across the dry, packed earth. He held up a hand to greet them.

  "Haiee, my brothers. Let today be a good day to die."

  "Wish you wouldn't say that," Ryan grumbled. "I'm not figuring on dying. Not yet."

  "You make many jests, One Eye Chills." Cuchillo grinned.

  "I do? And I'd kind of like it better if you stuck to calling me Ryan Cawdor, Chief. If that sits all right with you."

  "And I'm J. B. Dix. I appreciate the honor of being Weapons Strike Fear and all that, but I answer better to my own name."

  A girl, as slender as a fawn, with liquid brown eyes, came and stood by Cuchillo Oro. She wore a dress of deerskin that was embroidered with hundreds of col­ored beads in a swirling pattern of suns and arrows. Ryan had noticed her watching Jak Lauren several times during the past day.

  "This is my only daughter," the war chief said, reaching from the saddle to pat the girl proudly on the shoulder. "She is called Steps Lightly Moon."

  The girl hid her face behind her hand, peeking at the two white men. Then she spun on her heel and ran quickly away, darting between the rugged boulders with the speed of a dragonfly.

  "She's very beautiful, Cuchillo Oro," Ryan said, the Armorer nodding his agreement.

  "She wishes to talk with Eyes of Wolf."

  "With Jak?" Ryan exclaimed. "Well…let her go talk. The kid's still doped up to his ears, but I'm sure he'd appreciate a pretty little thing like that to talk to."

  "My daughter wishes to do more than talk with the white-head. She is foolish, and her skull rattles with ideas. She would marry with him."

  Ryan didn't quite know what to say to that. "Marry? I don't… What'd you think about it, Chief?"

  "They can talk. I have told her. But only if one of your women is there."

  Ryan didn't bother pointing out again to Cuchillo Oro that neither Krysty nor Lori would much appre­ciate the idea of belonging to anyone.

  The rest of the war party arrived, all hard-faced warriors in their late twenties or early thirties armed with a variety of old rifles.

  "We ride," Cuchillo said, leading the way along the narrowing trail toward the entrance to the box can­yon. Ryan winked at Krysty and swung up on the back of his horse. As a concession to the two Anglos, the Apaches had provided them with worn Western sad­dles.

  "Take care, lover," Krysty said. She patted J.B.'s animal on the flank as it walked past her. "Good luck, J.B. Bring us back a sec man for the pot, you hear me?"

  THEY CANTERED ALONG in the lee of a tall mesa. On top Ryan could just make out the tumbled ruins of pueblos, old before the first white man appeared on the continent.

  The sun was beginning to shine above the rim of the range of low hills away to the east. Ryan found such perfect weather unusual. The sky was an unsullied blue, with only the hint of a scattering of fluffy clouds at the edge of seeing, to the distant north. The chief led the way, with Ryan and J.B. in his dust. The rest of the Mescalero brought up the rear.

  A couple of miles from Drowned Squaw Canyon, on a back trail, they passed the ruins of an old adobe church. Its roof had tumbled in, whitened stumps of rafters showing against the crumbling walls. One window on the western flank of the building re­mained intact, a cross carved within it. The oak doors swung to and fro on the massive iron hinges, creaking in the soft breeze. Most of the graves had long since disappeared, but one stone, with a winged angel on top of it, remained. Ryan heeled his horse past so that he could try to decipher the faded wind-scoured in­scription.

  "Frederico Garcia Nolan," was the name. The dates were no longer legible. Using the angled shad­ows of the rising sun, Ryan was just able to make out a line beneath. "Loving the land, he now sleeps at peace beneath it. Stranger, ride by."

  He glanced around, looking out across the dra­matic land with its sculpted buttes and mesas. "Could be worse places to end up," he said.

  "A man should not lie beneath the dirt," Cuchillo Oro replied. "Out in the open, under the sky and sun and moon. That is the ending for a warrior."

  "It's a matter of opinion, Chief," Ryan said, push­ing his horse into a fast walk.

  STONES IN FACES RODE in front of the war party, scouting the trail with extreme caution. Cuchillo had told Ryan that there was little danger of being am­bushed by the Seventh Cavalry as they always went out in regular patrols. Also, they didn't know the region as the Mescalero did, with its winding trails, its loom­ing mesas and its snaking dry riverbeds.

  "Only danger is to ride blind-eyed into a camp of the pony soldiers," he said. "They do not come often so far from their rancheria that they need to spend a night away. They leave, as we did, at the dawning. But if they come to Many Deer Canyon, we shall be there before them."

  They guided their animals up a gentle slope, rising steadily toward a ridge of higher ground, then loop­ing west, diving down into the cool deeps of a narrow canyon. F
inally, following the hand signals of Stones in Face, they reached a natural bowllike plateau ringed with boulders. It commanded a view across a wide valley, with stunted trees lining the bed of a meander­ing stream and thick mesquite bushes. At its farther end there was a sharp-edged notch, barely ten feet across, that led through to the main trail.

  "This is Many Deer Canyon," the chief said. "The dog-faces will come through the gap and camp while they drink coffee and smoke by the water. That is al­ways their way."

  "But they might not come today?" J.B. asked, swinging stiffly down from the saddle, wincing at the soreness in his thighs and lower back.

  "They might not come," another of the warriors answered.

  "And they might not come tomorrow," Ryan said. "Or the next day."

  Cuchillo crouched by the edge of the plateau, star­ing out. "Only the spirits know these things. But, look, Ryan Cawdor. See the dust that rises there. I told you, my brother. It will be a good day for us to die."

  Of the eight men who stood upon the ridge watch­ing the lazy spiral of reddish dust, it would not be a good day for dying for two of them.

  The Armorer had brought his miniature binoculars with him, foldouts with image intensifiers. He stead­ied them against the top of one of the rocks, trying to focus on the oncoming patrol.

  "Too much damned dust," he said. "Can't see 'em properly. Means we can't fight them."

  The warrior named Long Knife sneered at that. "Anglos fear their own running dogs."

  "Now what the big fire's that supposed to mean!" Ryan exclaimed.

  "It means that we have fought for the history…" He hesitated. "That is the right word? History?"

  "Yeah. Go on."

  "The people have fought always. It is the will of Cuchillo Oro that you help us. How? By saying you cannot see!" He muttered something in his own tongue, spitting in the dirt, the saliva immediately soaking into the dust and vanishing.