“I wish Shalako would come back,” Laura said. He glanced at her. “So do I, Laura.
So do I.” Shalako Carlin bedded down on a patch of sparse, coarse grass well hidden by brush back of the ruined adobe cabin.
Originally built of rock, the cabin had evidently fallen to ruin, and then had been rebuilt with adobe bricks, and had now fallen to ruin again. But despite the shelter offered he had no intention of being caught within the walls, preferring freedom of movement.
Mohammet, stripped of saddle and bridle, was picketed on the rank grass of a slope just behind him. The night was still, and Shalako was dead tired … he fell asleep at once.
An owl hooted from a nearby tree, and a pack rat cowered at the sound, then sniffed curiously in the direction of the sleeping man.
Out in the forest a pine cone fell and the owl took off on lazy wings through the dark aisles of the scattered trees. The pack rat, relieved, moved hesitantly from the shelter of the cat’s-claw, circled the small clearing and disappeared on some nocturnal business of his own. A bat poised, fluttering dark wings in the air above the ruin, then swooped off, pursuing insects, and there was no other sound but the horse cropping grass. The stars hung their bright lanterns in a dark, still sky and the slight breeze carried a scent of pines along the high ridges.
A long time later, and far out among the trees, sound suddenly seemed to hesitate, and then for a moment there was silence. The stallion’s head came up alertly, ears pricked, and the man Shalako opened his eyes, and lay still, listening.
His guns were at hand, but he ignored them, reaching for his knife. He held the blade ready, cutting edge turned up … only a fool stabs down with a knife. There is too much bone structure in the upper part of the body… unless a man can find that particular vital spot. Holding the knife low, edge upward, one strikes at the soft parts of the body where no bones deflect the blow.
No sound … time went by, but he did not relax. Suddenly, the stallion drew back sharply and snorted, and Shalako smelled the Apache. It was a smell of woodsmoke, buckskin, and something acrid, strange.. . a shadow moved … lunged.
Shalako rolled to his knees. Unable to judge the position of the Indian in the darkness, he risked everything and slashed across in front of him, and felt the tip of the blade catch flesh. There was a muffled gasp and an iron grip seized his wrist.
Using the powerful muscles of his bent legs, Shalako straightened sharply, jerking the arm up and tearing it free. Instantly he smashed down with a closed fist and felt it thud against flesh.
The Indian lunged at him, his knife point tearing Shalako’s shirt. Shalako lunged in turn, missed, and the Indian seized his knife arm and tried to throw him over his shoulder. Instantly Shalako threw himself in the direction the Indian was throwing him, bunching his knees under him.
The sudden moving weight threw the Indian forward off balance and he fell on his face with Shalako’s knees riding his shoulders. Slippery as greased flesh can be, the Apache slid from under Shalako and came to his feet. Shalako rose with him and thrust home with the knife.
The blade took the Indian under the arm and went all the way in, and Shalako felt the warm gush of blood over his hand as he drew back on the knife. The Indian uttered a low cry and fell backward.
Shalako stepped back, catching his breath, and talking softly to quiet the frightened stallion. He stood perfectly still, watching the dark blotch where the Apache had fallen. He could hear the rasping gasps of the dying man, but he was not trusting the sound, and he waited.
Apparently the lone Apache had been left without a horse by some action of which Shalako knew nothing, and had hoped to get both horse and weapons from him. Yet it worried him that the Indian should be here. Had he been followed? Or had the Indian come upon his trail by accident?
After several minutes had passed and he heard no further sounds, he dropped to his haunches and struck a shielded match.
The Apache was short, powerfully-built-and dead. That first, blind blow with the knife had caught the Indian’s shoulder, then cut across his throat, tearing a razor like gash that covered the Apache with blood.
A relatively new breech-loading Springfield lay on the ground nearby, an Army rifle.
The Apache wore an Army belt and an ammunition pouch. The rifle stock was hand buffed and could not have been out of the soldier’s hands for more than a few days, perhaps only a few hours. That stock had been given loving care by a man who appreciated fine wood, something with which no Apache would have bothered.
So the Army was in the field, and probably not far away. If so the possibilities were that Chato was in full flight toward the border, but avid for rapine and murder, hungry for horses and loot.
Untying the stallion, he saddled up, and, sliding the extra rifle into the boot, he checked the loads on his own Winchester ‘76. The first gray was lightening the eastern sky when he crossed the saddle into Wolf Canyon.
Ten miles to the south and east, Bosky Fulton turned on his side and opened his eyes.
He got up, absentmindedly brushing needles and grass from his clothing, while listening for what the pre-dawn had to offer. It was time to be moving.
He was irritable and worried. The country would be alive with Indians, and he decided his best route would be toward Stein’s Pass. Yet he was uneasy, and even after he had saddled up, he did not at once move out.
For the first time he had something to lose, and it worried him. He had money and jewels enough to make him a moderately rich man, and he intended a wild time in San Francisco.
He was somewhere southeast and mostly east of Animas Peak, and the thought of crossing Animas Valley worried him. The valley was a wide-open route south into Sonora and Chihuahua, and a logical route for the Apaches to take. The trail near which he had bedded down led right into the Animas Valley.
He waited a long time, then led his horse forward and waited again. After a while he stepped into the saddle and rode out into the narrow trail. He was somewhere near Walnut Creek, and there was still some distance to go be fore reaching the valley.
Bosky Fulton scratched warily under his arm and looked cautiously around. He had a way of turning his head without moving his shoulders, dropping his head forward and looking around over his shoulder from the corners of his eyes. He was worried and wary. He recalled all too well a time when he had found two teamsters tied head down to the rear wheels of their wagon. Low fires had been built under their heads.
It was an old Apache trick.
Scared? He was scared all right. No man in his right mind rode through Apache country and was not scared. He was scared, all right, but he was ready, too.
That Carnarvon woman … he thought of her suddenly. By the Lord Harry he’d like to There would be plenty of women in San Francisco and with the money he had, he could pick and choose. He walked his horse slowly forward, touching his dry lips with his tongue.
Some miles ahead of him, the Apache known as Tats ah-das-ay-go slid down from the rocks to a point behind the ruined cabin. He found where the stallion had been tied, and he found the dead Apache.
He stared down at him with contempt. He had at tacked a sleeping man and had been killed!
Tats-ah-das-ay-go squatted on his heels against the cabin wall and smoked, and as he smoked he read the sign left by Shalako and the Apache with the ease of a man reading print.
The white-eyes had awakened, or had been lying awake. He could see where his knees had been and where his feet had pushed off as he lunged, and the fighting had taken place a few feet away from where the white-eyes had slept.
He left small trail, this white-eyes, and he slept lightly. He was a warrior, and he wore moccasins, Apache moccasins … perhaps he had lived among them? To kill such a man would be a great feat.
Tats-ah-das-ay-go got to his feet and returned among the rocks to his horse.
Yes, a great feat….
Chapter Four.
I t was noon of April 22, two days after the San Carlos fight, t
hat Lieutenant Hall cut the trail of the von Hallstatt party.
Trailing the wagons, the lieutenant came upon the deserted ranch where the remains of the fight lay all about. His scouts worked out a puzzling story that to some extent coincided with his own observations.
There had been a fight with the Apaches; one dead Apache was found within the wagon circle. Apparently the defense had been successful for the wagons had not been looted by Apaches … that was obvious from things left be hind.
Whoever looted them had made a systematic search for valuables, passing up many things any Apache would have taken. And the Apaches would have carried away the body of their dead warrior.
“Two parties left here, Lieutenant. The first party with most of the horses and one wagon headed south toward the border. The other bunch with two horses and one man carried in a stretcher-wounded man, most likely-cut off southwest.”
He indicated the broken boards of an ammunition box. “I count enough shells for one used-up box. They made a fight of it, then there must have been trouble among them.
“The wagon had four horses hitched to it, and, by their hoofs, small stock. Riding stock, more’n likely. Four of the men with that wagon had flat-heeled boots … teamsters, I take it.”
“Well, what do you think?”
The scout squatted on his heels, considered a minute, then spat into the sand. “Thievery, that’s what I think. That damn’ fool Fritz come a high-tailing it into this country with a pack of no-account thieves.
“Rio Hockett never did have no brains. Nervy man, but bullheaded and no-account.
I take it he and his crowd helped fight off the Indians, then looted the wagons and pulled out for Mexico.”
Lieutenant Hall considered the situation, then mounted his troop and rode off on the trail of the wagon.
By midafternoon they had come up to the wagon. It had been looted and burned, and all about lay the mutilated bodies of the slain men. The lieutenant or the trackers knew most of them by name, and the last one to be found was Hockett.
“Good riddance,” Lieutenant Hall said briefly, “the man was a thief and a troublemaker.”
“He made a fight of it,” the scout said, indicating the brass shells lying about.
“Now here’s an odd thing… his gun belt is gone. Taken by somebody who came up behind the rocks.” The scout pointed to the heelprint of a boot. “I’d say that was Fulton.
Didn’t see his body down there, and if anybody would get out of a mess-up like this here, it would be Bosky.”
“He got away?” Lieutenant Hall was incredulous. “Sure as shootin’. Man had small feet, and so had Fulton. Seen his track many a time. Him an’ Hockett run together, an’ bad as Hockett was, he was tame stuff to Fulton.”
“He will have to get on as best he can,” the lieutenant said briefly. “We must find the hunting party.”
Turning north, they skirted the Hatchets. With luck they would cut the trail of the party with the wounded man and the women. Such a group had small chance of survival, and the mystery remained. Why had they turned south?
“They’ve got a man with them who didn’t start with them,” the scout said. “Counting the bodies back there and what we found at the ranch, I figure Harding and Harris stayed with the Eastern party, but there’s another “Wells, what about Wells?”
“Could be. Don’t act like him though.”
Miles away, beyond two valleys and the Animas Range, another situation was developing.
Lieutenant McDonald halted his command. It was very hot. Dust arose from every step the horses took and when the troop halted the dust cloud drifted over them and settled upon their clothing, their faces, and in their nostrils. Aside from himself, all were Yuma or Mohave Indians except for the corporal, a stocky man with a beet-red face, and a veteran soldier.
The lieutenant’s mission: to find Indian trails recently made, to locate raiding Apaches and report to the main body under Colonel Forsyth. No man was better qualified for the job, nor was any man more conscientious in performance of his duty.
At this moment, Lieutenant McDonald was worried. So far he had found no tracks, but three days had transpired since the San Carlos attack, and the air smelled of trouble.
The fact that he had seen no Apaches was no consolation, for he lived by the old rule: When you see Apaches, be afraid; and when you see no Apaches, be twice as afraid.
Fear was not a thing of which to be ashamed unless a man let fear conquer him. Fear could be a spur to action and a safeguard against carelessness. McDonald had helped to bury a good many soldiers who were reckless or took unnecessary risks.
Yuma Bill, who rode beside him, pointed toward the Pelonchillo Mountains, his face as dark and craggy as the mountains he indicated. “I think,” he suggested, as he pointed.
“We’ll have a look, Bill.”
McDonald lighted his pipe. Why he wanted it at all he did not know, for the smoke was dry and hot, and his uniform smelled of stale tobacco, stale sweat, stale dust, and stale horse. He wished longingly for a cold drink, a drink with ice in it, and he grinned at the thought. How long had it been since he had such a drink? Two years?
Nearly three.
Yet this was a brand of warfare at which he felt at home. He had never been a spit-and-polish soldier, and never cared for the brass-bound posts back East. When he arrived on the southwest frontier he knew he had found a home … this was for him.
Lieutenant McDonald knew his Indians and they knew him, and every day he learned from them. He was a fighting man with no taste for formal drill, dress uniforms, or parade formations. Most drill was a waste of time, based on the demands of an outmoded idea of warfare, and their practical utility had ceased long since.
The only sensible training for troops was to teach them to fight and survive fighting, and every moment such training was not being given was a moment wasted.
It was battle that paid off, battle was the beginning and the end of a soldier’s life. The Apache, the greatest guerrilla fighter the world ever knew, had never heard of close-order drill or any kind of training except in fighting and surviving.
Now, with four scouts ranging out ahead of them to cut any possible trail, they started on.
Yuma Bill rode ahead to join them, and before they had gone fifty yards, he turned in the saddle and waved. The trail was there. A small party of Apaches, their trail not twelve hours old, moving toward the Gila. At once he sent a scout to inform Colonel Forsyth, then proceeded at a more cautious pace.
Within the mile another party of Indians had joined the first, making a band considerably larger than Mc Donald’s detachment.
McDonald rode warily. He could sense the worry among the members of his command, and he did not blame them. He paused frequently to study the terrain, and changed his direction of travel several times to make am bush difficult.
He could feel Indians. Even Yuma Bill, ordinarily a tough, unresponsive sort, seemed nervous. Nobody but a fool would want to ride into an ambush of twice their number of Apaches, and it was their very wariness that saved them.
At this time McDonald was sixteen miles from the main body under Forsyth.
Somewhere in this vast sweep of desert and mountains was a small party of men and women with no experience at Indian fighting, and that party, if not already destroyed, was undoubtedly being stalked by the Apaches.
Heat waves lifted with the stifling dust. McDonald mopped sweat and dust from his gaunt features and swore. His uniform felt stiff and heavy in the burning heat and his suspenders chafed his shoulders. The heat that rose from the sand and rocks was like that from the top of a stove.
Nothing moved … before them Horseshoe Canyon opened a way into the mountains. McDonald looked with misgiving at the towering cliffs, at the opening before them.
Yuma Bill, now riding point, was well out in front. He walked his horse into the rocky maw of the canyon. A moment later, McDonald saw him lift a hand.
When they came up to where he had
stopped he was standing over the remains of a hastily smothered fire from which a thin tendril of smoke still lifted.
McDonald mopped the sweat from his face, squinting his eyes against the glare to survey the cliffs and the rocks. Deep within him he knew he was in serious trouble, for this fire could have been smothered only moments be fore … perhaps even as they approached.
Had the Apaches fled? Or did they lurk back in the rocks? And how many were there?
“How many would you guess?”
Yuma Bill shrugged. “Maybe five, maybe six here” he gestured toward the rocks-“but who knows how many there?”
Should he now await Forsyth’s arrival? Or should he advance into the canyon?
It was the problem of command, and no one could share his decision or his responsibility.
If he sent another man for Forsyth and there were only a few Indians who had fled at his approach, Forsyth and the 4th Cavalry would have ridden sixteen miles in the hot sun to no purpose. On the other hand, if he went ahead on his own, if he explored the situation a little further… ?
“We will move along,” he said, but as he turned in his saddle to give the command there was a shadow of movement among the rocks. His shout was lost in a smashing volley, and two of his men tumbled from their saddles. One of them started up, lifting his rifle, only to fall again.
McDonald fired his pistol at a fleeting brown body and saw the Apache catch in mid-stride, then half lunge, half-fall into the rocks and out of sight.
The roar of guns and the wild, shrill yells of the Indians were all about him. Coolly, he directed the movement of his small detachment to the crest of a low hill. Even as he shouted his orders he was aiming and firing, trying to make every shot count.
This was the virtue of training, of conditioning, that in an emergency one always knew what to do. Panic only entered the empty mind.
Grabbing the shoulder of a scout, he swung the man toward his own horse. “Get Forsyth” he yelled hoarsely, amid the bark of guns.
The Indian leaped to the back of the horse and was gone in a long leap. That was the battalion race horse and, if he had speed, now was the time to use it.
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