‘What is it?’
‘This plan. You don’t think maybe that the Major’s aiming to… kind of…’
‘Wheel and deal on me? Use me to do what he’s never had the guts to do himself?’
‘I wouldn’t want it thought, Mister Herne, that those were the sentiments of a junior serving officer in the Cavalry of the United States of America, concerning my superior. That would be disloyalty.’
‘But you can think it, just the same. I know it and so do you.’
Pinner frowned. ‘I’d just say that I wouldn’t count too much on everything being like the Major says it is.’
Herne had grinned.
‘Major thinks he’s using me as a way of getting rid of One Eye and his band. Doesn’t occur to him maybe I’m just using him as a way of getting in there. What I do when I’m in there’ll depend on what I find. If n I get time, and I doubt I will, then you’ll see a whole lot of smoke.’
And so they’d left it. First light would be around five, and by then Herne wanted to be close enough to knock over the sentry. Or sentries. Trail like that could easily be watched by one man, but if One Eye was any use as a leader, then he’d have taken the precaution of doubling up.
Fifteen minutes after five and Pinner and his men would ride around the opening to the Canyon, yelling and shooting and making enough noise to convince the Apaches that it was a genuine attack on their stronghold. That should distract them from checking out their guards on the rear entrance to the camp.
That was the theory.
Now, huddled against the morning chill behind a massive boulder, was the time to put it into practice. The time to think through your next move, and check your weapons.
The honed bayonet — a relic from Jed’s days with Quantrill’s raiders — stuck down the inside of the right boot, in its own sheath. The Sharps rifle stayed in its bucket with the horse, back out of sight. It was a great gun if you wanted to pick a man off a wall at a quarter mile, but not a lot of use in the mission that Herne was on. If there was going to be any shooting, and there probably was, then the well-worn Colt would be what was needed. Something to stop a man at twenty yards.
He squinted up the hill, along where the faint ghost of the trail wound out of sight. There was the pale sliver of a young moon, sinking out of sight. And the first touch of light, signaling the false dawn that was coming closer. Time to stop the thinking and get on with the moving.
The Devil’s Playground was a tortured landscape, with its rocks baked by the New Mexico sun and frozen by the cold of the nights. During the day they would be too hot to touch, and now they were as cold as a drowned corpse. Jed slithered his way among them, gun in its holster, and knife in its sheath. He was backing himself to beat even a Mescalero by hearing them before they heard him.
Noise would carry a mile or more in the stillness and to try and sneak up on armed guards with either the Colt or the bayonet in his hand would have vastly increased the risk of an accidental sound.
In the past, Jed had fought against many of the more troublesome Indian tribes. Sioux and Cheyenne. Arapaho and Apache. But he’d never been involved in a mission on his own, trying to get in and out of a closely-guarded camp.
‘It’s only money,’ he whispered to himself, thinking in the solitary darkness of the solemn-faced girl eight thousand miles away in an English school. Rebecca Yates, her gentle and orthodox British education depending on his own skill with the bullet and blade. Her French and Latin paid for by the blood of other men. Maybe, ultimately, by his own blood.
Step by silent step, feeling his way forwards as the path steepened, keeping low against the boulders, ears straining for the first clue. The sound that would tell him where the enemy was.
If he had been responsible for that back trail to the Canyon, he would have put three guards to it. Two at the top, and his best man half-way down. He was nearly at the top, able to see the glow of cooking fires from the other side of the ridge, before he saw the sentries.
Two of them, close together. Sitting by a small fire, huddled under blankets, the barrels of their rifles sticking up against the red light of the flames. Heads leaning forwards, deep in conversation. As Herne crawled closer still, he caught the low sound of their talking.
He had to take a gamble, on whether there might be a change of the sentries before dawn. But it was more likely that they would change around the time the camp came to life and the first food of the day was served. So that the new men could eat and then make the steep climb up to the look-out point to relieve the guards from the night.
It was a gamble, as he would be dead if he met the replacement warriors on their way up, while he was on the way down. But it was a gamble that he had to take. There wasn’t any choice.
For several long minutes, Jed Herne remained quite still, eyes never leaving the two men. Trying in that short time to get into the minds of two young Mescalero warriors. Guessing what kind of men they were. How alert they would be to any movement around them.
Suddenly, the one to his right stood up, and walked straight towards the boulder where he was crouching. Herne’s bayonet whispered from its sheath, gleaming dully in the reflected light of the dying fire. The Apache was still wrapped in the blanket, his rifle trailing in the right hand. Jed knew that he couldn’t have been seen, so …?
The answer came soon enough. When he was a few paces from the hiding white man, the Indian stopped. He bent down and laid his rifle silently on the path, then straightened and turned away from his comrade by the fire. And loosened his belt, letting down white cotton trousers. Laying the blanket alongside him as he squatted behind a large rock.
It was a lucky break, and Jed hadn’t lived as long as he had by missing up on such chances. He ghosted from his hiding-place, one eye on the other sentry who remained crouched by the fire. The bayonet probing at the darkness in front of him, Herne moved forwards.
The Mescalero had just finished what he had been doing, and was standing up, the pale moons of his buttocks clearly visible. Herne made his move, taped hilt of the knife gripped in his right hand. Powering his way across the few steps of sand that separated them. Left arm snaking around the shorter man’s neck, clamping across the wind-pipe like a band of steel. Tightening and lifting, bringing the Mescalero clear off the ground, his jaw open, breath croaking in his throat as he fought silently for his life.
Turning his left hip slightly, to brace the struggling man against him, Herne the Hunter brought his right arm across his stomach. Felt delicately with the point of the knife for the correct place. The Mescalero jerked as the needle-tip pierced his skin. With a quick half-step, Jed turned his opponent so that the whole of his back was a target for the bayonet.
The pale color of the Indian’s cotton shirt helped. The blade hissed in, thrust with all of Jed’s strength, angling up between the left ribs, and slicing through the walls of the Apache’s heart, killing him almost instantly. The body jerked and kicked, but Jed held on, keeping his arm locked round the man’s neck, squeezing tightly to prevent any sound which would warn the second sentry.
Only when the corpse hung still and limp did he relax his grip, pulling out the knife and letting the body slide gently to the earth. He wiped the warm blood from the blade, and stood up again, eyes searching for the other guard.
He was still sitting huddled over the fire, clutching his rifle. He half-turned as the body shifted, disturbing the layer of tiny pebbles on the trail, and called out. Something that Herne hoped didn’t require an answer, as he was too far from the man to hope to take him silently, and a shot would bring a dozen armed warriors scrambling up after him. He’d get away without any great problem, but it would mean the end of any chance of rescue for Emmie-Lou Parsons. And that meant the end of his own chance of picking up the balance of the bounty from her loving husband.
Eighteen hundred and seventy-five dollars would buy a term’s schooling with enough left over for him to live a few weeks, and maybe think about buying a new mount.
But all that was in the future. Whitey Coburn used to say that a gunman who started worrying about his future would wake up one morning to find that he hadn’t got one.
It was very quiet on top of the spur, with only the faintest breath of wind stirring the night air. Far away to the east, the false dawn had vanished, but it was being replaced by the pink glow of the sun-rise. Another few minutes and it would begin to lighten.
Just as he started forward, knife flicking out in front of him like a snake’s tongue, the scream tore at the blackness. So despairing and lonesome that it racked at the ears, and made the night that much colder. It was a blind and insensate cry, seeking help where there could not possibly be any.
High and thin, wailing away into the desert, and bouncing from crag to crag of the Mogollons. Pain of a shuddering desolate kind was in the scream, and Herne closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the noise as it rasped on and on. Rising and falling, and finally sliding down the scale to a low, almost liquid bubbling.
He’d heard that sort of noise before, and knew what it was. Unless they’d caught any other whites, it meant that the ramrod, Tanner, was nearing the end of the line.
The guard also heard the noise - so loud that it must even have carried to the waiting troopers - and he stood up and walked nearer to the edge of the drop to the camp, shouting something back to his comrade.
Laughing at the suffering scream.
Wild anger blazed in Herne’s mind at the callous and brutal indifference to the pain of others, and he came as close as he had come for many years to reverting to the blind fury of his youth. He was filled with a burning desire to leap on the unsuspecting Mescalero and beat him to the stones. Pound and crush that face and laughing mouth to a bloody pulp, and then throw the corpse over the cliff.
But the calmness of reason inched back, and he stood still, shaking slightly with the effort, hands down at his sides while he took a half dozen deep breaths. Only when he knew he was again under control did he stare through the dimness, seeing the man still shrouded in his blanket, looking down over West Wind Canyon.
It was a dozen steps to the guard, and he took them at close to a normal pace, putting his trust in the fact that the man might turn at any moment, but would probably think the grating of boots on the sandy stones came from his returning brother. It was a reasonable thing to think, with the food waiting for him down in the village, and sleep not far off.
He began his turn as Herne reached his shoulder, but never completed it. The left hand pulled at the Apache’s hair, jerking him off balance, while the razor-edge of the old bayonet hacked through his throat, drowning the cry for help in a welter of blood.
The man struggled so hard against the red flood of death that a great clump of his lank hair was ripped from his skull, and it took all of Herne’s strength to stop the Mescalero from toppling over the edge of the ravine and alerting the whole camp to his presence.
Finally the fountain became a trickle, and the arms and legs hung limply. Jed lowered the blood-sodden corpse to the stones, wiping the bayonet on one of the few remaining clean patches of the Apache’s shirt. Rubbed his hands dry of the grease from the hair, and stood up, taking several deep breaths to ready himself for the next stage of the attempted rescue.
After that one scream, there had been more or less total silence from the camp. Peering down into the black cauldron of West Wind Canyon, he could see the red dots of the fires, and the dark outlines of the couple of dozen wickiups, scattered around the bottom of the boxed end. Away behind him the sky was still lightening, as the dawn grew closer.
Although everything was still going according to plan, Herne knew that time was slipping inexorably away from him. The narrow path down the rocky walls of the Canyon would be difficult enough to climb in the darkness, but it would be fatal to try and claw his way down in the light. He took out his silver half-hunter and peered at it, turning it so that the fingers reflected the faint light of morning.
It was close to five. In a little over a quarter of an hour, Pinner would be starting his diversion, and the Apache camp would be humming like a hive of angry bees. When that happened, Herne wanted to be close to the camp, ready to move in.
He stepped cautiously closer to the brink of the drop, seeing the path winding down below him for a few feet, before it disappeared into the darkness. It would not be an easy climb in daylight. At night it would be damnably dangerous.
Making sure that the thong across the hammer held his Colt safely in the holster, he began the descent, picking his way with silent care among the boulders and crags of the sandstone mountain.
The information from the Cavalry had been pretty accurate. It was around a hundred feet straight down, and that would be more than enough to spread him very thin. Herne had never been fond of heights, and he felt a momentary dizziness as he paused about twenty feet from the top. The trail snaked backwards and forwards across the face of the cliff, picking its way among the jutting knives of stone.
The light was improving fast, and he could now see a couple of figures moving in the gloom of the camp. Squaws, getting ready for the first meal. Probably tepary beans, with a little butter. Or a chili stew with blue corn bread. He imagined that he could smell it, rising from the depths below him, and he grinned ruefully to himself, wishing he’d brought some jerky with him to stave off the pangs of hunger.
He was just rounding one of the great hanging outcrops that nearly blocked the pathway, his mind drifting away to thoughts of food.
When he bumped straight into the Apache warrior carrying a rifle.
Chapter Six
Part of Herne’s mind was thinking about the food. Which lost him a little of the edge he should have had. But there was a difference in the two men’s reaction times to the confrontation. The Apache was still sleepy, clambering stolidly up the pathway to relieve the two night sentries. For in the day it would be impossible for anyone to get within two miles of the Canyon without being spotted from the top.
In all the time that the Mescalero Indians had camped in West Wind Canyon nobody had ever attempted to scale the heights and attack from the rear. So he was quite unprepared for a meeting with a white man on the pathway. Although Herne cursed himself for letting his concentration slip, he was at least partly prepared for a chance encounter with one of the Apaches. Which made his response that vital fraction of a second quicker than the warrior.
The light was racing across the land, and Herne could clearly see the man’s face as he started to react to the presence of the intruder on the path. His jaw began to open, and the rifle was on the way up from low down. Too low down to have a chance against a man of the caliber of Herne the Hunter.
Both men had taken an instinctive step backwards at the encounter, Jed going for the Colt - and finding the hammer snagged by the leather thong that held it safe while he was climbing. Fumbling with it cost a valuable half second, giving the Indian time to bring the Winchester up, right hand going for the trigger, right thumb groping for the hammer.
Even as he finally got his own pistol clear of the leather, Jed knew that he’d lost the war, even though he reckoned he’d win the battle. By shooting the Mescalero, he would wake up the entire camp, and that would end his chances of getting in to rescue Emmie-Lou Parsons. That lone despairing scream had told him that Tanner would be beyond any help of any man.
The speed of the white man’s draw froze the stretched smile of triumph on the face of the squat Apache. He had never thought it would have been possible for Herne to reach for his Colt and level it before the Winchester blasted him from the path to the hunting-ground of the white-eyes. Yet the hammer of the rifle had barely begun to move back and already he was staring down the gaping barrel of the handgun.
‘Sorry,’ said Herne, squeezing the narrow trigger of the Colt, feeling its familiar kick against the wrist. But his regret wasn’t for the Apache, who would have shot him if he had taken his chance, but for the pretty young girl who must now
be left behind him.
The bullet hit the warrior in the center of the chest, splintering its way through his breast-bone, angling off into his lungs and exiting beneath the right shoulder. The force of the blow sent him staggering backwards, cannoning off the red-tinted boulder, leaving a brighter splash of red across it. The rifle clattered from his hands, sliding a few feet and then stopping on the edge of the drop.
His fingers clamped on the entrance hole of the bullet, trying to force the life back within his body, half-leaning and half-falling, bracing himself with his unwounded shoulder, eyes flat and expressionless, lips opening and closing like those of an old man.
At such close range, Herne had been forced by safety to go for a body shot, though it would always take longer to kill a man than a bullet in the head. Now the Apache might take a minute or longer to die. Jed glanced down, peeping cautiously over the top of the rocks, seeing the effect that the shot had caused in the Mescalero village. As he had expected it brought men and woman pouring from their wickiups, shouting and gesticulating.
He suddenly realized that they couldn’t tell where the shot had come from, masked behind the rocks, so high above them, echoing and swirling around the Canyon, making it quite impossible to locate.
The dying man made a great effort to reach his knife, letting the blood flow unchecked from his chest, soaking through the flowered cotton shirt. He blinked several times, as though he was trying to clear a mist from his eyes, and took a faltering step from the support of the boulder. Herne knew that a second shot would give his position away, and held back, hoping that he might at least have a free climb back to safety.
Then two things happened simultaneously which altered his plans in a dramatic fashion.
The damage to the torn tissue of his lungs was suddenly too much for the Apache, who dropped to his knees, bright red blood frothing from his mouth and spurting down his nose, across his chin, and pattering into the dry sand. His hands reached out, like a penitent agonizing for a touch of a religious relic, then slipped gently forward, like a swimmer entering deep water, lying very still with the tips of his fingers only inches from Herne’s feet.
Apache Squaw Page 4