Apache Squaw

by John J. McLaglen

  ‘That dress making it hard?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not taking it off. I’ve had enough of being unclothed, Mister...? I don’t even know your name.’

  Her voice was ragged, and Herne realized she was only just holding on to sanity. The horror of what she had seen, and what they must have done to her, followed by the seemingly miraculous rescue had tipped her to the edge of madness. If she cracked up now, he wouldn’t be able to carry her. And that would be the best part of nineteen hundred dollars lost.

  He decided to be gentle.

  ‘Maybe on the way back home you can tell me some of it. If’n you want to. But right now we got to move out of this arroyo before old One Eye and his brothers come a’gallopin’ after us. I’ll cut a strip off the bottom of that squaw’s dress, and that’ll make it a whole lot easier to move up this slope.’ He kneeled at her feet, using the bayonet to slice off eighteen inches from the bottom of the deerskin robe.

  ‘I can’t do it, Mister...?’

  ‘Herne. Jedediah Herne. Your husband hired me to come and get you out of this place.’

  ‘And take me home?’

  She infected the word ‘home’ with a bitter hatred that made Herne look up.

  ‘Have you met Lishe? My husband?’

  ‘Sure. He came to me. Seemed plenty worried about you, Mrs. Parsons. There. That’s done. Now we’d best get to climbin’ this trail.’

  ‘Did you like my husband?’

  ‘Mrs. Parsons. In a couple of minutes from now, that camp down there is goin’ to be brimmin’ over with Apaches. And we stand out up here like a dead dog on a dinner table. I’ll talk all you like when we’re over the top and away, but until then, let’s cut it out.’

  ‘I want to know. Have to know, Mister Herne. And I won’t move unless…’

  ‘Lady! We don’t have the time. If I have to I’ll bend this gun barrel over your head and carry you.’ Herne knew how impossible that would be, but he had to do something.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Right.’ Jed was blazingly angry, unable to understand why Emmie-Lou Parsons was behaving this way. ‘Your husband, Mrs. Parsons, is not the sort of man I personally would choose if I wanted a fun-filled evening of happy laughter. That answer your question?’

  She nodded, raising a hand to push back her tangled hair from off her face. ‘Yes. Maybe we can talk a spell when we get out?’

  ‘Maybe. Now…Oh! Christ above! Here they come!’

  It may have been the pause in the action from the Cavalry. Or the shooting from behind them. Or one of the squaws could have run to the neck of the Canyon with a warning for One Eye. It didn’t matter at all. All that mattered was that there were a half dozen mounted bucks charging along the bottom of the steep-sided valley. All carrying repeating rifles.

  And Herne and the woman were still less than half the way up the trail to freedom.

  One of Billy Bonney’s favorite sayings was, ‘There’s always a way out. Just a matter of findin’ it.’ Not that there’d been a way out for Billy the Kid when Pat Garrett dry-gulched him in Pete Maxwell’s bedroom in Fort Sumner.

  That was just a touch over two years earlier. Jed had heard the news within days of the Kid’s death. The best part of a year before his own life was blown apart and his wife died.

  Now it looked like his time might be over. If they carried on upwards, then the Apaches could catch them before they got to the top. Furthermore, there were parts of the trail exposed to rifle fire from the Mescalero camp.

  ‘What do we do?’ Emmie-Lou Parsons asked plaintively.

  ‘Keep well down. Hands and knees. On the way up you’ll find a body or two. Keep on goin’. They’ll not concern you. Now git!’

  ‘What about…?’

  ‘I’ll come up slower, and make them buy the path. And the price is goin’ to be damned high.’

  He thought she was going to carry on the discussion, but she caught the look in his eyes, and shut her mouth. She had seen that kind of hardness in Lishe’s face, and knew it was time to do as she was told. Although the face of her rescuer had the same hardness as her husband, somehow it wasn’t as cold or as passionless.

  As she scrambled away, keeping as low as she could, the pebbles scraping her knees, Emmie-Lou thought more about the face of Jed Herne.

  It was a relief to have her off his back, and he settled down comfortably, with his shoulders against a towering crag, just round one of the twists in the rocky trail, and waited. He knew that the women would have seen which way they went. Short of trying the almost certainly suicidal tactic of hiding somewhere inside the camp, the back entrance was the only place they could have gone.

  There was shouting from far beneath him, and several shots cracked out. None of them coming anywhere near enough to cause him any anxiety. From where he rested he could see neither Mrs. Parsons, nor any of the Mescalero braves. He just hoped she didn’t show herself. The path opened out over the last twenty feet, and that was the danger point.

  His task was to make sure the Apaches were too busy to worry about anyone clawing up that last part of the trail. Two men with rifles, taking their time, could stand in the camp and close off the path. But he guessed that One Eye wouldn’t want to do it that way. He’d be blazing angry, wishing to avenge the deaths of the women and the child.

  The shooting had stopped. The gunfire from the open mouth of West Wind Canyon had died down to a faltering and irregular crackle. The Cavalry had done what they could, but time had run out.

  Although the track wasn’t that high, it was steep and treacherous. And narrow enough to stop the Indians coming up it as a bunch. Herne wriggled back so that he was just around the side of the rock, ready to make his move when he was sure the Mescalero hunters were on the straight part immediately beneath him.

  As the sun rose higher, he began to sweat. There was a faint breath of wind springing up, and he took off his hat, letting it blow through his greying hair. He stuck out his lower lip and blew air up across his face. Leaning there and waiting. Looking as relaxed as if he was dozing away by the local fishing-hole on a Sabbath afternoon.

  But his nerves were taut and ready. He caught the scratch of a foot on the rocks, followed by a muttered word. It was difficult to locate noise up there, bouncing about off the crags and giving false echoes. The sound of men grew louder. If he let them get too close before making a move, they would swamp him. Better to move too soon.

  ‘Hell!’

  Too soon.

  The canyon had tricked him. Although his ears had told him the chasing Apaches were nearly on top of him, they were still a whole bend of the path away. The first of them had only just taken the first cautious step into sight, looking back to tell the others the way was clear.

  Herne’s bullet told them different, hitting the brave in the left shoulder, sending him three steps back, dropping his gun, arms flailing. He had only been two steps from the edge of the drop, and disappeared over it with a great cry of pain and shock and anger. A cry that was only stopped by the wet thump of his body hitting the rocks below.

  A rifle appeared around the turn of the path, and five shots blazed away in Jed’s general direction. But by then he was safely out of sight behind the crag, already scuttling up the next straight bit to further cover.

  ‘We will catch you, killer of babies!’

  ‘Stealer of women and burner of helpless prisoners! You are a running dog who fears his shadow.’

  ‘I will kill you, white eyes!!’

  ‘Then come and do it. Or go back to the wickiups and tend to your squaws. They are braver than cowardly One Eye!’

  While he spoke, Herne had ejected the spent cartridge, ramming home a fresh round. Spinning the chamber to make sure he had the full six rounds. It was habit to check, though he was so used to the weight of the Colt that he could have told if someone had filed a quarter inch off one of the bullets.

  ‘You will not run free. When we have you we run down the white woman and I will teach her abo
ut running from me.’

  ‘Seems everyone wants to stop Mrs. Parsons running away from them,’ commented Jed to himself.

  A shower of small pebbles cascaded from high above him, telling him that Emmie-Lou must be close to the top. And that thought reminded him that the body of the third of the sentries he’d killed must be close to where he was. If his memory was right the corpse would be starting to stiffen up on the next twist of the trail.

  He reached around his cover and fired two quick shots, making a dash along one of the more open parts of the path to the next bend. A ragged volley of shots followed him, one of them spitting splinters of stone within a yard of his right hand. Then he collapsed, panting with the effort of the steep climb, and reloaded yet again. There was always the temptation during a break in the action to sit back and gather breath. First things had to be done first. And the very first of all was to keep a fully loaded gun.

  The body was still where he’d left it, though a light film of dust lay across it where Emmie-Lou had scrambled by. Herne sat and looked at it, and grinned.

  ‘Only useful Indian around here is going to be you.’

  There were five of the Mescalero braves left alive, including their chief, One Eye. The way Herne figured it, there was only one way of making sure that he and Emmie-Lou Parsons got away clean, and that was to kill all of them. And if that wasn’t possible, then he had to try and get them off his back.

  The body of the man he had killed half-way down the trail was only slightly stiff, sprawled forwards on its face, the pool of blood crimson at its center, and darkening to brown at the edges as it began to congeal. Both chest and back were heavily stained with drying blood, but that didn’t make his plan impossible. Waving away the insects that were eagerly lapping at the feast, Jed heaved the corpse to its feet, and dragged it awkwardly to the boulder that blocked off the turning of the trail. Propping it against himself, draping the limp arms on his own shoulders. Held it round the neck with his left hand, keeping the right free for the Colt. Then all there was to do was wait and listen.

  Below, One Eye was leading his men, urging them to keep silent in their pursuit of this dog who had killed half a dozen of their women while the pony-soldiers in blue kept them pinned down at the entrance to West Wind Canyon. But they had made the Cavalry pay for their feint. The young officer with them had brought them in too close so that some of the Mescalero sharp-shooters were able to get above them, and fire down over the top of their meager cover. Killing, One Eye reckoned, at least eight or nine.

  So that meant that it had been equal. Though the white man they stalked now must have disposed of at least two sentries to sneak in the way that he had. One Eye wanted him in his hands, and he also wanted the white woman back. He was conscious of the instant swelling at the front of his cotton trousers at the memory of the pleasure that he had taken of her. He and all of the other warriors.

  Though she had laid passive and still at the beginning, her nature had betrayed her. They had held her still. Easily with their greater strength and numbers. Braves took it in turns to stand across her wrists, while others each held a leg, forcing her thighs wide apart, to ease the entrance for their brothers. Yet after seven of them had spent their lust in her, the woman had begun to roll and kick and cry out. At first in anger. But later she had cried out and the Mescalero men had laughed for they knew it was no longer anger, but a need to be taken and taken brutally and often.

  One Eye wished that he had her there, between his legs, so that he could ride out his hatred of the white race on her, But first there was this lone man to take. The path would be too steep for him to move fast without being heard. Perhaps he was waiting around the next bend.

  ‘Aaaargh! No! Help! Help!!’

  The Mescalero chief looked round at his brothers, wondering what the cry meant. Could one of the sentries have sneaked up from the top of the Canyon and surprised the dog?

  ‘Red Wolf. Take care and look around the twist of the path and see what happens. Beware in case the white man tries to fool us.’

  The Apache named by his chief crawled to the front of the party, his necklace of wolf’s teeth rattling as he moved. He stuck his head around the rocks and stared up the trail.

  ‘Damn you! Son of a… Noooo!’

  ‘It is Lost Pony. He has taken the cur from behind and they struggle. Come!’

  ‘Wait,’ said One Eye, suspicious of a trap.

  ‘No!’ shouted Red Wolf, standing up. ‘We must help him or all is lost. Forward brothers to aid Lost Pony.’

  ‘No,’ said One Eye, but it is not easy for an Apache chief to stop his warriors once the desire for blood-letting clouds their minds. He was brushed aside. When he stepped more cautiously around the corner, he saw his four men scrambling on hands and knees up the steep incline.

  At the top of it, half-masked by one of the huge red boulders, he saw the cursed white man, and indeed he was locked in a death struggle with Lost Pony. They rocked backwards and forwards, holding each other tightly. There was no sign of the woman, but she could not have gone far. His men were only ten paces away, and yet still some doubt nagged at One Eye’s mind, like the worm in a ripe peach.

  What was wrong?

  ‘Wait!’ Of course. Lost Pony had gone up from the camp to relieve the other sentries. They had not raised an alarm, so they must be dead. If they were dead, then Lost Pony would have been climbing the face of the cliff at the same time that the white man was climbing down. Even in the dim light of early morning it would not have been humanly possible for them to have passed without his brother seeing the intruder. So Lost Pony could not be fighting the white man. He must be…

  ‘He is dead!’ he screamed, seeing his doubt made a certainty as the enemy swung Lost Pony to cover himself, and they could all see the dreadful hole in his back, stained dark with his life-blood.

  ‘No!’ yelled Red Wolf, now within reaching distance of the couple. His rifle was still held low in his hand as he climbed up, not wishing to fire earlier for fear of hitting Lost Pony. And now it was too late. On the narrow path all was confusion as the four Apaches tried to escape.

  Herne’s bullets were too quick for them. Firing under the dangling arm of the Mescalero corpse, he was able to steady himself and gun them down with no risk and no difficulty. It needed five bullets to take out the four warriors.

  Red Wolf was hit in the side of the head, just below the bright blue headband, the bullet puddling his brains to pulp.

  As he fell the second man was exposed, and he died in the same way, his skull shattered by a single shot. He dropped, and the third man tried to hide behind him. Jed’s shot took him narrowly through the very top of the head, the bullet splintering a section of the cranium and exiting upwards. It knocked him out, but failed to kill him.

  Behind him, the fourth man was already on his way back down the slippery path, his rifle left behind in his blind panic to escape. Herne took steady aim, and shot him through the back of the neck, toppling him on his face, blood pouring from his throat, and from his mouth. He rolled and slid all the way down to where One Eye stood paralyzed by the sudden horror of his men’s death, landing sightlessly at his chief’s feet.

  The Mescalero levered at the Winchester like a man in a frenzy, sending a half dozen shots upwards at the single man who had decimated his small tribe. Three of them smacked into the protecting corpse of Lost Pony, hitting the body with a dull, soggy thud, their impact absorbed by the dead flesh.

  The man shot through the top of the head rolled over, trying to claw his way to his feet, feeling with one hand at the gaping wound that had streaked his long hair with blood. His last thought before Herne shot him through the face was that he had been lucky not to have been killed. The corpse flopped back on top of the other two.

  Herne dropped the body of Lost Pony and jumped back out of sight round the corner, bumping into a terrified Emmie-Lou Parsons.

  ‘What the Hell…?’

  ‘I heard you call, and I thought
…Oh God, I thought you were dead.’

  The girl flung herself at him, sobbing uncontrollably, clinging to him with the strength of someone drowning. Her arms were round his neck, pinning his gun-hand to his side, making it impossible for him to reload. Even at that moment of heightened danger, Jed was aware that the woman was naked under the stinking robe, and that her breasts were young and firm, pressing against his chest.

  He didn’t think that it was possible for any man to come up that treacherous path silently and at speed. But One Eye was a man possessed of a blind rage, stoked with a burning disbelief that this thing could have happened. In one hour of one morning everything had gone.

  Before this white eyes came to his camp, he had been leader of a small tribe. But a secure tribe. Feared and respected throughout the Sierra Mogollon, and untouchable thanks to their hide-out in West Wind Canyon. Their name had been raised even more by the capture of the lovely wife of Elisha Parsons. Man with Eyes of Snake and Heart of Stone. That was the Apache name for him.

  Now a whole hand and three of his finest warriors were dead. A hand of the squaws, and one child. With his depleted force he could no longer hope to hold the Canyon. They were lost, and would become a homeless sub-tribe, driven to living close to a larger group, depending on them for comfort, for defense and for food.

  And that had sent him mad, his brain filled with only one desire. To kill this white man, regardless of the risk to himself. And so One Eye had run up the sheer path, ignoring the dizzy drop to his left, his rifle clutched in his hand, stepping lightly and unbelievably fast.

  Never expecting to find his prey so delivered up to him, helplessly tangled in the arms of the white woman who wore the deerskin robe of one of his murdered squaws. His lips peeled back from his teeth in a feral snarl of pleasure as he brought the Winchester up to his hip, levering a round into the chamber, and cocking the hammer with his thumb.