Return of the Tall Man

by Clay Fisher

“We both Indians. No lie to each other. The boy will be all right; you will see.”

  “I wasn’t so much worried about him as about us,” admitted Ben. “You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?”

  “No, not me—Mangas.”

  “You mean when we get to your rancheria up yonder?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why? What have we done?”

  “You white man.”

  “Only part,” claimed Ben hopefully.

  “Most part,” grunted the Mimbreño.

  Ben nodded, tried another tack.

  “How about my friends? One of them is half Sioux.”

  “Other half white. Half white worse than all white.”

  “Then you simply kill all the whites you catch, is that it?”

  “All but woman. If she young, good face, good body.”

  “All others, though, eh?”

  “No, sometime we save a strong boy-child. You know, one not cry out or act with fear. Make good Indian. All tribe, Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas, have some like that.”

  “You mean like my cousin Quanah?”

  “Quanah half-breed, no good.”

  Ben gave it up, returned to the original thought.

  “Then Mangas will kill us tomorrow?”

  “Oh, no. He take longer than that.”

  “Torture?”

  “You ask foolish question. You one-quarter Comanche; know better.”

  “Yep,” said Ben. “I did, I am, and I do.”

  To his surprise, Broken Hand smiled at the flippant reply. He reached out and patted Ben’s arm.

  “You good man. Make joke like Indian.”

  “I know a hundred of them,” said Ben. “My grandmother was a great wit among the Comanches.”

  “Good, good …” The Apache nodded and fell still.

  After a time, during which Ben noted that his weathered, simian frown grew deeper-lined by the minute, the tough-looking chief shook his head and held up his shrunken arm.

  “You know how I get sick arm?” he asked. He pointed out through the gateless hole in the fort’s wall, into the westward night. “White man own trading store—not here, out there, over by place call Apache Well. He say I steal from store. I say I no steal from store. Say no Apache steal from white man.” He slid out of its sheath an eight-inch skinning knife and made a dramatic slash through the darkness. “But white man, he say I lie. He have five man hold me, cut me bad with knife, cut arm, all arm, muscle, sinew, very deep. He say to me, ‘There, you steal no more.’”

  His story trailed off, fierce eyes stalking the night out beyond the walls.

  “But white man wrong. I steal one more time. I come back to store with many friend. They hold white man. I steal both arm, here”—he demonstrated with the blade—“just below elbow. I take all arm off, bone, everything. Next day soldier patrol find him that way. He no die. Soldier chief Major Mowry good man from this fort here.” He stabbed the ground upon which they sat, blading the dry earth deeply. “Major, he say tell Broken Hand, ‘Dah-eh-sah, death to him.’ Soldier scout, White Mountain Apache, say yes, he tell. He find me. I say him tell Major Mowry, ‘Zas-te! Kill him.’ Scout, he say, ‘Enneh,’ he do.”

  He paused again, pulling his knife free of the earth.

  “So long war now. No peace for Apache people till last soldier gone. No peace for soldier till last Apache gone.”

  This time when he stopped, he did not offer to continue, and Ben said presently:

  “But I’m not a soldier. Why kill me then?”

  “Soldier no go till last white man dead.” The chief shrugged. “So kill all white man, then soldier go. Simple.”

  “Very,” agreed Ben.

  Broken Hand nodded, his gnarled hand touching his arm again.

  “Too bad you white. But no change Apache law. I do you favor though.”

  “Well, thank you,” said Ben, imagining many things at once, the least of which was commutation of sentence to slavery. “My friends, too, eh?”

  “No, no can help friend. Only you.”

  “Thank you, chief, but I take what my friends take. That’s a law of my people.”

  “Law of your people no good. You get Apache law same as friend but not from Mangas.” He pointed to the revived Big Bat and Go-deen over by the prison wall. “They get from Mangas; you get from Broken Hand. They wait, you get first thing in morning.”

  “Get?” said Ben, throat constricting. “Get what?”

  “Honorable death. We no cut you. Put you on wall like soldier do Apache. You die quick, many bullet. Honorable.”

  For a moment Ben said nothing. Then, as steadily as he could, he made known his gratitude.

  “Many thanks, chief,” he said. “I would purely hate to die dishonorable.”

  “Dismiss it from your mind,” waved the other. “It is nothing—even less than that.”

  “Broken Hand,” said Ben, “you couldn’t be righter.”

  “Thank you. Here”—the Apache reached impulsively inside his shirt, brought forth the stub of a cigarillo butt—“have a smoke. From Sonora. Very good.” He plucked a brand from the fire, lighted the butt for Ben, inquired with concern as the latter drew in the first lungful. “All right? You like fine?”

  Ben exhaled lingeringly.

  “Honorable,” he nodded, “real honorable.”

  “Good,” said Broken Hand, relieved. “Smoke deep. Take time. Enjoy flavor.” Then, with a friendly smile and gesture to dispel any remaining tension, “Last one …”

  26

  The Gentling Sound

  The fort’s outer walls were of Pinos Altos cedar logs planted vertically and tied together with an inner catwalk of milled lumber. The horse shed against the rear, east wall was also of timber. The quartermaster’s depot was an adobe hovel lodged against the jail, which in turn was wedged into the front, northwest corner of the quadrangle. Officers’ quarters on the north wall were of adobe and cedar, the approved Santa Fe type of Spanish construction. Enlisted barracks were the cedar-pole-and-adobe-plaster architecture called by the scornful and miserable occupants “early Apache jacal.” The post sutler’s store, heart of any western horse Indian trading area post, military or otherwise, was of notched split logs and raftered roof—long, long gone—and stood just within the yawning gates centrally in the enclosure’s forecourt. From it to the jail was perhaps forty feet. The entire compound was no more than thirty paces squared, measured inside the barracks, horse-shed buttresses of the walls.

  Listing this plot in the near-stygian gloom preceding moonrise, Ben Allison found little of hope in its offering.

  The only practical way out was the open gateway; and across this single avenue, the Mimbreños had thoughtfully strung their picket of highly nervous desert mustangs, the best watchdogs to be found on either the North or South Plains. No one but an Indian could come near that line of spooky, half-wild horses and not be snorted and neighed into an instant announcement of intent of goodbye. Which in Apache country amounted to a guaranteed farewell of shoot first and scalp afterward.

  No, a man could just as well quit looking out that damned gate. There had to be some other way.

  Ben tried piercing the darkness in the direction of the jail and could not. He then called softly to see if his friends were still all right. He heard Big Bat answer, “Oui,” and Go-deen growl something to the effect that he had never felt better in his life and that to ask an idiot question was to get an idiot answer. Ben grinned, and as he did, a Mimbreño moccasin smashed him in the mouth and knocked him back against the logs of the sutler’s store.

  When he got the blood out of his mouth and the stars out of his eyes, he looked up and saw Hota Du-chuz, the ape-faced subchief, standing over him.

  “No talk,” suggested the Apache.

  Ben spit some more blood and part of
a front tooth.

  “Good idea.” He nodded.

  At once the horsehide moccasin slammed into his face again, this time missing the mouth and nearly ripping an ear away.

  “No talk,” repeated Hota Du-chuz.

  This time Ben gave the nod without the comment. Hota Du-chuz watched him a moment, then put his foot into the ribs of Broken Hand, sleeping beside Ben. The chief awoke with a start and sat up.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” said Hota Du-chuz. “These big mouth talk too much. I shut up quick.”

  “Well, thanks. I must have dozed away. Hmmm—bad.”

  “Yes. Good thing you tie Tall One to you.”

  “I watch him; you watch others. I do my job; you do your job. Understand?”

  “Sure. When you go see Mangas?”

  “I already said; when the moon comes.”

  “Pretty quick now,” said Hota Du-chuz, eying the early stars. “Maybe so fifteen minute, maybe so twenty-five.”

  “I’ll be ready,” grumbled Broken Hand. “You go back and watch others. No, wait—” He held up his hand as the subchief started off through the darkness. “Better bring them all over here; put in house with woman.” He gestured to the sutler’s store behind Ben and himself. “We watch more easy all one place.”

  Hota Du-chuz stood a moment as though he might argue the order, then went off without a word. He was back in a short time, followed by several braves dragging Big Bat and Frank Go-deen by their heels through the compound’s choking dust. The two were trussed in the same way Ben was, hands to ankles behind the back.

  “Put in house,” said Broken Hand. “Him, too,” he gestured to Ben. “I will sit in the door till the moon comes. You others lie down, rest.” His own braves were already asleep, sprawled in the dirt beyond the fire. Hota Du-chuz’s followers dumped Ben and the others in the pit blackness of the store building, glad to be rid of the responsibility and to join their brothers on the warm ground of the fireside. The sharp chill of the altitude was getting into the air now, and the fire felt good. Its dying embers purred and spat softly. The spread horse blankets and weary bodies made good company to the lulling sounds. Like good soldiers anywhere, the Apache braves were soundly sleeping within minutes of Broken Hand’s order.

  In the doorway sat Mano Roto, waiting for the moon. On the wall beyond the doorway sat Hota Du-chuz, waiting for Mano Roto. The chief was too soft with these white eyes. Especially the tall one who talked too much. When Broken Hand was gone up the trail to see Mangas, things would change quickly. Meanwhile, the moon could not be long, and a man who would be chief in Mano Roto’s place could well afford the brief patience. There was the woman, too. For all her hard looks, she had a body soft as a baby foal’s nose. Hota Du-chuz had felt it. En-neh! No wonder the lecherous old devil in the doorway yonder had paid such a price for her! And another thing. She was no breed as he thought. Hota had seen her body where the clothes protected it from sun and wind. It was white as mare’s milk. Eyeh! This was meat for a younger man than Mano Roto. And one who stayed awake better.

  Hota Du-chuz looked over at his chief. Broken Hand was already nodding again. The grin which lifted the upper lip of his lieutenant was the same grin which bared the canines of the waiting dog wolf when the antelope doe’s head began to drop and the spotted fawn to wander from her couched side.

  The old fool. Let him sleep. Hota Du-chuz was awake and watching. His time would come and soon, very soon.

  Hota Du-chuz was a prophet beyond his knowledge. As the pleasant thought of his ascendancy passed in his mind, a sudden stir of the ponies on the picket line across the gateway caught his acutely sharp ear. He came to his feet, crouched and peering off toward the restless horses. They quieted quickly enough, and any other Indian would have let the matter go as a harmless night shadow or vagrant scent of desert predator from the hunting reaches of the Mimbres bottoms. But Hota Du-chuz was not any other Indian.

  He went forward through the black velvet well of darkness filling the high-walled enclosure of Fort Webster. Ahead of him the solitary opening of the gate showed a lighter gray from the outer desert, where he could see its faint luminescence through the legs and over the backs of the picketed ponies. Ten feet from the line, he paused. Nothing moved, save the mustangs themselves. They pricked friendly ears, and two or three uttered the muffled, snuffing exhalation with which the prairie horse greets the familiar, welcome smell of its master.

  Hota Du-chuz straightened, let the steel go out of his muscles.

  “Hoh, shuh,” he told the little mustangs, answering them with the old Apache gentling sounds. “Be still now; all is well.” With the words, he turned to go back to the pinpoint of coals which marked the fire before the sutler’s store. The tiny beacon was the last sight of Hota Du-chuz’s life.

  As he took the first step out from beneath the front-wall catwalk, a tall shadow dropped from it soundlessly. The drive of the knife was true and deep. Hota Du-chuz went into the silted dust of old Fort Webster as quietly as though lying down to sleep. Bending over him, the tall shadow waited for the time of one long breath, then stood up.

  “Hoh, shuh,” said John Lame Elk and stepped over the body and went through the noiseless dust toward the Apache fire.

  27

  The Tongue of Strangers

  Until the moon came over the palisaded walls, flooding the compound with its dazzle of white light and awakening Broken Hand, there was no attempt at talking to Amy Johnston. The three friends whispered among themselves, discussing their nonexistent chances in English, which the girl could not understand, and trying to decide whether to risk going for Broken Hand’s knife—where they could see the silhouette of its belted haft in the doorway—or to simply wait for morning and pray for deliverance from a God none of them had particularly worked at pleasing prior to the present emergency. Human nature being what it is, the vote went rather speedily to going for the knife, and selection of the one who was to inch across the floor like a ripe-corn worm, to try stealing the weapon with his back and bound hands to Broken Hand’s back, went at once forward. Go-deen was ruled out for the size of his belly, Big Bat simply for his size. Ben was judged the best sneak, given the farewell whispers, nudged on his way by the breed’s plea to see if he could not get only himself killed, in event of failure, and avoid bringing the Apache temper down on the rest of them.

  Ben began hunching through the dirt upon his side like some grotesque, wounded reptile. He knew the risk, knew that Frank Go-deen’s parting request was valid. To fumble the theft of the knife could bring far more than another moccasin in the mouth. Not from Broken Hand perhaps, but from the hair-trigger Hota Du-chuz, squatting but three or four feet from the former. Should he hear or see Ben behind the chief, he would likely strike to kill and not wait to determine if the captive had freed himself, was armed, or another solitary fact. In the dark, sights and sounds were struck at blindly. To react in any other manner was to invite destruction in the unmerciful code of the desert.

  But Ben did not reach the knife haft of Mano Roto. As he came up behind the chief and was twisting to get his back and hands presented toward the knife, a long shadow fell athwart the doorway. There was light enough now from the moonrise which was lightening the low skyline of the river hills to distinguish substance and shade. This shade was not cast by the bandy legged Hota Du-chuz. Ben writhed around, watching the doorway. In the instant that he did, the moon broke free of the hills and shot the fort full of day-bright illumination. Mano Roto stirred, and the long shadow froze. The chief rubbed at his eyes, yawned, turned to blink and peer into the lightening gloom of the store’s interior. Behind him Ben saw the shadow move again. An arm, substance not shade, appeared from the frame of the door as if grown there by some magic of the moonlight. But the arm ended in a human hand, and the hand held a loose adobe brick shard the weight and size of a small an
vil. And the hand raised the shard and brought it into the back of Mano Roto’s skull in the precise second that he said to Ben, “Eh? What are you doing there, boy?” And Mano Roto slid onto his face in the dust with no more sound than Hota Du-chuz before him.

  Lame John stepped over him into the store and said in guarded, apologetic tone:

  “I didn’t kill him, Brother Ben, because we exchanged our words, he and I. And I’m sorry, too, I had to lead you to think I would leave you and my friends here. I saw no other way at the moment. Will you forgive me?”

  “John” said Ben, no grin and no grit in the answer, “it’s us owes you apologies. Let’s get out of here.”

  The Nez Percé put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  “Wait,” he said, “I must see the woman; I must talk with her.”

  “All right,” muttered Ben, “but make it quick. She’s here, in yonder corner under that old shelf. We ain’t tried talking to her. Feared she’d make a fuss. But we heard her stirring around in the dark.”

  “It’s strange she wouldn’t speak to you,” said Lame John. “She knows Frank can speak Shoshoni.”

  “There’s more queer here than in a circus side tent,” rasped Ben. “But the price ain’t so reasonable. Here, slice me loose before you mess around with that girl.”

  Lame John cut him free, and he quickly pulled Broken Hand’s body back up into a sitting position in the doorway, while the Nez Percé went over to Amy Johnston. Ben, turning away from propping up the chief, saw Lame John beckoning to him. He cut loose Big Bat and handed him Broken Hand’s knife to tend to Go-deen, then went on over to where the Nez Percé stood over Amy Johnston.

  “See,” he said, “here is why she didn’t talk to Frank; they gagged her so she couldn’t say anything which might help you. I’m going to cut her free now. Are the others ready?”

  “Yes,” said Ben, “but wait a minute on the girl. Can we trust her? Suppose she’s addled some and yells out the minute you pull the gag? Remember, she wasn’t exactly on our side last time we talked.”