by Clay Fisher
“I must free her; she has suffered too long now.” He bent to slash the rawhide gag, but Ben pinned his arm and twisted him roughly against the rear wall of the store.
“John, you can’t do it. You could get us all killed. Think, man, think! Just look at her there! She’s glaring at us wilder’n a cornered she-lynx!”
“Brother Ben, don’t hold me, I beg of you.”
He said it softly, and Ben knew he would never cry out and betray them, but he knew as well that the next moment could bring that knife winging for him if he did not somehow get through to its savage wielder that this woman was as great a danger to their lives as any of the sleeping Apaches—or might be far worse.
Fortunately, he got help from a sympathetic quarter and one long wise in the ways of Indians.
“Here, mon ami,” whispered Big Bat behind him, “give him into my attention.” He slid past Ben and had Lame John in his bear’s grasp before either Ben or the Nez Percé could guess his intent. His giant strength crushed the breath out of Lame John’s lungs and held it out, leaving the tall brave as helpless as a newly whelped kitten. Ben seized his knife in the next moment and handed it to Frank Go-deen, who had just drifted over from the doorway.
“All still quiet outside,” he said; “let’s work fast in here, brothers.”
“Oui,” said Big Bat. “Petit Ben, you know what to do with the woman. She has got to stay quiet. N’est-ce pas?”
Ben nodded grimly.
“You pull her out and hold her up, Frank,” he said.
Go-deen obeyed the order, pinning the woman to his chest, facing Ben. Ben measured her and hit her as hard as he dared. Her head flew back into Go-deen, rebounded, fell forward, and hung slackly.
“All right, Frank,” Ben said, “now pull the gag.”
He went over to Lame John, looking close into his face.
“John,” he said, “you know I was right. Will you be yourself if we let you go? I want your word.”
For a count of five, it appeared as though the proud Nez Percé would give his word only to kill his questioner. Then the wild fire died from his dark eyes, and he nodded his head weakly.
“Ease off him,” ordered Ben, and Big Bat let go the rib-
cracking pressure and stood back. Lame John would have fallen in the first moment had Ben not caught and steadied him. Directly, he was all right and said remorsefully to Ben:
“Brother, it was wrong of me. I talk like you do, but I still think like an Indian. You had to do it. Let us go quickly now. I will carry her.”
Ben shook his head, sliding to the doorway and looking out. He was back in an instant.
“Nobody will carry her, John. We got work to do out yonder first. We don’t bring it off out there, ain’t nobody going to have to worry about toting Amy Johnston out of here. You savvy?”
Lame John was thinking like a white man again; there was no hesitation now and even a flicker of the old sober smile.
“I savvy, Brother Ben. Hookahey!”
They all went to the doorway, four shadows moving as one. Facing the outside, they hesitated.
“I can’t see the subchief,” whispered Ben. “He’s gone.”
“That he is, brother,” said Lame John. “Forever.”
“You got him?”
“Yes, with the knife. Now how will it be with the others, knife or rock?”
“I like the rock,” said Ben. “A knife can miss.”
“True.” It was Big Bat, adding his expert’s opinion. “And the pleasant thing is that one can use the rock without knowing what he did with it. With the knife you know.”
“I don’t mind knowing,” put in Go-deen. “Killing these monkeys means nothing. It’s just that to cave a head in is quieter and quicker. I say the rock also.”
“Good,” said Ben. “We’ll work in pairs; me and Lame John, you and Big Bat. One to rock and one to knife. If the rock fails, the knife can follow it. All right?”
“Sure.” Big Bat’s white teeth flashed like a snowbank in his black beard. “François and I will start on the ones near the gate.”
“No, wait,” broke in Lame John. “We had better pair Frank and me for those near the gate. If those ponies get a smell of white man, we’re done before we start.”
“Nobody knows Indians like Indians—amen,” said Ben. “Come on, Bat, you and me will start on them farthest from the horses. And don’t be giving off no French Canadian odors on the way.”
“Petit Ben,” vowed the other, “you have my word; I will keep the buttocks tensed.”
“No fear of that,” said Ben. “Let’s go. Hit true and pray hard.”
They set off through the moonlight, two and two, circling the sleeping Apaches. It went well to a point. Seven Mimbreños were knocked unconscious before the eighth awoke. Go-deen’s descending rock missed him, but Lame John’s waiting blade did not. He fell, however, backward across the ninth man, who came rolling to his feet, rifle in hand.
He fired at Go-deen, face close, the powder blinding the breed momentarily, but the bullet ricocheting off the wall top and crying harmlessly out into the desert. Big Bat had him from behind then and broke his spine with a grizzly hug whose bone crack made Ben physically sick. The Apache was still moving when Bat dropped him, and Lame John went to one knee beside him and slit his throat. In the paper-white light of the moon, the dying man’s blood pumped black as squid ink. It made a pool in the dust of Fort Webster’s forecourt as wide as a pony’s staling spot. Ben saw Lame John dip his fingers in it, touch them to his forehead and then point them in rapid succession to the four winds of the prairie before plunging his knife in the dirt to cleanse it and standing up to join his white and half-white fellows.
Ben suppressed a chill not of the high altitude night. The Nez Percé had told him the truth in the sutler’s store. They talked the same. And not much else.
It was something to remember.
28
Goodbye to Broken Hand
They put the seven unconscious Mimbreño braves in the stifling pit of the old guardhouse. Through the rusted hasp of the door they wound the heavy chain of the leg-irons taken from Amy Johnston. The cuffs of the irons were then linked and locked together. A second set of irons, found on Broken Hand’s saddle horn, were placed upon the chief’s ankles. The single ancient Spanish key to both sets of chains—a macabre idea of Lame John’s—was forced into the mouth and down the gullet of the dead Hota Du-chuz. “Let the secret be his that he may not rest easy,” said the taciturn Nez Percé. “He was a bad Indian.”
Broken Hand was left outside the prison, so that upon return of consciousness he might bring water to his warriors in its fierce crucible. Should he leave them to try crow-hobbling his way for help, he could not be sure to return in time to prevent their deaths from dehydration, a fact of the desert known to the Apaches above any other people. All clothing was stripped from him and from his braves. All weapons and ammunitions of the Indians were dumped down the well in the riverbed. The entire action, a charity of Ben’s, since both Frank Go-deen and Lame John advised killing the Mimbreños and hiding their bodies in the dry cistern inside the palisade, took less than thirty minutes. Funeral services—dumping down the cistern—for Hota Du-chuz and his two comrades took another five minutes. Indian saddles, bridles, blankets, moccasins, camp bags, everything of Apache evidence inside Fort Webster, were “buried” with the cistern dead. The horse herd, including Malachi, who had been taken along by the hostiles as a curiosity to show the folks at home because of his “white man’s eyes,” was now brought up by Lame John and Go-deen. Their own mounts were selected and saddled. The Mimbreño ponies were not freed for fear they would make their ways up to the Pinos Altos rancheria. Instead, they were roped in threes and made ready to lead along to such a point in the flight as they might be safely abandoned. Malachi was turned loose, his only instruction the terse one f
rom Ben to “keep up and shut up, happen you pine to see Montana again.” Inside three-quarters of an hour, all was done that could be done, and Amy Johnston was brought out and placed aboard her mount. She was conscious now, and Ben ordered her hands left bound and, indeed, made fast to the saddle horn. Lame John scowled but said nothing. Ben, noting the fact, gave the woman’s pony to the Nez Percé to lead, thus putting him on his Indian honor and forestalling any possible move on his part to follow his heart rather than his head.
The moon was, by this time, an hour high over the stockade wall, and the departure from Fort Webster readied in its last detail save one.
Ben, in a final weakness of his “white side,” sloshed two buckets of water over Broken Hand, bringing the old chief sputtering and spitting awake. He then explained to him the situation with regard to himself and his men in the prison house, saying nothing of the other details of the abandonment, and concluding with the apologetic statement that it was more than his one-quarter Comanche heart could bear to depart not knowing if Broken Hand were dead or alive, hence risking the lives of his friends in the juzgado. He also assured him that his nephew, Chaco, was all right and would be released within the agreed time. To have left without these small courtesies would scarcely have been the act of an honorable enemy, he finally maintained.
Broken Hand, perforce, agreed.
Looking up at Ben and wincing with the pain of his throbbing head, no less than that of his injured reputation, he waved lugubriously to Ben.
“Go on. You good man. I knew it, too. Should have killed you like Hota said. Well, goddam, I don’t care. I like you. Go. Run fast. Look out for smoke.”
Ben, thinking he meant the smoke of Indian fires, or camping places, nodded gravely.
“Many thanks. We’ll be careful.” He touched fingertips to brow. “His Comanche brother salutes Mano Roto.”
“Go to hell,” groaned the old chief. “But go quick.”
Ben grinned tightly. He reached down, patting the bowed red shoulder.
“Mucho hombre, Mano Roto,” he said and went quickly back toward the others.
In the utter stillness of the moonlight, they mounted and went out the gate. Lame John led the way, the first objective to pick up the captive Chaco where the Nez Percé had left him. This proved to be in the brush of the riverbed not a mile north of the fort. Lame John had merely circled the post on the far side of the river and had never been farther from the Apaches the preceding day than the width of the stream. The prisoner reclaimed, they rode on. Chaco was gagged, and they left him that way. Their objective, the sole one which their combined number could suggest, was Fort Craig on the Rio Grande. Big Bat had known of its existence and general location—somewhere between Mesilla and Socorro, a give or take of a hundred miles and more, but northerly rather than southerly. If it was, as Big Bat guessed, nearer Socorro, then their best possible line of flight would be due northeast, their shortest possible straight-line distance, seventy to ninety miles. Of water en route, they knew nothing; nor of trails. They had filled all the Apache canteens at the Fort Webster well, and they did know that somewhere north and east, the Rio Grande flowed down its wide valley. A direct run for it, due east, had been discussed and voted down. What good was water with the Mimbreño Apaches sharing it with you? No. They would gamble on hitting the river where they could both drink and keep their hair to enjoy the refreshment. That in white man’s arithmetic had added up to Fort Craig. None of the comrades said any more of the earlier decision as they now rode onward through the night, with Chaco and the still-silent Amy Johnston staring holes in their tense, already tired backs.
With first light they built a small fire and enjoyed coffee, parched corn, and salted Mimbreño mule meat. They offered the fare to Amy Johnston and Chaco, neither of whom would accept it. The Indian boy was now released. Big Bat and Frank Go-deen were very angry over this move, and Ben could not help but be deeply uneasy over it. Yet Lame John would have it no other way. He had given the Apache chief his word. The twenty-four hours had passed. The boy went free or Lame John would fight.
Ben was absolutely confounded by this display of savage obstinacy in the face of their own extreme peril. But in the end, he ruled for Lame John, stipulating only that the boy not be given a pony. The Nez Percé was able to accept this condition, because his word to Broken Hand had contained no specific reference to the pony. It was a fine point but evidently within the Indian code. While it did not entirely satisfy Big Bat and Go-deen, they had to agree with Ben’s grim insistence that they had now to “hang” together or they would all get “strung up” separately.
The boy was cut loose, given the terms of his release.
He said not a word, but turned and started back along the trail. When he had trudged a quarter-mile, he suddenly ducked off the line of pony prints into the brush, laughing, leaping, and running with apparent demented abandon.
“Now what the hell?” growled Go-deen.
“Now trouble,” said Big Bat Pourier. “I feel it in my guts.”
They all came away from the coffee fire, watching nervously. Within a few moments, Chaco reappeared on the summit of a low, naked ridge. He was at the exact extreme edge of the carry of either a voice or a rifle bullet. But the New Mexican morning was very still, and the New Mexican air very thin. They heard him acutely well.
“You fools!” shouted the youth. “Keep the pony! I run faster on my feet. All day fast. You see. Watch for smoke. Apache talk with smoke. You watch sky; you fools dead; never reach Big River; never see your people there, anywhere. You see smoke—last thing!”
“Goddam him,” said Frank Go-deen. “Talk back to him. I’ll get the Sharps. Keep him going.”
He started for his old gelding and the big Sharps bull gun, but the metallic shucking sound of a Winchester lever beat him to it.
“No,” said Lame John, “don’t shoot.”
Go-deen stopped, whirled about, went white when he saw the Winchester muzzle held three feet from his face. He looked past the weapon to Ben.
“What did I tell you, brother?” he grated. “All the way back in Judith Basin when you first let this Slit Nose come along? Well?”
Ben, having his own misgivings, and bad ones, had no ready reply. Nor did he need one.
“Mes amis,” announced Big Bat Pourier, “it has become unimportant. Put up the guns.”
Turning, the others looked instinctively to the ridge. Chaco was gone. In a moment they saw him again, briefly, crossing between ridges. He was running evenly and with unbelievable speed. They waited five minutes but saw him no more. Frank Go-deen broke the accumulated quiet.
“Chaco,” he said softly, “that’s a Spanish word, isn’t it, Brother Ben?”
“Yes, it is,” admitted Ben uncomfortably.
“Would you mind, I wonder, telling us what it means?”
“Well, I’d rather not.”
“But do, please do, eh?”
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“Take a guess. Eh?”
“Oh, hell,” said Ben with his lemon-twist grin, “it means ‘the laugher.’ Ain’t that something?”
“I don’t think so,” said Frank Go-deen. “Let’s get out of here.”
They brushed out the fire spot, got back on their horses. Ben looked around at Big Bat.
“You believe the kid about running fast as a horse?” he asked.
“Sure. Some Sioux can outrun a horse. That is, on an all-the-day race. You understand?”
Ben nodded.
“Might as well cut loose the spare stock then?”
“But of course.”
“Frank?”
“Sure, Bat’s right. The boy will beat the horses in now. Easy.”
They let the Indian ponies go. The animals scattered a little, then regrouped and stood watching the white men. Bat and Frank exchanged looks, the latter nodding.
“It’s a good thing all the same that we set the boy afoot, Baptiste. You agree?”
“Oui, François. No blanket, no smoke, is that what you are thinking?”
“Not thinking—hoping.”
“Well, mon cher, it won’t be easy without the saddle blanket, I would estimate.”
“No, not unless these small monkey brothers know some tricks to cut off the smoke that my Oglalas don’t. But then, curse it, we don’t use the smoke too much. The Cheyenne do some talking that way, and the Arapaho a little, too. But the Sioux like the mirror better.”
“Oui, they learned this from the army.”
“One time I had no use for the soldiers,” said Go-deen. “Now I would like to see about six hundred of them riding over that hill up there. Even two hundred. Or two dozen.”
“Mon ami, I would wish for even one dozen!”
“Yes, well, if wishes were war ponies, Mandans would ride,” growled the Milk River breed. “Hookahey.”
“Hopo!” responded Big Bat, with the other Sioux go word, and put his heels in his reclaimed Comanche bay. The little animal leaped forward behind Go-deen’s old white. When they had caught up to Ben and the others, they settled into the steady jog trot of the Indian mustang, which devoured the miles as no blooded gait before or since bred into the plainly superior horses of the white man.
Behind them, as their mounts dwindled to sun-dancing flecks in the vast roughness ahead, the raw blue sky stretched empty and serene to the last curve of the high country’s horizon.
Not even a hawk swung in its endless domain, nor drifted in it a cloud so big as a single-blossomed cotton boll.
The fair weather held. Late that afternoon, in a lovely small meadow of springs and hock-high forage, fringed by small timber and huge, house-sized boulders, they made a happy camp. By the expert reckoning of Go-deen and Big Bat Pourier, they had covered forty miles since daybreak; a total of seventy-odd since leaving Fort Webster the night before. The horses were caked with grime and tired out. But they were sound of wind and limb, and a cool evening on the good feed and water here found would put them back ready to go another sixty or seventy miles if need be. However, if Big Bat’s original guessing was even near accurate, there would be no need. They must be within fifteen or twenty miles of the river and quite possibly that close to Fort Craig itself. They could, had there been reason—such as sign of close pursuit—have pushed on that same night after a few hours rest for the stock and made it to the Rio Grande by first light. Lame John, watching the ears and actions of the horses, told Ben that he knew from these things that they were within easy ride of “big water.” Since this could mean only the Rio, no other stream of size being anywhere near in that country, Ben had decided against forcing their precious mounts, and all hands devoted themselves to the pleasures of settling down for the rest of their lives that lazy summer night in high New Mexico.