by Abe Dancer
Smith pulled the cinch strap from under the belly of his mount and threaded it through its buckle.
‘I ain’t scared.’
Henry picked his saddle off the sand. ‘I am.’
NINE
Blazing shafts of ghostlike rifle bullets cut through the morning air in deafening succession. Plumes of white-hot sand kicked heavenward as the shells failed to strike their retreating targets. The twenty Apaches swarmed like soldier ants over the hot sand dunes in chase of their prey. Again and again their rifles spewed out deadly lead as they screamed out their chilling war cries. It mattered nothing to the Apaches that six of the seven men they were pursuing were also Indians. They were not Apaches.
In their hearts this was their land. Apache land. Anyone within its confines was sentenced to death without a single word ever being uttered.
All laws here were as they had always been.
They were unwritten, but just as lethal.
After years of being moved from one hostile environment to even worse reservations, the twenty braves had rebelled and left the confines of their enforced new home.
They would not be moved on again. They would no longer be treated like livestock. They would die rather than allow their dignity to be eroded further. The Apaches had a saying: ‘It is a good day to fight, it is a good day to die.’
To them they were no longer living. They were existing. Death held no fear for men on the very edge of extermination. There was nothing left to lose. They had already lost everything except their defiance.
Feverishly the braves galloped into the low morning sun firing their rifles at targets they could barely see as the merciless rays of the blinding orb faced them.
But unlike so many others who had drifted into this unholy land, Talka knew how to survive most things it challenged him with. Being attacked by braves far more heavily armed than those he led was just one of them. He knew that if he kept the sun in the eyes of those who followed them, it would act as a shield.
It was said that only the Devil and the Apache could survive in such a hostile terrain as the desert. It was not true. Six of the seven riders the Apaches chased were also more than capable of existing in this ferocious land.
Only Apache bullets could prevent them from living through another day.
The seven horsemen had ridden for nearly two miles through the soft unforgiving sand as the Apache war party closed in on them with every stride of their small, fit ponies. Hal Harper spurred his mount yet he could barely keep up with his companions’ far smaller animals.
They were built for this territory. His long-legged horse with its shod hoofs was not. The Indian ponies thundered low to the sand with their bareback riders gripping and steering them with muscular legs.
Harper rode high with the burden of his saddle weighing down his mount. As the bullets got closer, Harper held on to his saddle horn with his left hand, leaned against the neck of his horse and aimed his six-shooter under the horse’s throat.
As the panting animal beneath him turned to follow the tail of the last pony, Harper saw that the Apaches were now within range of his .45.
He squeezed the trigger.
He saw one of the braves in the middle of the following pack punched from his pony by the sheer impact of his lead.
‘Got ya!’ Harper said through gritted teeth.
The rest of the Apaches continued their chase. Now they seemed to be even louder than before. Now they seemed to be forcing their ponies to find even greater pace. Now they were getting close.
Dangerously close.
Harper pulled the hammer of his weapon back again. It locked into position. He closed one eye and fired again.
This time his bullet was not true. He saw one of the braves buckle but the Apache did not fall. Defiantly he kept riding on and on.
Harper swung back up on to his saddle and spurred harder than he had ever done before.
The horse responded.
‘Keep going, boy!’ Harper yelled at his mount.
Like the faithful creature it had always been, the horse thundered through the sand and caught up with Talka and his fellow Indians.
As all seven rode up a sandy rise, Talka gestured to two of his fellow braves. They cut the carcasses of the dead animals free from behind them. The stiff bodies of the game fell and bounced on the sand. Harper knew that Talka was trying to see if the Apaches were hungry enough to settle for a third of the Indians’ hunting triumphs.
Half of the Apaches drew rein and stopped when they reached the fresh gutted game. But nine of them continued after the seven riders ahead of them.
A volley of shots rang out from the Apache rifles. Red tapers spat all about the riders. Standing in his stirrups, Harper felt something brush past his left arm, which started to burn. He glanced at it. Then he saw the blood soaking his shirtsleeve. He had been winged, but there was no pain. Only a feeling of burning.
‘White Eyes!’ Talka called back.
Harper screwed up his eyes against the sand that cut into his face from the hoofs of the fleeing ponies around his own. He saw Talka point to their left and then turn the neck of his mount brutally.
They all followed suit.
The soft sand was replaced with a gritty trail which led alongside a rocky overhang.
Talka called out. It was not words but a guttural call which chilled Harper to the bone. They all closed up behind the lead rider as he yelled out again.
Suddenly the ground fell away.
All seven mounts leapt into a place where the sun had yet to reach. They started to fall through the darkness.
Their masters leaned back and clung to their reins as the horses clawed at the very air itself.
Harper closed his eyes and waited.
It was a wait which seemed to last forever.
TEN
They had fallen for more than forty feet into a deep dark chasm and hit a slope of soft sand with brutal force. The sheer impact of the unseen ground beneath the hoofs of the animals sent each of the horsemen flying over the necks of the mounts. Every ounce of wind was knocked out of the horses. They staggered and then fell on to their knees. Their masters fared little better. Each of them had landed hard and just lay where they had fallen trying to suck air back into their bruised bodies.
High above them they could see the whooping figures gathering at the very edge of where the trail ceased to exist.
It was Talka who managed to rise from the sand first. Like the true leader he obviously was he checked all his men and their ponies for injuries. Only when satisfied that they had survived without any broken bones did he move to Harper.
Harper accepted the hand and got to his feet. He was about to speak when Talka turned his back and returned to the one Indian who had been wounded by an Apache rifle bullet as they had fled the wrath of those who had pursued them.
Dusting himself down, Harper took some deep breaths and walked to where Talka knelt beside the only Indian who had not risen from the sand where they had all landed seconds earlier.
‘Is he OK, Talka?’
The Indian got back to his feet. Even the shadows could not hide the concern etched into his features.
‘Not good, Hal,’ came the simple reply.
‘This ain’t no place to be wounded in,’ Harper said, casting his eyes around the dark rocky walls which rose high to where they had ridden from. ‘Wherever this damn place is.’
Talka signalled to his other braves to check their ponies more thoroughly. They did as commanded without uttering a single word.
Harper rubbed his arm. The pain suddenly erupted.
‘Damn it all!’ Harper snarled quietly. ‘I forgot they winged me as well.’
Talka gave the graze a quick look and shook his head. ‘It not bad, White Eyes. Bullet just cut skin. My brother is hurt bad. Bullet in him. Need to be cut out soon.’
‘How soon?’
‘Very soon.’
Harper turned and looked at his horse. Its forelegs were bur
ied deep in the soft sand where it had landed. Defiantly it vainly struggled to free itself. The drifter moved close to it and ran a concerned hand across his mount’s neck.
‘Easy, boy. I’ll get you up on your feet.’
‘Horse OK?’ Talka asked Harper.
‘Shaken up a tad,’ Harper answered. ‘But I reckon he’ll be fine as soon as I get him standing on some firm ground.’
‘Good,’ Talka nodded. ‘We need ponies OK for long ride back to my land.’
The bruised and battered braves picked up the expertly butchered game and water sacks and started to return them to the shoulders and backs of their unsteady animals.
Harper used his hands to shovel the sand away from the legs of his tall horse. At last the animal managed to stand.
The rocky confines the seven men found themselves in soon began to resound with the Apaches’ chants coming from far above them. Nervously, Harper grabbed the bridle of his horse and led it closer to the safety of the rockface. He looked upward and then saw the fearsome warriors shouting down from their high vantage point.
Talka moved unseen by the Apache warriors through the shadows to the side of the troubled Harper. His hand rested on the younger man’s shoulder.
‘Be unafraid, White Eyes Hal,’ he said firmly.
‘That’s not as easy as it sounds, Talka.’ Harper swallowed hard.
Talka waved signals to his keen-eyed followers. They seemed to understand his every gesture. The brave then looked back at the young man he had taken under his wing.
‘Apaches no like dark place,’ Talka told him. ‘They not come down here. We safe for time.’
‘They don’t come down into this place?’ Harper repeated the statement. ‘Why not?’
‘The spirits of their dead live here,’ Talka said.
Harper raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t savvy.’
Talka led the young man across the sandy slope to a spot almost directly below the place from where they had driven their mounts. The older man knelt and then scooped some sand away with his left hand. Harper gasped, then dropped down on to one knee beside his benefactor.
The eyes of the young drifter narrowed. He stared in disbelief at the bones and then saw a skull. He looked at Talka open-mouthed.
‘Is this one of their kind?’ he asked.
Talka nodded. ‘This Apache. They used to use this place to drop their dead into. It is said that the spirits of a hundred warriors live in this place.’
Harper gulped even harder. ‘So they bury their dead here.’
‘And they think it is a sacred place.’ Talka added. ‘But Talka no think this “happy hunting ground”, White Eyes Hal.’
‘Your tribe ain’t afraid?’
Talka stood again. ‘The dead Apaches cannot hurt us. Only the living Apaches can do that.’
Hal Harper returned to his full height. His eyes were drawn back up to the Apaches as they continued to spit out their verbal venom at those they believed had defiled their holy place.
‘You told me not to be scared, Talka. I’m sorry, but I ain’t never bin so afraid in all my days. How are we gonna get out of this place alive?’
‘There are many trails out from here.’ Talka said. ‘We only need to take one of them.’
Harper nodded. ‘How come them Apaches ain’t fired their rifles down here at us? I’d have thought they’d sure want to kill us more now than when we was up there in the fresh air.’
‘They do not wish to offend their ghosts.’ The Indian shrugged and led the taller man back to the wounded Indian who still lay in the sand. He shook his head slowly and then turned to one of his other companions. He said something in a low hushed tone and then ran his fingers through his mane of long dark hair. His eyes glanced upward before returning to Harper.
‘My brother is dead,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harper replied.
The other braves lifted the body up from the sand and then laid it carefully across the back of the black-and-white pony between a water sack and the lifeless body of a deer.
Talka watched silently as they used rawhide strips to tie the body of his brother securely.
‘You ain’t gonna bury your brother here, Talka?’ Harper asked his friend.
‘Not with Apache bones, Hal,’ Talka said heavily. ‘We take him back to our land and give him to the wind and the sun. His dust will travel to places we cannot go.’
Harper had no idea what the Indian beside him meant but knew that if he lived long enough, he would eventually discover the answer to all his unasked questions.
They rode two by two in a column more than a hundred yards in length. Eighteen dust-caked troopers were being led by a veteran of more than five Indian campaigns. Captain Eli Forbes was one of the old school of cavalry officers, straight-backed and grim-faced. Few had ever seen a smile cross his weathered features. In fact few had ever seen any emotion on the face of the officer who thought that any sign of humanity was a sign of weakness. His troop had travelled a long way in chase of the twenty or so Apache bucks who had escaped from the reservation forty miles east of the sterile desert they now found themselves in. They had left Fort Myers seven weeks earlier with five heavily laden packmules in tow.
Their trek had been a hard one. The Apaches were unlike so many other tribes that Forbes had faced during his long and illustrious career. Most Indians sought out and found land which was better than the one they had left behind them. Not the Apaches. They were hardened souls who seemed able to take even the harshest of terrains in their stride.
Forbes knew that each day, after they had tracked the men they were charged with bringing back to the designated reservation, the Apaches would simply alter direction. The twenty painted riders would go west and then south and then west again. It made no sense to the military mind of the army captain. There was no logic in it. They would be headed for water one day and then back-track into what seemed to be a place where nothing could exist.
Yet the Apaches navigated the arid landscape and somehow remained alive.
Forbes knew that his was a mission most would have considered impossible. For years men had tried and failed to capture the famed Apache leader Geronimo. A fortune had been spent in a vain attempt to capture the wily Indian and all it had achieved was a lot of dead trackers and even more dead horses.
Forbes had begun to wonder if these twenty or so Apaches might be like their legendary leader. Could they escape capture indefinitely?
It was beginning to appear so.
There were no marked borders in this land. The expert cavalryman had no idea whether they were still in America or had ventured into the forbidden Mexico where his gold braid meant nothing. Yet he continued to forge on regardless. He had been told to capture the braves by any means possible. Forbes was quite willing to kill them all if that was what it took to establish his authority.
Mile after mile and day after day it was becoming obvious not only to Forbes but to his enlisted followers that they could not possibly still be on American soil. Yet he continued to lead them onward.
Forbes raised a hand and stopped his troop. His chest heaved as his lungs tried to suck air into them. Sergeant Bruno Coogan rode to the side of his superior officer and looked at the man whose tanned face stared out at the white featureless land ahead of them. Even the trail of their scout was no longer visible.
‘We gonna make camp, sir?’ Coogan asked hoarsely.
Forbes nodded slowly. ‘For a few hours, Coogan. Get some coffee and vittles cooked up for the men. When we’ve eaten we’ll continue.’
Coogan looked at the sand ahead of them. Sand which rose in whirls as a mocking breeze skimmed the surface of the ground. If there had been tracks to follow, he thought, they were long gone now. His wrinkled eyes turned and focused on Forbes. He had served with the man for ten long years and had never seen him buckle. Even now Forbes remained as rigid as he always had been.
‘You sure the scout went thataway, sir?’
‘I’m sure,’ Forbes retorted stiffly.
‘How?’ Coogan scratched his whiskered face. A face in total contrast to the clean-shaven one of his officer. ‘There ain’t no tracks any place.’
Forbes looked at his sergeant. ‘Trust me! I know where they’re headed. It came to me last night just after we bedded down. When the scout returns he will confirm my theory.’
Coogan leaned closer. ‘The men are starting to get a mite edgy, sir. This desert ain’t fit for men.’
‘The Apaches are headed to a place that I believe is called the Devil’s Elbow.’ Forbes uttered the words quietly. ‘I’m led to believe that this was where they originally came from. Their ancestral home, if you like. Mark my words, that is where we shall find them.’
‘But Apaches are nomads, sir,’ Coogan said. ‘They ain’t from no place. They just wander around killing good Bible-reading folks for the joy of it.’
Forbes shook his head. ‘You’re wrong, my friend. Even the Apache have roots. When we get there we shall find them.’
‘And kill ’em?’
Forbes took in a depp breath. ‘If necessary.’
There were few sights which could have frightened men as rugged and seasoned as Tate Talbot was. Yet this one did. The five riders had galloped across the soft shifting sand for more than five miles when, after managing to ride up a mountainous dune, Talbot suddenly saw the group of Apaches ahead of his small troop. The wide brim of his battered sweat-stained Stetson cut out the sun’s fury but he could do nothing to prevent the instinctive panic that almost stopped his heart from beating.
He dug his boots into his stirrups, hauled back on his reins and brought his mount to a sudden halt.
The Davis brothers had only just reached the top of the dune when they were forced to follow suit and abruptly stop their horses behind their leader. Smith and Henry dragged rein and eased their mounts to either side of Talbot’s snorting charge.
A cloud of dry sand drifted away from the dune’s crest and floated across the blue, cloudless sky. It was more than enough to alert the eyes of those who were at home in this godless place.