by Tony Masero
‘You should have shot that son-of-a-bitch down,’ Lilly warned angrily as they headed out. ‘Finished him off for good.’
Diehard shook his head, his attention fixed on the ears of the mules in front, ‘No, we did enough killing back there already.’
‘He’ll be coming, you heard him. That bastard will be trailing you.’
‘Not for a while with that wing of his shot through.’
‘Don’t matter. Hear what I say, Diehard, you need to put a full point in it when you write a line or you’ll end up looking over your shoulder the rest of your days.’
Diehard pulled a bitter face, ‘I don’t like doing it, Lilly. Not the killing, I do what I do when I have to but I don’t intend making a fulltime occupation of it.’
‘Appears to me you won’t have no choice in the matter when that Reggie Rayde gets it into his mind to come calling.’
‘I’ll worry about that if the day ever comes.’
Lilly shook her head ruefully, ‘You sure have a lot to learn, bucko.’
Diehard stared solemnly ahead and changed the subject, ‘This the right direction for Allen’s Cross?’
‘Keep going as you are and maybe we’ll be there by nightfall.’
Lilly forgot her angry outburst and sighed languidly, stretching her arms high above her head, ‘Have to say, it sure feels good to be on the move again, I had enough of being cooped up in that place with all those deadbeats.’
She looked back casually over her shoulder at the mission diminishing in the distance behind and then suddenly jerked upright.
‘Hey! What is that?’
Diehard turned and through the trail dust rising behind them he saw three running figures spread wide apart five hundred yards back and coming at a remorseless pace.
‘What the devil!’ he gasped. ‘Hellfire! They’re painted-up Apaches, where in tarnation did they come from?’
‘I don’t reckon they’ll be looking to hitch a ride, I think you’d better lay it on, buster.’
Diehard slapped down the reins and with a piercing whistle urged a faster trot out of the mules. The mare behind stretched her legs and easily kept pace with the wagon.
‘I heard tell that Apache can run all day without taking pause for water or rest,’ frowned Lilly, twisting around to watch the three coming up behind.
‘I heard them stories,’ Diehard agreed. ‘Guess we’ll find out how true they is. Take my rifle and offer a little dissuasion, will you?’
Lilly did as he asked and resting over the seat-back fired off a shot at the trio over the head of the white mare. The Indians promptly dropped to the ground and vanished from sight.
‘Hard to draw a bead on them with all the jouncing around but they seemed to have lost a mite of interest.’
Diehard cracked down the reins again and the mules picked up speed to a fast gallop that began to take them clear of the followers.
‘They still coming?’ he asked.
‘They’re still there, out of range now though.’
‘Dang it! We’ll have to make Allen’s Cross before either they catch up or these mules drop.’
‘Like I say,’ chuckled Lilly. ‘This is what it’s like looking over your shoulder all the time when there’s a mean body behind, sure gives you a crick in the neck and an urge to move on, don’t it?’
‘You’re mighty cool for a lady who’s just been involved in a shoot out and is being trailed by a red man’s war party.’
Lilly snorted a laugh, ‘I had a good life already, Diehard and it ain’t over yet. Besides, you pleasured me real fine last night and that’s a good high to go out on, wouldn’t you say?’
Diehard colored up and ducked his head down, concentrating on the driving to hide his embarrassment. It was his opinion that Lilly was a wanton woman, bold and free true enough but to his more conservative way of thinking there were some things you just didn’t discuss in the daylight.
The ground ahead dipped and rolled over scrub covered low dunes but Diehard picked his way on the flat between the crests where the surface was firmer. There was no clear path written across the desert but Diehard made out a line of hills in the distance and taking the highest as his target kept the mules heading in the same direction.
The sun’s heat was full on now and Lilly took a scarf from her valise and wrapped it over her head at the same time as clinging on tight to the buckboard seat as they bounced over the uneven ground.
Half a mile behind them Angelino pulled up his companions with a raised hand and watched the dust trail vanishing off into the distance with a calculating eye. He turned to the third warrior.
‘Go back; bring to me the rest of the band. Alcasay and I will keep following the whites on foot, we will leave sign to mark the way. Bring the ponies fast and we shall catch them before dark. I want to question these ones that come so easily out of the ground.’
Without a word the brave turned and obediently trotted back the way they had come, with a quick glance at his lieutenant Angelino set off again on the chase.
‘Do you think these creatures are witches then?’ asked Alcasay as they jogged along at a steady pace.
‘I do not know but that magical place back there on the mount troubles me and I would like to know more. That is a good horse they have tied behind, don’t you think? Like the snow of the mountains and the clouds of the sky.’
‘Perhaps it is best left alone. There are many other white man’s ranches we can raid; we can grow fat on their beef. Can gain many horses and take our leisure hiding in the mountains.’
Angelino nodded and fondled the silver cross at his neck, ‘So we shall after we have taken these two.’
‘You know that it is the same white man with the horses we allowed to live in the time before? I recognize him.’
‘This too I saw. He has a woman with him now.’
‘They are the spawn of evil spirits, Angelino. Maybe even ilkashn, the witches that bring death on their shoulders.’
Angelino spat, ‘If you are afraid then go back to the others, I shall go on alone.’
Alcasay shook his head sorrowfully, ‘You are my sworn chief; I shall not run away nor betray you. You know I have no fear of any living man but if these are demons we chase then I fear it shall end badly. It would be better to find a diyan, a shaman to cleanse ourselves.’
‘We are Apache,’ snapped Angelino. ‘It is not our way to show fear of anything, be it on the earth or below it. Come, brother, you are my boldest warrior. Make your heart stern, look to the Life Giver above and draw courage.’
With that, the Apache war chief took up the pace and set out at a longer stride in front of Alcasay, who followed dutifully on behind. Alcasay kept his troubled thoughts to himself even though he knew that the greatest terror of the Apache was that the spirits of the dead would come back and invite the living to join them in the afterlife and although he followed Angelino loyally, he was afraid that his war chief’s desire for knowledge was a misguided path and that he was being tricked by ghostly and unnatural messengers.
Fifty miles later and after a hard run, Diehard and Lilly made it to the range of hills as the sun was beginning its slide into evening and the hillsides rising above them were bathed in a blaze of yellow light. It was a softly molded range of a crystalline nature and coated with sparkle in the sunlight but the hills were steep sided and much higher than had first appeared from a distance.
‘We need to find a way through,’ said Diehard. ‘You know a pass, these mules are near tuckered out now.’
Lilly who was watching back the way they had come, looked at the weathered hillocks before them and shook her head, ‘I don’t know the way through, I guess we have to ride along until one turns up.’
Diehard sucked his teeth in consternation, ‘Which way, north or south? You choose.’
‘Hell, I don’t know, just keep going. North, I guess.’
Diehard turned the sweat soaked mules, their hides gleaming with white foam and took off along the li
ne of hills in a northerly direction. Tough though they were the mules were becoming recalcitrant now, they needed rest and water and it took some forceful urging on Diehard’s part to make them obey. Only the white mare was ready for more and Diehard was impressed by her stamina, he reckoned she could run all day and still go on.
‘Hope you’re right,’ he murmured. ‘You see them Indians now?’
‘No, but it don’t mean they ain’t there. I heard tell they can run seventy miles on foot and still be ready for a fight.’
‘Up ahead,’ said Diehard, spotting a darker shade in the line of hills. ‘Do that look like a way through to you?’
‘Go for it,’ advised Lilly grimly.
They made the cut as the shadows lengthened and it was there within the steep sides of a narrow valley that the right-hand mule stumbled and came to an obstinate stop and would move no further. No matter how hard Diehard whipped his rump the beast had had enough and with the kind of stubbornness that only a mule could demonstrate it slumped to the ground and refused to go one step more. The other animal stood mute, its limbs shivering and head hanging with exhaustion. Only the white mare stood proud and erect, tired but far from beaten.
‘They’re done for,’ Diehard admitted. ‘About ready to drop.’
‘What do we do?’ asked Lilly.
Diehard looked around at the walls of rock rising on either side, his mind racing as he considered their predicament.
‘Two options,’ he said finally. ‘We either head out on foot and try to make headway in the dark or we sit tight and have it out with these Indians.’
‘Can’t say I favor the first, we go on and we get caught out in the open then we’re dead meat,’ Lilly observed.
‘Probably,’ Diehard agreed.
‘Or we stay here like a pair of sitting ducks and take on these locals who know this country back to front. It don’t sound like much fun either way.’
‘Right,’ Diehard agreed again.
Lilly glared at him grimly, ‘Well, I never been one for running,’ she said pugnaciously. ‘I say we stand and go it toe-to-toe with the beggars.’
Diehard nodded and jerked his chin towards the heights on either side, ‘Then it has to be from up there. We’ll set up a fire down here, dummy up some sleeping arrangements and maybe one of us can get lucky and nail them from above.’
There was little in the way of cover on the smooth sided cut, no fallen boulders, only the dust underfoot and the weatherworn rock face that curved upwards away from them in the gloom and Diehard knew it would be the very devil to climb.
‘One of us?’ asked Lilly. ‘You said one of us?’
‘Yeah, that will be you. Take the rifle and find yourself a spot up there, you won’t make it up with boots on that slope, best go barefoot.’
‘Barefoot!’ Lilly said with some disgust and a show of outraged pride. ‘Damn it, Diehard! That’s a little excessive in these skirts, ain’t it? I’m a lady of some quality not a hairy mountain man.’
‘The only way you’ll do it without sliding off.’
‘What about you then?’
‘I got me another idea. I have to stay down here and dig me a grave.’
Lilly arched a skeptical eyebrow, ‘A touch pessimistic, don’t you think?’
Diehard grinned, ‘I aim to rise from the dead when them redskins arrive.’
Lilly got the picture and smiled back at him, ‘Well, ain’t you the devious sort? So, how do we go about this?’
Diehard dismantled the tailgate of the buckboard, with some regret at his promised care of the Baldwin’s vehicle suffered as a result but with necessity being paramount in this woodless land he shrugged off the pang of guilt. Breaking apart the boards allowed them to make up a campfire and as he prepared this Lilly began her difficult climb up the valley sides. After tying up her skirts, she unlaced and shed her boots and found that the granular nature of the rock, which felt like coarse sandpaper under her toes, gave her bare feet some traction and allowed her to work her way slowly up the angle of the wall. With the rifle and a canteen looped over her back she struggled on until she made it to a narrow ledge barely wide enough for her slim form and there she settled.
From the gained height she could see the small figure of Diehard below working busily in the light from the campfire as he gave each of the mules a hat full of water and nosebag of grain from the supply carried in the buckboard. Diehard took time petting the mare; he fed and watered her as he whispered encouragement in her ear, stroking the animal’s soft hide as he did so.
He made up a fake bedroll beside the fire from heaped dust and a blanket and set Lilly’s boots beside it as if she slept there.
Lilly watched him as he dug out a shallow grave to one side of the camp and erected a cross at the head fashioned from the tailgate timbers, then he proceeded to lay belly-down in the hole and cover himself with dust until there was no more than a indistinct mound over his body. She had to admire his ingenuity and smiled to herself at his perceived innocence when they had slept together, he may not have been all that hot in the sack but at least he could carry it off when it came to the practical side of things.
Then they waited.
The hours passed and the full blackness of night enclosed them.
Around her Lilly could hear the nightlife of the desert awaken, the creatures that could not suffer the heat of the day and only came out in the cooler hours to hunt and feed. Bats, attracted by the firelight swooped low and she heard the eerie hoot of a Horned Owl off in the distance.
The chill of the night air was unexpectedly brisk after the heat of the day and Lilly hunched her shoulders as a shiver ran through her. Whether it was the cold or fear she was not sure. The rifle felt heavy in her hands and despite the cold she felt the slickness of sweat on her palms where they grasped the weapon.
She shifted uncomfortably on the narrow ledge, her eyelids growing heavy even though the electric trail of expected danger ran with a thrill the length of her spine. She nodded, jerking herself to full attention as the scream of a bobcat on the hunt echoed down the length of the valley. For a moment she wondered if these were the genuine calls of night animals or were they the following Indians signaling to each other. At the thought she widened her eyes and searched the shadows again.
Then she saw them.
Two figures advancing carefully and slowly into the outer fringes of the firelight. They stepped cautiously in their moccasined feet, taking each tentative step one at a time and keeping their rifles up and ready. They stopped, frozen and lit only by the dying embers of the fire. A flick of the head by the one with the silver cross at his neck, Lilly saw it flash momentarily as he moved and his companion stepped over to come in at a wider angle to the camp.
Gradually she maneuvered her rifle barrel around until the further figure, now almost lost in the shades, came under her sights.
Angelino was suspicious.
It all looked too easy. One of them asleep by the wagon and a heaped grave with that symbol of their religion placed at its head. What had happened here? Had one of them died unexpectedly? The wagon was still here and the two mules. The animals stirred restlessly but they looked too tired to do much else. The whites would certainly not have left their only means of escape and would they leave that splendid white mare behind? Now they slept. Did they think the Apache would not come? Perhaps they did. Perhaps they thought they had left their enemies far behind and were safe. It was the way of the whites to underestimate the tenacity of the Indians; he knew this was true, as he had seen it happen many times before.
It was the woman that slept, he noted her small boots with their lacings hanging free set down beside her sleeping form. It appeared as if the man had died and the woman buried him, she would be exhausted he reckoned and doubtless would need rest. With rifle raised to his shoulder and pointing at the blanket he advanced more confidently.
There was a sound in the darkness above.
A click. The noise a hammer makes as a r
ifle is cocked. The sound was magnified by the enclosing valley walls and by the stillness of the night.
Instantly the two Indians moved. They ducked sideways as a rifle shot cracked out and Angelino heard Alcasay utter a cry of pain as he suffered a hit. At the run, Angelino raced for the cover of the buckboard and he slid down behind as another bullet slammed into the wooden planks above his head.
They had been tricked, it was an ambush and he cursed his stupidity for advancing so openly.
Alcasay was there beside him.
‘You are hurt, brother?’ asked Angelino.
‘A graze, I think,’ said Alcasay, fumbling with the hole in his side under the jacket. Then, ‘Maybe worse,’ he grumbled, holding up bloody fingers.
Angelino grunted, his attention fixed on discovering the locality of the shooter. ‘The rifle is above,’ he said, stealing a glance around the side of the buckboard.
Another shot rang out and Angelino saw the bloom of rifle flash in the darkness.
‘I have it,’ he said, lifting his rifle and firing a snap shot in the direction of the flash.
‘There is only one rifle, where is the other one?’ asked Alcasay, his eyes overly bright and gleaming in the dim light.
‘I don’t know, unless he is truly dead in the grave.’
More shots came from above and the bullets chewed into the buckboard’s sidewalls spitting splinters and rocking the vehicle as they slammed into it.
‘Go to one side,’ said Angelino. ‘I shall make a run and you will see where is the one above us and shoot them. Agreed?’
‘A risk,’ grimaced Alcasay, the wound in his side painful now.