The old mountain man went up the rope like a monkey, and he was the first one up.
He tossed the rope back down. “Send up the supplies, boys, an’ be quick about it.”
Seventy years old he might be, but Wellman was still all gristle and wang-leather tough, and as he had shown, would be hard to handle in any kind of scrap.
Wellman stood on the lip of the peak and stared at the valley below. “I’d a not believed it,” he finally said. “I wish I had me one of them pitcher-boxes so’s I could show the world this sight.” Then he took the field glasses and slowly and carefully scanned the area in all directions.
“There’s the damn fort!” he said disgustedly. “It ain’t real plain, but yonder it is.” He concentrated on the three other directions and finally laid the glasses aside. “We got time to do our business in the valley. There ain’t no ’Paches within a three hour ride of here. You boys get crackin’. I’ll belly-down up here and keep an eye peeled for savages.”
They lowered the bulky supplies and Bodine and Sam hurried down.
“Brother,” Sam said, “I don’t like the way you’re smiling. What have you worked out in that devious mind of yours?”
“First of all, we find a way to climb up on the lip of this place. One that the Apaches don’t use.”
“And? . . .”
Bodine looked at him for a long moment, grinning all the time.
“You’re not serious!” Sam picked up the mental waves from his blood brother.
“Oh, yeah!”
“You’re crazy, you know that? You are positively a raving lunatic!”
“But you love it, right?”
“The plan, if I read it right, does have some elements of intrigue . . . not to mention danger if anything goes haywire.”
“You want to do it?”
“What are we waiting for?”
The blood-brothers worked quickly, placing the dynamite, which was the same color as the rocks, in various locations. Bodine had called out to Wellman what he was doing and the man grinned his approval, adding, “I just hope you can find a way up to the lip.”
“Use your glasses, Dick,” Sam suggested. “Find us some possibilities if you can.”
Dick started searching the walls of the valley, marking possibles in his mind.
Bodine and Sam both agreed they would not permanently close the entrance to the valley. When the moment came, Wellman would be in position across from the canyon floor and high-up above the entrance with two fully-loaded rifles, his Colts, and a sack of dynamite for throwing.
Bodine and Sam would be, if they could find another way out, on the lip of the valley wall when Chappo and his warriors returned.
Then the fun would start.
* * *
They had done all they could do on the valley floor, and went over the area carefully, smoothing out any tracks they had made. And they had found another way out. It had been a hard climb, but the two young men made it, and it gave them a fantastic view of the valley below them and a great vantage point for shooting.
Dick had climbed down the rope to the canyon floor, and Sam had coiled the rope and climbed down using the Apache hand-holes.
They had left no trace of disturbance. At least they all hoped that.
They took a chance and pulled the horses in close to them, Wellman’s horses behind the ridge where he had made himself a home, and the horses of Matt and Sam behind them in a cul-de-sac at the end of a crinkumcrankum.
Then, all they had to do was wait.
And wait they did.
Days passed, and they were running out of food for themselves and for the animals. With despair in his voice, Bodine said, “If they don’t show up by tomorrow, one of us is going to have to ride to the fort for supplies.”
Despair took wings as Wellman’s faint shout came to them: “Dust comin’, boys!”
“Good luck, Dick!” both young men shouted, then settled down as still as a waiting snake.
As Chappo and his warriors rode single-file into the valley, Sam whispered, his voice carrying no more than a foot from his lips, “We’re seeing history.”
“Just as we saw in June,” Bodine reminded his brother. “In the Rosebuds.”
“But this time we can talk about it.”
“That is truth.”
It was not all of Chappo’s band; the valley could not sustain several hundred warriors and their animals. But it was Chappo and about fifty of his braves. And there were fresh scalps tied onto the manes of their ponies and on their rifles.
“They’ve been busy,” Matt said grimly.
“Very,” was his brother’s reply. “Some of those scalps belong to children.”
The Apaches swung down from their horses and began settling in.
Bodine and Sam looked at each other and smiled, a grim curving of the lips. It was about to become very unpleasant for Chappo and his braves. And Sam had stated coldly that if any renegades deserved it, Chappo and his bunch did—richly so.
They had brought a mule in with them, no doubt stolen during a raid, and a brave killed the poor animal with an axe. Apaches preferred mule meat above horse. Other braves began gathering up very dry wood for a quick, hot, and virtually smokeless fire.
Both Bodine and Sam quietly eared back the hammers on their Winchesters.
Bodine had carefully dug into the cold ashes of old cookfires and planted a dozen sticks of dynamite just under the ashes of each fire-pit, the fuses up, and then re-spread the ashes. For many of the Apaches, this was going to be a very unusual last meal.
The dry wood was dropped into the fire-pits as the mule was being butchered.
“Just another couple of minutes,” Sam muttered.
It was cool in the valley, and many of the Apaches had gathered around the fire-pits, urging the fire-tenders to hurry up and build the fires so they could warm themselves and stuff their bellies full of mule meat.
The fire-builders had knelt down around the pits and were igniting the dry grass and twigs under the piled on wood. Already the Apaches were moving closer to the just-lit fires, hands extended over the pit. Others were coming forward with bloody chunks of mule meat impaled on sticks.
The first pit blew, the dozen sticks of dynamite exploding and knocking Chappo’s braves in all directions, many with shattered arms and legs and torn-open chests and rock-mangled heads.
Before the others could react, all the fire-pits blew, the sounds echoing around the closed-in valley and deafening all who were close by.
Matt and Sam opened up, the slugs from their Winchesters knocking the already confused Apaches to the ground as they ran toward weapons. One was climbing up the hand-holds toward the look-out spot. Matt and Sam let him climb. When he was halfway up, his hands tried to get a purchase in the two holes Sam had filled with bacon grease. He fell screaming to the rocks below him and landed on his head, smearing the rocks with blood.
Dynamite had been placed in the rocks above the narrow valley. Matt and Sam began firing at the primed and capped sticks, exploding them and showering the Apaches below with killing and maiming rocks hurled forth under the charges.
Sam and Bodine spotted Chappo as he ran from his wickiup toward where the horses were corralled inside a crude barricade. They fired as one and both shots were true, taking the guerrilla leader in the belly and turning him around. He went down on one knee and Bodine and Two Wolves fired again, the slugs striking the man in the head and chest.
Chappo’s savage and evil career was over.
Chapter 18
The remainder of the band had nowhere to go and nothing to do except die; and they did that.
Several made the twisting entranceway only to be shot down by the rifle of Dick Wellman as they ran out onto the canyon floor. Several more tried to climb up to Matt and Sam. They were killed by thrown sticks of dynamite, their bodies mangled from the blasts.
There was no surrender in those few remaining. They fought to the last man, and the last man died. From their vantage point,
there was no place in the little valley for the Apache to hide from the guns of the brothers bonded in blood. When the last of Chappo’s band lay sprawled on the ground, Bodine and Sam took careful aim and fired a coup-de-grace into each seemingly lifeless body. A half a dozen of them were not dead before the final bullet struck them. When those sprawled death-still on the ground and among the rocks realized what was happening, they jumped up and tried to run.
They did not make it far.
The buzzards were gathering before the gunsmoke had drifted away from the valley of the dead, the carrion-eaters gracefully floating in a circle high above, as silent and as knowing as death.
“Dick?” Sam yelled.
“Yo!” came the shout.
“Bring the horses up to the entrance. We’ll lead a horse out and lower down Chappo’s body over the edge. We’ll take him to the fort and bring the Army back.”
“I’ll be ready when you are.”
* * *
A patrol rode out to meet the men about a mile from Fort Bowie.
“Lose a man?” the sergeant asked.
“Chappo,” Bodine told him.
The sergeant almost swallowed his chew. He jumped off his horse and lifted the blanket covering the Apache war chief. “Holy Christ!” he yelled. “It’s really him!”
A rider from the patrol was sent galloping back to the fort and everybody there turned out to see the men ride in.
After the colonel had gazed at the dead face of Chappo, he personally escorted Bodine, Sam, and Wellman to his office. There, he seated them with a wide smile and poured them tumblers of whiskey, filled up nicely.
He ordered a man in to take down their story and told them to proceed.
The colonel was all smiles when they finished. “Sergeant,” he said. “I will personally take Companies A and B out at first light in the morning. Have those orders cut and recorded. And have the official photographer ready to go. I want this recorded for posterity.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you gentlemen consent to lead us back in?” he inquired.
“Be glad to,” Wellman told him. “But don’t take no green soldier boys, ’cause the smell’s gonna be enough to gag a maggot. And that reminds me, Colonel: you got anything to eat around this place? We run out of grub waitin’ for them heathens to show up.” He smiled as he held out his glass for another drink.
* * *
They could all see the buzzards long before they reached the valley. And they began to smell the dead not long after that.
Guards were posted all around and above the entrance to the valley and Bodine led the colonel and several of his men and the Army photographer through the winding passageway.
“Incredible,” the colonel muttered, stepping out into the valley.
He and the others wrapped bandanas around their faces to give some relief from the smell of the dead.
Photos were taken with the colonel in various poses beside the stiffened dead; the colonel with Bodine, Sam, and Wellman; the colonel standing beside the great holes in the earth caused by the dynamite planted in the firepits; and the colonel holding a rifle with several dried scalps dangling from it.
“Why is he doing all this?” Sam asked. “The fool had nothing to do with this slaughter.”
“He’s buckin’ for general,” Wellman said. “And this will probably do it for him.”
The men, after soaking in tubs of hot soapy water, had resupplied at Fort Bowie and changed into clean, freshly laundered clothing.
In the valley, they looked at one another, passing silent messages, then walked over to a grizzled sergeant major.
“We’re gone, Sarge,” Sam told him.
“Wish I could go with you,” he whispered. “One other good thing just might have come out of all this, though.”
“What’s that?” Bodine asked.
“That fool colonel might get promoted and transferred outta here!”
The men were still chuckling as they rode away from the crazy rocks.
* * *
They began their search for the outlaws Lake and Porter. Wellman had vowed to kill both of them for killing his kin and taking his Jenny. Bodine and Sam agreed to tag along.
They rode northwest out of the Chiricahuas, heading first for the town of Dos Cabezas, Spanish for Two Heads, a wide-open and rip-roaring mining town. The news that they had trapped and killed Chappo and his murderous band of renegades had preceded their arrival, and they could pay for nothing in the town. They were put up in the hotel and served the finest food that could be prepared for them. But no one could tell them anything about Lake or Porter.
From Dos Cabezas they followed the stage road west to Wilcox and received the same treatment there they had in Dos Cabezas. And got the same lack of information about the men they were pursuing.
“Might have gone to Tucson,” Wellman said, lingering over a glass of beer. “You boys game?”
“I don’t believe we have anything terribly pressing on our social calendar,” Sam said with a smile.
“Not unless President Grant calls us to come to Washington so he can pin medals on us for getting rid of Chappo,” Bodine added.
“That colonel back yonder at Bowie will be gettin’ them medals, boys.”
“He can have them,” Sam summed up the feelings for all of them.
* * *
They were just about halfway between Wilcox and Benson when the Apaches hit them. They’d been following the stagecoach road that dipped south for a time before gently beginning its northwest slope toward Tucson.
It was a pleasant morning and the men were riding abreast when the Apaches seemingly came out of nowhere and hit them hard. One Apache was too eager and snapped off a shot that whizzed under Sam’s chin. The men put the spurs to their horses and made it into the rocks just as the main bunch of warriors began firing.
Wellman looked around their position in the rocks and said, “I been in better situations. But it beats bein’ out yonder in the open, I reckon.”
They had the water in their canteens and some food. No graze for the horses; but each man did carry a bait of corn for the animals.
“According to the schedule I read back in town, there’ll be a stage along this afternoon,” Sam said. “Give or take a day or two,” he finished it, knowing that when the Apaches were known to be rampaging, the stages sometimes did not run.
“Which may or may not stop to lend us a hand,” Wellman grimly pointed out to them. “And I wouldn’t blame them if they just rolled on by. If we’re still alive by then,” he added.
The rocks in which they had forted up were circular, and with the horses, crowded. Wellman took the position facing the road; Sam took the west; Bodine crawled to cover the other angles. The men had taken their spare rifles and Colts from the pack animals, laying the rifles to one side and shoving the pistols behind their belts. The terrain in front of them looked barren and void of life; but they all knew better.
Sam saw something that just didn’t quite fit in with their surroundings and lifted his Winchester, sighting the object in, and waiting. The stick-like object moved—no more than a tremble—and Sam fired. An Apache jumped up, his left arm dangling useless, broken at the elbow by the .44 slug, and Wellman drilled him in the brisket, doubling him over and dropping him to the sand.
After that, nothing seemed to move and no shots were fired for better than half an hour, the Apaches playing their best card: the waiting game.
But the men in the rocks knew the warriors were stealthily moving toward them, perhaps no more than an inch or two at a time, but coming at them all the while.
None of them had any idea how many Apaches they were facing. It could be anywhere from half a dozen to more than thirty. A good bet was somewhere in-between, since Apaches were not known to travel in bands of more than thirty. Chappo had been the exception. But Chappo’s head had been cut off and mounted up on a tall pole and placed in front of the fort.
All of the men inside the rocks h
ad moved, one at a time, and gathered up more smaller rocks, to pile in front of them for more protection.
When the Apaches made their move, they came all at once, and they had been very close to the rocks.
Bodine nailed one in the chest, Wellman got lead in another, and Sam shot one right between the eyes before the braves reached the jumble of rocks and breached the natural fort.
Bodine jammed the muzzle of his Winchester into a warrior’s mouth and pulled the trigger, blowing away the back of the brave’s head.
Wellman clubbed one to his knees and then shot him, the slug severing the man’s spine.
With blood streaming down his face from a bullet graze on his forehead, Sam’s rifle jammed and he used his longbladed knife, burying it to the hilt in an Apache’s chest.
Bodine was knocked down by a brave who hurled himself over the rocks and landed on him. Bodine kicked the brave between the legs, bringing a wild cry of pain and then pulled a Colt from behind his belt and shot him in the head, ending the yowling.
Wellman had taken a slug in the upper part of his left arm and was using his right hand filled with an empty Colt to batter in the face of a brave. Sam stepped forward and shot the Apache twice in the belly.
The remaining Apaches, having lost far too many warriors, called it quits and vanished into the desert across the road. They galloped away, hugging the necks of their horses to offer a smaller target.
Bodine brought down a horse with a single rifle shot and plugged the Apache when he stood up after rolling on the ground. The pony struggled to its feet and Wellman put the animal out of its misery. It was a better end than the Apache would have given it, since they usually rode a horse to death and then ate it.
That was yet another reason why the Apache was so hated by the settlers.
Sam lifted his pistol to finish one brave who lay on the ground, glaring hate at them through dark eyes, his hands clutching his bullet-shattered belly.
The Apache cursed Sam in English and Sam returned the uncomplimentary remarks in Cheyenne.
The Apache spat at Sam and Sam shot him between the eyes.
“Thoroughly disagreeable bunch of people,” Sam said, reloading.
Brotherhood of the Gun Page 13