Geronimo! (Herne the Hunter Western

by John J. McLaglen

‘Poco. El Poco.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Loco means crazy. From what I hear about Diego, that name’d fit him just as well.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you a drink, Jed, only my husband’s brother will scent liquor at fifty miles across storm-tossed waters and so it’s safer …’ she allowed the sentence to dangle off into the space between them. Herne nodded.

  ‘I met Isaac. Takes pictures. I seen good ones before. Met a man called Matt Brady a couple of times after the War. Brought home the dyin’, but it didn’t catch the fear and the smell and the noises.’

  ‘Times will probably arrive, Jed, when someone invents a machine capable of capturing all of that.’

  ‘Then that might mean the end of wars, Carola. If’n the bastards who sit around in Washington and Richmond and London and the big safe cities planning the attacks and the defenses got to know what it was really like, really like, then they’d stop it. Be good.’

  It was the first real sign of emotion that she’d seen from him, and it made her like him more. She stood up, knowing from past experience that if she didn’t make a positive move it would be all too easy to fall into bed with this man, Herne. And a lady never sleeps with her servants.

  ~*~

  Two days later, an hour before dawn came pinkly from the eastern sky, the four of them rode quietly out of Nogales, heading southwards, towards the great wilderness that served as a natural barrier between the Territory of Arizona and Mexico. Limitless mountains of grey-yellow rock soared from the orange deserts, with rare rivers, hidden at the cool deeps of scarred valleys.

  Herne led the way, followed by Isaac, with Thaddeus Ray and his wife bringing up the rear. In the end it had been necessary to invest in four spare horses and a mule to carry the heavy camera. Each animal was laden with food and water, festooned with canteens that bumped and rattled in the stillness.

  There had been no rain for weeks and even though they moved slowly they sent up a smudged pillar of red dust into the air behind them, visible for fifteen miles or more. Nobody spoke much, though Ike occasionally hummed a verse or two from shows he’d seen back in New York. As they left Nogales further behind, and the land closed around them, so the singing stopped and they carried on in almost total silencer

  It was another scorching day, the mercury in the thermometer on the porch of Pilch’s General Store in Tucson nudging the one-twenty mark. The sky was untouched by any cloud and the heat bounced back at the four riders as they picked their way along.

  ‘Look!’ That a rattler?’ asked Isaac Ray, pointing with a finger at a coiled snake resting in the partial shade of some sagebrush.

  Herne nodded. ‘Want a picture of him?’

  ‘Why? Can I? Oh, you’re joshin’ me. By the time I got everythin’…Yeah.’

  They rode on, deeper south.

  Jed moved a hundred yards or more ahead of the rest of them, scanning the trail for any sign of unshod ponies. Moving from side to side, knowing that Geronimo was too wily to stay near a main trail for long. There was water a few miles ahead of them. The only water for a long ways, and Herne hoped that they might pick up some indication there of any Apaches in the area.

  He paused, standing in the saddle, looking ahead of them at the great ranges of hills that seemed to roll on forever. Guessing that Geronimo was likely somewhere up there. Looking back at the little party he had chosen to lead.

  Isaac, in faded blue shirt and pants, slumped in a characteristic pose forward over the neck of his bay mare. On the first halt of the morning Herne had gone through the photographer’s baggage, letting his hand drop to the butt of his Colt when Ray protested. Finding three bottles of tequila and smashing them on a nearby boulder, watching the liquor drain and darken down the orange stone.

  ‘Drunk on the trail’s bad. In a town he’s likely to get hisself killed. Out here he can maybe get us all killed. Time for that when we get safe back.’

  There hadn’t been any protest, though Ike had stopped twice before noon to swing down from the saddle and crouch by the side of the trail, retching noisily as he vomited up thin strings of yellow bile. Herne took no notice of him.

  Thaddeus rode stolidly on his own grey gelding, looking as if he’d just finished a crash course of lessons on how to control a horse. His hands never loosed on the reins, and each time they stopped for a mouthful of water and a brief rest, his stiffness showed his lack of experience.

  ‘Swear my breeches are worn clean through, Jed,’ he said, wincing as he tried to find a position that didn’t pain his raw thighs.

  ‘Should wear clothes made for comfort. That Eastern vest and pants must be thicker than a preacher’s Sunday best. And that hat’s too small round the brim for out here. Doesn’t shade your face nor your neck.’

  Carola was dressed most sensibly, and she had risen again in Herne’s estimation for the way she pushed on with them, never once complaining, though she was obviously suffering from the severe heat. She had brought some cream with her that she kept rubbing on her cheeks and lips to try and check the dryness and cracking, but her skin was more used to the New York climate which lacks the blistering heat of Arizona.

  Her clothes were well chosen. A light brown divided skirt that reached to well below the knee, cut so that she was able to ride astride the ‘palomino that she had selected for herself. She wore black riding boots that reached to mid-calf with short, functional spurs on the heels. A pale green blouse, with long sleeves to protect her arms completed the ensemble, topped off by a stylish hat of white lace, fringed with a long veil that hung over her face.

  When they stopped in the middle of the afternoon, leading the horses for a half hour to give them a break, Carola came forward and walked with Herne, leaving her husband and his brother to stride along together in silence. She was interested in the Apaches, keen to store away as much information as she could before they actually met any, so that her mind would then be clearer for any interviews she might manage.

  The Englishwoman was especially eager to know about the way that the Chiricahua raised their children. Jed told her what he knew and she listened, occasionally asking a further question, several times taking out a small notebook and writing in it with a silver-cased pencil.

  ‘They are much more devoted parents, these naked heathen savages, than many I know back home among the English shires,’ she said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘I once spent several months as the house guest of Lord Gethes and his wife, Aubretia. While I was there her ladyship gave birth to a child, their first. The day after the birth she was reclining in her chamber—it was always filled with cats, I recall. And the nanny brought in the child. A tiny bundle wrapped in a great shawl of finest Flemish lace. Lady Aubretia barely looked up from the cats on her bed and told the servant to take the child away and bring it back when it was six years old.’

  ‘Six!’ exclaimed Herne, unbelievingly.

  ‘Six years. To give it a ring to wear on a chain around its neck and to call it Titus. A wet-nurse would be provided for the baby. And that is how the upper classes in England raise their young.’

  ‘I don’t know a damned animal treats their young as bad. I heard that, the dukes and lords and all were a mite crazed, and that explains why.’

  ‘The English are all somewhat touched, Jed.’ She suddenly looked across at him and he felt the power of her personality. ‘There are times when all of us want to do things that would be foolish. Perhaps disastrously so. I think you know what I mean, Jed, do you not?’

  ‘Yeah. Guess I do, Carola. Guess I do.’ Raising his voice to reach the brothers. ‘Mount up. Time to move on faster!’

  The pillar of dust followed them wherever they went along the trail. Only in another day or so, when they were among the foothills of the mountains would stones replace sand and they would be better able to move in secrecy.

  ~*~

  That night Geronimo and his small band were sitting eating around a tiny smokeless fire, hidden in one
of a nest of canyons, less than a hundred miles from where Herne and the Rays were camped. They had only seen the groups of pursuing soldiers once during the day and they had simply stopped and watched the column as. it snaked away into the distance, heading westwards.

  But there were others in the region. A wily old fighter like Geronimo kept his scouts ranging a long way from the women and children. Keeping them circling around in overlapping figures of eight so that there was no chance of their being caught from any side. And one of them had reported finding the marks of a largish body of men, passing by from south to north. Which meant that they were probably heading northeast from Sonora. A mix of shod and unshod horses and ponies.

  ‘Three hands of men,’ said Nachez, second on of the mighty Cochise, the most famous of the braves who had chosen to follow Geronimo.

  ‘What kind?’ asked Geronimo.

  ‘I think some Mexicans, but some are half-whites. They are not people.’

  ‘You saw them?’

  ‘From two bowshots away,’ replied Nachez, licking his fingers to clean them of the grease from the meat, wiping them finally on his blue velveteen waistcoat. ‘I saw the man who leads them.’

  He made a gesture with his right hand, using the side of his palm to indicate the height of the man who had been at the head of this group. Showing that he had been very short.

  ‘El Poco,’ said Geronimo, and his face was deadly serious.

  Chapter Five

  Herne and the Rays had been out on the trail for six days before he found the first signs of Geronimo and his tiny group. It was at a waterhole, far off the main trail. The early morning of the day before had seen a violent storm, with water sheeting down from an overcast sky, lightning threading through the blackness, spooking the horses. It was all the four of them could do to hold on the reins of the terrified animals, dodging the flailing hooves.

  Before the rain was finished the worst violence of the storm had eased away and the stars were beginning to break through the scudding clouds.

  The animals quieted and Thaddeus Ray retethered his horses to the boulders, sitting down with a sigh of exhaustion. ‘Don’t want to fuckin’ go through that again, Jed.’

  ‘Your tongue, husband,’ protested Carola, but she was bitterly tired and the words lacked any strength.

  Herne looked around, seeing water coursing down the cliffs of the canyon where they’d camped. Looking intently at the earth around his boots. When they’d arrived there, at late evening, the place had been in heavy shadows, but the bottom of the draw had been deeply eroded. Now the dry sand was already a shallow stream, two or three inches deep.

  Three or four inches.

  Six inches.

  Seven.

  ‘Get out of here!’ yelled Herne, recognizing that they all stood in great danger.

  ‘Rain’s stopped,’ protested Ike Ray, brushing at his clothes.

  ‘Yeah,’ added Thaddeus.

  ‘Has here, but there’s thousands of gallons on their way down from higher up the valley.’

  ‘Hell. It’s stopped. Can’t be much,’ Ike said, looking around.

  ‘I’m not arguing with you. I’m telling you. In a quarter hour this’ll be twenty feet deep in water. It’s a real flash flood. Come on!’

  The stream had widened and deepened even during that brief argument. Carola Ray stepped to join Herne, jumping back with a gasp as muddy water splashed and surged clean over her boots, wetting her feet. From farther up the canyon they could suddenly hear a distant rumble of sound, drawing closer.

  ‘You come or you stay and drown!’ snapped Jed, vaulting on the back of his own horse, grabbing the reins of the lead animal. Heeling off down the canyon, away from the roaring of the speeding flood, the animal kicking up spray from the fetlock-deep river.

  ‘Come on, Thad!’ screamed the woman, trying to clamber up on her horse, while it stepped round in circles, whinnying in fear as it scented the rushing wall of death.

  But they all managed to get mounted, galloping for their lives down the steep slope.

  Herne was leading, leaning low in the saddle, looking back up the sheer-walled ravine, catching a glimpse of the peaking flood, toppling fast after them, white-froth on its crest, glittering in the pale light of the serene moon.

  The other three were strung out behind him, Thaddeus Ray now barely fifty yards in front of the wall of dark, tumbling watery mud. Herne saw that it was only a matter of seconds before they were all overwhelmed by the flash flood and he stretched further forward, setting his teeth in the ear of his stallion, biting as hard as he could, feeling the leap of galvanized effort as the horse pushed itself on faster.

  But even that wouldn’t have been enough.

  On the way up the canyon Herne’s memory had registered a narrow arroyo off to the left, leading steeply up from the main path. It couldn’t be much further.

  Further.

  ‘There!’ he yelled at the top of his voice, tugging at the reins, ‘Go left!!’

  For a heart-checking moment he thought the stallion was going to fall, feeling its fore-feet slip on the cascading pebbles at the centre of the ravine, then tugging with all his strength to turn the animal to the safety of the side-canyon. Nearly letting go of the pack animal but managing to hang on.

  ‘This way!’ he called, urging the horse on up a short, stiff slope, turning and waiting, seeing the woman appear, but her pack animal had gone. Then Isaac, miraculously holding on the reins of both his spare horse and the mule.

  ‘Thad!’ screamed Carola, her voice thin and weak against the swelling rumble of the flash wave as it raced down the main canyon.

  But there was no sign of her husband. Herne watched in the moonlight as the peak of the great flood raged past the opening to the side canyon, some of it spilling up, the foaming crest lapping near the ledge where they all stood. He thought he saw a horse carried by, the head strained upwards, white eyes rolling in the dimness. Then that was whirled away into the night.

  ‘Thad!’ cried Carola again. Isaac joined her in yelling for his brother. But there was no reply.

  ‘Guess he’s gone,’ said Herne quietly. After the earth-shaking wave had passed on by, rolling down the canyon to spend itself out eventually on the dry floor of the desert, the night had grown peaceful again, there was still the tugging, gurgling of the stream left behind, but it was barely two feet deep, shrinking all the time.

  Herne stepped down from the saddle, patting his stallion on the neck, calming it. Now that the danger was passed, all the surviving animals were quieter, still panting with the effort of the flight for life.

  ‘He might have gotten clear,’ said Isaac.

  ‘I’ll go look. Stay here with Mrs. Ray.’ He walked away from the sobbing woman, picking his way carefully down the slope of the side arroyo, the surface slippery with mud. The air itself smelled damp, the rocks cool to his touch: The temperature of the night must have dropped by twenty degrees in five minutes during the storm and its devastating aftermath.

  The moon threw its cut shadows clear over the main part of the canyon. There was a large boulder on its side, nearly as big as a house, paying its tribute to the lethal effect of the flash flood. One of the horses was lying dead, head lolling at a broken angle, a hundred paces downstream, water still, rippling at its matted coat, swilling mud into the blank eyes. There was a saddle, hanging from a jagged spur of rock, fully twenty-five feet from the floor of the canyon, showing the height of the wave.

  But there was no sign at all of...

  ‘Jed.’

  The voice was so feeble that Herne barely caught it, straining his ears in the darkness to try and hear where it had come from.

  ‘Jed.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Jed! I’m here.’

  There was a flicker of movement beyond the corpse of the horse. A hand, or something white, waving. Stopping. Waving again:

  ‘By this horse, Jed. Here!’

  ‘I see you, Thad. I’m coming.�
�

  From behind him Jed heard the woman. Carola had followed him to the mouth of the narrow side canyon and had seen her husband, alive.

  ‘Thaddeus,’ she cried.

  ‘Keep back, Carola,’ called Herne. ‘Ain’t safe down here. I’ll bring him up to you.’ Turning towards the man. ‘You hurt?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know.’

  ‘Anything broke?’

  ‘Most things move. But my leg’s trapped under this damned horse.’

  With the eventual help of Isaac Ray and using one of the live horses to tow away the dead one, they were eventually able to free Thaddeus. Though he was badly shaken, and his clothes were ruined with mud and torn in a dozen places, amazingly he was unhurt. The current had tangled him up with the animal and they had both been jammed up against a large outcrop of rock, with the body of the horse protecting the man from the worst of the battering.

  ‘Guess we’re lucky, huh, Jed?’ asked Thaddeus when they were partly dried out and the false dawn was touching the top of the hills to the south with a pearly light.

  ‘Sure. There’s four of us. We got three riding horses between us. To pack animals and a mule. Lost most of the food and ammunition, though we can save some of that if’n we get workin’ now. Have to shift loads.’

  ‘What’ll I ride?’ asked Thaddeus.

  ‘Pack animal. Better’n walking, Thaddeus. Means we got to lose some weight. Have to be all that, Dee.’ Pointing at the camera and the boxes of chemicals and glass.

  It was like sticking his fingers into the den of a mother wolf when she’s suckling her cubs. Dee’s lips peeled back over his teeth and he actually snarled his anger at Herne.

  ‘No fuckin’ bastard fuckin’ touches my fuckin’ camera, Herne. Fuckin’ keep off.’

  The shootist looked at him with a cool appraisal. ‘Like a man stands up for what he believes. But not when it might cause me to lose my life.’

  ‘It won’t make a difference, will it, Jed?’ asked Thaddeus Ray.

  ‘Might. Might not.’

  ‘We need his pictures. Without them our stories might not be taken.’