Tom Horn And The Apache Kid

by Andrew J. Fenady

  “Will you be staying here permanently, Mrs. Miles?” Shana inquired.

  “I’ll be staying as long as Nelson does.” The gowned woman glowed toward her mate. “But now that he’s made this place safe, I suppose they’ll give him a command at some other trouble spot.”

  “Yes, well”—Miles cleared his throat, if not his conscience, and indicated the dance floor—“you two enjoy yourselves. We’ll chat later on.”

  Crane and Shana both accepted the polite dismissal. They noticed Nurse Thatcher accompanied by Doctor Barnes who carried an extra glass of punch while walking toward Sieber. Shana and the captain joined the procession and exchanged greetings with the doctor, the nurse, and the old scout.

  “Here, Al,” said Doctor Barnes, extending the extra glass to Sieber. “Have some of this stuff, it’ll mix real good with that tobacco. Hatchet here’s swallowed half a bucket already. How’s the leg?”

  “Can’t you see?” Sieber took the glass and pointed toward the crutches. “I’m completely recovered.”

  “I’d say in a month or so,” Barnes diagnosed, “you’ll be trading them in for a walking stick, something that looks like Hatchet here, only shorter.”

  “It’s Thatcher, and I’m sorry you asked me to come along, you old cockroach.”

  “I said Thatcher, and I didn’t ask you, you asked me. I wonder if that orchestra knows ‘Forty Shades of Green.’ ”

  “Can I get you a glass of punch, Shana?” Crane inquired.

  “Thank you,” she replied. She noticed Karl Van Zeider nodding charmingly in her direction. Van Zeider had dropped by the store from time to time during Horn’s absence, made a few purchases he probably didn’t need, and indulged in polite conversation about everything except Horn, Bradford, and another offer. But she knew that he was a patient as well as a per sis tent man. He would play the waiting game, waiting for the possibility of her accepting Bradford’s marriage proposal, for Horn to kill the Apache Kid or vice versa—or better yet, both. Shana returned Van Zeider’s nod and quickly averted his gaze.

  It seemed that all the guests had arrived—at least, those who mattered. General and Mrs. Miles moved away from the entrance onto the dance floor.

  “Would you care to dance?” Crane asked Shana as they finished their drinks.

  “Yes, I would,” Shana smiled. “But you know, Captain, I haven’t danced since I left Boston.”

  “Well, I’m a lot rustier than that,” said Crane, “so come along at your own risk.”

  They waltzed onto the floor and danced as perfectly as if they had been going to cotillion together for years.

  “Mrs. Miles is a beautiful woman,” said Shana. “Yes,” Crane agreed, “but she certainly has a blind spot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A wife should be in love with her husband but Mrs. Miles thinks the general is the be-all and the end-all.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I’m going to ask for a transfer…” Crane hesitated. “...as soon as...”

  “As what? Oh! You mean when Tom…comes back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess a lot depends on that,” Shana reflected, “for Mr. Sieber and…”

  “And you?” Crane looked into her eyes, but Shana didn’t answer.

  There was a great roar of thunder and the electric crack of lightning, as if the bolt had just missed the building. At that instant the door was flung open, and framed on the threshold with rain and lightning behind him was the ghostlike figure of Tom Horn.

  He stood like some half-crazed creature out of a wild Walpurgis Night, with a wet, swollen face and grave-digger eyes. He wore no coat. His shirt was torn and mudcaked.

  Every eye turned upon him. The waltzers stopped waltzing. The orchestra stopped playing. Al Sieber rose on his crutches, but no one else moved. No one except Tom Horn.

  He closed the door and stepped forward, walking not fast, not slow, toward Sieber, who waited. Horn moved past Shana. She took a step, but went no closer. At least he had come back; he was alive—with worn-out eyes and blood-matted hair, bruised and beaten but alive. Shana told herself that nothing else mattered.

  “Nelson,” Mrs. Miles whispered as Horn passed, “who is that…man?”

  Miles just stood, a portrait of command indecision.

  Tom Horn stopped in front of Sieber. Their eyes locked for a moment. Then Horn raised his right hand, opened his fist, and placed the Apache Kid’s eagle claw in the old scout’s gnarled hand.

  Sieber nodded. He understood.

  Horn turned and started to leave.

  “It’s the Kid’s!” Sergeant Cahill pointed to the talon in Sieber’s hand. “Horn got the Apache Kid! I told you he’d bring him to his milk!”

  Soldiers and civilians moved closer to get a look at the claw, as if they were viewing the remains of the Apache Kid.

  Doctor Barnes stepped in front of Horn and pressed his arm. “You need some attention, boy. You look half dead, and it ain’t easy to tell which half.”

  Horn shook his head and moved off. As he did, Cahill hollered out, “Congratulations, Tom! You got the reward coming! Six thousand dollars!”

  Horn kept walking, but now Karl Van Zeider blocked his way.

  “Just a minute,” Van Zeider protested. “That trinket doesn’t prove a thing. This is a trick to collect the reward.” He thrust a finger near Horn’s face and demanded, “Where’s the body, Mr. Horn? Where is the body?”

  Horn lashed out with the same savagery he had fought the Kid. He held on to Van Zeider and smashed blow after blow onto the man’s face.

  Van Zeider would have fallen after the first blow, but Horn held him up with one hand and continued hitting him with the other until they both fell on top of the punch-bowl table, collapsing everything on it. Horn, now certainly a madman, kept on beating his fists into Van Zeider’s body and face amidst the broken table, crystal bowl, and glasses.

  Cahill, Dawson, Crane, and a half dozen other troopers stormed at Horn and finally managed to pull him off and pinion him. Horn could barely stand, but his eyes still blazed with unsatisfied vengeance at the inert figure on the floor.

  “Get that maniac out of here!” General Miles commanded.

  Horn’s eyes, lizard cold, looked at Miles, then at the men holding him. He was now in control of himself. As his body relaxed they let go of him.

  He walked alone past the still-stunned spectators, who stood like statues. Shana was near the door staring at him. He stopped and looked at her for the first time. There was a fervid look in her eyes he had never seen before.

  “You’re as much a savage as he was,” she said.

  Tom Horn opened the door and walked out into the rain.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  A lingering summer wind held the first hint of autumn, along with the faint taste of last night’s rain. The clear Arizona air, scented by late-blooming flowers, foretold that soon summer would pass and other things with it. The waning year would give way to winter as time was giving way gradually to a new century and new ways.

  The question was whether the West had been won— or defeated. The outlook depended on whether you were white or red, on whether you had been one who survived with the endless stretch of wagon trains that lumbered out of Kansas and Missouri—or whether you were bleached bones in the desert. It depended on whether you rode with Crook at Salt River Canyon or Custer at Little Big Horn. Not just the strong survived, but also the cunning, the careful, and the just plain lucky. Those at Fort Bowie this mordant morning had survived—at least so far.

  There were as many people around as usual, but they were somehow more quiet than usual, and their attention if not their eyes angled toward Tom Horn as he strapped the saddlebags on Pilgrim’s back.

  “The trouble is,” Doctor Jedadiah Barnes said to Nurse Thatcher while they watched through the window, “the Apache Kid was an Indian who thought he could live as a white man, and Tom Horn is a white man who tried to live like an Indian.”
>
  “Was that really so bad?” Nurse Thatcher asked.

  “No, it wasn’t bad,” Doctor Barnes reflected. “Maybe it was just too soon.”

  Tom Horn still showed the marks of the fight with the Apache Kid. There was also a mark on his manner that showed as he tied the bedroll on the animal.

  Shana approached. “Tom, I’m sorry for what I said last night.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He did not look at her.

  “Don’t you care enough to make it matter?” Horn didn’t answer.

  “Don’t you?” she repeated.

  “Not now,” said Horn as he saddled up.

  She felt everything slipping away—her illusions about the West, her outlook on life and love, the passion of summer’s muffled night dispelled by the cold, angry dawn, the promises of unbound youth fettered by the heavy chains of reality, almost as real and heavy as those that girdled Geronimo. Maybe Brent Bradford had been right, at least about one thing: the West was not for everyone, and everyone was not for the west. Shana tried to cling to a last desperate hope like a fluttering bird fighting a wild wind.

  “Tom,” she asked, “will you come back?”

  “No.”

  “What about your interest in the store?”

  “I’m just not a storekeeper. Give my share to Sieber if you want.”

  Without good-bye, without looking back, he directed his animal toward the fort entrance. He remembered his words to Shana—that it wouldn’t be easy to leave her. It wasn’t easy. But Horn believed it was best, at least for her. There was a part of him forever sealed off—a territory within him wild and uncharted, pulling him across the next horizon toward the distant mountains. Without that part he could not be a husband. The Apaches were in chains now or confined to reservations, but the Apache part of Tom Horn was still free.

  Out of a discolored, distorted face, Karl Van Zeider watched through the cantina window. He was already making plans. With Horn gone, those plans would come to fruition much sooner and easier. Van Zeider would survive—and prevail. He felt the strength and ambition returning to his battered body, and his aching brain surged with confidence in the future.

  General Miles and Mary stood on the headquarters porch along with Captain Crane. Horn approached but looked straight ahead.

  “Nelson,” Mrs. Miles inquired, “was that man in your army?”

  “No, no, Mary,” General Nelson Appleton Miles replied. “He was just a scout.”

  Captain Crane’s look was one of unqualified disgust. He moved away from his superior and walked toward Horn, who now rode by. The captain threw a salute to the scout. Horn kept riding.

  Al Sieber leaned on his crutches near the fort entrance. Here Horn paused.

  “Where to?” Sieber asked.

  “Miles was right about one thing,” Horn shrug -ged, “the day of the scout is over—at least around here.” Horn’s face was calm, his voice even. “Might head up toward the Platte.”

  Al Sieber knew he was saying good-bye to his other son. He looked at Horn, and his eyes swam with memories. “If you run across Crook, well...”

  “Yeah. Take care of yourself, Al….” Tom Horn tore the thong and eagle claw from his neck and handed it to Sieber. “And this.”

  That was it. Horn started to ride away. Shana Ryan came and stood next to the old scout.

  Sieber looked at Tom Horn riding away from Fort Bowie. The chief of scouts took something from his pocket, and his eyes went down to the beaten-upold hand.

  It was open now, and in the creased and callused palm were two eagle claws. “Sibi’s Boys,” he whispered

  Other Leisure books by Andrew J. Fenady:

  THE TRESPASSERS

  BIG IKE

  THE REBEL: JOHNNY YUMA

  RIDERS TO MOON ROCK DOUBLE EAGLES

  Copyright

  A LEISURE BOOK®

  February 2009

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 1984 by Andrew J. Fenady

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