Kitt Peak

by Al Sarrantonio

  "Why?" Thomas said. If he didn't have his coffee, and if he didn't shave, he would not feel as if the day had started.

  Bartow shrugged nervously. "Just should." "What's eating at you, Bartow?" Lincoln said.

  Bartow gave Reeves a solemn look. "Nothing. Just think we should get on with it." Thomas packed his bedroll, and, as Lincoln bent to tend to the fire, he prepared his shaving kit. "We'll leave soon enough. Get down and have coffee with us."

  Bartow took a sliver of jerky from his pocket and tore at it unenthusiastically. "Think I'll ride a little ahead."

  Thomas looked at him. "Suit yourself. But don't ride on more than an hour ahead."

  Bartow nodded grimly and set off.

  "What's eating him?" Lincoln said.

  "He's superstitious," Thomas said. "But now we have to make sure that his foolishness doesn't get in the way of what we have to do."

  In his mind, Thomas cursed Marshal Murphy lightly for burdening him with this extra problem.

  An hour later, Thomas and Reeves were ready to ride. Thomas felt ready for the day now; his clothes, which had been neatly folded the night before, had been put on in military order, and his belly was full. His face was shaved.

  With some annoyance, he had noticed that domestic life had put a little slack in Lincoln Reeves. But he was mildly critical to the Trooper, thinking back on his own creeping slovenliness back in Boston.

  "Do you miss the Army, Trooper?" he asked Reeve as they set out.

  Lincoln pondered the question. "Can't say I do."

  "Are you sure? Wasn't there a telegram you were supposed to send home?"

  "Damn!" Lincoln swore. Back in Tucson, he had promised himself to send the telegram, and then forgotten again. "She'll kill me, Matty will."

  "I doubt that," Thomas said. "But she will be worried. That's why I sent it for you." Lincoln beamed.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Told her you missed her terribly."

  "I do!" Reeve protested.

  "I'm sure you do, Trooper. But I'm also sure you miss this life, just as I do."

  Again, Lincoln pondered. "To be truthful, I do. But a farmer is what I am now, sir. And when this is over, I'll go back to farming.

  Thomas smiled. "I told her that too, Trooper."

  When they hadn't caught up with Bartow after an hour and a half, Thomas began to worry. But then they saw the half-breed, waiting for them at the top of a rise. As they got closer they saw him sitting in his saddle, pulling on a piece of jerky, solemnly watching them approach.

  "I been thinking, chief," he said to Thomas. "Yes?"

  "Well, I'm going to have to leave after tonight. I got business back in Tucson to take care of."

  "You'll take us into the reservation?" Bartow sat up taller in his saddle. "I promised to do that, and I will. But tonight I'm leaving."

  "Fair enough. But I want you to tell Murphy what you did."

  Bartow chewed his jerky thoughtfully. "He won't be happy."

  "That's not my problem, Bartow." Bartow nodded. "Reckon it's my problem, then, chief. I'll do it."

  Bartow turned, and Thomas and Lincoln followed.

  They reached the reservation two hours later. It spread out below them in the cradle of two mountains. One of them, the taller, Thomas took for Kitt Peak. He noted that Bartow shied away from it, taking them far to the west, approaching from the base of the other mountain.

  Thomas had been in many Indian reservations, but he had never seen one quite as depressed as this one. These were a beaten people. There were more wooden shacks than teepees; outside many were naked, dirty children playing in the dust. Down the middle of what served as their main road, a ditch filled with foul-looking water ran. Saguaro cactus grew here and there. Outside the few teepees, old women sat weaving baskets. Their clothing was a mixture of traditional and the white man's, scarves and dirty dresses. No one smiled.

  It was a large reservation, and they rode for fifteen minutes before reaching their destination, a large wooden building with a sagging, shingled roof. On its porch, every other plank seemed to be missing. The word OFFICE had faded, though someone had recently whitewashed the word COUNCIL in crooked letters above it.

  Inside, the accommodations were no better than what they had seen. A table missing one leg, supported by fruit cases, stood just inside the door. On top of it were scattered papers, some with United States government markings on them. Thomas picked one up. It was a newsletter, from Washington, talking about new programs for education, housing, and the distribution of clothing and foodstuffs. It was a year old, and the more Thomas read, the more he saw how evasive and complicated it was. Nothing had been promised before 1905, and only if a myriad of forms were filled out and properly filed.

  Thomas put the paper down.

  Along the back of the room was a counter. Behind that, mostly empty shelves held a few blankets and a lot of cooking utensils. More boxes of cooking utensils stood open on the floor in front of the counter.

  A few more tables, missing one or two legs and supported by empty boxes or crates, were scattered around the room. A few old men sat at them, staring into space. Along the far right wall were a few cots; on one of them, a figure lay curled, uncovered, face to the wall, eyes open.

  There was a back room. An old man came out of it to wait at the counter for them. There was some sort of recognition between the old man and Bartow; when the old man raised his hand listlessly, though, Bartow said nothing.

  "Here for more jerky?" the old man asked thickly, offering a tired smile. His eyes, half-vacant, turned on Lincoln and Thomas.

  Bartow said, "Marshal Murphy sent me with these two. They're looking for Bill Adams's daughter."

  The old man's eyes went to stone.

  "You heard about Adams and Tahini?" Bartow offered.

  "We heard. They're burying Tahini down in the city, the mining company's taking care of it. We said fine. We have our own burial today."

  Bartow's interest was heightened he chewed on his own jerky faster. "Who?"

  "Kohono-si. He was cut up like Tahini." The old man waited for Bartow's reaction.

  Bartow said, "I threw the bones last night."

  "So," the old man said. Then he added, "You belong here with us."

  Unaccountably, Bartow smiled, showing his teeth. In a moment, he seemed to have re-turned to his old self.

  "Be damned if I do!"

  "That's no way to speak of the dead." "So what!"

  The old man looked off into the distance. "You will understand some day. You cannot leave us behind. Especially not now."

  "Bull-spit." Bartow heaved a sigh of relief, and turned to Thomas and Lincoln with his smile intact. "Let's go about our business, chief," he said to Thomas. "I can stay with you now."

  The old man frowned.

  "Le-Cato in?" Bartow asked the old man.

  "The Keeper of the Smoke is at his home, preparing for a trip."

  "Fine." Bartow turned to leave, then came back to the counter.

  "Think I will have some of that jerky, if you don't mind!"

  Frowning still, the old man sold him what he wanted, and they left.

  "Got to understand," Bartow said to Thomas as they mounted and rode slowly to the edge of the village, "I thought I was a dead man until five minutes ago. This bone thing always works for me. The rest of it" — he waved his hand — "is bull-spit. But that bone thing worked the night my daddy died, and the night my momma died. And now..."

  "I take it you're not close to your tribe?" Thomas said.

  Bartow laughed. "Not likely, chief. I went to Tucson. Never really cared for it."

  "But that's not the way Abby Adams felt? Is that why she came back here?"

  "Couldn't say," Bartow replied. His face clouded momentarily.

  Thomas said, "I think we should attend this funeral. "

  Bartow looked at him unhappily, then said, "If you want, chief."

  The Keeper of the Smoke's house was better looking than the rest, but
not by much. It looked as though at one time it had been very cozy and neat, but time, and lack of maintenance, had made the eaves sag and the front door hung at an angle. Le-Cato himself sat on the front porch in a chair, out of the sun, staring at the street. Nearby, his horse was being packed by a young squaw, who ignored them.

  "Hey, old man!" Bartow called.

  Le-Cato looked at them, startled. "You are a dream," he rasped.

  "Hell, no, Le-Cato, we ain't no dream! Got to talk to you, is all."

  The old man had regained his bearings, and sat staring at Thomas.

  "Yes," he said, "we will talk." He turned to the young squaw. "Granddaughter, leave us."

  Without looking at them, the young girl stopped what she was doing and walked away.

  But after a long talk with the Keeper of the Smoke, Thomas felt as though he had learned nothing, except for the fact that the old man had nothing to say to him. He spoke in circles. But despite all that, Thomas felt the man's keen interest in him. Thomas learned nothing of Bill Adams's daughter, and nothing about the eagle, but the old man more than once put his thin hand on Thomas's knee, as if testing to see if he was real.

  When they left, the old man seemed much happier than he had been when they arrived, and as they stepped from his porch he once again reached out to touch Thomas.

  "You see that?" Bartow said with a laugh as they rode off. "0l' Le-Cato thinks you're a dream come true!"

  The funeral of Kohono-si was short and nearly devoid of ceremony. The man's body was carried down the main street of the village on a litter, and laid on the ground in front of the council store. The Keeper of the Smoke chanted a prayer, and then the litter was lifted again, to be carried outside the village limits and buried.

  "I'd like to examine that body," Thomas said.

  "Sure thing, chief!" Bartow said. He stepped forward, told the litter carriers to lower the body, which they did. There was a murmur from the Tohono O'otam until the Keeper of the Smoke said, "It is all right."

  Thomas stepped quickly forward and looked the body over. It had, indeed, been mangled in a fashion similar to that of Tahini. This time the killing wound was a gash across the chest, at heart level. Again there were slashes on the hands and arms, as if the man had tried to ward off his attacker.

  Thomas backed away, and the litter carriers bore the body away.

  "Okay if we leave now, chief?" Bartow said. Through the entire ceremony he had stood smiling, chewing on his jerky.

  "Yes," Thomas said.

  They camped outside the village, but still in reservation territory. Bartow was no longer afraid of Kitt Peak. It loomed behind them. Just before sundown Bartow left, and returned with another prairie dog, which Lincoln looked forward to ravenously.

  By the time they ate it was late, and after the long day Thomas and Lincoln turned in. They left Bartow sitting by the fire, humming, still talking as he finished his own meal.

  In the middle of the night, Thomas awoke. The fire was low, but still lit. Something was wrong. He counted the outline of horses.

  There were only two.

  He rose and walked to where Lincoln lay sleeping. Bartow was nowhere to be seen. His bedroll had been packed; his horse was gone.

  By the fire, Thomas found Bartow's plate, with a scatter of animal bones on it. They were in the same pattern they had been when Bartow had gotten so upset the night before.

  "Trooper Reeves!" Thomas called. He didn't wait for Lincoln to scramble out of sleep before setting off himself into the darkness, gun drawn.

  They found Bartow two hours later. He had been heading back to Tucson; his horse stood near his body, huffing impatiently, and waiting to be led. Bartow was face up, staring at the stars, head thrown back. As they got closer, Thomas could see the pulled back rictal look of fear on the man's face.

  "That's the way Sergeant Adams looked," Reeves said.

  "Yes," Thomas said. He examined the body. There were marks of a struggle, claw marks on the arms and hands. Thomas crawled close to Bartow's face, brought his nose down to the dead man's mouth, and sniffed.

  "Lieutenant — " Lincoln said in distaste.

  "Quiet, Trooper." He continued to sniff, then, to Lincoln's disbelief, put his finger into Bartow's mouth and scraped against his teeth. He then brought the finger close to his nose and sniffed.

  "All right," Thomas said, getting up. He strode back to his horse, pulled his bedroll down, and rolled it out.

  "You take the first watch, Trooper," he said to Reeves, then promptly lay down, and rolled himself up.

  Shaking his head at Thomas's antics, Lincoln unslung his rifle, crouched in the shadows near the newly made camp, and looked to the stars for four hours before Thomas Mullin awoke, alert and bright-eyed, to take his place.

  Chapter Eleven

  With pride, Lone Wolf watched as a representative of the last of the Six Tribes approached his camp. The rider halted below, looked up, and held his staff of feathers high overhead in greeting. In answer, Lone Wolf raised his hand high in salute.

  Lowering his staff, the rider continued to climb his horse up the steep path to the top of the bluff.

  Content, Lone Wolf turned back to the Council. The other members had been fed, and were now smoking. Curling Smoke was telling a story to keep them amused. Lone Wolf had grudging admiration for the old man; Curling Smoke had, at least according to himself, been in nearly every major war party of the past fifty years, including the last one of Geronimo. According to Curling Smoke, Geronimo had been a good chief who had merely grown too tired to fight, and now allowed himself to be shown in circuses and newspaper photos. Once that had happened, Curling Smoke said, some of the greatness had bled out of Geronimo, like the blood from a slain deer. Curling Smoke and Geronimo were nearly the same age, and still Curling Smoke fought on. The implication was clear.

  Lone Wolf half-listened to the old man's rambling story about a raid on a fort while he waited impatiently for the new emissary to arrive. This day would prove him triumphant as a chief. No one had been able to call a war council in nearly five years. The white man's reservations were full and seemingly secure. Only up north, in what the white men referred to as Canada, were any war parties, and small ones at that, operating anymore.

  It was as if the Apache tribes had given birth only to women, fit to do women's work.

  But all that might change. Lone Wolf was no fool. He had studied the campaigns of Geronimo and of Victorio, and, most recently, Pretorio. They had all failed for one reason alone. The white man's army had been close by, and great in numbers. With white man's schooling in the reservation, Lone Wolf had learned how to read maps and books. His teachers did not notice that the only books and maps he was really interested in were concerned with the so-called Indian Wars. He had studied well, and began to form his own plan when he was fifteen.

  That was five years ago, just as Pretorio was being quickly beaten and sent back to his reservation in New Mexico. Those had been bad times for the Apache. Throughout all the tribes, an unspoken feeling of defeat had descended. The white man seemed to sense this, and his iron grip had relaxed. The forts to the west had been strengthened, and those here in Arizona, and east into New Mexico and Texas had been weakened. Fort Davis, in Texas, which Pretorio had attempted to attack, had been closed, and the dreaded Buffalo Soldiers dispersed. All along the middle West, the white man had relaxed, secure in his telegraph lines, his federal marshals, his farmers, his towns of merchants and shopkeepers.

  This Lone Wolf had waited for. Patiently, and with the outward appearance of docility, he had learned and waited for this moment. And now there would be great war again. But this time it would be different. For Lone Wolf would win. He would not fight a war of numbers, but of stealth. Conquest would be foolish. Lone Wolf was well aware of the might of the United States of America, and knew that any attack on those farmers, or shopkeepers, or the white man's precious railroad would bring swift and terrible retribution. Lone Wolf would not be a flaming sword
in the side of the United States, but rather a sharp thorn. He would not fight the Army. He would, instead, strike one terrible blow, one sharp thrust of the thorn, that would at once hurt the white race mightily and provide a rallying point for all the Indian tribes from west to east. And soon he, Lone Wolf, would be the greatest chief of them all, rallying a hundred thousand braves throughout all of the United States, a force too mighty for the white man's army to conquer.

  Perhaps an alliance with Mexico, or Spain, would follow. The United States would reel from the blow the mighty Lone Wolf would strike.

  If only the final piece of his plan would fall into place . . .

  "And the white men cowered behind their wagons," Curling Smoke was saying behind him, "and waited for their deaths to come. And come they did." Lone Wolf turned to see Curling Smoke address White Deer, the representative of the Mescalero tribe, and Pretorio's only descendent. "And you will enjoy this, White Deer. For when we went in later to take scalps, the three soldiers who had been accompanying the caravan were Buffalo Soldiers, their black faces twisted in painful death."

  White Deer nodded.

  Lone Wolf turned back to face the valley below as the new representative topped the rise.

  For a moment, all was silent. Lone Wolf knew the Council behind him was watching him, waiting for his reaction. This was a pivotal time. The new representative halted his horse, and looked at Lone Wolf. Lone Wolf stared back hard.

  Suddenly, Lone Wolf raised his hands in greeting.

  "Welcome, brother."

  At first reluctant, the new representative breathed deeply and raised his feather stick in greeting.

  "Thank you, brother," the new one said. "I bring greetings from the Tohono O'otam, who have sent me here as their representative. The eagle has flown high, in many dreams, and has told us that this is what we must do."

  The rider dismounted, and Lone Wolf strode forward, and embraced him.

  "It is good that you have come, Le-Cato. It is good that the Keeper of the Smoke of the Tohono O'otam has brought his people into this great undertaking."