“Why is he so bound and determined to go southeast?” Newt asked. “Everything you tell me is that we’re most likely to find Apache camps in the big mountains to the south.”
Horn nodded. “Maybe, but Apache are liable to be anywhere and Pretty Buck thinks that Juh and his band might be closer to Janos or Casas Grandes where there’s good raiding and villages that will sometimes trade with them.”
“Juh?” Newt repeated the Chiricahua chief’s name that sounded like whoa to him.
“Juh’s band is the main one we didn’t get when we were down here two months ago. His bunch claimed they needed more time to gather the rest of the people hidden in the mountains, and they promised they would come back to the reservation when they found them,” Horn answered. “You ask me, the real reason was that the old devil wanted more time to raid Mexicans and have a little fun.”
Newt scanned the big country before him, realizing more than ever what a daunting task he had set himself to. Where did one begin to search for one little boy lost in the middle of such an expanse?
“Pretty Buck thinks we ought to work down the Janos River and then as far south as Casas Grandes. If we don’t run across word of the boy or sign of Apaches by then, we’ll cut west to the Bavispe and then on to El Tigre Mountain,” Horn added.
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
Their plan was to question anyone they met as to whether they had seen Juh’s band or sign of it, and especially to ask about any sighting of a white boy child. Given the chance, they could put the word out that they wanted to trade for the Redding boy. As warlike as they were, and as much trouble as they heaped on the Mexicans, the Chiricahua Apache were also known to trade with a few of the Sonora and Chihuahua villages.
Regardless of their hopes and intentions, not a strange soul did they see for another day’s ride. Twice they passed remote, abandoned villages. There were irrigated cornfields left unharvested or picked clean by raiders, and the carcasses of slaughtered cattle and goats were littered throughout the countryside.
“Apaches ran them out. It’s been a hard summer,” was all that Horn said when they first came on such evidence of raiding.
When they did finally run across fellow humans on the high desert road, it was a party of Mexican woodcutters in some hills northwest of Janos. There were ten woodcutters and they rose up beside the road from where they had been taking a morning siesta in a mesquite thicket. Pretty Buck was riding in the lead, and at the sight of him the woodcutters took up arms and found cover in the thorny brush or behind their high-wheeled firewood carts. Newt waved to them, and Horn called out greetings in Spanish, but the woodcutters would not come out to talk. They cursed Pretty Buck and threatened him yet did not fire upon the travelers.
Not willing to hang around longer and risk a foolish fight, the trio pushed on to Janos, some six miles farther on. The town lay along the river on a high plain, broken only by gentle hills and consisting mostly of grasslands that were relatively free of the low brush and cacti that covered the Sierra Madre mountainsides on the western horizon. Scattered herds of cattle grazed shin-deep in grama grass, and intermixed with such rangeland were the fallow farm fields along the course of the river south of the town.
The trio entered town through an adobe archway that led into a plaza overlooked by the bell tower of a large church. The town lay at a crossroads between Chihuahua, Sonora, and El Paso, and the traffic and business the road delivered showed in the quality of the buildings surrounding the church.
The citizens on the streets did not panic at the sight of two strange and heavily armed gringos and one wild-looking Apache, but they did stare and whisper among themselves. Newt spoke enough Spanish to understand some of their murmurs and how the word of an Apache in town was spreading throughout Janos.
Outside the town’s center were less well-built jacales and smaller adobe homes that belonged to the poor farmers and peasants, and it was there on the outskirts that the trio tied their horses to a goat pen fence next to a cantina. The cantina was only a tiny, single-room jacale, with a low roof and walls built from upright poles set in the ground and the cracks between the poles plastered over with adobe mud. The sign on the front of it marked it as a cantina and not a goat shed.
Newt ducked his way into the door, followed by Horn. Pretty Buck loafed well behind, reluctant to enter, but finally taking a stand one step inside the room.
A single bartender stood behind the hand-hewn slab of pine log that served as a bar, and three other men were leaning on that bar, nursing clay cups of liquor and taking careful note of the strangers who had walked in among them, especially Pretty Buck.
Newt ignored their stares and took a place at the bar. He gestured at the jugs resting on shelves behind the bar and then at the cups the other customers held. “Tres bebidos, por favor.”
Horn stood beside him, but Pretty Buck remained by the door even though Newt twice motioned him to join them. The bartender didn’t answer Newt, nor did he pour the drinks.
“Dame tres bebidos, por favor,” Newt repeated, his tone not as friendly as it had been the first time.
The bartender nodded at Pretty Buck and looked a question at Newt.
“Mi amigo,” Newt said in answer to that look.
“Apache,” the bartender said with a hiss, spitting after he spoke.
Newt rested his elbows on the bar and leaned closer to the bartender. So close that he could see in detail the beads of sweat dotting the bartender’s face.
“Dame tres bebidos, ahora.” Newt stressed that last word. Now.
The bartender looked to the three other patrons of his establishment, but they said nothing to help. The bartender reached to the shelf behind him and took down two clay cups. He sat those cups in front of Newt and pulled the corncob stopper from a jug and poured the two drinks.
Newt took up neither of the proffered cups and stuck out a forearm and barred Horn from taking one, either. He held up his pointer finger to the bartender. “Uno mas.”
“You’re pushing it, Jones,” Horn said in a whisper.
One of the Mexicans down the bar said something to the bartender that Newt couldn’t make out other than to tell it was about Pretty Buck and that the tone was not at all friendly. Horn rattled off a string of Spanish at the bartender, his tone pleasant and patient. The bartender shook his head and pointed at the two drinks he had poured.
Horn looked at Newt and shrugged. “He says he won’t serve an Apache.”
Newt strained to think of the words he needed, but he finally gave up on his limited Spanish skills and said to the bartender in clipped English, pausing often between the words to give them extra emphasis, “My friend here is a venerated warrior and a respected scout of the U.S. Army, and he has ridden a long way to your shithole of a town. You will pour him a drink.”
The bartender must have understood the word “army,” for that gave him a brief pause. But in the end, he remained unfazed and shook his head once more and pointed at the two cups, then at Newt and Horn.
“Dos bebidos,” the bartender said.
Newt turned his head away for an instant and took a deep breath. He and Pretty Buck exchanged a brief look, and then Newt grabbed the bartender by the front of his coarse-spun cotton shirt. He jerked him halfway over the bar, and his other hand took hold of the back of his head and smashed his face down into the wood. He let go the instant the man’s face resounded with a meaty thud against the hard surface, and the bartender teetered there for a short count with his nose flattened and bloody before he slumped to the floor.
The three Mexicans down the bar moved. Whether they intended to make issue with Newt’s treatment of the bartender, or whether they were simply getting out of the way didn’t matter. Horn snaked a long-barreled Colt revolver out of the flap holster on his left hip and pointed it in their direction. The Mexicans froze where they were, and the sound of the cocking hammer on Pretty Buck’s Springfield carbine caused them to put their hands in the air.
Newt watc
hed them while he reached across the bar and took down another cup from the shelf. “That’s right. Keep those damned hands in the air.”
He continued to watch them while he poured a third drink and motioned Pretty Buck over to him. The Apache scout took a place on his right, and Horn backed against the bar between Newt and the three Mexicans with his pistol still on them. He took up his cup with his free hand.
Newt motioned for Pretty Buck to do the same, and they lifted their cups and downed their drinks together. The liquor from the jug was only cheap mezcal, and nasty tasting and poorly made mezcal at that, but Newt smacked at the bite of it as if it were a fine drink.
He looked again at Pretty Buck. “Enjuh.”
Pretty Buck nodded and grinned back at him. “Enjuh.”
Horn slammed his empty cup down on the bar top hard enough to break it. “Damn right, enjuh.”
Newt stepped around Horn and went to the three Mexicans with their hands in the air. One of the weapons among them was a rusty Paterson revolver stashed in a younger man’s belt. The model of the antique Colt pistol was so old and out of date that Newt had never seen its like. The other two men had no firearms, but they did carry large sheath knives. He yanked all three weapons free and pitched them in the far corner of the room.
He pointed at Pretty Buck. “Mi amigo tenía sed. He was thirsty, hear me?”
Whether the Mexicans understood him or not, they nodded anyway.
Pretty Buck started out the door first, followed by Horn. Newt was the last out and he almost ran into Horn’s back. The young mule packer had stopped barely outside the door and was looking up at some Mexican soldiers sitting their horses facing the cantina. There were five of them in blue uniforms with red piping, and the one in the middle was an officer in some kind of silly plumed hat, gold shoulder braids, and wearing a silver embellished saber. He was a thin wasp of a man with a hard, pinched face. The look he was giving the Americanos was far from hospitable. What’s more, the four cavalrymen with him already had their Remington carbines unsheathed and at the ready.
Chapter Six
“Who are you?” the Mexican officer asked in almost perfect English.
Horn spoke up before Newt could, and his answer was far different from what Newt would have given. In fact, Horn snapped his usually slumped spine straight and gave the officer a smart, lively salute. “American officers, Troop D, Second Company, Fourth Cavalry. I’m Lieutenant Horn, and this is Captain Jones. The Apache with us is our scout.”
The officer gave them a more careful examination that bordered closely on disbelief, but his expression eventually wavered to some kind of reluctant acceptance when he noticed the army campaign hat and the flap holster Horn wore. “Where are your uniforms?”
“We’ve been two weeks in the field and we’ve found that blue uniforms don’t work well for advanced reconnaissance.”
“I am Colonel Herrera.”
“Buenos dias, Coronel.”
“Are you aware that you are on Mexican soil?”
“We’re in pursuit of Apache hostiles who have kidnapped an American child.” Horn continued his lie without missing a beat.
“This is the second time this year that your army has entered my country without permission.”
“We understand that your government and mine have an agreement.”
Newt watched while Horn and the Colonel Herrera had a staring match. Horn was as bland faced and as fawning as a schoolboy.
“These Apache and this American child you seek,” Herrera finally said, “what makes you think they are here?”
“We are merely scouting,” Horn replied. “The rest of our company is camped at San Bernardino.”
“I am aware of the American camp at El Rancho San Bernardino.”
The look on Horn’s face told Newt that the young packer had been counting on that army camp at San Bernardino to make his lie believable.
“You will find no Apache near Janos,” the colonel continued. “I assure you that my men have been most diligent in seeking out and making war on such savages. We gave battle to the Apache in the mountains west of here not so long ago. It was a hard fight, but my soldiers were courageous and achieved a great victory. A victory, I remind you, that the Apache will be long forgetting, and a victory such as your American army was unable to accomplish despite your General Crook’s bragging about his most recent campaign in those very same mountains.”
“Still, you might have gotten word or heard a rumor about a small bunch of renegades and captive child with them,” Horn said.
“I have heard of no such child, nor of Apache,” the colonel answered. “It would seem that you have ridden a long way for nothing. This problem of Apaches, this is an American problem, I think, and it would be best for you to leave here and seek within your own country for the captors of this boy you speak of.”
“The Apache raiding party we’re after crossed into your country more than a week ago.” Newt had heard enough of the colonel’s talk, and he butted in before Horn could stop him.
“Once again I say, there is no Apache problem here. The only problem is one of your own making.”
“What problem is that?” Newt asked.
“This trouble you bring with you.” The colonel came close to an eye roll and tilted his head back and gave a sigh while he gestured with a lazy flip of his hand at Pretty Buck. “Your Apache tracker makes the citizens of this city nervous. Already many people have come to me reporting his presence. Should you remain longer, bad rumors will spread. This thing, this . . . Cómo se dice? How do you say it . . .?”
Colonel Herrera waved a hand around in the air as if he could physically pluck the word he sought from it. “This fear, yes, this fear, this worrying will grow. One Apache will turn to many and to rumors of a raid. There is history, much history. Bad history. Apache history. This you do not know. You do not understand. People will be afraid to go into their fields to work, and instead they will have nothing to do but whisper to each other. Some will say that Colonel Herrera cannot keep Janos safe and that they should petition Chihuahua or Mexico City for assistance. We cannot have that.”
“No, we couldn’t have that.” Horn put a hand to Newt’s sleeve to start him toward their horses.
The three were barely mounted when the three customers from the cantina and the bloody-faced bartender came out the door and started complaining to the colonel in rapid-fire Spanish and pointing in the Americans’ direction. Horn gave another less professional salute, and they spun their horses on their hocks and left Janos in a high lope before the good colonel had time to think more on the supposed U.S. Army officers he had so recently met.
They were nearing the river when a flock of crows lifted into the air in front of them, cawing and flapping their wings in protest. It wasn’t the noisy birds that drew the trio’s attention, but rather the perches that they had so recently roosted upon. There, at the edge of the road ahead of them, was a row of heads stabbed onto stakes set in the ground. Those heads had been there long enough that the sun and weather had all but mummified them, and the remaining skin had shriveled so much that the teeth on every one of them was revealed as if they were grinning at whomever should pass by. Some had been scalped, and others were missing ears. Even passing by the stakes at a lope, Newt could tell that they were Indian heads, and the sight of so many empty eye sockets and leering death grins made a cold shiver run up his spine and the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
After crossing the Janos River and riding out of sight of the settlement, they left the road and made three or four more miles cross-country before they stopped. The packsaddle on the mule had shifted, and they needed to readjust it and to let their horses have a blow.
“Do you always go around whacking bartenders when you’re outnumbered in a foreign town?” Horn asked.
“A man that runs a tavern ought to have better manners,” Newt replied.
Pretty Buck was watching Newt closely but said nothing.
H
orn let out a low whistle and looked back the way they had come. “Well, those pendejos in that cantina don’t worry me half as much as that Mexican colonel, or acalde, or whatever he was. I’d as soon we didn’t see him and his Mexican regulars again. That was a hard man, if I don’t miss my guess, and slippery as a snake.”
“What did you think about the colonel’s trophies we saw passing out of town?” Newt asked. “Looked mostly like women and a couple of children to me.”
“Well, Herrera might have a different idea about a great victory. I was with the army and Colonel Forsyth’s column last spring when we came up after his fight,” Horn said. “True, his Mexican regulars and militia put the ambush on old Loco’s bunch and caught them flat-footed, but it was a massacre as much as it was a battle. When we looked over the battlefield the next day, the whole creek bottom was scattered with dead soldiers and Chiricahua. There was one washed-out hole in the ground where some of the Apaches had taken cover, and it was filled to the brim with their bodies. By the time we finished looking things over, we had counted better than sixty of Loco’s people dead, and only about a dozen of them were warriors. The rest were squaws and children.”
Newt grimaced as he visualized what Horn was telling him.
“And it isn’t like those women and children got hit on accident in the heat of the fight. Herrera and his soldiers shot them down on purpose,” Horn added.
“And then staked their heads on the edge of the road to brag a little to the public about what an Indian fighter he is,” Newt said.
Horn nodded in agreement. “When we came up on him, he had a couple of dozen or so women captives and some children that he wouldn’t turn over to us to take back to the reservation. We heard later that he gave seventy scalps to the governor at Chihuahua City as a token of his esteem, and he gave the children to some families in Bavispe for more political favors. The mothers and sisters and grown daughters he sent to the coast and sold as slaves. I imagine that money paid for that fancy sword he’s wearing.”
“Nasty business,” Newt said.
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