Horn cut him off. “Yeah, you’ve already said that. A man doesn’t come down here doing what you’re trying to do for no kind of friend, woman or not.”
“I don’t have many friends.”
“I can believe that.” Horn laughed but did it quietly. “Tell me the real reason, Jones. How come you’re trying to get yourself killed doing something that you don’t have a fart’s chance in the wind of getting done?”
Newt started to say something but stopped short.
“Don’t have the words for it, do you?” Horn asked.
“No, I don’t. Half my life I’ve been doing things that I can’t explain or I probably wouldn’t do again.”
“Well me, neither. Maybe I was bored, or maybe I’m out to make me a mark like you said back there at that old city on the San Miguel.”
“When those Rurales have passed we’re going to ride, and ride fast,” Newt said. “That Hatchet is way ahead of us, and it’s time we made up some ground.”
“I’ll be with you.”
“You better be, or I’ll leave you.”
Newt went back to the place he’d left Gok, but Gok was gone. Careful searching of the canyon below him led Newt to finally spot the Chiricahua. The old warrior had slipped a hundred yards farther down the mountain and was down on his belly with that Long Tom Springfield infantry rifle he packed along rested across a rock. Newt noticed then that the Rurales were almost directly below Gok, following a course between the river and the foot of the mountain.
The Rurales were close enough by then—still a long rifle shot—that even Newt could make them out plainly for what they were. There were a dozen men in the Rurale company. He could see the big, sugarloaf brims of their sombreros. The number of guns they were carrying and the way they dressed like some kind of vaquero or Mexican cowboy gave them away.
He knew what Gok was about to do, but there was no way that he could get down there fast enough to stop him or call out to him without giving their position away. All he could do was watch and wait for the roar of Gok’s gun.
He didn’t have to wait long. That long-barreled Springfield cracked and smoked, and one of the Rurales in the front of the line, the one on the yellow horse and with the red shirt on, tipped off his horse like a hammer had struck him in the head. It was an incredible shot, maybe two hundred yards or better, and the Rurale had been riding at a trot and through the mesquite brush.
The other Rurales looked up the mountain while Gok reloaded his trapdoor single-shot. By the time he was aiming again, the Rurales were off their horses and climbing up through the rocks. One of their bullets spanged off the canyon between Newt and Gok with an angry whine.
Gok never fired again, and by the time Newt had Horn on his horse the old warrior was already coming at a run and almost to his own horse.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Newt asked in English, regardless of whether or not Gok could understand him.
“Enjuh,” Gok said, as if that made everything better.
And then he leaped on his horse in one smooth swing of his leg and the hand not holding his rifle grabbing a handful of the horse’s mane. It was the move of a young man, not a man of Gok’s apparent age. Newt would have guessed him somewhere north of fifty or so.
Newt got on the Circle Dot horse and followed Gok back up the canyon until they hit another canyon leading into it and sloping down to the river on the other side of the point of the mountain where they had left the Rurales.
“That was a damned fool stunt he pulled. What was he thinking back there?” Newt asked Horn.
Perhaps it was pure chance, but at that very moment Gok looked at Newt and said in surprising and perfect English, as if it explained it all, “Damned Mexicans.”
Gok moved ahead of them again, guiding them down the new canyon.
“Do the Apaches hate all Mexicans like he does?” Newt asked Horn while he checked their back trail. The Rurales were going to be a long time working their way up that mountain, but they were mad enough to do it faster than they had any right to.
“Mostly, and the Mexicans hate them about the same,” Horn said. “Lots of years and bad things between them. Lots of good folks on both sides gone under.”
Newt nodded that he understood, as he had heard much the same his first time in Mexico. However, he found no pleasure in that understanding. “Bad blood and too late to do anything about it, I reckon.”
“The way I hear it, Gok’s got more grudge than most when it comes to Mexicans, and they like him even less,” Horn said.
Newt noticed that Horn was breathing harder than he should. His blistered foot must have been bothering him worse than he let on. “What about Gok?”
Horn seemed to find something funny about the way Newt said the old warrior’s name, but he let it go and said nothing about it. “You ask him sometime, and maybe he’ll tell you the straight of it if he wants to. Or maybe he won’t.”
The side canyon choked down so narrow and was so rough that they could barely get their horses down the rugged chasm. Newt wasn’t happy that they were going down on the flats. He would have much preferred to stay up on the mountain and take advantage of the terrain. Even outnumbered like the Rurales had them, the Mexican lawmen would have a hard time flushing them out or overrunning three men with good rifles and plenty of cover and the high ground. But Gok’s plan seemed to be to cross the river and outrun the Rurales to the mountains on the other side of the river bottom.
The last hundred yards down the canyon was a slide of loose ground and eroded debris, and their horses had to go fast to keep from falling. They hit level ground at a run and were soon in the cover of a dense mesquite thicket. Ahead of them, rising up above the shorter mesquites, Newt could see the green line of cottonwoods along the river. That green line was only a short ride away.
But instead of going toward the river, Gok pulled up and looked back at the mountain behind them. He turned and pointed at the river, then at them, and the river again. It was plain he wanted them to go on while he remained behind. What he intended, Newt didn’t know, whether it was to wait for the Rurales and kill another one while getting himself killed, or something else. Newt didn’t care.
He slapped Horn’s horse on the hip and the two of them tore through the thicket toward the river. Gok remained behind.
Recent fall rains had swollen the Bavispe River where it made its big turn to the south, and it took Newt longer busting brush to find a more suitable place to cross. Even that wasn’t a good crossing, but it would do in an emergency.
Newt gave Horn a concerned look. “You up to this?”
Instead of speaking, Horn answered him by spurring his horse into the river. Newt was right behind him, and they hit swimming water not ten feet out. Horn was lighter and remained in the saddle, but although the Circle Dot horse was a strong swimmer and swam high in the water, Newt wanted to lighten his strain where he could. He slipped from his back and let the horse drag him along by the saddle horn. The river was wide there, and he alternated his attention from the near bank to the far one. It wouldn’t do to be caught in midstream by the Rurales. He tried not to think anymore about that and hung on and let his horse swim.
Once they were out on the far bank, they got into cover of the brush and trees and turned back and kept watch on the way they had come. Newt hadn’t a single bit of dry cloth to wipe his guns down, but he did the best he could with leaves. He unloaded both weapons and attempted to dry the cartridges, too. He would be sure to clean and oil both his rifle and the Smith pistol when he had the chance.
Horn remained on his horse, as if he lacked the energy to get down. Newt thought that was best, anyway. If they had to run it would be better not to have to help the kid on his horse again. He wondered about Horn’s foot. He couldn’t see how bad it was with the bandage on it.
They waited until the sun was well down behind them and had almost given Gok up for good when he came riding through the brush to them. He seemed no worse for his wear,
and Newt had no idea where the old warrior had crossed the river. It was obviously a better crossing, for Gok was only wet up to his moccasin tops. What’s more, Gok was leading two strange horses with Mexican Charro saddles on them, the kind with the big wooden saddle horns.
Gok gestured for them to go, and he led off to the west before Newt could ask any questions. But Newt wasn’t about to let it go. He kicked the Circle Dot horse up until he was close to Horn and Gok.
“How’d you get those horses?” He knew good and well that Gok had ridden around the point of the mountain and slipped up behind the Rurales and raided their horses while they were up on the mountain looking for him. He knew it but wanted to hear it.
“Enjuh,” Gok twisted around on his pony and said with a grin that made him seem years younger than he was, as if the whole afternoon had been a normal day.
Newt was trying to understand how one old man who was scared of bears and who snored like a freight train in his sleep and was so stiff kneed in the cool mountain mornings that it took him half an hour to get moving right could sneak up on a whole company of Rurales and get away without their horse guard spotting him.
It was then that Newt saw the fresh scalp hanging from Gok’s gunbelt.
Gok saw him looking at the scalp and his grin changed to something more like a smirk.
“Those Rurales never did anything to us,” Newt said. “That was cold-blooded murder what you did back there.”
Horn didn’t translate, either because he was too out of it, or simply because he didn’t want to.
Newt tried to find the words in Spanish but gave up for he knew it would do no good, whatever he said to Gok. All he could think of was to say again in English, “You could have gotten us killed.”
“Damned Mexicans. No bueno,” Gok said.
Newt wanted to lay hands on the Apache right then, and he wanted to get free of him. But he needed Gok’s tracking skills and he needed his knowledge of the land. And that made him madder, that he needed such a killer to help him. He tried to tell himself that the Apache and the Mexican people had been at war for generations, and that it was no wonder they shot each other on sight. But that didn’t soothe him.
It came to him that he hadn’t heard Gok shoot since he had shot the first Rurale from the mountain. No matter, the old warrior had done for two Rurales by himself and hadn’t gotten a single scratch in the process. Everything he had guessed about Gok from the instant he first laid eyes on him was true. He tried not to think about how he had known that instinctively, but he did.
Was he a killer, same as Gok? Wasn’t that why Matilda Redding had wanted him to go after the boy? Oh, she said it in a nicer way—that bit about being a man with the bark on. She wanted him to go after the boy not because she trusted him but probably saw him for what he was the instant she first met him back on the Pecos. Did she think of him as he thought of Gok? He tried to imagine how she saw him—just a raggedy man who hadn’t made anything of himself in better than thirty years. A violent man with a past no gentleman would claim. Nothing but the scars he had received and the ones he had given to tell his story. Nothing to his name other than a dead man’s gun and a horse even an Apache wouldn’t eat.
For years, Newt had told himself that he was going to amount to something one day, all the while hating the name he had somehow earned, like it or not. Always going to change and always putting that off with every bad excuse life kept offering him. And here he was again, fighting and clawing, and with nothing to offer anyone but his gun and his fists. And no one who would miss him when he was gone. It was an ugly truth, but one he couldn’t deny. He had known it for a long time and had been reminded of it when he rode through the ruins of that ancient city. A man like him was never headed for anything but a hard end.
Gok and Horn had pulled too far ahead of him, and Newt sped up his horse. Horn was listing a little to one side in the saddle, and Newt thought he might have to prop him up. Damned fool kid, coming down to Mexico with him. He was young enough, yet, to learn and change his ways and find something different. Maybe go back to the States and find that pretty Apache woman he had talked about, or one of those Mexican señoritas with the flashing brown eyes. A kid like him had a chance to change before it was too late. Smart kid and a fine talker. He would make a politician or a lawyer or such if someone pointed him that way.
The Smith pistol on Newt’s hip had shifted, and righting it to a more comfortable spot and the feel of those grips against his palm put his mind back to task. No sense whining about the way things were, and no since thinking too much. They said the Widowmaker was a hardcase, and they would say it when he was gone. Let them say what they wanted to. He was going to get the boy back if he was still alive. Matilda was counting on him, for one reason or another. Let the cards fall where they would, and pity those who got in his way.
Another set of mountains loomed up to the west, and Gok was leading them that way. Newt rode alongside Horn and put a hand on the kid’s shoulder to brace him. Horn was so sick and hurting that he didn’t know that Newt was helping him.
Chapter Twelve
They turned south and followed the Bavispe once they reached the foot of the mountains they had seen to the west. On the day after crossing the Bavispe Gok sped them up, as if he knew something that he had not shared. Twice, Newt had seen sets of horse tracks but knew not who made them. The tracks could have been the Rurales they had left the day before, or they could have been made by any riders. The Hatchet had such a lead on them that the tracks were too recent to be his or his men’s.
Horn was better after a night’s rest. Newt had lanced the blisters on Horn’s foot, and Gok had rubbed cool mud from the river on them before they rigged up another crude bandage. Although Horn was better, Newt feared that the poison would set in Horn’s foot, no matter how much they attempted to doctor it. And then Horn would die or they would have to cut off that foot. Either way, if the rot set in Horn was dead. Newt kept a watch ahead, hoping he would see a village or town in the distance. Maybe they could find a doctor if they passed upon a settlement.
Gok didn’t seem concerned about Horn’s foot, as if he had seen such wounds before and thought them nothing to worry about. Or he simply didn’t care.
Newt noticed for the first time that the front sight on Gok’s rifle was missing. It was amazing that Gok had made such a long shot on the Rurale with the gun missing its sight. Most Indians Newt knew weren’t much of a rifle shot, but then again, he hadn’t met many Apache and he was sure that Gok was unusual, even among them—an efficient killing machine.
They came upon the burned-out Apache rancheria late in the morning. The fall days were getting steadily cooler and the wind whipped up the length of the narrow valley, whistled through the open rib bones of several cow carcasses strewn about, and flapped a piece of scorched steer hide serving as a partial roof over the pole frames of one of the handful of brush wickiups in the ruined remains of the Apache camp. There had been three lodges, and Newt didn’t need to wait for Gok to come back from looking over the tracks and other sign around and in the camp to know what had happened. Somebody had hit the village and hit it hard. There were two bodies that Newt could see from where he sat on his horse and watched Gok work over the signs. A man and a woman, both old, both now dead with their scalps taken and other things done to them. Whoever had done it had set fire to the lodges before they rode away.
When Gok rode up, Newt knew who had attacked the Apache camp before Gok said anything. Horn did, too. The look on Gok’s face said it all, and then he went ahead and said it, anyway, “La Sacha Sangrienta.”
The Hatchet had done this.
Horn translated as Gok filled in the details. Eight men, maybe more, had hit the Apache camp a day or two before—men with shod horses, and men who scalped old men and women and cut off their ears. Piezas, those ears were called in that country and time, trophies again like the Apache heads Colonel Herrera had spiked along the road to Janos. There had been a time when th
e state of Chihuahua had offered a bounty for scalps and pairs of ears.
“He says the Hatchet and his men got two more children here,” Horn said.
There were no bodies of children, so Newt knew that it was more slaves for the Hatchet to sell.
“How does he know it wasn’t Rurales or Herrera’s soldiers that did this?” Newt asked.
Horn led him over to the body of the old woman. She lay flat on her back with a large, ragged split of busted bone in her forehead.
“He carries a hatchet for his nasty work. That’s how he got his name,” Horn said.
Truly, it looked as if a hatchet or an ax blade had busted the old woman’s skull. Newt looked away, sick at the sight of that old woman’s scalped and mutilated head, and her eyes staring wide open up at him and the sky. He waited a moment and then got down off his horse and pushed her eyelids closed with his hand. There was no time for burying them, but he could at least do that much.
Gok seemed uneasy that he had touched the dead and rode on without them. Newt and Horn followed but lagged well behind him on purpose.
“How far behind him are we?” Newt asked.
“You heard Gok. Maybe two days. Maybe a little less,” Horn said. “Those kids should slow them down.”
“You know of any towns downriver that they might be heading for?”
“Never been down this way, but Gok says that there’s a village called Opata about two more days south. Some other tiny Indian villages in the mountains closer, but I can’t remember their names.”
“How’s the foot?”
“Better.”
Newt couldn’t tell if Horn was lying or not. “You up for this? We might run on to them any time. It won’t be easy.”
“Like I told you, I’ll be right there with you.”
“Good, I’m counting on you.”
“That back there”—Horn pointed behind them at the Apache rancheria they had left—“I’ve seen Apaches do things as bad or worse, but just the same, men who could do that don’t deserve to live.”
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