Buzzard Bait

by Brett Cogburn

  Horn was getting the children into a clump of brush and boulders on one side of the little canyon, while Gok went back to the entrance and knelt with his rifle shouldered, ready to fend off pursuit or an attack from that way. Newt looked up at the canyon sides some fifty feet above them in sheer walls, and he knew that the instant their attackers looked down from those heights they were going to be easy pickings.

  Only the talus slide at the head of the tiny canyon provided a way up, but even it looked almost too steep to climb. Newt ran to it, knowing he needed to get up to the top before it was too late. Horn must have been thinking the same thing and followed as fast as his injured foot would let him.

  The bottom of the slide was so loose that Newt sunk to his ankles and twisted his knee, but he lunged forward, time after time. The higher he went the steeper it became, and the loose rocks under his feet shifted and slid and pitched him on his face twice. Each time he got up and struggled upward. The last thirty feet was so steep that he was almost on his hands and knees. He gained ground, and then he slid back, sometimes well below where he had started.

  He fell forward over the rim rock lip of the canyon with his chest heaving and his heart pounding madly. As he landed on his belly he saw men coming at a run toward him. Some were on horses and some were on foot, and all of them were the Hatchet’s men.

  The high ground was flat like the top of a mesa, and his attackers were all spread out in front of him. There were five of them, and the closest to him was barely fifty yards away.

  Newt’s cheek found the rifle stock and he squeezed off a shot at the nearest man racing down the edge of the big canyon. That man staggered three more wild steps forward, hunched over, holding his belly with both hands, and then he toppled into the canyon below with a wild scream.

  Another rifle boomed right beside Newt, and out of the corner of his eye he saw that Horn was sitting beside him with his knees up in front of him. His own Winchester was propped on one of those knees as he squinted at his rifle sights.

  Horn’s gun boomed and a Mexican pulled up his horse hard and sagged over the front of his saddle. Horn worked the lever on his Winchester and fired again, and that shot struck the same bandit’s horse and knocked it down.

  The Hatchet was the farthest away. Newt’s vision was drawn to him out of the others by the brightness of the red serape he wore and that gray horse he rode. The Hatchet saw what was happening and veered to one side. He ran his horse parallel to Newt and Horn’s position, firing his pistol on a dead run. Newt worked the lever on his Winchester and racked a fresh round home. He swung his rifle and tried a shot at him, but the Hatchet was moving too fast and Newt missed.

  Before he could fire again he heard gunfire from down in the canyon behind him, and he twisted around in time to see Gok fighting hand to hand with another of the outlaws at the foot of the slide. The outlaw struck Gok a blow to the head with his rifle barrel that knocked Gok down. He was about to deliver another such blow before Gok kicked his legs out from under him and drove a knife into his throat when he hit the ground.

  By the time Newt turned back around, the Hatchet and the other remaining outlaws with him were running away across the tableland. Newt tried to aim at them, but they were already too far away. He lifted his head from his rifle stock, but saw that Horn was going to try a long shot.

  Horn methodically flipped up the tang peep sight on his Winchester and turned the dial elevator on it until he was satisfied. He tucked his cheek tight to the rifle stock once more and took a deep breath, as if he had all day and as if nothing in the world could hurry him. The Hatchet and the other outlaw were three hundred yards away by then and gaining.

  Horn let out a part of that deep breath, and after a long count of two or so he squeezed the trigger. The outlaw fleeing beside the Hatchet leaned to the rear with his back suddenly arched and his sombrero bobbing and slapping between his shoulder blades. A few more strides of his horse, and his arms dropped to his sides and he tumbled from the saddle over the back of his horse’s hips.

  The Hatchet kept running until he dropped off of the rise and out of sight in the distance.

  Newt looked at Horn and found him looking back.

  “Not bad,” Newt said.

  Horn lowered his rifle and patted the stock affectionately. “When this old smoke pole talks, the bad men listen.”

  They waited longer, scanning the ground before them in case there was more of the Hatchet’s gang out there.

  “Wish we had got the Hatchet,” Horn said while they waited. “He was weaving his horse back and forth and too low in the saddle to get a bead on him.”

  “Well, we put him out of a gang. We ought to be well across the border in another day or so, and I don’t think he’s going to bother us anymore.”

  “You said yourself, he doesn’t seem like one to give up on a thing. There’s talk that a Rurale once killed a buddy of his and cut his head off and put it in a jar in his office. The Hatchet walked into that Rurale headquarters in broad daylight by himself, shot two of them, and carried his friend’s head out of there.”

  “Tough or not, three of us can handle him, but I don’t think we’ll ever have to worry about seeing him again. Not if we keep moving. It can’t be more than sixty or seventy miles to the border, and in another day we can be in a settlement on the American side. The Hatchet is going to be a while gathering new recruits, even if he doesn’t want to quit.”

  “You thought about him riding to Colonel Herrera?”

  Newt frowned. “I ever tell you that sometimes I wish you wouldn’t talk?”

  No other attacker showed himself, and after a long wait Newt became convinced that they had gotten them all or the rest of them had fled with the Hatchet.

  Gok was at the bottom of the scree slide when they went back down into the side canyon. He was kneeling over the man he had killed, and when he rose up he had his knife in one hand and a bloody scalp in the other. He merely glanced at his two companions and then turned away.

  Newt looked down at the mutilated head of the Mexican bad man and then saw the children peering at the dead body from their hiding spot. None of them said anything.

  “Bloody savages,” Newt said.

  Horn looked to Gok and then back to Newt with a wry twinkle of his eyes and one corner of his mouth upturned. “You talking about him or us?”

  “Him.”

  “Apaches don’t take scalps as much as a lot of other tribes,” Horn said. “Some warriors do, some don’t. From what I’ve seen, the ones that do tend to save it for enemies they especially hate. And Gok there, he doesn’t like Mexicans not one damned bit, and that man he scalped was one of them that took his niece and these other Apache children.”

  “I don’t know that he likes anyone. I think he enjoys this.”

  “Well, be damned glad he’s on our side.”

  Newt limped over to where the children had taken cover and coaxed them out of hiding and checked them over for wounds. None of them seemed worse for the wear, although they were frightened. He and Horn mounted them on their horses while Gok went up the scree slide and disappeared over the rim rock. And he did it much more nimbly than Newt had managed the feat.

  Horn’s horse had died while they were fighting off the Hatchet’s men, and that made them two horses short counting the other one. They now had twelve children and four horses to mount them on. Newt took the gear off the dead horses and transferred what of it that they needed and could carry to the remaining horses. He remounted the children in pairs, leaving Billy, Charlie, Gok’s niece, and the older Apache girl on foot for the moment.

  Gok came back down into the canyon. Newt had assumed the worst and expected Gok to be carrying more scalps, but the old warrior only had two gunbelts slung over his shoulder, some canteens by their straps over the other, and three rifles held in the bends of his arms. He tied the rifles under the saddle fenders of the horses the children rode, then slung the canteens from their saddle horns. He said something to Horn
that Newt didn’t understand.

  “Said his people are always short of guns and ammunition to fight with,” Horn said.

  The Circle Dot horse had run into the canyon with the rest of the horses during their flight, and Newt put Billy and Charlie both on the gelding’s back and then got up in the saddle himself. Horn followed suit and put the older Apache girl behind him. That only left Gok’s niece, and as Newt thought he would, Gok took her on his horse.

  They went out of the side canyon cautiously, and the rest of them waited at its mouth while Newt rode up the big canyon to where they had originally been fired upon. He had Charlie get down and fetch his hat, for his knee was aching and slowly stiffening from where he had wrenched it running up the scree slide, and it was too difficult to get down himself with the two kids behind him.

  Newt examined the black hat while Charlie went after his rain slicker lying nearby. Billy looked at the hat as if he wondered why they had come back for it.

  “I’m partial to this hat,” Newt said.

  Charlie handed him the slicker, and while he was trying to climb up behind the saddle Newt examined the garment. There were two bullet holes through the tail of it, and he realized how close he had come to being shot. He slipped back into the slicker and turned the horse around.

  They joined back up with the rest of their group and headed down the canyon toward a belt of oaks visible a couple of miles away. It was Horn that scouted ahead this time, and Newt and Gok rode beside each other at the back of the rest of the children.

  Newt watched Gok playing with his niece and telling her things that made her laugh. And then Newt saw the scalp hanging from Gok’s belt.

  Newt turned his attention to checking their back trail and to trying to get his shirt to quit rubbing his neck. The rocks from the bullet ricochet had stung him fiercely. He could see some blood on that collarbone, but he couldn’t see the wound to tell how bad it looked. He was sure that he was not hurt badly, but it burned and stung. Gok saw him tugging at the neck of his shirt and motioned for Newt to show him the wound.

  Newt pulled the neck of the shirt down so that Gok could see. The old warrior made a face and waved at Newt as if it were no big deal. Gok didn’t appear to have received so much as a scratch in the fight, the same result the first time they fought the Hatchet’s gang.

  Horn came riding back and saw Newt looking at Gok. “What are you thinking?”

  “Did you ever see anyone fight so wildly?”

  “I told you, these Apache are fierce folks.”

  “I thought you said Apaches don’t like to take chances they don’t have to, but Gok doesn’t seem to think that way.”

  Horn started a conversation with Gok that lasted a good while. When it was finished Horn translated for Newt.

  “I asked him why he fights that way sometimes, and if he has no fear,” Horn said.

  “And what did he say?”

  “He says he cannot tell us the source of his magic or he won’t have it anymore.”

  Gok said something else, making signs and motions with his hands as if that would help them understand him. As usual, Newt couldn’t make out much of what he said.

  “He says that when the Mexicans at Janos killed his first wife and children and his mother, he cut his hair in mourning and sat with them for a long time,” Horn said. “And while he was mourning a spirit voice told him the secret of his power.”

  “What secret?” Newt asked.

  “That he can only be wounded and that no gun can ever kill him. He says that it will be a blade or some other weapon that will be the end of him, but no gun.”

  “If he truly has such magic, why did he just tell us of it and risk losing it?”

  Horn asked Gok that, and Gok rode silently for several strides of his horse before he answered.

  “He says that he is ready to die and does not fear death anymore.”

  It would have been impolite for Newt to scoff at such beliefs, so he didn’t. And what did he know? Superstition or not, many soldiers before battle had their rituals and charms. They might wear a certain piece of clothing or jewelry, do seemingly trivial things the same way every time, eat a certain meal, or any number of things. And no doubt, a man came to believe more in them when he survived after practicing them. Such confidence could make a man braver or make him move faster and stronger instead of locking up with fear or being hesitant.

  Horn seemed to have been thinking a similar thing. “Me and you may think all that medicine stuff is silly, but to an Apache it’s no different than one of our preachers praying to God for his divine help.”

  “That’s something to think on.”

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. They believe it’s true,” Horn said. “An Apache warrior going on a raid has war names for all his weapons and will not call them by their normal names until he is back home from the war path. If another warrior or a young boy along for the first time makes the mistake of calling a bow a bow, or a spear a spear, then the Apache believe that’s bad medicine and can cause things to go badly.”

  “To each his own,” Newt said.

  “Might not be that bad,” Horn said, and held up his rifle. “I’m more partial to this Winchester than I am to most anything I ever owned, and I trust it more than the majority of people that I’ve ever met.”

  “You going to give it a name?” Newt wished Horn would quit talking. His knee was hurting worse and it put him in a grouchy mood.

  “No need to be a smart aleck,” Horn said. “But why not name this gun? Back when I was a boy I used to hear those stories about those old Indian-fighting long hunters like Boone and Crockett, and all those mountain men that came out West trapping beaver. Lots of them had a name for their rifle. Wouldn’t have thought of not naming one, no more than you wouldn’t name your child or have a woman without a name. A man that’s proud of a thing or owns a thing should name it, or he doesn’t think anything of it at all. You know, Tick-Licker, and Ol’ Betsy, and Sweet Lips, and Sally, and Meat-in-the-Pot, and Thunder Stick, or some such like that. The Apache may have that right. There’s power in naming your weapon.”

  Newt gave him a look that said he wasn’t going to answer, and probably not talk anymore at all.

  Horn plunged on, regardless. “You could name that fancy shooting iron on your hip if you wanted. People don’t forget seeing a gun with grips like that, and you’re a known man. You’d give them a name for when they talked about that gun of yours.”

  Newt frowned at him and shook his head and slowed his horse so that he fell back behind Horn.

  Horn was nonplussed and continued to chatter. Newt tried his best not to listen. Billy had both arms wrapped about his waist, and he felt the child slipping to one side. He turned his head around far enough to see that Billy had fallen asleep. He reached behind him and righted the boy and noted that Charlie, too, had fallen asleep with his head resting against Billy’s back.

  Horn slowed and fell back beside him. He was still talking about guns and what he ought to name his rifle. Newt thought that Horn was a lot like little Charlie, in that there wasn’t much that seemed to faze him. What kind of man could come out of a gunfight like it never happened and talk nonstop like that as if they were riding to a church social or a picnic?

  “Is my talking bothering you?” Horn asked.

  Newt rubbed his raw neck and shook his head. “No, you keep it up. You’re putting the kids to sleep.”

  “Now, you listen. I . . .”

  Horn never got to finish what he was about to say, for at the same time they rode out of the mouth of the canyon into the oak grove, the brush cracked in front of them and rock rolled down the side of the canyon somewhere above them. Newt barely had time to pull up his horse and put a hand to his pistol before three Apache warriors stepped into the end of the canyon in front of them.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Every one of the three warriors already had their rifles ready, and Newt had a feeling that there were more of them back
in the trees or hidden somewhere above them on the canyon sides. One thing he was learning was that everybody in Sonora seemed to love ambushes and tight places to pull them off. He promised himself to avoid such places in the future.

  “Easy, Jones,” Horn said. “I’m pretty sure those are some of Gok’s friends.”

  Gok said something to Horn and Newt, then rode on up to the three warriors blocking their way.

  “What did he say?” Newt asked.

  “Your Spanish isn’t getting any better,” Horn said. “I’ve never seen a man that talks less or with less knack for human language.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said to keep our hands away from our guns.”

  Newt rubbed the bottom of his pistol holster for a moment in thought and then rested it on his saddle horn. Billy squirmed, and Newt could feel the boy trying to hide behind him.

  Charlie, on the other hand, leaned out around Newt so that he could see the Apaches better. One of the Apaches talking to Gok noticed Charlie and lifted his head as if he knew the boy and intended that subtle motion to serve as a greeting.

  “You know him?” Newt asked.

  “Yes, Chatto gave me to him. He’s who taught me how to catch rats and cook them.”

  Newt was surprised that Charlie didn’t seem angry or scared by the presence of one of his former captors, and possibly one who had participated in the murder of his parents. But he held his tongue, for he was too intent on what was going on with Gok and the other warriors.

  After some talk, the warrior that Charlie pointed out motioned to someone up on the canyon sides, and before long four more warriors appeared. Gok called to Newt and Horn to move on, and they followed the warriors into the grove of oak trees. They soon came upon the Apache camp made beside a spring of water. There were no lodges and very little baggage. A few horses and scrubby Indian ponies were tied in the trees, but for the most part the Apaches seemed to have fled their last camp with only what they could carry on their backs.