Lieutenant Davis intended to ride into Willcox with Newt, and while Newt was waiting for him to gather his things, Horn walked over to him.
“I’ve got to stay with the Apaches. Lieutenant’s orders,” Horn said.
Newt went to his saddlebags and pulled out the wallet that Redding had given him. Six hundred dollars remained. Newt counted out four hundred and handed the money to Horn.
Horn counted the money, shifting it from hand to hand. “You only owed me three hundred.”
“That other is for Pretty Buck. You give it to his family or that girl he was sweet on.”
“I’ll do that.”
Newt held out his hand and Horn took it.
“I don’t know what to say,” Horn said.
“Well, that’s a first.”
“I’d ride with you anytime.”
“Same here.”
“You ought to come up to the reservation when you’re through. I can probably get you on as a packer or maybe I could talk Sieber into hiring you on as an interpreter.”
Newt laughed along with Horn.
Horn once more glanced at the money in his hand. “I’m going to buy me a new rifle gun with this, and then if it’s a good gun I’m going to give it a name.”
“Horn, the best thing you can do is quit the gun business. There’s nothing in it but a noose or a killing at the end.”
Horn laughed again. “Same old gloomy Widowmaker. Damned if I ain’t going to miss that ugly mug of yours and all your brilliant conversation.”
Newt went to his horse and checked his saddle. Gok came up on him so quietly that he didn’t know he was there until he turned around and saw him. The old warrior said nothing for a long time, and Newt wondered what he wanted.
Geronimo finally reached out one hand, balled into a loose fist, and touched Newt on the chest. “Shush Bijii.”
And then Geronimo withdrew the hand and touched his own chest above his heart. “Shush Bijii.”
He gestured to Newt and then back to himself, yet did not repeat the phrase a third time.
Newt thought he understood and nodded his head. Both of them stood there for a while longer, looking at the horizon as if they could see something there.
In time, Geronimo pointed to the south. “Enjuh.”
“Enjuh,” Newt repeated. It is done.
* * *
William Redding’s personal train car was parked on a siding next to the depot house when Newt rode into Willcox. The telegraph operator had made sure to tell everyone he could that the Redding boy had been recovered and was being brought to Willcox. There must have been a hundred people lining the streets when they rode across the railroad tracks. Some asked him questions or congratulated him, and others merely watched. A few people pointed at Billy and whispered to each other.
The marshal of Willcox, the mayor, a judge, and the town newspaper editor tried to stop them for conversation’s sake, but Newt rode on. He could see Matilda Redding and her son standing beside the parlor car waiting for him.
Billy did not bail from his horse and run to them, but he did hold out his arms to his father when he came to lift him from the horse. His father hugged him tight, and Matilda wrapped her arms around both of them.
After the initial emotion of the reunion had calmed, William Redding Sr. ushered them all into his railcar. Lieutenant Davis politely excused himself, and Newt was left alone inside the car with the Redding family.
William Sr. sat on the couch with the boy on his lap. Matilda surprised Newt and immediately hugged him the instant the door closed behind him. She wouldn’t let go for a long time, and Newt felt awkward and happy and sad all at the same time.
When she let go of him and took a step back to look up at him, her eyes were full of tears. “Bless you, Newt. Bless you.”
“I brought him back.”
“I know you did.”
“You’ll have to go easy with him for a while,” Newt said, looking at Billy. “He’s had a hard time.”
“I know. What about you?” She put both arms on his shoulders and looked him up and down. “I swear you’ve lost twenty pounds since I saw you last.”
“No trouble.”
She looked him square in the eyes and held her gaze. “Don’t you go fibbing to me. It’s a good, brave thing you’ve done.”
“It wasn’t nothing.”
“Newt, I don’t know how I can ever repay you. When we lost Billy and his mother I thought I was going to die.”
“That’s a bad feeling, I know.”
William Sr. got up off the couch and came over and shook hands with Newt. “Thank you, Mr. Jones. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What Mother says is true. There’s nothing that we can do that would ever express our gratitude.”
“Just take care of Billy there. He’s a good boy.”
William Sr. smiled at his son, then went to his desk and drew out a ledger and dabbed a pen in the ink well. “I hope this will show our appreciation sufficiently.”
It was then that Newt realized that William Sr. had opened a book of checks, or bank draft forms. He watched the man’s right hand scrawl on the paper.
“Take this. And if it’s not enough please let me know.” William Sr. was holding out the bank draft to him. It was made out for one thousand dollars.
Newt didn’t take the draft and stepped past William Sr. and looked down at Billy on the couch. “You be good now, you hear?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Jones.” Billy got up and hugged Newt around the knees.
“And don’t you be falling asleep on no horses. You could fall off and hurt yourself.”
“I won’t.”
Billy still clung to him, but Newt broke free and handed him off to his father. William Sr. patted Billy on the head and offered the bank draft again.
“It’s the least I can do,” he said.
Newt took the wallet that they had given him back in San Antonio and laid it on the desk. “There’s what’s left of your expense money.”
“There’s no need of that.”
“It’s your money, not mine.”
“But we owe you.”
Newt looked at Matilda. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“I don’t understand,” William Sr. said.
“No, you don’t know me, Mr. Redding. If you did you wouldn’t offer me that money.”
“I can’t let you walk out of here after all you’ve done. I see that you are a man of pride and ideals, but every man has expenses and things he needs to attend to.”
Newt held up a hand to stop him. “You want to do something? You let me use your line of credit over at the store across the tracks. It won’t be much, just a few trinkets to trade, maybe a bit of staples for a week’s trip, and a good pack mule to carry it all and a shoe job for my horse.”
William Sr. held up the check again. “Just this.”
“No, I’ve told what you can do.”
William Sr. sighed. “Very well.”
Newt tipped the brim of his hat at him and then to Matilda before he went out the door. As she had back in San Antonio, she followed him outside and watched him get on his horse.
“You’re a good man, Newt Jones. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“I’m no good man.”
“I don’t care what you say. I see you, Newt. You’re a good man, and there aren’t enough of those to go around.”
He turned his horse and rode across the tracks. Lieutenant Davis met him as he was getting off his horse in front of the nearest saloon.
The lieutenant had a telegraph in his hand. “I wouldn’t go telling people about the McComas boy.”
“And why is that?” Newt had an idea what the answer would be before he heard it.
“General Crook thinks that news of the boy being alive might stir up the public for no good reason and cause greater difficulty between the civilian public and the Apaches and the reservation.”
Newt gave a bitter c
huckle. “Let me guess. If I tell about Charlie he’ll call me a liar in the newspapers and come up with some other story.”
Lieutenant Davis looked as disgusted as Newt felt. “I’m only relaying his message, as per my orders.”
“You need to get a new job, Lieutenant. How about you come have a drink with me?”
“Thanks but no thanks. I’ve got those Apaches waiting for me, and I’d better get them moving before the rumor spreads that Willcox is about to be massacred.”
“So long, then. You tell old Nantan Lupan that he can kiss my ass,” Newt said before he disappeared inside the saloon.
* * *
Two days later Newt rode out of Willcox leading a pack mule. Those that saw him said he had a hangover that would knock down an ox after doing nothing but drinking whiskey for two days straight, and that when the mayor tried to give him a citation from the city for his brave deeds in the recovery of the Redding boy he laughed at the mayor and shoved him out of the saloon. To all appearances, and to the city’s disappointment, they found him to be a most unpleasant man—not at all in line with the rumors of his heroism and valor.
The last they saw of him he was riding to the south. Some said he was still too drunk to ride and let his horse pick the direction, but none of them really knew him.
Chapter Twenty-six
Newt rode into Galeyville on the east side of the Chiricahua Mountains two days later. It was a bitter cold, windy day—too cold for anybody to be outside to see him arrive. And there weren’t many left in the town to see him even if the weather had been nicer. The town looked all played out, just like the silver load that had founded it.
There were no horses in front of the little false-fronted saloon, but the trickle of wood smoke floating out of the pipe chimney gave Newt hope for both a warm fire and something to warm his belly. He tied the mule to a fence post on the downwind side of the saloon and draped one of the horse’s reins around the frame of the packsaddle and loosened the gelding’s cinch.
Tucking his neck deep inside the collar of his coat against the bite of the wind howling down the street, and squinting his eyes against the dust, he went around the corner of the building and pushed the front door open. There was only one man inside, and he was sitting by the cast iron stove playing checkers with himself. He looked up and acted genuinely surprised to see anyone, and Newt assumed that he was the proprietor and bartender.
Newt stepped across the room, and the man by the stove got up and went behind the bar. Newt pointed at a bottle of Old Forester on the shelves of the backbar, and the owner took it down and poured him a healthy two fingers in a glass. Newt took the glass and went to stand by the stove.
“Haven’t seen you around here,” the owner said.
“Don’t imagine from the look of things that you get too many new customers,” Newt said.
“Town’s about done. What brings you here?”
“Traveling.”
Newt didn’t want to talk. He only wanted to stand by the fire and have a few drinks before he moved on south. He didn’t even know why he had come there, anyway. He hadn’t known where it was, and simply struck the road to it and followed it.
“You haven’t got trouble after you, have you?” the owner asked. “None of my business, but I’d as soon not have any brought on me.”
“Nervous, ain’t you?” Newt asked, and took a sip of his whiskey.
“Habit I guess. Curly Bill’s boys back in the day always had somebody after them, and most that come here anymore are the kind that might be looking for a quiet place kind of out of the way.”
“You think I look like trouble?”
“I think you look like a dangerous man.”
“Thoroughly dangerous,” Newt said to himself.
“What’s that?”
“I said I don’t have any trouble after me.”
The owner left the bar and went to a window. The saloon only had two windows, and one of them faced up the street the way Newt had come.
“You say you don’t have any trouble?” the owner asked. “Well then, what’s that I see coming?”
Newt went to the window and saw the two horsemen coming down the street. He finished his whiskey while he watched them, then handed the empty glass to the owner.
“You know them?” the owner asked.
Newt took off his coat and laid it on a chair, then hitched his pistol to a better position on his hip and went out the door. He leaned against the front of the saloon and watched the two horsemen coming at a walk toward him. Even with the dust blowing, the red serape on one of them was easy to see.
When they were within fifty yards of him he saw that the man with the Hatchet was none other than Colonel Herrera in his blue soldier coat. Newt put his hand on his pistol and waited.
They pulled up not twenty feet in front of him, and it appeared that they didn’t recognize him until they were that close. The colonel looked twitchy and nervous, but the Hatchet looked like he couldn’t care less.
“Hello, Clagg,” Newt said. “You looking for me?”
The Hatchet adjusted his glasses on his nose before he spoke. “Wasn’t looking for you in particular, but I can’t say that I’m unhappy to have run across you. I owe you one.”
Colonel Herrera’s horse was nervous in the wind, and it wouldn’t be still. “You have ruined me.”
“How’s that, Colonel?”
“The governor fired him, and then those kids you took from me got to telling tall tales about how he came to visit me when they were with me,” the Hatchet said. “You might say he’s got a score to settle, too.”
Newt expected the colonel to say something, but he did not. He only glared and worked his jaw muscles.
“You poked fun at me back in Bacerac,” the Hatchet said. “I don’t see you being funny now.”
The wind banged an open door down the street somewhere. “You tell a joke and maybe I’ll laugh.”
Newt waited. He could see the colonel trying to get his hand closer to the open front of his coat and guessed he had a pistol under it.
“You are a . . .” The Hatchet lifted his right hand with the fingers pointing upward and made circles in the air with it. “What are the words?”
Newt was almost too late understanding that the hand in the air was meant to draw his attention, and he almost forgot about the Hatchet’s left hand.
“Bastardo! ” the colonel shouted, and reached inside his coat.
The Hatchet went for his left-hand gun at the same time, and Newt’s Smith was barely out of its holster when the Hatchet’s first bullet hit the wall a hand’s length away from his head. The colonel’s horse was dancing in place, and he was having trouble getting his coat out of the way.
Newt thumbed back the hammer on the Smith and shot the Hatchet through the chest. The bullet twisted the outlaw in his saddle, and that movement caused Newt’s next bullet to hit him high in the shoulder. The outlaw’s horse reared, and he tumbled off its back into the street with a grunt.
Newt swung his pistol toward the colonel and saw that he was only then getting his pistol out. Newt cocked the Smith and leveled it at him.
“Bastardo! ” the colonel shouted again, and brought his pistol up.
Newt shot him in the head.
He heard the sound of a pistol cocking and turned just in time to see the Hatchet on his knees with his pistol leveled at him. Blood was leaking out of the Hatchet’s mouth, and his glasses were gone. His eyes were red and swollen, and the pistol wobbled in his hand.
“You can’t kill me,” the Hatchet rasped.
Newt put another bullet in his chest. The Hatchet slumped over and lay still.
Newt thumbed his empties out of the Smith and reloaded it while he watched Clagg die. “Like hell I can’t. That was for Billy and Charlie.”
When he walked back in the saloon, the two bodies lay only a few feet apart. The wind blew the Hatchet’s big sombrero down the street, rolling it like a cartwheel.
“Pour m
e another glass of whiskey.”
The bartender was so nervous he was shaky, but he poured the drink.
Newt had the glass turned up but stopped short of taking a drink when he saw the Circle Dot horse looking in the front window. “Make that two drinks, bartender.”
The bartender didn’t understand, but he poured the second drink anyway. He stepped to the window and looked past the horse. “Damned but you got them both.”
Newt tossed down his whiskey and set the glass on the bar. “Thoroughly dangerous man. Thoroughly, they say.”
“What?” the man behind the bar asked.
“I said, do you think a horse will fit through that door?”
HISTORICAL NOTES
1. THE TIME PERIOD of this novel is purposefully set in the fall of 1883, as it lands chronologically after the first novel of the series and was the only date near to what I needed that fit the plot of the story I envisioned. I always try to insert a little fact and other bits of historical trivia into my novels, and the truth is that in the spring of 1883, General George Crook led an expedition into Mexico that was primarily made up of a large force of Apache scouts in the army’s employ, a few American officers and troops, and a team of mule packers. The purpose of his campaign was in part to recover the kidnapped Charlie McComas. However, the major intent was to capture, kill, or receive the surrender of Geronimo and Chatto and other “renegades” and “broncos” who had fled the reservation at multiple times during 1882 and raided and plundered their way across parts of Arizona and New Mexico on their way south of the border.
Crook claimed that his expedition was a great success; however, he failed to get all of the Apache that had fled to Mexico immediately back into the States and to the San Carlos Reservation. Although Crook did manage to run down and return 273 Apache women and children and 52 Apache men to the reservation, the fiercest of the warriors and some of their families remained in Mexico under the leadership of Juh, Chihuahua, Chatto, Naiche, and Geronimo. This ragged group of diehard holdouts was made up of some of the fiercest and most cunning fighters in the history of the Apache people.
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