The Colonel's Lady

by Clifton Adams

  The two Pimas came back as the sun died, saying that they had seen nothing. No smoke, no sign of any kind, but they didn't seem particularly pleased about it. They knew that Apache gave sign only when he wanted to.

  We waited until it was dark. Then we waited some more. The Indians squatted, watching me, and I wondered if they would follow me if hell began to break. There was no way of knowing about that. Finally I gave Juan the nod and we mounted and began riding into the hills.

  Toward midnight the scouts began to get nervous and Juan said it was about time to leave our horses and go the rest of the way on foot. The two Pimas went out and came back about twenty minutes later, saying that they had found a small box canyon up ahead. That was where we left the horses. We hobbled them and set them to graze, and hoped that they would be there when we got back.

  A late moon was beginning to show now over the hills. In the pale light that sifted down I could see Walking Fox and Red Hand, the two Pimas, fingering long scalping knives. The Papagos, Juan and Black Buffalo, had knives and hatchets. Where they had hidden them during the long patrol march, I didn't know. Juan said something and the two Pimas went up the side of the canyon wall as silently as cats, and in a moment they were swallowed in darkness.

  After a minute Juan motioned for me to follow him. But it wasn't as easy as it looked, going up that clay bank over loose rocks and brush, without making any noise. I kicked a loose rock with my heavy cavalry boots and it went crashing down to the floor of the canyon, sounding as if I had dislodged a boulder. I didn't like that. And neither did Juan.

  I remembered something then. After motioning to Juan to stay where he was, I made my way back to the bottom and found my saddle and saddlebags. I pulled off my boots and found the soft long buckskin moccasins that Gorgan had given me and put them on. It wasn't going to be much fun traveling over sharp rocks with tender feet and nothing to protect them but the pliant soles of the moccasins, but it was better than giving our position away. I also unloaded the two bandoleers of ammunition that I had slung over my shoulders and put my carbine back in the boot. The carbine would only make the going more clumsy, and it wouldn't do much good anyway if we were discovered. I kept my revolving pistol and Gorgan's bowie knife but I discarded the map case and knapsack. Pencils and paper, along with the jerked beef that would be our food for the next two days, went into my pockets.

  When I had finished I felt naked, but I also felt less loaded and clumsy. I made it up the canyon wall this time without too much noise.

  I had expected rough going after we left the horses, but I hadn't expected it to be the way it was. We moved like animals most of the time, down on all fours, from one rock to another, keeping in the deep shadows. We didn't see the Pimas until sunrise, but Juan seemed to know where they were all the time. The grade was steep and the rocks were sharp, and my feet were bruised and raw before we had traveled half an hour. At the first signs of dawn I called a halt and lay flat on the ground trying to get my wind back. Trying to stop my heart from pounding through the rib cage of my chest. When I could talk I told Juan to bring the other scouts in. We wouldn't go any farther until the sun had come up.

  “How much farther is the stronghold?” I asked.

  Juan shrugged. Maybe an hour. Maybe less. He would know more about it when the other scouts came in and he could talk to them.

  Black Buffalo and Walking Fox and Red Hand appeared before long. They said they thought the stronghold was not far away. They had a long talk with Juan and I gathered that they figured they had come far enough and wanted to get out before Apache began stirring.

  If that was the case, Juan put an end to it with a few sharp words. I took the jerky from my pocket and passed it around, and we lay behind the rocks, chewing, waiting for the first real light of dawn.

  It came finally, but the Apaches didn't. Everything looked safe enough to me; the hills were quiet, the morning was pleasantly chilled before the sun got itself together to make another assault on the land. But Juan was careful. He sent his scouts out again, one at a time, at about five-minute intervals, then he motioned for me to follow. We moved from rock to rock, and I found myself imitating the Indians in my movements, moving crouched over, arms hanging. Like hunting dogs, with our noses to the ground. Near midmorning Red Hand came back and said he thought they had found the place.

  We moved up a little more and pretty soon we could see the ragged rim of rock in the distance. We lay flat on our bellies for a long while studying it. If it was the place, there were sure to be lookouts on the high points and we couldn't possibly reach it without being seen. Not in the light of day, anyway. Maybe at night there would be a chance.

  I asked Juan what he thought about it, and he said we wouldn't have a chance of getting any closer that day. Walking Fox and Red Hand and Black Buffalo thought we were too close already. They were all for getting back to our horses and rejoining the patrol.

  It wasn't long before we saw a band of Apaches come riding from behind the ridge and head toward us. There must have been twenty of them. But they didn't see us. They rode heavily, chins on chests. Some of them were smeared with ceremonial paint, but they looked neither to the right nor to the left. They looked sick. Or very tired.

  I saw Juan grinning faintly after they had passed. He pointed to his head and made circular motions. “Tiswin,” he said.

  It was Juan's idea that the Apaches had had a big celebration the night before, and all the young bucks, and old ones too, for that matter, had tanked up on tiswin. I had never tasted the Apache corn beer, but if it was anything like the sutler's whisky, I could understand how they wouldn't take much interest in things on the morning after.

  We lay there behind the rocks and by midafternoon we were baked dry by the sun and I cursed myself for leaving the saddle canteen behind in my sudden enthusiasm for traveling light. We tried to chew some more jerky, but there wasn't enough moisture in our mouths to get it down. We had to give it up, and lie there and wait.

  Later in the afternoon we saw more Apaches come from the deep draw behind the ridge—small hunting parties, probably. Some of them had deep-dish Mexican saddles on their ponies, and Juan said they were Chiricahuas. Professional outlaws, probably, who had deserted Geronimo down south. The scout recognized others as members of the Mimbreno tribe, by the painted designs on their bodies. They were all naked except for breech-clouts and headbands and long moccasins like my own. All of them had long bows, and filled quivers slung across their backs. Most of them had rifles.

  We lay there. We sweated and cursed and were too dry and thirsty to be scared. But finally the sun began to go down and it wasn't so bad.

  As long as we lay still we were safe, it looked like. But we couldn't stay there forever, without water, without food. And besides, there was a job to do, and we had to get up to the ridge to do it.

  Toward nightfall we began to hear the far-off beat of drums from behind the ridge, accompanied by the high-pitched twang of one-string Apache fiddles. And then the chanting and yelling. Juan grinned that grin of his.

  “Tiswin.”

  As the sun died and the night grew darker we could see a ghostly glow along the ridge, caused by their fires on the other side. I wanted to start moving up then, but Juan said it would be better to hold back until the tiswin had a chance to work.

  Near midnight, as the yelling beyond the ridge reached a frantic pitch, Juan nodded and said, “Now.”

  The other scouts didn't like it and didn't see the sense in it. They wanted to go back while they had the covering of darkness. But Juan again clipped the uprising before it could become effective, and they began to move out, sullenly, reluctantly, toward the ridge.

  It was a long way, it turned out; farther than it looked in the bright light of day, farther than you would guess that sound would travel. It must have been at least three miles of boulder-strewn upgrade from our starting place to the ridge. We moved very carefully now, crawling, squirming, wriggling from rock to rock, and trying to h
urry to make the ridge before the moon came out.

  Juan scouted the ridge himself, when we finally reached it. He came back with the information that there were Apache lookouts on both sides of us, but there was still a good chance of making it to the top, where there were places in the rocks to hide.

  As we neared the top we could see a lone Apache standing against a blood-cast sky. We moved an inch at a time now as the noise from below seemed to sweep over us. I followed Juan under a protecting shelf of rock, and there we lay for what seemed like a long time, not breathing, not moving. Then at last we began to relax. The lookout hadn't seen us.

  Walking Fox and Black Buffalo and Red Hand had found places over to our right somewhere, and we couldn't see them now. But we could see the Apache, and we could see the mad scene down below us. We were looking into Kohi's stronghold.

  We were seeing something that no white man had seen before—or if some had seen it, they hadn't lived to tell about it. As far as I could see in the darkness, sheer walls of rock rose up to form an unassailable fortress. There must be an opening somewhere, but I couldn't see it now.

  Almost directly below us a large fire cast a bloody circle of light on the valley floor. The dance of the warriors had reached a frenzied pitch now, as they circled around and around the fire, casting long, distorted shadows over the crowded circles of onlookers. The drums beat relentlessly at the night and the throbbing became a part of the darkness. Musicians sawed monotonously on their high-pitched fiddles, and the music clashed with the shrill shrieking of the women. Old men sat woodenly in a large circle around the warriors, somehow violent in their stonelike silence, and hooded holy men urged the dancers on.

  At first the violence of the scene was numbing. But gradually we became accustomed to that, and then it was the sheer number of them that overwhelmed us. I began counting quickly a part of the circle in order to estimate the whole. There were a thousand at least, not counting the women and children. That meant there would be eight hundred, and maybe more, able-bodied warriors who would be able to take the warpath.

  Where Kohi had recruited them from, I couldn't guess. But there were Mimbrenos and Chiricahuas and Arivaipas; Apaches gathered from every point of the territory. Renegades maybe, and outlaws in their own tribes, but good fighting men and probably the best light cavalry soldiers in the world. How had Kohi brought them together? What had he promised them?

  War, for one thing, I knew. And soon. War medicine had already started, and Apaches wouldn't be held back long after that. But not the harassing war on patrols that Kohi had been occupied with for so long; he wouldn't need this large a force for that. With eight hundred young braves ready for the warpath, he could even storm Larrymoor itself....

  The thought hit me and left me cold. I thought of Caroline there. Of the other women, and the children. Of course, there was a good chance that Kohi would never succeed in storming a fighting fort like Larrymoor, even with this great force at hand, but it was only a chance. It wouldn't be an impossibility.

  It was something to think about as the night wore on. As the dancers exhausted themselves and the great fire began to dwindle. The thing died, finally, of its own violence. The circle of red light began to creep toward the center and the women began to leave. And the old men. Only the younger women remained finally—young widows who had no men of their own—and the young warriors. By twos and fours they walked into the darkness toward the wickiups.

  It was very quiet now, after the hours of violence.

  Juan said, after a long silence, “We go now?”

  “Not yet. We'll have to wait till dawn.”

  Now that I was here, I wasn't leaving until I had mapped the stronghold. That was the job Weyland had given me and I wasn't going back to Larrymoor without doing it.

  “Black Buffalo is afraid of Apache,” Juan said flatly. “I think he will cause trouble.”

  “We can't go now. We've got to stay until I get a look at this stronghold.”

  Juan dropped it. In many ways he reminded me of Skiborsky, or Steuber. Having been in the Army for so long, he accepted what came and asked no questions. Still, he was worried, for one man's fear could mean the end of all of us.

  We waited. Weyland would get his map, and I would give it to him. I wondered what the Colonel's face would look like when he saw me riding back into Larrymoor again, alive. The thought gave me comfort as the long night wore on.

  At the first show of morning light I got out paper and pencil and began to sketch the country we had crossed. As the stronghold began to rise out of the darkness, I worked on that. I could see now that it was a long canyon, closed on one end with a towering formation of boulders. The other end threaded down to a needle-point opening barely large enough for a man and a horse to enter. It was easy enough to see why Kohi had never been defeated in a place like this.

  When I had finished I put the rough map in my pocket and looked at Juan.

  “Do you think we can get out of here now? Can we travel far enough to be safe before it gets light?”

  He frowned, gazing at the paling eastern sky. “If we travel fast, it is possible. And if Apache does not see us.”

  “Get the other scouts, then, and we'll move.”

  Juan began worming his way from under the ledge of rock. But suddenly I saw something and held him. What I saw was a rider—probably one of the Apache lookouts—making his way across the canyon floor toward the large cluster of wickiups at the far end. It wasn't the rider, but where he had come from, that bothered me. He hadn't come through the small opening at the near end of the canyon, so that meant there had to be another opening somewhere. I motioned to a cluster of boulders about fifty yards to our left.

  “Do you think we can get over there without being seen, Juan?”

  He looked dubious. “We stay here?”

  “I've got to see where that rider came from. Then we'll go-”

  His eyes said it would be too late then, but he only shrugged. We moved out from our hiding place on our bellies. The Apache lookouts were not to be seen now. Maybe they were asleep. Maybe they'd had too much tiswin. Or maybe they were behind the next boulder with rifles aimed at our heads. There was no way of knowing, so we crawled.

  There was another entrance, all right. I could see it now, after we had moved over far enough. It was a narrow pass between two rocky hills, leading in from the east. There was only one entrance into the stronghold, or so the story had always gone. I grinned to think what Weyland would have to say when I showed him another one.

  I felt good then. Apache was sleeping. We were safe and still had a good chance of getting out before the sun was too high. But, most important, I had done the job without getting killed, and that was going to hurt Weyland. It was a good feeling, but it didn't last long. I looked up suddenly and saw six Apaches coming toward us.

  Chapter Ten

  WHERE THEY came from, I don't know. Maybe they had had women up there during the night. Or maybe they had come up to relieve the lookouts who had stood guard all night. It didn't make any difference how they got there. They were there and that was enough.

  I dropped down behind a boulder and grabbed Juan as he was about to start crawling out. I didn't think they had seen us yet, but it would only be a matter of minutes. They were coming straight toward us and there was no place to run. No place to hide. I reached for my pistol, but Juan knocked my hand away. I drew Gorgan's knife and waited.

  It was a long wait. We could hear them coming, talking, laughing crazily, rifles cradled in the crooks of their arms.

  So Weyland had been right all along. The thought was bitter. The Colonel had planned that I would be killed and that was the way it was going to be. It was a strange thing, but I wasn't afraid at that moment. Anger was the thing I felt. Rage swept over me like a hot, smothering blanket. I would never see Caroline again. I would never know why Halan had turned against me.

  Those were the things that went through my mind as the Apaches drew closer. Juan knelt bes
ide me, his long keen “trader's” knife in one hand, his face impassive and wooden. I wondered what Juan was thinking.

  Then I went cold. A yell went up in the cold gray morning. I thought they had seen us and started to jump out from behind the boulder. But Juan caught me. He held me with an arm as hard as stone, his hand over my mouth. The yell, mad with fear, went up again, and this time I recognized it. It was Black Buffalo.

  The yelling brought instant activity along the ridge and on the canyon floor of the stronghold. Apaches came swarming up the sheer walls, through the openings. We heard the quick soft pad of running feet, and then the sharp, authoritative crack of a rifle. We knew Black Buffalo was dead.

  Apaches seemed to be everywhere now and the quiet of the morning was shattered with cries of rage. Juan kept his hold on me. We stood as still as the hills.

  How long that went on, I didn't know. We stood there, waiting for them to find us. But they didn't come. They were occupied with Walking Fox and Red Hand now. We could hear the blows landing and the cries of anger. And finally they went away, taking the two scouts with them. It was as if Death had walked up to touch us, and then had walked away.

  Juan relaxed his hold on me. I said, “We've got to get them back! We can't just—” He clapped his hand over my mouth again and kept it there until the angry, hate-maddened procession made its way down from the ridge and onto the valley floor. Then he said flatly, as if it were no concern of his, “Nothing we can do. Too many Apache.”

  And he was right. There was nothing we could do but wait and watch, and the thought was sickening. Even now we could see them down below. The angry mob, the hundreds of them.

  The two scouts were not tied. They were pushed and kicked along in the van of the mob. Two ponies were brought into the open, and two young warriors mounted them and rode yelping up and down the canyon while the crowd cheered. Then men from the crowd handed the riders rawhide reatas, and I knew what they were going to do.

  The reatas were looped and made fast around the bodies of the two scouts. They made no sound. They did not beg for mercy. If the tables had been turned they would have done the same to the Apaches. The riders took the ends of the hide ropes and began pulling Walking Fox and Red Hand toward the end of the canyon. The riders nudged their ponies and the two scouts had to run to keep up with them.