The Fight at Hueco Tanks

by Chris Scott Wilson

  So be it.

  Chato saw Copperhead easing his knife from its sheath and realized the sky must be lighter. He looked over his shoulder to see the cloud cover had broken slightly to show the pale eye of the moon. He smiled. It was a good sign.

  The white men were very close now. He could hear the leading horse chewing on its bit and the creaking of the saddle leathers. He could make out the silhouettes of the two riders, broad-brimmed hats and long-fringed buckskins. Cavalry scouts! For a moment Chato tasted fear. If these were scouts then a column of Pony Soldiers must be close behind. Reason quieted him. The scouts were the eyes and ears of the Pony Soldiers. Kill them and the Bluecoats would be blind and deaf, children as they were in the way of the desert.

  They were very close now.

  To Chato’s right the Apache Kid moved, his hand tugging lightly at the snare wire. On his left the Butcher squirmed. He too was eager. But to be impatient would be to spring the trap too early. Angrily Chato made the sign to be still and the others nodded their assent, fearful of incurring his wrath.

  They were almost on top of them.

  Chato could smell the sweat on the leading horse’s shoulders as it pulled level with him, and slowly he raised his hand. When the second horse was on top of the snares he slashed his hand down in the cutting sign. The Apache Kid snatched at the tripwire.

  Suddenly the desert night was filled with war cries.

  ***

  “Apaches!” Zeke yelled, tumbling through the air.

  Tanner came alive. He sawed on the reins and the big bay reared into a turn. He saw Zeke somersaulting to fall onto a waiting shadow that collapsed under his weight. Another shadow leapt to where Zeke had fallen. Tanner’s gun was in his hand. He eared back the hammer, lining the shot as the bay plunged beneath him. He pulled the trigger and the muzzle-flash momentarily blinded him.

  A figure sprang from the mesquite beside him and Tanner swung his pistol. He fired again and missed. Hands were at his throat, threatening to pull him from the saddle. Instead of shooting he swung his arm in a roundhouse and the barrel cracked against the Indian’s head. The body dropped away as Tanner gulped air down his freed windpipe.

  Where Zeke had gone down the night was alive with shadows. Urgently he kicked the bay forward. A howl split the air just as the horse responded. Tanner turned in the saddle as a figure sprang up towards him.

  For an instant the moonlight lit up the face of his attacker. It was a death’s head, lips drawn back from the teeth in an ugly grimace of hatred. Tanner ducked under the Indian’s lunge, wheeling his arm in a backhand. Metal struck flesh but he couldn’t tell what kind of effect the blow had. The Apache landed on the bay’s rump and the horse squealed into a rear, tipping off the unwelcome passenger.

  Tanner dug his spurs in again.

  Zeke had landed in a tangle of arms and legs. Absurdly, he was pleased as he crashed down onto the Indian. And he was grateful his boot hadn’t caught in the stirrup. The Indian under him went flat, winded. Zeke punched him for good measure. He was pulling his arm back for another one when he was jumped from behind. He went down again, rolling forward, twisting to face his attacker. Steel flashed and he felt the bite of a knife in his forearm. There was no time to consider the damage. Flat on his back he brought up his knees as the Apache hurtled forward.

  Zeke grabbed for the knife arm, smashing his other fist into the Indian’s face. He was tiring quickly. Where the hell was Tanner? Maybe he had his own problems. The punches didn’t seem to deter the Indian any but Zeke kept driving them, seeking a chance to grab his Colt and end the matter. There was no opportunity. Just as he succeeded in throwing off his attacker, the night vomited another who flung himself forward, nails clawed and breath hissing.

  The sheer momentum threw Zeke flat on his back again and there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Netdahe!” the Apache screamed. “Death to the white man!”

  With horror Zeke saw the one he had already thrown off come back to his feet and begin to close in. Then he was fighting for his life. Cursing, screaming, punching, the tiredness erased by the adrenaline of fear. His hat was gone. One of them pinned his legs. The other kicked him savagely in the ribs. Pain exploded inside his chest.

  Maybe this was the time. And this the place. Maybe, at last, this was the bronco Apache he had dreaded so much. The one that would take his scalp. Zeke sniffed it in the air as he fought with failing strength. Death was grinning over his shoulder, its stench heavy in the desert night. Yes, he was very close.

  Almost exhausted, mind hysterical, Zeke screamed as someone yanked at the fringe of hair that bordered his bald pate, stretching it for the knife. Eyes wide, he redoubled his flagging resistance.

  Then the Apache screamed, lifted into the air as though a huge hand had plucked him from the earth. He crashed into the ground three feet away. Struggling frantically, Zeke kicked out at the other Apache, freeing his legs.

  Then the bay horse was over him. A strong hand grabbed at his bleeding arm.

  “Get up here!”

  Tanner slipped his foot from the stirrup and the old scout found it and swung up. Doubled over, Tanner wheeled the bay and kicked it into a gallop. The big horse thundered along the trail, happy to be free of the nuisance of the shadows dancing round him, sniffing the air hopefully and making for Hueco Tanks.

  “You see any ponies?” Tanner called back.

  “No. You?”

  “Nope.”

  Knowing instinctively that they weren’t being followed, Tanner eased the horse down to a walk to let him blow. Both men and the horse were panting. The bay stopped and they listened. Nothing.

  “Could use a smoke.”

  Zeke coughed. “And me.” He pulled out his tobacco sack with trembling fingers and began to fashion a cigarette. When he stuck it down, Tanner took it from him.

  “You all right now?”

  Zeke took another paper and carefully sifted tobacco onto it. “Damn glad to be here to roll up. What took you so long, Tanner? You slipping?”

  “Not as far as you, old man. I just wanted to see how you made out on your own for a change. Good job I was standing by. You were nearly a goner.”

  “Christ. You bet,” Zeke replied, letting the jibe pass him by. That one really had been too close for comfort. “Sure was glad to get out of there. Pity ’bout my horse. A good one that.”

  “Wasn’t your’n anyhow. Belonged to the U.S. Cavalry.”

  “Hope they don’t take it out of my pay.”

  Tanner grinned. “The saddle was your’n though.”

  “And the rifle. What the hell am I going to do without my saddle?”

  Tanner chuckled. “You want me to take you back for it?”

  Zeke looked horrified. “Christ, no.”

  “Well, quit belly-aching, you’ve still got your hair.”

  “Yeah,” the old scout grunted. “Couldn’t figure out why they were so interested in mine.”

  Tanner laughed. “Well, they figured I’d be too hard for them, but then they saw you and figured you’d be easy meat.”

  “What worries me,” Zeke said as he struck a match, “is that you were very nearly right.”

  Tanner recognized the sincerity in his friend’s voice. “You’ve been closer than that, Zeke.”

  The old scout snorted. “Yeah, but I don’t want to come that close ever again.”

  “You could always go back to punching cows.”

  Zeke looked aghast and Tanner could tell by the glint in his eye that he would be all right now.

  “Jim Tanner, now you’ve convinced me. You really are crazy.”

  Tanner glanced back down the silent trail and then back at Zeke, who was pulling down smoke into his lungs like it was the last cigarette he was ever going to smoke. His hand was shaking like he had the palsy. Okay, it had been close, but they had been in tighter jams than that, times when they had been sure they had no chance of staying alive. Maybe Zeke was getting too old for the trail. It
hurt Tanner to think it; the old man had taught him a lot and it had never occurred to him that the day might eventually come when Zeke would be unable to look after himself. Oh, he was thick-skinned, tough, but Tanner had begun to notice the soft spots; the groans when the old man rolled out of his blankets at sunup, the trembling of his hands, that look in his eyes when he would gaze at the country and then spit in disgust at the way everything was changing and complain that there would soon be no room left for men such as them.

  There was no doubt the horizons were drawing closer every day. Progress. The taming of a land. It was the stage lines like Wells Fargo and the railroads that were narrowing the gaps in the country. Soon there would be settlers everywhere. Railroad now stitched the east and west edges of the continent together since the joining of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific at Promontory in Utah, back in ’69. For a while both Zeke and Tanner had worked for Central Pacific, shooting game to provide the track laying crews with fresh meat, and when the lines were joined by the golden spike they had drifted south to become buffalo runners, hunting the shaggy beasts for their hides which were fetching a good price back east. They weren’t the only ones with the idea. The plains had become festering hellholes of rotting buffalo flesh and when the buzzards and the coyotes had finished the waving grass was littered with bones whitening in the sun. And the huge herds of buffalo grew fewer until there were only small pockets wintering in sheltered canyons, then even those were hunted down.

  The buffalo runners had shot themselves out of a job. Zeke and Tanner had watched their good thing die then packed up and headed southwest, still searching for that elusive fortune.

  They said you could smell a buffalo runner from ten miles downwind and Tanner sometimes thought he could still smell the stink from his buckskins. He glanced at their back trail again. Zeke’s voice broke into his thoughts.

  “Seems to me they’ll be following us by now.”

  Tanner turned, wondering which one of them was growing old the quickest. “Yeah, we’d better start making tracks.”

  “We still heading for the tanks now that we’ve found those Apaches?” Zeke asked, although he knew the answer.

  “Sure. We’ve got to find out if anyone’s alive down there. We need water anyhow. You can bet they’ll follow us. That Indian knows me. He saw me one time at San Carlos. He wants my hair.”

  Tanner touched the bay’s flanks and the horse broke into a canter. Zeke tossed his cigarette end away into the night, then considered his friend’s words.

  “What Indian?”

  “Chato.”

  Zeke cursed.

  “What’s the matter, old-timer?”

  Zeke scowled. “Jesus, when you pick ’em boy, you really pick ’em.”

  Tanner grinned. “You bet.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Chato stamped up and down as Tzoe relit the campfire. His eyes sparked with the demon inside him. If there was one thing he hated it was to be beaten. Especially six Apaches against two white-eyes. But when he had leapt at the first rider’s horse and seen who the blanco was it made sense. Not an ordinary scout, but the legendary Jim Tanner and his partner. The Apaches had a name for him, El Cazador, The Hunter. Without exception they hated and feared him. It made Chato’s anger a little easier to bear. If any white man could escape them, it was that golinka, skunk, El Cazador. Him and his partner were as cunning and crazy as she-wolves nursing litters.

  He peered out at the covered body of Ragged Hand. He wondered how many that made Tanner’s tally now.

  “This golinka, skunk, I think he collects our scalps to thicken his own hair,” Chato snarled. “In a corner he fights like a scorpion. His tail has much sting.”

  Tzoe fanned the tiny fire. “His sting did not do our brother,” he jerked his head at Ragged Hand’s corpse, “much good.”

  “He died well,” Chato confirmed.

  “But he died,” Tzoe repeated.

  The young chief stepped quickly over to where Tzoe crouched over the fire and grabbed his hair, jerking it so the Apache’s face was forced back.

  “He died well. He died free, as a man should, not with his quiver empty, queuing in a line to collect his ration of skinny beef and to get his food ticket punched. Not like you, Yellow Wolf, who would have screamed like a girl if you got scratched.”

  Tzoe wrestled his head from Chato’s grasp. “What made him so good? Was he different from other men?”

  “He was. He was my brother. We hunted together, even as boys. I was with him when he was bitten by the cougar that gave me this.” He fingered the necklace of claws about his neck. “That was when he earned his name. He gave me the claws to remember that day by. He was wild and free and he loved the stars over his head when he slept.” He shook his head and walked away to sit down on a rock. “Now he sleeps forever.”

  As if he had shown weakness by admitting his fondness he glanced sharply round the other faces. Nobody laughed. El Corneicero, the Butcher, was sharpening his knife with solid concentration. In the silence he pushed the blade back into its sheath and stood up, sober-faced.

  “I will see to the ponies.”

  Chato’s face resumed its mobility. “Good. Tomorrow we may need all the speed their lungs can give. If the cavalry follow Tanner we will need all their strength.”

  Tzoe’s head came up. “Cavalry?”

  Chato sneered and looked at the other braves. “Listen to Treacherous Coyote. Already he wants to run. The word ‘cavalry’ frightens him. Well, we will run, but only after we have done what we came here to do.” He pointed out into the darkness. “We have the old scout’s horse and his besh-e-gar, rifle, but there are other rifles down there that we need for our people. And there is Jim Tanner. When I have killed him, then we will run from the Long Knives. This is not the place for us to fight them. When we have the means then we will fight at a place of our choosing.”

  “Our people have already fought.”

  Chato’s anger twisted his mouth. “Our chiefs gave in to the Americanos because the bellies of the children were hungry and the councils were old men who had no stomach for fighting. Well, we must fight or our people are finished. There is no other road. We let them take our land where the game was rich and the water was sweet, in exchange for land where there is no game, but they promise us food. What happens when they forget their promises? They have done so enough times in the past. They will do it again. No, the talking stops here.”

  “And if they kill us?” Copperhead asked quietly.

  “Either way they kill us,” Chato replied. “At San Carlos our hearts grow sad and our eyes grow dull. The life shrivels up inside us like a berry in the desert sun. Without freedom there is no life. The Apache will disappear from the face of the earth.”

  The others nodded in agreement, eyes flickering to Ragged Hand’s corpse as if they saw their own future there in the stiffening body. The white-eyes had taken everything else, why not their breath?

  Chato moved restlessly, as though his energy could not be contained, and all of them watched him. He stood over the crackling fire, face hard in the dancing light, made even harder by the presence of his flat nose. He glanced at Tzoe’s wary eyes then back into the flames. “For each one of us they kill, I will kill ten of them,” he declared.

  A sly grin pulled at Tzoe’s lips. “And what will you do, my chief, if you are the first to die?”

  Chato spat into the fire. “Have I not told you, Treacherous Coyote, I have the magic. I will be the last to ride the trail of stars. You will all perish before Usen, the Great Spirit, calls me.”

  Tzoe watched his chief carefully and he could see that Chato actually believed every word he said. In an effort to hide his own disbelief Tzoe turned away in a pretence of tending his rifle. He was careful Chato could not hear him as he whispered:

  “Fool.”

  ***

  “Shooting’s stopped,” Black Bob McConnell called down needlessly from where he sprawled across the half ruined roof of the barn
.

  Josh made an impatient face. “We know that, blockhead. Just keep your eyes fixed on those shadows out there. When the firing stops is when it gets dangerous.” He chewed steadily on his tobacco chaw, eyes narrowed over the sights of his Winchester.

  “I thought Apaches didn’t fight at night,” Juan Servada commented, himself concentrating on keeping watch.

  Josh’s eyes veered momentarily to the Mexican’s face, casting a look that said You-townsfolk-don’t-know-nothing, then returned to their vigil. “Tell them Apaches that,” he said.

  Servada snorted.

  “Glad you think it’s funny,” Josh growled. “Me, I’m scared stiff.”

  “Señor, you are not alone.”

  “Thank God for that,” Josh said, turning to send a stream of ochre tobacco juice pattering in the dust by his boots. “Mind you, wish we didn’t have that woman and her brat along. Women always get in the way.”

  Servada considered the night, his thoughts roaming the soft hillsides and cool valleys of Kate Lantz’s body. There was no doubt she was an attractive woman. Idly he wondered what she looked like with her hair down. “There you are wrong, Señor,” he said absently. “Women are sometimes much tougher than we men. We may do all the fighting but it is always them that pick up the pieces afterwards.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Sutton conceded, “but all the same I wish they weren’t here.”

  Servada smiled to himself. Already the Americano woman had given him the eye. Good manners, that’s all it took. If she hadn’t had the child with her who knows what might have happened. Maybe it still would, daughter or not. She knew nothing of men like him. What could she know, brought up in the east where gentlemen were what they seemed and desperadoes were always scar-faced and unshaven, bad-looking men? How innocent she was. He was amused she had taken him for a businessman; that was precisely the image he liked to convey. That’s exactly what he wasn’t.

  Brought up dirt-poor in a small village in Chihuahua in Mexico, he had learnt the subtle mechanics of handling cards. By the time he was sixteen he was playing in the cantinas and from their stench he had moved up the ladder to the Americano saloons along the border. Always with an eye to the money he had never had he’d progressed to the railhead towns where he had also learnt the necessity of being as dexterous with a gun as with the pasteboards if he was to stay alive to enjoy the fruits of his cheating. With the perfection of his quiet accent and his mode of dress, moderate enough to separate him from the obvious tin-horns, he had also worked his way out of the drovers’ and cowhands’ saloons into the back rooms of the hotels where the local businessmen played their weekly poker games. That was where the real money was and when he discovered how easily they could be fleeced (as long as you appeared to be one of them) his mind had devised subtler plans for stripping them of their assets. He’d had share certificates in long bankrupt companies printed and peddled them. It was a success. His secret was never oversell, and the pretence of not really being interested in parting with them no matter how high the offer. That and never stay too long in one town.