A Gunman Rode North

by William Hopson

  Below dipped a sweeping view of a wide swale to his right, with well-worn game trails among the trees, the kind of trails riders traveling northward would instinctively follow. To his left was another, studded with a thick growth of evergreens.

  Kerrigan continued to wait patiently, the words of Kadoba coming back to him: Time is nothing to the Indian. To the stalker of game or an enemy, an hour or a sun or a moon is nothing.

  When the Indian hurries too much the game flees. When the Indian waits it comes to him.

  The sun crept into view and showered the vast panorama with yellow light against green and brown. A lizard came out from behind a rock and regarded the strange object flat on its stomach. But impatience had begun to take its inevitable toll in worry. Those men had known during the night that he had not remained in camp, nor had he jumped on the red horse and risked their fire in a hard-running get-away; something Kerrigan now thought of with regret.

  They probably had taken the horse and left Kerrigan to plod away on foot, certain he'd head straight for Pirtman. Hell, he thought impatiently, they probably hurried on to wait for me there.

  He rose to his feet with a grunt of disgust at himself and tossed aside the head grass, in him the foolish feeling of a man who'd tried to play at being an Apache and, in so doing, had lost his only horse. Damned fool, he muttered, and went down into the small swale to his left. He threaded his way over the carpeting of dry mat and pine cones beneath the trees and climbed the opposite ridge, intending to work his way down its hogback under concealment of the thick brush.

  He was still a bit disgusted with himself when he stepped noiselessly out on top and saw Stubb Holiday crouched behind a bush thirty feet distant, rifle in hand.

  "Don't move, Holiday," Lew Kerrigan warned, the repeater cocked and halfway to his shoulder.

  Holiday came around slowly, rising at the same time, his chunky body stiff. The driver of Harrow's private coach spoke through bloodless lips.

  "I gave Tom your message, Kerrigan," he said, and exploded into lightning action.

  With no time to raise rifles for aim, they shot simultaneously from hips, the twin reports rolling out across the country and then echoing back like thunderclaps presaging a storm. The .45-90 in Kerrigan's work-hardened hands jerked from recoil and, at the same time, Holiday's bullet cut a slash through the worn brim of the brown Stetson. Kerrigan leaped sidewise and snapped the weight of the weapon against the jacking lever to whip in a fresh cartridge, a right-handed action faster than working the lever.

  But Stubb Holiday's rifle clattered against the rocks at his feet, making an odd, metallic sound. He threw up both hands and almost flung himself from the rocky perch, writhing from the shocking impact of 350 grains of lead fired into his body at close range.

  The slope on the east side of the little hogback dropped down at an angle of about sixty degrees and Holiday fell feet down. He slid that way, on his face, hands outspread above him.

  He came to a stop in a cloud of dust and a shower of small stones raining down from above. He lay with his round, almost cherubic face partly buried, yellow hair powdered, legs outspread, short arms still outflung.

  Kerrigan watched stonily. A third man of Tom Harrow's was dead.

  Three of them now, and he hadn't wanted to kill again after the Havers business. Holiday hadn't been with them in the beginning. He'd taken a message and a thin pistol back to Harrow in the hotel in Yuma and then driven the red coach on back to Pirtman and Dalyville.

  Was Harrow now in the vicinity with still more men?

  He had no time to conjecture that possibility. A quarter-mile away a bay horse with a frantically spurring rider bent low in the saddle broke at a dead run from a clump of timber. From another point, almost due south and below Kerrigan, at the point where the hogback descended into the ground, Jeb Donnelly's booming roar of warning came clearly. His big white horse, a color no hunter of men should have ridden, shot into view and headed toward the one spurred by the man wearing an odd-looking beaver hat with a low round crown.

  "Git outa here!" the ex-marshal was bellowing to Hannifer LeRoy. "That damned lobo circled around and got into us! He's killed Stubb Holiday up there in the brush on the ridge!"

  Kerrigan snapped the repeater to his shoulder and lined up the sights on the man riding his white horse like a huge brown cockleburr stuck on its back. Four shots left. Many days previously, back there among the lava beds in the desert, it had been like this. Donnelly had half heard, half felt the waspish whistle of bullets from the .45-90 cutting the air past him and throwing up little sand spurts ahead of his running white horse.

  Now he heard the slugs again, striking among the limbs his outflung arm was trying to ward off as he rode for cover and tried to protect his still partly bandaged jaw. But the four shots had missed their target, and Kerrigan again refused the thought of trying to down the white horse.

  He looked around for the dead man's horse and soon found it hidden in an aspen clump below. With the reloaded repeater in one hand, he mounted. The horse broke into movement under the urging of soft moccasin heels and with a tight rein against the bit carried a new, wary rider cautiously back in the direction of his abandoned camp.

  Lew Kerrigan crept through the underbrush on noiseless feet, circling around from the south, and stepped over the body of a dead man close by where he had camped. This one turned out to be the "cowpuncher" who had come into the corral back of the new hotel in Yuma and later, in Phoenix, had grabbed Old Cap by the shoulder and hurriedly spun him back through the slat swing doors of a side-street saloon. He'd foolishly emptied his six-shooter last night, and died for that mistake.

  Big Red was gone, as had been expected, led or ridden away by LeRoy, who had intended to recover the powerful horse. The fact that they'd been gone for quite a bit was evidenced in a big black bear nosing around in the torn remnants of Kerrigan's warbag. It gave vent to a startled "woof" and broke away at a lumbering gallop.

  Bear Paw Daly, slipping furtively into Kerrigan's small ranch north and east of Pirtman to replenish his empty food packs, had worn a claw and foreleg skin on his left arm stub to terrify the superstitious Apaches while he hunted unmolested for their gold.

  Kerrigan watched the galloping bear and acted instinctively.

  "Maybe," he half-grunted, "Tom would like another one from me as a wedding gift."

  He swung up the heavy rifle and drove a .45-90 slug of lead squarely behind the camp marauder's left ear.

  It rolled forward twice like a big furry rubber ball and then sprawled out flat on its belly. Kerrigan moved over to it, took from his pocket the sharp jackknife, and deftly skinned out the left foreleg and claw.

  He straightened with the bloody trophy in his hands—and saw around him the price he had paid for such trivial thinking. Apaches!

  There were about thirty of them standing like silent ghosts in a wide, loosely patterned circle that brooked no thought of an attempt to escape. Brown statues with rifles slung over their mostly bare arms. The same rifles Tom Harrow had sold them for raw gold.

  A few wore old shirts above dirty white muslin breechclouts and doubled-down buckskin leggings wrapped around with thongs. Loco himself wore a Stetson, property of some long-dead rancher, the brim pulled down hard all the way around. He was easily recognizable from pictures taken during one of his brief stays on the reservation.

  They began to close in on moccasined feet that made not a whisper of sound; moving in to where Lew Kerrigan still stood astraddle the body of the bear. The animal was their brother, and old Daly had terrorized them because they thought him to be Bear-in-Body-of-White Eyes.

  Ace Saunders lowered the powerful field-glasses from in front of his heavily whiskered countenance and slipped them into the leather case slung from his saddle horn. He rode at a slow, careful walk until he rejoined the others back of a knoll.

  "For two cents," he said more to himself than the others, "I'd go back down there and horn in."

  "That's wh
at you were supposed to do. All of us, in fact. Try for a crippling shot. You lose some guts since he played Apache and killed your pardner?"

  "Don't," Saunders whispered softly, a queer light flecking his dark eyes. "Don't ever speak to me like that again, Hannifer, if you want to stay alive. I'd have got him alone after you two decided it was healthier to go running to Pirtman with your tails between your legs. Now for two cents I'd go back and help him. Lew Kerrigan don't deserve a slow burn."

  "What's he talking about, Hannifer?" Jeb Donnelly grunted, looking at the slim, unshaven gunman. "What's eatin' you, Ace?"

  "Apaches down at Kerrigan's camp," Saunders said coolly. "They just closed in on him. First wild ones I've ever set eyes on. It put ice up and down my back."

  "Then let's get out of here slow and careful," LeRoy said. With the instinctive fear of men long familiar with the bloody price exacted by the Apaches, he began to glance around nervously.

  "Just as quiet as we can go," Jeb Donnelly nodded, sheer fright in his own eyes.

  "What about Kerrigan?" asked the gunman. "He's a white man and there's twenty or thirty of them—with plenty of matches."

  "Listen to the man," grunted Jeb Donnelly to LeRoy and jerked his head at Ace.

  "Kerrigan warned us last night this is Loco's country and to get out while we could," Saunders replied doggedly. "He tried to tell us and you two wouldn't listen. If he hadn't twisted out of our little ambush this morning—if we'd shot him crippled like we figured and been down there with him at his camp now—those of us not dead would be getting ready to swing by our heels over a slow fire. I haven't got any particular affection for Kerrigan, but dammit, he's a white man. He don't deserve to die like that!"

  "He was the one who knew so much about them 'Paches in the first place," Jeb Donnelly pointed out, and started his horse in a slow walk. "You two can do what you please. I'm going to soft-walk this white hoss of mine for another mile and then lay the steel in his sides."

  LeRoy said, "Well, Ace?" and began to follow.

  Saunders looked back once and then rode after them. He said, ignoring them and speaking as though to himself, "I still think we shoulda gone back."

  Jeb Donnelly grinned through the opening around his flabby mouth and pointed furtively to his temple. "These gents who hire out their guns, Han, they allus got a bolt loose upstairs some'ers."

  "No telling what Tom will do, now that he's lost his only chance at some more of Loco's gold," LeRoy replied, still continuing his nervous glances at the surrounding timber. "But that's his lookout. Right now I'm going to put some distance between me and those Apaches. Come on, let's make a run for it!"

  They spurred along, the red horse galloping at the end of a lead rope, and once more Ace Saunders looked back. This time toward the ridge where Stubb Holiday hadn't wanted to go, except that Ace had insisted.

  He and Ace had ridden the same trails for almost six years, and now the Apaches would strip and mutilate Stubb's body.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lew Kerrigan stood facing Loco. He made no move to turn and look behind him. His face was as blankly inexpressive as he could make it, not knowing at what moment brown fingers would seize his hands from behind or a swung rifle barrel would land a stunning blow alongside his head.

  Maybe, he thought desperately, I can do it by talking Apache.

  "Ninda-hi," he said slowly to Loco. The Outlaw People, they called themselves.

  Loco's lateral gash of a mouth did not change. Kerrigan received no answer, nor did he expect any for a few moments. It was the Apache way. Loco merely stood looking at him. Some Apaches cut their hair across the bottom and let it hang shoulder-length. The others rarely braided as was the custom among plains Indians. The renegade's hair beneath the pulled-down brim of the old hat had been drawn back, covering his ears, and tied at the back of his neck with a buckskin thong.

  Kerrigan tried again. "I have seen the White Eyes' face-writing of you on paper. You are Chief Loco."

  "Yes, he's crazy," spoke up a voice behind Kerrigan. "Also Bi-ni-edine, we are, Yew. The Brainless Ones."

  Kerrigan turned slowly and stared in astonishment at Kadoba. It seemed unbelievable that he could be here—in the high country of the Mogollon Plateau. When they had parted the last time the Apache had lain behind the locked steel door of a hillside dungeon, left wrist and ankle chained to a heavy iron ring sunk deep in floor mortar.

  Kerrigan had seen few grins on the Apache's face during their two years of confinement. Heaven knew there had been little to bring even a faint smile to Kadoba's face. But at the moment, among about thirty thin-slitted mouths, his was open in a schoolboy grin. He was free of the white man's prison chains; he was back, not among fat reservation Indians, but the wild, lean broncos; and he was meeting the friend who had made it possible.

  "I'm glad you escaped, Kadoba," Kerrigan said, shaking hands.

  Kadoba turned and faced the fierce visage of the beady-eyed Loco, who'd eluded the troops in a masterful hit-and-run campaign and yet mostly remained in northern Arizona, whereas others had fled to Mexico. Natchise, the extremely tall son of Cochise, and Chatto, the short Apache Bull, had made frontier history by flashing up out of Mexico, pouncing into the San Carlos Reservation to get their women and children, and then making a running, twisting fight back to sanctuary across the border.

  Loco the Crazy One rarely had had to flee across the invisible boundary. His will-o'-the-wisp band had seldom been cornered in a disadvantageous fight, and when it finally did happen Loco had spun to face them.

  Kadoba began to speak to Loco. "This is the White Eyes who was with me in the prison at Yuma. He was my friend and teacher, and I told him many things of the Outlaw People. I have told how he sent me the knife-with-teeth and I killed the guard."

  Kerrigan stared at him, having understood every word of it. "Who did you kill, Kadoba?" he asked, thinking of genial Bud Casey's wife and four children.

  Kadoba grinned and swelled out his chest for the benefit of the others as he answered in broken English they didn't understand. "You send me knife-with-teeth in pig meat. Get horsehair from Bud. He say make Apache hackamore. No make hackamore. Make long rope. With knife-with-teeth I kill Wood Smith in neck. Kkkkkkttt!" he hissed and jabbed an index finger into his throat.

  So the brutal, hard-drinking friend of Jeb Donnelly was dead? Kerrigan had felt no sympathy or fellowship for the average desperado doing time in Yuma for their various crimes, but they had deserved more humane treatment at the hands of their guards than Smith had given them.

  "I get across the water, me," Kadoba was speaking. "Steal horse, run him dead. Take meat and run all night in new moccasins. Steal 'nother horse, some days pretty soon hunt Loco with smoke signals. He see."

  Kerrigan could picture the astonishing rapidity of Kadoba's flight northward to the familiar high country where he had been born. Next to the famed Tarahumari runners of Old Mexico, from whom young Apaches had adopted the method of running for eight hours and kicking a light ball ahead of them, Kadoba seemed to have about doubled the daily distance of troops probably on the lookout for him since his escape.* The young Indian probably had been back with Loco's band of broncos for several days.

  * Author's note: Upton states in his military textbook, Cavalry Tactics, that forty-five miles per day was the absolute limit of cavalry horses on the Southwest Indian frontier.

  Loco began to speak then in short, grunting gutturals. He stared at Kerrigan and Kerrigan returned the stare, making certain there was no fear evident in it. He curled his lips contemptuously to show he'd helped an Apache.

  "He asks why do you kill our brother the bear?" Kadoba said. "He says we do not kill our own brother."

  Kerrigan lifted his left arm and held it straight out. Over it he laid the skinned-out foreleg and pointed the claws at Kadoba's face. The Apache sucked in his breath and leaped backward.

  All around the glade Lew Kerrigan heard the little sucking intake of breath that told of a sudden, inn
er excitement beginning to grip the hostiles. They began to mutter and point—and small wonder.

  For years they had seen the old grey beard, the Bear-in-Body-of-Man, and fled in panic at the sight. Now while they listened, Kerrigan, aided by the voluble Kadoba, gravely told them the story of the old man who had hunted yellow iron unmolested in the heart of bronco Apache country. He had known that hunters of the yellow metal, when caught, always were burned head down over a slow fire as a warning to others. He had worn the bear paw on his blown-off left arm to frighten the Apaches away.

  Loco stepped forward, again speaking Athapascan* gutturals. Then it was not a bear in the body of a man? It was an old viejo who'd finally found Apache gold? It was Harrow, the man who once sold us guns, who had brought in all the White Eyes yellow hunters and made a big camp?

  * Author's note: Athapascan is a common language understood by many tribes. The fact that Indians in the Mackenzie Valley near the Arctic Circle speak the same language as Arizona Apaches is cited by ethnologists as proof of aborigine migration from Asia.

  "Yes," nodded Kerrigan.

  But Loco wasn't through. "And now you come alone to hunt more yellow iron with a bear claw on your arm to make fools of the Apaches?" The beady-black eyes were beginning to turn bright with an instinctive hatred.

  "No," Kerrigan shook his head. "I wanted to travel here in safety because I have enemies to kill. Two of them are already dead. One of them is over there," pointing to the brush. "But there are others who have been trailing me."

  "These things we know, because we have been trailing them. If you kill your enemies, this we Apaches understand. You can go free. You will be safe. But you must not hunt for yellow iron or white iron."

  "This thing I understand," Lew Kerrigan agreed.

  Kadoba spoke a sharp warning, in English. "He believes you speak with a straight tongue. Now you shake hands quick!"

  Kerrigan stepped forward and shook the small, dirty hand. The eyes above it were still beady, the mouth a thin, vicious-looking slit. The odor that came to Kerrigan's nostrils was like that found in the den of a wild animal.