The Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  “That brandy isn’t going to do him any good,” Cameron told her.

  “I know,” she said, reining her horse to a halt beside him. “I’ve tried to get him to give it up but it seems to give some relief, so he keeps drinking.”

  Cameron scowled and shook his head. “It’s only gonna bring it on all the faster.”

  “You think it is consumption, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She nodded and turned to look at the Missourian receding in the distance. “I thought so, too, but I wasn’t sure.” She turned back to Cameron. “Will he die?”

  He was a little taken aback by the baldness of the question. Hers was a mettle definitely forged in fire. “I don’t believe there’s a cure, but people can live with it quite a while if they take care of it. He’s not taking care of it.”

  “Maybe he will after we have the gold,” she said.

  Cameron nodded and smiled faintly, vaguely amused at her certainty about the gold. “Yeah, he probably will.”

  She smiled, her brown eyes suddenly bright with amusement. “It is there,” she said, nodding her head and raising her lovely brows. She clucked to her horse and started out ahead of him. “It really is there.”

  “Show me,” he groused to her back.

  “I will, Mr. Cameron,” she said, half teasing, giving the black her spurs and galloping after the others.

  Cameron clucked to his own horse and caught up with Hotchkiss, who was riding up beside Jimmy Bronco, ahead of Clark. “We should make Toke’s place tonight,” he said to the graybeard.

  “Tokente?” Bud asked, looking at him brightly. “He lives out here?”

  Cameron nodded. “He ran into a nice-sized vein and bought himself a little spread just west of here, not far off the trail. We can hole up in his barn and fill our canteens and water barrel. In the meantime, I’m gonna drag back and see what, if anything, is followin’ us.”

  He held his reins out to Hotchkiss. “Take my horse. I’ll catch up to you later.” Holding fast to the horn and cantle, Cameron brought both his moccasined feet onto the saddle, positioning himself to spring onto a passing boulder. Wanting whomever was following them to believe they’d all ridden off together, he didn’t want to leave any footprints.

  “Be careful,” Hotchkiss warned.

  “Later,” Cameron said.

  He shucked his rifle from its boot and jumped smoothly off the saddle onto the boulder, throwing his arms out for balance. Moments later he was on the ground, hunkered down between boulders, watching his back trail.

  Seeing no one behind him, he moved out from the boulder and headed back toward the camp, staying wide of the trail, dodging between boulders and trees.

  About thirty yards away from the fire ring, he crouched behind a cottonwood deadfall. Hidden by the tangle of roots that had been ripped out of the ground when the tree fell, Cameron peered out from under the tree’s rotting trunk.

  His field of vision included the campsight, the dry riverbed enveloped in tall grass, and the eroded hill where he’d been standing when he’d spied movement to the east. The sun was climbing fast now, bringing the heat back out of the ground. It was warm on Cameron’s face and back, and already he was sweating.

  He’d been sitting there for fifteen minutes when something moved on the right slope of the hill. Cameron recognized the faded red headband and black hair of an Apache. A rifle poked up beside the head. Cameron felt his heart quicken. Shit.

  All he needed was an Apache attack this early in the trek. The sight of that headband gave him more doubts about how smart it was to head into Mexico and the heart of Apache land. Most of the Indians might have gone to reservations, but there were still enough misfits out here to make travel a living nightmare.

  He considered his options. He could engage this Apache now and get him off their trail and be done with it, or he could wait and see if the man intended to follow their caravan. Maybe the man was just curious and wanted to know who was about. Or maybe he wanted to tangle. He was Apache, after all, and there was honor in fighting and killing the white-eyes. The packs probably looked good, too, tantalizingly covered with tarps. Who knew what the white-eyes were hauling? The horses and mules would be some fine plunder to take back to the rancheria.

  And then, too, there was the woman …

  Cameron decided to wait a few minutes and see if any other Apaches showed up. If there were only one or two more, as was likely, he could probably handle them if he used the element of surprise to his best advantage. The Apache raised his head a little farther, peered around the hill at the camp.

  Apparently deciding all was clear, he got to his feet and walked cautiously around the hill, moving his head slowly from right to left, sniffing the breeze, reading the signs. He held the rifle—an old-model Springfield, it appeared—up under his shoulder, muzzle pointed forward and about chesthigh.

  He was young, maybe in his late teens or early twenties. His face was painted for battle.

  At the fire ring, the Indian stared down at the freshly covered coals, then lifted his head and let out what sounded like a cross between a yell and a yelp. A minute later, another Apache appeared, about the same age as the first. He, too, carried a Springfield, and a knife on his belt.

  They walked around the camp, picking out the footprints and reading them—no doubt determining exactly how many were in Cameron’s party, their ages, and recognizing one set to be that of a woman.

  When they were through in the camp, the first brave headed up the trail, following the fresh tracks. The second Indian lingered awhile, taking a drink from the sheepskin hanging from his neck and adjusting the ties on his moccasins.

  Then he, too, headed up the trail, following the cavalcade, long hair blowing out behind him.

  These two were going to be trouble, Cameron could tell. They’d probably wait for dark and attack the camp or Tokente’s rancho, where he’d planned on spending the night. He would have to take care of them here.

  To that end, he followed them, staying wide of the trail and taking cover behind rocks and mesquite shrubs. When a hill rose between them and Cameron, Cameron made use of it by running, keeping the hill between him and the two young men and watching the ground carefully so as not to step on anything that could signal his presence.

  He climbed the hill and stopped, looking down at the Apaches, who were now walking about ten yards apart, rifles held at their waists. The one in front sensed Cameron’s presence and swung around, bringing up the rifle. Cameron’s Winchester was already at his shoulder.

  He drew a bead on the Apache’s chest and pulled the trigger, then immediately planted the bead on the other one, who had turned at the rifle’s bark. Before the brave brought his own gun up, Cameron laid him out with a bullet through the forehead.

  Cameron walked down to the two bodies lying in the dust, dead eyes gazing at the sky. Some men got inured to killing, but Cameron never had. He’d gotten used to it, so that it didn’t bother him as it once had, but he still wasn’t hardened to it. There was something simply, clearly wrong in taking the life of another man, and he’d never killed when it hadn’t meant being killed himself. He knew that these two renegades, young as they were, with their whole lives ahead of them, would have ruthlessly killed him and the others in his party if he hadn’t killed them first.

  He dragged the bodies off the trail, leaving them to the scavengers, and headed after his group. He hoped this incident wasn’t an omen of more to come.

  CHAPTER 19

  CAMERON’S GROUP FOLLOWED a faint wagon trail into a canyon where cedars and cottonwoods grew along an arroyo and where a sprawling dead oak was peppered with crows. The crows lifted, cawing raucously, when the party neared the tree.

  Cameron was trailing his mule beside Clark. Hotchkiss and Marina were riding drag. Jimmy Bronco rode point, scanning the rims around them where Indians could be hiding. Cameron didn’t like the way Jimmy kept his hand on the butt of one of his six-shooters, as if read
y to draw at any moment.

  He knew the kid was just being vigilant, but he might be a little too vigilant. If one of the others cleared his throat too loudly he was liable to get shot.

  “Who is this man whose ranch we’re heading for?” Clark asked Cameron.

  “Alfred Going. He’s about my age, a little older—a Mex from a little village in Chihuahua, but he was raised by Apaches that kidnapped him when he was just a tyke. He and I scouted together one summer, up near Apache Pass, the first time the Army tried to haze the Chiricahuas to San Carlos. We tracked some renegades that separated from the pack and lit out for Mexico.”

  Cameron shook his head. “That was one bloody summer. We led up a troop from Camp Grant—most of ‘em, other than the chief trumpeter and the sergeant-major, greener ’n spring peas. One mornin’, me and Alfred scouted up a watershed east of where we’d bivouacked. I told the sergeant-major to stay put till we got back. We were afraid that if the group we were after wasn’t east, they’d be north, and he’d run right into ’em in bad country.

  “Well, my horse got gutted by a mountain lion, so Alfred and I were late getting back to the bivouac, and guess what? The sergeant-major got itchy feet and went on ahead. Three miles out, he got ambushed at Soogan Creek. The Apaches were waitin’ in the rimrocks—had ’em completely surrounded. Alfred and I could hear the guns and the Apache war cries, the horses and men screamin’, from a long ways away. By the time we got there, it was all over. Half the detail was lying in the water, and the Apaches had disappeared like they hadn’t even been there.”

  “And the sergeant?”

  Cameron shook his head. “Didn’t make it. He was a good man. He just got itchy feet. It happens.”

  “Is that what I have, Cameron? Itchy feet?” Clark asked, with a trace of humor.

  “No, you got gold fever. But it amounts to the same thing in Apache country: death.”

  “I didn’t think there were that many Apaches left out here.”

  “There aren’t, but it doesn’t take that many. Besides, you have the rurales, the federalistas, and the revolutionaries to worry about. Not to mention the sheer remoteness of the place, and the treacherous trails. If one doesn’t kill you, another will.”

  Clark smiled confidently. “For as much gold as we’re going to find, Jack—you mind if I call you Jack?—it’s worth the risk.”

  Cameron steered his horse off the trail to let Clark and his mule pass through a narrowing between the arroyo and a mound of dry river wash. Then he caught up to him again.

  “You see any action?” Cameron asked him.

  “No,” Clark said, a little defensively.

  Cameron had already figured as much. Men like Clark often bought their way out of battle. If he’d fought, he wouldn’t have been as eager to tear off with an attractive woman like his wife into Apache- and revolution-ravaged Mexico. He’d have a deeper appreciation for life. He’d know how much even the mother lode was really worth.

  But Cameron was glad Clark hadn’t fought, because Clark’s lack of fear and good horse sense was going to lead Cameron to Bachelard. Hell, it might even lead him to gold he wouldn’t otherwise have gone after.

  “Stop right there or we blow your heads off!” a man’s voice sounded from somewhere ahead.

  “Jimmy, keep it holstered!” Cameron yelled at the boy, whose right pistol was half out of its holster. The boy froze and looked at Cameron, his face flushed with alarm.

  Cameron had recognized the voice. Apparently Hotchkiss had, as well; he gave a high-pitched laugh as he reined his horse to a halt. Cameron stopped his own horse and waved an arm, looking around for a face in the rimrocks ahead on both sides of the canyon.

  “Alfred! It’s Jack Cameron.”

  The man yelled something, in what sounded to Cameron like Apache and Papago mixed with English. Then, as he moved, Cameron spotted him, on the rimrock on the right side of the canyon. The man waved a hand and yelled lazily, “Hey, Jack—what brings you way out here, amigo?”

  Cameron cupped his hands around his mouth and replied, “Your cooking, you old heel squatter.”

  There was movement to his left. Cameron saw someone else in the rocks—a short, round figure with a rifle, on what appeared to be a burro. This had to be the person Alfred had yelled to in the strange mix of languages. Then Alfred and the other were both gone, disappeared behind the butte.

  “Let’s go,” Cameron said to the others. “Jimmy, keep your hands off your guns.”

  Fifteen minutes later they came around a bend in the trail and saw the headquarters of the rancho. The adobe cabin, with a brush roof, two cactus corrals, and a mud barn, stood before a high limestone rock that loomed like a giant tongue frozen mid-lick, the tip of the tongue hanging about a thousand feet over the cabin.

  The wind blew down the canyon, slapping the door of the ramshackle outhouse sitting by a gully that fell away to the right of the headquarters. On a small island of brush in the gully, several goats grazed. They turned their heads when they caught the scent of strangers on the wind, and bleated warily.

  Cameron led his group toward the corral, where Alfred Going and an Indian woman were turning loose the horse and burro.

  “Dichosos los ojos que te ven una vez mas, Jack,” Going said, grinning broadly and moving away from the corral to greet the visitors. “Ah, how happy the eyes that gaze upon you once again.”

  He was a stocky, barrel-chested man with a double chin, a large round head with kind brown eyes, and a handlebar mustache that had gotten away from him. His hair was still black but his sideburns and mustache were going gray. He wore homespun clothes and a high-topped hat with a narrow crown and feathers in the band.

  Smiling, Cameron dismounted and shook the man’s hand. “Nice to see you, too, Toke. Been a while.” Tokente was the man’s Apache name—Toke, for short.

  “When’s the last time …? Oh, I know, two summers ago you passed through here after you sold some mustangs in Mexico. Remember? You spent a day helping me bury cholla cactus around my chicken coop to keep the coyotes from digging in.”

  “How’s that workin’ out, anyway?”

  “Pretty good. I ain’t lost many chickens, but I seen some coyotes with some pretty sore snoots.” Going smiled broadly, hunching up his shoulders, grinning with practically his whole body. His laughter was a soft, steady “heeeee.”

  “Looks like you got yourself a partner,” Cameron told him, nodding at the woman forking hay into the corral. She was round as a barrel, and just over five feet tall, with straight black hair falling in a braid to her buttocks. She wore deerskin leggings and a deerskin poncho painted and decorated with porcupine quills. A necklace of wolf claws hung about her neck.

  Going grinned again. “That’s my wife, She-Bear. She’s really something, Jack.”

  “She-Bear?”

  “That’s what I call her because I can’t pronounce her Papago name—she’s Papago, from over west—but it’s fitting if you ask me. If ever a woman looked like a she-bear, it’s She-Bear!”

  Going smiled broadly and gave a self-satisfied “hee.” Turning to the Indian woman, he said something in the strange mix of languages he’d used before. The woman dropped another forkful of hay over the corral, stood the fork against it, and started for the house with a lumbering gait.

  Cameron could tell from her profile that whatever Going had rattled off to her had pleased her. A faint smile pulled at her cheeks and Cameron thought he could see some color there, as well. No doubt that was as much emotion as the obviously shy woman ever showed to strangers.

  “She has a scar on her nose,” Going said. “She was fighting another woman over me—a Puma at the trading post—and she almost got it bitten off!”

  “Over you?”

  “Hee.” Going shrugged. “I appeal to women; another man would not understand.”

  “You can say that again, brother!” Hotchkiss said, coming up trailing his horse and shaking Going’s hand. “How you been, Toke?”

>   “Me? How are you, you old gray-muzzled lobo!” Cameron introduced Jimmy Bronco and the Clarks, Going nodding graciously and smiling and welcoming everyone to his humble casa. Then Going turned to Cameron. “Where you folks going, anyway?”

  “Mejico,” Cameron said.

  Going frowned curiously, as if to ask what all these gringos were doing heading for Mexico.

  “It’s a long story. We’ll tell you over supper—if you don’t mind us inviting ourselves, that is.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, brother,” Going said. Gesturing to the tank beneath the windmill just beyond the corral, he added, “Help yourselves to a wash, then come inside and light a spell.”

  “Don’t mind if we do,” Cameron said.

  He let the others go ahead. Going came up beside him and whispered conspiratorially, “That Señor Clark’s wife, she is a good-looking woman, but much too skinny. You leave her here a couple days and let She-Bear put some tallow on her bones!”

  “Nah, I don’t think so,” Cameron chuckled. “Hell, those women would get in one scrap after another over you.”

  “Ah …” Going said with a thoughtful nod. “Good thinking.”

  THERE WAS NO room for seven people to eat comfortably in the cabin, so Cameron and Alfred Going set up a makeshift table of split logs and food barrels in the yard. She-Bear roasted three plump hens on a spit she built near the table, using mesquite deadfall she gathered in the gully.

  While the chickens roasted, juices sizzling as they dribbled into the fire, Going and his visitors sat around the table, drinking wine and talking. When the sun went down, Going lit hung lanterns from the trees. The air freshened and cooled as the sky paled.

  As the first stars winked to life in the east, She-Bear served the meat, along with roasted corn. The group dug in with their fingers, as the amenities did not include silverware—She-Bear could barely come up with enough plates and cups. The Indian woman spoke only to Going, when she spoke at all, and while she appeared sullen, Cameron knew it was only because she was shy and awkward among strangers, as were most Indian women he had known. She would not have prepared this kind of meal for unwelcome guests.