Apache Country

by Frederick H. Christian

  Easton broke out of freeze frame, snatching up the fat man’s shotgun as Ironheel deftly picked up the other man’s Winchester. His entire body and face were matt with dust. He had stripped off his clothes, Easton realized, rolled in the dust until his body was the same color as the earth, then gone silently past them until he found a suitable ambush spot, lying immobile among the rocks, invisible until he was ready to strike.

  Materialize without warning.

  “The big one’s got my Glock,” Easton warned.

  Ironheel nodded and turned over Clay’s inert body using his foot and the barrel of the Winchester. He wasn’t any too gentle about it. The big man groaned but remained unconscious as Ironheel retrieved the automatic, handed it to Easton, then stepped back.

  “Let’s finish this and get out of here,” he said tightly. He wasn’t even out of breath.

  Easton looked around. The fat man had managed to struggle to his knees, his body swaying like a steer with the staggers. He fell sideways, thrashing on the ground as he tried to sit up again. Below the eyebrows his ruined face looked like raw hamburger. Blood from his shattered nose and cheekbones pattered down like rain into the indifferent dust. He looked up blindly.

  “Hemph me,” he whimpered. “Mleeeth.”

  Help me, please. Easton hesitated and Ironheel’s face hardened.

  “Two minutes ago he would have killed you like a bug,” he snapped. “Don’t waste your time.”

  “I just—”

  “Get his belt, tie his legs with it. Use the jacket to bind his arms. I’ll take care of the other one.”

  It was brutal, but he was right; they had to be immobilized. The minute these two got back down to Rio Alto, they’d blow the whistle. Once the cops knew who had been involved, the pursuit would reform. And their other, as yet unidentified pursuers would also pick up their trail again. He went over and poked the fat man with the shotgun.

  “Sit up,” he told him. The man flinched and held up his bloody hands in reflex action, as if to ward off a blow.

  “Hemph me,” he blubbered. “Ah mee anockphor.”

  Help me, I need a doctor.

  “You’re lucky you don’t need an undertaker,” Easton rasped. He took hold of the sleeves of the fat man’s camouflage jacket and ripped it off him, then unceremoniously rolled him over to yank his wide leather belt out of its loops. The fat man groaned and made glutinous, incomprehensible noises that Easton ignored. By the time he had him trussed, it was beginning to get dark.

  He looked around. Ironheel had already bound the hands and feet of the still-unconscious Clay and was waiting a few yards down the trail, naked but for a small loincloth, the Winchester over his shoulder. He held up a bunch of keys and jangled it.

  “Want to bet it’s a pickup?” he said.

  “Where are your clothes?” Easton asked.

  Ironheel pointed toward the bushes. Easton waited as he picked up the concealed bundle and got into a pair of jeans and a shirt before they continued down the hill. Behind them they could hear the fat man hoarsely shouting an endless litany of muffled obscenities. As the sounds gradually faded with distance a thought occurred to Easton. If no one happened up this trail for a few days, both men might easily die of exposure or dehydration. He said as much to Ironheel.

  “Breaks your heart just thinking about it,” Ironheel grunted. “Right?”

  “Right,” Easton said.

  Think Apache. Compassion gets you killed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ironheel won his bet. Parked canted over on the side of the canyon, maybe a hundred yards above where the pavement came to an end, was a red Mitsubishi pickup with El Paso County license plates and an NRA bumper sticker. That figured, Easton thought.

  He swung the passenger door open. On the cab floor was a scabbard with a shoulder strap for the Winchester. Spring clips above the rear window for the shotgun. Stuffed under the seats were a couple of kapok-filled body warmers that smelled of sweat and tobacco. They put them on anyway. They would be welcome in the approaching coolness of the night.

  “You realize we’ve blown any chance we had of overnighting in a cabin up here,” Easton said. “Got any other good ideas?”

  “With these wheels we could be in Albuquerque in three hours,” Ironheel said thoughtfully. “Go straight to the FBI.”

  “Forget it,” Easton said. “They’d just hand us straight back to Joe Apodaca. We’re going to need a lot more evidence than we’ve got right now before we go anywhere near the Feebs.”

  “And how do we get it while we’re hiding out in the mountains?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Easton said, and it was the truth. A plan of sorts was forming in his mind, but it still had a long way to go. Ironheel got into the pickup, started the engine.

  “We can’t go far in this thing,” Easton warned him. “If those two get loose …”

  “Dázhugó,” Ironheel said. “Sure. But at least we can save ourselves a few miles.”

  He drove down the hill toward town. The shops and boutiques were all brightly lit, the sidewalks busy with early evening strollers. Rio Alto was suffering from overkill. In the winter, befuddled après-skiers clumped about in boots and snowsuits like drunken carthorses. In the spring it was the horse racing high-rollers, noisy and brash. In the summer brain-dead backpackers with oversized rucksacks that swiped you off the sidewalks. In the Fall ten thousand leather-clad bikers descended on the town and turned it into Harley-Davidson hell. You really had to love the tourist dollar to go through all that.

  At the Y junction Ironheel turned left and drove up through what somebody who’d clearly never seen one had named Alpine Village. At the top of the hill, opposite an Italian restaurant, the highway branched east, passing a strip mall with a supermarket before snaking down in long hairpin bends into the scattering of buildings that formed the village of Perth.

  By this time, Easton had checked the glove compartment and found a metal water canteen and a box of shells for the Winchester. He stuffed as many shells as he could into the pockets of the body warmer, then filled the canteen with mineral water before looping the strap around his shoulder. What lay ahead of them couldn’t be done without water.

  At the bottom of the hill, Ironheel swung off the road and took the stony trail leading up to Lindo Lake. It was pitch dark now, and the headlights made the potholes in the track look like the craters of the moon. At the campsite on the south fork of the Rio Lindo, Ironheel pulled into the big parking lot. It was about two thirds full. They could see lights in some of the RVs. South Fork was one of the biggest camping sites in the area. Every week in the summer, hundreds of people used it as a jumping-off point for hiking, horseback riding, fishing, nature trails. Cars, wagons, RVs, pickups came and went every hour of the day.

  “End of the line,” Ironheel said.

  “Want to go over to Bonito Lou’s and get a six pack and some Doritos?” Easton grinned, jerking a thumb at the lighted convenience store nearby.

  “No money,” Ironheel said. “You’re wearing it.”

  They got out of the pickup and left the keys in the ignition. If no one noticed them the Mitsubishi would sit undisturbed in the parking lot for a long time. Or better still a bunch of local kids would joyride the hell out of it before torching it on some back road.

  They headed on foot back down the stony track toward where they had turned off the highway, crossed the empty road and continued on down Lindo canyon, following the meandering course of the river. A full moon lit their way. The ground was open and fairly level and they made good time. After a while they turned south away from the river. The track sloped upward ahead of them into the darkness.

  “Where we going?” Easton asked Ironheel.

  “Used to be an abandoned cabin on the other side of Coyote Mesa,” he said. “If it’s still there we can use it tonight. Get an early start tomorrow and be up in the Marcials by noon.”

  It ought to be safe enough, Easton thought. Nobody knew where they w
ere. Their pursuers were grounded until they knew where to start looking.

  “I never thanked you,” he said. “Back there in the canyon.”

  “No need,” Ironheel replied.

  “Maybe apologize, then,” Easton said. “I thought you’d ditched me.”

  “Considered it,” Ironheel grunted.

  Easton glanced at him sharply, but in the thin light could not see if he was smiling or not. They moved on at the same brisk dogtrot across the moonlit mesa toward an all-weather road mainly used by people going up to the starkly modernistic Tracy Theater sitting on its hilltop like an alien spacecraft. Once long ago, in a different life in a different world, he had taken Susan up there to see Glen Campbell in concert. Galveston, Oh Galveston.

  “Dá’ akú,” Ironheel said, breaking into his reverie. “Over there.”

  They topped a low rise; the ground sloped away down in front of them to the road below. To their left, sheltered in a grove of native black walnuts, stood a dilapidated old single-story frame cabin with a ramshackle ramada porch. As they got nearer Easton saw it had a tumbledown fieldstone chimney and a roof of rusty, skewed corrugated iron. A central door was flanked by two big Federal style casement windows with sills about two feet from the ground.

  “House Beautiful,” he said.

  Ironheel’s response was, as usual, starkly practical.

  “Chiiz,” he said and pointed. “Firewood. Take these.”

  He handed Easton a book of K-Mart matches, and while Easton foraged beneath the trees for kindling, disappeared behind the cabin. Easton heard him working on the rear door, which gave a protesting squeal as he opened it and went inside. The bare floorboards protested noisily, then the front door opened with a reluctant creak and he came out on to the porch carrying a battered old saucepan. He held it up for Easton to see.

  “Tú,” he said, using the Apache word for water, and headed off down toward the creek. Not just practical; he wasn’t exactly extravagant with words, either.

  When he had enough wood to start a fire, Easton went inside and piled it in the old stone fireplace, dry moss and kindling first, then a few bigger sticks. He lit the kindling and watched the flames flicker and spread. The small glow of heat was welcome. Piling on more wood, he got up and looked around, opening cupboards. Apart from a few old tin cups, all were empty and gray with dust.

  After a while Ironheel came back in with a panful of water from the creek and put it on the fire to heat. When it started to simmer he put some white flower petals into it.

  “Chamiso blanco?” Easton guessed.

  “Dá’áígee” he said. “Right. Rabbitbush flowers. Makes good tea.”

  “My mother used to use chamiso if we had a fever.”

  “Chamiso hediondo is better. Apache also use the branches for sweat baths. Moisten them and throw them on hot stones. N’zhoo. Very good.”

  “Smells strong.”

  “Good for the belly,” Ironheel said. “So are these. Here.”

  He poured a handful of sunflower seeds into Easton’s cupped palms. They munched on them hungrily as the fire crackled and the little shack grew warmer. Ironheel got two battered tin cups out of the cupboard, rinsed them with a little tea from the pan to get rid of most of the dirt, then filled them with the warm liquid, and they sat on the floor drinking it. It didn’t taste like the tea Easton remembered from his childhood, but it was hot and not unpleasant.

  The silence and the small glow of the fire were companionable but neither of them spoke. Mice scurried behind the broken plasterboard. Outside in the darkness the trees sighed in the night breeze. Somewhere an owl hooted. Then another, further away. The trace of a frown touched Ironheel’s forehead. He got up and padded across to the door, opening it very quietly just wide enough to peer out. When the owl hooted again. Ironheel closed the door and came back across to the hearth, where he squatted with his back to the fire. It was difficult to be sure in the flickering light of the flames, but Easton thought he could see unease in the dark eyes. Ironheel was silent for a long time.

  “Something wrong?” Easton said at last.

  “Búh,” Ironheel said. “The owl.”

  Easton frowned. “What about it?”

  “There are many spirits. Some good, nohwiyi’sizlini. Others evil. Ch’iin.”

  “And the owl is one of them?

  Ironheel nodded gravely. “Apache believe that sometimes those who have gone remain for a while near the place where they died. Their spirits try to communicate with the living through the voice of the owl.”

  “And you think that might be one we just heard?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “When you hear búh hoot, you are supposed to go to the diyunn and make a ceremony to keep the spirit in good humor on its journey to yaaká’, the Happy Place. Or maybe it will stay and cause trouble.”

  “Diyunn? That’s like a witch doctor, right?”

  “Witch doctor is white man talk,” Ironheel said scornfully. “Diyunn are okaah yedabik’ehi, those in charge of worship.”

  “Be a tad difficult finding one right now,” Easton observed. “If that really is a bad spirit out there.”

  “Nah,” Ironheel said, more like he was trying to convince himself than anyone else. “It was just búh.”

  “The Happy Place, is that like what we call Heaven?”

  Ironheel shook his head. “Yaaká’ isn’t a location. No God, no angels. Just somewhere, up ahead, maybe a four day journey, beyond that ridge, around that mountain. When you get there you are reunited with all those who have gone before. That is why it is called the Happy Place.”

  Apache deaths were surrounded by much ceremony, he said. As the body looks in death, so it remains for eternity, so the dead were always dressed in their finest clothes. For those who had no horse, there was the Death Pony to ride to the Happy Place. There was no guarantee of admission. Really bad people could not go there immediately, but had to be reincarnated in the body of a bear – sometimes more than once – before being admitted.

  “You think maybe that owl was someone from the spirit world who wants to talk to you. To us?”

  Ironheel shook his head, like he was trying to get rid of a disturbing thought.

  “It was only búh,” he said again, gruffly this time. “Just an owl.”

  Easton yawned cavernously: he hadn’t realized how tired he was. The warmth of the fire and the inner glow of the tea were having their effect. He looked at his watch: almost midnight.

  “We covered a few miles today,” he said.

  Ironheel nodded. “Tomorrow will be harder,” he warned. “We’ll have to do some serious climbing.”

  “You really know how to cheer a fellow up, don’t you?”

  “Better sleep,” Ironheel said, ignoring the remark. “We want to be on our way by sun-up, before it gets too hot.”

  Without further ceremony he curled up on the floor and within moments was snoring gently. Wonderful, Easton thought sourly. Now I can sit up all night listening to him sawing wood. He stared into the red embers of the fire, thinking about Susan, the way he always did when it was late and he was alone with his thoughts. He pictured Jessye curled up in her bed far away, with Boople snuggled next to her on the pillow, and wondered what he was doing here and why the hell he had gotten himself mixed up in all this.

  He piled some more sticks on the fire, looking glumly at the hard bare boards of the cabin floor, sure he would never be able to find comfort on them the way Ironheel had. He rolled up his body-warmer for a pillow and laid down to give it a try.

  He was asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Easton was awakened by a strange, atonal sound. Pale early-morning sunlight was streaming in through the grimy windows. He sat up. Framed in the open doorway, naked except for a loincloth, stood Ironheel. His head was thrown back, his arms upraised toward the sun. As he chanted in Apache he seemed oblivious to the thin, chill morning air. It was like a scene from the Stone Ag
e.

  Easton remained still and silent, listening to the arrhythmic, unmodulated sounds Ironheel was making. The musicology experts called them vocables, somewhere between a musical note and a word. After a while Ironheel lowered his hands and turned around. When he realized Easton had been watching him his mouth turned down.

  “Shi’okaah,” he said and turned away.

  An apology would probably make things worse, Easton thought, and didn’t make one.

  “A prayer to the morning,” he said.

  Ironheel turned on his heel and once again Easton saw surprise, as always quickly masked, in his eyes.

  “You know about that?” he said.

  “Yusn gave us this land,” Easton recited, silently blessing Grita. “Through our forefathers it has come to us. It was our land before the White Eyes came ... How does the rest go?”

  “Nowhi’ní,” Ironheel said, as if reluctant to speak. “It is still our land.”

  They were both silent for a moment. For the first time since Easton had been with the Apache, he sensed some kind of empathy between them. It felt good.

  “You don’t add up, Ironheel,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Which one is the real you? The petty thief I met in the Riverside jail, or the one who prays every morning to the Apache God?”

  “Can’t the same man be both?”

  Easton shook his head. “You’re different out here.”

  “Maybe the change is in you,” Ironheel said. It was a good answer. There might even have been truth in it, but Easton didn’t let that sidetrack him.

  “What happened, Ironheel?” he persisted. “What was it knocked you sideways? There was something, wasn’t there? Somewhere, something.”

  Ironheel looked away, toward the hills. “Same things that knock everyone sideways. Life. Bad luck. A raw deal. Take your pick.”

  “I’d guess raw deal,” Easton said. “That would account for the attitude. And the anger.”