Leaving Yuma

by Michael Zimmer

  We brought along all the food we could carry, filled the canteens at a long, shallow tank still half full from last winter’s rains, then moved out as before, with Luis up front, then Abby and Susan, and me bringing up the rear. Other than what was necessary, we still weren’t speaking much.

  We’d been traveling more west than north ever since leaving Sabana, but that was largely on account of Alvarez. With the lieutenant no longer a concern and our canteens full, we turned north along the rim of the escarpment. Our destination was the Río Concepción, where I was fairly confident we’d find water. I was also worried that we might run into some Yaquis or Southern Pimas there, but hoping we’d see them in time to avoid an encounter. My plan was to refill our canteens at the river, then make a final push for Arizona. It would be tough haul, but we needed to get out of Mexico—all of us, but especially Susan.

  About three miles north of the clearing we came to a split in the cliff’s rim, with a trail winding down to the bottom maybe one hundred and fifty feet below. We halted on top when Luis spotted the tracks of other horses in the dirt. He dismounted to examine them more closely, running his fingers lightly over the ridges of loose soil. After a couple of minutes he stood and returned to his mule.

  “I think two,” he said, throwing a leg over his cantle.

  “Davenport and Buchman?” I asked.

  There was no reaction from Abby at mention of her husband’s name, which seemed odd at the time.

  “Sí, I would think so.”

  “How far ahead?”

  “Yesterday morning.” He was looking east, calculating our route from Sabana, as I was doing from the Cañon Where the Small Lizards Run. It would come out just about right, I decided.

  “That means Carlos probably didn’t double-cross them,” I said.

  “It would seem so,” Luis agreed.

  “Are you saying Edward and another man are somewhere ahead of us?” Abby asked doubtfully.

  “That’s the way I read it,” I replied.

  “They are not traveling fast,” Luis observed. He was looking at me now, his expression pulled into a frown as he tried to make sense of the old man’s plans. “Perhaps they have gone to meet someone.”

  “Someone wanting to buy his guns?”

  “It is possible, no?”

  I glanced at Abby. Her lips were a pencil-thin line scratched across her face, her eyes as hard as cherry pits.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said abruptly. “If they’re ahead of us, we’ll watch out for them, but we’re heading for Arizona.”

  Luis nodded and reined his mule toward the cañon’s rim. Abby and I followed close behind, our mounts’ hoofs setting off little avalanches of pebbles and dust. At the bottom we turned just west of due north and settled into the ride.

  The sun rose warm, then turned hot, but there was a thin haze in the air that blunted the worst of the heat. Later that morning the clouds thickened and the wind picked up, kicking sand in our faces like a Mr. Atlas beach bully, and the stock—Abby’s seal brown in particular—turned fractious.

  Luis and I pulled our hats down to shield our faces, but Abby had lost her sombrero when her horse was shot out from under her, and had to use a blanket drawn over her head like a shawl. Susan used it, too, crawling underneath, then pulling her legs up out of the blowing sand until she was nothing more than a lump along her mother’s spine.

  The wind died late in the afternoon, but the clouds remained. Although the temperature wasn’t as brutal with the sun’s rays filtered by a buttermilk sky, the humidity rose noticeably, making our progress even more miserable than when we’d suffered the full brunt of a cloudless day.

  We made another cold camp that night, then pushed on the following morning in a cheerless silence. With the wind down, the stock became easier to manage again, and we started pushing a little, eager to reach the Río Concepción and fresh water.

  I think for the others, as well as myself, the Concepción had become more than just another water hole. It was our final barrier, the United States—or at least one of its territories—beckoning seductively from the other side. We were still several hours away when Luis suddenly hauled back on his reins. I heeled my mule forward, my hand dropping to the Smith & Wesson’s scarred walnut grips.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He pointed with his chin toward a clump of catclaw about a hundred yards to our left. “I saw something.”

  “Man or animal?”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  Then Abby gasped. Following the direction of her gaze, I saw a man standing in the brush on our right. He was short and dark and pot-bellied, the way the hungry sometimes are, with coal-black hair cut straight at the brow and shoulders, and bare, spindly legs. He wore a breechcloth made of jerga, ankle-high moccasins, and a necklace of javelina tusks strung between wooden beads. He was carrying a spear in his right hand, its butt digging into the ground at his side.

  “You recognize him?” Luis asked. He meant the Indian’s nationality. Although in these parts he could have been Pima or Apache or even one of the coastal tribes, I knew he wasn’t. I think Luis knew it, too. That’s why he started to ease his hand toward the revolver riding on his hip, although in fairness I don’t think he intended to draw it. He just wanted to be ready. Unfortunately it was too late for that.

  And me? I sat there with my hope puddled on the ground under my mule like so much urine. Placing my hand lightly on Luis’ arm, I croaked, “Don’t.”

  He gave me a searching glance. “Why not?”

  I nodded toward the clumps of chaparral that surrounded us on every side. Three more Yaquis had joined the first. They were all dressed similarly, the earthen tones of their clothing and the reddish-brown hue of their skin blending into the landscape like chameleons. These three were carrying bows, with arrows nocked but as yet undrawn. I wasn’t falling for their little attempt at chicanery, though. They were testing us, putting out a poorly armed bait to see how we’d react, but I knew that if Luis drew his gun, we’d all be dead before he could cock it.

  “Leave off,” I murmured. “We’re outnumbered.”

  “There are only four of them,” Abby pointed out. She was probably wondering what had me so spooked when I’d faced worse odds against Chito Soto and his goons. I nodded toward the chaparral, and Abby cried out softly. I counted eight men loosely surrounding us, three of them toting cocked rifles. Shifting around in my saddle for a look to the rear, I added another dozen warriors to the total, and said quietly, “They’ve got us, and they’ll kill us if we try to fight or make a run for it.”

  “What do we do?” Abby asked, patting Susan’s hand in a futile attempt at reassurance.

  “Do what you’re told to do, and nothing you aren’t,” I replied tersely. Then, in Yaqui as rusty as the hinges on an abandoned barn door, I called to the man who had first stepped forward. “I am White Dog, a friend of the Yoemem, who I once lived with. We come in peace, and wish only to pass through your country as quickly as possible. Except for water and air, we will take nothing that belongs to the People.” (Editor’s note: Yoemem is Yaqui for “The People,” which is how they historically referred to themselves.)

  “I know who you are, White Dog,” the man replied coolly, “and you are no longer welcome among us.”

  The fact is, I’d never been all that welcome among the Yaquis, even when I lived with them. An outsider from the get-go, I’d been tolerated solely because of Old Toad’s unusual attachment to me.

  “We wish only to pass through,” I persisted. “When we leave, we will never return.”

  “That promise was made once before,” the Indian pointed out. I remembered him then. His name was Ghost, because of his ability to move silently through the brush, neither seen nor heard. Early in my stay with the Dead Horse clan, in a fit of teenage frustration, I’d blurted to Ghost that if I ever escaped, I’
d never come back. Apparently he hadn’t forgotten.

  Ghost wasn’t coming any closer, but some of the others were. Rifles were held at the ready, and those men armed with bows had finally drawn their arrows. Tipping his spear toward us, Ghost said, “Remove your guns.”

  I took another quick look around. The numbers were increasing. I counted nineteen now, and figured there were still a few more in hiding in the chaparral. Real easy, I loosened the buckle on my gun belt and let it fall. Luis and Abby did the same, although I could tell Luis was hesitant to comply. I could appreciate his feelings, remembering the hatred of Mexicans that had burned in the breasts of so many Yaquis.

  With our revolvers on the ground, the Indians sprang forward. Clutching hands hauled me roughly from my saddle. My arms were pulled back and my wrists—still tender from Del Buchman’s cuffs—were lashed with short lengths of rawhide. Through a forest of thin brown legs I caught glimpses of others doing the same to Luis and Abby, and I could hear Susan wailing as she was carried away.

  Abby was screaming for them to return her child, kicking and twisting wildly. I shouted for her to let it go, that the girl would be all right, but she didn’t hear me, and probably wouldn’t have stopped if she had. She fought like a demon, and if she’d been a man, they would have bashed her skull in and left her for the vultures. Instead they found her desperate struggles humorous, and laughed and joked as they forced her to the ground, then bound her wrists behind her back. It took five of them to do it.

  Luis’ face was the bloodiest when we were all brought back to our feet, the near-perfect shape of a rifle butt already starting to swell the flesh under his right eye. I knew it would go harder on him than either Abby or me because of Porfirio Díaz’s eradication policy toward the Yaquis.

  Abby had ceased her resistance and stood with her head bowed, her chest heaving. Tears glistened along both cheeks, cutting narrow channels through the dirt. The warrior who had snatched Susan had also confiscated the seal brown, and was riding west at a swift gallop, the girl clamped firmly in his arms. Her cries floated back to us long after she and her captor had disappeared, like claws slashing at her mother’s heart.

  Mine, too, for that matter.

  Others had mounted the two mules and were circling behind us like cowboys gathering strays. A branch torn from a creosote bush came down on my shoulders like a strip of fire. I cried out a guttural protest and spun around, staring into the laughing eyes of a young man who couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. The smile faded from his lips when he saw my expression, and I won’t deny a desire to pull him from the mule’s saddle and wring his scrawny neck, no matter his age.

  “Before I leave, I’ll cut your throat,” I swore darkly, although my Yaqui was so poor and my anger so hot, I’m not sure he understood my words.

  Ghost stepped in front of me, his eyes blazing with their own special hatred. “You run, White Dog,” he growled in Spanish. “All of you run, or we will gut you on the trail and leave you as live bait for the coyotes.”

  He meant it, too. I’d seen him do it to a Mexican family the Yaquis had caught harvesting salt from the Sea of Cortez, my first year living with them. Luis already knew what we were facing, but I translated Ghost’s threats to Abby so that she also understood the situation.

  “It’s going to get real bad,” I told her. “But you’ve got to hold on. For Susan’s sake.”

  She’d kept her face hidden behind the screen of her long hair while I repeated Ghost’s truculent promises, but raised her eyes to meet mine when I mentioned Susan.

  “You are lying, Mister Latham,” she said softly. “I shall never see my darling baby again.”

  “I’m not lying, ma’am. The odds aren’t good, but they’re there, and we’ve got to take them. We’ve got to keep on taking them, until we just can’t take them any more.”

  She was staring deep into my eyes. I could tell she wanted to believe me. Finally, uncertainly she nodded. “All right, sir, you shan’t find me lagging. I give you my word.”

  I reckon that’s about all you can ask for in a case like ours.

  Just being real blunt, what followed after that was a nightmare of pain and humiliation. The majority of the Yaquis continued on east on whatever business had brought them out there to begin with, but Abby, Luis, and I were herded toward the setting sun like so many sheep, the two young men on our mules acting as cruel shepherds. They kept us moving in a tottering, graceless run, and I’ll swear they picked the scabbiest patches of earth they could find to drive us over. My legs started to cramp soon after starting, and my lungs were straining within the hour. Sweat poured into my eyes like rivers of salt, nearly blinding me. I stumbled once and went to my knees, and the kid with the creosote switch sent me flying, nose first, into the dirt by running the shoulder of his mule into my back. He swung around even as I struggled to rise, striking at me again and again with that whip-thin limb until I got my legs under me and started running.

  If it was hard for Luis and me, it was even worse for Abby, encumbered as she was by her wide-sweeping skirts and whatever trappings she had under it, petticoats and bloomers and who knew what else. At one point she fell and refused to get up. One of the kids returned to whip his mule back and forth over her. The sturdy jack tried hard not to step on the mushy figure beneath him, knowing the loose footing would likely throw him, but he couldn’t help clipping the woman several times with his iron-shod hoofs.

  Finally the kid jumped down and in exasperation began beating Abby across the back and shoulders with the flat of his mesquite wood bow, until she forced one knee up, then the other, and surged to her feet. She stood there a moment, her nose bleeding, her jacket nearly ripped from her back, glaring at the youth as he remounted the mule. The kid stopped the jack in front of her, grinning broadly, then pointed the tip of his bow to the west.

  Abby started off without comment, passing between Luis and me with barely a glance. We fell in silently behind her. I hated what that kid did to her, but I’m even more embarrassed to admit how much I savored the break her fall had given me. It was a chance to catch my wind, and allow my heart to slow its rapid pounding. I could see that Luis felt the same way in the subdued cast of his face when his eyes met mine, then darted away.

  There were still a couple of hours of cloudy daylight left when we reached the Río Concepción. We stumbled down its sloping bank like trail drovers at the end of a three-day spree, staggering and glassy-eyed from fatigue, our bodies aching from our run. I was vaguely aware of a village on our left, but too exhausted to care, too parched to take my eyes off the gentle flow of water before us.

  The Concepción was always a small river, but never to be dismissed in that arid wasteland. At that time of year—it was still the middle of May, remember?—the river was running a good twenty feet wide and several inches deep, rippling swiftly and purposefully over its sandy shoals.

  I dropped to my knees in the wet sand—the hell with scooping water up in my hand like a true warrior—and flopped forward onto my belly to dip my face in the surprisingly cool water, letting it flow over my sun-burned cheeks and split lips. Abby and Luis were doing the same on either side of me, the three of us wallowing in the life-giving shallows of the Concepción like hogs in a mud hole. After a while the kid with the creosote quirt jumped to the ground and started beating us over our shoulders to keep us from drinking too much, but we refused to be driven away. It wasn’t until several middle-aged men from the village came down to forcibly drag us out of the water that I finally started to take note of my surroundings.

  The village was fairly large for 1907. I estimated at least two dozen dwellings, strewn like overturned bowls throughout the mesquite that grew along a low bench overlooking the Concepción. The older men stood above us while the kid who had given us so much grief on the trail explained our presence in a loud and agitated manner, his right arm gesticulating wildly. After a minute
or so of listening to the youth’s rambling, one of the older men quieted him with an upraised hand, then spoke briefly to another man, who rolled me onto my back with his toe. I didn’t recognize him, although in fairness I was still half blinded from the sweat and dirt rimming my swollen eyes, despite the dunking I’d given them in the river.

  The older man’s words were too agile for my poor Yaqui to follow, although I heard Ghost’s name mentioned a couple of times, as well as Toad’s. I wondered if the old war chief lived there, if he was even still alive. Then the two youths who had driven us to the village suddenly quirted their mules and raced away, while a couple of the older men hauled me to my feet. They half led, half dragged me up the bank to an abandoned wickiup, where they dumped me against the wall like a piece of firewood. They had my legs bent back and my ankles hitched to my wrists in about as much time as it takes to tell, then strode off talking conversationally about, as near as I could follow, what one of the men’s wife was making for dinner that night.

  The sun set and night came on. I lay there alone and uncovered, so stiff from my afternoon run that I could barely move. I was half starved and near about froze, but the worst part about that whole night were the cramps. My legs and arms and along my spine, even the muscles across my stomach, kinked and contracted all the way through to dawn.

  I know you’ve had a charley horse, or that cramp where your big toe wants to veer away from the others. Imagine enduring that all night long and not being able to jump out of bed to pace or stretch your muscles back to normal. It was hell with a capital H, although I never lost sight of the fact that, as bad as it was, I was still alive.