by Tabor Evans
They loosed arrows with tooth-gnashing twangs and ensuing whines. Longarm fired once, twice, three times and was aware of one Apache falling back out of sight while another tumbled onto the trail.
Longarm bolted off his heels and ran up a gravelly trough amongst the rocks and boulders hanging precariously suspended along the cliff face, arrows cracking off stone all around him from above. One smacked a thumb of rock to his right.
He stopped and jerked a look at an Apache standing atop a finger of rock about twenty yards above and to his left. As the Apache reached to pull another arrow from his quiver, Longarm aimed and fired the Winchester.
The warrior was thrown back with a yelp. The last Longarm saw of him was his moccasins rising high in the air before dropping back down the other side of his perch.
Several shots rose on Longarm’s left, in the direction in which War Cloud and Magpie had run up the ridge.
The lawman racked a fresh cartridge and continued running up the ridge, boots sliding in the loose shale. He gained the top, breathing hard. Only one more shot rose on his right, and then an eerie silence descended.
Longarm walked amongst the rocks topping the ridge, looking slowly from his right to his left and back again, tracking with his cocked rifle. The silence was ominous. There was no movement except the breeze occasionally lifting little swirls of dust.
Ahead, the gravelly slope dropped slightly. A corridor angled gradually off to Longarm’s right.
Tufts of grass and twisted cedars grew amongst the rocks that had obviously been spilled here during a long-ago eruption of a massive volcano—one of many that made up the Shadow Montañas, which were a maze of black volcanic rock mixed with occasional basalt or sandstone outcroppings.
Squeezing his Winchester in his hands, crouching, Longarm walked slowly around the bend.
Just as the trail began to straighten, he caught movement in the periphery of his left eye. He jerked his head and gun around in time to see a shirtless, middle-aged Apache with long, black, silver-streaked hair aim a Colt’s revolving rifle at him. The Apache squinted as he triggered the rifle, which must have been new to him—he’d probably swiped it from a prospector or some other white man he’d found interloping in these sacred mountains of the Chiricahuas—and missed Longarm by a foot.
The bullet plowed into rock ahead and above the lawman, spanging wickedly.
Longarm’s Winchester roared twice. He watched the warrior jerk back against the rock wall behind him, snarling and triggering his rifle into the gravel near his knee moccasins. Blood pumped from the two holes in his leathery hide drawn taut across his ribs.
Something moved along the corridor ahead of Longarm. The lawman threw himself to his left a half second after an arrow broke against the rocks where he’d been standing a moment before.
He rolled off a shoulder and snapped the Winchester’s rear stock to his cheek, taking quick aim at the Apache running toward him down the corridor, grimacing anxiously as he reached over his left shoulder to pluck another arrow from his quiver.
Longarm drew a bead on the Apache’s chest over which a red-and-white calico blouse and medicine pouch billowed. The Apache howled wickedly, dark eyes flashing. When the brave was ten feet away from Longarm, the lawman squeezed the Winchester’s trigger.
The hammer fell with a benign ping against the firing pin.
Longarm cursed.
The Apache stopped, grinned, and loosed his arrow. The missile was a blur hurling toward Longarm, who had no time to dodge before he felt the hot pain of the strap-metal head burying itself in his upper left arm.
Longarm yelped and dropped his empty rifle. He glanced at the arrow. About a foot of its back end protruded from the front of his left arm. The rest, including the blood-coated, strap-metal head, protruded from the back of that arm.
“Fuck!”
Should have counted your shots, dumbass . . .
Longarm rose to his knees and slid his Colt from its holster. But before he could get the weapon aimed, the Apache was on him.
The warrior kicked the gun out of the lawman’s hand. The Colt barked, hurling its slug skyward before it went flying high in the air and careening back down the corridor in the direction from which Longarm had come.
The Apache took one step back and, crouching and grinning, slid a big bowie knife from a beaded sheath under a red slash on his right hip. He grinned wider, showing nearly a full set of large, crooked, yellow teeth, his long hair blowing in the breeze.
Longarm heaved himself quickly to his feet, stifling a yelp against the searing pain in his left arm, feeling the blood ooze out from both the entrance and exit wound. He spread his boots and squared his shoulders at the Apache, who crouched like a cat about to pounce. The Indian expertly flipped the knife in his hand and held it up slightly to show Longarm the razor edge.
Longarm’s pulse hammered in his temples.
This didn’t look good. This didn’t look one bit good. The Apache, short and muscular, with cunningly slanted eyes, appeared to be damn good with that knife . . .
There was nothing quite so fortifying as feeling as though you’re teetering on a precipice with death yawning from the darkness below. As the Apache lunged toward Longarm, the lawman parried the blow with his left arm, screaming against the fire flaring in that arm when he knocked it against the Apache’s knife hand.
The lawman lurched forward, hammering the Apache’s left cheek with his right fist.
He’d found the strength to land a sledgehammer blow to the Indian’s face. It scrambled the Native’s brains for a valuable split-second, enough time for Longarm to deliver an on-target kick to the Chiricahua’s crotch. He’d put enough adrenaline behind the kick that the Apache screamed and dropped the knife as he bent forward and clapped both forearms over his battered balls.
Instantly, the Indian straightened, tears glistening in his eyes from the pain he was trying to shrug off. He balled his fists and quartered around Longarm. The lawman reached around his left arm with his right hand, and screamed as he broke off the end of the arrow and tossed it away. He pulled the end out of the front of his arm with another bellowing yell that rocketed around the canyon.
He held the splintered end of the arrow in his right hand, blood dripping off the finger of split wood jutting from the main shaft.
“Here, you son of a bitch,” Longarm raked out through clenched teeth, “maybe you’d like this back!”
The Indian had watched in hang-jawed amazement as the white man had removed both ends of the arrow from his own arm. That’s why he was slow to react when the same big man with the bloody left arm bolted toward him, hammering his left fist with another echoing scream across the Apache’s right cheek.
The Apache grunted and stumbled backward.
The big lawman was on him in a second, grabbing him by the back of his neck and pulling his head forward while he rammed the splintered end of the bloody spear into the Apache’s throat.
The brave stumbled back, screaming and clawing at the bloody shaft in his neck. He fell back against a wall of the canyon and, choking, frothy blood pumping from his neck, dropped to his butt before falling onto his shoulder and jerking as the last of his life bled out.
Two more figures appeared in Longarm’s field of vision. He scooped the Apache’s bowie knife off the ground and held the knife up in a ready crouch. But it was the War Cloud father and daughter standing there looking at him in mute amazement.
An Apache warrior was down on all fours in front of them—a tall, bony young man with an eagle feather headband. Obviously the War Clouds’ prisoner, he too was staring skeptically up at the tall white man in the blue shirt and string tie, wielding the knife.
Longarm lowered the knife and straightened with a sigh.
“Where you two been?” he said. “And who’s your friend?”
He’d barely gotten that last o
ut before the ground started to pitch around him. Several clouds must have passed over the sun, because shadows skittered along the rocky canyon around him. He looked up. The sky was clear. His brain was only just then catching up to his body, realizing the throbbing pain hammering him as blood continued to ooze out of both holes in his arm.
“You best sit down and rest, brother,” War Cloud advised, glancing at Magpie with the unspoken order to watch their prisoner, and strode toward the lawman. “You don’t look so good. Ouch—that arm’s gotta hurt!”
Longarm glanced at the bloody appendage. “I gotta admit it’s a might on the uncomfortable side.” He looked around at the ridge walls. “We get all of ’em?”
“For now. There will likely be more. I don’t know how large the band is that lives in these mountains—I haven’t been here for many years, not since I was a wild young brave—but the Chiricahuas will try everything they can to keep trespassers away. Especially away from Blood Mountain, where they believe their witch god lives.”
He peered toward the large, arrow-shaped formation that they’d been heading for in the southwest though the large, bald, black granite peak couldn’t be seen from this vantage.
War Cloud took Longarm’s good arm and led him over to the shaded side of the canyon. The scout shoved Longarm down onto his butt and pushed him back against the relatively cool stone wall. War Cloud looked at the two dead men, and then he looked at Longarm and shook his head.
“That was a piece of work there, brother.” He chuckled and looked at Magpie, who offered a rare smile, her dark eyes flashing in the sunlight.
Longarm looked at the Apache brave whom Magpie was holding a pistol on. “Who’s he?”
War Cloud looked at the Apache, whose left eye was swelling closed. Blood dribbled down from the young brave’s left temple. “He will not tell me his name. Magpie knocked him out with a rock. He has been shamed. But do you see those two eagle feathers?”
“Someone important?”
War Cloud nodded. “Likely the son of the band leader—whoever he is. I figure if we have the leader’s son with us, we will have an easier time reaching Black Twisted Pine.”
“Good thinkin’.”
Magpie said something to her father. War Cloud frowned at the girl and then, apparently to appease her, he walked back to stand over the young Apache, aiming his carbine at the brave’s head.
Meanwhile, Magpie walked over and knelt down beside Longarm. She said something in her tongue that sounded like German being spat out around a mouthful of rocks, and lifted his wounded arm slightly. She lowered her head, squinting her eyes, evaluating both wounds.
Longarm glanced at War Cloud.
War Cloud frowned. The protective father was not pleased by the girl’s ministrations. “He’ll be all right,” the scout groused at his daughter. “Hell, he’s cut himself worse shaving.”
“Thanks, brother,” Longarm said with an ironic smile.
Magpie spat out a small stream of Coyotero at her father. It had an angry, chastising ring to it.
War Cloud flushed and glanced away, cowed.
Magpie lifted her head and shook back her hair as she removed her loosely tied blue neckerchief. She spat some more Apache, telling Longarm something about stopping the bleeding until they could get to fresh water, and wrapped her neckerchief around his arm, covering both holes.
He watched her small, brown hands firmly but gently tie the neckerchief around his arm. He looked at her brown cheek behind the shifting curtain of her hair that she now let hang loosely about her shoulders, a style she’d started the day after she’d caught Longarm and Leslie McPherson fucking in the wagon shed at Fort McHenry.
The girl finished tying the neckerchief and glanced at the lawman. She caught him staring at her. She blinked, held his gaze, and then rose and walked away.
Longarm glanced at War Cloud. The scout gave him a dark look. Longarm gave a wry chuckle. He looked around cautiously. Judging by the long-angling shadows, he figured it was around four in the afternoon.
“We’d best get to the horses, ride for another hour or so, then find a place to camp.”
“Sure you can ride, Custis?”
Longarm gained his feet. The pain was intense, but he’d suffered worse. He’d live. Once they found their horses he’d take a couple shots of rye or a belt of Major Belcher’s brandy.
“I can ride,” he said and strode off to fetch his rifle and revolver.
War Cloud gave the Chiricahua a savage kick to his backside and yelled in the brave’s own tongue, “Dirty Chiricahua dog, get to your feet or I’ll gut-shoot you and leave you here to the pumas!”
While Longarm and War Cloud were following their prisoner and the girl back toward where they’d left their horses, War Cloud sidled up to Longarm and said into his ear, “Remember what I said earlier?”
“About what?”
“About the curse my wife put on any white man who tries to make time with Magpie . . . ?”
“Oh, that one,” Longarm growled. “How could I forget?”
War Cloud gave him an ominous grin.
Despite the warning, Longarm allowed himself a glance at the girl’s perfectly shaped rump causing her doeskin dress to sway enticingly ahead of him.
Chapter 16
Horses were fearful but relatively stupid beasts, so their fear didn’t often carry them far. That was why Longarm and the War Clouds had a mercifully short ways to walk in running them down. They also found the Apaches’ horses and appropriated one for the brave.
The trio and their gagged and bound captive continued riding along the old Indian trail they’d been following since entering the range. All three allies scoured the terrain around them every step of the way.
They rode higher and higher into the Shadow Montañas, and after cresting one of several ridges stippled with the flora of the high desert, the peak they were heading for rose into spectacular view straight ahead of them, vaulting back against the southeastern sky. And with the sun angling down in the west, behind the riders, the flame-shaped monolith showed why the name of Blood Mountain had been hung on it. Late in the day the setting sun made the chunk of ancient black granite and hardened volcanic lava fairly glow the crimson of fresh blood.
It was quite a sight jutting there beyond several more rocky, pine-carpeted ridges, and though Longarm guessed they were still a good day’s away from it, the lens-clear light cast in vibrant relief its scalelike pocks, fissures, thumbs, cornices—all tapering to a peak resembling a giant, deftly crafted arrowhead.
When the sun was nearly down, Longarm reined up beside the trail, at the edge of fragrant pines growing amongst the rubble of spewed lava boulders, and reached back with his right hand to fish his field glasses out of his saddlebags. He grumbled against the pain in his wounded arm, cursing himself again for not having counted his shots, and held the field glasses up to his face.
“They are still there, brother,” War Cloud said. “Seen ’em from atop the last ridge.”
Longarm cursed.
For the past three days, he and War Cloud had been aware of two shadowers. At least, he thought there were two. They’d remained far enough behind Longarm’s party that the lawman had never gotten a clear view of them. Thus, he had no idea who they were. They could have been banditos they’d picked up after they’d crossed the border into Mexico, or they could have been a couple of riders whom Major Belcher had sent to follow Longarm and the War Clouds out from Fort McHenry.
The lawman thought the latter possibility the most likely. Banditos would either have accosted their quarry by now or lost interest and disappeared from their trail.
“I think we’d best find out who they were before we get any closer to Blood Mountain and Black Twisted Pine,” Longarm said, returning the glasses to their case. “Let’s hole up here, go without a fire. Maybe they’ll ride up on us.”
They looked around for a place to camp. Magpie found a spring running out from the base of a stony dike and dribbling off into a freshet curling amongst the pines. Being high and well sheltered by boulders and tall trees, it was a good place to camp.
They tended their horses and the brave’s pinto mustang first and then arranged their gear in a sandy area at the base of the dike, the freshet running down the slope nearby. War Cloud tied the prisoner securely with rope to a tree, and the young brave sat, coldly staring.
Longarm sat on a rock ledge jutting from the dike. He set his saddlebags and canteen down beside him and took a long drink of water, cutting through the dryness in his throat.
When he’d corked the canteen and fished a bottle out of his saddlebags, needing another couple of shots to dull the pain in his arm, Magpie walked over and grabbed the bottle out of his hand.
“Hey!” Longarm said.
She spat some Chiricahua at him, and then set the bottle on a rock by his saddlebags and began untying the bandage around his arm.
“She says to make sure there is enough for cleaning the wound,” War Cloud said. He was sitting cross-legged on the far side of their little, bowl-shaped camp, taking apart his rifle and cleaning each part with an oily rag. “She acts like she’s your mother or something.”
He chewed out several sentences to his daughter in their language. Magpie ignored him. She unbuttoned Longarm’s shirtsleeve and then sat with his hand in her lap, gently cleaning his arm with the whiskey.
Longarm sat gritting his teeth at the infernal sting in each of the holes in his arm. If she was aware of the pain she was causing him, the girl didn’t let on. She continued to very slowly, methodically, and gently clean the dried and jellied blood away from each hole—it was a clean flesh wound—with the bandage soaked in whiskey.
When she had his arm clean, she scurried off up a near slope and came back with a handful of what appeared plant root and pine needles. War Cloud sat watching his daughter in mute frustration as he continued to thoroughly clean his rifle. Magpie placed the root powder and pine needles in a fresh, whiskey-soaked bandage, and wrapped the bandage tightly around the lawman’s wounded arm.