Lord Apache

by Robert J. Steelman

  The sound of his bravado died away in the silence; the reeds still did not move. There was only the faint gurgling of water in the pools of the Agua Fria.

  Feeling foolish, he started to go back to the camp, when the reeds wavered, trembled.

  "Come out!" Drumm ordered. "Come out with your hands in the air, or I'll shoot!"

  The reeds parted. A wizened face, small and brown like that of a monkey, peered through.

  "Careful!" Drumm warned. "No sudden moves!"

  The intruder was an Indian, but not an Apache; at least, he did not resemble Agustín and his raiders. He was below even the height of the stocky Apaches, and dressed in a ragged pair of once-white pantaloons and leather jerkin. The feet were bare and horny; a tangle of glass beads hung around his neck. He wore a tattered felt hat that once must have belonged to a white man.

  "Keep your hands over your head!" Drumm ordered.

  In response to his gesture the wrinkled little man shuffled from the thicket. He was trembling; in the light of the camphene lamp the seamed and leathery face worked convulsively.

  "Why, the poor thing!" Mrs. Glore murmured. "He's scared!"

  Drumm gestured. "Search him for concealed weapons, Eggie! This man could be dangerous! He is certainly not one of our good simple English countrymen!"

  The valet patted the intruder's clothing, rummaged through the leather bag the man carried, tossed a hatchetlike knife with a cord-wrapped handle to his master.

  "No firearms, certainly," he reported." and in his knapsack are only some of those flat pancakes—"

  "Tortillas, they are called."

  "And little sacks filled with seeds—beans, peas, Indian corn, things like that."

  Mrs. Glore pushed between Drumm and the visitor. "My goodness!" she protested. "You're scaring the tripes out of him with that gun! He's hungry—look how his ribs stick out!" Ladling beans into a tin plate, she offered it to the man.

  Warily he eyed it; then the monkey's paw of a hand shot out and he snatched the plate. Squatting, the newcomer dredged food into his mouth with his fingers, finally wiping the plate clean with a tortilla from his knapsack.

  "There—I told you!" Mrs. Glore said. "There's no harm in the poor creature!"

  Drumm lowered his gun, but continued to observe the Indian.

  "He is probably a Pima, or a Papago. They are peaceful farmers, and the seeds he carries very likely represent his only wealth."

  The little man got to his feet and made a gesture that indicated fealty and respect anywhere in the world. He spoke rapidly, hands fluttering like small birds in a kind of sign language. Drawing a finger across his throat, he pointed toward the Mazatzals. Putting his hands over his face, he cowered and held out two fingers, working them back and forth in a manner reminiscent of a man running.

  "He is fleeing from the Apaches!" Drumm decided. "That is certainly his meaning!" Striding to the dying fire, he kicked the embers. "Eggie, put out the lamp! His presence here may mean that Agustín and his cutthroats are not far behind!" He opened the case, loaded his Tatham pistols, and handed them to Phoebe Larkin.

  "If we are attacked and there is no hope, do me the favor of shooting Mrs. Glore directly. Save the other pistol for yourself. There are horrible tales of what the red brutes do to captured white women!"

  "I'm not afraid," Phoebe said. Her voice trembled only slightly. "If one of them comes near me, he will get what for!"

  "That's right," Mrs. Glore said. "We are from far up the holler, and was weaned on a bullet!"

  "Eggie," Drumm instructed, "you and I will defend the camp from the earthworks we have dug. Bring all our weapons and cartridges. A flask of water, too, and a dish of Mrs. Glore's beans to stay us during the night's watch."

  Phoebe touched Drumm's arm. "You—you be careful, now!"

  She was looking directly at him, eyes luminous in the starlight. He expected to find fear there, perhaps panic. Instead there was a queer look he did not have time to analyze.

  "I will be careful," he assured her. "Now you and Mrs. Glore go into the hut and get some sleep. If anything untoward happens, you will certainly be aware of it."

  The camp settled into stillness. A rind of moon hung low in the western sky and finally disappeared. An infinity of stars sprinkled the sky, so densely distributed that it was difficult to separate one from the other. Only the Pole Star seemed a separate entity, hanging high over distant Prescott.

  "That Mrs. Glore," Eggleston said softly in the darkness, "is an unusual woman, Mr. Jack!"

  Warmth fled the earth, evaporating quickly into the dry air. Along the river the coyotes started their nightly chorus. The sound was almost welcome to Jack Drumm, a familiar thing against the menacing uncertainty of an Apache attack.

  "She is, indeed," he agreed. "A good cook, also." He squatted in the trench, peering over the parapet of stones, watching, listening. Orion's belt crawled slowly overhead.

  "A hard worker, Mrs. Glore," Eggleston continued. "Very clean and neat, also!"

  "That, too," Drumm agreed.

  The wound on his cheek itched. Though it had partially healed and the ugly scab had fallen away, he was conscious of its disfiguring nature. The beard, now a good half inch long, covered most of it; he was grateful for that.

  Through the night they lay behind the parapet, tense and expectant. Eggleston slept—Jack Drumm was sure he once heard a muffled snore, quickly cut off—but Drumm himself could not think of sleep. Cramped and sore, he stared into the starlit darkness with eyes aching from the intensity of his gaze. He had two females to protect; it was a heavy responsibility.

  He felt, rather than saw, the pallid dawn. Well, it had all been a false alarm, he supposed. Eggleston truly slept, now; his mouth was open, a lock of thinning hair fallen over his face so that the valet looked almost like a child—a lost middle-aged child. Drumm smiled paternally.

  "Eggie," he whispered. "Wake up! The night is almost over!"

  Yawning and stretching, the valet sat up. "For a moment there," he admitted, "I think I dozed a little."

  Drumm started to laugh but bit it off hard. From the river, where they must have lurked unseen, the Apaches burst out on the camp, a dozen or more of them. Silently and viciously they spread about the camp, intent on murder and rapine. Clubbing the butt of his carbine into a looming painted face, Jack Drumm had the satisfaction of seeing the man stumble backward, dropping a ribboned hatchet. Pulling the trigger, he saw another attacker drop his lance and fall. At his feet Eggleston knelt, aiming carefully, to drop an Apache who was running toward the reed hut.

  "Good shot, Eggie!" Drumm shouted.

  Perhaps low on ammunition in their mountain fastness, the raiders hoped to slaughter them with knife and club and hatchet. But this time Drumm and his valet were prepared. Together they laid down a blistering fire, forcing the Apaches to retort in kind. Though the big Sharp's rifle was a single-shot weapon, Eggleston had his pistol, and Drumm covered him with carbine fire while the valet reloaded. The survivors quickly took cover and for a moment the din ceased. Drumm peered over the parpet but withdrew when a bullet ricocheted from a flat boulder and caromed off, singing wickedly. In the first rays of the rising sun he saw a puff of smoke from the reed hut, a flash of orange; an attacker running toward the reed hut suddenly bent over, as if struck by an immense wind, and crumpled. Phoebe Larkin and Mrs. Glore were defending themselves. He hoped they would save the last cartridges for each other.

  In the brief lull he swung to scan the perimeter of the trench, fearing that a new attack was planned from another quarter. He was just in time to see the Union Jack, his own Union Jack, fluttering high over the far side of the parapet. Now they were attacking from that side.

  "They are coming, Eggie!" he shouted. "Be ready!"

  The flag was carried by the man in the ornamented leather hat—surely Agustín himself—whom Jack remembered from the first raid. Bone whistle between his teeth, keening like the call of a wild animal, Agustín leaped into the trench. Be
hind him swarmed the rest of the attackers.

  The chieftain swung a gleaming machete, as it was called. Drumm blocked it with the barrel of his carbine. Iron clanged against iron. Agustín dropped the swordlike weapon, cursing an Apache curse. As he danced in pain, Drumm caught Agustín's brown hand in his and twisted hard, bending the wrist backward in a jujitsu maneuver he remembered from Kurushiki, in Japan. Agustín dropped the flag. They both scrabbled on the ground for it.

  Wrenching at the staff, Jack tore the flag from Agustín's grasp but the wily Apache kicked him in the groin. Giddy with pain, he doubled over, hearing at the same time a woman's scream. It seemed very far away, distant, almost like a voice from beyond the Styx.

  Aware of a sudden shadow, he rolled away in panic. But it was Eggleston standing over him, swinging the big Sharp's like a club. The weapon spun in a deadly arc, the steel buttplate crashing into a rag-bound skull.

  "Get back there!" the valet snarled, and broke a man's bones with another vicious swipe of the butt. "Ho, sirrah, stand back! Mr. Jack, are you all right?"

  Someone leaped on the valet, bearing him down. The trench filled with smoke, confusion, wolfish snarls, the report of firearms. Drumm tried to get to his feet but could only writhe in agony, clutching his groin. He was dimly aware of Agustín snatching up the maltreated banner, holding it triumphantly aloft where it caught the rays of the rising sun.

  Almost resignedly Drumm closed his eyes, waiting for the end. This was his last sunrise. Lieutenant George Dunaway had been right. He should have—how was it the lieutenant had put it? Shuck off all this junk and ride as fast as you can to Prescott before you get bushwhacked. Interesting word, bushwhacked! Now he had been bushwhacked. Never again would he look on green grass and blooming roses, never again see Clarendon Hall, never again see Andrew and Cornelia Newton-Barrett and—

  Impatient at death's delaying, he finally opened his eyes. That was when he saw Phoebe Larkin. Like an avenging fury, she stood on the parapet, pistol in each hand, squinting along the barrels with such professionalism that he knew instantly the derringer in her bosom was a well-known tool, her familiarity with weapons a matter of custom. Probably she was a professional murderess, though this category of employment was not one he had previously come on. But murderess or not, he did not want her to die.

  "Run!" he yelled. "Run away, Phoebe! Save yourself!"

  Propping his body on outstretched arms, he tried to rise. But a last bullet from the fleeing Apaches struck him heavily in the shoulder. The force of the impact spun him sideways so that he fell with face pressed against the dew-wet earth. He became very tired. Curious, he tried to touch his wounded shoulder. The effort was painful, and his fingers came away warm and wet. Blood—his blood, Drumm blood.

  He continued to lie in that strange position, cheek pressed against the ground and buttocks in the air, hearing the sounds of battle grow fainter and ever fainter.

  Chapter Five

  When he awoke Jack Drumm did not know where he was, even less where he had been. He seemed swimming in some nameless void, a fathomless pool where there was no up or down, no now or then—only the cloying blackness. From time to time he caught a glimpse of light, perhaps a lamp burning in a window a long way across the moors. At times there was a face lit by the lamp glow, but so faint and blurred that he could not recognize it. Too, at times he heard sounds: voices, small rustlings, footfalls. When he cried out, tried to reach these evidences of humanity, the dark enveloped him again and he sank again into the void.

  Finally, with the tenacity of the Drumms, he decided that this business of the darkness was very silly. If he was alive, then a black void was no place to waste time. If he was dead, there must be something beyond the void; pearly gates, perhaps, and a waiting harp—or fiery furnaces. In either case it seemed best to find out immediately.

  Opening his eyes, he stared dazedly about. It took a long time to identify the splash of color on the back of a folding canvas chair near the bed. Finally he identified it as a China silk kerchief—a woman's kerchief, such as females used to bind their hair or secure in place a bonnet. Exhausted by the concentration, he lay back; the familiar void once again engulfed him.

  He did not know how long it was before he opened his eyes again. With a start he realized that he lay in Eggleston's reed hut. The movement lanced his shoulder with spasms of pain. He lay quietly again, feeling the awkward bulk of bandage. Recollection flooded back—the Apache attack, Agustín in his leather hat waving the Union Jack, the numbing impact of the bullet, the final sight of Phoebe Larkin standing on the parapet like an avenging angel, firing down into the trench with his Tatham pistols, one in each hand.

  Run! Run away, Phoebe! Save yourself! Dimly he remembered the words, remembered shouting to Phoebe Larkin. Then he had collapsed on his face, knew no more.

  But he was here. He was alive. From outside the hut came reassuring sounds: the bray of a mule, a woman's voice, someone laughing, the rippling of wind in the reeds along the river. He was alive!

  Gritting his teeth, he rolled to the edge of the crude bed and swung his naked legs over. The whole world reeled, tipped upside down. Desperately he grasped at the chair. Finally his equilibrium returned, though he seemed out of breath and very tired.

  Dressed scantily in his shirt, he staggered upright, the earth floor cool and damp under his feet. Still holding on to the chair, he stared unbelievingly at the scarecrow regarding him from the fragment of mirror fastened to the wall. The apparition was surely a fugitive from Dartmoor prison, a gaunt hollow-eyed ruffian with scruffy red beard. Even the slatted light from the sun, filtering through the reeds, painted the sorry figure in stripes appropriate to a convict. His mouth opened in wonder; he saw a gap where a tooth should be. Remembering the fight with George Dunaway, he was now certain that the apparition was he, John Peter Christian Drumm, of the Clarendon Hall Drumms. In spite of himself, he came close to grinning. The bearded ragamuffin leered back at him. What changes the Arizona Territory had wrought!

  Shuffling painfully across the floor, blanket wrapped around his bare legs and dragging the chair as a prop, he stood in the doorway, accustoming his eyes to the sunlight. Eggleston had Bonyparts, the mule, hitched to a bizarre assembly of slats from a broken keg laced together with wire to form a crude drag; he was scraping dirt to finish the dam across the Agua Fria that Drumm had planned. The little Papago man who had visited the camp the evening before the attack was making bricks with a wooden form and mud from the river. Under a brush shelter Mrs. Beulah Glore stirred something—probably more beans—in a pot over a mesquite fire.

  Puzzled, Drumm stared at a fresh mound of earth. At the head of the raw new mound a stake was driven into the ground; a scarlet cloth headband fluttered from it. With elation he realized that their little party had indeed given the Apaches "what for," as Phoebe Larkin had promised.

  He saw her, then, standing in the shade of a spread canvas, drinking from the water butt with a tin dipper. As he did, she appeared also to hear the faint sound of gunfire from the mountains, and turned to stare into the purple distance where George Dunaway was still harassing the Apaches.

  "Phoebe!" he called. "Miss—Miss Larkin!"

  At first she did not see him, only tightened her grasp on the heavy Sharp's rifle and continued to look at the slopes of the Mazatzals, dipper poised halfway to her lips. He tried to speak louder, but all that emerged was a strangled croak. Phoebe heard him, however; she dropped the rifle, crying out. Eggleston let fall the makeshift rope reins, Mrs. Glore abandoned her beans, and Papago left off his brickmaking. They all ran to Jack Drumm.

  "I only left for a minute!" Phoebe complained. "Oh, whatever are you doing out of bed?"

  Mrs. Glore and the valet took him by the arms and tried to steer him back into the hut but Drumm would have none of it.

  "I am all right!" he protested. For the first time he noticed the copper-brown youth sitting under the brush ramada, tied firmly to a wooden bench.

  "W
ho is that?"

  Eggleston had a blood-stained bandage around his head, but he spoke with great pride. "A prisoner of war, I guess you might say, Mr. Jack! We captured him day before last—"

  "Day before last?"

  "You've been out of your mind," Phoebe explained, "for well over forty-eight hours! It was probably due to all the blood you lost from where you were shot in the shoulder."

  "Lucky for you," Mrs. Glore beamed, "the ball passed right through and didn't bust anything! Mr. Eggleston here stood over you like a lion and fought them off! Oh, I tell you, he was a real ring-tailed roarer! How he did ramsquaddle them red brutes!"

  Basking in her approval, the valet smiled modestly. "And Miss Phoebe here, in addition to playing the perfect Amazon with your pistols, put you to bed and managed to stop the bleeding with cold compresses."

  Jack Drumm remembered a hand on his brow, a light and gossamer touch that was for a while his only link with this world of sunlight and triumph.

  "I am—I am grateful," he stammered. "I mean—to you all, but especially to you, Miss Phoebe. And we fought them, the Apaches, to a standstill! We showed them we are here to stay, residents of the Territory!" He caught sight of the grinning leathery face of the Papago. Where had he been during the battle?

  "He skedaddled," Beulah Glore explained. "Don't know as I blame him, either! He wouldn't go ninety pounds with sashweights in his pockets. But he's been real useful around here."

  "Now, Jack," Phoebe urged, taking his arm, "you must get back to bed! You are as white as a bedsheet, and have got to rest."

  She had never before called him Jack, and the familiarity made him uncomfortable. Too, how had she described him? A cold fish? That had been unfair, and inaccurate. Cornelia Newton-Barrett could have informed her differently. He wondered what Cornelia would have done during an Apache attack.

  "First," he said, "we must decide what to do with this scoundrel here—this Apache youth you have captured."

  "Beulah here," Eggleston said, "hit him over the head with a shovel! When the rest finally broke and ran, they left him for dead. We tied him up, but let him walk about each day for a little while under guard. He eats a great deal, though, and will soon pauperize us."