“Who’s next?” he barked. “Who else wants to argue?” His baleful, bloodshot eyes traveled to Rusty, who knelt beside the still form of Sudden.
“Yu, kid?” grated Quincy. “Yu got anythin’ to say? Step out an’ pull yore gun an’ we’ll settle this right now!”
“Quince…” Shiloh Platt ventured.
“Shut yore mouth, damn yu!” hissed Quincy. “This is my shindig an’ yu’ll do what I’m tellin’ yu to do.”
“Yu reckon the Apaches will as well?” Rusty looked up from where he knelt, and his cool question made Quincy stop, a puzzled look on his face. He shook his head as if to clear it, and those watching saw the killing light begin to dim in his eyes.
“Yu’ve blown it now, Quincy,” Rusty went on inexorably. “That shot’ll bring every ’pache buck within twenty miles o’ here at a dead run.”
Quincy’s shoulders slumped, and his face seemed to grow older. He passed a hand wearily across his eyes, then looked at Shiloh Platt. The half-breed saw that the madness was gone, and at the same time realized his opportunity. He stepped forward with his own gun drawn.
“Shuck yore gunbelt, Rusty!” he snapped. “Move!”
For a moment, it looked as if Rusty might argue the point, but at that moment Barbara Davis, fearing further bloodshed, touched his arm. With a sigh, Rusty unbuckled his belt and stood away from his weapons. Shiloh scooped them up and tossed them across his saddle.
“Yu show good sense, girlie,” Shiloh grated. “Quince, get me some rope.”
“I don’t get this, Platt,” Rusty said, frowning.
“Yu will,” promised the half-breed. “Quince, tie that black-haired sonofabitch good. If the Apaches is on their way here like the kid sez, they’re goin’ to find somethin’ to keep their minds off of us long enough to give us time to get clear.”
Rusty watched in astonishment as Shiloh revealed his monstrous intent, the enormity of the foul deed beyond his understanding. “For Gawd’s sake, Platt!” he cried. “Yu can’t leave him here for the Injuns!”
Shiloh Platt cocked the six-gun and pointed it at Barbara Davis. “Yu want to bet her life on it, sonny?” he snapped. When Rusty turned away, disgust on his face, Shiloh grinned mirthlessly. “I thought not. Mount up: let’s get the hell outa here afore them red sons arrive! His gaze raked the small clearing, passing over the still forms of Tucson and the unconscious Texan.
“I hope they roast yu alive, Sudden,” he gloated. “One thing’s shore: yu won’t bother me no more!”
Quincy led his horse over. “Green’s nag bolted,” he reported. “Damn brute near took my hand off when I tried to get close.”
“Leave it,” Shiloh snapped. “Mister Sudden ain’t goin’ to be needin’ it!”
Without another word he spurred his horse out of the clearing, Rusty and Barbara riding behind him, Quincy bringing up the rear. The dust of their going had not yet settled when Sudden groaned and opened his eyes.
Chapter Twelve
High in the molten sky a tiny speck wheeled. Slowly it came nearer, dropping slightly, tilting its wings to catch the faint thin breeze that touched the tips of the faraway mountains. It swooped lower; then hovered. A triumphant croak came from its throat: the buzzard had sighted prey. Gliding slowly downwards towards the tumbled rocks, always wary for movement – for the buzzard is a coward who prefers to feast upon the maimed or the dead – the ugly black bird settled, with a flapping of its heavy wings, upon a boulder above the clearing where Sudden lay motionless.
Sudden had watched the bird land, however; and a curse escaped his lips.
“Hell,” he muttered. “I’d better give that brute some sign I’m alive, or he’ll be down here peckin’ my eyes out afore yu can holler “grub-pile’.” He surged against the bonds which held him, struggling violently; but Shiloh Platt had done his job well, and the bonds gave not an inch. The sweat glistened on the Texan’s brow as he strained every muscle against the restricting ropes, and then subsided with a gasp. It was no use. A quick glance showed that the malevolent bird had hopped down to a nearer stone, its wicked eyes glinting in the sun. Up in the sky two circling dots signaled the advent of more of its kind. Then, without warning, the big black bird gave a startled squawk and leaped into the air, climbing fast and high away from the rocks. Sudden watched it go with a frown touching his brows, an expression which quickly changed to one of foreboding. “Somethin’ movin’ out there in the rocks,” he reasoned, half-aloud. “An’ whatever it is, it shore ain’t help a-comin’.”
Nor was it. In a few more moments, as if rising from the very rocks themselves, two Apache warriors appeared. They approached cautiously, their short bows strung with iron-tipped arrows which Sudden knew would be coated with deadly venom. One of the warriors sidled over to Tucson’s body, turning it over and kicking it violently. To Sudden’s amazement, he heard a groan of pain. Then Tucson was still alive! He had not time to carry the thought further, for the second warrior stood over him now, his reptilian eyes burning with dark hatred. Leveling the nocked arrow full at the helpless Texan’s chest, the Apache drew back the bowstring slowly, to its fullest extent.
“Stop!”
The voice was familiar, and Sudden twisted his head to see its owner, Juano, step out from behind the rocks and stride forward, his eyes blazing with triumph. Sudden felt almost glad to see the big Apache. That warrior’s bowstring had been about an inch from the point of release, and although Sudden had looked death many times in the face, he could not repress a shudder.
To poison their arrows, the Apaches taunted rattlesnakes until the reptiles disgorged their venom. They used this, mixed with other deadly ingredients, as a mixture to dip their war arrows into. The slow convulsions which the merest scratch from such an arrow brought on, and the lingering death which followed, were not Sudden’s idea of the way he would have chosen to die. To go down fighting against superior odds, to have at least a chance – a man could ask no more. But poison…again, in the hot sunlight, a shiver touched his body. None of these feelings showed on his face, however. He turned his head to face the Apache leader.
“Long time no see,” he managed, casually.
The Apache stepped forward and towered over the bound prisoner, his painted visage contorted with cruelty.
“Soon you no laugh!” he spat.
“Oh, I dunno,” Sudden said. “Allus try to see the funny side o’ things, that’s my motto. Seen any ghosts lately?”
The remark brought the blood rushing into the Apache’s face, and the veins stood out like cords upon the copper forehead. For a chilling moment, Sudden thought he had gone too far, but Juano controlled himself with an effort.
“You trick Apache twice,” he ground out. “Not third time!”
A curt command and Sudden was dragged to his feet, and he was cut loose long enough to mount a pony. As soon as he was on the animal’s back, his feet were roped beneath its belly. He watched as two warriors struggled to slide the huge body of Tucson face down across the back of a horse, where his dangling arms and feet were roughly lashed to prevent his body sliding off. Sudden ventured a question, and the Apache sneered.
“Big man not dead,” he told the Texan. “Maybe wish he was, soon.”
The horses were brought and on a command from the leader, they set off at a lope into the desert ahead. Sudden counted the band: seven warriors and Juano. No sign of Manolito. It was possible that the war party had been split up, with Manolito and the rest of the warriors following the valley trail in case the pursued party had gone that way. The Texan noted too that several of Juano’s warriors had no ponies. They seemed unworried by this, nor did their fellows appear to find it remarkable. They kept up effortlessly with the jogging ponies, moving in an economical ground-eating dog trot. Sudden recalled the stories he had heard of Apache warriors, who could run fifty miles in a day and fight a battle at the end of it. They were men of iron constitution and indomitable will; and they would fight the white man until they were all kille
d or their spirits were broken. Sudden was not one of those who held the cynical view that the only good Indian was a dead one. Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, Red Cloud, Tecumseh, Dull Knife, these had been great men no matter what the color of their skin. White men never stopped to consider that it was they who were the interlopers, and that the red man was being robbed and cheated on all sides simply never occurred to them. To most frontiersmen, the red man was a menace to life, and he treated the Indian as he would any other plague – by doing his best to wipe it off the face of the earth. Sudden wondered now how the others were faring. Had they managed to conceal their tracks? It had been a surprise to find these Chiricahuas so far west, and so deep into the desert; this was proof of Juano’s determination to avenge himself upon the white-eyes who had so cleverly tricked him. Sudden stole a glance at the Apache leader. He rode with his head high, a tiny smile of satisfaction playing around the cruel mouth which boded ill for the prisoner.
Sudden shrugged; it was not in his nature to despair, and he managed to maintain an air of sardonic indifference to his fate, even though he realized this would only further anger his captors. Once, when an unlucky stumble flung a warrior against a cactus, he laughed with the others at the Apache’s frenzied actions as he wrenched the wicked spikes from his flesh. Sudden’s coolness surprised the watching warriors; in his predicament, their prisoners usually begged, screamed, blubbered for mercy.
Finally they came to a stop. They were in the middle of a wide flat stretch of open desert, bare of even cactus or mesquite, heavy rocks scattered here and there. Since it was still bright day, Sudden knew that this was not a camping place, but where he was to die. He looked at Juano as one of the warriors slashed through the bonds around his feet and dragged him roughly to the ground, and saw that he had guessed correctly; the Apache’s face was like a stone carving of some evil, ancient god. When Juano spoke, there was a silken menace in his words.
“You understand? Juano want you die very slowly. You die here where nothing live. No water, nothing That one—” he jerked a hand towards the figure of Tucson, lying now on the ground,”—maybe die quicker, bring black birds. No matter – you die very slow.’
“Shucks, yo’re just mad ’cause yu made a poor trade,” Sudden retorted, unabashed by the Apache’s icy words. “By the way – yu shot any o’ them Winchesters yet?”
This reminder of the trick which had shamed him before his warriors shattered the Indian’s control and turned him into a raving beast. With eyes glazed and body shaken by rage, he rained blows upon the defenseless prisoner, who stood them unmoved, a contemptuous sneer on his lips. Juano snatched a knife from his belt and raised it, and then, just as suddenly as he had begun, stopped, a look of cunning seeping into the lizard eyes.
“Almost you trick Juano again,” he said, and thrust the wicked Bowie knife back into its sheath. “But you no die so easy. You die Apache way: slowly. Your tongue burst in your mouth. Your body turn to fire. Your brain make you maricon.’
“I’ll go crazy, all right, if yu keep on chatterin’,” said the unmoved Texan. “Yu got me so scared my knees is rattlin’.” If there was any truth in what he said, there was no evidence of it in his demeanor, which was upright and fearless.
“Enju! It is enough!” snapped Juano. Sudden’s wrists were freed, and a strip of rawhide was lashed to each wrist, hanging loose. The same procedure was adopted for his ankles. While this was being done, another warrior, using a heavy flat stone, hammered four stakes into the ground making a rough approximation of a rectangle. A stunning blow from the butt of a rifle sent Sudden reeling to the stony ground, and the thongs at his wrists and feet were lashed in turn to the immovable stakes. He lay there, stretched in the tight X of his bonds, while the Indians repeated the procedure with the still-unconscious Tucson’s body. A quick, unobserved testing of his bonds told Sudden that there was no play in them whatsoever.
Now the Apaches brought a water skin, and poured some on each of the thongs. Sudden’s blood went chill; in the hot sun, the thongs would shrink rapidly, stretching his body as if on a rack. But Juano was not yet done. He now took a tiny sack, made from tanned and softened deer hide, from the cantle of his crosstree saddle and came over to the recumbent prisoner, Two of the warriors roughly ripped away the Texan’s shirt, and Juano leaned forward, emptying the contents of the sack upon Sudden’s chest. The puncher’s eyes narrowed: honey! He arched his back and shook his head from side to side in an effort to avoid the sticky stream Juano poured on him, but to no avail: his efforts merely spread the sweet stuff more evenly about him. Juano poured it until the sack was empty and Green’s chest, face, and the ground beneath his head were covered with the stuff. Juano stood back to survey his handiwork.
“Now we see if white-eye can think of trick to make desert ants stay away,” he snarled.
The Apache well knew that before long the murderous red ants of the desert would come in hordes, attracted by the sweet smell of the honey, picking, biting, stinging Sudden in a torment of tiny pains until he went berserk, driven insane by the double torture of the racking rawhide and the merciless insects.
“He who would cheat Apache should remember: Apache have long memory,” Juano finished. “Think upon that, white-eye.”
“Aw, yo’re jest a sore loser,” Sudden said with a grin, although he felt far from in a grinning mood. The awful sentence of death which the Apache had pronounced upon him was in some ways less preferable than the fate he had earlier escaped.
Juano leaped on to the back of his horse, reining the animal’s head cruelly around. “Now we go: find your friends,” he said, with a snarling grin. “Got plenty more honey.” And with this chilling threat, he signaled to the warriors, who began to troop away from this place of death. The prisoner watched them move up the side of a slight swell in the land, then vanish down the far side, moving south. He assessed his own position. It looked pretty hopeless. No horse, no weapons, no water, not even a sharp stone near his tight-drawn hands or feet to try to shuffle around towards the wet rawhide thongs. And even if he did get free, without his horse and guns, without water, getting out of the desert on foot was well-nigh impossible.
“Damnation!” he said aloud. “I ain’t licked yet!”
His voice sounded scratchy and dry in his throat, and he realized that the terrible heat of the desert was already leeching the moisture from his body. He knew he must act as fast as he could, while he still had his strength. The rawhide thongs would also dry out very quickly, and he must move before they did.
“Gawd, what I’d give for a drink!” he gasped.
Something tickled his ear, and he shook his head, then recoiled in horror. A rapid glance showed him several big red ants moving in their busy half circles around the pool of honey which had trickled from his face and body to the ground. Sudden knew that there was not a moment to lose. If those insects moved on to his defenseless skin, his face, his eyes ... he repressed a shudder, with difficulty. The rawhide thongs were still darkly damp, and he arched his body, heaving with every ounce of his strength against the restraining stakes. The thongs bit viciously into his unprotected wrists, but he gritted his teeth, ignoring the searing pain, and arched his body again. Grinding his teeth, he surged against the restraining thongs until it seemed as if they must surely cut through his wrists like butter. He fell back, gasping. Had there been a slight movement? The thongs were still wet enough to stretch slightly, and if he could just pull them enough before the sun dried them, there was a faint chance…
“Ain’t much o’ one, but any’s better’n none at all,” he managed, the sound of his voice hoarse and cracked now. He knew that he must hurry.
Again and again he arched his body, surging against the bonds, panting for breath in that oven-like atmosphere, the heat beating down upon his perspiration-bathed body like a brazen hand, his throat tight and fiery. A searing pain burned his skin and he looked down. The ants had followed the trail of honey up his heaving body and were now moving acros
s his bared chest in a dark clotted mass. Sudden ground his teeth to keep from crying out at the incessant pain of their infinitesimal bites, shaking his head violently to keep the insects from getting on to his face. Doggedly he kept working on the rawhide thongs, tensing and pulling, feeling them give a tiny fraction more each time, leaving now a small amount of play. But the terrific exertion and the relentless sun were taking their toll. Sudden looked up at the molten ball in the sky with dust-rimmed eyes, and croaked a weird curse. Once more he surged against his bonds, and this time he felt the first real movement. He tested the right hand thong and found that it had stretched perhaps two inches. The left hand one was also appreciably longer, certainly long enough to enable him to ease downwards on his back until he felt his heel touch the stake to which his right foot was bound. A sigh escaped his puffed lips. Now once more, with renewed vigor, he arched his back. Using his shoulders as a prop, he drove his right foot in a downward stabbing kick at the stake. The high heel of his boot jarred against the squat wooden peg, jolting the bound man’s entire body; but now he was desperate, and the strength which drove him was the last remaining strength of sanity. Again the right foot stabbed out and again, and now the stake moved, and moved, and then in one last surging kick he knocked it out of the ground. Now he rolled up on his right knee, heaving until it was under his body, ignoring the nettling bites of the ants still guzzling their sticky feast. He threw all his weight backwards against the thong binding his left foot. Once, twice, three times he repeated this movement, then all at once the stake came out of the ground, and Sudden fell backwards, gasping for breath. Faint now, and racked with pain, longing for rest which he knew he dare not take, he lay for a moment until his breathing was as near normal as it would get in this furnace heat. Then slowly he got to his feet, his body doubled forward, and in a few more minutes had dragged the stakes which held his hands clear of the brittle earth. With his neckerchief he wiped off the gooey mess of honey and with it the torturing ants. His whole chest was a mass of tiny bites, red and angry; and his wrists were swollen to nearly twice their normal size, with deep red weals made by the rawhide. But these hurts were as nothing to the raging thirst which possessed him.
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