Vulture Gold

by Chuck Tyrell

* * * * *

  With a roar, the warriors sprinted after him. Again, he glanced over his shoulder. A lean warrior ran a dozen strides ahead of the pack. Havelock broke into a sprint, angling to the left. The lead warrior came whooping after him, waving a war axe.

  A gully sliced the flank of Eagle Eye Mountain less than a quarter of a mile away. The lead warrior now loped nearly fifty yards ahead of the pack. Havelock demanded more speed of his tender feet. He plunged over the lip of the gully and out of sight. He dove sharply to the left, and moved uphill. Moments later he found a large sandstone shelf cropping up in the bottom of the wash. He hid behind it with a shard of shale in his hand, forcing himself to breathe slowly and deeply.

  The lead warrior scrambled over the edge of the gully. He let out a screech when he saw bloody footprints leading up the gully and dashed in pursuit.

  Havelock lay in wait, but the warrior nearly escaped. He leaped from behind the sandstone shelf to collide with the speeding brave, knocking him down, but he almost failed to get an arm around the Apache's neck and under his chin. The brave writhed, but Havelock's arms and shoulders held uncommon strength. The hammerlock closed the carotid arteries and blocked the flow of blood to the Apache's brain. His body went limp.

  Havelock snatched up the brave's axe. Shouts from other pursuers said he had no time to take the moccasins. He raced up the gully. His first goal—the cave—was only moments away.

  The shouts of the warriors drew nearer. Havelock had little time. Thanks to the Pueblo drug, however, pain did not incapacitate him. He ran on, jumping from rock to rock as the gully got steeper. Then he dashed for the cavern. He moved quickly yet carefully. The thin lacerated soles of his feet still had to carry him a long way.

  As he topped the gully's bank, warriors boiled around a bend and caught sight of him. They screamed and spread out, some launching themselves at the walls of the gully, hoping to outflank him. But he was once more out of sight by the time they reached the top of the gully.

  Havelock ran for the cave, ignoring the tearing sensations from the soles of his feet.

  The sun climbed higher in the pale sky. And to the south, thunder rumbled as the storm front pushed into the desert north of the Gila River. Grimly, Havelock stayed ahead of his pursuers. He could not avoid the sharp edges of sandstone, shale, and dried desert wood. They cut. He bled. But he would not give up.

  The thunderheads crept closer. A southerly wind came up. The creatures of the desert sought refuge. Soon thirteen Apache warriors clamoring after a naked white man with a leather-and-steel brace on his left leg were all that moved beneath the clouds. The warriors paid no attention to the weather.

  Havelock's breath came in great heaves as he topped the rise that fronted the cave. He dashed in the mouth and ran to where the horses had been tied. He retrieved the bundle from the ledge – a shirt, a pair of moccasins, and a knife. He slipped the moccasins on and strode back to the banked fire where the can of tallow lay by the wall of the cave. He quickly smeared all the tallow into the folds of the shirt and wrapped it tightly around the head of the war axe. He shoved the bundled axe head into the banked coals as he listened for Apache pursuit.

  As the cloth of the shirt caught fire, he heard the warriors scrabbling up the embankment. He ran toward the back of the cavern, shielding the makeshift torch with his body. The flames melted the tallow, fed on the grease, and lit the way. Smoke from the torch moved ahead of Havelock, leading toward the opening at the other end.

  Knife in hand he paused. He heard nothing. Perhaps the braves were cautious about plunging into a dark cavern.

  Beyond the spring, the cave narrowed until Havelock had to turn sideways to edge along. Light from his torch showed sand on the floor of the cave, and in the sand, the five-pad footprints of another kind of puma – the desert cougar from which the old chief took his name. Havelock could only push on.

  Suddenly, a dark void—the torch burned, but its light no longer reflected from stone walls. Cautiously, Havelock moved into a large chamber. The cavern had probably been carved by waters that was now a tiny spring. Havelock saw shadowy stalactites and stalagmites at the far side of the chamber, but a tumble of jagged rocks cascaded down the near side. The thin roof of the cavern had caved in like a badly shored mine shaft.

  High up the slope of tumbled rock, Havelock saw a sliver of daylight—his way out.

  Shoving the knife into his leather loincloth and holding the torch high, Havelock started up. Ten feet... Twenty.

  Then from across the chamber came the soft warning cough of the cougar. Havelock froze.

  The big cats rarely attacked unless provoked, and they didn't like fire. Havelock hoped his torch was enough.

  On the far side of the chamber, the cougar's eyes reflected the light of the torch. Then the eyes disappeared.

  The cat jumped from its ledge and padded out of the chamber the way Havelock came in.

  Havelock waited.

  After a while he continued his climb. At the top, he threw the sputtering torch back into the cavern and pulled out the knife. The opening was large enough, but a piñon pine had taken root by a large boulder above the hole and its branches formed a thick cover over the exit. Havelock would have to worm his way through the piñon needles while watching out for Apaches.

  Slowly Havelock poked his head through the opening. Wind whipped the branches into a frenzy and tore at his hair. What once had been a sinkhole now looked like a natural indent, the northern edge a continuation of Eagle Eye Mountain and the southern edge a lip, far above and behind the entrance to the cave.

  Havelock grasped a piñon branch and pulled himself into the thicket. He bellied out from under the tree's clutches, took shelter behind the boulder, and then surveyed the edges of the indent.

  No sign of Apaches.

  Havelock stood and walked west, keeping to his original plan. As he topped the edge of the indent, a shout from below said he'd been spotted.

  At that moment, angry storm clouds blotted the sun, catching the warriors unaware. Lightning preceded the storm which had already filled Centennial Wash and flooded the Gila River.

  Intent on their prey, the Apaches failed to notice the strength of the approaching storm. But they halted as one when a mighty bolt ripped into a gnarled old juniper and left it smoking on the side of the mountain. Few things frightened Apache warriors; one was lightning.

  Havelock climbed for the ridge that marked the Big Horn divide. The moccasins helped but as the effect of the pellet wore off, pain from the damaged soles of his feet shot up his legs. His head throbbed from Laura's bullet, and his knee could not put up with much more strain.

  Another bolt of lightning struck. Closer. The Apaches darted about in jerky circles shouting, Pis! Pis!, in imitation of Pise, the speckled nighthawk, who could dodge lightning bolts.

  Havelock topped the divide as the heavy curtain of rain hit. He concentrated so totally on climbing the steep slope he was unprepared for the drop off on the other side. The rain smashed him down the sharp incline. He struggled for balance. His leather moccasins slipped on the wet rock. He plunged downward, rolled like a log by the runoff.

  The rain drove the dancing Apaches to shelter and turned the desert into a sea of mud. Every gully and wash foamed with floodwaters that carried the dead bodies of animals, branches torn from living trees, and whatever flotsam lay in the way.

  Havelock continued downhill with the gathering force of water. He smashed a shoulder against the rocks and lost his knife. His scream was lost in the roar of falling water.

  Halfway to the bottom, he snagged up against an old juniper deadfall, banging his injured head on its solid trunk.

  Guttural Apache voices woke Havelock. His head felt as though Laura had used it for a target again, but he heard the warriors say his name, Iron Knee. Then someone must have mentioned lightning because several braves shouted "Pis! Pis!"

  Havelock could hear the Indians, but not see them. The run-off had washed him far under the dead
fall and then piled on sticks, branches, leaves, packrat nests, and other debris.

  He lay on his right side, facing the juniper's trunk. The footsteps and voices of the Apaches receded up the slope.

  He didn't open his eyes for a long time. Perhaps he slept. Or maybe he lost consciousness.

  * * * * *

  Thunder rumbled and rain fell further north as the storm moved onto the Colorado Plateau. At the Apache rancheria, Puma listened as his braves told how Iron Knee had run to the cave. How a mountain lion had come out afterward, bounding up the mountain away from them.

  How the death runner had suddenly appeared high up the mountainside, near the divide. How the lightning had come when they tried to pursue him. And how he disappeared as the rain passed. Perhaps, they ventured, he had become a mountain cat.

  A tiny smile came to the old chief's face. His totem had protected Iron Knee. And Tom Morgan, lying in a nearby wickiup, heard Puma say: "The Great Spirit has spoken. My grandson is avenged. His ghost cries no longer for the blood of Iron Knee."

  Chapter eight

  Havelock strained to open his eyes. The slight movement brought blinding pain. Smashing his head against the juniper's trunk had aggravated the effect of Laura's bullet. He couldn't help but groan. Stubs of broken juniper branches had scraped and poked him as the flood shoved him into the deadfall. He'd bled in a dozen places, and one sharp splinter had driven itself deep into the fleshy part of his forearm. He had to extract it, but first he needed to get out of the deadfall.

  Stick by stick, sodden leaf by sodden leaf, Havelock removed the flotsam. He held his left arm still, trying not to hit the sliver on anything. At last, when he dragged himself into the open, little daylight remained.

  The rainstorm had left water in hollowed basin-like rocks in the bottom of the wash. He didn't risk standing.

  The effort of getting out of the deadfall left him dizzy. The juniper sliver throbbed in his left forearm. The lacerations in his feet stung. Crawling to a rock basin, he sucked at the rainwater. It rolled thick on his tongue. It tasted of mud. It tasted wonderful.

  The sun dropped behind the mountains beyond the Colorado River, filling the sky with gold. Although the days were hell-fire hot, temperatures dropped at night. Havelock had only a loincloth for warmth, but he slept.

  His eyes opened with the dawn. His body shook. The edges of the wound where the sliver protruded showed an angry red.

  Havelock struggled to his feet. He shoved a finger into his breechclout, searching for the painkiller pellets he'd put there. They had melted into a lump. Havelock scooped the goo onto his index finger. He put half in his mouth and left half on a flat sandstone, then bellied down to a rock basin for another drink.

  Soon Havelock felt no pain, but he had to cut the splinter out. He struggled to the crest of the ridge, and then started back down, retracing his tumble, searching for his knife. The sun was high when he found the knife wedged deep into a crack. Pain racked his battered body, but there were things to do before he could take the last of the painkiller and cut the splinter out.

  First, he needed fire. He found a piece of flint and used the knife as steel. Strong sparks danced when he struck the flint against the blade. A rotten log, broken open, supplied a powder that held a spark well. Tiny dry sticks, leaves, and larger chunks of wood completed his preparations. With patience learned from his Cherokee grandfather, he struck spark after spark until one caught in the punky rot. He coaxed it into flame.

  Havelock kept the fire small, but the sight of it lifted his spirits. He swallowed the rest of the painkiller and again sucked water from a rock basin.

  For poultice, Havelock sliced ears from a nearby prickly pear, seared their spines off over the fire before beating them to a pulp with the handle of the knife. The cactus pulp smelled fresh and clean. From a nearby juniper he cut long strips of inner bark to use as string, then sharpened the knife with sandstone and stropped it on a moccasin. He had to cut the splinter out while the painkiller held.

  He made a quick deep cut, running the knife point along the splinter. Blood flowed. He grasped the splinter and worked it slowly backwards until it came loose. Blood filled the hole and flowed down his forearm.

  A handful of prickly pear mush on the wound, covered by an ear with the skin scraped off one side and wrapped with strings of juniper bark completed the dressing.

  Prickly-pear fruit, plump, red, and roasted over the fire, took the edge off his hunger. After a long drink of water from the natural tank, Havelock burrowed under an overhanging mesquite to sleep. He'd travel at night.

  * * * * *

  In Prescott, the governor received a telegram from M.K. Meade. His daughter was safe. In Wickenburg, four weary travelers slept after their grueling ride. A lone rider leading a spare horse paused under the window of the hotel. He rolled a smoke and struck a lucifer. For an instant, the match lit the face of Barnabas Donovan.

  * * * * *

  By the morning of the second day, Havelock knew he had to move. The wound in his arm was angry but not festering. The rock basins now held little water, and nearby prickly-pear plants were stripped of ripe fruit. His bare skin had toughened with the exposure, but direct sunlight would still burn him.

  He bellied down to the dregs in the sandstone basin, drinking all he could hold. His body must store the moisture as he had no canteen or water-bag. With luck, he'd make the stage road before dying of dehydration or sunstroke.

  With Eagle Eye Mountain to his right, the battered lawman set out for the stage road, more than twenty miles to the north. He wore moccasins. Cedar bark held the prickly-pear poultice to the wound on his arm. The knife stuck in his loincloth. His slow pace kept him from sweating and wasting body water, and he stepped carefully so as not to jar his head.

  He moved high above the floor of the desert. The horizon stretched across the distance to a black outline of stony mountains that bisected the starry sky.

  The desert's a hard land. But it's beautiful. It's a living land that's wild and free, and it makes no compromises for puny men who imagine they're great. Havelock chuckled. He wondered if he'd ever again see his homestead above the Mogollon Rim, where a silver ribbon of water ran through flat grasslands flanked by great malapai volcanic stone.

  Havelock had found the place five years before, when visiting Colonel Corydon Cooley's big white house in the foothills of the White Mountains. He'd filed claim on a half-section and had a man proving up on it. He planned to raise whiteface cattle and good horses on that place...someday.

  His mind wandered as he stumbled through the desert night. The dry wind sucked moisture from his body faster than he'd counted on. He'd planned to make ten, maybe twelve, miles during the night, then hole up for the day, and walk the rest of the way the next night.

  Then he fell. Stepped right off the edge of a shallow gully and rolled nearly a dozen feet down the side to fetch up against a sandstone ledge. For a moment he lay dazed.

  I'm gonna have to quit banging my head against things.

  The fall tore the cactus poultice from his arm. Blood oozed. Fortunately, the knife at his waist had not driven into his groin. He made it to his feet on the third try. He peered through the darkness at the hole in his arm. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound throbbed, an echo of the throbbing in his head.

  He tried to climb the side of the gully, but didn't have the strength. He went to all fours. Head hanging, he tried to think. Damn. Maybe Donovan was right. Maybe he was just a breed, neither here nor there, nothing anyone would ever want.

  Laura's image crept across his eyelids. He shook his head. Damn. Get on with it. "You will not give up!" he shouted.

  Echoes from the mountain returned his words.

  Havelock decided to follow the gully westward to the desert floor. Rising and stumbling onward, he came across a stand of Osage orange and cut a staff from the tough tree to lean on as he plodded westward.

  The thin soles of his moccasins wore through, and the desert punishe
d his bare feet through gaping holes in the leather. Havelock concentrated on moving forward, avoiding the dim forms of cacti in the dark.

  The moon rose, bathing the desert in soft blue light, and Havelock made better progress. He'd trudged almost ten miles when the dawn sent fingers of gold into the sky above Eagle Eye Mountain.

  Havelock dozed in the shade of a jutting monolith, moving back into the shadow whenever the sun hit him. By evening his arm and head felt better. His feet did not.

  Once more, prickly pear provided his food. Without fire, he had to peel the outer skins and spines off with his knife. The fruit gave him moisture and renewed a measure of his strength. With the glory of the sunset, he started out again, this time moving north.

  Soon his moccasins had no soles, and sticks and stones lacerated his feet. Progress slowed. Without something to cover his feet, he'd never make the stage road. Havelock paused. His head and arm ached dully; his feet hurt as if slashed by razors. He leaned on his staff. No cedar bark here. Cactus wouldn't work. If only he had painkiller. He stuffed a forefinger into the waistband of his loincloth, searching for a trace of medicine.

  Leather loincloth! A long strip of soft doehide about a foot wide, tied at the waist with a thong, flaps hanging front and back. Covering for his feet – a wide smile cracked Havelock's lower lip.

  He cut foot-shaped patches from the loincloth's flaps. Then he sawed a strip away from each side of each patch, leaving them attached at the back. He punched holes along the sides. Placing a foot on one patch, he grasped the two strips and pulled them across his instep. Back and forth he laced the strips until the patch on his foot resembled a Roman sandal.

  With the improvised sandals, he moved much faster, but the stage road remained a good three miles away when the sun topped the divide.

  Movement in daylight would sap his strength fast, but the road was so close. He'd promised to go to Wickenburg. He'd promised to bring in Donovan. He'd promised to get back the gold. To many the promises of a half-breed were worthless; to Havelock, they were priceless.