Once he had tended to his wound, he raised his head slightly above the boulder and couldn’t believe the spectacle. The two remaining Apaches were sprinting across the canyon floor with their tomahawks drawn. They apparently believed he was grievously wounded, and they were rushing in to finish him off. Bryan had always heard the Apache was a cunning fighting man. However, this maneuver didn’t seem all that clever; in fact, it was just plain stupid. But he figured these were young Apaches who somehow believed they were invincible. They weren’t, because he shot them both before they got within striking distance of him. They had taken their last scalp, tortured their last settler.
One of them died before he fell sprawling to the canyon floor—shot right through his heart—but the other managed to crawl within ten feet of Bryan. He was gut shot. The foolish fellow was still intent on going to work on Bryan with his tomahawk. He spit at Bryan with intense hatred, so Bryan shot him right square in the face. The bullet proved the more effective of the two missiles.
Bryan dropped to his knees and suddenly got a case of the shakes. He supposed it was caused by his weakened condition brought on by his arrow wounds and from just good old-fashioned quotidian fear. Yes, a lingering fear that a man just naturally will take on when a band of Apaches are about. He had been prepared to thin them out some, but he expected to do it on his own terms by singling them out and exterminating them. To have three of them come at him from ambush was a different matter altogether.
He fell to his knees to get down behind the rock. A collared lizard scampered from beneath the rock, and once it had put some distance between them, he turned to inspect the interloper. He seemed to be irritated because he had been driven from the shade. Ordinarily, he didn’t emerge from the shade until later in the afternoon when it cooled down. He was an ungainly looking fellow, standing on long legs that appeared kind of like stilts. Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, had engineered his legs to raise him above the broiling desert floor, keeping his core temperature at a manageable level. It was hot enough to fry an egg on the boulder Bryan used for cover. “Sorry, old fellow,” he told the lizard. “I’ll let you be as soon as I get rid of all of these pesky Apaches.” The lizard seemed unappeased.
Bryan didn’t dare leave the rock to emerge out into the middle of the canyon floor because he wasn’t sure if there were more Apaches on the cliff behind him. He remained there on his knees for a short time, fretting about it, but after a while, he got so weak from blood loss, he toppled over on his side and slipped into a semi-conscious state. Cloud shadows slid silently across the canyon floor, and sage sparrows flitted around several of the patches of sagebrush. A red-tailed hawk screeched from overhead, and a rattlesnake slithered by a mere twenty feet from him, looking for shade. He was oblivious to these birds and animals just going about their daily routine because he had now slipped into an unconscious state.
Several hours elapsed, and finally, a very patient Apache sat down on his breechcloth and slid down a decline choked with talus. He had been waiting patiently on the cliff behind Bryan. There was no way to make the slide silently, so when he bounded out onto the canyon floor, he lingered there in a little alcove for nearly an hour. Finally, he decided that Bryan must be dead, so he crept around the edge of the cliff and held his war club firmly in his right hand. A war club is a surprisingly effective weapon used to brain one’s enemy. It is fashioned out of a wooden handle, cut with grooves at one end for the leather straps that keep a big rock secure. The leather straps are soaked in water and cinched as tight as possible to hold the head in place, but when the leather dries, it constricts and fastens the rock head to the wooden shaft with a vise-like grip. The Apache decided he would sneak up close to Bryan and then rush at him and brain him with the war club. A war club applied vigorously to a man’s skull will bust it open like a ripe melon.
He spotted Bryan’s boots and was relieved to see the hated white man was down. But just to be safe, he decided to rush him and club him a time or two with the war club. He just wanted to make certain. He was looking forward to carving Bryan up with his knife. He would pluck out his eyes so he couldn’t make his way around in the afterworld. Next, he’d cut off his nose, hack off his private parts, and shove them into his mouth. Then, of course, he would lift Bryan’s hair because it would give him a boost in prestige among the rest of the band. It would look good hanging off the side of his horse or on a coup stick in front of his tepee.
The Apache crouched low, gathering his muscles for the spring, but something unexpected happened. A rifle bullet plowed through his mouth, ruining his smile and taking out a sizable portion of the back of his head.
The shot was exceedingly loud in the confines of the canyon, and it brought Bryan bolt upright. He got to his feet, peered to the right, and spotted the dead Apache. Then he cut his eyes to the left and who should he see but Amanda, astraddle a beautiful, lemon silk stallion holding a smoking .44-40 Winchester. He almost laughed because she had transformed herself. She was wearing men’s trousers, a man’s red-and-white checkered shirt with a red kerchief tied around her neck, Hyer boots, and a Metropolitan Navy .36 holstered at her hip with belt loops full of bullets. Her boots were light blue with lots of fancy leatherwork, and they had yellow scrollwork around the rim and pull loops. There was no denying it—she was truly a vision.
“Are you Annie Oakley?” he asked.
“I just saved your bacon, and you make a stupid joke?” she shrieked.
“You’re right; the joke was uncalled for. Thank you, Amanda. I guess I’m hurt bad and just sort of delirious and not thinking straight.”
“I’m not accepting your apology, for now anyway—maybe later.”
“Well, let me know when you come around,” Bryan said. “Now, can you bring me some water?”
CHAPTER 10
“What are you doing out here in the desert? Thought I dropped you off in Hanksville and that you were going to go back to Provo like a good little girl.”
“Well, I like that,” she said, throwing her arms up in exasperation. “I just saved your miserable hide, and you haven’t the grace to thank me properly. Furthermore, you have the unmitigated gall to suggest I should be on my way to Provo, as if I haven’t a free will to move about this Western country as I dang well please.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m very much pleased you saved my life. But I’m worried because you are out here in the desert, and where’d you get that horse?”
“I’m out here to kill Apaches. In case you’ve forgotten, they killed my husband—shot him in the neck with an arrow.”
“Come to think of it, where did you get that Metropolitan Navy pistol? It ain’t worth spit. It’s a cap and ball, and when you are reloading it, an Apache will be slicing off your blonde topknot.”
“Oh, you are just beastly. It’s all I could find.”
“But these are Apaches—the fiercest fighting men on the planet—and for you to think that . . . well, a girl fighting them is an absurd idea. Now listen here, I want you to turn around and head back to Hanksville.”
“No, I’ll do no such thing. I’m going to kill more of these Apaches, with or without you.”
He was so weak he could hardly function, but he summoned the strength to look toward heaven. “Why me? You’ll be as useless to me as a cartwheel dollar, but I suppose you can tag along. I don’t want you out after these here Apaches on your own. Now where did you get that danged horse? How are you going to hide him out in this here desert? The Apaches will see you from miles away. Please don’t tell me you stole him. They hang horse thieves in this country, you know.”
“Thank you for letting me hang around. You won’t regret it.”
“I wish I could believe that,” Bryan said as he let out a huge sigh.
“I didn’t steal the horse. I bought him from that drunken livery stable owner back in Hanksville, old Earl Widdison. He had him on some meadow grass in a nearby pasture. I used some of the money you gave me.”
Bryan’s
head started spinning, and he fell flush on his face in the sand, abrading his forehead and nose.
Amanda spread a blanket in the shaded area behind the rock, tugging and straining until she arranged Bryan on it. She’d had the foresight to pack bandages and medicines into a pannier draped across the rear of her horse.
She built a fire—using the branches from a nearby dead cottonwood tree—and boiled water in a pan she found in Bryan’s packs. The combined heat from both the fire and intense sun made it almost unbearably hot, but she knew she had to cleanse his wounds and stop the bleeding. No telling what contaminants the arrows contained because she had already figured out his wounds were caused by arrows. He hadn’t had the sense to tell her he was injured and ask for help instead of blathering on and on about her presence there in Utah’s Central Desert, that is, until he fell on his face in the sand.
Once she got his wounds nicely cleaned, she slathered on carbolic acid and bandaged and bound them up tight. She hoped the injuries wouldn’t mortify, as Westerners were wont to say, then he should be all right.
After she attended to his wounds, she made a soup from potatoes, carrots, and jerky she carried in her panniers. She made certain the portions of beef and vegetables were minced up nicely so Bryan wouldn’t have any trouble swallowing the soup. He woke up for a few minutes, so she shoveled the soup into his mouth with the bulk of it dribbling down his chin.
Then he passed out again, but after the sun went down, he finally woke up. “Help me get on my horse, Amanda, we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Are you crazy? You have lost so much blood that you are in no condition to ride,” Amanda said.
“Nonsense, help me up. When those three Apaches don’t return, old Victorio and the boys will be coming back to look for them. We can’t defend ourselves in this position. We need to find a better place or ride all the way to La Sal.” He tried to get up but she pushed him back down.
“Dang it, woman. Don’t you get it? If we don’t leave here, we’ll both be dead.”
“But if you try to ride, you’ll be dead for sure,” she said as her voice went up a couple octaves.
“Amanda, my odds, uh, our odds are much better at surviving if I try to make the ride because if we don’t ride out of here, our deaths will be a certainty.”
“I always heard that Apaches won’t fight at night.”
Bryan looked to the heavens again. “It’s not true. They are notional. If they have a good reason, they will fight at night, and missing three members of their band gives them a darn good reason.”
Amanda saddled their horses and loaded the packs on Mule. Then she helped Bryan get to his feet. As soon as he was vertical, his head began swimming and he nearly passed out again. But she was soon able to walk him to his horse and help boost him into the saddle.
“Amanda,” Bryan said, using a soft voice because he didn’t want it to carry across the desert and alert the Apaches. “Amanda,” he repeated, “get in my saddlebags, fetch those piggin’ strings, and tie my feet to the stirrups and my hands to the skirting on the saddle. Cinch all the knots up tight, and it will keep me from falling off if I pass out again.”
“How will you shoot if it comes to that?”
“If I need to shoot, take my Bowie knife out of the sleeve and cut me loose, then get me off the danged horse so I won’t be sitting up there as a target.”
She did as she was told. “I don’t like any of this,” she said. “I still think we should have stayed here to let you recover.”
“Let’s ride. I’ve decided we have got to make it to La Sal, then we can hole up there for a while and I’ll be able to recuperate.”
The sun was on its way down, sinking slowly out of sight below the Western horizon. There was an orange-and-pink sunset, and the light from it had washed across the desert habitat, turning everything into shades of orange and pink. But the low-lying areas on the canyon floor and the crevices on the canyon walls were in the shadows, giving everything before them a dappled appearance. The temperature dropped perceptibly and portended a chilly evening. A desert is funny that way. During the day, it can be hotter than the blazes, but strangely enough, during the evenings, it can get downright chilly.
Bryan looked over at Amanda. “The desert is fickle like a woman, wouldn’t you agree?” He chuckled and contemplated that he might not be getting enough blood to his brain, considering that intemperate and abrupt utterance.
“Where’d that come from? Why don’t you just hush up and ride? Ah, gosh darn it, I just feel like shooting you.”
He laughed until he got dizzy again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Before they got underway, Bryan asked Amanda to handle an important chore. “Amanda, I suspect those Apaches tied their horses in a little alcove up ahead and then hiked a ways back to set up the ambush on me. Before we leave, I want you to walk back there and set those horses free—but strip all the gear from them before you let them loose. It won’t be a hard task because Indians don’t use saddles or bridles.”
“Shouldn’t we lead them into La Sal and sell them?” Amanda asked.
“That would be nice, but you’ve got your hands full taking care of me, and leading those three horses would be more than you can handle. Just set them free; they might follow us. But if they don’t, at least they’ve got an outside chance of finding feed and water.”
“Of course I’ll do that, Bryan; those poor horses.”
After Amanda set the Indian ponies free, they left the canyon and rode out onto an open desert with red rock ramparts off in the distance to the north and the south. They stared off into seemingly interminable distances without a soul in sight, nor was there any living creature in sight. Those vast distances and the loneliness were the sort of things that drove many of the Western pioneers crazy years before when they were rolling the prairie schooners westward across the Great Plains. It made some people so crazy that they turned around and returned to the Eastern cities.
It was terribly hot, even though the clouds clabbered up the weathered sky. But they forged onward, disregarding the vast and lonely distances. Bryan passed out. His head lolled off to the side, bouncing around to the rhythm of the horse’s gait. Occasionally, Amanda would stop and go back and force water down his throat, then she would take a slug of it herself. One time, he awakened when she was giving him water, and they had a short conversation. “Bryan, we are going to run out of water before long. I had to use too much of it bathing your wounds back in that canyon.”
“Don’t worry, there are two tanques de la aguas about ten miles ahead,” he said with a weak voice.
“What?”
“Water tanks—hollowed out places in the rocks that collect fresh water. Let’s just hope they are full of water because sometimes they are empty. Further, we should pray that an antelope or deer hasn’t somehow died in one or both of the tanks.”
“Bryan, what happens if we can’t fill our canteens at those tanks?”
“We die.”
“We die? No, are you serious?”
“I’m serious, but there would be an outside chance we could make it to La Sal—another twenty miles beyond the tanks. But it wouldn’t be something I would bet on.”
Amanda began to pout. “Well, isn’t that some cheery news?”
“Would you rather I lie to you?” Bryan asked as he raised his eyebrows.
“No. Of course not.”
“Amanda, take my hat and fill it about half full of water and give it to these horses and Mule. If they die, we die.”
“That will just about wipe out all the water.”
“So be it. Like I said, if they die, we die.”
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
Bryan cleared his throat. “Oh, Amanda, you must also wet a cloth and bathe the sand from their nostrils. They need to be able to breathe.”
“Okay, I’ll do that, too.”
“And to take this one step further, Amanda, we are going to have to cut down on our water intake
. Just give us a little sip every now and then. Oh, and put a pebble in your mouth and give me one. It will help to keep our mouths moist.”
Amanda shook her head. “How do you know this stuff?”
Bryan looked at her like she was crazy. Surely, she was aware he had drifted all over the West for nearly ten years. Did she think he hadn’t learned anything during those ten years? “I’ve crossed more than one desert in pursuit of wanted men. A man learns after a while. I’ve always had my vest pocket full of dodgers listing the bad men and what the bounty is on each one, and I have been all over the West.”
“I see; that makes sense. Your head is simply full of knowledge on how to survive on the frontier, but if you took that knowledge to Brigham Young Academy, it wouldn’t be worth spit. Academicians would simply regard you as a curiosity and then ignore you.”
“Amanda, my disdain for them would be equal to their disdain for me. I’ve never held to the hoity-toity types.”
“So that’s how you look at me, is it? A hoity-toity type?” Amanda asked as her nostrils flared.
“If the shoe fits.” Bryan laughed at her anger. He enjoyed getting her riled up. “Actually, Amanda, I have high hopes for you and think you just might survive out here in the desert where life is harsh but the scenery is spectacular. Haven’t you ever looked out along a horizon and got the uncontrollable urge to see what’s on the other side? That’s called yondering, and I have a bad case of it. That beats hanging out in a stuffy, old classroom anytime and rubbing elbows with the hoity-toity.”
“No, I’m not a danged yonderer,” Amanda barked. “It sounds stupid to me. How can one fulfill one’s destiny—become all that one can be—by wandering all over the country like some gypsy?”
“Some of us don’t give a damn about fulfilling the destiny you speak of so fondly. We just enjoy living day to day. Some nights, we might go to bed hungry, but we don’t worry about it because we know there’s a good chance we can find something to eat the following day,” Bryan said with his weakened voice.
Murder in Mushroom Valley Page 7