Apache Shadow

by Jason Manning

  Barlow lay still a moment, catching his breath and letting his nerves settle down. He'd been damned lucky. One broncho down. How many more to go? One thing was certain—he had to keep moving. Now, though, he no longer had the element of surprise on his side. Instead of moving directly toward the other Apaches, whom he believed to be further to his left, he began crawling in the same direction as before. Within moments he found himself on the rim of an embankment. Below him was a dry gulch. He wondered if he could use it as cover to get behind the bronchos. While he pondered the wisdom of this tactic, he was startled by the appearance of a second Apache, who was sliding down the embankment not twenty feet to his left. Barlow fired; the broncho kept sliding, and when he hit the bottom of the ravine, he fell. But Barlow's elation was short-lived; the Apache rolled over and began shooting. A bullet kicked dirt into Barlow's face as he desperately rolled away from the rim of the embankment. He felt the searing burn of a bullet on the inside of his left arm, just above the elbow. Lying on his back, he tested the arm, flexed the fingers of his left arm. Everything was still working. The bullet had just grazed the skin.

  He didn't hear the third Apache's attack, or even see it. He just felt it coming, some primeval instinct kicking in to warn him of danger, and he rolled again, onto his belly, and once more blazed away with both pistols. The broncho stumbled, got off one wild shot before dropping his rifle, and then fell sprawling, almost on top of Barlow. Barlow swung a leg around and prodded the broncho with a bootheel. There was no response. The Apache was dead.

  Barlow crawled a few feet away from the body, then paused to listen hard, wondering if another Apache would suddenly appear out of the darkness. He heard the sound of horses on the run. Scrambling to his feet, he returned to the embankment. A solitary broncho was galloping past on his pony, leading two riderless horses. Barlow raised a pistol, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber. In the next instant the broncho was urging his pony up the embankment, and in a matter of seconds, he had disappeared into the night on the other side of the arroyo. Hunkering down in the sagebrush, Barlow waited a good five minutes. Three horses—had there been only three bronchos? He heard nothing more. Still, he would have waited longer, just to be on the safe side, except that his anxiety for Oulay's well-being overwhelmed caution. He turned and headed back for the vaqueros, taking the precaution of calling out as he got closer, to avoid being shot by Mendez.

  He handed the big knife back to the vaquero. "Two dead. The other's gone. I didn't need this, but thanks anyway."

  Mendez took the knife. The horse carrying the body of his cousin Manolo stood nearby; Barlow's horse and Mendez', were nowhere to be seen. Mendez used the knife to cut the rope securing the corpse to the saddle. He pulled the body, stiff with rigor mortis, down into his arms, laid it gently out on the ground, then stood and looked at Barlow.

  "I will stay with them," he said, nodding at Rodrigo and the third vaquero. "You go, padrone. Bring back help."

  Barlow hesitated. He didn't like leaving Mendez and the others behind. But Mendez had already sized up the situation, and thought it through, and come to the right conclusion. Barlow didn't argue. He nodded, and climbed into the saddle, spurred the horse into a gallop, and rode for the ranch.

  The ranch was under attack.

  Barlow heard the gunfire, crackling in the distance, from more than a mile away. Drawing nearer, he could see the muzzle flashes from the adobe house and also from the vicinity of the bunkhouse. He wasn't sure where the Apaches were, and at this point he wasn't about to hang back and wait until he knew more. All he could think about was Oulay. She was all he had. He couldn't lose her. He spurred the horse into an all-out gallop and rode straight into the melee.

  It didn't take him long to figure out where the enemy was. The rifles located around the bunkhouse were turned on him, and suddenly the air around him was filled with hot lead. Still, he nearly made it. Not thirty feet from the adobe the horse beneath him shuddered, stumbled, and went down. Barlow jumped clear; as the animal's head went down, he threw his right leg over and landed on his feet, running for the door to the adobe. The door flew open and several vaqueros emerged, pistols and rifles blazing, to cover his approach. One of them was hit, and the impact threw him back into Barlow as the latter crossed the threshold; Barlow lost his balance and fell, skidding across the puncheon floor. The vaqueros piled inside. The door was slammed shut, and they scattered as several bullets slammed into the timbers, splintering them. Barlow looked up as Oulay fell to her knees beside him. She looked distraught as she touched his arm. By the light of a single lantern sitting on the floor nearby, Barlow saw that his arm was covered with blood. He threw the other arm around her and pulled her close to him.

  "I'm all right," he breathed, relief flooding through him that she was unharmed. She helped him to his feet, and he held on to her, not willing to let her go just yet. Taking a quick look around, he saw that there were seven vaqueros in the adobe. That was one less than he had left behind to guard Oulay. He didn't need to ask where the eighth man was; he had a pretty good idea. Of the others, two were wounded, and that included the man who had just been shot. One of his companeros was tending to his wound, which Barlow saw was a minor one. The other man, however, didn't look good. He was laid out on the floor in a back corner, covered with a blanket, and there was no color in his sweat-streaked face. He was unconscious, his breathing shallow. Seeing him reminded Barlow of Rodrigo and the other vaquero, out there in the desert with Mendez.

  The Apaches were still shooting, and several vaqueros were at the adobe's windows, returning fire. Shell casings littered the floor. One man walked up to Barlow.

  "We are happy to see you, padrone. But where are Rodrigo and the others?"

  "We were ambushed on the way back from the crossing," explained Barlow. "Rodrigo and Pepe were wounded. Mendez stayed behind with them."

  "There is enough food and water here to last us several days," said the vaquero. "The Apaches cannot burn us out. Soon, I think, they will give up and go away. When they attacked, we freed the horses from the corrals. So when they go, they will go empty-handed."

  Barlow nodded. What the vaquero had said was true—they were relatively safe inside the adobe. There was just one problem. He couldn't wait several days to return to Mendez and the others. He didn't know about Rodrigo, but he was pretty certain that Pepe would be dead by then.

  "No," he said, "we can't wait days—or even until morning. We've got to drive those Apaches away and then get back to Mendez."

  "But how, padrone?"

  "I don't know," confessed Barlow.

  "It is too bad that the scout isn't here," lamented the vaquero.

  Barlow nodded. He'd been thinking the same thing. Where was Short Britches? These vaqueros—especially those who had worked for John Ward—had come to expect the old scout to be there for them when trouble arose. They had an almost mystical faith in his ability to do that. And Barlow realized that his own expectations where Short Britches was concerned were unrealistically high.

  Oulay brought him a cup of coffee. He sat down at the table and sipped it gratefully. She sat down across from him, gazing into his eyes. It was somewhat ludicrous, he thought—that they were sitting here, as they did most mornings to spend a few quiet moments together before he left for the day's work, with men fighting, and some of them bleeding, all around them. But there was no place at the windows for him. Besides, now that he'd ridden into this trap, he had to find a way out of it.

  "Don't worry," he told her, trying to sound reassuring. "Everything will be fine."

  And that, he mused, was even more ludicrous. What an odd thing to say with bullets slamming into the adobe walls of their home.

  "I'm not worried. Not anymore—now that you're back." She hesitated a moment, and he could tell that she was debating whether to say something more. "I heard what you just said. I know it is none of my business—but there is one way to make the Coyoteros go away."
/>   In spite of everything, Barlow had to smile. In Apache society, a woman left the details of warfare to the menfolk. He recalled the first time he'd laid eyes on her. He had accompanied an Indian Bureau commissioner to the village of Cochise, to speak to the Chiricahua jefe about a peace treaty. They had met around a cook fire in the cowah of Cochise, and Oulay had been one of the women who sat in the shadows at the back of the lodge, their presence tolerated only because their task was to serve the men food or drink if such was requested. But as the men conversed on weighty matters, the women would not have dreamed of making their own feelings known. Barlow valued Oulay's opinion, and always tried to make her feel as though she could speak to him about anything. She was smart, he knew, and she paid attention to everything that was going on around her. But the training she'd received as an Apache nahlin was too deeply engrained; she seldom spoke her mind, and never interfered in his business.

  "I'm listening," he said.

  "Find their horses," she said, leaning across the table to speak clearly, but softly, over the boom of the rifles. "They will be guarded by only one, and it is usually the youngest and least experienced among them. Run their horses off, and they will break off this fight and go in search of them. Without horses, their raid is over."

  "Of course," said Barlow. "Yes, you're absolutely right."

  He finished off the coffee and was about to stand up when she grabbed his hand with both of hers.

  "Please," she said, speaking now in an intense whisper, "do not do this yourself. You have done enough tonight. And you have been lucky."

  "I can't ask these men to do something I wouldn't do myself."

  "You would do it. They know that. But I ask that you don't do it."

  Barlow was startled. In the time they had been together she hadn't asked him for much—and she had never made this sort of request before. She had to know that it would run counter to his instinct, to everything he stood for.

  "She is right, padrone," said the vaquero to whom Barlow had spoken moments before. "You have already taken too many chances. Some of us will go. I have fought the Apaches many times before. Forgive me for saying so, padrone, but I can do what needs to be done as well as you can."

  "I know that," said Barlow curtly. He stared at Oulay, and she looked away, fearing—he supposed—that he would be angry with her—or, at least, very disappointed. But he did not feel either of these emotions. She had suffered hours of torment wondering if he had been slain by the Coyoteros. Was this so much to ask of him? To give her, for once, at least some peace of mind.

  Barlow settled back down at the table and picked up his coffee. "Okay," he said.

  The expression of joyful relief on her face was worth the shame he felt in sending others out on a mission that could cost them their lives while he remained behind, relatively safe behind the walls of the adobe.

  Chapter 10

  The morning sun was hammering heat into the hardpack when Barlow opened the bullet-scarred door of the adobe and cautiously stepped out. His appearance was met with silence rather than a hail of Apache lead. The Coyoteros were gone.

  Two vaqueros had slipped out of the adobe hours earlier, under cover of night, and using a trapdoor built into the base of the structure's back wall. That door had been suggested by Short Britches, who had told Barlow that people who lived in Apacheria often added such a feature so that they might escape if under attack.

  The vaqueros did not return until shortly before first light—and during their absence Barlow had suffered a lifetime of emotional anguish, knowing that he might never be able to forgive himself if they were killed doing what he felt he should have done himself. But they weren't killed, and when at last they returned, they told of how they'd circled wide around the ranch buildings, how they'd found the place where the Apaches had left their horses, and how they had killed the single Coyotero who stood guard over the horses before running all but two of the ponies off. These two they'd brought back to the adobe. The Apaches immediately broke off the fight and went off in pursuit of their horses, just as Oulay had predicted.

  Now, thought Barlow, as he was joined by some of the vaqueros, the question was whether the Coyoteros would return. That, however, wasn't his first concern. Three of his men were stranded in the desert some miles away.

  He told two of the vaqueros to ride out and find some of the ranch's horses or mules. They would have to take a wagon out to retrieve their companeros, and the Apache ponies were not suited for the harness. While they were gone, Barlow and the others searched for and found the corpse of the vaquero who had been killed at the onset of the Apache attack. They were relieved to see that his body had not been mutilated, and buried him in a small graveyard fifty paces away from the ranch buildings. In this graveyard lay the remains of three other vaqueros—the men killed by the renegade Kiannatah on the night, long ago, when he had kidnapped Oulay. Barlow wondered if another grave would have to be dug for the badly wounded man he'd left behind with Mendez the night before.

  They were paying their last respects around the mound of fresh dirt when one of the vaqueros touched Barlow's shoulder. Barlow looked up, and followed the man's gaze. A single horseman was coming over the rim of the hill to the south. Even at this distance it was easy to identify the man. He wore a battered stovepipe hat. As Short Britches urged his horse down the rocky slope, Barlow walked out to meet him.

  "Where have you been?" he asked the old scout. "You missed all the fun."

  Short Britches surveyed the ranch buildings. "I am sorry," he said. "I must be getting old. I did not know that this trouble was coming. But I do know about some other trouble headed this way."

  Barlow's heart sank. "Now what?"

  "A column of bluecoats. No more than a hour away."

  "Wonder what the hell they want."

  Short Britches did not respond.

  "Well," said Barlow, exasperated, "I guess I'll stick around and find out. I've got two men out looking for our stock. As soon as they get back, I want you to take a wagon and as many men as you think you'll need to pick up Mendez and two others. They're three miles out, toward the river crossing. Two of 'em are hurt. Think you can find them?"

  Still, Short Britches said nothing—because the question, in his opinion, was not deserving of an answer.

  When the column of soldiers appeared from the south, Short Britches and his detail of three vaqueros, one mounted and the other two in a wagon pulled by a pair of ranch horses, had just disappeared into the heat haze that shimmered above the surface of the desert to the west. The rest of the vaqueros were lounging about in any strip of shade they could find. As far as Barlow was concerned, they deserved a day of rest and recuperation. Repairing the damage done during the battle with the Coyoteros, and rounding up the rest of the stock, could wait until tomorrow. Though they were exhausted, and most seemed to be sleeping, they kept their weapons near at hand. The Apache threat was still a very real one. The bronchos were out there, somewhere, and as long as that was the case, no sane man could rest easy, no matter how exhausted.

  On the one hand, Barlow was relieved to see the soldiers, since their presence made it much less likely that the Coyoteros would strike again. But he was wary, nonetheless. What did this visit signify? It wasn't likely that the army knew of the Coyotero raid. Not yet. Barlow figured he'd been the first one hit.

  There were eighteen men in the column, dusty, bone-weary men on run-down horses that looked like they'd been pushed hard day and night. The officer at the head of the column called a halt and angled his horse across the hardpack to approach Barlow, who stood watching from the striped shade of the ramada that fronted the adobe house. As the officer drew near, Barlow was pleasantly surprised to see that it was Charles Summerhayes, one of his messmates from his days as a lieutenant with the garrison at Fort Union. He hadn't seen Summerhayes for many months, and in that time his friend had changed a great deal. Back when they'd been at Fort Union together, Summerhayes had seemed like hardly more than a boy
then, still wet behind the ears, and scarcely mature enough for the burden of responsibility carried by a commissioned officer in the United States Army. Barlow had shared quarters with Charles and two other lieutenants, Hammond and Trotter, and of his three roommates, Summerhayes had been, in Barlow's opinion, the least likely to succeed. And yet both Hammond and Trotter were dead, both slain in action against the Apaches—and here was Summerhayes, looking like the veteran of desert warfare that he was. You could look into his face and see that he'd been to hell and back.

  Reaching the adobe, Summerhayes dismounted, wincing at the stiffness in his joints caused by long hours in the saddle. As he turned, Barlow stepped forward with hand extended.

  "Hello, Charles. It's been a long time."

  "Joshua." Summerhayes stripped the leather gauntlet from his right hand and shook Barlow's hand. "You're looking well." He took a long look around the ranch. "Looks like you were hit hard."

  Barlow nodded. "A Coyotero war party, yesterday. They left last night."

  Barlow heard Oulay in the doorway behind him. Summerhayes looked at her, swept the dusty campaign hat from his head. "Morning, ma'am."