Trail of the Apache and Other Stories
Page 9
be no survivor to tell of the lone Apache killer.
The sport of the affair had satisfied him, but he
was angry. None of the men had been using a
Sharps, so there was no ammunition to be had. He
picked up the guard’s Winchester, slinging the cartridge belt over his shoulder, but he liked the feel of
the heavy buffalo rifle better. In the Sharps he had
the confidence that comes only after trial. But he
had only two cartridges left for it.
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He turned his attention to the drummer, who
was sprawled awkwardly next to the coach. With
his foot he pushed the body over onto its back. A
crimson smear spread over the shirtfront. The
Apache opened the black satchel next to the man
and emptied the contents onto the ground—
needles, scissors, paring knives, and thread—and
moved on to the horses.
His next act made the woman turn her head
slightly, for with his skinning knife he sliced a large
chunk of meat from the rump of a disabled horse
and stuffed it into the sample case. Then he stepped
to the front of the horse and cut the animal’s jugular vein. Soon after, a Chiricahua Apache with a
white woman at his side waded up Banderas Creek
along the shallows. The woman dragged her legs
through the water stiffly, slowly, as if her reluctance
to move quickly was an open act of defiance toward
the Indian.
The Chiricahua carried two rifles and a bloodstained satchel and wore a clean shirt, the tail hanging below his narrow hips. With every few steps his
glance turned to the cold face of the woman. They
disappeared three hundred yards upstream, where
the creek cut a bend into the blackness of the pines.
✯ ✯ ✯
It was the point riders of Phil Langmade’s C
Troop that found the wrecked stagecoach and the
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dead men, almost two hours later. Twenty days in
the field and a brush with Nachee, and because of
it they had missed the stage at Rindo’s.
They were returning to the garrison at Inspiration, thighs aching from long, stiff hours in the saddle. Grimy, salt-sweat-white, alkali-caked—both
their uniforms and their minds—after days of riding through the savage dust-glare of central Arizona. And of the forty mounts, three had ponchos
draped over the saddles, bulging and shapeless. All
patrols were not routine.
Langmade sent flankers to climb the ridges on
both sides, and then went in. The troopers spread
out in a semicircle, watching with hollow, lifeless
eyes the flankers on the ridge more than the grisly
scene on the road. You get used to the sight of
death, but never to expecting it.
Langmade dismounted, but Simon Street, the
civilian scout, rode up to the dead driver before
throwing off. He walked upstream another hundred yards and then came back, approaching the
officer from around the coach. The troopers sat still
in their saddles, half-asleep, half-ready to throw up
a carbine. Habit.
Langmade said, “I don’t know if I want to find her
inside the coach or not. If she’s there, she’s dead.”
Street’s eyes moved slowly over the scene. “You
won’t find her,” he said. “There’s a little heel print
over on the bank. They went upstream. That’s sure.
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If they went down they’d wind up in the open near
Rindo’s.”
Langmade boosted himself onto the side of the
stage and came down almost in the same motion.
He nodded his head to the scout and kept it moving
in an arc along the top of the near ridge.
“Bet they laid up there waiting,” Langmade said.
“A month’s pay they were Apaches.”
Street followed his gaze to the ridge. He just
glanced at the officer, his face creased-bronze and
old beyond its years, crow’s feet where eye met
temple, his hat tilted low on his forehead, his eyes
in shadow. “You’re throwin’ your money away, soldier,” he said. “Apache.”
Langmade looked at him quickly. “Only one?”
“That’s all the sign says.” Street pointed to the
butchered horse. “A war party don’t cut just one
steak.”
He turned his attention back to the ridge. He was
looking at the exact spot from which the Apache
had fired. Then his gaze fell slowly to sweep across
the road to Banderas Creek. And he squinted
against the glare as his eyes followed the course of
the creek to the bend into the pines.
Langmade pushed his field hat back from his
forehead, releasing the hot-steel grip of the sweatband, and watched the scout curiously. Langmade
was young, in his mid-twenties, but he was good
for a second lieutenant. He didn’t talk much and he
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watched. He watched and he learned. And he knew
he was learning from one of the best. But the tension was building inside his stomach, and it wasn’t
just the aftereffects of a twenty-day patrol.
There were three dead men in the road and a
woman missing and it had happened because he
had failed to bring the patrol in to Rindo’s on time.
The report would include an account of the brush
with Nachee, and that would absolve him of blame.
But it wouldn’t make it easier for him to face Colonel Darck.
You didn’t just look at a stone near your boot toe
and say “sorry” to a man whose wife has been carried off by a blood-drunk Apache—even if you
weren’t to blame.
There it was. Langmade stood motionless,
watching the scout. Langmade was in command, a
commissioned officer in the United States Army,
but he was tired. His bones ached and his mind
dragged, weary of fighting the savage country and
the elusive Apache who was a part of that country,
and always there was so little time.
Learning to fight doesn’t come easy with most
men. Learning to fight the Apache doesn’t come
easy with anyone. You watch the veteran until your
face takes on the same mask of impassiveness, then
you make decisions.
He waited patiently for Street to say something,
to give him a lead. He remembered forty troopers
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who watched the thin gold bars on his shoulders,
and he tried to forget his helplessness.
Langmade said, “The colonel was coming from
Thomas to meet Mrs. Darck at Inspiration.” The
scout was aware of this, he knew, but he had to say
something. He had to fill the gap until something
happened.
Simon Street looked at the officer and a half
smile broke the thin line of his mouth. “We’ll find
her, soldier. It wasn’t your fault. People get killed
by Apaches every day.”
As the words came out, he realized he had said
the wrong thing and added, quickly, “Know who
this looks like to me?” and then went on when
Langmade looked but didn’t speak.
“Looks like that bronco Apache we been chasin’
on and off for five years. Nochalbestinay. Though
the Mexicans named him Mata Lobo. He was a
Turkey Creek Chiricahua who’d never get used to
reservation life in seven hundred years. Sendin’ him
to San Carlos was like throwin’ a mountain cat a
hunk of raw meat and then pullin’ all his teeth
out.”
Street pulled a thin cigar from his pocket and
passed his tongue over the crumbling outer layer of
tobacco. “You know, at one time there was almost
a thousand troops plus a hundred Apache scouts all
in the field at one time huntin’ him, and no one
even saw him. You couldn’t ask the dead ones if
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they saw him or not. An Apache’s bad enough, but
this one’s half devil.”
He moved toward the butchered horse. “Boy’s
got a real yen for steak, ain’t he?”
All the time the tension had been building in
Langmade. Just standing there with his arms heavy
at his sides and the weight pulling down inside his
stomach. He had to hesitate until he was sure his
voice would come out sounding natural.
“You’ve got the sign and I’ve got the men,” he said.
“Just point the way, Simon. Just point the way.”
Street had turned and was walking toward his
horse. He stopped and looked back at the officer.
“Get your troop back to Inspiration and get a fresh
patrol out, soldier.”
Street’s words were low, directed only to the officer, but Langmade raised his voice almost to a
shout when he answered:
“We’ve got men here—get on his track!”
“I’m not goin’ to guide for dead men,” the scout
answered easily. “If a thousand men can’t catch
him, you can’t count on forty. Maybe just one’s the
answer. I don’t want to tell you how to run your
business, son, but if I was you I’d shake it back to
Inspiration and get a fresh patrol out.”
Street mounted and then looked down at Langmade, who had followed him over to the horse.
“The trail’s as fresh as you’d want it,” he said, nod-‚
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ding toward the butchered horse. “That mare
hasn’t been dead three hours. And he’s got a
woman with him to slow him down.”
“I’ve been out longer than that, Simon,” Langmade said. “She’ll slow him down just so long.”
The scout’s mouth turned slightly into a smile as
he pressed his heels into the mare’s flanks. “That’s
why I got to hurry, soldier.”
He walked the mare toward Banderas Creek and
kicked her into a gallop as he turned upstream.
✯ ✯ ✯
An hour before sunset Simon Street was walking
his horse along the winding trail that threaded its
way diagonally down the slope of the forestcovered hill that on the western side joined the
rocky heights of the Sierra Apaches. This gradual
leveling of the sierra was a tangled mass of junipers,
gnarled stumps, and rock, rising and falling
abruptly from one hillock to the next.
The trail gouged itself laboriously in a general
southwesterly direction, fighting rock falls, pine, and
prickly pear, finally to emerge miles to the south at
Devil’s Flats. From the crest, and occasionally down
the path, you could see in the distance the
whiteness—the bleak, bone-bleached whiteness—
that was the flats.
Street had traveled a dozen-odd miles from the
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ambush, making his way slowly at first along the
creek bank, looking for a particular telltale sign.
He knew the Apache had followed the creek, leaving no prints, but somewhere he had to come out.
The Apache would cover his tracks from the
creek, but he would be coming out at a particular
place for a reason. To pick up his mount. And you
can’t leave a horse tied in one place for any length
of time without also leaving a sign. To recognize
the place is something else.
Street saw the low tree branch that had been
scarred by the hackamore, and his eyes fell to the
particles of horse droppings that had remained after the Apache had swept most of it into the denser
scrub brush. He was on the trail. From then on it
was just a question of thinking like an Apache.
For the scout, that night, it was the last of his
jerked beef and a quarter canteen of cold coffee.
No fire. Cold, tasteless rations while he pressed his
back against a smooth rock that was still warm
from the day’s heat and dueled his patience against
the black pit that was the night.
His Winchester lay across his lap, and the slight
pressure on his thighs was a feeling of reassurance
against the loneliness of the night. Dead stillness,
then the occasional night sound. He could be the
only man in the world. Yet, just a few miles ahead,
perhaps less, was a bronco Apache who would kill
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at the least provocation. And with him was a white
woman.
Street rubbed the stock of the Winchester idly.
✯ ✯ ✯
In the dusk Amelia Darck watched the Apache.
He crouched over the slab of red horsemeat, sitting
on his heels, and hacked at the meat with his skinning knife. He cut off a chunk and stuffed it into
his mouth, but the cold blood-taste of the raw meat
tightened his throat muscles and he swallowed hard
to get it down. He would wait.
He cut the slab of meat into thin strips and
spread them out separately on a flat shelf of rock.
When he had more time he would jerk the meat
properly and have plenty to eat.
He looked toward the white woman and saw her
staring at him. Always she stared, and always with
the same fixed, strange look on her face. The eyes
of the Apache and the white woman met, and Mata
Lobo turned his attention back to the meat. The
woman continued to stare at the Apache.
She sat on the ground with her arms extended behind her, full weight on her arms, propping her
body in a rigid position, unmoving. Her legs extended straight out before her, the ankles lashed together with a strip of rawhide. And she continued
to watch the Apache.
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Amelia Darck saw an Apache for the first time
when she was six years old. His face was vivid in
her memory. She remembered once somebody had
said, “. . . like glistening bacon rind.” And always
a dirty cloth headband.
Yuma, Whipple Barracks, Fort Apache, and
Thomas. Officers’ row on a sun-baked parade. Chiricahua, White Mountain, Mescalero, and Tonto.
Thigh-high moccasins and a rusted Spencer. Tizwin
drunk, then war drums. And only the red sun-slash
in the sky after the patrol had faded into the glare
three miles west of Thomas. Shapeless ponchos that
used to be men. The old story. And she continued
to watch the Apache.
Mata Lobo glanced at the woman, then stood up
abruptly and walked toward her. He stooped at her
feet, hesitated, then placed the blade of the knife
between her ankles and jerked up with the blade,
severing the rawhide string.
His face was expressionless, smooth and impassive, as he eased his body to the ground. A face that in
the dimness was shadow on stone. His hands pushed
against her shoulders until her arms bent slowly and
her back was flat against the short, sparse grass.
The hands moved from her shoulder and touched
her face gently, the fingers moving on her cheeks
like a blind man’s identifying an object, and his
body eased toward hers.
Her face was the same. The eyes open, infre-‚
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quently blinking. She smelled the sour dirt-smell of
the Apache’s body. Then she opened her arms and
pulled him to her.
✯ ✯ ✯
Simon Street was up before dawn. He gave his
tightening stomach the last of the cold, stale coffee
while he waited for the sun to peel back another
layer of the morning darkness. It was cold and
damp for that time of the year, and when he again
started down the trail, a gray mist hung from the
lower branches of the trees and lay softly against
the grotesque rock lines.
More often now, the ground fell away to the left,
the trail hugging the side of the hill in its diagonal
descent; and in the distance was a sheet of milky
smoke where the mist clung softly to the flats. The
trail was narrow and rocky and lined with dense
brush most of the way down.
Less than a mile ahead the grade dropped again
steeply to the left of the trail, bare of tree or rock, cutting a smooth swatch twenty yards wide through the
pines. The mist had evaporated considerably by then
and Street could see almost to the bottom of the slide.
First, it was the faintest blur of motion. And then
the sound. A sound that could be human.
Simon Street had been riding half tensed for the
past dozen years. There was no abrupt stop. He