Trail of the Apache and Other Stories

by Elmore Leonard

  come into camp in early morning.”

  I asked Mickey if it was Tony Choddi, and finally

  he admitted that it was. I felt better then. McKay

  couldn’t hang a man for trading a horse.

  “Are you satisfied, Mr. McKay? He didn’t know

  it was yours. Just a matter of trading a horse.”

  McKay looked at me, narrowing his eyes. He

  looked as if he were trying to figure out what kind

  of a man I was. Finally he said, “You think I’m going to believe them?”

  It dawned on me suddenly that McKay had been

  using what patience he had for the past few minutes. Now he was ready to continue what they had

  come for. He had made up his mind long before.

  “Wait a minute, Mr. McKay, you’re talking

  about the life of an innocent man. You can’t just toy

  with it like it was a head of cattle.”

  He looked at me and his puffy face seemed to

  harden. He was a heavy man, beginning to sag about

  the stomach. “You think you’re going to tell me what

  I can do and what I can’t? I don’t need a government

  representative to tell me why my horse was stolen!”

  “I’m not telling you anything. You know Mickey

  didn’t steal the horse. You can see for yourself

  you’re making a mistake.”

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  McKay shrugged and looked at his herd boss.

  “Well, if it is, it isn’t a very big one—leastwise we’ll

  be sure he won’t be trading in stolen horses again.”

  He nodded to Bowie Allison.

  Bowie grinned, and brought his quirt up and

  then down across the rump of the chestnut.

  “Yiiiiiiiiii . . .”

  The chestnut broke fast. Allison stood yelling after it, then jumped aside quickly as Mickey Solner

  swung back toward him on the end of the rope.

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  It was two weeks later, to the day, that Mickey Segundo came in with Tony Choddi’s ears. You can

  see why I asked him if he had a notion of going after McKay. And it was a strange thing. I was talking to a different boy than the one I had last seen

  under the cottonwood.

  When the horse shot out from under his dad, he

  ran to him like something wild, screaming, and

  wrapped his arms around the kicking legs trying to

  hold the weight off the rope.

  Bowie Allison cuffed him away, and they held

  him back with pistols while he watched his dad die.

  From then on he didn’t say a word, and when it was

  over, walked away with his head down. Then, when

  he came in with Tony Choddi’s ears, he was himself

  again. All smiles.

  I might mention that I wrote to the Bureau of In-The Boy Who Smiled

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  dian Affairs about the incident, since Mickey Solner, legally, was one of my charges; but nothing

  came of it. In fact, I didn’t even get a reply.

  Over the next few years Mickey Segundo

  changed a lot. He became Apache. That is, his appearance changed and almost everything else about

  him—except the smile. The smile was always there,

  as if he knew a monumental secret which was going to make everyone happy.

  He let his hair grow to his shoulders and usually

  he wore only a frayed cotton shirt and breechclout;

  his moccasins were Apache—curled toes and leggings which reached to his thighs. He went under

  his Apache name, which was Peza-a, but I called

  him Mickey when I saw him, and he was never reluctant to talk to me in English. His English was

  good, discounting grammar.

  Most of the time he lived in the same jacale his

  dad had built, providing for his mother and fitting

  closer into the life of the rancheria than he did before. But when he was about eighteen, he went up

  to the agency and joined Tudishishn’s police. His

  mother went with him to live at the reservation, but

  within a year the two of them were back. Tracking

  friends who happened to wander off the reservation

  didn’t set right with him. It didn’t go with his

  smile.

  Tudishishn told me he was sorry to lose him because he was an expert tracker and a dead shot. I

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  know the sergeant had a dozen good sign followers,

  but very few who were above average with a gun.

  He must have been nineteen when he came back

  to Puerco. In all those years he never once mentioned McKay’s name. And I can tell you I never

  brought it up either.

  I saw McKay even less after the hanging incident. If

  he ignored me before, he avoided me now. As I said, I

  felt like a fool after warning him about Mickey Segundo, and I’m certain McKay felt only contempt for

  me for doing it, after sticking up for the boy’s dad.

  McKay would come through every once in a

  while, usually going on a hunt up into the Nacimentos. He was a great hunter and would go out

  for a few days every month or so. Usually with his

  herd boss, Bowie Allison. He hunted everything

  that walked, squirmed, or flew and I’m told his

  ranch trophy room was really something to see.

  You couldn’t take it away from the man; everything

  he did, he did well. He was in his fifties, but he could

  shoot straighter and stay in the saddle longer than

  any of his riders. And he knew how to make money.

  But it was his arrogance that irked me. Even though

  he was polite, he made you feel far beneath him. He

  talked to you as if you were one of the hired help.

  One afternoon, fairly late, Tudishishn rode in

  and said that he was supposed to meet McKay at

  the adobe office early the next morning. McKay

  wanted to try the shooting down southwest toward

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  the malpais, on the other side of it, actually, and

  Tudishishn was going to guide for him.

  The Indian policeman drank coffee until almost

  sundown and then rode off into the shadows of the

  Nacimentos. He was staying at one of the rancherias,

  visiting with his friends until the morning.

  McKay appeared first. It was a cool morning,

  bright and crisp. I looked out of the window and

  saw the five riders coming up the road from the

  south, and when they were close enough I made out

  McKay and Bowie Allison and the three Bettzinger

  brothers. When they reached the office, McKay and

  Bowie dismounted, but the Bettzingers reined

  around and started back down the road.

  McKay nodded and was civil enough, though he

  didn’t direct more than a few words to me. Bowie

  was ready when I asked them if they wanted coffee,

  but McKay shook his head and said they were leaving shortly. Just about then the rider appeared coming down out of the hills.

  McKay was squinting, studying the figure on

  the pony.

  I didn’t really look at him until I noticed

  McKay’s close attention. And when I looked at the

  rider again, he was almost on us. I didn’t have to

  squint then to see that it was Mickey Segundo.

  McKay said, “Who’s that?” with a ring of suspicion to his voice.

  I felt a sudden heat on my face, like the
feeling

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  you get when you’re talking about someone, then

  suddenly find the person standing next to you.

  Without thinking about it I told McKay, “That’s

  Peza-a, one of my people.” What made me call him

  by his Apache name I don’t know. Perhaps because

  he looked so Indian. But I had never called him

  Peza-a before.

  He approached us somewhat shyly, wearing his

  faded shirt and breechclout but now with a streak

  of ochre painted across his nose from ear to ear. He

  didn’t look as if he could have a drop of white

  blood in him.

  “What’s he doing here?” McKay’s voice still held

  a note of suspicion, and he looked at him as if he

  were trying to place him.

  Bowie Allison studied him the same way, saying

  nothing.

  “Where’s Tudishishn? These gentlemen are waiting for him.”

  “Tudishishn is ill with a demon in his stomach,”

  Peza-a answered. “He has asked me to substitute

  myself for him.” He spoke in Spanish, hesitantly,

  the way an Apache does.

  McKay studied him for some time. Finally, he

  said, “Well . . . can he track?”

  “He was with Tudishishn for a year. Tudishishn

  speaks highly of him.” Again I don’t know what

  made me say it. A hundred things were going

  through my head. What I said was true, but I saw it

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  getting me into something. Mickey never looked directly at me. He kept watching McKay, with the

  faint smile on his mouth.

  McKay seemed to hesitate, but then he said,

  “Well, come on. I don’t need a reference . . . long as

  he can track.”

  They mounted and rode out.

  McKay wanted prongbuck. Tudishishn had described where they would find the elusive herds

  and promised to show him all he could shoot. But

  they were many days away. McKay had said if he

  didn’t have time, he’d make time. He wanted good

  shooting.

  Off and on during the first day he questioned

  Mickey Segundo closely to see what he knew about

  the herds.

  “I have seen them many times. Their hide the

  color of sand, and black horns that reach into the

  air like bayonets of the soldiers. But they are far.”

  McKay wasn’t concerned with distance. After a

  while he was satisfied that this Indian guide knew

  as much about tracking antelope as Tudishishn, and

  that’s what counted. Still, there was something

  about the young Apache. . . .

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  “Tomorrow, we begin the crossing of the malpais,” Mickey Segundo said. It was evening of the

  third day, as they made camp at Yucca Springs.

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  Bowie Allison looked at him quickly. “Tudishishn planned we’d follow the high country down

  and come out on the plain from the east.”

  “What’s the matter with keeping a straight

  line,” McKay said. “Keeping to the hills is longer,

  isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but that malpais is a blood-dryin’ furnace

  in the middle of August,” Bowie grumbled. “You

  got to be able to pinpoint the wells. And even if you

  find them, they might be dry.”

  McKay looked at Peza-a for an answer.

  “If Señor McKay wishes to ride for two additional days, that is for him to say. But we can carry

  our water with ease.” He went to his saddle pouch

  and drew out two collapsed, rubbery bags. “These,

  from the stomach of the horse, will hold much water. Tomorrow we fill canteens and these, and the

  water can be made to last five, six days. Even if the

  wells are dry, we have water.”

  Bowie Allison grumbled under his breath, looking with distaste at the horse-intestine water sacks.

  McKay rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He was

  thinking of prongbuck. Finally he said, “We’ll cut

  across the lava.”

  Bowie Allison was right in his description of the

  malpais. It was a furnace, a crusted expanse of

  desert that stretched into another world. Saguaro

  and ocotillo stood nakedly sharp against the whiteness, and off in the distance were ghostly looming

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  buttes, gigantic tombstones for the lava waste.

  Horses shuffled choking white dust, and the sun

  glare was a white blistering shock that screamed its

  brightness. Then the sun would drop suddenly,

  leaving a nothingness that could be felt. A life that

  had died a hundred million years ago.

  McKay felt it and that night he spoke little.

  The second day was a copy of the first, for the

  lava country remained monotonously the same.

  McKay grew more irritable as the day wore on,

  and time and again he would snap at Bowie Allison

  for his grumbling. The country worked at the

  nerves of the two white men, while Mickey Segundo watched them.

  On the third day they passed two water holes.

  They could see the shallow crusted bottoms and the

  fissures that the tight sand had made cracking in the

  hot air. That night McKay said nothing.

  In the morning there was a blue haze on the edge

  of the glare; they could feel the land beneath them

  begin to rise. Chaparral and patches of toboso grass

  became thicker and dotted the flatness, and by early

  afternoon the towering rock formations loomed

  near at hand. They had then one water sack two

  thirds full; but the other, with their canteens, was

  empty.

  Bowie Allison studied the gradual rise of the

  rock wall, passing his tongue over cracked lips.

  “There could be water up there. Sometimes the rain

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  catches in hollows and stays there a long time if it’s

  shady.”

  McKay squinted into the air. The irregular

  crests were high and dead still against the sky.

  “Could be.”

  Mickey Segundo looked up and then nodded.

  “How far to the next hole?” McKay asked.

  “Maybe one day.”

  “If it’s got water. . . . Then how far?”

  “Maybe two day. We come out on the plain then

  near the Datil Mountains and there is water,

  streams to be found.”

  McKay said, “That means we’re halfway. We can

  make last what we got, but there’s no use killing

  ourselves.” His eyes lifted to the peaks again, then

  dropped to the mouth of a barranca which cut into

  the rock. He nodded to the dark canyon which was

  partly hidden by a dense growth of mesquite.

  “We’ll leave our stuff there and go on to see what

  we can find.”

  They unsaddled the horses and ground-tied them

  and hung their last water bag in the shade of a

  mesquite bush.

  Then they walked up-canyon until they found a

  place which would be the easiest to climb.

  They went up and they came down, but when

  they were again on the canyon floor, their ca
nteens

  still rattled lightly with their steps. Mickey Segundo

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  carried McKay’s rifle in one hand and the limp,

  empty water bag in the other.

  He walked a step behind the two men and

  watched their faces as they turned to look back

  overhead. There was no water.

  The rocks held nothing, not even a dampness.

  They were naked now and loomed brutally indifferent, and bone dry with no promise of moisture.

  The canyon sloped gradually into the opening.

  And now, ahead, they could see the horses and the

  small fat bulge of the water bag hanging from the

  mesquite bough.

  Mickey Segundo’s eyes were fixed on the water

  sack. He looked steadily at it.

  Then a horse screamed. They saw the horses suddenly pawing the ground and pulling at the hackamores that held them fast. The three horses and

  the pack mule joined together now, neighing shrilly

  as they strained dancing at the ropes.

  And then a shape the color of sand darted

  through the mesquite thicket, so quickly that it

  seemed a shadow.

  Mickey Segundo threw the rifle to his shoulder.

  He hesitated. Then he fired.

  The shape kept going, past the mesquite background and out into the open.

  He fired again and the coyote went up into the

  air and came down to lie motionless.

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  It only jerked in death. McKay looked at him angrily. “Why the hell didn’t you let me have it! You

  could have hit one of the horses!”

  “There was not time.”

  “That’s two hundred yards! You could have hit a

  horse, that’s what I’m talking about!”

  “But I shot it,” Mickey Segundo said.

  When they reached the mesquite clump, they did

  not go over to inspect the dead coyote. Something

  else took their attention. It stopped the white men

  in their tracks.

  They stared unbelieving at the wetness seeping

  into the sand, and above the spot, the water bag

  hanging like a punctured bladder. The water had

  quickly run out.

  Mickey Segundo told the story at the inquiry.

  They had attempted to find water, but it was no

  use; so they were compelled to try to return.

  They had almost reached Yucca Springs when

  the two men died. Mickey Segundo told it simply.