by Jonas Ward
“Then ask him.” Buchanan was pointing toward the hard-riding horseman who was just then emerging from his own dust cloud on the ridge.
Matesa shrugged again. “Matesa asks no one. A warrior asks no one.”
“Maybe,” Buchanan said, and watched the newcomer rein his horse down and swirl into the center of things. This was Cuchillo, the surviving son of old Sentos. Cuchillo reached out and gripped Buchanan’s arm in the Indian handshake. Buchanan exchanged greetings and said, “Better tell your friend here to take us into camp before he carves us up.”
Cuchillo turned and spoke rapidly to Matesa. The big brute listened expressionlessly and then laid his fist against his chest. “This my war party.”
Cuchillo shook his head and spoke again. After a moment Matesa growled, clamped his mouth shut, and wheeled his horse around. His arm whipped up and down, and he went drumming down off the ridge at a dead run. The five bucks streamed away after him.
Johnny Reo said, “Think of that, now.”
Buchanan nodded. “We got this far, anyway.”
Cuchillo said, “You have given our lives to my father and to me. You will be honored in our village.”
Honored, Buchanan thought, but watched. He said, “Let’s go then.”
The grin Reo gave him was bleak and very, very dry.
Ten
The Aravaipa went his own way, rubbing his rope-burned wrists and staring fixedly at Buchanan and Reo as if to burn their faces indelibly into his memory. They watched him tramp out of sight. Cuchillo led them down into the timber, where the trees closed in on them and they had to ride single file through the cool, dark corridors of pine. There wasn’t much talk. Cuchillo seemed happy enough, but the white man hadn’t been born who would have felt calm and easy just then. Buchanan kept his eyes open and his rifle handy. An Apache on foot could cover an incredible amount of ground in a short time, and it was always possible that the Aravaipa they had instead would find a weapon somewhere and come after them. Not to mention a few hundred other Indians who tended to shoot at any white man first and ask who he was later.
It took the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon. They climbed steadily along the slopes of wooded canyons into the deepest reaches of the mountains; in time they were close to timberline, at high altitude, where the timber began to thin out. The peaks buckled up, bald and jagged, faced with stunted shrubs. The son of Sentos kept up a steady pace. Reo said, “Maybe it’s the cold, thin air up here, and then again maybe it ain’t.” He turned up the shirt collar around his neck.
An Indian appeared on a hill and stood watching them. It meant one thing, for sure: the Indian wasn’t alone. There was no telling how many pairs of eyes were keeping them in view. Buchanan saw the dark wariness of Reo’s expression. He looked up with hang-dog eyes. “Right now I’d like to give the man back his twenty-five hundred dollars and call it even.”
“Scared, Johnny?”
“Ain’t you?”
“Sure I am.”
“A man’d have to be plumb crazy not to be scared,” Reo said.
A cool current of air swept across the slope, chilling Buchanan, riffling his skin. Up front Cuchillo’s black head bobbed steadily forward. They entered a district of tall rock slabs tilted at improbably balanced angles; the wind hummed a steady monotone through these acoustic chambers. Squat brown men with hair bound tight with strips of colored cloth kept appearing along the trail and standing there to watch with steady eyes.
Their horses moved along the floor of a long canyon. Indians began to drift down toward them, taking positions and walking along with them; in fifteen minutes there was an escort of a dozen Apaches on foot. One of them made a joke, and the others laughed. Reo said, “I hope Sentos is in a good mood too.”
They broke out of the canyon, walking their horses, and soon, on the side of a mountain that commanded a large district, Cuchillo brought them into the rancheria. It was a sprawling scatter of wickiups, spread without pattern along the humps and hollows of the mountainside. A thin stream ran down the foot of the slope. The ranks of the pedestrian escort were swelled by thirty or forty children who fell in and marched along, staring curiously at the two white men. Old women came out of the wickiups and glared defiantly at Buchanan and Reo; one woman picked up a handful of dirt and flung it. Reo dodged, and the dirt flew harmlessly past. A flung rock hit Buchanan in the thigh; he ignored it.
A gray woman came out of a wickiup, and abruptly one of the Indian braves wheeled and ran away into the rocks. Reo grinned. “Must’ve been his mother-in-law. A man ain’t supposed to look at his mother-in-law.”
They reached the chief’s lodge. Cuchillo stopped. Reo said, “Better not step down until we’re invited.”
“Yes.”
Stooping to clear the low doorway, Sentos came into view. Under the brim of his stovepipe hat, the old Indian’s face was a map of seams and creases. It broke into a broad grin, and Buchanan said, “We can get down now.”
A woman came forward with obvious intent, taking the reins of the two saddle horses and standing blank-faced while Buchanan and Reo dismounted. Sentos looked around at the circling crowd, listened to its noise, and nodded carefully; he indicated the doorway of the lodge with a sweep of his arm, afterward pushing the huge blanket aside and entering.
“After you,” Reo said dryly, and followed Buchanan into the dimness of the wickiup.
A small fire burned in the center of the place, to keep the mountain chill away from Sentos’ old bones. Sentos sat down cross-legged on a blanket, waving his arms toward the ground beyond the fire. “You come to my house—good, good.” Sentos’ eyes were lighted by proud pleasure.
Buchanan said in his cautious, stumbling Apache, “May the god of the sun be kind to the great war chief.”
Sentos dipped his head in reply. Cuchillo ducked into the place and squatted down behind his father’s left shoulder.
Buchanan kept smiling at the old chief while he said, “Johnny.”
“What?”
“See any sign of our package?”
“No.”
Buchanan went right into a short speech in Apache, a few pleasantries to accommodate the Apache code of etiquette. He bragged some, and Sentos bragged some, and Reo bragged too. Buchanan told a lie, and Sentos told a bigger one, and they both laughed. It had been a long time since Buchanan had been in an Apache lodge, and the smell was strong in his nostrils.
After twenty minutes of pipe-smoking and desultory amenities, Sentos spoke to his son, who went outside and returned shortly with a gourd. It passed from hand to hand. Buchanan swallowed a stiff slug of tulapai and felt it burn a vicious path into his gut. He handed the gourd to Sentos, watched the stovepipe hat tip back and the old man’s Adam’s apple bounce up and down, and said to Sentos, “Amigo, I want to take the white woman.”
There followed Sentos’ short grunt. His black eyes shifted from the jug to Reo, to Cuchillo, finally to Buchanan. He grunted again. “She is your woman?”
“She’s my woman,” Buchanan lied. It was a subterfuge he and Reo had decided on; it was about the only thing he could think of that might work.
Sentos studied Buchanan’s face. After a while he said, “She talks only about the one with bad legs.”
“Her father.”
“Only about him. She does not talk about Buchanan.” Then, abruptly, the old man got to his feet and left the wickiup. Cuchillo went out after him.
It left Buchanan and Reo alone inside. Reo shifted forward and spoke in a tone that carried no farther than Buchanan’s ears. “I don’t think he bought it.”
“It’s the kind of lie where he knows I’m lying, and he knows I know he knows it. But he owes me his life and he’s not about to call me a liar to my face.”
Reo shook his head. “Buchanan, we’re hanging on by a hair. He’s probably talking to the girl right now. When he finds out she’s never even heard of you, both our heads are going to roll right into the basket.”
“No,
” Buchanan said. “He’ll be talking to his sub chiefs right about now, finding out whether they’re willing to let the girl go.”
“And if they ain’t?”
“Then we play it by ear.”
“What makes you such a goddamn hero, Buchanan? It just ain’t natural. We could pull out right now and go back and tell Warrenrode his daughter’s dead. Nobody’ll know the difference.”
“Nobody but you and me,” Buchanan said. “There are things you can’t stay out of.”
“Aagh.”
When Sentos pushed back the flap and returned into the wickiup, his face was long and guarded. He sat down and arranged his shirttails and said, “I have consulted with the spirits and with my own heart.”
“A man must do that,” Buchanan agreed gravely.
Sentos said, “It is true I owe you a life, maybe two. If it was in my heart that the white woman will be killed, then I, Sentos, would say to you this—she will not be killed. But it is never in my heart to kill the white woman. And there is a thing more. When a warrior goes to steal a horse, he will use all his tricks against the man who owns the horse. This a warrior must do. And so there is no anger in my heart against you, my friend Buchanan, even though you try to trick me. When we stole the white woman from the house of the man with bad legs, my own eyes saw her in the arms of a white man with glass in front of his eyes. She is not your woman.”
Buchanan said nothing. He could see Reo stiffen, out of the corner of his vision, but he sat still and only kept his eyes fixed on Sentos’ eyes. The old Indian had a wizened, pickled face; he looked very sad. He made a small smile and said, “Come,” and led the way outside.
As if deep in thought, Sentos led the way along an aimless path through the Apache camp. Indians lowered their eyes as he passed, in deference to the elder chieftain; but once Sentos went by, their defiant glowers lifted against Buchanan and Reo. Reo muttered, “They’ve got all the warm instincts of a hangman, every one of them. We better get our butts out of here.”
Mescal heads roasted in a baking pit; piñon nuts and juniper berries lay on flat rocks outside wickiups. An old man sat mending a longbow. In the shade of a brush ramada, women in deerskins and turquoise ornaments squatted and sewed skins together with deer sinew and bone awls. All this activity stopped when the two white men came by; black eyes came up and lay against them, unblinking and unfriendly.
Sentos brought them around the end of a wickiup and stopped. He raised his hand to point toward a fat man in body paint who sat in the middle of a large cleared flat of earth. Two men sat nearby, softly beating out rhythms on a pottery drum and a rattle made from an eagle’s claw.
“He is Lazen,” Sentos explained. “The snake shaman.”
Lazen, the medicine man, was reaching toward the small fire in the center of the circle. He pulled out a twig and held its glowing end to a ceremonial cigarette in his mouth. When he had it going, he turned toward the east and puffed out a ball of smoke. He turned south and puffed out another ball of smoke. He kept this up until he had puffed smoke in the four compass directions, after which he opened a drawstring pouch and set out pollen in the same four directions around him. The colored pollen followed the Apache tradition of hues: black to the east, blue to the south, yellow to the west, and white to the north.
Buchanan knew enough about Apache ceremonies to know that this was the beginning of an important one. He also knew that old Sentos wouldn’t have brought him around to see this unless he had a reason.
The pottery drum made an insistent clatter. Small clusters of hunters and women drifted toward the circle and stood around, watching the medicine man perform his rituals. The fire grew—everyone who came brought fuel to throw on it—and at intervals the shaman tossed powder into the fire that made bright-hued smoke shoot up.
Sentos motioned with his finger and stepped eight or ten paces away from the gathering circle of Indians. When Buchanan and Reo came over, Sentos spoke in a drone.
“Before the sun sets, there will be a ceremonial tipi of four sticks. There will be songs and drinking and dance and a feast. It is the ritual of White Painted Woman.”
Reo gave him a curious look and said to Buchanan, “Puberty rite for some girl.”
Sentos said, “The rite of the maiden. She is older than our own, your white woman, Buchanan. But no woman in the Apache tribe can be married to a warrior unless she has come of age according to the dance of White Painted Woman.” Sentos said it casually, so that Buchanan would know it was important.
Buchanan said, “You figure to marry her off?”
“She will marry a warrior tomorrow when the sun is highest.”
“What if she doesn’t like the idea?” Reo asked.
Sentos only grunted. He turned and poked his bony finger against Buchanan’s high chest. “My friend Buchanan, no harm will come to the white woman. But she will be the wife of a brave.”
“And then?”
“A few moons will pass, and she will carry a warrior’s child. And when she has slept on an Apache warrior’s pallet for that long, then she will be sent back to the white man with bad legs.”
Buchanan’s glance whipped around to Reo’s. Reo’s face was drawn and quietly angry. It was a cruel and brutal insult Sentos intended—to fill Marinda Warrenrode’s belly with an Apache’s baby and then dump her back on her father’s doorstep.
Sentos in his way was a wily match for old Warrenrode. Nothing he could do to Warrenrode’s daughter could hurt Warrenrode as much as this.
Sentos said, “The one with bad legs has killed two of my sons, Buchanan.” He picked up a scratching stick and rubbed it up and down his back. “He will have his daughter returned to him. You can tell him this, from Sentos. When the snow comes to the foothills, when the birds have flown to Mexico and the snakes sleep in bands, then he will have his daughter back.”
Buchanan said, “It’s a wrong thing to do, amigo. If you hate a man, then you should fight him. But a man who fights another man’s woman is not as much of a man as I always thought Sentos was.” He laid the full force of his ice-blue gaze against Sentos.
Sentos shook his head. “You are a brave man, Buchanan, but you are not Apache and you do not know the Apache way.”
“I know this much. If you do this to Warrenrode, you’ll make an enemy who will spend forty years hunting you if he has to. He’ll kill every Apache he sees. He’ll blame all Indians for what one Indian has done, and his men and his guns will give you no peace.”
Sentos shrugged. “Your white-eyed soldiers have tried. If they cannot trap the Apache, then I do not fear the man with bad legs.”
Sentos began to turn; then he swung back toward Buchanan and said in a very quiet voice, “He will hurt the way I have hurt. He will feel as I have felt—that he has knives sticking in his body.”
The old man threw down the scratching stick. He added, “You are my guests in the rancheria, and I am happy that you stay as long as you wish—eat my food, drink my drink, smoke my pipe, and accept the honor of the Apache village. But there will be no more talk of the white woman.”
With that, Sentos tramped away with stiff and choppy strides.
Buchanan said, “You can’t help seeing the old man’s point.”
“That’s exactly what I say,” Reo agreed eagerly. “Now, let’s just mosey on over and pick up our horses and make tracks out of here while the old bastard’s still in a good mood.”
“No,” Buchanan said. “We’ll take the girl with us when we go.”
“You’re joking.”
Buchanan shook his head. “Honest to God, Johnny.”
“Maybe you better count me out, then,” Reo said, and turned to walk away.
Buchanan said gently, “I wouldn’t do that, was I you.”
It stopped Reo and turned him around. “Why not?”
“I’m your ticket home,” Buchanan said. “You don’t mean a thing to these Indians. Long as you’re under my wing, you’re guaranteed safe conduct. But light out on
your own, and you’ll have every Apache in the mountains on your track.”
Reo lifted his finger. “We take the girl out of here, and we’ll have them on our track anyway.”
“All right, then. Suit yourself. But it’s going to get mighty lonesome out on that trail come nightfall.”
Reo considered it. “Yeah,” he muttered, “I see what you mean.” He looked up. “You’re a number one son of a bitch, you know that?”
“Me?” said Buchanan. “I’m just a peaceable man.” He tugged his hat down and sent his glance around slantwise, from hut to hut. “Let’s see if we can find the girl.”
Eleven
They found her but only at a distance. Three sturdy-looking Apaches with rifles barred Buchanan’s way.
He caught the reckless gleam in Reo’s eye. Reo was all ready to draw his gun, but Buchanan shook his head and said in a soft voice, “Can’t gunfight the whole tribe, Johnny.”
And so they stood there, trying to look innocent, and the three Apaches stood there, trying to look tough, and beyond the three Apaches the hill sloped down to where the creek ran by, and there worked a number of squaws, some of them wearing their infant children in cradleboards on their backs. Tramping around in knee-high moccasins, they tended a sparse cornfield by the creek. Farther along, three women crouched pulling up the root stocks of tule plants. And that was where Buchanan saw Marinda Warrenrode.
It was impossible to mistake her. No one had given her clothes; she wore a cotton blouse and skirt, or what was left of them. But it was her hair that made her easy to recognize so far away. Blonde as flax. The kind that seemed as white and fragile as corn tassels in the spring.
She was standing with her mouth clamped shut and her arms folded under her breasts, staring resolutely straight ahead and paying absolutely no attention to the abuse the squaws shouted at her. One of the squaws walked by and slammed a stick against Marinda’s arm and kept right on walking. Marinda didn’t stir. After a moment Buchanan saw why: her feet were tied together.
