by Jory Sherman
“I see one,” Bullard said. “And another’n right close to it.”
“Now, let your eyes roam over on both sides of it. A few feet each way. You might see more marks or tracks, disturbed soil.”
Zak smiled as Bullard passed him, his gaze locked to the ground. He was like a bloodhound on the scent. There were more tracks and Bullard was finding them, eager as a kid following the blood trail of his first deer.
Zak showed him how to look for bent branches, bruised blades of grass, a slightly dislodged pebble. All were signs of some walking creature having disturbed the natural order of the terrain. Bullard was an eager student and he began to notice things he would usually overlook.
“So, the Injuns taught you to track. But how did they do it? Like we’re a-doin’?” Bullard was curious. A good sign, Zak thought.
“We walked game trails, followed buffalo herds, looked at places where quail had dusted their feathers. They showed me tracks in snow and on sand. Sometimes they had me just sit in one spot and watch a small patch of ground for half a day or more. I watched ants, grasshoppers, doodlebugs, ticks on trees and leaves. I looked at small creatures until I could track an ant across a rock.”
“Really?”
“Almost,” Zak said, with a wry smile.
They came to a game trail less than a foot wide. There were deer tracks and horse tracks, bird tracks and rabbit droppings. The trail led deeper into the hills and mountains, and they saw a variety of plants: cactus, ocotillo, grass and sage, different kinds of trees. And the land began to break up into small ravines and washed-out gullies, little hills and bigger hills, a crazy quilt of patterns and designs that became bewildering passageways into a strange world, the world of the Navajo.
The horses they were tracking had broken up, all going separate ways.
“We won’t follow tracks any more today,” Zak said. “It’s too slow and taxing.”
“What now?” Bullard asked.
“Take to the high ground. See how far we can see. Move slow and listen. Smell. That’s part of tracking, too.”
“It is? How so?”
“These Navajos are already trying to hide their tracks, or didn’t you notice?”
“You mean all them flat rocks buried in the ground, the hardpan we crossed.”
“Yes. They don’t want anyone following them to wherever they’re going.”
“But you don’t know where they’re headed, huh?”
“I don’t know the exact place, but I might know the kind of place,” Zak said.
“What kind of place?” Bullard studied Zak’s face. Zak’s hat brim shaded most of it, and there was a slash of light across his mouth and chin. His eyes were dark vacancies, sunk in shadow.
“A safe place where they keep their women and kids. A place where they can grow corn and tend sheep. A place that can be defended with only a few men. A place where they can go in one way and out another.”
“You mean like a canyon?”
“A box canyon, maybe,” Zak said, “open on both ends. Or maybe several canyons converging on a valley.”
“We ain’t seen nothin’ like that so far.”
“No, but we’ve been climbing gradually for the past two hours or so. And that sun is falling away in the sky. Dusk comes early in the mountains. The watch you carry in your pocket is no good up here.”
“I reckon,” Bullard said.
They climbed to high ground, crossed a narrow ridge and dropped down into a saddleback ravine, then continued on to another peak and crossed still another ridge. On either side were broken terrain, gullies and washes, small hills, and dry creek beds.
Near sunset, Zak rode across a narrow, tree-choked ridge and stopped suddenly, Bullard right behind him.
“See somethin’?” Bullard whispered, his senses suddenly alert.
“No,” Zak said, “but there’s a steep drop-off just ahead and I smell wood smoke.”
Bullard raised his head slightly and sniffed. “I don’t smell nothin’,” he said.
Zak held up a hand. Then he cupped his right ear. He turned his head toward the drop-off.
Bullard sniffed a few more times.
“Listen,” Zak whispered.
The slight breeze was blowing in circles. Shifting, changing, as if the currents were uncertain at that altitude. Zak figured they were at about nine or ten thousand feet above sea level.
Bullard started nodding.
They both heard snatches of voices. Voices that faded and became almost inaudible then vanished.
Zak signaled to Bullard to dismount. He climbed out of the saddle. He tied Nox to a small pine tree, gestured for Bullard to do the same. Then the two crept up to the drop-off, both hunched over like cats stalking a bird or a squirrel.
They squatted at the edge and looked down. There was a wide valley below them. Smoke rose in the sky and turned to tangled cobwebs once it reached the draft blowing through. There were canyons on both sides, and they saw hogans and horses and heard children’s laughter, the shrill high-pitched voices of women, the faint tink of a wooden spoon on a clay bowl, the bleating of sheep. And at the far end were small fields with corn planted in clumps, the stalks knee-high, and tree stakes where beans climbed in spirals and jiggled in the breeze.
Men rode in and out of both ends of the canyon on unshod horses, and there were men smoking in front of their hogans or washing their faces in the small creek that threaded through the valley like a small silver snake.
Bullard’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened.
“That’s their damned camp,” he breathed.
“One of them, anyway,” Zak said, and he knew that every minute they stayed where they were, they were in danger.
He made a quick count of the men he could see.
It was not a small camp. And it had been occupied for some time. He counted more than fifty men, and then froze.
One of them was looking up toward them, shading his eyes from the sun. It seemed to Zak that the Navajo warrior was not only looking at him, but straight into his eyes.
He clamped a hand on Bullard’s arm.
“Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t even breathe.”
The Navajo brave, a statue, naked except for a breechcloth and moccasins, continued to stare straight at them.
As if the man knew they were there.
Chapter 11
The Navajo brave down in the valley pointed to the ledge and began yelling something in his native tongue.
“Move,” Zak said, scooting backward, away from his perch.
Bullard wriggled to get out of sight of the Navajo camp.
“Let’s light a shuck,” Zak said, running to his horse. He swung up into the saddle. A moment later Bullard was mounted, and the two rode into the trees and headed downslope.
“Where to?” Bullard asked.
“Just follow me, Randy.”
Zak picked his trail, weaving in and out of trees and passing over hardpan when he could, nosing Nox through heavy brush and over small boulders, putting spurs to him when there was enough open space to run. The sun sank over the western rim of the Sangre de Cristos and beyond the Jemez, burning the last daylight in the sky, rimming the red-smeared clouds with silver and gold. Its yellow light turned the azure sky to a pale blue-green pastel as it spread out in a wide fan to mix the colors.
Both men were panting. Sweat oiled their faces, soaked through their clothes. The horses were not lathered, but their hides were slick with perspiration. Zak wheeled Nox into an aperture between two low ridges, turned into a shallow gully filled with rocks and brush. He reined up and scanned his surroundings.
They were protected from direct rifle fire as long as they stayed in the gully, and nobody could approach from either end without being seen. It was not a good spot for a long siege, but it would serve as a temporary place to rest. More than that, the acoustics were perfect. He could hear someone coming on horseback or foot from some distance away, where they were.
“We
stayin’ here?” Randy asked, his sides heaving, his breathing deep and labored from the exertion.
“We might lay up here until the sun goes down,” Zak said.
“Good. I’m out of breath.”
“Just listen for a while, Randy. Listen real hard.”
The horses stood hipshot, catching their breaths. Sweat striped their coats, trickled down their legs, dripped from their fetlocks. Flies swarmed for the fresh, salty liquid, and the breeze that had cooled them as they rode died out in that sunken bowl, turning it into a steam bath.
The two men listened for several minutes. They heard neither human voices nor the sound of hoofbeats. A red-tailed hawk flew over, dragging its corrugated shadow along one of the ravine walls, then floated out of sight without making a sound. The silence rose up around them and enveloped them. They began to breathe in regular, smooth breaths as they both wiped sweat from their foreheads, faces, and necks. The horses did not show signs of alarm; Zak was watching both of them, looking at their ears, which were more powerful than his own.
Bullard pulled out his pack of cigarettes and was just about to shake one out and stick it between his lips when both men straightened up as if their spines had turned to ramrods. Both horses brought up their heads and their ears stiffened to hard cones and began to twist toward the sound.
Zak heard the clank of an iron hoof on stone, then a cascade of falling rocks less than fifty yards from them. From another direction, there was the sound of many hoofbeats. These were muffled, with no clang of metal against stone.
Both men craned their necks to peer out of the gully. Bullard stood up in his stirrups.
A rider halted his horse and waited there in plain view while the sounds of the unshod horses grew louder. A few seconds later the halted rider was surrounded by several Navajos, all buck naked except for breechcloths and moccasins.
The lone rider on the shod horse was wearing an army uniform, a billed campaign hat tight on his head. His Spencer jutted out of his boot. He started signing with his hands and Zak heard snatches of disconnected Spanish words. One of the Navajos also spoke in Spanish.
The meeting did not last long. The soldier turned his horse and rode back toward the valley of the Rio Grande. All of the Navajos, a dozen or more, followed after him.
“That horse the soldier was riding was a bay mare,” Zak said. “Just like the one I shot at up in those trees.”
“It sure was. And I recognized the trooper,” Bullard said. He licked dry lips. “About swallered my own throat. A fucking traitor.”
“The soldier was a Mexican,” Zak said.
“Sure was. That was Sergeant Renaldo Dominguez. Good old Naldo, the sonofabitch.”
Zak said nothing. His eyes narrowed to slits as the sounds of the riders faded away and the land settled back into silence.
Shadows crawled down the sides of the ravine, filled the gully.
They heard more horses pass by, within fifty yards, following the same course as the previous riders.
“I wonder what Naldo’s up to, what he told them redskins,” Bullard said when it grew quiet again.
“We can’t risk finding out right now,” Zak said.
“We goin’ to stay here?”
“No, but we’ll have to find a safe place to spend the night.”
“Hell, it’s practically night already.”
“Don’t light up any cigarettes, Randy. We’ll go out the other end, walk our horses real slow and find a spot to lay out our bedrolls.”
“I don’t cotton much to stayin’ out here all night.”
“It might be the safest place.”
They waited another hour, until it was pitch dark. Then they made their way slowly out of the tangle of brush and climbed back onto flatter land. Zak looked at the stars and got his bearings, then proceeded to follow a ridge down onto a wide, flat place that was dotted with conical hills, cactus, and lava dust.
They stopped often to listen, but widened the distance between them and the gully, wending ever eastward and holding close to the higher hills. Zak saw a promising configuration and rode up a slope to the top of a ridge. Hills surrounded them like the shadows of giant reptiles, snaking in and out of lesser hills, flat terrain, and higher peaks. It was like riding through a deserted landscape in another world. They could not see far, and so relied on the horses to pick their way along the ridgeline.
They found a cluster of scrub pines and gnarled juniper bushes and Zak reined up. He rode around the place and looked at it from every angle.
“This might be good,” he said. “No reason for a Navajo to ride up here, and if we stay in the trees, we can’t be seen by anybody riding below on either side of us.”
“What about the horses?”
“We’ll grain and water them just enough so that they won’t grumble about it much,” Zak said.
“Unsaddle ’em?”
“No. We might have to leave in a hurry. No hobbles, either.”
“All right,” Bullard said. “Wish I could smoke, though.”
“Tomorrow,” Zak said.
They tied the horses apart from each other, at either end of the tree cover.
Bullard laid out his bedroll after brushing away rocks to smooth the ground where he lay his blanket. Zak laid his sleeping gear out near Nox at the opposite end of the copse of trees, kicking rocks out of the way and scraping the ground free of small stones.
“It’s awful quiet up here,” Bullard said.
“We’ll stand watches. I’ll take the first. You get some sleep.”
“I’ll try. I keep thinkin’ of all them redskins we saw. They’s only two of us and God knows how many Injuns.”
“Don’t worry about them, Randy. They’re not worried about us. Get some shut-eye.”
Bullard took off his hat and stripped off his gun belt. He laid his Spencer next to his blanket and lay down.
In a few minutes, he was asleep.
Zak sat down with his rifle, the trees at his back. He looked at the stars and chewed on a piece of hardtack, washed the mass down with water from his canteen.
He had spent many such nights in the wilderness, out on the plains, up in the Rockies. He enjoyed the solitude and the stars, the vast expanse of the night sky, and when the moon rose, he looked down on a mysterious world of strange shapes and undecipherable shadows. The night land had its own rhythms and pulses. Creatures moved about, hunting, sniffing, listening, and he felt a part of that world.
He thought of Naldo Dominguez, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, now a deserter, or at least in cahoots with Narbona and the renegade Navajos. What was his mission? Why would a man give up his duty as a soldier and join such an enemy? What was behind all the predations along the Rio Grande, and the two white men who had been with Narbona and then gone into Santa Fe? There seemed no sense to any of it.
But Zak knew that everything made sense, eventually.
A man had to figure it out, no matter how puzzling it all seemed.
But this was something he had never encountered before. This was Navajo land, and it held many mysteries.
How could an army, a troop of cavalrymen, go up against such enemies? This was not the plains or the mountains. Here, the enemy could melt away in a thousand mazes and leave no track. Worse, the enemy had no clear face. It was a mix of races and faces. If it came to a fight, army against army, where was the battlefield? Who was the enemy?
Who was the enemy?
That was the question.
Chapter 12
Randy stood at Zak’s feet, nudging the sole of Zak’s boot with his toe. Zak awoke immediately, threw off his blanket, and sat up. It was still dark, but Zak knew that it was close to dawn. The chill breath of a breeze blew at his face, seeped through his clothing to his skin. He grabbed his rifle and stood, adjusting his eyes to the moonlit darkness, the star sheen gleaming like liquid metal on the bill of Bullard’s cap.
“Report,” Zak whispered. Sometimes the military in him came to the forefront. This was o
ne of those times, he realized.
“Sir, I didn’t know how far sound could travel at night. Out here, I mean. This is a good outpost. I heard riders way off.”
“Any of them come close?”
“No, but I heard activity. Couldn’t tell exactly where the noises was comin’ from, but I heard a lot of horses. Goin’ west, up into the hills where we was yesterday. Up to that Navajo camp.”
“Did you eat?”
“I sure did, Zak. Gnawed through hardtack and jerky, gobbled down a cup of rancid beans.”
Zak suppressed a laugh.
“How long ago did you hear the horses?”
“A while after I took over your watch. Maybe an hour later. Sounded like they was all strung out.”
“No talk?”
“Didn’t hear none.”
“So, the Navajos and Sergeant Dominguez went somewhere and came back. A raid?”
“Maybe,” Bullard said.
“Might be safe for us to ride down to the valley and see what Captain Vickers has to say.”
“You’re the boss, Zak.”
“I’ll ride down first, then give a whistle if it’s clear. You wait up here. You hear anything, you give me a whistle.”
Zak rode down to the flat. He dismounted, put his ear to the ground. He heard nothing. He whistled, then climbed back up in the saddle.
He waited for Bullard to join him, then rode to the east, following the easiest path through hills and mounds, stopping every so often to listen. It was still cool and there was a slight breeze blowing down from the mountains at their backs. The horses were frisky and stepped out well on the volcanic dust, their hooves landing solid on the hardpan. They would leave tracks, Zak knew, but that was unavoidable. It was still full dark, but he could feel the dawn flexing its muscles just below the horizon. He wanted to get back to the old camp before the sun rose high enough to strike them full in their faces. They rode out of the jumble of hills and he knew they were making good time on the downhill ride to the valley.
