by Jake Logan
He’d not heard a peep nor scuff of moccasin leather on rock since he’d gotten in this scrape, but he knew better than to trust that the Apache were gone. They were lurking somewhere close by.
Another hour dragged by. It became more of a chore for Slocum to rouse himself and fight his way out of the stupor and the increasing drowsiness that sickness from his wound and sunlight and lack of water was fast bringing him. And every time he did, and began to straighten up, maybe take a tentative inching step forward to cover the two feet to the cliff’s edge before him, either the lion to his right or the damned snake—or both in concert—would hiss and growl. So they were waiting him out, too, eh?
As the purple hues of dusk deepened into near full dark, Slocum did his best to work feeling back into his numbing limbs, planning what to do in the next few minutes. For he knew that the Apache would make their move under cover of darkness. And that was any second. As if to confirm what he suspected, he heard the slightest of whisperings from somewhere above. If he hadn’t been listening for it, he might well have mistaken it for a mouse foraging or a breeze rattling a dried stalk. But he knew better. The Apache were on the move.
He gripped his sheath knife in his left hand—ideal for slashing at the big rattler that he could just make out hadn’t yet moved from its warm-rock spot—and in his right hand he kept the rifle at the ready. He could use it to thrust at the lion, and trigger it off should the need arise. Now the biggest challenge facing him was the low, natural escarpment just before him on the edge of the cliff.
Slocum shuffled forward, hearing just what he expected—the rattling and hissing to his left and a more insistent growl from the lion to his right. Too bad, they’d just have to live with it. But now the Apache would hear the noises and know where he was, and that he was on the move.
Time to leave. He managed to heft his wounded leg up on the rock, and glanced over at the snake. It was gone, not a surprise considering the sun had gone down and its cold-blooded self might seek the warmth of its den somewhere close by. The lion had moved forward, one bold step closer to him, her ears pressed flat to her wide skull. A slash of moonlight flecked her eyes.
And then two things happened at once: The cause of the whispering, scuffing sound from on high showed itself—skylined above were two Apache, the rounded heads, shoulders, and drawn weapons all rimmed against the purpling sky. And then, without warning, the cat leapt at Slocum.
His plan had been to tenderly explore the edge of the rim, scooting along it back toward the east, to his left, hopefully avoiding the snake, should it still be somewhere nearby, and then slipping back to the route he’d taken before to get back to his horse and gear. But the leaping cat and the poised Apache changed all that. Now he slipped over the rocks, maintaining a tight grip on them as his feet—one good one, one numb and throbbing—scrabbled for a ledge, a lip of rock, anything. What he found was less than promising. As his feet flailed, the wounded leg bumped and thrashed the same as its companion against the rock face.
He’d already sheathed his knife on his belt, and didn’t have any easy way to secure the rifle, so he kept it gripped tightly, clunking it against the rock. The lioness’s frustrated shriek told him she’d been barely deceived by his quick ploy. But a second later, Slocum felt hot breath choking in his face just before the big cat’s mouth opened wide and lunged at his head. He gripped the rock tight with his left hand, and with his right, still gripping the rifle, he jammed it at her gaping maw as it drove straight at him.
Hot, razorlike pain flowered up his arm as his big knuckles collided with the cat’s incisors. It bit down and thrashed left to right, but most of what it clamped on was gun stock and steel. Slocum felt the beast’s teeth grind and snap, felt its blood mingle with his own as the great cat yowled and yanked on his hand and on the gun, not yet willing to give up the fight.
The cat’s ire forced from it a rank scent of rage, much as a cornered creature will exude a stink of fear. Slocum drew back on the gun and rammed it forward and harder at the cat’s thrashing mouth. Side to side the tawny-headed brute slashed, spittle flecking Slocum’s face like rancid rain, her deep-throated screams cutting the otherwise still, clear night with raw rage and pain.
All the while, Slocum’s trembling purchase on the rock had begun to slip. His left hand had formed into a cramped claw that felt ready to snap apart at the slightest movement. His feet still found no edge, no slightly jutting wrinkle in the rock. His boots drummed and toe-scraped the rock face.
Would it be a sheer face, straight down to the bottom? All those hundreds of feet down? Would he be able to haul himself back up to the relative safety of the ledge before he dropped? He opted for that last thought, even as the she-lion whipped her head once more to the right, peeling the rifle from his grasp. The gunstock struck him a dizzying blow to the temple. He heard the weapon continue dropping, into the coming night, and below him, it clacked once against rock, then silence.
The now-familiar hot wetness of blood seeped into Slocum’s right eye. Where was the cat? But he didn’t have long to wait—for he heard it padding off, making an almost spitting sound, not yet comprehending the pain in its mouth. Never had meat fought back in such a way, Slocum was sure of it. But musing about the cat, which sounded as if it were stalking off toward its lair, would get him nowhere but dead. With a mighty heave, he flung his right arm upward toward the ledge he’d spent the previous hours on—and that was when the slight shadow fell on him. Slocum looked up into the leering face of an Apache warrior.
For a brief moment they merely stared at each other, then two more Indians appeared, flanking the first. They all moved closer, seeming, from their wide mouths and glinting eyes, to be enjoying his predicament.
The first, in the center, slipped a broad blade free from his belt and with no warning brought it down fast and hard at Slocum’s outstretched right arm, which gripped the rock before him. His left was still gripping, barely, just below the rim, chin height to Slocum.
But he had to pivot and shift his weight to that hand, as well as to his chin—just in time, as the broad-bladed knife flashed downward, slashing at the spot Slocum’s hand had been. The blade ground hard, ringing against stone, and the bearer of the weapon howled a blue oath into the night air.
The three Apache moved as one—they grabbed for him, but Slocum had swung his weight back onto his right hand and chin, and with his freed left he risked its cramped state to grasp his own hip knife. He freed it from the sheath and swung it at the advancing three faces. From the shrieks and the way they pulled back, he was sure the keen edge of his blade found purchase in at least two of the three men’s chests and arms. It wasn’t enough to buy him much time, but he knew it would be a mere moment before the entire ledge was filled with Apache ready to drill bullet holes into his head, hands, arms, torso—anything they could see.
No, there was precious little way out of this up above. But down below? Who knew? Maybe a ledge? It was rare that a canyon wall didn’t have some sort of crack, crevice, or shelf. And then he felt strong hands grip his right, another hand clasped tight about his left wrist, squeezing the already rictuslike claw that was Slocum’s left hand until in seconds it proved completely helpless. His knife clattered against stone.
They began hauling him up, dragging him back up over the rocky lip to their waiting, hellish, torturous ways. This would be a fate far worse than dropping to death into a canyon. Still, he vowed to fight them with every last twitch of his body.
But something behind the Apache warriors had other plans.
The close-up hair-raising howl of a lion is blood-chilling at the best of times, but the shrieks of a wronged, enraged she-lion, wounded, angry, and filled with an all-consuming bloodlust incomprehensible to humans, seized all four struggling humans momentarily. For half a heartbeat, no one moved, then all hell broke loose. The Apache let go their hold on Slocum. His last vision in the near-dark above was of a
massive flailing form landing in the midst of the three shouting warriors. The yowling mother cat thrashed in all directions at once, dealing fang-and-claw fury veiled in a cloak of deafening rage that echoed far into the night.
As soon as the warriors let go of him, Slocum slammed back to the ledge, his chest hitting hard, and his legs and arms windmilling for purchase on anything at all. But they found none. He tumbled backward, still close to the rock. He sensed more than saw its massive presence to his left, felt air rushing by him, could see in his mind the hands of a clock slowing almost to a stop. Sound seemed to have pinched out, too. Then he hit.
His head bounced like a castanet against something much harder than a human skull, and his entire body sagged against it. But he was still conscious, awake, and aware. And what’s more, the sounds and smells and sights missing moments before all rushed back to him.
Slocum lay there a moment, his head ringing and aching and clanging all at once, aware that he had hit a ledge, though how far he’d fallen he couldn’t be sure. Wait . . . he heard something from above, a struggle—the cat and the Apache. So he couldn’t have fallen all that far—maybe a dozen yards or so. But who knew. Who was winning up there? he wondered. He hoped it was the powerful she-lion. Though if other Apache showed up soon, she might well die. Even if she lived, they would probably hunt her and her cubs, knowing that they roamed the high rocky knob and made it their home—and knowing she may have taken the lives of some of their warriors.
He felt with his hands, patting the rock beneath him, at the same time awkwardly edging his right boot outward. He hadn’t pushed it a few inches when his leg slipped off the rock. He almost pitched sideways from the shock.
“Easy, Slocum,” he said in a voice he hardly heard. It sounded as if he were speaking underwater. He compensated by crabbing his left hand outward from his body, out along the rock, and it came to an abrupt stop mere inches from his hip. Could the ledge be that narrow? Could he be that lucky? Apparently so. How long was it?
It took most of his strength just to sit up. He edged as close as he dared to the cliff wall and his legs swung downward, the wounded limb throbbing anew. His legs’ momentum almost pulled the rest of him with them. He stretched his left hand along the wall, felt the rock angle inward, and a vague flicker of hope let him think it might be a cave, a way into the rock face. Maybe even just big enough to crawl into and rest. He needed rest and time to think. He didn’t even know if he had any weapons with him anymore.
The rocky wall continued to angle inward, still only mere inches, but it might prove enough to serve him well, if his luck held. But within another second, he knew this would not be the case.
The first strike barely surprised him. If it were not for the sound accompanying it, Slocum would have thought he’d bumped the back of his hand against a rocky spur. But it was no rock, and the sounds were distinct enough—and rapidly gained more than one voice. It was the unmistakable increasing din of a nest filled with disturbed, writhing rattlesnakes. And in the moonlight, as Slocum drew back his stricken left hand, already feeling odd, pulsing and throbbing with a strange pain, in the moonlight he saw a massive rattlesnake slide out of the small cave and stare at him.
And that was when he recognized it as the snake from the ledge earlier. Had to be. And just his luck as, with the lion, it, too, was a mama. A very protective mama. And she curved and writhed ever closer, hissing and rattling the entire way.
The second bite hit the same arm, but higher up, through his ragged shirt. At the same time, Slocum had been retreating back to where he’d landed—mere inches away, but it was all the distance he had available to him. He saw the dull gleam of moonlight playing off the broad, thick girth of that mother snake—and she was coming straight for him. And followed by what looked like a dozen smaller versions of herself, all taking their time and heading toward nothing but him.
Funny, though, as he wasn’t all that concerned. Instead he felt odd, sort of thick and buzzy, as if he were drunk and wrapped in gauzy bandages. Must be the viper poison filling up his body. He’d seen men die horrible deaths as they filled with the stuff and there was no way to help them . . . And now, Slocum guessed it was his turn.
Everything seemed lighter, brighter, and as he looked at the slowly advancing shapes, he realized he should try to stop them somehow. He thrust his boots at them, but it didn’t seem to do any good, they just kept coming. He sensed he was near the end of his meager ledge, as he swung his right leg back up onto the narrow rock shelf, the big snake drove forward between his kicking boots, and with her wide, spadelike head raised up, she prepared to strike. The smaller forms slithered around her, under him, beside him, he felt them slide over his hands, press against his legs, one made its way up onto his belly . . . and that was when he ran out of ledge.
Slocum was vaguely aware that he was falling, and he knew he should be worried, knew that somehow this was it, the last of his days—and at night, too—but he felt only a thickening feeling, maybe something preventing him from breathing. He also was aware that something was on him, something that thrashed and flailed. Was it his own body? He didn’t know, had a vague idea that it might be a snake, though why he wasn’t sure.
And then, light and sound and feeling . . . everything just plain stopped.
3
The first thing he heard was a scream. Even before he opened his eyes, Slocum heard it. And it seemed to go on and on. Finally, he realized it was coming from his own mouth. Another voice joined his, but this one was smooth, low, soothing. He heard it for what seemed hours and eventually he realized that the other voice, his screaming voice, had stopped. But the soothing voice kept murmuring in his ear. What it said, he did not know, but it also did not seem to matter. Finally, though, he began to understand words in the soft murmuring, felt something touching him, a hand maybe, brushing his face, his arm, and feeling came back to him. But not much else. What was he doing here? And where was “here”?
“. . . be okay, just relax now. You hear? Everything’s gonna be just fine. Julep’s going to make sure nothing else bad happens to you, you hear?”
Slocum let the words float in his mind. He chewed on them, worried the edges, then finally understood them. And to his surprise, when he thought about replying, he heard another voice, hoarse and barely more than a whisper, but it was a voice, and he thought that maybe it was his own.
“Where am I? What . . . what happened?” The act of speaking brought with it an unimaginable pain, as if talking had unlocked a door, and the room within was filled with sharp pains, dull aches, and splitting, slicing, searing agonies. His head throbbed, and his arms and legs felt as though they had been ripped off then nailed back on with steel pins driven by sledgehammers.
The soft voice sounded again, but he didn’t understand what she was saying.
“Want to see . . . why can’t I see?” he said through teeth gritted against the pain.
He heard the woman sigh, then she said, “I shouldn’t. I covered your eyes because of your head bandage. Figured you might not be able to take the light just yet.”
“Please. I need to see . . .”
She sighed again. “Okay then. But you got to keep your eyes as closed as you can for a while yet. Just peep a little bit, promise me that.”
“Yeah, all right.”
Slocum felt gentle hands tugging at what must have been the wrappings on his head. Why was his head bandaged? But he had no further time to muse on the subject, because a fresh round of throbbing pain washed over him as brightness invaded his eyes. It took him just as long to overcome the pain as it did to begin to make out dim shapes. He didn’t speak for long minutes, and the woman, thankfully, didn’t say a thing either.
Finally he was able to make out what the shapes were, then details, and lastly, just when he was about to say something, a face edged into view. He felt sure he had died and gone to his great reward. He’d long been unsure
of just where he’d end up at the end of his days, his life being what it had been—a rough mix of good, bad, and ugly moments. But this creature staring down at him surely had to be an angel.
The light around her illumined her head from behind, but enough crept through and around her hair—golden hair at that—that he was able to see a kind, smiling face a few inches away from his. She had high cheekbones, a rounded face, a medium nose, not too sharp, nor too long, and full lips that rose in a smile.
“Are you . . . an angel?” he said in a croaking voice that had managed to come out barely above the previous whisper he’d emitted.
The angel giggled and shook her head. “I’ve been called a whole lot of things for a whole long time, mister, but I ain’t never been called an angel.” She leaned closer, laid a hand on his forehead. “I tell you, though,” she said, preoccupied with tending to him. “A girl could get used to that sort of talk.”
“How’s the flying snake man?” A voice almost seemed to shout from beyond the woman.
She turned and said in a loud whisper, “Hush, you! He’s come around and he don’t need your big voice muddying up his head. Leastwise not yet . . .”
“Who’s that?” said Slocum. He tried to raise himself up on his elbows, but the woman said, “Easy now. Take it easy there. That’s just Deke. He don’t do anything quiet.”
“She’s right,” said the big voice, but beside him now. “Julep’s right about most things. Like you, for instance. I swore you were a goner, but she told me to get on out and leave her alone. Said she’d fix you up, and by gum if she didn’t. Though with a fall like that, and snakebit and shot and all . . .”
The words the man spoke rattled through Slocum like a series of hard punches to his chest. It was like watching a speeding train whip by, and every window was filled with a picture of something that had happened to him that day. Within seconds he remembered it all, from waking up at the hot spring with the beautiful Apache maiden, the one he’d called “Princess,” then the chase across the plain, the Apache hot on his heels, his Appaloosa pounding hell-for-leather toward that rock pile, that damned knob of high rocks.
