by Jake Logan
This was a rough lot. If this was the entire tribe, they numbered three, maybe four dozen in all, small whimpering children, naked and filthy, included. And yet above, surprisingly clean and with shining hair and a bold, defiant look in her eyes, stood the young princess, or so he called her, on the same rock. Her hands were folded across her ample breasts, her hide dress much cleaner than those on the other women.
What was her secret? And more to the point, where was her father, the chief? Slocum didn’t see anybody who might resemble a chief. In full daylight, not even Broad Chest looked much like a chief, even though hours before, the big Indian had been only too willing to let Slocum assume that he was.
He looked up at the princess. It was as if she’d awaited his eye, and when she caught his gaze, she looked proudly up the rocky ravine. Slocum followed her gaze and saw what she was looking toward, that the path continued on, snaking between the grimy people and the hovels before him. He saw a fuller, thicker plume of new smoke rising up from a fire farther on. This rocky place, it seemed, contained further mysteries.
“Where are you all takin’ us?” shouted Mort, staggering forward as one of the warriors kicked his backside. “I got to have a rest, I tell ya! I’m about done in!”
“Shut up, Mort,” hissed Julep. “You ain’t helping matters by yammering and complaining.”
Slocum chose to ignore Mort’s increasing level of whining. The fat man had been blubbering about poor Shinbone being mistreated, about how Lemuel had been a good man, and that Mort also wasn’t up to the task of walking much farther that day, not without rest. Apparently Shinbone had worked him hard, in an effort to punish him for losing the pack animal on their return to the canyon. But if it was sympathy that Mort was looking for, he wasn’t about to get any from Slocum.
Then the wailing began. It drowned out poor Mort’s whining. And even before Slocum looked to see where the noise was coming from, he knew it was for the two dead Apache. The ones he and Julep had killed. If they got out of this alive, it would be a miracle. Why in God’s name had he thought he could pull this off? If he had any sense at all, he would have up and ridden off without a look back at any of them, left Julep in the canyon—somehow she was one strong-willed woman, so that would have been a heck of a trick—and headed any direction but toward the Apache camp.
Curse me for a fool, thought Slocum. But he knew he couldn’t have gone in any other direction but toward the people who needed help. The Apache, no matter that they drove him to the brink, literally, nonetheless needed to know what was coming. And since he had few other options at present, he had to concentrate on convincing them that they were soon to be attacked. And unless they had some secret horde of warriors and weapons, they were doomed.
He had to convince them that they must flee this place. He believed they could outrun Deke’s army, if only because they had no heavy weapons to lug with them. That argument, if he lived long enough to present it, would be tricky. The Apache were a proud, noble people who would likely consider fleeing to be on par with the lowest lows of cowardice. And that was something he could understand. But he had to convince them that leaving in this instance meant living to fight another day.
He also had to save his skin, Julep’s skin, and though it pissed him off, he supposed he was also responsible for the lives of Mort and Shinbone, too.
They were herded along the winding path, and while the wailing continued behind them, a few members of the gathered bedraggled Indians peeled off and joined the procession. Slocum assumed they were also mourning members of the dead Indians’ close families. A cold knot of shame coiled in his gut, and anger with himself crept into his mind, though he had been forced into the killings.
“John.” Julep looked at him, and he saw genuine fear in her eyes and a tear forming. “John, what can I expect from them? I mean to say . . . what will they do to me?” She straightened, thrust her chin out, and kept walking. “I want to be prepared,” she said.
“You’re a bold woman, Julep. Apache value that. Don’t be anything less than what you are. But at the same time, try not to antagonize them. Mort keeps on running his mouth and he’ll feel their sting.”
As if he had been heard by the Apache nearest them, the man edged between them with a lance, as if to pry them apart.
“What are you doing?” said Julep.
Slocum said, “Remember what I said, Julep. Be strong, but don’t antagonize. Don’t be afraid to shout for me. I’ll do my best to help you.”
She nodded at him as they were led apart.
“Do not worry, white man,” said a bold voice. Slocum looked from Julep to the man who had spoken. The man looked familiar, and Slocum knew he had to be the chief. He recognized him from the chase that day weeks before, as the man who had led the others on horseback and raged at him while they galloped hard on his heels across the flats.
“We are not animals. We do not kill needlessly, nor do we torture without cause. Unlike whites.”
The man spoke very good English, and this told Slocum that he had most likely been educated in a white school, maybe by missionaries. But that line of questioning would have to wait.
Slocum watched as they led Julep to a small hut, hide-wrapped and low. One brave led her in and returned shortly. Slocum presumed they had tied her to something inside. He hoped so, as his mind raced through any number of other possibilities, none of which bore consideration.
He stopped struggling against his bonds and fixed the chief with a hard glare. “You had better hope so, Chief. I am not in a position to do much more than talk, I realize that, but I will promise you, if she is harmed in any way, and I have even the slightest opportunity to exact revenge, believe me, I will.”
“I will keep that in mind, white man. And I will also make sure we don’t give you that opportunity.” The man seemed to almost smile, then he jerked his head to the side, nodded toward a hut similar to the one they’d stashed Julep in. Broad Chest prodded Slocum in the back, gestured toward the hut with his expressionless face.
“Hold on a minute. I have to talk with the chief.”
The chief yammered in Apache tongue at the man, his eyebrows raised in question. Finally the chief nodded and stared at Slocum. “Talk now.”
“You have got to get on out of here. This place is a powder keg waiting to be touched off.”
The chief actually looked as though he might smile. “What makes a white man say such things? Always it is something terrible that the Apache must do, all for the sake of the white man.”
“I understand how you might feel that way, but you have to listen to me. It’s about those folks down in the canyon. I know all about it and how it used to be your home.”
“You are from there.”
“Not exactly. I spent time there, but I sort of . . . dropped in on them. While I was there, I found out that they have a whole lot of weapons stockpiled down there—and you and your people are their first target. Any day now.”
The chief regarded him for a long moment, then said, “Did you kill my people?”
Slocum felt that the chief already knew the answer, but as he opened his mouth to respond, a howl of rage from behind him made him turn.
There was Shinbone, weaving and unsteady, his shirt ripped off his back and hanging in shreds, and a crazed look in his glassy eyes. He held a gleaming knife, the cutting edge of the blade held tight against the fleshy roll of Mort’s neck. The fat man gasped, his mouth working like that of a beached fish, his dimpled hands pawing at Shinbone’s sinewy forearms, wrapped tight across Mort’s flabby chest.
“Stay back, you savage bastards!” Shinbone spun Mort this way and that as the Apache, all grinning—obviously enjoying this rare spectacle—gathered into an ever-tightening ring around him.
Slocum guessed that when the Apache cut his straps that bound his wrists to his ankles and let him flop off the horse, they might have cut t
oo much. Shinbone, probably playing possum, had bided his time and took the chance as it presented itself.
“Shin,” gagged Mort. “What you doing? Gaah! Shin?”
“Shut up, damn your worthless hide. You’re my ticket out of this viper nest. You open your mouth one more time and I’ll carve that flapping tongue out for once and all.”
It seemed to Slocum as if Shinbone was regaining his balance and vision more and more by the second. The Apache didn’t appear to be in any hurry to prod ol’ Shin; rather it looked as if they were enjoying themselves. And then the unexpected happened. A young Apache burst through the line just behind Shinbone. He was muscled out well, and nearly as tall as a full-grown man. Despite all that, Slocum didn’t think he was much more than fourteen years old, and reminded Slocum of the youth they’d had to kill back at the canyon’s mouth.
But what caught everyone’s attention was the knife he wielded. Unlike Shinbone’s, this one did not glint in the sunlight, but looked to be a dark, vicious slab of well-used, well-bloodied metal. As Shinbone turned, lugging struggling Mort by the neck, with no hesitation the young warrior thrust the dagger halfway up Shinbone’s back, just to the side of his spine.
The tall man’s eyes snapped impossibly wide, his head jerked back on a stalk of veined neck that tightened and trembled. All the people gathered about him stared in quiet shock at what they had just seen. A thin stream of blood trickled from Shin’s mouth, pushed out by an equally thin cry, as if made by a baby heard from far-off. Then the tall man’s body convulsed, and as he did so, the knife he held to Mort’s fat neck sank in deep.
Mort’s eyes grew rounder, even as blood welled over the blade, slowly spilling down his shirtfront. The wound—and Shinbone’s tight grip—prevented Mort from screaming, though his mouth pantomimed it well. But Mort’s feeble pawing grip seemed to grow stronger as Shinbone’s waned. The fat man swung and bucked and spun, and somehow this burst of power forced the spinning, bleeding mass of two men to spin, in an odd death dance, while those around them merely watched in horror at the quick-fire scene. The Indian boy, still holding the handle of his knife, worked it deeper into Shin’s back, a determined look on the youth’s face, his teeth gritted, and his eyes squinting at the blood beginning to spray at him. Only then did the boy release his hold on the deep-set knife.
A last burst of reflexive energy from Shinbone whipped the tall man’s knife arm outward in a wide arc. As he spun, the blood-drenched tip of the long blade caught the youth square in the chest and lodged there.
All three stabbed figures stood erect, eyes wide, staring at everyone, staring at nothing, at the last things they each would ever see, perhaps the clear blue sky, a high-up cloud scudding slowly from somewhere to somewhere, before the beauty of the world winked out for each of the three dead men, and they collapsed in a lifeless pile of meat.
Slocum had never seen anything quite like that before. Apparently neither had anyone else. For what seemed an eternal minute, the gathered Apache stared in disbelief at the instant horror they had witnessed. All told, the gruesome event had taken no more than a few quick seconds, perhaps the time it takes to shout to a friend.
And then the wailing really started. The only thing Slocum could be grateful for was that Julep hadn’t had to see it. No matter what type of men Shinbone and Mort had been, they were still her kin, if not her friends. It was bound to be a shock when she found out what had happened.
One howling voice rose above the rest, a reedy, tremulous thing that rang with the grief of a long life lived in a hard way. Slocum traced it to a thin old man who pushed his way through the crowd and hunched over the young dead man. He pushed at the bodies of Mort and Shinbone until some of the other warriors grasped the dead white men and dragged them off the body of the youth. The old man bent low over the boy’s body, wailing and beating his fists against the boy’s stilled chest.
Finally he ceased, but his eyes, rimmed with red and set above a long, hawklike nose and grim slit of a mouth, seemed to search the crowd until they settled on Slocum. With speed that betrayed his apparent age, the old man leapt to his feet and let the young man’s head drop unceremoniously to the bloodied earth. He screeched something in Apache, but Slocum didn’t need to know the lingo to gather that the old man didn’t want to palaver over a cup of hot coffee.
“Chief, what’s he want?” Slocum asked without taking his eyes from the advancing old man.
“That boy was his grandson. He loved him very much. The old one wants blood coup.”
“But I didn’t kill the kid.” Slocum braced for the old man’s attack. Rarely had Slocum seen anyone so determined.
“That doesn’t matter. To him, you are white, and that is enough to fight for.”
“I’d rather we spent the time discussing what I came here to tell you—that the whites in the canyon are planning on attacking you all.”
But by then the old man had stalked up to Slocum and begun ranting in his face. Spittle flecked from his mouth. Unlike Shinbone’s final moments, when everyone saw his stumpy black teeth gnashing the air as if he were chewing a troublesome wad of gristle, the old man’s teeth were impressive, white, and whole. And up close, he looked a whole lot younger. His body was leaner, less wrinkled, and more muscled than Slocum had first seen. Perhaps the shock of seeing his grandson die was too brutal for him and so at first he had seemed frailer.
The old man wasn’t concerned with politeness and stepped in close, thrusting his hands, palms out, into Slocum’s chest. He kept at it, no one interfering, pushing Slocum backward, though Slocum was having as little of it as he could stand, and tried to push back with his head and chest. He didn’t want to harm the old man, but he was being urged to fight.
“I’m not the man who killed your grandson!” he shouted, even though he knew, according to the chief, that the old man didn’t care. He just wanted blood revenge on a white. And he was the only white around—except Julep. That thought changed everything.
Finally, Slocum held his ground, a difficult thing to do with the old man coming at him like a determined lynx. “Enough!” shouted Slocum. To the chief, he said, “I will fight him, but he is old, and it will not be a fair fight. Just please don’t let him take it out on the white woman. She had nothing to do with any of this. She is innocent. As innocent as are you and most of your people. Do you hear me?”
The chief clapped his hands above the hubbub and noise of the crowd. A number of warriors, some of whom Slocum recognized, gathered around in another ragged circle. One man slit the ropes binding Slocum’s wrists, and he muttered a low groan of relief, rubbing his raw wrists tenderly.
The chief tossed two knives to the dirt between Slocum and the old man and nodded toward them, muttering something. To Slocum, he merely said, “Only one lives.”
The old man, once again showing his catlike agility, snatched up a knife, then retreated a few paces, allowing Slocum to do the same. Once each man was armed, they circled like game cocks in a ring, the old man nearly smiling, his sneer was so wide.
He growled and lunged, closing the gap between them. Slocum sidestepped, but at the last second, the old man’s knife flicked and caught Slocum in the side, slicing through his shirt and nicking his rib cage. It stung and served to remind Slocum that the old man was indeed out for his blood, every last drop of it, if his determined look was any indication.
They continued in such a fashion, with the gathered crowd beginning to enjoy the blood sport. The chanting increased, and the crowd pressed closer. Sweat stung Slocum’s eyes, and he learned quickly that the old man was more than his match. It could well prove to be Slocum’s last go-round. But not without a damn good fight, he told himself, and in a move that broke the little dancing routine the two combatants had locked themselves into, Slocum spun in the opposite direction and drove a dusty boot into the side of the old man’s head.
The leathery face snapped sideways, a too
th pinged from the angry mouth like a thrown pebble, and the old man’s shoulders sagged. But only for a moment. Then he recovered, danced back in, closer than Slocum had expected. The old man lunged in tight once more, hoping to catch Slocum with an upper-thrusting blow to the gut. But Slocum had been in his share of fights, enough to know what to expect from such a move. He parried again, and as the old man overshot, Slocum spun to the side, then quickly drove the butt end of the knife’s thick handle down hard at the base of the old man’s skull. The old Apache dropped to the dusty earth like a sack of rocks.
Not quite unconscious, the old man lolled facedown in the dirt in a daze. Slocum staggered over and kicked the knife from the gnarled hand, then looked briefly at the weapon in his own hand before tossing it beside the other one, at the feet of the chief.
“Only one lives,” said the chief, a dour look on his dark face.
“Nothing doing.” Slocum shook his head, trying to catch his breath. “The old man’s angry, but he’s angry with the boy, not with me. The boy brought his death on himself.” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “I had nothing to do with it.” He held his arms wide and walked slowly around the circle, staring into the faces that stared back at him. “I came here to warn you about the white men who would do you much harm. I didn’t have to do that, you know. Why do you suppose I did that?” He paused before the chief. “Now will you listen to me?”
The chief stared at him a moment, then cut his eyes to the old man, whose labored breathing had begun to soften and even out. To Broad Chest, he said, “Help the old one to care for his grandson.” He looked back to Slocum, but still addressed Broad Chest. “And tie this one to the post in the hut.”
