by Lou Bradshaw
He was still scrambling to get up when I was halfway to where Dog was holding the last one at bay. The desperado was on the ground and scooting backward as Dog crept closer and closer. His knife was in his right hand and he was trying to get to his gun with his left hand. If he’d have shifted that knife, he could have plucked that gun right out of his holster. But a beast like Dog can have that kind of effect on folks. I drew back and sent that twelve inch blade flying. It caught him in the middle just below the breast plate. He grabbed the hilt and tried to pull it out with both hands before the lights went out in his eyes, and he fell back.
Pulling the knife out, I cleaned it with the shirt I was ripping off him. Tobe came up behind me and I said to him,
“Start stripping them, I want them buck neked. Take anything in their pockets and all their weapons… “Go! Now!” he went.
Then I took his scalp and hacked him up some with the tomahawk and moved to the next one. With two fresh scalps and two men hacked up I got to Crocket as he was finishing stripping the ugly mustached one. And as I took his scalp, I explained,
“We want anyone following them to think they ran into some Apaches. This is what they would do to a fallen warrior… They chop ‘em up, so they can’t get revenge in the next life, if they should meet up.”
“We’ll take everything they had including their horses. The Rurales won’t go up into those mountains chasing a handful of Indians… They’re smarter than that… We’ll let the horses loose up there somewhere, and bury any of that other truck that we can’t use.”
In a few minutes, we had everything bundled up and tied on behind Tobe’s saddle.
Chapter 7
It took a little, to locate the entrance to the trail Captain Bailey had indicated, but we finally did and started up into the mountains. The range called Sierra de Los Ajos is an isolated group of peaks. It has one feature in common with the rest of the western Sierra Madres; it may not poke holes in the sky, but it’s steep.
The trail we were on was no more than a game trail. It had been used by people and a few horses, you could tell by the way the earth had been packed. But there hadn’t been any horse traffic on it in several years. That had probably been Bailey’s last attempt. Leading three horses plus the ones we were riding would leave some scars.
It was a scramble any way you looked at it, but there was no way to avoid it. We would eventually get to about eight thousand feet and go over the back side of the highest peak and come down the southern slope.
We’d been climbing for several hours, and Tobe Crocket hadn’t said a word. That was fine with me, but it was unlike him. He usually had more to say than I cared to listen to, so I listened to his tone rather than what he said. If there was urgency in his voice, I paid attention. I figured he was still some shocked by our little disagreement with the banditos.
When I reckoned it was safe to let those extra horses loose I called a halt in a little copse. There was a little grass and some edible brush to keep them occupied. Normally, I’d have kept them, but the way things stood at that time, extra horses were more baggage than I wanted to carry. We stripped the gear and stashed it in the rear of that copse.
Next we went through their things. There wasn’t much worth hauling away. They had one rifle that could take a .44 cartridge, and it wasn’t in bad shape, so we kept it. There were a couple of rusty old six guns, which would likely blow up sooner or later. We kept most of their bandoleer ammunition. We found twenty dollars in gold pieces, and a handful of pesos. I let the boy keep the gold… he could use it.
We mounted and left while those broomtails were cropping the grass and brush. That would have made a nice campsite, but I didn’t want those horses to get too familiar with us. An hour later we found a place to make coffee and do a little cooking over a small smokeless fire. Tobe started to strip the saddle off his horse and I said,
“We won’t spend the night here… We’ll go on up a couple of miles and find another place. I don’t know if they’re out this far from the village, but if they are, they’ll be drawn to the lingering smells.”
That seemed to make sense to him, but he still didn’t have anything to say. So when we’d finished our meal and cleaned up the area I asked him,
“What’s the problem, you don’t seem to be yourself. You upset because I mutilated those bodies and took the scalps?”
“No… I understood that. I know why, and I know that ain’t something you do all the time. It’s just that… that…oh never mind…”
“Get it off your chest, son… You keep it bottled up and it will eat at you.”
“I don’t know how to put it…. But dammit, Cain, you did all the work… you and Dog…. And, Cain…I was plumb scared to death. My teeth were chattering and I was shakin’ up until that fella jumped off his horse and drug me to the ground…. He was a lot stronger than me, and I just knew I was gonna die any second.”
“But you didn’t die.”
“Only because you killed him. If you hadn’t come when you did, I doubt I could have held out for another minute.”
“It all turned out right. And neither one of us got killed… or bad hurt.”
“But I didn’t do my part…and I was almighty scared.”
“I was scared…. All sane men are scared at times like that. Bein’ scared is probably what kept you alive long enough for me to get there. A certain amount of fear is a good thing to have. It’s goin’ to make you fight harder and longer than you would if you were just plain mad.”
“You held that fella till I could get to him. You did your part, and don’t you ever doubt it…. Dog did the same thing… He held that hombre at bay till I got there…. And that was all I was hopin’ from either one of you. I guarantee you got a lot to learn if you plan to go ridin’ the wild side…. But for right now, the most important thing you have to learn is to do what I tell you without a hesitation or a question…. It could save your life or mine.”
“You were scared?”
“I reckon, but if you tell anyone, I’ll have to come after you with my tomahawk…. Now let’s get on up the trail.”
We moved out into the failing light. But there would be light enough for us to find a place for another half hour. We found a cozy little brush choked canyon about a mile or so up the trail. There wasn’t much of a moon due to an overcast sky. A person could see the outlines of trees and rocks against the sky, but beyond that we may as well have been in a cave.
Dog nudged me, and my eyes were wide open, but mostly my ears were searching for sound. What I heard was “clop” and then “click”. It came from down the trail, but it wasn’t close. I shook Tobe to let him know we had company coming. I told him to stay with the horses and keep them quiet. I found a place with good cover where I hoped to be able to see them go by and hope they did go by.
What was worrying me was the click, which was a shod horse. As they came closer I could hear more than one horse. There were several shod horses and a number of unshod horses as well. As they passed, I got myself low enough to see their faint shape against the sky. Dog was right beside me and eager to get things started. I put a hand on his head and he calmed a bit.
As they went through the little sky gap between the trees, I counted two Apaches in the lead, two men wearing sombreros, and three Apaches in the rear. I heard rather than saw each man move by, and the last one stopped just after he passed my sky gap view. Had he seen or heard or just felt something? He waited for a short while, and then he moved on.
The men wearing the sombreros were slumped over. I couldn’t tell if they were hurt or just tired, but they didn’t appear to be were honored guests.
I had a pang of guilt for not opening up on the Apaches, or at least killing the prisoners. But I couldn’t afford to even let them know we were here. I assumed the prisoners were either a pair of fleeing banditos or what was left of a Rurale patrol. Whatever they had been, I knew and they knew what they would soon be. And they would have a few more days to think about it.<
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Neither Dog nor I moved until I could hear no more sounds of their travel. I couldn’t figure why they were traveling so late at night. Most Indians didn’t like to fight at night, but that didn’t apply to traveling at night. I knew little about the southern tribes, especially the desert people. What I knew came from my friend Rubio. When Crocket left the horses and joined Dog and me I told him,
“We been kissed by the Angels, boy. They missed our signs in the dark. Those horses we turned loose must’ve wandered off, or went back down. There were five Injuns and two Mexican prisoners… They must have been layin’ up waitin’ for dark.”
“Are we gonna go after them and save those prisoners?”
This was coming from a boy who was about to wet himself earlier in the day, when three bandits were coming at us. He either grew a bunch of hair on his chest since then, or he had a really bad memory.
“No… there ain’t a thing we can do for those boys. They got to go through it. Whether they’re bandits or government troops, they’ve done some mighty rough things to folks, but nothing like what’s about to happen to them.”
There was still about three hours before daybreak. I had no intention of leaving before then. The last thing I wanted to do was run up on their tails in the dark. I don’t know if young Crocket went back to sleep, but I did.
The sun was just painting the sky when I opened my eyes. The first thing I did was look to make sure the boy was there. He was a bit on the sudden side, and his decisions weren’t always based on good sense. I wouldn’t put it past him to take off in the middle of the night to save those prisoners. But he laid a little way from me with his eyes closed and his mouth open.
I gathered up some dry sticks and built a fire under a big pine, so the smoke if there was any would filter up through it. I got some bacon cooking and the coffee started. Then I pulled Cal Bailey’s map from my pouch and gave it a good look. The fact that those Apaches hadn’t run into those other horses bothered. It also bothered me that we hadn’t seen any use on the trail when we started up it. It looked as if he hadn’t been used in years. I looked again and saw where another trail entered a ways back from where we were. It must have been this side of where we left the horses. He hadn’t given it much more than an indication, since it wasn’t important to him. We must have passed it when the light was failing.
We couldn’t afford to do that. I’d have to be more careful with signs. I couldn’t take it for granted that because a trail starts out unused that it will stay that way. Right then, I had to go wake sleeping beauty with the toe of my moccasin…. Breakfast was ready.
Chapter 8
It was almost sinful to leave camp when the sun was over an hour in the sky. I was used to breaking camp right after first light, but I wanted to give those ahead of us plenty of distance. Not being privy to their plans, I could only assume they would stop for a rest and leave early, but I couldn’t count on it. All I could count on was me, Dog, and Bud. The boy meant well, and he’d be a man soon, but he wasn’t cured and seasoned yet.
Before we moved out, I went over both saddles and rigs to make sure there weren’t any clinks, chinks, or jingles. I made Tobe take off his spurs. He wasn’t happy about it, but he obliged me and stowed them in his saddle bag. They weren’t much for jingling, but he didn’t need them much on those mountain trails.
We finally moved out… slow and watchful. Dog was naturally in the lead, and I put Tobe in behind him. I wanted to cover our rear, since we were on a well used part of the trail. The boy had a tendency to forget to watch his back trail. He’d get over that, if he lived long enough, but for now, I’d cover backend of things.
Dog was roughly twenty feet ahead of Tobe, and I could see him most of the time. He was looking to his left and ahead, and then he stopped and turned so he could see me. I gave him a little Carolina Wren chirping whistle. He moved on, and I rode up to the boy and said,
“When I say ‘Down’ you get out of the saddle to the right… pronto. Just dive…. I’ll try to keep him off you.”
Back in my place, I watched the place that was making Dog so nervous. Dog had passed it with a few sniffs and moved to the far side of the trail as he passed. Tobe was next, and I was all set to yell, but he went through without a hitch. Dog was moving on with no concerns, and the boy had made it through…. What was I missing? I was approaching the troublesome spot pondering why I’d made the wrong call, when it hit me.
I was just moving past the pile of boulders, as I looked up and pulled my knife at the same time. He had come out of that pile like a cougar springing. He had been a higher than a horseman, so he was coming downhill. I didn’t waste time getting out of my saddle. I dove right putting my horse between us. I hit the ground and rolled, and I started coming up as the Apache’s left leg hit the cantle and turned him sideways as he fell from the bolting Bud.
For a man who had just made a painful and awkward landing, he came up fast, but I was already on him. He was almost halfway up, and favoring his left leg, but I didn’t give him a chance to get set. I left my feet and dove, my left hand ready to keep his knife hand busy, and my right ready to plunge my knife on impact. When I hit him, the Bowie went into his side, and I gave it a turn toward the middle. The knife was wrenched from my hand as I went head over heels beyond him. I came up pulling my hatchet, but I wouldn’t need it.
The way he was gushing blood, he would never get up. He was laying on his back with one hand on my knife trying to pull it out. I just walked up behind him and gave him a rap on the temple with the backside of my hatchet to put him out of his misery.
“You gonna chop him up and scalp him?” Tobe asked.
“No…. two reasons. Don’t need to… and he was a brave man… He suspected something when they came through last night. I figure he just dropped out and came back on his own.”
“But won’t they come back lookin’ for him?”
“Not likely. Injun go out with a party, but they can quit the party when they want. There’s a leader, but he ain’t the boss. Every brave is his own boss… each man knows his job and he don’t need a boss. But this one would have lived a little longer if he’d a stayed with the rest.”
“What about a chief?”
“A chief ain’t like a king. He ain’t born to it… he’s got to earn it…. But he’s still just a leader and not a ruler…At least that’s how it is with the tribes I’ve known…. Now we better go.”
The next two or three hours would be critical for us. I noted another trail was marked on the map. If my hunch was right, that would be the main trail into their camp, and it would split off to the right. The trail we wanted kept on going around the mountain and into the back door.
We’d spent the morning in the saddle, and we hadn’t seen anything that looked like another trail. I’d been looking for the other trail and not paying enough mind to their tracks. So I made it a priority to keep an eye on them too.
After another half hour, those tracks just went away like they’d never been there. I told the boy to keep his eyes open, and I got down started casting around afoot. Someone had done a good job of wiping out the tracks, and some of that was due to the rocky ground. I walked back to where they had disappeared, and then back toward Crocket. Looking at things from two sides makes a difference. Dust had been scattered about, and with the sun coming from the other direction I couldn’t see the shadows. But from the back side, the dents showed up…. They’d gone between a huge slab of rock and some thick growing cedars.
It was a beauty, and a man would have to look hard to find it. A little more dust and I’d not been able to see the shadows. I was much relieved that we weren’t likely to bump into that bunch by accident, but that didn’t mean we could let our guard down. There could be hunting parties or a few young bucks out looking for scalps… These were not blanket Indians.
Our path soon became a game trail once again, and we could move at a better pace. I took the lead again and Dog walked at my side. We were traveling in a thic
k pine forest for the time being, and except for an occasional twig snap, there was little sound of our passing.
Dog would disappear to sniff things out, and maybe make a ground squirrel meal, but he wouldn’t be gone long. Dog usually takes care of himself, unless we’re in a place like back in Los Angeles, where there’s no game. That’s when I step in and make arrangements.
That big homely critter didn’t belong to me, even though I paid for him. Old Rubio sold him as a sheep dog along with some sheep, when I was going to try the sheep business. I sent the sheep back and kept the dog. He was too big for herding sheep anyway. Like I said, I don’t own him because he owns himself, and he can leave anytime he wants…. I’d sure miss him if he did.
The trail dipped down a couple hundred feet and branched off several times before it started climbing. The pines thinned out and the terrain was becoming bare and rocky. There were great walls of solid granite above us and precious little cover. Well, there wasn’t anything we could do about it, so we rode on getting higher and higher. By nightfall we were on the back side of the peak, which was the north side.
I could see beyond the few lower peaks and foothills. The land out there was rough with sparse vegetation, but there were clumps of green, which told me of water. I pointed them out to Tobe and told him,
“When we leave, that’s how I want to go…. We can follow the water and run for the railroad.”
“Why can’t we go back the way we came?”
“You’re welcome to it… if you want to go back through the Apaches, banditos, and Rurales. But I’m goin’ this way. I’d expect there’d be some ranches up closer to the border.”
“Oh… I sort of forgot that part.”
We went on, and the trail led us higher and higher and farther around the backside of the mountain. Once again we came into thick stand of pines. At first it partially blocked the view of the plains below and beyond the foot hills, but I still saw what I was looking for. Out there, I could see a faint hint of a trail. It was maybe many hundreds of years unused, but there it was. Some of those old trails belonged to people who were here long before the Apache, the Yaqui, or the Aztec people. The Injuns just called them the Old Ones or the People who Came Before. They couldn’t explain them… they just accepted them.
