A Good Day

by James W. Marvin

  The Apaches would have left their own ponies some distance away from the scene of the killings, so that they didn’t warn the three men. Now they would be paying the price for that decision. Crow on the big black had several minutes start on them. And he made the best possible use of that start. Heeling the stallion on with a ruthless determination.

  The trail was just as steep and narrow as it’d looked from below, which was another factor in his favor. He could go at his best speed without any fear of being ambushed from around the next corner. The following Apaches would constantly have to bear in mind the possibility that he might have stopped. That he might be sitting waiting for them around the next doubled curve, ready to wipe the leading man off his pony.

  He checked his escape after about a quarter of an hour, sitting quite motionless in the saddle, calming his breathing and listening for sounds of pursuit. But the Arizona mountains were silent and still. The clouds had come rolling in once more, bringing sharp flakes of snow in their teeth, cutting visibility from the steep slopes all around.

  Evening was still several hours off, but the light was poor and Crow guessed that there wouldn’t be a lot of enthusiasm among the Apaches for any extended pursuit among the unforgiving mountains. Though a group of warriors as large as the one that had ambushed the two soldiers and himself would eventually overwhelm him, if they could catch him, they would know what a heavy toll of blood he could charge.

  The rough trail that he’d been riding was becoming treacherous. Closing in on the one side, with a drop falling away to the left of him. Sheer into circling darkness, the flakes of snow spinning around like lost souls in the infinity of Purgatory.

  Crow had swung down and was leading the horse for a while, still stopping every five minutes or so and listening. Twice his boots slipped on patches of fresh ice that coated some of the larger boulders.

  “Best try and stop somewheres,” he said to himself, sniffing at the cold.

  In a locked room at the back of Crow’s mind there was a whispering voice. A fear that the reason that the Chiricahua weren’t bothering to pursue him too closely was a simple one. There’d been no side trails leading off the track. Not one. No opportunity to turn and lose them. And the cliffs seemed to be overwhelming the trail, squeezing it tighter and tighter.

  Suppose it was simply going to stop? Peter out and utterly vanish.

  If that happened then he was cold meat. As dead as if he was dangling in a slaughterhouse with a steel hook through his throat.

  The blood price could still be high.

  But the whispering voice was stilled.

  The trail widened once more, so that he was able to mount up on the stallion. From some old tracks he saw, he guessed that somewhere the far side of the mountain this trail came out lower down. In good weather it was probably an occasional hunting path, used as a short-cut to avoid a long and tedious ride around the bottom of the hills.

  But with the snow deepening and the temperature dropping by the minute, it was a perilous way to go.

  What was it Jed Herne used to say? “If you’ve got death behind you and death in front of you, then you might just as well keep on going the way you’re heading.”

  Right at that particular moment it seemed as good advice as any.

  But within the hour things had changed. The snow had begun to fall with a serious intent and venom, blotting out everything but the cliffs to his right and the trail a few paces ahead. Though he knew the yawning abyss still lurked to his left, it was impossible to see anything there but a wall of swirling whiteness.

  Once again he’d been forced to walk alongside the black horse, leading it cautiously forwards. Not bothering to stop and listen for pursuers. In weather as bad as this had become Crow knew that nobody else would be moving out in the hills.

  And, if he didn’t find somewhere soon to rest up under cover he wouldn’t be moving out for much longer.

  The path had ceased its snaking ascent, seeming to have leveled off. Even dipping two or three times, as if it was planning to return to the valley floor. Then changing its mind like a shy maiden flinching back from wading in at the edge of the sea.

  The snow was blinding. Lying so deep that it was blurring the side of the trail. Twice Crow came within a single stride of stepping clean over into the blank silence.

  “Got to stop this,” he said quietly.

  The wind was rising, producing the effects of a blizzard. The stallion was becoming more restless, tugging at the reins and whinnying. Skittering sideways, banging its flank on the cliff.

  In the flurries he occasionally saw further ahead. It was during one of those brief clearances that he saw the narrow opening to a side trail; the first one that he’d seen since starting his wild flight away from his two dead comrades.

  The rocks seemed to offer slightly more protection from the worsening weather so he took it, pulling at the bridle and leading the horse after him. It was like walking into a room. The rocks domed above his head, shutting out most of the snow and all of the wind. The horse’s hooves rang on bare stone again.

  The narrow passage lasted for about a hundred yards, bending and winding among the orange walls of rough stone.

  It was nearly dark and bitterly cold. Though the wind was gone, the air itself seemed to be composed of crystals of fragmented ice. Packed so that breathing became painful to Crow. But he pushed on. The trail was clear and well-trodden, so it must lead somewhere.

  Ahead of him the shootist suddenly saw a dark, rough circle, black against the lighter rocks. It had to be a cave. Maybe what he was looking for. Maybe too shallow for him and the horse. Maybe the haunt of some ravening mountain lion.

  “No,” said Crow. There was the faintest hint of an orange-red glow from within. If there was a fire there then it had to be man.

  Apaches?

  There couldn’t be anyone else in this isolated fastness, but where were the guards? And the place was totally silent. As he walked the stallion forward the animal resisted. Snickering softly and trying to pull away from him. It was obvious that the cave frightened the horse and Crow stopped for a moment. Rubbing his hand across its neck with a surprising, soft touch, gentling its fears and blowing up its nostrils. Calming it. Finally leading it on once more.

  Hesitating in the mouth of the cave. There was a great overhang of sullen rock that shut out the sky and left the area of stone in front quite dry. Crow tied the black to a spur of jagged boulder, patting it again on the side of the neck.

  “Wait on there,” he said. “Wait on.”

  Reaching down to flick the retaining thong off the twin hammers of the sawn-down scattergun. The Purdey was made for just this kind of situation. Going into a dark cave when you didn’t know who or what you’d meet. There wasn’t a creature living that could stand up to the double charge of ten-gauge shot.

  A small fire was flickering near the opening to the cave. But it was impossible to see how far the opening went. It might have been barely six feet. It could have been ten miles. The shootist hesitated, peering into the midnight blackness.

  “The only enemy is fear, Crow,” said a voice. “Enter and you will defeat even that.”

  Chapter Nine

  There was an indefinable feeling of age about the voice. As though it had come from some long closed catacomb in the deeps of a forgotten city. It spoke a strange kind of formal, slightly stilted English. Crow had little doubt that the voice was that of an Indian.

  But an old, old man. Each word sounding as though an infinite effort had been needed to fetch it some great distance over difficult terrain.

  The shootist drew the Purdey, bracing it in his right hand, triggers back. Finger on the triggers. Though the mysterious voice didn’t seem to hold any threat for him, it would be madness to take any kind of risk.

  “Come, my son. Come.” A harsh, croaking sound, like an unprimed pump. “It is a good day, Crow.”

  The phrase disturbed echoes in the mind of the shootist. “It is a good day.”
It kept coming up again and again.

  “Do you fear?”

  “Yes,” replied Crow, honestly and simply.

  Once again that croaking noise that must be the old man laughing.

  “Always truth, man in black.”

  “Should I enter?”

  “Yes. I have been waiting you.”

  “You knew?”

  “Come.”

  The shootist stooped, stepping past the small fire, his eyes adjusting to the dimness within. Seeing now that the cave ran in for several yards, turning like a dog-leg to the left. Around the corner there was the shadowy glow of another fire. He kept his hands firmly on the Purdey.

  Ready.

  “Come.”

  “No tricks.”

  “I cannot promise you there will not be “tricks”, man called Crow.”

  The shootist walked cautiously into the cave, around the corner. Finally seeing the owner of the voice, sitting shrouded in a beaded blanket, pulled over his head.

  “You may return the short gun to your hip, my friend.”

  “In a whiles.”

  “Such care.”

  “I’d have been dead years back without taking care, old man.”

  “Sit down. There is stew in that iron bowl. It will hold off the cold.”

  It wasn’t as bitter chill within the low-roofed cavern, but the warm soup, thickened with several herbs and vegetables that Crow recognized, and some that he didn’t, blazed a fiery path through his body. He drained that bowl, rubbing his finger around the bottom to catch the dregs, sucking them from his hand.

  “Mmm, that sure hit the spot, Mister.”

  He finally holstered the Purdey, taking the decision to leave the leather thong off the hammers. In case he needed to make a fast draw.

  The old man looked across the fire at the shootist as he squatted on his haunches. For some moments there was silence between the men, broken only by a whisper of sound as a burned branch collapsed in soft gray ash.

  “You wonder who I am and how I knew your name, do you not, Crow?”

  The shootist smiled. “You’re the shaman called White Snow by my people.” He used the Chiricahua name in full. “White Snow That Sets Upon The Tallest Of The Mountains.”

  “Yes. I did not think …”

  “That I’d know? Sure. Nobody else you can be. But, I’m surely surprised to see you alive.”

  “There have been words of my passing, Crow. Many times.”

  In the shadowed cowl of the blanket the shootist could catch the fiery sparkle of the old medicine man’s eyes. Glittering brightly from a darkness blacker than the wing of a raven.

  White Snow. A legend among the Apache people. With the possible exception of Casa Negra who had been rumored to be more than a hundred years old when he’d died. He had been the greatest of the Apaches” wise men, skilled in lore and myth with necromantic arts beyond anything that most white men could ever imagine. Casa Negra had died a good ten years back. Something about some soldiers and the fabled gold of Hernando. And the lone Mimbreños Apache warrior, Cuchillo Oro. Black Cave and Golden Knife.

  Nobody now knew where truth ended and legend began. If in doubt, print the legend.

  “You are very old, White Snow.”

  “It is truth, Crow. In the counting of your people I am close to one hundred winters. Perhaps I have passed that number. It is magic to you?”

  The shootist hesitated. “Not magic. But to reach one hundred years means being damned special.”

  “It is not special to live long. Many die young and are more special.”

  “I don’t see how you could know I was out here, old man.”

  The head beneath the blanket moved slightly, with a strange juddering movement. A kind of regular trembling.

  “You saw John Dancer at Fort Garrett.” It wasn’t a question and Crow said nothing. Waiting. “When there was trouble then my people left that place and came to the hills once more.”

  The shootist considered interrupting to ask where Cyrus Quaid was. Little Cyrus. Vicious little bastard that he was, there didn’t seem much doubt that the friendly Indians had taken him. That the white boy was probably somewhere within five miles of where Crow sat in the smoky cave, feeling the warmth of the stew layering his stomach with well-being. There had been something in the gruel that he hadn’t been able to quite recognize. Some herb?

  He stayed silent.

  They are safe with their leader, Small Pony. Your soldiers will not find them, I think.”

  “I can find them, old man,” replied Crow.

  “Why would you hunt them?”

  They have done wrong. They have stolen a boy from the fort.”

  “A boy?”

  “Around fifteen or so. Cyrus Quaid. Son of the sutler at Garrett.”

  “I know of that man. But the boy …”

  Crow didn’t trust most people. If it came down to it then he wouldn’t trust anyone at all, less’n he had to for some reason. And just because White Snow was a famous and respected shaman, and was a hundred years old, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to tell lies just like a five year old with his fist clamped to the cookie jar.

  “You didn’t know Dancer had lifted the boy?”

  “No. It will be bad.” A long hesitation for fifty stuttering heart-beats. “If it is true.”

  The place was searched for the body. It wasn’t there. No tracks out. But for Dancer and the rest of that group. With the scouts.”

  “Yes. They say the red-hair gold star is close to the end of his road.”

  Crow nodded. Lovick’s condition had led him speedily to the same conclusion.

  “It must be twenty years when Bascom slaughtered for the breed, Mickey Free,” mused the old Indian. “They were bad days for my people and for the great Cochise.”

  “Seventeen years, White Snow,” said Crow. “It will happen again.”

  “Then darkness will come again to our land. You have many pony soldiers with you?”

  “It does not take many of us, old man,” evaded the shootist.

  “No. There is also a boy missing from the fires of Small Pony. The son of Man Who Leads To Water. You do not know of him?”

  Crow considered the question for some moments. There was something truly weird about this old witch-doctor of the Chiricahua. Here, alone, in bitter weather. Not frightened. Not anything. The calmness and quiet seemed to take them both out beyond any normal areas of time and space.

  “The words you do not speak say much, young friend,” said the Indian, voice quieter than a snake’s belly rustling over sun-warmed stone.

  “The circle closed for him, White Snow,” replied the shootist. “We saw him in the poor light of evening. A soldier shot at his horse, but he missed. The boy tried to escape. We still didn’t know that he was … was so young. He died immediately.”

  The blanketed head nodded slowly. “I had seen it in my dream. So, he will not hunt with his friends again, but will lie forever in the sky. You did not bury …?”

  “Hell, no. It’s in a draw about twelve, fifteen miles back, a couple a hundred feet off the trail to the fort. He wasn’t touched.”

  “Then it was a good death.”

  “That’s mighty stupid for a man lived as long as you, White Snow. There’s no good death. I seen plenty, old man, and none of them were good.”

  “I am well reproached, Crow. The words slipped too easily to my mouth and I spat them out when I should have swallowed them. It is right.”

  “You didn’t know about Cyrus Quaid?”

  “I did not know. I do not know. John Dancer’s words were of the chase that would come. He did not say why that would be harsh.”

  “Dancer and the Garrett party’s with Small Pony?”

  “Yes. Will you have more of the stew, Crow?”

  “No. Kind of makes my head to spin. What the Hell was in it?”

  “Some meat. Deer. Snake meat. Beans. Leaves. Roots. Mushrooms. It is the mushrooms. They will help you to see.�
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  The walls of the cave seemed to be shimmering. Swelling backwards and forwards like high surf on the coast of California. The smoke from the fire gusted and streamed about the face of the shootist, even though there was no wind in the dark cavern. It sought out his narrow eyes and made them blink and water. There was a bitter, acrid taste to the smoke that reminded Crow of times long past, not worth forgetting, when he’d lived among various tribes of Indians. A smell of antique traditions and race memories that stirred him.

  “The blood races in my body, old man,” he said, conscious that the words he used came from an infinite distance inside his head. His hands felt heavy as though they’d been filled with pellets of lead.

  It was a bizarre idea and Crow grinned at it. Laughing suddenly. Realizing that the laughter threatened to run away with him, taking control of his cheeks and making the back of his neck hurt.

  “I have long heard of you, Crow. That you seek the straight road.”

  “I do.”

  “And you look to live a life in the manner that you will it?”

  “Yes. I will pay the price for that.”

  “Price?”

  “It’s like sums I did as a child, White Snow. You set balances against each other.”

  “What stands on either side?”

  “On the one is the loneliness. Nights alone and days without ending.”

  “Nobody you know?”

  Crow laughed again, his voice sounding harsh to his ears. He lay back and rested, closing his eyes, finding his brain filled with a thousand shifting images every second. But even that was easier than the effort of remaining upright. The shootist realized that he’d been drugged by the elderly shaman, but the knowledge didn’t bother him.

  “I know a lot of people, old man. A whole damned lot. Hard-eyed whores in every town from Juarez to the Lakes; Faro dealers; rooming-house robbers; drunks; crooked lawmen; soldiers buckin’ for promotion or for retirement; frontier preachers with a taste for young girls; young girls with a taste for cheap killers; kids who hear my name and want to ride to glory on the back of it. Most times they finish up dead.”

  The blanketed figure from across the fire was nodding at the words.