Valley of the Lesser Evil

by Carl Dane

  Chapter 13

  We were getting ready to leave and Carmody could sense there was something on my mind.

  “I want you to do something for me,” I said. Not now. On your own, when you have a chance. And feel free to say no.”

  “You want me to dig a couple spare graves before we go so you can fill ‘em up later?”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Nothing so dramatic. But not fun, either. I have a strong stomach but Billy was a friend of mine. Digging the slugs out of his head might tell me something.”

  “Like what? One piece of lead’s like another, and if it passed through his skull it’ll be smashed flat anyway.”

  “Probably, I agreed, “but some slugs are bigger, some are smaller, some take on a different color when they’re smelted. It might give me something to go on. Probably not, but maybe. Maybe not enough to justify asking you to poke around in a rotting body because I can’t do my own dirty work.”

  “That don’t bother me,” he said. “There was times when I stayed alive by peeling back the rotten parts of any animal carcass I came across to get to something I could eat that hadn’t turned to poison yet.”

  I pointed out Gannon’s gravesite to him and we headed toward town.

  Chapter 14

  We both grew uneasy at the same instant.

  Carmody jerked his head in practically a full circle and picked up his shotgun. I stood up on the floorboards, making myself a bigger target but gaining an extra couple feet of view on the horizon.

  Neither of us had seen, heard, or smelled anything, but the danger was real. I’m not superstitious, but I believe that men used to danger develop some sort of awareness that’s not related to the regular senses. And there was something going on here.

  The Apaches appeared like they’d suddenly sprouted from the soil. There were at least five of them, broad, sturdy, and from the looks of it, homicidal. They were painted for battle. About five more were closing in on horseback. All were armed with rifles, lances and bows. They’d gotten the drop on us. They’re trained to move low and quiet, an inch an hour, and in brushy, hilly country like this they can remain concealed until they’re right on top of you.

  There was no point in trying to outrun them in our sorry little one-horse wagon. There was also no point in firing first, as we were hopelessly outnumbered. But there was nothing to be gained by being taken alive, either, other than to learn what inventive tortures they could employ to entertain themselves for the rest of the afternoon.

  “Don’t shoot unless they make a move,” I told Carmody. “If they do, I’ll take the ones to the right; you shoot to the left.”

  Carmody said something I didn’t understand. It took me a second to register the fact that he knew something of their language and was talking to them.

  The big one, presumably the leader, laughed.

  “What did you say?” I asked Carmody.

  “I told him you said you would kill him unless they let us go.”

  “This is no time to fuck around. What did you really say?”

  Carmody ignored me and spoke again to the Apache. The Indian’s face grew stony.

  “That’s what I really said, and I just told him that you think he looks like a weak little girl and in a knife fight you would cut off his manhood.”

  “You are a real diplomat, Carmody,” I said. I didn’t look at Carmody. I kept my eyes on the big Apache.

  “Is there something to be gained by making him more mad at me that he already is? Am I not getting something here?”

  Carmody barked out more words, and the tall one barked back, and they barked at each other for a while until the Indian dismounted, his eyes afire, and waved the other warriors back.

  Carmody lowered his rifle and looked at me, seemingly unconcerned about the circle of a dozen or so armed men.

  “So here’s the deal, Marshal. You just challenged the big one – his name is Taza – to a one-on-one. I appealed to his honor, saying after all we was way outnumbered and if he were any kind of man at all he’d accept your challenge. You win, we go free. You lose, we both die, which I very well imagine would happen anyway.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “They are always true to their word,” Carmody said, jabbing the air with his finger. “And since they see we are outnumbered the realize it ain’t sporting just to kill us, so the big one will be noble and will give us a chance by fighting you one-on-one.”

  I thought it was strange that Carmody chose this time to give a speech about Apache nobility but at that point I’d have to take whatever chance I could get.

  Taza growled, impatient with all the talk. He drew a trade knife, not the crude pointed sticker they made themselves but a foot-long edged blade that gleamed in the sunlight. He pointed at my holstered gun. I knew what he meant and undid the gunbelt, letting it slide to the dirt. Carmody set down his rifle.

  “There’s a flaw in your plan,” I told Carmody. “I don’t have a knife.”

  He reached behind his neck and poked his hand down his shirt and retrieved one. I’d never seen anyone sheath a knife between his shoulder blades but everyone has their own ways. It was a good trick and if I lived I’d remember it. Carmody’s weapon was what we called a side knife, straight and double-edged, popular among the Confederates and probably taken off the body of one.

  “Nothing fancy,” Carmody said, “but sharp and cuts backhand as good as fore.”

  The braves moved around us in a precise, wide circle. It occurred to me that they, and Taza, had done this before. Apparently, a lot.

  There was no preliminary ceremony. He lunged at me, showing surprising speed for a big man. It wasn’t a real attempt to cut me. He was testing. I retreated straight back in two quick steps, not a smart move but not a real move, either. Taza advanced, feinting low and then slashing at my head. I ducked and retreated, a strategy that couldn’t go on forever because pretty soon I’d run out of room in the clearing or trip over something and topple back.

  The circle of braves moved and reformed as we fought, as neat and coordinated as a formation of dancers. Taza was in no hurry and was in fact probably looking forward to the long, slow process of gradually disemboweling me and seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself as he danced forward with a practiced step and prepared to dart out with his knife-hand.

  I didn’t stand a chance at his game, especially as I was weighed down by my boots, giving up a couple inches in height, and having a blade roughly half the size of his. Also, he was an experienced knife-fighter. Many Apaches are.

  But their fighting style is dictated by their traditions, and from my limited experience with Indians I knew that they knew little or nothing of striking. Punching him would be next to impossible because I’d have to come within knife range. So at his next forward step I moved to the side, which surprised him, and mule-kicked him to the short ribs.

  The heel of my boot must have broken three of his ribs on his knife-hand side. I could hear them crack. Apaches are taught to fight without showing pain, but I could tell he was hurt and he withdrew his next thrust quickly when he found he couldn’t reach forward without pain.

  Around us there was some chatter.

  I gathered I’d committed a breach of etiquette by kicking him but figured I’d better go with what worked.

  Taza kept his knife in his right hand, despite the injury to that side. There was a fleck of blood at the corner of his mouth. I’d busted him up good inside.

  He circled to my right, reaching forward with his left. His intent was to grab me and pull me toward him where he could do close-in work with the knife. He was betting he could fend off my slashes and wrestle me into a position where he could finish me off.

  I whipped my right leg around and kicked him in his left thigh with my shin. It was a move I learned from a fighter who’d traveled in Siam. You uncoil your body and the kick lands, if you time it right, with tremendous force. Your shin is sharp and it whips deep i
nto the big muscle of the thigh. My kick landed with a slapping sound and Taza was clearly stunned by the pain. But there’s more to it than pain – the big slab of muscle gets paralyzed from the blow.

  He took a step toward me but that leg didn’t work anymore and he caved forward, flat on his face. He grunted and scuttled over on his back and reached for the hilt of the knife that he’d fallen on.

  It had impaled him. He’d fallen forward and driven it into his belly.

  Taza removed the knife, his face somehow registering surprise but not betraying the pain, and lay on his back, weakly waving the blade.

  “He expects you to finish him!” Carmody yelled.

  I hesitated. Under the right circumstances there’s nothing in my moral code about going after a man when he’s down because if you let him up he just might recover and kill you. I’d kicked the snot out of Toad partly for that reason and partly for effect, but Taza now presented no threat and I had nothing to gain by butchering him.

  “They normally will not respect you if you don’t finish the deal,” Carmody said, “but that was a freak accident. I don’t know what the rules are in this here situation.”

  “I don’t want to kill him. Tell him I want to win fair. We will finish this another day. Tell him that.”

  Carmody grunted some words. I pointed to my knife and pantomimed falling on it. Then I snorted and shook my head.

  “Tell him we will finish this later in a real fight,” I said.

  Carmody intoned a melodic string of three-syllable words and we began to back away.

  The braves exchanged glances, unsure. Taza weakly waved his knife as more blood leaked out, soaking his tunic. The wound was closer to his side than his front, and while it was deep I didn’t think it was fatal, at least not immediately. A deep wound can cause all sorts of infections and inside leaking and the like, but men have lived through worse and I imagined that his people have ways of dealing with knife wounds.

  I picked up my gunbelt, walked to the wagon, and took up the reins as if everything had been decided. Carmody did the same, moving quickly but without haste.

  We didn’t look back until several minutes later. They had not followed us.

  Chapter 15

  Carmody was amazed that I could play the piano but seemed equally astonished that I knew nothing of Indian languages.

  The upright in the Silver Spoon actually played pretty well, or I thought I was playing it pretty well, anyway. That was a conclusion perhaps hastened by the half-dozen whiskeys I’d downed to celebrate getting out of my last predicament with my scalp intact.

  “Amazing you can tickle them ivories after busting your hands on so many heads,” Carmody said. “I don’t know how you can even make fingers work that fast, especially on them low parts with your left hand.”

  “That’s an interesting point about music and fighting,” I said. “As far as music, you can learn to do anything with your left hand as you do with your right hand, if you’re right-handed, and vice-versa. Same with fighting. A lot of guys limit themselves because they think they are left-handed or right-handed and have to stay that way. Taza, for instance. He kept that knife in his right hand, even though he couldn’t reach very far after I busted his ribs. If he’d trained to cut with his left as well as his right, I’d be a fillet by now.”

  “You are a clever one,” Carmody said. “That’s why I offered you to fight him and not me. I’m pretty good with a knife, but I figured you’d stand a better chance, being a professional and all. And besides that, I figured Taza would be more likely to accept a challenge from you because you don’t look like much.”

  I let that pass.

  “You know,” he said, changing the subject without preamble, “I’m kinda rough around the edges, but I ain’t no dummy.”

  “I know you’re not. Never said you were.”

  “I’ve done a lot of reading and studying, sort of on my own. Picked up a smattering of languages to get by, and sometimes just for fun.”

  “I can get by in Latin and Greek,” I said, regretting the words as soon as they came out.

  “Well hot fucking damn!” Next time a bunch of Romans make us fight lions in the Coliseum we’ll be in great shape. You are a handy guy to know. But in the meantime, if I was you I’d pick up a few words of the local dialects should you wish to survive out here.”

  “I think that is very good advice,” I conceded, starting a new tune. “And I will follow it. I never ran into that many Indians. Only a few skirmishes on cattle drives, and I never really spent that much time in the saddle anyway. But I remember the songs the hands would sing. You know this one?”

  “Green Grow the Lilacs,” Carmody said without hesitation. “Irish. And before that you was playing a little Mozart, though you cow-poked it up a bit.”

  “I’m impressed,” said. And I was.

  Carmody turned serious and looked straight ahead. He seemed to be mulling over whether to say something but decided not to.

  Carmody was right about my shortcomings in frontiersmanship. What I don’t know about Indians and trails and the woods is, well, everything. On the other hand, I know a lot about what I guess I’d call human moves – and even though I don’t speak the language I could read Taza’s reactions when I was talking to Carmody. You watch the eyes in a situation like that; Taza’s were black and mostly inscrutable but he shifted his gaze between me and Carmody that I could tell he was following the substance of the conversation. And from his reactions I could tell he’d go for round two at a later date when he could carve me up slowly without being derailed by a freak accident.

  Yes, Taza spoke English, or at least understood it. He was smart and pretended not to. Carmody didn’t catch on, and as he’d saved my life twice in as many days I felt no need to make him feel bad about it. So I’d just let him lecture me on my linguistic shortcomings and move on.

  When and if the day came when Taza spoke in English I’d pretend to be surprised.

  Chapter 16

  I ran out of repertoire a few minutes later and Carmody and I returned to a table. Mrs. Adler sat down with us. Carmody filled her in on the events of the morning.

  “You should have killed him,” she said. “When he said he’ll finish the fight someday, he meant it.”

  “I believe you are right, and Mr. Carmody here was just reminding me – at length – of how little I know about Apaches. You both have a history with them – I don’t know if you know each others’ story.”

  They didn’t know the other’s story and they filled each other in. Mrs. Adler recounted her days as a child in captivity as she drank. Carmody, as he drank, told us about his years after the war when he roamed the plains buffalo hunting and lived on-and-off with an Apache woman.

  I just drank.

  About an hour later, Mrs. Adler had become positively loquacious, and after the second bottle of whiskey we shared we knew in great detail the story of her life up until about five years ago, and that’s when her memory seemed to falter. I asked a few questions without wanting to seem too pushy, knowing that I would shut her down if I pressed too hard.

  She gave me some half-answers and remained, still, a character outlined only in the broadest brush strokes. And when I tried to unearth the reason she wouldn’t take a very good offer for the Silver Spoon and move on in her life she served up her rehearsed reply.

  “This is the life I have,” she told me. “And it’s not bad. It’s had bad parts, and the bad parts are still a part of it. But I’m the type of person who would hold onto a pair rather than throw one card away to draw to an inside straight.”

  I was going to tell her that what she said was pretty much what Shakespeare meant by writing that conscience doth make cowards of us all, but she didn’t seem in the mood for one my of dissertations. And I wasn’t sure, at that point, if I could get the words out straight because my lips had gone numb.

  “Anyway, let’s change the subject,” she said, thickly. “B
usiness is better, you two still have your scalps, and I just want to have some fun. It’s been a long time since I had fun.”

  I raised my glass. “To fun, Mrs. Adler.”

  “Don’t be so formal. Please call me Elmira.”

  “I am reluctant to blur a business relationship,” I said, noting how hard it was becoming to pronounce two words beginning with b so close together in a sentence, especially now that the rest of my face was becoming as numb as my lips. I could hold my liquor as well as the next man but there comes a time when complicated sentences are too much of a challenge. I wondered if I could still perform all right on the piano, but decided not to test it. I wondered, too, if I’d drunk so much I was past the point of performing in any category.

  ***

  The blankets and sheets were frilly things designed more for decoration than for warmth. The night had brought a sudden chill after the clouds cleared and the moonlight slanted in through the window and reflected off the cascades of gold and silver in her hair.

  She drew up tight to me and tucked the covers around and under her as she burrowed her head into my chest.

  “I guess this means we’re on a first-name basis now,” she said, and fell back asleep.

  Chapter 17

  The gunshots rang out at dawn. I saw nothing from the window except fresh tracks from unshod horses. I could hear hoof-beats when I leaned out the window, and then I heard a woman scream.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Elmira asked as she shot up into a sitting position.

  “Indian raid, I think,” I said as I stepped into my pants and stomped my boots on.

  When trouble comes when you’re in bed there’s always that awkward moment of indecision when you calculate how much time you want to sacrifice getting dressed. Lives could be at stake, even my own, but was the problem so exigent that it warranted me running out naked with just a gunbelt strapped on? It was too much to think about with a blinding headache, so I decided I should probably get dressed, and by reflex even managed to jam on my hat before I ran toward the door.