by Abe Dancer
But who or what was down there?
It was impossible to see.
All he knew for certain was that it was not the night breeze which was kicking up the dust. Something living was moving down there just beyond his range of vision. A bead of sweat defied his chilled flesh and ran down his face.
Cautiously Talbot eased himself back until he was on firm ground again, then he inhaled deeply. Could it be more hostiles? Could the rest of the tribe have found their dead and tracked him to this place? If so, how long would it be before they started up the rockface in search of him?
This was no place to defend yourself against an attack.
Talbot tied the rope reins around his left boot, found a match and struck it with his thumbnail. He cupped the flame and put it to the end of the cigar in his mouth. He sucked in the smoke and blew out the match. He no longer feared them seeing him.
‘C’mon,’ he whispered angrily and pulled out his guns again. ‘I’m ready for ya. I’ll kill all of ya.’
Then he heard a sound.
It was hoofs on rocks.
A horse.
No horse would come up here of its own choice. Only a horse with a rider on its back would be loco enough to do that. Just as he had done.
He cocked the hammers of his guns and waited.
FOURTEEN
It was a blood-curdling noise which echoed in the cold night air all around the rocks which jutted up from the desert floor. The sound of hoofs on the twisting trail up to where Tate Talbot waited grew ever louder. The outlaw who wore the tin star upon his chest grew more and more anxious. His gloved hands clutched on to his pair of cocked .45s as sweat traced down his features. With every pounding beat of his heart the sound increased. One hoof after another in an almost tormenting fashion. Talbot moved his weight from one leg to the other. He knew that he could have remained on the flat rock which hung over the mountainous precipice and watched the horseman from a spot that could have allowed him to pick the rider off. But he had chosen to remain up against the moonlit rockface with both his weapons drawn and readied.
He knew that he had chosen the wrong option.
From where he was secreted he could not see who was heading up to where he hid. His eyes darted back and forth from beneath the brim of his hat and focused across at the rocks at the top of the steep stony trail.
He watched, as all frightened creatures watch for the first sign of danger to rear its ugly head.
Starved of sleep, food and water, Talbot’s mind raced.
Was it another Apache? Maybe it was more than one. Did Indians fight at night?
Talbot knew that he had made no efforts to hide the tracks of the pony when he had fled the bloody battle scene. Anyone with half an eye could have trailed him to this place. His heart began to race.
He tried to swallow but his dry throat refused to obey. He wanted to cough but again fear prevented it. Slowly he began to crouch down. He knew that he was a big target even to someone who was not the best of shots. Talbot fell on to one knee and then the other. Again his eyes searched the area for something to use as cover. But there were no boulders up here close to the top of the towering rock formation. Talbot realized that when the shooting started it would probably be the end of him.
He started to breath heavily.
Talbot had been an outlaw for most of his grown days and had faced many men wielding knives, guns and rifles without even flinching, but this was quite different.
He was scared.
Scared of the unknown horseman who continued to force his mount ever upward towards him. Talbot had lost all of his men due to his own greed and suddenly realized that for the first time since he had ridden on the wrong side of the law, he was entirley alone.
He had always been part of a gang. For the first part of his infamous career he had been one of the riders. Then he had formed his own gang. The men who had followed his lead had changed over the years as one by one they had been killed. But there had never been any problem finding men willing and able to replace those he had lost.
But now he was alone.
Quite alone.
The sweat was now flowing down his face. He screwed up his eyes and kept them homed in on the top of the trail where his ears told him that the rider would soon appear. Seconds seemed to last a lifetime as he waited.
Then he saw him.
The moon was behind the mounted figure. All he could see was a black shape astride an even blacker horse. Talbot rose fast and raised his guns until his arms were fully outstretched.
‘Haul rein, ya bastard!’ Talbot snarled.
The rider drew his reins up to his chest. The horse stopped and snorted. Talbot moved closer. This was no Apache, he silently told himself. This was a white man.
‘Who are ya?’ Talbot growled even louder.
‘Howdy, Tate,’ the rider’s voice said.
Talbot’s jaw dropped. ‘Frank?’
‘Who the hell was ya expecting, Tate?’ Smith chuckled.
Talbot dropped his guns into his holsters and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the moon over the rider’s shoulder. He looked at the face and wished it had been another one of his gang members. Anyone except Frank Smith.
‘I thought ya was dead. I thought ya all was dead.’
Frank Smith looped his leg over the neck of his mount and slid from his saddle. He looked down at the eerie landscape stretched out far below them before returning his gaze to the sweating man beside him.
‘I nearly was, Tate,’ Smith answered. ‘They backshot Liam and I had to dump his dead carcass a few miles from here. Man, them Injuns sure is ornery, ain’t they?’
‘So we’re the only ones left?’ Talbot said. ‘Damn it all!’
‘Yep.’ Smith pulled his canteen from the saddle horn and handed it to Talbot. ‘Just you and me.’
Talbot grabbed the canteen, unscrewed its stopper and took two long swallows. He sighed and then handed it back to Smith who returned it to the saddle.
Even the moonlight could not hide the expression carved into Smith’s face. It was the look of an ambitious man.
‘What ya looking at?’ Talbot snapped.
‘I’m looking at you, Tate,’ Smith snapped back. ‘Ya looks like a man that’s beat. I ain’t beat. I’m still willing to carry on and finish the job we come out here to do. I wanna catch that Casey critter and claim that reward money.’
Tate Talbot looked at the ground. ‘No, we gotta head back to Senora, Frank. It’s over.’
‘Over?’ Smith grabbed the shirt collar of his companion. ‘Ya willing to kiss twenty thousand dollars goodbye? Just ’coz we lost a few men?’
Talbot pulled Smith’s hands away. ‘It’s over I tell ya. That critter is miles away from here by now.’
Smith suddenly clenched both his fists and threw a left to Talbot’s belly. When that brought the winded man’s head down Smith smashed his right across the side of Talbot’s jaw. The older man fell to the ground.
‘I’m leading this party from here on in,’ Smith said. ‘Ya better savvy that darn fast or I’ll kill you as well.’
Talbot raised his head. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. ‘But that young drifter ain’t really Diamond Bob Casey, Frank. I made that up.’
Smith hauled the bigger man back to his feet. He shook him hard and glared into his eyes.
‘What?’ he yelled.
‘I just had me this idea that I could kill someone that nobody knew and say it was Casey. The reward money would have to be paid.’ Talbot coughed. ‘Don’t ya get it? It was all a big trick to claim the bounty.’
Smith released his grip. He turned and stared out at the strange landscape again. For a few moments he remained silent. Then he glanced at Talbot again, this time with even more fury in his eyes.
‘It don’t matter none. We’re still going to kill that varmint, Tate. That’s too much money to turn our backs on.’
Talbot wiped his mouth with his glove. He looked at his blood glisten in t
he moonlight. Then he nodded.
‘OK,’ he agreed.
‘I reckon I know where he went,’ Smith said. ‘I found me some tracks that lead down into a canyon. Some Apaches went down there but I found me another set of tracks. The tracks of a shod horse. That’s gotta be him. There ain’t no other horse with shoes in this desert.’
‘More Apaches?’ Talbot said.
‘Ya scared of a few Injuns, Tate?’
‘Damn right!’
FIFTEEN
Dawn raced across the desert quickly. Within minutes the temperature had risen by ten degrees. The troop of cavalrymen had been led by the seasoned Navajo Nate Willows to the place where at least half the young Apache braves they had been charged with bringing back to the reservation lay festering in the stained desert sand. The smell was already sickening and the air was filled with excited flies. Not one corpse of either man or animal had escaped the onslaught of voracious insects. As the horsemen approached half-a-dozen vultures lifted off the sand and flew up into the sky.
They would circle until it was safe for them to return to their feasting. Every eye watched them as they floated around high above the small patrol of troopers.
Captain Eli Forbes raised his hand and stopped his powerful mount as his scout dropped down from his horse and began his inspection of the dead. Forbes dismounted and handed his reins to his sergeant. The officer followed the scout to the nearest of the saddle horses. The stench was almost unbearable and yet the scout seemed immune to the horrific odour.
Navajo Nate Willows was scratching his head with one hand whilst the other fended off the attention of the flies with broad sweeps.
Forbes edged closer. ‘You said earlier, when you returned to the troop, that there were too many saddle horses for the number of bodies of white men, Navajo.’
‘Sure enough,’ Willows nodded.
‘Are you certain?’ Forbes said, holding a white-gloved hand in front of his mouth.
Willows nodded and quickly pointed around them. ‘Yep. We’re short of some dead folks, I reckon.’
Forbes narrowed his eyes against the flies. ‘You said that there are four horses and only two bodies?’
‘Yep.’
‘Then at least two men escaped this fight,’ Forbes said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder who they were and where they went?’
‘They headed yonder!’ The scout waved his hand towards where the high mesas could be seen far beyond dunes.
‘Devil’s Elbow?’ Forbes suggested.
‘That’s what they called the place.’
‘The ancestral home of the Apache.’
‘Not all of them, Captain.’ Willows glanced briefly at the man in dust-caked blue. ‘Just the ones young Nazimo is kin to.’
Eli Forbes could not stand the stench any longer. He turned away and coughed.
Willows began to walk again. With every step his knowing eyes lit upon something new. Something which he had not noticed on his previous visit to this macabre battle ground. The military officer walked at the side of his scout. He had been on many battlefields after the gunsmoke ceased but death was something which he had never been able to get used to.
He paused as he noticed the scout leaning over the bodies of the dead braves. He watched as the scout turned each of the young bodies over and looked hard into their already rotting features.
‘What of Nazimo?’ Forbes asked.
Navajo Nate turned and looked beneath bushy eyebrows at the captain. ‘He ain’t here.’
Forbes stepped closer. ‘Are you sure, Navajo?’
Willows nodded firmly. ‘I know that hot-head real well, Captain. He ain’t here.’
Forbes turned away from the pile of bodies and tried to rid his nostrils of the acrid stench. It was impossible. He had never seen the Apache brave known as Nazimo but had heard a lot about him. He was the most dangerous of them all. A man who had the spirit of an entire nation surging through his veins. No other Apache, apart from the famed Geronimo, could stir up his fellow braves quite as well as Nazimo.
Forbes sighed and returned his eyes to the scout. ‘That’s a shame, Navajo. Without Nazimo the rest of them would be easy to round up. Like headless chickens.’
Willows stepped over the buzzing sand and stood next to the captain. He knew the man was close to the end of his long career.
‘I’d suggest we return back to Fort Myers if it weren’t for the fact that Nazimo is still running loose, sir.’
Forbes punched one gloved fist into the palm of his other.
‘We cannot quit without Nazimo, Navajo. Dead or alive I have to take him back to Fort Myers.’
‘I knew ya would say that, Captain,’ Willows said, nodding. ‘I can lead ya on after that young troublemaker. His trail went up yonder.’
The tired cavalry officer looked to where his scout was pointing. He could see the high golden-coloured mesas beyond the rolling sand dunes. He had never been in a land anything like this one and did not like it one bit. His eyes darted back to Willows.
‘What’s out there, Navajo? What can we expect?’ he whispered. ‘I have to consider the men. Can white men survive in that sort of terrain?’
‘There’s death out there, Captain! Sand and rocks and a whole bunch of things that can kill even more painfully than the worst Apache ya ever did meet.’ Willows shuddered. ‘I ain’t travelled too far into that land. It kinda makes ya want to turn and ride away. That’s what I did. I turned my old horse and rode away as fast as the poor critter could go.’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse.’
The cavalry officer looked to Coogan. ‘Get the men to round up all the rifles and rifle rounds they can find, Coogan.’
The sergeant saluted and pointed at three of the mounted men.
‘Ya heard the captain. Round up all the weapons!’
The enlisted men did as ordered and reluctantly approached the decaying bodies.
Forbes patted the scout’s shoulder and walked back across the sand to his horse. He took up the reins and stepped into his stirrup. As he settled down on his saddle he watched as the scout threw himself up on to his own mount and gathered up his reins.
‘Are we gonna carry on, sir?’ Sergeant Coogan asked.
‘The job has yet to be finished, Coogan,’ Forbes replied.
Sergeant Coogan watched his superior officer pull out a map from a saddlebag and carefully unfold it. His eyes went from the paper to the scout, who was already cutting a trail between the bodies of the animals and men who were scattered before them.
‘Where’s Willows headed, sir?’ Coogan asked as his men completed their task and piled the rifles on the backs of their pack animals.
Forbes tapped his spurs against the side of his horse and started to follow Willows. ‘Navajo Nate is taking us into Devil’s Elbow. The place which, they say, these Apaches regard as their home.’
‘But what do we know about Devil’s Elbow, sir?’ Coogan asked. He mounted, waved an arm and started the troop after Forbes and the scout.
‘See for yourself.’ Captain Forbes turned and handed the map to Coogan as the burly rider drew level. Coogan stared at the map. Apart from the name there was nothing else upon its printed surface.
‘But, Captain,’ Coogan said fearfully, ‘it ain’t got nothing printed on it that we can use. No trail or river markings or anything. We ain’t got no idea what’s out there sir.’
Forbes nodded.
‘We know one thing, Coogan. Nazimo and what’s left of his war party are out there. And we’re going to get them.’
The cavalrymen rode on through the sand beneath the rising sun, following the tracks left by the scout’s horse.
Even before the dust from their horses’ hoofs settled the vultures came floating down and resumed their fight over the rich pickings.
SIXTEEN
The shafts of sunlight had stretched down from the small holes far above in the ceiling of the cave. Talka had been first to awaken. Anyone who knew him would have doubted
that he had even slept at all. His was the role of leader. It was a duty he had not chosen for himself but one which he refused to relinquish. He led and he tried to protect those who looked to him as their chief. For most of his adult life Talka had led small hunting parties from his distant homeland to the desert that had once been occupied by Apaches. Yet this was probably going to be the last time the dry arid desert would be visited by the tribe with no name.
Once there had been plentiful game amid the dunes. Enough for both Apaches and his own tribe. But now most of the game was gone, like the buffalo further north. Talka knew that he would have to find another hunting ground.
After watering the horses Talka had roused the other braves silently and then turned his attention to the young white man they had saved from the merciless desert a couple of days earlier.
Hal Harper felt the hand on his shoulder and jumped up from his bedroll beside the flames of the strange eternal fire. He blinked hard and then focused on the amused face of Talka.
He sighed heavily.
‘Talka.’
‘We ready to go now, White Eyes Hal.’ The brave stood and helped Harper up from the sand. The light of the flames danced across both men as they moved to their mounts.
Harper tossed the blanket across the back of his horse and patted it down firmly. He then bent down and sleepily lifted the hefty saddle up. He threw the saddle over the blanket and then lifted the left stirrup up and hooked it over the saddle horn.
Talka and the other Indians watched as the young man reached under the belly of the horse and pulled both the cinch straps in turn towards him. They were fascinated by how complicated it was for a white man to ready his mount.
Harper saw the men beside him and glanced at them. ‘What ya looking at?’
Talka pointed at the saddle. ‘White Eyes Hal work very hard to get pony ready. We only need blanket. Why Hal and other white men need all that?’
Harper raised his eyebrows. It was a good question and one he did not have an answer for. But he had to say something to the men who had looked after him as if he were one of them.
