White Apache 9

by David Robbins

  Marshal Crane spat in the dust. “It’s true, unfortunately. A rancher named Prost and another, Jacoby, were dragged from their beds in the middle of the night and murdered.”

  Quid was going to ask if they were friends of Gillett’s, but the lawman abruptly touched his hat brim and tromped off.

  “I’ve got work to do, gents. Be seeing you around.”

  Bob Plunkett was glad to see the lawman go. Eager to get to the hotel and learn why Taggart’s cousin was in Tucson, he turned to hurry off. To his utter surprise, the very man they needed to talk to was walking toward them. “It’s him!”

  “Who?” Quid asked, still watching Crane.

  “Who else? The dude.”

  ~*~

  William Randolph had his hands clasped behind his back and his head bowed. He was beginning to think that trying to claim the bounty on the White Apache was the biggest mistake he had ever made. Nothing had gone right. Amelia had persuaded Governor Goodwin to issue a safe-conduct pass. Once it was in Taggart’s hands, killing him would be out of the question.

  The reporter refused to concede defeat. He had too much time and money invested in the venture to back down. Somehow, he mused, there had to be a way to thwart the governor’s intervention.

  The solution hit him like a ton of bricks. Stopping short, Randolph smiled. It was so simple! All he had to do was arrange for Taggart to be slain before Amelia made contact. The reward would still be in effect. He would get his hands on the $25,000, after all.

  But how to go about it? Randolph wondered. Where was he going to find someone deadly enough to do the job on such short notice? He had hoped to stall the woman long enough for him discreetly to seek a likely prospect, but she was determined to leave in the morning.

  Just then a shadow fell across him. Randolph stopped and looked up into the flinty face of a broad-shouldered man in a wide-brimmed black hat. The stranger wore an ivory-handled Colt on one hip and a large knife in a leather sheath on the other.

  “We need to palaver, mister,” the hardcase declared. “And I won’t take no for an answer.”

  William Randolph smiled. Something told him that his prayers had just been answered.

  Chapter Six

  The renegades had been traveling south for six straight days when they came upon tracks made by three heavily laden wagons and a half-dozen riders winding along the border of the Chiricahua reservation. The tracks led farther south, toward Mexico.

  Since the wagons avoided the only road in the area, and since the party always made camp in out of the way places where they were unlikely to be noticed by roving cavalry patrols, Clay deduced that the wagons belonged to one of the many bands of smugglers operating in the region.

  It was no secret that a thriving illegal trade flourished between criminal elements in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Rifles, pistols and ammunition were routinely smuggled across the border, as were cattle, horses and other livestock.

  Years ago, before the coming of the whites, the Spanish had seen fit to enslave members of various Indian tribes. Men, women, even children had been marched south in chains and made to work in mines or labor on vast haciendas. They were treated like animals, given barely enough food to survive and worked to the point of exhaustion day in and day out. Not surprisingly, few of the Indians lasted very long.

  The American Government had tried to put a stop to the slave trade. But the cavalry could not be everywhere at once. The border was so long, the region so remote, that those who operated outside the law continued to do so with virtual impunity.

  Clay Taggart was glad they had stumbled on smugglers and not unsuspecting families on the move. Although raiding was part and parcel of the Apache way of life, and killing without being killed was one of the highest Apache virtues, he balked at the notion of wiping out innocent pilgrims.

  The band stuck to the trail like a pack of wolves on the scent of a deer herd. As was the Chiricahua custom when on raids, the warriors were on foot.

  From early childhood Apache males trained as long-distance runners. Boys were routinely made to cover four-mile courses over rough country. On hot days they had to do it carrying a mouthful of water which they could neither swallow nor spit out. Gradually over the years, the distance was increased. By the time Apache males were full grown, they could travel seventy-five miles over scorched desert in a single day and be no worse the wear for their ordeal.

  Clay Taggart was not yet the equal of his fellow renegades, but he could go farther on foot, and faster, than any white man in the territory. On this particular sunny day he loped at the head of the Chiricahua, who were strung out in single file behind him. As was always the case when on the go, no one spoke. The hardy warriors jogged in stoic silence, their churning legs eating up the miles with deceptive ease.

  To the northwest, two days’ travel by horseback, was Fort Bowie. Together with Fort Apache, located farther north, the post was a bastion of American military might in the southeast corner of Arizona. Troopers out of Fort Bowie routinely patrolled the border, so Clay was on the lookout for them. He did not care to be taken by surprise, as he had been after slaying the antelope.

  Of the five members of the band, only Clay wore a hat. Apaches, by and large, shunned headgear, except for headbands of various colors. Clay’s hat was brown. It sported a wide brim that shaded his eyes from the sun. Weeks ago, for the sheer hell of it, Clay had stuck a feather in the crown.

  Fiero often remarked that the hat looked ridiculous, but Clay refused to stop wearing it on raids. It had become his trademark, serving to identify him to any who might spot them.

  Clay wanted to be recognized. He wanted those who had mined his life to know that he was very much alive. He wanted them to quake with fear, never knowing when he might show up on their doorstep to exact vengeance for the wrongs they had done him.

  It was an hour before sunset when a telltale plume of dust marked the position of the small caravan. White Apache slowed, signaled to the others, and veered into high rocks to the east of the rutted track. He soon came within sight of the wagons and riders.

  Most were Mexicans, distinguished by their sombreros and flared pants. Armed to the proverbial teeth, three riders were in front of the wagons, three behind. Bandoliers crisscrossed their chests. Double cartridge belts encircled their waists. Each man had two pistols in side holsters and a third wedged under the front of his belt. Each man carried either a Henry, a Spencer, or a Winchester. These were men who knew what they were doing. They would not be easy to take by surprise.

  A pair of men rode on each of the last two wagons. One man handled the mule team while the other, bristling with hardware, kept watch.

  White Apache was most interested in the lead wagon—and not because of the beefy, greasy half-breed armed with four pistols and a brass-frame Henry who was riding guard. His gaze was drawn to the long-haired driver, a Mexican woman who was dressed like a man and had a sawed-off shotgun propped between her legs.

  Clay had heard of her. Anglos called her Sonora Sally. Mexicans knew her as Hechicera Rojo, the Red Witch. She was a wily smuggler who had been working the illicit border trade for the better part of a decade. Only once had she been caught, on the Mexican side. Saloon gossip had it that she had bribed her way out of jail and disappeared. Her men were all confirmed killers, pistoleros with no scruples. Rumor had it that she kept them in line by offering them shares in her operation, as well as letting them take turns sampling her feminine charms.

  Every lawman in Arizona would have given their right arm for a crack at her. The army had posted circulars, asking anyone with information on her whereabouts to come forward.

  But the White Apache had found her first. From a high roost he spied on them, debating what to do. The wagons were bound to contain a lot of plunder. The big question was whether it was plunder the Apache could use, or whether they would be risking their lives for useless dry goods.

  Then there was Sonora Sally to consider. Clay had an aversion to ki
lling women, even a woman who made her living on the wrong side of the law. He attempted to come up with an excuse to let the smugglers go on their way unmolested.

  The wagons rattled steadily southward. Now and then an outrider would go up to one of them and help himself to a dipper of water from a side-mounted barrel.

  White Apache and the Chiricahua shadowed the smugglers until sunset. As the light dwindled, Sonora Sally guided her team into a gully; the others followed suit, and within no time they had a fire going and were treating themselves to coffee and beans.

  When Clay was positive the gang had settled down for the night, he withdrew from his vantage point, silently signaling to the warriors as he did. They all joined him except for Ponce. The young warrior was left to keep watch.

  Presently White Apache and the three Apache warriors were gathered under a rock overhang, squatting in a circle. Fiero spoke first. Simmering with excitement, he declared, “I say we attack before dawn. Most of the Nakai-yes will be asleep. We can kill half of them before the rest know what is happening. It will be easy.”

  “You always want to attack,” White Apache pointed out, eliciting a grin from Cuchillo Negro. “But we must ask ourselves whether it would be worth it. What do we stand to gain?”

  “Rifles, ammunition, horses,” Fiero ticked them off.

  “We have enough horses. We have plenty of guns from previous raids. And we have collected enough ammunition for an army,” White Apache held his ground.

  The hothead did not like it when someone disputed him. “So? Are you becoming lazy, Lickoyee-shis-inday? Since when is a warrior content with what he has? Have you forgotten that we are Apache? The Shis-Inday are warriors, before all else. We have always been so. We will always be so. My father, his father, and my father’s father all lived by their quickness and their wits. We must do the same.”

  It was a valid point that White Apache could not dispute, so he did not even try. It would have done no good, anyway. Once Fiero made up his mind, changing it was like changing the course of a river—next to impossible unless you were the Almighty. He turned to Delgadito for support. “What do you say?”

  The renegade leader thought it folly to go up against so many guns. In the old days, before Lickoyee-shis-inday usurped his position, he would have dismissed it as too reckless. But he had been working on a plan to win back the trust of the other warriors, and to that end, he had to side with them against Lickoyee-shis-inday whenever possible. So he answered, “Fiero’s thoughts are mine. We have been idle too long. If we do this the right way, we will not lose anyone.”

  “And you?” White Apache asked Black Knife.

  Cuchillo Negro had always been the most cautious member of the band. He always counseled against doing anything rash. This time was no different. “I once heard Cochise say that a wise warrior knows when to fight, and when not to. There is little to gain by attacking these Nakai-yes. I say we keep hunting. Something better will come along.”

  The wrangling would have gone on indefinitely had Ponce not materialized out of the shadows. “Come quickly,” the young warrior urged.

  “What has happened?” White Apache asked.

  “You must see for yourselves.”

  Into the darkness they melted, spectral figures who made no more noise than real ghosts would. Invisible to the smugglers below, they laid flat along the gully rim.

  Clay was taken aback to see that a girl of ten or twelve had joined the smugglers. It was an Indian girl, of all people, clothed in a store-bought dress, the cheap kind sold at trading posts. He was going to ask Ponce where she had come from when she rose from near the fire and hobbled over to Sonora Sally and several pistoleros. Around her ankles were shackles. The chain was so short, she could not take full strides without falling on her face.

  “She is a Mimbre,” Fiero said.

  White Apache did not know how the warrior could tell, but he took Fiero’s word for it. All four of the warriors had keener eyesight than he did. At times, he had to marvel at their ability to distinguish objects so far off that he was hard-pressed to make the objects out.

  Of the various Apache tribes, the Mimbres were more closely allied with the Chiricahua than any other. In part, it stemmed from the deep personal friendship Cochise had shared with Mangus Colorado, the former head of the Mimbres. In part, too, because the two tribes lived close to one another, so close that the borders of their recognized .territories overlapped.

  The girl in the gully was carrying a tin cup of coffee. She bent to hand it to Sonora Sally, and tripped. The hot brew splashed on the smuggler’s neck. Sally shot to her feet with a howl, cuffed the girl so hard that she fell onto her side, then lustily cursed the child in Spanish.

  White Apache sensed a change come over his companions. Not one moved. Not one uttered a sound. Yet they were different. Their forms gave the illusion of being chiseled in stone, as if they had tensed from head to toe. They were human panthers, anxious to rip and rend.

  Sonora Sally stopped swearing and stomped to a wagon. From it she pulled what appeared to be a coil of rope. A sharp flick of her arm revealed the truth. A bullwhip unfurled with a crack, inches from the prone Mimbre. The girl crawled backward to get out of reach, but hampered by the leg irons she could not crawl fast enough. Sonora Sally stalked her. The whip arced again, its tip biting into the girl’s shoulder, ripping the material and the soft flesh underneath.

  “You will learn to be careful, savage!” the smuggler railed. “Or I will peel your hide piece by piece until there is nothing left.”

  Clay doubted the Indian girl understood. The child covered her face with her arms and rolled onto her stomach, but that did not stop the whip from raining down over and over, its searing tip cutting her arms, her legs, her feet. Blood trickled from the wounds, coating her wrists and lower legs.

  The girl never let out a peep. Teeth clenched, she bore the torment with the fortitude of an Apache adult. When Sonora Sally finally tired and lowered her arm, the Mimbre brazenly sat up and stared defiantly at her. Two men promptly seized her.

  Sally walked forward, coiling the whip. When she was close enough, she swung, smashing the girl across the mouth with the heavy handle. The Mimbre was rocked by the blow. Another caused her knees to buckle. A third, delivered to her stomach, doubled her over, at which point the pistoleros let her drop.

  Fiero’s blood pulsed in his veins. It was all he could do to keep from charging down into the camp. “Now what do you say, Lickoyee-shis-inday?” he whispered.

  White Apache did not have to say anything. They all knew what had to be done.

  The girl lay still for the longest while, until Sonora Sally, or the Red Witch, as Clay was now inclined to think of her, walked over and kicked the Mimbre in the back. When the girl did not rise quickly enough to suit her, the Witch grabbed her by the hair and jerked her upright.

  “That one is mine,” Fiero whispered.

  The captive was made to wait hand and foot on the men, serving them coffee, spreading out their blankets and doing other chores. She was poked, prodded and slapped. Through it all, she held her bloodied head high.

  “If she were a little older, I would take her to be my woman,” Ponce said.

  The young warrior was the only member of the band who did not have a mate. The woman he had kidnapped from the conducta had later escaped. Shortly before that, a Chiricahua maiden for whom he cared, Firefly, had been brutally butchered by an army scout. Ponce was profoundly lonely but he would never let on as much.

  White Apache slid back from the edge. Grunting to alert the others, he rose, but stayed low so the smugglers would not glimpse him. One by one, the Apache dogged his footsteps. When they were far enough from the gully to speak openly, he swung around and bluntly declared, “We will kill them all. It is agreed?”

  “Tats-an,” Fiero said vehemently.

  “As for the ish-tia-nay, one of us must take her to her people when it is over,” White Apache noted.

  “Shee-dah,”
Ponce volunteered.

  White Apache bent his neck to study the sky. Scattered pale clouds scuttled across the heavens, dominated by a sliver of moon. It would pose no problem to men trained from childhood to blend into the terrain as if they were part of it. “We must attack the kunh-gan-hay from both sides of the gully at once. Delgadito and Ponce from the east, the rest of us from the west.”

  Clay did not mention that he felt it best to have Fiero near him so he could keep an eye on the firebrand. The others would not do anything rash. Fiero—was Fiero.

  “What will be the signal?” Delgadito posed the most important question.

  “When you see me go over the rim.”

  Fiero grinned like a kid who had been granted his heart’s desire. “At last, a battle! Nah-kee-sah-tah to asht-lay. I like those odds!”

  Twelve to five? Only Fiero would, White Apache mused, as they soundlessly fanned out to take their positions. He returned to the same vantage point as before.

  The smugglers were relaxing after their long day of arduous travel. Several played cards. Others had a game of dice going. The Red Witch huddled with a husky pistolero who could not keep his hands off her shapely body.

  Left alone, the Mimbre squatted by the fire. She was the perfect picture of misery. But she did not cry; she did not so much as sniffle.

  Clay admired the girl’s grit. He scanned the smugglers again, seeking evidence of liquor. It would help immensely if some of the pistoleros were too drunk to offer much resistance, but evidently their boss kept them on a tight rein. Coffee was drunk in large quantities, but nothing else.

  Shifting, White Apache sought sign of his companions. To the north, Ponce and Delgadito were working their way along the rim toward the far side. Fiero lay at the base of a boulder thirty feet away. Of Cuchillo Negro, no trace could be seen.

  There was nothing else for Clay to do but wait. Crossing his arms, he rested his chin on a wrist and made himself comfortable.