“I just had to ask, didn’t I?” Sam questioned, shaking his head as they stepped up on the freshly-milled and laid boardwalk.
Bodine pushed open the batwings and the three of them walked inside.
The half dozen outlaws recognized them immediately and one dropped his hand to his gun. Another caught the man’s arm, preventing him from opening the fight.
Bodine, Sam, and Wellman all saw the movement and filed it away for later reference. The movement didn’t make any sense. The three of them were temporarily limited in vision due to just stepping into the murk of the saloon from the bright sunlight. Now would have been a perfect time to take them out—or to try to take them out.
“Rye and a beer for me,” Wellman said, bellying up to the bar.
Sam and Bodine ordered a beer.
The outlaws left the long bar and walked to the rear of the room, carrying their drinks with them.
“What’s goin’ on,” Wellman muttered, lifting his shot glass and taking a sip.
Sam looked, amazement spreading across his face. “They’ve taken seats with their backs toward us. Everyone of them.”
“They know that we’re looking for Chappo; they probably knew that two days after we agreed to it.” Bodine was thoughtful for a moment. “Perhaps Porter and Lake figure the easiest way to deal with us is to let us go on in after Chappo. The three of us against several hundred of Chappo’s Apaches is not the best of odds any way you want to look at it.”
“With us out of the way, they wouldn’t have to keep looking over their shoulders,” Sam added.
The men were speaking in low tones, so they could not be overheard.
“What now?” Wellman said. “They’s too damn many miners in here to just haul ’er out and let ’er bang.”
“And if we goaded them into a fight, in front of this many witnesses, even though we probably wouldn’t go to trial for it, it’d be a black mark against us,” Bodine said. He took a swig of beer.
“Hell with it.” Wellman knocked back his rye and swallowed half his beer. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get something to eat.”
Chapter 15
While they were eating in a tent cafe, the three of them watched as the outlaws left the saloon, mounted up, and rode out. The gunslicks and outlaws headed west, but all knew that didn’t mean a thing, since they could and probably would change directions as soon as they reached the edge of town.
“They’ll get up in the Mules and make camp so’s they can watch us,” Wellman said, forking a huge piece of apple pie into his mouth. “See which way we leave out. Them’s part of the bunch that held my Jenny. I’ve a notion to follow ’em and just shoot ’em out of the saddle like the hydrophoby skunks they is.”
Several men seated close enough to hear what was being said eyeballed the trio and then got up and moved to a table across the canvas-covered room. It took only one look for the miners to know that these were men who would brook no nonsense.
The trio finished their meal, had another cup of coffee, then returned to the stable. Bisbee was an hour behind them at dawn.
To the north and west of them, the prospector Ed Schieffelin was digging in the earth in his search for silver. Soon the town of Tombstone would be born.
The land the three men rode across alternated from near-barren desert to shady glens invitingly placed under canyon recesses. It was a land perfectly suited for ambush. There were ranchers in this section of the territory, but they lived behind walled fortresses, with enough cowboys on the payroll to make up a small army. For the most part, those ranches were south of where the trio rode.
Bodine called a halt after making fifteen miles that first day out of Bisbee. They fixed their evening meal, carefully put out the fire, and moved on several miles before bedding down for the night. They were in Apache country, but the next day would put them smack in the middle of Chappo’s country, on the edge of the lonely and dangerous Chiricahua Mountains.
The morning dawned hot. An hour’s ride, with Wellman at the point, brought them to a spring where they watered their horses and filled up their canteens and then cooked breakfast, all the time keeping a wary eye out for trouble. All of them felt as though a hundred hostile eyes were on them. And as Wellman put it, “They probably is.”
“Then why don’t they attack?” Bodine asked, his nerves stretched tight, as were the nerves of all three of them.
“They might think we’re crazy,” Sam conjectured. “Just three men riding into the heart of Chappo’s territory. Chappo himself might think we’re crazy for doing this.”
“Worked for me one time,” Wellman said. “Up on the plains. Utes had me fair and square. I started babblin’ and singin’ and preachin’ and a-droolin’ at the mouth. Then I sat down on the bank of a crick and started eatin’ mud. That done it. Them Utes high-tailed it out of there. They didn’t want no truck with no crazy person. Chappo probably does think we’re all nuts; but that ain’t gonna cut us much slack. Not for very long. We got six fine horses between us and it’s a mighty curious thing in his mind what we got tied under the canvas on them packhorses. I ’spect they been watchin’ us since late yesterday. Some of ’em’s bound to make a move at us today.”
They headed out, riding single-file, with no one talking and with all senses working hard.
With few exceptions, the time for hot meals was done. From this point on, it would be cold biscuits and jerky, washed down with lukewarm water from their canteens.
They were abruptly into the mountain range, almost without warning, and the attack came without warning, as they all knew it would. Had not Bodine been watching his horse’s ears, they would have been dead men.
The ears came up and Bodine felt the animal tense between his legs. “Here they come!” he yelled, and put the spurs to the horse.
Sam, who had just taken the point from Wellman, led them into a draw and up into the rocks and timber. An Apache reared up in front of him, hate on the face. Sam shot the brave in the belly and the horses coming up behind mauled the Indian with their hooves.
The ambush having failed, the Apaches settled down to a waiting game. The three were in a fairly good location, but that had been due to luck, not on the skills of any of them. Just above the rocks was a thick stand of spruce and fir.
“We can’t let them get up there,” Sam said. “I’ll take the high place.” Then he was gone, moving silently and swiftly up the slope.
While Wellman kept watch, Bodine picketed the horses in a hollow, grabbed two canteens, their spare rifles, a pouch of dynamite, and found himself a good spot from which to fire.
“How many?” Bodine called.
“Don’t make no difference,” Wellman’s reply was caustic. “They’ll all be here in an hour. Pony left at a gallop while you was gone.”
“I have a little surprise for them,” Bodine called in a hoarse whisper. “One I doubt they’ve ever faced before.”
Wellman chuckled. He knew Bodine had been in the dynamite. “This is a good spot for it awright.”
Moments later Sam called, “Head’s up! Reenforcements have arrived.”
“They must have been just over the ridge,” Bodine muttered. He turned his head and almost yelled as he came nose to snout with a funny looking varmit.
Wellman laughed just as the varmit took off like a shot, heading for the timber, its long banded tail held high as it scampered away. “Coatimundi. They some relation to the raccoon.”
“The expression on your face was priceless!” Sam called down with a laugh. Then he switched to Cheyenne and said, “We are confusing the Apache with all this idle chatter. They don’t know what to make of it and some of them have backed away, believing us to be crazy people. So let’s keep it up.”
“Can you preach, Dick?” Matt called.
“I’ll say I can! I can talk the devil right out of any sinner that ever lived.”
“Get to it, then. I’m gonna lay out some surprises for our friends.”
Dick went to preaching and
it was quite a sermon. He ranted and raved and even Sam perked up when the old mountain man began confessing to past sins concerning various ladies.
So far, with the exception of the few shots exchanged by both sides at the outset, the Apaches had not fired at the men.
In Cheyenne, Matt called, “Sam? How close is the nearest bunch to me?”
“About twenty-five feet right directly in front of you and below. I didn’t shoot when I saw you laying out the sticks.”
“I ’bout run out of things to confess to,” Wellman said, and his Cheyenne was excellent. “Drop about three sticks in on top of ’em, Bodine.”
Bodine grinned, picked up four sticks wrapped for throwing, thumbnailed a match into flame, and lit the fuse. He let it burn down dangerously close and then chunked it over the rock he was behind.
The explosives detonated about two feet off the ground and the carnage was extensive. Before the sound waves had stopped reverberating, Matt tossed a bundle to Dick.
The Apaches opened up and Sam returned the fire, working his Winchester as fast as he could and still lay down an accurate fire.
Twice the Apaches tried to get to where the dead and dynamite-mangled bodies of the braves lay, to drag them away. Once, Sam’s rifle fire drove them back. The second time they reached the bloody scene only to have Bodine and Wellman throw several sticks of sputtering death in on them.
The fight was out of them for this day. As swiftly as they had opened the initial attack, the Apaches pulled out and the canyon grew silent as the hoofbeats of their ponies faded.
“The bodies of the dead are mangled away,” Sam called, not yet ready to leave his high-up position in case the Apaches doubled back. “The same as when they are deliberately mutilated. The souls are doomed to wander forever, never finding a resting place.”
“Good,” Wellman said, then spat a long stream of brown tobacco juice. “Serves ’em right for ignorin’ my sermon!”
“Turkey Creek,” Wellman said, and swung down from the saddle, stretching his old bones. “After what we done to them today, we can chance a fire and fix us something to eat here and then ride a couple of miles over to a lake and bed down for the night.”
“Smack in the middle of Apache country,” Bodine said, pulling his Winchester from the saddle boot.
“That’s right,” Wellman replied cheerfully. “And you can bet that right now they’re scratchin’ their heads and wonderin’ what in the hell they done come up agin. Couple more fights like the one we just come through, and Chappo will take his band and head for the rocks, up in the north part of the range. And if they decide to do that, boys, we in for some rough goin’.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
“Cain’t get through there. Least I don’t know no way. It’s the gawdawfulest mess a human bein’ ever laid his eyes on. Looks like God just picked up all the huge rocks He could find and throwed ’em down all in a jumble. The ’Paches know the way in and out, but I don’t. And boys, you don’t want to get trapped in there.”
Bodine handed the man a stick. “Draw us a map and show us the range, Dick.”
Wellman outlined a zigzagging square. “We’re here,” he jabbed the point into the earth. “Just north of where that Spaniard feller, Coronado something-or-another is supposed to have explored couple of hundred years ago. Way up here is Fort Bowie. They’s still some soldier boys there. The fort was built back durin’ the civil war and the soldier boys is ’posed to be wagin’ war agin the Chiricahua ’Paches. But the Army don’t come in here much, so don’t get your hopes up about that. They got long years of fightin’ ahead of ’em ’fore Geronimo is through. Now somewheres up here,” he jabbed the stick toward the top of the crude map, “they’s a valley. It’s ’posed to be about fifty acres in all. Got good grass and water. But gettin’ to it is the problem. The way I heared it, they’s one way in and one way out: a canyon, about four miles long. Just wide enough for a horse to manage it. Far as I know, there ain’t no white man ever found the entrance. Or if they did, and they blundered in there, they never come out.”
“Then we’ve got to find it,” Matt said simply.
Dick fixed him with a jaundiced gaze. “I figured you’d say something like that.” He poured a cup of fresh-brewed coffee and leaned back against a log. “Boys, the Apaches have two virtues. And as near as I can figure, two is all they got. They live for two reasons: to steal without getting caught, and to kill without being killed. And they’re the best in the world in doin’ both. And I ain’t bad-mouthin’ ’em for it. That’s just the way they’s raised. Once taken by Apaches, they’s been precious few men ever got away from ’em. I’m an old man, and I don’t personal know but of three men who ever done it. And you met one of ’em back at the fort: Bill Lewis. I’ve rode into and out of the camps of Crow, Cheyenne, Ute, Comanche, Kiowa, Blackfoot, Sioux, Arapaho, Creek, and ten other tribes. I been tooken unfriendly-like five times, and talked my way out of it. You don’t talk your way out of the hands of these Apaches down here. I want you boys to keep that thought in your minds at all times. Now let’s eat.”
* * *
They rode about three miles from the lake, toward the northeast, and bedded down in a cold camp. And the nights were chilly. Come the dawning, they chanced a small fire under a low overhang and fixed coffee, extinguishing the fire as soon as the coffee had boiled. They drank coffee and chewed on stale bread and jerky. Then they mounted up and headed north, toward the Wilderness area. Sam and Bodine saw rock formations unlike anything they had ever before witnessed: strange, almost eerie upthrustings, stately and silent.
“And deadly,” Wellman said, knowing what they were thinking, for he had thought the same thing years back. “Blind canyons ever’ way you turn. Apaches trap you up in one of them, hang it up.”
“Awful lot of country for so few Apache,” Sam pointed out.
“Yeah. That’s why we still got our hair. They don’t know where we are. Yet,” he added.
At mid-morning, Wellman called a brief halt and said to Sam, “You think you could take some field glasses and climb up that rock yonder?” He pointed.
Sam rode around the nearly sheer upthrusting, looking for hand-holds. When he returned he said, “Yes.”
Wellman and Bodine dismounted and squatted down while Sam pulled off his boots and slipped on moccasins. Matt pulled out the makings and rolled a smoke, as did Wellman. It was dead calm on the twisting canyon floor, and the smoke would linger close with no wind to carry it to unfriendly noses.
Sam stayed on top of the peak for over half an hour, meticulously scanning the terrain in all directions. He carefully climbed down and said, “Nothing to the south of us. Some very faint fingers of smoke to the north and signs of dust to the east.”
“How far north?” Bodine asked.
“I’d say five miles north and east.”
“Talking smoke?”
“No.”
“We got luck ridin’ with us,” Wellman said. “They don’t know where we is. But we know ’proximately where they is. In the Wilderness. They’re not going to run for the rocks for three of us. They’ve gathered and are talkin’ about this; tryin’ to figure out if their medicine is bad.”
“They might not understand dynamite,” Sam said. “I remember my grandfather telling me about the first time he heard and felt artillery. He said it was awful. The Indians ran in panic.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Wellman said. “The Apaches have shore enough seen what mountain cannon can do,” he told them. “Back some years ago, while the civil war was goin’ on in the east, the Army out here used twelve pounders agin Cochise over in Apache Pass. I heard about it. Whipped old Cochise to a farethee-well that day, and put the fear into him. Since then the Apache has always been afraid of what they call the thundering guns. They might think that’s what we’ve got. How many cookfires did you see, Sam?”
“Maybe half a dozen all told. I looked several times to be sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. They were coo
k fires.”
Wellman smiled. “They’ve gathered. The dust you seen was others comin’ to the gatherin’ for a pow-wow.
“We just might get lucky,” Matt said. “If you want to chance it.”
“What do you have on your mind, brother?” Sam asked.
Matt laid it out.
Wellman and Sam looked at each other and both shrugged. “It’s so crazy it just might work,” Sam said.
“Well then,” Wellman said. “Let’s fix us a hot meal and get goin.’ ”
“Some hot food would taste good,” Sam said.
“ ’Specially when you take into consideration it might be our last meal,” Wellman said with a grin. Then his grin faded. “Something about that area with that balancin’ rock you spoke of keeps naggin’ at my mind. Well, mayhaps it’ll come to me. But I thought that was east of here.” Then he would say no more about it.
But both Sam and Bodine could see the old man was worried about something, and it wasn’t the bacon and the beans cooking.
Chapter 16
They left the packhorses behind, stripped of their burdens and well hidden and left their own horses about a half a mile from where Sam had spotted the heaviest smoke. He had marked the spot in his mind by a huge balancing rock that was just to the south of the smoke. Twice on the way there, Sam climbed atop high rocks to make certain they were on the mark. Each time, they were dead on.
They watered their horses and left them on picket pins in a small area with enough good graze to keep them content for the time the men would be gone, and they didn’t figure on being gone for more than three hours. It was silently understood that if they weren’t back by then, they would never return.
Dick Wellman did a lot of quiet grousing about the others carrying by far the heaviest loads, but Matt and Sam stood firm. Dick was still quite spry for his age, but they needed his guns and experience more than they needed his strength in carrying dynamite.
They all knew that if their horses were found, it would, in all likelihood, mean the end for them, for the Apache would sound the alarm and every trail and pass would be blocked.
Brotherhood of the Gun Page 11
