The Lonely Men s-14

by Louis L'Amour

  Only if we didn't get out of this place we weren't going to be laying many plans.

  Up there where I was, I began to give study to the country around.

  I knew that getting the rest of those horses up to the top was an unlikely chance. In the first place, most of them were larger and heavier, and altogether harder to handle than the two we had got out. We might just possibly get one horse up, or even two. We would never make three or four.

  So I cut that out of my thinking. Somehow we had to get out by going downhill, and that meant riding right through that bunch of Apaches ...

  Now, wait a minute, I told myself. There to the right ... that's a slide of sand, but there's a mixed lot of growth in it There don't seem to be so many large rocks. I studied it as carefully as the light would allow.

  If we could just ... I began to see how we, or some of us, might make it. If we stayed here none of us would make it through tomorrow.

  I was going down there right now and face them with it. Only first there was that Apache off to the left. He had been coming up the hill for the last half-hour, creeping, crawling, out of sight more than two-thirds of the time, but always getting closer. Now when he moved again ...

  Settling myself into the sand, I braced my elbow and taken a careful sight. Then I waited. His foot moved ... I waited.... Then he lunged into view and I squeezed off my shot. He never even twitched.

  Chapter 14

  When I came sliding into the hollow Spanish looked at me. "Was I you, I'd still be travelin' " he said. "It don't look like we're goin' no place down here."

  "I've got an idea," I said.

  He searched my face. "Well, you Sacketts have come up with some good ones. I hear tell whenever one of you boys are in trouble, the rest come a-runnin'. I'd like to see that now. I surely would."

  "They don't know where I'm at."

  John J. was stuffing a pipe. He looked haggard and honed down. I hadn't the heart to look at Rocca yet.

  "What's this idea?" John J. asked. "Right about now I'll buy anything."

  "Yonder," I said, "there's a corner of slope that's mostly free of big rocks.

  There's some grass and some brush, but it's low stuff, and the sand looks as if ifs packed."

  "So?"

  "Come nightfall we mount up. We stampede the horses down that slope into the Apache camp and we go with them. Only we keep on riding."

  Battles gave study to it Spanish, he just looked at me. "How many do you think would make it?" he asked.

  "Maybe none ... maybe one."

  Battles shrugged. "Well, it's no worse than here. At least we'd be trying."

  "What about Tamp?" Spanish asked.

  "He isn't getting any better, is he? How much chance has he got here?"

  "None at all."

  "All right. So we get him into a saddle. You put that Mex on a horse and he'll ride it to hell and gone. I know him. If we get him up in a saddle he'll stay there as long as any of us, dead or alive."

  "All right," Battles said, "I'll buy it. What do we do?"

  "Pick your best horse. We'll load the pack horse. Maybe he can stay with us, maybe he can't. Maybe hell follow and catch up. You know how horses like to stay together."

  We sat about there, chewing on jerked beef and trying to see all the angles, but there wasn't much we could do but trust to luck. We could hold to the far side of the bunch away from the Apache camp, although that might be the worst thing, for there'd likely be Apaches sleeping around, or watching from everywhere.

  Time was a-passing, but we daren't do anything to let those Indians know what we were planning. Saddling up had to be done after dark, and all we could do would be to pray none of them got up on the rimrock before night came on.

  Tampico Rocca was lying there with his eyes open when I sat down beside him.

  "You don't have to tell me," he said. "I heard you talking."

  "You reckon you can set up there like I said?"

  "You get me into the saddle, that's all I ask. That and a couple of shotguns."

  "You'll have them."

  We sat quiet then for a quite a spell. It was almighty hot, and even sitting still the sweat trickled down my body. We drank and drank again, and we all ate a little more ... no telling when we'd get to eat or drink again, if ever.

  Finally I taken my rifle and climbed up on the rim. We had to make those Apaches think they had us, and after my helping in two kills from up there, they'd be sure I'd stay there.

  Up on the rim I could see no cover for an Apache up there, no way one could come on a man except by night, and if anybody rode from their camp, I could see him.

  The camp was too far for a rifle shot, but I could see their cook fires, and see them moving around. Our horses, if we could start them slow, might get within easy distance of their camp before we had to stampede them. And we might be lucky enough to stampede their pony herd, but I wasn't betting on anything.

  When it was fairly dark I came down off the rim and we lighted a small fire to make coffee. They knew where we were, and we wanted them to think of us as staying put, although the idea of us trying to break out probably never came to their minds. They knew we were boxed in.

  Over coffee we just sat around, keeping an ear tuned for movement. Rocca was propped up by his saddle atop a couple of rocks.

  John J. Battles was quiet, saying nothing much until suddenly he started to talk of home. It seemed he'd come from New England, of a good, solid family. He had made a place for himself in the town and was a respected young businessman, and then he got involved with a girl, and another young man from a respected but high-riding family had come for him with a gun. This fellow had been drinking, and threatened to kill Battles on sight. When they met again Battles was armed, and in the exchange of shots, he killed the man.

  There had been a trial, and Battles was cleared of the shooting, but he found himself no longer welcome at the girl's house, or anywhere else in town. So he sold his business, went west, and had drifted. He had driven stage, ridden shotgun for Wells Fargo, during which time he killed a holdup man and wounded his partner. He had been a deputy marshal for a time, had driven north with a cattle drive, and scouted against the Cheyenne.

  "What happened to the girl?" Spanish wanted to know.

  Battles glanced up. "What you'd expect. She married somebody else, not as well off as I'd been, and he got to hitting the bottle. A couple of years later his horse ran away with his rig and he was killed.

  "She wrote, wanted me to come back. Offered to come west to me, and you know something? Try as I might, I couldn't even remember exactly what she looked like."

  "You didn't have a picture?"

  "Had one. Lost it when the Cheyennes ambushed a stage I was traveling on." He paused for a moment. "I'd like to have seen the leaves change color back in the Vermont hills again. I'd like to have seen my family again."

  "I thought you had no family," I said.

  "I've got a sister and two brothers." He sipped some coffee. "One brother is a banker in Boston. The other one is a teacher. I'd gone into business, but a teacher was what I really wanted to be, only when the moment came I was steadier with a gun that I should have been." Nobody talked there for a time, and then Battles looked around at me. "Any of your family ever in New England? There was a man named Sackett made quite a name for himself up in Maine during the Revolution. Seems he was wounded or hurt or something, and he spent the winter on the farm with my great-grandparents, helped them through a bad time."

  "Uh-huh. My great-grandfather fought in the Revolution. He was with Dearborn at Saratoga, and he was in Dearborn's command when they marched with General Sullivan to destroy the towns of the Iroquois."

  "Likely it's the same man." Battles put down his coffee cup and began to stoke his pipe.

  Spanish walked in from the lookout "All quiet," he said. "There's still one fire goin' "

  Quiet as could be, we saddled our horses, and loaded what grub was left on our pack horse. Overhead the stars
were very bright, and the night was still. Whilst the others got Rocca ready for traveling, binding his wounds tighter. I crept over to the place where we were going to try to ride down.

  The ground was packed pretty good, and there was no slide sand.

  The place was narrow, just a strip that might ordinarily have gone unnoticed, except that in our desperation we had looked for any possibility at all. Of course the Apaches might have seen it, too, and might be waiting for us down there, for it was the only place where we could come off the mountain with any speed. But we had not seen it from below, only from the view on the rimrock.

  We gathered near the edge, the loose horses before us, held by me and Spanish.

  Tampico Rocca was in the saddle, John J. Battles beside him, holding our two horses.

  It was near the middle of the night when we released our hold on the horses and went back to step into our saddles. "All right," I said, "let's go."

  We started the horses forward. We made almost no sound in the night, there was a whisper of hoofs in the sand, a slight creak of saddle leather. I could feel a tightness in my chest, and I gripped hard on the pistol butt in my hand. This would be close, fast work -- no chance for a rifle here.

  The lead horses disappeared over the edge before us and started down, and as they reached a point about a third of the way down we let out a whoop and each of us fired a shot.

  Startled, the half-broken horses lunged into a run. They went down the slope in a scattered band and hit the flat below running all out. A rifle flashed, somebody shouted, and a fire flared up. The Apaches had prepared fires for light, and they lit the wild scene with a dancing glare.

  Low down on the black horse, I charged into the night, gun held low and ready.

  The wind whipped my face, and the horses thundered into the Apache camp.

  Off to my left Rocca's gun was blazing. I saw a wild Apache face spring at him out of the dark, saw the flash of the pistol, and the face vanished into the darkness. Somewhere a horse screamed, and I heard a shout from Battles as his horse spilled head over heels, and John J. hit the sand running. I saw him slide to a stop and slam two fast shots at the running Apaches. Then he wheeled and, bolstering his pistol as he moved, he made a wild grab at the streaming mane of one of our horses, somehow turned aside from the first rush. He was almost swept from his feet, but he went astride the horse, clinging to his hold on its mane.

  Flames stabbed from every side, and then we were through the camp and racing away down the bottom of the barranca.

  My black was running all out, and I turned a little in my saddle. Rocca was still coming, riding loose in the saddle, his hat on the back of his neck, held by the string of his chin-strap which had slipped to his throat.

  Spanish was off to my right -- or so I thought -- and we charged on into the night, some of the horses running wild ahead of us, others scattered to left and right.

  We raced on, and somehow the horses found a winding trail to the cap rock and slowed to climb it. I called out, but there was no reply. Finally the black struggled over the rim onto the mesa. There was more light there, under the high stars.

  I drew up. Here and there I glimpsed a horse, but none that carried a rider.

  Slowly I rode on, talking to the horses and hoping the others would follow.

  Daylight was still far away, but none of us would dare to stop. If they were alive they, too, would keep on.

  There was no use to try to find anybody. In the darkness a body could be missed, and any one of us would shy from any other rider for fear he was facing an Indian.

  Through the night I rode, once lifting my horse to a trot for a few miles, then slowing again to a walk. I reloaded my gun, checked my rifle. Once, worn out as I was, I dozed in the saddle.

  Finally, in the gray light of day, I stopped. Carefully, standing in my stirrups, I looked in every direction. I could see for a good distance on all sides, but there was nothing but desert and sky. Wearily, I started the black horse on again, heading north.

  By noontime, with nothing in sight, I got down and stumbled on, leading the horse. There was no telling when I might need all that horse had to make a run for it.

  There were no tracks. There was only silence. Overhead a buzzard swept down the sky, returned and circled widely above me. After that he stayed with me, and I figured a buzzard had pretty good judgment about where he might get a meal.

  The sun was hot, and no breeze stirred. My canteen had been holed by a bullet and was empty. I stumbled along like a sleepwalker, dead on my feet, yet not daring to stop. Finally I gave up and climbed into the saddle again.

  Ahead of me, almost lost in the blue of distance, the cap rock seemed to break off. There were mountains beyond, behind me and to the east there was nothing.

  Water ... I had to have water, and so did my horse. Under a desert sun a man cannot live long without water.

  The mesa ended abruptly, but there was no trail to the rough, rolling land below. Here there was another stretch of the rimrock, nowhere less than thirty feet of sheer wall, then a steep, rock-strewn slope.

  Far off I thought I could see a patch of green in a fold of the earth. Skirting the cliff, I rode on. Suddenly I saw the tracks of shod hoofs.

  The tracks were familiar. They were the tracks of a horse that Spanish Murphy had ridden, a tough, mountain-bred horse, larger than the average mustang, and weighing almost a thousand pounds. Turning into the trail, I followed it along the rim. We came abruptly to a cleft where the rock wall had broken away and there was an easy though steep descent to the valley below. We made it.

  We rode on, the black and me, with the black quickening his pace so as to come up with his friend. Sure enough, we'd gone not over five miles when we saw the bay mustang ahead of us. He had stopped, and was looking ahead, ears pricked.

  Well, I shucked that Winchester before you could say aye, yes, or no, and I eared back the hammer and walked the black right up alongside that mustang. I spoke easy to him, and he didn't do more than side-step a mite, knowing my voice. Then I looked where he was looking.

  There was a thick clump of ironwood beside the way we were taking, and a horse was standing head down there, just waiting, and sitting up on its back was a man. He was sitting there, hands on the pommel, head hanging like the horse's, and when we started forward, he paid us no mind.

  Good reason why. It was Tampico Rocca, and he was dead.

  Even before I got to him I could see by the blood on his vest that he'd been shot at least twice, but he'd lived long enough to lash one hand to the saddlehorn and tangle the fingers of the other hand in the turns of the rope.

  Rocca had said that if he got into the saddle he would stay there, and he meant it.

  Chapter 15

  There was no need to stay close to him, and I was wary. Had the Apaches seen me coming, it would have been like them to leave Rocca there, and I wanted no traps.

  An arroyo offered some shelter, and after a quick glance I rode into it and waited there, listening.

  For several minutes I watched Rocca, the horse, and the rocks around. Mostly, it was the horse I watched, for the actions of the horse would warn me if there was anyone close by.

  Following the arroyo a little further, I saw a clump of brush and low trees near the lip of the draw, so I rode up the bank in their shelter. After a while, reasonably sure that it was safe, I went back to the horse and its burden.

  The trailing bridle had caught in the brush, and I let it stay there while I lifted Rocco from the saddle after freeing his hands. There was nothing with which to prepare a grave, so I found a shallow watercourse, placed him in it, and covered the body with brush and rocks.

  But first, I had taken his guns and ammunition, to leave nothing for the Apaches if they found him. There was a full belt of ammunition as well as some loose cartridges. And there was a swallow of water in the canteen.

  In his pocket I found a stub of pencil and some old papers on which he had been learning to write his name.
He had gotten somebody to write it for him, or had taken it from something addressed to him, and had practiced, over and over again, on many different surfaces. I had never seen him do so, nor likely had anyone else, for he was a proud man, ashamed to let us know he could not write, and that he cared.

  There was no address, nothing to show that there was anyone to whom he belonged.

  But there had been a girl he had talked of, so I took what money he had, only a few dollars and some pesos, to give to her.

  Scarcely twenty minutes was used in burying the body. Then, leading the spare horse, I went back to the arroyo and followed it for perhaps a mile, the soft sand leaving no tracks that could be recognized. When I came out I started across country.

  The sun had gone down by now and the desert was cool. Off in the distance I could hear a quail call ... I hoped it was a real quail.

  I felt stiff and cold now, and I worked my fingers to keep them easy for my gun.

  Shifting to Rocca's horse, I rode on into the night. There was no trail, but I went ahead, all the time looking for water. The green place I'd seen from afar should be near.

  The black horse pulled up alongside me, and Rocca's horse quickened its pace.

  They smelled it.

  An arroyo opened on my right and I found my way into it, listened, then walked the horses on, knowing the arroyo would end where the water was. The arroyo gaped, and I looked into a small oasis darkening with the cool of evening.

  There were a dozen cottonwoods, some mesquite and willows, and slopes green with grass, and through the trees a glimmer of water. I could hear birds twittering.

  The horses tugged at their bits, wanting to go forward. Winchester in hand, I walked them slowly, ready with a spur if need be.

  Suddenly my way was blocked by a low stone wall that looked to be a part of one of those trincheras the ancient people built to terrace and till their land, or sometimes for dams. I'd seen a lot of them in Mexico.