Taggart (1959)

by L'amour, Louis

  He built a cigarette, continuing to watch the Indians. There would be a fight, he was sure of that. Somehow they would find the canyon, or signs of the presence of some of the party, and then there would be some shooting. He had seen Apaches fight before, and he had fought them, just as he had fought Kiowas, Comanches, Sioux, and Modocs. He remembered the smoky smell of their bodies, the swiftness with which they could run, the suddenness with which they could disappear. With Apaches a man had to shoot first and think later.

  With a kind of sour respect, he watched them make their search. There seemed nothing methodical about it, and yet he knew nothing could have been more thorough. Only the rain had saved them thus far.

  By now Adam Stark would probably have returned to the canyon and would be ready for trouble. And Shoyer was there. Three men and two women, and their position was good, but he knew that he would not give much for their chances at this moment. If he had been elsewhere and had been asked how long three men and two women could survive against thirty Apaches, he would have shrugged it off as scarcely worthy of comment.

  Being here made it different … not that their chances were any greater, but that it was their own problem, and it had to be dealt with. He studied what chances they might have. First they could hope they were not discovered, and then, being discovered, they could fight with the idea of taking as many Apaches with them as possible.

  Two men at the canyon mouth could do a job of standing off any attack for a while, and he himself could keep them from getting to the canyon rim for a while. They would get around behind him eventually, and then if he was still alive he would retreat to the canyon. After that they would defend the house as long as they could.

  He chuckled grimly, remembering Shoyer. The man-hunter had bought himself a basket of trouble this time, and if he got out of here alive he would be lucky.

  All was quiet below. The Indians had started a fire and were killing one of their spare horses. Nothing an Apache liked better than horse meat except mule meat … no Apache, he remembered irrelevantly, would eat fish.

  I

  Taggart lit his cigarette and stuck the match into the sand.

  He got out several cartridges and placed them in a neat row on a flat rock. They looked good there, ready for business. He put the Winchester down and sat back, watching the Indians moving about the fire, near the spring.

  Thoughts of the women went through his mind. That Consuelo was a fine figure of a woman. Give a man a time in bed, but for staying quality, day in and day out living, she wouldn’t hold a candle to Miriam Stark.

  He thought of the strange feeling that had risen within him when he sat his horse in the darkness outside the canyon, knowing there was someone near, even knowing that someone was a woman and desirable. It made no sense, but there it was. He had known.

  One of the Apaches was looking up the slope. He had a feeling, that warrior did … he had him a hunch. Maybe Taggart’s attention had drawn their attention. He waited, watching without looking directly at them.

  The Apache had stepped out from the rest now and was looking up the mountain. Taggart knew he could not be seen … the broken slabs of rock, the clusters of prickly pear, these were a perfect cover. Even if they caught a glimpse of him they might think it was just part of the prickly pear or the rock. But the attention of the Indian worried him.

  Suddenly the Apache stepped out from the others and started up the slope, walking slowly, studying the ground occasionally, but coming right on. Taggart drew deep on his cigarette and squinted at the Indian. The wind was from the Indians and toward him, so he had not been worried about them smelling the smoke.

  “You, anyway,” he said, to himself, “you keep coming and I’ll nail your hide to the mast. You I’ll take with me.”

  He was thinking his bullet home, knowing where he would put it, how he would inhale, exhale slowly and then squeeze off his shot … and there would be a dead Indian at the end of that shot. At that distance and with that target he would not, could not miss.

  The Apache drew nearer. He was no more than eighty yards away now and he had paused.

  He was short and stocky, and Taggart could see his face clearly … broad at the cheekbones.

  Taggart rubbed his cigarette out in the sand. He took up the rifle and balanced it in his hands, sighting briefly down the barrel at the middle of the Indian’s chest.

  Then he lowered the Winchester and waited.

  The Apache was looking up the slope and Taggart could see the glint of his eyes.

  And then there was a call from down the slope, and the warrior turned and went back down the hill. Taggart lowered his rifle and leaned it against the rock nearest his hand.

  It was very hot.

  Within the canyon there was no sound. The bare rock walls left narrow strips of shadow at their foot, and the rivulet of water had long ceased to run. The noon held still under the Arizona sun, breathless with the moment. Cicadas sang, a shrill accompaniment to the heat.

  Miriam came to the door and brushed the hair back from her eyes. She looked down the canyon toward the mouth, but there was no sound. Adam and Pete Shoyer had gone there, and they would be waiting in the rocks near the canyon’s opening, while according to Adam, Swante Taggart was somewhere on the mountainside above the canyon’s rim.

  “No need to worry,” Adam had said. “There’s a man who’ll get along if anyone will.”

  Yet she did worry. He was up there alone, beyond their sight, and by now he would be growing hungry. That he had visited Adam earlier Miriam guessed, but Adam had made no comment.

  An hour dragged slowly by, and then another. The Apaches seemed in no hurry to leave.

  Most of them rested in the sparse shade of brush or rocks near Mud Spring, while a few prowled restlessly among the hills, mostly toward Rockinstraw and Redmond Mountain.

  Pete Shoyer came back to the house, a heavy, unwashed man as seen by daylight. He grinned widely at Miriam. “Hot down there,” he said.

  “Will they find us?”

  Consuelo came to hear his reply, and Shoyer looked past Miriam at the Mexican girl.

  “You never know about ‘Paches. The way I figure, they know I’m somewhere around.”

  He stood at the door and ate the plate of beans and chia that Consuelo brought him, his eyes continually straying down canyon.

  Suddenly he chuckled. “That there Taggart … he sure won’t try runnin’, with those ‘Paches out there. They’d have him tied to a cactus in no time.”

  “Mr. Taggart,” Miriam replied quietly, “sees no reason why he should run. I doubt if you need worry about it. When this is over, if any of us are alive, he will be here.”

  Shoyer grinned insinuatingly. “You set store by him, looks to me. It sure looks to me.”

  “Not particularly,” Miriam replied stiffly, “only I’m sure Mr. Taggart is a good man. He is not a criminal. He is not a murderer. Those men were encroaching on his land and they began the fight.”

  “Lady,” Shoyer protested, “I ain’t the judge. I only hunt him down and make an arrest.”

  “Or kill him … and all for money!”

  Shoyer was not disturbed. “Don’t give me that. I’ve had all that stuff shoved at me before this, an’ it’s just the way I make a livin’. Some folks work at one thing, some work at another. I work at what I’m best at.”

  “Why don’t you forget Mr. Taggart?” Miriam asked. “When this is over, just ride on?”.

  He chuckled. “Lady, you really do go for that gent. You really do. Now, the way I’d figured,” he glanced at Consuelo, “it was this other lady who went for him. Seemed to me that was a goin’ thing.”

  “You’re being rude.”

  Shoyer was not disturbed. “Maybe … that’s the way I see it. How about it, Mex?”

  Consuelo drew herself up. “I am married woman.”

  Shoyer shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first. Good-lookin’ man, that Taggart. Now me … women folks never made no fuss about me. On�
�y when I had money. So I pull Taggart in, I have money. “

  He finished his plate and licked his lips off carefully, then rubbed his palms on the front of his trousers and accepted the coffee. He had taken the first swallow when they heard the shot.

  It came from down canyon. It was sharp and clear, and left an echoing report that racketed against the rock walls.

  Pete Shoyer threw down the cup and, rifle in hand, sprinted for the canyon mouth.

  Miriam reached inside the door and took up her rifle.

  Chapter Nine.

  S wante Taggart had seen it coming. He had seen it happen. It was the same Apache who had started up the slope. He had been called from the spring by a beckoning Indian, and had started back when something arrested his attention in the direction of the canyon mouth. Taggart saw the warrior stop, and for several minutes the Indian stood very still. Then, ever so carefully, he began to move toward the spot where the canyon emerged upon the desert.

  Taggart, sure the Apache had seen some movement there and was stalking whoever was on guard there, lifted his rifle. He took careful aim, took up the slack on his trigger, then held his slack and waited. If that Apache started to lift his rifle Taggart would fire. The distance was now well over two hundred yards, but Taggart had no doubt of his shot.

  Another shot came first.

  The Apache made the slightest move upward with the rifle, then even as Taggart was about to squeeze off his shot the Indian buckled at the knees and pitched forward on his face, the echo hanging in the still air.

  For an instant, Taggart believed he himself had shot. The dust-brown body of the Apache lay in plain sight, sprawled on a clump of prickly pear, the sun gleaming redly on the bloodsplashed leaves.

  Nothing else moved.

  Taggart shifted his attention to the group around Mud Springs … but there was no group! There was nobody at all. There were only the horses and the slow, thin spiral of the rising smoke from the campfire.

  Sweat trickled down his cheek. Taggart eased his tension on the trigger and, keeping his eyes on the slope, dug out the makings. The sun glinted from a rifle barrel .

  . . something was moving down there, but Taggart held his fire. No use to let them know what happened until necessary.

  The dead Indian lay where he had fallen, nailed with the first shot.

  Overhead a buzzard sailed in the blue-brassy sky, and in the far distance over the Four Peaks a few white clouds hung still in the sky. His foot was cramped and he shifted position.

  No chance to avoid the fight now … they were in for it. Only there was nothing to shoot at. Nothing to do but wait. Down below they would be ready. Stark and Shoyer would be at the canyon mouth, the girls at the house, and he was here, high on the slope of the mountain with the canyon falling off on his right hand.

  Whatever the dead Indian had seen or believed he saw had not been communicated to the others. The Apaches did not know what had happened, and right now they would be starting to move, to investigate.

  The trouble was, the visibility was not good enough. The air was sharp and clear, but the slope was dotted with brush, and there was brush in the hollow near the canyon mouth. Swante Taggart turned slowly and studied the mountain above and around him.

  A man never took anything for granted in this country if he wanted to keep his hair.

  Suddenly he realized he was holding an unlit cigarette in his teeth, and he struck a match with his left hand and lifted it to the cigarette. Just then an Apache came out of the juniper below him and started across the slope. He had worked his way up the slope and was not over fifty yards away, and if he reached the canyon at that level he could look down upon the buildings.

  Taggart fired the rifle with one hand, lifting it and squeezing off the shot.

  The Indian stumbled, but he did not go down. Like a wounded cat the Apache wheeled, and when he started to lift his rifle Taggart shot into his body, aiming from the shoulder this time. The Indian took a short quick step up the slope, and then went down to his hands and knees.

  Rifle ready, Taggart watched him there. He could see the man was bleeding, so he held his fire. A wounded Apache was doubly dangerous, but there was no use wasting fire if the man was dead.

  The Indian started to get up, then slumped to the ground again.

  And over the wide slope of the mountain there was no further sound, no movement.

  Taggart shifted position, working his way through the brush and farther up the mountain.

  When he had found a good spot he settled down to wait.

  Nothing happened. The sunlight was hot upon the hill’s broad face. A bee buzzed around some sage nearby. Overhead a bird lit in a mesquite tree that grew where water had run down the mountainside. The sky was an empty silence, and below the desert and mountains lay still. Here and there rocks were acquiring shadows, but the sun was still high. A lizzard stirred among some flat rocks. Taggart mopped the sweat from his brow and squinted his eyes against the sun.

  They were out there. Not one of them, but at least two dozen … if his first count had been right, at least twentyeight.

  Two warriors had been slain, and as yet they had not seen any enemy. This was Apache work turned against Apaches. But Swante Taggart knew well enough that the odds were all against them. At this kind of fighting the Apache was clearly the greatest of them all, perhaps the greatest guerilla fighter the world had ever seen.

  Only Taggart had learned from them, and so had Shoyer. Grimly, he suddenly realized he was pleased that Pete Shoyer had found him. Whatever else he was, the man-hunter was a first-class fighting man.

  A slow hour passed. Nothing stirred. The Apache horses stood in the wash near Mud Springs, clearly visible. Suddenly, he was aware that there were now fewer horses than there had been. One by one they were being spirited away.

  . Yard by yard he searched the terrain. From the far slope of Rockinstraw he worked his eyes back and forth along the slope, and on down to Mud Springs. Then he searched around him and above him. When he looked toward the horses again, another was gone.

  A line-back dun stood near some brush at the edge of the wash, and he set himself to watching that horse. He sighted his rifle at the horse, then eased it down and took a quick look around. Then he waited.

  He had been looking at the object for several minutes before he realized that it was a bush that had not been there a few minutes before. While he watched he saw the bush inch closer to the dun.

  Lifting his rifle he cradled it in his hands, waited an instant, and then squeezed off his shot. It was an easy shot, and the Indian sprang forward in a lunge, his leg buckling under him. Even so he grabbed the dun and jerked him back into the brush before Taggart could get off another shot.

  Instantly, Taggart was moving, working his way up hill, drawing closer to a place where he could, if it became necessary, get back into the canyon of the chapel. There had been no more firing from the canyon mouth.

  The sun declined a little, the shadows pushed out toward the east, and nothing happened.

  He glanced toward the place where the first Apache had fallen across the prickly pear. The body was gone, slipped away while he was busy with the other. It was the Indian custom to remove their dead whenever possible.

  It must be that the Apaches did not know of the canyon of the chapel, for had they known the attack would have begun before this. At this moment they were undoubtedly scouting the area trying to find out where their enemy was and how many there were.

  The first shot from the canyon opening and then the other from up the slope evidently had them puzzled. Obviously they had been trailing Shoyer, and probably they did not know now whether they fought one man or more than one.

  This gave Taggart an idea. Picking up a small rock, he shied it into a clump of brush some distance away, throwing it into the leafy top of the brush where the falling stone would rustle. A few minutes later he tossed one into a small gravel slide farther south along the slope. A few bits of gravel rattled o
ver stones and were still. If it did nothing else, it would puzzle them and make them wary, and the hour was already well along. But Apaches were wary of night fighting, and they might not attack until daybreak. The stretching shadows would offer even more cover for attackers.

  Taggart fed a couple of cartridges into his Winchester, and searched the terrain around him. His present position bottled him close against the edge of the canyon, with thick brush and rocks all around. At the very edge of the brush the field of vision was good, but he had to move to look up slope, and that bothered him. To move was to expose himself to danger, and so far he had made his moves with the greatest care and under almost perfect concealment. The stillness, too, was disturbing.

  Two Apaches dead, one wounded, out of two dozen or more. Swante Taggart knew they had been lucky in taking first blood from the Indians, but he also knew what that number of Apaches could do, and they could not expect to be so lucky from this time forward.

  There were two alternatives. Stay and fight it out, or try to make a run for it.

  Either meant risk, either meant the odds would all be against survival. Nobody outside knew they were here, nobody was in a way to discover their presence and send relief, so whatever was done they must do themselves.

  The shadows were growing longer. The sun cast its final red lances into the sky, and the clouds lined themselves with gold. With darkness the Apaches might withdraw to their camp near Mud Spring … but they might not.

  Miriam had mentioned a back way out to which she could bring a horse, a route that led over the mountains and down toward Globe. He thought about that now.

  Taggart got to his knees and worked his way around behind a cedar that clung to the canyon’s rim. From there he studied the situation and liked none of it. Yet the time had come to get back into the canyon … if he intended to. Of course, he need not return at all. He could take his own chances, moving at night, hiding by day.

  His strength was built up again, and he knew what he could stand. It was no distance to Globe.

  He crouched, then ran in a crouching run for a clump of boulders ahead of him. He was almost there when an Apache raised up from the rocks and aimed a rifle at his chest, and another one started over the rocks toward him. He fired his rifle from the hip, but in the instant before he fired the Indian seemed to be struck from behind and he fell face forward, sliding down the rocks, and the report of a rifle thudded hard at close range.