“What the hell does it matter to you?” The man squinted an eye. “You wouldn’t be tryin’ to put a saddle on me, would you?”
“I’m not trying to buffalo you.”
“Sure you’re not,” the cowboy snickered. “I’ve got news for you, four-flusher. Clem Bodeen don’t fool so easy.” Bodeen took several steps backward and waved the Dragoon. “Shuck all that hardware, pronto.”
Reluctantly Clay obeyed, dropping the pistols and the knife. The Winchester was leaning against the fence near the puncher, who had not yet seen it. “What do you plan to do? Ride double with me?” he asked casually. “All your horses were taken.”
“There’s a few whey-bellies over to the west pasture,” Bodeen replied. “They ain’t much. But if I ride one and take an extra, they’ll do to git me to Tucson.”
“It’s a long ride.”
“I can hold up,” Bodeen stated. “And if I don’t, I can guarantee I’ll put some pills into you before my lights go out. Now walk, you varmint.”
Clay passed within a foot of the Winchester. It would have been so easy to lean down, scoop up the rifle, lever a round into the chamber, and fire. Easy, and fatal, with that big Dragoon aimed as steady as could be at his head.
“Lead your horse yourself,” Bodeen directed. “Try forkin’ leather and I’ll shoot you in the back.”
“The back?” Clay said as he clutched the reins.
“Any white man who would ride with stinkin’ Apaches don’t deserve no better.”
Clay sighed and began hiking westward. “There was a time when I felt the same way you do. But things happen. People change.”
“You’d never catch me stoopin’ so low.”
“Think so?” Clay said. “Let me tell you something, Clem. A man never knows how his life is going to turn out. Just when you think everything is grand as could be, life hauls off and wallops you one good. The next thing you know, you’re up to your ears in more trouble than you ever wanted.”
“You talkin’ about yourself?”
“Could be. Could be you one day.”
“Like hell. Nothing could make me do what you’ve done.”
“Oh?” Clay glanced at the cowhand, who was off to the right. “Let’s suppose you were in love with the finest women in all of Arizona. Let’s suppose that one day her pa takes sick, and they can’t afford to keep up the payments on their ranch. You want to help, but you don’t have a lick of money. Then let’s suppose that a neighbor, a rich rancher, comes along and offers to pay off all their debts if she will marry him. She doesn’t want to, of course, but her pa is close to dying and she has her ma and three younger brothers to think of. And they all say she’s a fool not to marry the rich rancher. So she up and does.”
“What’s all this got to do with anything?”
“Keep your britches on. I’m getting to that,” Clay said. There was no need for him to justify his actions to anyone, but he wanted the young cowboy to understand, wanted Bodeen to know that he wasn’t a blood-crazed killer. “Now let’s suppose this woman comes to regret what she did. She still loves you and wants to marry you and have your children. But the rich rancher isn’t about to let her go. He’s lusted after her since she was a girl, and he aims to keep her, no matter what.”
“She should run off on the bastard,” Bodeen said.
“It’s not that simple. The rich rancher was true to his word and has been paying off her family’s debts. Her pa recovered, but she’s afraid if she goes away with the man she loves it might cause her pa’s weak heart to give out. So she does the only thing she can. She slips away from time to time to see the hombre she really cares for.”
“He ought to brace that rich bastard and fill him full of holes.”
“Wouldn’t work. The rich rancher never packs an iron. Everyone knows it. And he has the town marshal in his vest pocket. No, there’s nothing for the man to do but keep seeing the woman on the sly and hope that somehow it all works out.”
Clem Bodeen had lowered the Dragoon a few inches. “I think I’m beginnin’ to follow your trail, mister. It doesn’t work out for them, does it?”
Clay bowed his head, his voice lowering. “No, it doesn’t. The rich rancher suspects something’s up and has one of his hands, a hired gunshark by the name of Boorman, follow his wife when she goes off on one of her rides. Boorman finds her with the man she loves. There’s gunplay. Boorman is a shade slower. The woman pleads with the man she loves to get away before her husband has the whole countryside out looking for him. Like a fool, he does as she wants.”
“Why like a fool?”
“Because if I’d had any brains, I would have ridden to Gillett’s spread and done him in then and there.”
There was silence for a full minute.
“Jesus,” Bodeen said. “Miles Gillett! You sure can pick your enemies.”
“I try mighty hard,” Clay joked, but neither of them laughed. “Gillett claimed that I was trying to force myself on Lilly when Boorman caught us. Claimed I shot Boorman in cold blood. Then Gillett sent Crane after me. And to make it all seem fair and legal, he had Crane deputize a bunch of local ranchers instead of using Gillett’s gunnies.”
“That Gillett doesn’t miss a trick.”
“He did this time,” Clay said harshly. Stopping, he twisted and pointed to the scar on his neck. “They caught me, Clem. Caught me in the Dragoons and lynched me on the spot.”
“Hellfire!”
“Then they rode off. Some of them were laughing.”
Clay walked on, his words choked with emotion. “But they didn’t know there were Apaches nearby. Didn’t count on the Apaches cutting me down, saving my life.”
“So that’s why you hooked up with them!”
“Sort of. They agreed to help me get revenge on the sons of bitches who strung me up in exchange for me lending a hand against a scalp hunter who butchered their kin.” Clay paused. “Prost was one of the men in that posse, Clem, one of the no-accounts who hanged me.”
“I didn’t know,” the young cowhand said softly.
“Now you do.”
This time the silence was much longer. Presently, Clem cleared his throat and said, “I ain’t much for deep thinkin’, mister—”
“Taggart. Clay Taggart.”
“—and I don’t have no right to judge you for what you’ve done. If the same thing had happened to me, I might have taken the same road. But that don’t mean I can just let you ride off. Prost was one thing; my three pards, another. You had no call to kill them.”
“The Apaches did it, not me.”
“Doesn’t make much difference, far as I can see. You’re ridin’ with them. That sort of makes you responsible for what they do, don’t it?”
There it was. The awful truth staring Clay right in the face. “Yep,” he answered in a whisper. “I reckon I am.”
“Then I have to take you into Tucson. I’ll tell folks how it was and maybe—”
Clay heard a strangled whine and spun to see Clem Bodeen sinking to the ground with an arrow jutting from between his shoulder blades. “No!” Clay cried, springing to the young man’s side. Clem looked up, his eyes pleading, his mouth wide as if he was trying to scream but couldn’t.
“As God is my witness, I didn’t want this!” Clay said, holding the cowhand by the shoulders.
Bodeen trembled, gasped, and went limp.
Clay gently lowered the cowboy, then closed Clem’s eyelids. He sensed, rather than heard, someone come up beside him, and he pivoted on a heel.
Delgadito had another shaft nocked on the sinew bowstring. A thin smile curled his mouth as he nodded at the puncher. “I come plenty quick when I find you gone. I save you, friend. You like, eh?”
Clay Taggart stared at the dead Southerner for the longest while. His reply, when it came, was as cold as ice. “If you only knew, friend.” He pried the Dragoon from Clem’s fingers. “If you only knew.”
Chapter Three
Delgadito was troubled. He had e
xpected Clay Taggart to be extremely grateful for being saved from the cowboy. Instead, the white-eye had been somber and surly all during the long journey back to the secret lair in the Chiricahua Mountains.
Warm Springs, it was called. There was only one way in and out, through a narrow cleft in a cliff. Only the Chiricahua Apaches knew of its existence; only they knew of the verdant valley hidden beyond the cleft and that a small army could hold out there for many months, if need be.
Clay had been to Warm Springs before. Oddly enough, he found himself anticipating their return with relish. The secluded refuge was the one place in the entire Southwest where he was safe, at least in one respect. The Army and the marshal couldn’t lay a hand on him there. It was the only safe haven he had, the only place where he could take time to mull over his problems and ponder the best course of action. And he sorely needed to think things through. After what had happened to Clem Bodeen, he had to decide whether linking up with the Apaches had been a brilliant brainstorm or the biggest mistake he had made in a lifetime of making blunder after numbskull blunder.
So, when the horses were let loose to roam and graze and the warriors gathered around the spring to talk in low tones, Clay went off by himself, scaling a lofty crag east of the spring to a wide shelf, where he perched and gazed out over the magnificent landscape.
Arizona had a stark quality that stirred Clay’s soul. The sunbaked deserts, the lofty mountains, the vast canyons, and imposing buttes were all masterpieces of natural splendor. He never tired of admiring the scenery. Nor did he tire of the plant and animal life that so many Easterners found formidable. The cactus, chaparral, and mesquite. The Gila monsters, sidewinders, and scorpions. They were all part and parcel of a land that had forged living things on the unrelenting anvil of survival, rugged specimens capable of enduring the heat, the dryness, and anything else nature threw at them.
Once Clay thought he could hold up under any hardship, that he was tough enough to face any difficulty head-on and win out. But now he wasn’t so self-confident.
What had he done of late to show he deserved a fine woman like Lilly? Clay thought. The answer: Not a damn thing. Everything had gone to hell in a hand basket, and he seemed helpless to prevent it from getting worse.
Lilly was still in Gillett’s clutches. The law and the army were both on the lookout for him. Any white man in the territory would shoot him on sight. And to top it all off, he’d gotten involved with a pack of renegades, most of whom would as soon slit his throat as look at him. What in tarnation had he been thinking of when he agreed to Delgadito’s loco notion?
Unknown to Clay, at that very moment, the subject of his thoughts was hunkered behind a boulder twenty feet away observing his every expression. Delgadito did not like the turn of events. He did not like the white-eye being so upset. If Taggart should change his mind about their arrangement, it would ruin Delgadito’s well-laid scheme. And Delgadito was not about to let that happen. The Apache crawled to another boulder, crouched, and worked himself into a deep crack that shortly brought him to a vantage point a few yards above the shelf on which Taggart sat.
Delgadito could not permit the white-eye to dwell on whatever was bothering him. He had to keep Taggart too busy to even entertain the thought of striking off on his own. Consequently, Delgadito rose and descended along a rock incline to the shelf. He halted directly behind Taggart, then said in Apache, “We must talk, Lickoyee-shis-inday.”
Clay was so startled, he nearly toppled off the edge. Turning, he glared in annoyance at the warrior and responded, “I would like to be alone.”
“I will not take long,” Delgadito said. He sat beside the white-eye and let his legs dangle. “This important.” Delgadito looked up. “That right word? Important?”
“Yes,” Clay said gruffly. “Your English gets better every day.”
“Thank you,” Delgadito said, beaming proudly.
“So what’s so damn important?”
The tone of voice was an insult in itself. Had anyone else used it, Delgadito would have struck the offender on the spot. He burned with resentment, but he kept his temper and said, “You.”
“Me?”
“You plenty upset.”
“True. And I’d be obliged if you’d let me alone for a spell. I have a heap to ponder.”
“Tell me. I help.”
Clay gave a little laugh and shook his head.
“You not want my help?” Delgadito asked.
“It’s not that.”
“What?”
Clay leaned forward, rested an elbow on his knee, and cupped his chin in his hand. “Here I am, in the worst tight spot of my life, heading for another Texas cakewalk if I’m not careful, and the only one who gives a hoot is a redskin most people consider the fiercest Apache in all of Arizona.” Clay chuckled. “This could only happen to me.”
Although Delgadito did not quite grasp the meaning of many of the words Taggart had said, he did get the general drift. “Why just you?” he asked.
“You’d have to know the story of my life to understand,” Clay said wistfully. “My folks were nesters, hardscrabble sorts who wandered all over the country before pa settled near Tucson. That was a year to the day before consumption claimed him. Ma wasted away herself, after he was gone. They left me a homestead that wasn’t worth a hell of a lot, and I managed to turn it into a small ranch. Made profits, too, my last three years.” Clay gnawed on his lower lip. “I miss that place awful much.”
“You want to go back?” Delgadito probed, suspecting that here was the reason for Taggart’s moodiness.
The idea hadn’t occurred to Clay in many days, but now that the warrior brought it up, he straightened and grinned. Yes, he most definitely would like to go, if for no other reason than to find out how his cattle were faring. Every last head had been out on the range when he left, so he figured they should all be fine. “There’d be no hard feelings if I were to light a shuck for home?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
“We go with you.”
Clay locked eyes with Delgadito. “There’s no need.”
“We help you find way out of mountains.”
“I can find my own way easy enough, thanks. You’ve taught me well.”
“We go anyway. Maybe other whites try kill you.”
“I’ll slip in and out before anyone knows I’m there.”
“We go,” the Apache insisted.
“It’s too risky,” Clay refused to back down. “My spread borders part of Gillett’s on the north. He might have gun hands waiting for me.”
“Then you need our help.”
Exasperated, Clay averted his gaze so Delgadito wouldn’t notice his anger. Truth to tell, he saw this as a golden opportunity to get rid of the Apaches once and for all. On his own he might be able to spirit Lilly away from Gillet. Together the two of them could head for parts unknown, California, maybe, or Montana Territory, anywhere they could start over and make a new life as husband and wife. “I’d much rather go alone,” he grumbled.
Delgadito almost scowled in contempt at yet another example of the white-eye’s weakness. Americanos had a tendency to feel sorry for themselves when things didn’t go exactly as they wanted, to whine and complain over every little hardship. An Apache would never behave so childishly.
Yet, when Americanos were on the warpath, they were worthy fighters who refused to retreat or surrender. Delgadito had fought them, had marveled at their vigor and fortitude. Small wonder the Americanos had defeated the Nakai-hey many winters ago in a great war.
Delgadito could not understand, though, how a people so like children on one hand could be so manly on the other. Americanos were living contradictions, beyond the ability of any Apache to fully comprehend. But their contrary natures were predictable. They could be used by one versed in Na-tse-kes, the Apache way of deep thinking, which was so much more than thinking, more in the order of a profound state of mind in which all factors of a problem were con
sidered and every contingency allowed for.
Delgadito took a risk. If subsequent events did not unfold as he anticipated they would, he stood to lose the only chance he had of regaining a post of leadership. But if they did, then he would have Clay Taggart at his beck and call, a puppet like those the white women on the reservation used to entertain the young ones, a puppet to do with as he pleased.
“Very well, Lickoyee-shis-inday,” Delgadito said. “It will be as you want.”
Clay glanced at the warrior in amazement. “You mean it? You’re not joshing me?”
Delgadito gestured at the horses grazing below. “We cannot hold you here against your will, not after all you have done for us. In the morning you can take your horse and go.”
Dumbfounded, Clay clapped the warrior on the back. “Damn, partner, but you’re more white than some whites I know! I’ll owe you for the rest of my days.”
“If you decide to come back, you will be welcome.”
“Thanks again,” Clay said. He had, however, no desire whatsoever to return. Once Warm Springs was behind him, so were his days as the White Apache.
“I am happy to please you,” Delgadito said, rising. “I will tell the others.” Moving along the shelf to an incline, he started down the slope, listening to Taggart’s whoops of delight. All four of his companions were regarding the Americano intently when Delgadito came to the spring.
“What is the matter with your pet?” Fiero inquired. “Has the dog finally lost his mind altogether?”
“I told him he could leave tomorrow,” Delgadito said. The revelation had a chilly reception. As usual, Fiero voiced his sentiments first.
“He knows too much to be allowed to go.”
“He knows nothing of importance.”
Fiero motioned at the valley. “Is our refuge nothing? Are our secret trails nothing? The water holes known only to us, are they not important?”
“Lickoyee-shis-inday will not betray us.”
Warpath (White Apache Book 2) Page 3
