By the middle of the night Clay didn’t mind all that much. There had been something about the driving rhythm that had gotten into his blood. He had sat up, observing, swaying in time to the vigorous beat. Several times he had nearly jumped up and joined them.
The war dance was as old as time itself. Moving to the tempo of the drum, the four warriors lined up, then slowly circled the fire four times. Afterward, they divided into pairs, one pair dancing on the south side of the fire, the second pair to the north. Later they shifted, one pair going to the east, another to the west. Four times they did this.
Next the warriors ringed the fire. Each one took turns prancing around it, pretending to battle enemies he would slay in the days ahead. Of them all, Fiero had leaped the highest, chanted the loudest, danced the hardest. Secretly, Clay had envied him.
“Yes, I saw,” Clay now said.
“We must travel fast,” Delgadito said. “We must strike like lightning and never stay in one place for very long. We are only six but they will think we are sixty.”
The Apaches moved out, adopting a tireless dogtrot that ate up the miles quickly. Clay once again brought up the rear. So superbly conditioned had he become that he never once lagged. Had there been an onlooker to witness their passage, the onlooker would not have noticed any difference between the five bronzed warriors and the white man.
To all intents and purposes, it looked as if there were six Apaches on the warpath, not five.
Chapter Eight
The next week was to mark a turning point in Clay Taggart’s life. A subtle change took place deep within him, so subtle he failed to realize that he had changed, and done so drastically, until after the fact.
On the first raid after the battle on the plateau, Clay stayed aloof, refusing to help butcher an old peon and the man’s two sons.
On the second raid, made on a hacienda, Clay picked off several defenders from a distance with his Winchester.
On the third raid, a brazen attack on a large rancho, Clay helped hold off a party of vengeful vaqueros, shooting three of them with his pistols.
Then came the afternoon Ponce spotted a conducta bearing northward. The Apaches shadowed the wagon train until it stopped late that afternoon. The wagon master chose a poor spot: beside a stream where it formed a wide pool at the mouth of a narrow canyon.
The Apaches waited until twilight shrouded the landscape before creeping down the canyon. Working their way from bush to bush, yucca to yucca, they drew within rock throwing distance of their prey. No mountain lion or jaguar could have moved more stealthily than they did.
Apaches were masters at this art. They could disguise themselves among brown shrubs, green grass, or gray rocks with equal ease, using whatever the terrain offered to blend into the ground, as if they were part of it. And where there wasn’t enough grass or loose rocks or dirt, they were adept at contorting their bodies into the shapes of the objects around them. If they were moving through a boulder field, they would curl themselves into the shapes of boulders. If they were moving through yuccas they would mimic the appearance of the yuccas with the precision born of long experience.
Delgadito had taught some of these tricks to Clay, enough to permit Clay to approach the conducta without being detected. He saw the Mexicans going about the business of watering teams and cooking supper. Among them were a dozen or so women and children, and, on beholding them, Clay felt a twinge of regret. Then he reminded himself that these were the same people who had backed the government decision to place a bounty on Apaches, which made them partly responsible for all the Apache women and children who had been slaughtered by the scalp hunters. They deserved no mercy from him.
The Mexicans had just sat down to eat when Delgadito yipped, the signal for the attack. The single guard by the livestock dropped with a bullet through the brain. More men were shot as they rose or grabbed for guns. Panic reigned in the encampment, panic fueled by the war whoops and shrieks of the Apaches, who made enough noise for twice their number.
Clay joined in, whooping at the top of his lungs while firing at targets as fast as they appeared; a driver who tried to aim an old carbine, a man in a fine suit who was shooting a derringer, another man who had climbed onto a horse and was about to ride off. A peculiar sense of excitement came over him, intense excitement of a kind he had never before felt. His heart beat madly, his blood pumped wildly. Had he looked into a mirror, he would have discovered a bloodthirsty grin on his face.
Fear aided the Apaches, fear so potent it drove many of the Mexicans fleeing into the night. Their horses and mules, their wagons, and their possessions were all forgotten in their haste to escape the dreaded terrors. A half dozen, however, showed real courage, forming a ragged line to cover the flight of their companions, shooting as they departed.
In the time a man could have counted to one hundred, the fight was over with the Apaches as undisputed masters of the conducta. They stalked into the circle of wagons warily, using their knives to end the lives of the wounded. Clay did not lend a hand. He was content to gather the horses which had not run off, and he was leading a sorrel to the middle of the encampment when a high-pitched scream brought him to a certain wagon on the fly.
Amarillo had found a woman and her boy of nine or ten years of age hiding under blankets. When Clay arrived, the woman and her son were huddled together by a front wagon wheel while the Apaches were debating their fate.
“—keep them for my own,” Amarillo was saying.
“She has a healthy look about her. She will bear me many more sons.”
“They could not keep up,” Delgadito said. “You know the Nakai-yes are weaker than us. They would tire and have to be left behind.”
“Then I will take the boy and kill the woman.”
Fiero stepped forward. “Why waste her? Let us use her first before you slit her throat.”
“It has been too long since any of us had a woman,” Ponce mentioned, his dark eyes devouring the petrified mother. “We should draw straws to see who goes first.”
Cuchillo Negro studied the pair a moment. “Are they worth one of us losing his life?”
“I have lost your trail,” Amarillo said.
“What if those we drove off come back? What if there are soldiers in the area and they heard the shots?” Cuchillo Negro brought up.
“The ones we fought are too scared to return,” Fiero declared. “And if soldados show, we will do to them as we did to those others six sleeps ago.” He hefted his rifle. “Apaches do not run from Mexicans.”
Clay had been staring at the woman. She had regained enough presence of mind to stop trembling and was glaring at her captors in undisguised hatred. A lesser woman would have been on her knees, in tears, begging for her life.
“I say it would be foolish to take them with us, and we do not have time for all of us to have our way with her,” Delgadito declared. “Let us kill them both and be on our way.”
“I disagree,” Amarillo said. “Since I found them, I should have the final say.”
“I side with Amarillo,” Fiero stated.
Delgadito glanced from one to the other. “Since we cannot agree, I think we should ask our leader what to do.”
Abruptly, all eyes were on Clay. He hesitated, debating what he should say. The woman meant nothing to him personally, but he was loath to harm either her or the boy. On the other hand, if he said as much, he would anger Amarillo and Fiero, just when they were starting to treat him with a little respect. Delgadito had put him on the spot, and he didn’t like it at all.
“Well?” Fiero prompted.
Clay thought fast. “Amarillo is right,” he said. “They are his to do with as he pleases. But Delgadito and Cuchillo Negro are also right. We are on the warpath, remember? You have taught me that, when on the warpath, an Apache always travels lightly and swiftly. We can do neither burdened with the woman and her child.” He gave Amarillo his undivided attention. “We should leave them here and go. Later, after we have finished our
business with Blue Cap, we can raid a small farm or two and find another woman for you. That would be fairest.”
The Apaches shared looks. Amarillo pursed his lips, then replied, “There is wisdom in your words, Lickoyee-shis-inday. I will do as you suggest.”
“And you, Fiero?” Clay asked.
“Amarillo caught them. Amarillo had decided.” Fiero touched the knife on his hip. “But we cannot permit them to live or they will tell their friends how few we are.” Before anyone could stop him, he took two rapid steps and plunged his blade into the mother’s chest. Too shocked for words, she clutched once at Fiero’s arm, then slumped against the wheel. Her son let out a wail and raised a fist to hit Fiero. The warrior was quicker.
Clay made no protest. He stared at the dead pair and wondered why he did not feel angry or sad over their deaths, why he did not feel something. Trying not to dwell on it, he pointed at the four horses. “We would make better time if we took them.”
“We travel on foot when making war,” Delgadito reminded him. “You know that. Horses leave too many tracks and are no good in mountainous country.”
“I was thinking we could eat them later. We have been living off the land so long I have forgotten what a full meal is like.”
“You are too soft,” Delgadito said, grinning. “But so you will not starve, we should take one horse, no more. We must feast on it tonight and be elsewhere by morning.”
Fiero ran to the fire and picked up a burning brand. “First we have this to do!” he cried, and dashing to a wagon, he set it ablaze.
The rest followed his lead. Clay gripped the unlit end of a burning stick, carried it to the wagon the woman and boy had been in, and tossed the stick inside. A bundle of blankets caught immediately, the flames feeding hungrily on the material. Soon they had spread to a crate containing clothes. The heat ignited the wagon itself.
Clay stood in the middle of the ring of burning wagons, among the corpses of those slain by the Apaches. With a puddle of blood inches from his feet, and the acrid scent of the smoke mingling in his nostrils with the pungent odor of blood, Clay Taggart raised his head to the heavens and whooped like the Apaches were whooping.
A strange, new, and intoxicating feeling took hold of Clay. He laughed long and hard, then danced in a circle while shaking his fists at the heavens. Never had he felt anything like this before, never had he felt so very thrilled to be alive.
The Apaches gathered at the pool. Everyone drank until they couldn’t drink another drop, which was their custom when they knew it might be a while before they next tasted water. Fiero assumed the lead going up the canyon. Clay stayed next to Delgadito, who led the horse.
The war party climbed high into the mountains to a pocket of trees secluded from view from below. Here, a fire was built. Ponce and Amarillo killed the horse; then Cuchillo Negro joined them in carving off thick slabs of meat for their meals.
Clay sat on a flat stone listening to the crackle of the fire, his mouth watering at the tangy scent of the roasting flesh. There had been a time when he would have been sickened by the mere thought of eating a horse, but living among the Apaches had changed his outlook, and now he relished the taste as much as he did that of beefsteak.
The warriors talked in quiet voices of the events so far. Clay heard Blue Cap mentioned and shifted to catch the palaver.
“—stay in Sonora as long as we must to draw him into the open,” Delgadito was talking. “It might take a moon; it might take two.”
“Too bad we do not know where he stays when he is not out lifting hair,” Cuchillo Negro said.
“A man like him never stays in one place too long,” Clay said.
“I am more concerned about how many men he will have with him,” Cuchillo Negro commented. “There could be more than twenty.”
“They will be no match for us,” Fiero said.
“If they were just white-eyes or Nakai-yes, I would agree,” Cuchillo Negro responded. “But Blue Cap has many breeds in his band. Some are more Indian than white or Mexican. They can track almost as good as we can. If we are not careful, they will lead him right to us, when we are not ready for them.”
“Then we must always be ready,” Fiero said.
“If we knew when they were coming we could lay a trap,” Ponce suggested.
“Blue Cap has not lived so long by being careless,” Clay pointed out. “He is the best there is at what he does, so you can be sure he will attack when we least expect it.”
“Let him!” Fiero growled. “I will rip his heart from his chest with my bare hands!”
The others, Clay noted, were not quite as confident. They had barely escaped with their lives the last time they tangled with Johnson, and there was no guarantee they would do so this time.
Soon all grim thoughts were banished. The meat was done, and each warrior ate with relish. Clay wolfed his down, as an Apache would, wiping the hot grease on his thighs. As he had done at the pool, he ate until he could not eat another morsel. When they were all done gorging themselves, the fire was extinguished; the leftover meat, buried.
Westward over a barren spine they traveled, the starlight barely enough for them to see more than a dozen yards with any clarity. Clay’s full stomach made him drowsy. He resisted by shaking his head and pinching himself, aware that if he tripped or accidentally made any loud noise he would be looked down on by the others. Apaches took great pride in their wilderness skills. To earn their respect, he must prove their equal.
An hour later they halted in a dry wash. Clay was so tired that he was asleep the moment his head touched the ground. His full belly and the crisp air combined to give him the untroubled sleep of a baby, and he awoke refreshed and raring to go at first light.
The Apaches resumed their depredations. Two more ranchos were struck in swift succession over the next two days and a small traveling party was ambushed.
“Surely by now Blue Cap has heard we are here,” Cuchillo Negro remarked as he sorted through the contents of a saddlebag. “All of Mexico must have heard about our raids.”
“There is a way we could learn whether he has heard or not,” Delgadito said, standing over one of the men they had just killed.
“How?” Clay asked.
For an answer, Delgadito stripped the dead man naked and held out the clothes. “Take these along.”
“Why?” Clay asked suspiciously.
“So you can put them on when the time comes. With your features no one would think you were Apache. You can enter and leave as you please.”
“Enter and leave what?”
“Sahuaripa. We will be there before nightfall.”
“You want me to go into a town?”
“What better way to learn the latest news?” Delgadito rejoined, and tossed the clothes at Clay’s feet. “Habla espanol?”
“Si,” Clay conceded. “A little.”
“So do I, so we will go together.”
“Do you want to die? They’ll see you are an Apache and kill you on the spot.”
Delgadito picked up a brown sombrero. “With this, a pair of pants, and a serape I will look just like any other half-breed. No one will bother us.”
The other warriors took the brainstorm as a matter of course, leading Clay to guess the brazen plan had been tried before, with success. For sheer gall it had no equal. The last thing the Mexicans would expect would be for Apaches to be wandering in their very midst.
It was dusk when their destination came into sight. Sahuaripa turned out to be a small pueblo of one hundred souls or so. A dusty track of a road wound westward from the town toward Hermosillo.
From a prominent ridge Clay surveyed Sahuaripa and did not like what he saw. There were too many people moving about. And he swore that he saw men in uniform among them. He made his concern known to Delgadito.
“We will be in little danger. The Nakai-yes pay no attention to breeds. Stay in the shadows, out of their way, and they will not even know you are there.”
Although Cla
y’s gut instinct warned him not to go along with the loco notion, he did so anyway. To back out would make the Apaches think he was yellow, and he wanted to show them he had as much sand as any man. The clothes he wore were a white cotton shirt, pants, and leather huaraches. A straw sombrero and a drab poncho served to hide his features and build tolerably well.
Delgadito wore the same, except his hat was brown, and his serape, a colorful mix of several hues. He shunned the huaraches, saying he preferred to go barefoot rather than wear the uncomfortable sandals.
The heavens had darkened to a dingy gray that matched Clay’s gloomy mood when they descended the ridge to the road. They had waited until there were no travelers on it to avoid drawing attention to themselves.
Under Clay’s shirt he carried both pistols and his knife. He unconsciously patted them for reassurance now and again as he strolled toward the town. The musical peel of big bells reached his ears, coming from a high church steeple at the north end of Sahuaripa.
“Remember to never look the Nakai-yes in the eyes,” Delgadito cautioned. “They bristle like porcupines if you do.”
Most of the pueblo’s inhabitants were heading toward the church. Clay veered from the road to the side of an adobe building and stopped to scan the single main street. A few men idled under overhangs. A few dogs were visible, all resting quietly. Near a house several children frolicked, laughing merrily. Sahuaripa was the perfect picture of serenity.
“Come,” Delgadito said suddenly, advancing boldly into the street.
Tucking his chin to his chest, Clay followed, the skin at the nape of his neck prickling. He did not like this, not one bit. He was certain all eyes were on them, but when he braved a peek he found they were being totally ignored. Clay began to feel more confident until he saw where the warrior was leading him.
There was a drab cantina on the west side of the street. From its open doorway and windows wafted the soft music of a deftly played guitar. Two Mexicans lounged in front, talking.
Warpath (White Apache Book 2) Page 9
