“What do we do now?” Ponce asked.
“They can keep us pinned down in here and starve us out,” Fiero said.
“Or they can go around to the top and pick us off from up there,” Amarillo noted.
Clay held the Winchester close to his side. “They will do none of those things.”
“Why not?” Ponce demanded.
“Because we will not be here. We are going to charge them.”
“They outnumber us,” the young warrior said. “They have many more guns.”
“We will have surprise on our side,” Clay countered.
“That is not enough,” Ponce stubbornly persisted.
“Then stay here and die.” Clay rode close to the bend and listened to the approaching thunder. It would be a minute or two yet, he figured, and was surprised that he felt no fear since he did not count on making it out alive. He gazed at the Apaches; then, at the heights above. Of all the places in which to die, this was the very last place he would have expected. Of all the circumstances under which he could have passed on, these were circumstances he would never have predicted, not in a million years.
Life was downright peculiar at times, Clay reflected. A man never knew from one day to the next what tomorrow would bring. Joy. Sorrow. Love. Betrayal. They were all rolls of the dice, luck or bad luck, as the case might be. And since a man couldn’t predict his fate, couldn’t guarantee his happiness no matter how hard he tried, it was wisest to take what came along without complaint and make the best of it.
Clay made himself a promise. If, by some miracle, he did survive, he was going to make the most of every minute of life remaining to him. No more regrets. No more wishful thinking. He would take each day one at a time, and the Devil be hanged!
Voices sounded past the bend. Clay looked at the warriors and grinned. “Let’s show these buzzards how men die,” he said in English. When they stared at him quizzically, he declared in their own tongue, “Kill as many of the dogs as you can!”
Then, lashing his reins, Clay galloped around the bend, the Winchester tucked to his shoulder. He had timed the attempt just right. The scalp hunters and soldiers were in the straight- stretch between the two bends, bunched together but not so tightly a rider couldn’t barrel through them.
In the forefront rode Ben Johnson, wearing the Union cap he had worn the day he deserted from the army. Clay took a hasty bead and fired, but the alert renegade swerved and took a flying leap, landing behind a boulder.
A chorus of savage whoops erupted behind Clay as he aimed at another target and fired. Three more rifles cracked. The volley slew the front rank of scalp hunters, toppling men right and left. The rest, bewildered by the unexpected attack, tried to turn their mounts and flee or take cover, instead of shooting back. Confusion reigned, confusion that enabled Clay and the Apaches to plow through the hard cases with misleading ease.
The soldados were another matter. Trailing the scalp hunters by a dozen yards, they had more time to react, to gird themselves, to level their rifles.
Captain Rivera filled Clay’s sights, and although Clay had no wish to kill a man who had never done anything to him, who was only doing his job, Clay squeezed the trigger. Rivera sailed backwards as Clay closed on the enlisted men. The Apaches were hot on his heels, and between them, they dispensed death on all sides. Fighting at close quarters, using guns and knives, the warriors carved a path through the soldados that left five of the six Mexicans thrashing on the ground in the convulsions preceding death.
The second bend beckoned. Clay rode faster, taking the bend a few heartbeats before a ragged series of shots showed that the scalp hunters had recovered and were out for blood. He glanced back, saw all the Apaches were unharmed. Fiero yipped so Clay responded in kind.
Like a pack of wolves celebrating a kill, the Apaches sped down the canyon to its mouth. Clay reined up so abruptly the sorrel had to dig in its hoofs and slide to a stop. He surveyed boulders on both sides of the opening, then nodded. “We end it here.”
The Apaches, who had halted the moment he had, looked at one another.
“We can escape,” Ponce said.
“They cannot stop us,” Amarillo added.
Clay commenced replacing the spent rounds in his rifle. “Go if you want. No one will hold it against you. But you know and I know that Blue Cap will never rest until he has taken revenge on us. He will hunt us wherever we go, north or south of the border.”
“White Apache is right,” Fiero stated.
“The only way to put an end to this, once and for all time, is to end it here and now,” Clay went on. “There is only one way out of the canyon. They will have to go past us.”
“They still outnumber us,” Amarillo said.
“Who is counting?” Clay replied. He rode to the right, concealed the sorrel behind a boulder the size of a cabin, and took up a position in the small boulders closer to the mouth. Fiero joined him. Ponce and Amarillo hid across the way.
“We must not let one go by,” Clay said. “If word should get out, the state of Sonora will put so high a bounty on our heads that every scalp hunter in Mexico and every greedy Indian hater up north will be after our hair.”
Fiero levered a round into his rifle. “To the death,” he said grimly. “I would not have it any other way.”
Clay hunkered down. He recollected the first time he had set eyes on Ben Johnson, during the raid on Delgadito’s encampment, and the horrible images of women and children being mercilessly slaughtered seared into his brain. Women, split from crown to chin by sabers or shot so full of holes they resembled sieves. Children, crushed under the driving hoofs of horses or run down for sport and impaled on knives. And here he was avenging them, a white man avenging people who had been complete strangers to him. Yet, in an odd sort of way, it felt right to be there, to be able to make the scalp hunters pay for their years of slaughtering innocents.
A bee buzzed past. Clay squinted up at the sun, wondering why Johnson was taking so long. Probably the cutthroats were tending to their wounded, he reasoned, or figuring out what to do next.
“They come,” Fiero declared.
A few seconds later Clay heard them too. He rested the barrel of his rifle on the boulder in front of him and lowered his cheek to the stock. The scalp hunters would be there soon. His thumb curled back the hammer, and he lightly touched his finger to the trigger.
“Blue Cap is mine,” Fiero said.
Before Clay could respond, riders appeared up the canyon. Four abreast, and they were flying like the wind, as if they knew their lives depended on it. Dragged behind their mounts were bundles of brush that raised great clouds of dust, so much dust that those behind the first four were completely obscured.
“Damn!” Clay snapped, realizing he had been outfoxed. Johnson had anticipated the ambush; under the cover of the dust most of the scalp hunters hoped to get away.
Fiero opened up. Clay joined him at the same instant Ponce and Amarillo did. Three of the killers were hit, but only two fell. The wounded man clung to his saddle, bent low over his animal’s neck. None of the horses slowed in the slightest.
Clay fired twice into the huge dust cloud even though he knew he was wasting ammunition. Vague shapes were all he could see of the scalp hunters. Getting a bead on one was impossible.
Rising, Clay ran to the sorrel and vaulted into the saddle. He had to stop the scalp hunters one way or the other. Feeding a new round into the chamber of his rifle, he galloped past the boulder.
Already the cutthroats had swept past the canyon mouth and were fleeing northward. The riderless mounts had veered to either side of the main body, reducing the amount of dust. Some of the scalp hunters bringing up the rear were now visible.
Clay banged off two shots, saw two hard cases drop. Then he concentrated on overtaking the main bunch. Among them would be Ben Johnson, the man Clay wanted the most.
A glance showed the Apaches were following, but they were sixty or seventy yards behind and would be unable to overtake Clay
before he overtook Johnson.
As if on signal the scalp hunters scattered, separating into twos and threes and making off in all different directions. Anxiously Clay scanned them. A speeding pair to the northwest caught his attention. One of the riders wore a telltale blue cap.
Clay gave the sorrel its head. He saw Johnson look, saw the sneer that slashed the butcher’s face. In defiance Clay yipped, then settled down to the job at hand.
Scalp hunters were skilled horsemen. The violent life they had chosen honed their skill. Traveling long distances as they did, often days or weeks at a stretch, over the most rugged of terrain in order to strike at an Apache encampment they had received word of, these men could hold their own against anyone, anywhere.
So Clay wasn’t upset at being unable to catch the pair right away. He was content merely to keep them in sight, and for the next three-quarters of an hour that is exactly what he did. He neither gained nor lost any ground.
Suddenly the two badmen vanished, sinking from sight as if swallowed by the earth. Clay knew better. They had gone into a gully or a wash and might be waiting for him to show himself so they could shoot him to ribbons.
Clay was too smart for that. He slanted to the west and slowed, the Winchester cocked and held at shoulder height. In a bit he spied the gully, which crossed his path from east to west. Slowing even more, to a walk, Clay stood in the stirrups for a glimpse of the bottom. But the gully was too deep.
Cautiously, Clay approached the rim. When he was fifteen feet away, he climbed down and advanced on tiptoe. Crouching at the edge, he scoured the bottom and saw only brush. There were no scalp hunters, no hoof prints, indicating to Clay that the pair had gone eastward.
Climbing back on the sorrel, Clay rode into the gully and up the other side. From his new vantage point he could see a little farther than before, but it proved unnecessary. For no sooner had he gained the top than Johnson and the other scalp hunter burst from the gully hundreds of feet distant and galloped to the southeast, toward Sahuaripa.
“No you don’t,” Clay said under his breath as he gave chase. He would ride the sorrel into the ground, if need be, to stop them from reaching safety. And he just might have to do that. The sorrel was flecked with sweat and showing signs of being tired. A few more miles and it would be too tuckered out to stand, let alone gallop.
Clay persisted anyway. The stakes were too high for him to quit. Countless lives would be lost, women and children slaughtered piteously, their remains left to rot or to serve as food for buzzards.
Another hour went by. The sorrel flagged but gamely responded to Clay’s goading. Thankfully, Johnson and the other man also slowed, so Clay was able to stay almost within rifle range. Presently, there appeared a knobby spine of land that, ages ago, must have been a mountain chain, which had long since been worn down by wind and rain. Boulders dotted the spine, affording ample spots to take cover, which is what Johnson and his companion did. They disappeared into a wide notch between two boulders.
Clay swung wide, suspecting another trick. They might know the area, he speculated, might be able to work their way over the spine without being seen. Consequently, he rode all the way around and reined up in the shade of a mammoth slab of rock. From here Clay would be able to see if the scalp hunters made a break for Sahuaripa.
Taking the Winchester, Clay climbed onto a tear shaped boulder, covered his eyes with his hand, and scoured the spine. Somewhere in that maze was Ben Johnson, but finding him would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Clay could spend days wandering among those boulders without accomplishing a thing.
Maybe, Clay reflected, Johnson was counting on Clay to give up in time. If Johnson knew where to find water, the scalp hunter could wait Clay out. Clay somehow had to flush the two killers into the open or locate their hiding place.
Near the middle of the ancient spine reared a towering column of stone that looked as if a giant had taken a lot of great flat boulders and piled them one on top of the other. From there, Clay figured, he might be able to spot Johnson. The problem was reaching it and scaling it without being shot.
Sliding down. Clay led the sorrel eastward by the reins. From cover to cover he crept, ever nearer the column. When the sorrel lifted its head and pricked its ears, he halted, listening with bated breath. Whatever the horse heard, he didn’t. In a minute the animal lost interest, its head drooping, so he went on.
In the shadow of the column, Clay ground-hitched the sorrel. He stepped to the base of the imposing natural wonder, hooked his fingertips on the lip of a boulder above him, and, muscles bulging, pulled himself high enough to get a purchase for his feet, The climb, he discovered, would be extremely difficult. He paused, pondering his next move.
It was then that someone coughed.
Clay was off the column, crouched at its base, before the cough died. The sorrel was gazing to the southwest so he went in that direction, hugging the bottoms of the boulders, placing each foot down lightly in order not to make any noise. A man like Ben Johnson would have the senses of a cat. Taking him by surprise would be hard to do.
A hint of moisture in the air gave the cutthroats away, a trace of coolness that Clay could practically taste. Water was nearby, and where there was water, there would be the scalp hunters.
Clay dropped to his hands and knees and crawled. He had covered only a few yards when softly spoken words reached his ears.
“—don’t much like this sittin’ and doin’ nothin’.”
“We stay put until nightfall, Simms. Quit your bellyaching.”
“We can outrun him, I tell you. His horse has to be as tired as ours, Ben. We can beat him to town.”
“Maybe so. But I’m not taking any chances. You’ve fought enough Apaches to know not to take them for granted. There might be more between here and Sahuaripa.”
“I’m willing to try.”
“I’m not.”
While the scalp hunters talked, Clay moved closer. A single boulder was all that blocked them from his view. He could see their horses over to his left, heads hanging as the animals dozed. To his right lay a small spring, its surface as smooth as glass. The killers, Clay guessed, were sitting with their backs to the boulder.
That gave Clay an idea. Setting the rifle quietly down, he rose, wincing when his knee popped. There was no reaction by Johnson or Simms, so he reached up, caught hold, and climbed.
“I’ve never seen you so spooked by one Injun before,” Simms said. “What’s so special about this son of a bitch that we couldn’t make a stand?”
“He’s different.”
“How different?”
“I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about him. He doesn’t look right.”
“If anyone else told me such nonsense, I’d think the sun had baked his brain.”
Clay was halfway up the boulder, clinging with fingers and toes like an oversized lizard. Grains of dirt fell from under his left hand, and he feared the scalp hunters would hear but they continued whispering.
“Didn’t you see his face? His build?” Johnson demanded gruffly. “He’s either a breed or a white man.”
“The Apaches ride with a white-eye?” Simms chuckled. “Never happen, boss. They hate every last mother’s son of us. They’d sooner skin us alive.”
“He looked white, damn it.”
“Whatever you say.”
The next moment, Clay gained the flat top of the boulder and paused to catch his breath. Below him were two hats, the Union cap and a black, filthy Stetson.
Ben Johnson shifted. “I want you to take your slicker and make sure we erased all our tracks between here and where the boulders began.”
“There’s no need. We were real careful. We didn’t miss one.”
“Do it anyway,” Johnson growled.
Muttering under his breath, the man named Simms rose. “All right, all right. Don’t get your dander up.” He took a step toward the horses, then stopped to stretch, turning toward the boulder as he did. �
��Just when I was hankering for a na—”
Clay saw the hard case’s eyes lock on him and launched himself into the air, his knife clutched in his right hand. It would have been simpler to use his pistols, simpler to shoot both men dead before they even knew he was there, but that would have been too painless an end for men who had caused so much suffering, who reveled in slaughter and bloodshed. Clay wanted to do to them as they had done to so many others. He wanted to give them a taste of their own medicine. So he relied on the knife instead.
Simms opened his mouth wide to blurt a warning but Clay was on him sooner, his foot smashing into Simms’s chest and propelling the stocky man backward into the horses. The animals naturally whinnied and shied away, one of them lashing out with its rear legs. A hoof thudded against Simms’s head and he sprawled forward, either dazed or dead.
All this Clay glimpsed as he alighted and spun to face the most feared scalp hunter of all. Ben Johnson was rising, his hand stabbing for his six-shooter. Clay thrust, his knife nicking Johnson’s arm as Johnson dodged to one side. The Colt slipped from the killer’s fumbling grasp. Pressing his attack, Clay swung again and again, trying to gut his foe. Ben Johnson evaded the blows, then suddenly bent and whipped his own knife from a boot.
“Now try me, bastard!”
“Glad to,” Clay responded.
Johnson blinked, grinning savagely. “I knew you were white! Damn your bones!”
Clay leaped and slashed. His blow was parried. Johnson skipped to the left. A gleaming blade rushed at Clay’s head and would have split him like a melon had he not jerked his head back. Clay tried to ram his knife into the scalp hunter’s gut, but the experienced Johnson glided aside.
They circled one another, each seeking an opening, their knives weaving small circles in the air. Johnson wore a determined look. There was no fear on his face. He had done this before, no doubt many times, and had always won. He was confident he would win again.
Clay tried a low cut, a high cut. Johnson backed up, or attempted to, but there was nowhere for him to go because he had unwittingly placed his back to the spring. His left foot slipped into the water, and he started to lose his balance.
Warpath (White Apache Book 2) Page 14
