The Ellsworth Trail

by Ralph Compton

  “If you can track,” his father once told him, “you’ll never get lost and you’ll never starve. Tracks are messages the game leaves for the hunter to read.”

  And his tracking ability had stood him in good stead when he was with the Second Texas. He was often sent out to scout enemy positions and look for signs of patrols. He took pride in his tracking ability and had been surprised when he discovered how easy it was to track men and their horses. He could tell when soldiers stopped to rest or take a piss or do grunt, and their cigarettes always told a story: whether or not they were in a hurry, or how careless they were. Or nervous. When he saw cigarettes half smoked, he knew the rider was either startled by something or jumpy, especially when he found more than one tossed away before the smoker had finished.

  His father had taught him to track ants and doodlebugs, making him lie down on his belly and study a small piece of ground until he was able to tell the story of every small creature that was there or had been there. He learned to study the grasses and the dirt from close up and then from atop a horse, or just walking along. At first he had not seen the sense in it, but after a time, he saw the wisdom in the exercises his father gave him. The earth was alive and most people didn’t notice the small things, and the small things were often the most telling, the most important. He learned how to tell the age of a track by studying how much dirt had drifted in since it had been made or how much dew or rain was in it. A blade of grass would always try to bend back toward the sun, and he could tell how long ago such a blade had been stepped on by an animal or a man, and how heavy either one was.

  All of the horse tracks faded away as the scouts rode off in different directions. He hoped they would know where he’d be when it came time for them to report. He had given them specific instructions about that part of their duties, explaining to them how to figure dead reckoning and how to calculate his speed and direction. A lot of it was by guess and by gosh, he knew, but the good scouts should be able to find him pretty easily.

  Quail piped in the distance and Jock listened carefully. An Apache could imitate a bobwhite perfectly, he knew, and they knew the difference between the calls of male and female. It was sometimes difficult to tell the real thing from an imitation.

  It was quiet for a time and his cigarette burned down until the tobacco was too hot to draw on, so he spit out the ragged and soggy butt. He was considering whether or not to roll another one when he heard another quail off to his left. Then came an answering call from another direction.

  Jock stiffened in the saddle and loosened his Sharps carbine in its scabbard.

  Neither call had been made by a bobwhite.

  He looked up at the sun, marking the approximate time of day. He had been riding for about two hours and none of the scouts had shown up to report. That wasn’t crucial at this point, he knew.

  But the quail calls had not been made by any quail, either.

  Jock looked all around, standing up in the stirrups to stretch his length of view. He saw nothing but prairie, but the calls had made his scalp prickle. He slowed his horse, then reined it to a stop.

  He listened.

  Then, another quail call. Very close this time.

  He started to ride toward it as he pulled his rifle from its sheath. Then he heard the crack of a rifle not far away. One shot, followed by two others from the same gun—by the sound of it a Henry repeating rifle.

  The shots were followed by the high-pitched screeches of Indians, just over a rise.

  Jock recognized those sounds. They were the war cries of Apache braves and he knew they weren’t hunting buffalo.

  Chapter 14

  Jock rode toward the crackle of rifle fire. The high-pitched yelps of the Apaches punctuated the crack of rifles. As he topped the rise, he saw puffs of white smoke shredding like gauze in the breeze. At first he could see no horses or riders, but then he saw an orange flash and heard the sizzle of a bullet as it fried the air next to his right ear.

  The shot came from the right, but the Apaches were on his left. He saw them a split second later, rising up from the ground, shooting, then scurrying off to reload or hide. He smelled the acrid scent of burnt powder as he rode into the smoke, hunched over his saddle so that he made a smaller target.

  He fired at one Apache and missed. Still, the Indians did not turn their guns on him, but continued to direct their fire at the shooters to the east. Jock rode that way, making a wide circle so that he could come up behind the X8 hands. He thought that one of them might have mistaken him for an Apache when he rode up, and he didn’t want that to happen again.

  “It’s me, Jock Kane,” he called when he came up on a half dozen men lying prone on the ground behind a low rise. Their horses were tied to mesquite bushes a hundred yards or so behind them. As he got there, one of them turned and looked at him. It was Lou Quist.

  “Put your horse up, Kane, and help us out,” Quist said.

  “Be right there.”

  Jock rode back and tied his horse with the others. He dug into his saddlebags for more cartridges for the Sharps, then, hunching over, he made his way back to the fighting.

  Horky’s bunch was there, with Quist’s, but Jock noticed that one man wasn’t moving. He looked more closely and saw blood covering one side of the man’s face in a smear. He winced, not recognizing who it was, but knowing that the man was dead. He counted heads and that was even more puzzling. All six of the scouts from Horky and Quist’s bunches were there, sprawled on the ground like army snipers. He crawled up beside Horky, and laid his rifle out in front of him, resting it on a clod of dirt.

  “How many, Horky?”

  “I do not know for sure, boss. Maybe seven or eight, I think.”

  “Who got killed?”

  “I do not know. I think he was with the Apaches. Dub, he shot him. It all happened so fast.”

  “They jump you?”

  “Yes. They came out of the ground, I think. We dragged the body here, trying to make him breathe. But, he died.”

  “I smell something,” Jock said. “Beef?”

  “They were cooking a steer when we rode up. I fired my rifle three times and Quist came to help us.”

  Bullets whizzed overhead, and once in a while one of the drovers fired at a target. The Apaches were moving around, but they weren’t leaving. They smelled blood and maybe they wanted scalps. Jock knew that they couldn’t stay there, pinned down as they were. Sooner or later, the Apaches would flank them or rush them and it would be a bloody mess.

  “We can’t fight them lying here on our bellies,” Jock said. “We need to get back on our horses.”

  “Every time we try to do that, they shoot much,” Horky said.

  Jock sniffed the air. Besides the smell of cooked beef, there were the aromas of burning wood and cowpies. He tried to put together a picture of what had happened. The Apaches had stolen a beef and were cooking the best parts when the scouts came up on them. The Indians must have been very hungry. But, from where had they stolen a cow to cook, way out here on the plain? From the X8 herd? Not likely. But he knew he had better find out. He hadn’t expected his men to find a bunch of Apaches cooking meat in the middle of nowhere. Rather, he had thought they might run into a scouting party and then put them on the run. Instead, they were in a fight and the Apaches had drawn first blood.

  “Hell, we can’t see ’em,” Morley said. “That last bullet was too damned close.”

  “Dub, shut up,” Quist said, and shot his rifle at a flash of color some sixty yards away.

  “Where in hell did the Apaches get all that ammunition?” Jock said aloud, asking no one but himself. As if in reply, the Apaches sent a volley of shots their way. The bullets plowed furrows in the ground just in front of the lined-up men, and sand stung the faces of some of them.

  “We’ve got to get the hell out of here,” Jock said, loud enough for all the men to hear. “Crawl backward to your horses. I’ll hold the Apaches off from here.”

  “They might rush you an
d kill you, boss,” Horky said.

  “Want me to stay with you, boss?” Beeson asked.

  Jock shook his head. “No, get moving. Just scoot backward until you think you can make a run for your horses. I’ll keep fire on the Apaches.”

  “Here,” Beeson said. “Maybe this Henry will do you more good. It has sixteen or seventeen cartridges in it. That ought to be enough.”

  Beeson handed Jock the Henry. It was a big, heavy Yellow Boy. Jock handed over his carbine to Beeson.

  “Good luck, Jocko,” Beeson said, and Jock welcomed the familiarity. It was a tight situation and he hoped he had the courage to face up to the challenge. The odds were not in his favor, he knew.

  He worked the lever on the Henry, and saw that there was a cartridge already loaded in the chamber. He closed the breech, and waited. He heard the men scooting backward, the noise of their denims rubbing against dirt, rock, and brush.

  Jock held the rifle steady, looking for movement. He saw the smoke from the Apache cookfire, just a thin, wispy tendril rising in the air. So, he knew where the Apaches had been when the scouts had encountered them. Now he looked for movement on either side of the pigtail of smoke, and when he saw a head pop up, he squeezed the trigger and sent a round burning over the Apache’s head. He levered another cartridge into the chamber, heard the metallic clunk as the empty hull ejected and spanged against a pebble before coming to rest in the dirt.

  The head bobbed back down and disappeared.

  As he listened, Jock heard soft voices speaking in another language, which he took to be Apache. It wasn’t Spanish, he knew that. Then he heard the scuffle of unshod hooves and knew that one or more of the Indians was either moving the ponies or preparing to mount up.

  Memories of the war came rushing in on Jock. Other battles, sieges. Not like this one, but every bit as nerve-wracking. Hearing the enemy, but not seeing the enemy. His palms began to sweat and the smell of the dirt beneath his body conjured up old fears; fears of dying on a battlefield all alone, blown to bits by a mortar or cannon round and nothing but pieces left scattered in all directions.

  He could almost smell the blood of the dead man nearby, and maybe he could smell him, because his senses were so acute, so tightly honed as he faced, once again, his own mortality. Life hung by so fragile a thread in battle. Every breath became precious, every thought could be the last, and yet they were so jumbled up, they didn’t matter. Maybe it was only the smell of death that kept a man alive, gave him the courage to face the same death that lay next to him, or a few yards away, with vacant eyes and drying blood and the stench of voided bowels that came with sudden death, when a man’s sphincter muscle relaxed and let his grunt out for all to smell, for all to take heed of as a warning of what might lie ahead in the blinding, clinging white smoke, in the terrible rattle of grapeshot or the angry whine of a minié ball slicing through the air, looking for a man’s body to splay and smash to that final oblivion.

  The yipping had stopped and Jock knew, with a sudden shock, that he had not heard the Apache yells for some time. When had it stopped? Before he rode up, he knew. Usually those high-pitched screeches meant that the Indians were on the attack. So, when had the attack stopped? And why?

  His skin began to crawl with the realization that he was all alone, facing an unseen enemy. Behind him were the men he had chosen as scouts. If the Apaches were to rush him and he had to run, he could be caught in the crossfire, perhaps even killed by one of his own hands.

  Jock strained to hear, but there was only a deep silence. He no longer heard the shuffling of hooves from the Apache ponies. Were the Indians sneaking off? Had they already left? He could see no sign of movement from where he lay. His scalp prickled as if a spider egg had hatched on the back of his neck.

  He didn’t dare turn around to see where his men were now. Had they reached the horses? No, probably not, or he would hear them riding up. The minutes crawled by in agonizing slowness.

  Jock knew he could no longer stay where he was. The Apaches could be anywhere. They could be circling to come up on his men from behind, or they could be flanking him, and them, on both sides. He knew he had to get back to his own horse. From where he lay, he was a sitting duck, with no defenses beyond a borrowed Henry rifle and the Colt he wore on his hip.

  He scooted backward, keeping the rifle up out of the dirt and pointed in the general direction of where he had last seen movement on the Apache side. Back, back, back, he crawled, expecting an attack at any moment.

  His progress was slow. Very slow. He didn’t even know if he was moving in a straight line. He didn’t dare look back to see where he was going, where the other men were. He tried to keep his alignment on course the way he saw it.

  The silence was immense and deep.

  Then he heard it and his blood turned to ice.

  A high-pitched Apache yell broke the silence, and then it was joined by a chorus of screeches that sounded like an overwhelming horde of Apaches heading straight for him in a do-or-die charge.

  In front of him, an Apache rose from the ground, his face smeared with dirt and paint, his mouth open in a blood-curdling scream. He had a pistol in his hand and it was spurting lead and flame from the barrel. He ran toward Jock like a deer, bounding high and zigzagging with astonishing agility.

  Jock took aim, knowing that in a few seconds the Apache would be right on top of him, firing at point-blank range. It seemed that his heart stopped in that long moment. His finger curled around the trigger of the Henry and he tried to draw a bead on the charging Apache. He held his breath for what seemed an eternity. Then Jock squeezed the trigger, hoping he had figured right, hoping the Apache would run straight into the bullet fired from the Henry. The explosion in his ears drowned out all other sound and the butt of the rifle bucked hard against his shoulder.

  The Apache did not break stride as he aimed the pistol in his hand straight at Jock’s head and squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 15

  The onrushing Apache’s last cry was torn from his throat as Jock’s bullet smashed into his chest, the lead flattening against bone and flesh, ripping through arteries and heart like some metal fist. The Apache’s pistol shot went wild, thudding into dirt, cracking rock and burying itself in the ground. The Apache pitched forward, blood spurting from the small hole in his chest, gushing from a peach-pit-sized hole in his back where it tore out ribs and meat, churning them to fragments of pulp.

  Jock levered another cartridge into the rifle’s chamber and got to his feet, expecting more Apaches to rush him. Instead, he saw a gaggle of ponies racing off to the south, Apache riders silent as ghosts in full flight. He counted six braves atop the ponies, all of them brandishing rifles.

  A moment later he heard hoofbeats from behind him and turned to see his scouts riding toward him. Horky was leading Jock’s horse. From where they were, Jock knew they could not see the retreating Apaches yet, and by the time they reached him, the Indians would be out of sight.

  Jock walked over to the Apache he had shot. He touched the toe of his boot to the man’s side. He lay still, stone dead, the bleeding halted with the failed pumping of his heart. Jock felt sadness wash over him, like the sadness at Corinth when he had killed a Union soldier at close range. He did not like taking a man’s life, robbing a living person of his future on earth. It made him feel as if a part of him had been lost.

  He turned and looked at the other dead man, wondering who he was and why he had been there, so close to the Apaches, if not actually one of their number.

  Horky rode up and handed Jock the reins to his horse.

  “Looks like you chased them off,” Beeson said.

  “I didn’t chase them off, Amos. This one came after me and I shot him. I think he sacrificed his life so that the others could escape. Otherwise, it makes no sense.”

  “It makes sense, all right,” Quist said. “Them murderin’ bastards knew they was outnumbered. If we’d have got here in time, we’d have turned all of them cowardly savages
into wolf meat.”

  “I don’t think they ran because of cowardice,” Jock said. “I think they had other things on their minds.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Quist said. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. But I want to take a look at that beef they butchered.”

  Dub’s face paled, and Jock noticed it.

  Jock mounted his horse and rode to where the Apaches had been camped. The others followed in somber procession, the smell of death thick in the air.

  A small fire was still smoldering, and the scent of roasted meat lingered. A large longhorn cow lay nearby, disemboweled, but the hide still on it. Jock swung down, and handed his reins to Horky.

  “I’m going to take a look,” Jock said. “Just sit tight, all of you. Those Apaches might come back.” Jock handed up the Henry to Beeson and retrieved his own Sharps repeater. “Thanks, Beeson. It shoots right true.”

  Everyone went on the alert. There was a rattling of rifles and the snap of lever actions as the scouts scanned the surrounding landscape.

  The Indians had cut off the head of the cow and placed it on a small mound, facing east. It sat there like some hideous artifact, its eyes bristling with flies, its tongue cut out, its neck flecked with dried blotches of blood. Its tongueless mouth gaped as if the animal had been frozen in the midst of a silent scream. Its horns were dug into the ground to balance the head, and dirt had been scooped up behind its neck to hold the entire body part in a semirigid position.