Tom Horn And The Apache Kid

by Andrew J. Fenady

  “Last week Goklaya and his broncos hit the Olang ranch…here. Burned it down—wiped out the whole family, took over a hundred horses, and pulled for the border.”

  Crook waved the arrow back toward Horn, Sieber, and the Apache Kid. These four men understood and respected each other. The scouts knew that Crook was the best “wilderness general” who ever lived. He wore civilian clothes except for a well-seasoned, well-wrinkled old army jacket. Crook stood more than six feet tall, erect, spare, sinewy, and muscular. His voice was raspy, and he was severe and brusque in speech but not unkind.

  With exception of the Civil War, he had spent his entire army career fighting Indians. Still, no American general was more respected, admired, and even loved by the red man. Crook made damn few promises, but kept the ones he made.

  Born in Ohio, he graduated from West Point in 1852 and was assigned to California and the Oregon Territory. He subdued the Humboldts, then the Rogue Rivers and the Shastas, who had been marauding the mining camps. Crook was successful in campaigns against the Klamaths and the Tolowas and then the Columbia River tribes.

  During the four-year bloodbath of the Rebellion, Crook distinguished himself at South Mountain, Antietam, Chickamauga, and Appomattox. Then it was back to Indian campaigns. Against the Paiutes he took to the field with a command of forty men wearing his old clothes and carrying a toothbrush. He didn’t see a house again for two years. The Paiutes were made peaceable.

  Later Crook led the great Apache campaigns that culminated in the surrender of five thousand of the boldest, bloodiest warriors on the face of the earth. They capitulated to Gray Wolf on April 6, 1873, at Camp Verde and became reservation Indians.

  When Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were massacred by the Sioux at Little Big Horn, General Crook was ordered north to the Platte. With only a hundred more men than Custer had had, Crook crushed the Sioux, the Cheyennes, and the Araphoes.

  But hundreds of Apache broncos had bolted the reservations, and Apacheria was a battleground again. Crook had been ordered back to Arizona, along with Sieber, Horn, and the Kid. The Fourth and Fifth Cavalry hunted, trapped, or killed every warring Apache chief except for Goklaya.

  And now General Crook had sent for Sibi and his sons…the Eagle and his Claws.

  “Al, you, Horn, and the Kid’ve crossed the border illegally, chasing renegades.” Crook cleared his throat in mock seriousness and added, “Without the army’s knowledge, of course. Well, this time it’s going to be legal—and the United States Army’s going in with you.”

  “Not as much fun, Gray Wolf,” the Kid grinned.

  “Goklaya’s ranchería is in the Sierra Madre, somewhere around here.” Crook tapped the arrow against the map again, this time below the Mexican border. “We’re going to find out exactly where and wipe it out.”

  Horn waved his hand at the map. “General, I’ve never heard of one country letting a foreign army cross its borders.”

  Crook walked back and forth in front of the map as he talked. “The Mexican government wants to get rid of Goklaya as bad as we do—maybe worse. So they’re making an exception. Goklaya doesn’t know that. He won’t be expecting us. That’s in our favor.”

  “That’s about all that’s in our favor,” said Horn.

  “Rugged country,” commented the Kid.

  “Million places to hide,” added Sieber.

  “Yes. Well, Goklaya’s only in one place.” Crook pointed the arrow at each of the scouts. “And you three are going to take us to it. What do you say to that?”

  “I say,” Horn remarked, “we better get started or we’ll be late for breakfast in hell.”

  A few minutes later, Horn, Sieber, and the Kid were heading across the compound of Fort Bowie. Bowie was on the northeastern slope of the Chiricahua Mountains at Apache Pass. It stood at an elevation of more than forty-seven hundred feet on a slanting espadrille of the mountainside and commanded a fifty-mile view. The fort was peopled by civilians, Indians, and miners as well as soldiers. In addition to the barracks, there were a way station, a cantina, a sutler’s store, a freight office, barns, and about a dozen other buildings. Fort Bowie had no walls.

  “Ol’ Gray Wolf sure is determined.” Horn lifted the brim of his hat with his thumb.

  “So’s Goklaya,” the Kid said.

  “Yeah,” Horn nodded. “Should be some party.”

  “Skookum,” the Kid beamed.

  Sieber handed Horn a folded sheet of paper. “Tom, here’s a list of the supplies we’ll need from the store. Me and the Kid’ll check out the animals. Meet us over at Van Zeider’s livery.”

  “You bet.” Horn took the paper and went on his way.

  Tom Horn walked into Ryan’s General Store, looked around, saw no one, then hollered out.

  “Hey, Ryan, you cabin-robbing bastard, where are you?”

  A handsome, fair-haired woman in her mid-twenties stepped through the curtains from the back room.

  “That cabin-robbing bastard is dead,” she said.

  “Dead?” Horn almost whispered the word.

  A tall, sharp-featured, well-dressed man about forty followed the woman from the back room as she spoke again.

  “Murdered,” she added.

  “Mr. Horn’s been away from Fort Bowie for some time.” The tall man’s voice dripped caramel. “Evidently he hadn’t heard of the tragedy.”

  “Horn?” the girl brightened. “Are you Tom Horn?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m Shana Ryan, Tim’s sister. He wrote of you often—said you were a friend. I’m sorry if I...”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “One night last month a thief broke into the store.” Shana Ryan took a step closer to Horn. “Tim caught him at it but was killed.”

  The tall man glanced at his gold pocket watch. His outward calm was betrayed by a pair of restless, narrow, ocherous eyes.

  “Probably some crazy Indian,” he conjectured.

  “Or some not-so-crazy white man,” said Horn.

  “Oh, yes, I forgot,” the tall man smiled. “Mr. Horn has an affinity for our red brothers…and sisters.”

  “Van Zeider, I don’t like you.” Horn looked directly at the tall man. “I wouldn’t like you any better if you were red, yellow, black or blue.” He turned toward Shana Ryan. “I’m sorry about your brother, Miss Ryan. Are you still in business?”

  “Well, Karl has made me an offer…for the franchise...”

  “I’ll bet he has,” Horn said without looking at Karl Van Zeider.

  “But in the meantime,” Shana continued, “I’m still in business.”

  Van Zeider patted at the gold watch now in his vest pocket.

  “Excuse me, Miss Ryan. Please consider my offer. It’s fair. I might even say it’s generous.” Van Zeider smiled his confident, satisfied smile, nod-ded again at Shana Ryan, and walked stiffly past Horn and through the door.

  When Van Zeider was gone Shana smiled at Horn. Even when she smiled there was a hint of sadness in her wide, opaline eyes. Horn guessed the sadness was for her murdered brother. She was the handsomest woman he had ever seen at Bowie and most other places. Her flaxen hair was pliant, but not too soft. Her body was athletic, but unmistakably woman. Shana must have weighed twenty pounds more than Suwan but it was disbursed in all the right places.

  “It seems,” she said, “that you and Karl have different points of view about Indians.”

  “And other things.” Horn nodded.

  “But you’re a scout. You fight the Indians.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The ones that have to be fought. That’s my job right now. I’m trying to work my way out of that job. But not Van Zeider.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are some who don’t want the Indians too quiet.”

  “But why?”

  “As long as the Apaches are stirred up, there’s contracts to be got. The War Department allocates over two million dollars a year inside the Arizona border. Those contracts mean big prof
its to some men. They supply the army with beef, horses, and mules. Then there’s beans and bacon at forty and fifty cents a pound and flour at twenty dollars a hundredweight. And it all has to be freighted in. Van Zeider’s in the freighting business—among other things.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Van Zeider does.”

  “Mr. Horn...”

  “Tom.”

  “Tom, I just want you to know….” Her voice drifted down.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Well, as I said, my brother thought of you as a good friend.”

  “We were that,” Tom Horn said and handed the supply list to Shana Ryan.

  At the corral near the Van Zeider Bros. Livery and Freighting stable, the Apache Kid was examining mules as Sieber sat on a keg of nails and watched. Also watching was Emile Van Zeider, Karl’s younger but huskier brother. He was a big bronco of a man, with a mouth that could hold a pint. Emile and three of his teamsters stood glowering at the Kid’s judgment of their animals. General Crook was a great admirer and advocate of the mule, making extensive use of it during his campaigns and in times of peace. Crook always rode a mule, never a horse. He made certain his animals were selected with the greatest care. With specially designed harnesses and adroit loading procedures, Crook’s pack mules could carry 350 pounds apiece, almost double the usual army mule load and nearly as much as the British army’s elephants in India. The Apache Kid was the best judge of horse and mule in the territory.

  The Kid looked at Sieber and nodded yes for an animal, then two no’s in a row.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that animal,” Emile Van Zeider barked.

  “There wasn’t ten years ago,” the Kid grinned.

  “Well”—Van Zeider pointed—“the other one’s in good shape.”

  “One good lung and three good legs.”

  Van Zeider moved toward Al Sieber.

  “Sieber, you’re too damned particular.”

  “Look here, Mr. Van Zeider,” Sieber said, spitting out some tobacco juice, “you get a dollar twenty-five a day for each of these mules. That’s more pay than a trooper gets. You’re damn right we’re particular.”

  As the Kid rejected another animal, Pete Curtain, one of the big teamsters, stepped toward the Indian.

  “Let’s look this redbelly over—see what shape he’s in.” The teamster grabbed the Kid and promptly got caught with a left hook that knocked the big man into the dust.

  The other two teamsters jumped at the Kid as fists flew. Sieber watched unconcerned while the two men flayed at the elusive, weaving Apache Kid.

  Tom Horn appeared from around a corner. “Hello, Al.”

  “Hello, Tom. Put in that order?”

  “Yep. You didn’t mention that Tim Ryan was killed.”

  “I guess I didn’t.”

  The altercation continued, with the two team-sters beginning to get the better of the Kid.

  “Got the mules picked yet?” Horn inquired.

  “Not quite,” said Sieber.

  “Hold him, Pete! Bite him limp!” Emile Van Zeider hollered. “Give it to him, Jud!”

  “Seems to be an honest difference of opinion,” Horn said, observing the one-sided fight.

  “That redbelly attacked my men,” Van Zeider growled at Horn.

  “All three of ’em?” Horn said. “Al, seems like the odds are always against the Indian.”

  “Seems like.” Sieber spat again.

  Horn tugged down the brim of his hat and moved toward the melee—not fast, not slow. Emile Van Zeider made the mistake of grabbing Horn. Horn flung a fist forward in a tight lump against Van Zeider’s face, breaking his nose and knocking him galley west through the rail.

  Horn picked up a heavy bucket and wrapped it hard against a teamster’s head, sending him sprawling into a mule, who kicked and hee-hawed. A couple of other mules also made themselves heard and felt.

  Emile Van Zeider started to get up, but Sieber’s boot came to rest heavily on his chest. The Kid’s fist smashed the remaining teamster senseless against the wall of the barn, just as General Crook appeared with Karl Van Zeider.

  “Mr. Sieber,” Crook announced in almost theatrical formality, “I’d like to hear your explanation of this.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sieber spat once more. “Couple of jackasses started a fight.”

  Chapter Three

  The dawn broke warm and gentle across the crowded compound at Fort Bowie. Crook’s command waited as the general mounted his powerful gray mule, Apache.

  The command consisted of forty troopers, a caravan of mules loaded with supplies and ammunition and twenty Apache scouts. Horn, Sieber, and the Apache Kid were mounted next to Crook as Captain Bourke, Crook’s aide-de-camp, who had a lot of army between his belt, rode up.

  “Captain Bourke,” Crook said, “let’s move out.”

  Bourke gave the command and the column moved, past the Van Zeider brothers, who were standing in front of the Van Zeider cantina, and Shana Ryan’s general store. She stood watching, shading her eyes from the glint of the morning sun.

  As Horn rode by, Shana lowered her hand in a way that Horn interpreted as a farewell salutation. He nodded in return.

  They headed south through the sun-burnished Arizona Territory, Crook at the head astride Apache with a shotgun across his saddle. Behind him rode the crusty, craggy officers, the nail-hard troopers, the leather-tough Indian allies—and the scouts, the lifeline to the others. With their finely-tuned senses and honed instincts, the scouts were a peculiar breed—part man, part wildcat—who could feel the hazards ahead.

  And those “hazards” were Apaches.

  “Apache”—the word came from the Zuni tongue and meant “enemy.” And the Apaches were the enemy to anyone who tried to take their land, as they themselves had taken it in an unremembered time.

  The Apache spoke a dialect of the Athapascan tongue and later Spanish. From the Mogollan Rim southward across the dreaded desert waste to the sky-piercing peaks of the Sierra Madre in Mexico—all this the Apache conquered. They scattered the Zunis out of the heartland, chased the Commanches to the east and the Yumas to the west, and carved their claim in blood and fear.

  For more than two hundred years the Apache tribes had ruled the hard, cruel land. The Apache nation was made up of many tribes: Tonto, Mimbreño, Mescalero, Jicarilla, White Mountain, Lipan, Pinal, Arivarpo, Coyatero, and Chiricahua. The last and most cunning chief of the Chiricahua, Goklaya, still raided and killed, then melted like a phantom into the nearly impregnable mountain ranges of Mexico.

  Goklaya had no more than a hundred Apache warriors, but they could make forty-five miles a day on foot, seventy-five on horse back, and when his horse fell the Apache would eat it and steal another.

  Often the Apache preferred to move and fight on foot. Over much of the terrain in which the Apache excelled in guerrilla warfare, a horse was a handicap rather than an asset. The Apache was swift and noiseless and better off without some stupid animal who might snort or whinny at an inappropriate time—or leave tracks. The Apache warrior needed less food and water than the cumbersome mount he rode. He was a smaller, more maneuverable target on foot, with catlike speed and silence. But when he did use the animal in fighting or fleeing, the Apache was nearly as good a horse man as his Comanche cousin, whose cavalry puissance was peerless.

  Whether afoot or mounted, in alkali dry desert or on rain-drenched promontory, the Apache, man for man and pound for pound, mea sured up as the most defiant and dreaded enemy ever encountered by the United States Army.

  It had been estimated that it cost the United States government five thousand dollars to kill an Apache. There was no way of measuring the price in human life and pain in defeating the facile Red foe.

  These were the last of Crook’s enemies—and Sieber’s, Horn’s, and the Apache Kid’s. The rest of the Apaches had been “pacified” on reservations, in accordance with Crook’s policy, a policy opposed by other United States Army leaders
, who favored a different policy—extermination.…

  At dusk, a scout who had been sent ahead signaled from a rise. Horn, Crook, Sieber, the Kid, and Bourke rode toward the vantage point. As the group arrived, the scout pointed toward a dust cloud moving far below. Bourke broke out his field glasses.

  “Indians?” Crook asked.

  “No,” said the Kid.

  “He’s right, sir,” Bourke confirmed, looking through his field glasses. “Not Indians.”

  “Soldiers,” said the Kid.

  “Right again,” Bourke corroborated.

  “Hibernating in that hen house didn’t hurt the Kid’s eyes none,” commented Sieber.

  “Can you make them out?” Crook asked Bourke.

  “Stars,” said the Kid.

  “What?” Horn inquired.

  “Stars.” The Kid touched his shoulders with both hands.

  “A general?” Crook asked.

  “Four stars.” The Kid held up his right hand, thumb against the palm.

  “There’s no such thing as a four-star general,” Crook said, with a trace of impatience.

  “Two generals,” the Kid grinned.

  “It’s General Sheridan, sir.” Bourke lowered his field glasses.

  “Who’s with him?” Crook asked.

  “Don’t recognize him, sir,” Bourke replied.

  “Whoever he is,” the Kid added, “he’s done up in a heap of fuss and feathers and more brass than a ten-dollar spittoon.”

  The two contingents converged at sunset. General Philip Sheridan, General Nelson Appleton Miles, and their troopers reigned up as Crook and his men approached.

  Sheridan and Miles presented studies in startling contrast. Phil Sheridan was a small man, with the largest part of his head forward of his ears. He was a combative man, restless of spirit, not politic in language. His black-Irish bloodline was evident in his long, mobile face. He had the reputation of being sharp and peppery, a self-reliant man of courage and decision, a tactician. Sheridan was also a friend of Crook’s.

  Nelson Appleton Miles was a much bigger man, with a trace of weakness in his girth. He had a pleasant enough face above a fat neck. His plump hands seemed effete. His skin was thin and resented the outdoor rigors. Miles’s reputation was that of a “headquarters general.” He wore an overdone uniform of his own design. Next to Miles rode Captain Crane, a sunny-faced, intelligent young officer.