by Ralph Cotton
“Injuns!” shouted Burke, gigging his horse forward, making for cover. Upon hearing Finland’s gunfire, he jerked his own Colt from its holster on his hip.
“Don’t shoot!” Sam yelled, but it did no good.
Montana fired wildly in three different directions. So did Burke. Stanley Black did the same as arrows streaked in, broke and bounced off rocks, sliced through mesquite and low cactus.
Sam ducked down, rifle in hand, and ran in a crouch toward his two watering horses. He got there just in time. A small bent figure had taken the reins to the two horses and turned to lead them off into the rocky hillside. But this was no warrior, Sam realized at once. It was an ancient relic of a woman in a ragged checked dress and a straw skimmer hat. Upon seeing Sam rise with his rifle, she stumbled and fell and let go of the horses’ reins. With guns roaring behind him, Sam saw that the silence on the desert floor was broken.
Sam had brought his rifle to his shoulder. Yet upon seeing that it was an elderly woman instead of a warrior, he held his shot. He watched as her terrified face looked at him from thirty yards away. She stumbled to her feet, her toothless mouth agape, and scurried off out of sight.
An arrow slid across the ground at Sam’s feet. He ducked and swung his rifle in the arrow’s direction. Again, he held his shot, seeing a half dozen children racing away like young jackrabbits across stone and brush in the same direction as the old woman. They carried bows and arrows in hand.
Babies . . . , Sam told himself. But babies whose arrows could kill a man.
He released a tense breath and hurried to the two horses as they stood milling about where the old woman had turned them loose. Leading the two horses hurriedly back to the crest of rocks surrounding the water hole, Sam kept himself and the animals covered by a large boulder as he called down to Burke and the others.
“Hold your fire,” he shouted. “It’s only kids and old folks. They’re gone.” He stood in the ringing silence after the final shot was fired. Had there been any question of the Apache across the sand flats knowing they were here, the gunfire had answered it.
Chapter 2
Sam and the four gunmen led their horses into the safety of rock higher up the sloping hillside above the water hole. Burke walked alongside Sam, his Colt out of its holster, his eyes searching every rock, every slice of blackened shade in the midmorning sun.
“Old women and little kids, huh?” he said to Sam.
“That’s who hit us,” Sam said. “But now every warrior around knows somebody’s here. Unless they have something better to do, they will be coming to feel us out.”
“Damn Injuns,” said Burke. He spat in disgust. “They act like they own both sides of the border.”
Sam just looked at him.
“You know what I mean,” Burke said. “It’s got to where a white man can’t go nowhere or do anything without stepping on some Injun’s tail.”
“This is how it’s going to be all the way to where I hid the gold,” Sam commented, walking on.
“Aha,” said Burke. “So I’m right, you are headed there?”
“I never denied it,” Sam said, knowing it would make no sense, him being an outlaw and not greedily going after gold he’d hidden a month ago. “Segert set me up, made it look like I sold rifles to a band of Mexican rebels. Hiding his gold is all that kept me from a federale firing squad. I figure the gold’s rightfully mine.”
“With what just happened back there,” said Burke, jerking his head toward the surprise attack, “we’re doing you a favor offering to ride with you.”
“Like I told you, Clyde,” said Sam, “you ride for Madson—”
“Forget Madson,” Burke said. “We get the gold and split it up, I’d be a fool to ever let Madson know we got it.”
“What about those three?” Sam asked, appearing to consider it. He wanted to get into Madson’s gang, and Burke was his best means of doing so. But he wanted to be talked into it.
“They’re not fools either,” Burke said. “But if you don’t trust them, we can always kill them soon as we get our hands on the gold.” He shrugged.
“That’s true,” Sam said, seeming to consider it some more.
“Crazy Raymond Segert did a lot of dealing on his own,” Burke continued. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Madson didn’t even know about the rifle deal. We could take this gold and go ride for Madson and he’d be none the wiser.” He grinned.
There it is . . . , Sam told himself. That was exactly what he wanted, a way into Madson’s gang. Once he was in, all he had to do was get close enough to Bell Madson to kill him.
They stopped at a turn in the hill path to let the others catch up to them. Boyd Childers grimaced, holding a hand pressed around the arrow sticking from the side of his shoulder above his upper arm.
“What do you say, Jones?” Burke asked, keeping his voice lowered. “You and me, even split? I take care of these three when the time comes?”
“The more I think of it, the better it sounds,” Sam said, letting go of some of his reluctance.
They stopped talking when the three other gunmen gathered up closer to them.
“How’s the arm holding up, Childers?” Burke asked.
“Hurts like hell,” Childers said sullenly. “Why the hell was we palavering in clear view back there, knowing Injuns are swarming like flies?”
Burke stared at him.
“We all learn from our mistakes, don’t we?” he replied sarcastically.
Childers looked away, muttering under his breath.
The Montana Kid spat in contempt and wiped his gun hand across his lips, his Colt gripped in his fist.
“If that’s their best they just hurled at us, we’ve got nothing to worry about, if you ask me,” he said. “I can shoot at young’uns and old folks all day long, means nothing to me.” He slickly spun his Colt into his holster.
Sam eyed him.
“Even if they’re facing you, shooting back?” he asked flatly.
“Are you being funny, Jones?” he asked. His hand rested on the butt on his holstered Colt.
Sam didn’t answer. Instead he turned to Burke.
“We’ve got a deal, Clyde,” he said, “if you can keep this one from firing his gun every time the wind changes.”
“We were fired upon, Jones,” said Finland. “When fired upon, I generally find it helpful to fire right back. Especially when it’s a band of border-jumping Apache out to lift my hair.”
“Yeah, look at my arm,” Childers put in. “I say kill them all, to hell with them. Where did all the old women and the kids come from anyway?”
“My guess is they’re a different tribe than the ones over in the Twisted Hills,” Sam said. “What we’ve got are a lot of remaining White Mountain Apache, Tontos and Chiricahuas. They’re moving into the Mexican hill country, taking anything with them they find along the way. The old woman, the children? I’m thinking they’re what’s left of Pinaleños or Mescaleros, after what the U.S. Cavalry has done to them.”
“Well, well, fellows,” Montana said with a dark grin. “It looks like we’ve got ourselves a ’pache expert on our hands.”
Sam bristled a little, for show—just one hotheaded outlaw that took no guff or goading from anybody.
“I’m no expert on Apache, Montana,” he said. “But I know when to start shooting or when to ride wide of them. About the only thing that draws these tribes together is the chance to kill some white men and spike their scalps and testicles on a lodge pole. Most times they go out of their way to avoid each other. We need to leave them that way.”
“I will,” said Montana, “unless they come calling on me.” He patted his holstered Colt. “When that happens, I’ll burn them down, same as I would a coyote.”
Sam turned his stare from Montana to Burke. Burke shrugged and offered a grin.
“What can I say, Jones
?” he said. “The Montana Kid likes to settle things with a gun—don’t we all?”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” said Sam, looking back at Montana, “but we’re going to try to shake any warriors off our trail that we might have picked up today. We’re going to slip as quiet as we can up to where the gold is buried, get it and get out.” He looked all around at the gunmen’s hard faces. “Anybody who’s not all right doing that needs to turn his horse around and get his knees in the wind.”
“We hear you, Jones,” said Burke. “Now let’s yank that arrow out of Childers and go get ourselves some gold.”
Sam looked from face to face, seeing the front of Stanley Black’s sliced hat brim drooping down to the tip of his nose, the outlaw’s eyes staring out above it.
“Fix your hat brim, Black,” Sam said. “We don’t want to be mistaken for a traveling circus.”
Burke and the Montana Kid chuckled under their breaths. Black grumbled, red-faced.
Sam turned to Childers and looked at his wounded upper arm, the arrow sticking from the side of his shoulder.
“Sit down over there, make yourself comfortable,” he said to Childers, gesturing him toward a low rock. “I’ll slice that thing out of your shoulder.”
“I’m thinking wait up on it,” Childers said, gripping his shoulder around the sunken arrow shaft. “See if it loosens up some. It’s awful sore right now.” He’d taken out a bag of tobacco and papers from his shirt pocket to roll himself a smoke.
Awful sore right now . . . ?
Sam just looked at him.
“I can slice your arm and take it out with a knife, or I can chop your arm off later with an ax.” He shrugged. “It’s your arm. Let me know if you decide to keep it.”
“No cause for you getting a mad-on over it,” Childers said, his cigarette paper in one hand. He shook a stream of tobacco across the paper and pulled the drawstring on the bag shut with his teeth. “I just want to wait until the soreness eases up some. It ain’t every day a man lets folks go digging down into his arm.” He offered a nervous laugh and looked around at the others for support. The gunmen only looked back at him with caged eyes.
“Sounds good to me,” Sam said to Childers. “While you’re waiting, practice rolling your smokes one-handed.”
“Damn it to hell, Jones,” Childers said. He wadded the half-constructed cigarette and threw it away. “All right, next stop we make, you cut it right out of here.”
“Wise decision,” Sam said over his shoulder.
Seeing Sam mount his dun and take up the lead rope to his spare horse, the gunmen gathered their horses as well. As Sam put his dun forward at a walk, the four mounted their dusty animals and rode on, Boyd Childers at the rear of a single line up the steep switchback trail.
• • •
When they had moved farther up onto the rocky hillside, Sam, Burke and the other gunmen made a fireless camp in the early afternoon. After leaning Boyd Childers back against a rock, Sam fed him shot after shot of whiskey from a canteen Burke had handed him. Sam watched for a moment as Childers’ head began to bob toward his chest. Finally Sam drew a long knife from his boot well and mopped the blade with a touch of whiskey on a bandana. Then he studied Childers’ face closely.
“Are you ready, Childers?” he asked stoically.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Childers said with a whiskey thickness to his voice. He sat shirtless, having pulled off his shirt and maneuvered it over the embedded arrow shaft.
Sam spread his hand around the shoulder wound and reached in with the knife to go to work. As the others had drawn back to watch from a few yards away, Childers took a piece of wood from his mouth that he’d been given to bite down on and spoke to Sam in a slurred, lowered voice.
“You don’t think much of me, do you, Jones?” he asked.
Sam just looked at him, knife in hand.
“I don’t think of you one way or the other,” he said. “You best bite down on that.” He gestured toward the short piece of dried ironwood.
“I mean me running out of town that day, not even taking my horse,” Childers said.
“I figured it to be a wise move under the circumstances,” Sam said quietly. “Am I taking this arrow out, or not?”
“I just don’t want you thinking me a coward,” Childers said. “I’m not.”
“Bite down, here we go,” Sam said. He laid the point of the knife alongside the arrow shaft.
Childers barely got the piece of wood between his teeth before Sam stuck the blade down into his shoulder flesh. With a widened wound opening, Sam gave a slight twist of the knife blade and yanked the arrow free, fast and slick. The pain was sharp, deep and searing, but it ended as quickly as it had started. Childers grunted and bit hard on the wood. Then he relaxed and slumped back.
Sam inspected the blood-smeared arrow shaft. He found the metal head intact.
“You’re lucky, Childers,” he said. “If this was a flint head, pieces of it could have broken off deep. I’d have been digging it out a little at a time, the next hour.”
“Lucky me,” Childers said halfheartedly. He looked at the iron arrowhead himself.
“Usually the warriors only give their kids stone heads, for hunting. They keep the iron heads for themselves, for killing us white devils.”
Burke had walked up as soon as he saw the arrow was out of Childers’ shoulder. He stood bent, palms on his knees, looking at the arrowhead.
“What do you suppose it means?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “It could mean the warriors have enough rifles and pistols, they can afford to give the war heads to their sons for hunting.”
“Rifles, huh?” said the Montana Kid, he and Black venturing in closer. “How far are we from this buried gold?” As he spoke, he looked all around, back across the desert floor below. The wavering afternoon heat had cut the vision across sand flats by half. Anything moving over a mile away was lost in the rising, swirling heat.
“Two days,” Sam said, “three at the most, depending on what pushes us forward or holds us back.” He pitched the arrow across Childers’ lap. “Here’s you a souvenir,” he said.
Childers picked up the arrow and flung it away.
“I won’t need reminding of it,” he said.
Sam placed a folded bandana on the bleeding wound and pressed Childers’ hand on it. He twisted another bandana and tied it around the wound as Childers removed his hand from it. Black stood watching, his hat brim tied flat against his hat crown with a strip of rawhide.
Sam looked off and up at a higher switchback trail circling in the distance above them.
“We need to get up there before dark,” he said. “Whoever’s coming this way across the sand should be getting here about dark. They can’t make any more time than we can on these hillsides.”
“You mean we’ll get on up there and camp the night real quietlike?” Burke asked.
“No,” Sam said. “We get up there and rest our horses for a while and move on. We ride all night. Tomorrow we’ll cross more desert, put some miles between us and them, maybe shake them off our trail. Right now they’re curious about us. But the curiosity will wear thin when they see how hard it is to catch up to us.”
“I’ve heard ’pache can track a ghost across running water,” Black said.
“So you want to give up, throw ourselves on their mercy. Maybe we could ask them where we can and can’t go?” Montana said critically.
“I’m just saying, is all,” said Black. “The ’pache ain’t people to be fooling with.”
“Don’t make them bigger than they are,” Sam said.
“Yeah, we’re gunmen ourselves,” said Burke. “We don’t bow and scrape to nobody. Am I right, Jones?”
“Yeah, why not . . . ?” Sam looked all around, taking stock of the hills, the winding trails. “Besides, we’re so deep
in the Mexican Desert hills now, we’re going to be ducking and fighting them whether we go forward or turn back.”
The Montana Kid chuckled, seeing the look of trepidation on Stanley Black’s face.
“Hell,” he said, “if this gold was too easy to take out of here, I expect I wouldn’t think it worth my time.”
“You’re talking crazy, Montana,” Black said.
Sam wiped his knife blade back and forth in the dirt and shoved it down into his boot well. He walked toward his dun and the spare horse.
“Let’s get moving,” he said over his shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll all try to keep our guns quiet.”
“Be advised, Jones, if I’m fired upon, I’ll fire back,” the Montana Kid called out, taking Sam’s words to be aimed deliberately at him.
“So I’ve seen,” Sam said without looking back.
As he walked on, he heard Black speaking to Burke in a lowered tone.
“Who put him in charge?” Black asked.
“Keep your mouth shut, Stanley,” Burke growled in reply, “before I stick a rock lizard in it and sew it shut.”
Sam stared straight ahead at his dun and the spare horse. Yes, he could see he was taking the lead with these men, but so be it, he told himself, walking on toward the horses. Somebody had to take charge. This harsh land had no respect of person or his objective. It didn’t matter that he was a lawman working under cover. In this deadly terrain, staying alive dwarfed all other purpose and intent.
Chapter 3
At dark, the five had reached a high summit and stepped down from their saddles. They led the tired horses under a limestone shelf overhang and dropped the saddles from their sweaty backs. They poured tepid water from their canteens into their upturned hats and held the sparse offering up to the horses’ muzzles. Sam took a dried goat shank from the supplies carried by his spare horse. Walking over to where the men had fallen to the ground and leaned against their damp saddles, Sam pitched the meat down to Burke.
“Here, take some and pass it around,” he said.
