Hondo (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  Once, going out at daybreak, she saw an Indian girl dipping water from the spring. Angie called to her, and the girl turned quickly, facing her. Angie walked toward her, offering a bright red silk ribbon. Pleased, the Apache girl left.

  And the following morning there was another quarter of antelope on her step—but she saw no Indian.

  Ed Lowe had built the cabin in West Dog Canyon in the spring of 1871, but it was Angie who chose the spot, not Ed. In Santa Fe they would have told you that Ed Lowe was good-looking, shiftless, and agreeable. He was, also, unfortunately handy with a pistol.

  Angie’s father had come from County Mayo to New York and from New York to the Mississippi, where he became a tough, brawling river boatman. In New Orleans, he met a beautiful Cajun girl and married her. Together, they started west for Santa Fe, and Angie was born en route. Both parents died of cholera when Angie was fourteen. She lived with an Irish family for the following three years, then married Ed Lowe when she was seventeen.

  Santa Fe was not good for Ed, and Angie kept after him until they started south. It was Apache country, but they kept on until they reached the old Spanish ruin in West Dog. Here there were grass, water, and shelter from the wind.

  There was fuel, and there were piñons and game. And Angie, with an Irish eye for the land, saw that it would grow crops.

  The house itself was built on the ruins of the old Spanish building, using the thick walls and the floor. The location had been admirably chosen for defense. The house was built in a corner of the cliff, under the sheltering overhang, so that approach was possible from only two directions, both covered by an easy field of fire from the door and windows.

  For seven months, Ed worked hard and steadily. He put in the first crop, built the house, and proved himself a handy man with tools. He repaired the old plow they had bought, cleaned out the spring, and paved and walled it with slabs of stone. If he was lonely for the carefree companions of Santa Fe, he gave no indication of it. Provisions were low, and when he finally started off, Angie watched him go with an ache in her heart.

  She did not know whether she loved Ed. The first flush of enthusiasm had passed, and Ed Lowe had proved something less than she had believed. But he had tried, she admitted. And it had not been easy for him. He was an amiable soul, given to whittling and idle talk, both of which he missed in the loneliness of the Apache country. And when he rode away, she had no idea whether she would ever see him again. She never did.

  Santa Fe was far and away to the north, but the growing village of El Paso was less than a hundred miles to the west, and it was there Ed Lowe rode for supplies and seed.

  He had several drinks—his first in months—in one of the saloons. As the liquor warmed his stomach, Ed Lowe looked around agreeably. For a moment, his eyes clouded with worry as he thought of his wife and children back in Apache country, but it was not in Ed Lowe to worry for long. He had another drink and leaned on the bar, talking to the bartender. All Ed had ever asked of life was enough to eat, a horse to ride, an occasional drink, and companions to talk with. Not that he had anything important to say. He just liked to talk.

  Suddenly a chair grated on the floor, and Ed turned. A lean, powerful man with a shock of uncut black hair and a torn, weather-faded shirt stood at bay. Facing him across the table were three hard-faced young men, obviously brothers.

  Ches Lane did not notice Ed Lowe watching from the bar. He had eyes only for the men facing him. “You done that deliberate!” The statement was a challenge.

  The broad-chested man on the left grinned through broken teeth. “That’s right, Ches. I done it deliberate. You killed Dan Tolliver on the Brazos.”

  “He made the quarrel.” Comprehension came to Ches. He was boxed, and by three of the fighting, blood-hungry Tollivers.

  “Don’t make no difference,” the broad-chested Tolliver said.

  “ ‘Who sheds a Tolliver’s blood, by a Tolliver’s hand must die!’ ”

  Ed Lowe moved suddenly from the bar. “Three to one is long odds,” he said, his voice low and friendly. “If the gent in the corner is willin’, I’ll side him.”

  Two Tollivers turned toward him. Ed Lowe was smiling easily, his hand hovering near his gun. “You stay out of this!” one of the brothers said harshly.

  “I’m in,” Ed replied. “Why don’t you boys light a shuck?”

  “No, by—!” The man’s hand dropped for his gun, and the room thundered with sound.

  Ed was smiling easily, unworried as always. His gun flashed up. He felt it leap in his hand, saw the nearest Tolliver smashed back, and he shot him again as he dropped. He had only time to see Ches Lane with two guns out and another Tolliver down when something struck him through the stomach and he stepped back against the bar, suddenly sick.

  The sound stopped, and the room was quiet, and there was the acrid smell of powder smoke. Three Tollivers were down and dead, and Ed Lowe was dying. Ches Lane crossed to him.

  “We got ’em,” Ed said, “we sure did. But they got me.”

  Suddenly his face changed. “Oh, Lord in heaven, what’ll Angie do?” And then he crumpled over on the floor and lay still, the blood staining his shirt and mingling with the sawdust.

  Stiff-faced, Ches looked up. “Who’s Angie?” he asked.

  “His wife,” the bartender told him. “She’s up northeast somewhere, in Apache country. He was tellin’ me about her. Two kids, too.”

  Ches Lane stared down at the crumpled, used-up body of Ed Lowe. The man had saved his life.

  One he could have beaten, two he might have beaten; three would have killed him. Ed Lowe, stepping in when he did, had saved the life of Ches Lane.

  “He didn’t say where?”

  “No.”

  Ches Lane shoved his hat back on his head. “What’s northeast of here?”

  The bartender rested his hands on the bar. “Cochise,” he said….

  For more than three months, whenever he could rustle the grub, Ches Lane quartered the country over and back. The trouble was, he had no lead to the location of Ed Lowe’s homestead. An examination of Ed’s horse revealed nothing. Lowe had bought seed and ammunition, and the seed indicated a good water supply, and the ammunition implied trouble. But in that country there was always trouble.

  A man had died to save his life, and Ches Lane had a deep sense of obligation. Somewhere that wife waited, if she was still alive, and it was up to him to find her and look out for her. He rode northeast, cutting for sign, but found none. Sandstorms had wiped out any hope of back-trailing Lowe. Actually, West Dog Canyon was more east than north, but this he had no way of knowing.

  North he went, skirting the rugged San Andreas Mountains. Heat baked him hot, dry winds parched his skin. His hair grew dry and stiff and alkali-whitened. He rode north, and soon the Apaches knew of him. He fought them at a lonely water hole, and he fought them on the run. They killed his horse, and he switched his saddle to the spare and rode on. They cornered him in the rocks, and he killed two of them and escaped by night.

  They trailed him through the White Sands, and he left two more for dead. He fought fiercely and bitterly, and would not be turned from his quest. He turned east through the lava beds and still more east to the Pecos. He saw only two white men, and neither knew of a white woman.

  The bearded man laughed harshly. “A woman alone? She wouldn’t last a month! By now the Apaches got her, or she’s dead. Don’t be a fool! Leave this country before you die here.”

  Lean, wind-whipped, and savage, Ches Lane pushed on. The Mescaleros cornered him in Rawhide Draw and he fought them to a standstill. Grimly, the Apaches clung to his trail.

  The sheer determination of the man fascinated them. Bred and born in a rugged and lonely land, the Apaches knew the difficulties of survival; they knew how a man could live, how h
e must live. Even as they tried to kill this man, they loved him, for he was one of their own.

  Lane’s jeans grew ragged. Two bullet holes were added to the old black hat. The slicker was torn; the saddle, so carefully kept until now, was scratched by gravel and brush. At night he cleaned his guns and by day he scouted the trails. Three times he found lonely ranch houses burned to the ground, the buzzard- and coyote-stripped bones of their owners lying nearby.

  Once he found a covered wagon, its canvas flopping in the wind, a man lying sprawled on the seat with a pistol near his hand. He was dead and his wife was dead, and their canteens rattled like empty skulls.

  Leaner every day, Ches Lane pushed on. He camped one night in a canyon near some white oaks. He heard a hoof click on stone and he backed away from his tiny fire, gun in hand.

  The riders were white men, and there were two of them. Joe Tompkins and Wiley Lynn were headed west, and Ches Lane could have guessed why. They were men he had known before, and he told them what he was doing.

  Lynn chuckled. He was a thin-faced man with lank yellow hair and dirty fingers. “Seems a mighty strange way to get a woman. There’s some as comes easier.”

  “This ain’t for fun,” Ches replied shortly. “I got to find her.”

  Tompkins stared at him. “Ches, you’re crazy! That gent declared himself in of his own wish and desire. Far’s that goes, the gal’s dead. No woman could last this long in Apache country.”

  At daylight, the two men headed west, and Ches Lane turned south.

  Antelope and deer are curious creatures, often led to their death by curiosity. The longhorn acquires the same characteristic. He is essentially curious. Any new thing or strange action will bring his head up and his ears alert. Often a longhorn, like a deer, can be lured within a stone’s throw by some queer antic, by a handkerchief waving, by a man under a hide, by a man on foot.

  This character of the wild things holds true of the Indian. The lonely rider who fought so desperately and knew the desert so well soon became a subject of gossip among the Apaches. Over the fires of many a rancheria they discussed this strange rider who seemed to be going nowhere, but always riding, like a lean wolf dog on a trail. He rode across the mesas and down the canyons; he studied sign at every water hole; he looked long from every ridge. It was obvious to the Indians that he searched for something—but what?

  Cochise had come again to the cabin in West Dog Canyon. “Little warrior too small,” he said, “too small for hunt. You join my people. Take Apache for man.”

  “No.” Angie shook her head. “Apache ways are good for the Apache, and the white man’s ways are good for white men—and women.”

  They rode away and said no more, but that night, as she had on many other nights after the children were asleep, Angie cried. She wept silently, her head pillowed on her arms. She was as pretty as ever, but her face was thin, showing the worry and struggle of the months gone by, the weeks and months without hope.

  The crops were small but good. Little Jimmy worked beside her. At night, Angie sat alone on the steps and watched the shadows gather down the long canyon, listening to the coyotes yapping from the rim of the Guadalupes, hearing the horses blowing in the corral. She watched, still hopeful, but now she knew that Cochise was right: Ed would not return.

  But even if she had been ready to give up this, the first home she had known, there could be no escape. Here she was protected by Cochise. Other Apaches from other tribes would not so willingly grant her peace.

  At daylight she was up. The morning air was bright and balmy, but soon it would be hot again. Jimmy went to the spring for water, and when breakfast was over, the children played while Angie sat in the shade of a huge old cottonwood and sewed. It was a Sunday, warm and lovely. From time to time, she lifted her eyes to look down the canyon, half-smiling at her own foolishness.

  The hard-packed earth of the yard was swept clean of dust; the pans hanging on the kitchen wall were neat and shining. The children’s hair had been clipped, and there was a small bouquet on the kitchen table.

  After a while, Angie put aside her sewing and changed her dress. She did her hair carefully, and then, looking in her mirror, she reflected with sudden pain that she was pretty, and that she was only a girl.

  Resolutely, she turned from the mirror and, taking up her Bible, went back to the seat under the cottonwood. The children left their playing and came to her, for this was a Sunday ritual, their only one. Opening the Bible, she read slowly,

  “…though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou…”

  “Mommy.” Jimmy tugged at her sleeve. “Look!”

  Ches Lane had reached a narrow canyon by midafternoon and decided to make camp. There was small possibility he would find another such spot, and he was dead tired, his muscles sodden with fatigue. The canyon was one of those unexpected gashes in the cap rock that gave no indication of its presence until you came right on it. After some searching, Ches found a route to the bottom and made camp under a wind-hollowed overhang. There was water, and there was a small patch of grass.

  After his horse had a drink and a roll on the ground, it began cropping eagerly at the rich, green grass, and Ches built a smokeless fire of ancient driftwood in the canyon bottom. It was his first hot meal in days, and when he had finished he put out his fire, rolled a smoke, and leaned back contentedly.

  Before darkness settled, he climbed to the rim and looked over the country. The sun had gone down, and the shadows were growing long. After a half hour of study, he decided there was no living thing within miles, except for the usual desert life. Returning to the bottom, he moved his horse to fresh grass, then rolled into his blanket. For the first time in a month, he slept without fear.

  He woke up suddenly in the broad daylight. The horse was listening to something, his head up. Swiftly, Ches went to the horse and led it back under the overhang. Then he drew on his boots, rolled his blankets, and saddled the horse. Still he heard no sound.

  Climbing the rim again, he studied the desert and found nothing. Returning to his horse, he mounted up and rode down the canyon toward the flatland beyond. Coming out of the canyon mouth, he rode right into the middle of a war party of more than twenty Apaches—invisible until suddenly they stood up behind rocks, their rifles leveled. And he didn’t have a chance.

  Swiftly, they bound his wrists to the saddle horn and tied his feet. Only then did he see the man who led the party. It was Cochise.

  He was a lean, wiry Indian of past fifty, his black hair streaked with gray, his features strong and clean-cut. He stared at Lane, and there was nothing in his face to reveal what he might be thinking.

  Several of the young warriors pushed forward, talking excitedly and waving their arms. Ches Lane understood none of it, but he sat straight in the saddle, his head up, waiting. Then Cochise spoke and the party turned, and, leading his horse, they rode away.

  The miles grew long and the sun was hot. He was offered no water and he asked for none. The Indians ignored him. Once a young brave rode near and struck him viciously. Lane made no sound, gave no indication of pain. When they finally stopped, it was beside a huge anthill swarming with big red desert ants.

  Roughly, they untied him and jerked him from his horse. He dug in his heels and shouted at them in Spanish: “The Apaches are women! They tie me to the ants because they are afraid to fight me!”

  An Indian struck him, and Ches glared at the man. If he must die, he would show them how it should be done. Yet he knew the unpredictable nature of the Indian, of his great respect for courage.

  “Give me a knife, and I’ll kill any of your warriors!”

  They stared at him, and one powerfully built Apache ang
rily ordered them to get on with it. Cochise spoke, and the big warrior replied angrily.

  Ches Lane nodded at the anthill. “Is this the death for a fighting man? I have fought your strong men and beaten them. I have left no trail for them to follow, and for months I have lived among you, and now only by accident have you captured me. Give me a knife,” he added grimly, “and I will fight him!” He indicated the big, black-faced Apache.

  The warrior’s cruel mouth hardened, and he struck Ches across the face.

  The white man tasted blood and fury. “Woman!” Ches said. “Coyote! You are afraid!” Ches turned on Cochise, as the Indians stood irresolute. “Free my hands and let me fight!” he demanded. “If I win, let me go free.”

  Cochise said something to the big Indian. Instantly, there was stillness. Then an Apache sprang forward and, with a slash of his knife, freed Lane’s hands. Shaking loose the thongs, Ches Lane chafed his wrists to bring back the circulation. An Indian threw a knife at his feet. It was his own bowie knife.

  Ches took off his riding boots. In sock feet, his knife gripped low in his hand, its cutting edge up, he looked at the big warrior.

  “I promise you nothing,” Cochise said in Spanish, “but an honorable death.”

  The big warrior came at him on cat feet. Warily, Ches circled. He had not only to defeat this Apache but to escape. He permitted himself a side glance toward his horse. It stood alone. No Indian held it.

  The Apache closed swiftly, thrusting wickedly with the knife. Ches, who had learned knife-fighting in the bayou country of Louisiana, turned his hip sharply, and the blade slid past him. He struck swiftly, but the Apache’s forward movement deflected the blade, and it failed to penetrate. However, as it swept up between the Indian’s body and arm, it cut a deep gash in the warrior’s left armpit.