Blood and Gold

by Joseph A. West

  “I guess I do,” I said. “No, I really do.”

  “Then you’ll have to stand by her. She’ll need that from you more than anything else.”

  I drew deep on my cigarette, enjoying the harsh, bitter bite of the smoke. “Ma, I was thinking about that very thing earlier. I decided Lila needs a grown man, not a boy.”

  “Dusty, you’re all the man you’ll ever be,” Ma said. “And a darned good one if you ask me.”

  “Do you really think that, Ma?” I asked.

  Ma nodded. “If you were my own son, I’d tell you the same.” She reached out and laid the tips of her fingers on the back of my hand. “Marry her, Dusty. Raise your children and then grow old with her and never, not even once, turn your back on her.” She studied me closely. “Can you do all that?”

  “I’d surely like to try.”

  “Do more than try.” Ma hunted around for the right words, as I had done earlier. “Cherish her, Dusty. Never let her think for a single moment as long as you both live that you consider her soiled goods.”

  I took a deep breath and said: “If I made Lila my wife and any man said such a thing about her, I’d kill him.”

  “But you, Dusty, what do you think?”

  I smiled, a genuine smile, finding no need to force it. “I think, Ma, I’m beginning to grow up.”

  I’ll never know what Ma was going to say next, because Charlie Fullerton stomped onto the porch and said: “Dinner’s ready, an’ if’n you don’t come in and eat, I’ll throw it away.”

  Half an hour later, as I was finishing my second piece of pie, big John Coleman and a dozen exhausted riders reined up outside the ranch house. The faces of the Coleman punchers were haggard and unshaven, but they looked a grim and determined bunch, led by a Kiowa I’d seen a time or two, a silent, brooding man who made a living as a horse wrangler but also hired out now and then as a scout.

  I didn’t yet know it as I wiped off my mouth and stepped onto the porch, but I’d soon be joining them all on a headlong ride into hell.

  Chapter 24

  “My Sally’s gone,” Coleman told Ma as he sat with us in the parlor. “And young Ethan Noon with her.”

  “John, whatever has happened?” Ma asked, rising alarm edging her voice.

  Coleman turned his exhausted red-rimmed eyes on her. “It happened on the trail home after they left here last night.”

  “What happened, John?” Ma prompted. Her face had slowly drained of blood. She had guessed at what was to come and I could tell she dreaded every approaching word of it.

  “Apaches,” Coleman said. “We found Sally and Ethan by their upturned buggy early this morning. Ethan made a good fight of it. We found empty cartridge cases scattered all around his body.” Coleman’s voice caught in his throat and he struggled with the words. “Near as the Kiowa can piece it together, at the end Ethan threw down his empty rifle, drew his Colt and shot Sally”—his unsteady fingers strayed to his right temple—“here. Ethan kept the last bullet for himself. He shot himself in the mouth.”

  Hardly able to comprehend what I was hearing, I realized how badly I’d misjudged Ethan Noon. The puncher had sand and he’d proved it in the last few violent and terrifying moments of his life.

  Coleman was a huge man, big in the chest and shoulders, with a full beard and an easygoing way about him. But now he looked shrunken somehow, and suddenly very old.

  “Mr. Coleman, I’m right sorry about Sally,” I said. “And Ethan.”

  The big rancher nodded. “Thank you, Dusty. I know you and Sally were close since you was both just younkers.”

  The man buried his face in his hands, but still seemed full of talk, the horror of what had happened spiking at him mercilessly. “I figure there were about two dozen Apaches involved in the attack. After we’d taken Sally and Ethan back to the ranch, I rounded up the hands and we took off after them.

  “Rode clear to the breaks of Cottonwood Creek and found nothing, then headed south. Finally we saw their dust plain, but they were still a long ways off, and then we lost them. The Kiowa figures they doubled back on us and are headed for the Davis or maybe the Glass mountains. He says the Apaches figure to lose themselves up there among the canyons and rocks.

  “I trust that Kiowa. He knows what he’s talking about, when he talks.”

  Coleman took his hands from his face and looked at Ma. “Miz Prather, your ranch was closest, so I figured I’d let the boys eat and maybe exchange horses, and then get right back after them savages again.”

  Ma nodded. “Mr. Fullerton is feeding the hands in the bunkhouse right now, and of course I’ll let you have fresh horses.”

  Coleman nodded, his eyes bloodshot, his face gray. “Thank you kindly. I surely do appreciate it.”

  Ma’s eyes revealed her growing concern. “John, you’re all in. You should rest up for a spell.”

  The rancher shook his head. “I’ll have no rest until I find those Apaches and kill every last one of them.”

  I rose to my feet. “I’d like to join you, Mr. Coleman. Like you said, Sally and me were close.”

  “Glad to have you, Dusty,” Coleman replied, picking at the plate of food on his lap. “We ride out in half an hour.”

  I walked to the bunkhouse and readied my gear, then saddled the dun and led him back to the front of the house. Most of Coleman’s hands had already eaten and were busy roping fresh mounts from the corral.

  I knew most of the men by name, and as I walked past several of them waved a friendly greeting, and one yelled: “Good to have you along, Dusty.”

  The oil lamps were lit outside the house on each side of the door, casting shifting pools of orange and yellow on the wood floor of the porch, and Ma and Coleman were sitting on the rockers in the shadows, deep in conversation.

  I stepped inside and made my way to Lila’s room and rapped lightly on the door.

  “Come in,” Lila called.

  She was sitting up in bed when I entered, wearing a pale lavender robe of Ma’s, her shoulder all bound up in Charlie’s white bandage.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and took Lila’s hand. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Much better. Mr. Fullerton’s been feeding me like a horse, says I’m way too skinny.”

  I looked into Lila’s eyes, but they were shadowed and guarded, revealing nothing of how she felt or thought. “I just came in to say so long,” I said. “I’m riding out with John Coleman after some Apache renegades.”

  Lila smiled at me. “Thanks for trying to spare my feelings, but Mr. Fullerton already told me what happened to Sally Coleman and her husband.”

  “Mr. Fullerton talks too much,” I said, then rose to my feet. “Lila, I’ve got to be moving on.”

  “Dusty, please take care of yourself,” Lila said.

  Only after I’d left her room and swung into the saddle of my horse did I remember that I hadn’t kissed her. Nor had I asked her to marry me.

  It just wasn’t the right time, I told myself.

  But was that the only reason?

  We rode out in moon-splashed darkness under a wild, broken sky, the Kiowa in the lead, most of the tired Coleman riders already nodding in the saddle.

  The only sound was the fall of our horses’ hooves and the creak of leather, though John Coleman mumbled to himself every now and then, a man being pushed to a breaking point by grief and the desire for revenge.

  We headed west for three days and then caught and killed two Apache stragglers in Coyanosa Draw about twenty-five miles west of Fort Stockton. A third warrior was still alive after the shooting stopped and the smoke cleared, and John Coleman said we’d get nothing out of him anyhow and ordered one of his men to kill him.

  But he underestimated the persuasive powers of the Kiowa. The Indian told John he’d find out where the remainder of the band was headed and the big rancher shrugged and let him have at it.

  As the rest of us made camp and boiled coffee at a shallow runoff between two steep rises covered in creos
ote bush and tar brush, the Kiowa drew off a ways, dragging the wounded Apache with him. He made his own fire out of sight of us and got to work.

  I have to hand it to that Apache—he was tough. Little more than a boy, he kept silent for a long while and it was only as the day shaded into evening and the first stars appeared that he began to scream.

  He screamed all night, keeping us from sleep, and just before daybreak the screams suddenly strangled to an agonized stop.

  The Kiowa came out of the brush, wiping his bloody knife on his buckskin leggings, and squatted by the fire. As the hands watched, some of them mighty green around the gills, he poured himself a cup of coffee, then rolled a cigarette, lighting it with a brand from the fire. The Kiowa sat, smoking, drinking his coffee, shivering slightly in the morning chill, a man at peace with himself, saying nothing.

  Big John, surly from lack of rest, stepped beside the Indian, looked down at him and asked: “Well?”

  Without looking up, the Kiowa said: “The Apaches you seek are headed for the Davis Mountains all right, and they’ll swing a little to the north to avoid Fort Davis and the Buffalo Soldiers. They plan to link up with Victorio at Wild Horse Draw and then cross the Rio Grande into Mexico. All this the Mescalero boy told me.”

  “Can we catch them before they get into the mountains?” Coleman asked, his eyes anxiously searching the Kiowa’s impassive bronzed face.

  The Indian nodded. “We will catch them. It may be today or tomorrow, but we will catch them.”

  “Hey, Injun, do they know for sure we’re after them?” a puncher asked.

  The Kiowa nodded, his black eyes flat, revealing nothing. “They know. And they don’t fear us.”

  “They will fear us—by God they will,” Coleman roared, slamming his fist into the open palm of his left hand, his face flushed.

  The Kiowa shrugged. “They ride to join Victorio. Otherwise the hunters might already have become the hunted.”

  “I want them all dead,” Coleman yelled, ignoring the man. He turned to his hands, taking in each one of them with his sweeping red-eyed glare. “Do you hear that, boys. I want them all dead and I’ll give any man who brings me an Apache scalp a fifty-dollar bonus. In gold!”

  A cheer went up from the hands, but the Kiowa sat in brooding silence, absorbed by his own thoughts, his eyes open but seeing nothing, looking inward.

  I figured the man was having a vision of some kind, but I could not guess if it was good or bad, and had I asked, the Kiowa would not have told me.

  It was not yet full daylight when we saddled up and took to the trail, heading due west to keep Fort Davis to our south.

  A day’s ride took us to the shallow foothills of the Davis peaks, but we saw no sign of Apaches.

  The Kiowa rode far ahead of us, scouting the brush-covered hills and shadowed canyons, the rugged, stone pillared mountains a purple silhouette against the pale sky, rising a mile high above the plain.

  The Coleman hands were strung out along the trail, men and horses beginning to wear out. There was no talk from the men as they rode and I began to wonder if they’d stick if we didn’t come on the Apaches soon.

  I reckoned John Coleman had the same thought, because he suddenly turned in the saddle and beckoned to me. I kneed my horse beside the big rancher and was shocked by his appearance. Under his beard, his cheeks were sunken and his skin had taken on an unhealthy gray pallor. Only the eyes were alive, burning with an unholy light, the eyes of a fanatic—or a madman.

  “Dusty, listen to me,” the rancher said. “There’s still a couple of hours until dark and I want this over and done. I want the Apaches who killed my Sally scalped and dead.”

  “We’ll find them, Mr. Coleman,” I said, attempting to humor the man. “They can’t be too far ahead of us.”

  As though he hadn’t heard, Coleman went on: “Back at the Rafter C, my Sally lies in the icehouse, wrapped in a sheet, all stiff and white and cold. I can hear her every minute of the day and night, crying out for me to come home and bury her decent.” The man’s blazing eyes sought mine. “She’ll wear a dress that was her mother’s. I’ll lay her in the ground in it.”

  The big rancher was teetering along the ragged edge of insanity, though I could sense his inward struggle as he desperately tried not to slip away.

  “Go help the Kiowa, Dusty,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. “Find me those Apaches.”

  I was only too glad to escape those terrible eyes, and I spurred the galloping dun hard as I rode toward the distant figure of the Kiowa.

  I caught up with the Indian as he was riding through a narrow canyon, its floor covered in yucca and aga rito. On the top of the surrounding hills grew yellow pine and a few black cherry trees. Higher up, the mountain slopes were covered in juniper and pinon and here and there stood stands of slender and stately ponderosa pine, their dark green branches moving restlessly in the wind.

  The Kiowa didn’t seem surprised to see me. He merely pointed with his bladed hand along the canyon. “They came this way.” He nodded toward the soaring mountains. “They intend to cross the peaks and head for Wild Horse Draw.”

  I looked around me, but saw nothing. “Where are they?” I asked.

  The Kiowa gave me a rare, grudging smile and nodded. “Up there.”

  I looked up, squinting against the harsh sunlight, at the mountain towering above us. It was a steep climb to the crest where granite rocks jutted from the slope like the prows of great iron warships.

  As my eyes became accustomed to the glare, I made out a single file of about twenty horsemen winding their way toward the top, an Apache on a gray horse leading them, the rest strung out behind him.

  “Hell, they’re getting away,” I said.

  The Kiowa shook his head. “No, because now we stop them.”

  He slid his Henry from the boot, threw it to his shoulder and levered off three fast shots, the booming echoes bounding among the canyon walls like gigantic boulders being bowled along a stone cavern.

  Immediately, the Apaches scattered, men and horses merging so completely into the landscape of the mountain that the slope seemed deserted.

  Coleman and his riders charged into the canyon a few moments later.

  “Damn it all, did we lose them?” the rancher yelled, glaring at the Kiowa, his frustration evident. “Did we lose them?”

  The Indian answered without taking his eyes from the slope. “No, they are up there.”

  “Will they fight?” Coleman demanded. His gaze turned to me. “Dusty, will they fight?”

  “They will fight,” the Kiowa replied for me. “They will fight up there, higher up the mountain. The Apache will let us come to them, even though we are few and they are many.”

  “Hell,” the big rancher snorted, “there are thirteen of us.”

  The Kiowa smiled again, a humorless grimace that didn’t reach his eyes. “With Apaches, that may not be enough.”

  “If you’re too yellow to face them, then stay here, damn you!” Coleman flared. “The rest of us will get the job done.”

  If the Kiowa took offense, he didn’t let it show. He turned to Coleman and carefully unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a rawhide string; hanging from it were what looked to me to be a row of withered brown claws. “These are the trigger fingers of the seventeen men I have killed in battle,” he told Coleman, his hard-boned face stiff and proud. “I will fight the Apaches.”

  Coleman looked at the Indian’s grisly trophies for long moments, then nodded. “So be it.”

  He turned in the saddle, addressing his men. “My offer still stands, boys. Fifty dollars in gold for every filthy Apache scalp you lay at my feet.” Amid wild cheering, Coleman doffed his hat and waved it above his head. “Now let’s go get it done.”

  Led by the Kiowa, we rode further into the silent canyon.

  I slid my Winchester from the scabbard and from far above me I heard a scrub jay call, answered a few moments later by another. And another.

  The Kiowa’s
back stiffened, his eyes constantly scanning the ridges of the canyon. He laid the butt of the Henry on his right thigh, holding the rifle upright and ready as his pony picked its way along the canyon floor.

  He had been right. The Apaches weren’t about to run. They planned to stay and fight.

  Chapter 25

  After a couple hundred yards, the canyon widened, giving way to a wide clearing carpeted with grass and wildflowers, a few scrub oak growing around the perimeter. There was evidence that wild cattle had used this place to graze and they’d cut a narrow trail that wound up the slope of the mountain, disappearing into some tumbled boulders a few hundred feet above the level.

  We were enclosed on all sides by high, brush-topped ridges, and it was very hot in the clearing. I stood my horse near the shade of an oak and wiped sweat from my hatband and brow.

  The Kiowa had swung out of the saddle and was examining the trail up the mountain. He studied the piled-up boulders above us for long moments, nodded to himself, then walked over to Coleman, leading his pony.

  “Where are they?” the rancher asked, irritation harsh in his voice. “Damn it, man, where are they?”

  The Kiowa pointed beyond the boulders. “Higher.”

  “Can we get the horses up there?”

  “Yes,” the Kiowa answered, “but best we go on foot. Men on horseback make large targets.”

  Coleman didn’t argue. He ordered his hands to dismount and leave their horses in the clearing. I swung out of the saddle, eased the girth on the dun, then walked to the bottom of the trail, studying the boulders above me. It seemed a likely ambush spot, but I figured the Kiowa knew what he was doing, and when he took to the slope I stepped after him, Coleman and his men falling in behind us.

  Halfway to the boulders, a rabbit bounded out from under my feet and I jumped about three feet in the air in surprise. Behind me I heard a man snigger and even Coleman smiled and said: “Bunny spooked you some, Dusty, huh?”

  I turned my head, gave the man a sheepish grin and kept on climbing.

  The Apaches had us outnumbered, but when I’d looked around at Coleman’s hard-bitten, gun-handy riders, most of whom had fought Indians before, I figured the odds might just about be even.