The Fight at Hueco Tanks

by Chris Scott Wilson

  Tzoe didn’t look up but he took the knife from his mouth.

  “Chin-da-see-le, I have the homesickness.”

  Chato bridled. “Homesickness? This is your home. All the land your eyes can see.” He stamped his foot on the hard mother earth. “This is your home, every piece of ground where your moccasins leave tracks. Usen, the Great Spirit, gave it to us. It has always been ours since the beginning of time and always will be. These white-eyes, they murdered my father, Mochas, and my brother, and you sit there calmly and say you want to go home. You are an old woman, like those chiefs we left in Mexico, arguing endlessly round the fire but doing nothing.” He looked at him with disgust.

  “I tell you this, Tzoe, you will fight with me here, or I will kill you myself and then go back and tell all your relatives what you were. Lo-kohi-sca-ni-ilgae o ndi yu dastin a-ata lick-ind-ye `n’-nalti-i-gi-a net-j-ta-iltcohete te indi-ndi, a crazy, scabrous half-breed bastard with a snake eye and a forked tongue who lies and spies in all things.”

  Tzoe stared, perched for a brief moment on the ledge between committing murder and turning to run. He did neither. He snorted.

  “Why should I ride with you any longer? You kill one white man, you kill two. You steal a horse here and a sack of flour there. You have not ridden against the Pony Soldiers. They are the ones we should be fighting. You fancy yourself as the next chief when old Nana dies, eh? Me, I think it will be Golthlay, Geronimo. What makes you so great?”

  Chato’s shoulder muscles bunched and he sprang across the fire. He kicked the knife from Tzoe’s hand and sent him sprawling on his back. In a flash he was astride him, then metal flashed in the firelight and Chato’s blade rested on Tzoe’s jugular vein.

  “You ask me why I am great? I will tell you, Treacherous Coyote. I have the eye of the eagle, the ear of the cougar, the cunning of the fox, the tirelessness of the wolf, and I can stay hungry twice as long or thirsty six times as long as any man.” He pulled Tzoe off the ground by the front of his calico shirt then dropped him with disgust and stood up, casually tucking his knife back into the folds of his high moccasins. He stared down defiantly, tossing his raven hair.

  “Now, do you fight or do I kill you myself?”

  Tzoe’s mouth twisted at the corner into a tentative half-smile.

  “I fight,” he said, for the moment beaten.

  ***

  From the back of his big bay mare Jim Tanner consulted the darkening sky.

  “How much further, Jim?”

  Jim Tanner studied the sky in the north where they had seen the smoke two hours earlier. It had to be the station at Hueco Tanks. So the bronco Apaches had made it this far. He turned to glance at his companion’s weathered face.

  “Well, Zeke, we won’t get there before sundown. ’Bout an hour after. Anyone there’ll be good and dead by now. I figured if they was Apaches come from over the border they’d be running back south, but we ain’t cut no sign. They wouldn’t camp at the station, not under a column of smoke like that. Too damn obvious.”

  “What about the stage?” Zeke asked. “If it was the station there’s one due through there today.”

  Tanner grimaced. “Well I hope the stage’d been and gone before whatever happened down there.”

  Zeke was putting together a cigarette. “If the stage is still at the station and there’s anybody left alive I sure hope they ain’t trigger happy. They’re likely to blow our heads off, us coming in after dark and all.”

  Tanner laughed, unscrewing the cap from his canteen to take a gulp. When he had finished Zeke had just put the cigarette to his lips. Tanner leaned over and took it for himself.

  “Roll up another one, Zeke.”

  Zeke Harris scowled good-naturedly, mumbling as he dug out his tobacco sack again. “You’d think the best damn scout in the U.S. cavalry could make his own smokes,” he said.

  Tanner laughed again and raised his eyebrows. “If I did, whatever would I need you for, you ornery old son of a half-blind she-wolf?”

  Harris snorted. “Well it ain’t for the conversation. You never make any.”

  “Other things on my mind, Zeke.”

  “Haven’t we all?”

  Tanner waited for his companion to finish building his smoke then struck a match on his stained buckskins and touched it to his cigarette. As he sucked down the smoke he watched the shallow valley before him. It was harsh desert dressed only by ocotillo, Spanish dagger and some scrub mesquite.

  “If they’ve run this way they’ll have crossed the bottoms. We’ll take us a little ride down there and cut for sign. Maybe we’ll pick up something.” He nudged his horse into a walk.

  Zeke sighed and clucked his tongue. “Man’s not likely to gather any moss riding with you.”

  Tanner grinned. “Leastways you’ll keep your hair.”

  Zeke chuckled and lifted his hat to show his bald pate. “Don’t have to worry none on that score.” He looked at Jim’s brown hair curling over the collar of his fringed jacket. “You’ve got more than enough for both of us. Look more like a squaw than a white-eyes.”

  Tanner made no reply as he guided the bay down into the valley and behind him Zeke grumbled to his own mount.

  “Man ain’t got a civil tongue, hoss. Me, I figure he was raised by a rattlesnake. Only noise he makes is a hiss.”

  At the bottom they split in opposite directions and began to work the trail, bent low over their horses’ necks as they searched for tracks. There were none. Tanner was already waiting, crouched on the ground in front of his horse, watching the skyline, when Zeke rode back. Tanner jerked his head in question and Zeke shook his in reply. Tanner grunted.

  “Maybe it weren’t Apaches after all?” Zeke offered.

  “And maybe it was. It stinks like their doing. Got me a notion.”

  Zeke said nothing. He knew Tanner’s notions. They had a bad habit of being correct and although Apaches didn’t frighten Zeke he had no desire to be fighting them today. All he wanted right then was a stomach full of beef, a bottle of whiskey and a quiet place to lay his head. These days he was beginning to wonder if he was getting a bit long in the tooth, what teeth he had left, for this life. His bones were beginning to creak and he had ridden on enough campaigns to satisfy any man. One of these days some young buck Apache was going to jump him and stomp him good and the one thing he had come to look forward to was dying in bed.

  Zeke came out of his thoughts as Tanner climbed back into the saddle, the big bay rattling the bridle bit in its mouth.

  “I got a feeling, Zeke. Those red sons of bitches are out there somewhere along the trail. The notion’s as strong as a norther busting out of the Rockies and pushing me like a tumbleweed before it. Ain’t nothing I can do about it. I just know it.”

  Zeke said nothing. He had a nasty suspicion Tanner was right.

  And he was.

  CHAPTER 3

  “How did he take it?” Servada asked.

  Josh Sutton looked up from where he was frying some pork in a skillet and made a face. “Sick to his stomach. Never seen a dead man before, ’specially one been tortured like that. Mind you, never seen one that bad myself for a long time.”

  Servada nodded gravely. “I saw a man once the Apaches had taken in Sonora. I’ve never forgotten it.”

  Josh grunted. “I don’t think the boy will. He’s been hanging on to that shotgun like it was his mammy’s tit. I don’t think he’s ever fired a gun in his life. Not even at a turkey shoot.”

  “He’ll learn,” the Mexican said.

  “Yeah, like the rest of us. I told him, it’s only the first time that’s hard. And it’s a whole lot easier when it’s an Indian who’s got his eye fixed on your hair.”

  “Have you killed many men, Mr. Sutton?”

  Josh turned the pork. “A few. In my younger days. The bad ones leave me alone now. I usta be a freighter, a muleskinner hauling supplies. They’re hard men…” His eyes glazed as he slipped into his memories, then cleared again. “But don’t you w
orry none about me. If those Apaches come back I’ll take care of my share.”

  “Apaches, you say?” Servada frowned.

  Josh grimaced. “Sure thing. Plenty of arrows stuck in the timbers. Apache all right. Not sure what kind of Apaches but that don’t matter. Any kind’s bad.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought they’d use arrows.”

  Josh made another face. “Must be short of rifles or bullets or both. If they saw us arrive they’ll be back. They’ll want our guns.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Servada added. “Best not say anything in front of Señora Lantz or her daughter.”

  Josh nodded. “What d’you reckon on the drummer?”

  “He’s frightened, but he’s not alone there.”

  “He carry a gun?”

  Servada shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “What about you?”

  “Yes, I have a Colt and a belt of bullets too.”

  “Ain’t as much of a gent as you look then?”

  Servada’s shoulders moved. “A man must protect himself.”

  “Can you use it?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a note of certainty in the Mexican’s voice and Josh measured him as a man who would take nothing from anybody. Oh yes, he could use it all right.

  Servada pursed his lips. “Very well, you have a Winchester, Mr. McConnell has the shotgun, and I have a Colt. Not many guns if those Apaches come back. Have you any idea how many there were?”

  Josh shook his head. “Ain’t got much of an eye for tracks. But they never ride in ones or twos, always half a dozen or more.” He examined Servada’s face. “Doesn’t sound too good, does it?”

  Juan Servada was about to answer when Kate Lantz’s voice called out. “Señor Servada?”

  The Mexican looked down at the stagecoach driver. “We’ll talk later,” he said, then disappeared into the shadows to find Kate Lantz.

  “Not that talking’ll do much good,” Josh said to himself as he stuck a piece of pork with his knife and tasted it. One thing was for sure, he was going to enjoy this pork. It might be the last pork he ever ate. Come to that, the last anything he ever ate.

  “Come and get it!” he shouted.

  “No coffee, Señora,” Juan Servada apologized to Kate Lantz as she wiped her plate clean, her back against what was left of the barn wall, her feet stuck out in front on the dusty ground.

  “I’m amazed we had any food at all,” she replied, looking to the cooking fire which provided the only light.

  “Señor Sutton found a pig that the raiders had left.”

  “You mean this was a live pig?” Kate’s daughter, Ruth, said, staring with horror at the remaining morsels of meat on her plate.

  “Of course, Señorita. Pork is from pigs as beef is from steers,” the Mexican explained, the ghost of a smile in his dark eyes.

  “I know that,” the girl blurted, “but it was alive only an hour ago.”

  “Eat it and be grateful,” her mother said. “You could have gone to bed hungry.”

  William Loving looked up from his plate which he had emptied as if there had been someone standing over him ready to snatch it away. “We should have been at a hotel in El Paso tonight, with proper food and a bed,” he complained.

  “Then you ain’t seen the hotels in El Paso,” Josh said dryly. “They ain’t hardly no better than this.”

  “I still wish we were there. At least we wouldn’t have the threat of Indians attacking us.”

  Kate Lantz recognized the fear crawling into the drummer’s voice again. She glanced at the Mexican in an attempt to alter the direction of the conversation. “I hope you don’t think me impertinent, Señor, but have you traveled far?”

  Servada smiled at her, knowing what she was trying to do. “Do you mean this trip, Señora, or…”

  “No, just this trip. I wouldn’t want you to think I was prying into your affairs.”

  “This trip I’ve come from Memphis, Tennessee. At Fort Smith, as you know, I transferred to this stage. I have an appointment in El Paso.”

  Kate Lantz studied him. To judge by his clothes he was obviously wealthy, a rancher or a stock buyer. He hadn’t seemed offended at her question as many men might have been, so she decided to dig a little deeper. It would be nice to know what he did; after all he was very handsome and she found him fascinating.

  “And what do you do, Señor? You’re not a salesman are you? I recognize breeding in your good manners. So many of the men one meets out here in the west are desperadoes of some sort or another.”

  The Mexican smiled. “Thank you, Señora. No, I am not a salesman…”

  Gunfire crackled away to the south. Juan Servada fell silent as they all listened to the night. Josh struggled to his feet and snatched up his Winchester, then snapped: “Black Bob! Get up on that wall there!”

  Black Bob McConnell had been in the act of feeding a sliver of pork into his mouth. As he sat rigid the pork hung limply from his fingers and his jaw remained open like a trapdoor. Only the urgency in the Mexican’s voice goaded him into action.

  “Do as he says, boy. Quickly!”

  Black Bob dropped the pork which landed on the scattergun cradled in his lap. The firelight flickered across his face as his fingers fumbled with the gun, the pork grease making his hands slip. Clumsily he rubbed his palms on his jeans and came to his feet like an unsteady colt.

  Josh was already at the window, staring hard into the night.

  “Can you see anything?” Kate Lantz asked.

  “Nope,” the old driver answered, then Juan Servada completed the statement.

  “But now we know.”

  “Know what?” the frightened Loving demanded, lifting his hat and dabbing at his forehead with a grimy handkerchief.

  Servada looked at the drummer with a cool eye. “They’re out there.”

  “That’s for sure,” added Josh, levering a shell into the Winchester’s breech. “But are they coming here?”

  ***

  In the dark Zeke Harris’s horse stumbled in a prairie dog hole. It was the moment any horseman dreads; that if he is thrown his boot will catch in the stirrup and the horse will panic and drag him along until he is dead. There is no sure method of freeing yourself. You can only trust in God and providence and turn over onto your face and hope that your foot will slip out. A bruised, even a broken, jaw is better than being dead.

  They had been working along the trail. The sun had gone down and the moon had not come up so there was no hope of casting for sign. It was hard enough to make out the big forks of cactus that pointed accusing fingers at the night sky. If a man wasn’t careful they snagged at his clothes like grasping hands in the night and Zeke had already painstakingly removed a handful of ugly spikes, cursing as he rode.

  Without a chance of picking up the bronco Apaches in the dark the two scouts kept on a straight line, heading for Hueco Tanks.

  But when the horse caught its leg, getting dragged through the cactus wasn’t Zeke’s primary concern. At the moment of being hurled upwards out of his saddle he knew it wasn’t a prairie dog hole at all. As the horse’s head went down he glimpsed a shadow dance in the mesquite.

  A man’s shadow.

  The hunters had become the hunted. The Apaches they were looking for had found them first.

  “Jim!” he shouted, twisting in mid-air, at the back of his friend, who was riding in front. “Apaches!”

  CHAPTER 4

  Chato made a sharp flat-handed gesture to keep the Apache Kid and the Butcher in check. Eyes attuned to the darkness they crouched in their hiding places on either side of the trail. They could hear clearly the progress of the two horses walking toward them.

  Ragged Hand had taken his turn to scout the perimeter of their camp and he had heard the click of iron as it struck stone. Such sounds carry a long way on the clear night air. Following his instinct he edged away from his lookout post and had heard the sound again, this time nearer. When he saw the two tall shadows
he was sure. White men. Quickly he turned and faded into the night then loped silently back to the camp and informed Chato.

  Their leader, with an unholy glitter in his eyes, kicked dust over the tiny cooking fire and snatched up his single-shot Remington rifle. Two more horses for their remuda and at least two guns. The blancos would carry pistols too, not that Chato cared much for them, preferring a rifle, but guns were guns. From Ragged Hand’s report he worked out that the two white men were riding for the tinajars, the rock tanks near the burned out station. Quickly he selected a spot on the route and laid his ambush. The Apaches ran snares across the trail, kicking dust over the wires in case the moon should come up suddenly and flash on their surprise.

  So they hunkered down under the inky shadows of the mesquite and cactus to wait. Chato cast an eye at the clouds and wished the moon would show her deathly face. The moon meant everything. It controlled all the cycles of life, propagation in both man and animals, and its subtle hand ruled the weather too. He wished it was an Apache moon, big and full and blood-red, so that he, Chato, could see the faces of the two Americanos as they died, and they too would see who it was that killed them.

  But there was no moon, so Chato glowered as he hid by the trail, anger beating fiercely in his heart. He slid his scalping knife silently from its sheath and pressed it to his lips. Tonight the cold steel would taste blood, warm sweet white man’s blood. He grinned evilly in the darkness. Impatience teased his nerves, a muscle jumping in his cheek as though he was winking. If only the moon was out. It would be a good night to die, to die as a man should, for something worth the flame of his life. Freedom. It gnawed at his heart. If he could not be free then he would rather ride the star-trail away from this world. And the only way to be free was to kill the white-eyes. Kill and keep on killing until there was none of them left.