“What did you tell her?”
“Someone tried to kill us. Nothing more.”
“And she didn’t ask?”
“If she asked,” Ironheel said slowly, “she would have to know the truth.”
So she didn’t ask. Apache logic, Easton thought. Go fight it.
“What about the bodies?”
“Biké’ idagosdiig,” Ironheel said. “Their footprints are gone.”
The finality in his voice persuaded Easton to leave it at that.
“How long have I been here?”
“Naki beiskaago.”
“Two days?”
“You had bad fever.”
“Where exactly is this?”
“Near the head of Whitetail Canyon. You know where that is?”
Easton nodded. If you drew a line on the map east from Mescalero and another south from Glenavon, they would intersect pretty close to where he was now. Out in the high lonesome, but not by any means so far out that skilled hunters wouldn’t be able to find them.
“Anyone been around asking questions?” he asked Ironheel.
“My sister told me some Riverside deputies came up to the Administrative Building. They said they were looking for two fugitives, asked if anyone had seen anything suspicious,” he said. “But that’s as far as it went. They don’t have any jurisdiction here. The Reservation is Federal land.”
“So who knows we’re here?”
“Doo aich’idé,” Ironheel said. “Many. Among the Apache there are very few secrets.”
“Then we’d better move out before someone drops a dime on us.”
Ironheel shook his head. “Doo hak’i da. That won’t happen.”
“How can you be sure?”
“There is a tradition,” he said. “Dahgos’aani. From the old days. If a man comes into camp as the friend of an Apache, he may not be harmed while he is there.”
“Your people still observe that rule?”
“Dá’ako. Enough. While you are up here you’re of my blood. My clan. You are Apache, too. Unless someone goes bronco, we’re –” he made a circular gesture with his hand “ –bike ádagosdiig.”
“What does that mean?”
Ironheel moved his hand again in a vague circle. “Sort of, disappeared. Left no tracks. Gone somewhere else.”
“I’m surprised,” Easton said, and he meant it.
Anybody who lived in this part of the world knew the Apache – Mescaleros in particular – had a decidedly ambivalent attitude toward their white neighbors. Tourists who stopped at the Tribal Headquarters were often met with downright rudeness or treated like visitors from another planet. And anyone unwise enough to exceed the speed limit on the reservation found out real fast just how different from white cops a Mescalero Tribal Policeman could be.
Ironheel laughed, a short, harsh sound. “It’s not for you,” he said flatly. “They wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.”
“Don’t go out of your way to spare my feelings,” Easton said.
“Rely on it.”
It wasn’t really hostility, Easton decided. It was attitude. A determination not to give anything away or let anyone take advantage.
“So why are they doing it?”
“Because my sister asked them. She probably had to call in every favor she was ever owed, and a few more besides, but that’s why they’re doing it.”
“She must be greatly respected.”
Ironheel nodded “The people here call her Isdzánhí dawahn t’alkodá, Woman Always Ready,” he said. “She’ll be here later. Right now she’s at the Agency.”
“Something else,” he said. “While you were out of it, Apodaca went on the TV news, said a wanted murderer, James Ironheel, took a chief deputy sheriff hostage and is hiding out up in the mountains. Armed and dangerous, he said. There’s even a reward.”
There was a hint of amusement in the words but he did not smile.
“Was anything said about the two men – the ones who tried to kill us – being missing?”
Ironheel shook his head. “Doo nt’é da. Not a thing.”
“Odd,” Easton said.
“Maybe it’s better.”
Easton had already picked up on that message. Ironheel’s sister either didn’t know or didn’t want to know what had happened, and Ironheel was in no hurry to have her find out.
“There’s more,” Ironheel said. “Apodaca said on TV he suspended you from duty.”
It was Easton’s turn to frown. “Did he give a reason?”
“So you can’t be forced to use your authority while you’re being held hostage.”
Smart, Easton thought. They knew he wasn’t a hostage. They knew what he was doing and why he was doing it. But nobody else did. This way not only did they keep his mouth shut, they also ring fenced him: if he tried for assistance from any law enforcement facility it would be presumed he was doing it with a gun to his head.
The little flare of anger the ruse had lit inside him died down, leaving him feeling suddenly drained, and he lay back on the bed, surprised by his own weakness.
“Guy on TV said this is the biggest man-hunt in living memory. State Police, helicopters, roadblocks, you name it,” Ironheel told him. “Gonna find us no matter what.”
And kill us, Easton thought.
“We’re not safe here,” he said urgently. “Sooner or later, they’re going to figure out where we are. Probably sooner. They’ll call in the FBI, get Federal search warrants. And then they’ll take the reservation apart. Cabin by cabin. Stick by stick.”
Ironheel gave an almost imperceptible shrug. That Apache fatalism again. Like, que sera, sera. I have to get him to stop thinking like that, Easton thought, and wondered how the hell he would even begin.
“You can’t travel,” Ironheel said.
“I’ll have to,” Easton said. His eyelids were heavy and it would have been a lot easier to just lie back and let the waves of weakness wash over him, but he fought them off. “Where are my clothes?”
“My sister had to cut off your shirt to dress your wound,” Ironheel said “Your other stuff is over there.”
“It’ll have to do for now,” Easton said. “Can you loan me a shirt?”
“One on the chair,” he said. “Is there a phone up here?”
“Why?”
“I need to call someone in Riverside. A friend.”
Ironheel frowned his disapproval, and in the light of recent events, Easton could scarcely blame him.
“We need help,” he said and left it there.
“My sister has a cellphone—”
“No good,” Easton said. “Easiest things in the world to track. Be like advertising where we are. We need a public phone.”
“There’s one a couple of miles away. But you can’t—”
“Got to,” Easton said, swinging his legs out of the bed. He felt the tight tweak of the wound in his side, like a crab with steel claws, cold, hard, pitiless. Sweat popped out on his forehead and his senses swam. He grabbed a chair to steady himself as he fumbled into his creased pants and buttoned the shirt. His legs felt like slack elastic, but he was damned if he was going to let Ironheel see it.
Ironheel saw it anyway. “Sit down,” he said.
There was no trace of sympathy in his voice. Well, that was the Apache way, too, Easton thought. In the old days they always tried to bring their wounded home. But when they could not, they left them and walked away. He flopped back onto the bed and sat waiting for the roaring in his ears to ease.
As if from a long way off, he heard the sound of a vehicle coming to a stop. Ironheel checked the window quickly and nodded. The door opened and a woman came in. She wore a faded wool shirt, knee-torn Levis, and moccasins. He spoke to her in Apache, a question. She made a sign with her hand, palm out, a short arc to the right.
Everything okay?
No problem.
So this was Ironheel’s sister.
She was medium height and compactly built, with d
ark eyes and long black hair tied back in a loose ponytail. Her face was oval and much less swarthy than her brother’s. She took the scene in with one glance, crossed the room and sat beside him.
“Ndaah, ndaah,” she said. “Rest. You must be more careful.”
She lifted his wrist and took his pulse, looking down at the watch on her left wrist. She had small strong hands. Her expression was serious, her eyes veiled. She smelled of soap and woodsmoke. For some reason her presence made him feel tranquil.
“We talked on the phone,” he said. “Joanna, isn’t it? Or do they call you Jo?”
“They call me Doctor,” she replied firmly. “You are not gladly received here, Mr. Easton.”
“I’m not here by choice,” he pointed out.
It came out pretty sour and he saw it register in her eyes. So you can get to them, he thought. Her head came up and there was reciprocal hostility in her voice as she replied.
“You have done bad things. Ncho’go ágot’ihii.”
“Again, not by choice,” he said. “You know what happened?”
Her face remained impassive. “Enough.”
He touched his side. “How bad is this?”
“You were lucky. The bullet clipped your lower rib and went right through the soft skin of your abdomen.”
“That’s lucky?”
The hint of a smile briefly touched her lips and for a moment what might just have been mischief lit her eyes. It changed her expression completely.
“Think you can walk?” she asked.
“Only one way to find out,” he said. “And from what you say, the sooner the better.”
“The pickup’s outside,” she said. Like she meant, Good, go.
“Does that mean you’ll help us?”
Her reply was oblique. “James is my brother.”
“Your attitude toward him appears to have changed some,” he said.
She made another of her small dismissive gestures. She looked at Ironheel and again something passed silently between them.
Ready?
Yes.
It was like each could read the other’s mind.
“Let’s go,” Ironheel said. “We can talk on the way.”
Easton stood up, swaying slightly. Okay, Easton, he told himself. You’re big, you’re strong, you’re mean. Bad guys quail when they see you coming. Now let’s see you do something really difficult, like walking twenty yards.
He pulled in a deep breath. The mist of dizziness in his head dispersed a little as Ironheel draped Easton’s right arm around his shoulders and his sister took the other side. Her body was lithe, strong and firm. They went out together into the sunshine.
Chapter Seventeen
Apart from a few chirrups of birdsong, it was utterly silent. The cloudless sky arched overhead like a huge blue vault, and the air was as crisp as a brand new banknote. Off to the right through the trees he could see Pajarito Mountain. The timbered canyons fell away from where they were standing to the invisible valley below, then steeply up again beyond it to the summit of the Sierra Blanca, twelve thousand feet high, wild, empty, forbidding.
Somehow Easton felt oddly alone, together yet separate. Even with them supporting him, it was like they were moving a piece of furniture.
“You okay?” Ironheel asked.
“I can manage,” he said. As in, I can do stoic too.
They boosted him up into the pickup, a beaten-up white Toyota with a dented front fender. Joanna Ironheel slid behind the wheel and her brother got in on the other side, Easton in the middle. Ironheel wound down the window on his side and put his forearm on the sill, looking out.
“I need some straight talk here, Mr. Easton,” Joanna Ironheel said, as they moved bumpily off down the track. “I want to know exactly what we are involved in.”
He frowned. “I thought your brother—”
“You know more than he does.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Easton said. “But I’ll try to explain. This thing began when a man named Robert Casey and his grandson were murdered and your brother—”
“I heard all that on TV,” she said, cutting him off with an impatient movement of her hand. “Tell me about the other man who was killed. The attorney.”
“His name was Weddle. Your brother told him the Sheriff of Cháves County was one of the men who killed Casey,” Easton said. “And a few hours later, Weddle was murdered.”
“Easton didn’t know what Weddle knew,” Ironheel told her. “Until I told him.”
She gave him a sharp, don’t-interrupt look and he fell silent, staring moodily out of the window.
“Sunday morning,” Easton told her, “I told the District Attorney, a man named Olin McKittrick, what your brother had told me. McKittrick said he’d made arrangements for your brother be taken into a Department of Justice witness protection program, and instructed me to get your brother to Rio Alto and hand him over to them. On our way there someone tried to kill us.”
“Can you prove any of this?”
“I’m going to.”
She was silent for a moment. When she spoke again there was a shade less antagonism in her voice. “How, exactly?”
“Good question,” Easton said. “First, I need to get us some help. Otherwise we won’t last two days.”
“Maybe not you,” he heard Ironheel mutter.
It was true. Alone, Ironheel could go bronco, disappear alone into the wilderness, live off the land. It would be a long time until anyone found him unless he wanted to be found.
“Do you know why the old man and the boy were killed?” Joanna Ironheel asked.
“I have no idea,” Easton said, letting a little of his own frustration out. “The only way I can find out is by staying alive. If they catch us, they’ll kill us. Case closed.”
Nobody said anything. There wasn’t anything to say.
Other than that they were high in the forested wilderness south of the River Alto, Easton had no idea where they were. The track they were on led downhill between dense stands of pine trees, and then made a long double bend before climbing up to a point where three trails met. They took the right-hand fork, traveling roughly southwest.
“Where are we?” Easton asked, trying to roll with the pain that fizzed up his ribcage like an electric shock every time the truck bounced on the rocky track.
“Turkey Canyon,” Joanna said. “Trail runs more or less parallel with State 244.”
State Highway 244 cut through the heart of the Mescalero Apache Reservation from US70 to Highcroft. They passed a couple of abandoned cabins and then climbed a steep rock-strewn rise. Up ahead, set back from the trail, were two ramshackle single-story wooden cabins with corrugated iron roofs, smoke wisping from one of the chimneys.
“Kúde,” Ironheel said. Right here.
Around the side of the other cabin Easton could see a rusted Ford short-bed pickup jacked up on bricks, its windshield and windows missing. Beyond it was a pile of worn tires with weeds growing in and around them. Scrawny -looking chickens foraging on the hard-packed earth scattered in alarm as they approached.
As they pulled up, a short, thickset man came out of the cabin on the right and stood arms akimbo. His face, shaded by a battered baseball cap, looked as if it had been carved from a very old piece of mahogany. His gray-white hair was long and straggly. He could have been anywhere between fifty and eighty. He wore a patterned shirt with the tail hanging out over his pants like Apache in old photographs.
“Gonit’éé,” Joanna Ironheel called. “Fine weather. How are things here?”
No greeting, Easton remembered. Apache who observed the old ways and the old rules didn’t call each other by name face to face. This was partly because so many Apache names could be both male and female, such as One Who Likes Horses, or Broken Foot, or Little Face, but mostly because a man’s name was called only when there was special need. Then, because his name had been called, he would—he must—help in any way he could.
“Done any hunting?”
Ironheel asked the old man. The Apache nodded, never taking his eyes off Easton. There was not the remotest hint of welcome in them.
“This the pinda’ lick’ oye everyone’s talkin’ about?” he said.
“Dadíí,” Ironheel said. “Holzéé David Easton. Easton, this is Mack Gallerito. He owns this place. Mack, I’d be grateful if you would let him use your phone.”
“Nagont’l’odí. He smells like trouble,” the Apache said, his gaze still fastened on Easton. His tone was truculent. Aversion came off him like heat off a stove. He turned away so his back was toward Easton, and spoke directly to Ironheel. “Better he finds a phone someplace else.”
“Sir, I’m a law enforcement officer,” Easton said through the open window, observing the rule of not using names. “Requesting your assistance.”
Mack Gallerito gave no sign he had heard. He didn’t even look around. That Apache thing again: it was like Easton wasn’t there. Joanna Ironheel laid a hand on Easton’s arm to still the response she could see he was about to make.
“Shhh,” she said softly. “Ndee nlii. He is Apache.”
Easton let out his breath and his annoyance with it. She was right. The old man would ignore anything he said anyway. This wasn’t about using his phone. It was about power. Having power was very important to an Apache.
“Mack,” Ironheel said firmly. “Isaa sáá. Hear what I ask. Your people are of my clan. My people are of yours. Ich’ídísts’aa’. I am asking this of you.”
Easton watched fascinated, remembering what Grita had told him. If an Apache asks another for help, it must be given. It made no difference how poor a man might be, if he was called by name, he will—he has to—do whatever he can. It was not a matter of punishment later. It was about doing what was right because it was the right thing to do.
Now Gallerito’s shoulders squared up. He made a gesture and Ironheel followed him off to one side. They stood talking urgently in Apache. The older man stood immobile, listening, nodding occasionally, his face showing nothing.
As they watched, two Apache children with huge dark eyes, a girl about ten and a boy maybe two years younger, came to the door of the cabin and stared at Easton as if he was one of those little green slant-eyed aliens some people believe landed back in 1947.
Apache Country Page 14
