Apache Country

by Frederick H. Christian

  “And to no point,” she said, with a small smile of surrender. “Goníninlaa. You win. I will do this thing and that will be an end to it.”

  It was gracious, and he said so.

  “Apache are sometimes stubborn because we have to be, Mr. Easton,” she said.

  Later, after the pickup had trundled out of sight, Easton took a seat on the porch outside the cabin. It was a still evening, with a roseate sun making a long slow descent down to the desert floor beyond the mountains. Birds flitted between the trees. Cicadas sang their endless songs. A red-tailed hawk circled over Pajarito, looking for prey.

  He thought about Jessye and wondered how she would enjoy her stay with Tia Poli in the Gila mountains. He imagined her squatting on the patio watching the ants busy at their work, her slender back a perfectly balanced bow, the way she would cock her head to one side as if to ask the ants, Why are you doing that? It would be her bedtime around now. He pictured her asleep, snuggling Boople, the shapeless cuddly toy Susan had bought her when she was too young to get her tongue around the word ‘beautiful.’ Then, as he often did at this time of evening, he thought about Susan. It had taken a long time but he was beginning to be able to do it now without getting angry.

  To begin with it had seemed to be no more than a minor infection of the thumbnail and Andrew Webber, their family doctor, prescribed antibiotics. After the treatment it looked like it had healed, but then the infection recurred, and this time it seemed slightly worse. Better be on the safe side, Andy said, and fixed Susan an appointment with a consultant in Albuquerque who did some tests and then recommended a stronger antibiotic. Amoxiclavin. Strange how some words stuck in your head.

  When the Amoxiclavin didn’t work either, the consultant decided it would be prudent to do a biopsy. Nothing to be concerned about, he said, just a sensible precautionary measure.

  Stop worrying, she said. It’s just a biopsy. Thousands of people have them, every day of the week.

  I love you, let me worry, okay?

  You idiot. Nothing’s going to happen.

  She went into hospital the following Tuesday and never came out. Something wrong with her kidneys that hadn’t shown up in the blood tests, renal collapse followed by almost immediate heart failure. The specialist couldn’t understand it. We did everything we could, but she just didn’t rally. He made it sound like it was Susan’s fault, and rage consumed Easton, rage at medicine and the charlatans who practiced it.

  It was an infected finger, for Christ’s sake. A infected finger.

  You have to try to understand. No one could have anticipated ...

  You killed her. She put her life in your hands and you killed her.

  Be careful what you say, Mr. Easton. You could find yourself in serious trouble making such rash statements.

  You think anything you can do to me would be worse than this?

  If death is cruel, funerals are crueler still. No hurt cuts deeper than to watch them lower the woman you loved above all others into the unfriendly earth. All that was left was a stone with her name and some lines from a poem she loved. Just whisper my name in your heart, I will be there. Thinking about the past made him weep, and thinking about the future was unbearable. The same words going through your mind over and over: Never again, never, never.

  Then a sudden chill of apprehension touched him as he noticed a thin, dark plume of smoke began rising above the tops of the pines off to the southwest. As the same moment, Ironheel came outside and stood next to him, narrowed eyes watching the smoke spiraling lazily skyward in the faint breeze.

  “Tell me it’s just a campfire,” Easton said.

  “Dahoshkaah,” Ironheel breathed. “Pray it.”

  Hot, dry, late springtime was the high season for forest fires; it was a rare year there wasn’t at least one big one. Sometimes they were started by lightning or someone accidentally kicking over a spirit stove, but more often than not it was just some heat-torpid motorist unthinkingly flipping a cigarette butt into the undergrowth.

  The column of smoke seemed to be thickening, but so far, there was no sign of flames threading upward through the smoke.

  “It doesn’t look bad,” he said.

  “They never do,” Ironheel said darkly. “At first.”

  Once it gets started, a forest fire can spread with astonishing speed, taking on a hideous life of its own as it marches in a ragged line anywhere between five and ten miles wide, generating heat that will sear a man’s skin at fifty yards. The mountains become a battlefield, with hundreds of firefighters deployed, property ruined, every kind of wildlife decimated.

  Back in the late 50s, “bad ones” like the Allen Canyon blaze had taken out sixteen thousand acres. The huge Circle Cross fire two years later turned into a 25,000-acre brute that ran fourteen miles in four hours ahead of a sixty mile-an-hour gale. In the summer of the Millennium year there had been more: six or seven fires was about the annual norm and the scale of the devastation had been literally enormous. Even today, with much more sophisticated firefighting techniques, there were still plenty of bad ones. And no such thing as a good one.

  Ironheel made a sound, pointed. There was no doubt about it anymore. The smoke was darkening, thickening, coiling menacingly.

  “Looks like it might be over near the Gallerito place,” he said edgily. “Wonder if they’ve called for –?”

  As if on cue, the huge throb of helicopter engines overhead drowned out whatever he was saying, and a moment later two aircraft racketed overhead in line astern. They looked like non-military versions of Boeing-Sikorsky light attack helicopters. Easton could clearly see the red Forest Service shield and circle decals on their sides as they dipped down behind the hill. The smoke was still coiling upwards, thicker now, blacker, leaning away from their watching point. Thank God there was hardly any wind, he thought. If the fire ran, it would not come this way.

  “Damn pickup had been here we could have lent a hand,” Ironheel said. “Those guys need all the help they can get.”

  There were any number of reasons why they couldn’t go down and help, of course; he knew them as well as Easton did, so there was no point putting them into words. Apache weren’t the only ones who knew when to keep their mouths shut.

  They stood in tense silence, watching, waiting. About ten minutes later, another helicopter chattered over, and as the thunder of its passing ebbed, they heard the growl of heavy diesel engines where the road ran between the trees below where they were standing.

  “Nalbiil ko’ nenltseesí,” Ironheel said. Fire trucks. There was relief in his voice.

  Now the column of smoke above the trees was threaded with white, like the dark tresses of an aging woman. Steam, Easton thought. The firefighters were already in action. The black tower of smoke swayed and thinned, spread and whitened, flattening out.

  “Looks like maybe they’re getting it under control,” Ironheel said. “Maybe we can still–”

  He broke off without finishing the sentence as a battered old Ford Mercury rattled into view and came to a stop about twenty yards downhill from the cabin, a small whirl of dust boiling briefly up. As he got out, Easton recognized the driver, one of the young Mescaleros he had seen at the Gallerito place earlier.

  “Wait here,” Ironheel said and loped downhill. Easton could hear them talking rapidly in guttural Apache, the younger man making angry gestures. Once he pointed over at Easton, and even at this distance Easton could discern the hostility in his body language.

  Now what?

  As he watched, Ironheel put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and said something that appeared to have a calming effect. The young Mescalero looked up at Easton again and then nodded reluctantly. He stood waiting as Ironheel came back up the slope to the cabin, his face grim.

  “Mack Gallerito is dead,” he said. “That’s his son, John. He says a couple of hours after we were there, three white guys drove up to the cabin. They showed some kind of official ID, said they needed to ask Mack a few questions,
it was just a formality. One of the men stayed with the car, the other two took Mack inside. They were there about half an hour. A couple of minutes after they drove away there was an explosion and the place went up like it had been napalmed.”

  “Which agency were they from?”

  “Good question.” Ironheel’s voice was harsh. “Firefighters that found Mack’s body said it was tied to the bed with baling wire.”

  Easton was stunned. “They traced my calls,” he said. “They must have bugged my home phone.”

  Ironheel made an impatient gesture. “John is waiting,” he said. “He has called my name. You know what that means.”

  “I know you want to go with him and I know he needs your help, but you can’t,” Easton said emphatically. “Think, damn it. Why did those men come up here, why did they kill the old man?”

  “You tell me,” Ironheel rasped, his eyes narrowed with anger “You tell me.”

  “They were looking for us. We’ve got to get the hell away from here.”

  Ironheel was still mad. “And that’s all you care about, right?”

  “What I care about is staying alive,” Easton said, spacing out the words so they would sink in. “We don’t have time for condolences. Try to make your friend John understand why.”

  Ironheel glared at Easton angrily, then let out his breath in a long soft sigh.

  “Nahónlkid goláágo,” he growled. “You ask much. It won’t be easy.”

  Looked like Apache didn’t go in for apologies either. Or maybe it was just Ironheel. And maybe not much maybe, either.

  “Ask him to take us down to Whitetail,” Easton said as Ironheel strode away. “Tell him why.”

  Throughout the time Ironheel talked to him, John never once took his eyes off Easton. He made angry gestures, clearly refusal. Ironheel talked some more, and finally John shook his head in what looked like reluctant agreement. Breathing a silent sigh of relief, Easton went into the cabin to get the shotgun and his Glock. He walked down the hill, handed the Winchester to Ironheel, and stuck the automatic into his own waistband. Then they piled into the Plymouth and banged down the hill to the Pine Tree Canyon trail, the two Apache up front and Easton in back, nursing his wounded side and trying not to let the anger he could feel coming off John Gallerito bother him.

  He did some rapid mental arithmetic. Joanna had left for Hondo around seven. It was maybe thirty miles away, some of it on poor roads. Say an hour. Ten minutes tops to pick up the package. An hour back. Everything else being equal, she should be coming up the hill right about now.

  Just above Whitetail Lake they saw lights coming toward them. It was the pickup. John flashed his lights, and Joanna Ironheel pulled over and got out of the vehicle, holding up a plastic Wal-Mart shopping bag for them to see. John pulled over alongside the pickup and they all got out.

  “Everything all right?” Easton said. “Anyone see you?”

  She shook her head.

  “And nobody followed you?”

  She shook her head again. “If there’d been anyone I’d have seen them.”

  Something wrong, Easton thought. It was more than an hour since the fire had started at the Gallerito place. Their pursuers must know where they were. So why hadn’t they come looking for them?

  “Turn around and follow us down to the Agency,” he told her.

  “What’s happened?” she said, homing in immediately on the tension in his voice.

  “Ách’ít’ii,” Ironheel told her sharply, “Just do like he says.”

  For a moment she bristled, then shrugged and handed the shopper to Easton. As he opened the door of the Plymouth to put it on the backseat he heard a boom of thunder.

  But it wasn’t thunder.

  With shocking suddenness, a helicopter blasted over the crest above them like a great swooping dinosaur, its rotors stirring up a storm of wind and dust and detritus that made it feel as if all the harpies in hell had suddenly descended upon them. Through the battering roar of the chopper’s engine Easton heard a shorter, jackhammer sound that could only be one thing. A row of holes stitched itself across the roof of the Plymouth and the vehicle rocked as if a giant had punched it.

  “Nánlyeeg!” Ironheel yelled, “Run!”

  Zig-zagging like a hare Easton stumbled toward the shadowed shelter of the trees fringing the trail. The pulsing thunder of engine noise fifty feet above his head was punctuated again by the staccato chatter of an automatic weapon and bullets tore up the ground in front of him.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw John Gallerito fold at the knees and sink to the earth. Ironheel was off to the right, running like a deer, his sister moving as fleetly at his heels. Blundering blindly between the darkling trees, the stuttering rattle of the automatic weapon pursuing him, Easton lost sight of them. Chunks of bark exploded from the trunks of the trees, and branches crashed down from above like wounded birds.

  After he had gone maybe a hundred and fifty yards Easton stopped, his back pressed against the rough bole of a huge tree, heart pounding, his entire body slick with cold sweat. The thundering growl of the helicopter’s rotors seemed to be directly above his head. In the vast slipstream they generated the treetops swayed like seaweed, and more branches tumbled noisily to earth.

  Suddenly the blinding beam of a million-candlepower searchlight sliced like a scalpel through the foliage, limning the trees with an unearthly radiance, momentarily blanking his vision. Hunched beneath the interlaced overhang of tree branches, pressed against the solid protection of huge pine, Easton desperately assessed the situation. He had wondered why the people who killed Mack Gallerito hadn’t come looking for them, and this was the answer: a merciless hunt-and-kill mission using a helicopter fitted with infra-red scanners, thermal imagers, and high power parabolic sound-detectors.

  That being so, regardless of how dark the fast-advancing night, or how thick the sheltering cover of the trees, the hunters would be able to see anything that moved, detect anything that gave off heat, stalk anything that made a sound.

  And kill it.

  Chapter Twenty

  The mule deer burst out of the thicket in a sudden, heart-stopping explosion of noise and movement. It was a young buck, maybe a two hundred pounder, eyes shining yellow with terror as it bounded past Easton, flickering through the intense whiteness of the column of light from above to vanish among the trees. As it did, the light above switched off with an audible click, and the steady whupping beat of the helicopter engine changed from hover to a whining roar, its dark bulk skimming away above the trees in pursuit.

  In the same moment, Ironheel materialized soundlessly out of the undergrowth, his sister a smaller shape behind his dark bulk.

  “Shiké’ dahndáh!” he said. “Follow me.”

  He pointed downhill and moved off at a ground-eating lope, his sister effortlessly keeping pace. Sliding, tripping, Easton followed blindly, weaving between the dark and silent trees, trying hard not to make any more noise than he had to.

  After half a mile in this helter-skelter fashion, they found themselves on a raggedly defined logging track. Ironheel held up a hand, stop. His sister pulled up beside him, her breasts rising and falling with exertion. Easton could hear the harsh sound of his own breathing. In front of them was an eight foot-high stack of cut logs, each log maybe fifteen feet long and around eighteen inches in diameter. The whole stack was held in place by six logs driven upright into the ground, three on each side.

  “Dig!” Ironheel hissed. “Fast as you can!”

  He pulled out his knife, hacking furiously at the rank weeds growing out of the soft earth alongside the logs, his sister and Easton kneeling beside him tearing out the rough undergrowth with their bare hands, minds emptied of everything except survival. After a couple of minutes, Ironheel grunted with satisfaction.

  “N’zhoo. There’s a gap.”

  “Tight fit,” Easton said.

  Slashing away at the weeds, Ironheel didn’t bother to reply. Then all at once he held up
a hand, his head cocked to one side, listening.

  “What?” Easton said. He could hear nothing.

  “Dahndáh!” Ironheel said urgently. “They’re coming! Bitl’áh! Underneath!”

  Scrambling to comply, Easton heard it now: the beating throb of the chopper heading back toward them. As Joanna Ironheel lay down on her back and reached up to get a grip on the underside of the logs, shoving with her heels and simultaneously pulling herself in and under the stack, the two men lay flat alongside her and using shoulders, buttocks, heels and hands, squirmed clumsily beneath the log stack. Then they were underneath, buried in utter blackness.

  The ground was soft and moist. Easton felt the wound in his side throbbing and prayed it hadn’t reopened. Above them in the night sky the helicopter engine was a solid presence like rolling thunder, and they could hear the treetops moving in the storm its rotors created, dead branches skittering down like the sticks of burnt-out rockets.

  Light touched them in the total darkness, and through the tiny gaps between the logs they could see the icy white finger of the searchlight lancing between the trees. They lay perfectly still, huddled close together in the pitch darkness. Their breathing was harsh and ragged and they smelled of sweat. And maybe fear.

  “Can they – ?”

  “Doo dahilts’ag da!” Ironheel hissed, and laid a hand across his sister’s lips before she could complete the whispered question. Easton felt her move her head in a nod, signaling her comprehension. They must be absolutely silent, completely still. If indeed there were ultra-sensitive listening devices on the aircraft, even a whisper could betray them. He touched the butt of the Glock in his waistband. Nine shots against whatever firepower the hunters might be able to muster. Not reassuring.

  For what seemed a long time the chopper quartered above them, then its engine again made its distinctive change of pitch from hover to drive, and like the rolling thunder that follows a storm path, the dark menacing sound began to recede. After a while the forest was silent again. Ironheel stirred.

  “Give it a bit longer,” Easton whispered.