“I said I didn’t know much about the Apache,” Easton told him. “Not that I didn’t know anything.”
Ironheel’s habitually forbidding expression came as near to a smile as Easton had yet seen. He wondered if it signified approval.
“Belly fires were pretty small,” Ironheel said.
If an Apache was on the run, either alone or in a group, he would never light a fire that might give away his presence to his pursuers. Instead he would scoop a small hole in the ground, and in it light a tiny fire, squatting close to it for warmth and shielding its glow with his body. When the embers were almost burned out he would cover the ashes with a thin layer of sand or earth and then lie over it, using the residual heat to ward off the bitter chill of the desert night.
With a small gesture that might have indicated he was surprised at himself for talking so much, Ironheel stood up.
“Kee t’agé ndeezi,” he said abruptly. “Cowboy boots.”
“What?”
“Those ropers you’re wearing. They won’t be any use at all up in the mountains. You got money?”
Easton took out his billfold and handed it over. Ironheel took out all the notes – about $120 – and handed it back to him empty.
“That a loan?” Easton grinned. “Or a confiscation?”
His remark elicited a slightly impatient frown, which Easton figured meant Ironheel wasn’t very big on irony, either. After asking him for his shoe and clothing sizes, Ironheel stuck the money in his back pocket and without a word started off down the canyon again and disappeared into the trees. The vanishing Indian. A ‘Lo’ unto himself. Easton allowed himself a smile at the sad little pun.
The sweet scent of cooking chicken seeping up out of the earth oven was making him feel very hungry, but he knew it would be some time before it was ready to eat, so he settled his back against a big boulder still warm from the afternoon sun and watched the gullied flanks of the Sierra Blanca turning from tan to gold to red. Quail called somewhere off in the brush, and once he saw the bright flicker of a hummingbird amid a scarlet cluster of Arizona thistle. Ants were scurrying busily around the chicken entrails on the ground. Crows floated among the tall trees, their broken calls like the cries of castaways. When they stopped the silence was enormous.
He found himself thinking about Joanna Ironheel and wishing he had talked with her more. She was not beautiful, but he had sensed a warmth behind the professional exterior. He wondered what Apache girls did while their brothers learned to track and hunt. In the old days Apache women had to be as tough and resourceful as the men. Maybe they still were.
She had shown no sign of fear as the helicopter howled angrily above them, he remembered. The Chiricahua strain. How much of her was still that, and how much of it had she given up, or been forced to put aside, to become a doctor in the white man’s world? When you had to suppress or deny your origins you surrendered something that could not be repurchased. As he knew only too well.
The pearly opalescence of twilight was beginning to creep into the arroyo when he heard a faint sound and turned to see Ironheel coming out of the trees and up the hill toward him. He was carrying two big shoppers and a smaller one. He put the smaller one down and handed one of the bigger ones to Easton, who fished out of it a black sweatshirt, a pair of black jeans, a blue denim work shirt, a pair of yellow leather work boots, socks and underwear.
“K-Mart,” Ironheel said by way of explanation.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” Easton said.
In grade school the better off kids who wore brand name clothes had a joke that went: What are the first English words a Mexican baby learns? ‘Attention K-Mart shoppers.’ If, like him, you were wearing K-Mart clothes, it was pretty cruel.
“Thought we could use sweatshirts,” Ironheel said. “It can get pretty cool up here at night.”
“Why everything black?”
Ironheel just looked at him. Dumb question: black makes you harder to see.
He watched as Ironheel shrugged out of his shirt and pants. His upper body was bronzed and powerful. Muscles moved as smoothly as pistons under the coppery skin. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. Those State cops were lucky he didn’t kill them, Easton thought.
He took off his own clothes, slid on the new ones. The jeans smelled starchy and were stiff against the skin. The work boots were hard and unfriendly but they would be much more sensible for the kind of walking that lay ahead. All the same, he was sorry to write off his Justins; you got kind of attached to a comfortable pair of boots.
As soon as they were both dressed Ironheel gathered up all the other discarded clothing, jammed it into one of the larger shoppers and disappeared noiselessly downhill and into the trees. A few minutes later he as silently reappeared empty handed.
“I stashed everything underneath some rocks down there,” he said. “Put a blaze on one of the trees so you can come back for your boots.”
“You don’t miss much, do you?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Tell me something,” Easton said. “That disappearing trick you do. Did they teach you that when you were a kid, too?”
Ironheel nodded. “There was a hastiin, an old man who lived up on the hill above our place,” he replied, his eyes hooded with recollection. “At least, he seemed old to us kids. He was probably around fifty. His name was Lííyótah, Horse Holder. He’d had polio, couldn’t walk far. But he was king of the hiding game. T’lo kahd’ inadi aha’eh.”
Easton tried to repeat the Apache phrase and failed. Ironheel said it again.
“T’lo kahd’ inadi aha’eh. It means something like, to come from nowhere, to materialize without warning. The practice of stealth, and silence, and stillness, to be one with where you are, is a great skill, very important to Apache. Not just being motionless, but thinking motionless, emptying the mind of every other thing except that.”
Every day the old man would take him out somewhere and tell him to conceal himself. First to a meadow, then to a rocky outcrop, and next day to a yucca flat, where the boy was bidden to vanish into whatever concealment he could find. If he did it well, the old man gave him a piece of candy. If he did not, and the old man found him easily, he beat him with a stick.
“Ích’ idists’aa!” he would shout. Listen. Learn. Be as the grass, be as the rock, be as the yucca plant until your enemy is near enough for you to strike.
T’lo kahd’ inadi aha’eh. Materialize without warning.
“What about girls?” Easton asked, thinking of Joanna Ironheel. “What do they learn?”
Ironheel shrugged. “Apache girls play with dolls. Help their mother in the house. Gather k’ai – willow – for baskets,” he said, dismissing the subject as superfluous by standing up and stretching. Easton grinned behind his back. Tina Fey would love this guy.
“That chicken should be ready,” he said. “Let’s eat.”
They scraped back the earth and peeled off the layer of dried out tule shoots which had kept the chicken flesh moist. Easton reached for the meat but Ironheel held up a hand, wait. From his belt he took a small deerskin pouch and out of it a pinch of powder, his lips moving as he sprinkled it on the fire. It made a little hiss as it burned and gave off a tiny puff of white smoke.
“What was that?” Easton asked.
“Hádn’din,” Ironheel said, frowning as though reluctant to talk about it. “Cat-tail pollen. A way to give thanks.”
“I don’t have any pollen,” Easton said.
“It will be all right,” Ironheel told him, without the slightest trace of humor. Then he nodded abruptly and picked up a piece of chicken.
“Aal’lizaa,” he said. “Eat.”
The chicken was juicy and tender and they ate quickly, manners be damned. When they were through Easton leaned back with a sigh.
“You think the water in the creek would be safe to drink?” he said.
“Probably not without boiling it,” Ironheel replied. “Used to be you could drink an
yplace in this country. Now … better not. You thirsty?”
Easton shrugged. “I’ll survive.”
“Try this,” Ironheel said.
He reached inside the smaller shopper he had laid to one side, and came up with two Styrofoam takeaway cups.
“Coffee?” Easton said, astonished.
“You earned it,” Ironheel said gruffly. “I pushed you hard today.”
That was probably as close to praise as he got, Easton thought. They sat quietly drinking their coffee as the sun moved down the far side of the sky. It was that still silent part of the evening he remembered from when he was a kid. When you lay in bed, sleepy but not asleep, and you could hear Dad and Mom moving around downstairs, and you knew all was well. For these few sunset moments it was even possible to forget they were fugitives. But grim reality was never far away. After a while Ironheel stood up, putting the coffee cups into his sack.
“Coffee good?”
“Best I ever drank.”
“I got some water, too. And a canteen.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being perfect?” Easton said, irritably.
Ironheel didn’t respond. “Anything edible, put in the big sack and tie a knot in it. Paper, feathers, all the other stuff in this bag. Then bury it all in the fire hole.”
Easton did as he was bid, maybe still a little irritated at Ironheel’s condescension. Anyone who lived in this country knew not to leave food lying around. You were liable to come back and find a bear eating it.
“What now?” he asked, sensing Ironheel was impatient to move on.
“Maybe go down and see if there are any empty weekend cabins along Cedar Creek,” he replied. “If we do we’ve got a place to sleep.”
“Okay. But no break-ins, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Ironheel said straight-faced. “Wouldn’t want the law coming after us.”
Well, well, Easton thought, he has a sense of humor after all.
After they had carefully cleared up the area, he laid the little bundle of refuse into the fire hole and watched it burn up. Then he scraped the earth back on top of it, tamped it down with his foot and scattered dry earth and twigs over it. He looked up to see Ironheel standing stock still, his head cocked to one side in a listening attitude.
“You hear something?” he asked.
Ironheel frowned and held up a hand, Quiet. Easton listened intently but all he could hear was the sleepy twitter of the birds and the sigh of the breeze. After a moment, Ironheel shook his head, then drew in a deep breath and let it out.
“What was it?” Easton said.
Ironheel pointed down the hill. “Dándas,” he said. “You go on ahead. If you get to the bottom before me, wait.”
Easton opened his mouth and then shut it.
No arguments, no questions, remember?
Leaving Ironheel behind, he started down the hill, sensing rather than seeing him fade into the trees parallel to the trail. The sinking sun was touching the crest of the mountain, elongating his shadow so it stretched maybe ten feet ahead of him. After he had covered about a half mile, he glanced back, but there was no sign of Ironheel. He shrugged and kept going.
About two hundred yards further down, the track bore sharply to the right between a scatter of huge boulders. As he reached the bend, two men stepped out from behind them and stood spraddle-legged in front of him, blocking the way.
The one on Easton’s left was a big man with the physique of a street fighter, dark eyes beneath a jutting brow, a scrubby stubble beard. He had on a sweat-stained white Resistol curly brim, a red and green plaid shirt with a blue body warmer, well-worn jeans, and battered old cowboy boots. Canted across his left forearm was a .44-40 Winchester hunting rifle, but that wasn’t what stopped Easton in his tracks.
The second man, on the right, was fat and squat, maybe five seven or eight, with a beer gut that spilled over the wide belt holding up his army-style pants. He wore a peaked Raiders cap, a camouflage flak jacket and lace-up combat boots. The Remington over-and-under shotgun he was holding was pointing right at Easton’s belly and he looked as if he wouldn’t need much of an excuse to use it.
“All raht, asshole,” he growled. “Where’s the fuckin Indian?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What in the hell is this?” Easton said, trying for what he hoped sounded like outraged innocence. The big dark one levered a shell into his carbine. The metallic sound seemed very loud in the silence. He swung the barrel around and Easton’s feigned protest dried up.
“Skip the bullshit,” the big man said. His drawl was even more pronounced than that of his fat friend. “Answer the question.”
Easier said than done, Easton thought. In his mind’s eye he saw Ironheel again, head up like a wild animal sensing the approach of a predator, and knew now what that had been. Ironheel had heard something, maybe suspected an ambush. So why had he let him walk into it?
He tilted his head in the direction he had just come from. “Back up there someplace,” he told his captors. “Told me to go on ahead.”
“You expectin’ us t’ b’lieve that?”
Easton shrugged, take it or leave it. The big man looked at the fat one. The fat one nodded.
“You’re the cop, raht? Easton,” he said triumphantly, as if remembering the name was an extraordinary feat of memory. “Okay, Easton, here’s what you do. Lift that pistol of yours outa yo belt nahce’n careful. Finger and thumb only, hear?”
Easton did exactly as he was bidden, using his forefinger and thumb to lift the Glock out of his waistband. As he did the big man spoke again.
“Atsaboy. Now toss it over heah.”
The gun made a soft, heavy sound as it hit the ground. The big man picked it up and tucked it into his belt, beneath his jacket. The fat man nodded with satisfaction, his jowls creasing.
“Okay, now get yore ass over theah,” he said, emphasizing the order with a jerk of the shotgun barrel. “B’hahnd these rocks.”
As Easton did what he was told, unanswerable questions raced through his head. Where was Ironheel? He would never have run. So could he be somewhere nearby, watching? Even if he was, what could he do, unarmed?
“How did you find us?” he asked. Maybe if he could get them talking the sound of their voices would help Ironheel locate them.
The fat man smiled. His teeth were very bad.
“Shit, you’s all over the TV,” he said. “We reckernized yo Injun buddy right off, minnit we seen him in K-Mart.”
“Sides, when’s the last time you seen a Injun buyin’ two different sahz men’s pants?” the big one said, as pleased with himself as if he was Sherlock Holmes. “Top o’ that, afoot? A Injun with no wheels? Shit, you wanna get me odds on that in Vegas?”
The phrase rang a faint bell in Easton’s memory, but right now he could not place it. He concentrated on the two men. They were Texans, of course, although a notch or two downmarket from the ones who came up in the summer for the quarter horse races and in the fall to kill things. These two were good ol’ boys from one of the trash towns, part of that social group the demographers label ‘shotguns and pickups.’
“Okay,” the fat man said heavily. “Git on over b’hin’ them rocks like I tole you. You make a funny move Ah’ll shoot a chunk raht offa your ass.”
“If it was just you and me, fat man,” Easton said softly. The piggy eyes glinted malevolently.
“In yore fuckin dreams,” he said, and gestured again with the shotgun.
Easton went over and stood where he had been told to stand. The fat man came over and stood beside and slightly behind him, with the big man to his right. The heat coming off the rocks was like standing near a big oven. The fat man’s hands made wet prints on the shotgun as he shifted his grip. He smelled like an old horse blanket. The big guy stood to one side, tense, poised. They’d picked their spot well. Anyone coming down the trail wouldn’t see them until it was too late.
Long, leaden minutes crawled by. Nothing happened. The fat
man made an impatient sound. The other one frowned angrily and took off his curly brim hat to wipe his forehead, then inched carefully out around the rocks with the Winchester leveled, ready for anything. Nothing moved in the encroaching twilight.
“Well, shee-hit,” he said angrily. “Where’s that fuckin Indian at anyways, Gil? I’m gittin’ tarda this.”
The fat man shrugged. “You wanna know what I think, I figure maybe he seen us an’ took off.”
“Bastard,” the big man said, as if it was somehow unsporting of Ironheel not to have delivered himself up to their guns.
The fat man looked at Easton, the piggy eyes empty. “What the fuck, Clay, we got this one,” he said. “Still a thousand bucks, raht? Whyn’t we jes’ take ’im on down the hill and collect it?”
“Yeah, guess,” the big man said. His thoughts couldn’t have been plainer if they had been painted on his forehead. Druther had two grand than one.
“Okay, dipshit, less go,” the fat man said, and poked Easton in the back with the shotgun. The gun barrel got him in his wounded side this time, and it hurt. Another one I owe you, fat man, Easton promised silently as he led the way down the hill, with the fat man behind him and Clay bringing up the rear.
The trail was less steep now, widening out as they descended, with patches of chokecherry and mound cactus growing between the tumbled chaos of boulders and fallen rocks on both sides of the watercourse. Then suddenly Ironheel materialized behind Clay as if out of the very rock. The three foot-long cottonwood branch he held like a baseball bat whupped through a short, vicious arc and struck Clay’s head with a sound like a cleaver hitting a side of beef. The big man went down sideways as if he’d been poleaxed.
Whinnying with panic, the fat man wheeled around, bringing the shotgun up, but fast as he was, Ironheel was faster. The four-inch thick wooden club went whup again and smashed horizontally into the fat man’s face, and Easton heard the eggshell sound of fragile bones being crushed. The fat man moaned and sank to his knees, dropping the shotgun, blood spouting between the fingers of his hands as he covered his ruined face. Again the club went whup, striking him above the right ear this time, and he collapsed in a twitching heap.
Apache Country Page 19
