Cry of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  As he waited, Falcon heard the sound of a low, muffled cough from off to his right, then a sniff, as if the brave waiting there for him was coming down with a cold.

  He shifted his direction slightly and crept forward, his Arkansas Toothpick in his right hand and his shotgun in his left.

  Glancing upward, Falcon saw a large cloud moving slowly across the sky with all the majesty of a clipper ship sailing calm seas. The trailing edge of the cloud was almost to the moon, and in another few moments would pass it, leaving a brief period of moonlight shining down.

  Falcon froze, staring ahead, waiting for light. When it came, he could clearly see the outline of a man sitting fifteen feet ahead of him on the ground with his legs crossed in front of him and a rifle resting on his thighs. The man’s head was nodding, leaning forward only to be jerked back upright as he caught himself dozing and tried to force himself to stay awake. Naiche has been pushing his people too hard, Falcon thought. Warriors falling asleep while waiting in ambush was a sure sign they hadn’t had much rest lately.

  When the next cloud covered the moon, bringing almost total darkness, Falcon laid his shotgun on the ground and eased forward, an inch at a time. As soon as he was in position, he clasped his left hand over the warrior’s mouth and quickly slid the blade of his knife across his throat.

  The man jerked once, then sighed heavily, almost as if he were relieved to give up his life and finally get some sleep. Falcon lowered him to the ground gently so as not to make any noise.

  Figuring the other bushwhackers were arranged in a circle around the dying, moaning man, Falcon picked up his shotgun and began to move laterally around the area the sounds were coming from. He was in no hurry and moved slowly, knowing time was on his side. As tired as these warriors were, the closer to dawn it became, the harder it would be for them to keep their attention at peak levels.

  The next two kills went without a hitch, the men dying silently as they had sat while waiting to kill Falcon. The fourth warrior must have been more alert than the others, or perhaps he heard the click of a pebble moving when Falcon attacked. He turned just as Falcon grabbed his throat, trying to bring his Winchester up to fire.

  They wrestled in the dark for a few seconds until finally Falcon managed to slip the point of the Toothpick under his rib cage and angle it up to pierce his heart.

  A dying spasm caused the brave’s trigger finger to contract on the Winchester and it fired, exploding in the desert silence like a cannon shot, belching a foot-long flame out into the night, temporarily blinding Falcon.

  The last of the sentries jumped to his feet, and in his excitement began to fire repeatedly at the place where he saw and heard the rifle shot. Bullets were pocking the desert sand all around Falcon as he rolled over toward his shotgun.

  He grabbed the Greener and eared back the hammers, pointing the twin barrels toward the sound of rifle fire and firing blindly.

  Just as the shotgun exploded, a whining bullet tore into Falcon’s chest, hitting a rib bone and skipping along under the skin to exit out his back. Luckily the rib deflected the slug enough that it didn’t pierce the chest but stayed just under the skin, causing intense pain but no lasting damage.

  The buckshot from Falcon’s shot spread out into a pattern ten feet wide at twenty yards, peppering the Indian and tearing him almost in two. He was blown backward in the air, arms flung wide, dead before he hit the ground.

  When Falcon’s vision came back took his shirt off and explored his wound with his hands. He figured he was all right when he took a deep breath and found only pain, no restriction of his breath and none of the dreaded bloody froth that meant a lung wound and certain death.

  He rolled the shirt into a long cylinder and wrapped around his chest, tying it tight to minimize blood loss.

  After making sure there were no more sentries, he made his way toward the sounds of crying and begging and moaning coming from the nearby depression in the ground.

  No matter how many men a man has killed, or how many men he’s seen left by Indians to die, when it’s someone he knows personally and they’re still alive and in agony, it rends the heart to see what cruelty one human being can impose on another.

  There were tears in Falcon’s eyes as he squatted next to Cal Franklin. He slipped the Toothpick under the rawhide thongs holding Franklin’s wrists outstretched and cut them one by one, releasing the terrible tension on his arms.

  Cal turned his head toward Falcon, exposing staring, sightless eyes covered with ants. “Who’s there? Who is it?” he whined, his voice hoarse from his screaming and yelling.

  “It’s Falcon, Cal.”

  “Oh, thank God!” He reached with one of his newly arms and grabbed Falcon’s shoulder. “Kill me, Falcon. If you’ve got any mercy in your soul at all, kill me quickly!”

  Falcon glanced down and saw that Cal’s intestines were spread all around him. The man had no chance at all of survival, but he might live for days in total agony.

  Falcon drew his Colt and laid the barrel against Cal’s temple. With his free hand, he stroked Cal’s cheek. “Cal, you rest easy now, you hear?” Falcon said and pulled the trigger, putting an end to Cal Franklin’s misery.

  He sat back on his haunches, breathing slowly, waiting to regain enough energy to go out into the darkness and fetch Diablo.

  He thought maybe he’d rest there the rest of the night and wait for the dawn to see if perhaps the army was on its way. He’d had no stomach to travel any further tonight. He’d had enough killing to last him a while, and he really needed rest. He didn’t want to make the same mistake Naiche was making and push himself so hard he became ineffective.

  After a while he got to his feet and went to find Diablo. On the way, reined to an ocotillo cactus, he found the five ponies belonging to the warriors left behind to kill him.

  Once back at the area where the dead Indians lay, he took out his Arkansas Toothpick and walked to each body, slicing off the scalp locks one by one.

  Taking the scalplocks to where the horses were tied, he affixed a scalp lock in each of the ponies’ manes, leaving the bloody trophies hanging along their necks. After he was done with the grisly task, he cut their reins and fired his pistol behind them, sending them galloping off toward the distant mountains where Naiche was headed.

  Falcon hoped they would send yet another message to Naiche that his days were numbered.

  Chapter 42

  The next morning Falcon woke up just before dawn. The air was frigid, and the sky was full of ominous looking clouds that bespoke of possible snow later in the day.

  Falcon thought the desert must have been the last place God made, for it was filled with contradictions. Blazing hot and dry most of the year, it could turn freezing and have snow and ice at other times. He had seen the temperature in the day break one hundred and then fall to below freezing the same night.

  He pulled on his fur-lined jacket and set about making breakfast. While the fire was starting and his coffee was heating, he used the time to bury Cal Franklin’s body. With no wood available for a cross or other marker, he gathered a number of fist-sized stones and piled them over the grave to help keep scavengers from digging the remains up.

  He didn’t bother with the Indians’ corpses, figuring coyotes and buzzards had to eat, same as worms.

  Afterward, he sat next to the fire, enjoying for the first time in several days a period of relaxation where he could smoke a quiet cigar and a good cup of coffee. He had no supplies with him for a meal, so he chewed on some dried beef jerky and a few old biscuits that were as hard as rocks. No wonder punchers call biscuits sinkers, he thought, for they immediately sank to the pit of his stomach and sat there, waiting to cause mischief in his digestive tract later in the day.

  As the morning sun rose he spied a dust cloud off to the north, coming from the direction he had traveled the night before. I hope that’s Hawk and Jasper with the army, he thought. If it’s not, I can’t afford to wait much longer. We’ve got to catc
h up with Naiche before he crosses the Rio Bravo into Mexico, or the army will be powerless to go after him.

  He emptied the rest from his coffeepot into his cup and brewed a fresh pot, figuring the men coming would be needing some after their journey across the desert.

  Less than thirty minutes later the calvary arrived, led by Hawk, Jasper Meeks, and a gnome-like man with flaming red hair and a face only a mother could love.

  The captain in charge reined his horse to a stop and tipped his head at Falcon. “I’m Captain Buford Jones, Mr. MacCallister. Your . . . associates here tell me you’ve been tracking Naiche and his band of renegades.”

  Falcon nodded, wondering why the red-headed gent kept staring at him so intently.

  “That’s right, Captain. They took off from here last night and headed straight south toward the Pedregosas and Mexico. I believe they’re probably headed down there to try and join up with Geronimo, who I hear is on the warpath across the border.

  As Jones opened his mouth to speak, the man who’d been staring at Falcon jumped off his horse and walked over to him.

  “Ye be Falcon MacCallister, son of Jamie MacCallister?”

  Falcon tensed. He never knew what such a greeting presaged. His father had many friends, but he’d also made his share of enemies also in his many years of traversing the west.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Mickey Free,” the man said, breaking into a wide grin and sticking out his hand. “Your pappy saved my skin once, an’ helped me out on some other matters a time or two. He was a real man, the kind you only run into once or twice in your life.”

  Falcon took Mickey’s hand and shook it.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I was always pretty fond of him, too.”

  As they shook hands, Mickey’s eyes glanced over Falcon’s shoulders and he saw the five Indian corpses lined up a short distance away. He looked at Falcon and cocked an eyebrow. Then his grin got even wider, a feat Falcon would have thought impossible just a minute before.

  “I see you been busy, Falcon,” Mickey said, brushing by him to go take a closer look at the dead braves.

  Jones and Hawk and Meeks dismounted as Jones told his sergeant to have the men dismissed for a meal break.

  As they all walked to stand over the bodies, Jones’s eyes widened and he stared at Falcon. “Mr. MacCallister, were these men killed by Indians? I notice they’ve all been scalped.”

  Falcon wagged his head. “No, captain. I did that myself, both the killing and the scalping. I tied the scalplocks onto their ponies and sent them on ahead to deliver a message for me to Naiche.”

  Jones drew himself up, a self-righteous expression on his face. “White men do not scalp their victims, Mr. MacCallister.”

  Mickey snorted a short laugh through his misshapen nose. “Kind’a depends on the man, Captain, don’t it?”

  His gaze flicked to the pile of stones nearby. “Who’s the gent in the ground, Falcon?” Mickey asked.

  “Friend of ours, name of Franklin,” Falcon answered, drawing disbelieving looks from Hawk and Meeks.

  “Ya mean ole Cal done got kilt by the Injuns?” Hawk asked.

  “Yes, and he died hard,” Falcon answered. “They worked on him a spell before I was able to end it for him.”

  Jones looked astonished. “You mean you killed your own friend in cold blood?” he asked.

  Falcon’s eyes got cold as ice. “I told you, Captain, he died hard. His eyelids were cutoff, and his belly was opened with his guts spread out on the ground all around him. There wasn’t any way he was going to survive, so I did what he asked and helped him to some peace.”

  “I cannot believe—” the captain started to say, when Mickey interrupted him.

  “Believe it, Captain. If it ever happens to you, you’ll be beggin’ fer a blue pill just like Franklin did, an’ you better hope there’s somebody around to feed you one when you need it,” Mickey said with feeling.

  Jasper Meeks spoke up. “There might be worse ways to die, but offhand I can’t think of one.”

  “Me, either,” Hawk added.

  “All right, gentlemen, point taken,” Jones said.

  “Would you men like some coffee?” Falcon asked.

  “Only if it’s strong enough to float a horseshoe,” Mickey said.

  “Oh, it’ll float a horseshoe,” Falcon answered, “but not the biscuits I ate this morning.”

  Within a few minutes, they were all standing around Falcon’s fire, warming their hands and drinking coffee. Hawk stuck a wedge of Bull Durham in his cheek and the others built themselves cigarettes or fired up cigars.

  Buford Jones took a long drink of coffee and asked, “Falcon, you and Hawk and Meeks have had several run-ins with Naiche and his men and you’ve managed to come out on top every time. Evidently you have some feel for how to deal with these Apaches. What do you suggest we do next?”

  Falcon could hardly believe his ears. He’d never once before met an army officer who didn’t think he knew it all, and had certainly never had one ask him for advice. Of course, he knew nothing of Jones’s previous encounters with Naiche’s men that ended in Jones’s terrible defeats.

  “Well, Captain, the one thing I do know is you’ll never defeat the Apache in a running battle or on horseback. Apaches, unlike most other Indians other than the Comanche, have no backup in them, and they won’t stop fighting until the last man is dead. They don’t have any word in their language for tomorrow, so all they live for is the here and now, unlike us whites who seem to think we’re going to live forever. Thinking like that gives them an advantage in battle, ’cause they’re not worried about surviving, as we are. They’re only worried about dying with honor.”

  Jones nodded. “So, what do you suggest, Falcon?”

  “I think the best thing would be for me to try and flank Naiche and his group and come at them from the front. When they turn to try to avoid me, you and your men will be behind them, waiting.”

  Jones looked skeptical. “And just what makes you think Naiche, with his many warriors, will turn and run from just one man?”

  Falcon grinned. “ ’Cause I’ve gone to some trouble to make him fear me. So far, every war party he’s sent out after my friends and me has come back to him dead. That’ll be enough for him to take the easy way out and try to go around me if he can.”

  “I’ll ride along with him, Captain, just to make sure thing’ go the way he figures they will,” Mickey said.

  “I reckon Hawk and I’ll do the same,” Meeks added.

  Falcon shook his head. “No, Jasper, I need you and Hawk to stay with the captain here, and show him how we arranged our ambushes of the war parties.”

  Jones frowned. “I don’t need nobody to show me how to fight, Falcon.”

  “I know you don’t, Captain, for the normal sort of fighting the army does. I’m quite sure you are excellent at leading your men in calvary charges. But this is Indian fighting. That’s something else altogether, and you won’t find any better teachers than Hawk or Jasper.”

  Somewhat mollified, Jones nodded. “All right, but just where do you think this is all going to happen?”

  “If you’ve got a map showing the Pedregosas along the border with Mexico, I’ll show you. The mountains in that region are quite steep with lots of ravines and box canyons. There’s only a few places where Naiche can cross easily, where the trail is such that the women and children traveling with him will be able to walk through the terrain.”

  After Jones pulled out his map and Falcon showed him the area they were assuming Naiche would be in, Falcon took Hawk and Jasper aside.

  “I’m counting on you men to keep Jones out of trouble.”

  Hawk frowned. “He’s green as a two-foot high willow tree, Falcon. What the hell’s the army thinkin’, sendin’ a man like that out to fight Injuns?”

  Falcon grinned. “They don’t have much choice, Hawk, ’cause men like you and Jasper are too smart to join the army and fight Indians for a liv
ing.”

  Jasper nodded. “I reckon that’s true, Falcon. Men like us who’ve lived out here long enough to know which end of the porcupine to pet don’t exactly take to takin’ orders from some stuffed shirt from Washington. We’ll try to keep Jones and his men alive until you flush Naiche our way.” He shrugged, “After that, it’s every man for hisself.”

  “Fair enough,” Falcon said. He stuck out his hand. “In case for some reason I don’t see you gents again, it’s been a pleasure riding with you.”

  The three men shook hands. Then Falcon climbed on Diablo and he and Mickey Free headed south-southeast to flank Naiche while Hawk and Jasper led the army troops south-southwest to come at him from behind.

  Chapter 43

  The Pedregosas lay in a long, uneven line, reaching southward to Agua Prieta across the border in Mexico. It was a mystery to Naiche and many Apaches how an imaginary line stopped the bluecoat soldiers from chasing them beyond a simple fence. It seemed senseless to a people who moved from place to place wherever they chose to go—fearing nothing but an enemy who might block their pathway to better hunting grounds by putting up a fight—but the white-eyes had many strange customs, like fences, which Naiche’s people did not understand. It would not keep him from taking advantage of it—the most important one of all, the fence—now that they were on the run from soldiers and the three men who had an uncanny ability to track down and kill Apaches the way another Indian might.

  After the skirmish with the three white men when they set their fire in the desert brush, Naiche found he had fewer than fifteen able-bodied fighting men. If Mickey Free led the soldiers to them now it would be a short fight unless Naiche could take his people to a fortified place higher in the mountains where rocks, scattered trees, and narrow trails would give them the advantage of cover.

  He recalled the carnage done to his three rear scouts early today . . . their scalps missing, bellies cut open, and their eyes poked out as if someone had done it with a sharp pointed stick—a sure sign the men following them understood Apache customs and ways.