Apache canyon

by Garfield, Brian, 1939-

  The answers simply were not available. He found himself cm-sing the whole morass, while he walked slowly across the parade ground. Down at the far end. Tucker was drilling his platoon with sharp, clear commands— "Right, march! Pick up your feet, dammit—you're raising enough dust for a brigade." The dry bite in Tucker's voice was something no one could miss.

  Brady paused in front of the guardhouse, nodding to the sentiy. He peered in thi-ough the small barred opening of the door, made out the wiry form of Tonio far in the dimness.

  "How's it going, Tonio?"

  Tonio moved forward. There was, Brady noticed, a new respect in the Apache youth's eyes. Tonio spoke carefully, Agency School talk. "What am I being kept here for, Brady? What have I done?"

  "I'm not quite sure," Brady said. "I'll ask the major. I don't run this place, Tonio--I just work here. Anything I can get for you?"

  Tonio spat. Brady smiled gently. ' Take it easy, lad. At least you're getting plenty of food and shelter.

  "I wish to hunt my own food-to be with my own people."

  "You may get your wish pretty quick now. Just

  don't try to bust out again."

  "If I do, you will not catch me aUve."

  Brady nodded. "Maybe that's what you learned the other day. Well, keep on learning, kid, and one day you'll be a chief. I'd like to see that happen."

  Tonio met his glance proudly; Tonio believed him and that was good. Brady turned from the door, patting his pockets, frowning. He said to the sentry, "Got the makings on you, soldier?"

  "Sure." The trooper handed over paper and to Brady rolled a smoke and handed the materials back.

  That was when he heard the faint sound of scuffling. His head lifted, listening to the sounds of scratching and thudding. Presently he walked around the end of the guardhouse. Behind the building he came upon the sight of two men mixing in savage battle, silent and vicious. Harris and Sutherland.

  The two officers stopped abruptly, startled. Both looked at Brady. Sutherland's lip was cut and his cheek showed a bruise; Harris bled from his ear. And from his awkward bent stance, Brady guessed that Harris had been hit more than a few times in the belly.

  "Howdy,'' Brady said with a straight face. "Can I hold somebody's coat?"

  The sounds of the two men's breathing filled the air for a moment. Then Sutherland spoke: "Get out of here, Brady, and forget you saw anything."

  "How are you going to explain your face?"

  "Shut up, Will," said Harris, "and go along."

  "No," Brady said. "I reckon not. You're fighting the wrong man, Captain Sutherland."

  Sutherland's brows knitted into a frown. His moon face was flushed and showed the tracks of sweat and punishment.

  Brady said, "You two look pretty funny right now."

  Harris said wearily: "Get out of here, Will."

  "No," Sutherland said. "Wait. What did you mean —I'm fighting the wrong man?"

  "Just what I said. Captain Harris never took after your wife."

  Sutherland moved forward a pace, braced. "How do you know?"

  "I get around. Captain, maybe before you jimip to a conclusion, you ought to take a look and see how far the jump is."

  Puzzled, Sutherland's round face turned toward Harris. "Is that true?"

  "I told you before, George—I don't want anything from your wife and I never did."

  Sutherland stood awkwardly poised. The round fleshiness of his cheeks made him look soft, but he was not. He remained unconvinced; he frowned past lowered brows at Harris. "Smoke means fire," he said stubbornly.

  Harris straightened, shrugging. "You take my word or you don t. Listen, George—this loose talk has hurt me as much as it's hurt you. My own girl's suspicious of me now."

  Brady tried to hold back a grin, but was not altogether successful.

  Harris, glancing at him, waggled a finger. "You shut up. Will."

  Brady's brows went up. "I didn't say a word." He fought down the impulse to laugh.

  Sutherland stood fast, frowning at Harris. "Why didn't you tell me all this before?" "Did you ask me?"

  "Aagh," Sutherland said. Abruptly he wheeled, brushed past Brady and was gone around the side of the guardhouse.

  Harris came forward wearing a troubled look. "Maybe it would have been better if we'd finished the fight. George and I have been rubbing each other the wrong way a long time."

  "Sorry, Justin," Brady murmured. "I'd have minded my own carrot patch, only I figmed I had a stake in this one."

  "What stake?"

  Brady shook his head. "Not now," he said. He was turning away when Harris's voice caught him.

  "You—you and Eleanor. I should have figured it before."

  "Don't rush into a wrong guess," Brady said, turning.

  "Hell," Harris said. "I didn't think you were that kind, Will."

  Brady, full of contradictions and no longer sure of himself, turned and went tramping through the dust.

  Harris caught up to him in a few long strides. "Hold on. Will. I didn't mean any offense. It took me by surprise, that's all."

  "Sure," Brady said, glancing at him bleakly. They were walking alongside the guardhouse wall. Suddenly he stopped and confronted Harris. "Damn it, Justin, I had it all figured out. Why'd you have to go and tear it apart?"

  "Why?" Harris said. "What did I do?"

  Brady searched his eyes for a moment, and cursed. "Damn it, do you have to keep standing there looking like an officer and a gentleman?"

  "Wait a minute," Harris said. "I'm just beginning to pt this. Your conscience is bothering you, Will."

  "Is it?" Brady's eyes flashed up, hot with an anger directed against no one in particular. "Well, then, maybe it is. It'll take a wiser man than me to put it all together, Justin. But I'll thank you to quit get-ting in my way with your iron-bound codes of honor. I've got grief enough without that."

  "It's not me that's getting in your way," Harris answered. "Don't get things mixed up, Will."

  "How else can I get them, Justin?" Brady retorted. "Neither your damned codes nor anything else is going to set things right."

  Harris nodded. "I see," he said gently. "Then you're in love with her?"

  Brady swung away, putting his back to Harris. "Well," he said, half in anger, "what if I am?"

  When he turned back, Harris was shaking his head. "You've got trouble then," was all Hanis said. He stood regarding Brady with a worried glance.

  Brady cursed.

  Harris showed a wan smile. "Want some advice, Will?''

  "No."

  "I'll give it to you, anyway. Get clear of this post —get clear of that woman. Find yourself a saloon and drink yourself to death. Anyhow, ride over the hill and don't ever look back."

  "It wouldn't work," Brady said.

  Harris took a pace forward and gripped Brady's shoulders. "She belongs to somebody else, Will."

  Brady let out a long breath. "Yeah." He turned on his heel and walked away.

  Hanis let him go alone.

  Brady, measuring neither time nor distance, rode a far way out onto the desert plain. Catclaw and palo-verde and manzanita scrubs dotted the yellow-brown land, and the dust-filled heat was bitter and bright. His horse covered miles of ground; and now and then, out of habit, his eyes flicked the surrounding hillocks.

  And finally he saw before him the gently winding comse of the Smoke, bordered by its marching green cottonwoods. He rode down to the river and let his horse drink its fill from the shallow flow.

  Now drought lay hard and bleak across the land. He had known times when the Smoke flowed sixty or a hundred feet wide along its desert course; today it was scarcely ten feet wide.

  He considered his cavalry boots. A Christmas gift from Justin Harris, not too many months ago. He cursed, led the horse back on the grass, loosened the cinch, and left it with reins trailing. He walked back to the shaded bole of a thick cottonwood, settled with his back to the tree. Legs stretched, his hat tilted across his brows, he glanced upstream and down,
and closed his eyes.

  But rest was impossible. Presently he stood up and tore a foot-long twig from a low-hanging branch. He proceeded to break the twig into the smallest possible bits, and tossed them one by one onto the surface of the meandering river. In a short while there was a tiny fleet of them, floating downstream.

  Brady pushed back his hat and sm-veyed the river in both directions; it wound out of sight both ways, leaving him nothing but the thin perimeter of cotton-woods to look at. He turned back to his horse, tightening the cinch and mounting. Brady frowned and sat there, not moving the horse, curlingone leg over the saddlehorn. He patted his pocket and swore; he did not have his cigarette makings. "Fine day," he muttered. "Fine day-everything's going right." He put his foot down into the stirrup and lifted the reins, yanking his hat low over his forehead.

  That was when the sight of something out of place froze him. He squinted forward. Presently a breech-clouted Indian, short and lean, rode a dappled horse out of the trees across the river and sat his horse, regarding Brady.

  Brady matched the Indian's frank stare. It meant only one thing: that Indian was not the only Indian around here. Most likely, Brady was surrounded by now.

  Brady grimaced. If he hadn't been so stupidly engrossed in his own problems, he would have heard them sneaking up on him. He scowled at the silent Indian and tried to figure up the odds against him, but he had no way of telling how many of them were concealed in the cottonwoods.

  Pretty soon they would get tired of their little game. One of the young bucks, more restless than the others, would take a shot at him from the trees. That would be the end. He didn't propose to wait for that.

  He had to assume two things. One was that the majority of the Apaches were in the trees behind him on his own side of the river, expecting him to tmn and walk or run from the silent one across the river. Another was that surprise would give him a little edge-the edge he needed-between life and death. "Well," he said, under his breath to the pony, 'Tiere we go."

  The Apache across the river sat his dappled horse blandly, unbhnkingly. Brady cocked his muscles, gave his horse warning with a little twitch of the reins, and jabbed in the spurs. He charged straight across the shallow stream into the surprised Indian on the dappled horse.

  The Indian shouted and lifted his lance; Brady leaned far forward along the horse's withers, water splashing up against his legs, and lifted his revolver from its holster. He fired two hurried shots.

  Shooting from the back of a lunging horse did not make for accuracy. He hit the Indian-the Indian lurched on his saddle and dropped the poised lance -but he had not hit a vital area. A tight grin of tension spHt Brady's lips. He splashed out of the water, and wheeled past the swaying mounted form of the woimded Apache. The Indian reached out for him but missed; Brady spun his horse into the trees with the first of a fusillade of shots winging by him. He heard the bullets strike trees, he heard the boom of Agency rifles and the sharper crack of one fast-shooting Winchester—all this in a few spht seconds.

  He plunged his horse, galloping through the fringe of cottonwoods.

  He broke out of the trees and sped at a dead run up a slope, crossing a patch of rocks and looking back in time to see the first of the bucks on horseback leaving the trees in pursuit of him. He heard a couple of shots, and ran straight up the slope and over the top and cut shaiply to his left. After a steady run he reined the horse again to the top of the ridge and looked back.

  The Indians were strung out in a ragged line. The ten Apaches were considerably beyond accurate rifle range. He ran forward along the crest until he turned to the left again and ran once more for the trees. That was his mistake.

  There were very few stupid Apaches when it came to hunting down a man. When he was halfway to the river, a trio of mounted bucks broke from the cottonwoods and charged toward him, rifles lifted.

  He cursed and yanked the horse's head around, making for the steep hillside. The maneuver had given the main pai'ty of braves a chance to gain on him. He fired a few random shots over his shoulder, and felt the horse begin to scramble, attacking the stifle rise of the hill. The firing of the Apache rifles increased. Ricocheting bullets screamed off rock surfaces. A glance backward showed him that the three Apaches from the river had joined the main party; they were within two hundred yards. Far back along the trees, a straggling solitary rider was trotting forward. He guessed it was the one he had charged and wounded at the river.

  The horse heaved forward; he had the precarious sensation of starting to fall backward, the hill was that steep. He leaned flat forward over the horn. A rearward glance flung at his pursuers told him they had gained thirty yards.

  And finally, the horse lunged over the top. Brady gigged it to a canter and went across the narrow, rocky ridgetop, and began the long run down the shallow dropping slope of the other side. He knew exactly what the Apaches were doing. Two or tliree would be cutting to either side, making the long run around the end of the ridge. The rest would be following him up the slope.

  His only course was straight ahead into the tortured ruggedness of the foothills, into the darkness of the Arrowheads.

  Brady s mind worked swiftly. If he maintained his present direction, it would not be too long before the Apaches drove him into a box. There were very few passes into the fortress of the Arrowheads; most of the notches were dead ends, box canyons. He had to make a long swing around until he was running parallel to the base of the foothills-and then hope his winded horse would outlast the Apache's lightly loaded mounts.

  The horse was already badly vmided. He could feel the shod hoofs stumble now and then. Behind him he saw the first of the Indians scrambling over the ridge top and plunging forward after him, whooping. The distance was not much more than half a mile.

  A man could not outgun fourteen fighting Apaches. But to continue running, in the end, would lead to defeat. His eyes swept the hills and settled on a craggy mound of rocks. Beyond it lifted the higher masses of the foothills and then the dark fastness of the Arrowheads. He swept o£F his hat and looked at the sky, at the westering sun-two hours of full day-fight left, and another hour of dusk before night. On a fresh horse it was five hours to Fort Dragoon.

  It was the nearest thing to a natural fortification this desert had to oflFer. A manzanita branch rushed by, tearing at his trouser leg. He went around the side of the hill and pointed the horse up its steep slope and let the horse rock and stagger up the hill.

  Halfway up, Brady yanked the rifle from its scabbard and the canteen from the saddle and, carrying only these two things, flung himself off the horse and ran uphill.

  He covered ground with pumping legs until his eyes swam with blood and his chest heaved and he could not get enough of the hot, stinging desert air into his lungs; he squeezed upward between the faces of a rock-sHce and scrambled on, demanding of his punished legs step after step. And finally, in that manner, he achieved the top of the hiU-a small round flat space, surrounded by a natural rock perimeter, and guarded on half its base by a sixty-foot sheer stone chff.

  He lay flat, canteen and rifle at hand, and for a single moment let his head drop onto his arm while he brought great rasping lungfuls of scorching air into his body. His legs were numb, immediately starting to stiffen. He lifted his head and looked downhill.

  They were coming.

  He saw his own riderless horse standing with its feet splayed, utterly beaten, head hanging ahnost to the ground, eyes wide and bulging and glazed.

  The Indians charged right up to the base of the hill and stopped, milling, holding a quick conference. The brassy sun beat down on Brady s back and sent up painful reflected heat from the surface of the flat rock on which he lay. He reached his rifle, extended it over the edge of the rock and rested his cheek against the stock. He shook his head; he bhnked; he aimed the rifle, held his breath and squeezed off a shot.

  The bullet took the nearest of the Indians off his saddle and dumped him on the ground; immediately, the other Apaches scatter
ed to the cover of the rocks. Presently, he saw two men leading all the horses to a spot out of Brady's range.

  Now it would begin—the slow stalk.

  He picked up the rifle again and began to search for targets in the rocks below. For a while, he knew, it would be standoff-but if they could crawl too close to him before nightfall, he was done ...

  Sutherland entered his quarters late in the afternoon with the dark bruise on his cheek and a little scab of dry blood at the comer of his mouth. His look was bleak. Eleanor, at the window, did not turn when he entered. For a moment he watched the cahn outline of her profile against that light Finally she turned slowly, giving him a long look and said, "Hello, George."

  He said nothing in reply. Outside the parlor, heat pulsed along the ground. Eleanor said idly, "Did Lieutenant Garrett come in with the patrol?"

  "No."

  "I thought I heard horses."

  Sutherland maintained his stiff stance. "Perhaps it was the horse traders. They brought a bimch of stock for the major to look at"

  "Yes," she said, turning into the room. "Perhaps that was it." Heat was almost stifling in the low-ceilinged room. Sutherland took off his pistol belt and hat and put them on a table. His wife looked at him. "You re bruised, George." "Yes.''

  "Does it hurt?" "No."

  She had been fingering the pistol belt on the table. Now she turned. "I don't mean to pry if it's army business, George. But let me ask you one question." "Go ahead, my dear." ]Was it Captain Harris?"

  "As a matter of fact," he said, "it was. Are you happy?" "No."

  "If you're interested, nobody won the fight. We didn't stay at it very long." He smiled. "I beheve I might have licked him," he said, and nodded. "Harris is careless, and in the long run, his carelessness would have given me the opening I wanted."

  "He has a reputation for being a good fighter." His eyes flashed. "Leading troops against Indians is not the same kind of fighting, my dear. But I assure you, Jll better him at both, before I'm through with him." Hi5 tone remained calm; he added, as though it were an afterthought, "I intend to see Justin Harris break, Eleanor. It will give me a certain pleasure." All the while, he watched her carefully.