by Jim Fergus
“Hey, cut the crap,” he said. “The camera’s fucked. A fuckin’ horse ran over it. See if you can’t save some of the film, will you, kid?”
“Yeah, sure, of course I will,” I said. “But you’re going to be okay, Big Wade.”
“Fuck, what a bonehead I am,” he said. “You’d think I’d have learned by now, wouldn’t you?”
“Learned what?” I asked.
“I made the same mistake I warned you about, kid,” Big Wade said. “I got to thinking that my camera was a shield, that it would protect me …” His voice went suddenly quiet and distant, as if coming from a very long way away. “But you know, kid, when you work for the Dog-ass Daily Dispatch and your most exciting assignment in three years is covering traffic court, you don’t really expect to die in the line of duty.”
“Who said anything about dying?”
“But what the fuck,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard me, “getting shot by the bronco Apaches makes a lot more interesting obituary than chronic liver failure. You get what I mean? Write it yourself, will you, kid? Pump it up a bit, like I taught you. Make me sound heroic.”
“I’m not writing your obituary, Big Wade,” I said, “because you’re not dying.”
He nodded and smiled. “I got the shot, kid,” he said. “I got the shot.” And with that, just as the doctor finally made his way to us, Big Wade stopped breathing.
I did not have time to mourn. That would come later. Right now I had to find Margaret and the others, I had to find Chideh. I remounted. In the distance, I heard the haunting tones of Billy Flowers’s hunting horn, a deep, resonant trumpeting that wafted above the trees like a strange and soothing music.
I assumed that Flowers was blowing his horn as a signal to Carrillo, and I followed the sound myself, knowing that Carrillo would be, as well. I soon caught up to the tattered remnants of the Great Apache Expedition, Colonel Carrillo and Chief Gatlin with a handful of soldiers, as well as Señor Huerta who had rejoined them. Unsuccessful in his pursuit of Indio Juan and his son, who had disappeared once again, the man was utterly beside himself with grief and frustration. After three years of hardship and self-denial and fruitless searching through these mountains, he had been at last so close to recovering his son; Geraldo had been right there, almost within reach, only to be snatched away again, as if in a cruel prank. Now he cried out for the boy, shouting his name, alternately begging and cursing his Apache captors.
I followed them up a short incline on the trail, which opened up onto a small grassy bench. Here the summer grasses were green and lush from the monsoons, the trees and bushes heavy with new growth, sunlight filtering through the leaves. It was the kind of little oasis where, on another day, you might want to stop and rest in the shade. Then I heard Señor Huerta’s anguished bellow, a sound of such utter despair that it made my skin prickle. Just off the trail ahead, his son Geraldo dangled from a tree limb, hanged, his slight body still twirling at the end of the rope. Indio Juan had killed the boy rather than give him up, to leave a wound so deep that it would render any other victory hollow.
As Carrillo and his men cut down Geraldo’s body and occupied themselves with the inconsolable, grief-stricken father, I slipped past them and rode as hard as I could up the trail, following the sound of Billy Flowers’s hunting horn. I knew that he must be tracking the Apaches. Before I had gone a hundred yards, the girl appeared on the trail ahead of me. She did not speak, only motioned for me to follow her, leaving the trail and riding up a steep slope.
On the far side of the slope, hidden in a small, rocky bowl, I found Margaret, Joseph, and Albert, all dismounted. “What the hell happened back there?” I asked them. “I lost track of you. I didn’t know where you’d gone.”
“We didn’t wait around to find out what was happening,” Margaret said. “When the shooting started, we followed Charley.”
“Why Charley?” I asked. “Why didn’t you stay with the expedition?”
“Because there were bullets flying around there, little brother,” she answered. “It just didn’t seem like a healthy place to be.”
“Where is Charley now?” I asked. “Where are all the others?”
“They’ve scattered out,” said Albert. “They’ll come together later.”
“Flowers is trailing some of them,” I said. “Do you hear his horn? Carrillo and his men are not far behind.”
“We know,” Margaret said. “We don’t have much time. We have to get moving again. I just wanted to see you before we go, Neddy.”
“What do you mean we, Mag?” I asked. “Go where?”
“I’m going with them.”
“What are you talking about? When did you decide this?”
“Just now,” Margaret said. “It’s my chance, Ned. I’d kick myself later if I gave it up now.”
“Are you fucking insane, Margaret? Chance for what? To be a slave?”
“To write the definitive anthropological study of the bronco Apaches,” she said. “I’m not a slave if I go of my own free will.”
“But doesn’t Charley know that we deceived him?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried that he’ll kill you for it?”
“He doesn’t know that,” she said. “And who’s going to tell him, sweetheart?”
“Do you know what Indio Juan did to Geraldo?” I asked.
It was clear that they did not.
“He hanged him,” I said. “Right back there off the trail for his father to find.”
“Oh my God …” Margaret said. “Oh, no …”
“Carrillo and the Mexican ranchers are never going to give up, Mag,” I said. “They’ll hunt down every single member of this band and kill them all—men, women, and children. There will be no mercy for anyone.”
“They’ll have to catch us first, won’t they?”
“Aw, Christ, Mag, is this really how you want to live the rest of your life?” I pleaded. “With a band of renegade Apaches, running from the Mexican army?”
“It’s not the rest of my life, little brother,” she said. “It’s just for a little while. I’ll come back. You’ll see. And when I do, I’ll prove to the bastards that a woman can do fieldwork.”
“You remember what Charley said, don’t you, Mag?” I asked. “Nobody is ever allowed to leave.”
“I’ll find a way.”
I looked at Albert, and didn’t even need to ask; I knew he wouldn’t leave Margaret or his grandfather.
“I promised my mother that I would take care of my grandfather,” he said, reading my look.
Old Joseph Valor smiled. “My grandson believes that because I am an old man he must take care of me,” he said, “but really it is I who takes care of him. I must teach him to be an Apache.”
“You’re a civilized man, Albert,” I said. “You grew up on the reservation. It’s too late for you to lead the life your grandfather led. It’s even too late for you, Joseph.”
“I do not wish to live that life again,” Joseph said. “I am an old man, and I only wish to die in the place where I was born. And before I do, I have things to teach the People.”
“What kind of things?”
Albert smiled at me. “You don’t know much, do you, White Eyes?” he said.
“No, I guess I don’t,” I said. “I’m from Chicago.”
“We must leave now,” said Joseph. “The soldiers are coming.” He remounted.
I looked then at Chideh, meeting her eyes, gazing deep into the bottomless depths of her dark irises. We had saved each other’s life, we had lain together and loved each other. And yet I realized in that moment more surely than I ever had before that I knew nothing more about her now than I did the first time I set eyes upon her in that Mexican jail cell. As she knew nothing more about me.
“Let her go, Neddy,” Margaret said. “Even if he allowed you to, why would you want to take her away from the only world she knows?”
“She’s just a kid, Mag,” I said. “She could have a whole new life ahead of her. We could have
a whole new life together.”
“Do you really believe that, sweetheart?” Margaret asked. “Don’t you know that there are some species that simply can’t be domesticated, that die in captivity?”
“She’s going to have my baby, Mag.”
“All the more reason to let her go, sweetheart,” said Margaret. “Children belong to the mother’s tribe, and these people need all the babies they can get.”
“Why, so they can be slaughtered by the Mexicans?”
“We have to go,” Margaret said. She gave me a quick, awkward hug, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye and I knew that she was fighting back tears.
“How will you find me when you come back, Mag?” I asked. “I don’t have a home, I don’t even know where I’ll be.”
“Don’t worry, little brother,” she said. “I’ll find you. Big Wade will know where you are, won’t he?” She swung back onto her horse, agile herself as one of them. “Will you say good-bye to him for me, and to Tolley, too? I know you’ll take care of things, Neddy.”
I decided in that moment that Margaret didn’t need to know about Big Wade. There had been enough death for one day, and she had enough to worry about. “Okay, sure I will, Mag.”
“Good-bye, Neddy,” she said, and she reined her horse around to follow the others.
I watched her ride away. “Don’t forget to write, Mag!” I called after her. And she laughed and waved back at me without turning.
Now only the girl remained, looking uncertainly at me, and then at the others as they rode away from us.
“Vete,” I said. “Vete con ellos. Go with them.”
“¿No vienes conmigo, marida mio? You are not coming with me, my husband?”
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
“Come with me,” I said.
We heard an exchange of gunfire behind us; Indio Juan must have engaged the soldiers again, which would at least slow them down.
The girl looked in the direction of the gunfire and then back toward me. She shook her head sadly. “Puedo no,” she said. “I cannot.” She reached out and touched my arm lightly, just the slightest touch; I can still feel her fingers grazing my arm. “Te quiero,” she whispered. “I love you.”
“You weren’t going to kill that boy, were you, Chideh?” I asked.
She smiled softly. “I loved that boy like a brother,” she said. “I could not hurt him.”
I reached out for her but she was already gone, as in a dream, and in that specific, otherworldly way she had of moving, lithe as a spirit, she swung onto the back of her horse, touched his flanks lightly with her heels, and galloped up the slope without another glance back. “Te quiero,” I whispered back.
I had nowhere else to go now but to find Carrillo and his men, and with the others gone, my last responsibility was to try to protect Tolley, and myself. The fact was that we had fulfilled our end of the deal: We had brought Charley to them. That things had fallen apart and they had failed to capture him, and failed to rescue little Geraldo Huerta, was hardly our fault.
I rode up over the saddle and back down the steep slope on the other side to regain the main trail. But it was not Carrillo whom I encountered first, it was Indio Juan, riding hard down the trail toward me with two of his warriors. I knew that he had already spotted me and that there was no sense in trying to flee. I reined up and waited for them. It had not occurred to me until this very moment that I did not have a weapon on my person, not even a knife.
At their approach I saw that the warriors were only boys and that one of them was badly wounded. He rode slumped over on his horse, holding on to its neck, and as they came to a halt in front of me, he slipped off and fell to the ground. Indio Juan sat his horse and made no move to go to the boy’s aid. “Cabalga sólo ahora, ojos blancos,” he said to me, smiling malignantly. The boy was moaning on the ground, and I dismounted and went to him. He had been shot through the stomach and was bleeding profusely; I could do nothing for him. Now Indio Juan also slid off his horse and approached me where I knelt beside the boy. I knew that he intended to kill me. He held a rifle in his hand but I saw as he swaggered toward me that he was not going to waste a precious bullet; rather, he was turning the rifle in his hands and was preparing to bludgeon me in the head with the butt of it. I could do nothing but cower and raise one arm defensively over my head and say, “Por favor no me mate,” which made Indio Juan laugh, for nothing amused him more than watching his enemies cower and beg before their death. “Duu nk’ echiida,” he said with contempt, repeating, “eres débil, you are weak, White Eyes.” But the truth is I was no longer afraid of Indio Juan; my heart was too filled with hatred of him to be afraid; I would rather die myself than allow him to return to the People, to violate Margaret or Chideh, or, even more unthinkable, to harm my unborn child. It was not so much a question of courage on my part, I was just plain angry, filled with outrage and indignation; I could not bring Mr. Browning or Big Wade or little Geraldo Huerta back, but I could avenge their brutal, senseless deaths at the hands of this strutting little madman. At the same time that I cowered with my arm held in front of my face, an impotent defense against the rifle butt that Indio Juan now raised overhead, laughing as he did so at the cowardice of the White Eyes, I slipped the blood-soaked knife from the sheath at the dying boy’s waist, and I lunged at Indio Juan as if trying to tackle him, plunging the knife into his stomach, driving it as hard and as deep as I could. I pulled it out and drove it in again, and a third time. With each thrust of my knife, Indio Juan staggered backward, finally dropping his rifle and falling to his knees, before collapsing over onto his back. I do not believe that I am a violent man by nature, but my rage had become a kind of cold vengeance, and within it I did not feel yet that Indio Juan had sufficiently paid for his crimes. And so before the light had faded completely from his eyes, so that perhaps he would know he was going to the Happy Place without his hair, I grabbed a handful in my fist and lifted his scalp and hacked it from his head, holding it aloft and uttering a terrible cry of triumph.
I sat on the ground, breathing heavily, Indio Juan’s bloody scalp in hand, his dead body lying beside me. My rage drained away quickly, my sense of vengeance soon replaced by a vague queasiness, a sense of anticlimax. I guess you have to kill a man to know this feeling.
The second boy still sat his horse, paralyzed, staring at me, terrified now, certain that he would be next to die. “Go on,” I said, waving him away. “Vamonos. Get the hell away from here.” And the boy smiled at me with relief and gratitude, pressed his heels to his horse’s flanks, and galloped away.
Later, I presented Indio Juan’s scalp to Señor Huerta, scant consolation to be sure for the death of a man’s son … Besides the wounded Apache boy, who died moments later on the ground beside me, Carrillo’s soldiers had managed to kill several of Indio Juan’s men in the running skirmish. The other Apaches, whom Billy Flowers had been tracking, largely women and children, had dispersed into the mountains, leaving a dozen separate trails.
The chase was finally called off and we bivouacked that night in the mountains, burying the dead and attending to the wounded. No one slept much for their moans and cries in the night. The next morning, we headed back down to base camp in the plains, a trip that took us most of the day, our progress greatly slowed by the transport of the wounded.
We made a ragged procession riding back into camp, and from our greatly reduced numbers and those who were carried, or dragged in on travois, it was clear to all there that our mission had been a disaster. They had brought Tolley out of his tent for our arrival and he stood between two soldiers as we rode in. Of course, I knew even more surely now that Carrillo had no intention of executing him, or me, or of putting us in prison. Having lost little Geraldo and so many of his own soldiers and volunteers, the colonel had enough professional troubles without now causing an international incident. Ironically, the single success he could claim was the death of the notorious Indio Juan. I heard later that they put his (s
calpless) head on display in the town square in Casas Grandes and that people came from all around to see it.
The Great Apache Expedition was officially disbanded a few days later, though Colonel Carrillo sent to Mexico City for reinforcements and resupply, and he and his soldiers spent several more weeks in the mountains, searching in vain for the remaining Apaches. But as is their way, they seemed to have once again vanished off the face of the earth, absorbed like the spirits of the dead in the canyons and arroyos and the hidden valleys of the Sierra Madre.
The old predator hunter Billy Flowers took his dogs down to the American Mormon settlement of Colonia Juarez, near Casas Grandes, where he contracted to hunt mountain lions for the ranchers there. And the rest of us followed Chief of Police Leslie Gatlin back across the border to Douglas, Arizona. Gatlin may not have brought little Charley McComas back to show off, but the very act of contact with the mythical white Apache has saved his reputation and given the Greater Douglas Chamber of Commerce the fodder to organize yet another expedition next spring. Now instead of using little Geraldo Huerta as the bait, they tell everyone that a poor defenseless young woman anthropologist by the name of Margaret Hawkins, from the University of Arizona, has been kidnapped by the bronco Apaches; it makes a better story that way, despite my repeated insistence that Margaret went with them voluntarily and did not wish to be rescued.
Most of Wade Jackson’s film had been exposed that morning when his camera was trampled under the horse’s hooves, but I managed to salvage a few frames. One of them was “the shot” Big Wade had referred to in his dying words—an image of Charley himself, riding in to meet with Carrillo and Gatlin just before things went wrong. The Douglas Daily Dispatch ran it on the front page the following week, under the banner headline: WILD MAN CHARLEY MCCOMAS FOUND! Both the story, which I wrote myself, and the photograph were picked up by the national press services and have run in newspapers all across the country. Big Wade would have been pleased with our final collaboration. On the strength of it, and because of my other work on the expedition, I was offered a job here on the Albuquerque Journal. Bill Curry asked me to stay on at the Daily Dispatch, but I took Big Wade’s advice and got the hell out of Dog-ass.
