Apache Sundown

by Jory Sherman

“Can we do anything for him, Zak?” O’Hara asked.

  “He’s losing blood fast. My bullet must have cut an artery. Not all of the blood is coming out his back.”

  “He’s bleeding to death, then.”

  “It looks that way.”

  O’Hara turned his head. He could not look at the dying man. Colleen remained cowering against the wall, her gaze fixed on Zak. Scofield’s face was a mask of hatred and contempt as he gazed down at Medina.

  Zak eased the hammer down on his pistol but didn’t put it back in its holster.

  “I think this man’s paralyzed,” he said. “Bullet probably sheared off part of his backbone.”

  “He’s not moving much, with all that pain,” O’Hara said.

  Morning light began to seep in through the windows. Medina groaned, but he didn’t spit out the stick and scream. Zak felt pity for the man. At the same time, he thought of how often men made mistakes in judgment that cost them their lives, or crippled them for life. Medina was probably bleeding to death, but his last minutes on earth would be agonizing. The man should have known better. What caused someone like him to think he could get away like that? Loyalty to Ferguson, or to Trask? Or was he like some cornered animal, so hungry for freedom that he would risk his life to escape? Well, Medina had lost. The risk had been too great.

  Zak saw the light spreading across the landscape, turning the rocks to rust, casting shadows to the west, pulling all the cool from the earth. In the distance he heard the call of a quail, and he saw a pair of doves fly across the barren land, twisting in the air like dancers with wings.

  “Scofield, you and Rivers start carrying wood outside. Everything that will burn—tables, chairs, firewood. Pile them up nearby at the highest point of the land. Break the furniture up if you have to. Build me a tall pyramid.” Zak turned to Colleen. “If you have any female things to do, Colleen, best get to it. We’re leaving.”

  “What about Pablo there?” she asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Are you just going to leave him lying there in agony?”

  “There’s nothing I can do for him,” Zak said.

  “So, you’re just going to watch him die. In agony.”

  “I’m not going to watch him die.”

  “But he’s going to die,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, you…” She flounced out of the adobe, into the dawn. He heard her rummaging through her saddlebags at the hitchrail. There was a rustle of paper, the ruffle and flap of cloth, footsteps on the hard cool ground.

  Medina retched and spat the stick onto the dirt floor. Blood bubbled up out of the hole in his back.

  “We better move him,” O’Hara said.

  “Grab an arm,” Zak said.

  The two men pulled Medina away from the vomit. Zak turned him over so he lay on his back. His face was wet with tears, his eyes glistening like ebony agates.

  “I do not feel my legs,” Medina said, in English.

  “Do you feel pain?” Zak asked.

  “No more.” This, in Spanish.

  “You’re paralyzed, Pablo,” Zak said. “If you know any prayers, say them.”

  “There is no priest.”

  “No. There’s just you and God.”

  Medina began to weep, without shame. Zak and O’Hara looked at each other. O’Hara shook his head. Zak nodded.

  “You just goin’ to leave me back here?” Deets said from the rear of the room.

  “Take him outside, Ted,” Zak said. “I’ll be out soon. Have Rivers and Scofield knock down those hitchrails and stack them with the other wood. There should be a maul or a hammer in here somewhere, a pry bar, maybe.”

  “Will do,” O’Hara said. He walked to the back of the adobe and looked around for something to tear down the hitchrails. He found an old sledgehammer, picked it up. Then he walked over to Deets, untied the rope around his ankles and stood him up.

  “You run, Deets,” O’Hara said, “I’ll shoot you down.”

  Deets growled low in his throat but said no words.

  The two men walked outside.

  Zak heard voices as O’Hara gave commands and Scofield answered him. Rivers came in and carried out a table. He came back for a chair.

  “You want us to tear apart these bunk beds?” he asked Zak.

  “Everything that will burn, Hugh.”

  “First time you’ve called me by my first name,” Rivers said. “It’s Hugo, not Hugh.”

  “All right, Hugo. What’s in a name, anyway?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” Zak said.

  Rivers was outside for some moments. Zak heard Scofield lay into the hitchrails with the sledge. Apparently Rivers spelled him, because Scofield entered the adobe to carry out another chair, a shelf board, and a wooden box.

  “Pile’s gettin’ pretty big,” he said to Zak, who still stood over Medina.

  “Keep stacking it up, Scofield.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Medina stopped crying. He put a hand to his face and rubbed his cheeks.

  “There is pain now,” he said, his voice a whispery rasp. This was in Spanish, and Zak spoke to him in Spanish.

  “Did you pray, Pablo?”

  “Yes. I will die soon, maybe.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You do not shoot me? To make it quick?”

  “No. You’re going to have to die on your own, Pablo.”

  “I want to die now. Give me a gun.”

  “You are Catholic, Pablo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it not a mortal sin for a man to take his own life?”

  “I think so, yes. But the pain…it is so much now.”

  “If there is no priest, to whom do you confess, Pablo?”

  “Maybe to God. Maybe to you.”

  “Better God than me.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I will confess.”

  “Ask to be forgiven for your sins,” Zak said.

  “Yes, I will do that.”

  “The dying will be your penance.”

  “What?” The man’s eyes glittered behind the tears.

  “Does not the priest give you penance? Prayers to say, good deeds to do?”

  “Yes, the priest does that. He says to say the Hail Marys, the Our Fathers. So many for so many sins.”

  “Say those, then. It will take your mind off the pain, perhaps.”

  Medina closed his eyes. Zak could see his lips quivering, opening slightly and closing again, as if he was murmuring the prayers or confessing. Then he heard the word peccata and realized that Pablo was speaking in Latin, that ancient, dead language that was never spoken until the Catholic priests took up the practice.

  A Jesuit had told Zak about Latin, how it was always only a written language until the priests spoke the Mass in that tongue. The priest had studied Latin and spoken it for two years before he took his vows. The language was precise, highly inflected, and suited the Church’s purposes. Zak believed that the Church made the language sacred and holy to separate themselves from ordinary people, add mystery to their canons. And now Pablo Medina was talking to his God in the Latin. Somehow, it seemed fitting. Zak saw blood streaming from underneath him and the color seemed to drain from his face. His lips paled and stopped moving.

  “Good-bye, Pablo,” Zak said, in Spanish. “Go with God.”

  Medina crossed himself with pathetically slow movements and then all the strength seemed to leave him. His arm flopped down and lay across his chest.

  But then, when Zak thought he was gone, Medina gasped and a shiver coursed through his torso. He opened his eyes wide and looked up as if seeing a phantasm. He choked, gasped, then let out a last breath. His mouth opened, but he did not breathe anymore.

  “Vaya con Dios,” Zak said again, and turned away.

  He walked outside and drew a deep breath. The air was clean and cool. The desert scents wafted to his nostrils and filled him with an odd warmth.

  Colleen walked up from where
she had been, beyond the road. She was carrying a small towel, a canteen, a bottle of lilac water, and a bundle of sanitaries.

  “Can you make us some coffee before we go, Colleen?” Zak asked.

  “Yes. The stove is hot, we’ve water and a pot. Do you have a cup?”

  “In my saddlebags.”

  O’Hara and Deets were up above them on the slight ridge, watching the soldiers break the legs off tables and chairs, pile them atop a pyramid of wood.

  “Is Pablo…” Colleen’s eyes bore into Zak’s, searched his face.

  “He’s gone, Colleen.”

  “Thank God,” she said.

  “God had nothing to do with it,” he said, a trace of bitterness in his tone.

  She started to retort, but saw the look on Zak’s face and swept past him, disappeared inside the adobe. Another pair of doves whistled past, and the thin high clouds glistened white and peach in the morning sun. Zak looked to the east, to the land of the Chiricahua, and thought of Cochise.

  Now there, he thought, was a man to ride the river with.

  And they both had one more river to cross.

  Chapter 27

  Zak carried a flaming faggot out to the pile of wood.

  “After this gets going,” he said to Rivers and Scofield, “cut down all the cactus, cholla, yucca, and whatever else is green and throw it on the blaze and then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

  He threw the chunk of blazing kindling into the pile of wood, near the bottom of the pyramid, and watched as the flames licked at the fuel. O’Hara, Colleen, and Deets stood by, drinking their coffees, watching the wood catch fire.

  “Mind telling me what this is all about, Zak?” O’Hara asked.

  “I hope it’ll be a signal fire, Ted.”

  “A signal fire? For whom, if I may ask?”

  “For Cochise.”

  “Cochise? Did I hear you right?”

  Ted almost choked on his coffee. Colleen, too, looked surprised. Deets stood there with a dumb look on his face. He’d stopped bleeding and Zak had untied the rope around his wrists. He, too, was drinking coffee. Another of Zak’s acts of kindness toward his prisoner.

  “You heard me, Ted. We’re going to need Cochise.”

  “What will he make of the fire?”

  “I expect one of his scouts will see the smoke when it starts rising. Cochise will want to know what it’s about.”

  “That seems like a pretty long shot to me,” O’Hara said.

  The first plumes of smoke began to lift off the pyre. They were thin at that point, but as Scofield and Rivers threw green plants on the top, the smoke spread out and thickened. Soon, the fire was blazing and smoke spiraled up to the sky, spreading as the zephyrs caught it.

  “Now, go inside the adobe and bring those bunk mattresses out,” Zak told the soldiers. “Toss them on the fire and then mount up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rivers and Scofield chorused.

  Zak finished his coffee while the soldiers piled on the damp mattresses. The feathers crackled and fumed, adding bulk to the rising smoke. A tower of black and gray smoke above the blaze, smoke that could be seen for miles around.

  He put his cup back in his saddlebags. “Mount up,” he ordered.

  Colleen and Ted tossed the rest of their coffee onto the ground. In moments they were mounted, along with Rivers, Scofield, and Deets.

  “Deets, you can light a shuck,” Zak told his prisoner.

  “Huh?”

  “Go on. Ride up that road and tell Trask anything you want.”

  “You mean you’re just turnin’ me loose? I can go?”

  “Nobody’s going to shoot you in the back, Deets. Go on. I have no further interest in you.”

  For a moment Deets appeared unsure of himself. He looked at O’Hara, who gave no indication of approval or disapproval. He looked at Rivers and Scofield. Their faces were impassive.

  Then he clucked to his horse and turned him toward the road.

  He stopped, turned back to look at Zak.

  “You really going to sic Cochise on us, Mr. Cody?”

  “You bet your boots I am, Deets.”

  Zak smiled, but there was no warmth in it. It was the kind of smile that would curdle milk, or the blood in a man’s veins. Deets turned and rode off slowly toward the road. Everyone around the fire watched him go.

  “That was a big mistake, Zak,” O’Hara said. “You’ll lose the element of surprise.”

  “I want Trask to know his days are numbered,” Zak said.

  “You might be numbering our days,” O’Hara said.

  Zak ticked spurs into Nox’s flanks. He rode off to the east, the others following. He could still smell the smoke, and he knew the fire would burn long enough to serve its purpose.

  He took an angle, away from the road, straight into the heart of Chiricahua country. He had cleaned his pistol, oiled it, reloaded it with six brass cartridges. His rifle, too, was loaded and ready. He knew that because of his wound, Deets could not travel fast. By the time Deets reached that last old stage station, Zak figured he would be smoking the pipe with Cochise. And, maybe, Jeffords would be there, too. The more the merrier.

  Quail piped and he saw a coyote slink toward the shack they had just left, its nose to the ground, its tail drooping. The coyote was a gray shadow on the landscape, a ghost left over from the dark night and the flash flood. A survivor, slat-ribbed, lean, scavenging for scraps, leftovers, and maybe a dead man lying inside the adobe, his scent already rising, like the smoke from the fire, to alert the buzzards that were already circling in the sky.

  Cochise would see them, too.

  Everything was perfect, Zak thought. Just as he had planned.

  Chapter 28

  Lieutenant John Welch needed only one glance at the map Ben Trask had spread out on the table.

  “That’s Lieutenant O’Hara’s map, all right,” he said. “That’s his writing on it.”

  Trask smiled with satisfaction. He jabbed a finger down on one of the X’s O’Hara had drawn.

  “And that’s where we’ll find Cochise and his whole damned tribe. Think you can find it, Lieutenant?”

  “You’re damned right I can find it. He’s got compass directions, everything we need. I’m ready to go if you are. Looks to be about a two-day ride. Three at most.”

  “Let’s do it,” Trask said.

  They walked out of the adobe together. Welch’s troops were mounted, and Ferguson stood by on horseback with his men and Trask’s. He held the reins of Trask’s horse. Trask took them and climbed into the saddle.

  Ferguson was looking off toward the west, his eyes squinted to narrow slits.

  Trask adjusted his boots in the stirrups, looked off in the same direction that Ferguson was gazing.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked.

  “Smoke,” Ferguson said. “Way off.”

  “I wonder what it means,” Trask said.

  “I have no idea,” Ferguson replied.

  Welch barked the orders and his troops moved out in a column of twos. There was no guidon, and all of the troops, including Welch, wore civilian clothes. The only clues that the men were in the army were their rifles and their boots. Otherwise, they looked like any group of ordinary townfolk.

  “Did you see all that smoke in the sky over to the west of us, Trask?” Welch said after a few minutes.

  “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Something caught fire.”

  “Looks to be somewhere near the old stage road.”

  “Could be.”

  “It doesn’t worry you?”

  “Why should it? It’s miles away. Hell, I’ve seen smoke all my life. There’s always somebody burnin’ something, leaves, trash, you name it.”

  “Not likely anybody’s burning leaves in this country,” Welch said.

  “I’ve seen ’em burn dead horses and dead cattle, too,” Trask said.

  “Up north, you see smoke like that, you thin
k one thing. I’m talking about Colorado, Montana, the Dakotas.”

  “Yeah. Injuns.”

  “That’s right,” Welch said.

  “So, did you ever see Apaches send smoke signals?” Trask asked.

  “No, but I’ve only been here about a year.”

  “Don’t worry about it, then. I ain’t.”

  Welch looked at him.

  Trask had the bark on him, all right. But the smoke gave Welch an uneasy feeling. He looked around at the wide sky, the blueness of it so pretty it could make a man’s eyes well up, and the little puffs of clouds. As pretty a day as he’d ever seen.

  But there shouldn’t have been smoke to smudge that pretty blue sky.

  Chapter 29

  They rode past the sunset and through the long night, Zak in the lead. Scofield slept in the saddle, with Rivers making sure he didn’t fall from his horse. Ted let his sister sleep as she rode, and he kept close, ready to catch her if she fell. Rivers and Scofield took turns, but neither truly slept. They just kept going.

  Zak stopped every four hours so everyone could walk around and stretch. Toward morning he halted to build a fire, make coffee. The coffee kept them going, and when dawn broke they were on horseback once again, riding straight into the rising, blinding sun.

  Near noon Zak took out his silver dollar and began flashing it like a signal mirror. An hour later he got an answer. Three flashes. He tipped the dollar and sent back three flashes. A single flash answered him, which he also acknowledged.

  They all saw the flashes.

  “You know who that is, Zak?” O’Hara asked.

  “I think so. Wait.”

  Zak flashed the coin again. There were answering flashes.

  He put the silver dollar back in his pocket.

  “Well?” O’Hara said.

  “That was Anillo. ‘Ring,’ in English. He told me a place to meet. Cochise will be there.”

  “How far? How long?” The news seemed to give O’Hara new energy. He was as bright-eyed as a recruit after his first shave.

  “One hour. At an Apache well I know. They know I’m coming with you, your sister, and two bluecoat soldiers.”

  O’Hara laughed. “I’m glad I made friends with Cochise.”