Checking the gold hunter for the time. Still a good four or five hours of daylight left to him. And, despite the storm that had washed away the trail, he knew now where the party of white men was hiding. He didn’t know what he’d do when he found them, but Crow had never been the sort of man to ford a river until he reached it.
There’d be time.
Chapter Nine
Dusk was creeping in from the eastern sky, darkening as it came, folding itself into the valleys and the steep-sided arroyos. Leaving the tops of the hills in sunlight for the longest time.
Buzzard Peak was still touched with brightness, a bare hour away at a steady canter, when Crow heard the sound of a mounted patrol. Making so much noise that he guessed immediately `they must be soldiers. Cavalry out after the Chiricahua. There would be at least a dozen of them.
He reined in the stallion, waiting for them to come up to him, smiling to himself as he saw a way of using them to help him earn some money. With that kind of strength it would be easy to take the kidnappers. And there was no reason why Verity shouldn’t pay him.
Seeing them trotting towards him, led by a fresh-faced boy of around eighteen, Crow wondered for a moment whether the soldiers knew that there was a sizable band of Chiricahua around the region. It was getting late and he knew of no obvious safe camping place for the night.
‘Halt!’ shouted the boy, the command passed on by a gray-haired Corporal. The patrol straggled to an untidy halt, annoying Crow’s sense of military rightness.
‘Lieutenant Bradstock. You are…?’
‘You know there’s Chiricahua around, Mister Bradstock?’ asked Crow, looking at the soldiers. Ten of them.
That was all. Moving happily through country where there should be an Apache behind every single rock. Pushing on with this wet-eared kid, who hadn’t even bothered to put out a scout.
‘I have heard there are a few stragglers around.’
‘I saw a dozen or more around Dead Hawk.’
‘Not hostile,’ smiled the boy.
‘You’re goin’ to go grinnin’ to Hell, boy and take these men with you, if’n…’
‘Damn your impudence! You think…’
‘If’n,’ continued Crow as if the young officer had never spoken, ‘you believe that.’
‘By God! I’ll…’
‘You hard of hearin’, boy?’ asked the tall man, leaning forwards, both hands gripping the horn of his saddle. Looking straight at the Lieutenant.
‘No. I’m not. Nor am I hard of seein’. I can see some brainless drifter who sees a reservation Apache in a drunken sleep and believes that the whole nation is about to come round our ears.’
Crow’s knuckles whitened at the young man’s words. Holding himself under control with great difficulty. ‘I killed better men than you for a whole lot less than that, Mister Bradstock.’
‘Threaten me, and you’ll have cause to regret it! I will not have that!’
‘Could be the gentleman did see…’ began the Corporal, apologetically. ,
The boy turned on him like a terrier after a rat. Face flushed with anger. ‘Hold your tongue, Mayhew! Or you’ll find that the stripes have vanished off of your arm and appeared across your impudent back.’
Crow guessed that the N. C. O. had probably been a serving soldier before this boy was even born.
‘Mister Bradstock…’
For a moment he thought that the boy had so lost himself that he was going to draw on him, and his hand dropped to the butt of the Purdey, prepared to blast the officer from his saddle.
‘I do not want to hear more from you. You stop us with a wild and unsubstantiated tale of bands of marauding savages and then you threaten me.’
‘Keep goin’ on the trail to Dead Hawk, and keep your eyes well peeled, seein’ as how you don’t have the thought to put out scouts?
The Corporal opened his mouth as if he was going to speak, and then caught the blazing fury in the boy’s eyes I and made the right decision to hold his tongue.
‘And what will I see? A war council of the Apache nation worshipping the ghost of General Custer?’
Crow longed to smash his fist into the sneering young, mouth. But he wiped off the smile in a better way.
‘Three dead Chiricahua.’
‘What?’
‘Three. One was near dyin’ with the bloody flux when I shot him.’
‘You killed all three?’
‘Yes. All three.’
There was a long silence as the shadows crawled onwards, the sun finally slipping off the top of Buzzard Peak. It would soon be night. After the attack by the Indians, this last interruption was enough to make it difficult for Crow to get to his destination before full dark came one down.
‘Flux?’
‘Sure. He was crappin’ in a cave when I shot him. Didn’t seem rightly, somehow.’
‘Chiricahua?’
‘I guess you are hard of hearin’, Mister. I killed three Chiricahua who’d tried to ambush me. Not far off. Earlier I’d seen me a party of around a dozen. Figures they must be close around here.’
After the shock, the young Lieutenant was recovering some of his mangled self-possession. ‘They won’t bother us. Ten of us.’
Crow pointed up to the knife-edge of the cliffs above them, black against the midnight blue of the evening sky.
‘Put a half dozen men up there with Spencers and your ten men wouldn’t have the chance of a candle in a hurricane, Bradstock.’
‘I guess…maybe there could be something in what you say,’ admitted the Lieutenant, reluctantly. ‘But I’m aiming to camp in a half hour. Put out sentries. They won’t hit us. We’re goin’ to break mid-day tomorrow in Dead Hawk. You been there?’
‘Yeah.’ Crow didn’t see any reason now to waste even more time on an explanation of what he was doing and where he was going.
‘What do you think, Corporal?’ asked Bradstock, finally deciding to take some advice.
‘Well, Lieutenant,’ began Mayhew. ‘Seems to me like the gentleman here might have somethin’ on his side. He says he’s seen a party of ’Paches. Killed three himself. They could be settin’ for us.’
‘Lot of things restin’ on your word, Mister…Didn’t catch your name.’
‘Didn’t throw it.’
‘Come on, Mister,’ pressed the boy, now suddenly becoming suspicious. Eyes picking up the golden braid that hung from the saber on Crow’s hip. Rising to take in the yellow bandana at the throat. ‘Hey!’
Crow could have lied.
That would have been easy.
‘Doin’ it easy’s just another way of sayin’ doin’ it yellow was what an old shootist had once said to me years back.’
‘That’s Cavalry equipment.’ exclaimed the Corporal, seeing what his officer had spotted.
‘Want to tell us about it, Mister? And throw in your name while you’re at it.’
‘I was in the Cavalry.’
‘He’s a fuckin’ runner!’ exclaimed the Corporal, snatching out his pistol, leveling it at Crow.
It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. The desertion rate from the United States Cavalry reached epidemic proportions at times. Particularly during Crook’s campaign in the Black Hills of seventy-five and seventy-six when the whole of the region was stricken with gold fever. But it is also worth noting that the Secretary of War. Stephen B. Elkins, reported that of men recruited between eighteen sixty-seven and eighteen ninety-one, one third had deserted. A staggeringly high average figure.
‘You’d’ best explain yourself!’ barked the young officer, delighted that he’d now got on the scent of something more exciting than having to worry about why he hadn’t bothered to post scouts in an area where there were known to be hostile Indians.
‘I used to be an officer,’ explained Crow. Wondering how many more times in his life he would have to recite this litany. ‘Lieutenant with the Third. First Squadron out of Fort Buford.’
The Corporal’s pistol wavered and his jaw dropped.
‘Sir! That was where…I reckon this must be…’
Crow smiled at him. A thin smile that shut the N.C.O.’s mouth for him.
‘Right. My name’s Crow.’
Even the boy had heard about Crow. Maybe not with all the facts clear in his mind. But there’d been enough talk that ran like a wild-fire through the whole of the Cavalry.
Crow.
A story of treachery and desertion of duty. An attack by the Oglala Sioux only a few weeks before the massacre at the Little Big Horn. Crazy Horse. Crow was a friend of the Indian. He’d betrayed his companions to the Sioux and saved his own life with a secret signal when most of his patrol were dead. Court martial. Dismissed the service. It didn’t occur to the boy to wonder why, if even half of the tale was true, Crow hadn’t been immediately bound to a stake and shot by a firing squad. But in that kind of a situation it’s often easier to believe the story in its lying entirety rather than pick at the outside of it and find it comes apart in your hands.
When the legend becomes bigger than the truth, then you print the legend.
‘Crow!’
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed the Corporal, his finger whitening on the trigger. ‘I was a friend of John McLaglen, way back when. I hear you ran out and let him get butchered by some of your fuckin’ friends.’
‘You heard wrong,’ said Crow, quietly. Knowing that he was desperately close to death. One incorrect move or word and he was going to be blasted out of the saddle. Soldiers didn’t take to traitors. Crow had never been a traitor. Never been anything like it. But mud sticks.
‘I heard wrong?’ sneered Lieutenant Bradstock. ‘That the way you tell it?’
‘Yes. That’s the way I tell it. I figure you heard the lies ’bout me, Mister. You believed them. I don’t give a sweet Goddamn about that. I told you that there’s Apaches around. I’m tellin’ you that if you camp near here then I wouldn’t give a busted flush for the chances of you or any of these men.’
‘I guess…’ began the Corporal, the pistol again wavering as he considered the possibility that the tall man in black could be telling the truth.
‘That’s enough! By God, Crow! You surely have a nerve. Betray your command up north, then come down here like a fuckin’ carrion eater. Try and get us to do somethin’ you say. I wouldn’t be surprised if’n you hadn’t done a deal with some more of your stinkin’ bastard Indian friends to betray us as well!’
Crow sat very still and looked at the young officer. His eyes expressionless. Dark chips of night in hollows of washed bone. He felt the skin on his face tightening with anger at the snot-nose kid’s words. Finger itching for the polished butt of the Purdey.
Bradstock recoiled from the face. Heeling his own mount several steps backwards. Glancing round at his men for reassurance.
‘Don’t…’ he began, before he realized that Crow had done nothing. Said nothing.
Finally, his voice a whisper as soft as velvet and as cold as polished ice, Crow spoke.
‘You meet me ever again, boy, anywhere, and by God but I’ll kill you where you stand. You believe the shit that people’ve said about me, then you believe anything. But you keep that mouth sewn tight. I’ll kill you, Bradstock.’
‘You can’t threaten me…!’
‘I’m not threatenin’ you, boy. I’m promising you.’
‘I could have you shot down like a dog,’ began the officer, but there was no conviction in his voice and Crow knew that he wasn’t going to die.
Not there and then.
‘You give that order and I’ll draw on you and blast you to bloody rags. No way on this earth you could stop me.’
The silence stretched on. Darkness was creeping fast in around them and Crow realized that he wasn’t going to make it to the hidden camp of the whites. Not that night. The Lieutenant fought to regain control of a situation that had always been beyond him. Calling out to the Corporal to holster his pistol.
‘And then we move on out. Leave this . . .’ he thought better of it. ‘Leave him to his own ends. We’ll camp as planned as soon as possible. Move on out, Corporal.’
‘What about the Apaches, Sir?’ asked the non-com, still not sure what was happening.
‘Damn them! I don’t believe in them and I am certain sure, Corporal, that I would not believe this man if he said the sky was blue.’
Crow watched them go. Sitting patiently on his stallion until the last of them had vanished. He’d tried. Man couldn’t do more than try. The Cavalry moved on towards the east, away from the setting sun, into a region of cross-trails and low hills, now pools of total blackness where the night had caught up them.
There was no safe camping place for miles, but Crow guessed that the fresh-faced officer wouldn’t wait too long. He himself was going to have to look for somewhere to pass the dark hours.
There was a narrow draw off to the left, less than two hundred paces on and he walked the horse into it. Tethering it loosely to a large rock. Giving it a handful of oats from one of the saddle-bags. Unrolling his own blanket, and stretching out to sleep. Making sure that his guns were to hand.
It was about three when he woke. The low hour when cattle start awake for no reason and the blood flows at its slowest. The noises that had snatched him from sleep were easily recognizable.
The patrol of pony soldiers hadn’t gone very far to camp. Less than a half mile by the way the sounds carried. The shooting. Screaming. Yelping of Chiricahua Apaches that scented an easy victory.
Crow didn’t move. There was no point. After a little over a half hour he went back to sleep.
There was nothing to listen to but the long, empty silence.
Chapter Ten
Crow carried on riding west the next morning. Getting up as soon as the first flush of the false dawn lightened the eastern sky. Not bothering to go and look for the Cavalry patrol. The sight of butchered, scalped, mutilated corpses had never done a lot for him. He’d seen it all before.
The stallion eagerly devoured another handful of the oats, licking it from the hollow of Crow’s palm with a velvet tongue. Whinnying softly in the dimness, and rubbing its head against the man’s shoulder. Crow took no notice of it. Affection from a dumb beast was worth neither more nor less than that of a woman.
Or the friendship of a man.
His original plan was altered. The fact that the Apaches were close by meant danger to his schemes of coming in secretly to the camp of the white kidnappers. He needed now to End out where the Chiricahua camp was. To someone as survival-wise as Crow, that wasn’t hard.
The region was crisscrossed with tracks. He could pick out the horses of the white men. And the shod animals of the soldiers. Among them were the trails of the unshod ponies of the Apaches. Coming and going in a jumbled maze that would have bewildered most white men. But to him the hoof-marks told a simple story. It was as good as being handed an excellent map with a large arrow pointing to the camp of the Indians.
He wondered whether the kidnappers of the Veritys knew that they were in the middle of such hostile territory with Apaches all around them. If they knew they were taking a dreadful chance. Or perhaps they knew about the illness among the Chiricahua.
Maybe they just didn’t know at all, Crow had never subscribed to the theory that God looked only after the good. Wicked men got their fair share of the breaks as well. It wasn’t that far off Buzzard Rock. After their victory, Crow guessed that the Apaches would be resting up. Sleeping late. Enjoying their triumph over the white-eyes. Magnifying their tales of valor. Not that there can have been too much valor in slaughtering Bradstock and his patrol as they camped. Waiting like lambs for the Chiricahua to take them.
He left his black stallion when he figured he was close enough to where the camp must be. Though he didn’t know the region that well, Crow recalled there was a wide bowl of land, hedged in by low hills. With fresh water and at least three trails out of it. That was where they’d be. The Chiricahua liked high places, but in this region there weren’t e
nough of the hidden fortresses that they loved. So they’d go for comfort and safety.
What was damned strange was that Crow couldn’t find any guards. Not where he expected them to be placed. Not on the trails in. Not watching from the ledges up above. Suspecting some kind of a trap, the big man eased himself to the head of a narrow chimney of red-brown rock, emerging on top of a bluff that overlooked the camp. It was where he’d thought it would be. The nearest of the wickiups only about two hundred paces from where he lay.
It was a beautiful clear spring morning, the light perfect. It wasn’t a large camp. Not more than twenty of the small huts. Crow stared down, sensing that something was very wrong. No tires smoking this late. No dogs that would normally have been scavenging about the wickiups. No bare-assed brats fighting and playing around in the dust.
‘No damned horses,’ he whispered.
It wasn’t unusual for Apaches to desert a camp overnight, abandoning the site for some reason or another. But Crow had never known them leave the wickiups as they were.
Moving as if he were stalking wild deer, constantly looking around him, Crow crept nearer. Down the face of the bluff, pausing and standing very still. Ears cocked for a noise of any kind.
But there was nothing. The faint breath of wind that was blowing gently from the north-west. A ragged piece of curtain flapped at the mouth of one of the furthest of the wickiups. Moving slowly back and forth, as though an invisible hand was flicking at it to try and attract the attention of the watching white man.
There was nothing else.
Crow finally decided that it wasn’t a trap. There was no point to it. Something had happened to the Chiricahua to make them pack up and leave. It must have been within the last four or five hours.
Before he came close to the homes, Crow circled the entire camp, and he saw fresh tracks moving out of the area. To the north. Lots of ponies. Feet. Impossible even for him to guess at how many, But they had taken several travoises with them, the ends of the poles ridged deep in the ground. That meant either an unusual number of old people.
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