Black Apache

by Clay Fisher

  “She wants you for her jacal pet, priest,” the scalper told me, clearly pleased. “She’s just made it a condition of our bargain with your nigger.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said, startled. “Flicker!”

  I had thought to see the renegade Negro flinch when Santiago called him nigger, but I quickly knew I must have been mistaken. “I can’t help you, priest,” he coldly said, mimicking Kifer’s address. “Just do your little dog’s best by the lady. Don’t let your comrades down.”

  I could not even then believe that Flicker meant this treachery, but there remained no time to worry about being the Catholic jacal plaything of Monkey Woman. Flicker and Kifer were going to the breakfast fire: Our surrender was to hand.

  Riflemen mounted guard for both sides. For us, the negotiators were Flicker and Packrat, Kaytennae commanding our rifles. For them, Santiago and Monkey Woman sat to the bargaining over the coffee tins. Pretty Boy stayed with his broncos lobos and their twenty cocked guns.

  In moments, only, the traitorous deed was done.

  We could destroy the map before they might seize it from us, true. But they could hold us in the barranca until we starved to death. Or shoot us all down in a prolonged rifle fight. For alternative, Santiago proposed that we all go on together to El Naranjal. That we divide equally whatever we might find there of Franciscan gold. And that we then go our separate, peaceful ways in the gentleman’s truce and soldier’s trust that he was prepared to offer here. Why, in sanity’s name, should we kill each other, and no one find the gold?

  There followed some brief, weak argument from Flicker, but then, plainly defeated, he signaled me over.

  I went to him and he drew me aside so that no one might hear us. “Tell our mining expert that Mirlo says it is time for him to change his mount and ride the old white bell mule. Say it in precisely that way, Nunez,” Flicker emphasized. “Packrat will understand.”

  Seeing my dumbfounded frown, he became más severo. “Don’t you back off me now, damn you, padre,” he snapped. “Listen. Remember when Packrat took the old white mule at my order into the big American mining camp at Cerro Ventana? I said I sent him in for some good American cigars, remember? Well, that was a business trip. And Flicker knows his business. Especially when it’s monkey business. Believe it, hombre, he didn’t buy cigars in Cerro Ventana!”

  “But—”

  “But nada!” Flicker glared. “Remember just this one thing more: When I sent Packrat for those cigars, it was immediately after we had found out that Santiago and the Yaqui rurales had not given up, as we thought, but were right behind us again. Think about that.”

  He gave me a pat on the back and called aloud to Santiago Kifer and Monkey Woman that all was settled with Father Nunez, the last of our side to require understanding of Santiago’s generous terms.

  Kifer then went to Pretty Boy, talked quickly with his ugly half brother, returned to the fire, and announced the final agreement from his side, as well.

  The shameful bargain was put to immediate effect.

  We traveled broken into three groups. First went Kifer, Monkey Woman, and Robert Flicker, with Kaytennae again as Apache guide. Then came my company, including all our women guarded in its middle by Loafer and myself, with Packrat in outer command. Behind us, who were thus really hostage to the damnable plan, came Pretty Boy and the broncos lobos. In this way, it was claimed, the maximum of security would be obtained, the minimum opportunity for treachery provided.

  The map, de seguro, rode with Nunez in the middle of his brave little company.

  Thus we set out, back through North Barranca, to come to where the road to El Naranjal went into East Barranca.

  In our central group we were depressed in the extreme. Stella Allison, riding knee and knee with me, confided her well-learned fears for Yaqui treachery. For my part, I cursed Flicker’s cowardice. Or at very least his foolhardy trusting of the scalper’s word. One knew that some planned crime of betrayal was included in the terms.

  In truth, it was.

  But not by Santiago Kifer and the Yaqui.

  When our cavalcade neared the site of the ancient stone sign, I noted Packrat riding the old white bell mule so that she lagged behind. I reprimanded him sharply and ordered him to keep up, but he told me in Apache to mind my part of Soldado Negro’s business deal and let him get on with his.

  Next, I noted he was riding the white mule nearly back into the Yaqui rurale troops. As I remarked this, I saw him pull from his pocket, bite the end off, and light with flourish of large sulfur matchstick a most impressive but peculiar looking cigarro grande.

  He put this great cigar in his mouth to wet the end for smoking.

  Evidently, however, Packrat did not relish the taste of the big smokes that Flicker had sent him to purchase at Cerro Ventana. He made a wry face and, removing two more of the offending cigars from his pocket, wrapped them in a bundle with the first cigar. He then flung this packet contemptuously—but most forcefully—over his shoulder toward the trailing Yaquis. The three-cigar bundle made a fine high arc above the narrow pathway of North Barranca and fell squarely among the brute-faced rurale troops of Niño Bonito.

  Only it was not a bundle of three cigars that Packrat had “bit and lit,” as Flicker later put it.

  It was a packet of three sticks of the very best United States—made giant blasting powder. And what Packrat had bitten off so short as to sputter no more than six measured clock-ticks was the hard twist of black fuse that ran into the first of los tres cigarros. Small wonder that the rotund Apache so unmercifully whipped the old white bell mule away from the puzzled Yaqui rurales.

  The following explosion, held so tightly close by the crowding walls of the barranca, literally knocked me off my mount—and I was one hundred varas away from it.

  Dirt, rock, jungle limbs, clots of fernery, and bits of Yaqui soldier and rurale uniform rained down upon our hunched shoulders for what seemed eternity. Then Packrat was yelling for us to whip on our horses and the pack train of our mules. Up ahead, I could hear the vicious cursing of Santiago Kifer and the unearthly simian screaming of his mother, Monkey Woman.

  I vow that I heard also, above everything, the rich, deep laugh of Robert E. Lee Flicker.

  Ah! Flicker. Gentleman, scholar, almost officer of the United States Army. Decent and honorable black human being of superior character, unquestioned virtue, absolute trust of given word and sealed contract.

  Also, thank God, unmitigated rotten traitor to his Yaqui bond.

  Flicker had met the enemy and blown him nigh out of North Barranca.

  El Naranjal lay before us.

  43

  CLIMB FASTER AND

  DON’T LOOK BACK

  Ahead, we could hear Flicker yelling, “aquí, aquí,” meaning for us to “come this way.” Kaytennae was up there, too, shouting in Apache, “ugashe,” or, “come on, let’s go!” Rallying my people, I led them through the still-hanging dust toward the voices. We had abandoned our horses now but still had our mules. About us, as we went, I could see Yaqui bodies, both moving and not moving. Some were half buried in the debris brought down from the barranca walls. I did not see their leader, Pretty Boy. Nor was I looking for him. Or any of them. I was looking to save the life of Alvar Nunez, naturally in company with those entrusted by Flicker to my shepherding. The fact that I beat them all to East Barranca, and to the rocks that hid Flicker and Kaytennae at that point, had nothing to do with it. I was their leader. Did I not have to go ahead of them to be sure the way was safe? Por supuesto.

  Even so, my selfless act in preceding them nearly cost me my life. Yet some still say that Nunez ran like a rabbit that day in North Barranca “when the walls came down.” Such is charity among the tiny of mind.

  What really happened is that I blundered out of the dust into the very middle of some hot rifle fire that commenced just as I arrived there.

/>   Fortunately, my keen eyesight rescued me.

  To my left, I saw, belatedly, Flicker and Kaytennae firing from their rocks in the throat of East Barranca. To my right, all in the same eagle-like glance, I observed a cavern in the wall of the northern barranca, just opposite the entrance of the eastern branching. Inside the lip of this cavern were Monkey Woman and Santiago Kifer and then two others who, in all the stirring of alarm, we had entirely forgotten—Crench and Belcher, the two deputies of Tombstone. Later we were to learn that Santiago had left them behind as rear guard while he probed on down the North Barranca after us. For the moment, I saw only that Belcher, the hairy lank devil, had reared himself up to one knee and leveled his weapon—another shotgun—full into my body, where I had, quick as a panther, gone to my abdomen in the dirt. Out of the same eye-corner, I saw Crench, the great lurching oaf, reach with his arm and knock aside Belcher’s gun barrels. The weapon discharged as Crench moved, its heavy load of buckshot whizzing over my head and blowing out the belly of a poor mule that stood beyond me. Ears ringing from the powder blast, I heard Crench raging at Belcher, “Hyar, damn ye! Leave the little crunchback be. He ain’t done you no hurt.”

  Belcher’s reply was obscene, but Santiago’s voice from the cavern was merely blasphemous.

  “Shoot the padre, goddamn you, you two dumb bastards!” he screamed at his deputies. “He’s the one’s got the map on him. Get him down!”

  With the same shout, he shouldered his own Winchester to kill me. Belcher also recovered and rammed two more shells into the shotgun. But Crench, the supreme fool that he was, lunged out of the cavern, scooped me up like a barnyard chick, and raced with me over into East Barranca’s rocks. There, he dropped me among my own people and just stood there, fully exposed to the fire of his friends who were trying now to kill him from the cave.

  Flicker it was who reached out from behind his rock and knocked Crench’s great flat feet out from under him, bringing the hulking deputy down among us like the felling of some forest giant.

  “Lay low, deputy,” the Negro Apache advised. “Your amigos yonder got it in mind to do you scant good.”

  Crench first said, “Why, thanks,” then blundered back to his feet and yelled across the barranca, “Hyar, damn ye, ye bastards. It’s me, Crench. What the hells-fire you trying to do?”

  Flicker felled him again and just in time.

  “Stay down, you idiot,” he said calmly “We can use a mule like you. You can carry the packs of that one Belcher blew the bowels out of.”

  The lumbering mind of Deputy Crench strained to catch up to this idea. Flicker patted him on the head. “Good boy,” he said. “Don’t fret it. Welcome to the dream of Father Alvar Nunez. And thanks for coming.”

  “Huh?” Crench frowned. “Thanks for what?”

  “Thanks for helping us out,” Flicker explained, throwing a shot into the cavern across the barranca. “We appreciate it.”

  “I ain’t done nothing,” the deputy objected.

  “You saved the padre’s life,” Flicker told him. “We call that something. Not much, of course. But something.”

  “I like the little fart,” Deputy Crench defended.

  “Sure enough,” said Flicker. “And that isn’t easy.”

  He turned to me.

  “Nunez,” he said, “get your people together. You’d best persuade Crench to stay with us; Kifer will kill him, sure. Be ready to go when Kite and I open full fire. How many mules left?”

  “Five. They have all gotten into the barranca brush behind us. My people are in there with them, also.”

  “You mean in East Barranca, where we’re going?”

  “Yes, praise God. Young Grass got the mules and everybody in there.”

  “Goddamn Apache.”

  “Yes, gracias a Dios.”

  “Mierda,” Flicker grimaced. “If you see God, give him a Winchester. Tell him to hold low and not get his barrel too hot.”

  “Forgive this black sinner, dear Savior!” I pleaded.

  “Hand dear Savior a Winchester, too,” Flicker growled. “You ready, Kite? You got ammo left?”

  “Anh, yes,” Kaytennae nodded.

  “All right,” Robert Flicker said. “Ugashe.”

  He and Kaytennae commenced, as one, to lever their repeating rifles. Their fire went into the cavern opposite. There was no halt in its thunderous roll. Powder smoke and the stink of powder smoke clotted the outer barranca. Beneath its cloud, I went with the women and ex-Deputy Crench on up into the brushchoke of East Barranca. Packrat stayed behind with his rifle to join Flicker and Kaytennae in the blasting of Kifer, Monkey Woman, and Deputy Belcher.

  As abruptly as it had begun, the barrage broke off.

  Flicker and the two Apaches came running and dodging through rock and scrub. Behind them, the weapons of the enemy were silent. That stillness but lent the wings of fear to our steep climb up East Barranca.

  “God knows if we hit anything,” Flicker panted to me. “But Santiago’s too smart to get winged by luck. With his kind you never say they’re dead until you dig them under. Then you sit shotgun on the grave for a week.”

  “I didn’t see Pretty Boy down where I was,” I puffed. “He might be dead.”

  “Where was he when the sticks blew?”

  “Let’s see, he was with his men. No, he was lagging behind them. Talking to that one he calls Buzzard. That’s his second, his ayudante.”

  “How far behind the men were they?” Flicker said.

  “Ten varas, perhaps.”

  “Damn, that’s far enough.”

  “You think they escaped?”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Flicker grunted. “Climb a little faster, padre. And don’t look back.”

  44

  THE ROAD TO THE ORANGE GROVE

  The barranca gained elevation constantly. After the first few hundred pasos of jungle-grown lower course, we broke into an open vastness of barren rock. Here, great excitement seized us.

  In rock, a trail will show if it be five hundred years old. Or five thousand. We saw unmistakable evidence of ancient mule traffic now. In places, the old track was worn six inches deep in the soft sandstone. I knew from the Franciscan literature that El Naranjal had been mined through parts of two centuries. Such a deep track had to mean that Flicker was correct. East Barranca was the road to the orange grove.

  “Jefe,” I flattered him, while we still panted behind the rump of the last pack mule, “dispénseme. You seem to have guessed right. Such a trail as this one must be the road to a very rich mine—only a very rich one, eh?”

  “It has to be El Naranjal,” he answered, face flushed not alone by the heat of the climb. “Padre, I’ve got an apology, too. We’re closer to that Apache church of yours than ever I believed we would be.”

  “Gracias a Dios,” I murmured, crossing myself.

  “Him and old Kite,” he corrected.

  “And old Mirlo,” I amended.

  He laughed. It made a good sound there in the sunglare of the barranca.

  We took a quarter-hour noonhalt in a small saucer of rocks that contained a spring. There was just room for our five pack mules and nine human beings and one exhausted old camp dog to stand in the basin. We made no fire. It would be foolish to let any possible pursuers know our location where we could not see theirs.

  Then, as we went on, we noted the air thinning.

  “Damned high,” frowned Flicker. “Strange, too.”

  “Yes, we must be a mile up.”

  “And still going straight up,” Flicker said.

  “We could see only the rim of North Barranca from down below,” I recalled. “Perhaps there is no mesa above us, as we have been assuming, but a mountain, rather.”

  “We couldn’t know,” Flicker said. “We’ve been in that damned big barranca the last three days.
We could have come to a mountain.”

  “Very big one, I think,” I said. “Its name will be El Quebradero. Eleven thousand feet, nearly, and not showing on any modern map.”

  “The hell,” Flicker said. “Not on the maps?”

  “It’s on one map,” I said. “This one.”

  I held up the Franciscan carta, and Flicker frowned and said he didn’t remember any El Quebradero on that map. I gave him the document. He looked at it, then me.

  “That wasn’t on that map this morning,” he said flatly.

  “Perhaps that is why they call it El Quebradero,” I smiled.

  “The Enigma. Hmmm.”

  “Yes, or the mystery. It’s part of the legend.”

  “Yeah,” said Flicker. “Since about five hours ago.”

  “Sabe Dios,” I shrugged. “I remember it being there all the while. Perhaps you were looking always at the tracings of the mine itself.”

  “The hell,” said Flicker again.

  The way became so steep shortly that actual stair-steps had been cut into the living rock—for mules that would now be two hundred years old. Our own pack beasts placed their hooves in these stepholes with some uncertainty at first. But then old Cosa Dulce, old Sweet Thing, our white bell mule, took the lead and had no trouble at all. Surely it was only that she was brainy enough to figure out the stairsteps, the others then imitating what she did. Still, it disturbed me somehow that she would seem to know the way.

  “Well, look at it like this,” Flicker said, when I sought reassurance from him. “Either it’s her brains or her age.”

  “Her age?”

  “Yes, you know; maybe she has been here before. Like two hundred years before.”

  “Preposterous,” I waved.

  Flicker eyed me. “To an expedition that has maps that grow mountains,” he said, “what the hell is a two-hundred-year-old white mule?” Again, he cocked dark eye at me. “Matter of fact,” he said, “you’re beginning to look a little ancient yourself, Nunez. I wish we had a good priest here. We could use some exorcising about now.”