by Clay Fisher
There was a pause, during which I heard the crunch of pebbles beneath n’deh b’keh behind me, and I sensed, rather than saw, the tall form of the Texan move up to join us. In my continuing, incomprehensible innocence, I still did not realize what the Nednhi was saying.
Allison did, por supuesto.
“Padre,” he said, in his soft San Saba drawl, “you’d best go tend the woman. This ain’t your game.”
Then I knew. Then I turned to go, queasy of the gut already, but grateful. But I was too slow by half a turn. In the corner of my eye, I saw the first of the crouching shadows melt out of the south rocks of Old Campground. I waited, even then, to be sure, and, in the silence on the mountainside, I heard distinctly their first excited whimperings and the horrid chopping of the jaw teeth induced by the sighting and smelling of the bloodied baits before them.
I fled then to the side of Huera.
Hooding my cowl, I prayed to hear no more.
But I did hear.
I hear that frightful sound yet.
It was not alone the slavering and bickering of the wolves among themselves, but the human cries of impossible agony that preceded the end. Pray God I shall never see purgatory. But I have already heard it.
It was when the wolves came for the heads of Custer Johnson and the youth, Billy Jo Carson, at Old Campground of the Chiricahua.
And ate them, to the sand of the beach, alive.
17
The hinny mules behaved as though broken to the work of the in-between sling. Moreover, West Way, as far as the Cañon Avariento, proved not a difficult track. It was neither as steep nor as dangerously narrow as the trail into Old Campground from Casas Grandes. Remarking on this welcome surprise, I was cautioned by Allison to “wait up a bit.”
“Happen I know Injuns,” he nodded. “We’ll come to where she squeezes down like a tight-choked side-by-each.”
“Like a what, hombre?”
“A double-barreled scatter-gun bored full-and-full.”
“Ah!”
I naturally had no precise idea what he was talking about. But, as usual, I got what he called “the drift” of his aromatic Texas speech. Perhaps, in this case, it was only because the word avariento had the meaning of “narrow,” among several others permitting one to surmise that Cañon Avariento might prove to be well named. The Indians seldom erred in these appellations.
We rode the night away with only two halts to tighten saddles and to see to Huera’s condition. It was nearing dawn when Juh called the third halt.
At this point the Apache horses had been on the force for twenty hours. They were ridden down to their hocks and at least half of them would be fit only for wolf baiting, hereafter. The remaining half would recover with rest, but could not carry their riders an added mile, presently, even if beaten to it. They were simply done.
Juh came to me, his shadow Kaytennae by his side.
“Blackrobe,” he said, “your small mules appear yet sound. I want you to go by their heads, however, from this place. The way will be difficult and I am sure they will travel it better if following you. Kaytennae will be your guide, in turn. Tejano,” he said to Allison, “come with me.”
“Anh, Jefe,” the Texan answered quickly. “You bet.” Then, quietly aside to me, in leaving, “Padre, if this here is where we split the blanket, good luck with your half. You ain’t very big, but you will do for full-growed.”
“Hasta la vista,” I said, and they were gone. “Well,” Kaytennae said cheerfully, “come on, Blackrobe. Let us see if we can bring my aunt safely to the next place. Ugashe.”
“Your aunt?” I asked, following him. “I thought she was Juh’s aunt.”
“She is, of course.”
“By blood, niño?”
“Well, no.”
“Ah. Neither is she to you, I suspect.”
“No, not by blood.”
To the Apache, the term aunt is like that of brother or cousin. In most usages no blood kinship exists by employment of the word. If the person is a real cousin, for example, the Nednhi will say that he is “son to the sister of my own mother.” Apaches, among themselves, can distinguish the matter simply by the inflection with which they say aunt or brother or cousin. Occasionally, usually with outsiders, they qualify it by saying own-brother or own-cousin, the “own” meaning a real or true kinsman by blood. Exactly the same applies to grandparents, sons, daughters, any relationship at all. A strange people, as previously held.
For the moment, I felt relieved that Huera was not, in fact, kin to Juh’s dark bloodline. The Nednhi headman was a fine specimen of his wild kind, but so purely an Apache, a bárbaro committed to hating the white man, that I did not wish to think of graceful Huera being of his same family. For I had to remember that the Apache always hates another man even before he hates the white man, and that is the Mexican man, of course. And I, Alvar Nunez, allowing for my inclusion of Opata blood, was a Mexican man.
Thus cautioned, I went gladly with young Kaytennae to the side of the fitfully sleeping warrior woman. And thus, with the youth before me in the stygian gloom of the predawn, I went with my silent Huera and the two small mules into what Apache fate I knew not. Nor, God forgive me, did I care, so long as I might share it with her.
Now the trail went upward. Now it narrowed as Allison had predicted. Even young Kaytennae panted with the climbing. No other two Spanish mules could have borne that blanket-sling with precious Huera in it as dear Lata and Jugada bore it. So careful in each choice of step. So strong and steady in every upward heave of wither and hindquarter. Not one slip, in all the miles of the desperate going, for either little brute’s burro-trim hooves. They went like trained dogs, watching their burden constantly, never squeezing the woman, never bumping her. All of this with the moon long set and the way lighted only by the blackness that inks that canyoned land at the deepest hour of the night, just before the new day.
Sunrise found us in a pass which showed nothing but ranges before us and behind us.
I was certain we were on the divide and that this would be the place of the fourth halt. It was not.
Down we went now.
The way eased somewhat, the bare granite gave way to a beginning of meadowed soft lands. Pine and spruce and balsam fir foresting set in and, before long, we were in a lovely timbered country. Within a mile, we heard fast-falling water and shortly we came out upon a small but furious stream rushing to the west; we had crossed to the other drainage and were on the Pacific Slope of the Sierra.
Kaytennae confirmed the fact but said we must keep up with the others, now nearly out of sight ahead of us. I noted that, even afoot, the pace of the march did not seem to yield. Again, the youth agreed, pointing out as a true thing the story I had so often heard that a healthy Apache of young or middle years will indeed keep up with a horse and, in fact, over a distance, outtravel the animal. “Before the horse came here,” the youth now told me, “the Apache ran everywhere that he went. He never just walked as a white man or Mexican will. He trotted as the lobo, even loped as the caballo. We can still do it, as you see. We warriors can.”
“Very well, warrior,” I answered him back, “I am not so certain we priests can compete with the wolf and the horse, but these Spanish mules will try. Vamos, a ello!”
For the next six hours, until high noon, we slid and groped and fought and prayed our way down out of the Blue Mountains of the Nednhi, coming at last and with God’s goodness to the “fourth place,” where Juh and the others stood awaiting us.
But God and His goodness were fleeting.
The fourth place proved no more final than the first or third halting; we rested, boiled a little of Bustamante’s tea, watered the twin mules, examined and performed what care we might upon Huera, and pushed on.
We were down in the foothills of the west side now, following a course southward which crossed the mouths of th
e innumerable barrancas that ran back into the high country. These openings offered a continuing opportunity of advantage to the Apache march, Kaytennae explained.
First, there was the matter of hand-close concealment in the deep fissures. Then, many of them bore local water courses, which made for rich backlands where small game, good pasturage, and, indeed, some farming of the ancients still were to be found. At one place, we followed one of the streams a considerable distance inland. There we found delicious fruits growing along the banks, evidences of old irrigations by Indios reducidos, enslaved or tamed Indians, of another time. The waters also teemed with game fish. Yet when I suggested to Kaytennae that Huera’s strength would be well restored by a good meal of trout boiled down into a fish gruel, the Nednhi youth recoiled.
“Blackrobe,” he admonished me, “you should know better than to say that thing. An Apache cannot eat the flesh of the fish, no more than that of the dog. But I will not report it to my uncle. Be warned.”
“I would not blame you, if you told him, niño,” I said guiltily, and I promised to take future care.
“But your aunt must eat,” I added. “Perhaps this one time—”
“Chito, chito!” he cried. “Hush at once.”
We went on, trailing behind the Apaches who now followed Juh and Ben Allison back into the hills. The canyon we were in widened abruptly. Before us was a deserted settlement, the adobes washed away, roof timbers dry-rotted into caving tumbles. Inside one foundation square grew a pine tree no less than thirty feet high. Beyond the ruined hutments ran a tangle of ancient orange trees which, miracle of miracles, yet bore a tasty fruit. We also noted palms growing here which had been planted by the hand of man. Kaytennae grew uneasy going through this musty place of the past. He said he did not understand how white men and Mexicans could bear to stay in such airless dwellings. For him, they would be as traps that had caught him. “How can your people live in this manner?” he asked me. “How do they see the stars at night? Or taste the clean bite of the air?”
Juh and the others shared the young man’s restlessness. We should have halted there but did not. I had only time to gather my cowl full of the sweet oranges for Huera’s eating, and we were traveling again.
But now we were coming to it.
Suddenly, we were into a flare of the higher canyon floor. Vertical walls of rock went straight up, hundreds of feet above us. Upon the south wall was a black split, you could call it nothing better, really. Just a place where the mother rock had cracked open far enough and high enough to admit one man on horseback, or two men on foot walking abreast but very closely.
Kaytennae saw my look of dismay, and he grinned happily.
“Cañon Avariento,” he said.
I could not credit his words. That was a canyon? That miserable schism in the granite’s great cliff was famed Cañon Avariento? The legendary entrada to Juh’s Stronghold? Kaytennae joked with me.
“Niño,” I said, “por favor, no hace chacota.”
“But I do not make fun, Blackrobe.”
“No? God’s Name! We will go into that hole?”
“Anh,” he nodded eagerly. “Right now.”
So we did, too, I carrying Huera in my own arms while Kaytennae passed the hinny mules one at a time through the vile varmint’s cavern beckoning ahead. We went on blindly through the rock, feeling its walls with our hands to avoid striking head or toe or tender shin on the ever-intruding stone fangs of its riven jaws. I actually crept through backward, thus to avoid accidentally injuring the poor creature in my charge. So it was that, when we came again into daylight, breaking free of the mountain, I stood at first with my rear to the vista that, upon turning myself to the fore, smote the eye so astoundingly as to bring from me an awed, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—!”
The whole interior range of the Sierra appeared to open before us.
We stood in a rocky amphitheater, black with the campfire smoke of Apache centuries. From it, the view inward of the range, framed a distant, towering mesa crowned with a thin green line of timber. The incredible bulk of this apparent monolith staggered the mind. It seemed like there was a separate world awaiting us up there on the top. One sensed it. One understood that. Without a word from young Kaytennae, I knew we were going up there. And I knew what awaited us on the mesa.
Kaytennae saw that my imagination had guessed it.
“Anh, yes, Blackrobe,” he said. “Our home.”
I could only nod mutely for reply.
I was looking on a sight never before seen by Anglo or Mexican traveler living to describe it.
I was looking at Juh’s Stronghold.
18
Shortly, Juh came over to us and spoke to Kaytennae in Apache. At once, the youth took from his war bag a common small mirror of the variety carried by both Mexican and American cavalry troops in the field. Although it was not specifically a heliographic mirror, I was quickly interested to see it so used now. My interest stemmed in direct part from the fact that Kaytennae had learned this playful art from a certain priest in Casas Grandes. I had provided him the glass to while away his convalescence from the brain fever. I had subsequently learned from Juh that the lad could send and receive the sun-flashes of such signaling better than any adult in the band.
Now we stood by while Kaytennae sent his blinding flashes up to the mesa’s top. They were answered before long, and the youth told Juh that the return flashings promised that fresh horses would be started down at once, as well as medicine.
“Un-nuh,” grunted the chief. “Meanwhile we will wait.”
Unbidden, we all sought our places to sit down. A fire was built and water put to boil. I made Huera as comfortable as possible. Allison came over to wait with us, but Little Buck remained at Juh’s side. The Texan told me that, in the entire night of riding and walking, the Apaches had not permitted one word between himself and the boy. It was, he believed, the beginning of the white captive’s training into Apachehood. He was to know that his people were forever behind him, that he was no longer Pinda Lickoyi, a White Eye, but Tindé, of the Apache themselves. “We give them another week or ten days with the kid,” he concluded, “he won’t want to talk to us if they let him.”
“No, no, not so swiftly as that,” I denied. “But he will change.”
“You don’t need to draw me no pictures, Padre,” he nodded. “I’ve seen the Comanche break a white kid.”
We fell still, for Juh was scowling over at us.
It was midafternoon now. The hours wore on. Huera became restless beneath the crawl of deer flies and the heat of the late day. She became first pale, then flushed. The Texan and I touched her skin, exchanged frowns. It was what we had feared. The fever.
Allison leaned deeply over her, sniffing like some lean hound on track. He looked up at me, grimacing.
“I can smell it,” he said. “She’s festered.”
I leaned and sniffed in turn, shook my head.
“I do not detect it, hombre.”
“That’s because you ain’t smelt enough of it, Padre; I got four years of its stink in my nose: three in the war, one on the owlhoot trail. She’s festered. We don’t do something más pronto, she’ll go to gangrene, inside.”
“God forbid!”
“Mebbe,” he rasped. “But we better dicker with Juh.”
He went over to the Nednhi chief before I could move to dissuade him. I could only follow quickly, in hope of apologizing for his rude bluntness and lack of courtesy rules. In this entire situation, I understood something that Allison did not appear to grasp. It was that my own life was at least somewhat respected by the wild mountain tribesmen; while his life lay continually as near its end as one rise of anger in Juh’s savage temper, or one improper challenge of Juh’s supremacy. I had tried impressing this upon the Texan in the very outset of our adventure, away back at the Nednhi Falls. He had shrugged it off by remi
nding me that Juh was my department. He was on the trail to get back Little Buck Buckles and I was along solely to pacify the Apache in the process of the rescue.
I suspected I would get the same answer now, but the opportunity to learn so was denied.
Juh was already rumbling with rage.
He was, in fact, picking up his beautiful new Winchester rifle and working its yellow brass lever to emplace a cartridge in the loading chamber.
Ben Allison was the cock of that rifle’s hammer from his death.
He moved faster than Juh’s finger on the trigger.
Knocking the rifle barrel upward with a kick of his foot, Allison turned and bent down with his back into the weapon and the burly Nednhi chieftain. Both of the Texan’s sinewy hands seized the barrel in the same instant that Juh’s finger closed and the heavy blast of the explosion of the round-in-chamber echoed off up-canyon. With all the force in his lean body, the Texan heaved on the rifle barrel. As Juh did not let go of the weapon’s stock, he perforce followed the arc of its swing over the Texan’s back. Juh landed on the rocks of the floor of the halting place, flat on his broad back. The grunt of the air driven from his great lungs by the impact was of explosive force. For a moment he lay stunned. Then, he was on his feet, finding Ben Allison with his eyes.
“Tejano, you are a dead man,” he croaked hoarsely. “Give me the rifle.”
“I will give it to you, where you were going to give it to me,” Allison answered him, working the loading lever. “Right in your damned intestinos. Entiende, Jefe?”
Juh, for all his Apache fury, did comprehend.
His warriors had all closed in a tight circle about the big Texan, but they could not fire into him without danger of the same bullets striking their chief. Allison, however, had a clear field of fire and a range of not over four feet. Under those circumstances not even the war chief of all the Nednhis wanted to get shot in the guts. The Apache, moreover, was the supreme realist. It was a trait of his people. An Apache will always seek to live. Always.
