Trail of the Apache and Other Stories Read online

  reined in gently with a soothing murmur into the

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  mare’s ear, and slid from the saddle, whispering

  again to the mare as he tied the reins to a pine

  branch a foot from the ground.

  He made his way along the trail until the slope

  was again thick with brush and trees, and there he

  began his descent. A yard at a time, making sure of

  firm ground before each step, bending branches

  slowly so there would be no warning swish. And

  every few yards he would hug the ground and wait,

  swinging his gaze in every direction, even behind.

  He had gone almost a hundred yards when he

  saw the woman.

  He crouched low to the sandy ground and

  crawled under the full branches of a pine, watching

  the woman almost thirty yards away. She was sitting on something just off the ground, her back

  resting against the smoothness of a birch tree.

  He was approaching her from the rear and could

  see only part of her head and shoulder resting

  against the tree trunk. The brush near her cut off

  the lower part of her body, but there was something

  strange about her position—her immobility, the

  way her shoulder was thrown back so tightly

  against the roundness of the birch. Street had the

  feeling she was dead. Time would tell.

  He lay motionless under the thick foliage and

  waited, the Winchester in front of him. And Simon

  Street had his thoughts. You never get used to the

  sight of a white woman after an Apache has fin-‚

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  ished with her. An hour later, a week later, a dozen

  years later, the picture will flash in your memory,

  vivid, stark naked of hazy forgetfulness.

  And the form of the Apache will be there, too,

  close like the smothering reek of a hot animal,

  though you may have never seen him. Then you will

  be sick if you are the kind. Street wasn’t the kind,

  but he didn’t look forward to approaching the

  woman.

  After almost a half hour he again began to work

  his way toward the woman. In that length of time

  he had not moved. Nor had the woman. If she was

  dead, the Apache would probably be gone. But that

  was guessing, and when you guess, you take a

  chance.

  He crawled all the way, slowly, a foot at a time,

  until he was directly behind the birch. Then he

  reached up, his hand sliding along the white bark,

  and touched her shoulder lightly.

  Amelia Darck jumped to her feet and turned in

  the motion. Her face was powder white, her eyes

  wide, startled; but when she saw the scout the color

  seemed to creep through her cheeks and her mouth

  broke into a fragile smile.

  “You’re late, Mr. Street. I’ve waited a good many

  hours.”

  The scout was momentarily stunned. He knew

  his face bore a foolish expression, but there was

  nothing he could do about it.

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  The woman’s face regained its composure

  quickly and once again she was the colonel’s lady.

  Though there was a drawn look and a darker

  shadow about the eyes that could not be wiped

  away with a polite smile.

  Then Street saw the Apache. He was lying belly

  down in the short grass, close behind Mrs. Darck.

  Street took a step to her side and saw the handle of

  the skinning knife sticking straight up from the

  Apache’s back. The cotton shirt was deep crimson

  in a wide smear around the knife handle.

  He looked at her again with the foolish look still

  on his face.

  “Mr. Street, I’ve been sitting up all night with a

  dead Indian and I’m almost past patience. Would

  you kindly take me to my husband.”

  He looked again at the Apache and then to the

  woman. Disbelief in his eyes. He started to say

  something, but Amelia Darck went on.

  “I’ve lived out here most of my life, Mr. Street, as

  you know. I heard Apache war drums long before I

  attended my first cotillion, but I have hardly reached

  the point where I have to take an Apache for a lover.”

  Simon Street saw a thousand troops and a hundred scouts in the field. Then he looked at the slender woman walking briskly up the grade.

  4

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  Most of the time there was dead silence. When

  someone did say something it was never more than

  a word or two at a time: More coffee? Words that

  were not words because there was no thought behind them and they didn’t mean anything. Words

  like getting late, when no one cared. Hardly even

  noises, because no one heard.

  Stillness. Six men sitting together in a pine grove,

  and yet there was no sound. A boot scraped gravel

  and a tin cup clanked against rock, but they were

  like the words, little noises that started and stopped

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  at the same time and were forgotten before they

  could be remembered.

  More coffee? And an answering grunt that meant

  even less.

  Five men scattered around a campfire that was

  dead, and the sixth man squatting at the edge of the

  pines looking out into the distance through the dismal reflection of a dying sun that made the grayish

  flat land look petrified in death and unchanged for

  a hundred million years.

  Emmett Ryan stared across the flats toward the

  lighter gray outline in the distance that was Anton

  Chico, but he wasn’t seeing the adobe brick of the

  village. He wasn’t watching the black speck that

  was gradually getting bigger as it approached.

  All of us knew that. We sat and watched Emmett

  Ryan’s coat pulled tight across his shoulder blades,

  not moving body or head. Just a broad smoothness

  of faded denim. We’d been looking at the same

  back all the way from Tascosa and in two hundred

  miles you can learn a lot about a back.

  The black speck grew into a horse and rider, and

  as they moved up the slope toward the pines the

  horse and rider became Gosh Hall on his roan. Emmett walked over to meet him, but didn’t say anything. The question was on his broad, red face and

  he didn’t have to ask it.

  Gosh Hall swung down from the saddle and put

  his hands on the small of his back, arching against

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  the stiffness. “They just rode in,” he said, and

  walked past the big man to the dead fire. “Who’s

  got all the coffee?”

  Emmett followed him with his eyes and the question was still there. It was something to see that big,

  plain face with the eyes open wide and staring

  when before they’d always been half-closed from

  squinting against the glare of twenty-odd years in

  open country. Now his face looked too big and

  loose for the small nose and slit of an Irish mouth.

  You could see the indecision and maybe a little fear
/>   in the wide-open eyes, something that had never

  been there before.

  We’d catch ourselves looking at that face and

  have to look at something else, quick, or Em would

  see somebody’s jaw hanging open and wonder what

  the hell was wrong with him. We felt sorry for

  Em—I know I did—and it was a funny feeling to all

  of a sudden see the big TX ramrod that way.

  Gosh looked like he had an apron on, standing

  over the dead fire with his hip cocked and the worn

  hide chaps covering his short legs. He held the cup

  halfway to his face, watching Em, waiting for him

  to ask the question. I thought Gosh was making it a

  little extra tough on Em; he could have come right

  out with it. Both of them just stared at each other.

  Finally Emmett said, “Jack with them?”

  Gosh took a sip of coffee first. “Him and Joe Anthony rode in together, and another man. Anthony

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  and the other man went into the Senate House and

  Jack took the horses to the livery and then followed

  them over to the hotel.”

  “They see you?”

  “Naw, I was down the street under a ramada. All

  they’d see’d be shadow.”

  “You sure it was them, Gosh?” I asked him.

  “Charlie,” Gosh said, “I got a picture in my

  head, and it’s stuck there ’cause I never expected to

  see one like it. It’s a picture of Jack and Joe Anthony riding into Magenta the same way a month

  ago. When you see something that’s different or

  hadn’t ought to be, it sticks in your head. And they

  was on the same mounts, Charlie.”

  Emmett went over to his dun mare and tightened

  the cinch like he wanted to keep busy and show us

  everything was going the same. But he was just

  fumbling with the strap, you could see that. His

  head swung around a few inches. “Jack look all

  right?”

  Gosh turned his cup upside down and a few

  drops of coffee trickled down to the ashes at his

  feet. “I don’t know, Em. How is a man who’s just

  stole a hundred head of beef supposed to look?”

  Emmett jerked his body around and the face was

  closed again for the first time in a week, tight and

  redder than usual. Then his jaw eased and his big

  hands hanging at his sides opened and closed and

  then went loose. Emmett didn’t have anything to

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  grab. Some of the others were looking at Gosh Hall

  and probably wondering why the little rider was

  making it so hard for Em.

  Emmett asked him, “Did you see Butzy?”

  “He didn’t ride in. I ’magine he’s out with the

  herd.” Gosh looked around. “Neal still out, huh?”

  Neal Whaley had gone in earlier with Gosh, then

  split off over to where they were holding the herd,

  just north of Anton Chico. Neal was to watch and

  tell us if they moved them. Emmett figured they

  were holding the herd until a buyer came along.

  There were a lot of buyers in New Mexico who

  didn’t particularly care what the brand read, but

  Emmett said they were waiting for a top bid or they

  would have sold all the stock before this.

  Ned Bristol and Lloyd Cohane got up and

  stretched and then just stood there awkwardly

  looking at the dead fire, their boots, and each other.

  Lloyd pulled a blue bandanna from his coat pocket

  and wiped his face with it, then folded it and

  straightened it out thin between his fingers before

  tilting his chin up to tie it around his neck. Ned

  pushed his gun belt down lower on his hips and

  watched Emmett.

  Dobie Shaw, the kid in our outfit, went over to

  his mount and pulled his Winchester from the boot

  and felt in the bag behind the saddle for a box of

  cartridges. Dobie had to do something too.

  Ben Templin was older; he’d been riding better

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  than thirty years. He eased back to the ground with

  his hands behind his head tilting his hat over his

  face and waited. Ben had all the time in the world.

  Everybody was going through the motions of being natural, but fidgeting and acting restless and

  watching Emmett at the same time because we all

  knew it was time now, and Emmett didn’t have any

  choice. That was what forced Emmett’s hand,

  though we knew he would have done it anyway,

  sooner or later. But maybe we looked a little too

  anxious to him, when it was only restlessness. It

  was a long ride from Tascosa. A case of let’s get it

  over with or else go on home—one way or the

  other, regardless of whose brother stole the cows.

  Gosh Hall scratched the toe of his boot through

  the sand, kicking it over the ashes of the dead fire.

  “About that time, ain’t it, Em?”

  Emmett exhaled like he was very tired. “Yeah,

  it’s about that time.” He looked at every face,

  slowly, before turning to his mare.

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  It’s roughly a hundred and thirty miles from Tascosa, following the Canadian, to Trementina on the

  Conchas, then another thirty-five miles south,

  swinging around Mesa Montosa to Anton Chico,

  on the Pecos. Counting detours to find water holes

  and trailing the wrong sign occasionally, that’s

  about two hundred miles of sun, wind, and New

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  Mexico desert—and all to bring back a hundred

  head of beef owned by a Chicago company that tallied close to a quarter million all over the Panhandle and north-central Texas.

  The western section of the TX Company was

  headquartered at Sudan that year, with most of the

  herds north of Tascosa and strung out west along

  the Canadian. Emmett Ryan was ramrod of the

  home crew at Sudan, but he spent a week or more

  at a time out on the grass with the herds. That was

  why he happened to be with us when R. D. Perris,

  the company man, rode in. We were readying to go

  into Magenta for a few when Perris came beating

  his mount into camp. Even in the cool of the evening the horse was flaked white and about to drop

  and Perris was so excited he could hardly get the

  words out. And finally when he told his story there

  was dead silence and all you could hear was R.

  D.

  Perris breathing like his chest was about to rip open.

  Jack Ryan and Frank Butzinger—Frank, who nobody ever gave credit for having any sand—and

  over a hundred head of beef hadn’t been seen on

  the west range for three days. R. D. Perris had said,

  “The tracks follow the river west, but we figured

  Jack was taking them to new grass. But then the

  tracks just kept on going. . . .”

  Emmett was silent from that time on. He asked a

  few questions, but he was pretty sure of the answers before he asked them. There was that talk for

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  weeks about Jack having been seen in Tascosa and

/>   Magenta with Joe Anthony. And there weren’t

  many people friendly with Joe Anthony. In his time,

  he’d had his picture on wanted dodgers more than

  once. Two shootings for sure, and a few holdups,

  but the holdups were just talk. Nobody ever pinned

  anything on him, and with his gunhand reputation,

  nobody made any accusations.

  Gosh Hall had seen them together in Magenta

  and he told Emmett to his face that he didn’t like it;

  but Emmett had defended him and said Jack was

  just sowing oats because he was still young and

  hadn’t got his sense of values yet. But Lloyd Cohane was there that time at the line camp when Emmett dropped in and chewed hell out of Jack for

  palling with Joe Anthony. Then came the time Emmett walked into the saloon in Tascosa with his

  gun out and pushed it into Joe Anthony’s belly before Joe even saw him and told him to ride and keep

  riding.

  Jack was there, drunk like he usually was in

  town, but he sobered quick and followed Anthony

  out of the saloon when Emmett prodded him out,

  and laughed right in Emmett’s face when Em told

  him to stay where he was. And he was laughing and

  weaving in the saddle when he rode out of town

  with Anthony.

  Until that night Perris came riding in with his

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  story, Em hadn’t seen his brother. So you know

  what he was thinking; what all of us were thinking.

  Riding the two hundred miles to find the herd

  was part of the job, but knowing you were trailing

  a friend made the job kind of sour and none of us

  was sure if we wanted to find the cattle. Jack Ryan

  was young and wild and drank too much and

  laughed all the time, but he had more friends than

  any rider in the Panhandle.

  Like Ben Templin said: “Jack’s a good boy, but

  he’s got an idea life’s just a big can-can dancer with

  four fingers of scootawaboo in each hand.” And

  that was about it.

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  The splotch of white that was Anton Chico from

  a distance gradually got bigger and cleared until finally right in front of us it was gray adobe brick,

  blocks of it, dull and lifeless in the cold late sunlight. Emmett slowed us to a walk the last few hundred feet approaching the town’s main street and

  motioned Ben Templin up next to him.