Trail of the Apache and Other Stories Read online

  far out on the plain to the two wagons and the ribbon of river behind them. He tried to relate the boy

  and the wagons in some way, but he could not.

  After a while he saw buffalo. A few straggling

  off toward the wagons, but even more on the other

  side of the valley where the plain widened again

  and the grass was higher, green-brown in the sun.

  Toward noon the buffalo increased, and he remembered the hunters saying how the herds were

  moving west. By that time there were hundreds,

  perhaps a thousand, scattered over the grass, out a

  mile or so from the boy who seemed to be concentrating on them.

  Maybe he really is going hunting, Leo Cleary

  thought. Maybe he’s starting all over again. But I

  wish I had me a drink. The boy’s downwind now,

  he thought, lifting his head to feel the breeze on his

  face. He could edge up and take a hundred of them

  if he did it right. What’s he waiting for! Hell, if he

  wants to start all over, it’s all right with me. I’ll stay

  out with him. At that moment he was thinking of

  the three barrels of whiskey.

  “Go out and get ’em, Will,” he urged the boy

  aloud, though he would not be heard. “The wind

  won’t keep forever!”

  Surprised, then, he saw the boy move out from

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  the brush clumps leading his horse, mount, and

  lope off in a direction out and away from the herd.

  “You can’t hunt buffalo from a saddle . . . they’ll

  run as soon as they smell horse! What the hell’s the

  matter with him!”

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  He watched the boy, growing smaller with distance, move out past the herd. Then suddenly the

  horse wheeled, and it was going at a dead run toward the herd. A yell drifted up to the ridge and

  then a heavy rifle shot followed by two reports that

  were weaker. Horse and rider cut into the herd, and

  the buffalo broke in confusion.

  They ran crazily, bellowing, bunching in panic to

  escape the horse and man smell and the screaming

  that suddenly hit them with the wind. A herd of

  buffalo will run for hours if the panic stabs them

  sharp enough, and they will stay together, bunching their thunder, tons of bulk, massive bellowing

  heads, horns, and thrashing hooves. Nothing will

  stop them. Some go down, and the herd passes over,

  beating them into the ground.

  They ran directly away from the smell and the

  noises that were now far behind, downwind they

  came and in less than a minute were thundering

  through the short valley. Dust rose after them, billowing up to the old man, who covered his mouth,

  coughing, watching the rumbling dark mass erupt

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  from the valley out onto the plain. They moved in

  an unwavering line toward the Salt Fork, rolling

  over everything, before swerving at the river—even

  the two canvas squares that had been brilliant

  white in the morning sun. And soon they were only

  a deep hum in the distance.

  Will Gordon was out on the flats, approaching

  the place where the wagons had stood, riding

  slowly now in the settling dust.

  But the dust was still in the air, heavy enough to

  make Leo Cleary sneeze as he brought the wagon

  out from the pines toward the river.

  He saw the hide buyers’ wagons smashed to

  scrap wood and shredded canvas dragged among

  the strewn buffalo hides. Many of the bales were

  still intact, spilling from the wagon wrecks; some

  were buried under the debris.

  Three men stood waist deep in the shallows of

  the river, and beyond them, upstream, were the

  horses they had saved. Some had not been cut from

  the pickets in time, and they lay shapeless in blood

  at one end of the camp.

  Will Gordon stood on the bank with the revolving pistol cocked, pointed at Clyde Foss. He

  glanced aside as the old man brought up the team.

  “He wants to sell back, Leo. How much, you

  think?”

  The old man only looked at him, because he

  could not speak.

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  “I think two barrels of whiskey,” Will Gordon

  said. He stepped suddenly into the water and

  brought the long pistol barrel sweeping against

  Clyde’s head, cutting the temple.

  “Two barrels?”

  Clyde Foss staggered and came to his feet slowly.

  “Come here, Clyde.” The boy leveled the pistol

  at him and waited as Clyde Foss came hesitantly

  out of the water, hunching his shoulders. The boy

  swung the pistol back, and, as Clyde ducked, he

  brought his left fist up, smashing hard against the

  man’s jaw.

  “Or three barrels?”

  The hide buyer floundered in the shallow water,

  then crawled to the bank, and lay on his stomach,

  gasping for breath.

  “We’ll give him three, Leo. Since he’s been nice

  about it.”

  Later, after Clyde and his two men had loaded

  their wagon with four hundred and eighty hides,

  the old man and the boy rode off through the valley

  to the great plain.

  Once the old man said, “Where we going now,

  Will?”

  And when the boy said, “We’re still going hunting, Leo,” the old man shrugged wearily and just

  nodded his head.

  6

  The Boy Who Smiled

  When Mickey Segundo was fourteen, he tracked

  a man almost two hundred miles—from the Jicarilla Subagency down into the malpais.

  He caught up with him at a water hole in late afternoon and stayed behind a rock outcropping

  watching the man drink. Mickey Segundo had not

  tasted water in three days, but he sat patiently behind the cover while the man quenched his thirst,

  watching him relax and make himself comfortable

  as the hot lava country cooled with the approach of

  evening.

  Finally Mickey Segundo stirred. He broke open

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  the .50-caliber Gallagher and inserted the paper cartridge and the cap. Then he eased the carbine between a niche in the rocks, sighting on the back of

  the man’s head. He called in a low voice, “Tony

  Choddi . . .” and as the face with the wide-open

  eyes came around, he fired casually.

  He lay on his stomach and slowly drank the water he needed, filling his canteen and the one that

  had belonged to Tony Choddi. Then he took his

  hunting knife and sawed both of the man’s ears off,

  close to the head. These he put into his saddle

  pouch, leaving the rest for the buzzards.

  A week later Mickey Segundo carried the pouch

  into the agency office and dropped the ears on my

  desk. He said very simply, “Tony Choddi is sorry

  he has caused trouble.”

  I remember telling him, “You’re not thinking of

  going after McKay now, are you?”

  “This man, Tony Choddi, stole stuff, a horse and

  clothes and a gun,” he said with his pleasant smile.

  “So I
thought I would do a good thing and fix it so

  Tony Choddi didn’t steal no more.”

  With the smile there was a look of surprise, as if

  to say, “Why would I want to get Mr. McKay?”

  A few days later I saw McKay and told him

  about it and mentioned that he might keep his eyes

  open. But he said that he didn’t give a damn about

  any breed Jicarilla kid. If the kid felt like avenging

  his old man, he could try, but he’d probably cash in

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  before his time. And as for getting Tony Choddi, he

  didn’t give a damn about that either. He’d got the

  horse back and that’s all he cared about.

  After he had said his piece, I was sorry I had

  warned him. And I felt a little foolish telling one of

  the biggest men in the Territory to look out for a

  half-breed Apache kid. I told myself, Maybe you’re

  just rubbing up to him because he’s important and

  could use his influence to help out the agency . . .

  and maybe he knows it.

  Actually I had more respect for Mickey Segundo,

  as a human being, than I did for T. O. McKay.

  Maybe I felt I owed the warning to McKay because

  he was a white man. Like saying, “Mickey Segundo’s a good boy, but, hell, he’s half Indian.”

  Just one of those things you catch yourself doing.

  Like habit. You do something wrong the first time

  and you know it, but if you keep it up, it becomes a

  habit and it’s no longer wrong because it’s something you’ve always been doing.

  McKay and a lot of people said Apaches were no

  damn good. The only good one was a dead one.

  They never stopped to reason it out. They’d been

  saying it so long, they knew it was true. Certainly

  any such statement was unreasonable, but damned

  if I wouldn’t sometimes nod my head in agreement,

  because at those times I’d be with white men and

  that’s the way white men talked.

  I might have thought I was foolish, but actually it

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  was McKay who was the fool. He underestimated

  Mickey Segundo.

  That was five years ago. It had begun with a

  hanging.

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  Early in the morning, Tudishishn, sergeant of

  Apache police at the Jicarilla Agency, rode in to tell

  me that Tony Choddi had jumped the boundaries

  again and might be in my locale. Tudishishn stayed

  for half a dozen cups of coffee, though his information didn’t last that long. When he’d had enough,

  he left as leisurely as he had arrived. Hunting renegades, reservation jumpers, was Tudishishn’s job;

  still, it wasn’t something to get excited about. Tomorrows were for work; todays were for thinking

  about it.

  Up at the agency they were used to Tony Choddi

  skipping off. Usually they’d find him later in some

  shaded barranca, full of tulapai.

  It was quiet until late afternoon, but not unusually so. It wasn’t often that anything out of the ordinary happened at the subagency. There were

  twenty-six families, one hundred eight Jicarillas all

  told, under my charge. We were located almost

  twenty miles below the reservation proper, and

  most of the people had been there long before the

  reservation had been marked off. They had been

  fairly peaceful then, and remained so now. It was

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  one of the few instances where the Bureau allowed

  the sleeping dog to lie; and because of that we had

  less trouble than they did up at the reservation.

  There was a sign on the door of the adobe office

  which described it formally. It read: d. j. merritt—

  agent, jicarilla apache subagency—puerco,

  new mexico territory. It was a startling announcement to post on the door of a squat adobe

  sitting all alone in the shadow of the Nacimentos.

  My Apaches preferred higher ground and the closest jacales were two miles up into the foothills. The

  office had to remain on the mail run, even though

  the mail consisted chiefly of impossible-to-apply

  Bureau memoranda.

  Just before supper Tudishishn returned. He came

  in at a run this time and swung off before his pony

  had come to a full stop. He was excited and spoke

  in a confusion of Apache, Spanish, and a word here

  and there of English.

  Returning to the reservation, he had decided to

  stop off and see his friends of the Puerco Agency.

  There had been friends he had not seen for some

  time, and the morning had lengthened into afternoon

  with tulapai, good talking, and even coffee. People

  had come from the more remote jacales, deeper in

  the hills, when they learned Tudishishn was there, to

  hear news of friends at the reservation. Soon there

  were many people and what looked like the beginning of a good time. Then Señor McKay had come.

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  McKay had men with him, many men, and they

  were looking for Mickey Solner—the squaw man,

  as the Americans called him.

  Most of the details I learned later on, but briefly

  this is what had happened: McKay and some of his

  men were out on a hunting trip. When they got up

  that morning, McKay’s horse was gone, along with

  a shotgun and some personal articles. They got on

  the tracks, which were fresh and easy to follow,

  and by that afternoon they were at Mickey Solner’s

  jacale. His woman and boy were there, and the

  horse was tethered in front of the mud hut. Mickey

  Segundo, the boy, was honored to lead such important people to his father, who was visiting with

  Tudishishn.

  McKay brought the horse along, and when they

  found Mickey Solner, they took hold of him without asking questions and looped a rope around his

  neck. Then they boosted him up onto the horse

  they claimed he had stolen. McKay said it would be

  fitting that way. Tudishishn had left fast when he

  saw what was about to happen. He knew they

  wouldn’t waste time arguing with an Apache, so he

  had come to me.

  When I got there, Mickey Solner was still sitting

  McKay’s chestnut mare with the rope reaching

  from his neck to the cottonwood bough overhead.

  His head drooped as if all the fight was out of him,

  and when I came up in front of the chestnut, he

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  looked at me with tired eyes, watery and red from

  tulapai.

  I had known Solner for years, but had never become close to him. He wasn’t a man with whom

  you became fast friends. Just his living in an

  Apache rancheria testified to his being of a different breed. He was friendly enough, but few of the

  whites liked him—they said he drank all the time

  and never worked. Maybe most were just envious.

  Solner was a white man gone Indian, whole hog.

  That was the cause of the resentment.

  His son, Mickey the Second, stood near his dad’s

  stirrup looking at him with a bewildered, pathetic

>   look on his slim face. He held on to the stirrup as if

  he’d never let it go. And it was the first time, the

  only time, I ever saw Mickey Segundo without a

  faint smile on his face.

  “Mr. McKay,” I said to the cattleman, who was

  standing relaxed with his hands in his pockets,

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to take that man

  down. He’s under bureau jurisdiction and will have

  to be tried by a court.”

  McKay said nothing, but Bowie Allison, who

  was his herd boss, laughed and then said, “You

  ought to be afraid.”

  Dolph Bettzinger was there, along with his

  brothers Kirk and Sim. They were hired for their

  guns and usually kept pretty close to McKay. They

  did not laugh when Allison did.

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  And all around the clearing by the cottonwood

  were eight or ten others. Most of them I recognized

  as McKay riders. They stood solemnly, some with

  rifles and shotguns. There wasn’t any doubt in their

  minds what stealing a horse meant.

  “Tudishishn says that Mickey didn’t steal your

  horse. These people told him that he was at home

  all night and most of the morning until Tudishishn

  dropped in, and then he came down here.” A line of

  Apaches stood a few yards off and as I pointed to

  them, some nodded their heads.

  “Mister,” McKay said, “I found the horse at this

  man’s hut. Now, you argue that down, and I’ll kiss

  the behind of every Apache you got living around

  here.”

  “Well, your horse could have been left there by

  someone else.”

  “Either way, he had a hand in it,” he said curtly.

  “What does he say?” I looked up at Mickey Solner and asked him quickly, “How did you get the

  horse, Mickey?”

  “I just traded with a fella.” His voice shook, and

  he held on to the saddle horn as if afraid he’d fall

  off. “This fella come along and traded with me,

  that’s all.”

  “Who was it?”

  Mickey Solner didn’t answer. I asked him again,

  but still he refused to speak. McKay was about to

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  say something, but Tudishishn came over quickly

  from the group of Apaches.

  “They say it was Tony Choddi. He was seen to