Trail of the Apache and Other Stories Read online

  He was sorry he had shot the water bag, but what

  could he say? God directs the actions of men in

  mysterious ways.

  The county authorities were disconcerted, but

  they had to be satisfied with the apparent facts.

  McKay and Allison were found ten miles from

  Yucca Springs and brought in. There were no

  marks of violence on either of them, and they

  found three hundred dollars in McKay’s wallet. It

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  175

  was officially recorded that they died from thirst

  and exposure.

  A terrible way to die just because some damn

  Apache couldn’t shoot straight. Peza-a survived because he was lucky, along with the fact that he was

  Apache, which made him tougher. Just one of those

  things.

  Mickey continued living with his mother at the

  subagency. His old Gallagher carbine kept them in

  meat, and they seemed happy enough just existing.

  Tudishishn visited them occasionally, and when

  he did they would have a tulapai party. Everything

  was normal.

  Mickey’s smile was still there but maybe a little

  different.

  But I’ve often wondered what Mickey Segundo

  would have done if that coyote had not run across

  the mesquite thicket. . . .

  7

  Only Good Ones

  Picture the ground rising on the east side of the

  pasture with scrub trees thick on the slope and

  pines higher up. This is where everybody was. Not

  all in one place but scattered in small groups: about

  a dozen men in the scrub, the front-line men, the

  shooters who couldn’t just stand around. They’d

  fire at the shack when they felt like it or, when Mr.

  Tanner passed the word, they would all fire at once.

  Other people were up in the pines and on the road

  which ran along the crest of the hill, some three

  hundred yards from the shack across the pasture.

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  Those watching made bets whether the man in the

  shack would give himself up or get shot first.

  It was Saturday and that’s why everybody had

  the time. They would arrive in town that morning,

  hear about what had happened, and, shortly after,

  head out to the cattle-company pasture. Almost all

  of the men went out alone, leaving their families in

  town: though there were a few women who came.

  The other women waited. And the people who had

  business in town and couldn’t leave waited. Now

  and then somebody came back to have a drink or

  their dinner and would tell what was going on. No,

  they hadn’t got him yet. Still inside the line shack

  and not showing his face.

  But they’d get him. A few more would go out

  when they heard this. Also a wagon from De

  Spain’s went out with whiskey. That’s how the saloon was set up in the pines overlooking the pasture

  and why nobody went back to town after that.

  Barely a mile from town those going out would

  hear the gunfire, like a skirmish way over on the

  other side of a woods, thin specks of sound, and

  this would hurry them. They were careful, though,

  topping the slope, looking across the pasture, getting their bearings, then peering to see who was

  present. They would see a friend and ask about this

  Mr. Tanner and the friend would point him out.

  The man there in the dark suit: thin and bony,

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  not big but looking like he was made of gristle and

  hard to kill, with a mustache and a thin nose and a

  dark dusty hat worn square over his eyes. That was

  him. Nobody had ever seen him before that morning. They would look at Mr. Tanner, then across

  the pasture again to the line shack three hundred

  yards away. It was a little bake-oven of a hut, wood

  framed and made of sod and built against a rise

  where there were pines so the hut would be in

  shade part of the day. There were no windows in

  the hut, no gear lying around to show anybody

  lived there. The hut stood in the sun now with its

  door closed, the door chipped and splintered by all

  the bullets that had poured into it and through it.

  Off to the right where the pine shapes against the

  sky rounded and became willows, there in the trees

  by the creek bed, was the man’s wagon and team.

  In the wagon were the supplies he had bought that

  morning in town before Mr. Tanner spotted him.

  Out in front of the hut, about ten or fifteen feet,

  was something on the ground. From the slope three

  hundred yards away nobody could tell what it was

  until a man came who had field glasses. He looked

  up and said, frowning, it was a doll: one made of

  cloth scraps, a stuffed doll with buttons for eyes.

  The woman must have dropped it, somebody said.

  The woman? the man with the field glasses said.

  A Lipan Apache woman who was his wife or his

  woman or just with him. Mr. Tanner hadn’t been

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  clear about that. All they knew was she was in the

  hut with him and if the man wanted her to stay and

  get shot, that was his business.

  Bob Valdez, twenty years old and town constable

  for three weeks, carrying a shotgun and glad he had

  something to hold on to, was present at the Maricopa pasture. He arrived about noon. He told Mr.

  Tanner who he was, speaking quietly and waiting

  for Mr. Tanner to answer. Mr. Tanner nodded but

  did not shake hands and turned away to say something to an R. L. Davis, who rode for Maricopa

  when he was working. Bob Valdez stood there and

  didn’t know what to do.

  He watched the two men. Two of a kind, uh?

  Both cut from the same stringy hide and looking

  like father and son: Tanner talking, never smiling,

  hardly moving his mouth; R. L. Davis standing hipcocked, posing with his revolver and rifle and a cartridge belt over his shoulder and the funneled,

  pointed brim of his sweaty hat nodding up and

  down as he listened to Mr. Tanner, smiling at what

  Mr. Tanner said, laughing out loud while still Mr.

  Tanner did not even show the twitch of a lip. Bob

  Valdez did not like R. L. Davis or any of the R. L.

  Davises he had met. He was civil, he listened to

  them, but, God, there were a lot of them to listen to.

  A Mr. Beaudry, who leased land to the cattle

  company, was there. Also Mr. Malsom, manager of

  Maricopa, and a horsebreaker by the name of

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  Diego Luz, who was big for a Mexican but never

  offensive and he drank pretty well.

  Mr. Beaudry, nodding and also squinting so he

  could picture the man inside the line shack, said,

  “There was something peculiar about him. I mean

  having a name like Orlando Rincon.”

  “He worked for me,” Mr. Malsom said. He was

  looking at Mr. Tanner. “I mistrusted him and I believe that was part of it, his name being Orlando

  Rincon.”
/>   “Johnson,” Mr. Tanner said.

  “I hired him two, three times,” Mr. Malsom

  said. “For heavy work. When I had work you

  couldn’t kick a man to doing.”

  “His name is Johnson,” Mr. Tanner said. “There

  is no fuzz-head by the name of Orlando Rincon.

  I’m telling you, this one is a fuzz-head from the Fort

  Huachuca Tenth fuzz-head cavalry and his name

  was Johnson when he killed James C. Baxter a year

  ago and nothing else.”

  He spoke as you might speak to young children

  to press something into their minds. This man had

  no warmth and he was probably not very smart.

  But there was no reason to doubt him.

  Bob Valdez kept near Mr. Tanner because he was

  the center of what was going on here. They would

  discuss the situation and decide what to do. As the

  law-enforcement man he, Bob Valdez, should be in

  on the discussion and the decision. If someone was

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  to arrest Orlando Rincon or Johnson or whatever

  his name was, then he should do it; he was town

  constable. They were out of town maybe, but

  where did the town end? The town had moved out

  here now; it was the same thing.

  Wait for Rincon to give up. Then arrest him.

  If he wasn’t dead already.

  “Mr. Malsom.” Bob Valdez stepped toward the

  cattle-company manager, who glanced over but

  looked out across the pasture again, indifferent.

  “I wondered if maybe he’s already dead,”

  Valdez said.

  Mr. Malsom, standing heavier and taller and

  twenty years older than Bob Valdez, said, “Why

  don’t you find out?”

  “I was thinking,” Valdez said, “if he was dead

  we could stand here a long time.”

  R. L. Davis adjusted his hat, which he did often,

  grabbing the funneled brim, loosening it on his

  head and pulling it down close to his eyes again and

  shifting from one cocked hip to the other. “This

  constable here’s got better things to do,” R. L.

  Davis said. “He’s busy.”

  “No,” Bob Valdez said. “I was thinking of the

  man, Rincon. He’s dead or he’s alive. He’s alive

  maybe he wants to give himself up. In there he has

  time to think, uh? Maybe—” He stopped. Not one

  of them was listening. Not even R. L. Davis.

  Mr. Malsom was looking at the whiskey wagon;

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  it was on the road above them and over a little ways

  with men standing by it, being served off the tailgate. “I think we could use something,” Mr. Malsom said. His gaze went to Diego Luz the

  horsebreaker, and Diego straightened up; not

  much, but a little. He was heavy and very dark and

  his shirt was tight across the thickness of his body.

  They said that Diego Luz hit green horses on the

  muzzle with his fist and they minded him. He had

  the hands for it; they hung at his sides, not touching

  or fooling with anything. They turned open, gestured, when Mr. Malsom told him to get the

  whiskey and as he moved off, climbing the slope,

  one hand held his holstered revolver to his leg.

  Mr. Malsom looked up at the sky, squinting and

  taking his hat off and putting it on again. He took

  off his coat and held it hooked over his shoulder by

  one finger, said something, gestured, and he and

  Mr. Beaudry and Mr. Tanner moved a few yards

  down the slope to a hollow where there was good

  shade. It was about two or two-thirty then, hot,

  fairly still and quiet considering the number of people there. Only some of them in the pines and down

  in the scrub could be seen from where Bob Valdez

  stood wondering whether he should follow the

  three men down to the hollow. Or wait for Diego

  Luz, who was at the whiskey wagon now, where

  most of the sounds that carried came from: a voice,

  a word or two that was suddenly clear, or laughter,

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  and people would look up to see what was going

  on. Some of them by the whiskey wagon had lost

  interest in the line shack. Others were still watching, though: those farther along the road sitting in

  wagons and buggies. This was a day, a date, uh?

  that people would remember and talk about. Sure, I

  was there, the man in the buggy would be saying a

  year from now in a saloon over in Benson or St.

  David or somewhere. The day they got that army

  deserter, he had a Big-Fifty Sharps and an old

  Walker and I’ll tell you it was ticklish business.

  Down in that worn-out pasture, dusty and spotted with desert growth, prickly pear and brittlebush, there was just the sun. It showed the ground

  cleanly all the way to just in front of the line shack

  where now, toward the midafternoon, there was

  shadow coming out from the trees and from the

  mound the hut was set against.

  Somebody in the scrub must have seen the door

  open. The shout came from there, and Bob Valdez

  and everybody on the slope was looking by the time

  the Lipan Apache woman had reached the edge of

  the shade. She walked out from the hut toward the

  willow trees carrying a bucket, not hurrying or

  even looking toward the slope.

  Nobody fired at her; though this was not so

  strange. Putting the front sight on a sod hut and on

  a person are two different things. The men in the

  scrub and in the pines didn’t know this woman.

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  They weren’t after her. She had just appeared.

  There she was; and no one was sure what to do

  about her.

  She was in the trees a while by the creek, then she

  was in the open again, walking back toward the hut

  with the bucket and not hurrying at all: a small figure way across the pasture almost without shape or

  color, with only the long skirt reaching to the

  ground to tell it was the woman.

  So he’s alive, Bob Valdez thought. And he wants

  to stay alive and he’s not giving himself up.

  He thought about the woman’s nerve and

  whether Orlando Rincon had sent her out or she

  had decided this herself. You couldn’t tell about an

  Indian woman. Maybe this was expected of her.

  The woman didn’t count; the man did. You could

  lose the woman and get another one.

  Mr. Tanner didn’t look at R. L. Davis. His gaze

  held on the Lipan Apache woman, inched along

  with her toward the hut; but must have known

  R. L. Davis was right next to him.

  “She’s saying she don’t give a goddamn about

  you and your rifle,” Mr. Tanner said.

  R. L. Davis looked at him funny. Then he said,

  “Shoot her?” Like he hoped that’s what Mr. Tanner

  meant.

  “Well, you could make her jump some,” Mr.

  Tanner said.

  Now R. L. Davis was onstage and he knew it and

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  Bob Valdez could tell he knew it by the way he levered the Winchester, raised it
, and fired all in one

  motion, and as the dust kicked behind the Indian

  woman, who kept walking and didn’t look up,

  R. L. Davis fired and fired and fired as fast as he

  could lever and half aim and with everybody watching him, hurrying him, he put four good ones right

  behind the woman. His last bullet socked into the

  door just as she reached it and now she did pause

  and look up at the slope, staring up like she was

  waiting for him to fire again and giving him a good

  target if he wanted it.

  Mr. Malsom laughed out loud. “She still don’t

  give a goddamn about your rifle.”

  It stung R. L. Davis, which it was intended to do.

  “I wasn’t aiming at her!”

  “But she doesn’t know that.” Mr. Malsom was

  grinning, turning then and reaching out a hand as

  Diego Luz approached them with the whiskey.

  “Hell, I wanted to hit her she’d be laying there,

  you know it.”

  “Well, now, you go tell her that,” Mr. Malsom

  said, working the cork loose, “and she’ll know it.”

  He took a drink from the bottle and passed it to

  Mr. Beaudry, who drank and handed the bottle to

  Mr. Tanner. Mr. Tanner did not drink; he passed

  the bottle to R. L. Davis, who was standing, staring

  at Mr. Malsom. Finally R. L. Davis jerked the bottle up, took a long swallow, and that part was over.

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  Mr. Malsom said to Mr. Tanner, “You don’t

  want any?”

  “Not today,” Mr. Tanner answered. He continued to stare out across the pasture.

  Mr. Malsom watched him. “You feel strongly

  about this army deserter.”

  “I told you,” Mr. Tanner said, “he killed a man

  was a friend of mine.”

  “No, I don’t believe you did.”

  “James C. Baxter of Fort Huachuca,” Mr. Tanner said. “He come across a tulapai still this nigger

  soldier was working with some Indians. The nigger

  thought Baxter would tell the army people, so he

  shot him and ran off with a woman.”

  “And you saw him this morning.”

  “I had come in last night and stopped off, going

  to Tucson,” Mr. Tanner said. “This morning I was

  getting ready to leave when I saw him; him and the

  woman.”

  “I was right there,” R. L. Davis said. “Right, Mr.

  Tanner? Him and I were on the porch by the Republic and Rincon goes by in the wagon. Mr. Tanner said, ‘You know that man?’ I said, ‘Only that