Trail of the Apache and Other Stories Read online

  be no survivor to tell of the lone Apache killer.

  The sport of the affair had satisfied him, but he

  was angry. None of the men had been using a

  Sharps, so there was no ammunition to be had. He

  picked up the guard’s Winchester, slinging the cartridge belt over his shoulder, but he liked the feel of

  the heavy buffalo rifle better. In the Sharps he had

  the confidence that comes only after trial. But he

  had only two cartridges left for it.

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  He turned his attention to the drummer, who

  was sprawled awkwardly next to the coach. With

  his foot he pushed the body over onto its back. A

  crimson smear spread over the shirtfront. The

  Apache opened the black satchel next to the man

  and emptied the contents onto the ground—

  needles, scissors, paring knives, and thread—and

  moved on to the horses.

  His next act made the woman turn her head

  slightly, for with his skinning knife he sliced a large

  chunk of meat from the rump of a disabled horse

  and stuffed it into the sample case. Then he stepped

  to the front of the horse and cut the animal’s jugular vein. Soon after, a Chiricahua Apache with a

  white woman at his side waded up Banderas Creek

  along the shallows. The woman dragged her legs

  through the water stiffly, slowly, as if her reluctance

  to move quickly was an open act of defiance toward

  the Indian.

  The Chiricahua carried two rifles and a bloodstained satchel and wore a clean shirt, the tail hanging below his narrow hips. With every few steps his

  glance turned to the cold face of the woman. They

  disappeared three hundred yards upstream, where

  the creek cut a bend into the blackness of the pines.

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  It was the point riders of Phil Langmade’s C

  Troop that found the wrecked stagecoach and the

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  dead men, almost two hours later. Twenty days in

  the field and a brush with Nachee, and because of

  it they had missed the stage at Rindo’s.

  They were returning to the garrison at Inspiration, thighs aching from long, stiff hours in the saddle. Grimy, salt-sweat-white, alkali-caked—both

  their uniforms and their minds—after days of riding through the savage dust-glare of central Arizona. And of the forty mounts, three had ponchos

  draped over the saddles, bulging and shapeless. All

  patrols were not routine.

  Langmade sent flankers to climb the ridges on

  both sides, and then went in. The troopers spread

  out in a semicircle, watching with hollow, lifeless

  eyes the flankers on the ridge more than the grisly

  scene on the road. You get used to the sight of

  death, but never to expecting it.

  Langmade dismounted, but Simon Street, the

  civilian scout, rode up to the dead driver before

  throwing off. He walked upstream another hundred yards and then came back, approaching the

  officer from around the coach. The troopers sat still

  in their saddles, half-asleep, half-ready to throw up

  a carbine. Habit.

  Langmade said, “I don’t know if I want to find her

  inside the coach or not. If she’s there, she’s dead.”

  Street’s eyes moved slowly over the scene. “You

  won’t find her,” he said. “There’s a little heel print

  over on the bank. They went upstream. That’s sure.

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  If they went down they’d wind up in the open near

  Rindo’s.”

  Langmade boosted himself onto the side of the

  stage and came down almost in the same motion.

  He nodded his head to the scout and kept it moving

  in an arc along the top of the near ridge.

  “Bet they laid up there waiting,” Langmade said.

  “A month’s pay they were Apaches.”

  Street followed his gaze to the ridge. He just

  glanced at the officer, his face creased-bronze and

  old beyond its years, crow’s feet where eye met

  temple, his hat tilted low on his forehead, his eyes

  in shadow. “You’re throwin’ your money away, soldier,” he said. “Apache.”

  Langmade looked at him quickly. “Only one?”

  “That’s all the sign says.” Street pointed to the

  butchered horse. “A war party don’t cut just one

  steak.”

  He turned his attention back to the ridge. He was

  looking at the exact spot from which the Apache

  had fired. Then his gaze fell slowly to sweep across

  the road to Banderas Creek. And he squinted

  against the glare as his eyes followed the course of

  the creek to the bend into the pines.

  Langmade pushed his field hat back from his

  forehead, releasing the hot-steel grip of the sweatband, and watched the scout curiously. Langmade

  was young, in his mid-twenties, but he was good

  for a second lieutenant. He didn’t talk much and he

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  watched. He watched and he learned. And he knew

  he was learning from one of the best. But the tension was building inside his stomach, and it wasn’t

  just the aftereffects of a twenty-day patrol.

  There were three dead men in the road and a

  woman missing and it had happened because he

  had failed to bring the patrol in to Rindo’s on time.

  The report would include an account of the brush

  with Nachee, and that would absolve him of blame.

  But it wouldn’t make it easier for him to face Colonel Darck.

  You didn’t just look at a stone near your boot toe

  and say “sorry” to a man whose wife has been carried off by a blood-drunk Apache—even if you

  weren’t to blame.

  There it was. Langmade stood motionless,

  watching the scout. Langmade was in command, a

  commissioned officer in the United States Army,

  but he was tired. His bones ached and his mind

  dragged, weary of fighting the savage country and

  the elusive Apache who was a part of that country,

  and always there was so little time.

  Learning to fight doesn’t come easy with most

  men. Learning to fight the Apache doesn’t come

  easy with anyone. You watch the veteran until your

  face takes on the same mask of impassiveness, then

  you make decisions.

  He waited patiently for Street to say something,

  to give him a lead. He remembered forty troopers

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  who watched the thin gold bars on his shoulders,

  and he tried to forget his helplessness.

  Langmade said, “The colonel was coming from

  Thomas to meet Mrs. Darck at Inspiration.” The

  scout was aware of this, he knew, but he had to say

  something. He had to fill the gap until something

  happened.

  Simon Street looked at the officer and a half

  smile broke the thin line of his mouth. “We’ll find

  her, soldier. It wasn’t your fault. People get killed

  by Apaches every day.”

  As the words came out, he realized he had said


  the wrong thing and added, quickly, “Know who

  this looks like to me?” and then went on when

  Langmade looked but didn’t speak.

  “Looks like that bronco Apache we been chasin’

  on and off for five years. Nochalbestinay. Though

  the Mexicans named him Mata Lobo. He was a

  Turkey Creek Chiricahua who’d never get used to

  reservation life in seven hundred years. Sendin’ him

  to San Carlos was like throwin’ a mountain cat a

  hunk of raw meat and then pullin’ all his teeth

  out.”

  Street pulled a thin cigar from his pocket and

  passed his tongue over the crumbling outer layer of

  tobacco. “You know, at one time there was almost

  a thousand troops plus a hundred Apache scouts all

  in the field at one time huntin’ him, and no one

  even saw him. You couldn’t ask the dead ones if

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  they saw him or not. An Apache’s bad enough, but

  this one’s half devil.”

  He moved toward the butchered horse. “Boy’s

  got a real yen for steak, ain’t he?”

  All the time the tension had been building in

  Langmade. Just standing there with his arms heavy

  at his sides and the weight pulling down inside his

  stomach. He had to hesitate until he was sure his

  voice would come out sounding natural.

  “You’ve got the sign and I’ve got the men,” he said.

  “Just point the way, Simon. Just point the way.”

  Street had turned and was walking toward his

  horse. He stopped and looked back at the officer.

  “Get your troop back to Inspiration and get a fresh

  patrol out, soldier.”

  Street’s words were low, directed only to the officer, but Langmade raised his voice almost to a

  shout when he answered:

  “We’ve got men here—get on his track!”

  “I’m not goin’ to guide for dead men,” the scout

  answered easily. “If a thousand men can’t catch

  him, you can’t count on forty. Maybe just one’s the

  answer. I don’t want to tell you how to run your

  business, son, but if I was you I’d shake it back to

  Inspiration and get a fresh patrol out.”

  Street mounted and then looked down at Langmade, who had followed him over to the horse.

  “The trail’s as fresh as you’d want it,” he said, nod-‚

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  ding toward the butchered horse. “That mare

  hasn’t been dead three hours. And he’s got a

  woman with him to slow him down.”

  “I’ve been out longer than that, Simon,” Langmade said. “She’ll slow him down just so long.”

  The scout’s mouth turned slightly into a smile as

  he pressed his heels into the mare’s flanks. “That’s

  why I got to hurry, soldier.”

  He walked the mare toward Banderas Creek and

  kicked her into a gallop as he turned upstream.

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  An hour before sunset Simon Street was walking

  his horse along the winding trail that threaded its

  way diagonally down the slope of the forestcovered hill that on the western side joined the

  rocky heights of the Sierra Apaches. This gradual

  leveling of the sierra was a tangled mass of junipers,

  gnarled stumps, and rock, rising and falling

  abruptly from one hillock to the next.

  The trail gouged itself laboriously in a general

  southwesterly direction, fighting rock falls, pine, and

  prickly pear, finally to emerge miles to the south at

  Devil’s Flats. From the crest, and occasionally down

  the path, you could see in the distance the

  whiteness—the bleak, bone-bleached whiteness—

  that was the flats.

  Street had traveled a dozen-odd miles from the

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  ambush, making his way slowly at first along the

  creek bank, looking for a particular telltale sign.

  He knew the Apache had followed the creek, leaving no prints, but somewhere he had to come out.

  The Apache would cover his tracks from the

  creek, but he would be coming out at a particular

  place for a reason. To pick up his mount. And you

  can’t leave a horse tied in one place for any length

  of time without also leaving a sign. To recognize

  the place is something else.

  Street saw the low tree branch that had been

  scarred by the hackamore, and his eyes fell to the

  particles of horse droppings that had remained after the Apache had swept most of it into the denser

  scrub brush. He was on the trail. From then on it

  was just a question of thinking like an Apache.

  For the scout, that night, it was the last of his

  jerked beef and a quarter canteen of cold coffee.

  No fire. Cold, tasteless rations while he pressed his

  back against a smooth rock that was still warm

  from the day’s heat and dueled his patience against

  the black pit that was the night.

  His Winchester lay across his lap, and the slight

  pressure on his thighs was a feeling of reassurance

  against the loneliness of the night. Dead stillness,

  then the occasional night sound. He could be the

  only man in the world. Yet, just a few miles ahead,

  perhaps less, was a bronco Apache who would kill

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  at the least provocation. And with him was a white

  woman.

  Street rubbed the stock of the Winchester idly.

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  In the dusk Amelia Darck watched the Apache.

  He crouched over the slab of red horsemeat, sitting

  on his heels, and hacked at the meat with his skinning knife. He cut off a chunk and stuffed it into

  his mouth, but the cold blood-taste of the raw meat

  tightened his throat muscles and he swallowed hard

  to get it down. He would wait.

  He cut the slab of meat into thin strips and

  spread them out separately on a flat shelf of rock.

  When he had more time he would jerk the meat

  properly and have plenty to eat.

  He looked toward the white woman and saw her

  staring at him. Always she stared, and always with

  the same fixed, strange look on her face. The eyes

  of the Apache and the white woman met, and Mata

  Lobo turned his attention back to the meat. The

  woman continued to stare at the Apache.

  She sat on the ground with her arms extended behind her, full weight on her arms, propping her

  body in a rigid position, unmoving. Her legs extended straight out before her, the ankles lashed together with a strip of rawhide. And she continued

  to watch the Apache.

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  Amelia Darck saw an Apache for the first time

  when she was six years old. His face was vivid in

  her memory. She remembered once somebody had

  said, “. . . like glistening bacon rind.” And always

  a dirty cloth headband.

  Yuma, Whipple Barracks, Fort Apache, and

  Thomas. Officers’ row on a sun-baked parade. Chiricahua, White Mountain, Mescalero, and Tonto.

  Thigh-high moccasins and a rusted Spencer. Tizwinr />
  drunk, then war drums. And only the red sun-slash

  in the sky after the patrol had faded into the glare

  three miles west of Thomas. Shapeless ponchos that

  used to be men. The old story. And she continued

  to watch the Apache.

  Mata Lobo glanced at the woman, then stood up

  abruptly and walked toward her. He stooped at her

  feet, hesitated, then placed the blade of the knife

  between her ankles and jerked up with the blade,

  severing the rawhide string.

  His face was expressionless, smooth and impassive, as he eased his body to the ground. A face that in

  the dimness was shadow on stone. His hands pushed

  against her shoulders until her arms bent slowly and

  her back was flat against the short, sparse grass.

  The hands moved from her shoulder and touched

  her face gently, the fingers moving on her cheeks

  like a blind man’s identifying an object, and his

  body eased toward hers.

  Her face was the same. The eyes open, infre-‚

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  quently blinking. She smelled the sour dirt-smell of

  the Apache’s body. Then she opened her arms and

  pulled him to her.

  ✯ ✯ ✯

  Simon Street was up before dawn. He gave his

  tightening stomach the last of the cold, stale coffee

  while he waited for the sun to peel back another

  layer of the morning darkness. It was cold and

  damp for that time of the year, and when he again

  started down the trail, a gray mist hung from the

  lower branches of the trees and lay softly against

  the grotesque rock lines.

  More often now, the ground fell away to the left,

  the trail hugging the side of the hill in its diagonal

  descent; and in the distance was a sheet of milky

  smoke where the mist clung softly to the flats. The

  trail was narrow and rocky and lined with dense

  brush most of the way down.

  Less than a mile ahead the grade dropped again

  steeply to the left of the trail, bare of tree or rock, cutting a smooth swatch twenty yards wide through the

  pines. The mist had evaporated considerably by then

  and Street could see almost to the bottom of the slide.

  First, it was the faintest blur of motion. And then

  the sound. A sound that could be human.

  Simon Street had been riding half tensed for the

  past dozen years. There was no abrupt stop. He