Two of the warriors pulled him to his feet and
half-dragged him to the center of the rancheria.
Most of the Apaches were stripped to breechcloths,
streaks of paint on their chests contrasting with the
dinginess of their dirt-smudged bodies. They stood
about him, silent now, their dark eyes burning with
anticipation of what was to come. Asesino, Pillo’s
son-in-law, walked up to within a foot of the captain, stared at him momentarily and then spat full
in his face. Asesino’s lips were curling into laughter
when Travisin punched him in the mouth and sent
him sprawling at the feet of the warriors.
✯ ✯ ✯
He rose slowly, reaching for his knife, but Pillo
again intervened, speaking harshly to his son-inlaw. Pillo was the statesman, the general, not a
rowdy guerrilla leader. There would be time for
blood, but now he must tell this upstart white
Trail of the Apache
47
soldier what the situation was. That it was the
Apache’s turn.
He began with the usual formality of explaining
the Apache position, but went back farther than
Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, both in his own
lifetime, to list his complaints against the white
man. The Apache has no traditional history to fall
back on, but Pillo spoke long enough about the last
ten years to compare with any plains Indian’s war
chant covering generations. As he spoke, the other
Apaches would grumble or howl, but did not take
their eyes from Travisin. The captain stared back
at them insolently, his gaze going from one to the
next, never dropping his eyes. But he noted more
than scowling faces. He saw that though lookouts
were posted on the eastern edge of the mesa, the
direction from which he and Ningun had come
hours before, the western side, was empty of any
Apaches.
Pillo was finishing with background now, and
becoming more personal. He spoke in a mixture of
Spanish and English, relying on Apache when an
emphatic point had to be made. He spoke of promises made and broken by the white man. He spoke
of Crook, whom the Apache trusted, but who was
gone now.
“Look around, white soldier, you see many Tin-
neh here, but you will not live to see the many more
that will come. Soon will come Jicarillas, Tontos
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and many Mescaleros, and the white men will be
driven to the north.” As he spoke he pushed his
open shirt aside and scratched his stomach.
Travisin saw the two animal teeth hanging from
his neck by a leather string. It was then that the idea
started to form in his mind. It was rash, something
he would have laughed at in a cooler moment; but
he glanced at the fire that meant torture. He looked
across it and saw Gatito. There was the answer!
The animal teeth and Gatito.
“Pillo speaks with large mouth, but only wind
comes out,” Travisin said suddenly, feeling confidence rise at the boldness of his words. “You speak
of many things that will happen, but they are all
lies, for before any Tinneh come I shall drag you
and your people back to the reservation, where you
will all be punished.”
✯ ✯ ✯
Pillo started to howl with laughter, but was cut
short by Travisin. “Hold your tongue, old man! I
do not speak with the wind. U-sen Himself sent me.
He knows what your medicine is.” Travisin paused
for emphasis. “And I am that medicine!”
Pillo’s lips formed laughter, but the sound was
not there. The white soldier spoke of his medicine.
“All your people know that your medicine is the
gray wolf who protects you, because U-sen has always made Himself known through the gray wolf
Trail of the Apache
49
to guard you from evil. I tell you, old man, if you or
any warrior lays a hand on me as I leave here, you
will be struck dead by U-sen’s arrow, the lightning
stroke. If you do not believe me, touch me!”
Pillo was unnerved. An Apache’s medicine is the
most important part of his existence. Not something to be tampered with. Travisin addressed Pillo
again, turning toward Gatito.
“If Pillo does not believe, let him ask Gatito if I
do not have power from U-sen. Ask Gatito, who
was the best stalker in the Army, if he was ever able
to even touch me, though he tried many times. Ask
him if I am not the wolf.”
The renegade scout looked at Travisin wide-eyed.
He had never thought of this before, but it must be
true! He remembered the dozens of times he had
tried to win his bet with the captain. Each time he
had been but a few feet away, when the captain had
laughed and turned on him. The thought swept
through his mind and was given support by his
primitive superstitions and instincts. Pillo and the
others watched him and they saw that he believed.
Travisin saw, and exhaled slowly through clenched
teeth.
He turned from Pillo and walked toward the
western rim of the mesa without another word. It
had to be bold or not at all. Apaches in his way fell
back quickly as he walked through the circle and out
of the rancheria. His strides were long but unhur- 50
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ried as he made his way through the tall grass, looking straight ahead of him and never once behind.
The flesh on the back of his neck tingled and he
hunched his shoulders slightly as if expecting at any
moment to feel the smash of a bullet or an arrow.
For the hundred yards he walked with this uncertainty, the spring in him winding, tightening to catapult him forward into a driving sprint. But he
paced off the yards calmly, fighting back the urge
to bolt. Nearing the mesa rim his neck muscles uncoiled, and he took a deep breath of the thin air.
There on the western side, the mesa edge slanted,
without an abrupt drop, into the irregular fall of
the mountainside. A path stretched from the mesa
diagonally down the side to be lost among rocks
and small rises that twisted the path right and left
down the long slope.
Travisin was only a few feet from the path when
the Apache loomed in front of him coming up the
trail. Though many things raced through his mind,
he stopped dead only a split second before throwing himself at the Apache. They closed, chest to
chest, and Travisin could smell the rankness of his
body as they went over the rim and rolled down the
path to land heavily against a tree stump. Travisin
lost his hold on the Indian but landed on top clawing for his throat. A saber-sharp pain cut through
his back and his nostrils filled with dust and sweat-Trail of the Apache
51
smell. The Apache’s face was a straining blur below
him, the neck muscles stretching like steel cords.
He pulled one hand from the Apache’s throat,
clawed u
p a rock the size of his fist and brought it
down in the Indian’s face in one sweeping motion,
grinding through bone and flesh to drive the Indian’s scream back down his throat.
As he rose to run down the path, the carbine shot
ricocheted off the mesa rim above him. His medicine was broken.
✯
Chapter Seven
An hour before dawn Fry had finished spotting
his scouts along one side of the narrow canyon that
gouged into the shoulder of Pillo’s mountain
stronghold. One scout was a mile behind with the
mounts; the others, concealed among the rocks and
brush that climbed the canyon wall, were playing
their favorite game. An Apache will squat behind a
bush motionless all day to take just one shot at an
enemy. Here was the promise of a bountiful harvest. Each man was his own troop, his own company, each knowing how to fight the Apache best,
for he is an Apache.
They were to meet Travisin and Ningun there at
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dawn and wait. Wait and watch, under the assumption that sooner or later Pillo would lead his band
down from the mountain. The logical trail was
through the canyon. And the logical place for a jackpot was here where the canyon narrowed to a defile
before erupting out to the base of the mountain.
De Both crouched near Fry, watching him
closely, studying his easy calm, hoping that the contagion of his indifference would sweep over him
and throttle the gnawing fear in his belly. But de
Both was an honest man, and his fear was an honest fear. He was just young. His knees trembled not
so much at the thought of the coming engagement,
his first, but at the question: Would he do the right
thing? What would his reaction be? He knew it
would make or break him.
And then, before he could prepare himself, it had
begun. Two, three, four carbine shots screamed
through the canyon, up beyond their sight. At the
same time, there was a blur of motion on the opposite canyon wall not a hundred yards away and the
Apache came into sight. He leaped from boulder to
rock down the steep wall of the canyon until he
was on level ground. He gazed for a few seconds in
the direction from which the shots had come, then
crossed the canyon floor at a trot and started to
scale the other wall from which he would have a
better command of the extending defile. He stopped
and crouched behind a rock not twenty feet below
Trail of the Apache
53
de Both’s position. Then he turned and began to
climb again.
✯ ✯ ✯
Often when you haven’t time to think, you’re
better off, your instinct takes over and your body
follows through. De Both pressed against the boulder in front of him feeling the coolness of it on his
cheek, pushing his knees tight against the ground.
He heard the loose earth crumble under the
Apache’s moccasins as he neared the rock. He
heard the Indian’s hand pat against the smooth surface of it as he reached for support. And as his
heart hammered in his chest the urge to run made
his knees quiver and his boot moved with a spasmodic scrape. It cut the stillness like a knife
dragged across an emery stone, and it shot de Both
to his feet to look full into the face of the Apache.
Asesino tried to bring his carbine up, but he was
too late. De Both’s arms shot across the narrow
rock between them and his fingers dug into the
Apache’s neck. Asesino fell back, pushing his carbine lengthwise against the blue jacket with a force
that dragged the officer over the rock on top of
him, and they writhed on the slope, their heads
pointing to the canyon floor. The Indian tried to
yell, but fingers, bone-white with pressure, gouged
vocal cords and only a gurgling squeak passed agonized lips. His arms thrashed wildly, tore at the
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back of the blue jacket and a hand crawled downward to unexpectedly clutch the bone handle of the
knife. Light flashed on the blade as it rose in the air
and plunged into the straining blue cloth.
✯ ✯ ✯
There was a gasp, an air-sucking moan. De Both
rolled from the Apache with his eyes stretched open
to see Fry’s boot crush against the Indian’s cheekbone. His eyes closed then and he felt the burning
between his shoulder blades. He felt Fry’s hands
tighten at his armpits to pull him back up the slope
behind the rock. The same hands tore shirt and tunic to the collar and then gently untied the grimy
neckerchief to pad it against the wound.
“You ain’t bad hurt, mister. You didn’t leave
enough strength in him to do a good job.” And his
heavy tobacco breath brushed against the officer’s
cheek and made him turn his head.
“I feel all right. But . . . what about the blood?”
“I’ll fix you up later, mister. No time now. The
captain’s put in an appearance.” He jerked a thumb
over his shoulder.
Far down the canyon a lone figure ran, his arms
pumping, his head thrown back, mouth sucking in
air. It was a long, easy lope paced to last miles without let-up. It was the pace of a man who ran, but
knew what he was doing. Death was behind, but
Trail of the Apache
55
the trail was long. As he came nearer to the scouts’
positions, Fry raised slightly and gave a low, shrill
whistle, then cut it off abruptly. Travisin glanced
up the canyon slope without slacking his pace and
passed into the shadows of the defile just as the
Apaches trickled from the rocks three hundred
yards up the canyon. They saw him pass into the
narrowness as they swept onto the canyon floor,
over fifty strong, screaming down the passage like a
cloud of vampires beating from a cavern. Their
yells screeched against the canyon walls and
whiplashed back and forth in the narrowness.
Fry sighted down his Remington-Hepburn waiting for the hostiles to come abreast. He turned his
head slightly and cut a stream of tobacco into the
sand. “Captain was sure right about their sign.
They was pavin’ us a road clean to hell. Have to
find out sometime where they all come from.” He
squinted down the short barrel, his finger taking in
the slack on the trigger. “In about one second you
can make all the noise you want.” The barrel lifted
slightly with the explosion and a racing Apache
was knocked from his feet. A split second later,
nine more carbines blasted into the canyon bottom.
Fry was on his feet after the first shot, pumping
bullets into the milling mass of brown bodies as
fast as he could squeeze the trigger. The hostiles
had floundered at the first shot, tripping, knocking
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each other down in an effort to reach safety, but
they didn’t know where to turn. They were caught
in their own kind of trap. They screamed, a
nd
danced about frantically. A few tried to rush up the
slope into the mouth of the murderous fire from the
scouts, but they were cut down at once. Others
tried to scale the opposite wall, but the steep slope
was slow going and they were picked off easily.
They dashed about in a circle firing wildly at the
canyon wall, wasting their ammunition on small
puffs of smoke that rose above the rocks and brush
clumps. And they kept dropping, one at a time.
Five shots in succession, two, then one. The last
bullet scream died away up-canyon. There was the
beginning of silence, but almost immediately the air
was pierced with a new sound. Throats shrieked
again, but with a vigor, with a lust. It was not the
agonized scream of the terrified Chiricahua, but
the battle yell of the Coyotero scout as he hurled
himself down the slope into the enemy. They had
earned their army pay; now it was time for personal
vengeance.
Half of the hostiles threw their arms into the air
as the scouts swarmed into the open, but they came
on with knives and gun stocks raised. Savage closed
with savage in a grinding melee of thrashing arms
and legs in thick dust, the cornered animal, made
more ferocious by his fear, battling the hunter who
Trail of the Apache
57
had tasted blood. They came back with their knives
dripping, their carbine stocks shattered.
✯ ✯ ✯
It took two days longer to return to the little subagency on the banks of the Gila, because it is
slower travel with wounded men and sixteen Chiricahua hostiles whose legs are roped under the
horses’ bellies by day and whose hands are lashed
to trees by night. Travisin led and was silent.
De Both held himself tense against the searing
pain that shot up between his shoulder blades. But
oddly enough, he did not really mind the ride
home. He looked at the line of sixteen hostiles and
felt nothing. No hate. No pity. Slowly it came upon
him that it was indifference, and he moved his
stained hat to a cockier angle. Boston could be a
million miles away and he could be at the end of the
earth, but de Both didn’t particularly give a damn.
He knew he was a man.
Fry chewed tobacco while his listless eyes swept