Norton, Andre - Novel 15 Page 5

  "If we wait—'n I ain't growed as simple as a beaver kit in my old age—we've got us a mighty fine chance to clean out the whole kit 'n caboodle of 'em. Game to try, Sergeant?"

  Herndon's eyes sparkled; he didn't have to answer. The way he hurried them on was reply enough. Ritchie smelled the smoke—but it was fainter now. The fire, having served its purpose, must be almost out.

  Their last halt was at the beginning of an extremely narrow ledge. Tuttle was the first to squeeze out along it. After several hour-long minutes Herndon reached back for Ritchie's sleeve and tugged him up.

  "Hug the wall all the way, and don't make a sound!"

  With his tongue tip caught between his teeth, his hands damp and shaking a little in spite of the bite of the cold as he shucked off his gloves, Ritchie ventured along the scrap of path. He kept his attention on the rock wall at his left, gluing his fingers to any knob or crack which would give him purchase. Then the ledge widened out and was canopied by the beginnings of an overhang. He stumbled forward to be caught up in the scout's grip.

  "Git over thar 'n keep still!" That fierce whisper sent him into the shadows where he burrowed into a pile of debris and nursed his arm. Tuttle's pinching fingers had started up the ache of his bruise again.

  By the time Tuttle was hauling in the second man Ritchie was satisfying his curiosity about their surroundings. Although it was past sunrise, the sky had not cleared much, and dark gray clouds were piling up with the promise of more snow. So the niche they were occupying was still a place of dusk and shadows.

  Straight before him ran a wall, almost to the lip of the drop, and above its crumbling crest he could make out a square, tower-shaped structure. Even the pile of stuff against which he had been sheltering was man made. He had heard of these strange cliff castles, but this was the first time he had seen one.

  "All right." Herndon swung in, the last to cross. “Take cover along the outer ruins and thin out. Pick a place that'll put your sights down there."

  He pointed a little to the left. Ritchie squirmed forward. But he never reached the place of his own choice, for the Sergeant rounded and pushed him down in an angle of the broken wall.

  “Loosen a couple of these bricks," Herndon ordered in a half whisper. ''That'll make you a loophole. And stay put-right here!"

  Ritchie unslung the carbine and pulled out his knife. He had to keep his fingers bare while he dug and twisted at the powdering adobe. From time to time he stopped and stuffed his hands inside coat and shirt to thaw out the warning numbness. But he had the first brick loose and was easing it out of its age-old setting when Herndon returned to drop down beside him.

  The Sergeant was picking away, too. But he moved with astonishing speed to catch a second brick which almost dropped out of Ritchie's blue, raw-cold hands.

  “Put those in—next to your hide and keep them there! This is no time to get frostbite!"

  Reluctantly Ritchie obeyed, shuddering all through his body as the icy flesh slapped against the warmth over his ribs. At least the knife wind of the mountain slopes did not come here. If they could only have a fire now—why, it wouldn't be half bad!

  Herndon put down another brick.

  "Take a look down there. And keep awake!"

  Keep awake—that was good! As if anyone could sleep now! Ritchie hunched up a little and looked down through their improvised loophole. Some distance below, a wide ledge, which might almost have been the top of a small mesa, jutted far out. Fires burned there, and the curious heaps of dried brush covered with ragged blankets that were the lodges of the Apaches made lumps not unlike the untidy nests of pack rats. Blanketed squatty figures—probably the squaws, he decided—were moving around the fires. He could see only one red-turbaned warrior, a lookout mounted on a rock to watch the valley below.

  "He's your target." Herndon indicated the lookout. "When the time comes, see that you freeze on him. And shooting downhill is tricky. If you're not sure of the range, fire at that line of rocks—the ricocheting bullets are sometimes as good as straight shots. Ah—"

  His voice faded. There was a sudden stir of activity on the ledge of the camp. Three warriors, conspicuous against the general drabness because of their fiery headcloths, were trotting up the incline to the camp. The sound of voices came up through the clear air, though not clearly enough to distinguish words. Tuttle was right; the raiding party was coming home.

  The next hour was both the most miserable and the most exciting Ritchie had ever spent. Although cold seeped into his bones and his body ached with it, he dared not stir from his vantage point to ease cramped limbs. He watched the raiders gather in by twos and threes.

  That fire which had tantalized them since their arrival with its fragrant smoke and promise of heat blazed higher, and another smell came up with the smoke, the hot stench of too-well-roasted meat. Ritchie swallowed. If he closed his eyes, he could almost visualize the roast ham which had been the centerpiece at Aunt Emma's dinner on the last occasion he had been there. Roast ham with sweet potatoes and beans and—

  Herndon's sudden move snapped him back to the present. The Sergeant was up on one knee, his pistol resting on the wall, as he watched with very intent eyes a swirl of movement in the camp.

  The murmur of sound from down there had ended in a couple of wild shouts. Ritchie's hand tightened on the carbine. Discovery? No, no one down below was thinking of the cliffs. Instead the Apaches were packed in a wide circle around two of their own number. The men were stripped bare, their powerful stocky bodies showing as dark silhouettes of strength and endurance against the few patches of snow as they circled warily.

  “Apache duel!" Herndon spoke more to himself than to Ritchie.

  A steel blade in one dueler's fist caught life from the fire. There was an attack, sudden, direct, but it did not get home. For one long moment Herndon watched the contest. Then his pistol lifted, and he fired into the air.

  Ritchie's trigger squeezed as the answer came from across the canyon in the clear notes of the bugle. A steady wave of fire poured down into the massed target below.

  What followed wasn't pretty. But then the canyon of the ambush had not been a tidy sight either—and the fuse which set off this powder train had been long in weaving. None of them doubted that Apache war was war to the death.

  Wailing cries came up. Dark sacks of clothing fell to the rocks and did not rise again. A few escaped into the brush. But most of the red turbans fought, backs against rocks, making a firm last stand, sending up arrows which could not even nick the cliff tops held by their enemies.

  Ritchie coughed. Powder reek filled the ruins, held in by the overhang. He coughed, squeezed the trigger, loaded, coughed. It was a mechanical business now. And after the first few seconds he did not even think of those below as human beings.

  ''Cease fire!" Herndon's order was a shout which rang along the cave mouth.

  Men were climbing down the far wall of the canyon.

  "Want we should git down thar, too. Sergeant?" Tuttle called from his post.

  "Yes." The single word was curt. Ritchie pulled himself up to his numbed feet and followed his commander, stumbling over the piles of ruined adobe.

  The dragoons ventured out into the camp cautiously. It wouldn't be the first time a dead Apache came back to kill a careless enemy.

  The camp itself was a poor thing, the sort of shelter animals might have sought. Ritchie had no desire to poke into the interiors of the bush huts which gave out the stench of unclean human bodies. He headed for the fire.

  "Wonder what the cuss was fightin' for—" Tuttle had come to a stop beside the brown body of one of the duelists where it lay sprawled across the rock.

  "Woman or loot, quien sabe?" Velasco shrugged and held out a bundle of hide. "Maybe even this—"

  From his fingers now unrolled a shirt of buckskin. Across it were sewn in rows and patterns a multitude of small objects: arrow points, bits of crystal, little bags plump with stuffing, even a cross of metal and—Ritchie recogniz
ed with astonishment—the looped chain of a rosary.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "Medicine shirt," Velasco explained. "The man who wore this was either a great chief or a medicine man. These bags now—they are full of hoddentin—the sacred meal. And here is wood which has been lightning struck—"

  "But the cross—that rosary—?"

  Velasco's face grew bleak; his jaw seemed to sharpen. "There has been raiding across the border to get that. Those are the spoils of warfare."

  "Hey, Sergeant, lookit this here!" One of the dragoons dragged a lance up to the fire. "This ain't Injun stuff!"

  Something in the curve of the old metal head was vaguely familiar to Ritchie. He must have seen one like it somewhere.

  "Old Spanish," Herndon said after examination. "Could have been brought by Coronado himself."

  "Yep." Tuttle spat into the flames. "I've heard tell as how they found a skeleton out in the desert aways some years ago. Had it a helmet 'n armor on—one of the old fellas from down Mexico way who came up here huntin' gold. No tellin' where this here's come from ner how long it's been passin' from hand to hand—"

  Velasco folded the medicine shirt and slipped it under his belt. "I trust," he spoke to Tuttle, his teeth an amused flash of white, "you are not neglecting to explore their bullet pouches, my friend."

  “No. But 'twon't do much good. They only had 'em two-three trade guns, that's all. 'N here's the total." He took his hand out of his pocket and opened it. On the palm were four balls made to fit the muskets of an earlier day.

  "Can buy myself a couple of good chaws with these here. They're gold," he told Ritchie. "Injuns think one metal's as good as 'nother for pokin' holes in a man, so they run a nugget into a bullet 'n here yo' are!"

  "Lay the bodies out over here. Then fire the huts—" Herndon broke into the circle warming by the fire.

  Ritchie helped with the grisly task of clearing the battle ground.

  "Leave 'em to the wolves, eh? Like they left our boys!"

  Herndon rounded on the man who said that. "Their women are back there. We'll leave them to their own folks," he snapped. "But get fire into those huts and be quick about it."

  Three of the dragoons took burning branches from the fire and hurled them into the piles of brush. The flames crackled up into vicious and devouring life as the detachment prepared to march.

  The women and children who had escaped, where would they go now? Their supplies were gone, and it was beginning to snow again. Ritchie wrenched his thoughts away from that path. He'd better keep thinking what it meant to the peaceful ranches and travelers in the valleys below to have even one rancheria wiped out—its manpower never to go raiding again.

  They moved along the canyon at a sort of shuffling trot, still alert to every bit of movement behind them. They were close to the end of the canyon when one mitten was shaken from Ritchie's hand. He stopped to recover it and so, by a hair's breadth, escaped the arrow which skimmed past his shoulder to splinter against stone.

  A thin whimper marked the miss. There was no time to aim—and nothing he could see to aim at. Knife in hand he plunged back toward the pile of loose rocks which marked an ancient slide. And, by the very quickness of his move, he cornered the enemy.

  It was a very small specimen of fighting man who faced him defiantly, back against the canyon wall. There were wild dark eyes staring into his, a tangle of black hair looped back with a red cloth string, a thin face sharpened by desperate fear into the muzzle of an animal.

  Ritchie put his knife back in its sheath and reached out his hands.

  "Look here, kid, nobody's going to hurt you—"

  The captive flung himself forward in a frenzied attack, but Ritchie had braced himself against that very maneuver. He caught and held the skinny little body in spite of its flailing arms and kicking legs. Then the head darted down, and teeth sank into the flesh of his bare hand.

  With a quick hot word Ritchie pulled away, but he still kept his grip on his captive.

  "What the-!"

  Herndon stopped short as Ritchie and the struggling boy careened from behind a boulder and crashed into him. There was a moment of tangled battle, and then they separated. Ritchie, his wounded hand held stiffly before him, was still clutching the little boy's arm, but the Sergeant had an even tighter hold on the nape of the Apache's neck.

  "Look out! He bites!" Ritchie's grasp of that too-thin arm was anything but gentle.

  "Maybe you would, too, if the only weapon you had left was your teeth!" Herndon commented. "Let go now, I have him."

  Ritchie nursed his injured hand. A row of bright red dots marked the skin across his palm. It hurt out of all proportion to the extent of the damage. Herndon's control of the Apache was better than his. Either the Sergeant's demeanor had effectively cowed the boy, or else he had wasted all his strength in the struggle, for now he was standing quite still while Herndon twisted a loop of rawhide around his hands, fastening the other end of that leash to his own belt.

  "What will-?"

  "We do with him?" finished Herndon. "Take him in with us. If we leave him here, he'll starve or freeze. This snow will blanket the trails of his people so that he can never find them. Now—" He repeated a few guttural words to the boy.

  The young Apache stared stolidly before him as if neither of the dragoons were there. But when the Sergeant started down the trail and gave a short jerk to the leash, he spat out a stream of harsh words in a high thin voice, then held up his head and marched bleakly along, paying no more heed to his captors.

  "What did he say?"

  "He was just condemning all Pinda-lick-o-yi to a region a great deal warmer than the one we now traverse." There was a hint of laughter in Herndon's answer.

  "Pinda-lick-o-yi?" Ritchie twisted his tongue about the word.

  "White eyes. That's the Apache name for us. Ours for them—Apache—isn't much better. That just means 'enemy.’ They call themselves simply 'The People.' "

  "Wal, got yoreselves a scalp still walkin'!" Tuttle observed as they caught up with the rest. "Took two of yo' to bring him in, 'n"—those keen eyes had not missed Ritchie's cradled hand—"he set his mark on one of yo' into the bargain."

  "Little varmint!" One of the dragoons shifted the sling of his carbine. "Better knock 'im on the head, Sergeant, or he'll knife yo' first chance he gits. These rock snakes are pizen from their cradles."

  Herndon tugged the leash gently, bringing the captive up to them. "Now"—again that note of humor colored his tone—"do you all think this character such a desperate one?"

  A miserable collection of rags was tied over a small body too thin but still wiry. The high-held head was crowned with an untamed mop of coarse black hair through which the Apache gave them back stare for stare. Suddenly Ritchie was ashamed of the way he had handled those matchstick arms. He dragged off the wool scarf he wore under his coat and pulled it clumsily around the boy's neck with his unhurt hand. Then he spoke directly to Herndon.

  "Can he march? Those moccasins don't look very tough—"

  "Lord!" The man who had spoken of varmints laughed cruelly. "The bottoms of his feet are leather. They ain't human—the Apaches—they're half-lion, half-bear. He'll march us all out on our feet—if he has to!"

  But the Sergeant had taken a small package out of the front of his coat and opened it to display a pair of heavy socks and a second pair of moccasins. He signed the boy to sit, and when the Indian paid no attention, swept him off his feet and with Tuttle's aid got both socks and moccasins on him.

  "Let's go!" He was on his feet again. "We'd better reach the horses and be heading out of the mountains before the storm closes in."

  Ritchie glanced up at the mountain peaks above. The thick curtain of clouds which had hung there most of the morning was more dense. And certainly the snow was falling faster; the fine mist of spinning particles was taking on more weight and substance.

  "Hm." Maybe no one but Ritchie heard Tuttle's mutter. "The game's made, 'n the ball'
s rollin', gents."

  That had been the cry of the gambler in Santa Fe. He shivered. The game had started, but what were the stakes this time—their own lives?

  5

  ''A Right Smart Lot of Snow''

  The canny black Ritchie was riding was foot-sure and steady—even over a trail which had ceased to exist sometime back except as a white-blanketed cut through never-ending heights. Above, the gray clouds had broken, and now the air was thick with whirling flakes which muffled sound and hid from sight the men ahead. When they halted, Ritchie almost rode down the very man who had signaled the stop.

  By tramping and beating down drifts, they achieved a pocket under the overhang of the cliff. As Ritchie rubbed down the steaming black, he wondered how long the gelding could keep going on the handful of corn which was all that remained in his provision bag. Tuttle's mule was gnawing hungrily at a pine branch, and two of the horses reluctantly followed its example.

  The fire they huddled about was pocket-sized. Forage for enough wood to enlarge it would have taken them out of sight. And both Tuttle and the Sergeant were against that. It was Herndon who outlined their position in frank enough words.

  ''We're staying here until it clears. Wander out in this and lose our bearings, and that's the finish!"

  ''Stay here 'n starve!" burst out one of the men. "We ain't got more'n 'bout two days food with us—"

  "Two days full feed can make 'bout five or six short rations," Tuttle pointed out. ''We draw up our belts a mite maybe. Git out in this stuff, man, 'n we can be goin' six ways from Sunday 'n not know it! Want them fellas to have the last word?"

  Down the wind came a long mournful howl. The horses stamped uneasily, and the men glanced over their shoulders into the gray mist of the outer world.

  Something moved against Ritchie, hunching close enough to make him feel real pressure. He looked down. The little Apache was holding his hands out to the fire. He did not raise his eyes. But, when again that dismal howl came floating through the snow, he shivered. Ritchie picked up one of the blankets he had just pulled off his horse and dropped it around the small bony shoulders. Brown claw hands caught at its edges and whipped it tighter, so that only darting eyes could be seen through a slit.