Louis L'Amour - The Lonely Men

I knew as well as anything that at least four or five pairs of eyes had been on me all the while, and had I jumped for a gun or a horse they'd have had me. So I just stretched out quiet, feeling a whole lot better for the drink.

Presently Kahtenny got up and walked over to me and sat down. He rolled himself a smoke as easy as any cowpoke you ever did see, and he sat there smoking until half of it was gone before he spoke. "Somebody want to kill you."

"Me?" I chuckled. "Maybe a lot of folks." I sized him up as having something puzzling on his mind. "You mean your boys?"

"Other man. White man."

"A white man wants me dead? What makes you think so?"

"He have my squaw. He say, you dead he give her to me. I bring your body, he gives squaw."

"So why haven't you done it?" Kahtenny looked puzzled. "Why he want you dead? I think somehow it is a trick."

"How'd you get the news? Did Toclani bring it?" He showed no surprise that I knew Toclani. "Yes ... he bring it. My squaw ... she talk to sister at San Carlo. She go quickly in the night, but when she leave these men take her."

"Did they hurt her?"

"No. Toclani say no." He looked at me. "Me fight Toclani, but Toclani good man.

My squaw good woman. Toclani puts Apaches to watch out for my squaw."

"Who are these white men?" "Their name is Hadden. There are several. Toclani sees them. Why they want you dead?"

"I shot them up. Rocca ... you know Tampico Rocca? They called him greaser and were going to kill him. We fought Rocca and me, we kill one ... maybe two of them.

He still was not satisfied. "Toclani says you good man. Great warrior."

There wasn't much I could say to that, so I kept my mouth shut and waited, but my mind was working as fast as I could make it. I lay no claims to being a thinker or a planner. I'm just a mountain boy who grew up to be a free drifting man, but it didn't take much figuring to see I had a way out of this if I could come up with the right ideas. Trouble was, I had to play my cards almighty careful, because I surely didn't have any hole card. One thing working for me was that Kahtenny was suspicious, and feared a trap.

To kill me of his own idea would be simple enough, and likely that's what he would have done, after some torture to see what kind of a man I was. But now somebody else wanted me dead, and he was puzzled.

From what I gathered, Kahtenny's squaw had slipped back into the reservation to see her sister and that was when the Hadden boys caught her ... waiting until she started to leave.

It was nothing unusual for a wild Apache to return to the reservation, stay a while, and then leave. The Army was always trying to get them to return, and often the squaws would come back first to look over the situation.

Now they had Kahtenny's squaw and he wanted her back, but he was like a wild thing that sniffs trouble at every change, and there was a lot about this offer that he did not like.

He sat smoking and waiting, and finally I said, "I think you can not trust them."

He looked at me. "They will kill her?"

"They are bad men. They would have killed Rocca for nothing. I think if you take my body to them they will kill her and you also ... if they can."

He waited a while, and I poked sticks into the fire. Then I said, "Give me my guns. I will get your squaw for you."

For a long time he said nothing, then abruptly he got up and went to the other fire, where he remained, occasionally in low-voiced conversation. After a while he came back and sat down on the sand. "You can get my squaw?"

"Kahtenny is a warrior. He knows the ways of war. Much can happen, but this I promise. I shall get her safely if it can be done."

After a pause, I added, more quietly, "The Haddens are not Apaches. They are fierce men, but they are not Apaches. I can get your squaw."

"She is a good woman. She has been with me for many moons."

"Do you know where they are?"

"We take you there. It is near the border." Nobody needed to warn me that my troubles were only beginning. Kahtenny might use me to get his squaw back, and then shoot me down in my tracks. It wasn't that an Apache wasn't grateful, he just had different ideas than we folks had. If you were not of the tribe you were a potential enemy, and killing you was in the cards.

There had been no sign of Spanish or of John J. Nor in the little I could overhear was there mention of them. It seemed likely that they had gotten clean off. Well, luck to them.

At daybreak they led my black horse to me and I saddled up, taking my time, but when I started for my guns, they stopped me and Toclani took my Winchester and hung my gun belt over his shoulder. They let me fill a canteen, and then we started out.

All the time we were riding I kept thinking about Neiss, who was one of five men on a stage near Stein's Peak when it was hit by Cochise and his band. The driver and a man named Elder were killed right off, the stage capsized, and the men were preparing for a fight when Neiss talked them out of it. Cochise, he said, was an old friend, just let Neiss talk to Cochise and all would be well, so they tried it. Cochise roped Neiss and dragged him up the canyon over the rocks, cactus, and brush, while two other warriors did the same for the others. Then they were tortured to death. That happened in April of 1861.

Thinking of this, I was placing no great faith in my chances with them, and although they watched me like hawks, I kept a wary eye out for any chance of escape. There wasn't any.

My black horse was gaunt and worn by hard travel. To break and run, even if the chance came, would get me nowhere. I had no weapon and there was no place I had to go ... no place I could reach in time.

The sun glared down on us as we walked our horses across the parched, rocky hills, weaving amongst the cactus and the greasewood. It was rolling land, broken by short sawtooth ranges of dull red or brown rock, and occasional flows of lava marked by the white streaks of dry washes. Indians rode on all four sides of me, always alert, always ready.

Nobody talked.

Each step my horse took seemed to be carrying me closer to death ... escape would be too much luck.

I could expect no help from the Haddens. I had no idea how I was going to get the squaw away from them, and I felt sure they had no intention of letting her go free. Even among good men the depredations carried on by the Apaches had created the desire to exterminate them, one and all ... and the Haddens were not good men.

Me, I always had great respect for the Apache. He had learned to live off a mighty bleak and hard country, and he had none of the white man's ways of thinking, and you had to reach out to try to understand how he felt and what he wanted to do.

After a while we began to see more cholla, great stretches of it, all pale yellow under the bright sun, with the dark browns and blacks of the old branches down below. Jumping cactus, we called it, because if a body passed too close if seemed to jump out to stick you. The Apaches thinned out to single file as we went through it.

All of a sudden we drew up. Kahtenny turned and pointed out a low mountain ahead of us, off to the east. "It is there they are," he said, "at Dead Man's Tank.

They are six men, and my squaw, and they want you."

They wanted me dead.

Though Kahtenny would have killed me without waiting if he figured that would be enough, he was no more trusting of the Haddens than I was. They would get my body, but that didn't mean he would get his squaw.

"You're going to have to give me my guns," I said. "If I ride in there without them, they'll kill the both of us if they can. I figure to handle the Haddens.

Without them, the others aren't likely to cut up no fuss."

The funny thing about it was, all day my mind had been miles from that hot desert and back in the hill country of the Cumberland. They say a man's whole life passes before him when he's about to die. I can't say that mine did ... only those times back in the mountains, so long ago.