Ralph Compton - Blood and Gold

MATANZAS CON SUS DENTES

I knew enough of the language to translate. It said: Kills with His Teeth.

The Apaches had given me a name and were letting me know that I was a marked man. All they wanted to do now was capture me alive. After that, using all the devilish ingenuity they could muster, they’d test me to see if I was the great warrior I seemed.

I knew that test would be much worse than anything Shorty Cummings had suffered and I would scream and shriek my way into eternity.

A sudden chill in my belly, I walked back to the wagon. Lila raised an eyebrow, but didn’t offer a question. For that, I was glad, fearing that my tongue would stick to the roof of my dry mouth.

When Lila did speak, her words did little to allay my fear.

“Dusty,” she said, pointing south, “look over there. It’s more smoke.”

I followed her pointing finger to the low hills and mesquite flats stretching away from us. In the distance I watched the smoke rise, then break, then rise again, black puffs drifting one after another into the lead-colored sky.

Fascinated, fearful, I couldn’t tear my gaze away from it. “Lila, that’s talking smoke. Apache smoke.”

“What are they talking about?” the girl asked, her dark eyes huge.

“Us,” I said.

Chapter 12

We were halfway down the slope when the rain began, not the downpour I’d expected but a soft drizzle, lacing across the landscape as fine as spun silver.

As soon as we reached the flat and turned south, I remounted the black while Lila took my place beside the oxen and I rode away to scout the trail ahead.

For the most part this was open country, a grama and buffalo grass plain with low hills rising here and there, their slopes dotted with mesquite and post oak.

I startled a small herd of grazing antelope and they bounded away from me over the crest of a hill and were soon lost to sight. Several times I spotted long-horn steers, strays from the spring herds, but they were every bit as wild as the antelope and kept their distance.

When I reached a shallow valley between a couple of low, flat-topped rises, I reined in the black and slid my Winchester from the boot.

My ears straining for the slightest sound, I sat still in the saddle, scanning the valley ahead and the surrounding slopes.

Nothing stirred.

The drizzle continued to fall silently on the grass and far above me the gray clouds were starting to thin and far to the west I saw a patch of blue sky.

I turned in the saddle, looking for the wagon. It was about a mile behind me, the oxen plodding through the long grass, and I could make out the tiny figures of Lila and her pa.

There was no way around it—the wagon would be here soon and before it arrived I’d have to scout the valley, a likely place for an Apache ambush.

I wheeled the black around the screening rise of the hill to my right and got behind its shallow slope. I rode down into a rocky wash, followed it for a couple of hundred yards, then rode out of it again, finally stopping at a dense thicket of mesquite growing low on the hill.

Rifle in hand I swung out of the saddle and, crouching low, made my way up the rise. I reached the crest and looked around. As far as I could see the land around me seemed empty.

But the Apaches had been here.

A small, charred circle on the grass showed where they’d coaxed a sullen fire out of mesquite root and sent up smoke, probably the talking smoke we’d seen earlier in the morning.

I got down on one knee, my rifle at the ready, but saw only silent hills and rain-washed grass. After a few minutes the pattering drizzle petered out, discouraged by the blossoming sun that felt warm on my back, and around me the color of the grass and hills shaded from dark to light green as the sunlight touched them.

I rose to my feet just as the riders started to come.

A column of cavalry was riding through the valley, a red-and-white guidon fluttering at their head, two pack mules bringing up the rear. The officer in command threw up a hand when he saw me and halted the troop.

I made my way down the hill, under the careful scrutiny of two dozen hard-eyed buffalo soldiers, and stopped beside the officer, an elderly white captain with iron gray hair showing under his battered campaign hat.

“Captain James O’Hearn,’ the officer said by way of introduction, his voice harsh like he gargled with axle grease. “Ninth Cavalry.”

I gave O’Hearn my name and added: “I see you’ve fared badly, Captain.”

The officer nodded. “Had a run-in with Apaches south of here. Lost my scout and a couple of my men are hit hard.”

I glanced along the column and saw a Pima draped belly down across his saddle, his long black hair hanging loose, almost touching the top of the grama grass. Two of the soldiers sat slumped in the saddle, one with a bloodstained bandage around his head.

O’Hearn studied me with interest. “What brings you out here, Hannah?”

I nodded toward the approaching wagon. “That. We’re headed for the Clear Fork of the Brazos.”

The captain watched the wagon creak slowly toward the column, and when he saw Lila walking by the side of the oxen as she finally reached us, he touched the brim of his hat. “Captain James O’Hearn, ma’am. Ninth Cavalry.”

Lila dropped an elegant little curtsy, then introduced herself and her father.

Obviously taking pleasure in the sight of a pretty woman in this stark wilderness, O’Hearn smiled and swung stiffly out of the saddle. He turned to his sergeant, a clean-shaven man in a faded blue army shirt, tan canvas pants tucked into his high cavalry boots. “Rest the men for fifteen minutes, Sergeant Wilson.”

I watched the troopers dismount, all of them black men in the ragtag uniforms of the frontier army, no two of their sweat-stained campaign hats alike, each shaped to the wearer’s individual taste. Most wore the blue shirt and yellow-striped breeches of the horse soldier, but a few affected store-bought pants and all had brightly colored bandanas around their necks.

To a man the men looked worn-out and hollow-eyed, but their weapons were clean and as they searched for wood to boil their coffee, their restless attention was constantly on the hills around them.

These were first-class fighting men who had earned a reputation among the Apaches of being brave and tenacious enemies, no small accolade from Indians who were mighty warriors themselves.

O’Hearn himself looked to be about sixty, but he was lean and hard, honed down to bone and muscle by constant campaigning and the harsh nature of the land itself.

The soldiers shared their coffee with us, and while we drank, O’Hearn paid a great deal of attention to Lila. She was so beautiful that morning that when I looked at her, I felt pain as much as pleasure. Lila had a way of doing that to a man and when I was around her I found it hard to think straight.

It was the captain’s voice that brought me back to reality. “Ma’am, I’m returning to Fort Griffin and I’d be happy to escort you and your father there until the Apache renegades are penned up.”

Lila flashed her dazzling smile. “Thank you kindly, Captain,” she said. “But Pa and I are anxious to reach our farm while there is still time to plant a crop.”

O’Hearn shook his hoary head. “Ma’am, I have a daughter your age, and I would tell her the same thing I’m telling you. It’s too dangerous for a woman to be out here. The Apaches have split up into a dozen different war bands and they have the whole country between here and the Brazos in turmoil.”

He nodded his head to the south. “Yesterday they killed two men at a cabin over on Valley Creek and before that they hit a preacher and his family on the Concho. Killed five people, three of them children.”