Joseph West - The Man From Nowhere - A Ralph Compton Novel

“Heard the shooting,” Yearly said without looking up. “I’d say, oh, forty-five rounds. You score any hits?”

“Scored with most of them.”

“Uh-huh,” Yearly said, a comment Oates considered neither approving nor disapproving.

A silence grew between them, then Oates said, almost accusingly, “I didn’t see any Apaches, though.”

“You won’t, unless they want to be seen. But they’re here.”

“Jacob, shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“Like what?”

“Like getting ready to defend ourselves.”

“The Apaches never bothered me before.”

“Who’s to say they won’t now?”

“The Apaches, I guess.”

The old man looked up from his book. “They’re carrying their hurting dead with them. I reckon they’ve had a bellyful of war for the present.”

“I still haven’t seen them.”

“You will. Coffee’s still on the bile if’n you want some. An’ clean the Colt while you’re at it, Eddie. A dirty gun has killed more than one man. Cleaning stuff in the drawer over there.”

The long day was just giving way to evening when the Apaches began to ride past the cabin, heading into the Gila.

Under a sky streaked with ribbons of red and jade, teased by a west wind, they came singly at first, then in groups of three or four. The endurance and fortitude of the Apache were legendary, but these warriors looked like they’d been through it. Many of them wounded, they slumped on their tired ponies, taking no interest in what lay around them. They must have been routed at Alma and it showed.

Oates and Yearly stood outside the cabin in the violet night and watched them pass.

Most of the warriors led ponies burdened by dead men roped facedown across their backs. Oates counted thirty bodies, but probably more had been abandoned along the trail.

“It’s too dark to make out faces clear,” Yearly whispered, “but I haven’t seen Victorio or ol’ Nana either.”

Asking a question to which he already knew the answer, Oates said, “You reckon they got beat at Alma?”

The old man nodded. “Looks like.” He gave Oates a sidelong glance. “Thinking of going back, Eddie?”

“One day, but only to settle some scores.”

Yearly nodded. “That can drive a man.”

One by one the Apaches melted into the distance and night, leaving only the solitude and silence on the land that God intended.

A match flared as Yearly lit his pipe. Then the old man turned to Oates and said, “Go inside, Eddie. Leave me to study on things for a spell.”

A small alarm rose in Oates. “You all right, Jacob?”

“I’m fine. Sometimes a man wants to be by himself, is all.”

“Then I’ll bring your coat. There’s a chill in the air.”

Coyotes were yipping somewhere out in the darkness and the wine-dark sky was full of stars.

“I’m not cold,” Yearly said. “Now leave me. I’ll be in soon.”

Oates turned away and started to walk back to the cabin. All his life he’d been isolated, but never alone. There had always been people around, a few friendly, most not, but they were always there. Why a man would stand in the crowding dark and seek out loneliness puzzled him.

He stopped and looked first at the shadowed land, then at the sky, hoping to see what Jacob was seeing and feel what he was feeling. He listened into the night and heard the sigh of the ceaseless wind, the restless rustle of the cedars around the cabin.

Then he began to understand. . . .

The night was coming down on him like a blessing and it had the power to heal the hurt in a man. Now he knew what Jacob knew.

He stepped into the cabin, and for the first time in a long time, the whiskey hunger had completely left him.

Yearly stepped inside an hour later, bringing the memory of the night with him. “Best you spread your blankets, Eddie,” he said. “We got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“No more Apaches passing through, huh?”

“Not passing through, no.” Seeing the expression on Oates’ face, he said, “There are Apaches out there, not many, maybe just a few broncos.”

“Why would they stay around?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at the younger man. “Eddie, there are bad apples in every barrel, and that applies to Apaches as much as it does to white men.”

He crossed to his cot, then stopped. “Load the Colt, boy, an’ keep it close.”

Chapter 10

Next morning Yearly said they wouldn’t go to the mountain that day but stay close to the cabin. The old man seemed to have a honed instinct for danger and Oates made no objection.

When Oates went outside to fork hay to the horses, Yearly went with him, his Winchester cradled in his arms. Oates carried the Colt in the pocket of his ragged pants and Jacob had told him to load all six cylinders.

The old man’s eyes were never at rest, scanning the land around them and the open ground behind the corral. Now and then he would raise his nose and read the wind, then frown, his knuckles whitening in the rifle stock.

“They still around?” Oates asked.

“Uh-huh. Watching us. They figured I was alone, but now they’ve seen you and it’s making them think.”

“Think about what?”

“How best to lift our hair. The Apache is brave, but he ain’t a fool. They’ll attack at the moment they figure the odds are on their side. That’s why we’ll stay together in the cabin.”

“I’ve got the Colt, Jacob. I could bring in the cinder block we’ve already cut. It will only take a couple of trips.”

Yearly shook his head. “You’d be out in the open, boy, an’ that’s bucking a stacked deck. They’d lift your hair for sure.” He smiled. “Hitting a tree with a .44 is one thing. Hitting an Apache is another.”

“How many do you figure, Jacob?”

“I don’t know any more than I did last night. Enough, I reckon.”

“I guess they’re pretty mad about the beating they took at Alma, huh?”

“Eddie, an Apache doesn’t get mad. He gets even.”

Oates threw the paint mustang a last forkful of hay, then followed Yearly back to the cabin.

The place was solidly built of pine logs and had a tar-paper and shingle roof, rare and expensive at that time. But the chimney was of sticks and mud and Yearly said it constantly blew down in gales. There were only two openings to the front, a single window and the door, and none to the back.

The cabin looked as if it could withstand a siege and when the old man barred the door with an oak beam and closed the wood shutters on the window, the building seemed to Oates well-nigh impregnable.

Just before noon, under a blazing sun, the Apaches began to test the cabin’s defenses.

Searching bullets thudded into the pine door and walls. Then a shot shattered the glass of the cabin window and Yearly swore bitterly and long.

Oates stood at the cross-shaped gun port Yearly had cut in the window shutters and his eyes tracked back and forth along the terrain, then drifted back all the way to the Canyon Creek Mountains three miles to the northeast.

The air was sharp and clear, but the hilly ground to the front of the cabin was covered with cedar, piñon and thick stands of prickly pear. The ground rose gradually to a high, rocky ridge dotted with juniper and mesquite that gave good cover for a hidden rifleman.

With idle elegance a black hawk raptor rode the air currents above the ridge, then disappeared to the west and white clouds hung still above the Canyon Creek peaks.

Oates’ eyes began to feel the strain of his search. Nothing moved and the oppressive heat of the day lay heavy on the land. Sweat trickled down his cheeks and the rubber handle of the Colt felt slick in his fist.

“See anything, Eddie?” Yearly asked.