Ralph Compton: Down on Gila River

Perhaps intimidated by a male voice, Lori said, “Nobody lets me see anything.” But she walked away, accusing eyes on Sam. “I’m going to tell Dolly,” she said.

Sam waited until the child was occupied with her doll. Then he said to Hannah, “Time I spoke with that Apache, tell him to move on and quit bothering white folks.”

“Do you think it’s wise?” the woman said.

“No, it’s not wise,” Sam said. “But maybe I can talk him into gettin’ me my horse back.”

Chapter 5

Sam Sawyer stepped out, his Colt up and ready.

Darkness didn’t yet crowd him close and the cottonwoods remained visible in stark relief against a scarlet and jade sky. The desert was quiet and the hollow call of a coyote served only to make it quieter still.

Sam’s eyesight had been burned out by hard years of driving herds through sun, wind, rain, and snow. Staring across the vast distances of plains that began where he was at and ended where he was yet to be had also taken its toll.

Now he saw the trees well enough, but not the Apache on the gray pony.

He’d have to get closer. A lot closer.

Sam walked on, his booted feet making little noise. Above him a hawk glided and made a kee-kee-kee sound as it rode the high wind currents. The hawk, a black, angular silhouette against the sky, troubled Sam, but for the life of him he didn’t know why.

Then the hair rose on the back of his neck. Hell, he’d walked too far. The Indian was behind him on his right, not ten yards away. The Apache sat his pony under an ancient, spreading oak that had no right to be there.

Sam turned and said, “Stay right where you’re at, Injun.” He fought to keep his voice calm. “I can drill you dead center from here.”

Now he was near enough to the Apache to notice a couple of things: The man was painted for war and he sat his horse as still as a statue of a Civil War general in a town square. The Apache remained motionless and didn’t glance in Sam’s direction.

All right, Sam decided, maybe the Indian couldn’t understand good ol’ American.

He thumbed back the hammer of his Colt, the triple click loud in the silence, and said, “ Bajese de su caballo o yo le matare .” His threat in Mexican to shoot the Apache off his horse didn’t work either.

The warrior stayed where he was, his eyes fixed on a distance Sam couldn’t see, man and horse an unmoving pillar of alabaster in the mother-of-pearl dusk.

His confidence waning as fast as the light, Sam grew desperate. His chin jutting, he stepped toward the Apache. “All right, we’ll play it your way,” he said. “I’m pulling you off’n that danged pony.”

The Indian’s horse tossed its head, then moved forward at an unhurried walk. Then the hawk dived low, its talons raking the top of Sam’s hat. Cussing, Sam waved off the swooping hawk, then took a step to the side and let the horse and rider pass.

The Apache didn’t look at him, his lusterless black eyes fixed on an invisible horizon many miles distant.

It was then that Sam saw a bullet hole in the middle of the warrior’s forehead, crusted with dried-black blood. His breath stilled in his chest, Sam’s eyes widened and he felt fear like ice water in his belly.

As the Apache rode past, his pony’s hooves making no sound, Sam smelled sage and pine . . . and something else . . . something he half remembered . . . the sweet, acrid stench of a decaying body.

The American cowboy was, and remains, the most superstitious creature on earth, and Sam had all the puncher’s inborn fears of ha’nts and ghosts and shadowed places where eyes glow in the gloom like sparks of fire.

He watched the Apache clear the trees and slowly melt into the dim hall of the night so that no trace of man or horse remained. Then, as fast as bad knees and aching feet allowed, Sam turned and sprinted for the cabin, as scared as he’d ever been in his life.

Hannah met Sam at the door, the shotgun in her hands. “What happened?” she said. “I heard you running.”

“I wanted to make sure you were all right,” Sam said, blinking. His breath came in shallow, quick gasps.

“The Apache?” Hannah said.

“I moved him on.”

Hannah lowered the Greener. Her eyes sought Sam’s in the darkness, probing with that uncanny ability a woman has that tells her when a man is lying. “Now let me know what really happened,” she said.

“Are we going to talk all night on the doorstep?” Sam said, glancing quickly over his shoulder.

“Come in,” Hannah said. “The coffee is still hot.”

She waited until Sam drank coffee and built his second cigarette with unsteady hands. Then she said, “I didn’t hear a gunshot. I didn’t hear anything, though I thought I heard the cry of a hawk.”

Sam shook his head. “No, there was no shooting and danged little talking.”

A silence stretched between them, grew taut.

“What happened, Sam?” Hannah said finally.

It was the first time the woman had used his given name, and Sam took pleasure in it. But it was a long time before he answered. Then he said, “The Apache is riding a different trail from the rest of us.” He sought a way to express himself, then: “I reckon he’s looking for a place where only dead Indians go.”

He saw the confused expression on the woman’s face, the crease that appeared between her eyes.

“Where’s Lori?” he said.

“Asleep. She and Dolly dozed off in the chair.”

“The Apache is dead, Hannah.”

“You killed him?”

“Somebody killed him, but it wasn’t me. And it was a long time ago.”

“Sam, I don’t understand.”

“Like I said, the Injun’s been dead for a long time.”

“But how . . . I mean . . .”

“Hannah, he ain’t a living man and he ain’t a dead one either.”

“A ghost? Do you mean he’s a ghost?”

“Something like that.” Sam drew deep on his cigarette. “Call him what you want, but he ain’t alive no more.”

“How do you know?”

“Do you want me to draw you a picture?”

“How do you know?”

Sam pointed to the middle of his forehead. “He’s got a bullet hole right there, and it happened months, maybe years ago.”

Hannah sat in stunned silence for a few moments, then said, “Is it an omen?”

“Could be,” Sam said. “But is it a good omen or a bad one? And who is it for? It ain’t for me or you. Leastways, I don’t think so.”

Hannah didn’t answer. Finally she crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders and said, “Gosh, all of a sudden it’s cold in here.”

“Yeah, it sure is,” Sam said. “All of a sudden.”

A moment later someone hammered on the cabin door.

Chapter 6

Startled, Sam Sawyer jumped to his feet and drew his Colt. He put a finger to his lips and hushed Hannah into silence, then stepped to the door.

“Who’s there?” Sam said, his mouth to the door’s rough timber. “I warn you, I ain’t sittin’ on my gun hand here, so if’n you’re a dead Injun, you’re gonna be a sight deader.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then a man’s voice said, “I’m an honest traveler, seeking food and shelter.”

“What are you doing out there at this time of night?” Sam said. He was aware that Hannah had taken down her shotgun and had stepped into shadow.

“I’m afraid I’ve lost my way,” the man outside said.

“Where you from, mister?” Sam said.

“Silver City. I was headed for a town called Lost Mine, but I seem to have mislaid the place.”

“It’s south of here,” Sam said.

“Yes, but can I find it in this Stygian gloom?”

Sam thumbed back the hammer of his revolver, the triple click loud in the silence. “State your intentions,” he said.