Apache Shadow Page 13

  Crook's gray eyes brightened. He turned to Summerhayes. "You know this man. Is what he says the case?"

  The lieutenant nodded. "I'll vouch for him. Besides, Joshua here has trusted him with the one thing he cares most about. That about says everything you need to know."

  Crook glanced at Barlow, then at Oulay, and finally back at Short Britches. There were some things that weren't being said, but he didn't need them to be spelled out. Besides, his instincts told him that Joshua Barlow wasn't a man who was going to change his mind. Not this time. He'd said no. Turned the offer down flat.

  "Fine," he said. He wasn't one to agonize over a decision that had to be made. "There is no time to lose. I want at least twenty-five scouts at Camp Bowie in a fortnight. I intend to ride with five full companies into the land of the Mimbrenos and the Mescaleros. Those bands have not yet gone on the warpath, but I've heard that many of their young men are aching to do so. They must be persuaded to remain at peace."

  "How do you aim to do that?" asked Short Britches.

  "By telling them the truth. I will not lie to an Indian. Too many of my kind have already done that. I will tell them that it doesn't matter who started the present troubles. They cannot be allowed to continue. I'll give them my word that they'll be protected from bad white men. But in exchange, they must protect whites from bad Indians. If bad Indians continue to raid I won't be able to protect them. I also intend to point out to them that more whites are coming. This they probably already know. But the point must be driven home that one day soon they will no longer find enough wild game to sustain themselves. They must learn to farm. As soon as the Coyoteros have been defeated, I intend to begin an irrigation project that will help them grow their crops. And then I will help them find markets for those crops. When the whites see that they intend to remain on their reservations, and have set aside their weapons for good, they will cease to fear the Apaches. And what they no longer fear they will no longer hate."

  Barlow shook his head. It all sounded fine, and he didn't doubt that Crook was sincere. Perhaps the general had succeeded with the same plan with other tribes. But it wouldn't work with the Apaches. They would never become farmers.

  "You don't believe this will ever come to pass," said Crook, watching Barlow, and smiling faintly.

  "It's a nice dream," said Barlow.

  Crook stood up. "It will work. It has to, because, if it doesn't, the Apaches will be wiped out. And I would not like to see that happen." He nodded to Oulay. "Thank you for the coffee, ma'am. Come on, Lieutenant, we'll start back at once. There's no time to waste." He glanced once more at Short Britches. "Camp Bowie. Two weeks." With that, he walked out.

  Summerhayes gulped down the rest of his coffee, rose, and stuck a hand out across the table at Barlow, who shook it.

  "I'll be seeing you, Joshua."

  "Take care, Charles."

  Summerhayes followed Crook out, and Short Britches started for the door too.

  "Hold it," said Barlow.

  The old scout turned, his features an inscrutable mask.

  "What the hell are you doing?"

  Short Britches shrugged. "I'm just getting tired of being the one who's left behind to mind the store, while you go off and have all the fun. It's my turn for a change."

  "No," said Barlow, shaking his head. "No, that's not it at all. You've never been interested at all in the fight against the Apaches, except when it hits us right here at home. You're doing this for me—or for Oulay and the vaqueros. Or maybe for all of us, because you're wondering if the Coyoteros would hit us again once they found out I was going against them."

  Short Britches just looked at him, with a blank expression on his face. "You didn't trust me at all when we first met. Now you have a high opinion of me. You were wrong then—and you're wrong now. The fact is, I'm more qualified than you are for this job, and we both know it. I'm a better tracker than you ever will be. And I'm a born killer. You're not. So what are we arguing about? It didn't take General Crook long to figure out that he would be better off with me as his chief of scouts. You just don't want to admit this is so."

  "Well, I don't believe you, not for a minute. And I don't think you should go. But you're going to do what you want. You always have."

  "That's right."

  "Just don't get yourself killed."

  "I never have."

  Chapter 20

  Kiannatah reasoned that to brazenly enter the encampment of the Coyoteros and to present himself to Valerio as a volunteer who could help him and his people in their war against the White Eyes would probably not work. For one thing, it would quickly become apparent to Valerio, even if Kiannatah made no mention of it, that he was Netdahe. An outcast. And once this was determined, the Coyoteros might take offense, as though his very presence was an indication that he did not think they would fare as well against the Pinda Lickoyi if they sent him away. Of course, Kiannatah believed this was true, but to convince the Coyoteros of this truth, which would wound their pride, was something else. No, he had to earn his way into the confidence of Valerio. And the only way he could see to do that was to await an opportunity to show the Coyoteros what an asset he could be in battle.

  To do this he had to be in the right place at the right time, and that meant he had to shadow the Coyotero war parties as they left the encampment—which itself had been easy enough to locate, high up in the Mogollon Mountains. Shadowing a group of bronchos going off to war was no easy thing, but Kiannatah wasn't worried. He was confident he could do it. And he did—for weeks.

  The Coyoteros launched numerous raids from their mountain stronghold. For the most part, they attacked easy targets—isolated ranches, a party of gold hunters who, though alerted to the fact that there was an Apache war going on, had allowed their hunger for the yellow ore to blind them to the risks involved in continuing their search for the mother lode. One of the war parties that Kiannatah followed attacked a Butterfield Stage route way station. They wanted the horses held in the station's corrals. But the stage company had taken precautions, fortifying the stations along the route, and making sure that no coach rolled without the protection of an army detail or a squad of the hired guns it had hired. The way station attacked by the Coyoteros was manned by a dozen well-armed men, and they not only saved themselves but prevented the bronchos from making off with a single horse.

  Win or lose, the Coyoteros always returned to the Mogollons, moving quickly but always careful to watch out for army pursuit. Kiannatah watched out for the yellow-legs too. But he never saw any. That puzzled him. Where was the United States Army? Surely it had been charged with the task of protecting civilians from the Coyotero threat.

  Eventually, Kiannatah solved the mystery. Following the Coyoteros back to the mountains in the aftermath of the disastrous raid on the stage station, he discovered that he was not the only lone Apache shadowing the war party.

  In the foothills of the Mogollons, he crossed the track of a lone Apache, who seemed to have come from the north, cut the fresh trail of the Coyoteros, and then turned to follow them. This placed him behind the war party and in front of Kiannatah, who quickened his pace, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stranger. It occurred to him that this might be a broncho from another band, who, like himself, had come to offer his services to Valerio. But the stranger made no attempt to catch up with the Coyoteros. He merely followed them for several miles, before breaking off and heading north again. Curious, Kiannatah followed him.

  Late that day, he caught his first glimpse of the broncho. The man seemed to be in a great hurry, and paid only cursory attention to the trail behind him. Kiannatah got close enough, before darkness fell, to determine that the broncho was Mescalero. When night came, Kiannatah had another decision to make. If he pressed on in pursuit, he might stumble into a trap. The risks of continuing to follow the lone Mescalero were greatly enhanced now. But he pressed on, and was soon rewarded. The Mescalero led him down into a creek bottom, where Kiannatah could see the light of a ca
mpfire under the willows and alders. In the camp were four other Mescalero bronchos. Kiannatah was still thinking that these men had come to join the Coyoteros in their war—until he saw the fifth man in the camp.

  The bent stovepipe hat aside, he recognized this man immediately. It was the same man who, accompanied by several White Mountain Apaches and a yellow-leg sergeant, had pursued Kiannatah from the ranch of John Ward to the Mexican border in order to rescue the Chiricahua maiden named Oulay. Kiannatah had killed two of the White Mountains, but he had not known about this man until the man's bullet had struck him. And that had been the difference—he'd barely escaped with his life, while this man and the bluecoated sergeant and the last remaining White Mountain had taken Oulay from him.

  Bitter hatred surged through Kiannatah at the sight of this man, and it was all he could do to refrain from aiming his besh-e-ger—his rifle—at the scrawny figure, well illuminated by the firelight, and squeezing the trigger. But he came to his senses in time. He could kill the man in the stovepipe hat, but at the sound of his rifle the five Mescaleros would scatter, disappearing into the darkness. And then he would have to deal with them. Under these conditions, the odds were stacked too high for even him to overcome. So he tamped down his anger and resentment, and found solace in the thought that he would soon have another opportunity to kill his enemy.

  The question remained—what were the man in the stovepipe hat and his Mescalero companions doing in the Mogollon foothills? Kiannatah had always assumed that the man in the stovepipe hat had some association with the army officer who had taken Oulay, with the permission of Cochise, as his woman. But he did not know this for sure. The best thing to do, he decided, was to follow this group tomorrow; perhaps their actions would enlighten him as to their purpose.

  Before dawn the next day, the camp was astir. The man in the stovepipe hat dispatched the Mescalero bronchos. Two headed south, two headed north. The man in the stovepipe hat, accompanied by the fifth broncho, also went south. Kiannatah followed this pair, which stopped at the place where the last Coyotero war party had entered the mountains. The other two Mescaleros who had come this way continued southward, but the man in the stovepipe hat and the Mescalero with him found a vantage point on high ground and settled down to wait. Not far away, Kiannatah did the same.

  The man in the stovepipe hat and his broncho companion remained on the lookout the rest of the day—and all of the next. Kiannatah was ill prepared for a long vigil; he had very little water and no food. But he dared not leave, even for a short time, to find sustenance. Instead, he remained in hiding, watching the others. Sometimes he held a pebble in his mouth. This was an old desert dweller trick—the pebble caused him to produce additional saliva, which kept his mouth and throat wet, which in turn allowed him to go longer without a drink. As for the hunger gnawing at his stomach, he simply chose to ignore the discomfort.

  As he lay, scarcely daring to move, in the hot sun for hours and days on end, Kiannatah went over and over all the possible scenarios that might explain the actions of the man in the stovepipe hat and his Mescalero friends. He was pretty sure that they had not come to the Mogollons to join the Coyoteros. But if they were enemies of the Coyoteros, why did they not venture deeper into the mountains in an effort to discover Valerio's hideout? Kiannatah couldn't figure that part out. But he was confident that if he waited long enough, and watched closely enough, he would learn the truth.

  In the morning of the third day, a Coyotero war party came down the canyon beneath the vantage point held by the man in the stovepipe hat and his Mescalero companion. There were sixteen bronchos in the party. Their faces and their horses were painted for war. There could be no doubt as to their intentions. Kiannatah was more interested in what the man in the stovepipe hat would do. He did nothing, save watch the Coyoteros file down the canyon, and out into the foothills. Once they were gone, the Mescalero went down to where his horse was hidden and rode south. The man in the stovepipe hat remained above the canyon for about an hour. Then he too went down to his horse, and rode back in the direction of the tree-lined creek, where he and the other Mescaleros had last congregated.

  Puzzled, Kiannatah followed the man in the stovepipe hat. He realized that this was a perfect opportunity to kill the man. But he wanted to know what the old scout was up to.

  The man in the stovepipe hat reached his old campsite and settled in to wait. At some distance, Kiannatah did likewise. A few hours later, one of the other Mescaleros showed up. Then another rode in. By the end of the day, two more had arrived. The only Mescalero missing was the one who had ridden south after the appearance of the Coyotero war party.

  Kiannatah was growing weary of the game. That night he seriously considered slipping into the camp and abducting one of the Mescaleros. Perhaps, under the knife, the man would explain what he and his companions were doing. Kiannatah doubted that the old scout would talk under torture, but maybe one of the others would. He decided that he would watch for one more day before taking drastic action.

  But with the next day came answers, for in midmorning the old scout and the Mescaleros had a visitor—a young yellow-leg officer, escorted by the missing Mescalero, the one who had ridden south twenty-four hours earlier. Kiannatah decided that if the soldier left alone, he would follow and, when the time was right, capture the man and torture him until he talked. His contempt for the Pinda Lickoyi was such that Kiannatah confidently believed that none of them could withstand pain the way an Apache could. He watched as the officer and the old scout spoke for a long time. But when the soldier finally left the grove of willows and alders, he was accompanied by all of the others. Kiannatah resigned himself to carrying on with the task of shadowing these men. At least now he knew with certainty that the old scout and the Mescaleros were not here to join the Coyoteros. They were spies, working for the United States Army. And they were up to something. Kiannatah needed to know what that something was.

  The officer and his escort traveled for several hours in a southerly direction, leaving the foothills of the Mogollon Mountains and venturing out onto the desert plain. They then rendezvoused with a strong contingent of soldiers. In no time at all the entire contingent was on the move, returning to the mountains in a northwesterly direction. By sundown they were approaching the canyon where Kiannatah had last seen the Coyoteros. Before full darkness had fallen upon the land, the officer and the old scout had dispersed the troopers on the slopes on either side of the canyon. Seeing this, Kiannatah finally had the answers he needed. The yellow-legs were setting a trap for the Coyoteros.

  Now he understood the actions of the old scout and the Mescaleros. After one of the Mescaleros had reported the return of the Coyoteros following the raid on the stage station, the man in the stovepipe hat had staked out the canyon they'd used to slip deeper into the mountains. The old scout had surmised that the Coyoteros would use the same route for inress and egress as long as it remained undiscovered. And he'd been right. The next raiding party had emerged from the same canyon. It was entirely likely that they would return, once more, by the same route. And this time they would be struck down by the concealed cavalrymen.

  Thinking it over, Kiannatah grudgingly acknowledged the wisdom of the cavalry's strategy. To plunge into the Mogollons in hopes of finding the Coyotero hideout would likely end in one of two ways—either the soldiers would exhaust themselves in a futile search or they would fall prey to Coyotero ambush. Instead, the yellow-legs intended to strike at the raiding parties. Rather than attacking the head of the scorpion, they were targeting the stinger. By killing the bronchos who conducted the raids, they would go far in rendering the Coyoteros harmless. Without warriors, Valerio would have no choice but to stop the raids or surrender.

  This result might not be realized after the ambush of a single war party. But following the planned ambush, the soldiers would fade back into the desert. The old scout and his Mescaleros would remain. Eventually they would detect another Coyotero raiding party emerging by some new
route from the mountains. Then, the same thing would happen again—the cavalrymen would be alerted, and another ambush would be set.

  All of this was perfectly clear to Kiannatah. All that remained for him was to decide how to react. He concluded that the situation might provide him with the opportunity he had been looking for. If he could somehow save the Coyotero war party from being wiped out, he would prove his worth to Valerio. How, then, could the Coyotero leader deny that the skills of an Avowed Killer were a real asset to his cause? Kiannatah wasn't naive—he didn't expect to be hailed as a hero by the Coyoteros. Some of the bronchos would resent his presence. That was inevitable. But he didn't care; he wasn't seeking friendship.

  His mind made up, Kiannatah decided that his best course of action was to remain in the vicinity of the canyon. If he ventured out into the desert plain, in hopes of finding the Coyoteros returning from their raid, he might miss them. Besides, his scheme would be far more effective if by deed rather than merely by word he rescued the war party from destruction. True, some of the Coyoteros might die, but that was no concern of his; he would wait until they had fallen into the cavalry trap, and then he would save them.

  He didn't have long to wait. Late in the afternoon of the following day, the Coyoteros returned. This time their raid had, apparently, met with success, for they brought with them a dozen fine horses, and some of them wore the clothing of the Pinda Lickoyi; most bizarre of all was the young broncho who had donned a calico dress over his himper and loincloth. Reaching the mountains, they began to let their guard down, and they were talking and laughing among themselves as they entered the canyon, blissfully ignorant of the fact that death awaited them there.

  Suddenly, a shot rang out. Then another. And then an entire fusillade, as the cavalrymen rose up from their places of concealment on both sides of the canyon and began blazing away with their carbines. Several of the Coyotero were killed instantly. Others made a break for it, galloping deeper into the canyon—only to find that escape route blocked by the Mescalero scouts led by the man in the stovepipe hat. A few more of the Coyotero raiders toppled from their horses, cut down by the withering fire. Some of the survivors thought to flee back whence they'd come, but the yellow-leg officer had placed a detail of sharpshooters at the entrance to the canyon, and they blocked that route too. The Coyoteros were well and truly hemmed in on all sides. Seeing that their prey was doomed, several of the soldiers began shouting gleeful aspersions at the bronchos in the canyon bottom. Within the span of a minute, half of the raiding party was dead or dying; the rest had leaped from their horses and sought cover behind rocks. Dust and powder smoke half obscured the scene—this, in fact, was the only reason the entire Apache party wasn't instantly wiped out.