“Can you, Ryan?” the old man replied.
AS THEY LEFT THE SCENE of the abortive firefight, Ryan glanced over his shoulder, seeing that the spiraling dust cloud from the patrol of sec men was still moving steadily toward the north, where dark purple clouds were gathering. The cavalrymen had taken their dead and wounded with them, bodies tied ankle to wrist over the saddles.
Jak’s head lolled helplessly to one side as the makeshift litter bounced slowly along, drawn between two ponies. His long white hair seemed dulled and lifeless.
Ryan and the others walked along by the Apaches, toward the line of red cliffs that marked the side of one of the long mesas.
Over the years he’d seen several old vids of what were called “westies,” mainly about firefights between the soldiers and different tribes of Indians.
Now, unbelievably, he was living in one of those vids.
Chapter Twelve
THE RANCHERIA OF THE subtribe of the Mescalero Apaches was in a box canyon, nearly a two-hour ride from where they’d encountered the six whites.
If Ryan and his friends had managed to get hold of a detailed map of that part of New Mexico, printed way before the holocaust, they’d have found it was named Drowned Squaw Canyon.
The jaws of the canyon were less than a dozen feet across, barely wide enough for a pair of horsemen to ride in side by side, and it lay at the farther end of a wilderness of coulees and dry riverbeds that wound and twisted in an almost impenetrable maze. Even from fifty paces away, it didn’t look to Ryan as if there were any way into the canyon.
The trail continued for a hundred yards or so, between two-hundred-foot walls of sheer crimson rock, gradually widening until it opened into an area about six hundred paces across. At the farther end, under the lip of a wall of seamless stone, was a pool of deep, clear water.
There were small fires burning among fifty or sixty low huts, which Doc told them were called wickiups. As they walked into the canyon with the horsemen, women and small children came running from the huts, excitedly calling out to one another at the sight of the white strangers. The leader waved them back with his rifle, shouting out orders as he dismounted.
“Do you want food?” he asked Ryan.
“Yes, and water. But first the boy must be treated. You said”
“Our shaman is called Man Whose Eyes See More. I have asked an old woman to go and wake him. The whitehead will rest there, by the fire.”
While they waited for the shaman, Ryan led the other four around the camp of the Mescalero Apaches.
At their leader’s orders the Indians kept away from the visitors, but three of the older women, faces wrinkled, eyes almost buried in the folds, brought them earthenware bowls of green chili stew, with chunks of mutton floating in it. They also gave them corn on the cob, blue corn bread and spicy yerba tea.
Ryan hadn’t realized how hungry he’d been after the action of the firefight, and he devoured two bowls of the hot stew.
The sun had disappeared behind the cliffs to the west of the canyon, making the air feel cool and shadowed. They sat down near Jak, outside the turf-topped hut. The boy was now on the very brink of death. His breathing was so subdued that it was no longer possible to see respiration. J.B. had knelt beside him, holding a small mirror to the bloodless lips, bringing only the faintest mist to the polished metal.
“Where’s their” Krysty began, stopping as the buckskin curtain across the mouth of the nearest wickiup opened.
It was Man Whose Eyes See More.
He was so skinny that it looked like he’d have to run around in a rainstorm to get himself wet. Most of the Apaches were close to the five-foot-six mark, but the shaman was scraping at seven feet tall, weighing barely 120 pounds.
Man Whose Eyes See More was dressed in an elegant pair of seersucker pants of ancient cut that were missing one leg below the knee. His top half was clad in a striped cotton shirt with a white collar and a brocade waistcoat with mother-of-pearl buttons. There was a flaming scarlet cravat knotted casually around his scrawny neck, which was held in place with a silver stickpin with an empty claw setting. A pale cerise kerchief dangled from the vest pocket. His feet were bare and a whole lot less than clean.