rifle. I ran toward him, and was almost to the hillside when a man with a bloody
head sprang from the wickiup from which we had taken the children.
He leaped out, staggered, then glared wildly around. His first yell failed him,
but he shouted again and his voice came full and strong. As he yelled he lifted
his rifle, and Rocca shot him.
The children were in the brush and climbing the steep slope, faster than I would
have believed possible.
Backing after them, I let the Apaches come boiling out into the rain, and then
fired rapidly.
One Indian spun and dropped his rifle, another yelled and started for me. I let
him come, and shot past him at another who was lifting a rifle to fire. That
Indian staggered and fell, then started up again.
The running Indian had a knife, and he was almost on me. Shortening my grip on
my rifle, I took a long swing that caught the running Indian in the belly. He
caved in with a choking cry, and I scrambled up the muddy slope, grabbing at
branches.
From above there was a sudden cannonade of fire as our friends up there, who had
heard the shooting, opened up on the Indians to cover our retreat.
Scrambling, falling, and scrambling on, we made the crest, and when the little
girl fell I caught her up and ran after Rocca, with the others covering us as
best they could.
We made our camp, swung into our saddles, and with three of us each carrying a
child, we raced off along the ridge, rain whipping our faces.
We ran our horses when we could, then slowed for the steep, dangerous trail
down. Falling rain masked the depths below, the great peaks were shrouded in
cloud. Thunder rumbled around us, tremendous sounds as if we were inside an
enormous drum. We dashed into a pine forest, ran our horses for a hundred yards,
then slowed for a steep slide and a muddy scramble.
Battles’ horse slipped and fell, spilling him from the saddle, but the horse was
game and scrambled up. By the time it was on its feet, Battles was in the saddle
again.
There was no chance now for the black rock atop the boulder. Anyway, because of
the rain Harry could not see it.
Me, I kept looking back over my shoulder, wondering when the Indians would catch
up. The rain might have muffled the shots enough so that the other rancherias
would not be alerted to our coming. We drew up briefly under the trees and I
eased the girl into a better position on the saddle before me.
“Were there any other children back there?” I asked her. “White ones, I mean?”
“No,” she said. Her eyes were bright, but she looked excited rather than scared.
“Which one is Orry Sackett?” I asked.
She just looked at me. “Neither one. Those two are the Creed boys. I never heard
of any boy called Orry.”
Something turned over inside me. “Tamp,” I yelled, “my nephew isn’t here!”
“I know it,” he said. “He ain’t here at all. These were the youngsters the
Taches took. The only ones.”
“That’s not possible!”
“You better get goin’ ” Spanish said. “This here is no time to talk.”
We started on, knowing there could be no hesitating, no turning back. The hills
would be alive with Apaches now, and if we got out of here alive we’d have to
have uncommon luck, which we had come into the mountains knowing.
Slipping and running, scrambling up and down muddy slopes, slapped by wet
branches, racing through the forest … first and last, it was a nightmare.
We came finally to the place above the first Indian encampment, and I passed the
girl over to Battles. “I’ve got to get that boy Harry!” I told him. “Don’t be a
fool! There’s no chance!”
“Keep going,” I said. “I promised him.”
They all looked at me, each of them holding a youngster — three tough,
hard-bitten men with no families, no homes, nothing to call their own but a set
of guns and saddles. They sat there in the rain, and not one of them could come
with me because now they had the children to think of.
“Run for it,” I said. “This here’s my scalp.”
“Good luck,” Spanish said, and they were gone. Me, I watched them go, then swung
my horse toward that boulder. Far back up the mountains, I thought I heard a
shout and a shot. But I went down that trail to the place where I’d met the boy.
Hounding the boulder, rifle ready, I stared toward the rancheria, and suddenly
out of the wet brush came the boy, Harry Brook. He was soaked to the skin and he
was scared, but he came toward me. “Mister,” he said, and he was crying.
“Mister, I was scared you wouldn’t make it.”
Reaching down, I caught his hand and swung him up to the saddle.
“They know you’re gone?” I asked. “I think so … by now. Somebody came in and
said he’d heard shootin’, but the old bucks wouldn’t believe him. No chance in
this rain, they said, not in these mountains. I figured it was you, so first
chance I had, I cut and run.”
We started up the trail. Up there on the ridge I could see the muddy tracks of
the other horses, and I swung into the trail after them, but then pulled up
sharp. Their trail was almost wiped out by the track of other horses, unshod
horses.
“Apaches,” I said. “Is there another trail?”
“Down there.” The boy pointed toward the canyon. “The Old Ones’ trail. An Apache
boy showed it to me. It goes out across Sonora to the big water.” Harry looked
up at me, his face glistening with rain. “Anyway, that’s what he said.”
The black was fidgeting. He liked the situation no more than I did, so I pointed
his nose where the boy said. He shied at the trail, then took it gingerly.
It was no kind of a place to ride even in good weather, let alone in a rain like
this. Thunder crashed, and there was a vivid streak of lightning that lit up
everything around. The trail was only a glistening thread along the face of a
cliff.
But the black was game. He went as if stepping on eggs, but he went, and I held
my breath for the three of us. Far down below my right stirrup I could see the
tops of pine trees, maybe five hundred feet down there. We edged along, taking
one careful step at a time, until we were almost at the bottom, when the trail
widened out.
It took no time at all to see that this was no traveled trail. Rocks had fallen
into it ages back, trees had grown up right in the middle, and we had to skirt
around them. Me, I kept looking back. Sure as shootin’ we were going to get
ourselves trapped. Still, all a body could do was push on, so we pushed.
Night was a-coming, and with all those clouds and rain it was going to come
soon, but there was no place to stop.
We had come down about a thousand feet, and were moving along a watercourse that
wound through poplars and maples, gigantic agaves and clumps of maidenhair fern.
Everything was wet.
Suddenly, off to our left, I saw one of those ruins — an ancient wall, half
broken by a huge maple that had grown through it. There was a stream running
that way, and it was only niches deep. Turning the black, I walked him along the
stream until we could turn behind the wall where the maple grew.
There was a sort of clearing there, sheltered on one side by the wall, and
falling away on the other toward a bigger stream, trees were all around. The
maple had huge limbs that stretched out over the wall and made a shelter. I
swung down under it and lifted the boy to the ground. “Stay up close to the
tree,” I said, “until I can rig something for us.”
Now, a body doesn’t spend his years wandering around the country without
learning how to make do. I’d made wet camp a good many times before this, and I
had been keeping my eyes open for a likely spot, one that had what we’d need.
First off, I saw how the ground slanted away toward the big creek, and I figured
that wall offered fair protection. The maple was alive, but in some storm the
wind had broken off a big limb, with a lot of branches on it, and it lay there
on the ground. Maple burns mighty well, and makes a hot fire.
That big tree would give some shelter, and the wall would make a reflector for