Harry stay on the black.
What I wanted most just now was to get out of these mountains and head off
across the flatland, and maybe get to a ranch. But I had a time keeping my
thoughts on my business with that girl along.
She was only a bit of a thing, but she must be packing a lot of nerve to come
into this country after her sister. There was no chance to talk, for we were
going single file, and I wasn’t stopping. This was a strange trail, and we’d no
idea where it might lead. Mayhap right into a bunch of Apaches — in which case
some brave might have my scalp in his wickiup, if he bothered to take it. The
Apaches were very strong on scalping.
At the top of a long slope we paused for a breather, and I looked around at
Dorset. She was right behind me, leading her pony, and taking two steps to my
one. Harry Brook, up there on the horse, had not said a word.
We stood there for a mite, and she said, “The sky’s turning.”
There was gray in it, all right, and day would come quickly now. We stood quiet
then, saying nothing nor needing to, but there was communication in the night,
we felt each other, felt the darkness and the danger around us, and felt the
cool dampness of the canyon ,after the rain. We could smell the pines … and we
smelled something else.
We smelled smoke.
It was enough to curl your hair. In this layout we couldn’t expect friends. My
partners had lit out to the north, I was sure, and if there was anybody here it
had to be Apaches. And that smoke was right ahead of us.
We daren’t go back, and we couldn’t climb out. Me, I slipped the Winchester out
of its scabbard, and so did she.
“Well go ahead quiet,” I whispered, “and if we can get by ’em, we will.
Otherwise, we got to mount up and run for it. You and the boy get on the same
horse, and if trouble shows, run.”
“What about you?”
Me, I smiled. “Lady, you’re not looking at no hero. I’ll get off a few shots and
I’ll be dusting the trail right behind you, so don’t slow up or I’ll run right
up your shirt tail.”
We started on. Dawn was streaking the sky when we saw the canyon was starting to
widen out. Then I saw moccasin tracks, some shreds of bark, and a few sticks —
somebody collecting firewood. And then we heard yelling ahead of us, and I knew
that kind of yelling.
“Might be,” I said, “we can get by. They’re mighty concerned, right now.”
She looked at me. She said, “What concerns an Apache so much that we might slip
by his camp?”
A man couldn’t look into those honest gray eyes and lie. She would guess,
anyway. “They got them a prisoner,” I said, “and they’re tryin’ to find out how
much of a man they caught. If he stands up to torture and dies well, they will
figure they’re big men, because they caught a big man.”
We moved ahead, each of us warning our horse against noise, and those horses
could be warned, they were that smart. Aside from their own instincts, they had
caught some of our wariness for danger, for a horse, like a dog, can become
extremely sensitive to the moods of his rider.
The western man trusted to his horse’s ears, its eyes, its senses. He shared
with it his water, and if need be, his food.
We moved forward quietly but steadily, and soon we saw their camp on a bench
near the stream, partly hidden by brush and trees. The stream was not over four
feet wide and no more than four or five inches deep, and the canyon through
which we had come evidently caught the overflow.
Rifle ready, I led the way, watching the camp from the corner of my eye.
Here the dry stream-bed was perhaps fifty feet wide, most of it white sand
dotted with rocks, many of them half buried. The brush was mostly willow, and
thick.
It was a cool morning but I could feel sweat trickling down my back between my
shoulder blades, and I worried for fear a hoof would strike stone. We went
steadily on, drawing close to the camp, then abreast of it.
The Indians were almighty concerned with their prisoner, and they were shooting
at him with arrows, missing in as close as they could, pinning the sides of his
shirt to the tree, parting his hair with arrows. There was a trickle of blood
down his forehead which I glimpsed when he lifted his head, and for the first
time above their yells I heard his voice, and he was singing.
It was Spanish Murphy.
Yes, sir. Spanish was tied to a cottonwood in the clearing and the Apaches were
shooting arrows at him and working themselves up to more serious ways of hurting
… and he was singing!
Oh, they hated him for it, but they loved him for it, too, if I knew Indians.
For their prisoner was a man with nerve, singing his defiance right into their
faces … and it was also a means of keeping up his courage.
They would kill him, all right. They were devils when it came to inflicting
pain, and they would try to make him last as long as possible, devising new
tricks to give him the tortures of hell, and loving him for his strength and his
guts.
Spanish was a singing man who loved the sound of the old songs, the western
songs, the songs from the high-up hills. He was singing “Zebra Dun” when we
caught sight of him and, raising his head, he looked right through an open space
in the brush, looked right at us, and he changed his tune to “John Hardy.”
“John Hardy was a desperate man, he carried his two guns every day. He killed a
man on the West Virginny line, but you ought to see Tell Sackett gettin’ away, I
want to see Tell Sackett gettin’ away!”
There he was, a-warning me. Him in all that trouble, but thinking most of us
getting out of there. And me, I daren’t stop, for I had a girl and a small boy
depending on me. But this I did see. There weren’t more than inine or ten
Indians there, so far as I could see, they were all warriors.
We went on, our skins crawling with fear for Spanish Murphy, and also with fear
for ourselves. We were beyond their camp now, but were expecting any moment to
hear a yell behind us and to see the Apaches come streaming after us.
The thing that played into our hand was that the Indians probably had no idea
there was anybody else about. They had either killed the others, or they’d taken
out running.
Fifty yards beyond their camp the canyon took a bend, and when we had it behind
us we felt some better. I decided we didn’t have much time before those ‘Paches
got down to serious business with Spanish. I knew I had to get him out of there,
and I had to do it before he was hurt too bad to travel.
When we had gone a little way I pulled up. “You’ll have to go on alone from
here,” I said to Dorset Binny. “Do you know Sonora?”
“No.”
“The Apaches have run most of the folks off their ranches north of here, and the
few who are still there won’t fight back. I’d say ride due west and watch for a
trail. If you can find a ranch, ask them to take you in and hide you.”
She lingered, and I said, “Whatever made you try this, anyway?”
“There was nobody else to come. I didn’t want my sister growing up an Apache.”
She hesitated. “Not that what we had was so much better. Since Pa died I’ve been
trying to ranch, but we haven’t done very well.”
“You ride west,” I repeated. “I don’t need to tell you to be careful. You didn’t
get this far riding it blind.” I swung my horse, lifting a finger to my hatbrim.
” ‘Bye, Dorset.”
“Good-bye, William Tell,” she said, and they rode away up the canyon and I
turned back.
I had no idea in my mind at all about what I was going to do. How does a body go
about taking a prisoner away from blood-hungry Apaches? I couldn’t just open
fire. In the first place, they’d scatter out, pin me down, and surround me in no
time. Also, they might just up and kill Spanish right off.
All the time there was a-nagging at me a thing I knew about Indians. Ninety-nine
times out of a hundred a man who rides into an Indian camp is safe as long as he