Glancing around, I saw a separate small island of rocks rising perhaps from a
buried spur of the ridge. “You folks hole up over younder,” I said, “and I’ll
take three horses and the canteens and ride over there for water. You cover me.
If any shooting starts, you open up on the ridge over there. I’ll water the
horses, and fill the canteens.”
Leading the horses, I rode to the waterhole. There was a desert wren singing in
the willows, and the cotton-wood leaves were rustling, as they do in the
slightest breeze. Some quail sifted away through the low brush as I approached,
the horses quickening their pace as they neared the water.
If there were Apaches near they would surely have seen my friends take their
rifles and get down among the rocks, and they would be almighty sure to know
that meant trouble if they opened fire. But it was a shaky business, a-setting
out there on a horse, letting the other ones take the time to drink, and just
a-waiting for a bullet.
After a bit I got down, went around the waterhole, and began filling canteens.
First off, on coming up to the waterhole I’d taken notice of the ground, and saw
coyote, bighorn, and wild horse tracks, and the track of a desert fox, too, but
no tracks of anything human. That didn’t mean a whole lot. An Apache, if he
figured there were white men around, would never go near a waterhole unless he
was dying of thirst. He would just hole up some place close by and wait.
One by one I filled the canteens, getting a drink myself in the meantime, and
then I mounted up and rode back and took the rest of the horses.
It was an eerie sort of thing, watching the horses dip their muzzles into the
water and drink, and listening to that wren in the brush. I could see a place
where some javelinas, the wild pig of the desert, had been bedded down.
When the last horse had drunk his fill, I gathered the reins on the black and
put a boot into the stirrup. I started to swing up, but something glanced sharp
across my eyes and I let go the pommel and dropped.
The bullet, timed for my swing into the saddle, clipped a twig where my head
would have been, had I not been warned by that flash of sunlight on a rifle
barrel.
On one knee I aimed and fired, my shot echoing those fired by my bends among the
rocks, and they all hit within inches of where the Apache had been. Then I was
in the saddle and racing the horses back to the rocks. In an instant we were all
riding, and another shot hit the sand behind us.
“Only one,” Rocca said, “but he’ll send up a smoke.”
“Maybe we got him,” Spanish said.
“We’d have to have luck. We worried him, but I don’t think we got him.”
We glanced back, and in another minute saw a thin column of smoke rising. We
looked at it, but nobody made any comment. The horses were slowed to a walk —
they might need to run later. We traveled down an arroyo that left no tracks to
speak of, the deep sand obliterating all but indefinite hollows.
We went down across a desert flat and into several parallel ranges of bare
ridges, their slopes partly covered with the drift sand. The ridges gave us a
little cover, and we stepped up the pace.
The children were very tired now. The endless motion of the horses had lulled
them into a state where nothing mattered but a longed-for end of it. As for the
rest of us, we lived by the moment, counting on nothing more, knowing that the
worst might still lay before us.
Dorset came close to me, and for some time we rode side by side without
speaking. Suddenly, about half a mile off to our right, we saw a rider. It was
an Apache, but he made no effort to close the distance, simply holding a course
parallel to our own. A few minutes later another appeared, to our left.
“They’re closing in.” Battles lit a cigar, squinting his eyes through the smoke.
“I think they’ve got some place in mind, somewhere up ahead.”
Tampico stood in his stirrups, scanning the country around. “We’ll turn west,”
he said.
We wheeled quickly and charged in that direction, spurring our horses for speed,
and drove right at the man on that flank.
For a startled instant I think the Apache had no idea what to do, and then he
fled off to the northwest as fast as his pony could carry him.
We kept on west at top speed, wanting to cover ground before they could adjust
to our change of direction and pace. We dipped into a hollow dotted with clumps
of ocotillo and prickly pear, and charged down it, out of sight of the Apaches
for at least a mile. Then we rode up a shallow wash and out on the flat above.
There were at least a dozen Apaches off to the east, riding on a course that
would join with ours somewhere ahead. Others were coming up behind, and to the
west we could see another party coming along fast to head us off.
Me, my eyes were taking in the country around. We were being boxed. “All right,”
I said, “we’ll run!”
And we ran.
I figure we all knew we were up against it then. They knew we had been swapping
saddles, but now they weren’t going to give us a chance to do that. They were
going to run us the way they’d run wild horses, in relays. If we stopped they’d
move in and surround us, so we had to run. And they knew where we were running
to.
Oh, they were sly, all right, cunning as wolves. Ahead of us a canyon mouth
suddenly opened, a wide, shallow canyon like some of those in western Texas,
with sides sloping steeply up to a sheer rock wall about thirty or forty feet
high. The Apaches closed in on the sides, driving us into that canyon like into
a trap. And we knew it would be a box canyon, with a dead end somewhere up
ahead.
“Slow down,” I said. “Rocca, we got to find us a place up on the slope,
somewhere open to the top.”
A shot rang out and one of our horses stumbled and fell. I swore. Nobody ever
likes to see a good horse die, but this one would be eaten by the Apaches.
They had fallen behind now, but they were in the canyon top, which was over four
hundred yards wide at this point. There was a thin trickle of water in the
bottom, at the east side.
We were almost abreast of what looked like a means of escape before we saw it —
hollow up near the rim, a sort of half-basin scooped out by some fall of rock,
followed by erosion. Pulling up, I pointed. “We’re going up there.”
“It’s a trap,” Rocca said. “We’ll never get out of it.”
“It’s a place to stand and fight from,” Battles answered, looking up. He wheeled
his horse and started up the slope.
He rode left for about fifty paces, leading the pack horse, then back right,
riding a switchback trail he was making himself.
Tampico Rocca was already down behind some rocks, and I dropped beside him. “Go
on up,” I told Dorset. “At the top you’ll have to lead your horse, but keep
going.”
She was not one to ask unnecessary questions. She knew what Rocca and I were set
to do, and she wasted no time. John J. Battles was already halfway up, and he
was on his feet, leading his struggling horses. Harry Brook, with one of the
Creed boys, was right behind him, but being lighter they could stay on the
horses.
Spanish Murphy was waiting. Winchester in his hand, and when Dorset passed him
he followed, leading the other horses. They strung out on the trail, making
quite a cavalcade.
“Tamp,” I said, “there’s a steep fall of rock, a sort of watercourse, to the
left of where they are going up. It will be steeper but faster.”
“Bueno,” he said, and looked around at me. “It has been a good race. A very good
one, I think.”
The Apaches were coming closer — there must have been at least thirty of them.
Again I glanced at the slope, checking out the route, the possible cover, the
quickest way to the hollow up under the rim. It was farther up there than it
looked, and already the others were looking a lot smaller, but they still had a
way to go.
One of the Apaches was trying to climb the slope behind us. Rocca tucked the