steps higher, then stopped, and we let her be. It was still a far piece to the
top.
After we’d all caught our breath we started on, and it was a struggle. But
little by little we scrambled up until at last we got on top. By that time it
was full dark and we still had the other horse to bring up.
Battles was down there alone, or as good as. Rocca was in no shape to lend a
hand, and might be asleep. The Apaches didn’t attack at night as a rule, for
they had the notion that if a man was killed in the darkness his soul would
wander forever in darkness. But if they did try coming up that slope in the
dark, Battles could never hold them.
Leaving Dorset with the mare and the youngsters, Spanish and me made our way
back into the basin. By the time we reached the bottom we were so almighty tired
we were staggering, and we just naturally caved in. John J. reported no movement
as far as he knew of. Rocca was sleeping. He had lost a lot of blood, and we had
no way of treating a wound. Up on the mesa we might find one of the herbs the
Indians used, but down here there was nothing.
Spanish worked a hollow for his hip in the sand and went to sleep. After I took
John J.’s place, he did the same.
It was still, and overhead the stars were bright as they can only be in a desert
sky. A coolness came up from the barranca below, and I listened for any whisper
of sound, struggling against my own weariness and the need for sleep. But a few
minutes of sleep might mean death for all of us. Only my wariness stood guard,
and the thought of them trusting me.
A long while later, Spanish came to me. “You better get a little sleep,” he
said, “but if we’re figuring on getting that horse up the mountain, it won’t be
much.”
There was no need for me to move. I just let go and closed my eyes, and when I
woke up it was with a hand on my shoulder.
“They’re stirrin’ around down there,” Spanish said, “and it’s gettin’ on toward
dawn.”
“You two hold ’em,” I said, getting up. “I’ll take that other horse up the
mountain.”
“Alone? It can’t be done.”
“It’s got to be,” I said. “The Apaches will figure it out if we wait. Maybe they
already have.”
John J. was on his feet, his gun belted on and his Winchester in his hand, a
spare cartridge belt draped over his shoulder.
“If it gets bad, pull back to Rocca here, and make a stand,” I said. “I’ll get
back as soon as I can.”
He indicated the horses. “Do you think we could make a break for it? Down the
slope and right into them, shooting all the while?”
It was a thought, and I said so, but I told him no, not yet. Then I went and
caught up the other mustang and headed for the slope. Oddly enough, Dorset’s
horse took to it as if it was home country. More than likely she could smell the
other horse, and knew it had gone this way. Maybe she could also smell Dorset.
Wild horses can follow a trail as good as any wolf — I’ve seen them do it many a
time. And the other horse, with us working to help, had maybe made the trail a
little better.
The horse had to struggle, and I tugged and braced myself and pulled, and that
game little horse stayed right with it. With daybreak tinting the sky, we made
it to the rim.
And then we heard the shots. Somebody down there was using a Winchester.
We heard the chatter of the rifle, then a few slower, paced shots. There was
silence, then another shot.
The children were wide-eyed and scared, but they were pioneer youngsters, and no
telling the trouble they’d seen before this. Dorset stepped into the saddle and
I taken her hand.
“Ride,” I said, “and stay with it. Hide out by day, ride by night,” I told her
again. “Don’t shoot unless they get close, and then shoot to kill. I figure
you’re going to make it. We can hold them a day or two.”
She put her hand on mine. “Tell, thank them for me, will you? All of them?”
“Sure.”
The shooting down there was steady now. They needed me down there. I knew how
Apaches could come up a slope. Nothing to shoot at but a few bobbing, flashing
figures, you scarce saw them when they vanished, appeared again elsewhere, and
came on.
Dorset knew it, too. She turned her horse, lifted a hand, and they rode off into
the coming morning. I taken one look and then I hit the slope a-sliding. Far
below I could see the Indians.
Battles was on the rim, bellied down behind rock slabs. Far off, near the
stream, I could see the Apache ponies, but nothing was moving on the slope.
Behind Battles I could see Spanish, and he was rolling some rocks into place,
lifting others, making a sort of rough wall from where John J. was firing to
where Rocca was lying. He was getting set for a last-ditch fight, and the lay of
the land sort of favored our position by being a mite lower than the rest of the
hollow.
Of a sudden an Apache came up from behind a rock and started to move forward,
and my Winchester came up as if it moved of its own will, and I taken a quick
sight and let go.
High on the slope the way I was, right under the rim, I had a good view of what
lay below. That Apache was a good three hundred yards off and lower down, but I
held low a-purpose and that bullet caught him full in the chest.
He stopped in his tracks and Battles shot into him, getting off two fast shots
before he could drop, but when he did drop he just rolled over and lay sprawled
out, face up to the sun.
A number of shots were fired at me, but all of them hit the slope a good fifty
feet below me, and I decided right then I was going to stay where I was.
It stayed quiet then, and slowly the afternoon drew on. Our horses had been
bunched by Spanish so that they were close to Rocca, and the position seemed
pretty good unless the Apaches decided to attack by night. But I kept on
thinking about what we might do. There had to be a way out.
Now, my pappy was always one for figuring things. He told me time and again that
when in a difficulty a body should always take time to contemplate. “The only
way folks got to where they are,” he’d say, “was by thinkin’ things out. No man
ever had the claws of a grizzly nor the speed of a deer — what he had was a
brain.”
Right now we had here a stalemate, but it worked in favor of the Apache. It
worked for him because he had access to plenty of water and grass, which we did
not have.
And I knew the Apache would no longer wait. He’d be scaling that rimrock
himself, and without horses he could get up there all right, although it would
take some doing. We could figure on having them above us by the next daybreak,
and then that hollow would be nothing but a place to die in.
We had to make it out of there, and right now. Nobody expects to live forever,
but nobody wishes to shorten his time. Of course, a body never knows which turn
will shorten it. Like when a bunch of us boys went off to the war we left a
friend behind who paid a substitute. We all came back, safe and sound, but the
one who stayed home was dead — thrown from a horse he’d ridden for three years
… scared by a rabbit, it jumped, and he lit on his head. So a man never knows.
Only if we didn’t get out of this place we weren’t going to be laying many
plans.
Up there where I was, I began to give study to the country around.
I knew that getting the rest of those horses up to the top was an unlikely
chance. In the first place, most of them were larger and heavier, and altogether
harder to handle than the two we had got out. We might just possibly get one
horse up, or even two. We would never make three or four.
So I cut that out of my thinking. Somehow we had to get out by going downhill,
and that meant riding right through that bunch of Apaches …