Now, wait a minute, I told myself. There to the right … that’s a slide of
sand, but there’s a mixed lot of growth in it There don’t seem to be so many
large rocks. I studied it as carefully as the light would allow.
If we could just … I began to see how we, or some of us, might make it. If we
stayed here none of us would make it through tomorrow.
I was going down there right now and face them with it. Only first there was
that Apache off to the left. He had been coming up the hill for the last
half-hour, creeping, crawling, out of sight more than two-thirds of the time,
but always getting closer. Now when he moved again …
Settling myself into the sand, I braced my elbow and taken a careful sight. Then
I waited. His foot moved … I waited…. Then he lunged into view and I
squeezed off my shot. He never even twitched.
Chapter 14
When I came sliding into the hollow Spanish looked at me. “Was I you, I’d still
be travelin’ ” he said. “It don’t look like we’re goin’ no place down here.”
“I’ve got an idea,” I said.
He searched my face. “Well, you Sacketts have come up with some good ones. I
hear tell whenever one of you boys are in trouble, the rest come a-runnin’. I’d
like to see that now. I surely would.”
“They don’t know where I’m at.”
John J. was stuffing a pipe. He looked haggard and honed down. I hadn’t the
heart to look at Rocca yet.
“What’s this idea?” John J. asked. “Right about now I’ll buy anything.”
“Yonder,” I said, “there’s a corner of slope that’s mostly free of big rocks.
There’s some grass and some brush, but it’s low stuff, and the sand looks as if
ifs packed.”
“So?”
“Come nightfall we mount up. We stampede the horses down that slope into the
Apache camp and we go with them. Only we keep on riding.”
Battles gave study to it Spanish, he just looked at me. “How many do you think
would make it?” he asked.
“Maybe none … maybe one.”
Battles shrugged. “Well, it’s no worse than here. At least we’d be trying.”
“What about Tamp?” Spanish asked.
“He isn’t getting any better, is he? How much chance has he got here?”
“None at all.”
“All right. So we get him into a saddle. You put that Mex on a horse and he’ll
ride it to hell and gone. I know him. If we get him up in a saddle he’ll stay
there as long as any of us, dead or alive.”
“All right,” Battles said, “I’ll buy it. What do we do?”
“Pick your best horse. We’ll load the pack horse. Maybe he can stay with us,
maybe he can’t. Maybe hell follow and catch up. You know how horses like to stay
together.”
We sat about there, chewing on jerked beef and trying to see all the angles, but
there wasn’t much we could do but trust to luck. We could hold to the far side
of the bunch away from the Apache camp, although that might be the worst thing,
for there’d likely be Apaches sleeping around, or watching from everywhere.
Time was a-passing, but we daren’t do anything to let those Indians know what we
were planning. Saddling up had to be done after dark, and all we could do would
be to pray none of them got up on the rimrock before night came on.
Tampico Rocca was lying there with his eyes open when I sat down beside him.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I heard you talking.”
“You reckon you can set up there like I said?”
“You get me into the saddle, that’s all I ask. That and a couple of shotguns.”
“You’ll have them.”
We sat quiet then for a quite a spell. It was almighty hot, and even sitting
still the sweat trickled down my body. We drank and drank again, and we all ate
a little more … no telling when we’d get to eat or drink again, if ever.
Finally I taken my rifle and climbed up on the rim. We had to make those Apaches
think they had us, and after my helping in two kills from up there, they’d be
sure I’d stay there.
Up on the rim I could see no cover for an Apache up there, no way one could come
on a man except by night, and if anybody rode from their camp, I could see him.
The camp was too far for a rifle shot, but I could see their cook fires, and see
them moving around. Our horses, if we could start them slow, might get within
easy distance of their camp before we had to stampede them. And we might be
lucky enough to stampede their pony herd, but I wasn’t betting on anything.
When it was fairly dark I came down off the rim and we lighted a small fire to
make coffee. They knew where we were, and we wanted them to think of us as
staying put, although the idea of us trying to break out probably never came to
their minds. They knew we were boxed in.
Over coffee we just sat around, keeping an ear tuned for movement. Rocca was
propped up by his saddle atop a couple of rocks.
John J. Battles was quiet, saying nothing much until suddenly he started to talk
of home. It seemed he’d come from New England, of a good, solid family. He had
made a place for himself in the town and was a respected young businessman, and
then he got involved with a girl, and another young man from a respected but
high-riding family had come for him with a gun. This fellow had been drinking,
and threatened to kill Battles on sight. When they met again Battles was armed,
and in the exchange of shots, he killed the man.
There had been a trial, and Battles was cleared of the shooting, but he found
himself no longer welcome at the girl’s house, or anywhere else in town. So he
sold his business, went west, and had drifted. He had driven stage, ridden
shotgun for Wells Fargo, during which time he killed a holdup man and wounded
his partner. He had been a deputy marshal for a time, had driven north with a
cattle drive, and scouted against the Cheyenne.
“What happened to the girl?” Spanish wanted to know.
Battles glanced up. “What you’d expect. She married somebody else, not as well
off as I’d been, and he got to hitting the bottle. A couple of years later his
horse ran away with his rig and he was killed.
“She wrote, wanted me to come back. Offered to come west to me, and you know
something? Try as I might, I couldn’t even remember exactly what she looked
like.”
“You didn’t have a picture?”
“Had one. Lost it when the Cheyennes ambushed a stage I was traveling on.” He
paused for a moment. “I’d like to have seen the leaves change color back in the
Vermont hills again. I’d like to have seen my family again.”
“I thought you had no family,” I said.
“I’ve got a sister and two brothers.” He sipped some coffee. “One brother is a
banker in Boston. The other one is a teacher. I’d gone into business, but a
teacher was what I really wanted to be, only when the moment came I was steadier
with a gun that I should have been.” Nobody talked there for a time, and then
Battles looked around at me. “Any of your family ever in New England? There was
a man named Sackett made quite a name for himself up in Maine during the
Revolution. Seems he was wounded or hurt or something, and he spent the winter
on the farm with my great-grandparents, helped them through a bad time.”
“Uh-huh. My great-grandfather fought in the Revolution. He was with Dearborn at
Saratoga, and he was in Dearborn’s command when they marched with General
Sullivan to destroy the towns of the Iroquois.”
“Likely it’s the same man.” Battles put down his coffee cup and began to stoke
his pipe.
Spanish walked in from the lookout “All quiet,” he said. “There’s still one fire
goin’ ”
Quiet as could be, we saddled our horses, and loaded what grub was left on our
pack horse. Overhead the stars were very bright, and the night was still. Whilst
the others got Rocca ready for traveling, binding his wounds tighter. I crept
over to the place where we were going to try to ride down.
The ground was packed pretty good, and there was no slide sand.
The place was narrow, just a strip that might ordinarily have gone unnoticed,
except that in our desperation we had looked for any possibility at all. Of