you, Tell?”
For a moment there I hadn’t anything to say. I kept thinking of Ange, the last
times I saw her, and of the first times, high in those Colorado mountains.
“My wife is dead,” I told him. “She was a rarely fine girl … rarely fine.”
“Tough,” Spanish said. “You, Rocca?”
“No, señor. I am not a married man. There was a girl … but that is far away
and long ago, amigos. Her father had many cows, many horses … me, I had
nothing. And I was an Indio … my mother was an Apache,” he added.
My eyes were on the floor, tracing the cracks in the rough boards, often
scrubbed. My hungry flesh was soaking up the lost moisture and I felt sleepy and
quiet, liking the square of sunlight that lay inside the door, even the drone of
the flies … I was alive.
The blood of Apaches was still on my hands. There had been no water in which to
wash until now, but soon I would … soon.
The room was like many of its kind, differing only in the plank floor. Most
floors were of stamped earth. There were several rough board tables, some chairs
and benches. The room was low-raftered, the walls were of adobe, the roof of
poles and earth. I could smell bacon frying in the kitchen, and coffee.
Spanish Murphy hitched around in his chair. “Tell, we make a team, the four of
us, why don’t we stick together?”
The man came in from the kitchen with tin plates and a frying pan filled with
bacon. He dumped the plates on the table, then forked bacon onto them. He went
out and returned with the coffeepot and a plate of tortillas. Still another trip
and he brought a big bowl of frijoles — those big Mexican brown beans — and a
dried-apple pie cut into four pieces.
“We’ll need a couple of horses,” I said, looking around at Case.
“You’ll get ’em,” Case replied. “I think the Comp’ny would like to get them to a
safer place. We’ve been expectin’ an attack almost any time.”
He gestured toward the bacon. “You got to thank Pete Kitchen for the bacon. He
raises hogs down to his place, calls ’em his ‘Pache pincushions, they’re so shot
full of arrows.”
John J. Battles, a solid chunk of a man, glanced across the table at me.
“Sackett … that’s a familiar name.”
“I’m familiar,” I agreed, “once you know me.” It wasn’t in me to get him
comparing notes, figuring out who I was. Once he did, he’d bring up the fight in
the Mogollon country, and how Ange was murdered. It was something I was wishful
of forgetting.
“I still figure,” Spanish said, “that we’d make a team.”
“If you want to risk hanging.” John J. Battles grinned at us. “You all heard
what Case said.”
“Me,” Rocca said, “I wasn’t going nowhere, anyhow.”
“Later,” I said, “it will have to be later. I’ve got a trip to take.”
They looked at me, all of them. “My brother’s kid. I hear tell he’s been taken
by the Apaches. I’ve got to go into the Sierra Madres after him.”
They thought I was crazy, and I was thinking so myself. Rocca was the first: one
to speak. “Alone? Señor, an army could not do it. That is the Apache hideout
where no white man goes.”
“It’s got to be done,” I said.
Case, he just looked at me. “You’re crazy. You’re scrambled in the head.”
“He’s just a little boy,” I said, “and he’s alone down yonder. I think he will
be expectin’ somebody to come for him.”
Chapter 2
Laura Sackett was a strikingly pretty young woman, blonde and fragile. Among the
dark, sultry beauties of Spanish descent she seemed a pale, delicate flower,
aloof, serene, untouchable.
To the young Army officers in the Tucson vicinity, Laura Sackett was utterly
fascinating, and this feeling was not dulled by the knowledge that she was a
married woman. Her husband, it was known, was Congressman Orrin Sackett, who was
in Washington, D.C. Apparently they had separated.
But nobody seemed to know just what the status of the marriage was, and Laura
offered no comment, nor did she respond to hints.
Her conduct was irreproachable, her manner ladylike, her voice was soft and
pleasant. The more discerning did notice that her mouth was a little too tight,
her eyes shadowed with hardness, but these characteristics were usually lost in
the quiet smiles that hovered about her lips.
Nobody in Tucson had ever known Jonathan Pritts, Laura’s father, and none of
them had been present in the vicinity of Mora during the land-grant fighting.
Jonathan Pritts was now dead. A narrow, bigoted man, tight-fisted and arrogant,
he had been idolized by his daughter and only child, and with his death her
hatred for the Sacketts had become a fierce, burning urge to destroy.
She had seen her father driven from Mora, his dream of empire shattered, his
hired gunmen killed or imprisoned. A vain, petty, and self-important man, he had
impressed upon his daughter that he was all the things he assumed he was, and to
her all other men were but shadows before the reality of her father.
Until he had come west, they had lived together in genteel poverty. His schemes
for riches had failed one by one, and with each failure his rancor and
bitterness grew. Each failure, he was positive, had come not from any mistake on
his part, but always from the envy or hatred of others.
Laura Pritts had married Orrin Sackett with one thought in mind — to further her
father’s schemes. Orrin, big, handsome, and genial, and fresh from the Tennessee
hills, had never seen a girl like Laura. She seemed everything he had ever
dreamed of. Tyrel had seen through her at once, and through her father as well,
but Orrin would not listen. He was seeing what he wished to see — a great lady,
a princess almost — graceful, alluring, a girl of character and refinement. But
in the end he saw her, and her father, for what they were, and he had left her.
And now Laura Pritts Sackett was returning, without a plan, without anything but
the desire to destroy those who had destroyed her father.
As if by magic, on the stage to Tucson, the pieces began to fall into place. At
the first stage stop east of Yuma she overheard the driver talking to the
station tender.
“Saw him in Yuma,” the driver was saying. “I’d have known him anywhere. Those
Sackett boys all look alike.”
“Sackett? The gunfighter?”
“They’re all good with their guns. This one is Tell Sackett. He’s been out
California way.”
The idea came to her that night. She had been trying to think of some way to
hurt the Sacketts, to get even with them. Now here was Tell Sackett, the older
brother, the one she had never met. It was unlikely that he knew of her
difficulties with Orrin. The Sacketts wrote few letters, and from what she
remembered Orrin had not seen his brother in years. Of course, he might have
seen him since she left, but there was a chance, and she resolved to take it.
The means was supplied to her also by way of a conversation overheard. She had
heard many such conversations without thinking of how they might be used. The
men were talking of the Apaches, of some children stolen by them, perhaps
killed. “Two of them were Dan Creed’s boys. I don’t know who the other one was.”
The young Army lieutenant on the stage had made tentative efforts at a
conversation with Laura, all of which she had studiously avoided. At his next
attempt she surprised him by turning with a faint, somewhat remote smile.
“Is it true, Lieutenant, that there are Apaches about? Tell me about them.”
Lieutenant Jack Davis leaned forward eagerly. He was a very young man, and Laura
Sackett was a beautiful young woman. It was true he had himself been on only two
scouts into Apache country, but he had served with older, more experienced men
who had talked freely, and he had listened well.
“Yes, there are Apaches,” he said, “and it is true we might encounter them at
any time, but the men on this coach are all armed, and are experienced fighting
men. You will not need to worry.”
“I was not worried about them, Lieutenant, merely curious. Is it true that when
attacked they retreat into Mexico? Into the Sierra Madre?”
“Unfortunately, yes. And the Mexicans are not helpful. They refuse to allow any
of our armed forces to cross the border in pursuit, although I believe there are
some indications the two governments may work together against the Apaches.”
“So it seems likely that if a prisoner were taken over the border into Mexico
you would not have much chance of recovering him, would you?”