Apache Moon (26 page)

Duane followed the manager to an office at the end of the hall. The sign on the desk said
BABCOCK
. The manager sat in his chair, took out a scale, and lined up bottles of chemicals. Then he proceeded to apply scientific tests to the nuggets. “Where'd you get them?” he asked pleasantly.

“Somebody gave them to me.”

“He must've been a very good friend.”

“The best.”

“You'll have to give me your name, for my records.”

“Joe Butterfield.”

The banker weighed the nuggets. “The best I can do is nine hundred and fifty dollars.”

“It's a deal.”

“That's a lot of money to carry around. It might be prudent to invest such a sum. We have numerous interesting opportunities available in this very area. How'd you like to buy a saloon?”

Duane was surprised. “You can buy a whole
saloon
for nine hundred and fifty dollars?”

“Depends on the saloon.”

“Let me think that one over.”

Duane stuffed the money into his boot and left the bank. “I guess I'm rich,” he muttered. He wondered what to buy first and decided on a good meal. A few doors down, he found the Red Rooster Saloon. He pushed open the bat-wing doors, stepped into the shadows, and checked the crowd. A Mexican with a wide sombrero sat in a corner, cleaning his fingernails with a knife. Two cowboys and three vaqueros played poker, deeply intent on their cards, a mound of coins piled in the middle of the table. There was the usual crowd of drunkards at the bar, and waitresses in low-cut blouses carried food and drink along the narrow aisles.

Duane found a table and sat facing the door, his hand near his Colt. Maybe I should bury the money, but what if a gopher digs it up? He was approached by
a waitress in her late twenties, with black hair and two teeth missing, one on top and one on the bottom. “Where'd you blow in from?” she asked saucily.

“Give me a steak with all the trimmings and a mug of beer. Have you got any tobacco and paper?”

She looked him up and down. “I got anything you want.”

“I'm not arguing with you.”

She appeared uncomfortable, blushed, and launched herself toward the chop counter. Duane pulled the brim of his hat lower over his eyes and examined his companions once more. The men looked like they could steal your stockings without removing your boots, while the ladies were the kind who'd do anything for a dollar. The saloon was dingy and squalid, a far cry from the clean air at the top of Gold Mountain. Duane missed Cucharo, Delgado, the old chief Pinotay, and even Gootch, but most of all he missed his woman.

He felt incomplete without her, as if his kidney or liver were missing. He wasn't sure that he'd see her again because anything could happen in Texas. He couldn't help wondering if she and Delgado had finally got together, because many times he'd noticed them looking at each other with desire in their eyes. Perhaps they'd surrendered to their natural inclinations now that I'm not there to watch them. It's not as if she's still a virgin, he thought dourly. For all I know, she's flirting with Delgado at this very moment.

His eyes scanned the saloon relentlessly because a
fight could break out at any moment. He'd seen it happen time and again, and usually he'd ended up in the middle. From now on, I'm staying out of fights, and I don't care what they say about me. I'll take me a little vacation in this town, and I'm sure I can find something to do.

The waitress returned with a steak platter and a foaming mug of beer. She placed them before him, told him the price, and he paid. “Is there a library in this town?” he asked.

“No, but do you know how to read?”

“I went to school for most of my life. How about you?”

“I can read a little, but I never read a whole book. Is it hard to learn?”

“Not at all.”

“If I pay you, would you give me readin' lessons?”

“I don't plan to be in town very long.”

Duane didn't realize that she wanted more than mere reading lessons, but he only had eyes for Phyllis Thornton. He dug into his steak, thinking of the hot kisses and mad embraces in their cozy little wickiup. There'd been moments when he thought they'd tear each other's skin off. He still carried a scar from one of her neck bites.

He felt excited at the mere thought of her, but she was far away, and his bed would be cold that night. He frowned morbidly as he sliced into his slab of beef. First good-looking man that comes along, she'll be on him like a dog on a bone.

***

The Fourth Cavalry rattled and clanked across the desert, while morale plummeted. The Apache scouts had found the spot where the raiding party had stolen Lieutenant Dawes's horses, and now they were following the trail of the lost detachment as it proceeded in a northerly direction.

Phyllis rode beside Captain Turner at the head of the formation, and behind them came the bugler and trooper carrying the colors of the Fourth Cavalry. Phyllis dreaded what lay ahead because there was no way that Lieutenant Dawes's soldiers could survive without horses in this remote corner of Apacheria.

Phyllis had met Lieutenant Dawes once, and the West Pointer had been impressive in his immaculately tailored uniform. It was difficult to believe that such a cultured and sophisticated man could die violently in a barren, remote wasteland.

The scouts appeared among the cactus, led by Krandall in his stained and smudged buckskins. Phyllis could see the weight of death on their faces. Krandall saluted Captain Turner. “They're up ahead, sir.”

The detachment rumbled onward, as word traveled back through the ranks. Evidently Lieutenant Dawes had led his small detachment into deepest Apacheria, and the results had been disastrous. “This might be a little hard for you to take, Miss Phyllis,” said Captain Turner out of the corner of his mouth.

“Don't worry about me,” she replied staunchly, for she'd heard about massacres all her life, although she'd never actually seen one. She gritted her teeth and hardened her heart, for it wouldn't do to faint among the soldiers. They had enough to do without taking care of a sickly woman.

“There they are,” said Captain Turner deep in his throat.

At first Phyllis thought she was seeing bleached branches lying among the bushes and cactus spines, but then she realized they were human bones! Her eyes fell on a skull severed from its body, its eyes huge, black, and staring endlessly at the sky. Arms and legs were chopped from torsos, skulls cracked in two, and everything had been picked clean by buzzards, ravens, crows, and rodents. Phyllis caught a vision of Apaches attacking suddenly, transforming the desert into a slaughterhouse of cavalry troopers. But now it was over, the troopers had gone to their just rewards, and the desert had returned to its cruel splendor.

The men set to work digging graves as Phyllis sat alone with her canteen in the shadow of a cottonwood tree. The final shred of her innocence dissolved in the killing ground before her. Elegant and dashing Lieutenant Dawes was a bunch of bones somewhere out there.

Meanwhile, Captain Turner fulminated at the edge of the clearing as he paced back and forth. “General Sheridan ought to send a thousand men down here and clean the redskinned bastards out once and for all!
Boys, one of these days we'll run into 'em, and we'll make 'em wish they were never born!”

Marshal Dan Stowe looked at the buzzards circling in the sky, dipping to earth and rising again. It appeared that a feast was taking place straight ahead, and he wondered whether to see what it was or circle around.

He was passing through territory that had never been surveyed and didn't know exactly where he was. His crude map said Turkey Creek was up ahead, and he needed to water his horse. He held his gun in his right hand, but it wouldn't help against an arrow shot silently from behind a poinsettia bush. He knew that he should travel at night and sleep during the day, but he didn't want the Pecos Kid to get away.

Sometimes he wondered what was wrong with him because all he had to do was collect his remaining nineteen hundred dollars from Big Al Thornton and head for Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and Stratford-upon-Avon. This doesn't make sense, Marshal Stowe told himself. If the Pecos Kid is innocent, maybe I should forget about him.

The lawman's much-vaunted honor seemed a charade in the boiling desert. What's Duane Braddock to me, and what am I to him? I'll just say he disappeared, and perhaps Prince Albert will invite me to tea. I might even settle in London and fall in love with a
duchess. He remembered the famous lines by Sir Walter Raleigh:

Now what is love? I pray thee, tell.

It is that fountain and that well

Where pleasure and repentance dwell.

It is perhaps that sauncing bell

That tolls all into heaven or hell:

And this is love, as I hear tell.

The beautiful lines evaporated in his mind as he drew closer to a small mining camp. Buzzards cackled as they ripped flesh from two forms sprawled on the ground. The stench struck Marshal Stowe's nostrils, reminding him of battlefields covered with rotting corpses.

He fired his gun into the buzzards; they screeched angrily, spred mammoth wings, and leapt into the air. Marshal Stowe pinched his nose as he urged his horse closer. He noticed steel pots, clothes, boots, and the ax and realized that Apaches hadn't killed them, because Apaches would've stolen everything in sight. And they sure as hell didn't kill each other. Marshal Stowe examined the half-eaten corpses with the cold eyes of a frontline officer but couldn't discern what had done them in.

The lawman examined the scene of the crime as his horse drank from the creek. Inside the tent he found blankets, buffalo skins, more clothing, canned
food, tobacco, and whiskey. But he couldn't find rifles, pistols, or cartridges.

He tried to reconstruct what had happened. Someone had evidently killed the miners, stolen their weapons, and taken any gold lying around. If the Apaches didn't do it, who did? There was no trace of a third miner, and Turkey Creek wasn't exactly a crossroads of the world.

But Marshal Stowe knew of one person who'd been headed this way. Did the Kid do it? he wondered. He studied the ground, but the tracks were blurred, and he didn't have the eyes of an Apache. What if nice, polite Duane Braddock was the cold-blooded killer that Lieutenant Dawes suspected? Marshal Stowe scratched his chin in thought. It wouldn't be the first time that one man was right, and everybody else wrong.

A
STOUT MAN WEARING A BLOND BEARD
and a green visor sat behind the counter in the Morellos Post Office, reading an old
Harper's Magazine.
“Sir?” asked a voice.

The postal clerk glanced up and saw silver conchos gleaming atop a black cowboy hat. “What can I do fer ye?”

“Any letters for Duane Braddock?”

The postal clerk shook his head.

Duane strolled out of the post office. It had only been five days since he'd seen Phyllis, but he couldn't help hoping that her letter would be waiting for him.
There was nothing to do in Morellos except drink yourself to death, unless somebody shot you first. He hadn't had one solid night of sleep since he'd arrived because carousing, shooting, and singing went on twenty-four hours a day. It was a wide-open town, with one sheriff trying unsuccessfully to keep the lid on.

The soles had worn through both of his Apache moccasin boots, and Duane didn't have his woman to repair them. He crossed the street to Buckley's General Store and found the same pleasingly plump lady working behind the counter, displaying a bolt of cloth for the perusal of a Mexican grandmother. “What can I do for you today?” the proprietress asked Duane.

“Pair of boots.”

“Have a seat and take off the ones you're wearing. I'll be with you in a few minutes.”

Duane looked at articles of men's and women's clothing hanging from the rafters amid crates, boxes, and advertisements showing fashionable ladies and gentlemen strutting about a city. The proprietress cut a few yards of cloth from the bolt, and Duane pegged her at mid-thirties, efficient, businesslike, an excellent advertisement for her wares. She spends her life pushing the merchandise, he realized.

After the Mexican woman departed, the proprietress approached Duane with two sheets of paper and a pencil. “Place your feet on these.”

She knelt before him and traced the outlines of his
feet on the paper. Color came to her face, and she appeared flustered as she returned to her position behind the counter. “Are you part Apache?”

“My grandfather was an Apache. Do you own this place?”

“Are you planning to rob me?”

“I was watching while you were waiting on the Mexican woman, and I wondered who you were.”

“My name's Arlene Buckley, and yes, I own this place. I'm alone here because my husband was killed by Apaches three years ago.” A chill came over the store as she opened a book that showed pictures of boots. “It takes four weeks, and you'll have to pay half down.”