Flintlock (13 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: Flintlock
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was in Geronimo's mind that he head south into the high desert plateau country, then swing east to the Zuni Mountains and wait there for more warriors to join him.
He now had twenty young men with him, a formidable force to be sure, but not sufficient to hurt the soldiers badly enough that they'd withdraw, licking their wounds, from this part of the country.
Behind the warriors rode six young women and with them a few boys who laughed and jeered and tugged on the rope that was tied to the wrists of a soldier.
Tonight, after the fires were lit, they would watch the women test the man's courage, though he was young and already cried and slobbered and begged the Apache for mercy, ridiculous words that did not bode well.
Geronimo rode deep in thought, wondering if his decision to retreat to the Zuni Mountains was the right one, or should he raid with the men he had and teach the whites a lesson they'd never forget?
Faugh
, it was a puzzle, and one that would bear more consideration. Perhaps the spirits would come to him in a dream and show him the way.
The sight of the scout galloping toward him roused Geronimo from thought. The young warrior pumped his rifle above his head, a sure sign of excitement.
The warrior drew rein on his buckskin pony and words fell from his mouth like rocks tumbling down a mountainside after an earthshake.
There were white men, three of them, camped in the open not a mile ahead. They had a fire and—this was a great wonder—a white flag hung from a pole near where they sat.
Geronimo listened and wondered what to make of this.
Were they soldiers surrendering?
The warrior shook his head. No, not soldiers.
Was it a trap set for the Apache?
No. There were just those three. None others.
His warriors gathered around him as Geronimo thought of this strange thing.
White men were not smart, as everyone knew, but could they really be so foolish as to think that the Apache had any respect for a white flag?
None of the young men had an answer for that.
The lines on Geronimo's face drew fine and deepened. Such a thing had never happened before. Even the Mexicans weren't this stupid.
Finally he made up his mind.
They would go and take a look at these white men, and if there was no sign of a trap, kill them and take their horses and guns.
The young men agreed with this strategy.
But it was still a great marvel that the white men were there.
 
 
The scout led the way to the white men's camp, located in foothills at the western end of the Tohatchi Flats, where the featureless brush country meets the Chuska Mountains.
Fort Defiance lay just ten miles to the west, but Geronimo had no fear of soldiers being in the vicinity in force. The cavalry and infantry regiments were still well to the north and fully occupied rounding up Apache women and children.
But he was a cautious man and his warriors rode on the alert, their eyes everywhere.
Under a sky the color of cardboard, the Apaches dismounted and left the horses and their prisoner with the boys and women.
They fanned out and surrounded the white men's camp, eyes on fire, hungry as wolves.
Three good horses were tethered in a clearing within a clump of cedar and piñon and the white men carried repeating rifles and belted Colts.
Such men were worth killing.
 
 
“They're all around us, Asa,” Logan Dean said. “Just settin' out there, watching.”
“I know it,” Asa Pagg said. “Keep your hand away from your gun and grin from your butt to your eyebrows.”
“I don't like it,” Dean said. “They're planning to lift our hair.”
Pagg smiled. “Could be. But it's too late to do anything about it now.”
“What's the call, Asa?” Joe Harte said.
Pagg said, “Like I just said, keep your hands away from your guns and grin like the Apaches were visiting kin.”
“Hell, I knew this was a big mistake,” Dean said. “I figured we were riding into trouble.”
“Just shut your trap and think of the army payroll,” Pagg said. “Keep your mind occupied, like.”
“Yeah, well I'm scared, Asa,” Harte said.
Pagg nodded. “Apaches will do that to a man.”
He took a step forward, cupped a hand to his mouth and yelled, “Geronimo! I want to talk to you. Got a deal for ya.”
Pagg knew better than to declare his friendship. The Apaches didn't have a word for
friend
, because they never had any. Mention of a deal might swing it.
A silence settled on the foothills and even the crickets were still. Rain clouds crowded the sky to the north and a breeze picked up but as yet made no sound in the trees.
Unnerved by the quiet, Pagg yelled, his voice no longer as confident, “Geronimo, did you hear me? We got things to talk about, you and me.”
A bullet kicked up a fountain of dirt an inch in front of Pagg's left boot and the rifle's flat statement echoed among the hills.
He heard the slap of hands on leather and yelled, “No! Stay as you are.”
“Hell, Asa, they tried to kill you,” Dean said.
“If they wanted to kill me I'd be dead right now,” Pagg said.
To Geronimo, he yelled, “That was a good joke. Now come out and talk. We have business to discuss.” He threw in the kicker. “It's about Fort Defiance.”
A minute ticked past, taut as a fiddle string, then another. Thunder rumbled, still far off, and Asa Pagg listened to the thud of his heartbeat in his ears.
Brush rustled and a couple of Apache boys appeared, dragging a white soldier behind them by a rope. The man was obviously terrified. Then Geronimo and a couple of warriors seemed to rise out of the ground like ghosts from a grave.
The oldest of the bucks, a squat, wiry man with bowlegs and mean eyes, wore a broadcloth vest decorated with silver pesos. It was him who did the talking.
He held up two fingers. “The soldier for two rifles. This is Geronimo's deal.”
Pagg shook his head. “No deal. The soldier means nothing to me.”
“Please, mister, help me,” the trooper said. He was no more than a boy and had already been badly abused. His face was cut and bruised by blows from the Apache boys' cudgels and his blue eyes were frightened.
The warrior and Geronimo exchanged words and the warrior said again, “Two rifles.”
Asa Pagg was smarter than most of his kind. By demanding the Winchesters, he knew Geronimo was trying to weaken his defensive power at no cost in Apache blood.
“Mister . . . please . . .” The soldier whispered. “For God's sake don't let them torture me.”
“The hell with this,” Pagg said.
He raised his rifle and shot the young man between the eyes. The soldier dropped to the ground like a puppet that just had its strings cut.
“Tell Geronimo I'm serious,” he said to the warrior. “I'm not playing around here. I want to cut a deal on Fort Defiance, not his damned prisoners.”
Geronimo heard this and understood, but his weather-worn face showed not the slightest trace of emotion.
After a few moments' thought, he said in the English he'd only recently mastered, “We will talk. But remember this . . . I hold your lives in my hand.”
Pagg didn't scare worth a damn, but he knew his life was on the line.
It was a time for some slick, and fast, talking.
 
 
Only Geronimo and the warrior with the fancy vest sat by the fire. Both kept their Springfield rifles close across their thighs.
Pagg had offered them coffee, which they'd accepted, and whiskey, which they'd refused.
After talking for ten minutes, Asa Pagg said, “So it comes down to this, Geronimo: You attack with your warriors and we'll be inside taking care of as many defenders as we can.”
“I do not understand this, taking care,” Geronimo said.
“Kill. I mean we'll attack from their rear and kill defenders. It will make your task easy.”
“Battle is never easy,” Geronimo said.
“Well, as easy as we can make it.”
The Apache's black eyes shifted to Dean and Harte and lingered on them for long moments. He seemed to be satisfied with what he saw.
“Why do you turn on your own kind like a ravenous wolf?” Geronimo said.
Pagg had been called worse and he smiled as he told the Apache about the pay wagon, then said, “We can share the money if you want, Geronimo.”
“Gold and silver?”
“Yeah, and a lot of it.”
“We use gold and silver to decorate our weapons and make necklaces for our women,” Geronimo said. “Pah, you can keep your gold and silver.”
“Then remember what I told you earlier,” Pagg said. “You'll take many horses and many guns, and women too, if you want them.” He smiled again, trying to make himself seem sincere. “And with our help you can burn Fort Defiance to the ground.”
Geronimo sat in deep thought, head bowed, until Pagg became convinced he'd never talk again. But then the Apache looked up and said, “Pagg, you are a snake, a wild beast who kills its own kind, and to make a treaty with such as you hurts my heart. But I have thought of this and I know I must do what is best for the Apache.”
Now Pagg was eager. “Then you agree? When will you attack?”
“Before the soldiers bring in our women and children. If I wait longer, there will be too many soldiers at the fort. Yet, I will wait awhile until more young men join me.”
“Damnit, so when? Give me a time, Geronimo.”
“I will wait five days.”
“But I need a time of day, morning, noon or night? How will I know when your attack is coming?”
“You will know.”
Geronimo rose stiffly to his feet, a man pained by old wounds.
“There is a full moon in five days. Expect me when it rises.”
“I thought Apaches didn't fight at night.”
“The full moon makes the night as day.”
Pagg stuck out his hand. “Well, put it there . . . pardner.”
Geronimo ignored the gesture and he and his warrior walked back toward the brush. Then Geronimo stopped, nodded in the direction of the soldier's body and said, “Bury your dead, Asa Pagg.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
With the help of Captain Gibbs's cavalrymen, Flintlock and Roper buried Elliot and Cole, and the captain himself said the words over the shallow graves.
It had rained the whole morning and by the time they returned to the trading post everybody had mud on their boots.
“How is she?” Flintlock asked Chastity Gauley.
“Still the same,” the man said. “Cleaner and prettier dressed, but the same. She won't talk and she won't eat.”
“Well, she ain't gonna get any better,” Abe Roper said. “That's for damn sure.”
“She will. In time,” Flintlock said. “She's young and that will help.”
“She's a crazy woman and she ain't worth it. Leave her here, Sam'l,” Roper said.
“Damnit, Abe, I said no and I mean no.”
“Easy, Sammy,” Roper said. “Don't get mad at a man who knows better'n you do. It ain't his fault.”
Flintlock opened his mouth to speak, but Captain Gibbs stepped beside him, saluted and said, “We're pulling out, gentlemen. Thank you for caring for the madwoman so well.”
“We're taking her with us, Captain,” Flintlock said. “We've decided we can't leave her here.”
“Yes. Well, do whatever you think is best.” A trooper brought the officer his horse and he mounted.
Gibbs seemed to think about something, then he bent down to Flintlock from the saddle and said quietly, “Regarding your throat, Mr. Flintlock, doctors learned so much during the war that they do wonders nowadays with disfigurements. I strongly urge you to contact a physician and ask him what modern medicine can do for you.”
“I'll sure keep it in mind,” Flintlock said.
“Well, the best of luck to you,” Gibbs said.
He swung his horse around and joined his departing column, galloping past the Apache captives who were even more weak and miserable than they'd been a day earlier.
Roper watched the man leave, then said, “Does it trouble you that much, Sam'l?”
“What?”
“You know what. The big bird on your throat.”
“It troubles me some, some of the time.”
“Folks who know you look past it.”
“What about folks who don't know me?”
“Then you have a problem.”
“A doc would have to skin me,” Flintlock said.
Roper nodded. “Seems like.”
“Then the bird stays where it is.”
Jack Coffin walked toward them through the rain, his hair hanging lank and wet across his shoulders. He led his horse.
“Time you boys saddled up,” he said. He looked around him. “Where's the Chinaman?”
“He's here somewhere,” Roper said.
“Better tell him,” Coffin said.
“We're taking the girl with us,” Flintlock said.
Coffin said only, “She got a hoss?”
“She'll ride double with me,” Flintlock said.
The Apaches, in common with all other Indians, had no concept of insanity as a stigma, nor did they have a word for a crazy person. The closest they came was “someone who makes me laugh” or “a person who can't be reasoned with.”
Coffin, raised by the Apache, accepted the presence of the madwoman without further question.
“Tell her we're leaving, Samuel,” was all he said.
 
 
Charlie Fong's horse was gone, and of the man himself there was no sign. A search of the area around the post by Flintlock and the others turned up nothing.
“Has he wandered off before, Abe?” Flintlock said.
“No. Not like this.”
“Maybe he left with the soldiers,” Coffin said.
“Charlie's his own man,” Roper said. “He'd have told us if he planned on doing that.”
“Do we search for him, or go on?” Coffin said.
“This is wild country,” Flintlock said. “He could be anywhere.”
Roper vented his frustration. “Damned Chinaman,” he said. “I could never tell what he was thinking.”
“I say we go on and find the golden bell,” Coffin said. “He will catch up if that's what he wishes.”
“Sam'l, what do you think?” Roper said.
“I agree with Coffin.”
“Hey, I just remembered that Charlie has the map,” Roper said.
“Then he wants the bell for himself, maybe so,” Coffin said.
“No matter.” Roper tapped the side of his head. “I got the map here.”
“Then we go on?” Coffin said.
“Yeah, we go on,” Roper said. He looked at Flintlock. “Sammy, since you're so all-fired determined to take the madwoman with us, I'll carry the grub sack, make more room for you.”
“True-blue of you, Abe,” Flintlock said, smiling.
But Roper wasn't listening. He stared off into distance.
“Where the hell is that damned Chinaman?” he said.
 
 
“You're coming with us,” Flintlock said to the girl.
She smiled at him, but made no response, her eyes vague.
“You look real pretty this morning,” Flintlock said.
The girl remained silent.
“Hell, I've got to call you something,” Flintlock said. “Can you tell me your name?”
After a few moments of quiet, he said, “All right, then I'll call you Ayasha. It's a Cheyenne name and it means ‘Little One.'” Flintlock smiled and said, “Because that's what you are, Ayasha, just a little one. Do you like that?”
The girl stared at Flintlock for a long time, then she reached out and touched his throat. “Bird,” she said.
“Yeah, it's a bird,” Flintlock said. “Ayasha, we'll have you talking again real soon, huh?
Bird
is a real good start.”
Roper stepped into the post. “Sam'l, we got to ride,” he said. “Save your pretties for later.”
“Soon as I find a slicker for Ayasha, we'll go.”
“Who the hell is Ayasha?” Roper said. “You haven't found another crazy female?”
Flintlock grinned and put his hand on the girl's shoulder. “No, she's Ayasha. In Cheyenne it means ‘Little One.'”
“Oh yeah? Well you tell Ayasha she ain't getting a cut of the golden bell. Not even a little one.”
“You're all heart, Abe,” Flintlock said.
“I know. I've always been too softhearted for me own good. It'll be my downfall one day.”

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