the Lonely Men (1969) (9 page)

"Mister, I was scared you wouldn't make it."

Reaching down, I caught his hand and swung him up to the saddle.

"They know you're gone?" I asked. "I think so ... by now. Somebody came in and said he'd heard shootin', but the old bucks wouldn't believe him. No chance in this rain, they said, not in these mountains. I figured it was you, so first chance I had, I cut and run."

We started up the trail. Up there on the ridge I could see the muddy tracks of the other horses, and I swung into the trail after them, but then pulled up sharp. Their trail was almost wiped out by the track of other horses, unshod horses.

"Apaches," I said. "Is there another trail?"

"Down there." The boy pointed toward the canyon. "The Old Ones' trail. An Apache boy showed it to me. It goes out across Sonora to the big water." Harry looked up at me, his face glistening with rain. "Anyway, that's what he said."

The black was fidgeting. He liked the situation no more than I did, so I pointed his nose where the boy said. He shied at the trail, then took it gingerly.

It was no kind of a place to ride even in good weather, let alone in a rain like this. Thunder crashed, and there was a vivid streak of lightning that lit up everything around. The trail was only a glistening thread along the face of a cliff.

But the black was game. He went as if stepping on eggs, but he went, and I held my breath for the three of us. Far down below my right stirrup I could see the tops of pine trees, maybe five hundred feet down there. We edged along, taking one careful step at a time, until we were almost at the bottom, when the trail widened out.

It took no time at all to see that this was no traveled trail. Rocks had fallen into it ages back, trees had grown up right in the middle, and we had to skirt around them. Me, I kept looking back. Sure as shootin' we were going to get ourselves trapped. Still, all a body could do was push on, so we pushed.

Night was a-coming, and with all those clouds and rain it was going to come soon, but there was no place to stop.

We had come down about a thousand feet, and were moving along a watercourse that wound through poplars and maples, gigantic agaves and clumps of maidenhair fern.

Everything was wet.

Suddenly, off to our left, I saw one of those ruins -- an ancient wall, half broken by a huge maple that had grown through it. There was a stream running that way, and it was only niches deep. Turning the black, I walked him along the stream until we could turn behind the wall where the maple grew.

There was a sort of clearing there, sheltered on one side by the wall, and falling away on the other toward a bigger stream, trees were all around. The maple had huge limbs that stretched out over the wall and made a shelter. I swung down under it and lifted the boy to the ground. "Stay up close to the tree," I said, "until I can rig something for us."

Now, a body doesn't spend his years wandering around the country without learning how to make do. I'd made wet camp a good many times before this, and I had been keeping my eyes open for a likely spot, one that had what we'd need.

First off, I saw how the ground slanted away toward the big creek, and I figured that wall offered fair protection. The maple was alive, but in some storm the wind had broken off a big limb, with a lot of branches on it, and it lay there on the ground. Maple burns mighty well, and makes a hot fire.

That big tree would give some shelter, and the wall would make a reflector for my fire. One branch of the tree extended across a corner of the wall, and I ducked under it and rolled away a couple of fallen stones that lay there. The big fallen limb and its branches offered partial cover for the comer, so I cut some pine branches and wove them in among the branches of the maple until I had a fair shelter.

Tying the black horse under the maple, but on a rope long enough so he could graze, I carried the saddle and gear to the shelter. The boy was already seated in the corner.

From under a couple of fallen trees I peeled some dry bark, gathered twigs from the fallen maple limb, and in a few minutes I had a fire going. It looked good, and felt better.

I had built the fire close against the wall so the heat would be reflected, and there we huddled in reasonable comfort. The wall, the sheltering trees, and our improvised shelter kept off most of the rain. After a few minutes, the boy fell asleep.

I checked my guns, made sure my rifle was fully loaded, and trusting to the black to warn me, I huddled against the wall on the opposite side of the fire from the boy, and slept too.

Chapter
8

The night wind moaned in the passes, and the small fire sputtered. The fuel burned down to coals, and the coals were a dull red except when touched briefly by the wind. The rain had come to an end, but big drops fell now and again from the leaves of the maple.

From time to time I opened my eyes, looked around, land slept again. It was always so with me ... I can remember few nights when I slept the hours through without awakening, usually to lie awake listening for a while, sometimes to get up and prowl restlessly.

The black horse, now that the rain had stopped, moved away from the tree to crop the thick grass. Up on the ridges the grass had been sparse and had little nourishment, but the grass that grew around the fallen stones was rich and green.

You know how it is when you hear something a long time before you are really aware of it? It was like that now with riders coming down the trail. Most likely I didn't hear much ... maybe only a whisper of sound ... maybe some hidden sense felt the difference in the night, for they came like ghosts in the darkness, or like wolves, soft-footed and sure of their prey.

They must have been puzzled, and worried too, for I'd come down the trail of the Old Ones, where no one ever rode.

It was a spirit trail, and they would not have liked it, especially in the night. Their horses would be mountain-bred and sure-footed, and more than likely they had known this valley of the ruins when they ran wild, for there was grass here, good grass and water.

These riders must have been slow in getting away from their rancheria, coming after my tracks had crossed the trail of the Apaches that pursued my compadres.

Seeing the tracks of my lone horse, they had followed, sure of a kill.

My small fire gave off so little smoke as to remain undetected, and its slight red glow would be hidden by the tree and the wall. Yet they found me. I suppose they heard my horse cropping grass.

All was still in my camp. A drop fell hissing into the coals, and my horse stopped cropping grass and lifted his head, blowing softly through his nostrils.

I came clean awake.

An instant I lay there, listening, and then I rolled over and left the blanket in a long smooth dive into the darkness, and heard the whip of an arrow as I went. When I looked back, I saw that the arrow had gone through my blanket into the ground.

They came in fast, and my butt stroke missed the head of the nearest attacker, and hit his shoulder, staggering him. Then my rifle was knocked from my hands.

Now, back yonder in the mountains where I hail from, the boys and men do a sight of knuckle and skull thumping. The girls go to the dances for the dancing and the boys, and the boys go for the fighting and the girls.

Me being such a tall kind of homely boy, I had more time for fighting. Then in the Army, and on the river boats, and all -- well, I'd done my share. So when I lost my rifle it just sort of freed me for fighting.

A body lunged against mine and I butted at the face, used my knee in his crotch, lifting him clean off the ground, so as I could lay hands on him. I fairly picked him up and threw him, and then I took a roundhouse swing at something coming at me. I saw a knife flash, and my fist landed and I felt bone crunch.

It was bang with both hands, swing, grab, but Apaches were fair hands at wrestling, but they had no experience at fist-fighting, and that was what I was doing. One short, powerful Apache grabbed me by the arm and the waist to throw me, but I brought my boot heel down on his instep and he let go and I could swing my elbow against his ear.

It was kind of lively there for a few minutes. There was three of them, but I was bigger and stronger. One of them jumped on my back with his forearm across my throat, but I grabbed his hand and elbow and flung him over my shoulder and smack down across the stone wall. He hit hard, and I heard him scream. And just then there was a shot.

Coming from outside of camp, it caught us unawares, but I saw an Apache fall and then the others ghosted into the night, one of them dragging the one I'd thrown across the wall. Then they disappeared like drops of water into a pool. They were there, and they were gone.

The one who had been shot was lying there near the fire, and Harry, his skins clutched around him, was sitting up, huddled and scared, in the corner of the wall.

And then a low voice said, "Hello, the camp!"

I said, "Come in, if you're of a mind to," and the next thing there walks into camp the cutest button of a girl you ever laid eyes on.

She was scarcely more than five feet tall and wore a buckskin hunting shirt that looked better than any such shirt I'd ever seen before. She was quick and pert, and she was leading her pony, but the Winchester in her hands wasn't for fun -- that Apache would have realized it had he lived past her bullet.

She held out her hand. "I am Dorset Binny," she said, "and I hope you will forgive me for not looking as much like a lady as I should."

"Ma'am," I assured her, honestly enough, "when you come up like that and shoot that straight, I couldn't care how you're dressed."

And I added, "I am William Tell Sackett, and the boy yonder is Harry Brook, recently taken back from the Apaches."

We had both moved back into the shadows, and with that much said we took to listening. It was my idea those Apaches had them a bellyful, but they weren't alone, and this was no place to dally.

"Some other children got away, didn't they?"

"Yes -- a couple of boys and a small girl."

"The girl was my sister. That is why I am here." Well, she was talking to a shadow, for I was already saddling up. Right then, what I wanted between me and those Apaches was distance, for within a matter of hours this mountain would be alive with them, like a kicked anthill with ants.

She came along with me and the boy, and for an hour we followed the old trail north, then we turned west, taking a trail on which I found no tracks. Once in a while through the parted clouds I could see the sky, and sometimes a star was right above us. Black walls crowded closer, and we were skirting some almighty big boulders. Me, I kept thinking what a nasty place we were in, with the weather what it was. A body didn't need to look at the walls for a high-water mark. You just knew that the water must run through here thirty feet deep for an hour or two after a heavy storm. But the water had already passed on ... and I wished for no more rain now.

The folks that had made this trail had no horses, it was a moccasin trail. After a while we had to get down and lead, for there was just no riding, but I let Harry stay on the black.

What I wanted most just now was to get out of these mountains and head off across the flatland, and maybe get to a ranch. But I had a time keeping my thoughts on my business with that girl along.

She was only a bit of a thing, but she must be packing a lot of nerve to come into this country after her sister. There was no chance to talk, for we were going single file, and I wasn't stopping. This was a strange trail, and we'd no idea where it might lead. Mayhap right into a bunch of Apaches -- in which case some brave might have my scalp in his wickiup, if he bothered to take it. The Apaches were very strong on scalping.

At the top of a long slope we paused for a breather, and I looked around at Dorset. She was right behind me, leading her pony, and taking two steps to my one. Harry Brook, up there on the horse, had not said a word.

We stood there for a mite, and she said, "The sky's turning."

There was gray in it, all right, and day would come quickly now. We stood quiet then, saying nothing nor needing to, but there was communication in the night, we felt each other, felt the darkness and the danger around us, and felt the cool dampness of the canyon ,after the rain. We could smell the pines ... and we smelled something else.

We smelled smoke.

It was enough to curl your hair. In this layout we couldn't expect friends. My partners had lit out to the north, I was sure, and if there was anybody here it had to be Apaches. And that smoke was right ahead of us.

We daren't go back, and we couldn't climb out. Me, I slipped the Winchester out of its scabbard, and so did she.

"Well go ahead quiet," I whispered, "and if we can get by 'em, we will.

Otherwise, we got to mount up and run for it. You and the boy get on the same horse, and if trouble shows, run."

"What about you?"

Me, I smiled. "Lady, you're not looking at no hero. I'll get off a few shots and I'll be dusting the trail right behind you, so don't slow up or I'll run right up your shirt tail."

We started on. Dawn was streaking the sky when we saw the canyon was starting to widen out. Then I saw moccasin tracks, some shreds of bark, and a few sticks -- somebody collecting firewood. And then we heard yelling ahead of us, and I knew that kind of yelling.