The Savage Curse (14 page)

“I see it,” Gale said. “Looks like riders, maybe, comin' our way. See those dark specks every now and then? Inside the dust cloud.”

“I see somethin',” Ben said. “Can't make it out.”

“Could be Injuns,” she said. “They don't seem to be ridin' real fast if they are.”

Whatever was kicking up the dust was too far away for Ben to tell what it was. He felt a trickle of sweat course down his temple and his gut tightened. The wind was blowing their way, and so was the dust.

“Don't you have a spyglass?” Gale asked. “My heart's squeezed so tight I can hardly breathe wondering who in tar-nation is kicking up all that dust.”

“Yeah, John has a pair of field glasses in his saddlebags. Wonder why I didn't think of it.”

“I'll get 'em,” Gale said and leaned her rifle against the pilings. She dragged one set of saddlebags toward her. They were heavy. She opened one and began rummaging through it with both hands. “Not in this one,” she said. She dipped her hands into the other one, her fingers probing for a large object that could be a pair of binoculars in a leather case.

Ben shaded his eyes and peered intently at the cloud of dust. He could just make out the legs, chest, and head of a horse in the forefront of the dust, but could not make out the rider.

“Ah, here they are,” Gale said, pulling the case out of John's saddlebag. She took out the binoculars and put them to her eyes. She adjusted the focus.

“I can just make out part of a horse,” she said to Ben.

“Give 'em here,” he said. “Let me take a gander.”

Gale scooted over close to Ben and handed him the binoculars. She leaned back and got her rifle, but stayed close to him as if she did not want to return to her former position.

Ben refocused the field glasses and gazed down in the sunlit valley. The glasses magnified his view by a factor of twenty and he could make out the lead horse. The rider was still obscured by the blowing dust, but the horse looked to be a fine mount.

“That ain't no Injun pony up front,” he said.

“The Navajos ride everything from burros to saddle horses,” Gale said.

“It's a tall horse, I think, maybe sixteen hands high. Can't make out the rider.”

Just then, they both heard a quail call. It was very loud and close at hand. The sound seemed to be coming from over the rim of the mesa.

The sound startled Ben and he lowered the binoculars.

The call persisted.

“That ain't no quail,” Gale said.

“Sounds like one. What is it?”

“Navajos imitate 'em. It's some kind of signal, I reckon, from down below the mesa.”

Ben felt the skin tighten on the back of his neck. He peered over at the laboratory, all along the edge of the mesa, then on both sides.

“Somethin's up, maybe,” he said. “But I don't see nothin'.”

Gale scanned the same area, her finger curled around the trigger of her rifle.

The calling stopped, and they could both hear the wind crooning in the valley. It sounded like a faraway river or some creature keening just beyond their view.

He looked up at the sky. The little clouds were even closer, but behind them huge altocumulus clouds were forming, giant billowing thunderheads as white as snow.

“Hear that wind?” he said. “And see them clouds yonder?”

“Yes,” she said. “There'll be a storm likely. We get 'em here. That wind. It means we'll get a cloudburst come evenin'.”

“Well, we got the cave and that lab if John takes it over. We can stay dry.”

Gale didn't say anything. She was looking at the dust cloud again.

“Take another look at what's down there,” she said. “Looks to be a passel of riders.”

Ben put the binoculars back up to his eyes. The riders were still miles away, but he could now see the lead rider better. His throat lumped up as he saw the column behind him. And he thought he saw something fluttering above them, like a kerchief or some kind of flapping bird.

The lead rider was dressed in blue. But he saw a yellow stripe down his leg. Behind him, the next rider held a staff and the flying thing was flapping over his head.

“Them riders might be soldiers,” he said. “I think I see a guidon. And they're ridin' two by two. Injuns don't ride that way, do they?”

“No,” she said. “Let me take a look.”

Ben handed Gale the field glasses.

“I believe those are soldiers,” she said. “Yes, I can see their uniforms. United States Cavalry, Ben. And they're probably tracking those Navajo jaybirds hunkered down below this mesa.”

“You sure?” he said.

“Pretty sure. Still a lot of dust a-blowin', but they're riding in formation and they got them yellow-striped pants. Might have come from Tucson out of Fort Apache.”

“Let's hope they're chasin' them Navajos we got camped on our doorstep.”

“Well, if John ever sends smoke up that chimney, they might see it and come ridin' this way. That'll sure drive off them Injuns.”

But there was no sign of smoke from the lab's chimney and the quail calling had begun again, loud and piercing, from two or more Navajo throats.

“Damn,” Ben said. “Maybe I better go down there and see what's happened to Johnny. It's been too long.”

He started to rise and Gale put a hand on his arm.

“You stay right here, Ben,” she said. “I don't want to be left here all by my lonesome.”

“But John ...”

“John Savage looks like a man who can take care of himself. If the Navajos had killed him, they'd be all over us like a nest of hornets.”

Ben sank back down.

The piping calls stopped and there was a silence once again.

“I wonder what it means,” Ben muttered.

“What?”

“All that callin'.”

“Probably a warning,” she said.

“Warning who?”

Gale didn't answer. She didn't like it. The Navajos were talking to one another about something. And whatever it was, it wasn't good for them or for John Savage.

She tensed up, drew a breath, and held it. She felt as if something was going to happen at any minute.

Something terrible.

She thought of John and wondered why he hadn't gotten inside the lab. Was he dead? He might be lying on the other side of the building, his throat cut, his head scalped down to raw meat. She shuddered at the thought.

The clouds were rolling in and the wind was picking up. It blew at her hat and hair and whistled in the rocks on the mountainside and the pile of tailings.

She bit her lip and tightened her grip on the stock of her rifle.

She was trying her best not to scream.

18

JOHN'S HEART SEEMED TO STOP IN HIS CHEST. IT WAS ONLY HIS breathing that had stopped, but he felt as if time had ceased to be in that instant of decision. He looked down at the pistol in his hand, wondering if it carried a curse. He was so close to killing a man. All it would take would be a tick of his trigger finger and the Navajo would be rubbed off the page of life forever.

The pistol weighed heavy in his hand. The grip burned through his palm as if it was on fire. His trigger finger stiffened and froze as if paralyzed. He looked at the face of the Navajo. The Indian's eyes were closed, his mouth partially opened, the fierceness in his visage vanished. He was a young man, no more than fifteen or sixteen, John figured. Nearly his own age. Could he kill such a man so easily? Could he shorten a life with a simple pull of the trigger? He could, but something in him rebelled against his own ferocious instinct.

The two had fought, each trying to kill the other in the heat of combat. But now, there was a winner and a loser. Was chivalry a thing of the distant past, forgotten in a modern age where the pistol replaced the sword and the lance? Did a man lose all compassion when his blood ran hot? Did the power to kill mean a man had to kill?

His father's words came back to him in those fateful seconds.

“When you take a man's life, son,”
Dan Savage had said to him one day when they were hunting deer high in the Rockies,
“you'd better have a damned good reason. And if you kill a man for no good reason, you kill part of your own soul. You don't just kill the man, you kill yourself. You kill what made you a man in the first place.”

He had killed men, that was true. But he had had good reason. Those men had done him harm, had murdered his family. What had this Navajo done? He had fought, and fought bravely. He had tried to kill a white man, his natural enemy, but he hadn't succeeded. Did that justify killing him? Maybe. At that moment, John did not know. He stood on the edge of a high cliff, the wind blowing at his back. If he fired his pistol, the wind would blow him off and he would plunge a thousand feet into an abyss. He would live with that Navajo's sleeping face in his thoughts and dreams for the rest of his life.

His father's message was written on the barrel of the pistol in his hand. Written in Spanish. But he knew its meaning and his father's words came back to him now, in English.
Neither draw me without reason, nor keep me without honor.

John eased the hammer back down to half cock and stepped away from the unconscious Navajo. He looked around the room for a piece of rope. There were plenty of ropes here and there. He found a piece of manila rope that was the right length. He holstered his pistol and picked up the rope, carrying it to the fallen man. He knelt down, turned the man over, and tied his wrists together behind his back. He picked up the man's knife and stuck it in his belt. It was a large imitation of a bowie knife, with sharp edges on both sides of the blade, a brass guard, and an antler handle that was worn down to the outlines of the ridges.

He dragged the man to the wall and propped him up in a sitting position near the stove. There was a welt on the man's temple and it was swelling to the size of a darning egg. Satisfied, John put sticks of kindling in the stove, stacked them in the shape of a pyramid. He found wood chips and scattered those beneath the sticks of wood. He struck a match, held the flame to a pair of chips until they caught fire. He dropped the match onto the other chips and gently fanned the flame until it spread. As soon as the kindling caught, he closed the door and made sure the damper was open.

“You, white man. Why you tie me?”

“You speak English,” John said.

“I speak.”

“Are you Red Hand?”

The man shook his head.

“I am called Coyote.”

“My name is John. John Savage.”

“You do not kill me.”

“No. I have no reason.”

“I kill you, John Savage.”

“You didn't.”

Coyote smiled.

“You tie me,” he said. “You kill now?”

“Not if you tell me why you tried to kill me.”

“Red Hand say kill.”

“Why?”

“White man bad.”

“We mean you no harm, Coyote.”

“You shoot. You want kill boy.”

“You know why we shot at that boy. He was trying to kill us.”

Coyote smiled again. He nodded. “That is true,” he said.

He struggled with his bonds and John shook a finger at him.

“Don't try to get away, Coyote. Or I will shoot you.”

“Coyote no run.”

“How many Navajos are with you? Tell me the truth now.”

“Three.”

“Just three?”

“Red Hand come when sun go to sleep. He say take the horses of the white man.”

“So there's just you, that boy, and one other. Is that right?”

“Three only. We wait for Red Hand.”

“Where is Red Hand?”

“He go. Not know where.”

John was relieved to know that they were not outnumbered. But there were still two Navajos outside. He wondered why they hadn't come after Coyote. Maybe they were ordered to stay put. A boy and probably another man. Now he had a prisoner and didn't know what to do with him. Coyote spoke only a little English. Perhaps he could find out more if he spoke Spanish. But his Spanish was not perfect. There were a lot of words he didn't know. Still, he might be able to find out how many men were with Red Hand. If he was returning at sunset, they'd have to get away or risk a bloody fight with the Navajos.

John tended to the fire. He made sure it was smoky, and added more kindling. He closed the damper for a few seconds on the chimney, then opened it. Gale and Ben ought to be able to see more than one puff of smoke.

“Will the two men outside come after you, Coyote?” John closed the door to the stove and walked over to his prisoner.

“They will wait for Mano Rojo.”

“You cannot stay in the mine anymore.”

“No?”

“No. I am trying to catch a bad white man and I need the mine. Will you and Mano Rojo go away and leave us alone?”

“You tell Mano Rojo.”

“Will he listen?”

“He will listen.”

“Will you tell him if I let you go?”

“I will tell him.”

John didn't know if he could trust Coyote. He would be taking a big chance if he let his prisoner go. Now he held the advantage.

“How many men with Red Hand?” John asked.

“Two more.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. No more. We are few. We are hungry. We live like the rabbit. We hide. We look for food. We hide.”

John was getting a picture of the life these runaway Navajos were leading. They were refugees from some Indian reservation, wanting to live free but having no means. And they were probably being hunted by the U.S. Army. Or, worse, by a posse of civilians who would probably shoot the Navajos on sight.