Warrior Born (A White Apache Western Book 3) Read online

  “Hush,” Clay whispered. “No one is fixing to hurt you.” Hearing English, he deduced, would calm them down since English was the language they were accustomed to. “I’m a friend.”

  The trouble was, while Clay sounded white, he looked and smelled like an Apache and the two horses accepted the evidence of their eyes over their ears. The black moved flush with the rails and nickered. The sorrel stayed where it was but stamped a front hoof.

  “All I want is to ride you,” Clay said simply for something to say. Edging forward, he glanced at the house, then froze.

  Vasquez had stopped and turned around.

  ~*~

  Miles away, Delgadito followed Cuchillo Negro deeper into the night. His features were calm to the point of being impassive, yet inwardly, he was in turmoil. Amarillo, his friend, had died. Amarillo, one of the few who had been loyal to him from the beginning, who had sided with him against Palacio and the weaklings who licked the boots of the white invaders.

  Delgadito had few friends. The loss of any one of them was a grievous loss, especially now with his band slaughtered and his leadership in question. Soon word would reach the reservation Apaches and the young warriors would say among themselves, “Delgadito is bad medicine. Only a fool would ride with him.”

  The sole solace Delgadito could take was in the knowledge Lickoyee-shis-inday had led this raid, not him. The blame fell squarely on White Apache’s shoulders. Now, the others would see that Taggart was not fit to be leader. They would turn to Delgadito for guidance, as they always had. Amarillo’s loss would not be in vain.

  The clearing where the horses had been left appeared. Delgadito crossed to his animal, swung up, and lifted the reins.

  “Wait,” Cuchillo Negro said. “Where is White Apache?”

  Fiero, the last to show, looked back. “I thought he was behind me all this time.”

  “Remember the shots we heard?” Ponce mentioned. “Maybe the white-eyes killed him too.”

  “I will go look for him,” Fiero announced.

  “No,” Delgadito said curtly, forgetting himself. “White Apache, if still alive, is on his own. He knew how it would be.” The Gans had been kind. At last, Delgadito was rid of the white nuisance, and he wanted to leave it that way.

  “Since when do the Shis-Inday desert their own?” Fiero challenged. “You are the one who has done more than any other to make him one of us, yet now you will not lift a finger when he might be lying out there wounded?”

  A twinge of temper made Delgadito say, “We lost Amarillo because of him. Let him share Amarillo’s fate if that is the will of Yusn.”

  “You do as you want,” Fiero said. “I do as I want. I am going.” A single step was all he took, though, when an unusual sight riveted him in place.

  Off through the mesquite faint lights could be seen, bobbing and flitting like so many golden insects.

  “The white-eyes have found us,” Ponce declared.

  “No,” Cuchillo Negro said. “See how they move in many different directions? They still hunt us, but they have no idea where we are. We must leave quickly, or they will.”

  Nothing could have pleased Delgadito more. Circumstance had conspired to accomplish what all his scheming could not. “We should hide until morning and then try to find White Apache.”

  “And do not forget Amarillo,” Cuchillo Negro said. “We must recover his body, if we can, in order to lay him to rest as he should be.”

  All of them shared the sentiment. Proper burial was a grave matter. It was the Apache custom most shrouded in secrecy, the one outsiders were never allowed to see, the one Apaches never spoke of to anyone other than Apaches.

  “Let us go,” Cuchillo Negro coaxed, jabbing his heels into the flanks of his steed.

  The band trotted eastward, the reluctant Fiero bringing up the rear. No one else saw the scowl of disapproval he wore at being compelled to flee from craven whites.

  Nor did anyone notice the rare grin on Delgadito. Exultant that at last he was rid of the White Apache and able to regain the trust of his fellow warriors, he yearned to whoop for joy. But that was not the Apache way, so he rode on silently, thinking, in his own tongue, the Apache equivalent of “Good riddance!”

  ~*~

  At that precise moment, the man Delgadito wanted to see rubbed out was crouched inside Harve Denton’s corral, a hand resting on a Colt, primed to unlimber his hardware in a blaze of lead, if he was discovered. And that was a very real possibility since Surgio Vasquez was retracing his steps and staring intently at the horses.

  Clay locked his gaze on them too. Should one of the animals act up again Vasquez would be even more suspicious and might just shout an alarm. Clay touched his thumb to the hammer of his six-shooter and waited like a sidewinder coiled to strike.

  Vasquez was indeed suspicious. He’d heard a horse nicker, as if in fright, but now both were simply standing there, looking off into the darkness. Stopping, he scanned the pasture flanking the stable but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Since he had been around horses from the age of six, he well knew their skittish dispositions. A playful rabbit or the hoot of an owl might have spooked the pair in the corral. With a shrug, he turned and strolled on to the house.

  The second the front door closed behind the Mexican, the White Apache padded to the sorrel, rubbed its neck a few times, and slid onto its warm back. Thankfully, the horse showed no fright. Clay prodded it over to the gate, worked the bar by bending far down, and gave a shove. Before him was the yard and the house, which he skirted by riding to the left.

  Just then voices sounded, and Roarke and the other cowhand came out of the stable, recoiling in shock on spying the presumed Indian in the act of stealing one of their employer’s animals.

  “What the hell!” Roarke roared.

  “It’s one of them!” squealed his partner.

  Both men dug for their blue lightnings.

  Clay Taggart had twisted sharply at the first syllable. As they drew, so did he, and they were the ones who suffered from a bad case of slow. Clay sent a slug ripping into the squealer, a gut shot that doubled the puncher over.

  Roarke was bringing his pistol up when Clay shot twice. The bullets caught Roarke in the throat and spun him around. Sputtering crimson, he staggered, gunplay forgotten in the face of his mortal wound.

  At the house, shouts rent the air. Clay brought the sorrel to a gallop, fleeing around the same hedge he had hidden behind earlier. Almost immediately, he discovered that something was wrong. The sorrel moved with an awkward, broken gait. Bending low again, he saw the right foreleg was the cause, and he mentally cursed his stupidity. He should have realized the horse had been left behind for a reason. It was going lame.

  Clay had no choice but to flag the animal onward. He had to get out of there before Vasquez organized pursuit. Passing several trees, he bore southward, acting on the assumption that Vasquez would count on him heading northeast, to the mouth of the valley.

  Within a quarter mile, the sorrel limped so badly Clay had to rein up. Dismounting, he felt the leg carefully, then set it down in disgust.

  “Some days nothing goes right,” he complained. Giving the horse a pat, he hiked on, listening for the telltale drum of hooves. Nor was he disappointed. In the distance, riders were galloping to the northeast, just as he had figured they would. He chuckled at how easily he had outwitted them.

  A new element was abruptly added. The sorrel let out a series of strident whinnies, one right after the other, without letup.

  Clay froze, dreading the result. He could still see the sorrel and would have shot it if he could do so without any risk of the shot being heard. As near as he could determine the riders had not heard the sorrel—yet. Gripping his rifle securely, he sprinted across the field, his destination distant black humps, in reality a line of rolling hills.

  Presently, Clay realized the night had fallen quiet except for the sorrel. “Damn critter!” he snapped. Bearing credence to his anger, the sound of the riders resumed
, but they had changed direction and were coming toward the sorrel. Toward him.

  Clay flowed over the ground as would a bounding panther, his dark hair flying in the wind, his moccasins making as little noise as would a field mouse. A harried glance revealed one of the riders had lit a lantern. But that was all right. He’d left few tracks, not enough for a man to read. A typical cowboy, anyway. Surgio Vasquez was a whole other story.

  Had Clay been next to the Mexican, he would have seen his anxiety justified. Vasquez was the one with the lantern, on the ground near the sorrel, kneeling to better see the faint impressions left by the Indian they were after. Apaches were noted for being light on their feet and rarely leaving tracks, but this one, Vasquez saw, had been careless. He found a partial print, then the entire outline of the left sole on a patch of bare earth. A low hiss issued through his parted teeth.

  “What is it?” asked one of the five punchers with him.

  “Not what. Who,” Vasquez said. “It’s him.”

  “Who?”

  “Blanco Apache.”

  “Blanco?”

  “White, Griffen. It is the White Apache himself,” Vasquez clarified, taking his reins in hand. “He is smart, this one. He doubled back to lose Senor Denton and the rest. And he would have gotten away, if not for Roarke and Charley.”

  Griffen stroked his scruffy beard. “You don’t say. There’s a heap of money on this turncoat’s head. I’m all for going after him.”

  “Me, too,” said another. “One of us might be lucky enough to drop him.”

  “What I couldn’t do with a thousand dollars!” declared a third.

  Vasquez regarded them with concealed contempt. Americanos had more courage than brains, and where money was involved, more greed than common sense. “That works both ways,” he commented.

  “What does?” Griffen asked.

  “At the same time we are hunting him, he might take it into his head to hunt us.” Vasquez paused. “Do you want to be riding around in the dark when you might find yourself right in his gun sights?”

  Griffen was an older hand, a puncher who had worked for Harve Denton since the founding of the Box D. Like most cowpokes his age, he had a little money salted away for a rainy day, and like most, he dreamed of having more, his hope pinned to one day winning big at one of the weekly five-card stud games in town and having enough to tide him through his later years without having to fret where the next meal would come from. So, in reply to the tracker, he said, “For that much money I’d trail the Devil into Hell.”

  Vasquez gestured southward. “Be my guest. He’s heading for the Rosita Hills and should reach them by dawn.”

  “You aren’t coming?” inquired a beefy man in a surly manner.

  “I like living, Terrill,” Vasquez said, hooking a boot in a stirrup. Swinging into the saddle, he grinned and said, “Adios, amigos. Good hunting.”

  “Now hold on,” Griffen said. “Didn’t your boss, Gillett, send you to lend Harve a hand?”

  “Si,” Vasquez admitted.

  “Gillett wants this White Apache bad, I hear,” Griffen said.

  “He does. So?”

  “So why is it you’ve done next to nothing since you got here? You wouldn’t go with Harve and them because you claimed they were wasting their time, and now you won’t go with us because you’re scared you might be shot. It seems to me that your boss is going to be mighty mad when he hears how his great tracker has a yel—” Griffen choked off his final words and blanched, for Surgio Vasquez’s hand had swooped close to the fancy notched pistol low on his hip.

  “Have a care, amigo. You were about to say something that would have gotten you killed.”

  Griffen had heard of Vasquez’s skill, rumored to be second only to Billy Santee’s. Griffen was a fair hand with a six-gun, himself, but nowhere near as talented as those two. “I didn’t mean no insult,” he said amiably. “I was just trying to make the point that if you don’t tag along, your boss might be a mite upset with you.”

  Vasquez slowly lowered his arm though his blood boiled. He was slow to anger except when his courage was called into question, and the notches on his six-shooter were ample evidence of the consequences when people thought him less of a man than he was,

  The tracker did not want to go with the hands. They were being stupid, and stupidity cost lives. Yet he had to concede that the hairy Griffen had a point. His employer might not agree with his reasoning; he might hold it against him. And of late, Miles Gillett had dealt harshly with anyone who failed to do his job.

  “Ahhh, we don’t need Vasquez,” Terrill was informing the others. “There’s five of us, ain’t there? We can handle this Taggart feller by ourselves.”

  Griffen nodded. “I’m game. How about the rest of you? Lane, Edwards, Hanks? Are you with us, or not?”

  “To the finish,” said Hanks, a cowboy bearing a nasty scar on his left cheek courtesy of a Comanche lance. “I’m not fond of Injuns nohow.”

  “Like a steer, I can try,” Edwards said.

  Lane simply nodded.

  “Then let’s punch the breeze and get this over with,” Griffen stated. He glanced at the Mexican. “Do us a favor and tell Mr. Denton, when you see him, that we’ll be back with the White Apache’s hair, or we won’t be back at all.”

  “He will have to find out some other way,” Vasquez said, blowing out the lantern and giving it to Edwards. “I’m going with you.” He did not like the way Griffen grinned at him, but he held his peace as the five cowhands took up the chase and lashed his own mount into following. He had no interest in leading. Experience had taught him that Apaches picked off those in the front of an enemy party first, thinking that the leaders would be at the front, and once they were disposed of, the rest would become too confused to fight effectively. Typical Apache brilliance.

  Vasquez tugged his sombrero down low, then loosened his pistol in its holster. He could feel the boot knife he carried rubbing against his right ankle. And in his saddle scabbard was a .56-caliber Spencer, a new seven-shot model, as accurate as any Winchester ever made. Armed to the teeth as he was, he somehow suspected it still wouldn’t be enough. Bullets were no match for savvy, and the craftiness of Apaches was legendary. He could only hope this White Apache hadn’t gone completely Indian, or he might never see Mexico again.

  ~*~

  Meanwhile Clay Taggart ran on across the benighted Arizona landscape. He was in full stride, running as Delgadito had taught him, breathing in deeply and exhaling smoothly through his nose, not his mouth. He had seen the lantern snuffed out, and although he had too wide a lead to hear any pursuing horses, he guessed the punchers were after him and refused to slacken his pace.

  The hills had grown from black mounds to resemble a miniature mountain range. Clay figured he had half a mile to go, and he would be able to lose himself in the uninhabited region bordering the valley. The only hurdle he must overcome was outrunning the cowpokes. And Vasquez. He must never forget about Vasquez, who could track like an Apache and knew Apache ways. Vasquez mattered the most. Outthink him, Clay mused, and he would come out on top. Fail, and he’d be sprouting daises come Spring.

  The throaty snarl of a cougar wafted from the hills. There had been a time when Clay would have given one of the big cats a wide berth, but that was before his confidence in his own ability had grown under Delgadito’s tutelage. He no longer feared the wilderness, as he once had. Not when he could live off the land anywhere, at any time. Not when his senses were so much sharper than they had been, and the odds of his being caught unawares, by man or beast, were so slim.

  The rumble of hooves intruded on Clay’s reverie. He looked back but, as yet, could not see them. The nearest hill reared five hundred yards off; so close, yet so far. Could he do it?

  Exerting himself to his limits, Clay flew. His own speed amazed him. The grueling months of constant hardship he had spent with the Apaches had worked wonders on his sinews and stamina. He felt as if he could run for another hour or two
without any trouble whatsoever.

  Horses were faster, though. Clay looked once more and spotted vague forms at the limits of his vision. They were forty or fifty yards east of him and would miss him, unless they fanned out.

  Suddenly the unforeseen occurred. The earth seemed to give way under Clay, and he trod on air while falling like a rock. Too late he realized he had blundered onto an arroyo. His waving arms clipped a bush. His body smashed into another bush, tumbling him end over end down a steep slope littered with dry bush. His descent was halted by a boulder.

  Excruciating pain lanced through Clay like a red-hot knife. He sprawled facedown, glad he had not split open his fool head. Luck had been with him.

  Or had it?

  Vasquez and the cowboys out for his blood were racing along the rim of the arroyo toward him.

  Chapter Ten

  The White Apache struggled to his knees beside the boulder at the base of the slope and unslung his rifle. He remembered the lessons Delgadito had imparted, remembered that the key to Apache stealth was an uncanny ability to blend into the background so perfectly they appeared part of the terrain itself. Accordingly, lying on his side, he molded himself to the shape of the boulder, hugging the rough surface with the Winchester pinned in front of him.

  In moments the riders arrived, traveling past the point where Clay had fallen and drawing rein a dozen feet off.

  “You must of been hearing things, Terrill,” someone said after a bit.

  “There was a noise, I tell you,” argued the man with keen ears.

  “What kind?”

  “Hard to say, Griffen,” Terrill said. “Sort of like rocks clattering and a crackling sound.”

  “How could you hear anything over the sound of our own horses?” wondered another man.

  “I did, damn it,” Terrill snapped. “And the next one who brands me a liar is going to regret it.”

  A voice marked by a Spanish accent chimed in. “Calm down. No one would think of doing that.” A horse stomped a hoof. “I would suggest we keep looking, companeros. Sitting here we are easy targets, no?”