Warrior Born (A White Apache Western Book 3) Page 2

  They had all balked at first, especially Fiero. They had demanded to know why they should risk their lives to help one white-eye seek revenge on other white-eyes. For the plunder, for many guns and horses, Delgadito had countered. Still some of them had been unwilling, and it had taken all of his considerable skill to manipulate them into going along with the idea.

  There was a reason Delgadito had gone to so much trouble. Since the others would not allow him to lead the band after the slaughter, he had conspired to control them through the white-eye.

  His plan had been simple. Since White Apache viewed him as a friend and relied on his judgment in making decisions, the others would come to see that he was the guiding influence in the success of their raids, and as a result, he would regain some of the standing he had lost.

  The next step had required a daring strike into northern Mexico. Again led by White Apache, they had gone after the scalp hunters who had wiped out their families and friends. It had been Delgadito’s intention to slay Blue Cap, the leader of the butchers. In doing so he would have restored himself almost fully to the good graces of his fellows.

  But everything had gone wrong once they were south of the border. White Apache had done well—too well. Taggart had freed Fiero, Ponce, and Amarillo after they were caught by Blue Cap, and later had slain Blue Cap, himself. Instead of Delgadito earning their praise and esteem, White Apache had garnered it.

  And now that they were back at their mountain retreat, the others were treating White Apache as one of them. No, worse. They had come to respect him, to trust him. They looked to him for leadership, as they had once looked to Delgadito.

  It was infuriating.

  Delgadito wanted to roar with rage, but he held his tongue and rose. As he stood there simmering with frustration, he was suddenly struck by a remarkable fact. From that height the five men on the canyon floor all looked the same. They all had long, dark hair. They all wore long-sleeved shirts, breechcloths, and high moccasins. They all had cartridge belts slanted across their chests or waists. To all intents and purposes, there were five Apaches down there, not four and a white man.

  The sight was profoundly disturbing. Until that very moment Delgadito had not quite realized how completely Clay Taggart had taken to Apache ways.

  Fresh, raw rage pumped through Delgadito’s veins. His standing in the tribe meant everything to him. It was the source of his pride, his secret joy. He liked being widely admired and having less experienced warriors flock to him for advice and instruction. Now all that was denied him and there was only one person he could blame—himself.

  He was the one who had saved Clay Taggart. He was the one who had taken Taggart under his wing and taught Taggart the the Shis-Inday ways. He was the one who foolishly thought he could use Taggart for his own ends and then discard the white fool later.

  Delgadito headed down the cliff with the agility of a mountain goat. Halfway down he paused to let his blood cool. It would not do to the let the others know his true feelings. For a Shis-Inday to show such emotional weakness would be inexcusable. He must accept things as they were for the time being. He must bide his time until an opportunity presented itself to dispose of Clay Taggart in such a way that the others would never suspect the resentment he had harbored.

  By the time Delgadito stepped onto the canyon floor he was his normal self again. He strolled over to where the five men were talking about their recent adventures in Sonora.

  . Fiero, always the most alert, looked up first and asked, “Any sign of them yet?”

  “No,” Delgadito said.

  “Where could they be?” Fiero wondered in a typically gruff fashion. “Palacio told Amarillo it would be five sleeps, but tonight it will be seven.”

  “You know Palacio,” Cuchillo Negro said. Next to Delgadito, he was the deepest thinker of the group, the one who saw under the surface of things to their hidden meanings, the quiet one whose words counted more because each was spoken with care. As he made his comment, he absently touched a hand to his chest above the wound he had suffered in Sonora. It still bothered him but not enough to keep him from being up and about.

  “What does that mean?” Fiero wanted to know. The firebrand of the tribe, he was noted for his ferocity in battle and for always being too hasty in speaking his mind.

  “It means,” Amarillo said, “that he is showing his contempt for us by keeping us waiting.” Always the most cautious of them all, he added, “Even though he insults us, we must not take offense. This is our chance to mend the break, and we should do everything in our power to make him welcome.”

  “I agree,” said Ponce, the youngest, who yearned for the companionship of others his age, particularly that of a certain young woman.

  Delgadito sat cross-legged and stared at the party who had ruined his well-laid scheme. “And what does Lickoyee-shis-inday say?”

  Clay Taggart, the man called White Apache, squared his broad shoulders as he regarded the ring of warriors with his penetrating blue eyes. He knew how much the meeting meant to them, and he wanted to do everything in his power to bring about the result they desired. It was the least he could do after everything they had done for him. “I say you should make Palacio welcome, smoke the pipe together, and listen to what he has to say. Later you can decide whether to accept his terms.”

  “He will want us to grovel,” Fiero said in disgust. “And I grovel to no man.”

  “You do not know that for certain,” Clay said in his lightly accented Apache. He had been working hard in recent weeks to master the tongue and was proud that he could speak it with a fluency few white men shared. “If he is wise, he will know you have suffered enough. For the good of the whole tribe it is best to let you mingle with your people from time to time. Surely, he will not hold your war on our common enemy against you.”

  Delgadito had listened in disguised amazement. Taggart, he reflected, had offered exactly the same advice he would have given. Even more interesting was the way in which Taggart had referred to their white oppressors.

  “One does not mention Palacio and wisdom in the same breath,” Cuchillo Negro said.

  “Then he is not fit to be leader of the Chiricahuas,” Clay said frankly. “I am surprised you would pick such a man to guide your footsteps.”

  “He was not picked,” Cuchillo Negro clarified. “His father was a chief, and his father before him.”

  Clay merely grunted, Indian fashion. There were two ways to attain a position of leadership among the Apaches, or the Shis-Inday, as they called themselves. One was to earn it by proving superior ability, the other was to have it bestowed by virtue of a bloodline. He had only been among them a short time, but already he’d learned that those who had to work to earn high regard made better chiefs than those who had come by it easily.

  “Do not let Palacio hear you talk this way,” Amarillo warned. “He is very quick to anger if someone so much as hints that he is not a good leader.”

  The more Clay heard, the lower his opinion of Palacio became, and he had yet to even meet the warrior. Sighing, he stared into the distance. Why was he getting so worked up over it? The internal problems of the Apaches were really none of his business. He was becoming softheaded to think they cared about his opinion one way or the other. Uppermost in his mind, at all times, should be that he was white and they weren’t. No matter how friendly they acted, in their eyes he was still an enemy. Delgadito had told him so many times.

  Still, Clay had been forgetting his proper place among them quite a lot lately. After so many weeks of living with the band, of fighting by their side, of hunting and eating and sleeping together, there were times when he thought of himself as one of them, without even being aware that he was doing so.

  And who could blame him? The Apaches, Delgadito most notably, had treated him better than his own kind. It wasn’t Apaches who had betrayed him. It wasn’t Apaches who had tracked him down and left him for dead at the end of a rope. And it wasn’t a rich Apache who had plotted to ta
ke his woman, his ranch, and his very life.

  Clay scanned the five swarthy faces and suppressed a self-conscious grin. Who would ever have figured that one day he’d consider five Apaches to be some of the most likable hombres he’d ever met? Every last one of them, even the hot-tempered Fiero, would do to ride the river with, and it galled him that most of his kind rated them as the scum of the earth.

  Suddenly Clay realized Delgadito had addressed him. “What was that?” he asked in English. The warrior liked to practice every chance he got, and Clay was more than willing to oblige Delgadito since Clay reckoned that he owed the Apache his life several times over.

  “Someone else should keep watch. It is your time, I think.”

  “That it is,” Clay said, rising. They had been taking turns standing guard over the entrance, watchful as hawks, not only for other Apaches, but for the cavalry and anyone else who might be out for Clay’s hide. Picking up his Winchester, Clay hiked southward. A shadow fastened itself at his side.

  “I will go along,” Delgadito said.

  “Grateful for the company,” Clay commented, “That’s right neighborly of you.”

  “Neighborly?” Delgadito repeated the new word, rolling it on his tongue as he might an unusual morsel of food.

  “Friendly,” Clay explained, translating in Apache, “Nejeunee.”

  “You Americans make much of having friends,” Delgadito said, saying each word slowly, choosing them with care as he always did. He had to labor hard at English but he was making swift strides. “Everyone you meet, you want to like them and for them to like you. If someone does not like you, you are upset and feel there is something wrong with you.” He shook his head in reproach. “Too many of you have your brains in a whirl.”

  “The Apaches do not place as much stock in friendships, I’ve noticed.”

  “There you are very wrong,” Delgadito corrected him. “We value our few true friends highly. But we are smart enough to know that no one person can be the friend of all others, so we pick our close friends after much thought. And when we make an offer of friendship, we bind ourselves by giving a gift and smoking a pipe.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “What?” Delgadito said, not certain what part was being referred to.

  “I’d be honored if some day you would smoke a pipe and share a gift with me.”

  That was the farthest thing from Delgadito’s mind, but he smiled and said, “Name the day and we shall do it.” He saw Taggart beam like a small boy just given a lizard to torture, and he had to turn away so the white-eye would not detect the mirth that racked him.

  Clay was touched by the offer. It was yet another example of the kindness the Apaches had extended him, yet another reason why he believed the terrible stories about the tribe were nothing more than tall tales. For years he’d been led to think that if he were ever caught by Apaches he’d wind up staked live on an anthill with his gut sliced open and his scalp gone. Yet, the only warrior who had ever tried to harm him was Fiero and that had been more the result of a misunderstanding than anything else.

  The thought prompted Clay to say, “Delgadito, there’s something gnawing at my innards.”

  “You have swallowed a live snake?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that, pard,” Clay said. “It’s this business about the Shis-lnday always thinking of outsiders as their enemies.”

  “What of it?” Delgadito responded. From infancy he had been taught that very thing, along with the two cardinal rules of the Chiricahuas: Steal without being caught and kill without being slain.

  “Do Cuchillo Negro and the others still think of me that way? After all we’ve been through?”

  The appeal in Taggart’s voice startled Delgadito. No matter how much he learned about the whites, no matter how much time he spent in the company of White Apache, he could not get used to their childlike attitudes. “It matters that much to you?” he said.

  “It matters greatly,” Clay confessed.

  “No man can know another man’s heart. You must ask them how they feel.” Delgadito saw sadness etch Taggart’s face and mulled over its meaning as they hiked to a cliff wall near the valley entrance and began climbing. He had to keep in mind that the white-eye was cut off from his own kind, that the five warriors in their band were the only companions Clay Taggart had had for quite some time. Perhaps it was only natural for Lickoyee-shis-inday to regard them as more than mere enemies.

  For Clay’s part, he was thinking about the sequence of violent events that had resulted in his adopting Apache ways and marveling at how it had all turned out. Once he had been like most Arizonans and hated Apaches simply because they were Indians, because they were different. Now, having learned that deep down they were a lot like himself, his hatred had evaporated, and he found himself liking them more and more as the days went by.

  It took several minutes to scale the heights. When Clay finally stood on a ledge no wider than his shoulders and stared down at the ground far below, he smiled at his accomplishment. Most whites would have been afraid to try such a feat. Six months ago, he would have felt the same. Now he could scale the sheerest cliffs with an ease that astounded him.

  Delgadito reached the ledge moments later and stood a few feet from Taggart. He, too, gazed downward, but not to compliment himself on his climbing ability. Rather, he was imagining the shape White Apache’s body would be in after a fall from that high up. All it would take was a slight nudge at just the right moment and the thorn in his side would be gone.

  Clay shifted to survey the stark Chiricahua Mountains, admiring their rugged beauty as he never had before. Previously, when delivering cattle to the reservation or on those other rare occasions when he had visited the remote region, he had thought of the mountains as he had thought of most Arizona landscape—arid, harsh, and foreboding. He’d been wrong, though. When seen through the eyes of someone who was growing to know them intimately, the Chiricahuas had a personality all their own, a raw splendor unique among Arizona mountains. Small wonder the Chiricahua Apaches were so passionately devoted to their homeland. Small wonder the tribe had fiercely resisted the white invaders at every turn.

  Delgadito took a casual step closer to Taggart. He peered down at the spot where the rest of the warriors were sitting and was pleased to find that a tree screened them from sight. No one would see if he gave Taggart a push. He could claim the white-eye slipped and the others would accept him at his word because they all knew White Apache was as agile as a pregnant cow.

  “I reckon I understand,” Clay said softly.

  Delgadito looked at him.

  “I always figured you Apaches were a bunch of miserable savages who were only interested in butchering helpless whites, but now I see there was more to it. You were also protecting your land.”

  “This country was ours from long ago,” Delgadito said. He neglected to bring up that defending their land was only part of the reason they fought the whites. From as far back as any Apache could remember the six tribes had lived to raid and to plunder. The Zunis, the Pueblos, the Pimas, the Maricopas, the Spanish and others had all paid dearly in order that the Apaches might flourish.

  “I know what it means to have your land taken away from you,” Clay mused. “Miles Gillett has stolen my ranch right out from under me.” He bowed his head, feeling unbridled fury gush up within him. “That, and the woman I love.”

  “We rub out Gillett soon,” Delgadito said, to keep Taggart talking while he inched ever closer.

  “No, I’d rather save that bastard for last,” Clay said. “First we’ll blow out the lamps of the rest of that damn posse, just like we did with Jacoby and Prost.” Both of his hands clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “All ten of them will pay! Marshal Crane, Bitmer, Moritz, that gunny Santee, every last one!”

  There was no denying Taggart’s thirst for vengeance. It was enough to give Delgadito pause, to remind him of his earlier scheme to use the white-eye to destroy more Americans and,
in the process, regain his standing in the tribe. Then he thought of the unexpected influence Taggart had earned among his fellows, and he firmed his heart to the task confronting him.

  “We ought to go on another raid soon,” Clay was saying. Thoughtfully, he scratched his chin. “Let me see. The next one should be Harvey Denton. I’ve never been to his spread, but I know right where it is.”

  Delgadito took another step. He was now within arm’s length of the unsuspecting white.

  “Denton has more hands than Jacoby and Prost had, but they shouldn’t be a problem if we scout the area first,” Clay went on, lost in reflection. “It won’t take us more than a week to get there and probably ten days back because we’ll have so many horses to—”

  Shutting the words from his mind, Delgadito slowly raised his right arm, extending his hand toward Taggart’s vulnerable back. He glanced into the valley again to verify none of the other Shis-Inday was watching. With his fingertips poised next to the white-eye’s shoulder blade, he was all set to shove when, unbidden, memories of the time Taggart had saved his life filled Delgadito’s head.

  “We’ll have to be on our guard for the cavalry,” Clay was saying, his attention glued to the nearly invisible trail that led into the retreat from a rocky, desolate canyon. “The army must have beefed up their patrols after our attacks. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re offering bounty money to the first of their Indian scouts who locates our hideout.”

  Racked by rare doubt, Delgadito still could not bring himself to do what must be done. Was he growing weak? he wondered. If so, he was no longer fit to be a chief, and he might as well leap from the cliff himself.

  “Yes, sir,” Clay declared. “You have the honor of being the most sought-after Indian in the entire Southwest.”