Warrior Born (A White Apache Western Book 3) Page 5

  “I fought Blue Cap with one,” Clay reminded him.

  “But are you skilled?” Fiero persisted, stressing the last word.

  “I can get by when I have to.”

  “Come.” Wheeling, the warrior strode westward toward a stand of fir trees.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I will teach you how Apaches fight with knives,” Fiero said. “There are many tricks you must learn if you are to survive the challenge. Pedro Azul is very crafty with blades.”

  “You’d do this for me?” Clay marveled, recollecting that at one time Fiero hated all whites, including himself, with a raging passion.

  Unknown to Clay, Fiero was thinking that very thing. No one was more confounded by his change of heart than he was himself, and he was all the more upset because it had claimed him like a thief in the night, insinuating itself without his being aware, so that one night he had gone to bed detesting the entire white race and the next morning he had gazed on White Apache with new vision that told him this particular white-eye was not such a bad person. “You saved me from the Nakai-yes,” he said, since that was as good a reason as any and the only one that halfway justified his new outlook. “You gave me pesh-e-gar,” he added, hefting his rifle.

  The shade under the trees was refreshing. Fiero leaned his rifle against a trunk bordering a clearing, stripped to the waist, and drew his gleaming butcher knife. “Come, White Apache. We see how you do.”

  Feeling self-conscious, Clay placed his Winchester next to the warrior’s, palmed the Bowie, and cautiously advanced, not quite sure what to expect. It occurred to him that this could all be a ruse on Fiero’s part to stick eight inches of metal between his ribs when he relaxed his guard, a notion he dismissed as a product of his suspicious nature. Fiero might have the fiery temperament his name implied, and be pure Apache through and through, but Fiero was also a man of honor.

  “Expose little of your body to your enemy,” the firebrand was telling him. To demonstrate, Fiero bent at the waist and balanced lightly on his feet. He had reduced his size by a third and could now dart either right or left, forward or backward, with supreme ease. “You try.”

  Clay coiled in imitation of the warrior.

  Fiero grunted, then nodded at his knife. “Always hold the blade down so your enemy can not tell which way you will strike.” Again he demonstrated by flicking his butcher knife this way and that, always returning it to the original position afterward.

  Once more Clay did as he was instructed. He would rather have held the Bowie in front of him, blade extended, to ward off his foe’s thrusts, a preference he did not mention so as not to annoy his new teacher.

  “Now we hone your skill,” Fiero declared. He promptly closed, stabbing at Clay’s legs so fast Clay barely had time to parry and dance aside.

  “Careful,” Clay objected. “That was too close.”

  “Pedro Azul will come closer.”

  For the next half an hour Clay Taggart was put through his paces by a master knife fighter. It gave him a whole new appreciation for his deliverance during their first encounter, when a timely fall down a slope had been all that saved Clay from Fiero’s blade. And it left Clay drenched with sweat, craving a visit to the spring.

  “Remember all I have taught you and you might live,” Fiero said, in the act of slipping his knife into its beaded sheath.

  “Do you want to know the truth?” Clay responded. “I would gladly forget all about fighting if Pedro Azul could be persuaded to change his mind.”

  “That will not happen,” Fiero said. “Pedro Azul wants your blood for his brother’s. It is the way of the Shis-Inday.”

  “My people call it taking an eye for an eye,” Clay revealed.

  Fiero grinned. “At last. Some white words that are not nonsense.”

  The pair walked side by side from the first, parting when Clay angled to the spring where the two brothers and five other warriors were seated. The looks they bestowed on him were enough to provoke nightmares in children. Kneeling, he dipped a hand in the cool water and gulped thirstily until Pedro Azul abruptly rose and came over.

  “I will kill you tomorrow, white-eye.”

  “You will try,” Clay amended.

  The warrior’s dark eyes took Clay’s measure. “Before we were forced onto the reservation I slew many of your kind. Babies are harder to kill.”

  “I must take your word for it,” Clay said, standing and taking a step back to give himself room to maneuver. “White men never harm babies. Only weakling and cowards do.”

  “Are you calling me a weakling and a coward?” Pedro Azul rasped.

  “If you have slain babies, Yes.”

  The stocky warrior hissed and placed a hand on the hilt of his knife.

  Chapter Five

  There were no friendly Apaches nearby. Clay was on his own, confronted by the furious brother of the brave he had wounded and with five more hostile warriors close by, all armed. He saw Pedro Azul begin to pull the butcher knife and automatically braced to fill his hand with a Colt.

  “No, brother!” Chivari cried from his resting place at the base of a large boulder. Wincing, he pushed onto an elbow. “The challenge has been issued. We must do this according to custom.”

  No other appeal could have been so persuasive. Apaches were creatures of custom; disputes, marriages, warfare, every single activity had to be done in a certain way. Pedro Azul would have liked to carve the haughty white-eye into a hundred pieces right there, but he knew the proper time would be during the formal duel. So, restraining his wrath, he contented himself with a verbal barb. “We will get as many horses for you this way as another.”

  The comment jarred Clay’s memory; Chivari had mentioned the same thing prior to taking aim. “Another warrior has offered you horses to take my life?”

  “What Apache would be bothered?” Pedro Azul rejoined. “No, Lickoyee-shis-inday, it is your own kind who will pay a high price to the one who brings you in.”

  “Who will? The army? The reservation agent?”

  “Find out for yourself, if you live through the day tomorrow,” Pedro Azul baited him. Sneering, the Chiricahua walked to his fellows, and one by one they showed their disdain by turning their backs on him.

  Clay hardly noticed. He slouched off, depressed by the alarming, but not entirely unexpected, news. A while back he had been involved in a skirmish with a cavalry patrol in which the soldiers had discovered he was a white man. It stood to reason the army would be interested in him. Evidently, they didn’t care whether he was brought in alive—or dead.

  The rest of the day Clay spent off by his lonesome, high on a crag only eagles or mountain sheep could reach. He had weighty issues to ponder, a future to chart, and all depended on the outcome of the fight. He reached decisions that would impact not only his life but the lives of every man, woman, and child in Arizona, northern Mexico, and western Texas. Later he would look back on this day as the crucial turning point in his life, although he had no inkling of its importance at the time.

  That night, after a light meal of antelope, Clay sat by himself under a rock overhang, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Footsteps heralded a shadowy shape that paused in the darkness.

  “I would share words with you, White Apache.”

  Clay had expected Delgadito or perhaps Fiero. Mystified, he responded, “You are welcome to sit with me, Cuchillo Negro.”

  Black Knife, the name meant in English. The quiet one. The thinker. The one who saw much but disclosed little of what he saw. Ducking under the overhang, he sat.

  “What brings you to see me?” Clay asked. Never in the months he had been with the band had he had a man-to-man chat with this one. Yet, Clay felt closer to Cuchillo Negro than to any of the others except Delgadito. Why that was he could not say.

  “Our bullets have killed the same enemies.”

  “This is so,” Clay said.

  “We have eaten the same animal, drunk from the same spring.”

 
; “Many times,” Clay confirmed, sensing he must pay close attention.

  “When Delgadito wanted to make you a member of our band, I was not the one who loudly objected.”

  “True.”

  “When Delgadito let you lead us on our raid into Mexico, I fought by your side.”

  Clay’s ears perked up. Had he understood rightly? He distinctly recalled Delgadito planting the idea that the others had wanted him to lead. “Are you saying Delgadito could have led if he wanted to?”

  “I say no such thing,” Cuchillo Negro said. “I simply give voice to the truth.”

  Puzzled, Clay said, “What other truths does my red brother care to share?”

  “Has White Apache ever stood near the top of a mountain peak when the clouds are low?”

  The unusual query intensified Clay’s curiosity. “Several times,” he replied.

  “And what did White Apache see?”

  “Clouds. What else?”

  “Did he see the land under the clouds, the hills and valleys and rivers?”

  “How could I when the clouds hid them?”

  Cuchillo Negro gazed into the distance. “Like those clouds, that which we see often hides something else beneath the surface. Things are not always as they seem. Men are not always as they appear to us. Their words may have one meaning, their actions another, their innermost thoughts a third.”

  “Can you give me more details?”

  “I have already revealed too much.” Cuchillo Negro stood and blended into the night without saying anything else.

  Clay was left more perplexed than before. He suspected that Black Knife had given him a subtle warning, but he had no idea what the warning implied. The very thought of casting any sort of suspicion on Delgadito, who had treated him kindly from the first day they met, went against his grain. And even if he were right about the accusation, he saw no basis for it. Delgadito had never harmed him in word or deed.

  The quarter moon was well on its downward arc when Clay Taggart spread out his blankets near the embers of the fire and, with a sigh, reclined on his back. By all rights he should be sleeping, should be conserving his energy for the knife fight. Yet try as he might he was unable to doze off. His mind raced more rapidly than a runaway stage, his blood boiled with excitement.

  In the wee hours of the morning, Clay finally drifted into an undisturbed slumber. Bright sunshine warming his eyelids awakened him, and he sat up, blinking in dismay at finding the sun an hour into the sky. Across from him sat Fiero diligently attaching a leather hide to a wooden framework.

  “You greet the day late, White Apache,” remarked the firebrand. “Your nerves must be made of iron to let you sleep so long on the day a challenge must be answered.”

  Afraid he had slept past the appointed time and shamed himself in the eyes of the band, Clay shoved the blanket from him and exclaimed, “The fight!”

  “Is not for a while yet,” Fiero said. “The circle has been set up and soon the shields will be done.” He held out the object he had been working on. “We had to use antelope skin since there are no oxen within two days’ travel.”

  Shaking his head to dispel lingering tendrils of drowsiness, Clay said, “No one told me that we’d use shields.” Yawning, he stretched, then balanced on his knees. “It is good to hear. I will be able to protect myself from his blade.”

  “A shield can protect, yes, but it can also hide,” Fiero pointed out. “A clever fighter sometimes conceals his knife behind his shield so his foe cannot predict his movements.”

  “Thanks, friend. I will remember it.” Clay headed for the spring and noticed the Apaches had divided themselves into two groups. Delgadito and company were off to the left, while Palacio’s bigger group sat to the north. The challenge had widened the rift between the two factions, so that now neither wanted anything to do with the other.

  Clay’s sympathy went to the outcasts. To his way of thinking it wasn’t unreasonable for them to want to mingle with their people again, and he begrudged Palacio the right to turn them down.

  Several mouthfuls of the crystal clear water did wonders to revitalize Clay. He was rising when a hand fell on his left shoulder.

  “Are you ready, White Apache?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I reckon,” Clay answered Delgadito. He stared at the warrior closely, thinking of Cuchillo Negro’s baffling warning. In the light of the new day, with his friend standing right there in front of him, it seemed more senseless than ever.

  “When the sun is there,” Delgadito pointed, “the fight will begin.”

  Clay patted his Bowie. “Do I get to use my own knife?”

  “You may use any knife you want.” Delgadito squatted to cup water to his mouth. After drinking, he smacked his lips and looked up at the white-eye. Oddly, he was experiencing no great joy at the prospect of Taggart being slain. For as surely as the day turned to night and the night to day in an endless cycle, White Apache would meet his death at the hands of Pedro Azul, one of the best knife fighters in the tribe.

  “Have you ever been challenged?” Clay inquired.

  “Twice, both when I was much younger,” Delgadito said. “No one ever wanted to challenge me again after that day.”

  “You fought them both at the same time?”

  “No. One after the other. That was back when I had two wives and my first wife’s brothers did not like that I had set my second wife above her and made her do all the work. She complained to them, and they complained to me, and when I told them I would do as I pleased, they became angry.” Delgadito peered through the haze of time and commented, “Their challenge was stupid. My affairs were my own.”

  Clay remembered that Delgadito had only one wife when they met. “Was that she who nursed me back to health?”

  “No. After I killed her brothers, she ran off and starved herself to death in the mountains. The woman I had favored died later of disease. You saw my third wife.” Delgadito stopped, surprised he was revealing so many personal details. Such matters were better locked up deep inside and reflected on in private.

  Glancing around to insure no other Apaches were watching, Clay placed a hand on Delgadito’s arm and said sincerely, “No matter what happens today I want you to know I’m right grateful for all you’ve done for me. I speak from the heart when I say that you’re one of the best pards I’ve ever had.”

  Delgadito simply stared as White Apache walked off. Once again, he was bothered by a tug of affection for the white man, a tug he suppressed with hard effort. It should make no difference that Taggart had saved his life. It should not matter that they had been through many hardships together and lived as true Shis-Inday should live. Taggart was spoiling his carefully laid plan to regain a position of leadership in the Chiricahuas and, accordingly, must be destroyed.

  Over by the fire, White Apache was rolling up his blankets, when Fiero approached bearing the antelope-hide shield and several long leather strips.

  “It is time to make ready.”

  Clay was directed to strip to his breechcloth and moccasins. He had to sit and hold out his left arm while Fiero ceremoniously bound the shield to his elbow and wrist. As the warrior worked, he imparted critical advice.

  “A blade can pierce the hide. Do not try to stop a direct stab straight on. Use it so”—Fiero made a sweeping gesture—“to deflect his knife.”

  “I will,” Clay said.

  “It is not necessary or wise to get too close to him. Stay just out of his reach and when an opening presents itself, strike with the speed of a rattlesnake.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Some men have weaknesses that can be taken advantage of,” Fiero continued. “Pedro Azul does not. He attacks with skill and defends with skill. Rarely does he make a mistake.” Fiero looked at Clay. “If I knew how to defeat him, I would tell you.”

  “You have already done more than I had any right to expect.”

  “But not enough. You saved my life in Mexico, and that is a debt I can
only repay in kind.”

  A circle thirty feet in diameter had been trampled in the high grass. Around it the Apaches gathered, Palacio on the south side, Delgadito to the north.

  Pedro Azul strode into the ring as a gladiator of old striding into an arena, smiling smugly in his supreme confidence in his ability. Bronzed sinews rippling, he held his head high for the benefit of his admiring friends and made a few passes with his long butcher knife to loosen his arm for combat.

  By contrast, Clay Taggart looked as somber as living death as he entered the circle and stood regulating his breathing. His pulse drummed madly. It was all he could do to keep his presence of mind. He tried to disregard the spiteful glares of Palacio’s people but could not.

  No one imparted last minute instructions. No one told them to begin. Pedro Azul started the fight by streaking across the grass to strike, adopting the role of aggressor, his knife glittering in the sunlight.

  Clay had been so engrossed in composing himself that he nearly missed seeing the charge. He had his eyes on the ground, not on his adversary as they should have been. On hearing the patter of footfalls, he raised his head and his shield at the same time and, by accident, blocked the first swing. Then, darting to the right, he retreated under an onslaught that few could have withstood.

  Whoops and yells broke out as the Apaches cheered their favorites. The shouts of Pedro Azul’s backers nearly drowned out the few who were roaring to inspire Clay.

  When it comes to a fight to the death, no amount of thinking can prepare a person for actually being in that fight. Death seems remote from a distance but is horrifyingly real when it comes calling at the door. Clay Taggart had thought he was ready, but he was not. Fear coursed through his veins, a chilling fear that he might die in the next few moments. Fear turned his soul to ice; fear made him less than he was. But it was also fear that set his blood to pumping even faster and fear that lent speed to his limbs to back-pedal so swiftly the Apache was unable to deal a killing blow. Indeed, the warrior had a hard time keeping up.

  Clay Taggart had made one circuit of the circle. Then, suddenly, he stopped. Shame crept over him as he realized he had given rein to abject cowardice. He stood his ground, his fear vanishing, replaced by guilt and the calming influence of his inner manhood. In that twinkling of time, he took stock of himself and found the inner strength that every man must find to be worthy of the brand.