White Apache 8 Page 6

  White Apache rose, sheathed his knife, and wiped his greasy fingers on his legs. Picking up the Winchester, he dashed into the brush, turned to the north, and bounded like an antelope for over a hundred yards. On reaching a hillock which gave him a clear view of his camp, he flattened.

  None too soon. Hooves thudded off through the chaparral. Tendrils of dust rose into the air. Soon riders materialized.

  Antonio was still a few yards in the lead. Across his thighs rested his Henry. He spotted the dead horse and the fire at the same moment. Slowing to a walk, he elevated the rifle and scanned the vegetation beyond. He saw no one but he knew that he was being spied on.

  Captain Benteen raised his arm and the patrol likewise slowed. At a gesture, the column split in half and fanned out to the right and the left. Sergeant O’Grady rode at the head of the left line of troopers.

  Benteen drew his Colt and made straight for the fire. The scent of roast horse meat hung ripe in the air. It made his stomach do flip-flops.

  The Jicarilla halted beside the roan. Sliding down, he studied the hard earth carefully.

  “How many?” Captain Benteen asked.

  The scout did not answer. He was too intent on the tracks. There were few, mostly scuff marks and partial prints, but enough for a warrior of his ability to tell a great deal. And what he read in the dirt excited him beyond measure.

  “How many, Antonio?” Benteen repeated.

  “One,” the Jicarilla disclosed. He came on a clear footprint and sank to one knee to better inspect it. His excitement mounted. “It be him.”

  Benteen nudged his horse closer. “Who?”

  “The one they call White Apache.”

  The officer fairly flew off the chestnut and over beside the warrior. “Are you sure? We’ve had no reports of Taggart being in this area.”

  Antonio let the implied insult pass. Of course he was sure. He had learned to track when barely old enough to sit a saddle, and he was considered one of the best in his tribe. “See,” he said, extending a finger and running it around the outline of the print. “Foot bend partway out.”

  “So?”

  “So Indian foot bend in. White foot bend out. Man like White Apache, part white, part Indian, his foot bend partway out. Savvy?”

  Benteen did, but he still had his doubts. It would be an incredible stroke of luck for him to have stumbled on Clay Taggart when the traitor was alone and on foot. Taggart’s capture or elimination had been made the highest priority. Every officer in the Fifth Cavalry was under strict orders to be on the lookout for him, and to take whatever steps were necessary to bring the butcher’s bloody reign of terror to an end. The officer glanced at the fire. “He can’t have gone far.”

  Antonio looked up. “Him still here.”

  “What?”

  “Him watch us. I feel it.”

  Captain Benteen spun. “O’Grady! It’s the White Apache! Scour the brush! Check everywhere! He has to be nearby!”

  The shout carried to Clay Taggart’s ears and he promptly slid down the far side of the hillock, stood, and raced eastward. Threading through the prickly mesquite and dry weeds with a skill few white men could rival, he rapidly put as much ground behind him as he could.

  Clay was not worried. Yet. It would take time for the scout to follow up his trail and determine which direction he had gone. By then he would change course. If he could elude them until nightfall, he’d be in the clear. Night, however, was hours off. He had his work cut out for him.

  Pacing himself, White Apache ran at a tireless trot, just as the Chiricahuas had taught him. He grew thirsty but he shut his mind to the urge. Endurance, he had learned, was a state of mind. He had to close himself off to everything except the matter at hand. The simple act of moving his arms and legs and breathing in a regular rhythm took his full attention. That, and pricking his ears for sign of pursuit.

  It came much sooner than White Apache had counted on. The crash of brush to the passage of horses and the jingle of cavalry accoutrements told him that the patrol had formed into a single long line and was pushing briskly eastward. They were no more than five hundred feet away. Whoever was in charge knew all the tricks.

  Captain Benteen liked to think that he did. He rode at the center of the line with the Jicarilla on his right and the sergeant on his left. His intent was to flush the traitor and surround him. If Taggart resisted, the man would be shot to pieces. If not, then Benteen stood to become the envy of every officer in the Southwest. The man who brought in the White Apache would become famous. It would be written up in all the newspapers. A promotion would be in the offing, and Benteen liked the idea of being a major. If he played his cards right, he could be a full colonel in five years. The possibility was sufficient to give him second thoughts about civilian life.

  Antonio had his head bent to the ground. Every now and then he would see a smudge or some other trace of their quarry. They were very close behind. He curled his thumb around the hammer of his Henry, certain the white-eye would put up a fight.

  Nor was he alone in thinking that. Sergeant O’Grady had been involved in several Indian campaigns. He had fought the Sioux on the high plains. He had tangled with the Comanches in Texas. Apaches, in his opinion, were little different, only tougher and meaner. Through all his campaigns, he had stayed alive because he always stayed alert and he was wise enough to anticipate what the enemy would do before the enemy would do it.

  In this instance, O’Grady was certain the traitor would open fire if they got too close. He probed the undergrowth ahead, his carbine held loosely in his brawny hands. His marksmanship was superb, the talk of the post. As the troopers liked to say, “If O’Grady can see it, he can hit it.” All Clay Taggart had to do was show himself and he was a dead man.

  But Clay had no such intention. The onrushing soldiers were three hundred feet to the west when he came to a dry wash. Bearing to the right for forty feet, he hopped down off the shallow bank, set his rifle to one side, and clawed at the loose earth as if he were an oversized prairie dog trying to dig a burrow. Which, in effect, he was.

  Clay had learned from masters how to use terrain to his advantage. He was adept at blending into the background, at bending his body into the shape of boulders and bushes, at disguising himself with branches and grass and dirt.

  The earth gave way quickly. He scooped out a hole just large enough for him to squeeze into, and did so. The Winchester went across his body. By then the patrol was so close that the ground rumbled. He pulled the loose dirt back in after him, covering himself but leaving a small hole to see through. As he finished, thunder peeled above him. Fine particles of dust rained onto his face and neck. He had to stifle an impulse to sneeze.

  A shadow swooped across the wash, preceding a soldier who vaulted his horse off the bank and galloped to the other side. Clay saw several of them, including the scout and the officer, off to the left. They rode on up the opposite bank without looking back. The second that the line of blue coats disappeared, he pushed the dirt off him, squeezed out, sprang to the top of the bank, and sped off in the direction he had come.

  It would not fool the scout for long, Clay knew. He had to think of something else. But what?

  Outwitting an Apache took some doing. Erasing his tracks with a tree limb would do no good since the marks made by the leaves would be a dead giveaway. Nor would it help if he tried to walk backward in his own footsteps for a while. Any tracker worthy of the name knew that when a man did that the steps were shorter and the heel marks were deeper than they should be.

  One ruse would buy him a little extra time, and that was to travel through the thickest of the mesquite. It would slow the cavalrymen down since they would not risk harming their mounts.

  After a few minutes White Apache turned to the south. In the distance reared a bluff. From its crown he would be able to see the patrol. He went faster, wondering if the troopers were wise to his ruse yet.

  They were. Antonio realized that he had lost the scent after
traveling sixty yards past the wash. He told Benteen, who ordered the troop to swing around and search for sign. The Jicarilla tried to put himself in the moccasins of the white-eye renegade, to think what he would do if he were the one being chased. When he saw the wash, he understood, and he smiled at White Apache’s cleverness.

  The freshly dug hole was obvious to everyone. Antonio showed where the man had plunged back into the chaparral. Once again the troopers spread out in a long line and advanced at the double. Every man sensed that they were closing in. Their carbines were at the ready.

  Captain Benteen was growing worried that the traitor would elude them. The man had the wiles of a fox. And he was certainly no coward. It had taken great courage to lie in that small hole, unable to even bring a gun to bear to defend himself, while the patrol galloped on past above him. If just one trooper had spotted it, Taggart would have been trapped with no way out. Benteen knew himself well enough to admit that he would never have been able to do the same thing.

  Sergeant O’Grady was making it a point to stay close to the officer. He recollected hearing that in several prior clashes with the cavalry, the White Apache had picked off those in charge at the outset. The man was no fool. Taggart knew that dropping the officers and noncoms would throw the privates into confusion and give him time to make his escape. Well, O’Grady was not about to let that happen this time.

  Suddenly the brush to the northwest crackled. A nervous soldier opened fire, banging off four shots before he saw that it was a deer, not Clay Taggart. The buck was struck twice high in the chest and died on its feet.

  White Apache heard the shots and paused. They helped him pinpoint the patrol, and he was disturbed to discover that the cavalrymen had caught on to his trick and were hot on his heels again. Or, rather, their scout had. He resumed his course toward the bluff at twice the speed.

  It dawned on Clay that perhaps this time his luck had run out. Perhaps he had met his match in this scout. He might never reach Sweet Grass, the Chiricahua sanctuary high in the rugged mountain range of the same name. He might never get to take his full revenge on Miles Gillett and Lilly.

  That last notion, more than any other, fired him with new resolve. Clay was not going to let the soldiers take him without a fight they would long remember: He skirted a small cactus and had a clear path to the base of the bluff, which reared over fifty feet above the sea of mesquite.

  Antonio, meanwhile, had lost the trail again. He bore wide in both directions seeking more tracks but could find none. Captain Benteen gazed at him expectantly, and Antonio could tell that the officer was upset. But what else could he do? he asked himself. The mesquite rose as high as his shoulder in places.

  Inspiration struck when the warrior saw a sparrow perched on a limb. Reining up, he patted the neck of his pinto a few times to steady the animal, then he coiled his legs to his chest, placed his feet flat on the saddle, and unlimbered to his full height of five feet, seven inches, balancing on the balls of his feet. It pleased him that the officer and the nearest troopers gawked. They would tell of his deed back at the fort and his worth would rise in the eyes of the other white-eyes.

  Suddenly Antonio glimpsed a figure in a breech-cloth flitting through the brush to the south. It had to be the White Apache, and he was almost to a high bluff. “I see him,” Antonio declared, sinking back down. “He is not far.”

  Unaware that he had been seen, Clay Taggart started up the gradual barren slope. Gullies and crevices laced the face of the bluff, offering ample places to hide. He passed several ideal spots on his climb to the top. Halfway up, as Clay rose onto a narrow bench, he glanced over a shoulder and felt his gut tighten into a knot as hard as the quartz which veined the bluff.

  The patrol was converging on him.

  Clay glanced down, his mind racing. In the time it took him to climb back to the bottom, the troopers would reach the base and cut him off. His best bet lay in getting up and over the other side before they pinned him down. To that end he scrambled higher. He had less than ten feet to go to gain the summit.

  Then Clay reached up, wedged his right hand into a crack, and went to pull himself higher still. Without warning the earth around the crack crumbled and gave way, throwing him backward. He tried to dig in his heels. He tried to snatch hold of a rocky spine. Gravity conspired against him and he tumbled, raising a cloud of dust and bloodthirsty cheers from the charging troopers who believed that his blunder put him at their mercy.

  And maybe they were right.

  White Apache landed with a jarring impact on the bench. As he rose to his knees shots rang out. Lead thudded into the bluff on both sides of him. Some of the soldiers had broken from cover and were firing on the fly. Snapping the Winchester to his shoulder, he fixed a bead on the foremost trooper and shot the man right out of the saddle. Shifting, he worked the lever, feeding a new cartridge into the chamber. His second shot caught a burly cavalryman in the forehead and catapulted the man over the rump of his mount as if he had been fired from a slingshot.

  Captain Benteen was beside himself. He had been yelling for his men to take cover but a half-dozen or so ignored him in their excitement and eagerness to kill the scourge of the Territory. In an effort to get their attention, he raked his horse with his spurs and began to pull ahead of them, shouting all the while, “Cease firing! Take cover!”

  Sergeant O’Grady had fallen a dozen feet behind his superior. On seeing the officer race madly into the open, fear coursed through him. He called out, “Sir! Stop! Get under cover yourself!” But his yell went unheard in the general din. Glancing toward the bluff, he saw the White Apache in the act of taking aim. Instantly O’Grady fired three times as fast as he could.

  The shots came closer than any so far to nailing Clay Taggart. Two whizzed past his cheek. The third smacked into the dirt inches above his head. Clay paid them no heed. He had spotted the officer in charge of the patrol. Hastily aligning his sights, he held his breath a moment, then stroked the trigger.

  To Captain Benteen, it felt as if a red-hot poker had seared his ribs. He knew he had been hit and placed a hand on his side. When he drew the hand away it was covered with blood. Dizziness assailed him.

  Suddenly Sergeant Shawn O’Grady was there. Looping a well-muscled arm around the officer, he guided Benteen’s horse into the mesquite to the east. The rest of the patrol followed their cue.

  Up on the bluff, Clay Taggart ran out of targets. He spied a wide cleft nearby and threw himself into it as a ragged volley peppered the bench. When the volley faded, he peeked above the rim. The troopers were swiftly ringing the bluff. In another minute they would have it surrounded.

  He was trapped.

  Six

  His name was Santiago Pasqual. In his opinion the greatest affliction in his life was to have been born of a Mexican mother and a Cibeque father. This made him a half-breed. And breeds, sad to say, were held in little regard by both whites and their full-blooded Indian brethren.

  Santiago hated being looked down on as some sort of two-legged cur. He despised Americanos and full-bloods alike, no matter which tribe they belonged to. Apaches, Pimas, Maricopas, it made no difference. Secretly he loathed them all.

  Secretly, because it would not do for word to get out. Apaches were notoriously touchy about such things. He might wake up in the middle of the night some time with his throat slit from ear to ear. Or he might lose all his customers, which would put him out of business. And he did love his work.

  Santiago owned a run-down saloon which in most other parts of the United States would have been condemned as a hovel. It sat just over the boundary line of the Chiricahua Reservation, not all that far from Fort Bowie.

  Most of those who came daily to drown their sorrows in red-eye were Apaches. Even though it was against the law, the Chiricahuas didn’t care. Many were addicted to the firewater of the white-eyes. They could no more get through a day without a drink or three than they could without breathing.

  Many Mexicans also made Santia
go’s their favorite watering hole, since it was one of the few places they could go to drink where they did not have to put up with arrogant gringos. Not usually, at any rate, for there were times when Americanos did stop by.

  This day was one of them. Santiago stood at the bar, idly polishing a dirty glass with a grimy rag. Only seven customers were present, scattered about the dingy room. In the back, Santiago’s woman toiled over a hot stove, making burritos and enchiladas and other tasty dishes for those who were hungry. He could hear her hum as she worked, and he smiled, thinking of her ample posterior.

  Then there rose an odd scraping noise at the front door. Santiago looked up, and his breath caught in his throat. For a moment he thought that he must be seeing things.

  Framed in the doorway was a creature that appeared to be something out of Santiago’s worst nightmare. It was half the size of a bear but had the head of a wolf and a coat as shaggy as a buffalo’s. Piercing eyes raked the saloon as if seeking its next meal. Santiago set down the glass and started to reach under the counter for the scatter-gun he kept handy to deal with rowdy drunks. He froze, though, when a buckskin-clad form appeared beside the strange beast.

  Santiago recognized that form, and the other two who filed in behind him and over to a corner table. Their mongrel monster stayed at their side even though there was a sign out front, in both English and Spanish, warning that no dogs were permitted inside. Santiago had written the sign himself.

  Inwardly cursing all whites for thinking they had the God-given right to do as they damn well pleased, Pasqual plastered a smile on his swarthy face and walked over. He pretended not to notice when the shaggy creature fixed a baleful glare on him and growled.

  “That’s enough out of you, Razor,” Clem Bowdrie said. “You be civil, you hear?”

  Tick Bowdrie snickered. “Aw, let the dog have some fun. He ain’t gnawed on anyone in days.”

  Santiago recalled hearing somewhere that animals could smell when a man was afraid. In that case, the monster squatting by the table had to know that he was terrified to the bone. But he did not let on. For the benefit of his regular customers, he put on a brave front and said, “Hola, señores. It has been a long time since last you graced my humble establishment.”