Apache canyon (6 page)

Not long after that, he had met Emmett Tucker, walking with the precariousness of a very drunk, very sad man. Tucker had merely grunted to him and gone home. And this morning he had seen Justin Harris fall in his company onto the dust-covered compound and berate them for sloppy driUing. Which was something Harris seldom did.

The major had come out on his office porch and spoken a few words of smprise and caution to Brady who had taken all these small things into his head. Brady was now in the barber's chair, trying to sort them out.

After a shave and a haircut, he went across the weed-and greasewood-strewn lot to Chet Rand's store, where he consumed a lunch consisting of canned tomatoes, canned peaches, salt beef and crackers.

The only thing he could see plainly was that everything, all these entanglements and angers, revolved around the central figure of Eleanor Sutherland. Eleanor's dark beauty had drawn them all into a web of hatreds and deceptions. How long that web would last was anybody's guess. It seemed pretty obvious that when the web did collapse, it would dump them into an uncomfortable pit of conflict that might destroy all of them.

"I'll see you later," he said to Chet Rand, and left the sutler's. For the next five days he was bound to the army by contract; after that-he had not decided. A lot of it depended on Eleanor. In some ways she frightened him as much as she attracted him. He knew he wanted her, but he was not at all sure that he was capable of making her happy. Up to now his own life had run through drifting paths. And he was half-afraid that it was his very irresponsibility, in contrast with Sutherland's regimented conduct, that appealed to Eleanor. If that was true, he knew there was no chance of making any kind of a mutually happy future with her. If, on the other hand-

The answers simply were not available. He found himself cm-sing the whole morass, while he walked slowly across the parade ground. Down at the far end. Tucker was drilling his platoon with sharp, clear commands— "Right, march! Pick up your feet, dammit—you're raising enough dust for a brigade." The dry bite in Tucker's voice was something no one could miss.

Brady paused in front of the guardhouse, nodding to the sentiy. He peered in thi-ough the small barred opening of the door, made out the wiry form of Tonio far in the dimness.

"How's it going, Tonio?"

Tonio moved forward. There was, Brady noticed, a new respect in the Apache youth's eyes. Tonio spoke carefully, Agency School talk. "What am I being kept here for, Brady? What have I done?"

"I'm not quite sure," Brady said. "I'll ask the major. I don't run this place, Tonio--I just work here. Anything I can get for you?"

Tonio spat. Brady smiled gently. ' Take it easy, lad. At least you're getting plenty of food and shelter.

"I wish to hunt my own food-to be with my own people."

"You may get your wish pretty quick now. Just

don't try to bust out again."

"If I do, you will not catch me aUve."

Brady nodded. "Maybe that's what you learned the other day. Well, keep on learning, kid, and one day you'll be a chief. I'd like to see that happen."

Tonio met his glance proudly; Tonio believed him and that was good. Brady turned from the door, patting his pockets, frowning. He said to the sentry, "Got the makings on you, soldier?"

"Sure." The trooper handed over paper and to Brady rolled a smoke and handed the materials back.

That was when he heard the faint sound of scuffling. His head lifted, listening to the sounds of scratching and thudding. Presently he walked around the end of the guardhouse. Behind the building he came upon the sight of two men mixing in savage battle, silent and vicious. Harris and Sutherland.

The two officers stopped abruptly, startled. Both looked at Brady. Sutherland's lip was cut and his cheek showed a bruise; Harris bled from his ear. And from his awkward bent stance, Brady guessed that Harris had been hit more than a few times in the belly.

"Howdy,'' Brady said with a straight face. "Can I hold somebody's coat?"

The sounds of the two men's breathing filled the air for a moment. Then Sutherland spoke: "Get out of here, Brady, and forget you saw anything."

"How are you going to explain your face?"

"Shut up, Will," said Harris, "and go along."

"No," Brady said. "I reckon not. You're fighting the wrong man, Captain Sutherland."

Sutherland's brows knitted into a frown. His moon face was flushed and showed the tracks of sweat and punishment.

Brady said, "You two look pretty funny right now."

Harris said wearily: "Get out of here, Will."

"No," Sutherland said. "Wait. What did you mean —I'm fighting the wrong man?"

"Just what I said. Captain Harris never took after your wife."

Sutherland moved forward a pace, braced. "How do you know?"

"I get around. Captain, maybe before you jimip to a conclusion, you ought to take a look and see how far the jump is."

Puzzled, Sutherland's round face turned toward Harris. "Is that true?"

"I told you before, George—I don't want anything from your wife and I never did."

Sutherland stood awkwardly poised. The round fleshiness of his cheeks made him look soft, but he was not. He remained unconvinced; he frowned past lowered brows at Harris. "Smoke means fire," he said stubbornly.

Harris straightened, shrugging. "You take my word or you don t. Listen, George—this loose talk has hurt me as much as it's hurt you. My own girl's suspicious of me now."

Brady tried to hold back a grin, but was not altogether successful.

Harris, glancing at him, waggled a finger. "You shut up. Will."

Brady's brows went up. "I didn't say a word." He fought down the impulse to laugh.

Sutherland stood fast, frowning at Harris. "Why didn't you tell me all this before?" "Did you ask me?"

"Aagh," Sutherland said. Abruptly he wheeled, brushed past Brady and was gone around the side of the guardhouse.

Harris came forward wearing a troubled look. "Maybe it would have been better if we'd finished the fight. George and I have been rubbing each other the wrong way a long time."

"Sorry, Justin," Brady murmured. "I'd have minded my own carrot patch, only I figmed I had a stake in this one."

"What stake?"

Brady shook his head. "Not now," he said. He was turning away when Harris's voice caught him.

"You—you and Eleanor. I should have figured it before."

"Don't rush into a wrong guess," Brady said, turning.

"Hell," Harris said. "I didn't think you were that kind, Will."

Brady, full of contradictions and no longer sure of himself, turned and went tramping through the dust.

Harris caught up to him in a few long strides. "Hold on. Will. I didn't mean any offense. It took me by surprise, that's all."

"Sure," Brady said, glancing at him bleakly. They were walking alongside the guardhouse wall. Suddenly he stopped and confronted Harris. "Damn it, Justin, I had it all figured out. Why'd you have to go and tear it apart?"

"Why?" Harris said. "What did I do?"

Brady searched his eyes for a moment, and cursed. "Damn it, do you have to keep standing there looking like an officer and a gentleman?"

"Wait a minute," Harris said. "I'm just beginning to pt this. Your conscience is bothering you, Will."

"Is it?" Brady's eyes flashed up, hot with an anger directed against no one in particular. "Well, then, maybe it is. It'll take a wiser man than me to put it all together, Justin. But I'll thank you to quit get-ting in my way with your iron-bound codes of honor. I've got grief enough without that."

"It's not me that's getting in your way," Harris answered. "Don't get things mixed up, Will."

"How else can I get them, Justin?" Brady retorted. "Neither your damned codes nor anything else is going to set things right."

Harris nodded. "I see," he said gently. "Then you're in love with her?"

Brady swung away, putting his back to Harris. "Well," he said, half in anger, "what if I am?"

When he turned back, Harris was shaking his head. "You've got trouble then," was all Hanis said. He stood regarding Brady with a worried glance.

Brady cursed.

Harris showed a wan smile. "Want some advice, Will?''

"No."

"I'll give it to you, anyway. Get clear of this post —get clear of that woman. Find yourself a saloon and drink yourself to death. Anyhow, ride over the hill and don't ever look back."

"It wouldn't work," Brady said.

Harris took a pace forward and gripped Brady's shoulders. "She belongs to somebody else, Will."

Brady let out a long breath. "Yeah." He turned on his heel and walked away.

Hanis let him go alone.

Brady, measuring neither time nor distance, rode a far way out onto the desert plain. Catclaw and palo-verde and manzanita scrubs dotted the yellow-brown land, and the dust-filled heat was bitter and bright. His horse covered miles of ground; and now and then, out of habit, his eyes flicked the surrounding hillocks.

And finally he saw before him the gently winding comse of the Smoke, bordered by its marching green cottonwoods. He rode down to the river and let his horse drink its fill from the shallow flow.

Now drought lay hard and bleak across the land. He had known times when the Smoke flowed sixty or a hundred feet wide along its desert course; today it was scarcely ten feet wide.

He considered his cavalry boots. A Christmas gift from Justin Harris, not too many months ago. He cursed, led the horse back on the grass, loosened the cinch, and left it with reins trailing. He walked back to the shaded bole of a thick cottonwood, settled with his back to the tree. Legs stretched, his hat tilted across his brows, he glanced upstream and down, and closed his eyes.

But rest was impossible. Presently he stood up and tore a foot-long twig from a low-hanging branch. He proceeded to break the twig into the smallest possible bits, and tossed them one by one onto the surface of the meandering river. In a short while there was a tiny fleet of them, floating downstream.

Brady pushed back his hat and sm-veyed the river in both directions; it wound out of sight both ways, leaving him nothing but the thin perimeter of cotton-woods to look at. He turned back to his horse, tightening the cinch and mounting. Brady frowned and sat there, not moving the horse, curlingone leg over the saddlehorn. He patted his pocket and swore; he did not have his cigarette makings. "Fine day," he muttered. "Fine day-everything's going right." He put his foot down into the stirrup and lifted the reins, yanking his hat low over his forehead.

That was when the sight of something out of place froze him. He squinted forward. Presently a breech-clouted Indian, short and lean, rode a dappled horse out of the trees across the river and sat his horse, regarding Brady.

Brady matched the Indian's frank stare. It meant only one thing: that Indian was not the only Indian around here. Most likely, Brady was surrounded by now.

Brady grimaced. If he hadn't been so stupidly engrossed in his own problems, he would have heard them sneaking up on him. He scowled at the silent Indian and tried to figure up the odds against him, but he had no way of telling how many of them were concealed in the cottonwoods.

Pretty soon they would get tired of their little game. One of the young bucks, more restless than the others, would take a shot at him from the trees. That would be the end. He didn't propose to wait for that.

He had to assume two things. One was that the majority of the Apaches were in the trees behind him on his own side of the river, expecting him to tmn and walk or run from the silent one across the river. Another was that surprise would give him a little edge-the edge he needed-between life and death. "Well," he said, under his breath to the pony, 'Tiere we go."

The Apache across the river sat his dappled horse blandly, unbhnkingly. Brady cocked his muscles, gave his horse warning with a little twitch of the reins, and jabbed in the spurs. He charged straight across the shallow stream into the surprised Indian on the dappled horse.

The Indian shouted and lifted his lance; Brady leaned far forward along the horse's withers, water splashing up against his legs, and lifted his revolver from its holster. He fired two hurried shots.

Shooting from the back of a lunging horse did not make for accuracy. He hit the Indian-the Indian lurched on his saddle and dropped the poised lance -but he had not hit a vital area. A tight grin of tension spHt Brady's lips. He splashed out of the water, and wheeled past the swaying mounted form of the woimded Apache. The Indian reached out for him but missed; Brady spun his horse into the trees with the first of a fusillade of shots winging by him. He heard the bullets strike trees, he heard the boom of Agency rifles and the sharper crack of one fast-shooting Winchester—all this in a few spht seconds.

He plunged his horse, galloping through the fringe of cottonwoods.

He broke out of the trees and sped at a dead run up a slope, crossing a patch of rocks and looking back in time to see the first of the bucks on horseback leaving the trees in pursuit of him. He heard a couple of shots, and ran straight up the slope and over the top and cut shaiply to his left. After a steady run he reined the horse again to the top of the ridge and looked back.

The Indians were strung out in a ragged line. The ten Apaches were considerably beyond accurate rifle range. He ran forward along the crest until he turned to the left again and ran once more for the trees. That was his mistake.

There were very few stupid Apaches when it came to hunting down a man. When he was halfway to the river, a trio of mounted bucks broke from the cottonwoods and charged toward him, rifles lifted.

He cursed and yanked the horse's head around, making for the steep hillside. The maneuver had given the main pai'ty of braves a chance to gain on him. He fired a few random shots over his shoulder, and felt the horse begin to scramble, attacking the stifle rise of the hill. The firing of the Apache rifles increased. Ricocheting bullets screamed off rock surfaces. A glance backward showed him that the three Apaches from the river had joined the main party; they were within two hundred yards. Far back along the trees, a straggling solitary rider was trotting forward. He guessed it was the one he had charged and wounded at the river.