Apache Country (20 page)

“And?”

“Two calls. One to Charlie Goodwin. One to
Olin McKittrick.”

“So McKittrick knew,” Easton breathed.

“It’s not what you could call evidence.”

“What about Garcia Flat? You find anything up
there?”

“Tire marks, maybe half a mile from where
they found the bodies. Someone was up there on a trail bike.”

“You took casts?”

“And photographs.”

“Where are they?”

“In a safe place.”

“Joe Apodaca has a trail bike,” Easton
said.

“Wait a minute, wait just a damned minute,”
Cochrane said. “Let me try to get ahold of all this.”

“Tom,” Easton said slowly, emphasizing each
word. “They’re in it together. It’s the only explanation. Only two
people knew I was going to be on that road with Ironheel: Tom
Carmody and Olin McKittrick. And I sure as hell don’t think Tom
Carmody set us up.”

Easton heard Cochrane let out his breath in a
long sigh. “What you want me to do?” he said.

“Nothing,” Easton said urgently. “Until I get
Ironheel in front of a grand jury there’s not much any of us can
do. That bike of Joe’s, it’s a Harley, right?”

“Right.”

“If we could get casts of his tires ...”

“I love that ‘we’,” Cochrane said sourly.
“Dave, I’m gonna need to let Jack in on this, that okay?”

“Use your best judgment, Tom.”

“Ironheel with you?”

“Absolutely. He’s it, Tom. He’s the whole
bang shoot. We lose him, they’re fireproof. Keep that in mind, will
you?”

“I guess.”

“There’s something else. I need ammunition.
Nine mill for the Glock. Shotgun shells.”

“That all?” Cochrane said drily. “Who you
planning to shoot?”

“No one, I hope. But if anyone comes after us
we might need to … discourage them.”

“How do we work it?”

“There’s a convenience store at Hondo.
McCullom’s. You know it?”

“Affirmative.”

“There’s a trash can on the forecourt.”

“Forecourt, trash can, got it. When?”

“Your call, Tom.”

“Tonight be OK?” Cochrane told him. “Around
seven, say?”

“Tom,” Easton said. “I can’t begin—”

“Thanks for that. I’ll get right on it,”
Cochrane said and hung up abruptly. Someone in the office had come
within earshot, Easton decided. He got another dial tone and called
his home. Grita answered.

“Grita, it’s me,” he said in Spanish. He
heard her gasp. “Don’t talk, just listen. Estoy seguro. I’m all
right. What you’ve seen on TV, what you’ve heard, it’s not true.
But something bad is happening and I have to stay away from home
until I find out what it is.”

“They said the Apache took you away into the
mountains.”

“That’s where we are. But I’m not a prisoner.
He’s helping me.”

“I tried to keep the little one away from TV.
But she heard about it at school. Those kids …”

“Tell her I love her and I’ll be home soon,
will you do that?”

“Por cierto. You need anything, food,
clothes, I bring it to you,” she said, and he blessed her silently
for her unqualified trust.

“Some bad men tried to kill us,” he told her.
“I am afraid they might try to use you or Jessye as a means to trap
us.”

“Who are these people?”

“Better you don’t know,” he told her. “Grita,
I want you to take Jessye, go away as soon as you can. Is there
someplace you can go where nobody can find you?”

She was silent for a moment, thinking.

“You remember my aunt, Tia Poli? The one who
taught me the Apache song?”

“I remember.”

“We go there,” Grita said. “Tomorrow. I fix
with the school. Stay till you come. You know where, si?”

The old aunt who had traded with the Apache
lived up in the Gila Forest east of Silver City. He remembered
Grita telling him Tia Poli’s adobe casita was up a winding canyon
road near the old Georgetown cemetery, hard enough to locate even
when you knew where it was. He breathed a sigh of relief.

“That’s perfect,” he said. “Ma’ cuidado,
comprende?”

“Have no fear. I will watch over the little
one.”

“I know you will, Grita. You always have.
Vaya con Dios.”

“Estamos todos en Sus manos, patrón,” she
said.

Mack Gallerito watched impassively as they
got back into their truck and drove off. He probably would have had
the same expression on his face if they’d driven off a cliff,
Easton thought. He was beginning to get used to what appeared to be
the standard Apache hostility toward the pinda’lick’oye, but there
was no law said he had to like it.

“Muchas gracias, you hard-assed old bastard,”
he muttered as the old man went back into his rundown cabin.
Ironheel heard him and said something to his sister in Apache. She
nodded and smiled a tight little smile.

“What was that?” Easton asked.

“Said it’s going to take a long time to make
you understand what it’s like to be Apache,” Ironheel replied.

“If your friend Gallerito’s a role model I’d
say you’re probably right,” Easton replied.

This time his words touched a nerve because
he saw rancor kindle in the dark eyes. Joanna Ironheel saw it too,
and put her hand on her brother’s arm. He drew in a long breath and
let it out, shaking his head impatiently.

“Baa nagólni’,” he said to his sister. “Tell
him.”

“No matter how it may have looked, Mr.
Easton, Mack Gallerito wasn’t being a hard-assed old bastard,” she
said. “Apache don’t do chitchat. Something’s worth saying, we say
it. If not, we say nothing.”

“You afraid us white-eyes will confuse polite
with gutless?”

“We learned never to give you the chance,”
Ironheel gritted, biting down on the words. “Long time back.”

It got very quiet, a
maybe-nobody-better-say-anything kind of quiet. It stayed that way
as they bumped down the trail into the canyon. Joanna Ironheel’s
back was as straight as a ramrod, and the smolder of disapproval
coming off her brother was practically toxic. Humble pie time,
Easton thought..

“Doo baa shi’l gozhóó da. I apologize,” he
said abruptly into the silence. “What I just said was stupid.”

Surprise lit Ironheel’s eyes, but it was
quickly masked. His sister allowed herself the thinnest of
smiles.

“Apology acknowledged,” she said.

The clipped tone told Easton ‘acknowledged’
was not in this instance a synonym for ‘accepted.’ Apache and their
goddamned pride. Did they think they were the only ones who had
any? He took a deep breath and started over.

“You’re probably wondering who I called back
there,” he said.

They waited, saying nothing. Was that more of
the Apache way, he mused, or their way of telling him they were
wondering no such thing? Whatever it was, their lack of interest
was disconcerting. Maybe they were confident Yusn would take care
of them, he thought. Maybe so, but since Yusn was the Apache god,
he wasn’t about to take a chance on the care extending to him.

He told them about his call to Tom Cochrane,
and his friend’s promise to make a drop outside McCullom’s later
that evening.

“That’s a lot of trust,” Ironheel said. “How
do we work this?”

“It would probably be best if I go down to
Hondo alone.”

Ironheel made an impatient sound.

“Get real, Easton. Last couple of days your
face has been all over TV. You walk into a store, someone will drop
a dime and every cop in New Mexico will be on your case.”

“So what are you saying, you should go?”

“Damn right.”

“Just mingle with all the other Apache doing
a little late night shopping down there, right?” Easton said,
piling on the scorn.

As Ironheel glared back at him, he glanced at
Joanna Ironheel. She had tight hold of the wheel and was staring
straight ahead, her lips pressed together in a thin line. Was she
staying out of it because when there is a difference between men,
Apache women do not intervene, or for reasons best known to
herself? One thing he did know: something was making her good and
mad.

“So,” Ironheel said, leaning as heavily on
the sarcasm as Easton had. “You go down there in them bloodstained
uniform pants, start rummaging about in the trash can, and hope
nobody will notice, that it?”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Joanna Ironheel
snapped, pulling to a stop in front of the cabin. “Will you two
quit butting heads like a couple of rutting elk?”

Rutting elk? Well, well, Easton thought,
struggling not to grin, she sure as hell hadn’t keeping silent out
of respect.

“Did someone ask you for an opinion?”
Ironheel snapped.

“Nizé!” she snapped back, the dark eyes
flashing. “Just save that warrior-code routine for the na’ilins,
big brother. It doesn’t impress me.”

“What does?” he retorted.

They glowered angrily at each other. Siblings
always fight dirtier than strangers, Easton thought. They get more
practice.

“You Neanderthals listen to me,” Joanna
Ironheel said, staring straight ahead. “Neither of you can go down
there. And you both know it.”

Ironheel turned to Easton as if to say, You
tell her. But Easton shook his head.

“She’s right,” he said.

Joanna Ironheel clapped her hands together
and laughed out loud, giving him a sudden glimpse of a younger,
beautiful woman.

“Yéé, now you’re being smart, Mr. Easton,”
she said. “At least you’re man enough to admit you’re wrong.”

Her brother made an impatient, dismissive
sound that is the same in any language: women!

“Not wrong,” Easton protested. “A tad slow on
the uptake, maybe.”

“Both,” she said, and not without
satisfaction.

Joanna Ironheel left for Hondo a little after
seven. Before she left she again made it very clear she was helping
only because there was no alternative.

“I have my own life here,” she told Easton.
“The work I do is important. I will not allow you this thing of
yours to jeopardize it.”

“Fine,” Easton told her, matching her
antagonism with some of his own. “But just remember if I hadn’t
been for this thing of mine, as you call it, your brother would
probably be dead now.”

“You two fight well,” Ironheel observed
sarcastically, and all at once his sister held up both her hands,
palms out.

“And to no point,” she said, with a small
smile of surrender. “Goníninlaa. You win. I will do this thing and
that will be an end to it.”

It was gracious, and he said so.

“Apache are sometimes stubborn because we
have to be, Mr. Easton,” she said.

Later, after the pickup had trundled out of
sight, Easton took a seat on the porch outside the cabin. It was a
still evening, with a roseate sun making a long slow descent down
to the desert floor beyond the mountains. Birds flitted between the
trees. Cicadas sang their endless songs. A red-tailed hawk circled
over Pajarito, looking for prey.

He thought about Jessye and wondered how she
would enjoy her stay with Tia Poli in the Gila mountains. He
imagined her squatting on the patio watching the ants busy at their
work, her slender back a perfectly balanced bow, the way she would
cock her head to one side as if to ask the ants, Why are you doing
that? It would be her bedtime around now. He pictured her asleep,
snuggling Boople, the shapeless cuddly toy Susan had bought her
when she was too young to get her tongue around the word
‘beautiful.’ Then, as he often did at this time of evening, he
thought about Susan. It had taken a long time but he was beginning
to be able to do it now without getting angry.

To begin with it had seemed to be no more
than a minor infection of the thumbnail and Andrew Webber, their
family doctor, prescribed antibiotics. After the treatment it
looked like it had healed, but then the infection recurred, and
this time it seemed slightly worse. Better be on the safe side,
Andy said, and fixed Susan an appointment with a consultant in
Albuquerque who did some tests and then recommended a stronger
antibiotic. Amoxiclavin. Strange how some words stuck in your
head.

When the Amoxiclavin didn’t work either, the
consultant decided it would be prudent to do a biopsy. Nothing to
be concerned about, he said, just a sensible precautionary
measure.

Stop worrying, she said. It’s just a biopsy.
Thousands of people have them, every day of the week.

I love you, let me worry, okay?

You idiot. Nothing’s going to happen.

She went into hospital the following Tuesday
and never came out. Something wrong with her kidneys that hadn’t
shown up in the blood tests, renal collapse followed by almost
immediate heart failure. The specialist couldn’t understand it. We
did everything we could, but she just didn’t rally. He made it
sound like it was Susan’s fault, and rage consumed Easton, rage at
medicine and the charlatans who practiced it.

It was an infected finger, for Christ’s sake.
A infected finger.

You have to try to understand. No one could
have anticipated ...

You killed her. She put her life in your
hands and you killed her.

Be careful what you say, Mr. Easton. You
could find yourself in serious trouble making such rash
statements.

You think anything you can do to me would be
worse than this?

If death is cruel, funerals are crueler
still. No hurt cuts deeper than to watch them lower the woman you
loved above all others into the unfriendly earth. All that was left
was a stone with her name and some lines from a poem she loved.
Just whisper my name in your heart, I will be there. Thinking about
the past made him weep, and thinking about the future was
unbearable. The same words going through your mind over and over:
Never again, never, never.

Then a sudden chill of apprehension touched
him as he noticed a thin, dark plume of smoke began rising above
the tops of the pines off to the southwest. As the same moment,
Ironheel came outside and stood next to him, narrowed eyes watching
the smoke spiraling lazily skyward in the faint breeze.