Apache Country (24 page)

As they slogged on, Easton stoically tried to
ignore the long, reaching ache in his legs and thighs, and the
occasional inadvertent stumble, reminding him how out of condition
he was. To make things worse, Ironheel didn’t even look winded.
Easton remembered something he’d read a long time ago, that in the
old days an Apache warrior could walk forty miles in a day, then
steal a horse and be ready to fight a pitched battle. Maybe
Ironheel could do it, he thought. Me, no. The way he felt right now
he couldn’t have fought a pitched battle with a gopher.

“Tell you what, though,” he thought out loud.
“I could kill for coffee.”

Ironheel nodded absently but did not reply,
like a man with more important things on his mind. The sun moved
down a notch in the afternoon sky. Huge white formations of cumulus
clouds sailed by overhead like galleons on the Spanish Main. It was
cool beneath the trees. Every so often they would come out of the
forest and into a meadow bounded by thickets of soapweed and scrub
oak. Banks of sweet clover, wild roses and showy loco weed added a
riot of color.

“Tell me something,” Easton said. “Where in
the hell are we and where are we going?”

Ironheel stopped and hunkered down, motioning
Easton to join him. He picked up a dry stick and scraped lines into
the dirt. They looked like a big letter `Y’ lying on its side with
the open arms facing east.

“The long straight is Dolorosa Creek,” he
said, pointing with the stick. “Mescalero Agency right here where
the arms join.”

Easton nodded his understanding. The main
stem of the `Y’ was the highway, US 70, which ran alongside the
creek down to Dolorosa. The top arm followed the north fork up to
Rio Alto. The lower one was a minor road that branched off at
Mescalero and followed the south fork of Dolorosa Creek, meandering
up through the ski area and mock-Austrian village of Highcroft.
Parallel to that road ran a state road which joined the main
highway about three miles north of Mescalero.

“Right opposite the junction is Goat Canyon,”
Ironheel said, making a line in the dirt with his stick. “There’s a
trail that goes around in back of the Rio Alto Rodeo Grounds and up
toward Grindstone.”

“How long will that take?” Easton asked.

Ironheel squinted up at the sun. “It’s about
nine, ten miles from here as the eagle flies,” he said. “We ought
to be up there late afternoon, maybe six, six thirty. How do you
feel?”

“High as the flag on the Fourth of July,”
Easton said, ignoring Ironheel’s frown. He probably didn’t know too
many show songs, either. “We heading for the Sagrados?”

Ironheel nodded. “Just the foothills. From
there we can try to work our way up into the Marcials, then come
around into Riverside from the north.”

“How far is that?”

“Altogether? Forty five, fifty miles.”

Less than an hour by car, Easton thought
ruefully. Covering three, four miles an hour, even if they could
keep moving eight slogging hours a day, it would take a minimum of
two days to get even within reach of help. Always supposing they
managed to evade their pursuers, and always supposing he could keep
up with Ironheel, neither of which was by any means guaranteed.
Ironheel had set a fierce pace from the start and it didn’t look
like he was going to make any concessions.

“You going to be able to do this, Easton?”
Ironheel said, as if he had read Easton’s thoughts.

Easton nodded. “I’ll do it.”

“Gets pretty tough.”

“You told me that before.”

Ironheel shrugged. Your funeral.

Using a fallen branch to obliterate the map
he had drawn in the dust, he stood up, looking down toward the
Dolorosa valley. He pulled in a long deep breath and let it out
slowly.

“Hiit’ash doleel.” he said. “Let’s take a
walk.”

Around five thirty, with the sun dropping
down toward the Sierra Blanca, they reached the junction of
Cienegita Canyon and Carrizo Creek, not far from a back road that
ran down from the Forest Service lookout tower at the head of the
creek and then into Rio Alto past the KRRR radio tower. They had to
scramble into the brush a couple of times when a vehicle came
bumping up the rough track behind them, but apart from that they
saw no one.

From the Cienegita junction they clambered up
another ridge and reached the flatter top of Grindstone Mesa. Below
them in its narrow canyon, the little resort town of Rio Alto
basked in the late afternoon sun. Twenty-odd years ago it had been
a pokey little wooden cabin village catering to the local hunting
trade. Now it sprawled all over the mountains, with downtown
gambling casinos and luxury hotels and every kind of restaurant
from Tex-Mex to Thai.

In spite of Easton’s slowing pace, they made
good time along the ridge. After they had walked about another two
miles, they came down a steep gradient trail into a pretty wooded
canyon that sloped sharply up to the west, the bright yellow
flowers of goldenrod and prickly pear decking its flanks. They
followed the rocky watercourse uphill for maybe half a mile before
Ironheel stopped and looked around like Brigham Young making his
big decision.

“Hanányol,” he said. “Rest.”

Easton sank gratefully to the ground. The
complete stillness of the mountains enveloped them. Although they
were no more than a couple of miles from the bustling streets of
Rio Alto, this deserted canyon could just as easily have been on
the far side of the moon. He could hear mourning doves lamenting in
the trees. Ironheel dug a heel into the earth. It was soft and
loamy. He looked at Easton and pointed downward.

“Dig a hole.”

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

Using their hands and Ironheel’s hunting
knife they made a hole with shelving sides, maybe eighteen inches
deep at the bottom and the same across. Next Ironheel told Easton
to go get some large pebbles from the creek bed and showed him how
to line the hole with them while he foraged for dry leaves, pine
needles, and small twigs. When he came back he placed them in a
layer on the stones, then lit them with a book match. They burned
rapidly with a bright flame and very little smoke.

He piled on thicker twigs and sun-dried
cottonwood branches he had picked up in the creek bed, breaking
them into lengths of about three or four inches. Sweetly pungent
smoke curled up. The fire sparked as they puffed at the embers and
an old song his father used to play on the radiogram started going
around in Easton’s head. It took him a while to remember the title
was “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire,” and the group that
sang it were called The Ink Spots. Like to see them try to get away
with a name like that today, he thought.

“Keep feeding the fire,” Ironheel told him,
getting to his feet. “Those stones need to be really hot.”

“You going somewhere?”

Ironheel ignored the question and set off
downhill with long, confident strides. Easton watched him until he
disappeared silently into the trees further down the canyon. Once
again he was surprised by the man’s ability to move so quietly,
almost without sound. Move like the wind, he had said earlier in
the day. Hunched over the fire, making sure it didn’t generate too
much smoke, Easton felt like he was back in his own backyard, with
Jessye watching him get the barbecue going.

“Daddy, who invented fire?”

“It was discovered, honey, not invented. Fire
was always there. It needed someone to discover it. The cave men, I
guess.”

“But how did they find out how to make fire
burn?” She persisted.

“Probably by accident,” he said. “Maybe
lightning struck and they carried the flame back to their cave. Or
maybe they rubbed sticks together until there was a flame and that
was how it began.”

“Poor cave men,” Jessye sighed. “No
Easi-start.”

After maybe half an hour Ironheel reappeared
as silently as he had departed, a chicken hanging limply in his
right hand. In his left hand was a bundle of green tule shoots.

“Apache recipe,” he said, holding up his
trophy for Easton to see. “First, steal a chicken. How’s that
fire?”

“Ready when the chicken is,” Easton said.
“Where did you get it?”

There were a couple of scratch-ankle farms
back along the Cienegita, Ironheel told him as he methodically
plucked the chicken, small places set back a little distance from
the creek. All he had to do was find one that didn’t have dogs,
grab a chicken and wring its neck.

When the bird was plucked he gutted it and
dropped the giblets on the ground, cut off the head and feet, then
divided the carcass roughly into four sections. His movements were
deft and sure. Raking the red embers of the fire aside with a
stick, he laid the chicken pieces skin down on the hot stones
beneath. They made a fat, sizzling sound and almost immediately
gave off a mouth-watering aroma.

“N’zhoo,” Ironheel said appreciatively.
“Good.”

He reached for the tule shoots, laying them
crisscross over the jointed bird until it was covered completely.
Then, using a forked stick, he pushed the stones from the side of
the pit closer up against the already smoking flesh.

“Cover it,” he said.

Using their hands they piled the earth they
had dug out of the pit on top of the tule shoots and tamped it down
until they could no longer hear the chuckling sizzle of the meat
underneath it.

“Is this what you call a belly fire?” Easton
asked. Surprise flickered momentarily in Ironheel’s eyes. He shook
his head.

“Earth oven,” he said, settling back on his
haunches. He was silent for a moment, as if working out which words
he wanted to use. “Don’t know many whites who know about belly
fires.”

“I said I didn’t know much about the Apache,”
Easton told him. “Not that I didn’t know anything.”

Ironheel’s habitually forbidding expression
came as near to a smile as Easton had yet seen. He wondered if it
signified approval.

“Belly fires were pretty small,” Ironheel
said.

If an Apache was on the run, either alone or
in a group, he would never light a fire that might give away his
presence to his pursuers. Instead he would scoop a small hole in
the ground, and in it light a tiny fire, squatting close to it for
warmth and shielding its glow with his body. When the embers were
almost burned out he would cover the ashes with a thin layer of
sand or earth and then lie over it, using the residual heat to ward
off the bitter chill of the desert night.

With a small gesture that might have
indicated he was surprised at himself for talking so much, Ironheel
stood up.

“Kee t’agé ndeezi,” he said abruptly. “Cowboy
boots.”

“What?”

“Those ropers you’re wearing. They won’t be
any use at all up in the mountains. You got money?”

Easton took out his billfold and handed it
over. Ironheel took out all the notes – about $120 – and handed it
back to him empty.

“That a loan?” Easton grinned. “Or a
confiscation?”

His remark elicited a slightly impatient
frown, which Easton figured meant Ironheel wasn’t very big on
irony, either. After asking him for his shoe and clothing sizes,
Ironheel stuck the money in his back pocket and without a word
started off down the canyon again and disappeared into the trees.
The vanishing Indian. A ‘Lo’ unto himself. Easton allowed himself a
smile at the sad little pun.

The sweet scent of cooking chicken seeping up
out of the earth oven was making him feel very hungry, but he knew
it would be some time before it was ready to eat, so he settled his
back against a big boulder still warm from the afternoon sun and
watched the gullied flanks of the Sierra Blanca turning from tan to
gold to red. Quail called somewhere off in the brush, and once he
saw the bright flicker of a hummingbird amid a scarlet cluster of
Arizona thistle. Ants were scurrying busily around the chicken
entrails on the ground. Crows floated among the tall trees, their
broken calls like the cries of castaways. When they stopped the
silence was enormous.

He found himself thinking about Joanna
Ironheel and wishing he had talked with her more. She was not
beautiful, but he had sensed a warmth behind the professional
exterior. He wondered what Apache girls did while their brothers
learned to track and hunt. In the old days Apache women had to be
as tough and resourceful as the men. Maybe they still were.

She had shown no sign of fear as the
helicopter howled angrily above them, he remembered. The Chiricahua
strain. How much of her was still that, and how much of it had she
given up, or been forced to put aside, to become a doctor in the
white man’s world? When you had to suppress or deny your origins
you surrendered something that could not be repurchased. As he knew
only too well.

The pearly opalescence of twilight was
beginning to creep into the arroyo when he heard a faint sound and
turned to see Ironheel coming out of the trees and up the hill
toward him. He was carrying two big shoppers and a smaller one. He
put the smaller one down and handed one of the bigger ones to
Easton, who fished out of it a black sweatshirt, a pair of black
jeans, a blue denim work shirt, a pair of yellow leather work
boots, socks and underwear.

“K-Mart,” Ironheel said by way of
explanation.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” Easton
said.

In grade school the better off kids who wore
brand name clothes had a joke that went: What are the first English
words a Mexican baby learns? ‘Attention K-Mart shoppers.’ If, like
him, you were wearing K-Mart clothes, it was pretty cruel.

“Thought we could use sweatshirts,” Ironheel
said. “It can get pretty cool up here at night.”

“Why everything black?”

Ironheel just looked at him. Dumb question:
black makes you harder to see.