Apache Country (26 page)

Whinnying with panic, the fat man wheeled
around, bringing the shotgun up, but fast as he was, Ironheel was
faster. The four-inch thick wooden club went whup again and smashed
horizontally into the fat man’s face, and Easton heard the eggshell
sound of fragile bones being crushed. The fat man moaned and sank
to his knees, dropping the shotgun, blood spouting between the
fingers of his hands as he covered his ruined face. Again the club
went whup, striking him above the right ear this time, and he
collapsed in a twitching heap.

Easton broke out of freeze frame, snatching
up the fat man’s shotgun as Ironheel deftly picked up the other
man’s Winchester. His entire body and face were matt with dust. He
had stripped off his clothes, Easton realized, rolled in the dust
until his body was the same color as the earth, then gone silently
past them until he found a suitable ambush spot, lying immobile
among the rocks, invisible until he was ready to strike.

Materialize without warning.

“The big one’s got my Glock,” Easton
warned.

Ironheel nodded and turned over Clay’s inert
body using his foot and the barrel of the Winchester. He wasn’t any
too gentle about it. The big man groaned but remained unconscious
as Ironheel retrieved the automatic, handed it to Easton, then
stepped back.

“Let’s finish this and get out of here,” he
said tightly. He wasn’t even out of breath.

Easton looked around. The fat man had managed
to struggle to his knees, his body swaying like a steer with the
staggers. He fell sideways, thrashing on the ground as he tried to
sit up again. Below the eyebrows his ruined face looked like raw
hamburger. Blood from his shattered nose and cheekbones pattered
down like rain into the indifferent dust. He looked up blindly.

“Hemph me,” he whimpered. “Mleeeth.”

Help me, please. Easton hesitated and
Ironheel’s face hardened.

“Two minutes ago he would have killed you
like a bug,” he snapped. “Don’t waste your time.”

“I just—”

“Get his belt, tie his legs with it. Use the
jacket to bind his arms. I’ll take care of the other one.”

It was brutal, but he was right; they had to
be immobilized. The minute these two got back down to Rio Alto,
they’d blow the whistle. Once the cops knew who had been involved,
the pursuit would reform. And their other, as yet unidentified
pursuers would also pick up their trail again. He went over and
poked the fat man with the shotgun.

“Sit up,” he told him. The man flinched and
held up his bloody hands in reflex action, as if to ward off a
blow.

“Hemph me,” he blubbered. “Ah mee
anockphor.”

Help me, I need a doctor.

“You’re lucky you don’t need an undertaker,”
Easton rasped. He took hold of the sleeves of the fat man’s
camouflage jacket and ripped it off him, then unceremoniously
rolled him over to yank his wide leather belt out of its loops. The
fat man groaned and made glutinous, incomprehensible noises that
Easton ignored. By the time he had him trussed, it was beginning to
get dark.

He looked around. Ironheel had already bound
the hands and feet of the still-unconscious Clay and was waiting a
few yards down the trail, naked but for a small loincloth, the
Winchester over his shoulder. He held up a bunch of keys and
jangled it.

“Want to bet it’s a pickup?” he said.

“Where are your clothes?” Easton asked.

Ironheel pointed toward the bushes. Easton
waited as he picked up the concealed bundle and got into a pair of
jeans and a shirt before they continued down the hill. Behind them
they could hear the fat man hoarsely shouting an endless litany of
muffled obscenities. As the sounds gradually faded with distance a
thought occurred to Easton. If no one happened up this trail for a
few days, both men might easily die of exposure or dehydration. He
said as much to Ironheel.

“Breaks your heart just thinking about it,”
Ironheel grunted. “Right?”

“Right,” Easton said.

Think Apache. Compassion gets you killed.

Ironheel won his bet. Parked canted over on
the side of the canyon, maybe a hundred yards above where the
pavement came to an end, was a red Mitsubishi pickup with El Paso
County license plates and an NRA bumper sticker. That figured,
Easton thought.

He swung the passenger door open. On the cab
floor was a scabbard with a shoulder strap for the Winchester.
Spring clips above the rear window for the shotgun. Stuffed under
the seats were a couple of kapok-filled body warmers that smelled
of sweat and tobacco. They put them on anyway. They would be
welcome in the approaching coolness of the night.

“You realize we’ve blown any chance we had of
overnighting in a cabin up here,” Easton said. “Got any other good
ideas?”

“With these wheels we could be in Albuquerque
in three hours,” Ironheel said thoughtfully. “Go straight to the
FBI.”

“Forget it,” Easton said. “They’d just hand
us straight back to Joe Apodaca. We’re going to need a lot more
evidence than we’ve got right now before we go anywhere near the
Feebs.”

“And how do we get it while we’re hiding out
in the mountains?”

“I don’t know yet,” Easton said, and it was
the truth. A plan of sorts was forming in his mind, but it still
had a long way to go. Ironheel got into the pickup, started the
engine.

“We can’t go far in this thing,” Easton
warned him. “If those two get loose …”

“Dázhugó,” Ironheel said. “Sure. But at least
we can save ourselves a few miles.”

He drove down the hill toward town. The shops
and boutiques were all brightly lit, the sidewalks busy with early
evening strollers. Rio Alto was suffering from overkill. In the
winter, befuddled après-skiers clumped about in boots and snowsuits
like drunken carthorses. In the spring it was the horse racing
high-rollers, noisy and brash. In the summer brain-dead backpackers
with oversized rucksacks that swiped you off the sidewalks. In the
Fall ten thousand leather-clad bikers descended on the town and
turned it into Harley-Davidson hell. You really had to love the
tourist dollar to go through all that.

At the Y junction Ironheel turned left and
drove up through what somebody who’d clearly never seen one had
named Alpine Village. At the top of the hill, opposite an Italian
restaurant, the highway branched east, passing a strip mall with a
supermarket before snaking down in long hairpin bends into the
scattering of buildings that formed the village of Perth.

By this time, Easton had checked the glove
compartment and found a metal water canteen and a box of shells for
the Winchester. He stuffed as many shells as he could into the
pockets of the body warmer, then filled the canteen with mineral
water before looping the strap around his shoulder. What lay ahead
of them couldn’t be done without water.

At the bottom of the hill, Ironheel swung off
the road and took the stony trail leading up to Lindo Lake. It was
pitch dark now, and the headlights made the potholes in the track
look like the craters of the moon. At the campsite on the south
fork of the Rio Lindo, Ironheel pulled into the big parking lot. It
was about two thirds full. They could see lights in some of the
RVs. South Fork was one of the biggest camping sites in the area.
Every week in the summer, hundreds of people used it as a
jumping-off point for hiking, horseback riding, fishing, nature
trails. Cars, wagons, RVs, pickups came and went every hour of the
day.

“End of the line,” Ironheel said.

“Want to go over to Bonito Lou’s and get a
six pack and some Doritos?” Easton grinned, jerking a thumb at the
lighted convenience store nearby.

“No money,” Ironheel said. “You’re wearing
it.”

They got out of the pickup and left the keys
in the ignition. If no one noticed them the Mitsubishi would sit
undisturbed in the parking lot for a long time. Or better still a
bunch of local kids would joyride the hell out of it before
torching it on some back road.

They headed on foot back down the stony track
toward where they had turned off the highway, crossed the empty
road and continued on down Lindo canyon, following the meandering
course of the river. A full moon lit their way. The ground was open
and fairly level and they made good time. After a while they turned
south away from the river. The track sloped upward ahead of them
into the darkness.

“Where we going?” Easton asked Ironheel.

“Used to be an abandoned cabin on the other
side of Coyote Mesa,” he said. “If it’s still there we can use it
tonight. Get an early start tomorrow and be up in the Marcials by
noon.”

It ought to be safe enough, Easton thought.
Nobody knew where they were. Their pursuers were grounded until
they knew where to start looking.

“I never thanked you,” he said. “Back there
in the canyon.”

“No need,” Ironheel replied.

“Maybe apologize, then,” Easton said. “I
thought you’d ditched me.”

“Considered it,” Ironheel grunted.

Easton glanced at him sharply, but in the
thin light could not see if he was smiling or not. They moved on at
the same brisk dogtrot across the moonlit mesa toward an
all-weather road mainly used by people going up to the starkly
modernistic Tracy Theater sitting on its hilltop like an alien
spacecraft. Once long ago, in a different life in a different
world, he had taken Susan up there to see Glen Campbell in concert.
Galveston, Oh Galveston.

“Dá’ akú,” Ironheel said, breaking into his
reverie. “Over there.”

They topped a low rise; the ground sloped
away down in front of them to the road below. To their left,
sheltered in a grove of native black walnuts, stood a dilapidated
old single-story frame cabin with a ramshackle ramada porch. As
they got nearer Easton saw it had a tumbledown fieldstone chimney
and a roof of rusty, skewed corrugated iron. A central door was
flanked by two big Federal style casement windows with sills about
two feet from the ground.

“House Beautiful,” he said.

Ironheel’s response was, as usual, starkly
practical.

“Chiiz,” he said and pointed. “Firewood. Take
these.”

He handed Easton a book of K-Mart matches,
and while Easton foraged beneath the trees for kindling,
disappeared behind the cabin. Easton heard him working on the rear
door, which gave a protesting squeal as he opened it and went
inside. The bare floorboards protested noisily, then the front door
opened with a reluctant creak and he came out on to the porch
carrying a battered old saucepan. He held it up for Easton to
see.

“Tú,” he said, using the Apache word for
water, and headed off down toward the creek. Not just practical; he
wasn’t exactly extravagant with words, either.

When he had enough wood to start a fire,
Easton went inside and piled it in the old stone fireplace, dry
moss and kindling first, then a few bigger sticks. He lit the
kindling and watched the flames flicker and spread. The small glow
of heat was welcome. Piling on more wood, he got up and looked
around, opening cupboards. Apart from a few old tin cups, all were
empty and gray with dust.

After a while Ironheel came back in with a
panful of water from the creek and put it on the fire to heat. When
it started to simmer he put some white flower petals into it.

“Chamiso blanco?” Easton guessed.

“Dá’áígee” he said. “Right. Rabbitbush
flowers. Makes good tea.”

“My mother used to use chamiso if we had a
fever.”

“Chamiso hediondo is better. Apache also use
the branches for sweat baths. Moisten them and throw them on hot
stones. N’zhoo. Very good.”

“Smells strong.”

“Good for the belly,” Ironheel said. “So are
these. Here.”

He poured a handful of sunflower seeds into
Easton’s cupped palms. They munched on them hungrily as the fire
crackled and the little shack grew warmer. Ironheel got two
battered tin cups out of the cupboard, rinsed them with a little
tea from the pan to get rid of most of the dirt, then filled them
with the warm liquid, and they sat on the floor drinking it. It
didn’t taste like the tea Easton remembered from his childhood, but
it was hot and not unpleasant.

The silence and the small glow of the fire
were companionable but neither of them spoke. Mice scurried behind
the broken plasterboard. Outside in the darkness the trees sighed
in the night breeze. Somewhere an owl hooted. Then another, further
away. The trace of a frown touched Ironheel’s forehead. He got up
and padded across to the door, opening it very quietly just wide
enough to peer out. When the owl hooted again. Ironheel closed the
door and came back across to the hearth, where he squatted with his
back to the fire. It was difficult to be sure in the flickering
light of the flames, but Easton thought he could see unease in the
dark eyes. Ironheel was silent for a long time.

“Something wrong?” Easton said at last.

“Búh,” Ironheel said. “The owl.”

Easton frowned. “What about it?”

“There are many spirits. Some good,
nohwiyi’sizlini. Others evil. Ch’iin.”

“And the owl is one of them?

Ironheel nodded gravely. “Apache believe that
sometimes those who have gone remain for a while near the place
where they died. Their spirits try to communicate with the living
through the voice of the owl.”

“And you think that might be one we just
heard?”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “When you hear búh
hoot, you are supposed to go to the diyunn and make a ceremony to
keep the spirit in good humor on its journey to yaaká’, the Happy
Place. Or maybe it will stay and cause trouble.”

“Diyunn? That’s like a witch doctor,
right?”

“Witch doctor is white man talk,” Ironheel
said scornfully. “Diyunn are okaah yedabik’ehi, those in charge of
worship.”

“Be a tad difficult finding one right now,”
Easton observed. “If that really is a bad spirit out there.”