The Apache brave held his rifle up in salute to his companions.
"He was alone," the brave said. "Ride back to the others. Tell them the way to Oto-A-Pe is clear."
His companions whooped, turned, and rode madly back.
The Apache paused to look down at the unmoving white man, new ragged newspaper scattering around him. Then the brave turned, whooping once himself, to ride back and join his brothers.
Lincoln and Thomas were emerging from the pass leading from the cactus field when three men surrounded them. Thomas didn't see faces; there were bandanas covering the features, and the men had their hats pulled down over their eyes. But he did recognize the one gruff voice that told the other two men to "be quick about it," and then told one of them to shut up when he started to mention the gruff man's name.
"Just do it," the gruff man said.
Lincoln, groaning from his hurt leg, was hauled down off his horse by one of the riders and thrown to the ground. A gun was held to his head.
"You get up, darkie, you die," the gruff voice said.
The other rider motioned Thomas down at gunpoint, and when Thomas had dismounted, the gruff one faced the Lieutenant.
"I'm gonna enjoy this," the man said. Then to the one holding Thomas at gunpoint, he added, "Hold him."
The man put his gun away and pinned Thomas's arms behind him. Then the gruff one reached his fist back and hit Thomas square in the jaw.
Thomas's head twisted to one side, then he looked the gruff one straight in the eye and said, "Why don't you show your face? You always were a coward, Forsen."
"Damn, he knows you!" the one covering Lincoln said. "You said he wouldn't â what are we gonna do now?"
"Shut up and cover the other darkie," Forsen said. He drew down this bandana and smiled at Thomas. "I don't care if you see my face, since I'm gonna kill you, anyway."
"Hey, wait a minute!" the one covering Lincoln said. "You said we'd beat 'em up is all! I don't want no trouble from Murphy in town!"
Forsen turned on him. "I said, shut up!" The other man took in a deep breath, but said nothing.
Forsen turned on Thomas and hit him again. This time the Lieutenant went black for a moment. When he came to, Forsen was already swinging at him again.
"You . . . always . . . were . . . a . . . coward. . . ." He got out, and then he heard his own voice fade away.
He awoke to, he thought, the sun rising.
But he found that when he tried to open his eyes, he could not, they were so swollen. He heard movement nearby.
"Trooper?"
"Here, Lieutenant." Lincoln sounded weak but alive.
"They beat you?"
"They were going to, but the one covering me with the gun wouldn't let them. He and Forsen had a fight. Forsen was going to shoot you after you were down. The one covering me turned his gun on him and made him back away. The third one sided against Forsen, finally, and they rode out."
"How's your leg?"
"Broken, sir." Lincoln laughed through pain. Thomas laughed, too, but found that when he did it, his face hurt, "Lord . . ." "Just take it easy, sir."
"What time is it?"
"Midday."
"What!"
"I thought you were dead, Lieutenant.
Forsen beat you so bad I thought you'd died.
But I couldn't crawl over there. . . ." Lincoln winced in pain.
"It's all right. We'll get out of this soon. . . ."
But suddenly Thomas felt a wave of pain and weakness come over him. His limbs wouldn't respond when he tried to move them. Then blackness in the midst of day claimed him again.
When Thomas awoke again it was twilight. Now, he was able to open his eyes a little. He saw Lincoln next to him, seemingly asleep, an open canteen beside him.
"Lord, what a pair," Thomas whispered, and this time when he tried to move his arms they worked, and he sat up.
Gently, he felt his face. He didn't like the contours his fingers found. But there was nothing broken. His nose was bloodied, and his jaw ached, and his eyes hurt when he opened them to more than a squint, but the fact was that Forsen, besides being a coward, did not pack a deadly punch. For that, Thomas was grateful.
He moved slowly to Trooper Reeves, and shook the young man awake.
"Trooper."
"Sir . . ."
"You washed my eyes, didn't you, Trooper?"
"Yes," Reeves said with some effort. "Was able to crawl on over to you. . . ."
Thomas felt the young man's forehead. There was fever. The broken leg had obviously become infected.
"Don't say another thing, Trooper," Thomas said. "We're getting out of here, now. I'm getting you to a doctor."
"Thank you, sir. . . ." Reeves said faintly. "I said don't speak! And thank
you,
Trooper."
"It's all right, sir. . . ."
Groaning with the hurt in his body, Thomas Mullin hauled himself to his feet, staggered to the horses, and before long had pulled the now unconscious Trooper onto his horse, tethered behind Thomas's own. With a mighty effort, he pulled himself up into his own saddle, and turned toward Tucson.
After one of the longest nights he had ever spent, Thomas finally reached the city an hour before dawn. He rode on to Marshal Murphy's office. When he received no response, he tied the horses up. An overwhelming weariness overcame him. He nearly blacked out. Summoning his last reserves of strength, he brought the unconscious Lincoln off his horse and set him against the front of the Marshal's building. Then he sat down beside the young man, and closed his eyes.
"We'll just wait here awhile, Trooper," he said, trying to summon strength that wasn't there.
Once more, blackness overtook him.
They moved liked clouds on the silent wind.
Lone Wolf was proud of his braves. Even Curling Smoke, at his advanced age, had seemed to draw strength from their mission, turning into a young buck again. The only one that Lone Wolf did not fully trust was Le-Cato, the Tohono O'otam, the Papagos chief, who had not raised his hand against one of the white men they had found along their path. Even the large group of campers they had swooped down upon, with blood enough for all, had proven too small a band for Le-Cato to join in the killing. Afterward, when scalps had been taken, he and Le-Cato had locked eyes, and the old man had turned away.
In two days they would be in the land of Le-Cato's people, and then the Papagos would either prove worthy hosts, or unworthy opponents. Lone Wolf knew that the Tohono O'otam would not oppose him, if only because Le-Cato had given his word; but the unspoken understanding was that if Le-Cato's people did anything to harm their enterprise, the Tohono O'otam would be slaughtered. Even in this
day of domination by the white man, the government could not prevent that. When the other tribes rose up against Le-Cato's people, the white man would come too late to the rescue. This Le-Cato and Lone Wolf both knew. So a kind of truce was maintained.
Then again, Lone Wolf had not told Le-Cato of their true mission, and what the eagle who lived on Oto-A-Pe was getting for them. If Le-,Cato knew these things, he would doubtless oppose Lone Wolf, no matter what the consequences. And before Lone Wolfs plan had been carried out, he doubted he could muster any opposition to the Tohono O'otam from the other tribes. For now, he needed the old man.
Lone Wolf turned to look at Le-Cato now. "Soon we will be in the land of the eagle, brother."
Le-Cato looked at him wearily, and nodded.
"And the people of the eagle will prove a good friend of the Apache, will they not?"
Le-Cato drew himself up, still looking at Lone Wolf, and nodded curtly again.
"Good, brother," Lone Wolf said, smiling, and turned to urge his own horse ahead at a faster pace.
~ * ~
Two more days.
Two more days and Reney Coleman would
have the weekend off. One weekend a month, and damn if that wasn't enough.
But, working for the white man, working for the Ranger Copper Mine, you took what they gave you, smiled, and kept smiling even when they took half of it away.
Reney stretched, stepped out of his pup tent, looked at the stars. Clear night. Then, nearly every night in this damn desert was clear. Nothing like Memphis, Tennessee. Sometimes he missed Memphis, not the people but the land. There was a little more to the seasons, there. This time of year, winter would be huffing its breath, ready to leave soon. And, in another month or so, spring would start to rise. He loved spring in Tennessee, the smell of hickory trees in bloom, the flowers. Out here in godforsaken Arizona, there was spring, but it looked much like winter and fall and summer. Degrees of heat was the only difference. In spring, you wouldn't be able to stand outside at three in the afternoon without burning your tailbone off, and in winter you could. Big difference.
Reney wondered about the black man he had met on the train the week before. Now there was a fellow looking for trouble. Said he liked this part of the country, too. Negroes like that made Reney nervous. Always pushing for more. And all that usually got the pusher was the business end of a whip or rope. And this man had been tough. More than Army tough. Black stone.
Reney sighed, wished the man well. Mullin, his name had been. Probably dead by now, though you never knew .
Stretching again, Reney looked at his dead fire, decided it didn't need relighting, and turned to go back into his tent to sleep. Time to head out back East to the mining company tomorrow, get his pay, get into Tucson for the weekend, maybe even catch a glimpse of who's-his-name, Teddy Roosevelt -
Something caught Reney's eye, way off in the distance against the dark horizon of a hill.
He had good eyes, and turned to look that way. Nothing. But then, something. A dark shape, high on a horse, standing still. The movement of the horse's head had caught his attention.
Quiet as a mouse, Reney left his tent behind and crept to the edge of his hollow. He could still see the top of the rider above him. Reney was well hidden, and if he was quiet he was sure the other man couldn't see him. Strangers, especially at night, were not something that Reney wanted near his camp.
He crouched, slowly climbed up out of his hollow, keeping the rider's head in view until it was hidden by the rocks above.
He stopped when he reached the top of the rise, then slowly raised his head.
The rider was gone.
Damn.
He rose higher. At first he saw nothing on the sloping plain below, a stand of saguaro in the moonlight, nothing more.
Then, one of the cactus moved, and he had his rider in sight.
Injun. No doubt about it, the way the man rode, and Reney could now see the man's bare back. Reney wondered what the hell a Papagos was doing here, thirty miles from his reservation, where he was neither wanted nor allowed.
A chill went up Reney's back as he realized that the stand of saguaro the Injun had ridden into was not a field of cactus at all, but other riders.
Reney counted six â no, seven. Seven Injuns, tall in the saddle, grouped in the moonlight.
Then another chill went up Reney's back as the original Injun he had seen waved to something in the distance, and a small army of Injuns appeared out of the darkness of the far hills and rode silently toward the group of seven.
Reney lost count at eighty, and stood rooted to his spot as the small army hooked up with the new band, then rode straight toward him, passing on the plain below, not fifty feet from the hollow where his camp was.
He thanked the Lord his fire was out, for they would have smelled the smoke for sure.
And they weren't Papagos. Reney thought he recognized one Papagos among them, Le-Cato, the new big chief or whatever they called him. But he couldn't be sure.
The Injuns rode on below him, the only sound their horses' huffing. Suddenly Reney felt the cold of the night, but again he thanked the Lord for that dead fire of his. . . .
He waited till the Injuns were well out of sight to the east, heading toward the mountains outside of Tucson.
Then, he rushed back to his camp, broke down his tent, and packed his horse.
If he was lucky, he could get back to the mining camp by morning. If Frawley didn't believe him, he'd go straight to the big man, Mates. Someone would take him seriously. The mining company would at least tell someone back in Tucson, and Fort Ranier would be alerted by telegraph, and the army boys would look into this thing, and do something about it. But that could take days.
Climbing up onto his horse, Reney wondered if that Negro Mullin knew about this, if this was why the man was here.
He shook his head. Don't think, get out. Get out and let the white men handle it. "Wish I was back in Memphis."
Reining his horse around, Reney heard a sound above him, a scratch on the rocks.
Oh, Lord, they've found me.
But, looking up, he saw nothing.