Kitt Peak (13 page)

"Hey!"

The white man dropped the gun, looked up as the claw came slashing down again. "You can't — !"

The eagle finished its work, pulled the white man's body to the edge of the cliff on its promontory, and pushed it over.

It watched the body plummet to the rocks below, then went back and retrieved the satchel and the box the white man had dropped.

The eagle went back to its promontory perch, fluttered its wings, looked at the sky.

"Soon," it said, and then dreamed as the night passed by.

In Abilene, Texas, on the second leg of his trip west, President Theodore Roosevelt was ebullient. This was his country! God, how he loved it. The cowboys, the rodeo shows, the ranching exhibitions, it brought back nothing but good memories of a period in his life that had started bleakly and ended in the White House. This was a marvelous part of the United States! And if only Jenkins and Mawdrey would leave him alone and let him enjoy it! But there the two Secret Service men were, constantly hounding him, trying to keep him away from crowds, separating him from his people!

"I won't have it!" Teddy thundered again and again, and finally the two guard dogs would have to let him have his way. "This is a bully country, and I want to breathe it all in!"

Not to mention, gather those votes. For next year's election would be a doozy, and Roosevelt knew that the West might very well hold the key to the Republicans holding on to power.

"God, how I love it!" Roosevelt bellowed, turning to flash his smile at the crowd as he boarded the train west. The Texans were fine people, great people, and they had given him quite a show.

"Where to next?" Roosevelt said as the observation car's door closed behind him, leaving the crowd to look at bunting as the train pulled away. "Where in God's name do we go next?"

Roosevelt was like a little child, his eyes bright, unable to sit, bending to stare out the window and wave at the few who could see him.

"Tucson, Arizona, sir," Mawdrey said, in his slow drawl. While Roosevelt looked perpetually charged-up, Mawdrey looked perpetually half-asleep, except his eyes, which were always moving, always alert.

"Then up to Phoenix, over to California, then back through Wyoming," Jenkins finished. He was efficient, cool, and always awake, though seemingly without any enthusiasm at all, which drove Roosevelt to distraction.

"Wyoming! Bully!" Roosevelt cried. "And we're visiting my old ranch out there, right?"

Mawdrey looked to Jenkins, who checked down his list. "Exactly one week from now, sir. We've arranged for your old trail boss to be there, and some of the hands who worked at the ranch when you were there

"Absolutely bully!" Roosevelt shouted. He looked as though he were going to explode. "But next we go to

"Tucson, sir. Arizona."

"Wonderful country! Fine landscape. Saguaro cactus and pinion pine. Didn't we do something last year about the saguaro, protect it, or something?"

Jenkins said, "Yes, sir. You signed a law which will establish a national monument "

"Can't wait to see it! Can't wait to see Tucson!" Roosevelt began to pace, as Mawdrey and Jenkins looked at each other and sighed.

"Who's for a game of gin rummy?" Roosevelt said, grinning, returning from the far end of the observation coach to hold a deck of cards under Mawdrey's nose.

"I suppose I am," the sleepy Secret Service man said, and Roosevelt looked over to Jenkins, smiling broadly, holding the cards out, until Jenkins threw up his hands and said, "Me, too, Mr. President."

By morning, Thomas felt better. He had almost passed out twice during the night, once nearly tumbling from the saddle before pulling himself back up, wincing in pain, and taking a deep breath to focus his mind. But after finding and eating some of Bartow's jerky in his saddlebag, he had begun to feel some strength seep back into his limbs. Amazingly, after a second chew of the tough meat, he was nearly his old self.

He had once done a study of the various range foods, jerky included, and had decided that the chewy, stringy meat had, in its own small way, helped to settle the American West. More cowboys, settlers, and scouts had been kept alive with this nutritious, preserved food than any other; without it, many of them would have been forced to eat unknown native plants while on long rides, and probably taken sick. In lean times, when game was scarce, and in winter, when vegetables and edible plants were nonexistent, and especially in situations where provisions had to be light, and canned goods too bulky to pack, jerky had provided one of the only solutions. It was a remarkable, if saddle-like, food.

Thomas reached into his saddlebag, still cringing slightly at the pain in his limbs, and removed another chew. The sun was nearly up behind him. Ahead, the Baboquivari Mountains loomed closer, and one in particular, Kitt Peak, sat right in the middle of his path.

We have a date, my friend, Thomas thought.

In the purpling dawn, the approaching peak was balefully majestic. He could well see why the Tohono O'otam had come to consider it a sacred mountain. Though it barely towered over its neighboring crags, it dominated them in other ways. There was a brooding majesty to it, a solid perfection. Thomas had been in and around mountains for almost his entire Army career, but this peak commanded respect. Though he put little stock in what he basically considered superstition, he could understand why the Papagos had settled in the shadow of this monster, and considered it a holy place. He could understand why they feared it.

None of this, of course, prevented him from beginning the long climb to its peak.

The trails were well laid out. Yet, because of Kitt Peak's steepness, he made little progress in elevation. At midday he stopped to eat and rest, and found himself on a small promontory overlooking the Papagos reservation nestled at the base of the mountain below. He estimated he had climbed perhaps three thousand feet, though he might have covered five miles of trail.

The reservation looked deserted.

Thomas went to the edge of the promontory and studied the scene below. Not a sound was in the main street of the Papagos settlement; he could not make out a single figure or horse anywhere on the grounds. Wash was hung out to dry, but there were no cooking fires, nothing to indicate that anyone lived there.

Thomas scanned the area surrounding the reservation. Again, nothing. It was as if the entire tribe of the Tohono O'otam had disappeared.

Above and behind him, from the upper cliffs, Thomas heard a sound.

He turned and looked up.

A scatter of rocks had fallen from above, and was sliding down the face of the mountain. A wash of pebbles came to rest on his promontory, not far from where his horse stood tied.

Thomas slitted his eyes against the sun, sought to trace the path up to its sources. The day, the mountain, were silent. Thomas went back to his horse, finished a chew of jerky, drank water from his canteen, and then proceeded.

The mountain rose under him, the day wore on.

Thomas began to hear flutterings above him, as if some bird were circling just above his head. But whenever he stopped to listen, the fluttering ceased. He studied the sky above the peak, but saw nothing.

He rode on.

Finally, as the sun was dropping toward the desert floor, the peak was in reach. The view below was majestic. Half of Arizona, it seemed, was spread out below him like a table setting, purple-hazed plains, and off to the north, some fifty miles off, the vague intimations of Tucson itself. Thomas stopped a moment to admire the view. None of the mountains in West Texas had quite approached this peak's height, or the magnificence of its 8,600-foot-high vista.

Above him, just over the lip of the peak, he heard the fluttering of wings, very close.
 
He turned as a winged thing dropped upon him, blotting out the sky. He was thrown from his horse, onto his back, and for a moment the pain of his beating screamed through his body, and he nearly blacked out. He felt something being forced into his mouth, and tried
to spit it out, but his nostrils had been pinched, his mouth closed, and he swallowed the object.

He lay back as the winged thing rose off of him, and, momentarily, his strength began to return.

He rose up on his elbows, staring at the thing looking down at him; a painted figure wearing the feathered wings of a bird, a head-dress cowl of feathers, and a mask like a beak. Its leggings were covered with feathers, its feet sheathed in curving talons. Strapped to its side in a loop was a long curving blade like a sickle or claw.

Thomas made to get up. He found that suddenly his strength was leaving him again, his head growing light.

The feathered figure bent over him, slowly removed its cowled mask.

For a moment it stared at him with its black
eyes.

"Thomas Mullin," it said finally, in clear, calm English. Thomas tried to work his now unworkable mouth, tried to get up. But everything failed him, and he felt himself laying back on what now seemed the featherbed of the rocky mountain floor, as the figure above him bent even closer, and said in a not unkind, female voice, "My father told me so much about you."

Lone Wolf was filled with pride. Before him, at the edge of the Papagos reservation, lay the naked wastes leading to Tucson. They had travelled unbothered, and now they stood on the verge of victory. Here, in the shadow of the mountain the white man called Kitt Peak, he could already feel triumph coursing through him. The great chiefs of old would be proud of him now; the great warriors would soon count him among their number. There was nothing now between himself and the city of Tucson, nothing that could stand in his way.

"Old man," he said, turning in his saddle to summon Le-Cato. Part of him told him to temper his pride, to show some deference for the chief of the Tohono O'otam, especially here in his own reservation; but part of him was too angry with the weakness he saw before him to be deferential.

Le-Cato, his face long, rode slowly up. Beside him was his granddaughter, the only member of the Tohono O'otam still in the reservation, who had ridden out to meet Le-Cato.
 
"Your people," Lone Wolf said, in mock surprise, "why are they not here to greet us? Where," Lone Wolf said, letting his voice rise in anger, "is the great celebration I anticipated from the great and mighty Tohono O'otam?"

"My granddaughter has brought the things you wanted," Le-Cato said, indicating the bundles tied to his granddaughter's horse.

"Or is it," Lone Wolf continued in anger, "that your people are perhaps the Papagos, the bean people, after all?"

He raised his hand as if to strike the old man, who flinched away from his feigned blow and hung his head.

Lone Wolf laughed, turning back to the others. "Look around you!" he shouted. "Behold the majesty of the Tohono O'otam!"

There was laughter.

Lone Wolf turned his attention back to Le-Cato.

"Never mind, old man," he said, tempering his voice. "In your heart, I imagine you were a great chief to send your people away. In your heart, I suppose you saved your people. Since they are women and children, all of them, I suppose it was wise."

Suddenly his anger flared, and he did strike out, knocking the old man from his horse.

There was more laughter as Le-Cato fell to the dust, his granddaughter jumping from her horse to help him up.

Lone Wolf jumped from his mount and pulled the trembling old man from his granddaughter's grasp. "Listen to me," he said, "and listen well."

Le-Cato looked away, until Lone Wolf grasped his chin, and pulled his eyes around to look into his own.

"There is one more thing for you to do, and then you can run off to hide with the other women and children. I will deal with your tribe later. But now, you will do the one thing we came here to do."

Le-Cato lowered his eyes.

"Do you understand me?" Lone Wolf shouted, pulling his blade from its sheath and holding it under the old man's throat. "Answer me with your mouth, or I'll cut your head off like a chicken's."

Le-Cato said, "Yes."

"Good." Lone Wolf let the old man go. He pointed up at Kitt Peak. "Now go into your sacred mountain, and meet your eagle." Suddenly he smiled, and motioned toward LeCato's granddaughter. "And, as a final offering to the eagle, take the squaw with you."

It was night-time when Le-Cato and his granddaughter reached the first plateau. The desert was already cold, and the old man shivered, as much with his mission as with the weather. Above him, the craggy mountain cut a line across the sky, slicing at the stars. Le-Cato shivered and walked on.

At the second plateau, an hour later, they heard a sound. Stopping, Le-Cato looked up fearfully, expecting the eagle to rise up above him and fall upon him. Silently he prayed that the eagle was not here, that it was flying high above the mountain and would not come down to him. For in what lay ahead he saw only disaster. Shivering, afraid, he climbed on.

Twenty minutes later, he paused. This time, he heard the sound he had feared, the rustling of feathers. Le-Cato was on the path leading to the next plateau. Tall above him, the mountain loomed like God himself.