Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (8 page)

 
          
 
Ritchie coughed. Powder reek filled the ruins,
held in by the overhang. He coughed, squeezed the trigger, loaded,
coughed
. It was a mechanical business now. And after the
first few seconds he did not even think of those below as human beings.

 
          
 
''Cease fire!"
Herndon's order was a shout which rang along the cave mouth.

 
          
 
Men were climbing down the far wall of the
canyon.

 
          
 
"Want we should git down thar, too.
Sergeant?"
Tuttle called from his post.

 
          
 
"Yes." The single word was curt.
Ritchie pulled himself up to his numbed feet and followed his commander,
stumbling over the piles of ruined adobe.

 
          
 
The dragoons ventured out into the camp
cautiously. It wouldn't be the first time a dead Apache came back to kill a
careless enemy.

 
          
 
The camp itself was a poor thing, the sort of
shelter animals might have sought. Ritchie had no desire to poke into the
interiors of the bush huts which gave out the stench of unclean human bodies.
He headed for the fire.

           
 
"Wonder what the cuss was fightin'
for—" Tuttle had come to a stop beside the brown body of one of the
duelists where it lay sprawled across the rock.

 
          
 
"Woman or loot, quien
sabe?"
Velasco shrugged and held out a bundle of hide. "Maybe
even this—"

 
          
 
From his fingers now unrolled a shirt of
buckskin. Across it were sewn in rows and patterns a multitude of small
objects: arrow points, bits of crystal, little bags plump with stuffing, even a
cross of metal and—Ritchie recognized with astonishment—the looped chain of a
rosary.

 
          
 
"What is it?" he asked.

 
          
 
"Medicine shirt," Velasco explained.
"The man who wore this was either a great chief or a medicine man. These
bags now—they are full of hoddentin—the sacred meal. And here is wood which has
been lightning struck—"

 
          
 
"But the cross—that rosary—?"

 
          
 
Velasco's face grew bleak; his jaw seemed to
sharpen. "There has been raiding across the border to get that. Those are
the spoils of warfare."

 
          
 
"Hey, Sergeant, lookit
this here!"
One of the dragoons dragged a lance up to the fire.
"This ain't Injun stuff!"

 
          
 
Something in the curve of the old metal head
was vaguely familiar to Ritchie. He must have seen one like it somewhere.

 
          
 
"Old Spanish," Herndon said after
examination.
"Could have been brought by Coronado
himself."

 
          
 
"Yep."
Tuttle spat into the flames.
"I've heard tell as how
they found a skeleton out in the desert aways some years ago. Had it a helmet
'n armor on—one of the old fellas from down
Mexico
way who came up here huntin' gold. No
tellin' where this here's come from ner how long it's been passin' from hand to
hand—"

 
          
 
Velasco folded the medicine shirt and slipped
it under his belt. "I trust," he spoke to Tuttle, his teeth an amused
flash of white, "you are not neglecting to explore their bullet pouches,
my friend."

 
          
 
“No. But 'twon't
do
much good. They only had 'em two-three trade guns,
that's
all. 'N here's the total." He took his hand out of his pocket and opened
it. On the palm were four balls made to fit the muskets of an earlier day.

 
          
 
"Can buy myself a
couple of good chaws with these here.
They're gold," he told
Ritchie. "Injuns think one metal's as good as 'nother for pokin' holes in
a man, so they run a nugget into a bullet 'n here yo'
are
!"

 
          
 
"Lay the bodies out over here. Then fire
the huts—" Herndon broke into the circle warming by the fire.

 
          
 
Ritchie helped with the grisly task of
clearing the battle ground.

 
          
 
"Leave 'em to the wolves, eh?
Like they left our boys!"

 
          
 
Herndon rounded on the man who said that.
"Their women are back there. We'll leave them to their own folks," he
snapped. "But get fire into those huts and be quick about it."

 
          
 
Three of the dragoons took burning branches
from the fire and hurled them into the piles of brush. The flames crackled up
into vicious and devouring life as the detachment prepared to march.

 
          
 
The women and children who had escaped, where
would they go now? Their supplies were gone, and it was beginning to snow
again. Ritchie wrenched his thoughts away from that path. He'd better keep
thinking what it meant to the peaceful ranches and travelers in the valleys
below to have even one rancheria wiped out—its manpower never to go raiding
again.

 
          
 
They moved along the canyon at a sort of
shuffling trot, still alert to every bit of movement behind them. They were
close to the end of the canyon when one mitten was shaken from Ritchie's hand.
He stopped to recover it and so, by a hair's breadth, escaped the arrow which
skimmed past his shoulder to splinter against stone.

 
          
 
A thin whimper marked the miss. There was no
time to aim—and nothing he could see to aim at. Knife in hand he plunged back
toward the pile of loose rocks which marked an ancient slide. And, by the very
quickness of his move, he cornered the enemy.

 
          
 
It was a very small specimen of fighting man
who faced him defiantly, back against the canyon wall. There were wild dark
eyes staring into his, a tangle of black hair looped back with a red cloth
string, a thin face sharpened by desperate fear into the muzzle of an animal.

 
          
 
Ritchie put his knife back in its sheath and
reached out his hands.

 
          
 
"Look here, kid, nobody's going to hurt
you—"

 
          
 
The captive flung himself forward in a
frenzied attack, but Ritchie had braced himself against that very maneuver. He
caught and held the skinny little body in spite of its flailing arms and
kicking legs. Then the head darted down, and teeth sank into the flesh of his
bare hand.

 
          
 
With a quick hot word Ritchie pulled away, but
he still kept his grip on his captive.

 
          
 
"What the-!"

 
          
 
Herndon stopped short as Ritchie and the
struggling boy careened from behind a boulder and crashed into him. There was a
moment of tangled battle, and then they separated. Ritchie, his wounded hand
held stiffly before him, was still clutching the little boy's arm, but the
Sergeant had an even tighter hold on the nape of the Apache's neck.

 
          
 
"Look out! He bites!" Ritchie's
grasp of that too-thin arm was anything but gentle.

           
 
"Maybe you would, too, if the only weapon
you had left was your teeth!" Herndon commented. "Let go now, I have
him."

 
          
 
Ritchie nursed his injured hand. A row of
bright red dots marked the skin across his palm. It hurt out of all proportion
to the extent of the damage. Herndon's control of the Apache was better than
his. Either the Sergeant's demeanor had effectively cowed the boy, or else he
had wasted all his strength in the struggle, for now he was standing quite
still while Herndon twisted a loop of rawhide around his hands, fastening the
other end of that leash to his own belt.

 
          
 
"What will-?"

 
          
 
"We do with him?" finished Herndon.
"Take him in with us. If we leave him here, he'll starve or freeze. This
snow will blanket the trails of his people so that he can never find them.
Now—" He repeated a few guttural words to the boy.

 
          
 
The young Apache stared stolidly before him as
if neither of the dragoons were there. But when the Sergeant started down the
trail and gave a short jerk to the leash, he spat out a stream of harsh words
in a high thin voice, then held up his head and marched bleakly along, paying
no more heed to his captors.

 
          
 
"What did he say?"

 
          
 
"He was just condemning all Pinda-lick-o-yi
to a region a great deal warmer than the one we now traverse." There was a
hint of laughter in Herndon's answer.

 
          
 
"Pinda-lick-o-yi?"
Ritchie twisted his tongue about the word.

 
          
 
"White eyes.
That's the Apache name for us. Ours for them—Apache—isn't much better. That
just means 'enemy.’ They call themselves simply 'The People.' "

           
 
"Wal, got yoreselves a scalp still
walkin'!" Tuttle observed as they caught up with the rest. "Took two
of yo' to bring him in, 'n"—those keen eyes had not missed Ritchie's
cradled hand—"he set his mark on one of yo' into the bargain."

 
          
 
"Little varmint!" One of the
dragoons shifted the sling of his carbine. "Better knock 'im on the head,
Sergeant, or he'll knife yo' first chance he gits. These rock snakes are pizen
from their cradles."

 
          
 
Herndon tugged the leash gently, bringing the
captive up to them. "Now"—again that note of humor colored his
tone—"do you all think this character such a desperate one?"

 
          
 
A miserable collection of rags was tied over a
small body too thin but still wiry. The high-held head was crowned with an
untamed mop of coarse black hair through which the Apache gave them back stare
for stare. Suddenly Ritchie was ashamed of the way he had handled those matchstick
arms. He dragged off the wool scarf he wore under his coat and pulled it
clumsily around the boy's neck with his unhurt hand. Then he spoke directly to
Herndon.

 
          
 
"Can he march? Those moccasins don't look
very tough—"

 
          
 
"Lord!" The man who had spoken of
varmints laughed cruelly. "The bottoms of his feet are leather. They ain't
human—the Apaches—they're half-lion, half-bear. He'll march us all out on our
feet—if he has to!"

 
          
 
But the Sergeant had taken a small package out
of the front of his coat and opened it to display a pair of heavy socks and a
second pair of moccasins. He signed the boy to sit, and when the Indian paid no
attention, swept him off his feet and with Tuttle's aid got both socks and
moccasins on him.

 
          
 
"Let's go!" He was on his feet
again. "We'd better reach the horses and be heading out of the mountains
before the storm closes in."

 
          
 
Ritchie glanced up at the mountain peaks
above. The thick curtain of clouds which had hung there most of the morning was
more dense
. And certainly the snow was falling faster;
the fine mist of spinning particles was taking on more weight and substance.