The Cache (5 page)

The keen edge severed the ropes around Joel’s hands, which were tied behind him. Joel began flexing his fingers, his face twisted as the returning circulation drove agony through his veins. Two slashes, and the ropes around the big youth’s ankles were cut.

Benoni asked him, very softly, if he could go into action.

“I can’t do anything for a minute,” said Joel. “I don’t think I can walk.”

He rose and took a step like a man with frozen legs. “Wait just sixty seconds, then . . .”

But there was a cry from behind them, and a Navaho bounded to his feet. He was the one closest to the two, well within good knife range. The rising sun flashed on his blade as he threw it.

Benoni reacted automatically; his own knife flew. „

Suddenly, the hilt of the knife struck out from the pit of the Navaho’s stomach. The stricken man fell backwards, his hands around the hilt. At the same time, Benoni felt a blow in his side, and he staggered back from the force. Though he felt no pain, only a numbness, he knew he was wounded. Looking downward, he saw the Indian’s knife sticking out from between his right ribs. It was not in more than an inch, but blood was welling out from around the steel.

The other two Navahos, yelling, had also gained their feet by now. One picked up a short spear from the ground. The other grabbed up a bow with one hand and an arrow with the other. Benoni, screaming, picked up a rock and rushed at the bowman. The Indian fitted the notch to the bow and raised the bow and arrow as a single piece, pulling back as he did so. Benoni threw his rock; it flew straight and smashed into the man’s throat. But not before he loosed the arrow.

Benoni felt another blow, this time in the chest just below the shoulderbone. He fell backwards upon the ground, then sat up. The Indian must not have had a chance to draw the arrow back to the head, for the arrow had not gone in deeper than the head. Nevertheless, Benoni was out of the fight.

The only Navaho standing raised his spear as if to throw. Then, changing his mind, he lowered it, gripped it with both hands, and charged Joel.

Joel looked desperately around for a weapon. None was within reach, none except the arrow and the knife sticking from Benoni’s flesh. And it was one of them that Joel took, tearing the knife from between Benoni’s ribs. Benoni cried out, but it was done so swiftly he could not resist. If he had had time to think, he would have told Joel to do it. Otherwise, both would be dead.

Joel stooped, picked up a rock, and ran at the Navaho. A few feet from him, he threw the rock. The Navaho ducked; the rock shot past his head. Joel shifted the knife to his right hand, and his left hand shot out. The Navaho came up out of his dodging maneuver a little off balance. Joel caught the spear shaft with his hand but not without closing it around the head first and cutting his hand. He jerked backwards. The Navaho, clinging to his spear, was pulled headlong. Joel pulled the spear towards him as he fell, twisted, and the spear drove between his arm and body. His right hand came up with the knife. The blade drove into the Indian’s belly. The Indian screamed and fell beside Joel. Joel pulled the knife out and plunged it into the Navaho’s throat.

Then, there was silence. Even the horses, which had been screaming, were quiet. Benoni looked down at the ravaged place on his side from which the knife had been so savagely jerked. The blood was flowing fast now, and the pain was beginning to come. Also, he was starting to feel the arrowhead in his shoulder.

There was nothing to do but try to work the arrow loose, even if it meant more loss of blood. He batted the flies away from the two wounds and closed his left hand around the shaft and began to move it slowly.

Joel, breathing hard, came up to him, and he said, “You’ll never be able to do that by yourself.”

He pulled the arrow loose with one easy motion. Benoni clenched his teeth to keep from screaming, and he felt faint. For a moment, the world swam, then it came back into focus. He saw Joel standing over him holding the bloody knife and arrow and smiling. Smiling.

“Looks as if you won’t make it, friend,” said Joel. “Too bad, too.”

“I’ll make it all right,” said Benoni. “I’ll live to take those scalps back to Fiiniks.”

“I don’t see how you can say that,” said Joel. “Since I’m taking those scalps.”

“You!” said Benoni. “You only killed one man. The rest are mine.”

Still smiling, Joel said, “Now, how are you going to scalp a man when you haven’t even the strength to walk? And’ll be dead in an hour or so? No, it’d be pure waste to leave all that fine black hair here to rot.”

“Maybe you should take my scalp, too,” said Benoni. He fought to keep his consciousness.

“I would if it wasn’t yellow,” said Joel. “Of course, I could tell them back home that it was taken off a blond Navaho. They say there are some. But I think they might find that hard to swallow. Besides, it wouldn’t be right, would it?”

Laughing, he turned and walked away and began the business of cutting and peeling back the dead men’s scalps. When he had four hanging from a belt he’d taken off a Navaho, he put on one of the men’s loincloths. He selected a horse, the best bow and arrows, a spear, and the best knife. He unhobbled the other animals, too, saying, “Couldn’t leave them there to die of starvation or be caught by the lions.”

Benoni watched him make preparations to move on. One thing he was determined not to do was to beg for help. It was obvious that Vahndert meant to give him none. Even if Vahndert would, he was not going to get Benoni Rider to plead. Benoni would rather die. Probably would die, too.

After putting the choicest food in the saddle bags of his horse, Joel returned to Benoni. “By rights, I should put a spear through you,” he said. “You’re no damn good, and you might possibly live. Though I doubt it. However, I’m a very forgiving person, I’ll let you make it on your own.”

He paused, then said, teeth bared in hatred, “Not before I pay you back for what you did on the way home from the Iron Mountains.”

He drew his foot back and kicked Benoni between the legs. Benoni felt agony, then he fainted.

When he came to, he found himself sitting up on his knees, bent over, and clutching at the source of pain. Blood was running down his side from the two wounds, and the flies were swarming on that side of his body, forming an almost solid mat of blackness and buzzing. Benoni scraped them away, then began crawling towards a pile of goods beside a Navaho. Painfully, he made the short distance, though he had to stop four times to fight off unconsciousness. Once at the pile, he chose two ceramic water bottles. These were not filled; the water that Joel had poured from them was fast drying on the rocks. However, Joel had not bothered the food. Benoni chose strips of dried meat, mesquite beans, and some hard dry bread. Then, he put on one of the dead men’s pants. They were tight, but they covered him.

He wrapped several bandannas around the wounds in a very clumsy but effective job to stanch the blood. Armed with a knife, a bow, and a quiver of arrows, and carrying a sack of food, he managed to mount a horse. He almost fell off from weakness and dizziness, but he held on. And he urged the horse down the slope and across a wash and back onto the trail. Then he rode back to the lake, where he dismounted and filled the water bottles.

After these preparations, he had only one thing to do. That was to find a cave in the mountains where it was cool, where he could command a view of the trail below, where he could recover from his wounds. He hated to loose the horse, for he could use it when he felt well enough to go back on the warpath. But if another band of Navahos found a hobbled horse, they would search the territory and might unearth him. He could not take a chance.

He took the saddle and reins off and gave the beast its freedom. Then, slowly, panting, full of pain, he climbed the mountain. And, within three hours, he had found one of the caves that pockmarked the face of the mountain. He crawled into its entrance over a pile of dried choya branches left there by rats, ignoring the pain of many little barbed needles. At the rear of the cave, he collapsed. He did not come out of his sleep until early next morning.

He drank some water and ate some smoked meat and the sweet beans. He waited for a fever to come, knowing that if he became infected from the wounds, he would probably die. But the fever did not come.

And, on the evening of the third day, he left the cave. He was very weak and stiff from the wounds and thirsty because he had drunk all the water on the second day. Painfully, he made his way down the mountains. At its foot, he drank water and refilled the bottles. Then, he began walking toward the northeast. A week later, he was able to run and to work the arm in which the arrow had sunk. He killed game with his arrows, and he built a small fire in the most secluded spots and cooked his meat.

Always, he looked for Joel Vahndert. If he had found the youth sleeping, he would have cut his throat on the spot. But he did not find him.

One night, he almost stumbled into a Navaho sentinel. This man was placed on a cliff high above the trail. After studying him, Benoni decided that this was the first in a chain of sentinels placed near the town that guarded the end of the trail. There was a big lake beyond it, the beginning of a series of lakes which ended in the body of water beside which Benoni had been wounded. Benoni worked his way over the mountains. At the end of the second night, he saw the lake and the stockaded village beside it. To the east were the beginnings of pine forests. He knew that north and east were many small Navaho settlements. About a hundred years ago the Navahos had come into this area, killed or driven off the Apaches then living there.

Benoni stood on top of the cone-shaped peak in the shadow of a jumper for a long time. What to do? Skulk around the town, kill a man, then leave for Fiiniks with a scalp at his belt? Or go east for a long distance, maybe to the edge of the earth, searching for a well-watered earthquake-free country to which the Fiinishans might migrate?

Finally, he decided that it was too soon to make up his mind. He would go much further east, however. He did not think it would be good to try to take a scalp here. Doubtless, Vahndert and some of the other youths had already been here. They would have stirred up the Navahos, put them on their guard. It would be better to go through here at night and strike at some of the towns or farms where the inhabitants were not so cautious.

That night, he left the mountain and struck across the forests. He traveled for two weeks, hunting on the way. He passed many Navaho farms with their rock hogans and straight or circular rows of maize, beans, pumpkins, squash, and muskmelons and little herds of sheep, goats, and a few cattle. Several times, he had a chance to take the scalp of some farmer working in the field, but he refrained. Two more weeks passed, and always he traveled into the rising sun. Now that he had many trees and bushes to hide him, he walked by day.

Then, one morning, a lone Navaho youth riding a horse came close to his sleeping place. The horse was a fine roan stallion; the saddle was chased with silver. The youth was singing a song about the maiden whose hand he meant to ask for.

Benoni admired the song and the fine voice of the youth. But he admired the saddle and the horse even more. He shot an arrow through the youth, cutting off his song in the middle of a word. He took the scalp and the horse and set off towards the east. Knowing that he would be tracked, he pushed the horse for several days. He went up as many streams as he could find and many times took the horse carefully across rocky places. Never did he see any pursuers, but he did not breathe easily until he had come to the edge of the forest.

On the edge of the Navaho country, where the desert began again, at the time of the sun’s setting, Benoni heard something. What it was he did not know. Only a murmur from upward that told him of something dangerous. He tied his horse to a branch of a tree beside a wash and worked his way on his belly northwards.

After fifteen minutes of cautious progress, he came to the top of a low ridge. He looked through the sparse grass and down into a little amphitheater. In its center sat Joel Vahndert, Joel Vahndert cooking a rabbit over a tiny fire. His horse was a few feet from him and was feeding upon the tough brown grass.

Benoni’s heart had been beating fast before. Now, it thudded under his breastbone, hammered. But he moved slowly in order not to make any noise, the ridge concealing him, and his hands were steady as he fitted an arrow to the string of his bow.

He planned to stand up, call to Joel, and thus give him a fighting chance. No one—not even himself, the only surviving witness (he hoped)—could accuse him of cowardice. Of magnanimity, yes, for he did not have to warn the treacherous Joel. No, not magnanimity, for he wanted Joel to. know that he, Benoni, had lived and now was taking vengeance.

But he did not rise at once, for he was savoring the look that would appear on Joel’s face when he saw him. Luckily for him, he crouched those few seconds. Just as he started to rise, to spring upon the top of the ridge, he froze.

A whoop from half a dozen throats rose from the opposing rim of the amphitheater. And, over the rim, six Navahos rode.

Joel dropped the meat into the fire, jumped up, caught his horse by the saddle just as it began to run away, and hoisted himself upon its back in one flowing motion. Fortunately for him, the horse was headed at right angles from the Navahos, and it passed four scrubby pines. The arrows of the attackers struck the branches or were deflected, and they lost some time by having to round the trees. By then, Joel was gone, though whether he could keep ahead of them was another matter. Huge, Joel burdened any horse he rode, and his animal was no larger than those that ran after him.

Benoni, unable to restrain himself, shot at the last Navaho in the line of pursuers. His arrow entered beside the youth’s lower spinal column, and the youth fell backwards off his horse. The others did not see him tumble, for their eyes were on the quarry.

Benoni ran out, scalped the corpse, and ran back to his horse. Then, instead of riding away from the party, he decided to follow them. A foolhardy move, but if the Navahos lost Joel, he intended to find Joel for himself. And, perhaps, he could pick off another of the enemy. He liked the idea of hunting them while they chased Joel.