If it hadn’t been for the map, Crow would have swung his lean body into the saddle and moved back out of the Sierras just as fast as the stallion would have taken him.
But there was the map.
Richard Okie tried two or three times that morning to justify to himself and to his wife, son and to Crow what had happened.
‘I thought he was … she was going for a gun. You saw it, didn’t you? They could have been murdering Apache bucks.’
‘They were old women. The one looked like she was around seventy, from what you could see through the broken bones and blood. When she was born you didn’t see a single white man out this way. Now she ends up getting butchered like a lack-brained imbecile like you.’
‘What will happen now, Mr. Crow?’ asked Edgar Okie breaking the taut silence.
‘Now, son? Now your Papa has shown what a great hunter he is, we’ll likely have thirty or more Apache come whoopin’ after our scalps.’
‘Oh, but we could tell them …’ began Amy, her voice tailing away as she realized the absurdity of what she was saying.
‘I tell you that if it wasn’t for your cousin’s damned map, Okie, I’d up and leave you right here.’
If it wasn’t for the map …
It was drawn on the same kind of paper as the first half, but less neatly written. The outlines were sketched in with a hasty, shaking hand, as though in darkness, or under pressure from excitement or fear. And some of the words ran over each other or seemed to be incomplete. But it was enough.
If the weather didn’t break against them again, then it would be enough.
‘Can you understand it?’
Crow nodded. All three of the Okies were around him, crowding in, peering at the tattered piece of paper over his shoulder.
‘How long will it take to get to the mine?’ asked Amy, her hand resting, so casually, on Crow’s shoulder, her hair dangling loosely down against the side of his face.
‘Looks like around three more days.’
‘Three! And then we get to see that big black bird!’ squeaked Edgar.
‘You understand that reference to the black bird, Crow?’ asked the father.
‘I don’t know. And, incidentally, since we are surely likely to get us some company in the next few hours you’d do well to reload those fancy pistols of yours.’
While Okie did as he’d been told, Crow stared again at the map. Trying to puzzle it out. So far the descriptions had been fine, with no possibility of error. And for nearly all the remainder it was the same. Except for the very last bit. The black bird.
It was drawn in. The inky outline of the head of a bird, looking like some kind of falcon. The beak hooked and sharp, seeming as if it sprang from a cliff of some height. Lines ran from the tip of the beak and from what appeared to be the eye of the creature, meeting at a point roughly half-way down a wall of rock on the opposite side of the valley. There was a small, wobbly arrow pointing to that spot, and some sort of a trail drawn in from the bottom of the page up to it. There was no “X” against the place, and no mention of it being the mine. But there was nothing else on the map at all that might have been it.
‘Has to be it,’ said Crow to himself. ‘That has to be it.’
They were in a wild part of the mountains that Crow had never visited, and he was scouting his way forward using the map, turning from mark to mark. From a dead tree stump, left along a narrow draw with a natural bridge carved by flood water over the centuries. Then right, aiming for a notch shaped like the claw of a bear. Up and over into the next valley.
Constantly on the watch for any sign of the Apaches. Once they found the raggled bodies of the two old women, Crow was certain as he could be that the chief would order the men of the tribe out in full pursuit after them.
The good weather was passing as swiftly as it had come, with the wind rising again from the north, tearing great ragged veils of powdery snow from the tops of the peaks around them. The sky was clouding over, grayness spreading down across the hills like a dull shroud.
‘I’m not feelin’ so good, Mr. Crow,’ complained Edgar Okie. The shootist turned to look at him, seeing that the boy’s face had again gone chalk-white, and that he was shivering like an aspen in a hurricane.
‘Give me your hand, lad,’ he said.
Leaning up from the saddle on the mule the teenager pulled off his gloves and laid his fingers in Crow’s hand.
‘Kind of hot again. Looks like that fever of yourn hasn’t burned itself out yet. Mr. Okie!’
‘Yeah? What is it, Crow? You seen more of those damned heathens?’
‘No. That’s what worries me. If I could see them I’d be happier. Know where they are, then. Nope, it’s not that. Your boy’s coming on real sick again.’
Amy heeled her own animal forward, tugging on the reins that led the pack mule. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m poorly, Mama,’ said the boy.
‘We can’t stop, can we?’ asked Okie, eagerly. Too eagerly, Crow thought.
But this time they didn’t have a lot of choice in what they did. With God knows how many Apaches trying to hunt them down, they had to keep moving on.
The ambush came part of the way through the next morning.
It had snowed during the night. A light covering that had settled everywhere, then frozen around dawn, making the footing dangerous. The burros were skittish and awkward, pulling back as they were forced along a narrow ledge, with the rock wall on their right and a sheer plunge down loose scree to a foaming river, a thousand feet below.
Edgar had become delirious during the hours of darkness and had twice thrown off the blankets, pushing his mother aside, trying to walk off into the snow. Crow had woken and Richard Okie had come scampering back, nearly falling on the slippery stones, holding the boy and leading him back to the shelter of the overhanging cliffs.
As they’d set out that morning, Crow had suddenly thought of Amaryllis Okie and her white powder. A half dozen times every day she’d taken some, but each time it seemed to Crow that the heroin took a little longer to work its easy magic.
‘That stuff might do the boy good,’ he suggested to her.
‘What?’
‘The heroin.’
‘No!’
It was if he’d suggested something so dreadful it has no name. Her jaw dropped under the hood of her cloak and he saw her fingers tighten on the handle of the small purse containing her medicine.
‘It’s for him.’
‘I don’t have too much.’ Her fingers were so tight that Crow expected to see bones break through the frail flesh.
‘He’s your son, Ma’am. And he’s ill. Now I don’t have a lot of skill but it seems that your heroin just might help.’
Despite all of his efforts he couldn’t persuade her to part with any of her precious powder. Crow was disgusted both at her blindly stubborn resistance and at her husband’s refusal to throw his weight against her.
So the boy became more ill, babbling to himself in a continuous mumbling whine as they rode on.
‘Don’t want to see no angels coming after me with great fiery wings and chariots that have sky up by them with faces the color of the sun at day, with the man standing in the corner by the bed where he sits and waits and waits and waits.’
Gradually he relapsed into silence, but he was still carrying a dreadful fever that was burning him up. He seemed to find it hard to swallow even a mouthful of water. His lips were peeling and cracked and his skin was becoming grayish and seamed like old leather. He kept swaying in the saddle and around ten in the morning Crow was forced, against his judgment, to swing Edgar up on the back of the stallion, holding him in front of himself.
The Indians hit them a half hour later.
The snow had started yet again, this time with a kind of emotionless determination. The wind had fallen away, leaving an eerie silence, with just the soundless curtain of white wrapping them coldly in. They were big flakes this time, settling immediately, not being swirled into drifts. Within ten minutes the trail was buried in three inches of snow, more falling every moment.
‘Don’t like this, Crow. Upon my soul, but I don’t care for this at all.’
‘Can’t say I like it much, Okie. Thing worries me is that this seems like it’s going for a spell. Not just a flurry like before. This has the feel of being the real thing.’
Visibility was reduced to around twenty feet. And with the lack of seeing came the uncanny loss of hearing. After so many days of hearing the high metallic clatter of the black’s hooves and the slightly softer note of the burros clicking along in its tracks, there was now just a faint muffled beat of the animals.
Crow suddenly reined in, seeing that the trail ahead dove between high walls of rock on either side. His sixth sense told him that this might just be the place and he paused, waving both the Okies forwards to warn them of his suspicions.
The bullets made that unnecessary.
They spattered around them, plowing up furrows in the whiteness, howling off the bare rock beneath. Kicking up sparks and making the mules shy and whiney.
‘Holy Jesus!’ cursed Okie as his animal pitched him clean off, landing with a thump on his side.
‘Hang on the reins,’ yelled Crow. ‘Don’t let him go! Hang on.’
‘Where are they?’ cried Amaryllis, desperately holding on the back of her bucking burro.
‘Up yonder. They don’t see us well. Come on.’
‘Where?’ shouted Richard Okie, struggling back on his mule, trying to kick it forwards.
‘There!’ said Crow, pointing ahead. Drawing the Colt from its holster and firing off three snapped shots at where he guessed the Apaches must be.
The firing slackened a moment then redoubled, but the bullets were aimed blind and none of them came close enough to do any harm to anyone. Crow was trying to work out from the angle of the shooting whether all of the Indians were perched high on the cliffs, or whether any of them might be lower down, settled behind rocks, commanding the whole trail.
It was hard to tell, blinded by the circling whiteness of the blizzard, but his guess was that most, if not all, of them were up above, firing down.
‘We’ll run through. Follow on,’ he called. ‘Don’t stop, whatever happens. Anyone goes down they stay.’ Without waiting for any objections he kicked spurs into the black’s flanks and moved forwards, ducking in the saddle, firing twice more as he entered the narrow defile, hanging on to Edgar.
It took less than three minutes to get through. Crow used the last round from the pistol, holstering it and drawing the Purdey, cocking it as he galloped, peering ahead through the snow. He didn’t know whether the Okies were behind him or not, nor did he care. It was life and death situation, and only one person’s life mattered to him at that moment. He might have been hired as bodyguard and scout, but with a couple of dozen Apaches blasting away then priorities changed a little.
In the deepest part of the ravine the snow seemed to have funneled into a solid wall of freezing whiteness, crusting on Crow’s face, filling his mouth and blanking his eyes. Visibility dropped to barely ten feet and the stallion dropped from its gallop to a bare canter, terrified by not being able to see more than a few steps ahead, and not all of Crow’s kicking could make it move faster. He clubbed it with the stock of the scatter-gun and yanked so hard on its ear that he drew blood, but it still refused to raise its pace again.
He could hear an animal scream behind him and knew a mule had been hit, but he didn’t look round. Spurring on and keeping …
The Apache came out of nowhere, appearing directly in front of the horse, slightly to the left, holding a smoking Springfield, wrapped in a thick jacket, fur-trimmed, long black hair frosted with snow, held back with a green band. His eyes opened wide with shock as he saw the big stallion almost on top of him and he raised the gun halfway to his shoulder.
Blocked by his own horse’s head, Crow couldn’t get a shot in with the Purdey. He snatched brutally at the reins with his hand, making the black pull to the left, rearing on its hind legs, slipping in the snow and nearly falling.
The Indian tried to evade the horse’s flailing hooves and dived to the side, bringing himself into range of the scattergun.
The shock from the explosion ran clean up Crow’s arm, jarring his shoulder. He’d only used one barrel, but it was more than enough for the young Apache warrior. The shot hit him in the chest at such close range that he fell backwards with smoke coming off the front of his jacket from the muzzle flash. Blood sprayed up on the neck of the stallion, splashing in Crow’s face as he pushed the animal on past the writhing body.
Moments later he was out of the ravine, in the open, still hidden from the Indians by the driving blizzard. He reined in and looked back into the wall of white, seeing Amy Okie appear, slumped forwards, no sign of the pack mule.
Through the attack and charge, Crow had almost forgotten the boy, Edgar, hanging limply in front of him. The tall shootist was such an efficient fighting machine that he was capable of switching off every other emotion that didn’t directly affect him. Edgar had been no handicap to Crow, who had managed to support him in the wild, blind charge, using his- left arm, keeping the right free for the guns. It may be better not to consider just what Crow might have done if Edgar had been a burden to him!
Amy Okie tried to explain how the pack mule had been hit and had fallen, nearly dragging her off her own animal as it went down.
‘I didn’t have …’
‘Don’t signify much.’
‘But I tried to save …’
Crow interrupted her. ‘I said it didn’t matter, Ma’am. We all got through. Those supplies wouldn’t have fed many corpses. Best we move on.’
She was in tears, clenching her fists across her bosom. ‘You don’t understand!’
Okie was also out of breath, snow across his eyebrows and in his stubbly beard, making him look like a jolly Christmas figure. He tried to shut up his wife.
‘Now, Amy. It couldn’t be helped. I saw it. We’re through and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’
‘But … No! No!’
She was almost screaming and Crow wondered if she was going to throw a fit of the vapors, If she was he was ready to bend a pistol across her head, The Indians had, for the moment, lost them.
‘Can we get out? Towards the Black Bird?’
Neither of them had paused to ask how the boy was, Crow noted.
‘Yeah. There’s a forked trail here on the map that seems to go around left, down some, then back up. Might give the Apaches the slip.’
Amy was crying. Great juddering sobbing, her shoulders shaking, face buried in her hands. Snow clogged her hair, where her hood had been blown back by the mad rush for safety.
For a moment the snow eased and the surrounding rocks appeared like magic, looming several hundred feet above them. Straight ahead of them Crow saw the main trail, and, just where the map had showed it, the fainter signs of the side track. With the pause in the snowfall he could hear the Indians, not far behind them, calling to each other in questioning tones.
‘Are we at the Black Bird Mine, Mr. Crow?’ whispered Edgar softly.
‘Not yet, boy. But we’re on the way. Come on, folks. Let’s move out of here. Snow’s only passing for a moment. When it comes on back it’ll cover the tracks in minutes and there’s a good chance they’ll lose us. Come on, Ma’am. We got through.’
‘Oh, my God,’ cried Amy. ‘You don’t realize. My bag. I lost it when the mule got shot. I’ve lost all my heroin.’
Around them the snow grew deeper.