At the moment the horse lunged into motion, Clay Taggart instinctively clamped his legs on the animal’s sweaty sides, but holding fast was impossible. The bay galloped out from under him and Clay felt himself falling. He didn’t fall far, not more than three of four inches, when he was brought up short at the end of the rope. The noose constricted, digging into his skin, into his throat, into his windpipe.
Clay sucked in air as his body dropped to its full length. He grimaced when the noose gouged in deep and for a second he thought his neck would snap. Some members of the posse were laughing, others were already riding off. He barely noticed. All he could think of, the only thing that mattered, was staying alive a few more precious seconds. Involuntarily he kicked, then promptly stopped when the movement made the rope tighten even further. As if from a great distance he heard a muffled voice.
“So much for the tough man! I don’t see why Gillett was so worried. Come on, boys. Let’s light a shuck!”
Dimly, Clay registered the drumming of hoofs. He saw swirls of fine dust hovering before him. His chest ached terribly as the rope twisted, swinging him from right to left. The posse was heading out across the flat. Only one rider, Santee, bothered to look back, and he grinned devilishly before vanishing into a dust cloud. Clay s right forefinger twitched, as if he was pulling a trigger.
How much time had gone by? Clay tried to make the air in his lungs last, but there were limits to how much the human body could endure. His misery intensified. He felt his lungs were close to bursting. Greedily he opened his mouth and attempted to breathe, to force fresh air past the horrible constriction in his throat. The effort was useless. His consciousness began to dim, his eyelids to flutter.
And as Taggart’s eyes closed, other sets of eyes observed him from the cover of the nearby brush, dark eyes that betrayed no hint of emotion except for a single pair. Delgadito looked on and nodded, impressed by what he had seen. He glanced at the departing whites, all of whom were now shrouded by dust, and then at Cuchillo Negro and Amarillo. “Cut him down.”
Soundlessly the pair of stout warriors obeyed. Cuchillo Negro, the younger of the two, went up the tree in a flash. A knife gleamed in the sunlight. Amarillo, waiting below, caught hold of the limp white man, letting the man slump over his shoulder, and then sprinted for the undergrowth. The body was much heavier than he had expected and he grunted from the weight. He was bending over to avoid a branch when his right foot caught in an exposed root and he tripped, falling onto his right knee. As he did, the body of the white man whipped forward, thudding onto the ground, and Amarillo, unable to check his momentum, fell onto the body, onto the man’s stomach. He thought the white-eye was dead, so he was more than a little surprised when the man coughed and spluttered and convulsed.
Suddenly Delgadito was there. The tall warrior crouched, his brawny hands tugging at the rope around the white man’s throat, loosening the noose a fraction at a time. Loud gasps came from the white man and his eyelids trembled but did not open. At length he lay still, breathing deeply but raggedly.
“What do we do with him?” Amarillo asked, touching the shredded remains of the man’s pants. “He has nothing worth stealing.”
“We take him to our kunh-gan-hay.”
Amarillo glanced up, puzzled. He was tempted to question the wisdom of such a move, but he did not. Too many times had Delgadito proven to be a master at na-tse-kes, at the deep thinking that brought so many rewards to himself and his band, for Amarillo to object. “It will be as you want.”
Four warriors, Delgadito among them, lifted the white man and bore him at a trot to the north along the strip of sparse vegetation serving as the boundary between the mountains and the flatland. Over a mile they went, and then they turned westward, moving with heightened caution because now they were out in the open. El Chico ran on ahead to be sure there were no nasty surprises waiting, while Pasqual fell to the rear to keep an eye on their back trail. They dared not let down their guard for a minute, not now when their homeland crawled with their enemies. Eternal vigilance was the price they paid for continued survival, and every man there had lost too many friends or relatives to slack off for a moment.
As Delgadito ran, he thought. He had listened with interest to the words of the whites, who were so stupid they had not known anyone else was within miles of them. He had seen with his own eyes how the big man with the mane of brown hair had stood up to them, had tried to escape, and then, when recaptured, had not shown the slightest fear when they had thrown him onto the horse and slipped the rope over his neck. No, not this one! Delgadito had seen nothing but hatred in the big man’s gaze, even when the man’s eyes watered, and nothing but a thirst for vengeance in the set of the big man’s face. And Delgadito had been impressed.
It was twilight when the band arrived at the hollow. The women had tiny fires going in front of the wickiups and the small children were eagerly waiting for their meager suppers. Some of the older boys were tending the five remaining horses.
Delgadito looked and felt the need to cough. To see his people reduced to this was enough to make him gnash his teeth in misery, but he would not give in to such weakness. No, he gave a word of greeting to one of the older boys who was showing promise, and smiled at a little girl, pretending that all was well, that all was as it should be when he knew, and everyone there knew, their people were in dire need.
“Where do you want this smelly white thing?” Chiquito inquired, turning his nose away from the leg he held.
For an answer Delgadito pointed at the ground near his wickiup, and the white man was deposited none too gently. The other warriors drifted off. Delgadito walked over to his wife, who was squatting by the fire, skinning a rabbit. “Mend him,” he said.
Delgadito bent low to enter the wickiup. Inside, he stripped off his bow and quiver, and was leaning them against the side when he sensed rather than heard her behind him. “You have something to say?”
“We heal our enemies now?”
“When it suits our purpose.”
“Whites killed my father and my brother.”
“Would I have forgotten?”
“Yet still you ask this of me?”
“No, ish-tia-nay. I tell you to do it,” Delgadito said, and saw her back stiffen. She left quietly, properly put in her place. He went out and sat cross-legged, watching her take out her anger on the rabbit, which she hacked to pieces as if it was the white man instead. As the meat cooked she set out gourd dishes containing pinion nuts and wild onions.
Delgadito ate in silence while staring off into the distance. He knew there would be others like her, others who did not understand, who would object strongly. Chiquito for one. Fiero for another. He must convince them he was right and then hope he had not made a critical mistake, a blunder that could cost him the position of influence he had earned only after much self-denial and hardship.
From out of the darkness Pasqual appeared. “Two fires,” he announced. “To the west and to the south.”
“I would see,” Delgadito said, rising. He padded to the top of the hollow where El Chico and Fiero were standing and peered at the bright points of light. The fire to the west had to be that of the men responsible for the hanging. Only whites made their fires so big the flames could be seen for many miles. The one to the south was much smaller, although not as small as Indians would make.
“Mexicans?” El Chico said.
“Too far north of the border,” Delgadito said, turning to go back. Neither party, in his opinion, posed a threat to his band, so he could devote his full attention to the matter of the white man. But he hadn’t taken two strides when Fiero addressed him.
“I was out hunting when you brought the white dog to our camp.”
Composing his features, Delgadito slowly faced the man who had caused him more trouble than all the other warriors combined. Fiero richly deserved his Spanish name; he had the temperament of a wildfire, and when aroused he was as fierce as an enraged mountain lion. Exceptionally strong and keen of eyesight, Fiero was the single best warrior besides Delgadito himself. And Fiero did not bother to hide the fact he would one day like to supplant Delgadito as the band’s leader.
“When can we burn out his brains?” Fiero asked.
“The white man is not to be harmed,” Delgadito said.
“Is it not enough his kind have stolen our land and forced most of our people onto the reservation? Are we Maricopas, that we jump to do their bidding whenever they so much as blink an eye?”
“This man did not ask for our help.”
“Then why?”
“You will understand in time.”
Fiero uttered a grunt of disgust. “I will never understand you, Delgadito. Whenever I think I am following your trail, you take another path and confuse me.” He glowered at the larger fire to the west. “There is only one way to treat whites. We must kill them, kill them all, drive them from our homeland so the Shis-Inday can go back to the old ways, to the practices of our forefathers and their forefathers before them.”
“There is no going back. The whites will never leave.”
“Then we must make the land run red with their blood,” Fiero declared, and El Chico murmured assent. “We must kill every one we find, including the dog you have brought here.”
“There are too many and they are all over.” Delgadito held his ground. “It is not like the old days when we could strike whenever and wherever we wanted. We must choose carefully and be miles away before the whites know what has happened.”
“Are the Shis-Inday women?” Fiero asked in disgust.
Saying nothing, Delgadito started to turn. He should have known he would not get off so easily. Fiero threw a challenge at him.
“I am going to steal horses. What do you say to that?”
Delgadito did not want anyone to leave camp. It was true they had eaten almost all their horses, and were rationing the rest because game was very scarce. The bellies of the little ones and the women were rarely full any more. But he did not want to risk a warrior being captured, or even seen, because it would arouse suspicions and a search party might be sent out. Despite this, he dared not object. Warriors were free to do as they pleased, whenever they pleased. Reluctantly, he swallowed his budding anger and simply said, “We can always use more meat.”
Fiero puffed up his chest and grinned at El Chico as if to say, “See? He does not dare refuse me.” Unslinging his bow, he stated aloud, “I will be back by morning with enough horses for a grand feast.” He took a step, then paused to regard both distant campfires. Presently he choose the smaller one and trotted southward.
El Chico leaned toward Delgadito. “I will go with him and make certain he comes back safely.”
“If I owned a rifle, I would give it to you,” Delgadito said in gratitude, for the giving of a rifle was akin to making a brother of a man selected to receive the gift. He watched the older warrior melt into the night, and walked down into the hollow with a heavy weight off his shoulders. El Chico was thoroughly dependable; he would keep Fiero in line.
About forty yards to the south the object of Delgadito’s concern had paused to adjust his knee-high moccasins to their full height as a protection against cactus. He heard the footfalls that no white man would have heard, and he was straightening up when El Chico ran up to him. “Did he send you to bring me back?”
“No,” the older man said. “If you would have me, I would go with you.”
“I travel fast,” Fiero boasted, and proceeded to do so, breaking into a mile-eating trot as he headed out across the desert. He wasn’t fooled for an instant. El Chico was a close friend of Delgadito’s and had never expressed an interest in Fiero before. Yet Fiero did not refuse the request. Here was a chance to earn honor in the eyes of the others. If he was successful, he would have as his witness one of the closest friends of the man he so despised. Who better to vouch for his prowess before the whole band?
The pair of Chiricahuas flitted like ghosts across the murky landscape. There was no moon, yet they saw clearly. There were plenty of stones and rocks and occasional dry weeds in their path, yet they made no sound. They covered one mile, and then another, yet they breathed evenly, without any sign of having exerted themselves.
Fiero was in his element. He lived for the raid, for the slaying of his enemies and the stealing of whatever he could lay his hands on. His father had taught him both arts, and so much more. By the age of ten he had become expert with the bow and the knife. By the age of twelve he could run over five miles through the worst of country and be ready to run five more as soon as he was done. By the age of fifteen he had killed his first man, a Mexican trader, and since then he had added dozens to his total. Fiero took great pride in his accomplishments and couldn’t wait to add to them.
El Chico, on the other hand, was having second thoughts. He had offered to go along as a favor to Delgadito, but the further they went, the more he doubted the wisdom of his action. Several moons ago two other men had gone off with Fiero and only one had returned, which was why no one else had gone out with Fiero since. The loss of a life was a bad omen and did not reflect well on whoever led a raid. El Chico wished he had remembered that death and not been so hasty.
Gradually they neared the fire. Fiero hoped to find Mexican traders, since they were so ridiculously easy to slay. He would settle for smugglers, although they were more seasoned, more wary. And if the party turned out to be a family on its way from the northern provinces of Mexico to Tuscon, so much the better. Fiero had need of a wife, and he had long craved a Mexican beauty such as several other members of the band had. It was said Mexican women could drive a man crazy with their lovemaking and he was anxious to put the rumor to the test.
The camp had stupidly been made right out in the open. Evidently those sleeping by the fire believed no one could approach them without being seen by the lone guard.
Fiero halted fifty yards out and crouched. He saw cactus and weeds and mesquite all growing close to the camp and inwardly he smiled. The sombrero on the guard told him these were indeed Mexicans and his inner smile widened. On the south edge of the camp was a long string of horses.
Motioning to El Chico, Fiero moved in a crouch, circling the camp. When young, Fiero had been an apt pupil, learning his lessons well. And the first lesson he had learned about raiding an enemy was this: A warrior should never make a move until the number of his enemies has been determined, along with the number of their weapons and the goods they have worth stealing. The second lesson was related to the first: Any weakness an enemy has must be discovered so it can be exploited.
This camp had so many weaknesses there were almost too many for Fiero to believe. There was only the one guard; the guard was facing the fire, not out into the desert; there was cover close to the sleepers; there was no one watching the horses; and the horses had all been tethered to a single rope, making the job of stealing them a simple task.
Fiero made a slow, painstaking circuit of the entire camp, and when he was back at the point where he had started, he crouched. “There are enough horses to last us for weeks,” he whispered.
“I do not like it,” El Chico responded.
“Did you see something I did not? If they made it any easier for us, we could walk in and take what we want.”
“Something bothers me,” El Chico insisted.
Fiero wondered if this was part of a plan, if maybe Delgadito had asked El Chico to try and talk him out of going through with the raid. It would be like Delgadito to do such a thing. The man was as crafty as a fox, as devious as a white. “You can go back if you want. I will steal the horses by myself.”
El Chico glanced at the camp. He could not say exactly why he was disturbed, but his every instinct warned him to pass this opportunity up.
“Well?” Fiero prompted.
Indecision made El Chico hesitate. If he left, and later Fiero returned with the horses, he would be shamed before all the others.
“I cannot wait all night.”
“Very well,” El Chico said.
“Here is how I want to do it,” Fiero said. He went into detail, and when he was done he spun and circled once again to the south side of the camp. There he searched about until he found a small cluster of grass which he plucked and stuck into the top of his headband above his eyes. By arranging the stems across his brow and pulling them under the headband and down over his face to his mouth, leaving just enough space at the eyes to see clearly, he transformed his head into the very cluster of grass he had yanked out.
Flattening, Fiero set his bow and bobcat-hide quiver aside and began crawling toward the horses. He needed his hands free to grab hold of one and mount. Later, when the camp quieted down, he would return for the bow and none of the Mexicans would be any wiser.
There was a certain technique to the stalking crawl that Fiero’s people had perfected during countless decades of practice. By keeping his arms tucked to his sides and using only his elbows and knees to move his body forward, he made it impossible for anyone to detect his movements. And by advancing a little at a time, he insured that anyone who happened to glance in his direction would see nothing but an innocent clump of grass swaying slightly in the cool northwesterly breeze.
Fiero had done this many times. He had stalked deer and antelope and gotten so close he could see their nostrils quivering when he loosed his arrows. He had stalked bears, and gotten so close he could have slapped them on the rump if he’d wanted. But the easiest of all to stalk were whites and Mexicans, who had the senses of a rock and the brains of a two-year-old. Often, like now, stalking them was no challenge at all. Just once Fiero would like to stalk a worthy foe, someone whose abilities were the equal of his own.
By now, Fiero knew, El Chico was stalking the camp from the north. El Chico would creep close enough to the guard to put an arrow into the man’s back if the man so much as moved while Fiero was stealing the horses. If that happened, El Chico would then fade into the darkness while Fiero galloped off with the stock and the foolish Mexicans would be left to yell and jump up and down and waste their ammunition firing at empty air.
Fiero scanned the sleepers as he neared the string. There were nine in all, bundled in their blankets, and not a one had so much as twitched since first he’d laid eyes on them. He thought it a bit strange that the Mexicans were covered with blankets on such a warm night, since even whites and Mexicans were hardy enough to sleep in the open in the summer, but since the ways of his enemies were often mystifying, he did not think it so strange as to warrant much attention. And that was his undoing.
Fiero snaked ever closer, his steely muscles rippling, his right hand always close to the hilt of his large knife. He was fifteen yards from the horses when he saw one the sleepers, or rather one of the blankets, move ever so slightly. An instant later the night was shattered by thunder, or what seemed to be thunder but was actually the simultaneous blasting of many guns.
Pain seared Fiero’s brow. He felt moist blood on his face. Realizing that somehow he had been spotted, that the Mexicans were trying to kill him, he threw caution to the wind and, leaping up, he raced to the south. More rifles boomed. Slugs tore into the ground to the right and left. Fiero covered a mere ten yards when a black veil claimed his mind and he fell.
The shock of striking the hard ground snapped Fiero back to life. He heard shouts, heard rushing footsteps. Scrambling to his hands and knees, he angled to the left, blinking blood from his eyes. He could hardly see for more than a few feet. Suddenly the ground opened up under him and he slid down a short incline into a shallow dry wash, not more than hip-deep and only the width of his shoulders. But it was enough to temporarily hide him, and he lay still, on his back, listening to the thud of boots and the jingle of spurs. There were shouts in Spanish, which, like many of his people, he was somewhat familiar with, and shouts in English, which he recognized as being English even though he knew little of the language itself.
“Where did the bastardo go?” a Mexican roared.
“He vanished,” said another.
“Keep looking!”
The search went on for a long time. Fiero expected them to find him at any moment, but they were concentrating on an area west of him. Finally one of them gave a shout and there was excited jabbering in Spanish. They had found his bow and quiver.
“He must have crawled off to die! He wouldn’t leave these behind if he wasn’t hurt badly,” one said.
The voices and the footfalls retreated to the camp. Wincing from the effort, Fiero pushed himself to the top of the wash. He saw many men, Mexicans and whites alike, which amazed him. And then he saw El Chico being dragged in, El Chico wounded and doubled over in torment, and he felt his blood turn hot. One of the whites, a huge man sporting a long brown beard, stepped close to the fire. When Fiero saw the blue cap the man wore, and the curved sword the man drew as he grabbed hold of El Chico’s hair, Fiero understood at last. He knew he must hurry to the hollow and warn his people, but as he turned to crawl off another black veil enveloped his mind and the last thing he remembered was his face smacking the dirt.