Ike stopped and made himself ready for whatever was to come.
This time neither brother had a whiskey bottle in his hand.
“You remember us,” Claude said.
“Yeah,” Charlie added, “we met up earlier this mornin’.”
“I remember. What about it?”
Several citizens had already noticed and drifted into doorways, behind posts and other safer havens from what appeared to be inevitable, one way or another.
“Well, we sobered up some since,” Claude said.
“So I see.”
“Well . . .” Charlie cleared his throat, then paused.
“Well, what?”
“We been thinkin’ it over.” Charlie nodded.
“And?”
Claude also nodded. “And we figure we was outta line some.”
“We ought not’a shot up your store,” Charlie said.
“It’s not the store I was worried about, fellas—my boys were up there, and my brother.”
“Yeah, so we heard,” said Charlie.
“We sometimes get a little rambunctious when we drink, particularly in the mornin’,” Claude added.
“Ain’t never seen anybody shoot like that.” Charlie.
“We know you coulda shot us instead of them whiskey bottles . . .” Claude.
“If you’d’a mind to,” Charlie. “So, kinda taught us a lesson . . . when we sobered up . . .”
“Just wanted to let you know . . . and not just in private,” Claude said.
“That’s all right, fellas, just watch out about that drinking.” Ike smiled. “Particularly in the morning.”
“We’ll try,” Claude said.
“Good.”
“Oh, one more thing . . .” Charlie.
“What’s that?”
“Be it all right if me and Claude come trade with you over at your store?”
“It be . . . once we open up in a day or so.”
Both Keeler brothers nodded, turned, and walked back into the alley.
“Ike Silver.”
He turned and saw Oliver Knight hurrying toward him.
“You just provided me with a finish to that story. For a minute there I thought I was going to write an obituary . . . one way or another.”
“For a minute there, so did I.”
“Never saw those Keeler boys so tame.”
“Well, could be they’re not as crazy as everybody said.”
“Could be, but Mister Silver, you got more faith in human nature than anybody I ever met. Well, got to get back to that deadline.”
“And I’ve got to get back to the store.”
Rupert Lessur, Gallagher and Rooster were standing in front of Lessur’s office as Big Ike passed by.
“Hello again, gentlemen.” He smiled and continued on his way toward the store.
The Keeler brothers smiled and waved as they rode past Ike Silver.
“Can you beat that?” Gallagher shook his head.
“Yes, I can,” Rupert Lessur said and walked into his office.
The hammer smashed down.
Inside the stable, Ben Brown worked the bellows and hammered on a chunk of iron.
“What do you see when you hit like that, Ben?”
He stopped work and looked up at his wife.
“What?”
“I said, what do you see when you hammer like that? It’s not just a piece of iron you’re hitting.”
“Have I ever treated you wrong . . . or the boy? Have I ever—”
“No, Ben. You got a gentle touch for such a powerful man. But—”
“But what?”
“We’re free now, Ben.”
“Are we?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe there’s kinds of shackles that can’t be seen.”
“Maybe there are . . . but not around here. Has Mister Silver ever done you wrong? Or us? Has he?”
“No.”
“Then can’t you just . . .”
“Just what?”
“Ease up a little, Ben? Just a little? While we’re here? For the boy’s sake. . . . and mine? Can’t you?”
“Where you going?”
“I’m gonna see if I can’t fix supper for those folks.”
Ike Silver sat at the rolltop desk in the store going over some papers as Melena came in from the side door.
“Mister Silver . . .”
“Come in, Melena. What is it?”
“You know there’s a kitchen back there . . .”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, I was just wondering . . . I thought if it’s all right with you, I could fix supper for tonight.”
“We’d appreciate that, Melena. Sure could use a home-cooked meal. And help yourself to anything you need from the store.”
“Thank you, and there’s some fat chickens out back. I think they belong to you.”
“Pick out the fattest.” He smiled.
Melena Brown started to leave, then hesitated.
Ike Silver rose from his chair and came closer to her.
“There’s something else, isn’t there? Please tell me.”
“About Ben . . .”
“What about him?”
“I know he seems sort of . . . starchy.”
“Hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re a good man to say that. You see . . . Ben thought . . . after the war, when we left Georgia . . . well, he’s good with his hands, Mister Silver. He can do most anything, but he can’t get work—not on his own or for anybody—and he’s gonna have to go to sharecropping. It’s nigh killing him.”
“I understand.”
“Back in La Paz . . . we didn’t have but fifty cents. We can’t travel like other folks, but we was gonna have to sell—”
“Melena, don’t you say anything to him. Let me see what I can do.”
“That’s not why I—”
“I know. There’s—”
The front door opened and Sister Mary Boniface stood in the doorway.
“The sign says Closed, but I thought I’d come in anyhow. Is it all right?”
“Sister Bonney, the door is never closed for you. Come in.”
“Hello, Melena.”
“Sister Bonney . . . uh, excuse me.”
Melena moved toward the side door.
“Any luck?” Ike asked.
“Yes.” Sister Bonney smiled.
“Good.”
“No, bad. All bad. I’ve been all over town. There’s nothing available for a school. At least nothing I could afford.”
“Are you going to give up?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. But I have been thinking . . .”
“Do you have any suggestions?”
“That’s up to you.”
“What is?”
“Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Ike lead her to one of the doors.
“What is it?”
“It’s a door. Go ahead and open it.”
She did. He stepped up next to her.
“You see this big storeroom . . . with its own entrance from the street?”
“Yes, I see it.”
“Well, right now it’s empty. Got any ideas?”
“God bless you, Big Ike,” she said, beaming.
“He always has . . . almost always.”
There was a knock on the door of Rupert Lessur’s private office.
“Come in.”
The door swung open and Rooster’s head and shoulder appeared. “Mister Lessur.”
“Yes?”
“Somebody here says she wants to see you.”
“She?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who?”
“Sister Bonney.” The voice came from the other side of the door. “May I come in?”
“Of course. Rooster, quit blocking the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sister Bonney swept past, entered, nodded at Rupert Lessur sitting at his desk and Jim Gallagher sitting in a chair across from Lessur’s desk, then looked around the room.
“Very nice office you have here, Mister Lessur, especially that desk.”
Lessur rose, looked at Gallagher, who got the message and also rose and removed his hat.
“It was imported,”—Lessur pointed at the desk—“from France. I’m told it once belonged to Cardinal Richelieu.”
“Not one of my favorite people,” Sister Bonney said.
“Oh? I hope you won’t hold that against me. Rooster, that’ll be all.”
Rooster nodded, took off his hat, stepped back and closed the door.
“What can I do for you, Sister?”
“You can deliver that crate.”
“Oh, really? Then you found somewhere to start the school.”
“Yes. Just a few minutes ago.”
“Very good. Where shall we deliver it?”
“To the storeroom behind Mister Silver’s new place.”
Gallagher squinted at his boss.
“That’s where you’re going to teach?” Lessur smiled.
“And live.”
“Well, that is . . . convenient.”
“Yes, isn’t it? The crate—would tomorrow be . . . convenient?”
“Of course. Gallagher, you’ll see to it.”
“Sure, boss.”
“Oh, one more thing, Mister Lessur.”
“What’s that, Sister?”
“You said something about a contribution. . . .”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. Would fifty dollars be convenient?”
“Of course.”
“And what about you, Mister Gallagher? Say, five dollars?”
“Uh, sure, Sister.”
“I thank you both . . . and Mister Lessur, that desk looks right at home. Good day, gentlemen.”
Sister Mary Boniface closed the door behind her.
“Well, Mister Lessur,” Gallagher said, “seems like they’re all settlin’ in over there.”
“So it seems.” Lessur struck a match with his thumbnail and lit a cigar. “For the time being.”
Colorados, Quemada, Secoro and a number of other mounted Apaches, all grim, almost funereal, looked down from their vantage point toward the activity at the mouth of the Rattlesnake Mine and the nearby area. Dolan and his men were cutting down trees, hauling and sawing beams for shoring.
The Apaches were looking at what was just a small patch of their once vast empire. From the Mogollan River southward across the dreaded desert waste to the sky-piercing peaks of the Sierra Madre in Mexico—all that the Apache had conquered. They had scattered the Zunis out of the heartland, chased the Comanches to the east and the Yumas to the west and carved their claim in blood and fear.
For more than two hundred years the Apache nation, made up of many tribes—Tonto, Mimbreno, Mescalero, Jicarilla, White Mountain, Lipan, Pinal, Arivarpo, Coyatero, and Chiricahua—had been invincible until the white men and bluecoats with long knives and long guns and large numbers had shrunk what was once an empire to a few pieces of dirt called reservations, and to barren slopes and rocks fit only for goats and snakes.
Quemada pointed and spoke to his chief in the dialect of the Athapascan-Spanish tongue. “They came here, Colorados, while you were in their prison. Not enough they take the land where we live and hunt—now they foul the place where the bones of our fathers and their fathers before them rest. For their yellow metal they desecrate the ground where we will be buried.”
Quemada looked at Secorro, then back to Colorados, waiting for him to speak, but the Apache chief remained silent.
“And they will come after you, Colorados, to take you back to their prison, where you will die and be buried in some unremembered grave on their land instead of here with your people . . . what is left of your people.” He pointed below. “Look at what is happening even now.”
“I have seen,” Colorados said softly.
“Our tribes are scattered.”
“Bring them together. Your father did.”
“We have no weapons.”
“Take theirs—your father did. All the tribes will follow the son of Mangas Colorados. Gather them together.”
“I still feel the weakness of my wounds. First I will gather my own strength.”
“Then what will you do?”
Colorados did not answer.