There was a doctor in Nogales, but it was nearly a month before Carola Ray was finally installed in a proper hospital in Tucson. The medical treatment there was better than most, but the news was just the same. And her own diagnosis was proved totally accurate.
‘Break to the back. Fall did it. Your using herbs on that break to the thigh saved us having to carve it off, Mr. Herne. But she’ll never walk again.’
She was totally paralyzed from the waist down, unable to control her own functions and incapable of moving a single step. She couldn’t even manage to crawl.
During the eternally long ride back through the hostile heat of the Arizona summer, strapped to a rough travois behind one of the Mexicans’ horses Herne had looked after the woman with a rough efficiency. With little sympathy, and with less conversation. The whole contract had turned sour and he knew now that there was no chance of his getting any of the money that he’d so painfully earned during the long chase after Geronimo. But he couldn’t have left her to die.
Jed Herne was one of the hardest of men and if it had been his own life measured against hers, he would have ridden away from her without the least compunction. But not all of the milk of human kindness had drained from him, so he stayed. Bathing her when they had water, gently washing away the filth from her body, cradling her in his arms as she wept.
And finally, it was over.
There was a little money, he discovered. Enough to keep her in the hospital for a whiles. The doctor, a crusty but benign old New Englander, had told him outside the ward where Carola Ray was lying that she would not live long.
‘Shock to the brain. Heat and suffering. And the spine’s sore broken. I figure she’ll likely make it into the winter, but I doubt she’ll come out the other side.’
‘I thank you,’ said the tall shootist, starting to turn away.
‘She has asked for you. Many times.’
‘The nurses told me.’
‘But you?’
‘I got business hereabouts, then I got to ride on. Seems to me better this way.’
‘Not even to say farewell to her, Mr. Herne? I would have thought—’
‘I don’t rightly give a damn for you or your thoughts, Doctor. She’s crippled and I don’t get paid. Farewells is best short. Shorter the better. Say them for me.’
‘Then you’re a cold-hearted bastard, Herne.’
The shootist paused from down the corridor. ‘So they tell me. So long, Doctor.’
But that wasn’t the end of the story, Not quite.
~*~
On September 4th, 1886 Geronimo finally surrendered his small band to General Miles, near Fronteras. As Herne had predicted it was Apache scouts, loyal to the Cavalry, who tracked him down and the cantankerous old warrior was persuaded that at last the time had come to yield.
He was put on the Southern Pacific Railroad and taken to Texas. In San Antonio he was close to death when an attempt was made to try him in a civilian court for murder. A trial that would have had only one outcome. But the military intervened and he was finally, some forty days later, put on a train for Fort Pickens in Florida with many of his warriors. Including, incidentally, some of the same scouts who had helped catch him. A sorry reward for them!
~*~
Jed Herne had paused to water his horse at around that time, near the railroad track that ran east. There was no town nearby, but there was a large, solitary water tower on the further side of the twin tracks.
There was a faint smudge of smoke on the horizon and by straining his ears the shootist could just hear die distant singing of the iron rails, signaling the approach of a train heading into the rising sun. His stallion could sense it and looked up from the muddied pool, whinnying softly. Herne took the bridle in his hand and held it, watching the snaking dark line growing larger and nearer
The noise of the locomotive swelled, but Herne saw that the train was slowing down, presumably to take on water from the tower. He patted his horse on the side of die neck, calming it, glancing casually as the carriages rattled and clanged to a halt, less than fifty yards from him. To his surprise he saw soldiers, in dusty blue, leap off the train before it had even halted, circling out, carbines at the ready
‘Now, what the Hell is that all about?’ he said to nobody in particular.
The engineers worked busily, swinging out the long hose, pouring water in, taking no notice of the solitary man and his horse. A couple of the Cavalry troopers looked at him, but a shout from a stockily-built Major brought their heads smartly round
By the time that Herne’s horse had drunk enough the train was ready to go, chugging very slowly forwards, the soldiers swinging back on board. There were guards between all the carriages and as the train pulled away past him Herne finally saw the reason for the precautions.
There were several dozen Apache warriors, prisoners, on the train, faces blankly staring out at the landscape as it crawled by.
‘Chiricahua,’ said Herne to himself, watching the train go.
Seeing that in the last carriage, alone by a window, there was an older man, with a broad face and deep-set eyes. Who saw the shootist and turned his head to stare at him.
For a moment out of time their eyes locked and the Indian lifted his hands slightly, showing the chains. Nodding in what might have been recognition or a salute. Herne did nothing, sitting easily in the saddle, looking with eyes cold as flint as the locomotive vanished towards the east, carrying Geronimo with it.
Only then did Jed tip his hat, in what could have been acknowledgement. Setting spurs to his stallion and heeling it forwards.
Away towards the west and north.