THERE WERE ONLY a few spurts of gunfire before everything went quiet. Cameron felt the blood rush in his ears like waves against a pier.
His tongue tasted coppery. He had long ago learned to take that as a sign that Apaches were close. Some men sweated profusely. For others, old wounds ached. For Cameron it was that coppery, bloodlike taste on his tongue.
He had a bad feeling about Bud and Jimmy. He didn’t like the silence that seemed to grow, like an invisible black cloud, as he rode.
The trail twisted through chalky buttes spotted with yucca and catclaw. At the bottom of the gully, along a rocky creekbed, grew gnarled, wind-stunted trees that looked like something in a death dream. Far above these twisted sycamores hung three vultures in a loose orbit. Cameron’s breath caught in his throat as he wound around a stunted butte and spied a body about fifty yards beyond the trees.
Keeping his eyes on the terrain around him, Cameron reached down, smoothly shucked his Winchester, and jacked a shell into the chamber. As he rode up to the man on the ground, he talked to himself, trying to remain calm. The hair on the back of his neck was standing upright, his heart was drumming like trains coupling, and his mouth was full of pennies.
It was Hotchkiss. He was moaning and cursing, writhing in pain. The three arrows embedded in his belly, chest, and thigh danced as he moved.
“Stay still, Bud,” Cameron said, dismounting, scanning the area as he moved carefully toward the old frontiersman, as though the man were booby-trapped.
“Get … Get the hell out of here, Jack” Hotchkiss urged between grunts of pain, breathing heavily. “It’s no use … it’s no goddamn use.”
“Sh. Take it easy.”
“They had us sittin’ down here like ducks on a pond.”
“Where’s Jimmy?”
“If he ain’t dead, they took him. They hit me first. Didn’ … didn’ even know what was happenin’ before I was layin’ here on the ground and they was screamin’ and flingin’ arrows from those buttes up yonder. I squeezed off a couple shots but I didn’ hit nothin’ but air.” He lifted his head and smiled with a sharp prod of pain. “Oh Jesus, it hurts!”
“Rest easy, Bud,” Cameron instructed. He studied the arrows sticking out of bloodholes in Hotchkiss’s body. He knew he couldn’t remove the one in the man’s belly without pulling out half his stomach.
Cameron touched the other arrow, over Hotchkiss’s right lung. Hotchkiss yelled, “Ah, God … Don’t, Jack! It’s no use. It’s no goddamn use. I’m a goner.”
Cameron knew with an overpowering anguish that it was true. He was torn between staying here and trying to do something for Hotchkiss, and going after Jimmy.
Hotchkiss was reading his mind. “Get the hell out of here, Jack. Don’t go after Jimmy. There was at least ten of ’em, and they’ll get you, too. They’re prob’ly heading back to their rancheria. Even if you find ’em, there won’t be nothin’ you can do. They’ll just do to you like they done to me.” He arched his back and gave a cry of pain. “Ahhh … goddamn … that smarts!”
Cameron knew Apaches well enough to know they had taken Jimmy alive for one reason and one reason only—to torture him. For Apaches, torture was sport, and they’d honed that sport to an art. He imagined the boy’s cries of pain, which the Apaches could prolong for days, and it sickened him.
“Hand me my pistol, will ya?” Hotchkiss said.
The long-barreled Smith & Wesson lay in the gravel about five feet to Hotchkiss’s right. Cameron knew why the graybeard wanted the gun; he’d’ve wanted it for the same reason. Cameron set the weapon in Hotchkiss’s outstretched hand. The old man’s eyes were rolling back in his head, showing the whites, and he was panting like a woman in labor.
“God, I’m sorry I got you into this, Bud,” Cameron said, shoving off his hat and running a rough hand through his curling blond hair.
“It weren’t none o’ your fault,” Hotchkiss said, getting a good grip on the pistol. “It’s just that … goddamn, we were so close to the gold!”
“If I hadn’t wanted to go after Bachelard, none of this ever would have happened. You’d be back in Goldneld—”
“I wanted to go after Bachelard as bad as you did.”
“We should’ve known better.”
“Go.” Hotchkiss waved him away. “Get out of here. Go back.”
“I’m going after Jimmy.” Cameron snugged his hat back on his head and lifted his rifle.
“It’s no use; he’s as good as dead.”
“You were one of the very best men I ever knew, Bud,” Cameron said. He squeezed Hotchkiss’s shoulder for a moment, then stood. The older man grinned briefly, then said, “Just tell me one thing. Do you believe in God?”
Cameron considered this for a moment, dropping his eyes. “Sure,” he said woodenly.
Hotchkiss grinned again. “I don’t, either. So I guess I’ll see ya in hell, then.”
“See ya, Bud,” Cameron said.
“Later, Jack.”
Cameron mounted his buckskin, then looked once more at his friend. His eyes veiled with tears. Brushing the moisture from his cheek with the back of one hand, he rode off, heading down the path the Apaches had left in the sand.
He was fifty yards away when he heard the pistol pop.
He didn’t look back.
Coming to a freshet bubbling down from a spring, Cameron stopped and watered his horse. He dismounted to take a good look at the tracks, holding the horse’s reins loosely in his hand.
About two twisting, turning miles back, he’d seen from the scuffed tracks of leather heels—a single pair among the prints of unshod hooves—that Jimmy Bronco was being forced to walk, probably with a rope around his neck. The tracks told Cameron the kid had fallen several times and been dragged before he’d regained his feet. In the last mile or so, he’d been falling more and more often and getting dragged farther and farther. It appeared one of the riders pulled him onto a horse now and then, so they could make better time; then he’d throw Jimmy down and make him walk some more.
The kid was wearing out. Cameron hoped he’d get to him before he was dragged to death. At the same time he knew that getting dragged was probably a much more pleasant way to go than what the kid probably had in store if and when the Apaches got him to their rancheria.
Jimmy’d be the main attraction tonight. The women, kids, and even the old folks would come out to enjoy the festivities. To watch him writhe and hear him scream …
Cameron winced at the thought, scrubbed the sweat from the back of his neck with his bandanna, then climbed back into the saddle and gave the animal the spurs. He knew the Apaches were gaining ground on him, and it frustrated him no end.
The Apaches could keep up their breakneck pace for hours. Their mountain- and desert-bred mustangs were used to it and even if one or two of the mounts gave out, they could double up on one of the others. On the other hand, if Cameron’s gave out, he and Jimmy were dead.
He followed a rugged, twisting trail into the high country. Pines and junipers grew out of the rocks. Grass became less scarce. Deer tracks were plentiful. Once, he saw a mangled juniper where a bull elk had scraped off its velvet, the antler tips laying the trunk open to its mushy red core. Cameron rode with his rifle light in his hands, boots soft in the stirrups, ready to come out of the leather at a split-second’s notice.
The sun was angling down in the west, toasting the back of his neck and turning his buckskin tunic into a hot glove. His thought of Jimmy and his old pal Hotchkiss. He’d had no right to bring them along on this foolhardy mission to kill Bachelard.
Bud was too proud to go home, where he belonged. And Cameron had been too focused on Bachelard—and Marina?—to urge the man to retreat to his ranch at the foot of Hackberry Mesa. At least he didn’t leave a wife and kids, as Pas Varas had. Bud had been married twice, to Indian women. They’d given him two kids apiece, but had taken them when they’d left Hotchkiss.
The sun was about a half-hour from setting when Cameron’s horse came out on the shoulder of a mountain cloaked in pines. The air was fresh and clear. A trickle of snowmelt water sluiced down a trough in the slope to his left.
Cameron stopped his horse to listen. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of low, guttural voices.
His heart quickening, he dismounted quietly, tied his horse to a branch, and donned his moccasins. Then he walked beneath the pines. The air was dark and filled with the heavenly smell of balsam—a sharp contrast to the overall mood of the place.
The needles and spongy, mossy earth were scuffed, making the trail easy to follow. He wound up on a ridge, the slope of boulders, talus, stunted pines, and low-growing junipers falling away in a forty-five-degree angle. Below, a gorge was nestled in more pines and a few deciduous trees, mainly aspens and a few sycamores.
Smoke smelling sweetly of pine rose up from the trees like high-mountain mist. Cookfires sparked through the branches. A dog whimpered and barked.
Cameron crouched low, considering his situation.
It was maybe a couple hundred feet down to the meadow, and the grade was fairly easy, something he could descend without falling if he made use of the handholds. There were plenty of boulders and trees to crouch behind. Also, it was getting darker, though the darkness would work against him as well as for him.
How would he find Jimmy? How could he get him out of there with no light to guide him?
Knowing it wasn’t going to get any easier the longer he waited, Cameron stole down the slope. About halfway down, he stopped and scanned the meadow beneath the treetops.
There were two large cookfires tended by old women and girls. The braves were milling around, eating and tending their horses. Cameron could smell the unmistakable aroma of mule. Probably the braves had been out raiding pack trains when they’d discovered Hotchkiss and Jimmy. They must have brought a mule or two back on which to dine. Apaches loved nothing as well as mule—a big, succulent quarter roasted on a spit—washed down with tiswin, their near-toxic drink of choice, which turned them into a horde of drunken banshees with the devil’s own lust for blood and misery.
Cameron wondered where Jimmy was. He had to get him out of there. He headed for a spot where the trees looked densest, one step at a time, keeping his eyes on the meadow and holding the rifle loosely before him. At last he hunkered down behind a stout pine, removed his hat, and risked a look around the tree.
From what he could tell, there were about twelve warriors, a handful of children, and about five or six old women. An old man with long, stringy gray hair sat before the canyon wall, bare legs folded beneath him. He was singing some chant and looking at the treetops, toward his Apache god, no doubt giving thanks for the safe return of the young warriors with the mules and the skinny young white-eyes.
Cameron did not see Jimmy. He was sure the boy was here, because he’d seen his tracks until the Apaches had half dragged him into the pines. Jimmy had to be here—maybe behind the brush wickiups that sat in a haphazard row before the canyon wall. Setting his jaw and taking a deep, calming breath, Cameron moved out from the tree and made his way carefully around the encampment, stopping behind each tree to scout his position and make sure no Apache was near.
Halfway around the perimeter of the camp, Cameron stopped dead in his tracks as the sound of feet padding through the pine needles and leaves came to his ears—from behind him! He turned quickly and saw a figure moving his way, silhouetted by the light which had nearly faded to total darkness under the pines. Cameron couldn’t believe the man hadn’t seen him, but apparently he hadn’t, for he did not react, but just continued walking, bent a little by the weight of whatever it was that he was carrying over his shoulder.
Slowly Cameron eased his rifle into his left hand and unsheathed his bowie with his right. Suddenly the Apache, who had been on a course that would have taken him only a few feet to Cameron’s left, stopped. Obviously he’d seen the white man.
Before the Indian could react, Cameron threw the bowie with an adroit flick of his wrist, a move practiced endlessly when scouting for the Army. He heard the sharp point of the knife crunch through the Apache’s breastbone.
The Indian stiffened and made a sound like a single gulp. A raspy exhale followed. Cameron prayed the man would die before he could yell. The load on the man’s shoulder fell as he slumped, his legs buckling. The man staggered forward two steps, then collapsed.
He fell to his knees and swayed there for several long seconds, gasping almost inaudibly. Then he fell forward and gave a final sigh.
Cameron sagged with relief, his entire body covered with nervous sweat. He wiped his hands on his tunic, looked around, and walked to the Indian. Crouching, he turned the man over. His bowie was buried to the hilt in the Apache’s chest, its wide blade no doubt slicing the man’s heart in two.
Cameron had to place one foot on the Indian’s chest and pull with both hands to remove the blade. When he’d wiped it clean on the Indian’s body, he inspected what the man had been carrying—mule. Cameron wondered how many more men were carving up the meat, and warned himself to watch his backside.
Any more incidents like this one were liable to get him a heart attack, if not get him shot.