Kaytennae addressed himself to me, but I watched Ben Allison: I wondered how he would feel now about killing every Apache in Juh’s El Paso war party, having found this brave young friend among that party’s number?
The youth began by saying that his uncle had been initially lured to steal the Texas white boy by the promise of the black soldier that they could exchange the boy for a ransom of all the new rifles in the American arsenal at Post of El Paso. And the black one had said that these new rifles were the wonderful kind, called Spencers, that had the short barrels, were loaded through the butt stock, and would shoot seven times at the flick of the lever.
Some Nednhi had been skeptical at first but Juh had won them over. Now all the Apache bands of the Chiricahua praised the great, bold adventure. Nana, Victorio, Mangas, Eskiminzin, Loco—even the wild young Bedonkohe, Geronimo—were reported ready to follow Juh and the mysterious black extraño.
However, the black soldier had not taken so generous a view of the war chief’s success. Juh had done too many things wrong. He had killed all those Texas Rangers. He had done too much talking up in the Davis Mountain camps of the Texas Lipan chief, Magoosh. Little doubt he had let slip the identity of the fugitive black man in his Mexican stronghold whose plan it was to kidnap the son of the Texas governor. Those Lipans would have reported this to the officers at Fort Bliss. American cavalry and Texas Ranger volunteers alike might even then be riding for Casas Grandes. The entire plan could be imperiled.
All of this, Kaytennae now concluded, he had just reviewed with his aunt Huera. It was why he had left us, to plead with her for our safety. She had seemed sympathetic, perhaps realizing at last that she owed her life to the Tejano, Al-li-sun. But Kaytennae could not be sure.
At that point where he would have asked his aunt to tell him if she would join in helping him free the prisoners—all of them, Little Buck, Blackrobe Jorobado, and the tall one with the pale eyes—the black one had come hurrying down from his big jacal.
And that was where the trail for Kaytennae’s two friends, and the white boy they had risked their lives to rescue from the Apache, now grew dark and dim.
It was made that way by what Kaytennae had heard while feigning the moccasin repair behind the wickiup of Huera the Blonde; and what he had heard was that the black one had a new plan.
Well, not really a new plan.
A delay in the old one.
The black one had convinced Huera that Juh had put them all in danger by his faulty leadership. The only way that Juh might now redeem himself would be to personally battle the one who had brought the war chief to a humbling before his own war party. A committee of three warriors who had been on that raid—standard procedure among the Nednhi in war business—had been appointed to consider the matter of their leader’s failures. Their verdict, only now brought to He Who Has the Plan: Juh must fight and kill the Tejano Allison.
But wait; that would merely restore Juh to a warrior’s place among the Nednhi, a matter of personal honor as an Apache fighting man shamed by a Pinda Lickoyi, a damned pale-haired White Eye and, worse yet, one from the hated Texas country.
As to who would be the future war leader of the Nednhi, He Who Has the Plan sought from Huera, the holy woman of the band, the warrior woman whose spirit-words were law in the stronghold, her own vision of that man upon whom this crucial honor would now fall.
Here, our teller-of-tales put out his hands in helpless gesture to us both.
“I am sorry for you, my friends,” Kaytennae said, “but more of sorrow is within me for my aunt.”
“Your aunt, boy?” Ben Allison broke in sharply. “What about her? Has that feller done her harm?”
“No, no, Al-li-sun,” he said, pronouncing the name syllabically, as did Juh and the others, “she has done him an honor.”
“Ah, no,” I breathed, guessing the tragedy.
“Ah yes, Blackrobe,” Kaytennae nodded, “he is the new war chief of the Nednhi.”