TOO MUCH OF NOT ENOUGH
The last day of December blew sleet like a swarm of ice arrows down the narrow canyon and into Rafe’s face. The year 1860 wasn’t leaving without a fight. Rafe pulled down his hat, shifted the collar of his faded army greatcoat up around his ears, and slouched lower on the seat of the light coach called a celerity. Slouching didn’t make his high perch any warmer. The five passengers had lowered the canvas curtains over the open sides, and Rafe envied them that small protection.
One or more of the passengers must have brought a supply of whiskey, because the voices coming from inside the coach grew steadily louder and more contentious. Rafe sighed. They had looked a hard lot when they boarded.
The hardest of them was a barrel-chested, basset-eyed fop with drooping side-whiskers called Picadilly weepers framing his square jowls. He wore a plug-hat, patent-leather halfboots, and the newfangled arrangement of matching wool vest, coat, and trousers. Rafe pegged him for a troublemaker. He hadn’t proved Rafe wrong.
None of the passengers had elected to ride on top of the coach today, but Rafe’s dog did. She sat with her head up, a lacework of icicles dangling from her muzzle. He had named her Patch, short for Apache. He hoped she had a nose for her namesake, although today she would have to wait for the odors to melt to smell them. She probably couldn’t even detect the cheap cologne that the guard, Toomey, wore. The aroma reminded Rafe of a dead possum rotting under a jasmine bush.
Toomey had gone the whole hog with the Butterfield look.
The same clothes he wore today hung in the window of every general merchandise store from Memphis to Tucson. The style’s namesake had never gotten closer than Arkansas, but one couldn’t fling a dead rooster in Tucson and not hit a John Butterfield.
Toomey had pulled the legs of his pantaloons down over the tops of the high leather boots, as Butterfield did. It was a style that defeated the boots’ purpose in this thorny country, but vanity would win over practicality most of the time. In warmer weather Toomey wore Butterfield’s calf-length yellow linen duster, silk cravat, and starched, white linen shirt. Now, however, he had on a coat made from a bison hide worn fur-side out Rafe felt as though he were sitting next to the bison itself, though a bison would have smelled better, been more predictable, and more amusing company besides.
Butterfield’s flat-crowned hat covered the bald spot that captured more of Toomey’s cranial real estate each month. If Rafe ever needed a hat himself, he had only to ride along the route of the Butterfield stage and choose one. The trail was littered with them.
Toomey shouted over the wail of the wind. “Have you ever plugged an Apache woman, Collins?”
Rafe almost wished the man had kept himself occupied shooting at everything that moved, and some things that didn’t. Toomey was partial to blasting small birds with his shotgun and shattering cacti into green mist.
Rafe shook his head and stared at the horses’ rumps. The thought of bedding an Apache woman hadn’t occurred to him. He had seen women of other tribes in the establishments he frequented, but he’d never known anyone to take an Apache except by force. From what he had observed, Apache women were surprisingly demure. Except for that minx of a horse thief, he amended. She was not like any Indian woman, or any woman of any race for that matter, but she was not what he would call flirtatious. He would as soon court an irate badger as woo her.
“I know they’s standoffish as a rule,” Toomey said, “but
I hear if you can get one liquored up, she’ll teach your doodle to dance, and no mistake.”
Doodle? Rafe almost laughed in spite of his sour mood. Did they call it a doodle in San Francisco, where Toomey came from? Did Toomey’s fellow members of the Committee of Vigilance refer to their doodles?
To Rafe’s relief, the canyon opened out, and sunlight warmed the wind’s chill, although it still blew with enough rancor to keep him turtled inside his greatcoat. Maybe Rafe was trying to insulate himself from Toomey and the rising storm of passengers inside the coach. He knew that when Toomey got the bit in his mouth on the subject of women, he could neither be stopped nor turned, so the sight of half a dozen Apaches driving about twenty head of cattle cheered him up. They would distract Toomey. All Rafe had to do was make sure Toomey and his Henry rifle didn’t start a war right here, right now.
The Apaches were approaching the trail at an angle and heading northeast. Toomey loaded the shotgun and his two pistols and put them at half-cock. His Henry stayed loaded all the time. As they came into range, Toomey raised the Henry and sighted on the man in the lead.
“Put that down,” Rafe said.
“Between us we have enough pills to make them all mightily sick.”
“Put it down but keep it handy.”
Toomey set the rifle alongside the shotgun resting across his thighs. The game he enjoyed hunting more than anything else was the two-legged kind. He often bragged about bagging greasers and maybe murderers back in California. For variety, the members of the Committee of Vigilance hung some of the cuplrits, or innocent men. Whatever.
Rafe leaned out to the side. He had to shout several times before a hand pulled back the canvas curtain, and the plug hat and Picadilly weepers poked out and tilted to look up at him. The bulging eyes below the hat’s brim and above the weepers had gone from shifty to unfocused.
“A party of Indians is approaching,” Rafe said. “They
don’t look to be on the warpath but keep your pieces ready. Do not fire unless I tell you to.”
The man poked his pistols out anyway and began waving them. Rafe put all six reins in one hand and took the whip from its boot. He snapped it with a loud crack so that the tip grazed the man’s hand. The plug hat withdrew abruptly, and Rafe shouted after him.
“Fire those without my say-so, and I shall make you wish you hadn’t.” He turned forward again. “If the ’Pache don’t kill us all first,” he muttered.
The Apaches made no effort to avoid the coach’s path, or to interfere with it. Rafe halted the horses and watched the cattle and their rag-and-bone escort cross the trail about fifty feet ahead of him. They were dressed as usual except for one. A boy in homespun pantaloons and the rags of a shirt rode behind the leader. He turned to look at Rafe as he passed. If Rafe had had any doubts about his identity, the red hair hanging from beneath his old hat and the upward cast to his left eye would have dispelled them.
Rafe didn’t believe in interfering with other people’s business, but maybe the Indians had taken the boy against his will. Felix Ward wasn’t worth saving for the benefit of civilized society any more than his stepfather, John Ward, was; but getting him away from his captors now might avoid a heap more trouble later. Rafe wasn’t prepared to fight for the lad, but he would try to trade for him.
“Felix Ward,” he called out. “Do you want to come with us?”
The boy glanced at him, and the sullen expression never changed. He looked away as though he had heard nothing. Rafe and Toomey watched the procession head off into the mountains.
“Cain’t blame the boy for quitting John Ward’s company,” Toomey observed. “I knew Ward in California. The Committee cast him off for bad behavior.”
Rafe chuckled at the notion. How low would a man have to sink to be rejected by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee? In any case, Felix Ward was well gone, and no one
would miss him, least of all his not-quite-stepfather.
Rafe hadn’t time to ponder the situation any further. The heat of Plug Hat’s temper had brought the contention in the coach to a full boil. The canvas sides flew up, and men spilled out of them in a roil of fists and heels and oaths. Rafe was tempted to drive on and leave them, but he pulled the horses to a halt.
All he needed was for one of them to develop the “starts.” The starts were the demented fits that frequently overcame passengers deprived for weeks of sleep and subjected to the fear of attacks by Comanches or Apaches. The fits usually occurred when a passenger did fall asleep, only to be wakened suddenly by noise or jostling.
Imagining himself to be under attack, the afflicted one lashed out at his fellow passengers. Rafe had also known them to jump down from the coach and hightail it off into the desert.
He decided then and there to drive for Butterfield only until he saved enough money to buy a wagon of his own. He would return to hauling freight. The salt pork and corn might harbor worms and weevils, but at least they were quiet.
RAFE’S LEG OF THE BUTTERFIELD ROUTE ENDED HERE AT the stone stage station at Siphon Canyon. The canyon was one of the many that formed the six-mile-long cleft dividing the Dos Cabezas and the Chiricahua mountains. Americans called the long defile Doubtful Pass. The Mexicans had named it Paso del Dado, the Pass of the Die. Die in this case meant the singular of dice. It carried the sense of risk, of chance, of taunting fate. What made it chancy were the Chiricahua Apaches who had preyed on travelers here for centuries.
Covered with alkali dust, Rafe took a bucket to the spring. He stripped in the bitter February cold, and sluiced water over himself, dancing to keep warm. He dried off with some sacking and dressed; then he slept on the bunk in the back room for a few hours. When he woke up, he had time on his hands.
The westbound stage wasn’t due for two days.
He volunteered to help Jim Wallace deliver corn and salt beef to the troops bivouacked over the ridge and downslope from the station. Jim was the best driver Rafe had ever met. He was a soft-spoken sensible sort whose only noticeable point of pride was a large front tooth of gold. He had dark, wavy hair slicked back, and the lean, scarred body and hands of a man who had survived here for twenty years. He spoke a little Apache, and he often shared tobacco with Cochise. He was the one who had persuaded Cochise to supply wood for the station.
Rafe also came along because Wallace had mentioned that Cochise would be here. Cochise had become famous among Indians, Anglos, and Mexicans alike. People said that a look or a word from him could subdue the most fractious of his followers.
When Rafe and Wallace finished unloading the barrels at the cook tent, Patch set about clearing the area of rabbits while Rafe hunkered by the stream. He broke the thin crust of ice and scooped up the icy water. He looked glumly at the thirty or so tents set in neat rows. He should have been relieved to see the infantry arrive, but he wasn’t.
In Rafe’s opinion, the neighborhood went into a steep decline when Second Lt. George Bascom arrived. Rafe had disliked him the instant he strode into the station to introduce himself to Wallace. In Bascom’s close-set blue eyes Rafe could see the cold fire of ambition, but no spark of intelligence. Wallace summed Bascom up when he observed, “The lieutenant’s got too much of not enough.”
Bascom had not the wit to distinguish shades of good and evil. For him the world was neatly divided between those who agreed with him and were right, and those who didn’t and were wrong. Baby fat tautened his sleek, pink cheeks. He cultivated a wedge-shaped beard, maybe to disguise the fact that his Creator ran short on materials when He reached Bascom’s chin. The lieutenant reminded Rafe of a salamander lurking in river grass. He started referring to him as The Newt.
The weather didn’t lighten Rafe’s mood. The ceiling of iron-gray clouds drooped with the weight of snow, making the sun’s light look like dusk rather than early afternoon. The surrounding peaks seemed to press closer in menace.
Rafe assessed the ponies tethered outside Bascom’s tent. They had Apache saddles and bridles with the usual oddments of feathers and claws and beading attached. Even though he knew Lozen’s mare wouldn’t likely be among them, he looked for her anyway. He wondered what mischief she was up to.
“I have a bad feeling about this soiree of Bascom’s.” Rafe climbed up to sit next to Wallace on the wagon seat.
“The chief brought his wife and a couple kids, his brother, and two nephews with him.” Wallace handed Rafe a canteen of whiskey. The silky liquid warmed Rafe’s throat as it went down. “He wouldn’t be planning any trouble with his wife and little ones along.”
“I’m not worried about Cochise.” Rafe felt an unease stir just above his belt buckle. “What do you reckon Bascom’s up to?”
“He says he and his men are passing through, and he wanted to visit with the chief. They’ve probably finished dinner and are drinking coffee right about now. I told Bascom that the chief’s partial to coffee.”
“Bascom’s not the hospitable type.”
Wallace shrugged. “John Ward’s been raising holy Moses about the theft of his cattle and that kid. Maybe Ward wants the soldiers to fetch them, and Bascom thinks Cochise can help him do it.”
“Ward doesn’t care about that boy.” Rafe’s unease festered into foreboding.
“A kidnapping will set the army into action faster than a few missing steers. Hell, everybody around here has come up short in their steer inventory, thanks to the ’Pache and the Mex banditti. I imagine Ward’s sorry they didn’t kill Felix. That would have gotten the army’s attention even faster.”
“Cochise had nothing to do with any of it. I saw Felix
with the Indians who probably took the cattle. They were headed north, and they had on moccasins like those the White Mountain tribe wears. The boy didn’t look kidnapped to me.”
“Maybe you should tell Bascom that.”
“Reckon I will.” But Rafe could see that he was already too late. As though watching a runaway team careen toward a cliff’s edge, he saw the fifty-four soldiers of Bascom’s command load their rifles and take up positions around the tent. The soldiers tensed when they heard shouting from inside it.
“That shavetail is doing something stupid,” Wallace said.
A knife blade appeared through the tent wall and glided downward. A large, brown hand gripping a tin coffee mug pushed through the opening. Cochise leaped out just behind the mug. He dodged through the astonished soldiers and sprinted into the creosote bushes behind the tent. He zigzagged up the slope as though running fresh and well-hayed on a level straightaway. The soldiers opened fire, fifty rounds at least by Rafe’s reckoning. Cochise, who must have been fifty years old, never slowed down. The last Rafe saw of him, he still gripped the mug.
“Hell-fire! You damned dunderheads!” With arms waving and eyes a-bulge, Bascom rushed out in a spray of spittal, oaths, and orders. “Hold these savages prisoner. Cochise’ll return that boy or pay dearly. By God, I’ll show the filthy heathen who’s in charge.”
Wallace swore steadily under his breath. In a workmanlike manner, he attributed to Bascom the same lineage and wished him the same fate as his most intractable mules.
Rafe blew out his breath in exasperation. The damned fool has dragged us all feet-first into the fire now, he thought.