Chapter One

 

He came out of the high country riding fast, his poncho flapping like bat wings around his shoulders.

At back of him, the rider held guide rein to a bunch of six sleek horses. Fine animals that set the pace, in fact they could have outrun his small cowpony any time they wanted, they were that good. The first, the black stallion, he held by a halter rope, the others were tied off tail to neck by long sections cut from two lariats. Even so they ran as a tight group behind him, comfortable with each other’s company and fanning out only as far as the lead ropes would allow.

Diehard Charlie Wexford was enjoying the sprint; it was a wild moment of freedom stimulated partly by the magnificent creatures that were born to run and Diehard’s own youthful nature. Around them the sun was setting over the wide expanse of the empty Arizona desert and it was into an orange glow that Diehard raced on a dusty ocher dash that the thoroughbreds seemed to be enjoying as much as he. They leaned into it and stretched out, their dark silhouettes gleaming in the last rays of sunlight.

The echoes of the day sent long purple shadows running out in fingers from the overhanging peaks of the rugged buttes and mesas looming about them as Diehard wove his way at the gallop leading the string down the slope and through the maze of coulees and gullies out onto the open plain and wide clear sky above.

Diehard Charlie had originally earned his nickname from others in the Leaning-T bunkhouse where he was seen by his fellow cowhands as a quietly upright and stalwart fellow, kind of intransigent but never one to turn his back on a friend and a kindly soul to both men and animals. Half-jokingly they had baptized him and it had stuck through three drives up the old Goodnight-Loving Trail to the railhead at Cheyenne. Not that he approved of or dwelt on such approbation and if left to his own devices he kept to the ‘Diehard’ part and left the rest forgotten. And in that, we’ll oblige him the same.

He was a self-effacing, rough-cut sort of boy, a tow-headed barely nineteen year old with long sideburns and shoulder length hair cut ragged at the ends, a more-or-less give and take kind of fellow raised by his widowed Irish mother after his father had been lost to them before Marye’s Heights whilst serving with the Fighting 69^th at Fredericksburg. Sadly the couple had emigrated from Ireland not more than five years before the war started, so the father’s death left the family in a dire state as his wife had to manage alone with Diehard Charlie, then just a baby.

With little money, Diehard’s ma had boldly chosen to head west where there was the promise of better opportunity for herself and the child in gold rich California. After the strike not eighteen years before the State had boomed and so they made the hazardous journey overland soon after the war ended.

She was a woman of firm belief and determined personality and raised Diehard alone without recourse to some of the shallower occupations enjoyed by many of her peers. She found honest work wherever she could, taking in sewing and washing, shelling shrimp and rolling cigars, none of which presented an easy life for a widowed single woman in those early days after the war. Diehard was left with a deep love and affection for his devoutly religious mother and always saw to it she received a portion of the forty dollars a month he earned as a trail hand. She still wore the black in memory of her beloved husband, went to mass regularly and had raised Diehard in their San Bernardino home to remain a firm follower of the Catholic faith. It was a moral attitude that had inevitably taken some knocks and been rubbed away somewhat by his experiences since leaving home but old habits and a leaning towards the implanted mores of the church still stayed with him despite the rough and ready roustabouts he often found himself associating with on the trail.

 

He had come across the superb stallion and equally fine mares by accident in a box canyon where they had found water and grazing in this otherwise desolate area of Arizona. A freak thing and, given to wondering where they had come from, Diehard reckoned they had run off from somewhere south of Nogales across the border, probably in a fancy hacienda given that they were all of prime bloodstock. Maybe an Indian raid or some equivalent disaster, a violent storm perhaps or range fire. There was no brand of ownership to mark their perfect hides so there was no telling their origins and only the jet black stallion with a looped white blaze like a smudge of paint on its forehead had the remains of a savage wound along its side as evidence of the disaster that befallen them. Healed now but leaving a long jagged scar that was a shame to see on such a perfect creature. Diehard had named him Herido for that sad mark, it meant ‘Wounded’ in the Spanish and he thought it fitting given the rip of white scar that ran like a lightning strike along the animal’s ribs.

For the rest of them he had kept it simple and called them in sequence: Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro, Cinco. Three bays, a dappled gray and a pure white. All of them mares and sensational to look at, each of them classically lined and beautifully strong, all around fifteen to sixteen hands, weighing a thousand pounds or so of compact confirmation that made them a delight to see.

Diehard had closed off the narrow canyon mouth with a bank of mesquite, sagebrush and spiky scrub that had trapped the animals inside. He had brought them all to the saddle slowly and with care. None of the savage speedy breaking that was used on the range for rough ranch mustangs where the cowponies fought with a lariat wrapped around a post and a quick bucking quirt-driven ride to bring them to order. No, his way had been easy and slow, they were intelligent animals and quickly grasped that his intentions were kindly. First he let them feel the weight of his blanket across their backs and then his saddle whilst he kept the head covered by his poncho. Taking his time and allowing a lick of sugar when the going was good, Diehard spent a month seducing the animals to his care. They were ready now and he planned on taking them down to the town of Prentice Bridge for sale where he reckoned he would make maybe seven hundred dollars a head on the prized creatures. It was a fortune on the hoof, perhaps forty thousand dollars for the five mares if he was lucky, for he planned to keep the marked stallion Herido for himself.

Diehard considered himself a damned lucky soul all right.

 

Doubly so, for up until then his journey west had been far from plain sailing. Even before he had discovered the horses he had found trouble, but there he had been blessed by his Irish luck and fortunate again.

A war chief of the White Mountain Apache, a savage renegade they called Ellio Angelino, had run off from the San Carlos reservation and been raiding and causing grief throughout Apacheria. When he and his band came across Diehard, the cowboy had been making his solo journey along the Beale Wagon Road across from Albuquerque on a determination to visit with his mother in San Bernardino. Ridden down, Diehard had been forced into a dismounted shootout and only when he had exhausted all his ammunition and death was a certainty had he found recourse in the beliefs of his upbringing. With only his belt knife left to defend himself he thought to make his final peace. Diehard had taken out the rosary his mother had given to him and fallen to his knees in preparation to meet his Maker shrived of his sins and with an Act of Contrition on his lips.

Unknown to Diehard, not five days before this ambush, Angelino and his band had come across three Jesuit missionaries and overcome them without resistance. They had taken the holy men prisoner and as was the Apache way they thought to distract themselves with a little entertainment and torture the despised white men to death. Only one of the captured men wore the black garb of the order, the rest were dressed in regular travelling clothes. It meant little to the war band who or what they were and how they looked, they were all white men, invaders and although not the most hated Mexicans they were considered just as bad.

Staked out, the priestly men had prayed aloud, clasping the silver crucifixes they wore around their necks and calling on their Lord for salvation as they prepared to meet a martyr’s end. There was no mercy in the Apache though and the first Jesuit missionary had died screaming his Savior’s name, his head roasted slowly over the super heated coals of a brushwood fire. The second they had cut at with their knives, slicing him to death whilst he prayed, that had all gone as planned until Alcasay, the fiery second in command, had given in to a demented rage and wildly stabbed the man through the heart. The third priest had begged to be strung out in the form of a cross so he might emulate his Savior in death. This had impressed Angelino and he wondered for a while at the beliefs that kept the three men so soundly adhering to their religion.

The indifference of the Indians should be remarked on as the Apache were simple men who enjoyed toying with captives as children might play with scorpions and lizards, teasing them in deadly fashion before killing them as things of no importance. So to see one singing and praising his God with such obvious dedication whilst strung on a tree, as he had requested, and about to have his eyelids cut off had made its mark on Angelino. He now wore one of the dead Jesuit’s silver crosses around his neck, hoping that he too might gain some of their courageous magic in this way.

He had watched as the three had repeatedly crossed themselves and he himself had imitated the waving hand gestures, thinking it a strong and secret medicine worthy of recall. When he saw Diehard repeating the motions and noted the crucifix dangling from the rosary, he had called his braves sharply to order and commanded the cowboy left alone. Why he did this might be difficult to understand, but it was something obscure that moved within the heart of the savage man and he considered it wiser to let this white man so full of the spirit power that the Jesuits had evoked go his way unharmed than maybe be hounded by his ghost during the moons that followed as he walked the war trail.

In such a manner, Diehard had been allowed free passage and even his subsequent discovery of the prized ponies was allowed and passed over by the Apache. After all, the war chief Angelino had considered, the white man’s magic must be truly great to make such a miraculous find in the middle of the desert where it seemed the magnificent ponies had sprung from the earth as if in answer to his call. Angelino, still unnerved by the brave passing of the Jesuits, had superstitiously considered that any bad medicine that would have been aroused by harming the white man was unwise and so Diehard had escaped a terrible death and kept his wild horses.

Diehard, of course, knew nothing of this. He could only marvel at his good fortune at being left alive and with the added godsend of finding the horses he believed that his luck had taken a turn for the better.

But he was still cautious, knowing only too well the vagaries associated with the wild Apache mindset. So when he camped that night with Prentice Bridge not half a day’s journey ahead, he kept his now empty Winchester beside him and the hobbled horses nearby.