About the same time that the Apache named Chawn-clizzay breathed his last, another man was taking a deep breath to fill his lungs with air. Clay Taggart stood perched on a flat boulder on the bank of a narrow stream situated high in the remote, rugged Chiricahuas. Below him the stream widened into a murky pool not quite five feet deep.
Taggart stepped to the edge of the boulder, extended his arms, and dived. Cool water encased him in a velvety cocoon, all the more welcome because it afforded great relief from the burning sun. As his fingers brushed the muddy bottom, he arched his spine and whipped upward, cleaving the surface smoothly. Exhaling, he tread water and allowed himself to relax.
This was the first dip Taggart had taken in months, ever since a fluke of fate had resulted in his being taken in by a band of renegade Chiricahua Apaches.
The Shis-Inday, they called themselves. The men of the woods. And now, should any of his old acquaintances see him, they would rightfully think he had gone Injun, as the saying went.
Taggart’s dark hair was worn Apache style and hung to his shoulders in a shaggy mane. His skin had been bronzed a coppery hue, the soles of his feet coated with calluses. Except for his striking lake-blue eyes, he was the perfect picture of a robust, full-blooded Apache. And of late he had even begun to think like one, which bothered Taggart immensely.
Mere months ago, he had been a moderately successful rancher living not far from Tucson. Today, he was hiding out on the vast Chiricahua reservation, a wanted man, sought by the army and civilian authorities alike, despised by whites and most Apaches. How, he wondered, could so much have gone so wrong so rapidly?
The answer was as plain as the nose on Clay’s face: Miles Gillett. It was the wealthy rancher who had seen fit to frame Clay in order to get his greedy hands on Clay’s ranch. It was Gillett who had to shoulder the blame for the lynch party that left Clay for dead. And it was Gillett who was indirectly accountable for the bloody revenge Clay had taken on those who nearly hung him.
Suddenly, Clay had the feeling he wasn’t alone. Swiveling in the water, he scoured both banks. Months ago he wouldn’t have spied a thing out of the ordinary. But the many weeks he’d spent among the Shis-Inday had sharpened his senses to the point where he immediately saw the vague outline of a man crouched in the high grass. Acting as if he hadn’t noticed, he swam leisurely to shore, to the strip of gravel where he had left his clothes and weapons.
Clay casually wiped his hands on grass and reached for his breechcloth. But instead of picking it up, he snatched his Winchester and took a running dive into the grass, rolling and flattening on his stomach as he landed. He leveled the rifle and worked the lever to feed a new cartridge into the chamber.
Fifteen yards off, the man abruptly stood. He was a handsome Apache with the weathered features typical of his kind, a rifle clasped in the crook of his left elbow. He made no move to employ the gun. Instead, he raised his other arm in greeting and said a single word, “Nejeunee.”
Clay slowly stood and eased the hammer down on his Winchester. “Friend,” he said in response. His Apache was far from perfect, but he had the satisfaction of knowing he spoke it better than most other whites and was improving all the time. “I am pleased to see you, Cuchillo Negro. It has been seven sleeps since any of you have so much as spoken to me.”
The Apache came forward, his inscrutable visage providing no clues as to the reason for his unforeseen visit. “It is time we talked, Lickoyee-shis-inday.”
White Apache. The name had been bestowed on Clay by another warrior, the one responsible for saving him from the lynch party, a man Clay had assumed was a staunch friend until recently. “I will gladly hear your words. Wait a moment,” he responded. In no time, he donned his breechcloth, shirt, and knee-high moccasins. Around his waist he strapped a pair of matching Colts in twin holsters. From the back of one dangled a large butcher knife. Twin bandoleers crisscrossed his chest. “Now I am ready.”
Cuchillo Negro stepped to a majestic willow and sat with his back to the wide trunk. Had Clay Taggart been able to peer into the warrior’s mind, he would have been amazed to find that Cuchillo Negro was greatly concerned about his welfare. The two of them had never been all that close, so it would have interested Clay greatly to learn that Cuchillo Negro thought quite highly of him, but for a reason Clay would never have suspected.
Cuchillo Negro stared at Clay as he took a seat, then the warrior picked his statements carefully. “We have hunted together, skinned the same deer together.”
“This is true,” Clay acknowledged. He knew enough of Apache ways to realize that something of the utmost importance had brought the warrior to him, and he was eager to learn its nature. Ever since the band had returned from their last raid, the four warriors had virtually shunned him. Their cold attitude had bothered him initially, until he concluded they were upset because a fifth warrior, Amarillo, had been slain fighting his enemies.
“We drank from the same spring, slept beside the same fire.”
“This too is true.”
“Never once have I spoken in anger to you, like Fiero. Never once have I tried to make you follow my path instead of your own, like Delgadito.”
“True,” Clay said, while inwardly he filed the reference to Delgadito away for future consideration.
“So would you say we are brothers, White Apache?”
The question confused Clay. Given the history of the Shis-Inday, it was rare for them to regard outsiders as brothers. They had fought the Spanish when the Spaniards first came to the New World.
They had raided into Mexico as the whim moved them. They had resisted the influx of whites into their domain and lost a costly clash with the United States. To top it all off, they were even in a state of perpetual war with most other tribes.
Clay had spent months in the company of the renegade band that had saved him, and he’d gotten to know the five stalwart warriors fairly well. For the most part, the Apaches had never been more friendly than they had to be, the lone exception being Delgadito, the former leader who had lost his right to lead when his band was slaughtered by scalp hunters.
As for the others, there was Fiero, the firebrand who lusted for war as some men lusted for women. The youngest was Ponce, so eager to make his mark according to the time-honored Apache ways of stealing and killing. The fourth had been Amarillo. And here sat the fifth, Cuchillo Negro, the one who always held his own council, the one who spoke the least but whose influence always held great weight, the one who had always seemed so aloof. Yet he referred to Clay as he would his best friend.
To Clay, it made no sense. But he answered, “Yes, I would say we are brothers. After all we have been through together.”
“Brothers listen to brothers,” Cuchillo Negro said. Then he did an odd thing. He tilted his head and glanced upward. “Do you see the high limbs being rustled by the breeze?”
“Yes,” Clay said.
“So can I. Yet we cannot see the breeze itself. No man can.” Cuchillo Negro paused. “The thoughts of men are much like the wind. We can see the actions that come about as a result of thoughts, but we cannot see the thoughts themselves. Would you agree?”
Completely puzzled, Clay replied, “As always, you speak with a straight tongue.”
“Sometimes the wind is so strong that it pushes against us, trying to move us against our will. Has this ever happened to you, Lickoyee-shis-inday?”
“Sometimes,” Clay admitted. He figured the warrior would elaborate but Cuchillo Negro sat gazing at the treetops for the next couple of minutes, his knit brow indicating he was lost in reflection. Clay would have liked to quiz him at length but that wasn’t the Apache way. Men spoke their peace at their own pace. To pry was to court their anger.
While the custom frequently bothered Clay, he admired the Apaches for their laconic natures. It was a welcome change from white society. There were no snoops or busybodies to contend with, no town gossips who had nothing better to do with their lives than spread the latest malicious rumors concerning people they hardly knew. In the Apache scheme of things, everyone was expected to mind their own business.
Cuchillo Negro cleared his throat. Unknown to Clay Taggart, inwardly he was in great turmoil. Meddling in the affairs of two others was strictly taboo, yet he couldn’t bring himself to sit back and do nothing while the white-eye was being manipulated by Delgadito. Since White Apache had been accepted into the band, and had risked his life on their behalf on more than one occasion, Cuchillo Negro felt it only right that the white man be treated with the respect due all, not as a puppet in another’s quest for power and prestige. But he had to be careful. He risked antagonizing Delgadito. Cuchillo Negro knew he had already overstepped the line that separated friendly advice from intentional meddling. Delgadito would be entirely justified in challenging him to formal, ritual combat if he found out. “Have you ever noticed that sometimes branches are broken by strong wind?”
“Yes,” Clay said, at a loss to know how the remark applied to him. He was taken aback when the warrior abruptly rose.
“Take care, Lickoyee-shis-inday that the wind does not break you.” Cuchillo Negro turned and walked off, and soon he was lost among the cottonwoods.
Frowning, Clay stood and hiked westward. This made twice that Cuchillo Negro had implied he couldn’t trust Delgadito. The first time he had dismissed the notion as preposterous. After all, it had been Delgadito who saved him from being hung, Delgadito who later had gone to great lengths to safeguard his life. Surely, he had reasoned, Delgadito wouldn’t have invested so much time and energy in his welfare unless Delgadito genuinely cared.
But now Clay wasn’t so certain. Delgadito hadn’t been quite as friendly during the week or so leading up to Amarillo’s death. And since then Delgadito had wanted nothing to do with him, hardly the act of a staunch friend. Perhaps Cuchillo Negro had been right all along. Perhaps Delgadito had used him as some sort of puppet to suit a purpose Clay had yet to divine.
A flock of sparrows winged from a thicket on Clay’s left, breaking his concentration. He passed on by and crossed a wide meadow. Several grazing horses glanced at him, then resumed eating.
After the last raid the Apaches hadn’t returned to Warm Springs, the sanctuary they usually used, but to another isolated retreat hidden high in the Chiricahuas. Sweet Grass, they called it, because of the abundant forage to be found. The warriors had set up camp in a sheltered nook at the base of a high cliff. Clay had stayed with them the first week, until their cold treatment influenced him to seek a spot elsewhere. On a bench that straddled the lower slope of a mountain he’d found a suitable spot.
Several times during his climb Clay paused to survey the valley. Bathed in sunshine, the green of the verdant vegetation and the blue of the sinuous stream lent the scene the aspect of a literal Eden. Over half-a-mile away, a few stray tendrils of smoke wafted skyward.
Clay came to the bench and walked to his lean-to. He knelt, opened a pouch, and removed a couple of strips of venison jerky he had made himself. As he munched, he dwelled on the same problem that had confronted him for days, the issue of what to do next. Should he stay among the Apaches where he clearly wasn’t wanted, or should he leave the territory for parts unknown? Venturing to Tucson or any of his other old haunts was akin to committing suicide since he was wanted by both the U.S. Army and the civil authorities. To complicate matters, a large bounty had been put on his head, dead or alive, a certain lure for every bounty hunter and money-hungry kid west of the Pecos.
Clay had always been a loner, always kept pretty much to himself, but he’d never figured on ending his days a complete outcast. He had a few close friends, a very few. He’d very much like to see them again, but he dared not. Once he traveled beyond the boundaries of the reservation, his life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel. Not that it was worth any more in the reservation. He’d already made an enemy of Palacio, an influential warrior, and he wouldn’t be at all surprised if Palacio sent someone to rub him out.
As if on cue, a jay higher on the mountain squawked in alarm. It was the kind of cry jays only voiced when they were extremely upset, either by the presence of a roving predator or intruding humans. And all the members of the band were down in the valley.
Clay cocked his head and listened intently. There might be a bear or mountain lion abroad, or perhaps even a rare jaguar. Delgadito had told him that many years ago jaguars were quite numerous in the Chiricahuas, but the spotted cats had almost died out shortly after the coming of the Spaniards.
Finishing his first piece of jerky, Clay went to bite into another when a squirrel erupted in a fit of irate chattering, in about the same vicinity as the jay. His curiosity was aroused. Stuffing the jerky back in the pouch, he grabbed his Winchester and padded into the ponderosa pines. The carpet of yielding needles underneath enabled him to move as silently as his shadow.
There had been a time when Clay Taggart wouldn’t have bothered investigating. Back in his ranching days he had paid little attention to the cries of wild animals. Where Nature was concerned, he had been like a babe in the woods. Ironically, though, he’d always assumed he knew just about all there was to know about wilderness survival. Fortunately, his stint with the Apaches had disabused him of such idiocy.
To fully understand the ways of the wild, a person had to live in the wild. To fully appreciate the rhythms of the wildlife, a person had to experience those rhythms firsthand. The Apaches were adept at living off the land because in a sense they were as much a part of the land as the animals they shared the land with. They were at home in the mountains, on the plains, or in the deserts. The land was in their blood, one might say.
The same could not be said to an equal degree of Clay Taggart, but he had learned a whole new appreciation for Nature and had learned to relate to the multitude of creatures inhabiting Nature’s domains. They were no longer simply dumb brutes put on Earth for humankind to exterminate at will. They lived, they breathed, they did things for a reason. Just as the jay and the squirrel must have done.
Both had fallen silent, so Clay had no means of pinpointing their exact locations. He slowed, searching the slopes above. If he saw a mountain lion, he’d take a shot. Apaches were especially fond of lion meat. A fresh kill would make a dandy gift to offer Delgadito and the others in the hope of mending fences. But if he saw a bear, he wouldn’t fire unless his life was in peril. Apaches had high regard for bears, something Clay had learned only after coming to live among them. Bears were their wise brothers, as they put it, and no Apache would ever eat the flesh of a brother.
The forest was quiet, unnaturally so. There should be birds singing, insects buzzing, the chattering of chipmunks and squirrels. The silence had an ominous feel about it, like the lull before a storm.
Clay halted beside a pine and squatted. As Delgadito had taught him, he gazed through the brush at knee level, where the moving legs of large animals and men would be most obvious. Though he looked and looked, he saw nothing other than undergrowth.
As the minutes dragged by and nothing happened, Clay decided that whatever had agitated the wildlife had probably drifted elsewhere. He stood and turned, then realized the forest continued to be as still as a tomb.
Seconds later, the faint snap of a twig reached Clay’s ears. Promptly ducking low, he moved warily in the direction the sound came from, diligently placing his feet with consummate care. He held the Winchester low to the ground so stray shafts of sunlight wouldn’t glint off the metal and give him away.
Clay went forty yards without finding whatever had busted the twig. It could have been a deer, even a raccoon, but his gut instinct told him otherwise. He veered to the right, past a patch of briars. Suddenly, a section rustled. Automatically, he brought the rifle to bear, but held his fire when a rabbit hopped into the open. The second it saw him, it bounded off in prodigious leaps, making enough noise to alert every predator within hundreds of feet.
Clay dashed to a patch of scrub brush and flattened. Doing as he’d been instructed by Delgadito, he quickly covered as much of himself as he could with fallen limbs and leaves so that he would blend in with the background. Then he laid motionless, awaiting developments.
Less than a minute elapsed when something moved deep in the woods. A stocky form flitted across the ground toward the briars, halting among a packed growth of ponderosas a dozen yards away, where it vanished as if sucked down into the very earth.
Clay wasn’t fooled. Moving only his eyes, he probed the forest for others, and when none appeared he focused on the strip of ground between the briars and the ponderosas, certain that was where the man would show himself again. Even though he knew it would happen, he was surprised when the heavily built Indian sprang up like a sprouting plant not eight feet from his hiding place.
It was an Apache, but one Clay had never seen before. The newcomer wore buckskin leggings and high moccasins. His chest was like that of a bronze sculpture, his sinews rippling as he moved. The man sniffed the air, then bent to see into the depth of the briars. Satisfied no one lurked within, the warrior straightened, put a hand to his lips, and twittered in perfect imitation of a mountain bluebird, a series of terr-terr-terr cries that would have fooled Clay into thinking they were the genuine article had Clay not seen the man make them.
Two more Apaches popped up from out of nowhere. One was skinny, a jagged scar on the left side of his chest. The other wore a faded blue army jacket with a torn sleeve. All three converged and huddled to consult in whispers.
Clay caught just a few snatches of meaningless words. The warrior sporting the scar glanced in his direction and he involuntarily tensed, dreading discovery. The last time he’d encountered an unknown Apache, the man had tried to kill him. But there was no outcry. The warrior’s gaze drifted beyond him and around to the north.
At a gesture from the Apache wearing the jacket, the three men jogged off down the slope.
To ensure he wasn’t spotted, Clay stayed put until they were out of sight. Rising, he hastened in their wake, anxious to learn the reason they were there. His best guess was that they were friends of the warriors in Delgadito’s band. Yet, if that were the case, why were they sneaking into the valley instead of entering through the gap to the south? Had they been sent by Palacio to dispose of him?
Caution kept Clay a prudent distance back. Occasionally, he glimpsed the three Apaches as they glided downward. They came to the bench and right away saw the lean-to. He crept to a weed-choked knob that afforded a clear view and watched them rummage through his meager belongings. The stocky one had the audacity to take a stick of his jerky.
Downward the trio went, to the edge of the meadow. Rather than cross, they went around, and Clay observed them test the breeze to guarantee they stayed downwind of the horses. They were leaving nothing to chance.
Clay became more troubled the farther the three warriors went. Friends of Delgadito’s would hardly need to employ the degree of stealth being exercised by the newcomers. But maybe, he reflected, they weren’t sure Delgadito was there so they were exercising typical Apache vigilance.
The warrior in the blue shirt took the lead. They slowed to a catwalk shortly thereafter, spreading out as they drew within sight of the cliff.
Clay hung back, in a quandary over the right thing to do. He could fire a few shots to alert Delgadito, or he could bide his time and avoid making a fool of himself should the trio prove friendly. He chose the latter.
All four members of the renegade band were in camp. A low fire blazed, the wood crackling loud enough to be heard in the surrounding trees. Delgadito, Fiero, and Ponce were gambling with a deck of cards stolen from a ranch the band had raided several months ago, while Cuchillo Negro looked on without much interest.
Clay saw the three new Apaches lower themselves to the ground and crawl. His brain shrieked a strident warning that they must be enemies, but once again logic intervened and he persuaded himself the trio had indeed been sent by Palacio and were seeking him. Naturally, they wouldn’t show themselves until they found their quarry.
Thus convinced, Clay didn’t interfere when the one in the blue coat stopped behind a bush and parted the branches. He didn’t move a muscle when the warrior poked a rifle through the opening. But when he saw the man take a steady bead on Delgadito and touch a thumb to the hammer, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his first hunch had been the right one and the three newcomers were up to no good. Unfortunately, he had no time to fire warning shots, no time to do anything other than what he did; namely, to rear erect and charge the warrior about to fire.