AS CUCHILLO WAS thrust into awareness again, it seemed to him that he had been in painless pitch darkness for only a moment. The method of arousing him was a pail of water dashed into his face.
Because for the first split second he had no control over his responses, he vented the start of a shrill scream. But then his eyes became focused, and he saw the grim, scowling face of Gruber above him. And he gritted his teeth and compressed his lips against the agonies that were transmitted to his burning brain from every punished nerve ending in his body.
‘Doc Dresser reckons you’re just banged up a little, Injun,’ the lawman growled. ‘And got what he calls superficial abrasions. Said you’d come outta it feelin’ lousy but a long ways from dead. Folks always said Doc Dresser knew what he was talkin’ about.’
There was a hush over the town, the stillness of the blisteringly hot day marred only by the subdued hiss of escaping steam—until a clock began to chime the hour of noon.
Cuchillo looked along the length of his body, eased his head slowly from side to side, then craned his neck to rake his pain-clouded eyes in the fourth direction. And saw that
he was closer to death than he had ever been before.
He was still bound, but in a different manner and in a different part of Tyler Bend. They had brought him to the center of the plaza, and now there were two locomotives engaged in Gruber’s final, terrifying attempt to learn what Cuchillo refused to tell him.
The Apache lay on the track bed and tied between the two engines, his wrists lashed to the rear coupling of one and his ankles similarly tied to the other. There was just enough slack in each length of rope to allow him to lie out full length.
The audience was once more divided into two groups, but this time flanking the railroad across the plaza. With the single exception of the worried-looking sergeant and the impassive Horan, the watchers generated an almost palpable quality of silent, excited anticipation. There were no faces at the window of the infirmary, and John Hedges was not a captive watcher anymore.
Instead, he was pinned to the ground in front of the locomotive from which the steam hissed. Jake and another young man held the teacher’s shoulders hard to the ground, while his ankles were trapped by ropes lashed to four spikes hammered into ties. His slightly bent knees were across the rail ten feet in front of a lead wheel of the locomotive.
When Cuchillo returned his pained gaze to Gruber, the lawman was smiling—his concern harder to see, but still there.
‘You get the idea, Injun?’ he asked evenly. ‘If you don’t talk, you get torn in half. Or maybe just lose your arms or legs or maybe the whole works. Either way, your buddy will be in real bad shape.’
Cuchillo shifted his gaze and turned his head, to transmit a tacit message of regret toward Hedges. The teacher was looking at him in return, his sweat-sheened face expressing fear but asking for nothing.
‘I cannot betray my fellow Apaches, man of the law.’
‘Get it over with, Gruber!’ a man snarled. ‘He ain’t gonna talk, so finish the bastard!’
Cuchillo had started to turn his attention back toward Gruber, but as the new voice spoke out, he tracked down the man. And saw it was the fat Horan. Then the sheriff squatted down beside Cuchillo and lowered his voice. The lawman’s anxiety was now starkly visible in every line of his weathered face.
‘Look, you crazy Injun,’ he hissed. ‘The story about what happened out at the east camp is all over town. But either Jake didn’t tell the whole works, it got garbled in the telling, or folks didn’t believe it. Whichever, they want your blood.’
Cuchillo glanced meaningfully down the length of his torso, crusted with congealed blood from being dragged. The local doctor had examined him without treating his wounds. ‘They have a considerable appetite,’ he growled.
‘Shuddup and listen,’ Gruber rasped. ‘There ain’t much time. You saw what a massacre it was out at the camp. These folks just need me to show one sign of weakness, and they’ll take the law into their own hands. You’ll die, Injun. And they’ll kill your buddy as well. Everyone here knew the men that got killed at the camp. Some were related.’
Gruber was leaning so close that sweat beads coursing down his cheeks and dripping from his jaw splashed onto Cuchillo’s burning face.
‘They want revenge, and you and your buddy are real close at hand for that. I heard what Jake told me. And I talked with Hedges while you were out. I believe you, Injun. But I gotta put on this show. And I gotta get somethin’ out of you or kill you. If I don’t, these folks sure enough will kill you. And Injun though you are, that won’t sit well with me and my view of the law. So, goddammit, tell me where we can find them murderin’ ’Paches!’
‘What the hell you wastin’ time for, Gruber?’ Horan demanded.
‘Maybe he’s givin’ the Injun the Last Rites!’ a woman called, and punctuated it with shrill laughter.
Cuchillo craned his neck to look at Hedges again—and saw that his friend’s lips were moving in silent prayer. Then the Apache’s dark eyes shifted to gaze at Horan. And his agony-filled mind attempted to negate pain as it raced to find an honorable solution.
He wanted to live so that he could complete his so-often frustrated mission to kill the hated Pinner. He wanted to save John Hedges from the agony and lasting torment of being mutilated. But of even greater importance, he did not wish to sacrifice his honor by betraying the Chiricahuas.
‘Roll that damned locomotive!’ Horan snarled. ‘What do you people say?’
Shrill and hoarse, massed voices were raised in hate-filled agreement.
‘Come on!’ Gruber hissed urgently.
Would it be dishonorable to reveal that the fat Horan supplied John Colt with the weapons to wage war on his fellow White Eyes? No, not if his accusation were given credence in isolation. But if it was believed, Horan would be ‘leaned on’ by the man of the law. And when he talked, as he certainly would, surely Cuchillo would have to bear a large part of the responsibility for making public the secret hiding place of John Colt and his braves.
But, no! Cuchillo shook his head. He was merely betraying a White Eyes to whom he owed no allegiance. And if that White Eyes had not the endurance and honor of an Apache brave, then that was no fault of Cuchillo.
The crowds on either side, muttering low-voiced words of menace, moved in closer. Far off, a train whistle blasted—like the dying cry of a wounded animal.
Perhaps it signaled release, Cuchillo thought. Or perhaps merely more hate-crazed witnesses for his execution and the agony of John Hedges. For even as he prepared to speak the words of betrayal, he was certain they would merely cause delay—that his word as an Apache would not be believed against the undoubted defense that Horan would frame.
‘I will tell you this!’ he shouted, the very act of raising his voice triggering fresh waves of intense pain throughout his body.
The advance of the crowds on either side was halted, and the near silence descended over Tyler Bend again—broken by the hiss of escaping steam and the distant rumble of an approaching train.
‘The Chiricahua Apaches are well armed and well supplied for their attacks upon the builders of the railroad.’ He looked about him and saw that he commanded the undivided attention of all who watched. But certain faces stood out starkly from the rest by the depth of interest they showed. John Hedges. Sheriff Gruber. The Army sergeant. And Horan. ‘And they could not be so without aid. And this aid is freely given by a White Eyes traitor to his brothers.’
‘He’s bluffin’, Gruber! I’m with Horan! Finish him! Time’s wastin’!’
Cuchillo wrenched his head to the side, to stare briefly with startled puzzlement at the man who now urged quick death for him. A man who until this moment had pleaded so often for the prisoner’s life to be preserved. The Army sergeant.
But the sheriff appeared to be unaware of who had shouted the words. He continued to maintain a blazing-eyed stare toward Cuchillo’s face. ‘Keep talkin’, Injun!’
The whistle shrilled again, and the noise of the train’s headlong progress from the east resounded and swelled between the sides of the valley.
‘The White Eyes who does this is the one called Horan!’ Cuchillo announced, powering his voice to even greater volume to be heard above the thunder of the train as the ground beneath his back began to vibrate.
The fat man’s shriek of denial was drowned by a roar of anger from the flanking crowds. But their rage was not directed at the owner of the freight line. Instead, they were incensed by Cuchillo’s slur upon one of their number. And as he glanced toward the helpless John Hedges, the Apache saw that his friend shared something of their feelings. Not rage. Disbelief and even a degree of contempt at such an unworthy attempt to escape the perilous situation.
But when he returned his attention to Gruber, Cuchillo saw that the lawman continued to express interest—now with an underlying trace of understanding.
‘Move that engine, Joe!’ a man bellowed above the venting of hatred and the screeching of brakes.
‘Frig that! Let’s just blast the Injun!’
Gruber roared an obscenity, whirled, drew his Colt, and exploded a shot into the air. ‘Law business!’ he shrieked as the crowds pulled up short and backed away, even though many of the men had drawn guns.
Cuchillo lay still, his muscles involuntarily bunching in expectation of a fusillade of flesh-tearing shots. But the reports that cracked out sent more lead high into the shimmering blueness of the midday sky—and did not come from the guns of the milling throng packing the plaza. He turned his head then, to peer along the underside of the locomotive, beyond the trapped form of Hedges, to where the train from the east was shuddering to a halt.
It was the train he had seen pull out of Tyler Bend earlier, then loaded with timber to rebuild the destroyed east camp. For the return trip, the locomotive was at the rear, pushing the flatcars in reverse. It had been unloaded at the camp, and now just two of the cars were laden—one with nervous, still saddled cavalry mounts, and the other with uniformed soldiers. It was the troopers who had exploded a volley of shots into the air, at the command of a tall, thin man wearing the insignia of a Confederate major.
For part of a second, there was silence. Then the officer issued another order. He and his men leapt to the ground, their strength equally divided between both sides of the track, and ran forward. The crowd retreated further, and the civilians holstered their weapons.
‘Get that man up from there!’ the major snarled at Jake and his partner. Then he skidded to a halt in front of Gruber. ‘What the hell is happening here, sir?’
Major Wycoff was close to six feet tall and weighed no more than a hundred and fifty pounds. His uniform seemed to hang on, rather than be worn by, his emaciated frame. And his sun-bronzed face was haggard rather than lean, with prominent cheekbones and gray eyes sunk deep into the sockets. He was about fifty.
Like the thirty or so officers, noncoms, and troopers he commanded, he was unshaven, dirty, and weary from long and arduous travel.
Gruber did not flinch from his anger, and replaced the Colt in the stomach holster with measured arrogance. He raked his mean eyes over the men and then settled his gaze on Wycoff’s angry face. ‘You and your soldier boys don’t look like you located the Injuns, Major,’ he growled. ‘Reckon I could find ‘em—my way.’
Trotter and another civilian who had come in on the train pushed through the ring of soldiers.
‘Well, Frank?’ the ashen-faced chief engineer of the railroad company asked.
His foreman was short, with a big belly, massive shoulders and a round, tough-looking face. ‘That ain’t him, Mr. Trotter,’ he announced after a brief, hate-filled glance at Cuchillo. ‘Leader of them damn raiders is at least another three inches higher.’
‘Captain Hough!’ Wycoff snarled. ‘Cut this Apache free, and take him to the fort office. The schoolteacher likewise!’
The junior officer named stepped forward, drawing a knife. Jake and his partner had already untied John Hedges.
As the crowd mumbled its angry discontent with the new turn of events, Gruber spoke in a whisper to the major. Wycoff’s anger increased while the lawman remained calm. Then the Army man nodded emphatically and issued an order Gruber acknowledged with a smile.
‘Only a three-inch difference, Frank?’ a man called Peabody pushed through the crowd toward the saloon.
‘I reckon.’
‘Damn shame you got to town so damn fast. Couple more minutes that Injun’d been a perfect match.’