HAVEE CHOSE A fresh pony from the Kiowa remuda and slung his saddle on the mustang’s back. It took a good hour before the half-wild animal was gentled down enough to accept the unusual weight of the saddle, and then Havee had to fight it steady as they moved southwards. He had put all his harness on the pony, and the beast resented the presence of the bit in its mouth. It chomped its teeth on the metal and shook its head, bucking nervously as the old man fought it forwards with vicious kicks. After a while, he lost his temper, mouthing a string of inventive curses at the pony. He hauled the Remington out and reversed the pistol, clutching it by the barrel and cylinder. Then he slammed the butt down between the mustang’s ears. The pony squealed and dropped its head. Its eyes turned up, rolling the whites into view. Havee slammed the gun down again.
After that the mustang was easier to handle.
Working the horse into rideable condition took the better part of the day, and when night fell they were out on the prairie north of the Pecos River.
In the morning they picked up fresh sign of the Kiowas’ passage. The Indians were moving fast, abandoning anything—and anyone—that slowed them down.
There were copper pots dropped along the trail, and bundles of clothing. Twice the two men came on dead mustangs, ridden until the hearts burst and the ponies fell in their tracks. Small pouches filled with smoldering charcoal had been lashed between the animals’ legs, the heat urging them on even after their strength was gone.
They saw an old man, his body deserted beside the trail. Someone had wrapped him in a blanket when he died, and set a bow in his gnarled hands. But that was all the burial ceremony afforded him.
‘They’re runnin’ harder than I thought,’ said Havee. ‘It’s like somethin’ spooked them.’
‘Yeah,’ grunted Azul, wondering why Mahka was in so desperate a hurry that he wouldn’t halt even long enough to afford the customary decencies to the dead.
Close on sunset they found out why.
They were riding up towards a low bluff that promised water and shelter in addition to a view of the land ahead. The Pecos was behind them, and far off to the west summer lightning was sparking over the slopes of the Guadalupes. The sky was darkening with that sullen blue-black that accompanies storms, and the air was thick and hot, like the breath of some angry animal.
From off the rimrock they could see the distant lights of Fort Stockton.
From farther down the slopes, they caught the glimmer of campfires and the soft murmurings of a group of men.
‘Mahka wouldn’t settle like that,’ whispered Azul, ‘not the way he’s been running. That’s a white man’s camp.’
Havee nodded. ‘Could be sojer boys forted up fer the night. Or maybe Texas Rangers.’
‘Let’s take a look,’ said Azul.
They went down on foot, slipping through the shadows until they were close enough to pick out individual figures through the glow of the three big fires.
Blue uniforms mingled with dusty civilian gear. There were nineteen men spread out around a hollow, seven of them cavalrymen standing guard on the camp and the horse herd. Three Apache scouts huddled together around their own fire, mostly ignored by the others. There were nine men out of uniform: Texas Rangers linked up with the Army.
Azul motioned for Havee to stay put and wriggled down through the rocks. He got level with a trooper holding a Spencer carbine cradled in his left arm and a chewed-out cigar butt in his mouth. The man looked bored and tired. Azul came up on his feet and slid his left arm tight across the trooper’s throat. He reached round to grab the Spencer as he cut off the man’s cry.
‘Friend,’ he said. ‘I’m not about to harm you, but I don’t want to get shot, either. When I let you go, you call your officer. Alright?’
He eased his arm from the soldier’s neck and the man nodded, doing his best to stare sideways at his attacker. Azul could feel him shaking and wondered why the Army chose to use such inexperienced men. He could smell the sweat busting from the trooper’s pores, and the fear was a palpable contagion that came out from the man like the stink of burning grease.
An Apache guard would have sensed him coming. Even surprised, would have tried to warn his companions. And tried to kill the ambusher. So would a Kiowa; like the boy back near the Salt Springs.
The pinda-lick-oyi were too easy to kill. They depended overmuch on their guns and their greater numbers: it took the fun out of the fighting.
‘Major! Major Simms?’ the soldier’s voice was hoarse with fear. ‘I got someone wants to see you, sir.’
‘Who?’
Two men stood up. One was dressed in cavalry blue, the other in a faded dustcoat and battered top hat. Both had guns in their fists as they stared towards the slopes. Azul noticed that the men in civilian dress came up faster, with pistols and carbines pointed at his voice, than the soldiers.
‘Step forwards and be recognized. Hold him in sight!’
The officer’s voice rang little bells of memory in Azul’s mind.
He let the trooper loose and stepped down into the clearing, holding his arms out to either side of his body. He walked through the ring of nervous troopers to the officer standing to one side of the central fire. Like his voice, the man’s face was familiar.
‘Well I’ll be damned! It’s Matthew Gunn! How long’s it been since Two Bits?’
Azul shrugged, recognizing the officer. He had been a lieutenant then, when he sided with Azul in a gunfight and hired the half-breed to talk peace to the broncos fighting out of the Arizona hills.ii Now he was a major, and a long way from the high country of Apacheria.
‘You got promoted,’ said Azul, shaking Simms’s out-thrust hand. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Field commission,’ grinned Simms. ‘Strictly speakin’, I’m just a captain on the payroll, but they bucked me up to major when this Kiowa trouble started up. What the devil are you doing down here?’
Azul explained; when he was finished, Simms called for the pickets to let John Havee through their line, and invited both men to eat with him.
‘This is Captain Bond of the Texas Rangers,’ he said, introducing the grizzled man in the top hat. ‘He’s a warden of the church in Pecos when he’s not out with his men.’
‘Welcome to you,’ grunted Bond. ‘Seein’ as how the major here knows you, I guess you’re alright.’
‘He is,’ said Simms. ‘I’ll vouch for him any time.’
‘He’ll need better’n that if he’s chasin’ Mahka,’ grunted Bond. ‘That Kiowa devil’s ridin’ lucky.’
‘You mean you didn’t find him?’ asked Azul.
Simms shook his head, tugging at his moustache. ‘No, we didn’t. We been picking up sign ever since he hit Dragonsville, but we can’t find him. There’s patrols out all the way from the Pecos to Mexico, but he’s slipping through neater than a goddam greased eel. Captain Bond’s people got patrols out from Pecos to Eagle Pass, and the cavalry’s alerted all the way from Fort Brigg. I’m detailed to ride patrol out of Stockton and link with the riders from Fort Davis. There’s a net of cavalry and Texas Rangers hung out clear from Fort Quitman to Eagle Pass, but there ain’t no one seen the Kiowa.’
‘Slippery creatures, them Kiowa,’ murmured Havee. ‘Likely to ride rings round an Army patrol.’
‘Not round the Rangers,’ snarled Bond. ‘Them god-forsaken’ injuns ain’t up to beatin’ my boys.’
‘Maybe not in a straight fight,’ said Havee. ‘Which is why they ain’t took you on. They just went past you an’ left you behind. They’ll be halfway to Mexico by now.’
‘You could be right.’ Bond gave in grudgingly. ‘I said it was a job for just a few men right from the start. Trouble is that we got ordered to team up with these soldier boys, an’ they foller orders like goddam sheep.’
Simms grinned. ‘The Army’s got men out over the entire south of Texas. A whole tribe can’t just slip by.’
‘You don’t believe that,’ said Azul. ‘Lobo Loco hid out long enough back in Arizona; why shouldn’t Mahka do the same?’
‘Different country,’ said Simms; confidently. ‘The broncos were up in the high country. They had the mountains to cover them; this bunch is down on flat ground. Hell! There’s nothing between here and the Rio Grande except sand. Where can they hide?’
‘You’ve not found them yet,’ insisted Azul. ‘Not all your patrols. Nor will you, unless Mahka decides to fight.’
‘He already hit Sutter’s Crossing,’ grunted Bond. ‘Wiped out the tradin’ post an’ then ambushed a stage out o’ Pecos. Seems like he raided the Putnam ranch, too. Heathen bastard.’
‘What you planning to do about it?’ Azul directed the question at Simms. ‘Sitting up here won’t find him.’
The young officer stroked his mustache and shrugged. Under his tan, his handsome face looked worried, premature lines creasing his forehead.
‘Not much I can do,’ he said, ‘except follow orders. I’m detailed to hold my command on patrol in this area and watch for hostiles. Those are strict orders. I can’t break them.’
Bond snorted and Havee chuckled. Azul said: ‘I’m not under orders. I can go find him.’
‘You’ll do it with the Army’s blessing,’ said Simms. ‘I can’t pay you for it, not like it was back in Two Bits, but I’d appreciate any word you can send.’
‘Sure,’ said Azul. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
They finished talking and the two half-breeds brought their ponies down off the rimrock and put them in with the patrol’s animals before settling down for the night.
‘You really gonna send word to the Major?’ asked Havee. ‘How you figger to get Mahka caught if the Army’s ridin’ our tail?’
‘It won’t be,’ Azul murmured. ‘We’ll ride on come morning an’ leave Simms to his patrols. I said I’d get word to him if I could, which don’t seem very likely. At least we know we got a friend in the military.’
‘Yeah.’ Havee stretched out, hauling his blanket up to his chin. ‘There’s one other thing worryin’ me.’
‘What’s that?’ said Azul.
‘What the hell do we do when we find Mahka.’
Azul grinned in the darkness. ‘One step at a time,’ he grunted. ‘I’ll think of something.’
Melanie lay face down across the pony, trying to breathe through the confines of her gag. Her wrists and legs were lashed securely together, and rawhide thongs held her in place on the mustang’s back. Her fair hair was hidden under a dark scarf. One of Mahka’s wives led the pony cautiously forwards, the other ambled beside, grinning at the white girl from time to time. Whether the grin was meant to reassure or frighten her, Melanie had no way of telling. It looked friendly enough, but the woman still clutched a long-bladed knife firmly in her right hand.
They had been moving like this since the storm clouds blew eastwards and hid the moon. For most of the day they had been huddled in the shelter of an arroyo, guards out on all sides and the Indians maintaining a nervous silence. The men Mahka had sent off early that morning were still gone, and Melanie got the impression the young chief was waiting for them to return. Fires were forbidden and she had eaten only a thin strip of dried buffalo meat since dawn, the evening meal forgotten as the Kiowas prepared to move out onto the flatlands.
Night had fallen when they struck camp. Mahka had stared hard at his new wife, then barked orders to the other women. Before she knew what was happening the larger of the women had grabbed Melanie’s arms and twisted them behind her. When Melanie opened her mouth to protest, the other woman had filled it with a wadded lump of greasy cloth and looped a thong tight around the girl’s neck. Then they had tied her wrists and ankles and bundled her unceremoniously onto a pony. Someone had seized her hair, and for an awful moment, Melanie thought they meant to scalp her. Instead, they had merely hidden her blonde locks inside a bandana.
Mahka had checked her bonds, then tried to explain in his faltering English.
‘Many soldiers.’ He had difficulty pronouncing the l and the d, so that it came out as sojers. ‘Look for us. Kill. We go ... fast. No noise ... No speak. Die if speak.’
The second wife had brandished her knife then, parodying the cut of its blade across Melanie’s throat. The girl had watched her use the knife to skin a buffalo: she knew how sharp it was.
She had stayed silent, fighting to quell the rumbling of her empty belly as they moved out. She guessed that the Army must have sent patrols out; indeed, she seemed to recall that there was a fort in this area. Presumably, then, Mahka intended to lead his people past the soldiers under cover of the storm clouds. It fitted in with the chaotic pattern of the past few weeks.
Since that strange night when all her intentions got jumbled up by the young Kiowa’s overpowering attentions, Melanie Hedges had lived in a kind of waking dream. Each day the tribe had moved farther south, the women and children riding or walking inside a ring of mounted warriors. More men had gone off, sometimes for days at a time, returning with guns and bloody scalps. Unused to such forced marching, Melanie had concentrated solely on keeping up, learning to cook Kiowa-style when they halted at night, then joining Mahka under the furs before drifting readily into a bone-weary sleep. The constant movement and the strangeness of it all had numbed her perceptions as much as the shock of seeing men boasting over the bloody hanks of hair. Somewhere, in a tiny, frightened part of her mind, she remembered the death of her mother, the attack on the stage. That part of her held true to her original promise to kill Mahka if she could. But another corner of her confused mind dwelt deliciously on the maleness of him, on the fact that he was held in awe by men clearly his senior in years, and the fact that this war chief had selected her as his wife. The confusion got mostly forgotten in the need to keep moving, the need to learn the Kiowa ways to avoid the blows and the scorn of the other women.
Mahka, she realized, was aware of this dichotomy, and so had chosen not to trust her on the most dangerous part of their journey.
Almost idly she wondered what she would do if the gag was not blocking her mouth and she heard the clatter of cavalry sabers in the night. Would she call out for help and bring the wrath of the Army down on the Kiowa? Or would she stay silent, helping the tribe drift through the net of patrols?
She was glad the choice was taken from her: it made things easy. There was no need to make any choice between half-forgotten duty and regard for her lover. She needed only to stay as comfortable as was possible in her position and avoid any opportunity of giving Sweetwater Woman the chance to use that awful knife. Melanie stared at the swaying ground and tried to work out where they were going. Mexico, she thought. At least, they seemed to be moving steadily southwards for all the detours they had made, swinging back and forth across the Texas plains. She had spent long enough on the Montana ranch to work out her position, albeit roughly, from the sun and the stars; and the geography lessons given by Miss Elizabeth had afforded her a rough knowledge of America’s geography. Yes, Mexico was their most likely destination. After the war with Mexico, when Sam Houston and Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie had won the Lone Star country from the greasers there hadn’t been so much co-operation over things like border raids.
She concentrated on remembering everything she could about her history lessons with Miss Elizabeth. It took her mind off the unpleasant taste of the gag and the painful rubbing of her bonds.
The Kiowas moved out under the cover of the stormy sky.
Big black clouds were coming down, roiling across the moon to spill deep shadow over the land. Knives and pots and guns were either wrapped round with layers of cloth, or held where they couldn’t rattle and give sign to a waiting enemy. Children were clutched close against their mothers’ breasts, or sworn to silence with threats of punishment and promises of reward. The ground was soft enough that the ponies could move silently, but all the dogs likely to bark or go chasing rabbits had been slaughtered, their carcasses stored away ready to be eaten.
Behind them, to the west, the bulk of the hills stuck up from the plain, distant fires indicating the presence of white men. Farther south, the lights of Fort Stockton glowed faint against the black sky.
They moved fast, not daring to risk a gallop into some possible bluecoat ambush, but still maintaining a swift, half-running pace.
They went by Fort Stockton close enough to hear the noise of the place through the pre-storm stillness, and by dawn they were almost level with Fort Davis and smiling at the rain hiding their tracks.
The storm broke just around sunrise, the early light cut through with sullen flashes that danced across the lowering, grey-black sky. From out of the west a curtain of yellowish grey seemed to hang down between the clouds and the land, moving eastwards like the maw of some gigantic beast intent on scooping up the ground and swallowing it into that roaming, lightning-toothed mouth. Melanie had been let down from the mustang and her gag removed just long enough for her to eat a bowl of cold cornmeal and a stick of pemmican. Then the gag was replaced and though her hands were freed, Sweetwater Woman stayed close beside her, one hand on the hilt of the skinning knife.
The storm came in fast, the heavy stillness giving way to a howling wind that fluttered hair and tore at the ragged manes of the ponies. The wind was followed close by a solid wall of rain.
Abruptly, like the sudden dimming of a kerosene lantern, the morning was grey. Not the pre-dawn greyness of mist and evaporating water, but a solid, tangible greyness. The sand slushed into mud so that walking became difficult, the soggy prairie gripping soft moccasins, tugging at the feet with leeches’ suckers to render each step a doubled effort. Rain hit in blinding, stinging columns and Melanie reached out to grasp the mane of the pony for fear of losing her footing and her way. She felt the bandana torn from her hair by the solid weight of the rain, then felt her hair plaster tight against her scalp and face, darkening as the water flooded through it and soaked her clothes.
The few warriors sporting war-bonnets slipped them off and quickly wrapped the feathers inside hide bags. The bowmen covered their quivers, and those braves using rifles or handguns slanted the barrels downwards and draped blankets over the weapons.
The tribe pushed onwards, still holding to that shuffling, running walk.
Melanie heard a child begin to cry and glanced to her right. Just in time to see the mother clap a hand over the infant’s mouth and ease its head inside her blouse. Farther on, a tired mustang lost its footing in a rivulet that appeared from nowhere and went down on its haunches. Its rider jumped clear, slipping himself in the churning mud. When he dragged on the single rein, the mustang snickered and snapped big yellow teeth at the warrior’s hand. The man ran quickly round the pony’s head, reaching under the ribs to squeeze the mustang’s genitals. The pony screamed and bucked to its feet. The Kiowa was on its back while the animal was still rising.
Then he was gone behind the curtain of rain and Melanie stumbled forwards, half-blinded and soaked through.
Around noon the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun and the sun came out. The prairie steamed, thick waves of mist rising from the sodden ground. Mahka came back, the paint on his face washed away so that streamers of black and red and yellow ran down his chest. He was shouting orders. Sweetwater Woman grabbed Melanie and slung her astride the pony, jumping up behind. She drove her heels hard into the flanks and the mustang lurched forwards, breaking into a wary canter.
They rode and walked through the rest of the day, not stopping to eat or rest or relieve themselves. When the children howled protests, they were hushed and held out from the ponies to void their bowels in splattering trails over the sand. When an adult felt the need, he—or she—stepped clear of the column and followed nature’s course as fast as was possible before hurrying back.
By nightfall they were in sight of the Rio Grande.
And there was no sign of pursuit.
They made camp inside the confines of a shallow canyon that ran down to the water. Half the warriors fell back to guard their trail as the women lit fires of stored buffalo chips and cooked their first hot meal in two days. The tipis were set up and when the eating was done, Melanie collapsed into the furs with her eyes closed before her head touched the ground.
Mahka was gone all night, checking his back trail and scouting the ground ahead. He returned before dawn and kicked his wives awake, shouting for food.
The air was chill and misty, tendrils of fog creeping up from the river into the canyon to muffle sound and numb, tired bones. The women worked fast, kicking the fires into life and heating cornmeal and meat. Melanie joined them, working alongside Sweetwater Woman and the other wife, Golden Knife.
Mahka allowed extra time for this feeding, letting his warriors rest and giving the horses time to catch fresh wind. Then he took them down the canyon to the river.
The rock ended where the water began, fanning out in a wide vee where a beach of glistening sand led into the Grande. Mahka led the way, splashing out through the shallows into the faster water at the center. He slid clear of his pony halfway across and wrapped his left hand in the animal’s tail as the pony dragged him through to the far bank. Then he mounted again and called for the others to follow over.
It took most of the morning, for the Kiowas took care of their children, warriors crossing back and forth to herd the little ones over. Two children and three old men drowned. So did one woman.
They reached Mexico with the tribe reduced to a total complement of twenty-seven people. There were twelve warriors and nine women; the remaining six were children.
They moved on without pausing to rest and by midafternoon were halted in an area of badlands, where canyons and dry washes gave them cover and shelter and wood. Mahka shouted fresh orders and the squaws began to set up the tipis along the edge of a shallow stream. The men picketed their horses and sprawled back in the sun, combing their long hair and checking over their weapons. Had Melanie been able to understand the Kiowa language, she would have known that they boasted of their skill in avoiding the bluecoat patrols and getting safe out of Texas with so many raids to their credit.
But she couldn’t, so she just helped the women and wondered what would happen next.