Apache Country (18 page)

“You live here too?”

Ironheel moved his head in what might have
been a negative gesture. “Close by.”

Of course, Easton thought. He would probably
not live in the same house as his sister. In the old days, Apache
kinship rules required that from childhood on, a brother’s
relationship with his sister be formal. As children, they would of
course be permitted to play together, but after puberty the brother
would treat his sh’ila – sibling – with decorum in both speech and
action. If their mother and father were not at home and the sister
was alone, the brother must go elsewhere until the parents returned
or put disgrace on the whole family. The rules probably weren’t
applied as stringently now as they had once been, but the taboo
would still be there.

“You tell that sheriff where you were taking
me?” Ironheel asked him.

Easton shook his head. “Only the DA. A man
called Olin McKittrick.”

“Then …” Ironheel looked thoughtful. “They’re
both part of this thing.”

“Damn right they are,” Easton said. “And they
want us dead.”

“They’ll have an interesting time getting it
done,” Ironheel said flatly.

Easton felt a fresh surge of anger at the way
they’d sent him to what they confidently expected to be his death.
Probably the first thing McKittrick did after I left his house was
to call Apodaca, he thought. He knows, Joe. We need to take care of
this. The duplicitous bastard had no more contacted the Department
of Justice than he had called the Dalai Lama.

The fact McKittrick was involved added
another dimension to the murder of Robert and Adam Casey, but he
had no idea yet what it might be. It was a cliché that in a murder
case, the first question you asked was Who benefits? He tried to
concentrate but his brain felt like it was clogged up with cotton
candy. I’ll think about it later, he promised himself.

“How did I get here?” he asked Ironheel.

“My sister came down to get us.”

Easton frowned. “Your sister? How did she
know …?”

“One of the men had a cellphone.”

“Did you kill both of them?”

Ironheel got up and looked out the window.
“My sister will be here soon,” he said, sidestepping the
question.

“What did you tell her?”

“Someone tried to kill us. Nothing more.”

“And she didn’t ask?”

“If she asked,” Ironheel said slowly, “she
would have to know the truth.”

So she didn’t ask. Apache logic, Easton
thought. Go fight it.

“What about the bodies?”

“Biké’ idagosdiig,” Ironheel said. “Their
footprints are gone.”

The finality in his voice persuaded Easton to
leave it at that.

“How long have I been here?”

“Naki beiskaago.”

“Two days?”

“You had bad fever.”

“Where exactly is this?”

“Near the head of Whitetail Canyon. You know
where that is?”

Easton nodded. If you drew a line on the map
east from Mescalero and another south from Glenavon, they would
intersect pretty close to where he was now. Out in the high
lonesome, but not by any means so far out that skilled hunters
wouldn’t be able to find them.

“Anyone been around asking questions?” he
asked Ironheel.

“My sister told me some Riverside deputies
came up to the Administrative Building. They said they were looking
for two fugitives, asked if anyone had seen anything suspicious,”
he said. “But that’s as far as it went. They don’t have any
jurisdiction here. The Reservation is Federal land.”

“So who knows we’re here?”

“Doo aich’idé,” Ironheel said. “Many. Among
the Apache there are very few secrets.”

“Then we’d better move out before someone
drops a dime on us.”

Ironheel shook his head. “Doo hak’i da. That
won’t happen.”

“How can you be sure?”

“There is a tradition,” he said.
“Dahgos’aani. From the old days. If a man comes into camp as the
friend of an Apache, he may not be harmed while he is there.”

“Your people still observe that rule?”

“Dá’ako. Enough. While you are up here you’re
of my blood. My clan. You are Apache, too. Unless someone goes
bronco, we’re –” he made a circular gesture with his hand “ –bike
ádagosdiig.”

“What does that mean?”

Ironheel moved his hand again in a vague
circle. “Sort of, disappeared. Left no tracks. Gone somewhere
else.”

“I’m surprised,” Easton said, and he meant
it.

Anybody who lived in this part of the world
knew the Apache – Mescaleros in particular – had a decidedly
ambivalent attitude toward their white neighbors. Tourists who
stopped at the Tribal Headquarters were often met with downright
rudeness or treated like visitors from another planet. And anyone
unwise enough to exceed the speed limit on the reservation found
out real fast just how different from white cops a Mescalero Tribal
Policeman could be.

Ironheel laughed, a short, harsh sound. “It’s
not for you,” he said flatly. “They wouldn’t piss on you if you
were on fire.”

“Don’t go out of your way to spare my
feelings,” Easton said.

“Rely on it.”

It wasn’t really hostility, Easton decided.
It was attitude. A determination not to give anything away or let
anyone take advantage.

“So why are they doing it?”

“Because my sister asked them. She probably
had to call in every favor she was ever owed, and a few more
besides, but that’s why they’re doing it.”

“She must be greatly respected.”

Ironheel nodded “The people here call her
Isdzánhí dawahn t’alkodá, Woman Always Ready,” he said. “She’ll be
here later. Right now she’s at the Agency.”

“Something else,” he said. “While you were
out of it, Apodaca went on the TV news, said a wanted murderer,
James Ironheel, took a chief deputy sheriff hostage and is hiding
out up in the mountains. Armed and dangerous, he said. There’s even
a reward.”

There was a hint of amusement in the words
but he did not smile.

“Was anything said about the two men – the
ones who tried to kill us – being missing?”

Ironheel shook his head. “Doo nt’é da. Not a
thing.”

“Odd,” Easton said.

“Maybe it’s better.”

Easton had already picked up on that message.
Ironheel’s sister either didn’t know or didn’t want to know what
had happened, and Ironheel was in no hurry to have her find
out.

“There’s more,” Ironheel said. “Apodaca said
on TV he suspended you from duty.”

It was Easton’s turn to frown. “Did he give a
reason?”

“So you can’t be forced to use your authority
while you’re being held hostage.”

Smart, Easton thought. They knew he wasn’t a
hostage. They knew what he was doing and why he was doing it. But
nobody else did. This way not only did they keep his mouth shut,
they also ring fenced him: if he tried for assistance from any law
enforcement facility it would be presumed he was doing it with a
gun to his head.

The little flare of anger the ruse had lit
inside him died down, leaving him feeling suddenly drained, and he
lay back on the bed, surprised by his own weakness.

“Guy on TV said this is the biggest man-hunt
in living memory. State Police, helicopters, roadblocks, you name
it,” Ironheel told him. “Gonna find us no matter what.”

And kill us, Easton thought.

“We’re not safe here,” he said urgently.
“Sooner or later, they’re going to figure out where we are.
Probably sooner. They’ll call in the FBI, get Federal search
warrants. And then they’ll take the reservation apart. Cabin by
cabin. Stick by stick.”

Ironheel gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
That Apache fatalism again. Like, que sera, sera. I have to get him
to stop thinking like that, Easton thought, and wondered how the
hell he would even begin.

“You can’t travel,” Ironheel said.

“I’ll have to,” Easton said. His eyelids were
heavy and it would have been a lot easier to just lie back and let
the waves of weakness wash over him, but he fought them off. “Where
are my clothes?”

“My sister had to cut off your shirt to dress
your wound,” Ironheel said “Your other stuff is over there.”

“It’ll have to do for now,” Easton said. “Can
you loan me a shirt?”

“One on the chair,” he said. “Is there a
phone up here?”

“Why?”

“I need to call someone in Riverside. A
friend.”

Ironheel frowned his disapproval, and in the
light of recent events, Easton could scarcely blame him.

“We need help,” he said and left it
there.

“My sister has a cellphone—”

“No good,” Easton said. “Easiest things in
the world to track. Be like advertising where we are. We need a
public phone.”

“There’s one a couple of miles away. But you
can’t—”

“Got to,” Easton said, swinging his legs out
of the bed. He felt the tight tweak of the wound in his side, like
a crab with steel claws, cold, hard, pitiless. Sweat popped out on
his forehead and his senses swam. He grabbed a chair to steady
himself as he fumbled into his creased pants and buttoned the
shirt. His legs felt like slack elastic, but he was damned if he
was going to let Ironheel see it.

Ironheel saw it anyway. “Sit down,” he
said.

There was no trace of sympathy in his voice.
Well, that was the Apache way, too, Easton thought. In the old days
they always tried to bring their wounded home. But when they could
not, they left them and walked away. He flopped back onto the bed
and sat waiting for the roaring in his ears to ease.

As if from a long way off, he heard the sound
of a vehicle coming to a stop. Ironheel checked the window quickly
and nodded. The door opened and a woman came in. She wore a faded
wool shirt, knee-torn Levis, and moccasins. He spoke to her in
Apache, a question. She made a sign with her hand, palm out, a
short arc to the right.

Everything okay?

No problem.

So this was Ironheel’s sister.

She was medium height and compactly built,
with dark eyes and long black hair tied back in a loose ponytail.
Her face was oval and much less swarthy than her brother’s. She
took the scene in with one glance, crossed the room and sat beside
him.

“Ndaah, ndaah,” she said. “Rest. You must be
more careful.”

She lifted his wrist and took his pulse,
looking down at the watch on her left wrist. She had small strong
hands. Her expression was serious, her eyes veiled. She smelled of
soap and woodsmoke. For some reason her presence made him feel
tranquil.

“We talked on the phone,” he said. “Joanna,
isn’t it? Or do they call you Jo?”

“They call me Doctor,” she replied firmly.
“You are not gladly received here, Mr. Easton.”

“I’m not here by choice,” he pointed out.

It came out pretty sour and he saw it
register in her eyes. So you can get to them, he thought. Her head
came up and there was reciprocal hostility in her voice as she
replied.

“You have done bad things. Ncho’go
ágot’ihii.”

“Again, not by choice,” he said. “You know
what happened?”

Her face remained impassive. “Enough.”

He touched his side. “How bad is this?”

“You were lucky. The bullet clipped your
lower rib and went right through the soft skin of your
abdomen.”

“That’s lucky?”

The hint of a smile briefly touched her lips
and for a moment what might just have been mischief lit her eyes.
It changed her expression completely.

“Think you can walk?” she asked.

“Only one way to find out,” he said. “And
from what you say, the sooner the better.”

“The pickup’s outside,” she said. Like she
meant, Good, go.

“Does that mean you’ll help us?”

Her reply was oblique. “James is my
brother.”

“Your attitude toward him appears to have
changed some,” he said.

She made another of her small dismissive
gestures. She looked at Ironheel and again something passed
silently between them.

Ready?

Yes.

It was like each could read the other’s
mind.

“Let’s go,” Ironheel said. “We can talk on
the way.”

Easton stood up, swaying slightly. Okay,
Easton, he told himself. You’re big, you’re strong, you’re mean.
Bad guys quail when they see you coming. Now let’s see you do
something really difficult, like walking twenty yards.

He pulled in a deep breath. The mist of
dizziness in his head dispersed a little as Ironheel draped
Easton’s right arm around his shoulders and his sister took the
other side. Her body was lithe, strong and firm. They went out
together into the sunshine.

Apart from a few chirrups of birdsong, it was
utterly silent. The cloudless sky arched overhead like a huge blue
vault, and the air was as crisp as a brand new banknote. Off to the
right through the trees he could see Pajarito Mountain. The
timbered canyons fell away from where they were standing to the
invisible valley below, then steeply up again beyond it to the
summit of the Sierra Blanca, twelve thousand feet high, wild,
empty, forbidding.

Somehow Easton felt oddly alone, together yet
separate. Even with them supporting him, it was like they were
moving a piece of furniture.

“You okay?” Ironheel asked.

“I can manage,” he said. As in, I can do
stoic too.

They boosted him up into the pickup, a
beaten-up white Toyota with a dented front fender. Joanna Ironheel
slid behind the wheel and her brother got in on the other side,
Easton in the middle. Ironheel wound down the window on his side
and put his forearm on the sill, looking out.

“I need some straight talk here, Mr. Easton,”
Joanna Ironheel said, as they moved bumpily off down the track. “I
want to know exactly what we are involved in.”

He frowned. “I thought your brother—”

“You know more than he does.”

“I’m not sure I do,” Easton said. “But I’ll
try to explain. This thing began when a man named Robert Casey and
his grandson were murdered and your brother—”