Apache Country (25 page)

He watched as Ironheel shrugged out of his
shirt and pants. His upper body was bronzed and powerful. Muscles
moved as smoothly as pistons under the coppery skin. There wasn’t
an ounce of fat on him. Those State cops were lucky he didn’t kill
them, Easton thought.

He took off his own clothes, slid on the new
ones. The jeans smelled starchy and were stiff against the skin.
The work boots were hard and unfriendly but they would be much more
sensible for the kind of walking that lay ahead. All the same, he
was sorry to write off his Justins; you got kind of attached to a
comfortable pair of boots.

As soon as they were both dressed Ironheel
gathered up all the other discarded clothing, jammed it into one of
the larger shoppers and disappeared noiselessly downhill and into
the trees. A few minutes later he as silently reappeared empty
handed.

“I stashed everything underneath some rocks
down there,” he said. “Put a blaze on one of the trees so you can
come back for your boots.”

“You don’t miss much, do you?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Tell me something,” Easton said. “That
disappearing trick you do. Did they teach you that when you were a
kid, too?”

Ironheel nodded. “There was a hastiin, an old
man who lived up on the hill above our place,” he replied, his eyes
hooded with recollection. “At least, he seemed old to us kids. He
was probably around fifty. His name was Lííyótah, Horse Holder.
He’d had polio, couldn’t walk far. But he was king of the hiding
game. T’lo kahd’ inadi aha’eh.”

Easton tried to repeat the Apache phrase and
failed. Ironheel said it again.

“T’lo kahd’ inadi aha’eh. It means something
like, to come from nowhere, to materialize without warning. The
practice of stealth, and silence, and stillness, to be one with
where you are, is a great skill, very important to Apache. Not just
being motionless, but thinking motionless, emptying the mind of
every other thing except that.”

Every day the old man would take him out
somewhere and tell him to conceal himself. First to a meadow, then
to a rocky outcrop, and next day to a yucca flat, where the boy was
bidden to vanish into whatever concealment he could find. If he did
it well, the old man gave him a piece of candy. If he did not, and
the old man found him easily, he beat him with a stick.

“Ích’ idists’aa!” he would shout. Listen.
Learn. Be as the grass, be as the rock, be as the yucca plant until
your enemy is near enough for you to strike.

T’lo kahd’ inadi aha’eh. Materialize without
warning.

“What about girls?” Easton asked, thinking of
Joanna Ironheel. “What do they learn?”

Ironheel shrugged. “Apache girls play with
dolls. Help their mother in the house. Gather k’ai – willow – for
baskets,” he said, dismissing the subject as superfluous by
standing up and stretching. Easton grinned behind his back. Tina
Fey would love this guy.

“That chicken should be ready,” he said.
“Let’s eat.”

They scraped back the earth and peeled off
the layer of dried out tule shoots which had kept the chicken flesh
moist. Easton reached for the meat but Ironheel held up a hand,
wait. From his belt he took a small deerskin pouch and out of it a
pinch of powder, his lips moving as he sprinkled it on the fire. It
made a little hiss as it burned and gave off a tiny puff of white
smoke.

“What was that?” Easton asked.

“Hádn’din,” Ironheel said, frowning as though
reluctant to talk about it. “Cat-tail pollen. A way to give
thanks.”

“I don’t have any pollen,” Easton said.

“It will be all right,” Ironheel told him,
without the slightest trace of humor. Then he nodded abruptly and
picked up a piece of chicken.

“Aal’lizaa,” he said. “Eat.”

The chicken was juicy and tender and they ate
quickly, manners be damned. When they were through Easton leaned
back with a sigh.

“You think the water in the creek would be
safe to drink?” he said.

“Probably not without boiling it,” Ironheel
replied. “Used to be you could drink anyplace in this country. Now
… better not. You thirsty?”

Easton shrugged. “I’ll survive.”

“Try this,” Ironheel said.

He reached inside the smaller shopper he had
laid to one side, and came up with two Styrofoam takeaway cups.

“Coffee?” Easton said, astonished.

“You earned it,” Ironheel said gruffly. “I
pushed you hard today.”

That was probably as close to praise as he
got, Easton thought. They sat quietly drinking their coffee as the
sun moved down the far side of the sky. It was that still silent
part of the evening he remembered from when he was a kid. When you
lay in bed, sleepy but not asleep, and you could hear Dad and Mom
moving around downstairs, and you knew all was well. For these few
sunset moments it was even possible to forget they were fugitives.
But grim reality was never far away. After a while Ironheel stood
up, putting the coffee cups into his sack.

“Coffee good?”

“Best I ever drank.”

“I got some water, too. And a canteen.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of being perfect?”
Easton said, irritably.

Ironheel didn’t respond. “Anything edible,
put in the big sack and tie a knot in it. Paper, feathers, all the
other stuff in this bag. Then bury it all in the fire hole.”

Easton did as he was bid, maybe still a
little irritated at Ironheel’s condescension. Anyone who lived in
this country knew not to leave food lying around. You were liable
to come back and find a bear eating it.

“What now?” he asked, sensing Ironheel was
impatient to move on.

“Maybe go down and see if there are any empty
weekend cabins along Cedar Creek,” he replied. “If we do we’ve got
a place to sleep.”

“Okay. But no break-ins, okay?”

“Absolutely,” Ironheel said straight-faced.
“Wouldn’t want the law coming after us.”

Well, well, Easton thought, he has a sense of
humor after all.

After they had carefully cleared up the area,
he laid the little bundle of refuse into the fire hole and watched
it burn up. Then he scraped the earth back on top of it, tamped it
down with his foot and scattered dry earth and twigs over it. He
looked up to see Ironheel standing stock still, his head cocked to
one side in a listening attitude.

“You hear something?” he asked.

Ironheel frowned and held up a hand, Quiet.
Easton listened intently but all he could hear was the sleepy
twitter of the birds and the sigh of the breeze. After a moment,
Ironheel shook his head, then drew in a deep breath and let it
out.

“What was it?” Easton said.

Ironheel pointed down the hill. “Dándas,” he
said. “You go on ahead. If you get to the bottom before me,
wait.”

Easton opened his mouth and then shut it.

No arguments, no questions, remember?

Leaving Ironheel behind, he started down the
hill, sensing rather than seeing him fade into the trees parallel
to the trail. The sinking sun was touching the crest of the
mountain, elongating his shadow so it stretched maybe ten feet
ahead of him. After he had covered about a half mile, he glanced
back, but there was no sign of Ironheel. He shrugged and kept
going.

About two hundred yards further down, the
track bore sharply to the right between a scatter of huge boulders.
As he reached the bend, two men stepped out from behind them and
stood spraddle-legged in front of him, blocking the way.

The one on Easton’s left was a big man with
the physique of a street fighter, dark eyes beneath a jutting brow,
a scrubby stubble beard. He had on a sweat-stained white Resistol
curly brim, a red and green plaid shirt with a blue body warmer,
well-worn jeans, and battered old cowboy boots. Canted across his
left forearm was a .44-40 Winchester hunting rifle, but that wasn’t
what stopped Easton in his tracks.

The second man, on the right, was fat and
squat, maybe five seven or eight, with a beer gut that spilled over
the wide belt holding up his army-style pants. He wore a peaked
Raiders cap, a camouflage flak jacket and lace-up combat boots. The
Remington over-and-under shotgun he was holding was pointing right
at Easton’s belly and he looked as if he wouldn’t need much of an
excuse to use it.

“All raht, asshole,” he growled. “Where’s the
fuckin Indian?”

“What in the hell is this?” Easton said,
trying for what he hoped sounded like outraged innocence. The big
dark one levered a shell into his carbine. The metallic sound
seemed very loud in the silence. He swung the barrel around and
Easton’s feigned protest dried up.

“Skip the bullshit,” the big man said. His
drawl was even more pronounced than that of his fat friend. “Answer
the question.”

Easier said than done, Easton thought. In his
mind’s eye he saw Ironheel again, head up like a wild animal
sensing the approach of a predator, and knew now what that had
been. Ironheel had heard something, maybe suspected an ambush. So
why had he let him walk into it?

He tilted his head in the direction he had
just come from. “Back up there someplace,” he told his captors.
“Told me to go on ahead.”

“You expectin’ us t’ b’lieve that?”

Easton shrugged, take it or leave it. The big
man looked at the fat one. The fat one nodded.

“You’re the cop, raht? Easton,” he said
triumphantly, as if remembering the name was an extraordinary feat
of memory. “Okay, Easton, here’s what you do. Lift that pistol of
yours outa yo belt nahce’n careful. Finger and thumb only,
hear?”

Easton did exactly as he was bidden, using
his forefinger and thumb to lift the Glock out of his waistband. As
he did the big man spoke again.

“Atsaboy. Now toss it over heah.”

The gun made a soft, heavy sound as it hit
the ground. The big man picked it up and tucked it into his belt,
beneath his jacket. The fat man nodded with satisfaction, his jowls
creasing.

“Okay, now get yore ass over theah,” he said,
emphasizing the order with a jerk of the shotgun barrel. “B’hahnd
these rocks.”

As Easton did what he was told, unanswerable
questions raced through his head. Where was Ironheel? He would
never have run. So could he be somewhere nearby, watching? Even if
he was, what could he do, unarmed?

“How did you find us?” he asked. Maybe if he
could get them talking the sound of their voices would help
Ironheel locate them.

The fat man smiled. His teeth were very
bad.

“Shit, you’s all over the TV,” he said. “We
reckernized yo Injun buddy right off, minnit we seen him in
K-Mart.”

“Sides, when’s the last time you seen a Injun
buyin’ two different sahz men’s pants?” the big one said, as
pleased with himself as if he was Sherlock Holmes. “Top o’ that,
afoot? A Injun with no wheels? Shit, you wanna get me odds on that
in Vegas?”

The phrase rang a faint bell in Easton’s
memory, but right now he could not place it. He concentrated on the
two men. They were Texans, of course, although a notch or two
downmarket from the ones who came up in the summer for the quarter
horse races and in the fall to kill things. These two were good ol’
boys from one of the trash towns, part of that social group the
demographers label ‘shotguns and pickups.’

“Okay,” the fat man said heavily. “Git on
over b’hin’ them rocks like I tole you. You make a funny move Ah’ll
shoot a chunk raht offa your ass.”

“If it was just you and me, fat man,” Easton
said softly. The piggy eyes glinted malevolently.

“In yore fuckin dreams,” he said, and
gestured again with the shotgun.

Easton went over and stood where he had been
told to stand. The fat man came over and stood beside and slightly
behind him, with the big man to his right. The heat coming off the
rocks was like standing near a big oven. The fat man’s hands made
wet prints on the shotgun as he shifted his grip. He smelled like
an old horse blanket. The big guy stood to one side, tense, poised.
They’d picked their spot well. Anyone coming down the trail
wouldn’t see them until it was too late.

Long, leaden minutes crawled by. Nothing
happened. The fat man made an impatient sound. The other one
frowned angrily and took off his curly brim hat to wipe his
forehead, then inched carefully out around the rocks with the
Winchester leveled, ready for anything. Nothing moved in the
encroaching twilight.

“Well, shee-hit,” he said angrily. “Where’s
that fuckin Indian at anyways, Gil? I’m gittin’ tarda this.”

The fat man shrugged. “You wanna know what I
think, I figure maybe he seen us an’ took off.”

“Bastard,” the big man said, as if it was
somehow unsporting of Ironheel not to have delivered himself up to
their guns.

The fat man looked at Easton, the piggy eyes
empty. “What the fuck, Clay, we got this one,” he said. “Still a
thousand bucks, raht? Whyn’t we jes’ take ’im on down the hill and
collect it?”

“Yeah, guess,” the big man said. His thoughts
couldn’t have been plainer if they had been painted on his
forehead. Druther had two grand than one.

“Okay, dipshit, less go,” the fat man said,
and poked Easton in the back with the shotgun. The gun barrel got
him in his wounded side this time, and it hurt. Another one I owe
you, fat man, Easton promised silently as he led the way down the
hill, with the fat man behind him and Clay bringing up the
rear.

The trail was less steep now, widening out as
they descended, with patches of chokecherry and mound cactus
growing between the tumbled chaos of boulders and fallen rocks on
both sides of the watercourse. Then suddenly Ironheel materialized
behind Clay as if out of the very rock. The three foot-long
cottonwood branch he held like a baseball bat whupped through a
short, vicious arc and struck Clay’s head with a sound like a
cleaver hitting a side of beef. The big man went down sideways as
if he’d been poleaxed.