Cry of Eagles (21 page)

Naiche halted his weary band for a brief rest stop in rugged foothills at the southern edge of the Dragoons. Beyond the hills lay a brutally dry desert, dotted with agave and barrel cactus, ocotillo plants and cholla, yucca and prickly pear, with scattered stands of mesquite trees offering the only possible hiding places—from the soldiers behind them led by Mickey Free . . . and the four strange white men, two of them dressed in animal skin Indian garb, Apache manhunters no one could identify who continued to stalk their every move toward Mexico, killing Naiche's warriors along the way.

Chokole shaded her eyes from the sun. “We will have no way to defend our people if they catch us out there, before we reach the shelter of the Pedregosas. Slowed by the animals and heavy packs they carry, it will take us two suns to enter the mountains, or perhaps three suns.”

Their departure from Wild Pig Springs had been a sad affair, with the hasty burials of Cuchillo and his warriors. Naiche still felt a touch of regret for killing Cuchillo in order to put the blame for so many warriors' deaths on someone other than himself.

“We have no choice,” he told the Apache fighting woman in a dry voice. “We must cross this desolate place as quickly as we can. The women will need to run, leading the pack animals. Anyone who falls behind will be left to die. Only the strongest of our people will make it to the land called Mexico, where the bluecoats cannot follow us. Tell this to all who have hope of living as free Apaches.”

“We should wait for darkness,” Juh counselled. “If the bluecoats see our dust sign on the horizon, or the four white-eyes, they will know where we are. We have no defenses in this open place.”

Naiche was uneasy about any delay. “We are Apaches,” he said. “We are trained to hide from our enemies when there is no place to hide. The Apache scalphunter, Mickey Free, is guiding the bluecoats along our tracks, and we have no tools to remove the iron shoes from our horses. The white-eyes in buckskins are also behind us. There is no time to rest. If we stay here to wait for darkness, they will be closer to us. Free will bring the soldiers, and all of us will die if we wait here for the sun to sleep. There are too many of the white-eyes for us to win a battle with them.”

“We could lose a fight out in the open,” Chokole warned as she gave their backtrail a careful examination. “Our people are frightened by the four whites who killed Cuchillo's warriors, and the soldiers coming from the north.”

Naiche could never admit he had his own worries about Free and the buckskin-clad men. His role as chief of the Chiricahuas and leader of this renegade band forbade any demonstration of fear. “We have many-shoot rifles and bullets. Let them come to fight with us.”

Nana, old enough to be wise in the ways of war, spoke. “We are too few, Naiche. The clever white-eyes have taken too many of our number to the spirit world. We know they understand our ways, our movements, and they can read our tracks too easily. Darkness will hide us when we cross this desert to the Pedregosas. It is two day's journey, perhaps more, as Chokole said, and we have no places to stop and fight where Earth Mother will give us rocks or big trees or cover to halt their bullets. We should cross this place at night, when they cannot see our dust sign in the sky. Out there on the empty desert, we will all be killed if they find our horses' sign and the direction we travel.”

Nana's experience fighting the whites gave Naiche a moment's pause. But he was certain the white-skinned killers were very close now, and Mickey Free would not be far behind them with the columns of bluecoats. “The iron on these soldier horses gives us away,” he said finally. “This is the reason why they find us so easily. But we must have strong horses. Without them, we are helpless. The time has come for us to prove we are Apaches, in spite of the tracks we leave for them to follow. The white man's iron horseshoes are our enemy.”

“Yes,” Chokole agreed. Darkness is not far away. I agree with Nana that we should wait for the sun to disappear, for with sundown the light is gone, and they will not see us or the hoofprints left by our animals.”

“Chokole offers you wise council,” Nana said, giving the hills behind them his own careful scrutiny. “Even if they find us here, we have rocks and arroyos where we can fight them off with repeating rifles.”

Naiche recalled the wisdom of Geronimo, and how many times he had told the People it was better to hide and fight an enemy at the place and time where the advantage belonged to the Apache, and not the enemy. “Geronimo avoids direct contact with our white enemies. He leads them into traps where even a few good warriors can win battles against many times their number. If we wait here for the sun to sleep, we lose precious time. If we keep moving, we have the advantage of being far out in front of them.”

“Our people . . . especially the women, are tired and afraid of these white men,” Nana said. “Under the cover of darkness they will have less fear.”

Naiche turned to Nana, his eyes slitted with sudden anger. “I am chief of the Chiricahuas, a son of Cochise. The spirits guide me. We will cross this desert now, and put more distance between us and the whites while the sun warms the air. If we wait for darkness, the freezing cold will hamper our horses, and the women will not be able to travel as fast.”

Nana lowered his head.

Chokole looked off at the horizon where the sun would fall below the desert in a few short hours, providing the darkness she and Nana wanted. “You are our leader, Naiche. I will do whatever you say we must do to reach safety. If you tell us to go now, we will go.”

Across the desert floor, shimmering heat waves created the illusion of water in the distance. A hawk circled far to the south above the ocotillo spines, hunting, seeking prey before the darkness ended its chances of a successful feeding on the snakes and lizards it might find in a dry land. Riding currents of hot air, it rose on wings spread far from its body, a sure sign no danger lurked beneath it.

Naiche pointed to the bird. “The hawk gives us our sign. It hunts without fear. The way is clear across this desert to the mountains. Tell the women to run as fast as they can with the pack animals. It is time to go.”

Chokole turned her horse and rode off at a trot back to the waiting women and horses. Naiche could hear her giving them his message. Farther back, a rear guard of armed warriors watched the foothills through which they had come since leaving Wild Pig Springs.

It was Juh who gave Naiche more cause for concern, when he pointed to a spot in front of them.

“Look beyond the cholla, Naiche,” Juh said, his tone grave, filled with foreboding. “A coiled rattlesnake lies in our path. It is a sign from the spirit world to go in another direction, for the snake is a messenger of death.”

Naiche heard the serpent's deadly warning rattle, and he saw it coiled in the shade below a flat stone. His stomach twisted. The rattlesnake was, as Juh said, often a messenger from the next life sent by their ancestors to turn the People away from certain disaster.

More than anything else, even more than invoking the wrath of the spirits, Naiche feared being caught by the four unknown Apache hunters and the soldiers before more warriors joined them to use the many-shoot rifles lashed to the pack horses. What good were magic guns if he had no warriors to shoot them?

He slid off the back of his horse and drew his knife, for he meant to kill the rattlesnake silently as proof to Juh and the others that the serpent was not a bad omen foretelling some dark to come.

He strode quickly down to the rock where the huge rattler lay coiled. The snake watched him with cold, lidless eyes. He distracted the thick serpent with a sudden movement of his left foot, swinging it just close enough for a strike at the top of his knee-high deerskin boots decorated with porcupine quills and beadwork.

The rattler struck half the length of its body, deadly fangs bared. Naiche jerked his foot away just in the nick of time and sent his gleaming knife blade downward in a swift arc.

The tip of his knife caught the snake behind its broad head and tore through its layers of scales as Naiche pinned it to the ground. Coiling around his arm, rattling fiercely, it was helpless to inject its poisonous fangs into his flesh.

Naiche sliced the serpent's head off while its body still writhed with a life of its own. He stuck the rattler's head onto the tip of his knife and turned toward Juh and the line of Apaches waiting for him on the crest of a hill.

He shook the knife over his head. “See this, my brothers?” he cried. “We are Apaches! We will kill anyone who tries to stop us from joining Geronimo in Mexico!”

Nods of approval went down the row of warriors and women. By means of a simple demonstration, proving that the rattler was not a warning from the Spirits to turn away, Naiche had given his people new hope and courage.

“Follow me across the desert!” he shouted, mounting his bay with the snake's head displayed on his knifetip.

Single file, Naiche started downslope toward the welcome heat of the desert floor that would take them to the Pedregosas, then across the Mexican border to safety.

Falcon watched through his binoculars as Naiche got on his horse, holding a knife with a snake's head on it, and led his people out onto the desert floor. He took particular note of the three warriors left behind as a rear guard.

Time to sow some more seeds of fear,
he thought as he crawled backward from the edge of the ledge he was lying on. He pulled his Winchester from its saddle boot and eased over the hilltop, being careful to keep to heavy brush as he descended the side of the mountain toward the Indian guards. He took his time, making no noise, until he was a couple of hundred yards from the braves.

He stepped to a pinyon tree and braced his rifle barrel against a small branch stub sticking out. Slowly, he exhaled and increased pressure gradually on the trigger. The long gun exploded and kicked back against his shoulder. He worked the lever and switched aim before the echoes from the first shot had faded. Twice more, faster than it takes to tell it, he fired, knocking all three Indians off their ponies.

One was still alive by the time Falcon was able to scramble down the remaining hundred yards of hillside.

As Falcon stood over the Indian, a look of terror came over his face as the brave pulled his knife and slashed it across his own throat.

I guess I
'
ve got them thinking I'm some kind of monster,
Falcon thought. That was good news, to see the Indians so afraid of him they'd rather cut their own throats than face him.

Falcon spent some time working on the dead bodies, then rounded up their ponies, tied the braves to the broncs' backs, and sent them out onto the desert in the direction Naiche and his band had taken. It would be nice if he could be there to see their faces when their rear guard showed up butchered like the others.

When he had washed the blood off his arms, Falcon gathered up as much dry timber and dead branches as he could and built a large pile in the center of the trail. He took a cigar out of his pocket, struck a lucifer on his pants leg, lit the cigar, then threw the match in the dry leaves.

Within minutes he had a roaring bonfire going, sending dark columns of cloudy smoke into the sky.

He looked back up the mountain toward the odd-shaped rock in the distance called Indian Head Peak by white folks. He hoped the army had shown up, and that Hawk and Meeks would recognize his smoke as a signal to come.

Once the fire was going well, he climbed back up the mountainside to Diablo. He decided he had time for a short nap, since he figured to be busy later that night. He took Diablo's saddle off, put his ground tarp on a bed of pine needles, and lay back for a
siesta.

As he fell asleep he began to dream of another place where he'd tangled with Apache runaways from an Indian reservation. That time he'd found himself with some rather infamous company—none other than Billy Bonney, known in New Mexico Territory as Billy the Kid—a man virtually everyone thought was dead, shot down by Sheriff Pat Garrett. A bunch of Mescaleros hired by Thomas Catron up in Santa Fe rode to Lincoln County to raid the cattle ranch of John Chisum. Falcon had quickly put an end to Chisum's Apache problem....

* * *

Falcon walked over to the Kid where he was standing above the man he'd shot.

“Got him right through the heart,” the Kid said, “only he's still alive.”

“Won't be for long,” Falcon observed, for even in the dark of the pinyon forest an inky pool of blood was spreading around the body, easy to see.

“He kinda whispered his name,” the Kid went on in a quiet voice. “Roy Cobb.”

“He called the other one Deke,” Falcon remembered.

“Cobb said they didn't work for Jimmy Dolan or Murphy or any of the Lincoln County bunch. They came straight down from Santa Fe, bein' paid by Thomas Catron, the leader of the beef ring that started all this trouble. That's what this feller told me just before he blacked out.”

“Somebody needs to pay a call on this Thomas Catron. Tell him what happened to his boys and his Apaches here tonight. It ain't over yet. There's still nine or ten Apaches out there, and I intend to kill 'em all.”

“How come, Falcon?” the Kid wondered. “They don't seem to want no more fight with us.”

“It's personal, Kid.”

“Personal? You've tangled with those same renegades before?”

“Not the same bunch, but they're renegades off a reservation, and that makes 'em fair game.”

“Fair game for a killin'? Mind tellin' me why you feel so hard-line about it?”

Falcon took a deep breath, gazing toward the open prairie where the renegades still sat their ponies watching the trees where the shooting had occurred. He was remembering the worst moment of his life, when a band of redskins had come down on his place while he was away, slaughtering his wife, Marie, butchering her like a fatted calf, cutting her open, scalping her, leaving her alive to suffer miserably until she died slowly.

“You ain't gotta talk about it if you'd rather not,” the Kid said.

“A band of renegades attacked my ranch while I was off on business. They took my wife with 'em. They had their way with her and then cut her open. Sliced off her scalp. My father told me when he found her she'd bled all over the place, so I know she suffered something awful.”

“Was she . . . dead when he found her?”

Falcon merely nodded, turning away from the dying gunman from Santa Fe to walk to his horse.

“You're goin' after the others, ain't you?” the Kid said just as Roy Cobb let out his final breath.

“Sure as hell am,” Falcon replied.

“I'll go with you,” the Kid offered, hurrying to catch up to Falcon's longer strides.

“Nope,” Falcon remarked. “This is my affair. Stay put until I'm done with 'em.”

“You're gonna take all of 'em on by yourself?”

“Now you've got the idea,” Falcon told him as he untied Diablo's reins and swung into the saddle.

He began thumbing cartridges into the loading tube of his Winchester rifle. Then he booted it and pulled one pistol at a time to check their loads.

“I'll damn sure ride out there an' help you,” the Kid said again.

“I appreciate the offer,” Falcon replied, reining Diablo away from the tree. “But this is my personal score to settle. It's been haunting me all these years. I can't sleep sometimes, picturing what my Marie must've looked like when Jamie found her.”

“An' now you're out to kill every Indian renegade you run across. It don't matter what breed they are.”

Falcon halted his horse just long enough to answer the Kid's question. “Those are renegades, son. The law says we don't fight each other any more like we did in the old days, before the big treaty at Medicine Lodge. These Mescaleros broke their word to keep peace between us. They ran off looking for a fight with white men, and I aim to oblige 'em. Those renegades who killed my Marie ignored the treaty and went to war against me, against a defenseless woman. I'll make every redskin renegade I can find pay for what happened to my wife until I go to my grave. It's something I have to do.”

At that, Falcon had heeled Diablo through the pinyons toward the open valley, where nine Apaches were gathered in a low spot with rifles balanced across their ponies' withers.

Falcon rode to the edge of the forest. He jerked his rifle free, jacked a load into place, twisted Diablo's reins around his saddlehorn so he could guide the trusty stud with his knees. At the last Falcon pulled the Colt pistol from his left holster, fisting it, then bringing the Winchester to his right shoulder.

“Move out, Diablo,” he said soft and low, urging the big stallion into a run straight toward the Apaches.

The Indians did not move, watching him gallop toward them out of a setting sun as if they couldn't believe their eyes—one man charging toward nine armed warriors. Falcon knew they must believe he was crazy.

Hell,
he thought,
they may well be right.

The smooth running gait of Diablo did nothing to bother his aim when Falcon drew a bead on one Indian and pulled the trigger on his rifle, a shot of almost three hundred yards, impossible for all but the best marksmen.

A shrieking Indian twisted off his pony, flinging his rifle high above his head as he fell head-first beneath the hooves of the other ponies.

Falcon gave the Winchester's loading lever a road agent's spin, twirling it around his outstretched hand, sending another brass-jacketed shell into the chamber. He was still too far out of range to use his Colt pistol, but he was sure the opportunity to use it would come.

Three Indians fired back at him, yet Falcon had anticipated their move by kneeing Diablo to the left and right so the big horse changed leads with every stride. A zigzagging target was virtually impossible to hit without a stroke of luck, and if Falcon had anything to say about it, the Indians were plumb out of luck today.

Falcon fired his rifle again as two slugs whistled past him into the night sky, while a third plowed up dirt and grass many yards to the right of Diablo's run.

The shot from Falcon's Winchester found another mark when a Mescalero in a fringed buckskin shirt yelped like a scalded dog and rolled, ball-like, off the croup of his prancing pinto pony to land hard on the ground behind it.

Again, Falcon gave the rifle a one-handed spin, a practiced move he accomplished so smoothly it seemed like a fluid motion, not the working of a steel mechanism in a man's hand.

Four more shots thundered from the swale in Falcon's direction, and all were wide misses. The Indians' ponies were hard to control with all the shooting going on, rearing on hind legs or plunging against the pull of jawreins.

Falcon aimed for an Apache and blasted him off his dappled gray. Blood flew from his ribs and back, and it seemed the big .44 slug had all but torn the Indian in half.

Diablo continued his charge toward the milling Indians as the powerful horse dodged back and forth under the signals from Falcon's knees.

The remaining Apaches suddenly panicked, as if they realized this crazy white-eyes meant business, and swung their ponies away from Falcon's headlong rush, drumming their heels into the ribs of their mounts.

Their retreat did nothing to discourage MacCallister's grin determination to blast the Mescalero renegades to their happy hunting ground. He asked Diablo for more speed and singled out one Indian to ride down and kill. Six Mescaleros remained, and if he had his way he meant to slaughter the entire bunch.

He fired at the escaping Apache and blew the back of the warrior's skull apart, with blood and hair and bone fragments flying high above the dappled pony until the dead Indian fell limply to the valley floor.

Turning Diablo after another target, Falcon aimed and fired twice with his Colt. Another warrior screamed in agony and went down hard.

Changing directions again, the scattering Apaches wanted no more of Falcon. Remembering Marie, he gave a mirthless grin. “Time for paybacks, you red bastards,” he growled, asking Diablo for all he had.

* * *

Falcon rested aboard the big black stud on a hilltop to survey the scene below. Diablo was blowing hard, covered with a thick coating of sweat and foam. Falcon leaned forward to pat the big stud's neck, for he had run as if he were chasing the devil for Falcon—which, in a sense, he had been.

Spread across a starlit valley, lying in patches of dark blood, nine Mescalero Apache renegades decorated the north Chisum pasture. Men who had found all the excitement they could handle when they decided to leave the reservation and make some extra money by stealing.

He heard the Kid riding up the hill. As soon as the Kid got there he spoke.

“Never saw nothin' like it, Falcon.” Kid removed his hat and sleeved off his face. Then he shook his head in awe. “You killed every one of 'em like it was all in a day's work. ”

He glanced sideways at Falcon. “You know, I used to think I was a pretty bad hombre, but you just showed me something. There's always somebody over the next hill who's just a little bit badder.”

Falcon gave the Kid a lopsided grin. “Now you know why I keep telling you to get off the hoot owl trail and go straight. That trail only leads to one conclusion, and it's always the same, being stood up in a pine box for folks to take pictures of and stand around gawking at.”

Kid nodded.

“You plannin' on goin' up to Santa Fe to have a talk with Catron?”

Falcon's thirst for revenge had lessened after the bloodbath, and he turned to the Kid. “Maybe later, but right now I'm heading on down to John Chisum's to tell him what happened.”

He stared out across the field, almost completely covered in darkness now. “He's probably heard the shots and is wondering who's gone to war out on his spread.” He stuck out his hand, “It's time you started that long ride to the Mexican border.”

The Kid leaned out of his saddle, taking Falcon's hand. “It's been a pleasure to know you, Falcon MacCallister. Thanks for all you did to try to help me an' my friends. We lost the war in Lincoln County, that's for sure, but we damn sure made 'em pay in blood to get it done.”

Falcon didn't want more conversation right at the moment. “Best you start riding, son. And good luck to you. If you're as smart as I think you are, you won't ever show your face in New Mexico Territory again. Let 'em all think you're buried up at Fort Sumner.”

The Kid nodded and swung his horse off the hilltop, hitting a trot to the south. Crossing the dark valley, he glanced to his left and then his right when he rode past the bodies of some of the Apaches Falcon had killed.