Lord Apache (10 page)

He did not know how long it was before he opened his eyes again. With a start he realized that he lay in Eggleston's reed hut. The movement lanced his shoulder with spasms of pain. He lay quietly again, feeling the awkward bulk of bandage. Recollection flooded back—the Apache attack, Agustín in his leather hat waving the Union Jack, the numbing impact of the bullet, the final sight of Phoebe Larkin standing on the parapet like an avenging angel, firing down into the trench with his Tatham pistols, one in each hand.

Run! Run away, Phoebe! Save yourself
! Dimly he remembered the words, remembered shouting to Phoebe Larkin. Then he had collapsed on his face, knew no more.

But he was here. He was alive. From outside the hut came reassuring sounds: the bray of a mule, a woman's voice, someone laughing, the rippling of wind in the reeds along the river. He was alive!

Gritting his teeth, he rolled to the edge of the crude bed and swung his naked legs over. The whole world reeled, tipped upside down. Desperately he grasped at the chair. Finally his equilibrium returned, though he seemed out of breath and very tired.

Dressed scantily in his shirt, he staggered upright, the earth floor cool and damp under his feet. Still holding on to the chair, he stared unbelievingly at the scarecrow regarding him from the fragment of mirror fastened to the wall. The apparition was surely a fugitive from Dartmoor prison, a gaunt hollow-eyed ruffian with scruffy red beard. Even the slatted light from the sun, filtering through the reeds, painted the sorry figure in stripes appropriate to a convict. His mouth opened in wonder; he saw a gap where a tooth should be. Remembering the fight with George Dunaway, he was now certain that the apparition was he, John Peter Christian Drumm, of the Clarendon Hall Drumms. In spite of himself, he came close to grinning. The bearded ragamuffin leered back at him. What changes the Arizona Territory had wrought!

Shuffling painfully across the floor, blanket wrapped around his bare legs and dragging the chair as a prop, he stood in the doorway, accustoming his eyes to the sunlight. Eggleston had Bonyparts, the mule, hitched to a bizarre assembly of slats from a broken keg laced together with wire to form a crude drag; he was scraping dirt to finish the dam across the Agua Fria that Drumm had planned. The little Papago man who had visited the camp the evening before the attack was making bricks with a wooden form and mud from the river. Under a brush shelter Mrs. Beulah Glore stirred something—probably more beans—in a pot over a mesquite fire.

Puzzled, Drumm stared at a fresh mound of earth. At the head of the raw new mound a stake was driven into the ground; a scarlet cloth headband fluttered from it. With elation he realized that their little party had indeed given the Apaches "what for," as Phoebe Larkin had promised.

He saw her, then, standing in the shade of a spread canvas, drinking from the water butt with a tin dipper. As he did, she appeared also to hear the faint sound of gunfire from the mountains, and turned to stare into the purple distance where George Dunaway was still harassing the Apaches.

"Phoebe!" he called. "Miss—Miss Larkin!"

At first she did not see him, only tightened her grasp on the heavy Sharp's rifle and continued to look at the slopes of the Mazatzals, dipper poised halfway to her lips. He tried to speak louder, but all that emerged was a strangled croak. Phoebe heard him, however; she dropped the rifle, crying out. Eggleston let fall the makeshift rope reins, Mrs. Glore abandoned her beans, and Papago left off his brickmaking. They all ran to Jack Drumm.

"I only left for a minute!" Phoebe complained. "Oh, whatever are you doing out of bed?"

Mrs. Glore and the valet took him by the arms and tried to steer him back into the hut but Drumm would have none of it.

"I am all right!" he protested. For the first time he noticed the copper-brown youth sitting under the brush ramada, tied firmly to a wooden bench.

"Who is that?"

Eggleston had a blood-stained bandage around his head, but he spoke with great pride. "A prisoner of war, I guess you might say, Mr. Jack! We captured him day before last—"

"Day before last?"

"You've been out of your mind," Phoebe explained, "for well over forty-eight hours! It was probably due to all the blood you lost from where you were shot in the shoulder."

"Lucky for you," Mrs. Glore beamed, "the ball passed right through and didn't bust anything! Mr. Eggleston here stood over you like a lion and fought them off! Oh, I tell you, he was a real ring-tailed roarer! How he did ramsquaddle them red brutes!"

Basking in her approval, the valet smiled modestly. "And Miss Phoebe here, in addition to playing the perfect Amazon with your pistols, put you to bed and managed to stop the bleeding with cold compresses."

Jack Drumm remembered a hand on his brow, a light and gossamer touch that was for a while his only link with this world of sunlight and triumph.

"I am—I am grateful," he stammered. "I mean—to you all, but especially to you, Miss Phoebe. And we fought them, the Apaches, to a standstill! We showed them we are here to stay, residents of the Territory!" He caught sight of the grinning leathery face of the Papago. Where had he been during the battle?

"He skedaddled," Beulah Glore explained. "Don't know as I blame him, either! He wouldn't go ninety pounds with sashweights in his pockets. But he's been real useful around here."

"Now, Jack," Phoebe urged, taking his arm, "you must get back to bed! You are as white as a bedsheet, and have got to rest."

She had never before called him Jack, and the familiarity made him uncomfortable. Too, how had she described him?
A cold fish
? That had been unfair, and inaccurate. Cornelia Newton-Barrett could have informed her differently. He wondered what Cornelia would have done during an Apache attack.

"First," he said, "we must decide what to do with this scoundrel here—this Apache youth you have captured."

"Beulah here," Eggleston said, "hit him over the head with a shovel! When the rest finally broke and ran, they left him for dead. We tied him up, but let him walk about each day for a little while under guard. He eats a great deal, though, and will soon pauperize us."

The little Papago sidled up to Jack Drumm and looked fearfully at the Apache youth in his bonds. He jabbered something, then retreated.

"I know," Drumm said. "They are very fierce."

He looked into the black eyes of their captive. It was like staring into the eyes of a snake—a flat impassive opacity that showed nothing of humanity behind the glittering pupils.

"Look here," he said. "Do you speak any English? I mean—" Frustrated, he broke off. "
Englisch? Anglais? Ingles
?"

The youth only stared coolly, muscular bronze arms folded over a hairless chest.

"Flag!" Drumm made a waving motion. "Do you understand?" He took a stick and drew a Union Jack in the dust, complete with staff and waving folds of cloth. "
My
flag!" He pointed to the flanks of the Mazatzals. "It belonged to my brother Andrew, damn it all, when he was in India, and I want it back! Flag—do you understand? I want my flag back, or Agustín will have to answer to me!"

At mention of Agustín the obsidian eyes seemed for a moment to clear, to show depth, to indicate interest. The youth was tall for an Apache, with a kind of indolent grace even in his bonds. He lifted his chin proudly, and the black eyes became large and luminous. Then, suddenly, it was if a curtain descended. Once more, Jack Drumm might have been addressing a stone.

"I don't think the creature understands a word you say," Mrs. Glore observed.

Jack Drumm felt his knees weakening; he swayed a little. Phoebe caught him under the arm, looking anxiously into his face.

"Hadn't you better—"

"I—want—my—flag," Jack said between clenched teeth. "Flag—
bandera
! You understand that?"

The Apache watched him, immobile, without emotion, but Jack felt somehow that the youth understood. He turned to the valet.

"Cut him loose, will you, Eggie?"

Eggleston was surprised. "Are you sure, sir, that—"

"Cut him loose," Drumm repeated, surprised to find his voice suddenly husky and reedlike, almost inaudible. "Let him go, and tell his master Agustín we are here to stay, along the Agua Fria! Let him tell Agustín he can not dislodge us! Let him tell Agustín I will have my flag back, and before I leave this miserable land I will see Agustín himself hanged on a gallows in Prescott!"

He toppled, then, and would have fallen. Eggleston and Mrs. Glore managed to catch him under the arms and drag him protesting into the reed hut. He had a fever and his mind wandered again. But Phoebe Larkin was always nearby; it gave him a grudging complacency.

By the middle of November the combined forces from Camp McDowell and Fort Whipple had confined Agustín and his raiders to the Mazatzals. Escorted by small detachments of troops, stages and wagons and even an occasional straggling train of hopeful settlers began to filter along the Prescott Road, although there was still danger of scattered raids. Sam Valentine and the newly elected Territorial representatives rode north to the capital in an armed band. Valentine was amazed at the growing activity along the river. Eating a slice of Mrs. Glore's peach pie, he strolled along the earthen dam, where the water now backed up to a depth of almost a foot.

"So you just decided to stay, eh?"

Drumm did not mention his fight with Lieutenant George Dunaway but he suspected that Valentine had heard of it. News traveled fast in this arid land.

"Yes," he said, "we Drumms are a stubborn lot."

Valentine ate the last of the pie and looked toward Mrs. Glore's new kitchen, built with odds and ends from a Phoenix-bound shipment of lumber by the sawmill in the new capital of Prescott.

"The ladies too, I see."

"Eh?"

"Those two indomitable ladies stayed also—the ones who refused to go back to Phoenix when the stage was attacked in Centinela Canyon."

"Yes," Drumm said, "they are stubborn too, I think. At any rate, they decided to stay over awhile and help me get things in shape here. I think, though, they will be leaving soon for Prescott. Miss Larkin has an uncle there, I understand."

Valentine's eyes narrowed. He stroked his beard. "I see two more pies cooling on the table over there. They are covered with cheesecloth against the flies, but I can smell pie a hundred yards off. Do you suppose Mrs. Glore would sell me one?"

"She baked a few extra," Drumm admitted. "They cost a dollar apiece."

"Done." The legislator finished the last of his coffee, and added, "I appreciate the coffee, too, but you ought to charge for it. If you're going to stay here, you can make yourself a mint of money with a good cook." He mounted his big bay and looked thoughtfully at Drumm. "You know, this Territory needs people like you —hard-working savvy folks that'll settle down and make the desert bloom. But Arizona needs people like George Dunaway too. George cusses a lot, never been curried below the knees, but he's actually a prince of a fellow when you get to know him. And if it wasn't for tough nuts like George Dunaway, the rest of us might just as well go home to Indianapolis or Nashville or Atlanta— wherever we came from."

Ike Coogan stopped off, too, driving a Tully and Ochoa freight wagon bound for Prescott with a load of melons, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and peaches. Sitting in the shade of the ramada with Jack Drumm, he sliced open a ripe melon with his jackknife. Handing a dripping half to Drumm, he noted his host's wincing as he reached for the succulent fruit. "Got you through the shoulder, eh?"

Drumm nodded. "It's not healing right. There's pus around the wound, and a suppuration."

Juice dripping from his whiskers, the old man shook his head, grinning. "
Rancho Terco
, that's what I'd call it.
Rancho Terco
!"

Drumm knew some Spanish. "
Rancho Terco
? Let's see—
terco
means—"

"It means stupid!" Ike cackled. "Idiot—blockhead! Hee hee! That's it, all right! Blockhead Ranch! No one but a blockhead would camp in the middle of an alkali desert and wait for old Agustín to swoop down and cut out his giblets!"

Drumm was annoyed. "I don't think it's so foolish! Anyway, Sam Valentine tells me Agustín probably won't bother us any more. And this is good soil along here—all it needs is water!" He pointed to the river bottom where the gentle Papago, whom they had named Charlie after an ancient London dustman, was hoeing newly sprouted shoots of corn. "With plenty of winter sun, and water, a man could get several crops a year along the Agua Fria!"
Not
, he thought,
as in Hampshire
. There it was already cold and dark, blustery and raining.

"You serious?" Coogan demanded.

"I am in dead earnest. I mean to stay here until I am ready to leave—and I do not know when that will be."

Coogan scratched his tobacco-stained beard. "By God, you sure cut a different figger from that silly-ass Englishman that first come here!" He stared at Drumm's ginger beard, the straw sombrero, the jagged scar on the cheek. "You're beginning to look like a real Arizony hardcase!" He got creakingly to his feet, leaning on the old rifle. "If you're actual intending to stay here for a while, I got a proposition for you from Tully and Ochoa in Phoenix."