Terror at Hellhole (3 page)

In 1873, the new community was named Yuma City, which is thought to be taken from the Spanish word
humo
, meaning ‘smoke,' because the Indians frequently created smoke clouds to induce rain. Completely surrounded by the natural barrier of the relentless Sonoran Desert, Yuma City became the logical place for a prison—badly needed in a territory teeming with brazenly lawless men. Several other physical and geographical features assisted in making this site ideal for the prison.

The rushing waters of the mighty Colorado and Gila rivers added further insurance against escape. The neighboring Quechan Indians who roamed this savage land with a careless leisure and the instinctive latitude of a wraith, were frequently utilized to return escapees fortunate enough to have eluded the dangers of the rivers, or the stem rigors of the unmerciful desert. The prison authorities welcomed the assistance of these skilled hunters by offering bounties of fifty dollars for an escapee.

This arrangement, however, was not always as harmonious as one might imagine. Many Quechans made it a point to kill the prisoners before dragging them in, for older Indians like Palma still remembered with bitterness the impact of the Anglos upon their land.

Emigrants passing through the valley never had time to complete a single growing season and therefore they helped themselves to the Quechans' mesquite beans and melons, while their cattle devoured the grain and maize crops. When the Indians fell upon the intruders stealing their food, soldiers were sent from the fort; the army refused to consider that the emigrants were at fault, that the crops were not theirs for the taking.

When the Quechans repeatedly attacked the settlers for their depredations, the troop commander decided to mount a full-scale campaign against them. Palma vividly recalled the time when the army under the command of Major Heintzelman, reinforced by two hundred and fifty soldiers from San Diego, raided the Indian villages in an attempt to drive the Quechan men from the river area. But the warriors had fought back valiantly swinging with their large war clubs and sharp knives, killing six soldiers before they had to retreat. Later, forty dragoons under Major Fitzgerald tormented a group of Quechans moving their families; they pressed the Indians, brutally trying to make the young and old travel faster. The Indians had turned on the troops, and in defiance of powder and ball, attacked with only their primitive weapons but were able to force the soldiers to retreat.

Palma armed with a sharp spear, had driven the spear point through two soldiers, and had wounded three others during the fight. Unable to defeat the Quechan warriors, the army had retreated. Later, they adopted the tactic of burning the Indians' mud and brush hovels and their grain-fields, forcing them to scatter in search of food and shelter.

To make matters worse, the Cocopas tribe then invited the weakened Quechans to visit them, and while there, the Cocopas hosts attacked their guests, killing a large number of men and women, and taking many others as captives.

Demoralized, the scattered Quechans were never again able to mount an effective fighting force and had to content themselves with small groups of warriors who made limited raids on the settlers, or even their enemies, the Cocopas. While these warrior groups were not large enough for concentrated battles they were able to strike their foes by stealth, then flee before the enemy could recover.

Tall and blocky, Palma fought in most of these battles. Never a leader, he was, however, a strong warrior for his hatred against the enemies of his people was great. Then one day he realized that the Quechans' fighting days were numbered, and when a young warrior named Ho-Nas Good began to court his daughter Avita, he stopped fighting entirely.

Quechan marriage ceremonies were simple in those days and when Ho-Nas constructed a mud and brush house nearby, Palma did not object for he had already looked favorably on the young man. Soon Avita had spent four nights in Ho-Nas's bed, during which time he did not touch her, and then, because he had no family for her to prepare a meal, which was normally required to complete a marriage ceremony, she brought him home.

A deep mutual respect developed between Palma and his young son-in-law, and together they would forage the desert for food while his wife and newly married daughter planted melon and pumpkin crops in a swale south of Gila Slough. Spring floods overflowing their land provided irrigation so that their crops flourished in the rich soil.

“My father,” Honas had said one day while they were out setting rabbit snares. “Last night I had a strong dream—a dream wherein we earned much money tracking down escaped prisoners for the superintendent of the walled prison on the hill, and for the sheriff in Yuma City.”

Palma stared at Honas hard, not liking what he had heard but knowing that dreams formed strong powers. “I would never work for the white people,” he snapped. “It would be unthinkable to work for our enemies.”

“Then would you work for me?” Honas had asked. “I could deal with them so that you would only need to assist me. Because I have been educated by the padres of San Sebastian, I understand the white man and his foolish ways. And because we are Quechans, we are superior to them in ability to seek and capture the escaping prisoners.”

Disturbed, Palma studied the hawk-eyed young man while he pondered the idea. What Honas said had much merit and he considered it. “But, if I do go with you, I will never seek another Indian even if he is a prisoner,” he had said. “And I will always try to kill the white escapees whenever I can.”

Doubt crossed his son-in-Iaw's face. “It is better, my father, if we do not kill them unless it is necessary to protect ourselves, for the white man foolishly still has regards for convicts even though they have committed evil deeds. It is the way of their religion.”

“Why is this so?” Palma asked, puzzled by what Honas had said.

The younger man shook his head. “This I do not know, but it is so. Our Gods are not like their God, therefore we do not have to spare our enemies. But if we do not kill the prisoners, our services will be in greater demand than for other trackers.”

“Does not Chato often kill the men he seeks?” Palma asked, clearing his throat gruffly. “I have heard it said so many times in Yuma City.”

“But he is an Apache with an inborn hate,” Honas had answered, knowing the direction Palma's thoughts would lead him.

“I, too, have a deep hatred,” the older man muttered angrily, sifting back through memories burned deep into his mind.

“You and our people have suffered much at the hands of the white man,” Honas told the older Indian. “More so than the Apache because we were never as well organized, nor were we so cruel as they. Moreover, Chato hates all men regardless of race. He respects only strength and power.”

Palma nodded sagely. His young son-in-law was indeed a man of wisdom, a man far more intelligent than other men of so few summers. “And what would we do with our wealth?” he asked. “The Quechan has never worshiped worldly goods.”

Honas looked pleased, sensing that his father-in-law was relenting. “We will have warm clothing for the winter, white men's clothing, and dresses for our women. We will be able to buy coffee and sugar, and bright cloth and needles with thread for our wives.”

Caught up in the desire to add to the list, Palma said: “I would like some tobacco and a good pipe.”

“That, too, my father. We will soon have good rifles and knives that French Frankie will get for us, and steel traps that the merchants sell.” Then Honas added firmly, “And one day I will buy Avita a real house in the city.”

Feeling already committed, Palma sighed. Tired of war, and continually fleeing from one place to another, he decided that he would do it. “Then so be it, my son. I will do as you ask.”

Honas placed a hand on Palma's shoulder. “May it always be so, my father.” And the older Indian nodded in agreement, for to obey a dream was strong medicine.

They moved their dwelling and together they built a larger house in a clump of trees at the site of a little-known water hole, away from the beaten path. Soon they began to prosper by working together.

Tracking for the warden of the prison, and at other times helping Sheriff Waringer at Yuma City, the two Quechans speedily earned a reputation for their ability to track down and bring back alive the prisoners they had been engaged to capture. Only if there was a gunfight, did the two men fail to return with live renegades. Soon they were called during all prison breaks because they could ferret out hiding places undetected by guards, and the Yuma City sheriff always selected them for his posses. Only Chato, the Apache, could match Honas's skill to follow a spore on the blazing desert, but because of his inherent cruelty, preference was usually given to the young Quechan if he was readily available.

Honas led the group of searchers through the underbrush thriving along the coffee-colored river. Occasionally reeds grew out into the water wherever the swift flow had been restricted by sandbars or accumulated debris and drift-wood.

Pausing, he pointed up the steep sandy bank and said, “Your man Ayala, this is where he left the river. He crept up into those bushes until he got past the outskirts of the settlement. Up there he can travel faster with less chance of being seen.”

Palma nodded and spoke in agreement, “The spoor is fresh. He has moved slowly, staying in the brush until he was past the river people living here.”

Guard Frank Allison scuffed the sand with a square-toed boot. He smiled grimly. “Guess you're right. None of the Mexicans or whites who live along the riverbanks claim to have seen anyone. It must have taken Ayala some tall hiding and sneaking around to get this far without being seen. That's bound to have slowed him so we must be pretty close.”

The river dwellers, with their mud and brush hovels, were human outcasts who survived along the banks downstream from Yuma, existing on fish, competing with the many gulls that flew up from the gulf of California, for the debris that floated down the Colorado. Wood, garbage, and anything floatable, discarded by their more affluent neighbors in Yuma, was how they made their living.

Palma nodded again. “We can travel faster now and he has less concealment to hide his tracks.”

Honas was the first man up the bank. Barren gullies fingered the baked earth sparsely covered with useless sagebrush struggling to grow. Inland, the far hills shrouded in a gray haze were barely perceptible against the blandness of the desert, a brown drabness created by centuries of sun and dust, and the eternal shimmering heat. There was nothing but sun-parched sand and cactus.

He raised a hand for silence, straining to hear the faint sound of the prison siren floating through the windless air. “Another escape,” he said, looking at Allison. “If we're lucky they may come down this way, maybe even run right into us. Otherwise, Chato and Ben Harplee will have to do without us unless you want to give up on Ayala.”

“No, by God.” Allison held up his hand in reproach, his eyes straight ahead. “We'll keep after Franco Ayala. I don't want the little bastard getting away. After we find him, we can help them if we get back in time.”

Honas exchanged glances with Palma, seeking his concurrence, then he agreed with a nod. “We'll find him soon.”

The two Quechan trackers moved forward rapidly, stepping up their pace now that their quarry was near at hand. Desperate, because he had left the cover of the river brush, the fleeing convict's tracks were more visible for the ground had turned to sand.

Fear lent speed to frightened feet, but within that very fear, panic was beginning to enervate the escapee in this harsh desert land. Not the soft sand of an ocean beach, but rather an unyielding reflector of the scorching heat stifling his lungs. The specter of death hooded this inhospitable terrain that supported only scrub growth and deadly creatures; snakes and scorpions, lizards and spiders were rampant among the greasewood bushes, and always the irritating swarms of insects hovered over him.

Water was difficult to locate in this desolate region where a feeling of loneliness and frustration would gradually unbalance a man's mind. Fearful of towns, yet even more fearful of the desert with its mirages and afflictions, an escapee could, and often did, become a babbling, deranged thing beyond any sense of direction. High in the distant sky, three buzzards began to float serenely, occasionally circling as they were wont to do in their age-old waiting game as harbingers of death.

It was near the evening of the third day that the pursuers came upon Franco Ayala lying in a ragged heap, a slobbering, beaten hulk of what once had been a feisty man, a man who in his incoherent bewilderment had been drifting in great circles, staggering short of his goal of reaching the Mexican border.

Allison gave him water and some food in a slow feeding process. Then he placed handcuffs on him before allowing him a few hours rest. The four men moved their prisoner in a direct route back to the prison, arriving there in time for breakfast on the morning of the sixth day.

And it was a day long to be remembered for its anger and sadness.

“I'm sorry, Honas,” Superintendent Joshua Tarbow said. “Because you and Palma were gone so long, I thought it best to have your wife and her mother buried at once.” He stopped his pacing to look at the two trackers before clearing his throat. “I thought it best because the women had been—er, assaulted, then badly disfigured.”

“Assaulted, disfigured?” Honas exchanged glances with stern-faced Palma, waiting for the warden to continue his explanation of the five escapees' sordid rampage at the Quechan's cabin,

“Raped,” he said nervously. “And both women had been cut many times with a knife.” Tarbow looked pained, forcing himself to go on. “Your wife...they were both slashed beyond recognition, according to Chato.”

“Who were the men who did this terrible thing?” Honas asked, his ashen face still impassive.