Tom Horn And The Apache Kid (14 page)

The revealing dawn found the camp much as Horn had left it months ago, with both wickiups nestled against a sleeve of the
Rincons near the stream that crept from the high country, drifted lazily past the flat of the camp, then meandered more quickly
with the slanting terrain toward the valley below.

Old Pedro still lived in the smaller wickiup, and Suwan shared the larger with her son—Tom Horn’s son. Before Horn left she
had asked if he had a name he wanted their boy to be called. Tom had said no, so she chose Taw-Nee-Mara, “Spirit of the Wind.”
Tom Horn had agreed that it was a good name.

Pedro tickled Taw-Nee-Mara with a feather, and the baby gurgled and laughed. Suwan smiled as she fixed breakfast in the large
wickiup. Pedro lifted the baby in his bony hands, and it gripped his thumbs and held on, swinging like a little monkey. Taw-Nee-Mara
was long for his age and lithe, with his father’s silver-blue eyes. His skin was coppery colored, much like his mother’s,
but with a little brass mixed in.

Suwan rose, picked up a bucket, and went outside. She walked as she did every morning toward
the stream and listened to the sounds of early daylight. She knelt and swept her fingers through the cool green waters, then
dipped both hands into the rivulet and splashed the liquid onto her face.

She wore a buckskin dress now and moccasins, but she remembered the times when she and Horn had swum naked in the cold autumn
mornings and sometimes at night, when they would run without drying into the warm seclusion of the wickiup and lie together
until they were dry.

Suwan had been with Apache braves before she became Horn’s squaw. Apache braves took pride in the sexual powers of their manhood.
Sex to an Apache was something to be taken—not given, or even shared. It was a thing to gratify the man. With the two Apache
bucks, Suwan gave. But Horn showed her another side of sex. With him she didn’t feel that she was being taken from—and she
gave more in return.

Always she knew that he would leave. When they had been together she tried not to think of the time he would be gone. And
when he left she tried not to wonder whether he would return. But she knew that if he did not come back by the first frost
he would never be back, and she and Pedro and Taw-Nee-Mara would go to the reservation and live with the other Apaches.

She was thinking once more of Tom Horn as the strong, rude hand clapped over her mouth. She dropped the bucket. It hit a rock.
Another hand grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm behind her. Suwan turned and looked into a face that she had never seen
before—the face of the Apache Kid.

As the Kid pushed her forward, he heard a
sound from the wickiup. He dropped his hand from her mouth, hooked and drew the Colt from its holster, and fired at the figure
in the entrance of the wickiup.

Still holding the baby, Pedro saw the flash of the Colt, heard the blast, and felt the bullet tear through Taw-Nee-Mara and
into his own chest.

As he fell into a deep black pit of unconsciousness, the last thing he heard was Suwan’s scream.

Tom Horn was toting a hundred-pound sack of beans toward the wagon hitched in front of the store, when he saw the gaunt, blood-smeared
old Indian, more dead than alive, straddling the pinto as it plodded into Fort Bowie.

A burlap sack was tied to the pummel of the saddle.

Tom Horn dropped the beans and ran toward old Pedro.

The compound was full of people watching, as Pedro slipped from the horse into Horn’s arms.

Shana came from the store and stood next to Al Sieber, who was leaning on his crutches.

“Al, who is it?” she asked Sieber.

“It’s one of Tom’s…relatives,” Sieber replied.

Horn gently lowered the Indian onto the ground and leaned close as Pedro
whispered. He lived long enough to tell Horn what had happened. When there was nothing more to say or to live for, Pedro closed
his eyes and died.

Tom Horn untied the burlap sack containing the body of his dead son from the saddle and carried it in both hands. He walked
past Shana and Sieber without speaking.

At midnight Tom Horn still sat on the straight-back chair in his room, looking at the naked body of the baby he had placed
on his bed. There was a soft knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Tom,” Shana’s voice answered.

“Go away.”

“Tom, let me come in, please.”

“The door’s not locked.”

Shana entered. In her arms she carried infant’s clothing and a small, soft white blanket. She stood silent in the darkness
for a moment and looked at the broken, doll-like body on the bed.

“Al told me about you and Suwan and…the baby.”

“I guess I should’ve told you, but I didn’t. You had a right to know, and I’m sorry, if that’s what you came to hear.”

“That’s not why I came. I brought some things— and a blanket.”

“I’ll bury him as he is—naked and bloody. That’s the way I deserve to remember him.”

“But what about
him,
Tom?”

“It doesn’t make any difference to him.”

“Please let me bathe him and—”

“Just leave the things here if you want. I’ll take care of him.”

“All right, Tom. Do you mind if Al and I come along with you tomorrow?”

“Do what you will.”

Shana placed the clothes and the blanket on the foot of the bed and left without another word.

The hot summer wind quivered up from the south and blew a fine dust spray into Tom Horn’s eyes as he put the last rock in place
on the mound blanketing the grave of Taw-Nee-Mara.

Horn rose from his knees and walked away from the solitary sepulcher. He had not buried his son in a cemetery, but in the
desert at the base of a cliff that rose like a cathedral, where the wind sang as it was singing now—a requiem for the innocent.

Horn reached the buggy where Shana and Sieber sat waiting. Pilgrim stood nearby.

“I’m sorry, Tom,” Shana said, “truly sorry.”

Horn wiped the wind-blown dirt from his eyes.

“His name was Spirit of the Wind,” said Horn, “and that’s where he is now.”
Horn mounted. “Well, Al, you’re going to get what you wanted. I’m going after him. And I’m going to kill him.”

“This isn’t the way I wanted it.”

“I know that—and if I had gone sooner it wouldn’t have happened this way.”

“Tom,” Shana implored, “let the troopers go with you.”

Horn wheeled his horse around and without looking back—rode.

Shana placed her hand on Al Sieber’s battered fist.

“He’ll come back,” said Sieber.

“Even if he does,” Shana said softly, “he’ll never be the same.”

The Apache Kid had been without a squaw for almost a month when he took Suwan from the camp and left Pedro and the baby for
dead. Suwan had started to run toward her fallen grandfather and Taw-Nee-Mara, but the Kid had grasped her wrist, twisted
her to him, and hit her across the head with the barrel of his gun.

She became aware of the ground moving under her and realized she had been bound hand and foot by thong and slung belly-down
over the saddle of the Kid’s Appaloosa. The Kid straddled the back of the animal just behind the saddle. Suwan, her head throbbing
from the blow of the gun barrel, did her best to pretend she was still unconscious, but the Kid knew the moment her eyes opened,
even though he didn’t see them.

He chose a ridge along the river, with broken boulders, cottonwoods, and soft, damp grass. The Apache Kid dismounted under
the shade of a tree, then roughly pulled Suwan from the saddle onto the ground. The Kid dug his moccasins under her midsection
and rolled her over on her back. She knew there was no use pretending she was unconscious. Suwan opened her eyes and saw the
Apache Kid holding a knife and kneeling toward her. He cut her legs free of the thongs, then her wrists.

Without speaking, his face told her what would
come next and how it would be. She knew if she resisted it would be worse.

She didn’t resist.

Tom Horn knew that the place to begin would be the most painful, but he went back to the camp where he and Suwan had lived.

He set aside the pain. He would have to set aside all emotion that might dull or drain his searcher’s senses and instincts.

He was a hunter now; a hunter tracking a wild animal that he would kill—or it would kill him.

Horn dismounted and read much of what had happened. The bucket near the stream where Suwan had knelt. The signs of struggle.
The shooting. The hoofprints of the shod Appaloosa, heavier now with an added burden. The tracks, leading into the stream
and being swallowed by the running water.

Horn nudged Pilgrim into the stream and followed its course. There were a hundred places to emerge without leaving tracks.
It was impossible for Horn, patient as he was, to determine which of these the Kid had chosen. Horn would have to leave the
stream and begin the circle—ever widening until he read some sign of the Kid and Suwan.

But there were no signs.

General Miles had ordered Crane and the others to continue the patrols in search of the Apache Kid. Maybe Horn would find the
renegade and maybe he wouldn’t but it would be better for Miles’s record if the United States Army under his command found
the renegade first.

The face of the jackrabbit blended into the brush. Only the eyes moved—almost imperceptibly. Then the head turned, reacting
to something, and the rabbit sprinted away.

The bullet kicked up a wad of dirt just in front of the jack, and the frenzied little animal changed directions. The second
bullet hit its mark, smacking the rabbit off its feet. The jack twisted into the air and landed dead on the sage.

The Apache Kid, on horse back, lowered the rifle; then his foot nudged Suwan, who stood nearby. The Kid’s head motioned toward
the rabbit about forty feet away. Suwan seemed in a trance but turned and walked toward the dead animal.

As she came to the thicket where the rabbit lay, the Kid followed on horse back some distance behind. Suwan stooped to retrieve
the rabbit but was arrested by the sight of a rattler, coiled and ready to strike. At first her eyes were hypnotized by the
spiraled creature, but then they flicked back toward the Kid, who was reloading the Winchester.

Suwan snapped out of her trance and snatched up the now-rattling serpent. It struck and missed as the squaw hurled the snake
like a deadly bola toward the Kid. But the Kid saw and heard and fired sending a bullet into the rattler, decapitating it in
midflight.

Suwan stared at the Kid in silence and waited.

The Kid shoved the Winchester into its boot, then urged the Appaloosa toward
Suwan, looking as if he might kill her. Instead, he leaned low and picked up the dead jack by its ears, then nudged the woman
with his foot, pointing north.

Suwan began to walk, followed by the Kid on horseback.

The Apache Kid hunkered near the small smokeless campfire, roasting the jack. Suwan sat, leaning against a tree that sheltered
the fire. She stared into the elfish flames. All day through the relentless summer sun she had been walking, past the point of
exhaustion.

The Kid tore a strip of flesh from the rabbit and ate. He nodded permission for her to eat. Suwan neither moved nor reacted.
He finished chewing, then tore another ribbon of rabbit and move nearer, holding the meat close to her face. She turned away.

His left hand grasped her face like a claw squeezing her jaw open, and he thrust the food into her mouth. She spat the meat
back at him, and his fist slammed in the side of her face. She fell unconscious, almost into the fire.

The Kid pulled her by the hair away from the flames, then cut another slice from the roasting rabbit and ate.

Miles away, Tom Horn had made dry camp. He unsaddled Pilgrim, rubbed down the animal, fed him some grain and water, ate a
meager meal, and laid his head on the blanket roll. He looked up at the stars piercing the deep blue sky and winking a million
miles away.

Horn closed his eyes. He thought of the farm in Missouri, of the times on the trail with Sieber, of Geronimo in faraway Florida,
of Shana and the bed they had shared but once, of the grave that forever
imprisoned Taw-Nee-Mara, and of the Apache Kid with Taw-Nee-Mara’s mother.

It was the heart of the night’s darkness. The camp-fire was silent and cold, only ashes, mixed with the bones of the rabbit.
The Apache Kid slept with rifle under him and gun in hand. Suwan lay near him, her anguished eyes open in her swollen face,
but unmoving. Then slowly, slowly, she looked toward him and away again.

After he struck her unconscious he had taken the dress off her and placed it with the rifle under him where he slept. Naked
except for her moccasined feet, Suwan moved first one leg, then the other. Silent as a blush, she managed to rise, then froze
until she was sure the Kid still slept. With slow, unheard steps, she crept past the pool of cold gray ashes, then disappeared
around a rock and breathed for the first time but still without sound.

Suwan made her way into a dark miniature ravine, then moved faster as she breathed an audible breath and ran into the hollow
black night. Faster around another turn, across a gully, faster over the crooked trunk of a fallen dead tree, faster around
a bell-shaped boulder—and directly into the waiting form of the Apache Kid.

Suwan screamed, but the Kid clutched her throat and forced the scream into silence and Suwan onto her knees. Just when it
seemed he would choke the life out of her body, he relaxed his hand, and she fell, a limp, dim outline on the ground. The
Kid reached under her armpit and forced her to her feet. He pushed her roughly in the direction of the
camp. Somehow, half stumbling, half crawling, she made it like a spent dog back to the camp, where she lay on her naked belly
and bruised face. But the long night’s ordeal was only beginning.

The Apache Kid reached down and turned her on her back.

Shana Ryan stood behind the counter sipping a cup of after-breakfast coffee as Sergeant Cahill, Trooper Dawson, and two other
troopers, MacLeod and Keller, entered the store.

“Payday this morning, Miss Ryan,” Cahill announced. “We’d like to settle our accounts for the month, ma’am.”

“All right,” said Shana, riffling through a stack of slips near the cash register as the men produced money. “Cahill, nine
sixty-five.”

“Here’s ten even, ma’am. Hold on to the change,” Cahill grinned. “I want to keep my credit good.”

“Your credit’s always good, Sergeant,” Shana smiled. “Dawson—eight fifty. MacLeod—ten seventy-five. Keller—eight ninety.”

The troopers all put money down. Each followed Cahill’s example and made Shana keep the change to the next dollar.

“Any word from ol’ Tom?” Cahill inquired as Shana tore up the monthly credit slips.

“No, nothing. Will you men want anything else this morning?”

“No, ma’am,” said Dawson. “Just thought we’d better square up before we charged the
cantina
.”

“I’ll take a plug of tobacco,” said Cahill. “Pay cash money.”

As Shana carried out the transaction, Captain Crane came in through the open door. The troopers tossed him a perfunctory salute
and walked onto the porch, but heard the beginning of the conversation that followed.

“Good morning, Captain.” Then Shana asked immediately, “Did the patrol find any…?”

“No, no sign of either one of them in almost two weeks,” said Crane. “Not a campfire, not a track, not a scratch or a scent.
It’s as if they’ve both evaporated.”

Outside, the troopers lingered on the porch. They knew the
cantina
wouldn’t open for another quarter of an hour.

“I’ll bet ol’ Horn brings back the Kid’s scalp in his saddlebag,” said Cahill, biting into the tobacco plug.

“Not likely,” Keller replied. “The Kid ain’t human.”

“Neither’s Horn,” Cahill observed. “He’ll get the Kid if he has to track him from soda to hock, follow him from this world
right into the next.”

“If he does find him, I don’t reason Horn’d kill him,” MacLeod ventured. “Hell, them two shared the same canteen too long.”

“Yeah, well now,” Keller grinned, “the Kid’s sharing Horn’s squaw. I’ll bet Horn blows his eyeballs out, both of ’em.”

Shana had come close to the open door and heard what the troopers were saying.

“Besides, there’s the reward,” Cahill retorted. “I
got a double eagle that says Horn hangs him up to dry.”

“I’ll take that bet,” MacLeod said.

“I’ll put ten on Horn,” Dawson added.

“You’re covered!” Keller exclaimed, and as he did a crutch smashed across his back and head, propelling the would-be gambler
off the porch, into the hitching post, and onto the ground.

Sieber stood on his remaining crutch, his face a thundercloud. Captain Crane moved past Shana and through the doorway.

“I think you men better pick up your friend,” Crane suggested, “and go do a little drinking.”

The suggestion was greeted by a chorus of “Yessir’s” as the troopers lifted up Keller and dragged him in the direction of
the
cantina
.

“Good morning, Al,” Crane greeted the old scout, then walked off across the compound.

Al Sieber hobbled into the store, using the surviving crutch and what ever other support was available along the way, until
he reached a half barrel and sat. Shana refrained from trying to assist him.

“I don’t blame you,” she said, carrying in the remnants of the broken crutch. “Betting as if it were some game. It’s uncivilized.”

“It’s nature’s game,” Sieber said slowly. “And no, it ain’t civilized. Never has been.”

“What do you mean?” Shana leaned back on the counter.

“I mean it’s nature’s bible. Since the beginning there’s been the hunter and the hunted. But nature provides a difference
between the two. Trouble is—there ain’t no difference between those two.”

“Of course there is.”

Now she leaned forward. “Not the way I mean,” said Sieber. “In nature’s contest the hunted is usually small, fast, and hard
to spot. The hunter’s strong and equipped with tooth and claw. But those two got the same equipment.”

“Oh, Al,” she sighed, “if he hadn’t gone alone, maybe...”

“No.” Sieber shook his head. “That’s the way to do it. The Kid can spot a flea in a herd of buffalo. Alone’s the way. I’ve
gone over it a thousand times. The way I’d do it if I was either one, the hunter or the hunted.”

The old scout had silently played out the pursuit over and over to himself. Now for the first time he gave expression to his
thoughts. “The hunted’s got things in his favor: space, places to hide, room to get lost—every coulee, every draw, every rise,
every depression, every turn, tree, and rock gives him cover. And if the hunter misses him once, he might never find him again.

“But even the hunted has to eat. Food is where you find it, and the Kid knows where—and how. Quail, rabbit, field mice, maybe
a prairie dog in the desert.

“And in the mountain flanks, acorns—and there’s Spanish bayonet. The Kid might roast some mescal—tastes good, but you can smell
it down-wind. If the going gets really tough, there’s the gum of the mesquite or the inner bark of pine. So the Kid could
eat, all right. And so could Tom. He knows every trick of the Apache.

“A hunter like Tom Horn who’s a patient man has time on his side. And Horn knows how to see without being seen. He can read
every track on the
trail, mark on the grass, scratch on the bark of a tree, and he can tell nearly to the hour how long ago it was made…and
by what.

“Did the animal Tom spotted on the trail see what Tom’s looking for? Well, there’s no way of telling that. But sooner or later
even an animal smart as the Kid has to leave something behind. And sooner or later Horn’ll find it—the link that says, ‘What
you’re looking for passed this way.’

“If the Kid’s still got the squaw with him, it’ll be that much easier for Tom.

“So chances are, Horn’ll find the Kid. But finding him’s one thing. Up to now the Kid doesn’t know Horn is dogging him. When
he finds out, there’s no way of telling the outcome. They both got the same equipment…and every living thing wants to go
on living. That’s the first commandment of nature’s bible.”