High Lonesome Part 6

Considine rode quickly around. The Indians were gone ... all their dead and wounded carried off, as usual.

"He made a fight of it," Hardy said. "I'd never have believed he had it in him. He must have killed three, by the look of things. Wounded a couple."

Although they saw Chavez' body lying there, they could not take time to bury him, but Chavez would have been the first to understand that. Let the posse do it.

They rode out swiftly. There was nothing to keep them now. Westward at first, then south into the desert and toward the border.

They went down the trail at a canter, all of them seeing the tracks of the Indian ponies in the dirt, superimposed upon the tracks of Lennie and her father. The Apaches would have seen those tracks, and they would know one of the riders was a woman ... a good tracker would know which horse she rode.

By this time Dave Spanyer would know what was behind him and the man was no tenderfoot. He had been up the mountain and over the hill, and he knew a lot about trouble and the packages in which it presented itself. And from what Dutch said the old man had told him, Lennie could handle her rifle better than most men.

It was very hot. The air was still. They rode at a good pace, conserving the strength of their horses, yet keeping up a steady, distance-eating gait.

The original plan was still good: to strike into the very heart of the desert, keeping to the tinajas and seeps, the water holes least frequented by the Indians and incapable of supplying more than four or five men at a time.

The sky was a vast emptiness. Considine gave no thought to the money in the sacks they carried. He was thinking of the girl on the trail, and her father ... and somewhere between them, the Apaches.

a Hours earlier, Dave Spanyer had come to his moment of bleak decision.

Before that, he had done a lot of soul-searching. Irritably, he ran over in his mind the events of the night before. After all, when a girl got to Lennie's age she had to be trusted. What if something happened to him? She would be on her own, anyway, and the only way she would learn about men was by meeting them ... besides, every bit of trail-side rumor he had heard said that Considine was a gentleman.

"I ain't much of a father," he said suddenly. "Never had much truck with women folks. Never rightly understood them. Your Ma was different. She knew how to handle me, but I just do the wrong things, Lennie. You got to make allowances."

She said nothing, so he searched for words as they rode through the hot, still afternoon. "Had your Ma lived we'd have made out, and she'd want you to marry a good man and have a home, and that's what I want for you."

It was only a few hours ago that the rain had ceased, yet there was small indication of it except for some cracked mud in the bottom of a hollow here and there. But his instinct told him that water would be the least of their troubles before this ride was over. He wiped his rifle free of dust, then bit off a chew of tobacco.

He scanned the desert and the mountains. A man never knew there were Apaches around until they started to shootunot unless he kept his eyes open.

But his thoughts kept reverting to Lennie. He wanted to reach her, to make her understand. He groped for words, yet every trail his thoughts tried to follow led into an unfamiliar jungle of ideas where he was not at home.

Finally he said, "There's more to loving a man than kissing and such."

"I know there is, Pa."

Relieved at her response, he went on, "Next shade, we'll pull up for a bit."

They must keep their horses fresh, for there was no telling when they might have to run for it.

Suddenly, in front of them, they saw the tracks that came out of the desert to the southeast and cut across their trail. Six unshod ponies, the tracks not an hour old...

Spanyer studied their trail, looked off in the direction toward which they were riding, but saw nothing. "Might have seen us," he said. "We'd better take care."

"Pa?"

"Huh?"

"About them ... Considine and the others. Do you think they made it?"

"No tellin'."

"Will they come this way?"

"They'll light out fast for Mexico. From what I hear tell, that Considine knows the desert like an Apache or a Pima."

"I liked him."

"You just forget him. You'll likely never see him again, but if he comes gallivantin' around you, I'll kill him."

Spanyer turned in the saddle to look behind him, but the desert was empty ... he saw no dust. Yet worry lay heavy upon him, and he could not ride easy. He kept twisting and turning, and he knew the symptomsuhe only felt like this when he had the feeling of being watched.

He could see nothing, but he knew they were in trouble now, and he did not need to see it. Those tracks were too fresh ... trust an Indian to see them. So what to do?

Dave Spanyer had no illusions about the situation. Once you had Apaches on your trail you were in trouble ... all kinds of trouble. They would attack ... they would probably try an ambush, to kill him. Yet they might not.

Suppose Considine and his bunch had gotten away? They would be coming this way, and if he waited ... But he decided against it. The chance of their escaping scot-free was too slight for him to rest any hopes on it. The best thing was to keep going ... and it might be he could find a place where he could make a stand.

"Pa ... how did you meet my mother?"

Preoccupied as he was with Apaches, the question startled him.

"Oh ... she came west with her husband, and he took a fever and died. Being around, I sort of stopped by, time to time, to see if she was making out.

"Your Ma was a real lady ... educated ... she made me promise to see that you got some schooling.

"I never did figure out what she saw in me. Them days I was younger, and maybe not so mean, but anyway I respected her more than anybody I ever knew. We had a good life, a good life."

His eyes had not ceased to move as he talked, nor had he missed anything. Now he said, very quietly, "Lennie, you slip that Winchester out of its scabbard. Easy now ... and be ready for trouble."

"Are they Indians, Pa?"

Her horse was a half-broken mustang, and the rattler was almost under its feet. At the sound of the rattle, the mustang leaped into the air and came down running.

The horse lunged into the rocks, then broke loose on a dead run. Bounding a huge boulder, it hit the top of the rockslide running, and had no chance. The rock started to move under its hoofs, and the horse struggled madly to keep its feet, then fell and rolled over amid a cascade of rocks.

Cursing wildly, Spanyer plunged his own horse in pursuit, even as he heard the crash of the falling rock and his daughter's scream.

Swinging around the rocks, he drew up and slid to the ground, yet even now he took a quick glance arounduthis was no time to be off the trail. He half ran, half slid down the rocks to Lennie's side.

She was already getting up. She was shaken, and undoubtedly bruised and skinned, but there seemed to be no broken bones. And she had clung to her rifle. He went past her to the horse.

Even before he reached it he could see that its leg was broken. There was no hope for ituthe leg was badly shattered, and for all he knew it had a snake bite too. He stripped off the pack behind the cantle of the saddle, then, not wis.h.i.+ng to risk a shot, he stooped quickly and with his Bowie knife cut the horse's throat.

Lennie started toward him and he stopped her. "Gone," he said brusquely, to cover his fear. "Leg broken. I had to kill him."

"Oh, Pa!" Tears started in her eyes. "He was such a fine horse!"

"Are you crazy? That was a rattle-brained, hammer-headed broom-tail, and never an ounce of good to anybody." He paused. "Nevertheless, we're going to miss him."

One horse between them now, and hundreds of miles to go, most of it desert.

"We'll make out with one horse," he said when they got to the top of the slide. "You mount up."

She squinted into the s.h.i.+mmering heat. She knew what was troubling her father, but there was nothing she could do. Without her, he might have had a chance.

Oddly enough, although the Apaches worried him, he thought of them as a present and certain danger which he understood; what disturbed him more was the fact that Lennie needed him so badly, or needed somebody, and he did not know what to do.

Walking ahead of the horse, he plodded steadily into the hot, dead air of the afternoon desert.

Chapter VIII.

Dave Spanyer had never known a time when he did not possess a gun, and use it when needed. The frontier where he grew up made guns a necessity, for despite what some easterners thought about the Indians, the Indian was first and last a warrior.

His standards of behavior had nothing to do with the standards of the white men who opposed him, nor was he properly understood except by a very few peopleuand all of them were men who had lived with and around Indians.

Failure to understand Indian standards and ideas had done as much harm as had well-meaning but uninformed people, do-gooders and such, and the political appointees who were the Indian agents.

One of the basic mistakes in dealing with people of another cultural background is to attribute to them the ideas one has oneself. For instance, the white man's standards of what const.i.tutes mercy are strictly his own, and the American Indian had no such ideas. Battle was his joy. Battle and horse-stealing, combined with hunting, were his only means to honor and wealth, and a good horse thief was honored and respected more than a good hunter. An Indian would go miles upon miles to steal horses or get into a good fight.

Dave Spanyer had never known a time when he was not in the vicinity of Indians, usually hostile ones. He understood them, often hunted with them, fought them when necessary. He knew that for an Apache the word cruelty had no meaning. Torture was amusing to him, and he felt no sympathy for a captured enemy. The Apache respected courage, fort.i.tude, and strength, for these were qualities by which he himself survived. He also respected cunning.

On the whole, Dave Spanyer had more respect for most Indians than for many of the white men he had known. He fought them, and they fought him, but each respected the other.

The Indians understood and fought each other, and their customs and occupations were much the same until the white man entered the scene with superior weapons, a different set of standards, and a persistence scarcely understood by the Indian, who fought his battles for sport, for honor, and for loot, but rarely for territory to be seized and held.

Choosing the ground for a fight was not easy to do when the Apache was the enemy, for he knew every inch of his desert land, and was a master in the use of terrain from a tactical sense. Dave Spanyer, however, knew this country south of the Gila and the Salt River Valley almost as well as did any Apache.

He had no doubt they had followed every step of his progress for some time, and by now they had decided where the fight was to take place. By this time they undoubtedly knew something of him, too, for a man on a trail in Indian country soon reveals himself to a skilled observer. He reveals himself in the way he travels, in his approach to possible ambuscades, in his use of terrain for ease of travel and for concealment, in his observation of tracks and the country around.

Dave Spanyer wanted to get into a position where an attack must come ... where he could get in the first shot, carefully aimed. It was easier to kill that first man ... when the firing became more general, men became careful.

Night was not far off. If they could find an easily defended position they might hold off the Apaches until darkness, and escape during the night.

Packsaddle Mountain lay to the south, and the cave at Castle Dome was beyond reach. Then he thought of the canyon on High Lonesome. There was a lot of rocky surface there, and it was a place where they might lose their pursuers.

This was farther west than the Apache usually came, for the Papogoes and Pimas to the south and east were his deadly enemies, and there were Yumas to the south and Mohaves to the north.

Spanyer glanced at the sun. Two hours, at least, until sundown.

"We'll go to High Lonesome," he said aloud.

"Pa?"

"Huh?"

"That Considine... is he a bad man?"

Dave Spanyer studied the question with care. His first impulse was to tell her that he was, and then, thinking of the Apaches, he decided that whatever she might have to dream on would be a help. Besides, as men go, Considine was better than most.

Spanyer knew that no man could be judged except against the background of his time. The customs and moral standards of a time were applicable only to that time, and Considine was a man who left big tracks. He was an outlaw, but so far as Spanyer knew he had been honorable, except in looting stages and, rarely, banks or trains.

"No," he said at last, "I reckon he's not. He's an outlaw, but he's got the makin's of a mighty good man."

And then, strangely, Lennie touched his arm with her fingers, and for a time she walked beside him for a little way, holding his arm. And Spanyer, who had known little of tenderness, and who had found only mystery in the sudden growing up of his daughter, was deeply moved.

Around them the desert changed. The dead-white and faint buff of the sands became deeper in tone, the rocks were darker, and here and there ancient fingers of lava pushed down from the mountains, thrusting their probing fingers into the sand.

Joshua trees lifted their contorted arms toward the empty skies as though caught and petrified in some agonized writhing. On their right was an inclined shelf of almost smooth rock, half a mile long and reaching upwards, unbroken for several hundred feetua great upthrust, honed and smoothed by wind and rain and sand.

He was reaching back into his memory now. Before High Lonesome Canyon there was a box canyon. That could be the trap ... it was an ideal place for an attack, a place to be skirted widely.

Spanyer turned abruptly at right angles away from the mountains, and out into the tumbled forest of boulders. When well among the boulders he turned westward again.

"A man like Considine," Spanyer said suddenly, "is apt to be heedless of discipline, and every man needs discipline. If it isn't given to him, he had better discipline himself. Somewhere Considine took a wrong turn, and it is up to him to take a right one. But he has to do it himself."

"You did."

"Without your Ma ... well, without her maybe I'd never have done it."

"Considine could do it." She spoke with confidence.

"A man needs a push sometimes. He needs something outside of himself."

"Pa ... the gray's limping."

Dave Spanyer felt the cold hand of death touch him. He turned, almost afraid to look, and led the horse forward, watching it. The gray was limping, all right.

He stopped briefly in the shade of a boulder and examined the hoof. The shoe was broken, and half of it had fallen away. He pried the other half loose, and then with his knife he pared the hoof flat.

They moved on, dipping into a forest of Joshua trees. The sun was very hot, glaring into their faces, bathing them in impossible heat. Nothing moved. Not a dust devil ... not a wisp of gra.s.s ... nothing.

Then suddenly a rabbit plunged into the trail, saw them, and veered sharply off.

Instantly, Spanyer drew his gun and moved back into the rocks. He pressed Lennie down, drew the horse, into shelter. He listened into the stillness and it gave back no sound. Bolstering his pistol, he s.h.i.+fted his rifle to his right hand from the saddle scabbard.

"Something up there," he said. "A rabbit don't jump like that in this heat unless he's scared."

He squatted on his heels, his Winchester ready. He eased back the hammer, almost to full c.o.c.k, then, grinding his heel into the sand to stifle the sound, to full c.o.c.k.

He started to turn his head when he heard the sc.r.a.pe of moccasins on rock. He turned swiftly on the ball of his right foot, slamming his back against the rocks just as the Indian sprang.

The Winchester leaped in Spanyer's hand, and the Apache's throat vanished in a red smear as the bullet tore through, ripping the neck wide. The sound of the shot slapped against the rock walls, then echoed away and lost itself among the distant sands.