Hondo. Part 3

Slowly the muzzle of his gun lowered and he blinked in the light.

"Only last year you killed three men in a gun fight. We heard about it. Three men!"

"Yes, ma'am."

He smiled and stepped toward her, reaching for the gun, and in a panic of some sudden emotion, she knew not what, her finger shut down on the trigger. The hammer fell with an empty click and he stood with the muzzle of the gun against his chest, looking down at her.

Frightened by what she had done, she stood helpless while he gently took the gun from her hand. "Shouldn't point a gun at anybody when there's an empty chamber under the firing pin. It can be seen mighty plain. Specially with the light behind it."

He armed the Colt, then dropped it in the empty holster.

"I keep it that way because of Johnny."

"Keep it out of reach, and with a load in the chamber."

He ran his fingers through his hair. "Empty gun's no use to anybody, ma'am. If you need that, you'll need it fast."

"I might have shot you."

"Yes, ma'am." He turned toward his pallet. "Guess I sort of scared you. Usual noises don't bother me. It's those unusual ones that wake a man. Sorry, ma'am."

He sat down on the pallet and once more he rolled over and drew up the blanket. He was once more asleep. He still held the gun.

Lane ... Somehow the thought of his being Hondo Lane had not entered her mind. She should have realized who he was, for she had heard he had become a dispatch rider and scout for General Crook.

Crook valued such men, and made every effort to recruit them. She had seen the General when he first arrived on the Arizona station. He had not been in uniform. In fact, he rarely was, and he was traveling without fuss or ceremony. She had heard it said that no man alive knew more about pack trains than General Crook, and he got on well with the Apaches.

She stretched out in her bed, tired but wakeful. She had almost shot Hondo Lane. She had not intended to. So why had it happened? What had she been afraid of? She felt her face grow warm in the darkness and she turned her back on the room, trying to forget his even breathing. Yet she could not forget. And it was a friendly, comforting sound. For the first time in months she slept without fear, without worry.

Outside the wind moaned around the eaves and the cottonwood leaves rustled with their dry, companionable whispering.

She awakened once during the night and lay awake for several minutes. She had been worried about fuel, and now she need no longer worry. And the horses were shod. He had accomplished so much in so little time, and cutting through the big log ... It would have taken her days.

If she had to leave, the payment for the horse would help. But she could not think of leaving. This was her home, and here she could eke out a living whether Ed returned or not. She could shoot, and she had been able to kill an occasional rabbit or antelope. Johnny was getting older and in a few more years he could take over the hunting and she would at least have the land to leave him. And she could trade with the Indians.

Shortly before daylight Hondo awakened quickly. He sat up, listening, placing the sounds of the predawn hour. Then he got to his feet and slung on nis gun belt, dropping the Colt into its holster.

From the window he scanned the ranch yard. There was a faint gray-yellow light in the east. The yard was empty and still. The horses were standing relaxed and lazy. Returning to his pallet, he folded the blankets, then the buffalo robe and placed them in a neat pile upon a chair.

With a glance at the curtained alcove he picked up his hat and boots and eased open the door, stepping out into the brisk chill of morning. Lowering himself to the step, he put on his hat, then his boots.

The horses came to meet him and he forked hay for them. The lineback let his hand touch it before it s.h.i.+ed away, and then he went to the creek.

Th water gurgled darkly over the stones with little places of bubbling water where it ran around a branch of other obstruction. He removed his hat and, squatting, bathed his face in the cold water. The creek water was miraculously soft and very cold. He bathed his eyes, spluttering a little, and then combed his hair and straightened away from the creek.

The trees were dark and mysterious, and the cold of the morning was bracing and good. A few stars lingered, reluctant to abandon the clear sky to the coming sun. He took his time, skirting around the ranch, looking for fresh tracks, finding none but those of deer that had come down to graze on the greener gra.s.s around the edges of the corral.

The garden her father had irrigated was growing, but the few rows were painfully small, and obviousy irrigated by hand now. Across the creek he saw a clump of squaw cabbage and there were no broken stalks. He must tell her about it, for apparently she knew nothing of the desert plants on which the Indians survived.

There was food in the desert if a man knew where to find it, and the Apaches knew. That was the item that defeated the Army. The Apaches lived off the country they pa.s.sed through, and they knew all the water holes, and could if necessary go for several days without water, just carrying a pebble in their mouths. But the Apaches knew the plants that conserved water too.

Hondo rolled a smoke and glanced around the rim of the hills as his tongue touched the paper. Of course, the food the Apaches loved was mule meat--and that meant Army mules. An Apache preferred it to any other, with horse meat second, and only after that would he consider beef or mutton. Pork he would not eat at all.

Yet there was plenty to eat in the desert if a man knew where to look. Lane crossed the stream and gathered a double handful of squaw cabbage. He was walking back toward the house when the door opened and Angie Lowe stepped out.

"Squaw cabbage," he said. "Lots of it across the creek. Mighty good stew when you boil it with meat. Some folks like it raw."

She accepted the whitish stalks and put them down on the table inside. "Breadroot out there, too," he said, "an' you can grind mesquite beans into flour an' bake them into a loaf."

"You must have learned a lot from the Indians."

"Some," he said. "They've lived here a long time."

He walked on to the corral and roped the lineback. When he led it out of the corral he bridled and saddled it, then went to the house for his saddlebags and rifle.

"You're leaving?"

"Yes, ma'am. Got to go on." His eyes met hers. "Sure you won't come along?"

"No. This is all I have."

"Dam ought to be rebuilt," he said. "Hard to get water in the garden."

"If you're going, I ought to wake Johnny to say goodbye to you."

"Was it me," Lane coiled his rope, "I'd let him sleep. Youngsters grow sleeping. But you do what you want to."

"He's delighted with the whistle you gave him. It's more like a flute than a whistle."

Lane felt uncomfortable. He liked to avoid goodbyes, and this was leading to one. He fiddled with the girth, rearranged the saddlebags.

"Learned to make them when I lived with the Mescaleros. My squaw used to make them for all the youngsters in the camp."

"You lived with the Apaches?"

"Five years."

She hesitated, but her curiosity overcame her reluctance to pry. "You had an Indian wife?"

"Wife ... squaw. Took the liberty of borrowing a few feet of rope off that roll in the lean-to. Mine was 'most worn out. I'll be glad to pay you for it if you'll let me."

"Of course not."

He tied the rope to the corral post, then to the pommel of the saddle, and moved the horse back to stretch the newness out of the rope. She fidgeted wanting to know more but hesitant to ask. There was no sound from the house. The air was still fresh and cool but carried the promise of a hot day. As he worked, she watched him, reluctant to see him go.

"It must have been interesting, living with the Apaches."

"I liked it."

"This Indian wife you have--"

"Had. She's dead." He spoke quietly, without emotion.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up an unhappy memory."

He turned, letting the horse stand. He pushed his hat back on his head and considered her remark. "I don't remember anything unhappy about Destarte."

"Destarte! How musical! What does it mean?"

"You can't say it except in Mescalero. It means Morning, but that isn't what it means, either. Indian words are more than just that. They also mean the feel and the sound of the name. It means like Crack of Dawn, the first bronze light that makes the b.u.t.tes stand out against the gray desert. It means the first sound you hear of a brook curling over some rocks--some trout jumping and a beaver crooning. It means the sound a stallion makes when he whistles at some mares just as the first puff of wind kicks up at daybreak.

"It means like you get up in the first light and you and her go out of the wickiup, where it smells smoky and private and just you and her, and kind of safe with just the two of you there, and you stand outside and smell the first bite of the wind coming down from the high divide and promising the first snowfall. Well, you just can't say what it means in English. Anyway, that was her name. Destarte."

Rather amazed, Angie stared at him. "Why, that's poetry!"

"Huh? Didn't mean to go gabbing." He looked around at Angie. "You remind me of her. Some."

He untied the rope and began to coil it again without looking at Angie. "Good rope," he commented. "Sure I can't pay you for it?"

"I remind you of an Indian girl? Was she fair?"

He turned and looked at her without emotion. He inspected her hair, her coloring and her face. She flushed as his eyes went over her figure.

"Her hair was black as ten feet down. It s.h.i.+ned black like those plums you find up on the Powder. You know how the wing of a crow is s.h.i.+ny? Black and gleaming." He tied the rope to the saddle horn. "That's the way her hair s.h.i.+ned. He tightened the knot. "I'd like to pay you for this rope. Dispatch riding I've got the right to give you United States Army scrip."

"You loved her?"

He hesitated thinking about it his eyes wandering toward the hills. He hitched his belt a little and took out the makings. "I don't know. I needed her."

"But if she was dark and I'm fair?"

"Why you remind me?"

"Yes?'

"I dunno. It's hard to figure. I thought about it. You walk like her with your head up."

He put the cigarette in his lips. "You walk like an Indian. You don't toe out like a white woman."

He looked at her and their eyes met. He took the cigarette from his lips and took the front of her dress in his left hand and drew her to him and their lips met. There was nothing forceful about it, and she neither resisted nor helped, yet she was far from merely acquiescent. And when they parted her face was a little pale. She stepped back, not frightened, but not sure of what it meant.

"I'm surprised at you, Mr. Lane."

"No, you're not surprised, Mrs. Lowe. You knew."

"I'm a married woman."

"I thought about that, too. I thought about it a long time. Last night."

She touched her lips with the back of her hand and took another step back. Nothing about it had seemed wrong. It had seemed natural, right. Angie was puzzled at her own feelings and trying to find a meaning for them.

"Maybe I kissed you because you make me think of Destarte. Or maybe because I hate to think of your hair drying, slung from the center pole of an Apache wickiup. But a long time ago I made me a rule: I let people do what they want to do.

"I got it figured now. Handsome woman like you, walks with her head up, ought to kiss a man before she dies."

"You're very strange, Mr. Lane."

He swung into the saddle and the lineback humped its back, then settled down, restless, but aware of the man in the saddle and remembering the fight of yesterday. "I don't know about that," he said thoughtfully. Then he looked away. "Goodbye Mrs. Lowe."

She waited standing very still in the center of the yard until he went over the hill, and even then she did not move, but stood there, silent and alone in the middle of the bare yard. The dust settled into the trail and the rim of the hills showed nothing but the morning sky, brightening. It would be very hot.

She turned, picked up her pail and walked to the spring.

Chapter Four.

No man knows the hour of his ending, nor can he choose the place or the manner of his going. To each it is given to die proudly, to die well, and this is, indeed, the final measure of the man.

The forty-seven men of Company C rode with an awareness of death, for there were no recruits in their twin files. All were seasoned, desert-wise fighting men who knew the character and ability of their enemy.

The mission allotted to Company C was a wide sweep of the basin to warn, and to bring to the camp if possible, all ranchers, prospectors, trappers, and pioneer home-builders who might still be at large and unaware of the impending outbreak of fresh hostilities. Their commanding officer was Lieutenant Creyton C. Davis.

At thirty-two, Creyton Davis was a case-hardened veteran. Graduated from the Point in time to serve the last year of the War between the States, he had transferred west following the war in time to ride with Carpenter to the relief of Forsyth at Beacher's Island. Later he was at the destruction of Tall Bull's villages in'69.

In the five succeeding years he had campaigned in the desert, working from a series of bleak, wind-swept sun-baked posts against the Apaches, that fiercest and wiliest of guerrilla fighters.

Squinting his eyes against the sun glare, he tried to penetrate the s.h.i.+mmering heat waves. Beyond the heat waves were the mountains, and from the liquid movement before them arose the sentinel spires of the saguaro, those weird exclamation points of the desert.

No sound disturbed the fading afternoon, no sound but the creak of saddle leather, the rattle of accouter-ments, the click of hoofs on stone--and these were always with them.

Sweat trickled through the dust on his face, and alkali had made his uniform stiff and gray. His neck itched from the heat and dust, and his skin was raw from the baking sun. Nowhere, in all that vast expanse, was there movement. Yet out there somewhere was the Apache.

When he saw the solitary rider sitting motionless against the background of the hill, he almost drew rein.

Cotton Lyndon was a square-built man of forty, his face so seamed and lined with desert years that he looked twenty years older. The nickname was born of his hair, once corn yellow, now pure white, and his one apparent vanity.

He swung his horse alongside the Lieutenant's. He indicated the direction in which they rode. "Water yonder."

"What do you think?"

"They're around. I don't know where."

"See anything of Lane?"