L'Amour, Louis - SSC 30 Read online

  At daylight, the two men headed west, and Ches Lane turned south. Antelope and deer are curious creatures, often led to their death by curiosity. The longhorn, soon going wild on the plains, acquires the same characteristic. He is essentially curious. Any new thing or strange action will bring his head up and his ears alert. Often a longhorn, like a deer, can be lured within a stone’s throw by some queer antic, by a handkerchief waving, by a man under a hide, by a man on foot.

  This character of the wild things holds true of the Indian. The lonely rider who fought so desperately and knew the desert so well soon became a subject of gossip among the Apaches. Over the fires of many a rancheria they discussed this strange rider who seemed to be going nowhere, but always riding, like a lean wolf dog on a trail. He rode across the mesas and down the canyons; he studied sign at every water hole; he looked long from every ridge. It was obvious to the Indians that he searched for something-but what?

  Cochise had come again to the cabin in West Dog Canyon. “Little warrior too small,” he said, “too small for hunt. You join my people. Take Apache for man.”

  “No.” Angie shook her head. “Apache ways are good for the Apache, and the white man’s ways are good for white men-and women.”

  They rode away and said no more, but that night, as she had on many other nights after the children were asleep, Angie cried. She wept silently, her head pillowed on her arms. She was as pretty as ever, but her face was thin, showing the worry and struggle of the months gone by, the weeks and months without hope.

  The crops were small but good. Little Jimmy worked besider her. At night, Angie sat alone on the steps and watched the shadows gather down the long canyon, listening to the coyotes yapping from the rim of the Guadalupes, hearing the horses blowing in the corral. She watched, still hopeful, but now she knew that Cochise was right: Ed would not return. But even if she had been ready to give up this, the first home she had known, there could be no escape. Here she was protected by Cochise. Other Apaches from other tribes would not so willingly grant her peace.

  At daylight she was up. The morning air was bright and balmy, but soon it would be hot again. Jimmy went to the spring for water, and when breakfast was over, the children played while Angie sat in the shade of a huge old cottonwood and sewed. It was a Sunday, warm and lovely. From time to time, she lifted her eyes to look down the canyon, half-smiling at her own foolishness.

  The hard-packed earth of the yard was swept clean of dust; the pans hanging on the kitchen wall were neat and shining. The children’s hair had been clipped, and there was a small bouquet on the kitchen table. After a while, Angie put aside her sewing and changed her dress. She did her hair carefully, and then, looking in her mirror, she reflected with sudden pain that she was pretty, and that she was only a girl. Resolutely, she turned from the mirror and, taking up her Bible, went back to the seat under the cottonwood.

  The children left their playing and came to her, for this was a Sunday ritual, their only one. Opening the Bible, she read slowly, “… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou . ..”

  “Mommy.” Jimmy tugged at her sleeve. “Look!”

  Ches Lane had reached a narrow canyon by midafternoon and decided to make camp. There was small possibility he would find another such spot, and he was dead tired, his muscles sodden with fatigue. The canyon was one of those unexpected gashes in the cap rock that gave no indication of its presence until you came right on it.

  After some searching, Ches found a route to the bottom and made camp under a wind-hollowed overhang. There was water, and there was a small patch of grass. After his horse had a drink and a roll on the ground, it began cropping eagerly at the rich, green grass, and Ches built a smokeless fire of ancient driftwood in the canyon bottom. It was his first hot meal in days, and when he had finished he put out his fire, rolled a smoke, and leaned back contentedly. Before darkness settled, he climbed to the rim and looked over the country.

  The sun had gone down, and the shadows were growing long. After a half hour of study, he decided there was no living thing within miles, except for the usual desert life. Returning to the bottom, he moved his horse to fresh grass, then rolled in his blanket. For the first time in a month, he slept without fear.

  He woke up suddenly in the broad daylight. The horse was listening to something, his head up. Swiftly, Ches went to the horse and led it back under the overhang. Then he drew on his boots, rolled his blankets, and saddled the horse. Still he heard no sound. Climbing the rim again, he studied the desert and found nothing. Returning to his horse, he mounted up and rode down the canyon toward the flatland beyond.

  Coming out of the canyon mouth, he rode right into the middle of a war party of more than twenty Apaches-invisible until suddenly they stood up behind rocks, their rifles leveled. And he didn’t have a chance. Swiftly, they bound his wrists to the saddle horn and tied his feet. Only then did he see the man who led the party.

  It was Cochise. He was a lean, wiry Indian of past fifty, his black hair streaked with gray, his features strong and clean-cut. He stared at Lane, and there was nothing in his face to reveal what he might be thinking. Several of the young warriors pushed forward, talking excitedly and waving their arms. Ches Lane understood none of it, but he sat straight in the saddle, his head up, waiting.

  Then Cochise spoke and the party turned, and, leading his horse, they rode away. The miles grew long and the sun was hot. He was offered no water and he asked for none. The Indians ignored him. Once a young brave rode near and struck him viciously. Lane made no sound, gave no indication of pain.

  When they finally stopped, it was beside a huge anthill swarming with big red desert ants. Roughly, they untied him and jerked him from his horse. He dug in his heels and shouted at them in Spanish: “The Apaches are women! They tie me to the ants because they are afraid to fight me!”

  An Indian struck him, and Ches glared at the man. If he must die, he would show them how it should be done. Yet he knew the unpredictable nature of the Indian, of his great respect for courage.

  “Give me a knife, and I’ll kill any of your warriors!” They stared at him, and one powerfully built Apache angrily ordered them to get on with it. Cochise spoke, and the big warrior replied angrily.

  Ches Lane nodded at the anthill. “Is this the death for a fighting man? I have fought your strong men and beaten them. I have left no trail for them to follow, and for months I have lived among you, and now only by accident have you captured me. Give me a knife,” he added grimly, “and I will fight him!” He indicated the big, black-faced Apache.

  The warrior’s cruel mouth hardened, arid he struck Ches across the face. The white man tasted blood and fury. “Woman!” Ches said. “Coyote! You are afraid!” Ches turned on Cochise, as the Indians stood irresolute. “Free my hands and let me fight!” he demanded. “If I win, let me go free.”

  Cochise said something to the big Indian. Instantly, there was stillness. Then an Apache sprang forward and, with a slash of his knife, freed Lane’s hands. Shaking loose the thongs, Ches Lane chafed his wrists to bring back the circulation. An Indian threw a knife at his feet. It was his own bowie knife. Ches took off his riding boots. In sock feet, his knife gripped low in his hand, its cutting edge up, he looked at the big warrior. “I promise you nothing,” Cochise said in Spanish, “but an honorable death.”

  The big warrior came at him on cat feet. Warily, Ches circled. He had not only to defeat this Apache but to escape. He permitted himself a side glance toward his horse. It stood alone. No Indian held it. The Apache closed swiftly, thrusting wickedly with the knife. Ches, who had learned knifefighting in the bayou country of Louisiana, turned his hip sharply, and the blade slid past him. He struck swiftly, but the Apache’s forward movement deflected the blade, and it failed to penetrate.

  However, as it swept up between the India
n’s body and arm, it cut a deep gash in the warrior’s left armpit. The Indian sprang again, like a clawing cat, streaming blood. Ches moved aside, but a backhand sweep nicked him, and he felt the sharp bite of the blade. Turning, he paused on the balls of his feet. He had had no water in hours. His lips were cracked. Yet he sweated now, and the salt of it stung his eyes.

  He stared into the malevolent black eyes of of the Apache, then moved to meet him. The Indian lunged, and Ches sidestepped like a boxer and spun on the ball of his foot. The sudden sidestep threw the Indian past him, but Ches failed to drive the knife into the Apache’s kidney when his foot rolled on a stone. The point left a thin red line across the Indian’s back.

  The Indian was quick. Before Ches could recover his balance, he grasped the white man’s knife wrist. Desperately, Ches grabbed for the Indian’s knife hand and got the wrist, and they stood there straining, chest to chest. Seeing his chance, Ches suddenly let his knees buckle, then brought up his knee and fell back, throwing the Apache over his head to the sand.

  Instantly, he whirled and was on his feet, standing over the Apache. The warrior had lost his knife, and he lay there, staring up, his eyes black with hatred. Coolly, Ches stepped back, picked up the Indian’s knife, and tossed it to him contemptously. There was a grunt from the watching Indians, and then his antagonist rushed. But loss of blood had weakened the warrior, and Ches stepped in swiftly, struck the blade aside, then thrust the point of his blade hard against the Indian’s belly. Black eyes glared into his without yielding. A thrust, and the man would be disemboweled, but Ches stepped back. “He is a strong man,” Ches said in Spanish. “It is enough that I have won.”

  Deliberately, he walked to his horse and swung into the saddle. He looked around, and every rifle covered him. So he had gained nothing. He had hoped that mercy might lead to mercy, that the Apache’s respect for a fighting man would win his freedom. He had failed.

  Again they bound him to his horse, but they did not take his knife from him. When they camped at last, he was given food and drink. He was bound again, and a blanket was thrown over him. At daylight they were again in the saddle. In Spanish he asked where they were taking him, but they gave no indication of hearing. When they stopped again, it was beside a pole corral, near a stone cabin.

  When Jimmy spoke, Angie got quickly to her feet. She recognized Cochise with a start of relief, but she saw instantly that this was a war party. And then she saw the prisoner. Their eyes met and she felt a distinct shock. He was a white man, a big, unshaven man who badly needed both a bath and a haircut, his clothes ragged and bloody.

  Cochise gestured at the prisoner. “No take Apache man, you take white man. This man good for hunt, good for fight. He strong warrior. You take ‘em.”

  Flushed and startled, Angie stared at the prisoner and caught a faint glint of humor in his dark eyes. “Is this here the fate worse than death I hear tell of?” he inquired gently.

  “Who are you?” she asked, and was immediately conscious that it was an extremely silly question. The Apaches had drawn back and were watching curiously. She could do nothing for the present but accept the situation. Obviously they intended to do her a kindness, and it would not do to offend them. If they had not brought this man to her, he might have been killed.

  “Name’s Ches Lane, ma’am,” he said. “Will you untie me? I’d feel a lot safer.”

  “Of course.” Still flustered, she went to him and untied his hands. One Indian said something, and the others chuckled; then, with a whoop, they swung their horses and galloped off down the canyon. Their departure left her suddenly helpless, the shadowy globe of her loneliness shattered by this utterly strange man standing before her, this big, bearded man brought to her out of the desert.

  She smoothed her apron, suddenly pale as she realized what his delivery to her implied. What must he think of her? She turned away quickly.

  “There’s hot water,” she said hastily, to prevent his speaking. “Dinner is almost ready.”

  She walked quickly into the house and stopped before the stove, her mind a blank. She looked around her as if she had suddenly waked up in a strange place. She heard water being poured into the basin by the door, and heard him take Ed’s razor. She had never moved the box. To have moved it would-

  “Sight of work done here, ma’am.”

  She hesitated, then turned with determination and stepped into the doorway. “Yes, Ed-“

  “You’re Angie Lowe.”

  Surprised, she turned toward him, and recognized his own startled awareness of her. As he shaved, he told her about Ed, and what had happened that day in the saloon.

  “He-Ed was like that. He never considered consequences until it was too late.”

  “Lucky for me he didn’t.” He was younger looking with his beard gone. There was a certain quiet dignity in his face.

  She went back inside and began putting plates on the table. She was conscious that he had moved to the door and was watching her. “You don’t have to stay,” she said. “You owe me nothing. Whatever Ed did, he did because he was that kind of person. You aren’t responsible.”

  He did not answer, and when she turned again to the stove, she glanced swiftly at him. He was looking across the valley. There was a studied deference about him when he moved to a place at the table. The children stared, wide-eyed and silent; it had been so long since a man sat at this table. Angie could not remember when she had felt like this.

  She was awkwardly conscious of her hands, which never seemed to be in the right place or doing the right things. She scarcely tasted her food, nor did the children. Ches Lane had no such inhibitions. For the first time, he realized how hungry he was. After the half-cooked meat of lonely, trailside fires, this was tender and flavored. Hot biscuits, desert honey …

  Suddenly he looked up, embarrassed at his appetite.

  “You were really hungry,” she said.

  “Man can’t fix much, out on the trail.”

  Later, after he’d got his bedroll from his saddle and unrolled it on the hay in the barn, he walked back to the house and sat on the lowest step. The sun was gone, and they watched the cliffs stretch their red shadows across the valley. A quail called plaintively, a mellow sound of twilight

  “You needn’t worry about Cochise,” she said. “He’ll soon be crossing into Mexico.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Cochise.”

  That left her with nothing to say, and she listened again to the quail and watched a lone bright star.

  “A man could get to like it here,” he said quietly.

  That Man from the Bitter Sands

  When Speke came at last to water, he was two days beyond death. His cracked lips rustled like tissue paper when they moved, trying to shape a thought. The skin of his face, long burned to a desert brown, had now taken on a patina of crimson.

  Yet his mind was awake, and alive within him was a spirit that even the desert could not defeat. Without doubt Ross and Floren believed him dead, and this pleased him, stirring a wry sense of humor.

  The chirping of birds told him of water before he saw it.

  His stumbling, almost hypnotic walk ceased, and swaying upon his feet, he turned his head slowly upon his stiff neck.

  The basin remained unchanged, only now he had reached the very bottom of the vast depression, and a jagged knife’s edge of rocks, an upthrust from a not too ancient fracture, loomed off to his right.

  He had seen a dozen such along the line of travel, yet there was a difference. The faint, grayish green of the desert vegetation here took on a somewhat deeper green. Yet without the birds he might not have noticed. There was water near.

  Through the heat-engendered haze in his skull there flickered grim humor. Floren and Ross thought they had taken from him all that promised survival when they had also taken his gold. They had robbed him of weapons, tools, canteen, food, and water. They had left him nothing.

  Better than anyone else he had known what lay before him. After they had g
one he had worked to free himself, but when he had succeeded he did not move away. He waited quietly in the shadow of the ledge, gutted of its small hoard of gold. Only when the sun was down did he move, and then he stepped out with a long, space-eating stride, walking away into that vast wasteland, shadowed with evening.

  They had left him two things they did not realize would matter. They had seemed but bits of debris in the looted camp: a prospector’s gold pan and a storm square from his canvas groundsheet.

  Before it grew too dark to travel he had walked eight miles. Stopping then, he scooped a shallow hole in the sand and placed in it the gold pan. Over it he stretched the canvas, and above that he built a small pile of large stones. When his dew trap was complete he lay down to sleep.

  Scarcely a spoon of water rewarded the effort, yet he swallowed it and was grateful. Before the sun topped the ridge he had three more miles behind him. Near two boulders he stopped and made a sun shade of a ruined cedar in the space between the boulders. He crawled into this island of coolness and lay down.

  Midafternoon of the second day he found a barrel cactus, and cutting off the top he squeezed some water from the whitish green pulp. On the second and third nights he also built his dew traps, and each time got a little water. When he first heard the birds he thought he was losing his reason, yet turning toward the serrated ridge, he stumbled on. At its base, among some desert willows, was a small pool some four feet across … but lying in it was a dead coyote.

  Swaying drunkenly, he stared hollow-eyed at the dead coyote and the poisoned water. He could go no further, he knew. He must drink, yet, in his weakened state, a case of dysentery would surely kill him. It was not in him to yield, and too well he knew the ways of the wild country and the lessons it taught.

  The will that had carried him more than forty miles across the desert moved him then. He dragged the remains of the dead coyote from the water. Then he gathered sticks and built a fire. When he had a small heap of charcoal, he scooped up some water with the gold pan. He covered the water until it was two inches thick with charcoal. Then he stoked his fire and waited. Soon the water was boiling.