The Lonely Men s-14 Read online

  Spanish went up to watch from where I had been, and John J. went to the horses -- we saddled them each morning -- to be ready in case of need.

  Tampico Rocca was a ghost on the trail, moving without sound. We snaked down among the rocks, crawled over great boulders, and came down to where we could await the boy.

  Was he changed? Had he become an Apache? If so, he would shout when he saw us.

  Only he had no chance. Soundlessly Rocca dropped to the trail behind him, put one hand over the boy's mouth, and lifted him into the brush, where we crouched.

  He looked wild-eyed with fright, then seeing we were white men he tried to speak. Slowly Rocca took his hand from his mouth.

  "Take me away!" he whispered. "My name is Brook. Harry Brook."

  "How long have they had you?"

  "Two years, I think. Maybe not that long, but a long time."

  "Where are the other white children? The Creeds and Orry Sackett."

  "The Creeds? I have heard of them. They are in the next rancheria." He pointed.

  "Over there."

  "And the Sackett boy?"

  "I do not know. I never heard of another boy. There is a girl with the Creed boys, but she is only five ... very small."

  Well ... something seemed to drain away inside me. Had they killed him then? Had they killed Orrin's son? Battles asked the question.

  "Nobody was killed," the boys said. "I was in camp when they brought them in, the Creed boys and the girl."

  Squatting down on my heels, I asked, "Can you get to those others? I mean, will you ever see them?"

  "You ain't takin' me along with you?" There were tears in his eyes.

  "Not right now. Look, if we took you now we'd have to run, wouldn't we? All right, we leave you here. You be ready." I pointed toward a high rock. "Can you see that from camp?"

  "Yes."

  "All right ... when you see a black rock atop that, you come to this place, right here. We've got to get those other youngsters."

  "You'll get killed. They're in Kahtenny's rancheria."

  "Kahtenny? He's alive, then?"

  "He sure is. An' all them Apaches yonder take a back seat for him. He's a big man among 'em."

  We left him then, worried for fear the Apaches would come scouting to see what he was doing. They trusted no prisoner, even if he seemed to accept their ways.

  Only thing was, they didn't figure anybody could get away from the Sierra Madres ... or that anybody would dare come in after them.

  The first thing I did was hunt a piece of black lava rock to use when the time came. I placed it handy under a bush, and we went back, mounted up, and followed a trail out of there, skirting a cliff that fell away so sharply you felt as if you rode on a piece of molding along a wall.

  That boy back there ... could he keep them from knowing? That troubled me some.

  There was small chance he could get to the other youngsters, but there was some visiting back and forth ... it could be.

  But where was Orry Sackett? Where was my brother's son?

  Chapter 7

  Through the chill dawn we climbed toward the high peaks, weaving our way among trees that dripped with moisture from the low-hanging clouds. Then we descended several hundred feet into a secluded park ringed with splendid pines. On the far side a cold, clear stream fell over a limestone ledge into a deep pool.

  In every sheltered spot there were ruins ... ancient ruins, half buried in earth or an overgrowth of brush or moss. In one place a gnarled and twisted cedar grew inside a wall, a cedar that itself must have been hundreds of years old.

  I questioned Rocca, and he shrugged. "Who knows? They were the People Who Came Before, and they were gone before the Apaches came."

  He was only mildly curious. "Many peoples have come and gone. It is the way of the world. The People of the Stone Houses ... the people who built the cliff dwellings in Arizona and Colorado. They were driven out by the Navajo, who killed many of them.

  "The white man has driven out the Indian, but the Indian drove out others before, and those others had driven peoples before them. It is always the same.

  I think the Indian was defeated by the traders, not by the soldiers."

  "How so?" Battles asked.

  "The traders made the Indian want things he could not make himself. He came to need the white man, to depend upon him. The Indian had to trade or steal to get the rifles and other things he wanted that the white man had."

  It was what I had thought myself. Rocca shrugged again. "The first white trader who came to the Indians brought their doom in his pack. I think it is so."

  We were silent then. We came to a fearful slide and went down it, our horses sliding on their haunches for a good part of the distance to the bottom of a gloomy canyon, through which ran the headwaters of the Bavispe. It was an eerie, haunted spot, and I swung down, standing for a moment with both hands on the saddle, listening. But there was no sound except that of falling water, and the sighing of wind among the pines.

  "I don't like it," John J. said. "It looks like the dark edge of hell."

  Me, I was thinking of those youngsters among the Apaches, so strange to them, so frightening. They must be scared stiff. Yet I could think of worse things than living out a life in these mountains. The Sierra Madres were beautiful.

  We were coming close now, and we could see plenty of Apache sign. In gloomy places like this a body always had the feeling of being watched.

  We drank, one at a time, with the others watching and in the saddle. We crossed the river then and went up a switchback trail for a thousand feet toward a tremendous promontory.

  Storm clouds hung over the nearby peaks, and there was electricity in the air.

  Kahtenny's rancheria was somewhere below us, hidden in the low clouds. We started down through the trees, but had gone only a short distance when the rain began to fall in sheets, swept by a violent wind.

  The forest offered slight cover, and there was nothing to do but hole up and wait it out. We found a place where a great pine had fallen almost to the ground, part of it resting among the rocks. We cut away the branches on the under side and took shelter there, leading our horses under cover with us. There was barely room for us, and the pommel of my saddle brushed the bark of the pine.

  We took a chance, with the rain to keep down the smoke and keep the Apaches under shelter, and built a small fire where we made soup and coffee.

  After a break, with the rain still falling, I took up my rifle and went out on a scout. Keeping to the trees, I worked my way along the cliff. The rocks glistened with wet, and the raindrops pelted my slicker like thrown stones, but the trees offered some shelter.

  Suddenly I was looking down into Kahtenny's rancheria. There were a few smokes from wickiups, but nobody was visible.

  I felt a movement behind me, and I turned sharply. It was Tampico Rocca.

  He indicated the rancheria below us. "I could not fool them now," he said. "They would smell the difference in me. I have been eating the white man's food."

  "How many would you guess there are?" I asked. "Twenty, maybe?"

  "Twenty, or twenty-five."

  Two dozen human wolves ... and I mean nothing against them. My enemies for the time, yes ... but I respected them. At trailing or fighting they were fierce and relentless as wolves, and we had done the impossible and followed them into their almost impregnable Sierra Madre.

  "I'm going down," I said. "I shall get close and listen."

  Rocca stared at me. "You crazy. They will hear you. Their dogs will smell you."

  "Maybe, but the rain will help."

  "All right," he said, "we both go." It would be a daring thing, but there was enough of the Apache in him to be cautious. And it would be a chance to count coups against the Apaches.

  We crawled and slid down the mountain. From time to time we paused to listen, then moved on. We were fools, I told myself. What we did was insanity, no less.

  But I had to find Orry, and every hour in these
mountains was an hour of danger for us ... and for him.

  Together we crept to the edge of the encampment in the driving rain. Rocca darted to the wall of one of the wickiups, and I went to another. Crouching in the rain, I listened, but heard nothing except the low mutter of Indian voices and the crackle of a fire. As I was moving to another, I was stopped for a moment by Rocca's uplifted finger. Hesitating, I watched him, holding my rifle, muzzle down under my slicker. He shook his head, and moved on. We had listened at five wickiups and were about ready to give up ... Suppose the children were not talking? Suppose they were not there at all?

  Rocca gestured suddenly, and I went to him. We heard a mutter of talk within, and then, sure enough, a boy speaking plainly in English.

  I caught Rocca's arm. "Cover me," I said, and lifting the flap, I stepped in.

  For a moment I could see nothing, although I had taken the precaution of closing my eyes for a moment before stepping inside. Then in the red glow of the coals I saw a startled buck staring at me, and beginning to rise. On a pile of skins near one wall were three white children ... I could just make them out.

  A squaw was there, holding a child at her breast. She stared at me, no anger or hatred in her eyes, just a calm acceptance. "Do not cry out," I said in Apache.

  Then in the event she did not understand my poor use of the Apache tongue, I repeated it in Spanish.

  The buck was past his astonishment, and he came at me with a lunge. I met him halfway with the butt of my rifle, and he went down in a heap, out cold.

  "All right," I said to the children, "we're all going home. Wrap those skins around you and come on."

  Turning to the young Indian woman, who had not stirred, I spoke quietly in Spanish. "I do not wish to hurt anybody. I want only to take these children home."

  She merely looked at me as the three children ran toward me. I saw that one of them was a girl. I waved them past, toward the wickiup entrance, and they went out quickly into the rain. With another glance at the squaw, I followed.

  Tampico Rocca was already hurrying the youngsters toward the brush-clad hill where we had come down, and he was backing away, covering the wickiups with his rifle. I ran toward him, and was almost to the hillside when a man with a bloody head sprang from the wickiup from which we had taken the children.

  He leaped out, staggered, then glared wildly around. His first yell failed him, but he shouted again and his voice came full and strong. As he yelled he lifted his rifle, and Rocca shot him.

  The children were in the brush and climbing the steep slope, faster than I would have believed possible.

  Backing after them, I let the Apaches come boiling out into the rain, and then fired rapidly.

  One Indian spun and dropped his rifle, another yelled and started for me. I let him come, and shot past him at another who was lifting a rifle to fire. That Indian staggered and fell, then started up again.

  The running Indian had a knife, and he was almost on me. Shortening my grip on my rifle, I took a long swing that caught the running Indian in the belly. He caved in with a choking cry, and I scrambled up the muddy slope, grabbing at branches.

  From above there was a sudden cannonade of fire as our friends up there, who had heard the shooting, opened up on the Indians to cover our retreat.

  Scrambling, falling, and scrambling on, we made the crest, and when the little girl fell I caught her up and ran after Rocca, with the others covering us as best they could.

  We made our camp, swung into our saddles, and with three of us each carrying a child, we raced off along the ridge, rain whipping our faces.

  We ran our horses when we could, then slowed for the steep, dangerous trail down. Falling rain masked the depths below, the great peaks were shrouded in cloud. Thunder rumbled around us, tremendous sounds as if we were inside an enormous drum. We dashed into a pine forest, ran our horses for a hundred yards, then slowed for a steep slide and a muddy scramble.

  Battles' horse slipped and fell, spilling him from the saddle, but the horse was game and scrambled up. By the time it was on its feet, Battles was in the saddle again.

  There was no chance now for the black rock atop the boulder. Anyway, because of the rain Harry could not see it.

  Me, I kept looking back over my shoulder, wondering when the Indians would catch up. The rain might have muffled the shots enough so that the other rancherias would not be alerted to our coming. We drew up briefly under the trees and I eased the girl into a better position on the saddle before me.

  "Were there any other children back there?" I asked her. "White ones, I mean?"

  "No," she said. Her eyes were bright, but she looked excited rather than scared.

  "Which one is Orry Sackett?" I asked.

  She just looked at me. "Neither one. Those two are the Creed boys. I never heard of any boy called Orry."

  Something turned over inside me. "Tamp," I yelled, "my nephew isn't here!"

  "I know it," he said. "He ain't here at all. These were the youngsters the Taches took. The only ones."

  "That's not possible!"

  "You better get goin' " Spanish said. "This here is no time to talk."

  We started on, knowing there could be no hesitating, no turning back. The hills would be alive with Apaches now, and if we got out of here alive we'd have to have uncommon luck, which we had come into the mountains knowing.

  Slipping and running, scrambling up and down muddy slopes, slapped by wet branches, racing through the forest ... first and last, it was a nightmare.

  We came finally to the place above the first Indian encampment, and I passed the girl over to Battles. "I've got to get that boy Harry!" I told him. "Don't be a fool! There's no chance!"

  "Keep going," I said. "I promised him."

  They all looked at me, each of them holding a youngster -- three tough, hard-bitten men with no families, no homes, nothing to call their own but a set of guns and saddles. They sat there in the rain, and not one of them could come with me because now they had the children to think of.

  "Run for it," I said. "This here's my scalp."

  "Good luck," Spanish said, and they were gone. Me, I watched them go, then swung my horse toward that boulder. Far back up the mountains, I thought I heard a shout and a shot. But I went down that trail to the place where I'd met the boy.

  Hounding the boulder, rifle ready, I stared toward the rancheria, and suddenly out of the wet brush came the boy, Harry Brook. He was soaked to the skin and he was scared, but he came toward me. "Mister," he said, and he was crying.

  "Mister, I was scared you wouldn't make it."

  Reaching down, I caught his hand and swung him up to the saddle.

  "They know you're gone?" I asked. "I think so ... by now. Somebody came in and said he'd heard shootin', but the old bucks wouldn't believe him. No chance in this rain, they said, not in these mountains. I figured it was you, so first chance I had, I cut and run."

  We started up the trail. Up there on the ridge I could see the muddy tracks of the other horses, and I swung into the trail after them, but then pulled up sharp. Their trail was almost wiped out by the track of other horses, unshod horses.

  "Apaches," I said. "Is there another trail?"

  "Down there." The boy pointed toward the canyon. "The Old Ones' trail. An Apache boy showed it to me. It goes out across Sonora to the big water." Harry looked up at me, his face glistening with rain. "Anyway, that's what he said."

  The black was fidgeting. He liked the situation no more than I did, so I pointed his nose where the boy said. He shied at the trail, then took it gingerly.

  It was no kind of a place to ride even in good weather, let alone in a rain like this. Thunder crashed, and there was a vivid streak of lightning that lit up everything around. The trail was only a glistening thread along the face of a cliff.

  But the black was game. He went as if stepping on eggs, but he went, and I held my breath for the three of us. Far down below my right stirrup I could see the tops of pine trees, mayb
e five hundred feet down there. We edged along, taking one careful step at a time, until we were almost at the bottom, when the trail widened out.

  It took no time at all to see that this was no traveled trail. Rocks had fallen into it ages back, trees had grown up right in the middle, and we had to skirt around them. Me, I kept looking back. Sure as shootin' we were going to get ourselves trapped. Still, all a body could do was push on, so we pushed.

  Night was a-coming, and with all those clouds and rain it was going to come soon, but there was no place to stop.

  We had come down about a thousand feet, and were moving along a watercourse that wound through poplars and maples, gigantic agaves and clumps of maidenhair fern.

  Everything was wet.

  Suddenly, off to our left, I saw one of those ruins -- an ancient wall, half broken by a huge maple that had grown through it. There was a stream running that way, and it was only niches deep. Turning the black, I walked him along the stream until we could turn behind the wall where the maple grew.

  There was a sort of clearing there, sheltered on one side by the wall, and falling away on the other toward a bigger stream, trees were all around. The maple had huge limbs that stretched out over the wall and made a shelter. I swung down under it and lifted the boy to the ground. "Stay up close to the tree," I said, "until I can rig something for us."

  Now, a body doesn't spend his years wandering around the country without learning how to make do. I'd made wet camp a good many times before this, and I had been keeping my eyes open for a likely spot, one that had what we'd need.

  First off, I saw how the ground slanted away toward the big creek, and I figured that wall offered fair protection. The maple was alive, but in some storm the wind had broken off a big limb, with a lot of branches on it, and it lay there on the ground. Maple burns mighty well, and makes a hot fire.

  That big tree would give some shelter, and the wall would make a reflector for my fire. One branch of the tree extended across a corner of the wall, and I ducked under it and rolled away a couple of fallen stones that lay there. The big fallen limb and its branches offered partial cover for the comer, so I cut some pine branches and wove them in among the branches of the maple until I had a fair shelter.