Blood and Gold

Chapter 7

Startled, I reined in the black, my hand instinctively going for the Colt at my hip.

But then I realized that the taller of the two Indians wasn’t an Indian at all, but a white man with a red beard, hair of the same color spilling in tangles over his broad shoulders, and now he spoke to me.

“You came right in the nick of time, young feller,” he said. “For a spell there, I reckoned we was done for.”

Beside the man stood a pretty woman in a buckskin dress, her yellow hair in thick braids, a narrow beaded headband encircling her forehead.

“They attacked us just after sunup,” she said, smiling, showing beautiful white teeth. “Our ammunition was running low and it was only a matter of time.” Her dazzling smile widened. “Then you showed up.”

A little girl, maybe four years old, walked out of the cabin and shyly stood behind the woman, looking at me now and then from behind her skirt.

I touched the brim of my hat. “Glad I could be of service, ma’am,” I said. “I happened to be passing by and heard the shooting.”

The man took a step toward me and said: “Name’s Jacob Lawson and this here is my wife, Jen, and my daughter, Kate.”

I nodded. “Dusty Hannah.” And then, because I didn’t want to share my troubles with them, I added: “Just a puncher headin’ back to Texas.”

“Well, Mr. Hannah,” Lawson said, “ain’t no point standing out here in the rain. Light and step into the cabin.”

“Jacob,” Jen said, her face suddenly clouded with concern. “Shouldn’t we look at the fallen Apaches first? Some of them might only be wounded.”

Jacob looked at me, as though for direction, like he was figuring me for some kind of expert on Indians. “There’s one over there by the pigpen and maybe another,” I said. “And three or four among the rocks back there.”

“Then let’s take a look,” the man said.

I swung out of the saddle and led the black to the front of the cabin, where there was a hitching post. I looped the reins around the post and followed Jacob Lawson and his wife, her daughter in her arms, to the corral.

The Apache I’d hit lay dead on his back, blood splashed on the front of his shirt. There was no sign of the other man I’d shot at.

We walked over to the rocks and found two dead Indians and a third who had been hit hard but was still breathing. The Apache was conscious and his obsidian eyes revealed only burning hate and defiance. His Henry lay where he’d dropped it and I kicked the rifle farther away from him.

Jen made to kneel beside the warrior, but I stopped her. “I wouldn’t do that, ma’am,” I told her. “He’s still got a knife and for sure he’ll stick you with it if he can.”

“This man is hurt,” the woman said. “We can’t leave him out here in the rain.”

“Yes, we can,” I said. “If you take him inside, he won’t thank you for it, ma’am, and he’ll try to kill you first chance he gets.” I glanced up the slope behind me. “Come nightfall, the Apaches will be back to carry off their dead. Just let him be until then.”

“But . . . but that’s inhuman,” Jen protested, her blazing eyes searching my face.

I nodded. “Maybe so, ma’am, but this is a hard, unforgiving land and you do whatever it takes to survive.” As the rain lashed down around me, I nodded toward the fallen Apache, looking into his wild, hate-filled eyes. “That warrior is like Comanche I’ve known, only a whole sight worse. You can’t buy his friendship with kindness because he’ll take that as a sign of weakness and he’ll think you are afraid of him. Sure, you can carry him back to your cabin, nurse him back to health, but he’ll reward you for it by killing you the very worst way he can.” I looked at Jen, matching her anger with rising anger of my own. “You let him be,” I said, “or kill him.”

Jacob looked at me, a question in his eyes, as though trying to figure me out. ‘Y’know,’ he said finally, a smile touching his lips, “for a young feller, you talk old.”

“I guess I’ve had some growing up to do in recent times,” I said, matching his smile with one of my own. “Around these parts, just surviving makes a man grow old mighty fast.”

Jacob turned to his wife, his voice making it clear that he’d brook no argument. “You heard what Mr. Hannah said, Jen. Leave this Apache be.” Then, to take the sting out of it, he added: “Wife, he isn’t one of those wounded little animals you’re always finding. This is a fighting man and he’s dangerous.”

The woman looked at her husband, then at me, lifted her nose in the air and turned on her heel and stomped back to the cabin.

Jacob placed a big hand on my shoulder. “She’ll calm down in a few minutes and realize that you have the right of it. Now please let me offer you the hospitality of our cabin. We don’t have much, but what we have you can share.”

My first instinct was to refuse and get back on the trail, but my growling stomach thought otherwise and I found myself nodding. “I’d be obliged,” I said.

I glanced down at the wounded Apache and met his burning eyes. Summoning up the Spanish I could remember, I said: “Todavia endecha. Usted es amigos estara detras para usted.”

The Mescalero glared at me for a few moments, then gathered what saliva he could find in his dry mouth and spat contemptuously in my direction.

“Hell, what did you tell him?” Jacob asked.

“I told him to lay still, that his friends would be back for him.” I shrugged. “He didn’t take kindly to it.”

The Lawson cabin was clean but not well-appointed, though it had a wood floor, unusual for soddies at that time when most settlers made do with hard-packed dirt, occasionally whitewashed, but usually not.

I took off my hat and shrugged out of my wet slicker and Jacob directed me to a bench drawn up to a roughly made table. An Apache bullet had gouged a foot-long scar on the table’s pine top and another had taken a chunk out of the arm of a rocking chair that stood by the fireplace.

As Jen, her back stiff, worked at the stove, Jacob opened the wood shutters and shook his head, his face gloomy, as he surveyed the broken glass panes in the windows.

Glass was hard to come by in the West, and until the panes could be replaced, he’d have to cover them over with wood, making the interior of the cabin even darker than it was now.

Despite the fact that it was still full daylight, Jacob lit the oil lamp that hung above the table and a pale orange glow spread through the small room, making the place seem less bleak. The wonderful smell of frying meat and boiling coffee wafted from the stove and I found my mouth watering, even as my empty stomach growled at me.

For a while no one spoke, my disagreement with Jen over the wounded Apache still frosting the air between us. Outside the rain continued to fall, hammering on the roof of the cabin, drops occasionally gusting through the broken windows. The wind was rising, whispering notions around the walls of the cabin, setting the lamp flame to dancing.

Jen finally turned from the stove, heaped platters in her hands, and laid them on the table with more of a thump than their weight merited. She returned with plates, silverware and chunks of cornbread, sniffed, then slammed each item on the table with not so much as a howdy-do.

Jacob gave his wife a long, warning glare, then turned to me and said: “Dig in, Mr. Hannah.”

“Call me Dusty,” I said without looking at him, all my attention riveted on the food.

Annoyed with me she might be, but Jen Lawson had set a handsome table.

One platter was piled high with fried antelope steaks, the other with boiled potatoes, and I helped myself liberally from both. Jen returned to the table and poured coffee for me and Jacob, then sat herself. Their daughter snuggled close beside Jen, who gave the child a small steak to chew on.

We ate hungrily, each pretending to be too busy with the food to notice the awkward silence stretching between us. But then I happened to turn my head to the left, my attention caught by a log crackling in the stove, and Jen exclaimed: “Why, Mr. Hannah, you’re wounded!”

Absently my fingers went to my head, where Lafe Wingo’s bullet had grazed me. I felt crusted blood, though the wound wasn’t near as tender as it had been even a few days before.

“It’s an old injury,” I said, trying to make light of it. “I stepped into a stray bullet back to the Gypsum Hills country.”

The woman’s face was full of concern. “After you eat, I’m going to clean that wound for you.” Her eyes softened as she touched the back of my hand. “You poor thing.”

Embarrassed, I gave all my attention to my plate and Jacob laughed. “Dusty, better let Jen do as she pleases. She’s forever nursing wounded critters back to health.”

The air had cleared between us and Jen watched me with growing concern until I’d eaten my fill, sighed and pushed away from the table.

“That was an elegant meal, ma’am,” I told her. “The first woman’s cooking I’ve tasted in many a month.”

Jen was looking at my wound intently, and to head her off, I dug into my shirt pocket, found my makings and asked: “May I beg your indulgence, ma’am?”

The woman nodded. “Please do. Jacob smokes a pipe and I’m well used to men and their need for tobacco.”

Jacob stepped to the wood mantel above the fireplace and returned with a charred, battered pipe, which he proceeded to light.

I’d hoped our smoking would forestall his wife’s attentions, but it was not to be. Jen left the table and came back with a pan of water and a cloth and began to bathe my wound.

Only now, as his wife fussed and fretted over me, did I mention to Jacob Lawson that I’d first taken Jen and him for Indians.

The big bearded man took that in stride. “Jen and me, our plan is to follow the way of the Indian and live as he does. That is why we dress as we do. Eventually, we hope to attract others to our valley who feel the same as we do.”

As Jen dabbed at my head, she said: “We wish to put away our guns and live as a community in perfect peace, love and harmony. When the Apaches came, Jacob tried to speak to them in friendship, but their only reply was a volley of gunfire that drove us into the cabin.”

“They nearly done for us,” Jacob said. “It was that close.”

I nodded. “When the Apaches are on the war trail, as a general rule they ain’t long on polite conversation.”

“But even this won’t deter us,” Jen said, dabbing at my head with something that stung. “Our vision is to see this valley populated by hundreds of kindred spirits who wish to live as nature intended, close to the earth in the way of the native Red Man.”

“It’s a good way, Jen,” I said, “but mighty hard. In the old days when an Indian ate, he filled his belly to bursting because he had no way of knowing when he’d eat again. In winter, when game and fuel were scarce, all the tribes suffered from hunger and cold. Even in good years a lot of them died, especially the old and the younkers like your little girl there.

“Now the buffalo are gone, things are even worse. To survive a bad winter, the Indian needs fat. The buffalo had plenty of fat, especially in his hump where he stored it, and in good years when the herds didn’t drift too far south, that rich hump meat was easy to come by. Now the Sioux and the Cheyenne and the others must depend on antelope and deer and rabbit, and there’s little fat on any of them. If they don’t get government beef, and many of the wilder ones don’t, they can fill their bellies with deer and jackrabbit in winter and still starve to death.”

I rolled another smoke, thumbed a match into flame and lit it. “Like I said, it’s a good way, but it’s not an easy way.”

“We’ll teach the others who come to farm,” Jen said. “Then our community need not depend on game to see us through the hard winters.”

I dearly wanted to tell this starry-eyed pair that there was more to the Indian way than dressing up in beads and feathers and preaching peace and love. But I knew that nothing I could say would change their minds.

The Indian wasn’t much on peace to begin with. Any warrior worth his salt would ride two hundred miles out of his way to get into a good fight, and as for love, well, maybe they loved their own tribe but outside of that everyone else was considered a potential enemy and treated as such.

Jen finished fussing over me and I touched the wound on my scalp. The dry blood was gone and the clean sting from the stuff she’d put on it felt good.

Outside the day was shading into night, and though I would dearly love to have taken up their offer of a bed for the night, I had to be on my way if I’d any hope of closing the distance between me and Lafe Wingo.

I rose from the table, thanked Jen again for her food and shrugged into my slicker. I’d left my horse at their barn where Jacob had given him a bait of corn, saddled him again and led him back to the cabin. As Jen and Jacob stepped outside I swung into the saddle.

“We whipped those Apaches pretty good today,” I said, “but be sure of it, they’ll come back for their dead. My advice is to stay in the cabin and keep your rifles close. The Apaches will hit and run, but they’re mighty notional and they might just take it into their heads to renew the fight.”

Jacob motioned to me with his pipe. “Thank you for all you did for us, Dusty,” he said. “You saved our bacon and that’s for sure.”

“Glad I could help,” I said, uncomfortable with his thanks.

“Come back and see us.” Jen’s white smile was bright. “And maybe next time you can stay a while and help us teach others the way.”

“Till then,” I said, touching my hat, knowing full well that I’d never visit this canyon again.

I swung the black around and cantered up the slope. The wounded Indian was gone from the rocks as I expected he would be and so were the bodies of the dead.

In this world no man stands alone, and others he meets leave their mark on him, no matter how passing or slight, adding in varying degree to the sum of his knowledge. Jen and Jacob Lawson were dreamers, but in their strange way they had shone a bright torch on the path I intended to take.

Soon I would wed pretty Sally Coleman and live with her happily ever after in a snug cabin of our own. I told myself love and peace we would have aplenty and there would be only a looking forward at happy events to come and not a single backward glance at what had passed before.

All this I thought as I rode under a wild, broken sky, the rain hammering at my face, the wind flapping the wet slicker around my legs.

That the wind blew unnaturally chill I did not notice, though I should have. There was a sharp, cold edge to its thin whisper that sighed of sundry perils to come.

But me, being young and in love, paid it no mind.