Blue-Eyed Devil

45

THE FLAMES were beginning to frolic above the roof-lines. The smoke was thick and black and smelled of coal oil. No Indians were in sight on Main Street. But there were periodic gunshots from the side streets, and people, mostly women and children, rushed out of them and began to mill on Main Street.

“He’s corralling them on Main Street,” I said.

“Then kill them,” Pony said.

“Can’t fight the fire,” Virgil said. “Can’t protect all the people. Only thing we can do is kill Apaches. Too few of us to spread out. We stay together. Kill any Indian we see.”

He looked at Pony.

“Have to,” he said.

Pony nodded.

“Boston House not burning yet,” he said.

“It will,” Virgil said.

“I go there,” Pony said.

Someone released two horses from the livery, and they skittered together down Slate Street and toward the open prairie.

“Indians gonna collect them later,” Chauncey said.

“And a lotta scalps,” I said.

We moved in the same direction down Bow Street. At the end of the block where Bow crossed Sixth Street two Apaches with Winchesters held their excited horses hard as they stepped and turned, blocking the street. Virgil killed them both.

“Roof,” Chauncey said, and killed an Apache straddling the ridgepole. The Indian tumbled off the ridge and rolled down the roof slant and fell to the street. His Winchester stayed halfway down the roof. Next door a building collapsed, the roof falling in with an explosion of flame, and smoke, and sparks, and debris.

A brave came out of an alley in front of us and rode straight at us, firing a big old Navy Colt. Indians in general were not great shooters, and the fact that we were standing, and they were shooting from horseback, gave us another edge. The tight choke of eight-gauge shot hit the Indian full in the chest and knocked him backward off his horse as if he had run into a wall. Somewhere a woman screamed. We could hear a baby crying above the roar of the flames. And occasionally came the awful scream of a war cry. We moved up Sixth Street to Slate and turned the corner. Virgil and I stayed tight to the wall. Chauncey Teagarden had an ivory-handled Colt in each hand.

“Fuck this,” he said, and stepped into the center of Slate Street, heading back toward Main. A bullet kicked up dirt in front of him and, almost negligently, he snapped off a shot with his left-hand gun and killed an Indian on a pinto horse. Main Street was full of terrified citizens milling desperately in the searing heat, under a pall of black smoke. The Indians herded them the way cowboys herded cattle. Mounted and moving among the citizens, the Apache were not easy targets. Teagarden stayed in the open street. Gunfire continued to miss him. If we got out of this we’d learn a couple of things. Teagarden could shoot. And he didn’t scare easily.

Suddenly the shooting stopped. The flames still tossed and snarled above the buildings, and the smoke still hung low over the street. But it seemed somehow as if everything stopped when Kha-to-nay rode into the maelstrom with four warriors behind him. A young girl with her skirts pushed up high on her bare legs straddled the big bay horse in front of Kha-to-nay, clamped against him by Kha-to-nay’s arm holding the reins. It was Laurel. With his left hand Kha-to-nay pressed the edge of a bowie knife against her stomach.

“Virgil Cole,” Kha-to-nay bellowed. “Put down your guns and show yourselves, or I will gut your little whore right here.”

Virgil stood in the doorway of the hardware store, looking at the situation. We could not let Laurel be cut. We could not give up our guns.

Pony Flores appeared from behind the Boston House, riding a horse with no saddle. Kha-to-nay raised a “hold your fire” hand to his troops, as Pony’s horse picked his way through the terrified crowd. He stopped beside Kha-to-nay. On Kha-to-nay’s left side. Laurel stared at him.

“Chiquita,” he said to her. “I have come get you, again.”

Kha-to-nay spoke to Pony in Apache. Pony answered. Kha-to-nay shook his head. Pony spoke again. Kha-to-nay spoke again, louder, shaking his head as he did so. Pony moved so quickly it was hard to follow. He took hold of Kha-to-nay’s knife hand and pulled it away from Laurel. His right leg swung over his horse’s withers and he was on Kha-to-nay’s horse, behind him. The knife appeared from the top of his moccasin. He cut Kha-to-nay’s throat, shoved him off the horse, slid forward behind Laurel, got hold of the reins with his arms around her, and kicked the horse forward. As the horse moved we opened up on the four warriors with Kha-to-nay. Three of them went down. Pony flattened Laurel out over the horse’s neck and himself over her, and they galloped into the coming darkness of the prairie.

The remaining rider stepped off his horse and squatted next to Kha-to-nay. Chauncey Teagarden raised one of his Colts.

“No,” Virgil said.

Chauncey shrugged and held the gun half raised. The Indian began to chant something. In a short while the rest of the still-surviving Indians moved slowly through the crowd and gathered around Kha-to-nay’s body. They joined the chant. It was nightfall, and the mourning Apaches gathered around their fallen leader were lit only by the violent flames of the burning town.

“It’s over,” Virgil said. “You know enough Apache to tell them that?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Say they can take him and go. We won’t bother them,” Virgil said.

“We got ’em in front of us,” Teagarden said. “We could clean them up for god.”

“I know,” Virgil said.

He nodded toward the group of Apaches.

“Talk to ’em,” Virgil said.

It was as much sign language as me speaking Apache, but I was able to get it across that they were free to take Kha-to-nay and go. The terrified and now delirious crowd in the streets watched them as they rode past bodies they’d killed, out of Appaloosa and away from it. I thought about how far they would have to ride before the burning town would no longer be visible.

“I thought Pony was trying to save his brother,” Chauncey said.

“He was,” Virgil said.

“Guess he wanted to save the girl more,” Chauncey said.

“Guess he did,” Virgil said.