Savage Territory

Chapter Twenty-five

San Carlos Indian Reservation

Although there was a central area to the San Carlos reservation where Indian Agent Baker lived and where the commissary, hospital, and school were built, not all the Apache lived there. In explaining it once, Baker had said that the reservation was like an Indian state and in the state were several small villages scattered about. At the extreme northwest part of the reservation was the most remote of all the villages. Here lived Alope, the daughter of Nopoloto. Nopoloto was the nephew of Cochise and had fought with Cochise until the great chief made peace with the U.S. Army.

The sun had not yet risen, but Alope knew that it was nearly dawn, because she had heard the morning birds begin their singing. Now, as she lay on blankets in her father’s wickiup, she contemplated the events that were to happen today.

For a long time, Alope had been in love with a young man from one of the other villages. Because Cochinay, whose name meant Yellow Thunder, was from another village, he had to have authorization from the council for the privilege of going to Nopoloto to ask his permission to marry Alope. After some consideration and exploration of Cochinay’s family, the council of elders gave their consent and Cochinay went to Alope’s father to make his petition.

Nopoloto agreed to give his daughter to the young man, on condition that Cochinay give him many ponies. When Nopoloto told Cochinay how many ponies he wanted for his daughter, Cochinay said nothing; he simply rode out of the village.

Hearing how many ponies her father asked for, and seeing Cochinay ride away without so much as a word, Alope feared that there would be no marriage. She wondered why her father had been so demanding. Perhaps love meant nothing to her father. Perhaps Nopoloto wanted to keep Alope with him, for she was a dutiful daughter.

“Do not question me, daughter,” Nopoloto said. “I set a very high price to test Cochinay’s love for you. If he returns with the ponies, it will prove that his love for you is deep, and it will satisfy a father that his daughter will be well taken care of, and that there will be grandchildren to bless me in my old age.”

To Alope’s joy, Cochinay returned the very next day and appeared before Nopoloto’s wickiup with even more ponies than Nopoloto had asked for.

That was one week ago. In the week since permission had been granted, Cochinay had come to the village to make a home for them. He constructed a wickiup of buffalo hides, putting in it many bear robes, lion hides, and other trophies of the hunt, as well as his spears, bows, and arrows.

Alope had made many little decorations of beads on buckskin, which she placed in the wickiup. She also drew many pictures on the walls of what today would be her new home.

But that would not be until after the council declared them married, so for now, Alope lay on the blankets in her parents’ wickiup, waiting for the sun to rise and the marriage to be ratified. Finally, a sliver of sunlight slipped in through the opening of the wickiup, and Alope, anxious to begin the day, got up, picked up a bucket, and started toward the nearby stream to get water.

In the dawn’s early light, just outside the little village where Alope lay waiting for the day to begin, Pogue Willis looked around at the men who formed his posse.

“This don’t look like no warrior camp. I think this is just a village,” one of the men said. “Do you really think the Bixby woman is here?” one of the men asked.

“I don’t know if she is or not, but she could be,” Willis said. “The way I look at it, there’s only one way to find out, and that’s to go in and have a look.”

“But what if she ain’t here?”

“What if she ain’t? If you think about it, Lathum, it don’t make any difference whether she’s here or not. I mean, look at it this way. Every Indian we kill will just be payin’ them back for them killing those six miners and Mr. Malcolm,” one of the others said.

“But we don’t know that these here Injuns is the one that done the killin’,” Lathum said.

“It don’t matter whether these are the ones or not,” Meechum said. “The ones that done the killin’ were Apache, weren’t they? These here Injuns is Apache. If we kill a bunch of Apaches ever’ time they kill some of us, they will pretty soon get the word that the only way they can keep from gettin’ killed themselves is to stop their own from killin’ us.”

“I tell you true, gents, Meechum is makin’ sense to me,” one of the others said.

“Yeah, I guess if you put it that way,” Lathum said. He nodded. “All right, if we are goin’ to do this, let’s get it done.”

There were fourteen armed men in the posse and they lined up abreast. Just before they started, however, a young woman came from one of the wickiups, carrying a water pail. She started toward the stream. Then, seeing a long line of armed white men sitting on their horses just outside the village, she dropped the pail.

“Cochinay!” she screamed at the top of her voice.

“Shoot that bitch!” Willis shouted, and instantly several gunshots rang out. The young woman fell back, the top of her dress red with blood from the many bullet wounds.

The girl’s scream and the sound of gunfire alerted the others in the village, and several stuck their heads out to see what was going on.

“Kill them!” Willis shouted. “Kill them all!”

The posse rode through the village, shooting everyone they saw whether it be man, woman, or child.

Many of the villagers were able to get out through the backs of their wickiups by crawling underneath the walls, then running toward the arroyo that traversed the back side of the village. In this way, more than half the village escaped. Finally, when all were either killed or had run, Willis shouted at the others to stop shooting.

“You ain’t doin’ nothin’ now but wastin’ your ammunition,” he said. “Get down and take a look through all them huts, see if there’s a white woman in any of ’em.”

For the next few minutes, every wickiup was searched, but there was no white woman to be found.

“What do we do now?” one of the men asked.

“Burn the village,” Willis said. “I want these Apache bastards to know that we mean business. For every one of ours they kill, we’ll kill ten of them.”

“That would mean we would have to kill seventy, and there ain’t no seventy dead Injuns here,” Lathum said. “There’s only about ten or eleven.”

“Yes, well, I do think they will get the picture,” Willis said as the men began setting fire to the highly flammable structures.

It took but a few minutes before every hut was ablaze. Then, with two dozen columns of smoke climbing into the air, the posse rode away, leaving behind not only the burning wickups, but also the bodies of those they had killed.

Cochinay was one of those who got away. Catching one of the fleeing ponies, he set out to find Delshay.

“Why did you not join me before?” Delshay asked when Cochinay arrived at his encampment and told him of the raid on Nopoloto’s village.

“Before, my blood ran cool, because I wanted only to marry Alope, hunt, fish, and have sons to hunt and fish. But the white man has killed Alope, and now my blood runs hot. I want to join you and kill as many white men as I can.”

Delshay nodded, then reached out to put his hand on Cochinay’s shoulder. “You are welcome, my brother,” he said.

Half an hour later, Chandeisi came into the wickiup where Cynthia was being kept.

“We must leave,” he said.

“But we always leave in the morning,” Cynthia replied. “Why must we leave now?”

“Because Delshay has said we must,” Chandeisi replied.

Cynthia nodded, then began getting together the possessions she had been given. By now she had two dresses, a bowl and a spoon, a comb, a pair of moccasins, and most valuable of all, a tablet and a pencil.

Cynthia had convinced Chandeisi that she needed the tablet and pencil in order to “write her prayers,” and because Chandeisi had a genuine respect for the religious practices of everyone, he did not question Cynthia.

When Cynthia left the note, just before they left that night, she felt a slight twinge of guilt, as if she were somehow betraying Chandeisi’s trust and friendship. But her desire to be found and rescued transcended any sense of betrayal she might have.

Phoenix

Ken Hendel and Jay Peerless Bixby were sitting at a table in the Dry Gulch Saloon. From the back of the room a woman screamed, but her scream was followed by her high-pitched laughter, then punctuated with the bass guffaws of the men who were with her.

Bixby looked back toward the table with an expression of disgust on his face.

“How can anyone live in a place like this?” he asked.

“Oh, I think it has its attractions,” Hendel said.

“Really? And what, pray tell, would be those attractions?” Bixby took in the saloon with a sweep of his arm. “Back in New York, I am a member of the Ambassador Club, where we have a collection of the finest wines and spirits in the world. Would you compare this—this saloon to the Ambassador Club? I tell you, Hendel, it is not by accident that they call this place the Dry Gulch.”

Hendel held up his beer. “This beer is brewed here in Phoenix by Andrew Marcus. I think that even you would agree that it is as good a beer as you will find anywhere—and far superior to most.”

“The beer is all right, I suppose,” Bixby said. “Though I much prefer wine.”

“Whoooeee!” somebody shouted as the batwing doors were kicked open. Looking toward the sound, Hendel saw Willis and several of the other men who had ridden out with him this morning when they started their search for Cynthia Bixby.

“Bartender, line up the bottles and start pouring drinks!” Willis yelled. “You’ve got a thirsty bunch of men comin’ in.”

A dozen men came filing in behind Willis. All of them were carrying souvenirs of some sort, from bows and arrows to buffalo robes to beaded rugs. A couple were even carrying what appeared to be scalps.

“Let me tell you, boys!” Willis said loudly. “It’s goin’ to be a cold day in hell before any bunch of Apaches kill any more white men or women.”

“What happened, Willis? What are you talking about?” the bartender asked as he began placing empty glasses on the bar, preparatory to filling them with whiskey or beer.

“I’ll tell you what happened. We found the camp of that murderin’, thievin’ bastard Delshay,” Willis said. He laughed, then held up his finger to emphasise his statement. “And we rode through that camp like shit through a goose. We must have killed more than half of ’em. The rest skedaddled like scalded-ass rabbits, leavin’ the camp behind ’em. So we burned ever’ tent, ever’ grain storage, we even burned up their dried meat. Yes, sir, even if they do come back, they won’t be able to live there ’cause they have got no place to live no more. And what’s more, they have got no food to eat.”

“Did you kill Delshay?” one of the patrons of the saloon asked.

“No, no, we didn’t get him. He’s one of them that got away. Which says a lot about him, if you want my opinion. It tells me that the son of a bitch is a coward when it comes to fightin’ against real fightin’ men.”

“I don’t know,” one of the saloon patrons replied. “I’ve heard a lot about Delshay, but I’ve never heard anyone call him a coward.”

Willis glared at the patron. “Well, I’m calling him a coward,” Willis said. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“What? No, sir, no, sir, not at all, Mr. Willis,” the patron said quickly. With trembling hands he picked up his beer, drained the rest of it, then left quickly, chased by the laughter of the members of Willis’s posse.

“You ever’ see anyone move as fast as that feller just done?” Meechum asked derisively, and the posse laughed again.

“What about Mrs. Bixby?” Hendel asked, surprised by the fact that Bixby hadn’t ask about his wife first.

Willis shook his head. “Sorry, we didn’t see no white women.”

“Did you look?” Hendel asked.

“Did we look? You damn right we looked. In case you forgot, they’s a ten-thousand-dollar reward bein’ offered up for her. They ain’t no way we’re goin’ out there and do what we done without lookin’ for the woman that’s missin’. Only, she wasn’t there and the nearest I can figure is they must of took her out with them when they left. Either that, or she’s dead.”

“Do you think that it is more or less likely that she is dead?” Bixby asked.

“Well, I don’t rightly know how to answer that,” Willis said. “But now, let me ask you a question. What if we would happen to find her and it turns out she is already dead? Would you still pay the ten thousand dollars?”

“The bill reads that the reward is to be paid only if she is returned safely,” Bixby said. “So the answer to your question is no. Why should I pay the reward if she is dead?”

By now all the drinks had been poured, and Willis picked up a glass of whiskey, then tossed it down. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before he replied.

“I’m told by the folks who know them best that Indians don’t bury the whites they kill, and like I told you, we did not find a white woman’s body,” Willis said. “So, if you was to ask me, I would say that they have not killed her.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“No, I don’t know for sure.”

“I didn’t think so,” Bixby said. “It turns out that you are no different from all the other cretins who live out here. You are incompetent and irresponsible. The truth is, if you lived in New York, there is no doubt in my mind that you would all be incarcerated by now.”

Willis took another drink and studied Bixby over the rim of his glass for a long moment.

“Jay Peerless Bixby,” he said. “Only you are Jay Peerless Bixby Junior, aren’t you now? And it’s remembering, I am, that your old man, Jay Peerless Bixby Senior, is the bloke what was sent upriver for dippin’ some sticky fingers into Crédit Mobilier. Whether you do your stealin’ on the docks or in some fancy office, it’s still stealing, now ain’t it, laddie?”

Gone was the flat Western twang Willis had acquired, to be replaced by the accent of Hell’s Kitchen in New York.

“What?” Bixby asked, his cheeks flaming in color. “How—how do you know about that? Who are you?”

“Let’s just say that I am someone you don’t want on your bad side, whether it’s in Hell’s Kitchen or Tombstone, Arizona,” Willis replied.

Willis’s words had not only surprised Bixby, but everyone else in the saloon as well.

“I never know’d that about you,” Meechum said.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Willis said, still using his New York accent. Then, switching to a Western twang, he added, “But why are we standin’ around here jawbonin’? Seems to me like we got us some celebratin’ to do. We done what the entire U.S. Army ain’t been able to do, and that’s find and destroy the camp of that murderin’ bastard Delshay.”