The Lonely Men

*

Chapter 1

It Was Hot. The Shallow Place Where I Lay Atop The Desert Ridge was like an oven, the rocks like burning coals. Out on the flat below, where the Apaches waited, the heat waves shimmered and danced. Only the far-off mountains looked cool.

When I tried to push out my tongue to touch my cracked lips it was like a dry stick in my mouth, and the dark splashes on the rock were blood ... my blood.

The round thing lying yonder with a bullet hole in it was my canteen, but there might be a smidgen of water left in the bottom -- enough to keep me alive if I could get to it.

Down on the flat lay my sorrel horse, who had run himself to death trying to save my hide, and him with a bullet hole in his belly. In the saddlebags were the few odds and ends that were likely to be as much as I'd ever have of possessions in this life, for I didn't seem to be a fortunate man when it came to getting the riches of the world.

Back in the high-up Tennessee hills they used to tell it that when fighting time came around a body should stand clear of us Sacketts, but those Apaches down yonder had never heard the stories, and wouldn't have paid them no mind if they had.

If you saw an Apache on a parade ground he might not stack up too much, but out in the brush and rocks of his native country, he was a first-class fighting man, and maybe the greatest guerrilla fighter the world ever saw.

Squinting my eyes against the glare and the thin trickle of salty sweat in my eyes, I clutched the stock of my rifle right back of the action and searched the terrain for something at which to shoot. My mouth was dry, my fingers stiff, and my rifle action so hot I daren't touch it unless to shoot, and quick.

Down there on the trail Billy Higgins lay gut-shot and dead, killed at the last by my own bullet to save him from torture.

We'd been riding east in the cool of the morning when those Apaches hit us from out of nowhere. Rightly, this wasn't even Apache country. This was Pima or Papago country, and they were Indians who were friendly to us, and who fought the Apaches on every occasion. When those Apaches hit us it was every man for himself, and Billy Higgins and me, we taken out a-running, heading for the rocks where we could make a fight of it. An Apache with a .56 Spencer reared up from behind a greasewood and shot Billy right through the belly, opening him up as if it had been done with a saber. It meant he was dying, and he knew it.

Swinging my horse, I came back to him where he had fallen, but he looked up cool as could be and said, "You light out, Tell. I've seen some gut-shot folks in my time, but nobody had it worse than me."

The shock of the bullet was still on him, but in a minute or two he would begin to suffer.

When I got down to lift him up he stopped me. "Before God, Tell, if you try to pick me up everything I've got in me will spill out. You hit the trail, but try to get another one for me, will you? You can help more up in the rocks, keepin' them off me."

What he said was gospel true and we both knew it, so I swung my horse and lit a shuck for those rocks as if my sorrel's tail was afire. Only we didn't get far.

I heard the shots and felt the sorrel's hoofs break rythm, and then he started to cave under me, but somehow he fought himself up and kept on for fifty yards more. Then he started to go and I hit the ground running before he was down, with bullets kicking gravel ahead of and around me.

Almost at the top of the ridge a bullet caught me, and it saved my life.

It spun me, knocked me rolling butt over teakettle into the rocks, with two more bullets hitting right where I'd been. Scrambling up, I dove over into that shallow place and lay there, rifle in hand, hugging the ground. When the first Apache showed, I nailed him right between the eyes.

After that things quieted down, but there was no way to get clear. The ground around me hadn't anything in the way of cover, so I had to stay where I was ... with the morning ebbing away into noontime.

I'd no idea how many Apaches were out there. As they lived off the desert they never traveled in big bunches, there were rarely as many as thirty, more often twelve to eighteen, so far as I'd seen or heard.

Off to the northwest I could hear shooting, time to time, so some of the others must be alive, after all. There'd been five of us, to start, and all strangers who met in Yuma. That was the way it was in those days. More often than not a man might find himself traveling with folks he'd never seen before. None of the five of us had any knowledge of the others before we hit the trail. Traveling alone was a mighty chancy thing in Indian country, so it was lucky that we all shaped up to go east at the same time.

Now Billy was down, but I'd nailed an Apache. Right at the moment my chances didn't look good. If they were settin' a place for me in Tucson they'd best wait, for it began to look like there'd be an empty spot at the table.

I hunkered down a mite and piled a few rocks on the edge of the hollow to give me some more protection, leaving a place here and there to look through or fire through. I took time to replace the shells I'd fired ... no idea when the chance would come again.

Apaches are great waiters. They could set for hours on end, just waiting a wrong move. A white man, he gets restless, wants to move, and the first thing you know he does, and he dies.

Not me. I grew up in Cherokee country in Tennessee, and my pa had been a mountain man who'd fought Indians from boyhood ... he'd taught us when he was home, taught us all he could, and I learned from the Indians, too.

This shallow place in which I lay was scarcely three feet deep. It was maybe eight feet each way, and the lowest part was where the run-off water had started a trench that emptied into a draw in back of me.

The sky was a hot yellow, the land pinkish, with out-croppings of dull red or black. There was mighty little growth -- just scraggly desert shrubs and prickly pear, and mighty little of that.

The time inched by, with no change in the heat, no change in the sun, no change in the country around. Unless I lifted my head, nothing could be seen and I must trust to my hearing.

On the slope, there was nothing. My horse lay down there, and the body of Billy Higgins.

I hadn't been there long when I heard Billy scream. Taking a chance, I peeked out.

The Apaches were shooting flaming slivers of pitch pine into him with their bows. They were hidden down close to him, and there was no way I could get at them, nor them at me. They were shooting into Billy to torture him, which amused them, but also they were doing it to draw me out.

Three fires were smoldering in him before he screamed. And then he yelled to me:

"Tell! For God's sake, Tell! Shoot me!"

He lay out on the white sand in the glare of the awful sun, ripped open by a bullet, and the Apaches kept shooting those little arrows of flaming pitch pine into him. "Tell!"

There was terrible agony in his voice, and a pleading, too.

All of a sudden, he forced himself up and he put a finger against his skull.

"Tell! Right there! For God's sake, Tell!"

So I shot him. He would have done it for me.

You should have heard those Apaches yell. I'd spoiled their fun, and they were mad, real mad.

One of them jumped up, running at me, but just as I was about to shoot he dropped from sight, then another started and another, both disappearing before I could bring my rifle to bear, but each one a few yards closer.

Times like that, a body does some thinking, and right then I was a-wishing I was somewhere else, a-wishing I'd never come to Arizona a-tall, although until then I'd been mighty proud of the Territory, and even though hard times had come upon me I liked the country. Right now all I wanted was a way out ... any way out.

But those Apaches had a mind to keep me there.

All of a sudden one of them came up out of the sand and started for me, but when I swung my gun, another started up.

Now, even a fool boy from the hills is going to learn after a while, and so the next time one started up I didn't swing my gun and try to nail him, I just waited with my eyes on the place where the first one dropped. Not exactly on the place, for no Apache will ever get up from where he drops, he rolls over a few feet to right or left, sometimes quite a few feet.

Another of them started up, but I let him come until he dropped, and I waited for the first one. Sure enough, up he bobbed and I had to move the rifle muzzle only inches, and I nailed him right in the brisket, dusting him on both sides.

Before he could fall I worked the lever on my Winchester and got him again.

Then the others were coming and, swinging the gun, I caught another one ... too low down. He hit the ground in the open and the third one also dropped, not more than twenty feet now from the rim of my hollow.

One lay out there with what looked like a busted leg, and I let him lay until he tried to bring his rifle to bear, and then I eased around for a shot at him. The muzzle of my rifle must have showed a mite beyond the rocks at the edge of my hole, because the third one fired, hitting the rocks and spattering me with stinging rock fragments, one of which took me right in the eye.

Then they came, the two of them. The one with the bloody but unbroken leg, and the third one shooting as he came. I dropped my rifle and, with my eyes full of water from the smart of rock fragments, grabbed my bowie knife.

Now, I'm a pretty big man, standing six foot three in my socks, and although on the lean side what beef I had was packed into my arms and shoulders. That bowie knife was a heavy blade, razor-sharp, and when those two Apaches jumped into the hollow with me I took a wicked swipe at where they figured to be. Somebody screamed, and I felt a body smash against me. Upping my knee, I threw him off and fell back, just missing a slashing blow that would have taken my head off.

One Apache was down but not out. I could see a little now, and when I started to come up he grabbed at my rifle which was lying there and I threw myself at him, knocking the barrel aside with one hand and ripping up with that blade with the other.

He threw me off and I fell, all sprawled out, and they both came up and at me.

One had a wounded leg, one had a slash across the chest and biceps, but they were tigers, believe me. It was like being in a mess of wildcats, and for the next thirty or forty seconds I never knew which end was up, until of a sudden the fight was over and I was lying there on the ground, gasping for breath, with tearing gasps.

Finally I pushed myself up from the sand and turned over into a sitting position.

One Apache was dead, my bowie knife still in his chest. I reached over and pulled it loose, watching the other one. He was lying there on his back and he had a bullet hole in his thigh that was oozing blood and he had at least three knife cuts, one of them low down on his right side that looked mean.

Reaching over, I took up my rifle and jacked a shell into the chamber.

That Apache just kept a-staring at me, he seemed to be paralyzed, almost, for he made no move. The other two were dead.

Jerking a cartridge belt from one of the dead ones I looped it around my middle, still keeping an eye on the living one. Then I picked up my bowie knife from the ground and, leaning over to the living one I wiped off the blood on him, then stuck the knife into the scabbard.

One by one I collected their rifles and emptied the shells, then threw them wide.

"You're too good a fightin' man to kill," I told him. "You're on your own."

I walked down to where my canteen lay and picked it up. Sure enough, there was maybe a cup of water that had not drained out, and I drank it, watching the rim of the hollow all the while.

By now it was coming on to sundown and there were other Indians about. I took one more look into the hollow and that one was still lying there, although he'd tried to move. I could see a big rock back of his neck that maybe he'd hit across when he fell.

Taking a careful look around, I went down into the shallow gully left by the run-off water and started away.

About that time I found myself going lame. My hip and leg were mighty sore, and when I looked down to size the situation up I saw that a bullet had hit my cartridge belt, fusing two of my .44's together, and a fragment had gone up and hit my side, just a scratch, but it was bloody. That bullet that hit my belt where it crossed the hip had bruised me mighty bad, by the feel of it.

Shadows were creeping out from the rocks, and of a sudden it was cool and dark.

A voice spoke out. "You want to live long in this country you better get shut of them spurs."

It was Spanish Murphy. He came up from behind some brush with Rocca and John J.

Battles. Taylor was dead.

Murphy had lost the lobe of his left ear, and Rocca had been burned a couple of times, but no more.

"You get any?" Battles asked. "Four," I said, knowing that was more Apaches than many an Indian fighter got in a lifetime. "Three, and a possible," I corrected.

And then I added, "They got Billy."

"We'd best light out," Spanish suggested, and we walked single file to where their horses were. They had two horses, so we figured to switch off and on.

Spanish was tall as me, but twenty pounds lighter than my one-ninety. He was a reading man, always a-reading. Books, newspapers, even the labels on tin cans ... anything and everything.

We set out then. After a while I rode Tampico Rocca's horse and he walked. By daybreak both horses were tired out and so were we, but we had sixteen miles behind us and a stage station down on the flat before us. We were still several hundred yards off when a man walked from the door with a rifle in his hands, and we were almighty sure there was another one behind a window from the way he kept out of line with it.

When we came up to the yard he looked at Murphy, then at the rest of us, and back at Murphy. "Hello, Spanish. What was it? Apaches?"

"Have you got a couple of horses?" I asked him. "I'll buy or borrow."

"Come on inside."

It was cool and still. Me, I dropped into the first chair I saw and put my Winchester on the table.

A second man left the window where he had been keeping watch and, carrying his rifle, he went back toward the kitchen, where he began rattling pots and pans.

The first man went over to a table and carried the wooden bucket and the gourd dipper to us. "I'd go easy, there at first," he suggested. And that we did. The station tender leaned on the bar. "Haven't seen you in years, Spanish. Figured they'd have stretched your neck before now."

"Give 'em time," John J. Battles said. Setting there in the chair, taking occasional swallows of cool water from the bucket, I began to feel myself getting back to normal.

Spanish, he leaned back in his chair and looked over his cup at the station tender. "Case, how long you been with the Company?"

"Two ... maybe two and a half years. My wife left me. Said this western country was no place for a woman. She went back to her folks in Boston. I send her money, time to time. Afraid if I don't she'll come back on me."

"Ain't never married, myself," Spanish said. He looked over at me. "How about you, Tell?"

For a moment there I hadn't anything to say. I kept thinking of Ange, the last times I saw her, and of the first times, high in those Colorado mountains.

"My wife is dead," I told him. "She was a rarely fine girl ... rarely fine."

"Tough," Spanish said. "You, Rocca?"

"No, senor. I am not a married man. There was a girl ... but that is far away and long ago, amigos. Her father had many cows, many horses ... me, I had nothing. And I was an Indio ... my mother was an Apache," he added.

My eyes were on the floor, tracing the cracks in the rough boards, often scrubbed. My hungry flesh was soaking up the lost moisture and I felt sleepy and quiet, liking the square of sunlight that lay inside the door, even the drone of the flies ... I was alive.

The blood of Apaches was still on my hands. There had been no water in which to wash until now, but soon I would ... soon.

The room was like many of its kind, differing only in the plank floor. Most floors were of stamped earth. There were several rough board tables, some chairs and benches. The room was low-raftered, the walls were of adobe, the roof of poles and earth. I could smell bacon frying in the kitchen, and coffee.

Spanish Murphy hitched around in his chair. "Tell, we make a team, the four of us, why don't we stick together?"

The man came in from the kitchen with tin plates and a frying pan filled with bacon. He dumped the plates on the table, then forked bacon onto them. He went out and returned with the coffeepot and a plate of tortillas. Still another trip and he brought a big bowl of frijoles -- those big Mexican brown beans -- and a dried-apple pie cut into four pieces.

"We'll need a couple of horses," I said, looking around at Case.

"You'll get 'em," Case replied. "I think the Comp'ny would like to get them to a safer place. We've been expectin' an attack almost any time."

He gestured toward the bacon. "You got to thank Pete Kitchen for the bacon. He raises hogs down to his place, calls 'em his 'Pache pincushions, they're so shot full of arrows."

John J. Battles, a solid chunk of a man, glanced across the table at me.

"Sackett ... that's a familiar name."

"I'm familiar," I agreed, "once you know me." It wasn't in me to get him comparing notes, figuring out who I was. Once he did, he'd bring up the fight in the Mogollon country, and how Ange was murdered. It was something I was wishful of forgetting.

"I still figure," Spanish said, "that we'd make a team."

"If you want to risk hanging." John J. Battles grinned at us. "You all heard what Case said."

"Me," Rocca said, "I wasn't going nowhere, anyhow."

"Later," I said, "it will have to be later. I've got a trip to take."

They looked at me, all of them. "My brother's kid. I hear tell he's been taken by the Apaches. I've got to go into the Sierra Madres after him."

They thought I was crazy, and I was thinking so myself. Rocca was the first: one to speak. "Alone? Senor, an army could not do it. That is the Apache hideout where no white man goes."

"It's got to be done," I said.

Case, he just looked at me. "You're crazy. You're scrambled in the head."

"He's just a little boy," I said, "and he's alone down yonder. I think he will be expectin' somebody to come for him."

Chapter 2

Laura Sackett was a strikingly pretty young woman, blonde and fragile. Among the dark, sultry beauties of Spanish descent she seemed a pale, delicate flower, aloof, serene, untouchable.

To the young Army officers in the Tucson vicinity, Laura Sackett was utterly fascinating, and this feeling was not dulled by the knowledge that she was a married woman. Her husband, it was known, was Congressman Orrin Sackett, who was in Washington, D. C. Apparently they had separated.

But nobody seemed to know just what the status of the marriage was, and Laura offered no comment, nor did she respond to hints.

Her conduct was irreproachable, her manner ladylike, her voice was soft and pleasant. The more discerning did notice that her mouth was a little too tight, her eyes shadowed with hardness, but these characteristics were usually lost in the quiet smiles that hovered about her lips.

Nobody in Tucson had ever known Jonathan Pritts, Laura's father, and none of them had been present in the vicinity of Mora during the land-grant fighting.

Jonathan Pritts was now dead. A narrow, bigoted man, tight-fisted and arrogant, he had been idolized by his daughter and only child, and with his death her hatred for the Sacketts had become a fierce, burning urge to destroy.

She had seen her father driven from Mora, his dream of empire shattered, his hired gunmen killed or imprisoned. A vain, petty, and self-important man, he had impressed upon his daughter that he was all the things he assumed he was, and to her all other men were but shadows before the reality of her father.

Until he had come west, they had lived together in genteel poverty. His schemes for riches had failed one by one, and with each failure his rancor and bitterness grew. Each failure, he was positive, had come not from any mistake on his part, but always from the envy or hatred of others.

Laura Pritts had married Orrin Sackett with one thought in mind -- to further her father's schemes. Orrin, big, handsome, and genial, and fresh from the Tennessee hills, had never seen a girl like Laura. She seemed everything he had ever dreamed of. Tyrel had seen through her at once, and through her father as well, but Orrin would not listen. He was seeing what he wished to see -- a great lady, a princess almost -- graceful, alluring, a girl of character and refinement. But in the end he saw her, and her father, for what they were, and he had left her.

And now Laura Pritts Sackett was returning, without a plan, without anything but the desire to destroy those who had destroyed her father.

As if by magic, on the stage to Tucson, the pieces began to fall into place. At the first stage stop east of Yuma she overheard the driver talking to the station tender.

"Saw him in Yuma," the driver was saying. "I'd have known him anywhere. Those Sackett boys all look alike."

"Sackett? The gunfighter?"

"They're all good with their guns. This one is Tell Sackett. He's been out California way."

The idea came to her that night. She had been trying to think of some way to hurt the Sacketts, to get even with them. Now here was Tell Sackett, the older brother, the one she had never met. It was unlikely that he knew of her difficulties with Orrin. The Sacketts wrote few letters, and from what she remembered Orrin had not seen his brother in years. Of course, he might have seen him since she left, but there was a chance, and she resolved to take it.

The means was supplied to her also by way of a conversation overheard. She had heard many such conversations without thinking of how they might be used. The men were talking of the Apaches, of some children stolen by them, perhaps killed. "Two of them were Dan Creed's boys. I don't know who the other one was."

The young Army lieutenant on the stage had made tentative efforts at a conversation with Laura, all of which she had studiously avoided. At his next attempt she surprised him by turning with a faint, somewhat remote smile.

"Is it true, Lieutenant, that there are Apaches about? Tell me about them."

Lieutenant Jack Davis leaned forward eagerly. He was a very young man, and Laura Sackett was a beautiful young woman. It was true he had himself been on only two scouts into Apache country, but he had served with older, more experienced men who had talked freely, and he had listened well.

"Yes, there are Apaches," he said, "and it is true we might encounter them at any time, but the men on this coach are all armed, and are experienced fighting men. You will not need to worry."

"I was not worried about them, Lieutenant, merely curious. Is it true that when attacked they retreat into Mexico? Into the Sierra Madre?"

"Unfortunately, yes. And the Mexicans are not helpful. They refuse to allow any of our armed forces to cross the border in pursuit, although I believe there are some indications the two governments may work together against the Apaches."

"So it seems likely that if a prisoner were taken over the border into Mexico you would not have much chance of recovering him, would you?"

"Almost none. A few times exchanges have been arranged. In a few cases individuals have traded goods or horses for a prisoner, but if the Apaches are pursued, they usually kill their prisoners."

Laura Pritts Sackett was thoughtful, and at the next stage stop she wrote her note to William Tell Sackett. Unless she was completely mistaken, he would come to Tucson at once, and unless she was equally mistaken, he would start at once for the Sierra Madres. The rest would be up to the Apaches.

What the Apaches failed to do, if they failed, might be done by other means ... for which the Apaches would receive due credit.

Skillfully, she drew out the young lieutenant, and his comments were added to from time to time by one or another of the coach passengers. By the time the stage arrived in Tucson, Laura was well posted on the activities of the Apaches in Arizona Territory, as well as on the many times they had killed or kidnapped children, from the Oatman Massacre to the moment of her stage trip.

"Supposing one man or several men -- not soldiers -- were to try to go into the Sierra Madres?" she asked Lieutenant Davis.

"They would never return alive." The lieutenant was positive. "They wouldn't have a chance."

One of the passengers, a bleak, hard-faced man in rough frontier garb, looked around at him briefly. "Depend on the man," he said after a moment, but if he was heard his comment was not acknowledged.

That night, seated before her mirror, Laura Sackett knew she had found what she wanted. To trap his beloved brother would be just as satisfying as to trap Orrin himself, or Tyrel, whom she blamed even more.

She wished only for one thing: to see their faces when they realized how their brother had been duped.

When that man at the stage station in Yuma told me there was a letter for me I thought he was surely mistaken. Why, I couldn't recall getting more than three or four letters in my whole life, and nobody knew I was in Yuma -- nobody at all.

None of us folks had been much hand to write. Orrin and Tyrel had learned to write, but with me writing was an almighty slow affair, and not one to be undertaken lightly. And we were never much on just exchanging letters unless there was something all-fired important. But sure enough, this letter was for me, William Tell Sackett. It read:

Dear Tell:

Our son, Orrin's and mine, has been taken by the Apaches. Orrin is in Washington, D. C. Tyrel is laid up.

Can you help me?

Laura Sackett So old Orrin had him a boy! Now, nobody had seen fit to tell me, but drifting place to place the way I'd been, it was no wonder. And no need for me to know, when it came to that.

None of the family knew where I was, but that need cut no ice now. When I'd needed help the whole lot of them had come a-running, and if the Apaches had Orrin's boy I'd have to move fast before they killed him ... if they hadn't already.

A body never knew what the Apaches would do. They might kill a child right off, or they might cotton to the youngster and raise him like one of their own sons, and with just as much affection and care. A lot depended on how old the boy was, on how he reacted, and on how fast the Apaches had to move.

The Apaches, I knew, had respect for the brave. They had no use for weakness or cowardice, and you'd get nothing but contempt by asking for mercy.

An Apache admired the virtues he himself needed in the life he led. Bravery, fortitude, endurance, and the skills of the hunter and the hunted -- these were important to him, these he understood.

Tucson lay still under a hot noonday sun when we dusted our hocks down the main drag, eyes open for a saloon or an eating house where there'd be shade, something to wet our whistles, and the trail gossip we were eager to hear.

We rode into town with care, for we were all men with enemies. We rode with our guns loose in the holsters, ready to run or fight, as the case might be, but the street was empty, heavy with heat.

The temperature was over a hundred in the shade.

"All this town needs," John J. Battles said, "is more water and a better class of people."

"That's all hell needs," Spanish replied. "Let's get into the shade."

We were hard and lonely men who rode a hard and lonely way. We had known nothing of each other until this ride began in Yuma, and even now we knew scarcely more.

But we had sweated and thirsted together, we had hungered and fought, and eaten trail dust together, so now we rode as brothers ride.

We were men with sorrows behind us, and battles too, men with regrets behind us of which we did not speak, nor too often think. With none to share our sorrows or regrets, we kept them to ourselves, and our faces were impassive. Men with no one to share their feelings learn to conceal those feelings. We often spoke lightly of things which we took very seriously indeed.

We were sentimental men, but that was our secret, for an enemy who knows your feelings is an enemy who has a hold on you. Not all poker is played over a card table.

Although we spoke so lightly of Tucson we all liked the town, and were glad to be there.

Me, I was nothing but a tall boy from the high-up Tennessee hills who tried to live the way he'd been taught. Ma hadn't much book learning, but she had straight-out ideas on what was fair and decent, and there was no nonsense about her and Pa when it came to dealing with enemies, or those who were evil.

Pa stood by the same principles Ma did, but Pa taught us other things too: how to stand up for what he believed was right, and to back down for no man when it came to fighting time. He taught us how to fight, how to find our way through rough country, and how to handle cards better than most gamblers, although he didn't hold with gambling.

"If you go among the Philistines," he used to say, "it is better to go armed."

So he taught us how to recognize a bottom deal, and to read marked cards, and how the sharpers operated. The four of us split up on the street in Tucson.

Rocca had some friends in the Mexican town, and Spanish Murphy went with him.

John J. Battles had plans of his own, and so had I.

With me there was no choice, and little time. I met an idea head-on, and this time I had to do whatever might be done for that boy of Orrin's. I'd get cleaned up, get a bite to eat, and then I'd find this Laura Sackett. I'd never met Orrin's wife, but any woman Orrin would cotton to would be all right with me.

I'd been away from the other boys and knew little of their affairs. Tyrel had married a girl of Spanish blood, and had done well. Orrin had run for office and been elected, and I did recall some talk of his marrying, but none of the details. Nor had I any idea why she was in Tucson, and him in Washington. Folks' affairs are their own business, and I never was one for asking questions. What folks wanted me to know they would tell me, and I had enough to keep me busy.

The Shoo-Fly Restaurant was a long, narrow room with a white muslin ceiling and a floor of rammed earth. There were a few windows, a dozen or so tables of pine boards, and some chairs and benches, none of which would set quite even on the floor, but the food was good, and it was a cool, quiet place after the desert.

When I ducked through the door and straightened up inside, it taken me a moment to get my eyes accustomed to the place.

Three Army officers sat at one table, two older men and their wives at another.

John Titus and a man named Bashford, both important men in the community, sat nearby. At a table in the corner near the window sat a blonde young woman, pale and pretty, her parasol beside her. When I came in she looked at me quick and puzzled, then glanced away.

Seemed like I was the roughest-dressed man in the place, and the biggest. My boots were down at heel, and my big California-style spurs rattled when I walked. My jeans were 'most wore out, and they carried a blood stain. I'd shaved, all right, but my hair was long and shaggy, and of course I was packing a six-shooter as well as a bowie knife, and carrying a Winchester.

Mrs. Wallen, who ran the place, remembered me from a while back. "How do you do, Mr. Sackett," she said. "Did you just get in?"

"Four of us did," I said dryly. "Two of us didn't."

Titus looked around at me. "Apaches?"

"Uh-huh ... I'd say about fifteen, twenty of them."

"Get any of them?"

"Some," I said, and took a seat at a table near the wall where I could see the door and could stand my rifle in a corner.

"If you got any," one of the Army officers said, "you were lucky."

"I was lucky," I said.

Mrs. Wallen, who knew hungry men, as any frontier woman would, was already at the table with a cup and a pot of coffee. Then she brought me a slab of beef and some chili and beans, regular fare for that country.

As I ate, my muscles relaxed. A man on the run or fighting can get himself all keyed up with muscle and nerve ready for trouble until he's tighter than a drumhead. This was a pleasant room, and while I was never much hand for mixing in society, I liked folks, and liked to be among them.

Orrin was the mixer of the family. He had him an easy way with folks, he liked to talk and to listen, and he played a guitar and sang like any good Welshman.

Give him ten minutes in a room and he'd be friends with everybody there.

Me, I was quiet. I guess I'm friendly enough, but I was never much hand at getting acquainted with folks.

I figure I was shaped to be a wallflower, but I don't mind. I sort of like to set back and listen to folks, to drink coffee, and contemplate.

When trouble shaped up, Orrin would try to talk a man out of it, although he was a hand at any kind of fighting when they decided not to listen. Tyrel, he was the mean one. I mean he was a fine man, but you couldn't push him. He just hadn't any give in him at all. If you come to Tyrel a-hunting after trouble he had plenty to offer. Me, I wasn't much of a talker, and no kind of a trouble-hunter. Folks had to bring it to me hard, but when they did that I just naturally reacted.

I'd roped and hogtied many a wild longhorn out on the plains of Texas, and I'd busted some mustangs in my time, and quite a few hard-to-get-along-with men, too. When it came to shooting, well, me and Tyrel could never figure which was best. We had both been shooting since we were big enough to lift a cartridge.

Sitting there in that quiet room, my muscles resting easy and the warmth of food stealing through me, I listened to the talk around and wondered if ever I would have a home of my own. Seemed as if every chance left me with less than before.

My home was wherever I hung my hat, but these here were mostly settled folks out for a bite to eat on a Sunday, which this was. Back in the mountains, come Sunday we used to dress in our go-to-meetin' clothes and drive down to church.

It was a fine old get-together in those days. We'd listen to the preacher expounding of our sins, most of us kind of prideful we'd managed to sin so much, but ashamed before his tongue-lashing, and some were kind of amazed that they were so sinful after all. Seemed like with farming and cussing the mules, a body didn't rightly find much time for sinning.

We'd sing the hymns in fine, rolling, and sometimes out-of-tune voices, and after church we'd set out under the trees with our picnic lunches and some of the womenfolks would swap food back and forth. Emmy Tatum, she made the best watermelon pickles any place around, and old Jeannie Bland from up at the forks of the creek, she could make apple cider that would grow bark on a mushroom.

That was long ago and far away, but sometimes I could set back and close my eyes and still hear those folks a-singing "On Jordan's Stormy Banks" or "Rock of Ages," or maybe the one about the church in the wildwood. Everything was homemade, even the clothes we wore. Why, I'd been nigh to sixteen before I ever saw a pair of store-bought pants, or shoes we hadn't cobbled ourselves out of our own tanned leather.

One of the Army officers was standing beside my table. "Mind if I sit down, sir?" he said.

"Welcome," I said. "My name is Sackett, William Tell Sackett."

He extended his hand. "Captain Lewiston, sir. You mentioned a difficulty with the Apaches. Did you get a good look at any of them?"

"Well, they weren't reservation Indians, if that's what you mean."

"How do you know that?"

Me, I just looked at him. "By the smell of them. They'd come out of the desert after a long ride. The droppings of their horses showed fibers of desert plants they'd eat only if there was nothing else."

"Did you say you got some of them?"

"Three ... and one I hurt but didn't kill." He looked at me, and so I told him.

"He was too good a fighting man to kill, Captain. I got two of them with my rifle, and then two jumped me in the hollow. One I killed, but the other was a tiger. He seemed to have been paralyzed so I let him lay."

"You weren't alone?"

"Three men along with me, but not right there. I think they might have killed some, too."

"You lost two men?"

"Taylor and Billy Higgins. I never knew Taylor's first name. We didn't get a chance to pick up their bodies. When we could pull out, we did."

"About the dead ones, now. Did one of them have a scar on his cheekbone? That would be just too much to expect, I suppose."

"No ... not the dead ones. I didn't notice any scars on the dead one. But that one I left alive, he had a scar on his cheekbone."

Chapter 3

Captain Lewiston sighed. "You may wish you had killed him, Mr. Sackett. That was Kahtenny, one of the most dangerous and elusive Apaches of them all."

"He was in pretty bad shape, Captain, and I'm no man to kill a fighter like that when he's down and helpless."

Lewiston smiled. "I feel the same, but I am afraid there are some who do not.

There are those who feel they all should be killed."

That there blonde girl across the room was sure enough listening, although she was making quite a show of doing nothing but sort of idling over her food.

"Captain, I fought those Indians because they attacked me. I don't blame them for that. The Apache has made fighting his way of living for as long as his oldest people can recall. Or as long as the oldest Pimas and Papagos recall.

"The way I figure it, they fight because it's their way, and we fight back because it's our way. Somebody wins, somebody loses. Nobody in this country, or anywhere that I know of, can live in peace unless he's got somebody somewhere, protecting him."

Mrs. Wallen brought the Captain some coffee, and we sat there a few minutes more, discussing the Apache and his ways.

"You've been a soldier, Mr. Sackett?"

"Yes, sir. I served four years during the War Between the States. I was at Shiloh and the Wilderness ... and a few other places."

"We could use you here. Ever thought of joining up again?"

"No. I did what I had to do when the time came to do it. Now I'll fight when somebody can't be persuaded to leave me alone. Seems to me I've done enough Indian fighting without joining up to hunt for it."

"Are you related to Congressman Sackett?"

"Brother. Fact is, I'm here to talk to his wife." I glanced across the room at the blonde girl, who was now looking right at me. "I figure to get their son back from the Apaches."

"Their son?" Lewiston looked puzzled, but before he could say more, Laura Sackett interrupted. "Tell? I am Laura Sackett. Will you join me?" So I got up.

"Excuse me, Captain," I said, and taking my coffee I walked over to her table.

"Howdy, ma'am. Seems strange, not knowing you, but when you and Orrin married I was clean across the country. Never heard much about it."

"Sit down, Tell. We must talk." She put her hand on mine and looked at me with those wide blue eyes. "Let's not talk about trouble now, Tell. I want to know about you. After all, we must get to know each other."

Now, there isn't much that's more likely to make a man talk than a pretty woman who is ready to listen, so I found myself a-talking to her, mostly about Ange and how I found her high up in those far Colorado mountains where nobody lived, and then how she was murdered and how I hunted down the killer and got myself in a tight spot.

She had a pretty smile, and she gave me a lot of it. There were a couple of things about her looks that I didn't really shape up to like, but nobody is perfect. She had a small mouth, and it was kind of tight and hard at times, but she was a pleasure to talk to, and I talked.

Finally, she said would I walk her home, and it came to me suddenly that we'd talked the afternoon away and those Army officers were gone. Once out of the restaurant, she told me about the boy Orry, as she called him.

"He was taken with the Creed boys," she explained, "and the Army can do nothing.

I know if Orrin were here he would ride right down into Mexico and bring him back, but by the time Orrin could get here it might be too late. Then I heard you were in Yuma. You were my only chance."

"How old is the boy?"

"He's five ... going on six." She paused. "I must warn you, Tell, whatever you decide to do, you must not mention it around here. The Army would not allow you to cross the border on any such mission. Right now they are trying to arrange a working agreement with the Mexicans to join forces in stamping out the Apaches.

They want to attack them right in their stronghold in the Sierra Madre ... and that's another reason we must hurry. I have heard that if the Apaches are attacked they will kill all their captives."

Shortening my pace, I walked beside her. There was small chance the boy was alive, but I could not tell her that. Not that I even gave thought to not going to hunt for him. We Sacketts stand by one another, come hell or high water. The boy was a Sackett, and he was my brother's son.

My mind went down that trail into Mexico, and I had a cold feeling along my spine. Every inch of that trail would be trouble, and not only from the Apaches.

Water was scarce, and whilst the folks were friendly, the Rurales and the Army were not. They'd likely shoot a man out of hand.

Somewhere along the trail I'd heard about Dan Creed's two boys and another youngster being taken, but I hadn't any details, and they weren't important now.

A body would have to be almighty cautious. If the Army got wind of anyone going into Mexico with any such notion that would be the end of it. They'd surely stop him.

With negotiations going on between the two governments that would be all it would take to end them ... they'd never believe he'd come into Mexico on his own.

My name being Sackett, and all, they might be suspicious. I mean the Army might.

And Laura made me uneasy. I'd no knowledge of womenfolks, and never had been able to talk to any but Ange. Other women left me tongue-tied and restless, and Laura, she was all white lace, blonde hair, and those dainty little lacy gloves with no fingers in them. And that parasol she carried ... I was a raw country boy from the hills, not used to such fixings.

"You will try, then?" We had stopped at her door, and she rested her hand on my arm. "Tell, you're my only hope. There is no one else."

"I'll do what I can." Standing there on the step, with her a-looking at me from those big blue eyes, it made me wish I was three men, so as I could do more.

"Don't you forget, ma'am, there's no accounting for Apaches. They're mighty notional when it comes to prisoners. You mustn't be hoping for muck."

"He's such a little boy."

It came on me to wonder if she'd any notion what she was letting me in for, but I pushed the thought away. I had no call to be thinking of myself. How could she know what that trail into Sonora was like? A trail like a walk through hell, with ugly death waiting on every side, at every moment. You had to travel trails like that to know them. In my mind's eye I could see the faint thread of it winding across the hot desert under a brassy sky, with the sand underfoot and all lands of cactus and thorny bush around, with rattlers and Gila monsters and all ... to say nothing of outlaws and Indians.

A thought came to me suddenly. "I was wondering how Orrin ever let you get so far from him? You and the boy?"

She smiled quickly, sadly. "It was my father, Tell. He died in California and I had to go there for the funeral. There was no one else. When I found how dangerous it was, I left Orry here ... I thought he'd be safe here."

That made sense, all right. Still, there was a lot that puzzled me, but a man could waste any amount of time quibbling and fussing over details, which was never my way. If anything was to be done it had to be done fast. With her description of the boy and his clothing, I decided I'd best get together an outfit and pull out.

She stood there, her white dress like a light against the adobe walls. I looked back once as I walked away, and she was still standing there, looking after me.

It worried me some because this whole thing had come on me so sudden that I'd no chance to sort of think things through. Out there on the trail with those Apaches around there'd been no time, and now it seemed there was no time either.

Nevertheless, there was some thinking I had to do.

The worst of it was I was almighty short of money, and no matter what a man sets out to do, it seems it costs him something. This here was going to cost money as well as sweat, and maybe blood.

All I had to my name was about two hundred saved-up dollars, the most I'd had in months, and I'd lost my saddle back yonder, and needed a horse. We'd come into Tucson on horses just borrowed from the stage outfit, and they'd be going back soon.

So I needed a horse and an outfit, and a pack horse if I had enough to handle it.

What I wanted was a good used saddle, and there was a reason. I was of no mind to ride into Apache country with a squeaky new saddle. Now, any saddle will squeak a mite, and it's a comforting sort of sound, most times, but when there are Apaches around any sound more than your breathing is liable to get you killed.

I needed not only a saddle, but also, a pair of saddlebags, a canteen, a poncho, a blanket, a spare cartridge belt and a small amount of grub. I'd have to live off the country, on food I could get without shooting. From the time I crossed the border I was going to have to move like a ghost.

Tampico Rocca was in the Quartz Rock Saloon when I came in, and I went to his table and sat down. He leaned across the table. "John J., he rides out tonight.

There is trouble, I think."

"Trouble?"

"There was difficulty in Texas. Battles won out. Two of the dead man's brothers are in town, with some friends. Battles wants no more trouble."

"He's broke, isn't he?" Me, I dug down in my jeans. "I'm outfitting for Mexico, but I can let him have twenty dollars."

Rocca shook his head. "This is not what I mean, amigo. He will meet us outside of town. He wished me to tell you this so you would not think he rode off alone.

We are coming with you, senor."

"Now, you see here. This is my affair, and you boys got no call to ride along.

It's going to be rough."

Tampico chuckled. "Amigo, you talk to Rocca, not to some pilgrim. I am Rocca, who is half Apache and who has lived with them. I know where they go. I know how they live. You will need me, amigo."

Well, I just sat there, finding nothing to say. Words just don't come easy to me, and at such times I find myself coming up empty. So I just looked at him and he grinned and waved for another beer.

The place was filling up, and it was a tough place. Nobody ever said the Quartz Rock was gentle. Over at the Congress Hall Saloon you'd find the gentry. You'd find the solid men, the good men, and mixed with them some of the drifters, but the Quartz Rock was rough. At least when Foster ran it.

You drank their liquor and you took your chances at the games, and the men who hung out there were hard cases, men with the bark on, men who had been born with the bark on. There were men came into that place so rough they wore their clothes out from the inside first. When you saw a man walk into the Quartz Rock wearing a six-shooter or a bowie knife he wasn't wearing it for show.

We were finishing our second beer when four men came into the place.

Rocca sat up easily and moved on the chair to keep his gun hand free. This was beginning to shape up like grief of some kind, and I was in no mood for it.

They were four of a kind, raw and ragged, just in off the trail and they looked it. Like uncurried wolves they bellied up to the bar, and when they had had a drink, they looked around.

"It is those who seek for John J., amigo. I think they know I am his friend."

They crossed the room, the four of them, and every man-jack in the room could smell the trouble they brought with them.

They came to our table and ranged themselves in front of it. All of them were armed, and they wore guns as if they knew how to use them.

Me, I just sort of shifted one foot. The other foot was propped up on a chair's edge, resting easy.

"You!" The one with the handle-bar mustache stabbed a finger at Rocca. "You, greaser. They tell me you are a friend of the man named Battles."

Rocca was like a coiled snake. He looked at them, and he smiled. Now no Mex likes to be called a greaser. Me, I've been called a gringo many times and couldn't see that it left any scars, but some folks are almighty touchy, and Rocca was that way now. Not that I blamed him. It is all very easy to say trouble can be avoided, but these men were not going to be avoided. They were looking for trouble, they wanted it.

"Si, senor." Rocca said gently, "I am honored to call John J. Battles my friend."

"Then I guess we'll just kill you, Mex, seein' as how we can't find him."

Well, I just looked up at the man and I said, "I'm a friend of his, too," and I said it sort of off-hand as if it didn't matter much, but they knew it did.

They turned their eyes on me, and I just sat there, a tall, lonely man in a wore-out buckskin shirt and a beat-up hat.

"You want part of this?" Walrus-mustache was speaking again.

"A man can ride many a long mile in Texas," I said, "and see nothing but grass and sky. There's streams down there, and a man could raise some cows. Here in Arizona there's timber country with fine, beautiful meadows and cold mountain streams -- "

"What're you talkin' about?" Handle-bar mustache broke in. "Are you crazy?"

"I was just thinking a man would have to be an awful fool to throw all that away to prove how mean he was. I mean you boys got a choice. You walk back over there and drink your liquor and ride out to those mountain streams where the tall grass grows."

"Or -- ?"

"Or you stay here, and tomorrow you'll be pushin' grass from the under side."

They stared at me. They were trying to figure whether I was all talk, or whether I was tough. Now, I'm a patient man. Had they been talking to Tyrel, folks would have been laying out the bodies by now. Me, I'm not backward about giving a man a chance. Many a time a man with whiskey in him is apt to talk too much, and suddenly realize he wished he was somewhere else. I was giving them this chance.

They didn't take it.

The long-geared man with the handle-bar mustache looked at me and said, "I'm Arch Hadden," as if he expected me to show scare at the name.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Hadden," I said gently. "I'll carve the slab myself."

He kind of flushed up, and I could see he was off his step, somehow. He'd come walking up to fight, and my talk had put him off. Also, that name meant nothing to me, and I never was one to put much stock in reputatations, anyway.

Rocca had let me talk, he just sat quiet, but I'd come up the trail from Yuma with Tampico Rocca, and knew he was no man to buy trouble with. Arch Hadden had lost step, and he tried to get back again.

"I came to kill this greaser, an' I aim to do it." Rocca came to his feet in one smooth, easy movement. "Then why not get started?"

The man with the walrus mustache had had more to drink, and he wasn't being bluffed. He went for his gun, and I straightened my leg with a snap. The chair slammed into his legs and he fell against Hadden, and I shot the man on the end while they were falling. I heard another gun boom and then Rocca and me were standing there looking down at Hadden and his brother, one of them in a half-crouch but off balance, the other on one knee.

"You boys brought it to us," I said. "We didn't ask for it. You brought it, and now two of you are dead."

They hadn't looked at their companions until then, and when they did I saw they were suddenly cold sober.

"Arch," I said, "you may be a tough man where you come from, but you're a long way from home. You take my advice and go back."

Rocca was holding a gun on them, as I was. He reached around with his other hand and picked up his beer, and drank it, watching them.

Foster was standing across the room, his back to the bar. "Why don't you boys pack it up before the law gets here?" he suggested. "I don't want any more shooting in here. It's bad for business."

"Sure," I said, and holstered my gun. Deliberately I started for the door.

Tampico Rocca had been called a greaser, so he took his time. He put his glass down gently and he smiled at them. "Keep your guns," he said, "I want to meet you again, senores."

Outside in the street we ducked into an alley and stood listening for footsteps, but hearing none, we walked away.

At the corral we stopped and leaned on the bars, and Rocca built a cigarette.

"Gracias, amigo," he said. And then he added, "You are quick, amigo. You are very quick."

Chapter 4

Come daybreak, and worry was upon me. It was a real, old-fashioned attack of the dismals.

The shooting of the night before was bad enough, although I never gave much time to worry over those who came asking for trouble. When a man packed a gun he was supposed to give some thought to his actions and his manner of speech, for folks weren't much inclined to set back and let a body run over them.

It was that youngster who was worrying me. There was a small boy, a prisoner of the Apaches, or maybe already killed by them. And he was my blood kin.

Nobody knew better than me the distance I'd have to cover and the way I'd have to live for the next month or more. It was a hard country, almost empty of people, scarce of food, and rare of water that was fit to drink. The fact that Tampico Rocca was coming along sort of made it better. Two men can't move as quiet as one, except when one of them is Rocca. But his coming also made it worse, because if anything happened to him it would be because of me.

Now the first thing I needed was a horse, and I could find none for sale.

Meantime I sort of sauntered around and let folks know I needed a saddle, and finally bought a beat-up old Spanish single-rig saddle with a mochila, or housing, to throw over it, and oxbow stirrups. It was almighty old, but in good shape, and a lot of hard use had worn comfort into it. That saddle set me back eighteen dollars, and I picked up some old saddlebags for three dollars more. An old Army canteen cost me twenty-five cents. Little by little I put an outfit together, and by the time I'd bought a spare cartridge belt, a bridle, and a few other odds and ends I'd spent more than fifty dollars of what little I had. And still no horse. Whilst I went around the town of Tucson I kept a careful eye open for Arch and Wolf Madden. It turned out that one of those boys shot the night before wasn't dead. He'd been hit hard, but he was going to pull through.

They planted the other one, wrapped in his blankets, out on Boot Hill.

By noontime I had most of what I would need, but was still shy a horse. Dropping in at the Shoo-Fly I figured to have myself a bite of grub, and maybe I could find somebody with a horse to spare.

So I shaved myself with a broken triangle of glass for a mirror, stuck in the fork of a mesquite tree, while Rocca slept with his head on his saddle close by.

We were a mite out of town among some rocks and mesquite, and we'd been there a while when I heard somebody singing "Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," and Rocca pushed his hat back off his eyes. "Don't shoot," he said, grinning at me.

"That's John J."

And it was. Battles came up through the brush and looked us over, and we told him what the score was.

"Where's Spanish?" he wanted to know, and Rocca told him.

"He found himself a gal down yonder. Her name is Conchita, and if she gets mad at him the Apaches will be a relief. But don't you worry none about Spanish.

When the time comes he'll fork his saddle and come with us."

When I'd shaved we talked things over a mite and Rocca headed for Mexican town to roust out Spanish Murphy, whilst Battles went back into the brush to keep out of sight. Somehow or other, neither of us thought to tell him about the Hadden outfit.

The Shoo-Fly was crowded when I came in, but I tamed some heads. I don't know if it was the gun battle the night before or the whiskey I'd used for shave lotion, but they looked me over some. I'd been sort of sidestepping the marshal, not wanting to be ordered out of town yet, and not wanting trouble, if he was so inclined. When it came to eating, I was always a good feeder and always ready to set up and partake. Likely this would be the last woman-cooked food I'd have for a while, and even any hot meals I'd cook myself would be almighty scarce on that trek down into Sonora and over into Chihuahua. When a man is fighting shy of Apaches he doesn't go around sending up smoke.

Sitting there in the Shoo-Fly, which was not exactly elegant, though the best there was around, a body might have an idea folks would step aside for a body who'd killed his man in a gun battle. No such thing.

Right there in that room there were men like William S. Oury, who had fought through the Texas war for independence, had been a Texas Ranger, and had engaged in many a bloody duel with Apaches and border characters. Most of the men sitting around in their broadcloth suits were men who had engaged in their share of Indian fights, or wars of one kind or another. And they were good citizens -- lawyers, mining men, storekeepers and the like.

No sooner had I begun to eat than the door opened and Laura came in. She was in white, and she looked pale and frail. She wore the kind of gloves with no fingers in them that made no sense to me. And she carried a parasol, as most women did.

She stood a moment, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the glare, and then crossed to my table. I got up and seated her, then sat down.

Folks turned to look at her, they were almighty curious, her being such a pretty woman and all, and not many of them knowing we were kin.

"Tell," she said, "I heard you were looking for a horse. Is that true?"

"Yes, ma'am, it is. Mine was killed out yonder. I've got to find a saddle horse and at least one pack horse. Seems Apache raids have cut down the supply, and the Army has been buying saddle stock, too."

"Why didn't you tell me? I can get you some horses. In fact, I have just the horse for you."

"It would help," I admitted. "I've got my outfit together."

She took the coffee Mrs. Wallen brought to the table, and then said, "I hear you had some trouble."

"It wasn't my trouble. They were hunting a man I know, and when they couldn't find him they chose me -- that is, me and Rocca, one of the men I rode to town with."

She said no more about it, and I wasn't anxious to talk of it. We talked a while about the trip, and then she told me where to go to see the horses. "The one I want you to ride," she suggested, "is the big black with the diamond blaze on his hip."

Now, one horse I was not hunting was a big black with a diamond on his hip. Any kind of horse would help, but a black horse was almost as bad as a white one in that country. What I preferred was a roan, a buckskin, or a dun or grulla. I wanted a horse whose color would fade into the country, not one that would stand out like a red nose at a teetotal picnic. Of course, there were patches of black rock, shadows, and the like, and a black horse was some better than a white one which would catch the sun and could be seen for miles. However, this was no time to argue.

"All right," I said, and then I added, "If we get the horses I can leave tomorrow."

She talked of Tucson and its discomforts, and how she wished to be back in Santa Fe -- or in Washington, she added.

"I like Washington," I said.

She seemed surprised, and said, "You have been there?"

"Yes, ma'am. I was in the Army of the Potomac for a while. I was around Washington quite a bit."

That was a long time ago, and I'd been a boy then, freshly joined up with the Union army.

When she was gone I lingered over coffee, thinking out that trail to the south, trying to foresee the problems that might arise. It wasn't in me to go into things blind, and there was a whole lot about this that made me kind of uneasy, but there was nothing I could pin down.

Mrs. Wallen came over. "Are you related to Laura Sackett?"

"She's my sister-in-law."

"I wondered ... your names being the same, and all." She still hesitated, then sat down opposite me. "We don't see many women traveling alone in this country."

"Her father died ... out in California," I said. "He was all alone out there, and nobody to see to him. Orrin -- he's my brother -- had to stay in Washington."

She sat there a while without saying any more, and then got up and left. I couldn't figure out why she sat down to talk to me. It seemed as if she was going to tell me something -- maybe something about the Army or the Apaches.

The black horse was a good one, all right. And that diamond-shaped blaze on his hip and one white stocking was all that kept him from being solid black. He was a whole lot more horse than I expected to find. The two pack horses were nondescript mustangs, but they looked tough.

They were in a barn back of an adobe, and the man who had the care of them squatted on his heels and watched me studying the horses.

"You're takin' a lot of care, mister," he said sourly, "when you got no choice."

He spat out the straw he'd been chewing. "Take 'em or leave 'em. I got no more time to spare. The lady paid for 'em. All you got to do is saddle up and ride."

He didn't like me and I didn't like him, so I taken the horses and got away. I rode them back into the brush where Rocca was waiting and where my gear was cached.

Rocca had rustled a horse from somewhere in Mex town, so we were ready to go.

"You got anything holdin' you?" I asked him.

"Not so's you'd notice. Spanish is out in the brush with John J. They'll meet us south of here."

So we mounted up and rode out of there, paying no mind to anything else. Down country about four miles Spanish rode up to us, and then John J. Battles followed.

"You boys are taking a wild chance," I said. "You got no stake in this."

"Shut up," Spanish said. "You save your breath to cool your porridge."

"I never been to the Sierra Madres," John J. said. "Any place I ain't been I got to see."

We put up some dust and headed south, with me riding up front. The trail was used ... there was always some riding down toward Kitchen's ranch.

You might think that on a traveled trail you'd be safe, but there was nowhere in this corner of Arizona where a body was safe, one moment to the next. Pete Kitchen had men on watch all hours of the day, and everybody went armed, expecting trouble, so after a while the Apaches kind of fought shy of the Kitchen outfit.

There's been a lot of talk of the rights and wrongs of the Indian wars, and there was wrong on both sides. There were mighty few Indians holding down land in this country when the white man came, and most of them never held to any one spot. They just drifted from place to place, living off the wild game and the plants. The white men came hunting living space, and a place for a home. Instead of roaming as the Indians had done, they settled down to farm the land and build houses.

Some of the white men wanted to live in peace with the red man, and some of the red men wanted to live in peace, too, but some on both sides didn't want anything of the kind. The young bucks wanted to take scalps and steal horses because that made them big men with the squaws, and it was often easier to take them from white men than from other Indians, as they had always done. And whenever the wise old Indians and the wiser and kinder of the white men wanted to make peace, there was always some drunken white man or wild-haired Indian ready to make trouble.

When an Indian made war he made war on women and children as well as on men, and even the friendly white men found it hard to be friendly when they came home and found their cabins burned, their women and children killed. On the other hand, the politically appointed Indian agents and the white men who wanted Indian land or horses would rob, cheat, and murder Indians.

It was no one-sided argument, and I knew it. But now the Apaches had stolen some children and taken them into Mexico, and we were going after them.

We rode through the last of the afternoon and into the cool of the evening. We camped that night in some ruins, half sheltered by adobe walls, and at daybreak we rode out.

On the second night we stayed at Pete Kitchen's ranch.

Chapter 5

We rode south for a few miles after leaving Pete Kitchen's place, then turned off the main trail toward the east. Now, a man who leaves a trail in the desert had best know exactly where he is going, for his life is at stake.

Travel in the desert cannot be haphazard. Every step a man takes in desert country has to be taken with water in mind. He is either heading for water, or figuring how far he will be from it if he gets off the trail. The margin of safety is narrow.

All of us had been south of the border, but it was Tampico Rocca who knew most about it, with me coming second, I suppose. Like everybody else, we had to depend on waterholes, and no matter what route we chose, sooner or later we had to wind up at those watering places. This was just as true for the Apaches.

The desert has known waterholes, but it also has other waterholes not generally known, usually of limited capacity and usually difficult to find. Birds and animals know of those places, and so do the Apaches in most cases. If you did not know of them you had to know how to find them, and that was something that did not come easy.

A man living in wild country has to be aware of everything around him. He has to keep his eyes looking, his ears listening, his every sense alert. And that doesn't mean because of Apaches, but because of the desert itself. You can't fight the desert ... you have to ride with it.

The desert is not all hot sun and sand, there's the rocks too. Miles of them sometimes, scattered over the desert floor, great heaps of them now and again, or those great broken ridges of dull red or black rock like the broken spines of huge animals. They shove up through the sand, and the sand is trying hard to bury them again.

In much of the southwestern desert there's even a lot of green, although the playas, or dry lake beds, are dead white. Some of the desert plants hold back until there's a rain, then they leaf out suddenly and blossom quickly, to take advantage of that water. But much of the greenness of desert plants doesn't mean that rain has fallen, for many of the plants have stored water in their pulpy tissues to save against drought, others have developed hard-surfaced leaves that reflect sunlight and give off no moisture to the sun.

Plants and animals have learned to live with the desert, and so have the Apaches. And we, the four of us, we were like Apaches in that regard.

The desert is the enemy of the careless. Neither time, nor trails, nor equipment will ever change that. A man must stay alert to choose the easiest routes, he travels slow to save himself, he keeps his eyes open to see those signs which indicate where water might be found. The flight of bees or birds, the tracks of small animals, the land of plants he sees -- these things he must notice, for certain plants are indications of ground water, and some birds and animals never live far from water. Others drink little, or rarely, getting the moisture they need from the plants they eat or the animals they kill.

We rode until the sun was two hours in the sky, and then we turned off into a narrow canyon and hunted shade to wait through the hottest hours. We unsaddled, let the horses roll, then watered them at a little seep Rocca knew of. After that, with one man to watch, we stretched out on the sand to catch some rest.

There always had to be a man on watch, because the Apaches were great horse thieves, though not a patch on the Comanches, who could steal a horse from under you whilst you sat in the saddle. You either kept watch or you found yourself afoot, and in the desert, unless you're almighty canny, that means you're dead.

First off, when we rode into that canyon we studied the opening for sign. A man in wild country soon gets so he can read the trail sign as easy as most folks read a newspaper, and often it's even more interesting.

You not only read what sign you see on the ground, but you learn to read dust in the distant air -- how many riders there are under that dust, and where they're headed.

The droppings left by horses also have a story to tell, whether that horse has been grain-fed, whether he has been grazing off country grass or desert plants.

And no two horses leave the same track. Each is a mite different, and their gaits are different. Their hoofs do not strike with the same impact, and sometimes there's a difference in the way they are shod.

We could tell that nobody had been in that canyon for weeks. We knew, too, that most of the time during the months of June, July, and August in Sonora you'll get some rain. Sudden showers that may be gone as quickly as they come, but enough to settle the dust and to fill some of the "tanks" in the desert mountains.

Among those desert ridges such tanks are frequent, pits hollowed in the rock over the centuries by driving rain, or shaped by run-off water. During heavy rains these tanks collect water and hold it for weeks, or even for months. We'd had some rain, so the better water-holes and tanks were holding water now.

Shortly before sundown, rested by our nap in the shade, we saddled up again.

This time I took the lead.

There were clusters of cholla and ocotillo, and we took advantage of them as much as possible to shield our movements. The route we used was an ancient one rarely traveled in these days, but from time to time we'd pull up near a clump of brush where the outlines of our horses and ourselves would merge into the growth, and there we'd set, studying the country around us.

You might think that out in such open country, with no good cover anywhere, a body wouldn't have to worry, but knowing Apaches the way we did, we knew that twenty of them could be hidden out there in a matter of yards, and nobody the wiser.

We were taking our time, saving our horses. An Apache, who often rode his horses to death, will make sixty to seventy miles a day if he's in a hurry. On foot he'll cover thirty-five to forty miles a day even in rough country. That was about what we were doing a-horseback.

About an hour after dark, we rode down into a little hollow choked with mesquite brush and built ourselves a tiny fire of dried wood and made coffee. The fire was well hidden in the hollow and the brush, and it gave us a chance to get the coffee we dearly needed.

"What you think?" Rocca said suddenly. "One rider?"

"Uh-huh," I said, "a small man or a boy."

"What are you talking about?" Battles asked.

"We've been picking up tracks," I told them. "A shod horse. A small horse, but a good one. Moves well ... desert bred."

"Injun, on a stolen horse," Spanish said promptly. "No white man would be ridin' alone in this neck of the woods."

Rocca shrugged doubtfully. "Maybe so ... I don't know."

Those tracks had been worrying my mind for quite a few minutes, for whoever rode that horse was riding with caution, which meant it was no Apache. An Apache would know he was in country where his people were supreme, and although he would keep alert, he would not be pausing to scout the country as this rider was.

In my mind I was sure, and I knew Rocca was sure, that the rider was no Indian.

Unless, maybe, an Indian child.

When the desert sun was gone the heat went with it, and a coolness came over the land. The horses, quickened by the cool air, moved forward as eagerly as if they could already smell the pines of the Sierra Madre. From time to time we drew up to listen into the night.

About an hour before daylight we gave our horses a breather. Rocca, squatting on his heels behind a mesquite bush, lit a cigarette cupped in the palm of his hand and glanced at me. "You know the Bavispe?"

"Yes ... we'll hit at the big bend ... where she turns south again."

Tampico Rocca knew this country better than I did. After all, he was half Apache, and he had lived in the Sierra Madre. Battles was sleeping, and Spanish he went over to listen to the night sounds, away from our voices. I was hot and tired, and was wishing for a bath in that river up ahead, but it wasn't likely I'd get one.

Rocca was quiet for a spell, and I settled back on the sand and stared up at the stars. They looked lonely up there in the nighttime sky, lonely as we were down here. I was a solitary man, a drifter across the country, with no more home than a tumbleweed, but so were we all. We were men without women, and if all the nights we'd spent under a roof were put together they would scarcely cover four or five weeks.

Men have a way of drifting together without much rhyme or reason, just the circumstances of their living brings them together, just as we had been brought together in Yuma. Now the three of them were chancing their lives to lend me a hand, but that was the way with western men, and chances were I'd have done the same for them.

We started on again when the first streaks of dawn were coloring the eastern sky. The cactus began to be separate from the other shadows, and the rocks stood out, dark and somber. We rode single file, nobody talking until the gray sky was yellowing overhead, and then in a quiet corner we stopped, found a place to hide a fire, and made a small breakfast We were careful to build our fire in a hollow and under a mesquite bush, where the rising smoke would be dissipated by the branches overhead ... though using dry wood there was little smoke. Our time for hot meals was about over. Barring some sort of accident, we should soon come up to the Bavispe. Once we crossed that we would be in the heart of Apache country, with them on every side of us.

The Apache, in a sparse, harsh land where raising any crops was mighty nigh impossible, turned to raiding and robbing.

Generally, the men I'd heard talk of the Indian thought it was taking his land that ruined him. As a matter of fact, it had much to do with it, for an Indian couldn't live on a fixed ten acres or a hundred acres and live as he liked. He needed lots of hunting ground, and country that would support fifty Indians would support ten thousand planting white men.

But the Indian was whipped the first time one of them had a rifle for his own.

It was the trader who whipped the Indian by giving or selling him things he couldn't make himself. From that time on, the Indian was dependent on the white man for ammunition, for more guns, for more of the things he was getting a taste for. It was good sitting there in the cool of early morning, with the faint smell of woodsmoke in the air, the smell of frying bacon, the smell of good coffee. We were taking a chance, but we had scouted the country with care.

"How old's the boy?" Spanish asked suddenly.

"Five ... I think. About that."

"You think he's still alive, Tamp?" Battles asked.

Rocca shrugged. "Depends on whether he's a nervy kid, maybe. We'll pick up some tracks soon."

"Seen any more of that strange rider?" Battles asked. "I been watching for tracks all morning."

"No," I said, "I haven't seen any."

"What's it like up yonder?" Spanish asked.

"Oaks ... then pines. Running streams, rocks. All anybody could want but grub.

They have to bring it in. They get it from the Mexicans, or they kill them." He gestured. "The Apaches have almost cleared this part of Sonora of the Mexicans.

At least the rich ones. And the poor ones can only stay if they'll provide food for the Apaches."

My thoughts went back over the desert to Laura. She was a pretty woman, and she was brave ... holding herself up, like she did, with her little boy lost, and all. But somehow she left me uneasy. But I was never very comfortable around women ... except Ange. And the Trelawney girls I'd known back home in the hills.

We sat there quiet a little longer, listening to the horses cropping at the shrubs. Rocca was smoking and squinting at the hills around.

None of us knew what might be waiting for us up yonder. Even if we found the boy alive, we still had to get him from the Apaches and get him back across the border. Our chances were none too good. I looked over at Rocca and said, "Shall we move out?"

He rubbed his cigarette into the sand, and got up.

Me, I just stood there a moment or two thinking. All of a sudden I wished I was somewhere else. We were facing up to a lot of hell, and I looked forward to none of it. Besides, there was something about this whole affair that made me mighty uneasy.

We crossed the Bavispe and took a thin trail that led up through scattered oaks, along steep switchbacks toward the pines. The only sound was the chirping of birds, the grunting of one of the horses over a steep part of the trail, or the clatter of a falling rock.

For an hour we climbed, pausing several tunes to let the horses catch their breath. Finally we rode out on a bench under the pines where stood the ruins of stone houses built of rough lava blocks with no mortar. There were at least a dozen of them in sight, and maybe more back under the trees. The walls were of a sort of gray felsite, and here and there one appeared to be better built than the others, as though built by different hands, by different thinking.

Rocca indicated a slight depression in the grass near one of the walls. "We're still on the trail."

A crushed pine cone looked as if it had been scarred by a sharp-shod hoof. There were other signs too.

The country here was wild and rugged, and we saw no water. We were now over six thousand feet up, judging by the growth around us, and still we climbed. The trail occasionally wound along a rim with an almost sheer drop falling off on one side or the other. We rode with our rifles in our hands, our boots light in the stirrups, ready to kick free and hit the ground if there was time. Riding that kind of country with Apaches around will put gray in your hair.

We came out presently on a shoulder of the mountain with pines all around us.

There was sparse grass, and a thin trickle of snow water ran down the mountain slope. Found the tracks of the rider there ... plain. The small horse had stood under a tree, tied to a low branch while she scouted ahead. She?

The word came to me unbidden, without thinking. It came like a voice speaking to me, and I spoke aloud what I had heard in my mind's ear. "It's a woman, Tamp.

That's a woman or girl riding that horse."

Rocca rested his big hands on the pommel. "I think you are right," he said. "I think so."

"A woman?" Battles was incredulous. "It don't stand to reason."

"Did Dan Creed have a wife? Or a daughter?" I asked.

Rocca looked around at me. "I don' know, Tell. I tell you, I don'."

I dropped to the ground. "Sit tight," I said. "I want to see what she went to look at."

A step or two and it was dark and green under the trees. A step or two more and I was lost to them, waiting back there for me. I could see a pressed-down leaf here, and the kicked-over damp, dead leaves, scuffed by a passing boot. The trail was easy, but it took time, for I scouted the trees around me as I moved.

Suddenly -- a running man could scarcely have stopped in time -- I was on the brink of a cliff. Not sheer, but a steep falling away, something a man could climb down if he could find foothold and used his hands, or if he could slide.

It was maybe a couple of thousand feet down to the bottom, and there was a meadow, the greenest you ever saw, and a pool with trees around it. It was a small hanging valley that opened out over an enormous canyon. There were three cooking fires in sight, and a dozen Apaches.

First I squatted down, easing down so my movement would draw no attention, and then I studied the camp through a manzanita growing on the rim.

Squaws were working, children playing. They felt secure here. Nobody had ever followed them into this country, nobody had ever found them here before. For years, for generations, they had been coming here after their raids, after stealing the cattle, the horses, and the women of the Mexicans. Stealing their food, too, and bringing it here and to other places like this ... there must be many of them.

Little Orry was in one of them. How long could we look before they caught us?

How long, then, could we expect to live?

But Orry was my brother's son, and I was a Sackett, and in the Sackett veins the blood ran strong and true. It was our nature and our upbringing.

A few minutes longer I squatted there, watching the camp. Not staring, for staring can be felt, and will make an animal or an Indian uneasy. Then I went back through the trees.

"It's a rancheria," I said, "but I doubt if it is the one we want."

Chapter 6

Whoever it was who had come up the mountain before us had spent a good bit of time studying that camp. There were a-plenty of tracks, knee impressions, and the like, so we could see whoever it was had stayed there quite some time. And then that person had mounted up and ridden on.

We, too, moved on, and the trail we now followed was a deer trail ... or maybe one made by big horn sheep, which leave a somewhat similar track. The only other tracks on the trail were those small hoof prints, or sometimes, when the rider got on and walked, were boot tracks.

We entered soon into a wild and broken country, past towering masses of conglomerate and streams of a dull opalescent water, slightly bitter to the taste, but nonetheless good for drinking. Many times we were forced to dismount and lead our mounts, for large limbs or out-thrusts of rock projected over the trail.

Among some pines we pulled off and got down from our saddles. Tampico Rocca hunkered down and stared at the ground. Spanish Murphy glanced over at me. "Tell ... you think we're going to find that boy?"

"Uh-huh."

Well, I knew what he was feeling. The quiet. It was getting us. We were in the heart of Indian country, and we were all jumpy. There wasn't one of us who didn't know what it would mean if we were seen. It would mean a running fight... And our only choice would be to try to get away.

Once it was known we were around we'd have no chance to get close to those children. So far we'd had luck, with the skill of Rocca to provide a good part of it -- his skill and his knowledge of the country.

Presently we moved on, and now we saw Indian tracks from time to time. Up to now we had been traveling high, lonely country where Indians seldom went, but now we were descending slowly, getting into the areas where there was game, and where at any time we might encounter Indians.

"There's another rancheria ahead," Rocca soon said.

This one was also in a hollow, with a towering cliff behind it, and low, rolling pine-clad hills around. The rancheria lay in a nest of boulders and trees, with a small stream curving around the encampment. Even as we came up through the pines, several horsemen arrived. They rode into the area accompanied by a small swirl of dust and dropped to the ground. There were six Apaches in the group, four of them armed with bows, two with rifles.

Two of them were carrying chunks of meat, probably from slaughtered cattle. A third was handing down some articles of clothing, evidently stripped from some Mexican or his wife -- from our distance we could not determine which.

Suddenly Battles grabbed my arm and pointed. Several children had come up, carrying bundles of sticks. At least one appeared to be a white boy, his face was partly turned from them. He was a tall youngster, perhaps eight or nine years old.

This could be the place. Whatever else we did, we must talk to that boy.

I was conscious of the fresh smell of the pines and of crushed pine needles underfoot. There was a faint smell of smoke from the camp, and I could make out the sound of Indian voices speaking. Inside me, I was still -- waiting, thinking.

If there were other white children around, that boy would know about them. But what if he had already become close to being an Apache? Taken young enough, many American or Mexican children had no wish to leave the Apaches. To speak to him was a risk, but it must be done.

Spanish, he looked over at me. "We got us a job, boy," he said.

"I never figured it to be easy." I studied the rancheria, and I did not feel happy about the situation.

"We're too close," Rocca said. "We'd better move back. If the wind changed a mite, the dogs could smell us."

So we moved back among the trees and, weaving around a little, we found ourselves a tree-shaded hollow with a lot of boulders around and some big trees.

It was a perfect place to hide, and we were out of the wind there.

But I was worried. When I traveled alone, as I most often did, I had nobody to worry about but myself, and if I got into trouble there was only my own scalp to lose. This shape-up was entirely different, for these men had come along only to help me. If anything happened to them I'd have it on my mind.

We were here, though, and we had a job to do. "Rocca," I said, "is it likely that boy yonder would ever be left alone?"

"I doubt it. Depend on how long he's been with them, and how much they've come to trust him. There's a chance maybe."

"He'd be likely to know about other white youngsters, wouldn't he?"

"It's likely. Word gets around, and the Apache children would know, and they'd be apt to speak of it. At least when I was a boy in those Apache camps I knew most of what went on."

For the time being there was nothing much we could do, so the others stretched out to catch a little sleep, and I worked up to the bluff to get a better look than we'd had before.

The camp was quiet. The squaws never stopped working, of course, always busy at something, and a few youngsters played around. One of the Apache braves we had seen ride into camp sat cross-legged in front of his wickiup. He was a stoop-shouldered but strongly made man of about my own age, and he had a new Winchester that was never far from his hand. Even here, in their own hide-out, they never let up.

After a while I returned to camp and Spanish took my place up on the bluff.

Under a low tree I settled down for some rest.

When I awoke I fought myself back to reality with an effort. I'd been dog-tired, and whilst I usually was ready to wake up on the slightest sound, this time I had really slept.

The first thing I noticed was the silence. There was no fire, of course, and there was little light. It was late afternoon, and under the trees it was already shading down to dusk.

For a moment I lay quiet, listening. Raising my head, I looked around. Over yonder there was a saddle -- I could see the faint shine of it. I could see nothing else, nor could I hear any sound but the soft rustling of the leaves overhead.

My right hand moved for my rifle, closed around the action. A shot fired here would bring Apaches around us like bees from a kicked hive.

Carefully, I eased back the blanket, moved my feet out, and then drew them up and rolled to my knees. Glancing to where John J. Battles was lying, I could see his body under a blanket. He was asleep ... at least he was not moving.

Rocca was nowhere in sight, his bed was empty. We had purposely scattered out to sleep. It gave us that much more of a chance if the camp was attacked.

A moment longer I waited, then came up swiftly and with one long step was molded into the shadow of a tree. And still nothing stirred.

Nevertheless, I knew it wasn't just a case of worry with me. Somebody or something was prowling our camp, and we were too close to those Apaches for comfort. At the same time I know that the Apache, generally speaking, won't fight after dark. He has the feeling that the soul of a man killed in the night wanders forever in darkness. Of a sudden, something moved near me. There was no light but that of the stars. Here and there a tree trunk stood out, or a leaf caught the shine of a reflection.

It was a haunted place, this camp of ours, a corner among the crags, a place where cliffs reared up or fell away, where broken rocks lay among the trees.

There were so many shadows that one saw nothing clearly.

Slowly I lowered the butt of my rifle to the ground. At my belt was a bowie knife, sharp enough to shave with -- in fact, I often did shave with it. But it was my hands on which I would depend this time, hard work had made them strong, had built muscles into my arms and shoulders. For little softness had come into my life, little but hard riding and harder work. I waited, my hands ready.

The movement was there again, not a sound so much as a suggestion. Then it was the breathing that warned me ... only breathing, and I reached out with my hands.

Something slipped through my hands like a ghost. My hands touched it, grasped, and the thing wasn't there ... a faint grasp, and my fingers clutched only hair ... Then it was gone!

Battles sat up. "Tell? What is it?"

"A ghost, I think." I spoke softly. "Whatever it is, I wish it would believe we're not enemies." But whatever it was, was gone. A couple of hours later, by the light of day, we found tracks enough. Tip toe tracks of a small foot I felt a shudder go through me, and Rocca noticed it. "What?" he said. "You are afraid?"

"I was remembering ... someone who is gone," I said. "But these tracks are not hers. They are small, like hers, and the steps are quick, like hers ... but she is dead."

Tampico Rocca crossed himself. "She haunts you?"

"No ... it is only a memory. Her name was Ange, and I found her trail first, like this. I lost her again, like this. But Ange is dead. She was murdered," I said, "up in the Mogollon country."

"Ah!" That was Spanish. "You are that Sackett!" He looked at me thoughtfully. "I heard talk of it. I was in Cherry Creek then, but everybody knew the story ... and how your family came to help."

He looked at me over the tip of his cigarette, and I could guess what he was thinking. In the western lands where all news came by word of mouth, men quickly became legend, they became larger than life. It was so with Ben Thompson, Wild Bill, Mike Fink, or Davy Crockett. The stories grew with telling.

"The boy we're hunting," I said, "is my brother Orrin's boy. Orrin was one of them who rode to the Mogollon."

"I never had a family," Spanish said. "I was always alone."

John J. tamped tobacco into his pipe. "Most men are alone," he said. "We come into life alone, we face our worst troubles alone, and we are alone when we die."

"It was the girl we tracked," I said. I'd been looking around while we talked.

"She needed grub. She's taken some bread and some dried apples, and maybe a little jerky."

And then we were quiet again.

We knew what we had to do, and the waiting was hard, for we were men who preferred action. Our way of life had been to act ... there was rarely need for contemplation. We were men who moved swiftly, surely, and we lived or died by the success of our movement. So to wait now came hard. To wander in the mountains added to our danger, and to wait here was risk, but a man who does not move leaves no tracks.

So we watched and waited, for it was all we could do, and even just watching worried me for men who are being watched become aware of it.

The white boy we had seen appeared again, more than once, but always with Indian boys around him. And then, after another long day of watching, I saw him take a spear and go alone along a trail between some rocks. Like a cat I was off the rock where I watched, nodding to Rocca as I passed him.

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, maybe 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.

Tying the black horse under the maple, but on a rope long enough so he could graze, I carried the saddle and gear to the shelter. The boy was already seated in the corner.

From under a couple of fallen trees I peeled some dry bark, gathered twigs from the fallen maple limb, and in a few minutes I had a fire going. It looked good, and felt better.

I had built the fire close against the wall so the heat would be reflected, and there we huddled in reasonable comfort. The wall, the sheltering trees, and our improvised shelter kept off most of the rain. After a few minutes, the boy fell asleep.

I checked my guns, made sure my rifle was fully loaded, and trusting to the black to warn me, I huddled against the wall on the opposite side of the fire from the boy, and slept too.

Chapter 8

The night wind moaned in the passes, and the small fire sputtered. The fuel burned down to coals, and the coals were a dull red except when touched briefly by the wind. The rain had come to an end, but big drops fell now and again from the leaves of the maple.

From time to time I opened my eyes, looked around, land slept again. It was always so with me ... I can remember few nights when I slept the hours through without awakening, usually to lie awake listening for a while, sometimes to get up and prowl restlessly.

The black horse, now that the rain had stopped, moved away from the tree to crop the thick grass. Up on the ridges the grass had been sparse and had little nourishment, but the grass that grew around the fallen stones was rich and green.

You know how it is when you hear something a long time before you are really aware of it? It was like that now with riders coming down the trail. Most likely I didn't hear much ... maybe only a whisper of sound ... maybe some hidden sense felt the difference in the night, for they came like ghosts in the darkness, or like wolves, soft-footed and sure of their prey.

They must have been puzzled, and worried too, for I'd come down the trail of the Old Ones, where no one ever rode.

It was a spirit trail, and they would not have liked it, especially in the night. Their horses would be mountain-bred and sure-footed, and more than likely they had known this valley of the ruins when they ran wild, for there was grass here, good grass and water.

These riders must have been slow in getting away from their rancheria, coming after my tracks had crossed the trail of the Apaches that pursued my compadres.

Seeing the tracks of my lone horse, they had followed, sure of a kill.

My small fire gave off so little smoke as to remain undetected, and its slight red glow would be hidden by the tree and the wall. Yet they found me. I suppose they heard my horse cropping grass.

All was still in my camp. A drop fell hissing into the coals, and my horse stopped cropping grass and lifted his head, blowing softly through his nostrils.

I came clean awake.

An instant I lay there, listening, and then I rolled over and left the blanket in a long smooth dive into the darkness, and heard the whip of an arrow as I went. When I looked back, I saw that the arrow had gone through my blanket into the ground.

They came in fast, and my butt stroke missed the head of the nearest attacker, and hit his shoulder, staggering him. Then my rifle was knocked from my hands.

Now, back yonder in the mountains where I hail from, the boys and men do a sight of knuckle and skull thumping. The girls go to the dances for the dancing and the boys, and the boys go for the fighting and the girls.

Me being such a tall kind of homely boy, I had more time for fighting. Then in the Army, and on the river boats, and all -- well, I'd done my share. So when I lost my rifle it just sort of freed me for fighting.

A body lunged against mine and I butted at the face, used my knee in his crotch, lifting him clean off the ground, so as I could lay hands on him. I fairly picked him up and threw him, and then I took a roundhouse swing at something coming at me. I saw a knife flash, and my fist landed and I felt bone crunch.

It was bang with both hands, swing, grab, but Apaches were fair hands at wrestling, but they had no experience at fist-fighting, and that was what I was doing. One short, powerful Apache grabbed me by the arm and the waist to throw me, but I brought my boot heel down on his instep and he let go and I could swing my elbow against his ear.

It was kind of lively there for a few minutes. There was three of them, but I was bigger and stronger. One of them jumped on my back with his forearm across my throat, but I grabbed his hand and elbow and flung him over my shoulder and smack down across the stone wall. He hit hard, and I heard him scream. And just then there was a shot.

Coming from outside of camp, it caught us unawares, but I saw an Apache fall and then the others ghosted into the night, one of them dragging the one I'd thrown across the wall. Then they disappeared like drops of water into a pool. They were there, and they were gone.

The one who had been shot was lying there near the fire, and Harry, his skins clutched around him, was sitting up, huddled and scared, in the corner of the wall.

And then a low voice said, "Hello, the camp!"

I said, "Come in, if you're of a mind to," and the next thing there walks into camp the cutest button of a girl you ever laid eyes on.

She was scarcely more than five feet tall and wore a buckskin hunting shirt that looked better than any such shirt I'd ever seen before. She was quick and pert, and she was leading her pony, but the Winchester in her hands wasn't for fun -- that Apache would have realized it had he lived past her bullet.

She held out her hand. "I am Dorset Binny," she said, "and I hope you will forgive me for not looking as much like a lady as I should."

"Ma'am," I assured her, honestly enough, "when you come up like that and shoot that straight, I couldn't care how you're dressed."

And I added, "I am William Tell Sackett, and the boy yonder is Harry Brook, recently taken back from the Apaches."

We had both moved back into the shadows, and with that much said we took to listening. It was my idea those Apaches had them a bellyful, but they weren't alone, and this was no place to dally.

"Some other children got away, didn't they?"

"Yes -- a couple of boys and a small girl."

"The girl was my sister. That is why I am here." Well, she was talking to a shadow, for I was already saddling up. Right then, what I wanted between me and those Apaches was distance, for within a matter of hours this mountain would be alive with them, like a kicked anthill with ants.

She came along with me and the boy, and for an hour we followed the old trail north, then we turned west, taking a trail on which I found no tracks. Once in a while through the parted clouds I could see the sky, and sometimes a star was right above us. Black walls crowded closer, and we were skirting some almighty big boulders. Me, I kept thinking what a nasty place we were in, with the weather what it was. A body didn't need to look at the walls for a high-water mark. You just knew that the water must run through here thirty feet deep for an hour or two after a heavy storm. But the water had already passed on ... and I wished for no more rain now.

The folks that had made this trail had no horses, it was a moccasin trail. After a while we had to get down and lead, for there was just no riding, but I let Harry stay on the black.

What I wanted most just now was to get out of these mountains and head off across the flatland, and maybe get to a ranch. But I had a time keeping my thoughts on my business with that girl along.

She was only a bit of a thing, but she must be packing a lot of nerve to come into this country after her sister. There was no chance to talk, for we were going single file, and I wasn't stopping. This was a strange trail, and we'd no idea where it might lead. Mayhap right into a bunch of Apaches -- in which case some brave might have my scalp in his wickiup, if he bothered to take it. The Apaches were very strong on scalping.

At the top of a long slope we paused for a breather, and I looked around at Dorset. She was right behind me, leading her pony, and taking two steps to my one. Harry Brook, up there on the horse, had not said a word.

We stood there for a mite, and she said, "The sky's turning."

There was gray in it, all right, and day would come quickly now. We stood quiet then, saying nothing nor needing to, but there was communication in the night, we felt each other, felt the darkness and the danger around us, and felt the cool dampness of the canyon ,after the rain. We could smell the pines ... and we smelled something else.

We smelled smoke.

It was enough to curl your hair. In this layout we couldn't expect friends. My partners had lit out to the north, I was sure, and if there was anybody here it had to be Apaches. And that smoke was right ahead of us.

We daren't go back, and we couldn't climb out. Me, I slipped the Winchester out of its scabbard, and so did she.

"Well go ahead quiet," I whispered, "and if we can get by 'em, we will.

Otherwise, we got to mount up and run for it. You and the boy get on the same horse, and if trouble shows, run."

"What about you?"

Me, I smiled. "Lady, you're not looking at no hero. I'll get off a few shots and I'll be dusting the trail right behind you, so don't slow up or I'll run right up your shirt tail."

We started on. Dawn was streaking the sky when we saw the canyon was starting to widen out. Then I saw moccasin tracks, some shreds of bark, and a few sticks -- somebody collecting firewood. And then we heard yelling ahead of us, and I knew that kind of yelling.

"Might be," I said, "we can get by. They're mighty concerned, right now."

She looked at me. She said, "What concerns an Apache so much that we might slip by his camp?"

A man couldn't look into those honest gray eyes and lie. She would guess, anyway. "They got them a prisoner," I said, "and they're tryin' to find out how much of a man they caught. If he stands up to torture and dies well, they will figure they're big men, because they caught a big man."

We moved ahead, each of us warning our horse against noise, and those horses could be warned, they were that smart. Aside from their own instincts, they had caught some of our wariness for danger, for a horse, like a dog, can become extremely sensitive to the moods of his rider.

The western man trusted to his horse's ears, its eyes, its senses. He shared with it his water, and if need be, his food.

We moved forward quietly but steadily, and soon we saw their camp on a bench near the stream, partly hidden by brush and trees. The stream was not over four feet wide and no more than four or five inches deep, and the canyon through which we had come evidently caught the overflow.

Rifle ready, I led the way, watching the camp from the corner of my eye.

Here the dry stream-bed was perhaps fifty feet wide, most of it white sand dotted with rocks, many of them half buried. The brush was mostly willow, and thick.

It was a cool morning but I could feel sweat trickling down my back between my shoulder blades, and I worried for fear a hoof would strike stone. We went steadily on, drawing close to the camp, then abreast of it.

The Indians were almighty concerned with their prisoner, and they were shooting at him with arrows, missing in as close as they could, pinning the sides of his shirt to the tree, parting his hair with arrows. There was a trickle of blood down his forehead which I glimpsed when he lifted his head, and for the first time above their yells I heard his voice, and he was singing.

It was Spanish Murphy.

Yes, sir. Spanish was tied to a cottonwood in the clearing and the Apaches were shooting arrows at him and working themselves up to more serious ways of hurting ... and he was singing!

Oh, they hated him for it, but they loved him for it, too, if I knew Indians.

For their prisoner was a man with nerve, singing his defiance right into their faces ... and it was also a means of keeping up his courage.

They would kill him, all right. They were devils when it came to inflicting pain, and they would try to make him last as long as possible, devising new tricks to give him the tortures of hell, and loving him for his strength and his guts.

Spanish was a singing man who loved the sound of the old songs, the western songs, the songs from the high-up hills. He was singing "Zebra Dun" when we caught sight of him and, raising his head, he looked right through an open space in the brush, looked right at us, and he changed his tune to "John Hardy."

"John Hardy was a desperate man, he carried his two guns every day. He killed a man on the West Virginny line, but you ought to see Tell Sackett gettin' away, I want to see Tell Sackett gettin' away!"

There he was, a-warning me. Him in all that trouble, but thinking most of us getting out of there. And me, I daren't stop, for I had a girl and a small boy depending on me. But this I did see. There weren't more than inine or ten Indians there, so far as I could see, they were all warriors.

We went on, our skins crawling with fear for Spanish Murphy, and also with fear for ourselves. We were beyond their camp now, but were expecting any moment to hear a yell behind us and to see the Apaches come streaming after us.

The thing that played into our hand was that the Indians probably had no idea there was anybody else about. They had either killed the others, or they'd taken out running.

Fifty yards beyond their camp the canyon took a bend, and when we had it behind us we felt some better. I decided we didn't have much time before those 'Paches got down to serious business with Spanish. I knew I had to get him out of there, and I had to do it before he was hurt too bad to travel.

When we had gone a little way I pulled up. "You'll have to go on alone from here," I said to Dorset Binny. "Do you know Sonora?"

"No."

"The Apaches have run most of the folks off their ranches north of here, and the few who are still there won't fight back. I'd say ride due west and watch for a trail. If you can find a ranch, ask them to take you in and hide you."

She lingered, and I said, "Whatever made you try this, anyway?"

"There was nobody else to come. I didn't want my sister growing up an Apache."

She hesitated. "Not that what we had was so much better. Since Pa died I've been trying to ranch, but we haven't done very well."

"You ride west," I repeated. "I don't need to tell you to be careful. You didn't get this far riding it blind." I swung my horse, lifting a finger to my hatbrim.

" 'Bye, Dorset."

"Good-bye, William Tell," she said, and they rode away up the canyon and I turned back.

I had no idea in my mind at all about what I was going to do. How does a body go about taking a prisoner away from blood-hungry Apaches? I couldn't just open fire. In the first place, they'd scatter out, pin me down, and surround me in no time. Also, they might just up and kill Spanish right off.

All the time there was a-nagging at me a thing I knew about Indians. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred a man who rides into an Indian camp is safe as long as he stays there -- that is, if he rides in of his own notion, and not forced.

It was a long chance, for we were already shooting-enemies. They most likely knew me by sight by this time. Yet try as I might, I just couldn't come up with any other idea. But what to do when I got into their camp? How to get Spanish out of there?

I could get along in the language. Not that I was an easy talker like Tampico Rocca, but I could make out.

Spanish Murphy was in this fix because he had chosen to ride with me to Mexico, and it was up to me to take him from those Apaches, or to die with him.

I was packing plenty of iron. My Winchester was loaded, and I carried a six-shooter in my holster, with which I'd always been considered uncommonly swift There was another six-shooter tucked into my belt.

So I swung my black horse up that bank and rode in amongst them.

For a minute there, you never saw anybody more surprised. These were Netdahee Apaches -- killer warriors -- dedicated to wiping out their enemies.

Now, as I've said, the Indian is a curious sort of man. They were bred to battle, and among the Apaches the Netdahee were the fiercest, a warrior society of chosen men. They appreciated nerve, but they were curious, and maybe they wanted to see what I was going to do. Maybe it was because I was inside their camp, but nobody lifted a hand.

My eyes took in the lot of them, methodically picking the ones at whom I would shoot first. If trouble started I'd have small time to pick targets, but if I could nail a few of them ...

"Greetings!" I spoke to them in Apache. "I have come for my friend!"

Chapter 9

They turned like tigers at bay, cornered, their black eyes staring. Of the nine of them, one was wearing an old Army coat, another a faded red shirt, and the others were naked except for breech-clouts and knee-high, Apache-style moccasins.

One held a rifle, two had pistols, and one held a bow and a handful of arrows.

The others were armed only with their knives. Their rifles and bows lay near the fire.

The Apache with the bow and the one with the rifle, those I'd take first. An Apache can shoot his arrows just as fast as a man can work the lever on a Winchester ... and they made a nastier wound.

"The man you have tied is my friend. We have come far together, and we have fought well together. He is a good man in the desert or in the mountains."

My sudden appearance had startled them, and they were unsure. Was I alone? I saw their eyes go to the rocks around their camp.

They could not believe I would ride into their camp alone. There was brush along both sides of the stream from where I had come, and the hills at this point were lower and covered with boulders.

They were all in front of me now, and I dared not ride among them. Taking my time, and lifting one hand to hold them as they were, I then lifted my rifle and pointed it at Spanish, then lowered the muzzle a trifle and fired.

My bullet cut the rope where it passed around the tree to which Spanish was tied. He tugged, the rope loosened, and he tugged again.

Suddenly one of the Apaches moved. "Kill him!" he shrieked.

And I shot the man with the bow, then spurred the black and he leaped among them. I fired again, missed, and swung the stock of my rifle against an Apache skull. My horse went through them, turned swiftly, and started back.

A shot came from the rocks, then another. Spanish was loose and running toward the Apache horses.

A lean, fierce-looking Indian started for him and I held my sight an instant on his spine, then squeezed off the shot. The Apache kept running straight into a large boulder, hit it and seemed to rebound, then fell.

One Apache warrior made a running dive and sprang at me, grasping my saddle and swinging up to my horse, striving to get behind me.

I struck out savagely, guiding my horse with my knees, and for an instant we fought desperately. But I had both feet in my stirrups and a better purchase than he, so I threw him loose.

Spanish came charging from the horses, riding his own mount, and we went into the stream-bed side by side at a dead run, while the Apaches vanished into the rocks, shooting at the surrounding hills.

As we hit the sand of the stream-bed there was a rattle of rocks and, swinging around ready to fire, we saw Tampico Rocca and Battles riding neck and neck down the slope in a cascade of gravel.

We raced our horses for half a mile, then slowed to save them, and almost at once saw a fairly wide trail run off to the north from the stream. We took it, and crossed over a low hill into what must have been another part of the same stream-bed.

Then we held our horses to a good steady pace, keeping a sharp lookout behind.

Nobody was talking. Me, I was watching the trail for some sign of Dorset and the boy, but we saw no tracks. We were riding in the lower foothills of the Sierra Madre now, and while the ridges were covered with pines, the lower slopes were a lush growth of maple, juniper, oak, and willow, with a thick underbrush of rose and hackberry. Small streams were frequent Somehow, more by chance than by skill, we had thrown them off our trail, but we knew better than to think it meant anything more than a breather. Surprise had worked for us, but the Apaches would find our trail, and they would catch up.

We lifted our horses into a trot, frequently glancing back over our shoulders, yet always watching the ridges around. We were now traversing a broken but relatively open country with trees along the streams or growing here and there in small clumps. After the heavy rains our passage raised no dust, and the hoofs of our horses made little sound in the grass.

Twice we forded streams, three times we rode upstream or downstream in the water to lose whatever trail we might leave.

Once in the shade of great arching trees, while giving our horses a breather and a chance to drink at a small stream, I told them about Dorset Binny and the boy.

"If anything happens to me," I said, "find them and get them out of here."

The other youngsters had been riding quiet, scared and hungry, no doubt. Had it been us alone we'd never have chanced stopping to fix grub, but the children needed it, and we found ourselves a likely spot. While Rocca stood watch and Spanish fixed some food, Battles and me turned in under a tree for some sleep.

It seemed like years since I'd caught more than a few catnaps.

When I woke up my mouth was dry, and I sat up, staring around, just taking stock. It was almighty quiet, a beautiful quiet such as you only find in the forest. Far off, we could hear the stir of wind in the pines, a wonderful sound.

Closer to, there was only the murmur of water around the stones of the creek, and a faint chirping of birds. It was a natural, friendly quiet Tampico Rocca and Spanish came over to me. Battles was on lookout, perched up among the rocks where he could keep out of sight and still look the country over. The youngsters were sleeping.

"Got any idea where we are?" I asked Rocca.

"I been thinking on it." With his finger he drew a wavy line in the sand. "This here is the Bavispe," he said, and he pointed west. "She lies right yonder. If we cross the river there's some ranches. I wouldn't count on there being folks about, but it could be. Mostly the Apaches have wiped 'em put, burned 'em out, or stole them out. But it would be a good place to stop. There'll be old walls, water, and grass.

"Next we head for the Santa Margaritas ... I know an old mining camp where we can hole up. Then we can head for Chinapa, on the Sonora River."

"Sounds good."

Spanish was chewing on a blade of grass. "Fact remains," he said, "that we didn't get what we come for. We didn't find your nephew."

Rocca was looking at me, watching me. "The little ones," he said, "they know nothing of such a boy ... and they would know if the Indians had him."

"I put no faith in women," Spanish said, "meanin' no offense, but did you ever ... I mean, you and your sister-in-law ... "

I looked right at him. "I'll take no offense, Spanish--you've stood by me. I never saw her before we met in Tucson. I haven't seen my brother in some time ... never did talk to him about his affairs. Little time we had together we mostly talked about the old days and what become of folks we knew." I looked around at them. "I ain't been home much. I've been drifting."

Nobody said anything for a while, and then Battles, who had come out of the brush, said, "I figure you've been lied to, Sackett."

"It don't make sense."

"Any reason she'd want you dead? You got to realize ... not many come back from here. We ain't even sure we're gettin' back."

"The children never heard of any other boy," Rocca repeated, "and they'd know.

And, Harry Brook would. He speaks the language pretty good, and there's talk around the Indian villages."

Well, there was no use studying on it now. We had miles to travel. I said as much and we saddled up and moved down the creek.

Rocca rode with his head over his shoulder. I mean he was a worried man. When you see Apaches you're worried, but when you don't see them you're maybe really in trouble. They could be all around you.

When the shadows were beginning to reach out from the hills we came up to a ranch, four tired men with some tired children. As we neared it we spread out and I rode with my Winchester up in my hands, my eyes moving under the low brim of my hat, searching each shadow, each doubtful place.

No smoke ... no movement. Somewhere a blue jay fussed, somewhere a quail called into the stillness and another made reply. Otherwise it was still.

Nobody spoke, and we rode into the yard. Battles rode through the gate, and I went through a gap in the ruined wall. Spanish circled to the right, Rocca to the left.

The ranch was deserted ... a ruin. Fire had gutted it, and some of the stone walls had toppled. The windows gapped like great, hollow eyes that stared upon nothing. The barns were a tumbled mass of burned timbers and the fallen stones of foundation walls. Mesquite trees choked up the corrals.

But trees still shaded the ranch yard. Water ran from an iron pipe into a tank.

An oak limb had grown through an open window. In the patio the blocks of stone that paved it had been thrust up by a growing sycamore, which was now several niches through.

Once this ranch had been a splendid place, once the fields had been green and men had worked here, lived here, and loved here.

We rode into the thick grass where the ranch yard had been and we drew up. We heard only the wind ... only the trickle of water into the tank. John J. Battles looked slowly around and said nothing, and Spanish Murphy sat silent for a long moment. Then he said, "This is the sort of place you dream about, when you're on a long, dusty trail, or you're in the desert and short of water."

"We'd better have a look around," I said. "Tamp, you scout to the wall yonder.

Spanish can stay with the children."

We moved out. A rabbit sprang from under my feet and went bounding away. We searched the place, but we found nothing, nothing at all.

There was a watch tower on one corner of the place, shrewdly built to observe the country around, but now partly masked by the tops of trees. While I took the first watch, Battles put some grub together for a meal.

The sun was warm and pleasant, but it bothered me for I could see too little in the open country to the west. Our enemies should come from the east, but trust an Apache to use the sun's glare if he figured on an attack. But the sun sank behind the mountains to to westward and I studied the country all around with great care, and saw nothing.

Where were Dorset Binny and the boy? If they had ridden the way we planned they should be not too far away, for our course had veered around and we, too, had come west.

From the watch tower I could study the terrain and my eyes searched out all possible hiding places. The position of the ranch had been well chosen. The place had a good field of fire in every direction and must have been easy to defend back in the old days, yet the Indians had taken it, burned it out, and more than likely killed everybody on the ranch.

It seemed to me at least fifteen to twenty men would have been needed to defend the ranch. Maybe they were shorthanded when the attack came.

In the last minutes of daylight, I saw them coming -- two riders, not over half a mile off.

I called softly to Murphy, who was closest and knelt by one of the openings left in the wall for a firing position. But I was sure right from the start. As they drew nearer I could see them clear enough.

Standing up on the tower I called out, "Dorset! Dorset Binny! Come on in!"

Chapter 10

Laura Pritts Sackett was immaculate. She was cool, aloof, yet she managed to convey the idea that beneath that still surface there was turmoil, waiting to be exploited. A cold, emotionless young woman, she had learned very early that the appearance of deep emotion and passion beneath the quiet exterior was a tool and a weapon to be used, and so she had used it Her adoration for her father had resulted in hatred for all who in any way thwarted or opposed him.

As the days passed into weeks and she heard nothing from Mexico, she grew worried. Suppose, after all, Tell Sackett was not killed by the Apaches? Suppose he did return, and her falsehood was exposed? She was less worried, however, about being exposed -- she had no intention of remaining in Tucson anyway -- than about Sackett not being killed.

She knew enough about the Sacketts to know they had a way of getting out of corners. Suddenly, she made up her mind.

She would leave Tucson. She would go back east without waiting any longer. She might never hear what happened in Sonora, and there was no sense in staying on here, in this heat, and merely waiting. Her father had a little property in the East, and it was time she returned to settle the estate. But first she would make one final effort She was seated in the Shoo-Fly when she reached that decision. She knew, as did everyone, about the gun battle in the Quartz Rock Saloon, and she had seen the Hadden boys around town. She knew also that the Maddens had been doing some talking about what would happen when they met Tell Sackett and Tampico Rocca again.

Suddenly the door opened and Captain Lewiston came in, accompanied by Lieutenant Jack Davis, whom she remembered from the stage ride to Tucson.

They came to her table. "Mrs. Sackett," Davis said, "I want to present Captain Lewiston."

She turned her wide blue eyes on the Captain and sensed a coolness, a reserve.

This one would not be so easy as Davis to wind around her finger. "How do you do, Captain," she said. "Won't you sit down?"

The men seated themselves and ordered coffee. "I hope you will forgive the intrusion, Mrs. Sackett," Captain Lewiston said, "but we were wondering if you could tell us anything about the present location of Tell Sackett. I believe he is a relative of yours."

"He is my brother-in-law," she said, "although I had never met him until a few weeks ago. Right here in this room, in fact. He was with some other men. I don't know where they went. Is he in trouble?"

Lewiston hesitated. "Yes and no," he said finally. "If he rode into Apache country, as we have heard that he did, he may be in very serious trouble indeed."

She allowed her lip to tremble. "He ... he hasn't been killed, has he? The Sacketts are reckless, daring men, and ..." She let her words trail away.

"We have heard nothing," Lewiston said. "We are planning a strike against the Apaches that will take us deep into Mexico. We would not want them stirred up by some unauthorized foray into their country."

"I ... I did not know. If anything should happen to Mr. Sackett my husband would be very upset. They are very close."

"Mrs. Sackett, I understand you provided Mr. Sackett with a horse? Is that true?"

"Of course. His own had been killed and he was unable to purchase one. I merely helped." She smiled. "What else could I do?"

Lewiston was not satisfied, yet there was certainly nothing wrong with her story, nor had he any reason to suspect she knew Tell Sackett's whereabouts, except the fact that they were relatives, and had talked together. He could not have given any reason for his dissatisfaction, but he felt it. Moreover, he had liked Tell, and he was worried about him.

Later he said as much to Davis. "Oh, come now, Captain!" Davis said. "If Laura Sackett knew anything about Sackett she would tell you. What possible reason would she have for lying?"

"I don't know. But why is she staying on in Tucson? She has no relatives here, no friends, and this is no time of year to be here if you can be anywhere else.

I mean, I like the place, but not many eastern women such as Laura Sackett are inclined to want to stay here."

Davis had done some wondering about that himself. Tucson was a hot, dusty little desert town, and not a likely place for a lady of aristocratic background such as Laura had implied in a few carefully casual references. A stopover to recover from the rigors of a stage trip from California would be natural, but the days had stretched on, and still she remained. Had she been known in the area or had friends there, her presence would have been no cause for comment, but she kept very much to herself and indicated no desire to make acquaintances.

Laura was unconcerned as to what anyone thought. She detested Tucson and its people, and wanted nothing so much as to go on to El Paso and thence to New Orleans and the East. If she could only be sure Tell Sackett was dead she would leave.

She knew what she must do. Tell Sackett had now been gone for three weeks, and while it seemed likely that he was dead, he might even now be coming north over the trails through Sonora. So she had one more thing to do. She had to make sure that, if he had lived through the journey into the Apache stronghold, he would die before getting back to Tucson. Somehow she must manage to talk with Arch or Wolf Hadden.

They came rarely to the Shoo-Fly. There were other places to eat among their own land, and she had seen them on the streets with other toughs of ugly reputation.

By listening to talk she heard around her, she learned that the Haddens were, among other things, bronc riders and wild-horse hunters. They had come into town with several horses for sale or trade.

She spoke to Mrs. Wallen quite casually. "There is a man about town," she said, "a rough-looking man named Hadden, who has a sorrel gelding for sale. I would like to talk to him."

Mrs. Wallen hesitated, putting her hands on her hips. "Ma'am, those Haddens are not fit men for a lady to know. I will have Mr. Wallen talk to them."

"If you please," Laura Sackett answered coolly, "I would prefer to talk to them myself. I have dealt with many rough men whom my father employed. I have also had some experience in buying horses."

"Very well," Mrs. Wallen replied stiffly, "have it your own way."

Laura was amused. Mrs. Wallen did not like her, she knew, and Laura cared not at all, but it made her feel good to put her in her place, if ever so gently.

She finished her tea and, getting to her feet, she gathered her skirt in one dainty gloved hand and went out on the boardwalk. The heat struck her face like heat from the open door of a furnace. She stood an instant, looking up and down the street, and then she went on to her rooming house.

Arch Hadden was seated on the steps. He got to his feet as she approached.

"Wallen said you wanted to see me about a horse."

She studied him for a moment. "About a horse," she said, "and some other matters. If you will saddle that sorrel you have and bring him around in the morning I shall ride out with you. If the horse is satisfactory, I will buy him." The next morning in the early coolness they rode out beyond the mission.

The little sorrel moved well, but Laura was not interested in the horse. In a thick grove of cactus and brush, she drew up and Arch Hadden rode up close beside her.

He looked at her with a knowing leer. "Ma'am, I reckon you come to the right man. Now I'll just get down an' help you off that horse ..."

In her hand she held a two-barreled derringer. "Stay right where you are, Hadden," she said. "I brought you out here to talk to you. Do you know what my name is?"

He stared at her, puzzled but wary. "Can't say as I do. At the livery stable Wallen just told me to come and see the blonde lady at that roomin' house. I reckon evertrody in town has seen you, ma'am."

"I am Laura Pritts Sackett."

His face sharpened suddenly as if the skin had drawn tight. He was very still, and with amusement she could see what was happening in his mind. She was a woman, and she had a gun on him. She could kill him and say he had attacked her, and she would not be blamed, but if he drew on her and killed her, he would be hung for murder.

"Don't be frightened, Hadden. I am not going to kill you. In fact, I want you to kill somebody for me -- for both of us."

"What's that mean?"

"There is a man who has gone down into Mexico and I think the Apaches may have killed him, but if he should be coming back I want him killed before he reaches Tucson."

Hadden shook his head. "I've killed a few men," he said, "but only in fights. I ain't no paid killer, ma'am."

"Not even if the man is Tell Sackett?"

He was still wary, but interested. "You askin' me that? And you a Sackett?"

"I am not a Sackett, Hadden. I had the misfortune to marry one. I married him to help my father, but they turned on him anyway. Tell Sackett is my brother-in-law, and I want him killed, Hadden.