Tom Horn And The Apache Kid Page 10

  Captain Crane made his way alongside Horn and Sieber, who walked with the Apache Kid.

  “I’m sorry.” Crane looked into the Kid’s eyes and repeated, “I’m sorry,” then quickly walked away.

  One of the soldiers took the Kid’s arm and pushed him toward the rear car with the women. “You get special treatment,” the soldier snapped, “back there with the squaws.”

  “Take it easy, Kid,” Horn said. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

  The Apache Kid didn’t look back. He walked aboard the second car with the women and children.

  The train whistle sounded again, and hot white steam poured from the engine.

  Doctor Jedadiah Barnes and Nurse Thatcher now stepped near Horn and Sieber. There were the beginnings of tears in the nurse’s tired eyes. The doctor pulled out an already sweat-soaked handkerchief and wiped his wet face.

  “This is a black day,” Barnes said. “A black day. I begged Miles to let some of those people stay behind. There’s a half dozen near dead. Might just as well ship ’em in coffins. Begged him, but he wouldn’t listen. Hell, one of them women’s so ready she’s liable to drop that papoose before they hit the border. Well, come on, Hatchet—let’s get a move on. I’ve seen and heard enough around here to make me bilious for a month. Say, what the hell’s a matter with you, anyway?”

  “I’ve got a cinder in my eye, you old skeleton maker!” Nurse Thatcher knuckled a tear away from her bony face. “That’s what’s a matter with me.”

  “A black day,” Doctor Jedadiah Barnes repeated as he and Nurse Thatcher walked away.

  The band struck up a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne.” Noah Mumford started to sing. He waved both arms and urged the crowd to join him.

  They did.

  Should old acquaintance be forgot,

  And never brought to mind?

  Should old acquaintance be forgot,

  And days of auld lang syne!

  The shiny iron wheels of the engine spun and scratched for traction. The locomotive hissed steam and shuddered. The train moved, and the couplings connecting the cars locked tight as the iron caravan crawled eastward.

  For auld lang syne, my dear,

  For auld lang syne...

  Tom Horn and Al Sieber caught sight of the Apache Kid at a window. He had been manacled and deprived of his freedom. He had been arrested and convicted without judge or jury, sentenced without a hearing and exiled without appeal. He had been stripped of everything but the clothes he wore—and the eagle claw around his neck.

  Horn turned to Sieber.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking, Al?”

  “I guess so.”

  “The Kid’s got more steam in him than that boiler,” Horn said. “I’m afraid of what he might do.”

  “So am I,” Sieber nodded.

  “Damn!”

  The train gathered momentum, and so did the band and singers.

  We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet,

  For days of auld lang syne.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Later that afternoon the citizens and soldiers of Fort Bowie went back about their business. The platform was torn down. The chief beneficiaries of the proceedings were the schoolchildren. They got the entire day off and went about the fort playing cowboys and Indians.

  Seth Barker, the homeliest boy—he was twelve— was conscripted to play Geronimo. Seth streaked mud across his face and found a worn-out broom to serve as a Winchester.

  Luke Lipercott, who had achieved the venerable age of thirteen and already shaved once a week, was the logical choice to enact the role of Al Sieber, chief of scouts. The role of Tom Horn went to Sandy Bierce, since at age twelve he was the tallest of the young mummers. There was much yelling and shooting and ambushing, and finally Frank Lewis, also twelve, who had appropriated a cavalry bandana that served as his uniform, received a gold sword that formerly had been part of a wooden crate and made a speech almost as modest as General Miles’s noontime valediction to the hostiles.

  Sieber went to his place to get a little sleep. In spite of his weariness, he knew he could sleep only in two-or three-hour spurts. Since he’d be up soon, he didn’t bother taking off his clothes or boots. He did remove his hat and place it over his face. Ten seconds later Al Sieber was asleep.

  General Miles supervised the mounting of his gold sword on a wall behind his desk. He instructed two troopers to tip the blade slightly upward to achieve an optimistic, victorious effect.

  Miles stood a moment, studying the effect. He was pleased.

  Tom Horn walked aimlessly around the fort. He visited his horse, Pilgrim, in the stable. Then he wandered some more. He thought about visiting the cantina and going up against some whiskey, but Karl Van Zeider might be there, and Horn had had more than enough of Van Zeider’s society lately. After a while Tom Horn happened to wander aimlessly in the direction of Ryan’s store.

  Shana Ryan happened to be unloading a wagon marked Van Zeider Freighting hitched just in front of the store. She was struggling with a sack of flour. The sack was winning.

  “Hello,” said Horn.

  “Hello, Tom.”

  “Just what do you think you’re doing? Where’s the teamster that delivered this load?”

  Shana motioned toward the cantina. “He said he’d be right back, about a half hour ago. I needed some of these supplies to make up an order, so I thought...”

  “You thought you’d hoist fifty-pound flour sacks?”

  “I just need one for the order.”

  “Want me to go fetch him? Or would you rather I give you a hand?”

  “I’d much prefer your hand,” Shana smiled, “but at this rate I’m going to have to put you on the payroll.”

  “I’ll settle for supper.”

  “Beef stew sound all right?”

  “Sounds skookum.”

  “What’s skookum?”

  “Indian for ‘good,’ ‘great,’ ‘hallelujah!’ ”

  “Well,” she smiled, “I’ll try to make that stew as skookum as I can.”

  As Tom Horn headed for the store carrying in his third load of supplies, Karl Van Zeider approached from the direction of Doctor Barnes’s office-hospital. “You going into the grocery line, Mr. Horn?” Van Zeider inquired pleasantly.

  “One of your teamsters is wetting his windpipe, so I’m just giving the lady a hand.”

  “I did hear the scouting business isn’t so good lately,” Van Zeider commented.

  “That so?” Horn set the sack of flour against a bench on the porch. “And I hear the freighting business isn’t going to be so good now that the railroad’s come through.”

  “The secret of success in business is flexibility, Mr. Horn, and I pride myself on being very flexible.”

  “So’s a snake.”

  “Look here, Horn—sometimes you exceed…” Van Zeider let the sentence go unfinished as Shana stepped out of the door.

  “Good afternoon, Karl.”

  “Good afternoon.” Van Zeider tipped his hat. “I didn’t see you at the ceremony earlier today.”

  “No. I don’t relish the sight of human beings bound in irons and sent away from their homes.”

  “I can appreciate that, Shana. But those renegades know nothing of humanity. They’re wild animals, and we’re all better off without them. You’ll understand someday.”

  “I hope not,” Shana replied.

  “Have you been thinking of my offer?”

  “I’m still thinking, Karl.”

  “Well, it’s still open, and you won’t get a better one. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you two to your…storekeeping.” Van Zeider tipped his hat again and moved away.

  “Flexible,” Horn mumbled.

  “What did you say, Tom?” Shana asked.

  “Nothing worth repeating.” Horn started to lift the flour sack from the bench.

  “Tom! Hey, Tom! Hold up a minute.” Sergeant Cahill was practically running across the compound, and with him were trooper Dennis Ward and
Al Sieber. Cahill waved a fistful of money.

  “Al,” said Horn, “you up already?”

  “You know I can only sleep in dribs and drabs. Besides, these two horse pestlers woke me up.”

  “Any word from the governor?” Horn asked.

  Sieber shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Tom, it’s that time again.” Sergeant Cahill held the money up. “We’ve collected over five hundred dollars to bet.”

  “That’s more than last year,” Horn noted.

  “Well, hell, you won last year, didn’t you? Oh!” Cahill turned to Shana. “Excuse me, ma’am, for the language.”

  “What the hell did he win?” Shana smiled.

  “Biggest rodeo in Arizona, ma’am,” Cahill bea -med. “Being held in Globe. Last year ol’ Tom set three world records and carried off a thousand dollars prize money. We’re goin’, ain’t we, Tom?”

  “Well…” Horn scratched behind his ear. “We sure could use that money, huh, Al?”

  “Like a tick could use a furry place,” said Sieber.

  “Me and Dennis here got some leave coming. We’ll ride along with you,” Cahill volunteered.

  “It’d be a week before we get back,” Horn reflected, and looked at Sieber. “Don’t think I ought to leave right now. I mean, the governor might...”

  “You go ahead, Tom,” Sieber said. “I’ll stay here in case any word comes through. Win some of that prize money, boy.”

  “Well?” Cahill asked, looking at Horn. “Well?”

  “Well,” Horn said, “anybody want to give me a hand with this load?”

  “Me and Dennis’ll do ’er, Tom. Come on, Dennis— don’t just stand there like some dumb plow horse. Let’s get to gettin’.”

  Doctor Jedadiah Barnes appeared from around a corner. “Tom!” The doctor was pumping for breath.

  “Doc, what’s wrong?” Horn asked. “Somebody dying?”

  “Somebody’s always dying. Don’t mean anything’s wrong.” Doctor Barnes pulled money out of his vest pocket and handed it to Sergeant Cahill, then looked back at Horn. “I understand you’re going rodeoing. Want the sergeant to bet fifteen dollars on you. That’s all.” Doctor Barnes wheeled and walked away, breathing even harder.

  “Word sure does spread around here,” Sieber observed.

  “When we leaving, Tom?” Dennis Ward inquired.

  “Well…” Horn looked at Shana. “I’m gonna have me some skookum supper and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll leave tomorrow by first light.”

  Horn and Shana sat at the kitchen table in her apartment, finishing dinner. The scout had taken a tub bath and changed into his suit. His colt was still strapped on for ballast, but his freshly washed hair was parted in a straight line and scented with lilac water. During dinner he had loosened the black string tie that had been bowed at his throat.

  Shana looked beautiful and fresh as a spring garden in a blue-and-yellow dress that matched her eyes and hair. She wore a blue ribbon at her throat with an ivory cameo pendant.

  “You haven’t said much, Tom.”

  “Too busy eating,” Horn smiled.

  “Skookum?” Shana pointed to his empty plate.

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re a good cook.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m a good cook myself.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “Have to be in the scouting business or go hungry most of the time.”

  “Is it true General Miles is…has…?”

  “Fired us scouts? It’s true. He figures from now on it’s going to be a more peaceable war.”

  “Have you been thinking about what you’re going to do?”

  “No, I guess not. Right now I’ve been thinking about something else....”

  “The Apache Kid?”

  Horn nodded.

  “You’re doing everything possible, Tom. You and Mr. Sieber.”

  “Yeah, and the Kid’s getting farther and farther away. Well, it sure was good stew.”

  “Would you like a drink from the hooty-owl whiskey bottle?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Well then”—Shana pointed to the oven—“how does fresh-baked apple pie sound?”

  “Sounds good,” said Horn. “Smells good, too.”

  After the pie Shana walked Horn through the darkened store and to the front door.

  “Can’t recall a better dinner, drunk or sober,” said Horn.

  “You earned it,” Shana smiled.

  “Cahill and Dennis did most of the work.”

  “Tom?” Her face looked lovely, like the ivory white cameo at her throat framed in the moonlight, but soft and lambent.

  “You take care of yourself in Globe.”

  “I will.” He nodded.

  “And Tom, good luck and…” Her hands moved to his shoulders, her face floated close, and her lips touched his, just touched for a moment, then pressed warm and soft, unlike any lips Tom had kissed before. A feeling flashed through him, a feeling that had been unborn until that moonlit moment.

  “Hurry back,” she whispered.

  “I will,” said Horn. “You bet I will.”

  Tom Horn quietly eased into the room where Al Sieber slept. Without sound he pulled off his boots, took off his clothes, and laid them on a chair. He didn’t bother to turn down the blanket. In his underclothes he silently slipped into the bed and looked out through a window at the mute spring moon.

  “Anybody ever tell you,” Sieber’s voice drifted through the darkness, “that you smell real sweet?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Horn, Sergeant Cahill, and Trooper Ward rode northwest toward Globe.

  The train, on its double silver path, headed due east, across the Arizona border toward the Pecos River that bisected the territory of New Mexico.

  New Mexico, stepsister to Arizona and battleground of the Comanche Nation, whose warriors were the finest light cavalry in the history of mounted warfare.

  New Mexico, where John Simpson Chisum drove ten thousand beeves from bankrupt Texas after the Civil War and carved an empire out of rawhide and horn. It was said that Chisum had so much land that it would take a man on a good horse all summer to cover it.

  New Mexico, where the Murphy-Dolan-Brady ring challenged Chisum’s claim and set off the Lincoln County cattle war, which counted among its participants some of the bloodiest pistoleers ever to pull a trigger.

  Among them were Jess Evens, George Peppin, Bob Beckwith, Charlie Bowdrie, Tom O’Folliard, and two friends named Pat Garrett and William Bonney, who ended up on opposite ends of gun barrels. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, was a good-humored, jovial lad who had the dev il lurking within him. One moment a happy, open-hearted companion, the next he was a blood-splattered psychopath whose own blood was finally splattered by his former friend, Sheriff Pat Garrett. In 1881, when he was twenty-one, Bonney was laid to rest in peace, and the New Mexico Territory has rested more peacefully ever since.

  That peace would soon be shattered again as the train from Arizona chugged east into the be-clouded sun and toward the Pecos.

  Geronimo and his men were crowded onto the floor of the forward car, from which the passenger seats had been removed to make more room. Squatting, the Apaches had slept through the night.

  With dawn their eyelids lifted, but not their bodies. Still they sat, shackled, as two soldiers walked through, one carrying a shotgun, the other a rifle. There would be no breakfast—just a noon meal of dried corn and a spartan supper, with a ration of water in between.

  Geronimo sat against the rumbling wall of the swaying car. He stared straight ahead as the two soldiers strode by. The shotgun soldier spat on the leg of the Apache stretched out next to Geronimo. The Apache didn’t move. The two soldiers worked their way back toward the rear door and platform.

  Outside the sky turned dark, suddenly foreboding, clouds masking the sun, precursors of the coming rain.

  The two soldiers unlocked the door to the second car. It, too, was seatless
, loaded with the wounded—one warrior was already dead—and with women and children and the Apache Kid.

  The Kid sat, his back braced against the wall, and stared across at the opposite window. The New Mexico countryside raced by. The first droplets of rain streaked the dirty window.

  Every mile took the Kid closer to his certain death at the hands of Geronimo and his revenge-sworn Apaches. Every mile took him farther from his birthplace and, most important, from the territory where he knew every canyon, coulee, and rock, the uncharted dominion where he could hide forever. Maybe in time Sieber and Horn could do something, or maybe after a long time Miles and the army would forget about one lone Indian on the loose in a nowhere place. Maybe he would cross into Mexico. But the Apache Kid knew there was no maybe about Geronimo’s intentions.

  The two soldiers stopped. One nudged the other as they both looked down at a very pregnant young squaw, naked from the waist down, laboring in pain to deliver a baby as a brace of Indian women crouched at her side. The soldiers took in the show for a time, then walked to the rear of the car, unlocked the door, and stepped to the platform and into the light rain.

  “Sure does stink in there,” said the shotgun soldier.

  “Yeah, like old guts,” the other soldier said as they opened the door to the caboose.

  The sable clouds swirled into a dark cauldron. Lightning ripped across the boiling sky, and rain spilled in sudden torrents against the coursing train as it plunged into a long, black tunnel.

  The car was swallowed by darkness. The train whistle screamed. The pregnant squaw screamed, and as the train tore out of the tunnel into the rain again, the baby was born.

  The cannonading balled-up figure of the Kid smashed through the window, twisted and tumbled bleeding through the air, slammed on the ground, spun crazily over and over until it seemed his every bone would be broken, then crashed with a shuddering impact against a wet boulder.

  Chapter Twenty

  In Globe, Arizona, the bright ball of sun shone out of a yellow sky. Tom Horn had already won the bronc-riding contest, but it appeared that no one would be able to match Charlie Mason’s new world record for roping and bulldogging a steer. Mason’s time of fifty-one seconds seemed unbeatable.