Tom Horn And The Apache Kid Page 11

  Cahill and Dawson were betting that Tom Horn could beat it.

  Horn was in the saddle waiting to try.

  At the judge’s signal the wild three-year-old range steer was set loose from a pen and driven at a run by two cowboys toward a marker two hundred fifty yards away. As the red-eyed steer crossed the marker at full speed, the judge fired a second signal, and Horn, riata in hand, spurred after the racing animal.

  When he closed to within forty yards, Horn swung the loop of his lariat in a swift, clean circle. At twenty yards he flung the rope like a sling, and its loop settled around the horns of the charging beef and drew tight, tumbling the bewildered animal off its feet as Horn’s horse came to an abrupt stop.

  Horn flew off his mount, carrying the lash end of the lariat with him, keeping it taut, coiling up the slack while approaching the thrown steer. The crowd stood and yelled as Horn looped a half hitch on the steer’s forelegs and another on his hind legs. A third and final knot bunched all four of the stunned animal’s legs together in a bouquet of beef.

  Done.

  “Time,” the judge announced, “forty-nine seconds flat! A new world record!”

  The rain still pelted into the buckled, unconscious body of the Apache Kid lying at the base of the boulder.

  His escape had been discovered when the soldiers returned to the car to disperse the noon meal. The train stopped at Valverde, and telegraph wires tapped out the news north to Santa Fe, south to El Paso, and west back to Bowie. Within hours every fort in both territories had been alerted and patrols were sent out from the Rio San Pedro to the Pecos.

  A rain-soaked squad out of Fort Bayard had been reconnoitering for hours, when a scout pointed to the twisted heap that lay in a swale fifty yards from the railroad track.

  A trooper reached down, turned the Kid over, and looked into his blood-and rain-streaked face.

  “Alive?” the still-mounted sergeant asked, peering out of his slicker.

  “Barely.”

  “Better get him to Bayard,” the sergeant said. “What’s left of him.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Al Sieber and Captain Crane walked briskly out of General Miles’s headquarters toward a hitching post where Sieber’s horse was tied with saddle bags bulging.

  “I’ve never seen the general so flustered,” Crane smiled.

  “Yeah, he was downright epizootic,” said Sieber. He folded a tele gram, put it in his breast pocket, and started to mount.

  Shana came running toward them. “Mr. Sieber, is it true? Has the Apache Kid escaped?”

  “That’s part of it,” Sieber answered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You tell her the other part, Captain.” Sieber swung into the saddle. “And don’t forget to send that telegraph to Globe.” Sieber wheeled his animal around and galloped away through the compound.

  “What is it, Captain?” Shana persisted. “What happened?”

  “The Kid was badly hurt during the escape. He’s been captured again. They’re holding him at Fort Bayard.” Captain Crane motioned toward the headquarters building. “But that’s not what’s got General Miles in a flurry. There’s something else.”

  “What, for heaven’s sake? Has it got to do with Tom?”

  “In a way. I’m sending a telegraph now. Governor Zulick’s decided that what the Kid did to Van Zeider constitutes a civilian offense. He telegraphed Miles that the general had no right to put the Kid on that train. Zulick’s remanded the Kid to Sieber’s custody and authorized him to take the Kid to Tucson, where...”

  “...you’ll stand trial in a civilian court,” a saddle-worn Sieber explained to the Apache Kid in the hospital stockade at Fort Bayard.

  The Kid’s head was ban daged and covered by his handcuffed hands as he sat listening on a bunk. The Apache Kid lifted his face slowly. It was bruised and discolored.

  But that wasn’t the only difference. There was a different look in his eyes, a look that had been branded deep. It would be there from now on.

  The look was hate.

  “We’ll get the best lawyer in Tucson,” Sieber assured him.

  “After Tucson, what?” the Kid whispered.

  “We’ll have to take it one step at a time.”

  “Yuma. That’ll be the next step. Twenty years in that hellhole in Yuma.”

  Major Edward McReedy, commanding officer of Fort Bayard, walked down the hallway to where a soldier stood guard. Sieber moved a couple steps toward the major.

  “He must be made of catgut,” Major McReedy remarked. “We thought he was going to die.”

  “Maybe part of him did,” Sieber replied softly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ll provide you with a wagon and an escort—”

  “I don’t need any escort.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Sieber. He may be in your custody, but he’s my prisoner, and I’m responsible until he’s turned over to the proper authorities in Tucson. I’ll provide a wagon and escort whenever you’re ready to leave.”

  “Thanks,” Sieber grunted.

  “You have an idea when that will be?” Major McReedy inquired.

  “Whenever the Kid can travel.”

  “Now.” The Kid rose. “I’m ready now.”

  “Well, I’m not,” said Sieber. “I don’t travel like a colt no more. I’m plumb tired and saddle sore. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

  Tom Horn, Sergeant Cahill, and Trooper Ward sat at a table in the Globe Café with the scant remnants of three sixteen-ounce steaks and a nearly empty bottle of whiskey in front of them. Someone had thoughtfully provided Horn with a pillow to sit on. A score of customers were eating and drinking at other tables.

  “Hey, Sam,” Cahill called to the waiter, “fetch another bottle of that tornado juice and give everybody in the house another drink on Sergeant Patrick Cahill, courtesy of Tom Horn, who can rope and ride anything with hair on it!”

  Each of the three men had a stack of money in front of him.

  Cahill nudged Horn. “Tom, how much prize money did you total out to?”

  “Twelve hundred simoleons.”

  “Hell,” said Cahill, “ain’t nobody gonna break those records for fifty years—a hundred!”

  “We’ll do her again next year eh, Tom?” Trooper Ward laughed.

  “I might stay right here until then!” Cahill banged a fist into Trooper Ward’s shoulder.

  The waiter arrived with a fresh quart of whiskey. Cahill handed him the nearly empty bottle. “Here, Sam,” Cahill grinned, “give the rest of this to your cat and let him go out and howl at the moon to -night.” Cahill laughed and pounded the table, just as a young man entered the café.

  “Tom Horn in here?” the young man asked aloud.

  “Hell yes,” said Cahill. “Right here—the one sitting on the pillow.”

  “Telegraph, Mr. Horn.”

  “Thanks.” Horn took the tele gram and flipped the young man a quarter. He read the message from Crane about the Apache Kid. The young man stood looking at all the money in front of Horn.

  “Checked the hotel first,” the young man said. “Coulda left the telegraph there. But I made a special trip all the way over here.”

  “Yeah,” said Horn, rising and tossing the young man another quarter. “Thanks.”

  Horn took his money from the table, stuffed it in his shirt, and started out.

  “Hey, Tom,” Sergeant Cahill hollered, “where the hell are you going?”

  “Fort Bayard,” Horn hollered back, and went out the door.

  From Fort Bayard the prison wagon creeked past Silver City southwest toward Lordsburg. The wagon was built to hold up to twenty prisoners. This warm and windless day it held only one. The Apache Kid sat on the bench built along the length of the wagon wall and stared out the small barred back window, the only opening in the otherwise completely enclosed lorry.

  As he stared he continued to work on the handcuffs. He had been doing just that since the wagon, a
long with the driver and a mounted guard, with Sieber riding alongside, left Bayard hours ago.

  His right hand was compressed, and the Kid kneaded the flesh under the iron bracelet with his left hand. Some of the skin tore away, and the kneading pro cess was now aided by lubricating blood.

  Sieber had replaced the Kid’s clothes, ripped and shredded by the fall from the broken window, with a pair of booger-red pants and a blue cotton shirt. The Kid still wore his scouting moccasins— and the eagle claw.

  Tom Horn had ridden through the night from Globe. He had left Pilgrim with Sergeant Cahill, bought a good horse, then swapped mounts at the usual posts along the way, Safford, Fort Grant, and Wilcox. Now he was back at Bowie, where he would saddle a fresh horse and head east toward Lordsburg.

  Shana saw him ride the burned-out mare across the compound and into the stable. She locked the store and entered the barn as Horn cinched up a strong, deep-chested roan.

  “Tom…” Shana touched his elbow, and he turned close to her. “You look awful. You’ve got to get some rest.”

  “First I’ve got to meet up with Al and the Kid. I figure that’ll be just the other side of Lordsburg.”

  “A few hours, Tom. What difference will a few hours make?”

  “I’ve got to get there, Shana. But I was coming to see you first.”

  “Were you?”

  “Here.” Horn pulled money out of his shirt. “I won twelve hundred in Globe. Keep a thousand for me. Don’t want to carry all that much. If we need it in Tucson, I’ll come for it. Will you do that?”

  “Tom, you need sleep....”

  “Will you?”

  “Look at you. You’re dirty, worn out, half dead…and I think you’re wonderful.” She reached up and kissed him.

  Horn handed her the money, thrust the toe of his boot into the stirrup, legged over the saddle, and went to his spurs.

  Sweat and pain streaked down the Kid’s contorted face. His right hand was a mass of bloody meat as he worked the iron cuff lower and lower, almost to his bruised knuckles.

  The trooper riding alongside Sieber lifted the loosely tied yellow bandana from his neck and wiped at his sweat-mottled face.

  “Hotter than hell’s hinges,” he said, and un-screwed the lid of his canteen. The trooper took a swig, then held the canteen upside-down, showing Sieber that it was empty.

  Sieber nodded and pointed down a slope to a stand of trees along a stream about seventy-five yards away. “Give me your canteen. We’ll noon here.”

  “Sounds good.” The trooper screwed the lid back on the canteen and handed it to Sieber.

  “Tell the driver to pull up. And let the Kid out to stretch his legs and take a leak.”

  “Yo.” The trooper smiled and rode toward the driver as Sieber headed down the slope.

  “Pull up, Jess,” the trooper instructed the driver. “This’ll be our noon stop. Gonna let the Kid out.”

  Inside, the Apache Kid listened and with a last desperate effort slipped his blood-glossed hand free from the cuff just as the wagon lurched to a stop.

  “Come on out, Kid, and do what you haveta.” The trooper unlocked and opened the door.

  The Apache Kid held his hands together as if they were still shackled and started toward the rear of the lorry.

  “This is the last stop before Lordsburg, Kid,” the trooper said. “We’ll get a hot meal there to night.”

  The Kid backed out of the wagon, still concealing his unbound hands. The trooper stretched both arms in the air and twisted his neck to get the trail kinks loose. As the Kid’s foot touched the ground near the soldier, he spun and unleashed a left. Fist and handcuff smashed into the trooper’s face, felling him.

  The Kid sprang toward the downed trooper’s nearby horse and pulled the Winchester from its scabbard. Up front the debarking driver, unaware of what had happened, stepped to the ground as a rifle cracked and a bullet crashed into his spine.

  The dazed trooper looked up, and as he started to rise, a slug from his own Winchester tore into his forehead.

  At the sound of gunfire Sieber dropped the trooper’s canteen and turned toward the wagon, reflexively lifting his Colt from its holster. Sieber froze. He saw the Kid holding the Winchester, with the handcuffs dangling from his left wrist.

  “Kid!”

  A strange look danced into the Apache Kid’s eyes. He took quick but careful aim and fired one shot.

  The slug shattered Sieber’s left shin, tearing apart bone, muscle, and cartilage. The old scout dropped in agony.

  A half mile to the west, Tom Horn heard the faint pops of rifle shots and spurred his mount.

  The Apache Kid was already riding away on the trooper’s horse, holding the reins in his left hand while the blood-wet fingers of his right gripped the Winchester.

  Al Sieber half stumbled, half crawled back toward the stream. He made it to the water, set down the Colt, and tore away his pant leg. Just above the bootline his leg was a crimson pulp. He dipped his hands into the stream and had just begun to wash the wound, when he heard the hoofbeats. Sieber clawed his Colt and turned back toward the slope.

  At the wagon Tom Horn reined in his lathered horse and looked a moment at the two dead men on the ground, then spotted Sieber and galloped down the grade toward the fallen scout.

  Horn pulled up just short of Sieber, flew off his mount, and knelt at the wounded man’s side.

  “Al...”

  Sieber’s lips were thin and white with pain and rage.

  “That dirty son of a bitch!” said Al Sieber.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The prison wagon, with two horses tied behind it, rolled into Fort Bowie. Reins in hand, Horn sat in the driver’s seat. Sieber sat next to him, his leg swathed in a blood-soaked makeshift ban dage.

  Troopers and civilians assembled quickly from all directions and ran alongside, shouting dumb questions that Horn didn’t bother to answer and Sieber, nearly unconscious and in shock, couldn’t.

  “Get the doctor and a stretcher!” Horn hollered as he pulled the wagon up near headquarters. He started to help Sieber, who stirred as the lorry came to a stop. “Lend me a hand here, soldiers!”

  The men lifted Sieber off the lorry as General Miles and Captain Crane appeared through the headquarters doorway. Shana came running from the store and the Van Zeider brothers, Emile’s arm now in a sling, sauntered over as casually as if they were taking an idle Sunday stroll.

  Doctor Jedadiah Barnes and Nurse Thatcher ran past the Van Zeiders in an uncasual hurry. Barnes sized up his patient’s condition and barked instructions. “You two lay him on that stretcher. Hatchet, go back and heat up some water—get a move on! Get back, everybody—goddammit, get back!” Barnes looked at Horn and pointed to Sieber’s leg. “He hit anyplace else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Sieber asked, and lost consciousness.

  The troopers carrying Sieber followed Doctor Barnes toward the office-hospital as Barnes was still admonishing them to “get a move on.”

  “Are you all right, Tom?” Shana touched his arm.

  “Yeah.” Horn nodded, then turned toward Miles and Crane. “There’s two dead troopers in the wagon.”

  Four soldiers moved toward the rear of the prison wagon, untied the two horses, and opened the unlocked door.

  “And where,” General Nelson Appleton Miles spat out, “is the Apache Kid?”

  The Apache Kid leaned over the carcass of the horse he had ridden to death. He lifted the trooper’s Winchester out of its boot, uncinched the saddle and pulled it free from the dead animal. He let the saddle fall on the ground but picked up the saddle blanket, worked it into a roll, and shoved it under his armpit, pressing it against his body. He did all this without haste or concern. He knew there was no other living human being, white or red, within twenty miles of this stillborn spot. For now no one could harm him, manacle him, pen him. No one could touch or see him.

  Carrying the rolled blanket under his left arm, from which the handcuffs st
ill dangled, and with the Winchester cold against the palm of his right hand, he stepped over the legs of the dead horse.

  The Apache Kid was walking to where the sun had set, heading home along the Dragoon Mountains.

  Al Sieber lay conscious now in a bed at the infir-mary. Horn, Shana, Doctor Barnes, and Nurse Thatcher were still there. Barnes and Thatcher had washed out the wound, made what repairs were possible, set splints on the leg, and wrapped it tight.

  “I’m gonna track him down,” said Sieber, “and I’m gonna kill him.”

  “Not to night you ain’t,” Doctor Barnes advised. “To night you’re gonna get some rest. You lost a bucket of blood. Hatchet, see if you can blow out that lamp without knocking it over.”

  “Tom,” said Sieber, “I want you to—”

  “Not now, Al,” Horn interrupted. “You do what Jedadiah says. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  Sieber nodded reluctantly, then breathed deeply as Nurse Thatcher blew out the lamp.

  “I’ll be nearby,” the nurse said. “If you need anything just call out.”

  Sieber closed his eyes, and the others left the room.

  “Hatchet, you go home. I’ll sleep on the cot to -night,” Doctor Barnes said as they entered the waiting room. “No sense in both of us hanging around.”

  “Why don’t you go home?” Thatcher replied. “Maybe you’ll even put on a fresh shirt tomorrow— that one’s getting rusty.”

  “Go home you old spigot. I’m the head limb skinner around here—and this shirt’s good for another week.”

  “Good night, you two,” Nurse Thatcher said to Shana and Horn as she walked to the door.

  “Tom…” Doctor Barnes spoke almost in a whisper so Sieber couldn’t hear even if he were awake. “This isn’t the time to tell him, but I might as well tell you.”

  “That bad?” Horn thumbed his chin.

  “Not for an ordinary man. But Sieber’s not an ordinary man. His scouting days are all behind him.”

  “That’s a hard dose. You sure?”