Cry of Eagles (24 page)

He rode down one man who was running as fast as he could toward a distant grove of trees, trampling him under his horse's hooves, and shot another in the chest as he was putting a rifle to his shoulder to shoot at Falcon in the distance.

Falcon, his carbine empty, booted it and filled both hands with iron, firing with both as Diablo raced in circles around the camp.

Falcon blew three more men to hell, taking a bullet in his calf. He slowed Diablo long enough to wrap a bandanna around his leg to stop the bleeding, then continued his killing rampage.

Brown cracked open his Greener and was reloading when a black man rode right at him, firing a pistol over his mount's head. Brown looked up, staring death in the face, until the man was blown out of his saddle by Middleton, who grinned as he rode by.

Finally, it was quiet, except for the moaning and crying and shouting for help from the wounded.

Falcon, Middleton, Brown, and Scurlock gathered together at the edge of camp in the increasing darkness.

Falcon's nose wrinkled at the acrid stench of cordite and gunpowder, and the smell of blood and death was everywhere.

“You men had enough for now?” he asked.

Scurlock wheeled his horse around and surveyed the scene. There were at least fifteen dead, and four or five severely wounded. A couple of men had managed to make it to their horses and had escaped, riding leaned over their mounts as fast as they could.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “I've got no stomach for shootin' wounded men.”

Brown nodded. “Let 'em live or die on their own. I ain't plannin' on puttin' 'em out of their misery.”

“Let's vamoose,” Middleton said, his right hand over the hole in his left shoulder. “Our work here is done.”

* * *

Falcon's attentions returned to the task at hand . . . that of tracking, harassing, and eventually killing the renegade Apache chieftain, Naiche, and his scalp-hungry warriors. This was no time for daydreaming. If the three dead men had been found by Naiche, he would know someone was close on his backtrail, and might well send a small war party back to remove the threat. Falcon needed all his wits about him to survive this trek across the desert.

He and Hawk and the others had been lucky so far going up against the Apache without suffering any casualties. Now that he was alone, he had to be doubly careful not to make any mistakes, because it only took one to cost a man his scalp.

Cal Franklin was traveling fast as he left the Dragoons behind him, angling southwest toward Tombstone with his sacks of gold dust hidden in his saddlebags. He wanted no more of this three-man war between Falcon, Hawk, and Jasper pitted against bloodthirsty Apaches. He still recalled vividly what he'd seen from his hiding place in the cave, close to the cabin where he and Billy and Johnny and Frank headquartered while digging riches out of Arizona Territory rock. The slaughter he'd witnessed when his partners died still lingered in his memory, and he felt sure it would keep him awake at night for years to come. He didn't want to remember it any longer, yet it continued to creep into his slumber.

As he'd explained to Falcon and Hawk when they found him alive as the only survivor of the attack, he'd been asleep in a nearby cave, the beginnings of a new mine tunnel, when all the shooting and screaming and dying started. Cal had only his six-gun for a weapon, with six bullets and no more ammunition. What bullets they had were in the cabin, not really expecting any trouble. Thus he'd been forced to lie there at the mouth of the tunnel, to watch his friends and mining partners die the most horrible deaths anyone could imagine, and there'd been nothing he could do to save them. Shooting back at so many Apaches would only have gotten him killed, and his friends were already dead . . . or dying painfully. Some might call him a coward for what he did, lying there in the darkness while his partners were being slaughtered, but Cal was alive. In his own mind he knew he'd done the right thing, the only thing he could do at the time.

He pushed the incident from his thoughts for now, intent on getting away from the Indians as rapidly as he could. He hadn't cared what Falcon or Hawk or Jasper thought about him for pulling out when he did. After so many years of failure and frustration seeking the mother lode, after finally finding enough gold to make him a rich man for the rest of his days, it was senseless for him to stay and remain involved in what MacCallister and the others were doing, tracking down and killing a few Apaches at a time.

I'm no Indian killer,
he reminded himself.
I dig holes in the rocks, looking for gold.

Crossing desert flats, pushing his mount to maintain a steady trot even though water for his horse would be scarce until he reached Tombstone, he rode into a shallow, winding arroyo to do as much as he could to keep from being seen. A huge column of cavalry from Fort Thomas was already entering the Dragoons from the north looking for the Apaches, and they were being assisted by one of the most notorious Indian scouts and Apache hunters in the southwest—a ruthless tracker and Indian killer named Mickey Free. Cal didn't know much about Free, only the stories folks told about him. In the opinion of most, Free was crazy, as mad as a mercury-sniffing hatter who happened to have a taste for Indian blood.

And Falcon MacCallister was no less an Indian killer when he went on a rampage, like the one he was consumed by now. Something from his past made him a driven man while going after the Indians, and he went about it with a methodical, almost casual intent. When it came to slaughtering and mutilating Indians, he seemed to derive some inner satisfaction from disemboweling them or scalping them the way Apaches did their victims. And his own personal touch—the gruesome blinding of Indians who were already dead—had all the earmarks of a man being on the verge of utter madness.

Following the arroyo, he felt safer being off the skyline in what was mostly flat country. Falcon had said the Apaches' tracks were headed this way, and he believed they were making a run for Mexico, but Tombstone, and safety for Cal Franklin, lay in almost the same direction the Indians were taking. He was certain it was worth the risk to get as far away from MacCallister, Hawk, and the soldiers led by Mickey Free as he could. There was sure to be more bloodletting if either bunch found the renegades, and Cal had seen enough blood over the past few weeks to last a lifetime, not all of the atrocities committed by the Indians. When it came to outright savagery, Falcon MacCallister wasn't all that different from the Apaches he was stalking across the Dragoons.

His footsore horse had begun to tire, coughing in the dry, dust-choked desert air. Cal slowed the gelding to a walk to give it a moment's rest. He quickly realized his mistake.

Two mounted Apache warriors swung their horses along the rim of the arroyo above him, both aiming Winchester rifles down at him with hatred slitting their coal black eyes.

“Stop. Drop guns!” one of them demanded in broken English, although there was nothing about the command Cal didn't understand.

“Sweet Jesus,” Cal whispered, thinking about the sacks of gold dust, and what his life was worth.

He jerked his horse to a halt, then held both palms in the air to show they were empty.

“Drop guns!” the same Apache shouted, sighting along the barrel of his rifle with its muzzle aimed straight for Cal's heart.

Moving carefully, very slowly, he took out his pistol with a thumb and forefinger and dropped it in the sand beneath his horse. Then he pulled his rifle from its boot in the same slow fashion and tossed it down with a dull thud.

One Indian sent his horse down the sloping bank of the sandy ravine and stuck the barrel of his rifle against Cal's rib cage, jabbing him with plenty of force. “Ride. We show way,” he said in a strange, guttural tone. However, once again Cal had no difficulty being sure of what the snarling Apache wanted him to do.

He picked up his reins and turned his horse to the south, the direction both Indians were pointing.

Then the Indian behind him jumped off his horse to retrieve Cal's weapons.

I'm sunk,
Cal thought.
They're taking me to Mexico, or out in the middle of this desert someplace to rob me and cut me open, like they done Billy and my partners at the cabin. I'm gonna die howlin
'
for mercy just like they did, until a real slow an' miserable death takes me.

Resigned to his fate, not knowing what he could do to stop the pair of Apaches from killing him and taking the winter's work from his saddlebags, he rode out of the arroyo heading due south toward a distant range of mountains.

The Pedregosa range was where a few old-time miners believed a fortune in gold and silver lay hidden somewhere in rocky peaks, a treasure that had eluded miners, including early Spanish treasure seekers, for over a hundred years. Cal had combed those same peaks for a couple of years, looking for likely spots that might contain quartz, where all gold was found. He'd found nothing and rode north, to the Dragoons a year later, a fateful choice, it now seemed.

His saddlebags filled with riches, Cal rode toward his destiny, sure in the knowledge he would not live long enough to spend a cent of it.

“Ride fast!” the taller of the two Apaches snapped, as he slapped the barrel of his gun over the rump of Cal's exhausted gelding.

Cal's mount obliged the Indian with a long trot, limping slightly on its left forefoot. The Apaches appeared to be in something of a hurry, and Cal wondered if they knew the soldiers were close or if Falcon, Hawk, and Jasper might have been seen along the Indian's backtrail.

Cal, between grisly visions of what surely awaited him now, briefly pondered why only two Apaches had captured him. What had become of the main band? Falcon insisted it numbered somewhere between forty and fifty, in spite of the heavy toll he and Hawk had taken on some of them when they found Apache scouts away from the others.

These men are only scouts,
he told himself. They were sent back by their chief to see who was following them, and how close they were. It was Cal's misfortune to be mistaken for a threat, when all he'd hoped to do was reach Tombstone with his scalp and his gold dust sacks intact. He had truly believed he could make it without dangerous incident.

It was small consolation. Cal Franklin, at his best, was never a match for trained fighting men. He was, by profession, a miner, not a manhunter, unprepared and without the skills needed to perform the bloody deeds he's seen Falcon, Hawk, and Jasper enact upon the Apaches they hunted in the Dragoons. Men like Falcon were a different breed.

I'm gonna die,
he reasoned.
Never will get to spend a damn dime of all this gold we found. There ain't no such thing as justice in this life.

As he'd expected, the two Indians guided him toward the far off outlines of the Pedregosas, yet something deep inside him whispered that he would not live long enough to see the mountains where he'd once prospected for gold.

They'll kill me before we get there,
he thought, glancing around him at all manner of desert plants scattered across a sand and rock wasteland.
What an awful place to die when a man's got a fortune to spend.

It was foolishness, he knew, to worry about the scenery where he would be tortured and killed by these Apaches. What did it matter if the last thing he saw was a cactus or a mesquite tree?

He'd been counting on seeing the insides of several saloons in Tombstone—like the Oriental, perhaps, and others—to spend some of his golden dust. But Cal Franklin wasn't going to make it. This was the end of the line....

The warrior riding out in front made a sudden turn toward a distant thicket of ocotillo where a ravine made a sharp bend to the west.

That's where they're taking me,
Cal thought.
That's where I'm gonna die.

The Indian behind him with a rifle aimed at his spine rode closer to him now. Cal wasn't thinking about what would happen next, for he was resigned to it. He allowed himself to dream about what it would have been like to spend the gold in saddlebags.

They neared the ocotillo grove, and he saw shadows behind the stalks, the shadows of men and horses.

I wish I
‘
d never left MacCallister an
'
Hawk an' Jasper,
he thought.
It was a damned stupid thing to do.

The call of an owl came from the brush. The warrior riding in front cupped his hands over his mouth and returned the bird's cry.

Cal's horse was now so lame it had difficulty in the deeper sandpits, struggling to free its sore leg. He gave little thought to the animal carrying him. More than anything in his life, he wanted to see the saloons of Tombstone again.

“Stop here!” the Indian behind him cried.

Cal pulled back on his reins.

“Get off horse!”

He obeyed the order, swinging down from the saddle on legs that trembled when they held his weight.

From the ocotillos, half a dozen Indians emerged from the brush cradling rifles. One of them pointed at him, and he was surprised to find that the Apache was a woman, even though she carried a rifle and pistol . . . and a knife.

“Come,” one of his captors said, shoving the muzzle of a rifle against his ribs.

He trudged toward the brushy spot with his face toward the ground.

Hidden in a sandy basin surrounded by spiny ocotillo stalks as a desert sunset emblazoned western skies, Chokole looked down at their white prisoner. They had stopped to rest their horses and the women who had run beside the pack animals while crossing the flats, after seven hours of nonstop pushing across dangerously open country. A favorable spirit sign had come since Naiche killed the snake, for a wind had risen toward midmorning which blew away the dust driven skyward by their horses' hooves moving at a fast pace.

“He is one of them,” she spat in Apache, speaking to Naiche, pointing to a white man bound and gagged lying at the bottom of the sand pit. “I saw this one from far away, but he was with the two men in buckskins who killed our warriors. He wears different white man's clothing, but I am certain who he is. Let me kill him myself, Chief Naiche, for what they have done to our Apache brothers.”

Naiche glared down at the sweating white man, his eyeballs bulging, about to burst from their sockets. He turned to Nana, one among his warriors who was old enough to have learned the most English.

“Ask him who the others are, Nana,” Naiche said. “Tell him we will kill him unless he speaks true words.”

Nana sauntered over on his badly bowed legs, strands of gray catching late sunlight in his shoulder-length hair bound to his head by a cloth band. Before he asked the prisoner any questions he took out his knife, showing the white man its gleaming, razor-sharp blade.

The white-eyes struggled to free himself of his rawhide bindings, making muffled sounds because of the bloody soldier's neckerchief tied over his mouth.

“You speak truth to me, white man, or I cut off your eyelids and tie you across a bed of red ants with your guts scattered like ropes around you.”

The prisoner nodded quickly.

Nana bent down, and with the tip of his knife he cut the cloth away from the white man's mouth. “Who are these white men who follow us?”

“One . . . is named Falcon . . . Falcon MacCallister,” the man stammered.

“Is he the silent one who wears deerskins and makes no sound with his feet?” Nana asked, putting the knife blade to their prisoner's throat.

“Yes . . . he's the . . . tall one who rides a black horse, an' has blond hair and blue eyes. He's an Indian fighter or somethin' like that. He's from up in Colorado Territory.”

“Where is this place called Colorado Territory?”

“Up north . . . where it gits real cold in the wintertime. I ain't rightly sure why he left there. He never did give us no reason.”

“Why does he follow us?”

“Some Indians killed his wife a long time ago . . . an' he ain't never forgot it. They cut her up real bad an' left her for dead, an' he swore a blood oath on all renegade Indians. ”

“Was it Apaches?”

“He never said, but . . . I don't think so.”

As the white man hesitated, his eyes shifted and blinked rapidly several times. Nana, with the wisdom brought by many winters of life among the white-eyes, knew the man was lying.

“Look,” the prisoner continued in a whiny, pleading voice, “I never was no part of all that killin'. It's them three others who done it to your braves.”

“Who are the others?” Nana persisted, still drawing his knife gently across the bound white man's neck, just enough to draw a trickle of blood.

“One's called Hawk. He's an old army scout, I think. An' the other is a feller by the name of Jasper Meeks. He's a scout for wagon trains headed west. He's got real long, white hair.”

“I saw this wagon scout with the silver hair,” said a warrior standing in the circle around their prisoner in Apache. “His horse got away and he caught it. Then he took off and left the white people with the wagons to die. He is a coward.”

Naiche understood some of what the white man said in his native tongue, although he turned to Nana for a translation of his next question. “Ask the white-eyes where the other three are now.”

Nana grunted, returning to English when he spoke. “Where are the other three men?”

“Followin' your tracks, only MacCallister has some new idea about what he's gonna do when he gets real close to you. He said he was gonna kill all of you.”

“A new idea?” Nana inquired.

“He's gonna leave the other two fellers some place an' come after you alone. That's what he said.”

Now Nana chuckled, glancing over at Naiche. “The big one will leave the others soon to come for us by himself. He has said he will kill us all.”

“He lies!” Chokole cried. “No warrior, not even a white warrior, would be so foolish. It is a trick, what this man tells us. Do not believe him.”

Juh had been listening to all that was said. “I have seen this tall white-eyes with hair the color of wheat who rides the black horse. He kills without making a noise. He has been taught to hide on the face of Earth Mother like an Apache. My spirit voice spoke to me in a dream, saying this white man will be very hard to kill.”

Naiche turned to Juh, anger twisting his features. “Are you afraid of this white man?” he asked.

Juh wagged his head. “I am only telling you what my spirit voice whispered to me in my dream. I am not afraid of him, or of the others.”

Chokole spat upon the face of the white prisoner. “We kill this one slowly, and leave him for the tall one to find. I will kill him in the old way.”

Naiche knew it would be good for the others who followed him to see a white man tortured to death, proving to those who had doubts that Apache medicine was stronger than that of any white man.

He gave Chokole a nod of approval. “Kill him. Stake him out over the ants without his eyelids so his eyeballs will boil in tomorrow's sun. Cut his entrails from his body in the old ceremonial way. And scalp him. But leave him alive, so this tall one who calls himself a bird will hear his screams across the desert. It will be a message to him and his friends that we want war with him . . . that we are ready to fight him.”

The warrior woman smiled grimly, satisfied with Naiche's decision. “I will enjoy cutting him,” she said, loud enough to be heard by all the others. “Hear his cries, my People, and know that this is only the beginning of our war with the whites who have taken our land from us.”

* * *

Naiche would not allow a fire, not even a small one to take the chill out of the late afternoon air, while Chokole fashioned wooden stakes from thick ocotillo stems and cut points in them, to be driven into the ground. Strips of rawhide soaked in a clay bowl of water not far away. Juh had found a red ant bed south of the ocotillo thicket, where he placed the unconscious white man, still bound hand and foot. The ants would come from their mound at sunrise, drawn to the smell of blood to feed.

“Tie him across the ant bed,” Naiche ordered, somewhat concerned by their delay. “We have been here in one spot too long.”

Chokole carried her stakes and the bowl of rawhide strips to the ant bed. Thirty-four warriors and women followed her to see the ritual. Five scouts had been sent out into the dark desert on foot to watch for the other white men, or the soldiers. All the Apaches knew what would happen the moment the white man began screaming. Anyone within hearing distance would be drawn to the sound, and they must be ready to hurry south, toward the relative safety of the Pedregosas.

Chokole walked up to the white-eyes, a strange gleam in her eyes. She put down her stakes and rawhide, then she drew her knife.

“You die, for the lives of the Chiricahua people you sent to the land of shadows!” she shouted, hatred for this white enemy thickening the sound of her voice until it was deep, like that of a warrior.

Kneeling beside his head, she seized the front of his hair in her left fist and made a quick, slashing motion across the skin covering his skull and forehead.

A shrill scream rushed from the prisoner's throat and his eyes flew open. “Oh dear God! No!”

She left him there, with blood pouring from a bare spot in his skull, his bloody scalp lock tucked into her belt. She took up the ocotillo stakes and hammered them into the ground with a heavy stone.

Juh began cutting the man's wrists free, only to tie them again with longer strips of rawhide to fasten to the stakes. They were wet strips of rawhide that would contract as they dried in tomorrow's sun, pulling their victim's shoulders and elbows and hips apart at the joints. But that pain would seem like nothing compared to having his abdomen cut open, and then loops of his intestines jerked roughly from his body cavity to have them tossed all around him. Removing the eyelids was a new touch for Apache, a form of torture learned from their lifelong enemies to the east, the Comanches.

“Please, no!” the white-eyes screamed, his thin voice ending an early morning desert silence.

Chokole actually smiled a genuine smile when she heard him call out for mercy.

She went about the rest of her preparations quickly, saving the trimming of his eyelids for last. All around her, the other Apaches, mostly the women, were preparing to move again, to run south as fast as they could travel until they reached the safe haven Naiche promised them in Mexico.

When the prisoner was staked across the sleeping ant bed, she drove the tip of her knife into the white man's belly and scooped out a fistful of sticky intestinal loops faintly resembling purple snakes when they slithered from her hand to land on the ground, where they were coated with a layer of caliche dust and sand.

“Ayiii!” she cried to the red and orange streaked heavens, painted by the sun as it inched toward the far horizon with the arrival of dusk.

“Ayiii!” the Apache women cried in a gruesome chorus of voices, a celebration of the white man's slow death lying across the ant bed.

“It is good,” Juh said quietly to Naiche. “When these white enemies come to the sounds of his cries, they will know we will kill them all.”

Naiche had his doubts, for he secretly feared the spirit dream described by Nana. Would this one white man be so difficult to kill? He looked back along the way they had come. Was this silent killer even now on their trail, following them so he could kill them one by one as he had been doing for the past several days?

“It is time to go now,” Juh told him, handing him the thin rawhide jaw rein tied to the lower lip of his horse. “We have waited here too long.”

Naiche swung aboard his bay and signaled the rest of his band to move southward. Heavily laden pack horses led by the women, and twenty-two warriors, prepared to ride out onto the desert and travel all night to get to the far mountains and safety.

Chokole mounted her pinto and rode up beside him in the fading light. She pointed down at the dying white man staked out over the ant bed. “He will scream for many hours,” she said.

“It will be a message to the other whites who follow our tracks,” Naiche told her, giving the northern horizon a careful examination, looking for dust sign. “When they find him, they will know we are sending them a warning.”

Juh overheard their conversation and gave the northern desert a passing glance. “The tall one will come,” he told Naiche.

Naiche wondered how Juh could be so certain of it. Had his spirit voice foretold the future?

Suddenly, one of the five men who had been sent to watch their backtrail came running over a small hillock, shouting, “Horses come! Three riders are coming!”

Naiche whirled his bay around to face the young warrior. “From which direction?”

The man stopped, his chest heaving and sweat covering his body even though the morning temperature was still low. He pointed back the way they had come, toward the north.

“Only three riders?” Chokole asked.

When the scout nodded, too out of breath to speak, she looked at Naiche. “I told you the white man lied when he said the tall one was leaving the other two behind and coming by himself. It must be the three white-eyes who have been following us.”

Naiche nodded, his eyes searching the horizon, watching three small dots appear and get slowly larger in the hazy late afternoon sunlight. His heart thudded in his chest, and his stomach roiled. At last, he was to come face-to-face with this man who had killed so many of his followers.

“Let me lead a small war party out to meet them,” Chokole asked, her face fierce. “The tall one's tricks will be of no use on the desert flats. Even Apaches cannot disappear when there is no place to hide. Let us see if he is truly flesh and blood, or Spirit Walker.”

Naiche looked at Juh and Nana to see what they would advise.

Juh shook his head. “It cannot be the tall one,” Juh said with certainty.

“And why not, old one?” Chokole asked, scorn in her voice.

“It is not his way,” the old man answered. “He would not be so easily seen. His way is to walk in shadows, to steal silently through the night on feet that make no sound, to kill without being seen. I know this from my visions.”

Chokole snorted through her nose and turned her gaze to Naiche. She didn't dare say anything against the old one out loud, for the Apache revered the ancients, but she allowed Naiche to see her disagreement.

Finally, he told her, “Take ten warriors with you and ride out to meet the three who follow us.” He stared into her dark eyes, his face like stone. “Chokole, do not return unless you have killed the white-eyes.”

Her teeth flashed in a savage grin and she jerked her pony's head around. Holding her Winchester above her head, she gave an Apache war cry and quickly pointed out ten warriors to follow her.

As they rode off in a cloud of dust, Nana began to chant in a low voice, praying for the Spirits to guide Chokole's bullets to their marks.