the Lonely Men (1969) (6 page)

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.