The Peacemaker (30 page)

"You're crazy. You don't know what you're saying! I never had smallpox."

Jim's mouth twisted with anger. "Then you won't mind showing the Doc here the palms of your hands, will you?"

The colonel struggled against the blade, then seemed to realize it was useless and stopped fighting.

"You won't mind, will you, you son of a bitch?" Jim persisted, letting his blade do the coaxing.

The colonel held out his hands, palms up. Doc stepped forward and looked down at them.

"Yep. Those are smallpox scars all right," Doc vouched.

To no one in particular Jim explained, "All these years he's hidden those scars from Indy, from everyone." To the colonel he said, "You're the one who's crazy—crazy with hate. You probably figured the Apaches were doing you a real favor by capturing her. That way you'd never have to see her again. That goes for the commissioner too." Jim charged, "With him gone, you don't have to worry if his report to the President is a good one or not, do you?"

"No. No. You can't believe that," the colonel protested vehemently.

Jim exhaled loudly. "You're right. I can't believe that. I can't believe anyone would do such a thing, but you did."

"Leave him alone, Jim," Aubrey cautioned.

"If anything happens to Indy," Jim said slowly, threateningly. "I'm going to come back here and show you the Apaches' favorite method of torturing their captives," he stated, forcefully shoving the colonel away from him.

Colonel Taylor staggered backward and came up hard against a support post. "I'll see to it that you never get that pardon," he spat. "I'll see you hang!"

Captain Aubrey Nolan pushed Jim aside and addressed the colonel. "Begging your pardon, Colonel, sir. But with all due respect, I'd like to state my objection," he said.

The colonel wiped his hand across his throat and stared at the blood. "Objection to what, Captain?"

"To you, sir. To your position as commander of Camp Bowie." He drew back his arm, made a fist, and slammed it into the colonel's face. "I've wanted to do that a long time," he said, smiling with satisfaction as he brushed his hands against each other.

The sun was high in the sky and the temperature still rising when the wolf company rode out. They totaled only twenty-five now. Three had been wounded and two killed in the raid.

Twenty-five against a hundred or more. Yet, Jim refused to let the odds depress him. He glanced back at his hard-eyed wolves and an unexpected surge of pride lifted his spirits. They were good. Damn good. They were as skilled as any Apache warrior who had been prepared from infancy to fight and kill. In an incredibly short time they had become superlative horsemen, skilled trackers, and masters of warfare and survival. Those skills combined with good horses beneath them, the latest weaponry, and the white man's innate sense of logic would make the Apaches think twice before raiding another military outpost.

Twenty-five against a hundred or more. The odds were in the wolves' favor.

The ground around Bowie was charred and still smoking where the Apache raiders had fired it on their way out of camp, no doubt hoping the flames would spread to Bowie itself. But with no breeze to stir the embers, the flames had quickly consumed their sparse meal of dry chaparral and died out.

The smell of smoke was thick in Jim's nostrils and his eyes watered and stung. Just beyond the blackened area, he picked up the tracks of the band's unshod ponies and determined that they had headed east into Apache Pass.

A mile into the pass, Jim scanned the sheer mountain walls, the enormous rocks that looked ready to fall, and the blue-shadowed crevices. Until now, this moment, he had always found beauty and peace here in the pass, the kind of peace that comes with long familiarity. Now, the mountains, with their myriad of secret hiding places where Indy might be right at this moment fighting for her life, with the giant boulders that needed only a strong nudge to send them tumbling into the long, narrow channel below, seemed ugly and forbidding, and he cursed himself for having ever thought otherwise.

They rode slowly, steadily, deeper and deeper into the pass. Jim kept close watch on the ground for a sign that the band had dispersed, but so far nothing, which testified to Diablo's lack of leadership and skill. A wise leader would have broken the band up by now, agreeing to rendezvous at another place and time.

When Jim wasn't looking down at the ground, he was watching the mountains for the glint of a mirror or a white plume of signal smoke. The Apaches had many ways of communicating with each other and most of them were silent.

Near the eastern end of the pass, before it sloped into Siphon Canyon, he saw evidence that the band had finally separated, half of them heading north, the other half south. Jim got down off his horse and followed the tracks to the north several dozen yards. He took his two best trackers with him and explained that he was looking for three sets of deeper hoof prints; those being the horses carrying two riders. When they didn't find them, they examined the tracks to the south and there they found what they were looking for.

The trail through the Chiricahua Mountains was steep, and treacherous. They were forced to ride single file at a slow walking pace. The silence of the desert, which was like no other silence, surrounded them, broken only by the occasional ring of an iron-clad hoof striking a rock. At last, they descended into a wide-mouthed canyon surrounded by towering rock formations. Vegetation was sparse with only an occasional cedar or scrub oak precariously rooted into the side of the mountain.

Jim raised his hand to halt his men, then signaled them to circle him. "We'll pull up here. There's a stream two miles ahead of us. If Diablo listens to the older braves, he'll have them make camp there for the night. It's the only water in any direction for fifty miles."

Aubrey, like the others, appeared to accept Jim's knowledge of what was up ahead without question. "And if he doesn't listen to the elders?" Aubrey asked.

"Let's just pray that he does. Picket the horses. No fires. No smoking. We don't want to give our position away."

As soon as Aubrey had picketed his horse, he walked over to Jim, who was staring into nothing. "What do you figure to have us do?"

Jim met Aubrey's gaze. "I'm going to take Ryker and Moseley and scout ahead. Once I locate the band's exact position, I'll be able to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Then I'll come back and we'll lay out the plan of attack."

"We'll get her back, Jim." There was deep compassion in Aubrey's tone. "We'll get the three of them back alive and unhurt."

"Yeah, we'll get them back," Jim echoed Aubrey's words. Moseley and Ryker signaled their readiness. "We'll be back in an hour. Be ready to move out on foot."

True to his promise, Jim, Ryker, and Moseley returned an hour later, just as night was stealing over the mountains. Jim gathered the men around him and hunkered down and told them what he had observed. "They're camped about two miles up ahead." Using the dull side of his knife, he smoothed the ground in front of him, then cut out a large circle to represent the Apaches' encampment. "They've made camp in a sort of horseshoe canyon," he explained. "The walls around the canyon are almost perpendicular. The stream runs along the east side of the camp," he said, making a squiggle in the dirt. "The horses are picketed here, just up from the stream. There's only one way in and out, in front of the stream. Ryker will take six men up into the rocks to take out the guards. The rest of us will stay on the ground. We'll come in by the horses. Once we see Ryker's signal, we'll strike." He spent a half hour going over each aspect of his plan, then he stood up. "I don't know how this is going to turn out, but no matter what happens, I want all of you to know that I'm proud of what you've accomplished." Turning slowly, he looked at each of them. Then he said, "Let's go."

They had ridden for hours beneath a blazing sun. Indy could tell by the way her skin had begun to tighten that her face and neck were badly burned. She was stiff and sore, aching in every bone of her body, but no part of her hurt as much as the insides of her thighs where they had rubbed raw from straddling the horse with nothing between her skin and the horse's hair-rough hide to stop the chafing.

She had fought Diablo at first, struggling, scratching, biting, kicking him and kicking his horse, until he had pulled out his knife and slashed the back of her hand as a small example of what he would do to her if she didn't cease her struggles.

After that, she had calmed down, realizing the futility of it all. Even if she did manage to get away from Diablo, there were still the other braves to contend with.

Now, in the inky darkness of the night, slumped against a large boulder, Indy sat cross-legged in miserable silence with her hands tied behind her back. She was so weary she felt sick to her stomach and she was half-crazed with thirst.

Not a drop of water had passed her lips since early this morning. Her lips were swollen and her tongue was thick and dry inside her mouth. She remembered the trick Jim had used to draw the saliva into his mouth and searched the ground around her for a small pebble. Seeing one, she struggled to uncross her legs and sobbed with anticipated relief as she slowly rolled onto her hip, then to her arm and shoulder.

Bending her head to the ground, she picked up a pebble between her lips and drew it into her mouth. It tasted of grit and dirt but none of that mattered if it worked.

"What are you doing?" Pru choked out, obviously as thirsty and dry as Indy.

Rising slowly back to her sitting position, Indy closed her eyes and concentrated on working the pebble around the inside of her mouth. Without realizing it, she began to make little whimpering sounds when she felt it begin to work. After a long moment, she answered Pru's question. "It helps relieve the thirst," she whispered, her voice still raspy.

Prudence did try it and was soon enjoying the same relief that Indy had felt. "Do you think they'll torture the commissioner?"

"I don't know. I hope to God they don't."

"Indy, do you think Jim will come after us?"

"Unless something happened to him during the raid, he'll come for us," she answered with confidence.

"But there must be fifty or more Apaches and there's only thirty scouts," Pru lamented.

Indy refused to abandon her faith. "I know, Pru. But you mustn't think about that. If Jim can, he'll find a way to rescue us. I know he will."

"You're very sure of him, aren't you?"

Indy's eyes smarted with tears. "Yes.”

"Then he'll come," Prudence whispered. "He'll come."

Fully armed and stripped down to nothing but breechclouts and moccasins, the scouts advanced slowly and cautiously. A portion of the trail they were obliged to follow had once been a stream. Dried up long ago, the streambed was littered by round, smoothly washed stones and boulders. A whispered word of caution passed from man to man to tread lightly so as not to disturb the stones, which if knocked against each other would send a echo through the canyon and give away their approach.

Jim held up his hand for the men to halt when they reached the mouth of the canyon that led to the encampment. He gave Ryker last-minute instructions, then sent him and his men on their way. The others he told to remain where they were until he came back.

Asking Aubrey to accompany him, Jim ran into an outcropping of boulders, and climbed the stone fortress until he found a fissure through which he could view the Apache camp.

Aubrey followed close behind and climbed up near to Jim.

"There's the guards," Jim told Aubrey in a low whisper, pointing out each one. Holding on to their rifles, the guards stood on rock ledges high above the camp, casually watching the activity below.

A large crackling fire lit the center of the camp. The Apache raiders sat back in small groups from the leaping flames, laughing and talking among themselves.

"There's the commissioner," Aubrey observed. "He's alive but it looks like they've carved him up some."

"If they had wanted to kill him, they would have already," Jim offered, his knowledge of Apache traditions giving him an advantage. "More than likely they're planning on saving him for their victory dance once they return to their stronghold."

"To do what with him?"

"Give him to Chie's relatives. The women are the experts when it comes to getting revenge. They take a lot of pride in the way they torture a man. And with Chie having been such an influential member of the band, they'll take their own sweet time."

"But the commissioner didn't kill Chie. You did."

"Doesn't matter. One white eyes is as good as another."

The captain looked away and searched the camp. "I don't see Indy or Prudence anywhere."

"They're back there in the shadows." Jim pointed to the far end of the camp. When he had seen them earlier, they had appeared unharmed. He prayed that was still the case.

The Apaches were settling down for the night. Jim thought it best to wait until everything was quiet and most of the braves were asleep before he signaled an attack. He told Aubrey his plan and had started to climb down when he heard a woman's scream.

Indy!

He turned back and peered through the fissure, his face pressed against the rock.

Diablo had Indy by the arm and was dragging her to the center of the camp near the fire. Her arms were tied behind her back and she looked exhausted and terrified, but much to his relief, she still appeared unhurt. His heart wrenched at the sight of her and he wished he could tell her help was coming.

Aubrey was beside him, anxious and worried. "What do you think he's going to do with her?"

Jim held his hand up to silence him. Diablo had started speaking. His voice was loud, carrying. It echoed against the canyon walls. Every warrior had turned to look and listen.

Jim listened and translated at each pause. "He says that the success of the raid on Bowie proves he is no longer a boy but a great warrior. He says he's even more clever than his father because he succeeded in capturing the
nantan’s
daughter where his father could not."