Hardly able to comprehend what I was hearing, I realized how badly I’d misjudged Ethan Noon. The puncher had sand and he’d proved it in the last few violent and terrifying moments of his life.
Coleman was a huge man, big in the chest and shoulders, with a full beard and an easygoing way about him. But now he looked shrunken somehow, and suddenly very old.
“Mr. Coleman, I’m right sorry about Sally,” I said. “And Ethan.”
The big rancher nodded. “Thank you, Dusty. I know you and Sally were close since you was both just younkers.”
The man buried his face in his hands, but still seemed full of talk, the horror of what had happened spiking at him mercilessly. “I figure there were about two dozen Apaches involved in the attack. After we’d taken Sally and Ethan back to the ranch, I rounded up the hands and we took off after them.
“Rode clear to the breaks of Cottonwood Creek and found nothing, then headed south. Finally we saw their dust plain, but they were still a long ways off, and then we lost them. The Kiowa figures they doubled back on us and are headed for the Davis or maybe the Glass mountains. He says the Apaches figure to lose themselves up there among the canyons and rocks.
“I trust that Kiowa. He knows what he’s talking about, when he talks.”
Coleman took his hands from his face and looked at Ma. “Miz Prather, your ranch was closest, so I figured I’d let the boys eat and maybe exchange horses, and then get right back after them savages again.”
Ma nodded. “Mr. Fullerton is feeding the hands in the bunkhouse right now, and of course I’ll let you have fresh horses.”
Coleman nodded, his eyes bloodshot, his face gray. “Thank you kindly. I surely do appreciate it.”
Ma’s eyes revealed her growing concern. “John, you’re all in. You should rest up for a spell.”
The rancher shook his head. “I’ll have no rest until I find those Apaches and kill every last one of them.”
I rose to my feet. “I’d like to join you, Mr. Coleman. Like you said, Sally and me were close.”
“Glad to have you, Dusty,” Coleman replied, picking at the plate of food on his lap. “We ride out in half an hour.”
I walked to the bunkhouse and readied my gear, then saddled the dun and led him back to the front of the house. Most of Coleman’s hands had already eaten and were busy roping fresh mounts from the corral.
I knew most of the men by name, and as I walked past several of them waved a friendly greeting, and one yelled: “Good to have you along, Dusty.”
The oil lamps were lit outside the house on each side of the door, casting shifting pools of orange and yellow on the wood floor of the porch, and Ma and Coleman were sitting on the rockers in the shadows, deep in conversation.
I stepped inside and made my way to Lila’s room and rapped lightly on the door.
“Come in,” Lila called.
She was sitting up in bed when I entered, wearing a pale lavender robe of Ma’s, her shoulder all bound up in Charlie’s white bandage.
I sat on the edge of the bed and took Lila’s hand. “How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Much better. Mr. Fullerton’s been feeding me like a horse, says I’m way too skinny.”
I looked into Lila’s eyes, but they were shadowed and guarded, revealing nothing of how she felt or thought. “I just came in to say so long,” I said. “I’m riding out with John Coleman after some Apache renegades.”
Lila smiled at me. “Thanks for trying to spare my feelings, but Mr. Fullerton already told me what happened to Sally Coleman and her husband.”
“Mr. Fullerton talks too much,” I said, then rose to my feet. “Lila, I’ve got to be moving on.”
“Dusty, please take care of yourself,” Lila said.
Only after I’d left her room and swung into the saddle of my horse did I remember that I hadn’t kissed her. Nor had I asked her to marry me.
It just wasn’t the right time, I told myself.
But was that the only reason?
We rode out in moon-splashed darkness under a wild, broken sky, the Kiowa in the lead, most of the tired Coleman riders already nodding in the saddle.
The only sound was the fall of our horses’ hooves and the creak of leather, though John Coleman mumbled to himself every now and then, a man being pushed to a breaking point by grief and the desire for revenge.
We headed west for three days and then caught and killed two Apache stragglers in Coyanosa Draw about twenty-five miles west of Fort Stockton. A third warrior was still alive after the shooting stopped and the smoke cleared, and John Coleman said we’d get nothing out of him anyhow and ordered one of his men to kill him.
But he underestimated the persuasive powers of the Kiowa. The Indian told John he’d find out where the remainder of the band was headed and the big rancher shrugged and let him have at it.
As the rest of us made camp and boiled coffee at a shallow runoff between two steep rises covered in creosote bush and tar brush, the Kiowa drew off a ways, dragging the wounded Apache with him. He made his own fire out of sight of us and got to work.
I have to hand it to that Apache—he was tough. Little more than a boy, he kept silent for a long while and it was only as the day shaded into evening and the first stars appeared that he began to scream.
He screamed all night, keeping us from sleep, and just before daybreak the screams suddenly strangled to an agonized stop.
The Kiowa came out of the brush, wiping his bloody knife on his buckskin leggings, and squatted by the fire. As the hands watched, some of them mighty green around the gills, he poured himself a cup of coffee, then rolled a cigarette, lighting it with a brand from the fire. The Kiowa sat, smoking, drinking his coffee, shivering slightly in the morning chill, a man at peace with himself, saying nothing.
Big John, surly from lack of rest, stepped beside the Indian, looked down at him and asked: “Well?”
Without looking up, the Kiowa said: “The Apaches you seek are headed for the Davis Mountains all right, and they’ll swing a little to the north to avoid Fort Davis and the Buffalo Soldiers. They plan to link up with Victorio at Wild Horse Draw and then cross the Rio Grande into Mexico. All this the Mescalero boy told me.”
“Can we catch them before they get into the mountains?” Coleman asked, his eyes anxiously searching the Kiowa’s impassive bronzed face.
The Indian nodded. “We will catch them. It may be today or tomorrow, but we will catch them.”
“Hey, Injun, do they know for sure we’re after them?” a puncher asked.
The Kiowa nodded, his black eyes flat, revealing nothing. “They know. And they don’t fear us.”
“They will fear us—by God they will,” Coleman roared, slamming his fist into the open palm of his left hand, his face flushed.
The Kiowa shrugged. “They ride to join Victorio. Otherwise the hunters might already have become the hunted.”
“I want them all dead,” Coleman yelled, ignoring the man. He turned to his hands, taking in each one of them with his sweeping red-eyed glare. “Do you hear that, boys. I want them all dead and I’ll give any man who brings me an Apache scalp a fifty-dollar bonus. In gold!”
A cheer went up from the hands, but the Kiowa sat in brooding silence, absorbed by his own thoughts, his eyes open but seeing nothing, looking inward.
I figured the man was having a vision of some kind, but I could not guess if it was good or bad, and had I asked, the Kiowa would not have told me.
It was not yet full daylight when we saddled up and took to the trail, heading due west to keep Fort Davis to our south.
A day’s ride took us to the shallow foothills of the Davis peaks, but we saw no sign of Apaches.
The Kiowa rode far ahead of us, scouting the brush-covered hills and shadowed canyons, the rugged, stone pillared mountains a purple silhouette against the pale sky, rising a mile high above the plain.