Ahead of me the slope rose at a much steeper angle, but I spotted what looked like a narrow game trail winding upward toward the swaybacked crest of the mountain. The area on either side of the trail was surrounded by V-shaped rock formations, here and there massive boulders scattered around as though they’d fallen from the pocket of a striding giant.
The moon was drifting lower in the sky, but still spread a thin light, and the breeze, now that I was higher, blew stronger, edged with cold. This I welcomed, because the chill refreshed me and helped clear my head.
I reached the game trail and began the steep climb. But the horse, bred for the range, not mountains, balked, sidestepping on me, tossing his head as he tried to turn back. I fought the horse for a couple of minutes, then decided it was hopeless. All I was doing was draining my already low reserve of strength. I swung out of the saddle.
Where was the Apache? And was he alone?
Those questions crowded into my head, unsettling me as I led the horse back to the tree line and found a patch of bunch grass where he could graze.
I took up my rifle, walked to the trail again and started to climb. The going was hard and I was weak from the torture I’d suffered and from loss of blood. Every so often I had to get down on one knee, battling to catch my breath and gather my strength, my head bowed. Then I climbed again.
The thought never once occurred to me to give up and turn back. The Apache had wronged me and that I could not forgive or forget. The man had a reckoning coming and it wasn’t in me to let him escape it.
I passed a small rock formation no taller than a man on a horse, shaped like an inverted V, topped with a scattering of smaller boulders and clumps of scrub grass and black thorn bush.
I’d only taken a few steps past the rock when I heard it: a soft, quick, whum . . .whum . . . whum . . .
Turning fast, bringing up the Winchester, I took the blade of the spinning steel tomahawk in my right arm, where the heavy meat of the shoulder muscle meets the biceps.
The wicked little hatchet had been thrown at my back, but I had heard its whispering passage through the air and turned at the last moment. I had saved my life, but the blade was buried inches deep in my arm.
Instantly I lost all feeling in the arm and it flopped uselessly at my side, the Winchester slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers, thudding to the ground at my feet.
Above me I heard a loud whoop of triumph and the Apache jumped from the rock and ran at me, a knife in his upraised hand.
But I was in no shape to fight this battle on his terms.
Desperately, I clawed for the holstered Colt with my left hand, dragging it out of the leather by the hammer and cylinder. The Apache was almost on top of me. I threw the six-gun in the air and grabbed it correctly, thumbing back the hammer as my finger found the trigger.
The Apache closed with me and he slashed viciously downward with his knife. I twisted away at the last moment and the blade raked down my left side, drawing a thin line of blood but doing little damage.
Off balance because of his swing, the Apache stumbled into me and I raised my right boot and shoved him away. The warrior staggered back a couple of steps, his face twisted into a snarl of rage, and came at me again.
I triggered the Colt, feeling the gun awkward in my left hand, and saw the Apache jerk as the bullet slammed into him. Hit hard, the man slowed for just a split second, but it was enough. I fired again and again at point-blank range, every bullet finding its mark in the warrior’s body.
The Apache stumbled against me and I pushed him away again. He spun, fell on his face and then rolled over on his back, his black eyes blazing with a mix of hatred, defiance and the lust for revenge.
The warrior raised his head, frantically searching around him, and a hand stretched out for his knife, which had fallen nearby. But he never made it. His teeth bared in an ugly snarl, the breath rattled in his throat and he fell back, his terrible eyes closing for the last time.
I felt no pity for the man and no remorse. I understood what had driven him, because I’d seen the same single-mindedness of purpose, the same desire for revenge, in John Coleman. I did not admire it in Coleman, nor did I in this Apache.
I stepped over the warrior’s body and stumbled down the slope, found my horse and rode away from there. I didn’t look back.
Chapter 27
“It’s too deep, Dusty. Man, it’s gone right into the bone.”
With my good hand, I grabbed the redheaded puncher by the front of his shirt and pulled the man toward me. “Get it out of there,” I said, my teeth gritted against the pain. “Do it!”
I was lying on my back near the fading Apache fire and around me the Coleman hands were gathering their dead.
John Coleman had died without ever regaining consciousness. Including the Kiowa, we had five dead and two wounded—one of them me.
The redheaded puncher peered at the tomahawk buried in my arm. “That ain’t Apache,” he said. “I think it’s Arapaho. Maybe it’s Arapaho.”
“I don’t give a damn what it is. Just get it out of there,” I yelled, my patience snapping.
The puncher took a deep breath—I recollect that he had freckles all over his nose and cheeks—grabbed the ax by the handle and yanked. It didn’t budge, but wave after wave of agony slammed through me and sweat popped out on my forehead.
“Try it again,” I gasped. “For God’s sake, pull harder.”
The man did as I asked, and this time the tomahawk ripped free, bringing with it chunks of bloody flesh and splinters of bone.
I couldn’t stop the wild scream that rose to my lips, and beside me the redhead threw the hatchet aside, dropped to all fours and started to retch. The man finally wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked down at me and kept muttering over and over again: “Oh Jesus. Oh sweet Jesus . . .”
It was a prayer, not a cuss, but whether it was for me or for himself, I could not tell.
For me, the next few hours passed in a vague, whirling blur.
The dark landscape changed around me, from night to day, unshaven faces came and went and voices spoke to me, but, taken by a raging fever, I recollect very little of what happened.
I know we took our dead to Fort Davis for burial and that the sprawling post was a beehive of activity as two full regiments of Buffalo Soldier cavalry got ready to leave in pursuit of Victorio.
I remember a harried young army doctor doing what he could for my arm, and I recall him saying to the Coleman punchers: “If gangrene gets into that arm, he’ll need a lot more doctoring . . . and from a better physician than me.”
There was some discussion among the hands as to whether or not they should leave me at the fort, but I insisted that I could make the ride back to the SP Connected.
After a deal of cussin’ and discussin’, most of which I don’t remember, the decision was made to take me back to the ranch.
We rode into the SP four days later. I was burning with fever, seeing Apaches everywhere, talking to John Coleman like he was still alive, the dead Kiowa stepping out of a swirling mist, smiling at me, a bloody scalp in his hand, hearing gut-shot men scream and the sky above me cartwheeling, the hot sun spinning, never still for a moment.
As strong hands gently lifted me from the saddle outside the ranch house, I heard one of the Coleman punchers say to Ma Prather: “He’s in a bad way, ma’am. Unless somebody cuts that rotten arm off’n him, I don’t reckon he’ll make it much past the day after tomorrow.”
The hell you won’t cut off my arm, I yelled. But I must have only thought it, because nobody paid me any mind.
I woke to find myself looking into the whiskery, whiskey-reddened face of Charlie Fullerton, and this second time was no more pleasant than the first.