CHAPTER 6
Timmy’s mother’s name was Jane Stockdale. At Oro Blanco, she would be connecting with another stage going on to Providence Wells, where her husband owned a ranch.
“What is your name?” Timmy asked the Indian girl.
The Indian girl smiled. “My name is Yaakos Gan.”
“Yak ... ?” Timmy couldn’t repeat it.
“Ya-kos Gan,” the Indian girl said, pronouncing the word phonetically. “Yaakos Gan. That means ‘Cloud Dancer.’”
Timmy smiled. “Cloud Dancer. I like that. I can say that.”
“For our first year at school, we lived with a white family, and the white family gave us all white man’s names. I lived with the Walkers, so they gave me the name Nina Walker.”
Timmy shook his head. “No, I like ‘Cloud Dancer’ better. It’s prettier.”
Cloud Dancer laughed. “I like it better too, because it is my name. But when we go away to school, we are given white man’s names ... white man’s clothes”—she made a motion with her hand, taking in her yellow dress—“and we are told we can only speak the white man’s tongue. If they caught us speaking in our native language, they punished us.”
“But you can still speak Apache, can’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Say something in Apache for me,” Timmy asked.
Cloud Dancer pointed to Timmy’s mother. “That is your mother. Mother is shimaa.”
“Shimaa,” Timmy repeated.
Cloud Dancer pointed to her head. “Head is bitsitsin. Hair is bitsizil; eyes, bidaa; ears, bijaa; hand, bigan; feet, bikee. It’s easy. Just remember that each part of your body starts with the ‘bi’ sound, as in the word bit.”
Timmy repeated each word several times, until he was able to say them.
“Very good!” Cloud Dancer said, clapping her hands enthusiastically.
For the next few hours, Cloud Dancer taught Timmy her language while his mother looked on. Johnson stared out the window, his disapproval evident but not spoken.
Watching the interplay between Cloud Dancer and Timmy, Falcon MacCallister thought of his own wife, dead now for many years. Had she lived, it might be her sitting next to him now, and Timmy could be his own son, learning the language.
Marie Gentle Breeze, as she was called, had been captured by a band of Indians who tried to take her north with them as a slave. She fought them all the way, until they killed her. They crushed her head with a war ax, raped her many times, and threw her body in the river. Jamie MacCallister, Falcon’s father, rode and walked for many miles on either side of the river, searching for Marie. He finally found her body wedged between a large rock and a tree, a few feet away from the west bank of the river.
Falcon stared across the coach at the drummer. Johnson’s obvious Indian bias had triggered Falcon’s memories of his own wife, and what happened to her. It was the memory of his wife’s murder that had caused him to throw Johnson from the stage, and he had to fight against the urge to do it again.
Up on the driver’s seat, Gentry and his shotgun guard were talking.
“As many times as Johnson has made this trip with us, you’d think he’d have better sense than to fall out the door,” Kerry said.
Gentry chuckled. “He didn’t no more fall out that door than the man in the moon.”
“What do you mean? He got off the stage somehow. You seen him come runnin’ up alongside.”
“Well, think about it, Kerry. Has he ever fallen out the door before?”
“No.”
“No, and he didn’t this time neither. Come on, you know him. You know how he can get on a person’s nerves. If you ask me, that big fella MacCallister just threw Johnson’s ass out.”
Kerry laughed. “Damn me if I don’t think you’re probably right.”
In order to get to Pajarito from Calabasas, the stage had to follow the road south for a while, then cut back west through Cerro Pass.
By horseback there was no need to follow the road, so Fargo Ford and his band started straight across the Sonora for Cerro Pass.
When they reached the Santa Cruz River, they stopped to fill their canteens, and to let the horses drink. Ponci stood at the edge of the river and started relieving himself.
“Ponci, what the hell are you doing pissing in the river like that? Can’t you see we are filling our canteens, you stupid shit?” Monroe asked.
“I’m pissin’ downriver,” Ponci answered.
“Get away from the river or I’ll kick the shit out of you,” Monroe said menacingly.
“You want to try me?” Ponci replied, his hand hovering over his gun.
Suddenly a gunshot rang out, and a bullet hit the ground between the two men, then ricocheted off, the boom and whine bouncing back as echoes from the nearby mountains.
“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Fargo asked angrily. “Would you rather fight each other, or get your hands on that money?”
Ponci and Monroe stared at each other for a long moment.
“Look, if you two sons of bitches want to kill each other, be my guest. But do it after we get the money, okay? Hell, I hope you do kill each other, then ... it’ll be more money for the rest of us.”
“We’ll finish this later,” Monroe said.
“I’ll be here,” Ponci said.
“Whichever one of you sons of bitches kills the other, you don’t get his whole share. We’ll split it up amongst us,” Fargo said.
Ponci and Monroe stared at each other for a moment longer. It was obvious by the expressions on their faces that they had no intention of letting the argument get that far.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think so,” Fargo said, reading their expressions. “Come on, get mounted,” he ordered. “If we want to get our hands on that money, we’ve got to get to the pass before the stage.”
The coach had been under way for about four hours when, from the driver’s seat, came the blare of a trumpet.
“We must be coming into Pajarito,” Falcon said. He pulled out his watch and looked at it. “And right on time, I see.”
There was no railroad in Pajarito, and no telegraph line. Therefore, the arrival of the stagecoach, once each day from Calabasas and once each day from Oro Blanco, provided the only connection the town had with the outside world. Because of that, the arrival was a major event, and men and women stepped out of their homes, stores, and businesses to watch the stage roll in each day. Children would sometimes run down the street alongside the coach, often accompanied by their dogs. Today was no exception, and nearly every citizen in Pajarito stood outside their homes and businesses, watching the arrival.
Just before entering the town, the driver stirred the team into a trot so as to make a more impressive entrance. Then, as they approached the depot, Gentry called out to the horses and started hauling back on the reins. At the same time he applied the brakes and the coach slowed to just above a walk. It finally rattled to a stop just in front of the depot, where the stage sat there for a second or two as the dust cloud it had generated came rolling by them.
The driver climbed down then and, after patting some of the dust off himself, reached up to open the door. As he opened it, some of the dust rolled inside.
“All right, folks, this here place is the Pajarito stage depot. Since all of you is goin’ on through, don’t none of you be wanderin’ off nowhere so’s that you miss the stage. We’ll be here for about an hour to change the team, take on fresh water, and let you folks grab somethin’ to eat. Mrs. Foster fixes a good ham and ’taters, and if we’re lucky, she’ll have some kind of pie,” Gentry said.
Johnson jumped down first and hurried toward the privies in back. Falcon was next, and he helped both Mrs. Stockdale and Cloud Dancer down.