Within minutes after saddling and mounting, Fargo Ford and the others were riding north out of Sassabi Flat. By now it was incredibly hot and even the breeze, what little there was of it, emphasized the terrible heat. When the wind did blow, which was seldom, it did little by way of amelioration. Quite the opposite, in fact, for it was like a breath of air from a blast furnace, rattling the tinder-dry grass and shifting the sand about in abrasive clouds.
The four men were riding in single file, even though there was plenty of room for them to ride abreast. Fargo was at the head of the file, pushing them hard to catch up with Ponci.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said. Then, shouting into the desert: “Do you hear me, Ponci, you son of a bitch? I’m going to kill you!”
The echo rolled back from the Quigotoa Mountains.
“Kill you ... kill you ... kill you!”
Keytano’s wife awakened him. He sat up in the blankets and reached for the wooden shingle she offered him. On it was his breakfast of boiled beef and bread.
“He is gone,” he wife said.
“Who is gone?” Keytano asked as he bit into the meat.
“Chetopa. He is gone, and he has taken five warriors with him.”
Keytano sighed, then put down his meal. “This is not good,” he said.
“Will he make war?” she asked.
“He cannot make war, he can only make trouble,” Keytano said.
“But he can make much trouble,” Keytano’s wife suggested.
“Yes,” Keytano agreed. “He can make much trouble.” Keytano sat there for a long moment, just staring ahead. His wife picked up the food he had put down and held it out to him.
“Eat, my husband,” she said. “You cannot be strong here, and here”—she put her hand to her heart, then to her head—“if you do not eat.”
“Yes,” Keytano agreed. “I must eat. Then I must consider what to do.”
Arnold Johnson drove the rented team and buckboard toward Arivica. He had two accounts in Arivica, which he normally serviced by stagecoach, but after his run-in with Gentry, he would not be using the stagecoach again. They could just get their revenue somewhere else. They would not get one more cent from Arnold Johnson, or from Thurman Leather Goods.
His samples were in the back of the buckboard, plus he was even carrying the fulfillment of one order. When he traveled by stage, all he could carry was his samples. He could never fulfill an order because there was rarely room for the extra baggage on the stage.
The more he thought about it, the more he believed that he should have been traveling this way all the time anyway. It was certainly more comfortable than being inside a hot, airless coach box. And if he had to share another coach with someone like Falcon MacCallister ... well, he just didn’t know what he would do.
He didn’t know which was worse, having to share the coach with MacCallister, or with the Indian woman. There should be a law prohibiting Indians from traveling with white people, just as there was a law prohibiting the Colored from traveling with white people.
Indians and Coloreds should know their place, and their place was definitely below a white man.
“Below a white man,” he said aloud, and he laughed. “Yeah, I would like to have one of them below me right now.”
He rubbed himself as he thought of Cynthia. Cynthia was a black woman who had set herself up with her own crib back in Calabasas. Johnson was one of her best customers.
And, up in Harshaw, he was a frequent visitor to an Indian woman named Sasha.
The Indian girl who had been riding in the coach with him was prettier than either one of them. He thought of her lying naked in the ditch, and he wished he had gone up with MacCallister to see her. He wondered if the men who took her did have their way with her.
What would it be like, he wondered, to be an outlaw, to be completely free of all convention? Why, anytime you wanted a woman, you would just take her. And you wouldn’t have to pay her either. He imagined himself as one of the more storied outlaws of the West.
“Johnson the Terrible,” he said out loud.
No, that didn’t sound good.
“Kid Johnson.”
He shook his head. That didn’t sound right either. Maybe his first name.
“Arnold the Outlaw.”
“Arnold the Evil One.”
“Evil.”
“Evil Arnold! Yes!” he said aloud.
For the next several minutes, as Arnold drove the buckboard, he fantasized himself as Evil Arnold, robbing banks, holding up stagecoaches, and raping women. He felt himself getting an erection.
While one of his warriors held the reins to his horse, Chetopa slithered on his belly up to the crest of the ridge. Looking down onto the road that ran through the valley floor below, he saw a single buckboard, occupied by only the driver. There appeared to be some things in the back of the wagon, though from his distance, he had no idea what they were.
He went back to the others and looked at the war party he had gathered. There were five of them, ranging in age from sixteen to thirty. Each warrior was in paint, having chosen his own particular design.
Chetopa’s war paint consisted of yellow around one eye, black around the other, and three red slashes on each cheek.
It had not been hard to gather his band. Some he had known since they were boys growing up together. Others had come to the village during the breakup of the Chiricahua. All had a thirst for adventure, and most had their own reasons to hate the white man.
Early that morning he had walked though the village calling for all who were brave of heart to join him. These five joined him, while the others, especially the older men, merely stared at them from the openings of their wickiups.
“Will we attack this white man?” one of the Indians asked.
“Yes,” Chetopa answered.
“Eeeyaah!” the others shouted, and Chetopa motioned for them to be quiet.
“We will wait until he passes,” he said. “Then we will strike from behind.”
So deep was Johnson into his fantasies that he didn’t even see the Indians as they came over the ridge and started after him. In fact, his very first indication of danger was when one rode up right beside him on the left and another on the right.
For a second, Johnson was shocked by their sudden and unexpected appearance. Then he became frightened, and he slapped the reins against the back of his team, urging them to run.
The team broke into a gallop, and the buckboard flew down the road, leaving behind it a billowing rooster tail of dust. The Indians easily kept pace with him, and as he looked left and right, he saw that they were laughing, actually enjoying his panic.
He was not armed, and had no way to fight back. As soon as the Indians realized he wasn’t armed, they rode ahead of him, still one to either side, and reached down to grab the harness of his team. The Indians slowed the team, finally bringing them to a halt.
For a second the buckboard just sat there, surrounded by the swirl of dust the wheels had stirred up, as the whole war party gathered around.
“What do you want?” Johnson asked. He pointed to the harness and tack he was carrying. “Do you want my samples? You can have them! Take them.”
“You should not have come here,” Chetopa said.
“What do you mean I shouldn’t have come here? This is a public road. I’m on my way to Arivica.”
Chetopa spoke in Apache to the others, and Johnson saw them all raise their rifles and point at them.
“What? No!” he shouted.
The report of six rifle shots rolled back from the nearby mountains, and Johnson’s body jerked under the impact of the bullets. He slumped forward, prevented from falling only by the footrest of the buckboard.
Chetopa dismounted, drew his knife, and advanced toward the body. Grabbing the dead white man by his hair, he made the scalping cut; then he jerked the scalp off and held it up while it was still bleeding.