Feud On The Mesa (3 page)

For a long, brooding moment Red Sleeves thought over Ginn’s plan. He respected the fighting
ojo claro
before him, but this was a war to extinction and the great white fighters were no better than the lesser ones. In fact, it would be well to kill the great ones first, then the Indians would have nothing but pale-faced human sheep to slaughter.

Red Sleeves nodded slowly, looking straight into Caleb’s eyes. “Yes, we will take him with us and
leave his body among the dead. But the Apaches shall kill him, for he is a brave warrior and no stain must linger after the death of great fighting men.” He turned to No Salt: “Guard him well, No Salt, until we are ready to ride.”

N
o Salt was a good guardian. The day was al-most spent and he took his prisoner over to his own camp to eat. The meal was a dolorous, silent affair with Free Man eating desultorily, No Salt chewing in carefully averted grimness, and No Salt’s squaw impassive and dour. Caleb Doom ate hungrily. The food wasn’t tasty, and Doom knew better than to ask what it was. It was the first meal since he had left Leclerc at Dentón. His mind was busy, too. The Apaches had not disarmed him and he resolved, once in the neighborhood, to fire his gun and let the settlers at Clearwater Springs know that trouble was coming. That he’d die, he under-stood, but he was to die anyway.

No Salt wiped his hands painstakingly on the uppers of his moccasins. “You are to leave your gun and knife with me.”

Doom felt his hopes tumble. He considered immediate resistance but decided against it. Free Man had interpreted again and was watching the frontiersman owlishly Doom spoke as he unbuckled the wide, mahogany-colored belt and let his .44 and scalping knife drop gently against the warm earth. “One more gun and knife to hasten the fall of my brothers.”

Free Man bristled. “It is not so.”

“Yes, the result of warfare is warfare. The Apaches have been my brothers, and I hate to see them used,” Doom said angrily.

“No one uses the Apaches.”

“Not even Sam Ginn?”

“No. Sam Ginn is a’breed Comanche. He is like one of us, his race fights the
ojos claws
, too,” Free Man answered.

Caleb nodded thoughtfully as he watched the shadows lengthen. “Yes, one half of him fights the
ojos claws
, while the other half profits from the fighting. It is a good combination, for a trader.”

No Salt requested an interpretation, listened with downcast eyes and furrowed brow as Free Man told him what Caleb had said, looked oddly at the frontiersman, and arose, growling an order that was quickly made plain to Doom. The time had come to ride.

A raucous turmoil boiled through the large Indian encampment as the warriors, uniformly short, bandy-legged, and heavy-shouldered, painted and decorated in lurid symbols of death and ruin, assembled on their horses. They were awaiting the arrival of their war leaders, Red Sleeves and a dry-eyed, fanatically featured younger man called Antonio—a kidnapped Navajo who had grown up as an Apache.

Caleb looked over the fighting bucks. He estimated their number at 400—more Apaches than he had ever seen in a fighting party before.

Red Sleeves rode up beside him and inclined his head respectfully, broodingly “There are fool Apaches just as there are fools among the
ojos claws.
The Apache fools would have you die in disgrace.” He shook his head firmly. “This will not happen,
Silent Outcast. The older warriors know you are a great fighting man. They will see that you die as one. There shall be no shame to follow your spirit.”

Caleb nodded gravely, his face a blank painting. The Indian turned his horse, cast a careful eye over the gathered multitude of fighters, delayed the departure for a dramatic moment while all eyes were upon him, looked briefly heavenward, then nodded. The quiet of a moment before was broken by shrill shrieks from the children and women, the deep-chested, savage screams of the eager marauders, and the spiteful cries of the older men who had to remain behind. The grass was churned under 1,600 unshod hoofs, and a strong smell of animal and human sweat followed the disturbed atmosphere as the hostile bucks rode gracefully away from their
ranchería
without a backward glance. They talked and gesticu-lated among themselves, already forgetting home and families, to brag about the things they would do when they came to Clearwater Springs.

The darkness came down swiftly and with it a thick sickle of a moon that cast an eerie, ghostly light over the great sweep of the broad landscape. Sage, pungent with the yellow flowers blooming profusely in the late spring, and thorny chaparral, gray-green in the watery light, were a fitting, weird backdrop for the wild throng of horsemen who rode briskly toward their objective.

Caleb let his mind wander back to previous visits to Clearwater Springs. He fixed the location of the log and mud general store, squatty and forbidding. The clutch of shacks hastily thrown athwart the dusty trail that wound past the clear, cold spring that bubbled out of the hard ground. He recalled the scattering of emigrant soddies out on the
prairie. The sober, big-eyed children and the worn, patient women with their lean, stubborn, husbands in homespun. Clearwater Springs was a struggling settlement, where hardship and suffering were in the warp of everyone’s life. Drought, howling winters, illness without remedies, and accidents with-out help were the accepted lots of existence. Even so, Clearwater Springs was coming up out of the sordidness of its creation by stubborn insistence on the part of the settlers. Now it was to be shattered, fired, and devastated, which was tragic—but all this was to be laid waste for no better reason than because Sam Ginn, the
Comanchero
, wanted to hawk the pathetic treasures of forlorn people and make a profit.

Red Sleeves rode back to where Doom was riding erectly between No Salt, and Free Man. He reined up beside the white man, and Caleb noticed that another Indian was with him. He nodded and the warrior nodded back. He jutted his chin toward the other man. “Antonio.”

Caleb nodded to the younger man, who ignored the greeting and looked at the frontiersman with bitter hatred in his harsh, twisted features. Caleb swung his eyes back to Red Sleeves. “Clearwater Springs isn’t far ahead.” The Apache nodded again but said nothing. “Sam Ginn should make a good profit from your work tonight.”

At this, Antonio looked quickly at Doom. He spoke in a deep, husky voice. “We are not without friends.”

Doom shrugged indifferently. “No. You’ll have Sam Ginn for a friend so long as you do the fighting and bring the loot to him.”

Antonio’s black eyes sparkled in their muddy
settings, and he showed his white, even teeth in a snarl. “You lie!”

Doom’s comeback was swift and biting. “In your teeth!” he said.

Antonio was surprised and infuriated. He swore a blasting oath in Spanish and yanked his horse toward Caleb, drawing his knife as he went. Red Sleeves jumped his horse in between them and roared at Antonio who, ignoring his companion in his demonic fury, pushed closer. Doom was watching like a hawk but he made no move to get away from the wild Apache. Other warriors, hearing the violent oath, came wraith-like out of the shadows and watched the drama of anger that seethed in their midst.

Red Sleeves forced his horse in harder and frowned savagely at Antonio. He spoke in English, which was not generally understood by the other Apaches. “Silent Outcast must not die yet. The council has agreed that he is to be left at Clearwater Springs.”

Antonio, beside himself, swore obscenely at Red Sleeves, whose blunt jaw jutted dangerously and made a brief, thunderous tirade in Apache to which Red Sleeves nodded grimly. “Yes. He will die. It has been decided on. But you will not kill him here.”

Antonio was subsiding a little. The first crazy red mist before his eyes had paled a little as he looked balefully at the captive and holstered his knife with an exasperated movement. Doom taunted him again and this time Red Sleeves, afraid the fight might erupt into a sectional battle then and there, told him to be silent. Caleb looked thoughtfully at Red Sleeves as an outrider came back and told them that the lights of the springs were up ahead.

“Red Sleeves, you are a smart man, if your friend is not. You are letting the Apaches be made into
tools to enrich that renegade, Sam Ginn. I warn you. Whether I live or die, the
ojos claws
will pursue you to the end of your world, and wipe you out if you at-tack this settlement.” He raised his hands, palms upwards in an earnest plea. “You are not of
los viejos
, the old veterans of the yesterdays. You can learn the new way. Don’t lead the Apaches to their doom.”

Red Sleeves had long had a suspicion, although he had never voiced it. Now, with the crossroads of his race in his hands, he looked hard at Doom with a puzzled frown. “We are a persecuted race. We have been robbed. Our lands…. ”

Doom interrupted impatiently as he saw the bucks fanning out before the foremost of the out-lying sod houses up ahead. “You need not explain Tome. I know all the wrongs the
ojos claws
have brought to you and your people. I know of more wrongs than you. But you do not help them by raiding. Besides, the Apaches have not the strength….”

Antonio screamed wildly, savagely, deeply from his broad, bronze chest and the hellish scourge of the plains was unleashed. It was too late. Caleb locked his jaws in fierce grimness. Then this was to be a pyre of hate, and he was to lie in it, food for coyotes and red-eyed buzzards. He nodded his head in acceptance of his fate. This must have eventually happened, he thought. His life was forfeit on the frontier and his destiny was bound up inextricably with the wild, sullen land. All right, then he would die fighting.

Red Sleeves was hunching his muscles for the for-ward leap of his horse, going to join the others in their attack. Rifles and wild, despairing screams were pitting the watery light that bathed the eerie land when Caleb acted. His big black horse leaped
like an animated battering ram under the viciousness of his heels and struck Red Sleeves’s mount sideways. The Apache went down in a mêlée of thrashing arms and legs and flailing hoofs. Stunned by the fall, confused and bewildered, Doom’s fist found a ready target and the Apache relaxed from the blow.

Caleb, hearing the outraged screams of his guards, grabbed up a knife, pistol, and stubby carbine from the fallen warrior, turned in time to club No Salt from his horse with the rifle butt. He ducked under Free Man’s poorly directed knife, clubbed the boy unconscious. Leaping to the back of his plunging black horse, Doom flung the cracked rifle into the faces of three more incredulous braves who were coming in at him.

It all happened so fast, amid the howling pandemonium that marked Indian warfare and the desperate gunfire of the defenders in the soddies, that Doom was running madly through the night before the pur-suit put up a cry.

The quiet, somber night was suddenly alive. The first soddy was overrun and gutted, almost before its defenders knew what fury had descended upon them. The second and third outlying ranches were swamped, looted, and devastated in the same terrible, furious rush of Apaches out of the night. Rifle fire and blood curdling cries of the terrorized de-fenders came when they saw the enemy in among them.

Doom rode like one possessed, trusting to the flying hoofs of his big black gelding to carry him through the myriad obstacles of refuse and equipment, firing his handgun as he went, and Clearwater Springs came hurriedly, tremblingly awake. At best,
prepared and forewarned, the settlers were outnumbered about six or eight to one. But sleeping, unaware of the destruction that was hurtling toward them, there could be no defense of their homes and families.

Red Sleeves was mounted again, shaken and scratched and with a shooting ache in his head, but his pride was outraged more than his body. The news of Doom’s escape was carried quickly to Antonio, where he rode like a devil at the head of a maddened group of picked warriors. His muddy eyes blazed with scorn at Red Sleeves’s failure, and he spun away from his fighting men to hunt the
ojo claro.

Flames leaped at the attackers from the general store of Clearwater Springs. There were roars of angry pain in the night, evidence that the Apaches were paying a price. Red Sleeves launched two assaults against the log and mud building. They were successful in attaining their objective but could not force an entrance while the defending guns fired into them point-blank, leaving a welter of corpses. Red Sleeves was possessed of a monumental fury; his disgrace in losing the captive had changed him from a thoughtful, dignified man into a raging savage.

D
oom stopped his blowing horse and the dull light glistened on the sweat-drenched coat. Orange tongues of flame were erupting against the black tapestry of the night. He saw that the mêlée had absorbed the Apaches and for the moment he was safe. Slowly he turned back. The night was a jumble of pandemonium and babble. A brave came trotting toward him, stiff-legged. Caleb raised his pistol, waited until the unsuspecting hostile was close, and fired. The Indian yanked up his horse, unbelieving. Doom fired again and the man jerked upright, tottered, and went over sideways. Caleb caught the warrior’s horse, stripped his own, and herded it beyond the village, resaddled and mounted the Apache animal, and rode cautiously back into the night.

With nothing more than force of numbers, the attackers were flying through the darkness, assailing anything that promised a victim or loot. Many had found whiskey, and their hot blood—heated further by the raw spirits—turned them into demons. Caleb tied his new horse in a clump of brush at the edge of the creek and stalked among the attackers like a ghost. He came upon two young bucks looting a freighter’s hastily deserted hovel. One of the bucks
went down across the body of a small boy, and the other whirled to meet the unexpected attack. Doom squeezed off another shot and the gun clicked dully on an empty casing. Hurling the gun in desperation, he rushed the warrior, knocked him down, and aimed a desperate kick at the gun hand that was swinging to bear on him. The brave howled in pain and dropped the gun. Caleb was astraddle the powerful form before the other could roll away, his knife rising and falling with quick, sure thrusts. The Apache struggled wildly and blood gushed from a hole in his stomach, and another in his chest. Doom reversed the knife and swung it like an axe; the warrior relaxed, and Caleb leaped away. Picking up the gun the warrior had had, he disappeared in the half light.