Lord Apache (22 page)

The sergeant grinned. "I dunno, sir. But he was kind of snotty!"

Dunaway spat into the dust. "That's what they teach them at that mechanic's school on the Hudson—to be snotty with inferiors. It's part of the science of command."

"Are you coming, sir?"

"I'm coming." Dunaway turned to Jack Drumm.

"I guess it's pretty farfetched, but if—if you—"

He broke off.

"If I what?" Jack asked.

"Forget it." Dunaway shrugged. "It was just a wild hare of a thought." He got up and strode toward Major Trimble's lamplit tent. As he left he called to the sergeant major. "Maloy, see Mr. Drumm gets some beans and bacon and coffee, will you? He's likely hungry after that long ride."

Ravenous, Jack spooned beans into his mouth, chewed the bacon, burned his mouth with hot coffee full of grounds. Alonzo Meech sat beside him, watching. At last, uncomfortable under scrutiny, Jack laid down the spoon and looked at the detective. "What's wrong?"

Meech reached in a pocket and brought out a silk kerchief. It was the China silk, all vivid greens and blues, that Phoebe Larkin wore that first day Jack Drumm saw her step off the Prescott coach. In the still desert air he imagined—or knew—a faint perfume.

"I figured all along," Meech said, "someone was helping them two. Otherwise they couldn't have got away so slick. In Phoenix I almost had the cuffs on 'em. In Prescott I run 'em down to Mex Town, and they got away again. By asking around and handing out greenbacks, I was told they'd been smuggled back to what you call Rancho Terco here. And when I get here, flogging that damned mare all the way—she bit me twict—I find Miss Phoebe Buckner took by the Apaches."

"Phoebe
Larkin"
Jack muttered, spooning up the last of the beans.

"Buckner."

"That old man treated her cruelly. From what Phoebe told me I doubt he could even consummate the marriage. There are certainly grounds for a divorce, possibly even an annulment."

Meech folded the kerchief; the perfume, unmistakable, laced the evening air.

"I don't intend to quibble, Mr. Drumm. All I got to say is that you obstructed justice, aiding and abetting them two miscreants the way you did." He looked keenly at Jack. "Where's Mrs. Glore? I got a warrant for her too."

How much did Meech know? Not a great deal, Jack decided; Alonzo Meech was not the world's shrewdest detective, as he himself admitted. Meech did deserve credit, however, for persistence.

"Mrs. Glore," he said, "also is beyond your reach."

"Well—" The detective shrugged. "It was my mistake, I guess. I never thought you'd cross me the way you did. I took you for an honest law-abiding English gentleman, and that was a mistake."

Jack looked around at the campfires sprinkling the night. Most of the soldiers were stretched out in slumber, some only in underdrawers. By morning it would be near freezing, and they would welcome blankets. Somewhere a trooper sang softly against a muted plinking of banjo. A crescent moon crept over the ragged outline of the Mazatzals.

"I guess," he admitted, "it wasn't the first time a beautiful woman addled a man's judgment."

"I'll give you that," the detective sighed. He handed the kerchief to Jack Drumm. "You might as well take this thing. I know you was in love with her—it stuck out all over you, like warts. I ain't exactly a sentimental man, but maybe—well, since you ain't never going to see her again, it could be a keepsake."

Jack was moved; there was a lump in his throat. Gently he took the kerchief, touched the glossy silk. Perhaps, at one time, Phoebe Larkin had tied it about her waist. He recalled the ballad, the one called "The Girdle," that he had sung to himself the day he drove into Prescott for supplies:

A narrow compass, and yet there dwelt All that's good and all that's fair. Give me but what this ribbon bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round.

"Eh?" he asked suddenly.

Meech peered at him in the gloom. "You ain't listening to me, Mr. Drumm!"

"I'm sorry! I was thinking about something else."

"I said," Meech repeated, "it don't make no difference now."

"What doesn't make any difference?"

"Her," Meech said. "Miss Larkin, whatever you want to call her. She's probably dead. In any case, I'm told I got to give up the hunt." He took off his hat, ran a hand through thin gray locks. "First customer I ever lost! Oh, some took me a little time! Howsomever, I always caught up with 'em. But the home office finally called me off. I'm person non grotto—spent too much money, too much time, got no results. The Buckner family cut off the money—said they didn't want to spend all the old man's legacy hunting down the females that robbed and shot him."

"Legacy?"

Meech nodded, put his hat back on. "Phineas Buckner died two weeks ago. Oh, his passing didn't have nothing to do with Phoebe or Mrs. Glore! The old bastard fell down a stairway and broke his neck. So it's kind of 'come see come saw.' That's French for it don't make no never mind now anyway!"

Phoebe and Mrs. Glore free from pursuit, from arraignment, from conviction! It was ironic! After all these months of playing hare and hounds, Beulah was safe in Hampshire, or soon would be, and Phoebe—

"I'm going back to Philadelphia," Meech concluded. He looked around, sniffed the night air, cast a speculative eye on the moon.

"You know, this Arizona Territory ain't a bad place! Someday, when they put me out to pasture, I might just take my savings and buy me a little shack in Tucson or Yuma. In Philadelphia the old bones aches during the winter, but out here I feel like I was forty again!"

"I thank you," Jack murmured, "for giving me her kerchief."

Meech rose, flapped his coattails. "Soon's my butt heals, I'll sell that ugly old mare to a glue factory and buy me a ticket home on the A. and P. I don't guess I'll be up to sitting for a week on the cars just yet." He shook hands with Jack Drumm. "You give me a lot of trouble, Mr. Drumm, but can we part friends?"

"We can," Jack said.

The sergeant major brought him a blanket. "Lieutenant Dunaway said you'd need this, Mr. Drumm."

Wrapping himself in the coarse wool, Jack lay down next to the wall of the ruined adobe. The moon rose higher. Slanting shafts of yellow light shone through the blackened roof beams. He lay quietly for a long time, silk kerchief wadded in his hand. After a while he slept. He dreamed, inevitably, of Phoebe—of poor lost Phoebe, poor ravished Phoebe, poor—dead Phoebe Larkin.

At dawn he awoke, disturbed by a returning cavalry patrol. George Dunaway, wrapped in a blanket beside him, stirred sleepily and called to the fresh-faced young lieutenant. "Find anything, Lucius?"

Lucius reined up and looked at them. "Didn't expect to," he grumbled. "Nothing but a lot of hoof tracks where they ran all those horses up into the mountains."

Propped on an elbow, Jack watched the young lieutenant clamber wearily from his mount and go into the tent to report.

"The Apaches eat horses, I know that," he observed. "With all that horsemeat, they may be a long time coming down."

"I don't know," Dunaway said. He sat up, wrapping his arms around his knees, and watched the dawn flush over the Mazatzals. "Maybe they're getting second thoughts about horses. They're poor horsemen—a Sioux would laugh himself silly seeing an Apache trying to get on a horse—but don't ever underestimate Agustín's smarts. I wouldn't put it past him to be planning some kind of mounted attack along the river. An Apache can go on foot all day, that's true, but it takes a lot of time. With Agustín's people on horses, good horses, the Apache problem in the Territory can balloon into something that'll take the whole damned Army of the Potomac to settle!"

Eating from a tin mess kit, Jack stared down the deserted wagon road. The news of heavy raids along the Agua Fria had once again paralyzed commerce between Phoenix and Prescott. Agustín was still in the Mazatzals, watching the road from the lofty distance.
When the snow up there starts getting deep
! Remembrance of Trimble's smug words stung him. He flung the uneaten food away; it was Army food, exactly as George Dunaway once described it—sour bacon and rusty beans.

"Mr. Drumm!"

Startled, he turned. Uncle Roscoe beamed at him, whiskered face split in a grin. He pumped Jack Drumm's hand.

"They told me you come back! Lord, ain't I glad to see you! Sad circumstances, I guess—the young lady that was visiting you was took off by the Apaches, I hear—but it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, or however they say it."

"Any luck with the Gypsy Dancer Mine?" Jack asked.

The old man turned his burro loose to graze and squatted beside Jack in the shade of a smoke tree.

"I got her narrowed down," he confided. He pointed to the wrinkled slopes of the mountains. "See them twin peaks up there—kind of lookin' like a woman's tits? The Gypsy Dancer lays right between 'em, like a pendant around a female's neck. This time I didn't really go out for a long stay—just had me a few biscuits and a canteen of water—but when I go back up there—"

Something hit Jack Drumm hard.

"Listen," he said. He gripped the old man's skinny forearm. "Listen to me! How would you like to go up there right now?"

Uncle Roscoe's watery blue eyes blinked. He pulled away, saying plaintively, "God damn it, you're busting my arm bone!"

"I'm sorry," Jack apologized. "I didn't mean to hurt you! But I want to make you a business proposition. You know the Mazatzals better than anyone, even Major Trimble and his cavalry."

Uncle Roscoe bit off a chunk of tobacco. "When them soldiers was running around in didies," he confided, "I was climbing those mountains. Why, didn't I never tell you? Me and Agustín was blood brothers! Onct I had me an Apache wife! It was back in—"

"Never mind!" Jack said. "Not now, anyway! Do you think you could find Agustín's camp for me?"

Uncle Roscoe's jaws worked steadily.

"I'll give you five hundred dollars cash if you'll guide me into the Mazatzals and put me in the way of finding Agustín!"

The old man shook his head. "You better wrap cold cloths around your head! I think you got sunstroke!"

"Never mind that! Will you do it?"

"The mountaintop is swarming with Apaches! They'll cut out your gizzard and pass it around for horsy-doovers!"

"Are you afraid?"

Uncle Roscoe swore, kicked the dust. "Hell no—I ain't afraid! Them's my blood-brothers, and I don't take kindly to the way they been treated by the gov'mint! But Agustín ain't going to put no welcome mat out for
you
!" He peered keenly at Jack Drumm. "It's that female, ain't it—that red-haired Miss Larkin? I never seen her—she left Rancho Terco before you took me in—but I guess she was a looker!"

"That's neither here nor there," Jack said. "All I'm asking is whether you'll guide me up there!"

The old man rubbed his chin, chewed, spat. He looked at his burro, Pansy, grazing peacefully among the cavalry mounts.

"For a thousand dollars?" Jack prodded.

"God damn it, Mr. Drumm, it ain't the money! You took me in when I was sick, bled me, fed me, emptied my slop jar! I ain't never paid you back for that, and I guess there ain't any amount of money that'd settle my bill proper. But what in Tophet you aim to do onct you get up there?"

Jack took a deep breath. "I don't know," he confessed. "But if Phoebe Larkin is alive, I will do whatever I can to rescue her. Maybe I can ransom her. Maybe I can—"

"Not to speak blunt," the old man snorted, "but you're a God damned fool, Mr. Drumm! You're askin' to be kilt, maybe roasted over a slow fire! You started up Rancho Terco here, along the river, in the middle of what's holy ground to Agustín and his people. You fit 'em right down to the ground, tooth and nail—scragged a few, too. When they catch you up there in Gu Nakya—"

"What's that?"

"Gu Nakya? That's where Agustín used to hole up in the old days. That's where some of his folks is buried, only they don't bury 'em, of course—they just burn down the brush hut the feller lived in. Gu Nakya is over the top of the mountain, looking down that steep drop to the other side."

"Will you take me to Gu Nakya?"

Uncle Roscoe sighed. "All right, if you're so damned anxious to lose your liver and lights! Soon's I pack up a few more supplies, I intended to head up that way anyhow. This time I got the Gypsy Dancer dead in my sights. But you sure you don't want to change your mind?"

"Dead sure! I am firm in my decision."

Borrowing dried meat, hard cheese, and some tea and biscuits from the Sprankles, Jack told George Dunaway what he planned to do. Dunaway pushed back his hat and stared.

"You mean it?"

"I do indeed."

"Only yesterday I was thinking 'What if Drumm went up there, tried to find Phoebe?' It was a wild hare of an idea—I said so at the time—but now—" Dunaway fumbled for Jack's hand, gripped it hard. "Once," he muttered, "I beat the tar out of you in a fight. Remember?"

"I do."

"I used a few Arizona tricks on you, things you never saw before, and I flattened you. But I'm bound to admit you're a better man, Jack. While I sit here on my butt, scared of a court-martial, you—you—" Dunaway took a pad of paper from his pocket, scribbled quickly. "Here," he said. "You'll need this."

"What is it?"

"A pass through our pickets." Dunaway gestured toward the foothills of the Mazatzals. "They'll stop you when you get up there. No civilians allowed." He grinned wryly. "When Major Trimble finds out, it'll be my butt in small pieces! But it's the least I can do." He shook hands with Jack Drumm. "If—if you ever see Phoebe again, tell her I—I—" He broke off. "I guess I loved her," he said awkwardly. "Hard to tell, in a way, since I never had experience with the real thing. But—" He turned on his heel, walking rapidly away.