Tom Horn And The Apache Kid (3 page)

April is the crown jewel of the desert. In April, the desert glitters with variegated plants, flowers, and aspiring life. Bright,
shimmering cholla cactus, golden crocus, pink verbania, and flaming-red ocotillo blooms; quail, rabbit, and wild turkey scamper
among their squads of young. April is the time of rebirth, with spring rain bathing newborn birds and chasing the winds of
winter while washing the ferns and fondling grass. April is a time of seedling hope, of budding promise when things begin
to bloom and move across the desert. And early that April morning the soldiers, scouts, and animals moved and then diverged:
Crook, Bourke, and Sheridan to the north; Miles to the northeast; Horn, Crane, and their expedition to the south, toward the
border and Goklaya.

With every mile the terrain became more rugged and wild. Captain Crane rode next to Horn.

“Beautiful country,” said Crane.

“It is, but don’t trust it.”

“I don’t see any signs of Indians.”

“Yeah, well, when you see Apache signs be careful. When you don’t see ’em, be
more
careful.”

“Mr. Horn, I had a little talk with General Crook
last night. He has the highest regard for you and Mr. Sieber and…” Crane pointed toward the Kid.

“He’s called the Apache Kid.”

“Mr. Horn, about these Indians…”

“What about them?”

“They fight their own people....”

“Crook’s strategy,” said Horn. “Use Apaches to chase Apaches.”

“I presume he got the idea from the British—use colonials to fight colonials.”

“I presume.” Horn nodded.

“Why do they choose to fight on our side?”

“Maybe they want peace.” Horn shrugged. “Or maybe they want pay.”

Horn was in no mood for trail talk. He could have further educated the young captain on the subject but chose to break off
the conversation. Horn’s eyes, mind, and senses stayed with the task ahead, with the hunt and the killing that would come
if they found Goklaya—or if Goklaya found them. In this kind of warfare, the element of surprise was infinitely more important
than manpower or firepower. Usually whoever hit first won.

Call it surprise, sneak, or ambush—that first unexpected attack meant victory. And it was up to the scouts to provide that
element. Crook used few white scouts against the Apaches; most of his scouting contingent were Apaches.

Why
did
Apache fight Apache? Pay? Peace? Yes, and more. Long before the white man sought out and settled Arizona, there was deadly
rivalry among the tribes even as there had been among the ancient Greek city-states. One tribe raided another, not just for
territory and certainly not for crops—
these people were hunters, not farmers. There was an unending need for one tribe to prove its superiority over another—a
restless, irresistible drive to swoop and raid, steal horses and women, and claim victory over a worthy enemy.

Now, for years, the older chiefs and warriors, pent up and moribund on torpid reservations, had been boasting and taunting
the younger bucks with tales of past glory.

It was no wonder that when Crook gave these young natural hunters and warriors an opportunity to leave the placid confines
of the reservation and reap a new glory, they leaped at the chance. He hired rival tribes to chase the renegades and payed
them well in money and in what the Apaches loved most of all—adventure. Besides, in this way the young Apache bucks could
claim revenge for bloody raids the renegades had often made on the defenseless reservations.

Horn and Crane rode in silence until a question occurred to the captain. “Mr. Horn, in an encounter, how can we tell our Indians
apart from the hostiles?”

“You’ll notice,” Horn pointed, “all our Indians wear a scarlet headband.”

“The Apache Kid doesn’t.”

“He’s different,” Horn said in a hard voice. “There’s another way of telling.”

“How’s that?”

“In an encounter, Captain, the hostiles’ll be trying to kill you. There’s the border.”

Late that afternoon the lowering sun threw long shadows from the sawtooth peaks of the Sierra
Madres. Beige sand stretched toward the blue-black rock that tore into the hot, clinging sky. The expedition was miles into
Mexico, past the no-hurry
río
into wind-whipped canyons, moving toward the mountains that belonged to God and the eagles.

One of Sieber’s Indian scouts rode up fast. Sieber, Horn, and the Kid reined in. So did Crane, as the Indian’s winded horse
snorted and plopped to a standstill. The scout spoke in Apache.

“What is it?” Crane asked.

“Apaches,” said Sieber. “Hit a ranch about two miles west.”

“Well, let’s go,” Crane responded eagerly.

“Save your animal, Captain,” said Horn. “It’s too late to do those people any good.”

It was.

When Horn and the others arrived, the burned-out ranch was still smoldering. The contingent dismounted and found at least
eight bodies, so horribly mutilated that Captain Crane vomited.

The Apache Kid approached, carrying an empty whiskey bottle.

“American?” Sieber asked, pointing to the label.

The Kid nodded and handed the bottle to Sieber. Horn surveyed the devastation. “Took the cattle and the women. May as well
bury what’s left of the rest.”

The Kid motioned toward the retching young officer. “Something he ate?”

Crane wiped his palm across his mouth and breathed heavily. “I…I’ve seen men killed before, but never anything as savage
as this.”

“Dead is dead.” Sieber spat.

“Bad for them,” said the Kid, pointing toward the hacked-up bodies, “but good for us.”

“What does he mean?” Crane asked Horn.

“He means—now we’ve got tracks to follow.”

The column moved deeper into Mexico. Sieber rode ahead. The Apache Kid was nowhere in sight. Neither were the other Indian
scouts. Crane kept his horse paced next to Horn’s buckskin. Suddenly, in the heat of the desert, Captain Crane’s body shuddered
as if he were suffering a severe chill.

“What’s wrong, Captain?” Horn asked.

“I can’t get the sight of those mutilated bodies out of my mind.”

“Apaches don’t like Mexicans.”

“They have a grisly way of showing it.”

“Yep,” said Horn. “Every chance they get. Always been that way.”

“Why?”

“
Quién sabe?
Maybe because a long time ago the Apaches started raiding the villages, so the Mexicans started offering rewards for Apache
scalps.”

“Money?”

“Pesos. A hundred pesos for a male Apache scalp, fifty for a woman’s, twenty-five for a child’s—male or female. No questions
asked.”

“Is this still going on?”

“Yep. Bad blood, and old Goklaya’s got a couple of reasons in particular.”

“What reasons?”

“Some years back the Rurales raided a Chiricahua camp and massacred some warriors and women, including Goklaya’s mother and
his brand-new bride—girl named Alope.”

“Mr. Horn, you seem to know all about Indians.”

“Nobody knows
all
about Indians.” Horn pointed toward Al Sieber. “Sieber comes closest.”

“I don’t think your chief of scouts likes me.”

“Why say that?”

“He hasn’t said three words to me in three days.”

“He’s got nothing to say.”

They rode for another hour before Crane spoke again. “I thought you said we had tracks to follow.”

Horn nodded.

“I don’t see any tracks, Mr. Horn.”

“The outriders do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you can’t follow Apaches’ tracks directly, Captain. If you do they’re liable to double back and ’bush you. Got to
do it panther style.”

“Panther style?”

“Yeah. We’re going parallel to ’em. Cross once a day, then travel parallel on the other side.”

“That’s why we’ve been zigzagging?”

“That’s why. They’ve already split up. Main bunch took the cattle. There’s five of them kept the women. Probably played for
’em.”

“What do you mean, ‘played’?”

“Gambled,” said Horn. “Apaches like a game called monte. And even if they don’t like Mexicans, they’ll mate with the women
and produce sons who’ll kill more Mexicans.”

Just then the Apache Kid galloped out of a ravine
toward them. He pulled his horse up to Sieber, as Horn and Crane also approached.

“They’ll never be in a better spot for us,” the Kid beamed.

“John Six-Killer!” Sieber hollered. “He Dog! Hump!”

Three Apache scouts joined up with Sieber. Sieber waved and rode off. The Indian scouts followed. So did the Apache Kid.

“Captain,” Horn said to Crane, “you stay here with the troopers till you hear gunfire. Then ride toward it.”

Horn galloped away.

“But…” Crane looked around and exclaimed to no one in particular, “What the hell is going on!”

At the makeshift camp there were five nearly naked Apache broncos and three completely naked Mexican captive women.

Two of the women were heavy and across their broad backs and thick legs were bloody lines where the Indians had taken switches
to their bodies to urge them along on the trek. The youngest girl was thin and wide-eyed, with long, straight black hair that
fell to her small, upturned breasts. She was unmarked except for those breasts, which had been pinched and twisted and cruelly
abused by one of the Apaches as she rode in front of him astride his horse.

The Indians laughed, drank, and played monte. In the pot were rosaries, clothes, and other effects of the stripped and frightened
women, who hunkered nearby, ignored for the moment.

Horn, Sieber, the Kid, and the other scouts silently crawled into vantage spots around the camp.

At a signal from Sieber, he and the scouts opened a deadly crossfire with their Winchesters. Two Apaches dropped instantly,
dead. The third managed about four steps, then stopped with a
neat hole between his eyes and the back of his head blown away. The fourth made it a little farther— just a little, but with
the same result.

The fifth and final Apache ran like a burning cat toward an opening between two boulders. As he passed through he was greeted
rudely by the stock of Horn’s rifle, swung by the barrel. The rifle butt smashed the Apache’s flat face even flatter.

“You killed them!” Captain Crane cried out when he arrived and surveyed the carnage. “Butchered them all.”

“All but one, Captain,” said Sieber. “He’s gonna take us to Goklaya.”

“Better see to the women, Captain,” Horn added. “This ain’t gonna be pretty.”

It wasn’t.

The surviving Apache, his face battered, was tied upside-down to a tree. Already several razor cuts had been sliced across
his belly and breast. Blood seaped down his chest, across the cartilage that had been his nose, into his eyes, and off his
long black hair onto the ground.

The Apache Kid had done the carving as Sieber and Horn watched. Sieber spat and nodded again. The Kid’s knife blade gently
stroked across the Apache’s chest again, producing another fine red line.

“Reluctant, ain’t he?” Horn said to Sieber as Captain Crane strode over.

“Mr. Sieber,” Crane fumed, “I can’t allow this....”

Sieber paid no attention.

“No, you can’t, Captain,” Horn said evenly. “So why don’t you take a walk? Won’t be long now.”

“It won’t be long before this man bleeds to death.”

“You want to find Goklaya?” Horn asked.

“Of course I do,” the young officer replied. “But...”

“There’s no worse death for an Apache,” Horn said, “than to be strung upside-down and bleed to death.”

The Apache Kid picked up a handful of blood-soaked dirt and let it filter through his fingers.

“His spirit’s doomed to wander down below, Captain,” said the Kid, “instead of up there in the heavenly hunting grounds.”

“He’ll tell,” Horn added.

Sieber nodded, and the Kid started to slice again. At the touch of the blade the Apache screamed a ghostly scream that echoed
through the dark canyons. The Kid smiled and relaxed.

“You see, Captain,” Horn said pleasantly.

Later, Tom Horn gave the Mexican women food and talked to them in Spanish. They were shrouded in army blankets and clung to
their rosaries. Captain Crane stood nearby.

“Gracias, señor,”
said the oldest woman.

“Por nada, señora,”
Horn replied, then walked away as Crane followed.

“Poor, miserable creatures,” Crane intoned. “What kind of a life will they go back to?”

“Better than the one they had ahead of them,” Horn answered.

“Yes,” Crane admitted.

As they walked past the Kid, who was eating some pinole bread, he looked up at them.

“Hey, Tom,” the Kid smiled, “that young Nellie ain’t bad-looking…in the dark.”

Horn and Crane kept moving toward Sieber. Al sat across the sliced-up Apache, now secured by strips of wang.

“Mr. Sieber,” Crane inquired, “when will we get to…the enemy camp?”

“Tomorrow night,” said Sieber; then he rose and walked away. Crane watched after him for a moment, turning to Tom Horn.

“Mr. Horn, I wouldn’t say you waste words, but that man won’t spare an extra syllable.”

“Rheumatism,” Horn remarked.

“Well,” Crane admitted, “he does know his business.”

“No better man ever followed a set of tracks,” said Horn, “without leaving any.”

The next evening just after twilight surrendered to darkness, the troopers silently surrounded Goklaya’s
ranchería.
The unsuspecting village was anything but silent. Lulled by the seeming security of an international border and isolated
within a spectral sanctuary high in the hidden peaks, the warriors, along with their squaws, sweethearts, and children, were
celebrating the spring feast of fertility—Fermaga.

The mountain meadow flickered with dozens of fires and echoed with sounds of jocularity. Music, chanting, dancing. Dogs barked
and livestock bellowed and brayed.
Tizwin
and whiskey overflowed into the mouths of drunken warriors. The Apache braves’ powers of fertility would be tested far into
the night, but now they drank and, from the fires, ate venison, goat, and dog.

Goklaya had posted no sentries.

Captain Crane had the good sense to deploy his force as Sieber suggested. When the time came, half the command would charge
on horse back; the other half on foot and from all directions. A dozen of the best riders would run off Goklaya’s horses,
then join the attack.

Horn inhaled the odor of mesquite smoke and smiled.

“We can thank the feast of Fermaga. They’ll be at it most of the night.”

“You think Goklaya’s down there?” Crane asked eagerly.

“He’s there, all right.” Horn nodded and pointed to the largest wickiup.

“Ol’ Gray Wolf’d give both his stars to be here now,” the Kid said.

“Then now’s the time to hit ’em,” Crane volunteered.

“No,” said Sieber.

“We hit them to night,” Horn added, “Goklaya’ll melt into the dark.”

“Well, what
do
we do?” Crane inquired.

“May as well get some sleep,” Horn said. “Dawn’s the time. They’ll be dead to the world.”

“In more ways than one,” the Kid grinned.

Sieber slept. So did the Apache Kid. Tom Horn lay awake. His eyes followed the descent of a falling star as it disappeared
into the blue-black sea of sky.

Within hours the last of the Apache renegade bands would also fall. There would be blood on grass and rock and stream. The
blood of the renegade Indians and of troopers and scouts. That was inevitable. Destined. Would it be Horn’s destiny to die
and be buried in some unmarked grave in an unnamed place?

Tom Horn thought of his dog Shedrik, buried long ago on the Missouri farm of Horn’s youth. Tom’s father still plowed that
farm. The elder Horn was of Pennsylvania Dutch stock as hard as the
earth he turned for the spring planting. But Tom Horn, unlike his half dozen brothers and sisters, wasn’t meant to be a farmer,
to milk cows and spread seed and marry some brood woman who also would bring forth seven sons and daughters.

Tom hated the hoe his father handed him before his eighth birthday. Even then he yearned for a rifle. He’d often skipped school
and followed tracks of rabbit, skunk, coyote, and on rare occasions even a wildcat. When he was twelve Tom got himself a rifle
and skipped school even more often. With his dog Shed, he’d follow tracks and bring home game. His strong, stern father usually
rewarded him with a whipping while his mother watched silently and without sympathy.

And often Tom would silently watch the caravan of prairie schooners creaking west through Missouri clay stretching toward
the flat prairies, across the muddy Red River, through the vast Llano Estacado, west into the wind-slashed canyons over the
Mescalero Ridge, always west—toward their manifest destiny. Tom Horn knew that it would be
his
destiny, and soon. Meanwhile, he reveled in the stories of Missouri’s living bad men. Frank and Jesse James were still riding
and robbing and with them the Daltons and the Youngers, unreformed guerrillas from Quantrill’s Raiders who had splattered
Missouri and Kansas red with blood. But the outlaw life never appealed to Tom. He had never stolen so much as a tomato and
never would. Tom Horn would earn what he got—not from farming, not out of the land, but off it, hunting.

When he was fifteen, after scores of whippings, mostly for forgotten reasons, the climax came. A
neighbor boy thought it great sport to shoot down dogs. He emptied both barrels of a shotgun into Shed. Tom caught up to
his dog’s killer and thrashed him senseless. With tear-flooded eyes, young Tom Horn buried Shed, then went home, only to receive
another whipping because his clothes were torn.

The older man struck his son with a leather harness. This time Tom struck back. But Tom was no match for the bigger, stronger
man, who beat him with hammer fists and left him a bloody heap with broken face and ribs.

A week later, when he could walk, Tom Horn took up his rifle, kissed his impassive mother, said good-bye at Shed’s grave, and
sought his own manifest destiny—west.

While he couldn’t whip his father, Tom was big and strong for his age. He worked his way west on the railroad as a section
hand to Dodge City—the Dodge City of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Tom landed a job in a livery stable. He loved horses and
would ride every chance he got. Then he got a chance to be a cowboy. He signed on as a drover and helped take a herd to Santa
Fe across the trail that John Simpson Chisum had blazed a few years before. In Santa Fe he rode shotgun for Overland Stage
and then moved farther west to Arizona. In Prescott he secured a job delivering beef to the Indian agency.

At Fort Whipple Tom Horn met the man who should have been his father and became just that—Al Sieber, chief of scouts. Al took
an immediate liking to the tall, handsome lad who had a natural proclivity for riding, shooting, and hunting.
Both men spoke German and Tom managed to pick up a lot of Spanish. He had a quick facility for language.

With Sieber was a young Indian not quite Tom’s age. Tom heard that the young Apache’s true name was Ski-Be-Han, son of an
obscure chief called Togo-De-Chug. Years ago, the chief’s few followers had deserted him and held him up to ridicule, considering
him inept, ineffectual and a drunken sot. Even his squaw left Togo-De-Chug and their infant boy and went to live with another
brave. The boy suffered the derision and laughter directed at his father until the night the broken chief died drunk in a
pigpen.

Sieber felt sorry for the orphaned lad and took him in. The youngster rarely left Sieber’s side. Sieber was everything the
old chief hadn’t been. He was strong and respected. No one laughed at Al Sieber, chief of scouts. The lad wished that Al Sieber
was his father. The young Apache learned to speak and think and even feel as a white boy would. Sieber called him Kid, and
as he grew his true name was almost forgotten and he became known only as the Apache Kid.

Tom Horn lay near the now quiet meadow where Goklaya and his followers slept. For some it would be their last before the final
sleep. Horn thought of the years since that meeting at Fort Whipple…Sieber, the Apache Kid, and Tom Horn—the Eagle and
his claws.…

Sieber taught Tom Horn how to think like an Indian. At the same time he taught the Apache Kid
how to live like a white man. He enlisted them both as scouts more than a de cade ago.

Together they rode for Crook against the great Apache chiefs Mangas Colorados, Vittoro, Eskiminzin, Loco, Chato, Cochise.
All those chiefs were dead now—all but Goklaya.

And through the years Sieber taught Horn and the Kid what he called the great commandment from nature’s bible: “Every living
thing wants to go on living.”

Every living thing wants to go on living—the Indians in the village below, the troopers and scouts who were now awake and
at the ready, the Apache Kid, Al Sieber, and Tom Horn. Yes, Tom Horn wanted to go on living. He reflexively checked his Winchester
and his .44. How many lives that wanted to go on living had these weapons taken? Tom never kept track. How long would it be
before someone took his life? Tom rarely thought of that prospect—but he thought of it now.

He also thought of a young woman he had seen but twice and spoken to only once. Not just a brood woman, Shana Ryan was made
for more than having children. She was obviously well educated, a capable woman, strong yet feminine. There was something
in those eyes that bespoke deep emotion, even passion. Those strange male stirrings swelled in Horn, and he wished he could
put his arms around that ripe, well-turned body and feel the warm tenderness of those soft red lips.

Maybe when he got back to Bowie…if he got back…

The campfires below were cold white ashes. The
warm April dawn spread softly across the moist meadow. From one of the distant wickiups a baby cried but not for long. A
mother’s breast provided milk and promised safety and there was silence again.

The braves below outnumbered the troopers and scouts almost two to one. Then there were the women and children, some of them
capable of making war.

There could be no compromise, no negotiation, no bloodless surrender. If the situation were reversed the Apaches would not
hesitate. They would attack and hit hip and high without warning, as they often had on white and Mexican villages and even
on their own people.

Horn looked toward Sieber. The Apache Kid glanced from Horn to Sieber. Captain Crane’s eyes, already grown older, were fastened
on the chief of scouts.

The Eagle gave the signal to attack.