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Ta
The man’s horse was lathered with sweat, and he took his hat off to feel the evening breeze on the ridge as he told it.
“We caught them, out in the open. They had miles to go yet before they’d reach cover, and we ran them, hard,” the man said. “Then we see one of the horses pull up. We know it must be him and we go right at him, getting into range to start shooting. But he goes flat on the ground, out in the open but right flat, and doesn’t give us nothing to shoot at. He opened up at about a hu
Ta
“No sir, he didn’t look to be hit.”
“You know where he went?”
“Yes sir, Stewart’s out there. He’s going to track them and leave a plain enough trail for us to follow.”
Ta
The segundo shrugged. “Maybe he’s finding out.”
They moved out, south from the ridge, across the open, rolling country. In the dusk, before the darkness settled over the hills, they came across the man’s horse grazing, and a few yards farther on the man lying on his back with his arms flung out. He had been shot through the head.
Ten, the segundo thought, looking down at the man. Nine left.
“Take his guns,” Ta
It was over for this day. With the darkness coming they would have to wait until morning. He took out a cigar and bit off the end. Unless they spread out and worked up into the hills tonight. Ta
He said to the segundo, “Come here. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”
8
“Christ,” R. L. Davis said. “I need more than this to eat.” Christ, some bread and peppers and a half cup of stale water. “I didn’t have nothing all day.”
“Be thankful,” Valdez told him.
Davis’s saddle was on the ground in front of him, his hands tied to the horn. He was on his stomach and had to hunch his head down to take a bite of the pan bread he was holding. The Erin woman, next to him, held his cup for him when he wanted a sip of water. She listened to them, to their low tones in the darkness, and remained silent.
“I don’t even have no blanket,” R. L. Davis said. “How’m I going to keep warm?”
“You’ll be sweating,” Valdez said.
“Sweating, man it gets cold up here.”
“Not when you’re moving.”
Davis looked over at him in the darkness, the flat, stiff piece of bread close to his face. “You don’t even know where you’re going, do you?”
“I know where I want to go,” Valdez answered. “That much.”
Toward the twin peaks, almost a day’s ride from where they were camped now for a few hours, in the high foothills of the Santa Ritas: a dry camp with no fire, no flickering light to give them away if Ta
Ten years before, he had camped in these hills with his Apache trackers, following the White Mountain band that had struck Mimbreno and burned the church and killed three men and carried off a woman: renegades, fleeing into Mexico after jumping the reservation at San Carlos, taking what they needed along the way.
Ten years ago, but he remembered the ground well, and the way toward the twin peaks.
Valdez had worked ahead with his trackers and let the cavalry troop try to keep up with them, moving deep into the hills and climbing gradually into rock country, following the trail of the White Mountain band easily, because the band was ru
The first tracker into the passage was shot from his saddle. They carried him back and dismounted in the meadow to look over the situation.
This was the reason the White Mountain band had made a run for it and had not bothered to cover their tracks. Once they made it through the defile they were safe. One of them could squat up there in the narrows and hold off every U. S. soldier on frontier station, as long as he had shells, giving his people time to run for Mexico. They studied the walls of the canyon and the possible trails around. Yes, a man could climb it maybe, if he had some goat blood in him. But getting up there didn’t mean there was a way to get down the other side. On the other hand, to go all the way back down through the rocks and find a trail that led around and brought them out at the right place could take a week if they were lucky. So Valdez and his trackers sat in that meadow and smoked cigarettes and talked and let the White Mountain people run for the border. If they didn’t get them this year they’d get them next year.
Valdez could see Ta
That was the way Bob Valdez had pictured it taking place: leading Ta
He had almost forgotten the Lipan woman. He couldn’t picture her face now. It wasn’t a face to remember, but now the woman had no face at all. She was somewhere, sitting in a hut eating corn or atole, feeling the child inside her and not knowing this was happening outside in the night. He would say to Ta
It seemed simple because in the begi
No, the trouble was more than that. The trouble was also the woman herself, this woman sitting without speaking anymore, the person he would have to trade. He said in his mind, St. Francis, you were a simple man. Make this goddam thing that’s going on simple for me.