Blood and Gold

My first instinct was to swing away from there and keep on riding. But I was always a curious young feller and now my prying nature got the better of me and like a dang fool I kneed the black forward and began to climb the rise.

I dismounted before I reached the crest and led the black into the rocks. Now I was there, I discovered that the summit of the saddleback was flat, about thirty yards wide, and the red sandstone rocks, each as tall as a man, were scattered everywhere around its entire length and width.

Leaving the horse, I crouched and sprinted to the edge of the rise, well hidden by the surrounding boulders, and looked down.

Below me, the saddleback sloped away to end in a wide, flat-bottomed box canyon surrounded on all sides by tall hills. A sod cabin, shaded by a huge oak, lay close to the base of the hill furthest away from me. On one side of the cabin was a small timber barn, on the other a corral and, near that, a pigpen.

Corn shoots were greening a plowed-up piece of land to the front of the cabin and nearby ran a shallow creek, coming off one of the surrounding hills.

All this I saw in an instant, but what made my blood run cold were the Apaches hidden among rocks that must have tumbled down the rise in ancient times when the ground around here trembled.

From where I crouched I saw the backs of three of the Indians, but with Apaches, if you saw three there could be twice that number hidden.

And there were more of them. When I changed position to get a better angle on the cabin, I counted seven ponies tethered in a break in the hill to the right of the Apache position and there may have been others hidden from view.

Wooden shutters with narrow firing slits were drawn across the two small windows to the front of the cabin and from one I saw a puff of smoke followed by the bang of a rifle. A moment later a shot was fired from the other window and I heard the bullet whine off a rock near where an Apache crouched.

A warrior I hadn’t noticed before suddenly rose and fired his Winchester at the cabin. Soon three more stood and began firing, their bullets thudding into the cabin’s sod walls, a couple of shots splintering through the wood shutters.

The reason for all this firing became obvious when I noticed three Apaches run past the pigpen, then disappear from sight near the corral.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what they were planning. They could reach the cabin from its blind side and then get up on the flimsy pole and sod roof, smash it apart and fire at the defenders inside.

I figured the sodbusters in the cabin had chosen to live in this canyon because it was well sheltered from the heat of summer and the snows of winter. But they had chosen unwisely, because now they were trapped like rats and it was only a matter of time before the Apaches wore them down.

On my first trip up the trail I’d seen what Coman ches did to an Irish army scout and his Ute wife they’d captured. There was very little of the two left by the time we came across them, but it was obvious they’d taken a long, terrible time a-dying. Their last screams were still frozen on their gaping mouths and Simon Prather had to close their jaws with binding cloths so they’d look halfway decent for burying.

That was what the two firing from the cabin could expect, but I told myself it was no business of mine.

Bass Reeves had advised me to ride a hundred miles around Apaches and right now that seemed like mighty sound counsel. The sodbusters in the cabin meant nothing to me, and besides, I had to get back on the trail before Lafe Wingo slipped clean away.

But even as I did my best to justify it in my mind, I knew I couldn’t leave. Down there in the cabin were probably a woman and maybe her young ’uns and the way the Mescaleros were riled up, what they would do to them didn’t bear thinking about.

Cursing myself for a damned fool, I slid my rifle forward and sighted on the corral. Rain ran off the brim of my hat as the downpour grew heavier, scattering the slender plume of smoke that rose from the cabin chimney.

I waited. The tap-tap of rain hammered on my hat and I heard the drops hiss as they fell on the grass and bounced off the wet sandstone of the rocks around me. I drew my Colt and set it next to me, where it would be handy if subsequent events called for close work, though I fully planned to keep the Apaches at rifle range. Once I opened the ball, I didn’t want those warriors swarming around me because the outcome of that would be a mighty uncertain thing.

Despite the freshness of the rain-cooled air, my mouth was dry and my quickening heartbeats thudded loud in my ears. I took a deep breath, as Bass Reeves had taught me, willing my heart rate to slow, the better to shoot the Winchester accurately when the time came.

And the time was now.