Blood and Gold

But he underestimated the persuasive powers of the Kiowa. The Indian told John he’d find out where the remainder of the band was headed and the big rancher shrugged and let him have at it.

As the rest of us made camp and boiled coffee at a shallow runoff between two steep rises covered in creosote bush and tar brush, the Kiowa drew off a ways, dragging the wounded Apache with him. He made his own fire out of sight of us and got to work.

I have to hand it to that Apache—he was tough. Little more than a boy, he kept silent for a long while and it was only as the day shaded into evening and the first stars appeared that he began to scream.

He screamed all night, keeping us from sleep, and just before daybreak the screams suddenly strangled to an agonized stop.

The Kiowa came out of the brush, wiping his bloody knife on his buckskin leggings, and squatted by the fire. As the hands watched, some of them mighty green around the gills, he poured himself a cup of coffee, then rolled a cigarette, lighting it with a brand from the fire. The Kiowa sat, smoking, drinking his coffee, shivering slightly in the morning chill, a man at peace with himself, saying nothing.

Big John, surly from lack of rest, stepped beside the Indian, looked down at him and asked: “Well?”

Without looking up, the Kiowa said: “The Apaches you seek are headed for the Davis Mountains all right, and they’ll swing a little to the north to avoid Fort Davis and the Buffalo Soldiers. They plan to link up with Victorio at Wild Horse Draw and then cross the Rio Grande into Mexico. All this the Mescalero boy told me.”

“Can we catch them before they get into the mountains?” Coleman asked, his eyes anxiously searching the Kiowa’s impassive bronzed face.

The Indian nodded. “We will catch them. It may be today or tomorrow, but we will catch them.”

“Hey, Injun, do they know for sure we’re after them?” a puncher asked.

The Kiowa nodded, his black eyes flat, revealing nothing. “They know. And they don’t fear us.”

“They will fear us—by God they will,” Coleman roared, slamming his fist into the open palm of his left hand, his face flushed.

The Kiowa shrugged. “They ride to join Victorio. Otherwise the hunters might already have become the hunted.”

“I want them all dead,” Coleman yelled, ignoring the man. He turned to his hands, taking in each one of them with his sweeping red-eyed glare. “Do you hear that, boys. I want them all dead and I’ll give any man who brings me an Apache scalp a fifty-dollar bonus. In gold!”

A cheer went up from the hands, but the Kiowa sat in brooding silence, absorbed by his own thoughts, his eyes open but seeing nothing, looking inward.

I figured the man was having a vision of some kind, but I could not guess if it was good or bad, and had I asked, the Kiowa would not have told me.

It was not yet full daylight when we saddled up and took to the trail, heading due west to keep Fort Davis to our south.

A day’s ride took us to the shallow foothills of the Davis peaks, but we saw no sign of Apaches.

The Kiowa rode far ahead of us, scouting the brush-covered hills and shadowed canyons, the rugged, stone pillared mountains a purple silhouette against the pale sky, rising a mile high above the plain.

The Coleman hands were strung out along the trail, men and horses beginning to wear out. There was no talk from the men as they rode and I began to wonder if they’d stick if we didn’t come on the Apaches soon.

I reckoned John Coleman had the same thought, because he suddenly turned in the saddle and beckoned to me. I kneed my horse beside the big rancher and was shocked by his appearance. Under his beard, his cheeks were sunken and his skin had taken on an unhealthy gray pallor. Only the eyes were alive, burning with an unholy light, the eyes of a fanatic—or a madman.

“Dusty, listen to me,” the rancher said. “There’s still a couple of hours until dark and I want this over and done. I want the Apaches who killed my Sally scalped and dead.”

“We’ll find them, Mr. Coleman,” I said, attempting to humor the man. “They can’t be too far ahead of us.”

As though he hadn’t heard, Coleman went on: “Back at the Rafter C, my Sally lies in the icehouse, wrapped in a sheet, all stiff and white and cold. I can hear her every minute of the day and night, crying out for me to come home and bury her decent.” The man’s blazing eyes sought mine. “She’ll wear a dress that was her mother’s. I’ll lay her in the ground in it.”

The big rancher was teetering along the ragged edge of insanity, though I could sense his inward struggle as he desperately tried not to slip away.

“Go help the Kiowa, Dusty,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. “Find me those Apaches.”

I was only too glad to escape those terrible eyes, and I spurred the galloping dun hard as I rode toward the distant figure of the Kiowa.