Blood and Gold

And now there were only nineteen left.

I smiled grimly at that thought, finding it little consolation now that our numbers had been reduced to nine by the Apache ambush.

I reloaded the Colt, filling all six chambers, cranked the spent shell from the Winchester and fed another round into the chamber. It was shaping up to be a long night.

Fifteen minutes passed with no firing on either side.

Then the Apaches came at me.

The warriors swarmed from among the boulders and ran toward me, firing as they ran.

I got off one fast shot from the rifle, scored no hit and drew the Colt. The warriors were only a few yards away, bunched together and coming fast, hoping to capture me alive. Going against everything I’d ever been taught about the handling of a six-gun, I spread my legs wide and fanned the Colt dry, the gun almost uncontrollable, roaring and bucking in my hand. But at such close range, the tenderfoot play of the fanned revolver was devastating. Two of my shots went into the ground, another flew wild, but three of the warriors went down, at least two of them hit hard enough that they didn’t get up again.

Then the Apaches were tumbling all over me.

I kicked and punched and bit and swore, crashing my fist against a chin here, swinging my boot into a groin there. Then a rifle butt slammed into the back of my head and I knew no more.

I woke to darkness.

It took me a few moments to realize that I was naked, lying on my back, my wrists and ankles bound to stakes driven into the ground.

The rawhide had been wet when I was tied. Now it was dry and had shrunk, the thongs biting into my wrists so that my throbbing hands felt like they were swollen to three times their normal size.

When I looked up, the sky was ablaze with stars and the moon, almost full now, rode high within a circle of its own silver light.

Something stirred to my right and I turned to look. The Apaches sat around a small fire and I smelled meat roasting. One of the warriors raised a chunk of dripping beef to his mouth on a stick, held the meat with his teeth, then cut off a huge piece and began to chew.

But even the tiny movement of my head had been noticed.

One of the warriors rose from the fire and stepped toward me. I saw two things very quickly: The entire lower half of the man’s face, from his chin to his eyes, was painted black, among the Apaches a sign of mourning, not war. And I recognized him as the warrior who had sat the gray horse and given me the name Matanzas con Sus Dentes.

The Apache squatted on his heels beside me, his eyes shadowed by the darkness. He stayed that way for a long while, and though I couldn’t see his eyes, I felt them burning into mine—and I felt their hatred.

Finally I asked: “Qué usted desea de mi?”

The Apache surprised me then. In English he answered: “What I want from you is your death.”

“Why do you hate me so much?” I asked. Thinking back, it was a pretty dumb question, since the Apache hated just about everybody. But this warrior didn’t see it that way.

“You are the one who tore out my brother’s throat with your teeth. He and I were”—he raised his hands, forefingers extended, and brought the fingers together—“two from the same womb, born at the same hour. As we grew to manhood, we thought the same thoughts, felt the same things. We were two, but we lived as one.”

I’d killed this man’s twin brother, and right then I knew I was in deep trouble. And what he said next confirmed it.

“Your dying will be slow and very painful,” the Apache said quietly, like he was making polite conversation in Ma Prather’s parlor. “Only a very brave warrior could have killed my brother, but even so, at the end you will scream loud, I think.”

The moonlight lay like polished steel on the hard planes of the Apache’s face and the thin gash of his mouth. This was not the face of a merciful man, and anyhow, mercy for a captured enemy was a concept totally foreign to him.

“Go to hell,” I said, knowing I had nothing to lose by it.

The Apache nodded, saying nothing, no doubt having many times heard this same empty bravado before from men who later died shrieking for mercy or for death.

He rose to his feet and stepped to the fire. When he returned he held a handful of long, jagged cactus spines. He squatted beside me again and slowly, methodically shoved two dozen of the spines just under the skin of my chest and belly, leaving about an inch of each showing.

The pain was an intense, scorching fire, and I bit my lip, determined not to cry out. The torture was only beginning and it could last for two or three days. Could I take it without screaming? I knew the answer to that could only be no.

The Apache turned and uttered something to a warrior sitting by the fire. The man nodded, rose and carried over a thin, burning branch from the fire. The Apache took the brand from the warrior and then, one by one, lit the exposed tips of the spines.