Cougar Tracks, page 13
One of the men in civilian clothes crouched rather than stood near the fireplace. He smoked a cigar intently, dark eyes smoldering like the tip of his cheroot. He was an Indian – that was immediately apparent – uncomfortable in the clothes he wore, uncomfortable in his surroundings, unsure of his company.
Cougar knew without ever having seen the man before that this was Fox Ring, the Apache leader who had made a pact with the whites to wage war against the United States.
There was a red-faced man with silver hair, and a popinjay of a man in uniform complete with braid and fringed epaulets, a row of medals on his chest and a gentlemanly-looking Mexican with carefully barbered hair and long, graceful hands. Their heads turned in unison at some sound Cougar could not detect from beyond the window and the red-faced man grinned. A newcomer entered the room. He was tall, wearing a black suit, his thinning hair slicked back over a narrow skull. He held a drink in his gold-ringed hand. It was Solon Reineke.
It was all Cougar could do to hold himself back. To prevent himself from firing through the window, killing Reineke then and there. But he wasn’t feeling suicidal on that night.
One of the guards shouted from the front of the house and with a low curse, Cougar dropped away from the window. He should have had the time to take his look and slip away again, but he didn’t. Something – who knew what instinct – had prompted the sentry to hurry his routine and Cougar found himself face to face with the man as he rounded the corner of the stone house.
Cougar brought his fist up in a violent uppercut, clacking the guard’s teeth together, snapping the man’s head back. Dropping his rifle into the mud, the guard fell backward.
Looking around anxiously, Cougar rapidly dragged the guard into the bushes, stripped off the man’s coat and hat and put them on. Returning to the sentry’s position he yelled out as he had heard them do half a dozen times, ‘Clear!’ Then he waited.
Had it not been for the rain and the dark of night he would have already been discovered. As it was it was chancy enough. He stood in the drifting rain, muscles tensed, eyes alert, fighting the instinct to make a run for it. After an interval that seemed eternal the second guard called out, ‘Walking!’ and began his own circuit.
Cougar had seen all that he could hope to see on this gray night and so he started toward the oak grove. He would have no more than a minute before the alarm was raised and he had fifty men on his heels.
Cougar sped through the oaks, weaving his way. He was panting with the exertion; the cold rain streamed into his face. His clothing was soaked through, heavy and damp. He was approaching the end of the barracks, still at a dead run, when the cry went up from the porch of the stone house. It takes a minute or two for anyone to respond even to peril, and Cougar was already scrambling up the muddy bluff in the darkness before the barracks door was flung open and men swarmed toward the stone house.
Rapidly, Cougar clambered up the dark, sodden bluff, wanting to get to his horse and get the hell out of there. If no one had come across the sentry he had tied up in the meantime, he should be able to make it, for no one was yet spreading out to search for the interloper. Reach the horse. Find sanctuary. Then figure out a plan for getting to Reineke. He had at least located Solon, and that was a start.
Cougar didn’t slow as he passed, but he saw the struggling guard he had tied earlier still lying in the brush. Cougar grinned despite his dark mood. They would find the sentry soon and outside of some embarrassment the man hadn’t suffered any real injury.
The rain continued to sheet down, masking the mouth of the small canyon where he had left his horse, but Cougar found it, and still jogging, went to the waiting buckskin. Once into the saddle, he would be gone into the night-shrouded hills and the army below wouldn’t have a prayer of finding him.
Cougar had yanked the buckskin’s tether free and had grabbed the pommel to swing aboard when he heard the ratcheting of a hammer behind him.
‘Don’t,’ a voice warned as he started to crouch and reach for his Colt. ‘It’s your own Spencer I’m holding. I thought you’d have quit carrying it a long time ago.’
Slowly Cougar turned, his hands level with his waist. He found himself looking right into the muzzle of the big .56. The woman holding it was perched almost lazily on a rock as the rain swept down. Cougar knew her immediately.
‘Hello, Quiet Star,’ Cougar said to the Apache girl.
‘Hello, Cougar. What madness are you attempting now?’
‘Just roaming.’
‘Yes. Always roaming. I’m surprised you recognized me,’ she said, sliding down from the granite ledge to face him, the rifle barrel still raised.
‘You look the same.’
‘I was just a girl when you knew me,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘just a girl.’ But still he had recognized her instantly. She was more mature now, a little fuller of figure with a tighter, or perhaps wiser, look in her doe eyes.
‘I did not ever thank you for the last time,’ she said, stepping still nearer, but not dangerously so.
‘You wanted to get away from the reservation; you got away,’ Cougar replied.
‘Twice before that you are the one who took me back, however. The third time I escaped,’ Quiet Star remembered.
‘You got lucky,’ the big man said.
‘I saw your eyes go past me, Cougar,’ she said with just a hint of a smile. ‘I was hiding in the brush beside the river. I saw you following my tracks and my heart beat frantically. I would not go back! But they had sent Cougar again. How could I hide my tracks from Cougar? I had done everything I knew. I traveled up and down in the river’s water. I leaped from rock to rock, walked backwards and erased my tracks from the sand with a length of brush. I did all I knew how to do but when I saw Cougar following after me, I knew I had failed again to escape.’
‘I guess you did not fail. If I recall I lost your sign along the river. I can’t remember now, all those years ago,’ Cougar said.
‘I remember,’ Quiet Star said, ‘and so do you. I watched you come nearer and nearer. I saw your eyes go past me as I lay trembling. Then I saw you ride on, still looking at the ground as if you were hunting for my tracks, but you were not. You let me go.’
‘Maybe,’ he admitted.
‘I know you did. I know you had decided to let me be free.’ Her eyes widened with delight as she saw the object hanging at the V of his shirt. ‘You still wear that!’ she exclaimed. Quiet Star lowered the Spencer now, stepped forward and touched the silver disc he wore around his neck. ‘It is only a child’s thing, made with a girl’s unskilled hands.’
‘Yeah,’ Cougar agreed. ‘I can still wear it, can’t I?’
‘Yes.’ The delight faded quickly and then she stepped away, looking into his eyes. She held the rifle tightly still, but not menacingly.
‘What are you doing here, Cougar?’ she asked in a whisper he could barely hear above the rain. Her eyes were very wide, childlike themselves now with curiosity.
‘Maybe tracking you, Quiet Star,’ Cougar answered with a grin.
‘This is no time for laughter, Cougar. It is a dangerous place you are riding, very dangerous.’
‘That was Fox Ring I saw down at the house, wasn’t it?’
‘How did you …? Yes, it was Fox Ring.’
‘Making war talk.’
Quiet Star started to lie to him, but there was no point in it. Cougar knew or he wouldn’t be here. ‘Yes.’
‘Why weren’t you down there?’ he asked. She was all but concealed briefly by low, scudding black clouds. Thunder rumbled in the mouth of the canyon to the north.
‘They did not want me there,’ she replied, ‘and I did not wish to be there. That is simple to understand. When he learns what we must do, Fox Ring will tell me.’
‘You know, Quiet Star, that it is you who are now traveling a dangerous trail, not me. You know that, don’t you?’
‘There is no path left for the Apache that is not dangerous,’ she answered sharply. ‘Not any longer.’
‘This will be worse than any you’ve ridden,’ Cougar told her seriously.
‘No.’ The girl in the mist shook her head deliberately. ‘This will succeed. Fox Ring is certain of that, Cougar.’
‘And if it doesn’t succeed?’
‘It will,’ she said almost desperately. ‘You do not know what strength we have now.’
More reflectively, she added, ‘And if it does not, at least we will have made the good fight. We will have done all that we could for our children and our grandchildren to save their land and our way for them.’
‘You have to listen, Quiet Star; it will never work. You can’t whip General Crook.’
‘Crook …!’ She almost gave away something that she believed Cougar did not know – that Crook would be dead before the war even started. ‘Crook can be beaten,’ she said with confidence. ‘Any warrior can be beaten.’
‘Maybe,’ Cougar said. He did not want to argue with the young woman; he believed he understood her thoughts. Anyway, there was nothing he could say to change them and he hadn’t the time for a long discussion. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said. ‘If they catch up with me, it won’t be pleasant.’
‘No.’ There was the briefest hesitation, a moment when Cougar considered that Quiet Star, no matter their past, might hold him for the searchers below, but then she nodded and handed him his rifle and he swung aboard the patient buckskin horse.
‘I guess I won’t be seeing you again,’ Cougar said. He removed his crumpled cavalry hat from his saddle-bags and jammed it on to his head. The rain continued to intensify. Quiet Star answered through the steel mesh of the rainstorm.
‘No. Cougar,’ she said imploringly, ‘be wise and ride far away from this. Don’t look back.’ Quiet Star pleaded with him. She placed her hand on his saddle skirt and looked up at him with proud eyes that nevertheless revealed concern. The time they had shared together – girlish dreams, foolish chatter – were long gone. The time of caring for Cougar had passed.
‘I can’t ride away for the same reason you can’t, Quiet Star. It’s my battle too, now. Men have come to me and asked me for my help. I can’t turn my back on them. It has nothing to do with what I think or feel. It has to do with duty.’ Through the rain he asked one last question: ‘Fox Ring — is he …?’
‘He is my husband, Cougar. He is a good, strong husband.’
‘Take care of him, then. Get him out of his territory. Go across the border to Mexico. You’ll be safe down there.’
‘My husband has his duty as well, Cougar. You should understand that. Besides,’ she said with a sort of weariness, ‘Crook would follow us there, no matter what the laws are. I know this.’
‘Maybe,’ Cougar admitted. ‘Quiet Star … what were you doing up here by my horse? Out in the darkness and the rain?’
‘The guard did not come in to be fed when it was his turn,’ she answered. ‘I found this horse. I was waiting to find the white man who owned it. And kill him.’ She handed his rifle to him solemnly, and he took it.
Cougar made no reply. Distantly, he heard a muffled yell and then another. He touched the brim of his hat and turned the buckskin toward the main canyon, vanishing into the night and the storm as the Apache woman watched his back, remembering a different time and long-ago friendship before she, too, left the little canyon and hurried back toward the ranch where the angry search for Cougar had begun.
FOURTEEN
Night-time found the three riders camped on a small rocky knoll dotted with catclaw and agave. One huge live oak inexplicably flourished there, its wide-spreading roots presumably finding water where none could be seen to exist. Ellen was more tired than she could ever remember being. She was a good rider, but an entire day in the saddle virtually without rest was too much for her. Her back ached, her legs felt raw and sore. At sunset she stood alone in the purpling evening, hands on her hip, staring back in the direction they had come from. She still hoped that somehow her father would see his mistake, turn around, and catch up with them.
She still couldn’t decide if she was more worried for him or angry with him. It was a fool’s journey he had undertaken.
All of her clothes save those she was wearing were on the wagon; her soap, hairbrush, everything she needed and owned. Distant thunder caused her to turn her head. There was a storm in the foothills, but Dallas and D’Arcy said they expected it to continue eastward and not reach them on the flats. Too bad, she thought as she wiped her dusty hands together. After a day beneath the firebrand of the desert sun, she would welcome a thorough drenching, a flood!
She turned and walked back to where the two men sat close to the small fire burning bright against the dusky light, drinking coffee. Dallas glanced up at her approach.
‘Are you all right, miss?’ he asked, studying her face.
‘I’m just tired, that’s all.’
‘You have the right.’ Dallas nodded in response.
D’Arcy offered her a cup of coffee which she took absently. Her thoughts had drifted to her other lost man, to Carroll Cougar. Where was he on this night? She leaned her back against the oak, watching a flight of nightbirds far out across the desert.
‘We should make Fort Apache by tomorrow,’ she heard D’Arcy say.
‘And just what will I do there?’ Ellen asked with an edge to her words.
D’Arcy and Dallas exchanged glances. That question had already occurred to both of them. With her father’s surgeon’s position, she would have had security, even if the life out here in this raw land would be tough on her. Now, with no father to provide for her, what would she do?
Ellen snatched up her single blanket and turned away from them. She leaned up against the base of the tree, her head back, her eyes closed. What would she do? Her hopes for building a new life for her father and for herself had become a nightmare. She sipped indifferently at her coffee and continued to sit and stare at the darkening desert, finding nothing attractive in its changing hues, long valleys, and distant, bulking mesas.
Where are you, Cougar?
‘Did you want to take first watch?’ D’Arcy asked the one-eyed man.
‘Sure. I’ll take it, Calvin,’ Dallas said. ‘I’ve got some spark left in me still.’
‘You’re doing better than I am,’ D’Arcy replied. Despite the breeze from the desert flats he was perspiring freely. Fresh blood soaked his chest and arm. It was obvious that his wounds were on the verge of destroying him. Instead of mentioning this he told Dallas, ‘It’s gonna be tough on the lady, even should we get through to the fort.’
‘It will, for sure. Even if the Indians don’t burn it down or we abandon it if open war breaks out, I don’t know what kind of work she could get. Laundry, maybe,’ he said doubtfully.
With that in mind, perhaps, D’Arcy said, ‘I wonder how Cougar’s getting along.’
‘Hell, you know Cougar – he’s all right.’
‘Maybe. He sure walked into a hornets’ nest, though. Of his own accord, too. He’s not seeing straight these days, thinking of getting Solon.’
‘Cougar takes care of himself. I’d rather be in his shoes than Reineke’s. Hell,’ Dallas pointed out, ‘you’ve put yourself into a devilish position as well. Trying to get to Crook through all these hostiles, not even knowing where he’s camped.’
‘And you, Dallas?’ D’Arcy asked. At Dallas’s puzzled expression, D’Arcy pointed out to the one-eyed man, ‘You know as much about everything now as I do. They’ve got just as much reason to kill you as they do me.’
‘Yeah,’ Dallas said quietly, his eye meeting D’Arcy’s across the dully glowing, dying camp fire. ‘It does give a man pause to reflect, don’t it?’
D’Arcy didn’t answer. He was on his feet, catlike, instantly. Dallas whirled, drew his pistol, and crouched beside him. ‘Did you hear it too?’ he whispered.
‘Yes, I did. But what …?’
The question was never completed. Abruptly, from out of the darkness a howl rose into the night and something was thrown toward them across the camp and into the coals of the fire. D’Arcy and Dallas both looked for targets for their guns, but could sort out nothing in the darkness beyond the camp’s perimeter.
‘Are they gone?’ Dallas asked in a taut whisper after several long minutes of waiting.
‘I think so.’
‘Apaches, do you think?’
‘I’d say so. But what in hell …?’
Now Ellen White screamed beside them as they continued to study the deep desert shadows by starlight. She had rushed to the fire, her blanket over her shoulders. Now the blanket had fallen away. Frowning, D’Arcy and Dallas strode to the fire ring.
‘Damn all!’ D’Arcy murmured, for now they could see clearly what it was that the Apaches had thrown at them: the head of Dr White lay smoldering in the coals. Staring up blankly at them.
D’Arcy turned the girl away. She screamed again and then shrank in his arms, shaking uncontrollably. Dallas stood staring down at the gruesome object. ‘Damn all!’ he said softly, and then he toed it from the coals and pushed it off into the underbrush. It was then that the girl screamed again.
And again.
It was not long after that that the storm drifting in from the hills to the north reached them and the rain began to fall.
Cougar was already soaked through. He was on a low, folded hill, watching the men below him search intently for him, an impossible task under these conditions. The searchers had been given what was essentially an exercise in futility, poking around in the dark and rain, undoubtedly cursing and grumbling at their miserable task, but someone had wanted Cougar badly enough to send them out searching.
Now and then he could hear fragments of speech. Once he saw a man light a match, cup it in his hands and crouch down. The tiny flame illuminated the resentment on his face at having been dragged from a warm bunk to pursue this unlikely task. The searchers managed to draw no nearer to Cougar’s position.
Any tracks he had left had long ago washed away or been crisscrossed many times by their own boots. Cougar reflected that he could have rolled up in his blankets and slept safely for the past few hours while the men below wasted their time. So long as he cleared out of the area before daylight, he had no real problem. The skies above the dark land parted just long enough for a hesitant silver moon to peer briefly through the tumbling clouds and Cougar watched it as it was rapidly swallowed again by the continuing storm.
