Lord Apache (26 page)

Jack remembered Uncle Roscoe's words.
Ostin is Apache talk for "Lord." Anything they respect or fear they call Ostin—the bear, snakes, lightning
.

"We fought you too. My uncle said you were a brave man, stay along the river when it was his sacred place, his medicine place, and he wanted you to go away. He thought you a good man, too, let me go back to Gu Nakya—no kill."

Tentatively, respectfully, Nacho's slender fingers fumbled at the hoddentin sack around his neck.

"We went down and stole a lot of horses. Always, the Tinneh walked before, but we thought maybe horses, riding horses, would make a difference. We ride horses, the way the soldiers do, and ride back to the mountain before the soldiers could catch us." He shrugged. "But now they have mirror-talk, same as us. Always there were soldiers ready when we came. So that did not work either."

He got up to pace the dirt floor of the hut, strong brown legs knotting in muscles as he walked.

"My uncle knew it was no good. He led the Tinneh up on the mountain just to die. It was no good to fight anymore. But he had the Red Hair Woman. He told me, he said that Englishman along the river, that white man I cut in the face with my knife, he come after the Red Hair Woman. My uncle said that. My uncle believed that. And he said, my uncle said—when he comes, I want to talk to him and see if he is brave and good like I think."

"But—why? Why did he not just kill me when he had the chance?"

Annoyed to be interrupted with a difficult task, Nacho made an impatient gesture.

"You came! My uncle looked at you, talked to you. He fought you with knives, and you not afraid to die. So he was satisfied. He took his lucky hat, his chief's hat, and burned it. He walked away, to the big rock in the east, and—"

Jack Drumm had never seen an Indian weep. Certainly Nacho did not weep. But there was a glint in his somber eye. For a moment, it seemed his voice caught, broke.

"So he died. Because he had bad luck, he did not want to live anymore."

Jack was moved. "But why—I mean—why am I—"

"Ostin Drumm," Nacho said, "my uncle told me you are a brave man, a fair man, a smart man. He said you would lead us down the mountain, speak for us to that Gold Leaf Trimble. My uncle said that Trimble was a bad man, an evil man, a man who understood only blood, a man who killed Tinneh women and babies at Big Canyon to get those gold leaves on his shoulders. Now we know Trimble has these new guns, these shiny guns, that shoot faster than a hundred men. We are scared of those guns, scared that when we come down to the river to surrender Trimble will shoot even the old people and the sick people with those guns and—" Nacho wiped one palm across the other in an eloquent gesture. "Wipe us out—women and children, everybody!"

He paused, his voice trembling with passion. "Ostin, the Tinneh do not beg! If Gold Leaf Trimble tries to shoot us with those shiny guns we will all die like Tinneh! But if you come with us down the mountain, go first to talk to Trimble, tell him we are giving up our guns and will go to that Verde River place and learn how to be farmers and herdsmen—"

Afterward, Jack realized the young man could not have been so eloquent. Nacho's limited English was not equal to the task. Later he realized that much of what he remembered was supplied by Nacho's eloquent gestures. Much came also from Jack's own interpretation of an awkward phrase here, a misused word there.

"It is not the men," Nacho added. "We know how to die. But the women and children should not die."

Remembering how Indians weighed their words, deliberating a long time before speaking, Jack sat cross-legged in the hut, hands on knees, half naked, staring at the bright rectangle of sunlight in the open doorway. Nacho did not speak either.
Ostin
, Jack was thinking.
I am Ostin Drumm
. Somehow he was prouder of that title than he would ever have been of the title of Lord Fifield, Lord Fifield of Clarendon Hall, in Hampshire.

Nacho, he knew, was thinking also; thinking of a free and wild way of life that was vanishing. The Tinneh had been beaten. They would go back to the Verde River reservation. Hoes would be thrust into their hands, and rakes and shovels. The government, that mysterious force far to the east, would make of them farmers, herdsmen, mechanics. Maybe it was all for the best; surely it was the best for the citizens of the Arizona Territory, and perhaps best for the Tinneh too, in the long run. But something would be lost, something wild and free and soaring, like the eagle—Ostin Eagle. Agustín knew that, and died rather than lose it. Now the
sobrino—
Nacho—knew it too, and was ready to take the Tinneh into exile. He wanted Jack Drumm to help.

"I will do it," Jack promised. "It is an honor that you give me."

At dawn the next morning the Tinneh went down the mountain on their journey of surrender. Most, particularly the old men and women and children, rode horses—the stolen horses, the unavailing horses. They rode awkwardly, as Apaches did.

The journey was rough. Many would not have been able to make it on foot. There were wounded, too. Jack Drumm, with his small knowledge of medicine, did what he could, bandaging, lancing infected wounds, improvising a travoislike litter for a gangrenous man who suffered, but only lay silent and tight-lipped in the litter.

Nacho, chosen head of the vanquished Tinneh, led the way. Jack Drumm trotted beside him on Tom, the borrowed Spencer carbine in his saddle scabbard. Folded in his pocket was the precious Union Jack, also returned to him. It was ragged and dirty, and displayed several bullet holes. Behind them rode Phoebe Larkin in an Apache dress sewn from deerhide. She rode easily, expertly. "Why, of course!" she said in response to Jack Drumm's inquiry. "Of course I can ride! My uncle Buell taught me when I was a little girl in Pocahontas County!"

At the bend of the rocky trail Nacho reined up and stared toward the plume of white smoke above Gu Nakya. When they left, the Tinneh had set afire the brush huts.
When someone dies
, Jack remembered,
they set the whole village afire and move away. They don't want to be reminded
.

Gold Leaf Trimble was certainly aware of their coming. Up and down the sierra winked the shafts of reflected sunlight from the new M-7 heliograph. At noon the band paused for water from a spring, ate a little dried meat from their scanty stores, and
pinole
, parched cornmeal soaked in water to make a thin gruel.

Sometime in the afternoon the wounded man in the litter died, as uncomplainingly as he had borne his wounds. They placed the body in a cairn of rocks. The women gathered around and wailed in unison, comforted the wife of the dead man. Then the column moved on, faster, hoping to reach the Agua Fria by dusk.

An orange ball glowing in a purplish haze, the sun was setting behind the ragged ridges as they approached the cavalry outposts.

"Wait here," Jack instructed. "I will ride down and tell them we have women and children, and some wounded, that we are coming in under parole to surrender."

Nacho gave him a long fathomless look. Finally he nodded. "
Inju
. All right."

Jack rode into the twilight, the roan stepping daintily among the rocks, pretending to shy and be startled when a partridge boomed out of a thicket.

"Easy, now," Jack muttered, patting the horse's arched neck. "Easy, Tom!"

Where are they
? he wondered.
Where are the cavalry pickets? This is where Uncle Roscoe and I met them before
.

In the canyon with its steep sides he could see nothing but the trail directly ahead. Where were they? Surely Trimble knew they were coming. He reined in Tom, looking about. Could it be—an ambush?

"Trimble!" he shouted. "Dunaway! George Dunaway! It's me— Jack Drumm!"

Someone turned the crank of a Gatling gun and fire spat from the shadows of the canyon. Splinters of rock flew from the slablike walls, dust stung his nostrils, slugs screamed down the canyon, ricocheting from wall to wall.

"God damn it!" he yelled. "Stop it! Stop the shooting! It's me— Jack Drumm!"

Tom reared, pranced in a tight caracole, and threw him to the ground. He must have hit his head on a rocky ledge because brilliant yellow and red and green lights flashed behind his eyes, the world turned upside down, his ears rang. The Gatling gun cranked on, now joined by others; the canyon was filled with smoke and fire and deadly rolling thunder. He was showered with needlelike fragments of lead.

"Stop it!" he screamed. "God, stop the shooting!"

Gasping for breath, unsteady on his legs, half blinded from the stone dust and lead fragments, he groped along the canyon wall toward the guns.

"Stop it, I tell you! It's Drumm, Jack Drumm! Stop the shooting!"

The hungry chattering of the Gatlings paused, stuttered, paused again. For a moment the silence in the narrow canyon was oppressive. Then he heard George Dunaway's voice raised in anger.

"God damn it, stay away from that gun!"

"But Major Trimble said—"

Dunaway's words, most of them, were unprintable. "I don't care what Major Trimble said! Stand clear of that gun or I'll put a bullet through your fat skull!"

"George?" Jack called. "Dunaway?"

Through the dust and smoke came George Dunaway, revolver in one hand, the other clutching for support as he clambered among the rocks.

"Drumm! Is that you?" He shoved the revolver back in the holster and put an arm under Jack's elbow. "Here—let me help you! Are you hurt?"

Jack shook his head, gasped, "I don't think so!" He waved his arm toward the mouth of the canyon, now almost shrouded in night. "The Tinneh are back there! They're waiting to come in, to surrender!"

"The who?"

"Agustín's people! I rode down with them! They—they want to surrender!"

Dunaway was quickly professional. "How many of them? Are they armed?"

He was too tired, too recently released from the terror of the guns, to do anything but sit down on a flat rock. "Don't worry!" His lungs labored for air; he wheezed, coughed, holding his throat. "Don't worry about anything. I'll vouch for them."

For a long time he sat on the rock, Phoebe Larkin beside him, watching the defeated Tinneh ride by. The soldiers had lit torches; in the flickering light each warrior, as he passed by, raised a hand in salute to Jack Drumm, muttered something. Dunaway watched them, and shook his head.

"Beats anything I ever saw," he murmured, pushing the battered felt hat far back on his head. "We didn't have to fight them— they just came to us!" He chuckled. "No blood and brains spattered all over the rocks! Old Hardbutt Trimble will be real disappointed!"

As the Indians passed, Dunaway kept a tally in a notebook. "What is it they're saying?"

Jack knew. Each passing brave held up his hand, palm out, and called "Ostin."
Ostin Tinneh. Lord. Lord Drumm. Lord Apache
.

"They are saying good-bye," he told Dunaway.

"To you?"

He nodded. "To me, I suppose—and to a way of life. This is the end for them."

The end for them
, he thought.
And a beginning for me and Phoebe Larkin
.

Wire communication was fast improving in the Territory. It did not take long for the word of the capture of Agustín's rebellious band to spread. Freed from the Apache menace, people rode out from Prescott in wagons to see the camp where the captive savages waited for the long journey back to the Verde River reservation.

Almost immediately wagon traffic had resumed on the road. The vehicles of the California and Arizona Stage Line made their runs between Phoenix and the capital. Quickly the story spread, also, of Jack Drumm's role as intermediary in the capture, and of how he had rescued the Red Hair Lady. Stuff of a legend was in the making, and it embarrassed him.

Sam Valentine wrung his hand, thanking him in the name of the Arizona Legislature. Ike Coogan grinned toothlessly and handed him a chew of Wedding Cake, allowing as how he'd better start now to carry his own tobacco, like a real Arizony
hombre
. Charlie the Papago brought his whole family to see the famous man. The children made garlands of desert flowers to hang around Jack's neck while he turned beet-red, prevented from flight only by Phoebe's arm linked with his. Perhaps the only unhappy person, with the exception of Nacho's people, was Major Henry Trimble, who—according to George Dunaway—was searching War Department regulations to see if there was something illegal in a civilian interfering with a military operation in the field.