Power in the Blood (50 page)

“Grandfather would not like to hear those words.”

“Grandfather is dead,” Nail in His Feet reminded.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Drew. He could not tell if he was still considered a friend, given the colors of his uniform and skin.

“He knew this day would come,” said Bleeding Heart of Jesus. “He told us so.”

“Yes, we would meet with you again, John Bones: Grandfather told us this.”

“It was you who let him inside San Bartolomeo to take us away and learn the true ways.”

“Grandfather said we must be your friend forever.”

“Well, uh, I’m sure the old gentleman was right.”

“So we will not kill you.”

“No, we will not.”

“Thank you.”

Drew stood up, legs quaking with relief. The brothers studied him.

“You are much older.”

“You boys look different too.”

“And our names, they are different.”

“Yes, we do not use the names you once knew us by.”

“Those are our shame.”

“Now I am Panther Stalking.”

“And I am Kills With a Smile.”

“Grandfather gave us these names.”

“He gave us the learning to kill white people.”

“We have killed very many of them.”

“I heard about it,” said Drew. Congratulations did not seem to be in order. He was unsure what attitude to strike with these swaggering acquaintances from the past.

“Now you will tell us what you have done in the time that has gone by.”

While Drew provided a summary of events, Panther and Smile led him a short distance to their new mules, and allowed him to select one. He chose his own.

“That is a good one,” said Smile.

“I was myself riding that one,” said Panther, “but you may have it.”

“Where is it you wish to go, John Bones?”

“North, to Colorado.”

“So the army does not take you again?”

“Yes.”

“Then we will go with you.”

“But we will come back,” said Smile.

“Yes,” agreed Panther. “We belong here.”

“We will kill every white man.”

“Unless they leave,” added Panther.

“Yes, we will let them leave if they wish.”

“We are fair.”

“We keep our word.”

“See how we kept our word to Grandfather and did not kill you?”

“I’m very appreciative,” Drew assured them.

“Now you will be known to everyone,” said Smile. “You will be the only white man to see our faces and live.”

“No,” corrected Panther. “We were seen by many in the jail at Magdalena, and they are all still living.”

“Then we should go back there and kill them.”

“Enough talk of killing. We have our friend John Bones, just as Grandfather said. We must take him away from here, to pay back what he did for Grandfather, and for us. Without John Bones we would still have the bad names, and be Christian men.”

“Do not talk of things to make my insides sick.”

The brothers kept up their mild wrangling for miles. Drew had been told that Apaches never spoke unless necessary, and saw that Smile and Panther were not ideal models of the breed. He supposed this was because they had spent too many of their early years at the mission, which had corrupted their natural Apache reticence. They had learned the murderous ways of their ancestors since having been liberated from San Bartolomeo by Smart Crow Making Mischief, but they were a hybrid type of Indian, it seemed to Drew, as he listened to their petulant jabbering, a pair of scolding jays that delighted in pecking out the eyes of lesser birds.

In time, they felt silent, and Drew found himself able to remember Taynton. Until then, he had not spared his late friend much thought. He could not complain to his rescuers over their having killed someone he liked; it would mean nothing to them, Taynton’s skin being white. Drew would have to swallow the loss without a mention, or risk Panther and Smile’s turning against him. Without them, he might not reach the Colorado line. Curiously, he found he could not hate the brothers for their deeds, and this also bothered him. Was mere acquaintance sufficient for forgiveness? Drew could form no opinion, and in the end stopped trying. It was better to accept the things that had happened, incorporate them into his overall view of the world as a place in which events occurred without rhyme or reason, a constant jostling of actions and resultant reactions that were guided by no higher intelligence, no cosmic adjudicator. Smile and Panther had probably killed Taynton, instead of himself, simply because he was nearer, and for no other reason, certainly not because Smart Crow had predicted they would meet again. It was baffling, the way things turned out as they did.

The journey to Colorado lasted eleven days. Drew ate wild game shot by Panther Stalking and Kills With a Smile.

“We like these army guns,” said Panther.

“They kill further off than any other.”

“Springfield’s a powerful piece,” Drew concurred.

“But we wish they would shoot more than one bullet.”

“You want a repeater, steal a Winchester.”

“We have three already,” boasted Smile. “We have a secret place where we keep guns.”

“We wish to have a cannon also. Is there one at Fort Mobley?”

Drew recalled the small howitzer in the armory, its metal dusty from lack of use.

“No, and there’s no need for you to kill anyone there either. No one ever goes out on patrol for the likes of you two. Leave the fort alone.”

“We have seen there is no wall there. Why is that?”

“Nothing’s the way it should be at Mobley.”

Sometimes the brothers described their raids and ambushes to Drew, but he would not react to their stories, knowing they did this to goad him over the deaths of his own kind.

“You do not care that we do this?” asked Panther, when Drew had said nothing after hearing a particularly gruesome description of a family being scalped and violated.

“I care,” said Drew, “but these people you speak of are dead, and nothing I say to you will make them live again.”

“That is so.”

“If I believed I could stop you from doing more of the same, just by talking to you, I would, but I see in your faces and hear in your voices that you like to do this killing. You like to give pain.”

“Yes, we like this very much. Grandfather told us it is our life, our real Apache life, to kill whites and give pain to them before they die.”

“They fear pain very much,” said Smile, “and many of them will go away when they are told about the pain we give.”

“Some will leave,” Drew said, “but most will not. There are just too damn many for all of them to be scared of you all the time. You can never win against so many.”

The brothers became silent for a while, then Panther said to Drew, “There is nothing else we can do.”

“We have promised Grandfather,” said Smile.

“And that’s why I say nothing when you tell me what you’ve done,” Drew said. “You won’t change.”

“No,” agreed the brothers, without the least shade of regret, and the remainder of the ride that day was without talk of any kind.

Panther and Smile took care to avoid ranches and towns as they escorted Drew north. The trio passed the outposts of white civilization in darkness, rather than risk being seen.

“I guess you’ll be stopping by at some of these places on your way back,” said Drew.

“Yes, we will kill some more of your people. Even their dogs will die.”

“We have a way to make them not smell us.”

“Yes, white dogs are sleepy fools.”

“Will you tell us not to do this, John Bones?”

“I know whatever I say means nothing to you.”

“Yes, but you may ask if you wish.”

“We will listen to your words,” Panther assured him.

“Will my words mean more than your grandfather’s words?”

The brothers shook their heads.

“Then I’ll save my breath,” said Drew.

“You will let us kill your kind without asking us not to? Do you hate them all as you hate the army men?”

“Look, if you want me to beg you not to kill anyone, all right, I will. I don’t know if it’s a game with you, or if you’ll listen.”

“We are listening, John Bones,” said Panther.

“Then I ask you not to kill anymore. Go down to Mexico and do something else with the days you have left.”

“Do you beg us to do this thing?”

“Yes, I beg you.”

The brothers looked at each other.

“What will you give us in return?”

“Give you? I have nothing to give.”

“Will you give us one of your small fingers?”

“What?”

“Just one,” said Smile. “You may keep the other.”

“You’d quit the killing if I let you cut off my finger?”

“Yes, we will do this.”

“Will you let us have your finger, John Bones?”

Drew stopped his mule. “Yes,” he said. It was the least he could do for the memory of Taynton.

The brothers dismounted. “Get down,” Drew was told, then Panther drew his knife.

“Put the blade through a fire first,” Drew said.

A small pile of brushwood was gathered and kindled. Panther passed his knife back and forth in the flames, grinning at Drew.

“You have told us we like to give pain,” said Smile. “We know you think we are cruel for this, so you will cut off the finger yourself.”

“I don’t know that I could do that,” Drew said, his stomach already lurching at what was to come. He began to wish he had not struck so humanitarian a bargain with the brothers; it wasn’t as if anyone would ever hear about his sacrifice and laud him for a hero.

“You must do it, John Bones. We can not hurt you, or Grandfather would be angry.”

“Suit yourselves,” Drew said.

He held out his hand for the knife. Panther passed it to him. Drew could feel the heat of the metal as he held the blade close and saw the Pittsburgh manufacturer’s name stamped below the hilt. It was an excellent knife, honed to razor sharpness. The brothers watched as Drew set his left little finger against the pommel of his saddle and touched the blade to his skin, then raised it several inches. He would use its weight in the manner of an ax, rather than a saw, and be done with the act in seconds.

Panther and Smile were mildly impressed that Drew cut off his finger without a sound, without much more than a compression of the lips. They liked the way he thrust the knife blade into the ground to clean it, then calmly pinched the bleeding stump between his fingertips.

“There,” he said, sounding angry.

Panther retrieved his knife. Smile picked up Drew’s finger and examined it before tossing the scrap of flesh into the fire. Drew quickly smelled a part of himself burning, but was in no mood to appreciate the uniqueness of the situation.

Panther and Smile mounted their mules.

“Now we go a different way to you,” said Smile.

“You told me you’d take me all the way to Colorado.”

“And you are there. Your finger burns in Colorado.”

Drew felt vaguely cheated. His hand hurt, and the pain was building by the second. “Now you’ll go to Mexico,” he said, “and not kill anyone there, or on the way there.”

Panther shook his head. “We will do as we please. We will kill many people yet. We promise you this.”

“You … you said if I cut off my finger you wouldn’t do that anymore …!”

Smile nodded. “Yes, we said this, but we lied. Grandfather told us never to harm you, but we have told ourselves to spill blood into the earth from every white skin we can, so your blood must touch the earth, or we will not have done as we told ourselves we would. We did you no harm, and your blood has been spilled.”

“This way is best,” Panther said.

“Now we will never see you again.”

“Good-bye, John Bones. You have lost a little part of your hand to learn a big truth.”

“Yes,” agreed Smile, “and you will not forget a thing learned in pain.”

“What thing! What thing did I learn but that you’re liars!”

Panther said, “Never take the word of any man who is not blood of your blood.”

They left him there, with his mule and burning finger, in a uniform that could yet get him hanged.

24

His first reaction, when he woke up toothless, was surprise; where was the dentist, Dr. Maxwell? Clay felt his body weighing heavy as lead on the bed beneath him. Where was that bed again? He couldn’t remember the hotel’s name, let alone the town, but Dr. Maxwell’s name was burned into his brain. Maxwell had promised painless removal of all Clay’s diseased teeth at a single session of extraction, this operation to be followed by the fitting of a set of dentures to replace what nature had seen fit to take from Clay well in advance of his years.

“Your mouth, Mr. Dugan,” he had been told, “is the mouth of a man nearing seventy. Do you have the habit of chewing tobacco regularly?”

“Does it smell like I do?”

“Frankly, Mr. Dugan, I doubt that I could detect the odor among the general air of oral decay you carry. They must all come out, every tooth, before the jawbones become infected. You wouldn’t wish that fate on yourself, sir, believe me, for I have seen the results of indecision in cases such as this. Horrible, sir, simply horrible results that could have been avoided by prudent and timely investment in a painless process of my own devising, which I might add is far ahead of the common practices.”

“Painless?”

“No more discomforting than a stubbed toe, I guarantee.”

“All of them?”

“Without exception, and without delay.”

“Well, go ahead and do it while I’m here.”

“I require payment in advance, Mr. Dugan.”

“How much?”

“One dollar per tooth.”

“How many teeth in my head, Maxwell?”

“Thirty-two, including your wisdom teeth, which certainly should have come out long ago.”

“They never did give me any trouble till the rest of them started paining.”

“Thirty-two dollars, Mr. Dugan, in advance if you please.”

Clay counted out the cash. Maxwell had no office, being a dentist of the traveling school. His work was performed in whatever hotel room he happened to be occupying, so Clay lay down on the bed with his shirt open and a rubber sheet spread beneath his upper torso “for the inevitable runoff,” Maxwell explained.