The Peacemaker (11 page)

"Dammit, Nolan! You lied to me—" Shatto slammed a fist on the table.

"Now, Jim, don't go jumping to conclusions." Behind her door, Indy held her breath. She could almost see the captain leaning forward and raising his hand in his own defense. "We've been friends a long time and you know damn good and well you can trust me. I didn't lie to you. I just didn't tell you everything because I knew you wouldn't come if you thought the colonel knew about your past. You can hit me later if you want, but do yourself a favor and listen to what he has to say."

"Shatto, or rather, Major Garrity, Captain Nolan has explained your situation. He told me about the four men you killed, your court-martial, your sentence to hang, and your escape. I gave my word that I would not have you arrested . . . regardless of the outcome of our talk."

"An extremely wise decision, Colonel. I don't take well to confinement."

With a gasp of surprise Indy bolted to her feet. He killed four men? And he'd been sentenced to hang? Dear God, what kind of man was he?

"I'm sure Captain Nolan has already told you what the situation is here at Bowie—"

"The situation, Colonel, is obvious. You've got more trouble here than you know how to handle. You can't get supplies in or take troops out without running into an attack and losing a couple of men. The Apaches have a name for you,
doogoyaa da, bini'edih
, which, simply translated, means fool. They laugh at you and make jokes. You've become quite a source of entertainment for them."

"You're impertinent, Major Garrity."

"Call me whatever you want. I am what I am, and I speak my mind."

There was a hard edge to his voice that made Indy think her father and Captain Nolan would do well to tread cautiously. After all Shatto or Major Garrity—whatever he called himself—was a convicted murderer.

"I'm going to ignore your impertinence, Major. But let me make something clear. As soon as Grant won the election, I applied for a post in Washington. The War Department, in their infinite wisdom, made an error and sent me here to this flea-bitten post. I know nothing about the frontier or Indians other than what I've read in Army reports and newspapers. My expertise is in civil engineering, though I did successfully lead a regiment in the Army of the Potomac. But that was an altogether different kind of warfare. Nothing like this. I expect I'll be reassigned soon, but until then I have a duty to perform and I find myself embarrassingly unable to perform it. Therefore, I'm in a position to make you a bargain."

"A bargain, Colonel? Money? Land? No thanks, I'm not interested."

"Would you be interested in having all charges dropped against you? A full pardon, Major. That's what I'm offering."

"You'd be free, Jim," Captain Nolan put in quickly. "You could go home, see your family. See Tess. You wouldn't have to live like an outlaw anymore."

Tess? Indy's eyes bored holes into the door.

"Not good enough, Colonel."

"Jim! For God's sake. He's offering you the chance of a lifetime. I thought you'd be pleased. Jesus! I thought you'd be beside yourself. What the hell's the matter with you anyway?"

"Goddammit, Aubrey. I'll tell you what's the matter with me. I'm not guilty. I don't want just to have the charges dropped. I want to be proven innocent, and I want those men found guilty."

"But you killed them—all four of them. Not even the United States Army can bring charges against dead men."

Indy could feel both Shatto's and Captain Nolan's frustration.

"Gentlemen, please. Major Garrity, I understand your need to be exonerated. If I were in your position, I imagine I would want the same thing. But the problem, as I'm sure you already know, is finding the evidence, and after this late date ... well . . ."

"I provided them with all the information they needed, but it was never even brought up at the court-martial. They didn't want to hear the truth."

"I'm not without influence, Major. President Grant and I went to the Point together and I often visited his home at White Haven and he at mine. I'll ask him as a personal favor to have your case looked into."

"I want my rank reinstated with all its benefits and privileges. I want the word deserter stricken from the muster rolls."

"If you agree to train my men, it's as good as done."

Another pause, this one seeming to last an eternity. Indy held her breath and waited.

"What you're asking, Colonel—these skills you want your men to acquire—you can't expect them to learn them overnight. From what I've seen, it'll take several weeks just to get your men in decent physical condition."

"Not everyone will be participating, Major. I'll only choose the twenty best men."

"No, Colonel,
I'll
choose the men."

"You'll choose them? But you don't know them."

"Neither do you, but one doesn't need to know them."

Indy could almost hear her father grit his teeth.

"All right.
You
choose the men."

"And the horses, the weapons, the ammunition, and the clothes they wear. They'll be under my command. They won't eat, sleep, or breathe without consulting me first . . . and interference from you will not be tolerated."

"Be serious, Major. You're taking this a little too far. What you're asking is out of the question."

"Those are my terms, Colonel. I do it my way or I don't do it at all."

A chair leg scraped the floorboards.

"Ail right. All right. We'll do it your way."

"Another wise decision, Colonel."

Shatto rode east, away from Camp Bowie through Apache Pass. He was careful to cover his trail on the chance that the colonel had sent someone to follow him. In spite of their bargain, which would take him back to Bowie in four days, he didn't like or trust Colonel Charles Taylor, and he thought the Apaches' name and estimation of his character were remarkably accurate.

Hours later he cut deep into the rugged Dos Cabezas Mountains, zigzagging along a trail that an untrained observer could not have recognized. Mammoth boulders, stark and sterile, towered arrogantly above him on either side. Near sundown, the trail descended sharply and he rode into the Valley of Thunder, his home and the home of Toriano's group these past six years.

Home. He thought suddenly of another home with a green expanse of lawn, an orchard with fruit-laden trees and a pond that grew the biggest and tastiest catfish east of the Mississippi. He'd been happy there, living with his grandfather, and even happier when his parents had come there to live as well, their days of running stage stations in the territories behind them.

He mentally compared the locations and was about to ask himself which of the two he preferred when he reined in his thoughts. The Apaches had taught him that there was beauty, harmony, and power in all land; that the desert should not be likened to or measured against the mountains, or the valleys to the canyons.

His mouth drew up in a smile as he rode into the little vale that was crowded with shrubs and trees. It wasn't as green and lush as his other home, but it was beautiful all the same. Among the pine trees sat a dozen brush-covered wickiups, sturdily built to withstand the seasons. Toriano and his people, almost all relatives by blood and marriage, had made the Valley of Thunder a permanent campsite. Both water and game were plentiful. They had no need of moving from place to place as did most of the other groups within the central band.

Above him, from a point that overlooked the valley, a vedette screeched like a hawk to announce his arrival. At the lookout's call, three young boys came stampeding across the valley floor to meet him, whooping and hollering. They were followed by a half-dozen women, who gathered at the camp's edge, waving at him, as if he was an honored warrior returning from a successful raid. Toriano and his brother Luga and their cousin Eskinyea set aside the sinew they had been wrapping around their arrows and came to stand near the women.

The smell of game roasting over a slow-burning fire made Shatto's mouth water. He was glad to come home, but was not eager to tell Toriano and the others—his second family—about his visit to Camp Bowie and the bargain he'd struck. Though they were all anxious for peace, they would not like the road they would have to take to get there.

Toriano's straight black hair swung forward over muscular shoulders as he moved ahead and took the pinto's reins. "My heart is glad to see you, but could you not have come later, after the meal? The buck was a young one—very small— and you have a big hunger. I do not think there is enough for all of us to share." The glint in his eyes belied the seriousness of his tone.

Shatto raised his brow and cut Toriano a sharp sideways glance. "But I am very hungry," he said, patting his stomach. "I smelled the meat as soon as I reached the summit. Are you sure there is not enough?"

Toriano shrugged his shoulders. "I am sure."

"Well then, if as you say, there is not enough"—Shatto pulled the reins out of Toriano's hands—"I will have to go hunting. My story of the bluecoat colonel will wait until I get back." He reined sharply to the right and kicked the pinto into a trot.

Toriano's expression turned to disbelief. He broke from the group and sprinted after the horse. The women and children laughed and shouted with excitement at the game between the two warriors. Their shouts turned to screams of encouragement when in a sudden burst of speed Toriano reached the pinto's left flank and grabbed on to Shatto's leg.

Shatto whooped with surprise and released the reins. Had the attack come from an enemy he would have kicked the pinto into a gallop and dragged his attacker over the ground. Instead, he succumbed to Toriano's hold and slid off the pinto's back. He hit the ground hard but was quick to gain his feet and spring catlike at Toriano who lunged at him at the same time. The two men locked in mock combat, rolling over and over in the dirt, grunting, snarling like mountain lions, and laughing like children, until they looked up and saw Toriano's wife standing over them, scowling like an angry she bear.

Darkness crept slowly over the mountains, softly veiling the valley in shadows. Shatto sat cross-legged several feet from Toriano's campfire. He had discarded his civilian clothes for the breechclout and moccasins worn by the other men. The buck had not been small as Toriano had said, but a large one, big enough to feed the entire group, which now numbered twenty-five: ten women, eight men, and seven children.

Shatto talked of his visit to Bowie and his discussion with Captain Nolan and the colonel throughout the meal. When he had finished, he talked of his vision of the People's future. "Every day more white men come here to these mountains and the desert." His expression was grave, his tone solemn as befitted the subject. "It is true some go beyond to the great water, but many stay here to build homes, plant seeds in the ground, or search for the yellow iron. They do not think of the land in the way the Apache does. To them, it is a thing to be owned—like a rifle or a horse." He stopped, giving them a moment to digest his words. Because the Apache did not believe that land could be bought or sold—that it was for all men to use—they would have difficulty understanding.

"They want
this
land," he said with a wide sweep of his hands, "because it is rich in gold, silver, copper, and lead. There is coal and salt and much more that the white men want and nothing will stop them from coming and taking it, for they are greedy and they do not respect the land like the Apache."

"Let them come," said Eskinyea. At eighteen, he was full of himself. "We will fight them and send them away."

"Yes, you will fight them and some of them will go away, but more will come—always more will come. Not even Cochise and all his warriors can stop them. There are more white men than all the Apache, Zunis, and Navajo together." The mood of his audience suddenly tensed and they stared at him through the flames, their expressions fierce.

Luga, Toriano's youngest brother, had a surly disposition and tended toward being argumentative. He grunted now and shook his head. "There may be many as you say but they are weak like women. I see this with my own eyes."

Stretching his arm across to Luga and grabbing his shoulder, Shatto said, "Am I weak?"

Luga did not flinch. "No, but you are—"

"No different than they," he finished for him. "Not all white men are weak or fools like the bluecoat colonel. Not all Apache are strong like Luga." Turning back to the others, he continued. "The day when the Apache could move about like the wind is no more." His hand left Luga's shoulder to slash through the air.

"We have talked of this before," Toriano spoke out, his voice carrying to everyone around the campfire. "Shatto's vision is greater than ours because he is a white man and knows the white man's ways and the Apache ways. He has guided us in the past. We must listen to him now and believe."

Toriano made an excellent chief; he was diplomatic and open-minded—like Cochise had been until he was unjustly accused of abducting the son of a Sonoita Valley rancher. The ramifications from that affair—eight years ago—had begun a long and bloody war—a war that would have no winner, no victory.

In language they could understand, Shatto went on to explain President Grant's proposed Peace Policy, as told to him by Captain Nolan. It would be a system that would concentrate all Apaches onto reservations, where they would be educated, civilized, and taught the principle of agriculture so they could feed themselves. He didn't expect them to like the idea of being confined. He sure as hell hadn't liked that month he'd spent in confinement in a military prison. But he had to make them understand that the reservation system or something equally as bad was inevitable.

"You would be wise not to resist, because you cannot win." In the end, the braves sat staring morosely into the flames, their spirits going the same way as the sparks that died once they left the fire. "I have made a bargain with the nantan at the soldier fort." He explained what the colonel had offered and what he had agreed to do in return. "I have thought long on this and have decided that it is right that I should do this."