that we would be in the heart of Apache country, with them on every side of us.
The Apache, in a sparse, harsh land where raising any crops was mighty nigh impossible, turned to raiding and robbing.
Generally, the men I'd heard talk of the Indian thought it was taking his land that ruined him. As a matter of fact, it had much to do with it, for an Indian couldn't live on a fixed ten acres or a hundred acres and live as he liked. He needed lots of hunting ground, and country that would support fifty Indians would support ten thousand planting white men.
But the Indian was whipped the first time one of them had a rifle for his own.
It was the trader who whipped the Indian by giving or selling him things he couldn't make himself. From that time on, the Indian was dependent on the white man for ammunition, for more guns, for more of the things he was getting a taste for. It was good sitting there in the cool of early morning, with the faint smell of woodsmoke in the air, the smell of frying bacon, the smell of good coffee. We were taking a chance, but we had scouted the country with care.
'How old's the boy?' Spanish asked suddenly.
'Five ... I think. About that.'
'You think he's still alive, Tamp?' Battles asked.
Rocca shrugged. 'Depends on whether he's a nervy kid, maybe. We'll pick up some tracks soon.'
'Seen any more of that strange rider?' Battles asked. 'I been watching for tracks all morning.'
'No,' I said, 'I haven't seen any.'
'What's it like up yonder?' Spanish asked.
'Oaks ... then pines. Running streams, rocks. All anybody could want but grub.
They have to bring it in. They get it from the Mexicans, or they kill them.' He gestured. 'The Apaches have almost cleared this part of Sonora of the Mexicans.
At least the rich ones. And the poor ones can only stay if they'll provide food for the Apaches.'
My thoughts went back over the desert to Laura. She was a pretty woman, and she was brave ... holding herself up, like she did, with her little boy lost, and all. But somehow she left me uneasy. But I was never very comfortable around women ... except Ange. And the Trelawney girls I'd known back home in the hills.
We sat there quiet a little longer, listening to the horses cropping at the shrubs. Rocca was smoking and squinting at the hills around.
None of us knew what might be waiting for us up yonder. Even if we found the boy alive, we still had to get him from the Apaches and get him back across the border. Our chances were none too good. I looked over at Rocca and said, 'Shall we move out?'
He rubbed his cigarette into the sand, and got up.
Me, I just stood there a moment or two thinking. All of a sudden I wished I was somewhere else. We were facing up to a lot of hell, and I looked forward to none of it. Besides, there was something about this whole affair that made me mighty uneasy.
We crossed the Bavispe and took a thin trail that led up through scattered oaks, along steep switchbacks toward the pines. The only sound was the chirping of birds, the grunting of one of the horses over a steep part of the trail, or the clatter of a falling rock.
For an hour we climbed, pausing several tunes to let the horses catch their breath. Finally we rode out on a bench under the pines where stood the ruins of stone houses built of rough lava blocks with no mortar. There were at least a dozen of them in sight, and maybe more back under the trees. The walls were of a sort of gray felsite, and here and there one appeared to be better built than the others, as though built by different hands, by different thinking.
Rocca indicated a slight depression in the grass near one of the walls. 'We're still on the trail.'
A crushed pine cone looked as if it had been scarred by a sharp-shod hoof. There were other signs too.
The country here was wild and rugged, and we saw no water. We were now over six thousand feet up, judging by the growth around us, and still we climbed. The trail occasionally wound along a rim with an almost sheer drop falling off on one side or the other. We rode with our rifles in our hands, our boots light in the stirrups, ready to kick free and hit the ground if there was time. Riding that kind of country with Apaches around will put gray in your hair.
We came out presently on a shoulder of the mountain with pines all around us.
There was sparse grass, and a thin trickle of snow water ran down the mountain slope. Found the tracks of the rider there ... plain. The small horse had stood under a tree, tied to a low branch while she scouted ahead. She?
The word came to me unbidden, without thinking. It came like a voice speaking to me, and I spoke aloud what I had heard in my mind's ear. 'It's a woman, Tamp.
That's a woman or girl riding that horse.'
Rocca rested his big hands on the pommel. 'I think you are right,' he said. 'I think so.'
'A woman?' Battles was incredulous. 'It don't stand to reason.'
'Did Dan Creed have a wife? Or a daughter?' I asked.
Rocca looked around at me. 'I don' know, Tell. I tell you, I don'.'
I dropped to the ground. 'Sit tight,' I said. 'I want to see what she went to look at.'
A step or two and it was dark and green under the trees. A step or two more and I was lost to them, waiting back there for me. I could see a pressed-down leaf here, and the kicked-over damp, dead leaves, scuffed by a passing boot. The trail was easy, but it took time, for I scouted the trees around me as I moved.
Suddenly -- a running man could scarcely have stopped in time -- I was on the brink of a cliff. Not sheer, but a steep falling away, something a man could climb down if he could find foothold and used his hands, or if he could slide.
It was maybe a couple of thousand feet down to the bottom, and there was a meadow, the greenest you ever saw, and a pool with trees around it. It was a small hanging valley that opened out over an enormous canyon. There were three cooking fires in sight, and a dozen Apaches.
First I squatted down, easing down so my movement would draw no attention, and then I studied the camp through a manzanita growing on the rim.
Squaws were working, children playing. They felt secure here. Nobody had ever followed them into this country, nobody had ever found them here before. For years, for generations, they had been coming here after their raids, after stealing the cattle, the horses, and the women of the Mexicans. Stealing their food, too, and bringing it here and to other places like this ... there must be many of them.
Little Orry was in one of them. How long could we look before they caught us?
How long, then, could we expect to live?
But Orry was my brother's son, and I was a Sackett, and in the Sackett veins the blood ran strong and true. It was our nature and our upbringing.
A few minutes longer I squatted there, watching the camp. Not staring, for staring can be felt, and will make an animal or an Indian uneasy. Then I went back through the trees.
'It's a rancheria,' I said, 'but I doubt if it is the one we want.'
Chapter 6
Whoever it was who had come up the mountain before us had spent a good bit of time studying that camp. There were a-plenty of tracks, knee impressions, and the like, so we could see whoever it was had stayed there quite some time. And then that person had mounted up and ridden on.
We, too, moved on, and the trail we now followed was a deer trail ... or maybe one made by big horn sheep, which leave a somewhat similar track. The only other tracks on the trail were those small hoof prints, or sometimes, when the rider got on and walked, were boot tracks.
We entered soon into a wild and broken country, past towering masses of conglomerate and streams of a dull opalescent water, slightly bitter to the taste, but nonetheless good for drinking. Many times we were forced to dismount and lead our mounts, for large limbs or out-thrusts of rock projected over the trail.
Among some pines we pulled off and got down from our saddles. Tampico Rocca hunkered down and stared at the ground. Spanish Murphy glanced over at me. 'Tell ... you think we're going to find that boy?'
'Uh-huh.'
Well, I knew what he was feeling. The quiet. It was getting us. We were in the heart of Indian country, and
