'I never had a family,' Spanish said. 'I was always alone.'
John J. tamped tobacco into his pipe. 'Most men are alone,' he said. 'We come into life alone, we face our worst troubles alone, and we are alone when we die.'
'It was the girl we tracked,' I said. I'd been looking around while we talked.
'She needed grub. She's taken some bread and some dried apples, and maybe a little jerky.'
And then we were quiet again.
We knew what we had to do, and the waiting was hard, for we were men who preferred action. Our way of life had been to act ... there was rarely need for contemplation. We were men who moved swiftly, surely, and we lived or died by the success of our movement. So to wait now came hard. To wander in the mountains added to our danger, and to wait here was risk, but a man who does not move leaves no tracks.
So we watched and waited, for it was all we could do, and even just watching worried me for men who are being watched become aware of it.
The white boy we had seen appeared again, more than once, but always with Indian boys around him. And then, after another long day of watching, I saw him take a spear and go alone along a trail between some rocks. Like a cat I was off the rock where I watched, nodding to Rocca as I passed him.
Spanish went up to watch from where I had been, and John J. went to the horses -- we saddled them each morning -- to be ready in case of need.
Tampico Rocca was a ghost on the trail, moving without sound. We snaked down among the rocks, crawled over great boulders, and came down to where we could await the boy.
Was he changed? Had he become an Apache? If so, he would shout when he saw us.
Only he had no chance. Soundlessly Rocca dropped to the trail behind him, put one hand over the boy's mouth, and lifted him into the brush, where we crouched.
He looked wild-eyed with fright, then seeing we were white men he tried to speak. Slowly Rocca took his hand from his mouth.
'Take me away!' he whispered. 'My name is Brook. Harry Brook.'
'How long have they had you?'
'Two years, I think. Maybe not that long, but a long time.'
'Where are the other white children? The Creeds and Orry Sackett.'
'The Creeds? I have heard of them. They are in the next rancheria.' He pointed.
'Over there.'
'And the Sackett boy?'
'I do not know. I never heard of another boy. There is a girl with the Creed boys, but she is only five ... very small.'
Well ... something seemed to drain away inside me. Had they killed him then? Had they killed Orrin's son? Battles asked the question.
'Nobody was killed,' the boys said. 'I was in camp when they brought them in, the Creed boys and the girl.'
Squatting down on my heels, I asked, 'Can you get to those others? I mean, will you ever see them?'
'You ain't takin' me along with you?' There were tears in his eyes.
'Not right now. Look, if we took you now we'd have to run, wouldn't we? All right, we leave you here. You be ready.' I pointed toward a high rock. 'Can you see that from camp?'
'Yes.'
'All right ... when you see a black rock atop that, you come to this place, right here. We've got to get those other youngsters.'
'You'll get killed. They're in Kahtenny's rancheria.'
'Kahtenny? He's alive, then?'
'He sure is. An' all them Apaches yonder take a back seat for him. He's a big man among 'em.'
We left him then, worried for fear the Apaches would come scouting to see what he was doing. They trusted no prisoner, even if he seemed to accept their ways.
Only thing was, they didn't figure anybody could get away from the Sierra Madres ... or that anybody would dare come in after them.
The first thing I did was hunt a piece of black lava rock to use when the time came. I placed it handy under a bush, and we went back, mounted up, and followed a trail out of there, skirting a cliff that fell away so sharply you felt as if you rode on a piece of molding along a wall.
That boy back there ... could he keep them from knowing? That troubled me some.
There was small chance he could get to the other youngsters, but there was some visiting back and forth ... it could be.
But where was Orry Sackett? Where was my brother's son?
Chapter 7
Through the chill dawn we climbed toward the high peaks, weaving our way among trees that dripped with moisture from the low-hanging clouds. Then we descended several hundred feet into a secluded park ringed with splendid pines. On the far side a cold, clear stream fell over a limestone ledge into a deep pool.
In every sheltered spot there were ruins ... ancient ruins, half buried in earth or an overgrowth of brush or moss. In one place a gnarled and twisted cedar grew inside a wall, a cedar that itself must have been hundreds of years old.
I questioned Rocca, and he shrugged. 'Who knows? They were the People Who Came Before, and they were gone before the Apaches came.'
He was only mildly curious. 'Many peoples have come and gone. It is the way of the world. The People of the Stone Houses ... the people who built the cliff dwellings in Arizona and Colorado. They were driven out by the Navajo, who killed many of them.
'The white man has driven out the Indian, but the Indian drove out others before, and those others had driven peoples before them. It is always the same.
I think the Indian was defeated by the traders, not by the soldiers.'
'How so?' Battles asked.
'The traders made the Indian want things he could not make himself. He came to need the white man, to depend upon him. The Indian had to trade or steal to get the rifles and other things he wanted that the white man had.'
It was what I had thought myself. Rocca shrugged again. 'The first white trader who came to the Indians brought their doom in his pack. I think it is so.'
We were silent then. We came to a fearful slide and went down it, our horses sliding on their haunches for a good part of the distance to the bottom of a gloomy canyon, through which ran the headwaters of the Bavispe. It was an eerie, haunted spot, and I swung down, standing for a moment with both hands on the saddle, listening. But there was no sound except that of falling water, and the sighing of wind among the pines.
'I don't like it,' John J. said. 'It looks like the dark edge of hell.'
Me, I was thinking of those youngsters among the Apaches, so strange to them, so frightening. They must be scared stiff. Yet I could think of worse things than living out a life in these mountains. The Sierra Madres were beautiful.
We were coming close now, and we could see plenty of Apache sign. In gloomy places like this a body always had the feeling of being watched.
We drank, one at a time, with the others watching and in the saddle. We crossed the river then and went up a switchback trail for a thousand feet toward a tremendous promontory.
Storm clouds hung over the nearby peaks, and there was electricity in the air.
Kahtenny's rancheria was somewhere below us, hidden in the low clouds. We started down through the trees, but had gone only a short distance when the rain began to fall in sheets, swept by a violent wind.
The forest offered slight cover, and there was nothing to do but hole up and wait it out. We found a place where a great pine had fallen almost to the ground, part of it resting among the rocks. We cut away the branches on the under side and took shelter there, leading our horses under cover with us. There was barely room for us, and the pommel of my saddle brushed the bark of the pine.
We took a chance, with the rain to keep down the smoke and keep the Apaches under shelter, and built a
