small fire where we made soup and coffee.
After a break, with the rain still falling, I took up my rifle and went out on a scout. Keeping to the trees, I worked my way along the cliff. The rocks glistened with wet, and the raindrops pelted my slicker like thrown stones, but the trees offered some shelter.
Suddenly I was looking down into Kahtenny's rancheria. There were a few smokes from wickiups, but nobody was visible.
I felt a movement behind me, and I turned sharply. It was Tampico Rocca.
He indicated the rancheria below us. 'I could not fool them now,' he said. 'They would smell the difference in me. I have been eating the white man's food.'
'How many would you guess there are?' I asked. 'Twenty, maybe?'
'Twenty, or twenty-five.'
Two dozen human wolves ... and I mean nothing against them. My enemies for the time, yes ... but I respected them. At trailing or fighting they were fierce and relentless as wolves, and we had done the impossible and followed them into their almost impregnable Sierra Madre.
'I'm going down,' I said. 'I shall get close and listen.'
Rocca stared at me. 'You crazy. They will hear you. Their dogs will smell you.'
'Maybe, but the rain will help.'
'All right,' he said, 'we both go.' It would be a daring thing, but there was enough of the Apache in him to be cautious. And it would be a chance to count coups against the Apaches.
We crawled and slid down the mountain. From time to time we paused to listen, then moved on. We were fools, I told myself. What we did was insanity, no less.
But I had to find Orry, and every hour in these mountains was an hour of danger for us ... and for him.
Together we crept to the edge of the encampment in the driving rain. Rocca darted to the wall of one of the wickiups, and I went to another. Crouching in the rain, I listened, but heard nothing except the low mutter of Indian voices and the crackle of a fire. As I was moving to another, I was stopped for a moment by Rocca's uplifted finger. Hesitating, I watched him, holding my rifle, muzzle down under my slicker. He shook his head, and moved on. We had listened at five wickiups and were about ready to give up ... Suppose the children were not talking? Suppose they were not there at all?
Rocca gestured suddenly, and I went to him. We heard a mutter of talk within, and then, sure enough, a boy speaking plainly in English.
I caught Rocca's arm. 'Cover me,' I said, and lifting the flap, I stepped in.
For a moment I could see nothing, although I had taken the precaution of closing my eyes for a moment before stepping inside. Then in the red glow of the coals I saw a startled buck staring at me, and beginning to rise. On a pile of skins near one wall were three white children ... I could just make them out.
A squaw was there, holding a child at her breast. She stared at me, no anger or hatred in her eyes, just a calm acceptance. 'Do not cry out,' I said in Apache.
Then in the event she did not understand my poor use of the Apache tongue, I repeated it in Spanish.
The buck was past his astonishment, and he came at me with a lunge. I met him halfway with the butt of my rifle, and he went down in a heap, out cold.
'All right,' I said to the children, 'we're all going home. Wrap those skins around you and come on.'
Turning to the young Indian woman, who had not stirred, I spoke quietly in Spanish. 'I do not wish to hurt anybody. I want only to take these children home.'
She merely looked at me as the three children ran toward me. I saw that one of them was a girl. I waved them past, toward the wickiup entrance, and they went out quickly into the rain. With another glance at the squaw, I followed.
Tampico Rocca was already hurrying the youngsters toward the brush-clad hill where we had come down, and he was backing away, covering the wickiups with his rifle. I ran toward him, and was almost to the hillside when a man with a bloody head sprang from the wickiup from which we had taken the children.
He leaped out, staggered, then glared wildly around. His first yell failed him, but he shouted again and his voice came full and strong. As he yelled he lifted his rifle, and Rocca shot him.
The children were in the brush and climbing the steep slope, faster than I would have believed possible.
Backing after them, I let the Apaches come boiling out into the rain, and then fired rapidly.
One Indian spun and dropped his rifle, another yelled and started for me. I let him come, and shot past him at another who was lifting a rifle to fire. That Indian staggered and fell, then started up again.
The running Indian had a knife, and he was almost on me. Shortening my grip on my rifle, I took a long swing that caught the running Indian in the belly. He caved in with a choking cry, and I scrambled up the muddy slope, grabbing at branches.
From above there was a sudden cannonade of fire as our friends up there, who had heard the shooting, opened up on the Indians to cover our retreat.
Scrambling, falling, and scrambling on, we made the crest, and when the little girl fell I caught her up and ran after Rocca, with the others covering us as best they could.
We made our camp, swung into our saddles, and with three of us each carrying a child, we raced off along the ridge, rain whipping our faces.
We ran our horses when we could, then slowed for the steep, dangerous trail down. Falling rain masked the depths below, the great peaks were shrouded in cloud. Thunder rumbled around us, tremendous sounds as if we were inside an enormous drum. We dashed into a pine forest, ran our horses for a hundred yards, then slowed for a steep slide and a muddy scramble.
Battles' horse slipped and fell, spilling him from the saddle, but the horse was game and scrambled up. By the time it was on its feet, Battles was in the saddle again.
There was no chance now for the black rock atop the boulder. Anyway, because of the rain Harry could not see it.
Me, I kept looking back over my shoulder, wondering when the Indians would catch up. The rain might have muffled the shots enough so that the other rancherias would not be alerted to our coming. We drew up briefly under the trees and I eased the girl into a better position on the saddle before me.
'Were there any other children back there?' I asked her. 'White ones, I mean?'
'No,' she said. Her eyes were bright, but she looked excited rather than scared.
'Which one is Orry Sackett?' I asked.
She just looked at me. 'Neither one. Those two are the Creed boys. I never heard of any boy called Orry.'
Something turned over inside me. 'Tamp,' I yelled, 'my nephew isn't here!'
'I know it,' he said. 'He ain't here at all. These were the youngsters the Taches took. The only ones.'
'That's not possible!'
'You better get goin' ' Spanish said. 'This here is no time to talk.'
We started on, knowing there could be no hesitating, no turning back. The hills would be alive with Apaches now, and if we got out of here alive we'd have to have uncommon luck, which we had come into the mountains knowing.
Slipping and running, scrambling up and down muddy slopes, slapped by wet branches, racing through the forest ... first and last, it was a nightmare.
We came finally to the place above the first Indian encampment, and I passed the girl over to Battles. 'I've got to get that boy Harry!' I told him. 'Don't be a fool! There's no chance!'
'Keep going,' I said. 'I promised him.'
They all looked at me, each of them holding a youngster -- three tough, hard-bitten men with no families, no homes, nothing to call their own but a set of guns and saddles. They sat there in the rain, and not one of them could come with me because now they had the children to think of.
'Run for it,' I said. 'This here's my scalp.'
'Good luck,' Spanish said, and they were gone. Me, I watched them go, then swung my horse toward that boulder. Far back up the mountains, I thought I heard a shout and a shot. But I went down that trail to the place where I'd met the boy.
Hounding the boulder, rifle ready, I stared toward the rancheria, and suddenly out of the wet brush came the
