the waist to throw me, but I brought my boot heel down on his instep and he let go and I could swing my elbow against his ear.
It was kind of lively there for a few minutes. There was three of them, but I was bigger and stronger. One of them jumped on my back with his forearm across my throat, but I grabbed his hand and elbow and flung him over my shoulder and smack down across the stone wall. He hit hard, and I heard him scream. And just then there was a shot.
Coming from outside of camp, it caught us unawares, but I saw an Apache fall and then the others ghosted into the night, one of them dragging the one I'd thrown across the wall. Then they disappeared like drops of water into a pool. They were there, and they were gone.
The one who had been shot was lying there near the fire, and Harry, his skins clutched around him, was sitting up, huddled and scared, in the corner of the wall.
And then a low voice said, 'Hello, the camp!'
I said, 'Come in, if you're of a mind to,' and the next thing there walks into camp the cutest button of a girl you ever laid eyes on.
She was scarcely more than five feet tall and wore a buckskin hunting shirt that looked better than any such shirt I'd ever seen before. She was quick and pert, and she was leading her pony, but the Winchester in her hands wasn't for fun -- that Apache would have realized it had he lived past her bullet.
She held out her hand. 'I am Dorset Binny,' she said, 'and I hope you will forgive me for not looking as much like a lady as I should.'
'Ma'am,' I assured her, honestly enough, 'when you come up like that and shoot that straight, I couldn't care how you're dressed.'
And I added, 'I am William Tell Sackett, and the boy yonder is Harry Brook, recently taken back from the Apaches.'
We had both moved back into the shadows, and with that much said we took to listening. It was my idea those Apaches had them a bellyful, but they weren't alone, and this was no place to dally.
'Some other children got away, didn't they?'
'Yes -- a couple of boys and a small girl.'
'The girl was my sister. That is why I am here.' Well, she was talking to a shadow, for I was already saddling up. Right then, what I wanted between me and those Apaches was distance, for within a matter of hours this mountain would be alive with them, like a kicked anthill with ants.
She came along with me and the boy, and for an hour we followed the old trail north, then we turned west, taking a trail on which I found no tracks. Once in a while through the parted clouds I could see the sky, and sometimes a star was right above us. Black walls crowded closer, and we were skirting some almighty big boulders. Me, I kept thinking what a nasty place we were in, with the weather what it was. A body didn't need to look at the walls for a high-water mark. You just knew that the water must run through here thirty feet deep for an hour or two after a heavy storm. But the water had already passed on ... and I wished for no more rain now.
The folks that had made this trail had no horses, it was a moccasin trail. After a while we had to get down and lead, for there was just no riding, but I let Harry stay on the black.
What I wanted most just now was to get out of these mountains and head off across the flatland, and maybe get to a ranch. But I had a time keeping my thoughts on my business with that girl along.
She was only a bit of a thing, but she must be packing a lot of nerve to come into this country after her sister. There was no chance to talk, for we were going single file, and I wasn't stopping. This was a strange trail, and we'd no idea where it might lead. Mayhap right into a bunch of Apaches -- in which case some brave might have my scalp in his wickiup, if he bothered to take it. The Apaches were very strong on scalping.
At the top of a long slope we paused for a breather, and I looked around at Dorset. She was right behind me, leading her pony, and taking two steps to my one. Harry Brook, up there on the horse, had not said a word.
We stood there for a mite, and she said, 'The sky's turning.'
There was gray in it, all right, and day would come quickly now. We stood quiet then, saying nothing nor needing to, but there was communication in the night, we felt each other, felt the darkness and the danger around us, and felt the cool dampness of the canyon ,after the rain. We could smell the pines ... and we smelled something else.
We smelled smoke.
It was enough to curl your hair. In this layout we couldn't expect friends. My partners had lit out to the north, I was sure, and if there was anybody here it had to be Apaches. And that smoke was right ahead of us.
We daren't go back, and we couldn't climb out. Me, I slipped the Winchester out of its scabbard, and so did she.
'Well go ahead quiet,' I whispered, 'and if we can get by 'em, we will.
Otherwise, we got to mount up and run for it. You and the boy get on the same horse, and if trouble shows, run.'
'What about you?'
Me, I smiled. 'Lady, you're not looking at no hero. I'll get off a few shots and I'll be dusting the trail right behind you, so don't slow up or I'll run right up your shirt tail.'
We started on. Dawn was streaking the sky when we saw the canyon was starting to widen out. Then I saw moccasin tracks, some shreds of bark, and a few sticks -- somebody collecting firewood. And then we heard yelling ahead of us, and I knew that kind of yelling.
'Might be,' I said, 'we can get by. They're mighty concerned, right now.'
She looked at me. She said, 'What concerns an Apache so much that we might slip by his camp?'
A man couldn't look into those honest gray eyes and lie. She would guess, anyway. 'They got them a prisoner,' I said, 'and they're tryin' to find out how much of a man they caught. If he stands up to torture and dies well, they will figure they're big men, because they caught a big man.'
We moved ahead, each of us warning our horse against noise, and those horses could be warned, they were that smart. Aside from their own instincts, they had caught some of our wariness for danger, for a horse, like a dog, can become extremely sensitive to the moods of his rider.
The western man trusted to his horse's ears, its eyes, its senses. He shared with it his water, and if need be, his food.
We moved forward quietly but steadily, and soon we saw their camp on a bench near the stream, partly hidden by brush and trees. The stream was not over four feet wide and no more than four or five inches deep, and the canyon through which we had come evidently caught the overflow.
Rifle ready, I led the way, watching the camp from the corner of my eye.
Here the dry stream-bed was perhaps fifty feet wide, most of it white sand dotted with rocks, many of them half buried. The brush was mostly willow, and thick.
It was a cool morning but I could feel sweat trickling down my back between my shoulder blades, and I worried for fear a hoof would strike stone. We went steadily on, drawing close to the camp, then abreast of it.
The Indians were almighty concerned with their prisoner, and they were shooting at him with arrows, missing in as close as they could, pinning the sides of his shirt to the tree, parting his hair with arrows. There was a trickle of blood down his forehead which I glimpsed when he lifted his head, and for the first time above their yells I heard his voice, and he was singing.
It was Spanish Murphy.
Yes, sir. Spanish was tied to a cottonwood in the clearing and the Apaches were shooting arrows at him and working themselves up to more serious ways of hurting ... and he was singing!
Oh, they hated him for it, but they loved him for it, too, if I knew Indians.
For their prisoner was a man with nerve, singing his defiance right into their faces ... and it was also a means of keeping up his courage.
They would kill him, all right. They were devils when it came to inflicting pain, and they would try to make him last as long as possible, devising new tricks to give him the tortures of hell, and loving him for his strength and his guts.
Spanish was a singing man who loved the sound of the old songs, the western songs, the songs from the high-up hills. He was singing 'Zebra Dun' when we caught sight of him and, raising his head, he looked right through an open space in the brush, looked right at us, and he changed his tune to 'John Hardy.'
