Now, even a fool boy from the hills is going to learn after a while, and so the next time one started up I didn't swing my gun and try to nail him, I just waited with my eyes on the place where the first one dropped. Not exactly on the place, for no Apache will ever get up from where he drops, he rolls over a few feet to right or left, sometimes quite a few feet.
Another of them started up, but I let him come until he dropped, and I waited for the first one. Sure enough, up he bobbed and I had to move the rifle muzzle only inches, and I nailed him right in the brisket, dusting him on both sides.
Before he could fall I worked the lever on my Winchester and got him again.
Then the others were coming and, swinging the gun, I caught another one ... too low down. He hit the ground in the open and the third one also dropped, not more than twenty feet now from the rim of my hollow.
One lay out there with what looked like a busted leg, and I let him lay until he tried to bring his rifle to bear, and then I eased around for a shot at him. The muzzle of my rifle must have showed a mite beyond the rocks at the edge of my hole, because the third one fired, hitting the rocks and spattering me with stinging rock fragments, one of which took me right in the eye.
Then they came, the two of them. The one with the bloody but unbroken leg, and the third one shooting as he came. I dropped my rifle and, with my eyes full of water from the smart of rock fragments, grabbed my bowie knife.
Now, I'm a pretty big man, standing six foot three in my socks, and although on the lean side what beef I had was packed into my arms and shoulders. That bowie knife was a heavy blade, razor-sharp, and when those two Apaches jumped into the hollow with me I took a wicked swipe at where they figured to be. Somebody screamed, and I felt a body smash against me. Upping my knee, I threw him off and fell back, just missing a slashing blow that would have taken my head off.
One Apache was down but not out. I could see a little now, and when I started to come up he grabbed at my rifle which was lying there and I threw myself at him, knocking the barrel aside with one hand and ripping up with that blade with the other.
He threw me off and I fell, all sprawled out, and they both came up and at me.
One had a wounded leg, one had a slash across the chest and biceps, but they were tigers, believe me. It was like being in a mess of wildcats, and for the next thirty or forty seconds I never knew which end was up, until of a sudden the fight was over and I was lying there on the ground, gasping for breath, with tearing gasps.
Finally I pushed myself up from the sand and turned over into a sitting position.
One Apache was dead, my bowie knife still in his chest. I reached over and pulled it loose, watching the other one. He was lying there on his back and he had a bullet hole in his thigh that was oozing blood and he had at least three knife cuts, one of them low down on his right side that looked mean.
Reaching over, I took up my rifle and jacked a shell into the chamber.
That Apache just kept a-staring at me, he seemed to be paralyzed, almost, for he made no move. The other two were dead.
Jerking a cartridge belt from one of the dead ones I looped it around my middle, still keeping an eye on the living one. Then I picked up my bowie knife from the ground and, leaning over to the living one I wiped off the blood on him, then stuck the knife into the scabbard.
One by one I collected their rifles and emptied the shells, then threw them wide.
'You're too good a fightin' man to kill,' I told him. 'You're on your own.'
I walked down to where my canteen lay and picked it up. Sure enough, there was maybe a cup of water that had not drained out, and I drank it, watching the rim of the hollow all the while.
By now it was coming on to sundown and there were other Indians about. I took one more look into the hollow and that one was still lying there, although he'd tried to move. I could see a big rock back of his neck that maybe he'd hit across when he fell.
Taking a careful look around, I went down into the shallow gully left by the run-off water and started away.
About that time I found myself going lame. My hip and leg were mighty sore, and when I looked down to size the situation up I saw that a bullet had hit my cartridge belt, fusing two of my .44's together, and a fragment had gone up and hit my side, just a scratch, but it was bloody. That bullet that hit my belt where it crossed the hip had bruised me mighty bad, by the feel of it.
Shadows were creeping out from the rocks, and of a sudden it was cool and dark.
A voice spoke out. 'You want to live long in this country you better get shut of them spurs.'
It was Spanish Murphy. He came up from behind some brush with Rocca and John J.
Battles. Taylor was dead.
Murphy had lost the lobe of his left ear, and Rocca had been burned a couple of times, but no more.
'You get any?' Battles asked. 'Four,' I said, knowing that was more Apaches than many an Indian fighter got in a lifetime. 'Three, and a possible,' I corrected.
And then I added, 'They got Billy.'
'We'd best light out,' Spanish suggested, and we walked single file to where their horses were. They had two horses, so we figured to switch off and on.
Spanish was tall as me, but twenty pounds lighter than my one-ninety. He was a reading man, always a- reading. Books, newspapers, even the labels on tin cans ... anything and everything.
We set out then. After a while I rode Tampico Rocca's horse and he walked. By daybreak both horses were tired out and so were we, but we had sixteen miles behind us and a stage station down on the flat before us. We were still several hundred yards off when a man walked from the door with a rifle in his hands, and we were almighty sure there was another one behind a window from the way he kept out of line with it.
When we came up to the yard he looked at Murphy, then at the rest of us, and back at Murphy. 'Hello, Spanish. What was it? Apaches?'
'Have you got a couple of horses?' I asked him. 'I'll buy or borrow.'
'Come on inside.'
It was cool and still. Me, I dropped into the first chair I saw and put my Winchester on the table.
A second man left the window where he had been keeping watch and, carrying his rifle, he went back toward the kitchen, where he began rattling pots and pans.
The first man went over to a table and carried the wooden bucket and the gourd dipper to us. 'I'd go easy, there at first,' he suggested. And that we did. The station tender leaned on the bar. 'Haven't seen you in years, Spanish. Figured they'd have stretched your neck before now.'
'Give 'em time,' John J. Battles said. Setting there in the chair, taking occasional swallows of cool water from the bucket, I began to feel myself getting back to normal.
Spanish, he leaned back in his chair and looked over his cup at the station tender. 'Case, how long you been with the Company?'
'Two ... maybe two and a half years. My wife left me. Said this western country was no place for a woman. She went back to her folks in Boston. I send her money, time to time. Afraid if I don't she'll come back on me.'
'Ain't never married, myself,' Spanish said. He looked over at me. 'How about you, Tell?'
For a moment there I hadn't anything to say. I kept thinking of Ange, the last times I saw her, and of the first times, high in those Colorado mountains.
'My wife is dead,' I told him. 'She was a rarely fine girl ... rarely fine.'
'Tough,' Spanish said. 'You, Rocca?'
'No, senor. I am not a married man. There was a girl ... but that is far away and long ago, amigos. Her father had many cows, many horses ... me, I had nothing. And I was an Indio ... my mother was an Apache,' he added.
My eyes were on the floor, tracing the cracks in the rough boards, often scrubbed. My hungry flesh was soaking up the lost moisture and I felt sleepy and quiet, liking the square of sunlight that lay inside the door, even the drone of the flies ... I was alive.
The blood of Apaches was still on my hands. There had been no water in which to wash until now, but soon I would ... soon.
The room was like many of its kind, differing only in the plank floor. Most floors were of stamped earth. There were several rough board tables, some chairs and benches. The room was low-raftered, the walls were of adobe,
