working for me was that Kahtenny was suspicious, and feared a trap.
To kill me of his own idea would be simple enough, and likely that's what he would have done, after some torture to see what kind of a man I was. But now somebody else wanted me dead, and he was puzzled.
From what I gathered, Kahtenny's squaw had slipped back into the reservation to see her sister and that was when the Hadden boys caught her ... waiting until she started to leave.
It was nothing unusual for a wild Apache to return to the reservation, stay a while, and then leave. The Army was always trying to get them to return, and often the squaws would come back first to look over the situation.
Now they had Kahtenny's squaw and he wanted her back, but he was like a wild thing that sniffs trouble at every change, and there was a lot about this offer that he did not like.
He sat smoking and waiting, and finally I said, 'I think you can not trust them.'
He looked at me. 'They will kill her?'
'They are bad men. They would have killed Rocca for nothing. I think if you take my body to them they will kill her and you also ... if they can.'
He waited a while, and I poked sticks into the fire. Then I said, 'Give me my guns. I will get your squaw for you.'
For a long time he said nothing, then abruptly he got up and went to the other fire, where he remained, occasionally in low-voiced conversation. After a while he came back and sat down on the sand. 'You can get my squaw?'
'Kahtenny is a warrior. He knows the ways of war. Much can happen, but this I promise. I shall get her safely if it can be done.'
After a pause, I added, more quietly, 'The Haddens are not Apaches. They are fierce men, but they are not Apaches. I can get your squaw.'
'She is a good woman. She has been with me for many moons.'
'Do you know where they are?'
'We take you there. It is near the border.' Nobody needed to warn me that my troubles were only beginning. Kahtenny might use me to get his squaw back, and then shoot me down in my tracks. It wasn't that an Apache wasn't grateful, he just had different ideas than we folks had. If you were not of the tribe you were a potential enemy, and killing you was in the cards.
There had been no sign of Spanish or of John J. Nor in the little I could overhear was there mention of them. It seemed likely that they had gotten clean off. Well, luck to them.
At daybreak they led my black horse to me and I saddled up, taking my time, but when I started for my guns, they stopped me and Toclani took my Winchester and hung my gun belt over his shoulder. They let me fill a canteen, and then we started out.
All the time we were riding I kept thinking about Neiss, who was one of five men on a stage near Stein's Peak when it was hit by Cochise and his band. The driver and a man named Elder were killed right off, the stage capsized, and the men were preparing for a fight when Neiss talked them out of it. Cochise, he said, was an old friend, just let Neiss talk to Cochise and all would be well, so they tried it. Cochise roped Neiss and dragged him up the canyon over the rocks, cactus, and brush, while two other warriors did the same for the others. Then they were tortured to death. That happened in April of 1861.
Thinking of this, I was placing no great faith in my chances with them, and although they watched me like hawks, I kept a wary eye out for any chance of escape. There wasn't any.
My black horse was gaunt and worn by hard travel. To break and run, even if the chance came, would get me nowhere. I had no weapon and there was no place I had to go ... no place I could reach in time.
The sun glared down on us as we walked our horses across the parched, rocky hills, weaving amongst the cactus and the greasewood. It was rolling land, broken by short sawtooth ranges of dull red or brown rock, and occasional flows of lava marked by the white streaks of dry washes. Indians rode on all four sides of me, always alert, always ready.
Nobody talked.
Each step my horse took seemed to be carrying me closer to death ... escape would be too much luck.
I could expect no help from the Haddens. I had no idea how I was going to get the squaw away from them, and I felt sure they had no intention of letting her go free. Even among good men the depredations carried on by the Apaches had created the desire to exterminate them, one and all ... and the Haddens were not good men.
Me, I always had great respect for the Apache. He had learned to live off a mighty bleak and hard country, and he had none of the white man's ways of thinking, and you had to reach out to try to understand how he felt and what he wanted to do.
After a while we began to see more cholla, great stretches of it, all pale yellow under the bright sun, with the dark browns and blacks of the old branches down below. Jumping cactus, we called it, because if a body passed too close if seemed to jump out to stick you. The Apaches thinned out to single file as we went through it.
All of a sudden we drew up. Kahtenny turned and pointed out a low mountain ahead of us, off to the east. 'It is there they are,' he said, 'at Dead Man's Tank.
They are six men, and my squaw, and they want you.'
They wanted me dead.
Though Kahtenny would have killed me without waiting if he figured that would be enough, he was no more trusting of the Haddens than I was. They would get my body, but that didn't mean he would get his squaw.
'You're going to have to give me my guns,' I said. 'If I ride in there without them, they'll kill the both of us if they can. I figure to handle the Haddens.
Without them, the others aren't likely to cut up no fuss.'
The funny thing about it was, all day my mind had been miles from that hot desert and back in the hill country of the Cumberland. They say a man's whole life passes before him when he's about to die. I can't say that mine did ... only those times back in the mountains, so long ago.
All day my mind kept going back to turnip greens, and to wild-hog hunting in the hills on those foggy mornings when the forest dripped and a body prowled through it like a red Indian, scouting for wild hogs to give us bacon to cook with turnip greens in an iron pot. Me and Orrin used to go out, or sometimes Tyrel, though he was younger. Never knew Tyrel to miss, though on occasion I did.
I'd never seen that country since. Never seen it ... but I hankered for it. Many a time on the desert I looked up to the stars and wished I was back there, seein' the kitchen door open with its light shining out and me coming up from the milking with my pails full to overflow.
You wouldn't hardly think my mind would be on that now, with the trouble I was in right this minute, but that's the way it was ... as if I had to give my mind some ease with good rememberin'. So all the time, as we rode along, my thoughts kept going back to that green and lovely country.
I thought of the time I floated down the Big South Fork on a flat-boat to New Orleans, taking what we had to trade -- corn, sorghum molasses, and maybe some tobacco. We Sacketts never had much to trade except muscle, because our poor ridge-land didn't raise more than enough to feed us, even if we hunted the forest too. But folks liked to have a Sackett along going downriver through some country where unruly folks were liable to be. My thoughts came back to where I was, and I saw that Kahtenny was pointing out the land. 'You go,' he said, 'you go get my squaw.'
He handed me my gun belt and Winchester, and I checked them for loads. My mouth felt as dry as one of those empty creek beds.
'You keep an eye out,' I said. 'Maybe I won't be comin' back with her.'
We sat there a moment, and then I held out a hand. 'Loan me a spare,' I said. 'I may need it bad.'
Well, sir, he looked at me, and then he taken out his six-gun and passed it over. It was a Navy .44, and a likely piece. I shoved it down in my waistband back of my vest.
Toclani rode up. 'I will go with you,' he said.
'No, thanks. You stay here. If they see me comin' alone maybe they'll let me get close enough to talk. If they see two of us comin' they might just shoot.'
So I spoke to that ga'nted-up black horse and we started down, and back behind me Kahtenny said, 'You bring back my squaw.'
I'd be lucky to do it. I'd be a whole sight luckier if I rode out with a whole hide.
