Feud On The Mesa

mud general store, squatty and forbidding. The clutch of shacks hastily thrown athwart the dusty trail that wound past the clear, cold spring that bubbled out of the hard ground. He recalled the scattering of emigrant soddies out on the prairie. The sober, big-eyed children and the worn, patient women with their lean, stubborn, husbands in homespun. Clearwater Springs was a struggling settlement, where hardship and suffering were in the warp of everyone’s life. Drought, howling winters, illness without remedies, and accidents with-out help were the accepted lots of existence. Even so, Clearwater Springs was coming up out of the sordidness of its creation by stubborn insistence on the part of the settlers. Now it was to be shattered, fired, and devastated, which was tragic—but all this was to be laid waste for no better reason than because Sam Ginn, the Comanchero, wanted to hawk the pathetic treasures of forlorn people and make a profit.

Red Sleeves rode back to where Doom was riding erectly between No Salt, and Free Man. He reined up beside the white man, and Caleb noticed that another Indian was with him. He nodded and the warrior nodded back. He jutted his chin toward the other man. “Antonio.”

Caleb nodded to the younger man, who ignored the greeting and looked at the frontiersman with bitter hatred in his harsh, twisted features. Caleb swung his eyes back to Red Sleeves. “Clearwater Springs isn’t far ahead.” The Apache nodded again but said nothing. “Sam Ginn should make a good profit from your work tonight.”

At this, Antonio looked quickly at Doom. He spoke in a deep, husky voice. “We are not without friends.”

Doom shrugged indifferently. “No. You’ll have Sam Ginn for a friend so long as you do the fighting and bring the loot to him.”

Antonio’s black eyes sparkled in their muddy settings, and he showed his white, even teeth in a snarl. “You lie!”

Doom’s comeback was swift and biting. “In your teeth!” he said.

Antonio was surprised and infuriated. He swore a blasting oath in Spanish and yanked his horse toward Caleb, drawing his knife as he went. Red Sleeves jumped his horse in between them and roared at Antonio who, ignoring his companion in his demonic fury, pushed closer. Doom was watching like a hawk but he made no move to get away from the wild Apache. Other warriors, hearing the violent oath, came wraith-like out of the shadows and watched the drama of anger that seethed in their midst.

Red Sleeves forced his horse in harder and frowned savagely at Antonio. He spoke in English, which was not generally understood by the other Apaches. “Silent Outcast must not die yet. The council has agreed that he is to be left at Clearwater Springs.”

Antonio, beside himself, swore obscenely at Red Sleeves, whose blunt jaw jutted dangerously and made a brief, thunderous tirade in Apache to which Red Sleeves nodded grimly. “Yes. He will die. It has been decided on. But you will not kill him here.”

Antonio was subsiding a little. The first crazy red mist before his eyes had paled a little as he looked balefully at the captive and holstered his knife with an exasperated movement. Doom taunted him again and this time Red Sleeves, afraid the fight might erupt into a sectional battle then and there, told him to be silent. Caleb looked thoughtfully at Red Sleeves as an outrider came back and told them that the lights of the springs were up ahead.

“Red Sleeves, you are a smart man, if your friend is not. You are letting the Apaches be made into tools to enrich that renegade, Sam Ginn. I warn you. Whether I live or die, the ojos claws will pursue you to the end of your world, and wipe you out if you at-tack this settlement.” He raised his hands, palms upwards in an earnest plea. “You are not of los viejos, the old veterans of the yesterdays. You can learn the new way. Don’t lead the Apaches to their doom.”

Red Sleeves had long had a suspicion, although he had never voiced it. Now, with the crossroads of his race in his hands, he looked hard at Doom with a puzzled frown. “We are a persecuted race. We have been robbed. Our lands…. ”

Doom interrupted impatiently as he saw the bucks fanning out before the foremost of the out-lying sod houses up ahead. “You need not explain Tome. I know all the wrongs the ojos claws have brought to you and your people. I know of more wrongs than you. But you do not help them by raiding. Besides, the Apaches have not the strength….”

Antonio screamed wildly, savagely, deeply from his broad, bronze chest and the hellish scourge of the plains was unleashed. It was too late. Caleb locked his jaws in fierce grimness. Then this was to be a pyre of hate, and he was to lie in it, food for coyotes and red-eyed buzzards. He nodded his head in acceptance of his fate. This must have eventually happened, he thought. His life was forfeit on the frontier and his destiny was bound up inextricably with the wild, sullen land. All right, then he would die fighting.

Red Sleeves was hunching his muscles for the for-ward leap of his horse, going to join the others in their attack. Rifles and wild, despairing screams were pitting the watery light that bathed the eerie land when Caleb acted. His big black horse leaped like an animated battering ram under the viciousness of his heels and struck Red Sleeves’s mount sideways. The Apache went down in a melee of thrashing arms and legs and flailing hoofs. Stunned by the fall, confused and bewildered, Doom’s fist found a ready target and the Apache relaxed from the blow.

Caleb, hearing the outraged screams of his guards, grabbed up a knife, pistol, and stubby carbine from the fallen warrior, turned in time to club No Salt from his horse with the rifle butt. He ducked under Free Man’s poorly directed knife, clubbed the boy unconscious. Leaping to the back of his plunging black horse, Doom flung the cracked rifle into the faces of three more incredulous braves who were coming in at him.

It all happened so fast, amid the howling pandemonium that marked Indian warfare and the desperate gunfire of the defenders in the soddies, that Doom was running madly through the night before the pur-suit put up a cry.

The quiet, somber night was suddenly alive. The first soddy was overrun and gutted, almost before its defenders knew what fury had descended upon them. The second and third outlying ranches were swamped, looted, and devastated in the same terrible, furious rush of Apaches out of the night. Rifle fire and blood curdling cries of the terrorized de-fenders came when they saw the enemy in among them.

Doom rode like one possessed, trusting to the flying hoofs of his big black gelding to carry him through the myriad obstacles of refuse and equipment, firing his handgun as he went, and Clearwater Springs came hurriedly, tremblingly awake. At best, prepared and forewarned, the settlers were outnumbered about six or eight to one. But sleeping, unaware of the destruction that was hurtling toward them, there could be no defense of their homes and families.

Red Sleeves was mounted again, shaken and scratched and with a shooting ache in his head, but his pride was outraged more than his body. The news of Doom’s escape was carried quickly to Antonio, where he rode like a devil at the head of a maddened group of picked warriors. His muddy eyes blazed with scorn at Red Sleeves’s failure, and he spun away from his fighting men to hunt the ojo claro.

Flames leaped at the attackers from the general store of Clearwater Springs. There were roars of angry pain in the night, evidence that the Apaches were paying a price. Red Sleeves launched two assaults against the log and mud building. They were successful in attaining their objective but could not force an entrance while the defending guns fired into them point-blank, leaving a welter of corpses. Red Sleeves was possessed of a monumental fury; his disgrace in losing the captive had changed him from a thoughtful, dignified man into a raging savage.

IV

Doom stopped his blowing horse and the dull light glistened on the sweat-drenched coat. Orange tongues of flame were erupting against the black tapestry of the night. He saw that the melee had absorbed the Apaches and for the moment he was safe. Slowly he turned back. The night was a jumble of pandemonium and babble. A brave came trotting toward him, stiff-legged. Caleb raised his pistol, waited until the unsuspecting hostile was close, and fired. The Indian yanked up his horse, unbelieving. Doom fired again and the man jerked upright, tottered, and went over sideways. Caleb caught the warrior’s horse, stripped his own, and herded it beyond the village, resaddled and mounted the Apache animal, and rode cautiously back into the night.

With nothing more than force of numbers, the attackers were flying through the darkness, assailing anything that promised a victim or loot. Many had found whiskey, and their hot blood—heated further by the raw spirits— turned them into demons. Caleb tied his new horse in a clump of brush at the edge of the creek and stalked among the attackers like a ghost. He came upon two young bucks looting a freighter’s hastily deserted hovel. One of the