Feud On The Mesa

the carnage around him—“I’m afraid I didn’t do much good.” He looked at the motley, dry-eyed mob and frowned. “Where’re the troops?”

Jock Leclerc shook his head harshly. “Ain’t none. Your horse come into the livery barn at Denton last night, an’ we figured what was up, got together all the freighters and drovers that’ve been bottled up in town fer the last month, an’ backtracked him.”

“But the bugle?”

“Trick. We wasn’t strong enough to give’em battle. They was a helluva lot of’em, so we used the bugle to try a bluff, an’ damned if it didn’t work. They run like rabbits.” His swarthy face was puzzled. “Where in hell’d they all come from?”

An older man went up beside Caleb’s rapidly swelling leg and probed it. “Sit perfectly still,” he said. Caleb nodded indifferently and the doctor went to work. “Leclerc, you recall a man named Sam Ginn?”

The saloon owner snorted. “Sure, he’s one of the lowest Comancheros on the frontier. Troublemaker an’ renegade o’ the first water.”

“He’s talked Red Sleeves into forming a confederacy. He gets the loot and they get the revenge.”

Jock Leclerc’s features darkened under the rush of hot blood into his head. He bit down hard on the profanity that swelled in his throat. Suddenly his eyes came up hard and killing mad. “Can you ride?”

Doom nodded without answering, frowning into the protesting eyes of the little doctor.

Jock Leclerc swung to the assembled, white-faced settlers. “Git your horses. If the soldiers won’t do it, by Gawd we’ll have to!” There were some murmurs among the people and a woman started hysterical, high moaning. Another woman led her away as the settlers fanned out, looking for something to ride. Caleb listened gravely to the little doctor, nodded, and frowned at the throbbing leg like he resented its interference in the job to be done.

Leclerc was on his horse and beside him. “We gotta do it now. They’ll break their camp an’ slope an’ we’ll never find’em.”

“I reckon.”

“You can lead us to’em?”

Caleb nodded. “How many men you got?”

“Not enough. Eighty or so come from Denton, and there must be about one or two hundred here.”

Caleb’s somber glance swept over the dulled, apathetic settlers who moved mechanically among the wreckage of their village. “There’s about five hundred fightin’ bucks in the rancheria, an’ maybe two, three hundred more oldsters and youngsters handy.”

Leclerc nodded thoughtfully. “I sent two men to Lauder fer the soljers last night. We’ll leave scouts here at the springs an’ at intervals out on the prairie to guide’em in when they get here. They oughta make it no later than midday, if they travel fast.”

Caleb’s dour glance was matched with his words. “I reckon…if they’ve got fightin’ officers instead of Eastern puppets.”

Jock Leclerc looked over at him quickly, under-stood the brooding look and said nothing.

V

There weren’t horses enough. What the attack-ers hadn’t stolen had been shot. When the party left Clearwater Springs, there were no more than 250, all told. They left guides for the soldiers at regular intervals as they rode. This, too, cut down their effective striking force. The sun was get-ting a good start across the firmament in the new day when they encountered their first Apache vedette. They were fortunate in outriding and killing the warrior. However, two more braves fled at their approach and made it to the foothills before the hard-riding settlers could catch them.

Leclerc turned to Doom and yelled against the whipping air that streamed past them: “They’ll be ready now!”

Doom nodded, white-faced and sunken-eyed.

Leclerc reined over closer. “Ride’em down?”

Doom looked around and shook his head vehemently: “Don’t dare! Not enough of us. Have their route scouted an’ try to ride far enough ahead of’em to lay an ambush.”

Leclerc wagged his head as they swept up the mountain pass into the fragrance of the pine and fir foothills below the Apache encampment. “Not a chance, they’ll be watchin’ us like hawks, now that they know we’re comin’.”

Doom batted his eyes against the fuzziness that seemed to be eating at the edges of his mind. “Reckon you’re right at that.” He shrugged. “What-ever we do, tell the boys not to let the hostiles split’em up. Stay together…everyone. If we get divided, we’re goners.”

Leclerc shouted the orders to stay together and they were relayed back down the charging host of riders. Somewhere, up ahead, a rifle cracked and a ragged volley answered. A moment later, Doom looked down indifferently as he rode by, at the still, grotesquely sprawled body of a brave who had been shot out of a fir tree.

The excited, frenzied Apaches were breaking up their camp. They were in a broiling turmoil when scouts brought word to Red Sleeves that the settlers were coming. The hostiles were surprised that the pursuit was not made by soldiers, and Red Sleeves sent out a large body of warriors to try and find the soldiers he was certain were with the settlers. He feared a trick of some kind. Squaws were screaming at dogs and children and trying to load nervous, shying horses. There was a disorderly pandemonium throughout the camp that was only added to as the faint, unmistakable sound of a volley of firing stirred the feverish activity, each family trying to get away from the rancheria as quickly as the others. Much equipment was left behind as, inspired by Red Sleeves’s worried face, all grabbed what was handy and fled. Scouts came and went and still no sign of the soldiers could be found.

Red Sleeves swore volubly in both Spanish and English, the Apache tongue having no profanity in its vocabulary He ordered out the warriors, recently returned from the springs, to hold off the settlers while the rest of the encampment tried to get away In his perplexity, however, he ordered one half of the fighting men to go with the tribe. He felt certain that the soldiers were hidden in ambush.

The men under Doom and Leclerc were brought to a sliding halt when they charged around a bend in the trail and came face to face with a furiously charging body of hostile horsemen. Shouts, curses, and gun-fire welled up among the tall, stately trees as men, red and white, flung themselves off their horses and sought shelter. Jock Leclerc’s roaring voice rumbled over the fight. He spurred his horse into the thickest of the fight and shot into the mass until his gun was empty, then he used a rifle for a club. The warriors were fighting defensively now, and the whiskey was turning to acid in their entrails.

Doom, caught up in the zest of the moment, found a spring of inner energy somewhere and rode in be-hind Leclerc. A brave, resigned and doomed as the settlers swept in and past his tree stump defenses, jumped at Doom, grabbed his wounded leg, and tried to pull him from the horse. A wild, sickening jolt of agony ran through the frontiersman and his pain-filled eyes were sharpened with a murderous lust as he reached down, his big pistol almost against the hostile’s head, and pulled the trigger. Doom straightened up as the settlers surged over the hostiles en masse and swept on up the trail into the Indian camp area.

The Apaches, who hadn’t gotten away with their fellows, fought and died where they stood. The settlers, flushed and maddened with their sufferings and brief triumph, matched the hostiles in savagery and abandon. Wounded warriors, spitting defiance from the ground, were dispatched with knives and rifle butts; the hectic skirmish was over almost as quickly as it had begun. Doom told Leclerc to keep the settlers from following the main camp of Indians through the treacherous forest, and, with a few exceptions, the attackers stayed back and hunted fugitives among the debris that littered the former rancheria.

Doom was getting painfully down from the Indian horse, before the abandoned brush hut of Red Sleeves, when a single rifle shot echoed through the noisy camp. Instantly everyone was hunting cover. Caleb dropped flat as the bullet threw a violent gust of gravel and dirt up beside him. He rolled toward the abandoned shelter, drawing his pistol as he went. Again the hidden gunman fired. This time the bullet struck sideways on Caleb’s pistol and