Lord Apache

what happens tomorrow—or ever!'

Not caring about tomorrow, they lay again in each other's arms until it was tomorrow. Sometime during the night the firelit meeting came to a conclusion. The voices departed, the drums stilled, finally there was only moonlit silence. Jack went to the doorway and looked out. There were no guards, no restraints. In the lime-white rays of the moon the camp at Gu Nakya slumbered. The fire the Tinneh had built was now a bed of coals. A scrawny dog, bone in its mouth, hurried past him and was lost in the shadows. From far down the mountain came the frantic yips and yaps of coyotes on the hunt. Though Jack could not see the Tinneh sentinels, he knew that on the parapets of rock overlooking the valley they were scanning the night, watchful for attack. He went back into the hut and lay again beside her.

'What is it, Jack?'

'Nothing.'

'What time can it be?'

'Near dawn, I think.' He kissed her ear. 'Now go to sleep. Whatever is to happen, you will need your rest.'

'I am not afraid,' she said, and slept with her head in the crook of his arm. He lay silent, thinking of Eggleston and Beulah Glore, safe on the cars of the Atlantic and Pacific. By this time they were certainly in New York City, perhaps even on the high seas. He would not, however, exchange his situation for theirs. He was happy, almost irresponsibly happy, in a way he did not know Englishmen were supposed to be happy. It seemed very improper, yet there it was. The whole thing was so right, so utterly right; even, perhaps, preordained. After a while he slept, also, and did not wake till there sounded a scratching at the hide-covered doorway. Instantly roused, he sat up.

'Who is it?'

The deerskin flap was pulled aside. Early morning sun bathed the rude interior of the hut. He blinked, rubbing his eyes.

'Who's there?'

It was Nacho—the sobrino—Agustin's nephew. Blanket thrown over his lean shoulders against the morning chill, he squatted inside the doorway. Around his neck was the precious sack of hoddentin, the sacred meal, that his uncle had previously worn.

He pointed to Phoebe Larkin. 'You send her away.'

'But—'

'Send her away! We talk. A man does not talk important things before his women!' Nacho gestured; one of the old women of the camp entered the hut and took Phoebe by the arm.

'Where are you taking her?' Jack demanded.

'The Red Hair Woman will not be hurt,' Nacho promised. 'They give her food—' He looked at Phoebe's scanty attire. 'They give her food, and clothes to wear.'

'I think it's all right,' he said. 'Go with the woman, Phoebe.'

'I will,' she said. 'I'm not afraid, Jack.'

Though giving him a last uneasy look, she obeyed. Nacho watched her go.

'We talk now.'

'As you wish.'

The young man took out the scratching stick the Tinneh men carried and poked at his head, apparently at a loss as to how to begin. After a while, not looking at Jack Drumm, he muttered, 'Words! English words! I don't have many to say what I want. But I try.'

'I will understand,' Jack promised.

'My uncle,' Nacho began, 'raise me from a little boy. He was a warrior. But when white men cheated him he took his men and went away from the Verde River place—the—the—'

'The reservation,' Jack prompted.

'Yes. That is what they call it. But it was a thing to keep animals in, that reservation. So he lead the Tinneh away, and started to fight again, as we did in the old days. But things did not go right. My uncle had bad medicine. Too many soldiers came along the river. We fought them—we fought you too, Ostin—'

Jack remembered Uncle Roscoe's words. Ostin is Apache talk for 'Lord.' Anything they respect or fear they call Ostin—the bear, snakes, lightning.

'We fought you too. My uncle said you were a brave man, stay along the river when it was his sacred place, his medicine place, and he wanted you to go away. He thought you a good man, too, let me go back to Gu Nakya— no kill.'

Tentatively, respectfully, Nacho's slender fingers fumbled at the hoddentin sack around his neck.

'We went down and stole a lot of horses. Always, the Tinneh walked before, but we thought maybe horses, riding horses, would make a difference. We ride horses, the way the soldiers do, and ride back to the mountain before the soldiers could catch us.' He shrugged. 'But now they have mirror-talk, same as us. Always there were soldiers ready when we came. So that did not work either.'

He got up to pace the dirt floor of the hut, strong brown legs knotting in muscles as he walked.

'My uncle knew it was no good. He led the Tinneh up on the mountain just to die. It was no good to fight anymore. But he had the Red Hair Woman. He told me, he said that Englishman along the river, that white man I cut in the face with my knife, he come after the Red Hair Woman. My uncle said that. My uncle believed that. And he said, my uncle said—when he comes, I want to talk to him and see if he is brave and good like I think.'

'But—why? Why did he not just kill me when he had the chance?'

Annoyed to be interrupted with a difficult task, Nacho made an impatient gesture.

'You came! My uncle looked at you, talked to you. He fought you with knives, and you not afraid to die. So he was satisfied. He took his lucky hat, his chief's hat, and burned it. He walked away, to the big rock in the east, and—'

Jack Drumm had never seen an Indian weep. Certainly Nacho did not weep. But there was a glint in his somber eye. For a moment, it seemed his voice caught, broke.

'So he died. Because he had bad luck, he did not want to live anymore.'

Jack was moved. 'But why—I mean—why am I—'

'Ostin Drumm,' Nacho said, 'my uncle told me you are a brave man, a fair man, a smart man. He said you would lead us down the mountain, speak for us to that Gold Leaf Trimble. My uncle said that Trimble was a bad man, an evil man, a man who understood only blood, a man who killed Tinneh women and babies at Big Canyon to get those gold leaves on his shoulders. Now we know Trimble has these new guns, these shiny guns, that shoot faster than a hundred men. We are scared of those guns, scared that when we come down to the river to surrender Trimble will shoot even the old people and the sick people with those guns and—' Nacho wiped one palm across the other in an eloquent gesture. 'Wipe us out—women and children, everybody!'

He paused, his voice trembling with passion. 'Ostin, the Tinneh do not beg! If Gold Leaf Trimble tries to shoot us with those shiny guns we will all die like Tinneh! But if you come with us down the mountain, go first to talk to Trimble, tell him we are giving up our guns and will go to that Verde River place and learn how to be farmers and herdsmen—'

Afterward, Jack realized the young man could not have been so eloquent. Nacho's limited English was not equal to the task. Later he realized that much of what he remembered was supplied by Nacho's eloquent gestures. Much came also from Jack's own interpretation of an awkward phrase here, a misused word there.

'It is not the men,' Nacho added. 'We know how to die. But the women and children should not die.'

Remembering how Indians weighed their words, deliberating a long time before speaking, Jack sat cross- legged in the hut, hands on knees, half naked, staring at the bright rectangle of sunlight in the open doorway. Nacho did not speak either. Ostin, Jack was thinking. I am Ostin Drumm. Somehow he was prouder of that title than he would ever have been of the title of Lord Fifield, Lord Fifield of Clarendon Hall, in Hampshire.

Nacho, he knew, was thinking also; thinking of a free and wild way of life that was vanishing. The Tinneh had been beaten. They would go back to the Verde River reservation. Hoes would be thrust into their hands, and rakes and shovels. The government, that mysterious force far to the east, would make of them farmers, herdsmen, mechanics. Maybe it was all for the best; surely it was the best for the citizens of the Arizona Territory, and perhaps best for the Tinneh too, in the long run. But something would be lost, something wild and free and soaring, like the eagle—Ostin Eagle. Agustin knew that, and died rather than lose it. Now the sobrino—