Lord Apache

Nacho—knew it too, and was ready to take the Tinneh into exile. He wanted Jack Drumm to help.

'I will do it,' Jack promised. 'It is an honor that you give me.'

At dawn the next morning the Tinneh went down the mountain on their journey of surrender. Most, particularly the old men and women and children, rode horses—the stolen horses, the unavailing horses. They rode awkwardly, as Apaches did.

The journey was rough. Many would not have been able to make it on foot. There were wounded, too. Jack Drumm, with his small knowledge of medicine, did what he could, bandaging, lancing infected wounds, improvising a travoislike litter for a gangrenous man who suffered, but only lay silent and tight-lipped in the litter.

Nacho, chosen head of the vanquished Tinneh, led the way. Jack Drumm trotted beside him on Tom, the borrowed Spencer carbine in his saddle scabbard. Folded in his pocket was the precious Union Jack, also returned to him. It was ragged and dirty, and displayed several bullet holes. Behind them rode Phoebe Larkin in an Apache dress sewn from deerhide. She rode easily, expertly. 'Why, of course!' she said in response to Jack Drumm's inquiry. 'Of course I can ride! My uncle Buell taught me when I was a little girl in Pocahontas County!'

At the bend of the rocky trail Nacho reined up and stared toward the plume of white smoke above Gu Nakya. When they left, the Tinneh had set afire the brush huts. When someone dies, Jack remembered, they set the whole village afire and move away. They don't want to be reminded.

Gold Leaf Trimble was certainly aware of their coming. Up and down the sierra winked the shafts of reflected sunlight from the new M-7 heliograph. At noon the band paused for water from a spring, ate a little dried meat from their scanty stores, and pinole, parched cornmeal soaked in water to make a thin gruel.

Sometime in the afternoon the wounded man in the litter died, as uncomplainingly as he had borne his wounds. They placed the body in a cairn of rocks. The women gathered around and wailed in unison, comforted the wife of the dead man. Then the column moved on, faster, hoping to reach the Agua Fria by dusk.

An orange ball glowing in a purplish haze, the sun was setting behind the ragged ridges as they approached the cavalry outposts.

'Wait here,' Jack instructed. 'I will ride down and tell them we have women and children, and some wounded, that we are coming in under parole to surrender.'

Nacho gave him a long fathomless look. Finally he nodded. 'Inju. All right.'

Jack rode into the twilight, the roan stepping daintily among the rocks, pretending to shy and be startled when a partridge boomed out of a thicket.

'Easy, now,' Jack muttered, patting the horse's arched neck. 'Easy, Tom!'

Where are they? he wondered. Where are the cavalry pickets? This is where Uncle Roscoe and I met them before.

In the canyon with its steep sides he could see nothing but the trail directly ahead. Where were they? Surely Trimble knew they were coming. He reined in Tom, looking about. Could it be—an ambush?

'Trimble!' he shouted. 'Dunaway! George Dunaway! It's me— Jack Drumm!'

Someone turned the crank of a Gatling gun and fire spat from the shadows of the canyon. Splinters of rock flew from the slablike walls, dust stung his nostrils, slugs screamed down the canyon, ricocheting from wall to wall.

'God damn it!' he yelled. 'Stop it! Stop the shooting! It's me— Jack Drumm!'

Tom reared, pranced in a tight caracole, and threw him to the ground. He must have hit his head on a rocky ledge because brilliant yellow and red and green lights flashed behind his eyes, the world turned upside down, his ears rang. The Gatling gun cranked on, now joined by others; the canyon was filled with smoke and fire and deadly rolling thunder. He was showered with needlelike fragments of lead.

'Stop it!' he screamed. 'God, stop the shooting!'

Gasping for breath, unsteady on his legs, half blinded from the stone dust and lead fragments, he groped along the canyon wall toward the guns.

'Stop it, I tell you! It's Drumm, Jack Drumm! Stop the shooting!'

The hungry chattering of the Gatlings paused, stuttered, paused again. For a moment the silence in the narrow canyon was oppressive. Then he heard George Dunaway's voice raised in anger.

'God damn it, stay away from that gun!'

'But Major Trimble said—'

Dunaway's words, most of them, were unprintable. 'I don't care what Major Trimble said! Stand clear of that gun or I'll put a bullet through your fat skull!'

'George?' Jack called. 'Dunaway?'

Through the dust and smoke came George Dunaway, revolver in one hand, the other clutching for support as he clambered among the rocks.

'Drumm! Is that you?' He shoved the revolver back in the holster and put an arm under Jack's elbow. 'Here— let me help you! Are you hurt?'

Jack shook his head, gasped, 'I don't think so!' He waved his arm toward the mouth of the canyon, now almost shrouded in night. 'The Tinneh are back there! They're waiting to come in, to surrender!'

'The who?'

'Agustin's people! I rode down with them! They—they want to surrender!'

Dunaway was quickly professional. 'How many of them? Are they armed?'

He was too tired, too recently released from the terror of the guns, to do anything but sit down on a flat rock. 'Don't worry!' His lungs labored for air; he wheezed, coughed, holding his throat. 'Don't worry about anything. I'll vouch for them.'

For a long time he sat on the rock, Phoebe Larkin beside him, watching the defeated Tinneh ride by. The soldiers had lit torches; in the flickering light each warrior, as he passed by, raised a hand in salute to Jack Drumm, muttered something. Dunaway watched them, and shook his head.

'Beats anything I ever saw,' he murmured, pushing the battered felt hat far back on his head. 'We didn't have to fight them— they just came to us!' He chuckled. 'No blood and brains spattered all over the rocks! Old Hardbutt Trimble will be real disappointed!'

As the Indians passed, Dunaway kept a tally in a notebook. 'What is it they're saying?'

Jack knew. Each passing brave held up his hand, palm out, and called 'Ostin.' Ostin Tinneh. Lord. Lord Drumm. Lord Apache.

'They are saying good-bye,' he told Dunaway.

'To you?'

He nodded. 'To me, I suppose—and to a way of life. This is the end for them.'

The end for them, he thought. And a beginning for me and Phoebe Larkin.

Wire communication was fast improving in the Territory. It did not take long for the word of the capture of Agustin's rebellious band to spread. Freed from the Apache menace, people rode out from Prescott in wagons to see the camp where the captive savages waited for the long journey back to the Verde River reservation.

Almost immediately wagon traffic had resumed on the road. The vehicles of the California and Arizona Stage Line made their runs between Phoenix and the capital. Quickly the story spread, also, of Jack Drumm's role as intermediary in the capture, and of how he had rescued the Red Hair Lady. Stuff of a legend was in the making, and it embarrassed him.

Sam Valentine wrung his hand, thanking him in the name of the Arizona Legislature. Ike Coogan grinned toothlessly and handed him a chew of Wedding Cake, allowing as how he'd better start now to carry his own tobacco, like a real Arizony hombre. Charlie the Papago brought his whole family to see