'You do it, huh, ol' Arlie? You kill sonabitch Boz today?'
'We-el' Arlie paused, teasing her. 'Well, I reckon so. Figger I'll have me a plenty good chance today.'
'How you do it?'
Arlie shrugged lazily, murmuring that he'd kind of have to wait and see. 'But if I know that son-of-a-bitch, he's practically gonna do it for me.'
'Just you do it,' Kay insisted; then, wifelike, 'You too good-natured. Let people put things over on you.'
Arlie said he was going to put something over on her in about a moment. Kay persisted in her nagging.
'You get Critch, too. He come, you kill him.'
'Critch? What the hell for?'
'Hah! Same reason kill sonabitch, Boz.'
'Now, God damn,' drawled Arlie, in admiring wonderment. 'Ain't you the bloodthirsty ol' squaw! Don't even know whether Critch is comin', an' already you're after me to kill him.'
'Must make plans,' Kay said smugly. 'Must be ready.'
'Keep it up,' Arlie warned her. 'You just keep on talkin', an' I'll show you some plans. Danged good ones, too.'
'Ho! You not ready, old husband. Too soon.'
Arlie faced around to her, gave her bottom another smack. 'Real sure of that, are you? Real, real sure?'
'Well… Maybe you show me?' *b*
Behind the closed double-doors of the hotel ranchhouse bar room, Tepaha, the Apache, and Isaac Joshua King blustered and snarled at one another. Old Ike called Tepaha a woman with a peter. Old Tepaha declared that Ike had done treachery to a friend and brother.
'Even a boast you have made of it!' the old Indian shouted. 'You were warmed at Geronimo's fire. You smoked with him, and he called you friend and brother, and you smiled and called him like-wise. And then – ' Tepaha raised his arm dramatically. 'Then you – '
'Silence!' Old Ike cut him off with an infuriated howl. 'You twist truth into lies! I told you how it was! A hundred times, I told you! Why the hell don't you get the straight of it?'
'Shit!' said Tepaha loudly. 'Old Ike is old shit!'
It was a favorite word of his; one that he found extremely useful (as did Ike). Depending on how, where and when it was used, it could be virtually a vocabulary by itself.
'Goin' to tell you one more time,' Old Ike said. 'Ain't gonna tell it again, so by God you better listen…'
'Shit!'
'Will you hear me, old fool! The bluecoats had Geronimo in a cage there at Fort Sill. In a cage, by God, like a
'That God damn' – _shut up!_ – that God damn' Geronimo grabbed my hand and bit it! So, by Christ, I just got me a-hold of the bastard's nose, an' I damn' near twisted if off'n him before the bluecoats butted in. An' – an' I ain't a damn' bit sorry, neither!'
But he was sorry. He had acted instinctively, without stopping to think that Geronimo's eyes and ears were probably failing him, and he had judged Old Ike yet another enemy instead of his friend and brother.
He was sorry as hell, Old Ike was. And Tepaha was sorry that he had raised the subject. He had done so out of friendship and pride – the same motives which had moved Old Ike to taunt and abuse him. For great shame had come to the families of Tepaha and King; a particularly degrading shame, since a member of each family had offended against a member of the other family. Boz was known to have abused his wife, Joshie. I.K. – Tepaha's grandson – had been caught stealing from his 'Uncle,' Old Ike.
It is unforgivable to steal from family. From others, it is all right, even commendable. Though Old Ike's thinking, as regards the latter, was not quite so liberal as it once had been.
At any rate, they had been shamed – and even now they waited to mete out stern punishment to the guilty ones – and out of their deep hurt they acted as they did. To divert one another. To boldly prove that they were above hurt. For it is insulting to offer pity to a man, and disgraceful to appear to be in need of it.
Tepaha stirred the fire in the potbellied stove. Old Ike poured drinks for them and lit a cigar, and held the match for his friend.
Though their brotherhood was by choice, rather than the accident of birth, a stranger might have thought otherwise despite their differences in coloring. For they had been together for so many years and in so many places, sharing the same thoughts and deeds, that, in their necessary adjustment to one another, each had borrowed of the other's mannerisms and expressions, and now they had come to look quite a little alike.
Much of the time, even their talk was strikingly similar, Ike's alleged English even becoming a trifle broken. He was almost as fluent in Apache as Tepaha; also in idiomatic Spanish. And they spoke in both languages frequently – often sounding so much alike that it was hard to tell when one finished and the other began.
Old Ike shaved his head regularly, while Tepaha's hair grew to the lobes of his ears; and he wore a beaded band around his forehead whereas Old Ike wore a sombrero. But both men were clothed in calf-hide jackets, and levis. And both were shod in blockheeled Spanish boots; and protruding from the right boot of each was the worn haft of a gleaming knife.
As Old Ike sighed, unconsciously, Tepaha demanded another reading of the letters from crazy Osage lawyer. Brightening, Old Ike hauled the letters from his pocket, and both chuckled over them as they were read yet another time.
'Damn' crazy Osage,' Ike concluded. 'Says right here that Critch is plenty fine fella, got plenty o' money. Then he tries to claim Critch stole a stinkin' fifty dollars from him! What kind of God damn' sense does that make?'
'All Osage crazy,' Tepaha nodded wisely. 'Critch do right to steal money.'
'Well, I don't know as I'd say that, but…'
He shook his head, lapsed back into silence, his mouth sagging. Tepaha requested another reading of the letters. Old Ike ignored him. Nor could he be baited into another quarrel.
And, then, at last, when Tepaha was at his wits' end to help his friend, inspiration came to him. From far back in the all-but-forgotten past it came, and it proved highly effective in rousing Old Ike from his reverie.
'Huh! What the hell did you say?' He glared beetle-browed at Tepaha. 'What d'ya mean, I et him?'
'I mean,' said Tepaha, with simulated spitefulness. 'I mean what I say. You eat Osage.'
'That's a God damn' lie! I never et no one, Indian or white! I don't hold with eatin' people!'
'Eat 'em, anyway. You eat – Wait!' He held up a hand, chopping off the incipient outburst from his friend. 'Take yourself back many, many years. So many years, until that good time when we were young. Remember it, Old Ike – the night we saw Geronimo for the first time? The night we were brought into his lodge at lance-point? We had come up from
They had crossed Red River, the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas, that morning; losing their pack- horses and supplies to the river's quicksands, almost losing their lives as they fruitlessly tried to free the screaming animals. By luck and by God, as the saying was, they had somehow managed to get their mounts into deep water and swim them to the north shore. But their powder was a muddy mess, useless for their long Sharps rifles. And it was snowing; and the frozen short-grassed prairie was barren of game.
Tepaha dug into the dry center of an ancient buffalo turd, and got it lighted with his steel and flint. They fed the flame with more dung, and dried their clothes enough to keep them from freezing. Then, they headed north again, unarmed save for their knives, their heads ducked against the blowing snow.
By night the storm had become a blizzard. But there was the faint smell of smoke ahead of them, the scent of cooking food; and rocking in their high-pommeled saddles, they urged their trembling horses onward. An hour passed. The smell of food and smoke was still ahead of them. And around them, all-but-inaudible in the howling wind, were sounds. Sounds that were felt rather than heard. Shallow breaks in silence which Ike and Tepaha had trained themselves to become aware of and to interpret for what they were, as requisite to life.
Silently, they drew their knives. At virtually the same instant their horses reared upward, startled as their
