mirages.
A roadrunner skittered past with a horned toad's tail sticking out of its beak. It gave Stuart a wary glance, as if afraid he might try to steal its breakfast. When he just stood there, it ran off to where it could dine in privacy.
Geronimo and the young son who translated for him approached Stuart. 'Good day to you, General,' said the young man, whose name was Chappo. His accent might almost have come from New England. Stuart didn't know if the sounds of the Apache language made it seem that way, or if Chappo had learned the language from somebody from the northeastern United States. Either way, he found it funny. Also funny was the spectacle of a couple of Indians carrying Confederate Army-issue tin plates full of beans (they carefully picked out the salt pork, which they didn't like) and tin cups full of coffee, both of which (except for the pork) they thought highly.
'Good day to you, Chappo,' Stuart answered gravely, 'and to your father.'
Chappo spoke in the Apache language. Gcronimo answered. His voice was on the mushy side, for he was missing quite a few teeth, which also gave the lower part of his face the pinched-in look often thought of as characteristic of witches. Stuart wondered if that had helped give him reputation among the Apaches. That story they told about his making the daylight hold off for two or three hours so they could escape from a raid… No Christian man would believe it, but they did.
'I think you can take Tucson, if you want it,' he said now, through his son.
'Do you?' If the old Indian had been looking for a way to grab Stuart's attention, he'd found one. With Tucson in Confederate hands, Yankee control over all of western New Mexico Territory south of it would wither. The catch, of course, was that taking it would be anything but easy. Keeping it would be harder still, since it lay on the Southern Pacific line. Stuart had thought it beyond his slender means.
He studied Geronimo with the same sort of cautious gaze the roadrunner had given him. Geronimo might be a savage, but he was a long, long way from a fool. He might well hope U.S. and C.S. troops would engage in a struggle that depleted forces from both sides, leaving no white soldiers to protect the area from the Apaches.
With something approaching the truth, the general commanding the Trans-Mississippi said, 'I don't think we are strong enough to do that, even with the help of the brave Apaches. I wish I did, but I don't.'
When Geronimo had that translated for him, he spoke for some time. Chappo had to hold up a hand so he would stop and let the interpreter do his job. 'My father says he would not tell this plan to any other man. He thinks you can make it go, though. He says that, if you fooled the bluecoats so well once, you can do it again, and he will help.'
'Tell him to go on.' Stuart did his best to keep his voice and face impassive. He could read nothing on Geronimo's weathered features. He might have been back in one of the endless card games with which U.S. Army soldiers out West had made time pass before the War of Secession. How big a bluff was Geronimo running? Stuart realized he'd have to see more of the Indian's hand to tell.
Through Chappo, the Apache chief did go on: 'With these new rifles you gave us, we will go on the warpath. We will go up toward Tucson. We will be loud. We will be noisy. The bluecoats will have to see us.'
Stuart had no trouble understanding what that meant. The Apaches would hit farmers and herders and miners between the international border and Tucson. Livestock would vanish. Men the Indians caught would die. Women would probably suffer a fate worse than death, and then die, too.
He'd been talking with Major Sellers about how good it would be for the redskins to keep the USA too busy chasing them to trouble Sonora and Chihuahua. Now he had to contemplate what those coldblooded words meant. He hadn't fought like that during the War of Secession. Not even the damn-yankees had fought like that then.
But he hadn't given the Apaches Bible tracts. He'd given them guns, lots of guns. 'Ask your father what happens then,' he told Chappo.
Geronimo answered in detail. He'd thought this through. Stuart had seen how the fellow who proposed an idea usually had the edge on the fellow who was hearing it for the first time. That still held true, he discovered, when the fellow doing the proposing was an Indian who didn't know how to write his name.
Chappo said, 'My father says we can do one thing or the other thing. One thing is, when the bluecoats chase us, we can go up into the mountains and pretend to be rocks and trees. While they look for us, you go behind them and into Tucson.'
Stuart studied Geronimo with surprise and considerable admiration. Had the Apache had a proper military education, he might have been sitting in General Jackson 's office in Richmond. But Stuart said, 'For that plan to work, we have to depend on the Yankees' commander in Tucson being stupid. By now, he's probably heard the Apaches and the Confederates are friends. He will not forget about us while he goes chasing after you.'
Once Chappo translated that, Geronimo looked at Stuart for a moment before going on. His expression didn't change, but Stuart had the strong feeling that he'd just impressed Geronimo the same way Geronimo had impressed him. He should have been angry that a savage presumed to judge him in that fashion. He wasn't. Geronimo had earned his respect. He was glad he'd managed to earn Geronimo's.
The Apache chieftain said, 'The other plan is, we war toward Tucson. The bluecoats chase us. We do not go into the mountains. We lead them to an ambush you set with your men and your guns. This does not give you Tucson. It gives you the men who hold Tucson. Is it enough?'
'Hmm,' Stuart said, and then again: 'Hmm.' He hadn't expected a savage to presume to propose a plan of campaign. Nor had he expected the plan to be so tempting once the savage did presume to propose it.
Geronimo said, 'For a long time, I have fought the bluecoats and the Mexicans hard, even when I had little. Now you Confederates are on my side, and, with you to help, I can strike a great blow.'
'All right-we'll try it,' Stuart said, coming to an abrupt decision. Even before Chappo translated, Geronimo caught the tone of his answer and smiled the broadest smile Stuart had seen from him. Stuart smiled back, and clasped his hand. Once the damnyankees were licked and the CSA got Sonora and Chihuahua fully under control, the Confederates would have much, and the Apaches little. One step at a time, Stuart thought.
Chapter 7
Sitting as it did at the corner of Larkin and Mcallister in Yerba Buena Park, the San Francisco City Hall was only a few blocks from the offices of the Morning Call. Samuel Clemens looked up from the sentence he was writing- level of bungling last seen when Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt and not a single foolish soul thought to carry her along regardless, to sell for a shekel the half-pound — and spoke to Clay Herndon: 'Mayor Sutro's giving a speech in half an hour. Why don't you amble on over there and find out what the old whale's spouting this time?'
'Do I have to, Sam?' Herndon asked in mournful tones. 'I've covered him the last three times he's shot off his mouth, and if four in a row isn't cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. Besides, I'm about three- quarters of the way through this story you said you wanted today, and it's going pretty well. I hate to waste a couple of hours listening to His Honor gab, and then come back and find I've forgotten half the good lines I figured on using.'
'Which story is that?' Clemens asked. 'There were a couple of them, if I recall.'
'The one about the defenses of San Francisco Bay,' the reporter answered. 'I finally talked Colonel Sherman into giving me an interview yesterday, and I went out to Alcatraz and talked with the garrison commander there, too, so I've got the straight dope, all right. 'Muzzle-loading rifled cannon'-it's almost as bad as 'she sells sea shells by the seashore,' isn't it?'
'And their shells may be even more dangerous than sea shells, not that we've seen any proof of that,' Clemens said. 'Well, you're right-I do want that piece, as fast as you can turn it out, so I won't inflict our magnificent mayor on you this morning.' He took another look at the editorial he was working on. It was, by something approaching a miracle, for the day after tomorrow, not tomorrow. He got up from his desk. 'I'll cover the speech myself. By the way things are going, I'm bound to have more of our blunders to write about by the time I have to give this to the typesetters.'
'I didn't want you to have to go and do that,' Clay Herndon exclaimed. 'I just meant for you to send Leary or one of the other cubs.'
'Don't fret yourself about it.' Sam threw on his houndstooth coat. As if he were a gentleman of fashion, he
