The scout still sat his mare, but he was beyond the circle of Apaches. Next to him stood Pondichay, old and somber, too polite to ask outright the meaning of the sudden intrusion. Kleecan greeted him in Mescalero and continued to speak in that tongue, but he kept his eyes on the outlaw chief as he spoke.
For Kleecan told the old chief many things. He told him what a great warrior he was and recounted many of Pondichay's deeds, but slowly his voice saddened and finally he told him how sad he had been to hear of Juan Pony. The old Apache looked up, but Kleecan continued. And he told him that Juan Pony had been murdered. He told him that he had worked great medicine and was able to bring right to this camp the murderers of Juan Pony. His voice became cold and he told him how the murderers had committed the greatest sacrilege of all by taking Juan's hoddentin sack, which held the sacred pollen to ward off evil. And he told Pondichay that if he did not believe him, why not look in the chief murderer's pocket and see if the medicine bag was not still there for it is said that an Apache warrior parts with his hoddentin bag only when he is dead.
Kleecan wheeled his horse around. He had made his offering to the gods of destruction.
Red Hell Hits Canyon Diablo
They called it Canyon Diablo, but for no apparent reason. Like everything else it had advantages and disadvantages, good points and bad ones, depending on the time of the day, the season of the year, or who happened to be occupying the canyon at a given time. At this particular time, two hundred feet up the south wall, a solitary disadvantage stood motionless on the narrow ledge, watching the small group of riders on the open plain approach the dark defile that led into the canyon. A dozen feet above his head the rock sloped back abruptly straightening into the flat tableland. Directly below, the wall extended in a sheer drop to the canyon mouth; but a few yards to his right the canyon wall buckled with loose rock and thorn brush, sloping gradually out into the open plain.
A fifty caliber buffalo rifle rested on a waist high boulder in front of him, pointed in the general direction of the riders. His gaze followed the same line, his face motionless, though the sand specked hot wind nudged shoulder length, jet black hair and forced his eyelids to lower slightly, so that he watched with eyes that were slits against the glare.
Eyes that were small, black, bullet like . . . staring at the riders with a cold steel hate. It is easy for a Chiricahua Apache to hate. It is doubly so when his vision is filled with the sight of blanco horse soldiers.
Lieutenant Gordon Towner reined in his patrol at the signal from the rider fifty yards ahead. Matt Cline, the civilian scout, wheeled his pony and rode back to the officer and six men.
'Did you see him, Lieutenant?'
'Did I see whom?'
Matt Cline's jaw bulged, a wad of tobacco accentuating his creased, ruddy face, and the short brim of his hat was low on his forehead casting a shadow to the tips of his straggly, black mustache.
His lips were parted slightly by the tobacco bulge of his jaw and barely moved when he spoke. He pointed ahead to the mouth of the canyon three hundred yards away, and then his arm swept up to the top of the south wall. Pointing up, his lean, heavily veined arm stretched from the sleeve of red flannel underwear. He wore no shirt. His suspenders crossed the sweat stained, colorless under shirt and attached to dark serge trousers that tucked into high, dust caked boots. Across his lap he held a Remington Hepburn.
'See that ledge runnin' along near the top of the wall? Well, not a minute ago one of our little friends was up there.' The scout ended with a stream of tobacco juice spurting into the white dust.
The lieutenant pulled the brim of his floppy, gray field hat closer to his eyes and squinted ahead to the canyon entrance. A hundred things raced through his mind, and every one of them was a question. It was his patrol and he was supposed to have the answers. That's why he had a commission. But the face bore a puzzled expression. It was young, and lobster red, and told openly that he was new to frontier station, though he had learned all the answers at the Point. You hesitate when it's your command, your responsibility. When a dirty old man in an undershirt is studying you to see what you've got, waiting to pick you apart. And if he finds the wrong thing, the buzzards do the rest of the picking.
'Mr. Cline, the primary objective of this patrol is to locate and bring in Trooper Byerlein. If in the process we come across hostiles, it is also the duty of this patrol to scout them and deal with them using the best means at hand. I would judge that there is a rancheria somewhere in that canyon. I don't think their band could be very large, for I know of no Indians at San Carlos that are unaccounted for.
Now that we've found one, or possibly a band, we'll have to act quickly before they get away.'
'You got it wrong there, Lieutenant,' the scout said. 'We didn't find him. That Indian found us.'
'Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd observe him to be a lookout. Now he's obviously fled after being seen.'
'Only thing wrong with that, Lieutenant, is that you don't observe an Apache when he's on lookout.
I don't know what your experience is, but I hear this is your first patrol out of Fort Thomas. You might as well learn right now that when you spot an Apache like that, it's because he wants you to see him. Right now there could be a dozen of 'em hidin' on that rocky grade goin' up to the ledge. If we was to ride to the mouth we'd see him again just a little way further on. Then you'd go further and you'd see him again. Until he led you to the right spot. There'd be a lot of shots and you'd go back to Thomas draped over your horse facedown. If there's anybody left to lead the horse.'
And so they learned. The lieutenant faced the scout, but was silent. It wasn't the best thing to have been said in front of his men. Above all, they had to have confidence in him. He waited until he felt the heat of embarrassment drain from his face.
'What do you suggest, then?'
Matt Cline shifted his chew to the other cheek.
'Well, it looks like Byerlein's tracks go into the canyon, which means they pro'bly got him. It's one thing trackin' a deserter, but it's another goin' into an Apache rancheria to get him. If he's there he's either dead or half dead, so there's no worry there anymore.' He pointed to a splash of green that crept between low hills to the north of where they were standing.
'I think we'd better wait and move over to those pines until Sinsonte shows up. He'll cut our sign over to there without any trouble. Maybe he'll know just what we're up against.'
From the edge of the pines they watched the canyon entrance across the empty stretch of desert, and the shadowy defile that slashed into the mountainside had eight different meanings. But it flicked through everyone's mind that it was a place where you could die while never seeing what did it. Six enlisted troopers prayed to six interpretations of God that the young lieutenant wasn't a glory seeker . . . at least not on this patrol. So the men sprawled in sand and grass, their bodies relaxed though it's a singular type of relaxation only a little more than a mile from the Apache. Eyes are ever watchful. The lieutenant and Cline sat a little apart from the men.
Towner pulled at the sparse tufts of grass nervously, looking around in every direction, but mostly toward the canyon.
'How do you know you can trust Sinsonte?' It was more than just making conversation. 'He's an Apache just like the rest of them. How do you know he isn't eating with that band of hostiles right now?'
'Well, for one thing, army chow's spoiled him,' the scout answered. 'He probably wouldn't even touch mescal anymore if somebody baked it for him. I been scoutin' with him goin' on five years now and I don't have any reason not to trust him.
The day he turn around and lets go with his Sharps at me, why, then I'll quit trustin' him.'
Cline smiled at his joke. ''Course he ain't always been a scout. He was with Cochise ten years ago, shootin' all the whites he could, long as he needed a pony or a few extra rounds, but that was just somethin' in his past. To an Apache, what you did a long time ago hasn't got much bearin' on what you happen to be doin' at the present. And I don't think he got along too well with Cochise, though he was with him since Apache Pass. 'Course, he won't come right out and tell you. See, Sinsonte is a White Mountain Apache, and for some reason buried somewhere in his past he's got a full fledged hate for Chiricahuas. That, along with army rations, is why he's the best tracker at Fort Thomas.'
'Uh huh,' Towner grunted. 'So you think the hostiles in the canyon are Chiricahuas.' It was half question, half
