The girl’s scream and the sound of gunfire alerted the others in the village, and several stuck their heads out to see what was going on.
“Kill them!” Willis shouted. “Kill them all!”
The posse rode through the village, shooting everyone they saw whether it be man, woman, or child.
Many of the villagers were able to get out through the backs of their wickiups by crawling underneath the walls, then running toward the arroyo that traversed the back side of the village. In this way, more than half the village escaped. Finally, when all were either killed or had run, Willis shouted at the others to stop shooting.
“You ain’t doin’ nothin’ now but wastin’ your ammunition,” he said. “Get down and take a look through all them huts, see if there’s a white woman in any of ’em.”
For the next few minutes, every wickiup was searched, but there was no white woman to be found.
“What do we do now?” one of the men asked.
“Burn the village,” Willis said. “I want these Apache bastards to know that we mean business. For every one of ours they kill, we’ll kill ten of them.”
“That would mean we would have to kill seventy, and there ain’t no seventy dead Injuns here,” Lathum said. “There’s only about ten or eleven.”
“Yes, well, I do think they will get the picture,” Willis said as the men began setting fire to the highly flammable structures.
It took but a few minutes before every hut was ablaze. Then, with two dozen columns of smoke climbing into the air, the posse rode away, leaving behind not only the burning wickups, but also the bodies of those they had killed.
Cochinay was one of those who got away. Catching one of the fleeing ponies, he set out to find Delshay.
“Why did you not join me before?” Delshay asked when Cochinay arrived at his encampment and told him of the raid on Nopoloto’s village.
“Before, my blood ran cool, because I wanted only to marry Alope, hunt, fish, and have sons to hunt and fish. But the white man has killed Alope, and now my blood runs hot. I want to join you and kill as many white men as I can.”
Delshay nodded, then reached out to put his hand on Cochinay’s shoulder. “You are welcome, my brother,” he said.
Half an hour later, Chandeisi came into the wickiup where Cynthia was being kept.
“We must leave,” he said.
“But we always leave in the morning,” Cynthia replied. “Why must we leave now?”
“Because Delshay has said we must,” Chandeisi replied.
Cynthia nodded, then began getting together the possessions she had been given. By now she had two dresses, a bowl and a spoon, a comb, a pair of moccasins, and most valuable of all, a tablet and a pencil.
Cynthia had convinced Chandeisi that she needed the tablet and pencil in order to “write her prayers,” and because Chandeisi had a genuine respect for the religious practices of everyone, he did not question Cynthia.
When Cynthia left the note, just before they left that night, she felt a slight twinge of guilt, as if she were somehow betraying Chandeisi’s trust and friendship. But her desire to be found and rescued transcended any sense of betrayal she might have.
Ken Hendel and Jay Peerless Bixby were sitting at a table in the Dry Gulch Saloon. From the back of the room a woman screamed, but her scream was followed by her high-pitched laughter, then punctuated with the bass guffaws of the men who were with her.
Bixby looked back toward the table with an expression of disgust on his face.
“How can anyone live in a place like this?” he asked.
“Oh, I think it has its attractions,” Hendel said.
“Really? And what, pray tell, would be those attractions?” Bixby took in the saloon with a sweep of his arm. “Back in New York, I am a member of the Ambassador Club, where we have a collection of the finest wines and spirits in the world. Would you compare this—this saloon to the Ambassador Club? I tell you, Hendel, it is not by accident that they call this place the Dry Gulch.”
Hendel held up his beer. “This beer is brewed here in Phoenix by Andrew Marcus. I think that even you would agree that it is as good a beer as you will find anywhere—and far superior to most.”
“The beer is all right, I suppose,” Bixby said. “Though I much prefer wine.”
“Whoooeee!” somebody shouted as the batwing doors were kicked open. Looking toward the sound, Hendel saw Willis and several of the other men who had ridden out with him this morning when they started their search for Cynthia Bixby.
“Bartender, line up the bottles and start pouring drinks!” Willis yelled. “You’ve got a thirsty bunch of men comin’ in.”
A dozen men came filing in behind Willis. All of them were carrying souvenirs of some sort, from bows and arrows to buffalo robes to beaded rugs. A couple were even carrying what appeared to be scalps.
“Let me tell you, boys!” Willis said loudly. “It’s goin’ to be a cold day in hell before any bunch of Apaches kill any more white men or women.”
“What happened, Willis? What are you talking about?” the bartender asked as he began placing empty glasses on the bar, preparatory to filling them with whiskey or beer.
