had been little to bring even a faint smile to Kadoba's face. But at the moment, among about thirty thin-slitted mouths, his was open in a schoolboy grin. He was free of the white man's prison chains; he was back, not among fat reservation Indians, but the wild, lean broncos; and he was meeting the friend who had made it possible.
'I'm glad you escaped, Kadoba,' Kerrigan said, shaking hands.
Kadoba turned and faced the fierce visage of the beady-eyed Loco, who'd eluded the troops in a masterful hit-and-run campaign and yet mostly remained in northern Arizona, whereas others had fled to Mexico. Natchise, the extremely tall son of Cochise, and Chatto, the short Apache Bull, had made frontier history by flashing up out of Mexico, pouncing into the San Carlos Reservation to get their women and children, and then making a running, twisting fight back to sanctuary across the border.
Loco the Crazy One rarely had had to flee across the invisible boundary. His will-o'-the-wisp band had seldom been cornered in a disadvantageous fight, and when it finally did happen Loco had spun to face them.
Kadoba began to speak to Loco. 'This is the White Eyes who was with me in the prison at Yuma. He was my friend and teacher, and I told him many things of the Outlaw People. I have told how he sent me the knife-with- teeth and I killed the guard.'
Kerrigan stared at him, having understood every word of it. 'Who did you kill, Kadoba?' he asked, thinking of genial Bud Casey's wife and four children.
Kadoba grinned and swelled out his chest for the benefit of the others as he answered in broken English they didn't understand. 'You send me knife-with-teeth in pig meat. Get horsehair from Bud. He say make Apache hackamore. No make hackamore. Make long rope. With knife-with-teeth I kill Wood Smith in neck. Kkkkkkttt!' he hissed and jabbed an index finger into his throat.
So the brutal, hard-drinking friend of Jeb Donnelly was dead? Kerrigan had felt no sympathy or fellowship for the average desperado doing time in Yuma for their various crimes, but they had deserved more humane treatment at the hands of their guards than Smith had given them.
'I get across the water, me,' Kadoba was speaking. 'Steal horse, run him dead. Take meat and run all night in new moccasins. Steal 'nother horse, some days pretty soon hunt Loco with smoke signals. He see.'
Kerrigan could picture the astonishing rapidity of Kadoba's flight northward to the familiar high country where he had been born. Next to the famed Tarahumari runners of Old Mexico, from whom young Apaches had adopted the method of running for eight hours and kicking a light ball ahead of them, Kadoba seemed to have about doubled the daily distance of troops probably on the lookout for him since his escape.* The young Indian probably had been back with Loco's band of broncos for several days.
* Author's note: Upton states in his military textbook,
Loco began to speak then in short, grunting gutturals. He stared at Kerrigan and Kerrigan returned the stare, making certain there was no fear evident in it. He curled his lips contemptuously to show he'd helped an Apache.
'He asks why do you kill our brother the bear?' Kadoba said. 'He says we do not kill our own brother.'
Kerrigan lifted his left arm and held it straight out. Over it he laid the skinned-out foreleg and pointed the claws at Kadoba's face. The Apache sucked in his breath and leaped backward.
All around the glade Lew Kerrigan heard the little sucking intake of breath that told of a sudden, inner excitement beginning to grip the hostiles. They began to mutter and point—and small wonder.
For years they had seen the old grey beard, the Bear-in-Body-of-Man, and fled in panic at the sight. Now while they listened, Kerrigan, aided by the voluble Kadoba, gravely told them the story of the old man who had hunted yellow iron unmolested in the heart of bronco Apache country. He had known that hunters of the yellow metal, when caught, always were burned head down over a slow fire as a warning to others. He had worn the bear paw on his blown-off left arm to frighten the Apaches away.
Loco stepped forward, again speaking Athapascan* gutturals. Then it was not a bear in the body of a man? It was an old
* Author's note: Athapascan is a common language understood by many tribes. The fact that Indians in the Mackenzie Valley near the Arctic Circle speak the same language as Arizona Apaches is cited by ethnologists as proof of aborigine migration from Asia.
'Yes,' nodded Kerrigan.
But Loco wasn't through. 'And now you come alone to hunt more yellow iron with a bear claw on your arm to make fools of the Apaches?' The beady-black eyes were beginning to turn bright with an instinctive hatred.
'No,' Kerrigan shook his head. 'I wanted to travel here in safety because I have enemies to kill. Two of them are already dead. One of them is over there,' pointing to the brush. 'But there are others who have been trailing me.'
'These things we know, because we have been trailing them. If you kill your enemies, this we Apaches understand. You can go free. You will be safe. But you must not hunt for yellow iron or white iron.'
'This thing I understand,' Lew Kerrigan agreed.
Kadoba spoke a sharp warning, in English. 'He believes you speak with a straight tongue. Now you shake hands quick!'
Kerrigan stepped forward and shook the small, dirty hand. The eyes above it were still beady, the mouth a thin, vicious-looking slit. The odor that came to Kerrigan's nostrils was like that found in the den of a wild animal.
They walked down to the camp a short distance away. One of the war party espied the body of the man who'd emptied his six-shooter at Kerrigan's gun flash the night before and paid for that foolishness with his life. With a wild yell the buck grabbed up the wide-brimmed hat, tore off the filthy buckskin band around his forehead, and put on the Stetson, yanking and tugging until the brim was down around his greasy black locks. Next he unbuttoned the shirt, jerked the blood-caked object from its former owner, and held it up. He put it on proudly, wearing it tail out as was the custom of all wild Apaches.
Kerrigan removed Stubb Holiday's saddle and tossed it aside, cinching his own saddle on the back of the dead man's horse. Kadoba came up leading his pied pony and eased himself into the rawhide kak with its soft sheepskin pad.
To Kerrigan's inquiring look, he said proudly, 'I go with you so other Apaches no kill. Loco say you no hunt gold. You hunt gold, I kill you.'
'This thing I understand,' Kerrigan replied in
He was hiding a grimace of annoyance as he swung into leather. Somehow he had to get word to Fort Whipple in a hurry as to the approximate whereabouts of Loco and his long-sought band of butchers. Nor did he want any escaped convict killer Apache Indian with him when he returned to civilization. God forbid! He was already as good as hanged if Joe Stovers ever got the drop on him again.
And if Kadoba should be with him when Joe made the attempt, a wild Apache knew only one way in which to repay a debt of gratitude: lever that .44-40 Harrow had sold them, and when it was empty go in beside Kerrigan with a knife.
Sometime between three and four that afternoon their horses made the last steep climb up the side of a ridge they had been skirting and came out on top. Kerrigan and the slim Apache pulled up and looked down upon the green forest below, through which a single brown thread wound its way crookedly along a half-mile stretch of partly hidden buildings.
The walls and buildings of the old fort stood out clear. And so did the top of Clara Thompson's sprawling establishment not far from the headquarters office.
Kerrigan led the way down the steep declivity, both he and the Apache quartering their horses back and forth. Halfway down he pulled up and bent to look at deep hoof marks in the soft carpeting dropped from the pines. Kadoba glanced once and held up four fingers. Kerrigan nodded.
Three riders and one led horse that would be Big Red. The three probably were over there cleaned up and comfortable after gorging themselves on Clara's food. Who else would be over there? Kitty? Where were Harrow and the woman he probably had married by now? And where would cagey old Joe Stovers be about now?
Lew Kerrigan had ridden a few hundred miles to find out the answer.
'Come on,' he said to the Indian, and led the way down under an overhead blanket of green branches.
