men but that he would show God's mercy to this untutored young savage; thundering it while the interpreter tried vainly to get some of it across to the smoky-eyed bronco. Cavalry officers who knew the Apaches and why they had fought so bitterly against the encroachment of whites across their lands and their way of a free life had listened to Yeager Eaton's overly long harangue with poker faces becoming those of career soldiers.
It had been a big day, a personal triumph, for the judge; taking the case out of their hands and, later, lecturing them severely about setting stern examples for other 'savages' to observe, all the while gorging himself on food in the officers' mess and drinking their brandy.
That same young Apache who hadn't understood a word the judge had said now twisted around still farther in front of the judge and spoke to him in garbled English.
'Kadoba, me. You 'member me, huh? I killum squaw with knife. You send me Yuma in iron ropes. Send Yew Ker'gan too, huh? Now I come back kill you.'
Eaton's hat had fallen off. Kodoba's dark hand grasped him across the forehead and bent his neck over a knee, the prominent Adam's apple tight beneath the skin as the Apache's knife swept up in a vicious arc.
Tom Harrow stepped to the ground and closed the coach door upon three silent figures, none of whom had spoken to him. Jeb Donnelly reined the white horse over close and looked down, bulking huge in the saddle like a sack of sheep wool.
'Some of them boozed-up miners saw somethin',' he said in answer to Harrow's question. 'They'd shoot at a bat overhead, they're that nervous—not that I blame them, I'm nervous, too.'
'Where's Kerrigan?'
'Up front some'ers. I saw him duck back of a building. We're almost at the edge of town.'
'There might be a possibility,' Harrow said in a low voice, 'that those broncos will wait until we get a mile or so along the road. Jeb, now is the time. Go get the judge— Say, where is he?'
'He was with you behind the coach a little ways back. I'll take a look… but not too much of one.'
He loped away as the coach began to inch ahead in answer to Kerrigan's distant call. And then Donnelly came spurring back, hauling up hard on a sore-mouthed white horse. The lividness of fear had come into his big face again.
'What is it?' demanded Harrow.
'Goddlemighty,' panted out the new marshal appointed by Judge Eaton. 'He's—back there.'
'Dead?'
Donnelly nodded and swallowed hard. He drew his hand and part of his thick forearm all the way across his throat. 'They're in behind us, and it was you got me into this trap with your dirty money. For two cents I'd lay the steel to this hoss and take my chances—'
A rocketing explosion of rifle fire broke out at least a mile ahead of them. Lew Kerrigan, working his way far ahead of the others from one now thinly scattered shack to another, came up short and tried to look through the dim moonlight. He could hear the roar of the flames back there, whipping through and consuming the main part of what had been the business section. The great mansion up on the west ridge was a single blazing pillar of fire.
'Joe!' Kerrigan called piercingly. 'Joe, where are you?'
Somewhere up there he caught the sound of hard-running ponies and wild cries. Amid the broken sound of ponies darting here and there and the panic-stricken shooting of the fleeing miners, he heard the steady drumming of other horses. They were coming hard in a steady rhythm, a whole line of them riding abreast in skirmish formation, and now for the first time he caught the clear notes of a Cavalry K of C bugle sounding a charge. A sound he hadn't heard in more than ten years; not since Terry's Texans had ridden into battle against Union Cavalry.
He thought,
* Author's note: General Crook.
Loco had timed one trap too often. He'd known that the glow of the fire could be seen for fifty miles and that troops would know it hadn't been set by lightning. He'd gambled on a quick butchery of all the whites in the gulch and then scattering like quail, to meet two hundred miles away at a predesignated point.
To Kerrigan it looked as though he'd been outsmarted by Apache scouts in the pay of the army, and from the sound of things up there in the night, cavalry troops at last were putting an end to his elusive career of butchery.
Kerrigan leaned the .45-90 against the logs of a shack he'd been using for cover, suddenly more tired than he had ever been in his life. With the sudden realization that he wouldn't have to kill any more, the hatred and bitterness had drained out of him. He stood there for a few minutes, listening to the crash of running horses, the shots and general confusion. He thought of Carlotta and wondered how she'd feel, now that it was all over. She'd come to him there in the kitchen of Judge Eaton's courtroom because none of them knew what would happen within the next hour or so.
He'd have to run for it, of course. This night's work would be all over the territory—in every small hamlet paper—within a week. It would go to Washington in the reports of Captain Rawlinson and that of the Indian agent accepting new prisoners surrendering to the soldiers and Apache scouts.
And he'd have to get out of the territory to some faraway place because he hadn't believed a word Judge Eaton had promised less than an hour before. He knew the man and his fanaticism. He suspected that Tom Harrow's freedom had had something to do with money paid or to be paid.
Kadoba's familiar shadow loomed up out of nowhere and the Apache grinned his schoolboy grin. 'Soldiers come, Yew. Loco gone.'
'Dead? Run away?' Lew Kerrigan asked without particular interest. General Crook had cleaned out most of the other bronco bands, and it would have been but a matter of time until he'd run down Loco if the raider had escaped.
'No dead. No run away. Apache scouts catch him. Catch me too but I go back there.'
He pointed toward the distant fire, now beginning to slow down from lack of fuel. Many trees were burning fiercely through the tops but there was no wind to speak of out in the open country.
Kerrigan listened while the Indian talked with many gestures in a mixture of English, his own tongue, and a few Spanish words. He didn't jab an index finger against his throat as when he had told of killing Wood Smith. He slashed it across his throat in an emphatic gesture.
The White Eyes soldiers would have sent him away for two years and then turned him loose again. The old White Eyes who wasn't a soldier and didn't understand Apaches had put him in chains for life. He had killed him back there.
Again the simple generic Apache laws: If a squaw was unfaithful, hack off her nose or kill her. If an enemy did you wrong, kill him.
The judge had done a wrong to him and he had paid the debt as only an 'untutored young savage' knew how.
'Where you go now, Yew?' he asked.
'Far away, Kadoba.'
'You come with me, Yew. I take you to Apache gold. Loco no need more now. Not much like here long time. But some, I think.'
'I don't need it,' Kerrigan said tiredly. 'I have enough for my needs. Where do you ride now?'
The Indian gave a guttural grunt. 'Find other broncos, maybe. I hear soldiers cry, 'Where Kadoba? Where that damn' Apache kid?' Apache Kid now, me,' he grinned.*
* Author's note: Kadoba is not to be confused with the notorious Apache Kid of later years. That Kid, born in 1869, was only six years old at this time and living on the reservation.
Suddenly he whirled and fled like a shadow, his animal-keen ears picking up sounds that warned of danger;
