with fear, glistening with fear. And for all old man Remillard's authority, he couldn't do a thing. An old Mexican, like a thousand he could buy or sell, could stand there and do whatever he desired because he had slipped past the cowman's zone of influence, past fearing for the future. Tio raised the pistol to the level of his eyes. It was already cocked. 'Watch my mission, Jaime. Watch me send two devils to hell!'
He watched fascinated. Two men were going to die. Two men he hardly knew, but he could feel only hate for them. Not like he might hate a man, but with the anger he felt for a principle that went against his reason. Something big, like injustice. It went through his mind that if these two men died, all injustice would vanish. He heard the word in his mind. His own voice saying it. Injustice. Repeating it, until then he heard only a part of the word. His gun came out and he pulled the trigger in the motion. Nothing was repeating in his mind, now. He looked down at Tio Robles on the floor and knew he was dead before he knelt over him. He picked up Tio in his arms like a small child and walked out of the Supreme into the evening dusk. John Benedict approached him and he saw people crowding out into the street. He walked past the sheriff and behind him heard Remillard's booming voice. 'That was a close one!' and a scattering of laughter. Fainter then, he heard Remillard again. 'Your boy learns fast.' He walked toward Spanishtown, not seeing the faces that lined the street, hardly feeling the limp weight in his arms.
The people, the storefronts, the street--all was hazy--as if his thoughts covered his eyes like a blindfold. And as he went on in the darkness he thought he understood now what John Benedict meant by justice.
Trouble at Rindo's Station
Chapter One
There was a time when Bonito might have fired at the rider far below on the road, and for no other reason than to test his carbine, since the rider was a white man. He had done this many times before- sometimes for a shirt, or a fresh horse, usually for ammunition, though a reason was not necessary. But now there was something on the Mescalero's mind. He held his fire and urged his pony down the pinon slope.
From high up he had recognized Ross Corsen-- the lank figure slouched in the McClellan saddle, head down against the glare, hat low over his eyes. And now, as the Mescalero closed in, Corsen looked up, though he had seen him long before, when Bonito was still high up the slope. 'Sik-isn, ' Bonito said. The word was a hiss between his lips. Strands of hair hung from the shadow of a high-crowned hat, thick, glistening hair accentuating the yellowish cast of his skin and the pock scars that roughened heavy-boned features. A frayed, sweat-stained shirt covered his chest, but his legs were naked, for he wore only a breechclout, and the curled toes of his moccasins hung beneath the pony's belly, ridiculously close to the ground. A carbine was across his lap. Ross Corsen smiled at the Apache's greeting and studied the broad, ugly face. 'Now you call me brother, ' he said in Spanish. 'You must want something.' He had not seen the Mescalero in almost a year, not since the four-day chase down to the border, and a glimpse of Bonito far off, not running any longer because he was safely in Mexico. Bonito had killed two Coyotero policemen during a tulapai drunk. That had started it. On the run for the border, he killed two more men, plus four horses that didn't belong to him. Now he was back and Corsen studied him, wondering why.
The Apache spoke a slow, guttural Spanish and said, as if in the middle of his thoughts, 'We have suffered unfairly from your hand; all of us have'-he used the Apache word tinneh, which meant all of the people and in its meaning described the blood tie which bound them together--'and from the other man, the one who directs you. You think only of yourselves.'
'And when did you begin thinking of others?'
Corsen said.
'Those are my people at Pinaleno,' Bonito answered him. Corsen shrugged. 'I won't argue with you. What you do now is no concern of mine. I can't do a thing to you or for you, but maybe suggest you go home and get drunk, which is what you'll probably do anyway.'
'And where is our home, Cor-sen?'
'You know as well as I do.'
'At San Carlos, where there is little to eat?'
Corsen nodded to the Maynard carbine across the Apache's lap. 'Maybe in Mexico. You can't have one of those at San Carlos.'
'Yes, in Sonora and Chihuahua where it is a business of profit to take the hair of the Apache, the government paying for our scalps.'
Corsen shook his head. 'Look, I no longer am in charge of the Pinaleno Reservation. The government man has discharged me.' He thought for words that would explain it clearly to the Apache. 'He is the one, Mr. Sellers, who has taken your guns and decided that you live on government beef.'
'Some of the government beef,' Bonito corrected. 'He sells most of it to others for his own profit.'
'That is not true of all reservations. You know I treated your people fairly.'
'But you are no longer there and soon it will be true of all reservations.'
The words were familiar to Corsen. No, not so much the words as the idea: he had argued this very thing with Sellers three days before, straining his patience to explain to the Bureau of Indian Affairs supervisor exactly what an Apache is. What kind of thinking animal he is. How much abuse he will take before all the peace talks in the world will not stop him. And he had lost the argument because, even if reason was not on Sellers's side, authority was. He threw it in Sellers's face, accusing him of selling government rations for his own profit, and Sellers laughed, daring him to prove it--then fired him. He would have quit. You can't go on working for a man like that. He decided that he didn't care anyway.
For that matter it was strange that he should. Ross Corsen knew Apaches because he had fought them. He had been in charge of the Coyotero trackers at Fort Thomas for four years. And after that, for three years--until the day before yesterday--he had been in charge of the Mescalero Subagency at Pinaleno, thirty miles south of Thomas.
He didn't care. The hell with it. That's what he told himself. Still he kept wondering what had brought Bonito back. He thought: Leave him alone. If he came back to help his people, let him work it out his own Apache way. You tried. But instead he asked carefully, 'Why would a warrior of Bonito's stature return now to a reservation? They haven't forgotten what you did. If you're caught, they'll hang you.'
'Then I would die--which the people are doing now on the reservation, under Bil-Clin who calls himself their chief.' Bonito's eyes half closed and he went on. 'Let me tell you a story, Cor-sen, which happened long ago. There was a young man of the Mescalero, who was a great hunter and slayer of his enemies. From raids to Mexico he would return to his rancheria with countless ponies and often with women who would then do his bidding. And many of these he gave to his chief out of honor.
'One day he returned from war gravely wounded and his hands empty, but he noticed that still this chief, who was the son of a chief and he the son of one before him, received more spoils than anyone, yet without endangering himself by being present on the raid. Now this grieved the warrior. He would not offend his chief, but he was beginning to think this unjust. 'On a day after his wound had healed, he was walking in a deep canyon with this in his thoughts and as it grew unbearable he cried out to U-sen why should this be, and immediately a spirit appeared before him. Now, this spirit questioned the warrior, asking him how a man became chief, and the warrior answered that it was blood handed from father to son. And the spirit asked him where in the natural order was this found? Did one lobo wolf lead the pack because of his blood? The warrior thought deeply of this and gradually he realized that chieftainship of blood was not just. It was the place of the bravest warrior to lead--not for his own sake, but for the good of all.
'You know what he did, Cor-sen?' Bonito paused then. 'He returned to the rancheria and challenged his chief and fought him to the death with his knife. Two others opposed him, and he killed these also. With this the people realized that it was as it should be and the warrior was acclaimed chief of Mescaleros.
'That was the first time, Cor-sen, but it has happened many times since. When one is no longer deserving to be chief, then another opposes him. Sometimes the opposed chief steps aside; often it is settled with a knife.'
Corsen was silent. Then he said, 'At Pinaleno Bil-Clin is still a strong chief. And he is wise enough not to lead
