happened.
Sellers screamed. His left cheek was slashed from ear to mouth.
'Ross!'
Bonito feinted toward Sellers's head. Going back, Sellers brought up his arm, but the blade dropped. It flashed low under his guard and flicked a short arc across the sucked-in stomach. Sellers's vest opened from pocket to pocket and he screamed again and this time turned and started to run. But he came up short, pushed, jolted back to face Bonito by Teachout, who stood behind him. 'You're going the wrong way,' Teachout said.
'Let me go!'
Bonito stood waiting.
Corsen's gaze went from him to Sellers. 'Are you through?'
Sellers, blood smeared over his face, was breathing hard, holding his stomach. 'Ross.' He gasped.
'Shoot him! Now, while he's still!'
'Are you quitting?' Corsen said.
'God! Shoot him!'
Corsen said calmly, 'Fight him, or else get out.'
Sellers looked at him strangely, taken by surprise. 'Get out?'
'That's right. Ride out of here and take Verbiest with you. Forget you ever worked for the Bureau. There are seven people here to testify you're not fit for the job. Now, either fight him or write yourself off.'
Sellers hesitated, fingering the cut across his stomach, his eyes on Corsen. Then his gaze went slowly to Bonito, who stood unmoving, watching him. Gradually Sellers's grip loosened around the knife, and as it dropped from his hand he turned abruptly and walked to the station house. The screen door banged.
'Now,' Bonito said coldly, 'there is no more doubt.'
'It is still in my mind,' Corsen said mildly. He lowered the pistol he'd been holding on Sunshine and turned to Bonito. He added, pointedly, 'I have seen women fight before. Usually it proves nothing.'
Bonito's eyes narrowed. 'Say your words straight, Cor-sen.'
Corsen stopped a stride from the Apache. He raised his hand and swung the open palm hard against Bonito's face. The Apache was taken off guard and staggered back, but he did not go down.
'Is that straight enough?'
Corsen looked back at Ed Fisher and swung the pistol underhand toward him, and as he turned back to Bonito he shifted his feet suddenly and came around with his right fist smashing against the Apache's face. And this time Bonito went down.
'Maybe that's a little straighter.' Then, looking toward Bil-Clin, Corsen said, 'Is this your chief?'
Bonito came to one knee. His mouth was half open with numbness, but he smiled and said, 'All right. Corsen.'
Behind him he heard Fisher say, 'Here's the knife.' Corsen half turned as if to look at Fisher, but it was a short movement. He pivoted, swinging his left hand, and again caught Bonito on the face as he was rising. The Apache went down, rolling away from Corsen's reach, but as he came up Corsen was there. He swung a right and then a left to the Apache's head to beat him down again.
Bonito looked up at him, propping himself with his elbows; his face was cut at both eyes and his mouth swollen. And now he considered what to do next--how to fight this man whose not using a weapon was an insult. He brought his knees up under him, then one foot, watching Corsen closely. Corsen moved a step closer, clenching his fists. Bonito will pull something this time, he thought. Bonito was rising, then suddenly throwing himself at Corsen's legs. Corsen dodged and kicked out, but his boot caught Bonito's shoulder and now the Apache was rolling. Corsen started after him, then stopped dead as Bonito jumped to his feet. Fisher yelled, 'You want it now, Ross?'
Corsen shook his head. This was the way to beat him, if it could be done. He started toward Bonito, thinking: Carry it to him. Once he starts calling the play, you're through. Watch his eyes. They'll tell you a snap second before he moves. He moved close to Bonito, tensed, watching the yellow-filmed eyes, smelling the animal smell of the man, seeing the eyes now and not the face.
Corsen drew his arm back slowly, knotting the fist. He shifted his weight suddenly, swinging the fist-- the eyes--then just as suddenly threw himself to the side. Bonito's knife jabbed viciously, but Corsen was not there. And as the Apache came around to find him, in that split second Corsen was ready. He went back on his left foot, his body balanced, and then his weight shifted and his boot kicked savagely into Bonito's loins. The Apache gasped and stopped dead in his tracks, bending, holding his stomach.
And that was it. Corsen hit him with one fist, then the other, and as Bonito started to sag he caught the Apache's arm and drove his right fist straight into the paint-streaked face. The Apache went down, dropping the knife, and landed heavily on his back.
'There, Bil-Clin, is your chief,' Corsen said. He went over to Sunshine and knelt beside him, examining the shinbone that his bullet had broken. Bil-Clin was standing next to him now. It was hard for him to speak, even if it was not an outright apology, for he was Mescalero, but he said, 'What would you have us do?'
Corsen rose and looked at Bil-Clin. 'If you wish, we will get an American doctor for your son. But now go back to Pinaleno and take your dead.' 'And you will come, Cor-sen?'
Corsen's gaze went over the line of Apaches at the wall. Immobile faces, streaks of vermilion and bright yellow, and looking at them he was angry. But he thought: These are Mescaleros. You know what they are. You know what they can do. You were lucky today, but don't push your luck, and perhaps because of it make some cavalry patrol officer, who isn't even out here yet, push his. And he nodded slowly, wearily, to Bil-Clin and said, 'Yes. I will come.'
The others were standing almost in a line. Teachout and Ernie Ball, Ed Fisher and his partner and Verbiest.
Maybe this will straighten Fisher out, Corsen thought. He's a man you'd buy a drink for, even after he's robbed you. Verbiest made a mistake, but he knows it and he won't make it again. . . . And then he did not think of them anymore. Katie was in the doorway and he walked toward the house.
No Man’s Guns
As he drew near the mass of tree shadows that edged out to the road he heard the voice, the clear but hesitant sound of it coming unexpectedly in the almost-dark stillness.
'Cliff--'
His right knee touched the booted Springfield and he thought of it calmly, instinctively, drawing it left-handed in his mind, as he slowed the sorrel to a walk. Now at the edge of the shadows he saw a man with a rifle.
The man called uncertainly, 'Cliff?'
'You got the wrong party,' he answered, and neck-reined the sorrel toward the trees.
Less than twenty feet away the rifle came up suddenly. 'Who are you?' 'My name's Mitchell.'
The rifle barrel hung hesitantly. 'You better light down.'
Astride the McClellan saddle, Dave Mitchell didn't move. He sat with his shoulders pulled back, yet he was relaxed. Narrow hips, sun-darkened, thin-lined features beneath the slightly turned-up forward brim of a faded Stetson and everything about him said Cavalry. Everything but the roughwool gray suit he wore. His coat was unbuttoned and his dark shirt was unmistakably Army issue.
'You're camped back in there?' Mitchell asked, and he was thinking, watching the man studying him: I'm the wrong man and now he doesn't know what to do. The man with the rifle didn't reply and Mitchell said, 'I'm ready to camp the night. If you already got a place, maybe I could join you.'
For a moment the man didn't answer. Then the rifle, a long-barreled Remington, waved in a short arc. 'Light down.'
Mitchell let his right rein fall as he came off the sorrel. The rifle waved again. The man stood aside and Mitchell walked past him leading the sorrel. They moved through the trees, thinly scattered aspen, then cottonwood
