“That is a good name. Cochise has spoken of you.”
“I do not know Cochise. But I have heard he is a strong man. A brave man.”
“He calls you
“That is what some call me.”
“Then we will not kill you, Cody.”
“And I will not kill you. I make no fight with the Apache. I chase bad white men.”
“Why do you do this?”
“General Crook does not like white men who cause trouble with the Apache. He wants the Apache and the white men to live in peace.”
Anillo spat upon the ground. His eyes narrowed and his face turned rigid with anger.
“Do you have tobacco?” Anillo asked.
“Yes.”
“Then let us smoke and talk.”
Zak reached in his pocket and pulled out the makings. Anillo spoke to one of the men in the group, gestured for him to come down. He dismounted. Zak slid from his saddle.
They sat down and the Apache who Anillo had called slid from his pony’s back and walked over. He was older than Anillo. There were streaks of gray in his hair, lines in his face, wrinkles in the wattles under his chin. He had a fierce face, with close-set black eyes, a pug nose, high cheekbones burnished with the vermillion of his bloodlines.
“This is Tesoro,” Anillo said. Then he spoke to Tesoro in Apache and the old warrior squatted down as Anillo took out a paper and poured tobacco into it. He handed the pouch and papers to Tesoro, who made himself a cigarette. He handed the makings to Zak, who rolled one for himself. The three sat together. The two Apaches leaned forward as Zak struck a match. He touched their cigarettes and they sucked smoke into their mouths. Zak lit his own quirly, settled in a sitting position on the warm ground.
Zak looked at Tesoro, wondering how he had acquired his name. Tesoro meant “treasure” in Spanish. It was an odd sobriquet for a seasoned Apache warrior. Tesoro looked at him with cold ebony eyes.
“Raise your shirt, Tesoro,” Anillo said.
Tesoro, his cigarette dangling from his lips, lifted his worn cotton shirt, almost proudly, Zak thought.
Zak stared at Tesoro’s bare chest in disbelief.
The wounds were fresh. He had seen similar scars before, on warriors who had participated in the Sun Dance on the plains of the Dakotas, rips in their skin where they had impaled hooks that tore loose as they danced around a pole, connected to it with long leather thongs.
But these wounds were different. They were not scars made from hooks or knives. They were burns, and he had seen the likes of these before, as well. On his father’s body after Ben Trask had tortured him by jabbing a red hot poker into his flesh.
The burn marks were the same, and some were scabbed over. Others were pocks with new flesh growing in the depressions. Tesoro had been tortured over a period of time. These burns were not made in a single day or night, but over a period of days, or perhaps even weeks.
“What do you see?” Anillo asked, plumes of smoke jetting from his nostrils and out the corners of his mouth.
“Burns,” Zak said. “Iron burns.”
Tesoro nodded and let his shirt fall back into place.
Somehow, Zak knew the burns were not connected to some Apache ritual or religious ceremony. Tesoro, he was sure, had been tortured.
“A man burned him with hot iron,” Zak said. “A man who wanted Tesoro to tell him something.”
“
“A white man burned Tesoro,” Zak said. “Does Tesoro know the name of this man?”
“He knows the name of the man,” Anillo said. “Do you know the name of this man?”
“Is the name difficult for the Apache to say?”
“Yes. It is hard to say this name,” Anillo said.
“Trask,” Zak said. “Ben Trask.”
A light came into Tesoro’s eyes when he heard the name. That was the only sign that he recognized it. His features remained stoic.
“Terask,” Anillo said. “Ben, yes.”
“A bad man,” Zak said. “This is one I hunt. This is a man I would kill.”
“How do you know this was the man who burned Tesoro with hot iron?”
“He did the same to my father,” Zak said. “And then he killed my father.”
“Ah. And why did Terask do this to your father?”
“Gold. My father had gold. Trask wanted it.”
