Amelia Darck saw an Apache for the first time when she was six years old. His face was vivid in her memory. She remembered once somebody had said, “. . . like glistening bacon rind.” And always a dirty cloth headband.

  Yuma, Whipple Barracks, Fort Apache, and Thomas. Officers’ row on a sun-baked parade. Chiricahua, White Mountain, Mescalero, and Tonto. Thigh-high moccasins and a rusted Spencer. Tizwin drunk, then war drums. And only the red sun-slash in the sky after the patrol had faded into the glare three miles west of Thomas. Shapeless ponchos that used to be men. The old story. And she continued to watch the Apache.

  Mata Lobo glanced at the woman, then stood up abruptly and walked toward her. He stooped at her feet, hesitated, then placed the blade of the knife between her ankles and jerked up with the blade, severing the rawhide string.

  His face was expressionless, smooth and impassive, as he eased his body to the ground. A face that in the dimness was shadow on stone. His hands pushed against her shoulders until her arms bent slowly and her back was flat against the short, sparse grass.

  The hands moved from her shoulder and touched her face gently, the fingers moving on her cheeks like a blind man’s identifying an object, and his body eased toward hers.

  Her face was the same. The eyes open, infre

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  quently blinking. She smelled the sour dirt-smell of the Apache’s body. Then she opened her arms and pulled him to her.

  ✯✯✯

  Simon Street was up before dawn. He gave his tightening stomach the last of the cold, stale coffee while he waited for the sun to peel back another layer of the morning darkness. It was cold and damp for that time of the year, and when he again started down the trail, a gray mist hung from the lower branches of the trees and lay softly against the grotesque rock lines.

  More often now, the ground fell away to the left, the trail hugging the side of the hill in its diagonal descent; and in the distance was a sheet of milky smoke where the mist clung softly to the flats. The trail was narrow and rocky and lined with dense brush most of the way down.

  Less than a mile ahead the grade dropped again steeply to the left of the trail, bare of tree or rock, cutting a smooth swatch twenty yards wide through the pines. The mist had evaporated considerably by then and Street could see almost to the bottom of the slide.

  First, it was the faintest blur of motion. And then the sound. A sound that could be human.

  Simon Street had been riding half tensed for the past dozen years. There was no abrupt stop. He reined in gently with a soothing murmur into the mare’s ear, and slid from the saddle, whispering again to the mare as he tied the reins to a pine branch a foot from the ground.

  He made his way along the trail until the slope was again thick with brush and trees, and there he began his descent. A yard at a time, making sure of firm ground before each step, bending branches slowly so there would be no warning swish. And every few yards he would hug the ground and wait, swinging his gaze in every direction, even behind.

  He had gone almost a hundred yards when he saw the woman.

  He crouched low to the sandy ground and crawled under the full branches of a pine, watching the woman almost thirty yards away. She was sitting on something just off the ground, her back resting against the smoothness of a birch tree.

  He was approaching her from the rear and could see only part of her head and shoulder resting against the tree trunk. The brush near her cut off the lower part of her body, but there was something strange about her position—her immobility, the way her shoulder was thrown back so tightly against the roundness of the birch. Street had the feeling she was dead. Time would tell.

  He lay motionless under the thick foliage and waited, the Winchester in front of him. And Simon Street had his thoughts. You never get used to the sight of a white woman after an Apache has fin

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  ished with her. An hour later, a week later, a dozen years later, the picture will flash in your memory, vivid, stark naked of hazy forgetfulness.

  And the form of the Apache will be there, too, close like the smothering reek of a hot animal, though you may have never seen him. Then you will be sick if you are the kind. Street wasn’t the kind, but he didn’t look forward to approaching the woman.

  After almost a half hour he again began to work his way toward the woman. In that length of time he had not moved. Nor had the woman. If she was dead, the Apache would probably be gone. But that was guessing, and when you guess, you take a chance.

  He crawled all the way, slowly, a foot at a time, until he was directly behind the birch. Then he reached up, his hand sliding along the white bark, and touched her shoulder lightly.

  Amelia Darck jumped to her feet and turned in the motion. Her face was powder white, her eyes wide, startled; but when she saw the scout the color seemed to creep through her cheeks and her mouth broke into a fragile smile.

  “You’re late, Mr. Street. I’ve waited a good many hours.”

  The scout was momentarily stunned. He knew his face bore a foolish expression, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  The woman’s face regained its composure quickly and once again she was the colonel’s lady. Though there was a drawn look and a darker shadow about the eyes that could not be wiped away with a polite smile.

  Then Street saw the Apache. He was lying belly down in the short grass, close behind Mrs. Darck. Street took a step to her side and saw the handle of the skinning knife sticking straight up from the Apache’s back. The cotton shirt was deep crimson in a wide smear around the knife handle.

  He looked at her again with the foolish look still on his face.

  “Mr. Street, I’ve been sitting up all night with a dead Indian and I’m almost past patience. Would you kindly take me to my husband.”

  He looked again at the Apache and then to the woman. Disbelief in his eyes. He started to say something, but Amelia Darck went on.

  “I’ve lived out here most of my life, Mr. Street, as you know. I heard Apache war drums long before I attended my first cotillion, but I have hardly reached the point where I have to take an Apache for a lover.”

  Simon Street saw a thousand troops and a hundred scouts in the field. Then he looked at the slender woman walking briskly up the grade.

  4

  The Rustlers

  Most of the time there was dead silence. When someone did say something it was never more than a word or two at a time: More coffee? Words that were not words because there was no thought behind them and they didn’t mean anything. Words like getting late, when no one cared. Hardly even noises, because no one heard.

  Stillness. Six men sitting together in a pine grove, and yet there was no sound. A boot scraped gravel and a tin cup clanked against rock, but they were like the words, little noises that started and stopped at the same time and were forgotten before they could be remembered.

  More coffee? And an answering grunt that meant even less.

  Five men scattered around a campfire that was dead, and the sixth man squatting at the edge of the pines looking out into the distance through the dismal reflection of a dying sun that made the grayish flat land look petrified in death and unchanged for a hundred million years.

  Emmett Ryan stared across the flats toward the lighter gray outline in the distance that was Anton Chico, but he wasn’t seeing the adobe brick of the village. He wasn’t watching the black speck that was gradually getting bigger as it approached.

  All of us knew that. We sat and watched Emmett Ryan’s coat pulled tight across his shoulder blades, not moving body or head. Just a broad smoothness of faded denim. We’d been looking at the same back all the way from Tascosa and in two hundred miles you can learn a lot about a back.

  The black speck grew into a horse and rider, and as they moved up the slope toward the pines the horse and rider became Gosh Hall on his roan. Emmett walked over to meet him, but didn’t say anything. The question was on his broad, red face and he didn’t have to ask it.

  Gosh Hall swung down from the saddle and put his hands on the small of his back, arching against

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  the stiffness. “They just rode in,” he said, and walked past the big man to the dead fire. “Who’s got all the coffee?”

  Emmett followed him with his eyes and the question was still there. It was something to see that big, plain face with the eyes open wide and staring when before they’d always been half-closed from squinting against the glare of twenty-odd years in open country. Now his face looked too big and loose for the small nose and slit of an Irish mouth. You could see the indecision and maybe a little fear in the wide-open eyes, something that had never been there before.

  We’d catch ourselves looking at that face and have to look at something else, quick, or Em would see somebody’s jaw hanging open and wonder what the hell was wrong with him. We felt sorry for Em—I know I did—and it was a funny feeling to all of a sudden see the big TX ramrod that way.

  Gosh looked like he had an apron on, standing over the dead fire with his hip cocked and the worn hide chaps covering his short legs. He held the cup halfway to his face, watching Em, waiting for him to ask the question. I thought Gosh was making it a little extra tough on Em; he could have come right out with it. Both of them just stared at each other.

  Finally Emmett said, “Jack with them?”

  Gosh took a sip of coffee first. “Him and Joe Anthony rode in together, and another man. Anthony and the other man went into the Senate House and Jack took the horses to the livery and then followed them over to the hotel.”

  “They see you?”

  “Naw, I was down the street under a ramada. All they’d see’d be shadow.”

  “You sure it was them, Gosh?” I asked him.

  “Charlie,” Gosh said, “I got a picture in my head, and it’s stuck there ’cause I never expected to see one like it. It’s a picture of Jack and Joe Anthony riding into Magenta the same way a month ago. When you see something that’s different or hadn’t ought to be, it sticks in your head. And they was on the same mounts, Charlie.”

  Emmett went over to his dun mare and tightened the cinch like he wanted to keep busy and show us everything was going the same. But he was just fumbling with the strap, you could see that. His head swung around a few inches. “Jack look all right?”

  Gosh turned his cup upside down and a few drops of coffee trickled down to the ashes at his feet. “I don’t know, Em. How is a man who’s just stole a hundred head of beef supposed to look?”

  Emmett jerked his body around and the face was closed again for the first time in a week, tight and redder than usual. Then his jaw eased and his big hands hanging at his sides opened and closed and then went loose. Emmett didn’t have anything to

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  grab. Some of the others were looking at Gosh Hall and probably wondering why the little rider was making it so hard for Em.

  Emmett asked him, “Did you see Butzy?”

  “He didn’t ride in. I ’magine he’s out with the herd.” Gosh looked around. “Neal still out, huh?”

  Neal Whaley had gone in earlier with Gosh, then split off over to where they were holding the herd, just north of Anton Chico. Neal was to watch and tell us if they moved them. Emmett figured they were holding the herd until a buyer came along. There were a lot of buyers in New Mexico who didn’t particularly care what the brand read, but Emmett said they were waiting for a top bid or they would have sold all the stock before this.

  Ned Bristol and Lloyd Cohane got up and stretched and then just stood there awkwardly looking at the dead fire, their boots, and each other. Lloyd pulled a blue bandanna from his coat pocket and wiped his face with it, then folded it and straightened it out thin between his fingers before tilting his chin up to tie it around his neck. Ned pushed his gun belt down lower on his hips and watched Emmett.

  Dobie Shaw, the kid in our outfit, went over to his mount and pulled his Winchester from the boot and felt in the bag behind the saddle for a box of cartridges. Dobie had to do something too.

  Ben Templin was older; he’d been riding better than thirty years. He eased back to the ground with his hands behind his head tilting his hat over his face and waited. Ben had all the time in the world.

  Everybody was going through the motions of being natural, but fidgeting and acting restless and watching Emmett at the same time because we all knew it was time now, and Emmett didn’t have any choice. That was what forced Emmett’s hand, though we knew he would have done it anyway, sooner or later. But maybe we looked a little too anxious to him, when it was only restlessness. It was a long ride from Tascosa. A case of let’s get it over with or else go on home—one way or the other, regardless of whose brother stole the cows.

  Gosh Hall scratched the toe of his boot through the sand, kicking it over the ashes of the dead fire. “About that time, ain’t it, Em?”

  Emmett exhaled like he was very tired. “Yeah, it’s about that time.” He looked at every face, slowly, before turning to his mare.

  ✯✯✯

  It’s roughly a hundred and thirty miles from Tascosa, following the Canadian, to Trementina on the Conchas, then another thirty-five miles south, swinging around Mesa Montosa to Anton Chico, on the Pecos. Counting detours to find water holes and trailing the wrong sign occasionally, that’s about two hundred miles of sun, wind, and New

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  Mexico desert—and all to bring back a hundred head of beef owned by a Chicago company that tallied close to a quarter million all over the Panhandle and north-central Texas.

  The western section of the TX Company was headquartered at Sudan that year, with most of the herds north of Tascosa and strung out west along the Canadian. Emmett Ryan was ramrod of the home crew at Sudan, but he spent a week or more at a time out on the grass with the herds. That was why he happened to be with us when R. D. Perris, the company man, rode in. We were readying to go into Magenta for a few when Perris came beating his mount into camp. Even in the cool of the evening the horse was flaked white and about to drop and Perris was so excited he could hardly get the words out. And finally when he told his story there wasdeadsilence andall youcould hear wasR. D. Perris breathing like his chest was about to rip open.

  Jack Ryan and Frank Butzinger—Frank, who nobody ever gave credit for having any sand—and over a hundred head of beef hadn’t been seen on the west range for three days. R. D. Perris had said, “The tracks follow the river west, but we figured Jack was taking them to new grass. But then the tracks just kept on going.. . .”

  Emmett was silent from that time on. He asked a few questions, but he was pretty sure of the answers before he asked them. There was that talk for weeks about Jack having been seen in Tascosa and Magenta with Joe Anthony. And there weren’t many people friendly with Joe Anthony. In his time, he’d had his picture on wanted dodgers more than once. Two shootings for sure, and a few holdups, but the holdups were just talk. Nobody ever pinned anything on him, and with his gunhand reputation, nobody made any accusations.

  Gosh Hall had seen them together in Magenta and he told Emmett to his face that he didn’t like it; but Emmett had defended him and said Jack was just sowing oats because he was still young and hadn’t got his sense of values yet. But Lloyd Cohane was there that time at the line camp when Emmett dropped in and chewed hell out of Jack for palling with Joe Anthony. Then came the time Emmett walked into the saloon in Tascosa with his gun out and pushed it into Joe Anthony’s belly before Joe even saw him and told him to ride and keep riding.

  Jack was there, drunk like he usually was in town, but he sobered quick and followed Anthony out of the saloon when Emmett prodded him out, and laughed right in Emmett’s face when Em told him to stay where he was. And he was laughing and weaving in the saddle when he rode out of town with Anthony.

  Until that night Perris came riding in with his

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  story, Em hadn’t seen his brother. So you know what he was thinking; what all of us were thinking.

  Riding the two hundred miles to find the herd was part of the job, but knowing you were trailing a friend made the job kind of sour and none of us was sure if we wanted to find the cattle. Jack Ryan was young and wild and drank too much and laughed all the time, but he had more friends than any rider in the Panhandle.

  Like Ben Templin said: “Jack’s a good boy, but he’s got an idea life’s just a big can-can dancer with four fingers of scootawaboo in each hand.” And that was about it.

  ✯✯✯

  The splotch of white that was Anton Chico from a distance gradually got bigger and cleared until finally right in front of us it was gray adobe brick, blocks of it, dull and lifeless in the cold late sunlight. Emmett slowed us to a walk the last few hundred feet approaching the town’s main street and motioned Ben Templin up next to him.

  “Ben,” he said, “you take Dobie with you and cut for that back street yonder and come up behind the livery. Don’t let anybody see you and hush the stableman if he gets loud about what you’re doing. Maybe Butzy’ll come along, Ben—if he isn’t there already.”

  I looked at Emmett watching Ben Templin and Dobie Shaw cut off, and there it was. His old face again. All closed and hard with the crow’s feet streaking from the corners of his eyes. And his mouth tight like it used to be when he thought and ordered men at the same time, because he always knew what he was doing. You could see Emmett knew what he was doing now, that he’d set his mind. And when Emmett Ryan set his mind his pride saw to it that it stayed set.

  Emmett walked his mount down the left side of the narrow main street with the rest of us strung out behind. When he veered over to a hitchrack about halfway down the second block, we veered with him and tied up, straggled along before two store fronts.

  Em stepped up on the boardwalk and moved leisurely toward the Senate House hotel almost at the end of the block. He stopped as he crossed the alley next to the hotel and nodded to Lloyd Cohane, then bent his head toward the alley and moved it in a half-circle over his big shoulders. Lloyd moved off down the alley toward the back of the hotel.