Hondo (1953) Page 11

  “It better be tomorrow.” He said the words suddenly. “I’m going back.”

  “It’ll be tomorrow.”

  Hondo Lane had made dry camp in the gully. It was also a camp without fire. He was drawing too near to his objective now to take any chances. Also, there had been occasional dust along his backtrail, and once his eye had caught a flash of sunlight on some moving object behind him.

  He could be mistaken, of course. But somebody seemed to be trailing him—somebody not an Indian. The bed he had chosen was in a small open space in the middle of a thicket of mountain mahogany and prickly pear. There was a little catclaw, too. In this place he could sleep without fear, for nothing human could approach his bed without making considerable noise.

  On the soft sand he hollowed a place for his hips and rolled in his blankets and ground sheet. He slept, as always, gun in hand.

  His saddle lay beside him, his rifle in the scabbard, and his horse was picketed a few feet away. Sam crept under the brush on his belly and put his dark muzzle down on his paws and looked at the man he loved.

  The man had strange ways, but he was Sam’s friend, and they understood each other. And upon this night Sam too was restless. Twice that day his nostrils had caught a vague smell, faintly familiar, but scarcely tangible. Sam was uneasy, no more.

  A quarter of a mile apart three men looked at the night sky. One was discontented with his situation, but ready to accept the profits of murder; the second was thinking first of murder and second of profit; and the third, lying on the sand among the thorns and brush, thought of a cabin, of the firelight on a woman’s face, and of her shadow on the wall as he tried to go to sleep.

  The moving shadow of a woman on a wall, and the faint sounds of a woman working. It had been a long time, a long, lonely, restless time, since he had heard such sounds.

  The lineback had found some grass. He pulled at it, then ate. The sound of his moving jaws was pleasantly relaxing. The man who thought of a woman went to sleep.

  Twice in the night the dog awakened and looked at the man, then listened with pricked ears. Had he heard something, far off? He listened and the night listened around him, and there was no sound, and the dark muzzle lowered to the paws against the sand, and the dog’s eyes closed, and the horse, too, lay down.

  A coyote moved to the arroyo’s edge and lifted his nose to the sky, but catching the scent of dog and man, it moved warily away.

  Three miles to the south and west a Mescalero walked up a trail, then suddenly stopped. His feet, sensitive through the moccasins, detected something wrong in the path. He knelt, his fingers explored, and he found the indentation made by a horseshoe.

  He muttered something to the others, who gathered around him, and the three stood talking in undertones and looking away to the north and east. Then they walked their horses into a hollow hand of hills and prepared to wait until morning.

  There was a white man ahead of them, and possibly more than one. These were scalps to be had, coups to be counted, and they would return to their village men made stronger by the death of enemies. Their dark faces relaxed and they did not talk. And then they, too, went to sleep.

  And the planet turned slowly in the vast night sky, and the stars looked down, and there was a smell of damp and coolness in the air. Far over the mountains low clouds gathered. Perhaps the planting rain?

  Under a quiet sky the planet turned, and horses ate, and men slept, and death waited for morning.

  A bright star hung like a distant lamp in the sky when Hondo opened his eyes. He did not lie still. To awaken was to rise, and he did so now, getting swiftly to his feet, buckling on his gun belt, bolstering the gun, and drawing on his boots.

  Sam came to his feet with one swift, unnoticed motion as Hondo rolled his bed. The dog growled low, and Hondo looked up at him, watching.

  The Indians were near, and their moving disturbed a rattler, which coiled and sent out a short, sharp warning. Hondo relaxed, but Sam growled.

  “Cut it out, Sam! I can hear him.”

  Yet in that instant, his perceptions sharpened by danger, he sensed something else. The dog was disturbed as he had not seen him before, and the dog was not directing his attention toward the sound of the rattler.

  There was a frozen instant when Hondo’s ears caught at sound, when with the instincts of a wild thing he dropped suddenly and rolled over the bank beneath its added protection, backed by the deeper portion of the brush-choked gully. As he moved, one swift grab slid the Winchester into his hands.

  And after that single, violent, animal-like dive for safety, all was still, unmoving. And the movement itself had been relatively soundless.

  Now Hondo lay still, listening, scarcely able to breathe. A bee buzzed near, landed on a bush. Hondo could see the texture of the wings, the flexing of the tiny muscles of the body. Sam was quiet. The lineback, seemingly aware of the sudden tension, was still. Not a sound disturbed the clear, bell-like beauty of the morning. There was nothing.

  And then there was.

  Two riders showed up suddenly on the canyon rim, rifles ready, starkly outlined against the morning.

  Lowe and Phalinger had ridden their horses forward through soft sand. At first they considered crawling to the rim, but Lowe was aware of the dog’s danger, and had no desire to come upon the big mongrel suddenly. It would be a simple matter to ride right up to the rim, keeping a spacing of about twenty yards, then fire. Hondo Lane would be offered two snots, which was sure to make him hesitate an instant if he saw them at all, and they could cut him down.

  The plan was perfect—up to a point. They had not counted on the alertness of Hondo Lane or the hearing of Sam.

  Nor did they know about the Apaches.

  Phalinger liked no part of it. His heart was pounding and his mouth was dry. He had no breakfast, and he desperately wanted coffee. They had killed their whisky during the long night and his nerves were jumpy. It was too quiet. Moreover, he was moved by the beauty of the morning. Something deep within him seemed urging him to stop, to breathe, to enjoy. This was something one could not buy in bottles. It was bright, clear, all too beautiful.

  Phalinger had killed. He had shot men in the back, and he would not hesitate to do so again. Yet he loved life and loved it dearly, and in that awful moment of realization he saw in the clear, sharp beauty of the morning what wasted years he had left behind. He looked over at Lowe, started to speak.

  And he hesitated. Lowe was alert, tense. His rifle was ready. Lowe was a killer, as are many cowardly things, and he could not accept that there should live things and persons superior to him. Angie’s father had always been a better man, but wanting the ranch, Ed Lowe had played a game, fooling the father more successfully than he could ever fool the daughter.

  Their horses walked in the soft earth. They moved forward, step by step. Before them their view of the arroyo widened, the morning grew brighter. The sun lay against the far bank and at their backs, for they had circled for this advantage, so that Hondo would have to fire into the glare of the sun.

  Phalinger heard a bird call. He heard the soft fall of his horses hoofs. A leaf brushed his face, and off across the far hills there were low clouds. The very canyons, moraines, and hanging valleys showed sharply clear in the bright air. He liked the feel of the horse moving under him, liked the smell of it. He liked the smell of sage, and of crushed cedar. … Why had he waited so long to realize this?

  Lowe caught his eye with a signal. Phalinger’s rifle came up. It was live or die now. They breasted the slope.

  They saw the rolled blankets, the open space in the brush, the linebacked horse … and nothing else!

  In that single, awful moment of awareness, both men were caught, suspended, in the moment. Both had expected a target, were ready for it … and there was nothing.

  Then from Phalinger’s far right a flash of sunlight on a rifle barrel turned his head. For one swift, stark moment he saw the Apache, saw the dark, slim body, saw the rifle muzzle not forty y
ards away, and knew he looked upon death.

  He lifted his rifle, and heard soft, gasping words torn from him. “Oh, God!” And then the rifle bullet smashed into his law, tearing through his throat, and he fell.

  His horse sprang from under him. Vaguely he heard other shots, but they were not for him, nor was he for them. He lay flat on his face with the taste of blood and earth in his mouth and he was choking and he was seeing again the bright morning he had left, and with his last muscular effort he rolled over to look at the sky.

  There was a white cloud there, so small, so lonely, so white against the vast blue dome of the morning. For day had come. It was here, and Phalinger looked up at the sky and saw the cloud fade and knew he was gone and he tried to speak past the blood and there were no words, there was nothing any more…

  One moment there had been nothing and then the two riders appeared on the skyline. Their wide separation rang a bell of warning in Hondo’s brain, but at the same time he knew that while it was this that had disturbed Sam, it was not this that had disturbed the rattler. And the crash of shots told him he was right.

  He saw the nearer man drop, saw him hit the ground, heard a thin, despairing cry. Then he saw the other man drop also.

  The Apaches had been following Hondo Lane. They had not expected two men. They had no reason to believe there could be three.

  To count coup upon the body of a dead enemy is not so great a glory as to do it upon a living one. All three Apaches sprang suddenly forward … into death.

  The nearest Apache was a tall, splendidly built man, and he sprang eagerly, rifle held high. Hondo Lane’s bullet took him under the breastbone, striking at an angle, and ripped out of his side below the heart. The splendid leap was the last movement, for when the Apache touched the ground all that amazing wiry strength was dead, a blasted, wasted thing, giving blood to the sand.

  Hondo fired swiftly, saw the second man go down, the third vanish.

  For an instant Hondo lay still. The second white man to be shot by the Apaches had fallen from his horse into the arroyo. Worming his way through the brush, Hondo made it to his side. It was Ed Lowe.

  Even as he reached his side and laid down his rifle, the remaining warrior leaped from the brush into the saddle of Phalinger’s horse and was gone from sight.

  Hondo checked Lowe, then sat back on his heels. “You’re not hurt too bad.”

  Lowe, badly shaken, sat up. Some color was returning to his face. There was blood on his shirt. He drew a picture from his shirt pocket. “This tintype saved me.”

  The bullet had struck his chest at a flat angle and, hitting the tintype, had glanced away, tearing the skin beyond it with a burn rather than a wound.

  Hondo Lane got to his feet, picking up his rifle. “I wish that Indian hadn’t got away. All the Apaches between here and the post will be alerted now.”

  “You mean we’re cut off?”

  “What else?” Lane turned to study the terrain carefully. It was time to move. No telling how far away there were other Indians.

  As Lane turned away, Ed Lowe realized two things: Here was the man he had come to kill, and there was only one horse left—Lane’s horse.

  Hondo heard the sudden sharp growl from Sam. He sidestepped quickly as he turned and saw the flash of Lowe’s gun. Hondo fired his rifle from the hip and the bullet smashed Ed Lowe back to the sand. His muscles convulsed, bringing him almost erect. Hondo Lane did not fire again.

  Lowe came almost up, then fell, and there was no sound in the brightness of the desert morning. Hondo looked down at what had been Angie’s husband, then picked up the tintype. It was a picture of Johnny.

  He dropped to the sand, his face gray and ghastly, holding the tintype and his rifle and realization. And Sam came close and nudged against him, whining softly. And this time he was allowed to come close.

  Chapter Thirteen

  For an hour of lonely biding there had been no life upon the desert. The sun was high, and sweat trickled down Hondo’s neck, and the body of the lineback became dark with stain. And before them stretched the vast and rolling plain of sand, rock, and cactus that is the desert of the Southwest.

  Here there was no moment of security. Somewhere out there the escaped Apache had joined his friends, and somewhere those hard and tireless desert fighters were moving out, beginning their search for him.

  Desert … but a desert strangely alive. Not a dead land, but a land where all life is born with a fire, a thorn, a sting. Yet a strong land, a rich land for the man who knows it. One cannot fight the desert and live. One lives with it, or one dies. One learns its way and its life, and moves with care, and never ceases to be wary, for the desert has traps and tricks for the careless.

  The lineback walked with dainty feet, knowing this land, knowing its fears and its dangers. And on his back Hondo Lane never ceased to watch, taking in each small shadow, each dark rock, each possible place of cover before moving on. Once, riding along a rocky hillside, he followed the fresh trail of a deer. Suddenly the animal’s tracks broke sharply to the left and into the bottom.

  Hondo swung the lineback and followed, his hand ready for his rifle. Whatever the deer had seen or heard might now be gone, but he was not gambling. Later he came upon the fresh trail of a mountain lion. Probably not Apaches, then.

  He followed down the arroyo until it widened into a small valley where a stream flowed, cottonwood and willow lining its banks. Riding into the brush, he dismounted. Then, slipping off his boots, he walked back, brushing out his trail and leaving the tracks pointed toward the water as if to ride in or cross the stream.

  Then he retreated carefully, avoiding branches. Wild game will not step on fallen branches. Neither would an Indian. Only a horse, a cow, or a white man would be so foolish. The weight of the horse or cow or man would break the branch into finer pieces and press it into the ground. Hondo retreated with care, and when he was in the shelter of the trees he loosened the girth on the saddle and sat down with his back against a tree.

  It was not yet noon, at least an hour short of it, but the heat was great despite the time of year, and he must conserve both his horse’s strength and his own. He chewed on some jerky and hardtack while the horse cropped grass, then went down to the stream through the thick brush and drank. Then he emptied his canteen and refilled it with cold, fresh water.

  After an hour’s rest he pulled on his boots and tightened the girth. At the edge of the small grove where he had waited, he studied the terrain with care before moving out. Knowing the Apaches, he had no idea they would lose his trail. All he could do would be to delay their pursuit as much as possible. Yet now, when he left the grove, he rode swiftly forward, following down the stream bed, using the concealment of its trees. He left the creek on a shelf of rock and rode straight up the side of the valley. The last few feet was a hard scramble, but they topped the crest and were immediately off the ridge.

  A wide, long valley opened before him, dotted with the tall sentinel fingers of saguaro and the serrated ridge of an upthrust ledge that cut down the opposite wall. It was of dark, sun-blackened roek. The lineback was rested and he moved out eagerly.

  Suddenly a startled bird flew up some distance off, and instantly Hondo swung the lineback. The Apaches broke into sight scarcely seconds later, but the lineback was already running. With wild, shrill yells the Indians booted their ponies and the chase was on.

  The lineback was a fast, powerful animal with fire and a love of running. He took to it now, mane flying, nose into the wind. Glancing back, Hondo saw he was gaining ground, and suddenly he heard a whining yelp from Sam, and turning back he saw four more Indians coming down off the ridge ahead of him. To turn to avoid them was to lose distance, but there was no help for it. He swung the racing horse into a branching canyon and went up the side on a long angle.

  There were at least eight Apaches behind him now, and they had gained ground. He went up the ridge and then suddenly before him there was a long gray slide of shale. There was
no stopping. The lineback plunged into it, lost footing and went down. Sam was racing close and he was lost in the swirl of dust. The horse scrambled madly, fighting for a foothold, got it, and Hondo went back into the saddle and then he saw Sam come out of the dust on three legs.

  With a quick glance back at the Indians, Hondo bent and scooped the injured dog into his arms, and then they were racing away again.

  The time lost was too much. The Apaches had gained, and even as he cleared the ridge they converged around him. There was no chance to grab a gun with the dog in his arms, and they sprang from their horses and knocked him from the saddle. He struck out viciously, the dog leaped away, snapping at Silva, who was one of the attackers, but then the Indians were all over him.

  Hondo Lane was thrown on his face and his hands were jerked behind him and lashed hard with rawhide.

  A few yards away Sam stood, growling, waiting the expected command to attack. It was not given. Hondo glanced around. Nine Indians.

  Silva’s eyes went to Sam, and he turned and barked a request at the nearest warrior for his bow and an arrow.

  Hondo jerked his head around. “Sam! Vete, Sam! Vete!”

  Instantly the big dog wheeled and darted into the brush, making fast time even with his bad lee. Once back in the brush he crouched and crawled back, lying in the brush, growling low in his chest, but securely out of sight.

  Silva walked to Hondo and struck him across the face. There was cold triumph in his eyes. There would be a big time in the village this night. This man was strong. If he had courage, he might live a long time. … But why delay? Why wait until night? He could sing of his deeds when they returned, and the man was here, now.

  “The white man speaks our language,” he said. “It is good. He will know his treatment in advance.”

  “Your coup stick shows many scalps.”

  “Truly.”

  Hondo spoke slowly, clearly, and with contempt thick upon the words. He knew the Apache, knew the words would lash his fury. “You took them from squaws and papooses and dogs. Your lodge should be proud of you.”