“I’m a man of my word, Indian,” said Mann. “You surely would have done well to have gone on your way, quiet.”

  “I will not do what I know is wrong,” replied Cuchillo Oro as he sat down on the single bed in the corner of the cell.

  “Boy!” exclaimed Albie Chesterman. “But he is a real smart-ass, ain’t he?”

  “Hate a smart-ass Indian,” added Sheldon Green, spitting through the heavy bars, nearly hitting Crooked Eye.

  “Worse than an uppity nigra,” threw in his twin brother, Pete, for good measure.

  Larry Feathers didn’t say anything. He just came over and stared at the Apache, his handsome face totally without expression.

  Cuchillo looked back at them, recognizing the type. Small-town mean. Boys with nothing to do but drink and fuck around and get meaner and meaner. He was already beginning to have some second thoughts about taking a stand against Sheriff Thaddeus Mann now that he saw the dogs that ran at his heels.

  The sheriff went on home after a few minutes, leaving his deputies busily demolishing their second bottle of liquor. Their faces were becoming flushed, and their voices louder. Cuchillo recognized the danger signs from previous encounters with drunk whites, and he curled up on the bunk, trying to keep himself out of trouble. But beneath the appearance of dozing, his body was coiled and tense, ready for the attack.

  The main door opened, and in came an elderly man who was hobbling on crutches and struggling with a tray of sandwiches. The four boys started to jeer at him for being a clumsy cripple, but Dave Tardy took no notice of them, laying the crutches against the desk and lowering himself into a chair.

  “Gettin’ colder than a witch’s tits out there,” he said.

  “Could do with some warm tits tonight,” grinned one of the boys. In the hour or so he’d been in the jail, Cuchillo had already worked out their names by listening to their banter. There was nothing else to do, locked away. The Utes had ignored him. Well, that wasn’t totally true. The one on the floor didn’t seem to have come around yet; he was lying still, eyes closed, blood crusting on his face. The one chained to the bars had looked across at the young Apache, but said nothing, his beaten face showing no expression.

  “Should get that cock of your’n round to Teresa’s place,” replied Pete Green.

  Larry Feathers took the banter as his due, spreading his shoulders under the tight shirt, smirking as he touched himself in the groin.

  “Guess I got somethin’ down here that them bitches’d weep for.”

  “If you have the money, son,” said the old man.

  “You, Dave Tardy,” said the one called Chesterman, his voice slow and cold, “would do well to lock that flappin’ lip. Day’ll come and the sheriff ain’t goin’ to be around.”

  Tardy didn’t blink. He rolled himself a cigarette, running a leathery tongue along the paper. “Be round long after you get to lay in the dirt, lookin’ up at the sun with your eyes goin’ blind.”

  “By God, but if I get the job of lawman here, then you’ll not even get ten cents for shovelin’ horseshit from an empty corral,” snapped Albie, uncoiling his 6’ 9” frame and looming menacingly over the cripple.

  “Leave him be, Albie,” called Pete Green.

  “He’s a bastard.”

  “He don’t mean a fuckin’ thing.”

  “I’ll break his other goddamned leg for him and ram it clean up his ass!”

  Tardy chuckled at the threat, puffing smoke past the boy. Green carried on, trying to spread a little oil on the bitterly troubled waters.

  “Shut up, Dave. Let it alone.”

  “I mean it, Pete,” said the skinny teenager, one hand hovering around his right hip where he kept a Peacemaker tied fashionably low. Too low, Cuchillo Oro had considered, figuring that the boy would have to reach down that extra inch or so too far if he came up against a really top gun—someone like Jed Herne or that ex-cavalryman that the Apache had been hearing a lot about recently. Crow, he was called.

  “He’ll keep quiet,” said Green. “Won’t you, Dave?” He interpreted the silence as agreement. “There. Honestly, Albie. Sincerely, I mean it. Trust me.”

  “I trust you, brother,” said Sheldon Green, “just round ’bout as far as I can spit raccoon crap.”

  There was a brief silence in the jailhouse, and Larry Feathers walked over and stared closely at the prisoner shackled to the cell wall.

  “Guess we’ll let him down for the night.”

  “No. Leave the old buzzard,” said Albie Chesterman.

  “What have they done?” asked Cuchillo Oro, unable to hold back his curiosity.

  “Mr. Mann says how you’re somethin’ real special for a stinkin’ Indian,” replied Pete Green, who stopped picking his nose and stared at the golden knife that lay on the sheriff’s desk where he’d thrown it. All of them had looked at it, each boy wishing that it was his. But Mann’s word still ran, and none of them would have dared steal it.

  “Yeah. Killed lots of soldiers, didn’ya? Not that it bothers us. Few blue bellies here or there don’t mean a whistlin’ shit to us.”

  There was a murmur of agreement from the rest of them, except for Dave Tardy, who sat quietly smoking. He shifted as his severed leg pained him, like it always did when the weather was going to change. Some cold mornings he would swear he could feel cold in the toes he’d lost so long back. The cell keys at his belt jangled with his movement, tinkling like the bells on a far-off sleigh.

  “I did not hear your answer to my question about these Utes. They are old men.”

  “Sure are,” agreed Larry Feathers. “Not like you. Surely are a big bastard, ain’t he? Must be close to my height.”

  “The answer?” repeated Cuchillo, patiently. “I do not hear it.” He wished that he hadn’t begun to ask, sensing that this could be the moment they would all come piling in the cell after him. They’d beat him to the floor and then go to work on him with their boots, snapping ribs and battering him unconscious so that he could no longer roll and try and protect his groin and face.

  Then he would die.

  It could have been the moment, but it passed. The good old boys hadn’t drunk enough to make them sufficiently killing mean. And, the truth was, all of them were just a touch scared of the big Indian. None of them wanted to be first in through that barred door—except for Albie Chesterman, who had no fear of anything, no sense of humor and no love for anything or anyone.

  So they stayed where they were and talked to Cuchillo. They told him about Crooked Eye and Wounded Bear, the trouble they had with drunk Indians. They talked about how Sheriff Mann was too damned soft and how they preferred to deal with troublemaking nigras and Indians and Mexes and chinks themselves.

  “Some of them gets accidents,” laughed Feathers.

  “Sure, Hoss. They fall down the steps in the jailhouse here,” said one of the twins.

  Cuchillo was puzzled for a moment, thinking that he had not properly understood Sheldon’s comment. He wondered why it caused such choking mirth.

  “There are no stairs here.”

  “That’s it, ’pache. Got it first shot. You sure are one clever mission-taught Indian, ain’t you. Yeah, got it first damned shot.”

  Finally, as time wore on, their beds became attractive to them. Dave Tardy raised himself quietly from his chair and unlocked the manacles on the wrists of the old Ute, allowing him to slump to his knees. The young boys turned and watched curiously, saying nothing, then they returned to their drinking and cards. The warrior on the floor blinked himself back to the world, and the two old Indians crawled and sat close together in the corner of the cell farthest away from Cuchillo.

  The Apache was feeling tired. He had a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach that the whites would not allow him free of their township without exacting some kind of a toll from him—toll that would be paid for with blood and bones and, possibly, with his life. What was one Indian more or less to them?

  He loosened the long scarf of patterned cotton from around his forehead and let it lie on his lap. He fumbled in his breeches’ pocket as he rolled half on his side to get more comfortable. There were three or four small coins in there that the sheriff hadn’t bothered to remove. Cuchillo took them out and began to roll them in his fingers, placing them on his headband and then moving them again.

  It was all some kind of a game designed to pass the time.

  It was around midnight when the deputies left, kicking their chairs over and breaking the bottles into a can at the corner of the office. They muttered goodnights to Dave Tardy, but the old man studiously ignored them. They slammed the outer door behind them, finally leaving the building in silence. After around five minutes, the last of the town’s lawmen shifted and craned around in his chair, looking at the three prisoners.

  “Any of you want anything? Can’t offer you a four-course meal, but we got bread and some biscuits. There’s some salt pork out back. Water?” None of them answered him. The Utes were locked in their own misery.

  Cuchillo finally looked up at the white man. “I want nothing, but I thank you.”

  “Speak good English, Indian. Sorry to see you locked up here with that rubbish.”

  “That rubbish has been made by your people,” replied Cuchillo. “Once they were whole men; now they are not. It has been the whites that have butchered and taken women and robbed my people.”

  Tardy shook his head. “Guess there’s something in that. Thaddeus Mann and me ain’t really whole. Couple of old desperadoes waiting for that last train to the depot, that’s us.”

  “How did you lose the leg?” Cuchillo was interested in the old-timer, sensing that he lacked the bitterness and hostility of the four boys. But the Apache still would not trust any white man—or woman.

  “Ox wagon. Rolled on me in mud on a steep grade. Sheriff’s crippled too.”

  “I did not see it.”

  Tardy croaked his laughter and reached for his crutch. He stood up and hobbled clumsily nearer to the bars. “Some scars you see. Some you don’t. Thaddeus had a bad time in the War. Lost loved ones. You know?”

  Cuchillo nodded. “Yes. I know of losing loved ones.” His mind slipped back through time and space to his wife and baby, who were slaughtered years past by Cyrus Pinner. But the pig-faced pony-soldier had also gone that long road to follow them.

  “Sure I can’t do somethin’ for you? Or some water to clean up those boys? Not that there’s a lot of point in botherin’ with that. Hoss, Albie and the twins’ll be back on the morrow for some more funnin’ with them.”

  “Funning?”

  “They call it. What you see there ain’t nothin’, son.” Tardy pointed through the bars at Wounded Bear and Crooked Eye, both liberally slobbered with dried and drying blood.

  “They will beat them?” asked Cuchillo, who rose slowly from his bunk and took a couple of steps toward the friendly old cripple.

  “Sure as sun comes up over thither and sinks hither. Beat the crap out of ’em. And as for you, they’ll—” Then he stopped, knowing he’d crossed a line he shouldn’t have gone over. He turned away again. The keys jingled once more at the broad leather belt.

  One of the Utes muttered something to Cuchillo, but it was said low, and he wasn’t that familiar with their tongue. But he caught the word “hang.” And that was about all he needed to hear.

  “I have broken no law.”

  “Sheriff told you to move on, boy. Kind of foolish of you not to do that. Thaddeus does things by his lawbook, or he don’t do ’em at all. Ain’t many times he don’t do ’em.”

  “He seems an honest man.”

  “Sure is. That’s why those young cock-wavers can’t stomach him. Moment Thaddeus dies or moves on, then Pine’s Peak goes with him. And that’s the damned truth, Apache. Since the trains never came, the place’s been like a man on the edge of the drop, keeping hold with his fingertips. Sheriff goes and the town lets go.”

  “What about you?”

  Cuchillo had moved close to the bars, standing easy and relaxed. He saw the leather purse and his golden knife lying side by side on the desk. The few poor possessions of the old Utes were with them—nothing but some small change and a couple of narrow skinning knives. He allowed his headband to dangle in his good left hand, almost as though he’d forgotten it.

  Almost.

  “Now you sure ’bout some water? I’m about to get me some sleep, and I feel bad about not doin’ something for you poor bastards. Never harmed me much.”

  Tardy and Cuchillo were face to face. The deputy was leaning heavily on his crutch. The tall Apache smiled gently at him. “I think you are not a bad man, Deputy.”

  The white man came close to blushing. “Well … I don’t rightly … Thank you kindly for that.” He paused. “I sure wish there was somethin’ that I could do to help you … but you … Hell, you—”

  “There is something.”

  “Sure. What? I could maybe rouse out some grits to go with that pork.” He laughed, the laughter turning into a coughing fit that doubled him over. His face turned red, his eyes watered, his fingers were clawing at the palms of his hands as he fought for breath.

  Cuchillo watched him in silence, turning once to look at the other Indians in the cell. They both stayed still, staring back at him without the least flicker of expression on their faces.

  “Hellfire and bastard death!” spat Tardy, finally regaining control. “Get that stinkin’ chokin’, and I run clean out of breath. Where was we?”

  “I asked for something,” said the Apache, looking calmly at the crippled old man, who was so eager to please and help. But he was not eager enough to let him out of the jail and save his life.

  “What?”

  “That.” Cuchillo pointed past him to the desk, and Tardy turned to look and see what it was that the Indian wanted.

  Less than a half minute after that Deputy Dave Tardy of Pine’s Peak was dead.

  Chapter Five

  CUCHILLO HAD ONCE met a man from the land of India, in a border cantina, three-parts drunk and nearly four-parts dead from a consumption that spotted the front of his shirt with blood each time he coughed. They’d started talking, and the conversation had drifted inexorably toward the subject of death. The little Indian had fled from his homeland, pursued by the British, to the sea. He was wanted for a series of religious killings.

  He had worshiped a brutal goddess whose name, as Cuchillo recalled it, was Kali, and he had killed for her. But the way he had done it fascinated the Apache. Despite his illness, the dark-skinned assassin had shown him the skill—the art of the “toog” or “thug,” of strangling in the dark from behind by using only a long scarf and a silver coin to weight one corner. The Indian had tied a dollar in the long scarf he wore around his neck. He was standing behind Cuchillo, who had been braced and ready to parry the attack. But the Apache had been too slow. There had been the faintest hissing in the air, and then it was as though a powerful snake had locked itself around his windpipe. The thug had snatched the loose end as it whipped around, locking Cuchillo’s wrists and pulling. It wasn’t hard enough to kill, though he was very drunk, but it pulled hard enough to earn the tall warrior’s grudging admiration.

  One of the things that Cuchillo Oro was very good at was remembering what mattered. He never bothered to clutter up his mind with useless facts, but when something came along that might one day be of some use to him, then it was locked firmly away.

  While he’d been lying on the bunk, playing with the few coins left to him, the Apache had contrived to knot them into one corner of his long cotton headband, which he was holding loosely in his hand as he talked to the deputy. The weight hung low, and Cuchillo took care that he didn’t allow it to clink against the bars. Then, as Dave Tardy turned away from him and looked back into the office, Cuchillo had made his move. He was as fast and lethal as a prairie rattler so that the white man died not truly knowing what had happened to him.

  Tardy had looked across, seeing only the great golden hilt of the cinquedea gleaming in the light from the oil lamp. It was a beautiful object. The rough gold was studded with semi-precious stones, and he wondered if the Apache seriously expected him to hand it over.

  Then he was choking. The familiar tightness was gripping his throat, squeezing the breath from his lungs, making him blink in shock at the suddenness and speed of the attack. Doc Whiteside had warned him that he might get a shortness of breath if he carried on smoking at the rate he did, but he hadn’t expected it to be so total.

  He opened his mouth to try and speak, but the pressure was too great, making his eyes water. He seemed stuck to the bars, and he struggled to move. As his jaw gaped, he was barely aware of something around his neck, locking him upright like a steel band. It had to be the arm of that big Apache who’d wanted … what? Something he’d … He was holding him upright, supporting him.

  Tardy’s eyes closed, and his tongue protruded black and swollen from his crimson lips. His eyes opened again and blinked furiously, feeling as if they threatened to burst out of their sockets. It was awful, more painful than any attack he’d ever had. His chest was heaving for breath and not finding any through the constricted windpipe.

  Cuchillo held him tight, hands locked behind the man’s neck. Behind him he was aware that both Utes had risen to their feet at the sight of the attack, but they presented no threat, and he ignored them.

  Tardy’s foot stamped on the floor like a petulant child, and his hands groped at Cuchillo’s forearm, which was clamped across his throat. Tardy touched it and felt relieved that someone was saving him from toppling to the boards. The keys jangled furiously as he jerked and tugged, and his crutches fell away from him, rattling against the back of the desk.

  Blackness was closing in on Dave Tardy, and his last conscious thought was of gratitude to the big Apache for supporting him through the final crippling attack of breathlessness.

 

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