He’d left the well-broken-in manila throw-rope buckled to the off swell to add to the picture, since far more cowhands than lawmen rode as if they might be chasing cows.
It was an even-money bet he was wasting time and effort as he rode on into the golden sunset with the mountains he meant to ride over rising blood-red behind him in the lavender eastern sky. For it was one thing to swear a Jicarilla police sergeant to secrecy, and another to assume neither he nor his moon-faced wife would confide a bit to their own kith and kin.
But half a chance was better than none and well worth the taking when it wasn’t costing more than a couple of extra hours on a cool clear-weather trail through pleasant scenery.
Though the glowing light made it tougher to make out all the details, he could still see why the Jicarilla might not want to leave for any uncertain surroundings to the south. That fool report he’d read back in Denver said the BIA wanted to move the Jicarilla for their own good. The government was always moving Indians somewhere else as a way to improve their condition, and the Cherokee were still cussing Andrew Jackson for it after all these years. The report on the Jicarilla failed to mention the New Mexican cattle interests who’d cussed poor U. S. Grant for setting aside all this mountain greenery for Apache rascals who’d fought the New Mexico militia to a draw. Both Anglo and Mexican settlers had been fuming and fussing over all that swell range being wasted on fool Indians who didn’t know how you made real money on marginal range and semi-arid woodlands. The scenery along the way was too pretty for high country being managed for real money.
He was well out of sight from the Dulce Agency when he turned in the saddle to see a big fat star winking down at him from a purple sky. He kept riding away from it as he recited to his ponies:
“Star light, star bright, Same star I saw last night. Wish I may, wish I might, See a different star some night.”
Then he swung south, away from the track, saying aloud, “We’ll see where this shallow dry wash leads us by moonrise. Ought to be able to circle Dulce and make her up around the eagle nests without too many Jicarilla spotting us in the moonlight. They don’t find moonlight as romantic as us white eyes. They won’t even go raiding after dark before they work up a powerful medicine against the evil eyes most folks call stars.”
Longarm had more than one good reason to follow the southward-trending wash as darkness fell all around. The broad sandy bottom was easier for his eyes to make out, even as the steep, brush-rimmed banks on either side screened anyone moving along it. Best of all, since the snakes preferred twilight time for supper, neither the critters they hunted nor the diamondbacks themselves had any call to be scampering about in the open with two full-grown ponies crunching sand their way. High Apacheria got too cold for a sand-loving sidewinder on many a night, and the critters only bred where they could make it through the whole year.
Longarm figured they’d worked at least three miles south of the Dulce Agency when the big full moon popped up from behind the crags to the east as orange as a pumpkin ready for pie. So the next time they crossed a deer trail headed the right way, he reined in, changed mounts, and took it.
There was much to be said for mankind’s way of laying trails the way men wanted to go and to hell with a few dips or rises. But riding a strange mount in unfamiliar territory, Longarm preferred to work his way along trails laid out by other four-legged critters. Deer, being in less of a hurry and having no call to work harder than they needed to, tended to wind along contour lines a man would have a tough time following even in better light. So neither pony gave him any trouble as they wound their way ever eastward with the light improving as the rising moon got whiter while appearing to be getting smaller. Longarm had won cow camp bets on that optical illusion. You proved your point by aiming at the moon, high and low, with a calibrated gunsight. It still looked all wrong, but measurement was measurement.
The Continental Divide wasn’t always where the mountains rose highest. The uncertain dotted line on the map indicated where the falling rain wound up running down to sea level one way or the other. So while Longarm had to get over the official Continental Divide, it wasn’t nearly as high in these parts as in the Sangre de Cristos on the far side of the upper Rio Grande. Geology courses wouldn’t take four years if this old earth had been stuck together simply.
They still had some climbing to do before midnight and, deer not really caring which way the rivers might flow to the seas, they had to cut straighter and steeper as the rises got more serious. Few of the scattered crags and none of the passes rose above the timberline in this stretch of the Divide, but the juniper and pine thinned out to where the moonlight lit up plenty of open shortgrass, and Longarm was pleased to see they were making good time, considering he was riding strange ridges with no map but the more familiar stars up yonder.
It was a shame, or a blessing, that the folks called Apache had never yet learned to eat fish or admire stars. For mountain trout stuffed with onion-flavored blue-eyed grass and baked in ‘dobe on the coals were fit to serve Queen Victoria, while the stars at this altitude made the black velvet sky seem spattered with diamond dust, at least where bigger fireflies weren’t winking their asses down at you. It sure beat all how every nation seemed to pick some damned harmless thing to worry about. Pawnee just loved to stare up at the sky at night, and thought all the stars had names and medicines for anyone smart enough to ask the right star the right way. Most Indians looked at the stars the same as most whites. So why in thunder did the notorious night raiders of the Na-dene persuasion think moonlit or even starlit nights were so unlucky?
A couple of furlongs on a big fat star near the skyline winked out on him, and he reined in to reach thoughtfully for his saddle gun before he decided aloud, “Rocky outcrop on the next ridge. Ask a foolish question and Mother Nature just might answer. Of course you’d worry about stars giving your position away if you were running a ridge in search of harmful fun. But did the medicine men make up cautionary tales about evil stars just to make sure their young men raided on really overcast evenings?”
Mother Nature didn’t answer. So he set the question aside, not being a fool Indian who had to worry about it. As gents reputed to delight in blood and slaughter—or maybe because they did study war so much—Na-dene speakers sure gave themselves a lot of things to worry about. Like the unrelated Cheyenne, the so-called Apache seemed to have a horror of death all out of proportion to their delight in dishing it out. Nobody mutilated fallen enemies worse than those two nations, because nobody was as worried about their victims coming back from the dead. Longarm could see a certain logic in the otherwise spiteful practice of maiming and laming a fallen enemy after you’d killed him deader than a turd in a milk bucket. The Cheyenne admired cut-off bow or trigger fingers, while the Apache went for the eyes and feet. They called ghosts of any dead folks chindi, and just hated it when they met a chindi with its eyes and feet intact. For there was no way to kill somebody a second time, and how did you outrun or dodge a spook when it had its full power to play hide-and-seek with a poor mortal?