He sat erect on the pony's back and raised his hand to shield the glare from his eyes, looking over the trees below him. Then the other hand raised a carbine high overhead and waved it once in a long sweeping motion. And as if on the signal, gunfire cut the stillness, echoing down the draw.
The Apache clung low to the pony and started to move off, but he was sliding to the side and as the horse broke he fell, grabbing wildly for the mane, and rolled down out of sight. There were more shots, but from below they could see no one.
The Mimbre did not hesitate. Flynn swore. Bowers yelled as he cut past them suddenly. The lead rope turned their horses abruptly, jerked from standstill to dead-run as he swerved out into the draw and back down the way they had come. They dodged after the Mimbre through the scattering of trees and brush scraping mesquite thickets, riding head-down, unable to raise their arms against the branches. The lead rope would slacken, then tighten suddenly to stagger their mounts off balance, though neither of them went down. When they reached open country the Mimbre paused to listen, but now there was no sound of firing. And he moved off again at a sharp right angle, skirting the base of the hills. Soon, though, he angled into the hills again, now leading them much slower.
"You never know, do you?" Bowers said.
"Not in this country."
"It's either rurales or this Lazair," Bowers considered, and when the scout nodded, he said, "Where's he going now?"
"He'll want to take a look before running for home."
"With us along?"
"Maybe he's got plans for us," Flynn said.
They moved up into high country behind the Apache who would stop frequently to listen; climbing slowly because there was no trail, winding into natural switchbacks where the ground rose steeper, transforming itself into jagged rock formations. But always there were dense pines scattered, straggling over the slopes, and they kept to the dimness of the trees most of the time. The sunlight clung to the open areas, coldly reflecting on the grotesque stone shapes-shadowed crevices and the brush clumps that stirred lazily when the wind would rise.
And over it all, a stillness.
For a time, as they climbed, the cry of a verdin followed them. But when they looked up into the trees the bird was never there-hidden against the flat shade of a tree limb. A thin, bodiless cry in the stillness. Just before they stopped they saw the verdin suddenly rise from a cholla bush and disappear into the glare, and they did not hear him again.
The Mimbre led them into a hollow that was steep on three sides with shelf rock, ending abruptly only a dozen yards beyond the brush fringe of the entrance. He dismounted, dropping the Springfield, and approached Flynn's horse.
He looked up at the scout steadily for a moment then moved in close and quickly unstrapped the latigo. He grabbed Flynn's leg suddenly and pulled, dragging him down with his saddle. He moved to Bowers then and did the same thing, and now both of them were on the ground still astride their saddles. If they were to move, they would have to drag the saddles between their legs. The Mimbre picked up the Springfield, then glanced at them once more before disappearing through the brush.
Rest easy, Flynn thought. He saw Bowers begin to strain at the rawhide that was squeezing his wrists and he said quickly, "Not yet!" Bowers looked up and he added quietly, "He's watching us. Give him time to calm down and get out."
"How do you know?"
"Wouldn't you?" Flynn said.
Bowers relaxed, squatting hunched over the saddle, and his fingers moved idly against the saddle horn. It would be easy to drag the saddle over and untie Flynn's hands, since his fingers were free, and he could not understand this. Finally he said, "We can get out of this. Why didn't he tie us to a tree?"
"Because he'd have to free our hands to do it," Flynn said. "He didn't want to take a chance, and this is the next best thing. He's more concerned with those others over in the draw-close friends, maybe a brother."
"Why didn't he kill us?"
"I don't know. Maybe for the same reason Soldado did not."
Bowers frowned. "Which was what?"
"You'd have to ask an Apache," Flynn said.
Bowers said nothing now, listening to the silence, staring up at the shelf rock and the sky directly above them and over the brush fringe at the entrance. The hollow was in deep shadow because now the sun was off to the west. After a time he shook his head wearily.
"It's a god-awful poor way to fight a war," he said.
Flynn looked at him. "What war?"
"Whatever you want to call it then," Bowers said irritably.
"No cannons."
"You can keep the cannon."
"It's a good thing that old Apache doesn't have any."
"Or the rurales…or this Lazair," Bowers said. "I'm trying to make up my mind who's the worst of the three."
Flynn said quietly, "I don't think there's any doubt."
Bowers thought of the wagon train now, and of the girl and what the old Apache had said about the red stones and the white stones and he knew what Flynn meant. And he said nothing. But after a while, after he had thought of Flynn and the girl and Flynn's never mentioning the girl, he became angry and he thought: He's been fighting Apaches so long he acts like one. No emotions. Just a stoicism-like a rock.
They waited for almost two hours, talking in low tones when they did talk, and now there was little light showing over the brush fringe. Then, "It's about that time," Flynn said matter-of-factly. "Let's get out of here."
Bowers looked at him as the cavalry guide rose and dragged over his saddle and pushed it tight against Bowers. His fingers strained away from the rawhide until he touched Bowers' hand, then the fingers worked at the rawhide slowly because the knots were stiff and he did not have the full strength of his hands to use. But finally the thong loosened and Bowers was free. He untied the guide's hands. They passed through the brush cover and moved off in a general southwest direction toward Soyopa.
But when it was full dark, they stopped. A niche in the rocks would protect them from the wind. There was no fire; and before lying down, Flynn placed a semicircle of loose stones out a few yards from the niche. Then they slept; even with the chill and the wind moaning over the rocks. The Apaches had prevented sleep entirely the night before. And the dead had made it fitful the night before that.
They moved off again with the first light, past the circle of stones that were still in place.
"We're above that draw now," Flynn said. "The Mimbre brought us almost clear around it to the other side." He pointed far off over the trees to the wild country that fell below them. "It's down in there somewhere. If we head about that way we'll cross it…maybe find out what happened."
As they moved on, working their way down, Bowers said suddenly, "You've got the biggest capacity for doing things of any man I know."
"It's a big country. Everything in it's big," Flynn said. "The sun's big, the mountains, the deserts, even the bugs. You got to strain to keep up with it, that's all."
"What are you going to get out of this?" Bowers said.
"Sore feet."
"You know what I mean."
"Four dollars a day."
"What else?"
"What do you want, Red, a medal for everything you do?"
"I want a good reason, that's all!"
"Isn't that colonel reason enough?"
"You haven't answered my question."
Flynn's eyes lifted from Bowers and moved along the wall of rocky slope that rimmed this end of the clearing they had entered minutes before. He glanced off in the other direction, at the flat meadow that offered no cover, then back to the rocks and he saw it again-remaining fixed now, a sliver of light pointing out from a crevice in the rocks-like sun reflecting on a gun barrel.
"Mister, you'll have to ask me some other time," he said. "I think we're walking into something."
11
"Hold it there!"
It came abruptly then to stop them fifty feet from the sloping rock wall. Bowers' eyes went over the slope and Flynn said, "About ten o'clock, just above those two boulders." He saw it now, the gun barrel hanging motionless, pointing down through the crevice. No one showed behind it.