Comancheros (A Cheyenne Western. Book 7) Page 8

  Honey Eater stared into those eyes like two chips of obsidian, took in the machete in its shoulder scabbard, the cavalry pistol so huge its muzzle ended nearly at his knee. And in that moment a cold shudder moved up her spine as she realized: This half-breed with the short-cropped hair and reptile eyes was more cold and dangerous and murderous than both Indians put together.

  ~*~

  Touch the Sky felt his desperation increasing with every heartbeat.

  He was ensconced below the rimrock of Blanco Canyon, evenly spaced from the other three in his band. All four Cheyennes had watched, the bitter gall of anger rising in their throats, as the Mexican-Apache half-breed below had inspected their women as if they were meat.

  But Touch the Sky, who had been nearly sick with worry ever since the unknown Cheyenne woman had been tortured, had not spotted Honey Eater below. Nor was he close enough to hear her singing. Now the question plagued him in a litany that would not stop: Was Honey Eater dead?

  Clearly this half-breed was a slave trader. So why wasn’t Honey Eater among the others if she were still alive? But on the other hand, why would their enemies kill the one woman who would bring in the best price? Perhaps they meant to keep her for themselves—or even worse, perhaps they had already defiled her with rape, and Honey Eater had found some way to kill herself rather than live with such shame. Not seeing her below gave rise to various possibilities, all harrrowing.

  Even in the midst of all these troubling speculations, Touch the Sky became aware of it: an odd tingling in his scalp.

  Arrow Keeper’s words drifted back to him now from the hinterland of memory:

  This mission will be among the most dangerous of your life. You are learning to be a shaman. You must rely on the language of your senses and strong medicine too, not just the warrior way.

  Following a hidden impulse, Touch the Sky suddenly shifted his attention from the canyon floor below to the scrub brush just beneath his position.

  He stared, stared harder, squinted. Finally he realized what he was looking at, and his face broke out in cold sweat.

  Hidden just below him, nearly naked and cleverly camouflaged with mud and brush, was an Apache brave!

  Chapter Ten

  “You’re sure Aragon was by himself?” Tom Riley said.

  The Papago Indian scout named Rain Dancer nodded.

  “That means he won’t be transporting any prisoners soon, then,” Riley said. “He must know there are Cheyennes somewhere in the area.”

  Again Rain Dancer nodded. “This is why he rides alone.”

  “I don’t want to push my luck,” Riley said, speculating out loud. His platoon was patrolling the wagon road just north of the Llano, a vital commerce link between the St. Louis settlements and Santa Fe. He had ordered his men to picket their horses and make a nooning. “By treaty, the Blanco Canyon is Comanche territory. If we ride too close too often, we’re pushing their hand for a retaliation raid against the settlers.”

  But Riley was determined now to keep a close eye on this situation. For one thing, the Comanchero slave trading was getting out of hand. Some argued that what the Indians did to their own was no business of the white man’s. But Riley had learned it wasn’t as simple as the newspaper editorials made it sound. Sometimes, in a desperate bid to buy their loved ones back, Indians would kidnap whites and ransom them. Then the angry citizens lashed out at the Army for being “soft” on Indians.

  Besides, recently, when his men had chased the Kiowa-Comanche band back into the Blanco, Riley had recognized Matthew Hanchon through his field glasses—the tall, broad-shouldered Cheyenne called Touch the Sky, who led the small band Riley’s men had saved. Riley liked the youth, respected his courage and fighting ability. Accompanied only by his friend Little Horse, Touch the Sky had ridden into a mare’s nest of trouble in Bighorn Falls; to save the white parents who had raised him, he had risked death and rejection by his tribe.

  Now Riley knew the brave Cheyenne youth was under the gun once again. Only this time, the situation was even more desperate. He was no longer on his home ground or fighting on his own terms. Riley would do what he could, but he was far from having a free hand in this matter. He could not put settlers and soldiers at risk to save a friend—particularly an Indian friend, which U.S. Army officers were not supposed to have.

  But it wasn’t his men Riley was worried about. Though bloody contact with Kiowas and Comanches and Pawnees had left many of them keen to kill Indians, they were loyal to their platoon commander. Riley was the type of leader who made sure every last man had eaten before he broke out his own rations. And he never gave an order he himself wouldn’t be willing to carry out. As a result, his men would follow him into hell carrying empty carbines.

  “Pull up pickets and prepare to mount!” he ordered now, and the squad leaders repeated the order to their troopers. To Rain Dancer he said:

  “I want you to stick to the Blanco like ugly on a buzzard. Keep me informed. Odds are, Juan Aragon has arranged to have those prisoners delivered. I want to know at the first sign that they’re being moved.”

  ~*~

  Touch the Sky’s first shock of surprise, upon spotting the lone Apache, gave way to rapid action.

  He knew the Apache must be overpowered before the element of surprise was lost. Whatever he was doing here, he was surely a risk to the Cheyennes. The two tribes were not at war, but they were longtime enemies. The Cheyennes respected horses so much they made an annual ritual out of their Gift to the Ponies Dance; the Apaches, in barbaric contrast, ate horses as casually as the northern tribes boiled young dogs. The Apaches placed little importance on tribal unity or their gods, and even less on the northern style of horse-mounted warfare on an open battlefield. Such deep-rooted differences kept both tribes suspicious of the other.

  Touch the Sky knew he already had enough enemies surrounding his band. They didn’t need an Apache drawing a bead on them too. He had to find out what was going on. Perhaps this was a scout preparing the way for a raid—in which case Honey Eater, if she was still alive, and the others faced a new danger.

  He made a soft lizard-clicking sound in the back of his throat, signaling to the others. Then, cautiously, he slipped out from behind the shelter of the rimrock and began to make his way slowly down the hard slope of the canyon.

  He slithered from shrub to shrub, boulder to boulder, hanging on and moving closer. Still the Apache was intently watching the activity below in camp. Now Touch the Sky was close enough to see the nasty, blood-encrusted gash on the back of the young brave’s head.

  His foot dislodged a stone and sent it tumbling. The Apache turned quickly around, but Touch the Sky managed to duck behind a rock.

  The Apache turned back toward the canyon. Clammy sweat coated the Cheyenne’s back as he resumed his downward climb. He slid his knife from its sheath, crouched deep, leaped hard.

  He hit the unsuspecting Apache hard and sent him crashing to the ground. For a moment Touch the Sky had him completely pinned. Then, with a mighty twist of his muscle-corded back and shoulders, the strong Apache squirmed out from under him.

  They wrestled violently but silently, first one on top, then the other. They were both about the same size, though the mountain-climbing Apache had the advantage in his iron-muscled legs. Now he used those leg muscles to suddenly and violently flip his opponent off him.

  Touch the Sky felt himself being lifted, then he landed with a hard “Whumpf!” and a bright-orange blossom of pain exploded inside his skull. The blow packed enough force to stun him so that his arms and legs felt like lead weights he couldn’t move. But the pain wasn’t quite severe enough to knock him out.

  He was forced to watch, helpless, as the Apache drew a long Spanish bayonet from his sash. Deep blood gutters had been carved into both sides of the blade.

  Their eyes met, the Cheyenne’s a deep, fierce black, the Apache’s a bottomless, nimbus gray. His flowing black mane of hair was held in place with a strip of red flannel.

&
nbsp; The paralyzing blow had stunned Touch the Sky’s speech muscles too. Now all he could do was stare defiantly at his enemy, his lips set in their straight, determined line.

  The Apache tensed his muscles, preparing to seek warm vitals with cold steel. But at the last moment, impressed by the defiant lack of fear in the Cheyenne’s eyes, he relented. Instead, he dropped to his knees and pressed the lethally honed edge of the bayonet to the supine man’s throat.

  The Apache said something in an unintelligible language which Touch the Sky assumed must be his own tongue.

  The Apache spoke again. “Que haces aqui?”

  Touch the Sky thought he recognized the language as Spanish, but he didn’t know the words.

  A third time the Apache spoke, though clearly his face showed that he held little hope of being understood. “What are you doing here?” he said in stiff but adequate English.

  Still Touch the Sky couldn’t speak. But the shock of again hearing his native language showed in his eyes.

  “You understand?” the Apache said.

  Touch the Sky blinked rapidly, indicating a “yes” answer. Now a prickling tingle up his spine hinted that power was returning to his dead limbs.

  “Understand,” he gasped.

  “What are you doing here?” the Apache repeated.

  For a few moments longer Touch the Sky lay helpless. But now he could twitch his legs, his arms.

  “Take the blade away from my throat,” he said. “Right now I couldn’t attack a fly.”

  The Apache watched him a moment, calculating. Then he slid the bayonet back into his sash.

  “You speak good English,” he said. “Too good for an Indian. My name is Victorio Grayeyes. Who are you?”

  “I am called Touch the Sky. I am with Gray Thunder’s tribe. Our permanent summer camp is at the fork of the Powder and the Little Powder Rivers.”

  “You have strayed far from your hunting grounds, Cheyenne.”

  Touch the Sky nodded. “That’s because the white man’s stink has driven the buffalo herds far south. My tribe came down here for the hunt.”

  “The hunt? Surely you are not searching for buffalos in this canyon?”

  “Not for buffalos,” Touch the Sky replied grimly. “For my people. These Kiowa and Comanche dogs raided our camp while the hunters were out. They have stolen many of our women and children.”

  It was Victorio’s turn to nod. He had already learned, from runners, that Aragon was coming here from Over the River. He had hoped to follow him and learn where his brother and sister were being held.

  “Yes, I understand. And that short-haired dog below is making arrangements to sell them.”

  “Clearly. Do you know him?”

  Victorio’s face hardened, his gray eyes narrowing to slits as he glanced below. “Know him? Cheyenne, his name is Juan Aragon and he is my clan cousin. Only, he is like a cat who eats her own young. This gold-hungry soldiers’ dog led Mexicans to our cave. They killed my mother and father and others in my clan. But that treachery was not enough. He also took Delshay and Josefa, my younger brother and sister, planning to sell them. However, he made one drunken, stupid mistake.”

  Victorio pointed to his blood-matted hair. “He failed to make sure that I was dead. Now I plan to make sure he soon will be.”

  Touch the Sky nodded. “So that’s the way it is.”

  “Are you by yourself?”

  “No,” Touch the Sky said. “Three others are hidden up near the rim. We could not send a large war party and desert the rest of the tribe. Besides, a large group of warriors could never enter this canyon without being picked off like birds on the ground.”

  “True words, buck. Even the blue-bloused soldiers with their big-thundering guns will not attack the Blanco.”

  But Victorio was thinking. By himself he was virtually helpless. However, with a few Cheyennes on his side, the odds might look a little better. Victorio, like most Apaches, considered the Cheyennes an hereditary enemy. But no one had ever called them cowards or poor fighters. And like him, they were motivated by the need to rescue their own.

  Touch the Sky too was thinking much the same thing. He knew nothing about this area, where this half-breed Comanchero dog named Juan Aragon had his camp. It would be valuable to have a local on their side, especially one who hated the Comanchero as this Apache did.

  “Have ears for my words, Victorio. You know that our tribes are no friends to each other. But shall we put our bitter feelings aside this once and join forces? Shall we kill this dog Aragon and get our loved ones back?”

  Victorio nodded. Touch the Sky was startled when he offered his hand to shake on it—a white man’s custom which northern Plains Indians found hilarious.

  “Agreed, Cheyenne. We have a common enemy in Aragon. But have you heard yet of a place called Over the River?”

  Touch the Sky shook his head.

  “Believe me, it is a human snake pit. This is where Aragon sells his women. And this, I fear, is where we will end up fighting before this is over.”

  “I will take the fight wherever it must go,” Touch the Sky said. He didn’t add what he was thinking: that he hoped to Maiyun it wasn’t already too late for Honey Eater.

  Chapter Eleven

  From where he was hidden, Black Elk had a far different angle of vision into the Blanco Canyon.

  Black Elk, his cousin Wolf Who Hunts Smiling, Swift Canoe, and the Bull Whip soldier named Battle Sash were hidden at intervals in the thickets bordering the Rio de Lagrimas River. Thanks to their trick of luring the enemy out of the canyon to chase Touch the Sky’s band, they had been able to penetrate further into the Blanco than the other Cheyennes had been able to get before being forced to find concealment.

  Black Elk and the others with him realized Touch the Sky’s band had escaped and made it to the canyon—there could be no doubt of it when, last night, that captured herd guard had cried out, clearly the victim of Cheyennes. But the location of that scream also told Black Elk his tribal enemy was not nearly as close to the camp as his band was.

  When the short-haired half-breed with the long knife dangling from his shoulder had whipped aside the buffalo robe of that lone jacal below, Black Elk had glimpsed Honey Eater. Thus he now knew not only that she was alive, but exactly where she was being kept.

  But so far, Black Elk thought, the advantage had proven useless. Like Touch the Sky and the others, they had been so far helpless to act. The camp was crawling with armed warriors, as were the outlying meadows and groves of the fertile canyon. It was risky enough simply trying to keep their ponies grazing without being spotted.

  But even worse, he told himself, watching the slave trader’s big blood bay return toward the northern entrance of the Blanco, arrangements had clearly been made, terms agreed upon. Preparations for a journey were under way. The Cheyenne prisoners would soon be transported out of here—protected by a guard so strong that at least forty warriors would be required to mount a good battle against them.

  Either he acted soon, or the opportunity was lost.

  Black Elk was nearly wild with frustration and impatience. It was not just a question of rescuing Honey Eater and the others. The Cheyenne war leader also knew that his reputation with the other braves was on the line. Everyone in the tribe knew of the love between Honey Eater and Touch the Sky. It had become a great unspoken thing of tribal life, an unofficial legend. Indeed, Black Elk had even heard the young girls singing about it in their sewing lodge—falling silent when they saw him walking past.

  Every one also knew that Black Elk had not yet planted a baby in Honey Eater’s belly. Some hinted that perhaps he could not sire a whelp. It would only humiliate him further and add to the talk if Touch the Sky saved Honey Eater and the others.

  As he did often lately, Black Elk cast his thoughts back to the early days of Touch the Sky’s life with the tribe. After the raid on the camp of Henri Lagace and his whiskey traders, the Council of Forty had met to vote on Touch the Sky’s fate: Hal
f had voted to expel the youth for disobeying Black Elk and infiltrating the camp alone; half had voted to let him stay because, despite his disobedience, his courage had won the fight.

  The tie-breaking vote had gone to Black Elk as war leader. After agonizing indecision, he had selected a white moonstone from the pouch—signifying his decision to let Touch the Sky stay. But now, how he regretted that decision! He could never have foreseen it: The inept, ignorant youth who couldn’t even make a proper fire or sharpen a knife Indian fashion had developed into a dangerous, hard-edged warrior keen to raise his enemy’s hair.

  So what if Honey Eater loved the tall young buck? She is my property, he reminded himself fiercely. He had paid the bride-price for her, and a handsome bride-price it was—not only a string of fine ponies with hand-stitched bridles, but two travois piled high with valuable goods. This Touch the Sky did not even own meat racks!

  But the young warrior’s blood was hot with plans to put the old moccasin on—for everyone knew that inexperienced bucks wanted squaws who had been married once before.

  But Black Elk vowed again to kill both of them before he let Touch the Sky rut on his squaw.

  Now he scanned the vast canyon walls, trying to spot some sign of Touch the Sky’s band. But if they were out there, they were hidden well.

  He watched the sun, a fiery-orange orb, descend further toward the western horizon. And as it dipped toward its resting place, Black Elk made up his mind.

  It was a dangerous plan, but it would have to be done. He realized now that rescuing all of the prisoners was out of the question. Yet if he stayed hidden here much longer in the brush, cowering like a white-livered Ponca, Honey Eater and the others would be taken away. Clearly there was only one solution.

  It would be foolish, he told himself, to return from this mission without at least getting his wife—and thus, his manly respect—back. He had seen which jacal was Honey Eater’s prison—the lone one which stood between the camp clearing and the river. The one which was always heavily guarded—often, by the same fierce, swift-riding Comanche warrior who had sent Black Elk’s band scurrying from a hailstorm of deadly arrows.