I, Tom Horn Page 10

  For acknowledgment, he raised his near elbow and hit me in the mouth with it in a back-chuck of his bull shoulder that like to planted my biting teeth back amongst my grinders.

  When I had swallowed the blood and got the green circles and bright yellow balls out of my eye-vision, he pointed down into the hollow with his thumb, hooking it two times, and nodding a whisper. "Yonder's our Injun. Bear in mind what I told you. We got six minutes left." He swept the hollow below with a last scanning look. "About right," he decided, "foller on."

  I went with him down out of the rocks. The Indian, who had appeared out of the cavern to throw on more kindling for his mash cooker, dropped the wood and began backing around the blaze to get the huge kettle between him and Al Sieber. I could not see that he was armed. Sieber said to me out of the side of his mouth, "A la izquierda, circle to the left. Block him from the cave. Don't lift your rifle." He himself went to the right. The Indian held where he was.

  Which was hemmed.

  Sieber said to me in English, "I will use Mex on him, as he savvies it perfectly fine, and it will let you follow what's said. He will come back with some Mex and some Apache. Do your best to sort it out, as I want a witness that he was give his rights."

  All the while he was saying this, he was not looking at me but at the Indian. I was studying this man likewise. He was a mean one for certain. Heavy-built in chest and shoulder, long arms, legs bent in a bow you could have slid a cedar sawlog through, including the saw, and with a dark slab of a face that would give a Spanish longhorn bull second thoughts on charging it in a narrow place of the trail.

  "Chug," said Al Sieber, "I have come to put you out of the tizwin business. You will kick over that pot of mash, scatter your fire embers, and go away and not look back one time at me or this camp. If you do not do as I say, you will wish that your mother had born you crosswise of her crotch and you had strangled on your own cord, as that will have been easier for you than to see me mad. Tip over that kettle."

  Now this was all said in the lowest of mestizo Mexican, not your highfaluting Spanish, and it is a surety that Chuga-de-slona understood it perfectly, just as Sieber had said he would. But he didn't move to kick over the mash kettle. He just stood there, snake eyes glittering back in under the crag of his forehead and getting that crouch into his knees that lets you know you have got trouble coming with a big letter T.

  "Damn you," Sieber said. "Turn out that garbage onto the ground."

  "You are a meddlesome squaw," the Indian said, voice hoarse and heavy. "You do nothing but follow me and spy on me and you are always watching around all of the time." He picked up a small stick and tossed it on the ground between him and Sieber. "That is you, Jon-a-chay," he said. "See, I give you a new name, jon-a-chay, 'meddler." And see, I spit on you and your new name. Ih!

  He hawked in his throat and spat a stream of saliva onto the stick. The spittle bounced and some of it hit on Sieber's left boot. He looked down at it.

  "Centipede," he said, "you have called me jon-a-chay two times. If you do it a third, you won't do it a fourth. Now I have warned you. I have also given you opportunity to leave this place and never come back."

  Sieber wheeled about and cupped hand to mouth and called toward the cave, in Apache, for those hiding within to come outside. I was astonished to see two old crones and a third, not unattractive, squaw emerge from the cavern. "Come over here," Sieber ordered them, speaking Mexican now. "You know me. I do not harm women. I do not kill children." The three came nervously forward. "That is near enough," Sieber said. "I want you to understand what happens here." He pointed at Chuga-de-slona. "I have told Chug to leave and I will not follow him, but he must promise not to look back, not to make tizwin to sell to the others anymore. Chug is still here. He did not leave. Remember that."

  He turned back to the sullen Centipede.

  "It is too late for you to go now," he said to the Indian whiskey maker. "I am going to take you to San Carlos again. It will be the last time, this time."

  I later learned that he had arrested this particular man three or four times, with the evidence brought in to show in his trial against him. Each time, lenient authorities— civilian agents every time—had freed Chuga-de-slona. He had not done a day in restraint, or been punished in any way. So swore Al Sieber to me.

  It was little surprise then that this Indian now laughed at Sieber. The sound, because so unexpected, jarred my nerves. It caused my belly muscles to shrink too. Nobody laughed at Al Sieber. The Indian had signed his final warrant, I was white-faced certain.

  "You are an old female spying on true males," he told the dark-browed German. "You squat down to make water, and all you do is go about as a sneak-watcher, a liar."

  Because the Indian was between me and Sieber, I could not see the scout's face, except by glances when Chuga-de-slona would move his big Apache head. But I could hear the danger in Sieber's voice. It was the same change that you hear in the snarl of a bear that has decided he is through warning the foolish human in his trail-path and will rush upon the poor devil. All skilled hunters know the chilling difference.

  "Hombre," Sieber said, "es verdad. Yes, I do watch badmen like the Centipede. Y, por Dios, I will stop them from making tizwin to poison the brains of my Indians. Now don't make trouble, you son of a bitch," he concluded in plain-track English."Put out your hands for my boy to tie up. Be very careful now." He bent his own knees when he said it. I detected the crouch of the brute and so, I think, did Chuga-de-slona.

  "Cuidado" Sieber called out in Mexican. "Don't do it, Chug. Decide against it. Hold out your hands."

  "Jon-a-chay!" screamed the infuriated Indian. "I will kill you!"

  With the blurred speed of a horned rattler striking, his dark hand darted into the rocks beside him. He had a carbine hidden there. Sieber to my eye's knowledge was unarmed. The Indian, however, no more than got the lever of his old Henry rifle jacked open to load a rimmed copper shell into the chamber, when Al Sieber was upon him.

  I simply do not remember the bulky German moving.

  He was one instant standing no less than ten feet from Chuga-de-slona. None of the witnesses, not any of the three squaws and surely not young Tom Horn, remember that they saw him draw blade in the grunting leap to seize the whiskey maker. All remembered only that, in a blink of the eye, Al Sieber had Chuga-de-slona by the hair with one hand and a knife drawn back in the other. He bent the Indian's head backward to expose and make skin-taut as a drumhead the bulging jugular and bony voice box. He made one slash against that muscular target.

  There was no outcry from Chuga-de-slona.

  Only an escape of air, a shower of bloodspray, a hissing gurgle briefly stilled. The body of the Centipede fell away from Sieber's hand. My eyes fixed themselves in horror, not upon that poor, still jerking corpse upon the ground, but upon Al Sieber's hand.

  When first I told this event in my accounts of the Arizona days, I used the words, "Sieber nearly cut his head off." A man will do that. He will soften a story to spare harsher judgments than he believes an action ought to suffer. But Al Sieber did not nearly cut that Indian's head off. He did cut it off. It was in his left hand. And the body was in the ashring of the whiskey-cooking fire.

  The big German looked over at me and only nodded, letting his black eyes pass me to center on the weeping and mewing squaws. "Anciana," he called to one of the old hags. "Do you have a sack for this, por favor? It is dripping on my good boots."

  I found a rock to sit down on in a hurry.

  I was sick to puking, but did not get anything up because we had not eaten since leaving San Carlos. For a man who detested knives as I did, and yet admired Al Sieber as I had already come to do, it was some unsettling shock.

  But Sieber had no thought for my upset. He put the head on a clean stone nearby and took up Chuga-de-slona's two arms and barked at me, "Grab his feet." I did so, still shaky, and we stuffed the Centipede into his big iron mash kettle. A hand and both legs, from bend of knee, hung outside t
he pot, but the rest of him was already cooking when the old woman shuffled up with the sack for the head, or the next best thing she'd found for a sack.

  It was an old nose bag stolen from the cavalry and would fit the jugheadedest mule or coarsest plug, but was still a tight fit for old Chug's outsized skull; I never again saw an Apache head like that, but Sieber got it into the nose bag and handed that back over to the old woman.

  "Take it with you down to Pedro's village," he ordered the three squaws. "Show it to the people down there and tell them that Seebie is from now on hunting tizwin makers to kill them. It is no use anymore to run to San Carlos."

  The women were moaning and screeching prayer songs for old Chug. They never let up, but they took the nosebag and lit out down the mountain. We could hear them for half an hour. We spent the time policing the Centipede's "whiskey camp." We towed the mash kettle with the Indian in it to a nearby drop-off cliff and kicked it over into eternity. We set fire to the wickiup and Sieber fetched a half stick of dynamite out of his pack and blew shut the face of the cave. When the powderstink had cleared out, we could no longer hear the squaws sorrowing down the trail, and we got up on our mounts and sent them out of there.

  It was plumb dark by then.

  "Where we bound?" I asked, so bone-weary of the saddle I could scarcely stand its feel, but certain Sieber was headed for some hidden camping spot nearby. "I trust it ain't distant."

  "Awwhrrugg," answered Al Sieber.

  ‘That far," I said, smart-assing him out of being wore down past caution.

  "And then some," he rumbled, not jumping me.

  An impossible thought wandered into my blind-tired mind. "My God," I said, "you ain't meaning were going back to Pedro's?"

  "Roundabout," Sieber answered.

  "Roundabout what?" I gritted at him, still pushing.

  "Roundabout twenty-two miles," he said.

  Ah, what small store I yet had of knowing Al Sieber; I still thought he was heading for some nearby cozy blanket-spot.

  "Oh, sure," I said, cheeking it out. "Let's see, that would make it about by way of Fort Apache, wouldn't it? Or maybeso Sawbuck Mountain. It's prettier that way."

  "Stick with Fort Apache," Sieber advised. "That way you'll stick with me."

  And he never said another word the whole night through of that staggering ride, by moondark, from Chuga-de-slona's whiskey flat, to the peeled-log gates of Fort Apache.

  Sister Sawn

  Do not imagine that Al Sieber wasted a mile of that grueling night ride to Fort Apache.

  When, come dawn, we rode into the stockade, he sent me to where the scouts were having breakfast under a brush ramada by the picket line of ready mounts, but went on himself directly to the post commander's office. The whiles I ate with some of the boys I knew from San Carlos, Joe Yescus, (Mex name Jose María Jesús), Frank Monic, and Jaime Cook, Sieber reported the tizwin dustup over at Pedro's rancheria. It was a "good" report. Such had been our speed in "getting over the mountain" during the dark hours, that Captain A. R. Chaffee was able to collar poor old Nol-chai before I finished my eats.

  I felt sad for that little Apache fellow.

  He could not believe that anybody might have beaten him to the fort, where he had come to pick up his war bag and spare horses. He was all set to take out for Sonora and the Sierra Madre, down in Mexico. There he could have lived out his years in what Sieber called "the Apache land of the free and home of the brave"—broncos, that was. But he never made it past the Fort Apache front gate. There, the Indian police grabbed him and slung him into the post jail. We were assured he would be carted down to San Carlos and given a fair trial. Al Sieber said to me that he would never see San Carlos, which I suspect he didn't. It was why I felt bad.

  However, do not think that Iron Man made that allnight ride to get a poor little Apache buck hung.

  That was but a side part of his mission.

  He was not after the killer of Al-zan-ih, husband of Pedro s dark-skinned daughter; he was after the broad-ass squaw herself.

  He wanted her for me.

  I like to cut and run for Mexico myself; I could not believe Sieber was serious. But he was. Before I could recover brain enough to start tendering my resignation as interpreter of Mexican at San Carlos, we were both sent for by Captain Chaffee, the post C.O. at Fort Apache. "Be on your guard, Horn," the German scout gruffed to me as we obeyed the summons. "This will be about old Chug." He waved at two scouts walking by and continued, low-voiced. "Chaffee is a mean son of a bitch but one hell of a soldier. He will want to gumchew over the yarn I give him about Chug and will use you to pitfall me if he can. He knows, never you fear. So cuidado's the word. Just let me answer wherever Chaffee will leave me to do it. Comprende?"

  "Well, hell," I said, "you want me to lie, or what?"

  We stopped walking. Sieber stared at me, thunderstruck. His face had a curious bewildered look, and hurt

  "Lie?" he said, aghast. "Me ask you to lie?"

  "Yes sir. That's what you said, isn't it?"

  The old German shook his thick-fleshed head. It was evidently more of a blow then he was prepared to contain and still not break down openly.

  "Merciful goodness, Horn," he said to me, very loud, as we resumed our march to Chaffee's office, "you must answer as you think best. Every time."

  Then, in a side-mouthing growl, just as we hit the first step of the stoop in front of the headquarters.

  "Yes, and you better lie damned good, too."

  "Now, then, Horn," Chaffee said, "let me see if I have this straight. Sieber and you went to this whiskey maker's camp, advancing openly and proper. Sieber advised him he was under arrest and would be taken safely to San Carlos. The man then went berserk, seized a hidden gun and commenced firing, point-blank. At which moment Sieber here, in total disregard for his own life, leaped forward and disarmed the Apache. In the struggle for the weapon, however, it discharged, mortally wounding the Indian. Is that precisely the way in which it happened?"

  "Oh, yes sir," I saluted. "Only Mr. Sieber was much more braver than he makes out. Why, you ought to have see'd him, the way that he—"

  "Horn!" yelled Sieber.

  "Well, you was so almightily thoughtless of your own blood and bones, sir. When old Chug seen that you was bound to—"

  "Goddamn it, sir!" Sieber bellowed to Captain Chaffee. "Cain't you order this idjut kid to shet up?"

  Captain Adna Chaffee, who had about the toughest face a man could have and still not shatter his razor on it, gave a grin that blinked on and out like a lit match. "Yes, Horn," he said. "Please confine your answers to the questions. Yes or no will do nicely."

  He then issued Sieber a string of profanity such as I never heard before nor since, ending up with, "And I will thank you, goddamnit, Al, if you keep your own testimony straight and short. Go ahead, boy."

  Well, one way and another, I managed to limp through Sieber's pack of stretchers without barking my shinbones too many times on the hard rock of truth. Captain Chaffee thanked me and said, "My clerk, here, has all of this copy-true in writing. Sign it where he tells you, and if you've not perjured yourself you're lucky."

  "Yes sir," Al Sieber answered for me, knuckling his eyebrow in as near as he ever came to a proper saluting of an officer. "And he will be lucky if I don't kill him before the army puts him on the lovely shores of Alcatraz Prison for volunteering false testification against his superior, which is me. Thank you, sir!"

  Out we went, and Sieber was mad enough to nail my hide to the log wall of the latrine, he vowed, and let the troops tan it with their military urine for their next six enlistments. But he cooled down when he remembered Al-zan-ih's squaw and our urgent business with her.

  "Forget it," he ordered. "Come along on. We got us some widow's weeds to water."

  "You are daft!" I cried. "There ain't no human way you will euchre Tom Horn into taking up with no cow-hipped Apache squaw. Nor order him to do it, neither."

  Which is of course the manner i
n which it came about that we left Fort Apache that same afternoon, tagged after by the squaw, her three Injun whelps running in age from ten down to five years, seven spavined and stringhalted pack horses, a one-eyed mule named General Crook, four ordinary Indian dogs, and a pet wolf cub named Snarler, which was sick with the epizootic. Sieber had bleated it about the stockade that his new boy was Indian-struck and determined, in the face of all fatherly advice from him, Sieber, to forthwith "take to the blanket and get himself a sleeping dictionary" on the romantic life of the nomad Apache people.

  "What you mean," I overheard one sallow-faced old soldier say, "is that you've turnt the poor dumb kid into a squaw diddler, so's he kin spy fer you. Ain't there nothing so snake-bellied you civilian scouts won't creep beneath it to keep leaching off the guv'mint? If it wasn't agin orders, I would whup the—"

  I suppose he was going to threaten to whip Sieber good, but he never finished the sentence. The powerful German sprang upon him and dragged him behind the nearby blacksmith shed and like to killed him with a bare-hand beating. He left the soldier there back of the smithy and we got our cavalcade under way out the gate, pronto.

  Sieber never did know I heard that soldier's guff.

  He said to me, "That son of a bitch has owed me a gambling debt of five dollars for three years. I finally caught up to him. It is a sorrowful thing that men cannot be honest and decent with one another."