I, Tom Horn Page 11

  I agreed that it was and tried not to look at the other troopers watching us file out of the fort with our fat-butt squaw and her possession of riches. It wasn't till nine miles out on the trail that I even knew her name. It was Sister Sawn.

  Tizwin Trail

  Even before we got back to Pedro's village, I had to change my opinion of Sawn. True, she was dumpy and duck-butted. She had a voice that sounded like a jack mule braying for his mate. Her face was flat, square, homely, and sun-fried as a cow pie. If you got close to her downwind, it was enough to clear out a head cold. But inside all that? Why, that Apache squaw was all sunshine and humor and good heart.

  Funny? She made even Sieber laugh.

  And work! Lord God, that woman herded all those kids and livestock and doctored the sick wolf pup and never lost a stride to the old German or me. More, she cooked for us, butchered out the deer I shot, dressed its hide, carried all the water for camp (we weren't hurrying), and even sneaked time in the dark of the second night to dip herself in the creek and show up alongside my bedroll spot with a sprig of sage back of one ear, ready, and I am certain fully anxious, to fill out the rest of her contract.

  She was grinning wide enough for me to read newsprint by the flash of her teeth in the bear's-gut darkness and, moreover, she got halfways under my blanket before I could hoist her out with the two of my feet planted in the small of her wide behind. And, friends, that behind was naked as a baby's, and so was all the rest of her, which was a sufficiency amount of female parts anywheres you grabbed.

  Sieber got wrathy with me over it.

  Sawn was my ticket to get into Pedro's band, he explained. Why in hell did I think we went all the way over to Fort Apache to get her? If we two showed up back at the rancheria, having killed Chug and gotten poor old Nol-chai arrested to hang, with only our sweet white selves to grease our welcome, we might easily earn our discharge from San Carlos in Apache writing. Which was to say cut up a bit and burned a lot, after the fashion of the broncos with Pinda Lickoyi ("White Eyes") who displeasured them.

  But if we came into camp as the husband and best man to Pedros daughter Sawn, why, tribal custom would require minimum courtesies, including the safety to close our eyes and lay down to sleep. After all, Apache widows were not that easy to remarry, and this one had been hard enough to get a buck for in the first place. It followed that Old Pedro would be happy to see us, while the Cibicus, the non-peacefuls visiting in from the out-country would be shut off from harming us. Leastways, on the rancheria.

  "Its the best bet we got," Sieber concluded. "Now it ain't going to kill you to lay still for old Sister."

  Of course I would not hear of it.

  But when Sieber then grudged the information that he had done everything for me with a view to filling my boyhood dream of living with the Apache Indians and learning of their nomad life, why I had to weaken. It was scant use being stiff-necked over it. After all, the old scout had surely nothing to earn out of all this. He truly had done it out of a warm heart for me, "his boy." But, damn, that was one ugly squaw!

  Sawn proved to have her red pride, however.

  When I stumbled over to where she was bedded with her menagerie, she set the four dogs on me, and, in my scramble to back off from them, unbit, I stepped on the sick wolf pup and he nailed me good. The ruckus roused up the whole camp. The kids commenced to wail, the dogs to howl, the old packmule to scree-haw. My friend, Mr. Al Sieber of San Carlos, came up out of his blankets yelling in Apache and German, threatening, as I translated it, to kill Tom Horn on sight.

  Instead, when he found out I'd been bit by the wolf cub, he settled for building up the fire and cauterizing my leg with his ramrod heated a cherry red and run two inches deep into each tooth puncture hole.

  "I been watching the son of a bitch," Sieber growled about the wolf pup. "I ain't that certain he's got the epizootic. I don't like the way he acts. Could be hydrophoby."

  "Goddamn!" said Sister Sawn, coming up just then and greeting us with her giant grin and the one English word she had learned at Fort Apache. "Everyone is awake and the wind is still. We could be home with the sun."

  That was it. We broke camp and took the trail with some vigor and much silence. Somehow, I was given credit for the entire trouble. Sieber said not a word more to me until just outside Pedro's big camp. Then it was his usual word to Tom Horn in those learning days.

  "Shut your mouth," he said. "You can bob your head if you need to, or shake it sideways. Otherwise, you ain't to open your trap wide enough to spit."

  "Si, patrón," I sighed. "Lo entiendo"

  "You better understand it. Now smile and ride alongside your lovely bride. That's it. Enjuh, enjuh—"

  The tizwin squaws from Centipede's whiskey camp had got over the mountain well ahead of us. This was precisely as Sieber had planned it. "An Apache ain't no different than a white man some ways," he said to me. "First off, when he hears something fearful, he gets the wind up fit to bust. Then when nothing happens to him, personal, he simmers off. Apaches are great ones for letting the other feller ride his own green horses. He don't borry a bucking off, happen he can avoid it without seeming to try to. That's ever the trick with Injuns; you got to give them the room to back down while seeming to be raising holy ned. It takes time to learn it."

  In our case, we found it had worked fine.

  The camp had flown into an uproar when the Centipede's women came into its haven. But that was near two days gone. The Cibicus had largely taken off for the back canyons to hide out whatever of storm might bring the soldiers up from San Carlos. And the rest of the people had had good time to think back on what a bum old Zanny had been, to figure out where they were going to buy their Apache whiskey now that old Chug was retired, and to reason that it would be fairly wise to listen to what Old Mad (one of their names for Sieber) would have to say about the tizwin business. Nevertheless, it was still a comfort to come into the camp with Sister Sawn siding us, laughing her famous jackass laugh, pounding Sieber's boy on the back, and announcing in Apache to anybody who would listen that here was her new husband and we were coming to live with her father's very lucky people and it was a fine day and she would buy a young mule and kill it for a proper sing and roast that night, if all went well with our reception home.

  This calmed an assortment of the people, as a free mule feed was an occasion in Apacheria. Others had already said the hell with Chuga-de-slona and that, though it was a shame about Nol-chai, there was no Apache point in bothering Seebie, as the past had showed that to be a very bad investment of Indian time, indeed.

  There remained a bunch of hardtails who collected about us and escorted us to Pedro's wickiup, with hardly hushed references to our chances, should we be caught outside the village after dark. But Sister Sawn joked and jibed with these malcontents, reminding them that her father was an important man and her mother a noted gouyan, or wise woman, of the Warm Springs wild Indians.

  She did not need to remind them, also, Sister Sawn reminded them regardless, that the Warm Springs were the people of old Nana and the bitter killer Victorio. She was, through her mother, the own-niece to the latter famed chieftain, as well (Sieber said this was a pure pony marble), who was very jealous of her welfare.

  I was not unimpressed with her performance, pony marbles and all, and said as much to Sieber.

  "Well, sure," he said. "Now you are getting the idee.

  What did I tell you?" He scorched me with that black-eyed stare. "You might make it yet, Horn," he nodded. "Just keep taking them notes along the trail."

  "Yes sir," I said, as we dismounted outside Pedro's door. "I got my pad right here." I patted my Winchester rifle, and he seemed to think that was the right line of thought. He gave me two nods, his highest sign of approval. "What will happen now?" I finished off.

  "Now," Sieber told me, pushing past the muttering bucks who were still trying to bluff us, "we deliver Old Pete his annual temperance lecture, only this will be the last year he hears it from A
l Sieber. Shut up and stand close."

  The ancient Pedro now came out of his adobe and stick-pole hut, and we three sat down under the brush-roofed ramada outside the door, and the talk was on.

  "Is it true you killed the Centipede?" the old man led off.

  "Killed him and cooked him too," Sieber said.

  "Its unfortunate, Seebie; he was a part-devil."

  "No," the German said, "he was a whole devil."

  "The people are afraid when a devil is harmed."

  "Let them listen, then, while you do likewise," Al Sieber told the wrinkled Apache. "Then let them go and talk this warning all about among the other Indians."

  He then said that the Apache of those parts had better leave off making their Indian whiskey as he, Sieber, calculated to stop them from it. When he caught a man at it the first time, he would put him in the calaboose. But when he caught a man at it like the one he had just killed up on the mountain, then he would just kill him, for he had been warned before. There would be no mercy, let the squaws whimper their heads off. It was going to be dah-eh-sah on the tizwin business from then on, Seebie gave his word upon it

  Since dah-eh-sah translated "death" in Apache, Pedro was disturbed. In turn, he lectured Al Sieber.

  He did not want his men, he said, either to make or sell tizwin whiskey. He would help Seebie suppress them every time. But he had six hundred warriors and some of them were as bad Indians as any Indians could be, and he couldn't do anything with these hesh-kes, these bad ones who had the wild urge to kill and hurt.

  "These bad ones never get hurt themselves," Pedro complained. "They never grow old and never get killed, and they never, never turn good. They just remain what they are and are always into every trouble that comes.

  "You see, Seebie," he appealed helplessly, "they are part-devils, as I say, or they would get old or get killed sometime. That is what frightens the people."

  "Well," Sieber said, "I understand that. But if any of the people want to see one devil that is good and dead, let them go up and rope themselves down into the crevice at the bottom of the Cliff of the Cave, up there."

  "They won't do it, Seebie."

  "But you will tell them what I said. I mean each word, anciano."

  "Schichobe," Pedro said, "old friend, I will do it. But the times are bad. It will be a long war this time, Seebie. The Apache will fight until the last wild one is gone. You know who I mean; Warm Springs and Chiricahua: it will last ten years, unless the soldiers go after them and kill every one. There is no other way."

  "You know that, I know it also," Sieber said, "but the soldier chiefs aren't permitted to go after them and kill them, just like that. But I agree with you, jefe. You kill a bad Indian and he never is bad again."

  "Yes," Old Pedro said, "and the same with a white man. Unless, of course, he is a part-devil."

  I could see it was useless at this point, Sieber being likewise convinced. He changed the subject.

  "Now," he said, "Sister Sawn has promised us a mule roast tonight. Will you come, jefe, and sit by my right hand? You know I would be honored. I want you also to talk with this new boy of mine; I have an idea in my mind for him, if he should please you."

  Pedro said he would come. Moreover, he had two good young deer carcasses he would contribute and some late season cornmeal for pinole and for Apache bread. It would be a notable feast and we would all talk plenty.

  "But now," he said, tottering to his feet, "I have a little something inside." He held back the deerhide hanging of the door to his rude house and stood aside with a gracious gesture for Sieber and me. "Entran, ustedes," he invited us, in Mexican. "Haga me el favor, hombres."

  We bent and went in. Sieber was under six feet but I was over, and the inside ceiling of Old Pedro's wickiup could not have been much over five feet. I banged my head a good one, then got smart and hunkered down on the mud floor. The old man dug out a jug and poured three tin army cups full of something smelling about as potent as mule piss, picked up his cup, and said some words in Apache, which I didn't catch but Sieber repeated. We all then drank her down, as they say.

  I almost suffocated from mine, but managed to get back outside without either strangling or pitching up my breakfast, and Sieber and me got our mounts and rode off back out toward where Sister Sawn had our camp.

  "What in the name of God was that?" I asked the old German when we were out of earshot of Pedro's hearing horn. The old rascal was very deaf and used an ear trumpet. "It like to et out my throat box."

  Al Sieber looked at me.

  There was a martyr's pang of endured suffering in the glance. A seething, too, of the white man's Indian ire. A cursing of the darkness of the redskin mind, and no candle lit to shine one ray of hope. But all overridden by the vista, seen close at hand, of the true place of Pinda Lickoyi in the grander scheme of Pedro's Apache world.

  "It was tizwin" Sieber said. "Prosit—!"

  Talking Boy

  Sister Sawn's "party" was a skull buster. Tizwin flowed like Moses had hit the big iron cooker in the sky with his rod and his staff. We got all kinds of stories from Pedro about how the juice was really only pulque or Mexican liquor which he couldn't help being sold, or it was "white man's whiskey" sold off the reservation by bad Pinda Lickoyi "living near Globe."

  Sieber didn't auger it with the old chief.

  But once a man has tasted tizwin, he would know it if even a drop of it splashed on a nearby rock, or a jug was uncorked and shook to pour in the next county.

  It was sure enough the real stuff served at Sister Sawn's roast mule sing. Poor Sieber got so down in the mouth over it that he wouldn't eat. He just kept saying "son of a bitch, son of a bitch," over and over to himself, in German, and drinking from his own private jug, which he assured me contained "medicinal spirits" from the government supply of the post surgeon for the Fifth Cavalry.

  Since the jug looked like the same one we'd swigged from in Pedro's hut earlier that day, I was suspicious. When, in pouring himself another tin cup of the brew, Sieber spilled a little on my bare hand and it burnt a red ring on the skin, I knew it wasn't what he said.

  However, when he saw my hostile look, he shrugged and said, as mellow as he ever said anything, "Well, Horn, when you are in the camp of the enemy, you got to drink the wine of the country. Awwhhmiggg!"

  Next minute, he fell square over on his side from where him and me and Pedro was squatting by the dance circle watching the fun. He didn't stir but laid there like he was froze stiff, and the old Indian shook his head sadly. "Seebie is not moving anymore."

  "Not tonight," I said.

  "Well," the old rascal said to me, "you are his new boy, and so I shall talk to you the same as I was going to talk to Seebie; I was going to ask him to let you stay up here in my camp for a while. What do you think of that?"

  "Muy bueno" I said. "Mil gracias, patrón."

  "Yes," he said. "Well, I hear you speaking Mexican to my people, and I thought you were a Mexican half-breed. But Seebie tells me now you are a pure American boy. It's just that you are dark in the hide, and eye, like us."

  "Si, jefe," I nodded. "This is a true thing. Also, I think I am like your people inside of me, en el corazón. I would like to stay here and be one of you."

  "A white man cannot be an Indian. Seebie joked with me about you and your tribe, the Mi-si-oo-ran. I believed him."

  "Yes, jefe; yet my own-mother always told me that I was an Indian, different from her other children."

  "Well, many strange things happen in this world. We will not worry about it. Yosen will decide what you are." He eyed me a moment, then added. "I hear you talking some Apache, too. Where did you learn that?"

  I told him a brief story of my days on Beaver Head Creek, in Camp Verde, and the like. "Well," he said, "you have a gift of talking, so let us talk some Apache."

  He began at once to jabber at me in his language, and I began to wish Sieber were conscious to help me, for I had the feeling the old man was trying me out. But to my
amazement I commenced to jabber back at him, and in no time we were handing the Apache back and forth right decent. Pedro was almightily pleased. He whacked me on the back, with a string of enjuhs, and said, "Listen, tongue-speaker, we have got to wake up Seebie and get him to decide this matter."

  "I thought you were going to leave it to Yosen," I grinned, carried away by my success. But Old Pedro did not grin back. He was turned earnest in the minute. "No, no," he said. "God is only God, but Seebie tells the soldier chiefs what to do."

  "Ahh!" I said. And had the good sense to shut up right there.

  To anyone contemplating the cavalry scout service in the Apache country, I would have the following advice: do not be taken drunk on tizwin where you will need to be "awakened" by Indian methods.

  The Apaches put Sieber into a canvas packsling and drug him bodily down to the creek and rolled him into it. It was about four foot deep where they dunked him in, so he had either to surface or stay under and drown. He came up spouting water and terrible language, but Pedro convinced him he had only wandered down to the stream and fallen in all by himself. "Ask your boy. He saw it happen. Didn't you, ish-ke-ne?"

  Since he called me boy, in Apache, I thought to be respectful and replied to him, "Anh, da-go-tai, yes, father." He beamed over that. "You see?" he said to Sieber. "This is a smart new boy you have, Seebie. I want to talk to you about leaving him with me a while."

  Sieber waded out of the creek. He told Pedro they would talk about it. Meanwhile, he had had enough fun and was going to find his blankets. "Use mine," Pedro invited him at once. "I have that young wife now, the one from Mexico. I don't think you've seen her. Try her; I give permission." Sieber thanked him but refused, saying he was too tired to do well by a young wife. "Maybe my boy here would like to accept in my place," he mumbled to Pedro. "I give my permission."