I, Tom Horn Read online

  "What was the idee of that?" I demanded angrily of Sieber. "You got a rodeo mule there?"

  "Oh," said the German. "Now I am right sorry, Horn. But I forgot to warn you she has been trained to mount on the wrong side. She will pitch every time, otherwise. Try her again."

  I limped over and caught up the she-beast, got around on her wrong side, and swung up on her again. And lit on the same pile of rocks that I done before, bucked off even harder than the first time. But I was too wobble-kneed to go to war over it.

  "And what," I pleaded feebly of Sieber, "was the extry added idee of that?"

  Well, the old scout answered, I had hired myself out to cavalry and Indian employment, and he only wanted to show me how risky it could be carrying out orders that could get a man's ass in a permanent sling, without proper caution of forethought.

  "You see," he said, "the mule is likewise trained to buck unless the mounter walks alongside her a certain number of pasos before he clambers aboard her. The one trick guards her agin white horse thieves, the other agin being stole by Injuns. And there's your proper caution to it, don't you see."

  "No," I grumbled, "I don't see. What has getting two times bucked off your blasted performing mule got to do with the Apache camp, or me getting started right in the Injun scouting business?"

  "You've simply got to stay more on the que vive, Horn," he said. "That's what I've tried to show you. Question your orders, boy. Don't go and do a dumb thing because somebody has told you to do it. Back off and take a good look all about, every time. You comprende?"

  "Yes sir, I reckon so."

  "Well, no you don't," he snapped at me. "You're still short. You didn't ask me how many steps the mule is trained to go before she can be got on. Or how she can be mounted when there ain't time to walk her into it. Damn!"

  He spit out his plug of chaw like it had gone rank on him, "Here's your horse," he said, handing me the reins. "I don't know if I will keep you on, or not. By God, I don't." He limped beside the mule for what seemed to me no less than seventy, eighty feet before groaning his way aboard her and turning her head upstream.

  "Well," I said, after we had gone a proper ways, and me still smarting inside, "how do you get up on her without taking that overnight hike alongside her ass?"

  "Oh," Al Sieber answered, seeming startled, "didn't I tell you that?"

  And he left it dangling squarely there. As long as I knew him and rode for him, he never again mentioned it.

  I wouldn't, to this day, know how to get on that damn mule, if I had to do it. She was a peculiar beast, fit mount for Al Sieber. Her name was Jenny. Really, it was Janet. But he only called her that when he was put out. Come to think of that, she was more Janet than Jenny, I reckon. But Sieber loved her. I never saw him ride a horse, saving by emergency.

  He was a mule man.

  He always said he learned it from General George Crook in his first tour with the Third U.S. Cavalry, in the Arizona Territory. Crook was a mule man. And he knew more about the Apache Indians than any other white man short of Al Sieber, or maybe a few of the other white scouts early employed by Crook with Sieber. Men like Will Rice, Mace McCoy, August Spear, and Jack Townsend. But Crook and Al Sieber were the mule men. Interesting. Of all the others only those two are remembered today, and they rode mules. Well, Sieber always said a mule will, beat a horse every way but straightaway. By which he meant in a straight speed race. "A mule will go farther on less oats, climb better, get down better, carry more, is a sharper watchdog of your camp, has three times the sense and twice the sand of any horse, and, when whipped and clubbed on a reasonable schedule, will give faithful service to his master into advanced age."

  Sieber ought to know.

  He had come west in 1866, gone to work for Crook in either 1871 late or 1872 early, "found" me in July of 1876 —and he said he had got Jenny in the muster-out at Appomattox Court House, rode her all the way from Virginia to Arizona, wore out three saddles on her, and she was already six years old when he got her from General Grant by way of a crap game with a Confederate boy who'd been given her and sixty dollars to make a new life for himself and his family after the war.

  So Jenny had to be sixteen, seventeen years old when she bucked me off on the way to Pedro's rancheria and, well, hell, Sieber was only thirty-two, himself.

  Which will do it for mule men.

  Myself, I always rode the best horse that money could buy or skill could otherwise acquire. All I could ever say for mules was that they roasted pretty good, and the bronco Apaches would rather eat low on a bony jackass than high on a fat hog. Matter of fact, they wouldn't touch lip to pork. Or to bear meat or fish. Which maybe made the old German pretty coy, after all; if he got caught by hostiles while on the scout, they would always eat his mule first before judging what to do with him, and any fool knows a full-fed jury brings in the friendliest verdicts. An Apache bronco Indian full of fresh-roast mule meat wasn't no meaner than a Pima or Papago.

  I suspect that's why Sieber survived.

  Although I believe he used up more jennys in the process than any white man will ever understand.

  But mules always fascinated me. Them and the men that rode them when they might have had a good horse. You put your mind to the matter, and you can't help but puzzle it.

  Abraham Lincoln rode a mule.

  So did Jesus.

  Apache Bloodsmell

  We had gone but a short distance toward the Apache camp when a slender Indian of about my own age rode up and halted us. He spoke in Spanish.

  "Listen, Seebie," he said, "my father sends me to ask you to turn around. The people have gotten a supply of tizwin, and there has been a big all-night sing going on. Some Cibicus (mixed-band renegades) are in camp and talking lies against Jona-clum (John P. Clum, agent at San Carlos). There may be trouble if you come on up there now. All right, Seebie?"

  The big German was angry to hear this. "Where did they get the tizwin?" he demanded. "Don't lie to me."

  The Indian backed his pony to turn away from us. "You know where they got the tizwin, Seebie," he said.

  "Chuga-de-slona," Sieber glared, "old Centipede."

  "You did not hear me say that name," the rider replied.

  "One day," Sieber rasped, "he will brew his last pot."

  "Go back, Seebie. My father asks it."

  "It will be his last pot," Sieber continued as if he had not heard the young Indian, "because he will be in that pot himself. I promise it. You will see."

  "Go back," the Apache youth repeated. "Por favor."

  In all this time, he had not so much as glanced in my direction. Now, still without "seeing" me, he dug heel to his pony's ribs and took off up the river.

  Sieber sat there on his mule, scowling darkly.

  "That was young Ramon," he said at last to me. "He is the prize mesquite bean in his daddy's soup. Damn."

  I said, "And his daddy being Old Pedro, who we are bound to visit. Is that the fact?"

  "Of course."

  "And some outlaw Injun name of Chuga-de-slona is making and selling Apache whiskey, and we don't aim to tolerate that much longer."

  "You have got your snoot square in the hoofprint," Sieber growled.

  "We turning back?"

  Sieber shook his head. "We don't never turn back," he said. "We only sometimes ride a little wide."

  "Like right now, you mean?"

  "De seguro," grunted Al Sieber, and he swung his mule off the trail, hard to the right and into the higher rocks. I and the gelding scrambled to keep up and just barely managed it. That old crippled German was onto a hot track. He had smelled out something that had not got to my greenhorn's nostrils. That was plain as warts on a scalded hog. When we held up to rest our mounts on an overlook eight hundred feet above the river, I asked him what it was.

  "Horn," he scowled, "you got to learn that with Injuns it ain't what they tell you, but what they leave out that will spend or save your hair." He looked at me in a way to wither quartz rock. "Naturally,
Apaches don't by custom cut scalp locks. I'm using simplemind terms so even you can surround the idee."

  "What idee is that?"

  "The idee that Ramon was acting bad scairt, back yonder. It wasn't that he was fearful something might happen if we rode on up to the rancheria. It was that he was walleyed shook that we would find out what had already happened up there ."

  "And what you suppose that might be?"

  "Blood has been spilt for certain. Apaches are like green-broke broncs. Bloodsmell spooks them wild. Young Ramon, he had his nose holes so wide flared you could see clean to his butthole puckering string." Sieber cursed his way back into the saddle of his dapple-gray mule, settled there with a groan. "Come on, Horn," he said. "You got a beak the size of a cavalry bugle. "Let's see how good it blows out fresh Apache bloodstink."

  "Yes sir," I answered.

  Which, with Aloysius Sieber, chief of civilian scouts, United States Fifth Cavalry, San Carlos, was always the correct and proper reply.

  Sieber brought us into the upper, unguarded, end of Pedro's village. We had ridden nearly to the old chief's wickiup before the Indians realized who we were. Spotting Seebie, they closed in behind us by the scores. In the time required to reach Old Pedro's dwelling, we were surrounded by uneasy, scowling, and some outrightly ugly Apache Indians. "Anciano!" Sieber challenged the silent brush hut. "Come out here. It is Sieber."

  Pedro came out. He was very old. To me he appeared a breathing corpse. But he had been to Washington and shaken the hand of the white father, and he was a great Indian. His people called him a damned old liar, but they respected his wisdom and his many winters.

  "What do you want, Seebie?" he croaked. "Qué pasa?"

  "You know very well qué pasa,"Sieber answered him sternly. ‘It is for you to tell me."

  "There is nothing important. I asked you to stay away. Can't you see the trouble here. It is tizwin."

  "I can see that. There is more trouble than that."

  "There will be. Please to go, Seebie."

  A bad rumbling ran through the pushing crowd of Indians. The whiskey was evident among them, and the threat to white scouts from San Carlos was self-exampled by a hundred hostile faces in any quarter of the compass.

  Sieber looked around at the growling populace and gave a growl of his own. "Cállate!" he commanded them. "Chiefs are speaking here. If you want to talk against chiefs, come up here where we are. Don't stand back there behind those women. Bah! I retract that advice. Stay where you are. You are all ish-sons ("women") anyway."

  Fortunately, there was a rough laugh or three from the bolder men out front of the mob, and the tightness let up just enough.

  "Quick, now, Seebie," urged Pedro. "There is a moment. Ramon, aquí. Ride out with them." He lowered his tones as the young man stepped toward us. "Smile and talk as you go," Pedro said. "Do not hurry and do not linger. Good-bye, Seebie."

  As with Ramon earlier, the old man did not look at me. But, now, he did. He reached unexpectedly for my hand. "Shake," he said. "It will let the people think I know you, that we have met before, that you are somebody." As I obeyed, extending my hand readily enough, he said to Sieber, "Who is he for that matter, Seebie?"

  "My new boy, like a son to me."

  Only I might imagine what pain that falsehood cost the touchy old German, and I was properly beholden.

  Keen-eyed old Pedro stared into my face, still pumping my hand. "Seebie's boy," he said. "Good, good." He released my hand and clapped me on the biceps repeatedly. "Bueno, bueno, bueno," he kept chanting. "Seebie's boy, good boy. Enjuh, enjuh," which last was Apache for "good." Then, right in the middle of this happy acceptance of Sieber's new apprentice, the rheumy-eyed old devil turned to the San Carlos scout, frowning, "What is he, half of a Mexican or something? He is as dark of hide as I am. Does he carry In-deh blood? Or just a Mexican mother, say?"

  Sieber looked at me, trying to seem proud.

  "You have guessed it," he told the old man, with quite straight face, "but his mother is not Mexican, she is Missourian. You can see that, surely."

  "Ah, Mi-si-oo-ran, yes. Of course. A great Indian people. Where did you say they ranged, Seebie?"

  "Far off, jefe. Between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Sioux country, where Grey Fox has gone with all the Third Cavalry. You remember?"

  Grey Fox was another Apache name for General George Crook, more commonly called Red Beard. Pedro had known him intimately. Indeed, Crook had made Pedro chief of the San Carlos mixed bands, or at least had put the government cement to that position for him.

  Aha, aha! the ancient Apache said gruntingly.

  Then, to me, "Your people welcome their half brother. We know all about your mother's tribe. Not so warlike as the Comanche perhaps, nor so bold as the Kiowa, but a fine people. I knew you were of our blood all of the time. I was but testing Seebie."

  He stepped back, sizing me up.

  "Here!" he shouted to the restless throng about us. This is Seebie's new son. His mother was of the great Mi-si-oo-ran band, up toward the Sioux country. His name among us will be Seebie's Boy. When he earns his own name, we will give it to him, of course. Welcome him. Enjuh, enjuh. Wagh!"

  I thought to hear half a dozen grudging enjuhs and one questionable wagh. Then the meeting came down to cases, hard and ugly and rough as Sieber's growl.

  "Horn," he ordered me, "take the corner of yonder tarpaulin and whip it back to show what's under it."

  I looked at the filthy piece of government packing canvas on the ground beside Pedro's wickiup. It had a crust of green-blue blowflies on it thick as scum over an alkalied water hole. "You mean that tarpolean?" I specified. "The one with the lump under it?"

  "You see any other, Horn?"

  "Only showing a propertude of precautionary thought, sir," I replied. "Questioning every order."

  "Whip it back."

  "Yes sir!"

  There could have been a side of venison, rack of antelope, or hind of mule under that tarp, but there was not. It was a man, an Apache, and he was stifflimb dead.

  Sieber, staying on his mule, squinted at the corpse and said to me, "Brush them flies off the face." I took up a pine branch and did so. The buzzing cloud rose briefly, and Sieber said to Pedro, "Isn't that Zanny? It is, by God," he said, not waiting for the chiefs agreement. "Your own son-in-law. Married that ugly girl of yours. Poor Zanny. He did you a favor, jefe"

  "A drunkard," shrugged the old man. "No good."

  "He's ‘good' now," Sieber nodded. "Who did it?"

  "A best friend of Zanny's and my daughter, also from Fort Apache, as they are themselves. He didn't mean it."

  "Who was it?" Al Sieber said. "Was it Nol-chai?"

  "You spoke it, Seebie. I did not."

  "Have they gone back over to Fort Apache, jefe?"

  "Yes. They went last night by separate ways. But first my daughter came to me and said, ‘My father, Nol-chai has killed Zanny fighting over me. It was the tizwin that did it.'"

  "Had to be," agreed Sieber. "Nobody would fight over that squaw sober."

  "Her spirit is kind. She is a good worker."

  Sieber didn't answer. He reined his mule around, forcing back the Indians who were pressing us. "Come on, Bucko," he said to me. "I will show you how to catch up to one bad Injun for good."

  "We going after Nol-chai?" I asked, glad enough to be ordered back aboard the safety of my tall horse.

  "Nol-chai? Naw. He's a Fort Apache Injun, not one of ours. They'll take care of him over there."

  "What will he get of punishment?"

  "The end of a rope."

  "You mean the army will hang a man just for a drunk spree that got one of two best friends kilt brawling?"

  "He's an Injun, he'll swing. But he ain't our Injun. Foller me."

  The Centipede

  Sieber kicked his Jenny mule into a lope in two jumps, scattering Indians like duckpins. You can believe that I did not waste a breath in hitting the bay a lick with my quirt We dug out after t
he old German scout and Jenny like me and the bay was orphan strays and them our long lost mamas. We gained up to them in about four more cuts with the quirt, by which time the thickest of the Apache crowd was past.

  We managed to make it on out of the camp in good shape, excepting for where one old squaw cracked me on my thigh muscle with a hard-hurled knobby club the size and heft of a pick handle. Damn! But Sieber only scowled and said, "Cheer up. You was a big hit back yonder. That ain't the only stick you'll get throwed at you. You are going to get the heaviest squaw play of any half-breed since Mickey Free. I been underestimating you, Horn."

  We rode all that afternoon, coming late in the day to a desolate stretch of scrub pine and juniper brush high up on a shoulder overlooking the creek drainage that gave water to the corn and melon patches of Pedro's White Mountain rancheria. Despite the lonesomeness of the place, there was a good trail into it. When I asked about this, Sieber explained it was wore into the mountain by customers. When I then queried him as to what customers, he growled, "the ones that are going to be looking for another brewmeister come tomorrow morning."

  He would not say more, except to order me to be quiet and do absolutely nothing I was not ordered to do for the next ten minutes.

  "Ten minutes?" I said.

  "Yes," he answered. "Five minutes to get where we are going. And five more to finish our business there."

  I didn't like the feel of that empty mountainside. My sombra was punching me with its elbow. It was saying for me to look at Al Sieber. I did it, and it was a scary thing. His face was flushed and his back eyes burning like hot coals in the sundown shade of the place. I could hear his breath whistling out his nostrils.

  "What the hell's the matter?" I said, forgetting.

  But he didn't seem to hear me. He was pushing himself down off the mule, dropping her reins to ground-trail, and going forward afoot in his crawdadding, crimpled way. I had naught else to do but get down from the bay and follow him. When I came up to him he was bellied down in a rock outcrop giving view down into a little hollow below. Down in there was a brush wickiup built against a cliffwall with a cave running back into it. I saw two old busted-down burros and six, eight rusty ten-gallon cavalry water containers of the sort carried in field ambulances. Then there was the fire out in the middle of the hollow. And the vast black iron pot pole-slung over that fire and bubbling away full of a beautiful thick soup that any Missouri boy could smell was mash-whiskey makings, even dead against the wind, which was quartering across our front, down and away. "Christ," I whispered to Sieber, "Apache mountain moonshine."