Rope Burn Read online

  “Thanks for your help, Jensen,” MacDonald rasped to Ace. “Wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d let those savages have me.”

  “We’re in this together,” Ace replied.

  “Yeah, I reckon. Not that it’s gonna do any good. There are too many of the red devils—”

  He fell silent as the circle of Apaches suddenly parted and a man strode through the opening. He was slightly taller and slimmer than the rest of the warriors, who tended toward short, stocky builds. He had a blue headband around his hair and a blue sash at his waist, tied around the long white shirt he wore.

  A gunbelt was buckled around his waist as well, with the attached holster containing what appeared to be a long-barreled Remington .44. The warrior carried a Winchester at a slant across his chest. His bearing, as well as the way the other Apaches stepped back to let him through, told Ace that this man was the chief.

  The man lowered the rifle and made a leisurely, sweeping gesture with his left hand, indicating to the other warriors that they should step back. He faced the group of whites huddled next to the water and said in good English, “I am called Ndolkah. It means mountain lion in your tongue. You have killed several of my warriors, but I will spare your lives if you will lay down your arms and promise to fight no more.”

  “You mean you’ll let us go?” MacDonald asked harshly.

  The ghost of a smile flitted across the chief’s lips. “This I did not promise,” he said. “But if you surrender, some of you may live . . . for a while. If you fight, all of you will die, here and now.”

  “We surrender!” Driscoll cried. “Just . . . just don’t kill us!”

  “Shut up,” MacDonald growled. “That heathen ain’t gonna let any of us live except maybe the girl . . . and she won’t want to!”

  The wheels of Ace’s brain turned over swiftly. He didn’t think they had much of a chance, either—but they had no chance the way things were.

  And one slim hope still existed to which they might cling. Despite the warnings MacDonald had issued back at Fort Gila, Ace thought it likely that Lieutenant Olsen and a search party would have set out after the deserters as soon as Olsen got back to the fort. So help could be on the way—if they could survive long enough for it to find them.

  “Lieutenant Driscoll is right,” Ace said. “We have to surrender or be wiped out.”

  Chance stared at him in disbelief. “Ace, have you gone loco? Jensens don’t give up—”

  “This time we do,” Ace said. “We don’t have any choice.”

  Ndolkah smiled again. “You are wise beyond your years, young white man. Perhaps you will live the longest.” He gestured to his warriors again, this time curtly. “Take them!”

  The Apaches closed in again. MacDonald and a couple of the other men put up a fight, but it didn’t last long before they were overpowered and borne to the ground. Then all the prisoners’ hands were tied and their captors prodded them into a defeated walk on up the canyon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Apache village was a couple of miles higher in the mountains, in a narrower canyon that had an actual spring in it, so they didn’t have to rely on rain caught in tanks for their water. The clean, cool stream that trickled out of the rock wall was a tiny one, but it was enough to form a small pool, and in a harsh, unforgiving land such as this one, that was almost a luxury.

  Perhaps thirty mud hogans were scattered around the canyon, so Ndolkah’s band was neither one of the smallest nor a very large one. He had lost almost a dozen warriors in the ambush, with Ace, Chance, and MacDonald doing most of the damage, so the attack had been a costly one. Wailing from the women who had lost their husbands filled the air.

  “If they let those women have us . . .” Chance muttered as the prisoners trudged into the village.

  “I know,” Ace said. He and Chance had never clashed with Apaches until the ambush on the work detail, but they had heard enough stories to be aware that it was the women who took torturing prisoners to new, awful heights, not the men.

  “Frank will find us,” Driscoll babbled. “He’s got to.”

  “Shut up,” MacDonald told him. “That big buck who’s their leader savvies our talk. No point in lettin’ him know that a patrol might be on our trail.” He laughed. “If anybody at that fort’s smart enough to figure out I was tryin’ to put ’em on a false scent with all that talkin’ I did.”

  “Somebody will figure it out,” Ace said. He hoped that was true, because it was their only chance.

  Some of the women rushed toward them and spat at them. Children pelted them with rocks. Evelyn whimpered in fear and pain. Chance wanted to put his arms around her and comfort her, but with his hands tied behind his back, he couldn’t. Instead he walked as close to her as he could and said, “It’s going to be all right. You’ll see.”

  The tear-streaked face she turned toward him showed that she didn’t believe that for a second.

  The warriors poked them with Winchester barrels and herded them over to an area where part of the canyon wall bulged out and created an overhang. The area underneath it was ten feet deep, maybe twice that long, and the sloping roof no more than five feet high. All the prisoners had to bend to clear it as they were forced into the cave-like den, even Evelyn.

  MacDonald banged his head on the rock and cursed. His shirt had a large bloodstain on the side where he’d been stabbed. Nothing had been done about the wound. The Apaches probably didn’t think it mattered, since in their eyes MacDonald wasn’t long for this world anyway, and the big sergeant seemed to share that feeling.

  When they were all sitting down against the canyon wall under the overhang, though, Ace said, “Lieutenant Driscoll, you ought to take a look at that wound in MacDonald’s side.”

  “MacDonald’s wound?” Driscoll said in a voice that bordered on hysterical. “What about this arrow in my shoulder?”

  It was true that the arrow was still lodged in the lieutenant’s shoulder. That wound hadn’t bled as much as the gash in MacDonald’s side, though.

  Driscoll went on, “I’ll see if I can lean over so somebody can get hold of the shaft and pull it out.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” MacDonald snapped. “You know better than that. You’ve removed arrows from men who were hit. Pull it out and you’ll do a lot more damage.”

  That was true. The only practical method to remove an arrow like that was to break off the end of the shaft and then push the head the rest of the way through. That created an exit wound to deal with, but that was still less dangerous than the other way.

  Driscoll sobbed. “You’re right,” he choked out. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re all going to die.”

  “Don’t give up yet,” Ace said quietly. “As long as we’re alive, there’s a chance we’ll get out of here.”

  A gloomy silence fell over the group. Three of the Apache warriors stood just outside the makeshift prison, holding Winchesters at the ready. Now and then some of the women approached the prisoners and spat at them again. The guards allowed that but ran off any children who came up intending to throw more rocks.

  It was difficult to tell how much time had passed, but Ace tried to keep track of it by watching the play of sunlight in the canyon and the way its slant increased. He estimated that it was late afternoon when Ndolkah strode toward them and came to a stop in front of the overhang.

  The chief studied them for a long moment. Whatever he had in mind, Ace figured it would be a good idea to postpone it for as long as possible, so he asked, “How is it that you speak English so well?”

  Ndolkah looked annoyed by the question, but he said, “I learned at the reservation school, when I was a child. It was the first reservation on which the white men tried to force my people. They had not yet learned that we are not animals to be penned up.”

  MacDonald said, “Maybe if you’d learn to live like human beings instead of animals, you wouldn’t get treated that way.”

  Ndolkah moved his hand to the knife sheathed at his wa
ist, attached to the gunbelt he wore. “You have no right to tell us how to live, white man. When you try, we tell you . . . how to die.”

  He turned his head, looked along the line of prisoners, and pointed to the two troopers at the other end. He gave a guttural command in his native tongue, and warriors sprang forward to bend down and grab hold of those two.

  The men had started to look terrified as soon as Ndolkah’s gaze landed on them and lingered. Now they screamed and yelled and tried to writhe around as strong hands lifted them from the ground. One of them kicked at the Apaches and received a powerful blow that left him half-stunned and unable to fight. Both men were forced to their feet and dragged away from the others.

  MacDonald roared curses and said, “Leave those boys alone! They ain’t never done nothin’ to you or your people!”

  “They do not belong here,” Ndolkah responded calmly. “Some of my men died today, brave men, and their deaths must be avenged. The women and children cry out for justice.”

  “It ain’t justice! You just like killin’! You’re monsters, all of you!”

  Ndolkah ignored him and walked away.

  “They’re going to kill them,” Driscoll said hollowly. “They’re going to torture them and kill them.”

  Evelyn sobbed. Her head drooped forward and she didn’t lift her eyes, which Ace figured was a good thing. Whatever was about to happen, she didn’t need to watch it.

  “Shoemaker and Barnes,” MacDonald said. “Them’s their names. All of you ought to know that, and remember ’em in the time you’ve got left.”

  Chance said quietly to Ace, “With what they’ve done, I shouldn’t feel sorry for those men. Given the opportunity, I would have drilled them myself when we were trying to stop them from deserting.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Ace said. “They don’t deserve what’s about to happen to them. None of us do.”

  The Apaches were like a completely alien species that lived by different rules. There was no room for compassion in their makeup, only cruelty. That was the way it seemed to Ace, anyway, as the two troopers, Shoemaker and Barnes, were staked out and the women went to work on them with knives.

  Scream after scream ripped through the hot, late afternoon air as razor-sharp blades cut and sliced and peeled away skin and flesh. The men’s voices grew hoarse and raw as shrieks of agony took their toll on vocal cords. At first Shoemaker and Barnes bucked up off the ground and tried to fight against the bonds, but their strength deserted them as their blood flowed and seeped and oozed from the scores of cuts. Finally, all they could do was lie there, whimpering and quivering, as the Apache women continued to inflict torment beyond imagining.

  Evelyn slumped against Chance’s shoulder. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but Chance knew she could still hear the cries. He began talking, not really paying attention to what he was saying, just spewing an endless stream of words in an effort to drown out the terrible sounds that filled the Apache village and echoed back from the canyon walls. He couldn’t cover them up completely, but he could at least blunt their effect.

  MacDonald began cursing, a low, monotonous drone of obscenity, and oddly enough, that helped, too. Ace listened and almost took comfort in it.

  While that was going on, some of the warriors erected a pole framework with a thick crossbeam at the top. When they had it lashed together securely, the women who weren’t involved in torturing Shoemaker and Barnes began building a fire underneath the crossbeam, using broken branches from the scrubby trees around the spring. They fed it carefully until the flames burned steadily without being overly large. There wasn’t an abundance of fuel in these parts—but what the Apaches had in mind made using some of it worthwhile, where they were concerned. By now the sun was down and shadows were beginning to gather in the canyon, which made the fire seem even brighter.

  The women moved back away from the prisoners as the men approached. Ndolkah stood to one side, arms folded across his chest, watching, as his warriors freed Shoemaker and Barnes from the pickets that had held them spread-eagled. They tied the men’s ankles together, then lashed their hands behind their backs. They carried the troopers over to the fire, threw ropes over the pole framework, looped those ropes around Shoemaker and Barnes’s ankles, and then hoisted the men so they hung head-down over the flames.

  The two troopers looked more like bundles of bloody rags than they did anything human. So much blood covered the men’s faces and bodies that they appeared black in the firelight. Enough still oozed from their wounds to form fat drops that fell into the fire. From where Ace sat, he could hear each grotesque sizzle as those drops landed in the flames.

  Instinctively, even in their half-dead state, Shoemaker and Barnes tried to escape the terrible heat rising from the fire. Trussed up as they were, all they could do was wriggle frantically, like worms impaled on a fishing hook. They couldn’t twist enough to get away.

  Their suffering gave them enough strength, though, that their desperate struggle provided great sport for the watching Apaches. The women hooted and screamed in joy. The children capered around and giggled. The men looked on solemnly, nodding in satisfaction as the prisoners’ writhing grew more and more frantic, then progressively weaker and weaker.

  Finally, Shoemaker and Barnes stopped fighting and just hung there like sides of meat. They had either passed out or were already dead. Either way, it was merciful, because after a while their brains swelled from the heat and burst their skulls like shattered melons. Judging by their reaction, the Apaches thought that was the most entertaining thing they had ever seen.

  MacDonald was sitting next to Ace. He leaned his head closer and whispered, “Listen to me, Jensen. Before they get around to you . . . if you get a chance . . . you kill that girl. You hear me? You swear it to me!”

  Ace glanced at Evelyn, shivering against Chance’s side, and had to swallow hard before he was able to say, “I hear you. And I promise . . . I will.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The death of Privates Shoemaker and Barnes evidently satisfied the Apaches’ savage lust for the time being, because they didn’t approach the prisoners for the rest of the night. Eventually, exhaustion claimed all the captives. The human mind could only cope with so much horror before it retreated into whatever oblivion it could find.

  But when they awoke in the morning, that horror was still right in front of them. The Apaches had left Shoemaker and Barnes hanging from the framework as the fire burned down, so by now the bodies were nothing but charred husks. And the smell that still lingered in the canyon . . . !

  “How long is this going to last?” Driscoll muttered. He was pale and drawn, and every time he moved even the tiniest bit, he grimaced in pain from the arrow. Blood had dried and crusted around the wound, but now and then some fresh crimson would seep out of it.

  “Well, there are seven of us left,” MacDonald said, “but that counts the girl and they won’t kill her. They’ll make her a slave, and the bucks’ll take turns with her.”

  “Shut your mouth, MacDonald,” Chance flared. “There’s no need for filthy talk like that.”

  “I’m just tellin’ it the way it is, kid. If you don’t like it, take it up with those savages.” MacDonald paused, then went on, “Anyway, as I was sayin’, with six of us to kill, they’ll probably do two every night. So that means the lucky ones who go last probably have three more days to look forward to.”

  Quietly, Ace said, “There’s still a chance we’ll be rescued. We need to hang on as long as we can.”

  “Keep tellin’ yourself that,” MacDonald said with a cold grin.

  Ace was doing more than that. Now that the shock of their captivity had worn off slightly, his brain had begun to work again. If there was a way out of this deadly dilemma other than just sitting there helplessly and hoping, he was determined to find it.

  Only two warriors were standing guard over the prisoners today. That was a slight improvement. If he and Chance could get loose, they could overpower
those guards, free the others, take the Winchesters, and maybe make it to the far end of the canyon, which was steep but not too sheer to be climbed. Even better, there were enough rocks and trees on the slope to provide some cover. The Jensen brothers would be able to put up a fight and hold the Apaches off while the others escaped.

  They would still be on foot, in the middle of a harsh landscape filled with enemies, but that was better than being helpless captives destined for torture and death.

  The first step was figuring out a way for him and Chance to get loose . . .

  Ace looked to his left at his brother. Evelyn was on Chance’s left, leaning against him and resting her head on his shoulder. Under other circumstances, Chance would have been pleased as punch about having her so close to him, but not now. Evelyn’s eyes were closed, but she was breathing in such a jerky rhythm that Ace didn’t think she was asleep, just trying to shut out her surroundings. Chance just stared ahead dully, as if he’d been stunned.

  Ace’s gaze fell on the brooch pinned to Evelyn’s blouse. Even after everything that had happened, it was still there. The pin holding it in place had to be pretty sturdy.

  Ace’s heart began to slug a little harder in his chest.

  “Chance,” he whispered to his brother. “Chance!”

  A little life came back into Chance’s eyes. He turned his head toward Ace. “What?”

  “Look at Evelyn’s bosom.”

  Chance frowned. “Blast it, this isn’t the time or place—”

  “I’m talking about the brooch pinned to her blouse.”

  “What?” Chance said again. “I don’t understand . . .”

  Even as he spoke, though, he had turned his head to look where Ace had said, and his voice trailed off as he stared at the piece of jewelry.

  “That brooch has a pin on it,” he said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not like it’ll cut through those rawhide strips around our wrists, though.”

  “No,” Ace said, “but you might be able to use it to pick at them enough to loosen them. Then you could untie them.”