Brotherhood of the Gun Read online

  “I never heard of any warrior-chief named Gokhlayeh,” Sam said.

  Some Mexican soldier hung a nickname on him and it stuck,” Wellman replied. “Now he’s known as Geronimo.”

  * * *

  At the Salt River, the four of them rested and tried to relax. They did rest, but their relaxation was a tense one, knowing they were surrounded by Apaches. But they did manage to bathe and wash their clothes and have several hot meals. Then Matt remembered something that a drifting cowboy had told him just before he and Sam pulled out of Wyoming and started drifting south.

  “I heard there was a little town, no more than a trading post, really, down near the foothills of the Pinal Mounains,” Matt said. “The cowboy who told me about it was drunk at the time and wasn’t too sure about the name. He said somebody named it Glob.”

  “Somebody must have a glob for a brain to put a post smack in the middle of ’Pache country,” Wellman stated. “But it’s worth a try. Somewheres along the way I done lost my chewin’ tobacco. And I do like a chaw occasional.” He spat into the fire. “Wherebouts in the Pinals is this Glob place?”

  “He told me it was between the Pinals and the Apache Mountains.”

  “That’d be about thirty-five or forty miles from here. We’ll give her a shot then. Stay between Jackson Butte and Chromo Butte. It’s rough country but they’s water and good cover. And we’ll be caught up with the Tontos to the west and the White Mountain ’Paches to the east. Anybody object to pullin’ out in the mornin’?”

  No one did.

  * * *

  The name of the two-building town was not Glob—it was Globe. And as the bartender told them, this wasn’t the original location of the town. It all started out on Ramboz Peak as a mining town. It was moved here ’cause it was a better location.

  “Do tell?” Wellman said. “Gimme a rye. History lessons make me awful dry.”

  Beer for Bodine and Sam, lemonade for Laurie, who was making the barkeep nervous just by being in the bar side of the trading post.

  “Thought we might have some peace around here with old Cochise dyin’,” the barkeep said. “But ’twasn’t to be. Things is damn near as bad as they was.”

  “Chappo get up this way much?” Sam asked.

  The barkeep actually shuddered at the mention of his name. “That one is the worst of the worse. He just raided a ranch west of here night before last. Killed the man and woman and tortured their teenage son to death. Kidnapped a little girl. Poor thing.”

  “Victorio?” Bodine asked.

  “Victorio is talkin’ peace among the Mimbres. But if the Army tries to move him from New Mexico to San Carlos, they’ll be war. Bet on it.”

  “The Chiricahua reservation still going?” Sam asked.

  “Not after it was found that Geronimo and his cutthroats was just usin’ it for sanctuary between raids. That, and them killin’s last March prompted the Army to close it. They moved ’em all over to San Carlos. Which didn’t make us around here too damn happy.”

  Bodine knew that the San Carlos reservation was a barren wasteland of a hell-hole for the Apache. Some five thousand square miles of mostly low-lying land, populated by lizards and rattlesnakes and having terrible sandstorms, all of which made for miserable living conditions for the Apache. The vegetation was mostly cactus and mesquite and a few sorry-looking cottonwoods along the river banks. The government never gave the Apache enough food to live on. A weekly allotment of flour and beef never was enough to last more than four days. Then they went hungry. The Indians were constantly being short-changed on the beef, usually with the reservation officials being bought off to look the other way.

  To make matters worse, of the five thousand Apaches who were forced onto the San Carlos reservation, there were represented some eight tribes, some of them longtime haters of the other. All in all, it was not a pleasant existence.

  The government, in its efforts to transform nomadic warriors into fammers—something they did not succeed in doing—turned the reservation, for a time, into no more than a prison farm.

  Bodine looked toward the south. “It must be awful for those young girls down there.”

  “I ’spect.” Wellman fell silent for a moment and all knew he had something heavy on his mind. The old mountain man looked first at Laurie, then for several hard and lingering seconds at Bodine and Sam. “You all better know this now: If I git inside that slave factory down yonder, I ain’t takin’ no prisoners. If I git close enough to take a prisoner for information, I’ll skin him alive if I think he knows anything that would be a help to us. Anybody who would kidnap young girls to sell into bondage—and we all growed up people, we know what’s in store for them girl children—don’t deserve to live. Regardless of whether they’s Injun or white or Chinapeople; don’t make no difference to me. If any of you feel like you ain’t got the stomach for it, now’s the time to say so. Tucson ain’t but a hop and a skip from where we is. You can go there and get out of my business.”

  “Suppose some of them want to surrender, Dick?” Sam asked.

  “They got a problem,” Wellman said flatly.

  Laurie tried to put it in perspective. “Here we sit, four of us, talking about facing fifty or a hundred gunhands, and discussing their possible surrender. Who do we think we are?”

  Reservation policy also called for the Apache to govern himself. This was confusing to them because the Apache had no system that was even close to that of the white man. And to further complicate matters, the Apache thought the white man’s laws were stupid.

  But so hated were the Apaches that their plight went unnoticed by the settlers whose philosophy was, “To hell with them, they got what they deserved.”

  From the outset, it was a culture-clash of laws and rules from a more or less civilized society meeting a centuries-old, and to the whites, barbaric way of life.

  The Apaches were bound to lose.

  “Where you folks headin’?” the barkeep asked.

  “South,” Wellman told him.

  He looked at Laurie and shook his head and sighed. “Rough country between here and there.”

  “Yeah. I been there afore,” the old mountain man said. He jerked a thumb at Laurie. “Is there a place for her to sleep decent and safe for a night or two?”

  “I got a room in the back she could use. She’ll be safe there.”

  “ ’preciate it. We’ll sleep in the livery with our horses. You got ready-cooked grub here?”

  “Shore do. Got beef and beans and potatoes.”

  “You get it. We’ll shore eat it.”

  The four of them stayed in Globe for two days, relaxing and listening for any news that might come their way concerning Chappo and his band or Porter and his men.

  They learned that Chappo was likely to strike anywhere in the territory. His band numbered less than a hundred. And of the eight tribes of Apaches, only a couple would have anything at all to do with Chappo, and they were Victorio and Nana. Loco, Chato, Alchesay, and Eskaminzin would have nothing to do with the renegade Chappo; although, as one Globe resident said, that was probably due to some personal dislike more than a moral stand against Chappo’s viciousness and cruelty.

  Of Porter and his men, they learned that a large group of riders had been seen heading south out of the Mescal Mountains, following the San Pedro.

  “That’s probably Porter,” Bodine said, studying a crudely drawn map of southern Arizona. “He’ll probably veer to the southwest somewhere down here around the Little Dragoons and head for the Huachucas.”

  “That miner said a large group of riders,” Sam pointed out. “That means that Porter’s picked up some more trash.”

  Bodine nodded and Wellman said, “You two pick up a spare canteen, boys. As soon as we leave the Pinals, we’ll be ridin’ into a land filled with low-class people and damn little water.”

  “That pretty well sums up hell, Dick,” Matt said with a grin.

  “If it’s any worser, I shore don’t want to go there,”
the old mountain man said grimly.

  * * *

  They left Globe, heading south, at the best possible time of the year. Had it been summer, the conditions would have been very nearly intolerable for man and horse. They rode during the pre-dawn hours and the early morning, holing up by noon and resting during the hottest part of the day. At night they listened to the yap of the desert fox and lonely calls of coyote and once they heard the wavering howl of the wolf.

  They rode through the Tortilla Mountains, past Crozier Peak to the west and Holy Joe Peak far to the east. They picked their way through a maze of ancient saguaro, some of the giant cactus more than a hundred and fifty years old, standing fifty-feet high and weighing ten tons; many of them with thirty to forty huge arms.

  “Injuns eat them red fruits up there on the cactus,” Wellman pointed out. “They ain’t bad, but I wouldn’t want a steady diet of ’em.”

  “How do those birds nest in there without getting killed on the thorns?” Laurie asked.

  “Don’t ask me, child,” Wellman replied. “Just another one of God’s wonders, is all I can say. They’s rats out here in this hell that don’t never take a drink of water, so I’ve been told. I don’t know how they do that, either.”

  “What’s that up ahead?” Sam asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  “Them’s the Santa Catalina Mountains. And they’s a pretty sight for these eyes.”

  “Water?” Bodine asked.

  “You betcha, boy.”

  In actual distance they had traveled about seventy five miles. But their clothes were crusty with dried sweat and dust. Their eyes were red-rimmed from the intense sun and baked land and from staring hard for any sign of hostiles.

  “We been lucky,” Wellman summed up the journey from Globe to the Santa Catalinas.

  The four of them dismounted from their weary horses to stand and gaze at the abrupt and most welcome transformation. They were looking at beautiful grassy meadows and forests of ponderosa pine, and they could hear the sound of falling water far in the distance.

  “Seven Falls,” Wellman told them.

  “It sounds delicious,” Laurie said.

  “I never heared it put quite like that,” Wellman spoke with a grin. “But you pegged it right.” He pointed. “Yonder’s a crick, girl. You go bathe and such and I’ll hold a gun on these two to keep them from sneakin’ a peek.”

  “Oh, they wouldn’t do that, Dick!”

  Bodine and Sam just grinned.

  * * *

  “You two do smell a whole lot better,” Wellman remarked, after Bodine and Sam returned from a bath in the cold waters of the creek. “I was about ready to ask Laurie if she had any toilet water to pour on you boys.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk,” Sam came back at him. “I thought I was in the company of a skunk riding up here alongside you.”

  Wellman cackled with good humor, knowing that Sam spoke the truth. He had soaped off about five pounds of trail dust.

  Laurie was a short distance away, sitting on the rocks below Seven Falls, enjoying the beauty and the peacefulness of the scenery.

  “I ’spect we best plan on gettin’ to the fort in the Huachucas,” Wellman said. “We might get lucky and get some more lead into Porter’s bunch along the way.”

  “Army fort?” Bodine looked at Wellman.

  “Yeah. It’s always undermanned, so I was told. They won’t give us any trouble.”

  “And how far away is that?” Sam asked.

  “I’d guess a good hundred and thirty-forty miles from where we’re luxuriatin’. We’ll stay in the mountains for several days. I know the trails. They’ll be desert for a spell, ’tween the Rincon and the Whitstone Mountains—the Empire Mountains is grim, but I know where the tinajas is, or was—then we’ll have another spell down to the Huachucas.”

  “What’s a tinajas?” Laurie asked, walking up to join them.

  “Natural stone tanks high up in the rocks that hold water. This is a good time of year for them to have water, too. Summer can get kind of grim.”

  “There any towns between here and there?” Bodine posed the question.

  “Not that I know of. There used to a tradin’ post some few miles south and west of the Little Dragoons. Might be a town there now. But the way the ’Paches raid and burn, I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “When do you want to leave, Dick?”

  “We’ll get a good rest this afternoon and tonight. Pull out in the morning.”

  “People with right on their side, Laurie,” Matt told her. “Lawman over in Texas once said that you can’t stop a man who knows he’s right and just keeps on coming.”

  “Or a woman,” she replied sweetly, but with edged steel in the words.

  Chapter 9

  They left at dawn, skirting Mount Lemmon and riding south, out of the Santa Catalinas and toward the Rincon Mountains. Twice they saw sign of Apaches, but if the Indians saw them, and that was quite likely, the braves decided not to attack the riders. Perhaps it was the way they sat their saddles, or maybe it was the set of their jaws or the hard look on their faces. The Indians did not fight to take losses, and one look at the four people riding south would tell a seasoned warrior that much blood would be spilled fighting these people. Or perhaps the Apache just did not feel like making war; perhaps the signs were not right. Or as Dick put it, “ ’Paches are notional folks. Ever’thing’s got to be just right for them to attack. They got to sit and palaver for a time.”

  They left the coolness of the forests and rode into the near barrenness. There was water, but one had to know where to find it.

  They cut slightly east and found the trading post just west of the San Pedro river. They had not been bothered by the Apache.

  “We’re about twenty-five miles from the Huachucas,” Wellman told them. “And would you just take a look at them horses at the hitchrail.”

  Bodine and Sam had already noticed them. They belonged to some of Porter’s men; some of the same horses the men had seen following the ambush in the canyon and again at Horsehead Crossing.

  Bodine and Wellman and Sam checked their guns, wiping the dust from them and loading the cylinders up full. Laurie pulled her rifle from the boot.

  “Let’s go clean out a snake pit,” Wellman said, and took the lead riding up behind the trading post.

  The place could be called a town, if one wanted to stretch the meaning of that word. There were six buildings and one bumpy, rutted road running east and west.

  “Ain’t progress grand?” Wellman said, swinging down from the saddle. “Place has done become a regular metropolis since I last seed it. Let’s go reduce the population, folks.”

  “You just hold on a minute, Dick,” Bodine told him quietly.

  The mountain man wheeled around and stared at the much younger man.

  “We don’t know who might be in there. And I’m not goin’ in shootin’ until I do know. We were lucky back up north in that no innocent person got killed. We might not be so lucky this time around. There might even be some law in this burg; a man with more guts than that old man back at the Crossing.”

  “So?” Wellman challenged. Mountain men would walk up to the devil and spit in his eye just to see what he’d do. They were a breed such as the nation had never seen before and with their passing as progress caught up with them, would most likely never see again.

  “We’re down here to try and rescue some kidnapped girls, not get thrown in the pokey because we didn’t use our heads.”

  Wellman glared hard at Bodine for a moment, then grinned. “All right, boy. You run this show, then. What do you think we ought to do?”

  “Why, hell, Dick—go in a have a drink, what else?”

  Wellman laughed.

  “Laurie, you go in the store door of the building, cover us from that side.”

  The blonde nodded and walked toward the mercantile side of the huge building. Matt noticed that it was a pleasure watching her walk away. He put that pleasant thought
out of his mind and loosened his guns in leather. The three men walked toward the saloon side, stood for a moment staring into the much darker interior, so their eyes would more quickly adjust once inside, and pushed open the batwings.

  The hubbub of conversation ceased abruptly when the men entered. The three men walked quickly to the bar and fanned out, backs to the bar, staring at the roomful of rowdies who were giving them dark looks of hate.

  Porter was not among them, and neither were the top guns Sam and Bodine had seen up north.

  But several of the outlaws were still wearing dirty bandages from wounds suffered during the ambush in the canyon.

  Wellman smiled at the crowd of a dozen or so. The old man was anxious to drag iron and the crowd of gunnies could sense it. “Where’s that pig you call a boss? What’s his name? I disremember right off.”

  “Potty, isn’t it?” Sam said.

  “Yeah. Something like that,” Bodine picked it up. “Or maybe it was pooty.”

  The saloon quickly emptied of anyone not associated with the Porter Gang.

  “He’s around,” a rough-looking outlaw said. “Which is more than you’re gonna be for very long, old man.”

  Wellman laughed at him. “You think you’re gonna be the one to cash my chips in, punk?”

  “I might be,” the man replied.

  “Then stand up and do it!”

  But the outlaw only smiled. “Some other time, Wellman. We got more important things to do than fool around some old has-been like you.”

  Wellman laid a cussin’ on the man, calling him everything profane he could think of . . . which after fifty years in the high dangerous lonesome of the mountains, was quite a lot.

  Still the man would not stand and fight. And none of his friends showed any inclination to mix it up with Wellman.

  Wellman fell silent, having run out of cuss words.

  Sam began moving his hands, speaking in sign language. Wellman and Bodine both laughed. Sam ended by making a kissing sound with his lips.