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  ‘Other Apaches called him that. They thought he was crazy because he believed you could trust the white man.’

  Another smile worked at her lips. ‘The Apache sense of humour again?’

  ‘It was Loco who persuaded his band to quit fighting and go on the reservation. Only the whites forgot the promises they’d made to them to get ’em to surrender. They let ’em starve. So Loco broke out, with what was left of his people, rather than see ’em turn into a pack of beggars and drunks. No wonder he’s plenty mad right now. He’s been played for a sucker. He thinks he’s betrayed his people.’

  Taylor was a little surprised at the length of the spiel he’d launched, and the vehemence of his tone. Fiona looked surprised by it too.

  Taylor said, ‘I better watch out. Anyone catches me making speeches like that, they’ll call me an Indian lover.’ Which he was, literally. A few years back, in Arizona, he’d lived with an Aravaipa Apache girl. But that was another aspect of his story he didn’t need to share with Fiona Cameron just yet….

  She said, ‘But they’re cruel aren’t they, in war? And treacherous.’

  ‘Sometimes. But so are white men.’

  A slight awkwardness came between them. Eventually she said, ‘Well, my father’s waiting for his supper …’

  He watched her walk off towards her wagon. She’d reminded him Buck Evans was waiting for his supper too….

  Buck Evans stood in the shadows, listening.

  He was dressed in his finest for supper. He wore his best suit of go-to-meeting clothes (his only suit of go-to-meeting clothes), had slicked down his hair with the last of his bay rum, shaved as fine as he could manage with his dulled cut-throat razor and polished his boots. He even contemplated presenting Fiona with a bouquet of flowers but decided that was too forward. Besides the only flowers round here were tough desert shrubs, decked with thorns.

  He walked towards the Cameron wagon, whistling a tune he’d picked up on the buffalo range. He felt good. Then he saw dim figures standing by a small fire, and heard Fiona’s voice, and Calvin Taylor’s.

  He halted in shadows where he knew he couldn’t be seen.

  He heard Fiona say, ‘I didn’t know Apaches had a sense of humour,’ and Taylor reply, ‘Indians are human beings.’ Taylor went on, more Indian-loving nonsense in the same vein.

  An image suddenly flashed into Evans’s mind. He was labouring up a rise, in his face the ceaseless wind of the Staked Plains. He topped the rise and before him was a little gully, and in that gully lay his partner, Billy Russell. Russell had been stripped naked, his flesh as white as a fish’s belly. Evans had squinted against the harsh sunlight of these high, treeless plains and then had come the shock of seeing Russell clearly, seeing what the Comanches had done to him.

  Evans came out of his memories, back to the here and now. Taylor and Fiona talked some more, then she walked away from Taylor’s fire. She came towards Evans who stepped out of shadows so she could see him.

  ‘Can I walk you to your wagon, Miss Fiona?’

  ‘Surely.’

  As they walked along, he said, ‘That Taylor … You ever wonder why he knows so much about Indians?’ When she didn’t reply he asked, ‘Do you know what a squaw man is?’

  ‘Is that what he is?’

  ‘More than likely.’ That brought no response either and Evans felt a flicker of irritation. He said, ‘Just something to keep in mind.’

  ‘My business is my business, Buck.’

  ‘I’m getting a little confused,’ he said, ‘about what’s your business and what’s my business.’

  She gave him a cool look. ‘There’s no need to be.’

  ‘You did invite me to supper.’

  ‘That’s right. And you’re late.’

  He felt his temper start to fray. He opened his mouth to give an angry response; then they were at the Cameron wagon.

  Fiona had cooked a fine supper but the occasion wasn’t a success. Although everyone was scrupulously polite and pleasant there was a frostiness between him and Fiona that never thawed. He walked back to his wagon feeling thwarted and angry. He decided Fiona was toying with him, maybe playing him against Taylor, and he was annoyed at himself for letting that get to him.

  Temper had always been Evans’s weakness. It had led him to the one thing he’d done of which he was … ashamed might not be the right word. Maybe haunted by.

  Out on the buffalo range one night, when everyone was tired and dirty and sick of the stink of a buffalo camp, worn down to their nerve-ends by the constant threat of lurking Comanches, tempers had flared. His temper had flared. He’d got into a fight with a fellow named Kolvig, he couldn’t remember what about. Kolvig was a weaselly character with shifty eyes, not clean even by the standards of buffalo hunters, someone nobody liked. He was a Polack or Russian with barely any English so it was hard to imagine what could have been said that started things. But start they did. Maybe Evans had been a little drunk when it started. Whatever, after a considerable time of them punching, gouging and kicking each other, Evans had his opponent in a bear hug and Kolvig, with his arms trapped to his sides, had tried to reach the knife in his boot. So Evans had squeezed. Suddenly there was a small, brittle click, and Kolvig had hung limp in his arms. Evans realized for the first time the full extent of his strength: that he’d broken the other man’s back.

  The awful thing was, Kolvig didn’t die. He was still alive right now, as far as Evans knew. A cripple in some poorhouse. He was a living reminder to Evans of what he was capable of in anger.

  Evans wondered at himself, carrying around memories of Kolvig as though they were something he should repent of. He had no reason to feel guilt! Kolvig had been a damn dirty foreigner. It had been a fair fight until he’d tried to stick Evans with a knife. Evans had been defending himself and what was wrong with that? And if, sometime soon, he should tangle with Calvin Taylor, (in a fair fight, of course) and the Indian-lover should happen to find himself with his spine snapped too….

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Taylor might have missed out on supper but next morning the Camerons invited him to breakfast. After eating, he and the major sat drinking Fiona’s coffee.

  Major Cameron said, ‘No water yesterday. How far to the next?’

  Taylor clawed at the alkali dust in his trail beard. ‘There’s tanks that are usually good in Devil’s Pass. That cuts through the Superstitions up ahead.’

  ‘You said the Superstitions were Indian country.’

  ‘Apaches are mountain Indians. That’s where they like to live, and like to fight.’

  ‘And how far’s this … Devil’s Pass?’

  ‘At least thirty mile.’

  The two men exchanged grim looks. Cameron was a ghostlike figure, his skin and clothes paled by alkali. But everyone looked like that now, all of them aged by the greying of dust, even the children. Taylor supposed he looked like that too.

  Cameron said, ‘We won’t get there before tomorrow night. I don’t know if the stock’ll last that long.’

  ‘It’ll have to, major.’

  There was water in the tanks in Devil’s Pass. Not much, and that warm and tasting of alkali, but humans and animals drank gratefully.

  Major Cameron damped his bandanna and dabbed at the sunburn on his face. He told Taylor: ‘We’re more than halfway now!’

  Taylor drank from his canteen, rolling the water in his mouth before he swallowed. ‘We still got plenty of rough, thirsty country up ahead. Salt flats and such. And no guarantee of any water in it.’

  ‘How far, would you say?’

  ‘To Rio Azul? Fifty miles maybe.’

  ‘Fifty miles?’ A day earlier, Cameron thought, the prospect of fifty waterless miles would have been a weight of discouragement crushing him. Now, strangely enough, he felt optimistic. ‘Just fifty more miles and we’re home.’

  Next morning Cameron found there was a new spring in his step as he rose to face the day. From somewhere he seemed to have rediscovered long lost ho
pe. He even waved cheerily at Taylor as the man, mounted on his grey horse, rode out on his first scout. He noted that Fiona watched Taylor riding away.

  Cameron’s spirits stayed high as he ate his breakfast and moved amongst the travellers. They stayed high even as the day was shaping up to be the hottest yet, and the train crawled eastward between the jaws of grim Devil’s Pass. The Superstition Mountains loomed to the north and south, their treeless outlines jagged and hard edged. The travellers made their noon camp, then resumed their journey. After a few miles the caravan inched out of the pass on to an alkali plain.

  Cameron mounted his bay horse and rode alongside the wagons. He breathed white dust and felt the power of the midday sun. His eyes began to sting from the glare of the salt flats ahead. But he felt good, except when he remembered Fiona staring after Taylor. Despite his youth, Taylor seemed to be earning his money as a scout. Cameron could imagine how much guts it took to ride out alone ahead of these wagons each day. But what did Cameron really know about him? Did he want his daughter involved with such a man?

  Cameron had been riding along in a sort of reverie; he came out of that suddenly.

  There was movement ahead of him. On the eastern skyline.

  Cameron shielded his eyes with his hat but it was hard to see. Haze made the horizon fluctuate. Distant mountains beyond the haze flaunted and rippled like something seen through water. He could hear something strange too, a far-off high singing.

  Cameron squinted to see into the haze and made out a dark bobbing shape, growing larger. Haze stretched and twisted this shape and then Cameron saw that it was a rider coming towards him. At first he thought it was Taylor, then he saw the man was riding a dark chestnut horse. The point man – Ike Williams – was riding in at the full gallop across the salt flats. He was yelling something.

  Ike’s galloping horse raised a lot of dust. Behind this pale screen Cameron glimpsed weaving shapes, coming closer. With a dull sense of shock he realized these were horsemen – twenty, thirty of them – boiling up over the horizon with rifles in their hands. They poured out of the haze, on Ike’s tail like a pack of wolves.

  It came to Cameron that the high singing he’d heard was Apaches yelling. His impressions of them were a blur, flashing images: men in smocks and colourful shirts, their long hair flying bound with rags about their temples. He did register white stripes of war paint barring dark faces.

  Ike veered his flagging horse towards the wagons, spurring hard. Behind him rifles cracked.

  Ike flopped loosely in the saddle. He seemed to lean sideways and hang there, frozen in the act of toppling. Then he fell, rolling in dust.

  The horses of his pursuers ploughed him under. The war party fanned out; they yelled harder as they came at the wagons.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Calvin Taylor rode in from scouting across the salt flats. A breeze lifted and stirred loose sand, which enveloped him like a shroud. It was a hot, choking, eye-stinging shroud and he pulled his bandanna over his mouth and nose against it. He rode through this dim world, with the sun a gauzy smear behind streaming dust. His mouth twisted at the irony. He was supposed to be a scout, the eyes and ears of the wagon train, and here he was riding blind. A whole tribe of hostiles could be all around him and he wouldn’t see them.

  After some minutes the wind fell and the dust thinned. Taylor found he could see where he’d been and even where he was going.

  He rode, his sore eyes roving over featureless, sun-blasted country. This looked like an endless plain, a flat unbroken surface, but he knew that was deceptive. The plain was torn with breaks and gullies in which considerable numbers of men on foot or horseback might hide. So he rode with his hand close to the Winchester in his saddle sheath and his nerves stretched tight against the bark of a hidden rifle or Apaches rising suddenly like ghosts from the earth.

  Occasionally, hard as he tried to keep them focused, his thoughts strayed. Mostly to Fiona Cameron. On the frontier women were married off early, so it was surprising that such a fine-looking woman hadn’t caught herself a husband yet. He realized that he knew almost nothing about her. Every time they’d talked it was about him, usually about his supposed love of Indians.

  Taylor reined in his horse.

  Off to the west there was gunfire.

  Taylor’s main job was protecting these travellers. The popping of rifles told him he’d failed. The Apaches had got around him and the wagon train was being attacked.

  He thought of Fiona again, but this time with fear and alarm. He spun his horse. He spurred and the animal broke into a run.

  He drove the grey at a full gallop towards the sound of guns.

  Taylor rode up a long slope of white sand that came to his horse’s knees and plunged through this stuff to the crest. He came in view of the wagon train. The wagons were issuing out of the eastern end of Devil’s Pass. A big bunch of Apaches on horseback – perhaps thirty of them – swarmed towards it. There was yelling and gunfire. The lead wagons were turning, circling back into the pass. Dust rose thick as smoke and dim figures afoot and on horseback moved behind it.

  Taylor pulled his rifle from his saddle sheath and spurred again. His horse started to move; in the same instant Taylor felt a hard blow against his back that drove him up and forward out of the saddle. He fell, hitting on a mound of loose sand. Dust burst around him. He rolled and scrambled up, knee-deep in fine sand. His horse screamed and reared away. Taylor was utterly confused as to what was happening: had he just been shot in the back? Still he had enough presence of mind left to grab for the trailing lines of the horse as it sprang away. He caught them. The animal danced about.

  Taylor bent and snatched up the Winchester and saw two Apaches on horseback galloping towards him, one from the front, one from the right. The latter at least had a rifle, which he pulled to his shoulder and fired. Taylor wasn’t hit but his heart jumped in his chest and his arms began to shake with fear. That always happened when he came under fire. He didn’t look at the men charging him but concentrated on willing his arms to be still and on holding the reins as the grey tugged at him. ‘Hold still, damn you!’ The Apaches yelled; one gave the screeching call of a mountain lion. That was designed to panic the horse, he knew. Taylor tried to close his mind to the yelling. He stabbed his foot into the near stirrup and swung aboard the grey as the animal spun beneath him, chasing its tail.

  He hauled on the reins brutally, yanking the horse around, making it stand. By which time the Apache charging from the front was almost on him. The Indian drove his pony up the slant. He held a lance, a length of cane with a sliver of metal at the tip. Taylor spurred the grey downslope towards the other man. They yelled. They came together like two old-time knights in storybooks.

  The Apache thrust. Taylor swayed and felt the lance pass under his right arm; he swung out with the Winchester in his hand, the barrel catching the Apache across the throat. The pony plunged past, riderless, and the Indian rolled in dust on the slope. Taylor jumped his horse past him as the other Apache veered close, firing from the saddle. Something plucked at Taylor’s sleeve. He pulled the Winchester to his shoulder, caught a quick aim on the other’s chest and fired.

  His shot caught the pony in the head. The animal reared and fell over backwards, spilling the rider. Instantly this man sprang up. He lunged at the oncoming horseman and Taylor kicked him in the chest. The kick lifted the Apache from his feet and flipped him backwards. Taylor swept past, came to the bottom of the slope and reined in there.

  As far as he could see, through boiling dust, the wagons were piling back into the pass, teams running flat out. Bringing up the rear, Apaches snapping at its heels, was the Williams’s Conestoga. As Taylor had feared, this bulky vehicle was handling badly, swaying perilously as its team ran. Suddenly a wheel went, or jounced over a rock or something and the wagon tilted crazily. He watched in fascinated horror as the wagon overturned. It seemed to happen very slowly, almost gracefully. The Conestoga’s covered roof ploughed into earth on its side
and dust bloomed over everything. A toppling figure was a dim shape striking the ground and rolling on. It came to its feet and staggered forward out of dust and became Cephas Williams.

  Apache horsemen broke from the dust towards him. Cephas began to run. He was running blindly the wrong way, not towards Devil’s Pass and the other wagons but towards Calvin Taylor.

  Taylor remembered there was a rifle in his hands. As Apaches whipped their ponies in pursuit of the running man, Taylor lifted his Winchester and took aim on them; but before he could fire a bowstring twanged. Cephas staggered, attempted to reach behind him and fell. He made one half-attempt to rise. An arrow stood out between his shoulders, still quivering. Then his strength was gone, he slid forward on to his face.

  The riders wheeled their ponies and swarmed around the foundered Conestoga. Dust was thinning, figures emerged from it. Taylor glimpsed Josh Williams swinging his rifle like a club. Horsemen flashed past him. Taylor lifted his rifle and started firing. He hit one rider who pitched sideways. Then he saw Josh had fallen to his knees, his hands gripping the lance in his chest. He toppled.

  Taylor heard more yelling, behind him this time. A glance over his shoulder showed Apaches on horseback plunging down the slope towards him.

  They were behind him and in front of him. Taylor decided he’d rather take his death in the front than in the back. So he spurred the grey, whacked its rump with his rifle and the animal broke into another run. Towards the wagons.

  Apaches were still riding around the capsized Williams vehicle, raising a small dust storm that served to hide him. Suddenly he was amongst them, driving through, crouched low over his horse’s withers. He began to hope he could ride right through them unnoticed, hidden by dust and confusion. Then the cry went up: ‘Pinda-likoy-ee!’ ‘Pinda-likoy-ee!’ (‘White eye!’ ‘White eye!’)

  Taylor broke from the dust and an Apache swung his pony across his path. On one arm the Indian held a small round shield; in his other hand he lifted a rifle.