Blood line an apache wes.., p.1
Blood Line (An Apache Western #7), page 1
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Cuchillo Oro saved Linda Daughton from a fate worse than death at the hands of a band of renegade Chiricahua Apaches. When he was in danger himself, she returned the favor by shooting his attacker in the groin. Though the fight is over; the trouble is just beginning. Now Frankie Ettinger was out for revenge. But it would take more than a white man, even the rich and ruthless Ettinger, to spill the blood of Cuchillo Oro. And he will settle for nothing less than spilling the blood of any white man who dares to cross his trail …
APACHE 7: BLOOD LINE
By William M. James
Copyright ©1976, 2023 by William M. James
First Digital Edition: November 2023
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Published by arrangement with the author’s estate.
Editor: Mike Stotter
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
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This is for Terry
he rides shotgun like nobody else I know
Chapter One
IN THE LONG, hot summer of 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman was marching through Georgia, beating the Rebs back to Atlanta, where the one-legged General John Bell Hood waited for him. And through the green woods of Tennessee, Nathan Bedford Forrest led his elusive cavalry from the back seat of a buggy, his wounded leg propped up on a special support.
Things were going well for the Union.
For Cuchillo Oro, the lone Apache, things were going less well. After the bloody slaughter below the San Miguel River in Sonora, the north beckoned. And he had begun the long ride back toward his homeland. The land that had been part of the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, and that had finally been confirmed as a Territory only a few months ago. The Territory of Arizona.
That was the birthplace of Cuchillo Oro, in a rancheria close to the border with Mexico. That was where he had become a warrior and where he had married and seen his baby son draw his first shuddering breath.
And it was where he had met the white-eyes dog-soldier, Cyrus Pinner, who had butchered Cuchillo’s wife and child and had maimed him, blasting fingers off his right hand. Pinner, now a captain in the Cavalry, still lived.
North.
Northeast from Sonora.
The memory of the hatred for Cyrus Pinner never slept in Cuchillo’s mind, the embers constantly fanned to blazing fire each time he and Pinner met, yet neither was ever able to end the feud conclusively. It was time that the ghosts of the lovely Chipeta and the tiny Troubled Night be allowed to sleep in peace, time that the debt of blood finally be paid.
It was this compulsion that kept the giant Mimbreños Apache riding alone through the bleakness of the Sonora desert. The baking sun hung above him like a ball of crystal gold, bouncing back at him off the red sands. A day before, he had seen the dust of a group of men riding hard south, and had hidden in a dry arroyo as the band of Rurales galloped past him on lathered mounts.
He crossed into the United States not far from Agua Prieta, with only a mouthful of water left in his canteen and a handful of tepary beans in his saddle bag. And a stomach full of hunger. There had been no time in Mexico to stop for a meal, and he knew well enough that he would be needing all of his strength now that he was back in the country of his hated enemy.
‘Cuchillo says that a belly of warm food is better than a warm-bellied squaw.’
It had been long weeks since he had known either. In that desolate land, there was little chance of finding a compliant woman, but he had the beans. And there was a watering hole ahead. With a fringe of dead trees where a man might make a fire in the hollows and no one to see him do it.
The place was deserted. The upswing of his luck continued and he found a clay pot lying on its side by the ashes of a cold fire. He smelled it, wrinkling his nose at the yeasty smell of pulque. Mexicans had been there. Maybe a day ago. Maybe earlier. It was hard to tell in the failing light.
Except for a cracked handle, the pot was serviceable, and he filled it with water from the center of the small pool, being careful not to stir up the red mud. Before he started the fire, he put the tepary beans—three handfuls of them—into the pot to soak. They sank to the bottom, like a swirl of white ghosts, vanishing as the darkness crept swiftly in from the east.
A small fire of dry wood gave a fierce heat, yet cast little light over the surrounding desert, and was enough for Cuchillo to put the beans on, letting them simmer after they’d been soaked.
While they bubbled quietly away, the Indian lay back on the warm earth, occasionally adding water to the pot, letting his mind roam ahead to thoughts of where he might find Pinner and how he might slay the soldier.
Perhaps remove his skin, a narrow strip at a time, starting with his head and face. Slice off the lids of his green eyes, and scatter hot sand in them. Peel off his lips, and hammer the white teeth from that sneering mouth. Break off his fingers, so that he might know something of Cuchillo’s own suffering, before the Great Spirit took him.
All his senses alert to the movement of life in the surrounding lands, Cuchillo Oro took the knife from his belt. The great golden knife that had given him his name. A name that was feared throughout the Southwest of the United States.
It was a broad-bladed cinqueda. Fifteenth-century, with a double edge that the Apache kept honed to a razor’s keenness, and a point as sharp as a sewing needle. The light of the fire glimmered and spun off the polished blade, and off the uncut gems in the hilt of contoured ivory.
The golden knife had once belonged to Pinner. The cavalry officer had sat and held the yellow handle, and fondled the rough stones. Now it belonged to Cuchillo. By right of conquest. By right of victory. It was his, and the price that had been paid for it was high.
The far side of the watering hole was shaded by a towering saguaro cactus, and the Apache suddenly flicked the heavy knife, overarm, so that it sang through the night, thudding home on a streak of white bird dung, buried to its hilt in the fleshy plant, like a bizarre ornament.
Moving with the effortless grace of a puma, the big man rose to his feet and padded silently across, skirting the edge of the pool, and retrieved the knife, wiping it clean on his cotton trousers.
It was time to eat. And then it would be time to move on, before the heat came again and baked the land into a furnace where nothing could move or live. On the far side of the trees his pony whinnied softly, but there was nothing that he could give it. There had been water enough, but the beast had eaten nothing for three days.
His saddle bag also held a battered tin plate and a spoon. The beans were well done, a mound of steaming temptation, making the juices run in his mouth. He would have wished for some salt, but they were good without it. Plain, but filling, making his stomach satisfied. He wiped the plate clean, scraping the last of the white beans from the bottom of the clay pot, shoveling them into his mouth.
The meal, poor though it was, reminded him of other times he’d eaten tepary beans, in the wickiups of friends, or around a smoking fire with his young wife. With strips of buffalo meat and chopped roasted green chiles. That was a meal. Washed down with trade whiskey.
Cuchillo belched. ‘By Ysun! I am a whole man again. Let Pinner beware.’ The fire was dying down, the wood becoming fragile and white, dusted with glowing ash.
The Apache caught the thin, high note of bats, almost inaudible, wheeling above him in the blackness. Invisible in the moonless night. The Apache quickly packed up his saddle bags again, filling the canteen, with its U.S. Cavalry stamp on the side, saddling his horse again.
Through his time with the white men, Cuchillo had picked up many of their habits. Though he could outride any man on a bareback pony, he could still see the advantages of the saddle. The horse had been saddled when he stole it, and it had stayed that way.
The thought of the saddle brought back a fleeting memory of the only white man that he could think of without hatred. The little schoolmaster from Fort Davidson, John Hedges, who had taught him to read and write passable English. Who had left the fort when the Apaches had risen, and who now wandered the Southwest, helping where he could, using his skills as a teacher for red or white. With neither favor nor fear.
It had been too long since Cuchillo had seen the balding little man, and there might yet be time for that.
But now it was a simple matter of setting heels to his horse and heading north again, back up into Arizona, on the trail that could only end in death.
Two days later he was close to Lordsburg. He had ridden hard and fast, risking daytime travel, despite the frequent cavalry patrols that quartered the area, looking for Apaches. Now he lay on his stomach on the edge of a ravine, shading his eyes with his hand as he stared out across the sweltering land, less than a hundred yards from a trail.
His horse was a quarter of a mile back.
Dead.
A j
It whinnied, but there was scarcely enough life in it for that, feebly kicking out, the white bone sticking jagged through the dusty skin of its front near leg. White froth hung drily around its red-pitted nostrils, and it laid its head on the sand and waited for death.
Cuchillo hopped off its back as it began to slide, landing lightly to one side. He wasted no time as a white man might do in fruitless cursing. It had happened, and it might lead to his death in the barren wasteland, but there were things that must be done quickly if he was to have a chance of life.
He unholstered the Spencer rifle, placing the tip of the foresight against the horse’s forehead, gently squeezing the trigger. The gun bucked, the flat echoes of the shot bouncing back off the rolling land. The heavy bullet ripped through to the animal’s brain and it died quickly, its legs flailing in a last spasmodic movement.
Cuchillo stood for a second, looking down at the dead beast. He slung the warm gun across his shoulders, making sure the Colt was secure in its holster in his waistband, took the knife and cut several strips of still pulsing flesh from the animal’s flanks, tucking them all bloody in his bag. The canteen was empty, rattling like a dry gourd, but he hung it around his neck. To leave it would be to admit defeat. To admit that he had only a scant chance of ever finding water and keeping his hold on the thread of life. And that sort of thinking was not in the nature of Cuchillo Oro.
The Apache took only a heavy blanket, leaving behind the saddle and bridle. They would only be extra weight, and he knew that his chances of finding a fresh horse in that desert were less than of seeing snow in Death Valley.
But the gods had looked kindly on him. The trail that he lay near was sufficiently well defined for him to have a hope that someone might come along. If it were a friend, and that wasn’t likely, he could ask help. And if it were not … then he would take help.
Away to the north he could see a fringe of cloud hanging around the three thousand foot peak that the white men called Chiricahua. Although he knew much of the Southwest, this was a part that he was less familiar with. He knew that there were small townships not far away, and he could hope that there would be traffic on this trail.
The wind gusted, sending a flurry of dust devils shimmering across the land, breaking up among a blue-purple cluster of smoke trees, growing on the edge of a shady wash.
The dust cleared, but the keen eyes of the tall Apache saw more sand, blowing up off the trail. He watched it intently, checking that it wasn’t just the wind. But it persisted, moving closer to him. Following the track.
As it came nearer, Cuchillo could make out the lines at the center of the dust cloud. The square lines of a small rig, with only a single rider. Moving slowly, keeping the gun below the rim of the hill so that there would be no glinting to give away his position, Cuchillo levered a round into the breech of the rifle.
No Indian would ride in a wagon, so it had to be a white man. The trail wound within a hundred feet of where Cuchillo lay in ambush, and he dabbed a bead of spittle on the sight of the rifle, easing it up and nestling the walnut stock to his shoulder.
Cocked the hammer with the thumb of his left hand. After the dreadful mutilations that he owed to Pinner, Cuchillo had spent long, agonizing weeks in the wilderness, learning to use his left hand to shoot and fight. No one who had ever met him could doubt how successful he had been.
Concentrating on the wagon as it drew nearer, proceeding at something just a bit faster than a trot, Cuchillo nearly missed seeing the war party.
Six Chiricahua bucks, painted for war, sitting their ponies patiently away to the left. Merging into the network of deep shadows under the sides of an arroyo. Cuchillo hissed through his teeth. As far as he could see, none of them were armed with anything more lethal than spears and bows, but there were a half-dozen of them.
The man driving the wagon came closer, oblivious of the fact that he was the potential target of not one but two ambushes.
It was a difficult choice for Cuchillo. There was a chance he could shoot the white man and still get down to his rig in time to turn it and get away from the waiting band of young renegades. But the odds were heavily loaded against him. Although it would be easy from a little over thirty paces to pick the man clean out of the seat, to shoot a helpless and unsuspecting person from an ambush was something that went against the grain for the warrior. There might be times when it was necessary, but this was not such a time.
And there was always the probability that the horse would bolt at the first shot, the reins falling from the hands of the dead man, and all would be lost.
‘Cuchillo says that it is best to use the cunning of the mountain lion, and not the blind charge of the buffalo,’ he whispered, settling the Spencer back on the rim of the rock, and waiting to see how the dice rolled.
He didn’t have to wait long. Veiled in a cloud of orange-red dust, the rig went past him at a fast lick, the driver encouraging the bay horse along with a crack of the long whip across its withers. It would have been absurdly simple to put a bullet through the driver, although his figure was only a dim blur through the dust. But the rifle rested by Cuchillo’s hand, one arm lying across the hot metal of the barrel.
The renegades attacked quickly and efficiently. Three rode out in front of the wagon, shrieking and whooping, while the other three heeled their mounts up the side of the ravine, powering out on the trail only a few paces behind the wagon.
The shock of finding himself surrounded by savages who seemed to have leaped out from the shimmering air was too much for the nerve of the white man, and Cuchillo clearly heard the high inarticulate cry of fear as he tried to whip his horse up past the riders in front of him, at the same time swerving the rig to throw off the pursuers.
The Apaches were too good for him.
Much too good.
Before the wagon had traveled another hundred yards, the three in front had the reins cut, and the horse slowing to a walk, while the three behind had pulled up alongside the wagon, arrows notched in their bowstrings, pointing at the white-eyes.
Dust billowed up again, from the wheels of the braking buggy and from the stamping unshod hooves of the Indian ponies, and the watching Cuchillo found it hard to see what was happening. He moved easily along the room, keeping his silhouette below the sightline, getting closer to where the yelling renegades had surrounded the wagon, walking their mounts slowly around it in triumph, calling out to each other.
Cuchillo couldn’t understand why they didn’t just kill the man and take the horse. From what he’d seen, the wagon wasn’t heavily laden. Just a couple of boxes or cases. Not even very big, tied to the open back of the wagon with white ropes.
So what were they waiting for?
If there had been war declared, then he could understand that they might be going to take the mail prisoner, back to their camp. And the squaws who waited. Waited with their fires and their needles and their skinning knives.
But this was no war party, despite the streaks of red and ocher paint that daubed their cheeks and the flanks of their ponies. It was a small band of renegades. Cuchillo thought that he recognized their leader. A short Apache, with immensely muscular, bandy legs. Young Man Who Walks Like A Frog. And the skinny buck would be his brother. Eyes To Sun And Moon. Though at that distance it was impossible to see the glaring squint that gave him his name.
The others would be wild young boys, eager for some bloodletting. Wishing to dip their spears in the blood of the white men as they had heard of in the great days of Mangas Colorado and Cochise and Geronimo. Cuchillo Oro knew of those old days. Was he not the grandson of the great Red Shirt himself? Mangas Colorado? He knew of the great days. Of the prizes that were won. The coups that were counted. And the wailing women who knew of the price that was paid.
The dust cleared slowly, and by the time that Cuchillo had crept silently to within fifty paces of the tableau, he was able to see what held the renegades fast in a circle about the panic-stricken driver of the wagon.
