Читать книгу General Crook and the Fighting Apaches - Edwin L. Sabin - Страница 11

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“Tinkle, tinkle,” placidly sounded the bell of the old bell-wether, to prove that he and the other sheep were grazing near at hand in the stiff brush.

“All right,” thought Jimmie Dunn, whose business it was to keep tab on the whereabouts of that bell.

For this was a simmering hot summer afternoon of the year 1870, far, far down in southern Arizona Territory; and here on a hill-slope of the Pete Kitchen big ranch about half-way between Tucson town and the Mexican line Jimmie was lying upon his back under a spreading crooked-branched mesquite tree, lazily herding the ranch sheep.

The Kitchen ranch really was not Jimmie’s home. He lived with his uncle Joe Felmer (not really his uncle, either), who was the blacksmith for Camp Grant, the United States army post ninety miles northward, or fifty-five miles the other side of Tucson.

But the region close around Camp Grant was a sandy pocket famous for fever and ague as well as for other disagreeable features, such as scorpions, tarantulas, ugly Gila monsters (thick, black, poisonous lizards), heat and sand-storms; so that Joe had sent Jimmie down to their friend Pete Kitchen, on a vacation.

Everybody, American, Mexican and Indian, in southern Arizona, knew the Pete Kitchen ranch. It was noted for its battles with the Apaches who, passing back and forth on their raids out of the mountains of Arizona and Mexico both, were likely to plunder and kill, at any time. Sturdy Pete had not been driven away yet, and did not propose to be driven away.

Jimmie himself was pretty well used to Apaches. They prowled about Camp Grant, and attacked people on the road from Tucson, and frequently the soldiers rode out after them. Joe Felmer had married an Apache woman, who was now dead; he spoke Apache and Jimmie had picked up a number of the words; but there were plenty of unfriendly Apaches who every little while ran off with Joe’s mules or filled his hogs with arrows.

On his back under the mesquite tree Jimmie was not thinking of Apaches. He was idly surveying the country—at the same time having an ear open to the musical tinkle of the bell-wether, who told him where the sheep were straying. And a delightful, dreamy outlook this was, over all those quiet miles of mountain and desert Arizona which only the Southern stage-line traversed, and which, so thinly settled by white people, the roving Apache Indians claimed as their own.

In his loose cotton shirt and ragged cotton trousers Jimmie felt very comfortable. Presently his eyes closed, his head drooped, and he nodded off, for forty or so winks.

He dozed, he was certain, not more than five minutes; or perhaps ten. Then he awakened with a sudden start. Something had told him to awaken. He sat up and looked to see that the sheep were all right. He could not see one animal, but he heard the tinkle, tinkle. He twisted about to find the old bell-wether—and he gazed full into the grinning face of an Apache boy!

The Apache boy, who appeared to be fourteen or fifteen years old, was not more than five yards from him—standing there beside a giant cactus, naked except for a red cloth band about his forehead, and a whitish cotton girdle about his middle, with the broad ends hanging down before and behind, and regular Apache moccasins reaching like leggins half way up his thighs for protection against the brush: standing there, grinning, in his left hand a bow, in his right the wether’s bell!

He had been tinkling that bell! And a smart trick this was, too: to sneak up on the wether, get the bell, and ring it to fool the herder while other Apaches drove away the sheep!

For an instant Jimmie stared perfectly paralyzed with astonishment. He could not believe his eyes. Instead of a staid old tame sheep, here was a mischievous young wild Apache! Then, trying to utter a shout, up he sprang, to run. On the moment he heard a sharp swish, the noose of an Apache’s rawhide rope whipped about his shoulders, and right in mid-step he was jerked backward so violently, head over heels, that he had no time or breath for yelling a word.

Barely had he landed topsy turvy in the brush when a heavy body rushed for him, a supple dark hand was clapped firmly over his mouth, and hauled upright he was half dragged, half carried, through the mesquites and the cactuses and around the slope of the hill.

Now he was flung, limp and dazed, aboard a pony, his captor mounted into the saddle behind him, and away they tore, while the brush beneath reeled by under Jimmie’s swimming eyes.

This was a fast ride until the sheep were overtaken. There they were, almost the whole flock, being forced hotly onward by Apaches afoot and ahorse, with other Apaches guarding the flanks. It looked like a war party returning with plunder from Mexico. The bands about the foreheads, the round rawhide helmets that some wore, the thigh moccasins, the guns, bows, lances and clubs, proved that they were a war party; and they had a lot of loose horses and mules besides the Pete Kitchen sheep.

Jimmie sighted another captive—a Mexican boy, older than he, fastened upon a yellow mule led by an Apache horseman.

A broad-shouldered, finely built Indian wearing an Apache helmet with feathers sticking up from it, and riding a white horse, evidently was the chief in command.

The grip of the Apache who held Jimmie had slackened. Jimmie managed to squirm ’round enough to look up into the Apache’s face. In return he got a grin, and two or three Apache words that said: “Good boy. No fear.” These were common words with the “tame” Apaches who sometimes came into Camp Grant or to Joe Felmer’s little ranch near by, so Jimmie understood.

The country grew rougher and wilder and higher. By the sun Jimmie knew that the course was generally eastward, and he guessed that these were Chiricahua Apaches.

The Apache Indians, as almost anybody in Arizona could say off-hand, were divided into the Chiricahuas and the Pinals and the Arivaipas and the Coyotes and the White Mountains and the Apache-Mohaves and the Apache-Yumas and the Tontos and the Mogollons, and the Warm Spring Apaches and the Mimbres (of New Mexico), and the Jicarillas (Heek-ah-ree-yahs) or Basket Apaches, who never came into Arizona; and so forth.

The Tontos and Pinals, who were outlaws, and the Chiricahuas (Chee-ree-cah-wahs), who were hard, thorough fighters, seemed to give the most trouble. The Chiricahuas lived in the mountains of southern Arizona and of northern Mexico.

The pines and cedars of the higher country were reached before dusk. Not a tenth of the sheep had come this far. The most of them had been left to die from heat and exhaustion. Now having passed through another of their favorite narrow canyons, the Apaches halted, at dark, to camp beside a trickle of water in a rocky little basin surrounded by crags and timber.

This night Jimmie was forced to lie between two Apache warriors, the one who had captured him, and a comrade; and he fitted so closely that if he moved he would waken them. It was an uncomfortable bed, there under a thin dirty strip of blanket, limited by those greasy, warm bodies, and he was afraid to stir. But he was so tired that he slept, anyway.

Very early in the morning the camp roused again. Apaches when on a raid or when pursued were supposed to travel on only one meal a day and with only three hours’ rest out of the twenty-four. So now on and on and on, through all kinds of rough country they hastened, at steady gait and speaking rarely—Jimmie riding a bareback horse.

In late afternoon they halted on the rim of a valley so deep and wide that it was veiled in bluish-purple haze. On a rocky point three of the Apaches started a fire of dried grass, and sent up a smoke signal by heaping pitchy pine cones upon the blaze.

Chewing twigs and sucking pebbles to keep their mouths wet, the Apaches, talking together and watching, waited, until a long distance across the valley, whose brushy sides were thickly grown with the mescal, or century plant cactuses, blooming in round stalks twenty feet tall, a smoke column answered.

The Apaches tending to their own fire fed more pine cones to it, and two of them rapidly clapped a saddle-blanket on and off the smoke, and broke it into puffs. The smoke column across the valley puffed in reply.

The Apache boy who had played bell-wether pressed to Jimmie’s horse.

“Chi-cowah,” he said, pointing. That was Apache for “My home.”

Now the party appeared satisfied. They scattered their fire, and struck down into a narrow trail that crossed the bottom of the valley. A peculiar sweetish smell hung in the misted air. This, Jimmie guessed, was from the steaming pits wherein the hearts of the mescal, or century plants, were being roasted.

They glimpsed several squaws and children gathering foodstuff in the brush. As they filed through a little draw or rocky pass they were hailed loudly by an Apache sentinel posted above. He could not be seen, but the chief replied. The pass opened into a grassy flat concealed by the usual high crags and timbered ridges. Here was the Apache camp or rancheria (ran-cher-ee-ah), located along a willow-bordered creek.

Fifty or sixty of the Apache brush huts or jacals were sprinkled all up and down the flat, and as soon as the party entered, a tremendous chorus of welcome sounded. Women shrieked, children screamed, dogs barked and mules brayed. Right into the center of the camp marched the party, and stopped.

A circle of staring women and children, and a few men, surrounded. Other squaws bustled to take the horses and mules from the dismounting warriors. Jimmie was told to get off. Feeling lonesome and miserable, he saw close in front of him a boy who did not seem to be Indian at all, for he had fiery red hair and brick-red freckles and only one eye, which was blue!

Yes—a red-headed, one-eyed, blue-eyed boy, rather runty, in only a whitish cotton girdle, and moccasins. Evidently he dressed that way—or undressed that way—all the time, for his body and limbs were burned darker than his face.

Jimmie was not granted much space for staring back into that one blue eye. He was slapped upon the shoulder, “Aqui (Here)!” grunted the chief, in Spanish, and strode on through the circle. So Jimmie followed, hobbling at best speed.

The chief went straight to a scrub-oak tree, with a hut beneath it, and an Apache sitting in the shade of it, on a deer hide before the hut. By the manner with which Jimmie’s Apache spoke to the sitting Apache, who did not rise, it was plain to be seen that the sitting Apache was the principal chief, and that Jimmie’s Apache was maybe only a captain.

They talked for a moment in Apache, too fast for Jimmie to understand. Then the sitting chief, who had been eying Jimmie sharply, addressed him in simple Mexican-Spanish easy to catch.

He was not at all a bad-looking Apache. In fact, he was about the finest Apache that Jimmie had ever met: a broad-chested six-footer, like the captain chief, but large eyed and kindly faced and dignified.

“What is your name?”

“James Dunn.”

“No Mexicano?”

“Americano,” corrected Jimmie proudly.

“Your father Pete Keetchen?”

“No.”

“Where you live?”

“Camp Grant.”

“With soldiers?”

Jimmie reflected an instant. If he said “With Joe Felmer,” then the chief would surely hold him as a great prize, for Joe Felmer, Government scout as well as post blacksmith, was an important enemy. So——

“Sometimes,” asserted Jimmie, which was true.

“Why on Keetchen rancho?”

“Tend to sheep.” And Jimmie blushed when he recalled that he had been a great sheep-herder!

“Pete Keetchen your father?”

“No!” repeated Jimmie. “No father, no mother.”

The head chief and the captain chief gazed at him as though they would read his very thoughts. The captain chief had such piercing dark eyes that they bored clear through. But he was a sure-enough Apache, with straight black hair and dark chocolate skin, darker even than ordinary.

’Twas to be imagined that neither of the chiefs believed Jimmie’s statements. They still suspected that he belonged to Pete Kitchen.

The head chief spoke abruptly.

“You ’Pache now. Ugashé (U-gah-shay)—go!”

Jimmie knew that he was dismissed, and he turned away. He was faint in the stomach and weak in the knees, and he had no place in particular to go, until he saw the Mexican boy captive sitting in the sun, with his feet under him and his shanks high. Jimmie seized upon the opportunity to talk with him, at last.

“What is your name?” he asked, squatting beside him. All Americans in southern Arizona could speak some Spanish; Mexican-Spanish was as common as English.

“Maria Jilda Grijalba (Maree-ah Heel-dah Gree-hal-bah).”

“Where did you live?”

“In Sonora” (which was in Mexico). “Where did you live?”

“Camp Grant—American fort, Arizona.”

“How far?”

Jimmie shrugged his shoulders.

“Do not know.”

“You do not live on the rancho?”

“For little while.”

“You have father, mother?”

“No. Apaches kill them.”

“My father, mother, brothers, sisters, all killed,” lamented Maria, weeping. “Alas! All killed, by Apaches.”

“We run off, pretty soon?” proposed Jimmie.

“No!” opposed Maria, in much alarm. “Must stay. Be Apaches. They not let us run off. Big country. Get lost and die. Get caught and be killed.”

But Jimmie had made up his mind that he was not going to be an Apache; he would escape if he could. Or maybe he would be rescued.

However, here came the captain chief, and the bell-wether Apache boy, and the strange red-headed boy with the one blue eye.

“Ugashé!” roughly ordered the captain chief, of Maria. Poor Maria obediently arose and shuffled away.

The captain spoke to Jimmie, and smiled. He, also was a fine-looking Apache: almost six feet tall and straight and sinewy, with square face and thin, determined lips, and those extraordinary sharp eyes.

Jimmie stood up.

“Chi-kis-n,” said the captain, and nodded aside at the bell-wether boy.

“Chi-kis-n” was Apache for “my brother.” The Apache boy grinned and held out his hand.

“Chi-kis-n,” he greeted.

The red-headed, one-eyed boy explained in Spanish.

“Your name Boy-who-falls-asleep, his name Nah-che. But you must call him chi-kis-n—my brother.”

“Muchos gratias (Many thanks),” answered Jimmie, shaking hands with Nah-che. Nah-che was a stocky, round-faced boy, and Jimmie liked him in spite of that trick with the sheep bell.

“The chief’s name is Go-yath-lay,” continued the red-headed boy. “He is war-captain of the Chiricahua. Nah-che is son of Cochise, head chief.”

The war captain, who had been listening intently, trying to understand the words, nodded, and spoke again in Apache.

“Your chi-kis-n will show you,” translated the red-headed boy, who knew Spanish and Apache both.

“Aqui (Here),” bade Nah-che: and Jimmie followed him to one of those regulation Apache jacals—a low round-topped hut made from willow branches stuck in a circle and bent over to fasten together, with pieces of deer hide and cow hide laid to cover the framework of the sides, and flat bundles of brush to thatch the roof. The jacals resembled dirty white bowls bottom-up. Each had a little opening, as a door to be entered only by stooping half double.

Before the hut an Apache woman in a loose cotton waist worn outside a draggled calico skirt was busy cooking. She stirred the contents of an iron kettle, set upon a bed of coals in a small shallow pit. She threw back her long, coarse black hair and scanned Jimmie curiously while Nah-che spoke a few words to her.

Then repeating the title “chi-kis-n” Nah-che strolled away. The woman smiled broadly at Jimmie, took him by the arm, and talking to him led him inside the hut. The earth had been dug out, there, so that they might stand, in the middle, and not strike their heads on the ceiling.

The woman made Jimmie remove his trousers and shoes; and leaving him his ragged shirt tossed to him a pair of old moccasins.

Again out-doors, she gave him a mess of the stew, in a gourd bowl. The stew was corn and beans cooked together, and was very good indeed, to a hungry boy.

“Go,” she signed. “Come back at night.”

Here in the open, Jimmie felt rather odd, with nothing on but his shirt and moccasins. Still, most of the boys and girls of his age, in the village, had even less on. They were brown, though, and he was white, which seemed to make a difference.

Some of the boys were playing at what appeared to be hide-and-seek amidst the brush and trees and rocks; others were shooting with bows and arrows. The little girls had dolls, of rags, and stuffed, painted buckskin. They all viewed him out of their sparkling black eyes, and the girls giggled the same as white girls.

Jimmie’s squaw shoved him from behind.

“U-ga-shé!” she ordered. “Go!”

After all, thought Jimmie, if he had to live here for a while, he might better pretend to enjoy himself, until he got a good chance to escape. So he boldly joined in the game of hide-and-seek. At first everybody there let him alone. But he chased around, with the others, his shirt flapping, and soon he was one of the “gang” and was being shouted at in Apache.

The one-eyed boy and Nah-che and several others of that age stayed by themselves, playing a game with raw-hide cards, and talking. They were too old for foolishness.

This night Jimmie slept in the squaw’s hut. There was a feast and dance, judging by the noise that he heard when awake. Nah-che came in late. In the morning the red-headed boy went away on foot with three Apaches who evidently had been visitors at the village; and as he did not return during the day, he probably belonged somewhere else, himself.