The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [20]
Fry chewed tobacco while his listless eyes swept the ground for sign. That’s what he was paid for. It kept running through his mind that it was an awful funny thing to go out after sixteen hostiles, meet sixty and still come back with sixteen. Have to tell that one at Lon Scorey’s in Globe.
Pillo rode with his chin on his bony chest. He was much older, and the throbbing hole in his thigh didn’t help him, either. He was beginning to smell the greenness of decay.
On the afternoon of the fourth day they rode slowly into the quadrangle at Gila. Travisin looked about. Nothing had changed. For a moment he had expected to find something different, and he yearned for something that wasn’t there. But he threw aside his longing and slumped back into his role—the role that forced him to be the best Apache campaigner in the Territory.
A cavalry mount stood in front of the agency office and a trooper appeared on the porch as Travisin, Fry and de Both dismounted and walked to the welcome shade of the ramada.
“Compliments of the commanding officer, sir. I’ve rode from Fort Thomas with this message.”
Travisin read the note and turned with a smile to the other two. “Bill, let me tell you one thing if you don’t already know it. Never try to figure out the ways of a woman—or the army. This is from Collier. He says the Bureau has decided to return Pillo and his band to his people at Fort Apache. All sixteen of ’em. Certainly is a good thing we’ve got sixteen to send back.”
Fry said, “Yep, you might have got yourself court-martialed. Way it is, if Pillo loses that leg, you’ll probably end up back as a looie.”
De Both listened and the quizzical look turned to anger. He opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it and waited until he had cooled off before muttering simply, “Idiots!”
If Travisin was the winking type, he would have looked at Fry and done so. He glanced at Fry with the hint of a smile, but with eyes that said, “Barney, I think we’ve got ourselves a lieutenant.” Then he walked into the office. There are idiotic Bureau decisions, and there are boots that have been on too long.
And along the Gila, the war drums are silent again. But on frontier station, you don’t relax. For though they are less in number, they are still Apaches.
2
Apache Medicine
Original title: Medicine
Dime Western Magazine, May 1952
KLEECAN WAS THREE hours out of Cibicu, almost halfway to the Mescalero camp at Chevelon Creek, when he met the Apache.
Ordinarily he welcomed company, for the life of a cavalry scout is lonely enough without the added routine of riding from camp to camp to count reservation heads, and that day the sky was a dismal gray-green to the north, dark and depressing. It made the semidesert surroundings stand out in vivid contrast—the alkali stretches a garish white between low, bleak hills and ghostly, dust-covered mesquite clumps. It was a composite of gray and bright white and dead green that formed a coldness, a penetrating chill that was premature for so early in September, and more than anything else, it made a man feel utterly alone.
But even with the loneliness on him, Kleecan did not welcome the company he saw on the trail ahead. For he had recognized the Apache. It was Juan Pony. And Juan had been drinking mescal.
There wasn’t a man in the vicinity of San Carlos who would have blamed Kleecan for not wanting to meet an Apache under such conditions—and especially this one. Juan Pony had a reputation for meanness, and he did everything in his power to keep the reputation alive. And because he was the son of Pondichay, chief of the Chevelon Creek Mescaleros, other Apaches kept out of his way and white men had to use