The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [6]
“What do you think, Barney?”
Fry leaned against the edge of the desk. “I think probably the same thing you do. Those ’Paches aren’t goin’ to stay long at Gila even if we’d give them all the beef critters in Arizona. You notice there wasn’t any women in the band?”
“Yes, I noticed,” Travisin answered. “They’ll never learn, will they?” He looked at de Both. “You see, Lieutenant, the Bureau thinks that if they separate them from their families for a while, the hostiles will become good little Indians and make plows out of their Spencers and grow corn to eat instead of drink. What would you do if some benevolent race snatched your women and children from you and sent you to a barren rock pile over a hundred miles away? And do you know why? For something you’d been doing for the past three hundred years. For that simple but enigmatic something that makes you an Apache and not a Navajo. For that quirk of fate that makes you a tiger instead of a Persian cat. Mister, I’ve got over two hundred White Mountains here raising crops and eating government beef. I can assure you that they’re not doing it by nature! And now they sent sixteen Chiricahuas! Sixteen men with the smell of gunpowder still strong in their nostrils and blood lust in their eyes.” Travisin shook his head wearily. “And they send them here without their women.”
De Both cleared his throat before speaking. “Well, frankly, Captain, I don’t see what the problem is. Obviously, these hostiles have done wrong. The natural consequence would be a punishment of some sort. Why pamper them? They’re not little children.”
“No, they’re not little children. They’re Apaches,” Travisin reflected. “You know, I used to know an Indian up near Fort Apache by the name of Skimitozin. He was an Arivaipa. One day he was sitting in the hut of a white friend of his, a miner, and they were eating supper together. Then, for no reason at all, Skimitozin drew his handgun and shot his friend through the head. Before they hung him he said he did it to show his Arivaipa people that they should never get too friendly with the blancos. The Apache has never gotten a real break from the whites. So Skimitozin wanted to make sure that his people never got to the point of expecting one, and relaxing. Mister, I’m here to kill Indians and keep Indians alive. It’s a paradox—no question about that—but I gave up rationalizing a long time ago. Most Apaches have always lived a life of violence. I’m not here primarily to convert them; but by the same token I have to be fair—when they are fair to me.”
De Both raised an objection. “I see nothing wrong with our treatment of the Indians. As a matter of fact, I think we’ve gone out of our way to treat them decently.” He recited the words as if he were reading from an official text.
Fry broke in. “Go up to San Carlos and spend a week or two,” he said. “Especially when the government beef contractors come around with their adjusted scales and each cow with a couple of barrels of Gila water in her. Watch how the ’Pache women try to cut each other up for a bloated cow belly.” Fry spoke slowly, without excitement.
Travisin said to the lieutenant, “Fry’s not talking about one or two incidents. He’s talking about history. You were with Pillo all the way up from Thomas. Did you see his eyes? If you did, you saw the whole story.”
Chapter Three
THE EARLY AFTERNOON sun blazed heavily against the adobe houses and vacant quadrangle. The air was still, still and oppressive, and seemed to be thickened by the fierce, withering rays of the Arizona sun. To the east, the purplish blur of the Pinals showed hazily through the glare.
Travisin leaned loosely against a support post under the brush ramada. His gray cotton shirt was black with sweat in places, but he seemed unmindful of the heat. His sun-darkened face was impassive, as if asleep, but his eyes were