Trail Of the Apache and Other Stories (1951) by Elmore Leonard Read Free Book Online Page B

wall, wasting their ammunition on small puffs of smoke that rose above the rocks and brush clumps. And they kept dropping, one at a time.
    Five shots in succession, two, then one. The last bullet scream died away up-canyon. There was the beginning of silence, but almost immediately the air was pierced with a new sound. Throats shrieked again, but with a vigor, with a lust. It was not the agonized scream of the terrified Chiricahua, but the battle yell of the Coyotero scout as he hurled himself down the slope into the enemy. They had earned their army pay; now it was time for personal vengeance.
    Half of the hostiles threw their arms into the air as the scouts swarmed into the open, but they came on with knives and gun stocks raised. Savage closed with savage in a grinding melee of thrashing arms and legs in thick dust, the cornered animal, made more ferocious by his fear, battling the hunter who Trail of the Apache had tasted blood. They came back with their knives dripping, their carbine stocks shattered.
    It took two days longer to return to the little subagency on the banks of the Gila, because it is slower travel with wounded men and sixteen Chiricahua hostiles whose legs are roped under the horses' bellies by day and whose hands are lashed to trees by night. Travisin led and was silent.
    De Both held himself tense against the searing pain that shot up between his shoulder blades. But oddly enough, he did not really mind the ride home. He looked at the line of sixteen hostiles and felt nothing. No hate. No pity. Slowly it came upon him that it was indifference, and he moved his stained hat to a cockier angle. Boston could be a million miles away and he could be at the end of the earth, but de Both didn't particularly give a damn.
    He knew he was a man.
    Fry chewed tobacco while his listless eyes swept the ground for a 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 Trail of the Apache 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,