Pony Bay

By Roger Core

Pony Bay is the historical fiction about an Indian of sixteen years who joins an Indian tribe to escape into Canada.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524534882

Roger Core

About the Author Roger Core is a new author with two finished books: a novel, The Santa Cruz Artist, and a historical fiction, Pony Bay. He lives in a college town surrounded by horses and alfalfa. He attended the University of Virginia and graduated from the University of Michigan. He was raised on a farm near Salem, Oregon. His wife is a retired teacher, and he had an advertising agency in Connecticut. They have five children.

Book preview

Chapter One

Mira Dolor

I n the southeast corner of Arizona lay a vast desert suitable only for Indians, with skittish things hiding in holes. Also on the cooked earth, fifty miles from Mexico, the Chiricahua Mountains loomed with a billion years of erosion, creating humanoid boulders, standing shoulder to shoulder like giant soldiers, defending the ancient spirits and the stronghold of Chief Cochise.

Great was the desert’s beauty with scattered mesas surrounded by blue lakes that dissolved into thin mirages. Fragrances floated from spice and grasses and the fresh morning dew was sweet. Crimson, violet, gold, white, and soft blue brushed the blooms of mariposa, geranium, anemone, tall yucca, buttercup, phlox, primrose, larkspur, bleeding heart, and the shy century plant known as mescal. Trees varied: fir, spruce, ironwood, cottonwood, sage, and scrub. Sun-loving resinous-scented ponderosa pines gathered in regions of elevation. Cacti mimicked strange shapes named Old Man, Organ Pipe, Spanish Bayonet, Jumping Cholla, and the mighty saguaro. Surprising, and seldom seen, was the perfumed cereus blossom that visited once each year. When man or beast was stranded in this hostile part of the world, the barrel cactus and the mesquite plant provided both sustenance and shelter.

Corralled within thirty square miles of an Apache reservation called Mira Dolor, one hundred families lived tolerating dust and the brown leak of water impersonating a creek.

On a mesa bordering the reservation was Fort Bowie, a collection of thirty thick adobe structures built for officers’ quarters, barracks, scout quarters, stable, warehouse, and guardhouse. Clearly visible from the hill were Butterfield stagecoaches, Indian traffic, and immigrant wagons entering the dangerous Apache Pass where travelers were warned at a plot of bleached wooden crosses, carved with crude letters: Killed by Apaches. Tortured to Death.

Commanding both fort and reservation was Captain Scamp, an officer who long ago smothered any interest in the well-being of the Indian.

Digging along the San Pedro River to open an irrigation ditch, a fourteen-year-old boy, his father, mother, and sister were sprung upon by a renegade band of Apaches, and quickly the parents lay slaughtered in a fan of spreading river water, and the children were seized as slaves. After three years of labor, the boy was traded in exchange for two horses to a desolate tribe living a mile from the fort. But the girl was kept as the wife of an interested brave.

Now settled near whites who provided a better incentive for escape, early one morning the boy ran to the fort, though soon the disgruntled Indians came begging for the return of their property. Seeing the argument was getting nowhere, they accepted as compensation the post commander’s settlement of two army horses.

Growing into manhood, the boy became a scout and interpreter on post patrols. At twenty, he enlisted and was assigned to the fort, being promoted to sergeant. With tribes threatening the region, the district commander, Colonel Rush, needed an aggressive leader like the young sergeant who was Indian-savvy and daring. Rush got his wish, and within the year the rank of the young Indian hater was jumped to brevet captain. His name was Scamp.

After his promotion, the captain began a search for his abducted sister. Knowing that Apaches cared for their captive women and girls, he was optimistic she would be in good health.

When the guilty tribe was discovered, Scamp led a night patrol of twenty-five well-armed troops to the Indian camp. They approached at dawn after a scout informed him that a white woman with two children was living in a brush hut.

While his cavalry was gunning down scrambling people, Scamp swooped upon his anxious sister, pulling her onto his saddle as her small family stood crying. The column then fled as screams continued to pierce the village.

She never recovered from the ordeal. With her children gone, she plunged deeply into depression from which there was no escape. Soldiers at the post regarded her with concealed curiosity, and Scamp treated her as an adolescent. As her agony grew, she began circling the grounds, from her quarters to the stables to the barracks to the warehouse, her hair tangled wildly about her face. In despair she would murmur, time and time again, I can’t even talk to my babies.

One evening, while the brother was in a tin tub on the kitchen floor having a sitz bath, she took his revolver and her life.

Chapter Two

Mountain Man

E noch Bodycombe was born at a trading post outside St. Louis on the banks of the Missouri River. His father, David was from the coal fields of Pontardawe nestled above the Swansea Valley in South Wales. David had a singing voice in the grand Welsh tradition and at twenty-two won the prestigious Royal Classic Solo Competitions at the Bristol Festival. The silver loving cup and yellowed press clippings now sat in an Irish hutch:

Mr. Bodycombe, the winner of the Baritone Solo at the Carmarthen National Eisteddfod, possesses a beautiful voice of excellent quality both in the high and low notes. His reception for singing ‘Lorena’ was most hearty.

(Monmouth Guardian)

Enoch’s mother was a spirited beauty named Maggie Flynn, a Dublin actress with intense green eyes, flame-red hair, and tear-wrenching portrayals of Ophelia on the Shakespearean stage. By the time she was twenty she had performed to rising acclaim at the Old Vic in London.

It was a chilly winter evening when Maggie arrived at a dinner party hosted by a lively, bosomed player of Lady Macbeth. Entering the foyer she was met by a baritone voice singing Where Gloomy Pine Trees Rustle coming from a fire-warmed drawing room, stacked like a bundle of wood with glowing guests soon to be dining at an extended table bounteous with lobster Newburg, roast chicken, artichokes, and waffle potatoes. Paired by the plotting host, Maggie sat next to the exciting Welshman and was entranced all evening by his colorful tales of American Indians and the New World frontier. And that was that!

Enoch worked with his parents at the trading post until fourteen when he entered St. Louis Academy, a school for boys run by Jesuit tutelage, and where his mother was confident her compassionate son would be introduced to a life of the cloth. However, she soon discovered that, rather than scripture, Enoch found inspiration in the academy’s archives of the enlightened letters of Thomas Jefferson and the detailed illustrative notes and journals of Lewis and William Clark.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, St. Louis had become a city of more than a thousand bustling fur traders, missionaries, Indians, educators, French and American trappers, and officials from Washington DC. The city was crowned the last civilized community before it entered the uncharted interior to the west.

1876. Enoch, now thirty-six, had followed his western star through rivers, timber, and plains, guiding parties, and hunting every day with pioneers and Indians. During a life in the wild, Enoch acquired an endless collection of Indian garments that gave visual testimony to his intrepidity and character.

Covering his red shoulder-length hair and green eyes, a floppy broad-brimmed hat displayed a band of snakeskin with the rattler and a bald-eagle tail feather attached. It served as shade as well as a purple-stained receptacle for the profusion of wild berries found along the trail. Tethered to a rawhide cord knotted around his neck was a display of personal treasures peeking through his thick beard. Strung there were red-dyed laurel seeds, the ear of a grizzly outwitted in combat, and a handsomely carved crucifix presented to Enoch by a Catholic missionary for being his guide over the Bitterroot Mountains. More recently, he added a gold ring, given in gratitude as well, from a black-skinned trapper for extracting three Blackfoot arrows from the man’s bloodied back. Tied loosely about the Enoch’s throat from trips on the insufferable desert was a blue kerchief pulled over the significant beak of his nose to filter dust and to wipe his brow. From that same desert adventure, the inside of his left forearm showed puncture tracks from the fangs of the rattlesnake, plus slash scars to free his body of the venom. Centered on his breastbone, where a weathered neck met a dove-white chest, a blue tattoo called from his soul, revealing the teardrop from an Indian’s almond-shaped eye.

He wore cowhide gloves and a wide thick-leathered belt-strap recently procured at a mud-plastered trading post in Nogales inside the Mexican border. The belt had a buckle trimmed with silver. Embedded, next to the buckle, was a large turquoise gemstone of brilliant blue-green to honor his one-year-old daughter.

His britches were also cowhide, his coat soft deerskin with long fringes of the hide spread about his shoulders and trailing down his sleeves. His billowing shirt was gray flannel. On his feet were Apache moccasins with rawhide soles stitched to buckskin uppers that reached his thighs. When the moccasins began to thin, Enoch would pull replacement leather from the upper buckskin to fashion new soles. Buried inside the folds of his right legging was a Jew’s harp that he called a trump, bringing music whenever the spirit moved him.

Named Killer, Enoch’s horse was a dark bay Appaloosa mare he traded from a Nez Perce chief for two beaver pelts and an ax. The horse was strong, fast, sure-footed, and smart.

Sheathed to his waist was a razor-sharp, horn-handled, fifteen-inch bowie knife, a legendary piece of frontier cutlery as dear to him as his .44-caliber Winchester ’73, which was a lightweight, rapid-fire saddle gun, easy to load and shoot from his galloping mount. The gun carried fifteen rounds, but Enoch left an extra cartridge in the chamber, making the famous Wild West rifle a sixteen-shooter. On the plains of Montana the same model Winchester would one day prove its effectiveness in the hands of Crazy Horse and Sioux warriors at the Little Bighorn.

Chapter Three

Teacher

M ira Dolor Apaches were treated as prisoners of war, forced to remain inside a chain-link perimeter fence. For Indians to leave, a two-hour Trust Pass had to be earned. Only women and children were readily allowed out of the compound for gathering mescal and other plant foods. Apache hunters were permitted to join game-hunting parties, accompanied, of course, by the watchful eyes of cavalry troops. Enoch, being white, could come and go as he pleased.

A lean, middle-aged Chiricahua Apache with a smiling face was beginning a tale about the mischievous Coyote. Three near-naked children squatted in the dust, staring with great anticipation at him, the man everyone called Teacher. He had placed the children along the fence so he could peer beyond into the expansive flats of freedom.

"A long time ago, they say, Coyote killed a bear and made an arrow quiver from its hide. Some other people saw him and told him he had better stop because bears have dangerous power and it is forbidden to touch them, but he went ahead anyway.

Pretty soon Coyote set the quiver and arrows down so he could gather some nuts, and when he wasn’t looking, that quiver turned into a big bear and started to chase him.

The excited children laughed and yelped and glanced at one another. Teacher smiled and continued, Coyote ran hard, and soon he met his friend, Gopher. ‘Help me, old man,’ said Coyote. ‘A bear is after me.’

‘All right,’ said Gopher. ‘Get in my mouth.’

‘So Coyote crawled into Gopher’s mouth.’"

Childish giggles danced from mouths agape.

Just then Bear ran up and said, ‘Where did that Coyote go?’

I haven’t seen any Coyote.

What’s that in your mouth? said Bear.

‘Teeth," said Gopher.

Bear got angry and kicked Gopher. Coyote fell out and started running again. Bear chased him some more, but he got away.

The audience hooted with glee asking the old man for more. He smiled while another child joined the cluster. Teacher began a tale about hungry Coyote’s problems when he stuck his hand into a hole of a tree stump where the quick-thinking Jackrabbit resided.

With an antelope buck draped behind the saddle, Enoch walked Killer slowly, not far from the storyteller and his young companions sitting or standing along the fence. He was tired, as blood from the antelope dripped darkly and caked on the flank of the mare.

While Teacher was speaking to the children, he was aware of his son-in-law approaching.

A lifetime in the wild gave Indians highly developed powers of awareness, almost an animal’s ability. Surrounded every day by soft breezes, subtle scents, and silent sounds, they discerned miniscule disturbance as a natural order.

"Buenos días, Teacher. Cómo le va? Enoch asked. How’s it going?"

"Podría ser mejor, amigo, said the Apache. It could be better."

We’ll see if we can do something about that. Enoch grinned.

Centuries of survival encouraged Apaches to communicate with their Mexican antagonists across the Rio Grande border. So Spanish was learned and flowed whenever there was an advantage to do so. Most of the warriors spoke rudimentary English as well.

Teacher, it’s beyond me how you remember all those Coyote stories, probably because you’re the ol’ coot himself. Have you seen your daughter recently?

She and the baby are in the wickiup, Teacher replied. They returned yesterday with the women foraging the hills and baking mescal.

That means we’ll have yucca soup and antelope chuck for supper tonight from my stock of piñon nuts, mescal cakes, and mesquite gruel. And probably a bunch of wild onions. It’ll be what my mother called a thin Irish stew.

Teacher responded, I was going to have wood rat and dried mescal, but that can wait.

So join us. We’ll have dessert. And I want to talk to you about something. Enoch opened the stained badger pouch and displayed small blueberries and a large comb of honey. He winked at Teacher. The children too showed their delight with eager eyes, and a swell of Mmmmmmmm.

Looking at the audience, Enoch said, I’ll tell you what. All you sweet-toothed little coyotes come over tonight when the sun drops and we’ll dish you up some berries and honey. That is, if you haven’t got something better to do?

A recoil of joy erupted to match the reaction of any ecstatic Arizona child sitting in the dust or on a porch.

Excited about being home, Enoch nudged Killer to pick up the pace toward his tipi and family as a plan flashed again in his brain.

He had been married two years to a petite, very young woman named Hil-ka, Day Is Dawning. His baby girl had exceptional beauty, which he celebrated with the turquoise gemstone embedded into his belt strap. The parents’ genes in the child created a porcelain brown face, a plump floret mouth, and silky hair the color of coal. Her eyes glowed blue-green. Indians claimed she looked like Earth Mother. Missionaries said she was a stained-glass window. Teacher named the child Bi-da, His Eyes, after her father.

As Enoch and Killer approached, he saw his wife sitting with the child outside the skin-flapped door and singing the simple tune of a wolf pup with a tummy ache that had been caught in a raspberry bush. With delight, the wife looked up at him seated on his mare, dirty and drenched in sweat, with food slung over Killer’s backside.

She grasped a beverage gourd to carry flower-sweetened water to her husband.

He said, I love you, my fawn.

Enoch bathed in the tinted creek, and then he dressed the antelope and, setting aside the chuck cut for his stew, began the process of smoking the meat on a fire smothered with wet scrub and mesquite. He returned to the wickiup as Hil-ka was boiling water and preparing the meat and ingredients, placing them into the kettle. With the antelope smoking and Maggie’s Irish stew simmering, Enoch and Hil-ka went into their tipi to rest and talk as the child slept.

Our daughter cannot be raised here, Hil-ka.

She looked at him with understanding and touched his cheek. Yes, she said.

We will leave this place to become human beings and return to the old life.

She’s too small to go into an angry land where Coyote will not show his face.

Enoch said, You know Mira Dolor is bad for us, or any Apache. Bi-da must grow up free and one day have a family and watch them play near blue water.

What about the soldiers?

For months now I have been planning an escape to the Northwest. Your father will come with us. He will be here tonight and we can talk together.

She said, Let us sleep now and talk at dinner about the mountains and going home.

Nansa, Enoch said. Going home.

Yes. That is what you will now call me.

Nansa, Enoch said and fell asleep, his head in her arms.

As the day darkened, the air stayed warm and coyotes began to howl. Nansa, Teacher, and Enoch were seated on animal skins circled around the sturdy clay-baked pot of stew. A coiled basket filled with seeds, nuts, and desert spices was near to add flavor.

Teacher placed his empty bowl down and smiled at Nansa contentedly.

Your mother was good to me, and she used to cook like this when I returned from the hunt. She died too young and left me sad.

Nansa replied, Yes. White man’s pox took many Apaches. I miss my mother greatly and I think of her when I sing the wolf pup song she sang to me.

Enoch’s green eyes looked at his wife; then he turned his focus on her father, Teacher, it is time we returned.

What do you mean?

With your Apache sense and Nansa’s caring, we can go home. I have a route. With Killer and a mule we can return to the north where life is friendly. We will confuse the army’s chase. They will hunt us but they will not reach us.

A mule? Teacher asks.

Yes, I have gathered supplies and have a mule for you, Nansa, and the baby.

I can walk, Teacher added. I would rather walk than ride. In mountains and rough lands an Apache moves better and more dangerously on foot.

The journey will be slow carrying Bi-da, Nansa said. But yes, you are right. We must go because of her.

A mule is sure-footed and durable and can carry heavy burdens. You and the baby will be safer on a mule, said Teacher.

Earth is our Mother, Nansa said. She cares for us. I have faith in our future.

Enoch responded, We will make it. I have plotted safe trails and explored hidden passages in canyons and forests. Your father will be our light with his Apache ways.

As the family stilled into silence and thought, the long day closed into night. The stew fire glowed as they sat in peace and happy anticipation.

With no sound but erratic snaps of the flames, Teacher suddenly looked at Enoch and nodded his head toward the door. He spoke calmly, Check outside!

Enoch grabbed his Winchester and sprang to the opening in the wickiup.

He looked back to the family and grinned, It’s the children! They’ve come for the berries and honey. All of a sudden there’s about twenty out there.

That’s Apaches for you, Teacher quipped.

Chapter Four

Enoch’s Run

F ort Bowie was astir among the scattered droplets of rain sparkling from the night’s downpour. The remarkable aromas of bacon and coffee sitting on open fires awakened the soldiers’ spirits. In their sensorial splendor, none of the rank and file were aware that three Apaches and a white man had escaped and were now well beyond the reservation fence.

A tall, wiry, worried cavalry sergeant, sporting a thick bending mustache, his hat shoved under his armpit, quickstepped into the post headquarters tap cautiously at the post commander’s door.

Enter! filtered from the room within.

He pushed the door open and approached the captain who was sitting and staring at the clutter on his desk. The soldier snapped to attention with a rushed salute, focusing at the wall behind the officer. He bellowed, Captain, Sir, then awaited a response that didn’t come.

Again, with the same intensity, Captain! Sir!

The intruder seemed frozen in space while Scamp concentrated on his busyness, still refusing to look up. Pleading for attention, the sergeant carefully slid his puffed-up, bloodshot eyes toward the top of the captain’s carefully combed hair.

Mesmerized, Scamp systematically manipulated and oiled the parts of a walnut-handled revolver that rested on his desk strewn with cleaning rags, tools, a small spouted tin of sperm oil, sheets of reports, orders, and telegraph messages. In an opened desktop drawer were twenty golden-brown, beeswax-coated paper boxes, each labeled 12 Cartridges for Colt’s Revolver .45, Frankford Arsenal.

Finally, he responded, as if talking to the clutter, What is it, Sergeant?

Sir! A squaw and her half-breed are gone. With ’er father called ‘Teacher.’ They slipped out sometime last night! During the storm.

Still slumped over the pistol parts, Scamp looked up with a jerk.

I’ll be damned! That pretty little sauce named Hil-ka. What about her husband, the mountain man?

Don’t know, sir. Probably with ’em.

Now the captain sat back in his seat, slowly wiping his oiled fingers with a cloth.

You can bet your tired-ass he’s with ’em. Never trusted that arrogant bastard, floating around here like he was Christ himself. How’d he do it? What ’ya find?

Nuthin’, sir. Found nuthin’. No Injuns. No trail. The heavy rain last night washed everything out.

Whenever Scamp was not on patrol, he came to work in colorful full-dress uniform, a ridiculous show of pomposity for the sparse desert life at the post. The men cast secret jokes about the toy soldier in a sandbox who paraded from stables to barracks to warehouse, the same tragic circle his grief-stricken sister paced while she was speaking to her voices.

Full dress—the army’s dress code for Washington galas and formal affairs—was a dark blue double-breasted frock coat with the brass cavalry emblem of crossed sabers on the collar. Shoulder knots of gold cord were embroidered on a ground of yellow cloth with the two-bar insignia of his rank in silver. Two rows of gold buttons tapered down the breast of the coat, equally spaced and, being seven in number, also identifying his rank. Two stripes of gold lace were on his cuffs, terminating in buttons. From a sword belt of gold lace and silk suspended a saber and scabbard displaying a gilt plate with silver wreath, eagle, stars, and a scrolled E Pluribus Unum. The trousers were light blue with two yellow welted stripes running down the outer seams.

During the sergeant’s report of the escape, Scamp returned to his activity, appearing to be more interested in the ritual cleaning of his Colt .45, the pistol of choice in the West, known by cowboys and outlaws as the ‘Frontier Six Shooter’ or ‘the Peacemaker.’

Sergeant? Scamp asked the man still rigid before him, You’ve been in the cavalry for thirteen years and I’ll wager you never gave more than ten seconds’ thought to this exceptional firearm. Except, of course, when it’s saving your bony body from a band of renegades?

That army Colt is my sidekick, sir. I do appreciate it.

Good. It is the most beautiful, reliable thing there is and it never lets you down no matter what happens.

The soldier reacted, Yes, sir. When the trigger gets outta whack in a tussle, I hand-fan the hammer and get six shots off quicker than a fly off a frog.

Scamp tried his own war story, Last summer, trying to flush out old Chief Nana in the Chiricahua Mountains, the mainspring got busted by a war club, so I pounded the hammer with a rock and dropped two Chiricahuas with the same bullet.

The sergeant, fighting back, retorted, The Colt, sir, is a helluva war club too. I clobbered Turkey Feather with it. And a few others. It’s my way o’ scalpin’ ’em.

Still sitting, the captain raised and aimed his pride and joy at a gray dirty window across the room. This firearm points by itself. The way dueling pistols do. It’s hard to miss with it, and the destruction on a man at fifty yards is the devil’s work itself.

Scamp slipped the Colt into its hand-tooled holster lying on the desk with the rest of the pile, then slowly stood, wiping his hands again.

With a condescending smile, he said, Prepare a patrol, sergeant, we’re goin’ Injun huntin’. No matter where they hide we’ll catch and kill ’em, including the bastard brat with crazy weird eyes.

Yes, sir, we’re already ready. And we’ll take our best Apache scout and git ’em.

Sergeant, I am your best Apache scout.

Yes, sir! When do we ride?

At nine hundred hours. With the same troops I had last month in the Tonto Basin, and two fully supplied mules for a ten-day march. Get me Lieutenant Schultz. He’ll be in command while I’m away.

Do you want the white Arabian, sir?

Damn tootin’. I want those ungratefuls to see me coming.

Yes, sir.

And, Sergeant, Colonel Rush will be here in two weeks on an inspection sweep with some Indian buggers from the bureau. I expect this wild-Indian mess to be cleared up by then. You’re dismissed. As he saluted the captain, he rushed out the door hearing Scamp murmur to himself, Damn right we’ll git ’em. By dawn the same morning, Enoch and his family were resting in a cluster of gaita grass.

The night had been black and wet and slowed their progress.

Stick, girl!

Killer froze like a statue at the mountain man’s gentle command as he stood up on the saddle and looked back onto the glass-flat terrain. He saw no signs of Scamp, but knew that the captain, consumed by hate and ego, would insist on leading the seek-and-seizure mission himself. He would appear.

Latched and tethered to Killer’s saddle were a bedroll of buffalo hide, a coil of hemp rope, a sheathed hatchet, a badger skin pouch, and two large saddlebags. A stitched-and-beaded parfleche satchel that hung from the horse’s shoulder carried boxes of ammunition, each box labeled 50 Cartridges .44 cal. for the Winchester Repeating Arms Co, Rifle Model 1873. With the cartridges was a George Catlin 1833 Outline Map of Indian Localities printed on birch paper so as not to mold.

Stowed separately in the saddlebag for treating accidents and unpredictable inconveniences were ample supplies of natural medicines such as astringent root to stop bleeding, sa-wah-ja-ra for snakebite, and tobacco leaves for inflammation, abscesses, and swelling. Also, tightly enveloped in a skin wrap, Enoch carried the foul-smelling was-saw-bape-sha plant, cut into pieces to broadcast around the camp at night to keep bears at bay. For other maladies, he packed pinesap for the symptoms of excessive skin exposure, Prince’s pine for chest congestion, and blue paint root to induce sleep.

Reading Thoreau during his academy days, Enoch agreed that man lives best with a mixture of civilization and wilderness. He often tapped his well-worn text notes of Medical Practices & Medicines with the Corps of Discovery by Captain William Clark.

On the lonely trail a special source of inspiration, cushioned in the badger pouch, was a small Moroccan leather-bound volume of reprinted letters and poetry by Thomas Jefferson given to Enoch by the fathers of the academy for winning the Correct Scholar Prize.

Chapter Five

The Journey

O K, Apache family, let’s slap leather, said Enoch as he jumped from his stance on the horse onto the gaita grass.

Nansa picked up her child, sleeping from mother’s milk, and nestled her into the cradleboard. Teacher latched it to the right side of the mule’s wooden packsaddle. Nansa hopped onto a blanket that cushioned the rigid saddle, placing her leg around the child. She sat among an impressive collection of burden baskets and water jugs woven from twig, twining, and piñon gum. All containers were filled with food, cookware, matches, and tinted water from Mira Dolor.

Teacher was on constant alert using his vast mental and physical resources. He wrapped his head with a turban opened at the top, and Nansa wore a headband. Both were dressed in shirts buttoned to the neck, long trousers tucked into leggings, and moccasins. They carried large knifes strapped to the waists.

There is a waterhole to the north, but Scamp knows that too, and will probably be waiting for us there. Or, at the least, he’ll poison it, Enoch said. So we’ll head more westerly toward the Gila River.

But stay away from Phoenix,