Death Song

By Andrew McBride

They were two men driven by implacable hatred: Lieutenant Ranald Neal of the U.S. Cavalry, seeking his place in the roll-call of history, as the man who ended the Indian Wars, and Sombra the Apache war chief, bent on revenge. The two deadly enemies fought each other across the savage wilderness of the border country. They met for the last time in The Place of Bones, forbidden ground in the shadow of Ghost Mountain.

Caught in the middle, as this genocidal war reached its bloody climax, was the white woman who had been the Apaches captive and whose yellow hair gave Sombra luck in battle. Then, too, there was the formidable Calvin Taylor, Indian scout, hired gun and man killer. Could he, against all the odds, succeed in his deadly mission?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Hale Fiction
• Release date: Apr 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780719822537

Book preview

ONE

Calvin Taylor lifted the field glasses to his eyes and studied the Apaches moving out of the canyon. He spotted the white woman immediately.

She was dressed like the Indians with her, in a shapeless, knee-length shift, wearing high, snub-toed moccasins. But yellow hair stood out amongst twenty or twenty-five Indians whose hair was so black as to be almost blue, whose coppery skins were further darkened by the Arizona sun.

Taylor lowered the field glasses and rubbed his thumb against his chin, something he always did when he was trying to think. He was in the cover of scrub and boulders half a mile south-west of the canyon. He guessed it might be Rattlesnake Canyon; this lay halfway along the trail linking Forts Bowie and Huachuca, down in the south-east corner of Arizona Territory, hard by the border with Mexico. At any time a wild and dangerous place to be. And now – in the late summer of 1877, with Sombra’s Chiricahuas raiding north across the border – particularly so.

Taylor touched the rosewood stock of his carbine – the latest issue fifteen-shot Winchester, model of ’73; he also wore a cedar-gripped Colt pistol butt-forward in the cross-draw holster on his left hip. There was a knife sheathed on his other hip and enough ammunition in the saddle-bags on his horse to fight a small war. Not that he was looking for trouble.

All he’d been doing was helping out the army, earning a little extra money in the process. As he was drifting from Bowie back to civilization, Tucson maybe, what harm if he carried some army dispatches with him?

The harm was, it might make Sombra think that Taylor was scouting against him. Taylor could find himself a marked man.…

So, the last thing Taylor wanted was to lock horns with the war chief or any of his renegade band. Taylor had done enough scouting against Apaches, chasing them over the meanest country on God’s earth … he was looking forward to a spell of soft living, town living, for a change. All he’d planned to do was wait in cover until the Apaches passed from sight, then continue his journey. But the woman with yellow hair changed all that.

He scowled, hating the melodrama of the situation. Nonetheless, he knew he’d have to try and rescue the woman. But how?

There were only five or six warriors, men of fighting age, down there. The rest of the broncos were off somewhere with Sombra, raising all kinds of hell. Not that Taylor relished the thought of tangling with even half-a-dozen Chiricahua warriors.

Through his field glasses, Taylor studied the men he had to go up against. Stocky, middle-sized men, their long hair bound with scarves and head-rags, wearing colourful smocks and shirts and baggy moccasins that reached to the thigh. Several wore sombreros and scraps of discarded white-eye clothing; one man had on a dust-fouled army jacket. At least four were draped in cartridge belts with what looked like modern rifles in their hands. Their dark faces weren’t painted for war, the traditional stripe of white bottomclay spanning the face from ear to ear, running across the bridge of the nose; but they were undoubtedly hostiles, almost certainly part of Sombra’s band. Otherwise, they’d be up north on the reservation, trying to raise crops on the miserable stretch of desert the white man had allocated them. Only hostiles would have a white woman captive amongst their number.

Taylor got tired of rubbing his thumb against his jaw and scratched the stubble under his chin instead. He had about three days’ worth of trail beard there. He fingered one corner of his moustache. A man in his middle twenties but looking older, he’d spent too many years in the desert and mountain country, getting his skin tanned and leathered. He had dark hair and, in contrast, very blue eyes.

He saw the file of Apaches was winding north, into the foothills of the Dragoons. An army could lose itself in those mountains, in the maze of canyon and forest, so his only chance was to grab the woman whilst the band was still out in open country, with only a handful of warriors to guard her. Once they were deeper into the mountains, and the main body of warriors returned, there’d be no chance at all.

Taylor’s scowl deepened. The more he thought about the rescue he was contemplating, the riskier and crazier it seemed. He could foresee one more problem on top of all the rest. Whites who’d been captives of Indians long enough sometimes turned Indian themselves, fell under the strange spell of their captors’ way of life. He might find himself trying to rescue someone who didn’t want to be rescued. Then there’d be hell to pay.…

To the Apaches she was just ‘the yellow-haired woman’ but she’d been born Nola Hertzog twenty-three years ago. Where she was raised, in the wheatfields and backwoods of Wisconsin, people in her community spoke German to each other, and English to outsiders. Sometimes she could recall this other life, but most times the present was the only reality she could remember or imagine. Now even her reflection, the startling ice-blue of her eyes, the pale gold of her hair, seemed unreal, something she only thought she saw. It was as if she was bewitched. Perhaps one day the scales would fall from her eyes and she’d see herself as she really was, as copper-skinned, dark-eyed and black-haired as the Apaches around her.

The band had camped for the night on high ground, in a grove of palo duro trees. The pony herd had been moved into the centre of the encampment and warriors took turns keeping watch, positioning themselves on a shoulder of hill overlooking the camp. Until they were higher into the mountains they were dangerously exposed to attack and it wouldn’t do to let anything happen to Sombra’s yellow-haired medicine woman.…

Nola had a troubled night’s sleep, she dreamed of strange places and strange people, they had pale hair and blue eyes, just like her. When she woke, it was still dark, no light showed under the stiffened hide hanging at the entrance of the wickiup. The other occupants of the hut were still sleeping; she heard their regular breathing. Scraps of the dream, people with fair skin and flaxen hair speaking a strange language, stayed in her head. An Apache, troubled by a dream, might say ‘A ghost bothers me’. Nola stood and made her way out of the hut, waking no one. She judged it was almost false dawn and sensed the first lightening of the surrounding darkness. Nola could just make out the pale gleam of the water-hole. She began to hear a few small noises, early risers stirring in their wickiups and brush shelters. She went and knelt by the water-hole, drinking a little and splashing water on her face. The night was now hazy grey. She saw a boy leading some of the ponies down to the creek where they could drink.

It was at that point that a hand slipped around her mouth and she was pulled backwards. She tried to open her mouth to scream and a voice hissed in her right ear. In English, the voice said, ‘Quiet!’

Nola squirmed about; a white man held her, his face almost pressed into hers, a dark-haired man with eyes as blue as her own … he drew her back behind a wickiup and whispered, ‘Can I let you go?’

She nodded.

The white man glared at her doubtfully. After what seemed a long time he took his hand from her mouth.

Calvin Taylor thought, at least she didn’t scream. He lifted a finger to his lips, signalling silence, and then jerked his head in the direction of the creek. He felt silly going through this pantomime but she seemed to understand. When he turned away and moved forward, he saw her begin to follow. If she’d turned Indian, now was her chance to scream, or run, or call for help. Taylor waited for that, his nerves stretched tight as rawhide; but it didn’t happen.

To get the woman free, Taylor needed to steal one of the Apache ponies, and now was his only chance. At night Apaches put their horses into the middle of the camp and slept around them. The time the herd was most vulnerable was at dawn, when boys took the animals to water. Taylor had a few minutes in which to strike, in the dim gloom between first light and full light, when the whole rancheria would be up and about.

Already the grey haze was turning pink. He turned and signalled the woman to stop; she sank into cover. Taylor glanced at the hill above. There was a guard up there somewhere. Taylor squinted through the semi-darkness ahead of him. The ponies were at the creek, their heads dipped to drink; then he saw the horse guard.

He was, as usual, a novice warrior, a boy about thirteen, armed only with a bow and a lance. The youth prowled up and down, looking bored and disgruntled, probably wishing he was old enough to be about a man’s business or raiding, stealing and killing. Kids might be easily distracted and day-dream but they had sharp ears. Taylor sneaked up on the boy through the cover of some chest-high chaparral, moving as quietly as he knew how. He crouched down and circled in sideways, like a crab scuttling between the rocks. All the way he expected the boy to spot him, or to hear a yell that meant he’d been discovered by the guard up above, or by someone else in camp.

A dozen paces from the boy, Taylor halted. His face was damp with sweat; there was some fear in that sweat. He dried his hands against his pants and swallowed. The dryness in his throat was almost painful, as if there was a stick lodged in his windpipe. That was fear too, he knew.

Taylor took a two-handed grip of his Winchester; he moved from cover and walked up behind the boy, keeping an even pace, walking in a dead-straight line. At the last he broke into a run. The boy heard the sudden scuffle of feet and turned; Taylor struck him across the jaw with the stock of the Winchester. The boy spun, fell sprawling.

The ponies shuffled, a few whickered nervously. Taylor waited for them to run, that would ruin everything. But they didn’t run, they just shook their heads and shuffled their feet in the creek. Taylor took hold of the nearest paint pony by its jawline while he knelt over the Apache boy. He wondered if the blow of the rifle had broken the kid’s neck; then he saw the rise and fall of the boy’s chest. Taylor produced a length of cotton rope and tied the Apache’s hands behind him. For good measure he gagged the boy with a spare bandanna. He saw the woman watching him, all eyes. He whispered to her, ‘Get on this pony!’

At which point the Indian pony tried to rear. Having no time for niceties – it was almost full light – Taylor quelled the horse’s rebellion the way an old Mexican mustanger had shown him. He struck the horse on the forehead with his fist. He thought he’d broken his wrist doing it, but the horse stood, dazed but unresisting, as the woman climbed aboard its bare back. She kneed the pony into movement, guiding it with the jawline. Taylor led her to