44

THEY CAME single-file straight down Main Street, with space between them so that each target was single. Kha-to-nay was first. There were vertical white lines painted beside each eye, and his chin was painted black. He was bare-chested, riding a tall bay horse marked with similar war paint. There was a big bowie knife on his belt and a Winchester resting across his saddle in front of him. I could almost hear the collective gasp of the old people, women, and children peering out of their civilized houses at these other people.

He looked carefully left and right as he came. It was probably the way Caesar had looked, riding into a conquered city. He saw me, and pointed at me. They kept coming. I counted them as they came. Ten men, plus Kah-to-nay. Either Pony was mistaken or there were eight missing. Pony was rarely mistaken. When the column was halfway past me, Virgil stepped out from the pool room and walked slowly to the middle of the street. He would have seen the number. He would know there were eight fighters missing.

“Virgil Cole,” Kah-to-nay said. “Why are you not out across the river with the other fools?”

His English was flawless, except that it was too precise, like something carefully learned.

“Speaking English now,” Virgil said.

“I am here to burn your town to the ground,” he said. “I will take some women, probably, and kill everyone else. Therefore it is appropriate to speak the language of the Blue-Eyed Devil.”

“But first you want to brag about it,” Virgil said.

Again Kah-to-nay shook his head sharply.

“My brother who calls himself Pony Flores says you are his friend. My brother is no longer Chiricahua, but he is my brother. You may ride away, before we begin.”

I was shocked. “You may ride away”? Virgil Cole?

“Pony is my friend,” Virgil said. “And because you are his brother I will make you the same offer.”

Kah-to-nay stared at Virgil for a time.

“I will try not to kill you,” Kah-to-nay said.

“And me you,” Virgil said.

“But if I must,” Kah-to-nay said, “I hope you find that it is a good day to die.”

“I s’pect they’re all about the same,” Virgil said. Without raising his voice, and looking straight at Kah-to-nay, Virgil said, “Anybody see the other eight Indians?”

“Four of them.” Chauncey Teagarden’s voice came from the stable. “Livery corral behind me. One street over.”

“Other four are probably one street over the other way,” Virgil mused.

Kah-to-nay turned his head and spoke to his warriors in Apache. Then silence.

Kah-to-nay looked back up at where I was, and over at where Teagarden was.

“How many are you?” he said.

“Enough,” Virgil said.

Kah-to-nay raised his voice slightly and said something in Apache. From the pool room, Pony answered.

Then Kah-to-nay began to back his horse slowly away from Virgil. Suddenly he put his head back and screamed. It was a shocking sound in the twisting silence, a sound from another word. He kicked his horse forward and drove him straight at Virgil. Just before he reached him he yanked the horse right and drove the horse down the alley past the Boston House. His warriors came behind him, running straight at Virgil and turning just as they reached him, half going left. Half going right. Virgil stood motionless as they ran at him.

As soon as the Indians disappeared down the side street, a wisp of smoke began to rise on the left, from behind the buildings facing Main Street. Then smoke came from the right. I could smell the coal oil.

In the center of the empty street Virgil put his hands above his head and gestured for us to join him. The balloon was up.

45

THE FLAMES were beginning to frolic above the roof-lines. The smoke was thick and black and smelled of coal oil. No Indians were in sight on Main Street. But there were periodic gunshots from the side streets, and people, mostly women and children, rushed out of them and began to mill on Main Street.

“He’s corralling them on Main Street,” I said.

“Then kill them,” Pony said.

“Can’t fight the fire,” Virgil said. “Can’t protect all the people. Only thing we can do is kill Apaches. Too few of us to spread out. We stay together. Kill any Indian we see.”

He looked at Pony.

“Have to,” he said.

Pony nodded.

“Boston House not burning yet,” he said.

“It will,” Virgil said.

“I go there,” Pony said.

Someone released two horses from the livery, and they skittered together down Slate Street and toward the open prairie.

“Indians gonna collect them later,” Chauncey said.

“And a lotta scalps,” I said.

We moved in the same direction down Bow Street. At the end of the block where Bow crossed Sixth Street two Apaches with Winchesters held their excited horses hard as they stepped and turned, blocking the street. Virgil killed them both.

“Roof,” Chauncey said, and killed an Apache straddling the ridgepole. The Indian tumbled off the ridge and rolled down the roof slant and fell to the street. His Winchester stayed halfway down the roof. Next door a building collapsed, the roof falling in with an explosion of flame, and smoke, and sparks, and debris.

A brave came out of an alley in front of us and rode straight at us, firing a big old Navy Colt. Indians in general were not great shooters, and the fact that we were standing, and they were shooting from horseback, gave us another edge. The tight choke of eight-gauge shot hit the Indian full in the chest and knocked him backward off his horse as if he had run into a wall. Somewhere a woman screamed. We could hear a baby crying above the roar of the flames. And occasionally came the awful scream of a war cry. We moved up Sixth Street to Slate and turned the corner. Virgil and I stayed tight to the wall. Chauncey Teagarden had an ivory-handled Colt in each hand.

“Fuck this,” he said, and stepped into the center of Slate Street, heading back toward Main. A bullet kicked up dirt in front of him and, almost negligently, he snapped off a shot with his left-hand gun and killed an Indian on a pinto horse. Main Street was full of terrified citizens milling desperately in the searing heat, under a pall of black smoke. The Indians herded them the way cowboys herded cattle. Mounted and moving among the citizens, the Apache were not easy targets. Teagarden stayed in the open street. Gunfire continued to miss him. If we got out of this we’d learn a couple of things. Teagarden could shoot. And he didn’t scare easily.

Suddenly the shooting stopped. The flames still tossed and snarled above the buildings, and the smoke still hung low over the street. But it seemed somehow as if everything stopped when Kha-to-nay rode into the maelstrom with four warriors behind him. A young girl with her skirts pushed up high on her bare legs straddled the big bay horse in front of Kha-to-nay, clamped against him by Kha-to-nay’s arm holding the reins. It was Laurel. With his left hand Kha-to-nay pressed the edge of a bowie knife against her stomach.

“Virgil Cole,” Kha-to-nay bellowed. “Put down your guns and show yourselves, or I will gut your little whore right here.”

Virgil stood in the doorway of the hardware store, looking at the situation. We could not let Laurel be cut. We could not give up our guns.

Pony Flores appeared from behind the Boston House, riding a horse with no saddle. Kha-to-nay raised a “hold your fire” hand to his troops, as Pony’s horse picked his way through the terrified crowd. He stopped beside Kha-to-nay. On Kha-to-nay’s left side. Laurel stared at him.

“Chiquita,” he said to her. “I have come get you, again.”

Kha-to-nay spoke to Pony in Apache. Pony answered. Kha-to-nay shook his head. Pony spoke again. Kha-to-nay spoke again, louder, shaking his head as he did so. Pony moved so quickly it was hard to follow. He took hold of Kha-to-nay’s knife hand and pulled it away from Laurel. His right leg swung over his horse’s withers and he was on Kha-to-nay’s horse, behind him. The knife appeared from the top of his moccasin. He cut Kha-to-nay’s throat, shoved him off the horse, slid forward behind Laurel, got hold of the reins with his arms around her, and kicked the horse forward. As the horse moved we opened up on the four warriors with Kha-to-nay. Three of them went down. Pony flattened Laurel out over the horse’s neck and himself over her, and they galloped into the coming darkness of the prairie.