far out on the plain to the two wagons and the ribbon of river behind them. He tried to relate the boy
and the wagons in some way, but he could not.
After a while he saw buffalo. A few straggling
off toward the wagons, but even more on the other
side of the valley where the plain widened again
and the grass was higher, green-brown in the sun.
Toward noon the buffalo increased, and he remembered the hunters saying how the herds were
moving west. By that time there were hundreds,
perhaps a thousand, scattered over the grass, out a
mile or so from the boy who seemed to be concentrating on them.
Maybe he really is going hunting, Leo Cleary
thought. Maybe he’s starting all over again. But I
wish I had me a drink. The boy’s downwind now,
he thought, lifting his head to feel the breeze on his
face. He could edge up and take a hundred of them
if he did it right. What’s he waiting for! Hell, if he
wants to start all over, it’s all right with me. I’ll stay
out with him. At that moment he was thinking of
the three barrels of whiskey.
“Go out and get ’em, Will,” he urged the boy
aloud, though he would not be heard. “The wind
won’t keep forever!”
Surprised, then, he saw the boy move out from
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the brush clumps leading his horse, mount, and
lope off in a direction out and away from the herd.
“You can’t hunt buffalo from a saddle . . . they’ll
run as soon as they smell horse! What the hell’s the
matter with him!”
✯ ✯ ✯
He watched the boy, growing smaller with distance, move out past the herd. Then suddenly the
horse wheeled, and it was going at a dead run toward the herd. A yell drifted up to the ridge and
then a heavy rifle shot followed by two reports that
were weaker. Horse and rider cut into the herd, and
the buffalo broke in confusion.
They ran crazily, bellowing, bunching in panic to
escape the horse and man smell and the screaming
that suddenly hit them with the wind. A herd of
buffalo will run for hours if the panic stabs them
sharp enough, and they will stay together, bunching their thunder, tons of bulk, massive bellowing
heads, horns, and thrashing hooves. Nothing will
stop them. Some go down, and the herd passes over,
beating them into the ground.
They ran directly away from the smell and the
noises that were now far behind, downwind they
came and in less than a minute were thundering
through the short valley. Dust rose after them, billowing up to the old man, who covered his mouth,
coughing, watching the rumbling dark mass erupt
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153
from the valley out onto the plain. They moved in
an unwavering line toward the Salt Fork, rolling
over everything, before swerving at the river—even
the two canvas squares that had been brilliant
white in the morning sun. And soon they were only
a deep hum in the distance.
Will Gordon was out on the flats, approaching
the place where the wagons had stood, riding
slowly now in the settling dust.
But the dust was still in the air, heavy enough to
make Leo Cleary sneeze as he brought the wagon
out from the pines toward the river.
He saw the hide buyers’ wagons smashed to
scrap wood and shredded canvas dragged among
the strewn buffalo hides. Many of the bales were
still intact, spilling from the wagon wrecks; some
were buried under the debris.
Three men stood waist deep in the shallows of
the river, and beyond them, upstream, were the
horses they had saved. Some had not been cut from
the pickets in time, and they lay shapeless in blood
at one end of the camp.
Will Gordon stood on the bank with the revolving pistol cocked, pointed at Clyde Foss. He
glanced aside as the old man brought up the team.
“He wants to sell back, Leo. How much, you
think?”
The old man only looked at him, because he
could not speak.
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“I think two barrels of whiskey,” Will Gordon
said. He stepped suddenly into the water and
brought the long pistol barrel sweeping against
Clyde’s head, cutting the temple.
“Two barrels?”
Clyde Foss staggered and came to his feet slowly.
“Come here, Clyde.” The boy leveled the pistol
at him and waited as Clyde Foss came hesitantly
out of the water, hunching his shoulders. The boy
swung the pistol back, and, as Clyde ducked, he
brought his left fist up, smashing hard against the
man’s jaw.
“Or three barrels?”
The hide buyer floundered in the shallow water,
then crawled to the bank, and lay on his stomach,
gasping for breath.
“We’ll give him three, Leo. Since he’s been nice
about it.”
Later, after Clyde and his two men had loaded
their wagon with four hundred and eighty hides,
the old man and the boy rode off through the valley
to the great plain.
Once the old man said, “Where we going now,
Will?”
And when the boy said, “We’re still going hunting, Leo,” the old man shrugged wearily and just
nodded his head.
6
The Boy Who Smiled
When Mickey Segundo was fourteen, he tracked
a man almost two hundred miles—from the Jicarilla Subagency down into the malpais.
He caught up with him at a water hole in late afternoon and stayed behind a rock outcropping
watching the man drink. Mickey Segundo had not
tasted water in three days, but he sat patiently behind the cover while the man quenched his thirst,
watching him relax and make himself comfortable
as the hot lava country cooled with the approach of
evening.
Finally Mickey Segundo stirred. He broke open
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the .50-caliber Gallagher and inserted the paper cartridge and the cap. Then he eased the carbine between a niche in the rocks, sighting on the back of
the man’s head. He called in a low voice, “Tony
Choddi . . .” and as the face with the wide-open
eyes came around, he fired casually.
He lay on his stomach and slowly drank the water he needed, filling his canteen and the one that
had belonged to Tony Choddi. Then he took his
hunting knife and sawed both of the man’s ears off,
close to the head. These he put into his saddle
pouch, leaving the rest for the buzzards.
A week later Mickey Segundo carried the pouch
into the agency office and dropped the ears on my
desk. He said very simply, “Tony Choddi is sorry
he has caused trouble.”
I remember telling him, “You’re not thinking of
going after McKay now, are you?”
“This man, Tony Choddi, stole stuff, a horse and
clothes and a gun,” he said with his pleasant smile.
“So I
thought I would do a good thing and fix it so
Tony Choddi didn’t steal no more.”
With the smile there was a look of surprise, as if
to say, “Why would I want to get Mr. McKay?”
A few days later I saw McKay and told him
about it and mentioned that he might keep his eyes
open. But he said that he didn’t give a damn about
any breed Jicarilla kid. If the kid felt like avenging
his old man, he could try, but he’d probably cash in
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157
before his time. And as for getting Tony Choddi, he
didn’t give a damn about that either. He’d got the
horse back and that’s all he cared about.
After he had said his piece, I was sorry I had
warned him. And I felt a little foolish telling one of
the biggest men in the Territory to look out for a
half-breed Apache kid. I told myself, Maybe you’re
just rubbing up to him because he’s important and
could use his influence to help out the agency . . .
and maybe he knows it.
Actually I had more respect for Mickey Segundo,
as a human being, than I did for T. O. McKay.
Maybe I felt I owed the warning to McKay because
he was a white man. Like saying, “Mickey Segundo’s a good boy, but, hell, he’s half Indian.”
Just one of those things you catch yourself doing.
Like habit. You do something wrong the first time
and you know it, but if you keep it up, it becomes a
habit and it’s no longer wrong because it’s something you’ve always been doing.
McKay and a lot of people said Apaches were no
damn good. The only good one was a dead one.
They never stopped to reason it out. They’d been
saying it so long, they knew it was true. Certainly
any such statement was unreasonable, but damned
if I wouldn’t sometimes nod my head in agreement,
because at those times I’d be with white men and
that’s the way white men talked.
I might have thought I was foolish, but actually it
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was McKay who was the fool. He underestimated
Mickey Segundo.
That was five years ago. It had begun with a
hanging.
✯ ✯ ✯
Early in the morning, Tudishishn, sergeant of
Apache police at the Jicarilla Agency, rode in to tell
me that Tony Choddi had jumped the boundaries
again and might be in my locale. Tudishishn stayed
for half a dozen cups of coffee, though his information didn’t last that long. When he’d had enough,
he left as leisurely as he had arrived. Hunting renegades, reservation jumpers, was Tudishishn’s job;
still, it wasn’t something to get excited about. Tomorrows were for work; todays were for thinking
about it.
Up at the agency they were used to Tony Choddi
skipping off. Usually they’d find him later in some
shaded barranca, full of tulapai.
It was quiet until late afternoon, but not unusually so. It wasn’t often that anything out of the ordinary happened at the subagency. There were
twenty-six families, one hundred eight Jicarillas all
told, under my charge. We were located almost
twenty miles below the reservation proper, and
most of the people had been there long before the
reservation had been marked off. They had been
fairly peaceful then, and remained so now. It was
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159
one of the few instances where the Bureau allowed
the sleeping dog to lie; and because of that we had
less trouble than they did up at the reservation.
There was a sign on the door of the adobe office
which described it formally. It read: d. j. merritt—
agent, jicarilla apache subagency—puerco,
new mexico territory. It was a startling announcement to post on the door of a squat adobe
sitting all alone in the shadow of the Nacimentos.
My Apaches preferred higher ground and the closest jacales were two miles up into the foothills. The
office had to remain on the mail run, even though
the mail consisted chiefly of impossible-to-apply
Bureau memoranda.
Just before supper Tudishishn returned. He came
in at a run this time and swung off before his pony
had come to a full stop. He was excited and spoke
in a confusion of Apache, Spanish, and a word here
and there of English.
Returning to the reservation, he had decided to
stop off and see his friends of the Puerco Agency.
There had been friends he had not seen for some
time, and the morning had lengthened into afternoon
with tulapai, good talking, and even coffee. People
had come from the more remote jacales, deeper in
the hills, when they learned Tudishishn was there, to
hear news of friends at the reservation. Soon there
were many people and what looked like the beginning of a good time. Then Señor McKay had come.
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McKay had men with him, many men, and they
were looking for Mickey Solner—the squaw man,
as the Americans called him.
Most of the details I learned later on, but briefly
this is what had happened: McKay and some of his
men were out on a hunting trip. When they got up
that morning, McKay’s horse was gone, along with
a shotgun and some personal articles. They got on
the tracks, which were fresh and easy to follow,
and by that afternoon they were at Mickey Solner’s
jacale. His woman and boy were there, and the
Segundo, the boy, was honored to lead such important people to his father, who was visiting with
Tudishishn.
McKay brought the horse along, and when they
found Mickey Solner, they took hold of him without asking questions and looped a rope around his
neck. Then they boosted him up onto the horse
they claimed he had stolen. McKay said it would be
fitting that way. Tudishishn had left fast when he
saw what was about to happen. He knew they
wouldn’t waste time arguing with an Apache, so he
had come to me.
When I got there, Mickey Solner was still sitting
McKay’s chestnut mare with the rope reaching
from his neck to the cottonwood bough overhead.
His head drooped as if all the fight was out of him,
and when I came up in front of the chestnut, he
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161
looked at me with tired eyes, watery and red from
tulapai.
I had known Solner for years, but had never become close to him. He wasn’t a man with whom
you became fast friends. Just his living in an
Apache rancheria testified to his being of a different breed. He was friendly enough, but few of the
whites liked him—they said he drank all the time
and never worked. Maybe most were just envious.
Solner was a white man gone Indian, whole hog.
That was the cause of the resentment.
His son, Mickey the Second, stood near his dad’s
stirrup looking at him with a bewildered, pathetic
look on his slim face. He held on to the stirrup as if
he’d never let it go. And it was the first time, the
only time, I ever saw Mickey Segundo without a
faint smile on his face.
“Mr. McKay,” I said to the cattleman, who was
standing relaxed with his hands in his pockets,
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to take that man
down. He’s under bureau jurisdiction and will have
to be tried by a court.”
McKay said nothing, but Bowie Allison, who
was his herd boss, laughed and then said, “You
ought to be afraid.”
Dolph Bettzinger was there, along with his
brothers Kirk and Sim. They were hired for their
guns and usually kept pretty close to McKay. They
did not laugh when Allison did.
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And all around the clearing by the cottonwood
were eight or ten others. Most of them I recognized
as McKay riders. They stood solemnly, some with
rifles and shotguns. There wasn’t any doubt in their
minds what stealing a horse meant.
“Tudishishn says that Mickey didn’t steal your
horse. These people told him that he was at home
all night and most of the morning until Tudishishn
dropped in, and then he came down here.” A line of
Apaches stood a few yards off and as I pointed to
them, some nodded their heads.
“Mister,” McKay said, “I found the horse at this
man’s hut. Now, you argue that down, and I’ll kiss
the behind of every Apache you got living around
here.”
“Well, your horse could have been left there by
someone else.”
“Either way, he had a hand in it,” he said curtly.
“What does he say?” I looked up at Mickey Solner and asked him quickly, “How did you get the
horse, Mickey?”
“I just traded with a fella.” His voice shook, and
he held on to the saddle horn as if afraid he’d fall
off. “This fella come along and traded with me,
that’s all.”
“Who was it?”
Mickey Solner didn’t answer. I asked him again,
but still he refused to speak. McKay was about to
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163
say something, but Tudishishn came over quickly
from the group of Apaches.
“They say it was Tony Choddi. He was seen to