come into camp in early morning.”
I asked Mickey if it was Tony Choddi, and finally
he admitted that it was. I felt better then. McKay
couldn’t hang a man for trading a horse.
“Are you satisfied, Mr. McKay? He didn’t know
it was yours. Just a matter of trading a horse.”
McKay looked at me, narrowing his eyes. He
looked as if he were trying to figure out what kind
of a man I was. Finally he said, “You think I’m going to believe them?”
It dawned on me suddenly that McKay had been
using what patience he had for the past few minutes. Now he was ready to continue what they had
come for. He had made up his mind long before.
“Wait a minute, Mr. McKay, you’re talking
about the life of an innocent man. You can’t just toy
with it like it was a head of cattle.”
He looked at me and his puffy face seemed to
harden. He was a heavy man, beginning to sag about
the stomach. “You think you’re going to tell me what
I can do and what I can’t? I don’t need a government
representative to tell me why my horse was stolen!”
“I’m not telling you anything. You know Mickey
didn’t steal the horse. You can see for yourself
you’re making a mistake.”
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McKay shrugged and looked at his herd boss.
“Well, if it is, it isn’t a very big one—leastwise we’ll
be sure he won’t be trading in stolen horses again.”
He nodded to Bowie Allison.
Bowie grinned, and brought his quirt up and
then down across the rump of the chestnut.
“Yiiiiiiiiii . . .”
The chestnut broke fast. Allison stood yelling after it, then jumped aside quickly as Mickey Solner
swung back toward him on the end of the rope.
✯ ✯ ✯
It was two weeks later, to the day, that Mickey Segundo came in with Tony Choddi’s ears. You can
see why I asked him if he had a notion of going after McKay. And it was a strange thing. I was talking to a different boy than the one I had last seen
under the cottonwood.
When the horse shot out from under his dad, he
ran to him like something wild, screaming, and
wrapped his arms around the kicking legs trying to
hold the weight off the rope.
Bowie Allison cuffed him away, and they held
him back with pistols while he watched his dad die.
From then on he didn’t say a word, and when it was
over, walked away with his head down. Then, when
he came in with Tony Choddi’s ears, he was himself
again. All smiles.
I might mention that I wrote to the Bureau of In-The Boy Who Smiled
165
dian Affairs about the incident, since Mickey Solner, legally, was one of my charges; but nothing
came of it. In fact, I didn’t even get a reply.
Over the next few years Mickey Segundo
changed a lot. He became Apache. That is, his appearance changed and almost everything else about
him—except the smile. The smile was always there,
as if he knew a monumental secret which was going to make everyone happy.
He let his hair grow to his shoulders and usually
he wore only a frayed cotton shirt and breechclout;
his moccasins were Apache—curled toes and leggings which reached to his thighs. He went under
his Apache name, which was Peza-a, but I called
him Mickey when I saw him, and he was never reluctant to talk to me in English. His English was
good, discounting grammar.
Most of the time he lived in the same jacale his
dad had built, providing for his mother and fitting
closer into the life of the rancheria than he did before. But when he was about eighteen, he went up
to the agency and joined Tudishishn’s police. His
mother went with him to live at the reservation, but
within a year the two of them were back. Tracking
friends who happened to wander off the reservation
didn’t set right with him. It didn’t go with his
smile.
Tudishishn told me he was sorry to lose him because he was an expert tracker and a dead shot. I
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know the sergeant had a dozen good sign followers,
but very few who were above average with a gun.
He must have been nineteen when he came back
to Puerco. In all those years he never once mentioned McKay’s name. And I can tell you I never
brought it up either.
I saw McKay even less after the hanging incident. If
felt like a fool after warning him about Mickey Segundo, and I’m certain McKay felt only contempt for
me for doing it, after sticking up for the boy’s dad.
McKay would come through every once in a
while, usually going on a hunt up into the Nacimentos. He was a great hunter and would go out
for a few days every month or so. Usually with his
herd boss, Bowie Allison. He hunted everything
that walked, squirmed, or flew and I’m told his
ranch trophy room was really something to see.
You couldn’t take it away from the man; everything
he did, he did well. He was in his fifties, but he could
shoot straighter and stay in the saddle longer than
any of his riders. And he knew how to make money.
But it was his arrogance that irked me. Even though
he was polite, he made you feel far beneath him. He
talked to you as if you were one of the hired help.
One afternoon, fairly late, Tudishishn rode in
and said that he was supposed to meet McKay at
the adobe office early the next morning. McKay
wanted to try the shooting down southwest toward
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167
the malpais, on the other side of it, actually, and
Tudishishn was going to guide for him.
The Indian policeman drank coffee until almost
sundown and then rode off into the shadows of the
Nacimentos. He was staying at one of the rancherias,
visiting with his friends until the morning.
McKay appeared first. It was a cool morning,
bright and crisp. I looked out of the window and
saw the five riders coming up the road from the
south, and when they were close enough I made out
McKay and Bowie Allison and the three Bettzinger
brothers. When they reached the office, McKay and
Bowie dismounted, but the Bettzingers reined
around and started back down the road.
McKay nodded and was civil enough, though he
didn’t direct more than a few words to me. Bowie
was ready when I asked them if they wanted coffee,
but McKay shook his head and said they were leaving shortly. Just about then the rider appeared coming down out of the hills.
McKay was squinting, studying the figure on
the pony.
I didn’t really look at him until I noticed
McKay’s close attention. And when I looked at the
rider again, he was almost on us. I didn’t have to
squint then to see that it was Mickey Segundo.
McKay said, “Who’s that?” with a ring of suspicion to his voice.
I felt a sudden heat on my face, like the
feeling
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you get when you’re talking about someone, then
suddenly find the person standing next to you.
Without thinking about it I told McKay, “That’s
Peza-a, one of my people.” What made me call him
by his Apache name I don’t know. Perhaps because
he looked so Indian. But I had never called him
Peza-a before.
He approached us somewhat shyly, wearing his
faded shirt and breechclout but now with a streak
of ochre painted across his nose from ear to ear. He
didn’t look as if he could have a drop of white
blood in him.
“What’s he doing here?” McKay’s voice still held
a note of suspicion, and he looked at him as if he
were trying to place him.
Bowie Allison studied him the same way, saying
nothing.
“Where’s Tudishishn? These gentlemen are waiting for him.”
“Tudishishn is ill with a demon in his stomach,”
Peza-a answered. “He has asked me to substitute
myself for him.” He spoke in Spanish, hesitantly,
the way an Apache does.
McKay studied him for some time. Finally, he
said, “Well . . . can he track?”
“He was with Tudishishn for a year. Tudishishn
speaks highly of him.” Again I don’t know what
made me say it. A hundred things were going
through my head. What I said was true, but I saw it
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169
getting me into something. Mickey never looked directly at me. He kept watching McKay, with the
faint smile on his mouth.
McKay seemed to hesitate, but then he said,
“Well, come on. I don’t need a reference . . . long as
he can track.”
They mounted and rode out.
McKay wanted prongbuck. Tudishishn had described where they would find the elusive herds
and promised to show him all he could shoot. But
they were many days away. McKay had said if he
didn’t have time, he’d make time. He wanted good
shooting.
Off and on during the first day he questioned
Mickey Segundo closely to see what he knew about
the herds.
“I have seen them many times. Their hide the
color of sand, and black horns that reach into the
air like bayonets of the soldiers. But they are far.”
McKay wasn’t concerned with distance. After a
while he was satisfied that this Indian guide knew
as much about tracking antelope as Tudishishn, and
that’s what counted. Still, there was something
about the young Apache. . . .
✯ ✯ ✯
“Tomorrow, we begin the crossing of the malpais,” Mickey Segundo said. It was evening of the
third day, as they made camp at Yucca Springs.
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Bowie Allison looked at him quickly. “Tudishishn planned we’d follow the high country down
and come out on the plain from the east.”
“What’s the matter with keeping a straight
line,” McKay said. “Keeping to the hills is longer,
isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but that malpais is a blood-dryin’ furnace
in the middle of August,” Bowie grumbled. “You
got to be able to pinpoint the wells. And even if you
find them, they might be dry.”
McKay looked at Peza-a for an answer.
“If Señor McKay wishes to ride for two additional days, that is for him to say. But we can carry
our water with ease.” He went to his saddle pouch
and drew out two collapsed, rubbery bags. “These,
from the stomach of the horse, will hold much water. Tomorrow we fill canteens and these, and the
water can be made to last five, six days. Even if the
wells are dry, we have water.”
Bowie Allison grumbled under his breath, looking with distaste at the horse-intestine water sacks.
McKay rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He was
thinking of prongbuck. Finally he said, “We’ll cut
across the lava.”
Bowie Allison was right in his description of the
malpais. It was a furnace, a crusted expanse of
desert that stretched into another world. Saguaro
and ocotillo stood nakedly sharp against the whiteness, and off in the distance were ghostly looming
The Boy Who Smiled
171
buttes, gigantic tombstones for the lava waste.
Horses shuffled choking white dust, and the sun
glare was a white blistering shock that screamed its
brightness. Then the sun would drop suddenly,
leaving a nothingness that could be felt. A life that
had died a hundred million years ago.
McKay felt it and that night he spoke little.
The second day was a copy of the first, for the
lava country remained monotonously the same.
McKay grew more irritable as the day wore on,
and time and again he would snap at Bowie Allison
for his grumbling. The country worked at the
nerves of the two white men, while Mickey Segundo watched them.
On the third day they passed two water holes.
They could see the shallow crusted bottoms and the
fissures that the tight sand had made cracking in the
hot air. That night McKay said nothing.
In the morning there was a blue haze on the edge
of the glare; they could feel the land beneath them
begin to rise. Chaparral and patches of toboso grass
became thicker and dotted the flatness, and by early
afternoon the towering rock formations loomed
near at hand. They had then one water sack two
thirds full; but the other, with their canteens, was
empty.
Bowie Allison studied the gradual rise of the
rock wall, passing his tongue over cracked lips.
“There could be water up there. Sometimes the rain
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catches in hollows and stays there a long time if it’s
shady.”
McKay squinted into the air. The irregular
crests were high and dead still against the sky.
“Could be.”
Mickey Segundo looked up and then nodded.
“How far to the next hole?” McKay asked.
“Maybe one day.”
“If it’s got water. . . . Then how far?”
“Maybe two day. We come out on the plain then
near the Datil Mountains and there is water,
streams to be found.”
McKay said, “That means we’re halfway. We can
make last what we got, but there’s no use killing
ourselves.” His eyes lifted to the peaks again, then
dropped to the mouth of a barranca which cut into
the rock. He nodded to the dark canyon which was
partly hidden by a dense growth of mesquite.
“We’ll leave our stuff there and go on to see what
we can find.”
They unsaddled the horses and ground-tied them
and hung their last water bag in the shade of a
mesquite bush.
Then they walked up-canyon until they found a
place which would be the easiest to climb.
They went up and they came down, but when
they were again on the canyon floor, their ca
nteens
still rattled lightly with their steps. Mickey Segundo
The Boy Who Smiled
173
carried McKay’s rifle in one hand and the limp,
empty water bag in the other.
He walked a step behind the two men and
watched their faces as they turned to look back
overhead. There was no water.
The rocks held nothing, not even a dampness.
They were naked now and loomed brutally indifferent, and bone dry with no promise of moisture.
The canyon sloped gradually into the opening.
And now, ahead, they could see the horses and the
small fat bulge of the water bag hanging from the
mesquite bough.
Mickey Segundo’s eyes were fixed on the water
sack. He looked steadily at it.
Then a horse screamed. They saw the horses suddenly pawing the ground and pulling at the hackamores that held them fast. The three horses and
the pack mule joined together now, neighing shrilly
as they strained dancing at the ropes.
And then a shape the color of sand darted
through the mesquite thicket, so quickly that it
seemed a shadow.
Mickey Segundo threw the rifle to his shoulder.
He hesitated. Then he fired.
The shape kept going, past the mesquite background and out into the open.
He fired again and the coyote went up into the
air and came down to lie motionless.
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It only jerked in death. McKay looked at him angrily. “Why the hell didn’t you let me have it! You
could have hit one of the horses!”
“There was not time.”
“That’s two hundred yards! You could have hit a
horse, that’s what I’m talking about!”
“But I shot it,” Mickey Segundo said.
When they reached the mesquite clump, they did
not go over to inspect the dead coyote. Something
else took their attention. It stopped the white men
in their tracks.
They stared unbelieving at the wetness seeping
into the sand, and above the spot, the water bag
hanging like a punctured bladder. The water had
quickly run out.
Mickey Segundo told the story at the inquiry.
They had attempted to find water, but it was no
use; so they were compelled to try to return.
They had almost reached Yucca Springs when
the two men died. Mickey Segundo told it simply.