to lead an expedition to the border. They say that
he will probably ask for you. So I am being assigned here to replace you when the time comes.
This is, of course, only gossip that is circulating
about.”
“Do you believe it?”
“Sir, I don’t even think about it.”
Travisin said, “You mean you don’t want to
think about it. Sitting by yourself at a Godforsaken
Indian agency with almost two hundred and fifty
White Mountains living across the street. Not to
mention the scouts.” He paused and smiled at de
Both. “I don’t know, Lieutenant, you might even
like it after a while.”
“I accept my orders, Captain. My desires have
nothing to do with my orders.”
But Travisin was not listening. Long strides took
Trail of the Apache
13
him to the doorway and he leaned out with a hand
against the door frame on each side.
“Fryyyyyyyyyyy! Hey, Fryyyy!”
✯ ✯ ✯
The men of H troop looked over to the office as
they prepared to mount. Barney Fry left the sergeant and strode toward the agency office. “Come
in here, Barney.”
The clatter of trotting horses beat across the
quadrangle as Fry stepped up on the porch and entered the office. His short strides were slightly
pigeon-toed and he held his head tilted down as if
he were self-conscious of his appearance. He
looked to be in his early twenties, but, like Travisin, his face was a hard, bronzed mask, matured
beyond his age. When he took off his gray widebrimmed hat, thick, black hair clung close to his
scalp, smeared with oily perspiration.
“What do you think, Barney?”
Fry leaned against the edge of the desk. “I think
probably the same thing you do. Those ’Paches
aren’t goin’ to stay long at Gila even if we’d give
them all the beef critters in Arizona. You notice
there wasn’t any women in the band?”
“Yes, I noticed,” Travisin answered. “They’ll
never learn, will they?” He looked at de Both. “You
see, Lieutenant, the Bureau thinks that if they sepa- 14
ELMORE LEONARD
rate them from their families for a while, the hostiles will become good little Indians and make
plows out of their Spencers and grow corn to eat instead of drink. What would you do if some benevolent race snatched your women and children from
you and sent you to a barren rock pile over a hundred miles away? And do you know why? For
something you’d been doing for the past three hundred years. For that simple but enigmatic something that makes you an Apache and not a Navajo.
For that quirk of fate that makes you a tiger instead
of a Persian cat. Mister, I’ve got over two hundred
White Mountains here raising crops and eating
government beef. I can assure you that they’re not
doing it by nature! And now they sent sixteen Chiricahuas! Sixteen men with the smell of gunpowder
still strong in their nostrils and blood lust in their
eyes.” Travisin shook his head wearily. “And they
send them here without their women.”
De Both cleared his throat before speaking.
“Well, frankly, Captain, I don’t see what the problem is. Obviously, these hostiles have done wrong.
The natural consequence would be a punishment of
some sort. Why pamper them? They’re not little
children.”
“No, they’re not little children. They’re
Apaches,” Travisin reflected. “You know, I used to
know an Indian up near Fort Apache by the name
of Skimitozin. He was an Arivaipa. One day he was
Trail of the Apache
15
sitting in the hut of a white friend of his, a miner,
and they were eating supper together. Then, for no
reason at all, Skimitozin drew his handgun and
shot his friend through the head. Before they hung
him he said he did it to show his Arivaipa people
that they should never get too friendly with the
blancos. The Apache has never gotten a real break
from the whites. So Skimitozin wanted to make
sure that his people never got to the point of expecting one, and relaxing. Mister, I’m here to kill
Indians and keep Indians alive. It’s a paradox—no
question about that—but I gave up rationalizing a
long time ago. Most Apaches have always lived a
life of violence. I’m not here primarily to convert
them; but by the same token I have to be fair—
when they are fair to me.”
De Both raised an objection. “I see nothing
wrong with our treatment of the Indians. As a matter of fact, I think we’ve gone out of our way to
treat them decently.” He recited the words as if he
were reading from an official text.
Fry broke in. “Go up to San Carlos and spend a
week or two,” he said. “Especially when the government beef contractors come around with their
adjusted scales and each cow with a couple of barrels of Gila water in her. Watch how the ’Pache
women try to cut each other up for a bloated cow
belly.” Fry spoke slowly, without excitement.
Travisin said to the lieutenant, “Fry’s not talking
16
ELMORE LEONARD
about one or two incidents. He’s talking about history. You were with Pillo all the way up from
Thomas. Did you see his eyes? If you did, you saw
the whole story.”
✯
Chapter Three
The early afternoon sun blazed heavily against
the adobe houses and vacant quadrangle. The air
was still, still and oppressive, and seemed to be
thickened by the fierce, withering rays of the Arizona sun. To the east, the purplish blur of the
Pinals showed hazily through the glare.
Travisin leaned loosely against a support post
under the brush ramada. His gray cotton shirt was
black with sweat in places, but he seemed unmindful of the heat. His sun-darkened face was impassive, as if asleep, but his eyes were only half closed
in the shadow of his hat brim, squinting against the
glare in the direction from which Fry would return.
Earlier that morning, the scout and six of his
Coyoteros had traveled upriver to inspect the tracts
selected by Pillo and his band. The hostiles had
erected their wickiups without a murmur of complaint and seemed to have fallen into the alien routines of reservation life without any trouble; but it
was their silence, their impassive acceptance of this
Trail of the Apache
17
new life that bothered Travisin. For the two weeks
the hostiles had been at Camp Gila, Travisin’s
scouts had been on the alert every minute of the
day. But nothing had happened. When Fry returned, he would know more.
De Both appeared in the office door behind him.
“Not back yet?”
“No. He might have stopped to chin with some
of the White Mountain people. He’s got a few
friends there,” Travisin said. “Barney’s got a little
Apache blood in him, you know.”
De Both was openly surprised. “He has? I didn’t
know that!” He thou
ght of the countless times he
had voiced his contempt for the Apaches in front of
Fry. He felt uncomfortable and a little embarrassed
now, though Fry had never once seemed to take it
as a personal affront. Travisin read the discomfort
on his face. There was no sense in making it more
difficult.
✯ ✯ ✯
“His mother was a half-breed,” Travisin explained. “She married a miner and followed him all
over the Territory while he dug holes in the ground.
Barney was born somewhere up in the Tonto country on one of his dad’s claims. When he was about
eight or nine his ma and dad were killed by some
Tontos and he was carried off and brought up in
the tribe. That’s where he got his nose for scouting.
18
ELMORE LEONARD
It’s not just in his blood like some people think; he
learned it, and he learned it from the best in the
business. Then, when he was about fifteen, he came
back to the world of the whites. About that time
there was a campaign operating out of Fort Apache
against the Tontos. One day a patrol came across
the rancheria where Barney lived and took him
back to Fort Apache. All the warriors were out and
only the women and children were around. He remembered enough about the white man’s life to
want to go back to the Indians, but he knew too
much about the Apache’s life for the Army to let
him go; so he’s been a guide since that day. He was
at Fort Thomas when I arrived there seven years
ago, and he’s been with me ever since I’ve been here
at Gila.”
De Both was deep in thought. “But can you trust
him?” he asked. “After living with the Apaches for
so long.”
“Can you trust the rest of the scouts? Can you
trust those rocks and mesquite clumps out yonder?” Travisin looked hard into the lieutenant’s
eyes. “Mister, you watch the rocks, the trees, the
men around you. You watch until your eyes ache,
and then you keep on watching. Because you’ll always have that feeling that the minute you let
down, you’re done for. And if you don’t have that
feeling, you’re in the wrong business.”
A little past four, Fry and his scouts rode in. He
Trail of the Apache
19
threw off and ran toward the agency office. Travisin met him in the doorway. “They scoot, Barney?”
✯ ✯ ✯
Fry paused to catch his breath and wiped the
sweat from his face with a grimy, brown hand.
“It might be worse than that. When we got there
this morning only a few of Pillo’s band were
around. I questioned them, but they kept trying to
change the subject and get us out of there. I thought
they were actin’ strange, talkin’ more than usual,
and then it dawned on me. Gatito had spotted it
right away. They’d been drinkin’ tizwin. You know
you got to drink a whoppin’ lot of that stuff to really get drunk. I figure these boys ain’t had much
yet, cuz they were still too quiet. But the others
were probably off at the source of supply so we
rode out and tried to cut their sign. We tried every
likely spot in the neighborhood until after noon,
and we still couldn’t find a trace of them.”
Travisin considered the situation silently for a
moment. “They’ve probably been at it since they got
here. Taking their time to pick a spot we wouldn’t
find right away. No wonder they’ve been so quiet.”
Travisin had much to think about, for a drunken
Apache will do strange things. Bloody things. He
asked the scout, “What does Gatito think?”
Fry hesitated, and then said, “I don’t like the way
he was lickin’ his lips while we were on the hunt.”
20
ELMORE LEONARD
Fry did not have to say more. Travisin knew him
well enough to know that the scout felt Gatito
could bear some extra attention. To de Both,
watching the scene, it was a new experience. The
captain and the quarter-breed scout talking like
brothers. Saying more with eyes and gestures than
with words. He looked from one to the other intently, then for the first time noticed the young
Apache standing next to Travisin. A moment ago
he had not been there. But there had not been a
sound or a footstep!
The young brave spoke swiftly in the Apache
tongue for almost a minute and then disappeared
around the corner of the office. De Both could still
see vividly the red calico cloth around thick, black
hair, and his almost feminine features.
Fry and Travisin began to talk again, but de Both
interrupted.
“What in the name of heaven was that?”
Travisin grinned at the young officer’s astonishment. “I thought you knew Peaches. Forgot he
hadn’t been around for a while.”
“Peaches!”
Travisin said, “Let’s go inside.”
They gathered around his table, lighted cigarettes, and Travisin went on. “I’d just as soon you
didn’t speak his name aloud around here. You see,
that young, gentle-looking Apache has one of the
toughest jobs on the reservation. He’s an agency
Trail of the Apache
21
spy. Only Fry and I, and now you, know what he is.
but they have no idea who it is. He’s got a dangerous job, but it’s necessary. If trouble ever breaks out,
we have to be able to nip it in the bud. Peaches is the
only way for us to determine where the bud is.”
“May I ask what he told you just now?”
Travisin drew hard on his cigarette before replying. “He said that he knew much, but he would be
back sometime before sunup tomorrow to tell what
he knew. He made one last point very emphatic. He
said, ‘Watch Gatito!’ ”
✯ ✯ ✯
A rear room of the agency office adobe served as
sleeping quarters for both of the officers. Their cots
were against opposite walls, lockers at the feet, and
two large pine-board wardrobes, holding uniforms
and personal gear, were flush with the wall running
along the heads of their bunks.
A full moon pointed its light through the window frame over de Both’s bed, carpeted the plank
flooring with a delicate sheen, and reached as far as
the gleaming upper portion of Travisin’s body, motionless on the cot. One arm was beneath the gray
blanket that reached just above his waist, the other
was folded across his bare chest.
A floorboard creaked somewhere near. His eyes
22
ELMORE LEONARD
opened at once and closed just as suddenly. Beneath
the blanket his hand groped near his thigh and quietly covered the grip of his pistol. He opened his
eyes slightly and glanced across the room. De Both
was dead asleep. The latch on the door leading to
the front office rattled faintly, and then hinges
creaked as the door
began to open. Travisin quietly
drew his arm from beneath the blanket and leveled
the pistol at the doorway. His thumb closed on the
hammer and drew it back, and the click of the
cocking action was a sharp, metallic sound. The
opening-door motion stopped.
“Nantan, do not shoot.” The words were just
above a whisper.
Travisin threw the blanket from his legs, swung
them to the floor and moved to the doorway without a sound. Peaches backed into the office as he
approached.
“Chiricahua leave.”
“How long?”
“They go maybe five mile now. Gatito go with
them.”
Travisin stepped back to the doorway and
slammed the butt of his pistol against the wooden
door. “Hey, mister, roll out!” De Both sat bolt upright. “Be ready to ride in a few minutes,” Travisin
said, and ran out of the office toward Barney Fry’s
adobe across the quadrangle.
In less than twenty minutes, thirteen riders
Trail of the Apache
23
streaked out of the quadrangle westward. Behind
them, orange light was just beginning to show
above the irregular outline of the Pinals. The morning was cool, but still, and the stillness held the
promise of the blistering heat of the day to come.
The sun was only a little higher when Travisin
and his scouts rode up to four wickiups along the
bank of the Gila. Travisin halted the detail, but did
not dismount. He sat motionless in the saddle, his
senses alert to the quiet. He said something in
Apache and one of the scouts threw off and cautiously entered the first wickiup. He reappeared in
an instant, shaking his head from side to side. In
the third hut, the scout remained longer than usual.
When he reappeared he was dragging an unconscious Indian by the legs.
Travisin said, “That one of them, Barney?”
Fry swung down from his pony and leaned over
the prostrate Indian, saying a few words in Apache
to the scout still holding the Indian’s legs. “He’s a
Chiricahua, Captain. Dead drunk. Must have been
drinking for at least two days.” He nodded his
head toward the Apache scout. “Ningun says
there’s a jug inside with a little tizwin in it.”
Travisin pointed to two of the scouts and then