Incident at Devil's Hall

by Terrell Brown

Photo Credit: Trevon Baker

Private Othello Goode didn’t like this part. He didn’t like the country ahead where the trail of the Apaches was leading them. Rugged, steep terrain folded up into what looked like a narrowing, high-walled canyon of the Guadalupes. Ambush and death awaited them. The midday sun burned down intensely. You could almost hear the heat above an ominous and foreboding, yet mystical, silence. Somebody was bound to die on a day like this, in this terrible desert and mountains. The hair on the back of Othello’s neck tingled momentarily with his fears as he pondered what he must do. A slight breeze suddenly came up from the southwest around the nearby sheer cliffs of the mountain the Mexicans called El Capitán. The fitful currents of sweet air toyed with the soft brim of the grey felt hat he wore in lieu of a regulation campaign hat. He’d lost the other hat long ago. The string he’d rigged up through knife-punched holes in the brim to keep the hat on his head rested at the back of his curly, jet-black hair.

Othello pensively took another wrap of his horse’s reins around the fingers of his bronzed right hand. He chanced a glance into the face of the trooper standing at the bottom of the hill and gazing attentively up through the country above them. The sharp eyes seemed to caress every rock and tree and clump of cactus in the cautious searching. Both men had been in a place like this before. They knew the dangers that awaited them.

Othello peered back over the rump of their sweat-soaked mounts where they tried to keep their footing, half on a hill and half off. His old grey had just minutes before come up lame. Bad omen that, he figured simply. The dust of the column, the blue of the soldiers, the horses being walked in the heat, could be made out two or three miles away on the desert. He dropped his gaze down to his dusty boots, one sole so unstitched that his sock was coming out.

“Sunshine,” Othello said finally to the cavalryman below, “I’ll get up to the top of this rise where I can actually see something. If it’s clear, you ride back to the sergeant and tell ‘em to hurry on. I don’t want to be here by myself too long.”

“Don’t you worry none, Mr. Goode,” Sunshine smiled. “I’ll be back with the boys before the hair lies back down on your neck, shore as I’m the best cook in this here army! We’ll start walkin’, and you scoot on up that hill,” he sang out. “I’ll keep a good eye out for ya. Ain’t no Mescalero gonna get us today!”
Othello didn’t share his companion’s joy for the moment. He would be completely on his own for a while. He pulled his carbine from its scabbard and began to work his way up the meandering trail where the Apaches had gone, leaving the injured horse at the bottom of the hill. The old cavalry mount, once a proud member of the Seventh Cavalry stable, wasn’t going far today. Maybe, with good fortune, he’d be okay tomorrow.

Private Sunshine freed his carbine and began to lead his mount towards the approaching column of soldiers out on the desert. Every few steps as he led the horse carefully through the cactus plants, he’d look back over the high country above Goode.  The sign left by the Apaches were at least half a day old. Chances were the Indians wanted to get into the safety of the dreadful country up above, into their favorite mountain retreat, and that Goode would be okay until the others came up. Othello Goode wasn’t afraid of any man, not out here, wearing the uniform of the United States Cavalry.  There wasn’t a braver soldier on the continent, Sunshine figured.

Private Goode attained the height of the hillock. He gathered his breath and studied all about ahead of him as far as he could see. He signaled with a wave of his carbine that he was okay. Sunshine slipped his carbine into its scabbard under the saddle leather, checked his cinch. Deftly, he pulled the reins about his horse’s neck and mounted. The horse had had enough rest for now. Sunshine rode hard, not looking back anymore, towards the advancing column. Goode was the best of soldiers, but the Apaches were the worst of enemies. There was no time to spare.

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Photo Credit: Trevon Baker.

Sergeant Jackson Ralls led his mount through the sand and limestone shelves twenty or thirty paces ahead of the column of weary men and horses behind him.  The legs of his horse were bleeding just at the hooves from the day’s journey amid the sharp rocks and cactus. All of the soldiers in his detachment led their tired mounts behind them, strung out in a loose column for thirty or forty yards – except for Privates Abe Kettle and Tinker Roberts, two of his most dependable men. Those two, inseparable and always ready for what a day in the frontier army might bring, were some distance off on his right flank. Their carbines were slung over their backs hooked to shoulder straps by the saddle rings. The carbines rested in the crook of their right arms. Their eyes searched the landscape vigilantly as it benched to an abrupt meeting with the towering peaks of the Guadalupes not two miles distant. The foremost of the mountains, El Capitán, plunged upwards and outwards from the lapping desert beneath like the prow of a mighty ship at sea. 

The Apaches could have escaped into the refuge of the mountains much more quickly through the many canyons that fled out of the escarpment, many with springs of cold, fresh water that bled down through the limestone shelves of the high country. But this bunch who’s trail they’d cut was burdened with women and children. The warriors would never leave them, so they seemed to be headed for a bad place, a place where a few men could make this a tough day for soldiers. At least, that is how Ralls surmised the situation from the direction Goode and Sunshine had gone. He should have sent Roberts and Kettle. Goode, in his boldness, had gone further than he should. Counting himself, there were just ten of them left in the column now. He’d sent Brown, the trumpeter, off to hunt down the tracker, Alex Mobley, and the Mescaleros Gian-nah-tah and the Mescalero boy, Percy. He was certain this band they’d stumbled onto was part of the Mescaleros who’d slipped away from the agency up on the Pecos in the ‘60s. He wanted some help with this. He didn’t like the orders, but they were the commands of his superiors – Kill the men and take women and children to the agency at Fort Stanton on the Río Bonito.  He studied the terrain, inspecting every shrub and shadow, subtle changes in the rise and flow of the land, every clump of yucca or prickly pear, his veteran heart spreading out over the infinity of desert and mountains as the desert and mountains washed over him as well, filling and saturating his war-scarred soul with longing. There would be water and grass at the old Butterfield Stage Station nearby at the base of the mountains, a comforting thought.

He gently caressed the small, heavily-worn leathern book he held with the reins in his hands. The hands were sensitive hands, toughened by the work of his life as a cavalryman, but strong hands, quick hands. As he walked, he carefully took the time to wrap a short length of red silk about the book to secure the pages and further protect it from the elements. His hands were quiet and full of care as he did so. He looked into the face of his horse, which abruptly stopped as he stepped back to wedge the book into its place in a saddle bag. Two Years Before The Mast, he sighed in his thoughts. Sweat beaded on his forehead beneath the brim of his campaign hat and ran in rivulets over his cheeks, hotly into his eyes. California! Abruptly, he concluded the visions of peace and sunshine conjured up by his readings of Richard Henry Dana’s book. California! Surely, it was a wonderful place.

He peered over the polished seat of his saddle at a blue-clad rider just appearing at a gallop around a bulge of ground by Capitán. By the look of it, the charging rider would be Private Sunshine. Sunshine on horseback! He always rode like he was charging. But what disturbed him was the desperate haste of the rider and that Othello wasn’t with him.

Sergeant Ralls peered over at Kettle and Tinker Roberts. Kettle watched the rider, then returned his sergeant’s gaze. He and Tinker tightened their cinches. Sergeant Ralls nodded to Kettle. Kettle pulled the reins over his horse’s neck and mounted. Roberts swung aboard.

“What’s up, Sarge,” Trooper Johnson called up to the sergeant.

“Go with ‘em,’ Henry,” Ralls said.

Abe Kettle unsnapped his carbine and steadied it on the horn of his saddle. Roberts followed suit. They hesitated in the saddle, waiting for Johnson to get mounted. Johnson mounted and pulled his carbine from its scabbard. The three men rode off at a trot to intercept the now familiar horseman galloping towards them. Sergeant Ralls continued on with the others, leading their mounts on foot, giving the horses a little more rest.

“Pass the word,” Ralls said shortly to the nearest soldier, his old friend, Corporal Windrow Dranc from the state of Maine, the only Civil War veteran among them. “Let’s tighten up our cinches, Windy, and mount up. There’s water and grass at the old Butterfield station.”

“Tighten up your cinches, men,” Windy’s stentorian voice boomed over the desert to the men behind him. 
Ralls, still standing beside his resting horse and watching over the seat of his McClelland, slowly eased up his own cinch. The Apaches were like the deer at their best, scattering by ones and twos into the wilderness to mysteriously come together again out of reach in the silent cover of the mountains. But these were slowed down now by women and children, making them potentially ever more dangerous, yet vulnerable. Ralls didn’t want to lose a man. He didn’t want to see anybody lose their life today. Freedom on a frontier sometimes came at terrible costs.

He let his eyes leave the four mounted comrades coming together on the desert where the yucca yielded to the bunch grasses and shrubs prospering around the mountain-fed water table. He searched the irregular country northeast, inspecting horizons. He needed Gian-nah-tah and Percy in this situation. He needed the confident assurances of Mobley. He needed this day and whatever attended it to work out in the best possible way. He didn’t want casualties, Indian or soldier. Mobley would be okay. He had that look in his eye of a man who was going to make it through, who was going to survive and have stories to tell in his old age. But not everybody had that look in their eye. It was hard to know about the rest, about himself even. He would do what he had to do in this situation for all concerned. That included the Indians and their families. This day was a very tough day for a man like himself to be in. He didn’t like the orders. He didn’t like the orders at all. There was no room left in them for a man to do the right thing, no choice, no freedom. What good was a command without the liberty for a man to do the right thing if there was a right thing that could be done? There had to be a right way to handle this. These Apache men were fighting for the survival of their families, their own freedom, their own ways of life. Those were precious things in any man’s sight. There had to be a right way to handle this, something he could do? But what?
The three troopers sent to intercept Sunshine turned and rode on afterwards towards Capitán and Othello Goode. Sunshine galloped towards Ralls and the waiting detachment. Sergeant Ralls raised his hand to stop the men as Sunshine trotted up to them around clumps of prickly pear, through stretches of invading soil. The midday heat of the sun boiled down on them all unrelentingly in the open desert.

“Othello’s horse came up lame,” Sunshine said in explanation, reining to a halt beside Ralls. “That nag might make it on the prairie with the seventh, but it ain’t fit for this country.”

Ralls didn’t say anything, watching after Kettle and the others as they pushed their horses to Othello’s rescue.

“Sunshine, you know that talk about us getting Seventh Cav rejects is a tall tale somebody come up with,” Windy remarked, hoping to take some of the worry off Jack Ralls’s mind. “The Army wouldn’t do that.”
“Says Windy Dranc, anyway!” Sunshine retorted.

“Let’s go,” Ralls ordered, ignoring them and climbing into his saddle. The soldiers mounted up. Ralls lifted a hand and gestured for the column to keep moving, to follow him. He led out towards Capitán at a trot.
Sunshine and Windy considered one another as each pulled his mount about and fell in line. Jordan, Williams, and Woods brought up the rear.

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Photo Credit: Trevon Baker.

Johnson stood holding the reins of the four horses where the rugged country rose above a dry creek bed between Capitán and the nearest peak. Goode’s lame mount was among the horses.

“They’ve got Goode,” Henry Johnson said as Ralls dismounted beside him. “Abe and Tink are up there checkin’ for sign,” he nodded towards the crest of the steep hillock.

“Got him?” Ralls frowned. “You mean captured?”

Johnson nodded solemnly. “Captured. Abe said there’s sign of a fight, some blood where somebody fell into some cactus. Othello’s carbine with the stock broken clean off. Must of swung it like a club and hit a rock or somethin’. Didn’t even have time ta fire.  Stone cold chamber.”

The soldiers in the column dismounted,  bunching forward to overhear, concern for Othello on their faces, their glances searching the high country above them. Sergeant Ralls pulled his carbine from its scabbard and handed his bridle reins to Windy Dranc. Silently, he left his men standing and began working his way up the deer trail towards the rise of ground where Johnson had gestured. He topped out and searched a steady rise of juniper shrub, tangles of stunted oaks, mesquite and maple that crowded along steep banks above the rocky, dry creek bed. To his left rose the pine and juniper sprinkled precipices of Capitán, its fissured, craggy, chalklike pentacles wedged with pine and juniper-clogged ravines. To the right soared the walls of the Guadalupe wilderness.

The steep, dry creek bed strewn with boulders and its tangle of growth plummeted out of a dangerously narrowing canyon. This was prime ambush country. Ralls studied the rugged terrain adjacent the dry creek bed, searching for a sign of Kettle and Roberts. He didn’t want to lose two more men to the hostiles. He peered down towards where the others waited with the horses at the bottom of the hill. The boulder-strewn stream bed, the steep, brushy slopes that meandered inexorably towards a narrow, dark-walled hall between sheer cliffs, was no place for men and horses. Although the Apaches had just hours before led their horses through, surely with difficulty, an initial pursuit would best be attempted on foot. 
The blue of Privates Kettle’s and Roberts’s blouses suddenly came into view some distance above him. Sergeant Ralls waited, sweating from the heat and his climb.

“They got him all right,” Kettle said, carbine in hand, as he and Roberts approached, sliding down a shaley bulge in the trail nearby. “Four or five of them from the looks of it, on foot. He’s walking on his own. They’re headed for that break in the wall up there.” Kettle gestured with his carbine.

“Alive,” Ralls breathed with relief. “Good!” he exclaimed, a sense of hope for Othello Goode’s safety.
“Good?” Kettle exclaimed, glancing at Roberts beside him on the narrow trail. “What’s good, Sarge?” There was frustration in his voice. “These are wild Apaches. Their leader is probably the one the Mexicans call Diablo.”

“Well, if it is Diablo, then the medicine man, Listens Well, may be with him. If that’s the case, Othello has a chance.” Ralls peered long, longingly, up toward the narrowed, dark canyon, a treacherous hike distant. Listens Well was legendary, popular in Ninth Cavalry lore for his insistence that harming black soldiers was bad medicine. How the old Mescalero had come to that conclusion was unknown, but it was a fairly recent revelation and he was adamant about it. Therefore, it would be a problem for Diablo, who didn’t share the old man’s concerns for black troopers – if Listens Well was with the band. Gian-nah-tah had said Listens Well had gone in search of his people somewhere down in Texas. Most likely, he’d found them. Ralls had divined through Gian-nah-tah’s campfire talk with Mobley that Listens Well was related to Diablo, maybe his father or uncle. If so, he hoped now that Listens Well had great influence and Diablo respected what he had to say. That is, if the marauders were led by Diablo and Listens Well was with him.

“Abe, you’ve been here before, haven’t you?” Ralls asked, casting his gaze up at the narrow, sunless declivity far above them, still the better part of a mile of tedious, difficult climbing.

“We checked out these canyons last winter,” Kettle answered. “Not too far up this way. It’s no good for horses, and there wasn’t any sign then anyway. It gets real bad, sheer walls steep and narrow. It’s the Devil’s hallway, for sure.”

“Devil’s hallway? What’s it like?” Ralls said. Kettle and Roberts fell in behind him as they strode back down the deer trail towards the others, out of view right now. The high sun-baked crags of the Guadalupes plunged chalk-white into the scorching heavens off to their left. 

“Once you get up in there, you’re on your own,” Kettle belched between breaths and hurried, sliding steps. It was tough keeping up with the sergeant’s pace. Roberts’s canteen, which he had brought along in hopes of filling with fresh water, banged and sloshed its meager contents against his carbine as he clambered along.

“Once you get up there,” Kettle repeated, “the canyon narrows to twelve or fifteen feet with deep steps of rock you have to climb over. High, straight walls maybe forty, fifty feet straight up on both sides. We didn’t have any Apaches. If they’re around like today, we’ll be lucky if anybody gets out alive, Sarge!” Kettle paused for breath. “If we even get that far.”

They moved quickly down the slope, topping out on the last rise of ground where Sunshine had last seen Goode. Ralls searched out a rock to lean on and think, first checking about carefully for scorpions, rattlesnakes, tiny barrel cactus, prickly pear. He sat down, pushing his hat back and mopping sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his blouse. He sat for several minutes, calming his thoughts, staring off towards the desert to the east, calculating, his mind saturated with a volatile mix of aborted action, unlimbered prayer. He peered into the sunlit country northeast, struggling to catch a glimpse of Brown’s cavalry blue, horses, movement, anything that would offer hope.  Nothing. Nothing but the desert’s silence, the sun’s warmth, turkey vultures making high, wide circles far away.

The men he’d left below were quiet, waiting, resting, watching him. Kettle and Roberts remained standing. Roberts shook his canteen – a little tepid water remained in it. He held the canteen out to the sergeant. Ralls reached out and took it, but just sat, thinking hard, holding the canteen in his hands. Corporal Dranc stood up, leaned on his saddle, watched his good friend, Jack Ralls, suspiciously. They were all together now, except for Brown on his errand for Mobley and the friendlies who’d gone hunting for meat before they cut the trail of the Mescalero band, and Othello Goode. There were ten of them, surely not enough to be effective, Ralls calculated. He couldn’t lead them knowingly into ambush. But Othello was still alive; at least he hoped he was. No telling when the others would get here. Something had to be done – now. He tapped resignedly with his knuckles three solemn times on something metallic, something that chimed like chain mail armor, under the covering of his field blouse. Abruptly he stood up, ducking into the strap of the canteen. He had determined upon a course of action.

“I’m going to borrow this, Tink,” he said kindly to the waiting cavalryman. Ralls broke open the breech of his carbine and examined the chamber. Then, reconsidering, he handed the weapon to Abe Kettle.
“Hang onto this for me,” he said.

“Sarge?” Abe said sadly, pleading almost, taking the carbine in his free hand. He and Roberts exchanged brief, desperate glances.

“What’s going on up there, Jack?  Are you crazy?” Windy cried up to them, his hands raised up in a questioning gesture, the reins of his startled mount held in the extended right one. “Just wait a while. Alex is bound to be here soon with Gian and Percy. They can help.” He stood there, angry and frustrated, looking up at the men on the hill.

“Othello doesn’t have time to spare, Windy,” Ralls said. “You’re in charge,” he finished, his words colored by resolve.

Windy Dranc lifted his hands in a resigned gesture. No use arguing with Jack Ralls now. He’d made up his mind. Dranc pondered the white rocks, the cactus, the simmering dry heat of the day, Jack, Kettle, Roberts, the others, the pressing needs of the horses.

“Take the men over to the Butterfield station,” Ralls continued. “Water up. Rest the horses; see to their feet as best you can.” He gestured to Abe Kettle. Kettle and Roberts began reluctantly to pick their way down the trail where Windy and the other cavalrymen waited, hesitating.

Ralls ignored their concerns. “When Mobley gets here, send them up,” he instructed. He paused a moment in his thoughts. “Hopefully, I’ll need interpreters, so tell ‘em to make it quick.”

Windy nodded sullenly.

Ralls watched the cavalrymen as they straggled off in no particular order, leading their tired mounts, heads hanging, towards the old stage station. The cavalry blue was powdered and stained with dust and sweat from their days, weeks on the trail, their boots caked in chalk, scarred by thorns.  Then he turned and strode resolutely over the trail back up towards the bank of the creek bed that meandered down from the Devil’s Hall.

He followed along above the creek bed, sticking to the deer trail, picking his way around rocks and cactus, the scrubby trees and brush that prospered along the course of the dry ravine. There were maple and oak, juniper, occasional Texas madrone, willow. He moved steadily along in the intense heat, the buzz of insects. He peered often up at the dark fissure in the mountain terrain that was the Devil’s Hall. His quickened thought pursued like a frightened deer the brave retreat, the place of rest and assurance within himself, keeping a step ahead of the fear that could paralyze him. He thought of Othello, the good soldier, the man whose courage bordered on foolishness, the man whose life he must bargain for. He drove himself upward in hope of rescue, only a step, a very short step, ahead of his fear, into the heartland of the ferocious, wild Apache – his other adversary today.  He knew he must face them both, and so he moved on. He narrowed his gaze to block out the glare of sun and capture in his vision field every object, any sign of movement along the way. He could hear his own heart beating loudly, powerfully pumping the living blood down through his legs as they performed obediently their unpleasant task, out into his arms and hands, his sobered mind.

Broken memories intruded themselves into the arrow-straight determination of his heart. Why had he joined the frontier Army? Was it to crush the will, invade the homes and break the hearts of the wild, free peoples who had lived in the country so long that they couldn’t remember a time when they didn’t live here? He’d joined the Army in Kentucky, journeying in response to a poster that he’d seen. The poster was an invitation to join up, and the fact that he, unlike the multitude of freed slaves, could read worked in his behalf. He had trekked on to Louisville after the War in the defeated South. He had joined up for freedom and forty cents a day, for food, for something to do and be free of the South. He couldn’t live there anymore because he wanted to be a truly free man and there was nothing to keep him from leaving except opportunity. Eventually, in West Texas, he had re-enlisted for the same reasons. Other than a sister hopelessly displaced in the confusion of the post-Civil War South, there was nothing to return to. Such freedom as he had now to be a man, he jealously guarded. But it was a freedom kept at great cost and constant vigilance. Violence and danger was his daily bread, but all who swarmed West after the War – young and old, man or woman, soldier, civilian, red man, white or black – held that in common. Thus, in that sense, all were equals in the frontier West. What he owned of this life was his companions in arms, their common enemies, and wards, his courage and purpose – and whatever sense he could make of it.
Right now, picking his way alone toward the armed camp of hostile Apaches, he couldn’t make much sense of it, the choice he had made. Even so, the moment was his responsibility. A part of the answer to the situation must lie within himself. Today’s dangerous moment would settle with tomorrow’s dust. Nothing would last. The horses they rode, the brush shelters of the Indians, the laughter and fear would dissolve into memory. All would yield to the erosive power of time and its tenuous hold on history. What each man did today, how he comported himself, enemy to enemy, brother to brother, that would survive to bless them or haunt them until the day of redemption.

He struggled upwards, resolute, toward the Devil’s Hall. He’d lost track of time and was suddenly approaching the dark, shadowy defile. Another hundred feet and the layered sedimentary walls would loom above him. Warily, he scoured the slopes and sheer entry of the narrow passage. Sweat trickled down beneath his hat brim, glistened on his neck, wetting afresh the blouse covering his back and shoulders.

Plink! An arrow shaft angled into his blouse, shattering its flint head as it was deflected by the metallic corselet of Spanish mail he wore on scouts, in hot weather or cold. He’d retrieved the protective armor from a Comanche tipi on the plains of Texas before they’d burned it down. The previous owner, perhaps having found it himself, had encased it in a linen. A fort laundress had sewn it into a whole new, clean garment for him. Even with its cloth coverlet, the mail warmed up considerably on a hot day. In winter, the metal held the cold.  He never left a camp or bivouac without it.  It was a source of much humor to his fellow troopers.  He wore it anyway. 

He reached down and grabbed hold of the finely honed shaft, hung up in his clothing, and tossed it away. The busted point, held firm to the shaft by twine and rosin, tinkled down onto the sun-bleached stones.
He peered into the sun skywards just as his befuddled assailant – as befuddled as a shirtless, juvenile Mescalero could be – revealed himself on the slope above to let fly another flint-tipped arrow. Ralls winced, blinking his eyes violently, as this well-aimed missile clinked home to his midsection, the shaft breaking and splintering as it somersaulted harmlessly into nearby brush. Sergeant Ralls’s nerve held. He had counted upon the Apache’s legendary accuracy with bow and arrow and his preference to aim for the trunk of his victim. Had he moved his position in any way, he might well have been hit effectively.
The young Apache, given his chance to raid with the warriors, deftly mounted a third arrow and aimed carefully. This arrow had a long strap-iron tip glinting in the sun, purposefully snatched from its quiver, aimed slightly higher. At the instant it would have been released with telling effect, something or someone caught the boy’s attention from the opposite rim of the Devil’s hallway and, reluctantly, he lowered his aim.

Ralls turned his gaze up in the direction the boy had looked. A fierce yet expressionless face, that of a powerfully built Apache, hovered above the rim, outlined by a blinding sun-glint, the infamous Diablo himself. Ralls had been granted access to enter the hallway of layered, ancient stone. He lowered his gaze to the snaking dry streambed so that he wouldn’t stumble. There was no turning back now. He had not considered it anyway. There was only one thing to do, one choice that had stuck in his heart since learning that Goode had been taken alive. He had dreaded what the knowledge meant for him, every step he had taken, the thing he, he alone, had to do. The sweat flowing out onto his campaign blouse felt already like his blood gushing from his pours. His once iron will felt like the center of fear and weakness itself. Take this cup from me was hisonly thought. He chose his steps cautiously, just a short climb to the entry of the dark, foreboding, sunless hallway. He clambered up steep sluicing stairways of whitened reef stone, the residue and evidence of mystery-shrouded ages.

The sergeant entered the dimness of the defile. He was utterly in the Devil’s territory now. But he was also in the domain of the wild Mescalero Apache, and in that truth resided his and Othello’s one hope of survival. Whereas the Devil prized no dignity at all, the Mescalero did. Even so, his life and that of Othello Goode hung in the balance by a spider-thin thread. He was in Diablo’s hands, and his life could be taken at any time. At what price, and would he know the time, should he sell it?

Ralls made his way amid the white water-sculpted boulders, on level ground now in the shadows of the hallway. Toward the end of the sheer, grey and white sediment-layered cliffs, the brilliance of a western sun lit a narrow exit where three men could barely walk abreast. He stepped alone into that sunlight, blinding sunlight, after his passage through the dim hallway.

A dozen or more Mescalero warriors stood or lounged in a semicircle amongst the rocks and shrubs of the cascading dry streambed. They wore according to personal preference an assortment of mountain and plains Apache garb – buckskin shirts, leggings or cotton pants, large, hanging loincloths or swaths of material wrapped about their waists, Apache boots or moccasins, headbands of all shapes and colors – remnants of a mountain people and a once thriving buffalo-pursuing plains culture. Every man was armed, some with a bow and quiver of arrows, others with lances, pistols, and carbines of varied makes and models. The lines in their weather-darkened faces, the glint in their black eyes, suggested smiles or the closest thing to a smile, perhaps mirth. One old man in worn Levi’s and a cotton shirt, barefoot, sat on the nearest ledge studying Jack Ralls solemnly. Women and children of the band, Ralls sensed, were beyond the rise of ground and shrubs for safety. One Mescalero, his thick headband bloodied, sat further up the creek. His head was swollen and bruised as if he’d been kicked by a mule, senseless except that he was sitting up on his own. Was the warrior’s battered scull the ‘rock’ Goode’s carbine had broken itself upon?

Othello Goode, his arms bound tightly behind him, sat in the midst of the amphitheater of warriors, his head down but watching the sergeant, bruised and bloodied but not vanquished from his brawl with the Indians. Sergeant Ralls’ Army Colt was in its holster. It would remain there, unsought. 

The old Apache in Levi’s rose from his place on the streambed ledge and walked up to Ralls, less than an arm’s reach away. The wizened, cragged features of his time-worn face remained expressionless, the map of an unwritten ethnology, living, surviving on currents of time and myth, the breath of countless generations. The dark, indecipherable black eyes, like the orbs of a circling raptor, peered through infinity itself into the sergeant’s being, absorbing, inspecting his soul. Ralls met the penetrating gaze with unwavering courage and resolve. He found himself immersed in the black gaze, traveling into the dangerous void of the dark eyes, man to man, man against man, soul to soul, his own soul stripped of all pretense, vulnerable but face to face, the armor in his heart his only defense.

Sergeant Jack Ralls was an honest man, and he knew he must stand true, he must not lie. His life and that of Private Othello Goode, what they owned of it, depended upon immovable and unshakeable resolve, upon the integrity of Listens Well, upon the grace even of the fierce war leader, Diablo.

“Sorry, Sarge,” Othello Goode’s baritone shattered the reverie. “Meet the medicine man, Listens Well.” 
Listens Well exited his spell to give the recalcitrant Goode a censorious, harsh look, though his craggy features changed not a line. His features taking in new light, however, he let Goode speak his mind and introduce them. He returned to his close study of Sergeant Ralls. The old man seemed almost pleased now by the untoward interruption.

Goode sensed that the medicine man was receptive to further introductions. The Mescaleros about him – long black hair and leather and cotton and calico in the sun-bright white rock at the edges of his vision field – remained silent and unmoving.

“Looks like he probably took the trousers off a dead prospector,” Goode continued, undaunted. “They’re all dirty like a prospector would get ‘em. Look! Those dark stains are sure to be the man’s own blood, the last of it!” Goode became quiet, perhaps returning to a reflection of his own compromised condition, his own precious blood.

Nearby, one Mescalero fighter had procured for his own use Goode’s grey felt hat, confining his waist-long black hair. Goode caught the eye of the warrior. The Apache shamelessly returned Goode’s gaze. The hat seemed a perfect fit. The Mescalero was unlikely to give the hat up.

Sergeant Ralls knew little of the mystery of the Mescalero language, only a few words and phrases garnered in talk with the young Percy, who was more open to direct communication in his native tongue with the soldiers than Gian. Gian would speak to Alex Mobley in a decent but broken Spanish. Mobley, in turn, would translate from his indecent and broken Spanish into a passable, one would hope, English.  The system wasn’t perfect communication, but it was at least communication. Certainly it was better communication by far than what he was faced with now. He wished the trackers were here, wished he had waited. But waiting wasn’t his way, and he knew well the difference between the time to act and the time to wait. He’d considered Othello’s helpless situation and the consequences of delay. Hesitation could have meant the cruel death of Goode.  Now they both faced the same fate. But if Diablo wanted to kill Othello, why hadn’t he done it by now? Maybe Othello was a bargaining chip. After all, Apaches loved to gamble, but they didn’t like to gamble when it came to war. They liked to win battles even though they knew as a people they’d already lost the war.

“I want,” Ralls spoke into the stolid, iron-hard face of the medicine man, struggling to find a Mescalero word that would help him with his meaning, “my ndeen.”  He tried again as Listens Well watched him, puzzled. “Shiyee ndeen.”  “I want my man” was what he was trying to say in his faltering ignorance, but he knew his words were a corruption of the language, maybe not even Mescalero, but he spoke firmly, anger and emotion held in check. For the Apache, emotion was part of the language itself and thus not necessarily expressed in the visage of a man in order to convey meaning. Ralls, in his plain English, had not quite arrived there today.

The wizened, ancient face stared somberly at Ralls – discerning, probing, examining the inner man with the black, raptor eyes. Then the eyes acknowledged, spoke, whispered a new presence.
Ralls slowly pivoted about. Diablo stood, a fierce warrior in demeanor, close behind him. Next to him stood the boy who had fired his arrows so accurately from the cliffs, his strong, short bow still in hand. Both wore only a loincloth. Listens Well stepped away, dissolving back among his people. Diablo, locking his gaze with that of the sergeant, stepped boldly forward. He reached out abruptly with the knuckles of his right hand and rapped loudly three times on Sergeant Ralls’s shirt front, drawing from it the muffled clang and jingle of metal.

“Plata-hay!” he said to his assembled warriors, a look of mirth playing about his lips. Warriors smiled. A few of them laughed aloud.

Jackson Ralls recognized the Spanish word for silver combined with the ‘hay’ sound the Apaches seemed to use so much. Diablo had made a joke of the Spanish mail he wore beneath his shirt, protecting him from the wound the Apaches so liked to give. Arrow wounds were deadly, since the point once in the body might come loose from its shaft. Fortunately for Ralls, the boy’s arrows had been flint ones. Had the third head filed from strap iron been fired, he might well have felt the trickle of his own blood, as had happened once before in his long campaign trail against the Indians. That time, the arrow had not been fired by Apaches or Comanches, but by a Kickapoo raiding for horses in Texas to be traded or sold in Mexico. Ralls’s assurance was rooted in the warrior Apache’s unfaltering aim given an opportunity. Though his assailant had been only a youth, his confidence in the Apache as a cool-headed marksman had been justified today. 

Diablo spoke again to the warriors lounging in the rocks, just a word or phrase but a mouthful of meaning and information, perhaps even emotion, more than any equivalent in English or Spanish could have done. The language was rich, strange, mysterious. The warriors took note of what their leader said but remained unmoving as before, some communicating wordlessly with friends across the sun-bleached earth. Listens Well sat on a whitewashed rock ledge, solemnly watching Diablo and his new prisoner, the brave black war leader of the Buffalo Soldiers.

A Mescalero called Lame Buffalo appeared over the chasm of the slope above them, dragging a useless right leg in faltering step, reaching down to lift and pull the helpless limb over a clump of prickly pear, grasping his bare leg just at the knee. He spoke respectfully to Diablo, then returned over the slope to resume watch, limping and dragging his game leg. 

Diablo took a long, last look into the determined face of the Buffalo Soldier leader standing before him. Then he walked past Ralls, his shoulder brushing against the sergeant as he passed by. He took the carbine that was reached out to him by a Mescalero perched nearby Listens Well and leaned against the limestone flow, the warrior on his right and Listens Well to his left. They waited quietly, weapons in hand, dark eyes on the tunneled exit from their lair.

The golden sun beat down on all of them from where it would soon drop below their horizon to the west. A slight breeze stirred. The sergeant stood alone in their midst, silent, aware that they were waiting for something, somebody. Maybe Mobley and the others were back from their hunt. Othello Goode sat quietly too, shivering slightly. Ralls peered into Goode’s swollen face for a moment, but there was no judgment in the look. Ralls was a Buffalo Soldier and this was his man. They would weather this situation together. He must stay focused on what he must do when the time came. There was no room for hesitation, doubt, or confusion, any of which could leave him stranded. At heart, he was a man of action, but he needed one clear choice. Born and raised in slavery as he had been, and seeking his liberty in the Army on the frontier, Ralls knew that the one freedom a man had was the freedom to try and do the right thing under every circumstance. Then, fear alone became the enemy. And in conquering fear, a man became the victor. He waited, standing very straight and tall, watching the shadow of Devil’s Hall from the corner of his eye.

Abruptly, Gian-nah-tah appeared, a thin headband of red cloth holding his brushy black hair out of his eyes. He wore typical Apache garb, high-topped moccasins rolled down, breechclout and cotton shirt. Close behind came young Percy, wiry, bare-legged in a shirt and breechclout and wide headband, his pistol stuck beneath a cartridge belt around his waist. Mobley, the fearless and intrepid white scout, brought up the rear.

The assembled warriors watched over the newcomers and the parley developing below. 
Gian-nah-tah spoke first, intruding into the silence. He spoke in Apache to Listens Well, but with deference to Diablo. Listens Well was Gian-nah-tah’s friend, a man he respected for his wisdom.
Ralls could tell by Gian-nah-tah’s gentle gestures that he spoke of peace and for no harm to come to Goode and himself – and Alex Mobley. Gian-nah-tah gestured for all to find comfortable places to sit in the streambed and smoke and talk. Listens Well came forward. He and Gian-nah-tah sat down on small rocks facing each other. Listens Well looked at the intransigent Diablo. The war leader reluctantly sat down beside Listens Well. Gian-nah-tah gestured to Ralls and Mobley. Sergeant Ralls stepped over and sat crossed-legged on the rocky streambed. Mobley joined him, taking a place between him and Gian-nah-tah. Percy remained standing, watchful and alert. He knew the boy who had fired on Sergeant Ralls. They had been friends at Bosque Rodondo. 

Listens Well reached into a front pocket of his miner’s pants once, used to keep ore samples and nuggets by a murdered miner, and withdrew several rolled cigarettes and matches. Ralls recognized the roll of the cigarettes as part of Othello Goode’s stash that he kept with matches tucked in a boot top. Goode watched with interest the proceedings and Listens Well’s generosity with his tobacco. Listens Well graciously distributed one of Goode’s cigarettes to each man sitting in the streambed. He held one of the matches out to Gian-nah-tah. Ralls accepted the cigarette and hung it between his lips, though he did not, as a rule, smoke tobacco. He would make an exception today for the cause of peace. When they were all lit up, each man sat in silence as was the Apache custom, openly studying one another, enjoying the smoke, except, of course, for Ralls. He avoided drawing the acrid smoke deep into his lungs. 

Moments passed as the men sat smoking their cigarettes. Ralls was somewhat awed by his situation. He and his companions were surrounded by hostile Apaches. The Apaches and the Comanches which his regiment had helped to corral on the plains of Texas had to be among the toughest people in the world. He allowed himself one more thoughtful draw on the cigarette, blew the acrid smoke out skyward, snuffed the cigarette out. He reached the remnant past Mobley to Gian-nah-tah. He was ready to talk. In fact, he was ready for about anything, and it wasn’t the cigarette that gave him his courage or vision – ready for anything but captivity. He tended to be a very reasonable man. 

Diablo locked his eyes on those of Ralls. Ralls returned his stare, equally unrelenting and unvanquished.
Abruptly Diablo spoke, maintaining his harsh visage, but speaking in Apache to his uncle, Listens Well, and Gian-nah-tah.  Gian-nah-tah then translated what was said into Spanish for Alex Mobley. Though Mobley knew a smattering of the complicated Mescalero tongue, it was not enough. 

“Diablo is angry at you for wearing the White Eye’s uniform and trying to kill their women and children and take their country from them,” Mobley translated. “You’re alive because you didn’t lead the soldier’s up through the canyon like he wanted you to. But he wants to kill you and Goode, and me, for fighting for the Americans. His uncle here doesn’t want him to do it.”

Gian-nah-tah and Listens Well looked over at Ralls, themselves very interested in how he would answer Diablo’s challenge.

Ralls shifted his gaze away from Diablo and shot a long glance at Gian-nah-tah and Listens Well. 
“Tell the warrior Diablo I am an American and didn’t come here to fight for the White Eyes or take Indian land or kill women and children. I joined the Army of my own free will and for my own reasons. Nobody forced me to do anything. I am an American soldier and the soldier he has captured is my responsibility. I don’t want any lives lost, Mescalero or ours, but I want my soldier back.” Ralls spoke slowly with many long pauses so Alex Mobley would have time to translate into Spanish easily to Gian-nah-tah.    Gian-nah-tah added a word here and there in Apache for clarity, although both Listens Well and Diablo had an understanding of the Spanish. He wanted peace and safety for his people. He didn’t want them to suffer anymore in a hopeless war with the Americans.

“You are following us now, and my people are only trying to live free and not see our children go hungry and get sick and die on a reservation,” Diablo spoke now in Spanish.  Alex Mobley translated.
“It is well known in this country that Diablo is a warrior and raids and kills Americans and Mexicans often,” Ralls replied to Diablo, speaking in his one language, plain English. “I don’t believe Diablo hides behind his people, but you are only with them now to get them safely into the mountains. Then you will raid and kill innocent people again. That puts your people in danger. The only safe place for your women and children, if there is any safe place at all, is to camp near Fort Stanton where they can have some protection.”

“Who will protect them from the soldiers and the agent who steals their food and blankets?” Diablo interrupted forcefully.

Ralls ignored Diablo’s outburst. “Americans are coming into all the country now,” he continued. “The native peoples can’t stop them. The soldiers can’t stop them. You and your people cannot live wild and free anymore. It is a matter of time. Mescaleros must change if they are to survive in this new world. It is the only hope left for your people, to have a reservation of their own. The American government is determined to have an end to the raiding and looting. You must change or you will all be killed, not just by the soldiers. Everybody’s hand will be turned against the Apache.”

Mobley translated Ralls words, filling in the sergeant’s frequent pauses with the Spanish.
“This is not new to us,” Diablo said. “The Apache was here first in all this country you can see, even far into Texas before the Comanche. The Apache were a peaceful people, foraging for food and hunting buffalo on the plains, happy and living well. Our villages were very large beside the streams and rivers. Since that time, everybody’s hand has forever been against the Apache, even the Indians. We welcomed the Americans. Our people hoped you would be different, but Americans are no different than all the other people who accepted our hospitality and stole our land. And you, Buffalo Soldier, are no different than the White Eyes who sent you here. You are not welcome in our homeland.  Leave my people alone, and I will leave you alone.”

“You can’t escape, you or your people, Diablo,” Ralls said. “Take the women and children with you through the Guadalupes and the Sacramentos to the Tularosa country and let them be counted. You and your warriors can stay there, too. Carry a white flag of peace with you. Give me my man and go in peace for now,” Ralls finished. He sat silently, his empty hands resting over his knees, while Mobley translated. He had done and said everything he could to spare the lives of the Apaches and themselves, spoken as straight as he knew how. Now, a deepening silence pervaded their shadowed nook as the sun continued its descent westward. The Apache warriors were silent, as much a part of the merging landscape as the faint breeze that caressed its rugged hide with gentle, loving fingers of air. The warriors waited upon their leader, Diablo, to choose their course.  Diablo sat as still as one of the stones of the dry-washed arroyo, full to the brim with the cup he had been given. He and his uncle, Listens Well, stared inscrutably into the sergeant’s unfaltering gaze, taking his measure. 

Gian-nah-tah broke the spell, speaking to Listens Well and Diablo with cautious, soothing Apache words. He spoke of peace between the Mescaleros and the Americans and for living in a place safe for their women and children and grandchildren. There were so many Americans. Soon, not even the mountains would be safe anymore.

After a time, Diablo broke his own silence and turned his gaze from the Buffalo Soldier. He spoke briefly and forcefully in Apache. Gian-nah-tah translated for Mobley into Spanish. Mobley translated into English for Ralls.

“Diablo says he will send some of his men through the mountains with the women and children to Fort Stanton. The ones who go can stay if they want. Gian-nah-tah and Listens Well will lead them. He says he won’t go. He is a warrior and…” Mobley paused.

“And?” Ralls said.

“And he will keep Goode as an assurance that you will keep your word and stay clear. Maybe that’s in exchange for the pride he’s giving up,” Mobley added, an interpretation. “He’s used to havin’ his own way.”

Diablo stared hard into the sergeant’s stern, dark eyes as his message was delivered. Sergeant Ralls didn’t break contact with the war leader, without regard for his tenuous bargaining position, anger wrestling inside him with the goodwill of his spirit.

Finally, Ralls placed his hands on his knees and said firmly, “I’ll keep my word. So, it’s agreed – except for the last part.”

Before Mobley and Gian-nah-tah had finished their translations, Sergeant Ralls was on his feet. He stepped past a surprised Diablo and Listens Well and strode towards Othello Goode, sitting with his arms bound behind him. The Apache nearest Goode stood, covering the Buffalo Soldier with his old carbine. Diablo whirled about, agile as a panther. But though very angry, he hesitated.

The warriors in the gallery of witnesses rose as one, ready, watching vigilantly, expectant of a fight. Percy’s right hand poised nearby the pistol in his belt, his attention focused on the war leader, Diablo. If Diablo made any move to harm his friend, the sergeant of the Buffalo Soldiers, he was resolved to shoot Diablo. 

Within Diablo’s moment of hesitation, Ralls pulled Goode to his feet and spun him about, at the same instant slipping his own knife from its scabbard. Deftly, he slashed the rawhide that bound Goode and quickly slipped the knife back into its scabbard.

Diablo glared angrily. There was an empty moment of hesitation throughout the assembled men that could have been filled with unimaginable mayhem. Jack Ralls stood unmoving, his hand grasping Private Othello Goode’s upper arm tightly.

Abruptly, Listens Well spoke and pointed above into the fading blue of the sky. Overhead, two bald eagles, one smaller than the other, circled slowly, their shadows flitting over the white rocks of the arroyo. It had been many years since the Mescaleros had seen the great eagle in that country, but Gian-nah-tah and Listens Well had seen it.

Diablo waited, seething with rage. Ralls held his ground. Goode kept his eyes on that ground – the ground where his fate and that of the men who had come to save him would be decided. Mobley stood, poised for action. Percy waited, unbeknownst to any, aware of Diablo’s every move, the thoughts of his mind. Percy was excellent at being a clever and cunning Apache, even amongst his brethren.

Listens Well reasoned with Diablo, occasionally gesturing towards the two eagles circling in the firmament. Reluctantly, Diablo stepped aside, allowing Ralls with Goode in tow to move towards the exit through the Devil’s hallway, back into life and freedom. Othello would live to breathe fresh air another day.
Mobley stepped past his companions and stood by the entrance to the Devil’s hall. He nodded to Percy and they backed together into the shadows of the defile behind Jack Ralls and Othello Goode.

Once through the dusky tunnel, they hurried along the course of the dry streambed intent on reaching the old Butterfield Stage Station before dark, before Diablo had a change of heart. The sharp eyes of the crippled Apache, Lame Buffalo, followed their descent, searching the desert landscape for signs of movement. The two eagles flew over the small party of men, drifting southeast.

They hurried along, Ralls and Goode in the lead, watchful for snakes that might be moving as the air cooled. Towards the bottom of the arroyo where their progress became more difficult, they crossed over the hillsides to the easier bench of the desert where it gently rose to meet the escarpment of the magnificent Guadalupes. The men – counting Percy, for he had proven himself to be such – trotted across the flats, racing the darkness.  Cautiously, they approached the bivouac at the stage station just at dusk, not wishing to be fired upon by a jittery sentry. Mobley whistled his usual tune and spoke out softly so as not to frighten the horses.

Private Woods called to “Come ahead,” and the sound of his voice brought comfort, a release of the tension of the past few hours. The men gathered around the campfires inside the rock walls of the station stood up and laughed and slapped the newcomers heartily on the back as each came into the light of the popping flames. The pots of coffee were steaming and smelled wonderful. Percy smiled broadly. Mobley’s hunt had not been successful and, sensing trouble, they had given up and hurried to the encampment at the old stage station. Now, with Sergeant Ralls and Goode safely back, they were all just in time for a supper of beef jerky, pan bread, and the hot coffee with sugar. The canteens were full of fresh, cold spring water.

“Wendy,” Ralls said to the corporal after he’d settled down to a cup of black coffee. He was too spent to eat anything right now. Goode, however, dug into the grub with gusto. “Have the men hobble the horses when they’re through with supper and keep a close watch through the night. Diablo let us go, but he’s probably not averse to stealing a few cavalry mounts to regain lost dignity. Even it they’re not in the best of shape. We’ll leave early, before first light.”

Later, when the cavalrymen not on sentry duty were rolled up in their blankets snoring, some of them doubling up with a buddy for warmth, Ralls stirred the dying embers of a fire, adding a twig now and then. He slipped the adventurous Conquistador’s breastplate of mail from beneath his blouse and buttoned his shirt back on again against the coolness. Percy came over with his Apache flute and sat down across from him.

“Hanakah,” Percy said, gesturing towards the sergeant’s boot.  He held the flute up.  “Hanakah,” he repeated.

Jack Ralls reached deep into a boot top and, after a little difficulty, finally extracted a harmonica.
Percy gestured for him to play. He brought the flute to his lips and blew soft, strange notes through the thick, bamboo-like reed.

Ralls tried a few notes to fit them with Percy’s music. Ole Black Joe wasn’t going to work, he thought, for a wild kid like Percy. He sat by the flickering embers of the campfire dancing their light over his Army blues in the enveloping darkness. Clouds from the west had begun to blow in high above, crowding up against and then overwhelming the foreboding fastnesses of the Guadalupes, home to the Mescalero for centuries.  Somewhere beyond those soaring rims and plunging crevasses, Gian-nah-tah and Listens Well were leading Diablo’s people deeper into the mountains towards Fort Stanton and safety, though the Apaches preferred not to travel at night. There was no telling where Diablo was. He could be five hundred yards away, or fifty – ten?

Jackson forgot about Diablo and the wars and the songs of the South, the mournful songs of his youth and other melodies he’d taught himself. He played the mouth organ softly, so as not to disturb the sleeping men, working with Percy’s music, picking the notes and the song out of the electrified night air, out of the vastness of the ancient, primeval land with all its secrets and mystery that encompassed them. He could smell rain, lots of it. Percy and he played their music together, perfectly harmonious music, timeless music with an ancient rhythm. The horses grew quiet and settled down in the enclosure beyond the rock wall. The sentries, Johnson and Jordan this time, listened to the soothing, wild music and the threatening rainstorm. Mobley, the white tracker, lay in his blankets and listened, too. The music was wonderful the way it mixed so finely with the sounds of wind bringing in the bank of rain clouds to envelope their world with its tempest. He let the harmony of Creation pervade his bones and sinew and mind, lulling him into a deep, much-needed slumber. He was a tired but happy man.

The rain poured down so hard that night that the soldiers had to crowd against the walls and make tents of their blankets and ponchos to try and stay dry. Still, they got very wet and muddy. However, to a man, one way or another, they kept their saddles fairly dry. All else was soaked through. They snuggled their revolvers and carbines under their chest out of the mud and rested as best they could. They were up long before daylight wiping the mud off their hats and clothing with their neckerchiefs, brushing their mounts down, saddling up.

“Mount up,” Sergeant Ralls said quietly when their cinches were tight. “Let’s move out of here. We’ll stop and make some coffee when we’ve dried out a bit.”

They rode off in a column, circling towards the northeast, keeping the Guadalupes comfortably on their left. At dawn and with the rising sun, the whole world looked to them as if it had been washed clean. The morning sunshine dried their muddied uniforms on their backs. They stopped on a bench of high ground where they could see in every direction and built a fire. They boiled some pots of strong black coffee with small palmfuls of sugar to pour into their tin cups. The coffee and sugar tasted wonderful and lifted the spirits of the Buffalo Soldiers again. They felt good and happy. Life was good on the frontier. They joked among themselves. Mobley enjoyed his coffee, too, and the time sitting around on the rocks with the soldiers and Percy. He smiled, laughed. Life was good on the frontier, all right, in spite of all the sadness and danger.

While they were kicking sand onto the fire and stuffing coffee pots and cups into their saddle bags, a detachment of cavalry, Old Glory and guidon snapping in the breezes, approached from the southeast.
The Buffalo Soldiers tightened their cinches and caressed their horses’ necks as the captain of the white cavalrymen signaled his troopers to halt. Ralls stepped forward and saluted the officer. The officer sat his horse quietly, looking over Ralls and his detachment of Buffalo Soldiers. There was for awhile the sound of the wind, the blowing and whinnying of the horses, the clink of metal, the creaking of leather. The officer observed the muddied, unsavory uniforms of the Buffalo Soldiers, then he nonchalantly returned Ralls’s salute – where he stood patiently, it would seem, reins in hand. 

“Where’s your officer, Sergeant?” the captain said.

“He’s with the rest of the troop escorting drovers into the new ranges east of the Pecos, sir,” Ralls answered. “He knew the drover, sir. Split our company up and sent us ahead on a scout with the trackers.” Ralls gestured towards Mobley and Percy standing with their horses close by.

The officer studied Percy. “Any activity to report?” he said shortly.

“Rain’s washed out any sign, sir, even for an Indian,” Ralls replied. He gestured northeastward. “We’re going to check canyons on our way back to the Pecos.”

“We cut a trail earlier this week,” the captain offered, after a lengthy pause. “Tough to follow even without the rain,” he added, casting his eyes skyward. “Looked like women and children, too. Maybe some of those long-lost Mescaleros that slipped out of the Bosque years ago. What with the Comanche War, the plains were probably getting too hot for them.” The officer thought some more, quiet, watchful. “Apaches evaporate on the desert, like mist. But not for long. We’re going to corral them, you can count on that. Just a matter of time. They can’t run and hide forever.” He gathered his reins, gave his campaign hat a tug down. “We have a rendezvous with our packers west of here. We’ll check the Guadalupe Pass for sign.” He motioned toward Private Othello Goode, standing hatless by his horse among the other black troopers. Goode’s face was still quite puffy and marred with deep abrasions from his recent tussle with the Apaches.

“You need to keep your men out of the saloons and hog ranches, Sergeant,” the officer clipped, exonerating Ralls’s superior of any shortcomings in that respect. “Brawling makes the Army look bad to the civilians. I don’t broach any nonsense myself. You should make that soldier walk to the Pecos. Perhaps that would teach him some discipline?”

“Yes, sir,” Ralls answered, saluting. “I won’t overlook it, sir.”

With that, the captain turned his fine brown horse sharply to the left, signaling with upraised right hand for his column to fall in behind. Flag bearer and guidon led out behind him. The white troopers paraded off by twos behind their superior, casting glances at the Buffalo Soldiers on the ground as they passed in review.
“Mount up, men,” Ralls called out as the white detachment moved on. “Except for you, Private Goode!” he added, loudly enough for the captain to hear. “You walk.”

The Buffalo Soldiers mounted. Private Goode grimaced, while at a corner of his bruised mouth a wry smile broke through, just the glimmer of a somewhat painful grin.  Ralls and his men turned their mounts northeast, settling into a walk. They kept the mountains close on their left as before. When the white detachment was safely out of sight, Ralls turned and caught Othello Goode’s eye where he was walking his horse at the rear, losing ground and wearing his old boots out even more. His sock was hanging out again like a tired calf’s tongue through the sole where the stitching was gone.  He’d have to fix that when he could borrow a good needle and some thread. Ralls lifted a thumb upwards and Goode slipped his reins over his horse’s neck and mounted up. A night’s rest had done the old Seventh Cavalry horse a world of good. Goode hurried forward, urging the horse into a trot.

They were all here, Ralls thought pleasantly, here and accounted for. Another day on the frontier. He counted them off mentally, looking back with great satisfaction at the cavalrymen as he did so. Percy and Alex Mobley were ranging a few hundred yards out ahead. Behind Ralls came Windy Drank, Kettle, Roberts, Sunshine, Johnson, Jordan, Williams, Brown, Woods, Othello Goode. Gian-nah-tah was okay. He was with his people. Every man was accounted for today. None were lost.

Diablo and his foremost warriors rode down to the desert after the White Eyes had passed by to the southwest. A migration of rattlesnakes, more than a hundred and fifty of them, crossed the trail in the direction the Buffalo Soldiers had taken. Maybe Listens Well was right about them today. The war party turned southwest, stalking at a safe distance the movement of the White Eyes. They would see if there was some mischief they could cause – maybe run off some good horses. Diablo would see, but they must be cautious. The American soldiers were everywhere anymore. They could not win against the Americans who had grown as thick as the ants in their country, but they could fight.