Chapter Seventy-Eight
Her look was accusing.
The black moved restlessly beside him. “We won’t be gone long. A couple of days.”
Candice looked sick. “How can you do this? You’re killing your own flesh and blood!”
His mouth tightened. He refused to be drawn into this topic He mounted gracefully, gave her a hard look, and wheeled the black, cantering down the canyon to catch up with the war party.
He could feel her eyes on him. Accusing and dismayed, even repelled.
Her emotions seemed to be an echo of his own.
They rode steadily throughout the day, only two hundred strong this time, and Jack rode beside Nahilzay, who was in charge.
They rode north up the Aravaipa Valley, toward Fort Breckenridge.
They wouldn’t go that far. A supply convoy had passed ahead of them, marked by Cochise’s scouts yesterday.
They would ambush the convoy. They needed guns and ammunition.
Jack kept thinking about Lieutenant Morris, the man who had ordered the hangings in February, the man responsible for Shozkay’s murder.
Almost a lifetime ago. He was still at Breckenridge.
Thinking about him filled Jack with a blood-lust, a murdering rage.
His need for vengeance was completely primitive and completely Apache.
They ambushed the convoy at dawn the following day.
The convoy was foolishly camped in an arroyo, but the whites liked traveling in dry arroyos.
They had yet to learn the Apache way of traveling across the ridgetops—which was safer, although slower.
Arroyos were perfect for ambushes, meandering between hillocks and buttes.
Two hundred warriors descended screaming at once upon the fifty infantrymen mounted on mules.
The troops quickly turned over the wagons and made a barricade, returning their fire.
In the initial onslaught, three of them had been killed, a few others wounded but dragged to safety.
Jack pulled up the black as the Apaches circled the barricade at a racing gallop, firing bullets and arrows at the soldiers, coming from all directions at once.
For a moment he just watched. It would have been a slaughter if the troops hadn’t overturned the wagons so efficiently.
Now the skirmish could go on for hours, until the Apaches grew tired or ran too low on ammunition, in which case, if they didn’t fulfill the goal of the attack, they were worse off than when they had started. …
He urged the black into a lope and into the melee.
He quickly became absorbed into the battle.
When a rifle was pointed at him he had to fire to defend himself.
The cycle was swift, comprehensive, and vicious.
He wounded a soldier, seeing his head disappear from over the edge of the wagon.
A bullet missed his horse’s flank narrowly.
Still cantering, he circled, fired at a soldier, missing.
He hated wasting ammunition in this kind of fray.
Something made him turn.
Nahilzay’s horse was hit and floundering.
The tall warrior leapt off and escaped being crushed with the reflexes of a cat.
Jack moved the black toward him to provide protection to the man on foot.
Nahilzay saw him, smiling fiercely, running toward him.
Jack and Nahilzay saw the crouching figure in blue at the same time.
Nahilzay had no gun; it had been crushed by his horse, as had the bow.
The soldier was drawing his weapon, Nahilzay reaching for his knife.
Jack saw the soldier’s face. He was a baby-faced boy.
His eyes were blue, his skin badly sunburned.
He was terrified. Nahilzay threw the knife before the boy drew, but missed, losing his footing as he released it, jostled in the melee.
The boy raised the gun. Jack was frozen.
“Nino Salvaje,” Nahilzay shouted, looking at him with an unmistakably urgent message.
Jack drew. He was as fast as lightning, and both guns went off simultaneously. The boy fell, killed instantly. Jack rode the black hard to the warrior, who leapt astride behind him.
They galloped up the hill, where Nahilzay slid off, unhurt. He stared, every muscle in his body corded with fury. He didn’t have to speak—what was on his mind was self-evident. But he did. “Go home, White Eyes. There is no place here for a man who cannot kill his enemy.”
Nahilzay strode off, furious.