(Buckey O’Neill: San Francisco Chronicle.)
A hot day. The sun directly overhead, glowing with a fire that made the
air in the shadeless canyon quiver as if heated in an oven. Not a tree
in sight, not a bush--everything brown and barren. Everywhere boulders
of lava immense in size and sometimes split in twain, as if in rapid
cooling from the intense heat which gave them birth. Here and there
between the gray-green of the giant cacti, raising their thorny forms
fifty and sixty feet in the air, assuming with their strangely formed
limbs the shapes of immense crosses or trunks of trees from which all
leaves and smaller branches have been torn. Between the black and brown
of the sunburnt lava an occasional tuft of tall, almost colorless
grass. Over all a stillness that to one unaccustomed to the land would
seem strange and oppressive. Not a bird to break it with its song. Even
the lizards sought out what shade they could, making with their green,
red and variegated coats, almost the only dash of color to relieve the
monotony of the all-prevailing brown and black lava that each moment
grew more oppressive to look at under the glow of the fierce heat.
Save these not a living thing was in sight except where off to the west
a buzzard floated high in the air, and two men, with a burro lazily
following, passing down the canyon.
Prospectors and their outfit.
Opened shirts, showing red, hairy breasts, while their loosely buckled
belts, heavy with long, bright cartridges, whose tarnished surfaces,
made doubly bright from the rays of the hot sun, seemed strangely out
of place in such quietude.
Neither spoke. Each walked along as if alone, looking for the “float”
that might indicate the presence of some mineral ledge higher up,
more from habit than from hope, as the “formation” gave but little
indication of treasure.
How hot the sun. The burro, patient-eyed, forgot his old trick of
nipping the tops of the long gaete grass, and contented himself with
keeping closely in the trail of the two men, whose worldly possessions
of blankets, cooking utensils and tools, capped with an enormous
canteen of water, he so patiently bore. Not a breath of air stirring.
Only the quivering heat that made the eyes burn and ache. The men
shifted their rifles constantly from one hand to another, as if to
avoid getting blisters from the places where they touched the highly
heated metallic parts of their guns.
Crack! crack! crack!
Not fifty yards ahead from behind a dozen boulders leap out as many
jets of fire, while the snowy white puffs of smoke float up a few feet
and disappear in the quivering air.
One of the men stops for an almost imperceptible instant, as if to
brace himself. His hands rise to the level of his chest as if to bring
his rifle to his shoulder and then--down he falls headlong to the
ground in a limp mass. Dead! Shot through the head. Not a quiver; not a
motion; without a sound, were it not for that made by his falling rifle.
As he falls his companion staggers back a pace or two, catches himself,
and then, half crouching, half falling, drops behind one of the many
boulders. “Hit!” he thinks to himself, “but, thank God! not fatally;
only a scratch.” Life seems a new thing; to live, a new joy.
Only a scratch. “Where?” He hardly has time to think as he places his
gun across the boulder and fires at a figure, naked, dark, clothed only
in a breech clout and with a red scarf wound around the head. He notes
almost unconsciously how pronounced its color is against the dark face
and darker hair of its wearer. “A miss!” he mentally remarks, as the
figure disappears. “But better luck next time,” he thinks, as he pushes
down the lever of his gun and throws out the empty shell, replacing it
with a cartridge. “Short range;” he should have hit. It can’t be that
he was losing his old cunning; that his aim was bad. “No;” he fired in
haste and was “rattled.” “Another shot and he will show them” are the
thoughts that flash through his mind as he peers cautiously ahead to
discover his enemies.
None in sight.
For the first time he feels pain. Half numbness, half fire; how it
tears as he raises his shirt and looks at a little blue hole hardly
larger than a pea near the right side in the short ribs. “Only a
scratch or it would bleed worse. Did it go through?” he asks himself,
as he passes his hand up his back to find if there be an orifice of
exit. “No.” “That is bad, for there is no surgeon to be had to cut
the missile out. Pshaw, what matters it? Other men have lived with
bullets in them--why could not he? Night would soon come and then with
darkness he would go. He was not losing blood sufficient to weaken him
much, and by morning he would be far away. After all, it would only be
a close call, something to tell about. But poor Tom! he was gone,” and
as he looked at the lifeless form of his partner he could hardly keep
back the tears.
Crack! crack! go a couple of shots off to his left, and he sees the
dust flying up from near his feet. He tries to draw his limbs up to get
them in a safer position. Tries again, and the cold sweat breaks from
him. He cannot move them!
They are dead--paralyzed!
Something like a sob breaks from him. It is all over. In the first
flush of possible escape he had not thought of the spine being injured.
He knew it now. The game was played. A few hours longer at the best.
To-morrow and the next day, and the days and the years to come would
find him there. The end was only a question of a short time. Yet he had
only thought it a scratch.
With his arms he drags himself into a safer position. This done, he
unbuckles his belt, and as he lays it before him to have it handier
he thinks of the time away back on the Platte when he had first put
one on. How proud he then felt, as a stripling boy, of the outfit. How
bright the future had looked, and now it was all to end. After all,
life with him had been a hard one. It had brought to him few of the
treasures for which he had longed. For an instant he thought “why not
take the sixshooter and end it all?”
“Suicide?”
“No,” he would die fighting.
He would take some of them with him. Yet, why kill at all. They were
but savages--Apaches. Their deaths would mean nothing, would gain
nothing. Better to kill himself and keep from them the satisfaction of
doing it. No; relief might come. Some of the many scouting parties of
cavalry always in the field, or, perhaps, a party of prospectors might
hear the firing, and then with a good doctor all would yet be well. He
could find one at any of the military posts.
All these thoughts and a thousand others crowded through his brain
while he was placing himself in a better position for defense.
Cautiously raising himself he glanced over the boulder in the direction
from whence the last shots came. Crack! crack! crack! the bullets whiz
surlily around him.
Bang! bang! bang! goes the rifle.
A new feeling takes possession of him. His nerves tighten like steel,
and he pumps empty shells out of the rifle’s chamber and cartridges
in with a fierce speed. Kill! kill! let him take one of those howling
murderers with him, and he doesn’t care how soon after death comes. But
what is the matter with his aim? He has not yet killed one, not even
wounded one that he knows of. He refills the magazine of his rifle in
nervous, feverish haste, and then peeps through the crevices of the
boulders to see if there is an enemy in sight. None. They are there,
though. They are waiting and he is dying. How hot it is! He is burning
up with thirst and heat. How “it” hurts. He has got so that he thinks
of his wound only as “it,” as if it were some terrible monster that he
could not escape. The blood--small as the quantity--that flows from
his wound has formed a pool, clotted and coagulated. It adds to his
discomfort by its stickiness. He thinks, how strange that one’s own
blood should annoy one so, and then wonders where so many flies could
have come from, as he raises a swarm by the movement of his body. He
looks across to where the burro has fallen with the canteen and sees
that the vessel has been jammed by coming in contact with the boulder,
and that the precious fluid has nearly all run out. How much he would
give to have what little water remains! He feels almost tempted to try
to reach it, but no; that would mean throwing his life away without a
chance for revenge. Revenge. He will have it. Thirst is nothing; death
is nothing now if he can only kill, kill!
If he could only kill them all, how happy he would die!
He looks over the boulder. Nothing in sight but boulders, lava, cacti,
sand and gaete grass. “They are there, though.” He almost laughs in
sarcasm as he catches himself scanning the horizon to see if any relief
were in sight. Relief? For days he and the man that laid dead there had
traveled without finding a trail made by a shod horse--without finding
a trail of any kind. How childish to expect any help. Better brace up
and die like a man.
He looked at the body of the dead man. How hideous the face looked with
its swollen lips, open mouth, staring eyes. How black it had grown.
What a vast quantity of blood had come from the wound in the head. His
eye catches a movement in the tuft of grass to his left. Bang! bang!
goes his rifle. “Nothing there,” he thinks, as he crouches closer to
the ground to escape the shots that come in return.
So the hours go, but he hardly marks their flight. The sun is getting
lower in the west, and the white heat of day gives way to the
yellowish-purple haze that in Apache land is always the forerunner
of night. How when he was first hit he had longed for night; how
little he cared for it now. He could feel himself growing weaker. His
Winchester was heavier than any he had ever before lifted. Even “it,”
that terrible thing that chained him there, pained him less, but the
thirst grew horrible. Anyhow night would give him a chance to reach the
canteen. At times he felt almost drowsy, but fought off the feeling.
He was merely waiting for the end. He thought it strange that he could
face it so complacently. He hardly cared now how soon it came. Would
he shoot all his cartridges away before it reached him? He would not
waste them though. If he could only reach Tom’s gun and revolver and
destroy them it would make those that killed him angry. It was for
these things, worth perhaps $50, that he and Tom had been murdered. He
was beginning to think of himself as already dead. At least how easy
to ruin Tom’s rifle. It was only two or three paces away. He took his
revolver and fired at it, aiming to hit it just in front and below the
hammer, its most vulnerable part. Instead, the bullet hits the ground
and ricocheting enters the breast of the dead man. He shudders as the
body stirs from the force of the shot, although he knows that life has
been gone for hours. Everything is plain to him now why his other shots
had not taken effect. He was unnerved. How could a man with a hole
through his body hope to hit anything. He had heard of men shot through
the heart killing their assailants, and had often wondered if he could
do it. Could Tom have done it? How far off and yet how short seemed
the years that he and Tom had been together. How little there had been
in them that seemed worth now recalling. Crack! a single shot off to
the right, and he fires where he sees the smoke curling upward. Fires
again. Nothing. He counts his cartridges and is astonished that he has
fired so many. He must have lost some. No, there are the empty shells.
Another shot off to the right. One to the front. He fires at both. He
feels that he is growing nervous, and brings all his remaining powers
into play to secure better control of himself. He will put away the
idea of death, of his wound, of everything but revenge. Only one and
he will be satisfied, and for the first time in years he prays, prays
without words though, that he may kill but one.
The sun is sinking lower, it has almost reached the far off western
mountain tops. It would soon be night, and then what would “they” do?
Steal up under cover of the darkness and shoot him from behind some
boulder before he would be aware of it. He would keep a close lookout,
and perhaps he might after all “get” one of them.
Crack! crack! to the right and left, and he glances in both directions,
firing at each; and then right over him takes place a terrible
explosion, and he feels as if something heavy and blunt had struck
him in the back. He half raises himself, just enough to turn his face
upward. Another explosion, another heavy, blunt blow, and through the
smoke from a revolver he sees a dark young face, with black, glittering
eyes, white teeth, across which the lips are tightly drawn. The face
and the form of one almost a boy, and then he falls back while a dark
hand and arm snatches his gun from his half-clinging clasp. He hears
wild shouting and through his glazing eyes sees dark forms scrambling
for his arms, for Tom’s. They are even quarreling in their eagerness
to tear the pack from the dead burro, and then instinctively he sees
one raise something in the air ... and when it falls there is no longer
anything human in the face or the head of the man who has spent the
afternoon in fight. Nothing but a bloody pulp of skull, hair, brains,
broken teeth, crushed into a misshapen mass by the boulder cast upon it
by an Apache.
* * * * *
Another afternoon, years after, a tall sergeant and his detail of
cavalry escorting through the canyon a party locating a road, looks
down on the whitened bones of two men and a burro scattered by coyotes
and bleached by the winds and rains, and as he, with the toe of his
boot, pushes to one side the ribs of one of the skeletons, his eyes
mark the many empty cartridge shells. He looks up and sees that his
comrades have already noted them, while some one remarks:
“By----, he stayed with them while he lasted.”