Apache Death Page 10

  Then the orgy began, as brave after brave dropped his breechcloth and threw himself upon the helpless body of a girl who had gone to bed a virgin. As the girls' mother pleaded for release from the torture, those braves who had spent themselves at the bloodied loins of the hysterical Rachel rampaged through the rooms, smashing, tearing and defiling everything which had made the house a home for the Fawcetts. As Lorna watched, she experienced a metamorphic transformation inside her mind, perhaps even her soul. She became quiet, almost docile, in the vice-like grip of the Apache chief and her throat, seared by the screams, blocked any further sound. Her bright eyes continued to stare, wide and pained, at the scene of savagery, but it was apparent that she had capitulated to the inevitability of what was happening. It was as if a shutter had been slammed down upon her will to resist and when the last brave had satiated his lust and two more leaped forward to hack off the breasts of their victim, Lorna could merely shudder at the sight and wince at the sound her young sister's screams. And when the tomahawk crashed down on to, and then through, the skull of her mother there were no more emotional reserves upon which Lorna could call. She watched the action and saw the great spurt of crimson blood with an expression of vacant acceptance, and the set of her features did not alter as the braves grouped before her and made their wishes clear with the lower parts of their naked bodies as they shouted to Cochise.

  But Cochise had his own plans for Lorna and the braves accepted his orders meekly, garbing themselves in their breechcloths and filing out of the house to mount their ponies. Then, with the ease of a child carrying a rag doll, Cochise slung Lorna across his shoulder and left the house, whispering softly in her ear words she would not have heard even if the Apache had been speaking English. For the viciousness of what she had witnessed had rendered Lorna insensible to everything which happened after her metamorphosis. Thus, she experienced without emotion the ride to camp, the hatred of the Apache squaws as she was led to the chief's tepee and the ordeal of Cochise's cruel raping.

  Since becoming the chiefs white squaw she had accepted everything without resistance, eating, sleeping, and spreading, her voluptuous body beneath the hard maleness of Cochise whenever he signaled her to do so. Her only contact was with him and she was allowed to roam no further than a few feet from his tepee: she was universally hated by the Apache squaws and the object of blatant envy from the braves. She was a beautiful zombie and showed her first sign of human curiosity when she saw the two braves ride into the center of camp with a white man as their captive.

  Standing before the tepee in the bright afternoon sunlight, she followed the progress of the braves and their prisoner with bright eyes and there issued from her throat a low grunting sound which could have been indicative of pity for Lord Hartley Fallowfield or perhaps was an exclamation of recognition for a fellow human being who was not a member of the savage tribe with whom she had been forced to live. The braves and their captive immediately became the center of interested attention and as they approached the chiefs tepee other braves fell in behind them so that when the two mounted Indians halted in front of Lorna, they were at the front of a huge assembly of braves. And, formed into lines at each side, were the women of the tribe. There was no noise, except for the quiet groans of the white man as he regained consciousness. The braves who had captured him slid from their ponies and the animal across which the Englishman was slung was urged forward a few paces. Then, as the Englishman groaned again he tried to raise his head but dropped it at once, moving his center of gravity so that he slid off the neck of the pony and crumpled into a heap on the ground. The flap of the chief’s tepee was pushed open and Cochise stepped out, the clean lines of his handsomeness unmarked by warpaint.

  He stood beside his white squaw and surveyed the scene in silence for several moments, then barked a question. Both braves stepped forward and began to answer at the same time, anxious to claim the capture as his own. Cochise silenced them with a sharp command and pointed to just one of them, who rattled out his report. Lorna Fawcett continued to look at the Englishman, who had raised his head and was staring back at her with a confused expression.

  "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?'" he croaked, trying to raise a smile but failing.

  They were the first words of English the girl had heard since she had listened to the hysterical pleas of her mother and her lovely face showed comprehension. But she held her peace and watched without emotion as at a command from Cochise, the two braves hauled the Englishman to his feet. They had to support him in the upright position for his confused brain could not coordinate his muscles and he stood like a drunken man. His black hair was matted with dried blood from where the tomahawk blow had split his scalp and as he stood Lorna saw for the first time the broken shaft of an arrow protruding from his shoulder, the patch of black, coagulated blood crusting his suit coat. Pain masked his face, but he attempted to hold himself with dignity as Cochise stepped in front of him, hatred shining in the dark, Apache eyes. Moving with a precise speed, Cochise brought up his arm, grasped the arrow shaft and jerked it from the wound, raising an agonized scream and drawing fresh blood from the Englishman, whose pain was mercifully swamped by the soft blackness of a faint. The braves prevented him from collapsing to the ground and in obedience to another command from Cochise, dragged him unceremoniously into the chief’s tepee. The group began to break up then, but two of the more elderly squaws came forward at a signal from Cochise and followed the braves in through the flap. Lorna went in after them and sat in the comer, watching as the braves were dismissed and the women began to attend to the unconscious man's wounds, using herbs and hot water from the cooking pot and applying salve with bunched leaves. Cochise, too, watched for several minutes, then seemed to tire of the nursing and moved out of the tepee without a glance in the direction of Lorna. He never paid any attention to her unless the biological urge stirred in his loins.

  The squaws worked with skill and in silence and even in her trancelike condition Lorna was able to realize that their care was having a beneficial effect, for the Englishman, stretched out on the crude settle, began to breath more regularly and his face grew, less haggard and gained some color. A gentle bathing of his brow with warm water finally revived him.

  He awoke to find himself naked above the waist and saw his shoulder was padded with a leaf dressing and felt that his head was also expertly bound with a crude bandage. He glanced around him, grimacing with pain, but able to force a smile at the two squaws, who answered him with vacant stares. Then he saw Lorna and raised his hand in a weak gesture of greeting.

  "So I wasn't dreaming," he said, his voice still accented by a croak which detracted from his cultured tones. Her expression was no more friendly than that of the squaws.

  "Don't you speak English, my dear?" he tried.

  She moved her head in an almost imperceptible nod and he gritted against his pain to try to broaden his smile.

  But when he attempted to raise himself into a sitting position one of the squaws forced him to lie down again. She did not have to exert very great effort. "Are you their prisoner, too?"

  Again the slight movement of her lovely head encouraged the Englishman. "How long?"

  Now she shook her head and he sighed.

  "I suppose I'm for the high jump?" A quizzical expression caused him to amplify the remark. "They're only building, me up to knock me down. They'll kill me?"

  She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and the movement raised the bodice of the unattractive smock to indicate the fullness of her breasts, unfettered beneath the drab material. The Englishman smiled his appreciation.

  "I can see why the boss collared you for himself," he said.

  "Aren't you afraid to die?" she said suddenly and seemed to be surprised by the sound of her own voice. They were the first words she had spoken since leaving the farm.

  "It talks as well as walks," the Englishman answered, and adjusted his expression into one of sympathetic interest. "What's your name
, my dear?"

  "Lorna Fawcett," she told him, taking a step nearer to where he was lying. "They will kill you."

  While one of the squaws stared hatred at Lorna, the other went to the flap and babbled in her native tongue.

  "Don't you have' any influence with the big man?" For the first time there was a note of fear in the Englishman's voice and his smile was suddenly ragged at the edge. He sighed. "I suppose not—except flat on your back with your legs open. No use to me."

  "I'm not here from choice," she told him. "They killed my family."

  The flap was drawn aside and Cochise glowered into the tepee.

  "We've all got our problems," the Englishman rasped as Lorna scuttled back against the hide wall.

  Cochise regarded the Englishman in stony silence for several moments, then barked a command which sent the remaining squaw scuttling past him out of the tepee. Immediately, two braves rushed in, grasped the Englishman by his arm pits and dragged him off the settle and toward the flap. Cochise stepped aside and they pulled him outside. The chief turned to follow them, hesitated, then gestured with his head for Lorna to accompany him. She went, meekly, feeling the first stirring of human emotion since her ordeal had begun—trepidation not for herself but for the fate of the Englishman. And this turned to horror as she saw what the braves were doing to their prisoner.

  The tepees of the camp had been set up in a circular pattern, with a broad open space at the center, surrounded by those of Cochise, his brother and other subchiefs and the shaman. In the middle of this space the two braves who had removed the Englishman from the tepee were staking out the prisoner, tying his hands and feet to four lances which had been driven into the ground at such a distance that his limbs were stretched to their extremes. The other members of the tribe were formed into two lines, facing the prisoner on each side, with a space left vacant at the center of one line to allow Cochise and his white squaw to view the proceedings. The chief sank into a cross-legged posture on the ground and gestured for Lorna to do likewise. But she was looking at the Englishman, whose face and naked upper body glistened with sweat from fear and the effort of trying to struggle against the tightly-knotted restraining ropes. Angered by the woman's non-compliance with his command Cochise chopped her viciously across the back of her knees and she sat down hard with a cry of pain. The rest of the watchers sank to the ground then, their brown faces showing varying degrees of eager anticipation for the entertainment to come.

  High on the top of the canyon wall to the southwest Edge looked down at the Apache encampment and although he was too far distant to make a visual identification, he knew in his mind that the prisoner staked out between the lances was the Englishman. He had not followed the braves from any altruistic motives, but rather had taken the same route as they did because it followed the easiest course through the foothills of the northern mountain range and he surmised that the survivor of the bullion wagon escort would have taken the simplest way through. But when the braves had been challenged by two-more of their tribe and allowed to pass, Edge had, swung wide, guessing that the Apache camp was nearby and ringed by sentries.

  He had missed the arrival of the braves and their captive at the camp, but had dismounted and crawled forward to the lip of the canyon in time to see the Apaches assemble in what was obviously the preparation for some ritual. Then the prisoner had been man-handled from the largest tepee in the camp and tied down to await his fate. At first Edge had been too impassively intent upon watching the Englishman to take note of anything else happening on the canyon floor, but then he did a double take at the woman who was violently dragged into a sitting position beside the chief. She was a red-head and in Edge's limited knowledge of the American Indian such a coloration was unknown. So he studied her more intently and even from a height of more than three hundred feet he decided that her skin tone was too light for an Apache. He recalled the sweet smelling nightgown at the Fawcett farmstead and his mind fastened upon a theory.

  But then a shout from below captured his attention from the past and thrust it into the present as his hooded eyes raked across the canyon floor with its hundreds of lightly-garbed Apaches and the regular, conical shapes of the tepees. He saw a dust cloud moving fast between the tepees and then two mounted ponies emerged from it, ridden by braves who clasped decorated lances. While still more than a hundred feet from the captive Englishman they released the lances and the weapons slithered through the clear afternoon air, thudding, to an explosion of whooping, into the ground on each side of the prisoner's head with no more than an inch of space separating them from the vulnerable flesh. He saw the Englishman's body writhe up into an arch, but the ropes held firm.

  While the sounds of appreciation were still echoing along the canyon two more riders approached at speed, this time from the opposite direction and twirling tomahawks above their heads. They rode close together, their legs almost brushing each other, until the final yard when they separated to go to each side of the spread-eagled man, The tomahawks were raised aloft and then sent spinning downward, burying their heads into the earth only a fraction of an inch from the hirsute armpits of the Englishman.

  Much closer than Edge, Lorna Fawcett could see each movement made by the Englishman. She could see that every muscle in his sweat-soaked body was trembling; that as unshod hoofs again pounded the iron hard ground, the man contorted his face into a mask of terror, abandoning any attempt to meet death bravely. This time there was a lone rider who galloped directly toward the splayed V of the prisoner's legs, sliding an arrow from the quiver on his back and fitting it to his bowstring as he rode. The whooping rose to a crescendo as the brave urged his pony into a leap, lengthwise over the Englishman, and brought down his bow to send the arrow point-blank a half-inch from the prisoner's crotch. Although unharmed, the Englishman emitted a shriek and Lorna, fearing he had been hit, screamed. But her cry became a yelp as Cochise lashed out at her and smashed her back-handed across the mouth, drawing blood from a split lip.

  Up at the top of the canyon wall Edge drew his fingertips along the harsh stubble of his beard and pursed his lips as he saw two more mounted Apaches approach the tormented Englishman, one from each direction, drawing knives as they came. They crossed on different sides of the prisoner and released their knives in unison, drawing the first blood. The points buried themselves in the ground but the finely honed blades streaked through the skin at each side of the Englishman's waist. Blood oozed from the wounds to trickle down the blades and spread in the dust. The watching Apaches were delirious with delight which was heightened as the Englishman issued a diatribe of obscenity, laced with screams of horror.

  "Stop it, stop it, stop it!" Lorna Fawcett shrieked and it took the Englishman several moments to realize she was addressing him.

  "Christ, help me!" he croaked, jerking his head so that he could look across the intervening ground at her.

  "Can't you see they're playing with you?" she shrieked, "They're savages. They only recognize two traits in a man—bravery and cowardice. If they know you're afraid they’ll only prolong it."

  "I'm no bloody hero!" he screamed back.

  The audience had become silent as they listened without comprehension to the exchange, many of them looking at Cochise with eyes which challenged him to take action against his babbling squaw. For several long moments it seemed as if the chief intended to ignore Lorna's new-found eloquence and her interference with the test of valor he had set. But Cochise was in fact allowing his rage to reach full flood, his face running the gamut of expressional change from ice-cold impassivity to boiling virulence.

  From high overhead it seemed to Edge almost as if the whole canyon floor had been petrified. He had heard the voices of the Englishman and the white woman as scratches on the silence which had descended over the assembly of Apaches and had then seen utter immobility grip the entire encampment. But then, abruptly, there was a flurry of movement before the chief’s tepee. Cochise put the whole weight of his body into another sideway
s, back-handed slap across the woman's face which sent her crashing full length on the ground. And before she could even recover her senses the Apache chief had thrown himself upon her sprawled body with his hand streaking to his breechcloth to draw his knife. The blade Hashed once, then again in the sunlight and Lorna Fawcett wasn't beautiful anymore as deep gashes opened up in each cheek, from the eye to the jawline, spreading a warm stickiness which was much redder than her hair.

  "Now it's your turn to be brave," the Englishman croaked through his own pain as realization hit the woman and she began to scream with all the power in her lungs.

  Looking down from his vantage point, Edge sighed and began to draw back from the lip of the canyon, conscious of a stirring of what he recognized as anger at what he had witnessed, but unwilling to involve himself in a problem which did not concern him. But then the crackling of a twig under a moccasin sent him into an evasive rolling movement that put him on his back, staring up at two Apache sentries who had heard the whinny of his horse and come to investigate. They were intent upon capture rather than a kill and brandished knives, their bows over their shoulders, strings across the chest, wood slanting down their backs.

  "Shouldn't creep up on a guy like that," he yelled as he swiveled the Colt on his belt and shot one of the braves through the open foot of the holster.

  The big caliber bullet entered the braves throat and blew a larger hole as it exited through his cheek, spinning and crumpling him into a writhing heap on the ground. As every Apache in the canyon looked up in the direction from which the shot had come the second sentry was on Edge, anxious now for a kill as his quarry was forced to abandon all thoughts of using the revolver a second time. The knife arm was raised and brought crashing down, the full swing curtailed by a hard, edge-of-the-hand chop to the wrist. The brave yelled his pain but retained his grip on the knife and drew back for a second thrust. Edge was pinned to the ground by the straddled legs of the Apache and had no time to reach for his razor—the only accessible weapon as the knife point descended again. This time the swing came at a different angle and Edge's chop merely deflected the blow, so that the knife dug into the ground close to his ear. In the time it took the brave to withdraw the blade Edge had snatched out his razor, the handle slotting snugly along his fingers and palm, the fine blade extending three inches. As the brave raised his hand Edge slashed with the razor, gouging a river of blood from wrist to elbow on the inner arm. A second, sideways slash, severed a nerve and the knife dropped from lifeless fingers as the brave's eyes grew wide with terror at the ghastly wound on his arm.