COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

      To a courageous young man

      TOMMY REED

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      BETWEEN the Gila and San Francisco Rivers in southeastern New Mexico, the road drops suddenly off Cactus Flat in a maze of hairpin curves. Away to the east the mountains begin with a huge saddle hump that slopes to a horn, reminding one of a charging rhinoceros. It is the western jaw of a canyon’s mouth. The long eastern jaw reaches farther out, sheer and colorful, seeming to stare back at the road like the patient eye of Time.

      It is the Big Dry.

      Who named it that nobody seems to know. A poet, perhaps, one with a healthy sense of reality, for the brutal opening stands there a monument to drought. It has seen water rushing down, melted snow from the peaks of the Mogollons, in a wasteful gift, unfriendly and mocking. It has witnessed the push of white men up to the fertile San Francisco Valley, to the gold mines, the return of ore-laden bullwagons, showers of arrows on covered wagons and stagecoaches, and the ambush of United States troopers by the Apache—and all on this road.

      The picture, from the flat or “Soldiers’ Hill,” is the same now as in the day of the famous Apache chieftain Victorio, renegade or great warrior, but certainly a strategist, who fashioned a part of the true history of this land ahead of his pupil, Geronimo.

      This setting, made to order for the Apache, seems next to perfect for an historical novel of the West. The writer takes the liberty of drawing upon his imagination in dealing with Victorio and his son-in-law, Terribio, and in weaving them into a purely fictional tale that ends under the forbidding gaze of the Big Dry.

      1

      THE SACATON KID

      SILVER CITY lay miles behind the rider.

      Young West rode at a shuffling gait relaxed to the motion of the saddle, apparently at peace with the world and himself. His eyes were glare-slitted as his gaze held fast to the southern heads of the Mogollon Mountains. Under the blistering afternoon sky the green of pines away in the distance seemed alive and dancing under shimmering heat waves.

      He reined up and listened to a distant rumbling behind him. Knowing it was the stagecoach to Bacon and Queeny, he turned off the road into a bleached arroyo and waited behind a screen of scrub oak. If Cactus Williams sat in the driver’s seat, this was the stage he had ridden north to intercept.

      The tattoo of hoofs sounded closer. Soon the rolling wheels and crack of whip advised that the desert express was racing hard for Gila Crossing. It came on, tore on by in swirls of dust, clattering on, swaying, clinging to the twisting road like a train to a track. It followed a thin ribbon that was civilization’s hard-won trail; it split a land where a house was a gamble, something chanced upon, where cattle calved in the Apaches’ front yard. The mines up at Queeny drew it on. The lure was gold.

      Of late many stories leaked down out of the valley and mountains. Victorio, chief of the Apaches, was recruiting among the tribes stationed on the reservation. Smokes columned upward, and the dry ground was scarred by travois, and squaws and children and sheep moved slowly in the Apache way out of Arizona Territory down to the White Rocks. The Fort Bayard command looked northeast, frowning at all it could not see.

      However, if the rumor of the massacre up on Gutache Mesa were true, General Bent was probably bandoleering ammunition and alerting all outlying posts. Supposed to have happened at dawn four days back: two prospectors spread-eagled to the spokes of their wagon and killed by five burning arrows in each man. They were dead when Lieutenant Botts and his green troopers found them. Five arrows, five slashes in a horse’s throat. Victorio was trying to convey something.

      Young put it out of his mind. He was more interested in the item under the feet of Cactus Williams.

      He rode on, holding his distance behind the old Concord until he heard its hip-and-hub splash in the Gila River. He then rowelled his pony and raced north, fording the river a good half-mile above the oncoming stage. Topping a small knoll by the road, he looked back, then rode down the side and dismounted. After tossing a gray hat into a clump of bear-grass, he placed a worn black hat on his head and pulled grimy tan trousers up over his dark ones. Next he tied a red bandana over his face.

      The coach clattered nearer and a dust-devil started its spin in the road, raced west up the flats, and died in bantam fury. Young watched it, thinking there was a lot of dust to stir up out here. Had been, was, would be. In fact——

      He had kicked up a dust-devil or two in his twenty-seven years. Noted as a pony express rider and scout, he had seen trouble in Arizona Territory, and up on the Platte during the Cheyenne campaign. But he knew the Apache better and, after an unsuccessful prospecting venture up in the Datil Mountains, he had again turned to scout for General Bent during the late Mescalero campaign. But he had not come off so well, due to friction between officers in the field, a Captain Corday and a hot-headed lieutenant named Dana. The latter, in disfavor now, blamed Young for the trap that took a dozen of his troopers. A scout’s reward.

      And now he was about to rob a stage.

      The coach came on, and he watched the six-horse approach, a determined man who had no knowledge of the passengers inside. It would have mattered little if he had. He was of the breed, of one mind, a man of the dry country where dust and sun got under a man’s skin and stirred up a brew that, like a poison, prolonged patience and whetted sensitiveness to a fine point.

      The creaking or the stage was his signal. He got into the saddle and charged down from the blind side of the knoll. Cactus Williams saw him, reached for his rifle, dropped it when the horses snorted and reared. It was the advantage Young played for. The teams stood nervously still and Cactus reached high. Young slouched in the saddle, gun up, with deliberate ease. Not a word was spoken between them. Glances sufficed as Cactus studied the robber closely and found him more menacing by his unhurried manner.

      The sack at Cactus’s feet was handed over. Young motioned for the rifle, next, the pistol. Before the latter reached him, the coach door opened and five people stepped outside. Quietly Young’s thumb eased back the rifle hammer and the aim was set squarely on the crown of Cactus Williams’ hat. The pistol leveled on the passengers.

      All but one reached high. Only the girl stared fearlessly, curiously, a certain fascination making in her face. All of her registered in a flash on Young’s mind. She had a pretty figure, and her eyes were green, decisive, and alive. She was looking at him with a controlled expression, like the shape of judgment withheld. Then it melted slowly, and a faint flush of color beat up under her skin.

      One of the passengers darted a glance up at Cactus when Young appeared to relax. All of them knew the girl’s eyes held him when his success and safety demanded that he look sharp. Then Young was taking them in one by one.

      There was something familiar about the small man with determined gray eyes and red mustache. He knew who he was on second glance. Joe Sack, a man who had won his reputation on the right side of the law. But the girl was more interesting.

      Cactus was looking for an advantage. He thought he saw it in Young’s apparent carelessness and eased his hand down to his pistol. But Young had drawn his sight and now he saw the hand lift with the pistol. As both of them stared death in the face, Sack flipped up his coat in reach for his gun.

      With the aim on Cactus fixed, Young had only to shift his pistol on Sack. Rifle and pistol spoke in unison. The bullet knocked the gun out of Sack’s hand. The rifle slug tore through Cactus’s hat crown, causing him to drop the pistol in a hurry.

      The girl stared