Tom Horn And The Apache Kid Read Online Free PDF Page B

said to Crane, “you stay here with the troopers till you hear gunfire. Then ride toward it.”
    Horn galloped away.
    “But…” Crane looked around and exclaimed to no one in particular, “What the hell is going on!”

Chapter Six
    At the makeshift camp there were five nearly naked Apache broncos and three completely naked Mexican captive women.
    Two of the women were heavy and across their broad backs and thick legs were bloody lines where the Indians had taken switches
     to their bodies to urge them along on the trek. The youngest girl was thin and wide-eyed, with long, straight black hair that
     fell to her small, upturned breasts. She was unmarked except for those breasts, which had been pinched and twisted and cruelly
     abused by one of the Apaches as she rode in front of him astride his horse.
    The Indians laughed, drank, and played monte. In the pot were rosaries, clothes, and other effects of the stripped and frightened
     women, who hunkered nearby, ignored for the moment.
    Horn, Sieber, the Kid, and the other scouts silently crawled into vantage spots around the camp.
    At a signal from Sieber, he and the scouts opened a deadly crossfire with their Winchesters. Two Apaches dropped instantly,
     dead. The third managed about four steps, then stopped with aneat hole between his eyes and the back of his head blown away. The fourth made it a little farther— just a little, but with
     the same result.
    The fifth and final Apache ran like a burning cat toward an opening between two boulders. As he passed through he was greeted
     rudely by the stock of Horn’s rifle, swung by the barrel. The rifle butt smashed the Apache’s flat face even flatter.
    “You killed them!” Captain Crane cried out when he arrived and surveyed the carnage. “Butchered them all.”
    “All but one, Captain,” said Sieber. “He’s gonna take us to Goklaya.”
    “Better see to the women, Captain,” Horn added. “This ain’t gonna be pretty.”
    It wasn’t.
    The surviving Apache, his face battered, was tied upside-down to a tree. Already several razor cuts had been sliced across
     his belly and breast. Blood seaped down his chest, across the cartilage that had been his nose, into his eyes, and off his
     long black hair onto the ground.
    The Apache Kid had done the carving as Sieber and Horn watched. Sieber spat and nodded again. The Kid’s knife blade gently
     stroked across the Apache’s chest again, producing another fine red line.
    “Reluctant, ain’t he?” Horn said to Sieber as Captain Crane strode over.
    “Mr. Sieber,” Crane fumed, “I can’t allow this....”
    Sieber paid no attention.
    “No, you can’t, Captain,” Horn said evenly. “So why don’t you take a walk? Won’t be long now.”
    “It won’t be long before this man bleeds to death.”
    “You want to find Goklaya?” Horn asked.
    “Of course I do,” the young officer replied. “But...”
    “There’s no worse death for an Apache,” Horn said, “than to be strung upside-down and bleed to death.”
    The Apache Kid picked up a handful of blood-soaked dirt and let it filter through his fingers.
    “His spirit’s doomed to wander down below, Captain,” said the Kid, “instead of up there in the heavenly hunting grounds.”
    “He’ll tell,” Horn added.
    Sieber nodded, and the Kid started to slice again. At the touch of the blade the Apache screamed a ghostly scream that echoed
     through the dark canyons. The Kid smiled and relaxed.
    “You see, Captain,” Horn said pleasantly.
    Later, Tom Horn gave the Mexican women food and talked to them in Spanish. They were shrouded in army blankets and clung to
     their rosaries. Captain Crane stood nearby.
    “Gracias, señor,”
said the oldest woman.
    “Por nada, señora,”
Horn replied, then walked away as Crane followed.
    “Poor, miserable creatures,” Crane intoned. “What kind of a life will they go back to?”
    “Better than the one they had ahead of them,” Horn answered.
    “Yes,” Crane