The tunnel was an image from a nightmare. It curved enough that whatever light was in the sky got lost in the folds, the unseen walls pressing in with palpable sensation. There was the faint sound of scuttling insects, and the brush of spiders’ webs against his groping hands and face. He kept his left hand on the rock, not knowing where he was going, just following the curves as he paced onwards with his eyes straining to pick up some hint of life. It was like moving through a dream: unnatural; disembodied. He lost his sense of time and movement: became unsure whether he was going ahead or retracing his steps. His ears seemed to throb with unheard rhythms, and the beating of his heart took on the sonorous quality of a funeral drum. Nine times he slapped spiders from his face and then doubted he had found the right wall when his fingers touched rock again. Once, a spider landed in his mouth and he closed his teeth on the brittle, ichorous body; felt the legs scrabble against his lips. He spat it out, feeling nausea churn in his gut as he hoped the nip of the mandibles against his mouth had not fed poison into his bloodstream.
And then there was light.
At first it was dim, a dull glow that was like the far away shining of campfires seen from a great distance; unreal.
He came to the end of the tunnel and saw that the glow emanated from a series of caves honeycombing the rock where the trail led down into a hollow. The hollow was a hundred feet or more below him, the trail coming out from the tunnel on a wide-swinging path that wound down the south, west, and north sides of the canyon before reaching the bottomland. Where it touched the base, it fed into a meadow that was still lush with grass, a spring bursting from the western face of the rock before disappearing into a declivity of the stone a few yards on. Around the spring there was a fence containing the broncos, mustangs and a single stage horse. All around the base of the bowl there were caves, from which came the glow of the hues he had seen.
He studied the path down, knowing instantly that he would be spotted as soon as he began the descent. There were men posted at three points along the downwards path: two where it curved from west to north; two more where it went into the eastern swing; and two more at the base. There, its black mouth flanked by the sentries, was a second tunnel that he guessed was an escape route to the north.
He remembered something his father, Kieron Gunn, had told him. Something about riding in with your head up high, or your tail between your legs. He couldn’t recall the exact words now, but he knew that if he tried to slink into the bronco camp he would be shot down before he got anywhere close to the caves.
So he turned around and stumbled his way back through the tunnel.
He reached the place where he had left his horse as the sky got opalescent with the misty gray brightness of the predawn. The stallion rasped a faint greeting and the half-breed stroked the muzzle again, then mounted.
It was cold as he followed the narrow trail through the rocks, moisture dripping in slimy folds from the stone and a fretting drizzle blowing on the tail of the night wind. By the time he reached the wider path leading up towards the mesa the clouds were drifted off to the north and a steady trickle of rain was falling.
He reached the tunnel and dismounted again, calming the nervous horse as he led the animal into the nightmare blackness. Just inside the exit he remounted, slicking back his soaking hair before riding out on to the downwards path.
It was dry inside the hidden canyon, some natural upthrust of the air maintaining a column of warmth that held off the clouds, driving the rain away to the perimeters. He rode slowly, not trying to hide himself, waiting to be challenged.
The first set of guards stepped on to the trail with bows drawn back and stone-tipped arrows nocked against the gut strings.
‘I am Azul,’ he said in the language of the Apaches, slipping naturally into his mother’s tongue. ‘I have come for the white man your leader took from his raid on the stagecoach.’
The bows stayed pointed on his chest, but one warrior grunted, ‘Tell the others to pass word to Knife-With-Two-Sides.’
Azul waited in silence as the younger man hurried down the slope, pausing to speak with the second set of sentries before running back to his position. A man from the second post went down to the base of the path and spoke with the two guards there, then one of those moved over the dew-wet grass to a cave.
After a while a runner came panting up the slope.
‘Knife-With-Two-Sides will speak with this one. I am to take him down.’
The older guard nodded and motioned for Azul to pass by. The half-breed stretched his right hand down towards the runner and said. ‘Climb up behind me. It will be easier that way.’
The man took his hand gratefully, springing on to the gray horse’s back behind the half-breed’s saddle. And they went down into the bowels of the canyon.
‘There,’ said the runner when they reached the bottom, pointing to a large cave. ‘Knife-With-Two-Sides waits for you.’
He dropped from the stallion’s back and was lost in the mist rising from the grass. The bottom of the canyon was still relatively dark, the sun not yet high enough to pierce light into the steep-sided bowl, so that most of the illumination came from the fires around the caves. Azul noticed that they were made of a mixture of wood and dung, giving off hardly any smoke. Again, he recognized the skill of the man who had planned all this.
He rode towards the cave and halted in front, awaiting an invitation to dismount, as was natural to Indian custom.
Then a man came out from the entrance. He was around six feet tall, big for an Apache, with wide shoulders and the deep chest typical of the mountain-dwelling Indians. His hair was raven black, falling from under the confines of a red scarf that was banded with leather, to the shoulders of his pale blue shirt. A Cavalry-style gun belt spanned his waist, holding the shirt in over a breechclout and buckskin pants that were tucked, like Azul’s, into high moccasins. There was a knife sheathed on his right hip. Azul looked at the long scar running down the side of his face and the Winchester rifle he held in his hands.
Knife-With-Two-Sides sniffed a dribble of phlegm back inside his cut nostrils and spat.
‘What do you want?’
‘The man you took off the stage,’ said Azul. ‘I want him.’
‘Why?’ asked the Mimbreño. ‘Why should I give him to you?’
‘I am Chiricahua,’ said Azul. ‘My mother was a child of Mangas Colorado. The pinda-lick-oyi is a friend. I gave him my word that I would see him safe to Lordsburg.’
Knife sniffed and spat again. ‘The word of a half-breed is not worth much. Not to me.’
‘I gave it,’ repeated Azul. ‘I will keep it.’
‘Not if I kill you,’ said the Mimbreño. ‘That way you can never keep it.’
‘Nor you,’ said Azul coldly. ‘If you try to kill me, I shall kill you.’
Knife-With-Two-Side’s Winchester swung round to point on Azul’s chest.
‘You would be dead before me,’ he said.
Azul smiled a cold, humorless smile and said, ‘You would not see me die. You would be stamping the Star Road before me.’
He felt the short hairs on his spine prickle as the Mimbreño cocked the rifle and behind him the same clacking of hammers and the softer sound of bowstrings going back warned him of the missiles that would pluck him from his saddle in bloody rain at the first sign of an attack on the war leader.
His hands closed on the butt of the Colt, and his cold blue eyes went on boring into the Mimbreño’s black orbs.
‘I think you had better draw that pistol, mestizo,’ said Knife-With-Two-Sides. ‘I think I would like to see you filled up with arrows and bullets.’
Azul’s hand fastened tighter on the grip of the Colt. His thumb took the hammer back, ready to haul the pistol clear and plant at least one shot in the bronco’s body before he died.
And then a fresh voice rang out over the clearing, one Azul recognized.
