the Lonely Men (1969) Read Free Page B

to Tucson at once, and unless she was equally mistaken, he would start at once for the Sierra Madres. The rest would be up to the Apaches.
    What the Apaches failed to do, if they failed, might be done by other means ... for which the Apaches would receive due credit.
    Skillfully, she drew out the young lieutenant, and his comments were added to from time to time by one or another of the coach passengers. By the time the stage arrived in Tucson, Laura was well posted on the activities of the Apaches in Arizona Territory, as well as on the many times they had killed or kidnapped children, from the Oatman Massacre to the moment of her stage trip.
    "Supposing one man or several men -- not soldiers -- were to try to go into the Sierra Madres?" she asked Lieutenant Davis.
    "They would never return alive." The lieutenant was positive. "They wouldn't have a chance."
    One of the passengers, a bleak, hard-faced man in rough frontier garb, looked around at him briefly. "Depend on the man," he said after a moment, but if he was heard his comment was not acknowledged.
    That night, seated before her mirror, Laura Sackett knew she had found what she wanted. To trap his beloved brother would be just as satisfying as to trap Orrin himself, or Tyrel, whom she blamed even more.
    She wished only for one thing: to see their faces when they realized how their brother had been duped.
    When that man at the stage station in Yuma told me there was a letter for me I thought he was surely mistaken. Why, I couldn't recall getting more than three or four letters in my whole life, and nobody knew I was in Yuma -- nobody at all.
    None of us folks had been much hand to write. Orrin and Tyrel had learned to write, but with me writing was an almighty slow affair, and not one to be undertaken lightly. And we were never much on just exchanging letters unless there was something all-fired important. But sure enough, this letter was for me, William Tell Sackett. It read:
    Dear Tell:
    Our son, Orrin's and mine, has been taken by the Apaches. Orrin is in Washington, D. C. Tyrel is laid up.
    Can you help me?
    Laura Sackett So old Orrin had him a boy! Now, nobody had seen fit to tell me, but drifting place to place the way I'd been, it was no wonder. And no need for me to know, when it came to that.
    None of the family knew where I was, but that need cut no ice now. When I'd needed help the whole lot of them had come a-running, and if the Apaches had Orrin's boy I'd have to move fast before they killed him ... if they hadn't already.
    A body never knew what the Apaches would do. They might kill a child right off, or they might cotton to the youngster and raise him like one of their own sons, and with just as much affection and care. A lot depended on how old the boy was, on how he reacted, and on how fast the Apaches had to move.
    The Apaches, I knew, had respect for the brave. They had no use for weakness or cowardice, and you'd get nothing but contempt by asking for mercy.
    An Apache admired the virtues he himself needed in the life he led. Bravery, fortitude, endurance, and the skills of the hunter and the hunted -- these were important to him, these he understood.
    Tucson lay still under a hot noonday sun when we dusted our hocks down the main drag, eyes open for a saloon or an eating house where there'd be shade, something to wet our whistles, and the trail gossip we were eager to hear.
    We rode into town with care, for we were all men with enemies. We rode with our guns loose in the holsters, ready to run or fight, as the case might be, but the street was empty, heavy with heat.
    The temperature was over a hundred in the shade.
    "All this town needs," John J. Battles said, "is more water and a better class of people."
    "That's all hell needs," Spanish replied. "Let's get into the shade."
    We were hard and lonely men who rode a hard and lonely way. We had known nothing of each other until this ride began in Yuma, and even now we knew scarcely more.
    But we had