“They do the same thing to them they do to Indian women,” Braden said, and after that no one spoke for a minute. All the sounds, the rattling and the wind hissing by, were outside. Inside it was quiet.
I kept thinking that somebody ought to say something to change the subject. In the first place I felt uneasy with the talk about Apaches and John Russell sitting there. Second, I thought Braden certainly shouldn’t have said what he did with ladies present, even if Mrs. Favor had started it. I thought Dr. Favor would say something to her again, but he didn’t. He could have been seven hundred miles away, his hand holding the side curtain open a little and staring out at the darkness.
I would like to have said that I thought Mr. Braden should be reminded that there were ladies present, but instead I said, “I don’t know if the ladies enjoy this kind of talk very much.” That was a mistake.
Braden said, “What kind of talk?”
“I mean about Apache Indians and all.”
“That’s not what you meant,” Braden said.
“Mr. Braden.” The McLaren girl, her hands folded in her lap, was looking directly at him. “Why don’t you just be quiet for a while?”
Braden was surprised, as all of us were, I suppose. He said, “You speak right up, don’t you?”
“I don’t see any other way,” she said.
“I was talking to that boy next to you.”
“But it concerned me,” the McLaren girl said. “So if you’d be so kind as to shut up, I’d appreciate it.”
That was something for her to say. The only trouble was, it egged Braden on. “A nice girl talking like that,” he said, watching her. “Maybe you lived with them too long. Maybe that’s it. You live with them a while and you forget how a white person talks.”
I couldn’t see Russell’s face or his reaction to all this. But a minute later I could see what was going to happen, and I began thinking every which way of how to change the subject.
“A white woman,” Mrs. Favor said, “couldn’t live the way they do. The Apache woman rubbing skins and grinding corn, their hair greasy and full of vermin. The men no better. All of them standing around or squatting, picking at themselves and the dogs sniffing them. They even eat the dogs sometimes.”
She was watching the McLaren girl again, leading up to something, but I wasn’t sure what. “I wonder,” she said, “if a woman could fall into their ways and after a while it wouldn’t bother her. Like eating with your fingers. Or do you suppose you could eat a dog and not think anything of it?”
Here’s where you could see it coming.
John Russell said, “What if you didn’t have anything else to eat?” This was the first time he’d spoken since we left Sweetmary. His voice was calm, but still there was an edge to it.
Mrs. Favor looked from the McLaren girl to Russell.
“I don’t care how hungry I got. I know I wouldn’t eat one of those camp dogs.”
“I think,” John Russell said, “you have to know the hunger they feel before you can be sure.”
“The government supplies them with meat,” Mrs. Favor said. “Every week or so I’d see them come in for their beef ration. And they’re allowed to hunt. They can hunt whenever their rations are low.”
“But they are always low,” Russell said. “Or used up, and there’s not game enough to take care of everybody.”
“You hear all kinds of stories of how the Indian is oppressed by the white man,” Dr. Favor said. I was surprised that he had been listening and seemed interested now.
He said, “I suppose you will always hear those stories as long as there is sympathy for the Indian’s plight, and that’s a good thing. But you have to live on a reservation for a time, like San Carlos, to see that caring for Indians is not a simple matter of giving them food and clothing.”
He was watching John Russell all the while and seemed to be picking his words carefully. “You see all the problems then that the Interior Department is faced with,” he said. “The natural resentment on the part of the Indians, their distrust, their reluctance to cultivate the soil.”
“Having to live where they don’t want to live,” John Russell said.
“That too,” Dr. Favor agreed. “Which can’t be helped for the time being.” His eyes were still on Russell. “Do you happen to know someone at San Carlos?”
“Many of them,” Russell said.
“You’ve visited the agency?”
“I lived there. For three years.”
“I didn’t think I recognized you,” Dr. Favor said. “Did you work for one of the suppliers?”
“On the police,” Russell said.
Dr. Favor didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see his expression in the dimness, only that he was still looking at Russell.
Then his wife said, “But the police are all Apaches.”
She stopped there, and all you heard was the rattling and creaking and wind rushing past and the muffled pounding of the horses.
I thought, Now he’ll explain it. Whether he thinks they’ll believe him or not, at least he’ll say something.
But John Russell didn’t say a word. Not one single word. Maybe he’s thinking how to explain it, I thought. There was no way of knowing that. But he must have been thinking something and I would have given anything to know what it was. How he could just sit there in that silence was the hardest thing I have ever tried to figure out.
Finally Mrs. Favor said, “Well, I guess you never know.”
You never know what? I thought. You never know a lot of things. Still, it was pretty plain what she meant.
Braden was looking at me. He said, “You let anybody on your stage?”
“I don’t work for the company anymore,” I answered. I’ll admit, it was a weak-sister thing to say, but why should I stick up for Russell?
This wasn’t any of my business. He couldn’t help the ex-soldier, saying it was none of his business. All right, this was none of my business. If he wanted to act like an uncivilized person-which is what he must be and you could see it clearer all the time-then let him alone. Let him act any way he wanted.
I wasn’t his father. He was full grown. So let him talk for himself if he had anything to say.
But maybe he even thought he really was Apache. That had never occurred to me before. It would have been something to look into his mind. Not for long. Not for more than a few minutes; just time enough to look around with his eyes, around and back at things that had happened to him. That would tell you a few things.
I started to think of the stories Henry Mendez had told about Russell, piecing little bits of it together now.
How he had been Juan something living in a Mexican pueblo before the Apaches came raiding and took some of the women and children. How he had been named Ish-kay-nay and brought up by these Chiricahuas and made the son of Sonsichay, one of the sub-chiefs of the band. Five years with them and he must have learned an awful lot.
Then, after that, living in Contention with Mr. James Russell until he was about sixteen. He had gone to school there. And he had almost killed a boy in a fight. Maybe there was a good reason he did it. But he had left soon after, so maybe there wasn’t a good reason; maybe he just couldn’t be taught anything.
Then the most interesting part. How John Russell got his next name, Tres Hombres.
He had been with the mule packers on that campaign of the Third Cavalry’s, chasing down into Mexico after the bands of Chato and Chihuahua, and he got his new name in a meadow high in the Sierra Madre, two days west of the village of Tesorababi.
He had gone out looking for these mule packers who had wandered off the trail, hunting them all day and finding them, three mozos and eighteen mules, an hour before dark and a moment before the sudden gunfire came out of the canyon walls and caught them and ended four of the mules.
John Russell, who was sometimes Juan or Juanito, but more often Ish-kay-nay to the older ones of the Apache Police, shot six more of the mules in the moments that followed and he and the mozos laid behind the dead mules all night and all the next day. The Apaches, nine or ten of them, came twice. Running and screaming the first time they left two dead before they could creep back out of range of John Russell’s Spencer. That was the evening of the first day. They came again at dawn, silently through the rocks with their bodies mud-streaked and branches of mesquite in their head-bands. They said that John Russell, with the Spencer steadied on the neck of a dead mule, waited until he was sure. He fired seven times with the Spencer, taking his time as they came at him, and emptied his Colt revolver at them as they ran. Maybe two more were hit.
The packers, their eyes closed and their bodies tight against the mules while the firing was going on, smiled at John Russell and laughed with relief at their fear when it was over. And, when they returned to the main column, they told how this one had fought like three men against ten times as many of the barbarians. From then on, among the Apache Police at San Carlos, the trackers at Fort Apache and Cibucu, John Russell was known as Tres Hombres.
But knowing all this wasn’t the same as seeing things through his eyes. Maybe his past relations with white people explained why he acted the way he did, why he didn’t speak up now, but I’m not sure. Maybe you can see it.
It was colder later on, so I got the two robes from the floor and handed one of them to Dr. Favor. He took it and his wife spread it out so it would cover Frank Braden too. I unfolded the other robe for our seat. There was the soft clicking sound of the McLaren girl’s beads as she raised her hands. She gathered the end of the robe close to her, wedging it against her leg and not offering any of it to John Russell. I even had the feeling she had moved closer to me, but I wasn’t sure.
I heard Dr. Favor say something to his wife; the sound not the words. She told him not to be silly. I asked the McLaren girl if she was comfortable. She said, yes, thank you. Mostly though, no one spoke. It was a lot colder and the canvas curtains, that were all the way down now, would be flat one minute, then snap and billow out with the wind and through the opening you could see the darkness and shapes now and then going by alongside the road.
Frank Braden had eased lower in the seat and his head was very close to Mrs. Favor’s. He said something to her, a low murmur. She laughed, not out loud, almost to herself, but you could hear it. Her head moved to his and she said one word or maybe a couple. Their faces were close together for a long time, maybe even touching, and yet her husband was right there. Figure that one out.
We came in to Delgado’s Station with the slowing, braking sound of the coach coming off the slope that stretched out toward a wall of trees and the adobes that showed faintly against the trees. The coach kept rolling slower and slower and slower, with the sound of the horses getting clear and heavy, and finally we stopped. We sat there in silence and when Mrs. Favor said, “Where are we?” in just a whisper, it sounded loud inside that coach in the darkness. No one answered until we heard Henry Mendez outside.
“Delgado!” he yelled.
Then close on it came the sound of his steps and the door opened. “Delgado’s Station,” Mendez said. He stood there holding his leather bag. Beyond him, a man was coming out of the adobe carrying a lantern.
“Mendez?” The man raised the lantern.
“Who else?” Mendez said. “You still got horses?”
“For a few more days,” Delgado, the station-master, answered.
“Change them for these.”
“You got a stage?”
“A long story,” Mendez said. “Get your woman to make coffee.”
Delgado was frowning. He wore pants with striped suspenders over his underwear. “How do I know you’re coming?”
“Just move your people,” Mendez said. He turned to the coach again. “You wash at the bench by the door. You follow the path around back for other things.” He offered his hand and Mrs. Favor got out. Then the McLaren girl.
“Twice in one night,” Delgado said. “An hour ago we are in bed and three men come by.”
“You should have stayed up,” Mendez said.
Mr. Favor was just getting out of the coach. “Did you know them?” he asked.
“Some riders.”
“But did you know them?”
Delgado looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. I think they work for Mr. Wolgast.”
“Is that usual,” Dr. Favor said, “them coming by this time of night?”
“Man, it happens,” Delgado said. “People go by here.”
By the time I went around back and came out again, just Mendez and Russell were standing there. Mendez took a bottle that looked like brandy out of his leather bag and both of them had a long drink.
Two boys, in shirts and pants but barefooted, came out of the adobe. Both of them smiled at Mendez and one of them called, “Hey, Tio, what have you got?”
“Something for your grease pails,” Mendez said, “and the need of clean horses.” The boys ran off again, around the adobe, and Mendez turned to John Russell again.
“How do you like a mud wagon?”
Russell said something in Spanish.
“How do you like it in English?” Mendez said.
“That again,” Russell said.
“Practice, uh? Then you get good.”
“Maybe if I don’t speak it’s better.”
“And what does that mean?” Mendez asked.
Russell didn’t say anything. One of the boys came running out again with a bucket and Mendez said, “Paint them good, chico.”
“This costs more at night,” the boy said, still smiling, as if still smiling from before.
“I’ll pay you with something,” Mendez said. He took a swipe at the boy with the leather bag, but the boy got past him. Then he offered the brandy to Russell again. “For the dust,” he said. “Or whatever reason you want.”
While Russell was taking a drink, Mendez saw me and offered me one, so I joined them and had a swallow. It was all right, except it was so hot. I don’t know how they took the big swigs they did. Mendez took his turn then handed the bottle to Russell and went into the adobe.
The Mexican boy with the grease pail was working on the front wheels now. The other boy had unhitched the lead team and was taking the horses off. We watched them a while. Then I said, “How come you didn’t tell them?”
He looked at me, holding the bottle. “Tell them what?”
“That you’re not what they think.”
His eyes looked at me another second. Then he took a drink of the brandy.
“You want to go in?” I said. He just shrugged.
We went in then-into a low-ceilinged room that was lighted by one lantern hanging from a beam; the lantern had smoked and there was still the oil smell of it in the room.
The Favors and the McLaren girl and Braden were sitting at the main table, a long plank one in the middle of the room. Mendez stood there like he had been talking to them. But he moved away as we came in and motioned us over to a table by the kitchen door. Delgado’s wife came out with a pot of coffee, but went over to the main table before pouring us some. Mendez waited, looking at Russell all the while, until she went out to the kitchen again.
“They think you’re Apache,” he said.
Russell didn’t say anything. He was looking at the brandy bottle as if reading the small print. Mendez picked up the brandy and poured some of it in his coffee.
“You hear what I said?”
“Does it make a difference?” Russell said then.
“Dr. Favor says you shouldn’t ride in the coach,” Mendez said. “That’s the difference.”
Russell’s eyes raised to Mendez. “They all say that?”
“Listen, you wanted to ride with me before.”
“Do they all say I shouldn’t be in the coach?”
Mendez nodded. “Dr. Favor said they agreed to it. I said this boy isn’t Apache, did you ask if he was? Did you ask him anything? But this Favor says he isn’t going to argue about it.”
Russell kept looking at Mendez. “What did you say?”
“Well-I don’t know,” Mendez said. “Why have people unhappy? Why not just”-he shrugged-“let them have their way? It isn’t a big thing. I mean I don’t know if it’s something worth making trouble about. He’s got this in his mind now and we don’t have time to convince him of the truth. So why should we let it worry us, uh?”
“What if I want to ride in the coach?” Russell said.
“Listen, you wanted to ride with me before. Why all of a sudden you like it inside now?”
It was the first time I ever saw Mendez look worried, like something was happening that he couldn’t handle or have an answer for. He drank some of his coffee, but looked up quickly, holding the cup, as Braden and Dr. Favor rose from the table. Braden went outside. Dr. Favor went over to the bar where Delgado was, and Mendez seemed to relax a little and sip his coffee.