March, 2010

Issue #6

Apache Gold, Part 2
by Kenneth Newton

Through the field glasses Drake could make out the shimmering image of six men riding abreast at a slow gallop. Just out of rifle range they stopped, and one man continued at a trot, a white flag held above his head on the end of a lance.

"Give me your truce flag, Sergeant," Drake said as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the rear of the column. "Unhitch that gun and get it ready to use." Six days earlier they'd assembled the Gatling gun, and they were now pulling it behind the stout mule that had packed it all the way from Virginia.

The old sergeant was used to barking orders. "Simmons, Getusky! Break out that gun! Everybody dismount and take cover as best you can, and wait for orders!" Turning back to Drake, he said, "I wouldn't go out there by m'self, Cap'n. A man shouldn't trust a injun with his life."

The Indian continued to advance alone. "He seems to trust us," Drake said, "and I won't get any closer to his men than he gets to mine." He nodded toward the pair of pommel holsters slung across his saddle, each of which held a .44 caliber Colt's Dragoon revolver. "These horse pistols have seen me through a few scrapes in twenty years. I'll be all right. But if anything happens to me, the most important thing is to complete the mission, and get the boys out of here." He handed Gage the oilskin pouch. "If the location of the cave is as accurate as everything else on these maps, it's no more than half a day southwest of here. And if the mountain looks anything like O'Kelly's sketch, you shouldn't have any trouble finding it." He unholstered the revolvers and checked the loads, put them away, and turned back to Gage. "If there's any gold to be had, Sergeant, you can't leave here without it, no matter if I'm dead or alive. Is that understood?"

Gage scowled, but nodded. "Me'n the boys only got to run a few rounds through that gun back in Virginny, but we damn sure know how to make her spit lead. If'n that savage tries somethin, there'll be hell to pay. But I wisht I'd never heard tell of that damn gold."

Drake almost smiled. "Well, as someone once said to me, it's a bit late for those sentiments. We're soldiers. We'll do our job, or die trying. If anything happens to me, you're in charge, and you're to get that gold and deliver it into the Confederacy's hands. That's an order, Sgt. Gage."

Drake urged his mount in the direction of the lone rider. The big bay gelding was bone tired, and didn't want to so much as trot, but he was game, and he grudgingly headed out at a canter toward the advancing Apache.

The two men stopped when they were fifty feet apart, and then, as if on cue, each nudged his horse forward at a walk. When they stopped again, their horses were muzzle to muzzle. They studied each other in silence broken only by an occasional snort from one of their mounts.

The Indian was the younger man, no more than thirty-five, and tall for an Apache, with straight black hair that hung down his back past his shoulder blades. He wore a blue bandana around his head, tied at the back, and a red calico shirt with buckskin breeches and a white cotton breechclout. His mocassined feet were in the stirrups of a McClellan saddle that was covered with a gray woolen blanket. He held his lance in his left hand, and the buttstock of a Henry repeater protruded from a U.S. Army saddle scabbard beneath his right leg.

His dark eyes betrayed no fear or emotion of any kind as he sized up the tall and wiry graycoat soldier with the faded coat and brown trousers. Milagro knew white soldiers would lie beneath their peace rag. They always did, no matter the color of their uniforms. But in his experience, they wouldn't start a fight until after they had made their demand, and been refused. Then they would go away, and come back later with more men, ready to fight.

"Buenos dias," Drake said. "I have been sent by the chief of the graycoat soldiers to speak with Milagro."

The Apache straightened in the saddle. "I am the one the Mexicans call Milagro." The white man was dirty from head to toe. His pale blue eyes were set deep in his head, with long lines at the corners, and his horse was exhausted. "You have come a long way," said Milagro. "Have you finished your fight with the bluecoats, and come back to fight the Apache?"

"I come as a friend, to make peace, now and forever, between the graycoats and the Apache. My name is Harlan Drake. I'm a captain in the graycoat army." He transferred the white flag to his left hand and extended his right.

The Indian frowned, and made no move to accept the hand. "I have met only two white men who wanted to be a friend to the Apache, and other white men killed them both. What does your chief want from me?"

Drake cleared his throat. "The bluecoats are your enemy, and ours. You have something that is of no use to you, and the graycoat soldiers need it to continue to fight our common enemy. It will be good for both of us when we defeat the bluecoats. My chief has sent me for the gold."

Milagro arched a brow. "What gold?"

"The gold the Mexicans took from the bluecoats, and you took from the Mexicans. O'Kelly was sent back east to fight in the big fight. We captured him and he told us you have it."

The Indian sneered. "O'Kelly! That one is a coward who would betray his mother to save himself. But if I have this gold, you have not told me why I should give it to you."

"After we defeat the bluecoats, we will burn their forts and make the white settlers leave, and give Apache land back to the Apaches. We'll punish the Mexicans and Commanches for raiding here." Drake could see that Milagro wasn't impressed by his speech, and he wasn't surprised. He didn't think much of it himself. "Hell, the truth is, you may be better off if the graycoats win the war, but I can't promise you a thing. I was sent to get the gold any way I can. I don't want to, but I'll fight you for it if I have to." He decided to play his trump card. "We have a new gun that you can't defeat. With it, one man can kill every Apache in an afternoon."

The Apache people had few friends; Milagro would have been willing to accept Drake as an honest enemy, but then came the lie about the gun. He gripped the butt of the Henry. "This gun can kill more men than the soldiers' guns, but it cannot do what you say. I have never seen such a gun."

"It's not a rifle. That's it over there, on wheels like a cannon. I don't want a fight, Milagro. If I show you that the gun will do what I say, will you let me take the gold and go in peace?" Drake knew the offer was a gamble. The Gatling gun might fire all day, but it was just as likely to misfeed and jam every five rounds.

Milagro shook his head. "If you have a gun that will do what you say, I will trade the gold for it."

Milagro stopped in mid sentence, and both men looked to the west, their attention drawn there by the pounding hooves and rattling sabres of a small Union cavalry patrol as its vanguard topped a rise a quarter mile away. The eight or ten troopers fanned out along the ridge and stopped as their dust came up from behind and enveloped them.

Milagro trained a livid glare on Drake, who raised his hands in supplication. "They're no friends of mine."

Both men sat motionless in the saddle and watched as a single rider emerged from the dust and loped toward them, a white flag in the air above his head. Drake looked to his men. As Sgt. Gage had ordered, they had dismounted and taken what cover they could find, mostly behind small boulders and bushes. Gage, Simmons, and Getusky were more exposed, out front manning the Gatling gun, which looked to be set up and ready to fire. Milagro's companions sat stockstill on their ponies, watching and waiting.

The young lieutenant reined in, his mount nearly perpendicular to the two men's animals. He smiled, showing even, white teeth. He was clean-shaven and handsome, with thick blond hair prominent at his ears and down his neck. "Gentlemen," he said, "I hope I'm not interrupting anything." Neither man responded, and he went on. "I know this fellow to be Milagro, and I expect you must be Capt. Harlan Drake."

Drake was taken aback. "You have the advantage of me, Lieutenant. How do you know my name?"

The young man removed his right glove and extended the bare hand. "Forgive me, Captain. Lt. William Tyler, 2nd U. S. Cavalry. Say, does he speak English?"

Drake released the lieutenant's hand with a bemused grin. This proceeding was becoming increasingly bizarre by the moment. He looked to Milagro and asked, "Habla ingles?" The Apache turned his head to the side and spat.

"I'd take that to be a no. And I'll ask again how you know me."

"I not only know who you are, I know why you're here," the young man replied. "You and I need to talk, Captain." He glanced from side to side. "Preferably somewhere in the shade, if there's any shade to be found around here..."

Lt. Tyler's voice trailed off and his eyes stopped their search. He was distracted by a puff of smoke from atop a rocky hillside behind and above the Confederate position. His eyes widened in surprise as the bullet arrived just ahead of the report, thudding loudly into his abdomen above the navel.

Drake's mount started and reared, and in so doing put itself in the path of the second slug. The gelding flinched violently when the bullet struck its neck, and stumbled slightly as its front hooves regained the ground, but the beleaguered warhorse didn't fall. Another bullet hissed overhead as Milagro wheeled his pony about and kicked it into a gallop. The Apache hunkered low over his horse's withers as he sped away toward his companions.

Drake cursed his foul luck as sporadic shooting erupted from the blue and gray ranks. The distance between the two forces was too great for either side to do wholesale damage to the other; he and the boy, meanwhile, were in no man's land, and well within range of a stray round from either direction. Lt. Tyler put his hand to his stomach and pulled it slowly away, staring incredulously at the crimson stain on his palm. He trained a bewildered glare on Drake, silently demanding an explanation for the treachery that had wounded him.

Drake snatched up the lieutenant's reins as the staccato bark of the Gatling gun joined the rifle fire. "Oh, Christ!" he muttered. Things were rapidly going to hell, and the Gatling gun was showing the way. There was a sizable clump of rocks, perhaps two hundred yards away in the direction of the near foothills, and the immediate problem was to get himself and Lt. Tyler some cover. As he urged his bleeding horse forward, Drake saw that Sgt. Gage had the gun trained not on the yankees or Indians, but on the hillside behind them. The heavy bullets were lifting chunks of earth and rock into the air and splintering foliage, but Drake couldn't see any sign of a rifleman in the midst of the hail of slugs.

Apparently satisfied with the work he'd done on the hill, Gage ordered the gun wheeled about. The Apaches had vanished, so he directed fire on the Union line. Drake was raising a hand to call the sergeant off when his dying horse stumbled and fell. Unhorsed, he lost his hold on the white flag and Tyler's reins, and the panicked animal reared and threw the lieutenant as Gage opened up on the Federals. The bluecoats withdrew and dropped out of site behind the rise, but several quickly reappeared in prone position, leveling their carbines and firing at will as the Gatling gun peppered the ground in front of them.

Drake crawled to Tyler's side, and realized that at least some of the Union fire was directed at him. He managed to get himself and Tyler behind his fallen horse as bullets whined all around them. Two slugs struck the thrashing animal, and it heaved a final heavy sigh and became still as the firing tapered off. Drake rested a few seconds to catch his breath, and checked Tyler's wound. When he presssed he could feel the bullet with his finger; if the bleeding stopped, the boy might have a chance.

"Why did your man on the hill shoot me, Captain?" Lt. Tyler's tone was calm, and matter-of-fact.

"I don't know who shot you, son, but it wasn't one of my men. Our problem right now, though, is that your men are shooting at us. We need to show them you're not dead."

"They're not too far wrong, are they? I'm gut-shot. I know what that means."

"Well, if it was me, I'd be a goner. But you've been eating better than me, and you're stronger. I think maybe the bullet's into nothing more than fat and muscle." Drake pressed a kerchief against the wound. "Here. You hold this, and I'll get that white flag up in the air again and call this off. Do you have a surgeon?"

Tyler swallowed hard. "At Ft. Craig, yes. And my men should already be on their way there by now. They had orders to go for reinforcements if it came to a fight." He shook his head. "I never dreamed it would."

Drake could see no movement atop the rise. "You may be right."

A few minutes later Gage confirmed it as he galloped up and dismounted, excited and breathing heavily. "The 'paches and yanks have all turned tail, Cap'n. That gun's a reg'lar corker. She's jammed up right now, but the boys'll have her goin in a minute. Why, if'n we'd a had a dozen o' them at Gettysburg, we coulda showed them yanks a thing or two, I'll wager."

Half an hour later Lt. Tyler had his shady spot. They'd strung a tarpaulin between two pinion pines and put him on a blanket out of the sun, then given him the last of their laudanum and enough food and water to last until the patrol from Ft. Craig came after him. His wound had stopped bleeding, and he was resting fairly comfortably when Drake knelt down beside him. "I'd like to have that talk now, Lieutenant, if you're up to it."

Tyler lifted his heavy lids and nodded. "I believe that's a good idea." He swallowed hard and continued. "They found a copy of your orders, maybe in Richmond, or maybe with one of your officers in the field. Most of the north and west is connected by telegraph now, Captain. They wired us some time ago that you might be on your way here, or that you might have already come and gone. Then a few days ago, one of our Apache scouts spotted you, and they relayed the word to the fort. When they set out to deliver a message quickly, they can put the pony express to shame."

Drake didn't know what the pony express might be; he did know an Indian could travel light and fast when he wanted to. But he was more interested in goings-on back east. "Are you saying you've taken Richmond?"

The young man fixed his eyes on Drake's. "As I said, we have a lot to talk about. First of all, Captain, there is no gold out here, and never was. There was a shipment, all right. But all it's good for is making bullets and sinkers for fishing. It was just lead, made to look like gold. It's called fire gilding. Somehow or other they put a thin layer of real gold on the lead, and it sticks like skin."

Drake shook his head. "For what reason?"

"The shipment was a decoy. Details of it were intentionally let slip, in Denver and Mexico, and points in between. The idea was to draw attention to this shipment, in hopes the real gold shipment would go unnoticed."

Drake shook his head in disgust. "I hope somebody needed that gold real bad."

"Well, they told us at West Point a leader sometimes has to make hard decisions. I trust the officer who decided to sacrifice those men has lost his share of sleep over it. Trouble was, there were rumors going around about sending gold to Mexico, and they were true. It was necessary to risk a handful of lives for a greater good." Tyler grimaced in pain, and took a deep breath before continuing. "The gold was bound for the war coffers of Mexican President Benito Juarez. The United States had formally recognized his government; he had ideas our government liked, including his opposition to slavery in Mexico. But he had enemies who were getting outside help, mainly from France, and he needed cash. The actual shipment went to California, then to Acapulco by sea. Juarez supposedly got it, but if he did, it didn't help him much, because Maximilian was in charge inside of six months." Tyler responded to Drake's puzzled expression. "He's the Austrian the French have made Emperor of Mexico."

Drake stood and walked a few steps away. In a single motion he removed his hat and wiped his brow with his sleeve, then he slapped the dusty hat against his leg. "I might have chewed tougher gristle," he said as he stared out across the desert, "though I can't say I remember when."

"There's more to choke down. Do you know what the date is, Captain Drake?"

Drake turned back toward Tyler. "I'd make it early June."

"It's Sunday, the fourth of June, 1865, to be precise. You were a while getting here."

"We travelled mostly at night, trying to avoid patrols. Hell, we laid up for days at a time, waiting for a chance to slip by a bunch of you all without trouble. Even so, we had four skirmishes, and I lost three men and two horses on the way. There's a war going on back there, Lieutenant. Or should I say there was a war going on?"

Tyler nodded. "General Lee surrendered on April ninth. For all practical purposes, the war's been over for nearly two months. Bring me my saddlebags, if you would."

When Drake handed him the bags, Tyler removed a folded newspaper and handed it over. Drake perused the paper in silence. The copy of the Denver Herald was dated April 15. "ASSASSINATION!" the huge headline read, and the sub-headline added, "President Lincoln Murdered. The Nation in Mourning." Drake nodded and returned the newspaper to Tyler, then went to talk with his men.

An hour later they were ready to leave, and Drake knelt down beside Tyler, who was looking at a small photograph. "Are you a family man, Captain?" he asked.

"No, I never seemed to find the time for all that."

Tyler showed him the picture of a raven haired young woman. "A man needs to make time. Our first is on the way. She's going to join me after the baby comes, as soon as they're able to travel. There's no finer thing that having a good woman and children at home."

Drake nodded. "I don't doubt that. I hope you understand I can't stay here with you. I'm not doing any more fighting, but I'll not see these men clamped in irons for six months while some desk major decides what to do with them." He breathed a heavy sigh. "If there was anything I could do for you, I'd send them home and stay with you, but..."

Tyler didn't make him finish the sentence. "I know, and I also know the grief that has befallen me is of my own doing. I'm not your responsibility. There'll be a patrol out looking for me tomorrow. With luck they'll get here before the Apaches come back."

Drake put a hand on the lieutenant's shoulder. "What made you come out here with barely more than a squad in the first place? If you hadn't run into us, Milagro would have made short work of your patrol."

"I don't think so. The militia has been tough on him the last couple of years--worse than the regular army ever was. Their goal is extermination, and they waste no effort looking for a legal pretext to shoot Indians. The half dozen braves Milagro had with him are most likely all he's got left. My intent, if I ran into him, was to offer him a final chance to come to the fort and surrender, and lead his people back to the reservation." Lt. Tyler closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "I didn't get out of West Point in time to fight in the war. I'm embarrassed to admit it, Captain, but the reason I brought my little volunteer patrol out here was to find you, and accept the final surrender of the Civil War. I thought perhaps there might be room in the history books for a short paragraph on the subject. Instead, I may well become..." His voice trailed off.

Drake knew what Lt. Tyler's footnote to history might be. He went to his mount and retrieved his saber, then walked back to kneel for a final time beside the young officer. "Lt. Tyler," he said, "I surrender. The Union can count on no more trouble from me." He held out the saber.

Tyler turned his head. "Thank you, Captain, but there is no need to humor me at this point."

"I'm not. I'm surrendering myself and the men under my command, on the following conditions: that you not require us to stack our arms, that you let us be on our way with the animals presently in our possession, including your horse, and that you make our agreement known to the commanding officer at Ft. Craig. I don't want a platoon following me to Texas looking for a fight."

Tyler took the saber. "Those conditions are acceptable, but I would require that you make certain the Gatling gun doesn't fall into Apache hands. Either disable the weapon, or take it with you."

Drake nodded. "Agreed. Good luck to you, son," he said, extending his hand.

Tyler gripped Drake's hand as firmly as he could. "And to you, sir."

Click here to be notified when each new issue comes out!