The Killing Ground

Chapter 5.

For days they traveled, the young man and the Yavapai girl. She told him her name and they spoke in the language. They rode the horses until they gave out, then their throats were slit and meat was taken to eat later. No fires were lit. They ate berries and raw jackrabbit as well to keep going. After a week they relaxed more as they entered Apache area. They saw dust way off like dust-devils but they knew it was horses, they could hear shots and no more.

When all was quiet a day later, they moved silently towards the killing ground. The buzzards told them the story before they got there. Dead white people, a lot of them, maybe a half dozen. Burnt wagons and arrows, [?] from one tribe, some of the arrows were different and shot hoof marks and moccasin tracks that were shaped like a white man's way of walking. Some white men had done this loosely disguised as Apache. They took what they could use and walked on. The purple mountains and red ochre earth swallowed them up and the young man smelt his own blood as they ran and it was a good smell, the smell of being alive.