The Trickster With The Sidewinder Gaze

April 5, 2016
   If you want to unsettle an Apache, have an owl land on a branch near where they are sleeping and give a few hoots.

Daily Whip Out: "Giving A Hoot."

   It's an omen of death and is not appreciated. In many ways,  Mickey Free, accepted all this superstition at face value, which did him no favors when it came time to make rational decisions. Fortunately for him, he was rarely put in rational situations.

Daily Whip Out: "Mick On His Mammoth Jack"

He had a sidewinder gaze and he crossed the border near Naco and headed south across a broad plain.

Daily Whip Out: "Mick Rides On"

Three days later, he was high in the Sierra Madres at a point near Divisidaro, overlooking Copper Canyon.

Daily Whip Out: "Mick Looks Down"

Somewhere, out there, the Apache Kid is waiting.

Daily Whip Out: "Chomping at The Bit"

A cranky red mule being ridden by a red-headed Irish-Mexican raised as an Apache. Now there's a country-western song waiting to happen.

Daily Whip Out: "Mick Rides Into Los Muertos Just Ahead of The Storm"

   Unfortunately, Mickey is confronted in a cantina by the future son-in-law of the "Mad Russian" and kills him in self-defense, which brings out every trigger-happy Rurale in the entire state of Sonora and Chihuahua.

   Mickey eludes the Mad Russian’s elite squad, but he is caught with his pants down and is disarmed and taken to the hoosgow in the mountain village of Opodepe. The local Alcade sends a rider to Magdalena to inform  Emilio Kosterlinsky they have captured Mickey Free, the outlaw who shot his son-in-law at Los Muertos. The Alcade puts a double guard on the small jail. “Be careful and diligent," he tells the two civilian jailers. "He is a notorious coyote and will no doubt resort to his usual tricks."

   Even the ending was a trick. He was the trickster, after all. 

“The Apaches are pure democrats, each warrior being his own master.”

—John C. Cremony, as quoted by Paul Andrew Hutton in his new book, “The Apache Wars”