by Paul Lederer
Smuggler’s Gulch
Paul Lederer writing as Logan Winters
ONE
It wasn’t the kind of place you were likely to run across except by chance. There weren’t many maps of this corner of Arizona Territory, and few of them were more than guesses sketched out by surveyors who wished to get out as soon as possible and leave the broken, arid land to those who deserved it: the rattlesnakes and Yavapai Indians, who were not warlike, but a gloomy people, possibly a result of living a life mostly devoted to searching for water and food on this hard-bitten land.
Jacob Staggs, mostly referred to as ‘Jake’, stumbled upon the canyon in that way – by chance. He had been crossing the long white sand low desert and took the risk of riding his broken down, weary buckskin horse into the rocky highlands when they presented themselves. At the very least least, he figured, rising another few thousand feet must lead him to a cooler place to die.
Jacob ‘call me Jake’ Staggs was on the near side of twenty-five years of age and had nothing to show for that spent quarter of a century as yet. Motherless, fatherless, he had watched his uncle killed in a border skirmish and had begun wandering. In Mexico they had threatened to hang him for the crime of killing a local man’s burro. The fact that the man riding the burro had a ten-gauge shotgun aimed in Jake’s direction at the time did not sway the authorities. Jake’s shot had struck the burro and killed it. He was a stranger in a strange land and no friendly ears were willing to listen to his side of the story. The only thing to do was to run and he had. The buckskin horse he now rode had been taken from the American cattleman who had talked him into riding to Mexico in the first place. The man’s name was Bert Stiles, and it was he who had persuaded Jake to join his cattle drive and then proceeded to stiff Jake and the entire crew on their wages, leaving them broke and far from home at the end of the trail.
That was the extent of Jake’s crime spree, but he was an outlaw now on either side of the border, he supposed. And a damned unsuccessful one at that. The soles of his boots were showing holes – a sure indicator of a man in dire straits in this part of the country where a man’s boots were expected to last longer than his pony, the boots being the less used: a man desperate enough to walk from one side of the street to a saloon on the opposite side showed himself to be no real cowboy.
Jake Staggs was also out of water, and that troubled him much more than the idea that someone might see his worn out boots. He rode higher into the hills, which showed no vegetation besides an occasional yucca and scattered patches of cholla cactus, only endless stacks of yellow-gray boulders jumbled together in a sort of devil’s playground. He could feel the buckskin stumble from time to time and he stroked its neck in sympathy but that was all he could do to relieve the weary animal as it strove to pick a path upward through the weather-scoured boulders.
The furnace winds of the desert that Jake had hoped to escape blew more fiercely as they climbed. The desert wind snatched at his faded blue shirt and at the horse’s mane and tail, as if unseen fingers were trying to offer a warning and turn him back from his intended path. Maybe a man should pay attention to such small omens.
There being nothing behind him but the bluish heat-blurred vista of the long desert, Jake rode doggedly on throughout the stupor-inducing day.
When he found the canyon his reaction was that of a man stumbling through a mirage believing he has found an oasis yet uncertain as to its reality.
Cresting yet another boulder-strewn ridge, Jake felt a cool updraft; at the same time his horse’s ears pricked and its nostrils flared in eager anticipation: the horse smelled water. Jake’s senses weren’t that refined, but he could see green, living things. A staggered row of shaggy Mexican fan palm trees made its way up toward a feeder canyon, indicating water. A few yards on, he saw the gorge itself. Scattered live oak trees grew there and a clump of cottonwood frees showed the silver of the underleaves as they shifted in the dry breeze.
It was difficult to hold the buckskin back now that he smelled water and simultaneously heard the nickering of others of its kind. Now visible to Jake in a roughly made pen, they were standing near a stone house which was squat, undistinguished, weathered and yet so solid that it appeared to be almost a part of the rugged hills surrounding it.
‘Steady,’ Jake said to the horse, leaning forward to study the layout. It was certainly no settlement he was now looking at. Far from any stage line, and other convenience, it really had no reason to exist. Certainly it was not a cattle ranch or a horse ranch, although there seemed to be a significant number of horses in the pen, twenty or thirty at least. The graze he could see from the boulder-cluttered hillside was sparse and brown. There could be no farther pasture, the place being tucked tightly inside the folded rocky hills. What, then, was it? Who would wish to remain long in this isolated desert canyon for any reason whatever?
The buckskin horse was trembling beneath him, out of exhaustion and mingled excitement. Jake’s tongue clove to his palate. His lips were split, and his face blistered from the long ride over the barren desert. He made up his mind: there really was no choice.
There was water in the canyon; he was going down.
The horse impatiently wound its way downslope, following a switchback trail through the boulders, some of which were stacked more than fifty feet high, all of which radiated the heat of the day and cut off every whisper of the cooling breeze. The ride seemed a descent into hell. One more omen that Jake should perhaps have heeded.
They finally reached the flats of the long, narrow valley, and Jake moved the buckskin forward across grass so dry that it crackled beneath the horse’s hoofs as they passed. There was a cluster of dusty-leafed live oak trees beside the trail leading toward the house he had seen, and now a woman burst suddenly from them.
She wore a striped skirt and a ruffled white blouse. Her dark hair was in a tangle as she rushed toward Jake, her hands upraised.
‘Save me, oh save me!’ she cried as she reached Jake’s halted horse. He stared in bewilderment as the woman, slender, somewhere around the age of twenty-five, caught the buckskin’s bridle in one hand, touched his knee with the other and lifted pleading eyes to him. ‘Thank God someone’s come at last to deliver me from this hell!’ she screamed frantically and then, as Jake watched, stunned, the sheer panic that had contorted her face fell away and was replaced by wide-eyed glee. She began to laugh loud and long, placing one hand to her breast. Her head rocked from side to side with amusement. A man emerged from the oak grove and looked the woman up and down, studied Jake Staggs and said:
‘This is our Sarah. She’s quite mad, you know. Go on back to the house, Sarah. Do you have to frighten every stranger that passes through like that?’
‘I’m sorry, Worthy,’ the woman, Sarah, said, keeping her eyes down. She traced arcs in the sandy soil with the toe of her small scuffed boot. With one last amused glance at Jake Staggs, she hoisted her skirts and ran away spryly toward the stone house. The man called Worthy looked at Jake and his well-used horse and said:
‘You must be wishing for water. There’s a well ahead, but easier for your pony to drink from the little rill beyond the palm trees.’
The man was stocky, stubby almost. He had pouched eyes and a small nose that seemed to be retreating from his face to make room for his expanding jowls. But he wore a smile as well as a low-slung six-gun.
‘The girl …?’ Jake began, but Worthy shrugged the question off saying:
‘If you knew our Sarah, you wouldn’t pay any attention to that. She’s not quite right. It comes and goes. Mostly she’s good company, and a fair cook.’
Knowing nothing of matters and not needing to, Jake walked his horse forward in the direction indicated and soon came upon the rill which tumbled
down from some high artesian spring, passed among the stacks of yellow boulders and spread itself to feed the struggling trees and scant grass.
It was much cooler near the water in the shade of not only the shaggy swaying palm trees but the shifting cottonwoods. Jake watched the buckskin carefully, not wanting it to drink too much of the cold, crystal clear water, yet he himself had to take care not to make the same mistake. There is nothing more vital to life than water, and nothing that can satisfy the body long deprived of it but water. Finally, as the buckskin lifted its nose from the rill once again, dripping water from its muzzle which the high sun caught and silvered, Jake backed the reluctant horse away from the stream into the shade of the cottonwood trees, which were just beginning to bud out with the fuzzy white seedpods which gave them their name.
Jake sat with his back against one of the trees, watching the enclosed valley where still there was little movement – no working men, no riders. No one called across the yard. He had, as yet, only seen Sarah and the stubby little man, Worthy, but judging by the number of horses in the pen there must be others around. Jake considered all of the possibilities and the thought occurred to him that this might be a place where men who do not wish to be found could live. The horses, perhaps, were meant to be traded to men like himself: men on the run. He wondered if he had not wandered into some sort of robbers’ roost, but it was only idle speculation and since he planned on traveling on as soon as the buckskin was in decent shape again, it was really a matter of indifference to him.
There was a subject which concerned him and continued to grow in importance. Passing the house earlier he had tasted the scent of cooking on the air. Roast beef, for sure, and what might have been freshly baked bread. His stomach, minutes ago satisfied with the water, now began to complain and demand more solid nourishment.
Well, Jake thought as he collected the reins of the buckskin and started to lead it toward the house, Worthy had said that Sarah, mad as she might be, was a good cook. Maybe they would let Jake try his luck at their table. His pockets were empty, he knew; Bert Stiles, damn his eyes, had left the entire crew of drovers broke and stranded in Mexico without so much as a nickel or a promise.
Maybe Worthy would be willing to stand a single meal for a wandering man. Hopefully, Jake Staggs wandered toward the house.
Passing the rough corral where the horses craned their necks to get a look at his buckskin, Jake saw the squat Worthy standing on the wooden porch in front of the stone house. He was not smiling, but neither was there apparent dislike on his face.
‘Hungry, are you?’ Worthy asked with a nod. ‘I figured you’d be along. Come on in and have a seat. Panda will take care of your horse.’ Who Panda might have been, Jake did not know. He had seen no one else in the yard, and nothing moving but the leaves in the trees and light blow sand the wind picked up in its passing. Worthy suggested:
‘Don’t say anything to Sarah about before – she’s likely already forgotten about your meeting by now, the way her mind is.’
‘What made her the way she is?’ Jake asked. Worthy frowned and looked around at the rising rocky hills and at the white sun in a white sky and shook his head.
‘The desert, I guess,’ he said softly. ‘It gets to some people after a while, you know. I’ve met old prospectors, desert rats loonier than anyone they ever had in Bedlam.’ He shrugged, ‘But they don’t bother anyone wandering the desert by themselves, do they?’
‘So Sarah wants someone to rescue her from the desert?’ Jake asked as he looped the buckskin’s reins to the rough hitching post and stepped up onto the porch.
‘What she wants to be rescued from is something that exists only in her own mind,’ Worthy said with a heavy shake of the head. ‘Maybe only from herself. But enough of that; let’s sit down and eat, shall we?’
The room was small, but planks had been laid down for flooring. Food was already on the table - a rolled roast beef large enough to feed a dozen men, freshly baked bread, hominy and yams. Sarah was there as well.
There was a small kitchen area off to one side and beside it a short corridor running toward the back rooms of the stone house. Sarah could be seen from time to time, flitting about. From the shadows where she stood Jake saw her smiling broadly one minute, frowning and shaking her head the next. She jabbed her finger vigorously at herself and then at Jake, then at the ceiling overhead. She was alternately ghostly, cheerful and pleading. It wasn’t clear if Worthy saw any of this; if so he gave no indication. The bulky little man continued to eat with his head hung over his plate.
The meal, plain as it was, was immensely satisfying. The afternoon steadily cooled, and as Jake Staggs stepped out onto the porch he took the time to stretch, loosen his belt and deeply breathe in the fresh air. He felt a whole man again. He could not see his buckskin horse, but for the moment he did not feel concerned. Worthy stepped out behind him, the swaying porch giving under his heavy tread. Lighting a pipe, he stood beside Jake in studied silence.
‘This isn’t a bad little set-up you’ve got here,’ Jake said to the stubby little man, ‘though I can’t say it’s the sort of life I’d want.’
‘Not many are suited for it,’ Worthy answered. ‘I think it’s the silence of the place that gets to most people.’
‘That could be,’ Jake answered. He could hear a covey of desert quail somewhere along the creek, but for the rest there was only silence. ‘Anyway, I thank you for saving me and letting me sit down to your table.’
‘Meaning you’ll be traveling on?’ Worthy asked, puffing vigorously at his pipe.
‘As soon as possible,’ Jake said. ‘No offense, but there’s nothing much here for a man, is there?’
‘Not much,’ Worthy agreed. ‘Not much at all.’ He looked briefly toward the pale sky and then let his gaze meet Jake’s. ‘Are you on the run?’
‘What makes you ask that?’ Jake asked, stumbling over his tongue. Worthy smiled and shook his head.
‘Nothing. I don’t mean to pry, but we don’t get many men riding through here unless they’re trying to get away from something or somebody.’
Jake frowned. He did not answer. He did not know if he was on the run or not, not exactly. Would the Mexican authorities mount a manhunt for him across the border over the killing of a donkey? He doubted it. Or would Bert Stiles be angry enough over the loss of the buckskin to pursue Jake across the long desert? That seemed just as unlikely. Jake decided that no, he was not running away from anything. Perhaps he was just desperately searching for some place to run to.
It made no difference. This isolated dry canyon was not what he was looking for and he only repeated, ‘I’ll be hitting the road as soon as my horse is ready to travel.’
‘Good enough,’ Worthy said, tapping his dead pipe on the hitchrail to knock the dottle free. ‘You probably would like to get a little rest first.’ He inclined his head toward a ramshackle stone and pole structure not far away through the cotton-woods. ‘The barn’s over there. You can curl up until the day cools. I’ll show you the way to Yuma, if that’s where you’re heading.’
Jake had no idea where he was heading. Yuma might be all right. He might find something there to do, something to care about.
‘Get your rest,’ Worthy said encouragingly. ‘There’s no one around except for Panda, and he won’t bother you. He likely won’t even talk to you if you do happen to see him, but pay him no mind, he’s only a sad, regretful old Indian. Panda is on the run too, from his own people. He once made the mistake of scalping a few men who did not deserve it.’
Not exactly words of comfort for a man intending to sleep in a strange place, but Jake’s weariness could be stayed no further. He ambled across the ranch yard to the nearby barn and slipped in after searching with his eyes for the mysterious and mostly invisible Panda, but the Yavapai didn’t seem to be lurking nearby.
Panda, it seemed, had taken good care of the buckskin horse, for Jake found it standing in one of the dark stalls munching at fresh alfalfa hay.
Where the hay could have come from Jake couldn’t guess, but it figured that they would need a lot of hay with all the horses standing in the corral. In passing, Jake had looked the horses over. They were good stock, each and every one of them, of all hues from a burnished roan, its hide glistening in the sun, to a small dun with thickly bunched chest muscles. They wore mixed brands, most of them unfamiliar to Jake, though he did spot two of them wearing the Anchor brand. He had ridden with a man named Pete Storey while with Bert Stiles, and Pete, who was out of Flagstaff in the high country of central Arizona, said that he had ridden for Anchor which was a fair-sized outfit.
The question that presented itself, of course, was what this grass poor ranch tucked away in the barren desert needed with so many horses. Jake still had not seen another person around save the three he had been introduced to – if it was possible to say he had been introduced to Panda.
No matter. There is a time for thinking and a time for sleeping, and the heaviness of Jake’s eyelids told him which time had now arrived. He loosened up a pile of hay in the shadowed corner of the barn and lay down, hat over his eyes. When the day cooled and the buckskin had rested, he would be on his way again. Yuma, he guessed, could not be that bad a town to start over. He yawned as he made that decision, crossed his arms over his chest and fell off to sleep.
It was still warm when Jake awoke a few hours later, the barn having held the heat of the day, but outside the sky was beginning to color – rose pink and deep violet – and he could hear the frogs beginning to give voice to their night complaints up along the rill. If he left now he could make Yuma by midnight, he believed.
Rising stiffly, he stretched and walked to the buckskin which seemed happy to see him but carried a worried gleam in its eyes as if knowing that this human would soon take him away from the comfort of the barn and force him again to make his way across the endless desert. Jake stroked the horse’s muzzle and looked around until he found his saddle slung over a partition, his bridle hanging on a rusty bent nail on a nearby post.