by Paul Lederer
There was a blur of motion in the opposite corner of the barn and he saw a dark figure scuttle from the gloomy dimness into the half-bright dusk. He hadn’t had a good look at him, but the man was an Indian, that was for sure. Panda, it seemed, did not care for any sort of human contact. It made no difference to Jake. He was feeling rested, fed and ready to ride.
Smoothing his striped saddle blanket on the buckskin’s back, he saddled the horse, slipped it its bit and led it outside where the multi-colored sky lined the jagged ridges of the surrounding peaks and the coolness of the evening welcomed him.
He considered going by the rock house and saying thanks and so long to Worthy, but there seemed little point in it. He did glance that way and by the dull light of a lantern within saw the strangely pathetic figure of a woman, a shawl across her head and shoulders, her mouth open as if pleading, her fingers spread against the bluish pane of glass.
‘Sorry, Sarah,’ he muttered, keeping his eyes turned down. ‘I’m not the one you are waiting for.’
Before he had hit leather again he came upon Worthy standing in the center of the dry-grass yard, hands on his hips, staring northward. Jake started to speak, but Worthy held up a silencing hand. In a few minutes Jake, too, became aware of it: someone was approaching. There was dust drifting on the wind and the sound of hoofbeats – many of them. Standing beside Worthy he waited, watching in puzzlement.
In another minute two riders rode toward them at speed, swung down from their lathered ponies and opened the corral gates, hieing the animals standing there to the far confines. Behind these two came the horses, not in a rush, but in wild-eyed surprise. A half dozen men herded them along through the sundown-lighted evening. Twenty or more horses of all descriptions were pushed toward the corral and urged into it with coiled ropes, whistles and yells.
The horses milled in confusion, lifting heavy dust into the air. The sky continued to darken. From out of this darkness two men on horseback approached. One of them held a double-twelve shotgun in his hand. They both looked trail-weary, angry and plain mean. Eyes appraised Jake from the shadows of their hatbrims.
‘Who the hell’s this, Worthy?’ the man on the paint pony demanded, nodding at Jake.
‘Passing stranger,’ Worthy said – a little defensively, Jake thought. The man on the paint horse had narrow eyes, wide shoulders and a mouth that twisted nastily when he spoke. His sidekick was thick, brutish and bearded.
‘How do you know who the hell he is? Worthy, I told you before …!’ the man’s voice broke off in exasperation.
‘He’s just riding out now, Blanchard,’ Worthy explained. ‘There’s no trouble here.’
‘Oh, there’s trouble here,’ the man called Blanchard contradicted. ‘He’s already seen enough to cause trouble, hasn’t he? No,’ the man astride the paint pony continued with a heavy shake of his head, ‘there is trouble, unless he’s a blind man. And as for riding out.…
‘You’re going nowhere, stranger. Hand over your revolver and that Henry repeater you’re toting. You’ll be staying for a while. Quite a long while.’
TWO
It didn’t require a stroke of brilliance to deduce what was going on at the isolated canyon ranch. Jake knew that he had stumbled upon a gang of horse thieves. What else could explain the driving of a large herd of horses onto this poor range, the thirty or so sleek ponies already penned in the yard? Jake Staggs was really not concerned about it in any way – they were not his horses, after all, and his own mount rightfully belonged to Bert Stiles. All he had wanted to do was water his buckskin and keep drifting on. Now that wasn’t going to be too easy.
Kit Blanchard, the narrow-eyed man who seemed to be the leader of the gang, had ordered two of his roughnecks to take Jake by the arms and lead him to a small stone shed along the creek. He had been thrown in, the heavy door locked and he now found himself seated in the darkness with the man he knew to be Panda.
Why the Indian was also locked in he did not know, but it seemed to be something that the Yavapai was used to, for Panda sat in a corner, knees drawn up, his arms looped around them, saying nothing, his face expressing no anger or resentment.
There was a single window high on the wall, barred and far too narrow for a man to squeeze through. Through that slit, undoubtedly designed only to ventilate the close stone structure, Jake could see the last colors of the evening sky fading to darkness, dimming as were his hopes.
‘What are they going to do to us?’ Jake asked Panda, but the man just stared at him with opaque black eyes. Perhaps he didn’t even understand English, though he must have picked up at least a few words working around the ranch. When Jake had resigned himself to the settling darkness, the uncomfortable floor and the continued silence of the Yavapai, the Indian’s voice croaked, like a long rusted hinge and the man said:
‘Bad days.’
Jake eagerly tried continuing the conversation, to find out what was likely to happen to him and if there was a way to break out, but Panda had apparently said all he intended to say – or all he knew how to communicate.
The desert coolness settled; it was remarkable how quickly the nights could settle and how cold they became with no atmosphere to hold the heat of the day in. Jake began to shiver. He seated himself as Panda had done, drawing his knees up tightly against his chest. For a blanket!
His teeth had begun to chatter, his body to shiver. He could see a star or two through the slit window, but not enough of them to gauge the time by. He thought it was somewhere around ten o’clock when he heard the scraping of boot leather against the earth and someone fumbling with the iron latch bolting the door. As it swung open, Jake tried to leap to his feet, but only succeeded in staggering away to lurch against the wall, his circulation-starved leg muscles unwilling to cooperate with his mind’s commands. A huge bearded man stood outside the door, silhouetted against the star-silvered sky.
‘Come on out of there,’ he ordered. Jake glanced at Panda, but the Indian had not moved. It was himself that they wanted. Bending over to scoop up his hat, Jake eased out into the chill of the clear desert night.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked the big man warily.
‘They told me to get you. That’s all I know.’
All Jake needed to know was that he was out of the makeshift jail and that the man in front of him was displaying a Colt revolver. He would go wherever he was to be taken without a struggle. It was back to the house, as it appeared, for they walked that way, the big man always three or four steps behind Jake, his revolver fisted tightly in his hand. The stars were strewn wildly across the black sky. The cottonwood trees and the farther line of palms stood in stark relief against them.
‘Are they going to let me go?’ Jake asked his oversized companion.
‘They said bring you,’ his escort grunted.
All right, then, Jake thought. At least they weren’t going to shoot him out of hand. Maybe there was a chance to plead, argue or lie his way out of this place. They didn’t want him around and he surely didn’t want to stay. He assumed, rightly, that they saw him as an unwelcome witness. They couldn’t have mistaken him for a lawman, could they? What sane man with a badge would have ridden alone into this armed camp?
His speculations were unimportant, he decided, as they approached the lighted stone house. They would tell him what opinion they had formed and his fate was to be decided in a few minutes on this lost and lonely canyon outpost.
Just before they mounted the sagging wooden steps and entered the house Jake saw, just for the briefest moment, the sad, huddled figure of Sarah looking at him through the lace curtains. Maybe she wasn’t as mad as Worthy had said, or perhaps he had been right – this place had made her lose her mind.
They were there at the table, the last of the roast beef was nearly gone. The entire crew seemed to have eaten, but now they had drifted away. There were only four people remaining, not counting Jake and his sullen escort.
Sarah was there. Jake saw her flitting across the
hallway toward a hidden room. Worthy sat at the right side of the table, looking somewhat nervous. The stubby little man’s eyes shifted from point to point, never quite meeting Jake’s. At the head of his table, picking his teeth, Kit Blanchard lounged recklessly, a man without a care in the world. Then there was the blonde.
She sat beside and a little behind Kit Blanchard. She wore her long blond hair in a single brand which just then was tossed up over her shoulder as she fiddled with the ribbon tie holding it. She wore a yellowish flannel shirt with snaps instead of buttons and a pair of black jeans. She was young, blue-eyed and she smiled as she lifted those eyes to Jake Staggs. She seemed about ready to say something, but Kit Blanchard spoke first.
‘That buckskin horse with the Broken T brand you’re riding. It’s stolen!’
Jake started to deny it, then saw no point in it. He shrugged slightly. ‘I had to get away from where I was.’
‘Is that the way you usually go about your business?’ Kit Blanchard demanded, lowering his hand to nestle near the holstered Colt riding on his hip. Jake shook his head and told the dark-eyed man:
‘I don’t usually need to get away as bad as I did this time.’
Worthy, still nervous, spoke up, ‘I guess what Kit wants to know is—’
‘I’ll tell the man what I want to know,’ Kit Blanchard said, cutting off Worthy’s words. The stubby little man folded his hands together and looked away.
Kit Blanchard shifted slightly in his chair. The blonde, Jake noticed, was beaming at him as if he were her lord and master. Maybe he was. ‘What I want to know,’ Kit said, ‘is if you would be willing to work for me. We lost a couple of good hands on the trail, and as you have seen we’ve got a fair-sized herd of ponies out there that have to be moved as soon as they’re rested.’
‘We don’t have enough hay to feed them for long,’ Worthy commented, daring to interrupt the leader of the band of rustlers. Blanchard didn’t even glance at him.
‘Look, Jake – that’s your name, isn’t it? – we have a lot of horses out there and the day after tomorrow we’re going to have to gather them and push them down to Agua Fria. Do you know where that is?’
‘I don’t even know where I am,’ Jake said honestly.
Kit Blanchard smiled thinly. ‘Just across the border in Mexico. I’ve got a buyer for these horses. The thing is, we had a little trouble on the trail and we’re short of men. I know you’re on the run from something even if I don’t know what it is. I don’t care much, to tell you the truth, but you can hire on and make yourself a few dollars in the process, or we’ll just keep your horse and you can start out on foot for Yuma. Of course I’m not sure you could make it; no one ever has.’
‘All right,’ Jake said quickly if not eagerly, ‘I’m more used to herding cattle, but I’ll go along with you.’ He couldn’t see that he had much choice. Being sent out onto the long desert on foot was the same as being sentenced to death.
‘All right then,’ Blanchard said with a tight nod. ‘Blanco here will show you around.’ He indicated the big silent man who had escorted him to the house. ‘You’ll understand if we don’t give you your guns back just yet.’
Blanchard rose to his feet in one easy motion, his chair scraping on the plank floor. He took the young blonde by the arm and said, ‘That’s settled, let’s get some rest, Christi.’ The woman smiled at him, turned her head once to smile at Jake as well and was led off by the arm toward the interior of the house where Sarah had long since vanished into the shadows. Worthy did not rise, in fact he had barely moved. He sat with his head hanging, heavy arms draped over the arms of the chair.
‘We go now,’ the big bearded Blanco said, and he nudged Jake in the ribs with the muzzle of his pistol.
‘All right,’ Jake said. ‘You don’t need that gun.’
Blanco only repeated, ‘We go now,’ and it was difficult for Jake to decide if Blanco was that taciturn, spoke little of the language or was just plain stupid. No matter – he was the one with the revolver, so Jake turned and led the way toward the open door into the cool desert night.
They crossed the dry grass of the yard and passed into the cottonwood grove. Fifty yards on they found a small campfire burning with men lounging around it smoking or curled up in their blankets trying to sleep. A couple of rough lean-tos had been thrown up for shelter, but there were no other structures in the outlaw camp.
‘Grab a blanket and make yourself comfortable,’ Blanco told him, so Jake took an Indian blanket from a pile and settled down, easing nearer to the small, wavering fire. Jake saw dark, expressionless eyes lift to study him and watched as a bottle was passed between two other men who showed no interest at all in who he might be or what he was doing there.
An older man, blond and balding with a craggy face, scooted over next to Jake and offered his hand. ‘I’m Will Sizemore. Don’t pay any attention to the manners of the boys. They don’t talk much, but they ride hard and shoot straight.’ The flickering firelight illuminated Sizemore’s lined face. Jake thought the man was a little old for this sort of work, but then he reflected, there were only two ways out for a man who hits the outlaw trail: they hang you or you get shot down.
Jake Staggs did not intend to end up that way.
‘Riding south with us, are you?’ Sizemore asked.
‘That’s what the boss says, though he’s got a funny way of hiring a man on.’
Sizemore laughed dryly, ‘Kit Blanchard, he takes men on any way he can. Sort of like a land pirate, he’s been known to shanghai a few when we had our ranks thinned.’ Sizemore lowered his voice. ‘We had three men shot down this side of Tucson. The rancher who lost his horses didn’t take kindly to us collecting them. We got out of there, but it was a tight spot.’
Jake asked, ‘What is this place called anyway?’ He indicated the width and length of the canyon with a wave of his hand. ‘Has it got a name?’
‘Why, this is Smuggler’s Gulch,’ Sizemore said with some surprise. ‘You’ve probably heard of it, but not many men have seen it, and the law sure is never going to find it.’
Jake reflected, but no, he had never heard of the place. Apparently it loomed large in local lore, for Sizemore seemed nearly offended that Jake had never heard of the outlaw camp before. The fire burned lower. Sizemore leaned forward to add a few more sticks to the dying flames. Most of the men had rolled up in their blankets for the night by then.
‘That Sarah …’ Jake asked hesitantly. ‘What do you know about her?’
‘Sarah Worthy!’ Sizemore smiled and shook his head. ‘The sun, the isolation, the way of life drove her over the edge a long while ago. Pretty little girl, too. It’s a shame, but mister she is plain loco – anything she ever tells you, you can disbelieve it.’
‘And the other woman, the blonde?’
‘That’s Christiana, Sarah’s cousin.’ Sizemore’s face had lost all of its amiability. ‘Don’t think about her too much. She’s Kit Blanchard’s woman and if you look at her too long or in the wrong way, you’re likely to find yourself dead.’
‘I won’t. Thanks for telling me.’
‘I just thought you should know.’ Sizemore wrapped his blanket more tightly around his shoulders and yawned. ‘Anyway, there’s no point in talking about women or thinking about them way out here. Wait until we hit Agua Fria and get our pay.’ He chuckled, ‘Then you and I can have some discussion about the Spanish women at the end of the trail.’
With that, Sizemore rolled onto his side and tugged his blanket up over his ears. Jake figured that he might as well follow suit. There was no point in sitting up even though he doubted he would be able to sleep on this night. There was no sign of Blanco. Evidently his work was done; no one had told him to stand guard over Jake. What for? Was Jake Staggs going to make a break for the rocky slopes, the desert beyond without horse, water or guns? Still, his thoughts kept him awake until very early morning. From time to time he took it upon himself to add a few sticks to the fire. The night passed in wea
ry progression, the stars eventually dragging a wan crescent moon up from behind the rocky hills.
It was about the time that the golden sliver of the moon rose that Jake saw her in the cottonwood grove, flitting from tree to tree. She stopped once and beckoned to him before vanishing again, a slender ghost in the dark, dangerous night of Smuggler’s Gulch.
THREE
It was crazy, riding out of Smuggler’s Gulch with Sarah, but in another way it made a lot of sense. When he had risen from the low-burning campfire and slipped away from the camp into the shadowed depths of the cottonwood grove she had emerged from the darkness to rush silently to him, taking both of his hands as she looked up earnestly into his eyes.
‘I’ve got your horse – and your guns,’ she said. The moonlight shone through the upper reaches of the trees. The stars seemed to decorate the branches like Christmas baubles. Jake glanced uneasily back at the camp where the horse thieves slept.
‘I’ve made a deal to ride with Kit,’ Jake said. ‘If I make a run for it now, they’re liable to track me down and kill me.’
‘They’re liable to kill you anyway,’ Sarah said, letting her hands drop away. ‘You don’t know Kit Blanchard like I do. Once he has no more use for you – say after you’ve driven the horses into Mexico – he’s liable to do anything. A life means nothing to him. That’s why I’ve got to get out of here,’ she whispered fiercely.
‘When I first met you—’
‘I was serious at first. I had to put on my act, pretend to be crazy when Worthy showed up. I didn’t know he was around.’
‘But—’ Jake studied the girl closely now. There were no signs of madness, but then perhaps there would be none. At the moment she seemed to be only a frightened, desperate woman.
‘You don’t want to become one of them, do you?’ she asked, looking toward the outlaw camp. ‘A man always on the run, always being hunted.’
‘No. No, I don’t.’