On Dead Man's Range

by Lou Cameron

  She shook her head and said, “No. Neither did Papacito. He said the wild cattle still ranging up this way were more like money on the hoof than a spiritual matter. Alas, whatever does still haunt this range proved him and my poor brother wrong!”

  Stringer said, “Ghosts hardly ever use a nickle-plated Smith and Wesson on a man. But tell me what else your people say about spooks up here in Pleasant Valley, as long as we’re on the subject.”

  She said, “They tell all sorts of ghost stories about this old battleground. Years ago, when the last of the Grahams was run out by ferocious gringo sheriff, both your kind of people and mine moved in for to round up the abandoned herd and salvage the abandoned housing. It is said that when old Tom Graham came back later, some squatter ambushed him for to keep him from reclaiming the valley with all his old enemies gone.”

  Stringer nodded and said, “That left the range abandoned total. So what happened to the ones who must have wanted to move in on such good grazing? They say old Indian John defended his small part of it at gun point. So he must have thought it worth something.”

  Concepción nodded and said, “It is said his ghost still values the land he died for. Perhaps he still fights the ghosts of his enemies for it. As you say, those mysterious riders who murdered my father and brother in the dark last night had no human reason to do so. Over the years many others have tried for to settle up this way. They, too, have always been driven out by whatever seems to be haunting this range. I do not know all the stories. I was very little when everyone decided it just wasn’t wise to ride up this way after dark, or be here after the sun went down. There are tales of sheep being run over cliffs, and new homesteads burning down mysteriously. There are tales of livestock, and owners of livestock, simply vanishing forever, as if the spirit would have claimed them early.”

  She repressed a sob and added, “Oh, if only Papacito had not been so brave. What is to become of me now?”

  He said, “I have a spare Army horse who may be delighted to meet you, Concepción. You’re a lot smaller than the gents he’s more used to carrying. You’ll have to ride bareback. But that still beats walking. How far are we talking about?”

  She smiled for the first time and said, “I have many people in the Sierra Apache, just south of the Salt, about thirty of your miles from here.”

  He nodded and said, “Well, I mean to take it slow and scout this valley good, but I’m headed that way, and that old Army mount seems to want to tag along in any case.”

  As he helped her out of the lean-to with her meager belongings, he studied his mental map a bit more and added, “If you can get that old brute to part company with my paint and buckskin, you might be safer bee-lining on ahead of us. Like I said, I seem to have someone looking to gun me, and I ain’t ready to run just yet.”

  She said, “I will feel safer traveling with you, and do not worry, Stuarto—my people dwell in the Sierra Apache, but they are mostly Papago, on the Indian side.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  *

  It was good to have someone to talk to who wasn’t a horse, and Concepción was helpful in other ways as they followed the now lower waters of Cherry Creek south together. She was able to save him some time by pointing out the abandoned ruins left by folk run out long after the warring clans had been gone; unless, as some said, they were still haunting their old disputed range.

  By sunset he figured they were about a third of the way down Pleasant Valley, as Patty Stern’s map defined the sort of undefined edges. The claim lines penciled across the map in the conflicting interests of the two warring factions overlapped a lot. He could see why they’d decided to settle it by gun law instead of in court, whichever court had jurisdiction this far from Holbrook and even farther from the former county seat at Saint John’s. He made a mental note to ask for a look-see at the original claims filed by one and all, assuming there were still any on file and he got back alive.

  Since that was beginning to took like a tedious chore, he told the pretty little Mex gal they’d be eating cold and camping with no fire, well upslope from the old trail they were following, once it got too dark for anyone ghosting them from the distant skyline to make out any direction they might want to turn.

  She said she knew a good spot not far ahead. He said, “Anyone who’s made a habit of haunting these parts any time at all will surely know all the good campsites. What we want is a campsite of no particular interest and a good field of fire all around it.”

  They didn’t have long to wait before the sun went down, and since the moon hadn’t risen yet, it got plenty dark. Stringer told her, “Right. To begin with, we want to go back at least a quarter mile before we ford the creek and mosey up the far side.”

  He expected her to ask why. But there was a lot to be said for riding with a sidekick who was part Papago. They were mighty slick Indians—one of the only other nations the Apache respected and, some said, feared.

  The Papago were less famous than some less intelligent Indians. One had to be sort of stupid to take on the U.S. Army with a bow and arrow. The Papago had been desert hunters and part-time farmers in the old days, who’d just wanted to be left alone and were willing to return the favor. Apache, Navajo, and other such Dené-speaking breeds had been untidy neighbors for other Indians well before they’d learned other bad habits from the Mexicans and then the Anglos. So they’d been slaughtering Papago and vice versa long before anyone with a horse or gun had shown up to teach ’em how to do it right. The Papago had taken the position that nobody who fought Apache or Navajo could be all bad. Since they were having all the trouble they needed with the same enemies, the early Spanish and even sensible Americanos had been willing to treat the Papago decent, and pretty little gals like Concepción had resulted from the mutual admiration. Papago guides and scouts had helped rather than hindered wagon-trains taking the southern route to California, and in return the whites had given the friendly Papago enough guns and ammunition to chase their Apache enemies well east of the Sierra Apache, no matter what the map might say.

  After they’d doubled back on their trail a ways, Stringer led all his traveling companions across the creek and as far as a rise that offered nothing but an uphill charge to anyone else who meant to join them uninvited.

  As Concepción spread their bedding on the dry grass, Stringer led the three ponies down the far slope and hobbled them good, saying, “No oats, and I’m sorry about the water. If any of you bust loose, we’ll never speak to you again.”

  He moved back to the top of the isolated hill and asked the girl what she was doing in the dark, since it sounded funny. She said she was trying to open a damned old can. He sat down beside her and groped in his saddle bags until he found the bayonet that had come with his Army rifle. She thought it made a neat can opener. It was a little ominous, the way she sliced through tin with no fooling around. He was glad she didn’t have Apache blood. They shared the beans. She said she’d never eaten frijoles half as sweet. He said he didn’t like pork and beans cold either, but that he’d brought them along because they stuck to the ribs no matter what they tasted like.

  She dug in her own leather sacks to produce some tortillas that might have tasted better with butter. They went just fine with the beans. They were still a mite hungry after sharing so little. He’d figured on washing it all down with tepid canteen water, but she produced an earthenware bottle of pulque. It tasted no worse than any other cactus juice, and had a mild kick to it. He knew that by the time you drank enough pulque to feel it, your mouth would taste soapy in the morning. So he just drank enough to be polite. Concepción asked if it was safe to smoke, and when he told her he didn’t think so, she polished off the whole bottle.

  The moon rose, big and orange as a pumpkin to the east. He hadn’t noticed until then what she was wearing, or not wearing, as she sat cross-legged on her blanket with her duds fluffed up as a pillow near the head of what would have been a bed had it not been a Navajo blanket.

 
She stared off down the slope and said, “Oh, I can see almost as far as the creek now, Stuarto.”

  He said, “So can I. Don’t you even pull a top cover over you when you bed down so, ah, informal?”

  She said, “I have no top cover. Perhaps I shall wrap up in the one blanket I have. That is up to you, Stuarto.”

  He thought about that as he studied her by moonlight. The light wasn’t good enough to stare deep in her big sloe eyes. What he could see was distracting as hell to a man who hadn’t had any the night before. She was little as an Anglo twelve-year-old, but no man would ever mistake a gal with moonlit breasts as big and firm as hers for a child. She was sort of hairy for part Indian too.

  He sighed and said, “Well, I’d have one hell of a time falling to sleep right now, even if it was midnight, which it ain’t. But we have to settle on some ground rules here, Concepción. You know I like you too much to shoot you. But I know how your people feel about a love-’em-and-leave-’em Gringo too. So…”

  She laughed and asked, “Madre de Dios, do you think I wish for to take you all the way home with me to meet my family?”

  He said, “That might not be wise.”

  She said, “My cousin, Hernan, would try for to kill you, and I am fond of him too.”

  He tossed his hat aside in the grass and started to unbuckle his gun rig as he said, “I hope you understand that my job calls for me to travel a lot.”

  And then she was laughing like a mean little kid, and was all over him before he could get out of his shirt and jeans, let alone his boots. As she unbuttoned his pants, pulled them down just enough to be embarrassing, and impaled her wiry little body on the results, he laughed and said, “Wouldn’t this make more sense if you let me undress entire and get on top?”

  She moaned, “Ay, querido, do not tease me with romantico talk!”

  She collapsed limply down on him leaving him way up indeed until he could roll her on her back to finish right. She liked it that way, too, and returned the favor by helping him undress further while in action. He didn’t get the boots off until later, of course. She wanted more. But he pulled one of his own blankets over them and told her to hold the thought, explaining, “It can’t be ten o’clock yet and it’s starting to get cold as hell.”

  She snuggled closer, took the matter more firmly in hand, and told him she knew great ways to keep warm on a chill desert night.

  He could see she did. He’d already learned that rumba was just the Spanish word for a spree. But the word took on a whole new meaning as she twisted her trim hips in every direction at once and begged for more. He didn’t ask, so he’d never know how on earth she’d learned so many interesting ways to move her tawny little body. He knew she couldn’t be more than twenty-odd, and he knew that people here tended to raise their girls rather strictly.

  On the other hand, accepting her story at face value, she’d come from the Salt River Valley to be naughty, and the least a gent could do would be to oblige. So he did, a lot, and between that and the pulque it seemed to settle her nerves enough for them to get some sleep by midnight.

  She didn’t let him sleep until dawn. He growled a bit when he found himself half awake, chilled to the bone, with her shaking him hard. He yawned and said, “Jesus, doll, I don’t know if I can right now.”

  But she said, “Stuarto, I think I just saw an espectro!”

  That woke him up. But as he sat higher to look the way she was pointing in the dim light, there seemed to be nothing to see. He said, “I thought we agreed there were no ghosts, honey.”

  She said, “I saw it anyway. A pale green light, down that way on the other side of the creek. As if it was signaling or searching for something.”

  He grimaced and said, “It was probably just someone with a railroad lantern. When they’re not red they’re often green. Some wiseass is trying to read our trail, I reckon.”

  She shuddered and asked, “Is that any improvement on a ghost?”

  Stringer had brought along enough grub for himself, if he ate sparingly. Concepción had grown up eating every once in a while. So they agreed on having each other for breakfast, enjoyed one smoke and canteen water for dessert, and got up to get going again. She was still upset about the spooky lights she’d seen, or said she had. He told her his Army rifle could kill, easy, at a mile. So she calmed down when she noticed how much nothing there was all around them.

  They stopped before fording Cherry Creek to drain and refill all their canteens and water bags. The streambed was wider and more braided now. But the water ran cool and clear. Stringer thought back to the last time the morning sun hadn’t been this ferocious and told Concepción, “Rain on the flat plateau to the north must trickle down through cracks in the rocks a lot. I’d day the sources of this creek and the Tonto, farther over, have to be all-summer springs. This would be at best a damp dry wash by now if it depended on runoff alone.”

  She didn’t seem interested. She said her village in the Sierra Apache was stuck with well water, deep well water, this late in the year. She said arizona meant little or scattered springs in the Papago lingo some of her wilder cousins still spoke, and that there wasn’t even an arizona in her home canyon. One had to dig for water there, like most everywhere else in the territory.

  Stringer didn’t want to be ghosted from the skyline as they followed a well-mapped route alongside the only running water within miles. So they forged due east, farther, until they topped a ridge running northeast to southwest, in line with the valley whose limits were getting harder to define. Stringer saw other, higher ridges all around that would have made as good a boundry on Patty’s map. The valley floor was getting ever wider as they headed southwest and the creek down the middle was starting to ox-bow as it meandered across flatter expanses. Stringer wasn’t surprised to discover a narrow trail winding along the top of ridge, once they reached it. Game trails seemed to follow ridge lines as naturally as water chose the low ground between them. He swung the paint down it, enjoying their buzzard’s view of the whole range below.

  Concepción kept looking back as she followed aboard the old Army horse, riding astride, bareback, with her bare feet hanging wide as her knees gripped its barrel chest. It was just as well she rode Indian style, for having abandoned the old mount’s saddle and bridle, Stringer had only been able to offer her an improvised length of pigging, looped over the chestnut’s lower jaw behind its teeth. So far, Concepción was showing more spirit than her beat-up old mount. He could only hope she could handle it in an emergency.

  He warned her to pay attention to the way they were going instead of where they’d been. She still had the half-empty pistol that had likely killed her father, and since she’d admired the Krag bayonet so much, he’d let her tuck that in her waistband, scabbard and all. But there was nothing behind them within range of knife slash or pistol ball, and the trailside shrubbery ahead was starting to get serious.

  He thought about that as a stirrup-high sticker bush grabbed at a spur buckle. The slope to his right was starting to bush up as well, and the grass between was shorter, with the bare dirt exposed by sheet erosion here and there. To his left the range didn’t look like range as much as it looked like plain old desert. That was likely a sign of misuse too. It was said than in the old days, when whites had first seen it, the Arizona desert had been more like semiarid rolling prairie. But grass barely holding its own between rare rains couldn’t take much grazing, and there was no sense starting a herd of cows or sheep if one didn’t fancy a big one. So the beef boom of the ’80s had sure scalped Arizona good, leaving tougher plants that even sheep had trouble digesting.

  He spotted a clump of pioneering pear and called back, “Watch you bare feet, honey. Cactus coming up.”

  Conception swung her ankle up but replied loftily, “You call this cactus? Come with me to the Sierra Apache and I will show you cactus. This salad green is nothing to what we grow south of the Salt!”

  He didn’t argue. She was right. Prickly pear was a pioneer s
pecies or glorified weed that grew anywhere the ground was dry at all. He’d seen it fighting ponderosa pine for room on drier slopes of his own Sierra Nevada, and some said it even grew on Cape Cod, back east. But just the same, it was an indicator of fast-draining soil. It had trouble getting started where grass roots slowed the runoff enough to matter. He glanced to his right again, and yeah, the slopes were getting thirstier and thirstier looking, with dotted lines of chaparral winding down the ever-more-frequent gullies. The ridge they were riding was now solid chaparral. He was sorry now that he hadn’t thought to pick up chaps with his saddle. He glanced back and saw his part-Papago companion was coping with it all right, despite her less formal riding gear.

  As he swung his eyes forward again he found himself staring an old calico longhorn in the face. The spooked-looking critter tossed its wicked horns and spun around to crash out of sight in the chaparral. Concepción laughed. Stringer said, “Easy for you to say. It would have gored my leg first if it hadn’t been so polite. I think we just met part of the legendary lost herd of old Tom Graham. Have you noticed something else about this range of late?”

  She said, “Si, the desert is moving back to reclaim it. I could have told you that, Stuarto. You know I rode in from the south with my poor Papacito and Ramon. It gets worse between here and the Salt. By the time Cherry Creek joins the main stream, it is only a trickle running across the desert in a deep arroyo, so it waters nothing.”

  He rode on, talking half to himself, as he said, “I suspect we’re working our way off the range the green-light hombres seem to be managing, and I still can’t figure why.”

  She said, “Stuarto, you are speaking silly, even though I love you. What makes you think the range to the north is being, how you say, managed? Is nobody living there. Is no stock grazing there. Who could be managing it, for why?”

  It was a good question. He said, “I don’t know who or why yet. But I grew up on dry range that had to be managed, so I know it when I see it. You’re right about the chaparral and worse ahead. Even had I not just spooked wild stock, I’d suspect it was being grazed by more than the grass can stand up to. I reckon we’re southwest of anything anyone’s interested in.”