Arizona Nights

by White, Stewart Edward

  And then, without a transitory pause:

  Oh, my love has a gun

  And that gun he can use,

  ut he’s quit his gun fighting

  As well as his booze.

  nd he’s sold him his saddle,

  His spurs, and his rope,

  nd there’s no more cow-punching

  And that’s what I hope.”

  The alkali dust, swirled back by a little breeze, billowed up and choked him. Behind, the mules coughed, their coats whitening with the powder. Far ahead in the distance lay the westerly mountains. They looked an hour away, and yet every man and beast in the outfit knew that hour after hour they were doomed, by the enchantment of the land, to plod ahead without apparently getting an inch nearer. The only salvation was to forget the mountains and to fill the present moment full of little things.

  But Senor Johnson, to-day, found himself unable to do this. In spite of his best efforts he caught himself straining toward the distant goal, becoming impatient, trying to measure progress by landmarks—in short acting like a tenderfoot on the desert, who wears himself down and dies, not from the hardship, but from the nervous strain which he does not know how to avoid. Senor Johnson knew this as well as you and I. He cursed himself vigorously, and began with great resolution to think of something else.

  He was aroused from this by Tom Rich, riding alongside. “Somebody coming, Senor,” said he.

  Senor Johnson raised his eyes to the approaching cloud of dust. Silently the two watched it until it resolved into a rider loping easily along. In fifteen minutes he drew rein, his pony dropped immediately from a gallop to immobility, he swung into a graceful at-ease attitude across his saddle, grinned amiably, and began to roll a cigarette.

  “Billy Ellis,” cried Rich.

  “That’s me,” replied the newcomer.

  “Thought you were down to Tucson?”

  “I was.”

  “Thought you wasn’t comin’ back for a week yet?”

  “Tommy,” proffered Billy Ellis dreamily, “when you go to Tucson next you watch out until you sees a little, squint-eyed Britisher. Take a look at him. Then come away. He says he don’t know nothin’ about poker. Mebbe he don’t, but he’ll outhold a warehouse.”

  But here Senor Johnson broke in: “Billy, you’re just in time. Jed has hurt his foot and can’t get on for a week yet. I want you to take charge. I’ve got a lot to do at the ranch.”

  “Ain’t got my war-bag,” objected Billy.

  “Take my stuff. I’ll send yours on when Parker goes.”

  “All right.”

  “Well, so long.”

  “So long, Senor.” They moved. The erratic Arizona breezes twisted the dust of their going. Senor Johnson watched them dwindle. With them seemed to go the joy in the old life. No longer did the long trail possess for him its ancient fascination. He had become a domestic man.

  “And I’m glad of it,” commented Senor Johnson.

  The dust eddied aside. Plainly could be seen the swaying wagon, the loose-riding cowboys, the gleaming, naked backs of the herd. Then the veil closed over them again. But down the wind, faintly, in snatches, came the words of Jim Lester’s song:

  “Oh, Sam has a gun

  That has gone to the bad,

  Which makes poor old Sammy

  Feel pretty, damn sad,

  For that gun it shoots high,

  And that gun it shoots low,

  And it wabbles about

  Like a bucking bronco!”

  Senor Johnson turned and struck spurs to his willing pony.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE DISCOVERY

  Senor Buck Johnson loped quickly back toward the home ranch, his heart glad at this fortunate solution of his annoyance. The home ranch lay in plain sight not ten miles away. As Senor Johnson idly watched it shimmering in the heat, a tiny figure detached itself from the mass and launched itself in his direction.

  “Wonder what’s eating HIM!” marvelled Senor Johnson, “—and who is it?”

  The figure drew steadily nearer. In half an hour it had approached near enough to be recognised.

  “Why, it’s Jed!” cried the Senor, and spurred his horse. “What do you mean, riding out with that foot?” he demanded sternly, when within hailing distance.

  “Foot, hell!” gasped Parker, whirling his horse alongside. “Your wife’s run away with Brent Palmer.”

  For fully ten seconds not the faintest indication proved that the husband had heard, except that he lifted his bridle-hand, and the well-trained pony stopped.

  “What did you say?” he asked finally.

  “Your wife’s run away with Brent Palmer,” repeated Jed, almost with impatience.

  Again the long pause.

  “How do you know?” asked Senor Johnson, then.

  “Know, hell! It’s been going on for a month. Sang saw them drive off. They took the buckboard. He heard ‘em planning it. He was too scairt to tell till they’d gone. I just found it out. They’ve been gone two hours. Must be going to make the Limited.” Parker fidgeted, impatient to be off. “You’re wasting time,” he snapped at the motionless figure.

  Suddenly Johnson’s face flamed. He reached from his saddle to clutch Jed’s shoulder, nearly pulling the foreman from his pony.

  “You lie!” he cried. “You’re lying to me! It ain’t SO!”

  Parker made no effort to extricate himself from the painful grasp. His cool eyes met the blazing eyes of his chief.

  “I wisht I did lie, Buck,” he said sadly. “I wisht it wasn’t so. But it is.”

  Johnson’s head snapped back to the front with a groan. The pony snorted as the steel bit his flanks, leaped forward, and with head outstretched, nostrils wide, the wicked white of the bronco flickering in the corner of his eye, struck the bee line for the home ranch. Jed followed as fast as he was able.

  On his arrival he found his chief raging about the house like a wild beast. Sang trembled from a quick and stormy interrogatory in the kitchen. Chairs had been upset and let lie. Estrella’s belongings had been tumbled over. Senor Johnson there found only too sure proof, in the various lacks, of a premeditated and permanent flight. Still he hoped; and as long as he hoped, he doubted, and the demons of doubt tore him to a frenzy. Jed stood near the door, his arms folded, his weight shifted to his sound foot, waiting and wondering what the next move was to be.

  Finally, Senor Johnson, struck with a new idea, ran to his desk to rummage in a pigeon-hole. But he found no need to do so, for lying on the desk was what he sought—the check book from which Estrella was to draw on Goodrich for the money she might need. He fairly snatched it open. Two of the checks had been torn out, stub and all. And then his eye caught a crumpled bit of blue paper under the edge of the desk.

  He smoothed it out. The check was made out to bearer and signed Estrella Johnson. It called for fifteen thousand dollars. Across the middle was a great ink blot, reason for its rejection.

  At once Senor Johnson became singularly and dangerously cool.

  “I reckon you’re right, Jed,” he cried in his natural voice. “She’s gone with him. She’s got all her traps with her, and she’s drawn on Goodrich for fifteen thousand. And SHE never thought of going just this time of month when the miners are in with their dust, and Goodrich would be sure to have that much. That’s friend Palmer. Been going on a month, you say?”

  “I couldn’t say anything, Buck,” said Parker anxiously. “A man’s never sure enough about them things till afterwards.”

  “I know,” agreed Buck Johnson; “give me a light for my cigarette.”

  He puffed for a moment, then rose, stretching his legs. In a moment he returned from the other room, the old shiny Colt’s forty-five strapped loosely on his hip. Jed looked him in the face with some anxiety. The foreman was not deceived by the man’s easy manner; in fact, he knew it to be symptomatic of one of the dangerous phases of Senor Johnson’s character.

  “What’s up, Buck?” he inquired.


  “Just going out for a pasear with the little horse, Jed.”

  “I suppose I better come along?”

  “Not with your lame foot, Jed.”

  The tone of voice was conclusive. Jed cleared his throat.

  “She left this for you,” said he, proffering an envelope. “Them kind always writes.”

  “Sure,” agreed Senor Johnson, stuffing the letter carelessly into his side pocket. He half drew the Colt’s from its holster and slipped it back again. “Makes you feel plumb like a man to have one of these things rubbin’ against you again,” he observed irrelevantly. Then he went out, leaving the foreman leaning, chair tilted, against the wall.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE CAPTURE

  Although he had left the room so suddenly, Senor Johnson did not at once open the gate of the adobe wall. His demeanour was gay, for he was a Westerner, but his heart was black. Hardly did he see beyond the convexity of his eyeballs.

  The pony, warmed up by its little run, pawed the ground, impatient to be off. It was a fine animal, clean-built, deep-chested, one of the mustang stock descended from the Arabs brought over by Pizarro. Sang watched fearfully from the slant of the kitchen window. Jed Parker, even, listened for the beat of the horse’s hoofs.

  But Senor Johnson stood stock-still, his brain absolutely numb and empty. His hand brushed against something which fell, to the ground. He brought his dull gaze to bear on it. The object proved to be a black, wrinkled spheroid, baked hard as iron in the sunshine of Estrella’s toys, a potato squeezed to dryness by the constricting power of the rawhide. In a row along the fence were others. To Senor Johnson it seemed that thus his heart was being squeezed in the fire of suffering.

  But the slight movement of the falling object roused him. He swung open the gate. The pony bowed his head delightedly. He was not tired, but his reins depended straight to the ground, and it was a point of honour with him to stand. At the saddle horn, in its sling, hung the riata, the “rope” without which no cowman ever stirs abroad, but which Senor Johnson had rarely used of late. Senor Johnson threw the reins over, seized the pony’s mane in his left hand, held the pommel with his right, and so swung easily aboard, the pony’s jump helping him to the saddle. Wheel tracks led down the trail. He followed them.

  Truth to tell, Senor Johnson had very little idea of what he was going to do. His action was entirely instinctive. The wheel tracks held to the southwest so he held to the southwest, too.

  The pony hit his stride. The miles slipped by. After seven of them the animal slowed to a walk. Senor Johnson allowed him to get his wind, then spurred him on again. He did not even take the ordinary precautions of a pursuer. He did not even glance to the horizon in search.

  About supper-time he came to the first ranch house. There he took a bite to eat and exchanged his horse for another, a favourite of his, named Button. The two men asked no questions.

  “See Mrs. Johnson go through?” asked the Senor from the saddle.

  “Yes, about three o’clock. Brent Palmer driving her. Bound for Willets to visit the preacher’s wife, she said. Ought to catch up at the Circle I. That’s where they’d all spend the night, of course. So long.”

  Senor Johnson knew now the couple would follow the straight road. They would fear no pursuit. He himself was supposed not to return for a week, and the story of visiting the minister’s wife was not only plausible, it was natural. Jed had upset calculations, because Jed was shrewd, and had eyes in his head. Buck Johnson’s first mental numbness was wearing away; he was beginning to think.

  The night was very still and very dark, the stars very bright in their candle-like glow. The man, loping steadily on through the darkness, recalled that other night, equally still, equally dark, equally starry, when he had driven out from his accustomed life into the unknown with a woman by his side, the sight of whom asleep had made him feel “almost holy.” He uttered a short laugh.

  The pony was a good one, well equal to twice the distance he would be called upon to cover this night. Senor Johnson managed him well. By long experience and a natural instinct he knew just how hard to push his mount, just how to keep inside the point where too rapid exhaustion of vitality begins.

  Toward the hour of sunrise he drew rein to look about him. The desert, till now wrapped in the thousand little noises that make night silence, drew breath in preparation for the awe of the daily wonder. It lay across the world heavy as a sea of lead, and as lifeless; deeply unconscious, like an exhausted sleeper. The sky bent above, the stars paling. Far away the mountains seemed to wait. And then, imperceptibly, those in the east became blacker and sharper, while those in the west became faintly lucent and lost the distinctness of their outline. The change was nothing, yet everything. And suddenly a desert bird sprang into the air and began to sing.

  Senor Johnson caught the wonder of it. The wonder of it seemed to him wasted, useless, cruel in its effect. He sighed impatiently, and drew his hand across his eyes.

  The desert became grey with the first light before the glory. In the illusory revealment of it Senor Johnson’s sharp frontiersman’s eyes made out an object moving away from him in the middle distance. In a moment the object rose for a second against the sky line, then disappeared. He knew it to be the buckboard, and that the vehicle had just plunged into the dry bed of an arroyo.

  Immediately life surged through him like an electric shock. He unfastened the riata from its sling, shook loose the noose, and moved forward in the direction in which he had last seen the buckboard.

  At the top of the steep little bank he stopped behind the mesquite, straining his eyes; luck had been good to him. The buckboard had pulled up, and Brent Palmer was at the moment beginning a little fire, evidently to make the morning coffee.

  Senor Johnson struck spurs to his horse and half slid, half fell, clattering, down the steep clay bank almost on top of the couple below.

  Estrella screamed. Brent Palmer jerked out an oath, and reached for his gun. The loop of the riata fell wide over him, immediately to be jerked tight, binding his arms tight to his side.

  The bronco-buster, swept from his feet by the pony’s rapid turn, nevertheless struggled desperately to wrench himself loose. Button, intelligent at all rope work, walked steadily backward, step by step, taking up the slack, keeping the rope tight as he had done hundreds of times before when a steer had struggled as this man was struggling now. His master leaped from the saddle and ran forward. Button continued to walk slowly back. The riata remained taut. The noose held.

  Brent Palmer fought savagely, even then. He kicked, he rolled over and over, he wrenched violently at his pinioned arms, he twisted his powerful young body from Senor Johnson’s grasp again and again. But it was no use. In less than a minute he was bound hard and fast. Button promptly slackened the rope. The dust settled. The noise of the combat died. Again could be heard the single desert bird singing against the dawn.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IN THE ARROYO

  Senor Johnson quietly approached Estrella. The girl had, during the struggle, gone through an aimless but frantic exhibition of terror. Now she shrank back, her eyes staring wildly, her hands behind her, ready to flop again over the brink of hysteria.

  “What are you going to do?” she demanded, her voice unnatural.

  She received no reply. The man reached out and took her by the arm.

  And then at once, as though the personal contact of the touch had broken through the last crumb of numbness with which shock had overlaid Buck Johnson’s passions, the insanity of his rage broke out. He twisted her violently on her face, knelt on her back, and, with the short piece of hard rope the cowboy always carries to “hog-tie” cattle, he lashed her wrists together. Then he arose panting, his square black beard rising and falling with the rise and fall of his great chest.

  Estrella had screamed again and again until her face had been fairly ground into the alkali. There she had choked and strangled and gasped and sobbed, her mind nearly unhinged with terr
or. She kept appealing to him in a hoarse voice, but could get no reply, no indication that he had even heard. This terrified her still more. Brent Palmer cursed steadily and accurately, but the man did not seem to hear him either.

  The tempest bad broken in Buck Johnson’s soul. When he had touched Estrella he had, for the first time, realised what he had lost. It was not the woman—her he despised. But the dreams! All at once he knew what they had been to him—he understood how completely the very substance of his life had changed in response to their slow soul-action. The new world had been blasted—the old no longer existed to which to return.

  Buck Johnson stared at this catastrophe until his sight blurred. Why, it was atrocious! He had done nothing to deserve it! Why had they not left him peaceful in his own life of cattle and the trail? He had been happy. His dull eyes fell on the causes of the ruin.

  And then, finally, in the understanding of how he had been tricked of his life, his happiness, his right to well-being, the whole force of the man’s anger flared. Brent Palmer lay there cursing him artistically. That man had done it; that man was in his power. He would get even. How?

  Estrella, too, lay huddled, helpless and defenseless, at his feet. She had done it. He would get even. How?

  He had spoken no word. He spoke none now, either in answer to Estrella’s appeals, becoming piteous in their craving for relief from suspense, or in response to Brent Palmer’s steady stream of insults and vituperations. Such things were far below. The bitterness and anger and desolation were squeezing his heart. He remembered the silly little row of potatoes sewn in the green hide lying along the top of the adobe fence, some fresh and round, some dripping as the rawhide contracted, some black and withered and very small. A fierce and savage light sprang into his eyes.