by Paul Lederer
But then, Cameron thought, Dolly was a desert horse and she trusted her rider. The paint horse that Cameron had purchased in Tucson seemed bewildered by this sere landscape and the long white skies, considering this usage brutal.
At mid-afternoon they came upon the promised water.
‘Let Dolly sample it first,’ Stony advised. ‘She knows the smell of alkali and the scent of arsenic. If she doesn’t back from it, we’ve got sweet water.’
They swung down from their weary horses and Cameron held his eager paint pony back until Dolly sampled the pond first. She nosed the pond scum away from the brackish surface of the steel gray pool, tasted gingerly and then dropped her muzzle fully to begin drinking deeply. Stony Harte laughed and nodded to Cam to let his own horse drink. After the two men had drunk their fill and replenished their canteens they sagged tiredly to the sandy earth. A bower of tightly woven thorny mesquite and willow brush towered over them, filtering the sunlight. There was a single, ancient sycamore tree, its mottled bough arching low above the pond.
There were red ants streaming in a furious erratic line to the mesquite brush and back to wherever they had their nest, and pond skimmers – those strange long-legged insects which seemed to have the ability to walk on water – a multitude of quail tracks and, as Stony pointed out in the wetter sand near the pool, the hoof prints of a small doe.
‘Wish she was here now,’ Stony said, removing his hat to wipe his brow. ‘I’ve had all the pemmican I can take. Leave that for the Indians.’
Cameron laughed, agreeing, and asked Stony about making a fire for coffee, but the older man shook his head decisively. ‘We’re farther into Jicarilla country, Cam. That’s a very bad idea.’
Cameron noticed that Stony had chosen to sit on his saddle-bags and not his blanket, but he didn’t make a remark. The day remained unwaveringly hot, without a stirring of breeze, but they had the roughly woven shade overhead and the cooling influence of nearby water, and the afternoon was not all that unpleasant. Quail still spoke in the underbrush; perhaps disturbed by this man-presence near their watering place. A ball of gnats hung menacingly in the air but did not move in their direction.
Cameron, the heat and deprivation weighing on him, let his eyes close as he sat on his horse blanket placed over the burning sand. If it were twenty degrees cooler, he thought, he wouldn’t mind stretching out for a nap.
‘You know, Stony …’ he began, opening his eyes.
His words were cut off sharply before he could continue, for through the white glitter of the sunlight he saw that Stony Harte had drawn his pistol and had it aimed toward him.
‘Stony!’ Cameron shouted. Before he could move, Harte pulled the trigger of his .44, the roar echoing thunderously in the small copse. And then Stony Harte laughed out loud as the shot echoed up the canyon and black powdersmoke roiled upward through the tangle of branches into the white desert sky.
TWO
‘Learn to watch where you sit,’ Stony Harte said with a smile. He had risen to walk toward Cameron Black’s blanket. Using his boot toe he nudged the four-foot long sidewinder from the sand. The rattler was dead and, Cameron noticed, it had been killed by the single .44 bullet that had taken its head off neatly. Stony buried the head of the snake with his boot and picked up the sidewinder’s rubbery, near-white body which he tossed far away for some other predator to feed on.
Cameron found he was still trembling. It wasn’t the snake so much that caused his fear, it was the sudden murderous glint he had glimpsed in the eyes of Stony Harte, as he drew his revolver and fired in one deft movement. That could have been me, he thought irrationally as he watched the viper being flung away.
‘I never saw him.…’ Cameron said shakily. ‘How did you know?’
‘I saw his eyes protruding from the sand. He was watching you. Doubt he would have struck unless you molested him – they usually don’t. But,’ Stony went on, ‘you might have stuck a hand on him while you were rising or shifting position.’ He shook his head and smiled again. ‘Rattlers don’t like that.’
‘That shot …?’ Cameron Black asked.
‘Yeah, we should be moving. If there are Jicarillas around they’ll have heard it.’ Stony rose, put on his fancy hat and hefted his saddlebags.
It was cooler now and they continued to follow the course of the Maricopa. There was still no running water to be seen in the riverbed, but now and then Cameron could smell moisture in the still hot air. To him it seemed they were continuing to veer north-west, away from Tombstone, but Stony had assured him that the creek bent eventually toward the town. And here they always had the chance of coming across water. Out on the desert flats there was none.
The land began to change again with the passing of the evening hours. Low hills began to appear along their way, studded with agave, their flanks littered with red volcanic stones. Cameron heard an owl hoot somewhere and a rush of motion in the willow brush lining the river as some larger animal took to its heels at their approach.
Purple dusk was beginning to settle and there was a pale, rose-colored narrow pennant of cloud adhering to the sky. Stony asked from out of the near darkness: ‘How do you come to find yourself in this country, Cameron?’
‘I lost my mother and father at the same time,’ Cameron shrugged. ‘I was sent to live with an uncle in Arkansas. He didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. A cousin in Tucson invited me to come West and work on his dry ranch. By the time I got here we were in full drought and there was no water at all for his stock tanks. He had to sell off his cattle to the army and he moved on to New Mexico where a friend had offered him a clerking job in a dry goods store. Me … I hung around Tucson for a while but there was no work there. I hear they’re hiring mule skinners in Tombstone,’ he shrugged, ‘so that’s where I’m headed. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll travel on again. I got no roots left, no people.
‘How about you, Stony?’
Stony Harte’s voice was low, controlled, but bitter as he answered out of the near darkness. ‘I lost my folks in Georgia too. Mine were killed by Union soldiers. I lost an uncle, two brothers and my aunt lost her mind when the Yankees burned the house down and took over her land.
‘I swore I’d never live in the States again. That’s how I come to be in Arizona Territory. If it ever becomes a state, I’ll move on again – even if it’s to Australia.’
The anger was unmistakable, the hatred of the Yankees. Cameron was sorry he had asked the question at all.
Venus, the evening star, had begun to glow dimly above the western horizon. Cameron felt his pony misstep, stumbling on a round creek bottom rock. ‘Think maybe we ought to pick a campsite, Stony?’ he asked.
‘No. We’re pushing on a little farther.’
Cameron shrugged and followed along doggedly. It was Stony’s country; he must have had some goal in mind. Near the creek now Cameron could tell, by scent, the willows were greener, water more plentiful, and he caught sight of three or four closely growing cottonwood trees not far ahead. Stony beckoned in the darkness and Cameron followed him through the brush and up onto open country without question.
They found themselves on a low bluff where the scent of sagebrush was heavy and clumps of nopal cactus grew here and there. They followed a narrow path no wider than a rabbit run until Stony finally drew Dolly up at the edge of a rise and halted, looking down into the small valley that had appeared. Cameron could make out a tiny cabin, a small grove of live oak trees standing near it. A light burned in the cabin’s window.
‘You knew this was here,’ Cameron said in surprise.
‘Sure, Cam! I told you to trust me. Let’s go on down.’
‘Is it safe? Maybe we should hail the house first.’
‘It’s all right,’ Stony said. His teeth flashed white in the light of the growing starlight. ‘They’re friends of mine.’
What a blessing it would be to find himself under a roof, Cam was thinking, as they started down the brushy slope, making their way through man
zanita and greasewood. They would have some sort of rough meal to offer as well, whoever they were. Possibly even hay, at least some sort of fodder for the weary horses. And water!
It was his great luck that he had managed to fall in with Stony Harte, he reflected. He might have wandered aimlessly on the desert behind them. Worse, he could have encountered the Jicarillas on his own, or simply died from lack of water. Stony was a godsend, this desert nomad who seemed to know every pond and pass, secret trail and mountain divide.
Why then, as they approached the cabin from out of the darkness did Cameron find a cold creeping trepidation pass over him like a warning wind?
Stony halted his horse again when they were fifty yards or so from the small cabin. Putting his cupped hands to his mouth he sounded two owl hoots and was answered from somewhere in the darkness beyond the cabin. Smiling, Stony nodded to Cameron Black and they started on.
Cameron caught a glimpse of a man with a rifle moving toward them slowly from the oak grove, and he wondered briefly why such precautions were necessary. The answer was so obvious that his unease was banished by embarrassment at his own doubts. These people were, after all, occupying a country where the Apaches ranged.
Cameron saw the front door to the cabin open a crack. Then it was flung open, lantern-light flooding the porch as a grinning man without a hair on his head stepped out, pistol in his hand.
‘We’d given you up, Stony,’ the stranger said cheerfully.
‘You know better than to count me out, Slyke,’ Stony answered, swinging down from Dolly. He looped the gray horse’s reins over the crossbar of the hitch rail and stood, hands on hips, as the man who had emerged from the oaks sauntered up to him.
This one, Cameron saw by the light flooding from the cabin’s smoky interior, was tall, red-haired, wearing only his trousers, boots and long john shirt as if he had been roused quickly and dispatched quickly.
‘Hello, Willie,’ Stony Halle said without offering his hand. The red-head’s eyes were black in the darkness and they were fixed on Cameron. His nose, Cam saw, had been badly sliced at one time and had been stitched on carelessly, leaving it crooked and grossly flabby.
‘Who’s this?’ the man named Willie asked.
‘Cameron Black. He’s a fellow-traveler,’ Stony replied, with a small gesture that could have meant anything.
Swinging down from the paint pony’s back, Cameron nodded to the two strangers. His uneasiness had returned, but he did not know why. No matter, if they were friends of Stony’s, these men had to be accepted. No matter that they appeared tough and cautious. Most men in this territory were understandably cautious around those they did not know.
‘Got any coffee?’ Stony asked, untying the piggin strings that held his saddle-bags.
‘Coffee and white lightning,’ the bald man, Slyke, answered.
‘Then why are you boys making me stand out here in the dark!’
He inclined his head and Cameron followed him into the poorly built shack. Without sawn lumber to be had it had been constructed of whatever was at hand. Adobe clay over poles with a brush and pole roof. Cameron had slept in worse places; he paid no attention to the packed earth floor or darting mosquitoes.
‘About time!’ said the voice from beneath the Indian blanket in the corner. The blanket was spread over a roughly made low bed with a thin mattress of ticking. When it was thrown back, the woman in the black dress emerged with a quick smile for Stony and a narrow-eyed appraisal of Cameron Black.
‘Who is this?’ she asked tightly.
By the smoky glow of the kerosene lantern Cameron could not make her out well. Her voice was gravelly and low-pitched. She was quite short and fairly stout. Her hair was a haystack tangle of dark, gray-streaked locks. ‘My God!’ she murmured, still staring at Cameron. She picked up a brush from a rickety table and began working at her hair with a sort of nervous authority.
‘I know, Emily,’ Stony said to her. He then tossed the saddle-bags from his shoulder onto her bed and told Slyke, ‘I’ll have some coffee now. Let me have a straight shooter of that gump you call whiskey first to clear the dust.’
Willie nodded and walked to a corner stove constructed of a few bricks and a sheet of rusty steel. He poked at the smoldering fire and startled a few flames to life. Then he handed Stony a pint jar with an inch or so of pale liquor in it. Cameron was offered nothing.
‘What happened to the boys?’ Willie asked impatiently. He rubbed at his deformed nose and stared at Cameron as if challenging him to say something about it. Cam’s unease had returned, and now it was based more solidly on something beyond suspicions. He had somehow blundered into a band of dangerous men.
Stony drank a neat ounce of poisonous white lightning and shook his head. ‘The shotgun rider got Billy even before we had them halted. Some dude inside the stage took it into his head that he was a gunfighter. He leaped out of the Concorde and blasted away at Indian Joe. Missed the first two shots, got him the next.’
‘How many did you get, Stony?’ the woman asked, her eyes bright with the excitement of the tale.
Stony shrugged and took another drink of the poor whiskey, wiping his lips on his cuff. ‘I’m here, ain’t I? I got all three of them. I took the shotgun rider with a snap shot; I took my time with the passenger. I always liked Indian Joe. The driver played possum, pretending he’d been hit: I knew he hadn’t, so I hit him for real.’
‘Only you, Stony,’ the stout woman said with frank admiration.
‘The trouble is that I think there was another passenger. He bolted out the far door and took to the brush. I didn’t have time to search for him – no telling who the shots would bring. I grabbed the payroll and got out of there. I dumped the silver. For its weight it isn’t worth that much and I was alone and needing to travel fast. I burned the army scrip. That’s worthless. Especially if we decide to head out for Mexico. The gold …’ He nodded toward the saddle-bags resting on the Indian blanket.
Cameron Black felt himself sway slightly. His worst fears had been realized. He had wandered like a child into the camp of a band of murderous thieves.
‘Strange, ain’t it?’ the woman said. ‘The resemblance, I mean,’ she said, stepping nearer to Cameron to look at his face. ‘Eerie, is what it is – the way he looks like you.’ She still held her tortoiseshell brush in her hand. Now she lifted it as if she would tap it against Cam’s chest, but she did not. She turned her back and went to Stony and whispered something that made the outlaw grin.
Slyke was seated near the saddle-bags Stony had brought in and now his hand fumbled with the clasps. Stony Harte saw the motion from the corner of his eye and he whirled, his hand on the butt of his pistol.
‘Leave that be for now!’
‘It’s part mine, isn’t it?’ the bald man said sulkily, but he didn’t like the look in Stony’s eyes and he rose to turn away.
‘Why’d you bring the kid along with you?’ Willie demanded, watching Cameron.
‘Why do you think?’ Stony answered.
Slowly Willie came to understand. His eyes brightened with low intelligence as he looked from Stony Harte to Cameron Black.
‘He is,’ the woman, Emily, said, ‘isn’t he? He’s a dead ringer for Stony.’
‘Dead ringer,’ Willie said with a crooked smile. He tugged involuntarily at his bent nose again.
The misgivings Cameron had felt growing mushroomed into stark fear. He knew now what they had in mind for him. He backed away half a step, but Willie moved behind him, clamped a big, broken-knuckled hand on his wrist and removed his Colt .44 from his holster, tucking it behind his belt.
Cameron tried to feign indifference, as if taking his gun was only a precaution on the outlaw’s part. He tried fixing an expression of amiable unconcern on his face and suggested, ‘How about if I put the horses up and rub ’em down, Stony?’
Stony didn’t bother to answer. His eyes were hooded and bleak. There was no doubt in Cameron’s mind now what his fate was to be. Only a paw
n in a dangerous game, he would have to be sacrificed. He shrugged and half-turned as if he were part stupid. Then he bolted for the doorway. He threw a fist into Slyke’s stomach, pawed at his gun which he could not recover, stumbled past Willie and was banged against the door jamb then broke free into the yard.
Cameron ducked as the first shot was fired from the cabin door, tried for the paint pony’s reins and could not catch them up as the startled horse shied. Then he broke into a weaving, panicked run. Two more shots were aimed his way, missing him again.
Another bullet was loosed from one of the .44s behind him and this one did not miss. It caught him on the side of the skull like a sledge hammer, his limbs turned to rubber and Cameron Black came undone, sprawling onto his face against the cold, hard Arizona earth. One bright, volcanic light flashed through his head and then fizzled to darkness, leaving him falling into a deep, silent abyss.
‘Good work, Pocomo,’ a man was saying from out of a long, light tunnel. Someone answered in a strangely inflected voice.
‘I say catch ’em, I catch ’em.’ There was a pride in the words. Cameron felt a boot toe jar his ribs roughly. Someone was standing over him. Opening one eye a mere slit he saw the sun, high and white glaring down on the ranch. He closed his eyes tightly; the glare was intolerable. His head was raging with pain. There was matted blood in his hair, scabbed across one eye. He pawed at it with the web of his hand, tried to rise and fell back to the hot earth.
‘Get up!’ someone commanded, and Cameron was jerked to his feet by hands under his arms and at his belt.
‘You sure this is him?’ a third voice asked.
‘It’s him.’
‘I track that horse thirty miles,’ the man with the odd voice said. Squinting again into the terrible sunlight, Cameron saw that this one was an Indian, perhaps a Cherokee. His face was covered with white alkali dust, streaked with rivulets of sweat. ‘I know that horse tracks.’
‘So do I, Pocomo,’ the big man answered. ‘Name’s “Dolly”, isn’t it, Stony?’