The Lonely Men s-14

by Louis L'Amour

  They planted the other one, wrapped in his blankets, out on Boot Hill.

  By noontime I had most of what I would need, but was still shy a horse. Dropping in at the Shoo-Fly I figured to have myself a bite of grub, and maybe I could find somebody with a horse to spare.

  So I shaved myself with a broken triangle of glass for a mirror, stuck in the fork of a mesquite tree, while Rocca slept with his head on his saddle close by.

  We were a mite out of town among some rocks and mesquite, and we'd been there a while when I heard somebody singing "Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," and Rocca pushed his hat back off his eyes. "Don't shoot," he said, grinning at me.

  "That's John J."

  And it was. Battles came up through the brush and looked us over, and we told him what the score was.

  "Where's Spanish?" he wanted to know, and Rocca told him.

  "He found himself a gal down yonder. Her name is Conchita, and if she gets mad at him the Apaches will be a relief. But don't you worry none about Spanish.

  When the time comes he'll fork his saddle and come with us."

  When I'd shaved we talked things over a mite and Rocca headed for Mexican town to roust out Spanish Murphy, whilst Battles went back into the brush to keep out of sight. Somehow or other, neither of us thought to tell him about the Hadden outfit.

  The Shoo-Fly was crowded when I came in, but I tamed some heads. I don't know if it was the gun battle the night before or the whiskey I'd used for shave lotion, but they looked me over some. I'd been sort of sidestepping the marshal, not wanting to be ordered out of town yet, and not wanting trouble, if he was so inclined. When it came to eating, I was always a good feeder and always ready to set up and partake. Likely this would be the last woman-cooked food I'd have for a while, and even any hot meals I'd cook myself would be almighty scarce on that trek down into Sonora and over into Chihuahua. When a man is fighting shy of Apaches he doesn't go around sending up smoke.

  Sitting there in the Shoo-Fly, which was not exactly elegant, though the best there was around, a body might have an idea folks would step aside for a body who'd killed his man in a gun battle. No such thing.

  Right there in that room there were men like William S. Oury, who had fought through the Texas war for independence, had been a Texas Ranger, and had engaged in many a bloody duel with Apaches and border characters. Most of the men sitting around in their broadcloth suits were men who had engaged in their share of Indian fights, or wars of one kind or another. And they were good citizens -- lawyers, mining men, storekeepers and the like.

  No sooner had I begun to eat than the door opened and Laura came in. She was in white, and she looked pale and frail. She wore the kind of gloves with no fingers in them that made no sense to me. And she carried a parasol, as most women did.

  She stood a moment, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the glare, and then crossed to my table. I got up and seated her, then sat down.

  Folks turned to look at her, they were almighty curious, her being such a pretty woman and all, and not many of them knowing we were kin.

  "Tell," she said, "I heard you were looking for a horse. Is that true?"

  "Yes, ma'am, it is. Mine was killed out yonder. I've got to find a saddle horse and at least one pack horse. Seems Apache raids have cut down the supply, and the Army has been buying saddle stock, too."

  "Why didn't you tell me? I can get you some horses. In fact, I have just the horse for you."

  "It would help," I admitted. "I've got my outfit together."

  She took the coffee Mrs. Wallen brought to the table, and then said, "I hear you had some trouble."

  "It wasn't my trouble. They were hunting a man I know, and when they couldn't find him they chose me -- that is, me and Rocca, one of the men I rode to town with."

  She said no more about it, and I wasn't anxious to talk of it. We talked a while about the trip, and then she told me where to go to see the horses. "The one I want you to ride," she suggested, "is the big black with the diamond blaze on his hip."

  Now, one horse I was not hunting was a big black with a diamond on his hip. Any kind of horse would help, but a black horse was almost as bad as a white one in that country. What I preferred was a roan, a buckskin, or a dun or grulla. I wanted a horse whose color would fade into the country, not one that would stand out like a red nose at a teetotal picnic. Of course, there were patches of black rock, shadows, and the like, and a black horse was some better than a white one which would catch the sun and could be seen for miles. However, this was no time to argue.

  "All right," I said, and then I added, "If we get the horses I can leave tomorrow."

  She talked of Tucson and its discomforts, and how she wished to be back in Santa Fe -- or in Washington, she added.

  "I like Washington," I said.

  She seemed surprised, and said, "You have been there?"

  "Yes, ma'am. I was in the Army of the Potomac for a while. I was around Washington quite a bit."

  That was a long time ago, and I'd been a boy then, freshly joined up with the Union army.

  When she was gone I lingered over coffee, thinking out that trail to the south, trying to foresee the problems that might arise. It wasn't in me to go into things blind, and there was a whole lot about this that made me kind of uneasy, but there was nothing I could pin down.

  Mrs. Wallen came over. "Are you related to Laura Sackett?"

  "She's my sister-in-law."

  "I wondered ... your names being the same, and all." She still hesitated, then sat down opposite me. "We don't see many women traveling alone in this country."

  "Her father died ... out in California," I said. "He was all alone out there, and nobody to see to him. Orrin -- he's my brother -- had to stay in Washington."

  She sat there a while without saying any more, and then got up and left. I couldn't figure out why she sat down to talk to me. It seemed as if she was going to tell me something -- maybe something about the Army or the Apaches.

  The black horse was a good one, all right. And that diamond-shaped blaze on his hip and one white stocking was all that kept him from being solid black. He was a whole lot more horse than I expected to find. The two pack horses were nondescript mustangs, but they looked tough.

  They were in a barn back of an adobe, and the man who had the care of them squatted on his heels and watched me studying the horses.

  "You're takin' a lot of care, mister," he said sourly, "when you got no choice."

  He spat out the straw he'd been chewing. "Take 'em or leave 'em. I got no more time to spare. The lady paid for 'em. All you got to do is saddle up and ride."

  He didn't like me and I didn't like him, so I taken the horses and got away. I rode them back into the brush where Rocca was waiting and where my gear was cached.

  Rocca had rustled a horse from somewhere in Mex town, so we were ready to go.

  "You got anything holdin' you?" I asked him.

  "Not so's you'd notice. Spanish is out in the brush with John J. They'll meet us south of here."

  So we mounted up and rode out of there, paying no mind to anything else. Down country about four miles Spanish rode up to us, and then John J. Battles followed.

  "You boys are taking a wild chance," I said. "You got no stake in this."

  "Shut up," Spanish said. "You save your breath to cool your porridge."

  "I never been to the Sierra Madres," John J. said. "Any place I ain't been I got to see."

  We put up some dust and headed south, with me riding up front. The trail was used ... there was always some riding down toward Kitchen's ranch.

  You might think that on a traveled trail you'd be safe, but there was nowhere in this corner of Arizona where a body was safe, one moment to the next. Pete Kitchen had men on watch all hours of the day, and everybody went armed, expecting trouble, so after a while the Apaches kind of fought shy of the Kitchen outfit.

  There's been a lot of talk of the rights and wrongs of the Indian wars, and there was wrong
on both sides. There were mighty few Indians holding down land in this country when the white man came, and most of them never held to any one spot. They just drifted from place to place, living off the wild game and the plants. The white men came hunting living space, and a place for a home. Instead of roaming as the Indians had done, they settled down to farm the land and build houses.

  Some of the white men wanted to live in peace with the red man, and some of the red men wanted to live in peace, too, but some on both sides didn't want anything of the kind. The young bucks wanted to take scalps and steal horses because that made them big men with the squaws, and it was often easier to take them from white men than from other Indians, as they had always done. And whenever the wise old Indians and the wiser and kinder of the white men wanted to make peace, there was always some drunken white man or wild-haired Indian ready to make trouble.

  When an Indian made war he made war on women and children as well as on men, and even the friendly white men found it hard to be friendly when they came home and found their cabins burned, their women and children killed. On the other hand, the politically appointed Indian agents and the white men who wanted Indian land or horses would rob, cheat, and murder Indians.

  It was no one-sided argument, and I knew it. But now the Apaches had stolen some children and taken them into Mexico, and we were going after them.

  We rode through the last of the afternoon and into the cool of the evening. We camped that night in some ruins, half sheltered by adobe walls, and at daybreak we rode out.

  On the second night we stayed at Pete Kitchen's ranch.

  Chapter 5

  We rode south for a few miles after leaving Pete Kitchen's place, then turned off the main trail toward the east. Now, a man who leaves a trail in the desert had best know exactly where he is going, for his life is at stake.

  Travel in the desert cannot be haphazard. Every step a man takes in desert country has to be taken with water in mind. He is either heading for water, or figuring how far he will be from it if he gets off the trail. The margin of safety is narrow.

  All of us had been south of the border, but it was Tampico Rocca who knew most about it, with me coming second, I suppose. Like everybody else, we had to depend on waterholes, and no matter what route we chose, sooner or later we had to wind up at those watering places. This was just as true for the Apaches.

  The desert has known waterholes, but it also has other waterholes not generally known, usually of limited capacity and usually difficult to find. Birds and animals know of those places, and so do the Apaches in most cases. If you did not know of them you had to know how to find them, and that was something that did not come easy.

  A man living in wild country has to be aware of everything around him. He has to keep his eyes looking, his ears listening, his every sense alert. And that doesn't mean because of Apaches, but because of the desert itself. You can't fight the desert ... you have to ride with it.

  The desert is not all hot sun and sand, there's the rocks too. Miles of them sometimes, scattered over the desert floor, great heaps of them now and again, or those great broken ridges of dull red or black rock like the broken spines of huge animals. They shove up through the sand, and the sand is trying hard to bury them again.

  In much of the southwestern desert there's even a lot of green, although the playas, or dry lake beds, are dead white. Some of the desert plants hold back until there's a rain, then they leaf out suddenly and blossom quickly, to take advantage of that water. But much of the greenness of desert plants doesn't mean that rain has fallen, for many of the plants have stored water in their pulpy tissues to save against drought, others have developed hard-surfaced leaves that reflect sunlight and give off no moisture to the sun.

  Plants and animals have learned to live with the desert, and so have the Apaches. And we, the four of us, we were like Apaches in that regard.

  The desert is the enemy of the careless. Neither time, nor trails, nor equipment will ever change that. A man must stay alert to choose the easiest routes, he travels slow to save himself, he keeps his eyes open to see those signs which indicate where water might be found. The flight of bees or birds, the tracks of small animals, the land of plants he sees -- these things he must notice, for certain plants are indications of ground water, and some birds and animals never live far from water. Others drink little, or rarely, getting the moisture they need from the plants they eat or the animals they kill.

  We rode until the sun was two hours in the sky, and then we turned off into a narrow canyon and hunted shade to wait through the hottest hours. We unsaddled, let the horses roll, then watered them at a little seep Rocca knew of. After that, with one man to watch, we stretched out on the sand to catch some rest.

  There always had to be a man on watch, because the Apaches were great horse thieves, though not a patch on the Comanches, who could steal a horse from under you whilst you sat in the saddle. You either kept watch or you found yourself afoot, and in the desert, unless you're almighty canny, that means you're dead.

  First off, when we rode into that canyon we studied the opening for sign. A man in wild country soon gets so he can read the trail sign as easy as most folks read a newspaper, and often it's even more interesting.

  You not only read what sign you see on the ground, but you learn to read dust in the distant air -- how many riders there are under that dust, and where they're headed.

  The droppings left by horses also have a story to tell, whether that horse has been grain-fed, whether he has been grazing off country grass or desert plants.

  And no two horses leave the same track. Each is a mite different, and their gaits are different. Their hoofs do not strike with the same impact, and sometimes there's a difference in the way they are shod.

  We could tell that nobody had been in that canyon for weeks. We knew, too, that most of the time during the months of June, July, and August in Sonora you'll get some rain. Sudden showers that may be gone as quickly as they come, but enough to settle the dust and to fill some of the "tanks" in the desert mountains.

  Among those desert ridges such tanks are frequent, pits hollowed in the rock over the centuries by driving rain, or shaped by run-off water. During heavy rains these tanks collect water and hold it for weeks, or even for months. We'd had some rain, so the better water-holes and tanks were holding water now.

  Shortly before sundown, rested by our nap in the shade, we saddled up again.

  This time I took the lead.

  There were clusters of cholla and ocotillo, and we took advantage of them as much as possible to shield our movements. The route we used was an ancient one rarely traveled in these days, but from time to time we'd pull up near a clump of brush where the outlines of our horses and ourselves would merge into the growth, and there we'd set, studying the country around us.

  You might think that out in such open country, with no good cover anywhere, a body wouldn't have to worry, but knowing Apaches the way we did, we knew that twenty of them could be hidden out there in a matter of yards, and nobody the wiser.

  We were taking our time, saving our horses. An Apache, who often rode his horses to death, will make sixty to seventy miles a day if he's in a hurry. On foot he'll cover thirty-five to forty miles a day even in rough country. That was about what we were doing a-horseback.

  About an hour after dark, we rode down into a little hollow choked with mesquite brush and built ourselves a tiny fire of dried wood and made coffee. The fire was well hidden in the hollow and the brush, and it gave us a chance to get the coffee we dearly needed.

  "What you think?" Rocca said suddenly. "One rider?"

  "Uh-huh," I said, "a small man or a boy."

  "What are you talking about?" Battles asked.

  "We've been picking up tracks," I told them. "A shod horse. A small horse, but a good one. Moves well ... desert bred."

  "Injun, on a stolen horse," Spanish said promptly. "No white man would be ridin' alone in this neck of the woods."
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br />   Rocca shrugged doubtfully. "Maybe so ... I don't know."

  Those tracks had been worrying my mind for quite a few minutes, for whoever rode that horse was riding with caution, which meant it was no Apache. An Apache would know he was in country where his people were supreme, and although he would keep alert, he would not be pausing to scout the country as this rider was.

  In my mind I was sure, and I knew Rocca was sure, that the rider was no Indian.

  Unless, maybe, an Indian child.

  When the desert sun was gone the heat went with it, and a coolness came over the land. The horses, quickened by the cool air, moved forward as eagerly as if they could already smell the pines of the Sierra Madre. From time to time we drew up to listen into the night.

  About an hour before daylight we gave our horses a breather. Rocca, squatting on his heels behind a mesquite bush, lit a cigarette cupped in the palm of his hand and glanced at me. "You know the Bavispe?"

  "Yes ... we'll hit at the big bend ... where she turns south again."

  Tampico Rocca knew this country better than I did. After all, he was half Apache, and he had lived in the Sierra Madre. Battles was sleeping, and Spanish he went over to listen to the night sounds, away from our voices. I was hot and tired, and was wishing for a bath in that river up ahead, but it wasn't likely I'd get one.

  Rocca was quiet for a spell, and I settled back on the sand and stared up at the stars. They looked lonely up there in the nighttime sky, lonely as we were down here. I was a solitary man, a drifter across the country, with no more home than a tumbleweed, but so were we all. We were men without women, and if all the nights we'd spent under a roof were put together they would scarcely cover four or five weeks.

  Men have a way of drifting together without much rhyme or reason, just the circumstances of their living brings them together, just as we had been brought together in Yuma. Now the three of them were chancing their lives to lend me a hand, but that was the way with western men, and chances were I'd have done the same for them.