The prospectors walked over the mountains searching for—and some finding—large deposits of gold, silver, and copper. And, as always, men of money took away the rewards of their labors and built themselves great palaces.
And Joshua saw the Italians, Chinese, and many other nationalities driving the spikes into the rail ties. The trains came like the covered wagons before them—faster, more powerful—hauling more people and goods than ever before. The double-bitted axes and two-man saws cut the majestic pines of the high places, taking away the shelter of the deer, lion, and bear.
Now Joshua closed his eyes, for he knew all the rest. When he opened them, he heard the song begin again. It was both older and newer each time he heard it. There was a massive adobe church, and his lady walked right through the walls and into the one he sat staring at. Now, as she spoke his name, he knew his final move was near. For the first time, he turned away from her and headed for the door. She smiled, somehow exactly like the song.
As he opened the door and pulled it shut, he felt a presence come at him. He was so keyed up, so full of his feelings, that he just stepped aside and let it hurtle past. It was Grebbs. He’d driven the dagger so deep into the door that he couldn’t pull it out to strike again. Grebbs had missed all the way. Joshua gathered him up around the neck with one hand, jerked the dagger from the door with the other, and smashed him against the wall. He shoved the point of the dagger just barely under the skin of Grebb’s guts. Grebb’s eyes bulged, and he almost died of fright right there, but the hand of his master cut any words off. It was quite a long moment for the corporate vice president.
“What I should do, Grebbs, is cut your filthy entrails out and shove them down your dead throat. But that’s far too easy for you.”
Joshua dropped him to the floor and drove the knife to the hilt in the door. He then strode up the stairs three at a time, hearing only a low broken sob below him.
As he entered the world of people again, Carole grabbed at him, visibly drunk and more. She said, “God! God! What are you doing?” He moved on from her as she shrieked, “You don’t love me!” He ignored this, too, and when she raked her painted claws into the back of his neck, he ignored that as well. She stood looking at her fingers and the bits of bloody flesh clinging to her nails.
Rob blocked his way, again demanding attention. “I’m asking you for the last time! Do you hear me? Where is Aleta?”
He pushed the young man aside, saying as he went, “I’ll tell you in a few minutes.” This surprised and stopped Rob right where he stood.
Then Joshua raised his arms and shouted, “Music, you fools! Play and dance!” The drunken musicians all started up again, jerky, horrendously out of synchronization.
Joshua went to the kitchen and very tenderly lifted an exhausted and sleeping Juanita from her chair. He explained to her two sisters that he would take Juanita to her room on the other side of the hacienda. They were glad and went on cleaning up. He led her slowly out a side door. On the other side of many walls could be heard the so-called music sailing up, dissipating itself in the peaceful desert air.
As he walked the bent old woman along, he spoke to her softly, “It’s time for you to rest, Juanita. You’ve been faithful all these decades. Your sisters can do the labors. You will have time of your own now. A long, long time that will belong just to you. You’ve served many people who did not even deserve your presence.”
There was an old well near the working shed where her little house stood. They stopped here.
“Juanita, you are like this—this dried-up well. It gave so much for so long, it now has no water left.”
He pulled the plank top off. Juanita was weary and still partially in the world of sleep. Joshua steadied the bony old shoulders with both his hands. He looked at her in the moonlight and said, “Juanita, you are a beautiful woman.”
She twitched the tiniest of smiles across her worn face and tilted her head just a little in an almost girlish move.
Then he said, “Juanita, I love you.” He slipped a handkerchief from his pocket, crammed it into her mouth, jerked her upside down, and hurled her head-first into the well. There was just a crumpled thud. No more.
In the patio, the music was beginning to die. A dullness had come over the area. A deadly dullness. But heads started turning, one, two, three at a time towards the hacienda door. Their center of attention, Joshua, strode amongst them. There were only whispers now. Joshua saw a movement and stopped. The heavy earthen vase smashed to bits in front of him. He looked up, and there on a low wall stood Helstrom like a clown without makeup. He too, had missed.
Joshua grabbed him by both legs and jerked him down against the bricks of the patio floor. He hit, and his head bounced. Joshua gripped him by the neck and the side of one leg and tossed him over and beyond the wall.
He turned slowly around, his eyes covering all the crowd. No one moved. Not at all. He walked back through them to the house and in a few moments returned. He carried a huge silver candelabra, from the first Spanish days, with twenty lighted candles. He walked with it held high. None moved, except to get out of his way. Alfredo sat on the edge of the empty pool. His feet dangled down into its empty space. He tilted his head the way only he could do and softly, so very softly, strummed an old Spanish love song—a song older than the hacienda. Joshua walked to the steps of the pool and with absolute certainty of purpose stepped carefully down into it. It seemed a long time, but it was not. He placed the candelabra in the deepest part of the pool, stepped back, and looked into the flames. Then he raised his head and stared upwards at all the faces that now circled the pool to stare down at him. He turned in a complete circle so that he looked into the soft reflections in each of their eyes. He was all things in that small turn. None of them knew what they were seeing. He walked back up the steps, and there stood Rob.
Joshua said, “Come now, Rob, and I’ll tell you what you really want to know.”
Alfredo went on singing in Spanish as if he were making quiet love. The circle still looked downwards at the glowing candles.
Near the largest expanse of wall on the whole of the hacienda, Joshua said quietly to Rob, “I killed her. I took her into the desert and killed sweet Aleta.”
Rob was momentarily paralyzed. Then a terrible cry and sound of murder burst from him as he ripped the edge of his pocket, pulling out the gun. He fired right into the chest of Joshua, knocking him against the wall. He pulled at the trigger until there was nothing left. Joshua stayed upright for a moment, full of holes, and then fell forward, rolling over, face up. The crowd from the pool moved towards Rob, hesitantly, fearfully. They made a half-circle around the body.
Rob spoke, not looking away from Joshua’s dead, smiling face as if afraid he’d rise up again, “He killed Aleta.”
Grebbs, saying things unintelligible like a slavering idiot, pushed his way through the mass, stopping with his face above Joshua’s. Then he vented a little stuttering laugh. It broke forth louder and louder, and haltingly the others were caught up with him. They laughed and cried at the same time, not knowing really which they were doing. None thought to look at the wall above the body. It didn’t matter, though, for all those who might have seen were already there. On a thin-edged hill stood Charlotte the dedicated, Aleta the beloved, Chalo the companion, and old Juanita the faithful. They were in a row, smiling with contentment. Just below them, the lady in black lace walked forward to meet Joshua.
As he moved into the wall, there came from his throat another form of laughter that far, far transcended the hysterical cackling in the patio. He glanced back just once, and the song overcame the mirth. He took her into his arms and held her. They had waited so very long. It was over. They walked, holding hands, up the hill to join those he loved, and they all disappeared into a new world.
The wall turned back to dirt.
None could stay at the hacienda that night. Just before the sun announced the dawn, the last candle in the bottom of the pool flickered out. The light was
gone.
It has been said that no one wrote the traditional Western story better than Ernest Haycox (1899–1950). Such novels as The Earth Breakers, Alders, Alder Gulch, Long Storm, The Wild Bunch, and Bugles in the Afternoon, and such collections as Murder on the Frontier, Pioneer Loves, By Rope and Lead, and Rough Justice, offer eloquent testimony in support of that claim. The story we’ve chosen, “Stage to Lordsburg,” was made into John Ford’s landmark movie Stagecoach, starring John Wayne. In Haycox’s hands, the simplest, and sometimes most conventional, theme became something moving, powerful, memorable. The ability to capture the true essence of life in the old West is what set Ernest Haycox apart from other Western writers of his time, and what continues to make his work popular with modern readers. His stories and novels invariably have an unsurpassed sense of realism and truth about them.
Stage to Lordsburg
Ernest Haycox
This was one of those years in the Territory when Apache smoke signals spiraled up from the stony mountain summits and many a ranch cabin lay as a square of blackened ashes on the ground and the departure of a stage from Tonto was the beginning of an adventure that had no certain happy ending… .
The stage and its six horses waited in front of Weilner’s store on the north side of Tonto’s square. Happy Stuart was on the box, the ribbons between his fingers and one foot teetering on the brake. John Strang rode shotgun guard and an escort of ten cavalrymen waited behind the coach, half asleep in their saddles.
At four-thirty in the morning this high air was quite cold, though the sun had begun to flush the sky eastward. A small crowd stood in the square, presenting their final messages to the passengers now entering the coach. There was a girl going down to marry an infantry officer, a whiskey drummer from St. Louis, an Englishman all length and bony corners and bearing with him an enormous sporting rifle, a gambler, a solid-shouldered cattleman on his way to New Mexico and a blond young man upon whom both Happy Stuart and the shotgun guard placed a narrow-eyed interest.
This seemed all until the blond man drew back from the coach door; and then a girl known commonly throughout the Territory as Henriette came quietly from the crowd. She was small and quiet, with a touch of paleness in her cheeks and her quite dark eyes lifted at the blond man’s unexpected courtesy, showing surprise. There was this moment of delay and then the girl caught up her dress and stepped into the coach.
Men in the crowd were smiling but the blond one turned, his motion like the swift cut of a knife, and his attention covered that group until the smiling quit. He was tall, hollow-flanked, and definitely stamped by the guns slung low on his hips. But it wasn’t the guns alone; something in his face, so watchful and so smooth, also showed his trade. Afterwards he got into the coach and slammed the door.
Happy Stuart kicked off the brakes and yelled, “Hi!” Tonto’s people were calling out their last farewells and the six horses broke into a trot and the stage lunged on its fore and aft springs and rolled from town with dust dripping off its wheels like water, the cavalrymen trotting briskly behind. So they tipped down the long grade, bound on a journey no stage had attempted during the last forty-five days. Out below in the desert’s distance stood the relay stations they hoped to reach and pass. Between lay a country swept empty by the quick raids of Geronimo’s men.
The Englishman, the gambler and the blond man sat jammed together in the forward seat, riding backward to the course of the stage. The drummer and the cattleman occupied the uncomfortable middle bench; the two women shared the rear seat. The cattleman faced Henriette, his knees almost touching her. He had one arm hooked over the door’s window sill to steady himself. A huge gold nugget slid gently back and forth along the watch chain slung across his wide chest and a chunk of black hair lay below his hat. His eyes considered Henriette, reading something in the girl that caused him to show her a deliberate smile. Henriette dropped her glance to the gloved tips of her fingers, cheeks unstirred.
They were all strangers packed closely together, with nothing in common save a destination. Yet the cattleman’s smile and the boldness of his glance were something as audible as speech, noted by everyone except the Englishman, who sat bolt upright with his stony indifference. The army girl, tall and calmly pretty, threw a quick side glance at Henriette and afterwards looked away with a touch of color. The gambler saw this interchange of glances and showed the cattleman an irritated attention. The whiskey drummer’s eyes narrowed a little and some inward cynicism made a faint change on his lips. He removed his hat to show a bald head already beginning to sweat; his cigar smoke turned the coach cloudy and ashes kept dropping on his vest.
The blond man had observed Henriette’s glance drop from the cattleman; he tipped his hat well over his face and watched her—not boldly but as though he were puzzled. Once her glance lifted and touched him. But he had been on guard against that and was quick to look away.
The army girl coughed gently behind her hand, whereupon the gambler tapped the whiskey drummer on the shoulder. “Get rid of that.” The drummer appeared startled. He grumbled, “Beg pardon,” and tossed the smoke through the window.
All this while the coach went rushing down the ceaseless turns of the mountain road, rocking on its fore and aft springs, its heavy wheels slamming through the road ruts and whining on the curves. Occasionally the strident yell of Happy Stuart washed back. “Hi, Nellie! By God—!” The whiskey drummer braced himself against the door and closed his eyes.
Three hours from Tonto the road, making a last round sweep, let them down upon the flat desert. Here the stage stopped and the men got out to stretch. The gambler spoke to the army girl, gently: “Perhaps you would find my seat more comfortable.” The army girl said “Thank you,” and changed over. The cavalry sergeant rode up to the stage, speaking to Happy Stuart.
“We’ll be goin’ back now—and good luck to ye.”
The men piled in, the gambler taking the place beside Henriette. The blond man drew his long legs together to give the army girl more room, and watched Henriette’s face with a soft, quiet care. A hard sun beat fully on the coach and dust began to whip up like fire smoke. Without escort they rolled across a flat earth broken only by cacti standing against a dazzling light. In the far distance, behind a blue heat haze, lay the faint suggestion of mountains.
The cattleman reached up and tugged at the ends of his mustache and smiled at Henriette. The army girl spoke to the blond man. “How far is it to the noon station?”
The blond man said courteously: “Twenty miles.” The gambler watched the army girl with the strictness of his face relaxing, as though the run of her voice reminded him of things long forgotten.
The miles fell behind and the smell of alkali dust got thicker. Henriette rested against the corner of the coach, her eyes dropped to the tip of her gloves. She made an enigmatic, disinterested shape there; she seemed past stirring, beyond laughter. She was young, yet she had a knowledge that put the cattleman and the gambler and the drummer and the army girl in their exact places; and she knew why the gambler had offered the army girl his seat. The army girl was in one world and she was in another, as everyone in the coach understood. It had no effect on her for this was a distinction she had learned long ago. Only the blond man broke through her indifference. His name was Malpais Bill and she could see the wildness in the corners of his eyes and in the long crease of his lips; it was a stamp that would never come off. Yet something flowed out of him toward her that was different than the predatory curiosity of other men; something unobtrusively gallant, unexpectedly gentle.
Upon the box Happy Stuart pointed to the hazy outline two miles away. “Injuns ain’t burned that anyhow.” The sun was directly overhead, turning the light of the world a cruel brass-yellow. The crooked crack of a dry wash opened across the two deep ruts that made this road. Johnny Strang shifted the gun in his lap. “What’s Malpais Bill ridin’ with us for?”
“I guess I wouldn’t ask him,” returned Happy Stuart and studied the wash with a t
roubled eye. The road fell into it roughly and he got a tighter grip on his reins and yelled: “Hang on! Hi, Nellie! Goddamn you, hi!” The six horses plunged down the rough side of the wash and for a moment the coach stood alone, high and lonely on the break, and then went reeling over the rim. It struck the gravel with a roar, the front wheels bouncing and the back wheels skewing around. The horses faltered but Happy Stuart cursed at his leaders and got them into a run again. The horses lunged up the far side of the wash two and two, their muscles bunching and the soft dirt flying in yellow clouds. The front wheels struck solidly and something cracked like a pistol shot; the stage rose out of the wash, teetered crosswise, and then fell ponderously on its side, splintering the coach panels.
Johnny Strang jumped clear. Happy Stuart hung to the handrail with one hand and hauled on the reins with the other; and stood up while the passengers crawled through the upper door. All the men, except the whiskey drummer, put their shoulders to the coach and heaved it upright again. The whiskey drummer stood strangely in the bright sunlight shaking his head dumbly while the others climbed back in. Happy Stuart said, “All right, brother, git aboard.”
The drummer climbed in slowly and the stage ran on. There was a low, gray ’dobe relay station squatted on the desert dead ahead with a scatter of corrals about it and a flag hanging limp on a crooked pole. Men came out of the dobe’s dark interior and stood in the shade of the porch gallery. Happy Stuart rolled up and stopped. He said to a lanky man: “Hi, Mack. Where’s the goddamned Injuns?”
The passengers were filing into the dobe’s dining room. The lanky one drawled: “You’ll see ’em before tomorrow night.” Hostlers came up to change horses.
A Century of Great Western Stories Page 55