The Grey Pilgrim

by J. M. Hayes

  He tried the field glasses but they didn’t help. Too much heat distortion. He was right, though. There were two or three rounded shapes that could be cars at the base of the low range ahead. They didn’t match the form of the sharp boulders that dominated this bleak landscape. And they sparkled with what might be sun reflecting off glass or chrome. Few boulders do that.

  He got back in the Ford and told Jesus to go ahead, then wished he’d remembered to add a qualifying slow to the instructions. Jesus fishtailed the Ford down the hill and through the valley below.

  As they bounced across the desert, Fitzpatrick felt a sudden twisting in his guts that had nothing to do with last night’s booze. It took him a few seconds to recognize it because he hadn’t felt it since the hospital when he came home from Spain. That had been long enough to let him hope he might never feel it again. He suddenly, desperately, didn’t want to go to the foot of that jumble of rocks ahead. The vegetation wasn’t the same and the sun hit it from a different angle, but it reminded him of a place just outside a tiny village the maps had called Tres Santos. What happened there had cost him too much.

  Their path across the valley was relatively straight, with only an occasional bone-jarring pot hole or dry drainage. Fitzpatrick tried taking a few deep breaths but choked on the dust that rolled in his window. When he could breathe again he was all right. The organism was back under control, panic lost to rationality. There was nothing to be afraid of here. Whatever had happened was over. He and Jesus were just cavalry to the rescue, not prey being lured into a trap. He had a .38 Smith & Wesson in a shoulder holster on the back seat with his jacket and hat. He thought about putting it on, then rejected the idea. He wouldn’t need it, not even to reinforce a battered psyche.

  They were cars all right. The Buick had gotten well up toward the pass before it went off the road and down among the tumble of broken rocks below. From the look of its roof it had rolled at least once before coming to rest a few yards from a chasm that probably housed an impressive waterfall every other year or so.

  Somebody had tried to throw the Chevy off the road in a hurry and hide it behind a boulder that was about the size of a locomotive, but he’d been going too fast and its front end was crumpled up in an attempt to conform to the rock’s irregular surface. There was some damp earth under it where the sun hadn’t reached yet. They would have to install a new radiator before driving it home, after they pulled out the fenders so the replacement rims and tires it needed had enough room to turn.

  By comparison, the Ford truck was almost untouched. Both its headlights and all its glass had been shot out by someone showing off with a rifle that threw slugs the size of artillery rounds. They’d gotten it back on the road, changed the shot-out tires, and were in the process of putting a patch on the one that was only flat because they’d driven over a young barrel cactus.

  There were a couple of men being tended to in the shade of the rock behind the Chevy but both of them sat up to look as the Ford drove into view. There wasn’t much blood and no covered bodies or suspiciously grave-like piles of stone so Fitzpatrick started relaxing. It was a mistake. He almost put his head through the windshield when Jesus stopped.

  Starting a War

  “…and when we came around this curve, somebody shot out a front tire on us, Luis lost control and we went off the road and hit something and went over and ended up down there,” Larson said, still very excited and talking too fast as he pointed a thick finger at the remains of the Buick. He was keeping a white-knuckled grip on the carbine in his other hand. “The rest pulled over looking for cover, but, shit, Papagos can’t drive worth a damn. The Chevy’s totaled and we’re just lucky there wasn’t anything big in the way of the truck.

  “All of us in the Buick got battered up some, but aside from a fractured arm and maybe some busted ribs, nobody’s hurt bad. We just all of us piled out and hunkered down behind cover while they kept us pinned down from up there in the rocks and some bastard worked over the truck with a fucking cannon. We shot back some, but other than muzzle flashes, we never had any targets. I don’t think we did them any harm.

  “Then, all of a sudden, about dawn, they just quit. We stayed down for awhile, putting an occasional round up where they’d been, but they never answered. Maybe an hour ago I sent Drum Stomach and Sam Hawk-Bow up to scout it out. They tell me Jujul’s men are all gone, but I had enough trouble getting them to even go take a look. No way I could convince them to follow the trail. Bastards could be just another hundred yards or so up the slope for all I know. That’s why I’m keeping everybody down and mounting a guard and all.”

  “Good,” J.D. told the overweight little man. He looked to be pushing thirty from one way or the other. If he’d been much older, J.D. would have figured him as a prime candidate for a stroke or heart failure. As it was, if he kept up this exciting lifestyle, he was going to get his weight back under control in spite of himself.

  “Say, where are the rest of you?” the fat man asked. “You guys the advance scouts or what?”

  J.D. felt like laughing but his head still hurt too much. “Sorry,” he said. “Jesus and I are all you’re going to get. Nobody else is coming.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” Larson demanded, putting on his offended bureaucrat’s heads-are-going-to-roll face. “I called at least a half-dozen agencies in Tucson last night. I told them I was bringing a squad of tribal police and volunteers out after a federal law violator and that I expected trouble and wanted help. Are you trying to tell me you’re all they sent?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Shit!” he said. “Somebody’s going to pay for this.” He finally took notice of the man he’d been talking to. J.D. didn’t look impressive. He was on the back side of forty, tired, rumpled, and hung over. He was a tall, thin man, sort of a dark-haired Dashiell Hammett gone to seed. He hadn’t spent his morning having a grand time playing Cowboys and Indians with real Indians either.

  “Just who the hell are you, anyway?”

  J.D. dug out his billfold and flashed his ID. “And I assume you must be Larson.”

  The fat man acknowledged it, though J.D. thought he would have been wiser to come up with an alias.

  Larson looked at J.D., then back and forth between Jesus in the Ford down by the truck, and the rocks up above. “Shit,” he said again. He should have let it go at that. Instead he launched into an outraged harangue, the gist of which had to do with the sort of incompetents who would send, unaccompanied, an old man and a Mexican to help put down the first Indian uprising in Arizona in a quarter of a century.

  J.D. wasn’t in the mood to listen. He shouted at Jesus to bring up the car. It slammed to a stop beside them, enveloping both in a cloud of dust that choked off Larson’s tirade and didn’t do J.D. all that much good either. He held his breath until he could begin to make out Larson’s corpulent form through the swirling, sepia gloom.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Larson coughed. “What are you doing?”

  “The old man and the Mexican are going to take a look up ahead,” J.D. said.

  “You can’t go up there alone. Let me get some men. If Jujul’s not still up there he may be back in his village, thinking he’s scared us off. We might just surprise the old bastard and bring him in.”

  “No thanks,” J.D. replied. “You’ve done enough for one day, Mr. Larson. Jesus and I aren’t the reinforcements you asked for. If you’d stayed around and waited for somebody to return your calls as you were instructed, you’d already know the government didn’t want you out here starting a war. Technically, Jujul is guilty of inciting his people to violate a federal law requiring some of his men to register for possible induction, but there’s considerable opposition to the idea of a peace-time draft in this country, or the suggestion one can take from it that we aren’t going to be at peace much longer. Nobody wants you creating a cause célèbre for those people to rally behind. In other words, Larson, my instructions were to stop you, not help you. That or try to fix any blu
nders you might have already made.”

  “Why you…you…” Larson sputtered, rendered uncharacteristically epithetless. With a great effort of will he controlled himself enough to try again. “Listen. That fucking old Papago has broken a federal law, damaged tribal property, resisted arrest, and assaulted myself and other officers acting in the line of duty. This is my reservation and I want him in jail and not you or anybody else is going to stop me.”

  J.D. considered trying to explain. This being 1940, BIA people couldn’t run around arresting whoever caught their fancy. But J.D. was out of patience. He reached over and took the carbine out of Larson’s hands, swung it by the barrel, and shattered the stock on a nearby rock. He dropped the remains at the fat man’s feet.

  “If you annoy me again, Larson, I’m going to take you in on one of the John Doe federal warrants I’ve got and put you in a cell with some murderers and perverts and then lose the paperwork for a few weeks during which not even J. Edgar Hoover will be able to find you. Now shut your mouth and go help the remains of your posse get started back to Sells. We’re going to take a look at the top of this pass and maybe see if we can find anybody in Jujul’s village to apologize to. When we’re done, we’ll come back and pick up whoever won’t fit in your truck. I suggest you not be one of them. If I find you here when we get back I just might leave you and let Jujul or the buzzards do what they like with you. I’d be doing the BIA a favor.”

  He wrenched at the door of the Ford and it stuck again, spoiling the effect of his exit a little, though maybe the violence with which he finally ripped it open made up for it. He got in and purposefully neglected to mention anything about going slow until they’d showered Larson with the dust and gravel of a Jesus-style departure.

  The Gospel According to Fitzpatrick

  They parked the Ford near the top of the pass and got out to look around. It wasn’t hard to see where Jujul’s men had waited. They’d gotten comfortable where they had a clear view of the path for a long way and where they’d be impossible to avoid.

  “Only eight, ten men,” Jesus said. “He left most of them back at the village.”

  J.D. just grunted. He was still trying to cool back down, suppress the violent urges the chubby little bureaucrat had inspired. At least, he was hardly conscious of his hangover anymore.

  “Good spot,” Jesus continued. “They’d have seen headlights coming practically forever, or heard the motors for miles, even if the posse tried driving in blind.”

  J.D. leaned over one of the rocks someone had used for a shooting station and looked down at Larson’s crew.

  “They weren’t trying to kill anybody,” he said. “I’ve got a clear view of at least half the ones who think they’re still under cover down there.”

  He reached down and picked up a shell casing he’d kicked up from the dust and tossed it to Jesus. “What the hell is this?”

  The Indians had picked up most of their brass but they’d been in enough of a hurry to miss some in the dark. Jesus examined it and let out a low whistle. “Hay chingada! Big mother, huh?” He rolled the casing around in his fingers like a shopper looking for a price tag. I’ve heard the old man’s got a Sharps, an old-time buffalo gun, but I’ve never seen one of its loads. I don’t know for sure if that’s what this is, but that’d be my guess.” He stuck it in his pocket.

  “Jesus!” J.D. said. He pronounced it the English way so the deputy knew he wasn’t being addressed. “That pompous ass could have gotten them all killed. He’s just lucky nobody up here wanted to bother.

  “Come on, Jesus,” this time he made it rhyme with stay loose. “Let’s go take a look at the village. Bet we won’t find anybody home,” he added as they got back in the Ford.

  “Not at home, maybe,” Jesus replied, “but somebody’ll be watching. They’ll want to see if anybody comes and what happens if they do.”

  The village was a random collection of crude adobe mud-brick houses with occasional round earth-covered lodges the Papago called kihs mixed in. There were also some ocotillo sheds, half a dozen ramadas, and a few ramshackle corrals. It all sat at the base of a low range of hills a couple of miles beyond the pass. A narrow scar of green pointed toward the village from where a water tank uphill leaked a lazy trickle down a thirsty slope. There were a few irregular fields along the primitive irrigation system, but nothing much in them. By October, anything that could survive the brutal heat of summer was long since harvested.

  The place was deserted, though the former occupants didn’t seem to have departed in a big hurry. At least they hadn’t left much behind.

  “Anybody else keeping an eye on us,” J.D. asked as they got out of the Ford, “other than the one up in the rocks near the tank?”

  It was Jesus who was supposed to be good at that sort of thing so he didn’t mention that he hadn’t noticed that one. “Just the fellow out in the brush beyond the corrals,” he said.

  “I don’t think it’ll do any good, but why don’t you try talking them in? Maybe we can start working things out right now.”

  Jesus didn’t think it would work either, but he gave it a shot. He was a big man, broad faced, broad shouldered, and broad bellied. He had a big voice too.

  “Chum ach dodolimdag,” he shouted. “We are wanting peace. We are not wanting trouble. We are not the people who came this morning. We are not of the tribal council or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

  “You may know me. I am Deputy Sheriff Jesus Gonzales. I grew up beside your cousins at the San Xavier Mission. If you know that, you know I can be trusted. This White Man with me is a Federal Marshal, but, even so, he is honorable and also worthy of trust. Come, talk. Let us solve this while it is a fresh bud, before it blooms into something deadly, before the desert flows with the blood of the People.”

  Jesus went on like that for a while, but all it accomplished was to send both the watchers back into better cover. The only answer was a soft rustling breeze through the paloverdes and the shrill chatter of a nearby cactus wren.

  J.D. prowled through the village while Jesus continued spreading the gospel according to Fitzpatrick. It was cool inside the adobes. He wadded up his jacket, tossed it in a corner, and stretched out, just trying to get comfortable for a few minutes. When he woke he felt like a man willing to take a chance on what life might offer again. He walked back out into the blinding daylight, yawning and rubbing his eyes. Jesus had found a shady spot under a mesquite where he could keep an eye on the watchers. He was smoking a cigarette. J.D. smiled sheepishly.

  “They still out there?”

  The deputy nodded.

  “OK,” J.D. said. “Let’s leave them a gift, say a pack of your cigarettes. I’ll see that you get reimbursed out of the federal budget.”

  J.D. reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “And leave this with the cigarettes.”

  Jesus produced an unopened pack of Lucky’s and put it and the card out in plain view, a small stone on top so the breeze wouldn’t carry off the latter. He was polite enough not to mention how unlikely it was that any of Jujul’s people could read it, nor his opinion that he was the one most likely to be contacted, if either of them were. He was Mexican. The Desert People and the Mexicans had known each other for a lot of generations. They understood what to expect from each other. Both were still getting used to these pale-skinned late arrivals.

  The two lawmen climbed back into the Ford while a mockingbird complained about the heat. This time J.D. drove.

  Larson had left five volunteers behind at the ambush site. He hadn’t exactly overcrowded the truck for the trip back. J.D. grumbled about it, but he jammed the posse in and they made the long, uncomfortable drive to Sells.

  It was after sunset when they arrived. They dropped their passengers off at the federal building and went in to report to Reservation Superintendent Bill Fredericks, who, like J.D., had been in Tucson the night before. It was why Larson had been left in charge.

  Fredericks was in, but he was busy. Larson
was with him. They could tell because Fredericks’ voice was sufficiently raised to carry clearly through his office door. They stood and listened for a few minutes, then J.D. grinned and offered to buy the deputy supper down the street.

  “We’ll come back later and mop up whatever’s left of Larson’s ego,” J.D. said.

  The deputy followed him out of the building, smiling with surprise. “Damn!” he exclaimed. “It wasn’t what Fredericks was saying so much as how he said it. I never realized before what an expressive language English can be.”

  Worthy of His Passing

  The village at the foot of the hill still smoldered. Sasaki had ordered this insignificant piece of North China burned during the night of October 19. By midmorning, little remained beyond a few piles of glowing cinders and smoking rubble. A cutting wind with the taste of Arctic climes teased the remaining flames and carried smoke and ash and sparks across the rutted road and abandoned fields.

  It had rained lightly in the hour before dawn. The resulting puddles were skinning with sheet ice. Sunrise had brought light but not heat. Scudding low clouds maintained a sort of pulsing twilight. Sasaki considered the clouds and wondered if they would provide snow as a backdrop for the drama that would be acted out here.

  For a change, it seemed, the Chinese offered him a worthy opponent. From the head of the valley, the hill appeared well fortified. Strands of barbed wire and sharpened stakes blocked the approaches. A pair of machine guns had been placed where they could guard the flanks and still overlap at the center. The defenders seemed securely dug in, occupying a series of trenches that crisscrossed the hilltop.