Land Grabbers

by Paul Lederer

  ‘The sun was high and hot. I led the horses to water and let them drink. Looking around, I realized that Father had said nothing for a long time. When I found him, he was holding his stomach, writhing on the ground. I tried to comfort him. He muttered something about the horses and I realized that it was the water. That Father was sick from it and I was letting the horses fill their bellies with the same stuff. I drew them away from it, but it was too late. In minutes they had fallen, legs thrashing, foaming at the mouth.

  ‘Only then did I see the crooked sign someone had posted. It had fallen over, its post rotted away. “Poison Water”, it warned. By then Father was dying, his skin dry as parchment, his tongue—’

  She broke down then, buried her face in her hands and sobbed, the emotion racking her thin shoulders. The rifle dropped to the ground, ignored. I understood now what had happened. But not why it had. What sort of man would bring his young daughter out on to the faceless desert, putting her life and his own at risk? The scent of desperation lingered here. I needed to know:

  ‘What is it that is happening here? What is going on in Canoga? Who are these people in army uniforms?’ I asked quietly after she had recovered herself. ‘What has it all to do with you … and who are you?’

  FOUR

  ‘My name is Patricia Connely,’ the girl said as the silver half-moon drifted among the stars and the cold desert night settled over us. ‘Trish – I’m always called Trish. My father and a handful of his friends and their families were among the first into Canoga Valley. There is a lot of water that seeps from the underground spring in the area, enough to let the long grass grow and feed a dozen small rills. There are a few small bands of Yavapai Indians in the area, but they prefer the highlands to the flats and my father and the others had made friends with them on a previous expedition, and if they did not welcome us exactly, still we kept a respectful distance from each other and have never had a serious incident between white and red man.

  ‘This was our fifth year on the Canoga … what do I call you?’ Trish asked me.

  ‘Giles.’

  ‘This was our fifth year on the Canoga, Giles. We had our houses built and the men had driven in a small herd of shorthorn cattle from California to stock the valley. A few of the ranchers – Gus Staley and Harold Kendrick – had began to plant alfalfa for hay. We were prospering. No one is wealthy along the Canoga, you understand, but we counted ourselves lucky. A thousand square miles of open land, water, almost no Indian troubles.’

  Trish fell silent, and so I prompted her. ‘And then?’

  ‘And then men began to arrive. They mostly just sat and surveyed the land, watching us at work. No one knew who they were, what they wanted. Until one day the traitor arrived at our ranch.’

  ‘The traitor?’ I echoed.

  ‘That’s right. He was just a boy, a very sad looking young man with straw-colored hair. His name was Brad Champion.’ Watching Trish’s eyes, I had the idea that the young man, whoever he was, had impressed her more than a little. ‘We sort of … we went out walking a few times,’ Trish told me, ‘and one night he came to our house. Barney Webb was there, Wes King—I don’t know why I’m reeling off the names of people you can’t possibly know,’ she apologized. ‘But the men sat around the table with the lantern glowing low and Brad confessed. He and the other strangers we had noticed were spies for a man named Hammond Cole – sorry, another name you could not know.’

  ‘Could I not?’ I mumbled and Trish eyed me narrowly before going on.

  ‘Cole, so Brad told us, was a disaffected Southerner. In his mind the Yankees had taken his family’s property in Georgia from him, destroyed his land and way of life after the war. He believed that he had every right to exact payment from the Federal government in return.’

  ‘Canoga Valley?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Trish replied. I was shivering and wished for a fire. That, of course, was totally impossible on this secret night.

  Trish continued. ‘Brad told us all that Cole had conceived a plan to rob us of our land. It went something like this: territorial land being under the control of the US Army, Cole would become their representative. With twenty or thirty men dressed as soldiers, they would enter the valley and produce some sort of document claiming that the land had been illegally settled and that martial law had been declared until the dispute could be resolved. Who would know that this was not an army unit? Who would take arms against them?’

  ‘No one,’ I answered. I was beginning to understand the situation and have a glimmer of Hammond Cole’s peculiarly warped genius. ‘I wonder where he got the uniforms, the horses, the other army gear.’

  ‘Brad thought that they had connections with someone in the quartermaster unit, someone eager to make more money than he could ever acquire on army pay.…’ She paused. ‘Or, we considered, they had simply ambushed a regular army supply train and killed them all.’

  I was silent. Was Cole capable of the one and not the other? I recalled his stormy temper and those fierce black eyes. I decided he was capable of either.

  ‘Then what was supposed to happen? According to Brad.’

  ‘After we were driven off the land – along with at least one band of Yavapai Indian the land was to be turned over, “sold” at auction to a new group of settlers. Really a gang of toughs led by a man named Shockley – another name that means nothing to you, I’m sure.

  ‘Once they were in place, protected by an army garrison, the men who had acted as soldiers were to drift slowly away, discard their uniforms and one by one return to the Canoga to claim their own sections of land.’

  ‘It’s the most audacious plan I have ever heard,’ I said. ‘Trish, after Brad Champion revealed the scheme, didn’t the men of Canoga forge a plan to prevent the land grab?’

  ‘They might have,’ she said in a small voice. ‘If everyone had believed Brad. If they were willing to take up arms against the US Army. Would you be eager to do that, Giles?’ I shook my head negatively. ‘Nor were they and three days later—’

  I could see the mist in her eyes even by the poor light of the faltering moon.

  ‘Three days later they found Brad dead in a canyon. They tell me he was shot fifteen times … I did not count them. I could not look at his young body, riddled as it was.’

  After a minute, I asked, ‘Who gunned him down, Trish? Who killed Brad Champion?’

  ‘I don’t know! It was assumed that he had been shot by those other strangers, for having broken the code of silence.’ She hesitated fractionally. ‘Other people thought that it could have been one of us! Someone in cahoots with Cole, perhaps a small landholder drawn by a promise of more land. It was even said that the Indians did it, but no one really believed that. There seemed to be no motive – the Yavapai knew nothing of any of this – and besides Brad’s horse was left to stand where it was.’

  ‘Very unlikely that it was them,’ I agreed. ‘They would have taken the horse. Besides, I can’t see an Indian wasting fifteen shots to kill a man when one would do the job, ammunition being as hard to come by as it is out here.’

  ‘But everyone suddenly became mistrustful of neighbors, of the Yavapai, any stranger was looked at with suspicion. And Brad—’

  ‘Did you love him, Trish?’ I had to ask.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ she said in frustration. ‘He was honest, he was polite. He seemed to be trying to do the right thing in this world by telling us about Cole. We went out walking a few times. He stole a few kisses from me. Maybe it was only what they call puppy love. But he was young … and decent,’ she told me. ‘I might have loved him after a time. He just didn’t deserve to be murdered, Giles. He was only twenty years old.’

  ‘What was it that you and your father had in mind?’ I asked, pressing on not because I wished to bring up painful memories, but because I had to understand this all.

  ‘What? If no one else believed Brad, my father did. In an attempt to head the land grab off before it could begin, Father intended to ride to C
amp Grant and talk to the army. If all of this about our claims being vacated was true, he wanted to be told in person. If it was a lie, we wanted the cavalry – the real cavalry – there to put a halt to it.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ she said, her eyes now wandering to the hummock where her father lay, ‘we achieved nothing in the end.’

  I waited, but she said nothing else. I watched as she bowed her head and cried. I stood and took the blanket from under me, walking to Trish to place it over her shoulders as the night’s cold grew bitter. I let my hand briefly brush her shoulder and made her a promise so flimsy that it was nearly a lie.

  ‘I’ll help you out of this, Trish. I won’t let it happen.’

  If ever a more meaningless promise has been made, I don’t know when. What could I possibly do against the massed army of land grabbers? It was a lie, essentially, that I made to her, but it seemed to give Trish a small measure of comfort to know that she was not alone in her struggle.

  We slept.

  I don’t know how; the night was cold and we were hunted people. Sheer exhaustion and my own deprived body’s state demanded it, and so we did sleep, rising near to dawn with a prettily painted sky which would have entertained someone who had no deep concerns to attend to. We, downhearted and shabby, found no pleasure in the garish palette of sunrise.

  ‘We have not discussed it,’ Trish said as we recovered the cranky bay and saddled him, ‘are you going to take me to Camp Grant?’

  ‘No, Trish,’ I said, still holding my saddle. ‘We haven’t the resources. Were we to reach the army post we would have to convince them of what you were saying. Then it would take the time for them to obtain authorization for such an expedition, the time taken to ride back to Canoga. It could take days or even weeks, and by then Cole and his crew would have already established themselves. They have only to tell their story – the first settlers abandoned their homesteads and they have settled there. What could the army actually do?’

  ‘But then, Giles …!’

  ‘But then, there is only one solution. These men you spoke of – Staley, Kendrick – I can’t remember all their names, they must be persuaded to fight for their land. The Yavapai can’t be counted on; their people have never profited by fighting the army.’

  ‘Cole has many more men than we do,’ Trish argued.

  ‘Yes. Yes, he does. It will depend on who has the better strategy, and on who wants the land more – your people or the intruders.’

  ‘It will be nothing more or less than a range war!’

  ‘Nothing more or less. But,’ I said, tightening the cinches on the bay’s saddle, ‘if they do not care enough for their land to fight for it, then perhaps they don’t deserve to hold it.’

  Was I talking sense or just talking? I don’t know. Maybe it was false bravado manufactured to impress this tiny young woman, but I believed I was right.

  ‘You had better have this, Giles,’ she said, handing me a gunbelt with a slick Colt .44 riding on it. ‘It was Father’s. I couldn’t get it cinched up tight enough to fit me.’ I took it thankfully, checking the loads after belting the pistol on. With its comforting weight hanging on my hip I felt almost whole again.

  We rode out with the sun still low on the horizon, Trish’s arms around my waist. The bay was balky, weary with the miles it had traveled, but the going was easier now despite the double weight it carried. We rode gradually higher and closer to the mountains to the north. The land changed but little. The sun was still a blazing white-hot disc, although a few sheer clouds had appeared, casting thin shadows across the wide land. We had barely enough water remaining in the canteen to swab the horse’s mouth from time to time, and soon that was gone.

  There being no choice, we made camp at mid-morning beside an acre-sized patch of nopal cactus. Swinging down, Trish asked me why we had halted there.

  ‘The cactus pads. I’ve seen longhorn steers eat them with the spines on. But we’ll start a small fire and burn them off. When they’re cooled, they’ll make rough forage for the horse. There’s plenty of moisture inside.’

  And for us, I took a stick and began knocking off the bright red nopalitos, the thorny fruit of the cactus. Roasted, peeled, they would provide us with some nourishment as well. As we sat around the fire, toasting these while the bay horse munched on the cactus pads, Trish looked up at me and said:

  ‘You are a funny-looking man.’

  I didn’t know what to say. Thin shadows from the high, smoky clouds drifted past.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ she asked, taking a bite from the seedy, peeled cactus fruit she had been eating.

  ‘Yes, I just don’t know what you mean, I suppose.’

  ‘You just are funny-looking, Giles. Look at you! Your eyes don’t match for one thing. One of them is kinda green, the other kinda blue-gray. Your hair is almost red, but the sun has bleached it yellow at the ends where it curls over your collar. That blue shirt is definitely the wrong color for you.’

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked. At least, I considered, the girl was paying attention to me.

  ‘Yes. You’re kinda skinny, but your shoulders bulge out with muscle. And,’ she commented as she swallowed, ‘your feet’s too big.’

  ‘These aren’t my boots,’ I told her grouchily. ‘Anything else you’re in the mood to criticize?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘Outside of your nose which is kinda twisted, you’re a fine-looking specimen.’

  I just looked skyward, holding my tongue. I wondered if that was the weakest compliment a man could ever have received from a girl: ‘Fine-looking specimen.’

  A question had been on my mind for some time and now, since we had descended to a personal level, it seemed a good time to ask her:

  ‘How old are you, Trish?’

  ‘Why?’ the question seemed to offend her. ‘I am nineteen and one-half years old. If you are going to say that I look younger – I have heard that all my life.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say anything. I just have sort of wondered.’

  ‘Well, don’t say anything, if you please,’ she said huffily and then rose to her feet turning her back on me.

  ‘How far is it to Canoga?’ I asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Twenty miles, at a guess.’

  ‘We’re still well ahead of Hammond Cole and his army, then. I’d like to rest the horse, but I can’t walk just yet, and—’

  ‘I’ll walk alongside,’ Trish said. ‘Don’t object out of some misplaced sense of chivalry!’ she added, lifting a hand to still my protest. ‘I can walk; you can’t. The solution is obvious.’

  We started on, me on the plodding bay, the little girl with the wild frizzy hair marching determinedly beside me, the Spencer .56 repeater on her shoulder. In the white light of the desert day her hair seemed almost white. Her eyes, I had learned, were deep blue. I had tied my bandanna over my head pirate-style, but it did little to keep the searing heat from my skull and its jumbled contents. There was little time to talk. The superheated air made it difficult to breathe, and Trish, eager though she was to prove that she was a tough little woman, was faltering, her stride shortening. More than once I offered to switch places with her, but after her third firm refusal I didn’t bring it up again.

  ‘What are you doing out here, Giles?’ she did ask once as I let the horse pause to blow. We had halted on a low barren rise where the ubiquitous black volcanic rock was strewn across the ground, memories of some ancient caldera no longer visible. ‘No one belongs out here.’

  ‘You’re here,’ I reminded her.

  ‘You know what we were trying to do,’ Trish said pettishly, ‘trying to save our land, our homes.’

  I considered my answer for a minute before I shrugged and said simply, ‘I had some trouble on my backtrail. There was no choice but to try to escape into the desert.’

  ‘I see,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘When there’s time, will you tell me all about it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I will Trish, when there is time.’

/>   But now was not the time for it. We started down the slope, the bay moving tentatively. Above us three vultures circled on fixed black wings, the updraft holding them aloft effortlessly. They had spotted no carrion yet: had they, there would have been a cloud of the scavengers gathering, drawn there by their secret signals.

  How much time had we? I remembered hearing the two soldiers talking, back with the wagon train. They had said that they meant to reach Canoga the next afternoon – this afternoon. I didn’t know if they knew what they were talking about. It could have had no more weight than barracks chatter, jailhouse rumors. Something leaked to the weary soldiers to bolster their morale.

  I could not judge the distances, calculate how much of a lead – if any – we had on the land grabbers. Once in Canoga the settlers would have to be gathered from far-flung ranches, told of the situation. Then, we would have to convince them that the rumor young Brad Champion had carried to them was true. They would have to have enough confidence in their conviction to make them stand up to the US Army.

  And then they would have to organize a plan of action. A leader would be needed who could put it into play … me? I grimaced at the thought. I was never cut out for a general. Besides I was a wandering man, a stranger unknown to any of the settlers. It all seemed impossible now that I had had the time to think it through. And if I failed.…

  Well, someone had taught Brad Champion not to interfere. Fifteen bullets. I wondered how long it would take to kill a man like that. Was the first one the one that ended his life, or did the blows of each shot, like the impact of a sledge hammer, allow him to live long enough to feel the terrible jolt of each and every one of them?

  ‘There it is!’ Trish said, halting as she pointed into the distances. I could see nothing through the heat-haze at first, and then I did.

  A broad valley stretched out in all directions from the foot of a low line of hills. The ground was a gray-green, indicating water and growing grass. I even saw, or imagined I did, a few scattered buildings no larger than dice cubes.