Incident at Coyote Wells

by Paul Lederer

  I sensed rather than saw her enter the room and I rose abruptly.

  ‘I hear you’ve been trying to find me,’ she said. ‘I’m Beth.’

  Young, blue-eyed, her ears were small and set flat against her skull, her mouth was full, especially the underlip. Her hair was of the shade they call strawberry-blond. It was pinned up under a tiny, tilted blue cap. She wore a dark blue dress of the sort I can’t describe except to say it had ruffles at the throat and at the cuffs.

  ‘How did you know I was looking for you?’ I asked.

  ‘Henry Tyler rode in to tell me,’ she said, meaning I supposed, the old man in whose cabin I had stayed. She closed the door behind her. ‘Now I’ll have it!’

  From the folds of her skirt she withdrew a small silver-plated .40 caliber derringer, and quite deliberately aimed it in my direction. Her mouth was set, her pretty eyes determined. I automatically raised my hands. I tried a smile that didn’t make any impression at all.

  ‘Lady – Beth – I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about.’

  ‘Don’t use that sort of language to me,’ she ordered. ‘You know where it is. Henry said that Ray gave you his wallet. If you don’t have it, who does?’

  ‘It’s the wallet you’re after?’ I asked. I lowered my hands. She didn’t seem to mind that, but her little derringer didn’t waver and the expression in her eyes did not change. ‘Look …’ I took a step toward her.

  ‘Stay where you are. I’ll fire, and if you are thinking this pistol can’t do some damage, try it.’

  I wasn’t thinking that. A derringer was probably the most inaccurate weapon ever devised with its little inch and a half barrel. But it held two .40 caliber slugs, and many a gambler had discovered that across a card table it could do its deadly work quite well. We were only about that distance apart. The dry wind gusted, blowing the curtains farther into the room. There was a sharp rap on the door.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Beth asked without shifting her eyes.

  ‘Probably the house boy with hot water and soap. I asked him to bring some up to me.’

  ‘All right.’ She sidled to the corner of the room. ‘Answer the door. You look like you could use soap and water.’

  Under the watch of the twin muzzles of the derringer I opened the door. It was the boy, as I had guessed. He handed me the basin, soap and razor and flipped a fresh towel over my shoulder. He lingered, waiting for a tip, I suppose, but I had no change to give him. I heeled the door shut and walked to the small dresser against the far wall where I placed the basin and towel down. The oval mirror attached to the dresser began to fog slowly from the water’s heat. I turned to Beth for further orders.

  ‘Go ahead, wash up. You need it.’

  ‘I’ll be taking my shirt off,’ I warned her.

  She didn’t reply, just sat in the wooden chair in the far corner with that little pistol in her lap. I stripped off my shirt and washed up, then lathered my face with the bar soap provided and began to shave.

  There was another knock at the door, and I glanced that way by way of the mirror. I saw Beth rise expectantly and step toward the door without hesitation. Now what? The door was quickly opened and rapidly shut behind the newcomer. I knew him. It was Henry Tyler, in whose cabin I had spent the night. He held a Winchester rifle, wore a flop hat, a white shirt and his red suspenders.

  ‘What has he told you?’ I heard him ask Beth in a low voice.

  ‘Nothing yet.’

  They both sat – Beth again on the wooden chair, the old man on the bed, the rifle across his lap. I eyed the Winchester closely, if it wasn’t my own rifle, it was its twin. I finished shaving and shrugged into my dusty blue shirt. I had to ask them:

  ‘Do you mind telling me what’s going on, what you want of me?’

  It was Tyler who answered. ‘Ray Hardin’s wallet. What did you do with it?’

  ‘It got lifted from me,’ I told him, briefly describing the incident in the alley behind the saloon.

  ‘This man … what did he look like?’ Tyler asked, scratching at his chin. I described the bearded man as well as I could and Tyler’s frown deepened.

  He shook his head as if I was the world’s greatest fool. ‘It was McQueen,’ he commented, to Beth. ‘One of Art Corson’s men,’ he explained to me.

  ‘Look,’ I said wearily. ‘I don’t know what trouble you people have. I don’t know Corson or McQueen. I don’t want anything from you, and I have nothing that would be of any help to you. I found Ray Hardin as he was dying. I promised him that I would tell Beth that he had tried to do his best. I had his wallet. Then I got it taken from me. That’s all there is to it!’ I told them, growing a little exasperated. ‘Plus, I haven’t had a meal of any kind in two days. You’d be surprised how important that is becoming to me. Leave here, will you? Or let me go on my way.’

  ‘Breakfast is taken care of,’ Tyler said evenly. ‘I ordered it on my way up to your room. The boy will deliver it shortly.’ I took a step toward him and he whispered, ‘Sit down if you don’t want to be shot.’

  The room had only the single chair and Beth, her eyes as fierce as ever, had seated herself there. Henry Tyler was perched on the bed, and so I leaned against the wall and lowered myself to the floor, folding my hands between my knees, wondering again what I had gotten myself into. And more – wondering how to get out of it.

  I saw Beth’s blue eyes flicker, saw a little light appear in their depths then fade, saw a nearly undetectable smile twitch at one corner of her pretty mouth. She said to Tyler, ‘I think I understand a little better now, Henry. Why was he riding the desert alone, without water and poorly provisioned? Why did he take Ray Hardin’s wallet? I think we have a man on the run here. What did he tell you at your cabin?’

  Tyler lifted his eyes to me, remembering. ‘I accused him of being a murderer – Ray’s killer. Then he said a strange thing. I can’t remember his exact words, but it was to the effect that he was no murderer, and that he was innocent of what had happened in Flagstaff.’

  ‘He’s a man on the run,’ Beth said with a little satisfied nod. ‘He’ll help us now or find himself in prison.’ She smiled again, and for a pretty girl it was a brutal expression. ‘What is it you’re wanted for, Magadan? Robbery, horse-stealing, cattle-rustling?’

  ‘Murder,’ I told her quietly, and the little lady, tough as she appeared, seemed to blanch on hearing the harsh word.

  Once more there was a knock on the door. ‘That’ll be your breakfast,’ Tyler said rising.

  It was. I sat cross-legged on the floor eating four eggs, hotcakes, hominy, ham and biscuits, following it with three cups of coffee. Not a word passed between them as I devoured the food. They watched silently, with distant interest as if I were some creature in a zoo cage.

  As I ate I considered many things. Who were these people? What did they want of me? Could I reach the window and leap on to the balcony, drop to the street before they shot me? Would they shoot?

  As I placed my dishes aside, Tyler spoke as if he had been reading my thoughts. ‘You can’t afford to try anything, Magadan. Your own words have given you away. You’re an escaped murderer. If we have to shoot you – well,’ he shrugged, ‘it’s not even a crime. It’s more a citizen’s duty to eliminate men like you.’

  I didn’t respond to that. It was true enough. I finished the last of my coffee and asked, ‘What is it you people want of me?’

  ‘We need the number. If you don’t know what it is, we have to go after Corson and his two friends and get it from them. The two of us aren’t equipped to handle the job. Sorry if it hurts your feelings to say this, Beth, but it’s true. We’re only one small girl and an old man. You, Magadan, on the other hand, are young and strong. There’s no one else – not in Yuma – that we can trust.’

  It seemed to me that he was talking in circles. I didn’t have an idea what he wanted, except that he meant for me to go out on to the cruel desert once again and try to track down this Art Corson.

  ‘No,
’ I said flatly. ‘I’ve spent a week trying to escape the desert. I’ll not go out on to it again.’

  ‘Beth?’ Tyler said. ‘You know where the town marshal’s office is.’

  She rose from her chair, and I was forced to motion her to take her seat again. ‘You aren’t giving me much choice, are you?’

  ‘No. I’m trying not to,’ Henry Tyler said.

  ‘My horse is beat up.’

  ‘That big buckskin of yours had a rest at my cabin and spent last night in a comfortable stable.’

  ‘I’d have to go over and …’

  ‘That’s taken care of. He’s hitched out front. Water bags on the saddle horn. The hotel bill’s been paid. All you have to do is swing aboard and we’re on our way.’

  ‘The girl. How can she possibly ride with us on a trek like this?’ I ran an exasperated hand over my head, pointing at the petite woman in her little tilted hat and wide blue skirts.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Tyler said calmly.

  ‘Look out the window, Magadan,’ Beth ordered, and I got to my feet, frustrated, confused and angry. Would these people really turn me over to the law, see me hung? I had the feeling that they were capable of it. The sky outside my window was blue-white. Two men who seemed to be miners or prospectors passed by on the nearly deserted street below, riding mules, leading another laden with supplies. I heard the rustling of material and finally turned around to see Beth, her dress kicked aside, standing there in blue jeans and a white blouse which she must have been wearing under her outer garments all the time.

  ‘Will you do one thing for me?’ I asked, my eyes shuttling from Henry Tyler’s to Beth’s. ‘Just give me an idea of what in hell is going on!’

  Beth’s frown signaled that she was about to – once again – lecture me about my language.

  Tyler looked to Beth. ‘The man is correct. He does have a right to know what has happened.’ He rubbed his knobby forehead and then smoothed down his wispy silver hair. He withdrew a brass pocket watch from his trousers, glanced at it and said, ‘But not here. Not now. We have to be getting on our way.’

  The morning sun was still low enough so that the temperature was comfortable when we emerged from the hotel on to the dry streets of Yuma. Sure enough my tall buckskin horse was standing at the hitch rail, two waterbags hung from the pommel of my saddle, one on either side. I pulled my hat lower over my eyes and swung aboard, leather creaking under my weight. Hitched alongside my horse were a slender-legged little blue roan and a stocky sorrel about twelve years old. Henry Tyler gave the girl a hand up on to the blue roan and mounted the sorrel and we started out of Yuma along the dusty street.

  Noon found us in a cottonwood grove where a slender silver rill wove its way southward to join the Colorado River. The shade beneath the wind-fluttered cottonwood trees shifted with each gust of wind. Along the creek cicadas murmured to one another and a group of iridescent blue and orange dragonflies skimmed back and forth across the stream. The horses were led to water and drank, from time to time lifting water-silvered muzzles to glance at us and the land around us.

  It was dry and still, quiet except for the insect noises and the wind whispering through the trees. Tyler had given my rifle back to me, but I knew by its heft that he had unloaded it. I shoved it into my saddle scabbard with a natural-enough resentment. I was, in fact a prisoner to these two.

  ‘I need a full explanation,’ I said roughly. I was leaning against the shoulder of my buckskin horse, arms folded. ‘Threats won’t hold me long.’

  ‘We didn’t think so,’ Henry Tyler said in response. ‘If it weren’t so important.…’

  ‘I’ll tell him, Henry,’ Beth said quietly. ’So that he’ll understand why we’re doing this.’

  She walked slowly away from me, toward the darker shade of the cottonwood grove. She glanced back at me over her shoulder, and, shrugging, I followed her.

  Twenty or thirty feet on, Beth stopped and seated herself on the waist-high branch of a mottled cottonwood tree. She was a pleasing sight sitting there in the scattered shade in her jeans and white blouse, the wind teasing her light hair, but I carried my frown successfully.

  ‘You’d better start from the beginning and give me a good reason to stay, Beth. I’m a troubled man and I need no more of this. Much as I’d hate to do it, if I have to crack Henry over the head and make my way to California, I will.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said in a voice that was softer than I had heard from her before. ‘We need you! Badly.’

  I seated myself on the low hanging bough beside her, removed my hat and waited, glancing now and then at her lovely profile. She sighed; her hands fluttered in the air.

  ‘It’s all about Ben, of course,’ she told me, leaving me no more enlightened than before.

  ‘You’re going to have to flesh out these remarks, Beth. I have no idea who “Ben” is.’

  ‘Ben Tolliver, of course! My brother.’

  ‘All right,’ I answered calmly. She was obviously agitated. I knew she would get around to telling me the whole story eventually, and so I waited. It’s not always easy to speak of painful matters.

  ‘My brother, Ben, is serving time in the Territorial Prison for crimes he did not commit,’ Beth told me. ’Stop!’ she raised her hand. ‘I know that’s what all prisoners say, but proof exists that he is innocent. I know where it is, I just can’t get to it.’

  ‘Is that where all this business with Ray Hardin comes in?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Have you ever heard of the Pulver Gang?’

  ‘Sure. Bank robbers, killers.’

  ‘Well, Ben fell in with them – in a way. He had a small horse ranch and sold stock to them. He didn’t know who they were, what they did, only that they paid top-dollar for their mounts.’

  ‘I take it that the judge and jury didn’t believe that,’ I said.

  ‘No. But there is proof that Ben was railroaded, that the gang used him for a fall guy after a murder was done.’

  ‘What sort of proof?’ I asked.

  ‘The gang broke up eventually. I don’t know the exact reason, but Jefferson Pulver and this man Corson had a falling out. Corson shot his former leader. While Pulver was lying on his death bed he dictated a letter, naming names, exposing facts.’

  ‘Including the fact that your brother was not guilty of murder?’

  ‘Yes. Pulver wrote Ben a letter telling him that he would be exonerated once the confession was made public’

  ‘Corson didn’t like the idea, I take it.’

  ‘Of course not! It was Corson who did the murder. Ben told me so.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand this. Why hide the confession? Why didn’t Jefferson Pulver call the law to his deathbed and tell them all of this?’

  Beth gave me a pitying look as if I had rocks for brains. ‘Don’t you see? The officers of the law were all on the take in Flagstaff. I thought you of all people would understand that Sheriff Tom Driscoll is corrupt enough to lock anyone up, even hang a man, so long as Corson was paying him off.’

  Tom Driscoll? No, I hadn’t known, but now many things began to make sense. How I had been sentenced to hang for killing a man when I hadn’t been in miles of his camp. Perhaps I did deserve the critical look Beth Tolliver was giving me. Perhaps I did have rocks for brains.

  Beth was saying something else that I didn’t get. My attention was elsewhere. She paused, pushed aside an errant strand of pale hair and frowned at me again.

  ‘But you’re not even listening to me,’ she said with a shadow of petulance.

  She was right. I had been listening to the slow, stealthy approach of horses in the near-distance.

  Without ceremony I rose, yanked her off the tree bough by her wrist and started running back toward the stream where we had left Henry Tyler. Stumbling, struggling in my grip she shouted angrily:

  ‘What are you doing!’

  ‘We have to get to Henry. I need my rifle, and I need it loaded! Now!’

  FOUR
>
  It was close. We found Henry, shirtless, rinsing off in the stream. I shouted to him, grabbed my Winchester and instinctively he understood the urgency in my words. He ran to his saddlebags and tossed me a box of .44-40s. I was still thumbing the brass cartridges into the tube magazine when the raiders broke from the cottonwoods across the creek. I shoved Beth roughly to the ground, went to a knee and levered a round into the breech of the needle-gun.

  There were four of them and they charged at us across the narrow rill, their horses’ hoofs sending up silver fans of water. I guessed that I had loaded ten shots, and that should have been enough. But then I saw Henry Tyler, bare-chested still, gunned down before he could bring his revolver to bear.

  Smothering an oath I shot the man who had killed him, watching as he flung out his arms and dropped from his horse’s back into the shallow rill. Switching my sights I aimed two rapid shots at the man to his left. He, I recognized. McQueen’s flowing red beard flowed wildly past his throat as his horse charged. My bullet caught him just below his chin, and he slumped forward across his pony’s withers. The horse reared up and bucked him from the saddle. He lay still on the sandy bank as the other two outlaws rode for cover.

  I motioned to Beth to stay down and scooted to one side to my buckskin’s flank for protection while I scanned the cottonwood grove for signs of movement.

  For half an hour, perhaps, I remained there, crouched beside my horse, but I heard no sounds and saw no movement in the shadows of the scattered trees.

  ‘I think it’s all right now,’ I whispered to Beth.

  ‘You can’t be sure.’

  ‘No, I can’t be sure, but we can’t stay here. They may come back.’

  ‘We have to bury the dead,’ Beth said, holding her fingertips to her mouth.

  ‘There’s three of them,’ I said more roughly than I intended, tightening the cinches on my saddle. ‘There isn’t time.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ she answered reluctantly.

  ‘Look – is this Corson?’ I asked, toeing the second bandit over. She shuddered visibly and turned away after a brief glimpse.

  ‘I have no idea what Corson looks like. Only … only Henry did.’