West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels

by James Reasoner

  I stood up.

  Three puffs of smoke showed from across the tracks and bullets smacked into the sandy soil around me. I put the ’76 to my shoulder and watched the land across the tracks. I seen a scrap of white on black that looked to me like a headband. I laid the ’76 right in the groove and triggered it. A cloud of pink mist raised above the scrap of white for a second, then it disappeared.

  I waited, standing in plain sight with my Winchester ’76 at my shoulder.

  A shot spanged off a rock about knee level, but off to my right by at least six inches. They weren’t shooting all that good.

  I put a bullet in the space between two boulders where the puff of smoke had risen. It was a good hundred yards off, but I don’t reckon I missed.

  No more shots.

  I waited.

  After a few minutes without anyone taking potshots at me, I walked back to Morg, shoved the ’76 into its scabbard, and mounted up. The Fargo horses followed along toward Navajo Springs stage station just like they knew where they was going.

  3

  Smoke was coming out of the pipe in the roof of the station at Navajo Springs when me and the Fargo horses topped the little rise on the north side of the swale.

  No one said “boo” about us riding up and me letting the Fargo horses into the corral they came from.

  Fred Adams come out of the station cabin with a egg turner in his hand. “See ya got the Fargo horses,” he said.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “None I couldn’t handle.”

  “Good. Got some rabbit in the frypan, Owens. Like a bite?”

  “Let me do for my horse. Then I’ll join you.”

  “Don’t be too long ‘er I’ll gobble it all up my own self.” Adams cackled.

  Morg enjoyed a bait of Wells Fargo oats in a honest-to-god leather and canvas nosebag, while I took a currycomb to him. Kept thinking about that little Navajo boy. Another year or two, and he would have been doing a man’s work instead of riding herd on the tribe’s ponies. Won’t never, now, but he had no right shooting arrows at me. It wasn’t like the Fargo horses belonged to him, or something. Still, he’d been awful young to have his life snatched away so suddenly.

  “Owens!” Fred Adams’s voice came from the station cabin. “This here rabbit ain’t gonna last forever.”

  “Be right in,” I hollered. I left Morg with the nosebag on. I’d get the cockle burrs outta his tail after I’d had a hunk or two of that fried rabbit.

  “Gonna be sundown fore long,” Adams said. “You gonna wanna bed down here tonight? Welcome if you wanna.”

  “Neighborly of you, Adams—“

  “Fred.”

  “—Fred, and I’ll take you up on it. Me and my hosses’ll head back to Houck’s place in the morning.”

  Fred dumped a couple of pieces of fried rabbit onto the plate he’d set in front of me. “Some people say fried rabbit tastes like chicken, but I can’t see it.”

  “Let me see.” I took a big bite of hind leg. He’d gotten young and tender cottontails. Not much wild meat is as tender and juicy as a young cottontail. “Tastes like cottontail bunny rabbit to me. Best wild meat they is anywhere. Well, had some mighty tasty ‘gator tail once, but that ain’t red meat like rabbit.”

  Fred bit into his own piece of rabbit, pulled off a hunk of meat, and went to chewing it up. He swallowed and said, “How’d you like to kind of guard the Fargo horses? Keeping the Navajos from stealing them, if ya can, and getting ‘em back if ever them Injuns make off with a head or two.”

  “We ain’t talked money of any kind.”

  Fred pulled more meat off the rabbit leg with teeth that looked like yellow chisels. He chewed on that bite of meat for a long time. “Well, I can guarantee you cowboy wages—that’s a dollar a day and eats—fer watching the horses. Then I reckon I can get Wells Fargo to pay a bonus for every horse got back from them thieving Navajos.”

  “How much bounty?”

  “Dunno. Have to talk to the bosses, but I can wire them from Holbrook tomorrow if you’ll stick around here for me.”

  “I can stick around. I been thinking about homesteading at Cottonwood Seep anyway. Stage coming in tomorrow?”

  “Nah. With the railroad running, Fargo’s down to three coaches a week. Not coming through ‘til day after tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take your cowboy wages, Fred Adams, and I’ll take your bounty, whatever it is.”

  And that’s how I came to watch over the Wells Fargo herd. Well, if you can call a dozen horses a herd, that is.

  Things was quiet for almost a week, then the Indian Agent from Fort Defiance showed up with an Army Captain at his side.

  I wasn’t at the station, because I needed to build me a cabin at Cottonwood Seep, part of proving up on a homestead. I made it simple, putting juniper posts up as walls on three sides and digging out a back wall from the hill that the cabin stood up against. It’s hard work putting up a cabin, but you want something that ain’t gonna blow over in a dust storm. Besides, hard work never hurt a man atall.

  Andy Armijo came from the direction of Navajo Springs station, quirting his little paint pony to get every extra spurt of speed it had. He brought it to a stiff-legged hopping halt. “Señor C.P.,” he hollered. “Los Indios! Los Indios!”

  I was out front of the half-built cabin before the boy and his lathered horse pulled up. “Easy, boy. What’s going on?”

  “Señor. Señor. Señor Adams, he said for you to come quickly. Por favor, he said. Andy Armijo, you hurry to fetch Señor C.P., he said, because el agente Indio y soldados, they are here. Si. Es verdad.”

  “Momentito,” I said, using one of the Mexican words I’d learned. I whistled, and Apple the gray came running. He was the only horse I had what would come when I whistled. That said, I was teaching Morg so pretty soon I’d have two.

  “Hey, Apple,” I said when he trotted up.

  He answered with a blow and a nose searching for a treat. I came to the conclusion that Apple didn’t come because he loved me, he came because he always got something good. I gave him a piece of hard tack from the sackful I’d bought in Holbrook. He was satisfied that coming when I whistled meant something good.

  I clipped a lead rope to his halter and we went over to where I kept tack under a tarp. A couple of minutes and we were ready to accompany Andy Armijo back to Navajo Springs. “Vamoose,” I said, the cowboy equivalent of Mexican for “Let’s go.”

  Apple’s a good horse with a fairly fast gait, but Andy’s little paint danced on ahead as if the party would start before he ever got there.

  At Navajo Springs, I saw four horses, one with a run-of-the-mill rig and three with blue saddle blankets and those uncomfortable McClellan saddles the army likes to use. Four men.

  I took Apple’s bridle off so he could graze around. He’d come when I whistled. Andy’d taken his horse to the corral back of the station. He stayed there, perched on the top rail, so I knew he wasn’t invited inside. Automatically, I pulled my Remington, checked the cylinder, added a bullet, and put it back in the holster that sat at my left hip. I ratcheted a shell into the chamber of my one-in-a-thousand Winchester ’76. Apple went to cropping grass. I went to knock on the station cabin door, thinking it a little strange that Fred Adams wasn’t out and about. Holding the ’76 Apache style, lying along my left forearm, barrel up and action where my right hand would naturally take hold if the need came, I rapped on the door and Fred Adams jerked it open like he’d been standing there waiting.

  “Andy said you needed me.”

  Fred looked uncomfortable. “Come on in,” he said, and stepped back.

  I went in.

  The Navajo Springs station’s not all that big. The major stop’s in Holbrook. Here folks stretch their legs, have some coffee, whatever. The inside of the station cabin wasn’t made to hold a stagecoach full of passengers all at one time. Four men sat around a table built for six at the most. They sat on benches, two men to a si
de.

  “This here’s Devlin Jacobsen. He’s Indian Agent over to Fort Defiance,” Fred said.

  I nodded at them.

  Fred didn’t introduce the soldiers, a captain and two from the ranks, a sergeant and a buck private.

  “Mr. Owens,” the agent said. “We have information that you have shot two Navajos to death. We’ll need to take you back to Fort Defiance with us.”

  “Won’t work,” I said.

  “What won’t work?”

  “Neither you nor the army has jurisdiction over Apache County. You can’t legally take me to the fort.”

  The agent puffed up, all indignant. “You murdered two Navajos.”

  “Ain’t no law in Apache County or in all Arizona that would find me guilty. Pure self defense.”

  “Captain McElroy. Arrest that man!”

  I held up my hand. The room went quiet. “Mr. Agent man, do you know why I went onto tribal land? I trailed three Wells Fargo horses north. I found them bunched up with a herd of Indian ponies. I took those three Fargo horses back. Now. Are you familiar with what happens to horse thieves? They get strung up, hanged by the neck until dead.”

  The agent sputtered. “Indians always take horses. It’s part of their culture.”

  “Teach ‘em different, then. Because if they steal Wells Fargo horses, I’ll come riding. And if they shoot at me, they’d better not miss, because once I’ve been shot at, the shooter is a dead man. That’s self defense. You’ve got no grounds for taking me to Fort Defiance.” I turned to go.

  “Then you admit killing the Navajos, one a young boy.”

  “Like I said, pure self defense.” I left the room.

  Navajos did a lot of shooting at me over the years, and I shot back some. They missed. I didn’t. And somewhere along the line, they began to figure it wasn’t their bad shooting to blame, there was something strange about me. It wasn’t that they missed every time they pulled a trigger, it was their bullets bouncing off me like I was made of iron or going right through me like I was a ghost of some kind. So among the Navajo, I became known as Iron Man by some and Ghost Man by others.

  It’s not that I particularly dislike Navajos, it’s that I can’t abide a man taking another man’s belongings without so much as a “by your leave.” God gave us ten commandments and that’s not too many for a man to keep. I figure a man stays within those ten and he’ll never get crosswise of the law. One of the ten is—thou shalt not steal.

  Part II

  Outlaw Heaven

  Commodore Perry Owens stood up from the table. “Young’un, it’s getting down to time I gotta keep my eye on the store.”

  “Store?”

  “Yeah. Right here in the store.”

  I have no idea why he called the Bucket of Blood a store, but I knew there was much left to the story of Commodore Perry Owens. “May I come again tomorrow? I’m sure there’s much more we need to talk about.”

  Commodore’s eyes twinkled with humor. “Sure enough. Come in the morning. Not too early. You can eat from the free lunch, if you want.”

  I gathered my pens and foolscap tablet, stored them away in my leather bag, and stood. Commodore thrust out his hand. I took it. He gave my hand one shake and released it. “Tomorrow morning, then,” I said.

  “Be a pleasure. Surely will.”

  He saw me past the bar and stood still until I was through the batwings. He didn’t suggest anywhere a young reporter could stay, but I’d heard that the Havasu House was good, and I went to find out if it was.

  * * *

  I stood at the front door of the Bucket of Blood. My pocket watch showed three minutes to ten in the morning. Two doors swung closed from outside the batwings. They were locked. There was no bell or knocker on the doors. All I could do was wait. I wondered for a spilt second if Commodore was telling me he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

  “Mornin’,” Commodore said. He’d turned onto the boardwalk in front of the Bucket of Blood from a side street. “Bit early, ain’t ya?” Again, there was humor in his eyes, but his face was stone somber. I got the feeling Commodore Perry Owens didn’t smile with his face very often.

  “I’m eager to hear more of what you have to say, C. P. Perhaps that eagerness put speed into my steps.”

  “How’d it go at the Havasu House?”

  Does Commodore know everything that goes on in this burg? “Seems a good establishment. I left my paraphernalia there. I won’t catch today’s train, considering the years we have yet to cover.”

  “Well, then, come on in.” Commodore rapped on the closed doors with the head of the cane he carried. In moments, the doors swung open, and the barman said, “Early, are you, C. P.?”

  “The youngster—” he waved at me with his cane “—still has things to talk about with me.” He shouldered his way through the batwings, and I followed.

  “Same place as yesterday,” Commodore said. “Hey, Frick. Got any coffee for an old cowboy?”

  “Always got coffee, C.P., the place runs on coffee, ya know.”

  “Cuppa java, if you please, then. How ‘bout you?” he said to me.

  I nodded. Coffee would start the day with Commodore well. I didn’t mention the sunny side up eggs and fried potatoes and thick-sliced bacon and breakfast rolls smeared with apple butter that I’d had for breakfast at the Havasu House. After all, I’d eaten before seven and here it was pushing ten thirty. Coffee’d be very good. And it was.

  “Where’d we leave off?” Commodore said.

  “You were telling me about Navajos stealing horses. Was that a big problem?”

  “Not really. They’d make off with a few head and I’d have to get the critters back, but Navajos raise sheep. One man on foot can herd a lot of sheep. When it came to losing horses, more’n likely white men was to blame.”

  “Is that so? You mean there were many bad men on the prowl back then?”

  “Young feller, you would not believe.”

  “I suppose the west was really wild in those days.”

  A car backfired outside and Commodore’s hand went to his cane. His sharp gaze fastened on the batwing doors. After a moment, he relaxed and lifted his coffee mug. He looked at me as he sipped at the coal black brew. “You’ll need to remember . . . well, you’re too young to remember, but those were the days when ranges in Texas were overgrazed and all that belly-high grass on the Colorado Plateau looked like the answer to a lot of problems, cattle problems, I mean.”

  I must have looked puzzled, because Commodore put his cup down and placed his hands on the table, palms down. “You see, the A&P got all the way to Canyon Diablo in ’81. Government gave the railways every other section of land for forty miles on either side of the tracks. So the A&P had lots of real estate to sell. That’s what financed them.”

  “OK, but what’s that got to do with white men stealing cows and horses?”

  “Just you wait, youngster. Give me time to explain it all to you.”

  “Sorry.” I drained my coffee cup. Commodore filled it up again from the pot on the table.

  “So, with grass in Texas gone short and too many people crowding in, outfits like the Hashknife and the Twenty-four came into Arizona. Figure this, youngster. The Aztec Land and Cattle Company alone shipped forty thousand cows as far as Holbrook on the A&P, and turned ‘em loose south of the tracks.”

  “That’s the Hashknife Outfit, right?”

  “It is. And forty thousand cows on what looks like free range, along with some fifteen thousand wearing the Twenty-four brand, and a bunch of little outfits like the Z Bar and Henry Huning’s ranch and Stott’s place, and you’re tempting every bad man riding the outlaw trail.”

  “Where did that leave you, then?” I asked.

  “Me? I concentrated on raising good horses and keeping my nose clean.”

  “Any special techniques you used?” My questions came without my thinking much about them, and I wrote Commodore’s answers and comments down in shorthand as he spoke.

 
; “I learned a couple of good tricks from Zack Decker. He was a Mormon who lived in Taylor but had a ranch of sorts over by Cottonwood Wash.”

  “A Mormon that did tricks?”

  “Kinda. He went a bit out of his way to show folks that he always shot straight and true, and that he could get his gun, handgun or long gun, into action while other folks were still scratching their heads, wondering what to do.”

  “I’ve heard that you were always ready to shoot up a tin can.”

  “I was. The Clantons moved up from Tombstone after that shootout with the Earps and Doc Holliday, setting up a Seventy-four ranch in Alma, New Mexico. Easy to change a 24 to a 74, don’t you reckon? Gus Snider ran a bunch of outlaws over to Round Valley. The Blevins bunch had what they called a ranch on Cherry Creek. And there was a plenty of footloose cowboys willing to make ends meet by shooing off a cow or two or a dozen here and there, or take a team of horses, and what not.”

  “Did anyone steal any of your horses?”

  “No one that lived to tell the tale.”

  I couldn’t think of a follow-up question to that comment, so I drank a big swallow of the Bucket of Blood’s horseshoe-floating coffee.

  1

  “Hello, the fire.” I let the cowboys know I was coming in.

  “Hello yerself. Who are ya, ‘n waddaya want?”

  “No need to get your back up, Hamp. It’s me. Commodore Owens.”

  “Oh.”

  I heard hammers being released, but I had no way of knowing if all were.

  “Come on in. Coffee’s hot.”

  I got off Morg while I was still outside the circle of light thrown by the fire. I ground-tied Morg. “Comin’ in,” I said. I carried my coffee cup in my left hand.

  Four cowboys hunkered on their heels around a little fire. Old Man Blevins, Hamp and John Blevins, and another brother who went by the name of Andy Cooper. Someone told me he was wanted for killing a man down in Texas.