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

by James Reasoner

  They knew me and I knew them by sight. But I was there for another reason. I was hunting missing Z Bar beef, and their trail passed close by.

  “’Preciate the coffee,” I said.

  Hamp Blevins poured. “What brings you out toward the Rim?”

  “Someone’s driving a dozen or so head of Z Bar stock over this way. I’m out to show them the evil of their ways.”

  “Ain’t us,” Andy Cooper said.

  “Know that, Andy. If it were you, I’d not walk up to your fire with a coffee cup in my hand.”

  “Hmph,” Andy snorted.

  “I was wondering, Andy. Wondering if any of you Blevins boys would like to ride along. Come along and help me get our cows back.”

  The Blevins boys all studied their coffee cups like they could read the future in the grounds left in the bottoms. No one volunteered.

  “Well, thanks a bunch for the coffee,” I said. I tossed the dregs out, tapped the cup a couple of times with my other hand, and started to go back to where Morg stood waiting.

  Young Andy Cooper half hollered, “Hey, Commodore.”

  I turned to face him.

  “I’d admire to ride with ya.”

  I nodded. “Good. Saddle up. I’ll wait.”

  Andy Cooper rode hard and he didn’t talk a lot, which suited me fine, because I don’t talk much myself. We found the cows on a broad stretch of flat land just north of Show Low Creek. They were bunched up in a corral and some cowboys were heating running irons in a little juniper stick fire. I took my Winchester ’76 from its scabbard and rode with it across my saddle bows. Andy did the same. I kept the corral between us and the branding iron fire. I motioned Andy to go round the other side, which he did. Two cowboys rustled around with the fire.

  “Iron’s ‘bout hot ‘nough,” the one with the floppy hat said.

  “Denny, I been thinkin’,” the other one said.

  “Don’t think too much, ‘r yer hair’ll catch fire from the heat.”

  “Denny, I’m wondering.”

  “Whacha wondering?”

  “We ain’t got no lariat. How we gonna ketch them cows? How we gonna change them Z Bar brands?”

  Me and Morg just snuck right up to the corner of the corral, and I could just make out Andy on the other side. I jacked a shell into the chamber of my Winchester. Things got real quiet. Denny and the kid with him just froze.

  “Mister.” The kid’s voice was just above a whisper. “Mister?”

  “You all got a bunch of Z Bar cows in this here corral,” I said. “Could it be you’s figuring on making the Z Bar brands into something else? A eight cross, maybe? Huh?”

  Andy jacked a shell into his rifle, and the kid started sniffling.

  I used the name the kid had said. “Denny. What you got to say about all this?”

  It was getting on toward sunset, but I could make out Denny’s shrug. “You know what happens to rustlers?” I said.

  Again he shrugged.

  “How come you got my outfit’s cows, then?”

  The weeping kid stopped bawling and said, “Uncle Bart. It were Uncle Bart. He promised us two dollars a head if we’d get him some cows.”

  “Uncle Bart?”

  “That’ll be Bart Bigelow,” Andy said. “I know where he camps out. Like as not he’s at the dugout he made down on Silver Creek.”

  “That right, Denny?” I swung the muzzle of my Winchester over so it pointed right at him. “That right?”

  Denny shrugged.

  “Horses coming,” Andy said.

  “I hear ‘em.” I dismounted and shooed Morg off toward the creek.

  A rifle fired and Andy let out a curse. “Too damned close,” he said, and jumped off the far side of his horse.

  Four riders pounded toward us from the east, raising a cloud of dust and firing like they had all the bullets in the world. I took a bead on the lead horse, a three-color paint, and squeezed off a shot. The horse went down and the rider tumbled head over heels to the ground. When he scrambled to his feet, I put him down again with a shot in the brisket. I jacked another shell into my Winchester.

  I switched my aim to another rider, not worrying about the one I’d shot. He was dead.

  The other three scattered. There wasn’t all that much cover on the flat, but they ran for what there was. Andy was firing, but the running horses showed that his lead took little effect.

  “Aim for the horses,” I hollered.

  A six-gun cracked and a bullet plowed into the dirt not an inch from my left foot. I whirled and pulled the trigger when the Winchester’s muzzle lined up with Denny, whose hand worked at earing back the hammer of an old Colt Army M1861. My bullet took him just above the belt buckle and knocked him on his butt, where he sat, staring with disbelieving eyes at the blood stain spreading on his shirt.

  “They’re running, Commodore,” Andy hollered.

  A glance showed me that the other three badmen were almost to the juniper treeline. I shouldered my M1876 and shot as fast as I could work the lever. My bullets took two of the running men between the shoulder blades and they dropped, lifeless. The third one jagged just as I pulled the trigger and my bullet smashed into the joint of his left shoulder. He hit the ground howling, and I figured his wound wasn’t mortal. Not right away anyways.

  “Jeez,” Andy said. “I heard you could shoot, but I never seen the likes.”

  “Man who steals another man’s beef deserves to get shot.”

  “But jeez. Them fellers is a good hunnert yards off.”

  “I’d a hit ‘em at a quarter of a mile if I had a clear shot.”

  “Jeez.”

  “Come on. We got cows to take back to the Z Bar.”

  The kid was still sobbing. Denny looked to be on his last legs, so to speak. A gut-shot man don’t often live, unless he can get to Doc Goodfellow, who’s way down in Tucson. I whistled, and in a minute, Morg came looking for a treat, like I taught him.

  “Come on, Andy. Let’s go get that shoulder-shot jehu.”

  “He can still shoot,” Andy said. He sounded nervous.

  “If he tries, I’ll kill him.” I put my one-in-a- thousand ’76 into its saddle scabbard and pulled my Remington, checked it, and put it away. I started for the wounded man. After a minute, Andy came along.

  We got the shoulder-shot man back to the corral where Denny was crying and calling for his ma. I’d taken the shirts off the two dead men and we used them to bandage up the shoulder wound. I never asked his name. “Boy,” I said, “Doc Woolford over to Show Low’s a good sawbones. Either you and this man ride over there, or you ride by yourself and fetch him. Me and Andy Cooper’re gonna take these cows back to where they belong.”

  “Who are you, mister?”

  “Commodore Perry Owens,” I said.

  2

  A man has to be careful about where he practices shooting. Off out on the range, it’s not likely, but a lead bullet from a .44, pistol or rifle, can travel a good mile and still make a man-sized hole in anything it hits, man or beast. Wouldn’t do to have someone or some thing hit by a practice bullet. So often as not, I go down to Lithodendron Wash, ‘cause its walls are high enough so a bullet ain’t likely to fly over ‘em and soft enough so’s the bullet plows in rather than ricocheting off to God only knows where.

  Fine day in September, if I remember right, and I was riding a lineback buckskin that I naturally called Buck. I’d got me a buckskin mare with some thoroughbred in her and Jim Houck’s pa had a buckskin quarterhorse stud. I figured the two would throw a good colt, and I was right. Buck had the long legs of his ma and the black points and lined back of his pa. He was about as smart as a horse comes, and had more than enough bottom to get a man from St. Johns to Holbrook without breaking his wind. So I ran him from my place on Cottonwood Seep to where you drop off into Lithodendron Wash from the south. Just as we were about to scramble down the side of the wash, the sound of pistol fire came from a little further east. We went down the incline careful, without
raising a big cloud of dust. Then Buck, he catfooted up the wash, stepping in the sand that accumulated where the water ran of a rainstorm so there was no click of hoof against stone. Smart horse, that Buck. Almost wished he’d not lost his balls as a yearling.

  The sound of careful shooting came from ahead, just beyond the bend that took Lithodendron’s channel in a sharp turn north. We rode around the corner and stopped to watch a young man, probably no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, practice his draw and shoot.

  The boy stood square to his target, an old fencepost stood up against a niche in the east bank, about fifty feet away. His hand went to the Colt’s Peacemaker at his hip. He drew fast and smooth, but not rushed, and when the Peacemaker’s barrel came level, he touched off a round. The bullet smashed into the middle of the target post. He’d of gutshot a man at that same distance.

  Without turning, he replaced his pistol. “I reckon you’ll be Commodore Perry Owens,” he said. He drew and fired again, putting lead within half an inch of the first hit.

  “I am.”

  “I ain’t done nothing.”

  “Guilty conscience?”

  “No. But I’m after the man what killed my brothers. If he’s around, I’ll find him.”

  “Ain’t you a bit young to be riding after revenge?”

  The boy drew a third time and put the bullet right between the first two. He nodded. “Probably. But a Peacemaker don’t care about my age as long as I pull the trigger right and send the lead where it’s meant to go.”

  “A man could put it that way, I reckon. If you don’t mind, and I’m not trying to pry into your affairs, ya know, but if you don’t mind, I’d admire to know your name.”

  “Ruel Gatlin.”

  “A Colorado Gatlin?”

  “Yep.”

  “Brother to them boys what got shot over to Telluride, then?”

  “Yep.”

  “What brings you to Arizona?”

  “Hunting a man, like I said.”

  I put a question mark on my face.

  “Johnny Havelock. ‘Cept nowadays folks call him Ness.”

  “Know him. Some say he rides the Outlaw Trail.” Then I remembered something I’d heard. “Say. Didn’t I hear that Ness Havelock was bushwhacked in Moab the other night? Heard he’s buried right there in Moab’s graveyard.

  “Something’s buried there. Can’t believe Ness Havelock’d fall for that kind of bushwhacking, though.”

  “Garet Havelock’s got a spread down south toward Silver Creek. If Ness’s in the country, sooner or later, he’ll turn up there. And I hear that the shooting scrape in Telluride was on the up and up, no bushwhacking, no back shooting, just a straight up shootout, and Havelock came out on top.”

  The boy drew and fired, putting another bullet alongside the others. He replaced the Peacemaker, then repeated the process.

  He flipped open the loading gate and started ejecting his spent brass.

  “Mind if I take a shot or two at your target?”

  He shrugged.

  I stepped off Buck and ground-tied him. Times like this take a little showing off. If a man shoots unusual good at a target, not often someone who’s watched that shooting will draw on him at a later time.

  I drew my Remington Army as I walked past Gatlin and triggered it as my right foot came down solid on the ground. I thumbed the hammer back as I took two steps forward and pulled the trigger when my right foot was down solid again. After the fourth shot, I holstered the Remington, turned around, and walked back to where Gatlin stood, gun loaded, waiting for me to get out of the way.

  “Reckon the stories are true, then,” Gatlin said.

  “Stories?”

  “They say Commodore Owens is a heller with a gun and it don’t pay to go up against him.”

  “Is that what they say?”

  He pointed at the target post. My four bullets hit a good six inches above the place where Gatlin’s had chewed away a good part of the target’s belly. I could have covered the place my bullets hit with the palm of my hand, easy.

  “A man should hit what he shoots at,” I said, “work or play.”

  “My brother Lawrence always said you should have both feet on the ground to shoot.”

  “Surest way.”

  “But you was walking.”

  I nodded. “Flusters the man who wants to shoot you if you keep moving. Like you favor one hand over the other—I prefer to shoot with my right hand—you favor one leg over the other, too. When that foot is connected solid with the ground, you’re as good as stopped, and that’s when you touch off a round. Wanna try it?”

  “You bet I do.”

  So I spent the better part of a hour helping young Gatlin get to be as accurate with shooting at a walk as he was standing still.

  He reloaded his Peacemaker and shoved it into its holster. “Outta cartridges,” he said. “I’ll keep the five in my six-gun. A man never knows who he’ll run into.”

  I nodded. “Good thinking. Don’t reckon anyone’s gonna sneak up on your blind side.”

  “Thank you for the pointers, Commodore.”

  “More than welcome. And Ruel, if you don’t mind me calling you that, you might think twice about trying to gun down Havelock. He’s a good man, a hard man, but a good one. He don’t go around starting fights, but he finishes them when they get started.”

  “He killed my brothers. They won’t rest easy until he’s dead.”

  “All I’m asking you to do is think about it. Just sit and think.”

  “Been doing nothin’ but think about shooting Ness Havelock since I left Telluride.”

  I made no more comments. I’d had my say, and I knew Ruel Gatlin would come out second best if he braced Ness Havelock. But I wasn’t wearing no kind of a badge, and words carry only so much weight.

  We rode to Holbrook together, left our horses at Brown and Kinders livery stable. I went to Aunt Hattie’s for the first meal since I left my place at dawn. Gatlin stopped off at the Bucket of Blood, but I don’t think he had much drinking on his mind.

  People are bound to ask him what he was doing with Commodore Owens, and he’ll tell them. Ruel Gatlin ain’t a man of many words, so he’ll tell it clean and sparse and maybe another fable will grow and people will refrain from drawing guns against me just because of a story they heard.

  Anyway, I can hope it works that way. I can purely hope.

  3

  My homestead, which got me water rights to Cottonwood Seep and virtual rights to graze my stock anywhere south of the A&P tracks, made me next-door neighbor to the Zeigler outfit, Houck’s ranch, and others that lay to the west. As I was the only cowboy on my spread, I didn’t run many cattle; I concentrated on horses.

  They say Apache County was outlaw heaven in those days, and I suppose it was. But the biggest lawbreakers of all was the outfit they called the St. Johns Ring—the power mongers of Apache County.

  At the center of the Ring stood Solomon Barth. It was him, in fact, that convinced the territorial legislature to carve off a hunk of Yavapai County and turn it into Apache County. And he got the county seat assigned to St. Johns. Almost every political officer in the county was a member of the St. Johns Ring. It was like this. Albert J. Banta, the man who helped Barth get Apache County set up, was both probate judge and district attorney. Later. C. L. Gutterson took over the DA job. A Mexican named Tony Perez was the first sheriff. A lot of good he did. He was crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and J. L. Hubbell, the trading post owner that followed Perez, was no better. A man would wonder how in the world a sheriff could be fair and straight about upholding the law when he made so much money from trading whiskey and rifles to the Indians. Didn’t make sense then, don’t now. Even the St. Johns Herald was part of the Ring. No choice, I reckon. Sol Barth put up most of the money to get that paper up and going.

  Dave Udall told me one day, he said, “Damn. We’ve got a lot of Mormons in this county, but we can’t get a single office away from that St. Johns Ring. They
use deceit, fraud, ballot box stuffing, vote miscounting, and forcibly preventing our people from voting . . . they’ll do anything short of murder to keep their people in office.”

  Those of us what ran livestock found ourselves on the other side of the fence from the Ring. Sometimes I wondered if those people didn’t get a share of the cows and horses run off and sold by the outlaw element. People began coming to me when stock got rustled because I’d go out and get them cows back. Horses were more difficult. Basically, it was Barth, county officers, businessmen, and Mexican sheepmen on one side; Mormons, ranchers, and cowboys on the other.

  Let me tell you how it was. Here’s one example. It happened after the hullabaloo between cowboys and Mexicans at a fiesta in St. Johns.

  Dick Greer had a run-in with a Mexican sheepherder out on the range and ended up killing him. Now Tony Perez had deputized about eighty Mexicans. You saw a Mexican on the streets and chances were that he was one of those deputies. Greer figured he’d get no kind of fair break from the Mexican law, so he gave himself up to the judge in Holbrook. But those Mexican deputies nabbed Joe Woods, a Greer cowboy, along with a black rider they called “Nigger Jeff,” and locked ‘em up. Only they never put ‘em in jail, their lockup was Sol Garth’s hotel.

  That’s when Nat Greer, Dick’s brother, came to Cottonwood Seep, asking me for help. I owed Dick a favor or two, and he’d always been standup honest with me, so I said I’d do what I could.

  Nat’s horse was fairly well rode out by the time he got to my place, it being a good thirty miles from St. Johns.

  “We’d best be on our way,” I said, after I heard what he had to say. “I know most of them Mexes, and they know me. Let’s go talk to them.”

  I had Morg and Buck in the corral by my cabin. I saddled Morg and Nat switched his tack from his blaze-faced brown to my buckskin. We took off lickety-split for the Garth Hotel in St. Johns.

  After we crossed the Zuni River, Nat split off and rode to bring more guns. By the time I got to the first Mexican adobes on the lower flat next to the Little Colorado, Nat was there with six of his cowboys, armed with six-guns and Winchesters.