by Les Weil
Dobe Chavez
1886
VAST REACHES of rangeland rolled westward, rounded in soft sanded contours under midmorning sun, to lap against a long low ridge running seemingly interminable into the south along the flattened crest of the ridge rode two men, Dobe Chavez on a small stocky bay and young Lon Hall on a rangy long-legged pinto, riding line. They rode at a steady scanning the country to the right that dropped in shoulders of humped land down from the ridge. They swerved to the right and down, picking up speed, and gathered a half dozen steers and a cow with yearling calf at her heels into a compact bunch and drove them up and over the ridge and down the eastern slope. They jogged back up to the crest and moved southward along it again.
Thees hill," said Dobe Chavez. "We follow eet. Todas las vacas, all the cows weeth the right brand, we push them over thes hill."
"Si senor," said young Lon Hall, eighteen years of lanky enhusiasm, proud to be where he was, with whom he was, doing what he was. "I gotcha, Dobe."
They jogged steadily along, making occasional forays down the western slope and back.
"Let's see something," said young Lon. "What time do you say is?"
Dobe cocked his head to look from under the wide brim of sombrero at the sun. "Ees about ten of the clock," he said.
Carefully young Lon undid the button on a pocket of his shirt and took out a somewhat battered gold watch. He pressed on the stem and the face cover flipped open. "Ten, and one half."
"Ees what I say," said Dobe. "But ees a good clock."
"It was my granddad's," said young Lon.
They jogged steadily along. Off to the right about a mile down the western slope and out on the relative level, almost hidden in a small hollow, several small adobe structures came into view. A few haphazard garments hung on a clothesline between two sagging poles. A few chickens scratched at sun baked ground, tiny specks of busyness at the distance. Two scrawny horses and a burro drooped dejectedly in a ricket corral.
Dobe drew rein. "I theenk," he said, "I theenk I go se my, what you call heem? my couseen Jose Gonzales who ow me three dolar."
"You sure got a lot of primos," said young Lon.
"Si," said Dobe, grinning. "Muchos primos. You ride along Slow. I'll come soon."
"Yep," said young Lon. "And I'll bet you're thinking of sister. I've heard about her."
"Ees eet wrong," said Dobe, grinning again, "for un hombre to smile at las sehoritas?"
"I ain't saying nothing," said young Lon. "Just wishing you luck." He nudged the pinto forward along the ridge, whistlin softly under his breath.
* * *
Lon Hall drew rein and consulted the battered gold watch He liked the feel of it in his hand. Ten fifty-four. He tucked it carefully back in its pocket. Several hundred yards away down the right slope, atop one of the humping shoulders land, were three steers, still, rigid, staring on down beyond. He could make out the Slash Y plain on the flank of on "Acting kind of funny," he said. He shrugged and slapped spurs to the pinto and swung down, circling. As he topped the humping shoulder just below them to drive them up, drew rein again, sharp, in surprise. On ahead, in a hollow hidden before, were four horses, two saddled, two carrying pack racks, and two men, one jumping fast for a rifle from the scabbard on one of the saddled horses, the other rising upright, knife in hand, from the half-skinned carcass of steer.
The rifle bore on Lon Hall's middle and a cold sickness gripped him under his belt.
`'Come on down here, sonny," said the man with the rifle. "And easy."
Slowly Lon Hall nudged the pinto forward. Stopped. The muzzle of the rifle was unwavering and enormous.
"You Slash Y?" said the man with the rifle.
Lon Hall nodded. It was difficult to make his neck muscles move.
"Well, then, you can take a complaint back to your boss, Brennan. Your goddamned cows keep wandering over here. "Get in the way when we're picking one of our own like today to dress out. You got that?"
The man with the knife was reaching, quiet, furtive, to flip back with one foot the loose hide along the flank where he had been cutting. Lon Hall's eyes flicked to the foot and he saw, just as the hide went back, the brand, sharp and distinct. His eyes flicked back to the man with the rifle and he saw the face hardening more and the certainty showing and he reared the pinto with frantic hand on the reins and whirled it with spurs sinking in streaking away and angling for the ridge top. He heard the rifle roar and a revolver join it and the pinto eaped shuddering and caught footing again and strove upward and shuddered again, rearing high and toppling backward, and he pushed out and away, hard, falling, sprawling, scrambling, and the threshing body of the horse, life ebbing out of it, pitching down the slope, caught him and rolled full on him.
* * *
Along the crest of the ridge, trotting smartly on the small neat stocky bay, rode Dobe Chavez, singing softly to himself a little song that fitted him precisely at the moment, something about un caballero festivo. He was checking the hoofprints of the long-legged pinto. He saw where they left the idge top and swerved down to the right. Further on he saw where they returned accompanied by the prints of several ,ows and went down the slope to the left. "Ees a good keed," he said. "Ees doing the work." He saw where they returned o the ridge top and led on again. He trotted smartly along. He saw where they swerved again down to the right. He trotted on. They did not return. He slowed, then stopped, looking carefully out over the vast empty spaces of broken land. He turned and backtrailed, at a fast lope now, to where they had last swerved aside. He started down the slope to the right, following them. "Jesu Cristo!" he said and the bay plunged forward under spurs and down and over in taut-muscled leaps and slid to a stop on its rump beside the body of the pinto. Under it, limp, motionless, blank-faced, eyes closed, pinned by the legs up to the waist, lay young Lon Hall.
No longer un caballero festivo, un caballero triste instead, Dobe Chavez swung out of the saddle. He shook out his rope and pushed the loop over the pinto's lifeless head, down around the neck where it thickened. He pulled the rope tight to his saddle on the bay and whipped several coils around the horn, firm and overlapping. He stepped to the bay's head and took hold of the bridle and urged it into motion. It heaved, straining, hoofs digging in, and the body of the pinto pivoted and slid to one side. He knelt by the body of Lon Hall. Gently he turned it, limp and unresisting, so that the head lay up the slope. Gently he felt along the legs and arms, then grasped one wrist with surprisingly delicate fingers. He jumped up. "Ees there!" he said. He started again toward the bay. He stopped, looking down at the body of the pinto. A splotch of ' darkening blood showed on a shoulder. He knelt down and touched the splotch with a forefinger. The finger pushed on, easily, through the hide.
No longer un caballero festivo or triste, grim-faced instead, Dobe Chavez searched over the ground. He found the tracings of the pinto's frantic plunge up the slope. He found the half-skinned carcass of the steer, the ears and a patch of the flank hide gone. He stood for a long moment by the tracks of four horses leading off southwestward and his right hand rubbed slowly down and up the old leather of the worn holster at his side.
* * *
The several small adobe structures in their own small hollow seemed to be asleep in midday sun. One of the scrawny horses in the rickety corral raised its head and whinnied. Three or four chickens ran squawking into the nearest rabbit brush. Over the low rise behind the structures came Dobe Chavez, sweat streaking his face, carrying a saddle and a bridle. He was leading the bay. Two saddle blankets lay over the saddle on its back. And over them, lashed with his own rope, lay the limp body of Lon Hall.
Dobe Chavez dropped the saddle and the reins of the bay, still holding the bridle dragging from one hand. He strode to the door of the larger of the adobe structures and pushed it open. He spoke in Spanish, not asking, not explaining, simply stating. He strode to the rickety corral and in and moved slowly and reached out suddenly and caught one of the scrawny horses by the nose. He stepped in
close and threw an arm over its neck and slipped the bridle on. Paying no attention to the two women and one small boy and one smaller girl who had crowded out of the house, he led the scrawny horse out of the corral and slapped the saddle he had been carrying on it. He fastened the cinch. He took the reins of the bay and swung up on the scrawny horse. At a fast walk he led off angling up the long slope toward the ridge top.
* * *
On a straw mattress and several blankets stretched on the floor of the bunkhouse lay young Lon Hall, limp, motionless, face boyish and bloodless in the light of afternoon sun through the open doorway. Beside him was Cal Brennan, long lean body hunkered down, gently letting a few drops from a bottle drip between young Lon's slightly parted lips. Five other men stood close by, watching. On the third bunk on the right sat Dobe Chavez, head down, staring at the floor.
Lon Hall's throat muscles moved. He swallowed, involuntary, unknowing. His head rocked a bit and his eyes opened, staring. They focused on the face of Cal Brennan bending wer. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes and a sob shook him and his body stiffened in pain at the movement.
"Easy, boy," said Cal Brennan. "Don't talk more'n you have to. We'll have you to a doc soon. An' we don't need to know much. You recognize any of 'em?"
Lon Hall's head shook slightly. "There ... was . . . two. And ... pack ... hosses."
"You get a good look at 'em?"
The effort of words hurt. "Big man ... heavy ... freckles. Other ... short ... dark . . . no hat ... black hair." He tried to raise up some and pain stiffened him and he fell back, limp again, eyes closing.
Cal Brennan rose upright. "Benton an' Garcia," he said softly. "So that's how they been gettin' that beef they been peddlin' at the fort."
"Goddamn it!" said Monte Walsh. "What got into you, Hat? Letting a kid like that-"
"Jeeeesus!" said Hat Henderson. "How was I to know? He wanted to ride with Dobe."
Over on the third bunk on the right Dobe Chavez shifted weight and started to look up and let his head lower again.
"Jeeesus!" said Hat Henderson again. "So I made a mistake. How was I to know? They been mighty quiet. The been smart up to now."
"They made a mistake," said Chet Rollins. "Not makin sure of Lon."
"Hurryin'," said Cal Brennan. "Couldn't know how many of us might be around. Well, I guess the feed wagon'll do padded enough. Sunfish. You harness the team. Make the best time in you can without bouncin' too much. Tell Mac about it but we'll be way ahead of him. Get back here an take over when the rest of the boys come in. We might gone a while. Monte. Pick out good hosses an' saddle 'em. Chet. You dig out some rifles. Dally. You fill some canteens. Powder. Get some grub. An' you Dobe, you listen to me. We got to do any shootin' we ain't shootin' to kill. Not less w have to. Lon's alive. An' Mac's been jawin' about our way of doin' things an' about keepin' things legal. We try an' tak 'em in."
Cal Brennan sighed. "An' you, Hat. I ain't as spry as used to be. I can't keep up, you just forget me. Keep goin' Get 'em."
* * *
They rode, riding hard but not too hard, conserving the deceptive deep-bottomed strength in the tough little cow ponies under the saddles, not for the long low ridge and over to the carcasses of a pinto and a half-skinned steer, but straight southwestward to skirt the far end of the ridge and on to small jacal and pole corral where two men had squatted some months claiming to be running a few cows of their own dubious brand. There, in the first dark of night, they found evidences of a quick departure.
Dobe Chavez knelt on the ground, studying the prints of four horses pointed toward the broken badlands to the south. "Ees stupeed," he said. "They take too much."
"Carrying weight, eh?" said Hat Henderson. "Well, we ain't."
They rode, not fast now but steady in the dim shadowing shimmer of a piece of moon, Dobe Chavez in the lead, leaning down often along. the shoulder of his horse, dismounting occasionally to lead it through the pooled shadows of the lower levels while he studied the ground.
And the hours passed and in the first flush of light up the eastern sky they found the ashes of a small fire and the stomped ground where four horses had stood and the barely perceptible rounded indentations where two men had rested.
Dobe Chavez bent low by the ashes and tested them with a finger. "Ees warm," he said and swung up into saddle again.
They rode, faster now in the growing light, chewing in saddles on a cold biscuit and a strip of jerked beef each, and dropped into the broken badlands and worked through them in and around the fantastic formations of red rock and hardened purple clay streaked with the dull white of long-ago eroded limestone, and more hours passed and they emerged on the other side and as they topped out on the upper level they saw, far ahead, in the seeming limitless expanse of distance, two horses mounted and two horses packed. They rode, at a hard lope now, and a half hour passed and they saw that they had been seen and the four horses ahead were lengthening stride and they rode, ramming into it now, forward at full gallop.
They passed the two packhorses, cast adrift and slowing to one side, and they were beginning to string out now in a straggling line across the great bowled expanse as the small secret accumulating differences in horses and men and their riding began to tell. They passed saddle bags ripped loose and thrown aside and the two men ahead swung to the left, racing on fast-tiring horses up a long slope, and disappeared over the top.
They followed, strung out, cutting up the slope at a closer angle, and pulled in sharp at the top, one after the other, piling into a compact group as horses slid on rumps, braking hard. On down the other side was a small abandoned adobe shack. It looked deserted, forlorn, with doorless doorway a windowless window openings on two other sides, but sweat-streaked chest-heaving horses stood close by.
"Holed up," said Hat Henderson. A rifle sounded from one of the window openings and the whine of a bull whipped past him. "Hop it," he said. "Get the hosses down out of range. An' spread out around."
"You boys ... listen to me," gasped Cal Brennan, tag up, gray-faced and strained and grim. "I don't ... want . no grandstandin' . . . out of any of you. We got ... one man down ... back in town. That's enough."
Another hour passed and the first angry exchanging shots had dwindled to an occasional impatient report from some vantage point around and a rare warning reply from the shack and bullets had thudded harmlessly against the outside of the thick old adobe walls or through the doorway and window openings against the opposite inside walls. The the horses had shied from the shots and drifted away and been caught and brought around with the others and Dally Johnson sat on the ground near his own horse holding a moistened handkerchief against his eyes reddened and smarting from bullet-spurted sand.
Monte Walsh moved along, crouching below the top of the rise, and dropped to the ground beside Hat Henderson. "This ain't getting us nowheres," he said. "Me and Chet'll slip down on that blank side and around the corner. Rest of yo keep 'em busy through the windows and we'll rush the door."
"Shut up, Monte," said Hat wearily. "You heard what Cal said. An' they got nothing in there. No water. They got to come out sometime. Maybe when it's dark we'll try something."
It was Dobe Chavez, flat on the ground, peering through a bit of rabbit brush through which poked the barrel of his rifle, who caught the snatch of movement at a window corner and squeezed finger on trigger. And all heard the screaming yell that came from inside the shack and after a few moments the hoarse shout. There was talk back and forth, shouted, and a rifle was pitched out the doorless doorway and two revolvers after it and two men emerged, one big and heavy and freckled with blood staining his shirt at the left shoulder, the other short and dark and hatless and blackhaired.
* * *
Day drifted over the big land and in the little town of Harmony two men, one with shoulder bandaged, both guarded by a deputy sworn in by Sheriff MacKnight, waited in the one-room jail for the circuit judge who would be along eventually. Sheriff MacKnight and three others rode
out from town, across the vast reaches of rangeland, to the small jacal and searched thoroughly and found nothing. But a quarter of a mile away where the ground was soft and a coyote had been digging they dug too and found the stiffened hides of seven steers and five of them bore the Slash Y and two the Triple 7 of the next outfit to the north. And back in Harmony in a room of the combination hotel and office building young Lon Hall lay on an old brass bed, tended by an ample ageless Spanish-American woman who apparently never slept and watched him around the clock, visited twice daily by Doc Frantz. He was unconscious much of the time at first or asleep in a kind of coma, but color was creeping back into his cheeks and he was awake and aware at times. And every other day, late afternoon, though they were working the wide company range, area by area, tallying and branding, someone from the Slash Y but never Dobe Chavez was there to sit with him a while and take back the day's report.
"If there's any serious trouble," said Doc Frantz, "it's deep inside. Time's the only cure I know. But one thing's fairly certain. He won't ride again."
And young Lon, hearing that, turned his face to the wall. Three different times the woman heard him say, unaware of her presence, apparently to a battered gold watch he liked to keep clenched in one hand: "Well, anyways, I was Slash Y for a while." And once, once only, while he was crying softly to himself, she heard him say: "If only Dobe'd been there."
* * *
Early morning and Cal Brennan and Hat Henderson stood on the veranda of the ranch house. Out in the first corral horses were being saddled. The two men turned to look along the wagon trace leading in from the left. An old man in toobig clothes that seemed to be even older was approaching on an old gray horse. He came steadily on and stopped by the veranda, peering down with watery old eyes from under the limp brim of a shapeless old hat. "Thought you oughta know," he said. "They busted out last night. That Garcia had a gun. Betcha some other goddamned greaser slipped it to 'im. They stole some hosses. Sheriff's chasing them with just about everybody else in town."