Threepersons Hunt

by Brian Garfield

  The Threepersons Hunt

  Brian Garfield

  A MysteriousPress.com

  Open Road Integrated Media ebook

  For ZM,

  without whom

  Blue Mountain Spirit of the East,

  In your house of the blue clouds

  Where the blue mirage soars,

  There is the life of goodness

  Where you live.

  I sing of good things there.

  Yellow Mountain Spirit of the South,

  Your strength is of yellow clouds.

  Leader of the Spirits, holy Mountain Spirit,

  You are nourished by the good of this life.

  White Mountain Spirit of the West,

  Your strength is of white mirages;

  Holy Mountain Spirit,

  I am happy with your words

  And you are happy with mine.

  Black Mountain Spirit of the North,

  Your strength is of black clouds;

  Black Mountain Spirit,

  I am happy with your words

  And you are happy with mine;

  Now it is good. Enju.

  —Apache Indian song

  CHAPTER ONE

  A DARK column of cumulonimbus blew in across the desert from the Pacific Coast. It gathered condensation above the hot plains and when it reached the mountains of the eastern Arizona midlands it broke against them and there was rain.

  The volume of precipitation made flash floods in the mountain ravines. Each trickle became a rivulet that joined other rivulets until dry canyons roared and creeks thundered over their banks.

  The thunder and rain passed on but the floods continued for an hour or more behind them before the thirsty earth sucked them in.

  A white Ford station wagon squatted crosswise in the dirt like a toy left askew by a child who had lost interest in it. On its roof a red high-intensity light revolved and flashed. It was an Indian Agency car: White Mountain Apache Reservation Police.

  The cop who went with it stood beside the thatched wickiup and kept his eyes on Sam Watchman’s face when Watchman slid his Highway Patrol cruiser to a stop in the muddy ruts. There were seven or eight wickiups in various stages of architectural dishabille, two of them falling down: when a wickiup got beyond the patch-repair stage the Apache simply built a new one to live in and used the old one for storing firewood until it decomposed.

  There were several corrals and pens; there was a windmill with its tank; some little vegetable patches drenched and drooping behind the wickiups; a few old cars and pickup trucks; a dozen Indians in black hats or squaw dresses, observing Sam Watchman’s arrival with suspicion; a barbwire fence, three strands that ran around a ten-acre meadow—the far gate stood wide open; scrub-brush hills beyond the meadow and the darker timber of the White Mountains still farther. You could see the shadow-streaks of falling rain over the peaks thirty miles away.

  Over on the open tailgate of a ruined grey pickup truck sat an Apache giant in a plaid shirt, a young man the size of a grizzly bear with a face you could strike a match on. His bootheels dangled almost to the ground. He was smoking a cigarette and drinking beer out of a can, and watching everything.

  Watchman got out of the cruiser. The Indian Agency cop came forward, his transparent rain-slicker flapping in the wind. The air was like freshly washed glass and the wind had a good smell to it.

  “Pasó por aquí,” Watchman said. He passed by here. It was not a question. He saw in this scene everything that was supposed to be in it except horses. The place was a horse ranch but there were no horses.

  The Agency cop had small eyes high in his face and twisted gristle for a nose. He didn’t look quite forty. “One cop,” he said. “I send a squeal and they send me one cop. Hell you must be a Texas Ranger.”

  Watchman knew the joke. It was one of those “true” legends from the Old West. Somewhere in Texas they’d had a riot in some frontier town and the constable had telegraphed the Texas Rangers for help. A single Ranger had arrived on his horse and the constable had been aghast. “Only one Ranger?”

  “Only one riot, ain’t there?”

  “You see him?” Watchman asked.

  “No. But he was here.”

  “How much of a jump has he got?”

  “Maybe two hours.”

  “Horseback,” Watchman said. “Took the whole herd, did he? Smart.”

  “Real smart,” the Apache policeman agreed. “They had thirty head here. Call me Pete Porvo.”

  “Sam Watchman.”

  The village Apaches looked on with brooding stares while Watchman shook Pete Porvo’s hand, walked over to the fence and looked at the meadow. The corral gates were wide open too.

  Porvo caught up with Watchman at the fence. “No point getting dogs on this. Hounds wouldn’t know what horse to follow. Anyhow he was here in the rain, there wouldn’t be no scent.”

  “They told me he was stupid.”

  “Joe knows horses. He knows guns. I reckon he knows this country as well as any man alive. Put him in a city he’s pretty dumb. But up here?”

  “That’s why he came back here,” Watchman said. He turned his face straight toward Porvo. “You know him pretty well?”

  “Hell—it’s a small town, this Reservation. This ain’t Window Rock.”

  Either this was a shrewd psychic guess or Porvo had been prepared. Window Rock was the Navajo capital and there was nothing about Watchman that could identify his tribe to the eyes of a stranger.

  Probably they’d told him on the car radio. We’ll send you our Navajo trooper. He’s on his way up there anyway.

  But Watchman let it go. He squinted toward the mountains. “Would he go up there? Or stay down in the hills?”

  “He knows it all. I’d just be guessing.”

  “Guess, then.”

  “He’d stay down closer to where folks live, I expect. Ain’t nothing for a man to steal up in the piny woods there.”

  That could be right. If it was, Watchman thought wryly, it cut down the search area from two million acres to one million. It was a big Reservation.

  Porvo said, “He’ll turn those horses loose one at a time. After a while they’ll come home by themselves. Ain’t, no point trying to track him in the meantime, if that’s what you was thinking.”

  Watchman shook his head and started to walk back toward his Arizona Highway Patrol car. He stepped around the puddles. Porvo trailed him, screwing up his eyes against the blaze of noon sun that had reappeared behind the storm.

  Three Indian men stood in front of the biggest wickiup. Watchman stopped and said to Porvo, “Any of these folks see him?”

  “You seen him, didn’t you Eddie?”

  One of the Indians nodded slightly.

  Watchman tried a smile. It didn’t have any visible effect. “You try to stop him?”

  Eddie let one eyebrow rise a quarter of an inch—it was the sum of his reply.

  Porvo said, “You don’t try to stop a man got a rifle pointed at you.”

  Watchman swiveled on both heels. “What rifle?”

  Porvo turned to Eddie. “You get a look at it Eddie?”

  It was an effort for Eddie to speak; he had to conquer a reluctance, a resistance to the uniform and the stranger. “Guess I did.”

  “Well?”

  “Saddle gun,” Eddie said. “Lever. I think maybe thirty-thirty.”

  “Where the hell did he get it?” Watchman felt a little anger. “That’s all we need, him batting around up there with a rifle.”

  “Prob’ly figured he needed one,” Porvo said with oblivious logic.

  “You know where that puts him legally?”

  “I’m just a country cop. Where’s it put him?”

  “Dead or aliv
e,” Watchman said. “He’s a fugitive on a capital-crime conviction. He’s armed—anybody can shoot him on sight. They were right after all. He’s stupid.”

  “Man,” Porvo said softly, “ain’t nobody around here going to shoot Joe Threepersons. These are his people.”

  “He steals some more horses, his people are likely to start losing patience with him.”

  “Oh I don’t imagine he’ll steal any more horses,” Porvo drawled with an odd little smile. “Prob’ly next time he’ll just ask for a horse and the man’ll give it to him. You kind of wasting your time, you know. You ain’t going to get Joe.”

  “Whose side are you on, Porvo?”

  “Come right down to it, I guess I’m on Joe’s side.” Porvo met his eyes guilelessly.

  “He’s a convicted murderer.”

  “It was a white man he killed. You know, hell, you’re an Innun yourself.”

  “I’m a cop,” Watchman answered. “So are you, if you ever get around to remembering it.”

  “I ain’t no Uncle Tomahawk.”

  Watchman got the topographical map of the Reservation out of his car. He spread it out on the hood. Water had beaded on the wax finish and made dark discs through the back of the map. He leaned on his hands, studying it.

  Porvo laughed quietly in his throat. “Man if you need a map of this country you ain’t never going to find him.”

  2.

  A county sheriff’s car made a roadblock across the highway. A deputy sat on the front fender in the blaze of early afternoon sun. There were dark sweat patches all over his khaki shirt.

  Watchman drew his car up by the county car’s bumper. The deputy squinted through weather-whacked blue eyes. “How do.”

  Watchman nodded. He didn’t get out of the car.

  The deputy said, “You got traffic duty?”

  “Detective division.”

  “Looking for that killer?”

  “He’s on horseback. You may as well call this off.”

  “I’d have to check with my dispatcher.”

  “You do that.”

  “Anyhow,” the deputy said, “he ain’t going to show himself around here. Even a lizard knows enough to stay out of this sun.”

  “You could have been down on the desert. Fifteen degrees hotter down there.”

  “Yeah. Ain’t I lucky now.” The deputy bestirred himself, slid down to his feet and walked toward the door of his car. When Watchman drove off the deputy was reaching inside for his radio microphone. In the mirror Watchman saw the deputy’s hat brim turn, indicating his interest in Watchman: What’s that Indian doing in a state trooper’s uniform?

  The sun made the world brittle and blinding. Ahead of him U.S. 60 ran straight up the plateau. Perspective narrowed it to nothing and beyond that in a lavender haze stood the summits. The rain had gone on. Tufts of cloud hung here and there in its afterwash.

  Tiny in the distance a truck came toward him from the east, appearing and disappearing at intervals with the rises and dips in the road. It skimmed forward on top of the heat mirage, which made ponds of the paving. The sun beat hot reflections off its windshield. Presently it loomed, tossing a mane of oil smoke. Watchman gripped the wheel when the truck went by: its passage shook his car and the wind of its wake made his wheels shimmy on the damp road. When its diesel stink was out of his nostrils he began to breathe again.

  The road two-laned up through piñon and juniper hills that looked like orchards because of the size and separation of the small trees. A barbwire cattle fence ran along beside the road on the right. There wasn’t all that much decent graze up here; it took fifty acres to support one steer in this kind of country but the Apache tribes had plenty of acres. Not as many as the Navajos but then there were five thousand Apaches on this Reservation and there were maybe a hundred and fifty thousand Navajos up on the Window Rock. It made you wonder.

  He found the turnoff. A pair of ruts forked away from the highway, went through the fence across a rail cattle guard and disappeared into the hills. He went that way, bouncing in the ruts.

  The dirt track bisected the route Joe Threepersons had probably followed on his stolen horses. Ahead of him the foothills started to crumple and heave toward the dark forested high country; the land wasn’t as harsh and arid as his own Navajo country but it had its own kind of drama.

  He drove slowly across three or four miles of wagon track. The undercarriage of the Plymouth was taking a beating from the rocks. In the damp earth he saw tracks of cattle, deer, javelina, bobcat, coyote, jackrabbit, lizard and snake. Evidently no human foot had trod this ground since the invention of the beer can. A hawk drifted above the trees some distance to the south. Two Herefords browsed in the brush near the track; they watched him drive by, chewing, swishing their tails at flies.

  The noise of his approach startled a little gather of whitetail deer that bounded away in alarm. He kept watching the earth for signs of the recent passage of a herd of horses. He didn’t expect to track on foot but at least he might get an indication of the fugitive’s direction of travel.

  By the odometer it was six and three-tenths miles from the highway to the point where he found the spoor of the stolen horse herd. Too many of them to make an accurate count possible. Now of course the question was whether Joe Threepersons was with the herd. He might have split off on his own in some other direction, riding one horse.

  But he hadn’t. If you knew horses you knew that. These horses were still traveling east in something like a straight line. If the man had turned them loose they’d have begun to wander, they’d have milled around and browsed a while and then they’d have headed home.

  Watchman left the car and took a little walk to see what he could learn from the tracks. The earth had dried to a crumbly, cakey texture except where the trees shaded it; here it was still moist in places and some of the hoof-prints were quite clear, He was able to single out a set of prints that represented one horse zigzagging back and forth behind the rest of the herd: its prints were imposed on top of the others and it was the only animal that made so many switchbacks and turns.

  This was the track of the fugitive Indian’s mount: Joe Threepersons was riding behind the other horses, driving them, zigzagging to chouse strays back into the herd and keep them all moving. All except one horse which he had let go on purpose. In fact he’d probably driven it away; otherwise it would have stayed near the herd.

  Undoubtedly he planned to keep doing that, reducing the herd one animal at a time so that no one would be able to tell which one carried him. At the moment it was easy enough to single out the tracks of his own horse but it would be dark presently and by morning he’d have so much of a lead that there’d be no point trying to follow the tracks from here. Tomorrow it would rain again—it was that season—and the tracks would wash out then.

  Watchman had known all that before he’d decided to come over here for a look. He had come anyway because at least it narrowed the district where Joe Threepersons would probably end up. Ahead were the foothills, the timber country that fed the tribe’s sawmill, and the main Reservation settlements at Fort Apache and Whiteriver.

  To a White Mountain Apache like Joe Threepersons this Reservation was what “home” was to Robert Frost: the place where when you go there they have to take you in. Pete Porvo was right: if you had to have a map you wouldn’t find him.

  So what am I doing here?

  Following orders? Being a good German? Acting like a stalking horse for the white masters? Lisa had asked him why he stayed in the department and kept taking their insults and he’d told her, I’m just trying to earn my gold watch. But there wasn’t a whole lot of truth in that.

  Another time he’d tried to explain it to her: I come from a long line of white Indians. It gets to be a habit. My great-grandfather rode scout for General Crook, he was an Army Indian. Helped them track down Geronimo.

  For his great-grandfather there’s been a kind of logic to it: Navajo and Apache were bitter enemies in those days,
never more so that after the 1860s when the Navajo were tricked, trapped and massacred by Kit Carson’s armies so that forever afterward the Navajo nation had been subjugated and humiliated at gunpoint into Reservation bondage while, not far to the south, the Apache tribes continued for twenty years to run free and proud. The Navajo hated the Apache for their freedom; and so the Navajo scouts had gone to war against the Apache even when it meant fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with white soldiers. It was the only war the whites would let them fight, so they fought it. It was better than no war at all.

  My grandfather and my father were Agency Police on the Window Rock. My grandfather rode a while with Burgade’s Rangers. My father fought in the Aleutians and out in Kwajalein and Okinawa with the Seventh Division. So you see it’s an old and dishonorable tradition in my family, fighting for the white man. When I was in the Army it was peacetime but they sent me overseas to Seoul for a year, so I took a flag of Navajo design and planted it on Korean soil and claimed it for the Navajo nation.

  He’d done his tour of duty with the Military Police and then he’d gone to the university at Tucson on the GI Bill. A Highway Patrol recruiter had visited the campus the spring before graduation. So here he was in a uniform with a Sam Browne belt and a big hat and a six-gun in a clamshell holster on his hip just like a movie cowboy, an d he had had ten years of chasing speeders down the highways and untangling bloody wreckage and living on café chili and coffee. And now they’d sent him to track down a young fugitive Apache who was up there slamming around somewhere in those hills with a .30-30 rifle that could go off any time: an Apache who was trying to cross an emotional minefield and might just be in a frame of mind to take some people with him.

  Watchman resented it with the feeling he had been wound up and pointed in Joe Threepersons’ direction and turned loose for the entertainment of the white bastards who’d revel in watching two Indians square off, the same way they delighted in watching cockfights and prizefights between black men and Mexicans.

  3.

  Watchman was down on one knee inspecting the hoof-prints when the whacking boom of an explosion froze him in alarm.