Leaving Yuma

by Michael Zimmer

  “Susan!” Abby cried, but I spun her toward the window before she could say any more.

  “Outside,” I barked, then slipped one arm under her shoulder and the other under her knees and swept her off her feet like a bride at the threshold. There wasn’t anything romantic in my actions, though. I carried her to the window and nearly poured her through. She squawked when she hit the ground, but was back in the bat of an eye to accept her daughter from Luis.

  “You first,” I said, shoving Luis toward the window. He didn’t argue, but dived through, headfirst, although wrapping one arm around the sill on his way through so that he’d be able to spin around on the outside and land on his feet. I was right behind him, the hall door shuddering under blows from the far side, but still holding as the four of us made a dash for the rear gate.

  The alarm was being raised all over the garrison, although in a haphazard manner. I could hear confused shouting from several quarters, then a voice from another building demanding to know what was going on. Then someone fired a shot into the air, and I knew the fat was in the fire.

  We made it to the gate, but there were others behind us. As Luis yanked the big door open, a panicky soldado called for us to halt. I palmed the Smith & Wesson and snapped a round into the dirt at his feet, and heard the other soldiers scatter.

  The echo of the report had barely died when the rear door to the building where the Davenports had been held was flung open. A burly man wearing only trousers and a jacket with sergeant’s stripes stepped into the frame. Taking the situation in with a glance, he bellowed for us to stop and lay down our weapons, even as he lifted his own. Knowing I couldn’t take a chance with this one, I squeezed off a round that caught the heavyset man in the gut, and he staggered backward with a hoarse cry.

  We were through the gate in a flash after that, darting around the corner to the side street and making a run for the plaza, but we hadn’t covered even half the block when the sentry from the front gate came busting around the lower corner of the garrison. Shots from both Luis and me drove him back, but we knew that route had just been closed. Nodding toward a complex of corrals, open-faced stock sheds, and small holding pens across the street, I said, “That way.”

  I’d guess there were seventy or eighty head of horses penned inside those corrals, already growing agitated from the sound of gunfire and shouting from the garrison. We scampered down an alleyway where vaqueros had once run cattle and horses from one pen to another. I could hear Susan crying fearfully from beneath the blanket, while Abby tried to control the volume of her sobs so as to not give away our location. The front-gate sentry was shouting that we were hiding in the corrals, but not a lot of men were listening to him. Taking advantage of the pandemonium, Luis, Abby, and I ducked through the railing on the north side of the complex and ran across an empty, weed-choked lot to the mouth of the alley that would take us, two blocks down, to where we’d left our horses behind the abandoned tinsmith shop.

  It was dark as pitch along the alley, with only the stars above us like buckshot fired into a coal-black ceiling. Our progress was slowed by the junk we kept stumbling into—a smashed wagon wheel, scraps of lumber set aside for some future project or the winter stove, mounds of old ash shoveled out of fireplaces and ovens. A dog, some kind of knee-high mongrel, lunged at us from one of the lightless doorways, and Luis swung the carbine solidly into the animal’s nose, sending it howling out the far end of the alley. We rushed after it, making it as far as the southwest corner of the central plaza before we were halted by a squad of Soto’s men, racing past on foot.

  I grabbed Abby and hauled her back out of sight, the three of us flattening ourselves against the rear wall of whatever building we’d been stopped behind. The dog Luis had struck had already raced across the street, and one of the soldiers shouted, “This way, I saw them go in here!”

  That dog probably saved our lives that night, but it also led Soto’s men into the darkness behind the row of businesses lining the west side of the plaza, of which the tinsmith was one.

  We’d lost our horses.

  Standing with our backs pressed tightly against the rough adobe, Luis panted, “What now?”

  As if in response, a voice from the far end of the block shouted that he’d found our mounts.

  “The horses in the corral,” I said. “If we can get even a bridle on a couple of them, we can make a break for it.” I glanced at Abby. Her eyes were wide in the starlight, frightened but not panicked. “Can you make it?”

  “I can do whatever I have to do,” she assured me, and we pushed away from the building and started back toward the corrals. Unfortunately that route was also cut off. We paused at the edge of the empty lot, listening to the front-gate sentry insisting that we’d gone in here, meaning the corrals. This time he was starting to garner some interest.

  We crouched among the tall weeds, sucking wind but trying to keep the sound down. Susan was still snuffling, but more quietly now, her face pressed into her mother’s shoulder. At my side, Luis whispered: “Which way, J. T.?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “West?”

  “Into the desert?”

  “Into the fields, the barley and wheat and tobacco. It is our only hope.”

  “They’d find us in those fields. Maybe not right away, but as soon as it’s light. We’ve got to stay in town where there are more places to hide.”

  “They will find us here, too,” he insisted. “They will organize search parties, and comb every corner, invade every home.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Abby cried softly, probably wondering what kind of mess she’d gotten herself into. “There must be some place we can hide.”

  “The …” Luis paused, staring uncertainly into my eyes. “Amigo, would they search their own quarters?”

  “Maybe, eventually,” I replied, but I had to admit it was a better idea than any I was coming up with.

  Keeping low, we skirted the corrals on the desert side, then swung back toward the garrison. I could see the sentry and a handful of others moving through the pens, pushing the horses out of their way as they poked under the feed troughs with their carbines and used pitchforks to probe the haystacks. But they weren’t paying any attention to what was going on outside the corrals, and we were soon back to where Luis and I had started, crouched behind the motorized buckboard with its remaining chocked wheel. My fingers tightened on the Smith’s grips when I saw the knot of men clustered around the still unconscious guard at the rear gate. That route, too, was plugged.

  I turned to Luis, searching his face for some sign that he’d come up with an alternative to fleeing blindly into the desert, that there was a way out of this mess that I was overlooking. He shook his head.

  “Mister Latham?”

  I glanced at the woman. “Yeah?”

  “This.” She had her free hand on the side of the automobile, and gave it a small push. The car was so flimsily built that it rocked easily under her hand. “Why can’t we take this?”

  I leaned back to study the machine more closely. I’d realized from the first that it was crudely made, but it wasn’t until I took time to really study it that I realized it was actually a barn-crafted vehicle, a bastardized buckboard hammered together by some enterprising blacksmith or mechanic.

  The name Watson Masner was painted on the sideboards in gold script, but I don’t know if that was the buckboard’s maker, or the name of the mechanic who had converted it into a motorized vehicle. (Editor’s note: A James V. Watson was listed in the El Paso, Texas, city directory as proprietor of Watson Wagon Works, on Río Arriba Road, from 1898 to 1925, with Franklin W. Masner cited as manager of that company from 1914 to 1922; no other combination of Watson and Masner, in association with either wagon or automotive manufacturing, could be located; it is duly noted that the above dates do not correspond with Latham’s journey into Sonora in 1907.)

 
The engine was slung under the bed from iron brackets, with a sturdy bicycle-style chain running from the flywheel to a large steel sprocket that girdled the rear axle. The wagon’s tongue had been removed, and a metal shaft run through the straps that bound the hounds to the coupling pole; the shaft extended up through the floorboards to terminate in a nearly horizontal wooden steering wheel.

  I recognized the pedals on the floorboard from my experience with the Berkshire, but the other gadgets I knew only vaguely—choke, spark, fuel mixture. The throttle was fastened to the steering column like an upside-down pie tin, with a lever jutting from the right-hand side to adjust the speed; pull it all the way back to open it up, then forward to close it.

  As I studied the various mechanisms, it dawned on me that I could probably drive this thing if I could get it started. Unfortunately I didn’t have a clue how to start it, and I was almost positive Luis didn’t, either.

  “Unless you know how to operate all those levers so we can get it running, about the best we could hope for would be to roll it downhill, and that wouldn’t get us very far,” I told the woman.

  “But, I do know how to start it. At least I think I do.” She was standing beside the Watson Masner, seemingly mindless of the soldados gathered at the rear gate, or of those still searching the corrals below us. She ran a hand over the levers and knobs with growing excitement. “I’ve watched Mister McKenzie start Edward’s Berkshire I don’t know how many times in Tucson, and my father’s chauffeur in New York even let me drive our family Ford around Central Park on several occasions. This is really no different than either of those vehicles. This is the clutch, and that’s the throttle, and this brass things controls the timing …”

  “Wait a minute,” I cut in. “You can start this machine? Are you sure?”

  “I’m certain of it.”

  Hope flared briefly, then drifted back like a receding tide as I recalled the ear-numbing racket of the Berkshire when we started it in that sandy wash north of Moralos. We’d never get away with anything like that in Sabana, not with Soto’s men swarming on every side. I told Abby my reasoning, but she had another idea.

  “Randolph, my father’s chauffeur, explained it to me while we were watching another driver start his vehicle that way.”

  “Quicker than turning the engine over with a hand crank?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Considerably so,” she assured me. “Here.” She handed Susan to Luis, reminding her to remain quiet when the youngster started to whimper. Then she bent forward to study the engine, silhouetted against the lights of the garrison. Reaching toward a tiny, knurled knob under a tank located beneath the modified buckboard’s single seat, she confidently backed it open. The faint gurgle of gasoline running through the copper tubing brought a quick smile to my face. I was feeling better already. I’d have never known you needed to open a valve so that the fuel could reach what I’d eventually learn was the carburetor, but Abby did, and my confidence in her rose.

  She studied the engine another minute, then turned her attention to the steering column. She pulled the choke all the way out, adjusted the spark about midway, then nodded solemnly. “I think that’s it.” She looked at me with a hesitant smile. “Shall we try it?”

  I glanced at Luis. He stared back wordlessly. Knowing I’d ridden in an automobile before, he was letting me make the call. What Abby was proposing was as crazy as hell, but I didn’t know what other choice we had. “I say we try it.”

  Luis nodded and started tucking the blanket more tightly around the child.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked Abby.

  “Let me get into the driver’s seat and prepare myself. When I’m ready, please remove that rock from under the front wheel. Then I want you and Mister Vega to get behind the carriage and push it as fast as you can.” She smiled at my puzzled expression. “I do indeed intend to roll it downhill, Mister Latham, but only partway. If things work as I believe they will, we shall have ignition before we reach the plaza, and can proceed from there under full power.”

  “Through the plaza?”

  “I shall have to depend upon you for guidance. I’m afraid my thoughts were in something of a turmoil when I was brought here.”

  I nodded soberly. Luis set the girl in the buckboard and pushed her under the seat behind her mother’s legs—the most sheltered spot he could find. Then he moved around behind the automobile and placed the Remington carbine on the bed in front of him. I looked at Abby and asked her if she was ready.

  “As ready as I shall ever be,” she replied, no trace of her earlier smile remaining.

  I moved around in front of the snub-nosed vehicle. “Say the word,” I whispered.

  “Mister Latham, let us fly.”

  Session Fourteen

  Mister Latham, let us fly!

  I’m going to remember those words until the day they put me in my grave, but I didn’t have much time to appreciate them that night in Sabana. After kicking the remaining stone out from under the buckboard’s front wheel, I hurried around back to help Luis. The wagon had rolled only imperceptibly forward under its own weight, but quickly picked up speed with the two of us pushing it. We managed to cover about ten feet before one of the men at the garrison’s rear gate spotted us. They immediately shouted for us to halt, while simultaneously opening fire on us with their carbines.

  Although we caught a moment’s reprieve as soon as we rattled past the corner of the garrison’s rear wall, it was a short-lived clemency. Hearing the shouting and shooting, the men combing the corrals immediately raced after us. They started firing as soon as they saw us, but had to aim high because of the latticework of railing between them and the street. Their bullets peppered the garrison’s adobe wall, raining a mud-colored shower over the road.

  It went on that way for the next three blocks, everything happening so fast I could barely keep track of it all. Luis and I were pushing with everything we had, our bodies nearly parallel to the ground as we strained at the recalcitrant vehicle. We were picking up quite a bit of speed, too. Enough that, for a fraction of a second, right there at the end, I was afraid we’d gone too far and were going to lose our footing before we could clamber aboard.

  I remember gasping for Luis to jump, but I think he’d already started. I heaved myself toward the tailgate, scrambling over the top, then wiggling into the bed. Bullets were raking the air on every side, the dull smack of lead clawing at the vehicle’s sideboards like the beating of drums. We shot past the lower corner of the garrison so quick that a lot of the men standing at the front gate never even got off a shot. Then, just about the time I thought we were on our way, Abby released the clutch, and the Watson Masner lurched to a near halt.

  Luis and I, caught unaware, started skidding wildly toward the front of the vehicle. Susan screamed in terror as we flew past her mother’s feet and crashed into the footboard in a tangle of arms and legs. The child immediately started wailing, while Luis and I resorted to a more adult version of tears, and began cursing loudly and colorfully as we attempted to extract ourselves from the buckboard’s clutch and brake pedals.

  But a funny thing happened, too, and if you’ve ever driven an automobile, I suspect you already know what it was. Abby had jump-started the car, just as Randolph had instructed her back in New York City’s Central Park all those years before. It wasn’t a smooth start—I thought for a second the engine had been torn loose from the undercarriage—but then it caught with a violent chatter of valves and pistons, followed by a great belching of smoke and enough fire from the exhaust to mimic a cannon’s blast. Abby jammed the clutch to the floor, briefly pinning Luis’ left arm to the footboard in the process, then began a rapid flurry of leg and arm movements during which I believe she managed to readjust just about every pedal, knob, and lever the Watson Masner offered.

  The vehicle—I never have been able to decide whether it was an automobile or a buckboard,
and usually refer to it in whatever manner seems natural at the time—lurched forward with a jerk that seemed to nearly tear it in half. But then we were rolling forward again, under the engine’s power this time, rather than gravity’s.

  All that happened in about five seconds, if not less, and before any of us other than Abby really knew what was going on, we were barreling through the plaza with even more guns going off on every side, flying through there so fast I was still clawing for my revolver when Abby leaned hard on the wheel and we shot into a side street that took us northwest toward the river. Twisting partway around, Abby shouted, “Where to, Mister Latham? Where do we go from here?”

  I crawled forward on my hands and knees until I could grab the back of the seat. Maybe I should have explained this earlier, but one of the characteristics of a buckboard—where the vehicle got its name, in fact—was that there were no springs on the bed to soften the ride, no thorough braces to rock the wagon’s body back and forth like stagecoaches used to use. In later years, manufacturers would add leaf springs under the buckboard’s single seat, but a lot of the earlier models had just a wooden plank nailed across the body toward the front of the bed. If you’re curious about where the word “buck” comes from, think about the last rodeo you attended, and rest assured the ride was similar.