Leaving Yuma

by Michael Zimmer

  There were a few acres of well-watered grass not too far away, with Carlos’ seal brown gelding and Ed Davenport’s pack mules picketed in its middle. The crates carrying the potato diggers and ammunition had been tucked under a low overhang at the camp’s edge, partially covered with a piece of canvas.

  I was still standing there absorbing the scene when I heard a shout from the desert. Startled, I hurried through the rocks to where Carlos had set up his ambush. It was a natural spot for anyone wanting to cover the entire eastern approach to the clearing, with plenty of cover and an open field of fire for several hundred yards. Staring past the bodies of our dead horses, I watched a second group of horsemen hook up with Marcos’ smaller bunch. José Alvarez was easy to spot. Even after forty-eight grueling hours in the saddle, he sat his horse tall and ramrod-straight, his chiseled features like a chunk of cured oak. With his men stopped, I was finally able to get an accurate count—thirteen altogether, including the two officers.

  I sank back under a cloud of hopelessness. Thirteen men against the two of us. Three if you counted Abby, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. Not if she was going to have to face Alvarez alone after our deaths. Thirteen heavily armed soldiers, their bandoleers sagging with ammunition, against a pair of Winchesters and a half-empty box of cartridges. I closed my eyes, feeling the burn of the sun through the fabric of my shirt, its heat cooking the deep blue finish of the rifle’s barrel. Then I opened them with a start, laughing softly as the heaviness lifted from my shoulders, wondering what the hell I’d been thinking.

  I hurried back to the clearing. There was a short camp ax sitting beside a pile of dried cholla limbs next to the fire. I grabbed it on my way to the overhang where Carlos had stacked the cases of guns and ammunition. Yanking the canvas aside, I attacked a crate containing one of the Colt-Browning machine guns first, prying off its lid and spilling the bulky cargo into the dirt. It was already fully assembled except for the tripod, although smeared with a thin layer of packing grease I wouldn’t take time to clean off. I opened an ammunition crate next and yanked out a pair of cloth belts that I quickly began filling with .30-40s.

  Each belt held a hundred and forty rounds. You might recall me mentioning that a few sessions back, when I told you about Alvarez pumping the last hundred rounds into Poco Guille at that little cove outside of Sabana. As much as I resented its intrusion, that was the image occupying my thoughts as I shoved cartridge after cartridge into the Colt-Browning’s belt.

  “¡Hijo de puto! ”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Luis and Abby were standing at the edge of the clearing, just about where I’d been when I shot Carlos Perez. Susan stood at her mother’s side with her face buried in the woman’s skirt, her back to the clearing and the bloody corpse in its center. After that quick burst of Spanish profanity, Luis hurried over to start filling the second belt. Abby led Susan to the stack of munitions, still partially covered with canvas, and told her in no uncertain terms to stay put until she or Luis or I came to fetch her. Susan ducked under the canvas shelter like a frightened rabbit, and Abby came over to relieve Luis of the task of filling the second belt. I had the first belt finished by then, and, with that draped over my shoulders, Luis and I picked up the Colt-Browning and carried it into the rocks where Carlos had launched his ambush.

  “A good place,” Luis declared, glancing around as I spread the tripod’s legs and adjusted them for height. Luis eased the machine gun onto the narrow, channel-like platform, and I started tightening the lug while he held the gun steady. After watching me work for a couple of seconds, he said, “How bad is your wound?”

  I looked up, puzzled at first, then gradually becoming aware of a dull stinging at the junction of my neck and shoulder, accompanied by a warm dampness soaking into the fabric of my shirt. I twisted my head around in an attempt to view the damage, but the wound was too close to get a fix on it without a mirror. Luis moved my collar aside with a brown finger to examine the injury.

  “Not so bad,” he announced. “A crease only, although it will leave a scar. If we are not all dead by then, I can look at it closer tonight.”

  “How about your hands?” I asked, nodding toward the torn flesh of his palms and recalling how he’d used his forearms to lower the Colt-Browning onto the tripod.

  He turned them over to show me. The right one was worse, with small pebbles ground under the skin. They both looked raw and sore, but not necessarily debilitating.

  “My hands are as your shoulder,” he said. “They can wait.”

  While I made a few final adjustments to the tripod, Luis fed the belt through the machine gun’s action, then rocked the lever under the barrel to chamber the first round. I strung the ammunition belt out at the machine gun’s side so that it would feed smoothly, without hanging up or jamming. When Abby got there, we hooked the second belt to the free end of the first one, and I showed her how to keep them straight, and help advance them through the gun. We were still getting everything squared away when Alvarez shouted at us from the desert.

  “You men there, surrender at once or face the consequences!”

  I smiled, grateful that he wanted to dicker. It would give us a few more minutes to ready ourselves for his attack. Leaving Abby and Luis to handle the potato digger, I ran a crooked path back to camp, where I grabbed the Winchesters and the half-empty box of ammunition. I took just a moment to peek inside the canvas cavern where Susan was crouched, fresh tears washing down her cheeks. I repeated her mama’s admonition to stay down and out of sight, then hurried back to where Luis and Abby were listening to a new batch of demands from Alvarez.

  “What’s he want?” I asked.

  “The woman and the niña.”

  “Did you tell him no?”

  “Not yet. Should I?”

  I glanced to the west, where the sun had already set. It would be full dark in another hour. We were running out of time.

  “Better do it,” I said, then crawled out of the cramped pocket to find my own place from which to fight.

  I won’t relate the entire exchange that took place between Luis and Alvarez over the next several minutes. You can probably guess most of it, anyway. Alvarez wanted the woman and child and me and Luis, and if he’d known we had Davenport’s guns, he would have wanted those, too. Luis kept telling him no, until Alvarez finally told us we had five minutes to make up our minds. If we hadn’t sent Abby and Susan out by then, he would be obliged to attack, which would not only risk the lives of the women, but also ensure our own deaths.

  “There will be no quarter given if we are forced to charge your position,” he added, as if the outcome would have been different if we had cooperated—which none of us believed for a second.

  “It is about time you grew some cojones! ” Luis shouted back. “I am becoming weary of this futile exchange of words.”

  I glanced at Abby, grateful that she didn’t understand what was being said. Luis’ insulting replies to Alvarez had been getting more and more inventive, not to mention crude. (Editor’s note: At the time of her abduction, Abigail Davenport [sic] was fluent in several languages, including French, German, and Spanish.)

  Alvarez didn’t reply, although he did make a big production of dragging something out of his pocket—presumably a watch, although it was too far away to be sure—and quietly staring at it. At Marcos’ command, the troopers spread out on either side of the lieutenant, then quietly sat their mounts with their carbines butted to their thighs. I was lying on top of a sloping boulder a few feet to the left of where Luis and Abby were crouched, with a clear field of fire and probably the best view of the coming attack as anyone.

  “You two ready?” I asked the pair below me. They both nodded stiffly, and I added, “I don’t know what kind of range that potato digger’s got, so let’s let ’em get real close before you open up.”

  Luis gave me an uncertain look. “When you want me to fire,
you say so. Until then, I won’t pull the trigger.” He leaned back from sighting along the Colt-Browning’s barrel. “Just remember, amigo, I’ve never fired one of these things before. If something goes wrong …”

  He let his words trail off, but he’d made a good point. Still, I wanted Alvarez’s men as close as possible before we started shooting. I figured we’d only get one chance to break their charge before they realized we had a machine gun. If we hadn’t made a big dent in their ranks by then, their tactics would immediately change, and we’d lose whatever edge we had.

  Alvarez’s voice drifted in from the desert. “Two minutes.”

  Shouldering a Winchester, I settled in against the gentle slope of the rock.

  “One minute, señores. Please, make this easier on all of us and capitulate. Surely you realize it is our victory which is inevitable.”

  I said, “That’s mighty big talk for a bandit, don’t you think, Luis?”

  “Sí, but that is what happens when you put some men in uniforms. I have always believed it is the tightness of their collars that swells their heads.”

  Abby and I both laughed. Out on the desert floor, Alvarez raised his hand above his head. The picture lacked only a saber to make it romantic.

  “You know, amigo, we have come pretty far, you and I,” Luis said.

  “We’ve been bucking the odds ever since we left Moralos, for a fact.”

  “It’s been a good fight, a good effort.” He looked at me and grinned. “To tell you the truth, hombre, we’ve made it a lot farther than I expected.”

  “You two,” Abby scolded. “You’re acting like we’ve lost this battle before it’s even begun.”

  From the desert, I heard Alvarez give the command to advance.

  “No, señora,” Luis assured her. “This battle is not lost, but I think it is good that we appreciate what we have accomplished. Just in case, you know?”

  We turned our attention to the desert. Alvarez was riding out front, I’ll give him that. He’d kicked his horse into a short lope, and was really eating up the ground. The rough terrain was forcing his men to spread out behind him, but they were making an effort to stay as close as possible, which would be to our advantage. My smile faded as I tucked the Winchester into my shoulder. I’ve heard men insist a .44-40 is good for five hundred yards if the shooter knows what he’s doing, but I’ve always thought two hundred yards was stretching the cartridge’s limits. Alvarez’s men were right at two hundred yards when I thumbed the Winchester’s hammer to full cock.

  “Not yet,” I told the others.

  Sweat was rolling off my brow, needling the corner of my right eye. I pulled my hand away just long enough to knuckle the worst of it aside, then returned my finger to the trigger.

  “Not yet,” I repeated as Alvarez’s men swept past the one hundred-yard mark.

  “Damn it, J. T,” a voice cursed, and I realized with a little jolt of surprise that it was Abby who was speaking, not Luis.

  “Let ’em have it!” I shouted in reply, squeezing off a round that took that son of a bitch José Alvarez square in the gut.

  Before I could lever another round, the Colt-Browning seemed to explode at my side. That first burst of a dozen or so rounds went so high I figured only the farmers in Sabana needed to worry about them. Then Luis found the machine gun’s rhythm, and ran a hail of lead across the desert floor. At less than eighty yards, the carnage was as immediate as it was horrific. Luis skimmed the machine gun from left to right, then back again, two slow passes that emptied the first belt completely and moved twenty or thirty rounds into the second before he finally took his finger off the trigger. In all, I’d estimate he maintained a steady barrage for no more than ten seconds. I’d fired a solitary round. Out in the field, only a few of the horses remained standing.

  For a long time, maybe two or three minutes, we stared silently at the destruction we’d wrought. After a while I looked at Luis, and the expression on his face was like nothing I’ve seen before or since. Abby’s countenance was more despairing than frightened; she looked like she was about to collapse from the weight of her involvement. As for me, it was like being encased in fog; I had to force myself to pull my hand away from the Winchester’s trigger, and then I didn’t know what to do with it when I had.

  Luis was the first to rise, breaking the spell. After making a quick sign of the cross, he motioned for his rifle. I tossed it to him, then slid to the ground. Luis was already heading toward the killing ground. Abby took off in the opposite direction, back to the clearing to find Susan. She hadn’t spoken a word since I gave the command to fire.

  I walked out with Luis, the Winchester like an anvil in my fists. Our destruction wasn’t as complete as I’d thought from the rocks, and it wasn’t clean, either. Several of the horses had been killed outright, but a couple were badly wounded, standing broken and bleeding within the scrub. The rest of the troopers’ mounts had taken off after my claybank as if they knew where they were going, and I had no doubt that they would eventually find their way back to Vaquero Springs, where Soto’s men would tend to any lighter wounds, and wonder what had become of their riders.

  Drawing my revolver, I quickly put both of the wounded animals out of their misery, as I’d done earlier with Abby’s gray. Then I began stripping the extra canteens from their saddles. I left the single-shot Remington carbines where they’d fallen, and was just slinging the last canteen over my shoulder when I heard the thunder of Luis’ revolver echo across the desert. I spun around to find him standing above a soldier.

  “Hey!” I shouted, dropping the canteens and running over. He was already moving on to the next man when I stepped in front of him. “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, putting my left hand out like a traffic cop.

  He motioned toward a stocky individual sprawled on the ground a few feet away, his stomach ripped open, face waxy with pain. I swore when I recognized Marcos, then turned back to Luis. “You can’t do that. He’s a human being.”

  Luis stared back dully. “You would have me leave him here for the vultures?”

  “He deserves a chance, no matter how bad the wound or how long the odds.”

  “Bullshit,” Luis flared, his jaws knotting with … what? Anguish? Rage? Then he spun his revolver to thrust it toward me butt first. “You do it,” he said flatly. “You finish this job that we started.”

  “I didn’t start it, Luis. Davenport did. Or Soto. Or Alvarez. Take your pick.”

  “I pick you, J. T.,” he said coldly, the .44 unwavering in his hand. “Finish the job, or get out of my way and let me finish it.”

  “Let him … do it.”

  I turned back to the figure on the ground. I’d thought Marcos was too far gone to understand what we were arguing about, but he was staring at me with a quiet intensity, a silent plea. He knew what was going on, what his odds of survival were; I guess it was a gamble he didn’t want to take. My mind struggled for a reply, but there wasn’t any. Shoving me aside, Luis stepped over to the man’s side, flipped the revolver back into his own hand, cocked the hammer, and fired in one fluid motion. Marcos grunted at the bullet’s impact, momentarily stiffened, then abruptly relaxed, his face taking on a strangely peaceful cast.

  Death isn’t pretty, but some are worse than others, and what happened out there in the desert west of Sabana was about as ugly as it gets. I just needed to tell you that, so that you’ll have a better understanding of what happened later on.

  Session Nineteen

  It was just about dark when we got back to the little clearing among the rocks. Abby had dragged Carlos’ body into a nearby crevice, then covered it with a piece of tarp. She was going through the Mexican’s packs when we got there, setting out ham and hardtack and tins of sardines. Susan was perched on a crate at her side, staring out over the edge of the cliff. She didn’t even look around as we walked into the camp.

 
Luis and I stood quietly, watching Abby prepare a simple meal. Nobody spoke, and, after a couple of minutes, Luis leaned his rifle against the crate behind Susan and walked back into the rocks. He returned a few minutes later cradling the Colt-Browning in both arms. Abby stopped what she was doing as Luis walked across the clearing. I think it caught both of us off guard when he awkwardly tossed the machine gun over the edge, then stood there watching it fall.

  It took a while for the heavy gun to reach the bottom, but you could hear the crash even from beside the cold ashes of the campfire. It didn’t stop there, though. The Colt-Browning hit the boulder-strewn scree at the bottom of the cliff, then rolled and tumbled all the way to the bottom, generating its own little rock slide as it went. A few seconds later a thin cloud of dust curled up over the lip of the bluff, riding the currents.

  Turning away from the cliff, Luis eyed me speculatively, waiting, I suppose, to see what I’d say. Wordlessly I walked over to the cache of arms and dragged the crate containing the second Colt-Browning from the stack. After using the camp ax to pry off the lid, Luis and I carried the gun to the cliff’s edge and, on the third swing, sent it sailing into the gloam. We waited for the sounds of the crash to subside, then went back for the ammunition, breaking open each box separately and smashing the pasteboard cartons until the cartridges were heaped in the bottom of the crate like a pirate’s booty. Hauling the cases to the edge of the cliff, we heaved them out one after the other, the brass twinkling like fire-lit confetti as it vanished into the shadows far below.

  When we were done, we staggered back to the cold fire where Abby dressed our wounds—my neck and Luis’ hands—as best she could, then fed us a skimpy meal of ham and sardines on hardtack. I’ve eaten worse.

  We didn’t bury Carlos or the soldados, figuring Chito Soto would send out a troop when Alvarez’s horses showed up, and that they could do as they wished with the dead. We brought the stock in before dawn the next morning, and were saddled up and ready to ride by first light. Abby used Carlos’ rig on the Indio’s seal brown, while Luis used the saddle from his sorrel on one of the mules. I brought in an old US-made McClellan from one of the dead horses on the battlefield, using the breeching off a pack saddle to keep the rig in place atop the witherless animal.