by Lauran Paine
The Muleshoe men turned off southwesterly after loading their dead men and rode off without a rearward glance.
Buckner continued to wait. The Indian watched him and seemed to get weaker as the moments passed. By the time Buckner thought it was safe now to head out, the Apache weakly held aloft a hand and wagged his head.
“No good,” he muttered in mission English. “No more good for me.”
Ladd knelt, leaned aside the Winchester, and pulled back the bandage he had created from the raghead’s shirt. There was almost no external bleeding, but the flesh around the point of entry of the perforating bullet was turning a bad shade of blue. It was not as noticeable on the Indian’s hide as it would have been on a hide with less basic pigment, but it was still clear enough. There was no swelling, though. Perhaps there would not have been swelling in any case since the bullet went into the man’s mid body in the soft parts and emerged out of his back the same way, in the soft parts.
Buckner put the bandage back in place and said: “You give up awful easy, Apache. I’ve been hit harder than that in the mouth and never even stopped talking.”
The Indian was sick, which he had every right to be, but it amounted to more than a reaction to being injured; he was also demoralized and beaten. His type of people died very easily, almost handily, when these conditions combined against them.
Buckner went to his saddlebag and returned with a pony of brandy that he poured into the dull-eyed Indian. The Apache choked and almost gagged, then his eyes copiously watered, but their brightness momentarily returned, and, as he panted, his stare at Ladd Buckner remained quizzically bleak but interested. He clearly could not imagine why a range man would go to this trouble over him.
Ladd stoppered the pony and hunkered opposite the Indian as he said: “Now listen to me, strongheart. We’re going out of here, you on the horse, me walking ahead of it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The Indian understood. “I ride, you lead.”
“Yeah. Now tell me where your people are, because I can’t take you down to the cowman’s town and I’m not going to sit around up here in among the trees for a couple of weeks until you can make it on your own. You tell me, and I’ll take you pretty close to where they’ll find you, then we’ll part. You understand?”
This time the Indian said: “Why?”
Ladd considered the bottle he was holding. “Because I don’t like murdering folks. You wouldn’t understand.” He arose and glanced over both shoulders. The land was totally empty as far as a man could see in three directions. It was probably equally as empty northward back up through the forest but there was no way to be sure of that since visibility was limited to the first tangle of trees.
The Indian jutted his chin. “Cowman go there,” he gutturally muttered, indicating the southwesterly distance Chad Holmes and his Muleshoe men had taken. Evidently the Apache knew this territory well enough, and evidently he thought Ladd Buckner would be interested in where the nearest ranch might be.
Ladd did not care in the least where the Muleshoe Ranch was. He leaned to hoist the Indian. Without a word he roughly reared back and boosted the Apache across his own saddle. The Indian locked his jaws and fumbled for the saddle horn, then held on with his face averted. He was in great pain.
Ladd did not replace the Winchester in its saddle boot. It was another burden to be shouldered as he walked ahead, leading the horse, but close to fainting or not, that raghead up there was still capable of making a murderous effort. They skirted around the nearby cañon and angled up into the foothills where the muggy heat was noticeably oppressive, and once the Indian almost turned loose all over and fell, but Ladd caught him, swore at him, and roughly straightened him up again. Then he handed up the pony of brandy, waited until the bronco had taken down two more swallows, and struck out again.
Finally the Indian dripped sweat and got light-headed, so Ladd had to rest beside a deep little narrow creek. Here, he upended several full hats of cold water over the raghead, and, when the Indian recovered and was able to be moved again, Ladd asked where the Apache ranchería would be.
The bronco would not confide in him. He simply pointed vaguely and said: “Put me down four, five miles. Put me down out there.”
Ladd used up the last of his brandy getting his ward ahead that far, but he made it just ahead of full darkness, and, as he eased the bronco down and was leaning over, he said—“Good luck, you murderous son-of-a-bitch.”—and swung up over leather to retrace his way back down toward the grassland again.
He had no feeling of having done a Christian deed, if indeed that was what it had been, since an awful lot of non-Christians had done similar things. All he thought of as he picked his way through the darkness to the last of the uplands and emerged back upon the rangeland was that he’d done what he’d felt needed doing and that was the end of it—and from now on, when he came up out of a cañon in the Tomahawk Meadow countryside, he would look first before he rode right on out.
III
They were having a fiesta of some kind the day Ladd Buckner reconnoitered Piñon, then rode on in and put up his horse at the livery barn. There was a lot of that reedy kind of lilting Mexican music over in the cottonwood grove east of the town plaza, which usually went with celebrations in the Southwest. At the livery barn all a little bandy-legged oldster had told him was that one of those traveling troupes of pepper-belly play actors had driven into town the night before last and had set up their stage over between Mex town and the business section of Piñon. It did not have to be a fiesta then at all.
It was late in the day. Ladd needed a bath, a shave, and a place to stay, and he was in no big hurry, so he went first to a café opposite the jailhouse for a meal, and after that he walked the roadway on both sides, familiarizing himself with the town of Piñon, and finally he strolled to the shaded front of the harness and saddle works to stand out front, hands clasped loosely behind him, and gazed at the manufactured goods on display beyond the wavery glass window. The work was excellent. In fact, even people who did not appreciate the full expertise of the Piñon harness maker would have been impressed. Whoever he was, he was no novice; he had not been a novice according to Ladd Buckner’s guess in perhaps forty or fifty years, and this was not only the truth, it also happened to be the reason he had his harness works up for sale.
An open-faced, tousle-headed young cowboy walked up, leaned to see what Ladd was admiring, and amiably said—“Sure is the best, ain’t he?”—and passed southward without awaiting a reply.
Ladd stepped to the doorway, but the shop was locked. There was no one at the workbench or behind the counter inside. It was not really that late, but evidently this particular merchant thought it was, because he clearly had closed up shop for the day.
Across at the saloon there was a spindly little coming and going, mostly it seemed of townsmen who were coming from the direction of the Mex music and play acting, as though perhaps whatever play was being enacted over there induced thirst. Ladd went in search of the hotel and found that Piñon had instead a boarding house. He got a room, then paid an extra two bits for a chunk of tan lye soap and a scorched old towel. He followed the arrows to the bathhouse carrying his one and only change of attire from the bags on the saddle he had brought up with him from the livery barn. Bathing was always work, unless a man did it in a creek, and then it was usually uncomfortably cold. At least this time he got warm water from the great brass kettles atop the old cook stove, and could draw the cold water by pulling a corncob out of the hollowed log that served as a pipe from some distant spring.
When he was clean and freshly dressed and even neatly shaved, he hung the gun and belt around his middle, emptied the tub, and trooped back inside with the towel and soap. Darkness had settled. Piñon was ready for one of those fragrant, bland summertime nights, and the Mexican musicians were at it again over at the cottonwood park east of town where nearly all local celebrations and fiestas were held.
He had a drink at the salo
on, then ambled over where light from a long row of guttering candles at the foot of an improvised stage helped him select which vacant seat among the hand-squared big old cottonwood logs, arranged in ranks like benches, best suited his requirements. He did not have to get as close to the footlights as some men did; he could see well enough from midway back. And it was awfully hot down that close to those burning candles. Nor did anyone actually have to get that close anyway, unless they wanted to. There was a full moon this night.
Mexican urchins passed soundlessly back and forth on bare feet showing vast smiles as they sought to sell pieces of candy—chunks of squash soaked overnight in brown sugar water. Several cowboys who had already made too many trips back to the saloon were behind Ladd making remarks about the buxom leading lady, a sturdy woman in her thirties with a magnificent downy mustache, who swooned into the arms of the hero at regular intervals, but only after he had got his legs braced. In fact, as Ladd sat there eating his chunk of candy watching the performance, he noticed that the tall, handsome hero of the play in his elaborate but not very clean soldier’s uniform knew exactly when the buxom woman would throw herself at him. The hero began preparing himself moments in advance. Even then, several times she made him stagger.
The musicians were exceptionally gifted. The difficulty arose from the fact that, although they never once left their darkened places beyond the lighted stage as most of the male audience did, from time to time the musicians kept getting out of tune and off-key as the evening advanced. They had bottles of pulque and tequila discreetly cached close around where they sat.
The plot of the drama had to do with the buxom lady’s enormously difficult struggle to retain her virtue against the lecherous machinations of a rather portly civilian twice her age who knew every way to achieve his dastardly ends. She wavered between yielding, and rushing into the arms of the heroic soldier who was her true lover but who kept going off to join in wars and revolutions, until, near the end of the play, with all the participants perspiring profusely as a result of the heat generated by all those candles, the buxom heroine was finally caught out by the evil, leering, portly villain. In her subsequent despair, self-loathing, abysmal agony and anguish, she used up the entire third act that culminated in her suicide.
Ladd had another piece of the sugar-soaked squash and wandered away from the cottonwood grove. But most of the other spectators lingered until the final act when the big woman plunged a shiny dagger into her ample cleavage, and sank with many outcries and lamentations to the stage at the feet of her heavily perspiring soldier lover. She required almost a full five minutes to expire, during which the portly villain, standing just out of the candlelight in gloom and shadows, leered and dry-washed his hands and chuckled, something that prompted all the Mexicans in the audience to hiss fiercely at him. A number of the non-Mexican audience also joined in and someone hurled a carrot that missed but that nonetheless inspired the villain to move back a little farther into the shadows.
Ladd finished his candy and rolled a smoke while standing near a huge old cottonwood tree where a number of other men idly stood. One of them said: “Last year someone fired a shot over his head”—meaning the villain—“and the troupe was mad as hell next day because they could not find their villain for the next play.”
Ladd grinned and looked at the speaker. He was a graying, tall man with a droopy mustache and a nickeled badge on his shirtfront. As Ladd lit up, he said: “That lady’s pretty stocky to be hurling herself into the arms of the general . . . or whatever he is.”
The lawman agreed. “Yes. She’s been piling it on for the past three, four years. I recollect her first performance here in Piñon. She was a slip of a woman. Well, the Mex taste runs to hefty ones.” The lawman looked around with a wry twinkle. “I sort of agree with that myself. I just never cared much for mustaches, though.”
They grinned together, then Ladd wandered off back in the direction of the town’s main business area. It was a very pleasant night, and probably because it was midweek there did not appear to be many range men in town. Maybe that helped the town remain calm and relatively quiet and peaceful.
A man driving a dusty top buggy rolled past with his little lamps lighted and merrily glinting. The man had on a dented plug hat and a rusty old frock coat. There was a small black leather satchel visible upon the seat at his side. He was a somewhat stocky individual, round-faced, and not very old-looking. He saw Ladd and nodded as though they were acquainted, then kept right on rolling in the direction of the livery barn.
Southward and upon the east side of the road there was a small office sandwiched between two larger buildings with the legend Doctor Enos Orcutt upon the window in elegant gold letters. Ladd guessed that had been Dr. Orcutt who had just driven past. Not many other occupations required a person to haul a little leather satchel around with them. Also, plug hats seemed to go with the frontier medical profession.
At the saloon a snub-nosed, red-faced, bull-built older man brought Ladd’s beer and nodded genially at him as though he knew a stranger when he saw one and was perfectly willing to welcome strangers to Piñon. His name was Joe Reilly and at one time he had been a career soldier, but a musket ball at Antietam had cut short that career, something Joe had sworn up and down ever since was the best, and most painful, thing that had ever happened to him. Perhaps because there was not much trade right at the moment he lingered at Ladd Buckner’s end of the bar to talk a little. When Ladd explained who he was and why he had come to Piñon, the saloon man grew warmly expansive. It seemed that Joe Reilly was by nature an accommodating, friendly man.
“It’s the rheumatics,” he explained, “that made old Warner put his works up for sale. Some days it’s so bad he can scarcely close a fist. Other days he can sew a harness tug without any pain. He told me just a couple of days back that if he couldn’t sell out directly, he’d just have to hold an auction, then head on out to his daughter in California.” Reilly was also interested in Buckner’s ability. “You been a saddle maker long, then?”
Ladd replied without sounding as though he felt a compulsion to explain: “Best way for me to demonstrate, I expect, would be to work a few weeks with Mister Warner. All the bragging in the world wouldn’t make me a harness maker, would it?”
Joe smiled. “You’re right. And in these parts, Mister Buckner, folks judge a man by what he can do, for a fact.”
Ladd said: “It’s a nice town. Pretty and all . . . with trees and flowers.”
“We got water,” stated the saloon man. “That’s what makes the difference, you know. A town can have the prettiest view and the nicest settin’ and the friendliest folks, and without water it’s nothing.” He could have added “especially in Arizona” but he didn’t, probably because anyone who knew anything at all realized that water, or rather the shortage of it, had always been Arizona’s biggest dilemma. “You’ll like folks hereabouts,” stated Reilly, who had been in the Piñon country for eleven years now.
“How about Indians?” asked Ladd mildly, and Reilly’s geniality vanished in a second. “Them lousy sons-of-bitches,” he boomed. “Yes, we’ve got ’em. Sneakin’ little murderin’ raghead scuts, they are. They can steal the horse right out from under a man without him knowin’ it, they can. Slit throats of fellers who are lyin’ in their bedrolls. They’re the curse of the territory, Mister Buckner. I got to admit we got ’em. Wouldn’t be honest not to warn folks against the bandy-legged little mud-colored bastards.” The matter of Apaches usually brought up a related subject in the territory. It did now, with Joe Reilly. “And the bloody Army!” he exclaimed. “What does it do, I’d like to ask you? Not a darned thing, that’s what. It goes chasing Mex horse thieves all over the countryside, and doesn’t even acknowledge the ragheads. I tell you, Mister Buckner, when I was soljering, we looked at things a lot different. In those days we’d hunt them down and scrub them out down to the nits. Nowadays the Army’s soft and riddled with politics.”
As soon as the saloon man paused
for a breath, Ladd moved in swiftly to change the subject. “What time does Mister Warner open his harness shop in the mornings?”
Reilly had to wait a moment until his adrenalin diminished before replying. “Oh, I’d say about eight o’clock. Yes, usually about eight. I see him over there about then.”
Ladd paid for his beer, smiled his thanks, and left the saloon carrying away with him a critical bit of local lore. Never mention Apaches around Joe Reilly unless you wanted to be skewered to the bar front while Reilly got it all out of his system.
IV
Three weeks of sleeping on the ground followed by one night of sleeping in a boarding house bed seemed to signify a change in the life style of Ladd Buckner. When he went forth in Piñon the following morning, early, and walked both sides of the town before heading in the direction of the café, he was beginning to feel that he belonged, and yet he hadn’t even known Piñon had a bank until he paused in the new day chilly dawn light out front of a square little ugly red brick building to read the sign: The Stockgrowers’ Trust & Savings Bank of Piñon, Arizona Territory. There was someone’s name beneath all that fine lettering but Ladd looked in at the barred windows ignoring the name, then continued on his way to the café.
Five or six laborers were already at the café counter, wolfing down breakfast, and one of them who was called Abe by the others had a magnificent black eye that was the unavoidable butt of all kinds of rough comments among the others. Evidently they all knew one another. It was impossible for Ladd to believe those other men would have teased the man with the black eye if they hadn’t all been friends, especially since the man with the black eye stood better than six feet tall and weighed well over two hundred pounds.