Last Stand at Papago Wells (1957)

by L'amour, Louis

  Seven thousand years ago a man had come to drink, the first of the hunters and food gatherers to find this remote place. He knelt to drink, unaware that another hunter, the saber-toothed cat, crouched in the dead lava behind him. The primitive man carried a hand-ax of stone and a throwing stick with a spear. He heard the cat when it moved behind him and turned in time to make a thrust that tore the cat’s flesh. The spear-head broke off and fell into the sand, and the man struck his dying blow with a flint knife. The cat dragged the man some fifty yards before he dropped him, and then died himself, but the spear-head remains, only a few inches under the sand west of the waterhole’s edge.

  Few travelers came so far south, and they came only of necessity. In normal times there was water to the north, and in this area of some hundreds of square miles what water there was would be found in catch basins from infrequent rains. Any traveler headed into this country did so at his own risk.

  Sweet, clear water lay in a large pool at Papago Wells, water several feet deep and shadowed by walls of lava. Back of the main pool was another rock basin, smaller, more confined, with abrupt rock nearly enclosing it, while below the main tank was another, scattered with boulders. In the arroyo below and near this tank was a dense thicket of ironwood, mesquite, palo verde and cat claw.

  Rain had worn the rocks smooth, had cascaded over them in heavy storms, polishing them like glass, and in all the wilderness around there was nothing offering such water as this. Bighorn sheep came here to water, prowling mountain lions, occasional jaguar, coyote and antelope. Men came more seldom, rarely stopped for long.

  To desert men and animals alike, Papago Wells offered the surest chance for water in many miles, the cool dark tanks, the arroyo with its limited shade, the galleta grass … it was a place not to be forgotten. Bates Well was dry, Cipriano held little water, Gunsight was a long way behind, the Tule Wells a long way ahead.

  Far to the south, moving north and west now, rode a band of dark riders. Churupati, half-Apache, half-Yaqui, and all savage, was their leader. Accepted by neither tribe, from each he drew malcontents, denied by their own people, hating the white man, living only for murder and rapine. Skirting the Manteca and Espuma hills of northern Sonora they rode steadily westward, twenty-three rogue Apaches, riding toward a rendezvous with several smaller bands, to meet on the Sonoita. Scattered to their north were a few isolated ranches or mining claims, occasional Papago or Pima Indians … and the latter were ancient enemies. A swift foray across the border, murder, loot and burning, then they’d lose themselves in the deserts where they now traveled.

  Churupati was a dark, squat man of Herculean strength, flat of nose, scarred of face, living only to kill. Swinging south he struck swiftly at Quitovac where half a dozen Mexicans worked a mine, then north for a quick raid on the horse herds at Quitobaquito, and westward to Papago Wells. At Quitovac he left five of six Mexicans dead, believing he had killed them all, then drove off the mules for feasting at Sonoita. Unknown to him he left behind at Quitovac one Mexican alive, a white man and white woman … he also left sixty thousand dollars in gold.

  Through the desert Churupati and his men moved like shadowy brown ghosts, and always there lay in the back of Churupati’s mind a memory of the still, cold waters of Papago Wells.

  The water hole lay silent and alone, shaded from the desert sun. In the ironwood thicket below, a quail called. There was no other sound.

  A bighorn ram led his flock to drink, dipping their muzzles in the cold, dark water after the sun went down. They were still there, enjoying their proximity to water, when they heard the click of a hoof on stone, still some distance off. Like so many shadows the bighorns vanished into the maze of lava boulders and behind them the pools looked shy and innocent under the wide, white moon.

  A saddle creaked, nearer now, and two men came in from the west, conversing in low tones. “We’re safe enough, Tony. If the sheriff does follow us out of Yuma he’ll stay on the trail to Gunsight, then on through Covered Wells and Indian Oasis.”

  Tony Lugo was unconvinced. “This Yaqui country,” he said.

  “You Pimas are all scared of Yaquis,” Jim Beaupre said. “Never saw it to fail.”

  Lugo shrugged. “Pima fight Yaqui many times, and Pima win, usually.”

  Tony Lugo was not one to harry a subject. He had said his word and he let it remain so. If Jim Beaupre wanted to stop at Papago Wells, all right. The sheriff in Yuma was a determined man and the tall boy they had killed in Yuma was his nephew. The fight had been fair enough and the boys had started it, the nephew and two companions, hunting a reputation. They were young, but even so they should have known better, and when they jumped the two strangers it was with careless contempt and the desire to be known as having killed their man.

  Beaupre was an old buffalo skinner, dour, tough, weather-beaten, a man with a tang of salty humor in him and a wicked hand with a Bowie knife. Veteran of fifty Indian battles and twice that many hand-to-hand fights, he merely looked old, cantankerous and down-at-heel. Lugo—well, the half-breed had scouted for the Army, had stolen horses from the Apache and Hualapai, had done his share of fighting wherever he encountered it. Neither man wanted trouble, but the boys did. Three of them, two nineteen and one just turned twenty, and they believed they had chosen some old fool of a prospector and a harmless Indian. Now one of the boys lay dead, another had lost an arm, the third was close to death but might recover, with care.

  The moon was bright on the waters of Papago Wells when they stepped down from their saddles. Men and horses drank, then retired to the thicket below, a little too wise to remain close to water where other men might come, yet knowing enough to not go too far away, nor to build a fire. In the meantime their horses could graze on galleta grass or tornillo beans, and Beaupre and Lugo would be seeing anyone who came to the Wells for water.

  What Beaupre did not guess was that many would come to the Wells, and not so many would leave. Perhaps in some dark, secret convolution of his subconscious the half-breed knew it, but he had said what he had to say and it was enough to have spoken. What would be, would be.

  To the south and east of Papago Wells, the party of twelve riders seen by Logan Cates had decided to turn north. The decision, taken suddenly, was as suddenly fatal.

  A party of renegade Indians, headed for the rendezvous on the Sonoita, was awaiting them in a shallow wash. When the twelve riders appeared, dozing in the saddle, weary from their long ride, hot from the desert sun, the Indians opened fire. It was point-blank range, at a distance of no more than forty yards, and their first volley emptied four saddles, stampeded the horses and broke up the group.

  This group was the sheriff’s posse out of Yuma, and after that first savage volley they never reorganized. It had smashed destruction upon them at the end of a hot, dusty day when they were half asleep. Hunting two running men as they were, they had no idea they were themselves hunted. The sheriff himself was riding a half-tamed bronco, and before he got his horse stopped he was four miles away and all alone.

  Behind him there was scattered shooting, and he had an idea little of it was being done by his own men. The nearest water was at Gunsight Wells, and he hesitated whether to try for it or to return, and when he started again the bronc caved under him. For the first time he realized his horse had been shot.

  Alone then, the sheriff thought of his wife in Yuma. He knew enough of the desert to know how small were his chances of survival, but he had courage. He swore softly, realizing what those three reckless youngsters had cost, and then he began to walk. The following afternoon, still many miles from Gunsight Wells, his tongue swollen and his eyes glazed, he shot himself.

  The Indians had been successful. There had been but nine Indians, and they had cut the posse in half. After the first smashing volley they had killed another man, and the sheriff, unknown to them, had been added to the list. Four of the six who survived were soldiers from Fort Yuma under the command of a veteran Irish sergeant, and these alone held together, ro
lled into a shallow place in the desert, and opened fire.

  A fight with disciplined soldiery had no place in the Indian plans, so they slipped away to the south and Sergeant Sheehan gathered what ammunition was left on the slain men and horses, and with what canteens they could find and two recaptured horses for the extra weight, they started west. The following afternoon they were rejoined by the one remaining civilian, a man named Taylor, who had also kept his horse. Of the twelve these six remained.

  The soldiers were of a small patrol sent out to report the condition of water holes along this route to Tucson, and they had joined the sheriff on his return toward Yuma. That the move had been a fatal one Sergeant Timothy Sheehan would be the first to confess.

  Their situation was now serious. It was Sheehan’s duty to report the outbreak to the post at Yuma at the earliest possible moment, but he could not spare a horse for a messenger. Their very survival might depend on the horses to carry canteens and ammunition, and later they might have to share them, turn and turn about. Their one chance for survival lay in a safe arrival at Papago Wells.

  Once there they could rest, supply themselves with fresh water and make the attempt to reach Yuma. The worst of their journey undoubtedly lay between their present position and Papago. The Indians had escaped and might be returning in force, and not for one minute did Sheehan believe the few who attacked them were the only hostiles.

  And so, from various points on that southern desert, parties of men on foot and horseback moved toward Papago Wells, drawn by the common necessity of water.

  At Cipriano Well the Indians, gorged on mule meat, grunted in their sleep. Junie Hatchett slid the loop of her bound wrists down over her narrow hips and down behind her ankles. Then, doubling her knees under her chin, she put her bound feet through the circle of her arms and brought her wrists up in front of her. Then she began to fight the rawhide knots with her teeth.

  After more than an hour of heartbreaking struggle her wrists were free, and it required half again that long to free her ankles. Ghostlike in the silence, she got up. It was impossible to get a horse, for they would be frightened of the smell of the white man about her, and the Indians would awaken. She wasted no time except to retrieve a waterbag, but walked silently away into the darkness.

  Junie Hatchett was fifteen, soon to be sixteen, and her years had known little of love, much of loneliness, of longing, and of hardship. They had been years, too, of empty yearning toward the impossible … but from that yearning she now drew strength, for there is no power greater than the power of a dream, and she walked steadily away into the vast and empty desert, unafraid.

  Chapter Three

  In the first gray light of day three riders rode up to Papago Wells. Jennifer Fair had all she could do to hold herself in the saddle, but exhausted as she was, there was no relenting in her purpose. Kimbrough, though disliking the presence of Lonnie Foreman, was unable to do anything about it, and had decided at last that it was just as well.

  There was no wedding ring on the lady’s finger, but Lonnie knew a lady when he saw one, and in his book of rules, which was strict, Jennifer Fair was a lady.

  Fair … Jennifer Fair … Big Jim Fair!

  Of course! All at once it made sense, for the name of Jim Fair was known wherever cattlemen gathered. If Jim Fair’s daughter was riding out of the country with a man it was because her father disapproved of the man. Lonnie himself was a romantic, and if Jennifer loved the man, then her father had no right to object. Well … not much.

  Lonnie Foreman knew that Grant Kimbrough was a gentleman. From the West Virginia hills himself, he knew Kimbrough for what he was at first glance—Southern aristocracy. Back where he came from there was little of that, though down in the lowlands it was quite a thing. Up where Lonnie came from a man was judged by his shooting and his farming, and Lonnie had carried a rifle ever since he was tall enough to keep both ends off the ground. And he knew how to use one, too.

  They had arrived on the morning after the arrival of Beaupre and Lugo, of whom they saw nothing. On this same morning, far to the east of them, Junie Hatchett walked steadily toward the west, and behind her the sleeping Indians had not yet awakened.

  They had drawn up, well back from the tanks. “Maybe,” Lonnie suggested in a low voice, “I better ride up and take a look. Might be Indians.”

  Jennifer moved to protest, but Grant Kimbrough said, “All right … but be careful.”

  Jennifer glanced at him sharply, but made no comment. Kimbrough moved his horse near hers. “The boy is good at this,” he said, “we might as well let him do it.”

  She made no reply. The moon, in these last hours of night, had turned the cholla into torches of captured moonlight. She listened. Somewhere a pebble rattled on the rocks up ahead of them where Lonnie had gone, and a low wind stirred the desert, causing the greasewood beside them to hum faintly. It was beautiful … but so lonely, so empty. After the cities, the parties, the gaiety, the lights … no, this was not for her, despite the stillness, despite the beauty.

  She had hated the loneliness of the ranch without women of her own kind, she detested her father’s brusque good nature and his clumsy efforts to be affectionate. She hated the gun he was never without, and the memory of the gay, laughing boy it had destroyed.

  The desert, she told herself, was not for women. It dried them out and burned them up, and she was glad she was getting out of it, and fortunate to have met a man like Grant Kimbrough at such a time. He was so obviously a gentleman. He had breeding …

  Lonnie Foreman appeared in the vague light. “It’s all right. Nobody around, and plenty of water. Down in the lower wash there’s feed for the horses.”

  The feeble lemon light over the eastern mountains widened with the hours and crimson began to tint the far-off hills. Here and there the red dripped over and ran down a ridge into the desert. Tired as she was, Jennifer led her horse to the lower pool and stood by while he drank deep of the cool water. It was a lesson learned from her father, learned long ago.

  “We’ll have to rest,” Kimbrough said reluctantly. “Our horses are in bad shape.”

  “It’s a place to fight from.” Foreman squatted on his heels. “We could do much worse.”

  Kimbrough’s thoroughbred was showing the rough travel. He looked gaunt and hollow-eyed from the unaccustomed heat and dryness. Jennifer was shocked at its appearance, for her own horse, while very tired, was standing up well.

  Above the pool among the lava rocks a head lifted slowly and eyes looked down upon them. It was a ragged-looking black head, and the eyes were black, Indian, curious. The watcher studied each of them in turn, remaining longer on Jennifer. To his right another head lifted and Jim Beaupre joined Lugo in sizing up the arrivals. His shrewd eyes noted with approval that the boy had not put down his rifle.

  Neither man looked like the law, but there was no reason why they should be here, at this lonely place. “All right,” Beaupre whispered, “we’ll filter in on ‘em, but take it easy. That youngster looks like he’d shoot first and ask his questions of the corpse.”

  Foreman got to his feet. “I’ve some coffee, ma’am, and I reckon we could trust a fire if we keep it small and down in the hollow. I figure to make one that won’t show smoke.”

  “Would you, Lonnie?” Her smile was quick and friendly, and he grinned in reply. “You make the fire and I’ll make the coffee.”

  He was returning with his arms full of wood when he saw the two men. Lonnie stopped where he was, his eyes going from one to the other, and then to his rifle, a good ten paces away. His six-shooter was in his belt but he would have to drop the wood first and he was no hand with a short gun.

  “No call to get stirred up,” Beaupre said, “we’re travelin’ east, an’ just stopped the night.”

  Kimbrough turned at the sound of the voice and Lonnie saw how his coat was drawn back and that he wore his coat for a fast draw. Lonnie glanced at him sharply, finding something surprising in the gun. He had taken Kim
brough for a man just out from the East … he was not brown enough for a Westerner, but he wore his gun like a man who knew how to use it. Lonnie walked to where the fire would be and dropped his armful of wood.

  “You better think again before you go east,” Lonnie advised. ” ‘Paches killed my two partners at Bates Well.”

  “We’ll wait, then.” Beaupre grinned at the boy. “If they come thisaway we can stand ‘em off.”

  “They’ll come.”

  They built the fire under an overhang of rock where the flames could not reflect upward, although the sky was too light now to show any reflection. Over their coffee they huddled together, each busy with his or her own thoughts. Somewhere behind them, Jennifer thought, would be her father, probably with a dozen men, searching for her … and somewhere to the east, perhaps near him, were the Indians.

  Jim Beaupre had his own thoughts and they were not attractive. A sheriff’s posse was on his trail with hanging on their minds, and even if he were taken back for trial, a possibility which he did not consider likely, it would be doubtful if anyone on the jury would give them a break. Hometown folks were apt to consider such youngsters just harum-scarum boys, not giving due thought to the fact that the guns they carried were fully aged. A drifting buffalo skinner and a half-breed could expect no breaks.

  From time to time Lugo slipped away from the fire to study the surrounding country. The Pima was a good man, and could see things on the desert that only an Indian would see … an Indian or a man who had lived there as long.

  The sun was just about to tip its eyebrows over the mountain when he called down. “Man coming … riding alone.”

  From the shelter of the rocks they saw the man on the zebra dun. The horse had a fast, shuffling trot and he came on fast, but circling as he came, taking advantage of every bit of cover. At times they saw him, then they did not, but Jim Beaupre muttered something to Lugo, then chuckled. “He’s a smart one! Right now he knows exactly where we are, and I bet he knows how many there are! He also knows what shape our horses are in … see him cuttin’ for sign a while back?”