Last Stand at Papago Wells (1957)

by L'amour, Louis

  He also knew they were free of attack during the night—probably.

  It was a superstition of many Indian tribes that a warrior slain in the dark must forever wander, lost in the stygian darkness of the space between the worlds of the living and the dead. Their respite would end with the dawn.

  But a watch would be kept anyway. There might be skeptics among these Indians, skeptics who ignored the old superstitions. More than once he had been laughed at for being too careful, and had helped to bury some of the men who were not careful.

  With the first red arrows of the sun the attack would come out of the desert, for he had seen the dust in the sunset and knew there were more Indians now. He had seen the dust trails against the far blue mountains, hanging like smoke against the distance. The Indians would come out with the new day, their dusty brown bodies seeming to spring from the sand itself, and they would vanish as suddenly. Men had died by the dozen in the desert who had never known an Indian was near; he had himself seen a soldier killed by an Indian the soldier had passed within twenty yards in broad daylight on the open desert.

  Uneasy with inaction he went to his gear and shifted from boots to moccasins. Sheehan watched him curiously, and Cates told him, “I’m going to scout around out there.”

  “You’re takin’ a chance.”

  “I get around pretty good.”

  He went over the rocks and eased himself down at the edge of the ironwood thicket. He took his time, knowing haste could be dangerous, and he settled down in the brush and listened. After a long time he moved, gliding on silent feet among the rocks, making no smallest whisper of sound. Several times he paused to listen, checking all the night sounds. The rustle of leaves, the scurry of a small animal or lizard, the rattle of a pebble loosened by erosion … these were different sounds than the movement of a man.

  When he came out of the desert Jennifer was momentarily frightened. Grant had returned to their saddles for his pipe, and she was alone. To the south the twin peaks of Pinacate were dimly visible against the night sky.

  “You frightened me.”

  Cates stopped beside her, looking at the desert and the night. It was very still; the vast country to the south looked like hell with the fires out. “So peaceful,” he said, “and so dangerous.”

  “Are there Indians out there? Really, I mean?”

  “There are.”

  “But it’s so quiet!”

  “That’s proof enough. The desert has its own small sounds and when you don’t hear them something is out there warning them to be still.”

  “If there are Indians, why did you go out?”

  “Looking at the places they’ll use for cover when they attack.”

  “You might have been killed. You were inviting trouble.”

  “Yes, I might have been killed. Each of us is in deadly danger every instant from now until we get to Yuma. But I wasn’t looking for trouble—only a fool takes chances. Fools or children who don’t know any better. Danger is never pretty, it’s never thrilling. It’s dirty, bloody and miserable. It’s choking dust, the pain of wounds and waiting that eats your guts out.

  “Nobody but a fool or some crazy kid goes hunting trouble. It’s different when you meet it face to face on a dark night than when you read of it in a book. All this talk of people who look for adventure is from people who’ve had no experience.”

  He dropped his cigarette. “Your father knows. He lived through it, trying to make this country safe for you to grow up in.”

  “You don’t approve of me, do you?”

  “What is there to approve of? You are beautiful, of course, yet you resent the very things that made life easy for you. You resent your father. From the summit of the molehill of your Eastern education you judge the mountain of the obstacles your father faced. You”—he turned away from her—“are like the froth on beer. You look nice but you don’t mean anything.”

  He walked to the fire, angry with himself for saying things he had no right to say, for venturing opinions that were none of his business. He did not know Jim Fair, but he knew a little of any man who came to a country like this when Jim Fair came, who stayed and who built something from nothing. It took strength, character, and a kind of dogged determination that was wholly admirable. It also took fighting ability, and above all judgment.

  He crouched by the fire and ate the slice of beef Junie Hatchett brought to him between two thick slices of bread. He ate hungrily, careful not to look into the fire. Staring into fires was reserved for tenderfeet or more civilized worlds. A man who looks into a fire sees nothing when he turns quickly to look into the dark, and his momentary blindness may cost his life.

  Grant Kimbrough came down from the rocks with Jennifer. She looked angry, and Logan Cates grinned wryly, knowing that it was himself at whom she was angry.

  “Find any Indians?” Kimbrough asked, and there was an edge of sarcasm in his tone.

  “I wasn’t looking for any.”

  Sergeant Sheehan joined them at the fire, and the light from the flames caught the scattered silver in his hair. “How many d’ you figure, Cates?”

  “Anywhere from twenty to twice that number. Not more than fifty.”

  “How can you estimate?” Kimbrough asked.

  ” ‘Paches never travel in big bunches. They live off the desert and there’s never food or water enough for a big bunch. Nine out of ten war parties will number from ten to thirty warriors. Churupati could never get more than sixty, and my guess is there are not over twenty or twenty-five out there.”

  Zimmerman stood by the fire listening. He was a huge, hairy man who badly needed a shave. His mood seemed surly, and he looked up at Cates with a challenge. “You sure about that Indian?”

  “Lugo? He’s a Pima.”

  Zimmerman threw the remains of his coffee on the sand with a violent gesture. “So he’s a Pima,” he said angrily. “I heard you say that before. I say he’s an Indian and they’re all alike. He should be tied up.”

  “He won’t be,” Logan Cates spoke mildly. “He’s one of our best men.”

  “You say. I say the way to begin this fight is to shoot that greasy mongrel.”

  “Anybody,” Cates spoke mildly still, “who lifts a hand against that Indian will answer to me.”

  Zimmerman hesitated, his face ugly. For a moment it was obvious that he wanted to challenge this statement. Sergeant Sheehan interrupted.

  “That’s enough of that, Zimmerman. We’re all under the command of Cates. You’ll obey orders.”

  “You mean you’d have me court-martialed?” Zimmerman sneered. “Don’t take me for a fool! When all this is over there won’t be enough of us left to tell the story. You won’t carry any tales, nor will anybody else.”

  Zimmerman walked away into the darkness and Sheehan looked after him in silence.

  Beaupre came to the edge of the rocks above. “Cates, there’s shootin’ off to the east—mighty far off.”

  He climbed the rocks again, glad to escape the situation at the fire. They listened, but there was no further sound. He seated himself among the rocks near Beaupre and waited for a repetition of the sound, but they heard nothing. Irritably, he considered the situation below. Zimmerman was a dangerous man, unwilling to accept authority, and his remarks to Sheehan, uttered in the tone used, were practically a threat. As if there was not trouble enough with the Indians, there had to be trouble within their own circle.

  Despite the fact that he had been pursued by a sheriff’s posse, Jim Beaupre was a good man, a solid man, definitely a man to have on your side in any kind of a fight. Cates knew his kind from other times and places, for Beaupre was the sort of man who was handy at any job or with any weapon, and he was the sort who would, when the frontier ended, settle down to one of his jobs without fuss or strain. He would be a teamster, a blacksmith, a small rancher, never wealthy but always hard-working.

  And what of you, Logan Cates? he asked himself. Where will you be, and what will you become? Some day he wou
ld be too slow with his gun, would break a leg somewhere in the desert or lose his canteen too far from water. It had happened to others, it could happen to him. He would never have the ranch he wanted with a stream of running water and some old oak trees, he would never have the time to do the reading he wanted. His father had been a great one to read; he had been reading the night Dave Home shot him through the window.

  Only Dave Home had reckoned without Logan, who was sixteen at the time, but fully aged in the six-shooter. Logan dropped Home with a bullet through the skull before he got out of the yard.

  “That shootin’ bothers me.” Beaupre interrupted his thinking. “Somebody’s in trouble out there.”

  There was nothing anyone could do, so they sat tight, waiting for further shooting, or some evidence of movement. Kimbrough came up into the rocks, and Lonnie Foreman followed.

  Several minutes passed, and then suddenly, far off in the night, but rapidly coming nearer, they heard the sound of running hoofs … somebody was hunting a hole, and coming fast. There was a shot, closer than they had expected, for they all saw the stab of flame in the night, and then other shots.

  The horse came with a rush, leaping over the rocks, a led horse following. The horse came like the black rush of doom, nostrils distended. The horse skidded to a halt in their midst and a woman slid to the ground, a heavy old-style Remington pistol in her hand.

  She was a fat, heavy woman with a wide face and a smile to fit, and she glanced around swiftly as she touched the ground. Despite her escape there was neither fear nor relief in her eyes, just a swift calculation of the situation. When she spoke, which was immediately, her voice was hoarse, hard and cheerful. “Well, slap me with a silver dollar if this isn’t something like it! Ten minutes ago I’d have sold my hide for a phony peso!”

  She glanced around again. “Boys, I’m Big Maria out of Kansas City by way of Wichita, Abilene and El Paso, and am I glad to see you! Has anybody got a drink?”

  Chapter Seven

  Startled, they could merely stare, but the fat woman was not disturbed. She smiled broadly and winked at Beaupre. “Never was so glad to see anybody in my life! Pete, he tol’ me about this here waterhole. Said if anything happened to him to run for it.”

  Logan Cates remained in the background, looking past her at the powerful horse with its bulging saddlebags. It was a magnificent animal and in splendid shape. His eyes strayed to the fetlocks and then returned to Big Maria.

  “We figured ever’body from here to Tucson was either holed up or dead.”

  “We come right out of Tucson! Pete, he caught himself a slug in a shindig there, so we hightailed it.” She smiled broadly. “He wasn’t so much worried about the slug he caught as the five he put into the other gent!

  “Well, he should have set still, because we run head-on into a passel of Indians. Pete, he opened up with a shotgun at bellyshootin’ range and got himself a couple before they nailed him. I grabbed his Winchester and lit a shuck.”

  Jennifer had come from the curtained-off space under the overhang. “You must be Jim Fair’s daughter,” Big Maria said.

  “You know my father?”

  “No, but I saw him an’ heard him! He’s madder than a rattlesnake with a tied tail! Said a no-account tinhorn ran off with his daughter!” She grinned widely at the circle of listeners. “Which one of you no-account tinhorns is the lucky man?”

  Grant Kimbrough’s face flushed to the roots of his hair. “Miss Fair and I are going to be married,” he said stiffly.

  Big Maria chuckled. “Mister, you an’ her are goin’ to be married if Big Jim don’t catch you! If he does he’ll brand you with a number-ten boot!”

  Jennifer turned sharply away, her face white with humiliation. Grant Kimbrough hesitated as if about to reply, then turned and hurried after her.

  Logan Cates walked back to his place among the rocks and Beaupre descended to lead the horses away, but not until Big Maria had deftly retrieved the saddlebags. Those horses were in fine shape, much better shape than any horse he’d ever seen that came over the trail that lay behind them.

  The time was short now. There was faint yellow over the eastern mountains.

  Mile after mile the gray sands stretched away into the vague predawn light, here and there a bit of white where lay the bleaching skeletons of horses who had died on this road, known for many years as Camino del Diablo, or the Devil’s Highway. During the few years when the road was followed during the gold rush more than four hundred people had died of thirst, and the vague line through the sand hills and ridges of naked rock was marked by whitening bones and the occasional wrecks of abandoned wagons. On his first trip over the road he had counted more than sixty graves in a day’s travel, and nobody knew how many had died whose bones lay scattered by coyotes and unburied.

  No command was needed as the morning grew lighter. One by one the defenders slipped into position and lay waiting, listening to the morning sounds and waiting, knowing whatever was to happen would begin today.

  Or would it?

  Logan Cates remembered the stories of Churupati. The man was cunning as a wolf, shrewd, dangerous, and untiring. Nor was he a man liable to risk his few followers unless the game was sure to be great. Here within the oval among the lava rocks defended by the few white men were horses, guns, and ammunition, all of which he could use. Above all, the chances of relief were small, so if he could find water, he had only to wait. Churupati knew what hunger could do, what waiting could do, and what the straining of nerves could do.

  The shot came suddenly out of an empty desert, struck a rock within inches of Lonnie’s head, and ricocheted with an angry whine. From behind them, over in the lava rocks, another shot was fired.

  After that, there was silence. Silence, solitude, and the rising sun. With the rising sun the coolness was gone. An hour passed, and then another. Suddenly, from near the horses, there was a sudden burst of firing followed by a single shot, then a pair of shots. Kimbrough, Lugo and Beaupre were down there.

  Sheehan crawled up to join Cates. “Killed a horse,” he said sourly.

  Cates glanced at him sharply, worried about the dun. “No,” Sheehan said, “it wasn’t yours—it was mine.”

  “One less. I hope you’re a good walker, Sergeant.”

  “I’d walk or crawl.” Sheehan wiped the sweatband of his hat. “I’d do either willingly to get out alive.”

  Silence held the desert, and the sky was without clouds. Only the heat waves shimmered. Sheehan shifted his rifle in his hands and wiped his sweaty palms on his shirt front.

  “Cates,” he spoke in a low tone, “don’t count on help from the fort. Not soon, anyway. With us gone there aren’t twenty men there.”

  Lonnie Foreman turned impatiently. “Why are they waiting? If they’re going to attack, why don’t they get started?”

  “Who knows why an Indian does anything? Maybe they figure they don’t have to hurry.”

  Lonnie was silent and when he spoke he said, “You know what I think? I think maybe they’re right.”

  From Kimbrough’s position there was a single shot, then silence, and no sound but the light breeze of a gray morning turning to a blazing hot day.

  Sheehan slipped away to scout the various positions and check with his men. Lonnie shifted his rifle and squinted his eyes against the sun. “She’s a real nice girl,” he said suddenly.

  Cates agreed solemnly. “Make some man a good wife,” he added.

  “If I was a little older,” Lonnie explained carefully, “I’d—no, I want to see some more country. Why, I hear tell that up north in California there’s some of the biggest trees in the world! I’d sure like to see them trees.”

  “You do that.” Cates had found a cluster of rocks in the sand that somehow did not look quite natural. “I figure every man should see some trees before he dies.”

  He lifted his Winchester and sighted at the flat surface of a rock slightly behind the group. He steadied himself, blinked the sweat from his e
yes, then squeezed off his shot.

  From behind the rocks there was a startled yelp and Cates fired against the rock again, then fired past the rock. There was no further sound.

  “Them ricochets,” Lonnie said, “they tear a man up. They tear him up something fierce.”

  Cates slid back to where it was safe, then stood up. “You stay here, Lonnie. They’ll be nervous now, but you be careful.” He started down the rocks. “She’s a fine girl, all right. I’d say she was very fine.”

  He stopped by the fire for coffee. He squatted by the fire, thinking about it. The killing of that horse had been no accident, for every horse killed meant a man afoot, and a man walking was a man who would die in this country.

  Zimmerman walked to the fire and lifted the coffee pot. Cates saw at a glance that the big man was hunting trouble, and it would be always that way with Zimmerman. He would hunt trouble until somebody killed him—only this was not the time.

  “You wet-nursin’ that Injun?” Zimmerman demanded.

  “Before we get out of here we’ll be glad to have him with us. We’ll need every man we’ve got.”

  “Send him out there with the rest of the Injuns,” Zimmerman said. “He’s like them all. This here’s a place for white men.”

  “Lugo is a Pima, and the Pimas are good Indians. They are ancient enemies of both the Apaches and the Yaqui, with more reason for hating them than you’ll ever have. He stays.”

  “Maybe.” Zimmerman gulped coffee, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Maybe I’ll run him out.”

  “In the first place”—Logan Cates got to his feet—“Tony Lugo is, I suspect, twice the fighter you’ve ever been. In the second place, I’m in command here, and if you want to start anything with him, start it with me first.”

  Zimmerman looked at him over the coffee pot, a slow, measuring glance, and he did not like what he saw. He had seen these lean, quiet men before, and there was a cool certainty in Cates’s manner that betrayed the fact that he was no stranger to trouble. Yet Zimmerman knew his own enormous strength and relied upon it. “You get in my way,” he said, “and I’ll take that little gun and put it where it belongs.”