The Trail West

by William W. Johnstone

  Sweeney was thinking the great Milton J. Carmichael hadn’t seen any Apache trouble, large or small, in all the time he’d been in Arizona. No real trouble, just its aftermath. He was a coward . . . and a clever one. But Sweeney knew better than to mention it, and instead asked, “What about the dog?”

  The sheriff frowned. “If I can get a rope on him, I s’pose Nils’ll take him. He’s been wantin’ a mean dog to chain out back of his store to keep the kids and rowdies away, ain’t he? If we can’t haul him back, I reckon we’ll just shoot him. I got half a mind to shoot him now. Don’t much like the idea of havin’ him in town.”

  Sweeney rested his fork on his plate. He’d seen that dog only a few times, but he liked the critter and it put up with him. He didn’t much cater to the notion of that old weasel, Nils Gunderson, keeping the dog on a short chain for the rest of his life, let alone the sheriff putting a bullet through his head.

  Sweeney cleared his throat. “Why not let Monahan take him? I mean, the two of ’em seem to get along good enough.”

  Carmichael flicked a glance out toward Monahan’s figure and sniffed. “Sure,” he said with a shrug. “No skin off my butt.”

  One of the Hopkins brothers snorted out a laugh. Sweeney didn’t notice which one.

  “Be a treat to see the old man try to convince that stupid dog to go along,” the sheriff said with a grin bordering on nasty.

  One of the Hopkins boys said, “Bet you a buck you’ll still end up shootin’ him.”

  Sweeney ignored Hopkins and the sheriff’s snide tone. “Reckon I’ll ride out with him, too, if nobody minds.”

  “Don’t know why you rode out with us in the first place, Sweeney,” Carmichael said with a wrinkled forehead. He helped himself to more beef. “Woulda been a whole lot safer if you’d just kept on sweepin’ Gunderson’s floors.”

  Both Hopkins brothers laughed. Dutch Grosvenor and Oscar Wilkes, too.

  Sweeney didn’t say the obvious: nothing was safer than riding with Milton J. Carmichael. If Carmichael had been paying attention to business instead of lollygagging at the Robbard’s spread for half a day, then jawing so long at the Delaney’s that they’d had to bed down there for the night, they would have reached the Morgan place a day earlier, maybe sooner.

  They could have arrived in time to save Ray and Lizzie Morgan and their little boy.

  According to the telegram Carmichael had received, there were only five or six braves in that raiding party. There were seven men in the posse, and they were heavily armed. They could have handled six braves who, by the looks of things, hadn’t owned a single rifle between them.

  “Fine, then.” Sweeney set his plate on the ground, assuming the absence of a direct answer was as good as a yes. “I already gave my notice to Gunderson.” He stood up.

  “You what?” Carmichael thundered.

  “Gunderson said I was even,” Sweeney said calmly. “I only came along on this shindig so you couldn’t find something new I owed you for. Seems like every time I got close to even, you and Mordecai Clancy would come up with another mirror I’d broke over to his saloon.”

  There was laughter again. Carmichael twisted toward the perpetrators, and growled, “Shut up!”

  Sweeney took advantage of the momentary distraction and stepped away. All he had to do was convince Monahan to let him tag along.

  As he left the light of the fire and made his way over to the old man sitting on his heels in the dark, Sweeney was thinking Monahan was a loner if ever he’d seen one. He hadn’t said more than a handful of words to Sweeney after he’d pulled him out of that corral, and he’d been just as closemouthed with the other men.

  Of course, the hands were full of a million Monahan stories, which he heard over and over again all that winter long when Monahan was up at the line camp and couldn’t defend himself.

  They’d been good stories, though. A man couldn’t cowboy for twenty years without becoming something of a legend, even if he wasn’t aware of it himself. Monahan didn’t seem to have the slightest notion he was practically famous.

  Sweeney stopped a few feet from the cowboy. “Mind if I pull up some ground?”

  Monahan shrugged without looking up. “Ain’t my dirt.”

  The minute Sweeney started to sit down, Monahan got up and ambled toward the corral. Sweeney rolled his eyes, came out of his half crouch, and trailed along. Monahan stopped at the corral fence and looped his elbows over the top rail. Sweeney aped his position.

  “Helluva thing, what those Apache done,” Sweeney began.

  “It was that,” Monahan said, still watching the dog. “Far as I can see, nobody over there seems real upset about it.”

  “Carmichael’s a horse’s butt.”

  Monahan grunted.

  “That’s sure some kinda dog,” Sweeney offered after a moment.

  “Yup,” said Monahan.

  They stood in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the distant murmur of conversation from the yard, and the soft sounds of cattle drowsing.

  “You’d best take him along when you go,” Sweeney finally said.

  Monahan looked over at him for the first time. “Got no use for a dog.”

  Sweeney slouched against the rail. “Well, Sheriff Carmichael’s gonna shoot him if you don’t. He can’t stand that dog. Blue bit him real good in the backside a couple years back—least, that’s what they tell me—and nobody holds a grudge like old Milton J. Carmichael.” He scowled. “I should know. I got into a saloon brawl six months back, and he’s had me slavin’ at his brother-in-law’s store ever since, paying off the damage. Just cleared my debt. Figure I paid it about double.”

  “Carmichael’s a horse’s rear end, all right. Coulda told you that after I’d knowed him thirty seconds.” The old man’s face quirked up in a smile. “That ol’ Blue dog bit him in the ass, did he? Lucky he didn’t get the hydrophobics.”

  “Carmichael?”

  “The dog.”

  Sweeney smiled.

  Monahan squinted at his hands in the moonlight, studying them. “I don’t know as how he’d go along with me even if I was to say I’d have him. ’Sides, folks don’t like it much when a hand comes in with his own dog. Not all ranchers believe in ’em. I’ve knowed some fellers what would shoot a dog on sight, same as they’d shoot a coyote or wolf.”

  Sweeney nodded. “That’s sure true, Mr. Monahan. Might just as well let Carmichael use him for target practice.”

  Monahan snorted. “You’re chappin’ my butt, boy. And knock off that ‘mister’ business.”

  Sweeney didn’t say anything, but he smiled to himself. If he was any judge, Monahan would take the dog.

  “You mind a little company in the mornin’?” Sweeney asked, careful to keep his tone casual. He wanted like the dickens to ride a ways with the cantankerous old cowboy, if only in the hopes that he’d share a story or two.

  If he ever had any kids, he’d admire to tell them he rode a piece with Dooley Monahan, who was once upon a time the slickest hand to ever saddle a bronc or throw a loop; the man who’d shot it out with the Worth boys back in ’67, and who’d known Black Jack Flannery and the James boys and Wild Bill Hickok, to name a few.

  He knew getting Monahan to open up, just a little, would be harder than pulling teeth, but he didn’t mind. He had nothing else pressing to attend to. Besides, he had everything he owned in his saddlebags. He was ready to go.

  “You said you was goin’ south, and that’s as good a direction as any to me,” Sweeney added.

  Monahan frowned. Softly, he said, “I got some fellers after me. You’d best stay clear.”

  Fellows after him? It was music to Sweeney’s ears! They were bound to be famous. “Who are they? Are they rough customers?”

  Monahan turned toward him and without expression said, “Dev and Alf Baylor.”

  The Baylor gang? Sweeney’s breath caught in his throat. “I heard of ’em, all right. Heard their brother Jason got himself killed a year or two ago. He was
a mean one, all right, but not as mean as Dev or as crazy as Alf. I heard Alf shot a piano player up to Denver last year ’cause he played the same song twice. I seen paper on ’em back in town. Why they after you, anyhow?”

  With a bemused shake of his head, the old man turned away again. He muttered, “Crimeny, boy. You ask too many questions.”

  Sweeney pulled himself up. “I’d admire to come along, anyhow. If they’re trailin’ one man, they won’t suspect the track of two men and a dog. Hell, we’ll probably lose ’em altogether.”

  “Suit yourself,” the old man replied with a shrug.

  “Thanks,” said Sweeney. “It’d suit me fine.”

  Monahan woke in the middle of the night to make water, and found that Blue had moved. He was lying in the yard between Monahan and the others, and was watching Carmichael. It didn’t appear to be a real friendly watch. Whatever grudge was between the sheriff and that dog ran deep.

  When Monahan stood up and walked over to the pen for some privacy, the dog followed him and sat down, waiting for him to finish his business.

  “I’m leavin’ in the mornin’,” he said as he buttoned up his trousers.

  The dog stood and began to wiggle his furry butt a mile a minute. Monahan figured it was a good thing Blue didn’t have more than a nub of a tail, or the force of its enthusiasm would have knocked down half the corral.

  He stooped slightly to pat the dog’s head. The fur was like speckled eiderdown under his fingers, and he wondered that anything could be so soft on so tough a beast. Blue pushed up against his leg and groaned softly.

  “Reckon you can come along if you like. Grabbin’ my rein like that,” he muttered with a shake of his head. “Danged if you don’t beat all.”

  And thus, Dooley Monahan, worn-out, beat up, forty-four summers old, and winding down into old age, fleeing for his life before invisible enemies and who hadn’t wanted any more burdens than the multitude he already carried, came to own the blue dog.

  6

  Monahan and Sweeney rode out at first light with Blue trailing behind, while Carmichael’s men were still yawning in their blankets. They left without incident, except when they topped the hill over which Monahan had ridden the day before. The dog turned one last time and paused, lifting his head in a single long mournful howl.

  It set the hair on the back of Monahan’s neck to prickling.

  “C’mon, Blue,” Monahan said kindly. “Come along, fella.”

  After a moment the dog turned away from the ruined place it had lived and known good, hard work and love, and followed them.

  All that day they traveled south, with an occasional bob or weave to the west or east to avoid climbing a hill too high or skidding down a gorge too steep. It seemed to Monahan the farther south they went, the faster the calendar was pushed along. Spring roundup had just finished in the mountains, and he could still feel the recent memory of snowy climes and icy creeks chilling his old joints.

  But the Christmas smell of the high country had gone out of his nose entirely. The fellows around Phoenix would have finished their spring roundup a good month past. They’d get enough heat to bake a buffalo come summer, but they rarely saw more than a brief dusting of snow, and it never smelled like Christmas.

  He was beginning to think he’d best cowboy on the flats for a while, maybe forever. For old men with cranky old wounds, life was a good bit easier close to sea level than it was at seven or eight thousand feet. A good bit warmer, too.

  He’d managed to push thoughts of Dev Baylor pinning him to a pine with a rusty baling hook—and Alf twisting it—from his mind. Sweeney had had a point. If the Baylor boys were tracking him, and if they knew anything about him—which they probably did—they’d know he always traveled alone when he was between jobs. They wouldn’t follow the prints of two men and a dog.

  The young man was turning out to be a halfway decent traveling companion. At least, he was quiet enough after Monahan ignored four or five attempts to get a conversation going. Sweeney gave up and seemed content to ride in silence, and that was all right with Monahan, who figured he’d used up about all his talking back at the Morgan ranch.

  But he wasn’t deaf or stupid as Carmichael and the other others thought. He’d heard every word, when they were talking around their campfire the night before. He wasn’t as lackadaisical as Carmichael about those Apaches, either. He’d kept his ears cocked and his eyes open all day long.

  But the Apaches didn’t show.

  Monahan and Sweeney made camp for the night in a little hollow lush with paloverde just thinking about bringing up some yellow buds. Sweeney shot a big buck jackrabbit for their supper and was skewing it on a makeshift spit when his talking muscles all of a sudden kicked into high gear again. “Back up at the Circle D, those hands yammered about you all winter.”

  Monahan put the bean pot on the fire and sat back, shaking his head at the dog tossing the rabbit hide up into the air and catching it over and over. “Reckon we’d best find that dog somethin’ to herd. Trampin’ the trail all day, and he’s still got enough energy for twins.”

  Sweeney wasn’t easily dissuaded. “They said as how you knew the James boys. That true, Monahan? They said as how you rode with Jesse.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “They said you rode with Quantrill.”

  Monahan snorted. “Hog squirt.” He poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Which?” Sweeney insisted. “That you rode with Quantrill or that you rode with Jesse?”

  “You just don’t give up, do you, son?”

  Sweeney smiled. “No sir, I don’t.”

  Behind him, the dog threw the rabbit pelt high in the air with a snap of his neck, then leaped up to catch it in midair. He gave it a good shaking, and then another toss.

  Sweeney didn’t see any of it, but Monahan did, and it put him in a pretty fair mood to see the critter finally enjoying itself. After a moment, he said, “I’m from the great state of Iowa, boy, and I fought for the Union . . . I think.” He took a sip of his coffee. “If I’da ever run into Quantrill, I wouldn’ta stopped to say howdy, that’s for dang sure. I probably woulda put a lead ball between the crazy man’s eyes. And I wouldn’t know Jesse Woodson James if he was to walk in here and ask for a plate of rabbit and beans.”

  A puzzled look crossed Sweeney’s face, and Monahan added cryptically, “Now, his brother Frank? That’s another matter.”

  Sweeney leaned forward, his face eager as a pup’s. “How’d you come to know him then, if you fought for the North? Did you ride together? I mean, after the war?”

  “Nope.” Monahan took another sip of coffee. “The backstabbin’, bank-robbin’, rebel coward married up with my second cousin.”

  That seemed to stun Sweeney into silence, and Monahan took advantage of the lull to give the beans a stir and add four pinches of salt and three of pepper. He couldn’t stand flat beans. While he was at it, he adjusted the rabbit’s spit, giving it a half turn. It was starting to get a little too done on one side to suit him.

  Monahan gave the beans another stir and said, “It was a long time back. Reckon I’ve got over the worst of the mad.”

  “F-Frank James is your second cousin?” Sweeney finally stuttered.

  Monahan shook the bean spoon at him, and a couple of beans hissed when they hit the fire. “Only by marriage. Don’t you get to blamin’ that pestilential James clan on me!”

  “Well, did you go to the wedding?”

  Monahan snorted. He had gotten over the worst of his mad at Frank James, all right. That was, he was past the point of uprooting trees over it. But he was still plenty doggone ticked.

  “I should say I didn’t! I was up to Minnesota when my old neighbor wrote me about it, and I was so disgusted I up and burned that letter right then and there. And I’m through talking about that rebel trash, iffen you don’t mind. And even if you do.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sweeney. “Sorry.”

  “Well.” Monahan supposed he’d snapped at the boy. You
ng Sweeney couldn’t help it if a bunch of bored bunkhouse cowhands had talked his ear off. “Just don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “No sir, I won’t.”

  “And quit that ‘sir’ business.”

  “Yes sir. I mean, okay.”

  Monahan tried to mash a bean against the side of the pot, but it was still a little stony. He topped off his coffee and leaned back against his saddle. “When you was a kid, did you ever play a game called Town Gossip?”

  Sweeney shook his head.

  “Well, Missus Frye—she was the parson’s wife, up at our church back home—had us play it when we was kids, to teach us against the sin of repeatin’ tales. It was a right good lesson, and I ain’t never forgot it. She’d start out with a long line of young’uns, and the first one gets somethin’ whispered in his ear. Say, for instance, ‘Sally went to town and bought a green dress.’ Somethin’ simple like that. And then that kid whispers it to the next kid and so on, right on down the row. By the time it’s gone through that long line, it’d end up ‘Sally caught herself a greased pig and barbecued it with Mayor Woolard’ or some such.”

  Monahan hadn’t thought about that old game in years, and danged if it didn’t make him feel kind of sentimental. He didn’t know whether he liked the feeling or not, but he put it down on the side of not, just in case.

  Sweeney said, “I reckon it’s a good thing you told me the truth of it, then. Just to clear things up.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What about Bill Hickok, then?” Sweeney asked. “Or Clooney Portnoy or Arapaho Jones or Cole Younger, or these Baylor boys that are followin’ us? What about the Kalikaks or Charlie Goodnight or Joaquin Murietta or—”

  Monahan barked out a laugh, couldn’t hold it in. “Joaquin Murietta? By gum, those boys surely did talk, didn’t they? Joaquin Murietta was beheaded in the Golden State almost twenty years ago, boy, back when California was a place where donkey-headed fools went to scratch in the dirt for gold. Well,” he added thoughtfully with a scratch of his chin, “suppose they wasn’t all donkey-headed. Some of ’em actually found somethin’.”