West of Tombstone

by Paul Lederer

  Stony Harte.

  If Willie was here, in this tiny pueblo, could Stony be far away?

  He could still hear the crowd’s uproar and he closed his eyes tightly for a moment, not wanting to think what those men with the machetes were doing to the Dutchman. Cameron had come to despise Voorman and knew him for a murderer, but he wouldn’t wish that on any man.

  His thoughts clearing, his breath regained, he began to think of survival. Two horses missing from the stable. One saddled, apparently ownerless, pony near the plaza’s fountain. It wouldn’t take the villagers long to realize that there was another intruder among them and that he was probably afoot. Cameron started toward the shanty where they had left their own weary mounts. The roan couldn’t be pushed far or fast, but it surely had five more miles in it. Enough to get him clear of the pueblo precinct.

  The sun was rising higher, growing white and hot across the vast desert as Cameron hurried on. He rounded the broken-down hovel with his breath coming in panting gasps – like those of the horned toad he had seen.

  The horses were gone.

  Cursing, Cameron pounded the side of his fist against the crumbling adobe wall of the outbuilding.

  All right, then! What were his options? To attempt to mingle among the pueblo’s inhabitants, a stranger in a land where strangers were few, seemed futile. He would be pointed out in moments. Except … there was the cantina where white cowboys and travelers hung out. There he would not have to hide his face for its color. Of course, there was Willie to be considered, but Cameron didn’t think the gunman would risk shooting him down in this small town where judgement on him, too, would be sure and swift. Perhaps so, but there were few other courses of action that he could think of.

  Cameron began slinking down the morning alley again, assuming the cantina would have some sort of back or side door for deliveries and carrying out its refuse. He stayed off the main street where the villagers still clogged every foot of open space cursing or passing information or yelling out words he could not understand.

  Finding the back door to the cantina he hesitated. There were three steps to mount and then a sun-bleached wooden door. There was no telling what lay beyond the door, and Cameron had become in turns a convict, an escaped felon and presumed accomplice in two murders! Steeling himself, he stepped forward, mounted the steps and, holding his breath, reached for the latch, hoping it was not locked from the interior. He could hear voices not far away, perhaps men searching for the second American. He stretched out a hand to open the door, but it was swung open abruptly before his hand reached the latch.

  ‘Come in, quickly,’ the young Spanish girl said, and Cameron, hypnotized by the urgency in the bright-eyed girl’s voice, did as he was commanded.

  He found himself inside a dark room smelling of stale beer and sawdust, crates and barrels stacked high against two walls. ‘Follow me,’ the girl said. She was around five feet four inches tall, wore a white skirt and blouse of the Spanish style. Her raven hair was glossy and pinned up in some method Cameron was unfamiliar with. For jewelry she wore silver hoop ear-rings and one tiny silver ring with entwined strands. Her eyes were large and frank, her mouth was not wide, but her full underlip made it seem so.

  ‘Hurry up; what are you looking at?’ she demanded, although she must have known. ‘There is no time to waste. I have heard all about it. They will cut you to ribbons if we don’t hide you now.’

  He followed blindly, trusting the girl because there was no other choice. And, he admitted, he believed in her dark eyes.

  Opening a door they stepped into a narrow hallway. Now Cameron could hear music – two guitars – from a room beyond playing some sort of gypsy melody with an intriguing refrain. He didn’t have time to dwell on the tune or its composition. They quickly reached a narrow internal stairway. The Spanish girl paused, placed a finger of silence to her lips, lifted her white skirt a few inches and crept up it, glancing back once across her shoulder to make sure Cameron was following.

  The room she led him to was neat, clean, organized. There was a woman’s touch to every corner of it. Bright shawls, woven bedspread, splashily colored hangings. She toed a high-backed wooden chair out and gestured for him to seat himself as she returned to the door, looked up and down the corridor, closed the door and returned to sit opposite him in a matching dark-wood chair.

  ‘They won’t find you here unless you act stupid.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Cameron answered, still puzzled by her sudden appearance and concern over him.

  Silence clung to the room for a long while as the white curtains covering the partially opened window of the room billowed in the light breeze. Far away, it seemed, men still shouted like hunting pack animals.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked, when he couldn’t contain the question any longer.

  ‘How could I not?’ she replied simply, smoothing her skirt. A breath of warm air from outside shifted a slender tendril of dark hair across her forehead. She brushed it away as if it were an annoying insect.

  ‘You don’t know who I am,’ Cameron said, and to his astonishment the girl broke out in laughter – sweet, innocent laughter.

  ‘Of course I do, you dope!’ she answered, using the last word as if it were new to her, an affectation.

  ‘But you can’t!’

  ‘But I can, Cameron Black,’ the girl replied quietly, her gaze fixed on him. ‘I do know who you are.’

  ‘But how …?’

  ‘Your face,’ she said, with a shrug, the palms of her hands turned up. ‘I knew the moment I saw you. No one could look so much like Stony Harte if it wasn’t you.’

  ‘Look … I’m sorry I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Carmalita.’

  ‘Carmalita,’ Cameron said, trying the sound of it, ‘you seem to be a pretty straightforward woman, but you’re running rings around my mind. I can’t quite catch up, if you know what I mean. How could you know me? How in the world could you know anything about Stony Harte?’

  ‘It is simple. Where shall I start to explain?’ She touched the tip of her finger to her cheek, making a mock-dimple. ‘Have you not met a woman called Emily? A stout woman? When you were with Stony Harte?’ Cameron nodded mutely. Yes, he remembered the woman in the cabin at Stony’s hideout.

  ‘Emily is my sister … well, she is my half-sister, really. We had different fathers. Emily,’ she said, after a small pause, ‘fell in with this Stony Harte, this cabron. Do you know that term?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No matter, it is not a polite term in any language, but that is what he is.’ Carmalita’s Spanish accent came and went like a voice bent by the wind. It was mystifying, Cameron thought, and quite charming.

  ‘You haven’t told me yet how you could know about me,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ She rose, elegantly and smoothly and walked to the window to close it. ‘The breeze that cools and enlivens the morning turns to a devil wind by noon. It will blow hot dust in and … that’s not what you wanted to hear.’ She seated herself again, clasped hands between her knees. ‘Emily is my half-sister, she is older than me, and she is quite wild. She has been since her father died. She runs with bad men. It is so. She tells me that they have more money to spend than any peon could hope to see, and they live exciting lives. I have heard all of her tales.

  ‘A year or so ago she met this man, this Stony Harte, and rode away with his gang. I do not ask her what chores she performs, if you understand me. Emily thinks that Stony Harte loves her, that she would die for him. I don’t know where she gets such romantic nonsense. Do you know the term “camp-follower”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is what my sister is, though for an outlaw band. She fantasizes about Harte, but I think he is just a … bad man,’ she said, avoiding the earlier crude term she had used. ‘Emily has told me about all of Stony Harte’s great exploits and how clever he is. She told me that Stony had the law on his trail and so he killed a man who looked enough like him to
make the law think he was Stony Harte, that Stony Harte was dead. Let me see,’ Carmalita said, rising again. The delicate touch of her fingers was pleasant as she examined Cameron’s skull, finding the furrowed, roughly stitched scar. She drew her breath in faintly. ‘I knew it was so. It had to be you. Except they did not kill you dead enough.’

  Cameron laughed; the girl frowned.

  ‘So now what do you wish to do?’ Carmalita asked. ‘Find Stony Harte and kill him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cameron Black heard himself say. He had not phrased it that way even to himself, but it was true, wasn’t it?

  ‘I will help you,’ Carmalita said, and now there was no humor in her dark eyes. None at all.

  SEVEN

  Cameron sat silently watching the girl’s eager eyes, the quirky half-smile on her anxious mouth, wondering if what he had just said was true. In a way it was – Stony Harte deserved death, but he did not really want it to be at his own hands. He doubted if he was capable of such an act. He tried to explain his feelings to Carmalita.

  ‘I hate the man, but I could not kill him. I am not built that way, Carmalita. All I wanted was to make my way to Tombstone. I had hopes of finding a job there. I am peace-loving and, I suppose, too soft for the wild country.’

  ‘Gentle,’ she suggested. Cameron shrugged.

  ‘Choose whatever term you care to,’ he replied. He rubbed at his forehead, sunburned and aching. ‘My only chance of survival – I have thought long about this – is to take Stony Harte to the authorities. And he would be a dangerous man to try to capture. This I know.’ Carmalita started to interrupt, but Cam held up his hand and went on. ‘The other chance would be to restore the stolen gold to the stage line. There is a man named Morton who has his office in Tucson, an agent for Wells Fargo. He seemed to be a fair-minded man. If I could find the gold and deliver it to him, I might be exonerated.’

  ‘Can it be done?’ Carmalita wondered.

  ‘I have no idea. It is Stony Harte we’re dealing with,’ Cameron answered, realizing that he had used a plural. ‘This man can shoot the head off a rattlesnake without aiming. I know, I’ve seen him in action.’

  ‘So Emily has told me,’ the girl said, biting at her lower lip. ‘It is good to know that everything she tells me is not a lie.’

  ‘I don’t see—’

  ‘Because my sister tells me many things, Cameron Black – more, I’m sure than the outlaws would like, if they knew about it. Let us discuss this matter, carefully discuss it.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Cameron said, rising to walk to the window. He parted the curtains and looked out at the plaza which seemed to have returned to relative calm.

  ‘Get?’

  ‘Understand,’ he explained to the Spanish girl. ‘You seem to be offering to help me, but I don’t even know you, Carmalita! How can I be sure—?’

  ‘That I am not in love with Stony Harte, working to see that you are jailed, wanting any reward that might be offered for you, trying to keep you prisoner?’

  ‘Well.…’ he said hesitantly, but his words were banished by her wild laughter – not hysterical or mocking, but simply exuberantly merry.

  She wiped tears of laughter from her huge brown eyes with the hem of her white skirt, folded her arms beneath her breasts and told him, ‘None of that is so. I despise Stony Harte for what he has done to my sister, what she has become. If I wanted you killed I would not have opened the door for you. If I wanted a reward, I would not be alone with you in a room you are free to leave at any time. I could not stop you; I’m sure you are much stronger than I am. No, Cameron Black, I simply want to escape from Las Colinas – that is the name of this pueblo if you did not know, and free my sister of this strange infatuation she has with these outlaws.’ She shrugged and continued, ‘I know there have been many women who attach themselves to such men, perhaps seeing them as exciting rebels like Robin Hood. I am young, but I know this is not so. These people are nothing but animals. I can see how they treat Emily and it is ruining her as a woman.’

  ‘All right,’ Cameron said, taking her at her word. He turned to face the young Spanish woman ‘What is your idea of how to proceed?’

  ‘I can see your eyes,’ Carmalita responded, rising to face him. ‘What you wish most is to be safe. That means we have to find a way to smuggle you out of the pueblo. The second thing I see in your eyes, Cameron Black, is that you wish to take revenge on Stony Harte, but are not sure how to go about it.’

  ‘True,’ he admitted.

  ‘My priorities are different, but our aims are the same. I want firstly to remove Emily from the hands of the bandits. Secondly only, I wish to take some small measure of revenge on Stony Harte. He has not injured me so grievously as you, yet still I hate him.’

  ‘Has he ever tried …?’ Cameron asked weakly.

  ‘To have me follow in Emily’s footsteps. Of course!’ she laughed, but there was no humor in her laughter.

  Cameron rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘Maybe I should just try again to get to Tombstone on my own, leave all of this behind me. I don’t think I’m a coward, Carmalita, but I don’t think I’m man enough to go up against Stony and his gang. They have a special sort of murderous skill that I do not possess.’

  ‘You must do what you want,’ the girl said sharply and she turned her back to him. She still clutched herself, her back showing beneath her white blouse fit tightly across her shoulders. She was silent then. Cameron lifted a hand meaninglessly. Without turning to face him, Carmalita asked, ‘Would it help if I begged for your help? I am a woman alone; I can do nothing.’

  Then Cameron did feel like a coward. His heart sank as he studied her. It wasn’t his pride in his manhood nor the beauty of the slender lines of her body that swayed him: it was her foundationless trust in him, a childlike hope that he might assist her that shamed him. His hand rose again and this time he stepped nearer and placed it on her shoulder.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said without the reluctance he was feeling. ‘You’ve been thinking this through longer than I have. Where are they and how do we go about it?’

  They sat at the small table where Carmalita had placed two dainty cups filled with strong coffee. The sun slanted through the window, etching rectangles on the floor. Once, outside, there was a huge uproar and Carmalita explained, ‘They are dragging the murderer’s body through the town,’ and then the silence returned. Cameron hadn’t liked the Dutchman at the end when he had reverted to his true colors, but he hated to think of any man’s life ending as Voorman’s had.

  ‘Are there still just the three of them?’ Cameron asked, referring to Stony Harte’s gang. ‘Stony, Willie and the man called Slyke?’

  ‘That is all,’ Carmalita answered, as the sun through the pale curtains lit the dark gloss of her hair with its brilliance.

  ‘Of course. If they brought anyone else in at this point they’d have to split the gold another way.’

  ‘That is so,’ Carmalita agreed. ‘And if there were ten men instead of three, it would draw attention. A band of men that size would alert people that trouble might be arriving. Cameron,’ the girl said, revolving her cup on its saucer but never sipping the coffee, ‘two of the men, Willie and Slyke – I did not know that was his name – the one with a head like an egg, no hair even on his face – are staying in rooms at the cantina.’

  ‘And Stony Harte?’ Cameron Black asked, and astonishingly the girl blushed and turned her eyes down in shame.

  ‘They are at my mother’s house. Las Colinas is my home, as you know. And it is my sister’s. My mother is very old and she is nearly blind, half deaf, quite infirm. It is so sad that Emily has told my mother that Stony is her Americano husband. My mother feels a little sad because my sister has married a gringo; if she knew the truth of what Stony is, I believe it would be her death.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘When Emily and her “husband” come home from a business trip – buying horses is what they say, selling them in Mexic
o – they bring presents for Mama and Emily hugs her and Mama is so happy, glad that her daughter has everything she needs.’ Carmalita hesitated. ‘She does not know that Stony Harte is a robber, a gunman. She does not see the way he treats Emily. How he beats her and curses her and calls her names.’

  ‘Emily takes it?’

  ‘She takes it, covers her bruises and crawls back like a beaten bitch.’

  ‘I understand now, a little more, why you hate Stony,’ Cameron replied. ‘And all the time, does he—?’

  ‘Yes, of course!’ Carmalita answered. ‘All the time he takes every chance to try to grab me, threaten me, tell me how beautiful I am, how much gold he would give me.’ Her face finally lifted and although she had not been crying, Cameron could see the hidden tears in her eyes. His resolve was growing stronger. He himself had been shot, left for dead, imprisoned, but somehow that had already begun to fade from memory. He had survived.

  But the heartbreak in Carmalita’s voice was much more touching than his own sorrows. He did not believe for a moment that he was strong enough to best a hardened killer like Stony Harte, but he had resolved that he was strong enough to try.

  ‘It’s better to go after the two in the cantina first,’ Cameron said, after a long period of thought. ‘Do they drink enough to muddle their thinking?’ He recalled the ‘white lightning’ the gang members had had at the hideout cabin. Raw spirits, as close to pure alcohol as could be distilled.

  Carmalita told him, ‘They get drunk, flirt with the girls, try to start fights and sometimes fall down on the cantina floor. The owner does not care – they spend money very freely. Always in gold.’

  ‘I wonder what Stony thinks of that?’ Cameron mused.

  ‘I can tell you. Listening at their bedroom door, I have heard Stony tell Emily that he was going to ditch the two of them. I don’t understand that word in that sense, but if it means what I think it does, Slyke and Willie will never get their share of the remaining gold. He gives them just enough to stay drunk on.’