by Chuck Tyrell
Havelock put a handful of prickly pear mush on the wound, slapped an ear with the skin scraped off one side on the poultice, and wrapped the whole mess with strings of juniper bark. He tied the makeshift bandage with teeth and fingers, and it stayed put.
He roasted and ate several prickly pear fruit, taking the edge off his hunger. He took a long drink of water from the natural tank and burrowed into an overhanging mesquite to get out of the sun and get some sleep, knife at hand.
****
In Prescott, the governor had just finished reading a telegram from M.K. Meade saying his daughter was safe.
In Wickenburg, four weary travelers slept off their grueling ordeal between clean white sheets. A lone rider leading a spare horse paused under the window of the hotel. It was Barnabas Donovan.
12
Havelock stayed near the pool of water for another day and night, leaving when the water almost gone and nearby prickly pear plants had all been stripped of any ripe fruit. The wound in his arm was angry red, but not festering. The cactus pulp served to keep the edges of the wound soft. By the morning of the second day, Havelock knew he had to move. Water and food were gone, and it was a long way to Ehrenburg. Staying in the shade had given his bare skin time to toughen against exposure, but he'd still burn in direct sunlight.
He bellied down to the dregs of water left in the sandstone basin, drinking all he could hold. He let his body store moisture for him because he had nothing in which to carry water. If he was lucky, he'd make the stage road before he died of dehydration or sun stroke.
Havelock shaded up for the remaining hours of daylight. There was no use letting the sun suck the moisture from his body any quicker than absolutely necessary. As the sun dropped behind the western mountains, he once again bellied down to the sandstone tanks, sucking at the last of the water. It would be a long way before he got another drink.
He started his walk at dusk, his feet protected by moccasins, his arm poulticed with prickly pear and wrapped with cedar bark, and the knife stuck in his loincloth. He kept the pace slow and careful; no need to waste body water by sweating. Besides, his head still throbbed and it was less painful to walk slowly.
With Eagle Eye Mountain to his right, the battered marshal set out for the stage road, more than twenty miles north.
He was still high above the floor of the desert. The horizon stretched far into the distance where the black outline of stony mountains bisected the darkness of the starry sky.
The desert's a hard land, thought Havelock. But it's strikingly beautiful, too. It's a living land that's wild and free, and it makes no compromises for puny men and their imagined greatness. Havelock chuckled.
Not far away to the north and east, ancient cliff dwellers had raised their Montezuma's Castle to overlook the silent, deep waters of Montezuma's Well. Further along in that same direction lay Pleasant Valley, where Tom Graham had a cattle ranch and the Graham-Tewksbury feud would soon put the Hatfields and McCoys to shame.
On over the Mogollon Rim, at an altitude above six thousand feet, a silver ribbon of water ran through flat grasslands flanked by great malapai volcanic remains. It was the place Garet Havelock had found when visiting Col. Corydon Cooley's big white house in the foothills of the White Mountains five years ago. He'd filed claim on a half section and had a man proving up on it. He planned to raise whiteface cattle and good horses on that place…someday.
Havelock's mind wandered as he walked through the desert night. The dry wind sucked moisture from his body faster than he'd counted on. He'd planed to make ten, maybe twelve, miles through the night, then hole up for the day, and walk the rest of the way the next night.
Then, he fell. Stepped right off the edge of a shallow gully and rolled nearly a dozen feet down the side to fetch up against a sandstone ledge. For a moment, he lay there dazed. I'm gonna have to quit banging my head against things, he thought. The fall had torn the cactus poultice from his arm, too. A little blood oozed out.
Havelock made it to his feet on the third try. Fortunately, the knife at his waist had not driven into his groin. He peered through the darkness at the hole in his arm. The bleeding had already stopped, but it throbbed, its pulse echoing the throbbing in his head.
He started to climb the side of the gully, but didn't have the strength. He went to his knees and held very still, marshalling his strength to think of a way out.
Climbing would only sap his strength more, Havelock decided, so he would follow the gully westward to the desert floor.
Half an hour later, he found a stand of Osage orange growing in the bottom of the wash. He cut a staff from it to lean on as he plodded on his way.
The miles he'd walked over the desert had worn through the thin soles of his moccasins. Once more, his bare feet were being punished through gaping holes in the leather. Havelock forced everything from his mind but forward motion. Cacti were dim forms in the dark, but he could see them soon enough to avoid them. The moon rose, bathing the desert in soft blue light. Havelock made better progress then. He'd trudged nearly ten miles when the dawn sent fingers of gold into the black of night to turn the sky above Eagle Eye Mountain to blue.
No junipers at this low altitude so Havelock slept in the shade of a jutting monolith of stone instead, moving as the sun moved, trying to stay in the shadow. With evening, his arm and head felt better. His feet did not.
He made a meal of raw prickly pear fruit, peeling their outer skin and spines off with his knife. The fruit added moisture to his tissues and a measure of strength to his muscles. The glory of the sunset was still in the sky as he started walking, once again moving north.
With the soles of his moccasins gone, his feet were further lacerated by the desert floor. Progress slowed. He had to have some kind of covering for them or he'd never make the stage road.
He paused in the night. The dull aches in his head and arm echoed the sharper pains from his feet. He leaned on his staff and surveyed the desert before him. Higher up, he could have stripped a juniper of its bark for makeshift sandals. Down here there were no such trees, and prickly pear ears wouldn't last the time it took to tie them on his feet. If only he had some of that Pueblo painkiller. Unconsciously, he stuffed a forefinger in the waistband of his loincloth, searching the folds for a trace of the medicine.
Loincloth! Leather loincloth. A long strip of soft doehide about a foot wide, tied at the waist with a leather thong, leaving flaps to hang down front and back. Havelock's thoughts were disjointed, but he realized he'd found a covering for his feet.
He cut foot-shaped patches from the front and back flaps, one for each foot. Then he sawed a strip away from each side, leaving it attached at the back. He punched holes along the sides. Placing a foot on one patch, he grasped the two strips, pulling them across his instep. Back and forth he laced the strips until the patch on his foot resembled a Roman sandal, though the sole was not nearly as tough.
The improvised sandals let him move much faster, but he was still at least three miles from the stage road when the sun topped the divide.
He knew that movement in the daytime would sap his small reserve of strength very quickly. But the road was so close. And he'd promised to go to Wickenburg. He'd promised to bring in Donovan. He'd promised to get back the gold.
As Havelock trudged along, he ceased to think of his responsibilities. He focused on the stage road. If he could just make the stage road.
The hot sun sucked at his pores and scorched his bare skin. Already he could feel it burning. A dry wind sprang up, cracking his lips and blotting more moisture from his body.
Six miles to the east, the Ehrenburg-bound stage raised its roostertail of dust as it barreled along the rutted stage road, rounding the curve beyond the foothills that lead to the heights of Eagle Eye Mountain. Havelock didn't notice the stage until it was less than a mile away.
He broke into a shambling run. The road was a good mile off, but still he ran, clinging to the hope that the driver or the shotgun rider would see
him plunging across the desert. They didn't.
The stage went by. Even the dust had settled by the time Havelock staggered out into the rutted road and sprawled face down. There he lay, unmoving, his panting breath raising tiny spurts of dust. The stage had gone on by. It was no use. And he was so tired.
So very tired.
****
Santa Fe Sims drowned an errant stinkbug with a stream of tobacco juice. He rarely missed, either with tobacco-induced saliva or with the eighteen-foot bullwhip that hung in a coil from his left shoulder. He could snap a fly from the ear of any horse in the team without touching a hair.
Some thought Santa Fe was colorful, with his long white hair, buckskins, walrus moustache and greasy slouch hat, its brim pinned up against the crown with the crossed sabers of the Confederate cavalry.
But Wells Fargo hired Santa Fe Sims because he was the best man on the ribbons this side of St. Louis. Before the war, he drove freight wagons from St. Louis down the trail to Santa Fe. In Southern arms, he kept what supplies there were flowing to Lee right up to Appomattox. When the fighting was over, Santa Fe Sims found his way right back to the trail from which he took his name—who'd want to own up to a first name like Bartholomew anyway—and took to cracking whips and singeing mule ears with epithets mostly unfit for human ears.
"Stage leaves in five minutes flat," Santa Fe shouted.
"Should be a smooth run," said Haycock, the Ehrenburg Wells Fargo agent. "One sack of mail and two passengers. That can be worth enough for anyone to hold you up for."
"A man cain't be too careful. Wouldn't want to get bullet holes in this here brand-spanking new Concord." Santa Fe was nonchalant, but obviously proud of his new coach. He clambered up on the box and gathered up the reins.
"Barny," he called to a youth whose guileless face belied his age and his skill with a shotgun. "Get them laydees and gennulmun into the coach. We got a ways to go afore sunset."
The youth shooed the passengers, a drummer and a portly woman with a kindly face, into the Concord.
"Okay, Santa Fe," he said as he climbed up to the box, "Let 'er rip."
The whip crack sounded like a rifle shot. The popper at the end came up short of the ear of the offside lead mare by no more than a fine hair. The two spans of horses went from a standstill to a flat-out run in three strides. Santa Fe always liked to exit dramatically.
Once out of Ehrenburg, the old jehu pulled the teams back to a ground-eating gallop. Six hours and two way-stops from now he'd be pulling into Wickenburg with the same flair he left Ehrenburg with.
Santa Fe was on his second team when young Barny Ellsworth put a hand on his arm. The shotgun rider was pointing at a prone figure in the road ahead.
"Looks like a dead Injun," he shouted.
"You keep your eyes peeled for owlhoots," Santa Fe instructed, "I'll have Sally Mae look that gent over." The team came to a stop not ten feet from the naked figure in the dust.
"Sally Mae."
"What do you want, Santa Fe?"
"There's an hombre lying in the road ahead that looks like he's either dead or pert near so. Hate to ask a lady to do something like this, but would you do me a favor and take a look-see?"
"You know I'm no lady, Santa Fe Sims, and I can take care of myself well enough to examine any man's body, lying in the road or not."
"We just don't want this to be some kind of bushwhacking job, Sally Mae. I knowed you could care for yourself, which is more than I can say for that drummer man in there, that's why I ast you to have a look-see. Me and Barny will stay up here where we can see real good."
The portly woman stepped down from the stage with a big Dragoon Colt pistol in her capable right hand. The hammer was eared back. Sally Mae Peebles was armed and ready for trouble, should any come.
She bent over the prostrate form in the dust.
"Santa Fe, it's a white man. He's some hurt. Looks like he run all the way from Phoenix in his bare feet. Got some kind of contraption on his leg, too. Get yourself down here with some water."
Sally Mae put her pistol in its specially made skirt pocket and turned the body over.
Santa Fe arrived with a canteen. "That's Garet Havelock, marshal of Vulture City. Looks like he's been handled a bit rough." The tough old jehu lifted Havelock's head with surprisingly gentle hands. He tipped the canteen and poured a few drops of water into the slackly open mouth. At first nothing happened. The water just trickled down the dusty chin. Then Havelock's throat contracted and a tiny bit of that brackish, wonderful water slid down his throat. Suddenly he had a kind of desperate strength. With one hand, he knocked away Sally Mae's arm. With the other, he grasped for the canteen. But the jehu held him back.
"Easy now, marshal. You must-a come some ways. You just settle back and let Miss Sally, here, take care of you 'til we get to Wickenburg."
"Meade," Havelock croaked. "Gotta see Meade."
"All righty. We'll getcha there. Jest you take it easy."
The stage was back on the road in minutes, heading through the gap toward Wickenburg. The Harcuvar Mountains towered more than five thousand feet on the left, the Harquahalas soared to nearly six thousand on the right.
13
The delay put the stage into Wickenburg just after dark, but Havelock didn't know it. The safety of the rocking Concord let him release all the fear and anxiety that had kept him going and fall to sleep so soundly that he didn't even stir when Santa Fe and Barny Ellsworth carried him to a room on the second floor of the hotel. There he sprawled on clean sheets while Laura Donovan salved the cuts and scratches that covered his body. Wickenburg had no doctor.
Across the street, a big Irishman bought Santa Fe Sims a drink.
"I always admired a good man with the ribbons," he said. "I hear you're one of the best."
"Son, I cut my teeth on rein leather behind a team of mules. I know every rock between Saint Lou and Santy Fe. I oughta, I hit 'em all." Santa Fe had more than one drink under his belt already.
"I saw you come in tonight. Sure was a pretty sight. But I wondered about you carrying a wounded Indian. Isn't that a bit dangerous?"
"'T'wan't no Injun. 'Twas the marshal of Vulture City himself, Garet Havelock. Pretty beat up though. Bottoms of his feet looked like chopped steak. Had a hole in his arm, too. Don't reckon he'll be too spry for a spell."
The big stranger found an excuse to leave Santa Fe and walk out of the saloon. The old jehu's practiced eye noticed that the gunbelt and Frontier Cold in it didn't match the rough clothes the big man wore. The leather was intricately tooled and carefully oiled. The gun gave off the dull glint that spoke of use combined with careful upkeep. It was the rig of a man who knew how to use a gun, but wore it with much fancier duds. Something didn't fit.
The old muleskinner stared after the retreating form for a moment, then shrugged and turned back to the bar.
"Know that feller?"
"He's been hanging around for, oh, three, four days. Seems to be a right-enough jasper. Everyone's been pretty excited about the governor's daughter being brought in by that young Donovan feller. Don't s'pose anyone paid much attention to this feller. Why?"
"Ah, nothing. He just hit me a bit strange, that's all."
Outside the saloon door, Donovan slid into the shadows of the overhanging roof and stood for a long moment. He didn't want to run the risk of someone recognizing him. True, he'd let his beard grow into a stubble and slouched to hide his true height, but now, after Vulture City, too many people knew him by sight. And Garet Havelock was still alive. He cursed. Should have killed that boy I had tied to that tree back in the Territory, he thought, grinding his teeth. Should’ve done more than just shoot him in the knee. Always have been too sentimental for my own good.
Out there in the desert, a lot of gold lay buried. Arch Donovan had buried it. And he'd told his older brother where. Now, both Donovan and Arch knew where the gold was, and that was one person too many to suit Donovan. If Arch hadn't gone all pie-eyed about that girl, if h
e'd not started listening to that lawman, well, then perhaps he could have been trusted. Not now, though. Not now. And Donovan decided his half-brother had to die.
The girl had been sent back to Prescott. Sooner or later, the boy would come down for a drink. Then he'd die. But before that, Donovan made up his mind to tend to another job—the matter of the kid he'd not killed during the war.
Donovan kept to the shadows until he was at the back door of the hotel. It was not locked, but then, most doors weren't. He catfooted up the back stairs without being seen or heard.
He turned out the hall lamp and stepped back into the shadows to watch. Someone would surely go into or come from Havelock's room before long. The big man settled back to wait.
No more than fifteen minutes later, Laura came out of the second room on the left with a pan in her hand. She hurried downstairs without looking around at all. Donovan scowled. He knew at once he had found Havelock's room. At the same time, he cursed Laura—his own flesh and blood—siding with that lawman.
A red mist came up before his eyes to match the rage that pounded in his chest. He took gigantic steps down the hall, the echo of his footsteps ringing in the narrow confines.
He tested the door with a big fist. It would not open. Even in his anger, Donovan knew he didn't have time to break down the door. He also knew that every room in the hotel was the same. Angling the Frontier Colt so the lead from its 6-inch barrel would smash into anyone on the bed, Donovan fired five shots so quickly they were almost a single roll of sound.
Immediately he stepped into the adjoining room and strode to the window, ejecting spent shells and reloading the Colt as he walked. Shoving the gun back into the holster, he wrenched the window open, climbed out on the ledge, and dropped into the dark alley below.
He casually walked from the alley onto the boardwalk and down the street to the saloon. Soon, he was with a rowdy bunch of men bucking the tiger in the far rear corner of the place.
