Arizona Territory

by Dusty Richards

  He thanked her and she drove off. Climbing in the stage, he spoke briefly to the stage office agent holding the door and felt an empty spot form in his gut.

  “Damn you, Chet Byrnes. You can find the purtiest women in this whole world to be your wives. I swear you must be a genius at finding them.”

  “He damn sure is, Paul,” said the driver when he shut the coach door behind Chet.

  “Well, I can believe that, too,” Paul said, and climbed up on the seat. “Hang on, boys, we’re leaving Preskitt right now.”

  They were off to Tucson. Sleeping was hazardous as always inside the stage. Besides lurching from side to side, it also rocked up and down. In places, the driver ground the two teams up front almost to a halt going off steep hills and grades, then opened them up in the moonlit flats. It was a whirlwind ride, like usual, but Chet did steal some sleep.

  He and his men caught breakfast mid-morning at Hayden’s Ferry. Then they reloaded for Tucson. The day’s temperature hovered over a hundred already. Besides the dust that swept into the coach, the desert heat was like a furnace blast. After several horse changes, they took a break at Papago Wells. The eastbound stage from Yuma was late, and the agent asked Chet to give them a little time because a top man for the U.S. Marshal’s office was on that coach. Sheldon Arnold and his wife, Rachael, were the party they waited for.

  Obviously, the agent didn’t want to listen to the important man’s lamenting about any delays. Two hours later, which Chet knew would make their arrival in Tucson be after dark, the stage from Yuma arrived. Cole climbed up with the driver, so Chet and Jesus shared the coach with the Arnolds. He introduced himself as head of the Force.

  “Oh, yes, you are the man who shut down most of the border invasion forces that were plaguing the southern territory. I understand you ranch here.” Arnold mopped his face with a Turkish towel and then handed it to his wife who looked equally heat stressed. A nice-looking lady, but much younger than her husband. Chet guessed her to be in her early twenties and Arnold in his forties.

  “I have several ranches across the state,” Chet told him.

  “Well, I am pleased to meet you at long last. I was busy inspecting our California operations when I received notice about the payroll robbery.”

  “You know, Marshal Byrnes, that San Diego is in the seventies night and day?” his wife asked.

  “No, I didn’t. While it’s not that cool at my ranch at Preskitt up in the mountains, it’s much cooler than it is down here.”

  She squinted her green eyes and shook her head. “I hope you two quickly solve this case. I am not anxious to be here very long.”

  “I think with Marshal Byrnes and his men here, we soon may have this case solved and on our way, my dear.”

  “Good, Bootsie, because I am really ready to leave now.” She looked perturbed and stared out the side window at the boiling dust.

  Chet counted his blessings that she wasn’t his wife. Taking her along would be torture, compared to Elizabeth and his adventures with her.

  “Do you have any idea who these murderers could be?”

  “No. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find them. There are a lot of criminals that filter in here from the more eastern places. Recent restoration of the Texas Rangers has pushed the Texas criminals westward. So I suspect these felons may be unknown to Arizona territory lawmen.”

  “I know you are familiar with this element better than myself or Marshal Thomas. I do appreciate you coming in to help us.”

  “No problem. We’ll never get accepted as a state until we clean up the crime, and we need statehood for more economic development and growth.”

  “Spoken like a true American and a businessman. Amen.”

  “Since they have ended occupation of the South, perhaps we can be better understood in congress as hardworking people needing statehood.”

  Arnold agreed. Rachael moaned more about how uncomfortable she was from the heat, and her husband, for his part, totally ignored her. Chet tended his own business, and Jesus tried to sleep.

  They stopped at Picacho Peak Stage Stop for a horse change. The sun had set and the small peak stood out against the night stars.

  “Aren’t you lucky you don’t have her?” Jesus said privately, standing a short distance from the coach.

  “Amen.”

  “He don’t even hear her.”

  “You’re right.” They climbed in and took their seats. The Arnolds soon joined them and Rachael continued to fan herself.

  Nothing would help the heat except being under a waterfall, Chet mused. They weren’t close to where they were going, traveling through the night in a hot wind and churning up acrid dust. Tucson, the walled city, wouldn’t be any better, with no place to escape the temperatures as the stage charged through the narrow dark streets. Chet knew he’d be grateful to be at the hotel at last.

  Disembarking the stage, he had the agent take care of their saddles and war bags. Then he shook Arnold’s hand and spoke cordially to his wife, before they went to their hotel two blocks away. The Arnolds had reservations at the Congress. Chet found it too pricey, and where they stayed at the Brown was adequate.

  A street vendor made them burritos and they lounged near her spot to eat the meal.

  “About time we found some food,” Chet said.

  “That cook at the Peak hasn’t taken a bath since Christmas,” Cole said.

  “We never eat there,” Jesus said.

  “Not even starving,” Chet teased.

  They walked into the Brown lobby and took their room keys. Chet asked to be woke at seven, and when he answered the man’s knock, he was thinking he hadn’t slept very much.

  They took breakfast in the hotel restaurant and went to the federal courthouse to meet with Marshal John Thomas and find out what they could do for him. No sign of Roamer, but Chet decided he must be on his way with the horse stock.

  Thomas shook their hands and thanked them for coming. They went in his office and he showed them on the wall map where the robbery occurred. The spot was north of the main stage route, across southern Arizona west of Benson where the road went to Fort Grant.

  “Did they have a wagon or did they use the one it was on?” Chet asked.

  “We haven’t found the Army wagon with our roadblocks east and west on the Butterfield Road.”

  “They had to have a wagon to haul that many coins, either the Army’s or theirs.”

  Thomas agreed. “We’ve looked and found nothing. I had some Chiricahua scouts look for it. Nothing.”

  “When my men get here, we’ll look for it.”

  “If Indians can’t find it . . .” Thomas cut him a hard look.

  “I have nothing against Indians. But they didn’t find it. My men will go up there and look. A large wagon didn’t evaporate, unless they burned or buried it. That might tell us more about the robbery than we know now. If they didn’t use it to haul those coins out, then they had another conveyance.”

  “They tell me you and your men are among the best lawmen in the territory, so I’ll do anything you wish, but we’ve not found a shred of evidence we can use to make an arrest or launch a grand jury investigation.”

  “Give us a week. If we don’t turn up anything, I’ll go home and run my ranch.”

  “I thank you, sir, for coming.”

  “Do you have any witnesses that saw them?”

  “They were all masked. They swooped down with what must have been maybe twenty raiders or more, and ran over them, killing anyone they came to and took the rig away. They left the dead and wounded.”

  “They went south toward the Butterfield Route?”

  “We think so, but lost the trail.”

  “I’m sure we can find the trail to Fort Grant out there,” Chet said, convinced.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “That new coin money should be a flat giveaway if they spend it.”

  “Everyone has been notified to be on the watch.”

  “My man will be h
ere with horses for us shortly, and I’ll let you know what we find.”

  They shook hands. Once outside the courthouse, Chet shook his head. “We are late to look at this situation, but we can still follow it. No one steals coins. They’re too hard to transport and dispose of. The robbery site must be twenty miles east of here. If I stole it, and if I lived here and had a sound team to drive, I could be home in six or seven hours.”

  Roamer found them after lunch. He and Shawn had brought the riding horses and pack ones, too. Chet fed the two men lunch from a street vendor, while Cole and Jesus went for their saddles and war bags. By three o’clock they rode east, and about sundown asked a rancher permission to camp at his windmill.

  The rancher told them he had been quizzed by the lawmen and had no idea who had done the crime.

  “Is there any word about this robbery? I mean, folks talking about it,” Chet asked.

  “No. I was surprised. I thought maybe Mexican bandits did it, but there isn’t much talk about it.”

  “If twenty men rode up that road, wouldn’t folks see them?” Chet asked.

  “Sure, unless they went one or so at a time and were local, huh?”

  “You have any notion about that?” Chet asked.

  The man shook his head like that was all he wanted to say.

  Later in camp, Cole said, “Sounded to me like he told you something.”

  “He has to live here. If that’s what happened, that the robbers are people who live here, he would have to keep it to himself. I savvy that’s why he isn’t saying anything.”

  “How will we ever prove it, if no one will talk about it?” Jesus asked.

  “We need to start thinking about that as possible. I say, ‘possible.’”

  Both his men nodded their heads.

  “Men, it looks like this may be the toughest case we ever tried to solve.”

  “We heard about it happening down at Tubac, but it has been kind of subdued, like there is something wrong,” Roamer said.

  “I imagine before we’re through, we’ll have spent lots of time trying to figure it out. If we can.” Chet shook his head. “Why is this robbery so damn strange?”

  “Why did they let them get this close to the fort? Looking at that map, they let it get almost there,” Cole said.

  “They had to have a good road to take a wagon that heavily loaded out of here. The roadblocks east and west on the Butterfield Road turned up nothing. So they either hid it or buried it.”

  “It may be parked somewhere under a mesquite bush,” Shawn said.

  “But how many packhorses would it take to haul it away?”

  “They might of buried it.”

  Chet agreed. “Until things cool down. Maybe. Tomorrow, I want both ways from the site of the robbery scouted. Look for anything unusual. If it is an inside deal, we’ll learn, sooner or later.”

  He went to sleep that night in his bedroll, thinking about his wife. They had been together for nearly a year and he was spoiled. Poor cowboy, looking for a little sympathy. She definitely was not there. Go to sleep.

  CHAPTER 27

  Come morning, it felt cold in the early dawn, stirring around with his crew to saddle horses and cook breakfast. Roamer and Shawn would work north asking anyone what they knew and look for evidence. His three would go south and see if anyone saw anything or had any ideas. When the sun rose, the chill wouldn’t last very long, and he’d bet Rachael Arnold wouldn’t be up this early to enjoy it. Poor woman must be cooking in Tucson. Glad that he was not her husband, he poured coffee into tin cups for everyone.

  “How is your farm doing on the river?” he asked Roamer.

  “My wife has a Mexican woman helping her, and they take vegetables to the market every day. Lupe is a real salesperson and they’re making money. I’m surprised, but they are really doing well.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah, I was surprised when she set in to do all the planting, but folks are looking for fresh turnips and carrots and lettuce. I may be a farmer someday.”

  They all laughed. Chet shook his head. If Roamer ever became a farmer, he’d operate from a chair in the shade. He was a great lawman, but not an industrious laborer.

  “Saddle up. We can meet back here. Listen close to any witnesses. But don’t put words in their mouth. We need witnesses who saw them.”

  They spent the day on the road interviewing anyone who would talk to them, coming and going, and stopping to talk to residents who lived on or near the road.

  Did they see anyone driving a wagon by on that date?

  Anyone strange drive it?

  What did they look like?

  Jesus talked to the Hispanic people softly and nodded his head at their replies. Chet sat patient on his horse while it switched its tail at flies. Cole rode ahead to look for another witness.

  Jesus soon returned and mounted up. “The Castros said they saw the mounted guard go by and it never came back. He said the only wagon that came south that evening was a Mormon bishop named Elliot.”

  “He say what he was hauling?”

  “No, he could not see it, but said his big horses were in their collars whenever they hit a little grade.”

  “Why didn’t anyone else see him?”

  “Castro is not a Mormon.”

  “Jesus, many of these white folks we’ve talked to are probably of that same religion.”

  “What should we do about it?”

  “We need to talk to the main men from the marshal’s office. I’m sure they won’t want any trouble with a church group over this matter, but Elliot is the only man we can identify as being seen driving down from Fort Grant.”

  Cole rode up to join them. “You two learn anything?”

  “Jesus talked to a Hispanic couple. They didn’t know why he was asking, but the only person who came by that day in a wagon was a ward bishop named Elliot.”

  “Holy cow. That make him a suspect?”

  Chet held up his hand. “Not so fast. We need to check on him and learn a lot more, but so far he’s the only one anyone has seen go by. I doubt a dried up little Mexican man and his non-English-speaking wife will make a jury convict a high official of any church.”

  “That bothers you?” Cole asked.

  “Sure, it does. If someone like that murdered the payroll guards and stole the money, they aren’t any better than the Mexican bandits we’ve run down.”

  “I feel like that, too. Now what do we do?”

  “We go back and talk to our boss, and his boss, if he’s still here.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Let’s ride in and get there by mid-morning. We may be able to get a search warrant from a judge and search his place, if they want to do that.”

  “Maybe Roamer found something.”

  “I hope it was something more than what we did. Let’s get back to camp.”

  Everyone jogged their horses for camp. Chet had a bad feeling about the outcome of this whole robbery business and was still perplexed by what he knew.

  When they caught up with Roamer, he was no help, but he did hear about four men who rode in from the north that day. Someone saw them that day, but didn’t know them. They were well armed. Careful with his words, Chet told Roamer and Shawn what they had learned.

  “What next?” Roamer asked.

  “We go to Tucson and talk to the boss tomorrow. If he don’t want to do anything, we won’t, and I say we all go home if that is the case. If he wants to get us a search warrant, we’ll serve it and apologize if we find nothing.”

  “Think he’d have the money at his place?” Roamer asked.

  “He might think because he is church leader, because of his position, he won’t be checked.”

  “Damn, what will we do?”

  “Let our new boss decide.”

  “Good enough for me.” Roamer and Chet shook hands.

  Chet could hardly choke down the food Jesus served them. It hung in his throat going down and soured in his stomach. At last in his bedr
oll, he tossed in his sleep. No crime had ever drawn this out of him. Damn. He fought sleep, and finally slept, but wasn’t rested at morning.

  They reached the federal courthouse and Chet requested an audience with his boss from Earl at the desk, who went into the back office.

  Thomas came out and said his boss was there. That he wanted to hear anything they had to say. Chet said he needed his crew in there.

  Thomas agreed. The secretary, Earl, went for chairs and Shawn helped him.

  “You’ve met Chet Byrnes,” Thomas said to Arnold. “He can introduce his men for you. This is the Force we have used on the border.”

  “I met Cole and Jesus on the stage.”

  “This is Roamer and Shawn.”

  He shook their hands, nodded to each, and said he was glad to meet them.

  “What do you have?” Thomas asked Chet.

  “The only man that drove a heavy loaded wagon down that road that evening was a Mormon bishop named Elliot. He’s a ward leader in charge of a Mormon church.”

  “How good is the witness?”

  “Jesus talked to him. They are an older Hispanic couple, and she speaks no English.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think a Mormon church leader drove a heavy-laden wagon by their place after the robbery.”

  Thomas looked at his boss, Arnold. “Do we need to show him what we picked up at the First Arizona Bank today?”

  His boss nodded.

  Thomas drew a heavy cloth sack out of the drawer in his desk and spilled the shining coins on the desktop.

  Chet stepped closer and nodded. “Who deposited that money?”

  “A farmer from upstream named Rickard who paid off his mortgage today with these coins.”

  “Is he a Mormon?” Chet asked.

  “I imagine so. I’d bet eight out of ten farmers on the Santa Cruz River are Mormons.”

  Arnold broke in, “Byrnes, you live in this territory. Is this going to be another mess, like they had over at the Meadow Valley wagon train massacre in Utah over twenty years ago?”

  “No, I know a lot of those people. This never has occurred before, or I’ve never heard of it, anyway. But they’re all covering up seeing any of them on the Fort Grant Road. Except for the one couple who saw him, and I wouldn’t want to endanger their lives.”