by Paul Lederer
With the sun still floating high in the sky, Joe started riding out on to the long desert – the whitest, emptiest, most desolate and cleanest country in the nation.
Leaving the Dog Stain behind.
TWO
‘I’ll have that horse! And before you move, I’m warning you that I shoot to kill.’
In the west a blue velvet dusk had settled above the mountains, the red half-eye of the sun gleaming through the gathering murk. The man who had yelled out to Joe Sample stood on a low, humped sand dune where a few determined strands of thorny briars had pushed through, searching for air and sustenance. Joe glanced toward the narrow figure; then turned back to his cooking. Behind him the lazy meandering creek he had been following northward was faintly audible.
He had started bacon frying, had beans from a tin can ready and pan bread dough mixed. The smoke from his mesquite wood fire curled lazily toward the darkening skies, its pleasant, raw scent mingling with that of the heating food.
‘What are you, deaf?’ the man with the rifle yelled out, his voice raspy, dry.
‘I’ve got supper cooking,’ Joe answered. ‘It’s the only meal I’ll be having today, and I’m anxious to taste it. I’ve also got a pint pot of coffee. Why don’t you come down and join me?’
‘Why don’t you just do as you’re told!’
‘You haven’t told me to do anything yet, and I probably wouldn’t do it anyway. If you shoot now, you’ll ruin supper for both of us – and likely breakfast tomorrow. I know you’ve got me in your sights; I know you said you shoot to kill, but if it happens that you don’t hit my vitals with your first shot, you’ll note that I am wearing a gun, and if you give me a chance I’ll be shooting back. I’m not the world’s best shot, but you aren’t that far away from me, stranger. I expect I could tag you, even from my back.’
Joe suggested: ‘How about eating something first, then you can tell me what it is that’s bothering you?’
The stranger shuffled down the sandy knoll. As he approached, Joe noticed defeat in the thin man’s eyes. Another of life’s explorers losing his way.
‘Help yourself to a cup of coffee. It should be done by now.’
The thin man squatted on his heels and poured dark coffee from the small pot. He paid particular attention to the common utensils Joe had. ‘All of your gear is brand new,’ he commented, ‘but you’re no pilgrim.’
‘I had to start over from nothing. I ran into some bad luck.’
‘That is my horse,’ the stranger said, pointing toward the buckskin Joe had purchased. He took a sip of coffee, raising his gaunt, firelit face to Joe. ‘I got myself into a mess back in Yuma. The man across the table had three kings when I thought he was drawing to the flush showing. I lost my ready money and had to sell my horse or get kicked out of the hotel – Dog Stain – does that name mean anything to you?’
‘I’m afraid it does,’ Joe said, helping himself to a cup of coffee. Night birds were singing along the creek. Chatty, energetic chirps.
‘I thought I could win my horse back if the right card turned. It didn’t,’ the stranger said morosely.
‘That’s why I’m not a gambler,’ Joe said. ‘There’s only two things that can happen and I don’t like one of them.’
‘Losing.’ The man’s head nodded. He stroked his fingers down the stringy flesh of his throat ‘You’d think a man would learn better as he got older.’
‘Oh, we learn better,’ Joe said with a short laugh, ‘it just doesn’t stop us from doing it.’
‘I guess that’s it,’ the stranger said. ‘What is it that happened to you, Mr…?’
‘My name’s Joe Sample,’ Joe said extending a hand.
‘Tittle Sparks,’ the man at the fireside answered. Joe reached in to keep the beans from burning and slapped a few spoonfuls on to each of the tin plates he had taken from his pack. Why he had even purchased two he could not have said. But now and then a man does run across a companion even in the wildest places – if Tittle Sparks, rifle in hand, could be considered a companion. Still, if a hungry man came looking for a meal, you never refused him – not out here.
‘You were going to tell me how you lost your poke,’ Sparks said.
‘It wasn’t exactly like that,’ Joe replied, and he began telling Sparks the story of having his leg broken by a steer in the holding pen. It wasn’t really much of a story, he realized, but Sparks was riled by it.
‘And your boss, this Poetry Givens, you mean he just left you behind in Yuma?’ Darkness was settling; the firelight deepened the creases in Spark’s face.
‘He paid me off – I don’t know what else he could have done.’
‘I think I’ve heard of the man,’ Sparks said, greedily shoveling the last of the pan bread into his face after sopping up the bean juice with it. ‘The Double Seven is down toward Alamogordo, isn’t it?’
‘Socorro,’ Joe corrected.
Sparks went on with some heat in his words. ‘I know that ranch. They say that Givens named it the Double Seven because then his smith would only have to make that one iron – “7” – this way, then it could turned upside down to burn another “7” the other way.’ Sparks sketched the Z-like Double Seven brand in the earth. ‘Isn’t that what it looks like?’
‘Yes, sevens butt to butt.’ Joe was puzzled. What was the man getting at?
‘Because it was the cheapest way to design the brand!’ Sparks said with triumphant confidence. ‘It saved iron.’
‘Well, I doubt—’
‘So that’s the man who left you down and out in Yuma! It figures.’
‘My leg just took longer to heal than anyone would have guessed.’
‘Now you don’t have a job, is that it? Now that you’re crippled, Poetry has no use for you.’
‘Poetry’s not like that – he has a couple of yardmen on the ranch who got themselves hobbled up years ago. He takes care of them well enough.’
‘But they get paid less, I’ll wager.’
Joe was tired of discussing the character of Poetry Givens. He had always been treated well by the ranch owner. ‘It wasn’t Poetry’s fault,’ Joe insisted. ‘As for taking care of me – he’s not my daddy. I get paid for looping steers. I do my job; he pays me. That’s reasonable. The only way this could have been avoided was if I was clever enough never to become a cowboy.’
‘If you say so,’ Sparks muttered. ‘Anyway, I guess it all worked out for you. Seeing all this new camp gear you have tells me that something turned up for you. So I guess,’ he acknowledged grudgingly, ‘that you aren’t a thief, that you had enough money to buy my horse from that lowlife, Wolfe, down in Yuma.’
‘Do you want to see the bill of sale?’ Joe offered, reaching into his pocket.
‘No,’ Sparks answered, waving him off. ‘I suppose I was just a little touchy. Having no food in my belly, no water, no place to go and no way to get here.’
‘A man can get desperate,’ Joe agreed. ‘Just don’t let it lead you to shooting solutions.’
‘Well, son, I was ready to start grazing on sand,’ Sparks said, leaning forward, his hands on the knobs of his bony knees. ‘I suppose I should be thanking you for that meal instead of complaining to you. But it’s hard times for sure.’ After a thoughtful minute as the last light of the dying sun faded from the blue sapphire sky, he asked:
‘Where are you headed, Joe?’
‘Eventually to the Double Seven,’ Joe said hesitantly. Poetry told me I’d always have a job there. But there’s a few stops I have to make along the way.’
‘Where’s that?’ Sparks asked, leaning forward, squinting narrowly at Joe.
‘I’ll be needing to stop for a few more supplies,’ Joe answered vaguely.
‘Seems to me you’re pretty well stocked,’ Sparks said, nodding at the burlap bags that held Joe’s provisions.
‘Think so?’ Joe said warily. Sparks seemed too interested in his material goods. No matter – it had been a long day and the evening was cool; Joe decided to
curl up in his blanket with the last flickering red and gold remnants of his fire lighting the dark camp.
But he chose to sleep with his Colt revolver in his hand.
Dawn was a scarlet blur across the eastern horizon. Joe awoke stiff and lightly coated with sand. He sat up, clenched his knees and groaned, and looked around for Tittle Sparks. The long-faced, narrow built man was gone. As was the buckskin horse. And his saddle-bags containing his traveling money.
Too angry with himself to rise and curse the skies or chase after the man, Joe sat, thinking about how stupidly trusting a man can be. Sparks had announced his intention to take the horse, had nearly flat-out said that he was there to rob Joe whom he took to be a wealthier man than he, and yet Joe had let it happen.
Joe Sample had never considered himself overly-bright, but the episode was a new low in wisdom, even for him. Thinking about it, he considered that a part of his trusting nature came from having worked in an environment on the Double Seven, where, as on almost all ranches, a man could depend on his partners – simply because he had to. On the range if you could not depend on a man to bring help when it was needed – on an occasion when some ornery bronc might toss you or a snake bite you – well, you just had no one to count on.
Which explained why so many cowboys ending a cattle drive caused such a huge ruckus in trail-head towns – places they would never be invited back again. Months on the trail forged bonds. Fighting weather, Indians and half-wild animals brought the crews closer together than any army. One man might get into a dispute in one of those towns, be it Abilene or Wichita, any place you care to name, and his brothers of the saddle naturally came to his aid until things got too far out of hand. The ranch bosses didn’t like it, but they understood it and knew they needed that sort of unity among their men. They would grudgingly pay off any fines and lay into the cowboys, meaning only half of it, then return to the home ranch.
That was the way it was. But Joe was just a little too old to be as gullible as he seemed to have become, trusting his fellow man. Still grumbling as he surveyed the empty white-sand desert around him, Joe recalled that Sparks hadn’t even had a kind word to say about Poetry Givens who was the best boss Joe had ever hired out to.
‘Well, damn you, Tittle Sparks,’ he swore. ‘I’ve never met a man low enough to take supper at my fire and steal my pony in the night, leaving me afoot in country like this!’
He knew he wasn’t going to strike out across the flats. The Double Seven outfit had just finished driving a herd across that land beneath a white sun. Most of the cattle had made it, but there were a lot of bones and hides scattered out there. He made his way back toward the creek he had been following. Not knowing the area, even the name of the slow-moving, green-water stream, he was uncertain where it would lead. But any water in this wasteland offered a promise of life, and if there was a small ranch or community out this way, it would most likely abut the stream.
Joe took a breath and trudged forward. The high sandy banks of the creek were clotted with willow brush, nopal cactus and little else. The morning was tolerable enough as the bank to the east provided him with shade while he tramped along, shuffling over twigs, cactus and rocks, but when the sun reached its noonday azimuth, the heat of it fell like an iron brand across his shoulders and back.
He had water – he was grateful for that. Without it he would not have lasted a day. What his shrinking stomach urged him to do was to find some source of nourishment but nothing offered itself up to his hopeful searching. There were fish in the stream – bluegills, he thought – although he never got close enough to the darting silver fish to be sure. He had no line, nothing to forge a hook out of, and his one attempt at using a length of sharpened wood to spear one proved only embarrassing. He shuffled forward, following the stream hopefully.
He found nothing to eat, not a cottontail rabbit, not a rattlesnake – although by the signs in the sand, they were plentiful enough. And there was no shade! He could have crossed the creek to the other side where shadows would be falling sooner, but that would slow him down and likely ruin his boots.
Cursing Tittle Sparks and the evil ways of men, he sat in mid-afternoon on a rock abutting the stream and soaked his bare feet in the flowing water. Cicadas buzzed in the underbrush and peeper frogs chorused in the dry reeds. Once a small covey of quail wandered past, glanced his way and fled on foot. It took a lot to startle them enough to take to wing.; they were hardly six-gun game. Beyond that and the constant pestering of gnats, nothing moved along the valley, and there was no sign that anything – man or horse – had done so for a long while.
Joe rubbed his sore feet and looked into his boot, seeing the two ten-dollar gold pieces. All that Sparks had left him to survive on. Not that they did Joe a bit of good out here where there was nothing to be purchased and no one to buy it from, which, he thought, showed you how valuable money was at the bottom.
But that cash might prove valuable when he did manage to reach some settlement – if such there were out here – and he offered silent thanks to old Foghorn Blaine, a stubby, whiskered old-timer who had once seen Joe starting toward town to spend his pay and celebrate a successful drive and told him with heartfelt remonstrance: ‘Son, you have to always keep something to boot. You never know when you might need it.’
And when it won’t do you any good at all to have it, Joe was thinking, but Foghorn had been right – even having an extra dollar or two set aside could sometimes save a man from having to live like a crawling mongrel dog. People are apt to help you more if you can show them a little silver or a piece of gold – that’s just the way things are.
It was coming on to purple twilight when Joe saw the lights shining in the distance. The banks of the river had flattened, and looking toward the east, he could see the shimmering lights of what appeared to be a small town. He could hardly choke back the cry of relief in his throat as he struggled up the sandy bluff to solid, flat ground on blistered feet. He stood as a man amazed before he began plodding on toward the hopeful sign of civilization.
Joe wanted a horse more than anything in this world. No, he wanted food for his shrunken stomach. He wanted to find Sparks and teach that man a real lesson about respect. Or, more than anything, he realized, as he staggered toward the distant lights, he wanted to see another human face, talk to someone, anyone at all….
The first person he met was not the one Joe would have chosen.
‘Well, ain’t you a belly-crawler!’
‘I don’t know,’ Joe said hoisting his hands since the pudgy man standing before him in the near-darkness had a shotgun leveled at him. ‘I’m not familiar with the term.’
‘You ain’t?’ the hard-boiled man said, not lowering his shotgun an inch. ‘That’s what we call those like you who come dragging in off the desert. Half of ‘em’s army deserters, others broke-down prospectors who lost their burro to a rattlesnake. Now and then we even get somebody who’s broke out of Yuma Prison – murderers and bank robbers and such. Which kind are you, stranger?’ he demanded of Joe.
‘None of those,’ Joe shrugged. Behind the man was the rough shape of a poorly made house. The sky at sunset was milky blue, a flare of reddish light sketched across it. The shallow creek behind him still announced itself with trickling sounds. The air was scented with a familiar, unappetizing barnyard smell.
The man with the shotgun continued to scowl at Joe, wanting an explanation from this ‘bellycrawler’.
‘Someone took my horse and gear and left me out on the desert,’ Joe said.
‘Friend of yours?’
‘Not much,’ Joe said with a weak smile.
‘You should have been more careful.’
‘I guess I should have,’ Joe agreed.
‘Where was you heading?’ the armed man asked with a hint of slyness, as if he were trying to outwit Joe.
‘Newberry – do you know where that is?’
‘Is that where you come from?’ the man with the shotgun asked, ignoring the questio
n. ‘Up that way?’
‘No, I’m from Socorro, actually. It’s kind of a long story, friend. Do you mind us talking about it without that gun in my face?’
‘No, we are pretty friendly around Pierce Point.’
‘Is that what this place is called?’ Joe asked.
‘Of course it is.’ The man looked pityingly at Joe. ‘Man, you don’t know where you are or where you’re going, do you?’
‘That about covers it,’ Joe was forced to admit. ‘Any chance of a man getting something to eat? It’s been a long time since I’ve put my teeth to any meaningful work.’
‘That depends – have you got any money with you?’
‘A little,’ he answered. There was a little silver money in his jeans that Sparks hadn’t been able to get at, plus his boot money, which he resolved not to show to anyone for the time being.
‘All right,’ the man with the shotgun growled, ‘come up to the house. Addie will make you something – for a price.’
The breeze stirred as Joe followed the bulky figure of the man along a narrow path winding between thick stands of nopal cactus and scattered creosote bushes; the breeze did nothing to cool the skin, but it lifted scattered light debris – chiefly chicken feathers, which explained the scent of the place. To one side Joe noticed a long, squat, lath structure, and from it emanated fluttering, complaining, squawking noises indicating that the hens had not yet settled for the night and were having a hard time doing so. Finally they reached the house in the near darkness.
‘Mind your boots,’ the gun-toting stranger told Joe as he stepped on to the rear porch to the house. ‘Addie is not fond of chicken-droppings on her floor.’
