Dead Warrior

by John Myers Myers

  “How did you happen to be doing that?” I asked.

  “They drafted me for sheriff, after the one they had bought a ticket for ’Frisco.” Sparks dismissed the incident with a modest smile. “Well, after I’d busted up that mob, the Southern Pacific wanted me to keep the construction camps in order. All the way across the desert I’ve been hearin’ about Dead Warrior and how old Baltimore was cock of the walk here, so when the railroad got just so near I says, ‘Hell, the S. P. can make it the rest of the way alone,’ and I high-tailed it over here.”

  Lewis, I would have guessed, did not ordinarily drink from the bottle, but he accepted the flask from Sparks and took a slug. “How did you and Carruthers meet?”

  “Hasn’t Baltimore told you about that, Dwight?” Roy gave me affectionate consideration and then answered his own question. “No, he wouldn’t. Well, we’d known each other good enough to say, ‘Here’s mud in your eye’ before, but the time we really got to be side-kicks was when me and him saved Dolly Tandy from the Barringer gang.”

  While I was fortifying my aplomb with a pull at the bottle myself, Lewis caught up a pencil. “You mean the famous woman gambler?”

  “Sure do, Dwight.” Sparks took possession of the flask again. “She was dealin’ in a house I run over New Mexico way; and this Barringer kidnapped her one day, when he knowed I was out of town.”

  “Who’s Barringer?” Lewis was too busy scribbling to look up.

  “Who’s Barringer?” The front legs of Roy’s chair hit the floor, and he made a brief contact with reality at the same time. “You’ll find out, if you stick around Dead Warrior a few more months. He’s nothin’ but the head rooster in every terminus camp started by the comin’ of the S. P., and he’ll expect to be that here, too. Did you know he was in Arizona, Baltimore?”

  Being a newspaper publisher, I did. Charlie Barringer and a supporting coterie of gunmen had moved south from Montana early in the summer. As Sparks had said, they had made themselves masters of the community which moved along with the thousands of railroad workmen. There was a good living to be made out of shaking down the numerous terminus city small fry of crime, and I had no doubt that Barringer was doing very well for himself.

  “Yes, I’d heard about it,” I said, yawning in reply to Roy’s interrogatory gaze. My thought was that if Sparks had indeed frequented any of the camps dominated by Barringer it was because he had managed to have himself accepted as one of the latter’s hangers-on. “How did you and he get along this time, Roy?”

  “Oh, he didn’t want any of my game,” Sparks said, deftly stepping back into his chosen character, “and as long as he didn’t give the railroad no trouble, I let him alone.” Passing the flask to the correspondent and then back to me, he gave his attention to Lewis once more. “Well, as I was sayin’, Dwight, he’d grabbed Dolly Tandy — Miss Dolly, we mostly called her — and — ”

  “What’s she like?” Lewis interrupted.

  “Cute as a bug and sweet as they make ’em,” Sparks decided. “Well, I was wild when I got back to camp, feelin’ sort of responsible, you know; but everybody else was scared of the Barringer gang, except Baltimore here.”

  Sure I wouldn’t be missed, I rose and put the bottle on the desk within convenient reach of both. “I’ve got to go over to the stage and freight office,” I explained to Lewis.

  “Don’t stand on ceremony,” he sped me on my way. “How did you and Carruthers find out where the gang had gone, Roy?”

  “You didn’t have to be no Injun to follow those rannies,” I heard Sparks admit, as I walked toward the door. “There was fifty-three outlaws in the gang, though I wouldn’t say there was quite that many left by the time we was through with ’em, and they left a trail like a glacier in moonlight. Well, I had a long-range buffalo gun, and Baltimore — ”

  Outside on Apache Street, I stretched and grinned. Whatever Dwight Lewis might think of Dead Warrior, I was well content with all that met the eye. If the town was not yet a metropolis on the scale of New York, that could wait its hour. It was still a miraculous thing, in my opinion, to have sprouted from a lone savage’s grave.

  Part Three

  A Town Finished

  Chapter 17

  EARLY FALL SAW THE HAPPY Hunting Ground and the Glory Hole opening for business amidst the splendors of their new decorations. These were advertised as being more lavish than anything to be found in the Western Hemisphere; and there were few doubters among those who viewed the hardwood floors, the intricately carved bars, the vast mirrors and the crystal chandeliers they reflected.

  More remarkable to me was the variety of drinks available. Ham Gay’s stock had originally consisted of a couple of kegs of maverick whiskey. Now it included all the better brands of that liquor, as well as imported wines, beer served at just the right temperature and a wide range of cordials.

  Most remarkable of all were the bartenders. Where Short-fuse had once presided alone, clad in a red flannel shirt, there were three men in gleaming white jackets.

  “They sure know their stuff, don’t they?” Gay proudly asked.

  “Yes,” I agreed, being able to do no less. They could mix any concoction, were as fast as they were efficient and were prompt to note just who had an empty glass or needed a light. At the same time, they worried me, though it took me a while to locate the source of my uneasiness. These were the first barkeeps in Dead Warrior who didn’t act like they’d either whip you or lend you five dollars, and they didn’t care which.

  “Tell me something, Ham,” I said. “Why didn’t you keep Short-fuse?”

  “You and him was my first customers, wasn’t you?” The landlord looked reminiscent, then he chuckled. “I didn’t get rid of him, Baltimore. I’d say the straight of it was that he fired me.”

  “How’s that?” I asked, after pausing to jump and look around nervously. The shotlike popping of champagne corks was a new sound in Dead Warrior, and it was hard to repress the instinct to dive and hug the floor.

  “Well, I’d been skittish about how Short-fuse would take it, but I finally gathered all my sand in one heap and told him he’d have to wear one of them starched jackets.” Ham looked up and pointed to a skylight above the bar. “It was my good luck that that thing was open, or I’d sure have had a hell of a hole to repair when he went through the ceiling.”

  Droop-eye and Overton were presiding at the two faro tables, but I did not join the tiger-defying crowd around either layout. Gambling was a Dead Warrior constant, and my mind was on the changes which had taken place. The paintings and statues in the gambling room were among the novel luxuries which attracted my attention. Whatever their artistic worth, here were the expensive creations of European craftsmen, as a sign that the town had stepped from the frontier into the main orbit of civilization.

  “You have the air of a connoisseur, sir,” a voice at my shoulder interrupted my musing. “Are you perhaps a painter or sculptor yourself?”

  The nearest approach to artificers in Dead Warrior were the prostitutes who emblazoned their complexions and the smiths who arched bars of metal into the shape of horseshoes. Looking to see who had asked me such an unexpected question, I peered at a man I had met once before.

  “How’s Darwin’s Waterloo?” I wanted to know.

  “Dead and no doubt causing the buzzards that ate him posthumous grief.” The lively eyes rolled back and forth above the full beard as Dr. Hatfield tried to place me. “If you know that much about my private life, we must have been on terms of intimacy, for I am of that laconic mold which scorns to reveal private woes to strangers.”

  “Especially when met in the solitudes of the Texas Panhandle,” I helped him out.

  “The man with the stagecoach, to be sure! Carroll — Carraway — Carruthers.” Having identified me, he made an all-inclusive gesture. “I see you found the place you were looking for, and I don’t see how you could have done better.”

  To praise Dead Warrior in my hearing was like flattering a child in the p
resence of a fond parent. I nodded complacently.

  “We have the only real makings of a city south of Denver.” To this man I could confide aspirations that wouldn’t interest everybody. “I think you’ll live to see it the cultural as well as the industrial and commercial center of the West.”

  “I’m sure I will,” he pleased me by saying. “It was my folly in believing sensational gossip which kept me away so long; but one afternoon in your town has convinced me that it is the place I have been looking for — found, too, when I was just on the verge of giving up my quest and returning to the East.”

  About to ask him whether he had visited the Dead Warrior Free Library yet, I remembered what the object of his quest had been a couple of years earlier. “Are you thinking of trying to locate a university here?”

  “Not trying, Mr. Carruthers.” Suddenly his face wore the light of the dreamer who achieves. “It’s all but an accomplished fact.”

  Once I had been skeptical of his great idea, but at that time it had not been identified with Dead Warrior. Excitedly I grasped the professor’s arm.

  “But have you got the money, Doctor? Did you finally make a rich strike?”

  “I learned today that riches do not have to be extracted from the earth,” Hatfield told me. “I have found them in the heart of a great and generous man.”

  Trying to think of someone in town possessed of both the riches and the suitable inclination, I looked my puzzlement. “Horace Bedlington,” Hatfield said, in a tone that implied that I was stupid not to have guessed. “Despairing, I was in Tucson, about to entrain for San Francisco and take ship for the Atlantic seaboard via Panama Isthmus, when I learned that Bedlington was here. Determined to make one more effort, I arrived to have a talk with him today, and — and it was as easy as that.”

  I had known that Bedlington was making one of his periodic visits to Dead Warrior, but it was difficult for me to associate him with benefaction. “You mean to say he told you that he’d endow a university here?”

  My mixture of excitement and disbelief amused Hatfield. “When I had gained an audience with him, he wasn’t cordial at first, but it was wonderful to see the idea grow on him. After a minute or two there was a glimmer of interest, then he smiled, and finally he turned to his assistant, Mr. — ”

  “Weaver?” I suggested.

  “Yes, that was the name.” Seeing me fumbling for a match, the professor handed me one. “Well, as I was saying, Mr. Bedlington turned to Mr. Weaver, and slapped his thigh, crying, ‘By George, this is exactly what we’ve been looking for.’”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said. “And he wrote you a check?”

  “Our Maecenas did better than that.” The professor spread out his hands to symbolize magnitude. “He said that as soon as I was ready to build, he would give the university money to match half the gold output of the Dead Warrior mine, and he authorized me to tell the newspapers as much tomorrow.”

  “That’s very handsome,” I admitted, stunned at having to speak favorably of a man I had always loathed. “As for the newspapers, I know that one of them, at least, will be very much interested, because I run it. Have you picked a location yet?”

  “That will be the step after next,” Hatfield informed me. “Tomorrow afternoon I leave for the East in order to select an architect. However, I would be most grateful for your aid in choosing a site, pursuant to my return.”

  Beyond Dr. Hatfield I could see Sam Wheeler hold up two highballs invitingly, and I thought that further talk about the university could be postponed until the sobrieties of the following morning. “I’ll not only pick out a prime location but work out a scheme for bringing water to the campus,” I promised, as I moved to join Sam.

  Putting forward the fact that I was already on the school board, I got myself appointed as one of the directors of the new institution of higher learning, when Hatfield and I conferred the next day. The professor had had a more classical name in mind, but I insisted on the importance of the most famous name in Arizona, in order to win territorial good will. It was as a trustee of Dead Warrior University, then, that I rode forth the following Sunday, bound for Beaver Lodge Butte and beyond.

  Notwithstanding the cultural nature of my mission, I had a rifle in the saddle boot. Past the butte was unsettled country, and in recent weeks the remnant of free Apaches had troubled the area. A Carruthers and Wheeler freight driver had been scalped within ten miles of town only the week before, as a matter of fact.

  My tentative choice for a campus was one of the shoulders of the butte, a flat expanse which commanded a fine view of the valley. Before examining its possibilities, however, I rode on into the dip of country on the other side and up to the high ridge which made the next horizon. There was a stream over the hill that I thought could be dammed, giving the university a cheaper source of water than diverting it from the Dead Warrior aqueduct, itself no more than adequate for the needs of a booming city.

  Topping the ridge, I saw a rider, though not an Apache. I had heard that Dolly Tandy had returned to town two days earlier. Now I saw her, spurring uphill toward me from behind a rugged mass of rock. She was moving fast, but I attached no importance to the fact until I heard shouts behind her.

  I was on my way to meet her even before the first Indian dashed into sight. A second one followed, while a third emerged from a mesquite thicket, nearer to me and in a position to cut her off.

  Facing toward me, the other two saw me halt and raise my rifle. The third man glanced my way at their yell of warning, but his first glimpse of me was his last look at anything. My bullet took him out of the saddle, and his fall knocked the breath out of him before he could finish his death yell.

  Having moved to put Dolly between themselves and me, the remaining Apaches were shooting, too. The girl’s horse went down, just as I managed to stop Spanish Monte from rearing. Dolly lay in a heap, I saw, when I was once more moving forward, stunned or perhaps killed by the tumble. This had loosened the hair I had always thought so lovely, and which now offered allurement to the Indians. Dismounting, one raced to take the scalp, while his companion waited for me to ride into sure-death range.

  There was not time for me to halt and take steady aim once more. I was about to risk shooting over Dolly’s head while jolting along when that head lifted. Our relative positions were such that I couldn’t see the pistol she fired at the oncoming brave, but at one jump away from her he commenced staggering backward. At that I turned my own fire on the lone survivor, who had seen the odds shift against him. Wheeling about, he raced off.

  The girl was sitting up, trying to rearrange the hair she had come so near losing, when I crouched beside her. “Are you all right, Miss Dolly?”

  “Not only all right but in good company.” She looked as shaken up as she no doubt was, but she achieved a smile. “I didn’t take that fall quite right, so I turned my ankle; but I’ll be able to ride if you’ll catch one of those Indian ponies.”

  Of these the first would not stand for the approach of a paleface, though the second evinced no such prejudice. Finding that he wouldn’t be allowed to browse in peace, he let me ride near enough to grasp his halter.

  “What were you doing out here in the first place?” I asked, while I was putting Dolly’s sidesaddle on Spanish Monte.

  “Oh, just riding over to that pretty little creek, to give my horse some exercise.” She shrugged.

  Her offhandedness told me what her words had not. It was the very fact that Apaches were in the neighborhood, creating the stimulant of risk, that had drawn her so far afield.

  I cocked an eye at her. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Miss Dolly, but I prefer the times when you’re not being shot at.”

  That wasn’t much of a reproof, but she bridled at it. “I’d just as lief come back tomorrow,” she assured me. “The chances of meeting Indians are smaller than ten to one, and I’ll take those odds any day.”

  When I had helped her to mount, however, doing my best to save her from
having to put any weight on her turned ankle, she sat looking down at me, her face much softer. “The mind is such a tricky thing that it often second-guesses without admitting it, Baltimore, but I think I knew that it was you who picked that first Indian off, even though I didn’t have time to look.”

  “Perhaps you did.” After holding her gaze for a moment, I made a gesture of submission to destiny. Abruptly then I threw my saddle on the startled Indian pony. “Let’s clear out of here. You never know what sort of flies rifle fire may draw, and sufficient unto this day have been the Apaches thereof.”

  As we were picking our way uphill, the buzzards wheeled into position behind us. Unwillingly I had to watch them at their work, for I kept looking back for indications of pursuit. Dolly meanwhile was singing in her low, sweet voice.

  My name is Bill Doty,

  My mother’s own child;

  Part pup, part coyote,

  Half friendly, half wild.

  I don’t give a curse for

  The laws of the land —

  Us he-coons are worse for

  What weasels find grand.

  On a butte to the east of us I could see a smoke signal, but of the Indians to whom it spoke I could find no sign. Glancing ahead, I made sure that none had got between us and town. Meanwhile Bill Doty’s credo was further revealed.

  Some people like sleeping

  At dark of all moons;

  I rather like keeping

  Night watch in saloons.

  I don’t like to labor,

  I do like to roam,

  A gun my one neighbor,

  The next town my home.

  Reaching the shoulder of Beaver Lodge Butte once more, I let out a sigh of relief. Dolly heard that and smiled to show she felt the same way.