Elmore Leonard's Western Roundup #1

by Elmore Leonard

The Apache's one eye shifted. “Did to her? Did what?” he said in English.

  “Is she all right?” asked Moon.

  “She needs to be beaten,” the Apache said. “Maybe cut off the end of her nose.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Bren Early said. He got up and stepped to the window again.

  “He speaks of Hey-soo Cristo.” The Apache paused and said, using Spanish again, “What is the matter he can't sit down?”

  “He wants to do battle,” Moon said.

  The Apache stretched open his one eye, raising his brow as if to shrug. “Wouldn't it be good if we could have what we want? I take all the mountains sunrise of the river San Pedro. You take all your people and go back to Washington”—pronouncing it Wasi-tona—“be by your big chief, Grover Cleveland. Man, he was very fat, do you know it?”

  “He eats good,” Moon said.

  “Yes, but he gave us nothing. We sat in a room in chairs. He didn't seem to know why we were there.”

  “You liked Washington?” asked Moon.

  “Good water there,” Loco said, “but no country or mountains that I saw. Now they are sending our people to Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Is it like Washington?”

  “I don't know,” Moon said. “He served there one time,” looking up at Bren Early.

  “I believe it,” the Apache said.

  “It's like San Carlos, but with more people and houses.”

  “With mountains?”

  “I don't think so,” Moon said. “I've never been there. I've never been to Washington either. I've been to Sonora…Santa Fe, in the New Mexico Territory.”

  “The buildings in Washington are white,” Loco said. “There are men made of iron on horses also made of iron. Many buildings and good water. You should go there and live if that's what your people like.”

  “I like mountains, as you do,” Moon said. “I was born here, up on Oak Creek. I want to stay here, the same as you do. But there's a difference. They say, ‘Put Loco and his people on the train to Fort Sill.’ I can say, ‘Put him on yourself, I won't do it.’ And somebody puts you on the train. It's too bad, but what can I do about it?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Bren Early said, listening to them talking so seriously and understanding the drift but not the essence of what they were saying and feeling.

  Moon raised his eyes. “We're looking at the situation.”

  Bren Early made a gun out of his right index finger, aimed it at the back of Loco's head and said, “Pow. That's how you solve it. You two're chatting—last week he shot four people dead. So we send him to Oklahoma for a vacation.”

  “It's the high part of his life to raid and steal horses, since the first Spaniard came up this valley,” Moon said. “What else does he know? What's right and what's wrong on his side of the fence?”

  “My life is to meet the hostile enemy and destroy him,” Bren said. “That's what I know.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Moon said. “You want a war, go find one.” He began gathering Spanish words again and said to Loco, “When your men arrive, tell them to get all of your people here in the mountains and bring them back to San Carlos. You go with us. It's the way it has to be for right now.”

  “Maybe it won't be so easy,” Loco said. “There are others coming too.”

  Yes, the dust from the west, eight or ten riders. “Who are they?” Moon asked.

  Loco touched the dirty red pirate bandana covering his head. “The ones who take hair.”

  “You're sure of it?”

  “If they're not of you, or not the soldiers of Mexico, who are they?” the Apache said.

  4

  Bo Catlett came back with Katy McKean, the girl eyeing them with suspicion as she rode into the yard, sitting her roan like they'd have to pull her off it. Then sitting up there feeling left out, because they didn't have time for her those first moments. Bo Catlett began telling them about the riders coming. He said it looked like they had scattered the Indian herd and the two sides had exchanged gunfire, Bo Catlett hearing the reports in the distance. Now some of them for sure, if not all, were coming this way and it wouldn't be too long before they'd see the dust.

  Bren Early studied the girl as he listened, thinking to himself, My, my, my, the poor sweet young thing all dirty and tattered, like the savages had rolled her on the ground and torn at her dress to get it off.

  He said, “Miss,” helping her down, taking her by the arm, “come on inside out of the hot sun.” She pulled her arm away, giving him a mean look, and Bren said, “What're you mad at me for? I just want to give you some coffee.”

  “I ain't going in there with him,” the McKean girl said, looking at Loco standing in the doorway. “Less you want to loan me one of your guns.”

  “Don't worry,” Bren said. “He gets familiar with you again, I'll make the little heathen marry you. But how are you, all things being equal?”

  The girl said, “What do you mean again?”

  “I was just teasing,” Bren said, “showing you there's nothing to worry about.”

  “He tried things,” the Mckean girl said. “I hit him in his good eye and kicked him up under his skirt where it'd do the most good. But I ain't going in that room with him. I still got his smell in my nose.”

  Dana Moon took her gently by the arm. She looked at him but didn't resist as he said in his quiet tone, “You been through something, lady, I know; and we're going to watch over you.”

  “Thank you,” the girl said, subdued.

  “But you got to do what I tell you for the time being, you understand? You can kick and scream when you get home, but right now try and act nice.”

  5

  Who were they? was the question: Watching from the windows as they had waited for the Indian, Moon and Bren Early with their glasses on the riders raising dust across the old pasture.

  “Seven, eight,” Bren Early said. “Like cowpunchers heading for town.”

  “Starting to hang back, sniff the air,” Dana Moon said. What did those people out there know, looking this way? First, trailing Apaches with a horse herd and a white woman. Then, seeing a man in a derby hat riding off with her. They would have to be confused.

  “They traded shots,” Bren Early said and paused, thinking, Then what? “If they wanted the horses, why didn't they take 'em?”

  Which was about where Moon was in his own mind. “Say they did, and left somebody with the herd. How many you count, Bo?”

  “Ten,” Bo Catlett said. “Coulda been another one.”

  “And they saw you for sure.”

  “Couldn't miss us—time I got the lady turned around.”

  “They're cowhands,” the McKean girl said, with that edge to her tone again, not feeling very rescued crowded into this adobe room with four men and animals. She had moved up by Moon's window and stood close to him, seeing the hard bump in his jaw, wondering if he would ever spit; then would look over at Bren Early, maybe admiring his long wavy hair, or the tight, shrunk-looking suit molded to his tall frame. Squinting out the window, she said, “You can tell by the look of them, the way they ride.”

  Still, the McKean girl had to admit—without saying it aloud—it was a bunch of riders for not having any cows, and moving south at that, not like they were heading home from a drive.

  “There was a man used to sell us beef at San Carlos,” Moon said. “I believe the name was Sundeen.” Still watching through his glasses, seeing the riders at four hundred yards now, spreading out more as they came at a choppy walk, not a sound from them yet.

  “I used to know him,” the McKean girl said, a little surprised.

  Maybe they didn't hear her. Bo Catlett said, “The same man supplied meat to Huachuca. Look in his war-bag you see a running iron, it's Phil Sundeen. Used to bring his beef in vented every which way; cows look like somebody was learning to write on 'em.”

  Moon said, “If I remember—hired vaqueros he paid twenty a month and feed. And we see some Mexican hats, don't we?”

  “Which one's Sundeen?” Bren
Early asked.

  As Moon studied the bunch through his glasses, the McKean girl, squinting, said, “That stringy one on the sorrel—I bet he's got a hatband made of silver conchas.”

  “Something there's catching the light,” Moon said.

  “And forty-fours in crossed belts with silver buckles?”

  “You got him,” Moon said.

  “Don't anybody listen to me,” the McKean girl said. “I used to know him when his dad was still running things, before they sent Phil Sundeen to Yuma prison.”

  “That's the one,” Moon said. “You knew him, huh?”

  “I was acquainted with him,” the McKean girl said. “I wasn't to have nothing to do with him and that was fine with me. He was cheeky, loud and had ugly ways about him.”

  Bren Early said, “What was he in prison for?”

  “As this colored man said, for using his running iron freely,” the McKean girl answered. “It might be he run a herd down here to the Mexicans. On the way home he sees One-Eye here and decides to go for the bounty trade. Ask the Indian. He wouldn't have given himself up otherwise, would he?”

  The men in the adobe room looked at this girl who seemed to know what she was talking about. How old? Still in her twenties, a healthy-looking girl, though dirty and sunburned at the moment. Yes, she knew a few hard facts of life.

  Bren Early, leaning against the wall by his window, looked from the girl to Loco. “You must be worth plenty, all these people coming to see you.”

  “Make 'em bid high,” the McKean girl said, “and look at the scrip before you hand him over, or that son of a bitch Sundeen will try and cheat you.”

  The men in the room had to look at that girl again.

  Moon saw the waiting expression in Loco's eye and said, “He ain't going with them, he's going home.”

  “I know he's going home,” Bren Early said. “I didn't come six days for the ride.”

  “If it means an argument, what difference does it make who takes him?” the McKean girl asked. She was serious.

  Bren Early said, “Because he belongs to me, that's why.”

  And Moon said to her, going over to his horse, “I'll try and explain it to you sometime.”

  Bren Early was watching the riders, two hundred yards now, still coming spread out. “We got blind sides in here,” he said. “Let's get out to the wall.”

  Moon was bringing a spare revolver out of his saddle bag, a Smith & Wesson .38 double-action model. He said, “You don't mean everybody.”

  Bren Early looked at him. “I'm referring to you and me only. Shouldn't that do the job?”

  Moon pulled his sawed-off Greener from inside his blanket roll. Coming back to the window he handed the .38 to the McKean girl, saying, “You don't have to cock it, just keep pulling on the trigger's the way it works. But let me tell you something.” Moon paused, looking at the Apache only a few feet away. “He's with us, you understand? He's ours. Nobody else's.” Moon looked at Bo Catlett then and said, “Bo, give him his gun. Soon as it's over, take it back.”

  Walking out to the adobe wall, carrying their firearms, they watched the riders coming on, the riders looking this way but cutting an angle toward the stock tank.

  “We'll let 'em water,” Bren Early said.

  “You give 'em too much they'll camp there,” Moon said.

  “We got no choice but have a talk first, do we?”

  “No,” Moon said.

  “So they'll water and stretch first, take a pee and look the situation over. I hope they don't use dirty language and offend the girl's ears.”

  “Don't worry about her,” Moon said.

  He laid his Greener on the chest-high crumbling wall, leaned the Sharps against it, cocked, in front of him, loosened the Colt's in his shoulder rig, then decided to take his coat off: folded it neatly and laid it on the wall a few feet away.

  “They're watching us,” he said.

  “I hope so,” Bren Early said.

  Bren had leaned his Spencer against the adobe wall. Now he drew his big .44 S & W Russians, broke each one open to slide a bullet into the empty sixth chamber and reholstered his guns.

  Sundeen's bunch was at the stock tank now, fifty yards off, stepping down from the saddles.

  Bren Early said, “At Chancellorsville, a Major Peter Keenan took his Eighth Pennsylvania Cavalry, four hundred men and—buying time for the artillery to set up—charged them full against ten thousand Confederate infantry. Talk about odds.”

  Moon turned his head a little. “What happened to 'em?”

  “They all got killed.”

  6

  The Mexican in the straw Chihuahua hat who came over to talk looked at first like he was out for a stroll, squinting up at the sky and off at the haze of mountains, inspecting a cholla bush, looking everywhere but at Moon and Early until he was about thirty feet from the adobe wall, then giving them a surprised look: like, what're you doing here?

  The riders back of him, small figures, stood around while their horses watered in the corrugated tank and in the slough that had formed from seepage. One of the figures—it looked to be Sundeen—had his peter out and was taking a leak facing this way: telling them what he thought of the situation.

  The Mexican touched his hat, loosening it and setting it again. Even with the revolver on his leg and the cartridge belt across his chest he seemed friendly standing there.

  He said, “Good afternoon. How are you today?”

  Moon and Bren Early watched him, Bren murmuring, “Jesus Christ,” under his breath.

  “It's good to reach water on a hot day,” the Mexican said. “Have you been here very long?”

  Moon and Bren Early seemed patient, waiting for him to get to it.

  “We looking for friends of ours,” the Mexican said. “We wonder if you see anybody ride by here the past hour.”

  Bren Early said, “Haven't seen a soul.”

  The Mexican took time to look past them and study the adobes, seeing the white smoke rising from the first chimney and vanishing in the glare.

  “Where your horses?”

  “Out of the sun,” Bren Early said.

  “You good to them,” the Mexican said. “What else you got in there?”

  “Troop of cavalry,” Bren Early said and called out, “Sergeant!”

  Bo Catlett, with a Spencer, appeared in the door-way of the first adobe, calling back, “Suh!”

  The Mexican began to shake his head very slowly. “You got the Uninah States Army in there? Man, I like to see that.” His gaze returned to Bren Early and Moon. “Soldiers…but you don't have no uniforms on.” He paused. “You don't want nobody to know you here, huh? Listen, we won't tell nobody.”

  “You don't know what you've seen what you haven't seen,” Bren Early said. “Leave it at that.”

  The Mexican said, “You don't want to invite me in there?”

  Moon drew his Colt from the shoulder rig and put it on the Mexican. “You got a count of three to move out of here,” he said. “One…two…three—”

  Espere,” the Mexican said. “Wait. It's all right with me.” He began to back away, his gaze holding on Moon's revolver. “You don't want to be friends, all right, maybe some other time. Good afternoon to you.”

  7

  The Mexican, whose name was Ruben Vega, forty-four years of age, something like seven to ten years older than the two men at the wall, said to himself, Never again. Going there like that and acting a fool. Good afternoon. How are you today? They knew, those two. They knew what was going on and weren't buying any of that foolish shit today. Never again, Ruben Vega said to himself again, walking back to the stock tank…Sundeen waiting for him.

  Sundeen with his eyes creased in the sun glare, pulling the funneled brim of his hat down lower.

  “He was bluffing you. Don't you know when a man's bluffing?” Like the joke was on Ruben Vega and Sundeen had seen through it right away.

  “Sometimes I don't see the bluff if the man's good at it,” Ruben Vega said
. “These two mean it. Why is it worth it to them?, I don't know. But they mean it.”

  “Eight to three,” Sundeen said. “What difference is it what they mean?, the Indin's ours.”

  “I don't know,” Ruben Vega said, shaking his head. “You better talk to them yourself.”

  Sundeen wasn't listening now. He was squinting past the Mexican and touching his two-week's growth of beard, fondling it, caressing himself, as he studied the pair of figures at the wall. One of them had yelled, “Sergeant,” and the booger had stuck his head out. Soldiers—chased after the Apache and now had him in there. That part was clear enough. The girl, she must be in there, too. But eight guns against three was what it came to. So what was the problem? Ask for the Apache. Ask at gunpoint if need be. Those people would have no choice but to hand him over and be happy to do it.

  He said to the Mexican, “Send two around back to make 'em nervous. The rest of us'll walk in.” The Mexican didn't say anything and Sundeen looked at him. “What's the matter?”

  “It isn't the way to do it.”

  Sundeen looked at the Mexican's old-leather face, at the thick, tobacco-stained mustache covering his mouth and the tiny blood lines in his tired-looking eyes.

  “You're getting old, you know it?”

  “I think that's it,” Ruben Vega said. “I'm getting old because I'm still alive.”

  Sundeen wanted to push him and say, Goddamn it, quit kicking dirt and come on; there's nothing to this. But he knew Ruben Vega pretty well. He paid him fifty dollars a month because Ruben Vega was good with men, even white men, and was one trail-wise first-class segundo to have riding point with a herd of rustled stock, or tracking after a loose Apache with a Mexican price on his head. Like the one-eyed Mimbre, Loco: 2,000 pesos, dead or alive.

  When Ruben Vega spoke, Sundeen generally paid attention. But this time—Ruben had been bluffed out, was all, and was trying to save his face, sound wise, like he knew something as fact; whereas it was just an off-day for him and his back ached or his piles were bothering him.

  Sundeen looked over at his riders, part of them hunkered down in the stingy shade of the stock tank: four Americans and two skinny Mexicans with their heavy criss-crossed gunbelts. He said to Ruben Vega, “I'll show you how white men do it,” grinning a little. “I'll send your two boys around back where it's safe, and march in with the rest of these ugly bronc stompers myself.”