Elmore Leonard's Western Roundup #1

by Elmore Leonard

  Kneeling over him, Bren knew the boy was dead before he touched his throat for a pulse. Dead in an old blood-stained shirt hanging out of his belt; converted Navy cap-and-ball lying in the dust next to him. Poor dumb kid, gone before he could learn anything. He heard the Dandy saying something.

  “He's one of them.”

  Bren Early looked up, seeing the driver coming over, reloading the shotgun.

  “I had a feeling about him and, goddamn it, I was right,” the Dandy said. “He's the inside man. Tried to stop me.”

  Bren said, “You idiot. You killed this boy for no reason.”

  The driver was pointing his shotgun at him, saying, “Put your hands in the air.”

  3

  Sweetmary: June, 1889

  Mr. and Mrs. Dana Moon got out of the Charles Crooker Hotel in Benson after two honeymoon nights in the bridal suite and coming down to breakfast to feel everybody in the dining room looking at them and the waitress grinning and saying, “Well, how are we this morning, just fine?” They loaded a buckboard with their gear, saddles, two trunks of linen, china and household goods, and took the old stage road west, trailing their horses. Why stay cooped up in somebody else's room when they had a new home in the mountains with an inside water pump and a view of practically the entire San pedro Valley?

  In late afternoon they came to Sweetmary, a town named for a copper mine, a town growing out of the mine works and crushing mill high up on the grade: the town beginning from company buildings and reaching down to flatland to form streets, rows of houses and business establishments—Moon remembering it as a settlement of tents and huts, shebangs made of scrap lumber, only a year before—the town growing out of the mine just as the hump ridges of ore tailings came down the grade from the mine shafts. LaSalle was the main street and the good hotel was in Congress. One more night in somebody else's bed. In the morning they'd buy a few provisions at the company store and head due north for home.

  During this trip Moon said to his wife, “You're a Katy a lot of ways; I think you'll always look young. But you're not a bashful girl, are you? I think you're more of a Kate than a Katy, and that's meant as a compliment.”

  In the morning, lying in the Congress Hotel bed with the sun hot on the windows, he said, “I thought people only did it at night. I mean married people.”

  “Who says you have to wait till dark?” She grinned at him and said then, “You mean if you're not married you can do it any time?”

  “You do it when you see the chance. I guess that's it,” Moon said. “Married people are busy all day, so it's become the custom to do it at night.”

  “Custom,” Kate said. “What's the custom among the Indians? I bet whenever they feel the urge, right? You ever do it outside?”

  Moon pretended he had to think to recall and Kate said, “I want to do it outside when we get home.”

  “I built us a bed.”

  “We'll use the bed. But I want to do it different places. Try different other ways.”

  Moon looked at this girl lying next to him, amazed. “What other way is there?”

  “I don't know if we can do them in the daylight, but I got some ideas.” She smiled at him and said, “Being married is fun, you know it?”

  Moon was getting dressed, buttoning his shirt and looking out the window, when he saw Brendan Early. He said, “Jesus Christ.” Kate came over in her bloomers to look too.

  There he was, Moon's best man, walking along the street in a file of jail prisoners carrying shovels and picks, the group dressed in washed-out denim uniforms—the letter “P” stenciled in white on the shirts and pants—being herded along by several armed men on horseback.

  “Jesus Christ,” Moon said again, with awe. “What's he done now?”

  When Moon found them, the work detail was clearing a drainage ditch about two miles from town, up in the hills back of the mine works. Mounted, he circled and came down from above them to approach Bren Early working with a shovel, in his jail uniform, his new Stetson dirty and sweat-stained. There were four guards with shotguns. The one on the high side, dismounted and sitting about ten yards off in the shade of a cedar stand, heard Moon first and raised his shotgun as he got to his feet.

  “Don't come no closer!”

  Now Bren Early straightened and was looking this way, leaning on the high end of his shovel. He watched Moon nudging his buckskin down toward them—not knowing Moon's game, so not calling out or saying anything.

  “I said don't come no closer!”

  This man with the shotgun was the Cochise County Deputy Sheriff for Sweetmary. His name—Moon had learned in town—was R.J. Bruckner. Moon said it now, inquiringly.

  “Mr. Bruckner?”

  “What do you want?”

  There did not appear to be any warmth or cordiality in the man.

  He was heavy-set and mean-looking with a big nose and a florid complexion to go with his ugly disposition. Moon would try sounding patient and respectful and see what happened.

  He said, “My, it's a hot day to be working, isn't it?”

  “You got business with me, state it,” Bruckner said, “or else get your nosey ass out of here.”

  My oh my, Moon thought, taking off his hat and resetting it low against the sun, giving himself a little time to adjust and remain calm. The plug of tobacco in his jaw felt dry and he sucked on it a little.

  “I wonder if I could have a word with one of your prisoners.”

  “God Almighty,” Bruckner said, “get the hell away from here.”

  “That good-looking fella there, name of Early. His mama's worried about him,” Moon said, “and sent me out looking.”

  “Tell his mama she can visit him at Yuma. That boy's going away for twenty years.”

  “Can I ask what he's done?”

  “Held up the Benson stage and was caught at it.”

  Bren Early, standing in the drainage ditch, was shaking his head slowly, meaning no, he didn't, or just weary of it all.

  “Has he been tried already?”

  “Hasn't come up yet.”

  “Then how do you know he's getting twenty years?”

  “It's what I'll recommend to the Circuit Court in Tombstone.”

  “Oh,” Moon nodded, showing how agreeable he was. “When is the trial going to be?”

  “When I take him down there,” Bruckner said.

  “Pretty soon now?”

  “When I decide,” Bruckner said, irritated now. “Get the hell away from here 'fore I put you in the ditch with him.”

  R.J. Bruckner did not know at that moment—as Moon's hand went to his shirtfront but stopped before going inside the coat—how close he was to being shot.

  Back at the Congress Hotel Moon said to his wife, “I have never had the urge like I did right then. It's not good, to be armed and feel like that.”

  “But understandable,” Kate said, “What are we gonna do?”

  “Stay here another night, if it's all right.”

  “Whatever you decide,” his wife said. She loved this man very much, but sometimes his calmness frightened her. She watched him wash and change his shirt and slip on the shoulder holster that held the big Colt's revolver—hidden once his coat was on, but she knew it was there and she knew the man, seeing him again standing at the adobe wall in Sonora.

  After supper Mr. and Mrs. Moon sat in rocking chairs on the porch of the Congress Hotel—Kate saying, “This is what you like to do, huh?”—until the Mexican boy came up to them and said in Spanish, “He left.” Moon gave the boy two bits and walked down LaSalle Street to the building with the sign that said DEPUTY SHERIFF—COCHISE COUNTY.

  Inside the office he told the assistant deputy on duty he was here to see a prisoner, one Brendan Early and, before the deputy could say anything, laid a five-dollar piece on the man's desk.

  “Open your coat,” the deputy said.

  Moon handed the man his Colt's, then followed him through a locked door, down an aisle of cells and up a back stairway to a r
ow of cells on the second floor. Moon had never seen a jail this size, able to hold thirty or more prisoners, in a dinky mining town.

  “You know why,” Bren Early said, talking to Moon through the bars—the deputy standing back a few paces watching them—“because the son of a bitch is making money off us. The mine company pays him fifty cents a day per man to work on roads and drainage and this horse fart Bruckner puts it in his pocket.”

  “You talk to a lawyer?”

  “Shit no, not till I go to trial. Listen, there're rummies in here for drunk and disorderly been working months. He thinks I'm a road agent, I could be in here a year before I ever see a courtroom. And then I got to face this other idiot who's gonna point to me and say I tried to rob the stage.”

  “Did you?”

  “Jesus Christ, I'm telling you, I don't get out of here I'm gonna take my shovel and bust it over that horse fart's head.”

  “You're looking pretty good though,” Moon said. “Better'n you did at the wedding trying to drink up all the whiskey.”

  Close to the bars Bren Early said, “You gonna get me out of here or I have to do it myself?”

  “I have to take my wife home,” Moon said. “Then, after that.”

  “After that, what? I'm not gonna last any time in this place. You know it, too.”

  “Don't get him mad at you,” Moon said. “Say please and thank you or else keep your mouth shut till I get back.”

  “When—goddamn it.”

  “You might see it coming,” Moon said, “but I doubt it.”

  This jail was hard time with no relief. Chop rocks and clear ditches or sweat to death in that second-floor, tin-roof cell. (The Fourth of July they sat up there listening to fools shooting their guns off in the street, expecting any moment bullets to come flying in the barred windows.) Bren Early could think of reports he'd read describing Confederate prisons, like Belle Isle in the James River and Libby's warehouse in Richmond, where Union soldiers rotted away and died by the thousands. Compared to those places the Sweetmary lockup was a resort hotel. But Bren would put R.J. Bruckner up with any of the sadistic guards he'd read about, including the infamous Captain Wirz of Andersonville.

  One day after work Bruckner marched Bren Early down to the basement of the jail and took him into a room that was like a root cellar. Bren hoped for a moment he would be alone with Bruckner, but two other deputies stood by with pick handles while Bruckner questioned him about the stage holdup.

  “One of your accomplices, now deceased, was named Pierson. What are the names of the other two?”

  They stood with the lantern hanging behind them by the locked door.

  “I wasn't part of it, so I don't know,” Bren Early said.

  Bruckner stepped forward and hooked a fist into Bren's stomach and Bren hit him hard in the face, jolting him; but that was his only punch before the two deputies stepped in, swinging their pick handles, and beat him to the dirt floor.

  Bruckner said, “What's the names of your other two chums?”

  Bren said, “I never saw 'em before.”

  “Once more,” Bruckner said.

  “I'll tell you one thing,” Bren said.

  “What is that?”

  “When I get out I'm gonna tear your nose off, you ugly shitface son of a bitch.”

  As with J.A. McWilliams, killed in Florence a year before while calling Bren Early some other kind of son of a bitch, did he say it all or not? Bren did not quite finish before Bruckner hit him with his fists and the deputies waded in to beat him senseless with the pick handles. Dumb, wavy-haired know-it-all; they fixed him. And they'd see he never let up a minute out on the work detail…where Bren would look up at the high crests and at the brushy ravines and pray for Moon to appear as his redeemer.

  “You might see it coming, but I doubt it,” Moon had said.

  Moon brought six Mimbre Apaches with him: the one named Red and five other stalkers who had chased wild horses with him, had served on the Apache Police at San Carlos and had raised plenty of hell before that.

  They scouted Bruckner's work detail for three days, studying the man's moves and habits. The man seemed reasonably alert, that was one consideration. The other: the ground was wide open on both sides of the drainage ditch where the twenty or more prisoners had been laboring these past few days. Clearing a ditch that went where? Moon wasn't sure, unless it diverted water from the mine shafts. A slit trench came down out of a wash from the bald crest of a ridge. There were patches of owl clover on the slope, brittlebush and stubby clumps of mesquite and greasewood, but no cover to speak of.

  Moon and his Mimbres talked it over in their dry camp and decided there was only one way to do the job.

  Seven A.M., the seventeenth morning of Bren Early's incarceration, found him trudging up the grade with his shovel, second man in the file of prisoners—herded by four mounted guards, Bruckner bringing up the rear—Bren's eyes open as usual to scan the bleak terrain, now reaching the section of ditch they would be working today, moving up alongside it until Bruckner would stick two fingers in his mouth and whistle them to stop, jump in and commence digging and clearing.

  Bren didn't see Moon. He didn't see the Mimbre Apaches—not until he heard that sharp whistle, the signal, turned to the trench and saw movement, a bush it looked like, a bush and part of the ground coming up out of the ditch, Christ, with a face made of dirt in it, seeing for the first time something he had only heard about: what it was like to stand in open terrain and, Christ, there they were all around you right there as you stood where there wasn't a sign of anything living a moment before. The Mimbres came out of the drainage ditch with greasewood in their hair, naked bodies smeared with dirt, and took the four deputies off their horses and had them on the ground, pointing revolvers in their struck-dumb faces before they knew what had happened. There were yells from the prisoners dancing around. Some of them raised their shovels and picks to beat the life out of Bruckner and his guards. But Moon and his stubby shotgun—Moon coming out of the ditch a few yards up the grade—would have none of it. He was not here in behalf of their freedom or revenge. They yelled some more and began to plead—Take us with you; don't leave us here—then cursed in loud voices, with the guards lying face down in the sand, calling Moon obscene names. But Moon never said a word to them or to anyone. Bren Early wanted to go over to Bruckner, but when Moon motioned, he followed. They rode out of there on the deputies' horses and never looked back.

  Bren Early went home with Moon, up past the whitewashed agency buildings, up into the rugged east face of the Rincons. He saw Moon's stone house with its low adobe wall rimming the front of the property and its sweeping view of the San Pedro Valley. He saw Moon's wife in her light blue dress and white apron—no longer the McKean girl—saw the two cane chairs on the front porch and smelled the beef roast cooking.

  “Well, now you have it, what do you do?” Bren said.

  Moon looked at his wife and shrugged, not sure how to answer. “I don't know,” he said, “get up in the morning and pull on my boots. How about you?”

  “We'll see what happens,” Bren said.

  He rode out of there in borrowed clothes on a borrowed horse, but with visions of returning in relative splendor. Rich. At rest with himself. And with a glint in his eye that would say to Moon, “You sure you got what you want?”

  4

  Sweetmary: January, 1890

  They were having their meeting in the stove-heated company office halfway up the grade, a wind blowing winter through the mine works: Bren Early, bearded, in his buffalo coat; Mr. Vandozen, looking like a banker in his velvet-lapeled Chesterfield and pinch-nose glasses; a man named Ross Selkirk, the superintendent of the Sweetmary works, who clenched a pipe in his jaw; and another company man, a geologist, by the name of Franklin Hovey.

  Mr. Vandozen stood at a high table holding his glasses to his face as he looked over Bren Early's registered claims and assay reports. He said once, “There seems to be a question whether you're a miner,
Mr. Early, or a speculator.”

  It wasn't the question he was waiting for, so Bren didn't answer.

  Mr. Vandozen tried again. “Have you actually mined any ore?”

  “Some.”

  “This one, I'll bet,” Mr. Vandozen said, holding up an assay report. “Test would indicate quite a promising concentrate, as high as forty ounces to the ton.”

  “Three thousand dollars an ore-wagon load,” Bren said.

  And Mr. Vandozen said, “Before it's milled. On the deficit side you have labor, machinery, supplies, shipping, payments on your note—” The LaSalle Mining vice president, who had come all the way from New Mexico to meet Bren Early, looked over at him. “What do you have left?”

  Not a question that required an answer. Bren waited.

  “What you have, at best, are pockets of dust,” Mr. Vandozen said. “Fast calculations in your head, multiplying ounces times thirty-five, I can understand how it lights up men's eyes. But obviously you don't want to scratch for a few ounces, Mr. Early, or you wouldn't be here.”

  Bren waited.

  “Our geological surveys of your claims are”—Mr. Vandozen shrugged—“interesting, but by no means conclusive enough to warrant sinking shafts and moving in equipment. Though I'm sure you feel you have a major strike.”

  “Gold fever, it's called,” the geologist said. “The symptoms are your eyes popping out of your head.” He laughed, but no one else did.

  Mr. Vandozen waited longer than he had to, following the interruption. When the office was quiet and they could hear the stove hissing and the wind gusting outside, he said, “We could give you—you have five claims?—all right, five thousand dollars for the lot and a one half of one percent royalty on gold ore after so many tons are milled.”