The Last Stand

by Mickey Spillane

  “Nice story.”

  “Brings tourists around.”

  “Where do you come in?”

  “Me native guide.”

  “Ever find anything?”

  Pete bobbed his head. “Tourists believe anything. We salt the sand with arrowheads, carve wooden heads and let them weather out, throw in a clay pot or two and you can satisfy any city dweller.”

  “Pete…what were you doing up on that rise where I met you?”

  “Heck, man, I told you…”

  “Your horse was way ahead of you. Where were you coming from?”

  “Come on, Joe, I was fossil hunting. I already said…”

  “No tools, no sacks to carry anything in?”

  “What tools do you need out there? The wind does all the work. If there is anything at all it sticks up like, like…well, the toe on your foot. And fossils don’t come very big, pal. This isn’t like dinosaur valley where Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed around.”

  “Pete…”

  “I was looking for Miner Moe. He’s a prospector.”

  “Miner Moe,” Joe repeated. “Great moniker.”

  “He’s about eighty-five and lives on the desert. Someplace he has a dugout, though I’ve never seen it. He finds fossils, I trade for them and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Indians are lousy liars,” Joe said.

  “I’m not from India,” Pete reminded him.

  “I thought we were blood brothers.”

  “…Old Miner Moe has picked up some pretty odd-looking fossils, if you want to call them that. He had a golden feather that had been broken off from something else and the handle of a vase. Solid gold, that was, weighed maybe three pounds.”

  A small whistle came from Joe’s pursed lips. “You trade him for that stuff?”

  “He just showed it to me. We’re kinda good old friends, y’know?”

  “You ever tell anybody about it?”

  “Just you. I don’t have any other blood brothers.”

  “Think he did?”

  A furrow highlighted Pete’s forehead. “No. Moe has been on the sand too long. He knows who he can trust.”

  “He trusts you then?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why?”

  “While back, I found him unconscious out near a water hole. Somebody had tried to kill him. They tore open his bag, ripped up his clothes, but they didn’t get anything at all. Stole his tobacco pouch, is all. I carried him on my back to my hogan where my sister took care of him for two weeks until he was well enough to get back on the sand by himself.”

  “You still haven’t answered my first question.”

  Very patiently, Sequoia Pete said, “I was on that hill because my damn cayuse threw me and wouldn’t let me get near him. Now, you know that.”

  “What about Miner Moe?”

  “Twenty miles east I found where he had camped out. I couldn’t tell how long ago it had been. It was on a rock outcropping. Moe’s a moccasin wearer and hardly leaves tracks. There were none that I could follow.”

  “You knew where to look for him.”

  “Sure. He knew there were people from the south running away from something and they would take a hard ground path if they could. Stretches of that trail still show up when the desert wind comes in from the right angle.”

  “Does it do that often?”

  “No.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Maybe every ten years or so.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Moe said the last one he remembered was when he was still young.”

  “Pete…do you remember any times like that?”

  Another pause for thought, then: “When I was in college. Uncle Fast Turkey said it had happened. It didn’t mean much to me then.”

  “So what did you want from Miner Moe?”

  “To tell him to keep away from the rez, man. Those bozos who fly in here are after more than old clay pots and arrowheads. I’ve seen white-eyes with gold fever before and they sure had it when they saw what little trinkets the tribal elders had.”

  “Like the little feet?”

  “Right on, flyboy.”

  “That’s not much to get excited about.”

  “Remember Sutter’s Mill? It brought half the population of the east out here.”

  Joe nodded. “This isn’t about digging up natural gold. All you have are some little bitty artifacts that originate in some foreign country and aren’t in heavy supply to start with. So what are you sweating about?”

  “The last time those white guys flew in here they had a new face with them. An older guy, like mid-fifties maybe. About your age.”

  Joe grimaced.

  “Well-dressed. Big education. He had to think hard to use little words. He was all smiles and asked a lot of strange questions hardly anybody could answer.”

  “Pete, old buddy, could you have answered them?”

  “Sure, but he never asked me. Hell, I wouldn’t have given him the right time of day, either. The slob was a professor who specialized in ‘ancient cultures of the Americas.’ ”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Because he lectured twice at State University when I was a senior. A real Aztec lover, that guy. On his watch chain he dangled a tooth from some warrior who had been dead for centuries.”

  “Nice guy,” Joe said.

  “He was a tony civilian, that one. Didn’t have much to do with anybody who wasn’t a top dog. Never hung around with any of the other instructors and was completely turned off by the undergrads. How the hell he got mixed up with the tourist trade guys I’ll never know.”

  “But he knew about those little artifacts somehow, didn’t he?”

  “So could anybody else. Hell, they were on display at the tourist trade store for a month. A reporter from some Arizona weekly did a piece on them.”

  “Who has them now, Pete?

  “The Whistler. He owns the trade store.”

  “He whistles?”

  “No. He just has a lousy set of false teeth and when he talks it whistles. No tunes.”

  For a full minute the two men sat quietly, saying nothing. Joe was staring at the horizon and nodding to himself. Finally, Pete said, “You’re thinking pretty heavy, White-eyes. Want to talk about it?”

  Joe’s head bobbed slightly. “Everything’s happening at once, isn’t it? I come in on a power-off landing; you lose a horse in the desert, and all this after little gold feet get found in the sand. You get a creepy old professor out here parleying with tourist trade runners and Miner Moe flitting around like a ghost.”

  “You left out the best part.”

  “What, finding your magic arrowhead?”

  “No,” Joe told him. “Watching you eat snake.”

  “Wish I’d had a beer to go with it.”

  “You white-eyes are all nuts.” Joe got up from his crouch and stretched. “Let’s go to my hogan. Sis should have my Harley fixed by now.”

  * * *

  After two hours of steady plodding in loose sand, Pete held up his hand, checked his watch and slow scanned the skies for a good two minutes. He finally saw what he was looking for and pointed it out to Joe. It was a faint contrail coming out of the west toward them, a finger-like man-made cloud that followed the dot of a commercial airliner ahead of it.

  “He’s ten minutes overdue,” Pete growled.

  “So?”

  “Right now we make a forty-five degree turn to the left. I have to compensate for the delay in that plane’s schedule. Damn, I wish the FAA would get on their controllers’ necks. Screwing up the timetables can get a lot of us natives lost out here.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “The hell I am,” Pete told him. “You see me with a compass?”

  “Then how do you figure out a forty-five degree left turn?”

  “Native intuition, that’s how.” Pete waved his finger toward the rise of sand in the distance. “We go thataway.”

  Up ahead the horse was on a straight-line course
as though he had heard every word. Joe let a small grin twist at the corners of his mouth. “You’re just following that daggone cayuse, partner. He’s got no compass either.”

  “White-eyes, he’s got a nose. There’s a mess of bagged oats behind my hogan.”

  “And your sister will have supper on the table too, I suppose.”

  “Certainly. She sees us on the horizon and she’ll slip a couple more TV dinners in the microwave.”

  CHAPTER 5

  She was waiting for them. She stood there motionless, doused in sunlight, little flashes of brilliance sparkling from beadwork in her leather vest. Her hair was a scintillating black that framed skin coloring that was a beautiful, distinctive hue, a natural glow no temporary suntan could possibly imitate. Her fringed dress was short so that the soft musculature of her thighs and calves made Joe catch his breath in admiration.

  “Go ahead and whistle,” Pete suggested quietly.

  Joe just breathed hard. She slowly turned her head toward the sun and in profile Joe saw a perfect shape he could imagine seeing on an ancient coin. Then she turned back to watch them approach.

  “Damn,” Joe said.

  “She does that to all the guys,” Pete said. “Works them up at a distance then drops them dead when they get close. Look what’s in her hand.”

  It was hard for Joe to focus on the object, but he saw what it was. She was holding a foot long open-end wrench. She had on a tool belt that had a couple other tools snapped on it.

  “Good woman,” Pete said. “Work hard. Fix brother’s Harley. Got pot on stove cooking grub. Company no problem.”

  Fifty feet away Joe knew that no movie actress could come near her for sheer beauty. There was no makeup, but those quietly flashing eyes didn’t need any. Her lips were full with a natural dampness, startling red against her darker flesh. He didn’t let his eyes roam over her. He didn’t have to. He knew that whatever he saw would be the fullness of womanhood.

  Pete said, “This is my sister, Running Fox.” He waved in Joe’s direction. “This my friend…no, my—” and he said something in his native tongue that made his sister’s eyes jump to his with a new expression “—whose name is Joe Gillian. I found him in the desert. He landed his airplane way out there.”

  Running Fox simply said, “Why?”

  “It broke,” Joe muttered, not able to think of anything else to tell her.

  “Oh,” Running Fox smiled. Her whole face lit up.

  “I couldn’t fix it,” Joe added. “Hell, I don’t even know what broke.”

  “You look?”

  “No. Your brother found me first.”

  “He was drinking a beer,” Pete told her.

  “In the desert?”

  “Best place in the world to have a cold beer, Sis.” He added, “He split a can with me.”

  Running Fox’s glance said that gave him an extra brownie point at the most.

  “I nailed a rattler and cooked it,” Pete mentioned casually. “He ate half.”

  “Big rattler?”

  “Six, eight pounds maybe. We ate about a pound and a half apiece.”

  This time Running Fox looked directly at Joe, a new light in her eyes. “Mr. Joe Gillian, did you like that snake?”

  “Not bad, but it coulda used a little seasoning.”

  “Well, come on in and get some real seasoned grub. We have beans, very hot. Squash, very hot. Animal stew, very hot.”

  “What kind of animal?” Pete demanded.

  “Don’t ask,” she said. “And we have some very, very hot sauce.”

  She smiled, then turned with a swirl that made the hem of her skirt whip up the sides of her legs and when she walked toward the open door of the hogan, Joe forced himself to keep his eyes on the ground. All he could think of was that here he was, a bachelor, head of his own business, plenty of unspent cash even after buying the plane, not so young anymore maybe but in damn good condition for a man his age, and a target for every enterprising unwed—and sometimes wed—doll who laid eyes on him.

  And here he was out on the sand of nowhere with not even a change of socks or a toothbrush, dirtied up like a citified street urchin who played in a garbage dump, and suddenly feeling his sap rising because of an Indian princess-type with a Playboy-style shape, a college education, and a toolbelt she wore around her waist.

  All Joe could say was, “Damn.”

  * * *

  The sun had set by the time Joe felt the fire in his stomach lessening. He could handle the very hot beans and the very hot squash, the very hot animal stew, but it was the very, very hot sauce that took the starch out of him. The fire was diminishing, but something was happening with his insides and when he had finally figured out where the outhouse was and carefully plotted a course to that sanctuary, he squirmed in the seat of the visitor’s Lazyboy, keeping the back upright and the footstool down so when the time came for him to bail out, he could hit the deck in record time. If Pete had been the only one there, he wouldn’t have had to be so meticulous, but having the princess watching every move he made with some kind of a knowing smile on her lips, he had to be very, very careful. Like with very, very hot sauce.

  He had a dry sweat on his forehead, hot like the summer sun, but with no cooling moisture. Dry sweat. It was a paradox. He couldn’t even pay attention to what Pete was talking about as he embellished every minute of their meeting. The blood brother routine made Running Fox look at him with strange eyes, then Pete showed his ace card. He reached into his pocket and palmed the clear crystal arrowhead, holding it out for his sister to see.

  She didn’t have to be told what it was. Arrowheads were like pebbles in the sand to her. But this wasn’t an ordinary arrowhead and her rapt attention to the object in her brother’s hand made the muscles in her face go tight and her eyes took on an odd expression. She didn’t touch it. For a full minute, she simply looked at it. Then she said to Pete, “You found it?”

  “No.” He nodded toward Joe. “He did.”

  “Then it’s his.”

  Her brother shook his head. “He gave it to me.”

  “Did he know what it was?”

  “Sure. I told him. He didn’t want it and said it was all mine.”

  She turned to Joe for confirmation. “This is all true?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You know what it’s worth?”

  “Pete told me. I don’t want it.”

  “You could sell it and buy anything you want.”

  “I got everything I want,” Joe told her, then his expression went soft and he added, “I think.”

  Pete said, “He wants his airplane fixed.”

  With a quizzical expression, Running Fox asked, “Is that all?”

  Joe’s stomach was talking to him now. That was a very loaded question and when he took in the face of the beautiful Indian princess, he wanted to say a million things to her, but nothing proper would come out of his mouth. He let his mind jump to old 819 stranded up there in the hills, squatting like a tired old bird, knowing that one day he’d come back and take care of matters.

  He said, “I’ll take care of the plane. No trouble. You guys just keep your arrowhead.”

  “You wouldn’t miss a few million dollars, Mr. Gillian?”

  “No.”

  “You very rich, Mr. Gillian?”

  “All my bills are paid. I own a business. I don’t have any wants.” When he looked into Running Fox’s eyes, he knew that last was a lie.

  And so did she, because she smiled back with a smile that was hers alone.

  Running Fox folded the arrowhead in a small cloth, and tucked it away in a pocket. “We can get an expert opinion on that tomorrow.”

  The monster rolling around Joe’s insides suddenly said it was time to go and he pulled the chocks out from under his wheels with a quick yank and somehow or other he made a proper-type exit to the grand throne of pleasuresome relief and gave up the very, very hot sauce that spiced the just plain very hot meal, and when all naturalnes
s returned to him, he washed his hands and went back to the main room in Joe’s hogan.

  * * *

  The night sky was blistered with stars that beamed with such intensity that they didn’t seem real. There was no artificial glow from any nearby city to diminish their brilliance and if you watched carefully you could even see them move against the clothes-drying poles in the yard. They were almost like live things, yet so absolutely exact in their movements that the best chronographs ever made used them as timing ideals, but never could reach their perfection.

  Pete came out of the hogan and handed Joe his freshly laundered clothes. “My sister said you’d better hit the trade store tomorrow. My duds won’t fit you and you haven’t got the right configuration for buckskin.”

  “I got four full changes up in my airplane,” Joe said. “When do you think we’ll get back there?”

  “Well, there’s only one part I need for the Harley and I can get that on the rez when we go in. Maybe the day after tomorrow?”

  Joe turned and looked at his friend. The starlight made his expression stand out very plainly.

  Pete let out a short chuckle. “Boy, she really got to you in a hurry, didn’t she?”

  “What?”

  “Old White-eyes is suddenly in love. Right?” Sequoia Pete’s teeth shone in the moonlight.

  “You know,” Joe muttered, “you Indians certainly have a very sophisticated attitude.”

  “We college graduates, flyboy. Not rez schooled…State College with real professors and a chemistry lab. We even had a Bunsen burner.”

  “What, no Petri dishes?”

  “Sure, we had two of them. One broke and we had to use the plastic fruit cup container from somebody’s lunch.”

  “If I was in love with your sister, you’d be carrying an axe.”

  “You check my belt in the back?”

  Joe looked at his watch, the numerals a faint green in the darkness. “We going to sleep on the ground again tonight, pal?”

  “Hey, you’re company, man. Sis hung you a hammock out back right next to mine. I can’t stay in my own room ’cause I have to guard you.”

  Indignantly, Joe demanded, “From what? You got mosquitoes?”

  “Not this time of the year, but a lot of curious animals prowl around looking for strange white-eyes to chew on.”