Land Grabbers

by Paul Lederer

  ‘How far did you walk!’ Beth said, noticing my feet as I held one of them up for inspection.

  ‘I don’t know. A day and a night.’

  ‘After the Apaches jumped you.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I answered.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked, leaning closer to me.

  ‘No. It wasn’t pretty,’ I said. I didn’t want to try to invent a long, complicated lie and get caught up in it. ‘Are you the captain’s …?’

  ‘Sister? Yes I am,’ Beth answered. ‘If you’re asking if he will like it when he sees me sitting here with you, the answer is no, he will not.’ The wagon jounced over a large rock and she instinctively grabbed my arm. Only for a moment.

  ‘Could you tell me?’ I asked carefully, ‘Who they are? The people the soldiers are so wary of.’ By the way the troopers rode, not in file, but spread out across the raw land, it was obvious that they were expecting trouble from some quarter and were doing their best to be ready for it.

  ‘You don’t know?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘No. No one would tell me.’

  She tilted her head back and a melodic little laugh rose from her throat. ‘Boy, are you in the wrong place! You thought you had Apache trouble – wait until you see what comes next. They’ll probably hang you along with the rest of them.’

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. I still didn’t understand, and it seemed that it was in my best interests to know.

  ‘Who will hang us? Who, Beth? You have to tell me who they are, please.’

  ‘Why the army of course,’ she said. ‘You don’t think they’re going to let us get away with this!’

  THREE

  I studied the woman carefully. The morning sunlight was brilliant behind her, leaving her face in shadow. I could see the gleam in her eyes, however, and the flash of white teeth as her expression brightened, faded and then brightened again, less convincingly.

  ‘I’m starting to believe that you don’t know anything about what’s going on,’ Beth said.

  You should believe that, since I don’t. I would appreciate it if someone told me something.’

  ‘What have the others told you?’ Beth asked.

  ‘No one’s told me anything! Except for Sergeant Hawkins. He said that if I was one of them I already knew, if I wasn’t, I didn’t need to know.’

  ‘I guess,’ Beth said thoughtfully, ‘that he was right. I’m sure he was,’ she added more definitely. After another quarter of a mile of bouncing along on the wagon’s tailgate she turned those dark eyes on me again and asked:

  ‘If you’re not one of those army scouts, what were you doing out here?’

  ‘Doing?’ The truth might get me hanged. On the other hand, nobody believed my story of having been attacked by a party of Apaches. I shrugged indifferently, ‘There are such things as coincidences, Beth.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But out here!’ Her hand gestured toward the limitless desert. ‘It seems unlikely.’ She confided, ‘It would be better for you to come clean when they ask you again. Otherwise you will remain a prisoner. Worse,’ she said soberly, ‘they might decide to set you free. Without a horse, without water, with your feet in the shape they are.’ I saw an approaching rider, an angry Captain Cole on his leggy palomino mare.

  ‘If I were you,’ Beth said in a near-whisper, ‘I’d come up with a lie that has a chance of sticking.’

  ‘Get off of there, Beth,’ Cole’s voice boomed. His pretty little palomino tossed its head as he slowed it to match the wagon’s pace. ‘What’s the idea? Fraternizing with the prisoner!’ His lean face was so red that it nearly matched his russet mustache. His pale eyes were narrowed with anger.

  ‘Calm yourself,’ Hammond,’ Beth said lightly. ‘It’s already hot. At least there’s some shade from the canvas here, and sitting that horse is starting to rub me raw.’

  Captain Hammond Cole settled his glare on me as if he wanted to accuse me of something, but couldn’t quite figure out what. In the end he just muttered at me, ‘Be careful. You’re on the ragged edge.’ Then to his sister, ‘Come on. I want you to ride point with me.’

  Beth stretched her arms, nodded, untied the reins to her pony, and then as agilely as she had dismounted, swung back on to the white horse’s back, smiled faintly at me and rode away, following her brother.

  If that was who he was.

  At least among people like Jake Shockley, a man knew where he stood. Among these soldiers who might or might not have been soldiers who had other soldiers chasing them, or said they did, with a determination to deny me any infonnation, how was I to know who to believe, to trust – if anyone?

  I began to plan how to steal a horse and slip away.

  That was a hanging offense under frontier law since leaving a man afoot in hostile territory was the same as murdering him. If caught I would have yet another group wanting to stretch my neck. I had the law in Mesa Grande, the outlaw Jake Shockley and soon, if I was not lucky, the army. It was only soldiers, I thought, who were taken before an execution squad. Common thieves were hanged.

  Which gave me a moment’s thought. Beth had said that if they were caught they would all likely hang. Did that bolster my notion that these were not soldiers at all, but men who had somehow come by the cavalry trappings? I did not know, and I no longer cared. I no longer cared about the soldiers, if that was what they were, about them, whoever they might be. It was obvious that I was in a situation where I did not belong and that it could only get worse. What had Beth said?

  ‘If you thought you had trouble with the Apaches, wait until you seem what comes next.’

  I did not wish to stay around and find out what she meant. I was determined to risk all and escape if possible.

  I brooded, dozed, tended my feet throughout the morning. From time to time, troopers would approach the supply wagon to dip their canteens into the water barrels which were carried one on either side. I listened to snatches of conversation, partly to relieve the boredom, partly in hopes of gathering information. Most of what I overheard was simply grumbling about the heat, the food, the long ride. Once, though, I did hear Corporal Gentry tell another soldier that he estimated that they would reach Canoga early the next afternoon.

  ‘None too soon for me,’ the trooper replied.

  ‘It’ll be worth it in the end, Kent. Wait until you see how much.…’

  Their voices faded as, with their canteens refilled, they swung their horses away from the wagon.

  Canoga. Why did that ring a dull bell in the back of my mind? I had never been to such a place, nor heard of it before. Was it a town, a general term for the area? I squinted my eyes, trying to remember because it seemed that it might be important. It came to me in a flash, hardly enlightening, but bringing a chill with it:

  Canoga. One of the outlaws riding with Jake Shockley after he had decided that it would give him pleasure to lynch me had said, ‘What are you taking all this trouble for, Jake … we should be heading for Canoga.’ I was sure of it. The one called Vallejo, the one who rode a paint horse. I could almost see his face as he protested the morning’s entertainment.

  Did Shockley and his rough band of men have a rendezvous with this bedraggled army? Or was he and his gang the them the army feared? No matter, I was more determined than ever to make my escape before they decided just who was to have the honor of hanging me.

  They made camp at the hour of sundown. Horses and men had been driven to their limit through the smoldering hours of the desert day. Ragged-looking now, dead tired, the soldiers straggled in toward the campfires, wanting the reviving food and sleep.

  I was on my feet, sore as they were, wandering the camp perimeter. No one kept watch over me any more. If I got away, so much the better. The desert would deal with me sooner or later. Someone – Captain Cole, I assumed – had determined that I wasn’t worth tying up or hanging. Besides, there wasn’t a tree for twenty miles in any direction.

  All day I had been plotting my
escape. Finally, I settled on a plan that seemed reckless, but had the quality of simplicity. If it worked, fine. If it did not, I had lost nothing. It was a desperate plan, yes, but then I was a desperate man. Near the remuda where the weary horses had been picketed, I waited. As the sun lowered in the west, becoming a flattened red ball which spewed out purple and deep-blue coloring across the long desert as it died, I watched as a straggler made his way toward the camp. The trooper was a narrow man with a dark mustache and red-rimmed eyes. I walked out to meet him.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked as he drew up his bay. His hard eyes narrowed.

  ‘Kirk,’ he replied. ‘What makes it your business?’

  ‘The captain sent me over to wait for you.’ I inclined my head toward Cole’s wagon. ‘He wants to see you.’

  ‘What about?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, friend. We’re hardly on intimate terms. He just said to find Kirk and have him report to the wagon.’

  Kirk, bone-weary, wishing for nothing more than coffee and beans himself, growled and swung down while I held his horse’s bridle. He breathed out a few harsh curses, dusted himself off and said, ‘Take care of my horse.’

  I nodded as he started toward Cole’s wagon, his steps stiff with the long day’s riding.

  Then I swung into the saddle of the bay horse, heeled it sharply into a gallop and rode from the camp, bent low across the withers. I heard a shout and someone unleashed a shot in my general direction, but the bullet came nowhere near me. I rode the tired horse on unmercifully at a run for nearly a mile, then slowed, halted, and looked back toward the camp from the back of the shuddering bay.

  There was no pursuit. I expected none. The exhausted soldiers would not be eager to saddle up again and ride after me in the settling darkness where pursuit would likely prove futile anyway. Nor, I thought, would Cole care enough to order them to follow. The only man who would be angry enough at me to attempt it was Kirk who probably would receive a dressing-down for his carelessness, but he no longer even had a mount and it seemed unlikely he could sustain his anger for long.

  I started on, walking the weary horse through the falling twilight. I did not know where I was riding. I knew I would not try the dunes again, nor try to double back and tempt fate. Ahead. I rode northward, pointing the stumbling pony’s nose toward Polaris.

  There were still a few ounces of water in Kirk’s canteen, and I swallowed half of it as I rode. Water, I knew, was my next need. Freedom on the desert was an illusion without water. I had a thousand square miles of uncharted wasteland surrounding me. I did not know the land: I doubted if more than a few dozen white men did.

  We trudged on through the night, the poorly-used bay horse and I, as the temperature beneath a brutally clear sky began to fall.

  It was close to midnight, at a guess, when I rode the struggling bay up a low knoll dotted with agave and buffalo grass when I felt the horse quiver and stall beneath me. I feared at first that it was close to foundering, but that was not the case.

  It perked its ears and blew explosively through its nostrils, tugging at the reins, wishing to travel westward. I let the horse have its head.

  The silver half-moon only now had begun to slip toward the skies from behind the western mountains, and travel became easier by its glow. The mysterious shadows I had jumped at earlier now became landforms, rocks, an occasional saguaro or mesquite tree. And by the light of the moon I saw what had beckoned the horse.

  A pond appearing no larger than a dinner plate gleamed in the moonlight. Crowding its shore were cattails and willow brush. Three larger trees, twisted, and solemn, stood nearby. We hit the flats and moved toward the water, the bay fighting me all the way in his eagerness to drink.

  Another fifteen minutes brought us to the pond. We startled a few night-birds in our passing. The trees – sycamores I now saw – loomed dark and barren above us, casting intricate shadows across the raw earth.

  ‘Let that animal drink the water and he’s dead,’ a voice from behind the trees said. ‘And if you don’t ride out now, there’s a chance you’ll die too.’

  I reined in the bay and waited. The shadowy figure moved toward me. A Sharps carbine accompanied it. The finger caressing the trigger of the .56 was too nervous for my liking. It also belonged to a small hand connected to the slender arm of a girl with a tangle of fuzzy hair. Illuminated by the silver of the moon, it formed a wild aureole around her shadowed face.

  ‘I said, ride!’ the girl said. I shook my head.

  ‘The horse can’t take anymore. I’m not sure I can.’

  There was a moment of considered silence and then she said, ‘Well, swing down then. If you’ve got any guns, shuck ’em.’

  ‘I’m unarmed,’ I said, knowing that would sound odd. What sane man would ride this wild country without a weapon? He would have to be a fool or a man in serious trouble. I supposed I was some of each.

  Carefully, I dismounted, keeping a tight grip on the reins; the bay continued to strive toward water.

  ‘It’s arsenic poisoned,’ the girl said, waving a hand toward the pond. ‘There was a warning sign, but we didn’t see it in the dark. Nor the dead bones scattered about.’

  She came nearer. No more than five feet tall, she seemed overmatched by the Spencer repeater, but she appeared more than familiar with the weapon. Her eyes narrowed still more as she examined the bay, running her hand over it from neck to quivering flank.

  ‘I hate you!’ she screamed at me, and the muzzle of the rifle fixed itself on me. I could see her breast rising and falling, see the anger in her eyes by the mirrored light of the silver moon.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said, involuntarily raising my hands. ‘I don’t know you, lady. You don’t know me. You have no reason to hate me.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ she said with bitter, choppy words. ‘One of them.’

  I was tired of being one of them. Everyone believed that I was … whatever I was supposed to be. ‘Who,’ I asked, ‘do you think I am?’

  ‘This tells me,’ she said, and I saw her finger trace the US brand on the bay horse’s hip. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re a soldier!’ she said, laughing explosively. There was no humor behind the expression.

  ‘I stole the horse,’ I said, resorting to the truth. ‘I needed it to escape from some men back there. I don’t know who they are either, but they are not regular army. That much was made obvious to me.’

  She seemed to relax just a little, I took a chance and lowered my hands. ‘So you’re not an outlaw, but just a horse thief,’ she said. Again she laughed, a little nervously, I thought.

  ‘That’s right. Look … whatever your name is … it’s a long story, but whoever, whatever you think I am, I am not. Maybe we could talk it over. If you don’t mind my commenting on it – this is a hell of a place to find a woman alone.’

  ‘I was not alone when I started,’ she said. She was trying to keep her voice firm, but there was a slight quavering there. The rifle in her hands, however, seemed as resolute as ever. She sighed and shook her head. ‘You’d better tie the bay. The water is poison, and he’s the only horse we have now.’

  I tethered the unhappy bay to a low-hanging branch of one of the sycamore trees, loosened the cinches and took Kirk’s canteen from the saddlehom. All under the muzzle of the tiny girl’s large-bore rifle.

  Beyond the trees, the girl still holding the rifle at my back, I found her poor camp. And not twenty feet from it was a sandy hummock with a cross made from twigs. Around the pond, I now saw by moonlight the bleached bones of a dozen animals – deer, coyote, a puma and at least one steer. In the pale glow of the moon it had an eerie effect on me. Reminders of mortality can have that effect.

  ‘Sit down,’ the girl instructed, and I nodded. Seeing a blanket spread across the ground I lowered myself. My feet in the oversized cavalry boots still throbbed and burned, but that seemed inconsequential now. The girl – woman, if barely that – sat nearby on a broken tree stump. I noti
ced that she was eyeing the canteen I had brought. Casually, I flipped it toward her.

  ‘There’s not much in it,’ I apologized.

  ‘More than I’ve had in—’ She tilted the canteen to her lips and drank deeply. Ashamedly she started to push the cork back in.

  ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Take another.’

  With murmured gratitude, she did so. I watched her speculatively. What I had said earlier was true enough – this was no place for a woman wandering alone. Even if she had begun with a companion, why had they come out into this desolate land?

  She sat on the tree stump, her legs sheathed in black jeans, crossed at the ankles, the Spencer across her knees. Her face, I could see now with the moonlight fully on it, was still in that changing stage between rounded girlishness and the more well-defined lines of womanhood. She could have been anywhere from sixteen to eighteen years old, no more I thought. The wild halo of hair lighted now by moon shine seemed more blond than I had thought. Her mouth was small, almost delicate, her eyes wide. I could not determine their color, but they were expressive and sad, all of her earlier anger drained from them.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked after a long minute of silence. Without gesturing, I indicated the hummock.

  ‘My father,’ she said with a sniff, a catch in her throat. ‘Our horses were so terribly thirsty … we were so terribly thirsty. Father drank deeply from the water, remarking on its bitter taste which he took for the alkali that is so common in the area in standing water. I had busied myself first unsaddling the horses and stacking our belongings to one side.