by Ben Boulden
“Where do we start?” J.D. said.
Kate opened her mouth to answer, but closed it to watch three young women, none over the age of eighteen, shepherd a crowd of youngsters along the boardwalk. The children were having difficulty ignoring the strangers in town. The young mothers unsuccessfully shushed the giggling kids, who whispered about and pointed at J.D. and Kate. A brave tow-headed boy stepped from the group and said, “What are you doing here?”
Kate said, “Well, aren’t you a rascal—”
One of the young mothers whispered so loudly Kate confused it with a shout, “Malachi!” Then: “Father would disapprove of your speaking to a gentile.” This caused more giggling and it took several seconds for the women to regain control and wrangle the grinning children past the two strangers.
“At least we know someone lives here,” J.D. said.
“Did that girl call us ‘gentiles’?” Kate said.
“Two meanings,” J.D. said, “non-Jewish is its popular definition—”
“And?” Kate said.
“Non-Mormon.”
Kate frowned. J.D.’s favorite dimple appeared on her cheek a moment before she said, “Non-Mormon? How do they figure?”
“Don’t know why, Kate,” J.D. said. His lop-sided grin exchanged for a smart-alecky smile. “I just know what is. I guess you could say we’re gentiles from all perspectives.”
“Smart ass,” Kate said, the shadow of a smile on her face.
“Let’s go find a hole for this devil,” J.D. said, nodding at the dead man dangling across the saddle of his former horse. “He served his purpose and I’m tired of his smell.”
CHAPTER 6
On their way out of town J.D. saw a fight at the end of an alley off the main road. He sat his horse and watched a moment. What he saw was more beating than fight; near a parked wagon, two men crowded over a smaller man curled into a ball, his hands over his head and his knees drawn to his chest. The men, one with scraggly red hair and the other bald, expertly kicked at the smaller man’s head, back, chest to cause maximum damage with minimum effort. The scene was surreally quiet. The only noises were the rhythmic scuffing of leather on flesh, muted, dense grunts, and a pain saturated mewling.
J.D. assessed the scene in moments. He dropped from his horse and pulled the Winchester out of its scabbard in one swift motion.
“Cover me!” J.D. said without looking back at Kate, knowing she would do exactly that.
He ran into the alley, his left hand gripping the rifle’s forestock, and stopped ten feet short of the beating. J.D. pulled the Winchester’s butt to his shoulder and held his right pointer finger outside the trigger guard.
“Hold it!” J.D. said.
Red Hair glanced in J.D.’s direction long enough for a maniacal smile to cut across his ruddy face. He turned his attention back to the prostrate man, ignoring J.D. entirely, pulled a blackjack from the pocket of his cotton trousers. He slapped his right thigh with the vicious little weapon and said to the bald man, “Pull Johnny-boy up, Romms.”
Romms stopped kicking, looked at Red and then at J.D., a momentary look of disbelief on his face before looking back at Red. “What?”
“Hold his head up, man!” Red said. “I’m going to crack it open.”
“Goddammit!” J.D. said. “Stand back!”
Red looked back at J.D., an obscene smile on his face and rotted teeth in his mouth. The smell, even from ten feet away, was fearsome. It was comparable, J.D. thought, to the fetid, heavy odor of a gut shot deer. Romms grabbed the smaller man’s dark hair, dragged him the few feet to where Red stood. The man Red called “Johnny-boy” breathed raggedly, almost hyperventilating in big, harsh, gasping breaths.
His mouth opened and closed in pain; a few Spanish words falling out, and then, with an unexpected loudness he said, “Please.”
J.D. was unsure who the man was speaking to—his attackers or J.D.
J.D. moved closer, rifle at his shoulder, ticking through the options for his best attack. Shooting the men wasn’t at the top of the list. He was in hostile territory and the small lawman who told them to keep riding would take delight in showing J.D. a cell and maybe later in the day hanging him from the nearest Juniper tree. A scenario J.D. was uncomfortable with.
Before J.D. settled on his best approach, Kate stepped past him, the big Colt swinging in a wide arc over her head. She brought the heavy barrel down hard against the back of Red’s skull. The impact sounded like melon on rock. Red dropped to his knees. His teeth clamped down with an audible clack, a hoarse rush of air escaped his lungs. The blackjack fell from his grasp, his hands flexing involuntarily and, almost in slow motion, he fell face first to the hard alley dirt.
J.D. backed Kate’s play by moving to his right, widening the angle between him and Kate and placing the front sight of his Winchester on Romms’ nose.
“I have no predilection about dropping you where you stand,” J.D. said. “Put the man down, gently as you would your breakfast egg, then raise your hands as high as God allows.”
Romms looked at J.D. He shook his head and grimaced. J.D. put his finger on the rifle’s trigger. The movement unnerved Romms. He let the man’s head fall, harder than J.D. liked, and started his big clumsy right hand towards the gun holstered at his hip before his brain overtook the reflex and he went still.
“Good boy,” J.D. said. “We don’t want any shooting, do we, Kate?”
“Well,” Kate said, “I’m not opposed to pulling a trigger, sweetie.”
“That I know,” said J.D.
Romms held his arms straight in the air. He twisted his head to look at both J.D. and Kate. His bald pate reflected a shimmer of late morning sun. “I won’t make no trouble, mister.”
“I reckon you should talk to my wife,” J.D. said. “She’s the one wanting to pull a trigger.”
Romms looked at Kate, bowed his head slightly and said, “Please, lady. I ain’t no trouble.”
Kate laughed in that bawdy, lyrical way of hers that drove J.D. wild.
“We caught us a real hero, J.D.,” Kate said.
“We sure did.” J.D. turned to Romms. “Bring your left hand—slow if you would—down and pull your hogleg, at its butt, out of the holster with pinky and thumb.”
With the revolver in the dirt and Romms looking more uncomfortable than ever, J.D. said, “Take four large steps back.” Then to Kate, “Check on Red. Make sure he isn’t playing possum?”
Kate kicked Red, hard, in the ribs with the toe of her boot. He rolled with the impact and emitted a wet groan. When she was satisfied Red was cold, she moved past him to help Johnny-boy. He was curled into a ball, eyes open, watching. His face covered with blood, a large welt rising on his forehead. Kate knelt beside him; unsure if the man understood what he was seeing from his unfocused stare. She reached down, touched his hair, leaned forward, said, “You all right?”
“Sí,” said the man. “I hurting, but no-thing broken, I think.”
“What’s your name?” Kate said.
“Juan Fernandez. But please, call me John.”
Kate helped John to his feet. He stood on wobbly legs, stumbled with an unseen tide; steadied himself with a hand on the wagon and after a moment pushed Kate’s hands away.
“Thank you,” he said.
J.D. looked across the alley. Romms’ mouth was open, blackened teeth in the weather, arms shaking as he held them in the air. His trousers were encrusted with enough dirt and grease to keep him standing several minutes after he quit breathing. Red peacefully lying prone, wheezing lightly with each breath.
“Who are these men?” J.D. said to John. “And why are they after you?”
“I...I was unable,” John said, “to pay Mister Skousen’s obligation.”
“Obligation?” Kate said.
“What obligation?” J.D. said to Romms. “You collecting for Skousen?”
Romms nodded. His arms trembled so hard he looked like an aspen quaking in the wind. “Can I put my arms down?”
/> J.D. shook his head.
Kate noticed a small group gathered at the alley’s entrance. “We better vamoose. A crowd's forming.”
J.D. sighed. He looked at John Fernandez, said, “You up to driving the wagon?”
Fernandez nodded and climbed onto the hard plank seat of the buckboard. When he was seated he untied the reins, which explained why the horse and wagon were still in the alley, and started a slow turn to straighten the rig towards the alley’s exit and the back end of town.
The crowd was growing and with its increased numbers it was becoming more a mob than a crowd. There were a few shouts:
“What are you doing there?”
“Get out of town, you scoundrels!”
“You need help, Romms?”
J.D. fetched the horses, which were acting as a barrier between the growing mob and the scene of the fight. He mounted his horse and, pulling Kate’s and the dead man’s with him, moved deeper into the alley. When Kate’s horse was in reach she swung into the saddle without losing her aim on Romms’ belly.
“Go, John!” J.D. said.
John Fernandez hmmphed and brought the reins down on the horse’s back, prompting an eager trot. The wagon rolled briskly out of the alley and onto the back edge of Small Basin. Kate and J.D. followed, their guns pointed at Romms and the encroaching mob.
“This ain’t over!” Romms said as they turned the corner and disappeared from the alley.
At the edge of town as J.D., Kate, and John were rushing away, a boy of no more than ten, dressed in overalls too tight at the shoulders and too short at the ankles, raced from behind the last row of buildings, waved his arms wildly and shouted something impossible to hear. Kate, to J.D.’s chagrin, veered towards the boy who held a single sheet of folded paper high. Once the paper was handed off the boy wordlessly turned and ran back to Small Basin. Kate turned her horse towards J.D. and John while putting the sheet of paper inside her blouse.
“What was that?” J.D. said as Kate approached, her horse quickly moving past him.
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “And damned if I’m going to stop and find out!”
CHAPTER 7
The small settlement was a scattering of dilapidated homes. A few pueblo-style structures, flat roofs and mud red walls shimmered in the afternoon sun. Others built from rough-hewn pine and juniper aged a colorless gray. Chickens scurried across the dusty road, goats ate at the sparse nubs of greasy looking grass scattered across the desert’s landscape.
A handful of children played in dirt yards. The boys shirtless, the girls wearing burlap bags as dresses. Poverty leeched from the settlement like disease and Kate felt its sorrow and hopelessness as a weight. J.D. and Kate followed John to a rundown clapboard dugout where he halted the wagon and uneasily stumbled down from its seat. He held the buckboard for support and once he gained his legs, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Adalina!”
In a moment a girl of no more than 19 years, beautiful in her worn and faded dun-colored dress, stepped from the house.
“You are home, Papa!” she said. Then, noticing the cuts and bruises on his face, she said, “What happened? Are you all right?” She hurried to John and gently touched his bruised, bloodied face.
“Nothing to worry you,” John said. “An accident in town.”
“I wouldn’t call it an accident,” Kate said.
“Who are you?”
Kate opened her mouth to speak, but John interrupted.
“Friends, Adalina,” John said. “They helped me get home.”
He introduced his daughter to J.D. and Kate and explained what had happened in Small Basin. The fight. J.D.’s and Kate’s participation and the long slow ride home. The story brought tears of anger and frustration to Adalina’s eyes.
“Why must we stay here, Papa?” she said. “We could go west to California, or east to—”
“The farm,” John said, “is all I have.”
“The farm is a desolate, dead thing, Papa,” Adalina said. “There is no rain, no water, and what little it provides Skousen takes for himself.”
“That is true, but I am an old man. I have been here all my life and this place—It is everything.”
“But what about me, Papa—”
J.D. interrupted, “Skousen?”
Small Basin was more than it appeared, John explained, ignoring the piercing look on his daughter’s face. Levi Skousen had arrived in the late 1850s, when John was still a young man, from Salt Lake City on a “mission” for the Mormon Church. Levi and those sent with him settled the broad flat valley where Washington City was now and tried to grow cotton along the Virgin River. The crops continually failed because of the harsh, arid climate; flash flooding, silting and drought. Skousen began to supplement his income by raiding the lonely wagon trains moving across the Old Spanish Trail for California. His men dressed as Indians, stole money, food, and stock. Anything they could sell, barter, or trade.
Skousen was rebuked and recalled to Salt Lake City, but he refused.
John paused and looked at his daughter. He smiled humorlessly, shook his head and whispered, “I’m sorry, my darling Adalina.”
Skousen left Washington City, several dozen others followed, but instead of going north as ordered, he settled Small Basin in the canyon northeast of Lugar Bonito, the small settlement John Fernandez and his daughter called home. Lugar Bonito was never prosperous. The small muddy creek slithering along the canyon floor sustained its meager population. The creek fed the pocket farms and goat herds, but this life giving source ended when Skousen’s group arrived. They dammed the creek and aggressively pushed its residents to join or leave.
“It has been worse than it sounds,” a newcomer, dressed in the black clothes and white collar of a priest said. “In the early years Skousen sent raiding parties here and stole the little we had. He lured our young girls away by promising a better life and made them slaves. By some accounts he has as many as thirty wives. His people grow grapes and squash and winter wheat with our water and still he raids those poor souls traveling along the Old Spanish Trail.”
John Fernandez said, “Ah, Father Pacheco. This is J.D. and Kate Blaze. They helped me from a tight spot in Small Basin.”
Father Pacheco bowed slightly, offered his hand to both strangers. “It is a pleasure to have you in Lugar Bonito,” he said. “I am Joseph Da Cunha Pacheco.”
“Nice to meet you, padre,” Kate said.
“Likewise,” J.D. said.
“Thank you for helping John,” Father Pacheco said. “I have told him we must avoid Small Basin in favor of Washington City, but still he insists.”
John Fernandez looked uncomfortable and remained silent.
“But Washington City is a long distance. Six hard days there and back,” Father Pacheco said. “So we must brave the streets of Small Basin at times.” Then, to J.D. and Kate he said, “What brought you to Small Basin?”
J.D. told him the story and asked if he knew of a gang using the area as a hideout.
“Other than Skousen’s men?” said Father Pacheco. “No.”
Kate said, “Is there a chance this Skousen would send men to rob trains in Arizona?”
“Anything is possible,” Father Pacheco said. “But it is doubtful he would travel so far.”
“Why is that, Father?” J.D. said.
“As you know, this place is isolated, and its isolation gives Skousen power, but civilization is beginning to encroach and its arrival represents danger to Skousen. I think he would not like to draw outsiders here and robbing trains would bring detectives and others to Small Basin pursuing the bandits.”
There was a long silence while J.D. thought about the priest’s words. A cawing black bird, floating on the warm rising air currents in the vivid blue sky above Lugar Bonito, caught J.D.’s attention. He stared a moment and finally said, “I would agree, padre.”
The shadow of a smile creased Joseph Da Cuhna Pacheco’s face. It was meant to be welcoming, but instead
it was melancholy and sad. He said, “Now, will you be staying with us?”
“Is there a hotel in town?” Kate said. “I’m dying for a place to clean up and rest.”
“We have no place like that here,” Father Pacheco said, “but the church has an extra room I will gladly share.”
“That is very kind,” Kate said.
“But first,” J.D. looked back at the dead man’s horse. “We still need a hole for the carcass.”
“Adalina,” Father Pacheco said. “Would you take them to the old Spanish mine in Solitario Canyon?” Then, looking at J.D., he said, “The remains can easily be disposed of in the abandoned mine shaft.”
Adalina agreed with a sigh.
“Then bring them to the church,” Father Pacheco said.
CHAPTER 8
Kate and J.D. were alone after Father Pacheco showed them their temporary quarters. It was a tiny rectangular shed, a small bed on the back wall, cleaning and other supplies lining the others, and a small water cistern in one corner. It was attached at the back of a teetering clapboard church on the edge of town. The once white paint was faded and peeling to expose the raw pine planks beneath. The church sat on a small rise, overlooking the town as a shepherd, a red cliff rose majestically behind it, and everything was blanketed by a brilliantly blue afternoon sky.
“Nice,” J.D. said.
“Not what I was thinking, exactly,” Kate said. “But it’s better than sleeping with the coyotes.”
J.D. set his saddle bags on the floor and leaned his Winchester against the wall. He undid the buckle of his holster, grimaced at its emptiness, and set it next to the saddle bags.
“I think I know how we can distract ourselves from the room’s despair,” J.D. said.
“I thought you might,” Kate said, a smile on her full red lips. “But I need to clean up first.”
J.D. pulled her close, kissed her hard on the mouth, and after he untangled his lips, said, “You’ve never been too dirty to horse around.”
