Promised Land

by Mark Warren

  They tracked the mules from Camp Rucker southwest to the Babacomari River basin where the McLaury brothers’ ranch spread from green cottonwoods and grassy flats by the river out into the rocky, dry scrub on the desert slopes. There had been no rain for weeks, so the trail had been crisply defined in the baking sand. Without talking, the trackers rode under a blue slab of sky, as waves of heat rose beneath them. Their sweat burned off in the dry air as soon as it poured from their bodies.

  Coming into view of the ranch house, the posse of five soldiers and four federal deputies rode straight to a paddock where six ranch hands looked up from a conversation and stilled in collective wariness. Four mules were tied together at the rear fence. A paint mare was tethered to the snubbing post. One man, who stood apart with a boot propped on the low fence rail, straightened and squared to face the oncoming party. He was short with bowlegs and a dark, ruddy complexion. Pocketing a cigarette he had been rolling, he leaned and picked up a carbine.

  Wyatt slipped his Colt’s from its scabbard and held it behind his leg against the saddle skirt. As they pulled up to the fence, he nosed his horse next to Virgil’s, and they sat their mounts without speaking, studying each face in the group, just as they themselves were being studied. Wyatt finally settled his gaze on the short man with the rifle. Morgan wheeled his horse around one corner of the fencing to flank the Cow-boys.

  “Who’s in charge here?” Virgil said, his voice shored with the authority of his federal badge.

  No one spoke or moved. Virgil kicked his horse closer to a whiskered man who stood outside the paddock. This one was tall with reddish hair and red-speckled skin and a challenging sneer stretched across his face.

  “Are you in charge?” Virgil said gruffly.

  “I might be if there was somethin’ to be in charge of,” the man said through his tight grin. No one else smiled.

  “What’s your name?” Virgil demanded.

  The man smirked at the ground, as if considering the investment of energy required to answer. When he looked up, his smile disappeared, and his nostrils flared. His slate-blue eyes burned with hostility.

  “Patterson,” he growled in a surly tone.

  Kicking his horse forward a few steps, the lieutenant in charge of the soldiers spoke up curtly. “My name is Hurst. I have information that men named Diehl and Masters stole mules from Camp Rucker. The tracks lead right here to this ranch.”

  Virgil’s jaw knotted at this interruption of his own chosen tempo of interrogation. Patterson gave Hurst a gap-toothed smile, his teeth the ivory yellow of worn poker chips.

  “Well, hell,” Patterson crowed, “it’s a damned shame the army can’t hold on to their livestock.”

  Hurst sat up straighter in his saddle. “Do you know Diehl and Masters?”

  “I might,” Patterson said. Then he leaned off to one side and spat.

  “Do they work here?”

  The Cow-boy’s mouth curled again into a self-righteous sneer. “They work for theirselves . . . just like all of us do.”

  “But are they friends of yours?”

  “Hell,” Patterson mumbled, trading his show of antagonism for a shrug of disinterest. “I got lots of friends. People gener’ly try to avoid bein’ otherwise.”

  “When did you see them last?”

  “I don’t keep no diary,” Patterson snapped and showed his ugly teeth again.

  Virgil glared at the impudent man. “Where’re the McLaurys?” he barked with obvious impatience.

  Patterson’s smile broke at the no-nonsense timbre in Virgil’s question. “Around here some’eres. How should I know?” He cocked his head sideways toward the main house and barn. “Try the corral out back.”

  “Hey, Virge,” Morgan called out, walking his horse around the outside of the fence. He stood in his stirrups to look down into a shallow pit at the rear of the paddock. “Been a fire here recent.” He pointed to the mules. “And fresh singe marks on those rumps. Looks like a burn-over to me.”

  Virgil kept his eyes on Patterson. “You boys been doin’ some branding?”

  When no one answered, Morg leaned and squinted at the mules. “Looks like D8.” He smiled. “Kind o’ fits good over US, don’t it?”

  Standing directly in front of Wyatt, the short man with the carbine took a wider stance. The rifle remained angled over one shoulder and pointed at the sky, but the Cow-boy appeared as still and taut as a trap about to spring. Wyatt hooked his thumb over the hammer of his Colt’s and watched this man’s beady eyes shift from one posse member to another. Inside the few seconds of silence that ticked by, no one moved. The heat beating down on the desert seemed to intensify. In all this open space of the valley, the scene around the paddock was now like a cramped room with too many bodies inside.

  “Yeah, we gotta fire,” Patterson snorted. “We’re tryin’ to warm up. We ain’t used to these cool summers. Ain’t like in Texas.”

  Wyatt checked the brand on the paint standing patiently at the post. It was an old singe and scar: an even triangle, point down. Tired of Patterson’s vulgar voice, Wyatt addressed his question to the little, red-faced man before him.

  “Where do you keep your branding irons?” The group of Cow-boys continued to stand like statues, but their eyes flicked from Patterson to the feisty one with the carbine.

  “Wouldn’ know,” the man said in a clipped manner. “Don’t work here.”

  Virgil propped his right hand on his gun butt and swung his other hand up to point in an all-encompassing arc that included everyone inside the paddock. “You men raise your hands and stand over by the feed bucket where I can keep an eye on you. We’re gonna have a look at some branding irons.”

  The rifleman lowered his weapon diagonally across his torso—like a sentry challenging entry. At the same time, Patterson’s hand tightened on the gun butt at his hip. Wyatt brought up his Colt’s, letting it float into view in a smooth, unhurried motion. He didn’t cock the hammer or aim at anyone in particular, but the gleam of the blue metal was enough. Morgan brought his gun to bear on the man closest to him. Hurst and the soldiers had not moved.

  “Do it now!” Virgil commanded, his big voice booming with authority. His hand remained clasped on the butt of his revolver, but he made no move to pull it.

  Under the weight of Virgil’s glare, Patterson released his grip on his pistol and backed to the fence, where he climbed over the rails. Trying for a swagger with his arms slightly raised, he walked toward the back of the enclosure. Following his example, the other men in the paddock lifted their hands in token obedience, their fingertips only slightly higher than their elbows. Slowly they began to shuffle toward the bucket. The red-faced man was last to comply, taking only a few steps backward in the direction of his companions. He remained defiant, with his carbine held before him.

  “I’m a deputy U.S. marshal,” Virgil announced. “I’m coming in to have a look around.”

  Hurst dismounted, handed his reins to his sergeant, and followed Virgil into the paddock. The other soldiers sat their horses with nothing in their hands but their reins.

  Without taking his eyes off the Cow-boy with the carbine, Wyatt pivoted his head a quarter turn so as to be heard by Williams, the Wells, Fargo man behind him.

  “Marsh,” Wyatt said quietly. He waited until Williams eased up on horseback, boot to boot with him. “Tell the sergeant to order his men to dismount with their weapons out.”

  Inside the paddock Virgil knelt at the fire pit and held his palm over the mound of warm, gray ash. Right away he stood and walked to the mules. There he stroked one animal’s rump over its brand, where freshly scorched, blackened hairs fell away and angled on the breeze. Virge looked back to Wyatt and nodded. Then he turned to Hurst, who stood just inside the gate with his feet spread and his hands clasped at his lower back. But the lieutenant only stared blankly at the mules.

  Virgil walked the perimeter of the fencing. Finding no branding irons, he walked to the knot of surly Cow-boys, stopped before the
m, and spread his boots.

  “Frank ain’t gonna like you nosin’ ’round,” Patterson said, his nasal voice insolent and taunting.

  Virgil studied the man’s sneering face and, without any show, pulled his revolver. Holding the gun muzzle down beside his leg, he pointed with his free hand to the ground at their boots.

  “Unbuckle, boys. Let ’em drop.”

  Three heartbeats of dead quiet passed. Then the Cow-boys grudgingly complied, and belts and scabbards fell, thumping in the dust like so many snakes tossed into the fine powder of the paddock. The feisty one with bowlegs was the last to surrender his weapon. He bent at the knees and propped his carbine on the low rail of the fence, his glare fixed on Virgil. Then he slipped off his cartridge belt with holster and pistol and hung it over the same rail. When he straightened, his look of defiance appeared hard as a wood carving.

  Virgil glanced toward the house and barn, then at Wyatt. “Let’s check the house and those outbuildings back yonder.” Then he strode angrily to Hurst. “You hold these men here. I ain’t gonna get a straight answer from this jackleg.” He jerked a thumb toward Patterson. “I’m going to find a McLaury.”

  Virgil waited, glaring at the officer, until the lieutenant seemed to awaken from his own inner thoughts. Only then did Hurst unsnap his holster flap and pull out his revolver.

  Still on their mounts, Wyatt and Morg followed Virgil’s stiff march to the house. When no one answered Virgil’s heavy knock, the two horsemen parted around the house—Morgan angling toward the barn, while Wyatt took his horse at a walk downhill, where dust rose from a makeshift corral of laced mesquite branches and slender trunks of ocotillo. There a black stallion snorted and paced as a well-built man turned a rope around a snubbing post. Wyatt recognized him. Black, curly hair . . . freckles. A smaller man squatted in the dust and rose at Wyatt’s approach. Both were unarmed.

  “You McLaury?” Wyatt said to the shorter man.

  This one was full of spit and challenge. He hissed something to himself and walked toward Wyatt with a tight bounce in his step. The narrow goatee and moustaches—paired with his stiff walk—gave him the appearance of a fighting cock.

  “Who the hell’re you? You’re on McLaury land!”

  “Federal posse,” Wyatt said. “Name’s Earp. Who am I talking to?”

  The testy man tried to pull himself taller. “You can’t just ride up onto my land like this.” He threw out a hand and swept it in an arc at the hills around him. “This is all private, so you can turn around and get the hell out o’ here.”

  Morgan walked his horse next to Wyatt’s and reined to a stop. Smiling, he leaned a forearm on his pommel to get his face closer to the strutter.

  “You hard of hearing, mister? Tell us your goddamn name.”

  “McLaury!” he spat. “And this is McLaury land! Now get the fuck off of it!”

  Morgan laughed and carried his smile to Wyatt. Wyatt kept his face neutral and held his gaze on the hostile rancher.

  “We tracked six stolen army mules here,” Wyatt said. “We’re gonna look around.”

  McLaury’s face colored. “The hell you are!” He pushed through the gate. “Tom!” he yelled, walking in double-time toward a shed behind the barn. Virgil emerged from the barn and watched the man approach, so Wyatt let McLaury go.

  Inside the corral Curly Bill Brocius coiled the loose end of the rope into loops and squinted at Wyatt. “I know you, don’t I?” Then recognition came into his eyes, and he smiled with what seemed genuine delight. “Hell, yeah. The big shit law at Dodge. Well, God-damn.” He looked off happily to the horizon, and his expression grew pensive. “Old Sally.” Feigning a nostalgic moment, he shook his head, and then he faced Wyatt. “Now here you are down here where you got no goddamn business.”

  Wyatt kept his face expressionless as he recalled his last run-in with Brocius in Kansas. When Mattie had fallen back into her old profession, calling herself “Sally” again, working the line under one of Dodge’s successful madams. When he had tried to pull her out of that life, Brocius had just put money down for her services.

  Wyatt pushed the memory from his mind and stared at the Cow-boy. “Might be your business is mine,” he said. “You work for McLaury?”

  Curly Bill cocked his head as though he had heard an amusing joke. Then, taking a lot of air into his broad chest, he propped his gloved fists on his hips.

  “Son, I’m free as a Mexican wolf and don’t work for nobody.” He smiled again, flashing his teeth. “I ain’t too good at takin’ orders.”

  “But you are tied to these stolen mules,” Wyatt said.

  “Me?” Brocius said, frowning, but keeping his smile. “Hell, no, Mister Lawman. I just stopped by for a friendly visit.” A false play of concern narrowed his eyes. “But good luck finding those fuckin’ mules. Prob’ly somewhere down in Mexico by now.”

  Joining into Brocius’s theatrics, Morgan wagged a finger at the Cow-boy. “Might be you boys needin’ the luck.” He turned to Wyatt and held up a branding iron, his smile relaxing to a sly grin. “Look at what I found hangin’ in the barn.” Morg wet the tip of a forefinger in his mouth and with it touched the business end of the metal. Then his eyes crinkled with mischief as he looked back at Brocius. “Whatta you know? Still warm.”

  Wyatt sidled his horse next to his brother’s and took the iron to inspect the brand. The lettering had been crudely hammered out, but it was distinct: an 8 followed by a reverse D. He looked at the stallion in the corral. On its rump was the same mark branded on the skittish paint in the front paddock: an inverted triangle.

  “What’s the McLaury brand?” Wyatt asked Brocius.

  Curly Bill snorted a laugh through his nose and smiled at the sky. “Son, a rancher’s got lots o’ brands. I don’t keep up with his irons.”

  “Looks like a triangle, far as I’ve seen,” Morgan said. “Why the hell would a McLaury need a D-eight brand? Unless it was meant to burn over the army’s.”

  Curly Bill made an elaborate shrug and laughed. “Hell, far as I know, a man can come up with any brand he wants.”

  “That’s true,” Morgan replied in the same tone he might use with a young child. “But what do you bet he ain’t registered that brand?” He pointed to the iron.

  Brocius pretended to think about that. He scratched at his whiskered chin and stared off at the barn. “Well, now . . . I reckon you’d have to ask Frank about that, now wouldn’t you?” He turned to the frothing stallion and watched it pull at the rope dallied to the snubbing post. “All I care ’bout is takin’ the starch out o’ this black devil.” When he looked back at the Earp brothers again, his face was a picture of innocence. “Tell you what, city boys . . .” Now his voice suddenly took on a vicious edge. “Why don’t you get out o’ my face. Go back to your damned fancy town and give a speech or whatever it is you do there.” He took off his hat, mopped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt, and plopped the hat back on his head. “I got work to do here.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Curly Bill spun on a heel and strolled back to the tethered stud as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Morgan straightened in his saddle and called out to Brocius’s back.

  “If we find out you—”

  Brocius turned so quickly, he cut Morgan off. “I’m done talkin’ to you, young’n! Go chase your tail somewhere else!” Then, as suddenly as his anger had flared, it left him like a flame snuffed out by the wind. Trading one mask for another, he again assumed an actor’s pose, extended an arm, and pointed at Wyatt. “But you, big-shit lawman, why don’t you do me a favor.” The Cow-boy cocked his head and squinted. “How the hell can I get in touch with Sally? I ain’t really sure I thanked her proper for all she done for me back in Kansas. You ain’t gotta address do you?” Now his taunting smile was like a stench invading Wyatt’s space.

  Wyatt’s face darkened and turned hard, the angle of his jaw like sculpted stone. His eyes went cold as ice and held on Brocius for several heartbeats. The Cow-boy’s smile t
urned garish, like a gargoyle designed to insult whoever might look its way. Wyatt urged his horse forward at a slow walk until it stopped at the edge of the mesquite fencing. Sitting his horse in his easy manner, he stared down at Brocius and spoke in a tone so low that the Cow-boy narrowed his eyes and cocked an ear forward.

  “You’re pretty good at yappin’ your mouth. Is that all you boys can do?”

  Brocius’s thick, dark eyebrows lowered over his eyes, and his tongue ran across the front of his teeth, making his lips swell and then recede. “Well, I’ll tell you, Preacher, I—”

  “I don’t care to hear you no more,” Wyatt interrupted, the iron in his voice like a rail spike hammered into seasoned wood, “so I suggest you shut your mouth.”

  Brocius’s smile broke like a taut string snapping under pressure. The two men glared at one another, the only sound the wind and the stud shuffling its hooves in the dry, rocky sand as it strained against the rope. When Wyatt reined his horse around, Morgan followed and caught up to stare at the side of his brother’s face.

  “What was that all about?” he whispered. “And who the hell is Sally?”

  Wyatt said nothing and kicked his horse into a trot.

  They caught up to Frank McLaury and flanked him with their horses, the easy syncopation of hooves making the angry rhythm of the Cow-boy’s bantam walk seem overwrought and comical. Up the hill a man came from a shed behind the barn. Wiping his hands on a dirty rag, he stopped and stared at the visitors.

  “Frank?” he called out, his voice rising with a question. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “That’d be the other McLaury—Tom,” Morg said to Wyatt.

  Frank did not answer his brother. Virgil walked to Tom and engaged him in conversation. Like Frank, Tom was unarmed. His facial hair duplicated his brother’s, but his general manner and open way of talking appeared less hostile.

  When all were gathered together, Wyatt showed the still-warm brand to Virgil. Tom licked his lips and looked to his brother for a response.