Last Stand at Papago Wells (1957) (7 page)

Only Dave Home had reckoned without Logan, who was sixteen at the time, but fully aged in the six-shooter. Logan dropped Home with a bullet through the skull before he got out of the yard.

"That shootin' bothers me." Beaupre interrupted his thinking. "Somebody's in trouble out there."

There was nothing anyone could do, so they sat tight, waiting for further shooting, or some evidence of movement. Kimbrough came up into the rocks, and Lonnie Foreman followed.

Several minutes passed, and then suddenly, far off in the night, but rapidly coming nearer, they heard the sound of running hoofs ... somebody was hunting a hole, and coming fast. There was a shot, closer than they had expected, for they all saw the stab of flame in the night, and then other shots.

The horse came with a rush, leaping over the rocks, a led horse following. The horse came like the black rush of doom, nostrils distended. The horse skidded to a halt in their midst and a woman slid to the ground, a heavy old-style Remington pistol in her hand.

She was a fat, heavy woman with a wide face and a smile to fit, and she glanced around swiftly as she touched the ground. Despite her escape there was neither fear nor relief in her eyes, just a swift calculation of the situation. When she spoke, which was immediately, her voice was hoarse, hard and cheerful. "Well, slap me with a silver dollar if this isn't something like it! Ten minutes ago I'd have sold my hide for a phony peso!"

She glanced around again. "Boys, I'm Big Maria out of Kansas City by way of Wichita, Abilene and El Paso, and am I glad to see you! Has anybody got a drink?"

Chapter
Seven

Startled, they could merely stare, but the fat woman was not disturbed. She smiled broadly and winked at Beaupre. "Never was so glad to see anybody in my life! Pete, he tol' me about this here waterhole. Said if anything happened to him to run for it."

Logan Cates remained in the background, looking past her at the powerful horse with its bulging saddlebags. It was a magnificent animal and in splendid shape. His eyes strayed to the fetlocks and then returned to Big Maria.

"We figured ever'body from here to Tucson was either holed up or dead."

"We come right out of Tucson! Pete, he caught himself a slug in a shindig there, so we hightailed it." She smiled broadly. "He wasn't so much worried about the slug he caught as the five he put into the other gent!

"Well, he should have set still, because we run head-on into a passel of Indians. Pete, he opened up with a shotgun at bellyshootin' range and got himself a couple before they nailed him. I grabbed his Winchester and lit a shuck."

Jennifer had come from the curtained-off space under the overhang. "You must be Jim Fair's daughter," Big Maria said.

"You know my father?"

"No, but I saw him an' heard him! He's madder than a rattlesnake with a tied tail! Said a no-account tinhorn ran off with his daughter!" She grinned widely at the circle of listeners. "Which one of you no-account tinhorns is the lucky man?"

Grant Kimbrough's face flushed to the roots of his hair. "Miss Fair and I are going to be married," he said stiffly.

Big Maria chuckled. "Mister, you an' her are goin' to be married if Big Jim don't catch you! If he does he'll brand you with a number-ten boot!"

Jennifer turned sharply away, her face white with humiliation. Grant Kimbrough hesitated as if about to reply, then turned and hurried after her.

Logan Cates walked back to his place among the rocks and Beaupre descended to lead the horses away, but not until Big Maria had deftly retrieved the saddlebags. Those horses were in fine shape, much better shape than any horse he'd ever seen that came over the trail that lay behind them.

The time was short now. There was faint yellow over the eastern mountains.

Mile after mile the gray sands stretched away into the vague predawn light, here and there a bit of white where lay the bleaching skeletons of horses who had died on this road, known for many years as Camino del Diablo, or the Devil's Highway. During the few years when the road was followed during the gold rush more than four hundred people had died of thirst, and the vague line through the sand hills and ridges of naked rock was marked by whitening bones and the occasional wrecks of abandoned wagons. On his first trip over the road he had counted more than sixty graves in a day's travel, and nobody knew how many had died whose bones lay scattered by coyotes and unburied.

No command was needed as the morning grew lighter. One by one the defenders slipped into position and lay waiting, listening to the morning sounds and waiting, knowing whatever was to happen would begin today.

Or would it?

Logan Cates remembered the stories of Churupati. The man was cunning as a wolf, shrewd, dangerous, and untiring. Nor was he a man liable to risk his few followers unless the game was sure to be great. Here within the oval among the lava rocks defended by the few white men were horses, guns, and ammunition, all of which he could use. Above all, the chances of relief were small, so if he could find water, he had only to wait. Churupati knew what hunger could do, what waiting could do, and what the straining of nerves could do.

The shot came suddenly out of an empty desert, struck a rock within inches of Lonnie's head, and ricocheted with an angry whine. From behind them, over in the lava rocks, another shot was fired.

After that, there was silence. Silence, solitude, and the rising sun. With the rising sun the coolness was gone. An hour passed, and then another. Suddenly, from near the horses, there was a sudden burst of firing followed by a single shot, then a pair of shots. Kimbrough, Lugo and Beaupre were down there.

Sheehan crawled up to join Cates. "Killed a horse," he said sourly.

Cates glanced at him sharply, worried about the dun. "No," Sheehan said, "it wasn't yours--it was mine."

"One less. I hope you're a good walker, Sergeant."

"I'd walk or crawl." Sheehan wiped the sweatband of his hat. "I'd do either willingly to get out alive."

Silence held the desert, and the sky was without clouds. Only the heat waves shimmered. Sheehan shifted his rifle in his hands and wiped his sweaty palms on his shirt front.

"Cates," he spoke in a low tone, "don't count on help from the fort. Not soon, anyway. With us gone there aren't twenty men there."

Lonnie Foreman turned impatiently. "Why are they waiting? If they're going to attack, why don't they get started?"

"Who knows why an Indian does anything? Maybe they figure they don't have to hurry."

Lonnie was silent and when he spoke he said, "You know what I think? I think maybe they're right."

From Kimbrough's position there was a single shot, then silence, and no sound but the light breeze of a gray morning turning to a blazing hot day.

Sheehan slipped away to scout the various positions and check with his men. Lonnie shifted his rifle and squinted his eyes against the sun. "She's a real nice girl," he said suddenly.

Cates agreed solemnly. "Make some man a good wife," he added.

"If I was a little older," Lonnie explained carefully, "I'd--no, I want to see some more country. Why, I hear tell that up north in California there's some of the biggest trees in the world! I'd sure like to see them trees."

"You do that." Cates had found a cluster of rocks in the sand that somehow did not look quite natural. "I figure every man should see some trees before he dies."

He lifted his Winchester and sighted at the flat surface of a rock slightly behind the group. He steadied himself, blinked the sweat from his eyes, then squeezed off his shot.

From behind the rocks there was a startled yelp and Cates fired against the rock again, then fired past the rock. There was no further sound.

"Them ricochets," Lonnie said, "they tear a man up. They tear him up something fierce."

Cates slid back to where it was safe, then stood up. "You stay here, Lonnie. They'll be nervous now, but you be careful." He started down the rocks. "She's a fine girl, all right. I'd say she was very fine."

He stopped by the fire for coffee. He squatted by the fire, thinking about it. The killing of that horse had been no accident, for every horse killed meant a man afoot, and a man walking was a man who would die in this country.

Zimmerman walked to the fire and lifted the coffee pot. Cates saw at a glance that the big man was hunting trouble, and it would be always that way with Zimmerman. He would hunt trouble until somebody killed him--only this was not the time.

"You wet-nursin' that Injun?" Zimmerman demanded.

"Before we get out of here we'll be glad to have him with us. We'll need every man we've got."

"Send him out there with the rest of the Injuns," Zimmerman said. "He's like them all. This here's a place for white men."

"Lugo is a Pima, and the Pimas are good Indians. They are ancient enemies of both the Apaches and the Yaqui, with more reason for hating them than you'll ever have. He stays."

"Maybe." Zimmerman gulped coffee, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Maybe I'll run him out."

"In the first place"--Logan Cates got to his feet--"Tony Lugo is, I suspect, twice the fighter you've ever been. In the second place, I'm in command here, and if you want to start anything with him, start it with me first."

Zimmerman looked at him over the coffee pot, a slow, measuring glance, and he did not like what he saw. He had seen these lean, quiet men before, and there was a cool certainty in Cates's manner that betrayed the fact that he was no stranger to trouble. Yet Zimmerman knew his own enormous strength and relied upon it. "You get in my way," he said, "and I'll take that little gun and put it where it belongs."

"How about right now?" Cates asked softly.

Zimmerman looked at him, then shook his head. "I'll pick my own time," he said, "but you stay out of my way."

Turning, the big soldier walked away, and Logan Cates knew that only the time was suspended, that nothing had been avoided. Nor could there be any reasoning with Zimmerman, for the man's hatred of all Indians had been absorbed during childhood, drilled into him, leaving no room for reason; for such a man the loss of an arm would come easier than the loss of prejudice, for he lived by hatred.

The attack came suddenly. The Apaches came out of the desert like brown ghosts, and vanished as suddenly. They had come with a rush, moving suddenly as on signal, but there had been no signal that anyone heard. They came, they fired and they hit the sand, and then the desert was empty again, as though the sudden movement had been a deception of the sunlight on the sand ... only now they were closer.

Another horse had been killed, and Cates swore under his breath, knowing what the Indians had in mind. For a time there was silence and every man waited, expecting another rush, searching the sand and the jumble of lava for a target they really did not expect to find. Sheehan mopped sweat from his brow and worried, wondering what had been done back at the fort, knowing how few men were there.

"Nobody to shoot at," Foreman complained. "They're like ghosts."

"We wasted time!" Taylor said irritably. "We could have struck out for Yuma."

"Like your posse did?" Cates asked.

"That was an accident!" Taylor said angrily. "It wouldn't happen again."

"The Apaches make accidents like that."

Beaupre and Lugo fired as one man, and Kimbrough's shot was an instant behind. The three bullets furrowed the crest of a sand hill a short distance off, a crest where an instant before an Indian had showed.

"Missed him!" Beaupre spat his disgust.

"Teach 'em to be careful," Lonnie Foreman assured him. "If you missed you sure made him unhappy, comin' that near."

Minutes paced slowly by. Out over the desert heat waves shimmered; the day was going now, and it would leave them in darkness soon, leave them in darkness where the Apaches could creep closer, and closer.

Cates moved around their position, checking each man, scanning the desert from every vantage point. The area they covered was all of a hundred yards long, but difficult to get at for any attacker. There was cover beyond their perimeter of defense, but the cover for the defenders was even better. Where the two upper pools were there was a wide space that was open and safe as long as the defenders could keep the Indians out of the bordering rocks.

The hours drew slowly on. Occasionally a shot came out of the desert ... or an arrow. But there were no more casualties. Only once did anyone get a shot, and it was Kimbrough. He took a shot at a running Indian, a shadow seen among the mesquite and cholla, no more. Whether he scored or missed there was no way of telling. The sun lowered itself slowly behind the distant hills, and out over the lava, a quail called. It was evening again.

Squatting beside the fire, Cates nursed his cup in his hands. The fire and the coffee were the only friendly things; he did not belong here, he did not want this fight. Alone, he might have gone on, for his horse was a desert horse and his two canteens were large. And now he was pinned here, surrounded by Indians, and among people either indifferent to him or outright in their dislike of him.

"Will we get out?" Jennifer asked him.

"We'll get out."