Читать книгу The Big Dry - George Garland - Страница 5

SILVER CITY lay miles behind the rider.

Young West rode at a shuffling gait relaxed to the motion of the saddle, apparently at peace with the world and himself. His eyes were glare-slitted as his gaze held fast to the southern heads of the Mogollon Mountains. Under the blistering afternoon sky the green of pines away in the distance seemed alive and dancing under shimmering heat waves.

He reined up and listened to a distant rumbling behind him. Knowing it was the stagecoach to Bacon and Queeny, he turned off the road into a bleached arroyo and waited behind a screen of scrub oak. If Cactus Williams sat in the driver’s seat, this was the stage he had ridden north to intercept.

The tattoo of hoofs sounded closer. Soon the rolling wheels and crack of whip advised that the desert express was racing hard for Gila Crossing. It came on, tore on by in swirls of dust, clattering on, swaying, clinging to the twisting road like a train to a track. It followed a thin ribbon that was civilization’s hard-won trail; it split a land where a house was a gamble, something chanced upon, where cattle calved in the Apaches’ front yard. The mines up at Queeny drew it on. The lure was gold.

Of late many stories leaked down out of the valley and mountains. Victorio, chief of the Apaches, was recruiting among the tribes stationed on the reservation. Smokes columned upward, and the dry ground was scarred by travois, and squaws and children and sheep moved slowly in the Apache way out of Arizona Territory down to the White Rocks. The Fort Bayard command looked northeast, frowning at all it could not see.

However, if the rumor of the massacre up on Gutache Mesa were true, General Bent was probably bandoleering ammunition and alerting all outlying posts. Supposed to have happened at dawn four days back: two prospectors spread-eagled to the spokes of their wagon and killed by five burning arrows in each man. They were dead when Lieutenant Botts and his green troopers found them. Five arrows, five slashes in a horse’s throat. Victorio was trying to convey something.

Young put it out of his mind. He was more interested in the item under the feet of Cactus Williams.

He rode on, holding his distance behind the old Concord until he heard its hip-and-hub splash in the Gila River. He then rowelled his pony and raced north, fording the river a good half-mile above the oncoming stage. Topping a small knoll by the road, he looked back, then rode down the side and dismounted. After tossing a gray hat into a clump of bear-grass, he placed a worn black hat on his head and pulled grimy tan trousers up over his dark ones. Next he tied a red bandana over his face.

The coach clattered nearer and a dust-devil started its spin in the road, raced west up the flats, and died in bantam fury. Young watched it, thinking there was a lot of dust to stir up out here. Had been, was, would be. In fact——

He had kicked up a dust-devil or two in his twenty-seven years. Noted as a pony express rider and scout, he had seen trouble in Arizona Territory, and up on the Platte during the Cheyenne campaign. But he knew the Apache better and, after an unsuccessful prospecting venture up in the Datil Mountains, he had again turned to scout for General Bent during the late Mescalero campaign. But he had not come off so well, due to friction between officers in the field, a Captain Corday and a hot-headed lieutenant named Dana. The latter, in disfavor now, blamed Young for the trap that took a dozen of his troopers. A scout’s reward.

And now he was about to rob a stage.

The coach came on, and he watched the six-horse approach, a determined man who had no knowledge of the passengers inside. It would have mattered little if he had. He was of the breed, of one mind, a man of the dry country where dust and sun got under a man’s skin and stirred up a brew that, like a poison, prolonged patience and whetted sensitiveness to a fine point.

The creaking or the stage was his signal. He got into the saddle and charged down from the blind side of the knoll. Cactus Williams saw him, reached for his rifle, dropped it when the horses snorted and reared. It was the advantage Young played for. The teams stood nervously still and Cactus reached high. Young slouched in the saddle, gun up, with deliberate ease. Not a word was spoken between them. Glances sufficed as Cactus studied the robber closely and found him more menacing by his unhurried manner.

The sack at Cactus’s feet was handed over. Young motioned for the rifle, next, the pistol. Before the latter reached him, the coach door opened and five people stepped outside. Quietly Young’s thumb eased back the rifle hammer and the aim was set squarely on the crown of Cactus Williams’ hat. The pistol leveled on the passengers.

All but one reached high. Only the girl stared fearlessly, curiously, a certain fascination making in her face. All of her registered in a flash on Young’s mind. She had a pretty figure, and her eyes were green, decisive, and alive. She was looking at him with a controlled expression, like the shape of judgment withheld. Then it melted slowly, and a faint flush of color beat up under her skin.

One of the passengers darted a glance up at Cactus when Young appeared to relax. All of them knew the girl’s eyes held him when his success and safety demanded that he look sharp. Then Young was taking them in one by one.

There was something familiar about the small man with determined gray eyes and red mustache. He knew who he was on second glance. Joe Sack, a man who had won his reputation on the right side of the law. But the girl was more interesting.

Cactus was looking for an advantage. He thought he saw it in Young’s apparent carelessness and eased his hand down to his pistol. But Young had drawn his sight and now he saw the hand lift with the pistol. As both of them stared death in the face, Sack flipped up his coat in reach for his gun.

With the aim on Cactus fixed, Young had only to shift his pistol on Sack. Rifle and pistol spoke in unison. The bullet knocked the gun out of Sack’s hand. The rifle slug tore through Cactus’s hat crown, causing him to drop the pistol in a hurry.

The girl stared incredulously. When Young looked at her again, she seemed baffled. In her mind, despite rising anger and resentment, was something she could not help liking. Though a pair of eyes and sandy hair at the temples were all she saw above the bandana, she sensed the rest. And the bold careless attention he favored her with appealed to her as much as it angered her.

He was making a motion for the passengers to re-enter the stage. All obeyed except Sack and the girl. And she was about to raise a foot to the step when Young asked her name.

“Bonnie McQueen,” she said sharply. “Who are you?”

“The Sacaton Kid,” he replied. When she made no motion to get into the stage, he said, “Bonnie McQueen!” A cold light flickered across his eyes, then fell away into an amused expression. “Bonnie McQueen,” he said again, as though the name meant something to him. He looked at the sack across his saddle.

On it was written what he already knew: A. T. McQUEEN, QUEENY MINE. McQueen, rich and powerful, was the big man of the ’Frisco Valley and the mining town. To Young West, he was something else.

“So you’re McQueen’s daughter,” he said in a slow drawl that sounded like discovery. A light laugh sounded. “This is more than I anticipated, ma’am.”

Her mouth had a pretty quirk to it and there was a singular attraction in her every movement. “Why don’t you move on while you can?” she said, staring daggers at him.

Sack spoke up. “Maybe you’d like to hand over the payroll sack, young feller. We’ll give you a good start.”

There was a cogent quality in Sack’s words. It emanated from his tone of voice and steady eyes and Young knew he was listening to a good proposition. There were a few men like Sack in the West. They stood firmly for law and order, fought for it. But the proposition wasn’t for Young. He said so.

“Better listen to him,” Bonnie said. “They’ll bury the Sacaton Kid without bothering to ask who you really are.”

“Now that could be, Bonnie,” Young replied. “But aren’t you thinking about your father’s money?”

“He can spare all you took.”

“Sure. And a lot more, I hear. But we don’t want the big gun of the Valley robbed, do we? So just tell me where to return it.”

“The A-T Ranch!” she said, not to be outdone by him. “Say around nine tomorrow night. We’ll all be up waiting for you.”

Her sarcasm tickled him. He chuckled and said, “I’ll be seeing you, Bonnie.”

He spurred his pony and raced off. Looking back, he saw Sack’s hand fly up with a glint of metal in it. A shot and a close whine followed. But Young had seen more:

Bonnie’s hand struck Sack’s arm to deflect the aim.

Young rode north at a lazy gait, on past the stage stop and toward Cactus Flat, where night overtook him. A faint ghostly light etched the scenes about him, tipped the yucca and beargrass on the ridges like a memory of frost. A firebrand burned away up in the timber belt for an instant He looked ahead and saw it repeated. Indian telegraph. The Apache was harmless at night.

The stars were low and heavy, and Bonnie’s eyes continued to dig into his. Maybe the stars in his head were the ones he had seen burning brightly in her eyes. He had not expected her to stay with him all the way across Cactus Flat. But she watched his every move as he dipped down to the serpentine curves of the road and stared across the dark expanse where the upthrust of rock marked the opening of Big Dry Canyon. Stopping his horse, he looked into the night and considered his future with unwelcome seriousness.

The heavens, the girl, or the canyon, or all combined, evoked in him an innate wisdom all his own and yet no part of him. He was balancing the things that made up his life—purpose and a finely calculated sense of vengeance—against what was anchored behind a woman’s eyes. The ultimate goal was lost, tossed about in the ambivalence of his feelings, and he knew anger and resentment at the softer and finer instincts of his being.

He could not argue against purpose. What brought him out here was an unyielding thing. A woman’s eyes could wait.

He nudged the horse with a foot and rode on north, up toward A. T. McQueen’s country.

Bonnie knew somehow that she was working on the robber. She smiled up at the same stars he was seeing, urging him on with unspoken words. And like a woman she took a great delight in shaping his course even at a distance. She seemed to know that his fascinated look of the afternoon was still as fresh in his mind as in her memory. Some law of the universe made it so.

She ate supper at the stage stop, then climbed into the stage again. Cactus thought it best to travel at night. The news of the massacre of two prospectors up on Gutache Mesa influenced his decision. The Apache never struck at night.

As the coach rolled on and the other four passengers either slept or suffered the bumps in silence, Bonnie’s mind wandered off aimlessly to her own life prior to this day; to her future. She looked back on her twenty-one years, seeing the West, cattle, horses, mines, and Indians. She had teethed on Indian talk. She rode a horse with easy grace. She played the organ, fashioned her own dresses and hats, ran the big McQueen house on the ranch as her mother had taught her to do before her death two years back, and even made decisions in the absence of her father and his manager, Luke Mason. She felt the full responsibility of the big A-T Ranch, enough to realize that she shouldn’t have left it to go gallivanting down at Las Cruces for Lucy Summer’s ball. But she had had fun. The Army officers danced divinely. She would not soon forget Captain Corday, or Lieutenant Dana, who was returning to Fort Mangus. In a way she was glad to be on the road home instead of waiting over for the ball at Fort Bayard tomorrow night. And Luke Mason would be glad also.

There! The thought of Luke brought her up sharply. She and Luke were engaged to be married, though no date had been set for a wedding. She looked thoughtfully out of the window at the stars winking on and off over the ragged edges of the Mogollons. In her mind, Luke was standing alongside Lieutenant Dana and a man whose full face she had never seen, the Sacaton Kid.

Luke was tall, suave, educated; from Denver. He knew finance and mining. The Sacaton Kid was a bandit. Dana, grim and sullen, was a soldier. Tame Luke loved comfort. The Kid, like Dana, probably slept outdoors, saddle for pillow. Luke took her for granted. His air was that of a man who, supposed to make a good marriage, had all but tied the knot. He drank and gambled in a quiet reserved manner that said, “Good policy to do so.” What kind of game did the Kid play? Like he shot; like Dana fought?

Three men.

The green flashed behind her eyes. She would meet Luke Mason with a show of independence. Maybe she would exercise a catty streak and tell him how the Army officers slid across the dance floor with her as though they had moonlight in their veins.

She slept a little, opened her eyes, slept some more. As the night wore out, the stage reached the Mormon settlement where two passengers got off. The cowboy said he would ride ahead on the outrider’s horse to Bacon with news of the robbery. This left her with only Sack for company. Both were wide awake when the stage rolled on. He asked about her father, saying he had known McQueen for years, that A. T. would be surprised to learn that he was the new deputy sheriff, among other things.

“Deputy sheriff!” Bonnie exclaimed. “Then you’re duty bound to catch the Sacaton Kid.”

“Right. And I’ll do it.” He added. “Somehow.”

“Deputies don’t last long in Bacon or Queeny,” she reminded.

“So I’ve heard,” came the soft-spoken reply.

“What did you mean when you said you were the new deputy, among other things?”

Sack thought he could answer her in two words, “Apache trouble.” But that wasn’t enough. In all his experience he had never heard of Indian trouble that the white man had not started. In this instance the Adjutant General of the Territory felt that the Gutache Mesa killings by Victorio needed a thorough investigation; and under the guise of deputy sheriff, Sack was here to do just that. But she had asked a question.

“I’m a man who looks both ways, miss.”

“Clear as mud. But I shouldn’t have asked.” She eyed him curiously and said, “Back to the robber. You could have taken out after him yesterday afternoon.”

“Yes, I could have,” Sack said slowly. “Somethin’ queer about him, though. First off, I ain’t heard of no Sacaton Kid. Next thing, he didn’t act like a robber. Took too many chances. Yep, somethin’ odd about him. In fact——”

Bonnie waited for a moment. “Go on,” she said.

“I was about to say I was hopin’ he’d trade my way. But it ain’t practical thinkin’.”

Bonnie drew in her lower lip and eyed him narrowly before saying: “I know what you mean. Sounds crazy, but I was saying to myself: suppose he does return the money tonight?”

As Sack studied her, his mind sharpened with the possibility that the idea might not be so crazy after all. Then reason told him again that the mind of a hard-headed realist could not harbor such absurd and wishful thinking.