Читать книгу Showdown at Gila Bend - Kingsley West - Страница 5

LATIGO Lansen backed away and filled his lungs. Blood from the arm wound dripped on the ground. He stared at the body of the Apache. His legs hurt and trembled. “No, sir!” he shouted in tremendous relief. “Nobody’s killing me!”

The gelding watched and came close. Latigo walked from the dead Indian to the stream, stripped off the shirt, washed his chest and shoulders and bathed the stab wound. Wind came back and fluttered the feather in the red man’s hair. He didn’t bury the Indian and the sky turned copper and black before he slept. Tomorrow had better be good.

His name was Lat, which was short for Latimer Lansen, but nobody ever called him that. Latigo was the name that stuck to him like a burr and suited him well. He was twenty-six years old, tall and straight-backed in the saddle, with a flat stringy body that needed a solid month of woman’s cooking. His belly was lean and liked cold water. Long legs reached from narrow hips that were easy on a saddle and his hands knew their way about a horse or a gun. Close to his knee in the saddle holster hung a Winchester model 1866, well used and all the better for that.

He crossed the wide hardpan flat behind the ranch-house and reined. He leaned hands on horn and cantle and twisted in the saddle. There were no cattle anywhere, no noise, no blue smoke climbing from the chimney, the air curious and silent.

In front of the house waited two wagons and a buck-board loaded and ready to move. Two lighter squaw-hitched riding horses stood by the tail of the buckboard. The door of the house stood open and as Latigo rode close a man came out carrying a gunnysack bundle, then a young fellow followed by a woman.

The man was tall and straight and brown-faced with a grey moustache and walked boldly. Latigo touched the brim of his hat. All three hesitated and then came on. The woman and the boy nodded greetings but the man’s face did not change much.

“Mind if I water my horse?”

The man nodded permission and the boy pointed with the gunnysack pack he carried. “Sure. Find all the water you want over there.”

“Thanks. You mind if I get down? Been riding a long time.”

The man moved his head. His expression lost edge; hesitation left his eyes. “Sure, son. Get off your horse. Not every day we see strangers that are welcome.”

Latigo led the gelding to water and walked back. The man waited for him and the woman and the boy stood by the buckboard. He touched his hat again to the woman. “ ’Day, ma’am,” he said.

She packed the gunnysack bundle into place. “Haven’t a thing to offer, neighbour,” she said, eyes troubled but brave. “Right sorry about it, seeing you’re a stranger and all.”

“Nothing left in the house at all,” added the boy.

“Wasn’t hoping for food, ma’am,” said Latigo. “Had coffee a little while ago.”

The older man’s face was friendly enough, trouble on his mind and signs of worry on his forehead. The boy looked eighteen, all bone, strong as an ox and six feet tall, as good to look at as a good new day. Latigo reckoned he was the son. “You folks moving?” he asked.

The man nodded. The woman’s lips puckered and her eyes moved away. The boy bristled with anger. His hands clenched. He glared at his father. The man breathed deeply but the boy was ready to talk. “Yes, mister,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing . . . moving!”

The father spoke quietly. “That’s no way to talk, son,” he said. “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk. What we’re doing is best for all of us.”

The boy’s eyes blazed. Yellow hair fell across his forehead. He glared at Latigo, then at his father. “Aren’t you angry, Pa?” he demanded. “Aren’t you real honest-to-God spitting mad?” He waited seconds. There was no answer. Straight as a pine tree, he turned to Latigo. “Wouldn’t you be, mister, if it was you?”

Latigo looked from the father to the angry youth. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he said. “I’m a stranger.”

The man worked roughly at the gunnysack bundles behind the seat of the buckboard. “I don’t want to hear any more of that kind of talk, son,” he said. “I told you. Now let it be!” He strode towards the house and slowed after five paces.

“We’re running away, Pa!” cried the boy. “That’s what we’re doing. We’re letting them run us off our own land!”

The man stopped walking. Latigo turned in time to see pride leave the rancher’s shoulders and his hands tighten. The man turned and sighed deeply, brown face lighted by sunshine.

The boy’s eyes brightened. “Pa, I’m on your side,” he said loudly, earnestly, face creased and finely chiselled. “I’ll do anything you say, anything at all. I’ll go if I have to but, Pa, I don’t want to run away!” His eyes never left his father’s face and his hands pleaded. The woman began to cry a little. She turned to the buckboard and rested forehead on hand.

“If you folks are in trouble I’m sorry I butted in,” said Latigo. “You want me to, I’ll go.”

“No,” said the father. “It’s none of your doing. Ma is sorry she can’t be hospitable but,” he paused and breathed and looked at the loaded wagons, “as you can see, mister, we’re leaving.”

“We don’t have to, Pa,” said the youth.

The man’s eyes burned with anger he did not feel. “It’s the only thing I can do, son!” he said sharply, hurt because he had to say it and because the boy was his son.

The youth moved and stood before Latigo. “Mister, will you stay for a minute? Will you listen if I tell you?”

“Do anything I can,” said Latigo.

“There, Pa, there! You hear what the man says!”

“It’s none of his business, son!”

The boy was quick. He held Latigo’s arm and addressed his father. “Let me tell him, Pa. Just so he’ll know!”

The woman turned from the side of the buckboard. “Let the boy speak, Andrew. He’s got a right. . .”

“Thanks, Ma,” said the youth and waited for a sign from his father.

The older man regarded Latigo. “You’re a stranger, mister. I guess there’s no harm in telling you.”

The woman was quiet, waiting. The boy’s eyes stayed on Latigo. The father did the telling. “I’m Andrew Hemingway,” he said. “This here is my wife, Emily, and this is Buck, my boy. He’s eighteen years old. That’s why I’m doing what I am.” He walked from the wagon to the fence of an empty corral. Latigo and the boy followed. “Nearly all you can see was my land. All that range ahead of you, right down to the big arroyo. You can’t see it but it’s there.” He turned and pointed to the house. “Then out to the butte. From there east to where my marker is set up. South of us there’s wooded country and a creek that runs into the Gila river . . .” Latigo listened. The rancher described his land and its edges, a big comfortable spread, unfenced and with plenty of water. The house was stone built but the barn to the side had been burned down. “We’re close enough to the river for it all to be good land, mister. It’s got twenty years of my life in it. But, like Buck says, we’re running away.”

Latigo asked the question the rancher waited to hear. “Why?”

The boy stared at the ground in shame, eyes burning at what his father would say. “We’re being driven out,” said Hemingway. Latigo looked over the rancher’s shoulder at the charred uprights of the barn. “Seven or eight years ago Matthew Kincaid came here. He was a cattleman same as the rest of us. We didn’t think anything was wrong until it was too late. He started buying up all the land. Then he brought in hired guns. If he couldn’t buy your land peaceable, he made you glad to sell. They drove off my beef cattle. They spoiled my water so my cattle died. They burned down my barn. Soon I couldn’t get anybody to work for me. Two of my cowhands were killed. I buried them down by the stream.” He paused, breathed deeply and lowered his shoulders, eyes avoiding his son, pride of living and fearlessness gone out of him. “I can’t fight back, mister. Too old to learn how. Been a peaceable man too long for that. Buck here would fight. He’s young, he wants to fight, but he’s all I’ve got so I won’t let him fight. Got his mother to think about.”

“So you’re selling to Kincaid?”

Hemingway nodded. “Nothing else for me to do. Not enough ranchers left in Gila valley to fight back. He went at us one at a time.”

“Isn’t there a sheriff in Gila Bend?”

“Sure, there’s a sheriff. There’s even a jail. The sheriff knows what’s good for him so he does what he’s told.”

Hemingway walked away. The boy looked after his father. He didn’t smile when he nodded to Latigo. “Thanks for listening, mister,” he said. “All I wanted was for somebody else to know about it.”

“That helps,” said Latigo and called his horse. He swung a leg across the saddle. “Where you headed now, Buck?”

The youth hung thumbs in his belt, light strong on his long face and yellow hair, and shrugged. “Farther west, I guess. Maybe north. Don’t seem to matter much. This is where we’d like to be. You heard what Pa said. We’ve been here twenty years. Guess I was here before I was born.”

Latigo tugged up the gelding’s head. “Don’t see how I can help, Buck. Would if I could.”

Buck agreed. “I guess nobody can. Kincaid’s a big man.”

“Thanks for the water.”

The young fellow watched Latigo turn the horse. “You’re welcome. What’s your name, mister?”

Latigo looked down. “Lansen,” I said.

At the buckboard Hemingway raised his face to the light. “Why’d you come riding this way, son?”

The sun was also in Latigo’s eyes. He tilted his hat forward and threaded rein leather through his fingers. “Own some land around here,” he said. “From what I remember, this was a good place to live.”

“Keep riding, boy. They’ll have you out inside weeks.”

“Maybe not,” Latigo said and thought about it. “Thanks for the water. My compliments to Mrs. Hemingway.”

“ ’Bye, son.”

Buck watched until Latigo was out of sight. His father addressed him and had to speak his name twice.

Latigo rode across flats and came to the stream. Aspen and toyon berry grew close to the water. He reined at the two marked graves and looked back. Twenty years, he thought. He drew the Winchester from the scabbard and laid the gun across his thighs. Twenty years is a lifetime. Buck had been here before he was born.

Four miles nearer the Gila river wind raised sand and dust in a cloud. He walked the gelding through patches of big-eared cactus that stood out like dead men or prairie witches with reaching hands, and waited for the wagon to come abreast out of the haze.

The people on board weren’t old, the driver deep-chested, the woman round-faced and buxom. The man hauled on the reins and the team slowed to a halt. Flying sand beat against Latigo’s ears. He touched his hat to the woman. The man eyed him before nodding. The wagon was piled high with furniture and bedding. Latigo edged the gelding closer as the driver tipped his hat to keep off the wind. “Howdy, stranger.”

“Howdy!” returned Latigo, voice loud. “Don’t figure to find out what’s none of my business, mister, but are you folks moving out of Gila valley?”

“That’s what we’re doing, stranger.”

Latigo bent his head and shouted. “You being driven out?” he asked. “Like the Hemingways?”

The driver unbuttoned his coat to uncover the gun he wore. “Don’t reckon a man has to tell his business to every stranger he meets,” he said.

“I’m not a stranger, mister,” corrected Latigo. “You don’t need to show your gun. I got an interest hereabouts and I aim to find out only what’s good for me.”

“We’re leaving because there’s no future here for a man who can’t hire himself ten pairs of guns.”

The woman touched the man’s arm. “We don’t aim to do any fighting, mister,” she said, concern but no cowardice in her voice. “Jed and me . . . we’re not married very long. We haven’t had our firstborn yet.”

“Are you being driven out?” repeated Latigo. “I’m not belittling you, mister. All I asked was were you being driven out of Gila river valley?”

The man worked with the reins in his hands. He spat over the side and eyed Latigo. “Sold my land legal,” he said crossly.

Dust made the saguarro loom like yellow wraiths. The gelding was impatient. Latigo tightened rein and slapped a leg on flank. Then the wind died, the whine and whistle eased and red and pink cactus blossom bloomed big and rich again. “All I want to know is how to protect myself,” he explained.

The man on the wagon leaned forward. The hostility left his face. He regarded Latigo with interest. “You know this country, mister?” he asked.

“Know Gila river country,” said Latigo.

The woman spoke. “Then you know what’s happening.”

Latigo shook his head. “No, ma’am, I don’t. This here’s my home ground and I’m coming back. Rode past the Hemingways’ place a little while ago and they were pulling out. Then I meet you and you’re doing the same thing. I’m tired riding a horse, want to stand on the ground. I’d like to know what I’m up against.”

The driver of the wagon eyed him levelly. “Kincaid’s his name. He’s driving everybody out.”

“Everybody?”

“He’s got hired guns, mister. The way it is now the fellow who points a gun at you is right. Never met the man yet who could talk back to the end of a shooting iron. With us it was easy. I was a small man, didn’t have much stake.”

“Thanks,” said Latigo. “I’m obliged to you.”

“Glad to meet with you,” said the woman.

The man beat dust out of his clothes with the flat of his hat. “You’re not wearing guns,” he said. “That’s the first thing I’d think about if I was you.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Sand fell from wheel rims as the wagon moved. The man leaned over to speak again. “See any Indians on your way?”

“Killed one yesterday.”

“You figure they’re running wild?”

“There’s a big peace being made. If it works out the Apache will be over in Chiricahua country, near the mountains.”

“Reckon we’ll be all right, then.”

“Keep your gun handy.”

“Sure will. Glad to have words with you, stranger.”

Latigo backed away and turned the gelding. The wagon moved on. None of it was good.

The air was bright after the wind and sand, cactus scents reaching out like a lure. He rode sideways across a slope of land. Bluestem grass appeared underfoot and he began to think he could smell the river. He sat up straight, searching ahead. He knew this ground, had hoofed it a hundred times, riding bareback on a long-geared colt without a bridle, using hands on a mane-hold and tight legs to stay mounted. When he saw the river he dug in his heels and raced and whatever it was that stretched his spine, squared his shoulders and tightened chest and knuckles, the gelding felt it, too.

The Gila river, which is like the veins on the back of a man’s hand, begins near the Black mountains of New Mexico somewhere west of Socorro, sucks at the earth of Arizona in a network of tributaries like the roots of a tree and heads west in a twisting swirl for only less than a thousand miles. The Santa Cruz helps feed the rushing water from the south as do the Salt and Verde rivers which swell into the Gila from the north and join the southewestern flow not far from Phoenix.

For Latigo, who at El Paso had looked across the Rio Grande and in the north had seen the Colorado, the Gila was the only river in the world; blue as the sky in high clear daylight, shining like silver at night, making a wind of air and a rushing sound that was like the ringing of bells.

He flung aside his hat and walked into the water, boots and all, to wet hands and face and head. It tasted the same, was the same water, the same river. Gila Bend wasn’t far away now. He stared at the sky till body heat and sun dried skin and shirt. When he rode again he hurried, skirted the river for a time, finally moved to higher ground.

He was still thinking of the river when the dark-haired girl on a pony climbed the sloping ground and rode quickly out of sight. Two men met on horseback, dismounted, left the horses where they stood and, without speaking, began to fight. Latigo quickened and rode close. He reached for the rifle and thought better of it. He looked over his shoulder for the girl but she did not reappear.

The men weren’t evenly matched. One was older and solid and knew how to handle his weight so that the other fellow knew what hit him. He was a square-faced man with a full broad moustache and wide shoulders. His lips were tight, his face angry.

The younger man was Latigo’s height and weight, skin dark and clear, face well shaped and handsome. His hair was black as tar and his good looks and flat waist might have come from Mexican blood. He held himself well and had a tight lean frame. Nobody spoke. Latigo watched.

The fight was hard and clean and serious, without boots or knee work. The two men rolled on the ground, stood up, used their fists and knocked each other down, grunted and spat blood. The young fellow’s face bled first but he straightened again every time he fell down. The bigger man had punch and longer arms. When the struggle moved close to where Latigo sat on the horse and the gelding backed away, head in the air, neither of the men slowed. Knowing that he was there didn’t stop the fight which was private and important.

The big man hit the young fellow and he went down to lie on his back, gasping, legs all spread out, chest flat, shoulders trying to rise and not having the strength. His eye was cut and his cheek bloodmarked. In a minute he turned on his belly, pressed himself up and rose. The other man waited and the lean-bodied younger man came running to swipe at the man with the moustache. It was a good hit and the big fellow reeled back but did not fall down. He rushed in again with a clenched, clasped-fist pole-axe that missed. The young dark man stepped out of the path of the swish of air and bone.

Then something else happened. Hoofbeats drummed on the air and another rider raced down from high ground. The fighting men heard the sounds of the horse and the young fellow’s shoulders squared. He hardened and hit the big man twice, blows that made the man with the moustache stand back and suck in wind. But it was only for a minute. The big fellow hit the younger man a crunching, bone-breaking blow that ended the fight, a pile-driver that filled the dark-skinned man’s sky with stars and turned the daylight black. The young fellow choked and fell down and this time he didn’t get up. He had been hurt. He twisted on the ground, body bent like a jack-knife, and groaned. The big fellow wiped his mouth and stood back.

The rider came close. Latigo reached for the gun a second time and then saw her yellow hair. She approached like a storm of wind on a fine-limbered mare, all haste and purpose, slowed and slid from the saddle as easily and smoothly as any young buck who might throw his leg forward across his pony’s mane and dismount from a saddle-less horse in one beautiful, boneless motion. She carried a riding whip and her eyes were on fire. Fine golden hair showed under her flat-topped Mexican sombrero. She saw nobody but the man on the ground. Latigo watched as she ran to the young fellow.

At times like this a man doesn’t much care who his company is. He shows what he feels. The spare-bodied man was hurt and not ashamed of it. There was blood on his face, his chest hurt and his hands shook. The woman knelt on the ground by his side, raised his head from the dirt and brushed his forehead with her fingers. He was too hurt to know. Her eyes moved quickly over his face. She spoke his name and he only groaned. She tried to raise him up and failed. Then she rose, eyes bright, lips tight and hands clenched.

The man with the moustache picked up his hat. When he straightened the riding crop cut him across the face. He started back, angry and surprised. She did it again, eyes dancing in fury, voice as sharp as the whiplash. He snatched the crop from her hand and his broad face darkened as red weals appeared. He raised the whip to strike her in return and Latigo’s hand moved to the rifle stock. He didn’t have to slide the gun from the holster for the wide-faced man only glared at the woman and tossed the whip aside. “Ask him!” he said loudly. “He saw it all. It was a fair fight and Joe got what was coming to him! Go on, ask the man on the horse!”

Latigo’s forehead creased. He stepped down. The man with the whip-marked face strode to his horse, mounted, walked the animal back and spoke down to her, finger pointing. “Some day,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll kill him. . . and I won’t be gentle! Tell him that!” He spurred the mount and rode away. Latigo’s eyes came back to the woman. He waited to be asked.

She turned and stared hard at him. She had a fine lovely face, red lips that were tight now with suppressed fury, and eyes that were too dark for such light coloured hair. Her breasts moved under a yellow buckskin jacket and her riding skirt flared away from a narrow waist. She wore fancy riding boots of polished brown leather and was the finest looking woman he’d seen. When she did not speak he confirmed what the older man had said. “What the man says is true, ma’am. It was a fair fight.”

Her eyes glittered. “You saw it all?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why didn’t you do something?”

“Like what, ma’am?”

“You could have stopped them!”

Her hands and body quivered. She wanted to whip him also but the crop lay on the ground. “They didn’t want to be stopped,” Latigo said quietly. “Looked to me they had good reason for fighting.”

“You were afraid!” she accused. His legs straightened and his shoulders rose. “You see a man beaten nearly to death and you don’t lift a finger to help! What kind of man are you?”

He eyed her calmly, was slow to speak. Her flushed cheeks made her beautiful, a fiery beauty, all flame and temper. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’ve done all the fighting for other people I’m going to do. A man’s got a right to mind his own business.”

Her lips compressed. “You’re a coward!” she said and watched his jaw harden. “Who are you, anyway? What are you doing here?”

He moved to the horse, gathered up the rein and regarded her. “Nothing in the world so hard to put up with, ma’am, as a stiff-necked woman,” he said. “I reckon you talk the way you do because nobody ever told you not to.”

She had stepped nearer the man on the ground, moving his arms now and trying to rise. As Latigo spoke she turned quickly, eyes still alight with the old anger and sharpened with a new. “What did you say?” she demanded.

“You’re talking out of turn, ma’am.”

Her hands clenched again. The quirt lay too far away. Her breasts rose. “How dare you!” she cried.

He nodded. “That’s what I mean, ma’am.”

He raised himself into the saddle and threaded reins. The gelding came round. “Aren’t you going to help him up?” she asked, the words stinging. “You can see he’s hurt!”

“No, ma’am. He fell down by himself. Let him get up by himself.”

She turned from him, trembling, furious in defeat. She watched as he walked the horse away. The sun was strong, the light from the west, and he wore the hat forward to shield his eyes. There was an ease in the way he sat on the horse, in the way he ignored her and in the shape of his shoulders that was masculine and had nothing to do with her kind of pride. She did not know what to think. She did not understand her own confusion and didn’t know why not.

The young fellow on the ground moved and made a sound. She knelt and helped him to rise. Blood from the cut over his eye had hardened on his cheekbone, his chin was bruised and his lips swollen. He swayed and held her arm. She thought about the man on the horse. She looked again. Latigo was moving away. “What were you fighting about, Joe?” she asked.

The dark-skinned man brushed his mouth and squinted in the sunlight, eyes following the straight-backed figure on the gelding. “Nothing,” he said. “It was just a fight.”

She made him look at her. “Joe, it wasn’t just a fight,” she said. “I want to know!”

“It was just a fight, Hildy,” he said crossly. “A man-fight that doesn’t have anything to do with you. A fellow needs a fight sometimes. You don’t know. . .” She slapped his cheek and his dark face smarted. “If you’d marry me, I wouldn’t have to fight,” he said.

She knew that and didn’t answer him. He reached for her hands and she avoided the touch. His eyes sulked. “Get on your horse, Joe,” she said. “Father wants you.”

“What for?”

Again her eyes sought the shape of the man on the gelding, still visible, distant now. “I don’t know. He just wants you.”

He walked to his horse. She picked up the crop. When she was mounted she asked, “Who was that stranger, Joe?”

He followed Latigo’s direction; a man on a horse, dark against yellow grass, too far away to be recognised. “Never saw him before. Some cowhand. I reckon.”

“What’s he doing here? Is he looking for work?”

“I told you. I never saw the fellow before.”

“He could have stopped the fight.”

“No!” he said sharply.” “I didn’t want the fight stopped. I’m not finished with Nevin. I’ll kill him!”

“That’s what he said about you, ”Joe,” she remembered. Her eyes met his. Her look was distant and deep. “Why were you fighting?”

He didn’t answer. He spurred the horse forward. “Come on, we’d better get back. I’m in enough trouble already.”

Together they rode over sunlit grass. She remembered the face of Latigo Lansen and his lips, his hands when he straightened the rein and gripped the saddle horn, and eyes that weren’t afraid of her. The man riding by her side was as tall, as straight, and knew how to sit on a horse but there was a difference that had nothing to do with the shape of either or how each man rode a horse. She didn’t know what it was and not knowing disturbed her.